Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [2]
Picard couldn’t argue the point. “So I am.”
At the tender age of twenty-eight, he was the youngest captain yet in the history of the fleet. Even younger than the legendary James T. Kirk, and that was saying something.
“And it’s not just your age,” Ben Zoma said, ticking off the strikes against the captain on his fingers. “You’ve never had the experience of serving as first officer. You would never have gotten your commission so quickly if Captain Ruhalter hadn’t been killed in the course of a battle with hostile aliens. And—because an inexperienced whippersnapper like you couldn’t possibly have gotten a captaincy on merit—it was probably a political appointment.”
Picard grunted. “Thank you, Number One. I was beginning to actually feel capable of commanding a starship for a moment there, but you have managed to completely disabuse me of that notion.”
“My pleasure,” his friend told him archly. “What’s a first officer for if not to deflate his captain’s ego from time to time?”
“Indeed,” Picard said thinly, sharing in the joke at his own expense.
He looked around the domed room again and noticed a few sidelong glances being cast in his direction. They didn’t exactly look like expressions of admiration.
Perhaps Ben Zoma was right, the captain reflected. Perhaps his colleagues were looking at him differently because of his age and relative inexperience.
But if the looks on their faces were any indication, he wasn’t just an object of curiosity. He was an object of disdain.
It hurt Picard to think so—even more than he would have guessed. After all, they had no firsthand observations to go on. They could only know what they had heard.
Yet these were starship captains and first officers—men and women who represented the finest the Federation had to offer. Picard would have expected them to be more welcoming of a fledgling colleague, more sensitive to his situation.
Apparently, he would have been wrong in that regard.
As was often the case, Ben Zoma seemed to read his thoughts. “All in all, not the friendliest-looking group I’ve ever seen.”
“Nor I,” Picard said. “I get the feeling I’m running a gauntlet.”
“If you are, it’s undeserved. You’ve earned your command, Jean-Luc.” He jerked his head to include the other captains in the room. “Maybe more so than they have.”
Picard didn’t want to appear to feel sorry for himself, even if it was just in front of Ben Zoma. However, his colleagues’ doubts weren’t all that was bothering him. If they were, he could have taken the situation in stride.
Unfortunately, the glances they sent his way underlined a much more troublesome and insidious fact: the captain harbored some doubts himself.
Weeks earlier, when Admiral Mehdi called him into his office, he had expected the admiral to lay into him—to chew him out for the chances he had taken against the Nuyyad. Instead, Mehdi had ordained him Captain Ruhalter’s successor.
Picard had been too stunned at the time to question the admiral’s judgment. He had been too excited by the challenge to consider the wisdom of such a move.
But was he qualified to be a captain?
He had seized the reins in an emergency and brought his crew out of it alive, no question about it. But did he have the ability to command a starship over the long haul? Was he a long-distance runner . . . or just a sprinter?
“You’re not saying anything,” Ben Zoma pointed out. “Should I send for a doctor?”
The captain chuckled. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.” He caught sight of a waiter with a tray of food. “Perhaps an hors d’oeuvre will brighten up the evening for me. I’ve always been partial to pigs in blankets.”
His first officer looked skeptical. “Really?”
Picard smiled at him. “No. But they’ll do in a pinch.”
He had already embarked on an intercept course with the waiter when he felt a hand on his arm. Turning, he saw a tall fellow with a seamed face and a crew cut the color of sand.
Like Picard, he wore a captain’s uniform. “Pardon me,” the fellow said. “You’re Jean-Luc Picard, aren’t you?”
Picard nodded.