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Mind Over Matter

Chapter Four

Kol glanced at her empty tray before signaling a guard to take it away. "You have eaten what you have been given."

"I mean to survive," she told him.

"You are aware of the nature of your provisions?"

Katrina squared her shoulders. "I mean to survive," she repeated. "It's my duty."

He circled around behind her, and she forced herself to stand still during the perusal. The food, despite being disgusting in several ways, had helped more than she wanted to admit. She was feeling steadier, and the pain from her various injuries had receded to something resembling tolerable. She even felt a bit warmer, although she hadn't been aware of being cold in the first place.

A single meal shouldn't have made so much difference, she knew, but she pushed that thought to the back of her head. Mind over matter. It hadn't been just the meal, she decided. It had been the combination of food, rest, and a chance to recover from her injuries.

His voice broke into her thoughts. "Do you know how long you have been here, Admiral Cornwell?"

"Not exactly," she admitted. "Your circadian cycles are different from ours."

He paced back around to face her. "Seven of your human days. I believe that's a complete cycle of some type, according to your calendars."

It seemed safe enough to answer. "That's correct. Seven days make a week in our standard calendar. We use a different timekeeping method in Starfleet, to account for lightspeed dilation."

"I see. Yet it is still a significant amount of time, yes? More than enough to plan and execute a rescue mission, if one were coming?" He paused. "I would imagine you've planned and executed them in mere hours, before."

It was obvious where this was leading, so instead of replying, she simply watched him watching her.

"I will give you a report of what the Discovery has been doing," he finally told her. "It is under your authority, so you should be made aware that it seems to have withdrawn from the battle lines. In fact, our listeners have identified what sounds like an order to go on some sort of scientific mission." He barked a laugh. "In the middle of a war! Is your Starfleet really that naïve?"

"Wars can be won as much with innovation as with fighting. Knowing that gives us a competitive advantage."

He laughed again. "Perhaps. Or perhaps it is little more than Captain Lorca being a coward. Either way, you are still here, and Starfleet seems to have no plans to change that. Could it be that you are not as valuable to them as your rank implies?" Kol shook his head. "I warned you that my patience is not without limit, Admiral. If something does not happen so, I will be forced to…" he trailed off, leering. "Re-evaluate your worth to us."

Despite their different ranks, the relationship was permissible because both of them reported directly to Admiral D'Amico. That didn't mean the difference didn't exist, though, and sometimes it actually got in the way.

"There's just no substitute for human instinct!" Gabriel insisted. "Sure, you can fly using logic and procedure ninety-five percent of the time. Maybe even ninety-eight. But not a hundred, and you can't predict when that two percent's going to happen. This thing," he continued, pointing at the M-1 prototype, "will never replace a sentient pilot."

Daystrom's voice was tight. "'This thing,' as you call it, Commander, is sentient in its own right. All you're arguing is a bias against artificial beings!"

"A sentient computer? We resolved that one two hundred years ago!" Earth had reached the technological singularity for artificial intelligence in the mid-2030s, an event that had contributed to the final, devastating World War. In its aftermath, clear restrictions had been imposed to maintain the differences between machines and humans.

"That was then," muttered Daystrom. "This is now. Maybe it's time we evolved."

"Evolved to what?" Gabriel's voice rose. "Something beyond humanity itself?"

"What would be so terrible about that? We already alter our bodies with technology every day. Why not take it to the next logical step?"

"Next logical step? Didn't you study anything besides circuits in that –"

"Gentlemen," interjected Katrina, keeping her voice smooth despite its volume. "You're starting to go around in circles. Dr. Daystrom, your point is valid, but so is yours, Commander Lorca. And the answer is in the program parameters anyway. The M-1 is designed to free up human operators, not replace them. We laid that out in the design phase."

"Which is why we need to stick to the design," snapped Gabriel.

"Re-routing the duotronics to reduce processing time is well inside the definition of a process improvement." She took a breath. "Let's start here tomorrow. It's getting close to dinner time anyway."

She might have phrased it as a suggestion, but both men recognized the order and left. Katrina shook her head. Sometimes it seemed like she spent as much time mediating their conflicts as she did working on her own part of the project.

