Day of Honor - Michael Jan Friedman [19]
B'Elanna took a breath and let it out. Suddenly, a strange feeling crept up on her-a feeling that she had forgotten something important.
"Computer," she asked, "what time is it?"
"It's seven forty-five a.m.," the computer told her.
B'Elanna cursed beneath her breath. Seven fortyfive? She was due to conduct a fuel-cell overhaul in
engineering in fifteen minutes. How would it look if the chief engineer was late for something like that?
Somehow, she realized, she had forgotten to give the computer a wake-up command. But how? She always gave the computer a wake-up command. Of all nights to slip up, she thought.
Then B'Elanna remembered. It was the Day of Honor.
No, she thought. Don't say it. Don't even think it. You've shaken your Day of Honor luck.
From now on, she reminded herself, only good things are going to happen on this day. You'll see, she insisted. Only good things.
Except, apparently, bad dreams. And forgotten wake-up calls.
Putting both those things out of her mind, B'Elanna tossed her covers aside, swung her legs out of bed, and padded into the bathroom, where she manipulated the controls on the side of the sonic shower stall. When she heard the emitter heads begin to hum, she stepped inside.
If she hurried, B'Elanna told herself, she could still make the cell overhaul. A minute in the shower, another minute to pull on her uniform, and maybe three more minutes for breakfast. That would leave her as many as ten minutes to reach engineering.
It could happen. It would happen.
B'Elanna had built up her resolve to a fever pitch when she heard the emitter heads sputter. Huh, she thought. That's strange. Suddenly, they let out a shriek so loud and so grating she thought her eardrums would burst.
"Damn!" she yelped, leaping out of the shower stall.
The emitter heads continued to shriek, undaunted by the glare B'Elanna was leveling at them. All over the galaxy, she imagined, animals were hearing the sound and going nuts.
So was she.-but for an entirely different reason. After all, she was standing in the middle of the bathroom without her clothes, no cleaner than she had been a minute ago.
Worse, B'Elanna couldn't let the shower keep screeching like that. Aside from the discomfort it would cause her neighbors, the mechanism could build up a feedback loop. Then every EPS relay in the corridor would have to be reset-or, if luck went against them, replaced.
The Klingon in her wanted to rip the shower out of the wall. Fortunately, that Klingon had human company.
Still naked, teeth grating against the noise, B'Elanna knelt and removed the cover from the relay next to the shower. It wasn't a difficult task, but it was one that couldn't be rushed.
Then, without benefit of the tools one usually used for something like this, she cut off power to the shower unit. As suddenly as it had begun, the shrieking stopped.
It was quiet in the bathroom. Unnaturally quietexcept for the ringing in B'Elanna's ears.
Unfortunately, she had used up not only her shower time, but her breakfast time as well. And unless she got a move on, she wouldn't have time to get dressed
either. Muttering beneath her breath, she went back into her bedroom and opened the door to her closet.
Picking out one of the uniforms she found hanging there, she pulled it on as quickly as she could. Then she bolted for the door, unnerved, unshowered, and unfed.
And even with all that, there was no guarantee she would make it to engineering in time.
CHAKOTAY FOUND SEVEN OF NINE STANDING IN HER Borg cubicle. It chilled him a little every time he saw the thing, in that it was a remnant of the ship's transformation.
As the first officer approached the cubicle, Seven of Nine noticed him and stepped down. "Commander Chakotay," she said.
"I understand you wanted to see me."
"I am told you are the officer in charge of personnel," said the Borg. "That you prepare the 'duty assignments." Is that the correct phrase?"
"That's right," he replied.
But inside, he was wondering