Crossover - Michael Jan Friedman [83]
“Cheers,” he said, then threw his head back and downed the contents.
“Better than synthehol?” Guinan inquired.
The admiral made a sound of satisfaction, put his glass down, and smiled. “A damned sight.” Then his smile faded. “It’s nice to know some things still get better with age—even if I’m not one of them.”
“You don’t look so old to me,” she remarked.
“I’m a hundred and forty-five,” he admitted. “If that’s not old, I don’t know what is.”
Guinan placed her elbows on the bar and leaned forward. “At a hundred and forty-five,” she responded, “I was just getting started.”
McCoy stared at her. “You’re kidding me.”
“I’m not,” she assured him.
“How old are you?” he asked.
She pointed a finger at him. “Old enough to know you’re no k’jarju.”
The admiral’s eyes fixed themselves on his empty glass, where just a few lacy threads of the green liqueur were languidly making their way down the insides of the transparent surface.
“You were saying something about perspective,” she reminded him.
“So I was,” McCoy agreed.
“Care to elaborate?”
His eyes rose again to meet hers. “It’s the damnedest thing. Back on the old Enterprise, the thing I hated most—the thing that would always make me cringe— was hosting one of those Federation ambassadors from hell. The kind who shows up thinking he knows more than the captain and ends up demonstrating he knows nothing at all.”
“And?” Guinan prompted.
“And now,” said the admiral, “I’ve become the thing I hated. Now I’m the all-fired ambassador.”
“I see,” said his host.
“And just like all those other stuffed shirts, I’ve managed to make a mess of things by pulling rank. By insisting the captain do things my way.” He winced. “It’s a good thing Jim’s not around to see this.”
“You had a great deal of respect for your captain,” she observed. “A great deal of affection.”
McCoy nodded. “Damned right I did. He was the finest commanding officer who ever lived—in any century.”
“I didn’t know your captain,” Guinan conceded. “But I know mine. And if you had asked me, I would’ve said the same thing about him. The finest one who ever lived, I mean.”
“He’s no Jim Kirk,” the admiral told her. “Jim never would’ve sat there, waiting for the enemy to make the first move. He would’ve taken the bull by the horns.”
“Maybe Captain Picard would have done the same,” she argued, “if the circumstances were different. I’ve seen him take the bull by the horns, too. But most of the time, he finds another way.”
“What way is that?” McCoy inquired.
“One that’ll work,” she replied.
The admiral looked at her for a moment, as if searching for a chink in her resolve. He didn’t seem to find any.
He pushed his glass toward her. “I could use a refill, if you don’t mind.”
She didn’t. A moment later, she pushed the glass back toward him, filled again with some of her private stock.
McCoy tossed it back, then put the empty glass on the bar and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He seemed to have lost himself in thought.
“So what you’re saying,” he remarked at last, “is I should have had a little more confidence in your captain. And his method of dealing with the Romulans as well, I suppose, even though it’s not the first time I’ve run into them.”
“Different era,” she told him. “Different Romulans. If you want to be effective against them, you’ve got to change with the times.”
The admiral sighed. “That’s easier said than done.”
“You’ve done harder things,” Guinan assured him. “I know you have. You can do this, too.”
He smiled. “So, this captain of yours. He’s got it all figured out, has he?”
“Not exactly,” she answered. “There were a couple of things he didn’t quite understand—even before you made the situation a bit more complicated.”
McCoy winced. “Such as?”
Guinan shrugged. “The way the Romulans are moving so many of their ships toward their border with the Stugg. There doesn’t seem to be any—”
The admiral interrupted her, his wispy white brows knitting above the bridge of his nose. “The Stugg, you say?”
“The Stugg,” she confirmed.