Star Trek by John Jackson Miller

Author:John Jackson Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 2020-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

25

Tallacoe

CASMARRA

“Why the hell didn’t Section 31 tell me I’d been here before?” the emperor asked. “I mean, that she’d been here before!”

In a distribution-center alcove out of earshot from Quintilian’s tour group, Dax looked at Georgiou and shrugged. “I don’t know why they didn’t tell you. I haven’t thought of anything new since the last time you asked.” She added more softly, “But five minutes is a long time.”

Georgiou clenched her fists and turned away.

She had slept in the most comfortable bed she’d known since I.S.S. Charon, yet she had risen enraged—and also alone, which only added to her fury. After taking breakfast in her quarters, she’d belatedly joined Quintilian’s tour of the shipping facilities on his estate. Thereupon she fell, silently screaming, into a sea of disquisitions into the varied lading practices of freighters.

“—the same freighters on the Oast–Dromax runs can be used on the Dromax–Casmarra runs, but they have to be disinfected once here to make sure no toxins from the Dromaxian ores survive to the next time it hauls food. Now, over here—”

Were it not for Quintilian’s silken voice, the emperor would have fled entirely—that, and the fact that the man had found himself constantly interrupted by aides needing advice. Those interludes had given Georgiou ample chances to rant not-so-quietly to Dax.

“Leland sent me here with practically a gigaquad of correspondence between the two of them, telling me to act like the captain,” Georgiou said. “They told me how she sips her tea, how she wears her hair, and drilled into me her whole service record, so I wouldn’t trip up. Yet nobody bothered to tell me that she’d actually visited the place. And she even brought Michael!”

“Didn’t you say Burnham’s off on assignment with Discovery? Maybe they never got the chance to ask her about it.” Dax shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t know about the whole thing.”

“Leland acts like he knows everything. How could he not know?”

“Well, he didn’t know this. Or maybe he had a reason not to tell you.” Dax pursed her lips and frowned. “But that doesn’t make a lot of sense either.”

Georgiou added her own grimace. None of her Terran captains were allowed to go running around free from surveillance whenever they felt like it; there was too much danger of revolt. She kept them under watch at all times, usually with her chief of security, Joann Owosekun, providing reports that detailed every minute spent, every light-year traveled. But the emperor didn’t know how Starfleet worked. “Can a captain just hare off to a forbidden zone?”

“I don’t know. I’m not Starfleet.” Seeing the third member of their party off chatting with Quintilian’s pilot, Dax had an idea. “Finnegan!”

His head snapped toward her at the sound of his name. “Emony!”

Georgiou rolled her eyes as he hustled over. Finnegan had reportedly appeared right on schedule for the tour, energized and none the worse for the previous day’s injuries and night’s festivities. Blackjack had been resilient, too, but his pain receptors had been surgically deadened. How Finnegan managed remained a mystery to her.

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