Stardate 59547.4
En Route to Snickmik V
As had become common, T'Lyn was the first to arrive. She ordered a bowl of t'mirak rice with Terran red and black beans, a glass of water, and a pair of chopsticks from the replicator. Then she seated herself in their usual booth, at precisely 1945. While she began to eat, part of her mind listened to the babble of voices around her, without paying much conscious attention. Most of her awareness focused on the PADD she had brought to the table.
"T'Lyn!" Tendi slid into the booth on her right, a plate of noodles with pesto sauce before her, bright green eyes glancing at the PADD. "What are you studying this evening?"
"A polyphyletic assortment of eukaryotic organisms, most from the class Myxogastria."
"Ooo, slime molds! Can I see?"
T'Lyn passed over the PADD. The young Orion woman paged rapidly through its files, her kinesics almost fizzing with enthusiasm.
"Do you think this creature we've been sent to investigate is a slime mold?" Tendi asked at last.
"Doubtful," said T'Lyn judiciously. "Slime molds often exhibit a decentralized capacity to assimilate and process information, and some can carry out simple computations. None have ever shown the ability to speak."
"What do you think is happening?"
T'Lyn cocked her head to one side, considering the question. "I have insufficient data to form an opinion."
Tendi passed the PADD back. T'Lyn noted she'd had the courtesy to return the page to where it had been when she started. "I guess we'll find out. We'll be getting there in time for Beta Shift tomorrow. I hope we both get to be on the away team."
"That will be up to our new first officers."
"True." Tendi scanned the mess hall. "Where are they, anyway?"
In fact, the next member of their circle to appear was a rather fatigued-looking Rutherford. After stopping by the replicator, he slid in next to Tendi with a steaming plate of pork adobo and a cup of raktajino.
"Uh-oh," said Tendi. "Comfort food?"
"Kind of, yeah." Rutherford speared a lump of marinated meat and devoured it. "Not that this was a bad day! It was a really good day, but scary too."
"What happened?"
"Billups just made me the senior engineering watch officer for Gamma Shift." Rutherford grinned at her. "Six hours every day, I'm in charge of the engines!"
"Rutherford, that's wonderful!" Tendi hugged her friend, whose grin suddenly faltered. T'Lyn suspected his new responsibilities were not the only thing he found frightening. Then Tendi's own smile faded, as a thought occurred to her. "But if you're going to be on Gamma Shift from now on . . ."
Rutherford patted her shoulder. "Don't worry, Tendi. After my main shift I can hang out with you guys for a few hours, like we are now. I should be able to take care of my off-watch work after you go to bed."
"I guess so. It feels wrong, not all of us being on the same shift after all this time. We'll only be able to eat together once a day." Tendi made a visible effort to brighten up, for her friend's sake. "We'll make it work."
"You got that right!"
Boimler and Mariner arrived at last, sliding into the booth to T'Lyn's left with their trays of food. She thought Boimler seemed even more nervous than usual, whereas Mariner appeared to be considering violence. This impression was further supported when Mariner produced a bottle of bright-blue liquid. Judging from the lack of visible sediments in the bottle, T'Lyn hypothesized she was about to indulge in contraband Andorian brandy.
"Where were you two?" Tendi asked, a note of concern in her voice.
"Two-hour meeting with Jack . . . I mean, Captain Ransom," said Mariner venomously.
"He didn't change his mind, did he?" Rutherford guessed.
"He did not. He even won a quoting-Starfleet-regulations battle with Boims, which I wasn't sure was possible." Mariner growled. "It's official. The two of us are both provisional first officers until further notice. Never mind that's normally a solo job that needs someone two or three grades higher than us. Never mind a bunch of people on this ship outrank us."
"Sixty, exactly," said T'Lyn. "Not counting the eighty-seven other officers who share your rank of lieutenant, junior grade."
"Can I say, it's scary you just knew that?" Mariner shrugged. "At least people the same rank as us won't be a problem."
"Except for the ones who resent us being jumped up into this position," Boimler interjected. "Which will be all of them. Present company excepted."
