But Darryl Adin was not a man to accept death without a fight. Over and over Dare had drilled into the trainees, "Learn to be survivors. Your job is to protect other people-how much protection is a dead security guard?"

Yar was sitting by his bed when he finally came to-and despite the warnings of Dr. Trent that he needed rest he soon had out of them the condition in which the Orions had left the Starbound.

"Who's in command?" he demanded at once.

"I suppose you are," Dr. Trent told him.

"But who has the con?"

"n.o.body, really," said Yar. "Karin Orlov and Brian Hayakawa are on the bridge trying to rig some sort of radio transmitter, but without subs.p.a.ce the chance of a signal reaching another ship before-"

"Any chance is better than none!" Dare said. "Who else is taking action?"

"Uh ... what else is there-?"

Dare sat up and swung his legs over the side of the couch.

"You're in no condition to get up!" protested Dr. Trent as Dare winced sharply.

Dare opened his eyes and pinned the medic with his dark gaze. "If I don't, who will? You're needed here, and the trainees don't have the experience. Who survived from Engineering?"

"T'Irnya, Zkun, Donal, and Bosinney, but-"

"Where's Bosinney?"

"Mr. Adin," said Dr. Trent, "Ensign Bosinney is injured. He won't be able to work on the engines, if that's what you have in mind."

"Why not? Is he unconscious?"

"No, but I had to tranquilize him. When the Orions broke into Engineering and the crew ran out of phaser power, they used their tools as weapons. Bosinney had a welder, one of the Orions tried to shoot it out of his hand-and destroyed Bosinney's right hand."

"Oh, G.o.d," Dare said, looking down at his own hands in his lap for a moment. But then he lifted his head. "If he can't do the work-he can still direct it. There's nothing wrong with his brain, I take it?"

"He is in severe shock," Trent said angrily.

"Well the best thing to bring him out of it," said Dare, "is getting back to work. Can he move about?"

"Mr. Adin!" the doctor objected.

Dare stood, wobbly but determined. "If there is a chance in h.e.l.l of restoring impulse power, George Bosinney is the only one who can do it. I'm sorry if I insult your sensibilities, Doctor, but if we cannot restore power we'll all be dead anyway. Now let me talk to Bosinney."

The young Engineer lay listlessly on one of the treatment couches, two round tranquilizer pads attached to his forehead. Like Dare, he was dressed in a blue sickbay coverall. Bosinney's right arm disappeared from the elbow down into a healing unit. His eyes were open, but they stared blankly at nothing.

Without waiting for the doctor's permission, Dare pulled one of the tranquilizer pads off. Bosinney blinked, and attempted to focus on him. "Mr. Adin," he said, somewhat thickly. "I'm glad ... you survived, sir."

"And we're all glad you did, son." It was the first time Yar had ever heard him address a trainee so familiarly-except herself, of course, and that only in private. "We need your help, George. If we can't get the impulse engines running, we're all going to die."

"Wish I ... could help, sir. But ... my hand-"

"George," said Dare, "you can't think straight, tranquilized that way. If I remove the other pad, you'll have to face what has happened to you. Can you cope ... for the good of your shipmates?"

The unfocused stare told them nothing. But apparently it simply took Bosinney longer than usual to a.s.semble his thoughts under the effects of the tranquilizer, for just as Yar had decided he had tuned them out he said, "For ... shipmates. I'll ... try, sir."

"Good job," said Dare, and removed the other pad.

Bosinney's eyes focused at once, and he blinked. He looked toward his right arm, and said, "I can feel my hand. It itches."

"That's from the healing in your arm," said Dr. Trent. "If you want-" He gestured toward the pads Dare had laid on the bedside table.

"No!" Bosinney's eyes turned to Dare again. "You said we're all going to die."

"Not if you can get the impulse engines running."

"How can I?" Bosinney demanded, his voice squeaking in anguish. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

"It's your mind that's your strong point, Bosinney, not your hands!" Dare told him. "I'm sure Dr. Trent has reminded you of the many members of Starfleet with prosthetic limbs. You'll have a new hand that works just as well as the original-but only if we get the Starbound to Starbase 18. It's thirty-five days from here on impulse power-and we'll have life support once the engines are working."

"But how?"

"You're going to sit back and give the orders, son. As Acting Captain of the U.S.S. Starbound, I'm appointing you Acting Chief Engineer. You know the other trainees. Which ones are the most skilled at this kind of work?"

