"Ha." Her voice sounded distant. "You'd have gotten over me in no time. Then you'd have found some sweet little thing who thought you were heaven's gift to the universe."
"I'd much rather have a temperamental lieutenant who doesn't take any crap and who I know is a gift to me."
She shoved away far enough to look at him, a ghost of a smile finally touching her lips. "You have very poor judgment, Lieutenant Sinclair." Jen hugged him close again. "But you're a gift, too."
A knock sounded on the hatch, then Kris Denaldo stuck her head inside. "I guess things are going well. Excuse me, but this is still my stateroom, too. Much as I hate to interrupt you two lovebirds, and by the way isn't all this hugging on a ship a violation of assorted regulations, but I need to get ready for the next watch." Her gaze shifted. "Jen! There's new dents in that locker!"
Jen smiled for real this time, though half-heartedly. "Sorry, Kris."
"Sorry! Is that all you can say? Tell it to the executive officer when he inspects this stateroom. I can't leave you alone for five minutes without you getting me into trouble again." Kris pointed at Paul. "As much as I'm sure you'd love to watch me change clothes, I prefer to have all the Y chromosomes on the other side of the hatch."
Paul pulled himself up. "Wondrous beauty though you be, Kris, I only want to see Jen, because my heart belongs to her."
"Oh, really? What about the rest of you? Do those parts belong to anyone?"
Jen pushed Paul toward the hatch. "You're going to make me ill with all your romantic nonsense, Mr. Sinclair. Go do your job for a while and let me rest. As for you, Ms. Denaldo, stop thinking about my boyfriend's parts."
Paul swung out of the hatch, but just before Kris closed it he saw Jen. Her face still drawn with pain, she was nonetheless trying to smile at him, and was silently mouthing the words "I love you."
"Now what?" Mike Bristol wondered. "I assume we're going straight back to Franklin?"
Lieutenant Sindh nodded. "Accommodations aren't the only thing stressed on this ship. The Michaelson isn't supposed to carry this many living, breathing people for any length of time."
"At least we've got enough food."
"If you call this food." Sindh squinted at her meal. "What is this supposed to be again?"
"Veal San Francisco," Bristol announced with an apologetic look.
Paul poked at his meal. "Looks more like Spam Francisco. Where's Suppo, anyway?"
"He's going to eat with the… uh… the…"
"Survivors."
"Yeah. From the Maury."
Paul no longer felt like joking or eating. "I wish we could do more for those guys."
Sindh smiled reassuringly at him. "We did what we could, and we still are. I've been working with them. Counseling sessions."
Paul nodded back. He knew Lieutenant Sindh was qualified as a lay minister and as a counselor, but not much beyond that. "Does it help?"
"I hope so. A great deal of it is still up to the individual." Her gaze lingered on Paul, communicating her concerns about Jen. "I'm just doing some emotional damage control here. The real work will be once they get back to Franklin and the experts can take over."
Randy Diego looked around. "Anybody know what this is going to do to schedules? I mean, we were spending a lot of time out as it was, and with Maury gone…" He flinched at a couple of hostile looks. "Hey, it's a legitimate thing to think about."
Even though Paul shared in the initial reaction to Randy's question, he felt a need to divert the anger it had brought. Randy Diego could be clueless, but he wasn't knowingly mean. "That is something we have to consider. I mean, I'm not thinking about more time underway as much as I am about getting work done on the ship. We've had to defer a lot of maintenance because of these short-fuse underway periods."
Kris Denaldo nodded as well. "And the hull got beat up by all that stuff that flew off the Maury. We need at least a minor overhaul period. Fleet staff needs to decide whether they want a half-broke ship for the next few months or a fully-working ship at the end of that time."
"Commander Destin said-" Gabriel suddenly paled and looked down at the table.
"Uh-oh," Kris remarked. "Breach of internal security procedures. All hands to emergency destruction stations. So, Dana, what'd Commander Destin say?"
Gabriel looked up, then back and forth as if seeking a way out, before grimacing in defeat. "She said maybe we'd, uh, could, uh, be lead platform for the, uh, certification on the, the…"
Lieutenant Sindh swallowed her bite of food. "Lead platform for certification of that new engineering device the Maury had? What was it?"
"Uh, SEERS."
"Yes. Is that what she said?"
Ensign Gabriel looked down again. "Yes."
Kris Denaldo's icy tone seemed to be within a few degrees of absolute zero. "She's looking forward to the chance to shine doing that, huh? Nice."
"I… I'm sure she didn't-"
"Yes, she did. Nice career boost for her if it happens. Bitch."
Sindh frowned at her. "Kris. That's inappropriate."
"But if — "
"She's still a superior officer. And we're in a professional environment."
Denaldo bit her lip, then nodded. "Sorry to everyone who heard that. But I'd really advise no one let Jen Shen know Destin feels that way."
Everyone else nodded, though Paul noticed Lieutenant Isakov seemed slightly amused. What is it about that woman that annoys me?
Randy Diego looked at Gabriel. "But won't Shen be working for Destin on the way back? I mean, she's an engineer and all."
Gabriel shook her head. "No."
"How come?"
"I don't know. Chief Meyer brought it up at a meeting and Destin made it clear Shen won't be working in engineering on the Michaelson. No reason given. It's just not going to happen."
Everyone looked at Paul, who fought down a surge of irritation. Every time Jen gets mentioned everybody looks to me like I know everything that's going on in her head and her life. I don't know the life part and I don't think I'll ever know the head part. "I don't know. I haven't heard anything about that."
"Jen's doing okay, isn't she?"
"As well as the other members of the Maury 's crew."
Bristol picked at his food for a moment. "Suppo said something to me. He said we should've left them on the Maury."
"What?"
"Yeah. Commander Sykes said if they'd stayed on the Maury they'd have had a lot to do. Standing watches and fixing stuff and keeping things working. But on here all they've got to do with their time is think about what happened. He says that's not good."
Sonya Sindh nodded. "Commander Sykes is, I believe, correct. But the Maury 's not in any shape to sustain all those crew members all the way back to Franklin. We really didn't have any choice. But, speaking of the accident, has anyone heard if they have any idea what happened as of yet?"
Gabriel shook her head. "I was talking to Chief Meyer and Colleen. They say all we can tell right now is that the engineering spaces were destroyed by internal explosions."
"Explosions? Plural?"
"They think so. Very close together, though, so it seemed like one big explosion."
Mike Bristol shook his head in turn. "We'll find out for sure, right?"
"Well, Colleen wasn't sure of that. A lot of stuff was destroyed, including the engineering logs, and a lot of the, uh, fragments that might contain evidence were blown into space and dispersed so wide we'll never find them all."
Randy leaned forward. "Maybe it was a bomb." Everyone looked at him. "I mean it. The SASALs don't like us. Maybe they figured out how to get a bomb onboard the Maury."
"That's ridiculous," Kris Denaldo insisted.
"How do you know? Nobody else seems to know what caused the explosion. I'm not going to be the only one who thinks the SASALs might've had something to do with it."