Fire On High (4 page)

"I'm gonna kill him," Beth said for what seemed the hundredth time.

"I know you are," said Kurdziel. "You've made that painfully clear." She ran her tricorder over Beth's ankle. "That's healing up nicely. Look, do me a favor and stay off the slopes, okay, Ron? Even holodeck slopes are tricky for novice skiers."

22

Star Trek New Frontier

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Ronni said impatiently. "Can I sit up?"

Kurdziel nodded and Beth sat up, pulling on her boot gingerly. "He was supposed to be with me," she fumed. "Did I tell you this?"

"Yes," Kurdziel said.

As if Kurdziel hadn't spoken, Beth continued,

"Christiano was supposed to meet me on the slopes.

He promised me. Then he's running late, and I figure, no problem, so I start a trial run because I figure, you know, how difficult can this be?"

"And you found out." Kurdziel was trying to remain sympathetic, but even her infinite patience was beginning to flag. Beth had been involved with Ensign Christiano, who was in Engineering same as she was. But that relationship had apparently just crashed and burned, as Beth was quick to tell anyone who was stationary for longer than five seconds.

"Yeah, but that was nothing compared to finding out he was with another woman. And after the ring I gave him!"

"Ring?" This was news to Kurdziel. "What ring?"

"Got it off a dealer on space station K-Nineteen.

Picked it up just before being assigned here. I was . . .

I dunno . . . I was saving it for just the right guy. And I thought sure Christiano was him."

"So ask for it back," Kurdziel told her matter-of-factly.

"I'm not going to ask for it back!" Beth said indignantly. "It was a gift."

"If an engagement is broken off, isn't it customary to ask for the ring back?"

"But this wasn't part of an engagement. I just gave
23

Peter David

it to him because . . ." She looked down. "Because I really felt like he was the one. So I got ahead of myself and did something stupid. And now I know for next time. Live and learn."

"I'm sorry, Ensign."

"Well, it's a sorry galaxy, I guess."

She was about to say something else along those lines, but then she noticed something. She didn't want to point, because somehow it seemed rude, so instead she just angled her chin in the general direction of where she was indicating and asked, "She's up and around?"

Kurdziel looked where Beth was pointing and, by way of responding to the question, said, "Commander, You're looking fit."

Commander Shelby was striding across sickbay in her familiar confident manner. There was still some faint discoloration on her face from injuries sustained during a fairly battering excursion on the surface of Zondar, but at this point she seemed none the worse for wear from it.

"Feeling ready to get back to work?" Dr. Kurdziel asked.

"You could say that," Shelby said agreeably. She flexed her shoulder. "Still feel a little tightness, but Dr. Maxwell assures me that'll pass."

"If he says so, I'm sure it's true."

"Other than that, I've been judged fit for duty." She smiled, looking somewhat relieved. "I'm not much for sitting around and recuperating. Glad to be back in action."

"The way I heard it, you got back into action a little too . . . fast . . ." said Ronni Beth, her voice trailing off, realizing that, woozy from the painkiller she was
24

Star Trek New Frontier

under, she'd actually spoken aloud. Immediately she tried to figure out if there was some worse way she could have shoved her foot in her mouth. If it weren't for the painkiller . . .

Shelby, whose back was to her, slowly turned, her smile frozen on her face. "I beg your pardon?" she said with a voice that would have frosted a supernova.

"I'm sorry, I—Oh, look at the time," Beth said quickly, hopping off the table and trying not to hobble. "I'd better get go—"

"I asked you a question, Ensign," Shelby said, taking a half step that put her squarely in Beth's path, making it clear in a fairly unsubtle manner that Beth wasn't going anywhere.

"I . . ." She looked to Kurdziel for help, but Kurdziel simply shrugged in a way that said,
You're on your
own.
Looking visibly pained, Beth said, "Well, word was that you went back to the bridge during a red alert, that you put us on a collision course with a sun, and that you passed out after seeing . . ."

"After seeing what?" pressed Shelby, no less icy.

Beth said something very quietly.

