Chapter Text
Maren exhaled with relief as she yanked her gloves on over her frigid fingers. 13 C wasn’t freezing, but, as her mother was fond of pointing out, she “had no meat on her bones.” Without any kind of natural insulation, she always felt colder than she should.
She returned her attention to the maintenance console with just a trace of a dejected pout. Whoever had been in charge of programming the security lockout on this capsule not only had way too much time on their hands, they were really, really good. The second layer of encryption was proving more difficult than the first. She wondered how many levels she had left to go.
“Who installs multilayered security on an escape pod maintenance computer?” she asked aloud. She’d been working at the second layer for nearly an hour now, and she’d finally given up and pulled her gloves on just to give her frigid, aching fingers a break. She also realized she was getting hungry.
With some trepidation, she opened up the food ration compartment. Upon seeing its contents, she sighed and made a face, disgusted. Liquid nutritional supplements. That was all. Not even an MRE. Icheb would be happy, she thought. He actually liked the gross white supplements, and drank them all the time on purpose, praising their efficiency.
Taking out one of the eight cans fitted into the compartment, she examined the label. “Nutritional supplement 13B,” she read aloud. She had to grin at the coincidence – that was Icheb’s favorite ‘recipe.’ She cracked it open. “Wish you were here, love,” she said, lifting the can as if to toast him. Then she tipped it back, took a swig, and nearly choked. “Ugh!” she cried. “I don’t know how you drink this stuff!”
At least Icheb ordered them chilled from the replicator. This stuff was room temperature and tasted like cotton balls. She could chill it by putting it outside, she guessed, but that would require opening the door. She wasn’t that desperate yet. Grimacing, she took another sip. That was more than enough to convince her. She held her breath and forced herself to pound the rest of the drink as fast as she could, just to get it over with. Nutrition, not enjoyment, was the point, here.
Setting the empty can aside, she removed her gloves and returned her attention to the maintenance computer. Her slender fingers flew across the keypad as she battled with the code. God, whoever did this is good, she thought to herself, half impressed and half annoyed. And then it hit her: They rigged it on purpose to keep me out.
The realization only strengthened her resolve. So they’d expected her to toy with the systems. Well, she didn’t want to disappoint. If they’d gone to the trouble of bringing in a top programmer – and this was top quality work – just to see if she could break through, well then, she was going to break through. After all, she had a reputation to defend.
****
“Level 9 encryption breached, sir.” Icheb tried not to wince as the ensign announced Maren’s latest achievement. It had been 4 hours, 27 minutes and 33 seconds since she had begun trying to break through his defenses, and she was making quicker work of them than he had ever expected. She knows you as well as you know her, he realized. Even if she didn’t know she was breaking his code, the years they had spent programming together had given her an inside advantage.
Schmidt was in a meeting, and in his absence, a small crowd had gathered in the monitoring room to watch the spectacle. “Damn, she’s tenacious,” said one man, a Betazoid lieutenant commander who’d been part of the cryptology team that had failed to break the code.
“I would have given up on level four,” admitted a female Andorian lieutenant. Level four had stumped Maren for 43 minutes, until she used a Borg tactic she and Icheb had seen Seven of Nine use only once, more than two years prior. Icheb hadn’t realized she’d committed it to memory. The whole chamber had erupted in noise when she did it – it was a little like watching an athletic event, only there was just one competitor and the audience was made up almost entirely of star-struck programmers.
“I stand by my theory that she only looks human,” said another lieutenant, this one a Deltan man. “She has to be Illyrian, or genetically enhanced, or something.”
“Unlikely,” a Vulcan lieutenant commander said. “All applicants to Starfleet Academy are required to submit to thorough DNA testing. If she were not human, it would have been revealed prior to her arrival at the Academy.”
This time, it was someone Icheb knew who spoke up. “Assimilation always helps, eh, Lieutenant?”
Eric Atherton, a junior grade lieutenant, had entered the room unnoticed. The son of an admiral, he was stationed at Earth Spacedock, and had learned of Icheb’s temporary assignment earlier that week. Having lost his mother to the Borg at a young age, he had hated Icheb since their first day at the Academy together, and that hatred extended equally to Maren, whom he viewed as a traitor to the Federation because of her relationship with Icheb. He had become gradually less abrasive toward the pair over the years, but the prospect of watching Starfleet force Icheb to torment Maren had obviously proved too enticing for him to pass up. He had stopped by numerous times throughout the week to check on Icheb’s progress, with a sadistic grin that reminded Icheb of Commander Schmidt.
Icheb turned to level a glare at his former classmate, but didn’t dignify the joke with a response. He simply resumed watching the monitor, where Maren was just a few keystrokes from breaching level ten.
“At this rate, she’s going to lose power before the storm ends,” the Betazoid said. Icheb silently worried that he was right. Slow down, he thought. Please slow down.
“Level ten breached,” the human ensign announced, but his voice was mostly lost among the whoops and cheers of the crowd packed into the small room.
“Four more to go,” the Deltan said.
“I can’t believe this,” said the Andorian. “You guys worked three days and couldn’t crack level seven.”
“She’s the best I’ve ever seen,” the Betazoid said in awe. He glanced over at Icheb. “I think she’s even better than you.”
“It’s possible,” conceded Icheb. In fact, he had long suspected it himself. Thanks to his cortical implants, he was faster computationally, but she was more creative in her approach to solving problems, more free in her thinking. The Collective had structured his mind in a very particular way, and although it had given him many tools for problem solving, he tended to use those tools in a rational, predictable order. Maren’s thinking was, in his view, chaotic by comparison. That was one of the things he loved about her, even if he found it frustrating at times.
It bothered him that she had no idea she was being watched. It bothered him even more that there were so many people watching her. It wasn’t standard procedure to maintain a constant visual on cadets, but nothing about Maren’s test was standard. He suspected that Starfleet Academy was still unhappy about the glitch Maren had discovered and exploited during her Kobayashi Maru test. The resulting cascade failure had required a complete reprogramming of the simulator – which they’d made her do as punishment. Now, they were exacting their revenge. He hated to think of what they had in store for her on the psych test.
He’d faced the Borg for his own psych test – Command had overestimated his fear of the Collective. It was the first time his reserved personality had actually worked in his favor – if they had been able to read him better, they would know that the only thing he was truly scared of was losing Maren. The Borg simulation would have been much more frightening if they had included her in it, but they hadn’t. He had passed with flying colors.
“Level eleven!” the ensign cheered. Icheb stared at the viewscreen anxiously, then glanced at the weather display. The snow was starting to taper off, but the temperature was dropping. If she lost power, she might not get lost in the storm, but she’d certainly risk freezing to death.
“Please slow down,” he murmured under his breath.
The Betazoid looked over at him sympathetically. “She’ll be fine no matter what,” he reassured him. “Almost everyone fails their first test. It’s like a rite of passage.”
Icheb shot him a baleful look. “Maren has no intention of failing, sir,” he told the older officer.
“Tell me about it,” the Andorian replied.