Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [35]
Or rather, across half his face. The other half was a charred, bubbling wound, the result of an explosion in a plasma conduit during his first and only encounter with the Nuyyad.
The fellow’s name was Daithan Ruhalter. He had preceded Picard as captain of the Stargazer.
And the other man, the one with the plain, sturdy clothes and the dirt beneath his fingernails? He was a vintner, heir to a long line of vintners. And if he had had his way, his son Jean-Luc would have been a vintner as well.
“They’re firing, sir,” Gerda called out.
The viewscreen filled swiftly with a lurid barrage of phased energy emissions. A moment later the bridge bucked and shuddered with the force of the attack.
“Actually,” said Maurice Picard, “I’ve never approved of this sort of technology. I believe man’s place is on Earth, doing what his ancestors have done for centuries.” He searched for a phrase. “Getting his hands dirty, if you know what I mean.”
“You know,” Ruhalter said judiciously, “I think you’ve got a point there. You can’t rely too much on machines, even in a battle like this one. It’s the human element that wins and loses wars.”
“How so?” Maurice Picard inquired.
“Instinct,” Ruhalter elaborated. “Either you’ve got it or you don’t—and if you don’t, no collection of sensors and shields and phaser banks is going to help you.”
As if to underline the wisdom of his statement, the ship was bludgeoned again with a phaser volley. Holding on to his armrests, Picard felt his teeth rattle with the impact.
“Return fire!” he cried.
“Aye, sir!” came the crisp response.
The Stargazer lit up the sea of gases with a pair of ruby-red phaser beams. But somehow, though the enemy didn’t seem to make any effort to evade them, they missed.
Picard’s teeth ground together. “Torpedoes!” he bellowed.
Again, “Aye, sir!”
Packets of matter and antimatter plunged through swirling currents, hungry to feed on their prey. But they missed as well and were rapidly lost to sight.
The crew of the Stargazer paid for the miss with another round of bone-jarring torment. The deck beneath Picard’s feet jerked and shivered once, twice, and again.
“Fire again!” he roared.
But nothing happened. And when he turned to Vigo, all he saw was an expression of helplessness.
“Phasers and photon torpedoes are off-line,” the weapons officer reported numbly.
“Shields down seventy-five percent!” Gerda snarled.
Picard felt his teeth grate together. “Evasive maneuvers!”
Idun sent them swerving to starboard. Ever so narrowly, they avoided the pirate’s next burst of fury. But without weapons, there was no possibility of their winning this battle.
“Was it a good year?” Ruhalter inquired of his companion.
“It was an exquisite year,” said Maurice Picard. “The grapes were sweet, succulent . . . the best I have grown in a long time.”
“That’s good to hear. I always liked good wines.”
“Ah,” the vintner sighed, glancing at his son, “but it’s not enough to have a promising grape. It’s what one does with it that makes for success . . . or failure.”
He had barely gotten the words out when the enemy found them again. The Stargazer lurched hard to starboard under the force of the worst assault yet.
Without warning, Idun’s control console exploded in a geyser of flame and sparks and the helm officer went flying backward. Even before Picard got to her, he could tell that she was dead.
“That’s what happened to me,” Ruhalter said.
The elder Picard screwed up his face in grim sympathy. “It looks terribly painful.”
“Only if you survive,” Ruhalter noted. “In my case, death came quickly and mercifully.” He stroked the side of his face that had been reduced to blackened ruin. “Good thing I remembered to shave that day. I wouldn’t have wanted to make a lousy-looking corpse.”
He chuckled at his own joke. And after a moment, Maurice Picard chuckled with him. The sound of their laughter provided a bizarre counterpoint to the hissing of plasma and the exclamations of the captain’s bridge officers.
Not the least of which were Picard’s own raw-throated shouts. “Commander