DINNER AT TEN-FORWARD
by ardavenport
- - - Part 16: H'cars on Board
The trio of caterers surveyed the room and muttered to themselves by the view ports, Caro's clouded green-brown globe filled the port side.
"The view is superb..."
"But the place is only equipped with replicators..."
"The food will have to be prepared in another room and assembled here..."
"And the lighting from the tables; people will go blind while they're eating..."
Commander Riker stood away from the group and left them to their conference. They were the advance team from the God's Temple Catering Service, there to evaluate the Enterprise's facilities for the next night's dinner. A small group of others were precisely measuring the room with light devices. Riker had given them all the building specs, but apparently they didn't trust the ship's own floor plans and wanted to make their own evaluations. Four ship's personnel helped them as they worked. Measuring, drawing up the list of guests, designing menus and seating arrangements. Apparently dinner didn't just mean serving food, it also called for an emergency redecorating job. On Caro, apparently the setting for a meal was as important as the food itself.
Riker mentally corrected this last thought. Just because the official representatives of a planet did things one way, that did not mean that this was the standard for the whole culture. If there even was anything like a cultural standard.
Being on a spaceship that did not stay in any place for long tended to give anyone a very one-dimensional view of any of the places they had been. Starfleet devoted a lot of training time to teaching its officers to get as broad a view as possible of any alien culture they came into contact with. Or at the very least recognize that two weeks was not enough time to learn any more than a thin fraction of what any culture was like. Riker had once met an Andorian who'd just returned from a visit to Earth and was convinced that all of Earth civilization could be found in a shopping mall. Nothing that Will Riker, who'd been born and raised on Earth, said could convince this Andorian to rethink her opinions. The commander reminded himself of this encounter every time he found himself pre-judging a people he didn't really know.
The trio by the view ports broke up. From them, a tall, elegant Caroomadi woman with dark blue hair and eyes approached him.
And, Riker reminded himself. The Caroomadi themselves are nothing like Ensign Ikainet.
"We just might be able to do this," she announced. She'd been introduced to him as Lorn Kel.
"Then you find the accommodations satisfactory?"
"Oh, your people have been wonderful!" she assured him. "I just would have appreciated a little more than a day's notice for holding a full, formal dinner on a spaceship in orbit that we've never seen before."
"Well, your people seem to be pretty organized. I'm sure you can pull it off."
"Thank you. I'm sure we can, too. Just. But this is going to cost the government extra." She pushed back a long lock of her dark blue hair and tilted her head at him. "I have a few details to check with you." She took out a large notepadd, a long glowing list on it. "But first..." She paused cautiously. "Will any of the H'cars be attending?"
"I don't have any information about them. Sorry," Riker lied. The Caroomadi government had been very specific about wanting as few people as possible to know about the H'cars in Hold 4.
"It...could affect our plans significantly, for example, if the Ikainet were to be available to prepare any of the food." Riker paused at the word "the" used in front of Ensign Ikainet's name; a remnant, he supposed, of her former god-hood.
"I couldn't say anything about that," the commander answered truthfully this time.
"There's just been a lot of speculation about how you got the Roocaroom out of the inner orbit and what happened to the H'cars..." Kel wondered out loud. Riker just smiled benignly at her. "Right," she concluded. "I'll just assume they won't be attending." No response. "Right." She checked something off on her list with a stylus.
Kel led Riker over to a table where an elaborate place setting had been laid out. She went through a long list of Caroomadi rules of etiquette with him for his approval or disapproval.
Yes, tongs were an acceptable eating utensil.
Yes, finger food would not offend anyone.
No, the guests would not like to have their food flipped, tossed or squirted to their plates from a distance of any greater than ten centimeters.
Yes, each course of the meal could be served on a separate plate.
No, inflammatory food preparations that included juggling would not be advisable.
Yes, food sculptures were fine.
No, the guests would probably not appreciate a stylistic re-enactment by the chefs of how the food had been slain, grown or manufactured.
Etc, etc...
"Well, you look like you're prepared for just about anything," Riker commented when they finally got to the end of the list.
"We're here to serve," she said cheerfully. "Looks like this will be just a standard diplomatic dinner, with no floor show," she amended, borrowing a phrase that he'd used while they were going down the list.
"If it's all right with you? Starfleet is always flexible on matters of etiquette."
