Gauntlet

by Michael Jan Friedman

  And she stalked off, presumably to find Picard or Ben Zoma.

  Not that Simenon cared the least bit either way. Putting the incident aside, he took a look at the next monitor in line and muttered, “All right then . . . just where were we?”

  Ben Zoma was about to get in touch with Commander Wu when Wu got in touch with him.

  “I’ve just been to engineering,” she told him over the intercom system, her tone one of restrained indignation. “Did you know that Chief Simenon’s people are working double shifts down there?”

  “I wasn’t aware of that,” the first officer admitted. “But it’s not unusual for them to do that.”

  “Even in the absence of a yellow alert?” Wu asked. “Against explicit Starfleet regulations?”

  It took him a moment to recall the sense of the regulation. “I see what you mean,” he said. “But to tell you the truth, Commander, we often put minor regulations aside when they interfere with the smooth operation of the ship.”

  There was a pause. “Sir, regulations are designed to ensure the smooth operation of the ship.”

  Ben Zoma frowned. “Where are you now, Commander?”

  Another pause. “I’m on my way to sickbay.”

  The first officer could just imagine what havoc the woman was bent on wreaking there.

  He calculated the time it would take Wu to reach her quarters. Then he told her to meet him there in five minutes and terminated the link.

  “Have you ever done this before?” Lieutenant Pierzynski asked.

  It took a moment for the being in the gray-and-white containment suit to respond. “No.”

  “It’s not difficult,” the security officer assured her.

  The ghostly expression behind the faceplate didn’t change. “Perhaps you could demonstrate for me,” Ensign Jiterica said in a flat, metallic-sounding voice.

  Pierzynski shrugged, trying to act natural despite the strangeness of his visitor. “Sure.”

  Hunkering down on one knee, he swung open the metal plate that had been sitting flush with the bulkhead and exposed a compartment hardly bigger than his hand. Then he tapped a couple of square, colored studs inside the compartment and looked across the brig to the nearest of its eight cells.

  It didn’t look any different as a result of his efforts. Not yet, at least. But it would.

  Jiterica leaned over in her suit to get a better look inside the compartment. “You pressed the yellow button?” she asked. “And then the red one?”

  “That’s right,” the security officer told her. “And in that order. Otherwise, the emitters won’t respond.”

  “I see,” she said.

  Pierzynski had been asked by Lieutenant Joseph to show Jiterica around the brig. It wasn’t the first time Pierzynski had briefed a brand-new ensign, though it was the first time time he had done so for someone in a containment suit.

  He had heard about Jiterica’s problem in the shuttlebay. By then, probably everyone had heard. Unfortunate, he thought. But in a way, it had been for the best. Better to find out the ensign’s limitations during a drill than in a real emergency.

  Anyway, nothing like that would happen in the brig. Commander Ben Zoma had given Joseph his word that there wouldn’t be any evac drills as long as Jiterica was stationed there.

  Pierzynski got up and walked over to the cell whose generators had activated. There was a padd set into the bulkhead just to one side of it. Tapping in the requisite code, he saw a force barrier spring into being, stretching itself like a translucent veil across the cell’s doorless entrance.

  “And that’s how it’s done,” he announced. “If you want to turn it off, you just do the same thing in reverse. Or if you want to change the polarity of the fields, all you have to do is—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, he heard something—a shuffling sound. Not sure what it meant, he shot a glance over his shoulder and saw Jiterica leaning against the bulkhead.

  She was doubled over as if in pain.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I—” she began, but couldn’t get any further. “I—” The security officer didn’t know what to do for her. He didn’t even know what had happened. He had never had any experience with someone like Jiterica.

  Tapping his combadge, he barked, “Pierzynski to sickbay! Something’s wrong with Ensign Jiterica!”

  “Not—” the Nizhrak said, her voice strangely flat and emotionless for someone who was so obviously involved in a struggle. “I can—”

  Pierzynski didn’t know what Jiterica was trying to tell him, but it really didn’t matter. She needed help, and unless he was mistaken, she needed it quickly.

  “Hurry!” he shouted, urging on the medical team.

  Chapter Thirteen

  JITERICA WAS SITTING on a biobed and peering at Greyhorse through the transparent faceplate of her containment suit. “Interference?” she repeated quizzically. “That’s right,” said the doctor. He turned to Simenon, who had apparently assisted in the ensign’s recovery. “Perhaps my colleague here would care to explain?”

  The Gnalish shrugged his narrow shoulders. “It’s simple, really. Your suit is laced with a containment field—something like the barriers we generate in the brig to keep prisoners incarcerated. In your suit, though, the field is engineered to a rather exacting standard. In the brig, there’s no need for such precision, so the fields there tend to bleed a bit.”

  Jiterica was beginning to understand. “When Lieutenant Pierzynski activated the barrier, it bled beyond its visible parameters . . . and interacted with the field in my suit.”

  “With the result that your containment field went down,” Simenon told her. “At least, until we could figure out what had happened and drag you away from the barrier.”

  “But while you were without the assistance of the field,” Greyhorse noted, “it was left entirely up to you to maintain your molecular density and keep your suit from exploding. That must have been quite a burden on your physiology.”

