Star Trek The Next Generation®

by David A. McIntee

  “Could be worse, mate,” the other voice said from somewhere above La Forge’s head. “You could have done a Sisko with it.”

  Geordi looked up, and was startled to see a pallid leathery creature dropping toward him from the upper catwalk around the warp core. It had thrown a thick tentacle over the rail, and now the surly red central mass of it was descending on another couple of tentacles which remained secured to the upper catwalk. Octopedal, it was a mixture of arachnid and crab, and could have scuttled from almost anyone’s nightmares. La Forge knew better than to give in to the moment’s revulsion he felt, as he saw that the tool belts it wore around the thick upper tentacles were in Starfleet uniform colors, and one of them had a combadge while another had a Lieutenant Commander’s rank pips.

  Geordi had never seen the species before, but that wasn’t too surprising, as it was a big galaxy.

  “This is Lieutenant Commander Voloczin,” Scotty said by way of introduction. “The Challenger’s chief engineer.”

  “Hullo there, mate,” Vol greeted him, in the voice that he had heard bantering with Scotty as he came in. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t shake hands, obviously.”

  “Of course.”

  “Vol’s the only Voloczin in Starfleet, and he’s a damn fine engineer, if he doesn’t mind me sayin’ so.”

  “So, Voloczin is both the species and an individual name?”

  “Not exactly, mate,” Vol replied. “The syllables vol, o, and czin are just the only ones that humanoids tend to be able to hear or pronounce. The rest of our names are made up of awkward little noises and color tones that you wouldn’t be able to register. But, we’re a pretty rare bunch, and there are so few of us knocking about that you’re not bloody likely to meet two, so we all just call ourselves Voloczin when we deal with other races.”

  “And, to continue the introductions,” Scotty added, “Vol, this is Commander La Forge, chief engineer of the Enterprise.”

  “Enterprise, eh?” Vol sounded impressed. “Sovereign-class, that’s the life, eh?”

  “It’s been pretty good so far.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a chat about that, when you’re free. A real beauty, the Sovereign-class. More power all round, more efficient warp field, coils that sing . . .”

  “I’m missing it enough already, thanks,” Geordi chuckled.

  “I’ll bet.” Vol turned a large watery eye to Scotty. “That reminds me, those new coils we installed are tuning up a treat, but I could do with re-calibrating the injectors as well, because they really don’t get along with the newbies, if you catch my drift.”

  “I’ll have a look at them myself,” Scotty promised. “While we’re docked here at a starbase,” he added to La Forge, “I can get down here and do some real work. Ye’ll probably try it yourself, if I don’t miss my guess. But before that, I suggest you check in with sickbay to be sure your records all got transferred, and then go on up to the bridge and tailor the ops station to the way you’d like it best. We won’t be gettin’ under way for a few hours, so there’s plenty of time.”

  “I’ll do that. Thanks.”

  The ship’s medical department was exactly as La Forge remembered the Enterprise-D’s sickbay, at least as far as size, layout, and décor were concerned. The actual biobeds and medical equipment in the room were newer models, the same as Beverly had on the current Enterprise.

  There were two familiar faces waiting for him in sickbay, as well as Tyler Hunt, and he began to wonder where he really was. The mixture of past and present was starting to have a dream-like effect.

  The first familiar face was a fellow engineer. A little taller than Geordi, but with a similar build, and thinning, floppy hair. He was, with Hunt, examining a cylindrical stasis module the size of a holdall. “It should be fine for any desiccated biomatter, Commander. The material of the casing won’t interfere with the stasis field.”

  “Good work, Reg. We’ll need quite a few of these things when we reach Intrepid.”

  “Reg?” La Forge was slightly embarrassed to hear that his voice betrayed exactly how surprised he was. Reg Barclay turned, his expression surprised and delighted.

  “Commander!”

  “What are you doing here? I thought I heard you were going to the Delta Quadrant with the Voyager fleet.”

