by David Mack
“I do miss margaritas and jazz, but you can keep the Vegemite,” Fletcher replied. “Look, this is daft. We’re all going crazy in this place without any lads”—she cast a look in the direction of the departed doctor—“those of us who don’t hate them, anyway, and I think it’s mad we can’t say it.” She kicked away her chair as she stood and hollered to the silent heavens, “I want a hard shag, and I don’t care who knows it!”
With droll calm, Hernandez said, “Keep your voice down. You’ll scare the natives.” She motioned for Fletcher to sit. As the XO pulled her chair back to the table, the captain continued, “If you’re really this hard up, I’m sure we can work something out.”
“No offense, Erika,” Fletcher said, “you’re flash and all, but I just don’t see us that—”
“Not with me,” Hernandez chided her. “Remember what you told me about the Caeliar—a long time back, before the disaster? How they shape-change and mimic us? Maybe one of them can stand in for one of the MACOs.” She put on a teasing smile. “I know I saw you checking out Yacavino a few times.”
Horrified, Fletcher stared aghast at Hernandez. “Are you mad? You think I’d let myself get rogered by one of them?”
“Funny, I thought some of the MACOs were rather dashing.”
“Not the MACOs!” She lifted her chin and looked away to indicate she was talking about the Caeliar. “Them. The enemy.”
Hernandez rolled her eyes. “Don’t you think you’re being a little bit melodramatic?”
“Oh, I see. They give you a job, and suddenly you forget they’re holding us prisoner, hundreds of years and thousands of light-years from home.” She regretted it as soon as she’d said it. Apparently, it’s my night for putting my foot in my mouth.
“I haven’t forgotten anything, Ronnie,” Hernandez said. “Earth, my ship, my crew … Jonathan. Do you really think I could forget him? The way he used to touch me? Or the sound of him whispering in my ear when I was half asleep?” A bitter mood replaced her previous joviality. “We’re all stir-crazy here, Ronnie, but torturing ourselves over it doesn’t make it any better. Ranting about how badly you want to get laid doesn’t make the days go by any faster, either. If you want to let off steam, go running. Do a thousand pull-ups. Find a place with a nice echo and take up primal screaming. Or shut your door and just be your own best friend, like the rest of us do.”
Contrite, Fletcher sank back into her seat. She draped her limbs over the seat as if she were a rag doll. “Sorry. Guess I was a bit ’round the bend there.”
“Forget it. We’re all bound to snap sooner or later. You just got it out of the way early.”
Fletcher chuckled softly through an abashed smile. When it faded, she felt a crushing sense of loneliness pressing in on her from all sides. “Erika? Tell me the truth.… We’re really never going home, are we?”
Hernandez’s smile was sympathetic and bittersweet.
“Never say never.”
2381
7
Worf was surprised by the sharpness of Captain Picard’s voice as the captain dropped the padd on his ready room desk and said, “These numbers are completely unacceptable, Mister La Forge.”
The chief engineer shrugged and lifted his palms in a gesture of surrender. “They’re the best we have, Captain. All engineering teams are working around the clock, even the walking wounded. We’re at the limit.”
“Then go past the limit, Geordi,” Picard said. “Suspend any other operations that use computer power and focus everything on the task at hand.” He picked up the padd again and waved it as an object of contempt. “If we have to spend six hours trying to open each of these passages—”
La Forge interrupted, “It may take longer than that, sir. On this side, we have the Aventine to help us. Once we split up, whichever ship goes through the tunnel will have to calculate the return frequency on its own. If we’re lucky—”
Picard held up his hand. “Split up?”
The chief engineer looked to Worf, who explained, “Until reinforcements arrive, either we or the Aventine will have to remain here, as a sentinel against the Borg.”
The captain nodded. “I see.”
“In any case,” La Forge said, “processing power is only half the problem. After we analyzed the logs from the runabout that opened the passageway the Aventine used, we found out that the creature who’d hijacked the runabout altered its deflector output somehow. He stabilized the subspace aperture by emitting a tri-quantum wave—something we’re not set up to do.”
