Tales from the Captain’s Table (2 page)

“A
h, Paris,” said Jean-Luc Picard after the shimmering transporter beam released him and faded from sight. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

Not wishing to offend his former commanding officer, Captain Will Riker struggled not to wrinkle his nose noticeably as he, too, sampled the chill air and took in his new surroundings. The ancient, cobbled alley in which they had materialized seemed utterly unremarkable.

Except for its rather pungent smell.

“You look disappointed, Captain,” Picard said, reminding Riker how unaccustomed he was to being addressed by his new rank. Captain Picard had been in the habit of calling him “Number One” for fifteen years now.

Gesturing toward a meandering, meter-long crack in the brick wall beside him, Riker favored Picard with a wry smile. “As sightseeing destinations go, this doesn’t exactly measure up to the Arc de Triomphe or the Champs Elysées.”

Picard strode confidently away from the wall and into the late-afternoon shadows. Despite the apparently anonymous obscurity of the alley, he was clearly familiar with the terrain.

“You’ve seen those things before, Will,” Picard said. “I’ve something more important to show you today. It’s a rare privilege, and you’ve earned it.”

A rare privilege,
Riker thought, stepping carefully around a noisome pile of animal droppings as he followed his erstwhile CO around a corner.
A scenic tour of an alley that smells like an open latrine.

“You brought me here because I scratched up your yacht, didn’t you?” Riker said aloud as they reached a crowded, filthy
rue
that Riker recognized as emblematic of the oldest portions of the area surrounding Paris’s Gare du Nord
.
“You realized you wouldn’t be able to put reprimands in my file any longer, so you had to find another way of getting even with me.”

Pausing to let a cluster of harried, overcoat-bundled Parisians pass him on the ancient concrete-and-cobble sidewalk, Picard turned toward Riker, an uncharacteristically fraternal smile splitting his face. “I lent you and Deanna the
Calypso II
as my wedding gift. I’ve no regrets on that score, Will, dents and scratches notwithstanding. But the important thing is that you and Deanna had a safe and pleasant honeymoon trip.”

“You know what they say, sir. Any honeymoon you can walk away from…” Riker said, trailing off as he returned Picard’s grin. He quickly fell into step beside Picard as they walked down the
rue,
which teemed with pedestrians and old-style ground vehicles.

“Do tell,” Picard deadpanned.

Still grinning, Riker shook his head. “Not even under the influence of Romulan mind-probes.”

“We’ll see,” Picard said enigmatically, though his smile remained firmly in place.

Despite the comradely familiarity his newly achieved rank afforded him with Captain Picard, Riker found he really wasn’t very keen on discussing his recent three-week honeymoon in any detail. Suddenly, a new mix of pungent aromas assaulted him, causing his nose to wrinkle like a Ferengi’s—and giving him the perfect excuse to change the subject.

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Captain, but why does this place smell so…
strong?”

Picard gestured as broadly about the
rue
as the relentlessly determined streams of pedestrian traffic would permit. “For the same reason that the people prefer to walk. Or take vintage twentieth-century ground transportation. Or live in apartment buildings that predate the Industrial Revolution.”

Riker nodded, beginning to understand. “It’s a museum city.” He was familiar with the common French complaint that many of Earth’s modern cities were too sterile and antiseptic for Gallic tastes.

“My people are known for their singular resistance to change,” Picard said. “As well as for our frequent small acts of rebellion against modernity. We’re fiercely protective of our language, our architecture, our cuisine. Parisians are particularly so. Did you know that food replicators are forbidden in this
arrondissement?”

Riker sniffed the air again. Cooking smells melded with the sickly-sweet bouquet of ripening garbage—and the dog droppings he had so carefully avoided, which now seemed to be stalking him.

“Here we are,” Picard said, coming to an abrupt stop before a crumbling gothic structure that might well have been a thousand years old. Looking up toward the shadowy, gargoyle-festooned roofline, Riker counted six stories and guessed that the structure had endured at least four centuries past its safe lifespan.

Riker looked to Picard, who was pointing toward a narrow flight of concrete steps that led downward to a dingy-looking basement door.

Riker found himself staring at a wooden sign whose peeling paint nearly obscured the words
LA TABLE DU CAPITAINE
.

This can’t be right,
Riker thought, blinking mutely at the sign.

Picard had evidently noticed Riker’s confusion. “Well, I know the exterior doesn’t exactly rival President Bacco’s château in the Loire Valley for beauty. But I can assure you the Captain’s Table is a good deal more attractive on the inside.”

Riker shook his head in disbelief. The Captain’s Table was the name of the secret and exclusive bar Captain Picard had told him about—very quietly—on the very day his promotion to captain had come through. Not only was it a place that catered
only
to ship captains, but Starfleet personnel of lesser rank weren’t even supposed to be aware of its existence. Riker hadn’t had the heart to tell him that Captain Garfield of the
Independence
had told him about the place four years earlier.

But there was one huge problem: It was on the wrong planet.

“I thought you told me you visited this place a few years back with Captain Gleason of the
Zhukov
,” Riker said, frowning. “On Madigoor IV.”

Picard nodded, a puckish grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You’re right. That’s precisely where Neil and I were the first time I visited the Captain’s Table.”

Riker scratched his beard in confusion. “I guess they must be a chain.”
A chain of exclusive, hush-hush, top-secret, captains-only drinking venues,
he thought.
Right.

“No, Will,” Picard said, his grin becoming almost mischievous. “I assure you that the Captain’s Table is an utterly unique establishment.” And with that, he descended the stairs and pushed the dilapidated wooden door open.

Shrugging, Riker followed Picard down the stairs, across the threshold, and into what appeared to be a dimly lit, utterly unremarkable drinking establishment.

