Ship of the Line Page 8

  “Captain,” Riker grieved, and gave up trying to angle off what they were both thinking about. “Sir, it’s been five months now. You’ve signed every reassignment request from the general crew, but haven’t you noticed something?”

  “For instance?”

  “For instance that none of those requests have come from your command staff. Most of us are holding off on reassignment. We’re assuming—”

  “Don’t say it.” Picard held up one finger. “I know what you’re all assuming. I don’t know if it’s the thing for me any longer.”

  “I hate when you talk like that,” Riker said, deliberately leaving out the “sir.”

  “Yes, but those are becoming my clearest thoughts, I’m afraid,” Picard told him right away. “I’m starting to listen to them.”

  “Attention all Starbase personnel, residents, and visitors. There will be a special encore showing of A Night to Remember and Tony Feretti and Fred Lewis’ award-winning documentary The Loss and Recovery of the R.M.S. Titanic in the ballroom at eighteen hundred hours tonight. The touring exhibit of artifacts from the Titanic, the Lusitania, and King Henry the Eighth’s warship Mary Rose are currently on display on Decks 4, 5, and 9 of the U.S.S. Bozeman. Remember, the exhibit will only be here two more weeks. Thank you, and welcome aboard.”

  Slumping back into the couch cushions, Riker shook his head and moaned aloud. “For pity’s sake . . . I feel like I’m stroking upwind against a blast furnace!”

  Picard cast him a wry and sympathetic grin. “No matter how you try to cheer me up, eh? Leave it to us to have temporary billet at a Starbase hosting artifacts from ships in various conditions of wreck.”

  “Of all the times in all the years, did that damned presentation have to be just here, just now?” Riker slapped his knee and shook a fist at the speaker system. “Maybe they should just put us on display!”

  “Oh, now, Will,” Picard soothed. “You’re taking this far too personally. You’ve got to let these things subside, so you can have a chance to think clearly.”

  “Captain,” Riker complained, “I came down here to cheer you up!”

  “I don’t need cheering up.” Picard’s gaunt face and dark eyes actually showed up in the reflective surface of his tea as he held the cup to his chin, yet did not drink. He continued gazing out the big window. “This is my second loss of a command. In those years I’ve had hundreds of adventures, chances to save lives and advance changes far beyond my most wild anticipations. I’ve been absorbed by the Borg collective and survived. That’s a chance denied millions of innocent victims. The Borg still have a little grip on me . . . now and then I can feel it. I never know how that will manifest itself. Is it just a memory? I really don’t know. But if it does come forward again, it’s not only myself at risk. It’s any crew I’m commanding. Over a thousand people who have faith in me to have a good grip on whatever the situation is. Am I being fair to them?”

  The captain paused then, somehow knowing that Riker certainly didn’t have the answer to that and wasn’t very skilled at over-the-counter comforts.

  Picard blinked a couple of times and then looked at Riker.“And is any of this fair to you at all? Will you ever move on if I don’t?”

  Bridling his response, Riker determined not to get caught in that one.

  After a moment, Picard looked away again and sipped his tea, then flinched. Too hot.

  “I’ve managed to survive through a great deal,” he went on, “though I’ve had to watch members of my crew suffer and die . . . even had to order some of them to their deaths. That wears on you after a bit. I’ve lost two ships now . . . anyone with a lick of sense becomes circumspect after that. Seven years ago I was the Enterprise-D’s first mission commander, and now I’m her last. That should be enough for anyone.”

  The lounge fell silent again, and Riker found himself wishing that cursed announcer would come back on and start talking about disasters at sea again. At least that would be noise.

  “You think I’m being negative, don’t you?” Picard asked abruptly then, eyeing his first officer narrowly.

  Fidgeting, Riker wished he’d gotten himself a drink too, so he could have something to hide behind.

