Q & A - Keith R. A. DeCandido [41]
“And you blame Q?”
“Yes, I bloody well do! Ric was a right mess after that, and nothing I, or Counselor Troi, could do would set it right.”
“Are you concerned about how this will affect you on the mission?”
“I’m concerned about me and the rest of the crew…Honestly, I haven’t even thought about Ric in ten years. I just…I just don’t know if I can trust myself to keep calm.”
“Tell me,” T’Lana said after a moment, “do you find yourself getting angry at your children?”
Snorting, Kadohata said, “I understand. I should act the way I do when Aoki does some typical five-year-old thing.”
“Precisely.”
T’Lana allowed herself a slight upturn of her mouth. “Q is very much like a small child. He can be petulant, moody—”
“—and bloody dangerous when he’s careless and not paying attention.”
“Which is why Captain Picard’s suggestion of ignoring him is a good one—particularly for you.”
Kadohata nodded. “You’re right. Oh, and it was Worf’s idea to ignore him.”
“Indeed?”
T’Lana made a mental note to speak to the first officer. I think, she thought, that it’s past time we did so. T’Lana had had issues with Worf’s appointment as first officer, because he had put his personal desires before his duty during a critical mission. However, she was also willing to reconsider her hypothesis that Worf was unfit to command. The fact that it was he, rather than Picard, who suggested ignoring Q indicated a depth to the Klingon that deserved consideration.
“Counselor, one more thing. The crew seems off, on edge. I just wish there was something more I could do.”
“This crew has been through a great deal of late. The wisest course of action, Miranda, would be to continue to do your duty.”
Kadohata looked thoughtful. “I need to do more than my duty.” Then she got a faraway look on her face. “Perhaps that’s the ticket.”
T’Lana asked, “Ticket?”
“Tradition. Tell me, T’Lana, have you ever played poker?”
10
Karemma trading vessel Shakikein
Gamma Quadrant
One day before the end of the universe
VOGUSTA HATED SPACE TRAVEL.
He understood the need for it, of course. After all, one could not succeed in business if one remained on the Karemma homeworld. It was a useful base of operations, naturally—what better place to find a Karemma businessperson than on Karemma? But limiting oneself to that spot was just that: limiting. The Ferengi had a saying for it, as they seemed to for everything: “Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of currency.” Vogusta had always thought the saying to be lacking in clarity—the rib cage was where the heart was, and stars weren’t actually made of currency at all—but he appreciated the greater meaning.
If only it didn’t require actually traveling in space…
Intellectually, of course, Vogusta knew that the bulkhead wasn’t going to crack or collapse or implode or explode or do any of the hundreds of other things it might do to expose Vogusta, Vogusta’s cargo, Shipmaster Darsook, and Darsook’s entire crew to the pitiless vacuum of space. Emotionally, though, he was expecting it to happen at any second.
When he had hired the Shakikein to take him to the Gaia system to meet with DaiMon Neek, a stipulation of the hire was that Vogusta’s cabin was to be in the central part of the vessel, with no portals to the outside. He couldn’t imagine any reason why he would be summoned to the flight deck, but if he was, all viewers were to show computer-generated sensor images rather than image translations of same. He wanted nothing to remind him that he was in the middle of an airless nothingness that would render him dead.
It was the only way he could get through the voyage.
As it was, he had to turn down two cheaper ships—a Dosi freighter and another Karemma vessel—because they could