Tales from the Captain’s Table (35 page)

I looked back over at Hana. I’d known her even less than I thought I had, but saw that would not continue to be the case. Unaccountably, she had left me the story of her life.

I peered down at the book again, and reread the words there:
I was born in 2200 on Earth
…

Below them, the first of my tears fell onto the page.

Sulu finished her tale. Around her, the tavern’s patrons regarded her in silence. She couldn’t tell whether she had impressed everybody—or
any
body—with her story, but she was interested in its impact on only one person: Strolt. She looked over at him, and for the first time since he’d stopped to listen to her tale, she met his gaze with her own. For a long moment, the tableau remained frozen in place.

And then the bartender said quietly, “Well done.”

Unsure what Strolt was thinking, and not wanting to risk antagonizing him, Sulu broke their eye contact. “Thank you,” she said, turning in her seat toward the bar.

“Another for you, Captain Sulu?” the bartender asked, holding up an empty wineglass. “You’ve earned it.”

Sulu looked down at her own glass, which she’d emptied during the course of her story. “No, thank you,” she said.

Around Sulu, the tavern seemed to come slowly back to life. People shifted in their chairs, stood up, moved about. Voices rose in conversation, softly at first, and then to more normal levels. Sulu glanced over again at Strolt.

He was on the move, she saw, walking rapidly toward the front door. As he entered the vestibule, Sulu quickly pushed back from the table and stood up. Behind the bar, her stout host asked if she was leaving, and she told him that she was.

“I hope you’ll come back and regale us again,” he told her.

“Maybe,” Sulu answered without conviction, watching as Strolt passed out of her sight. She heard the creak of one of the hinges on the front door. Fighting the urge to give chase immediately, Sulu waited, wanting to give Strolt enough time to put some distance between himself and the tavern. When she caught up to him, she did not want to be in a position again where he could put innocent lives at risk.

“Well, Captain Sulu,” the bartender said, “I owe you a drink. You really told
two
stories, not just one.”

“Fine,” Sulu said as she measured the time until she thought she could safely pursue Strolt. “I’ll look for you next time I’m on Temecklia.”

“My name’s Cap,” the bartender said. “But you won’t have to look for me; I’m always here.”

“Okay,” Sulu said, and she offered him an inattentive smile. “I’ve got to go now though.”

“Safe travels,” Cap said.

Sulu nodded, then headed across the room. She moved quickly through the vestibule, then pushed open the creaky front door. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she started to run, but then stopped almost at once.

The sky had begun to lighten in the early morning hours. Up ahead, at the agora end of the alley, Strolt leaned tiredly against a wall—far enough away from the tavern for its patrons to be safe, close enough for Sulu to resume her pursuit. But she discovered that she wouldn’t have to chase him. He waited for her at the end of the alley as she walked its length. As she neared him, it relieved her to see both of his hands visible, neither of them reaching into his coat, ready to trigger the explosives.

“You’re right,” he said when she had closed to within three meters of him.

Sulu stopped. “About Hana?” she asked him. “About Mike?” She wanted to ask about Zeeren, his Tzenkethi mate, but didn’t.

“About everything,” Strolt said, and Sulu thought she heard a note of resignation in his deep voice. “Sometimes it’s necessary to act for the greater good,” he went on. “Even if it’s at the expense of what you most want.”

“I know,” Sulu said gently. “Believe me, I know.”

Strolt nodded. “When I first stopped to listen to your story,” he said, “I thought you were going to make my argument for me. Because you were all that your grandmother had, and because I’m all that Zeeren has. You did what you had to do, and I thought that demonstrated that I should do what I had to.” He paused, then added, “But there was more to your story.”

“Yes,” Sulu agreed.

“I really am all that Zeeren has,” he said. “We love each other, and all we want is to be together. But I’m not a Tzenkethi, and her family…” His words trailed away.

Sulu nodded, but said nothing. In truth, her heart went out to Strolt and his mate. For people to reject somebody because they’d fallen in love with an individual of another species…the very notion of the prejudice disgusted her.

