Collision Course

by William Shatner

  He was going to change his world for the better.

  Even at the age of nineteen, he knew with certainty that he was the only one who could.

  The Lily Sloane Complex—the Academy’s warp physics teaching lab—was, for safety reasons, located on an artificial island in San Francisco Bay that was linked to the main Academy grounds by a pair of monorail tracks with automated cars. The cars were in continuous operation, ferrying maintenance personnel, instructors, and mids back and forth to the lab.

  The four-minute ride was something most passengers looked forward to because of the startling moment when each car passed through the complex’s hemispherical force field that protected not the island, but San Francisco, from a potentially disastrous warp-core breach. There was always an exciting interval in which the monorail car seemed to suddenly slow, then dip into a steep dive, then right itself, as the field softened to permit the passage of the slow-moving object and the local gravitational field was distorted. No such softening would occur, though, should the Sloane Complex suddenly blow apart and the rubble spray out at supersonic velocities. In that case, all riders on the cars knew the force field would remain at full strength and, to an outside observer, appear to instantly fill with fire and black smoke.

  Such a catastrophe, of course, was a worst-case scenario. The complex’s containment and safety systems were maintained at the same readiness level as those on board a starship. Its static warp core—used in advanced instruction for mids and engineering specialist recruits from the Starfleet Training Center across the bay—was seldom operated at full power. Starfleet was not an organization known for taking unnecessary chances.

  The complex itself was a set of twelve buildings, only three of which were generally open to mids: the main lab, called Lily One; the subsystems lecture facility, called Z. Hall; and the warp-core facility, affectionately known to the mids and instructors as Ground Zero. The other buildings ranged from monorail maintenance facilities to two power plants, and a combined operations center that oversaw communications and transporter services, and flight-traffic control for the island’s small landing port.

  The ops center was Jim Kirk’s first target.

  “Now that’s more your style,” Elissa said as Kirk modeled his newest ‘borrowed’ uniform—maintenance overalls. “But most of those guys, they’re in their twenties, at least.”

  Kirk pulled his cap visor down, spoke in a deep voice. “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am.”

  “You do realize this isn’t a joke?” Elissa was already uncomfortable being in one of the ops center’s supply rooms, sorting through the uniforms of off-duty personnel. Kirk’s levity was not reassuring.

  “Sure do, ma’am.” Kirk spoke in the same deep voice.

  “Stop that right now,” Elissa warned him. “Just tell me what we do next.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of Kirk’s mouth, but he obeyed, sensibly. “We need to get to a maintenance terminal so I can check work orders.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Whatever kind of work had to be done in the warp lab three weeks ago, before the theft.” Kirk made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the door, indicating she should precede him. “As soon as we find those records, we find the name of the real thief.”

  There was a bank of maintenance terminals outside the staff cafeteria, and Elissa followed Kirk as he walked up to it as if he had worked at the Sloane Complex for years. Inwardly she cringed as he even drew attention to himself by nodding and smiling at the other maintenance workers. He had no fear.

  Then he reached into a pocket of his overalls and drew out an ID card.

  “Where’d you get that?” she whispered, eyes wide with disapproval.

  “It was in the pocket. That’s why I picked this one.”

  Elissa mentally castigated herself again for going along with this.

  “C’mon, Elissa. It’s not like it’s valuable or has a security clearance or anything.”

  Elissa grimaced. She had no one to blame but herself. Naively, she had believed that all Jim wanted to do was to check the lab in person—and the only thing remotely wrong with that was that he would have been wearing a midshipman’s uniform. There most likely was some kind of regulation prohibiting a civilian from impersonating a mid, but she was sure it had to be a much lesser offense than stealing a Starfleet car.

  Now, though, Jim wasn’t just dressing like an Academy maintenance worker—by using the stolen ID to access the terminal, he was impersonating a worker. That wasn’t against regulations—that was against the law.

  “Please,” she urged him now, “don’t do it.”