"Well, it's nice when the chef can be an active participant of the meal. But nothing on this list is sacred, Commander. Doing it this way will be fine."
"Is there anything else?"
"Yes." Kel went back to her list.
"We have a list of all the guests and what species they are. And the list of any food allergies your people have. Thank you for including that, Commander. You can't imagine how many people don't think of things like that. But..." Her long, pale, gold-ringed finger stopped at the bottom of her note padd. "What do 'androids' eat?"
"Oh, Mr. Data can eat anything we do."
Her eyelids lowered slightly over her huge, china-doll eyes. "But does he have any preferences?"
Riker shook his head. "No, I don't think so." She looked doubtful of his answer, but she marked that item off anyway. She contemplated her list for some time while the commander watched her. He mentally corrected himself again for unconsciously using Ensign Ikainet as a standard for prejudging all Caroomadi.
"Well, I think that's everything for now." She tilted her head again. Was that the Caroomadi equivalent of a sigh, Riker wondered. "I'm going to be up all night working on this." Riker stood next to her, looking down at her notepadd. She picked it up. Her fingers gently brushed the back of his hand and his wrist as she did so. "But after dinner tomorrow, I suppose I'll be free." He looked at her slender figure, her delicate facial feature, her enormous blue eyes. She stood very close to him, her hips almost touching him.
Riker raised an eyebrow and she returned a slightly open-mouthed smile.
"Would you be available for some dessert, Commander?"
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
Very early in the morning in Sickbay, Captain Picard faced Doctor Crusher over a small table.
"Now." She laid her hands across his palms. Picard had very large hands; they easily dwarfed Beverly Crusher's small, slender ones. "Take my hands and squeeze." His fingers curled around hers. "Harder," she told him. He focussed on the task, but his grip still seemed terribly weak. Doctor Crusher certainly wasn't experiencing any discomfort from it.
"That's good." She sounded pleased.
"They don't feel good."
"Well, they'll be better by this afternoon. Trust me." He still looked unsatisfied. She patted one of his hands and called for her assistant. A moment later Nurse Ogawa appeared carrying a bundle of clothes and a pair of boots. To Doctor Crusher, Picard looked as if she'd brought him a present when he saw the black and red uniform. Ogawa put it on the table and left.
"I trust you can handle this by yourself?" She slid the clothes over to him. He gathered them up in his arms and got up.
"Thank you, Doctor."
"And Jean-Luc..." He stopped. "Don't overdo it," she warned him to be careful about his hands when taking off the fatigues, and the BWD.
"Trust me, Doctor," he replied and disappeared into the lavatory.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
Lieutenant Worf strolled into Mr. Mot's "parlor", as the Enterprise barber liked to call it. The H'cars in the hold were secure, or as secure as they could ever be. All of the dinner preparations and guests had been checked, twice. There was time enough now to tend to his appearance for the formal dinner he would be required to attend that evening. No one on the Enterprise would have dared called Worf vain to his face. But it took a lot of careful work for the Klingon to keep his beard and long mustaches trimmed perfectly, his fine, wing-like eyebrows combed, his hair tidy. Worf was a regular customer of Mr. Mot, who felt it only natural that the demanding security chief would prefer his craftsmanship over others.
"There's nothing wrong with the clipper. It's just not designed to cut this." The Klingon heard LaForge's exasperated voice, the tones climbing to higher frequencies that the Klingon found irritating.
Worf turned the corner. LaForge stood facing Mot who brandished a large phaser clipper. A small brown-haired man with a pony-tail stood to the side of them. In the center, sitting in Mot's chair was Ensign Ikainet.
"Is there a problem?" Worf rumbled. Mot and LaForge stopped facing each other off over the barber chair.
"Oh, he's trying to cut Ensign Ikainet's hair," the brown-haired man piped up. Worf identified him as Cercy; he worked in the same sociology lab that Ensign Ikainet did. The Klingon stepped forward and looked down at the H'car.
"I thought Captain Picard ordered you not to change your appearance."
Cercy answered again. "Oh, we weren't trying for anything that drastic. We just-"
"I wasn't asking you." Cercy shut up. "Well, Ensign?"
"Cercy suggested that we should style my hair differently for dinner tonight."
