Security - Keith R. A. DeCandido [13]
Gomez put her head in her hands. “You really don’t get it, do you? I didn’t tell you because I had no reason to tell you. And because you didn’t trust my judgment, you went behind my back to Commander Ling, and caused Avril Station to fall to pieces. Now they’re purging your program and installing mine, and it should work out all right.” She looked straight at him. “That was the last straw, Tev. That was the last time you disobey my orders or flaunt my authority. I’ve gone easy on you up until now, partly because I prefer a more casual command style, but that obviously isn’t going to work with you. A formal and lengthy reprimand is going into your record, and I can promise you that any hopes you may have had of making commander next promotion go-round are pretty much in the waste extractor.”
Tev could not believe what he was hearing. “A reprimand? I have done nothing to deserve this!”
“You’ve done everything to deserve this, Tev. And the fact that you can’t even see it makes it all the more clear that it’s the right decision.”
“This is outrageous.” Tev shook his head. He was willing to concede a certain amount to the commander’s infatuation, but—
“Tev—we’re not going to steal credit for your work.”
That brought Tev up short. He looked over at Gomez, and saw that the anger had left her face, replaced with a kind of sadness—no, that wasn’t right. The expression he saw was pity.
“That is…ridiculous, Commander. I thought we went over this.”
“Yes, after our mission to Kharzh’ulla, you insisted that you didn’t hate Eevraith for stealing your work twenty years ago, and you didn’t have any regrets about the life you were leading in Starfleet. But I have to wonder if that didn’t engender a certain fear in you—a worry that someone else might do what Eevraith did. A worry that became so strong that you refuse to work well with anyone else.”
How dare she accuse me of that? So livid was Tev, he was unable to say the words aloud. Plus, while her accusations of his fears were wholly baseless, he did have a legitimate fear that she might take disciplinary action against him. It would be out of character—he learned early on that she had no taste for true leadership—but so was her earlier outburst. She had threatened his career enough for one conversation.
Instead, he simply said, “Is that all, Commander?”
“Think about what I said, Tev. Dismissed.”
He turned on his heel and left the room, intending to do no such thing.
Domenica Corsi stared at the ax.
She lay on her bunk, feet flat on the bed, knees bent and pointing to the ceiling. The box the ax was in leaned against her raised thighs. After the last session in the hololab—after the fourth straight time that Tomozuka Kim fought hard and got back up off the metaphorical mat no matter how much harder she made it—she realized that she could no longer stand the sight of the young Izarian, and told everyone to get some sleep.
Luckily, nobody gave her that order, as she would have had to disobey it. She had no interest in sleeping, because she knew exactly what would happen: she’d dream about Dar. Bad enough he still invaded her dreams on the anniversary of that miserable day on Izar. Last time, she’d banished it by seducing Fabian Stevens. That’s not happening again, she vowed. That’s gotten way too messy for my tastes.
She knew she was conveniently ignoring that her relationship with Fabian had been what kept her going these past months, that she really enjoyed his company, and that she desperately wanted to take it to the next level. But Caitano’s death and Kim’s Izarian face served as regular reminders as to why that was a tragically bad idea.
The ax stared back at her. It had been a family heirloom for three hundred and seventy-five years, and was remarkably well preserved, though the wood of the handle was cracked in spots. She’d taken the ax with her to Starfleet Academy, and it had survived through dozens of missions, from the other-dimensional trip the U.S.S. Soval took when she was assigned there as an ensign to that living ship that almost literally ate