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Star Trek: Pioneer Rating: R (For language, sexual references, and Sci-Fi violence) Despite the dangers, Cove-3’s smaller moon held something very special for their purposes: a huge cavern under one-tenth gravity. Okuma explained it would hold Pioneer with room to spare. In addition, Cove-3 had a huge set of Van Allen belts that pushed the explosive gasses away from the moon. It was a gem Koon was anxious to exploit but getting there was far from easy. Koon would have to bring the huge vessel into the system at warp 1, slip into Cove-3’s orbit, and park Pioneer in the cavern without crashing. Peyter was not as concerned as everyone else. He’d been the best pilot of his day after all, and this was the sort of thing he thrived on. At warp 1, it took Pioneer three hours to traverse the system from the outer ice belts, to Cove-3’s orbit. It was the first chance Totem and Spaulding had to examine the system up close, and what they saw racing past them was both reassuring and baffling. Cove had nine enormous planets beyond the inner asteroid belt. The outer ice giants were surprisingly large, ranging in size from slightly larger than Uranus to two almost identical planets on the scale of Saturn. They shone brightly in the gloom of their cold orbits. Cove-11 actually glowed an eerie blue from a vast ocean of radon under a thin atmosphere of helium. Cove-9 shone a brilliant green in the light of the distant star and supported better than fifty rocky moons. The first of the gas giants was a majestic orange-yellow leviathan tipping the scales at better than four times the size of Jupiter. It plodded along at a stately pace around the star in an unhurried manner. Even at warp 1 it took twenty minutes to get past its magnetic field. Koon used the gravity of the world to swing him past Cove-6 and almost cut it too close. Cove-6 was a runt living dangerously between the orbits of its larger sisters. Barely the size of Earth, the rocky world managed to survive consumption by Cove-7 and Cove-5 by skirting the inner asteroid belts that had so impressed Forte upon the advance team’s arrival. It sheltered under the diffuse gravity of the asteroids to keep from straying out of its orbit much like a man holding onto a thin safety line while walking along a narrow ledge. Unfortunately for Cove-6, the static energies in constant play between the asteroids pummeled the dwarf constantly. From up close, Cove-6 looked like an angry white flash of ball lightning slowly rolling around the static storm of the asteroid belt. Koon slipped over the north pole of the planet and almost got yanked out of warp by the most brilliant aurora he’d ever seen. Pioneer’s warp field accidentally strayed too close to Cove-6 and lifted the polar aurora off the planet. Had the ship been travelling any faster, the static energies could have destroyed the warp field. Two things prevented this from happening: Pioneer’s slow speed and Eddie Gordon’s experience with the “potholes” out in the 3KPC arm. Two years before he’d worked out a way for the warp field around the ship to flex and distend without affecting the mass of Pioneer itself. It worked like a huge shock absorber around the ship that only became more effective in the low warp numbers. With a bright flash of lightning, and an audible bang through the hull, Pioneer slipped past Cove-6 and dropped the static fingers of its aurora. Koon knew it had been a close call, but he wasn’t concerned. Even if he had dropped out of warp over Cove-6, he was confident he could fly his ship into a safe orbit. Plans to reach Cove-3 might be delayed, but only by a few hours. The next part of the flight was a long arc over the asteroids. The reason he’d skirted so dangerously close to Cove-6 in the first place was to get the biggest push from its gravity he could manage. The gravity of Cove-5 was so massive; it would have pulled Pioneer straight through the asteroids unless he got the smaller world to lob the ship over them. Cove-5 was the biggest thing short of a star anyone aboard Pioneer had ever seen. Tipping the scales at eight times the mass of Jupiter, it had a large set of magnificent rings tipped into the light of the star. This odd world, despite its size, was devoid of moons. The rings were made of rock and sodium mixed with a little phosphorus making them perhaps the most volatile object ever seen by the eyes of men. The magnetic field of the massive world kept all the explosive gasses permeating the system at a distance, but it would only take a stray spark inside the rings to set them off like a magnesium flare. Pioneer gave the giant and its rings a wide berth. Koon saw no reason for a showy run past the place with a magnetic field that would serve his purposes at a respectable distance. Even so, the churning clouds of Cove-5 dominated the attention of everyone near a portal for almost half an hour until it receded completely from view. With Cove-4 well out of line of their flight path, the next thing anyone saw up close was their target of Cove-3 and the tiny spec of a moon that was where the running ship would try to hide away and heal her wounds. Peyter deftly tapped a command into the helm, and the 300-meter-long ship dropped out of warp over the surface of the planet. Cove-3’s gravity snatched the ship out of orbit as soon as it flickered into existence, and the ship skidded along the atmosphere like a rock skipping off a pond. Peyter activated the dying impulse engines for the last time and was rewarded with a lurch throughout the ruined ship. Gordon had warned him the things would melt if he used them, so Peyter decided there was no sense in sparing them anyway. He carefully watched the velocity rise to the desired speed, and checked his orientation to the orbit of the moon. He hesitated for one second… another… then he overloaded the engines with an emergency burn. The impulse engines coughed, roared to agonized life for two seconds and exploded. The ship jumped as if stung, and broke free of the planet below. Behind her she trailed a fine wisp of ruined impulse cones reduced to shards by the overload. Gravity managed to slow the ship a trifle, but not enough to pull her back to the surface of Cove-3 and certain destruction. Ahead
of the ship lay a small moon dubbed “Atoll” by Okuma. Little more than a fragment of a much larger
moon that had been blasted away ages ago by a collision with Cove’s other, far
larger, moon, Atoll was the accumulation of several meteors that might have
struck Cove-3 had the mass of the small moon not been so attractive about its
regular orbit. Koon focused on the
cratered surface searching for his target.
