"Commander Kobango,
Sir?"
"Yes, what is it Cadet?"
David Kobango swiveled his chair around to study the young Komari, who stood a
respectful distance from him, holding a padd with both hands.
"Sir, I have tried to come
up with a working model of the Argolis cluster, but I am afraid I can't do it,
at least not without a lot more data." She shuffled her feet uneasily and
looked down. "Sorry, Commander."
"Don't be sorry," the
Lieutenant Commander replied in a level voice. "Is that what you have come
up with so far?" he asked, pointing at the padd she was holding. She
replied with a "Yes Sir" and he gestured for her to hand him the padd.
As David Kobango took the padd he
held his eyes on her hands for a moment. He had seen many humanoid species
before, but Komari had the longest, most slender, fingers he had ever seen and
one more finger joint made for rather unusual gestures. As the cadet took a step
back again, the science officer paid closer attention to the mathematical model
of the protostar cluster she had presented him.
"This is most impressive,"
he slowly commented. "How long have you worked on this?"
"Most
of the last thirty-six hours," she answered without hesitation, even if she
was pretty sure she would earn a reprimand for working too hard. On the other
hand, Tori Xedon was used to it.
He studied her closely, one
eyebrow slightly raised. Apart from a certain nervousness , Kobango attributed
to the cadet being alone with a senior officer, there was no sign of exhaustion
or weariness about her. " Thirty-six hours? Do you Komari ever sleep?"
"We need about as much sleep
as humans do, but I enjoy mathematics. Once I start working on a project like
this I can pretty much forget about sleep altogether."
The Valkyrie's Chief Science
officer shook his head rebukingly. "Now, Miss Tori, let me give you some
advice, not from a superior officer, but simply from someone who has been doing
this a little longer than you have." When she nodded her understanding
David went on. "Our work can be most demanding and most rewarding at the
same time, but ever so often you should take a break. It's okay if you want to
do your best, but keep in mind that you can only do it when you rest once in a
while. No use in working so hard that you start to make unnecessary mistakes."
She looked him straight in the
eyes, at least that was what Commander Kobango thought, before she answered.
"I understand, Sir."
"I hope you do. Now, you
said something about needing more data to complete this simulation?" He
waved the padd around and motioned for her to sit down at one of the chairs
surrounding the small conference table in his office.
"Ah, yes, Sir." Tori
Xedon looked somewhat uneasy as she sat down in the chair farthest from her
superior officer. "I have heard that the Captain piloted a shuttle through
the Argolis cluster only a few days ago, but the sensor logs of that flight are
classified, and the officers in stellar cartography I have talked to only have
limited access to it."
Commander Kobango thoughtfully
stroked his chin. "And you think with that data you could come up with a
working model of the Argolis interior?"
"I am not sure, Sir."
Her featureless eyes provided no clue to her emotions, but Tori's voice sounded
hesitant. "Without knowing the full extend of those sensor logs that's
impossible to say, but whatever is in those logs, I strongly suspect that I
would need a lot of additional sensor readings – and a lot more time with the
stellar cartography department – to finish this work, if that is possible at
all."
"So you think this task may
be too big for you, whatever additional information you had available, is that
what you are saying?" David was tempted to smile at her, but he kept his
voice level and his face expressionless.
The young woman kneaded her
slender fingers, stopping herself as soon as she realized what she was doing.
"I am afraid that may be the case, Sir. I am sorry to disappoint you."
Commander Kobango let the smile
slowly show on his face. "Not at all, Cadet. You don't disappoint me at
all."
"Sir?" Tori sounded as
incredulous as she felt.
*
* * * *
"You
asked me what it is I really want, but that’s just the problem. I can’t get
what I want.” Rishana sat down at the edge of the armchair, looking down at
her feet.
“Getting
rid of the visions?”
“Yes.
Even without Doctor Jascar telling me so, I know that whatever happened to me is
permanent.” The Betazoid fell silent and for over a minute she just stared
down. When she spoke again she did so slowly and softly, speaking much more to
herself than to Catherine Lee.
