Split Visions

The problem with modern technology, Kirk thought, was that it made meetings difficult. Where could you go that a signal wouldn't find you?

In the end, he could only think of a handful of places, and they all had their shortcomings. At least, he thought, as he stared into the echoing depths of the old channel tunnel, this one didn't have surly cadets waiting to take on the townie.

Uhura would always have stood out to him, as she had the first time he had seen her, so he spotted her coming. Civvie clothes or Starfleet uniform, it didn't matter: he hailed her with a raised hand and a piercing whistle. She paused, and her face went still, but then she continued on – determinedly, he thought.

"Lieutenant," he greeted her, and by way of not wholly false explanation: "This place is a little noisy."

"I had noticed," she answered, perfectly levelly, but he would be a fool to miss the irritation in her voice. "Sir, why are we meeting by a hole in the ground?"

"This is not just any hole in the ground," Kirk told her. "This is the old chunnel, that linked continental Europe to the British Isles, back when they used hydrocarbons as the major form of fuel."

"You're a historian of engineering, now?" she asked, brow raised, skeptically.

"Naw. But I appreciate audacity in all its forms. I mean, think of it!" He waved an arm at the chunnel. "Primitive construction materials and conditions, hundreds of meters of water and rock above you all the way, any leak or tremor or attack could bury you alive…" Kirk watched Uhura's skepticism deepen, and smiled. "Now, it's a tourist attraction."

Uhura eyed the rather thin crowd. "Not much of an attraction."

Kirk waved a hand, dismissively. "It takes the right frame of mind to appreciate it. You game?"

"That depends," she told him, tone sharp. "What's the game?"

"It's called 'telephone,'" he told her, and when she frowned, said, abruptly shifting tone and mood to command: "And it's not a game. Let's go, lieutenant."

Credit to her, she didn't ask questions, just followed him in. The attendant at the chunnel's entry smiled at them, and Kirk bought a pair of tickets, but declined the offer of a guided tour. "I've been down before," he told the kid, who couldn't be more than fifteen.

"Okay. If you need help, look for the lighted panels with hard-line communications built in – remember that your communicator will not function after you reach the fifteen meter mark. You'll be walking along the old service tunnel system. And please respect the 'do not enter' signs," the attendant replied, right from script, and let them pass.

The few other tourists walked slowly, pausing to read the illuminated signs describing the history of the project, the state of engineering science in the twentieth century, the costs imposed by a capitalist political economy. Kirk stuck his hands in his pockets and slipped past them all, heading for the second observation room, about a [] away; the last time he had come, he'd been the only one to venture so far. Uhura followed in his wake, and he tracked her by the click of her bootheels: steady in the crowd, and eventually, the only sound beside his own and the constant whisper of air ducts.

The second observation room had once been an emergency flood control chamber, and the controls themselves were behind plexiglass fronted by railing, with large red warning signs against tampering with the keycode readers. As he had hoped, no one was there.

Uhura made a slow tour about the room, frowning as she read the plaques about how the flood containment system had been set up to work. Kirk let her, watching her pace, and her brow furrow. Finally, she came to the last plaque, and turned to face him.

"Morbid, but practical," she commented. Then: "Why are we here, sir?"

"Because this is the only place I can think of that a Starfleet listening post won't reach," he told her.

Uhura stared at him a moment, then: "Telephone," she repeated, understanding lightening her look even as it darkened her mood. She leaned back against the little rail that separated visitors from the plexiglass itself, crossing one leg over the other at the ankle. "Section 31, I presume."

"You do presume, and on a couple of fronts," Kirk replied. At that, she lifted a brow in a gesture eerily reminiscent of Spock. Kirk smiled thinly. "I've had some time on my hands lately – doctors tend to frown on patients with radiation poisoning just leaving the hospital, so I went back to my manuals and read up on communications. Fascinating subject."

The brow climbed higher. "You're also interested in xenolinguistics now?"

"Xenolinguistics certainly has its allure, but that's not your only job," he countered. "You were trained extensively in signals analysis, coding, and cryptography. That is, in fact, what you were studying independently with Spock, according to the, for a Vulcan, enthusiastic letter of recommendation in your dossier."

