Taking Wing Read online

  An almost impish grin suddenly crossed his face. “I’ve already come up with a solution to that problem. Report to Titan, and you’ll have that third pip—Commander. But you’d better hurry. Offer’s good for a limited time only.”

  Vale took a step backward, momentarily stunned. She couldn’t have been more surprised if he had just sprouted wings.

  “But I only got promoted to lieutenant commander a few weeks ago,” she said after the seeming eternity it took for her voice to return.

  “So?”

  “But you can’t just. . . promote me again.”

  His grin broadened.

  “Can you?” she added.

  “Never tell the captain what he can and can’t do,” he said. “Didn’t we just establish, yet again, that I’m infallible?”

  Laughing, she extended her right hand. He took it in a firm grip. “Looks like I’d better inform Captain Picard that he’s going to need to find a new chief of security,” Riker said.

  “If you don’t mind, sir,” Vale said, disengaging from the handclasp, “I really ought to be the one to do it.”

  He nodded. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  “Will you be heading back to Utopia Planitia now, Captain?”

  “Not right away.” He turned and moved toward the door, which hissed open for him. “There are a few . . . farewells I want to make first.”

  She nodded, surmising that he would want to see Geordi and Worf again before departing. And sometime before his return to Titan he would need to have some time alone with Captain Picard.

  Thoughts of the Enterprise’s rock-steady captain, who was even now breaking in an almost entirely new crew, precipitated a renewed surge of guilt over her decision to leave. Get a grip on yourself, Christine. Didn’t the captain say he’d support whatever decision you made?

  Riker paused in the doorway. “Oh, and Christine?”

  “Sir?”

  For the first time, he made a show of looking directly at her bare feet. “When you report to Titan, don’t forget to bring your boots.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  U.S.S. TITAN, STARDATE 56944.2

  “Look out!” yelled astrobiologist Kenneth Norellis as the tool kit slipped from his grasp. Reacting instinctively, he grabbed vainly for the falling implements—and simultaneously lost his grip on the ladder. The artificial gravity took him, and he plunged nearly two meters straight down through the vertical shaft of the Jefferies tube.

  He landed in a heap at the bottom, a moment after his tool kit sprayed its cargo of spanners and stem bolts in every direction. The impact forced a surprised yelp out of him, in addition to abruptly pushing most of the air from his lungs.

  “You okay?” said Melora Pazlar, poking her head into the Jefferies tube’s shaft from a horizontal access tunnel.

  “Dammit!” Norellis said, massaging his right knee, through which pain was now flaring with near-nova intensity. “I can’t believe I just did that,” he hissed through clenched teeth. And for what? A diagnostic analysis of a tertiary backup holographic imaging relay. I might be walking wounded, but it’s pretty damned certain nobody’s gonna pin a medal on me for this particular injury-in-the-line-of-duty.

  “You mean you can’t believe you took a fall just now?” she said. Norellis was certain that the willowy Pazlar had never made a graceless move in her life—her cane and gravity-compensating exoframe notwithstanding. He saw in her barely suppressed smile that she was politely refraining from reminding him about the other tumbles and minor accidents he had suffered in his rush to make Titan ready to study the cosmos by her scheduled departure date. As though this couldn’t have happened to anyone, he thought, his rising indignation almost—but not quite—distracting him from the lancing pain in his right knee.

  “Good thing I happened to be nearby,” she said after he followed her out into the corridor, she walking with a smooth economy of motion, he advancing in a tentative, painful crawl. “Need any help, Kent?”

  He winced, praying silently that he wasn’t badly hurt. “I think I’m okay. Just need. A minute. To catch my breath. And gather up my tools.”

  She nodded, standing beside where he half sat and half lay on the deck. The delicate Elaysian planted her cane firmly with one hand and extended the other down toward him. “Let’s see if you can stand first.”

  He took her hand, using it to steady himself as he slowly rose, while Pazlar’s exoframe whined with the effort of keeping them both steady. As soon as he reached his feet, his already-throbbing right knee felt as though it had just entered Titan’s matter-antimatter annihilation chamber.

