by David Mack
“We need to have a conversation, Commander,” Troi said.
Sarai nodded toward Pek and sh’Aqabaa. “Now isn’t a good time. We need to bring Doctor Pek up to the bridge to confer with Commander Tuvok on an urgent tactical matter.”
Nothing dimmed Troi’s aura of sweet cheer—a quality Sarai found cloying. “Well, I’m sure Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa knows her way to the bridge. Don’t you, Lieutenant?”
“I do,” said the statuesque Andorian shen—who stood her ground and maintained a mask of perfect neutrality as she looked to Sarai for her next instruction.
A tense moment stretched out, a silent battle of wills as the three women regarded one another with preternatural calm while the Tellarite scientist trapped in their midst fidgeted like a child with an overtaxed bladder. The longer Sarai faced off against Troi, the more she realized that the counselor’s quasi-saccharine demeanor concealed a sharp and steely will. This was not a confrontation Sarai could bluff her way out of.
“Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa, take Doctor Pek to the bridge. I’ll join you shortly.”
“Aye, sir.” The security officer took Pek’s arm and led him to the turbolift, which opened at their approach. As soon as they were inside, the doors closed, and Sarai heard the faint hum of magnetic coils whisking the lift car away on its journey to the bridge.
She mirrored Troi’s insincere smile. “What can I do for you, Counselor?”
“Walk with me.” Troi turned and started back the way she had come without waiting for Sarai’s assent, making it clear that her invitation had been an order rather than a suggestion. As soon as Sarai fell into step at her side, she continued. “We need to talk about the crew’s morale.”
This was not a conversation Sarai wanted to have, but decorum compelled her to hear what Troi had to say. “What about it?”
“It could be better. Long frontier assignments take their toll, on both spirit and flesh.”
“And that concerns me because . . . ?”
“Traditionally,” Troi said, adopting the manner of an Academy instructor, “maintaining healthy crew morale is one of the key responsibilities of a ship’s executive officer. However, I’ve noticed that it’s a role from which you appear to be utterly divorced on the Titan.”
It pained Sarai to resist the urge to roll her eyes or grit her teeth. “You’re right. I do try not to tamper with the crew’s morale. In my experience, they and I are both happier this way.”
They continued aft until Troi led Sarai inside the ship’s ventral botanical garden, a lush green space tucked in the belly of the ship. It was a rare oasis amid the machinery of the engineering hull. Sarai wondered whether Troi had brought her here by chance, or because she thought the less synthetic environment might inspire Sarai to experience an emotional epiphany.
“No one is asking you to be the chief entertainment officer,” Troi said, “or to play matchmaker for the lonely hearts. But your personnel reviews exhibit no concern for whether the officers and enlisted crew under your command are thriving in their roles, or just marking time.”
“With all respect, Counselor, if any member of this crew wants to request a change of their billet or a transfer to another boat, they’re welcome to ask. But I don’t have the time to micromanage the careers of over seven hundred fifty people. So if I choose to prioritize the operation of this ship, the safety of its crew, and the effective completion of our assigned missions over the professional misgivings of seven hundred strangers, that’s my prerogative.” She stepped in front of Troi, pivoted to face her, and stopped. “Tell me the truth, Counselor. Did the captain put you up to this little chat? Or did the admiral?”
“Neither. As the head of the counseling services division, I made this call on my own.”
“Then I suggest you un-make it on your own. Mind your own duties, Counselor, and unless the captain or the admiral requests otherwise, keep your command advice to yourself.”
Sarai stepped around Troi and left the botanical garden. She listened for the sound of pursuing footsteps or a command for her return, but she heard neither.
Her walk back to the turbolift was quiet and steeped in resentment. Riding up to deck one, she stewed in her dark mood, most annoyed by the fact that she knew, deep down, that Troi was right. Sarai had neglected a significant aspect of her role as the Titan’s XO—not because she was incapable of rising to the challenge, but because she didn’t want to feel close to officers whom she knew she was betraying every minute of every day just by being among them.