"Mr. Spock has a degree in advanced applied mathematics," she replied, and shrugged. "It was a logical move."

"And very practical, given that the other half of the comm officer's manual is the handbook of intelligence protocols," he said pointedly, and sharpened his tone as he asked: "Communications isn't just about in-fleet and interspecies communication, it's the technical end of intelligence. Tell me about Section 31, lieutenant."

"There's not much I can tell you, sir."

Kirk folded his arms across his chest. "That you can tell, or that you will tell?"

"You have no reason to question me, captain," she answered, coolly.

"Don't I?" he demanded, as he gestured vaguely, with a hand encompassing the flood chamber. "You saved me from Khan – and don't get me wrong, I'm grateful – but we're talking about Marcus. We're talking about internal enemies, lieutenant. Now," he said, as he began tracing her path about the room, ticking off points, "you graduated top of your class. You were Spock's protégée, among other things, and your scores on the Academy admissions exam are phenomenal. In a word, lieutenant, you're smart – too smart not to know what you were getting into when you chose communications. So," he said, watching her face grow still and her eyes darken, "let's talk about your field. You've never encountered anything like Section 31 in all your training?"

She drew herself up, lifted her chin, said crisply: "No, sir."

"And up until the mission to Kronos – "

"Qo'noS, captain," she corrected him, quietly.

"Until the mission to the Klingon homeworld," he restated it, "you had never heard of, or gotten any glimpse of Section 31 or an organization like it operating in Starfleet?"

"I'm not sure, sir."

"You're not sure?" he repeated.

"No, I'm not." She paused, and then reached into the top of her shirt and drew out what he had thought was a pendant hanging concealed on a chain. She worked the clasp off and then touched a button on the back. A data chip's interface popped out the back of the pendant. She held it and the chain out to him.

As he took it and pulled out his own PADD to read it, she told him: "Everything I've been able to piece together on Section 31 since we docked Enterprise, captain."

Interesting, Kirk thought. "You came prepared."

"I've been expecting this conversation, sir," she explained, somewhat unnecessarily. They had, after all, other things to talk about now that they'd come down to the matter.

"How much have you got?" he demanded.

"Not much," she confessed. "It's hard to keep surveillance on the people who taught me how to do it. I might have a few contacts, though: I had a friend in communications who was recruited right out of third year to a special assignment. I've cross-referenced every instructor who taught signals analysis with Admiral Marcus, and with each other. You can see the web on file two."

Kirk, who was scrolling through the names, commented: "I notice Commander Spock isn't on your list."

"He doesn't know anything about Section 31."

Kirk grunted. "Vulcans embrace technicalities, lieutenant. Did you ask him directly?"

"Yes."

He eyed her, then. "How do you know he didn't lie to you outright? And don't tell me it's because he's Vulcan."

She hesitated. "I can't tell you otherwise, sir, since it is because he is Vulcan in a way."

Kirk made a chiding noise. "You believe the propaganda?"

"No, sir," Uhura replied coolly. "I believe – because I know – that you can't hide from a direct question in a mind-meld without your resistance showing through."

"Oh." Which was not the most insightful comment, but he looked at her anew, considering what she had just told him, and made a mental hashmark by her name for unbiased diligence. All's fair in love in time of war… "What else?" he asked.

Uhura, oblivious to his reappraisal, replied: "I traced Admiral Marcus's background as far as I could."

"I've been searching archives, too," Kirk replied, a little absently as he returned his attention to her summary of findings, which was minimal – as he'd expected. "Most of Marcus's are classified – even I don't have access." He paused, eyed her speculatively. "Can you crack the seal?"

Uhura shrugged. "With time and a team, and a lot of computing power, maybe. Could I do it undetected?" She shook her head. "Spock, though, gave me some pointers on Captain Pike – things he found in the meld with him."

"What sort of things?"

"Personal things – memories of Marcus." She paused, and he sensed she was assessing him, that she was concerned about what he would say to her words. But credit to her, she forged ahead: "Captain, you should know that Marcus and Pike have a history. Marcus – "

"Recruited Pike, yeah, I know," he preempted her. She blinked, surprised.

"How, captain?"