  He settled back onto the deck plating with a sharp cry and a resounding thump.

  “Let me help you get to sickbay, Kent,” Pazlar said. “You need to have Dr. Ree look you over.”

  “No!” he said, somehow finding enough wind to shout before he even realized what he was doing.

  “I think you may have sprained more than your pride, this time, Ensign,” said another voice, deep and rich and resonant.

  Norellis turned in the direction of the voice and met the concerned gaze of Lieutenant Commander Ranul Keru, the tall, burly unjoined male Trill who served as Titan’s tactical officer and chief of security.

  Crap, Norellis thought. Why does he have to see me like this? The universe must really hate me today.

  “I’m fine, Commander, really,” he said aloud, struggling up into a crouch that made a Cardassian interrogation chamber seem like mercy itself. “No need to bother Dr. Ree. Really. I mean, he’s a very busy man—er, dinosaur.”

  “Ree isn’t a dinosaur,” Keru said. “He only looks like one.”

  “Ah, so that’s what this is about,” Pazlar said, a look of understanding crossing her fair features. “I have to confess, even I find Dr. Ree a little scary-looking. But he’s extraordinarily gentle. I even heard Nurse Ogawa telling Olivia Bolaji that Ree is a world-class obstetrician.”

  The astrobiologist smiled lamely, hugging the bulkhead as his breathing normalized and he continued trying to straighten his knees. “That’s a lucky thing for Olivia. And if I ever get pregnant while I’m serving on Titan, I promise that Dr. Ree will be the second one to know.”

  His flexing knee reached a critical angle, and the pain once again dumped him deckward. Keru’s thick forearm caught him before he completed his latest pratfall.

  Pazlar favored Norellis with a sympathetic gaze. “Take some friendly advice from an expert, Kent. Next time you have to crawl around at the top of a Jefferies tube, disable the artificial gravity in there.”

  He nodded. “Great idea.” Fat lot of good that does me now.

  “Come on, Ensign,” Keru said in mock-stern tones. “To sickbay with you.”

  “You might outrank me, Commander, but I’m not sure you can make me go to sickbay.” But he knew he was losing the argument. Keru and Pazlar had already flanked him and were supporting him, effectively frogmarching him down the corridor toward a turbolift.

  “Consider it an order if you like,” Keru said, smiling, “or think of it as a strong suggestion from someone who never goes anywhere without a sidearm.”

  What remained of Norellis’s spirits fell at least as quickly as his tool kit had. Great. Now Keru thinks I’m a coward. And probably a xenophobe, too.

  As the doors of Dr. Ree’s sickbay drew near, Pazlar whispered in his ear. “Don’t worry, Kent. Dr. Ree hasn’t eaten any member of this crew.”

  Not yet, Norellis thought as he passed through the gates of Hell, and abandoned all hope.

  But once inside sickbay, he was heartened by the sight of a kindly, familiar face. Instead of a savage lizard-man, he saw Nurse Ogawa turn toward him. Except for her young son, Noah, the head nurse was the only other person in the sickbay reception area.

  “Please tell me Dr. Ree is out,” Norellis whispered, his jaw drawn tight from the agony in his knee as Keru and Pazlar helped him sit on the edge of a nearby biobed. “Maybe one of the othe
r doc—”

  “As a matter of fact, Dr. Ree is out at the moment,” Ogawa said, cutting him off. “He’s trying to boost morale by making a few ‘house calls’ among the crew.”

  Norellis sighed in relief at her confirmation of Ree’s absence, then winced again as jagged lightning bolts of pain shot through his right knee.

  Then he noticed Ogawa watching him in silence, her expression baleful. She brandished a medical tricorder as though it were a hand phaser. “Would anyone mind if I have a word with Mr. Norellis? Alone?” As Keru and Pazlar beat a tactful retreat, the nurse placed a gently restraining hand on little Noah’s shoulder. “Not you, Noah. I want you to hear this, too.”

  Oh, crap, Norellis thought again, wishing he could run after his two shipmates. I’ve really stepped into it this time.

  “Tell me, Kent, what do you know about Dr. Ree?” Ogawa said as she ran a quick scan of his injured knee. “How much can you tell my son about him?”

