Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [21]
“Fine,” he said. “And you?”
A shadow crossed her face. “A little tired. But then, we’ve been moving rather quickly.”
“To stop this Nuyyad,” he said.
“Yes,” said Santana. Suddenly, she seemed to shrug off her mantle of care. “I understand you’ve been promoted.”
“Not exactly,” said Joseph, with a glance at Pierzynski. “I’m just the acting head of security.”
Santana shrugged. “I’d be willing to bet that’s only a temporary situation.”
He looked at her askance. Did she know something he didn’t? She was a telepath, after all. She might have dipped into the captain’s mind and read his intentions.
Just as she might have been reading his at that very moment. The realization made him blush.
“It was just a figure of speech,” Santana told him. “Sorry if I got your hopes up.”
“It’s all right,” he assured her.
But it wasn’t, not completely, and he knew that she could tell. She had those powers, after all.
“Well,” Santana said, “it’s good to see you. I’m sure we’ll run into each other again.”
“No doubt,” said Joseph.
He nodded to Pierzynski. Then he continued down the corridor, doing his best not to think anything at all.
Simenon hefted the phaser rifle—a design that was decidedly different from any he had seen before, with its shorter, thicker barrel, its single handle, and its blue-black casing—and then handed it back to the Magnian. In the soft lighting of the engineering section, the weapon glistened like the hide of some dark, lean-muscled predator.
“It feels lighter than ours,” the Gnalish observed.
Vigil O’Shaugnessy nodded, loosening a lock of her sleek brown hair. “That’s because it doesn’t have a trigger, a keypad for making adjustments in beam width and intensity, or a subspace transceiver assembly.”
Simenon looked at her. The subspace transceiver built into every handheld phaser on the Stargazer facilitated communication with the ship’s computer, preventing phased emissions more powerful than “heavy stun.”
In other words, O’Shaugnessy could blow a hole through the Stargazer’s hull if she wished. It made Simenon squeamish just thinking about it.
“And you know about our phaser rifles…?” he asked.
O’Shaugnessy smiled. “It wasn’t by studying the blueprints, I can tell you that.”
Simenon tilted his scaly head to the side. “All our ordnance is—”
“Stowed in the armory,” said the Magnian, “behind six inches of duranium-tritanium alloy. I know.”
The engineer hated it when someone finished his sentences for him, but he put his pique aside in the interest of cooperation. After all, O’Shaugnessy and her team did represent their ace in the hole.
“I thought your people couldn’t perceive anything through walls that thick,” he said.
“Most of us can’t,” O’Shaugnessy confirmed. “However, this is a hand-picked team. We can do things others can’t.”
Simenon supposed he should be grateful for that. But somehow, he found it disturbing.
Of course, he was no stranger to the Magnians. He had worked with them on the defense of their world, taking their talents into consideration as he amplified the effectiveness of their tactical systems.
The level of esper ability he had encountered was impressive to someone who couldn’t overhear a thought or move a teacup with the power of his mind. But O’Shaugnessy, and those with her, seemed to be capable of even more of that.
How much more? the engineer wondered. And would it be enough to do what they came for?
Ensign Cole Paris was about to touch the pressure-sensitive pad beside the entrance to Jiterica’s quarters when he heard voices within.
Clearly, one of them was Jiterica’s. The new containment suit Chief Simenon had designed for her made her voice sound more natural than before, but it still wasn’t produced by vocal cords.
By contrast, the other voice sounded human. And masculine. Definitely not Commander Wu—who, to Paris’s knowledge, was the only member of the crew who had ever visited Jiterica in her quarters.
Besides Paris himself, of course.
In fact, he had come to see Jiterica many times—first as a friend, and in time as a lover. But he had never had to worry about