Uhura was still sleeping when I woke the next morning, her naked body spooned up against my own as it always was, an arm draped over me. It was as if even in sleep she wanted to hold me to her, afraid I might run away and leave her all alone. I gently lifted the arm, not wanting to wake her, then slid out of bed and donned a robe. Waking up female no longer felt as strange as it had. I'd grown used to the weight of breasts on my chest, to the wider hips that gave me such a different walk, and even to being shorter. I'd also grown used to waking up next to Uhura.
I stood there for a moment, smiling down at her and feeling something almost like regret. Yes, she had forced me into a position where I had no choice in becoming her woman, but I didn't hold that against her. In fact I admired how she had manipulated things to achieve that end. The sex was more enjoyable than I'd expected, too, and all she really wanted from me was affection. This was less than most people had demanded of me when I was still captain of the Enterprise and so had power. Now I had none. I leaned down and stroked her hair. She was so beautiful!
It was a shame I was going to have to kill her.
When I had a male body again and was once more captain of the Enterprise I could not command respect if anyone knew I had let myself get caught in a position where I was forced to become someone's concubine. I would have to make sure there was no way anyone could ever find out. Which was why Uhura would have to die.
But not just yet.
I was in no hurry to throw away one of the few good things I had so far found about being Janice Lester. Sighing, I made my way to the bathroom, going over my plans for the thousandth time as I showered and dressed. Today was the day we rendezvoused with the Archangel and, despite the unplanned adventures we'd been through over the past week, we would make our scheduled meeting on time. This was my one shot at the brass ring. If I blew it I had no idea how I was ever going to get to the other universe again.
Uhura got up a little later and while she showered I called up breakfast. This was one of my regular tasks because as well as providing sexual services, being a yeoman's woman meant I also performed most of the functions of a housewife. As we sat together eating, Uhura checked out the latest shipboard news on the computer.
"Top item is that all ships in the fleet have received a message from the First Minister," she said, reading from the screen, "reminding us the Emperor is about to celebrate a hundred and twelve years on the throne and...huh."
"What?"
"Captain Cartwright has been killed by a wild beast while leading a landing party exploring some newly discovered planet."
"That was careless of him," I said. Cartwright had been captain of the Archangel.
"Since we'll be returning to Earth before the Archangel, her new captain - Raoul Dominguez - has asked us to take possession of his body and store it in our hold until then. Captain Spock has agreed to do so."
With Spock tied up in the secret meeting I knew he'd be having, Uhura would be spending most of the day memorizing starfleet communications protocols since he had insisted she should become as proficient in these as the original Uhura had been. This made sense. It would look odd if, in an emergency, she was called in to take over at Comms and had no idea what to do. Which is why, after we rendezvoused with the Archangel that afternoon, I was able to slip away while she was laboring over a problem the computer had set her.
I made my way directly to the meeting room. Standing on guard outside were a couple of redshirts, one of whom had groped me two days earlier. He smirked when he saw me coming towards them, which was going to make what came next as much a pleasure as a necessity. As I reached them, apparently just walking by, I turned suddenly, and in rapid succession passed my ring over their agonizers. There was a brief crackling sound, and both men dropped as if they'd been pole-axed. I'd incapacitated them, but not for long. Moving to the door's security keypad, I quickly typed in an access code. Spock would have disabled all my official access codes as a matter of course, but I had set up several others against the possibility of my one day being shut out of the system. When the door whooshed open, I strode in with a confidence I was not actually feeling.
Spock was sitting across a table from two men dressed in high- collared black suits; one looked to be south Asian, the other Scandinavian. From the orders I'd received about this meeting a month ago, I knew their names were Patel and Sorensen.
"Don't get up, gentlemen," I said, raising my hands, "I'm here to talk, not to fight."
"Who is this woman?" demanded Patel.
"My name is Janice Lester," I said, "and for the past several years I've been working deep cover as a tomb raider under the personal authority of Admiral Rosen and reporting to James T. Kirk."
"Admiral Rosen died when the ISS Santiago was destroyed three months ago."
"I know, and Captain Spock eliminated Jim Kirk two weeks ago, so you see my problem."
"You're claiming to be an off-the-books operative, but the only two men who could have vouched for you are dead. Convenient."
"The very opposite of convenient, actually. I'm here to prove to you I'm who and what I claim to be."
"And how do you propose to do that?" asked Sorensen.
"By demonstrating knowledge I couldn't possibly have if I was a phoney. I'll begin with one word, a name: Defiant."
The two guards had recovered sufficiently by now to angrily stagger into the room, one of them grabbing me roughly by the shoulder.
"No, let her be," said Patel, "and wait outside unless we call you back in."
Casting murderous glances my way, they reluctantly complied while I smiled sweetly at them.
"How did you disable the guards, by the way?" asked Sorensen after they had left.
"Special black-ops tech," I lied, "classified."
"OK, let's hear you prove your claims..."
I turned to Spock, who had said nothing but was frowning deeply. He knew I was lying, but his curiosity about what I was up to had so far prevented him from exposing me.
"Captain Spock," I said, "you believe that we discovered the existence of a parallel universe, the universe of the Federation, when a transporter accident caused four members of the crew of the Enterprise to switch places with their counterparts from that other universe, correct?"
"That is correct, Miss Lester."
Ah, 'Miss Lester'. Reminding me of my place now. Very good.
"Would it surprise you to learn we've known the Federation existed for more than a century."
"It would, if true."
