But he was big. And strong. Gerda seemed to know how to tap the power he possessed but had never made use of.
“Kave’ragh!” he bellowed, trying his best to duplicate his teacher’s effort.
She spoiled his attack with an open-handed blow to the side of his wrist. It sent his fist wide of her face, where it couldn’t do any harm. But at least he didn’t stumble, as he had in their first few sessions. Maintaining his balance, he pulled back and reloaded.
“Kave’ragh!” he snapped again, determined to get past Gerda’s defenses.
This time she hit the inside of his wrist and redirected the force of his attack upward, leaving the right side of his body woefully unguarded. Before he could move to cover the deficiency, Gerda drove her knuckles into his ribs.
Hard.
The pain made him recoil and cry out. Seeing this, Gerda shot him a look of disdain.
“Next time,” she told him, “you’ll do better.”
He would too. And not because she had nearly cracked a rib with her counterattack. He would do better because he bitterly hated the idea of disappointing her.
The first time they had fought, in one of the Stargazer’s corridors, he had surprised her by getting in a lucky punch, and she had gazed at him with admiration in her eyes. It was to resurrect that moment that he endured this kind of punishment.
He didn’t do it in order to become an expert in Klingon martial arts—he had no aspirations in that regard. He came to the gym three times a week and suffered contusions and bone bruises for one reason only: to force Gerda to see him as an equal. To see him as a warrior.
And eventually, if he was very diligent and very fortunate, to see him as a lover.
With this in mind, Greyhorse again assumed the basic position. Knees bent, he reminded himself. One hand forward, one hand back. Knuckles extended, so.
More important, he focused his mind. He saw himself driving his fist into his opponent’s face, once, twice, and again, so quickly that his blows couldn’t be parried. And he ignored the fact that it was Gerda’s face he was pounding.
“Kave’ragh!” growled the doctor, a man who had never growled at anything in his life.
This time Greyhorse’s attack was more effective. Gerda was unable to knock it off-line. In fact, it was only by moving her head at the last moment that she avoided injury.
He was grateful that she had. He didn’t want to hurt her. He only wanted to prove to her that he could.
It was an irony he found difficult to accept—that he could only hope to win Gerda’s love by demonstrating an ability to maim her. But then, the woman had been raised in a culture that made aggression a virtue. She had, to say the least, an unusual point of view.
Again, Greyhorse roared, “Kave’ragh!” and moved to strike her. Again, Gerda was unable to deflect his blow. And again, she managed to dodge anyway.
Getting closer, he told himself. She knew it, too. He could see it in her gaze, hard and implacable, demanding everything of him and giving away nothing.
Not even hope.
Yet Gerda knew how much he wanted her. She had to. He had blurted it out that day in the corridor.
She hadn’t acknowledged it since, of course, and Greyhorse hadn’t brought it up again. All they did was show up at their appointed time in the gym, teacher and pupil, master and enslaved.
“Kave’ragh!” he cried out.
Then he put everything into one last punch—too much, as it turned out, because he leaned too far forward and Gerda took painful advantage of the fact.
She didn’t just elude Greyhorse’s attack. She side-kicked him in the belly, knocking the wind out of him and doubling him over. Then she hit him in the back of his head with the point of her elbow, driving him to his knees.
Stunned, gasping for breath and dripping sweat, he remained on all fours for what seemed like a long time. Finally, he found the strength to drag himself to his feet.
Gerda was waiting for him with her arms folded across her chest, a lock of yellow hair dangling and a thin sheen of perspiration on her face. He had expected to find disapproval in her expression, maybe even disgust at the clumsiness he had exhibited.
But what he saw was a hint of the look she had given him in the corridor. A hint of admiration.
It made Greyhorse forget how Gerda had bludgeoned him, though his throat still burned and his ribs still throbbed and there was a distinctly metallic taste of blood in his mouth. In fact, it made him eager for more.
“Tomorrow?” she asked.
He nodded, inviting waves of vertigo even with that modest gesture. “I’ll be here.”
Gerda tilted her head slightly, as if to appraise him better. She remained that way for a moment, piercing his soul with her eyes. Then she turned her back on him, pulled a towel off the rack on the wall, and left the gym.
Greyhorse watched her go. She moved with animal grace, each muscle working in perfect harmony with all the others. When the doors hissed closed behind her, he felt as if he had lost a part of himself.
How he loved her.
Chief Weapons Officer Vigo looked at his friend Charlie Kochman, contemplating the experience they had just shared. Then he broke out in a broad, toothy grin.
“You like it?” Kochman asked.
“I like it a great deal,” Vigo told him.
“Thought you would.”
Vigo considered the wooden sharash’di game board that sat between them, with its skillfully carved terrain and its clever simulations of various natural features. It was really quite a work of art—the kind the ship’s lounge seldom saw.
But the game itself . . . it was like nothing he had ever played before, either on his homeworld of Pandril or anywhere else. And he couldn’t wait to play it again.
“And you say you picked this up on Beta Nopterix?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. From an Yridian. He wanted to sell me the game, so he taught me how to play. Interesting, eh?”