  “Not a lot,” he confessed.

  She exchanged the tricorder for a hypospray, and injected him on the side of his knee. The pain immediately abated, and he flexed the joint cautiously. Still no pain. He heaved an appreciative sigh. Then he noticed Noah regarding him with his dark, curious, almond eyes.

  Acknowledging Norellis’s grateful smile with a small smile of her own, she continued: “So you aren’t aware of all the new surgical techniques Starfleet has acquired thanks to the Pahkwa-thanh in general, and to Dr. Shenti Yisec Eres Ree in particular.”

  “Um, no.”

  “Or the dozens of papers he’s had published in Federation medical journals.”

  He knew his face was heating up, warming and tinting itself to the precise color of shame. “Ah. Not, er, not as such. No.”

  “So all you do know about him amounts to the fact that he belongs to a species that superficially resembles an extinct Earth reptile.”

  Norellis nodded. “A very scary, carnivorous Earth reptile. Yes.” He remembered meeting Ree the night before in the arboretum; the doctor’s long, crazily articulated fingers alone had made Norellis want to jump out of his skin. This morning Norellis had watched in mortified fascination as the doctor took a meal in the main mess hall. He wondered when the dripping red contents of Ree’s plate would stop haunting him—

  “Are you even listening to me, Kent?”

  He shook off his unpleasant memories, wondering just how much of Ogawa’s dressing-down he had missed. “You’re right. I suppose I haven’t been exactly fair to Ree. I took the same Academy diversity training you did.”

  “That’s exactly what I was trying to remind you about.”

  He nodded. “I guess I’m just not used to being part of such an obvious minority. Being a human on a ship with a crew as varied as this one, I mean.” It suddenly occurred to him that he himself had been a minority of quite another sort for as long as he could remember—a fact that had never bothered him, nor anyone else in his life.

  To Norellis’s intense relief, Ogawa broke off her attack and answered his frank admission with a smile. She began waving a deep-tissue regenerator over his injured knee. “I’m glad we’re seeing eye to eye then.”

  Though he returned the smile, he thought, But I can’t promise you I won’t flinch if Ree tries to touch me.

  That notion made him feel rather disappointed with himself. He remembered his Starfleet Academy diversity training, of course, and recalled how very seriously he had taken it at the time; he’d just never expected to have to put it to so much practical use so very often. Between his anxieties about Titan’s CMO and a score of other nonhumanoid crew members aboard, not to mention the cultural differences among the rest, Norellis was beginning to think diversity was easier in theory than practice.

  “Is this what you mean by ‘conflict resolution,’ Mom?” Noah asked, brushing his dark bangs from his bright, coal-colored eyes.

  Ogawa beamed at her son. “Yup. And it’s the best kind.”

  “Huh. I wonder if it’ll be this easy with the Romulans.”

  Norellis saw that her smile faltered then, though not completely. “We can only hope, kiddo,” Ogawa said as she tousled the child’s hair, then told him he was free to go now if he wanted. Noah wasted no time taking his mother up on the offer, leaving sickbay at a brisk trot.

  Now alone with a woman whom he knew he’d just given good reason to chew him out, Norellis was more desperate than ever to change the subject. “So will I ever play soccer again?” he said, pointing to his knee.

  Ogawa had already turned back toward the biobed and was putting her instruments away. “Stay off it as much as you can for the rest of the day. And try not to fall down any more Jefferies tubes the next time you’re on duty.”

  Rising cautiously to his feet, Norellis wondered how she knew exactly how he’d injured his knee. Had Keru or Pazlar called ahead while he’d been distracted by his blinding pain? Or had Ogawa just made a lucky guess? In the short time he’d known her since he had left Starfleet Academy for Titan, she had always struck him as an extremely intuitive person.

  “Alyssa, what do you know about Ranul Keru?” He was glad now that she’d insisted ever since joining Titan’s crew that everyone stay on a first-name basis with her.

  “Anything in particular you’re looking to find out, Kent?”

  Norellis cleared his throat, silently cursing himself for his nervousness. “Is. . . Is he single?” He felt his cheeks beginning to flush again.

