Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [19]
“I’ve been working on amplifying our sensors with Beta Barritus in mind,” Simenon explained. “We’ll have better range, especially outside the visual spectrum. Here. Take a look for yourself.”
Valderrama examined the screen. It took her a couple of minutes to absorb it all, since she wasn’t an engineer by training.
When she was done, she turned to Simenon and said, “All right.”
He thought she was kidding. “You’re happy?”
“If you are,” Valderrama told him, smiling again.
Simenon considered her a moment longer. Then he said, “Fine. Thanks for your input.”
“Anytime,” Valderrama told him. “If there’s nothing else . . . ?”
“Nothing,” he assured her.
“Then I’ll be getting back to my section.”
“Fine,” he said.
So Valderrama made her way back across engineering and headed blithely for the exit.
Simenon shook his lizardlike head as he watched the doors close behind her. Cariello, Valderrama’s predecessor as sciences chief, would never have let him off the hook so easily. She would have thanked him for his efforts, of course—but then she would have demanded even more of him, whether he could deliver it or not.
That was how any good science officer would have handled it. But not Valderrama. She had simply accepted the limitations laid out for her on the screen and let it go at that.
Simenon frowned. He could tolerate a lot of things, but indifference wasn’t one of them. If Valderrama had been one of his engineers, she would have been on her way back to Starbase 32 already.
Starfleet was such a big place, he mused. Surely there had been a better science officer available somewhere.
Gilaad Ben Zoma gazed across the shiny black briefing room table at his new second officer.
Lieutenant Commander Elizabeth Wu was a small, wiry woman with short, dark hair. If Ben Zoma hadn’t known her age, he would never have guessed that she was over thirty.
“I read your file,” he said. “Your record is impeccable.”
Her previous captain had called her “the kind of person who gets things done.” But then, Ben Zoma could see that in the cast of her eyes and the way she carried herself.
“Thank you,” Wu responded, neither discounting the praise nor wallowing in it.
“I can see why Captain Rudolfini wasn’t happy to see you leave the Crazy Horse.”
Wu’s mouth pulled up at the corners—as close, apparently, as she came to a smile. “But I assure you, he understood. There wasn’t any opportunity for advancement on the Crazy Horse. If I wanted to move up, I had no choice but to transfer.”
A common motivation. “At any rate,” said Ben Zoma, “I think you know why I called you here.”
“Of course,” she replied. “To brief me on the personalities of the people who will be reporting to me.”
“Exactly.” It was standard procedure. “Have you had a chance to read any of our personnel files?”
“I was just doing that when you called me.”
“And whom have you read about so far?”
Wu thought for a moment. “Phigus Simenon. Your chief engineer, if I recall correctly?”
“That’s right.”
“He seemed capable enough,” Wu remarked.
Ben Zoma smiled. “Simenon is more than capable, Commander. He’s brilliant—the absolute best at what he does. But he’s also as cranky as they come, so take that into account in your dealings with him.”
Wu nodded, her expression indicating that she was filing the information away. “I’ll do that.”
“Have you gotten to Carter Greyhorse, our chief medical officer?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Greyhorse is brilliant too, in his way.”
“And cranky?” Wu suggested wryly.
“Actually,” said Ben Zoma, “he’s anything but. Greyhorse is always the same, always on an even keel, whether he’s treating a splinter or third-degree radiation burns. He’d make a great poker player.”
Again, the second officer looked as if she were filing his remarks away. “Noted.”
Ben Zoma went on. “Idun Asmund, our helm officer?”
Wu’s brow puckered. “Asmund, yes . . . I was halfway through that file. But I don’t think the woman’s first name was Idun.