"Nah, we can kick other baby-lieutenant asses if we have to." Mariner took a swig of her brandy. "Those other sixty, though, that's a disaster waiting to happen. Chain of command and rank hierarchy are going to be all out of kilter."
"I don't know, Mariner." Rutherford had a thoughtful expression on his face, and T'Lyn remembered he had nearly as much Starfleet experience to draw upon as Mariner. "You and Brad have a lot more respect among the crew than I think you realize. Even among the senior officers."
Mariner scoffed. "Come on. I have a long career as a Starfleet nepo baby and general fuckup behind me. Just over a year ago, I was run out of this crew and exiled to Starbase 80, and nobody but the three of you had the slightest problem with it. As for Boims, well, his record is a lot cleaner, but he's still so green he squeaks."
"Hey!"
"Sorry, dude, you've made lots of progress, but you're still a little damp behind the ears."
"Maybe," said Rutherford, very serious for once. "But both of you have done some pretty kick-ass stuff since then. You both helped save the ship when Admiral Buenamigo's project went all M-5 on us. In that Nova Fleet business, Mariner stopped Locarno cold while Brad did a great job in the center seat here. People noticed all that, believe me. Now we've finally met your transporter clone, Brad, and everyone knows he's been succeeding as the captain of a Defiant-class. Anything he can do, you can do."
Mariner shook her head. "Sorry, Ruthie, I don't buy it. Well, it might work for Boims, but I've got too much bad rep to get over."
"How do you know?" asked T'Lyn.
Mariner gave her a sharp glance, left eyebrow raised in almost Vulcan fashion.
"Since I have become a member of the Cerritos crew, I have not observed that you socialize extensively with any but the four of us. With the rest of the crew, you exhibit a well-established pattern of distancing behavior which deters social connection." T'Lyn raised her own eyebrow, master showing apprentice how it was done. "You are making a premature conclusion for which you have insufficient empirical evidence."
"Gah, shut up!" Mariner spent a few moments devouring her nachos, clearly avoiding the point.
T'Lyn suppressed the satisfaction of a small victory for logic.
"Of course, it gets worse," said Boimler. "We're dividing up the first-officer duties."
Tendi frowned. "Doesn't that make sense?"
"You would think so, but okay. Let's see if I can break this down for everyone." Boimler sent a flat stare across the table, pinning Rutherford and Tendi under its weight. "What are the duties of a ship's executive officer?"
They glanced at each other, not certain where this was going. "Well, you help the captain," said Rutherford. "You make sure their orders are followed, and everyone is in line with command policy. You can take command when they're away from the ship, or disabled."
"You lead away teams," Tendi chimed in. "Well, except when conditions are safe, and the captain needs to be present for things like diplomatic negotiations."
"You do a lot of paperwork," said Rutherford. "Duty rosters, crew evals, things like that. You make recommendations to the captain for promotions."
"Right," agreed Boimler. "So let's take those in order. We've already established we're going to have an uphill fight on the helping-the-captain-command thing. Now, of the two of us, who has the most talent for away-team leadership?"
Rutherford and Tendi glanced at each other. "Well, Mariner, obviously," said Tendi. "Now that she's not trying to get herself killed quite so often, anyway."
Boimler nodded. "Obviously. Physical capability, quick thinking under stress, proven leadership skills. That's Mariner. Okay, now of the two of us, who is most likely to do well with the administrative part of the job?"
"That's you all over, buddy," said Rutherford with a grin. "Workaholic, with a picky sense for detail. You love paperwork!"
"Correct. So of course Captain Ransom has assigned me to lead away teams . . . and Mariner is going to be stuck on board for the foreseeable future, revising the duty roster and getting started on quarterly crew evals."
"With Dr. Migleemo," Mariner groaned.
"That seems eminently logical," said T'Lyn.
"What's logical about any of it?" Boimler demanded, his voice rising in pitch.
"With officers he wishes to encourage, Captain Ransom's leadership style is consistently challenging and provocative," she explained. "He attempts to goad officers to excel, out of spite toward him if for no other reason. He forces them out of their 'comfort zone' and places them in situations where they must adapt and overcome. These assignments are consistent with his pattern. He has clearly taken an interest in both of your careers."