"Marcus told me," he said absently, as he continued scrolling through her work. "It was a bluff, I know now – he was playing the distraught father to get me to do his bidding." He paused a beat, thinking of that day, and of Spock's – for a Vulcan – impassioned plea to his captain's conscience. "Damn near worked," he admitted.

"Captain," Uhura said, then, and her tone was urgent, "a piece of advice. Be careful."

Kirk snorted. "Yeah, no kidding, lieutenant!"

"Listen to me," she insisted, and something in her voice made him look up at her. "I'm your communications officer and the head of your intelligence division, as you pointed out. This is my area, it's why you called me down here. Sir, consider: the weapons. The subterfuge. The shipyard. The rank. The… the institution. You crossed a commanding officer of a Starfleet black ops bureau. You killed one ship and one man – and you made yourself memorable. You will be remembered."

"I hope so," he told her, the predator in him leaking out in his voice now, but Uhura shook her head.

"It doesn't matter what you hope," she argued. "Whoever is in Marcus's organization, they're watching you." She stepped closer, voice lowering. "Captain, you've gone through the Starfleet psych evaluation battery, they'll have a file on your vulnerabilities, and I can tell you: your biggest liability is that you act before you think, and when it comes to women, it's not your brain you follow." And she pinned him with a glare: "Not unless you're using her, that is. I know what you did to Gaila for the Kobayashi Maru."

Kirk stiffened a bit, stung, and it was on the tip of his tongue to protest, to defend himself that that had been for cause and just one time. But Uhura – beautiful and distant as ever, despite her nearness now – stared at him, and the words deserted him. Because dammit, she was right. He licked his lips. "What are you saying, lieutenant?"

"I'm telling you what I would write in an agent-of-interest file on you, sir," she told him.

Kirk stared back at her now, thinking over the day's sparring match and interview, and after a moment, he asked, because the best defense is offense and surprise: "You sent it in yet?"

"No."

"You planning to?"

"No."

"I only have your word for it, lieutenant," he pointed out, and used her own bait from their ill-fated mission to Qo'noS: "What's that worth?"

"Ask your XO," she told him.

Kirk shook his head. "No," he said, firmly. "I'm not asking your boyfriend to mind-meld every time I need a reading on your honesty. The Enterprise is my ship and my command, lieutenant. You answer to me."

"It's Starfleet's ship. As for your command…" She paused, then straightened like a cadet on parade. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Kirk cocked his head at her, considering this gambit. "Granted," he said after a moment.

"I've made mistakes, Jim – you know it, and I know it. But I deal with the errors: you don't. You didn't say a damned thing to me or to Spock on Qo'noS, you didn't say a thing about the chain of command since you learned we were involved. You were juvenile enough to want to know what our fights were like, but did you call us to the carpet about what that meant for Enterprise? Did you really take her safety that lightly?" she demanded, eyes bright with anger or humiliation – and something he would not have expected, he realized, with a twinge: disappointment. Uhura, though, wasn't done yet.

"You fuck with your command crew, sir," she said bluntly. "You are constantly putting Spock in the position of having to cope with decisions you couldn't justify to a board of inquiry if they knew. You left your ship in the face of battle and left it to Spock to deal with Khan!" She shook her head sharply. "Jim, did you think the admiralty put you through Academy's OCS, that Pike went to bat to get you as first officer after you were demoted, to have you lead a clandestine sabotage mission that your security officer could have and should have completed? Do you know how many 'creative,'" she made air quotes around the term, "reports your bridge crew has had to submit to keep your ass from getting beached at half pay or court martialed? Do you know what that means for us?

"And then," she said, voice rising a bit, "there are your female crew. Me, Carol Marcus, Christine Chappel, Gaila, all the women cadets at the Academy – we're not here to be your eye candy, Jim. We have jobs to do, all right? We don't need you making cute comments at us or ogling us when we have to change into flight suits. I don't give a damn if you take my advice on the bridge – that's just what you owe me, it doesn't compensate for the rest. This is Starfleet – it is not a game or a playground for you. Your command is not about you, okay? And you've better figure that out fast, because if you don't, then whoever's working with Marcus – whoever funded him and cut his orders – will hang you from the masthead."

