Security

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “The second thing you need to know,” and now Corsi’s anger was starting to make Rennan’s head hurt, “is that I do not like to be interrupted. Is that understood?”

  In a small voice, Kim said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Say again, Mr. Kim, I didn’t hear you,” Corsi barked.

  More loudly, Kim said, “Yes, ma’am!”

  “Good.” She looked out at the rest of them. “Alpha shift will report to the security office. Kim, you’ll be trained on the systems there. Beta and gamma, report to the hololab and run battle drills nine and ten. When beta shift starts, alpha and gamma will continue to do the same, this time integrating Kim into our maneuvers.” She let out a breath. “Bear in mind that we could find Lense and Bashir at any minute, and that may require an extraction. Dismissed.”

  Rennan got up. He felt Kim’s disappointment in his first meeting with Corsi, which matched Rennan’s surprise. She hadn’t been like this when Rennan came on board—which was alongside Makk, Andrew, T’Mandra, Soan, Ellec, and the since-departed Frank Powers.

  And it all happened when Kim said he was from Izar. Rennan was glad that he’d been put on the same shift as Vance—this was a concern about the security chief that he needed to bring to the deputy chief’s attention posthaste.

  Chapter

  5

  U.S.S. da Vinci

  in search operations between Stations Kel-Artis

  and Deep Space 9

  NOW

  V ance Hawkins entered the mess hall in desperate need of a cup of coffee.

  He also needed a short break. Konya and Krotine had things under control in the security office, the da Vinci hadn’t actually found the Missouri yet, and Corsi had, miraculously, allowed alpha and beta shift to get some sleep, after running them all through the ringer.

  The only other occupant of the mess hall was Fabian Stevens, who had a variety of tiny parts on the table in front of him, along with a cup of coffee that looked like it had long since gone cold.

  “What’re you doing up?” Hawkins asked as he walked to the replicator. “Coffee, black.”

  As the steaming drink materialized with a hum in the slot, Stevens looked up and said, “Hm? Oh, uh—couldn’t sleep. Commander Gomez, Pattie, Nancy Conlon, and I were up half the night recalibrating the sensors. Nog was kind enough to send over the specs of the Missouri, and we’ve been fine-tuning so that the sensors will find the runabout’s seat cushion, if we have to.”

  “Nice.” Hawkins took a seat perpendicular to Stevens and noticed that several of the small pieces on the table were charred and/or broken. “Hope that’s not the sensor array.”

  Grinning, Stevens said, “Nah, these are the tattered remains of my pet project.”

  Hawkins nodded. “The mobile emitter that Luaran blew all to hell?”

  “Yeah, but at least it worked. Haven’t had the time to save it from Humpty Dumpty status.” Stevens took a sip of his coffe. “Gah, this tastes almost as bad as you look.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Hawkins said dryly.

  “I ain’t kiddin’, Hawk, you look like the seventh level of hell. What’s Dom been doing to you guys?”

  “That answer’d be shorter if you asked what she wasn’t doing.” Hawkins hesitated. He had no more desire to gossip about his boss to Stevens than he had to Carol, but Corsi and Stevens had something going on, and maybe the engineer could provide some insights. So he told Stevens about the meeting, and what Konya had told him afterward, and then discussed the training that went on during beta shift. “Angelopoulos has been in her doghouse since Artemis.”

  Stevens frowned. “Why?”

  “He didn’t break cover with Tev right off.”

  Snorting, Stevens said, “You can’t expect a ‘mere’ guard to keep up with the Great One’s thought processes. You know, I think he’s gotten worse since the Hyperion? In retrospect, inviting him along to that wasn’t one of my brighter moves—after bossing those cadets around for days, he’s expecting the rest of us to act like they did. Commander Gomez didn’t come out and say it, but I think she’s actually making that jackass take—”

  Hawkins held up a hand. “Uh, Fabe? I’m on a break here and I honestly could give a damn about your problems. I’m here to bitch to you about my boss, not listen to you bitch about yours.”

  Laughing, Stevens got up and headed to the replicator. “Fine, fine, so what’s the problem?”