“I
thought it was bad enough before, when the visions came only in my dreams, but
now that they come in the middle of the day it’s becoming more and more of a
burden.”
“Because
the visions interfere with your life and not because you get these glimpses of
the future?”
Rishana
finally looked up and nodded. “Half my life I have been a pilot. It’s not
just what I did, it’s who I was. Everybody is telling me to take my time to
cope with recent events, but I don’t want to take my time. I want to go back
to my work, to the life I had, but I can’t.”
Catherine
took her time to consider her answer. While she was tempted to remark something
about Rishana defining herself too much through her work, she knew that there
was more to the helmsman than that. Yet for now that didn’t matter - if this
was how Rishana saw herself Catherine had to work with it. She knew all too well
how it felt to look back at the past and wishing it would all return to the way
it once was, yet she knew just as well that she was close to falling into the
trap of drawing too many conclusions based on her own feelings. “Why not?
Knowing the future should be an asset for most Starfleet officers and not a
burden.”
“You
don’t understand. It would be great to know in advance what would be required
of me or what actions someone else will take, but all I get these days are
random flashes of things that may be a minute or a year into the future. Most of
the time I can see only a few seconds worth of events, without a way of knowing
when it’s supposed to happen.” She looked down again as she went on, her
frustration lending an aggressive undertone to her voice. “Whenever I get a
vision I can’t see anything else. If I get back to work and one of the visions
hits me while we are in the middle of a crisis I could get us all killed.”
“Is
it that bad?”
“Yes,”
Rishana’s head snapped up and she almost shouted. Quickly she looked away from
the Counselor and tried to get a grip of herself. “This morning I ran a
holodeck simulation. I tried to pilot a shuttle through the Argolis cluster and
it all went well, but then I had one of those stupid visions and when it
was over, the shuttle had run straight into one of the protostars.”
“So
what you really want is not for the visions to stop, but for them to stop
interfering with your duties as a conn officer?” While the Counselor had
voiced it as a question, she already knew it was true.
“I
guess so.” Rishana drew a deep breath and turned back to Catherine. “I have
tried every Betazoid technique for self-control, but the only thing that seems
to help me control the visions are the Vulcan meditations. At least they help me
push the visions back when they start, but I can’t meditate and fly the ship
at the same time.”
Catherine
smiled. “There are a lot more ways to calm your mind than Vulcan meditations.
I can teach you a few of those techniques and maybe we will find something that
helps you control the visions without interfering with your work.”
“Sounds
good.” Rishana sounded less than convinced, but she had decided to give
Catherine a chance and there was no reason to back out now. “When do we
start?”
“Whenever
you want, but,” the Counselor raised her hand to stop any reply Rishana
was about to make, “I must warn you. Don’t expect too much too quickly. I
know you want instant success, but it is not going to happen. There is no
miracle-cure for your problems and you have to be patient, however hard it may
be to accept that.”
* * * * *
“I
meant it when I said the work you have done so far is impressive. I see that you
have managed to integrate quite diverse sets of data into a single working model.”
Commander Kobango stroked his chin again, while studying the padd once more.
“I had never expected you to come this far with the data you had available.
Your Academy records told me you are a gifted mathematician, but what you have
done here reveals not just a talent for mathematics, but a solid understanding
of space sciences and physics as well.”
He looked
up, his smile widening. “As I said, most impressive.”
Tori
blushed. Her instructors at the Starfleet Academy had made sure she was aware of
how talented they thought she was, but Tori had always believed that was only
done to motivate her. Commander Kobango’s motivation could be just the same,
but somehow she doubted it. This was not the Academy; on a starship everyone had
to pull their weight, at least that was what she had always believed.
“Thank
you, Sir.”
David
Kobango started to shake his head, but then decided against it. He had said
enough and there would be more than enough time for the young Komari to find out
for herself, how talented she truly was, so he just held up the padd.