The cavern was in the shadow of a jagged canyon fifteen kilometers wide
and seventy deep. “ The next few minutes were tense, as Atoll grew larger in the main viewer. Koon could see the texture of the moon, but the canyon would only be a shadow until they descended into it. When the image of Atoll filled the screen, Koon saw the smallest motion on the surface. A moment later, the familiar form of a shuttle rushed up to meet them. “Right where you needed to be, Captain,” Okuma hailed. “Glad you could make it.” “Nothing’s changed since we spoke yesterday, I take it?” Koon asked cheerfully. “Nope,” Okuma confirmed. “It’ll be perfect, I swear.” Koon did not doubt Samantha, but his instincts were screaming at him to veer away from the certain collision staring him in the face. “The
moon has us, sir,” “Can
you see “Oddly
no,” “Tactical, give me a target blip to steer by,” Koon ordered. Carrie Locke was so nervous she had to try three times to comply with Koon’s order. With trembling fingers, she finally keyed in the command that integrated the image of the moon below them with the data Okuma sent them. A yellow triangle appeared on the screen inside a narrow shadow across the surface of Atoll. “Christ! That’s a tight spot!” Speer gasped. “Fuck it anyway, it’ll stretch,” Koon said calmly. He appeared only mildly focused on the problem. His expression was almost vacant as he started lighting off the thrusters. Pioneer gently pitched up and exposed her broad belly to Atoll. She slowed slightly, but the faint gravity of the moon brought her back up to speed. The ship fell into the canyon a minute later, and Koon decided it was time to slow the ship considerably. The maneuvering thrusters lit off like a white halo around the ship. Ordinarily considered the bastard stepchild of all drives, they were the most powerful ever built. No one knew exactly why Nebula-class was graced with such an outsized system, but no helmsman ever complained about it. By comparison the larger Galaxy-class was downright deficient in this regard, and it took a nervy pilot to heave the big ships about a spacedock or drydock. The Nebula ships could be ham-fisted around by a novice pilot and still nestle on a martini glass without shattering it. “Activate running lights,” Koon ordered. In an instant the ship shone like an arc light. In the displays the intense light revealed the stark walls of the canyon as they raced by with the suicidal speed. Still
the ship had to slow down quite a lot before she crashed into the canyon floor,
and outsized thrusters or not, Pioneer
was a heavy ship. The canyon walls raced
past her as if the palm of a cold, dark hand sought to grasp her. Okuma’s shuttle darted past the larger craft
and stopped to shine its landing lights on the entrance to Koon realized he was not going to stop his descent in time to slip inside the opening. He scanned the walls of the canyon and flinched when he saw they met at the bottom of the gorge in a sharp V. He ran the risk of running out of room, but there was no helping it. He allowed the ship to drop right past the cavern opening much to Okuma’s surprise. “Sir?” she asked over the com. “I’d rather not bounce the ship off the floor of that opening, Commander,” Koon said. “I’ll be back up in a minute.” The ship dropped like an elevator gone mad. The canyon walls began to squeeze in towards the hull of the ship. Koon rotated the nose back down towards the canyon floor facing the sharp profile into the canyon as the room between the steep walls of stone began to run out. The rate of descent unwound with agonizing slowness to the speed of a turbolift, to the speed of a skydiver, to the speed of a running man, to the speed of a brisk walk, and still Pioneer would not stop. Ten kilometers from the bottom her saucer scraped a few protruding boulders off the canyon walls; sending a grating, rattling sound through the ship that made everyone cringe. Finally, the ship shuddered to a stop with barely fifty meters of clear space to either side of the ship. “Eddie?” Koon called out over the com. Gordon, until recently convinced his ship was about to smash headlong into an unknown moon, stammered in his thickest Cockney, “Wha’ now, you fookin’ Rusky, arse’ole!” “Tell me again about the new ship dimensions,” Koon asked calmly. “I’d like to trim a meter or two off the saucer before I try this again.” He keyed in a few commands and Pioneer slowly heaved her bulk back up the canyon wall towards the cavern fifty kilometers above them. A
minute later, the ship eased inside “We checked and your eyes aren’t deceiving you,” Okuma almost giggled. The
walls of “We’ve scanned the chamber and the gold is a consistent five meters thick in all the walls and ceiling. The floor under the regolith goes down another ten meters before it changes over to granite,” Okuma explained. “Dazzling!”
“Try
the “What’s
it doing here?” Okuma’s tone turned uncertain, “That’s something I thought we might ask our Hirogen guest. We found some things on the planets that indicate this place is only the tip of the iceberg.” “Such as?” Koon asked. “The water isn’t here because somebody took it,” Okuma said. “Somebody harvested every drop of water out of this entire system and ran off with it.” “Yet
they left this behind,” “You don’t know the half of it, Willie,” Okuma said. “There are cities down on the planet made like this.” “What is this, a fairy tail?” Locke asked. “Makes
you wonder what’s in the junkyards,” “That
must be a sight,” Koon agreed.
“Congratulations, Commander, the discovery of “Pizzaro must be turning in his grave,” Okuma agreed bleakly. “He was waaaaay off.” Koon nestled the ship in a spot Shin and Kree had cleared of dust. Okuma insisted there were things the scientists had to see on Cove-2, 3, and 4 plus a bunch of things they needed to investigate on the other planets. Totem and Spaulding digested the data Okuma had already. Gleefully they sent their scientists to all corners of the system by the shuttle load. Totem in particular was thrilled with the archaeology and anthropology of the three habitable worlds. Soon a thick atmosphere was discovered on a moon orbiting Cove-9, followed the next day by another around Cove-8. Totem delighted in every new discovery till rapture. “This wasn’t what I had in mind, Captain,” Totem confessed the day after they arrived. “I signed on for First Contact missions, but Cove…” he trailed off. The reptilian scientist did not usually grope for words, but Cove had taken him completely by surprise. “I’m glad we stumbled upon the place, Doctor,” Koon said cheerfully. “That Cabrillo kid couldn’t have known the extent of what we’d find.” “There’s generations of research here, Captain,” Totem explained. “It’s a find an academic dares not dream about. If we don’t discover another soul from here to the Delta Quadrant, the mission will be worth our while after this place.” Spaulding was less reflective in his assessment. “A golden cave, abandoned cities, stolen water, and a ring of static discharge so powerful it must orbit the sun between the gas giants!” he said. “Unbelievable: in a word. Simply unbelievable! And we’ve only just begun!” Eddie Gordon knew he had to let his people gawk at the cavern before anything meaningful was accomplished, so he sent them outside in spacesuits to start building the drydock. Everyone stared at the place. No one had ever imagined so much gold. The practical upshot of the gold was almost laughable: light bounced around so badly in the cavern that the dimmest illumination produced a warm glow all around the ship. Once the more powerful lights were in place, the whole cavern was bright as a sunny day. Another benefit to the gold was its density. Pioneer’s sensors could not see outside the chamber, and the assumption was the gold shrouded the ship just as thoroughly from the outside. Overall, it was the safest hidey-hole anyone had ever seen. Eddie hoped it wouldn’t become a golden cage. Lieutenant Commander Edmund Gordon wondered how he’d gotten into this mess. Relentless work, long hours, blood, sweat, and the threatening tears had yielded nothing again. Like many a Chief engineer, Eddie regarded his ship with almost parental affection, and right now his child was sick, possibly dying. The Flare had crippled Pioneer, but it was akin to a broken arm or leg next to the damage surrounding him presently. The Hirogen had gutted whole sections of the ship, and extensively damaged main engineering. The warp core was fine, but all the controls to it along with all the monitors had been blown away. It had taken two days of frantic work to rig something up just for the sake of safety. Luckily, the control linkage to the bridge was largely in tact, so the real danger from the core was computer error. Eddie was willing to take calculated risks, but the warp core was just one of hundreds of calculated risks he was allowing to take place. He wasn’t a gambling man so the precarious, if operational, status of his ship didn’t sit well with him. Gordon was a cheerful man by nature. Everyone who worked with or under him assumed he was just the near side of a slacker, but that masked the care he lavished on his ship. He was a man who craved order and harmony. He believed in preventative maintenance and harmonious crews. It was better to put in a little work every day than put in a lot of work here and there. He also saw to it his engineers worked well in teams by various means. While he didn’t handle all disagreements with his people, nobody distrusted his arbitration. He was regarded fondly and considered both fair and easy to please. He’d pushed his people to the limit for the last two months, but he’d pushed himself harder. Commander Okuma occasionally interfered with his efforts to maintain the delicate balance between work and crew cohesion in recent weeks, but everyone was working so hard they barely noticed. His need for order and desire for harmony was more than just good business; Eddie desperately needed things to be this way. He couldn’t stand to see his engineers quarrel, and he saw the well-mannered workings of the ship as a means to keep the good feelings strong in his crew. As
a child, Eddie had grown up in a household fraught with dysfunction. His parents had divorced, remarried, divorced
again, and remarried others twice over.
