Tales from the Captain’s Table (12 page)

“He was a great man,” said the Rhitorri of his people’s savior. “A great captain.”

Picard smiled for the first time in months.
Perhaps not yet
, he reflected.
But given time, maybe he will be.

I
can still see it, everywhere I look. Still see her mangled and broken body, with blood just everywhere. Everywhere. Her ripped and burned uniform, the holes in her with the bodily fluids seeping out of her by the liter.

I see it in my mind’s eye when I’m awake, and I see it in my dreams when I’m asleep. Right now I’m sitting here at the Captain’s Table, staring into my empty glass that had once been filled with Orion whiskey…the new illegal beverage of choice, since Romulan ale became legal during the Dominion War. You could pack Orion whiskey into a photon torpedo, blast it at an enemy vessel, and watch it eat through their shielding and hull. I can feel it inside me even now, scorching its way through my chest, plunging down toward the lining of my stomach. Any solid matter I have in my body from an earlier meal will be devoured by it…probably along with whatever internal organ it may be hiding in.

So anyway, there’s the empty glass, and you’d think my own reflection would be looking back at me. But no. Instead I see her, which may be a bizarre trick of the light, or the Orion whiskey lifting her image directly out of my conscience and plastering it into the glass so it can haunt me.

You want to hear about it? I mean, you’re sitting there across the table, looking at me with this weird kind of expression that says you don’t know whether to pity me or feel disgust for me. Which is fine because, honest to God, I don’t know which one to feel either.

My name? Name’s Shelby. No, not that Shelby. I’m the other one, Elizabeth Shelby. Captain Elizabeth Shelby, which of course you probably know, what with this being the Captain’s Table and all. And the thing I’m talking about…that is, what I was just discussing with you…happened just a few months ago.

We were in a war. You may have heard. No, not that war. The smaller one. The Selelvian/Tholian War. Two races working in concert with each other, and hauling in a few underhanded allies to boot, such as the Orions, to go toe-to-toe with the Federation. Basically the Selelvians tried to take over the Federation with organized mind control, and the Federation—big shock here—was peeved upon discovering that. And the Tholians took the Selelvians’ side, possibly because they were in cahoots with them from the outset, or maybe they just really, really hated the Federation’s collective guts and saw this as an opportunity to make a move against them.

I swear, to some degree, I haven’t the faintest idea what’s truly at stake or what we’re fighting about. It’s almost as if we’re fighting just to fight. It’s a colossal waste of time and resources. Almost self-indulgent, if you ask me. But no one did, because I don’t get asked things. I, like any good Starfleet commander, go where I’m told and do what I’m told. And I do that at the helm of the good ship
Trident,
the best damned ship in the fleet. I’m fully aware that other captains will say the same thing about their vessels, but the advantage I have over them is that I’m actually right.

When I’m not on her…when I’m not standing on her bridge, watching the stars fly past us as we move…it’s painful, you know? Phantom pain, like what you feel when you lose an arm or a leg, and you could swear that it’s hurting you when it’s gone. Same thing. When the
Trident
’s not there, it’s like a piece of me is gone. But I learn to manage it. To deal with it. You have to; you can go crazy otherwise.

So the
Trident
wasn’t gone per se, but she was out of commission. We’d just taken a pounding in an ambush arranged by a Selelvian and an Orion ship, but we’d managed to cut our way out and leave the wreckage of two enemy vessels floating in space behind us. We were barely able to limp to Starbase Bravo and put in for repairs there.

Bravo had just about the best repair facilities in the area, and the CO there is an old friend, Frank Kittinger. Frank, or “Kitt” as I sometimes called him, had been Bravo’s first CO, and had come to see the station as his child. Well…a large, floating child. He’d told me any number of times that when he finally eased himself into retirement—which he suspected would be within the next year or two—his greatest hope was that someone like me would take over for him. I told him I can’t see myself leaving the starship life behind but, hey…you never know where Starfleet’s going to send you.

