Mosaic - Jeri Taylor [73]
Kathryn moved to the table and sat opposite him.
"Thank you for being honest with me," she said. "It helps a lot. But try to understand: This mission is important to me. And my way of working is as valid to me as yours is to you. I'm willing to compromise, but I'll ask you to do the same."
There was a silence between them. Kathryn half expected him to go back to his padd, excluding her and enveloping himself in his work. Instead, the hint of a smile tugged at his lips, and to her dismay, she found her fingertips tingling-that old, familiar, treacherous sensation. No, she thought. No, no, no, no, no. Not again.
"You're a tough one, Ensign. I like that. Weak people annoy me. But-are you as tough as I am? I guess we'll have to wait and see."
And without further discussion, he swung the padd around and began to give her the notes on sensor resolution and sensitivity that he'd been assembling.
Her response was so deeply ingrained that it was barely conscious. Somewhere, deep inside, a voice was saying, "I'll show him. I'll win him over."
But far below that was another small, wounded voice with a cry that had never surfaced, one that Kathryn had never heard and yet had guided her through most of her life.
Six months later, she sat next to Admiral Paris in the two-person shuttle, and reflected on that initial encounter with Justin Tighe. She'd been proud of the way she'd handled the situation, and confident that the going from that point would be smooth.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Lieutenant Tighe had proved to be an infuriating partner, a stern and demanding perfectionist, rigid in his work habits and intolerant of human error or frailty. There had been no change whatsoever in the way he treated her, which was essentially as a mobile tricorder, from the first day until now. It was a relief to get away from him and accompany Admiral Paris on this short mission to one of the moons of Urtea II, where They had mounted a sensor array three months earlier. There should now be valuable records of the K.havior of extragalactic neutron stars and nonbaryonic matter, two major components of the galaxy's distant halo. "Hear much from your father?" ventured the admiral once they were underway. "Actually not, sir. He sent me a subspace message a couple of months ago, but he couldn't really tell me what he was doing." As usual, thought Kathryn. "He looked tired. He must be working hard."
"I wouldn't doubt it." There was a silence between them, for talk of her father always raised the specter of Cardassia, and hence the questions that remained unanswered about their own mission-questions that couldn't even be posed.
To her relief, Kathryn had found that that other, covert, mission might as well not have existed. She was unaware of the ship's doing anything except surveying the galactic rim and amassing data on halo objects. If there was information gathering going on at the same time, she was gratefully ignorant of it.
"I got a communication from my son Tom the other day," continued Paris. A smile of what could only be called paternal pride played on his mouth. "He won the aeroshuttle derby at his school. Set a record for the course."
"You must be proud."
"I knew from the time he was a toddler that he'd be a pilot. I'd take him with me on routine flights, and I remember from the time he was two he was fascinated by the controls. He'd sit and watch me work them and not move for hours. He was like a little adult, studying and learning. When he was five he asked if he could try the simulator."
Admiral Paris shook his head and smiled at the memory. "It was all I could do not to laugh. Put a five-year-old in a simulator? How could he possibly handle it? Well, I asked him a few questions and damned