Vigo nodded. “Quite interesting.”
Kochman, who was one of the ship’s navigators, smiled back at him. “And guess what, buddy? It’s yours.”
Vigo didn’t understand. “Mine?”
“That’s right. It’s a birthday gift.”
The weapons officer held up his large blue hands. “I can’t accept it. We don’t celebrate our birth anniversaries on Pandril.”
“But we celebrate them on Earth,” Kochman reminded him. “And as my friend, I can’t imagine that you’d deprive me of the opportunity to celebrate yours.”
When he put it that way, it was hard for Vigo to turn him down. “I don’t know what to say,” he said.
“Say thank you,” his friend advised.
Vigo looked down at the board, then flashed another expression of delight. “Thank you, Charlie. Thank you very much.”
Idun Asmund, the Stargazer’s primary helm officer, was almost finished with her dinner when she saw Pug Joseph approaching her with a tray of food.
As Joseph got closer, steam from his meal wafting in front of him, he seemed to notice that Idun’s plate was already empty. “Aw, geez,” the baby-faced, sandy-haired security officer said, making no effort to conceal his disappointment.
She looked up at him. “Lieutenant?”
“It’s all right,” he told her stoically. “I guess we can talk some other time.”
There wasn’t anything that demanded Idun’s attention at the moment. “What was it you wished to talk about?”
Joseph set his tray down and pulled out a chair opposite the helm officer’s. Then he looked around to make sure no one in the mess hall was listening too closely.
“Actually,” he said, leaning forward, “I wanted to talk to you about your voice.”
Idun wasn’t sure what she had expected the security officer to ask, but that wasn’t it. “My voice?”
Joseph nodded enthusiastically. “You’ve got a way of making people listen when you speak. Your sister has it too. I want them to listen to me that way.�
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“In my experience,” Idun said, “people do listen when you speak. You’re widely liked, Mr. Joseph.”
“Liked,” he conceded. “But not respected. And a security chief has to be respected.”
Security chief? Now Idun was really confused.
She knew that Lieutenant Ang was leaving the Stargazer to accept a second officer’s post on the Sutherland. However, she hadn’t heard that Joseph would be succeeding him as security chief.
And now that she knew, she thought it a rash choice. Although Joseph was one of the more senior officers in the security section, he had never exhibited any particular affinity for command.
What’s more, he seemed to be aware of his deficit—but to be fair, he was trying to address it, if in an unusual way.
“So you’ve been named our new security chief,” she concluded.
Joseph blushed and shook his head. “Not permanently, mind you. It’s only a temporary assignment until the captain can find a replacement for Lieutenant Ang.”
Idun felt better about that. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Joseph or trust him implicitly, or that she would have hesitated for a moment to give him her back in a firefight.
It was only his ability to lead that the helm officer questioned. Nothing else.
“I see,” she said.
“Anyway,” he plunged on, “about your voice . . . do you have any tricks you might be able to share with me? Or . . . I don’t know, suggestions?”
Idun thought about it. “I don’t think so,” she said at last. “I don’t use any tricks. I just speak.”
Again, Joseph seemed disappointed. “Right. I just thought you might . . .” He shrugged. “Never mind. Thanks anyway.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. But she wished that she could have been of more help.
Phigus Simenon was a Gnalish, a lizardlike being from a world called Gnala, who stood as high as the shoulders of most human males. He was also the Stargazer’s chief engineering officer.
Usually, Simenon could be found in the engineering section, scrabbling over the controls of a sleek, dark console. At the moment, however, he was in his quarters, studying the image of an old friend and former colleague on his computer monitor.
“Hans Werber,” he observed with his customary sibilance.
The man who had been the Stargazer’s weapons chief nodded. “Good to see you again, Phigus.”
“Where are you?” Simenon asked.
Werber smiled beneath his walrus mustache, his blue eyes dancing. “New Zealand. Not a bad place, actually. If you’ve got to be in a penal colony, you might as well be in this one.”
“And they give you the run of the place?”
Werber shrugged. “I’m wearing an electronic anklet. It’s not as if I can go very far.”
“I see,” said Simenon.
“How’s Picard?”
“Well enough. He’s at a meeting at the moment. Captains and second officers from all over the sector.”
“Really. That’s unusual.”
Simenon nodded. “Very.”
Werber swatted suddenly at his balding head, then inspected his palm and brushed his hands together. “Damned insects. You forget how annoying they can be when you’re on a starship.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“You know,” said Werber, “I was wrong about Picard. I had him pegged as the vindictive type. But you know what he did?”
“What?” Simenon asked.
“He came to my cell at Starfleet Command and told me he’d put in a word on my behalf with the judge advocate general. He said that I put our differences aside and helped him.”
“You mean after you entered his room in the dead of night and tried to stun him with a phaser beam.”
Werber chuckled at the irony, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah. After. But the thing is Picard forgave me. He let bygones be bygones. Which, I’ll bet, is why I’m doing short time here in New Zealand instead of life on some high-security asteroid.”
“You’re probably right,” Simenon told him.
“Anyway,” Werber said, “I thought I’d let you know where I am. You know, so we can talk from time to time. No friend like an old friend, I always say.”