Strolt shrugged. “They gave her a chance to return. If she could acquire certain Starfleet data…” Again, his voice drifted down into silence.

“Your record as a freighter captain is spotless,” Sulu said. “If you take me to Zeeren now, if we can recover the data you stole before she makes it back to Tzenkethi territory, I’m sure you can be together again soon.”

“But she’ll still be cut off from her people,” Strolt said sadly. “From her own family.”

“The greater good,” Sulu said sympathetically. “And frankly, with such attitudes, they don’t deserve Zeeren’s presence in their lives. Or yours.”

Strolt pushed away from the wall and faced Sulu, then quickly reached into his coat. For an instant, she braced herself, preparing for the blast that would tear through Strolt’s body and then her own. But that didn’t happen. Rather, Strolt pulled out a train of four thin bundles, silver on one side, green on the other, with two small touchpads and a status indicator at one end. Sulu recognized the common packaging of the infernite-cabrodine chemical bombs. Had he detonated all four earlier, the explosion would have flattened the tavern and killed everyone inside.

Strolt tapped a sequence on the pads, then handed it over to Sulu. “It’s disarmed now,” he said.

Sulu took the explosives and checked the status indicator, confirming what Strolt had just told her.

“Zeeren’s in the Entelior system,” he said. Sulu had visited the system before, and knew that it hung in space not far from Temecklia. “She’s on the fourth planet, waiting for my signal to move. I’ll take you there.”

It was over, Sulu knew.

“My shuttle’s at the northeastern landing facility,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Strolt exited the alley ahead of her, and then fell in beside her as they headed for the port. They walked quietly for the thirty minutes it took them to reach the landing facility. As they neared the shuttle, though, Strolt stopped and gave her a questioning look. “
Enterprise
?” he asked.

Sulu stopped beside him and glanced over at the shuttle
Mitrios
, the hull of which was adorned with the registry identification NCC-1701-B/5, and the name of the vessel to which it was assigned:
Enterprise
. “After I dealt with the aftermath of Hana’s death,” Sulu said, “I went to Earth, to Starfleet Headquarters. I flew a desk there for three months, and then my ship came back from its mission.”

“
Your
ship?” Strolt said, and for the first time since she’d begun pursuing him, Sulu saw him smile.

“
My
ship,” she said. “The crew’s exploratory mission was wildly successful, and its new captain offered an admiralty as a consequence. When he accepted the position, Command proposed that I return to the
Enterprise
.”

“And you couldn’t refuse?” Strolt asked. Sulu shrugged, smiling now herself. She took a step toward the shuttle, but Strolt stopped her again. “And what about the book?” he asked. “What did Hana tell you?”

Sulu felt the smile melt from her face, not because what Hana had written to her hadn’t been important to her, but because important as it had been, it had still been a difficult tale to take. “She told me everything,” Sulu said seriously. “The story of her life: her terrible childhood, the mistake she made that resulted in her estrangement from her son, the deaths of so many people in her life, including her husband and sister—she told me all of it. It helped explain who she was, why she’d treated me the way she had, and that…” This time it was Sulu who let her words taper off.

“And that what?” Strolt wanted to know.

Sulu looked him in the eyes. “And that she loved me.”

Strolt didn’t smile again, but Sulu nevertheless interpreted the expression on his face as one of joy. “I’m happy for you,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, and to pull herself from the myriad thoughts and remembrances now churning through her mind, she headed again for the shuttle. She keyed in her access code, and when the hatch opened, she and Strolt climbed aboard. Sulu immediately placed the explosives in a stasis field, then computed a liftoff trajectory and a course to the Entelior system. Once she’d contacted the port’s control tower and received clearance, she took
Mitrios
into orbit. As she worked the helm, she felt the weight of Strolt’s attention, and so it didn’t surprise her when he asked her another question.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Sulu replied automatically, then thought better of her response. With her hands still moving across the helm panel, setting the shuttle on its course to locate Zeeren, she said, “I’m all right. It’s just that…” She successfully choked back the emotions threatening to overwhelm her, then peered forward, out at the stars. “It’s just that I miss my grandmother,” she said.

