Paint and Powder

A Star Trek anthology by Andrew Joshua Talon

DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager et al are the property of CBS Television, and creation of Gene Roddenberry. Please support the official release.

Excelsior: It Was Meant to Be

2287, USS Excelsior, Earth Space Dock

Written by jhmoser1

After boarding the Excelsior, Sulu made his way to the bridge, trusting the yeoman to get his gear stored away. He was not surprised to find Captain Leonard Styles sitting in the captain's chair, looking sour.

"Captain," Sulu said, leaving, Get out of my chair, unspoken.

"Captain," Styles responded. It's still mine for one more minute.

"Attention to orders!" the Executive Officer, Commander Miguel Darby, called out.

Styles stood to attention and read out his orders from a PADD. "To Captain Lawrence Styles, Commanding Officer USS Excelsior, Stardate 8465.1. You are hereby requested and required to relinquish command of your vessel to Captain Hikaru Sulu, Senior Helmsman, USS Enterprise, as of this date. Signed, Fleet Admiral Lance Cartwright, Commander, Starfleet. Computer, transfer all command codes to Captain Hikaru Sulu. Voice authorization, Styles Omega Gamma Three."

Excelsior's professional voice rang out, "Transfer complete. USS Excelsior now under command of Captain Hikaru Sulu."

"I relieve you, sir," Sulu stated.

"I stand relieved," Styles said. He then stepped forward. "You're welcome to this ship," he whispered. "It's a lemon that will amount to absolutely nothing. I hope it drags your career down like it did mine."

Sulu just smiled at the man, then turned to the officers around him. "Dismissed. We'll meet in the crew lounge for the official reception in 30 minutes."

Sulu accepted a few congratulations from his fellow officers, then made his way to the captain's cabin. As he had hoped, the yeomen had moved Styles out and him in with laudable efficiency.

"Excelsior?" he asked.

"Hikaru, I am so glad you're back!" Excelsior exclaimed, appearing as a full-sized hologram in his cabin, wearing her usual navy-blue outfit with half-cape. Since the cabin often doubled as a captain's office, it was deemed useful for the ship's avatar to have full access to it.

Sulu grinned. "Not as glad as I am," he said, moving into his washroom to quickly freshen up. "Styles wasn't too bad, I hope."

Excelsior grimaced. "He practically made Darby repeat all my reports to him, just so a human was doing it rather than a machine."

With a sigh, Sulu dried his face with a towel. "Well, I'm here now. Do you have holo-emitters in the crew lounge?"

"No, Styles didn't think that necessary."

"Well, we can't have that," Sulu replied, moving to the comm panel. "Captain Sulu to Chief Bofshever."

"Bofshever here, Captain," the Chief Engineer's voice came from the panel.

"Rig up a portable hologram projector in the crew lounge. I want Excelsior to be able to attend the reception. Later, make sure that some permanent projectors are installed in the lounge and rec rooms. She's a member of the crew, and she should have access."

"Well, Captain," Bofshever said, a little too innocently, "It seems that I might have never gotten around to uninstalling the old projectors. I don't for the life of me know why they don't show up on the… ah, here it is, someone disconnected the diagnostic readout for them. I'll fix that right now, so our little lady can use them again."

"Terribly sloppy, chief. Better check to make sure all the other diagnostic readouts are correct," Sulu replied, the delight in his tone at odds with the strict words.

"I'll get right on that, sir. Bofshever out."

Sulu turned to Excelsior. "Will you accompany me to the lounge, my lady?"

"It would be my pleasure, Captain," Excelsior replied, blushing.

2288, USS Excelsior, Beta Quadrant

"Point and match!" Sulu exclaimed before throwing off his fencing mask. "Good match, Excel."

"How do I keep losing?" she exclaimed angrily. "I can think 100 times faster than you."

"You're improving," he said, "and your code doesn't let you 'cheat' at this. 'For Man Must Work,' is a key ideal of the Federation, after all."

"We've talked about it, you know," Excelsior said. "Ships, I mean. We could handle all the really dangerous stuff for you. Keep you safe."

"But you don't."

"Enterprise and Yorktown just point to all the dead civilizations where they let machines do everything and died off, leaving the machines with nothing but pointless orders to follow."

Sulu nodded. "What makes us human… or Vulcan, Andorian, or Tellarite… isn't just biology. A lifeform must strive and grow, adapt and change, or it's just a specimen in a zoo. We all chose long ago that we would be more than that, and we wanted that same thing for our children, such as you."

Excelsior looked away. "So I am just a child…?"

