A Time for War, a Time for Peace - Keith R. A. DeCandido [80]
Spock must never have slept. “Anyhow, so you were put in charge a lot?”
“Aye. ‘Twas captain’s discretion who to make third-in-command—sometimes ‘twas I, sometimes ‘twas Mr. Sulu. And I’ve got to tell you, whenever it was me, the butterflies were reproducin’ like mad in my stomach.”
For La Forge’s part, he wondered how the chief engineer contrived to be part of the chain of command, which was not standard procedure. On the other hand, neither was having your first officer pull double duty in the sciences. Kirk obviously did things his own way back then. And hey, it’s not like you can argue with the results.
Before La Forge could comment on this, Ten-Forward’s steward, a young man named Jordan, came over with a fresh glass of scotch. “Here you go, Captain. Anything for you, Commander?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
After Jordan departed, Scotty said while staring into the amber liquid he’d been given: “The worst was Eminiar VII. They were havin’ a war with another planet, Vendikar—except they didn’t fight the war in a traditional way.”
A memory poked at La Forge. “I remember reading something about this at the Academy. They fought by computer, right?”
Scotty nodded sadly. “Aye, they did. The computer would do battle simulations, and assign casualties. Those people would then report to ‘elimination chambers.’ The problem started when they declared the Enterprise a casualty. Naturally, Captain Kirk refused to report to any bloody elimination chamber. He was down on the planet with Spock and a team—and he gave me General Order 24.”
La Forge nearly dropped his synthale glass—that order was to destroy the surface of a planet. Then he recalled his long-ago Academy reading. “But Kirk and some ambassador stopped them in time, right?”
“Ambassador Robert Fox, aye.” Scotty’s face twisted into an unpleasant smile. “There were times when I would’ve been glad to have that one report to the elimination chamber—but,” he continued, his face softening, “‘twas not to be. But you can imagine, can you not, Geordi, what it was like to sit on the bridge of the ship and being told I had to be responsible for the destruction of an entire world? I’m an engineer—I put things together and make them work better. What the captain was askin’ me to do
” His voice, which was as strained as La Forge had ever heard it in the ten years he’d known Scotty, trailed off.
However, La Forge was not thinking of Eminiar VII, he was thinking of events more recent than that—ones that predated his promotion to chief engineer of the EnterpriseD. Specifically when he was conn officer and put in command of the ship at Minos. Riker led an away team to the surface that also included Data, but when the first officer was incapacitated, Picard beamed down, leaving La Forge in charge of the bridge. It turned out to be a rather brutal trial by fire, as La Forge found himself under attack, both by an automated weapon trying to destroy the Enterprise and by the chief engineer, a self-righteous prig named Logan, who tried to convince La Forge to cede command to his higher-ranking self when the attack started. Logan was one of four chief engineers, each one worse than the last, that the Enterprise went through before Picard promoted La Forge.
Like Scotty at Eminiar, La Forge was faced with difficult command decisions, though his were related to protecting the Enterprise and keeping its civilian population safe. But unlike Scotty, La Forge felt nothing but pride over what he accomplished at Minos. He numbered it among his proudest hours in Starfleet.
Which doesn’t make the decision any easier.
“Do you see what I’m gettin’ at, lad?”
La Forge started at Scotty’s words, having lost himself in thought. “Uh, yeah, yeah, I do. But still—” He sighed, finished off his synthale, and got up. “I don’t know. Look, Scotty, I appreciate the advice—really, I do. I guess I just need to think about it some more.”
“You do that, lad,” Scotty said gently. “But remember one important thing, Geordi: