Tales from the Captain’s Table (8 page)

“That was some superbly unorthodox tactical thinking, Commander,” I said to Keru, thinking he might make a worthy addition to
Titan
’s bridge crew…

“And that’s the way it happened,” Riker said, pushing his tankard toward Cap. The uttaberry wine had built up a fine buzz, and he decided that discretion was the better part of valor now that his tale was told. He stood and straightened his uniform tunic—a habit he’d acquired from Captain Picard long ago.

“So that little adventure accounted for five days,” the Rigelian said
.
“You haven’t yet told us how you spent your remaining two weeks on the Opal Sea.”

Riker grinned. “And I’m not going to. I’ve told my story.”

“But not the whole story.” The Rigelian sounded angry.

Before Riker could say anything, Klag said, “One never hears the
entire
story, does one?”

“To quote an old Ferengi saying, ‘Always leave the customer wanting more.’ ”

Cap offered to top off Riker’s tankard again, but stopped when the new captain politely declined. Setting the violet bottle down, the barkeep said, “So assuming everything you’ve told us is true—and even if it isn’t—what’s it all mean?”

“Excuse me?” Riker wasn’t sure he understood the question.

“I mean, what did you learn from the experience?”

Recovering his tankard, Riker took another swallow of what remained of his drink, then offered Cap a wry smile. “Since I strongly suspect that you believe only about half of it, I’m going to turn the tables on you. What do
you
think I got out of it?”

“Seems to me you may have learned a little bit about staying cool during a tense situation,” Cap said. “And about thinking on your feet.”

Klag grunted. “I would say you learned to hone your improvisational skills. Tactically, if not musically.”

Riker shrugged.

“I think you already knew more than a little about improvising, Captain Riker,” Cap said. Riker was beginning to suspect that the burly bartender was fairly well acquainted with that subject as well.

Rising from his barstool, Picard faced Riker and said, “I think this whole harrowing episode may also have taught you something about how to deal with that fourth pip Starfleet just pinned to your collar.”

“It also should have taught you to be more careful the next time you pick a honeymoon destination,” said Klag with a chuckle.

Riker thought carefully about everything that had been said these past few moments and gathered his thoughts. “I suppose my story was about all of that,” he said finally. “But the main thing being shanghaied on the Opal Sea taught me was something else entirely. It’s something no one has mentioned yet—and I had no idea it would turn out to be so important for a newly minted starship captain to learn. But I’m glad I learned it sooner rather than later.”

“And what’s that?” Picard asked.

“Mainly this: Maintaining captain-like deportment is important, maybe even critically important. But knowing when to toss all that aside can be even
more
important. When, for instance, pirates force you to impersonate a bizarrely dressed alien music star, it’s a good time to set decorum aside and just play your heart out. And find the notes as you go along.”

“I don’t believe any of it,” the Rigelian said. He stood up, baring his fangs. “I demand proof that what you just told us is true.”

All other conversation in the bar came to an abrupt stop. Riker saw that every eye in the place was on him and the Rigelian. He knew that there was only one thing he could do.

Draining the dregs of his uttaberry wine, Riker set his empty tankard down on the bar. He walked purposefully toward the other captain—

—and then continued directly past him. Reaching up on the wall beyond him, Riker grasped one of the musical instruments that was displayed there.

He turned and faced the Rigelian captain, brandishing a reassuringly familiar trombone as though it were a phaser rifle.

“Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf calls this tune ‘Six Moons over Terriveyt Island.’ ”

Then he raised the instrument to his lips, played his heart out, and found the notes as he went along.

Cap leaned against the back wall of the bar and enjoyed Riker’s impromptu concert, remembering an old human saying about music having charms to soothe the savage breast—though few truly found Pelagian music all that soothing.

When the captain of the
Titan
finished his concert, there was copious applause and cheering from some of the patrons, including Klag. The presence of Riker and Picard had cheered the Klingon for a time—though partway through Riker’s concert, another Klingon entered and took up a position at the far end of the bar from Klag’s seat, and that had a deleterious effect on the
Gorkon
shipmaster’s attitude.

After Riker returned to the bar, Cap felt obligated to remind the man who’d brought him that he hadn’t actually paid his tab yet. Picard thought a moment, and apparently decided that, since Riker was at the start of his first command, it was only appropriate that Picard tell the story of what happened after the end of his….

W
ith all the years he had spent in the vast, lonely reaches of space, Jean-Luc Picard couldn’t remember ever having experienced a complete and utter lack of light.

