Gauntlet

by Michael Jan Friedman

  “It will all be in my report. Picard out.”

  As Vayishra’s perplexed expression vanished from the screen, giving way to the field of streaming stars, Ben Zoma moved to the captain’s side. “That was more fun than you deserve,” he said.

  “Is it?” Picard responded. “I am the only captain who’s ever cornered the White Wolf.”

  “Also the only one who’s ever let him go.”

  Picard glanced at his first officer. “You would have done the same thing in my place.”

  Ben Zoma smiled. “Probably.”

  “Which makes us . . . what?” the captain wondered. “Soft touches?”

  His friend considered the question for a moment. “I prefer to think of us as men who can tell where orders end and justice begins.”

  “Very poetic,” Picard said appreciatively. “But what kind of captain ignores his orders?”

  “In this case?” Ben Zoma said. He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “The best kind.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  AS OBAL WORKED OUT with a set of weights in the ship’s gymnasium, he reflected on how happy he was. He had pleased Lieutenant Joseph with his work in the shuttlebay. And if Lieutenant Joseph was pleased, Obal was pleased. In fact, he was smiling to himself when he heard a hiss and saw the doors to the gym slide apart.

  They revealed someone in exercise togs. Someone tall and muscular. Someone obviously human.

  Caber, he thought.

  The ensign didn’t notice the Binderian right away. He was too intent on something, too wrapped up in his own thoughts. In fact, he was halfway to the parallel bars when he seemed to realize that there was someone else in the room.

  Caber turned to see who it was. When he caught sight of Obal, a grin spread across his face. A cruel grin, if the Binderian was any judge of such things.

  The human stood there for a second, staring across the room. Then, like a predator who has caught the scent of his prey, he started in Obal’s direction.

  The Binderian wasn’t surprised. Caber had taken advantage of every opportunity to ridicule and belittle him. Why would he miss out on this one?

  Obal eased his weights to the ground and sighed. He wasn’t looking forward to the abuse that was sure to follow. He wasn’t eager to be humiliated again. However, he had tolerated his treatment to this point for the sake of decorum—and, for the sake of decorum, he would continue to do so.

  His superiors had more important things to do than mediate petty differences between crewmen. Obal was determined not to be a burden to them. He would endure whatever he had to for as long as he had to.

  And eventually, Caber’s hostility would wane. At least, that was the Binderian’s plan.

  But as the human approached him, the curl in his lip seemed to undercut Obal’s expectations. “Imagine finding you here,” he spat.

  The Binderian didn’t say anything at all. He just stood there, stoic and uncomplaining.

  “Nothing to say?” Caber laughed. It was a short, ugly sound without any humor in it. “Funny, you seemed to have plenty to say when we were in security.”

  Seeing he hadn’t gotten a reaction, the human bent down and poked a rigid forefinger into Obal’s bony chest.

  “Where the hell do you get off telling me what to do?” he demanded through clenched teeth. “Where does a squirt like you get the gall to lord it over someone like me?”

  The Binderian’s chest hurt where he’d been poked, but he managed to remain silent.

  It only made Caber that much angrier. “You don’t even have the guts to stand up for yourself. You think you deserve to give orders to people who do?”

  Again he poked Obal in the chest. This time, it was all the Binderian could do to keep from crying out.

  “Why don’t you find yourself another ship?” Caber demanded, his saliva striking Obal in the face. “One where they like taking orders from skinny little cowards?”

  Another poke, stabbing deep into the Binderian’s flesh. His eyes watered from the pain, but he kept it to himself.

  “You hear me?” Caber snapped, his voice echoing, his eyes mere inches from Obal’s. “You get your scrawny butt off this ship or I’ll make you wish you had!”

  As the gym doors slid open, Nikolas caught sight of Caber. He was about to offer an excuse for his lateness when he realized that his friend wasn’t alone.

  Obal was with him. And it looked as if Caber were trying to ram his forefinger right through the Binderian’s anatomy.