  “Well, Andy talked out of turn a bit during the Artemis debrief, so I can see why the commander’s crawling up his butt. But all Kim did was show initiative and enthusiasm. I mean, yeah, he was wrong, but it was only because the latest duty rosters haven’t made their way to Command’s database yet.”

  Stevens took a fresh cup of coffee out of the replicator. “And she’s kicking his ass as much as Andy’s?”

  “More, actually. Give the kid credit, he’s taking everything she’s dishing out, but all she does is ride him harder.”

  Sitting back down, Stevens said, “Well, isn’t that what she does?”

  “Not like this.” Hawkins drank some of his own coffee, the hot beverage clearing the cobwebs from his brain. “She had the off-shift personnel running scenarios in the hololab. When alpha came in, she whipped out battle drill number twenty.”

  His eyes widening, Stevens asked, “Galorndon Core?”

  Hawkins nodded.

  “Ouch.”

  “And she included the random sensor-blind traps that you and Duffy put in last year.”

  “Why do you think I said ‘ouch’?” Stevens shook his head. “When we showed her the gussied-up version of that, she said she was gonna save it for the next war. Seriously, that’s intended for ten-year veterans in security, not newbies.”

  “I know. Hell, Robins was having trouble with it, and it’s actually designed for someone like her.”

  “And you think it’s because of something with Kim being from Izar?”

  “I don’t think that, Rennan does, but I trust his judgment.”

  Chuckling, Stevens said, “Wasn’t he the one you thought wasn’t worthy to be on your hallowed security team?”

  Hawkins fixed Stevens with a glare. “I expressed a concern when Rennan signed on. I later retracted it.”

  “Was that before or after he knocked you down?”

  “You do realize that I can just kill you and make up a reason why, right?”

  Stevens frowned. “Hang on a sec—you said you’re on a break? You’re on gamma now?”

  Unable to help himself, Hawkins chuckled. “Nice of you to catch up to where the conversation was half an hour ago. Yeah, she put me on gamma, after I specifically requested to be put on alpha next go-round.”

  “Right, because then you and Carol would have two shifts to go all smoochy-face.”

  Hawkins raised an eyebrow. “We do not ‘go all smoochy-face.’ I’m not even sure what that means. Anyhow, something’s gotten the boss’s back up, and I don’t know what it is. I don’t think it was Coroticus.”

  Shaking his head, Stevens said, “Not that I noticed, but I wasn’t with her as much.”

  “Not that T’Mandra or Vinx noticed, either—their after-action reports are pretty straight-up.”

  “On the other hand,” Stevens said while rubbing his chin, “she hasn’t been entirely right with things since Ken died. You know about them, right?”

  Hawkins shook his head, unaware that there was any history between Corsi and Caitano.

  “Dom tried to keep it under wraps, but—well, Caitano’s dad was her mentor back at the Academy. So when he died—especially like that—she took it pretty hard.”

  Leaning back in the mess hall chair, Hawkins said, “Damn. I didn’t know that. That explains a lot, actually.” Finishing off his coffee in one gulp, Hawkins then rose. “Listen, I need to get back. Do me a favor—I don’t know what exactly you and the commander have going, and I honestly could live a happy life without ever knowing any specifics—”

  “This from the man who can
’t shut up about how wonderful Carol is.”

  Hawkins shot Stevens another look. “That isn’t the point.”

  “Easy for you to say—I need to wear polarized goggles just to keep from being blinded by your glow.”

  “Are you gonna listen to me, or are you gonna run your mouth off?”

  Grinning, Stevens said, “Evidence to date indicates I can do both.”

  Hawkins rubbed the bridge of his nose with his right forefinger and thumb. The coffee was doing nothing to alleviate the headache that he’d had since Corsi announced he was on gamma shift. “Can you just talk to her? See if anything’s bothering her? And if it is—I don’t know, do something about it?”

  “What do you suggest I do?”

  “Didn’t I just get finished telling you I don’t want specifics?”

  “That you did, yes.” Stevens sipped from his coffee. “Fine, I’ll do what I can, but I can’t promise it’ll do any good. Believe me, if I had any real impact on the way Dom behaves—well, let’s just say that you wouldn’t be so unclear as to what we have going.”

