Collective Hindsight (Book 1) - Aaron Rosenberg [2]
Turning back to his console, Tev opened and launched a particular subroutine he had created some time ago, more for academic purposes than for real use. He had crafted the program with his usual efficiency, however, and it performed exactly as requested. A moment later a small smile crossed his face, and he transferred the information into his padd before rising to his feet. So much for being puzzled. But now came one of his favorite parts—the presentation. This promised to be…interesting.
“I’ve identified the ship.”
Sonya glanced up at Tev’s comment. She and Fabian had been going over the sensor data, along with Pattie. Tev waited until he’d received a nod before he continued.
“I scanned our files and got a match.” Tev gestured toward the wall monitor with his padd, and the information he’d sent appeared on the larger screen. “The ship is called Dancing Star. I found its specifications in S.C.E. mission entry DV30193.”
“Wait a second.” Sonya looked back at Fabian, who was looking oddly sheepish. “DV30193? That’s a da Vinci file! We’ve seen this thing before?”
“Well, not you,” Fabian replied slowly. “It was back before you’d joined—just before, actually. It was—” He hesitated.
“—the last mission of Commander Salek,” Pattie finished for him.
“Oh, great.” Sonya leaned back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. Salek had been Gomez’s predecessor as first officer of the da Vinci and head of the ship’s S.C.E. complement. “So now we’ve got a runaway sun that’s already killed one member of this crew. This gets better all the time.” She looked back at Fabian. “During the briefing, neither of you mentioned this. Neither did Soloman or Corsi or the captain—and Carol out-and-out lied to Bart.”
Fabian at least had the good grace to flush and glance at his feet. “We were under orders, Commander.”
“Orders? What are you talking about?”
“What they mean is that the mission was classified.” All four of them turned toward the ready-room door as Gold entered the bridge. “It was during the Dominion War, and all of those events are classified for security reasons.” He glared at Tev. “I’d be very interested to know how you accessed those files.”
Tev simply shrugged. “I performed a standard search. I did design the search engine myself—it must have simply bypassed the security measures. Starfleet might want to work on that.”
Sonya reminded herself yet again to speak to Tev. The man was an excellent engineer, and an asset to the team, but his utter disregard for certain strictures and his contempt for anyone he did not consider an intellectual equal had already earned him several enemies. If not for his undeniable skill he never would have achieved his current rank—and if he didn’t learn to behave with a little more respect, or at least circumspection, he’d never rise any higher.
The captain continued to glare at him for a moment, and Sonya knew he wasn’t fooled. Not much slipped past Gold. But finally he shrugged and walked over to the console.
“Actually, the reason I came in was to give you access to those files. I’ve cleared it with Starfleet Command—nothing in that mission is a security risk anymore, and you definitely have a need to know about Dancing Star.” He tapped a command into the console, followed by a security code, and the files appeared onscreen. Initially they bore the black band across the front that indicated they were sealed, but after Gold entered the code, the band disappeared. Sonya couldn’t help but notice that Tev looked a little annoyed at this—it stole some of the importance from his accomplishment for Gold to simply hand her the materials a moment later.
But she’d deal with wounded pride later. For now she turned to Pattie. “Tell