Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [56]
Pug Joseph stood behind one of his colleagues in the main security area and considered the big, concave monitor bank.
In actuality, Joseph was only concerned with a single screen at the moment. It was the one that showed him the other hexagonal room in security, where Obal was presiding over the dozen men and women assigned to special sensor duty.
The Binderian had seemed like the perfect individual for the job. After all, he had already demonstrated a knack for detail, he could hardly manage to fall asleep in the company of so many other crewmen, and—just as important—he would free up a security officer better suited to actual security work.
On the other hand, this was an important duty, one requested by the captain himself. Joseph didn’t feel so confident in Obal that he was willing to let him operate without a little scrutiny.
The security chief had been reminded of a saying he had read back in high school in Colorado, when his class was studying Aristotle: Who watches the watchers?
In this case, he thought, I do.
And it was a good thing. Though the monitor allowed him only to see and not hear what was going on, he had witnessed enough of Obal’s encounter with Ensign Caber to understand the gist of it.
The ensign had ridiculed Obal, and the Binderian’s response had been no response at all. He had simply let it go.
Not good, Joseph thought. Not good at all. He hadn’t been in charge of the security section for long, but even he knew that an officer couldn’t let a subordinate get the best of him. It was the quickest way to lose control of a section.
He was tempted, as he turned away from the monitor bank, to relieve Obal of his assignment and put someone else in charge. But he didn’t do it. Part of him wanted to give Obal a chance to redeem himself.
Even though the other part was sure he wouldn’t.
Nikolas was about to tell his friend Caber that he didn’t like watching Obal be ridiculed, that he wished like hell that Caber wouldn‘t do it anymore. But before he could get the words out, he caught a glimpse of what was on his screen.
Nikolas wasn’t exactly an expert at interpreting sensor data, but what he saw looked like trouble—the kind he didn’t think he ought to mull over for very long. He was about to call Obal over when he realized what it would look like—a replay of Caber’s antics, which was the last thing the ensign had in mind.
Getting up from his seat, Nikolas crossed the room and leaned over beside the Binderian. Obal looked up at him and said, “Yes?” every bit as pleasantly as he had responded to Caber.
Nikolas jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating his monitor. “I think there’s something here you ought to see.”
Picard felt his jaw clench as he considered the rectangular viewscreen in front of him.
It showed him and his bridge officers what Ensign Nikolas had noted mere minutes earlier on his computer monitor—an army of vicious, twisterlike formations, each one appearing as an elongated diamond shape in a hue ranging from silver to dusky bronze. They looked as deadly as any phenomena Picard had ever seen.
“The vortices,” Ben Zoma said.
The captain nodded grimly. “Yes.” Their predecessors—that is, the three who had managed to venture this far—had described this obstacle in some detail.
Seeing no way around the twisters, they had attempted to negotiate a slow and careful path among them. Two of them, the captains of the Mongoose and the Leningrad, ended up turning back when the going got too rough. The third, the captain of the Christopher, had refused to give up until she lost a warp nacelle and no longer had a choice in the matter.
Ben Zoma frowned at the viewscreen. “Too bad we can’t use your warp trick here.”
“Because we don’t know how far this region may extend,” Picard elaborated.
“And,” added Ben Zoma, “because the vortices are magnetic in nature. They’d wreak havoc with a subspace field. And then there’s the problem of going to warp this close to a sun.”
“Point taken,” said Picard.
Ben Zoma looked at him. “Convene the command staff?”
The captain smiled,