“I’m sorry we couldn’t help each other, Commander. I think you’ll come to regret that in time. But in any case, what we’ve discussed here today is not for public consumption. If I learn that you’ve even mentioned this conversation to anyone—and I mean anyone—you’ll be drummed out of the fleet. Understood?”
“What I understand,” Garrett said, “is that you’ll probably drum me out of the fleet anyway. Otherwise I’ll be a danger to you—someone who can expose you for what you are.”
“Come now,” the admiral told her. “Do you really think I’d leave myself open like that? We haven’t mentioned a name, remember? We haven’t even mentioned a ship. So what is there to expose?”
That seemed to give Garrett pause.
“Besides,” he added, “this sort of maneuvering happens a lot more often than you might imagine. You might say it’s the business of admirals to maneuver.”
“Not being an admiral,” she said, “I wouldn’t know.”
He couldn’t resist a gibe after the way she’d refused him. “And you probably never will. Dismissed, Commander.”
Garrett stared at McAteer for a moment. Then she got up and left the room.
A pity, the admiral thought. The second officer of the Excelsior had seemed like the perfect candidate for what he was trying to accomplish. The perfect inside informant—though she might have suggested a slightly different term for it.
McAteer sighed. He would just have to find someone else to torpedo Jean-Luc Picard.
Chapter Seven
ELIZABETH WU WAS A WOMAN OF HER WORD, even if no one had heard her give it. Stopping in front of Ensign Jiterica’s quarters, she touched the security pad in the bulkhead. A moment later, the doors parted and gave her access to what lay within.
As it turned out, the ensign was seated at her workstation, the blue glare of its screen superimposed over the gray, vaguely human face she effected. Though her chair was bigger than the standard, she looked uncomfortable in her containment suit. Cramped, Wu thought.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” Jiterica echoed.
“Doing some reading?”
The ensign paused for a moment before answering. “I am not accessing the sensors.”
Wu waved away the notion. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”
“Then why are you here?” Jiterica asked.
The second officer shrugged. “If you have no plans tonight, I thought you might like to join me for dinner.”
Jiterica looked at her. “I don’t eat.”
It hadn’t occurred to Wu to consider that possibility. “You must eat something,” she said.
The ensign pointed to a valve on her containment suit—one that the second officer hadn’t noticed before. “This mechanism allows me to create an aperture in my containment field. Through it, I can ingest air molecules, which my body is able to break down into their component atoms and use as sustenance.”
Wu nodded. “I see. But humans—and a great many other species—don’t just go to the mess hall to eat. We go to socialize, to—” She searched for the right word.
“Commune?” Jiterica suggested.
Wu breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes. May I assume that your people have an equivalent activity?”
“We gather in groups at certain times of day,” the ensign explained. “We share experiences.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Wu said. “Even though your planet and your people are far away, you need to commune with someone. You need to share your experiences.”
Jiterica seemed to absorb the advice. However, there was no indication in the cast of her ghostly features as to whether the second officer had swayed her.
“What do you think?” Wu asked, trying not to be too pushy. “Would you like to give it a try?”
The ensign considered it for a moment longer. Then she said, “When would you like to do this?”
Wu smiled. “I’ll meet you back here as soon as our shifts are over. How does that sound?”
“As soon as our shifts are over,” Jiterica echoed.
As the second officer left the Nizhrak’s quarters, she felt a distinct sense of accomplishment. And for good reason.
She was about to make a difference in someone’s life. She had convinced a lonely outsider to take the first step on a journey of immense personal enrichment.
Even after she was gone, she thought, Jiterica would remember the woman who had helped her find her place on the Stargazer.
Nikolas was sitting at the computer station he shared with his roommate, going over his new schedule of assignments, when he heard the sound of chimes.
Someone was calling on him. He hoped it was Obal.
After all, the Binderian had promised to try to get him a sparring session with Idun Asmund. And when Nikolas had looked his friend up at the end of his shift, the computer had informed him that Obal wasn’t in his quarters.
He was in Idun’s.
“Come in,” said Nikolas, rising to his feet.
The doors opened and Obal entered. “Nikolas,” he said, greeting the ensign exactly as he usually did.
“There you are,” said Nikolas. “How did it go?”
He could tell from the change in the Binderian’s expression that he wouldn’t like the answer to his question. “Not well, my friend.”
“What happened?” the ensign asked.
Obal shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Lieutenant Asmund declined your invitation to spar.”
Nikolas was disappointed. Obviously, the woman was intimidated by the prospect of fighting with him.
“Maybe it would help,” he said, “if you promised her I would go easy on her.”
The Binderian didn’t look very optimistic. “I doubt it.”
Nikolas considered the lack of enthusiasm in his friend’s response. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
Obal’s expression told the ensign he didn’t think so.
“Okay,” said Nikolas. “I’ll tell her myself.”
“She will not agree,” Obal told him.
“We’ll see about that,” the ensign replied. And with that, he left his friend to pay a visit to Idun Asmund.