Taking advantage of the relative peace, she made notes in her testing logs for another half hour before shutting down. Their quarters were only two floors away, but she lingered on the trip there. No doubt he would still be in a bad mood. Perhaps, though, he might still be willing to take another exploratory trip to Canopus' civilian spaceport and the myriad cuisine opportunities there. It'd be a good distraction, and they'd already decided to try and work their way through all of them.

Gabriel was already halfway through a bottle of whiskey, sitting in a chair in their tiny living area and staring at nothing. He'd only taken out one glass.

"Drinking alone?" she asked him.

"Back off." His voice was a low rumble.

Rolling her eyes, she got out another glass and poured two fingers for herself. "You want to talk about it?"

"No."

"For what it's worth, he was –"

"I said I don't want to talk about it!" Slamming the glass down so hard that whiskey sloshed out of it, he stood. The chair fell over backward behind him. "I've dealt with enough rank for one day."

Her chin came up. "How do you even know what I was about to say?"

"I don't need to." He made a scoffing noise. "Screw this. I'm off duty. Don't have to take any more orders from you."

"I wasn't ordering you!"

"The hell you weren't! The only thing you didn't do was say 'dismissed'!" Slapping his palm on the door controls, he stormed out into the corridor so fast she had to run to keep up. "Let me go, Kat. I'll be back in a while."

"I was going to tell you he was wrong!"

"Let me go, damn it, or I won't be responsible for what happens!"

She went cold inside. "You wouldn't."

Breathing heavily, he scrubbed his hands through his hair. "There's a limit and I'm near mine. Now Let. Me. Go."

She did, making her way to the canteen for a sandwich before returning to their cabin. Restless and agitated, she roamed through the small space, cleaning everything she could find in an effort to burn off the energy sparking down her nerves.

Gabriel sometimes teased her about her tendency to clean when upset. "What does that say about you, Doc? I'm sure there's something about control in there somewhere."

Hours later, spent, she sat back on her heels and wiped her face. The whiskey was almost gone, it was nearing midnight, and she was exhausted enough that she was losing the ability to keep fighting the thought she'd hidden from all evening.

He'd almost sounded like her ex-husband.

Katrina closed her eyes and took careful, measured breaths. "That was fifteen years ago," she told the empty cabin. "Don't conflate the past with the present. That leads to seeing things that aren't there, and making the situation seem worse than it really is."

Actually saying the clinical advice out loud helped. Pushing to her feet, she undressed and turned the lights down to a minimum before crawling into their bunk. He came back about an hour later, smelling of sweat and alcohol, and stared in her direction for a while before heading toward the shower. She didn't move, although she suspected he'd known she was still awake.

Those suspicions were confirmed when he came out, pausing just far enough inside the room to let the door slide shut. Hesitating.

She sighed. "Just come to bed."

When he did, he buried his face in her hair. "Katrina." His voice trembled in that soft, vulnerable tone that still undid her every time she heard it. "I'm sorry. I went and worked out."

Pulling him closer, she pressed her lips against his temple. It really was all right. They were still communicating, and that was what mattered.

Nine weeks later, they had preliminary programming completed and installed in a specially modified runabout. Gabriel, who had finished Command School just before this posting, was in charge of the test missions. He'd begun earning a reputation as a tough but fair leader, the kind who tended to inspire an incredible amount of loyalty from those who served with him.

It had been his idea to unofficially name their runabout Nerwin after finding out it only had a model number. Daystrom, surprisingly, had not just understood the reference; he'd laughed and agreed with it. That had proven to be a turning point, and the relationship between the two men was smoothing out.

Katrina had gone out on a couple of the earliest flights, but the combat maneuvers they used were intentionally erratic as a way of testing the programs. After the third time she came back queasy, she began skipping them. There wasn't any need for her to be physically present anyway, as the data collection methodology she'd designed was strictly passive.

They'd been gone for two days of a four-day trip when Admiral D'Amico called her into his office and told her there was a ship available. Pretoria was a mid-sized science vessel, and her background in human factors psychology was a big part of what had specifically prompted Starfleet to offer it to her. They wanted to begin testing longer survey missions.