  “I did.” Barclay looked at the floor in characteristic embarrassment. “But Captain Scott has a lot of influence, and a love of experimenting with transporters.” He shivered.

  “Long story,” Hunt interrupted. “He adapted the Pathfinder project. Captain Scott recruited him, as he recruited you, because Reg was with you on at least one trip through time.”

  “The flight of the Phoenix.”

  “Exactly. So we know he’s got a good grounding in working with equipment and tools from past eras. Which should come in handy on Intrepid.” La Forge nodded. It was a good idea, and he looked forward to working with Reg again. “It should be just like old times, eh?”

  La Forge thought about those times for a moment. Borg invasions, holodeck fantasies, super-expanded brains. He caught Barclay’s expression, and saw the same thought in it. “Well, hopefully not quite like old times,” he said hurriedly.

  “No, not quite,” Barclay said, nodding in vigorous agreement.

  “So, Pathfinder? Transporter relay stations?”

  “That’s right, Commander. Not really pleasant, I think.”

  A woman’s voice, the same one La Forge had heard call Hunt earlier, said, “Oh, I think they both know what you mean, Tyler. And I know what they mean.”

  It was a petite and pretty Asian woman who took the stasis module and put it on a biobed out of the way. She wore a white coat, the centuries-old badge of a doctor, over her uniform. “Hi, Geordi.”

  “Hi, Alyssa. Or should I be saying Nurse Ogawa?”

  “I wish. Unfortunately you should actually be saying Doctor Ogawa.”

  “Doctor Ogawa is our chief medical officer,” Hunt explained. “She joined us from the Titan some time ago.”

  “Doctor Ogawa? I like the sound of that, but . . . I thought you didn’t want to be a doctor?”

  “Nurse Ogawa was just fine, and head nurse was all I ever wanted to be, but . . .” She shrugged her shoulders. “Sometimes life throws us curve balls.”

  “So how come you’re now the Challenger’s CMO?”

  “Mainly for Noah’s sake. Exploring dangerous and unknown corners of the galaxy is a good life for a Starfleet officer, but it’s not really the best way to bring up your son.”

  “And an engineering test-bed is? Isn’t there a lot more risk of things blowing up on the Challenger than there is on the Titan?”

  “I suppose there is, but at least Challenger has a home base at Starbase 410. So Noah can live with his grandparents, and go to a proper school on a proper planet, and I still get to go home and see him, most weekends.”

  “I guess that makes a big difference.”

  “Huge. Enough that I bit the bullet and let Starfleet Medical make me an MD. The training for all medical staff, doctors and nurses, has been standardized since the Dominion War, to make it easier to put someone in the right gap, wherever. So, I’d already done the training. Which means now everybody I meet thinks I spent my whole nursing career with that ambition.”

  “Only people who don’t know you.”

  “Well, that narrows it down to everybody in the universe except for a handful of people.”

  “I don’t think anyone will hold it against you,” Barclay said.

  “No, it’s just one of those things. Anyway, Geordi, I guess you came down to check on either the stasis modules, or whether your medical file had been transferred across safely.”

  “The latter, but now that you mention the stasis modules . . . Are they for the remains of the Intrepid’s crew?”

  “That’s right. Starfleet has requested that all the remains be recovered, kept in totally sterile conditions, and separated out for repatriation to the families of the crew. I’v
e had a second stasis unit added to the morgue with enough separate modules for two hundred sets of remains, which should give us a good safety margin on top of the Intrepid’s crew.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “Commander,” Barclay said. “Commanders. I have to go supervise the loading of the other stasis unit. Will you . . . ?”

  “Excuse you? Sure.” Alyssa shooed him away with a smile.

  “And I have the ops console to configure,” Geordi said. “Nice to see you again, Alyssa.”

  “You too.”

  Stepping onto the bridge, Geordi was again assailed by the dizzying sense of déjà vu. The caramel colored seats, the long sweep of the rail that held the tactical console as well as enveloping the three center seats, the lightly scented air, and so on. The only people on the bridge were a Bolian monitoring one of the science stations, and two people consulting something on the tactical console on the main rail that separated the aft bridge stations from the three center seats.

