This Gray Spirit

A Yrythny was bent over a communications unit, using a microlaser to fuse the last array component in place. She lifted her eye shield. “I’m busy!” Tlaral shouted.

“I want you to meet my friend and shipmate, Ensign ch’Thane,” Nog shouted.

Tlaral nodded politely, dropped the eye-shield and resumed her work.

Nog whispered, “She was one of the ones who beamed aboard to help us after we tripped the web weapon. If I could find a way to get Commander Vaughn to let me invite her to stay with the Defiantpermanently, I would. She’s a whiz with the cano pliers—and I’ve never seen an engineer who could diagnose a circuit board faster. Except maybe my father.”

“Is she going with you?” Shar asked, wondering if the glow in Nog’s face indicated that he might find true love, or at least serious infatuation, on this journey.

“Her husband—they call them consorts here—is a bigwig in the government. He’s going to be on board, too. He’s like the science minister or something? Mutters a lot.”

“M’Yeoh. Yes, I’ve met him. Why is he going with you?”

“We need a senior government official in order to be able to trade at the Consortium. He was the only one who didn’t need to be here for Ezri’s gig.”

Shar knit his brow quizzically. “Gig?”

“We need to go to Vic’s more when we get back, Shar. You’ll pick up the lingo in no time. You need to get into the groove.”

Shar felt confident he could live a fulfilling life without knowing what a “groove” was, let alone getting into one.

The Avarilhad been gone from Luthia for less than a day when the Yrythny General Assembly summoned Ezri to appear before them. She shouldn’t have been surprised—they’d been anxious from the begi

Vaughn had only just launched when a messenger appeared with her no

So she had treated her meetings as she would a surprise exam or a red alert. Focus. Breathe. Study the situation. Act, not react. And try not to panic. It worked for the most part. A thirty-two hour diet of position papers had filled her head with facts. Whether she could put them together in a useful fashion was another issue altogether.

She was about to find out.

Nothing like having some prep time,Ezri thought, shuffling through the padds loaded with Yrythny history, law, customs and geography brought to her by Candlewood and Shar. She read as quickly as she could, catching the main points and leaving the fine print for later; hopefully, no one would be quizzing her. She’d just finished perusing a treatise on Wanderer rights when Shar appeared in her doorway.

“The escort’s here, sir,” Shar a

“Already? They’re early!” Ezri moaned. “Help me gather all this up. And find me something I can carry it in. I don’t know when I’ll be coming back here today.”

Shar quickly procured a shoulder bag and loaded it up with any and all items Ezri might need. “Coral Sea Wars,then Black Archipelago Conflict,”she pronounced finally. “First Proclamation on Rightscame with the Peace Talks.”

“I think Black Archipelagocomes before the Coral Sea Wars,”Shar commented, then added “sir.”

“After! Let’s go!” She marched out of the office and into the exterior corridor, where the escort to the Assembly Hall awaited her.

*  *  *

Since he’d first set eyes on it, Vaughn knew that the Avarilrivaled even a Romulan warbird in size. After living aboard her for only a day, he decided that she conformed less to his notions of a starship than she did to a warp capable space station. Finding his way around identical spiraling corridors and dozens of transport car tracks proved challenging. If their wide-eyed expressions of confusion were any indication, his crew felt similarly.

Because Defiantwas still, to all intents and purposes, uninhabitable until repairs were completed, the crew had been provided accomodations aboard Avaril.Bowers, who had been supervising the removal of personal crew gear from Defiant,had mistakenly guided a group, arms laden with duffel bags, to the Avaril’s engine room. Wisely, Chieftain J’Maah had designated several large empty rooms close by Defiant’s bay to serve as living space, minimizing the square meters in which the Starfleet crew could get lost. To facilitate intercultural understanding, Chieftain J’Maah had provided them access codes to the unrestricted portions of the ship’s database. The voyage to the Consortium was expected to take four days in each direction, so Vaughn had issued a standing order that all Defiantperso

But there were practical concerns that required adaptation, such as the sleeping accommodations. Because the rooms given over to the Defiantcrew weren’t actually designed to be quarters, nothing remotely resembling a bed was available. Bashir and Pry

With Bowers, Bashir, and Pry

From what Vaughn had gathered so far, M’Yeoh, in his ministerial position, would secure credentials for Vaughn to conduct trades under the Yrythny’s sponsorship. Vaughn’s impression of the science minister since their first encounter was of a sniveling career politician. Descending from one of the oldest and most prestigious Houses on Vanìmel had been enough to secure M’Yeoh a high government position. Developing a constructive working relationship with him over the next few days might prove challenging. Vaughn had never had much use for inheritors of power; they were too often more trouble than not in his experience.

Checking the time, Vaughn noted that he had about half an hour before he was to present himself in J’Maah’s quarters. Having heard that the crew had organized a poker game for later in the evening, Vaughn decided to go on a personal errand now, before the meeting with J’Maah, freeing him up to play a few hands after di

Though he knew unscheduled hours might be infrequent in coming days, he decided to forgo practicality and download the next volume of The History of Terran Civilizationfrom the Defiant’s library into a padd for recreational reading. He’d finished the volume on Alexander the Great the day before they’d encountered the Cheka weapon; he was eager to revisit the rise of the Roman Empire.