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At night, though, it doesn’t look like much of anything. Sarindar doesn’t have a moon, so the only illumination is provided by the stars and by the dull lanterns that had been issued to the work camps. I wish I’d thought to bring some Starfleet lamps, which would have illuminated the whole place, and perhaps glinted off the plants and ground, but the only one I have is attached to my sonic rifle. The Nalori lanterns cast the dullest of yellow glows—they seem to wash all the life out of the planet.

Or maybe it’s the workers themselves. They sit outside their tents—tents —and eat, drink, play cards, tell stories, but there’s no enthusiasm. Nobody is ever smiling. The stories I catch snatches of all sound depressing. The drunk ones are all melancholy, and the hungry ones only seem to be eating to sustain themselves (though, given the quality of the food, that’s probably all you can expect).

And they all look at me with contempt as I walk by. I wonder how much of it is because I’m Starfleet and how much is because I’m a woman.

Not that it matters. I’m going to do this job, dammit. I’ve never failed an assignment yet, I’m not about to start now.

Personal log, Commander Sonya Gomez, planet Sarindar, Stardate 53274.9

It’s amazing what you can accomplish by fixing an antigrav unit.

J’Roh skittered to my tent about ten minutes ago and said, “It works.”

“What works?” I asked him.

“The load-lifter. I fixed everything the diagnostic-program said was wrong with it. And it works.”

“That’s kind of how it goes, J’Roh—that’s what diagnostic programs are for.”

“Maybe for you, but that’s never happened here.”

“Did you fix the other units?”

J’Roh chirped. “No. I only just finished repairing the one you told me to fix.”

“It took all day?”

“There were a great many things wrong with it—and, to be honest, I’d never fixed one before. Usually we would just smack it on the side.”

I put my head in my hands. “What about the rest of them?”

“I fixed all the diagnostic routines on them—that was pretty easy, actually—and I assigned a detail to fix them first thing in the morning.”

Probably the same detail I wanted to fix the antigravs in the first place. The point is, they all should be functioning within the next twenty-eight hours.

I needed that boost after the day I had had, though. I went with Razka to check up on the detail I had reassigned from tubing construction to digging—turns out nine of them called in sick.

I went to Kejahna to ask him about this. He stands almost two meters tall, and has arms roughly the size of warp nacelles. He has more scars on his face and arms than any of the other Nalori in the workforce. Part of me is curious as to what led to that, but most of me thinks I’m better off not knowing.

In any case, when I asked him about all the sick people, he said, “Oh yes, they’ve all come down with Dakota’s disease. It’s been going around. They’ll be out for at least a day or two.”

Dakota’s disease is a minor respiratory problem—not even a disease, really, more of a viral infection, but the doctor who discovered it was named Dakota, and the name stuck. It shouldn’t even be enough to keep people off work. It is very easy, however, to fake the symptoms, especially with the substandard medical equipment in Dolahn’s hospital.

In other words, the perfect thing for a “ sick-out.” The erstwhile tubing detail didn’t want to dig, so they decided to pretend to be sick to get out of working at something they didn’t like. It’s a particularly immature form of protest, and it wasn’t something I was going to stand for.

“Dakota’s disease?” I said with as much shock as I could muster. “I’ll need their names right away.” I started inputting commands into my padd. “They’ll each need to be isolated in separate tents for fifty-six hours.”

“Excuse me?”

“Standard quarantine procedure,” I said offhandedly. “We’ll have to set aside nine tents for them each to stay in. Someone will have to be assigned to take