Tales from the Captain's Table Page 5

  I was glad her sense of humor hadn’t suffered.

  We were separated a few minutes later, as we reached a large amphitheater that had been built right alongside the docks. I presumed that Deanna had been taken to some sort of green room, to await the start of the concert.

  Hordes of Pelagians—all of them outlaws and pirates, judging from their mode of dress—were already lining up and entering the bowl-shaped, open-air concert hall, and I could hear the voices of what sounded like thousands more already inside. Had our captors somehow used their tympanic squids to get advance word of this concert to the island? Regardless, Torr’ghaff obviously stood to make a fortune, assuming my performance was well received. I didn’t want to think about what might happen if it wasn’t.

  I was escorted directly to a large, richly appointed dressing room. I was a celebrity, after all.

  The first thing I noticed was the costume. A big, awkward, fake-jewel-encrusted suit almost entirely covered in large yellow and orange feathers, obviously the plumage of some human-size Pelagian tropical bird. I put it on, hoping my musical mimicry would be more convincing if I at least looked the part—

  “Actually, Will, birds that derive from island habitats usually don’t grow to such large sizes,” Picard said in a quietly chiding tone.

  Riker’s only response was a pleading look.

  “Sorry,” Picard said. “Continue.”

  The concert itself began that afternoon, and went better than I expected—at least at first. Torr’ghaff had left an instrument with me down in the ship’s hold, and I’d spent the better part of three days not only listening to a good chunk of Urr’hilf’s hit parade, but also determining that the fingerings of his chosen instrument weren’t all that different from those of the trombone. It was too bad the thing didn’t have a slide, but you can’t have everything.

  With Deanna lounging on a settee that Torr’ghaff’s men had placed on the wooden stage beside me—she displayed what even I thought was a very convincing “adoring female fan” expression—I got through the first couple of numbers without a lot of flubs.

  But those tunes were the easy ones. By the third number, maybe ten minutes into the set, I knew was floundering, and I could hear enough murmuring out in the bleachers to tell me that the audience was quickly becoming aware that something wasn’t right. Deanna continued to do her best to dispel that by maintaining an expression of sustained uncritical admiration.

  But as Thaddius “Old Iron Boots” Riker once said, “you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.” There was only so much even Deanna could do. It was up to me and my performance to keep these bloodthirsty pirates from booing and then rioting.

  And I knew I was failing, even as I lapsed into a rendition of “Stardust,” an old jazz standard from Earth. I hoped the crowd would accept it as one of Urr’hilf’s new, experimental compositions.

  Nope. As though thinking with one mind, the pirates who composed the audience—apparently thousands of them—rose from their benches. They surged toward the stage, trampling one another in their rage, which got them het up even further.

  I dropped my instrument on the settee beside Deanna, and helped her to her feet. “We have to get out of here,” I said, shedding the cumbersome, feather-and-jewel-covered jacket.

  Holding her hand, I moved with her toward the wings. A trio of burly pirates blocked our way, their blades extended. We turned toward the other side of the stage. Captain Torr’ghaff and another three armed pirates stood in our path, murder in their eyes.

  “Now would be a really good time for an emergency beam-out,” Deanna said.

  The angry shriek of the crowd crescendoed as the first of the pirates reached the stage and hauled themselves up onto it.

  “Looks like we’re in for a real fight, Arr’ghenn,” I said.

  I saw that even Torr’ghaff himself—who must have been pretty angry about his big, profitable concert event falling apart—was drawing a bead on us with his pistol. Shouting a warning to Deanna, I pulled her down behind what little cover the settee provided. Chunks of wood and brass and fabric flew as a metal projectile almost parted Deanna’s hair.

  We needed to get the hell out of there. But we needed weapons even more.

  I turned toward the stage just in time to see the first of the enraged audience members come barreling toward me. Like a lot of the Pelagian pirates, he was a nasty piece of work, and stood a good head taller than I did. Glancing at the settee, I saw the klap’paspech, which Torr’ghaff had perforated with his gun. I grabbed it.

  The approaching pirate didn’t use a lot of science when he swung his cutlass. I stepped in close after his first slash missed, then slammed him across the temple with my broken instrument. Dropping its shattered pieces, I then grabbed the man’s arm and let his own momentum carry him over my back and onto the stage, which he struck like a cannonball. A second man behind him soon went down, thanks to a decidedly sobered-up Deanna.

