Synthesis - James Swallow [6]
Riker bent to take a better look at whoever had conspired to derail his plans. “What’s going on here, mister?” he demanded.
He was rewarded with the sound of a collision as the junior officer in the Jeffries tube reacted with such shock that he banged his head on the panel. With a scrambling motion, a skinny humanoid male backed out into the corridor, shamefaced. “Uh. Captain. Sir. Captain.”
The officer’s collar was science blue with a lieutenant’s pips. He had wide yellow eyes with feline vertical pupils, pale white-gold skin, and strawlike hair. If it hadn’t been for the stubby tail that flicked from the base of his spine, the lieutenant could have passed for a more youthful iteration of Riker’s late colleague, the android Data. Cygnian, he realized, placing the species, searching his memory of the crew’s records. Which means this is—
“Lieutenant Holor Sethe, sir. Computer Sciences Department.” The officer gave him a formal salute. “I, uh, wasn’t expecting, uh, an inspection.” He rubbed the sore spot on his high forehead. Sethe blinked as his thoughts caught up with him, and he frowned at Riker’s lack of uniform.
“I know who you are, Mr. Sethe. You don’t have to salute me,” the captain replied, straightening. “We’re a bit more relaxed here aboard Titan.” He recalled meeting the young officer only once before, and he’d saluted that time as well.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Force of habit.”
Riker pointed at the control panel. “Two things. What’s wrong with my holodeck, and why wasn’t I informed?”
“Um,” began the Cygnian. “Well, nothing, and… why should you be, uh, sir? I mean, begging your pardon, but I thought this sort of noncritical system wouldn’t be a concern for the captain.”
“It is if the captain has it booked out for the next two hours.”
“But—” Sethe managed one word and then stopped dead. He reached for a padd and glared at it. “Today isn’t Friday, is it?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Ah. Um. Sorry. My work schedule is wrong. I shouldn’t be here.” He spun in place and began quickly gathering up all of his equipment, using his wide, slender hands to fold the open access panel back in on itself. “It’s just… before this, I was serving on a largely Vulcan-crewed ship. They have a different day cycle from Federation Standard. Even after all these months, it’s been a bit difficult for me to adjust… keep slipping into old routines.” His fingers danced over the keypad, and the command arch came back to life. “It’s, uh, fine, sir. Go ahead. I’ll get out of your way. Sorry.”
Streams of program titles began a rapid scroll down the panel, and Riker searched fruitlessly for the Lake Armstrong program. “Has this database been altered recently?”
“After the refit at Utopia Planitia, aye, sir.” Sethe nodded. “The Corps of Engineers used the opportunity to tweak a lot of minor systems. They had a Bynar team in here running upgrades to all the holotech.”
Riker recalled a mention of that from the files that had crossed his desk in the days and weeks after the massed Borg attack on the Alpha quadrant. In the aftermath of that bloody, destructive conflict, the Titan had been just one of many Starfleet ships sent back to lick their wounds in spacedock. Since the Titan had left the Sol system on her ongoing mission of exploration, the captain had been in the holodeck only a handful of times, certainly not enough to appreciate the full scope of any improvements.
Sethe opened the doors and jogged into the bare, graysteel chamber, pausing to adjust one of the holographic emitter grids built into the walls. “Okay, sir. I think we’re good to go.”
But Riker’s attention was elsewhere for a moment. Amid the menu of simulations available, he spotted something that gave him pause. Without being quite sure of the impulse that drove him, he tapped the screen.
From the featureless metallic space, smoky walls of careworn wood emerged in swirls of photons; clusters of tables appeared and fanned out across the floor, before a bandstand illuminated