Star Trek: USS Keenser
“The Dream of Life”
By Jack Elmlinger
“From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of live,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”
PART ONE: Preparation
The shuttlepod banked steeply enough for Captain Erik Lynch to feel his guts twist in his body, and to give him a relatively unobstructed view of the amassed fleet. Through the right viewports, he saw the capital ships spreading out toward the black, horizonless distance in loose orbits. They were in a regimented formation in ascending order of size so that the largest starships were actually the smallest from his vantage point -- the Galaxy-class heavy cruisers drifting on the outer perimeter like whales lazing beyond the safe-swim markers. To his right were the small attack craft in a tighter, stricted formation that ended with the Peregrines nosing the proximity field of Starbase Three-Two-One. The USS Keenser, unseen beneath the shuttlepod, was a solid Excelsior-class refit -- the smallest of the capital ships besides the Intrepid-classes, and the slimmer, sleeker, non-refit Excelsior-class vessels.
The ensign was a clean-cut, dusky-haired kid who piloted the shuttlepod with relaxed ease. Lynch could imagine him at the controls of a farm vehicle in work clothes, and a blade of hay stuck between his lips. He engaged the thrusters and they arced neatly over the bridge module of an Intrepid-class starship and slid into a narrow flight groove that ran between the amassed Miranda- and Constellation-class ships.
Lynch shook his head when they scooted past the ungainly over-under warp nacelles of the USS Libra. Bloody Hell, they were emptying everything out of mothballs for their war. If it went on for another couple of years, they would be raiding the orbital museums around Cheron, attacking the Dominion with Constitution- and Daedalus-class ships.
And after that, Mercury rockets, Lynch thought, and after that, nuclear weapons. And after that, Thompson machine guns. After that, crossbows, and after that, rocks…
He made a concerted effort to shake himself away from the black thoughts that were gathering around his soul the way that these ships had gathered around the Starbase. The crew could not see doubt or fear or fatalism. They had to believe that they stood a chance in a ship, designed over seventy-five years ago, against the Jem’hadar and the Cardassians in their freshly-minted ships that probably still smelled sweetly of sealants and cleaning compounds.
“Permission to ask a question, sir?,” piped the ensign. His voice was strong and clear.
Good for him. He may live.
“Go ahead, as long as you can talk and fly, Ensign.”
“Yes, sir. I was wondering what all of this… well, what it was for.”
Lynch sized up the traffic ahead of them. About thirteen shuttlepods were delivering their captains to the space station. “That’s a reasonable question.”
“There’s talk that we’re going to be hitting the Ma’Reev Shipyards, sir.”
Lynch gave him a suitably, authoritatively obtuse look. “I can neither confirm, nor deny that, Ensign. As it happens, the Admirals aren’t terribly forthcoming these days.”
“I see, sir,” the ensign answered stiffly.
“Ensign, how many ships do you think are here?,” Lynch asked, laconically.
“Sir?”
“The number, Ensign. Ballpark figure.”
“According to the flash-traffic advisories transmitted by the Starbase, there are one hundred and six, sir.”
Lynch whistled through his teeth. “That’s a lot of ships, Ensign. Can you think of any target that would warrant that many ships?”
The ensign blinked a few times. “No, sir. Not besides the shipyards.”
Lynch gave him a small, sidelong grin. “Neither can I.”
* * * *
“We’ll burn out the energy relays if we increase the concurrent output to this level,” Commander Jorge Roman griped, scowling at the PADD that Commander Debney had just handed him. “He’s got to be out of his mind.”
“The Captain is quite sane,” Debney responded icily,” and he’s requesting all necessary modifications to make this ship as assault-ready as possible.”
Roman looked up at her. “No, I think he’s quite mad. I’ve known him a long time. He puts on a good show, but deep down, he;s crazier than a pet coon.”