The look on Chakotay’s face when Demora Sulu entered the bar was telling. As Cap suspected, there was a story coming from the former Maquis, but it wasn’t going to be about his days as a terrorist or how he came to return to Starfleet. The link between Sulu and Chakotay was obvious from the moment he noticed her entrance, though she herself did not recognize him, as they wouldn’t meet outside the bar for some time yet.

Handing Chakotay a fresh drink, Cap asked if he wanted to go next, and Chakotay allowed as how he would….

“T
hey’re coming today.”

Blue Water Boy, an Oglala Sioux my own age, tossed this tantalizing tidbit out with as much nonchalance as he displayed when feeding the fish. Which he was also doing at the moment.

“Who?” I asked, thinking I knew and hoping desperately I was right. Sekaya, my little sister, looked up from where she lay sunning on a flat rock and glared at me.

“The Starfleet people,” Blue Water Boy said. There was a slight splash as one of the red and purple fish took the piece of bread he tossed on the water.

“Who says?” Sekaya sat up and then abruptly tugged on her swimming sarong, looking embarrassed. Both Blue Water Boy and I averted our eyes. Over the last year, Sekaya’s tree-trunk-straight figure had developed curves, and she wasn’t used to dealing with them yet. Neither were we.

“No one,” Blue Water Boy said mildly. Another bit of bread on the water; another red and purple fish gulping it down. He shrugged his shoulders. “I just know.”

Such a statement was as good as any hard, cold fact as far as I was concerned. Somehow Blue Water Boy did “just know” things. And I couldn’t remember any time when he’d been wrong.

Sekky and I had known the “weird kid” since infancy. We’d never had any friendships among the children of our own tribe that were as close. For one reason or another, we three were the odd ones out. Blue Water Boy was ethereal, almost mystical, and he had that strange sixth sense that often unnerved adults, who were much more inclined to challenge such things rather than just shrug and accept them. Sekaya was too headstrong and outspoken for a female in our tribe, and I…

Well, I was the “contrary.” I came into the world backward, a breech birth that, I learned, had almost killed my mother. My father took this position to be a sign that I was destined to always challenge, always question. And he was right—I did. I asked about the other tribes. I asked about aliens. I asked about their histories, their technology—sweet fruit to a child raised by a tribe that seemed to dwell more in the past than in the present. It seemed the only thing I never questioned was Blue Water Boy’s prescience. Which was, in itself, a contrary thing to do. So we three had found each other, and we didn’t seem to need much else in the way of company.

“When?” I asked. I didn’t want to miss them. They came far too infrequently for that.

“Chakotay, you better not,” Sekaya said, her voice a warning. “Father was not happy at all to learn that you were hanging around the Starfleet people. You remember how he acted.”

“Well,” I said, “he won’t get angry if he doesn’t know about it, will he? And who’s going to tell him?”

I was bigger than either of them and had become the de facto leader of the group. I liked to think it was my commanding presence, but it was probably only because Sekaya was a girl and Blue Water Boy found anything in the world more interesting than being a leader.

“I won’t volunteer that you’re seeing them,” Blue Water Boy said. “But I won’t lie for you, Chakotay.”

“Me neither.” Sekaya stuck her chin out defiantly. It was meant to be a “take me seriously” gesture, but she looked too cute for it to work the way she wanted.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s go. I don’t want to miss them.”

We were an hour early, but Blue Water Boy had of course been right. And when they beamed down to the official transport site, we were there to greet them.

My eyes widened. “They’re all women,” I hissed to my friends.

Sekaya smirked. “How very interesting. You know, Chakotay, somehow I think I could learn to like Starfleet too.”

Blue Water Boy cleared his throat and the three women smiled at him. One was an elderly Asian woman. Her long hair was almost completely white and tied in up a bun, but her eyes were bright and alert. Another was a Vulcan, slender and cool. The third was a stocky Anglo woman with red hair and lots of freckles.

“Well, hello,” said the Asian woman. “Are you the welcoming committee?”

