Serpents Among the Ruins Read online

“I understand,” Buonarroti said. “Don’t forget to sip a little water for the rest of us.”

  “Don’t worry, Rafe,” Harriman told him. “Once we’re finally done here and return to Space Station KR-3, I’ve put in for at least a few days of R and R for the crew.”

  “That’s great, Captain,” Buonarroti said. “I think we need it.”

  “I do too.”

  It took them just short of six hours to empty the cargo hold, a tiring exercise despite the use of the antigravs. It put an end to a long day for Buonarroti, but despite his fatigue, he felt energized for Harriman. For so long now, the captain had been Starfleet’s point man in readying for battle with the Romulans, and Buonarroti could see the heavy days weighing on his captain. So as much as war might be waiting for them all in the near future, Buonarroti felt happy that, at least right now, on Foxtrot XIII, the captain’s love would be waiting for him.

  Harriman’s footsteps echoed along the series of corridors that led from the transporter room to the section of the subterranean outpost that housed crew quarters. The walls, floor, and ceiling extended away from him in matte shades of leaden gray, interrupted every few meters by support columns and beams, along with an occasional access panel. The stark illumination provided by the overhead lighting panels did little to liven the sterile atmosphere. The cold, colorless setting seemed not only unoccupied, but uninhabitable, a man-made congener of the desolate asteroid surface somewhere above.

  Of the 271 Starfleet personnel stationed here at Foxtrot XIII, Harriman knew, a third would be on duty at their stations, a third would be asleep, and the rest, while off duty, would likely be in either the mess hall, the gymnasium, or their quarters. This far from the main body of the Federation, and this close to the Neutral Zone—and to the Klingon border, for that matter—few opportunities for recreation would present themselves. The significant power demands of the small outpost for its sensor, defense, and weapon systems rendered most luxuries unsustainable. Harriman could readily understand Command’s rationale for regularly reassigning the crews of such installations. Unlike their counterparts aboard starships, who could travel to any number of locations for shore leave, those who staffed distant outposts were effectively bound by their responsibilities to them—bound to fragments of frozen rock beside borders that could in a flash become the front lines in a war.

  The corridor jogged to the right, past an exposed conduit that had obviously been repaired recently; a patchwork of optical fibers emerged from several openings and wound around like the web of a disoriented spider. Harriman sidled by, distinguishing another characteristic of duty at the periphery of the Federation, namely the necessity of performing makeshift maintenance. Supply ships never called often enough.

  As he continued on, he thought of his own crew. Though not posted to a base along the Neutral Zone, they had been at the vanguard of the Federation’s delicate and dangerous contacts with the Romulan Empire for years now, without any real respite. Prior to spending the last seven months in the precarious Foxtrot Sector, there had been the Romulan occupation of the Koltaari, and before that, Enterprise had been embroiled in half a dozen other tense ship-to-ship encounters with Imperial vessels.

  And then there had been the clandestine mission to Devron II. That had not involved the entire crew—only Sulu had accompanied him from Enterprise, together with five officers from other Starfleet postings—but that had been a year ago, and it brought home to Harriman the reality of just how long this strife with the Romulans had been plaguing the Federation. The operation on Devron II—a planet in the heart of the Neutral Zone—had been especially brutal. Harriman remembered trying to mitigate the horror of the experience for himself by believing that the efforts of his team would ultimately prevent hostilities from breaking out. Instead, good women and men had died—and worse—for nothing; all this time later, war still impended.

  One of the officers who had served at Devron II had been Commander Michael Paris—known as “Iron Mike,” an odd moniker for so frail-looking a man, Harriman had thought at first, although the commander’s constitution and determination had soon explained the nickname. Paris had taken leave from his position as first officer of Agamemnon—the same ship in orbit about Foxtrot XIII right now—in order to take part in the covert assignment, and he’d comported himself admirably. He’d risked his life to save Sulu’s, and it had been his courageous and quick-thinking actions that had allowed the team—or what had been left of it—to escape the Devron system. Ironically, Harriman thought, in order for his current mission regarding the Romulans to succeed, he would once again require the assistance of Iron Mike Paris.