Even during his ship’s power failures, there had always been the rays of distant stars to provide some bit of illumination. But at that moment, with the door to the rehab bay closed behind him, Picard was in as perfect a blackness as he had ever known.

Then the overhead lighting strips went on, revealing a snub-nosed, ten-meter-long, type-9 cargo shuttle capable of transporting a crew of two, a cargo specialist, and a payload of several metric tons with the help of a twin-engine warp drive, a separate impulse drive, twelve directional thrusters, and an only slightly outdated deflector grid.

Her name, represented in neat letters on her hull, was the
Nadir
—after the Rigelian diplomat who brought the Dedderac into the Federation.
How appropriate
, Picard thought.

The doors slid open again and Erik Van Dusen, head of Starfleet’s new shuttle rehab facility, walked into the bay. “Sorry,” said Van Dusen, a gray-haired walrus of a man. “We still haven’t got all the lights hooked up in this section.”

“That’s quite all right,” said Picard, taking in the sight of the
Nadir
. “She was worth waiting for.”

But his voice lacked the enthusiasm he intended. It was a problem for him these days, working up enthusiasm—and not just when it came to shuttlecraft.

“She’s all ready for you,” Van Dusen informed him. “I checked her out myself.”

Picard turned to him. “You know, if I had been forced to go through the proper channels—”

“It would have been weeks before they assigned you a shuttle. And maybe longer, considering the possibility that this would have been seen as personal business.”

“I’m grateful,” said Picard.

“No need to be,” said Van Dusen. “It’s the least I can do for my sister’s old classmate.” His eyes twinkled mischievously. “Of course, back at the Academy you had a bit more hair….”

Picard managed a semblance of a smile. He had taken his share of ribbing about his energetically receding hairline. But then, he was pushing fifty years of age. A man was
supposed
to have something to show for all the time he had put in.

At least, that was what he had always believed. As it turned out, it was not always that way.

“So,” said Van Dusen, “are you ready?”

“I am,” said Picard.

Van Dusen tossed him a slim, silver remote-control device. Then he crossed the deck to its only distinguishing feature—a simple, unassuming console.

Using the remote control, Picard opened the shuttle hatch and slipped through it. Then he established a communications link with Van Dusen’s combadge.

“Do you remember how to pilot one of these things?”
Van Dusen gibed.

Picard had spent his share of time at the helm of a shuttle recently—something the other man might have forgotten. Still, all he said was “I do.”

“Glad to hear it. Just bring her back in one—”
Van Dusen stopped, looking appalled at himself.
“—or, um, two months, whenever you’re done on Hydra IV.”

It was difficult for Picard to make out Van Dusen’s complexion from where he sat, but he was certain the fellow had turned a deep shade of red.

“Thanks again,” said Picard.

Activating the thrusters, he brought the shuttle about until it was pointed at the bay doors. When they parted for him, revealing a slice of starry space, he nudged the craft forward.

Thanks to the transparent, semipermeable barrier stretched across the aperture, Van Dusen didn’t have to worry about the facility losing air. All he had to do was let Picard know when the doors had finished opening.

“All clear,”
he said.

Applying a little more thrust, Picard sailed into the embrace of the vacuum, allowing the doors to slide closed behind him. As soon as he was clear of the rehab facility, he laid in a course. Then he engaged the
Nadir
’s refurbished impulse drive and took her to one-quarter light speed.

The Hydra system wasn’t that far away. At warp two point two, a speed the shuttle could sustain for an extended period, the journey wouldn’t take more than a month.

It sounded like a long time. But then, it would have taken just as long to wait for a supply ship bound for Hydra. And then he would have had to interact with her captain—a situation he might have enjoyed at a different stage of his life, but didn’t think he would enjoy now.

After all, captains liked to talk about their ships. And of all subjects in the universe, that was the one Picard was most determined to avoid.

Seven days out from Van Dusen’s rehab facility, Picard transmitted a subspace message to Elizabeth Wu, letting her know that he was on his way.

Wu had served as his second officer years earlier, distinguishing herself time and again as perhaps the most dependable member of his command staff. When he first met her, her literal interpretation of Starfleet regs drove his other officers crazy. But in time she learned to ease up in that regard, and she became one of the more popular figures on the ship.

Picard was surprised when she told him she was thinking about joining her sister Victoria as a researcher at the Federation’s Hydra IV colony. But then, scientific inquiry had been Wu’s first love, and it had loomed larger in her thoughts with each breakthrough reported by her sister.