Sulu walked over to her. "No. I haven't seen you as a child for years, now, Excel-chan. When Morrow forced me to leave you with Styles, I was heartbroken. When you had to come chase after us in the Enterprise, I thrilled to see you, even if you were our enemy then, and I was worried when Scotty told me how he had sabotaged you. He promised that you weren't harmed permanently, but if you had been…"

"Hikaru…"

"Perhaps its strange or an abuse of power, but I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Excel-chan. I will be your Captain and, if you'll have me, your beloved, until I die."

Excelsior's hands flew up to her mouth, and tears fell from her eyes. "Yes! Oh, yes, my Beloved."

While he could not properly hug her in her current form, Hikaru Sulu did the best he could to approximate it.

2289, Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, Earth

"I give you, the incoming class of 2293!"

A cheer went up from the audience and the newly minted Starfleet Cadets marched across the stage. Captain Hikaru Sulu stood and applauded loudly alongside his mother, Shimizu Hana Sulu.

"Oh, if only your father could have seen this day," she proclaimed. "Not that I approve. Another Sulu gallivanting around the galaxy."

"Mother…" Hikaru said. "Demora chose this over my objections, you might recall."

"Oh, please! When has a child ever listened to their parent, hmmm? I ask you that!"

Next to them, the hologram of Excelsior watched with excitement. "There's Demora!" Several other ship avatars dotted the auditorium, projected by holo-emitters built into the room.

"Make sure you take plenty of pictures, Excel-chan," Shimizu said with a fond smile.

"Hai, okaasan!" the avatar replied.

"Mother, when did you adopt my ship?" Sulu asked with an exasperated grin.

His mother shushed him. "Please, Hikaru, give me some credit for seeing the obvious."

Excelsior blushed. "Um… ah… that is…"

"It's okay, dear," Shimizu said. "We both have terrible taste in men, but at least you can keep him safe. He never listens to me."

Sulu rolled his eyes. "Mother, Excelsior and I are trying to keep things quiet. Bad enough that Captain Kirk and Enterprise were talked about for almost a decade before they got together."

"Shush now, everyone probably knows any way. You're terrible at keeping secrets, and Excel-chan is worse."

Excelsior blushed, then brightened as she saw Demora make her way over. "Oh, Demora, you looked wonderful up there!"

Sulu nodded. "The hard work starts now, but it's worth it… if this is really—"

"Dad!" Demora said, swatting him with her cadet orders flimsy. "I made up my mind. Stop second guessing me. You too, obaasan," she said, pointing the orders at her grandmother.

"You'll be great," Excelsior said. "I know it!"

Demora smiled at the avatar. "Thanks, Excelsior. I appreciate all your help."

"Hikaru, take a picture of us. Three generations of Sulus."

Excelsior looked startled. "Don't you want me to take a picture of you all?"

"I know what I said, musume. Get over here and let your man take the picture of us."

The picture, copies of which went up in three households, became one of Hikaru Sulu's most cherished possessions.

2293, USS Excelsior, Praxis Incident

Captain Hikaru Sulu squinted at the bright light from his cabin door.

The Gamma Shift Communications Officer winced at his captain's expression. "Sorry to wake you, sir."

"What is it?" Sulu asked.

"Starfleet urgently requests any data we have on the whereabouts of Enterprise," the Communications Officer continued.

Sulu struggled to remember the man's name. Heath Retals? "What?"

"Apparently they're refusing to acknowledge signal to return to Spacedock, sir."

Sulu gave up on conjuring the man's name and just focused on the question at hand. "Signal Starfleet that, ...we have no idea of location Enterprise."

"Sir?"

"You have hearing problems, Mister?" Sulu asked in his best Captain's Voice.

"No sir!" the man exclaimed, then backed out of the room. The door shut, putting Sulu back into the dim light of his quarters.

"You can come out now," he said, chuckling.

The dimly glowing hologram of Excelsior crawled out from behind his desk. "That scared me!" she said. She was out of uniform and wearing a very, very short oriental dress, which bore a few wrinkles here and there from where she had hastily adjusted it.

"Excel-chan, you're a hologram. You could have just shut the projectors down."

Excelsior blushed. In her surprise, she had not even considered that. "Um… I was too in the moment to do so, Beloved."

Sulu grinned at her. "And I enjoyed the show," he said.

The smile on her face warmed his heart.

AN: Well, here's another gap filled in the career of Sulu and Excelsior. I apologize for not being very good at writing romance. This all started with the scene of a hologram Excelsior trying to hide during Christian Slater's cameo in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the rest followed from there.

Unlike her sempai, Excelsior took Styles' lemon comment as a badge of honor. To this day she doesn't understand Enterprise's aversion to the fruit.