A Time for War A Time for Peace Read online

  Chuckling, La Forge said, “Why do I get the feeling this meeting is over?”

  Picard stood up. “Dismissed.”

  Riker also rose, giving Crusher a pained look. For her part, the doctor ignored it and left the observation lounge, followed by Troi, who gave Riker an annoyed look of her own before dashing out to catch up with Crusher. Data and La Forge followed Picard toward the bridge, leaving Riker and Vale in the observation lounge.

  “Sir, can I ask a question?”

  Riker looked down at Vale. Though petite, she was by no means small, and he had learned in the four years she’d served on the ship that she was also not to be trifled with. More than anyone else on the Enterprise crew, she had shined during the year since Rashanar, from spearheading two separate rescue operations at the Dokaalan colony, to aiding the local peacekeeping forces in their desperate attempt to maintain order on the increasingly chaotic Delta Sigma IV, to her expert work in coordinating ground movements under the worst possible circumstances during the Tezwa mission. She was also due for a well-deserved promotion to lieutenant commander, and he had not told her this only by dint of wanting the official approval from Starfleet to come through. In times past, he wouldn’t have bothered to wait, as promotion recommendations from the Enterprise were generally rubber-stamped, but the cloud that Rashanar had cast on Jean-Luc Picard’s judgment meant Riker could take nothing for granted.

  Vale was staring at the floor, which surprised Riker, as she had always been the type to look one directly in the eyes.

  He prompted, “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  “I was wondering, sir, if—” She finally looked up. “If there was room for one more at the poker table tonight.”

  Riker blinked. “I didn’t know you played.”

  “Some, though it’s been a while. Me and a bunch of my classmates at the Academy had a weekly game during our fourth year, and we used to have Texas Hold’em tournaments on the O’Keefe.”

  “Well, you’re more than welcome to join us any time. I’m surprised you didn’t mention this sooner—especially since you were more than happy to take me up on that anbo-jytsu spar back at Delta Sigma.”

  At that, Vale smirked. “To be honest, sir, I didn’t feel entirely comfortable asking to be dealt in. I always thought it was something you D guys did.”

  “ ‘D guys’?” Riker repeated with a frown.

  “That’s what Daniels called you. I talked to him after I got transferred over here.”

  Riker nodded. Daniels had served as the Enterprise-E’s security chief from its maiden voyage until the end of the Dominion War, broken only by a six-month paternity leave, during which several other officers filled in. After the war, Daniels resigned his commission in order to be with his wife and raise their child on the Canopus Planet.

  Vale continued. “It’s nothing you do consciously, and only off duty, really, but you, the captain, Geordi, Deanna, Beverly, Data, Alyssa, Taurik—all of you who served on the EnterpriseD together—it’s like you have you own clique. It’s inevitable, from having served together for so long and doing all the things you did. Ambassador Worf’s part of it, too—I noticed it especially when he came on board during the gateways mess. You guys all have your own code, almost. Daniels warned me about it when I came on, and he was right.”

  “Lieutenant—” Riker started, but Vale held up her hand.

  “It’s all right, Commander, really. Honestly, it makes perfect sense, and you guys don’t do it consciously. It’s not something that affects the work, either, which is why it really isn’t that big a deal. Believe me, when I sound battle stations, I have never had the feeling that the captain would rather the ambassador was at tactical. But it’s also why I never felt comfortable asking in on the poker game. Like I said, that always seemed to me like something the D guys did.”

  Thinking back over the seven years since they took the new Sovereign-class Enterprise out of drydock—a time frame that was almost as long as the interval they served on its Galaxy-class predecessor—Riker realized that the crew who came over from the previous ship did tend to cluster together off-duty. There’s a lesson in that, Riker thought, filing it in his ever-growing mental folder of Things To Be Aware Of When I Have My Own Command.

  “Well, on behalf of the D guys, Lieutenant, I apologize, and offer as penance a seat at our poker table tonight.”