“Not really,” I had to confess. “Not officially, at any rate.” Inwardly, I cringed. So much for a good first impression. I straightened and said, “But nonetheless, it’s my pleasure to meet you. My name is Chakotay. This is Blue Water Boy and my sister, Sekaya.”

“Hi.” Blue Water Boy smiled sweetly. Sekaya looked like she wanted to burst, but per tribal custom, she could not speak until spoken to.

The Asian woman looked at her critically. “Don’t young woman say hello on this planet?”

“We do when we’re said hello to first,” Sekaya blurted.

The Vulcan woman and the Asian exchanged glances. In what I was later to learn was an almost genetically inherited gesture among Vulcans, the pointed-eared woman lifted her slanted eyebrow.

“Indeed,” she said.

“Well, Sekaya,” the Asian woman said, choosing, I thought, to deliberately address my sister rather than me or Blue Water Boy, “My name is Captain Demora Sulu. This is my first officer, Commander T’Piran, and my chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Anne O’Hara. We’re supposed to be addressing your council shortly. Can you take us to them?”

The Vulcan, Commander T’Piran, shot me a glance under slightly lowered lids. I’m sure I gaped like an idiot, but I had never been more shocked in my life.

It was only the third or fourth time I’d ever talked to anyone from Starfleet, and in all that time, I’d never even heard of a female captain. How did she keep order? And a female first officer and engineer?

“Is your ship entirely female?” I wanted to clap my hand over my mouth and wish the words back. Blue Water Boy made a strangled sound; I think he was trying not to laugh.

“Is your tribe entirely ignorant?” shot back O’Hara, but she, too, was trying not to laugh.

I gave it up. I had blown any opportunity to get in well with this crew, learn about their technology, maybe even get a tour of their ship. Slumping a little in defeat, I said honestly, “Yes. Sometimes I think we
are
entirely ignorant.”

Captain Sulu took pity on me. “The
Mandela
is not composed entirely of women, no. Would it bother you if it were?”

“No,” I said. “I think it would be wonderful.”

O’Hara snorted. “Spoken like a true adolescent male.”

T’Piran continued to regard me, her brown eyes like deep pools. “I do not think that was what he meant,” she said.

“While I’d love to host a roundtable about gender equality,” said Captain Sulu, “we do have a schedule to keep. Perhaps the three of you could be our escorts.”

We looked at each other. Blue Water Boy shrugged. Sekaya’s eyes gleamed. I wished she hadn’t come today; she would be insufferable after this exchange.

“Sure,” I said. “Follow me.”

Sekaya chattered like a bird the entire way home. She could not stop talking about the female captain. Blue Water Boy seemed troubled, but there was no way he could get a word in edgewise. Finally, exasperated, I snapped, “Sekky, shut
up
for a minute, okay? Blue Water Boy, what’s wrong?”

He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Nothing. I just…I feel a change coming. That’s all.”

“Because of what?” Sekaya was instantly alert. She, too, trusted Blue Water Boy’s hunches and feelings.

“Captain Sulu and her crew.”

“Why?” I wanted to know. “We’ve talked to Starfleet people before.”

“I know. But this time is different.”

I felt a shiver run down my spine. “Good or bad different?”

“Both. Like everything.” He gave me a shy grin.

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” Sekaya said, striding forward determinedly. “If Starfleet can have women captains, then our tribe can have women council members and women shamans. I’m so tired of—”

“Don’t,” I said sharply.

“Don’t what? Don’t ‘don’t’ me, big brother.”

“Don’t tell Father. Please.”

She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at me. “You’re going as crazy as Blue Water Boy,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I tell Father?”

“Because he won’t let us see them anymore,” I replied. “You know that. He thinks they’re bad enough already. If he learns that they promote women to captains, he’ll—”

“There are female admirals, too,” put in Blue Water Boy. “I heard them talking about it.”

“Captains and admirals,” I continued. “We’ll be forbidden to see them.”

“I won’t be,” Blue Water Boy said reasonably. “I’m Lakota. We get along fine with Starfleet and women captains.”

