Gauntlet

by Michael Jan Friedman

  Jean-Luc Picard looked around his bridge at the devastation he and his officers had endured—the flaming control panels and the clouds of black smoke and the persistent blasts of white plasma—and hoped it had all been worth it.

  He turned to Vigo. “Did you get it—the signal emitter?”

  The Pandrilite shrugged his massive shoulders. “I don’t know, sir. I think . . .” But he couldn’t finish his sentence. All he could do was shrug a second time.

  Picard turned to Gerda’s control console, which had survived the battle to this point. Her radar monitor still showed the movements of the Cochise as a green blip.

  But unless the captain was mistaken, the Cochise wasn’t coming around for another pass at its finally defenseless adversary. In fact, Greenbriar’s ship wasn’t going anywhere at all.

  Picard looked to Gerda for confirmation. Looking up at him, she said, “They’re dead in the water, sir.”

  And there could be only one reason for that. The Stargazer’s phaser assault had disabled the Cochise’s signal emitter. Greenbriar’s ship, though still well shielded and well powered, was completely and utterly blind.

  Instinct, he thought. Either you’ve got it or you don’t.

  The captain nodded in recognition of Gerda’s remark, then turned to Vigo. “Well done, Lieutenant.”

  The weapons officer smiled at him. “Thank you, sir.”

  Picard took in his other officers at a glance, settling on Idun last of all. “Well done, all of you.”

  His helm officer nodded, a glint of satisfaction in her eyes. This was the sort of thing she lived for—she and Gerda both.

  Finally, the captain considered the viewscreen, which had reverted to an image of the gas clouds surrounding them. “Mr. Paxton,” he said, “see if you can raise Captain Greenbriar.”

  In a matter of moments, Greenbriar appeared on the viewscreen. For a man who had just lost a space battle, he didn’t look very disappointed. He seemed as pleasant and easygoing as if he and Picard were standing around the punch bowl at McAteer’s cocktail party.

  “Good shooting,” Greenbriar told him. “My compliments to your weapons officer.”

  Picard didn’t feel inclined to join in the jocularity. “What’s going on here, Captain?”

  The other man frowned, accentuating the lines in his seamed face. “I guess there’s no point in trying to conceal it any longer.”

  But Greenbriar’s tone of voice belied his expression of resignation. It suggested that he was stalling for time, still looking for a way to secure the victory.

  Picard glared at him. He was through playing games, especially the sort that put the welfare of his ship and crew at risk. “The truth, Captain. And I mean now.”

  Greenbriar regarded him for a moment. Then he nodded soberly, appearing to accept the fact that he was out of options.

  “I’d appreciate it if we could speak in private,” he said.

  Picard considered it for a moment. Then he turned to Ben Zoma. “I’ll be in my ready room. You’ve got the bridge.”

  His first officer nodded, though he would no doubt have preferred to hear what Greenbriar had to say. “Aye, sir.”

  Casting a last wary glance at the viewscreen, Picard repaired to his ready room.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  PICARD SAT BACK IN HIS CHAIR and studied the same craggy visage that he had seen on the viewscreen. Except now, it filled the computer screen on his desk. “You must be a little confused,” Greenbriar said.

  “To say the least,” Picard responded. “Try as I might, I cannot imagine why you would attack a Starfleet vessel, unless you have aligned yourself with a pirate who has become the bane of this entire sector. And if you have, that begs yet an even greater question.”

  Greenbriar nodded. “It’s difficult to explain. Maybe it would be better if I let the pirate speak for himself.”

  Picard shrugged. “If that is what it takes.”

  A moment later, Greenbriar’s image was shunted to the left side of the screen, making way for the image of another man on the right. The White Wolf, Picard thought.

  But the pirate wasn’t at all what the captain had expected.

  For one thing, his hair wasn’t white; it wasn’t even gray. And he wasn’t the crafty old veteran he was cracked up to be. The White Wolf was a baby-faced young man, barely out of his twenties if Picard was any judge of such things.

