What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [27]
She was dressed in civilian clothes—a loose brown blouse and equally loose pants of the same color over black boots. It was, as far as she could remember, the first time she’d worn anything other than her uniform when not in her cabin. Lian had joked that she needn’t have bothered packing clothes when she’d come on board. But it wasn’t right to show up for a date in uniform.
At a little after 1900—being on time had never been Kieran’s strong suit—she went out to stand near the aft door. A few minutes later, Kieran walked up to her. He was wearing a dark blue short-sleeved shirt with a yellow jacket over it, his pants the same color as the jacket. At first she winced, until she realized that the color perfectly matched the toyar, which were in full bloom, and which Keiko had made the centerpiece of the arboretum. That didn’t make the outfit any more palatable, but Sonya resolved to live with it for as long as the clothes remained on.
She found herself hoping that wouldn’t be too terribly long.
He offered her his arm, which she took with a smile, and they both entered the aft door.
“I guess we’re the first ones here,” he said as the door closed behind them with a soft swish.
The smile growing, Sonya reached up and gently turned and lowered Kieran’s chin toward her. His brown eyes were filled with surprise, anticipation, and confusion, all at the same time. She whispered, “Kieran, there’s no symposium.”
Her hand moved up to his cheek and she craned her neck to kiss him full on the lips. To her great relief, he returned the kiss, though it took him until after she’d grabbed the back of his head to pull him closer that he thought to put his arms around her.
CHAPTER
8
Captain’s log, stardate 43992.6. Admiral Hanson and Lieutenant Commander Shelby of Starfleet Tactical have arrived to review the disappearance of the New Providence colony. No sign remains of the nine hundred inhabitants.
They were the best months of Sonya’s life.
Geordi wasted very little time in putting them on separate shifts. He had no problem with fraternization in theory, but he also wanted his people focused on their work, not on each other. So Sonya was put in charge of gamma shift, which was a promotion of sorts, since she was responsible for the entire engineering section during the “night” hours. Kieran, meanwhile, worked alpha with Geordi.
The relationship seemed to do them both good. Kieran received more commendations, and he said he was taking the initiative more. As for Sonya, gamma shift seemed to respond well to her leadership skills, which amazed her, as she hadn’t been aware she had any leadership skills. In fact, Commander Kurn, of all people—a Klingon who’d temporarily taken over as first officer as part of an exchange program—had given her a satisfactory rating for her work on gamma shift, notable for it being the only satisfactory rating he gave to anyone.
Working on alpha, Kieran tended to have the best stories, from him and Chief O’Brien unwittingly contaminating the ship with invidium—which led to Kieran being teased almost as much as Sonya had been after the hot-chocolate incident—to preparing a meeting room for the Legaran negotiation.
Not that it was all fun. Bernie Kornblum had been killed, shot by an Ansata terrorist who was attempting to blow up the ship, and everyone had believed Data to be dead as well, though that turned out to be a ruse. Several people had also been injured in an attack by a Romulan vessel during the encounter with “Tin Man.”
Still, things were going very well. The Enterprise did a lengthy survey of the Zeta Gellis Cluster, which included a rather bizarre first contact. Geordi started dating Christy Henshaw, which benefited the entire engineering staff, as it meant their boss was in a perpetual good mood. Kieran had joined the corner office, replacing Lian, who’d been transferred to the Hood, where she’d be the beta-shift ops officer under Riker’s former CO, Captain DeSoto. Wes had been given a commission to ensign, complete with red uniform and pip, an action that