Debney scowled back at him for a moment, a wordless moment filled only with the throb of the warp core and the incidental chirps of the controls and the tactile interfaces. After a moment, she narrowed her eyes at the stocky engineer and gestured towards the PADD. “I expect those modifications will be implemented, according to the schedule that the captain set forth. And that you will, along the way, solve the problem with the relays, I trust?”
Roman stoked his neatly-trimmed goatee. “Yes, sir,” he answered formally.
“Excellent,” Debney responded in kind, turning on her heel.
When she was safely in the turbolift, Roman turned to his Damage Control Supervisor, a young Bajoran woman named Lerra. “She expects these modifications will be implemented,” he explained, dryly.
“I don’t think you should have told her that the captain was crazy. She didn’t seem to get the joke.”
“Well, we’ll have to file that one away for future reference.”
* * * *
Commander Janine Debney puffed out her cheeks and felt an angry flush crawling up her neck and into her face. It was a stupid remark, a stupid power play. Roman had been Lynch’s Chief Engineer since he’d gotten his commission. Of course, he’d be informal and jocular. The flush had her face burning beneath her brownish pageboy haircut.
One month.
One to fill the role of First Officer, to complement the Captain, and become the other side of his personality. One month to enter the cadre of a ship’s crew, be accepted, and trusted as one of them. She’d had one month, and now they were heading into the biggest battle that this ship had ever witnessed. It wasn’t enough time, and she didn’t have the latitude to be making the mistakes that she was making.
Janine rubbed her moistening palms on her uniform slacks. She wondered if she could manage the next thirty-seven hours without another serious error in judgement like the last one. She wondered if it would even matter.
* * * *
Lynch shifted in his seat and looked at the holographic image at the center of the conference table before him that outlined their battle strategy.
“The Peregrines will, of course, engage the Jem’hadar and Cardassian fighters,” Admiral Kessie explained, shining his laser-pointer at the three-dimensional rendering of the battle that hung between the senior tacticians and the captains. “We don’t have any illusions about your ability to draw them away from the blockade -- they’re too well-trained for that. But once the battle is met, their formation will break down enough for the Peregrines to be sniping at the capital ships. That’s when you engage them.”
Lynch watched as the commanders of the Peregrines nodded and made notes on their PADDs. Experience-wise, they were a young group. While several of them were older than him, there were none above the rank of Commander, and the bulk of them were Lieutenant Commanders. You didn’t make captain and take command of a twenty-man fighter ship unless you were in the Maquis and there weren’t many of them left.
“Attack Groups One and Two will provide support for the Peregrines. You will engage and pursue the enemy fighters, keeping them away from the capital ships. I want two Peregrines on every Jem’hadar fighter. One Miranda-class light cruiser, however, should suffice. Attack Groups Seven and Eight, be prepared to also lend support against the fighters if need be. If not, coordinate with Groups Four and Five to punch through the battle cruisers’ lines. The Excelsiors and the Intrepids will have to work together to knock out the Cardassian Galor-class cruisers and the Dominion battleships. Neither of those classes can go head-to-head with one of them.”
Lynch scowled and made a note on his PADD. His group was Attack Group Five.
“Attack Groups Gamma and Hydra will hang back and provide support for the medical ships and escape pods if there should be any. While you shouldn’t expect to enter the battle, if necessary, you will be called in to engage the enemy as well.”
Gamma and Hydra were the Constellation- and Oberth-class starships. If they got called into battle, Lynch knew, it was all over but the shouting.
“Now,” Kessie went on with the briefing,” the main assault groups -- the Nebula- and Ambassador-class wings will operate in conjunction with, but in support of the Galaxy wing. You’re our battering rams…”
Which beats being cannon fodder, Lynch thought to himself.
* * * *
Lieutenant Mireth Lerra scowled and adjusted her grip on the molecule-displacer and twisted it into the small gap between the EPS conduit and the bulkhead, loosening the molecular bond of the fasteners. It made the conduit shake within the bulkhead, but it helped make it easy to splice out a junked segment and replace it with a conduit patch.
“Sir,” Ensign Chenek called from his segment of conduit, a few meters down the corridor,” isn’t this highly unusual? I mean, we want these conduits to hold, not fall apart.”
