All Good Things__ - Michael Jan Friedman [21]
The Klingon looked surprised. As the captain watched Worf glanced at Yar, an awkward expression on his face. The blond woman stood and met Picard’s gaze. Clearly, she was perturbed.
“Sir, with all due respect… I’m the security chief on this ship. Unless you’re planning to make a change, that is…”
The captain cursed inwardly. She was right, of course. It was just that his instinct was to think of Worfas the security chief.
“No,” he assured her. “I’m planning no such thing. Security alert two, Lieutenant.”
Yar inclined her head slightly. “Aye, sir.”
But before she could move to comply, they heard a voice piped in over the ship’s intercom system: “Captain Picard to the bridge, please.”
Picard knew the voice. It belonged to O’Brien—to whom he’d assigned primary conn duties.
“On my way, Chief,” he informed O’Brien. Then, leading the others out of the lounge, he exited onto the bridge.
As Tasha followed her new captain out of the observation lounge, she saw Miles O’Brien, a rather likable Irishman, waiting for them in the command area with a padd in his hand. As Picard approached, O’Brien extended it to him.
All around them, crew members were busy at one task or another—hooking up the circuitry in an open panel, lugging diagnostic equipment around, or linking a console to the ship’s computer. It was chaos—but no different from what one would expect on a vessel still being outfitted for duty.
“What’s this?” the captain asked O’Brien over the clamor.
The chief grunted. “Starfleet has just issued an alert, sir! It appears a number of vessels are moving toward the Neutral Zone between Romulan and Federation space.”
That caught Tasha~s interest. “What kind of vessels?” she asked.
O’Brien turned to her. “Freighters, transports… all civilian. None of them Federation ships.”
As Picard read the specifics on the padd, he frowned. Tasha got the impression that it meant something almost … personal to him.
“It says,” he announced, “that a large spatial anomaly has appeared in the Neutral Zone. In the Devron sys-tem.”
Worf’s response was quick and heated—no surprise, given his racial heritage. The Klingons and the Romulans, once allies, were now the most vicious of enemies.
“Perhaps it is a Romulan trick,” he suggested. “A plan to lure ships into the Neutral Zone as an excuse for a military strike.”
O’Brien eyed the Klingon. “I don’t know about that, sir. But Starfleet’s canceling our mission to Farpoint Station and ordering us to the Neutral Zone as soon as we can leave spacedock.”
To Tasha, that news wasn’t all bad. Sitting here in drydock had made her edgy—irritable. She couldn’t wait to put this new ship of theirs through its paces, and as far as she was concerned, the Neutral Zone was as good a place to do that as any. “No,” said the captain. She looked at him, a little taken aback. “No, sir?”
“That’s correct,” he told her. “We will not go to the Neutral Zone. We will proceed to Farpoint, as planned.”
Tasha looked at him. She began to object—but Worf beat her to it.
“Captain,” he blurted, “the security of the Federation may be at stake! How can we—”
Picard silenced him with a glance. “Man your station, Mr. Worf—or I will find someone who can.”
For an instant, Tasha didn’t know whether the Klingon would back down or not. But a moment later, he whirled angrily and returned to the aft science station that he had been working on.
Troi frowned. “Captain, perhaps if we understood your thinking… if you could explain…”
Unflappable, Picard shook his head. “I don’t intend to explain anything, Counselor…” Then he turned to Tasha, as if she represented the rest of the crew. “To anyone,” he said, completing his sentence. “We will proceed to Farpoint Station, as I indicated.”
For what seemed like a long time, nobody moved. There was an air of quiet tension on the bridge that nobody seemed eager to break.
Tasha tried to come to grips with the captain’s intransigence. Surely, he could see that a confrontation with the