So she had treated her meetings as she would a surprise exam or a red alert. Focus. Breathe. Study the situation. Act, not react. And try not to panic. It worked for the most part. A thirty-two hour diet of position papers had filled her head with facts. Whether she could put them together in a useful fashion was another issue altogether.
She was about to find out.
Nothing like having some prep time,Ezri thought, shuffling through the padds loaded with Yrythny history, law, customs and geography brought to her by Candlewood and Shar. She read as quickly as she could, catching the main points and leaving the fine print for later; hopefully, no one would be quizzing her. She’d just finished perusing a treatise on Wanderer rights when Shar appeared in her doorway.
“The escort’s here, sir,” Shar announced.
“Already? They’re early!” Ezri moaned. “Help me gather all this up. And find me something I can carry it in. I don’t know when I’ll be coming back here today.”
Shar quickly procured a shoulder bag and loaded it up with any and all items Ezri might need. “Coral Sea Wars,then Black Archipelago Conflict,”she pronounced finally. “First Proclamation on Rightscame with the Peace Talks.”
“I think Black Archipelagocomes before the Coral Sea Wars,”Shar commented, then added “sir.”
“After! Let’s go!” She marched out of the office and into the exterior corridor, where the escort to the Assembly Hall awaited her.
* * *
Since he’d first set eyes on it, Vaughn knew that the Avarilrivaled even a Romulan warbird in size. After living aboard her for only a day, he decided that she conformed less to his notions of a starship than she did to a warp capable space station. Finding his way around identical spiraling corridors and dozens of transport car tracks proved challenging. If their wide-eyed expressions of confusion were any indication, his crew felt similarly.
Because Defiantwas still, to all intents and purposes, uninhabitable until repairs were completed, the crew had been provided accomodations aboard Avaril.Bowers, who had been supervising the removal of personal crew gear from Defiant,had mistakenly guided a group, arms laden with duffel bags, to the Avaril’s engine room. Wisely, Chieftain J’Maah had designated several large empty rooms close by Defiant’s bay to serve as living space, minimizing the square meters in which the Starfleet crew could get lost. To facilitate intercultural understanding, Chieftain J’Maah had provided them access codes to the unrestricted portions of the ship’s database. The voyage to the Consortium was expected to take four days in each direction, so Vaughn had issued a standing order that all Defiantpersonnel were to spend at least two hours daily exploring the political and social contexts of the sectors they were traveling through. In addition, attendance at scheduled inter-crew mixers was mandatory (the exception being Nog and his engineers: repairing the Defianttook precedence over all activities for the duration of the journey). For himself, he was determined to memorize the layout of the Avaril;he hated getting lost.
But there were practical concerns that required adaptation, such as the sleeping accommodations. Because the rooms given over to the Defiantcrew weren’t actually designed to be quarters, nothing remotely resembling a bed was available. Bashir and Prynn had been assigned to collect sleeping bags, blankets and pillows from Defiant.After the first night sleeping on the Avaril’s decks, Vaughn expected the crew’s tolerance for noise, snoring and quirky bedtime routines to increase markedly.
With Bowers, Bashir, and Prynn still fine-tuning housekeeping and his briefings with Chieftain J’Maah completed, Vaughn was left with a block of time before he was scheduled to join the Avaril’s senior staff, including Science Minister M’Yeoh, for dinner and a discussion of what to expect at the Consortium.
From what Vaughn had gathered so far, M’Yeoh, in his ministerial position, would secure credentials for Vaughn to conduct trades under the Yrythny’s sponsorship. Vaughn’s impression of the science minister since their first encounter was of a sniveling career politician. Descending from one of the oldest and most prestigious Houses on Vanìmel had been enough to secure M’Yeoh a high government position. Developing a constructive working relationship with him over the next few days might prove challenging. Vaughn had never had much use for inheritors of power; they were too often more trouble than not in his experience.
Checking the time, Vaughn noted that he had about half an hour before he was to present himself in J’Maah’s quarters. Having heard that the crew had organized a poker game for later in the evening, Vaughn decided to go on a personal errand now, before the meeting with J’Maah, freeing him up to play a few hands after dinner.
Though he knew unscheduled hours might be infrequent in coming days, he decided to forgo practicality and download the next volume of The History of Terran Civilizationfrom the Defiant’s library into a padd for recreational reading. He’d finished the volume on Alexander the Great the day before they’d encountered the Cheka weapon; he was eager to revisit the rise of the Roman Empire.
With most of the crew settling into their new living spaces, Vaughn wasn’t surprised to find the corridors outside Defiant’s bay empty. He entered his personal access code into the doorpad and strode across the bay, the hollow clap of his shoes against the deck plates echoing through the chamber. Like a recovering patient, Defiantrested on her seldom-used landing legs. Supplementary power modules attached to external access ports and long, snakelike umbilicals trickled energy into the ailing vessel’s environmental systems. Vaughn patted her hull affectionately, hoping for her quick recovery. He ordered the hatch to open and he climbed aboard. Given the chance, Julian would lecture him about unnecessary radiation exposure, but the hyronalyn would cover him for more than the fifteen minutes the task required. Besides, decontamination was progressing at a good clip, and Vaughn wanted to sit in the captain’s chair, feel the armrests beneath his hands, take in the view from the center of the bridge. He might not be Defiant’s first love, but he felt their courtship was going well and he missed being in her company.
He hadn’t taken ten steps down the corridor beyond the airlock when he swore he heard the sound of a door closing. Tensing, he kept still and waited for any further sounds, but heard nothing. He didn’t dare ask the computer for information. At the closest functional companel, he initiated internal and external sensor sweeps; both yielded nothing. As far as the computer was concerned, Vaughn was the only organic being in the repair bay. Still, he couldn’t shake the sense that someone or something had been here—if not when he arrived, then certainly just before.
The Defianthad been boarded illicitly—he was sure of it. He wished the violation were unexpected, but the only unexpected part was how soon into their journey it had happened. Though his hosts had been gracious since achieving an “understanding,” Vaughn knew intuitively that he needed to be wary.