Collective Hindsight (Book 2) - Aaron Rosenberg [20]
“Pattie and I may not have changed so profoundly,” Fabian said with a smile, “but we feel the same way. We were less experienced, less crafty. It’s not that we were fools, just that we may not have had the tools we needed back then. Now we do. We’re all better than we were before.”
“And part of that,” Pattie added, antennae waving gently, “is because we’re part of this team. The old group was strong, but this one—this one is stronger.”
“I know,” Sonya said softly. “And it bothers me a little. As much as I hate to admit it, Kieran couldn’t have done the things Tev did. Not that Kieran wasn’t wonderful, and a great engineer, but his mind worked differently. We needed Tev for this.”
“And we needed you,” Pattie said. “You looked at the problem from a different perspective than Salek did, and saw what he missed.”
Sonya stood, and Fabian did as well, the four of them clustering together. Like a group—like a family. “I think,” she said slowly, discovering it as she spoke, “that I could see it because Salek had laid the groundwork for me. Because all of you had. He set things up, and that let me come in now and figure it out from there.”
Fabian laughed, “You know, hindsight usually only works if it’s your own.”
Sonya met his laugh with one of her own. “Well, maybe, but on this team we share so much anyway, what’s one more thing?” Then she shook her head and smiled. “I do feel good about it, though. I feel like this was a chapter in this crew’s history, and we helped close it properly. And maybe now Salek”—she felt her eyes tearing up slightly, and this time chose not to fight it—“and Kieran and 111 and McAllan and Feliciano and Drew and Barnak and all the others who have gone before can finally rest properly, knowing that we’ve put it all to rights.”
“Well,” Pattie replied with a tinkle, “I don’t know about all of it. What have we left to work on, then?”
“Not to worry, Pattie,” Fabian told her as the four of them headed toward engineering. “I’m sure we’ll find something.”
END
About the Author
AARON ROSENBERG was born in New Jersey, grew up in New Orleans, graduated high school and college in Kansas, and now lives in New York. He has published short stories, poems, essays, articles, reviews, and nonfiction books, but for the last ten years the majority of his writing has been in role-playing. Aaron has written for more than ten game systems (including Lord of the Rings, Vampire, DC Universe, EverQuest, and Star Trek) and is the president of his own game company, Clockworks (www.clockworksgames.com). He has two degrees in English, and misses teaching college English, which he did for several years. His other fiction includes the previous S.C.E. eBook The Riddled Post and the novelette “Inescapable Justice” in Imaginings: An Anthology of Long Short Fiction. He is currently hard at work on more S.C.E. fiction.
Coming Next Month:
Star Trek™: S.C.E. #35
The Demon
Book 1
by Loren L. Coleman
& Randall N. Bills
What begins as a simple investigation of a peculiar subspace signal leads to an errand of mercy, as the da Vinci responds to a distress signal—from the edge of a black hole! Hundreds of years ago, the Resaurians placed a station near the event horizon, forever teetering on the edge of the abyss, and now the S.C.E. must find a way to rescue them.
But the black hole, known as “the Demon,” contains centuries-old secrets that the Resaurians will kill to protect—and both the U.S.S. da Vinci and the station may be sacrificed to the Demon in order to preserve those secrets!
COMING IN DECEMBER FROM POCKET BOOKS!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About the Author
Coming Next Month:
Star Trek