Enigma - Michael Jan Friedman [5]
Finally, Jiterica closed the helmet latches and turned to him. But her face hadn’t quite coalesced yet. It was still crude, lacking in definition.
Then she took care of that detail as well. Her features clarified, sharpened, became familiar to him.
Only then did Paris ask the question that had been nagging at him: “Why did we need to stop?”
Jiterica smiled. “It’s time,” she said in her artificial voice, “for our next shift.”
“No…” said Paris.
He couldn’t believe it. They had just completed their last shift when they met in Jiterica’s quarters. Was it possible that they had been there for sixteen hours?
He had barely considered the possibility when he felt the encroaching emptiness in his belly, and the thirst, and an unusual stiffness in his legs. And by those signs, he knew that Jiterica wasn’t kidding.
Sixteen hours, the ensign thought, as he smiled back at her. Amazing.
Gilaad Ben Zoma, first officer of the Stargazer and incidentally Jean-Luc Picard’s best friend, had been trying for the last minute or so to concentrate his attention on the oval-shaped data-display device in his hand.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. And that wasn’t likely to change while Admiral McAteer and the captain were holed up in Picard’s ready room.
“They’ve been in there a long time,” observed Elizabeth Wu, the ship’s highly efficient second officer, who had handed Ben Zoma the data-display device in the first place.
He nodded. “They certainly have. I guess they’ve got something…complicated to talk about.”
“Think it’s a mission?” Wu asked.
Ben Zoma smiled a little. “More than that. Starfleet admirals—even those as intrusive as McAteer—don’t come out this far just to give an order. Something’s up.”
Wu frowned. “Something we’re not going to like, I take it?”
The first officer stared at the ready-room door as if he could see through it. “I don’t doubt it.”
Picard had kept his mouth shut for a good long time, but he could keep it shut no longer—which was why he had petitioned his superior for permission to speak freely, unfettered by the restricting bonds of Starfleet protocol.
On the other side of the captain’s desk, McAteer’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. But he didn’t take long to consider the request. “Granted.”
Picard plunged ahead. “There is a tempest brewing in this sector, Admiral. You know that as well as anyone.”
McAteer didn’t disagree.
“In your place,” Picard continued, “I would be deploying the entirety of my resources to address the situation at hand. And yet, with the notable exception of my assignment on Oblivion, in which my involvement was mandated by parties other than yourself, you have consistently relegated the Stargazer to peripheral activities. While other Constellation-class vessels serve as escorts through disputed territory or conduct border patrols, my vessel carries out scientific surveys—and frivolous ones at that.”
The captain leaned forward in his chair. “My crew is ready, willing, and able to handle any crisis that may arise, be it diplomatic or military in nature. We are eager to make the same sort of contributions as any other ship in the fleet—to do the same work and assume the same risks—and we would be grateful if you recognized that fact.”
McAteer smiled through Picard’s diatribe, apparently without resentment. Then, taking his time, he answered the captain’s challenge.
“You say that your crew is equal to any task I may decide to impose upon it. That may be so,” said McAteer. “However, to be perfectly blunt, its commanding officer appears not to be equal to any task.”
Picard felt as if he had been slapped across the face.
“That,” the admiral continued, in an even, almost benevolent-sounding tone, “is the reason I’ve been reluctant to put the Stargazer in the thick of the action—because your personal performance hasn’t earned my confidence.”
The captain bit his lip to keep from saying something he would certainly regret. If McAteer wasn’t confident in him, it wasn’t his