  “Captain,” said the pirate in a soft, cultured voice. “I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you. But under the circumstances . . .”

  Picard frowned. “Captain Greenbriar promised me an explanation. I’m waiting to hear it.”

  The White Wolf nodded. “Of course. My name is Carridine. And contrary to what you may have heard about me, I’m more of an exobiologist than I am a pirate.”

  It sounded familiar. “Emil Carridine?” Picard asked.

  The pirate looked at him. “I see you’ve heard of me.”

  “If I recall correctly, you come from a wealthy family on Earth. Some years back, you embarked on a series of planetary surveys in a previously unexplored part of space—”

  “And was never heard from again,” the White Wolf said. “But I hadn’t disappeared. Not really. I had only assumed a different identity.”

  “So I gather,” Picard told him. “The question is, why?”

  Isn’t it always? Carridine’s expression seemed to say.

  “During one of my routine planetary surveys,” he said, “I found a world I called Daribund. It was ridiculously rich in latinum—a huge prize for anyone with a yen to get rich quick.”

  The White Wolf’s eyes lost their focus as he remembered. “If it had been a barren world, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But Daribund was populated by a pre-sentient species with an extremely fragile niche in the planet’s ecosystem. Any mining enterprise on that world would have doomed that species to extinction.”

  Picard saw the problem. “And you wanted to prevent that.”

  “In the worst way,” Carridine told him.

  “And he couldn’t go to the Federation,” said Greenbriar, “because the planet’s dominant species was a prespaceflight culture.”

  Picard nodded. “The Prime Directive.”

  “So,” Carridine continued, “I bought a ship and put a crew together and took the matter into my own hands.”

  “And defended this world on your own,” Picard concluded.

  “Not that it was easy. I wasn’t Starfleet, so it was difficult to acquire much in the way of firepower. So I took a different tack.”

  Carridine went on to describe his boyhood fascination with Earth’s twentieth-century buccaneers—men like Bluebeard and Jean Lafitte. Inspired by them, he set out to create a situation that would keep unsavory characters from strip-mining Daribund.

  “If I became a pirate,” he said, “if I raided the ships of Federation member worlds, Starfleet was bound to come after me eventually. And if Starfleet was focusing its attention on this part of space, what pirate in his right mind would try to horn in?”

  Picard followed the reasoning. “And as long as real pirates stayed away, Daribund’s pre-sentients would remain safe.”

  It was a clever scheme. And more important, it had worked, up to then. The Stargazer’s presence here was evidence of that.

  Picard regarded Greenbriar. “And just how did you become involved in this enterprise?”

  Greenbriar shrugged. “I caught the White Wolf, just as you did. But as I was about to take him in, he told me the story he’s telling you—and I changed my mind.”

  Picard frowned. “You let him go.”

  “He did more than that,” said Carridine.

  “I became his ally,” Greenbriar told them without remorse. “I became his informant. Whenever Starfleet sent a ship after him, I let him know about it in advance. Until now, that was the extent of my involvement. By making it here, you compelled me to do more.”

  “To attack a colleague,” Picard said.r />
  Greenbriar nodded. “Yes.”

  “Unfortunately,” Carridine said, “I’ve now been apprehended a second time, and I don’t imagine you’ll be as open-minded as Captain Greenbriar was. It seems Daribund is about to lose its defender.”

  He paused, no doubt waiting for his comment—and its implications—to sink in. When he spoke again to the captain, it was as one reasonable man to another.

  “On the other hand, Captain Greenbriar saw the injustice in apprehending the White Wolf. I hope you will see the injustice as well, Captain—and act accordingly.”

  Picard looked at him. “You’re suggesting that I let you go? After all we’ve gone through to apprehend you?”

  “What I’m suggesting,” said Carridine, “is that you follow the impulses that led you to become a Starfleet officer in the first place. No more, no less.”

