Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [28]
He shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Good.” Wu pulled the chair out and sat down, dispelling any notion Ben Zoma might have had about finishing his reading in peace. “I’m glad I found you here,” she said. “I wanted to speak with you.”
“What about?” Ben Zoma asked, putting down the padd.
Wu’s brow knit. “Our last conversation included a rather . . . awkward moment. I wanted to address it.”
Ben Zoma dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. “You did that already. You said you were sorry.”
“Yes,” his colleague agreed. “But I wanted you to know that what I said was heartfelt.”
He smiled. “I never had any reason to believe otherwise.”
“You know, I never would have put my foot in my mouth that way on the Crazy Horse.”
Ben Zoma understood. “Because you knew her personnel a lot better than you know the Stargazer’s.”
Wu nodded. “Exactly.”
The first officer was able to sympathize, since the Stargazer hadn’t been his first assignment. “It’s difficult getting used to a new ship and crew, especially after you’ve been in one place for a long time.”
“It is,” his second officer confirmed.
“So let’s just forget what happened,” he suggested. “In fact, I’ve forgotten it already.”
Wu looked grateful. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Ben Zoma. He glanced at his padd, which was sitting next to his plate of stuffed grape leaves. “And now, if I can ask you a favor . . .” He let his voice trail off meaningfully.
Wu seemed to notice the padd and the grape leaves for the first time. “Of course,” she replied quickly. “By all means. Sorry to have distracted you from your work.”
“No problem,” he assured her.
She began to withdraw as quietly as she had approached him, but before she could leave, Ben Zoma tendered an invitation.
“Any time you want to talk . . .”
Wu smiled at him again. Then she crossed the lounge and made her exit through its set of sliding doors.
Ben Zoma smiled too, Wu’s overzealousness at their first meeting as forgotten as he had promised it would be. Then he went back to his padd and its advisories.
Chapter Nine
JITERICA STOOD AMID A HERD of snub-nosed silver shapes, the overhead lighting glinting off their duranium hides.
“We’ve got a type-eleven pod, a type-twelve pod, and three type-thirteen pods,” said Lieutenant Chiang, the gray-templed officer in charge of the Stargazer’s lone shuttlebay. His voice rang proudly from one end of the facility to the other. “We’ve got a type-three personnel shuttle, two type-four personnel shuttles, and a couple of type-five personnel shuttles, and right here is a type-eight heavy cargo shuttle fresh from the yards at Utopia Planitia.”
The Nizhrak knew exactly what types the vehicles were. Shuttle design was one of the myriad subjects she had studied in her crash course at Starfleet headquarters.
“Of course,” the short, stocky Chiang went on, “the type-twelve is in the process of being overhauled for the umpteenth time, so it’s useless to us right now.”
Jiterica saw a pair of uniformed legs sticking out from under the type-12, the exterior of which was virtually identical to the type-11. It was on the inside that the two shuttles were entirely different, thanks to the type-12’s 500-millicochrane impulse driver engines and its three sarium krellide storage cells.
“As you can see,” said Chiang, rapping his knuckles on the type-3, “we’re not exactly cutting edge here from top to bottom. This little number can barely maintain warp speed over the long haul, so we’d only use it in a dire emergency like a full-scale evacuation.”
“I understand,” Jiterica responded.
She had been sent here to assist the shuttlebay crew for the time being. She had no objections to the assignment. An ensign was supposed to familiarize herself with as many aspects of starship operation as possible.
“We’ve got another type-five on order,” Chiang told her, “but between you and me, I don’t expect to see her any time soon. The way they ration out new shuttlecraft, you’d think