Enigma - Michael Jan Friedman [45]
“Yes,” said Jiterica. “Has there been any word?”
Wu wished she had better news. “Not yet.”
Clearly, the ensign wasn’t pleased. “Shouldn’t we have received a message by now, either from another ship or from a starbase?”
The second officer nodded. “Perhaps we should have. But I’m not going to jump to conclusions. Unless I hear something to the contrary, I’m going to assume Commander Ben Zoma and his crew found safe haven.”
Jiterica took a moment to consider the remark. “You believe they’re uninjured?”
“I do,” said Wu.
The ensign smiled. “Then I will believe that too.”
Wu was gratified that Jiterica placed such faith in her. She just hoped that when it came to the Livingston, neither of them found a reason to be disappointed.
On the Cargo Hauler Iktoj’ni, Nikolas eyed the plate in front of him, which was heaped high with slender, pale tubers drowned in thick, black sauce.
“It’s better than it looks,” Locklear assured him from his seat on the other side of the table.
“I don’t see how it could be worse,” said Nikolas.
The cargo hauler wasn’t equipped with the state-of-the-art replicators that had become standard on Federation starships. The one they had wasn’t able to work fast enough to create a variety of dishes every night, so they had it make mass quantities of the same dish instead.
This evening, it was a Fayyenh specialty that Nikolas couldn’t even pronounce. Translated, it was rays-of-sunshine-in-old-dark-mud. Somehow, he wasn’t tempted by it.
It occurred to him that if he left it alone for a while and came back to it, it might not seem quite so unappealing. Pushing his chair away from the table, he looked around the mess hall.
The captain, a Vobilite, was discussing something with a couple of her mates on the other side of the room. Like all of her ruddy-faced species, Rejjerin had to speak around the curved tusks that protruded from the corners of her mouth, a condition that made her look argumentative sometimes.
But not this time. As she sat there trading remarks, she seemed confident, relaxed—and for a good reason. The Ik’tojni had nearly cleared Starfleet’s danger zone. In another day at their present speed, they would be home free.
Of course, there was still a chance that the captain would come to regret her decision. But to that point, it looked like she had made the right one.
“She’s something, isn’t she?” asked Locklear.
Nikolas saw that his friend was studying Rejjerin as well. “I guess you could say that.” He didn’t think Captain Picard would have taken that kind of risk—not unless there was a lot more at stake than a cargo delivery.
Locklear chuckled. “I remember how nervous you were when I told you the captain was forging ahead.”
“No,” said Nikolas, “actually that was you.”
His friend looked at him, his brow creased down the middle. “Now that you mention it, maybe it was. Anyway, I’ll be damned if her luck isn’t holding.”
Nikolas couldn’t argue with the facts. “I just hope our next job takes us somewhere far from this danger zone. I don’t think I’d want to push Rejjerin’s luck twice.”
Locklear turned a little pale beneath his freckles. “Amen to that.”
Nikolas took a fresh look at his dinner plate. Unfortunately, it didn’t look any more appealing than it had before. If anything, it looked less so.
It almost made him wish that the mystery marauders would show up after all. That way, he wouldn’t have to eat the stuff.
Ben Zoma watched the alien vessel’s docking port loom nearer and nearer, until it was so close that he could see the scratches on its hatch plate.
Only then did he say, “Ease her in, Mister Paris.”
“Aye, sir,” said the ensign. Then he turned the shuttle sideways and gently applied port thrusters to nudge her toward her target. After a moment or two, he married one surface to the other with a metallic thunk.
Unfortunately, the shuttle’s door didn’t fit the docking port precisely, and anything less than a perfect accommodation would leak dangerous amounts of oxygen. However, Starfleet’s engineers had long ago foreseen such an eventuality.
Using a separate