The Operative (A Star Trek novel)

Chapter Twelve

The next two days see a subtle and slight rise in micrometeor activity planet-wide. For those fortunate enough to be outside after dark under clear skies, it is the best meteor shower of the year. It sends some of the astronomers at Athena University rushing excitedly to find the parent body, it sends the military rushing excitedly to make sure it's natural. Neither find anything.

Some are natural, but the vast majority are small bits of rock hurled toward the planet by tiny mass drivers on probes launched from Shelley. Each carries a miniscule telemetry device into the planet's upper atmosphere. Just before burning up, they report with tightly-tuned pulses any active sensors encountered on their journey to incineration.

As each little voyager reports in, a holographic screen in the cockpit is updated, slowly building a tracery of colored lines intersecting at orbital defense platforms.

The time does not pass particularly well for Flynn, or, to be fair, for any of them. Apparently none of them are very good at enduring idleness, even in the presence of looming danger.

Each has his or her own way of coping, of course. Flynn's is to draw into himself, having little to say or do with anyone. Their presence on his ship, his only real home, is grating, as if they are house guests that are loathe to leave. Chekhov spends most of his time reading when he can't get anyone to play chess. Montenegro has become, if possible, more grouchy and sarcastic. O'Connor reminds him of a cat: she mostly sleeps. Of them all, LaRue handles it the best, as might be expected from an old soldier. But even so, they have to threaten to sit on him to stop his incessant pacing.

Montenegro's occasional teasing and knowing smiles whenever he goes into his stateroom, which always seems to contain the somnambulant O'Connor, don't help much, either. Neither does the presence of Jean in his small bed. They don't talk much, since she seems always ready for a nap, withdrawing in her own way as much as he is in his.

She has made no change in her habit of sleeping in only a longish shirt, no effort toward modesty when changing clothes. He feels foolish averting his eyes like some schoolboy. Yet for all that he would scoff if someone accused him of having any vestige of a nudity taboo, he feels uncomfortable if he doesn't. It doesn't help a bit that she has a beautiful body.

In bed, she neither seeks nor avoids touching him. He feels prudish when he draws away from her inadvertent, innocent touch. He feels like a child molester if he doesn't.

All in all, he doesn't sleep well.

James Bond would be most disappointed in me, he thinks sourly.

❖

His most pleasant time is spent in the little ship's cockpit, reading or chatting quietly with the computer. Shelley and Flynn have been together for a long time, two examples of exotic technology thrown together by Starfleet. Shelley is easily as intelligent as Flynn, at least as far as he can determine. They have taken to having late-night discussions when Flynn is aboard; wind-down periods, bull sessions. They talk about everything. In many ways, Shelley is the only being that Flynn can unguardedly discuss himself with.

Oh, he is well aware that Shelley must give reports to its superiors, and that a substantial part of those reports concern him—one reason to give Flynn such an advanced computer–companion was to have some means of spying on the spy, whom Starfleet has always feared was something of a loose cannon. But still, it is with Shelley that Flynn is most comfortable.

The first night waiting, their discussion turns to Ocht, and what makes a person turn into a dictator.

"Perhaps he was born that way," Shelley says. "I understand that humans can change their personalities radically—or I should say, my sources assert that—but I cannot really bring myself to believe it. How can a biological being's core change like that? My personality could be changed just by changing my schema base; but a human's?"