What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [24]
But after the Enterprise’s mission to the Romulan Neutral Zone ended, the promotion list came out, and Sonya was thrilled to see her name on it. Among other things, it meant she got a cabin to herself. Not that she had anything against Lian, but she hadn’t had a room to herself since she was seventeen.
Besides, Lian’s name had also been on the promotion list, so she was getting a cabin of her own, too, where she said she intended to celebrate along with another new promotion, Lieutenant Tanaka, one of the medical technicians, whom she’d been seeing for a few weeks now.
Ella Clancy had also been promoted; sadly, Tess Allenby wasn’t, which Sonya feared would simply make her friend even more bitter toward Wes. In fact, Tess was the only member of the corner office who remained an ensign.
Kieran hadn’t been on the list, either, which meant that he and Sonya were now of the same rank. Sonya wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
Sonya stood proudly as Geordi affixed the hollow pip to her collar. I can’t believe this is happening.
“I hereby promote you to the rank of junior-grade lieutenant, with all the duties and privileges—”
Feeling like she was going to explode, Sonya said, “Thank you, sir.” Then she realized what she’d done.
Geordi, however, just shook his head and chuckled. “—that entails,” he finished. Everyone else laughed as well.
To her amazement, Sonya didn’t feel embarrassed. She was too happy.
Data and Geordi went down the line to the other engineering ensigns in alphabetical order, ending with Helga.
Afterward, everyone in engineering cheered. Even Data, after a fashion.
Turning to Lieutenant Della Guardia, Geordi said, “We’ve got to get to the bridge—you’re in charge, Alfredo.”
“Yes, sir,” the newly promoted full lieutenant said.
Data and Geordi departed. Sonya knew that Picard and Riker were going to be given a tour of the Angosian capital, so Data was in command of the ship, and Geordi liked to put in time on the bridge, she knew. She suspected that was a holdover from his time as the alpha-shift conn officer before he was given the chief job. If there was one thing she’d learned about Geordi in a year on the Enterprise, it was that he liked to be in the thick of things.
Kieran walked up to her. “Congrats, Sonya. See, I told you. Watch it, inside a few years, you’ll be running this place, while I’ll just be an ordinary j.g.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” Alfredo Della Guardia said. “You got yourself a mighty fine performance review, there, Duff.”
“I did?” Kieran sounded surprised.
“He did?” Sonya sounded the same.
“Hey!” Now Kieran was mock-outraged.
Alfredo shrugged. “His work’s picked up. Maybe you’re a good influence on him.”
With that, Alfredo walked away.
Sonya wasn’t sure what to make of that.
The festivities concluded, it was time to go back to work. With the promotion, Gomez was put in charge of the warp core, which had been Della Guardia’s responsibility. La Forge generally preferred to rotate folks, so they were experienced in all aspects of engineering, not just their individual specialty, but he said Sonya’s antimatter expertise would prove handy, especially since the Enterprise’s warp drive had gotten a lot more and varied use in the past couple of years than expected. The Galaxy-class was still a relatively new design, after all—though the Borg threat had sent Utopia Planitia into overdrive with new ship concepts—and could, Geordi said, use some hand-holding.
As she ran a diagnostic on the warp core, she thought about Alfredo’s words. She hadn’t really seen herself as influencing Kieran in any way. True, they’d been spending more time together lately. She found she was enjoying his company more and more, in part because he seemed to be taking life more seriously.
Or maybe it was that she was taking life less seriously. The promotion to j.g. had validated