  Vale grinned. This took Riker aback. Over four years, he’d seen her smile plenty of times, though it was often a vicious one, indeed one that frightened a security staff that didn’t scare easily, not to mention whoever might be unfortunate enough to be on the other end of Vale’s phaser. However, this was the first time he saw her let loose with a friendly grin. I wonder if I’d have seen it more often if I ever opened up and let her in more.

  “I accept, sir,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” As Vale moved toward the door leading to the bridge, Riker asked, “Lieutenant?”

  She stopped and turned around. “Yes, sir?”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Sir?”

  “You said you weren’t comfortable asking before. What changed to make you comfortable?”

  Another grin. “Your promotion, sir. Once you’re off on the Titan, they probably won’t be having the weekly games on the Enterprise anymore, and I didn’t want to miss my chance to beat the pants off you.”

  With that, she left.

  This, Riker thought, is gonna be fun.

  “The game,” Data said, “is Murder. Seven-card stud, high hand splits with high spade in the hole, queen of spades up resets the game with a fresh ante, queen of spades in the hole is wild.”

  Riker tried to stifle a groan and failed. So did Troi and La Forge’s attempts to do so. Picard simply let out a long breath through his teeth.

  Vale, however, simply regarded the android—wearing his trademark green-tinted visor—with a penetrating stare. As usual for poker night, Riker kept the lights in the quarters he and Troi shared dimmed, aside from the big lamp hanging from the ceiling over the poker table. The directed light cast a shadow on Vale’s face that made her already menacing stare all the nastier, and just at the moment Riker was glad for Data’s sake that his emotion chip had been removed.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  The security chief had, in fact, said that practically every time Data dealt, as the second officer had been favoring complex variations that often involved wild cards. Riker allowed such things mainly because they helped vary the routine for their friendly game, but they were the sorts of things that would never be tolerated at serious professional tournaments.

  Vale was apparently a purist, and Riker wished even more fervently that she’d gotten into the game sooner.

  Data dealt the hand, and betting proceeded apace. Over the course of that and the next three betting rounds, no one got the queen of spades up, so the game was never reset. Riker was grateful, as whenever he had a good hand in this game, the queen almost invariably came up, and the redeal would provide him with a junk hand. This time, with one down card left to be dealt, he had a pair of tens showing, with the ten of spades in the hole. Three of a kind was a decent hand, and the ten of spades had a good chance of being the high spade in the hole as well, since the ace, king, and jack were showing in front of Picard, La Forge, and Troi, respectively. Data and Troi had both folded, and on this last bet, La Forge did likewise, leaving only Vale, Picard, and Riker.

  Riker studied the table. The four cards Picard had showing included nothing useful beyond that ace of spades. Riker himself had the ace of hearts, and Data’s now-folded hand had the ace of diamonds, so the best Picard could have was two aces—unless he had the queen of spades, a wild card, in the hole.

  About a year prior to the destruction of the EnterpriseD, Picard joined the poker game for the first time, saying that he should have done so years earlier. Within an hour of playing at the table with him that evening, Riker agreed wholeheartedly, for one simple reason. Picard might have been the finest captain in the fleet. He might have been able to recover from experiences as brutal as Borg assimilation and Cardassian torture. He might have been perfectly at home amid the landmines of Klingon politics or the labyrinths of some ancient ruins,

  But, his claims to have been “quite the card player” in his youth notwithstanding, Jean-Luc Picard was a very mediocre poker player.

  It wasn’t that he was particularly bad at it. He had a fine poker face—Riker found few “tells” in his facial expressions or gestures that he could use to his advantage—but he also wasn’t particularly good at betting properly or judging the cards on the table beyond his own hand. As a result, he regularly stayed in long past the point where he should fold, and was often the first to run out of chips, mostly as a result of staying in too long with weak hands. He was better at draw games—where there were no cards showing to the other players, and so one relied on the ability to read people, at which Picard excelled—than stud games.

