Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [36]
His friend darted to one of the aft consoles and worked like a demon to transfer helm control. In the meantime, the pirate dealt them one savage blow after another, inflicting hull breaches and casualties too numerous to report.
“I knew he wouldn’t be any good at this,” said Maurice Picard. The lines in his face had deepened with disapproval. “He should have stayed at home, as I advised him.”
“Doesn’t seem that he learned much from me either,” Ruhalter remarked. “Pity, isn’t it?”
“The helm!” Picard cried helplessly, perspiration collecting in the small of his back. “Damn it, Gilaad—”
Finally Ben Zoma yelled, “Got it!” and brought the Stargazer about. But it was too late. Picard could see that. As he watched, spellbound, the enemy fired at point-blank range.
The volley filled the viewscreen with crimson light, turning everything and everyone on the bridge blood-red. And when it hit, it seemed to plunge everything into darkness.
Some time later—a second, or was it an hour?—the captain realized that he was lying on the deck. Raising his head, he looked around, but there was nothing but sparks and black smoke and the silhouettes of what had been his officers’ control consoles.
Then they came walking out of the darkness and the sizzling flashes of light. Not his bridge officers, but they—the two who had no business being there.
They came to stand over him, both of them. And they had the same look on their faces—a look of heartfelt disappointment.
“He should have listened,” observed Maurice Picard.
Ruhalter nodded. “I’ll say.”
“He had so much promise.”
“Tons of it. He could’ve been a great captain.”
“A great man.”
“It was too soon,” Ruhalter observed, a spurt of sparks illuminating the nightmare side of his face. “He was too damned young.”
The elder Picard’s eyes filled with pain, just as they had the day his son left Labarre to attend the Academy. He nodded in agreement. “Too young indeed.”
The captain wanted to answer, but he couldn’t. The words stuck in his throat, choking him like thick, sooty smoke, forcing him to gasp for air, for life—
Then he realized that he wasn’t on the bridge at all. He was sitting up in his bed, breathing hard as if he had exerted himself, his skin covered with a sheen of sour sweat. It seemed to him that he could hear his room echoing as if he had cried out when he woke, though he couldn’t retrieve any of the words.
If there had even been words.
A dream, Picard thought, reassuring himself. All of it, a dream. But it had seemed so real while he was dreaming it.
So hideously real . . .
Chapter Eleven
NORMALLY CARTER GREYHORSE MINDED his own business. But every so often—as in the case at hand—he was compelled by duty to diverge from that policy.
“I’m fine,” Picard said once the doors to his ready room had closed, giving him and the doctor some privacy.
“You don’t look fine,” Greyhorse told him. “You look like you’ve had something big and insistent running through your brain. Something with heavy spiked boots.”
“Am I that transparent, Doctor?”
“I’ve seen viewports that are less so.”
The captain frowned. Then he walked over to his observation port and stared at it. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Nightmares?” the doctor suggested.
Picard turned to look at him, an echo of pain and confusion in his eyes. “A nightmare. Just one.”
“It must have been a good one.”
The captain’s chuckle had a distinct lack of merriment in it. “It was. We had found the White Wolf and engaged him in battle. But we didn’t fare very well.”
“We lost him?”
“We lost everything,” Picard told him.
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Greyhorse had a feeling there was more to it, but he didn’t force the issue. He just said, “Obviously, you’re concerned about how we’ll do when we find the White Wolf—particularly since we’re operating with a new captain, a new first officer, and a new second officer.”
“And that’s not cause for worry?” Picard asked.
The doctor shrugged. “I’m not qualified to answer that question. What I am qualified to tell