  But he’d already waved the card past the terminal’s sensor and a welcome screen appeared. “See?” he said blithely. “I don’t have to do anything else—no lies, no misrepresentation.”

  Elissa felt the hand of doom settle on her and her lost career. Jim was wrong. Just waving the card was misrepresentation. But as he’d instructed her, she kept her eyes fixed on the terminal as other complex workers and staff walked into and out of the cafeteria. Jim’s plan called for her to be a student instructor being given an orientation tour.

  A work schedule screen appeared on the terminal. Whoever Jim was impersonating wasn’t due to come on shift for another three hours, so it wasn’t complete.

  “See,” Kirk said to her. “The computer thinks I’m early so it’s not even asking me to input a start code.”

  “That doesn’t make it right,” Elissa muttered through clenched teeth.

  Kirk confidently entered a search command. “Starfleet punishing you for something you didn’t do isn’t right either. And I don’t have any trouble figuring out which situation is worse.”

  In response to his request, the screen changed. Now it displayed a maintenance schedule for the main warp lab. Kirk immediately adjusted it to show only the past three weeks.

  “Here we go,” he said. “Equipment upgrades.”

  Elissa looked left and right, surreptitiously, to see if anyone was watching them, but no one was.

  Kirk was scanning the screen, moving his finger over it quickly. “Looks like they’ve already replaced the stolen dilithium with a new shipment…There it is!”

  Elissa turned her attention back to the screen. “What?”

  “Read.”

  The paragraph Jim was pointing to was part of the warp lab’s maintenance log.

  Elissa dutifully read the paragraph. On July 15, the vault had been emptied of 3.2 kilograms of fully expended dilithium. On the nineteenth, the vault was degaussed and the holding frames were removed so the interior vault walls—about a cubic meter in volume—could be polished down and resealed. Five days later, new holding frames had been installed, the security system upgraded, and a new code combination set by the lab’s director. Then, on the twenty-sixth, three kilograms of partially expended dilithium crystals had been delivered under guard from Spacedock to be locked in the vault for demonstration use in the coming semester.

  “Okay, I read it,” she hissed at Kirk. “What am I supposed to see that I don’t?”

  “July twenty-fourth,” Kirk told her, “that’s when the security system was upgraded. So any device that could circumvent the new system had to be installed either at the same time or between that date and the twenty-sixth when the new dilithium arrived. A three-day window of opportunity. Simple as that.”

  “Try again.”

  “We only have to find out who entered the lab during that three-day period. Since there were no classes being taught, and no other maintenance work scheduled, it can’t be very many. And one of them will be our thief.”

  Elissa studied him, thinking hard. A little of Jim’s explanation made sense to her, but it still didn’t solve their biggest problem.

  “Even if we do find a list of people who entered the lab, then what do we do? We’re not protectors. We’re not Academy Security. I’m just a mid and you’re…you’re a…” Elissa couldn’t think how to characterize her bo
yfriend.

  “A genius?” Kirk said with a grin.

  “A teenager, like me,” Elissa said bluntly. “The two of us have no power. We can get as much information as we want. But we can’t do anything with it.”

  Kirk flushed, his mood darkening in a flash. “I’ll do something.”

  At once Elissa took his hand. “Jim…I know you want to help me. But this—” She nodded at the maintenance records on the screen. “—this is as far as we can go on our own. We need help.”

  She could see Kirk struggle and fail to subdue his frustration. “I would never—” He suddenly stopped, pulled his hand away from hers.

  They both realized handholding had been a mistake. They both looked around the hallway.

  They were alone.

  “Something isn’t right,” Kirk said. “Let’s go.”

  They walked as fast as they could without running down the corridor, heading toward the ops center’s main doors.

  The moment they turned the corner, Elissa’s heart sank.

  Mallory was waiting.

  23

  Kirk’s first instinct was to run. But then his brain took over and he remembered he was on an island and the only way off, short of hijacking a flyer, was to take a monorail car deeper into the heart of enemy territory. There was nowhere he could run.

