Vigo couldn’t argue with Joseph’s assessment of the place. The Level One Development Facility on Wayland Prime had become a veritable hotbed of innovation thanks to the handful of brilliant tactical engineers Starfleet had assembled there.
“And,” Joseph added, “as if that weren’t enough of a plum, you’re going to be one of the first weapons officers in the fleet to see the new Type Nine emitter.”
Truly, Vigo was looking forward to examining the new and improved ship’s-phaser emitter, and watching it perform in test mode. But that wouldn’t be the biggest thrill he was likely to encounter on Wayland Prime.
“Hey,” said Joseph, “I heard the guy who spearheaded the Type Nine project is a Pandrilite. Name’s Ejanix.”
Vigo nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you know him?”
The weapons chief smiled to himself. “As matter of fact,” he said, “I do.”
First Officer Gilaad Ben Zoma stood in the middle of the Stargazer’s shuttlebay and considered nothing.
At least, it looked like nothing. It was actually a transparent, semipermeable barrier that separated the atmosphere in the shuttlebay from the vacuum of space.
“So it’s working all right now?” he asked.
“It’s working fine,” said Chiang, the shuttlebay supervisor, “as you can see.”
Ben Zoma smiled. “Or not see, as the case may be.”
Earlier that morning, the barrier had displayed some instability, as evidenced by the pale yellow ripples running through it. Then, about an hour ago, it had actually begun to sputter.
The last thing anyone else in the shuttlebay wanted was an unstable barrier, considering that everyone’s lives depended on how well it worked. Chiang had made note of that to Ben Zoma, who had in turn made note of it to Simenon and his engineers.
The result? A new wave projector and a much more relaxed Lieutenant Chiang.
“Let me know if you have any more trouble with it,” Ben Zoma advised the supervisor.
“Don’t worry,” said Chiang. “I will.”
That promise exacted, the first officer strode across the shuttlebay and headed for the exit. He was just shy of the doors when they slid open and admitted Lieutenant Kastiigan.
“Commander Ben Zoma,” he said happily. “I was told you would be down here.”
“Well,” said Ben Zoma, “you were told right.”
Kastiigan had been with them for just a few weeks—ever since the previous science officer was relieved of her duties and sent back to Earth. In that short time, the Kandilkari had shown himself to be as canny and dedicated a science officer as anyone could have wanted.
“May I speak with you for a moment?” Kastiigan asked.
“Sure,” said the first officer. “I’ve got nothing urgent at the moment. What is it?”
The science officer lifted his chin. “I understand Lieutenant Vigo is going to attend a meeting on Wayland Prime.”
“That’s true,” Ben Zoma told him. “They’re demonstrating a new generation of phaser technology for Vigo and a few other weapons officers.”
“I don’t suppose there is any possibility of danger there?” Kastiigan asked.
Ben Zoma was surprised by the question. “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
The Kandilkari shrugged. “I just want you to know that if there was a possibility of danger, I would be perfectly willing to attend the demonstration with Lieutenant Vigo.”
The first officer smiled at the notion. “You mean as his bodyguard?”
“If you like. I just find the idea of our weapons officer facing some serious danger on his own a bit disturbing.”
“As would I,” Ben Zoma said. “That is, if there were any serious danger—which there isn’t.”
“Yes,” said Kastiigan. “You mentioned that.”
“So there’s really no need for a bodyguard,” the first officer added, just to make sure there was no confusion.
“Apparently not,” said the Kandilkari.
The room was silent for a moment. Ben Zoma felt compelled to throw some sound into it.
“Is there anything else?” he asked.
“Nothing,” the science officer assured him. “Thank you for your time, Commander.”
“No problem,” said Ben Zoma.
But as Kastiigan left him standing there in the shuttlebay, he found himself wondering just what in blazes they had been talking about.
Ensign Cole Paris couldn’t help liking the way things were turning out.
He liked the fact that he had come to grips with his chronic anxiety problem, born of trying to live up to the illustrious Paris name. He liked the trust Captain Picard had begun to place in him, making him the number-two helm officer on the ship behind the amazing Idun Asmund.
And he liked the fact that Second Officer Wu had decided to remain on the Stargazer, instead of returning to her old ship for the sake of a promotion.
Having Wu around gave Paris a comfort level he had never enjoyed before—not just since he had graduated from the Academy, but ever. It gave him the confidence to take on any challenge that came his way, and on a ship like the Stargazer they came his way all the time.
Paris was even getting used to Nikolas, his roommate. The guy wasn’t much for neatness or discipline, and he was a little too preoccupied sometimes with the opposite sex, but he did everything the senior staff officers expected of him—and more, if he could.
And if Paris needed a hand with something, he was sure that Nikolas would give it to him. There was something to be said for that as well.
At that particular moment, Paris was on his way to the bridge to give someone else a hand. Lieutenant Asmund had asked him to recalibrate the helm controls on one of the Stargazer’s shuttlecraft. Normally, that would have been a job for Lieutenant Chiang’s people in the shuttlebay, but Lieutenant Asmund was going to have to use the shuttle soon and she preferred that Paris take care of it.