  Picard frowned. He hated the idea of deceiving his superiors as Greenbriar had. He hated even the suggestion of it. He had taken a vow when he entered Starfleet, and he had every intention of remaining true to it.

  And yet . . .

  It was difficult not to see Carridine’s point. The man was protecting something worthwhile, something no one else was inclined to protect, and harming no one in the process.

  The White Wolf was on the side of the angels, strange as it seemed. And if Picard wanted to be on the side of the angels as well, there was only one choice he could make.

  With a sigh, he tapped his communicator and summoned Ben Zoma. Then he tapped it again and said, “Picard to Simenon.”

  The reply came a moment later. “Simenon here.”

  “I’d like to see you in my ready room,” Picard told him. “You and I have an important matter to discuss.”

  “What’s that?” asked the engineer.

  “In my ready room,” the captain maintained.

  Simenon grumbled. “As you wish.”

  Picard turned to Carridine. “I’m going to arrange a shutdown of the Stargazer’s impulse engines. An accidental shutdown, of course. It will present only a minor inconvenience to my engineering staff, but its timing will be most unfortunate, as it will allow the legendary White Wolf to slip through my fingers.”

  Carridine smiled in relief. “Thank you, Captain.”

  “But there’s a condition,” the captain added. “I want the Federation’s cargo returned. I don’t care how.”

  The White Wolf nodded, only too glad to comply. “Whatever you say. I’ve got no use for it anyway.”

  Greenbriar nodded approvingly. “You’re a good man, Picard. Just as I had heard.”

  Picard took some solace in the knowledge that he had at least one true ally among his fellow captains. Also, it occurred to him, he understood something he only thought he had understood before.

  “People are often not what they seem,” he said, quoting Greenbriar word for word.

  The other captain smiled. “You’ve got a hell of a memory.”

  “Yes,” said Picard. “But this is one day I may want to forget.”

  Idun didn’t know anything about Picard’s conversation with Captain Greenbriar. She didn’t know why he had summoned Ben Zoma and Simenon and then dispatched them again.

  But when Picard finally emerged from his ready room, the helm officer was certain that his orders would involve phasers and boarding parties and the incarceration of all who had committed crimes against the Federation.

  That is, until the captain actually spoke.

  “You know,” he said, “this is not a good situation.”

  She looked at him. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “I was referring to the impulse engines,” Picard told her. “This is a very bad time for them to have shut down.”

  Idun looked at her console, trying to figure out what the captain was talking about. As far as she could tell, the ship’s impulse engines were working perfectly.

  “Sir,” she said, “I don’t see any problem with the—”

  The helm officer stopped in midsentence. Suddenly, all her monitors were flashing, indicating that they had lost impulse power. She turned to Picard again.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “How did you—?”

  “In fact, the timing couldn’t have been much worse,” Picard remarked, his voice now loud enough for everyone on the bridge to hear him. “No doubt the White Wolf will take advantage of this unexpected opportunity to escape us. And without working impulse engines, there’s no possibility of our offering pursuit.”

  Idun didn’t understand. The captain didn’t seem very disappointed, considering how hard they had worked to find the pirate and disable his vessel. Then she realized what he was doing.

  He was letting the White Wolf go.

  “Had another starship tracked us down and joined the fray,” Picard continued, “it might have been a different story. However, we faced the pirate alone.” He looked around at his bridge personnel, eyeing each of them in turn. “Completely alone,” he added for emphasis.

  Idun didn’t know why the captain was doing this. But clearly, it had something to do with what he had learned in his ready room.

  She had been raised by Klingons to be a warrior, and a warrior didn’t allow a defeated enemy to slip through her fingers. Her every instinct cried out against this.

  Yet she remained silent, because it was Captain Picard who had implicitly asked her to do so. Her respect for him went beyond instinct, beyond protocol, beyond her understanding of right and wrong.

  If Picard wanted to allow the enemy to escape, Idun wouldn’t do anything to stand in his way. Nor, she decided, would she include any of this in her helm report.