Young Eddie had been bounced from house to house in His experience with his family turned Eddie into a good listener, and it made him many friends. The trouble was he was constantly in contact with his friend’s families, and what he saw was agonizing for him. Most of his friends came from unbroken homes. Their parents gave him more attention and affection than his own, and they were mystified why such a well-behaved boy spent so much time with them over the company of their children. When Eddie did go home to his mother’s or father’s house, he did almost everything alone and spoke little. Things might have stayed that way were it not for the last two of his stepparents. Nina Frobisher Gordon married his father when Eddie was thirteen. Barely into her twenties herself, Nina was frightened by the prospect of having a stepson not even ten years younger than she was. Despite her love for Eddie’s father, the quiet teenager lurking around the house unnerved her. Unlike her father and all his other wives, Nina wasn’t about to live in a house where she felt unwelcome. She was a secretary by training, and it left her with an abiding sense for what was out of place. Eddie was something that was hopelessly adrift in the house. While he wasn’t rude, destructive, or threatening, young Eddie was small, pale, and depressed. Nina couldn’t stand to see him this way. Every morning, she made a point of checking his daily schedule at school and discussing each as though it were a business meeting. At first, Eddie thought she was being nosey for some reason he’d have to be wary of, but he soon forgot about that. Nina had a great memory for names and faces along with a nose for gossip that translated into well-developed social instincts. In a few weeks, she was chatting away at him about her life and luring details of his daily routine from him. It was the first time an adult had included him in their lives or expressed an abiding concern for his. The shift was so subtle he barely noticed how much he looked forward to seeing Nina every morning. It was Nina who coaxed him gently out of his shell, and much to his surprise, she was delighted with the young man she found hiding behind the silence. She began to tell his father about what a wonderful son he had which in turn turned his father’s attention his way. Without understanding how it had happened, Eddie suddenly had a family. The next step came when he was fifteen. His mother married a rather rumpled man named Charles Raul. Nothing about Charley Raul was quiet. Nothing about Charley Raul was gloomy, and he made an effort to shine his cheerful energies into every corner of his house. Charley wasn’t the smartest man around, but he was hard working, honest, and loved life. He possessed a wicked sense of humor and told the filthiest jokes as casually as reading the morning news. Eddie never once heard the man utter a discouraging sound or a word or criticism that wasn’t optimistically constructive. It was easy to see why his mother loved Charley: he filled every room with joy, laughter, and optimism. She lost two kilos due to Charley keeping her talking and laughing too much to eat as much at the dinner table. Unlike Nina, Charley didn’t have to discover Eddie and tease him into the light. Charley was one of those rare people who others opened up to naturally. Charley arrived and created an atmosphere that demanded good will and openness. He never understood why others claimed his stepson was such a quiet boy since he couldn’t get Eddie to shut up. Not that he minded. It was Charley who encouraged Eddie to go into sports, it was Charley who encouraged Eddie to apply to the Academy, and it was Charley who broke the ice with all Eddie’s girlfriends before dances, dates, and dinners. Between Nina and Charley, Eddie managed to navigate his way through his teenage and Academy years without the gloom of his early years. Nobody would understand the difference other than Eddie and to a lesser extent Nina. Much to Eddie’s disappointment, his parents remained blissfully ignorant of what a fine son they had, and that had been the final, very bitter, blow to his attachment to them. After his first cruise out of the Academy, Eddie Gordon found himself under the command of Commander Peyter Koon. Eddie was drawn to the fatherly gentleman almost at once. Koon had a way of expressing heartfelt concern that made Eddie eager to please the man. He’d thrown himself into his work and Koon had rewarded him with promotions and greater responsibilities. In the short span of four years, Eddie found himself go from an Ensign fresh out of the Academy, to a Lieutenant Commander and Chief engineer aboard Pioneer. He knew he was young for the position, but Koon’s faith in him never wavered. Pioneer was something Eddie was justifiably proud of. Koon had given him a very free hand from the moment Eddie had set foot aboard. He’d been given a green, inexperienced, largely untried crew of engineers and officers and almost no senior NCO’s. On the surface, this was a mistake, but Eddie had turned the lack of experience into an opportunity. If nobody aboard understood something, Eddie turned the search for a solution into a competition. If there was a dispute, Eddie could play the attentive listener or the elder brother. He rarely had to pull rank (unless Garrett or Okuma were involved) and he built a team unlike any in the fleet. He rarely had to tell anyone what to do. “There’s no such thing as ‘my job’ or ‘your job’ on this ship,” he said often. “Everything needs to be done no matter who’s around.” Borrowing a page out of his stepfather’s book, he did everything he could to promote a “can do” attitude around the ship. “I’ll find out,” was the usual response to an unknown answer, and there was typically enthusiasm expressed to get started with the investigation. There was a level of creativity and energy aboard Pioneer the rest of the fleet would find shocking. Koon rewarded this with near blind trust. Okuma tried to impose a more orderly regimen on Eddie’s department, but Koon refused to enforce it. Garrett tried to change things to more standard procedures, but Eddie overruled him. Nobody guessed the reasons behind Gordon’s eccentric command style, but in a crisis they appreciated the experience he spread around so liberally. It made for a crew of generalists and few specialists, but when everything was broken, Eddie didn’t have to shuffle his people from place to place. Also all of Gordon’s people were very free with the information they exchanged. He couldn’t count the number of times it paid off to have a healthy professional grapevine spreading information about the ship. Lieutenant Shin often complained the engineers had no communication discipline, but Eddie refused to stop the chatter. If everyone knew what was going on, everyone had a personal stake in seeing things done right and done well. It wouldn’t have worked under any other Captain other than Koon and no other Chief Engineer than Gordon, but it worked well. Among
the crew, Eddie Gordon was one of the few who had no plans to return home. His parents had moved on to other spouses as
had Nina and Charley, and he had no siblings.
Still, the job could be frustrating. Aside from the garden-variety mishaps, the sheer scale of the present project was daunting. In addition, he’d been running at full-throttle for two months. The occasional catnaps and rare showers were wearing him down along with his people. It didn’t help many of them were staggering around with injuries and despairing lost comrades. They were demanding more and more of Eddie, and he was eager to help, but there was only so much time he could give before one day ran into the next. The refit was going to be nothing short of brutal on his people. Even inside a golden cave, they had to build a drydock around the ship, separate the saucer section from the drive section, rebuild the nacelles and their outriggers, tear down the drive section, tear down the saucer section, and rebuild everything into a new design nobody had ever tested. It was ambitious to say the least, but Eddie knew everything had to be done. “We need a craft capable of navigating the Great Barrier and the 3KPC arm, Eddie,” Koon had told him after the Hirogen attack. “Build me one,” he ordered. Eddie
wasn’t in the habit of disappointing Koon, and he wasn’t about to start
now. The design he’d come up with was
radically different from the Nebula-class,
but there was a reason for that. Wille
Hurst had compiled the findings from the Great Barrier and the Flare and made a
startling discovery or two along the way.
The first was a concept Okuma had brought up when they first received
their orders to recover Voyager. No warp core ever built could be expected to
propel a ship at high warp numbers and support a large crew for much more than
twelve years without a rebuild. Okuma
had suggested they harvest energy off the Great Barrier along the way, and When
he’d told Eddie about his findings, one of his engineers had figured out a way
to make the Barrier give them a push through subspace at incredible speeds
without undue strain on the warp core.