Mariner suddenly seemed more thoughtful than annoyed. "Damn, she's right, Boims. This contest bullshit of Jack's isn't what it appears to be."
Boimler nodded. "Yeah, he never comes at things directly. He throws people into situations without explanation and expects them to win."
"Almost makes me miss my mom. She could be an overbearing glory hound, but she was never devious with us." Mariner smiled slowly. "I got to admit, it's kind of working for me. I'm tired of kicking people's asses all the time to get what I want. I may have to try this judo strategy of his."
"First things first," said Boimler. "This isn't a competition. I don't think the captain intends for it to be, that's him messing with us. We have to work as a team."
"Always, my man." Mariner extended a fist for him to bump.
"Even when we're both outside our comfort zones."
"Ugh, even then. Although Dr. Migleemo may be a bridge too far."
T'Lyn watched the two of them, and permitted herself a tiny slice of warmth.
Stardate 59548.8
Standard Orbit over Snickmik V
Mariner took five minutes to check in on the bridge at shift change, to see if Ransom needed her there. Rather hoping he would need her there, truth be told. A full watch of doing paperwork was not a happy prospect.
"Don't worry, I'll call you if there's an emergency and I need an extra pair of hands," the captain told her, only a hint of smug gleam in his eyes. "You've got plenty of work to do. Go check out your office and get busy."
That's right. Q help me, I have an office now.
At least it was close to the bridge, right across the hall from the captain's ready room. The first sound of a red alert, the first whiff of a call from the bridge, and she could be in the chair next to Ransom in twelve seconds flat.
The door swept open, and she stopped dead.
Someone in Gamma or Delta Shift must have been a busy beaver.
All of Ransom's personal effects were gone: the shelves of keepsakes, the framed photos of Barcelona and Tycho City skylines, the weights and power rack. The single desk had been removed, replaced with a partners desk so she and Boimler could face each other while working. The new desk had been pulled out into the room a bit, and rotated, so both of them would be equally able to look out the big viewport while they worked. The office was rather spartan, no personal touches, but that would be easy to fix.
Mariner crossed the room, letting the door slide shut behind her, and went to a certain unobtrusive panel on the wall next to the replicator. A moment's work popped the panel loose. Behind it, she saw a familiar parcel, the faint stylus marks on the wrapper still lining up, just as she had left it. Satisfied, she replaced the panel.
"Raktajino, extra strong," she told the replicator, and a ceramic mug appeared. With a quaint little curl of steam.
One sip from the mug, one more glance around the room, and then she squared her shoulders and sat down at one side of the desk. "Computer, log me in to the duty roster, authorization Mariner-gamma-four-niner."
The surface of the desk stopped pretending to be a polished black-walnut surface, and lit up with an elaborate LCARS display, like a spreadsheet on steroids.
It had been years since Mariner had been trusted with duty rosters. At the time, she'd had two full pips and the good opinion of her commanding officers. On Deep Space Nine, and on the Yosemite, she had drafted duty rosters for big teams. After which she had fucked up her career beyond repair, and they had found more reliable officers to do the work.
So she was out of practice. Not to mention, the Cerritos crew was six times the size of anything she had built duty rosters for before.
In theory, at least, it was an easy task. The duty rosters got revised every six days, and they didn't usually change all that much from one crew rotation to the next. The computer did most of the work anyway. It was an enormous optimization problem: take the crew's known skill sets, their cross-training objectives, their long-term research and development goals, their current shift assignments, their positions on the Table of Organization, and a half-dozen other variables, and match them all up to the current list of Work that Needed Done. The computer even kept track of how long each crewman or officer had been assigned to a given kind of work, and knew to change things up every now and then so no one got stale.
Of course, the officer drafting the duty roster could exercise a lot of discretion.
Who do I want to reward? Who do I want to punish?
Mariner had been on the receiving end of that kind of discretion more than once. Her own mother had once tried to drive her off the ship, through creative use of the duty roster. There were any number of unpleasant tasks one couldn't assign to senior officers . . . but four-fifths of the crew complement were fair game.