"And that's the problem," Mot declared. "How can I possibly do anything with this hopeless mess." Mot grasped a lock of purple hair and held it up. "Without trimming it first. It's uneven. It's uncombed. It doesn't have a decent part. And Commander LaForge here has been going on about how I'm not allowed to cut it."
"It's not that you aren't allowed to. It just isn't physically possible," LaForge insisted. "Each individual hair on her head has it's own individual force field. You can't cut it. You've already tried everything you have here."
"Well, I just don't have anything strong enough here. That doesn't mean it can't be done. I once trimmed the scales on a-"
"Enough!" Worf was not in the mood for wasting any time on such a petty argument. "Mr. Mot, Commander LaForge is correct. It would be impossible for you to trim Ensign Ikainet's hair."
"Now you two may be fine Starfleet officers. But it's obvious to me that you don't know a thing about hair, and..." Mot argued on, armed with only the simple knowledge that for hair to be correctly styled, it needed first to be correctly cut. The barber neither recognized the importance, nor understood anything of a technical nature. So, if the laws of physics dictated that his clippers and laser cutters could not cut through a warp field, he took that as a personal affront to his skill as a barber.
"It doesn't matter what you use..." Geordi LaForge was as incapable of understanding Mot's total ignorance of simple physical principles as Mot was of appreciating the nature of Ikainet's impervious hair.
"Maybe you should just tie it up like mine..." Cercy was equally in the dark about why they were arguing at all and kept trying to steer them toward what he saw as the simplest solution.
"I don't want to cut her warp field," Mot finally declared. "I want to trim her hair. So if that's what's causing all this fuss, then I think we'll all be a lot happier if Ensign Ikainet would get it out of the way. At least from her hair."
"Oooooooh!" Ikainet exclaimed, bouncing upright. Unfortunately, a couple of centuries ago, a Caroomadi physicist, who was tasked with studying the H'car's structure, had made a very similar request.
"Aaaaah!" Mot practically screamed. Cercy and LaForge stepped back as well.
The rear and upper portions of Ensign Ikainet's head had melted into a vile, black oozing mass. Without the warp field to sustain its shape, her skull collapsed and reverted back to the many-times-re-replicated compressed organic matter that the H'cars had originally used to form their bodies, in a fashion similar to the way that they used dust and cosmic debris in space.
"Damn!" LaForge swore. Everyone covered their noses, even Worf. The stench of thousands of years of decay filled the room. With his VISOR enhanced vision, LaForge could just glimpse through the muck the new outline of the faint glow that he usually saw around the H'car. The warp field around her head hadn't vanished, it had merely retreated, as if it had been sucked in from the back of her head.
Ikainet was entirely unaffected by the change. Gobbets of black slime covered her shoulders and ran down her back. She looked from one to the other of her fellows, as if awaiting their approval. Mot backed away, speechless. In all his years as a contract barber with Starfleet, among all the different species he had tended, Mot had never, ever seen a hairstyle go so horribly wrong.
"Ensign! You will return to your normal shape immediately!" Worf bellowed. At once, Ikainet's purple hair returned. The black oozed glowed and vanished. But the smell still lingered.
The large security chief towered over Ikainet. Mot, Cercy and even LaForge, who considered Worf to be a friend of his, backed up a respectful pace. But the ensign remained as unintimidated and as clueless as ever.
"I think that it would be best if you appeared at dinner as you are."
"But-" Worf cut Mot's comment off with one evil glare.
"That's a good idea," Cercy agreed quickly.
"Uh, yeah," LaForge concurred.
"Of course, of course." Mot removed the cloth from around Ikainet's neck and hustled her out of his chair. "You look wonderful the way you are, Ensign," he hurriedly declared. "Now go on and do your duty." Cercy and LaForge got caught up in the exodus and went with the H'car. LaForge had actually come in to get his own hair trimmed, but he'd wasted most of the time he'd allotted for it arguing with Mot over clipping warp fields.
The door closed behind the three of them, and Mot breathed a great sigh of relief. Then he turned around and started.
Worf was still standing there, glowering at him.
The Klingon slowly and deliberately sat down in the barber chair and waited to be attended to by the barber. Mot gulped and bravely stepped forward.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
The wide, bulky doors parted and Captain Picard entered Cargo Hold 4. The bustling of dozens of people and H'cars filed the large echoing room.