If I felt like I really belonged here, if I thought I’d been posted here because I’d earned a return to starship service, that would be one thing, she brooded. But the only reason I’m here is because Admiral Batanides wants a spy to watch Vale and Riker, and she thinks my tainted past makes me easy to control. I’m here because she thinks I don’t deserve to be anything but a puppet.
When she considered herself from an emotional remove and asked herself who and what she wanted to be, the answer seemed clear: she wanted to be the best first officer she could be for Captain Vale and the most loyal subordinate she could be to Admiral Riker. Both of them, in spite of whatever Sarai had been coerced into reporting about them to Batanides, were officers of good character and noble intent. They deserved better than this, she realized.
They deserve better than me.
As far as Xin Ra-Havreii was concerned, there was no better place to be when feeling antisocial than arms deep in the sensor array at the bow of the Titan’s secondary hull. Ensconced in the cold embrace of machines and ODN cables, he felt safely isolated from the critical eyes of his shipmates, insulated from the distractions of interacting with those who excelled at nothing so much as the finding of fault with how he chose to conduct his personal business.
He wished he could debug personal relationships with the same detachment that he brought to rewiring the ship’s multispectral detection grid. Cross-circuiting isolinear slots was a simple matter of reading spec sheets and design schematics, then applying his lifetime of engineering expertise and mathematical acumen to deduce which pieces of hardware and which strings of firmware had to be adjusted to compensate for exotic radiation effects. If a tweak didn’t produce the result he expected he could test it with trial and error. More than anything else, what he liked about the process was its binary nature. An action worked or it didn’t; a change in the system either yielded the desired result or it didn’t.
When did relationships become so ambiguous?
He dismissed the rhetorical question. Stay focused. Just do the job.
A soft tone issued from his padd, which was balanced atop an EPS buffer beside him. He picked up the device and perused the message. It was a summary of a bit of sabotage that a civilian engineer had snuck onto a data chip and which might aid the Titan’s search. He noted the specs for the anticipated millicochranes of distortion the malware would produce, then put the padd aside while he continued working. One task at a time.
The array’s data transmission loads were almost balanced to within optimal range when he heard two sets of footfalls approaching from the corridor behind him. He hoped they would just pass on by, but instead they stopped outside his open bulkhead panel.
Ra-Havreii sighed. He looked back and made no effort to conceal his irritation at the disturbance. “Who’s there and what do you want?”
Ensign Evesh, a Tellarite sensor technician who several members of the crew insisted was a female of her species, leaned her snouted black-eyed face through the gap between the bulkhead and Ra-Havreii’s hip. “The captain sent us down to assist you.”
Her use of a plural pronoun made the chief engineer arch one snowy eyebrow with suspicion. “You and who else, Ensign?”
“Lieutenant Commander Pazlar, sir.” Evesh backed out of the tight space just far enough to let Ra-Havreii see Pazlar standing in the corridor with her arms crossed. Either oblivious of or indifferent to the acrimony and tension between the two senior officers, Evesh asked with typic
al Tellarite bluntness, “What do you want us to do?”
“Find someone else to annoy,” Ra-Havreii said. “I have this under control.”
Pazlar said, “We’re here by order of the XO.” Her deadpan manner telegraphed her disdain for being compelled to work with him.
Ra-Havreii pretended not to care. “Tell Sarai I don’t need your help.”
“You want to countermand the Ice Queen’s orders? Tell her yourself.”
Evesh grunted in irritation. “You’re wasting time! The captain said she wants to pierce the Orions’ cloak within the hour. So maybe you two can have your spat on your own time?”
Her rebuke drew shocked and reproachful looks from Pazlar and Ra-Havreii, the first time he had felt simpatico with the Elaysian science officer since their bitter breakup months earlier. Hoping to prevent the Tellarite from throwing any more fuel on the metaphorical fire, Ra-Havreii handed her an isospectral calibration tool and pointed her aft. “Open the next panel and triple the gain on the gravitic sensors for frequencies between twenty-one and twenty-two millicochranes. Compensate by compressing the curve on the signal waveform.”
