Taking Wing - Michael A. Martin [8]
A small, puzzling smile tugged at the corner of Deanna’s mouth. “Acknowledged,” Riker said. “Tell the transporter room that Commander Troi and I are on our way. Riker out.” Turning away from the railing, Riker reached out to the platform’s interface console and deactivated the Orion Arm simulation.
He turned back toward her. “What’s that smile for?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Deanna said, brushing the question aside.
Riker’s eyes narrowed with good-natured suspicion, but he decided to let the matter drop. As the captain and counselor walked together toward the exit, the walls of the lab shifted, returning to their usual standby display of the visible universe surrounding Titan. Beyond the gridwork of the ship’s drydock, the orange sunlit face of Mars dominated the space to starboard, the flat, smooth lowlands that were home to Utopia Planitia’s ground installations obliquely visible to the extreme north; at Titan’s port side, the stations and maintenance scaffolds of Utopia’s orbital complex stood out starkly against the yellow-white brilliance of Sol.
“Has the rest of the senior staff come aboard?” Riker asked Deanna as they exited the lab and strode into the corridor. He nodded at two of the ship’s biologists as they passed, an Arkenite whose name he couldn’t recall at the moment, followed by a lumbering Chelon of the palest green Riker had ever seen on a member of that species. The scientists nodded back.
“Almost,” Deanna answered. “Dr. Ree is the last. Well, except for the first officer, of course. But assuming nothing goes wrong there, you’ll be able to hold your staff meeting on schedule, and with everybody present.”
Riker tried to keep his expression steady as they passed an exposed length of the corridor wall, where several techs from the Corps of Engineers were still working at replacing a faulty ODN relay in a replicator network that crossed half the corridor. The work looked considerably more complicated than it had half an hour ago, the last time Riker passed through this section.
“I’m less worried about having a quorum at the staff meeting than I am about launching on schedule.”
“Don’t be such a worrier, Will,” Deanna said. “A few bumps along the way are natural. We still have two weeks. She’ll be ready.”
“Any new bumps I should know about?”
“Not really. Just the challenges you’d expect from trying to accommodate a crew this biologically diverse aboard a single starship. I was on deck seven while the construction team was putting the final section of Ensign Lavena’s quarters into place. I must say it’s a little unnerving to see a wall of Pacifican ocean water that extends from floor to ceiling. If we ever have a forcefield problem, her quarters will have to stay sealed, otherwise the rest of that deck will have a huge flood on its hands.”
Riker smiled. Titan’s distinction as having the most varied multispecies crew in Starfleet history was one in which he took great pride. He was convinced it set the right tone, for the right mission, at just the right time in the Federation’s history. Small wonder, then, that it was also an engineering and environmental nightmare. At least, until all the kinks were finally worked out.
“You’re right,” Riker said. “I’m not going to worry about it. Besides, it wasn’t all that long ago when we had to deal with ships that could have taken on a lot more water than that.” Our honeymoon on the Opal Sea, he thought. Quite an adventure that was.
They reached a turbolift and stepped inside. “Transporter room four,” Riker instructed it. The doors closed, and the lift started to move.
“There’s something I do need to bring up,” Deanna said. “It’s Dr. Ra-Havreii.”
“What about him?”
“He’s asked to remain aboard Titan during its shakedown.”
Riker frowned. “Did he say why?”
Deanna shook her head. “He wasn’t specific, but I could tell he was troubled about something.”
“A problem with the ship?”
“No, I asked him that immediately. He said he has no concerns about how Titan will