  It was indeed, Jiterica reflected. Of course, she had contained herself for short periods of time before—when she beamed up to the Stargazer, for instance. But in this case, the lapse in her containment field had been unexpected.

  “Had there been more insulation in your suit,” said Greyhorse, “this might have been avoided. But as it was . . .” He frowned.

  “Needless to say,” Simenon assured her, “this sort of thing won’t happen a second time.”

  The ensign didn’t doubt that he was right. But there were so many other things that could happen . . .

  “And,” said the doctor, “you can leave sickbay whenever you feel rested enough. With your suit functioning again, there’s no reason to keep you here.”

  Jiterica slid off the biobed less than gracefully. “Then I will be going. Thank you,” she said, “both of you.”

  And she made her way out into the corridor, beset by more doubts and uncertainties than ever before.

  Ben Zoma was already standing at the entrance to Wu’s quarters when the second officer showed up.

  “Commander,” she said, looking more than a little leery.

  Ben Zoma acknowledged her with a nod of his head. Then he waited while she tapped the metal plate set into the bulkhead, opening her quarters to them.

  As he might have expected, the place was impeccably if minimally furnished and unutterably neat. Following Wu inside, he took a seat and waited for her to do the same.

  “Well,” said Wu, with admirable efficiency, “here we are. What is it you wanted to speak to me about, sir?”

  Ben Zoma chose his words carefully. “I take it the captain of your previous ship was a precise observer of regulations?”

  She nodded. “Of course. Captain Rudolfini was an excellent officer.”

  Obviously, Wu wasn’t going to make it easy for him—not that he had expected her to. “At the risk of being considered a bad officer,” he said, “I have to tell you that we do things differently here on
the Stargazer. We don’t always adhere strictly to regulations, especially when they bump heads with common sense.”

  The second officer didn’t say anything. She just sat there and listened to him.

  “And as far as I can tell,” Ben Zoma continued, “we’re not unusual in that respect. Most captains will overlook minor violations if they don’t interfere with overall efficiency—especially when they’re seen in the context of a difficult mission.”

  Wu just looked at him.

  “Therefore,” he told her, “I would appreciate it if you let up on Simenon and Idun and whoever else among your subordinates may have been guilty of a minor infraction. Of course, if you see something seriously wrong, don’t hesitate to correct it. But it’s got to be more than a failure to requalify or the odd double shift.”

  Ben Zoma expected an argument from his second officer. To his surprise, he didn’t get one.

  “I’ll obey your orders,” Wu told him evenly, “if that’s what they are. But I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that I sincerely and wholeheartedly disagree with them.”

  He sighed. He had been right about Wu, it seemed—she was going to be trouble after all.

  Jiterica dutifully moved her containment suit along the corridor in the direction of her quarters. However, the suit wasn’t the heaviest burden she had to carry with her.

  When Lieutenant Simenon mentioned the similarity between the field in the ensign’s suit and the barriers employed in the brig, he had only meant that they drew on the same technology. But Jiterica had come to the conclusion that the similarity extended well beyond that.

  After all, her containment field was a means of incarceration as well, in that it kept her from assuming the form nature had intended for her. And there were other prisons into which she had blithely and willingly placed herself.

  The Stargazer, for instance, in that it carried her far from the milieu into which she had been born. And the vows she had made as a member of Starfleet, for they kept her from living a life in which she could find meaning.

  To this point, she had managed to fool herself. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, she had convinced herself that she might thrive in Starfleet—that she might even manage to become a viable officer someday. But her experiences on the Stargazer had finally put an end to that notion.

  First, there was the embarrassment in the shuttlebay, where she had placed others in peril by virtue of her very existence. True, it was only theoretical peril, but the next time it might be real.

  Then she had suffered an even greater embarrassment by nearly exploding her containment suit in the brig. As Simenon had indicated, the situation wasn’t likely to come up a second time, but how many other venues on the ship would prove inimical to her survival?

  What further humiliation would she have to endure before she accepted the inevitable—before she resigned herself to the grim reality of her prospects on the Stargazer?

  Just as Jiterica thought this, she saw someone round the bend in the corridor ahead of her. It was a human, older than most on the ship—a female with a greater body mass than the statistical average, her hair worn loose about her shoulders.

  Jiterica didn’t remember meeting the woman. However, it was clear that she was a lieutenant, because there was a spool-shaped device pinned onto the right shoulder and left sleeve of her uniform. It was also clear that she worked in the science section, because those same devices were at least partly gray in color.

  A full lieutenant in the science section, Jiterica thought. That would be Lieutenant Valderrama. The woman had beamed up to the ship with the group that came after the Nizhrak’s.

  As Valderrama approached her, Jiterica could make out the expression on the lieutenant’s face. It began with curiosity, reconfigured itself almost immediately into a mask of restraint, then evolved gradually into the inevitable look of pity.

  Finally, Valderrama nodded. Jiterica inclined her helmeted head in response. Then the lieutenant was past her—mercifully so—and the Nizhrak was alone in the corridor again.