  Her sister darted a glance at her from her place at navigation. Judging from Gerda’s expression, she felt the same way.

  “It’s too bad,” Lieutenant Paxton said, taking his cue from the captain. “We came so close.”

  “So very close,” Picard sighed.

  “I guess we have no choice but to repair the engines and go home with our tail between our legs,” Vigo said.

  “No choice at all,” the captain agreed.

  He looked around the bridge, waiting for one of his officers to object. No one did.

  Least of all Idun Asmund.

  Obal was taking his turn at the big concave bank of security monitors when Pug Joseph approached him.

  “Mr. Obal,” said the security chief.

  The Binderian turned to him and smiled. “Good morning, sir.”

  “How’s it going?” Joseph asked, though that wasn’t exactly the question he had come to ask.

  “Fine, sir,” said Obal. “I understand the impulse engines are running perfectly again.”

  “Uh . . . yes, I guess they are. I’m told we’ll be leaving Beta Barritus before we know it.”

  Obal shrugged his narrow shoulders. “It’s a pity the White Wolf got away. But at least we managed to recover the stolen cargo.”

  Joseph looked at the Binderian and couldn’t tell if there was any irony in his comments or not.

  “Listen,” the security chief said, feeling the need to change the subject, “I wanted to tell you what a great job you did down there in the shuttlebay. If not for you, we might have had a real tragedy on our hands.”

  Obal smiled. “I was happy to help. But then, isn’t that what a security officer does—provide help in times of crisis?”

  Joseph didn’t have the heart to tell the Binderian that he still didn’t have what it took, or to reprise his advice that Obal’s talents would be better served elsewhere. Not now, after he had made such a hero of himself.

  Unfortunately, there was more to security work than cataloging phasers or securing the shuttlebay. One had to have the respect of others, and Joseph just didn’t see how Obal could earn that respect.

  “Yes,” the chief replied grudgingly. “That’s what a security officer does.”

  Picard smiled when he saw the stars.

  They were long, bright streaks rather than points of brillia
nce, a function of the Stargazer’s faster-than-light velocity. But they were a welcome sight nonetheless.

  “You know,” said Ben Zoma, who was standing at the captain’s side, “I could go a long time without missing Beta Barritus again.”

  Picard nodded in agreement. “A long time.”

  “Sir,” said Gerda, putting a damper on the moment, “sensors are picking up a vessel.”

  Picard turned to her, his eyes narrowing. “What kind of vessel?”

  His navigator consulted her monitors. “It’s a Federation starship—the Antares. Two hundred million kilometers and closing.”

  Normally, Picard would have treated this as good news. Or at the very least, not bad news. But after his experience with the Cochise, he couldn’t help feeling a little gun-shy.

  “Hail them,” he said.

  “Actually,” Paxton told him, “they’re hailing us.”

  Picard nodded. “On screen.”

  The viewer filled with the image of a Starfleet captain—a swarthy man with a neat dark goatee. Picard believed he had seen the fellow at the admiral’s soiree on Starbase 32.

  “This is Captain Vayishra of the Antares,” the man said. “The Grissom and the Reliant will be here within the hour.”

  “I see,” Picard replied.

  Vayishra looked sympathetic, in a vaguely condescending sort of way. “Had trouble getting in, did you?”

  Picard shrugged. “Some.”

  “Don’t take it too hard,” Vayishra told him. “From what I’ve heard, it’s a mess in there.”

  “That it is,” Picard confirmed.

  “When we’re all here,” said Vayishra, “follow our lead. We’ll find the White Wolf no matter what it takes.”

  “Actually,” said Picard, “we already found him.”

  The other captain looked skeptical for a moment. Then he laughed. “Of course you have. You’ve got him in your brig even as we speak.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t,” Picard told him. “However, we do have the cargo he lifted.”

  Vayishra’s brow furrowed. “You’re being facetious, of course.”

  “I’m not,” Picard assured him.

  Vayishra shook his head. “But how did you—?”