• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

His solitude here was far more complete than what his shipboard quarters would have afforded him; he never seemed to have that limited space all to himself, even for a few precious hours. As Mayweather sat alone in his booth looking over his transfer applications in the Yorktown’s shadow, he wondered if his latest batch of shipmates hadn’t simply given him a wide berth here after making a collective decision—consciously or not—that he was a latter-day Jonah, a magnet for trouble. As absurd as it sounded, he’d heard enough scuttlebutt over the past few days to convince him that a substantial percentage of the Yorktown’s crew was spooked enough by the war to take this whole “bad-luck charm” business seriously.

And why? Just because I drove Jonathan Archer’s getaway car the night he abandoned the Kobayashi Maru to the slaughter. And because my hand was on the rudder when Discovery went down at Berengaria.

Rereading the stack of “thanks, but no, thanks,” replies from the XOs of the last several ships to which he had submitted transfer-application queries, he couldn’t help but wonder how far and wide this “bad-luck charm” juju had already spread. The entire Dædalus fleet seemed to have drawn the same conclusion about him, figuratively rolling up their gangways at his approach.

Just when he was beginning to believe that a veritable legion of XOs was arrayed against him, he scrolled down to a just-arrived reply to his query about a helm position aboard the recently-launched Atlantis NX-05. Admittedly, it had been one of his long shots, since NX postings were becoming rarer by the day, almost literally.

Mayweather had been accepted, apparently in the hopes that his prior experience aboard Enterprise would help expedite her newest sister ship’s current round of repairs in spacedock. He blinked in disbelief, but the text before him remained confidently in place. He grinned, delighted as much by the chance to rehabilitate his unfairly smeared reputation as he was by another opportunity to fly one of the fleet’s best and fastest vessels. His only regret was having to break the news of his decision to Captain Shosetsu, who had always treated him with decency and fairness. Shosetsu might actually have a serious problem with Mayweather’s decision to leave. But if he did, Mayweather was confident that Commander Mendez would get his CO on board with it in fairly short order.

The Yorktown’s exec had never seemed reticent about disposing of “bad-luck charms,” particularly when they were asking to be sent elsewhere.

FIFTY

Sunday, March 14, 2156

Heliopolis, Achernar II

THANKS TO EARTH’S NEWS MEDIA, Tucker had already seen images of the slow, chaotic exodus from the planet’s main human-inhabited city. But it wasn’t until he actually saw it from space that he realized that it was visible from space.

“The people down there must be terrified,” he said in a not-quite-Vulcan turn of phrase as he swiveled in his copilot’s chair toward Ych’a, who was running the conn panel while simultaneously checking and rechecking the functions on at least two other consoles. Posing as Sodok the trader, Trip had assisted her in checking out the small Tellarite shuttle’s vital systems during the hour or so prior to their purchasing it yesterday at the central Heliopolis spaceport.

“Those people chose to build a city deep inside territory controlled by a deadly and deeply paranoid society,” Tevik said from the portside communications console he was quietly monitoring. “It seems... illogical that the humans here have grown concerned about the possible consequences of their folly only now.”

Tevik’s tone sounded cold-blooded, even for a Vulcan, and his reference to logic seemed particularly alien, at least coming from him. Trip knew his uncomfortable awareness was because Tevik of Vulcan was actually Terix of the Romulan Star Empire. Trip still half-expected the man to call the planet below Atlai’fehill Kre,