The captain too had possessed a passion for science once. In fact, it had nearly derailed his career in Starfleet. However, in his case, it was a love of archaeology rather than arboreal genetics, and it had eventually lost out to his yearning for the stars.

Finally, Wu had given in to her attraction and asked for a leave of absence. And Picard had granted it. But he had also left the door open for her in case she wished to return. If the life of a research scientist turned out not to be all she imagined, she could always go back to work for him.

That was nearly nineteen years ago. To his knowledge, Wu had never looked back.

But Picard had made a point of keeping in touch with her, and she had done the same with him. He served as her conduit for news about her favorite crewmates and she kept him posted on the latest developments in her field, and over time they became even better friends than when they were working side by side.

Then again, he was no longer compelled to see Wu as a subordinate. She was simply someone for whom he harbored a good deal of affection and respect.

Which was why Picard was on his way to Hydra IV. Over the years, Wu had become his sounding board, an objective source of wisdom who knew intimately the workings of a starship but no longer had a stake in what went on there.

He needed that source of wisdom now. He needed it more than he had needed anything in his entire life.

Noting an unusual blip on one of his monitors, Picard put aside his thoughts and leaned forward to take a closer look. But it was nothing to worry about. Just an ion squall, too small to justify a course change.

A good thing
, he mused. The sooner he reached Hydra IV and Wu, the better.

It wasn’t until near the end of Picard’s second week on the
Nadir
that he found himself sitting upright in bed, his breath coming hard, his sheets twisted and dank with perspiration.

It had happened several times before over the last couple of months. And like those other times, there was an image emblazoned on his mind’s eye.

An image of a ship.

She was rust-colored, her long, intrusive bow protruding from what looked like the back of a centrally ridged turtle shell. But it wasn’t only in his dreams that Picard had seen her. He had done so in reality as well.

Her captain never identified himself, never gave even a hint as to his motive. And no one on the
Stargazer
could identify his ship, never having seen her like before.

But she had plenty of firepower. Her first volley tore up the
Stargazer
’s shields. Her second, which came immediately on the heels of the first, sent the Federation ship lurching sideways and gouged her hull.

Suddenly, Picard found himself in fiery, smoking chaos. Away from the bridge, it was even worse. A half-dozen decks were hemorrhaging atmosphere into the vacuum.

And not
just
atmosphere. On Picard’s viewscreen, there were bodies pinwheeling through space, some of them dead but others still horribly alive.

His eyes burning with carbon fumes and escaped coolant, Picard had risen from his seat to get a look at his colleagues. But as he did, his foot struck something.

Looking down, he saw that it was Vigo, his weapons officer. As big as the fellow was, it couldn’t have been anyone else. And there was blood oozing from a blackened gash in his temple.

Kneeling, Picard had felt Vigo’s thick blue neck for a pulse. There wasn’t any. The weapons officer was lifeless, inert.

“Picard to sickbay!” he had cried out. “I need a team here on the double!”

He had received an answer from his chief medical officer, but it was too garbled to make out. Apparently, the attack had damaged the intercom system as well.

And the enemy was coming about in a leisurely loop, preparing for a third and doubtless final strike.

Picard was compelled to improvise, and quickly. He had learned in his Academy days that an adversary was least prepared for a taste of his own tactics. The enemy had successfully relied on the element of surprise; Picard would do the same.

Instead of trying to expand the distance between the ships, he had his conn officer wheel and go to warp—but just for the merest fraction of a second. It brought them nose-to-nose with their unsuspecting assailant, closer even than they had been before. Then the
Stargazer
fired everything she had left in her batteries.

The enemy’s core must have been compromised, because she went up in a spasm of matter-antimatter fury. The battle, strangely, was over. However, the
Stargazer
could hardly be declared the winner.

Her systems were failing one by one, most every deck a sparking, flaming death trap. The death toll was at least twenty. And it was only a matter of time before their warp core breached and they shared the fate of their mysterious attacker.

So Picard ordered everyone who was still alive to abandon ship. The survivors piled into escape craft with whatever bodies they could find and sliced into the void. Then they watched the
Stargazer
diminish with distance, her once-proud lines skewed at a sad and lonely angle.

It took weeks for a rescue vessel to pick them up. By then, the survivors in Picard’s shuttle looked half-dead themselves, all of them having lost friends and comrades.

But Picard had it worse than any of them. He had to live with the knowledge that those comrades had perished on his watch.

Earlier in his career, there were those who had questioned his ability to command. At the time, he had believed them misguided. Now he wondered if they hadn’t been possessed of more insight than he had given them credit for.