“Sure,” she replied,” under ideal circumstances, but we’re going to take a pounding and these conduits are going to get blown out -- that’s practically a certainty. What is going to save our asses is our ability to bypass the damaged segments with patches in a hurry. Can you see where I’m going with this, Ensign?”
“I’m afraid not,” Chenek responded drolly and Mireth scowled. Starfleet was undoubtedly the best of the best in terms of service, but she had noticed that the Academy tended to turn out sheep in ensign’s uniforms. And they remained sheep until they were suitably molded, damaged, and broken in. Very few of them came out savvy and crafty. She wondered sometimes if it was the relative luxury that residents of the Federation lived in that had caused this malaise. If they had grown up where she had, they would have a keener sense of survival techniques.
But the implications of that were too chilling to consider.
“Okay, so if we take a hit from a Jem’hadar torpedo and the primary EPS conduits to the tactical array are junked and the secondaries are knocked out on Deck Seven, and Lieutenant Commander Gavin is sighting on a Cardie who’s busy chewing apart our line, what is the great challenge here?”
Chenek stopped working and visibly pondered this question. “How fast we can get the patch in place.”
“Exactly.”
“And it’s easier to do that if the thing’s already marked off into sections that we can remove.”
Mireth went back to her conduit. “Keep it up, Ensign. You’ll make Lieutenant yet.”
* * * *
Lieutenant Lian T’su awoke with Elinia Izan on her mind and the image lingered past her command to the computer to cease the alarm and through her sonic shower. She pulled on her T-shirt and slacks. Then she laid back on her bunk before fastening her vest.
Elinia…
A mistake to think about her. Dreaming couldn’t be helped. True, she could go to Sickbay and request an REM suppressant but that seemed extreme. They usually prescribed those for sufferers of night terrors or people with similar destructive sleep disturbances.
She sat up easily, feeling her flat stomach muscles pull taut. Elinia had loved her midriff. Lian fastened her vest, still feeling the warmth of Elinia’s cheek against her belly.
* * * *
Lynch was feeling meditative, but the fleet was lousing up his view. Rather than the limitless expanse of space rolling out from the transparent aluminum of the viewport, there was the jumble of ships. Most of them were too close to see in their entirety, so he was left with a view that looked as if Picasso had painted it: the phaser array of a Peregrine, the bridge module of a Constellation-class, the nacelle of a Saber-class. The view was all a jumble of starship components, as if nature itself was conspiring to remind him that the rest of his life hinged upon components such as these and their ability to deliver him from the maw of death in the next handful of hours.
“Dark thoughts again?”
The voice made him jump, then raised gooseflesh on his arms and along his shoulder blades. Vanessa Brandt stood the way that he remembered that she always did, with her right leg slightly back and behind the left as if she were ready to spring into dance at any moment.
“You know me too well,” he said with a slight smile.
“You haven’t changed that much in twelve years, Erik.” Her eyes seemed to be as clear and blue as they had been when they had started their careers together aboard the Potemkin. He found, to his bemusement, that he could peel back the years from her face and see the ensign that he had occasionally shared a bunk with. Yet, he found it inconceivable that he had ever made love to her, fallen in love, or had been a carefree ensign. He remembered his past as if it were a vid-file about someone else.
“It occurs to me that this time, the day after tomorrow, a lot of people will be dead. And the damnable part about it is that who lives and dies will mostly boil down to luck. Or chance. And that can’t be bargained with or altered in, any way. For all of our technology and training, it’s going to come down to the right place at the right time.”
He found himself lowering his head and looking up at her the way that he used to aboard the Potemkin. It was a disarming gesture that he had once seen one of his roommates at the Academy use on a senior instructor, and it worked well if you had a gentle face. Lynch had a face like a survival knife, but it always worked on Vanessa as a way of tacitly acknowledging the five inches that she had on him.
“You keep forgetting, Erik. You’re a starship captain. You make luck. You make fate. You control the very forces of nature.”