“I’d be happy to correspond with you,” the Gnalish replied. “More than happy. That is, if I still considered myself your friend.”
The man’s brows met over the bridge of his nose. “What?”
“When you betrayed Picard, you betrayed me too,” Simenon said. “I went charging into his office, accusing him of incarcerating you for no good reason. Then he told me about your little mutiny.”
“But Picard’s forgiven me for that,” Werber reminded him.
“He may have,” Simenon snapped, “but I haven’t. Good-bye, Hans. Enjoy New Zealand.”
And with that, he cut the comm link.
Old friend indeed, the Gnalish thought feeling a single deep pang of remorse. Then, glad that it was almost time for his shift, he made his way to engineering.
Chapter Three
AS JEAN-LUC PICARD WALKED into the dimly lit briefing room, he had an entirely different attitude than the one with which he had gone to bed the night before. Having slept on the problem, he had woken up certain that there was only one course of action open to him. Despite the disdain he saw in the faces of his fellow captains, despite their obvious disapproval, he would do his best to earn their respect.
He would comport himself with dignity. He would do what was asked of him quickly and efficiently, deploying every resource at his disposal. In short, he would be the best captain he could be.
But if he came up short in that regard, he wouldn’t fret over the outcome or let it distract him. He would simply accept the situation and move on.
He had a job to do, and a rather important job at that. If it bothered people that he had been chosen to do it, it was their problem—not his.
Scanning the room, Picard found himself searching the shadows for a friendly face. Captain Greenbriar’s was the only one that might have fit that description, but Greenbriar didn’t seem to have arrived yet.
Looks like I’m on my own, Picard thought.
He didn’t even have Ben Zoma for company. His friend had transported down to the base forty-five minutes earlier for a separate first officers’ briefing.
Picking out the nearest unoccupied chair, Picard deposited himself in it. He found himself shoulder to shoulder with a rail-thin Vulcan, who turned to glance at him with narrowed eyes.
Picard smiled as cordially as he could. “Good morning.”
The Vulcan didn’t say anything in reply. He just inclined his head in the smallest gesture possible, then returned his attention to the unmanned podium at the front of the room.
Somehow, Picard reflected, being snubbed by a Vulcan didn’t seem as objectionable as being snubbed by someone else. Maybe it was because they were so reserved to begin with.
Someday, he told himself, I would like to get to know a Vulcan better. Get inside his head, as it were.
Putting the thought aside, he looked around some more. The stream of captains passing through the open doorway was rapidly increasing in volume. No doubt, they were nearing the time when the briefing was scheduled to begin.
Greenbriar was among the last to walk in. He took a seat on the other side of the room, between an Andorian and a heavy-tusked Vobilite.
A moment later, a stocky man in an admiral’s uniform blew into the room, stopped behind the podium, and turned on a light that illuminated his face. He had lively eyes, a ruddy complexion, and a receding shock of pale-yellow hair.
“Good to see you all,” he said in a deep, resonant voice that required no microphone. “For those of you who haven’t run into me yet, I’m Admiral McAteer. I considered attending the cocktail party last night, but I decided you’d have a better time without the boss looking over your shoulders.”
A ripple of laughter made its way through the gathering.
Picard thought it strange that McAteer hadn’t attended his own event. On the other hand, he was relieved to know he wasn’t the only one who had been unable to find the man.
McAteer appeared to sober a bit. “I know you’re not used to meeting this way. Until now, you’ve all been pretty much on your own, operating independently except in the rare instance where two or three of you might need to coordinate your efforts.”
The rare instance indeed, Picard mused.
“I’m afraid,” said the admiral, “that such an approach is no longer viable. The galaxy is too big and our responsibilities too great for any of you to continue operating in a vacuum—no pun intended.”
Again, there was a ripple of laughter.
“From now on,” McAteer told them, “we’re going to get together like this periodically. That way, we can approach our workload in an organized and logical manner.”
Picard sampled his colleagues’ reactions. The Vulcan beside him was nodding his head in quiet agreement, but many of the other captains seemed less than enthusiastic.
Ruhalter, Picard’s predecessor, would have come down firmly in the latter group. Picard had no doubt of that. Ruhalter was a man who had preferred to respond instinctively, avoiding meetings and planning sessions as much as possible.
If the same topic was being discussed in the first officers’ briefing, Ben Zoma would be resisting it as well. Picard had no doubt of that either.
Nor could he help agreeing with his predecessor and his exec.
Captains had always been chosen for their ability to act on their own. It was the strength of the fleet, indeed one of the principles on which it had been built, and it didn’t seem wise to inhibit it.
On the other hand, McAteer was the man Starfleet had put in charge of this sector. If he thought it was time for something new, Picard would at least try to keep an open mind about it.
The admiral looked out over his audience. “I’ve made up a list of missions that we need to tackle. The first one—and the most critical—is the capture of the pirate known as the White Wolf.”
McAteer’s announcement fell like a stone into the midst of the assembled captains. In the ripples of silence that followed, Picard saw his colleagues exchanging glances.
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