  That brought Hawkins up short. There was a depth of feeling to Stevens’s words that he’d rarely heard from the usually freewheeling engineer. “You really care about her, don’t you?”

  For a second, Stevens’s face remained serious, then broke into his trademark grin, though the jocularity didn’t quite extend to his entire face. “To a degree that scares the hell out of me sometimes.”

  Hawkins was about to turn and leave the mess hall, then hesitated. “Carol told me something after we became a couple. She said the thing she got most from both Galvan VI and Teneb was that this is the only life we got, and we don’t know when it’s gonna be taken away, so it’s stupid not to make the most of it.”

  “Smart lady, is our Dr. Abramowitz.” Stevens tried to make the comment sound facetious, but failed.

  “I’ll talk to you later, okay, Fabe?”

  “Definitely.”

  Hawkins left, still unsure as to what was wrong with his CO, but also a lot more confident about at least one person’s ability to take a shot at getting it out of her.

  Chapter

  6

  U.S.S. da Vinci

  in search operations between Stations Kel-Artis

  and Deep Space 9

  NOW

  T ev sat at an aft station of the bridge of the da Vinci, looking over the recalibrations that Commander Gomez, Chief Engineer Conlon, and Specialists Blue and Stevens had done. The work was excellent, almost as good as Tev himself would have done.

  From the tactical station that faced Tev’s console, Ensign Winn said, “We’ve reached the coordinates, sir.”

  Standing up, Tev looked toward the conn at the fore of the bridge. “Full stop and commence search pattern.”

  “Answering all stop, sir,” Ensign Barre said from conn as she ceased the da Vinci’s forward thrust, and applied the reverse thrusters in the configuration necessary to bring the ship to as close to sitting still as was possible in the depths of space.

  From next to Barre at the operations console, Ensign Lambdin said, “Beginning search pattern.”

  Gamma shift was almost at a close, and soon Captain Gold would be arriving to relieve Tev of command of the bridge. The captain and Gomez had, he noticed, taken to walking to the bridge together in the mornings. According to Bartholomew Faulwell, it was a habit they’d developed early on in the commander’s tenure as first officer, but one that took some time to redevelop after Tev’s predecessor’s death. Tev thought that was an odd reason for discontinuing a practice that gave the two top-ranking officers on the ship an opportunity to compare notes and discuss command strategies. However, he said nothing, since he apparently could not communicate with Commander Gomez in any way that would not result in an awkward confrontation.

  Awkward primarily from her perspective, of course. The woman was obviously smitten with Tev—not that he could blame her, given his expertise in her chosen field, she would naturally be drawn to like, just as she was to Tev’s predecessor—but could not properly express her passion. Tev sympathized with the poor woman, but it sometimes got in the way of the work. Witness the tiresome arguments at Avril Station. If the commander would have just admitted that Tev’s diagnostic program was more efficient than hers, he would have been spared the distasteful task of going directly to the station administrator.

  The worst were those absurd sensitivity lectures he had to endure in the hololab. The program was apparently designed by Vulcans who were supposedly trying to educate people in how to deal with the more emotional species. Tev failed to see how this advice could possibly have been of use to a Tellarite.

  Still, he endured them. As Bartholomew had so succinctly put it, it got the commander off his back.

  At 0800 hours, the start of alpha shift, the turbolift doors parted to reveal Lieutenants Wong and Shabalala and Ensign Haznedl. They relieved Ensigns Barre, Winn, and Lambdin, respectively. At 0809, the captain and Commander Gomez entered. Tev had long since come to grudgingly accept that engineers who weren’t him had no concept of punctuality, and so did not let his irritation at the fact that his relief was nine minutes late show in his face.

  Gomez looked right at him upon entering the bridge. “Tev! Just the Tellarite I want to see.” The commander’s voice sounded a bit tighter than usual. Tev wondered if she was feeling ill. “We need to have a conversation. With your permission, Captain, we’ll be in observation.”

  Gold said, “Sure.”