Lieutenant Emily Blackburn was the most senior engineer after Eddie now
that Garrett was gone, and she had a passion for speed. After a brief explanation of what she had in
mind, Eddie decided there was no better way to get to the Delta Quadrant. The problem was the concept The result was different from anything anyone had ever seen. Koon had taken one look and blurted, “I want to command that ship!” The next thing was the constant problems with the warp core getting out here in the first place. Eddie knew they couldn’t count on the luxury of stopping every couple of weeks to overhaul the core, so something had to be done to shield or alter the warp core to make it more durable. Fortunately, Eddie had stumbled upon something Garrett had left behind. Lieutenant Commander Garrett had been a constant thorn in Gordon’s side. Secretly convinced he should be Chief engineer instead of Eddie, the man worked out his frustrations by squandering his duty hours on private projects. In another day and age, Garrett would have been a brilliant inventor. He was a creative dynamo. Ideas flowed from his mind in a steady profusion of practical gadgets and wild concepts. That he frittered his time away with these things instead of working with everyone else annoyed Gordon, but some of the gadgets were too handy to set aside and his concepts were well ahead of their time. One of these concepts was a new, very efficient warp core. The trouble was, the whole power grid had to be redesigned to accommodate the thing. Since they were rebuilding the ship anyway, Eddie judged this to be the only opportunity to put Garrett’s genius to the test. On the surface, this radical redesign of the ship only made more work for a job that was bound to be labor intensive, but Eddie knew they’d have to rebuild the ship anyway. On the trickle of power the old core was putting out, they could offload the whole works and rebuild without much fuss. They’d have to harvest antimatter from a fresh source, but the Great Barrier had pockets of the material floating in sufficient profusion to make that a simple matter. Outfitting a shuttle for the chore would take an afternoon and the trip to harvest it would take a month for a round trip, but it was going to take two to three months to complete the refit anyway. As a safety precaution, Eddie was going to rebuild the existing core in the event the new one didn’t work. Otherwise, he thought he might find a use for it elsewhere. At the end of the first day inside Carlsbad, the scaffolds for the drydock ringed Pioneer and the next watch had smoothly moved into the next phase. During the night, they separated the saucer and put it on a scaffold. Eddie, going on five days without sleep by this time, set to work removing the warp core with a team of crewmen. It was a night of hard, back-breaking labor, and Eddie collapsed into his office chair at the start of the next shift in the morning. They would begin the tedious task of offloading the gear stowed aboard each deck so that they could be dismantled. It was simple work that didn’t require supervision by engineers to any great extent, so Eddie decided the time had come for a nap. He meant to move to his quarters, but he slumped at his desk without realizing it. When he rolled off his chair and crashed to the deck, he continued to snore without letup. Tylan found him there three hours later. At first, she thought he was playing one of his many jokes on her. His posture on the deck was so absurd; she couldn’t imagine it could be comfortable. Eddie lay propped against the bulkhead with his rump in the air and his face and shoulders planted on the deck. His long legs were tangled in his chair and kept him from straightening out. Tylan wanted to laugh. He looked like he was listening for moles in the ground. To top it all off, he was wheezing out the most intricate snore Tylan had ever heard. SNNN…wheet… glug-glug, phew, snnn…wheet…glug-glug, phew…Followed by a chocking sound she thought he would suffocate from only to have the whole mess start over again with a loud whistle through his nose. Tylan moved around the desk and rolled him off the bulkhead. The snoring stopped at once, but Eddie didn’t stir. She took the opportunity to study his sleeping profile. Edmund Gordon was a handsome man she thought. He had a broad, open face with a square jaw. His careworn brow that had the first hint of the craggy features he was maturing into. She loved his eyes even though they weren’t open at the moment. They were a startling, chilly gray that disarmed those around him with a dose of unease before he set them twinkling. He’d once confessed to her he’d been late to start his growth, but it was hard to believe looking at the bulky man. He had the shoulders like a dinner table, and the barrel chest of a wrester. Thickly chorded, very long arms ended in large, long fingered hands. While not the tallest man around, he stood a head taller than Tylan. Looking down on his sleeping form instead of looking up into his smiling face, she thought he looked adorable. Unfortunately Eddie was exhausted and it showed even in sleep. His skin had grown pale and thin under the strain. It made him look older than his thirty-four years. His thick brown hair was falling out in clumps from the strain. He’d lost weight. It was enough to cause a maternal pang of concern in Tylan. She sensed Eddie’s mind wasn’t relaxing. Instead his brain was mulling over the problems of the day with the same intensity he needed while awake. As she noted this, she saw his lips mouth words as if he were requesting parts or counting items. That would never do. Tylan knew he’d wake up even more exhausted than when he’d passed out if she couldn’t find a way to shut him down soon. When she started working with Eddie seven years ago, he’d been a nuisance. He was constantly cracking jokes, clowning around, and generally making her job of keeping her Vulcan composure an order of magnitude more difficult. By accident he found out she was ticklish along her sides, and he never missed an opportunity to make her jump about ever since. His one saving grace was that he never went beyond the bounds she insisted on. If she told him not to tickle her, he would smile and keep his hands to himself. If she told him to cut out the clowning, he would turn reflective and ask about the details of her day. He always tried to clown around at first, but he was respectful when she insisted upon it. She barely noticed how good a listener he was until a particularly bad episode with M’rath. She’d felt an attraction to Edmund Gordon for about three years, but her involvement with M’rath complicated any notion on acting on this affection. For starters, M’rath was intensely possessive of her. Romulan men were famously jealous lovers and Romulan laws regarding female infidelity were draconian. In private, he accused Tylan of all manner of escapades without cause or evidence. After forty years of this treatment, Tylan’s pride had been eroded to nervous shreds. M’rath vented his frustrations with his duty to the Tal’Shiar on her. This usually took the form of running her pride into the ground. After enduring three hours of belittling abuse from her partner, she’d fled to her lab to forget about M’rath, Romulus, the Tal’Shiar, and the purpose she was supposed to serve in Starfleet. That day she’d bumped into Eddie along the way. She could keep her stoic composure in place while her emotions ran wild inside her mind so the face that she turned up to make her excuses to the man was as blank as any other day when she wasn’t upset. “Excuse me, Commander,” she said calmly. Eddie stared at her for a long time without moving or speaking. He was blocking the corridor, and appeared to have forgotten where he was going. His expression was one of puzzlement. He cocked his head quizzically to the side then tilted it the other way. After a long, uncomfortable silence he asked, “What size shoe do you wear?” The question was so surprising; she almost forgot her argument with M’rath. A flash of blank shock crossed her face before she could stop it. A wide smile spread across Eddie’s face. “You see,” he chuckled, “You’re standing on my foot.” He pointed a finger down to the deck, and sure enough, Tylan was standing one of his outsized feet. She quickly stepped back from Eddie, but he wasn’t satisfied. “Do it again,” he demaned. “What?” she blurted completely at a loss what to make of the man. Eddie pulled her to him and lifted her off the deck. He waltzed her around for two twirls before setting her down again. Immediately upon regaining her feet, Tylan slapped him. “You shouldn’t be so familiar with me, Commander,” she hissed. “I could report you to the Captain.” Eddie continued to smile. “I knew there was spirit in you, Tylan,” he confided in a gentle tone. “What has you so worked up today?” The notion he was seeing right through her shocked Tylan. She felt suddenly naked under his cheerful gaze. “Come with me,” he ordered with a smile. To insure she obeyed, he took her by the hand and dragged her along behind him. He led her to the galley and plopped a hot fudge Sunday before her once they arrived. Over the next half hour, he watched her eat the ice cream and stared at her with an oblivious smile. As a way to break the tension, she began to talk. As was her habit, she