Security - Keith R. A. DeCandido [4]
“Good. On screen.”
A very concerned-looking face appeared on the viewer, along with a fortyish, balding man with a blue collar on his uniform. “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Captain. Your doctors weren’t at the conference.”
Gold blinked. “Say again?”
The man in the blue collar spoke up. “Captain, I’m Dr. Dennis Chimelis—I’m the chief medical officer of the Musashi . I’m afraid that neither Elizabeth nor Julian made it to the conference. As it happens, they didn’t win…er, I did, in fact, but the point is—”
Having no interest in the doctor’s point, Gold waved his right hand in front of his face. “What happened to my CMO, Doctor?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
Gold whirled around to the tactical station behind him. “Put a call through to DS9, pronto.”
Winn nodded. “Aye, sir.”
“I’m sorry, if it wasn’t for the ion storm—” Terapane started.
“Understandable, Captain. Don’t worry, we’ll get right on it.”
“We need to make time to Cor Coroli IX. Again, sorry about this.”
“It’s all right. Da Vinci out.”
As soon as the screen reverted to the view of Avril Station, Winn said, “I’ve got Deep Space 9, sir.”
Gold nodded, and the screen switched, this time to a very familiar Bajoran woman in a Starfleet uniform with a red collar and four pips.
With a wry smile, she said, “David, this is getting to be a habit.”
“Not a good one, I’m afraid, Nerys,” Gold said to Captain Kira in as serious a voice as he could muster. “It seems we’ve both got us a problem.”
Chapter
3
U.S.S. da Vinci
in orbit of Coroticus III
NOW
V ance Hawkins waited impatiently for Laura Poynter to hurry up and finish operating the transporter. I need to see my woman. Not to mention my CO.
Their mission to Sachem II had been uneventful. The Dominion had done little to change the lives of the natives, mostly because the natives were fairly easygoing people. P8 Blue had supervised the team of engineers who’d be running the “duckblind,” Vance and his people had found no remnants of a Dominion base that might prove problematic—whatever one might say about the Jem’Hadar, they were good at cleaning up after themselves—and Bart Faulwell had found no evidence of cultural contamination. (The linguist also complained that the natives, who called themselves the O-Mor, had the most boring language he’d ever encountered. Vance gamely tried to be sympathetic.)
Now they had to pick up Commander Corsi and her team from Coroticus, which included Carol Abramowitz.
Vance and Carol had been serving on the da Vinci together since the war, but it wasn’t until their mission to Teneb—during which the entire away team, including the two of them, Fabian Stevens, and Commander Gomez, were almost killed—that they really noticed each other. He enjoyed listening to her talk, her sense of humor, her interest in the nuances of how other people lived their lives—and he could even stand to listen to her music for more than five minutes at a time, which put him one up on their two score crewmates.
As Poynter energized the transporter, Vance felt his stomach drop. There had been no vocal communication with the away team to avoid possible Prime Directive issues. They simply sent a signal to Corsi’s combadge indicating that the da Vinci was approaching. So Vance had no idea how the mission went—though the lack of any kind of distress signal from the duckblind on the planet was, he had hoped, a good sign.
When he saw one of the six members of the team beaming up in a horizontal position, he feared the worst. Dammit, we just buried Ken and that Deverick kid, and Lense has gone missing—we’re not losing another one!
I’m not losing Carol.
To Vance’s relief, the injured team member wasn’t Carol, but Lauoc Soan, and Vance soon saw that he was breathing. That tough little Bajoran had been through hell and back during the war, and Vance was fairly sure that, if he was breathing, he’d be fine.
Corsi—like all of them, dressed in the brightly colored clothing and cloak that the Coroticans favored—barked