Book 7: Breakdowns (Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers) by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Wrestling Entertainment
Published: 2005-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

2

Not surprisingly, Pattie and Zoë discovered that few conveyors and turbolifts had resumed operating. Any functioning automated transport was used to move wounded and security personnel. Voluminous civilian foot traffic moved slowly as thousands of night-cycle shift workers emptied out of work centers to return home. Weak emergency lighting further hampered progress; what hadn’t been bolted down or attached when the quake hit had been dumped on the floor. When an impatient Red pushing past had tripped her, Pattie nearly lacerated her lower limbs on the sharp edge of a dislodged wall plate. The occasional encounter with an anonymous squish or shattered bits continually reminded them to slow down, move carefully.

Though the mess meant inconvenience, Pattie knew their situation could have been far worse. From what little she could discern, the primary township structures had sustained little or no damage. A good clean-up crew could fix the situation. The farther she moved from the transport center, the more it appeared that new construction zones—near the treetops and spreading out horizontally from the mother-tree—had been hardest hit. Why this was, considering that those zones utilized the latest architectural advances, puzzled Pattie.

Without mechanized transport, traveling between branch levels required that they, and all others returning to their paddocks, climb up and down the peg-poles: meter-wide metal poles with half-circle-shaped pegs protruding off opposite sides. Pattie had used Jefferies tubes and stairs on the da Vinci, but she found she adapted poorly to those designs. The peg-poles were better suited to the grasp of her multiple limbs and her body’s weight distribution. For Zoë, the peg-poles worked on the same principle as a ladder would, so she had little trouble keeping pace with the queue of Nasat above and below her. Pattie, as she descended, was reminded of how softs used the ladders connecting bunk beds. Maybe more Nasat might join Starfleet if peg-poles were integrated into starship construction. She made a mental note to suggest her idea to Captain Gold when she next saw him.

The protracted trip back to Zoë’s paddock gave Pattie plenty of time to think about her encounter with the Yellow. Though the humiliation had diffused, she still simmered over the Yellow’s labeling her as a quiet. Hearing that word—hearing herself labeled that way—again reminded her why she’d joined Starfleet. In the S.C.E., whatever a Nasat computer said she was, whatever her physiology identified her as being, didn’t matter. Her accomplishments defined her, not a defect in the language-processing center of her cerebral cortex. Because she had skills and experience the township needed, a label shouldn’t matter—especially at a time of crisis.

Instead of locking down the township, why hadn’t the Council ordered every available shell out of their paddock to start working? Clearing the rubble, helping the wounded to safety—whatever was needed. A threat to the mother-tree was a collective threat to all life in the canopy, Nasat, tiny-leafed neophatra, or multi-winged avian. All should be vested in finding answers as soon as possible. Waiting around for bureaucratic wheels

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