  “As a matter of fact,” Picard went on, “I’m rather looking forward to life without that weight on my shoulders. There are other frontiers, you know, Will. I’ve always felt drawn to archaeology. A quiet sunlit dig somewhere, a cool drink, a big hat, a shovel and a brush—”

  Riker tucked his chin. “Sand in your teeth, sunburn on your nose, callouses on your knees . . .”

  Picard grinned. “And the wind in my hair?”

  They laughed a little, and Riker felt better. The captain had a rare smile, but a pleasant one.

  Tensions lingered between them, though. That unanswered question—Will you ever move on if I don’t?

  The captain gazed at him, still grinning.

  Shaking his head, Riker uneasily chuckled, “I wish you’d stop looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Geppetto looking at the puppet and being proud of what he built.”

  “Well, I am proud of you. I’m tempted to agree with a few of those admirals.”

  “And turn the next command over to me,” Riker huffed. “I wish they’d stop pressuring you to do that.”

  “Oh, it’s not all that bad. We’ve been cleared in the loss of the ship, and that’s something. They’ve ruled her crash a viable option in that chain of events and subject to commander’s discretion. We’re all free to accept new assignments . . . if we want them.”

  Picard stood up and strode to the large viewing windows. Outside this room was the inner spaceport of Starbase 12. The base itself was a huge hollowed-out spool hanging in space over the planet Rhodes, where the colony established a century and a quarter ago was now covering over half the planet. And at their fingertips, separated only by this window, was the protected inner docking area, where ships could be cuddled up close to repair bays and stocking complexes.

  And there, permanently moored, was the reason the colony was still here and the reason this starbase was still here. Beneath Picard, and Riker as he came to stand beside his captain, was the permanently moored border cutter Bozeman, docked here as a spacefaring museum. The old ship was compact and built for business, with its out-mounted sensor pods and its strong tractor mounts. Fixed up and put back in good hull condition, with its engines stripped out, the cutter was a dependable tourist attraction, coveted by the people on this starbase and the planet below. Its galley had been converted to a popular café, and even in retirement the ship continued to serve. Not so bad.

  In its belly right now were precious museum collections of artifacts from famous lost ships, crews, and passengers, rescued from slow but inevitable destruction at the bottom of Earth’s salty seas, brought here to be appreciated by successive generations who otherwise would forget.

  And that old ship, the cutter—Riker remembered from three years ago how sad Captain Bateson had looked at his great loss, and wondered if he were seeing the same resignation in his own captain now. Morgan Bateson was here on Starbase 12 right now, Riker knew, working on the new starship that had just been commissioned when he and his crew had been transferred so unceremoniously to this century. Bateson was regarded as a hero, and he deserved to be. He’d managed to keep most of his crew together and working. That was a feat in itself.

  Beside Riker, the captain’s dignified voice startled him suddenly.

  “I made,” Picard declared, “a big mistake.”

  Then he said nothing else for the moment, and went on sipping his tea.

  Riker paused, held his breath. He couldn’t remember hearing those particular words out of Picard in all the years they’d been together.

  Well, all right, might as well play this out. Maybe they could get to a goal line somewhere.

  “I can’t think of any mistake you made,” he baited. “I was in command of the starship at the time. You wer
en’t even there.”

  “I should have been. A captain commands not just a ship, but a situation.”

  “Sir,” Riker pointed out, “don’t forget . . . we won.”

  Picard shifted his feet and kept looking out. His expression didn’t change much. There was a perplexed tightening of his brow. “Then why do I feel as if we lost?” Looking down there at the old-style primary hull and the nostalgic nacelles, Picard quietly mused, “I wonder how James Kirk handled losing his Enterprise.”

  Riker skewered Picard with a look. “Why him, all of a sudden?”

  “Not all of a sudden. I met him only briefly, through a quirk of fate, yet he made an impression on me. He wasn’t the man legend declares him to be. He wasn’t all-encompassing and bigger than life . . . I don’t believe he saw himself as a faultless monolith at all. I presided over his death, yet I felt entirely inadequate to that charge. For a man who took things so personally, what was it like to lose that marvelous, strong, first Enterprise? He ordered the destruct sequence, did you know that?”

