What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [4]
“Worf is the Klingon?”
Lian nodded. “He’s been in charge of security since Yar died. It’s too bad—she was a good officer. Worf’s a little too tightly wound for security.”
“I thought security people had to be tightly wound.”
“Maybe.” Lian shrugged. “Anyhow, you should come to Ten-Forward.”
Shaking her head quickly, Sonya said, “I have to study the ship’s engine tonight. You remember what Dr. Ra-Havreii said?” She stood straight and put on the Efrosian’s gentle, deep voice. “‘A ship ceases to resemble its blueprints—’”
Lian joined in, doing her even better impersonation of their former Academy professor. “‘—within the first month of it being in space.’ Sonya, you’ll have plenty of time to study it while you work on it.”
“I can’t do that—I need to be ready to do this job right now.”
Letting out a long sigh, Lian said, “You haven’t changed a bit, Sonya.” She chuckled. “No, I take it back—you’ve gotten worse. Sonya, you’re already here.” Before Sonya could say anything else, Lian held up a hand. “All right, if you don’t want to come, I can’t force you, but I need to relax, so I’m going. If you want to join me—”
“—just take the turbolift up one deck, go right, keep on down that corridor until I get to section 2B, make a left, then make an immediate right, go straight until I hit Ten-Forward.”
Laughing, Lian said, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you already know your way around. We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Count on it.”
After Lian left, Sonya went into her room, stared at her duffel for a moment, then sat at the computer desk and called up the up-to-the-minute specs on the Enterprise’s warp core. Lian had said that engineering had been a mess, which tracked with the letters Sonya had been getting. The Enterprise had gone through an unprecedented four chief engineers in its first year. With that, the fact that the ship was the first off the line of a new class of vessel, and the types of things the flagship dealt with on what seemed to be a weekly basis, the engines had probably gone through a lot. She needed to know what the engines were like.
She also wondered who that guy was on deck thirty-one.
CHAPTER
2
Captain’s log, supplemental. As happened with our sister ship, the Enterprise is beginning to experience a series of system failures. So far they are random, but I fear they could be early symptoms of what happened to the Yamato.
“Need some help?”
Sonya looked up with bleary eyes to see a vaguely familiar officer, wearing a junior-grade lieutenant’s pips on a gold uniform. “I’m sorry?”
“I asked if you needed some help.”
It took Sonya a minute to remember where she was. “God, I must’ve drifted off. I’m sorry, I—” She inhaled through her nose, exhaled through her mouth—a stress-reduction technique her sister, Belinda, had taught her when they were kids, and one that occasionally worked. This was not one of those occasions.
She’d worked two straight shifts, having come on early during beta shift, and worked all the way through gamma. Ever since downloading the log from their sister ship, the U.S.S. Yamato—which had subsequently exploded, killing all aboard—the Enterprise had been suffering from massive systems failures.
La Forge had put her and Clancy in charge of making sure nothing untoward happened with the warp core. It was a catastrophic collapse of the Yamato’s warp core that had led to its destruction. Clancy was currently in the upper core, testing the diagnostic systems.
Finally, she placed the face of the lieutenant in front of her as the one from deck thirty-one her first day on board.
“I’m sorry,” he said, holding out his hand. “Kieran Duffy. I just came on, and Lieutenant La Forge thought you could use a hand. You’re Clancy?”
“No, Sonya Gomez,” she said, returning the handshake.
“Ah, okay. Sorry, I’ve been on alpha and beta, so I never got to know you gamma folks. Never much of a night owl, myself.” He grinned. “Not that it matters, since it’s always night out here. So, uh—do you?”
Sonya blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Need help?”
“Oh.” Sonya picked up her padd, as