The captain circled the activity, staying out of the way of the science teams and their subjects. Each H'car or group of H'cars was tended by at least one or two science or security personnel. Someone had had the clever idea of tying the Ikainet copies together into groups of twos and threes. They were uncoordinated by themselves; tied together they were nearly immobile and effectively kept out of trouble. Picard frowned. It was a practical solution-the H'cars didn't seem to have the metal capacity to think of breaking their bonds-but a degrading one to use on supposedly intelligent beings.
Wesley Crusher had a large setup of sensor pallet arrays set up and he currently had them pointed at a pair of Ikainet copies. Picard had been reading reports about the ensign's school project. Starting with Ikainet as the only subject, the study had grown into a full scale operation that included all of the H'cars, half the astrophysics lab, a warp field specialist and the two other teenaged members of the honors science class. Picard expected that Wesley Crusher would get a very good grade for his work.
A familiar figure in deep red, loose pants, tunic and flat-topped hat stood nearby with group of H'cars. Surprised to see her there, Picard went over to them.
"Guinan? What are you doing here?"
"Well, with them remodelling Ten Forward upstairs, there isn't much else for me to do. So, I thought I'd come down here and get acquainted." Guinan pointed to her companions.
"This is Zini." A tall, broad, pale H'car in a loose yellow dress nodded to him.
"And Gyaznek."
"Oooooh!" The smaller H'car exclaimed at him. She wore black boots, pants and robes and had very purple skin and hair to match. Her eyes were so oversized-even for a Caroomadi-they were almost bug-like.
"This is Maltod." This one had almost black hair and mustaches and navy blue eyes. She bobbed her head at him.
"And this is Warrin." Picard stared. She was the dark, naked mannequin that had harassed him in Sickbay when the H'cars had first appeared. She obviously remembered him, for she grinned and made a poking gesture toward him.
"These are the H'cars who disappeared from Caro when this whole thing started," Guinan explained.
"I see," he replied, keeping his distance from Warrin.
"We were just discussing what was going on on Caro."
"Really?"
"Really!" Gyaznek repeated happily.
"We were telling our side of what happened," Zini pronounced politely. Picard recognized her and the other H'cars from what he'd read from the Caroomadi history he'd studied and from the mission briefing. Warrin was still a surprise to him. She looked far more life-like in still pictures than she did in person.
"We were just doing as we were asked," Zini went on.
"Tens Bayairiz asked us," Maltod confirmed.
"Leave!" Gyaznek shouted. "Leave this world and don't come back! Return to the Roocaroom! Leave!" She waved her arms over her head. Nobody paid much heed to the noisy demonstration. Gyaznek had a habit of speaking only with exclamation points. The people in the hold had gotten used to it.
"I see," Picard acknowledged. In physical appearance these other four H'cars were completely different from Ensign Ikainet. They had different bodies. They had different voices. They used distinctly different mannerisms. But there was some underlying characteristic that they still shared with the ensign: a certain detachment from the reality around them. Picard suddenly didn't feel like talking with them. He didn't want to be around them at all; he wanted to leave.
Picard had thought he'd prepared himself for meeting the other H'cars. While he was recovering in Sickbay, he had reviewed all the ship's logs, his officers reports, the scientific data, the Caroomadi records and profiles of the four returned H'cars. He had analyzed and compartmentalized every detail about them, and so, had felt prepared to confront them in his hold.
But they repelled him as much as Ensign Ikainet did. He didn't want to be around them. As he stood there looking at them, he reminded himself that these were immensely old, powerful beings who'd had an enormous influence on the development of a whole civilization. I should at least be curious about them. Warrin was poking her own eye with her finger.
Another person approached them. Zor Bitarl, now wearing tailored gray robes, faced Captain Picard, her mouth closed in obvious annoyance.
"Captain Picard, I just spoke with Commander Data. Have you told your entire senior staff what my plans are for dinner?" she demanded. Picard looked back innocently.
"Of course. They will be involved at dinner, so they have a need to know what is happening."
"Captain, I revealed my plans to you only because you refused cooperation unless I did so. At the time you assured me that you would tell no one of my theories. My plan requires Bayairiz not know anything about what is to happen. By telling your staff you have risked-"
"Zor Bitarl," he cut her off. He was not in the mood for being talked down to by a prima dona detective. "My crew's discretion is as good as my own. If I have given my word to protect your theories, they will protect them as well. But anything occurring on my ship is my concern, and that of my staff. I will not keep them in the dark just to satisfy your craving for dramatic secrecy." He glanced toward Guinan and the H'cars. "And if you are so concerned for the security of this dinner party you are planning, then I suggest that you speak with the H'cars first," he told her smugly. "If you'll excuse me." He left Bitarl standing there. Guinan followed him.