  “No,” Riker said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes. His ship had come to the end of her tether, but he still summoned up one last chance for his crew to live. They did live, by the way, all of them who were on that ship that day.”

  “And so did all of us.”

  “Yes, but somehow, even though it’s happened to me again, I still can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for him.” Picard gazed out into the center of the Starbase spool at the moored Bozeman. “That was a different time, those years of early expansion. Captains were more autonomous. Their ships were really their ships. They were out of touch most of the time. Whatever happened, they simply had to handle it. They had to break regulations sometimes, even make up regulations. No Federation council looking over their shoulder, no civilians or desk officers second-guessing their every move, scouring their decision with hindsight . . . there’s a certain loss in the civilizing of Federation space. I wonder how James Kirk managed to never lose his edge.”

  Unable to bring himself to ask the perfect next question—Are you afraid you’ve lost yours?—Riker came up with a completely different question and forced it out.

  “Why don’t you go ask him?”

  The captain had begun turning away from the window, and now paused, perplexed. “I beg your pardon?”

  Leaning against the vaulted window brace, Riker cast the captain a saucy look. “The holodeck computer bank has all of his adventures programmed in as holoprograms.”

  “It does?”

  “Yes. While he was on the faculty at Starfleet Academy, he cooperated in making all of his mission logs into programs, and extrapolated on them for guest participation. Kirk told them what he was thinking, why he was thinking it, and what he thought he could’ve done better. Then they incorporated some of the perceptions and memories of other participants, just to make sure all the details were right. They used the building plans of the original starship and the technical schematics. The computer’ll give you the real James Kirk, too. After all, it’s not impressed by legends.”

  The captain drew his brows together, trying to imagine just how such records could be step-by-step, breath-by-breath fed into a computer and turned into a three-dimensional interactive program. Riker had wondered the same things.

  Picard tipped his head contemplatively. “I hadn’t given it a thought . . .”

  Riker smiled. “Well, you should.”

  Pressing his lips tight, the captain bobbed his brows and seemed intrigued, if not entertained, and put his teacup down on one of the lounge’s obsidian tables.

  “Well, sir,” Riker bridged awkwardly, “are you ready to visit the new starship? After all, everyone’s assuming.”

  Picard sighed. “Suppose it’s my duty to stoke the rumors, isn’t it?”

  “Not rumors, sir. Hopes. Just the pitiful wishes of a group of ragtag misfits, alone in the universe but for each other, clinging to the forlorn museful glimmerings of—”

  “I’m walking out the door, Number One. You’re not still talking, are you?”

  “No, sir, not me. Let’s go to the right, sir, it’s shorter.”

  Chapter 9

  Long, long years, and many grinding sorrows. Was this the shining return of knights? No, this was the melancholy reappearance of coachmen in a not-very-impressive coach. No great warship hummed beneath, but only an exploratory tank, now crammed full of samples and specimens. Not even an unusual specimen.

  Feeling as if his burdened chest were turning inside out, Gaylon rumbled out a sigh. The moment they had so long waited for was at hand. Return.

  This tank ship rattled around him as he arranged the last docking maneuvers at the Zgoda Ring. With no more to do, Gaylon turned and watched the last few umbilicals screw out from the station’s housings and latch onto the tank ship. He wished he were a machine too.

  In the center seat on this stuffy and unenlightened bridge, Commander Kozara sat in silence. A sharp-eyed patrol ship on the outer expanse had forced them to identify themselves, so even their approach to Fortress Zgoda had not been peaceful and without identity. By now, everyone on that station and half the people in the Klingon Command structure knew Kozara and his gloryless crew were finally coming home.