"How much longer?" she asked.

"The first one will be eighteen months. After that, they'll re-evaluate. The Constitution-class ships are already running five-year missions and I gather Starfleet wants to expand that to most if not all of their other operations."

"The Constitution-class ships are fast enough that they can get to a shore leave location at least every few months," she replied. "Is the Pretoria?"

"No. Which means you'll essentially be in a living confined environment experiment," the admiral explained. "Fleet Operations knows how quickly those can go wrong, so they need a captain who can recognize and address the problems in their beginning stages. I imagine you'll have the discretion to end the mission early if necessary."

Despite knowing she needed actual command experience if she wanted her career to go any further, Katrina hesitated. She'd decided to wait for the right ship and she wasn't entirely sure this was it. Few confined environment situations ended well.

D'Amico crossed his arms. "Captain Cornwell, your time with the M-1 Project was meant to be a temporary assignment. You yourself have told me that you're done developing the psych testing protocols. A lower-level professional can interpret and apply their results."

She nodded in acknowledgment.

"In addition," he continued, "Starfleet never would have promoted you to command rank without the intent to get you back onto a bridge." The unwritten message was perfectly clear.

"When would I ship out?"

"Six weeks, but you'd need to report to HQ in two. There's a four-week prep period. If you do turn this down, they'll need some time to find another captain, so I can't give you any more than three or four days to make the decision."

"I don't need that long," she told him. "In fact, I don't need any time at all. You can advise Starfleet I'll accept. But I just…" she trailed off, feeling ridiculous at having to bring this up, but knowing she needed to. "If I could have a few days. Commander Lorca should hear this from me first, sir, and not from a general announcement. But they're on radio silence at the moment."

"Of course you're going to tell Commander Lorca ahead of time, and in person. This isn't the type of thing you'd discuss over the comm even if you could." He chuckled. "Actually, Lorca's not likely to be stationed here much longer either. But you didn't hear that from me."

"No, sir."

"I'll transmit the paperwork. You just let me know when I'm clear to go public. Don't worry. I'm sure the commander will be thrilled."

She wasn't quite so optimistic. At one point, he'd developed a tendency to bristle whenever something came up that highlighted their rank difference, as well as a habit of taking any opportunity to mention that he was actually well ahead of her in terms of time-in-service. They'd had a terrible argument about it one evening, one that was bad enough that she'd bunked in temporary quarters for a couple of nights.

They hadn't talked about it after she'd come back, although he'd stopped mentioning time-in-service and she'd gone out of her way to downplay rank differences when they came up. In other words, the topic wasn't really settled; they'd just both started ignoring it. It seemed they weren't going to be able to do that any longer.

She went over scenarios in her head as she walked back toward the program office, and her stomach began churning again. Every single one seemed worse than the one before.

But they'd made their way through other problems. Surely they could make their way through this one, especially if she repeated the hint that D'Amico had dropped. And there'd never been any talk of commitment, anyway. In fact, they'd never discussed the future at all.

Still, the thought worried her, and having to wait made it even worse. It wasn't going to be a pleasant couple of days.

The door to the canteen opened as she passed it, bringing the smell of garlic into the corridor right as she was considering proposing one of their exploratory dinners for the conversation. Her already-unsettled stomach rebelled completely, and she barely made it to the head before losing its contents.

Katrina grimaced in the mirror after cleaning herself up. If that had been any indication, the idea about having the conversation over dinner was likely a particularly terrible one.

He was characteristically blunt. "When was the last time you had your cycle, Kat?"

She laid her burning forehead against the cool porcelain of the toilet in their quarters. "I haven't kept track. We've both had our injections."

Gabriel rubbed his hand over the bridge of his nose, leaning back against the sink. "Then let's think it through. You were just coming off it when went out on the mission toward Arcturus, and then –"

"Forget it," she interrupted, getting to her feet. Her knees were still wobbly. "I'll just take a test."

"Are you sure?" His hands were hovering in mid-air now, as if he didn't quite know what to do with them, or wasn't quite sure he was done needing them to hold her hair back from her face. This was definitely not the way she'd imagined this scene going.

"Fastest way to be sure," she told him. "It'll take longer to replicate it than for me to take it."

