Thirty Minutes Earlier
Kirk's communicator beeped softly, and he spared a glance at Uhura before flipping it open. "Scott?"
"Aye." The Chief Engineer didn't bother to lower his voice, which meant everything was going as planned and he was alone in Transporter Room Three. Or was preparing to betray them while Spock listened in. In the sudden rush of adrenalin, Kirk almost didn't care which; he'd never been so close to losing everything… or getting it all. "It's done. Ye can come down any time. The quicker the better," the Scotsman added, with a touch of malice. "There's only so long I can claim to be doin' maintenance."
"We'll be there soon. Kirk out." He snapped the communicator shut and turned back to Uhura with a smirk. "Well? How do I look?"
He was decked out in a rumpled maintenance uniform, his hair colored a dull gray. Uhura had made them both up to look like the dispirited drudges forced to do menial labor on Starfleet vessels, had even given Kirk a prison tattoo, a series of black lines joined in a semi-triangular pattern over his left eye to help obscure his features. "You look perfect," she said, meaning every word, and he puffed his chest out. She frowned. "Remember, we're supposed to be the worthless dregs of society," she cautioned him. "At least until we reach the Transporter room."
Kirk slumped, rolling his shoulders forward and hanging his head. "Like this?"
Uhura clapped her hands in delight as he shuffled forward a few steps in a perfect imitation of the spiritless drones that led mostly invisible lives on the ship. She should have known he'd made sure to notice them, no matter how far beneath him they were. You didn't rise to Captain as quickly as he had just because of an alien device.
"Like I said, perfect," she repeated sincerely. "How about me?" She gave him a sultry twirl, then moved smoothly into an imitation of his bent posture and shuffling gait. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, streaked with gray, her face scoured of any vestige of make-up. Her clothes were too large, giving her figure the illusion of gauntness, and she'd sacrificed her nails, snapping them off raggedly without a moment's hesitation. Attention to detail had always been her forte, and she knew it was the little things that could give them away. Even if they were only the halls for a few minutes, they couldn't risk being caught. Not this close to getting everything they wanted…
The trip to the transporter room seemed to last twice as long as it should have, due as much to their subdued gait as to the stress. There was a tense moment when a security guard, new to the ship and unfamiliar to either of them, cuffed Kirk across the shoulder for not getting out of the way quickly enough. Uhura could see the rage swelling on his face, but he managed to stifle it as the guard swaggered down the hall, unaware how close he had come to death.
The Tantalus Field was hidden among the cleaning supplies Kirk pushed on a gravity sled, one that listed alarmingly to one side but was steadier and better maintained than it appeared. Scott wasn't the only genius with machines, Uhura thought smugly as she shuffled behind Kirk.
At last the doors were opening before them; Uhura raised her head just enough to dart a quick glance around the room. As expected, only Scott and McCoy were there. She allowed herself a quick sigh of relief, straightening and indulging in a languorous stretch as the doors whooshed shut behind them. Kirk quickly pulled the alien machinery, hidden in a simple duffle bag, out of the maintenance equipment. After a quick check to make sure all the parts were there, he walked over to the console. "Are you sure this will work?"
"Absolutely." Scott sounded confident, and looked it, too. McCoy, on the other hand, looked like a nervous wreck, standing in a corner, arms clutched tightly across his chest, skin pale and waxy. He wasn't holding up here, on his home ground, nearly as well as he had on the duplicate Enterprise; Uhura's instincts not to trust him as an ally appeared to have been well founded. No matter; it would soon be over.
"And everything is programmed in?" Kirk still sounded suspicious.
"Aye." Scott stared at Kirk. "And ye have the information ye promised me?"
Kirk nodded. "Once we're gone, you'll never have to worry about that piece of information ever getting into the wrong hands. There are no copies, only the original data." He held up a disk. "It's all right here" Scott reached for it, but Kirk snatched his hand back. "Ah-ah, not yet," he cautioned. "Not until everything else has been taken care of."
Scott nodded, never taking his eyes off the disk Kirk continued to hold up near his face. Uhura would have given her eye-teeth to find out what information it contained, but all Kirk would tell her was that it was enough to not only destroy Scott's career but almost certainly get him killed as well. And soon, it would all be moot. One day, she'd get Kirk to tell her all about it, but not today. There was too much to worry about as it was.
"So." Kirk returned his attention to the transporter controls. "It's all preset, is it? Just the touch of a lever and we're gone?"
"Aye, and no need for us to stay while ye do it, so we can be well away before ye go." At that, McCoy looked up hopefully and took a sideways step toward the door. Kirk stopped him with a glare before looking back at Scott, nodding for the engineer to continue. "Just press this, slide this," he mimicked the movements over the appropriate controls, "wait 30 seconds, then onto the pads and into th' other universe ye go."
"No, into the other universe you go." Scott gaped as Kirk and Uhura both produced phasers and trained them on the other two. Uhura kicked the gravity sled over, and the contents tumbled out, revealing the bodies of two women, naked and hairless, hidden beneath the cleaning supplies. Scott cursed while McCoy let out a strangled moan as he realized exactly what was happening. "So, unregistered Deltan slaves, eh, Scott? You know there are penalties for illicit personnel on a starship." Kirk nudged the nearest body with one foot, then deliberately lowered his phaser and vaporized the inert form. Without changing expression, he pivoted and destroyed the second body.
"Now we've got organic residue to explain your disappearance," Uhura put in, herding McCoy toward the transporter. "Because right now, Spock needs to think that we're gone for good and that our accomplices were killed to make sure they didn't give anything away."
"So you're going to kill us?" McCoy blurted. "Why? Spock won't chase after you into the other universe, you know that!"
"Since we're not going there, even if he did it wouldn't do him any good." Kirk shoved the phaser against Scott's chest, forcing him backward, toward the transporter, as well. "You're going instead. To whatever nice, safe haven you picked for us."
Scott was as white as McCoy, who was shaking so badly his teeth were chattering. "Ye can't do this!" he protested, but Kirk just grinned and nodded at Uhura.
Just as she reached for the transporter controls, McCoy tried to run. Before he got more than a few steps, Uhura shot him. He crumpled to the ground, still breathing. "Set on stun," she explained unnecessarily to Scott, who remained frozen in place. "You're going whether you're awake or not." She gestured at McCoy's unconscious form, slumped in a messy pile on the step leading up to the transporter pad. "Pick him up," she said curtly.
"You heard the lady," Kirk drawled, stepping just far enough back to remain out of Uhura's phaser path. "Get him up there with you. You're going on a little trip." As Scott reluctantly moved to do as he was told, Kirk continued: "If you've told the truth, you're about to start a new life. And if not, if you were planning to betray us…" He shrugged. "Then this is your chance to get away from it all. Permanently."
"It's done!" Scott, half-supporting McCoy, paled further as Uhura spoke. "Thirty seconds, right?" He tried to protest, and she suspected from the panic in his eyes that he had, indeed, planned to betray them. But instead of pleading or bargaining, he only asked: "Then where the hell are ye goin'?"
"You let us worry about that," Kirk replied with a wink. The transporter activated, and Scott and McCoy disappeared in a flash of golden sparkles.
Before Kirk could do more than turn to face Uhura, the doors whooshed open.