  Gaylon and his crewmates had hoped for a grace period, a few days to contact their families and feel out the reception, to see if public and private mockery had possibly cooled after so long. After all, Kozara’s crew had paid, had they not? They had taken ignoble duty, gone out to “explore,” to absent themselves from the empire they had mortified, and they had contacted Klingon Command only twice. Each time they had been told to stay out there, remain exploring the Great Waste even longer. And they had obligingly stayed. That had to mean something, entail some credit, some bank of favor, yes?

  Shh-CHUNK—the final tether drew into its mount and locked there. The expedition was over. They would never have to come back to this forsaken pot of a vessel anymore. It had served, and could be cut to scrap for all Gaylon cared.

  He caught a thin reflection of himself in the scratched frame of the sensor mount at the helm as he went to stand in the same general area as Kozara, without moving too close. They were both ragged now, aged by years and even more by this humiliating voyage to collect useless bits, a voyage really meant to keep them away from here. Kozara was absolutely gray. Most of the warrior had been bored out of him. The past seven years had been a constant struggle to pretend they had a mission, and to keep doing it. They had come upon a few civilizations, but none of any use. Only one proved dangerous, and Kozara had no fighting ship. The Klingons had been forced to run away.

  They had run, and not bothered to be more humiliated. A man could only be so bruised. After so many blows, there was no feeling left in the nerves of the soul.

  Seven grim years they had been wandering. The mission was supposed to last only five years, but those contacts with Command had extended their assignment each time. Now the ship was full to its braces with bits of trash in stasis. There simply was no room left with which to keep exploring.

  Kozara looked old. He had looked old for decades now. Gaylon glanced at his commander—Kozara was tight with his small hopes.

  “He may be here, Commander,” Gaylon said. “Since our approach was not secret, he may have been notified.”

  For years Gaylon has trained himself not to care what was in Kozara’s mind. Today, though, he wanted to know.

  “He will be here.” Kozara’s voice, scratching from the old throat, made Gaylon flinch. “My son Zaidan will be in that station to greet us,” the commander muttered on. “Forgiveness will be on his lips. We have done our jobs without question. We went where we were told without protest. We did a job no one wanted. Charted space no one wants to go to. We have paid our penance and earned back our place among warriors. Zaidan’s open arms will welcome us back to honor.”

  Hope fired through Gaylon’s chest. He saw each of the bridge crew swell a bit wi
th the new chance, the flicker of logic in Kozara’s voice. They had done all that had been asked of them, done it without protest. Yes, yes—they could return!

  Sitting like a stone carving, Kozara stared at the forward screen, which now showed a view of the other side of the station ring from their docking place. The tank ship was plugged in afterend first, so her cargo hold could be unloaded. Gaylon could tell by the clanking of clamps and buzz of adjusting gussets that these docking ports had been updated. The ship, of course, had not. Out of range. Out of date.

  They could see from here all the other ships being worked on or loading. They could see the three warships, so different from the one they had piloted . . . how long was it now?

  Those new ships were much more like the blunt-winged birds-of-prey that soared Klingon skies, but more massive and stronger, and to look at them was a pain in the heart. They were painted with feathers and had only the slightest echo of the long-necked warships of Kang and Kor. In fact, they reminded Gaylon of Romulan wing-attackers.

  But to look was hurting his eyes. He saw too clearly all they had been missing.

  Obviously they had missed a considerable rearmament of the Klingon fleet. Why was there a rearmament? What was happening in the galaxy today?

  Seven years . . .

  Sharply a hunger for advancement gushed through Gaylon, a sensation he thought he had long ago banished. What a strange unbidden thought! His chances for promotion had been smothered long ago on that day with the dog captain. Many months had dragged by before he understood fully what he had lost and how much all the men of Kozara had lost their reputations that day. Gaylon had only been able to cling to his rank by staying with Kozara. Whatever his second thoughts had been, they had occurred in the middle of the Great Waste, and what did it matter out there? He had to stay with Kozara. At times even speaking to his commander was the most mocking effort of his life, worse than battle, worse than wounds, yet he had made himself do it, keep the ship going, one more system, one more planet. Keep going. Keep going.