Myriad Universes 02_ Echoes and Refractions - Keith R. A. DeCandido [160]
Still, it was boring just sitting and watching the stars red-shift by. If there had been anyone around she might have opted for a game of Terrace, or maybe chess, but it seemed that warping into the Neutral Zone wasn’t everyone’s idea of a good time, so Ten Forward was all but deserted. She was half tempted to page Sam Lavelle, who was always up for a bit of fun; but there was always the chance that Lavelle might misinterpret her intentions, reading too much into an invitation to join her for a cup of raktajino. They’d dated for a short while, and it had ended amiably enough, but there was always some tension between them, a kind of expectation that something might at any moment go wrong.
Alyssa Ogawa was always up for a cup and a chat, but she was working her shift in sickbay, and it wouldn’t do for a head nurse to abandon her post just to relax in the rec facility with an old friend.
There was always Wesley Crusher, of course-one of her oldest friends in Starfleet-but these days he seldom strayed far from main engineering, and he’d never really developed a taste for raktajino anyway.
These were the pressures of leadership, Sito thought with a smile, the price of success. She and all her old friends, all of them who had started out together on the Enterprise, had risen together through the ranks, and unlike a few, like Taurik, who had taken transfers to other vessels, most of them still served under Captain Picard. The only difference was that instead of being junior officers with time on their hands, they were senior staff and department heads with hardly any free time at all.
Sito sipped her iced raktajino, remembering more carefree days.
“Is this seat taken?”
Sito was so startled she nearly spit out a mouthful of liquid all over the ship’s tactical officer, which would not have been a good idea.
“N-no,” she sputtered, coughing after inhaling more raktajino than was probably advisable. She regained her composure somewhat and tried again. “No, Commander Ro, have a seat.”
Ro set her own cup down on the table, pulled the chair out and turned it around, straddling it with her arms resting on the chair-back. The movement was a familiar one, but it took Sito a moment to remember where she’d first seen it. It was exactly the way Will Riker used to sit on a chair. She hid a smile, remembering the friction between the former first officer and a somewhat younger Ro Laren. The two had never gotten along, it had seemed, and yet Riker had taken an interest in Ro’s career, and had served as something of a mentor to her, for all that Ro seemed to actively dislike him. Still, Sito and the others’d had a pool running for months, wagering over whether Ro and the first officer would ever break the ice between them and find themselves in an unexpected romantic encounter.
So far as Sito knew, no one had ever won the bet. But seeing Ro sitting across from her now, she wondered just what the tactical officer thought about the officer who had ridden her so hard for so many years, always pushing her to do her best, and then to do better still. Clearly, something had worked to make Ro an exemplary officer.
“You’re drinking raktajino,” Ro observed, glancing at Sito’s nearly empty cup.
Sito looked down, then back up, and shrugged. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“Hmph.” Ro made an indistinct noise. “I didn’t know there were many others onboard who enjoyed it.”
Sito took a sip. “I first had it on a stopover at Deep Space 9, during a visit to Bajor. The station’s liaison officer introduced me to it. I’d never had Klingon coffee before then, but after a few days of it, I was hooked.”
Ro nodded. “I picked it up in Advanced Tactical Training myself. One of my classmates had served aboard a Klingon vessel in an officer