Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [25]
“Thank you, Mr. Worf.”
Rising, the captain made for the turbolift.
Two
“Admiral?”
“Yes?”
“The Charleston has arrived, sir. Commander Asmund is beaming down now.”
“Thank you, Mr. Marcos. Please see to her wants. I’ll be by to meet her shortly.”
Vice-Admiral Yuri Kuznetsov cursed softly under his breath as he pulled up his swim trunks. Yet another of these Stargazer survivors, he mused. And if she was anything like the first two, it was nothing to look forward to.
Look on the bright side, he instructed himself. It’s only for another couple of days. Then the Enterprise comes and takes them all away, and you never have to put up with them again.
Truth be told, Dr. Greyhorse wasn’t so bad. A little too serious for Kuznetsov’s taste, a little too intellectual. Carrying on a conversation with him was like talking to a machine. But from what he understood, these were personality defects that ran rampant at Starfleet Medical. And if they were disingenuous, they were also tolerable.
It was the Gnalish, Simenon, that really jump-started Kuznetsov’s reactors. Not only was he opinionated, self-centered, and domineering…he also brought out the worst in Dr. Greyhorse. Since their arrivals, which were almost simultaneous, the two had done nothing but butt heads on every subject in creation. No doubt, at some level they enjoyed their bickering. But listening to it was driving Kuznetsov up a wall—and then some.
He grabbed a towel, closed his locker, and padded barefoot across the synthetic tile floor. He could almost feel the temperature-controlled water leeching away his frustration.
It was his responsibility to entertain Greyhorse and the Gnalish—Starfleet Command had made that plain enough. They didn’t want anything to go wrong with Captain Morgen’s return to Daa’V. With the Romulans an active threat again, the Daa’Vit Confederacy was too valuable an ally to take chances with—and if the Stargazer people were important to Morgen, that made them important to the brass back on Earth.
But it was 0600 hours—long before he was scheduled to go on duty. For a little while, anyway, he could relax.
As Kuznetsov approached the locker room exit, he had a premonition. A nagging something at the back of his consciousness.
In fifteen years of active service, he had learned never to ignore his feelings. So it was with some trepidation that he stepped forward, triggering the entry mechanism.
The doors slid apart silently. The pool sprawled before him, its blue depths lit from below.
And among the shifting light shadows floated Phigus Simenon, former chief engineer of the Stargazer. Noticing Kuznetsov’s entrance, the Gnalish looked up, his slitted ruby eyes evincing amusement.
“Ah,” he said. “Admiral. So good to see you.” He raised his tail out of the water languidly, then let it submerge again. His scaly gray body gleamed in the bluish light. “Care to join me?”
My God, thought Kuznetsov. Is there no escape?
Morgen had served aboard the Stargazer for only nine years, but it seemed like much more. His presence was such that when Picard recalled his decades-long foray into deep space, he could swear that the Daa’Vit had been at his side from the first to the last.
Apparently, Morgen felt much the same way, or he would not have honored his Stargazer crewmates by asking them to be his honor guards.
But as the transporter platform became host to the Daa’Vit’s reassembling molecules, Picard wondered how much Morgen had changed in other respects. After all, the last time he’d seen him, the Daa’Vit was still a junior-grade lieutenant. Now he was a captain—a peer. And more than that—Morgen was only days away from ruling one of the Federation’s most powerful allies.
Then again, this prodigious fate had always been in the cards for the Daa’Vit. And he had never tried to gain special treatment because of it. Nor had he let it temper his sense of humor—a caustic wit that was apparently typical of his race.
Ensconced in a shaft of blue light, Morgen began to take on shape and substance.