War Stories (Book 1) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [19]
“Even the UT isn’t perfect,” Throckmorton said. “Hell, it sometimes still has problems with the Klingon language.”
Phrebington made a disparaging noise. “That’s not evidence of anything. The Klingon language really is random noise—”
“Let’s get to it, people,” Bart said quickly before another argument erupted.
He and Anthony exchanged a quick glance. Finally, it looked like they were on the right track.
Androssi Vessel Overseen by Biron
STARDATE 53678.5
According to the remainder of the logs the Yridian provided, Faulwell’s team was able to build a translation matrix for the language and decode the Dominion transmissions. It required manually adding a subroutine to all universal translator devices, which struck Biron as inefficient. Androssi computers were equipped with dimensional enhancers to allow such upgrades to be performed instantaneously on all equipment. Yet another way in which the Federation is demonstrably inferior to us.
It made Biron’s defeats all the more galling.
Biron studied several other missions of the U.S.S. da Vinci itself, from their assorted construction missions (an irrigation system on a desert world designated Elvan; a subspace accelerator on the crystalline world designated Sarindar), salvage missions (a one-hundred-year-old Starfleet starship, the U.S.S. Defiant from an interphasic rift in the fabric of space; an alien vessel that the U.S.S. da Vinci crew members gave the inappropriate name “the Beast,” but which was in fact a ship belonging to a species known as the Hlangry, which Biron himself had also encountered two-point-nine cycles earlier), and rescue missions (prisoners from the malfunctioning prison designated the Kursican Orbital Platform; the mining colony of Beta Argola from an attack by the species known as the Munqu).
He noted several references to Commander Sonya Gomez’s exploits during the Dominion War on the U.S.S. Sentinel and decided that it was time to read about some of those missions as well….
U.S.S. Sentinel
STARDATE 52646.1
Lt. Commander Sonya Gomez had been wandering the halls of Deep Space 9 since the Sentinel docked at the station a few hours ago.
I can’t believe I’m lost. I never get lost.
It was a point of pride with her as much as anything. She had always had a dead-on sense of direction. Within three months at the Academy, the fourth-year cadets were asking her for shortcuts around campus. On the Enterprise, the Oberth, Altair IV, and the Sentinel, she knew her way around almost instantly, and never needed to consult the computer for directions.
Yet this Cardassian-built space station was vexing her.
As she turned a corner from one identical dark corridor into another identical dark corridor, she took refuge in a familiar face heading toward her.
“Chief!”
Miles Edward O’Brien looked up from the padd he was studying to see Gomez. “Sonya! Er, sorry, Commander.”
Gomez grinned. “Sonya’s just fine, Chief. How’ve you been?”
“About like you’d expect,” the taller man said with a wry smile.
“Are Keiko and Molly doing all right?”
“Just fine, all things considered. Keiko’s not thrilled with being this close to the front, but with the way things are going, no place is all that safe.”
Remembering the images of the Breen attack on San Francisco that she saw in the Sentinel’s observation lounge, Gomez was forced to agree. “I know what you mean.”
“Oh, and Molly has a brother—Kirayoshi.”
That put the smile back on Gomez’s face. She had always thought the chief and Keiko Ishikawa made a good couple, and she was glad to see that her instincts had proven correct. If only those instincts had been as accurate with Kieran, she thought, then put it out of her head. She and Kieran Duffy had broken up when she transferred off the Enterprise to the Oberth almost eight years ago. They had promised to keep in touch, but didn’t. At times she missed him horribly, at times she forgot all about him. She idly wondered if O’Brien