An almost impish grin suddenly crossed his face. “I’ve already come up with a solution to that problem. Report to Titan,and you’ll have that third pip—Commander. But you’d better hurry. Offer’s good for a limited time only.”
Vale took a step backward, momentarily stunned. She couldn’t have been more surprised if he had just sprouted wings.
“But I only got promoted to lieutenant commander a few weeks ago,” she said after the seeming eternity it took for her voice to return.
“So?”
“But you can’t just… promoteme again.”
His grin broadened.
“Canyou?” she added.
“Never tell the captain what he can and can’t do,” he said. “Didn’t we just establish, yet again, that I’m infallible?”
Laughing, she extended her right hand. He took it in a firm grip. “Looks like I’d better inform Captain Picard that he’s going to need to find a new chief of security,” Riker said.
“If you don’t mind, sir,” Vale said, disengaging from the handclasp, “I really ought to be the one to do it.”
He nodded. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
“Will you be heading back to Utopia Planitia now, Captain?”
“Not right away.” He turned and moved toward the door, which hissed open for him. “There are a few…farewells I want to make first.”
She nodded, surmising that he would want to see Geordi and Worf again before departing. And sometime before his return to Titanhe would need to have some time alone with Captain Picard.
Thoughts of the Enterprise’s rock-steady captain, who was even now breaking in an almost entirely new crew, precipitated a renewed surge of guilt over her decision to leave. Get a grip on yourself, Christine. Didn’t the captain say he’d support whatever decision you made?
Riker paused in the doorway. “Oh, and Christine?”
“Sir?”
For the first time, he made a show of looking directly at her bare feet. “When you report to Titan,don’t forget to bring your boots.”
Chapter Five
U.S.S. TITAN,STARDATE 56944.2
“Look out!” yelled astrobiologist Kenneth Norellis as the tool kit slipped from his grasp. Reacting instinctively, he grabbed vainly for the falling implements—and simultaneously lost his grip on the ladder. The artificial gravity took him, and he plunged nearly two meters straight down through the vertical shaft of the Jefferies tube.
He landed in a heap at the bottom, a moment after his tool kit sprayed its cargo of spanners and stem bolts in every direction. The impact forced a surprised yelp out of him, in addition to abruptly pushing most of the air from his lungs.
“You okay?” said Melora Pazlar, poking her head into the Jefferies tube’s shaft from a horizontal access tunnel.
“Dammit!” Norellis said, massaging his right knee, through which pain was now flaring with near-nova intensity. “I can’t believe I just did that,” he hissed through clenched teeth. And for what? A diagnostic analysis of a tertiary backup holographic imaging relay. I might be walking wounded, but it’s pretty damned certain nobody’s gonna pin a medal on me forthis particular injury-in-the-line-of-duty.
“You mean you can’t believe you took a fall just now?” she said. Norellis was certain that the willowy Pazlar had never made a graceless move in her life—her cane and gravity-compensating exoframe notwithstanding. He saw in her barely suppressed smile that she was politely refraining from reminding him about the other tumbles and minor accidents he had suffered in his rush to make Titanready to study the cosmos by her scheduled departure date. As though this couldn’t have happened toanyone, he thought, his rising indignation almost—but not quite—distracting him from the lancing pain in his right knee.
“Good thing I happened to be nearby,” she said after he followed her out into the corridor, she walking with a smooth economy of motion, he advancing in a tentative, painful crawl. “Need any help, Kent?”
He winced, praying silently that he wasn’t badly hurt. “I think I’m okay. Just need. A minute. To catch my breath. And gather up my tools.”
She nodded, standing beside where he half sat and half lay on the deck. The delicate Elaysian planted her cane firmly with one hand and extended the other down toward him. “Let’s see if you can stand first.”
He took her hand, using it to steady himself as he slowly rose, while Pazlar’s exoframe whined with the effort of keeping them both steady. As soon as he reached his feet, his already-throbbing right knee felt as though it had just entered Titan’s matter-antimatter annihilation chamber.
He settled back onto the deck plating with a sharp cry and a resounding thump.
“Let me help you get to sickbay, Kent,” Pazlar said. “You need to have Dr. Ree look you over.”
“No!” he said, somehow finding enough wind to shout before he even realized what he was doing.
“I think you may have sprained more than your pride, this time, Ensign,” said another voice, deep and rich and resonant.
Norellis turned in the direction of the voice and met the concerned gaze of Lieutenant Commander Ranul Keru, the tall, burly unjoined male Trill who served as Titan’s tactical officer and chief of security.
Crap,Norellis thought. Why doeshe have to see me like this? The universe must really hate me today.
“I’m fine, Commander, really,” he said aloud, struggling up into a crouch that made a Cardassian interrogation chamber seem like mercy itself. “No need to bother Dr. Ree. Really. I mean, he’s a very busy man—er, dinosaur.”
“Ree isn’t a dinosaur,” Keru said. “He only looks like one.”
“Ah, so that’swhat this is about,” Pazlar said, a look of understanding crossing her fair features. “I have to confess, even I find Dr. Ree a little scary-looking. But he’s extraordinarily gentle. I even heard Nurse Ogawa telling Olivia Bolaji that Ree is a world-class obstetrician.”
The astrobiologist smiled lamely, hugging the bulkhead as his breathing normalized and he continued trying to straighten his knees. “That’s a lucky thing for Olivia. And if I ever get pregnant while I’m serving on Titan,I promise that Dr. Ree will be the second one to know.”
His flexing knee reached a critical angle, and the pain once again dumped him deckward. Keru’s thick forearm caught him before he completed his latest pratfall.
Pazlar favored Norellis with a sympathetic gaze. “Take some friendly advice from an expert, Kent. Next time you have to crawl around at the top of a Jefferies tube, disable the artificial gravity in there.”
He nodded. “Great idea.” Fat lot of good that does menow.
“Come on, Ensign,” Keru said in mock-stern tones. “To sickbay with you.”
“You might outrank me, Commander, but I’m not sure you can make me go to sickbay.” But he knew he was losing the argument. Keru and Pazlar had already flanked him and were supporting him, effectively frogmarching him down the corridor toward a turbolift.
“Consider it an order if you like,” Keru said, smiling, “or think of it as a strong suggestion from someone who never goes anywhere without a sidearm.”
What remained of Norellis’s spirits fell at least as quickly as his tool kit had. Great. Now Keru thinks I’m a coward. And probably a xenophobe, too.
As the doors of Dr. Ree’s sickbay drew near, Pazlar whispered in his ear. “Don’t worry, Kent. Dr. Ree hasn’t eaten any member of this crew.”