Yet somehow, she wasn't taking any pleasure in the possibility.
"Computer, create a macro including the following tasks. Conference room cleaning. Holodeck biofilter maintenance. Turbolift lubrication. Waste extraction maintenance. Carbon filter cleaning. Anomaly consolidation. EPS conduit alignment or recalibration."
"Ready."
"No crew member is to be assigned any of those tasks for more than three consecutive days, or more than six total days out of thirty, unless at the specific direction of the commanding officer, executive officers, or a department head. Implement and recompute."
The desktop flickered, as some of the little boxes representing crew shifted around.
She examined the result, nodding to herself. It looked fine, it looked reasonable, but there was something else. Something missing.
"Computer," she said at last, "add a new weighting factor. Any crew member with a current performance rating of Exceeds Standards or better is to be given a duty assignment that involves personal contact with at least one of the commanding officer, executive officers, or their department head, at least once every six days."
The computer made the error noise. "Cannot comply."
"Why not?"
"Compliance would exceed limits on out-of-shift assignments."
Mariner thought about that for a few moments, before she understood. "Right. Too many people would be losing recreation or sleep just to have some face-time with the command staff on Beta Shift. Okay, scratch that."
The computer beeped cheerfully.
Mariner got up, carrying her mug with her to the viewport. She sipped her raktajino while she watched Snickmik V rotate below the ship. It was a pretty planet, with lots of green.
"Okay," she said at last, grinning wickedly. "If the mountain can't come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain. Computer."
"Ready."
"Create a new weighting factor. The captain, the executive officers, and each department head will be required to spend at least one full extra watch every six days on crew inspections and counseling sessions, alternating between Alpha Shift and Delta Shift."
She waited, but the computer was okay with that.
"Implement and recompute."
The boxes at the top of the chart, the ones representing command crew, flickered. Not all of them – Shaxs and T'Ana were already using their off-shifts to keep a close eye on all their people – but the others all had more time slots committed.
The senior officers can stand to flex their sleep schedules a bit, if it means everyone on board gets a little face-time on the regular. Even good officers have a hard time getting promoted, if the senior staff don't know who they are. Delta Shift may be a pack of idiots, but they aren't wrong about that.
Mariner reviewed the finished roster, making one or two adjustments, and then she was satisfied. "Computer, download to my PADD."
Time to take this to Jack and get him to sign off on it. I might tell him about the little time bomb I slipped in for the senior staff, or I might not. He could stand to be kept on his toes a little.
As she set out with her PADD for the bridge, she wondered.
How are Brad and the girls doing planetside?
Stardate 59549.2
Snickmik V
Four columns of shimmering light appeared in the town square, then dwindled away, leaving behind a Starfleet away team.
As soon as T'Lyn was corporeal, she scanned the vicinity, first with her eyes, then with her tricorder. New Brownsville, the primary settlement on Snickmik V, was a rustic place: square buildings in brick or wood-frame construction, decorated in colors humans considered pleasant, none higher than two stories. For all the pastoral architecture, the colony seemed modern enough. She saw a colonist carrying a civilian-model PADD, and three others using antigravs to move a heavy load. Her tricorder detected the presence of a fusion power plant not far away.
"It's really strange," said Tendi, slowly turning in place with her own tricorder out. "Why do so many human colonies look like this?"
"It's American four-square architecture," said Ensign Haubold, their security escort. "It's a simple vernacular style, easy to build even with hand tools, makes efficient use of local materials. Also, for some reason, a lot of colonists are really nostalgic for four- or five-hundred-year-old aesthetic trends."
"Huh," said Boimler. "I didn't know you were into architecture, Ensign."
Haubold shrugged, although her eyes never ceased their restless scan of the vicinity. "I read a lot."
T'Lyn enjoyed a moment of appreciation. Haubold was a very athletic woman, yet she clearly had hidden intellectual depth, and she radiated an almost Vulcan calm. It didn't hurt that she was quite aesthetically appealing. T'Lyn was reminded of Mariner, although the physical resemblance was not strong. Haubold kept her hair much shorter, and her coloring was several shades lighter.