I rounded on him almost angrily. My heart was racing, my palms were wet, and I didn’t know why. “Your tribe isn’t living a life that should have evolved,” I said, almost shouting. Blue Water Boy blinked, startled. “You aren’t forbidden technology, and padds, and games, and—and—and all that stuff. You don’t have to sit and listen to boring old legends about the stars and—”

“I like listening to legends,” he replied, maddeningly calm. “And looking at the stars.”

I threw up my hands. “Fine. Go ahead. Ruin any chance for Sekaya and me to talk to them.”

“I won’t say anything,” Blue Water Boy said, but he looked very sad all of a sudden.

Sekaya sighed loudly. “Neither will I. But you owe me one, big brother. No, wait, you owe me three.”

She strode forward with renewed energy. Blue Water Boy and I hurried after her. “Three? How do you get three?”

She turned over her shoulder, and in her still-girlish face I saw the hint of the strong-willed woman she would become. Then she grinned.

“Three.” She held up a slender-fingered hand and counted them off. “Captain Sulu, Commander T’Piran, and Lieutenant O’Hara.”

News travels fast in a little colony, and over dinner that night—a vegetable stew of squash, beans and corn—my father, Kolopak, brought the subject up.

“The Starfleet people have come back,” he said.

I studiously buttered my bread and took a big bite. If I had to chew and swallow, maybe I could think of something to say. I nodded, looking at Sekaya out of the corner of my eye.

“I know you like to see them, Chakotay. Did you?”

I hated lying to my father, but sometimes…But people had seen us. So, I swallowed, took a sip of water and answered with a hundred percent truthfulness, “Yes, I did.”

“Hmph.” Father ate another spoonful of stew. I had hoped this would be it, but he was apparently not satisfied.

“Did you talk to them?”

“Yes.”
Please shut up, Father,
I begged silently.

“What did you think of them?”

What answer did he want to hear from me? “They are the same as others who have come before.”

“Did you meet their captain?”

Sekaya’s eyes were as wide as the bowl in front of her, but she said nothing. Only I knew how hard it was for her to stay quiet. “Um, yeah, I did.”
Here it comes. The lecture on female captains. How women were special and to be cherished, and had many good and wonderful talents, but how the Creator had made them to serve their men and not to take leadership roles and—

“What did you think of him?”

I choked on the stew. “Wh-What?”

“Their captain. What did you think of him?”

This was a gift from the Sky Spirits! Not that I entirely believed in them, but this was surely a gift. Somehow, word had not gotten out to my father that Captain Sulu was a woman. My spirits lifted and I felt suddenly giddy.

“He seems…like a decent man,” I said.

Sekaya snorted. Stew went all over the table. “Sekaya!” snapped my mother. “Manners, child, manners! What in the world is so funny?”

I would kill her. I would just have to—

“A bug crawled up my leg and it tickled,” Sekaya said smoothly. I stared at her with renewed admiration. I had no idea she was such an accomplished liar. “I’m sorry.” She wiped up the stew and looked contrite. From where I was sitting, I could see one of her hands under the table. She folded up her thumb and splayed the other fingers:

Four.

The Starfleet people couldn’t have timed their arrival better as far as I was concerned. Seven young men of our tribe, including myself, had come of age this year, and Father and the others were busy planning some sort of initiation ritual. I was supposed to be preparing for it myself, of course, but there was no way I was going to be holed up somewhere meditating on stones or something when I could be around Starfleet people. I was grateful that my father was occupied and that was the extent of my interest in the rite.

In previous years, the Starfleet people came solely to gather samples from our planet and run a variety of tests to ensure that the world continued to be healthy for people who were technically Federation colonists. It was routine and apparently not a very interesting thing to do; I at least couldn’t imagine that it was interesting. Now, while they still fulfilled that original function, they also had begun patrolling the Cardassian border. We began to see them more frequently, which suited me perfectly. Despite the now more military reason for visiting our world, there apparently were still opportunities for “R&R” planetside. My homeworld was a great deal like Earth centuries ago—wide-open spaces, beautiful mountains and deserts and rain forests and tundra and so on. I took the world for granted, and often thought I would trade all the so-called natural wonders for a tricorder and a phaser I could call my own.