What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [21]
“Don’t be so sure,” Helga said. “Those old systems’ll surprise you—right, Sonya?”
Grinning at her Earl Grey, Sonya said, “Yeah, okay, so I took a little while to get the hang of it.”
“More than a little while,” Helga said conspiratorially.
“All right, all right, more than a little while. But we did it, didn’t we? We made a warp drive and we beat the Ferengi.”
Gar held his raktajino near his face, as if ready to sip it at a moment’s notice. “We made a warp drive with spit and baling wire.”
“And the Crusher kid’s experiment,” Helga added.
Tess made a face. “Not that little twerp again.”
Sonya was surprised by the vehemence of her reaction. “Tess?”
“Look, Sonya, I know he’s your friend, but…I mean, c’mon, he’s a kid. He hasn’t taken one class at the Academy, and Picard’s got him doing alpha-shift conn duties. I’m never gonna get on the bridge during alpha as long as he’s on the ship, especially if he keeps pulling miracles like this.”
“Tess, I…” Sonya hesitated. She’d really grown to like Wes over the past few months, but she hadn’t realized that the “acting ensign’s” position might have had a deleterious effect on the not-so-acting ensigns.
“Look, it’s okay.”
“You should say something to Riker,” Helga said. “He’s a good guy.”
“Please—he’s the one in charge of the kid’s ‘education.’ Who do you think put him in charge of that mineral survey in Drema? The worst thing I can do is complain to Riker about his precious boy genius.”
An uncomfortable silence descended over the corner office for a second before Gar said, “Hey, I hear La Forge is doing rotations again. He’s putting Kieran on warp diagnostics.” He waggled his eyebrows at Sonya. “So now you two can flirt all shift.”
Sonya almost spit her tea. “What?”
Lian gave Sonya an accusatory look. “Flirting? With Lieutenant Duffy? Sonya, you didn’t tell me.”
“We are not flirting.”
“Coulda fooled me,” Denny muttered.
“Don’t you start,” she said with a glower at her classmate.
“Hey, I wasn’t the one giggling during the maintenance cycle.”
Tess shot her a look. “Giggling?”
“He—” Sonya sighed. “He told a funny joke. The law of averages was bound to catch up to him eventually, and he’d say something funny. I was just being polite.”
“During a maintenance cycle,” Denny deadpanned.
“Look—”
“And then there was that time during the Mariposa mission,” Gar said.
“And when you two were on the damage-control team when that old Klingon ship attacked,” Helga added.
“And when—”
“All right!” Sonya said, interrupting Denny. “Maybe we are flirting…a little.”
“For very large values of ‘little,’” Denny muttered.
“But that’s all it is. I’m not interested in Kieran Duffy. He’s not nearly as funny as he thinks he is—in fact, nobody’s as funny as he thinks he is—and besides, he’s still a j.g. He’s been in Starfleet for years, and that’s as far as he’s gotten. That’s a classic case of career dead-endedness.”
“So?” Lian asked.
Sonya hesitated. She stared at Lian for a second. All her reasons were true, of course, but that wasn’t the overriding factor. She had, over the past months, taken it easy, and allowed herself to have a social life.
But she hadn’t taken the next step with Kieran Duffy for one simple reason: she didn’t want to go through what Lian went through when the Borg attack took Soon-Tek from her.
Tess used Sonya’s mention of career dead-endedness to rant about Wesley again, which in turn led to Denny speculating about his parents, which led to Lian and Helga telling Sonya, Denny, and Tess about Beverly Crusher, which led to a discussion of Dr. Pulaski and her transporter phobia, and soon nobody was talking about Tess’s bitterness or Sonya’s love life, which suited Sonya just fine.
CHAPTER
6
Captain’s log, stardate 43198.7. The Enterprise remains in standard orbit while we investigate the tragedy which has struck the away team. Lieutenant Marla Aster, ship’s archeaologist, has been killed in what should have been a routine mission. Whatever the explanation, it will not bring back a valued and trusted officer.