She was tall, big-boned, with a mane of long, black ringlets that swept the periphery of her creamy skin and ocean-blue eyes. If anybody looked like a deity capable of commanding the laws of nature, it was Captain Vanessa Brandt.
Lynch just smiled and gestured towards the viewport. “Where’s yours?”
Vanessa stepped up and peered out the window. “Hard to see. The Saragossa is back there with Group Twelve.”
“An Intrepid-class,” he said, approvingly. “They’ve worked all of the bugs out of those?”
“I have no complaints.”
“Still, naming a starship after a peace treaty has to be bad mojo.”
She laughed slightly, but held him in her gaze and he held her in his. “Do you miss me sometimes?”
“I miss being young with you.”
“That’s not an answer,” she replied.
Lynch turned away and looked back at the collection of starships. “You’re like a force of nature, Vanessa. I’m never really far from you.”
* * * *
“I’m not really happy with these tricorders. They’re about ten years old,” Doctor Lela Marcheu said, tightly to her medical executive officer, Shurek, who was following her like a satellite.
“Equipment shortages have been most pronounced at the field-usage level,” he explained to her. “Some outposts have not even been issued phaser compression rifles yet. The priority being, of course, starships and starship components.”
“Of course,” Marcheu said, dryly, looking over Sickbay, which was now swarming with technicians and nurses readying the place for the massive casualty situation that was soon to come. “But the newer ones are easier to use and our triage teams are made up of mostly ensigns and field medics with virtually no experience. No instincts yet. No intuition. They need all of the help that they can get.”
“I could attempt to requisition some of the newer models,” Shurek suggested.
“Don’t bother,” she said, imagining a Vulcan trying to wheel and deal. “We’ll cope. Right now, I need you to oversee the compilation of the medic packages. Make sure that they’re complete and accessible.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Shurek turned briskly and hurried off. Marcheu took the moment to look over her Sickbay, imagining it in a few hours: clogged with the dead and dying.
* * * *
“The Dream of Life”
By Jack Elmlinger
“From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of live,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”
- The Death of the Ball-Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell
PART ONE: Preparation
The shuttlepod banked steeply enough for Captain Erik Lynch to feel his guts twist in his body, and to give him a relatively unobstructed view of the amassed fleet. Through the right viewports, he saw the capital ships spreading out toward the black, horizonless distance in loose orbits. They were in a regimented formation in ascending order of size so that the largest starships were actually the smallest from his vantage point -- the Galaxy-class heavy cruisers drifting on the outer perimeter like whales lazing beyond the safe-swim markers. To his right were the small attack craft in a tighter, stricted formation that ended with the Peregrines nosing the proximity field of Starbase Three-Two-One. The USS Keenser, unseen beneath the shuttlepod, was a solid Excelsior-class refit -- the smallest of the capital ships besides the Intrepid-classes, and the slimmer, sleeker, non-refit Excelsior-class vessels.
The ensign was a clean-cut, dusky-haired kid who piloted the shuttlepod with relaxed ease. Lynch could imagine him at the controls of a farm vehicle in work clothes, and a blade of hay stuck between his lips. He engaged the thrusters and they arced neatly over the bridge module of an Intrepid-class starship and slid into a narrow flight groove that ran between the amassed Miranda- and Constellation-class ships.
Lynch shook his head when they scooted past the ungainly over-under warp nacelles of the USS Libra. Bloody Hell, they were emptying everything out of mothballs for their war. If it went on for another couple of years, they would be raiding the orbital museums around Cheron, attacking the Dominion with Constitution- and Daedalus-class ships.
And after that, Mercury rockets, Lynch thought, and after that, nuclear weapons. And after that, Thompson machine guns. After that, crossbows, and after that, rocks…
He made a concerted effort to shake himself away from the black thoughts that were gathering around his soul the way that these ships had gathered around the Starbase. The crew could not see doubt or fear or fatalism. They had to believe that they stood a chance in a ship, designed over seventy-five years ago, against the Jem’hadar and the Cardassians in their freshly-minted ships that probably still smelled sweetly of sealants and cleaning compounds.
