Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [6]
Mayweather cleared his throat.
Chang opened his eyes. “Hello, Ensign.”
Mayweather nodded. “Corporal.” He dispatched yet another silent prayer of thanks that he was not required to address the corporal as “sir.”
“You Starfleet folks have any luck today tracking down those Xindi and their superweapon?”
The muscles in Mayweather’s neck tightened involuntarily. Why did Chang feel obliged to sound so dismissive and patronizing whenever he mentioned the crew’s ongoing effort to find the Xindi?
“Captain Archer and the whole senior staff are doing everything they can,” he said quietly, meeting Chang’s steely, accusatory gaze without flinching. You’d just love to think you made me look away, wouldn’t you?
“If you can’t find ’em, Ensign, we can’t kill ’em,” Chang said. In a single smooth motion he rose from the bed and stood at parade rest, and regarded Mayweather with that raptor’s stare.
He’s only staying here until we find the Xindi, Mayweather reminded himself yet again.
He was tempted to tell Chang about some of the new leads that Commander Tucker and Lieutenant Reed were busy pursuing this very moment. But he knew that Captain Archer wouldn’t be pleased with any news being released outside official channels, especially when so many of the leads the crew had chased over the past few weeks had come to nothing. Besides, he didn’t feel very highly motivated to please Chang.
“If we can’t find the Xindi, Corporal, then nobody can,” Mayweather finally said. “And aren’t you late for your duty shift?” After all, the whole point of the current so-called “hot-cotting” living arrangements was to ensure that those who rotated in and out of Enterprise’s overcrowded crew living quarters barely saw one another, let alone had much time to get into one another’s way.
“Major Hayes gave me some extra liberty time,” Chang said. “I’m working a short shift today.”
Hayes probably thinks you need to take up a hobby, Mayweather thought. “Oh. Good for you,” he said aloud. The gym suddenly beckoned; it seemed to be his best refuge against any further chance encounters with Chang until the corporal’s truncated duty shift began. He moved toward the shelf where he kept his gym bag.
It wasn’t where he had left it. Chang must have been cleaning the place. Again.
“Well, I’m off to the gym,” Chang said before heading for the door at full march.
The door hissed closed, leaving Mayweather alone in the quarters that were no longer his island of privacy. He gave up searching for the gym bag, since the gym was now the last place on the ship he wanted to go anywhere near.
He glanced at the top of the bureau beside the narrow bed. Several mottled gray, camouflage-pattern MACO duty uniforms and at least one pristine set of dress uniforms, their triangular, two-striped corporal’s rank insignia clearly visible on the sleeves, lay in impossibly neat stacks on the top shelf. An optimist at heart, Mayweather allowed himself to hope that Chang had put them there to avoid crowding him out of the bureau drawers below.
Or did he leave the MACO uniforms prominently visible to send Mayweather yet another subtle message about whose contribution to the mission to find and punish the Xindi he considered the most indispensable?
He scowled as he noticed something else. Where the hell did he put my model of the Horizon this time?
Monday, September 10, 2153
“We’d better find the Xindi soon, Hoshi. Otherwise I just might have to kill my roommate,” Mayweather said very quietly. He tried to punctuate his words with an easy smile, but he suspected it looked more like the grimace of a man passing a kidney stone.
“Oh, come on, Travis,” Ensign Hoshi Sato said, grinning around the last few bites of a Reuben sandwich. She leaned forward conspiratorially across the narrow mess-hall table as she scooped up some of the sandwich’s remaining innards, which had plopped unceremoniously onto her plate. “You’ve had to live in close quarters with other people before.”
Mayweather took another sip of his still too-hot coffee.