They went to the main door of the hold, where he had entered. He stayed silent and tight-lipped, Guinan serenely silent. They paused at the door as a gang of blue-green and black uniformed science specialists pushed an antigrav cart loaded with new equipment into the hold. Picard turned back to survey the room once more.
"Not what you'd expect," Guinan commented.
"Hmm?"
"Well, the gods have returned," Guinan quoted a line from a well-known Rigellian novel. "At least for Caro, they have."
"Huh," Picard scoffed and left. He was out the door and halfway to the turbolift before he realized that Guinan hadn't followed him. Slightly disappointed, he slowed his pace, and then shrugged and entered the lift.
"Bridge," he called out to the lift computer. He certainly hadn't given the slightest indication that he might like to talk, and Guinan wasn't one for hanging around if she wasn't wanted. Not unless she had a reason to. And he hadn't given her any. The turbolift started upward on its journey.
He was curious about how she felt about these new H'cars. Obviously they didn't bother her any more than Ensign Ikainet did. Even after being injured by the ensign, Guinan remained steadfastly neutral toward her. Now she was chatting with Ikainet's sister H'cars down in the hold. He felt a little betrayed by this, though he couldn't think of a good reason why. Guinan was not bound by his own personal likes and dislikes. And he had to admit to himself that he disliked Ensign Ikainet.
The lift stopped and picked up two men in civilian clothes who asked to go to the hydroponics lab, briefly diverting Picard's trip to the bridge. The two men had been cheerfully chatting with each other when the doors had opened and let them in. But the sight of the dour-faced captain, alone in the lift, had stilled the conversation. They rode silently to their stop with Picard behind them, with that silent, impersonal closeness enforced by being temporarily stuck in such a confined space with an unhappy-looking senior officer. They got off quickly at their stop, and the lift resumed its upward motion.
Picard was annoyed with himself that he'd let his dislike for Ensign Ikainet transfer to the H'cars in the hold. He was annoyed that he disliked Ensign Ikainet. He felt as if she'd unfairly gained his dislike, just as she used her extraordinary abilities to make herself the center of attention all the time.
He wanted this mission to be over with. In fact, it was over with. They'd accomplished their goal. The Roocaroom were back in their place in the outer system with every indication that they would stay there for a long, long time. A two-month backlog of space traffic had commenced to and from Caro. The Enterprise was only staying as a courtesy to the Caroomadi government, to help Zor Bitarl resolve the intrigue that seemed to have been at the heart of the Roocaroom problem. Picard wished he had some emergency that he could rush to, leaving Caro and its H'cars behind.
The lift stopped and Picard stepped onto the bridge. Riker was on watch. After hearing the status reports of his officers, Picard once again left the bridge to his first officer and went to his ready room.
He went to the replicator and ordered tea, earl gray, hot. He carefully picked up the cup and saucer, wary of his hands. They were feeling much stronger since that morning, with only an occasional ache or twinge. He did not wish to return to Sickbay with fingers burned from hot tea.
He sipped the drink at his desk and sighed. He wanted to leave Caro. He was tired of this planet and its H'cars. He didn't care about the Tungaras murders. He didn't even think that Dixon Hill would have cared, had Dixon Hill ever met Ensign Ikainet. The Enterprise had successfully discharged its primary duty to Caro.
The captain took another sip, put the cup aside and then activated his view screen. Just one more minor duty to complete.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
The senior staff, plus Ensign Ikainet, gathered at 1600 in the observation lounge, an hour and a half before dinner. Picard ran the meeting in his usual efficient style, keeping the discussion on track and not allowing it to wander into time-consuming asides. The captain loathed meetings that ran any longer than necessary.
The captain first reviewed Zor Bitarl's dinner plans. Worf scoffed at the whole concept. The Klingon didn't read or appreciate drawing room mysteries where the murderer was dramatically revealed by the hero/detective. Data was intrigued by the concept and was actually looking forward to the plan's execution. Riker, Troi and Crusher seemed amused by the idea, and Picard wondered if the doctor's interest weren't spurred on by his open impatience with it.