  On this hand, Picard had been betting in his usual manner—not aggressively, but not passively, either. Unfortunately, that meant he either had the pair of aces, and he thought that was an improvement on Riker’s pair of tens and Vale’s pair of threes, or he had both the ace and the wild card in the hole, giving him three aces and a better hand than Riker’s.

  As for Vale, in addition to the pair of threes, she also had a six of hearts and a seven of clubs showing. It was possible she had a straight.

  Only one way to find out, Riker said after Data gave him an unnecessary reminder that the bet was his with the high hand showing.

  “Check,” Riker said. He wanted to see how Vale and Picard bet.

  Vale, however, was no fool. “Check,” she repeated.

  Picard, predictably, put in two gray chips. “I bet twenty.”

  Not high enough to scare anyone out. Riker put in four gray chips. “Your twenty and up twenty.”

  Vale, her expression unreadable, put in four gray chips. “Call.”

  Picard’s expression was just as unreadable as he did likewise.

  Data dealt the final card down. Years of long practice kept Riker from reacting in the least to the fact that he got the eight of diamonds, which gave him a full house of tens over eights. His chances of winning the hand had just improved drastically.

  He grabbed a white chip. “Fifty.”

  This time Picard raised an eyebrow, a mannerism he’d picked up after a particularly intense Vulcan mind-meld thirteen years earlier, and which was one of his few tells: it meant he wasn’t sure how to bet.

  Vale, however, didn’t hesitate. “Call,” she said, putting in a white chip of her own. This raised Riker’s confidence: she didn’t feel strong enough to raise, but felt that she could beat whatever he had alongside the tens.

  After several moments’ thought, Picard called as well.

  The only time Riker ever allowed his face to relax when he played poker was after the final bet. This time he grinned as he turned over his hole cards. “Boat.”

  “You know,” Troi said, “I still don’t understand why a full house is called a ‘boat.’ ”

  “The etymology of the term, Counselor—” Data started, looked around the table, saw the annoyed looks most everyone was giving him, including Troi, and then continued with only minimal hesitation: “—is something we can discuss at a later date.” Several people at the table chuckled, including Riker. “The commander has a full house, tens over eights, and also has the ten of spades.”

  Picard turned over his hole cards to reveal that he did have the other ace, as well as two kings, hearts and diamonds. Riker was not surprised, though he was disappointed that the captain was willing to part with his chips so easily. Riker would have beat the captain even if he still had three of a kind.

  “Two pair for the captain, no spades in the hole.” Data then looked at Vale. “Lieutenant?”

  First Vale turned over the queen of spades. If nothing else, that entitled her to half the pot, since it was the highest spade in the hole.

  Then she flipped over the four and five of hearts. Along with either of her threes, the six of hearts and the seven of clubs, it gave her a straight. Riker was now especially grateful for the eight he pulled on the last round, as the straight would have beaten his three tens.

  “Straight flush for the lieutenant,” Data said, and Riker’s jaw fell.

  What the hell?

  Then he saw it.

  Damn Data and his stupid variations anyhow. So focused was he on the queen of spades as the high spade that he momentarily forgot that it was also a wild card. Vale had the three through six of hearts, and could use the wild to substitute for the seven of that suit, thus giving her one of the best possible poker hands.

  “Well played,” Riker said glumly. “I’m surprised you didn’t raise me.”

  “Nah,” Vale said as she raked in her chips. “If I started going crazy with only a pair of threes showing, you would’ve known I had something good in the hole, which would’ve beat your three of a kind.”

  “I had a boat,” Riker pointed out.

  “You pulled that on the last card,” Vale said confidently.

  Frowning, and ignoring the giggles that were now emitting from the mouth of his fiancée, Riker asked, “How’d you know that?”

  “You checked on the second-to-the-last bet. You never check when you have a hand better than a straight.”

  “Yes, I do!” Even as Riker said the words, he frantically thought back to the night’s prior hands to see if that pattern had, indeed, emerged.

  “Maybe you do generally, but you haven’t tonight. You should be careful of that.”

