By the Book by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch Read Free Book Online Page A

mounding around the floor. A ramp leads up to the third floor."
    "For the moment we're safe," Mayweather said.
    Cutler laughed.
    Mayweather looked alarmed at her laugh. Clearly he was getting the rhythm of the game. "Safe" was a relative-and short-term in this RPG.
    "Are we safe enough to take a break until after our shifts?" Mayweather asked. "I got to get some sleep. Fighting these Martians is tiring."
    "Good idea." Novakovich glanced at Cutler. "You and I both have duty in seven hours."
    "I suppose your characters are safe enough for that," Cutler said, laughing. She put the bolts back in the cup, wrapped the towel around it, and stood as the others did. It was amazing how quickly time went by with this crazy game. Just as it had when she was a kid, playing it on her computer. Only linking minds, as they were doing now, seemed to be a lot more fun than linking computers.
    And it was nice to be playing with people who co-operated with each other instead of fighting among themselves.

EIGHT
    The tension on the bridge was thick, both from excitement and worry. Archer strolled around his captain's chair, unable to keep still. He'd left Porthos in his quarters, knowing that the next few hours would be difficult.
    The bridge crew watched him pace. Twenty-two hours had passed since Archer had promised them twenty-four more hours. He'd planned to stay off the bridge for the entire twenty-four so that the crew could do their research and studies, but he hadn't been able to. He needed to know what was going on.
    The reports had come at him fast, filled with information. He processed it quickly too, hating the discussion that inevitably came when he allowed the crew to interact during this time. He'd vowed not to hold briefings, and so far he'd been able to stick to it, even when he had to use unorthodox methods, like this one.
    The staff was used to more organization and a captain who didn't pace. T'Pol in particular found his methodology difficult. Even though they'd declared a truce of sorts, she still made him nervous. Right now she served as a reminder of all that the Vulcans had withheld from the humans.
    He wasn't going to do that to the Fazi.
    The only two people with nothing to report were Mayweather, who looked as if he hadn't gotten enough sleep, sitting at the pilot's station, and Trip, leaning on the wall beside the lift door. Trip was the only one who didn't seem on edge. In fact, he was watching Archer with something akin to amusement.
    Apparently the Fazi were more structured than anyone could have imagined. Their civilization, built on a perfect grid pattern, amazed Archer even more than the structure to their language Hoshi had tried to explain to him.
    When the reports were finished, Archer stopped pacing and looked at T'Pol. "Do you think that the Fazi colonized this world at some point in their past? And that the race on the southern continent was here first?"
    "It would be a possible answer to the Fazi engineering puzzle," T'Pol said. "Building on such a pattern would be more logical if done from the beginning of a settlement. Also, the Fazi seem quite different from the race on the southern continent-not just in technological advancement, but physically as well."
    "Is it unusual for two such different species to develop on the same planet?" Archer asked.
    T'Pol opened her mouth to answer him, and then stopped, recognizing his trap. He wanted her to tell him information he wasn't supposed to have.
    "Since we have discovered few similarities between these two cultures," T'Pol said, carefully avoiding his overall question, "it would be logical to assume that one group originated somewhere else."
    "I'm not so sure," Hoshi said.
    "About which part?" Archer asked.
    "The structure," she said. "I think we're making assumptions based on who we are. Sure, we tend to be more structured when we colonize, but some creatures are innately structured, like ants."
    Archer glanced at T'Pol. She was watching Hoshi, her features