CHAPTER TWO
“I tell you,
sir, they’ve only been on board for little over half a day, and already I wish
they were gone.”
Lieutenant
Jason Cashman prowled around his captain’s ready room, doubly frustrated: he couldn’t
let out the scream he’d felt building inside of him for the last seventeen
hours, lest his superior think he’d really
gone off the deep end; and he couldn’t even get a decent stride going—the area
was just too small for a good, aggravated pace.
USS
Ambassador’s commander watched as his
tactical officer brought himself up short; and, yet again, determinedly set off
towards the other side of the room, which was all of twelve feet away.
“I
acquired that rug on Bajor, you know,” Captain Thelen finally replied, with
that careful intonation common to all Andorians using Federation Standard. It
stopped the younger man in mid-step, and he continued, “Yes, the one into which
you’re wearing a sizable groove.” He motioned to one of the seats in front of his
desk. “The chair’s not an antique. Sit down.”
When
Cashman had finally settled himself, Thelen continued, “I take it our guests
have worn out their welcome, as far as you’re concerned?”
“Not
all our guests, sir. I haven’t even seen
Captain Mantovanni or Lieutenant MacLeod since they came aboard. It’s...” his
voice trailed off, and Thelen could see Cashman gritting his teeth.
“...Commander
Warrick?” he finished.
Cashman
nodded. “I understand that he’s Starfleet Intelligence and all, that he’s been
through Advanced Tactical Training and is supposed to be some kind of
super-troop, but that doesn’t mean he should treat us like we’re idiots!”
Thelen
sighed. He knew Jared Warrick, mostly by reputation; the man was highly
competent, but not exactly a paragon of circumspection insofar as protocol was
concerned. When the mission specialists they were ferrying to Enterprise-D had come on board, Thelen
had politely informed them that “the resources of the Ambassador are at your complete disposal”.
And,
evidently, Commander Warrick had taken him literally.
“Sir,
he’s been running simulations and exercises for almost 16 hours, with no signs
of letting up! I’ve tried to be patient, but we haven’t passed a single
scenario yet! He’s commandeered the recreation lounge as his ‘
“I
see. As far as I can tell, there’s only one thing to be done.” Thelen rested
his elbows on the desk, and steepled his fingers.
“Stop him.” When Cashman looked
momentarily blank, Thelen continued, “I won’t have it said of my crew that they
couldn’t pass a training exercise, even if it was devised by Jared Warrick. You’d better stop feeling personally
offended at his attitude and start
working on yours, Lieutenant. You’ve told me on any number of occasions
that your tactical/security team is ‘one of the best in Starfleet.’ Well, right
now, this man is proving you wrong. Do you think that the Tholians, Cardassians
or Borg will be so kind as to let you set up again if you fail in one of their scenarios?
“Think,
Lieutenant. You have resources right now to which you don’t ordinarily have
access. Use them.
“Dismissed.”
As
the shell-shocked Cashman reached the door, Thelen added, “And, by the way,
Lieutenant, don’t come back until you can tell me that my crew is passing these sims, not looking to avoid
them.”
Cashman
stiffened to attention. “Aye-aye, sir!” He practically sprinted out onto the
Bridge.
Thelen
chuckled to himself. It’s always good to
set your people one nearly impossible task a day. Sometimes they surprise you.
He
went back to his reports.
“
...a posting to the Enterprise-D is a
significant asset to your career goals. I find your progress to be acceptable.”
“Thank
you, Mother,” Sera MacLeod was careful to keep any intonation from her voice;
she knew T’Lirr found it most... disagreeable.
Despite
the effort, she was rewarded with a raised eyebrow, a Vulcan expression over
which T’Lirr had particular mastery. “Human affectations of courtesy with me,
daughter?”
Sera
relaxed her stonelike expression, and sighed visibly, “Perhaps my mother has
forgotten that when one is half-human, courtesy is a requirement, rather than
an affectation?”
T’Lirr’s
voice grew colder still. “You have your father’s insolence. How fortunate that
your intellect is a compensatory characteristic.” The tone then became,
remarkably enough, even more formal. “If you have no Starfleet commitments
which conflict, family business requires that you return to Vulcan in 57.4
standard days.
I could push the point, but why bother?
Sera thought.
“Schedule
permitting, I shall attend.”
T’Lirr
nodded. “Out,” she finished, and broke the connection.
After
her mother’s image faded, Sera weighed the illogic of her next impulse against
the possible satisfaction. After due consideration, she decided in the
affirmative...
...
and stuck her tongue out at the screen.
It
was a gesture she had seen her father, Commodore Javan MacLeod, use—when her
mother’s back had been turned, of course—on many occasions during her youth. As
far as she had been able to determine, T’Lirr had never seen him do it; and it
had seemed to give him such... satisfaction...
Much
more, unfortunately, than it had ever seemed to give Sera.
Sorry you weren’t here to see that, Da. I
think it would have made you smile.
Her
cousin had told her long ago, “You must prepare for the fact that you will be,
as humans say, ‘of two minds’ on many things.”