Folding his hands together, Picard asked, “How do we plan to remedy this?”
“I’m working with the Aventine’s chief engineer to design and install some upgrades to our sensor grids. We should be ready to start opening tunnels in less than three hours.”
“Very well,” Picard said. He turned to Worf. “How soon will the Enterprise be battle ready, Number One?”
With grim regret, Worf replied, “It will require at least another eight hours.”
“Why so long?” Picard asked.
Worf traded a knowing look with La Forge before he answered, “Personnel and resources are currently … limited, sir.”
La Forge added, “What he’s too polite to say is that I’ve commandeered all the engineers and damage-control teams to make the modifications to the sensor grid. When those are done, we’ll move the tactical system repairs to the front of the line.”
“See that you do, Mister La Forge. If we’re to stay behind as sentries, I’d prefer not to do so unarmed.”
The chief engineer nodded. “I understand, sir.”
“Dismissed, Mister La Forge. Mister Worf, stay a moment.”
Worf clasped his hands behind his back as La Forge left the captain’s ready room. When the door closed, Picard said to Worf, “I want your honest opinion, Worf. Is this crew really ready to face the Borg?”
“They have already done so several times,” Worf said, perplexed by the captain’s question.
Shaking his head, Picard said, “I’m not talking about starship combat, Number One. I’m referring to close-quarters combat. There’s no telling what we’ll find when we uncover the tunnel that leads to the Borg’s invasion staging area. Starships might not be enough to win the day—we may find ourselves tasked with infiltrating and destroying anything from a unimatrix complex to a transwarp hub. So, if it comes to that, I need to know: In your professional opinion, are Lieutenant Choudhury’s security personnel equal to the task?”
“Some are,” Worf said. “Some are not. But until they are tested in battle, there is no way to know who will falter.”
Picard seemed dubious. “Simulations—”
“—are unreliable,” Worf said. “Some trainees will not commit themselves, masking their true abilities. Others will indulge in bravado, inflating their egos while learning nothing. The only true measure of a warrior is combat.”
“Very well,” Picard said. “Putting aside the readiness of the individuals, how would you rate the department as a whole?”
“Exceptional, sir.”
The captain leaned forward. “Splendid. Tell Lieutenant Choudhury to start scheduling drills for her most experienced combat personnel. I want multiple small units capable of independent action. See to it that they’re briefed on all our latest intelligence about the absorptive properties of Borg cubes—just in case. And, at the risk of fueling their bravado, have them conduct intensive training simulations as soon as we get the holodecks functional.”
“For what objective should they be trained, sir?”
Picard’s aquiline visage tensed, and his frown lines deepened as he said, “To seek and destroy the Borg Queen.”
* * *
The door sighed open ahead of Bowers, and he walked into the Aventine’s gymnasium to find Captain Dax laboring to swing a bat’leth through a simple series of parries and strikes. She wore an off-white gi, and her feet were bare. As the pixyish Trill woman pivoted through a turning slash, she saw Bowers and lo
wered the crescent-shaped Klingon blade.
“Sam,” she said, sounding exhausted and annoyed.
“Captain.” He nodded at the bat’leth. “Looks a bit on the heavy side for you, don’t you think?”
“It was a gift,” she said. “One of these years, I’ll get the hang of it, the way Jadzia did.”
He decided not to mention that, from all accounts he had heard, Jadzia had been several inches taller than Ezri and had begun her martial-arts training at a much younger age. “I just wanted to let you know we’re less than two hours away from our first scouting run. Helkara says we’ll have the ingress frequency for the nearest tunnel by 2100 at the latest, and Leishman’s team is almost done modifying the sensor grid.”
Dax plodded to a bench along the side of the compartment, rested the bat’leth against it at an angle, and picked up a towel to dab the perspiration from her forehead and the nape of her neck. “How long until the Enterprise is ready?”
“Not till 0200, but they have to hang back to watch for the Borg, anyway,” Bowers said, partly distracted by the exquisite workmanship of the engraving on the side of the bat’leth and the fine temper of its edge. “We’re on our own for the first run.”
