10

The door glided open, and Nog stepped off the bridge and into the corridor. Voices and the electronic cheeps of diagnostic testing followed him out, then cut off abruptly as the door closed behind him. He walked quickly forward, paying little attention to anything but the padd he held in his raised hand. He studied the tabulated readout, analyzing the data. Words and numbers, colored green and yellow and red, and arranged in rows and columns, spelled out the results of the level-one diagnostic he had just completed on Defiant’s modified library-computer interfaces.

We’re almost there,Nog thought, encouraged. Only a handful of the readings on the padd appeared in yellow, signifying marginally functional equipment, and only one—a measure of the data flow rate to a secondary interface in the stellar cartography lab—appeared in red, indicating an actual failure. He glanced up as he reached a junction, where the corridor curved back around to the left, and another stretched off to the right. Nog jogged to the right and headed toward the main corridor on the port side of the ship. Stellar cartography,he thought, shaking his head as he turned right again at the next intersection. The new lab had proven the most troublesome—

Nog barreled into somebody. The hand in which he held the padd slammed back into his own body. His other hand reached out and groped for the wall as he tried to maintain his balance, but his feet became entangled and he tumbled sideways onto the deck. Twisting his body around at the last moment, he rolled with the impact as he had been taught to do at the Academy. The other person landed next to him with a thud, and he heard the rattle of several small objects striking the deck.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Nog said hurriedly, knowing that the collision had been his fault. He had been looking at his padd and not where he had been going, so intent on his work that he had not even heard the other person approaching the intersection. And when a Ferengi doesn’t hear something,he thought, it’s their mistake.

“No, no, I’m sorry, sir.” Nog recognized the pitch and tone of the woman’s voice immediately, as well as the slight but distinct cadence of her strange accent. Nog lifted himself onto his elbows and looked over at Ensign Roness. She reached over to him, putting her hands around his left biceps, apparently attempting to help him up even as she moved to rise herself.

“Gerda, it’s all right,” he said, tapping one of her hands lightly as a signal to her to let go of his arm. She did, and they both got to their knees and then to their feet.

“Are you hurt, sir?” Roness asked. She stood considerably taller than Nog did, and she peered down at him with an expression of obvious concern, and perhaps even of fear. She had, after all, just sent a senior officer sprawling onto the deck. “I didn’t see you, I—”

“It’s all right,” Nog repeated. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.” He patted at his uniform, mechanically brushing away the dirt and dust he imagined to be there but did not actually see. He looked past Roness and down at the decking behind her, leaning first to his right and then to his left, until he finally spotted his padd. Nog stepped by her, bent, and retrieved it. “I was too busy checking diagnostic results,” he said, holding up the padd to illustrate his point.

Roness smiled at him then, displaying a mouthful of perfectly aligned, perfectly white teeth, which looked to Nog far too squarish and blunt to be of any real use. As he had so many times before, he wondered just how hew-monsmanaged to chew their way through their food. As he considered her dentition, Roness walked past him, stooped down on one side of the corridor, and picked something up. Then she moved to the bulkhead opposite and grabbed something else. She stood and turned toward him, lifting both of her hands to show him the two padds she was holding. Her wide smile had transformed into a sheepish grin, and she shrugged comically. Nog laughed, a short, loud explosion of breath.

“I guess we’re all pretty busy checking diagnostics these days,” Roness said.

“I guess so,” Nog agreed. Then, remembering that the ensign had also been knocked down, he asked, “Are you all right?”

“I am, I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little bit surprised, that’s all.”

“Me too,” Nog said with a smile. “So how’s the work going?” he asked, pointing to the two padds she still held raised before her.

“Really well,” she told him, lowering her arms. “Ensign Senkowski and his team just finished repairing the last of the hull breaches, and they’re nearly done replating the ship’s armor.”

“That’s great,” Nog said enthusiastically. “I guess we won’t need to push the launch back again.”

“No, thank goodness for that,” Roness said. Her eyes widened as she spoke, revealing the obvious importance to her of meeting the new schedule. Several of the crew, including Nog, had felt embarrassment at having to delay the start of their mission, although Commander Vaughn had lauded their efforts to refit and repair Defiantover such a short span of time.

“Well, I need to get down to the computer core,” Nog said. Then, remembering that he carried the rank of lieutenant—something that still surprised him sometimes when he thought about it—he added, “Carry on, Ensign.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you, sir.” She started down the corridor and disappeared around the corner, apparently headed to the bridge. Nog turned and resumed his own course. This time, he only peeked occasionally at the padd, keeping his head up and his eyes primarily on his surroundings.

When he reached the port turbolift at the bow of the ship, he reached up with his empty hand and touched the control plate. The door slid open and he entered the lift. “Deck three,” he said. “Port computer core.” As the car descended, he raised the padd and began studying its contents again. I’m not going to run into anybody just standing in a turbolift,he thought, smiling to himself.

Nog was pleased by what the readouts on the padd indicated, and by the other reports he had received within the last couple of hours—including what Ensign Roness had just told him. Repairs to the ship were proceeding as expected, and the last major refit work to be completed was the conversion of the library computer. That involved both a modification to the existing interfaces, and a restructuring and reloading of scientific data to the dual computer cores. In the last few days, Lieutenant Candlewood and his team had made considerable progress, finishing almost all of the interface upgrades and loading more than half of the necessary data. Only the secondary systems in the stellar cartography lab continued to give them any significant trouble, as almost all of the systems in that lab had since they had begun its installation. If he could, Nog would have locked on to the entire lab and transported it out into space—except of course that, on an exploratory mission like the one Defiantwould be embarking on, stellar cartography would see more use than just about any other system on the ship.

Nog felt the lift slow and complete its vertical descent, then felt it move horizontally toward his destination amidship. At least we’ll be able to leave the station in five days,Nog thought, as pleased as Ensign Roness had been that Commander Vaughn would not have to delay the start of the mission a second time. Of course, they could probably gain an entire day back on the timetable. Nog was scheduled to be off duty three days from now, but if he worked instead—