“Permission to ask a question, sir?,” piped the ensign. His voice was strong and clear.
Good for him. He may live.
“Go ahead, as long as you can talk and fly, Ensign.”
“Yes, sir. I was wondering what all of this… well, what it was for.”
Lynch sized up the traffic ahead of them. About thirteen shuttlepods were delivering their captains to the space station. “That’s a reasonable question.”
“There’s talk that we’re going to be hitting the Ma’Reev Shipyards, sir.”
Lynch gave him a suitably, authoritatively obtuse look. “I can neither confirm, nor deny that, Ensign. As it happens, the Admirals aren’t terribly forthcoming these days.”
“I see, sir,” the ensign answered stiffly.
“Ensign, how many ships do you think are here?,” Lynch asked, laconically.
“Sir?”
“The number, Ensign. Ballpark figure.”
“According to the flash-traffic advisories transmitted by the Starbase, there are one hundred and six, sir.”
Lynch whistled through his teeth. “That’s a lot of ships, Ensign. Can you think of any target that would warrant that many ships?”
The ensign blinked a few times. “No, sir. Not besides the shipyards.”
Lynch gave him a small, sidelong grin. “Neither can I.”
* * * *
“We’ll burn out the energy relays if we increase the concurrent output to this level,” Commander Jorge Roman griped, scowling at the PADD that Commander Debney had just handed him. “He’s got to be out of his mind.”
“The Captain is quite sane,” Debney responded icily,” and he’s requesting all necessary modifications to make this ship as assault-ready as possible.”
Roman looked up at her. “No, I think he’s quite mad. I’ve known him a long time. He puts on a good show, but deep down, he;s crazier than a pet coon.”
Debney scowled back at him for a moment, a wordless moment filled only with the throb of the warp core and the incidental chirps of the controls and the tactile interfaces. After a moment, she narrowed her eyes at the stocky engineer and gestured towards the PADD. “I expect those modifications will be implemented, according to the schedule that the captain set forth. And that you will, along the way, solve the problem with the relays, I trust?”
Roman stoked his neatly-trimmed goatee. “Yes, sir,” he answered formally.
“Excellent,” Debney responded in kind, turning on her heel.
When she was safely in the turbolift, Roman turned to his Damage Control Supervisor, a young Bajoran woman named Lerra. “She expects these modifications will be implemented,” he explained, dryly.
“I don’t think you should have told her that the captain was crazy. She didn’t seem to get the joke.”
“Well, we’ll have to file that one away for future reference.”
* * * *
Commander Janine Debney puffed out her cheeks and felt an angry flush crawling up her neck and into her face. It was a stupid remark, a stupid power play. Roman had been Lynch’s Chief Engineer since he’d gotten his commission. Of course, he’d be informal and jocular. The flush had her face burning beneath her brownish pageboy haircut.
One month.
One to fill the role of First Officer, to complement the Captain, and become the other side of his personality. One month to enter the cadre of a ship’s crew, be accepted, and trusted as one of them. She’d had one month, and now they were heading into the biggest battle that this ship had ever witnessed. It wasn’t enough time, and she didn’t have the latitude to be making the mistakes that she was making.
Janine rubbed her moistening palms on her uniform slacks. She wondered if she could manage the next thirty-seven hours without another serious error in judgement like the last one. She wondered if it would even matter.
* * * *
Lynch shifted in his seat and looked at the holographic image at the center of the conference table before him that outlined their battle strategy.
“The Peregrines will, of course, engage the Jem’hadar and Cardassian fighters,” Admiral Kessie explained, shining his laser-pointer at the three-dimensional rendering of the battle that hung between the senior tacticians and the captains. “We don’t have any illusions about your ability to draw them away from the blockade -- they’re too well-trained for that. But once the battle is met, their formation will break down enough for the Peregrines to be sniping at the capital ships. That’s when you engage them.”
