“Put your helmet on, Eric,” Perraton suggested privately. “Ambassador’s coming back.”
In a sudden panic, Stiles drew up his helmet so fast that he clipped himself in the eye before getting the thing back on his head.
“Ouch,” Perraton supplied for him. “Another souvenir of your first mission. A shiner.”
Noting Stiles’s wince of anguish, Perraton straightened the helmet and put the scratched visor up.
“Ease up, lightfoot,” he said. “He’s just a guy.”
“Just a guy,” Stiles rasped. “He’s a hero, Travis . . . a Starfleet icon . . . the first Vulcan in Starfleet . . . Captain James Kirk’s executive officer . . . I’ve heard every story a hundred times all my life—do you know how many times he participated in saving the whole Federation? And even the Klingon Empire?”
“Doesn’t matter now. Anyway, the hard part’s over. You met him, you survived, and the experience didn’t suck out your brains. He was a Starfleet man for half a century. He knows the drill. So get a perspective. Here he comes.”
Do the job. Do the job.
The ambassador flowed back into the foyer, now carrying a slim red folder and followed by more than a dozen people and his attendant Edwin. Suddenly the foyer was swarming with civilians. At least they were mostly adults, a few teenagers—Stiles didn’t relish the prospect of herding toddlers through that mess out there. He stiffened as the ambassador came directly to him.
“We’re ready, Mr. Stiles.”
“Yes, sir . . . how would you like to do this?”
Spock handed the folder to Miss Theonella. “Pardon me?”
“I . . . I figured you’d have some preference about … what order you want them in and . . . how to do it.”
The ambassador thought about that briefly, his dark eyes working, as if he hadn’t considered such an option. After a moment he vocally shrugged. “Your mission, Ensign.”
Over Spock’s shoulder, Perraton smiled and gave Stiles a thumbs-up.
Sustained by that, Stiles forced himself to rise to the demand. “Uh . . . if you people would form a line, two by two, and Oak Squad situate yourselves between them, uh, one every . . . uh—”
He paused, tried to do the math, but couldn’t remember how. His brain had been sucked out!
Maybe he wouldn’t have to count and add and divide—his men were already arranging themselves into position. Perraton was taking the lead, and motioning the others into the queue at intervals.
“I’ll take the rear guard,” Stiles said. “Ambassador, would you mind coming back here with me, sir?”
“Thank you, Ensign, I will.”
“All right, let’s—no, no, you can’t do the door.” Stiles motioned to the funny-looking butler who was still standing his post at the door, waiting to open it for everybody. “Travis, put that man in line behind Girvan and you do the door. Then fall in.”
“Copy that.”
“Okay, phaser rifles ready.”
“Ready!” his men shouted.
“Rifles up!”
“Up!”
“Very well!”
Stiles took one more look at Ambassador Spock’s steady form in line before him, at the large UFP shield printed on the back of the blue jacket. The stars of the United Federation of Planets swam before his eyes.
He drew a breath. His voice echoed under the high tiled ceiling.
“Mobilize!”
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978-0-7434-2132-4 (eBook)
First Pocket Books printing June 1999
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