There was a short, pregnant silence, hot with anger and outrage, and Kirk could feel his own pulse pounding. Uhura stood there, eyes afire, waiting on response. And for all that he'd seen his crew turn to him in expectation and anticipation, breathlessly waiting to learn what he would say in the face of crisis that seemed unbeatable, those moments had been easy comparatively.

Because although missions might try his ability to bring his ship home, he'd never been personally on trial for the state of his command before – except with Pike. Only with Pike, who had seen through him, though even Pike hadn't been so honest. He'd been kind – maybe a little too kind. He'd been, Kirk thought, thinking back to Marcus's words, a father and a mentor. But Uhura was neither, and had no desire to be either, clearly. Why should she? She was his comm officer, not his recruiter. And she deserved an answer appropriate to her station.

"If that's your judgment," he asked her, and drew a deep breath, "then why are you still on my bridge, given all that?"

That did surprise her – it showed in her hesitation. But at length she sighed, and lowered her eyes, seeming to deflate a little. "I was thinking of putting in for a transfer," she confessed.

"So why haven't you?"

She lifted her eyes, then, looked him square in the face. "I've stayed on," she told him, "because despite all of that, you've given us missions worth working for. Another captain would've let the Nibiruans die for the Prime Directive. You put the spirit back into that law: they can't develop on their own if they don't first live, and you were never going to leave them to die if you could find a way."

She folded her arms over her chest, shoulders sagging a bit. "I don't like you very often, Jim, I think you know that."

"I had noticed."

"Nevertheless, you're a better kind of Starfleet than Marcus and his bureau. I knew what I was doing, going into communications – I knew I'd have to learn the intelligence work. I did it, trusting that we would use it wisely because I thought we'd dealt with the kind system that kills people for what they know, or for what someone else wants to own. God, Jim, you saw the planetary and federation budget, right? You know we're right at the limit, and I don't see where that shipyard and the facilities to conduct an op of that magnitude are coming from! But I know there are medicines that are in short supply, because they take a lot to produce."

She shook her head, and her face screwed up into a pained grimace. "That poor man, who bombed the Kelvin library," she said, fiercely, "I read in the aftermath reports that his daughter was dying from want of one of those short-supply drugs. Would that little girl have been dying, and would her father have been vulnerable to Khan's bribe if the money for Vengeance and Sector 31 had been used to make medicines, instead of missiles and dreadnoughts? Are we really so different from the Klingons as we hope?"

He hadn't thought of that. Economics had never been his interest or forte, but she had a point, clearly. He shut the PADD off. "All right," he told her, "let's think this out, then, because we have just made ourselves – all of us – memorable to whoever's funding Marcus et al. What's our next step? Security measures?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "You'd need someone with more familiarity with physical security than I am."

"If we can make it through relaunch without mishap…" he mused, but Uhura frowned.

"Maybe, maybe not. I've been thinking, captain," she said. "What if that's not how they operate?"

"What do you mean?"

"Marcus was brazen – and he got himself and his organization in trouble," Uhura reasoned. "We're supposed to be scientific explorers, using weapons for defensive measures only. But then Vengeance crashed into the bay and the whole Federation realized that there's some kind of secret, militarized wing of Starfleet out there. The planetary governments can't let that go."

"They'll start asking questions," Kirk mused.

"And as long as we're here, we're in a better position to investigate, too." Uhura paused, eying him significantly. "They'll expect you to do that."

"They need a PR coup," Kirk murmured, and felt his innards go cold. "They'll want to get us out of here."

"In full glory. Five year mission to the unknown edges, thanks to the gallant captain who uncovered the plot…" Uhura finished for him.

"And maybe we die out there, where no one can see us, or maybe we don't, but at least those of us who uncovered Section 31, are all together out there on the rim…"

"… and everyone here thinks Marcus and the forces he represents have lost," she concluded.

"It's perfect," he said, and swore. Uhura nodded.

"It's what I'd advise, if that were my campaign. Speaking purely from the communications-as-propaganda side of my department."

He eyed her at that: "Remind me not to piss you off again in the future," he told her.

"Just deal with your issues, Jim," she replied, pointedly. "That's good enough for me."