“Aye, sir.” Evesh took the tool and moved one bulkhead aft to work.
He tried to crawl back inside the sensor assembly.
Pazlar halted him by asking, “What about me?”
Sullen and brimming with resentment, Ra-Havreii slithered free of the machinery and confronted the science officer. “What about you?”
“Don’t do this here,” she said, her voice low and rich with implied threat. “Not now.”
“I forgot how much you love to dictate terms.” He felt her fury surfacing despite her best efforts to hide it. “Tell me: When you’re done meddling with my repairs, whose work do you plan to stick your hands into next?”
“Where I stick my hands is none of your business, Commander, but I’ll be more than happy to tell you where you can stick yours.”
From down the corridor, Evesh griped, “Hey! I’m trying to work here. Either shut up or go find a bunk to soil in private.”
Being openly disrespected by a junior officer lit Ra-Havreii’s fuse. “By the hoary host! Damn it, Ensign, you’re speaking to a pair of senior officers! Shut your snout and keep your eyes on your work, or so help me I’ll put so many black marks on your record you’ll be lucky to get a job scrubbing latrines on Rura damned Penthe!”
Pazlar tried to interpose herself between Ra-Havreii and Evesh. “Calm the hell down before you—”
“Calm down? Is that what you just said to me? Oh, that’s rich. Social advice from the likes of you—that’s the last damned thing I need.”
Now the science officer was in his face, challenging him. “The likes of me? And what exactly are the likes of me, Doctor Ra-Havreii? What does that classification mean to you?”
“The cold and heartless.” He flicked a fingernail against Pazlar’s powered exoskeleton, which enabled her to function in normal gravity though her species had evolved on a low-g world. “I always used to think this was just a crutch for your brittle bones. Now I see your defects go a lot deeper than that. You’re an emotional cripple too.”
The slap of her palm across his face stung for a second. The pain of realizing he could never take back his false and foolishly chosen words, he realized too late, would last far longer.
Pazlar turned on her heel and walked away, her rage radiating from her like heat off a dying star. Ra-Havreii watched her storm down the corridor, and as she disappeared around a curve he knew this confrontation was neither past nor forgotten. It would haunt him just as certainly as did his wounded pride and desperate longing for Pazlar’s lost affections.
This is rock bottom, he admitted to himself.
Evesh had left her assigned task to hover behind his shoulder. Her porcine features betrayed the slightest hint of a lascivious grin.
Ra-Havreii scowled at her. “What now, dammit?”
“I’d heard you Efrosians were a passionate lot,” Evesh said, “but I had no idea you’d be so brazen in front of a former lover.” She leaned closer. “I love brazen.”
That was when Ra-Havreii remembered that among the Tellarites, heated arguments were perceived as flirting and foreplay.
Correction: this is rock bottom.
Thirteen
* * *
The sound of smoothly running machinery was a symphony to Gaila’s lobes, and as he listened to the automated factory churning out new munitions below the control room, he felt like its maestro. I am the conductor of the choir of profit, he mused at the sight of robot arms assembling bombs and missiles. Sing, Brother Supply! Sing, Brother Demand!
Seated at the broad console in front of him, fine-tuning the settings that governed the facility’s output, was his Kaferian hacker, N’chk. It mystified Gaila how the insectoid computer expert could operate the board’s controls with his simple two-part claw extremities, yet somehow N’chk managed the feat with speed and precision. As many times as Gaila had been tempted to prompt N’chk to explain how he did his work, he just as often reminded himself that when something worked it was usually best not to risk messing it up by asking too many questions.
Gaila leaned closer to peer at the Husnock displays, but he found their status readouts perplexing. Unable to assess the situation for himself, he asked N’chk, “How’s it going?”
The Kaferian’s native language of high-speed clicks was translated in real time by a vocoder he wore around his neck. “I have restored the security measures the Pakleds bypassed. All exterior and interior defenses are now operational.”