  Tev, however, was not particularly in the mood for one of the commander’s flirtations. “I am now off-shift, Commander, could it possibly—”

  “You seem to have a certain difficulty with following direct orders, Lieutenant Commander, so let me spell it out for you. Go to the observation lounge or go to the brig.” She smiled. “Your choice.”

  If she is going to hide her lust behind rank, then so be it. Snuffling with minor irritation, Tev exited the bridge and entered observation, Gomez right on his heels.

  Bartholomew was in the lounge, working on a padd, with several other padds laid out in front of him. Tev didn’t recognize the writing that was scanned into one of the padds, but he assumed it was some arcane tongue that the linguist was working with.

  At their entrance, he stood. “Oh, sorry, Commanders. I just needed to spread out a bit for my article.”

  Gomez peered at the table. “That’s the Syclarian language, isn’t it?”

  Nodding, Bartholomew said, “The Sato Linguistics Institute asked me to do an article for their journal.”

  Tev snuffled. “Would they not ask a Syclarian to write one?”

  “They did, and got a big no for their troubles. So, since I translated a Syclarian scientist’s journal a while back, they tapped me. Been working on it in what I laughingly refer to as my spare time.”

  With a smile that was much more friendly than the one she had given Tev on the bridge, Gomez asked, “Bart, can we have the room, please?”

  Something changed in Bartholomew’s face, but Tev wasn’t sure what it was. “Uh, yeah, sure. I could use some coffee anyhow, so I’ll do this in the mess hall.” He gathered up his padds and left via the opposite door, which would take him to the turbolift.

  Turning to face Gomez, Tev said, “By the way, Commander, I have been studying the upgrades that you supervised to the sensors. Excellent work.” To show that he was sincere, he added, “Almost as fine as I would have done.”

  Gomez said nothing in response to that, but simply walked over to the window that showed the darkness of the interstellar void in which they searched for the elusive runabout. Her back was now to Tev as she spoke. “I just got contacted by Commander Ling. It was a pretty weak signal, because their comm amplifiers were down—along with most of Avril Station’s other systems. They managed to get a signal through to the nearest relay station, but it was tough.”

  This surprised Tev. The upgrades they had performed were of the finest quality. “I do n
ot understand.”

  “It seems that the diagnostic program that we provided for them crashed the entire system. That really surprised me, since I designed the diagnostic program we provided, and it should’ve been compatible with the station’s hardware.” Now, she turned to face him. “Except, it turns out, they didn’t use the diagnostic program I designed, did they?”

  Tev chose his words carefully. “I felt that the best way to—”

  Holding up a hand, Gomez said, “Stop right there, Tev. I told you that your diagnostic program would not suit the needs of Avril, yes?”

  “I found that conclusion to be faulty, Commander. I should think that with my—”

  Gomez walked around the table so that she stood face-to-face with Tev. “The reason why I came to that conclusion is because the computers on Avril were never given the Sitok upgrade because it crashed their system. The upgrade really wasn’t going to do them enough good for it to be worth overhauling all their hardware.”

  That surprised Tev. He wasn’t aware of any major Federation computer system that was not given the security and diagnostic upgrade pioneered by the Vulcan computer scientist Sitok two decades ago. Soloman had been handling the computer elements, so Tev had not bothered to familiarize himself with the specifics of their network. “Why did you not tell me that?” he asked, genuinely confused.

  “Why didn’t you just trust my judgment?”

  “I have always found my own judgment to be—”

  Waving her hands in front of her face, Gomez said, “Forget your judgment for a second, Tev. Forget you for a second. Yes, we all know you’re brilliant, and if we’re ever in any danger of forgetting, you’ll be sure to remind us. But the thing that you have continued to not get in all the time you’ve been on this ship is that the rest of us know a few things, too.”

  “You’re all quite competent in your fields, it’s true,” Tev said, “but—”

  Using a tone that Gomez had never used, not even when she reprimanded him while trying to decipher the pyramid the Koas had placed their planet into, she barked, “I did not give you permission to speak, Lieutenant Commander Tev! I hear one more word out of you without leave, and I will toss you into the brig.”