"I won't know till I a.s.sess the damage," Bosinney answered.

"Very well." Dare turned to Trent. "How soon can he start work, Doctor?"

"Another few hours-"

"Can I do any harm that will prevent getting a prosthetic hand if I get up now?" Bosinney asked.

"You'll still have pain, itching-and the possibility of shock-"

"That wasn't what I asked," said the boy, suddenly sounding very much a man.

The doctor gave Dare an annoyed look and replied, "No, you can't do any more damage now, unless you fall on it."

"Then please remove the healing unit, Doctor."

In the next few hours, Yar watched the man she loved bring the terrified and hopeless trainees back to Starfleet levels of discipline. A new duty roster was posted and all departments were manned, if with fewer personnel than usual.

All Dare really did was to proceed according to Starfleet protocols, but ordering, threatening, cajoling, and manipulating the trainees and the reluctant medical staff into following those procedures took tremendous effort. On the first day, Orlov and Hayakawa got their distress signal working, but it could only be sent by pre-warp methods of transmission. It would be months before the signal reached Starbase 18. The only hope it offered was the chance of a ship pa.s.sing near enough to receive it, before the Starbound ran out of power.

Nonetheless, the news that the signal was broadcasting was the first ray of hope.

Dare followed it with the ma.s.s funeral for the crew who fell in the Orion ma.s.sacre.

That was also Starfleet regs, but Yar was horrified nonetheless when Dare a.s.sembled all off-duty personnel for the standard Starfleet service, and broadcast it throughout the ship for those who could not attend. When he put his mind to it, Dare could read aloud beautifully and effectively, and as for the first time the young crew heard the words of hope and consolation read over the bodies of friends fallen in the line of duty, they wept shamelessly.

The bodies were then committed to the vastness of s.p.a.ce, whose exploration was the purpose to which their lives had been dedicated. There were no Orion bodies to dispose of; the pirates had carried their own dead away with them, a surprising act among a people renowned for having no honor or loyalty.

As surprising as their leaving anyone alive aboard the Starbound.

It was only when the funeral service was over, and Yar found herself wiping away tears and proceeding to her watch on the bridge with a new sense of dedication, that she realized Dare was right. Starfleet regs were right. Instead of increasing their depression, the funeral service provided a catharsis.

For the next three days, Yar doubted Dare slept at all. He visited every part of the ship, inspecting repairs, encouraging hope, ordering people to meals and to rest as often as to duty. And when he was not prowling the corridors, he was in Engineering, supporting George Bosinney, who seethed with frustration at not being able to do the work with his own hands. Then he got the idea of strapping an instrument to the stump of his right wrist, to perform some delicate maneuver that not even T'Irnya was able to complete to his satisfaction.

What he did, he explained, was to build one functioning impulse engine out of the ruins of three. It wouldn't give them much power beyond barest life support and motion-but if it got them to Starbase 18 it would save their lives. And the day they finally tested it, and began to move, the corridors of the U.S.S. Starbound rang with cheers.

Once they were underway, and it became apparent that the engine would hold, the trip to Starbase 18 became routine. Two days out from base, their radio signal suddenly brought an answer. A starship was sent to tow the crippled training ship in, while the joyful crew were taken aboard, wined, dined-and debriefed. There was talk of medals and commendations, and Yar glowed with pride in her young shipmates, and particularly the man she loved.

A few hours later they were able to transport to the Starbase. Yar, who had been acting more or less as second in command, stood at Dare's right, George Bosinney on his left, in the last group to transport over. As they materialized on the platform, Yar was surprised to see none of their shipmates lingering, and no admiral or even commodore waiting to greet the heroes.

Instead, a contingent of Starfleet Security marched forward, their leader facing Dare. "Darryl Adin," he announced, "I arrest you in the name of Starfleet Command. You are hereby relieved of duty, stripped of rank, and consigned to a Security holding area until a board of inquiry determines whether there are grounds for court-martial on charges of conspiracy, treason, and murder."

Tasha Yar and the other survivors of the Starbound were kept away from Darryl Adin for several days, until the Starfleet board of inquiry had done its work. To their horror, the board found enough evidence to court-martial the man who had given them the strength, courage, and guidance to survive after the Orions left them to die.

Once that was determined, though, Yar refused to answer the defense attorney's questions until the man arranged for her to see Dare.