Next they covered the ship's status and how it would affect their leaving Caro once all their business there was complete. Without mentioning the hundreds of hours of extra duty time his people in Engineering had spent replacing burned out modules, testing system components, crawling around in jeffries tubes, dismantling and reassembling panels all over Engineering and in other parts of the ship, Geordi LaForge and Commander Riker gave a brief, precise report that highlighted the essential information. The warp drive and all primary systems were restored to at least minimal requirements and they could leave Caro any time they wished.
Worf was assigned to removing the H'cars to Caro. He'd arranged to have them transported by shuttle to an isolated island on the surface that the Caroomadi government had set aside. The new and inexperienced H'cars would be trained in the arts of civilization there by the other modern H'cars. That training would consist of the huge energy discharges that the Roocaroom and the H'cars used for direct communication that were too dangerous and destructive to use in the confines of Cargo Bay 4. The energy burst that Ikainet had delivered through the ship's power systems when the H'cars had first appeared had been the tiniest tap on the shoulder to prevent them from causing any harm the Enterprise.
Satisfied with this arrangement, Picard moved on to the next subject: the changes in Ensign Ikainet's abilities that had resulted during the mission.
Troi had only given Ikainet a few preliminary tests, but they showed that her temporal perception had increased by more than two thousand percent. Her improved speech patterns were the most obvious change, but the counselor expected that all of Ikainet's decision-making processes would show a marked improvement. But the Ensign would have to be examined at a starbase at a later date to get a full assessment of how she had been changed. From what Picard could see, she didn't appear to be altered significantly.
Commander Data had reviewed the ensign's new ability to replicate things and he confirmed that she could reproduce anything in the ship's replicator logs. Basically Ikainet had absorbed all of the subspace data storage on the ship from the replicators and the holodecks. Ikainet could also physically recreate every power system path on the ship; in theory she could completely recreate the Enterprise power systems in open space, like a nervous system without a body, but nobody wanted to see her do it. Picard was delighted to hear that Ikainet could not produce matter objects from the ship's transporter logs. Data couldn't explain why, but any of their efforts to translate any inanimate object transport patterns into real space matter had produced, "interesting and grotesque replication errors." Picard had privately dreaded the prospect of Ikainet being able to reproduce any living matter that had been through their transporter. The results of that would have been too catastrophic to mention. Likewise, the captain was grateful that none these new abilities had been passed on to the other H'cars.
Ensign Ikainet herself had somehow found the time to produce a 14,372 page report (most of it was annotated pictures and diagrams and computer-generated tables, lists and indexes) about how her abilities had been changed by her encounter with the ship's power systems and Captain Picard's brain. Riker scowled when she mentioned her report. Data might have been able to absorb that much trivia in a few minutes, but Riker had not been pleased when she'd handed him such a stupendous volume to scan through an hour before the staff meeting.
It annoyed the captain that Ikainet had turned up with these new abilities so near the end of their mission. They were left-over details that they would be forced to leave undone, intriguing loose threads that wanted to be pulled. Picard was not going to pull on them. At last, the meeting reached the final bit of business on the agenda.
"Ensign Ikainet." Picard picked up a data chit that he'd brought to the meeting with him. Commander Riker smiled. He'd co-signed the orders that were on it. "I will be leaving you behind when the Enterprise leaves Caro. You will assist the Caroomadi government in dealing with these new H'cars. You will also serve as an initial Starfleet intermediary between the government and Headquarters until the permanent team arrives next week. Your immediate concern there will be coordinating the plans for rebuilding of the Tungaras Observatory." Smiling Picard held up the chit. "These are your orders. As well as your transfer orders back to the Beawolf. Captain Tzaki should be able to pick you up in another three or four weeks." Picard handed the chit to Data next to him. Data passed it to Doctor Crusher. Doctor Crusher, smiling sweetly, passed it to Ikainet. The ensign held it up and turned it over a few times, examining it carefully as if it were a new discovery.
"You will be a representative of Starfleet on your home world Ensign," the captain instructed. "I expect you to behave as an officer after we're gone."
Ikainet looked up from the tape, her mouth open in a smile, her little yellow teeth visible past her dark, purplish, thin lips.
"Riiiiiiiight!"
- - - End Part 16