Ring Around the Sky - Allyn Gibson [3]
“Commander,” said Gomez, “we can stare at each other across the table all day if that’s how you want to play it. If there’s a problem, I’d prefer to know about it now, when we can do something about it, rather than later, when the mission’s on the line.”
Tev took a deep breath and scrunched his snout. “I request that I be taken off this mission,” he said at last.
“Why?” Gomez asked as she shifted in her seat.
Tev looked at her quietly from behind impassive, bleary eyes. Finally he spoke, with a depth of emotion that Gomez had never heard from the Tellarite before. “Had Starfleet given me any choice in the matter, I would have chosen not to be here, Commander.” Gomez began to cut him off, but he held up a hand. “Yes, I was raised on Kharzh’ulla. But I left there many years ago, and I would prefer not to return. My life there—” He paused, then continued: “—ended badly.”
Gomez shook her head. “You’ll have to do better than that, Commander.” She paused. “Whatever your misgivings about returning home, whatever happened in the past, the fact remains that I need you and the team needs you. Captain Scott pushed for the da Vinci to be assigned this mission on the strength of your experience, and you would be doing the team a disservice if you sat out this mission.”
Beneath his beard, Tev’s face flushed red and his nostrils flared in anger. “Kharzh’ulla IV is not my home, Commander. I am from Tellar. I merely lived on Kharzh’ulla.”
“There’s no one aboard who knows more about Kharzh’ulla IV than you do,” said Gomez, hoping to appeal to his overweening pride. She stood, planted her hands firmly on the table, and her stare bored into Tev’s eyes. “I won’t take you off this mission, Commander, not now. If you want to put in a request to the captain, I won’t stand in your way, but I will go on record as believing you are putting your personal history ahead of the mission. Understood?”
Tev nodded slowly, his eyes and expression unreadable.
Gomez stood up from the table. “Good. You’ll have the briefing ready?”
Tev nodded again. “As I said I would.”
“Then I won’t keep you from your work, Commander.”
As she left the mess hall she heard Tev munching on his twigs and humming softly to himself. She shook her head. This mission promised to be simple, but Tev’s attitude made her question just how simple it would be.
Chapter
2
Captain David Gold drummed his fingers on the conference room table. He never liked to be kept waiting, and certainly not for a routine mission briefing.
“Where is he, Gomez?” he asked, looking pointedly at his first officer seated next to him.
Gomez frowned. “I don’t know, sir. He was preparing for the briefing earlier this morning, and he assured me he would be ready. Should I page him?”
“Your call.”
Gomez tapped her combadge. “Gomez to—”
The doors opened, and Tev bounded into the conference room, several padds clutched in his arms.
“You’re late, Tev,” said Gold.
“My apologies, Captain. Commander,” he said with a quick nod of his head in Gomez’s direction. “Preparing one of the simulations took longer than I had anticipated.”
“Let’s get the briefing started,” said Gomez. “The floor is yours, Tev.”
Tev took a deep breath and looked at the team seated around the conference room table. He touched the table’s computer interface, and the viewscreen image changed from the Federation emblem to an image of a Class-M planet, mottled blue and orange. “This is Kharzh’ulla IV, a Tellarite colony on the fringe of Federation space,” Tev said. The image zoomed in, and the planet grew larger. Continents took on distinctive features. An archipelago near the planetary equator came into focus. Solid structures rose from the planet’s surface like spokes on a bicycle wheel arrayed around