Also, Mariner is normally anything but calm.
"Hello, folks!" A male human approached the away team from across the town square, offering a friendly wave and a gentle smile. He was of average height, powerfully built, with broad shoulders and muscular arms. He wore denim jeans, a dark-red shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of black boots. His skin was dark, and his hair and beard were very short and dusted with silver. "You must be from the Starfleet ship."
"That's right. I'm Lieutenant Brad Boimler of the USS Cerritos. With me are Lieutenants Tendi and T'Lyn, and Ensign Haubold. We're here to investigate your . . . talking goo?"
The colonist laughed. "I know, it sounds crazy. We're glad you're here, though. We can't make heads nor tails of it. I'm Hiram Johnson, the colony administrator. I suppose you'd like to get right to work."
"Yes, sir."
"Right this way."
Johnson led the away team across the square and down a side street. Boimler and Haubold followed at once, while Boimler carried on a line of conversation with the administrator. T'Lyn and Tendi lagged behind a little, continuing to make observations of the environment. Soon, Johnson pointed ahead to where a large wood-frame barn, painted red and white, stood at the edge of town.
T'Lyn felt a spike of unease. Her first impulse was to suppress it, as an emotional impulse that needed to be cast aside rather than heeded. Then her conscious mind caught up with her intuition. Without seeming to pay close attention, she observed the colonists they passed on the street. An unusual number were standing or lounging about, with no clear business, watching the away team with keen consideration as they passed.
She remarked on this to Tendi, keeping her voice low so that the others would not hear.
"Yeah, you're right, it's a little odd," said Tendi quietly. She hung her tricorder at her belt, watching their surroundings, and T'Lyn could see coiled tension creep into her posture.
"Here we are," said Johnson, pulling open a wide sliding door.
A stench rolled out into the street, rotting vegetable matter with an undertone of vomit, making T'Lyn want to recoil.
Once the barn might have been used to store bales of hay or silage, or to house domestic animals. Now its floor was taken up entirely by a layer of organic material – leaf litter, decaying wood, humus, and soil – several centimeters deep. It was as if the colonists had carefully transplanted a region of the nearby forest floor into the building.
In the center of the open space was a gross mass of organic slime, perhaps three meters across and half a meter tall, covered with lumps and tendrils. Its overall color was a sickly yellow, with spots varying from lurid green to dull brown in no predictable pattern. Dozens of smaller growths clustered at the top of the mass, each of them a few centimeters long, slender stems topped by little bright-red balls that looked almost like berries.
"Ugly sucker, isn't it?" Johnson stepped into the dimness of the barn, leading the away team closer to the thing, leaving the door open behind them.
"Goddess, it is a slime mold," whispered Tendi. "I've never seen one so big before."
"You say this thing talks?" Boimler asked.
Johnson nodded. "Sure does. Although you have to stand still and listen for a bit."
The away team stood quietly, about three meters away from the edge of the mass, trying to ignore the smell. T'Lyn opened her tricorder again, muting the scanning tone so as not to disturb the silence.
She could hear nothing. A glance at Tendi's face showed the Orion woman concentrating, as if to listen for a tiny sound, but she was starting to show a puzzled expression.
Then Ensign Haubold began muttering to herself, barely loud enough for Vulcan ears to pick out the words. "Hello . . . yes, that's me . . . really . . . no, I'm in Security . . ."
There was sudden counterpoint to T'Lyn's left. Lieutenant Boimler had begun to mutter as well.
A shadow, at T'Lyn's back. Colonists were crowding into the open doorway, blocking some of the sunlight from outside.
"Do you hear anything?" she asked in a quiet voice, using Orion trader's tongue.
"Nothing but the humans talking to themselves," Tendi murmured in the same language. "Is it telepathy?"
"I sense none."
Administrator Johnson was watching the two of them closely, all geniality vanished. "You ladies can't hear it, can you?"
T'Lyn cocked an eyebrow at him. "No."
He sighed. "Well, now, that's just unfortunate."
All at once, the two dozen colonists standing in the doorway rushed them.