Gilaad Ben Zoma had met Tanya Tresh on his first day at Starfleet Academy.
Though their relationship had begun as a heated love affair, it had cooled off more quickly than either of them would have imagined, and settled into the kind of warm, intimate friendship only former lovers could enjoy.
Unfortunately, Ben Zoma hadn’t actually seen his friend Tanya in more than a year. But then, he was the first officer of the Stargazer, and she was doing what she had always wanted to do—serving as an exobiologist on a Starfleet research vessel.
Still, they corresponded often by subspace packet. Usually it was just to say hello or send news of a mutual acquaintance. But this time, Ben Zoma had contacted his friend for a different reason.
“Gilaad,” she said, as beautiful as ever beneath a fashionable pile of long, blond hair. “It was good to hear from you as always—even if all you wanted was to pick my brain.”
The first officer smiled. Once, he had had other things in mind, but those days were long past. And Tanya did possess the particular expertise he needed.
“I don’t know why you’ve suddenly developed such an interest in this subject, but here’s your answer,” she said. And she went on to tell him exactly what he wanted to know.
Ben Zoma frowned. He hadn’t expected good news, but this was even worse than he had imagined.
“I hope that helps,” Tanya told him. “Take care. And say hello to your pal Jean-Luc for me. I always did have a soft spot for Frenchmen.”
Ben Zoma was so occupied with the information she had given him, he barely took notice of her teasing. He sat there for a moment as his friend’s face gave way to the Starfleet insignia.
Then he got up and made his way to the captain’s ready room.
Commander Wu looked around the surprisingly crowd
ed mess hall for some open seats. Finding a couple at the far end of the room, she turned to her companion and pointed.
“We can sit there,” she suggested.
Ensign Jiterica turned the transparent faceplate of her containment suit in the indicated direction. “If you say so,” she responded, her voice as flat and tinny as ever.
“Good,” said the second officer, making a conscious effort to sound cheerful for Jiterica’s sake. “Let’s go.” And she led the way, threading a path between two rows of tables.
Glancing over her shoulder, she made sure that the ensign was following her. After all, Jiterica hadn’t looked eager to accompany her here in the first place. And whenever Wu happened to glance at the Nizhrak’s ghostly features, she had seen indications of uncertainty and trepidation.
On the other hand, that might not have meant anything. Wu wasn’t one of the exobiologists who had worked with Jiterica at the Academy. She didn’t know whether there was any real correlation between the Nizhrak’s expression and her emotional state.
For that matter, Wu couldn’t be sure Jiterica’s people were even capable of emotion. Could they feel loyalty? Gratitude? Disappointment? Only Jiterica could answer those questions with any confidence.
Wu had believed that the ensign’s actions back in the science section had their roots in a feeling of loneliness. But even that assumption might have been in error—a case of a human interpreting an alien’s behavior on the basis of her own.
All the more reason for me to get to know Jiterica, the second officer told herself. If I can reach her, understand her, I can help others to do the same.
As she and her charge approached their seats, Wu became aware that they were being watched—and not just by a few crewmen here and there. Nearly everyone in the mess hall was staring at them, perhaps wondering what Jiterica was doing here.
Wu wondered if the ensign was aware of the scrutiny. For her sake, the commander hoped not.
“Here we are,” she said, pulling out a chair for the Nizhrak. “Go ahead and sit down.”
Jiterica studied the chair as if it were a rare celestial phenomenon, something she had never seen before. Then she tried to turn her suit around and settle into it.
It was a difficult maneuver—much more difficult than Wu would have thought. After all, Jiterica hadn’t seemed to have any trouble sitting down in the science section or in her quarters.
But now that the commander thought about it, those places had swivel chairs without armrests. None of the chairs in the mess hall were of the swivel variety and they all had armrests. She bit her lip, wishing she had anticipated the problem before she invited the ensign to have dinner with her.
But she hadn’t. She had acted blithely, confident that her good intentions would be sufficient. And now the ensign was paying the price for her shortsightedness, striving with the chair as if she were wrestling a mugato.
Wu looked around and saw people wincing in sympathy with Jiterica’s efforts. She had to wince a little herself.
Finally, the ensign inserted her suit securely between the armrests. But her trials weren’t over, because she then had to turn the chair around and slip it under the table.
Wu did her best to help, but it was still an arduous task. It took a full minute for the two of them to pivot Jiterica’s chair ninety degrees and push it up to the table. And even then, she didn’t look comfortable. The containment suit was too bulky to permit much movement, so the Nizhrak just sat there as if she were paralyzed.
Fortunately, she didn’t need to move. As Jiterica had pointed out to the second officer in her quarters, she didn’t take in nutrients the way that humanoids did.
Walking around the table, Wu sat down opposite her companion. It was then that she received an answer to at least one of her questions about the ensign.
Jiterica’s face, pale and insubstantial-looking as it was, showed definite signs of embarrassment. Her brow was pinched and her eyes moved from one onlooker to another, making it clear that she was all too aware of them.
“So,” said Wu, “how do you like it on the ship so far?”
