Taking Wing Page 8

  After pausing to enter a minor course correction into the flight control console, Riker decided he had no choice other than to take up the gauntlet she had thrown down.

  “All right: ‘Among the map makers of each generation are the risk takers, those who see the opportunity, seize the moment and expand man’s vision of the future.’ ”

  “Emerson,” she said with unflappable confidence. “Not bad. I think you ought to short-list that one, too. How about this one: ‘My guide and I came on that hidden road to make our way back into the bright world and with no care for any rest, we climbed—he first, I following—until I saw, through a round opening, some of those things of beauty Heaven bears. It was from there that we emerged, to see—once more—the stars.’ ”

  Riker was so impressed with that one that he actually let out a long whistle. “Beautiful, though I think it’s a little long. Milton?”

  “Dante.”

  He made a face. “Let’s pass on that one. Maybe we ought to go heavier on brevity and lighter on metaphysics: ‘O Stars and Dreams and Gentle Night; O Night and Stars return!’ ”

  Once again absently tracing a finger across the three solid pips on her collar, Vale silently focused her gaze on some undefined portion of the shuttlecraft’s ceiling.

  Ha! he thought. Got you. You can’t get ’em all right.

  “I didn’t figure you for a fan of Emily Brontë, Captain.”

  He slumped in defeat. “Well, much as I like Cab Calloway’s song lyrics, I couldn’t find any I thought would pass muster with Starfleet Command. So I went back to the classics.”

  “I’m not criticizing, sir. The Brontë is a good choice. Maybe as good as the Magee: ‘And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand, and touched the face of God.’ ”

  They lapsed into contemplative, companionable silence for several minutes. Mars hove into view, growing rapidly from a ruddy marble to a broad, rust-colored disk.

  “Deanna can help sort this out,” Riker said. “After all, we don’t have to come up with Titan’s dedication plaque epigram today. We still have almost two weeks of final preparations to make before we launch.”

  Mars grew huge, and Utopia Planitia’s orbiting starship assembly facilities swung across the terminator into the planet’s sunward, daylit side. Floating in orbital freefall along the open spacedock facility that surrounded it was the graceful, twin-nacelled shape of the U.S.S. Titan.

  Though she was of an entirely new design, one of the very first of her type to be built, Titan was by no means the most impressive ship in the fleet. A Luna-class long-range exploration vessel, Titan massed somewhere between the Intrepid-class vessels introduced nearly a decade earlier and the old Ambassador-class. And she was fast, well-staffed, and could more than hold her own in a fight, if need be. But mostly she seemed eager to glimpse what was out there.

  And she’s my ship, he thought, his chest swelling with pride. My first real command.

  As Vale deftly piloted the Armstrong toward Titan’s main hangar deck, Riker noted with some relief that something had changed there. He tapped a command into the panel before him, opening up a voice channel.

  “Riker to bridge.”

  “Bridge here, Captain,” said Jaza. “Welcome back, sir.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Jaza. When did the Irrawaddy depart?”

  “Admiral Ross took the runabout back to Earth several hours ago, sir.”

  Riker was pleased to hear that the admirals’ visit was over. Though he didn’t exactly hold a grudge against Ross—he regarded him as an accomplished, competent officer who certainly deserved every laurel he’d earned during the dark days of the Dominion War—Riker nevertheless wasn’t anxious to spend a lot of time in the man’s presence. He hadn’t forgotten that William Ross had very nearly filled Titan’s first-officer position without consulting him first. Not that Ross’s choice of Riker’s own longtime friend and shipmate Lieutenant Commander Worf was by any means a bad decision; it simply had not been his decision.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jaza. And please advise Commander Troi that our crew is now complete,” Riker said as Vale began securing the craft.

  “I’m happy to hear that, Captain,” came the musical voice of Deanna Troi, which immediately brought a small smile to Riker’s face. “Welcome aboard, Christine.”

  “Thank you, Commander,” Vale said, sounding somewhat uncomfortable with Deanna’s familiar tone. Maybe she’s still got some misgivings about my command structure, Riker thought. Still, he felt confident that his diplomatic officer and his new exec would end up working well together, despite the concerns that both Vale and Admiral Akaar had raised earlier.