"And the Tholians. What do you know of them?"
"A crystalline race absorbed into the Empire thirty four years ago after we finally discovered a means of overcoming their energy web technology. Extremely belligerent, they had to be forced to submit to Empire rule, in the course of which they lost over ninety percent of their population and were reduced to a pre-technological state."
"Almost immediately after the defeat of the Tholian Assembly, the Empire established a heavily armed starbase on the edge of the space they had claimed as their territory, which we've maintained ever since. Do you know why?"
"I do not. Since the Tholians are now pre-technological, they no longer pose a threat that would warrant such an investment."
"They don't. The reason that starbase is there can be found in the brief, ignoble reign of Empress Sato. Do you recall the story?"
"I do. Hoshi Sato had command of a fleet of starships, whose power she threatened to use on Earth if she was not declared Empress. Her reign lasted one year, three months, and eleven days. At that point she lost control of her fleet and was overthrown within hours. Her head remained on a spike outside the imperial palace for several weeks afterwards."
"That's the official story, the one taught in history class, but it's not the whole truth. Sato commanded not a fleet of starships but one. It was a Federation starship called the USS Defiant, and it was from a hundred years in the future."
"Indeed," said Spock, raising an eyebrow. I had him now.
"There's an area in what was Tholian territory where there are dimensional fractures in space. This must also hold true in the Federation's universe, too, because the Defiant tumbled through one of those fractures. None of the crew survived. It's because of those fractures we maintain the starbase. The powers that be worry about what else might come tumbling through one day. The Defiant was taken by the Tholians and later captured from them by Captain Jonathan Archer. Hoshi Sato was the Captain's woman. She poisoned Archer, took command of the Defiant, and used it to make herself Empress. Unfortunately for her, Sato trusted someone she shouldn't have, someone, who let her enemies on board, and the Defiant was captured. There was certainly no way Empire ships of the day could have taken it militarily. The capture of all that future technology was hugely significant in accelerating the technological advancement of the Empire, but of even greater significance were the mission logs contained in her computers. Some of these had been lost, but most were intact. They provided a road map laying out the dangers the Empire would encounter in the territories it was expanding into and, in most cases, how those dangers had been overcome. Every Federation starship also has copies of the mission logs of every other ship in the fleet, so this was an enormously important find."
"A great treasure, indeed," said Spock.
"The Empire doled out the information to its captains sparingly with most receiving only the logs that related to their own missions, and then usually only a few months in advance of when they would be needed. Unfortunately, among the missing mission logs was the one covering this Enterprise's first encounter with the crew of the other Enterprise. When Captain Kirk found himself on that starship along with Uhura, Scott, and McCoy he was caught out. Unprepared for the encounter, he initially thought he was the victim of some sort of subterfuge and so gave himself away. He and the others were then quickly imprisoned. A lost opportunity, alas."
"Now that I am captain of the Enterprise, why have I not been given copies of those mission logs that relate to this ship?" asked Spock.
"Because we're now past the point in time where the Defiant's logs end," said Sorensen. "From here on out we're in uncharted territory."
"All you've proven so far, Miss Lester, is that you've gotten hold of some of the Empire's most closely guarded secrets," said Patel. "You could be a spy. How do you propose to prove that you're not?"
I had expected this.
"To do that will require the help of Captain Cartwright."
"Captain Cartwright is dead."
"No," I said, "he's not. If I had to guess I'd say he's in the ante room off this one, listening in on everything being said."
There was a moment's pause, then the ante room door whooshed open and Captain Cartwright strode out.
"The young lady appears to know just about everything, gentleman," he said, "but I have no idea how I'm supposed to prove she's not a spy."
Lawrence Cartwright was tall, dark-skinned, and commanding. He was also one of my oldest friends in starfleet.
"Knowing I could find myself in the situation I'm now in, Jim Kirk told me a bunch of stuff that only he and specific other people would know about, personal memories he had never shared with anyone else that would establish my bona fides by proving to those individuals I had his complete confidence. You and Jim Kirk knew each other a long time, Captain Cartwright. He said there was a particular story from when you were cadets that you had both sworn never to tell another soul. He then told me that tale and said that you should stop me when you were sure I knew the whole thing, that you wouldn't want the story getting out."
"Go on," said Larry Cartwright, frowning.
"OK. The story concerns two young cadets enjoying a furlough on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet, where they met a pair of young women named Faora and Alarna from Mars Colony. When the..."
"No need to go any further," said Larry, looking alarmed as well he might. "You're who you say you are. No way Jim Kirk would have told you that story if you weren't."
"Assuming for the moment you're who and what you claim to be, what is it you want, Miss Lester?" asked Patel.
This was it. Time for the big lie.
"The Empire doesn't believe the Federation has any spies over here," I said, "but we're still taking the precaution of faking Captain Cartwright's death just in case. In actual fact, the Enterprise is taking him to Earth where he will use a trans-dimensional harness to cross over into the other universe and infiltrate the Federation. You brought along a second harness that you were told was back-up in case the first one fails. It isn't. It's actually intended for me."
"You?" said Sorensen, incredulously. "Why would we send you across?"
"So I can go under deep cover again. This time not as a tomb raider, but as crewmember on their Enterprise."
Patel stared at me long and hard.
"This is too big a decision to make just based on your word alone," he said. "I need to seek confirmation from the Council."
I showed no outward reaction, but my heart sank. They were calling my bluff, so that was it; game over. I had given it best shot.
And I had failed.