"I didn't catch that," prompted Shelby.

"Colors," Beth said more loudly. "Word is that you pointed into midair, said, 'Oh look! Colors!' and fainted dead away."

"And did 'word' also mention," inquired Shelby,

"that my maneuver toward the Zondarian sun saved this vessel and all aboard—including, might I point out, yourself?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Beth admitted.

"Good. Because as long as the crew is having a laugh at my expense," said Shelby, raising her voice a bit so that it carried, catching the attention of others
25

Peter David

in sickbay, "it would be nice for them to remember that particular respect is to be accorded all senior officers of a starship. Particularly those senior officers who have, through their actions, kept everyone on the
Excalibur
in one piece. Understood?"

"Understood, Commander."

"Understood?" she said again, this time directing it to the general populace of sickbay, and she got nods from everyone there. With that settled, she squared her shoulders and walked out of sickbay.

Lefler's quarters were not especially large, but she'd never been much for anything fancy. She was more of a people person, really, and so spent very little time in her quarters. A friend of hers had once speculated that Robin Lefler had only one true fear in the galaxy, and that was of being alone. That her need to be with people was so incessant that solitude was utterly anathema. When informed of her friend's appraisal, Lefler had vehemently denied it while, at the same time, wondering to herself if there wasn't just a little bit of truth to it.

At this particular point in time, however, she wanted nothing but to be alone. Even though she was on duty, even though she should have by rights been heading up to the bridge, she had bolted into her quarters, the door sliding shut behind her. She closed her eyes, leaning against a bulkhead, and slowly shook her head. "It can't be her," she whispered. "She couldn't have done that. It can't possibly be her."

She said that several more times before gathering herself and going to one of her dresser drawers. She pulled it open, rummaged around for a moment, and then removed a holotube. It was a cylinder about six
26

Star Trek New Frontier

inches tall, and inside was a carefully preserved hologram of her mother, the late Morgan Lefler.

She remembered the day she had gotten it. It had been the day before her mother had died.

She recalled how the irony had weighed heavily upon her. How her mother had had the hologram produced as purely a spur of the moment thing. A gift to send off to her beloved daughter, a keepsake with no particular meaning other than that her mom was thinking about her. No . . . no, there had been another meaning, Lefler now recalled. She and her mom had had a big fight the night before. Her mother had made it clear that she had matters to attend to and that she absolutely had to go off and visit relatives the next day, and so she had left her daughter—for the last time, as it turned out—with things still unsettled between them. Robin racked her brains, trying to remember what it was that she and her mother had argued about, and she couldn't for the life of her recall.

All she could remember was the guilt that she had carried with her when she'd gotten that hologram the day after her mother had died.

Not died.

Abandoned her.

With a strangled roar of humiliation, anger, and frustration, Lefler's arm drew back and she hurled the holotube with all her strength, It flew across the room and, in her mind's eye, shattered, the tiny pieces of the delicate technology littering her floor like so many precious snowflakes.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon how one looked at it, the holotube was made to last. All it did was ricochet off the wall and land on the floor
27

Peter David

with a gentle clatter. It rolled a few feet and then came to a stop.

She looked at the holotube lying there on the floor, and felt it was looking at her mockingly. Feeling anger building inside her, she moved quickly toward it and stomped down on it. But the tube shot out from under her foot, rolled up against the wall, and lay there.

Robin let out a sigh, her initial rage spent. She walked over to the holotube, picked it up and looked at it while slowly shaking her head. "You always did have a knack for bouncing back, Mom," she said ruefully before putting the tube carefully back into the drawer from which she'd removed it.

Shelby was convinced that everyone was looking at her.

Stop it! You're being paranoid!
she scolded herself as she made her way down the corridors of the
Excalibur,
but she simply couldn't help herself. Looks or nods of the head that previously would have greeted her without her thinking anything of it now seemed fraught with hidden meaning. She was convinced that the entire crew was laughing at her behind her back.

Colors?

What had she been thinking? What in God's name had been going through her mind?