  A moment later, she and I were armed both with blades and with muzzle-loading handguns. But considering what we were up against, they might as well have been brooms and feather dusters.

  “Don’t go easy on them,” I told her. “They’re a lot tougher than they look.”

  She looked at me like I was a complete idiot. “Thanks, Will. And to think I was just going to give them a stern talking-to.”

  We were facing a veritable army of snarling, bloodthirsty nasties that would have made Blackbeard wet himself. For the first time since we’d come to Pelagia, I began to really believe that we were about to die.

  As we became completely surrounded by dozens of armed and angry men, I felt Deanna’s mind reach out to mine, apparently to comfort me during our last moments.

  That’s when the end of the world happened.

  But if a comet really had chosen that moment to slam into the center of the Opal Sea, I probably wouldn’t have had time to wonder what could have made such a damned loud noise.

  I turned then, and saw it.

  The prow of the Enterprise—the wooden one, not the duranium one—was suddenly plowing directly through the wall of the amphitheater that faced the docks. Bodies were scattering in all directions as the ship continued to move forward amid a great creaking and groaning of timbers and beams and pier planking and shattering bleachers and convincingly splintering holographic wood. The air was scorched by angry shouts and screams.

  Keru’s audacity impressed and appalled me all at the same time. Crashing into an amphitheater filled with concertgoers—even pirate concertgoers—wasn’t exactly a by-the-book Starfleet tactic.

  But if the person doing it had done some research—and discovered just how hard it really is to actually hurt a Pelagian—then what would have been an act of sheer brutality anywhere else had become instead a feat of tactical genius here on the Opal Sea.

  The most important thing at the moment was that everyone in the place seemed to have forgotten us, at least for a moment. “Let’s go!” I shouted to Deanna, grabbing her hand.

  We ran flat-out across the stage toward the wooden ship, just as it slammed into the apron with a thud that shook the building from rafters to root cellar.

  I cast a quick glance at the beams overhead, which were vibrating like banjo strings. This place is going to come right down on top of us, I thought. Wonderful.

  As we approached the side of the disguised Calypso II, several of the unsavory audience members began to form a disorganized skirmish line between us and our escape. I could see Chief Tongetti standing on the prow above them, readying a rope ladder for us, though he couldn’t lower it without inviting the wrong people aboard.

  Her cutlass raised defensively, Deanna looked toward me with a stunned expression. She obviously had no desire to kill anyone, and just as obviously was not aware of the “Small Spirits” that made that particular issue a nonproblem.

  I raised my own blade and pistol. “Have at ’em, Imzadi. They heal real quick.”

  Blades crashed into
each other. Fortunately for us, drunkenness and surprise had acted in our favor this time, allowing us to fight our way to the ship—and Tongetti’s rope ladder—just before the Enterprise made an apparently magical retreat back toward the docks, breaking for the green, sun-dappled expanse of the Opal Sea that lay beyond.

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” said Commander Keru as Deanna and I pulled ourselves over the holographic railings. Terriveyt Island, and all the cutthroats thereon, was rapidly falling away from us as the Calypso II skimmed along the ocean surface, powered by her heavily shielded maneuvering thrusters.

  “I wonder how many thousands of pairs of Pelagian eyeballs saw what you just did, Mr. Keru,” I said as we made our way belowdecks, and into the yacht’s real—that is to say, its twenty-fourth-century—interior.

  “Almost everybody back there is a criminal of some sort or other,” Keru said. “Somehow I don’t think they’ll be making any reports to the duly instituted legal authorities. Which, I might add, I have taken great pains to evade myself.”

  “All in all, that sounds better than being carved into chum by pirates,” Deanna said.

  “My thoughts exactly,” said the big Trill, a self-satisfied grin on his bearded face as he placed us on a leisurely course back to one of the visitor-friendly, tech-unrestricted islands. With any luck at all, we could make landfall undetected sometime after dark.

  And then get back to our interrupted honeymoon.

  But for the next several hours, Deanna and I would be aboard the yacht we’d borrowed, in the company of the colleagues who had saved our lives. I wondered if we could persuade them to give us an hour or so worth of privacy in the aft compartment. Even if that meant ordering them all to cram themselves into the cockpit. Rank, after all, hath its privileges.

  “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.

  Tending Bar…

  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….

  Jean-Luc Picard

  Captain of the U.S.S. Stargazer

  Darkness

  MICHAEL JAN FRIEDMAN

  With 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.”