  “You hear me?” Caber snarled, either oblivious to Nikolas’s presence or purposely ignoring it.

  “Hey, Joe!” Nikolas snapped. He loped across the gym to intervene before the situation could deteriorate any further. “Come on, leave the poor guy alone!”

  Caber didn’t respond. Instead, he poked Obal in his scrawny chest again and said, “Get lost—and I mean now!”

  Nikolas felt a spurt of anger. Obviously, his roommate had let his feelings about the Binderian run amok. Grabbing Caber’s arm, he spun him around.

  “You can’t do that,” Nikolas told him, meeting his friend’s red-rimmed gaze with equal intensity. “He’s a crewman on this ship, just like you and—”

  Before he could finish, Caber’s fist came flying at him. Nikolas couldn’t believe it. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back, his jaw feeling as if it had been broken in a dozen places.

  Caber came to stand over him, the angle accentuating the difference in their sizes. He pointed a thick, trembling finger at Nikolas and growled, “Stay out of this!”

  “I can’t,” Nikolas insisted, his words slurred by the pain and stiffness in his jaw. He began to get up, hoping he could still keep Obal from harm.

  But Caber had other ideas. As Nikolas got his feet underneath him, the other man launched a kick at his friend’s face. Nikolas was too surprised by the unrestrained viciousness of the attack to defend himself. All he had time to do was turn his face away.

  Caber’s kick wound up smashing Nikolas in the side of the head with the fury of a phaser blast, putting him on his back again. For a moment, the ensign was too dazed to move. Then, his ear a fiery agony, he rolled over on his belly in an attempt to get up and stop the other man.

  But it seemed that Caber was done with him for the moment. He was going after Obal again, his finger pointed at the helpless Binderian in an unmistakable promise of violence.

  Nikolas groped for his combadge, found it, and tapped it. “Security to the gym,” he mumbled through his pain, his voice sounding strange and distant, as if it were someone else’s.

  Then he thrust himself up onto all fours. It would take security a few minutes to get there, he told himself. In that time, Caber could inflict on Obal what he had inflicted on Nikolas.

  Or worse.

  Staggering to his feet, he saw Caber close with Obal. Too late, he thought. Too late.

  Caber was going to take out the rest of his anger on the Binderian. And as fragile as Obal looked, there was no guarantee he would survive the beating.

  But as Caber reached for Obal’s neck, something unexpected happened: the Binderian flung up one of his skinny arms and deflected the human’s attempt to grab him. Then, turning sideways, he lashed out awkwardly with one of his feet and speared Caber in the knee, eliciting a deep-throated cry of pain.

  As Caber leaned over to grasp his injured joint, Obal struck again. He drove the heel of his hand into the ensign’s forehead, straightening him up and causing him to stagger backward a couple of steps.

  Pressing his advantage, the Binderian rushed forward and, with blinding quickness, bounded feet first into Caber’s chest. The impact slammed the human into the bulkhead behind him, snapping his head back and forcing a groan out of him.

  It was then that Nikolas realized that the doors to the gym were open and that Pug Joseph and a couple of his security officers were already across the threshold, their mouths hanging open as they watched Obal in action.

  Caber, meanwhile, was no lo
nger a threat. He slid down the bulkhead like a bag of assorted and unrelated bones, his eyes closed, a trickle of blood visible in the corner of his mouth.

  Nikolas wondered if he had lost consciousness and dreamed it all. He was still wondering when Obal scurried to his side and put his spindly arm around him.

  “Are you all right?” the Binderian wheezed.

  Nikolas nodded. “Fine,” he wheezed.

  By that time, Joseph had joined them. The other security officers were attending to Caber.

  “What just happened?” the security chief asked Obal.

  Looking apologetic, the Binderian shrugged his narrow, rounded shoulders. “I regret to inform you that Mr. Caber and I have had disagreements in the past. However—”

  “They weren’t disagreements,” Nikolas interjected. “Caber didn’t like him. He bullied him.”