"Replicator records will show the request."

"Only if there's a need to pull them. Right now, there isn't."

Acquiescing to the argument, he paced outside the head while she finished the test and scan. She ran it twice to be sure, and then a third time because she hadn't wanted to believe it. Somehow, by then, she had also remembered the last time she'd had her cycle.

Seven weeks.

She'd told herself that the nausea, the tenderness, the occasional emotional swings were just related to the ups and downs of the project. Besides, she was about to the age when things were going to start changing anyway. So there'd been good explanations for everything that she'd noticed.

Hadn't there? Or was that simply what she wanted to think? After all, she'd claimed motion sickness as her reason not to go out on the Nerwin – despite never having had it before – and she'd mostly stuck to water instead of whiskey after dinner for the past couple of weeks.

Gabriel took one look after she opened the head's door and then wrapped his arms around her. "Okay. It's okay."

"No," she said, angry that her voice was so uneven. How can this be happening? We've both been careful."

"There's no such thing as foolproof. You know that, Doc. And it'll be all right. We'll figure this out."

Pushing back, she turned away. "Can we? I've been offered a ship."

"What?"

"I was planning to tell you tonight." Although this hadn't been the way she'd had in mind, she thought bitterly. "They want me to report for the mission briefing in ten days."

"Ten days? What about the M-1?"

"I've finished setting up the testing protocols. D'Amico's going to bring in a lower-level psychologist, since all that's left now is administering and testing results. The prototype is nearly finished anyway. You don't need me anymore."

"D'Amico's going to…" he trailed off. "This didn't just come up, then."

"Couple of days ago. I asked him to hold any public announcements until we talked." She sank down on their bunk and buried her face in her hands.

Kneeling in front of her, he used a finger to tilt her chin up until their eyes met. "All right. Maybe the project doesn't need you anymore, and you were only here until something else was available. But there's still time to ask for another ship, isn't there? So that we can at least have a chance to think this through?"

"You know better than that." You didn't turn down a command offer that you'd already accepted.

He searched her face for a long time before dropping his hand. "Even though you wouldn't be able to stay on the post for more than a few months."

"What are you talking about? I'll be fine once I take care of the problem." At this stage, termination would hardly require more than a couple of injections. She wouldn't feel very good during the first few days of the mission briefing, but hell, she hadn't completely felt like herself for a while anyway. By the time the Pretoria shipped out, though, she would have had more than enough time to recover.

"Take care of the problem? Is that how you see this? Damn it, Kat, you're pregnant!"

Hearing the word actually said aloud brought on another wave of queasiness. "Which isn't something either one of us ever meant to happen!"

"So?" he asked. "Half of life is reacting to the unexpected. Are you telling me you won't even consider anything other than termination?"

"It's my choice," she argued, once again trying and failing to reach for a sense of calm.

"I know that! I just –" he broke off, standing up and turning away. "Look. Can we just take a couple of days to think before you do anything final? There might be other options. Something we can figure out."

She followed him across the living area. "Be realistic. You know better than that. Hell, we're not even married, are we?"

Even during their worst arguments, he'd never gotten physical in her presence, but now he raked his arms across the desk, sending everything on it crashing to the floor, including the ancient Navarrense bowl that had been in his family for generations. It broke into a dozen pieces, the awful sound echoing against the walls long after it had come to rest.

Gabriel exhaled loudly into the silence that followed, refusing to look at her. "That bowl used to sit in the reception area at my family's factory."

"It can be repaired," she answered.

"No," he said. He finally looked at her, face showing an expression she'd never seen before. It was a horrible mixture of anguish, anger, and betrayal, and it left her insides shaking as badly as his hands. "I don't think it can be."

Katrina took a long, steadying breath. "I'd better go to the infirmary."

"Yeah. You do that."

She knew what she would find when she got back to their cabin. The surprising part was that he had cleaned up the mess before he'd gone.

Author's Note: The Deep Submergence Vessel NR-1, nicknamed "Nerwin," was a prototype U.S. Navy nuclear submarine. Although never officially commissioned, it was in service for nearly forty years, and among other things was well-known for its nausea-inducing experience.