Progenitor - Michael Jan Friedman [6]
Nikolas didn’t know Paris very well, but he had a premonition that the guy was right. Paris seemed a little off somehow, a little too stiff for his own good—like a toy soldier Nikolas had seen once in the window of an antiques store.
Different from Caber, he thought. That was for damned sure. As different as high noon and midnight.
“So what do you do,” Nikolas wondered, “when you’re not busy saving the universe?”
Paris stared at him for a second, a knot of flesh gathering over the bridge of his nose. Then he said, “Another joke?”
Nikolas nodded. “Sort of. But a question, too.”
His roommate shrugged. “I do like to read.”
Now we’re getting somewhere, Nikolas told himself. “Anything in particular?”
“Uh huh. Piloting manuals. That sort of thing.”
Inwardly, Nikolas cringed. “Really.”
“Can’t get enough of them.”
Nikolas managed a smile. “How about that.”
Paris looked thoughtful. “You know,” he said, “I could go for something to eat.”
The guy was talking Nikolas’s language. “Why don’t we head for the mess,” he said, “and I’ll—”
“But I’ve got an orientation meeting with Commander Wu,” his roommate finished, “and I don’t want to be late. First impressions and all that. See you later, all right?”
“Yeah,” said Nikolas. “See ya.”
As he watched Paris leave their quarters, he couldn’t help thinking how much Paris and Wu were going to love serving together. Between them, they didn’t have a relaxed bone in their bodies.
To a casual observer, Dikembe Ulelo would appear to be sitting at his console on the bridge of the Stargazer, exchanging routine data with the comm officer on Starbase 42.
But in reality, he was focused on another matter entirely. He was reflecting on the progress of his mission.
The junior communications officer had accomplished quite a bit since his arrival on the Stargazer a few weeks earlier. He had examined the engineering section, the shuttlebay, and a critical component of the deflector array. However, there was still a good deal more that he could learn.
For instance, Ulelo had yet to get a look at the ship’s weapons control center. Vigo, the chief weapons officer, had agreed to give him a tour of the place when an occasion presented itself, but to date that hadn’t happened.
Ulelo might have expressed a stronger desire to take Vigo’s tour, but he didn’t want to arouse the weapons chief’s suspicion. So he had decided to wait until the next time Vigo invited him to play sharash’di, and then remind his colleague about his invitation.
Eventually, he reflected, he would get Vigo to show him what he wanted to see. It was just a matter of time.
A green light began to flash in the corner of one of Ulelo’s communications monitors. It alerted him that the ship was in the process of receiving a subspace packet from the nearest Starfleet relay station.
It was part of his job to go through the packet and distribute its component messages to the appropriate parties. After all, only some of it represented official business. Much of it was personal mail intended for individual members of the crew.
The comm officer would also make a copy of each message for his own use. Then he would download the lot of them to the computer terminal provided in his quarters.
Of course, this would constitute a clear-cut violation of Starfleet regulations. But he would accept the risk if it meant knowing just a bit more about his colleagues—because knowing them better might gain him easier access to key operating areas of the ship.
And the more Ulelo learned about the Stargazer, the better equipped he would be when the time came.
Chapter Three
AS JEAN-LUC PICARD CONTEMPLATED the computer screen in his ready room, he heard a chime. “Come,” he said.
The doors parted and Ben Zoma walked in. “There’s a rumor going around that that last packet contained new orders. Any truth to it?”
The captain smiled. “Quite a bit, actually.”
Ben Zoma sat down opposite Picard. “So where are we going?”
“The Egreggedor system. There are