By that time she knew what he was accused of: conspiring with the Orions to steal the dilithium crystals, in return for a fortune in numbered bank accounts on Oriana. Starfleet Command had discovered that the leak to the Orions had taken place on Starbase 36, where they had loaded the crystals. Adin's complicity would account for his being left alive when the Orions killed the other officers.

Yar wanted George Bosinney to talk to Dare as well, but he refused. At first Bosinney had been as staunch as she in defending Dare-until he was reminded of the discharged phaser boosters discovered just before the attack. The young engineer told the investigating board about the wrong circuit breaker in the charging unit. Of course Dare had put the right one in after they restored power, and logged doing so. What the investigators found, though, was that according to the ship's log, the correct breaker had been installed at the beginning of the journey, and there was no record of anyone's changing it.

The Chief of Security had access to the Weapons Room at any time. And ... he made up the Security staff duty roster. "He put routine inventory of the Weapons Room off as long as regs allow after our stop at Starbase 36," Bosinney reminded Yar. "And, I'm not Security staff, but it gets around who the smartest and most conscientious people are in each department. He put you last on the list to take inventory, Tasha-because you were most likely to discover the sabotage. My guess is, the Orions were late. If they'd shown up even twelve hours earlier, no one but Adin would have known about that circuit breaker, and in the chaos after the battle he could have replaced it with no one the wiser."

"How dare you!" gasped Yar. "After he saved all our lives, you actually think Dare capable of treason?"

Bosinney held up the stump where his right hand used to be. "If he did what they say, he's responsible for this. I'll manage, but a prosthesis won't be the same, no matter what the doctors say. And I'm one of the lucky ones, Tasha. Fourteen of our cla.s.smates and seven good Starfleet officers are dead. If Darryl Adin betrayed us, he deserves to die! A rehabilitation colony's too good for a man who would betray his own shipmates."

"He didn't!" Yar insisted. "George-help me prove he didn't do it! At least talk to him."

"What good would that do?" he asked. "If he's guilty, he'd only lie. Think like a Starfleet officer instead of a lovesick teenager, Tasha. I hope, for your sake, that Adin proves innocent, but so far I haven't seen much chance of that. Once all the facts are uncovered, the truth will come out."

Oddly enough, when she did get to see Dare, he told her the same thing-except that he was quietly confident that he would be exonerated. He looked pale and thin, with dark circles around his eyes. Wearing a shapeless tan coverall, he seemed smaller than she remembered-she wanted to take him in her arms, protect him from whoever was doing this terrible thing to him, but they were separated by a force field.

"What should I do?" she asked. "Dare, I was witness to all the events. I was there when George found the circuit breaker. And they keep questioning me about our private conversations. What am I going to do, Dare?"

"Tell the truth!" he urged. "Tasha, I didn't do it. The truth can only prove me innocent. Don't be afraid, love. Trust the Starfleet investigators-they're the best there are. You may have noticed some important clue that I didn't. Tell them everything you know. That's the only way to set me free." But at the court-martial, the truth only condemned her love. There were suspicious messages on record within Starbase 36, from public comcons in the hotel where the Starbound crew had stayed for a few days of sh.o.r.e leave. Although they were paid for with tokens, Dare's credit code had been used to purchase such tokens.

This was early in the proceedings, and Dare was still supremely confident. When the prosecution asked him about the tokens, he replied, "I did not purchase them. If I were committing treason, would I be so stupid as to use my credit code? I would have deposited coins."

"The tokens were purchased on the other side of the base, far from your hotel," the prosecutor told him.

"And of course no Starfleet officer knows how easily computer records are traced," Dare replied sarcastically. "Someone else used my code to purchase comcon tokens. No identification would be required for an amount that small. What you are proving, sir, is that someone systematically set me up to take the blame for the attack on Starbound."

"Yes, Mr. Adin," said the prosecutor, "we shall prove that is exactly what happened."

Slowly but implacably, the prosecution built a case that the Orions had targeted Darryl Adin after he led the Starfleet Security team that defeated them at Conquiidor. Rather than kill him, they decided to discredit him. According to this hypothesis, they had approached him at some unspecified time, offering him money. He was known to be a gambler; possibly he owed money to underground a.s.sociates of the Orions.

Although Dare's attorney objected loudly, the prosecution continued to suggest that the Orions had found Dare's weakness and used it against him. But they could not have done it without his cooperation. Presumably he provided them with the information about the dilithium and the plan for taking the Starbound, believing the Orions would leave the crew unharmed and that he was safe because an informer inside Starfleet would be of continuing value to them.

