War Stories (Book 2) - Keith R. A. DeCandido [6]
Everyone looked at him.
Okha shrugged. “That’s the closest I can come to ‘sis-boom-bah’ in Old High Andorii.”
The Bynars stared at the linguist for a moment, then turned as one toward Fabian. “How was this bartender—”
“—able to get at the mechanism—”
“—of the torpedo?”
Fabian sighed. “He wouldn’t tell us. He said he used a regular tool kit, and made a comment about never revealing a trade secret.” He looked up. “Computer, compare sensor readings of the device to that of the Jem’Hadar torpedo confiscated aboard the U.S.S. Defiant on stardate 49265. Is there a design correlation?”
“Material used to house specified Jem’Hadar torpedo is a ninety-nine-percent correlation to the material used for the surface of the device.”
“Okay, so it’s almost definitely Karemma.”
“Do they play golf?” Abramowitz asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” Fabian said, finding himself unclear as to whether or not the cultural specialist was serious. “What I need is a standard emergency tool kit.”
Okha snorted. “Good luck.” At Fabian’s questioning look, the linguist continued. “This is an S.C.E. ship. There’s nothing ‘standard’ on here. Everything is top of-the-line and refurbished and toyed with and tinkered with.”
Fabian sighed and started putting together a mental list. Quark managed to get the torpedo open with nothing but the equipment found in a standard emergency tool kit, and Fabian was damned if he was going to let that Ferengi troll outdo him….
* * *
Salek fit the ODN conduit into the communications relay with a gloved hand. That meant that he was now done with seventy-six percent of the work he had assigned to himself to do, and should have his tasks completed within the hour. He reached into the supply case that he had magnetically attached to the side of the relay in order to retrieve another new ODN conduit. Several dozen of them had been vaporized by the Cardassian attack, and several more damaged, as were many isolinear optical chips. Salek had appointed himself the task of replacing them. Even as he did so to one of the outer sections of the relay—remaining tethered to it via his magnetic boots—Duffy was reattaching the relay’s hull plating in another section. Both of them wore EVA suits. Blue, meanwhile, had gone to work on the transmitter array.
As he pulled out the latest conduit, he activated the communicator in his EVA suit.
“Away team, report.”
“Aft hull plating’s almost welded on,” Duffy reported. “Then I can get to the fore. Pity I don’t have the golf ball, then I could play through.”
Blue’s voice then came over the comm line. “Transmitter array should be online in about twenty minutes.”
“Excellent. I have replaced half of the ODN conduits and all of the isolinear chips. Carry on.”
Salek, of course, did not bother to rein in Lt. Commander Duffy’s humorous excesses, having long since realized that they were part and parcel of his personality, and they never interfered with his ability to perform his duty. Salek, therefore, had no reason to complain.
His sister had cautioned him against signing on with the S.C.E. She had encouraged him to take a post on the T’Kumbra, with its all-Vulcan crew, but Salek did not see the logic in that. Besides, there were no positions available for a lieutenant commander on that vessel, and he saw even less logic in taking an inferior position.
“The humans are so—emotional,” his sister had said, as if this were some great revelation.
“Of course they are,” he had told her. “And Betazoids are telepathic, Tellarites are aggressive, and Andorians are blue. These are well-documented facts. I see no reason for any of them to interfere with my choice of posting. Unless you think so little of me that you expect me to succumb to emotionalism simply by being around them.”
“No,” his sister had replied. “I simply do not wish you to suffer needlessly.”
“I fail to see how I will suffer.”
His sister had dropped the subject after that, for which Salek was grateful. He had found his assignment as first officer of the da Vinci to be most satisfactory. They performed an important