“I will
run this by the Captain and see if I can get you authorized for access to the
flight logs you mentioned. Now don’t expect any answer soon, as I will take my
time, which will give you the perfect opportunity to get some rest.”
“I
will.” Tori Xedon rose, sensing the conversation was over.
“Good.”
David smiled at her again. “Just make sure you do, and don’t worry, the
Argolis will still be here tomorrow.”
*
* * * *
"You wanted to see me?“ Moira
took a few steps into Commander Enikal’s office and looked around. Apart from
a large desk and two simple chairs there was not much to see. The large LCARS
display on the wall
to her left was switched off and the only personal touch to the room was a large
cream and blue colored rug with geometric designs. ‘As serious and
efficient as Dar usually tries to appear,’ Moira concluded.
“Yes, have a seat, please.” Dar
Enikal gestured at one of the visitor chairs and placed the padd he had been
studying on his desk. “I wanted to talk to you about today’s combat drill. I
am not happy about the efficiency of our damage control teams and, as some of
them operate under your department, I thought it best to discuss my reservations
with you, before scheduling more drills.”
“Okay.” Moira’s lips tightened
as she sat down. The operations department certainly had a few things to learn
before she managed to form them into the team she wanted them to be, but
today’s exercise had been pretty tough on everyone. No, tough wasn’t the
right word. Dar had thrown everything at them that could go wrong and then some,
from malfunctioning or misplaced equipment to Cardassian boarding parties. If a
fire-breathing dragon had suddenly appeared in the middle of main-engineering it
wouldn’t have surprised Moira at all.
The sudden thought of a sword
wielding Lieutenant Alvarez storming into engineering to duke it out with a
dragon did a lot to lighten her mood, but one look at Dar’s cold expression
was enough to smother any smile before it reached her lips.
“You know, that drill was hardly a
fair test of anyone’s abilities.” Lieutenant O’Shea knew her people had
made some bad mistakes and she would admit that any time, but if Dar was already
planning the next exercise, she had at least to try giving her people a fair
chance the next time.
The Bolian leaned back and crossed
his arms over his chest. “No, of course it wasn’t. I never intended it to be
fair.” Noticing the surprised look in Moira’s eyes the Commander’s face
twisted into a dry grin. “I wanted to see how much stress the crew could take
before starting to make unnecessary mistakes. The simulation was never intended
to be realistic, but your damage control teams were still the first people
who’s efficiency dropped way below average.”
He leaned forward again and placed
his crossed arms on the desk. “It was the quickest way to find out who can
handle stress the best. Until we end up in another full-scale war we will
probably never run into a situation like today’s simulation, but the overall
test result is still valid.”
Moira gnawed at her lip as she
considered the Commander’s statement. While she still didn’t like the way he
had gone about it, she couldn’t refute Dar’s conclusion. Her department had
failed to pull it’s weight more than anyone else, there was no way to deny
that.
“Okay, I guess you are right, but
these people just need a little more time to work together,” she replied after
a deep sigh. “Half the guys in those DC teams don’t work together during
their regular shifts and they all have very different backgrounds and training
levels.”
While the main damage control teams
of the Valkyrie were made up of engineering personnel, in a major crisis
they were supplemented by teams pulled from the ops department. Most of them had
a good grasp of one aspect of the ship’s systems or another, but the ad-hoc
nature of those teams meant that knowledge levels differed widely from on team
to another, which, Moira had to admit, made it sometimes difficult to integrate
them with the engineering crews. It was all based on the theory that the ops
teams running damage control would only supplement the engineering crews and
that the varied training of the crewmen formed into a team gave each of them at
least one or two people experienced with any aspect of the ship.
“I know,” Dar admitted, “but
while that works well enough in most cases, we can’t risk a serious crisis
throwing our damage control off balance. Can you imagine how we would have fared
if the Romulans had caught us off-guard at Vulcan?”
Moira slowly nodded. Yes, she could
imagine that all too well. It would have been very close to the chaos and
confusion of the simulation that had frustrated everyone a few hours ago and the
results would have been deadly.