  Joseph frowned at him. “I’d appreciate it if you would let Ensign Obal speak for himself.”

  Nikolas controlled himself. “Aye, sir.”

  The security chief turned to the Binderian again. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  Obal sighed. “As I said, we have had disagreements. I ignored them for the sake of decorum.” He glanced at Nikolas. “However, Ensign Nikolas chose this occasion to come to my aid, and was injured for his trouble. On Binderia, we call someone who comes to our aid a kellis dagh. It is the height of cowardice on my world to let an assault on a kellis dagh go unavenged.”

  Nikolas was still stunned from the beating he had taken, but he had enough of his faculties about him to understand what Obal was saying. He couldn’t abandon someone who had defended him, no matter what repercussions might have followed.

  Might yet follow, Nikolas amended inwardly.

  After all, Caber was an admiral’s son with a spotless record. If anyone was going to get the benefit of the doubt, it would be him. But Nikolas and the Binderian had the truth on their side.

  Surely, the ensign thought, that has to count for something.

  Joseph nodded. “I’ll be sure to include that in my report.”

  Obal turned to Nikolas. “Come. I’ll help you get to sickbay.”

  Smiling through his pain, the ensign thanked him.

  “You’re welcome,” said Obal, smiling back.

  Nikolas didn’t think the little guy would be able to help him much, considering the difference in their weights. But after what Obal had done for him, the ensign certainly wasn’t going to turn him down.

  With the help of Joseph and his new friend, Nikolas got to his feet and began the arduous trip to sickbay.

  Picard was going over repair reports in his ready room when he heard a familiar chime. “Come,” he said.

  It was Valderrama. As always, she looked a little tentative as she entered the room.

  “Please,” the captain told her. “Sit down.”

  The science officer took the seat opposite his and smiled warmly. “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Nothing at the moment,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you a question, if that’s all right.”

  She shrugged. “Of course, sir.”

  Picard leaned forward. “Tell me, Lieutenant, how did you get the idea to use radar as a replacement for our sensor devices?”

  Valderrama shrugged. “I’m not sure, sir. I guess you could say it was an inspiration.”

  The captain wished she had given him a more concrete response. “What would you say if I told you that Ensign Jiterica claims otherwise? That she says she had the inspiration first?”

  The science officer reddened. “I don’t understand.”

  Picard frowned. “A little while ago, Ensign Jiterica ran into Commander Ben Zoma and asked if her radar idea had proven useful. Commander Ben Zoma told her that, to the best of his knowledge, it was your radar idea.”

  “Which it was, sir.”

  “Nonetheless,” the captain continued, “Ensign Jiterica insisted that she had come up with it. She insisted that she had given it to you, trusted you with it. Nor did she understand why you were trying to take credit for it.”

  The science officer shook her head. “That’s not the way it happened, sir. I hate to say it, but Jiterica is lying.”

  “Normally,” Picard said, “I’d be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. However, Jiterica’s personal logs, which are time-coded, corroborated her story. The ensign had the idea first and gave it to you, her superior. And you claimed it for yourself.”

  Valderrama didn’t try to defend herself this time. She just stood there, looking at him.

  The captain frowned. “Can you enlighten me as to why you would do something like that?”

  Valderrama looked away. It took her a few seconds to get a reply out, and when she did it was husky with remorse.

  “I didn’t think you would keep me on unless I did something spectacular,” she said. “All I did was grasp at the first straw presented to me.”

  Picard took a deep breath. “I can tolerate a great many things from my crew,” he told Valderrama. “However, a lack of ethics isn’t one of them. I would advise you to repair to your quarters and begin packing your things.”

  The woman’s brow creased down the middle.

  “If I were you,” the captain went on, “I would resign my commission rather than face charges. But either way, I can assure you that you’ll be leaving the Stargazer.”