  “Ms. Corso,” Mallory said pleasantly. “James.” He held up the sensor unit of a Starfleet tricorder. The second part of the device hung from a shoulder strap at Mallory’s side.

  “I’ve been following what you pulled up in the maintenance records,” Mallory continued. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re onto something.”

  Kirk was incapable of giving in to Mallory, or to any authority figure. And the fact that he felt trapped only drove him to counterattack. “Then stop going after Elissa!”

  “Jim, don’t!” Elissa broke away from him, attempting what he couldn’t—diplomacy. “Mr. Mallory, he was only trying to help me. We were just on our way to see my adviser and—”

  Kirk cut her off. “No, we weren’t.”

  Mallory looked from Elissa to Kirk. “I see. A difference of opinion.”

  “Yeah? A year at the Academy and she’s too afraid to ask any questions, rock any boats,” Kirk said hotly. “But I’m not!”

  Elissa grabbed his arm to stop him, but Kirk pulled away, walked right up to Mallory. “You should know that there’s nothing more important to her than a Starfleet career.”

  “I have no reason to doubt that. I’m familiar with her file.”

  “Then how can you think Elissa had anything to do with stolen ID codes, much less kick her out?”

  “As I told Ms. Corso, the most likely outcome is that the Academy will find her negligent for not safeguarding her ID codes. Separation is unlikely.”

  “Can you guarantee that?” Kirk challenged Mallory.

  “Jim—please don’t make it worse!”

  “Elissa, you can’t give in to this rotten system. You’re not negligent. You can’t stop fighting just because you think it’s the easy way out. What do you think’ll happen the next time they need a scapegoat to cover up something else they’ve done wrong?”

  Kirk turned to Mallory again. “Can you stop what they’re doing to her?”

  Mallory didn’t move back, just looked curious. “Why is that so important to you?”

  Kirk regarded him with scorn. “Why isn’t it to you? Isn’t Starfleet the almighty guardian of truth and justice throughout the galaxy?”

  For a moment, Mallory’s stern face cracked into a smile. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  Kirk blinked, rapidly rethinking Mallory’s presence here. Is he offering me some kind of deal? But why? Just as quickly, he realized it didn’t matter. Just the fact that an offer might be in play implied there was something he knew that Mallory didn’t, and that Mallory would trade.

  He tested his supposition, named his price. “Drop the charges against Elissa.”

  “I don’t have the authority to interfere in an independent investigation.”

  Kirk didn’t believe him. “I think you do.”

  “And I don’t think you know how Starfleet really operates.”

  “You asked what’s important, I answered. Take it or leave it.”

  Mallory looked amused. “You think this is a negotiation?”

  “I think it’s a trade.”

  Mallory nodded, thoughtful. “All right, try this.” He turned to Elissa, who had gone pale, her posture rigid as if she were willing herself not to collapse. “Ms. Corso, I can’t tell the Academy to stop the proceedings against you. But I can ask them to postpone your honor board hearing on the grounds that you’re helping Starfleet Security in an ongoing investigation that might be connected to the dilithium theft. I can also make it clear that Security is convinced you had nothing to do with that theft.” Mallory looked back at Kirk. “Is that acceptable?”

  Kirk shook his head. “A postponement doesn’t do anything.”

  Mallory disagreed. “It lets me go forward with an investigation that can clear this young midshipman of all wrongdoing. If we find the real thief, and if we find out how that thief obtained her codes without her knowledge, then I can give that evidence to the board and they can stop the proceedings.”

  Kirk saw Elissa’s tense face lighten with relief. “Jim, that’s our way out of this. Starfleet Security will investigate. They’ve got better resources than the Academy investigators. They’ll find the truth.”

  But Kirk wasn’t ready to declare victory yet. He looked at Mallory, his gaze wary, measuring. “Give me one reason why I should trust you.”