Try as she might, she couldn't dredge up the slightest reason why such a complete non sequitur would have popped out of her mouth. Sure, she had been a bit punchy. When they'd carted her back to sickbay, the doctors there couldn't believe that she'd been up and around at all. Even so . . .

28

Star Trek New Frontier

Colors?

What could possibly have possessed her?

This was ridiculous, Shelby realized, as she headed for a turbolift. She couldn't figure out why she was being this way.

All right, that wasn't true. She did have some inklings. It had to do with the fact that, to some degree, she had felt like, and continued to feel like, an outsider on her own ship. Her style was very different from Mackenzie Calhoun's, and although they were supposed to be working in tandem, she still couldn't help but feel a streak of competitiveness with him.

That was the truth of it, really. In many ways—in
all
ways—Shelby felt as if she were not only extremely qualified for command, but more qualified than Calhoun. Yet she was playing support to him, and not only that, but it seemed to her as if the crew liked him more than her.

It's not about being liked,
she scolded herself. That wasn't it at all. It was about getting the job done. It was about acting in the best interests of Starfleet. It was about routine, and regulations, and procedures, and getting back in one piece. Calhoun, damn him, could afford to be flamboyant, daring, and heroic. He had Shelby to clean up the mess for him: Shelby to run interference with Starfleet, Shelby to remind him of the way things should be done as he thoughtlessly flaunted the rules. Calhoun was busy carving himself a status that could only be considered legendary, and here was Shelby, feeling like a grunt.

Besides that, she felt extremely vulnerable in that status. And matters hadn't been helped by recent developments.

29

Peter David

But, dammit, she
had
sustained injury. That was the thing to remember. That's what she should be thinking about.

The turbolift opened and she stepped onto it.

"Bridge," she said briskly.

The lift hurtled toward the bridge, and as it did so, she continued to ponder the situation. She knew the reputation she was developing around the ship. Grim, humorless, a total hard-case.

The turbolift slowed and the doors slid open. Robin Lefler was standing there, her hands draped behind her back, looking lost in thought. She glanced up and looked mildly surprised to see Shelby there. "Oh!

Commander! Feeling better?"

"Just heading up to the bridge." She gestured for Lefler to join her and the lieutenant quickly did so. As the doors slid shut and the lift continued its way upward, Shelby suddenly inquired, "Lieutenant . . .

you hear people talk. You get around. You know what people around here have on their minds."

"I . . . guess I do, yes," allowed Lefler. "I am in charge of Ops, so I tend to—"

"To the best of your knowledge, does the crew lampoon me? Behind my back? Do they value my contributions and qualifications?"

The questions seemed to catch Lefler completely off guard. "I beg your pardon?"

"Am I . . ." She tried to find the best way to express it, but nothing seemed to come to mind immediately.

Finally, for want of a better phrase, she said, "Am I . . . 'one of the guys'?"

Lefler stared at her as if she'd grown a third eye.

"Would you want to be?"

"I . . ." She'd been looking at Lefler, but now she
30

Star Trek New Frontier

stared at the door. "I don't know. I don't know that fraternizing with the officers is a particularly good idea."

"But is being so rigid all the time a good idea either?"

Now she looked back at Lefler and there was a slightly pained smile on her face. "Is that what they say I am?"

The door to the bridge hissed open and Shelby strode out, brimming with new confidence. Lefler walked quickly past her and headed over to her station at Ops. Mark McHenry, at the conn, was sitting and staring dreamily at the world of Zondar turning lazily below them. He looked as if his thoughts were a million miles away, but by this point Lefler—and everyone else on the bridge—was used to him, knowing that his apparent distractedness was just that: apparent.

Calhoun was seated in the command chair, going over a report, and he glanced up when Shelby entered.

It was as if he were expecting her. But she was in no hurry to walk down to his level, feeling perfectly content instead to stand on the upper deck of the bridge and look down. She found that it gave her a nice dominant feeling, like a queen on high regarding her realm. Zak Kebron, standing at the tactical station, didn't even glance her way.