A burst of raucous sound greeted them even as Riker’s eyes struggled to adjust to the scant illumination.

“Postrelativist jazz, I think,” Picard said, nodding toward the narrow, battered stage where a trio of musicians labored, respectively, over exotic brass, string, and percussion instruments.

Riker shook his head, wincing at the strains of the furry humanoid who seemed to be fighting for his life against a vaguely trombone-like instrument. From the discordant hoots issuing from the instrument’s coiled metal bowels, it wasn’t at all clear who was going to emerge the victor.

“Sounds more like what passes for pop music on the Opal Sea,” Riker said with a wince. “Mixed with a fair amount of Sinnravian
drad
.”

Riker turned away from the stage and began taking a brief inventory of the Captain’s Table’s other habitués. Present were humanoids representing at least a dozen Federation species, along with perhaps half that many humans. A handful belonged to races Riker had never seen before. Most of the patrons sat at tables scattered throughout the room, while a few had bellied up to the bar. They all appeared to be intent upon either their quiet conversations, the various hot and cold liquors before them, or both.

A familiar face caught his eye. Seated at a corner table was Elizabeth Shelby. A multitude of small, empty glasses surrounded her, several of them upended. Not only had she taken no notice of him, but she seemed to want nothing more than to crawl inside the half-drained whiskey bottle into which she stared.

Riker wondered what was wrong, but resisted the temptation to walk over to her and ask.
Maybe she’s taken on a first officer who’s as big a pain in the ass as she was for me back when the Borg first tried to assimilate Earth.

As Riker turned to follow Picard to the bar, he began to revise his opinion of the place upward. Though the Captain’s Table appeared no less worn-out and seedy than it had when he’d entered, its walls boasted autographed photos of jazz legends, including Junior Mance, Charlie Parker, and Louis Armstrong, showcased alongside the bric-a-brac of a score of obscure worlds, objects ranging from a baritone sax to something that strongly resembled (but wasn’t quite) a standard Terran trombone to a zither-like stringed instrument Riker recognized as a Shaltoonian
linlovar
to the chrome fittings of various ground vehicles that surely had never come within several sectors of Earth.

How did a hubcap from a Jupiter 8 end up here?
Riker thought, staring at the shining disk on the wall with unconcealed amazement as he leaned on his elbows across the bar.
In a captains-only drinking establishment that somehow transported itself all the way from Madigoor IV to Paris, no less.

A pair of large pewter mugs thumped heavily onto the bar between Riker and Picard.

Picard raised his mug and took a generous swallow, then glanced with satisfaction at Riker before casting an appreciative smile toward the bartender.

“Perfect, as usual,” Picard said, setting his drink back onto the bar. “A very dry Pentarian
dresci
.”

Riker scowled in confusion. “I don’t remember you placing an order yet. You must have called ahead.”

“No, that’s not necessary,” said Picard, shaking his head. “That’s one of the special things about Cap here, and his establishment. Both always seem to deliver exactly what one needs, whenever one needs it.”

As long as one is a ship’s captain
, Riker thought, recalling what both Picard and Garfield had already told him. He studied the barkeep, a thickset human male with a shock of short, white, and slightly unkempt hair.
And as long as one pays one’s tab with a story.

“Thank you, Cap,” Riker said, raising his mug toward the bartender. He wondered how much of his story would be expected to be true.

“All part of the service, Captains,” the bartender said with a knowing grin as he polished a metal drinking stein on his apron.

“How’s
your
drink, by the way, Will?” Picard said.

Riker took an experimental sniff of his mug’s contents, and followed it with a tentative sip.

His eyebrows rose involuntarily. “Betazoid uttaberry wine, and a pretty damned good vintage, too. Funny, but that’s exactly what I was going to order.”

Rough laughter swelled to a full-throated, and familiar, guffaw at Riker’s immediate right. He turned, and found himself within a meter of another friendly face.

“Klag!” he said with a huge grin at the captain of the
I.K.S. Gorkon
.

“Betazoid wine, Riker?” The Klingon captain chortled. “I had thought you were made of sterner stuff.”

Smelling the
warnog
in the mug in front of his old friend, Riker laughed. “I’m pacing myself.”

The Klingon stared at Riker’s collar. “I see you have at last changed your views regarding your own vessel.”

Riker nodded. “You’re looking at the new captain of the
U.S.S. Titan
.”

Smiling, Klag said, “I
did
tell you that the glories of your own ship are far superior to the reflected glory of another’s.” Looking quickly at Picard, Klag added, “No offense, Captain Picard.”

“None taken, Captain Klag,” Picard said with a hoist of his own
dresci
. “I’d say we starship commanders are a fairly fortunate lot. At least those of us who have survived in the occupation for any substantial length of time. To our absent friends.”

Picard drank, and Klag followed suit with an agreeable grunt. “Hear, hear,” Riker said, then raised his own cup. The face of his own recently deceased father, as well as those of far too many dead comrades, flashed across his mind’s eye. Tasha Yar. Marla Aster. Susan Lomax. Matthew Barnes, Mwuate Wathiongo, Razka of Sauria, and so many others who died during the recent fighting on Tezwa.

And Data, who had been among the
Enterprise
’s most recent casualties.

So is
this
what I have to look forward to as
Titan
’s skipper?
he thought, suddenly feeling glum.
Decades of regrets, eulogies, solemn speeches—and drinking without my wife.

Riker set his tankard back on the bar, a bit harder than he’d intended. He came to a decision as he recalled a recent, very hard-learned life lesson. Mere days after receiving his latest promotion, he had learned that there was far more to a captain’s lot in life than grim sobriety.