It was quite a compliment, the ensign mused. Of course, Lieutenant Chiang might not think so. In fact—
Before he could complete his thought, he realized he was about to bump into something. His reflexes taking over, he sidestepped the object.
It was only after he took stock of his surroundings that he realized it wasn’t an object he had avoided. Or rather, it wasn’t just an object.
It was Ensign Jiterica, inside the Starfleet standard-issue containment suit she was forced to wear in order to operate as a member of the crew.
Unlike anyone else on the Stargazer, Jiterica was a Nizhrak—a low-density being whose species developed in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant. In her natural state, she was a cloud of ionic particles larger than the confines of the ship’s bridge. Hence, the containment suit, which allowed her to interact with the rest of the crew and fit into the same spaces they did.
Unfortunately, the suit was awkward for Jiterica to move. Even something as simple as standing up or sitting down was a difficult and complex maneuver. On top of that, the suit was a bulky item that took up more room than most of the ensign’s fellow crewmen.
Which occasionally made her a target for someone who wasn’t watching where he was going.
Paris looked through Jiterica’s faceplate, where he could see a ghostly female countenance. The Nizhrak was getting better at simulating a human face, he noted. A lot better.
“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I didn’t see you coming.”
What appeared to be a smile took hold of the Nizhrak’s face. “It’s all right,” Jiterica said in the mechanical voice the suit allowed her. “I’m not injured.”
Funny, thought Paris. The technology in the suit didn’t permit inflection. And yet Jiterica seemed to have found a way to impose a tone on her voice.
A rather pleasant tone, at that.
He found himself smiling back at her. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t this clumsy that day in the shuttle. Otherwise we never would have rescued the Belladonna.”
Paris was, of co
urse, referring to the research vessel the Stargazer had encountered a couple of weeks earlier. Caught in a cosmic sinkhole, the Belladonna and her crew were slowly but surely slipping away.
But Paris and Jiterica, working together, gave the research ship a chance at survival. And in the end, that was all the Belladonna needed.
Paris remembered how good it felt to know he’d had a part in saving all those scientists. And he remembered also how close he had felt to Jiterica, whose life had been in his hands.
He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen much of Jiterica after that, but he regretted the oversight. He had liked that feeling of closeness. He didn’t want to lose it.
“You’re not clumsy,” she told him. “I’m the clumsy one.” And she used an arm of the suit to point to its chest.
“Anyone would be clumsy if they had to walk around in that suit all day,” he said.
Jiterica’s expression seemed to falter then, and he was afraid that he had insulted her. But a moment later, the smile returned to her face.
“It is difficult,” she said. “I just didn’t think anyone here understood that.”
Paris shrugged. “I think we all do. We just don’t say it.”
Jiterica looked at him. “You did.”
And the expression behind her faceplate changed again. But this time, it didn’t seem to falter. If anything, it grew stronger and more distinct—especially the eyes.
They seemed to reach right into him, even more so than a pair of human eyes might have.
That’s when Paris remembered that he had someplace to go. “I’d like to stay and talk,” he said, “but I’m due in the shuttlebay. But…maybe we can get together some other time.”
Jiterica’s head seemed to tilt a little behind her face-plate. “Some other time,” she echoed.
Paris looked at her a moment longer. Then he made his way past her and headed for the turbolift.
But as he came to a bend in the corridor, he turned back…and saw that she was still standing there where he had left her, watching him go. It pleased him that it was so, though at the time he couldn’t have said why.
Admiral Arlen McAteer leaned back in his plastiform chair and considered the slightly convex screen of his desktop monitor, where a swarm of tiny, bright-red dots were scattered as if at random over a stark green-on-black grid.
The grid represented the sector of the Alpha Quadrant for which the admiral and the captains assigned to him were responsible. The tiny red dots stood for the Starfleet vessels commanded by those captains.
There was a great deal going on these days in McAteer’s sector. A great deal of unrest among the various species residing there. A great deal of posturing and finger-pointing and secret deal-making.
Like any admiral worth his salt, McAteer recognized these maneuverings for what they were—a prelude to armed conflict. It was the obvious conclusion. All the classic signs were there.
McAteer had already distinguished himself many times over the course of his Starfleet career. He wouldn’t have become an admiral otherwise.
But if he could forestall what was shaping up to be a fair-sized war with repercussions in the Alpha Quadrant and beyond, it would make his other accomplishments pale by comparison. It would be his signature achievement, the one that cadets would study at the Academy for hundreds of years to come.
All he would have to do was head off the harbingers of the conflict one by one. But it wouldn’t be easy. He would need to use all the resources at his disposal and deploy them with surgical precision.
Fortunately for McAteer, he was blessed with a cadre of veteran captains, men and women whose judgment had been tested time and again under the most dangerous and demanding circumstances. The officers in command of the admiral’s vessels were among the most experienced in the fleet.
With one notable exception.
Sighing, McAteer tapped out a command on his keyboard. The image on his screen changed, its grid and its swarm of red dots giving way to a white-stars-and-laurel-leaf design on a field of startling blue.