She noticed his attention to the blade. “Want to spar?” she asked, toweling sweat from her short, dark hair. “We can replicate one for you, go a few rounds.…”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said with a self-deprecating wave of his hand. “Not really my weapon of choice.”
The captain shrugged. “What’s your preference? I’m flexible.”
Bowers wondered if he was just imagining a note of manic desperation in Dax’s manner. Then he saw the anxiety in her wide-eyed gaze, and he knew that something wasn’t right. “Are you feeling okay, Captain?”
“We have the gym to ourselves, Sam, you can drop the rank.”
Her attempts at familiarity felt like more deflection, but if it helped her open up, he’d take advantage of her offer. “It just seems a bit weird, this sudden need to spar. Have you tried using the holodeck?”
“What’s the point of sparring in the holodeck? There’s no satisfaction in it.” She tossed her towel on the bench, picked up the bat’leth, and lugged it back to the middle of the gym.
He watched her arms quake with the effort of heaving the blade level with her shoulders and holding it steady. “Why can’t you get satisfaction sparring on the holodeck?” he asked. When she made no attempt to answer, he speculated, “Is it because a holodeck character can’t hang out in the lounge and tell the crew he got his ass kicked by the captain?”
She closed her eyes as her concentration broke, and the sword dragged her buckled arms halfway to the deck. “Goddammit, Sam,” she exclaimed. “I’m just trying … I just want to get my focus back so I can feel like I’m in control.” Dax turned away, and then she dropped the bat’leth. She planted one hand on her hip and used the other to cover her eyes. “Maybe you won’t understand this, but I feel like I’m faking my way through every minute of the day, and that everyone around me knows it.” Her hand dropped from her face, which was pale except for the circles under her eyes. “Five weeks ago, I was the second officer on this ship. Third in the chain of command. Then one direct hit by the Borg, and it was like I was watching Tiris Jast die on the Defiant all over again.”
Bowers recalled the death of Defiant’s female Bolian commander, during an attack by rogue Jem’Hadar ships several years earlier. That incident had been a key moment for Ezri, then still a counselor. She’d tapped into the Dax symbiont’s past lifetimes of experience, taken charge of the Defiant, and proved adept at rising to the challenges of command.
“If your moment on this ship was anything like the one you had on Defiant, you deserve to be in the center seat,” he told her, because it seemed to be what she needed to hear.
Dax shook her head. “It wasn’t just that incident. It feels like my whole career’s been like that. Just one lucky coincidence after another. What if they’d found another host for the Dax symbiont on the Destiny? Then I’d just be Ezri Tigan now, counselor un-extraordinaire. If Jast hadn’t been killed in that attack on Deep Space 9, I might still be wearing medical-division blue. Or what if Captain Dexar or Commander Tovak had survived the Battle of Acamar?”
Bowers rolled his eyes and sighed. “Bullshit.” Her head snapped toward him, and the fiery anger in her eyes confirmed that he had her attention. He continued, “Who cares how or why you ended up in those situations? What matters is what you chose to do each time you faced a challenge.” He stepped toward her. “You could’ve refused to host the Dax symbiont, but you didn’t. You could’ve let someone else call the shots on Defiant when Jast fell, but you took command and saved the ship. During that crisis with the alternate universe, and the fallout that came after it, you were the one who stepped up when it mattered the most. And from what I’ve read in this ship’s logs, you did exactly what you were supposed to do at Acamar.”
He stopped in front of her, kneeled, and picked up the bat’leth from the deck. It was a perfectly balanced weapon, and it rested in his hand with a reassuring heft.
Then he straightened, rotated the blade with both hands, and offered it grip-first to Dax. “You’re in command because you’re a natural leader. When others shrink, you rise. And you’ve got the advantage of eight lifetimes of experience—that’s seven and a half more than most captains.”