“I see your point, but I am not
sure what we can do about it, unless we completely rethink the way we organize
our damage control parties.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to
talk to you before planning any new drills.” The Bolian activated his computer
and turned the display around, so he and Moira could both look at it. “I was
thinking that we could organize your DC teams so that every one of them has two
crewmen specialized in a certain system, like computers or sensors or life
support. That way we could split them into smaller teams and parcel them out to
support engineering and still have some of the flexibility this system was meant
to achieve.”
*
* * * *
For
an hour and a half Dar and Moira had discussed various ways to get the most out
of their damage control parties, but at least they were getting close to a
solution.
“The
one thing that still bothers me, apart from the major reorganizations I’ll
have to do in my department,” Moira remarked, “is the increase in response
time this system may have. As soon as we start splitting up the DC teams we are
going to run into a situation where we have computer techs running around the
ship when a life-support problem comes up in their vicinity or vice-versa. We
could loose a lot of time moving our teams around the ship, instead of having
them do what they are intended to do.”
Commander
Enikal ran a hand back and forth over his head and frowned. “I guess you are
right, but I see no way around it. Maybe we should ask Commander Tucker for his
input.”
“Yes,
maybe we should.” Moira sighed and leaned back in her chair, only to sit up
straight again a second later. “Wait a minute, maybe we don’t have to.”
She reached for the computer and started to work the controls with a vengeance.
When she spoke it was more to herself than to Dar. “What if we make the teams
smaller? We could have one specialist in each team, but redistribute their
staging areas so we create overlapping zones of responsibility. We could send
out one or two men from one area to deal with smaller problems and hold the guys
from the next staging area back as necessary for support or another task.” She
turned the viewscreen around with a grin. “What do you think?”
For
a minute he studied the schematic of the Valkyrie and the initial deployment
positions for the damage control parties Moira had marked on the display.
“This will need some work, but it looks very good to me.” He saved
the schematic and grinned at the red-haired Ops officer. “Why don’t we call
it a day and grab a bite to eat. We can always work out the details tomorrow.”
“That,”
Moira declared, “is the best idea you had all day.”
*
* * * *
"I am going to set up the
workstation in the wardroom. Please take over the sensors.”
“Ah yes, Sir, of course.” Tori
hurried to get out of Commander Kobango’s way and took the chair at the Hawk’s
tactical station. She made a few adjustments to the controls, but then her hands
stopped and just hovered over the keypad. For most of the trip from Earth she
had stayed in her quarters, avoiding the cockpit and Lieutenant Foster. ‘Not
that he is not attractive’, she thought, covertly glancing at the human
officer at the helm controls. Too bad he had always talked without any regard if
others wanted to hear what he had to say or not. But now Tori Xedon was faced
with a different problem. The controls of the Hawk were close enough to
the standard layout she had trained with, yet unfamiliar enough to make her
pause and Commander Kobango had reconfigured some of them to his own liking.
Should she change them to something she was familiar with or leave them as they
were until Commander Kobango returned?
“Does one of you know what a
Tultrak is?” she asked.
Lieutenant Foster shrugged.
“It’s a pretty sweet class of ships. Apart from that – no idea.”
“It’s an animal native to
Bolarus IX”. Reto Kevas busied himself with the ops controls as he went on.
“A Tultrak is an aquatic mammal, a bit like a Terran otter and about the same
size, but with a golden fur with brown marking.”
Cal Foster snorted. “Now why would
anyone name a ship like this after an otter?”
“Because,” Reto shot back, “in
several Bolian religions the Tultrak is held sacred. They think it’s some sort
of messenger from their gods and that seeing one brings good luck. I’d say
that’s a pretty good reason to name a courier for it.”
“Geez, how could Starfleet leave a
guy who is so damn smart stuck in a CM2 slot.”
Reto decided to ignore the
Lieutenant’s caustic tone and returned to monitoring the engines, so he
didn’t notice how closely Tori Xedon studied him.
‘And another one of those things I
am not sure about.’
