Taking Wing - Michael A. Martin [72]
The door slid open, and the gurgle became louder as Ensign Aili Lavena stepped out, drops of water from her boots spattering the carpet in the corridor. She was attired in her modified uniform, which included the hooded hydration suit that kept her skin from drying out in Titan’s standard M-class environment areas. The door to her quarters closed behind her, once again muffling the aqueous background noises coming from within.
Lavena looked down the corridor and saw Will and Troi standing there. “Good morning, Captain. Counselor.” Her voice sounded slightly muted behind the transparent rebreather mask that loosely covered her face. A small cloud of vapor rose around its edges as she spoke. “I hope the waterlock system didn’t startle you. Some of the landlubbers seem to find it a little disturbing.”
Troi recalled having seen the engineers making the retrofits that had enabled the Selkie conn officer to enter and exit her nonstandard-environment quarters. But neither she nor Will had actually heard Lavena’s customized ingress/egress system in operation before. It certainly stood to reason that the tons of Pacifican seawater the system had to restrain wouldn’t be completely unobtrusive. It sounded disconcertingly like the flushing of a humanoid commode.
“Not at all,” the captain said. “We were just having…” He paused momentarily, and Troi noticed a peculiar if fleeting emotional undercurrent that almost broke the surface before vanishing utterly.
“We were just having a conversation,” he said, his composure once again rock solid.
“Very good, sir,” Lavena said, her head cocked to one side. “I’ll see you both on the bridge.” As the ensign turned and walked away, Troi glimpsed a transitory emotional highlight coming from her as well.
Though short-lived, it was not unlike the one Will had just quashed.
Will began walking forward again, but Troi placed a hand on his arm, holding him in place. Once Lavena had rounded a bend in the corridor, she turned him toward her.
“What was that about?” she said, keeping her voice low even though no one else was within earshot.
He surprised her by actually blushing slightly. “Leave it alone, Deanna. It’s nothing.”
She smiled, her eyes narrowing involuntarily. “It’s not nothing. I felt something coming from both of you.” The sentiment she had barely glimpsed in them both was finally beginning to make sense to her. “It was almost…carnal, for lack of a better word.”
“Deanna,” Will said, his voice deepening, imploring. He was clearly becoming intensely uncomfortable.
No wonder Pacifica was always such a popular shore-leave destination for dashing, unattached young Starfleet officers, she thought. Grinning, she slugged her husband playfully on the shoulder. “You dog! You and Lavena on Pacifica?”
Will resumed moving forward down the corridor, his blush intensifying and spreading to his ears. “It was a long time ago, Deanna,” he said in a near-whisper. “Just once, and right out of the Academy. And I only just now recognized her.”
She hurried to catch up with him, savoring the all-too-rare discomfiture her otherwise easygoing husband was displaying. “Ah, so now there are two people in your bridge crew you’ve been intimate with. I wonder what the admiral would think about that?”
Will shot her a withering glance, but said nothing else aloud. I’m embarrassed enough about this, Imzadi , she felt him say through the empathic bond they shared. Leave it alone, Deanna. Please. His chagrin burned in her mind as brightly as a sodium flare.
Arriving with him at the turbolift, Troi struggled to stifle the fit of giggles that had arrived unbidden. They stepped aboard, and as the doors closed, the empathic bond they shared delivered her an actual concrete image; it was a crystal-clear shard of memory.
It surprised her, but somehow failed to shock her. After all, she knew he’d occasionally been something of a “wolf” very early in his Starfleet career. But because their level of mutual trust and sharing had been so deep and intimate for so long, she simply couldn’t justify holding