  Casting a glance over her shoulder as if to make certain they really were alone, Ogawa pulled up a chair. The junior engineer resumed his perch on the edge of the biobed.

  “I don’t want to get a reputation as being Titan’s resident yenta,” she said. “So you haven’t heard anything from me. Got it?”

  He nodded, silently making a lock-and-key gesture across his lips.

  “He’s single. But he’s also kind of a loner.”

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t, you know, pursue him?” Norellis wanted to know, feeling some genuine confusion.

  “No. I’m just saying you need to proceed with caution. He lost a lifemate during a Borg attack on the Enterprise six years ago. And he’s been carrying around a lot of grief ever since then. So my advice is to proceed with caution. Go slow, Kent.”

  Thanking her, he moved toward the door. He wondered if he was about to exchange the pain in his knee for pain of a wholly different sort.

  “It’s nice of you to make a house call like this, Doc,” Olivia Bolaji said, resting on the sofa in the center of the quarters she shared with her husband, Axel Bolaji. “I know how busy you are.”

  “I am never too busy to check up on Titan’s very first hatchling-to-be,” Ree said, his voice a leathery rasp. “So, how is the unborn youngling today?” Ree placed one of his nimble, superarticulated hands gently on her abdomen. Olivia fought to keep from flinching away from his touch. Shamed by this, she hoped he hadn’t noticed.

  “Our newcomer has been kicking a lot lately,” Axel said, a proud parental smile spreading across his deep brown Australian aborigine features. “It’s hard to believe the due date is only fifteen weeks away now.”

  That seems like an eternity, Olivia thought as she looked down at her inexorably expanding belly. Her only regret about their decision to have a child was the time it would force her to spend away from her job. Olivia loved her work, and she knew she was going to have to begin curtailing it sometime in the next couple of months, if not sooner.

  “You can level with me, Doc,” she said. “Are you sidelining me?”

  Ree blinked several times—the outer, rough-textured eyelids closed and opened first, followed in alternation by a moist white inner membrane—as he appeared to digest the unfamiliar human sports idiom. Then he displayed several rows of serrated, daggerlike teeth in what had to be the Pahkwa-thanh equivalent of a benevolent smile. “Not yet, Olivia. I will maintain your flight and duty certifications for at least the next month. Let’s schedule another examination for thirty
standard days from now. I will reevaluate your duty status then.”

  Ree bid the couple farewell and exited into the corridor, carefully but quickly negotiating the narrow doorway, his broad tail tucked up tightly behind him.

  Olivia breathed an involuntary sigh of relief after he had gone.

  She glanced down once again at her distended abdomen, then smiled at Axel, gratified that Titan had turned out to be so family-friendly, at least so far. Being a much smaller vessel than the Venture—the Galaxy-class starship on which she and Axel had most recently served—Titan had nowhere near as many married couples and children living aboard her. But Olivia felt that their burgeoning family was more than welcome here nevertheless.

  But maybe it’s not so welcoming to Ree, she thought, her thoughts abruptly darkening. Why hadn’t Ree asked her to report to sickbay for today’s prenatal examination? Could it be that other members of the crew were flinching in his presence, just as she had? Was Ree picking up on those feelings of alienation, and therefore making an extra effort to reach out to the crew?

  She contemplated the child that was steadily growing within her. Let’s hope you and Noah Powell will get these things right more often than the rest of us do.

  “Okay,” Vale said as the azure limb of the Earth dropped away from the Armstrong’s forward windows, “how about this one: ‘We hold it in our power to begin the world anew.’ ”

  Riker nodded solemnly. Though he’d served with Vale aboard the Enterprise for the past four years, he had never realized just how well read she was. “Where did that one come from? Ben Franklin?”

  “Thomas Paine.” She appeared pleased to have stumped him.

  “I like it,” he said. When he saw her triumphant grin, he amended his statement with, “So I’ll put it on the short list with the other contenders.”

  “Can you recommend a better one?” she asked, appending a “sir” a beat later as an obvious afterthought. She was clearly taking this business very seriously.