Working with the Valkyrie’s science department had been not that different
from the Academy, but suddenly Tori was surrounded by unfamiliar situations.
Unusual controls, unfamiliar people, puzzling hierarchies. ‘How does a
crewman fit into things? Is he above or below me in rank or maybe neither?’
She tried to recall her basic lessons in Starfleet organizational structures,
but those lessons had been focused on the relation between officers and enlisted.
Right now she was neither, stuck in some sort of organizational limbo as it
seemed.
“What’s our position?” David
Kobango’s voice asked from the com-system.
“We are on course as planned,
three minutes from the perimeter,” Lieutenant Foster replied before, Tori had
a chance to check her sensor readings.
“Good. Proceed according to our
flight plan. I’ll be with you shortly.”
“Yes, Sir,” Caleb cheerfully
answered and accelerated the Hawk to full impulse.
Kevas checked the logs and shook his
head. “I don’t think this was on our flight plan.” ‘Make sure that
you are right and he is wrong.’
“Maybe it wasn’t, but that’s
none of your business, is it?” To Lieutenant Foster it certainly wasn’t a
question and he made sure his voice left no doubt about it. Commander Tucker
could place as much faith as he liked in the Bajoran tech, but the Commander
wasn’t here. Now it was down to Cal and Kevas. ‘And the Komari chick’.
While the cadet’s eyes were kind of weird, she was still a cutie. Wouldn’t
hurt to show her who was really in charge.
“I am picking up something on
sensors!” Tori Xedon shouted. “A ship is leaving the nebula, heading
straight at us!”
*
* * * *
Caleb’s
hand stabbed the Red Alert button without conscious thought. “Hold on! Taking
evasive maneuvers, now.”
The
Hawk erratically swerved off like a drunkard at the end of happy hour,
narrowly avoiding the first salvo from the Ferengi vessel.
“He’s
coming around for another attack!”
“Diverting
auxiliary power to the shields.”
‘Damn
it, I can see that he’s coming at us again.’
Caleb cursed under his breath and changed his evasive pattern.
Again
the Hawk narrowly escaped the barrage of plasma bolts, but it was close
– way too close. Whoever was in command of that Ferengi ship, he knew what he
was doing.
“Send
a distress call. We need the Valkyrie here.”
“No
use,” Kevas groaned. “They are jamming. Can’t get through.”
”I’m
gonna get us out of here.”
There
was only one way open to them and Cal didn’t like it. Turning around and
heading for the Valkyrie would take too long. Just running straight away
wasn’t an option either. They had the advantage in speed, but the Marauder’s
weapons had the better range to make up for it. ‘Who wants to live forever.’
Lieutenant
Foster forced the Hawk on a hard turn to starboard and headed straight for the
Argolis cluster. Hiding was the only option they had, but it was taken away from
them a split-second later.
The
Hawk shook under a direct hit.
“Shields are down to fifty percent.
We are loosing plasma from the starboard nacelle and warp engines are
fluctuating! We are loosing magnetic constriction on the antimatter injectors!
Shutting down warp engines.”
The
USS Hawk hurtled into the safety of the Argolis cluster with breathtaking
speed, but she was not fast enough.
“What
the hell was that?” Cal Foster cried out as the whole ship shook again
and lightning flashed across the cockpit windows.
“I
think their weapons have ignited the hydrogen in the cluster,” Tori offered
halfheartedly. ‘I am not supposed to be here. I am only a cadet. I am a
scientist. Why am I here?’
Kevas’ fist slammed down on his
console. “Shields are at twenty percent. Impulse engines are down.”
Lieutenant
Foster started to curse, but then a sudden thought hit him. He worked the
controls frantically and the Hawk slowed down.
“What
the hell are you doing? You are venting plasma from both nacelles!”
“Yes.
Hold on to your pants!” Cal targeted the courier’s small phaser arrays
directly aft and hit the firing control.
Warp
plasma and hydrogen ignited in a gigantic plume of fire that buffeted the Hawk
and threw her deep into the Argolis.
Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3
