What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [32]
Seeing the two of them, Geordi quickly put on a happier face. “What can I do for the two of you?”
“Sir,” Sonya said, “we’d like to volunteer to stay on board during the repairs—help you keep an eye on McKinley’s people.”
Kieran grinned. “Make sure they don’t turn the warp core upside down or anything.”
All the tension seemed to leave Geordi’s body. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear you two say that. I didn’t wanna ask anyone else to stay behind, but if you’re volunteering—”
“Absolutely, sir,” Kieran said.
“Thank you. I won’t forget this.”
“Just name your firstborn after us, sir,” Kieran deadpanned.
Geordi chuckled, and walked over to the warp core.
Sonya stared up at him incredulously. “Are you nuts? Sonya Kieran La Forge would make a terrible name.”
They laughed together, kissed quickly, and then Kieran headed off to his quarters while Sonya went on duty for the last formal shift before the repair cycle began.
CHAPTER
9
Captain’s log, stardate 45130.1. We have turned Dr. Kila Marr over to the authorities on Starbase 413, following her unauthorized destruction of the crystalline entity. We are now proceeding to Mudor V.
“Sonya, good, I need you to—”
Before Geordi, who had just arrived from the bridge, could finish his sentence, Sonya said, “I’ve realigned the warp coils and run a level-two on the deuterium injectors. They looked a little spotty.”
Geordi stopped in his tracks and shook his head. “I was just going to mention the warp coils. What was wrong with the injectors?”
Sonya shrugged. “Nothing major, just a point-one reduction in the flow. I figured it was best to check. The diagnostic’ll be finished in half an hour.”
“Great.” Geordi grinned. “You’re gonna work me out of a job, Lieutenant.”
Again, she shrugged. “Just doing my job, Commander.” Not that it’s much of a challenge. She wasn’t so impolitic as to say that out loud, of course. “Of course,” right. Two and a half years ago, I would’ve blurted that out, along with fifteen other stupid things.
But that was when she had reported on board. She had slowed down, and she’d learned not to babble—at least not so much.
More to the point, though, she had learned the Enterprise—inside and out. She knew every trick of the warp drive, she knew every plasma conduit, every injector, every ODN conduit, every isolinear chip in the engine room, if not the entire vessel.
There’s nothing left to learn.
That wasn’t entirely fair. The ship had its share of surprises, from the faulty replacement piece from McKinley that caused a warp-core breach—and, indirectly, a witch-hunt on the Enterprise, before Picard put a stop to it—to Wesley’s experiment that trapped his mother in a warp bubble.
Wesley was gone now, finally having enrolled in the Academy, which had disappointed Sonya, but had thrilled Tess Allenby, who had taken over at conn on alpha shift, only to transfer to the Lexington shortly thereafter, along with Gar Costa. The corner office had been reduced to herself, Kieran, and Helga, and had left the latter feeling like a third wheel.
And then Helga had died rather brutally during the Enterprise’s encounter with some odd dark matter that had been phasing parts of the ship out of existence for brief seconds. The floor under Helga Van Mayter had done that, and rematerialized while she was in the middle of falling through it. It was one of the most grisly deaths Sonya had ever encountered, and it still gave her nightmares, which usually ended with her screaming and Kieran comforting her.
With Tess, Lian, Wesley, and Gar gone, and Helga and Denny dead, Sonya found that she didn’t really have anyone left on board to talk to except for Geordi and Kieran. There were lots of new faces, including Martin Kopf and Robin Lefler, both recent Academy graduates who were thrilled to be assigned to the flagship. Sonya recognized