What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [38]
The only fly in the ointment was when she looked at the crew roster and saw who her second in command would be, which was why she was thinking about the size of the ship and the history of her captain right now, as it was easier than thinking about her second officer.
Kieran.
When the gangway door at Starbase 96 slid open, there he was, standing in the da Vinci corridor. She hadn’t lain eyes on him in eight years. He had gained some weight, and while his unkempt brown hair still covered his entire head, it had thinned a bit.
His amused brown eyes and easy smile hadn’t changed. The latter widened when he saw her.
“Sonnie!” And without warning, he grabbed her into a massive bear hug.
Until this very second, Sonya had no idea how she was going to react to seeing Kieran again. To her relief, it was joy, and she returned the hug with almost as much enthusiasm. That big smile had been missing from her life, and she was so happy to have it back. “Kieran, it’s so good to see you.”
“Same here, Sonnie, same here.”
They finally broke the embrace and stared at each other. Sonya found her eyes going to the gold collar under his black-and-gray uniform jacket. “Figures. You’ve only gone up one grade rank. You should have my job.”
Kieran shuddered. “No chance. Don’t want it. I prefer to have power without responsibility. Salek was great at that administrative stuff, and so’re you. After all, you ran an engine room, and did a damn fine job, too. I heard about that trick you pulled with the warp field on the Sentinel.”
Sonya found herself blushing. Altering the Sentinel’s warp field to make it seem like a Cardassian ship while they were stuck behind enemy lines was a trick and a half, especially coming after a prolonged fight with some Jem’Hadar ships, but it had gotten her a commendation. Captain Amalfitano had said it was at the top of the very long list of reasons why she got the promotion to commander.
“Anyway,” he said as he led her down the corridor toward the turbolift, “you’re gonna love it here. We’ve got a tac systems specialist who served on DS9 with O’Brien, so we can trade chief stories. Oh, and we have two Bynar civilians to do the computer work.”
That surprised Sonya, as she hadn’t remembered seeing that on the crew roster. But if they were civilians, they wouldn’t necessarily have been on that roster.
Kieran continued to babble on the way to the bridge. When the doors parted, Sonya found herself in a space that was smaller than the quarters she and Lian T’su shared on the Enterprise eleven years ago. A thin strip of deck ringed the bridge, lined with consoles, with a command well a step down that included conn, ops, and the command chair.
A white-haired, blue-eyed, pleasant-faced elderly human stepped up from the latter as Kieran spoke. “Captain David Gold, this is your new first officer, and the new head of the S.C.E. team, Commander Sonya Gomez.”
Sonya smiled and said, “Permission to come aboard, sir.”
“Granted.” Gold returned the smile. “Welcome aboard. I understand you and Duffy served together under Jean-Luc Picard on the Enterprise.”
“Uh, yes, sir,” Sonya said. Of course he knows. Kieran probably told him.
“Good. I’ve known Picard since his Academy days, and he doesn’t turn out bad officers. It’ll be a pleasure to have you two working together.”
“I’m sure it will, sir.”
And Sonya found that she meant it. She wasn’t sure where her relationship with Kieran would go from here, or even if it would, given their positions in this ship’s hierarchy. Not to mention on a ship of this size. The population of the da Vinci was four percent of that of the Enterprise—that would mean their lives were in a fishbowl. A relationship might not be the wisest move.
But that was for tomorrow. Today, she was on a new ship, looking forward to a wonderful new assignment, and she already knew that she could count on at least one member of her team.
I can