avoided talking about what was really on her mind, but Eddie listened attentively. Like the big brother she’d never had, he walked her through the rat-race of her thoughts with a few kind words and quite a few baited comments intended to get a rise out of her. Tylan doubted Eddie felt any attraction to her. Baiting Vulcans into displays of emotion was a popular sport among humans, but this episode stuck in her mind as special. Though she never hinted at what was on her mind, Eddie somehow knew she was deeply troubled. Most men would insist on attacking the issue directly, but Eddie was content to sooth her any way he could. He listened to everything that wasn’t bothering her while she worked out what was bothering her silently in her mind. It was surprising how well it worked. When he’d finally allowed her to go her way, he’d told her get some rest, and work off some tension. It was all the proper things a commanding officer should say, but she found herself fighting the urge to embrace him and weep in the circle of his arms. She’d never come so close to losing her Vulcan composure, and thereafter she craved Eddie’s presence. It wasn’t his willingness to listen; rather she felt a strong urge to tell him everything anyway. He was so easy to talk to. She sensed she could unload on him for hours, and his sympathy would never waver. In the years since, she’d spent no more time than she had to around him for fear of blowing her cover, but she found the few moments with him to be refreshing at every turn. Even watching his sleeping form on the deck was refreshing. It was thrilling to know she could bend over, touch his face, kiss his lips, and Eddie would never know. To prove her point she indulged in the experiment. She carefully locked the door and returned to his side. She balanced herself so that she didn’t rest any of her weight on him, and reached for his face. Her fingers trembled as they brushed his cheek. Her breath became short as the tremor raced up her arm and settled in the center of her chest. Tenderly she traced her fingers over his lips. She felt her throat thicken with desire. As she lowered her face to his, she had to keep her eyes wide open lest she spill the tears onto his face and risk waking him. The kiss was extraordinary. He didn’t respond, but it was immensely fulfilling. She noticed her hammering heart slow down in time with his. The lust she felt for him eased its hold on her soothed by the simple pleasure of his touch. In the warmth of her lips to his, her mind cast aside concerns, anxieties, fears, and doubts. It its place was a calm pool of relief. She almost collapsed on top of him the experience was so overwhelming. Drunkenly she sat back on her haunches and leaned against his desk. Her mind was remarkably clear. While Eddie slept on oblivious to the kiss stolen from him, Tylan’s senses expanded ecstatically. She could hear voices in the corridor outside the door and in the decks above and below her. She could see every hair on his head and the stubble on his cheeks and could have cheerfully counted them. She could taste the stale air of the ship and the salty taste of her tears. Most of all she could feel the fading heat of his lips rising off hers. She sat like that for several minutes before she noticed a change in Eddie. It was subtle, but she was trained to see these things. Eddie was sleeping dreamlessly now. His breathing had settled to a slower pace. His heart beat easier as tension flowed out of him. She hadn’t allowed herself to indulge in pride for some time, but she knew she was responsible and it felt almighty good. She felt an intense urge to curl up next to him and fall asleep as was the right of a lover. Tylan wanted to claim this man for herself in the most impatient of ways. She was about to proceed with this line of thinking when she heard the intercom chime. She bolted for the workstation and shut it off but not before Eddie stirred. He heaved himself awake drunkenly. Blindly he groped for the controls to the intercom and found her ass instead. For some reason she didn’t understand, his exhausted mind equated her bum to the intercom controls and he slapped it as if to shut it off. She let out a surprised little shriek, but Eddie only collapsed back to the deck. “This is Gordon,” he slurred without opening his eyes. Lieutenant Emily Blackburn’s voice came over the intercom. “Did I interrupt something, Commander?” “Naaaahh,” Eddie yawned, “just a nap.” “I’ve got an idea you should see, sir,” Blackburn said. Eddie yawned again, but he settled even further to the deck. After a long moment in which Tylan was certain he’d gone back to sleep he answered, “Can’t this bloody shit wait?” “I’m not sure, sir. It has to do with the power grid,” Blackburn explained. Eddie sighed. “Go on,” he growled. “I’m thinking the weapons will have to be rebuilt completely instead of adapted to the new core. The converters involved would be complicated and likely to fail, I might add.” “I think Tylan’s the one you should be talking to, Lieutenant,” Eddie mumbled. “The Captain told me last night she’s cleared around the rest of the ship. “Isn’t she in your office?” Blackburn asked. Eddie didn’t appear to register what Emily said, or so Tylan thought. After a moment’s pause she noticed his breathing settle down again. He’d fallen asleep while talking she guessed. Tylan wasn’t sure she should let everyone know what she’d been up to, so she put on her best Vulcan dispassion, and spoke into the intercom. “I’m here, Lieutenant,” she said calmly. “Did Commander Gordon explain the polarity change in the power grid to you?” Emily asked. “Not yet,” Tylan admitted, “What schematics should I be looking at?” Emily rattled off a file number and Tylan opened it up on Eddie’s workstation. What she saw puzzled her. “I don’t understand,” she said, “how do we get power in twelve phases?” “It’s the new warp core,” Emily explained. “Why don’t you come down here and I’ll explain it to you?” Tylan glanced down at Eddie. Her rump still tingled from his hand, and she was certain she had gone flush. The urge to do all sorts of indecent things to him was becoming rather urgent so moving out of his office might be a good idea. Also, her security codes had been revoked when she turned herself in. As luck would have it, today Eddie had fallen asleep with his code keyed into his workstation. As her Tal’Shiar training would have it, she already knew his access codes, but that was just another ugly detail she had to sort out with him and the Captain before long. Talking to Emily face to face would be preferable, but her current state of arousal was rather obvious and it made more sense to approach the problem from the schematic point of view at this stage. She felt her ears begin to burn as she looked at Eddie, and blushed a vivid green when she noticed her breasts were swelling. It was one of the shortcomings of being a Romulan female. Romulan males had the predictable response to arousal, but Romulan women had to contend with their own version of the phenomena. It was not uncommon for Romulan women who were flat-chested as a wooden plank to sprout breasts four or five cup sizes larger than normal while aroused. Some of the finest braziers in the known galaxy were made on Romulus to accommodate the needs of Romulan women, but Tylan had never seen one. Hiding this kind of growth would be impossible. I might as well march out there naked, she fumed at herself. She had an instant to marvel how this had never come up before in seven years of living in close quarters with the crew before realizing how rarely she’d felt this keyed-up in all that time. “I’ll stay here for now,” Tylan said struggling not to sound breathless. “If Commander Gordon has something to add, he’s right here.” Emily walked her through the various schematics and the files on the new power specifications. After about ten minutes Tylan managed to focus on the problems she was listing off and was able to converse without sounding like she’d run a marathon. “So we need twelve-phase weaponry instead of two-phase?” Tylan asked after Emily finished with her line of reasoning. “I’m not sure we do, but I’m thinking it would be safer and more reliable if we did,” Emily explained. “Not to mention more powerful,” Tylan mused thoughtfully. She considered the problem carefully for a moment before reaching a decision. “You’re right. Any converters we install would overload and breach in an emergency.” “I thought so,” Emily said. “I’ll get started on building the weapons.” Tylan couldn’t help an incredulous sneer from dropping out of her mouth. “You have twelve-phase weapons, Lieutenant?” “Well no,” Emily admitted, “but how hard could it be to rig them up?” “Counterproductive,” Tylan declared. “Tell you what, detach the phasers from the saucer and drive and put them outside the cave. I’ll get started on the new stuff right away. I’ve got the proper specifications in my lab for this sort of thing.” It was Emily’s turn to be incredulous. “You do?” she blurted. “Starfleet tried a sixteen phase weapons platform eighty years ago. They worked out the specifications, but they never found a suitable power plant. They worked on everything down to a single phase array. The hardware will be different especially on the emitters, but the specifications will be the same,” Tylan