  Deanna must have been thinking along similar lines. “I think Admiral Akaar will also be delighted to hear that you’ve decided to join Titan ’s crew.”

  Riker’s smile collapsed like the core of a neutron star as the Armstrong’s hatch hissed open. “The admiral’s still aboard?”

  “He’s coming along with us on the Romulan assignment,” Deanna said, using her most carefully neutral “poker night” tones. “In the meantime, he’ll be staying aboard Titan.”

  Riker’s eyebrows rose in a manner that would have spoiled his luckiest poker night. “Commander, has the admiral been made aware that the ‘meantime’ prior to Titan’s departure will last nearly two weeks?”

  “Yes, sir. He says he’s looking forward to spending that time here, so I’ve assigned him VIP quarters for the duration.”

  “That’s . . .wonderful. See you on the bridge. Riker out.” He and Vale rose and exited the shuttlecraft.

  At least it doesn’t sound as though he’s going to try to rush our departure date, he thought with no small measure of relief as he mentally scrolled through a nearly endless list of essential yet still only partially completed prelaunch tasks.

  But as he walked alongside Vale toward the nearest turbolift, he began wondering if he was about to discover what a thirteen-day inspection tour felt like.

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  U.S.S. TITAN, STARDATE 56979.5

  After the first week passed, Troi noticed that she was feeling increasingly restive, so much so that she booked a couple of sessions with Counselor Huilan, one of her two subordinates in Titan’s Mental Health Services department. She was glad for the presence of the hardworking male S’ti’ach. The nearly meter-high sentient, who resembled a fat, blue-furred, bipedal bear with extra arms and dorsal spines, smiled with his saberlike white incisors bared as he regarded her with his huge, fathomless black eyes, all the while patiently listening to her problems and offering occasional encouragements. Despite his small size, Huilan easily did the work of any two humanoid counselors, which was a real asset on a ship whose widely varied crew carried so much potential for interpersonal friction. After Starfleet had halved Troi’s original request for a four-person counseling staff—Starfleet Command, in its infinite wisdom, had decided that a total of three counselors, including Troi, ought to be more than adequate to handle any 350-person crew, regardless of its composition—she was doubly grateful for the little S’ti’ach’s tireless efforts on behalf of Titan’s morale.

  Nevertheless, Troi was feeling uneasy by day thirteen of Admiral Akaar’s stay aboard Titan. It wasn’t that Akaar was particularly overbearing, or even overtly impolite. But the tall, imposing Capellan was omnipresent, and his constant watchful propinquity had proved palpably unnerving to more than half the crew as they struggled to finish making the ship ready for its altered mission—a new agenda that was, all by itself, creating a great deal of anxiety in a ship’s complement selected more for its scientific credentials than for its diplomatic expertise. Lieutenant Pazlar had told Troi of her frustration with the admiral, who had essentially turned the stellar cartography lab into his personal command post during much of each day’s alpha watch. Because of its variable-gravity capabilities, the delicate Elaysian had come to regard the lab, with its unique, low-g win
dow on the universe, almost as her own private domain. Troi knew how much Pazlar valued the few places aboard Titan besides her own quarters where she could comfortably dispense with her ever-present exoframe. Akaar was literally weighing the lieutenant down, even as he more metaphorically burdened the rest of the crew.

  Troi also couldn’t help but notice the admiral’s fascination with Titan’s crew composition, particularly the ship’s unusually large proportion of nonhumanoid species. Personnel such as Orilly Malar of Irriol, a double rarity in that she was both nonhumanoid and an expert in exobiology, and the partially cybernetic Choblik engineering trainee Torvig Bu-Kar-Nguv, seemed particularly fascinating to Akaar. The admiral would no doubt have also spent more time closely observing the Pak’shree computer specialist K’chak’!’op—whom virtually everyone on Titan simply called “Chaka” as a compromise between the arachnoid’s complex mouthparts and the limitations of the speech apparatus of most humanoids—had the large sentient arthropod not exhibited a tendency to retreat for protracted periods into her quarters. Ensconced behind the earthen and organic-silk walls of her shipboard living space, Chaka could do her work as easily as she could anywhere else on the ship. Troi made a mental note to visit her soon and make a real effort to draw her out of her exoskeletal shell, as it were.

