Synthesis - James Swallow [5]
“Very funny,” said Melora in a way that made it clear she thought exactly the opposite.
“Look, I know how you feel. I’ve been in the same situation.” Unbidden, Jaza Najem’s face rose briefly in her thoughts. Vale’s relationship with the Titan’s Bajoran science officer had been brief but just as talked about. All these months later, all the time that had passed since he’d been lost on Orisha, and she still felt a moment of pause at the thought of him. She shook it off. “What I’m saying is, don’t worry about it. A few weeks ago, people were talking about Deanna and Will and their new baby. This week, it’s you and Xin. Next month, when Lieutenant Keyexisi enters the budding cycle, it’ll be him.”
“I don’t like the idea of my personal life being discussed as if it’s the plot of a holodrama.”
But Ra-Havreii does. The thought popped into Vale’s head the moment Melora spoke. In the first officer’s opinion, the Titan’s chief engineer liked his reputation a bit too much, trading on his iconoclastic behavior and—until recently—his cavalier attitude toward members of the opposite sex. The man was a genius, that was without question, but Vale had to admit that on occasion his attitude chafed on her. At times, she felt he was too contrived, too brazen about being brazen, as if it were a mask he’d worn so long he’d forgotten how to take it off. In her time as a peace officer on her native Izar, in the years before she’d joined Starfleet, Vale had seen the same thing in dozens of people—suspects, mostly.
So it had come as a surprise to her to learn that RaHavreii and Pazlar had become an item. From what she knew of Efrosian culture, the whole concept of any kind of long-term commitment was far outside the experience of males of his species. So not a lot different from some human men, then, she thought dryly.
“It hasn’t been easy for us,” Melora said quietly. “This doesn’t help.”
Part of Christine wanted to tap her combadge and summon Commander Troi or Doctor Huilan. I’m not a counselor. I’m no expert on the whole relationship thing. But she knew why the Elaysian was confiding in her: precisely because she wasn’t Deanna or Sen’kara. She sighed. “All you can do is give it your best shot. Don’t sweat the little stuff. Xin might be flighty, okay, but you’ve got a real connection. He cares about you. If you try to make it work, so will he.”
At length, her words seemed to have the right effect. Melora nodded. “Thank you, Commander. I appreciate that.” She floated up, back into the stars, and Vale left her behind, wandering out into the corridor.
See, she said to herself, I am a great liar.
The string of mumbled expletives was what led the captain to the service hatch next to the doorway of holodeck 2. A pair of long, thin legs extended out into the corridor, the rest of the torso they were attached to swallowed up by the open maintenance crawlway in the wall. A halo of tools and padds lay untidily on the deck, and every now and then, a milk-pale hand wandered out to snag a hyperspanner or laser sealer before disappearing back into the hatch.
Riker glanced at the control panel in the holodeck’s command arch. None of the touch-sensors responded to him, and the main system display was blank except for three words: “Please Stand By.”
He put down the heavy bag. For all the talk of captain’s prerogative and the like, it was actually pretty damned hard for a starship’s commanding officer to find a space in his schedule for something approaching actual leisure time. That was made worse if said captain wanted to synch up his day off with that of another officer, namely his wife, the ship’s senior diplomat. Riker’s pleasant mood lost some of its warmth to find that the holodeck he’d reserved for his use was off-line.
He’d planned to run a great resort program, one of his personal favorites, a simulation of an area of low-gravity parkland at the edge of Lake Armstrong on Luna. With Deanna doubtless on her way down to