  Valderrama didn’t object to his decision. She just turned and left his ready room.

  As Picard watched the doors slide closed behind her, he couldn’t help thinking that he had witnessed a tragedy. He couldn’t absolve Valderrama of her guilt. Clearly, she had brought her troubles on herself.

  But that didn’t make the outcome any less tragic.

  The captain had begun dictating a commendation of Jiterica into his log when he heard the sound of chimes again. Valderrama? he wondered.

  “Come,” he said.

  When the doors parted, he saw that it wasn’t Valderrama after all. It was Commander Wu.

  “Yes?” Picard said.

  The second officer stepped into the room and spoke without preamble. “Sir, it’s come to my attention that you’re operating as commanding officer of this vessel in clear violation of Starleet regulations.”

  “Indeed,” the captain responded. “And if I may ask, precisely which regulations am I violating?”

  She told him. As it turned out, there were a good deal more of them than he would have guessed, ranging from insufficient expertise in weapons systems to a lack of certain inoculations.

  “I promised Commander Ben Zoma that I wouldn’t hold any of my subordinates to regulations. But I believe that, as you’re the captain, you at least should be held to a stricter standard.”

  Picard felt himself stiffen at the rebuke. Nonetheless, he said, “I appreciate your pointing that out, Commander. I’ll take it under advisement.”

  Wu nodded. “Thank you, sir.” And she turned to go.

  “Commander?” he said, stopping her in her tracks.

  She faced him again, “Captain?”

  No doubt she expected him to comment on her overzealousness. He surprised her. “You handled yourself well while we were hunting the White Wolf.”

  Wu smiled. “It pleases me to hear that, sir.”

  He smiled back. “Dismissed.”

  Picard waited until she had left the room and the titanium doors had closed behind her. Then he contacted his first officer via the ship’s intercom system.

  Apparently, he still had one more problem to take care of.

  Wu didn’t understand. She said so, her voice echoing throughout sickbay.

  Greyhorse shrugged. “There’s no question about it. You’re due for a physical.”

  She frowned. “But you already gave me a physical.”

  “That was when you first came onboard.”

  “It wasn’t that long ago,” she pointed out.

  “Long enough,” Greyhorse told her. “Lie down, please.”
And he indicated the nearest biobed.

  Wu got up on the bed and lay down. Then she watched the doctor scan the bio monitors.

  “You know,” she said, “I have reports to file. I hope this won’t take long.”

  “It shouldn’t,” he told her. Suddenly, his brow creased.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  Greyhorse shrugged. “Nothing serious.” But he continued to regard the monitors.

  “Don’t be mysterious,” Wu told him. “If there’s something I need to know about—”

  “It’s your blood pressure,” he said, looking up at her. “It’s a little high.”

  “How high?”

  The doctor told her. Indeed it was a little high. But just a little—hardly worth discussing.

  And now that Wu thought about it, she had an explanation. “I had black bean soup for lunch. It was very salty.”

  “That might be the culprit,” Greyhorse allowed.

  The second officer swung her legs around and sat up.

  “And everything else is in order?”

  He nodded. “Very much so.”

  “Good,” said Wu, slipping off the table. “Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to my duties.”

  She was halfway to the exit when Greyhorse spoke up again. “Actually, Commander, I can’t allow that.”

  Wu turned and looked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I can’t allow you to return to your duties,” he said. “Not with excessively high blood pressure.”

  “But we agreed that it’s from the black bean soup.”

  “We agreed that it might be. The only way to know for certain is to test you again later this evening.”

  “But in the meantime, you’re telling me I can’t resume my duties as second officer?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Wu scowled. “This is ridiculous. You’re splitting hairs.”

  “It’s a regulation,” Greyhorse maintained.

  “But you don’t need to take it quite so literally, Doctor. There’s no way I’m unfit for—”

  She was halfway through her declaration when she realized what she was saying. And a moment later, she realized why she was saying it.