The ensign looked at her. “I have no complaints.”
It wasn’t the kind of response Wu had hoped for. Obviously, this was going to take some work.
“You’ve been in every section of the ship by now,” the commander noted. “You must have made some pretty interesting observations.”
Jiterica seemed to weigh the remark for a long time. “I have made observations,” she agreed at last. “However, it is difficult for me to say which of them you may find interesting.”
Wu shrugged. “Try me.”
The Nizhrak’s ghost-visage frowned. “All right. Two days ago, I was assigned to the security section.”
The second officer recalled the assignment. But then, one of her duties was to put together the weekly training schedules for all junior officers serving on the Stargazer.
“When I arrived, Lieutenant Joseph was engaged in phaser practice. Rather than interrupt him, which I thought would be rude, I stood and watched him.”
Wu nodded. “And?”
“And,” Jiterica continued, “I saw that his aim left something to be desired. Though his objective was to hit the center of his target, he occasionally missed.”
The commander waited for the ensign to go on. But she didn’t. She just sat there.
It was only after they had stared at each other in silence for several long seconds that the commander realized something: Jiterica had come to the end of her story.
“Really,” said Wu, trying her best to seem enthusiastic.
“Yes,” Jiterica replied.
“Any...other observations?” Wu asked hopefully.
With an effort, the Nizhrak extracted a handful from memory. However, none of them was any more entertaining than the first one. In fact, a couple were actually less so.
“How about that,” said Wu.
Jiterica’s eyes seemed to narrow. For a moment, the second officer had the feeling that her companion was onto her—that Jiterica had realized how uninteresting her stories were and how hard Wu was working to make it seem otherwise.
Then the ensign said, “You should eat, Commander. Otherwise, you’ll be hungry when you start your next shift.”
Wu was getting hungry—and she had a not-so-inexplicable desire to stretch her legs. “I’ll tell you what,” she told her companion. “You wait here and I’ll be back in a moment or two.”
“Agreed,” said Jiterica.
As the commander got up and headed for the replicator slot, she considered the size of the gap she was trying to bridge in inviting the Nizhrak to dinner. Too large, perhaps.
But she wasn’t about to give up. If there was a way to relate to Jiterica, a way to make her feel more at home here on the Stargazer, Wu was going to find it.
And she was going to do it before she claimed her post on the Crazy Horse.
Chapter Eight
AS JITERICA MADE HER WAY down the corridor, most of her attention was focused on coaxing her containment suit forward in a rhythm that accommodated ambulation. She gave the rest of it to Commander Wu, who was walking alongside her. “Yes,” she said, answering the question the second officer had just asked her, in a way calculated to spare Wu’s feelings. “I did find our dinner a worthwhile experience.”
“Good,” Wu returned. “We’ll have to do it again sometime.”
But Jiterica didn’t think that the human was quite as eager as her comment indicated. In fact, she was reasonably certain of it.
“Yes,” Jiterica agreed, trying to be polite.
Truthfully, she hadn’t been optimistic about the idea of a dinner exercise in the first place. However, she had gone along with it, partly to please the commander and partly to see if it might actually have a beneficial effect.
But from the moment Jiterica saw the chair in which she would be sitting, she suspected that she had made a mistake. And when she caught the look on Wu’s face and
realized how uninteresting the commander found her stories, she was sure of it.
She had been foolish to imagine that she could ever relate to humanoids the way they related to each other. Even species as divergent as Pandrilites and Gnalish might find a common ground here on the Stargazer, but not a being compelled to wear a containment suit merely to get around.
“See you later,” said Wu.
“Yes,” Jiterica responded. “Later.”
The second officer’s intentions had been good ones. The Nizhrak had no doubt of that. But they could never become friends.
Jiterica was gratified by the knowledge that she was making a contribution as a member of the crew. To expect anything more than that was simply unrealistic.
She watched Wu vanish around a bend in the corridor and recalled what real companionship had been like—how easy it had been, how effortless. Perhaps someday she would know such companionship again.
But not here, Jiterica thought. Not on the Stargazer.
Nikolas found the person he was looking for in the ship’s gymnasium. As if she would have been anywhere else, he mused as he walked into the high-ceilinged chamber.
Idun was working out on the parallel bars, swinging her long legs back and forth with apparently effortless grace and precision. And as if that didn’t make her tantalizing enough, she was wearing a form-fitting black warm-up suit that accentuated every luscious weapon in her arsenal.
The ensign didn’t say anything right away. He just walked up to the bars and watched with undisguised admiration.
After a while, Idun noticed him. Finishing her routine with a simple side dismount, she went to the towel she had left on the floor and dried herself off. Then she glanced at him.
“Is there something I can do for you?” she asked.
“Well,” said Nikolas, “our mutual friend Obal tells me you’ve decided not to spar with me.”
Asmund nodded. “That’s correct.”
“I understand,” he told her. “You’re concerned that you’ll get hurt. But I’m here to tell you that you needn’t worry. I’m used to sparring with weaker opponents.”
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