All Good Things__ - Michael Jan Friedman [15]
Someone cleared his or her throat. Remembering the officers who had assembled to greet him, Picard looked at them. They were waiting.
Gathering himself, he returned to the orders written on the padd. “You are hereby requested and required to take command…” he read.
And a second time, something caught his eye. Glancing up, he saw that the figures on the catwalk were back—but now, there were six of them. And they were pointing at him and jeering even more wildly than before.
Then, as if by magic, they weren’t. They had vanished again. He looked all around the room and could find no sign of them.
It was only then that he put two and two together. Might the sight of the hollow-cheeked hecklers have something to do with his feelings of disorientation? Might it not be all of a piece?
Unfortunately, he couldn’t puzzle it out now, in the presence of all his officers. They would think he’d gone over the edge.
Later, after he’d had time to rest, to mull it over, he’d be able to put these things in some reasonable context. He’d see that there was a logical explanation for all of it.
But right now, he wanted to get this ceremony over with and retire to his quarters. As before, he applied himself to reading the words on the padd.
“… to take command of the U.S.S. Enterprise as of this date. Signed, Rear Admiral Norah Satie, Starfleet Command.”
Turning off the padd, he stepped out from behind the podium and looked at his crew. They looked back at him silently, waiting for the first words he would offer them—their first bit of sage advice from the captain of the newly commissioned Enterprise.
But before he could advise them, he saw that the scraggly figures had returned—and this time, in force. There were ten of them now, up on the catwalk, all shouting at Picard with murderous intent. Out of reflex, he took a step back, prepared to respond if they came leaping over the rail to get at him.
But it never happened—because a fraction of a sec-ond later, they were gone. An eerie, echoing silence filled the shuttlebay, as the captain made his decision.
This wasn’t his imagination. This wasn’t the product of a tired or distracted mind. Something was going on here—and until he knew what, he would take whatever precautions he deemed necessary.
Addressing his officers, he shouted, “Red alert! All hands to battle stations!”
For a moment, they just looked at him, dumbfounded. Surely, their faces said, this had to be a joke. Only one of them took it seriously right from the start.
“You heard the captaint” barked Lieutenant Yar. “Move!”
That broke them out of their initial paralysis. An instant later, they were sounding the alert, rushing out the shuttlebay doors to their respective duty stations.
And as Picard watched them go, he mused that in twenty years on the Stargazer, he had never encountered anything like this. Welcome to the Enterprise, he told himself.
CHAPTER 7
Red alert,” muttered Miles Edward O’Brien, lost in thought as he made his way along the crowded corridor. “I just don’t get it.”
His friend Sutcliffe, who was accompanying him to the turbolift, didn’t get it either. He said so.
“I mean,” he continued, “I’ve heard of captains coming on board and trying to make an impression, but that was ridiculous. Everybody running to their battle stations for no reason at all…” He sighed. “If it was a drill, it was a damned stupid time for one.”
O’Brien cast a sideways glance at him. “Don’t say that.” Sutcliffe glanced back. “Say what?” “That it was stupid,” O’Brien explained. “And why not?” asked the other man. “Because he’s the captain,” O’Brien told him. “And that means he can’t do anything stupid?” O’Brien nodded. “That’s right.”
“You’re out of your mind,” said Sutcliffe. “Captains are as human as anyone else. Or as Vulcan. Or as Andorian. They make mistakes, just like the rest of us.”
“That’s not the way