Progenitor - Michael Jan Friedman [1]
He hit Pierzynski in the ribs, just below his elbow. Point and match. “Alas,” he said.
Pierzynski reached for the top of his mask and pulled it down, exposing his flushed, fatigued-looking face. Then he tucked the mask under his sword arm and extended his hand to the captain.
“Good one, sir. One more?”
Picard removed his own mask and clasped the security officer’s hand. “Perhaps some other time, Mr. Pierzynski. I’m due on the bridge in half an hour.”
Pierzynski nodded. “Of course, sir.” He smiled sheepishly. “I hope I didn’t disappoint you too much, sir.”
The captain smiled back and lied through his teeth. “You didn’t disappoint me at all, Lieutenant. I simply had a good day.”
That seemed to make Pierzynski feel a little better. At least, it seemed that way to Picard as he showered, dressed, and made his way to the bridge.
He arrived just in time to receive word from his communications officer that a message was arriving for him. Naturally, the captain reckoned it was from Starfleet Command, since his only orders at the moment were to exchange personnel at Starbase 42.
He was wrong. It wasn’t from Command, after all. Apparently, it was from the Crazy Horse.
“Really,” Picard said, wondering what it might be about.
“Really, sir,” Lt. Paxton confirmed for him.
“I’ll take it in my ready room,” Picard told his comm officer, and went there to receive the message.
Phigus Simenon, chief engineer of the Federation starship Stargazer, eyed the knot of scarlet-clad specialists standing at attention in front of him. There were twelve of them in all, males and females representing six different species.
They didn’t seem happy. But then, he didn’t want them to be happy. Not after what he had just seen.
“Disgraceful,” he spat, feeling his anger constrict the flow of blood in his throat vessels. “Absolutely disgraceful.”
“Sir,” said Dubinski, one of Simenon’s senior officers, “in all fairness—”
Simenon cut the man short with a snap of his tail. “Fairness?” he repeated, giving the word a bitter twist as it echoed throughout the engineering section. “You want fairness after you let this ship go up in a ball of matter–antimatter fury?”
In reality, the Stargazer hadn’t suffered so much as a scratch. But that was because the events of the last several minutes had only been a simulation of a warp core containment failure, not a real one.
Simenon ticked off his section’s failings on the digits of one scaly clawlike hand. Each accusation snapped and cut like the business end of a very sharp whip.
“First,” he hissed, “you relaxed and assumed the internal sensors would detect the beginnings of the failure. Second, you allowed the computer to respond to the situation, when you should have taken the initiative yourselves.”
Both were grievous errors, considering Simenon had shut down the sensors and the computers for a five-minute period. But then, what good was a test if it was too easy?
“And third,” he finished, “you hung onto the core too long when you should have ejected it immediately.”
The assembled engineers seemed to strain under the weight of their superior’s charges. They weren’t used to this kind of talk—even from the likes of him.
But it wasn’t Simenon’s job to mollycoddle them. His job was to make sure the ship got what it needed in the way of power and propulsion and a number of other critical areas, and he would be damned if he was going to fall short of accomplishing that.
That was why he was ripping into his engineers, right? To ensure that they didn’t falter in their vigilance? To make sure the Stargazer didn’t fall victim to some ridiculous and avoidable oversight?
“Sir,” said Dubinski, now that Simenon had vented the worst of his figurative spleen, “I’d like permission to speak.”
Simenon fixed the fellow with his lizardlike gaze. “Permission granted, Mr. Dubinski. I can’t wait to hear the excuse