explained. “How soon can you have a working system?” Emily asked. “I can have prototypes ready for testing by the end of the week,” Tylan admitted proudly. “A full scale model should be ready by the end of the month.” Emily was quiet for a long time before answering. “Commander, what do you think we should do?” she asked. The entire conversation had been conducted on audio alone, so Emily was completely unaware Gordon was out cold. Tylan didn’t want to wake him, but she didn’t want to explain what she was doing in here either. She agonized over what to do for a heartbeat before nudging Eddie with her foot. He didn’t stir. She slapped him a time or two before deciding he was completely shut down. Waking him up would mean enduring several minutes of confusion before he could bring his faculties to bear. “I’m afraid he fell asleep while we’re talking,” Tylan admitted. “Not surprising,” Emily allowed. She heaved a great sigh of exasperation before explaining her doubts. “Our fabrication schedules are fairly rigid, Tylan. I’m not sure what we’ll be doing in a month. I think we’ll have the new frame finished up to deck fourteen, but the power grid shouldn’t be much past deck five.” Tylan played with Eddie’s files for a moment or two before finding the building schedule he’d worked out. “Says here, he expects deck seven completely finished by the end of the month,” she said. Emily wasn’t convinced. “At the rate this is going, I doubt it. We’re barely keeping up with the timetable as it is.” Tylan had to admit it was a big job to rebuild and refashion a ship the size of Pioneer, but she had faith Eddie wouldn’t have worked through all this only to be wrong. “If this is the only unexpected pitfall…” she began. Emily cut her off sharply. “That’s just the thing, Tylan, it isn’t!” she snapped. “Every gadget on this heap of junk that isn’t broken is coming up with problems to the new warp core. We ran computer models on a few of them this morning and we concluded we’ll have to develop EVERYTHING!” She shouted the last word in a rage before breaking into a full-throttle rant. “We’ve got to develop either a converter or a whole new computer core to accept a twelve-phase input. We have to develop a new com system for the same thing. We tested a converter on the navigation array, and it couldn’t even identify where we were in the room! Every light we have aboard will explode if we put just a trickle of twelve-phase power into them. Our replicators are producing nothing but slag when we tried to test the power grid on it and that’s with ordinary two-phase power! We’re so close to starting from scratch, we’d be better off gathering stones, bones, and animal skins, and trying that instead!” “Why don’t you explain this to the Captain?” Tylan suggested. “Because that’s Eddie’s job!” Emily screamed through the intercom. A moment later Tylan could hear the woman sobbing on the other end of the line. Emily typically was the most unflappable person she’d hoped to meet next to Tylan herself so this was shocking change. Tylan didn’t know what to make of it. Had Emily gone mad? Had the constant strain unhinged her thoughts this badly? Upon consideration she rejected the notion. She was quite familiar with the signs of strain, and this was a breed apart. Something deeper troubled Emily than just work. Some fundamental shift in her perceptions had occurred. Why? “Lieutenant?” she began before deciding on another approach. “Emily, why don’t you see the Captain yourself? I think you have more on your mind than just work at the moment.” Emily sobbed something that sounded like an agreement and keyed off the intercom. Tylan studied Eddie for a moment. Was he really dealing with this sort of thing all the time? Was the crew coming apart? She didn’t think so. The scientists were overjoyed with Cove while everyone else was glad to set foot on a planet again even if it was a barren desert. The mood around the engineers was one of anticipation. Eddie’s people were eager to get started with the host of new problems the refit posed if for no other reason than to break the routine. There was even hope they could drastically improve their lot if they could but put the ship together right the first time. On the other hand Emily’s behavior was alarming, and far more important, Eddie was completely worn out. He’d barely gotten started with the ship before collapsing after two months of constant crisis. Tylan stooped again to Eddie’s side. She ran a loving hand through his hair and fretted about his comfort. She wanted to do something for him. “Who am I kidding?” she asked herself aloud in her native language. “I want this man in the worst way this very instant!” It was the first words she’d spoken in Romulan for almost thirty years. They sounded clumsy in her mouth even if her thoughts ranted in the tongue all the time. A smile passed over her face as a mad impulse struck her. Maybe she could tell Eddie everything after all. She laughed. “The first words of Romulan I speak in over a quarter century, and it amounts to ‘I wanna’ fuck!’ Have I really fallen so far, Eddie, or are you just that studly?” The language was coming back to her lips slowly, but it felt wonderful to be honest with herself in front of him. “You’ve never made it easy for me to be a Vulcan, I might add. There are times I had to hate you with every fiber of my being not to lose control and bray out a gust of laughter.” She laughed again, and that too felt wonderful. “Would you like to know what I’m going to do to you once you’re mine, Edmund Gordon? I’m sure you’ll like it. First, I want you to tickle me until my clothes fall off and I’m weeping with laughter. Next, I’m going to show you the joys of Vulcan acupressure. Those prudes may be stodgy, but they do know their foreplay. After that, I’m going to have my way with you until you’re half dead and I’m too sore to stand.” She was surprised how well this trashy talk translated into Romulan. The language was remarkably subtle and could be scandalously specific in fewer words. She laughed again when she realized she’d accidentally misstated the last part of her plan into something quite out of the question. It involved getting five other women for some rather specific acts of intimacy. She laughed so hard at the thought of Eddie managing six Romulan women in bed, he woke up. He blinked dazedly at her, annoyed she had disturbed him and confused why she was next to him while he was sleeping. Tylan had lost control and laughed even harder at his befuddled expression. Truly it was priceless! She struggled to compose herself while he stared at her. By the time she’d calmed down to a torrent of giggles, he was sitting up and staring at her with wide, confused eyes. “Talk to Tylan!” she giggled. She stood and slapped her bum the way he had a few minutes ago mistaking it for the intercom, and she was off howling again. Eddie tried to piece the joke together and couldn’t. Slowly it dawned on him he’d never heard her laugh before. “I like your laugh,” he slurred drunkenly before slowly slumping to the deck again. Tylan laughed harder for a minute before she began to cry. She’d waited so long to hear Eddie say something she could respond to. So he liked her laugh. She had to admit it wasn’t poetry, but it was the first piece of honesty between them. It was a good start. Before she could think about it much more the intercom chirped again. This time Eddie didn’t stir. Maybe she could be useful. She answered the call. “This is Doctor Totem. The computer core just went down in all the labs.” The reptilian scientist sounded prissy and offended over the audio. That was a common misconception for Totem. He had a lisp and a precise manner of speaking that always sounded overblown no matter how informal the conversation. His species was known for their prickly nature, but Tylan wondered if it had more to do with their mannerisms than their conviction. Those who worked closely with him aboard the ship claimed he was generous and considerate despite the widely held belief he was a pompous academic. Tylan checked the schedule and discovered the problem. “You’re not getting it back for five weeks, Professor, sorry. You’ll have to do with auxiliary units on the shuttles or palm PADDs until then.” “I see,” Totem said with a petulant lilt. “That poses a serious problem.” “Power to the computer core is liable to be erratic over the coming weeks, sir. You’d risk losing all your data and calculations several times over until the new one is on line,” she explained. Totem was surprised. “New one?”he asked. “You don’t expect me to believe you’re going to redesign the entire computer core, do you?” “I’m afraid we have little choice, sir,” Tylan explained. “The new core must work on a twelve-phase power net.” “As fascinating as that sounds, I’m deeply concerned about the risk,” Totem chided. “The Captain is well aware of it I assure you, Professor.” “Allow me to make my case, Lieutenant,” Totem said with surprising patience. “I’m not concerned about losing our data. I’m worried we’ll have to spend several months learning how to operate the new system before we grow accustomed to it. An interim step must be appraised before the old core is discarded.” Tylan admitted to herself he was right. It was a point of fact nobody had built a twelve-phase computer before