She looked up at him with grateful eyes and hesitantly accepted the bat’leth. As she took hold of it, he added, “You’re a hell of a good CO, Ezri. And I bet the man who gave you that sword would tell you the same thing—if you let him.”
* * *
Geordi La Forge braced himself inside the steep, nearly vertical crawl space that led to the Aventine’s sensor control nexus and reached down toward the ship’s chief engineer, Lieutenant Mikaela Leishman. “Gravitic calipers,” he said.
The slender, thirtyish woman passed the tool up to him. “How’s it going up there?”
“Almost done,” he said. “I have to say, I almost envy you. This is quite a ship you’ve got here.”
“Yeah, she’s a beauty. I still feel like I’m getting to know her, though. I only came aboard a few weeks ago, with the other replacements.” She chuckled. “There are systems on this ship I still haven’t read the manuals for.”
“That’s confidence-inspiring,” quipped Lieutenant Oliana Mirren, the Aventine’s senior operations officer, who stepped up behind Leishman and peered up the crawl space at La Forge.
Leishman cast a sour frown at her colleague, then asked, “Shouldn’t you be on the bridge?”
“Finished my double shift a few hours ago,” she said. “Now I’m checking up on the damage-control teams.” Looking up, she called to La Forge, “Hope our prototype systems aren’t giving you too much trouble, sir.”
“Not at all,” La Forge replied, even as he wondered what had led to so much tension between the two women.
Folding her arms, Leishman said to Mirren, “Geordi has everything under control, so you can go find someone else to hassle.” La Forge wondered when he and Leishman had come to be on a first-name basis, but since he wanted to stay clear of her cross fire with Mirren, he let that go for the moment.
“I’m sure Mister La Forge is an excellent engineer,” Mirren said, “but we’re equipped with a lot of test-bed systems. It would be a good idea to monitor his work a bit more closely.”
Leishman replied defensively, “He doesn’t need me to show him around a sensor grid, Oliana.”
“Actually,” La Forge cut in, pointing at a series of linked components, “I have no idea what those are. A heads-up before I disconnect something that ought to stay online might not be such a bad idea.”
Mirren’s smug glance at Leishman said, I told you so.
The Aventine’s chief engineer flashed an insincere smile in return, and then she clambered swiftly up the crawl space toward La Forge. He tried to wave her back. “Whoa, hang on! Space is a l
ittle tight up here right—” The last word of his sentence caught in his throat as Leishman pulled herself up beside him in the narrow tube and let her body press firmly against his.
She reached past him, which pushed their torsos together even more than before. A subtle, floral scent of shampoo in her hair teased his nostrils. “That,” she said, pointing at one bundle of optronic cables, “is a multidimensional wave-function analysis module.” Using her outstretched hand to grab a support, she extended her other arm over his opposite shoulder. “That bulky thing over there is an experimental sympathetic fermion transceiver, whose counterpart is currently being installed in a secure facility somewhere ultra top secret.” She pulled herself a bit higher than La Forge, placing her bosom in front of his face as she pointed at a complicated apparatus. “And this marvel of modern science is a chroniton integrator, which in theory will let us take sensor readings from several seconds in the future when our slipstream drive is engaged.”
“Very impressive,” La Forge said, only half certain that he was talking about the ship.
Leishman smiled. “Believe it or not, there are actually a few more things up here that are so secret that if I told you what they were—” She lost her grip suddenly on her handhold and whooped in surprise as she fell. Without thinking, La Forge caught her, and she held on to him, her arms around his neck, her legs wrapped around his waist. “Nice catch,” she said.
“All part of the service,” La Forge said, a grin brightening his own features.
From below the two chief engineers came an exasperated huff. La Forge and Leishman looked down and were met by the censorious glare of Lieutenant Mirren. “Heaven defend us from engineers in love,” she groused. “Let me know when you’re done.”
The operations officer walked away, leaving the engineers to their strangely intimate clutch in the crawl space. After a few seconds, Leishman cast a wide-eyed look of amusement at La Forge and broke out laughing. “She’s so easy to tweak!”
“I take it this is a running gag for you?”