Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [23]
And Riker couldn’t help a few seconds of awe as he gazed at the Bozeman too. Something about old ships …
There was visible damage on the cutter’s hull, and that caught both men’s eyes for a few lingering seconds. Then Bateson turned and came through the ready-room door at Riker’s side.
The ready room was decidedly cooler than the bridge. Captain Picard liked it that way. He said he could think better.
Jean-Luc Picard was pacing in front of his desk, and now came forward with a hand extended to Morgan Bateson. Picard wasn’t a large man, but he commanded a certain attention and had done so for as long as Riker had known him. He was less swashbuckler than magistrate, an old-line sovereign of a synthetic kingdom. Carrying with him little of the bravura of command, Picard instead seemed to treat captaincy as a pastorship, a trust rather than an adventure. Perhaps that was because command hadn’t been Jean-Luc Picard’s driven goal in life. Instead, he had simply risen to it as it came.
As Captain Picard approached them, Will Riker wondered if he himself could ever be so regal, and to take moments like this with such marksmanlike calm.
“Welcome aboard, Captain Bateson,” Picard offered amiably, and indeed Riker thought the tone and posture reminded him of someone greeting the next of kin at a funeral.
“Captain Picard,” Bateson responded, taking Picard’s hand. “This is a Starfleet ship … isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, it is, most certainly.” Picard motioned to the office. “Won’t you sit down?”
“I’d rather not just yet.”
Picard glanced at Riker. “Yes … of course.”
Looking out the wide viewports that graced the ready room for just another moment, Bateson turned and bluntly asked, “Will you please identify yourselves and your vessel now?”
“I am, as I told you, Captain Jean-Luc Picard. This vessel is the United Federation of Planets flagship U.S.S. Enterprise.”
As if he’d already been bracing for some kind of joke, Bateson looked at Picard, then at Riker, then back to the captain. “The Enterprise, Constitution-class NCC 1701, length two-hundred ninety meters, is under command of Captain Spock, currently flagged for Admiral James Kirk, and is at this moment on its way to a bogus border despute in the next sector. We just rendezvoused with the Enterprise less than one hour ago, and this ship … is not that ship.”
“Ah, no,” Picard allowed, “this isn’t that ship. But this is in fact the Enterprise … Galaxy-class, L.O.A. six hundred forty-one meters, crew of one thousand four. Our number is NCC 1701-D.”
Riker held his breath. The captain had been careful to put an inflection on the “D.” Bateson was no idiot. Starfleet captains weren’t. Well, most weren’t.
A, B, C … D. That had to represent a lot of innovation and effort—and a lot of years. It also implied that the starship Bateson knew as the Federation flagship no longer existed, that something had happened, probably something bad.
Bateson didn’t ask the obvious question. He just waited, looking at Picard with those slightly narrowed gray eyes.
Rubbing his knuckles, Picard confirmed, “Yes … all right, I’ll try to explain at least what we know. It’s only been a few minutes since we stabilized our systems. We nearly struck you.”
“I know,” Bateson said. “You blew your loading bay at the last second. Good thing you did, because we were completely stalled.”
“It’s our shuttlebay. Mr. Riker’s idea,” Picard gallantly transferred. “We’d have all been destroyed otherwise. We’re pretty sure of that. You’ve been caught in a temporal causality loop, as near as we can figure it, Captain. We were caught in it also and kept repeating the collision between our two ships. Finally we figured out the survival alternative and put an end to the loop.”
“I’m glad you did. We couldn’t move at all. For some reason our propulsion and guidance both went off line.”
“There’s no reason for that to happen,” Riker interrupted. ldquo;They’re not tied in with each other.”
“I know that,” Bateson answered.
“Of course … sorry, sir.”
Bateson ignored him and turned to