least of all one the size Pioneer needed. Since she hadn’t been in on the decisions that led up to any of the refit details, she could only assume Eddie had some computer specialist who had a masochistic streak. Building the core would be bad enough. Learning to operate it to its proper capacity could take years let alone months. Before she could say anything Totem reached a conclusion. “I’ll get started on that step shortly. Could the engineers be persuaded to activate the core for another three days?” “I doubt it, sir,” Tylan said. She was looking over the timetable during the next week, and the man-hours would have been brutal for a crew three times the size of this one. “I could talk to them and see what can be done,” she offered. “No need,” Totem announced. “I’ll test what I have against the smaller processors we have around here. We may have a little trouble scaling the process up, but far, far less than I expect from the new computer core.” For some reason he sounded fussy. One might think from the lisp and the clipped chatter he raced through the man was effeminate in some strange way. He had that curious combination of culture, concern, and distain bottled up in his voice that reminded everyone aboard of the excessively vain. “Tell those engineers I’ll permit them access to the system in concise stages as we test its thresholds,” he added before killing the link. Tylan was about to wonder what Totem was up to when another call chimed in. It was Okuma this time. “What are you doing in Gordon’s office, Tylan?” Okuma scolded angrily. Tylan decided the whole story wasn’t any of Okuma’s business, but there was enough of the truth to get by with. “I came here to see what I should be doing with my lab and found…” she hesitated. She had to stop herself from calling Gordon “Eddie” lest anyone grew suspicious of her feelings before she was ready. Rumor had it Okuma had taken up with Forte despite regulations, but Tylan doubted her feelings for Eddie would be understood or even tolerated. The timing was all wrong somehow. Maybe later. “…Commander Gordon asleep at his desk. I’ve been fielding calls for him.” “Let me talk to him,” Okuma snapped. “With all due respect, Commander, I think we should let him rest as long as possible. I’d suggest moving him to his quarters if I didn’t think I might need to wake him here and there.” Tylan had to stop herself from saying more. Any more detail and Okuma might become suspicious. There was a long silence over the audio followed by the twittering of a workstation on the other end of the line. “I see you’ve accessed his workstation, Tylan,” Okuma announced. “I’m locking you out of the command codes until Eddie wakes up. Have him call me when he does so I can reactivate them.” Tylan watched as a menu vanished off the screen. She didn’t mind. Eddie’s command codes included access to the ship’s chronometer, manually firing the weapons from engineering, manual override of all the ship’s systems, and the warp core self-destruct. The chronometer didn’t need fixing so far as she knew. She wasn’t interested in firing the weapons in the confines of the cavern. All the ship’s systems were shut down now that the computer core was off so the manual override was worthless. And she had no desire to destroy the ship. What she had left was total access to Eddie’s files. Considering what she had been doing so far, that should be more than enough to keep from disturbing him. “I’ll be sure to tell the Commander when he comes around,” she assured Okuma coolly. She hesitated for a moment before asking, “Should I revive him at a specific time?” Okuma sighed. When she spoke again she sounded resigned but not angry. “I guess he’s wiped out?” “Yes,” Tylan confirmed. “What other duties do you have presently?” Okuma asked. “I have my lab to clear out and some hardware to develop for the new weapons and targeting systems,” Tylan said. “From the sound of things I might be involved with almost all the power input hardware.” “I’ll reactivate your code key shortly. If you think you could pull a double shift this today, I’ll see if we can get one of the other engineers to field questions for Eddie while he gets some rest,” Okuma said. “I’m doing that now,” Tylan pointed out. “I can have the hardware modeled digitally as we go given about a week lead time. This would be a good place to be to get the proper heads up from the various projects.” Tylan knew Okuma didn’t trust her. During her interview with Koon, Samantha appeared ready to throttle her on the spot. She reasoned the XO thought Tylan was partially to blame for all that had befallen them, and the Romulan woman couldn’t really blame her. They’d come within a fraction of being exterminated on two separate occasions. Romulans were known to promote such events in Starfleet. At the same time Tylan resented the mistrust. Over the past seven years she’d grown attached to this crew even as her bond to M’rath broke down. She considered them friends, even Okuma in her snippy way. She trusted Koon in a way she found hard to describe. Not exactly the trust she placed in her boss and superior, more like the faith she held in a seer. She knew she didn’t want to disappoint Koon or Okuma, that privilege she withheld for M’rath alone. She understood that the trust she’d built up over the last seven years was likely to be severely shaken for the next few months if not years. There was no avoiding it. However she didn’t look forward to the daily trials ahead. It astonished her Emily and Totem had been as congenial as they had been. Both of them were tired, stressed, and fully aware of her treason during all the time they had placed such thoughtless faith in her. How could they forget all that in such a short span of time? The answer was an unlikely one. Koon had placed his faith in her without qualm. By doing so he shifted her role in the Tal’Shiar into the realm of inconsequential details. It was hard to believe so simple an act could have such far-reaching consequences. There were layers to his style of leadership she’d scarcely imagined. She noticed everyone was focused on the problems before them rather than the potential threats around them. The crew of Pioneer wasn’t in the slightest bit concerned about the Hirogen because Koon had taken that off their shoulders. They weren’t worried about reaching Voyager because Koon was convinced they’d get there. They didn’t think the task of rebuilding the ship was impossible because Koon set them to work on the problem with focus and trust. In exchange, he shouldered the worries, thought ahead, and eased their grief over the loss of their friends. He took on the big issues and doled out little problems for everyone to solve. Everyone was being pushed to the limit of their endurance, but Koon was careful not to break them. Everyone was too busy to care she’d been a Tal’Shiar agent. Now that they saw her moving about the ship and assuming her place beside them, they would accept the help and think about what they had to do rather than her. She found herself wondering if Okuma was above that. She worked closely with the Captain after all. Did Koon clue her in to his innermost thoughts? Did he explain his reasons for allowing her to remain aboard in full detail, or did he give a flippant answer and move on to the next item of business? If Okuma was outside Koon’s influence, she might take a dim view to having Tylan so intimately involved with the refitting of the ship. The Romulan woman waited in silence for half a minute. The mounting tension squeezed tears from her eyes and savagely tore at her throat for a sob. She let the tears flow freely, but pride kept her from allowing the rest of her composure to crack. “You have a point,” Okuma said at last. “I’ll see what Gordon thinks when he’s up, but I think he’ll agree so long as you work out today. Consider this your duty assignment for the second watch. I want you working in your lab during first watch on the hardware. From what I understand we’re going to need a whopping lot of it.” The tension eased in increments. It was like having several weights viciously hacked off her shoulders with blows just as hard to bear as the mass pushing down on her. As Okuma spoke, more of the weights dropped off her until her heart pounded and her breathing quickened to the point she was close to hyperventilating. Quickly she composed herself, “Thank you, sir,” Tylan said calmly. The com went dead. Tylan felt a wave of triumph wash over her. If she played her cards right, she’d be working closer to Eddie than she ever had before. It was enough to jump for joy, but the com chirped to life again and she went back to work. She stayed at her post for the next fourteen hours before Gordon finally woke up. She couldn’t remember ever being so happy. He was surprised to see her. He was even more surprised to glance at the clock and realize he’s slept for almost a full day. His uniform felt grimy, and his mouth tasted like it had been rinsed out in the popskull rum his instructors showed him how to make out of plasma coolant. He had to blink steadily for a full minute before his vision cleared enough to bear the light. Still, he felt groggy yet refreshed. The frantic race of his thoughts had ordered itself into a steady progression, and his body ached in a manageable fashion. Before he’d drifted