  Mallory pulled out his communicator, kept it closed. “How about I remind you that you’re in a restricted area of a Starfleet facility. You’re wearing stolen clothes. You’ve illegally used a stolen ID card to access restricted Starfleet data on a Starfleet computer system. And every illegal act you’ve committed since arriving at Sloane is recorded on security imagers.”

  Mallory held up his communicator. “I just have to flip this open and make one call, and you’ll be beamed up to a maximum-security holding cell on Spacedock. I doubt your trial will take more than half a day. And then, if the judge is in a good mood, and if he considers that you’re a minor, you’ll be lucky to only get two years of rehabilitation at the Starfleet penal colony on Mars. Terraforming. I believe the historical term is ‘hard labor.’ ”

  He paused as Elissa again tugged at Kirk, who again pulled away. The outcome of this confrontation still wasn’t clear to Kirk.

  “But,” Mallory added, “I haven’t flipped this open, and I won’t for now, because you’re right. The truth is important to me. So, to find the truth, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and consider your illegal acts as the wellintentioned mistakes of a misguided youth. Something I will only do once. Do you understand?”

  If there was anything Kirk hated more than being forced to do something, it was admitting the enemy had outmaneuvered him. And Mallory had. “Yeah,” he said.

  Mallory’s eyes bored into him. “I suggest you make that, ‘Yes, Mr. Mallory.’ ”

  “You…” Kirk was about to say something completely different, involving words he wouldn’t normally think of saying in front of Elissa, but Mallory snapped open the communicator in his face.

  “Sorry, didn’t hear that,” Mallory said evenly.

  Kirk took a breath and, for Elissa’s sake, forced out the hated words. He heard her gasp behind him. “Yes…Mr. Mallory.”

  Mallory put his communicator away, spoke crisply. “Ms. Corso, you have lab time booked at the Tucker Center. I suggest you use it. Your adviser will get in touch with you about the postponement of the hearing. And we will talk again.”

  Elissa snapped to attention, still ghostly pale. “Yes, sir, Mr. Mallory. Thank you, sir.” Then she looked at Kirk, hesitating just a fraction, so much between them still unsaid.

  Kirk frowned. “Just go. I’ll call you.”
<
br />   Elissa marched off, and Kirk folded his arms and leaned against the wall. No one was going to make him stand at attention. He was a civilian. “What now?”

  “Time for your half of the bargain.”

  Mallory wasn’t wasting any of his attention on Kirk’s posture or attitude, and Kirk knew why. The man had already made it clear who was in command.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “Where’s Spock?”

  “The Vulcan?”

  “Your partner.”

  “What?”

  Mallory’s stern expression let Kirk know he wasn’t in the mood for games. “I’m serious about sending you to rehabilitation, kid. Yesterday, Starfleet put a tracking module on each of you. Last night, they both came off at the exact same time. How stupid do you think we are?”

  “You’re joking, right?” Kirk laughed. “Stretch took off his module, too?”

  “Stretch?”

  “Spock.”

  “I’m losing patience here.”

  Kirk decided Mallory had zero sense of irony. He shrugged. “It’s like this. You had the two modules talking to each other over a subspace link, so you’d know if Spock and I tried to meet. So what I did was set up a subspace echo of that signal. When I took apart my module and it stopped working, I knew you guys would pick up the echo through Spock’s module.”

  “Why didn’t your module send out an alarm when you took it apart?”

  “I jammed the signal.”

  Mallory’s surprised face was a sweet reward to Kirk. “You had Spock’s module sending out a location signal for both modules, so when Spock removed his, it registered as if both had been switched off at the same time.”

  Kirk bowed for the crowd. “Thank you, thank you.”

  Mallory reached out and forced Kirk’s head back up. “I’ll say this one more time—you’re in real trouble, kid. So cut the smartass routine.”

  But challenging Kirk was like turning on a switch. He pushed Mallory’s hand away. “Yeah, well, I can handle trouble.”