Lynch watched as the commanders of the Peregrines nodded and made notes on their PADDs. Experience-wise, they were a young group. While several of them were older than him, there were none above the rank of Commander, and the bulk of them were Lieutenant Commanders. You didn’t make captain and take command of a twenty-man fighter ship unless you were in the Maquis and there weren’t many of them left.
“Attack Groups One and Two will provide support for the Peregrines. You will engage and pursue the enemy fighters, keeping them away from the capital ships. I want two Peregrines on every Jem’hadar fighter. One Miranda-class light cruiser, however, should suffice. Attack Groups Seven and Eight, be prepared to also lend support against the fighters if need be. If not, coordinate with Groups Four and Five to punch through the battle cruisers’ lines. The Excelsiors and the Intrepids will have to work together to knock out the Cardassian Galor-class cruisers and the Dominion battleships. Neither of those classes can go head-to-head with one of them.”
Lynch scowled and made a note on his PADD. His group was Attack Group Five.
“Attack Groups Gamma and Hydra will hang back and provide support for the medical ships and escape pods if there should be any. While you shouldn’t expect to enter the battle, if necessary, you will be called in to engage the enemy as well.”
Gamma and Hydra were the Constellation- and Oberth-class starships. If they got called into battle, Lynch knew, it was all over but the shouting.
“Now,” Kessie went on with the briefing,” the main assault groups -- the Nebula- and Ambassador-class wings will operate in conjunction with, but in support of the Galaxy wing. You’re our battering rams…”
Which beats being cannon fodder, Lynch thought to himself.
* * * *
Lieutenant Mireth Lerra scowled and adjusted her grip on the molecule-displacer and twisted it into the small gap between the EPS conduit and the bulkhead, loosening the molecular bond of the fasteners. It made the conduit shake within the bulkhead, but it helped make it easy to splice out a junked segment and replace it with a conduit patch.
“Sir,” Ensign Chenek called from his segment of conduit, a few meters down the corridor,” isn’t this highly unusual? I mean, we want these conduits to hold, not fall apart.”
“Sure,” she replied,” under ideal circumstances, but we’re going to take a pounding and these conduits are going to get blown out -- that’s practically a certainty. What is going to save our asses is our ability to bypass the damaged segments with patches in a hurry. Can you see where I’m going with this, Ensign?”
“I’m afraid not,” Chenek responded drolly and Mireth scowled. Starfleet was undoubtedly the best of the best in terms of service, but she had noticed that the Academy tended to turn out sheep in ensign’s uniforms. And they remained sheep until they were suitably molded, damaged, and broken in. Very few of them came out savvy and crafty. She wondered sometimes if it was the relative luxury that residents of the Federation lived in that had caused this malaise. If they had grown up where she had, they would have a keener sense of survival techniques.
But the implications of that were too chilling to consider.
“Okay, so if we take a hit from a Jem’hadar torpedo and the primary EPS conduits to the tactical array are junked and the secondaries are knocked out on Deck Seven, and Lieutenant Commander Gavin is sighting on a Cardie who’s busy chewing apart our line, what is the great challenge here?”
Chenek stopped working and visibly pondered this question. “How fast we can get the patch in place.”
“Exactly.”
“And it’s easier to do that if the thing’s already marked off into sections that we can remove.”
Mireth went back to her conduit. “Keep it up, Ensign. You’ll make Lieutenant yet.”
* * * *
Lieutenant Lian T’su awoke with Elinia Izan on her mind and the image lingered past her command to the computer to cease the alarm and through her sonic shower. She pulled on her T-shirt and slacks. Then she laid back on her bunk before fastening her vest.
Elinia…
A mistake to think about her. Dreaming couldn’t be helped. True, she could go to Sickbay and request an REM suppressant but that seemed extreme. They usually prescribed those for sufferers of night terrors or people with similar destructive sleep disturbances.
She sat up easily, feeling her flat stomach muscles pull taut. Elinia had loved her midriff. Lian fastened her vest, still feeling the warmth of Elinia’s cheek against her belly.