"Fair judge," he said, and smiled faintly.

"I'd better be," she answered.

"I am going to have a word with Spock, though," he told her.

"I'd expect you to. In part, that's why I asked him to perform that meld."

"As to that other part, since we're on the topic of chain of command," Kirk began, but she shook her head.

"We're not a security threat anymore," she told him. "Nor are we violating the chain of command. Unfortunately."

"Ah."

Uhura smiled thinly. "I take care of my problems, captain. Eventually."

"Let's just hope no one else noticed them who's in a position to report it to Marcus's people or anyone else," Kirk replied. Then: "I want you to take researching Section 31 on as a standing assignment. You can involve any of the department heads directly, and request time for it out of interdepartmental resources. But anyone not in the officer cadre cannot know what they're working on. Understood? This is eyes only, lieutenant, I don't want records on files someone else can hack."

"Aye, sir. Understood," Uhura replied.

"Good. I'll expect weekly updates. Again, eyes only. Make sure you've got someone with better covert operational security clearance than yourself if you want to meet off the ship."

She nodded. "Aye, sir." Kirk pulled the datachip from his PADD and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket, put his PADD away.

"All right, let's go, lieutenant. I'd say we've seen just about as much as any tourists can stand to see of the chunnel," he said fervently, and this time her smile was genuine.

The attendant was still standing at his booth, looking bored, and the crowds had thinned out a bit. The city of Cheriton rose before them in the distance, overlooking the ruins of the older town that had been home to the old chunnel. Kirk and Uhura walked in silence side by side, their hands thrust into their pockets and collars turned up against the brisk fall wind that came whistling up over the downs. At the transit station, Uhura turned toward the water and stared out at the sea that lay glittering in the slanting sunlight. Along the road, tourists walked, waiting for the airbus, enjoying the view.

"It's beautiful here," she said. "Peaceful."

"Must be why I avoid the place," Kirk replied, and grinned when she shook her head at him. The bus arrived just then, sending people scrambling to fill it. Uhura and Kirk stood to the back – ingrained habit, to let the civilians sit, and as the bus pulled away, a woman snapped a shot of it, smiling as her companion posed like a broken-hearted hitchhiker.

And when the bus had disappeared, the two of them walked down the road a ways, until they reached a parked car with government plates and tinted windows. A back door opened for them, and they entered.

"Problems?" asked the man who sat waiting for them.

"They never noticed us, sir," the woman said, and handed over her camera.

"But you couldn't tail them."

"No, sir."

"And the chunnel blocks communications wiretapping. Captain Kirk and his comm officer," the man who had posed for the woman said. "Alone together in the chunnel for a good hour."

"Indeed," said the man who had been waiting for them. "Good work. We'll handle the matter from here. Keep the bridge crew under surveillance."

"Yes, sir."

The man who had sat in the car, awaiting the report of his subordinates, leaned forward and tapped the window, alerting the driver. With just the faintest hum, the car glided away from the curb, its anti-grav lifting it from the earth, and it pulled away, heading back to the road, where it merged with the rest of the traffic and became lost in the flow. And the bus continued along its route, delivering Uhura and Kirk to the public transport pads. For a moment, Cheriton glowed before them, and then the transporter's shimmer blurred vision, and the city faded to white, to be replaced by the white of Enterprise's bulkheads.

"Captain on deck! Captain, lieutenant," snapped the transport chief.

"As you were," Kirk said, and waved at the crew pulling apart damaged panels, and with a significant look at Uhura: "We've got work to do."

"Aye, aye, sir!" they chorused, and Uhura along with them as the two officers made for the door and different departments.

But before they could go their separate ways in the corridor without, Kirk called after her: "Uhura!"

"Sir?" she asked, turning back towards him.

"Thank you, lieutenant. I found our discussion planetside… enlightening."

She smiled slightly. "I'm glad, sir."

And with that, she turned and headed toward communications. Kirk watched her go – damn, she did cut a fine figure! – and after a moment, he shook his head. Enlightenment was only as good as the action that came out of it, after all, and they couldn't afford mistakes. Kirk pulled out his communicator.

"Kirk to Spock – meet me in the engineering section. There's a safety matter we need to discuss…"