The Federation insignia. It was what came up on the admiral’s monitor whenever he started to compose a subspace message to one of his subordinates—in this case, the green apple he would have dearly loved to replace with an older and more seasoned officer.
McAteer still hoped to do that. But for the time being, he was embroiled in the most complex card game of his career, and he had to play the hand he had been dealt.
Leaning forward in his chair, the admiral said, “Good day, Captain. I trust this communication finds you well. By the time you receive it, you will have dropped off your weapons officer at Wayland Prime and should be awaiting new orders. Well, here they are.
“You’re to proceed to the Mara Zenaya system, where our long-range scans have revealed the appearance of a peculiar anomaly—one that wasn’t there the last time we surveyed the system, and may not be there indefinitely. You’re to examine this anomaly close-up, record your findings, and transmit them back to us here on Earth.”
McAteer frowned. “I know what you’re thinking. Why send a Constellation-class starship on what appears to be a simple scientific survey mission? As it happens, this may turn out to be more than a simple survey mission—since Mara Zenaya is situated on what appears to be the edge of Balduk territory.”
Every captain in the sector was familiar with the Balduk—a fiercely proud and intensely territorial species with whom Federation vessels had clashed on more than one occasion. Any captain would also know that the Balduk had a propensity for “creative” charting when it came to the boundaries of their designated space.
“The Balduk haven’t yet come out and said that they own the anomaly,” said McAteer, “but my guess is that they will do so just as soon as we show up. That’s been their modus operandi since our first contact with them. As soon as they see something of value to someone else, they figure it should be of value to them too.
“So you’re going to have to perform a balancing act. We don’t want to get into a knock-down-drag-out with the Balduk, but we also don’t want to lose a chance to study this anomaly.”
The admiral smiled. “Good luck, Captain. I look forward to hearing all about it. McAteer out.”
Tapping out another command, he ended the message. There, he thought. That ought to do it.
Normally, he wouldn’t have been concerned about the outcome of such an assignment—a walk in the park, really, compared with the missions most of his captains were embarking on these days. But then, it wasn’t just any captain he was dispatching to the Mara Zenaya system.
It was Jean-Luc Picard.
Second Officer Elizabeth Wu found the Stargazer’s chief engineer just where the computer had said he would be—in an echo-laden Jefferies tube that led to the forwardmost part of the ship’s saucer section.
There, bolted directly onto the Stargazer’s tritanium skeleton, was the forward tractor beam emitter—a sleek, cylindrical assembly about two meters long, with a slender, flexible conduit that allowed it to draw power from the electroplasma power grid. The emitter was surrounded by a half-dozen tiny, saucer-shaped waveguides that further secured it by tying in to the ship’s structural integrity field.
Nothing on the Stargazer was anchored more securely—not even the warp nacelles. But then, a tractor load could place an enormous amount of stress on a tractor emitter—enough to tear it loose from the ship’s spaceframe if measures weren’t taken to prevent such an occurrence.
Chief Engineer Phigus Simenon was a Gnalish, a gray, scaly creature slightly shorter than she was, with a long snout, startling red eyes, and a tail that swayed back and forth as he walked.
At the moment, of course, he wasn’t walking at all. He was lying on his back under the forward emitter, using a hydrospanner to open its outer casing.
Wu didn’t know if Simenon was fixing a problem or anticipating one, but he was clearly engrossed in his work—so much so that he didn’t even glance her way as she crawled toward hi
m, personal access display device in hand.
“I see you’re busy,” she observed.
“As always,” he muttered in his harsh, sibilant voice.
“Well,” said Wu, “I won’t take up much of your time. I was just wondering if you could shed some light on something for me—specifically, this subspace message from an Administrator Haywood.”
“Haywood?” he echoed. “Don’t know him.”
“He seems to know you,” said Wu. “In fact, he’s sent a note of commendation to Captain Picard.”
Simenon twisted his head around to regard her with his ruby red eyes. “A note—?”
“From the Federation colony on Setlik Three. Apparently,” said Wu, “the engineer there is a friend of yours.”
Understanding dawned on the Gnalish’s lizardlike face. “Chiidasi. Moraal Chiidasi.”
“It seems this Chiidasi fellow served with you on one of your previous assignments—the Onjata, I believe?”
Simenon’s grunt confimed it.
“He must have thought quite highly of you,” Wu continued, “because when he had some trouble with the colony’s power source, you’re the one he contacted.”
The engineer shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Their matter-antimatter generator was a lot like the warp engine on the Onjata. He knew I was familiar with it, that’s all.”
“That was one reason,” Wu agreed. “The other was that he considered you—” She held up her padd and read from it. “‘The best engineering mind in all of Starfleet.’ That’s rather high praise, Mr. Simenon.”
He dismissed the notion with a flip of his scaly hand. “That’s just Chiidasi showing his gratitude.”
The second officer smiled to herself. “No doubt. Anyway, I thought you would want to know.”
“Thanks,” said Simenon. Then, without any further ado, he went back to his work.
Wu shook her head. Her colleague was quite the interesting character. If his manners were anywhere near as highly developed as his engineering instincts, he would have been the most cultured individual in the fleet.
As it was, she gathered, he was just its best engineer.
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