  Is Akaar trying to prove that we can’t make such a diverse crew work? she wondered, as she discreetly watched the iron-haired fleet admiral in one of the ship’s common eating areas, where he was taking a meal on dishes that looked absurdly small before such a large man. The Capellan’s face gave nothing away, though, and he was nearly as opaque to her empathic talents as a Ferengi.

  At least he doesn’t insist on making all the mission specialists posted upstairs hop up and shout “admiral on the bridge” whenever he appears, she thought. There was always something to be thankful for, however small.

  As the day and hour of Titan’s departure from Mars orbit came and passed, she was grateful that the admiral’s staff, comprised of several extremely dour Vulcans, hadn’t even come aboard until scant hours before the ship’s launch, which occurred on time and without any significant glitches. Despite an understandable apprehension over what lay ahead for Titan and her crew, Will’s sense of relief as Ensign Lavena finally put the ship on a heading for the Romulan Neutral Zone had enfolded Troi like a warm down comforter. As she accompanied him afterward into the forward observation lounge for Akaar’s official Romulan mission briefing, Troi breathed silent thanks to the founders of the Fifth House for these small mercies.

  Titan’s senior staff quietly took their seats before a backdrop of star-strewn blackness. Troi noted with some satisfaction the calm attention and curious anticipation they were all radiating, sentiments that almost entirely drowned out a small but unmistakable undercurrent of apprehension coming from most everyone present, at least to some degree.

  “Thank you, Captain Riker, for the cooperation that you and your crew have given me and my staff,” Akaar said, his voice a low rumble. The admiral sat ramrod straight at the opposite end of the table from Riker, and Troi watched with interest as the two leaders’ eyes met. They were clearly evaluating each other.

  “Not at all, Admiral,” Will said. “I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say we’re eager to get our new mission under way.” Even if the nature of that mission has changed completely since I accepted this command, Will’s cerulean eyes seemed to add wordlessly.

  Troi sat at Will’s immediate left. Seated counterclockwise around the table starting from the captain’s right were First Officer Vale, Security/Tactical Officer Keru, Senior Science Officer Jaza, and Dr. Ree, who occupied a specially customized seat designed to accommodate both his unusual height and his thick, muscular tail. Turning her gaze clockwise from her left, Troi glanced at Chief Engineer Ledrah, whose wrinkled Tiburonian ears spread nearly as wide as poinciana blossoms. Beside Ledrah, and at Akaar’s immediate right, sat Dr. Ra-Havreii, attending the briefing at his own request.

  Behind Akaar stood three stone-faced Vulcans, two of them women. Though Troi found their ages difficult to determine, she judged from their bearing and salt-and-pepper hair that the youngest of the trio was well over a century old.

  “Some of you are doubtless wondering why I have elected to come along on this mission,” Akaar said, addressing the room. “I have come less in a military capacity than in what Starfleet Command and the Federation Council would no doubt describe as ‘humanitarian.’ ” His brief pause made the irony of his last word conspicuous; everyone present was well aware that humans comprised a distinct minority aboard Titan. “Since the fall of its Senate, there has been a great deal of political chaos in the Romulan Empire, and this has grown more acute in the past several days. The Romulans need outside help, and—more importantly—they are finally willing to admit it.

  “Among my staff are several experts in Romulan sociology, politics, and culture.” Akaar continued before briskly introducing T’Sevek and T’Rel, the two Vulcan women, and Sorok, the lone Vulcan male. Each was dignified, almost regal in bearing, though their earth-tone civilian suits were elegant in their unadorned simplicity. “T’Rel?”