“Did you change the access codes?”
“As you requested, yes. Your executive code now grants you full control of the factory.”
Gaila was pleased. “And what about the drone convoy?”
“I am having difficulty accessing their command-and-control node.” N’chk pointed out a bank of displays. “I have made educated guesses concerning some of its elements. Others I will need to identify by trial and error.”
Anxiety stirred inside Gaila. “How long to get it running?”
N’chk regarded Gaila with one of his wide-set compound eyes. “I am unable to say for certain. Hours. Perhaps days.”
“Days?” That was not what Gaila wanted to hear. “Every minute we fail to get those drones back in service we run the risk of this factory shutting itself down again. We need to start bringing in fresh building materials right now.”
The Kaferian seemed unmoved by Gaila’s plight. “I am aware of our goals.”
“Then get to work making them realities! I hired you because you’re supposed to be the best xenotech hacker in the known galaxy. We only have a few hours to fix this, so don’t tell me it might take you days to sort it out.”
“Husnock systems are complex, Mister Gaila. I will not promise what I cannot deliver.”
There was no point pushing N’chk any further. “I don’t need your mission statement. Just tell me when the drones are working.” He walked away from the Kaferian as much to give the hacker space in which to work as to give himself room in which to vent his frustration. He was in the middle of packing his long-stemmed pipe with Eminian sweet sinac when his right-hand man, Zinos, returned in a hurry from the factory floor. Gaila snapped, “And what do you want?”
“Aside from more money and a long vacation? How about an ETA on when we can start replenishing raw ore and ordnance compounds? This factory cranks out product like a Denebian slime devil squirts out eggs. At this rate it’ll run dry of raw materials in under two hours, and—”
“I’m aware of the problem,” Gaila said. “N’chk is handling it.”
Zinos did not seem encouraged by that news. “You sure he’s up to it?”
Gaila shrugged. “If not, he knows the consequences.” He waggled his pipe.
It took a moment for Zinos to realize what Gaila wanted. Then he pulled a sparker from inside his jacket and used it to ignite the sinac inside the bowl of Gaila’s hand-carved p
ipe. Gaila drew a mouthful of sweetly fragrant smoke and held it a moment to savor its narcotic effects, which were absorbed directly by his oral tissues and then his sinuses as he exhaled through his wide nostrils. “Thank you, Zinos.” Another puff. “Walk with me.”
Gaila ambled out of the control room, onto a catwalk that passed above the sprawl of hardworking machines that now labored for his benefit. Zinos followed him, almost at his side but always a half pace behind. The Argelian liked to say he did this as a gesture of respect, but Gaila suspected it was to give Zinos a better chance of shooting his foes in the back.
In between calming puffs, Gaila said, “Tell me, Zinos: How much of this factory did the Pakleds break when they tried to get it started?”
“Less than you might think. Vatzis says the only serious damage was in the fuel storage matrix, but he’ll have it fixed within the hour.” He shot a skeptical look over his shoulder, toward the control room. “Not that it’ll matter, if we don’t get the drone convoy running.” Facing Gaila, he added, “And even if we do sort that out, what are we supposed to do with all this merchandise? We can’t fit more than a few percent of it in the Tahmila’s hold at once.”
“So? Why should that matter?”
“How are we supposed to deliver the goods to interested buyers?”
Gaila chuckled, then exhaled sweet smoke through his razor-sharp grin. “Zinos, didn’t you see the outside of this factory when we arrived? Or were you not paying attention?”
Zinos looked baffled. “What are you talking about?”
“Huge missile batteries. Dozens of particle-beam arrays. Comm towers that I’ll bet my last profit are designed to scramble enemy targeting sensors. And the densest grid of shield generators I’ve ever seen. This place is a damned fortress! And we own it!”
Understanding dawned in the Argelian’s eyes. “So you’re saying we’d give up the secrecy of this factory’s location—”