  One of the people at the tactical station was a short but very serious-faced Ferengi in a yellow-trimmed Starfleet uniform, while the other was a tall and athletic Klingon female in a form-fitting black jumpsuit with silver and gold trim, which wouldn’t have looked out of place on some sort of palace guard. Her typically long Klingon hair was auburn and tied in a ponytail, which reminded La Forge of Worf, though he didn’t recall Worf having any living female relatives, so he doubted that they were actually related.

  As Geordi arrived, the Ferengi looked up, and stood to attention. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “No, it’s okay. I just came up to configure the ops console to the way I like it. I’m Commander La Forge,” he added, belatedly remembering that he ought to have said as much first of all. “But you know that—it’s Lieutenant Nog, right?”

  “Lieutenant Commander Nog,” the Ferengi said. “Security and Tactical on the Challenger.” Geordi was surprised. A Ferengi was the last species he expected to see assigned to security on a Federation starship.

  “And who’s the maniac who brought the ship into dock like that?”

  Nog looked alarmed, and opened his mouth to answer, but too late. The Klingon woman swung around at Geordi’s words. “I am Qat’qa, of the House of Qang,” she said coldly.

  Geordi felt immediately guilty, having thought the helm officer wasn’t in the room. “I’m sorry. Look, when I said maniac, I—”

  She barked a laugh. “You were quite correct. I have a mania, a passion, for flying. That’s what makes me so good at it.”

  “And so dangerous?” La Forge was trying to think of anything that could come closer to causing a disaster, and came up short.

  “A Klingon should be dangerous.”

  “Not to her own ship.”

  “There was no danger, Commander.” Her voice and her gaze remained icy. The turbolift doors opened, allowing Scotty onto the bridge just in time to hear the last few words of the exchange.

  “If you can’t see the dangers in what you were doing—”

  “Geordi,” Scotty said quickly. “Let it go, lad. She knows what she’s doing.”

  La Forge bit off the urge to press on with his argument. “I hope so.”

  “Will ye trust my judgment on it?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Good, then we’ll say no more about it. We’ve got a lot to catch up with.”

  “Qat’qa’s not in uniform—is she a civilian specialist?”

  “I am not in Starfleet,” Qat’qa confirmed. “I am on secondment from the Klingon Defense Force, as part of a long-term exchange program.” Qat’qa put on a slightly wide-eyed and innocent expression, at least by Klingon standards. “I have no objection to serving under a Starfleet chain of command, but I suspect that if I were to actually take a commission in it, my grandfather would come back from Sto-Vo-Kor to berate me.”

  Scotty nodded in agreement. “And the old devil would be as proud of you as he’d be affronted by the idea.”

  “This, also, is true,” she admitted.

  La Forge decided this was an appropriate point to bow out of the conversation, since it seemed to have turned in a direction more suited to those who were already familiar with each other, and he knew that, as always, he’d most likely end up feeling left out. “Well, I did come to the bridge to configure the ops console, so . . .”

  “Right, Geordi,” Scotty replied. “We won’t be leaving till morning, so ye might as well take the rest of the night off.”

  “Thanks, Scotty.”

  A couple of hours later, La Forge was satisfied that he had the displays on the ops station the way he wanted them. It wasn’t just the ship’s operational systems, and the sensors, but he’d arranged a tie-in to various databases and archives that might be useful in handling an NX-class ship.

  His legs carried him on autopilot to the door of his quarters, but, to his surprise, the door refused to open. He pressed the call button, hearing the chime inside. “Just a minute.” This voice was one La Forge recognized instantly, the way he would recognize a punch in the gut. Except that a punch in the gut couldn’t feel as paradoxically exciting as it was shocking and painful. The door opened to reveal a woman in a crisp civilian suit of different shades of gray and blue, and her hair was neatly shaped into a cluster of not unattractive buns. Leah Brahms raised one eyebrow. “That didn’t take long. I didn’t expect to see you until either we were both on the bridge, or bumped into each other in engineering or Nelson’s.”

