He complied, and soon one of the Arcturian cadets—he believed it was Titus—swiftly opened the door and pulled him inside, then scanned him and patted him down for weapons. Satisfied, the cadet gestured with his phaser for Sulu to climb the stairs ahead of him.

Portia met him in the hallway outside the office. Sulu met her gaze evenly. “I’d like to see the hostages, if that’s all right.”

After a moment, she opened the office door and nodded to someone inside. A moment later, that someone—Bertram—appeared with Ashley Janith-Lau in tow. She looked healthy but distraught. “Are you and the hostages all right?”

“We’re intact, Commander, but frightened. They haven’t hurt us, but they’ve threatened us, interrogated us. They believe we—”

“Enough!” Portia cried. “It’s my grievance to air.” She nodded to Bertram again, and he none too gently guided Janith-Lau back inside.

Portia closed the door. “Satisfied?”

“I’m concerned, Portia. What led you to this?”

She spelled out her case in terse sentences—how she believed the peace activists had somehow framed her for murdering Commander Rakatheema. Sulu took it in and thought carefully about how to respond.

“How do you think they could have done that?” he asked. “Falsified your appearance, your DNA at the scene?”

“We’ve been under constant media scrutiny since we arrived. Anyone could study my appearance and body language, collect some shed skin cells from where I’ve been. And creating prosthetic disguises isn’t that hard.”

“Even if someone in there did what you say, how does holding them hostage help? No court in the Federation will accept a confession made under duress.”

“You think I care about courts? About laws and institutions and systems? It was the system that created us to die in others’ wars. The hell with the system. I want to know. I want to look my betrayer in the eye and hear them say they did it.”

“And what if it’s not anybody in that room? You can’t know for certain that it was.”

“But as long as we hold them, you have a motivation to reexamine the evidence.” She shrugged. “I’m willing to play fair. If you review the case properly this time, if you find proof that I was framed and identify who did it—and if you can prove to me that it’s genuine and not a ploy—then I’ll let the hostages go. If not, then I’ll keep questioning them until the guilty one breaks, or one of the others exposes them to save themselves.”

“And then what? How can you or any of the others hope to get back into the Academy after doing this?”