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Chapter 11 - Couplets

At least Tamsin wasn't jumping up and down when Marty stepped off the transporter pad. He thanked the heaven and any supporting deities, real or imagined, for that small favor.

She began talking a mile a minute as soon as he'd rematerialized. The transporter chief, somebody new since Marty's departure from the Talos, was a Bajoran, who rolled his eyes, none too discreetly.

"... and there's just, oh, sushi! It is the most romantic – ever meal! I mean, some would say French, and I guess others would say Italian, but there's all these heavy sauces, y'know? Then all anybody ever wants to do is sleep! And ...."

As if you ever sleep, Marty mused, but did not vocalize. If there are past lives, I bet anything that you were a Jack Russell Terrier. "Tamsin? Tamsin!" Again, he held up his hands in the shape of a capital T. "Are you ready to transport to the surface?"

"I, I need to go to my quarters for a second," she said nervously, picking a speck of imaginary lint off her full-dress uniform. She started to leave. "Aren't you coming with me?"

The last thing he needed was to meet former colleagues, or be trapped in her quarters. "It wouldn't be proper."

"Oh." The tone was one of some disappointment. "I'll hurry right back!" She was gone in a flash.

Marty turned to the Bajoran. "I see the left control is still sticking a little. Your predecessor used to whack it with a hammer every now and then."

"I'll try to remember that, sir. Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Marty tugged a little at the collar on his regular uni. "She always like that?"

"Pretty much, so far as I can tell."

"Thanks. Uh, don't say anything, all right?"

"Not a word, sir."

=/\=

On the Cookie, Wesley put in a call. "I'd like to speak with Lakeisha Warren, at Starfleet Academy."

"Connecting you now," announced the relayer.

"Hey!" Wes called out. "How're you doin'?"

"Pretty good. I had rehearsal and more rehearsal today." She played the French horn, and the instrument was still in her hands as she had been cleaning it. "Big doings here."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Lakeisha said, "flag officers are coming in less than a week, on the thirteenth. It's some sort of big doings. Of course I don't know the specifics. I just play what they tell me."

"Which is?"

"Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Big time classical. Big time war music. I wonder if the musical director is trying to make some sort of a not-so subtle statement."

"You think so?"

"Post-Dominion War, post-Shinzon, you get the idea. There are people saying," she intimated, "that this decade is almost like the 2150s, with its Xindi War and then the Earth-Romulan War coming one right after the other. News and rumors around campus are that a lot of us will be shipped out to fight."

"But to fight whom, Lakeisha?" Wes asked. "I mean, I haven't seen anything on the viewer recently."

"I don't think anybody knows anything specific or concrete. I think it's more that they've just got a feeling. 'Course, it might just be paranoid seniors talking; nervous about where they'll be assigned when they graduate."