Her
five-year-old brow had furrowed; she had weighed his words, and replied, with
almost disturbing gravity, “To be ‘of two minds’… it is not logical, Spock.”
She
could remember him smiling slightly, though her mother later told her that to
mention such a thing was ‘inappropriate.’
He
had then said, “But it is often true.”
This
irritating dichotomy had often been the focus of her meditations; and, since Ambassador’s rendezvous with Enterprise-D was yet six hours in the
future...
...
it would be again.
Luciano
Cicero Mantovanni stood near the window in the Ambassador’s Observation Lounge, and watched the stars rush past
him.
He
found himself wondering how many were actually still there.
Most of them could just... wink out at any
moment, and the mourning would be posthumous by millions of years. Imagine the
coincidence of looking up at your favorite star, and having the last of its
light reach you in that particular moment.
He’d
heard on numerous occasions that some humanoids found the starfield of a vessel
traveling faster than light to be profoundly disturbing. A few even experienced
nausea or seizures if they happened to be looking when a vessel went into or
dropped out of warp. It had never bothered him. That moment between here and
there, of a place that had no place, had always held a certain romantic
fascination for him. Like Never-Never
Land or Tolkien’s Valinor, he thought.
“Sir?”
Mantovanni
glanced back. Looking rather ill at ease across the conference table was
Lieutenant Cashman, the Ambassador’s
young tactical officer. He considered the image he must be projecting: the
forbidding stance; the charcoal gray uniform indicative of Starfleet’s Special
Operations Division; the long hair which no one could mistake for regulation;
the theatrically brooding gaze.
Poor kid. I wouldn’t want to talk to me.
“What
can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
“Sir,
we’re having some trouble coping with Commander Warrick’s... unorthodox...
exercise scenarios, and I was wondering whether you could give us any suggestions?”
Mantovanni
at first gave no response; and Cashman hastily added, “Captain Thelen suggested
that I had access to resources I didn’t normally. Maybe this isn’t what he had
in mind... ”
The
captain raised a hand, and the younger man quieted.
“Take
some free advice; a commanding officer wants you to do whatever it takes to
perform your duties efficiently. If that, on occasion, means realizing and
acknowledging you need help, then... ” he stopped, and Cashman actually leaned
forward in anticipation of his next words.
“... you
just got better at your job.
“Now
let’s hear what you’ve got.”
The
younger man’s shoulders sagged in relief, and he managed a brief smile, before
his mind turned again to the impending exercise.
The simplest tricks are still the best ones,
Jared Warrick thought to himself, as he crouched behind an access panel for the
lateral sensor array and performed what his peers would call ‘minor surgery’.
Over
the last 21 hours, he’d taken the Ambassador’s
internal sensors off line in an amusing variety of ways, which had included:
initiating an unscheduled level one diagnostic; contacting Captain Thelen and
telling him that in the current simulation the ship’s commander was temporarily
mind-controlled and instructing him to take them off line himself (to his
credit, the Andorian had actually laughed aloud and then replied in a dull
monotone, “Yes, Master”); and now, overriding them from the heavily-shielded
confines of the battle bridge.
Well, let’s see, Warrick thought. So many ship’s systems, so little time...
As
he rose from his position and reached for the handle of service access port
#77B, the hiss of the turbolift doors told him that, for the first time, this
exercise wasn’t precisely going according to plan—at least, not his plan.
In
the second or two he had to act, Warrick considered several avenues of escape,
and then discarded them all for the simplest option—diving into the crawlspace
and sealing the hatch behind him. He popped it open, gathered himself for the
leap, and...
...
was brought up short as Lieutenant Cashman poked his head out of the selfsame
crawlspace, and pointed his phaser at Warrick’s chest. A few seconds later, a
trio of security guards had formed a rough semicircle around him, their own
weapons trained on his back.
Warrick
smiled to himself, but betrayed not a hint of this on his face. I knew you had it in you, kid, he
thought.
Instead,
he nodded, and informed them, “Exercise terminated, 0247 hours, ship’s local
time. Simulation cycle complete. You can stand your teams down and get some
sleep, Lieutenant. We’ll debrief at 1130 hours, just before our rendezvous with
Enterprise-D.
Cashman’s
team relaxed visibly, and Warrick could tell that it was all the young officer
could do not to leap from the crawlspace and turn handsprings.
“Aye
aye, sir. Dismissed,” he announced, as Warrick gave him a hand out of the
tunnel. The security team piled into the elevator, talking excitedly among
themselves, until the closing doors cut off the chatter.
Warrick
nodded once to the younger man. “Well done, Lieutenant.” He then turned back to
the access port and climbed in, much to Cashman’s obvious dismay.
“Sir,
I... I thought we were done?” he asked.
“We
are, Lieutenant. Just working through some things I’ll run past you when next
we meet, and I push the degree of difficulty up to level two.”
Cashman
retained about ten percent of his grin; he even managed a final, chagrined,
“Aye, sir”, before his adversary disappeared into the darkness.
A
plaintive, whispered, “There’s a level two?” was the last thing a
chuckling Warrick heard.