off there’d been a terrible pain behind his eyes, and every time he tried to blink had felt like grinding sand into his skull; fortunately that was gone. He felt closer to human again than he had in months. Tylan noticed him stirring, but chattered away with someone without skipping a beat. What was she doing? Eddie heaved his aching body upright and fumbled about drunkenly until he’d regained his feet. He waited for her to end the conversation before speaking. His foggy mind didn’t bother to focus on what was being said. Slowly his eyes took in the surroundings. Had he really slept all this time in his office? How long had she been here? A confused memory surfaced where he told someone to talk to Tylan. Another memory, surly a dream, had the austere little woman laughing hysterically and slapping her ass as if he should ride it. Tylan finished the conversation and keyed off the intercom. When she turned to face him, he noticed how tired she looked. “’Ow long ‘ave you been ‘ere?” he asked his Cockney accent thick in his mouth. “Since this morning,” she said cheerfully. “You let me sleep the whole time?” he was irritated with himself for not waking sooner and it reduced his voice to a menacing growl. She wasn’t impressed. “You were tired, Eddie,” she said softly. Gordon was many things, but he’d never been a “morning person” in his life. His temper was always fowl until he got some coffee and toast in his belly. Ideally he reserved a little time for reading the reports from around the ship to get his mind attuned to the tasks of the day, but he’d abandoned that habit of late. After that, he was his usual, cheerful self. Anyone within range of him for the first hour of the day was liable to get snapped at or endure sullen silences. Since he spent much of this ill-tempered time alone in his quarters, few were aware of this side to him. He growled something inarticulate at her and shuffled off down the corridor to the head. When he returned, she was chatting away with someone else. His mind was finally getting in gear, but he missed the larger portion of the conversation. Tylan was rattling off specification numbers while the person she was talking spoke in compartment numbers. It was like listening to foreigners talking in their native language. He could catch a word here and there, but he failed to follow what was going on. He glanced at the workstation and felt alarm thrill through him. “What are you doing?” Tylan jumped right out of her seat from the unexpected anger in his voice. She whirled about to face him with an expression of horror on her face. “I was telling Chief Bom about the timetable for the next shift,” she said sounding unexpectedly frightened. “I was telling him about the specifications for the fabrication shop in…” Eddie cut her off. “You don’t know what we’re doing from here on out!” he raged. “I’m going by your production schedule,” she protested. Eddie jabbed a finger at the workstation. “Those aren’t my specifications!” Tylan looked puzzled. “I know. Those were incomplete.” “I NEVER HAD A CHANCE TO FINISH THEM!” he shouted. Tylan’s mystified expression deepened. “Finish them?” she asked. He stared at her dumbfounded. “Don’t tell me there is a list of specifications compiled for twelve-phase power grids! I know for a fact…” Tylan interrupted him quietly. “Yes there is.” His mind skipped a beat. “What?” Her voice trembled nervously when she spoke, and she shook with fear as she tried to explain. “T-the specifications were standardized e-eighty years ago,” she stammered. “I’ve never heard of them,” Eddie growled. Tylan moved back to the workstation and brought up the appropriate files. “You were on the right track,” she said quietly. “But I saw no need to reinvent all this.” Eddie stared at one file after another with a mounting anger. Not at Tylan, but with himself. He’d assumed there were no guidelines for the new power grid right from the start so he hadn’t thought to research the matter. Instead he’d thrown himself into thinking through the whole mess from scratch. It had occupied every spare minute of his time for the last three weeks. He estimated he had wasted over sixty hours for this mistake. Sixty hours he could scarce afford. Sixty hours he could have used to sleep, work, or think through the tasks ahead of him. He slammed his fist through the workstation in a rage cutting off the com with a loud squawk. Why hadn’t he done his homework? Why had he skipped this first step to confirm his suspicions? He knew the reasons why. He’d always hated research. Gordon had endured his four years at the Academy knowing that the academia would lessen once he was out in the fleet. During his specialist training on Jupiter Station, he’d been told by his instructors there were two kinds of engineers: wrench-turners and golfers. Golfers were deskbound, work-a-day designers who produced specifications, prints, timetables, and theoretical applications. Wrench-turners produced working ships, safer crews, and stained uniforms that a team of trained professionals couldn’t wash clean again. It was the age-old argument between the people who designed things, and those who went out and built them. The difference between an architect and an artisan. While each was just as necessary to produce a finished structure, they inhabited stratified casts where ego and creativity were often at odds. Eddie was a wrench-turner. He demurred from paperwork, and kept his engineers organized “by ear” as he called it. Since there were few specialists in the crew it worked out rather well, but it all hinged on his memory. Since he had a marvelous ability to recall what he’d told a person down through the years, he’d rarely hit a snag. This was outside his experience. On the surface refitting the ship to a new specification wasn’t all that hard. The actual work aside, the elements in play were not terribly complicated. He was building a ship out of the remains of a ship that was falling apart. He had the power and the resources to produce what the hull of Pioneer couldn’t provide. Take out the time factor, and the process was fairly straightforward. The trick was not to become overwhelmed by the scale of the enterprise. What he’d missed was the plethora of details he had to sit down and refine. His inclination was to find out how to build the new power grid as he went along. If he did it in this manner, he could sort through the quirks of the design as he encountered them. The trouble with that approach was it weighed heavily on his efforts to keep things straight. In an effort to ease the burden on himself, he’d began compiling lists of specifications for the new grid never suspecting all that had been worked out already. In frustration he pulled at his hair and paced the room. Tylan watched him anxiously from her seat. “Oh, GOD!” he moaned into his hands in anguish. If he had only thought to look it up! He could have cost the ship months of painstaking trial and error if not fatally so. How could he have been so thoughtless? Koon’s trust was going to be shaken to the bone once he found out! More than anything that injured Eddie. He could live with his mistakes, but he desperately wanted to avoid disappointing Peyter Koon. What else had he overlooked? Details flooded into his mind with almost physical force. He leaned against the bulkhead weeping into his hands. A cold knot of fear twisted in his belly as the full scale of the task ahead broke through his last reserves of self-confidence. He curled into a ball on the deck and cried like the lonely boy from a broken home he was. “Eddie?” Tylan asked softly. He couldn’t answer her. It was humiliating enough he was coming apart in front of her as it was. He waved her away. A hand touched the top of his head. He flinched away from it. “Eddie?” she asked again. The hand returned and gently raked through his hair. An arm slipped around him. “It’s alright,” she soothed nervously. She sounded like a girl trying to talk a lion into sparing her life. “It’s alright.” She began murmuring words in a language he’d never heard. He didn’t understand what she was saying, but the more she spoke the more he calmed down. “Te’ hey lyle morisath ish nan bluv. Korri korri, Eddie, chen co mish. Korri korri, Eddie. Shhh, te’ que xe korri korri, Eddie.” She kept this up for several minutes. Her voice gradually lost the note of fear and gained a note of tenderness. The despair in his heart gradually drained away. It was replaced with a new anxiety. “Are you going to tell the Captain about this?” Tylan nodded. “I think he’ll be pleased how the specifications I had on file will accelerate the work.” Eddie shook his head. “I was talking about this,” he motioned to his puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. She smiled. It was the first time he’d seen it and it was dazzling. “No,” she said softly before adding in Romulan, “Auvun plo gesh yan xethem que korri korri, Eddie.” He smiled, “I think that means I’m in trouble.” “Maybe,” Tylan teased. He rose to his feet, and she stepped aside to let him pass by her. He stared at her for a moment before slipping his arms around her. “I’m sorry, love,” he said. “I’m not on my best behavior when I wake up.” He felt her arms tighten about him, but he missed the exultant smile. To Be Continued |
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