What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [2]
Nodding, Denny said, “Sounds vaguely planlike. Me, I’m gonna see when the holodeck’s available. From what I hear, these Galaxy-class ships have state-of-the-art holography, and I’ve got a great program I want to try out.”
Remembering Denny’s proclivities from the Academy, Sonya said, “Another murder mystery?”
Rolling his eyes, Denny said, “Yes, another murder mystery. This one’s from New York City in the late nineteenth century.”
“What, you’re gonna solve Jack the Ripper again?”
“That was London. And I already did that.”
Sonya chuckled. She remembered that Denny had reprogrammed one of his endless murder mystery holodeck scenarios so that the person who solved the Jack the Ripper case was able to reveal that the killer in question was possessed by an interstellar energy creature, as had been revealed by a Starfleet vessel a century earlier. He had said that getting the reactions of nineteenth-century humans accurate had proven challenging.
“Uh, excuse me,” said a voice, and Sonya looked up to see a fellow officer—a junior-grade lieutenant, in fact, wearing the gold of operations and security—coming toward them. He had unkempt brown hair, wide brown eyes, and smile lines around his mouth. “I’m, uh, running late for a staff meeting.”
Sonya and Denny stepped aside to let the officer pass. As he did so, he turned, and gave Sonya a long look before turning and jogging down the corridor.
“Who was that?”
Denny shrugged at Sonya’s question. “Probably one of the senior staff La Forge was having a meeting with.”
“Is it my imagination, or was he looking at me funny?”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in it—most people look at you funny.”
Punching Denny lightly on the shoulder, she smiled and they continued to the turbolift.
Sonya took in her new quarters. They were huge.
She had spent most of the last year memorizing everything there was to know about the Enterprise, and had found her quarters without a tour guide, or asking the computer. Sonya’s sense of direction had become legendary at the Academy—by the middle of her first year, the fourth-years were asking her for shortcuts around campus—and she was now confident that, just from her intensive study of the ship’s specs and diagrams, she could walk from here to the cargo bay with her eyes closed.
Even so, even knowing from those specs just how large the quarters she would share with a fellow ensign would be, she wasn’t prepared for the massiveness of the space.
An advantage of the constant annihilation of matter and antimatter that powered a Starfleet vessel was that it provided energy to spare. One of her Academy professors, upon learning of Sonya’s assignment to this ship, had laughed, nodded her head, and said, “Ah, the Galaxy-class—a monument to waste.” Having specialized in the study of antimatter, Sonya knew as well as anyone how true that was, but she’d never really thought of it in terms of giving even lowly ensigns on a ship that was a thousand strong so much room.
The quarters included a main room containing two desks, a round table, several chairs and a couch, and a replicator. On either side were two smaller rooms. She approached the first, and found it filled with an impressive array of Bolian artifacts. Assuming that this belonged to Lian—who’d had a passion for Bolian art for as long as Sonya had known her—Sonya walked over to the other room, which was undecorated, and furnished with a bunk, another desk, and another replicator, as well as a door that she assumed went to the commode.
As she had indicated to Denny, ship’s time was off a bit from the starbase; she checked the computer station on the desk and saw that alpha shift had ended a few minutes earlier. Lian was, like Sonya, on gamma, serving at ops on the bridge during the night shift, so her roommate’s lack of presence here was a bit of a surprise.