Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [57]
On the other hand, his responsibility was much more to the crew than other senior officers. Bush was still a senior officer, and thus was more the captain’s concern than that of another senior officer, other than the ship’s surgeon, who evidently had already weighed in on the subject and decided that being custodial was enough. It might be technically appropriate for Riker to take some action, but not in the realm of polite consideration that officers gave each other.
Bateson should’ve handled Bush’s desperate mental agony years ago. He hadn’t. Apparently he had communicated to his crew that it was all right to shield Bush and deceive Starfleet about the functionality of a commissioned, stationed officer aboard a ship of the line.
By the time Riker was introduced to his quarters, and then was escorted to the bridge of the starship, he was solidly grumpy about the way Morgan Bateson ran his command.
Good way to start off, right?
The turbolift doors parted before him, and Lieutenant Dennis led him onto the sweeping, beautiful bridge of the new Enterprise. It was a more intimate place than the previous Enterprise, each brace, chair, and support designed to mimic the streamlined, forward-leaning outer configuration of the ship’s hull, making each station look as if it were about to leap off a cliff and fly. The lines were all recognizable, the ceiling lower than the other ship. The lower ceiling provided more of that intimacy he suddenly felt.
The colors were muted, rather like being inside a giant computer chip. Brushed-satin structural members of military gray supported hundreds of diagnostic readouts and sensor displays. Six support pylons arched in a semicircle like the ribs of a melon, and each had a lighting panel running along its inboard side. Floor lights glowed upon a carpet of astral blue.
No station was more than four steps from the next station, which meant no one would feel alone or separated here, and they could all see one another’s panels with a glance.
Otherwise, most things were basic Starfleet design, captain’s chair at the center, helm before that, and the main screen directly forward of everything. The functional design had been mimicked in most spacefaring cultures. Klingon bridges, Romulans, Orions, merchants—almost everybody had the same basic design. It just worked.
Dennis immediately went to a station, leaving Riker to stand in the turbolift vestibule and look about in privacy. There were some people here, a few officers, Captain Bateson standing just over there on the port side, going over something on a padd with an engineer, and Deanna Troi was on the forward starboard upper deck, picking off some detail or other on a console.Nobody noticed him.
Nobody except a science officer who now tried to get past him and decided better of that.
“Sir, Lieutenant John Wolfe, Stellar Sciences,” the young man introduced himself. “You must be Mr. Riker. Welcome aboard, sir. Permission to show you around the bridge.”
“Granted,” Riker said. “Just do it from here.”
“Yes, sir.” Wolfe turned and started pointing to stations. “Tactical, Mission Ops, Defense, Science One, Science Two, Ops Manager, Guidance and Navigation, Environmental, Main Engineering Primary Status Display, Warp Propulsion, Impulse Propulsion, Flight Control, FTB Receiving, Systems Diagnostics, Battle Bridge CoStation, Main Computer Core Memory, Docking Control—”
“Thank you, good enough. Pretty much standard, give or take a few.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wolfe. Carry on.”
“Aye, sir.”
Riker paused for a few moments to appreciate the sheer newness of the bridge, the fresh smell of factory-new carpet, the glossy control panel tripolymers, the efficient and yet aesthetic arrangement of terminals and monitor screens with their pretty displays, and the brushed-metal struts gracefully holding everything in place.
And the sounds … he’d forgotten how comforting the soft bleeps and