  He reached an intersection. Down the cross-corridor, to both the left and right, numerous doors led to crew quarters. He checked for the number of Amina’s cabin on a directory mounted on the wall, and confirmed its location down the corridor to the right. He turned in that direction and hurried on.

  What Harriman had told his chief engineer earlier, back in Enterprise’s cargo hold, had been no exaggeration: he’d been looking forward to this time with Amina—to any time with Amina—for quite a while. They hadn’t been together since their week on Pacifica a year ago; although his crew believed he’d been there the entire month he’d been away from Enterprise, he’d actually spent the first three weeks on the Devron II mission.

  Since they’d become involved, this had been the longest period during which they had spent no time together. They’d sent missives and messages to each other often, and after Enterprise had been posted to Foxtrot Sector, they’d actually been able to speak to each other in real time on several occasions. They had even seen each other in person once or twice, but because of Enterprise’s rigorous schedule along the Neutral Zone, only briefly, and only as part of their Starfleet duties.

  Harriman reached the door to Amina’s quarters and stopped. The sounds of his steps continued on for a second or two and then faded to silence, as though swallowed up by the corridor. He tugged at the base of his red uniform jacket, straightening it, then lifted a hand to the epaulet on his right shoulder, making sure that it was secured properly. Satisfied, he reached for the door signal. His heart raced. He felt like a schoolboy, arriving to collect his date for the prom.

  A moment later, the door panel slid open with a soft rush of air. Inside sat a small room that belonged unmistakably to Amina. Harriman stepped inside, his gaze drawn to the wall directly across from him, to a mounted copy of an immigration certificate to the Martian Colonies. He’d seen the document before, and knew that it helped to tell the story of Amina’s grandmother’s grandmother, the first of her forebears to leave Earth. Next to the certificate hung a poem, a sonnet entitled “For Now and Ever”; Harriman had written it for Amina just six months into their relationship.

  The wall lay covered by those objects and others—by artwork; by small, semicircular shelves laden with numerous and varied artifacts; but mostly by framed photographs. Harriman saw Amina’s parents at the party their children had thrown to celebrate the couple’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. He saw her siblings—a brother and three sisters—two of whom he’d met, and two of whom he’d only ever seen in pictures. Amina’s beautiful, smiling face peeked out from a few of the prints, but the images were mostly of others, of those people who meant something special to her. He saw himself, in his Starfleet Academy graduation picture—a painfully thin boy from thirty years ago that he barely remembered anymore—and in a shot taken with Amina in Jennita, atop a cliff overlooking the sea’s magical sapphirine waters.

  “Captain John Jason Harriman the Second,” said a silky voice to his left, “are you just going to stand there, or are you going to say hello?” The words carried the faint hint of French pronunciation—Amina hailed from the Republique de Côte d’Ivoire, in Africa—an accent Harriman had always found exotic and romantic. Despite her mellifluous tones, though, Amina somehow still managed to express her strength and confidence, two characteristics that he had always found most appealing in he
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  Harriman turned. Amina stood there in a gold silk dress, the plush fabric accentuating the beauty and sheen of her dark chocolate skin. Sleeveless, with a pleated skirt that reached to the middle of her calves, the dress had been one she’d worn in Jennita when they’d gone out dancing, the skirt lifting and twirling spectacularly as she spun, her movements lively and graceful. Her straight, jet black hair framed her lovely features, curling inward slightly as it caressed the tops of her shoulders. She was radiant.

  “Amina,” Harriman said, his voice catching as he spoke the name of this woman he adored—and had missed—so much. He crossed the room in two strides, sent his arms around the small of her back, and hugged her tightly to him. Her arms encircled his shoulders—she stood slightly taller than he did—and embraced him back. He loved the feel of her long, lithesome body against his; they fit well together.