There we sat at Bravo, feeling the frustration of inactivity that always dogs you when you’re waylaid and in for repair. And then, the next thing I know, Kittinger is summoning me to his office, telling me he’s got someone who wants to talk to me. So I showed up at the requested time of thirteen hundred hours, and my eyes went wide as saucers when I saw who was standing there.

“Soleta! My God!” I said. I moved forward as if I was going to hug her, and Soleta just stood there and gave me the strangest look. And if you saw Soleta, you’d know why: the long, elegant, pointed ears, the upswept eyebrows, that telltale expression of quiet superiority…all signals of her Vulcan heritage. I stopped before I got within hugging distance and remembered that I wasn’t likely to get any sort of demonstrative behavior from her, even though I’d known her since the days when we’d served together on the
Excalibur
. She as science officer, me as second-in-command to my future husband, the inestimable Mackenzie Calhoun. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” I said.

“There’s no reason that you should have,” she replied. “A scientific conference was held here, to discuss the research that was done on the Beings and their ‘ambrosia.’ As one of those who had a very close association to both, it was felt I would be an ideal speaker on the subject.”

“Lieutenant Soleta was about to head back to the
Excalibur
and was wondering if you’d be interested in hitching a ride,” Kittinger said. He had a slightly lascivious look in his eyes, and I knew only too well what was going through his mind. He confirmed it when he added, “After all, I’m sure you miss your husband and wouldn’t mind a brief…conference?”

I was too annoyed with Kittinger’s remarks to say anything at first, but fortunately I didn’t have to. Soleta stepped in and said, “It is a happy aspect of human nature to be with one’s loved ones…just as it is an unhappy aspect of human nature to act in a smarmy or juvenile manner about it. How fascinating that the two of you lived up and down to your respective potentials.”

Kittinger mimed being shot to the heart and, after confirming that the
Trident
would not be up and running for at least a week, I decided to take Soleta up on her offer. The
Excalibur
was on active patrol along the border of Thallonian space, since Starfleet was concerned about possible Tholian incursions. Soleta was in a long-range runabout, so the trip back wasn’t expected to take that long. “Thank you, by the way,” I told her as she fired up the runabout’s engines.

She looked at me curiously. “For what?”

“For throwing yourself on that stupid grenade of a question that Kittinger said. About me and Mac…”

“I did not consider it a grand gesture of self-sacrifice,” Soleta replied. “He was acting in a boorish manner, and I criticized him for it. Not much need be said beyond that…although, should it be required that I do throw myself upon a grenade on your behalf, I hope it will be over something of more import than a foolish comment from a foolish coworker.”

“Same here.”

As we headed back to the
Excalibur
, Soleta filled me in on all that had been happening on the ship since my departure. Soleta wasn’t exactly one for eager gossip. Rather than reveling in the details, she simply ascribed equal and unenthused importance to everything. Not for such as Soleta was the excited whisper of “Oh, and you’ll never believe what else happened!” She laid out all the latest juicy bits of business in the same matter-of-fact way that one would be entering information into the captain’s log.

I knew it was pointless to mention this to her, or ask her to spice things up a bit. I truly didn’t think she’d have the faintest idea what I was asking her to do.

Matters, however, very quickly moved beyond a litany of the latest doings on the
Excalibur.

We had been in space a bit under an hour, with perhaps another two hours or so to the rendezvous point where the
Excalibur
was to meet us. Suddenly the proximity alarms on the runabout went off. I jumped, startled, but Soleta was far too controlled to allow even the slightest concern to be displayed. “We have company,” was all she said, studying the readings. “A single vessel, but larger than us, moving in fast to starboard. An Orion raiding ship, if I’m not mistaken.”

A monitor on the visual array flickered and there was a craft of the unmistakeable thrown-together variety that characterized a raiding vessel typical of the Orions. Think of the Orions as sort of the anti-Borg. Whereas the Borg absorb, or “assimilate,” diverse technology and reshape it into a seamless whole, the Orion grab what they can, where they can, slap it together, and force it to work through damnable ingenuity coupled with sheer willpower. They want people to recognize where they got various pieces of technology from. It’s similar to old-Earth gunmen who would carve notches on their weapons to advertise the number of kills they’d made.

