What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [22]
“Hey, Sonya, wait up!”
Sonya paused to let Kieran catch up with her in the deck ten corridor. She was heading to the turbolift, and thence to engineering. Both were on beta shift now—they’d been assigned there for the past few weeks, ever since their encounter with the Shelliak—which started in a few minutes. She’d been grabbing a bite to eat in Ten-Forward and reading a fascinating article in the latest JAWM about soliton waves. “What’s up, Kieran?”
“You’ve been holding out on me, Ensign.”
Frowning, Sonya said, “I don’t know what you mean.” Then she added with a smile, “Lieutenant.”
He grinned back at her. “I mean you never told me Belinda Gomez was your sister.”
“It’s not like it’s a secret or anything.” Sonya tried not to sound defensive. The fact of the matter was, she had kept it a secret. She had enough of dealing with being in the shadow of Her Sister the Soccer Star for most of her teen years, through to her time at the Academy. “You never asked.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll remember that from now on when I meet people. ‘Say, you don’t happen to have any famous siblings or other relatives?’ I mean, c’mon, Sonya, it’s not like most people would keep that a secret. She’s a great player.”
“I know, I just—” She sighed. “I spent a lot of time being in her shadow, that’s all. You know she saved my life when we were kids? I fell into the Gulf of Mexico when we were out on a rowboat, and she dived in and kept me from drowning.” Sonya shook her head. “That was just the start. After that, it was always, ‘why can’t you be like your sister?’”
“You should invite her on the ship, then. You’ll eclipse her in a nanosecond.”
Sonya gave Kieran a dubious look. “C’mon. I’m just an engineer.”
“‘Just’ an engineer? Kiddo, you’ve been Geordi’s golden girl for months. Besides, who else would have the chutzpah to spill hot chocolate on a god?”
At that, Sonya couldn’t help but laugh. Just recently, the natives of Mintaka III had mistaken the captain for a deity. It had taken a certain amount of work—and a near-fatal injury to Picard—to convince the Mintakans that the Enterprise captain was not divine.
“It’s not that big a deal,” she said as they approached the turbolift. “She’s just my sister.”
“Hah. There’s no such thing as ‘just’ a sister. I’ve got one, too, y’know—Amy. Devoted her life to making mine a living hell. Why do you think I signed up for Starfleet? Gets me far away from her and her practical jokes.”
They stood and waited for a turbolift. “Since when do you have a problem with practical jokes?” Sonya in particular was recalling an incident involving Ensigns McKnight and Prixis that required a molecular debonder to be applied in sickbay to their hair. The joke around the ship was that it was that incident in particular that led to Dr. Pulaski transferring off the Enterprise.
“I have no problem with my practical jokes. It’s hers that are the issue. There was this one time—”
The doors opened to reveal La Forge. Right around the time Pulaski left—to be replaced by the woman she replaced, Beverly Crusher, Wesley’s mother—La Forge had been promoted to lieutenant commander. According to what both Kieran and Denny had heard, La Forge had had several of his personnel requests denied because the people he wanted were full lieutenants, and Starfleet wasn’t comfortable with a chief engineer not being the senior-ranked person in the engine room. La Forge expressed his frustration to Riker, Riker expressed it to Picard, and the captain gave La Forge a field promotion to lieutenant commander after only a year as a full lieutenant.
“Duffy, just the man I want to see. You need to come with me to the transporter.”
“What’s happening?” Sonya asked.
“The away team got into a scrape—a bomb went off.”
Sonya’s stomach fell. “Is everyone okay?” She knew that Worf was leading the team, which also included one civilian scientist who was on loan to Starfleet, and two archeaologists, Marla Aster and Leo Antonidas.
La Forge shook his head. “Lieutenant Aster didn’t make it.”
Kieran’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God.”
“Commander Riker wants us to go down