  Again, Riker thought back over the night’s hands—then stopped. Dammit, she got me. She was trying to psych him out—an obvious trick that he never used to fall for. “I can see I’m getting complacent in my old age.”

  “Well, it happens to the best of us, sir—stands to reason, it’d happen to you, too.”

  Riker snorted. “Watch it, Lieutenant. I’m still first officer on this ship for a little while longer, and it’s very much within my power to have you keelhauling first thing in the morning.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, sir.” Vale spoke in a mock-grave tone.

  “See that you do,” Riker said, barely managing to keep a straight face. He turned to La Forge. “Your deal.”

  Looking dolefully at his small pile of chips, then at the much larger pile in front of Vale, La Forge grabbed the cards and started shuffling. “The game is La Forge Takes the Pot. All my cards are wild, and nobody else is allowed to get a face card or an ace.”

  “I haven’t played that one since the Academy,” Vale said without missing a beat. “My roommate called it all the time.”

  “Playing against you, I believe it.” La Forge shook his head.

  “I’m glad you’ve joined us, Christine,” Troi said. “It’s good to shake things up a little.”

  “Agreed,” Picard said.

  “I was kinda hoping for a shakeup that would tilt some chips my way,” La Forge said as he gave the cards a final shuffle, “but like the captain said before, it’s an imperfect world.” He placed the deck in front of Data, who cut it in half. Riker suspected that Data cut the deck right at twenty-six cards. “The game,” La Forge said as he picked up the cut deck, “is five-card draw, jacks or better to open, trips or better to win.”

  Even as he dealt, the intercom beeped. “Bridge to Commander Riker.”

  It was the soft voice of Lieutenant Wriede, the gamma-shift tactical officer. “Go ahead.”

  “Sir, I have a message from Betazed for you and Counselor Troi. It’s on a diplomatic channel, but it’s marked personal.”

  Troi rolled her eyes. “I wonder who that could be.”

  “Stand by, Lieutenant,” Riker said.

  Picard stood up. “I believe that is our cue to leave.”

  “Damn,” Vale said, also standing, “I was just getting warmed up.”

  “That’s what we’re afraid of,” La Forge muttered.

  Riker looked around in mild irritation. “You don’t all have to go. This’ll only take a minute. We’ll sit out Geordi’s hand and take it in the next room.”

  Picard turned to his second officer. “Data, in the fifteen years and however many months and days since we first met Lwaxana, what is the average duration of personal communications from her to this ship?”

  Data opened his mouth to answer, but Troi interrupted. “Point taken, Captain. Come on, Will, let’s get this over with.”

  Riker sighed as the four officers left the cabin. “Computer, full lights.” As the room brightened, he said to Troi, “I don’t see why this has to kill the game.”

  “Because the captain’s right. No matter what she has to say, Mother will take three times as long as is necessary to say it. And if she finds out we’re trying to cut her short just to get back to a poker game, she’ll take even longer and we’ll never hear the end of it.” She smiled. “Besides, better we stop the game now before Christine completely humiliates you.”

  Drawing himself up, Riker said, “I was lulling her into a false sense of security.”

  “She didn’t look very lulled to me.”

  “It was all part of my cunning plan. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

  She patted him on the shoulder. “The important thing is, you believe that.”

  “Damn right.” He tapped his combadge as they both sat at the desk on the other side of the cabin’s common room. “Patch it through, Mr. Wriede.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The screen on the workstation in front of them lit up with the Starfleet logo, which then faded and was replaced by the smiling visage of Troi’s mother. Lwaxana’s face had considerably more lines than the last time Riker saw her, but her obsidian eyes looked more lively.

  Another memory, now, this one of Lwaxana on Betazed when the Enterprise helped liberate the world. She was dressed in a battered, filthy one-piece outfit, her hair was unkempt and thinning, and her black eyes were rimmed with red. In many ways, Lwaxana’s bedraggled state was the perfect metaphor for the devastation that the Dominion War wreaked on the Federation. In all the years Riker had known Lwaxana, she had never been disheveled, unkempt, or even rumpled.