  Harriman pressed his lips against Amina’s neck and kissed her, taking in the sweet, wispy scent of her flesh. In an instant, the months of separation fell away, the yearning undertone of their many letters to each other now a remote memory only. The rightness of their relationship, their essential need to be together despite the millstone of physical distance that often kept them removed from one another, asserted itself once more. It had always been like this, from the very beginning. They parted only because of necessity—she had her career, he had his—and whenever they rejoined, whatever emotional hardships they had endured crumbled into dust.

  “Amina,” he said again, and he pulled back so that he could look into her eyes. Her green irises, flecked with grains of hazel, seemed to peer back at him with as much love as he himself felt. She looked good, her skin smooth and lustrous. Lines imprinted into her face along the sides of her mouth revealed a person who laughed easily and often, but did not add to the years in her appearance. At forty-eight, Amina could have passed for a woman in her early thirties, although the dignity and self-assurance with which she carried herself conveyed her maturity.

  “I missed you, John,” she said, softening the first letter of his name to a zh sound.

  “I missed you,” he said. He leaned in toward her, and their lips met, gently at first, and then in a harder, more passionate kiss. Harriman felt a fire with this woman as he had felt with no other.

  When they parted this time, Harriman took a few steps away, looking around the room. There wasn’t much to the place. Amina stood beside a half-wall that divided her quarters in two. Behind her sat a bed and a built-in dresser in a small sleeping area, too small to have been comfortably enclosed. Past the bed, a closed door no doubt led to a bathroom. In this section, a desk—topped with a computer-and-communications interface—and two chairs filled at least a third of the floor space. Still, as spartan as the accommodations were—save for Amina’s adornments—Harriman was certain that these quarters, the commander’s quarters, were the largest on the outpost. By comparison, his cabin on Enterprise seemed lavish.

  “This place is…” Harriman started, and then searched for an adjective to adequately express his thoughts. “This place is very much you,” he finally settled on, referring to Amina’s penchant for taking and keeping photographs.

  “You mean the pictures,” she said, clearly in tune with him. “All my albums are back in Aboisso with Mère and Père.” Though they traveled a great deal, Amina’s parents still kept a home in the African harbor city. “Starfleet didn’t give us a lot of storage space out here,” she said.

  “That’s all right,” Harriman told her. “There’s still plenty of room for both of us.”

  “Oh?” she asked, in apparent mock surprise. “Are you planning to move in?”

  “Ask me again,” Harriman said seriously, moving to her again and taking her upper arms in his hands, “and I’ll never leave.”

  “Oh, certainly, Mr. Starship Captain,” she teased, reaching over and brushing the tips of her fingers through the hair at the side of his head. “Mr. Warp Factor Nine, Mr. Ten Thousand Light-Years, Mr.—”

  “How about Mr. Sasine?” he interrupted quietly.

  “Is that a proposal?” she asked, smiling. In the eight years they’d been together, they’d each asked the other to marry countless times. The answers had always been yeses, and yet they had never progressed beyond that, had never discussed actually having a wedding. For his part, Harriman could not imagine pledging such vows and then saying farewell as Amina returned to whatever base she commanded and he returned to Enterprise. And yet—

  “Will you marry me?” he asked.

  The smile did not leave Amina’s face, but her expression changed somehow, from one of simple good humor to one of love and joy. “Yes,” she told him. “Of course.”

  And for the first time, Harriman asked the next question. “When?” He surprised himself, but as other questions threatened—Would they continue to be apart most of the time, or would one of them give up, or at least change, their career? Where would they live? Could they make it work?—as those questions and others began to flood his thoughts, he managed to stem the tide and push them away.

  Amina looked into his eyes for a long time, her expression never wavering. He loved her so much, and he knew she loved him. When will we get married? he thought again, and waited.

  At last, Amina said, “Every day.”

  Harriman’s lips parted in a way he could not control, his smile feeling as though it filled his entire face. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you.”

  He slipped his right hand around to the small of her back, clasped her right hand with his left, and then danced her into the sleeping area. They eased down onto the bed together, moving effortlessly in each other’s arms. It felt as though they had never parted.

  They did not sleep for hours.