  Valderrama was right to pity her, Jiterica thought. All her fellow crewmen were right to do so. She was, despite her best efforts, a pitiful excuse for a Starfleet ensign.

  But they wouldn’t need to pity her much longer. In the morning she would tell the captain that she was quitting the fleet and ask to be returned to her homeworld.

  Jiterica wouldn’t find any relief in that meeting—neither then nor later. No doubt, she would regret what had happened here and on the Manitou for a very long time.

  But in light of all her failures, a quick departure was the only reasonable option open to her.

  In the short time that Nikolas had known Joe Caber, his opinion had changed a hundred percent.

  Not his opinion of Caber—that hadn’t changed one iota. Nikolas still saw his roommate as the perfect Starfleet ensign, well on his way to becoming the perfect Starfleet skipper.

  What had changed was the way Nikolas saw himself.

  When he walked into his quarters the day before, he had already resigned himself to his fate. He was going to be a loose cannon, a thorn in the side of his superiors the rest of his Starfleet career—however long it might be allowed to last.

  Now Nikolas believed there might be a different fate in store for him, one that involved some success in his chosen profession. He could even see himself becoming an officer someday.

  And why? Because of Joe Caber.

  Because the guy had encouraged him to look beyond his limitations. Because he had shown Nikolas that they had more in common than the ensign might ever have believed.

  He might never be Joe Caber, admiral’s son. But if he tried, if he managed to put aside his resentments and his insecurities, he might become someone almost as good.

  “Hey,” said Caber, “you going to hang there all day?”

  Nikolas smiled despite the increasing strain on his arms and shoulders and regripped the horizontal bar one hand at a time. “Just until I feel comfortable,” he grunted.

  “You sure you’ve done this before?” Caber gibed in a good-natured tone of voice.

  In fact, Nikolas was hardly an expert on the horizontal bar. But he didn’t want to admit that in front of his roommate—especially after he had boasted about his gymnastic skills all the way here.

  “Just step back,” he said, “and try not to gasp in awe.”

  Then Nikolas began swinging back and forth, all the while maintaining his hold on the chalk-covered titanium bar above him. Ignoring the pain it cost him, he swung higher and higher, until his hips were well above the bar on his backswing.

  Finally, when he couldn’t take it any longer, he drove forward one last time. At the apex of his swing, he let go of the bar and threw himself backward into a tightly tucked somersault.

  That was the easy part, he told himself. The hard part would be sticking the landing.

  As fast as the room was spinning around him, Nikolas had no real idea what he was doing. All he could do was take a stab at it and hope for the best. With that approach in mind, he released his grip at what seemed like the appropriate time.

  And somehow, as if by magic, managed to land on his feet.

  There was an almost overwhelming moment of vertigo, when Nikolas had the feeling that he was standing more or less upright but couldn’t be certain of it. Then the dizziness passed, and he realized that he had stuck the landing.

  Stuck it perfectly, in fact.

  “Nice job,” Caber told him.

  Nikolas grinned. “All in a day’s work.”

  Then it was his roommate’s turn. He eyed the bar, rolled a bar of chalk between his hands and put it down beside the apparatus. Then he leaped up, grasped the bar, and kicked forward into a swing.

  In no time, Caber was swinging as high as Nikolas had. Then higher. And he was doing it with only one hand, first the right and then the left, never both at the same time.

  In a burst of energy, he swung completely around the bar, cut
ting a perfect circle through the air—once, twice, and a third time. Finally, without warning, he released the bar and tucked himself into a rapidly spinning somersault.

  But it wasn’t the single flip that Nikolas had done. It was a double, with a twist for good measure. And when Caber landed, it was with flawless grace and balance.

  Nikolas whistled involuntarily. And here he thought he had impressed his roommate with his relatively rudimentary performance. The guy was amazing. Absolutely amazing.

  “Nice job yourself,” Nikolas told him.

  But Caber didn’t answer. He was staring over Nikolas’s shoulder, his face frozen in an expression of disbelief. His curiosity piqued, Nikolas turned and saw what had caught his friend’s attention.

  It was the Binderian—the one who had beamed up to the Stargazer in Nikolas’s group. The ensign hadn’t seen him since, but he had heard that the guy was in security.

  What was his name again? Obert? Obizz? No, Nikolas thought, remembering at last. Obal.

  When he last saw the little guy, it was in the transporter room. They had beamed up together, along with the new science officer.

  At the time, Nikolas had noted how strange-looking the Binderian was, how awkward he seemed in his Starfleet uniform. Almost comical, the ensign had thought at the time.

  Now Obal was wearing Starfleet-issue black gym shorts a couple of sizes too long for him and a blue tank top that accentuated his bony shoulders and arms, and he looked even more ridiculous than he had in the transporter room.

  As Nikolas watched, the Binderian went over to the weight area and picked up a couple of barbells—the lightest pair on hand, perhaps three kilograms apiece. With an effort, he brought them to shoulder height. Then, taking a deep breath between clenched teeth, he began to push them toward the ceiling.

  With each push, Obal grunted. No—it was less a grunt than a wheeze, Nikolas decided. And to add to the effect, Obal’s face, which was already a bright pink, turned a lush crimson.