  “I’m sorry,” La Forge managed to say at last. “Nobody told me you were—”

  “I asked them not to.” Another punch in the gut. Did she think that he would have let her presence distract him from his duty, or indeed try to distract her?

  “I didn’t come here deliberately—That is to say, I just got a little confused, I guess. My homing instinct isn’t up to much, and I guess it led me here to the chief engineer’s quarters instead of to—”

  “Your quarters?”

  “My quarters. Which I associate with being Data’s quarters . . . I guess my legs think they’re back on the Enterprise-D.”

  “Don’t worry about it! Actually, I’ve been kind of looking forward to chatting with you.”

  “Kind of?”

  “Half looking forward to, and half dreading.”

  La Forge nodded slowly. “I know exactly what you mean.” It was exactly how he was feeling right now.

  “This isn’t the best place for us to catch up,” she said pointedly. “Maybe we should meet in Nelson’s.”

  “I could use some dinner, and a stiff drink,” he admitted. The icy ball in the pit of his stomach was now hatching butterflies.

  “Me too.”

  “Give me an hour?”

  Leah kept her expression frustratingly neutral. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Nelson’s was in the forward section of deck ten, and roughly the same size and layout as the old Ten Forward of La Forge’s fond memories, though the décor was a little different. There were 3D images and artworks of various historical engineering projects on the walls, from the Great Pyramid to the Vesta-class starship. Other mementoes included a rivet from the Forth Bridge, a cog from the Skybridge of Vanalis, an access panel from Zephram Cochrane’s Phoenix, and various other engineering milestones.

  Guinan already had a table with some drinks set up when Geordi arrived. He wasn’t sure whether Leah had primed her, or whether she had just known or figured out the right thing to do. She gave him that Cheshire cat look as he approached, but flitted back to the bar without speaking. Her look had said all she needed to, and Leah was already there too.

  “I should probably apologize for not meeting you when you boarded, but I thought it might be a little . . .”

  “Awkward?”

  “Distracting. You came here to work, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” He wasn’t sure what to say next, mainly because he wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear.

  “You seem to be of two minds.”
r />   “Not about that. It’s just the ship, and the faces. Not just you, but Reg and Alyssa . . .”

  “You spent a long time on the Enterprise-D.”

  “And they were good times. Being here is like being back in those days, and not. And I don’t know whether I’ve taken a step forward or back.”

  “Forward, believe me. The Challenger is all about moving forward.”

  “To the twenty-second century?”

  “We have new techniques to try on the Intrepid. Archaeological techniques, forensics techniques, data and energy recovery . . .”

  La Forge nodded. “Sounds fun. Maybe my luck’s changing after all.”

  “For the better, I hope.”

  “I’m still not sure yet. Leaving the Enterprise, even for a little while, feels like bad luck, especially with some of the other things that have happened lately.”

  “Such as?” Geordi opened his mouth to answer, but then thought better of it. She didn’t want to hear about Tamala. Leah’s eyes narrowed at his hesitation. “All right, at least tell me her name.”

  “Tamala,” Geordi said resignedly. “She was transferred to the Lexington a few weeks ago. Just when things looked like they might be getting interesting.”

  “Tamale?”

  “Tamala. Tamala Harstad.”

  “Oh.”

  “She was an intern on the medical staff.”

  “Serious?”

  “Maybe heading that way, but . . .”

  “But . . . she got transferred?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but even before that . . .”

  “It didn’t last?”

  “I wouldn’t say it wasn’t lasting, but I think that, given time, it would have . . . stopped lasting.”

  Leah nodded. “It’s your confidence.”

  “My confidence?”

  “Or lack of it. You never quite found that balance between being confident and not counting your chickens before they’re hatched.”

  “Okay . . . And that would mean . . . ?”

  “You were saying you already thought the relationship wouldn’t last. If you were afraid Tamala—Dr. Harstad—was going to lose interest—”