  Sasine woke first in the morning. She usually did when they were together. Lying in the dark, she glanced over to the chronometer on the shelf beside the bed, the digits on its face glowing faintly. She’d woken half an hour before the beginning of her shift, she saw, and although she’d slept only six hours, she felt more rested than she had in a long time—probably since she and John had last been together, back on Pacifica. With him beside her, she always slumbered more soundly. When they were together, the strength and certainty of their relationship provided a feeling that, no matter the circumstances in the rest of the universe, her world was whole and happy. As at no other time, she experienced a remarkable sense of peace.

  In the darkness, Sasine could hear the slow, gentle susurrus of John’s breathing. She felt the desire to roll over and take him in her arms. She wanted simply to hold him, to feel the warmth of his body and the love in his embrace. But he needed to rest, she knew, and she did not wish to wake him. Like her, he’d been sleeping poorly of late, and he had not needed to explain why in order for her to understand. They had both been living for months at the verge of Romulan space, and so had faced many of the same pressures and uncertainties. More and more, war seemed inevitable.

  Located near both the Romulan and Klingon borders, Foxtrot XIII—as well as the other dozen outposts in the sector—sat on the first line of defense for the Federation. But functioning more as a monitoring station and depot, the outpost hardly constituted a primary military force. Sasine’s crew could certainly defend themselves, and they could even launch effective short-range attacks, employing both the weaponry installed on the asteroid and the small squadron of shuttles housed below the surface. But for all of that, and even with the more powerful weaponry currently being installed, there were limitations on what you could do from a rock in space.

  Sasine yawned and stretched, arching her back carefully so that she would not disturb John. Then she moved slowly across the bed, slipped her legs over the edge, and rose to her feet. Her body temperature having dropped as she slept, she felt cold, and she hugged herself against what she perceived as the morning chill. Reaching for the chronometer, she deactivated the signal that would have awakened her in just a few minutes, and then she
reset it for John. Most days, the signal did awaken her, rudely interrupting her sleep. She would get up and groggily get ready for the day, seeming to really come awake only once she had left her quarters and made her way to the operations center.

  Now she made her way around the bed and into the bathroom, where she quickly prepared for her shift. In the sonic shower, she thought about the challenges facing John. As captain of the Federation flagship, one of the most powerful vessels in the fleet, his assignment to Foxtrot Sector these past months had been an obvious choice by Starfleet Command. Like the outposts, Enterprise would be on Starfleet’s first line of defense, but as an offensive force, fighting not just to identify and slow invading vessels, but to beat them back or even destroy them. The responsibilities John shouldered were significant.

  After showering, Sasine opened the bathroom door, leaving the lighting panel on a low level so that she could see in the sleeping area. She retrieved her uniform and under-clothing from the built-in dresser and slipped them on. In the dim light, she spied her gold dress from last night lying on the floor, and she picked it up and draped it across the half-wall. Then she retrieved her shoes and exchanged them for the uniform boots sitting in the corner.

  Ready for her shift, she walked to John’s side of the bed. She bent down and watched him for a few moments as he slept. In repose, he looked less like the confident and experienced starship captain he was, and more like the young man who peered out at her every day from his Starfleet Academy graduation photograph. She could see in him now the innocence of his youth, unburdened by the responsibilities that both adulthood and duty had brought on. At the same time, she could also see the man he would become—had become—surmounting the hardships of a strange and occasionally tragic childhood, growing into somebody she respected and appreciated—and who could always make her laugh.

  Just thinking of that, Sasine smiled. She actually considered asking Lieutenant Commander Civita to take her shift for her so that she could spend more time with John. Today would be a relatively light day of duties for her, her last on Foxtrot XIII. She had been assigned to the outpost less than a year ago, and it had surprised her that Starfleet Command had chosen to rotate out the crew as quickly as it had. She supposed that the mounting strain between the Federation and the Romulan Empire had a great deal to do with the decision. She absolutely understood and appreciated the motivation of alleviating some of the pressure and tension her crew had been feeling for so long without surcease. But her crew had also accepted such pressures with equanimity; they had known what their duties would entail before accepting assignment here.