Security - Keith R. A. DeCandido [10]
Hawkins raised an eyebrow. “We do not ‘go all smoochy-face.’ I’m not even sure what that means. Anyhow, something’s gotten the boss’s back up, and I don’t know what it is. I don’t think it was Coroticus.”
Shaking his head, Stevens said, “Not that I noticed, but I wasn’t with her as much.”
“Not that T’Mandra or Vinx noticed, either—their after-action reports are pretty straight-up.”
“On the other hand,” Stevens said while rubbing his chin, “she hasn’t been entirely right with things since Ken died. You know about them, right?”
Hawkins shook his head, unaware that there was any history between Corsi and Caitano.
“Dom tried to keep it under wraps, but—well, Caitano’s dad was her mentor back at the Academy. So when he died—especially like that—she took it pretty hard.”
Leaning back in the mess hall chair, Hawkins said, “Damn. I didn’t know that. That explains a lot, actually.” Finishing off his coffee in one gulp, Hawkins then rose. “Listen, I need to get back. Do me a favor—I don’t know what exactly you and the commander have going, and I honestly could live a happy life without ever knowing any specifics—”
“This from the man who can’t shut up about how wonderful Carol is.”
Hawkins shot Stevens another look. “That isn’t the point.”
“Easy for you to say—I need to wear polarized goggles just to keep from being blinded by your glow.”
“Are you gonna listen to me, or are you gonna run your mouth off?”
Grinning, Stevens said, “Evidence to date indicates I can do both.”
Hawkins rubbed the bridge of his nose with his right forefinger and thumb. The coffee was doing nothing to alleviate the headache that he’d had since Corsi announced he was on gamma shift. “Can you just talk to her? See if anything’s bothering her? And if it is—I don’t know, do something about it?”
“What do you suggest I do?”
“Didn’t I just get finished telling you I don’t want specifics?”
“That you did, yes.” Stevens sipped from his coffee. “Fine, I’ll do what I can, but I can’t promise it’ll do any good. Believe me, if I had any real impact on the way Dom behaves—well, let’s just say that you wouldn’t be so unclear as to what we have going.”
That brought Hawkins up short. There was a depth of feeling to Stevens’s words that he’d rarely heard from the usually freewheeling engineer. “You really care about her, don’t you?”
For a second, Stevens’s face remained serious, then broke into his trademark grin, though the jocularity didn’t quite extend to his entire face. “To a degree that scares the hell out of me sometimes.”
Hawkins was about to turn and leave the mess hall, then hesitated. “Carol told me something after we became a couple. She said the thing she got most from both Galvan VI and Teneb was that this is the only life we got, and we don’t know when it’s gonna be taken away, so it’s stupid not to make the most of it.”
“Smart lady, is our Dr. Abramowitz.” Stevens tried to make the comment sound facetious, but failed.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay, Fabe?”
“Definitely.”
Hawkins left, still unsure as to what was wrong with his CO, but also a lot more confident about at least one person’s ability to take a shot at getting it out of her.
Chapter
6
U.S.S. da Vinci
in search operations between Stations Kel-Artis
and Deep Space 9
NOW
T ev sat at an aft station of the bridge of the da Vinci, looking over the recalibrations that Commander Gomez, Chief Engineer Conlon, and Specialists Blue and Stevens had done. The work was excellent, almost as good as Tev himself would have done.
From the tactical station that faced Tev’s console, Ensign Winn said, “We’ve reached the coordinates, sir.”
Standing up, Tev looked toward the conn at the fore of the bridge. “Full stop and commence search pattern.”
“Answering all stop, sir,” Ensign Barre said from conn as she ceased the da Vinci’s forward thrust, and applied the reverse thrusters in the configuration necessary to bring the ship to as close to sitting still as was possible in the depths of space.
From next to Barre at the operations console, Ensign Lambdin said, “Beginning search