It wasted no time, diving in fast and unleashing a volley of pulse weapons that pounded us. A runabout is a swift and sleek vessel, but it’s not designed for heavy-duty combat against a superior, aggressive foe. Soleta had gotten the shields up barely in time, but the runabout swung wildly under the assault. I swear, every damned systems warning light that existed on the control panels lit up at the same time.

“Losing shields,” announced Soleta, and a heartbeat later, she added, “and stabilizers. And we have a coolant leak.”

“I’ll take helm,” I said. “Can you get the stabilizers and leak under control?”

“We’ll find out together,” she informed me, even as she vaulted, staggering, from her seat, and made her way to the emergency access hatches.

The runabout lurched fore and aft as their pulse weapons exploded around us. Soleta was practically bent in half, the flooring pulled up as she extended her arms and upper torso into the maintenance hatch. “Good evasive maneuvers, Captain,” she called out, her voice muffled.

Evasive maneuvers, my ass. With the stabilizers going out, it was all I could do to keep the ship from rolling. I struggled with the controls, caught a glimpse of the Orions darting toward us, and banked hard to starboard.

They’re steering us somewhere,
I suddenly realized, and then I saw it. “Soleta!” I shouted over the runabout’s sirens that were warning us of the dire situation, as if we didn’t already know. “There’s a planet, dead ahead! Under the current circumstances, what are the odds of my landing us safely?”

Soleta hauled herself out of the hatch, her face smeared with dirt. “That depends. Is the surface of the planet made entirely of foam rubber?”

“Probably not.”

“Then the odds aren’t great.”

Another explosion slammed us, and the computer voice—calm, naturally—informed us that we’d just lost our aft shields.

“I’m betting they’re better odds than our lasting out here,” I told her, and angled for the planet.

“I would be hard-pressed to disagree.”

“Give me as much of the stabilizers as you can, and make damned sure the landing thrusters are functioning.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The next few minutes were among the most harrowing of my life. Understand that back in my Starfleet Academy days, there was no cadet who could beat me for cool-under-fire when it came to operating a simulator. I was so skilled that for a time I was even considering focusing on becoming a helmsman until my parents said, “No, you’re heading on command track, end of discussion,” which is admittedly another story for another day.

For that matter, I’ve handled helm on all manner of vessels, and on more than one occasion with the damned things practically exploding all around me.

But a high-speed landfall on a barely functioning runabout…well, that was something else entirely.

They teach you in Starfleet never to wonder, “Is this it? Is this how I’m going to die?” Because to have such thoughts can wind up actualizing the concern. In other words, opening the door to wondering it can end up causing it. It was difficult not thinking that, though, I have to say, as I desperately muscled the runabout down toward the planet. With the shields unreliable, bringing us in at the correct angle was vital. Too shallow and we’d skip off the atmosphere; too steep and we’d burn up. The runabout shook violently, and I heard the screeching of metal as the ship fought to keep itself together. My uniform shirt was soaked through with sweat as the ship’s interior heated up, a sign that we were coming in too fast. The screen in front of me flared red. “Soleta! Do we have reverse thrusters?”

“After a fashion,” she replied, convincing me that there existed no predicament about which she could not be sardonic.

“Give me what you have! Now!”

The thrusters roared, helping me to correct the ship’s angle. The heat began to subside, and then I heard a sputtering as the thrusters proceeded to give out. Soleta muttered that rare thing—a Vulcan curse—and started to shove herself back under the flooring.

“Never mind! We’re out of time! Secure yourself!”
I called out, for the upper atmosphere had given way to the lower sections, the blackness of space being traded for what might well be breathable air. There was darkness all around us; we were coming in on the nightside. Wonderful. In the dark on a strange planet. Certainly there was no better place to be, especially with Orions on your tail.