* * * *
Lynch was feeling meditative, but the fleet was lousing up his view. Rather than the limitless expanse of space rolling out from the transparent aluminum of the viewport, there was the jumble of ships. Most of them were too close to see in their entirety, so he was left with a view that looked as if Picasso had painted it: the phaser array of a Peregrine, the bridge module of a Constellation-class, the nacelle of a Saber-class. The view was all a jumble of starship components, as if nature itself was conspiring to remind him that the rest of his life hinged upon components such as these and their ability to deliver him from the maw of death in the next handful of hours.
“Dark thoughts again?”
The voice made him jump, then raised gooseflesh on his arms and along his shoulder blades. Vanessa Brandt stood the way that he remembered that she always did, with her right leg slightly back and behind the left as if she were ready to spring into dance at any moment.
“You know me too well,” he said with a slight smile.
“You haven’t changed that much in twelve years, Erik.” Her eyes seemed to be as clear and blue as they had been when they had started their careers together aboard the Potemkin. He found, to his bemusement, that he could peel back the years from her face and see the ensign that he had occasionally shared a bunk with. Yet, he found it inconceivable that he had ever made love to her, fallen in love, or had been a carefree ensign. He remembered his past as if it were a vid-file about someone else.
“It occurs to me that this time, the day after tomorrow, a lot of people will be dead. And the damnable part about it is that who lives and dies will mostly boil down to luck. Or chance. And that can’t be bargained with or altered in, any way. For all of our technology and training, it’s going to come down to the right place at the right time.”
He found himself lowering his head and looking up at her the way that he used to aboard the Potemkin. It was a disarming gesture that he had once seen one of his roommates at the Academy use on a senior instructor, and it worked well if you had a gentle face. Lynch had a face like a survival knife, but it always worked on Vanessa as a way of tacitly acknowledging the five inches that she had on him.
“You keep forgetting, Erik. You’re a starship captain. You make luck. You make fate. You control the very forces of nature.”
She was tall, big-boned, with a mane of long, black ringlets that swept the periphery of her creamy skin and ocean-blue eyes. If anybody looked like a deity capable of commanding the laws of nature, it was Captain Vanessa Brandt.
Lynch just smiled and gestured towards the viewport. “Where’s yours?”
Vanessa stepped up and peered out the window. “Hard to see. The Saragossa is back there with Group Twelve.”
“An Intrepid-class,” he said, approvingly. “They’ve worked all of the bugs out of those?”
“I have no complaints.”
“Still, naming a starship after a peace treaty has to be bad mojo.”
She laughed slightly, but held him in her gaze and he held her in his. “Do you miss me sometimes?”
“I miss being young with you.”
“That’s not an answer,” she replied.
Lynch turned away and looked back at the collection of starships. “You’re like a force of nature, Vanessa. I’m never really far from you.”
* * * *
“I’m not really happy with these tricorders. They’re about ten years old,” Doctor Lela Marcheu said, tightly to her medical executive officer, Shurek, who was following her like a satellite.
“Equipment shortages have been most pronounced at the field-usage level,” he explained to her. “Some outposts have not even been issued phaser compression rifles yet. The priority being, of course, starships and starship components.”
“Of course,” Marcheu said, dryly, looking over Sickbay, which was now swarming with technicians and nurses readying the place for the massive casualty situation that was soon to come. “But the newer ones are easier to use and our triage teams are made up of mostly ensigns and field medics with virtually no experience. No instincts yet. No intuition. They need all of the help that they can get.”
“I could attempt to requisition some of the newer models,” Shurek suggested.
“Don’t bother,” she said, imagining a Vulcan trying to wheel and deal. “We’ll cope. Right now, I need you to oversee the compilation of the medic packages. Make sure that they’re complete and accessible.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Shurek turned briskly and hurried off. Marcheu took the moment to look over her Sickbay, imagining it in a few hours: clogged with the dead and dying.
* * * *
