Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [29]
Hope he’s alone in there. Should be, this time of day—
“Good morning, Captain.” Did he sound cheerful enough? Too cheerful?
Jean-Luc Picard only nodded, and squinted at some activity outside the wide windows of the viewing portico, out to the movements of ships and workers in the protected work cavity of Starbase 12.
“How are you today?” Riker asked, vectoring toward the woodpaneled inner wall and the food replicator station. Oh, boy, that sounded like something a nurse says to a sick patient.
The captain was sitting on one of the half-dozen office couches in the comfortable old room, watching some workers on free-float tethers mount a new sensor disk on a scruffy merchant cargo ship. Pausing at the replicator while he waited to see if Picard would answer the silly question, Riker found himself fixated on the cargo ship’s numbers—586490.
“Well enough,” the captain said. “Same as yesterday, and the day before.”
“I’ll get you some tea. Just the way you like it.” Riker snapped out of his relationship with the numbers and turned to the replicator. “Tea, Earl Grey, hot.”
“Sounds funny with you saying it,” Picard remarked as Riker accepted the steaming cup of tea from the receiver port.
“Well, I’ve heard you say it often enough,” Riker said.
“Yes … I never order anything else, do I? Every time it’s ‘tea, Earl Grey, hot.’ Perhaps next time I’ll be wild and ask for ‘hot Grey tea Earl.’ The poor computer’ll have a stroke.”
Feeling as if he were about to step on a mine, Riker dodged. “We’ve all got our favorites, sir.”
“I suppose. Or I could just be stuck in my ways.”
Uh-oh. Quickly taking a seat, Riker tried to figure out some way to get off this train, but he couldn’t think fast enough.
The captain leaned back and blew across the top of his cup. “One of these days I should just walk right up to that replicator and order Kahlua and cream. Or … oh, I don’t know … perhaps a good stiff … iced tea. Wouldn’t that be radical?”
“Captain,” Riker grieved, and gave up trying to angle off what they were both thinking about. “Sir, it’s been five months now. You’ve signed every reassignment request from the general crew, but haven’t you noticed something?”
“For instance?”
“For instance that none of those requests have come from your command staff. Most of us are holding off on reassignment. We’re assuming—”
“Don’t say it.” Picard held up one finger. “I know what you’re all assuming. I don’t know if it’s the thing for me any longer.”
“I hate when you talk like that,” Riker said, deliberately leaving out the “sir.”
“Yes, but those are becoming my clearest thoughts, I’m afraid,” Picard told him right away. “I’m starting to listen to them.”
“Attention all Starbase personnel, residents, and visitors. There will be a special encore showing of A Night to Remember and Tony Feretti and Fred Lewis’ award-winning documentary The Loss and Recovery of the R.M.S. Titanic in the ballroom at eighteen hundred hours tonight. The touring exhibit of artifacts from the Titanic, the Lusitania, and King Henry the Eighth’s warship Mary Rose are currently on display on Decks 4, 5, and 9 of the U.S.S. Bozeman. Remember, the exhibit will only be here two more weeks. Thank you, and welcome aboard.”
Slumping back into the couch cushions, Riker shook his head and moaned aloud. “For pity’s sake … I feel like I’m stroking upwind against a blast furnace!”
Picard cast him a wry and sympathetic grin. “No matter how you try to cheer me up, eh? Leave it to us to have temporary billet at a Starbase hosting artifacts from ships in various conditions of wreck.”
“Of all the times in all the years, did that damned presentation have to be just here, just now?” Riker slapped his knee and shook a fist at the speaker system. “Maybe they should just put us on display!”
“Oh, now, Will,” Picard soothed. “You’re taking this far too personally. You’ve got to let these things subside, so you can have a chance to think clearly.”
“Captain,” Riker complained, “I came down here to cheer you up!”
“I don’t need cheering up.”