But, according to the prosecution's theory, the Orions' real purpose was to destroy Darryl Adin, and at the same time make Starfleet question the reliability of all its Security personnel. And the theme of the prosecution's case was that for the Orions to achieve their goal, Dare had had to cooperate.

Dare's response was a sarcastic laugh, and "Anyone who would do a deal with the Orions would have to be mad!"

Unfortunately, the evidence suggested he was right.

The comcon messages were to guests at another hotel on Starbase 36, to set up meetings. But when Starfleet checked the ident.i.ties of those guests, it turned out that they did not exist. Their ident.i.ty doc.u.ments were forged. Their credit accounts were real enough, but had been opened just before and closed out immediately after they paid off the expenses of that trip to Starbase 36. Furthermore, all financial arrangements had been made from a rather backward planet through keyboard-access computers, so there were no images or voiceprints on record.

Nor could Dare account for all of his time on Starbase 36. The supposed meetings had taken place during times when he was asleep-alone- or on his own somewhere on the base. Yar blushed to think they had been watched so closely that whoever set him up knew which nights they had spent together, and the two nights they had been apart, during a seminar for the trainees aboard a Starfleet cruiser docked at the base. The seminar was hardly cla.s.sified knowledge, but it did not help Dare's case that he freely admitted spending both evenings gambling, a pursuit in which Yar never joined him.

Then there was the afternoon when she wanted to explore the famous sensory museum with the other trainees, and Dare had told her to go ahead, he had been there many times and wanted to do some shopping.

Dare had had several presents for her when they met again that evening ... but as the evidence unfolded, Yar could not help thinking that there had been plenty of time, as well, for him to meet someone for a brief strategy session.

Her own testimony came very late in the court martial. By that time Dare was sitting as expressionlessly as a Vulcan, listening to the d.a.m.ning evidence against him. Still, he managed an encouraging smile for Yar-he obviously counted on her testimony to exonerate him of the charges that he had sabotaged the Starbound.

But ... what could she say? She had to tell the truth. She clung fast to his insistence that she do so-surely his certainty that the truth would set him free was the best proof she could have of his innocence!

Yes, she answered the prosecutor, she had taken top honors in Security in her graduating cla.s.s. Yes, Darryl Adin had made out the Security duty rosters aboard Starbound. Yes, the weapons inventory had been delayed for almost the maximum thirty days after leaving Starbase 36.

"You began to discover defective weapons as soon as you started the phaser inventory?"

"Yes."

"What did you do about it?"

"I told Dare-Commander Adin-that same evening."

"Is that standard procedure?"

"No. I could have logged the defective phasers out to Maintenance and thought no more about it," she said triumphantly. "Mr. Adin would not have known there was anything unusual until the end of the following day, when I turned in the completed inventory report. But we had a ... an appointment that evening. So, scheduling me for inventory duty meant that he was informed and had to repair them sooner, rather than later."

"And did he?" the prosecutor asked.

"Repair them? Of course. That's what we were doing when the Orions attacked."

"No, Ensign-did Mr. Adin begin repairs on the defective weapons sooner? Your preliminary statement indicates that even though you reported them that evening, he did nothing until the following day."

"That is correct," she admitted, feeling Dare's eyes on her but unable to look his way. "First thing next morning he was in the Weapons Room. The phasers were only unusual; we didn't know there was anything seriously wrong until we found the boosters discharged. You cannot blame Mr. Adin for not resolving an emergency when he did not know it existed."

The questioning continued, and Yar was forced to relive those hours in the Weapons Room, pointing out that Dare had acted according to Starfleet procedure in each step, including calling for the best person aboard to trace the fault and effect repairs.

"I have here the Weapons Room log," said the prosecutor. "Let me play the section in which you discovered the problem with the boosters."

An overview of the Starbound Weapons Room appeared on screen.

Yar and Adin discovered that the phaser booster handles were discharged. Adin ran the diagnostics, his voice becoming tighter and more nasal with each new discovery.

"Tasha," he instructed, "check the duty roster for everyone who has worked in here since the last inventory. a.s.semble them in the main briefing room at 0900 tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we must recharge as many units as possible. Get Bosinney from Engineering. I want to know what caused these burnouts and power drains! It will do us no good to recharge the units if they simply discharge again."