  Nodding her curt, decidedly Vulcan acknowledgments to both the admiral and the captain, T’Rel took a single step toward the conference table before speaking. “Thank you, Admiral. Captain. Members of Titan’s crew. I trust you have all read the background documents we transmitted to you last week.” She acknowledged the round of nods that answered her with a peremptory nod of her own. “Very good. Among the strongest of the numerous Romulan factions to emerge from the post-Senate Romulan geopolitical landscape is—”

  “Excuse me.” Nearly everyone in the room seemed surprised at the almost brusque interruption. Except, Troi noted, for the man to whom the voice belonged: Will Riker.

  Based more on her private conversations with Will than her Betazoid talents, she knew exactly what was coming.

  T’Sevek replied in an almost chiding tone. “Captain, we would prefer that your questions be held until after our briefing presentation.”

  “That’s a fine idea, ma’am. However, there’s one question I really need to get out of the way first. And that’s because nobody has answered it to my satisfaction yet, even though I’ve already asked it more than a few times over the past two weeks.”

  Clearly becoming irritated, all three Vulcans turned as one toward Admiral Akaar, who sighed as he spread his hands in capitulation. “All right, Captain Riker. Which question are you speaking about?”

  “The most fundamental one, Admiral. Why is Titan being sent on this mission rather than the Enterprise? I don’t mean any disrespect, sir. But Titan has been a ship of exploration from drawing board to final crew roster. It seems to me the Federation’s flagship would be far better suited to this mission—as would its commander, who is a much more accomplished diplomat than I am.”

  Troi suppressed a smile. My, but you are still eager to get out to the far reaches of the Orion Arm, aren’t you, Will?

  But she also knew very well that far more was at play behind Will’s wrinkled brow than simple frustration over Titan’s recent change of orders and mission. He was clearly suspicious that the loss of personal prestige his former captain had suffered following last year’s Rashanar catastrophe had had something to do with Picard’s being passed over for this historic diplomatic assignment—a job that Will clearly believed that Picard should have drawn. Troi was forced to ask herself if Akaar might not be holding Rashanar against Picard, despite his subsequent multiple vindications at Dokaalan, Delta Sigma IV, and Tezwa, not to mention Picard’s aiding Klingon Chancellor Martok in recovering the clone of Emperor Kahless after he had mysteriously gone missing several weeks ago.

  Frowning, Akaar nodded and regarded Will in silence for a protracted moment. Still unable to read the guarded Capellan very deeply, Troi began to wonder if Will had finally pushed him too far.

  Then the admiral spoke with surprising mildness, in tones tin
ged with regret. “That is a fair question, Captain. But it is one that your former commanding officer has already answered, during his recent mission into Romulan space.”

  Will scowled. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Let us simply say that Captain Picard’s . . . uncanny resemblance to the late Praetor Shinzon did not go unnoticed on Kevatras,” Sorok said, stepping forward. “Word of the unfortunate relationship between Picard and Shinzon has already spread far and wide throughout the Romulan Star Empire.”

  Troi suddenly understood, even as she noted the look of comprehension that was spreading across Will’s face.

  “You think Captain Picard’s presence would destabilize the Romulan Empire even further,” the captain said.

  Sorok nodded solemnly, one eyebrow slightly raised. “Of course, Captain. As the man who assassinated the Romulan Senate, Shinzon is widely viewed as the author of virtually every difficulty the Empire currently faces. The fact that he was a clone of Jean-Luc Picard is just as widely known throughout the Romulan sphere of influence.”

  “Our primary mission is to assist the Romulans in the creation of a sustainable political power-sharing agreement,” T’Sevek added, speaking in professorial tones. “Picard’s presence would be antithetical to this goal.”

  “Is that really our primary goal?” Troi was startled to note that she herself had been the one to voice this question. Every head in the room had turned in Troi’s direction; her crewmates’ emotions ran the gamut from surprise to expectation, while the Vulcans, eager to get on with their briefing presentation, only seemed quietly annoyed.

  “What do you mean, Commander?” Akaar said. Though he remained difficult to get a precise empathic “read” on, Troi perceived little other than patient curiosity coming from the large man.

  Still, she decided it was best to proceed with utmost caution. “Just,” Troi began slowly, “that the political chaos in the Romulan Empire presents the Federation with a unique opportunity.”