THE VALIANT

by Michael Jan Friedman

Picard approached him. “Jomar?”

  At the sound of his voice, the Kelvan turned. His pale eyes acknowledged the second officer without emotion. “Commander.”

  “I came down to see how you were doing,” said Picard. “Mr. Williamson informs me that your work is proceeding more slowly than expected.”

  Jomar frowned ever so slightly. “It proceeds as it proceeds” was all the answer he seemed inclined to give. Then he returned his attention to his pale-green screen.

  “Is there a problem?” asked the second officer. “Something I can help you with, perhaps?”

  The Kelvan didn’t look away from his work this time. “There is no problem,” he stated.

  Picard was far from satisfied with the response, but he nodded. “Carry on, then,” he told Jomar.

  He considered the Kelvan a moment longer as Jomar went about his labors. Something was wrong, it seemed to the second officer. Every now and then, a Magnian would frown in the alien’s direction.

  He decided to speak with Williamson again. With luck, the colonist could shed some light on the matter.

  He had raised his hand to tap his combadge when someone said, “Commander?” The voice sounded awfully familiar.

  Then he realized it wasn’t a voice at all. It was just a word in his head, planted telepathically.

  Turning, Picard saw Serenity Santana come through the control chamber’s only doorway.

  The colonist was as beautiful as when he first saw her. Her lips were full of color again, her eyes deep and searching, her long, black hair loosely cascading over one shoulder.

  “Ms. Santana,” Picard replied.

  She feigned disapproval. “People generally use their first names here. Please . . . call me Serenity.”

  Remembering what she had done to the Stargazer, he kept his response to a single word. “Serenity.”

  Santana’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she looked into his. It seemed to Picard that the woman was skimming the surface of his mind. “You’re surprised to see me.”

  “I am,” he admitted freely. “Apparently, your people’s medical techniques are even more formidable than I was led to believe.”

  “To an outsider,” she said, “I can see how they would appear that way.” She paused. “I owe you an apology, don’t I?”

  The second officer shook his head from side to side. “Mr. Williamson has made your apologies for you. He spoke of the pressures the Nuyyad placed on you and Daniels.”

  The woman looked relieved. “Then you see I had no choice? I had to do as the Nuyyad demanded.”

  “So it would seem,” he responded flatly, keeping his thoughts to himself as much as possible.

  Santana studied him a little longer. Then she smiled wistfully. “You know,” she said, “I thought we had the makings of an intriguing friendship. I hope what happened doesn’t make that impossible.”

  Picard wanted very much to tell her that their friendship could still develop unimpeded. However, he couldn’t allow himself the luxury. He held the fate of an entire crew in his hands, and he wasn’t about to jeopardize it by giving rein to his emotions.

  No matter how strong they might be.

  Besides, Picard thought, Santana had caused the deaths of Captain Ruhalter and several other crewmen, and injured a great many more. It wasn’t easy to forget that.

  “I will try to keep an open mind,” he told her, his tone as devoid of emotion as Jomar’s.

  The woman sighed. “Under the circumstances, I suppose that’s the best answer I can hope to get.”

  Picard didn’t know what to say to that. But as it turned out, he didn’t have to say anything at all—because at that moment, an argument was breaking out on the other side of the shield control device.

  “Are you out of your mind?” someone hollered.

  “Insulting me will not mask your ineptitude,” came the response.

  Picard couldn’t identify the first voice right off the bat, but he could certainly identify the second one. Quite clearly, it was Jomar, and his tone was an edgy one.

  Circumnavigating the control device, the second officer saw what the dispute was about. The Kelvan was tapping away at one of the colonists’ keypads, erasing work that had already been done.

  “If you cannot follow directions properly,” Jomar added, “do not participate in this activity.”

  The Magnian in question, a dark-haired man who had been introduced to Picard as Armor Brentano, looked around angrily at his fellow technicians. “Did you see what he did to my screen? He’s insane!”

  “No,” said Jomar, looking up from the keypad. “I am meticulous. Perhaps it is you who are insane.”

  Brentano took a couple of steps toward the Kelvan. “Am I the one who just wrecked half a day’s work?”

  “Perhaps it was half a day’s work,” Jomar remarked coldly, “but it was not half a day’s progress.”

  Picard had heard enough. “Calm down,” he told the combatants, moving forward with the intention of getting between them.

  Santana reinforced the commander’s sentiments with her own. “Cut it out, both of you. We’re not going to beat the Nuyyad by squabbling.”

  But Brentano and the Kelvan didn’t seem to hear them—or if they did, they weren’t inclined to take the advice to heart. The colonist planted a finger in Jomar’s chest.

  “You think you know everything,” he shouted, “don’t you? You slimy, tentacled son of a—”

  Brentano never completed his invective.

  One moment, he was standing nose-to-nose with the Kelvan, poking his forefinger into Jomar’s sternum. The next, the colonist seemed to disappear, completely and utterly.

  Picard couldn’t believe his eyes—and he wasn’t the only one shocked by what he had seen.

  “What did you do to him?” demanded Santana.

  The Kelvan turned to her with his customary lack of passion. “I did this,” he replied calmly. And he pointed to a small, coarse-looking object sitting on the ground.

  Picard took a closer look at the thing. It had four triangular faces, making it a perfect tetrahedron.

  “What the blazes are you talking about?” snapped another of the Magnians. “Where’s Brentano?”

  “He is here,” Jomar told her, unperturbed by the woman’s display of emotion. “However, he has assumed a less disagreeable form.”

  The colonist still didn’t understand. But Picard, to his horror, was beginning to. Kneeling, he picked up the tetrahedron and turned it over carefully in his hands.

  “What he means,” the commander said, “is that this is Brentano.” He looked up at the Kelvan. “At least, it was.”

  The colonist screwed up her features in disbelief. “What are you talking about?” she asked Picard.

  He didn’t blame her for reacting that way. A hundred years earlier, Captain Kirk had to have doubted his own sanity when he discovered that his ship had been littered with tetrahedron-shaped blocks . . . and was told that they were distillations of his crew.

  Just as the block in his hands, Picard surmised, was a distillation of Armor Brentano.

  He put the tetrahedron back on the ground, then looked up at Jomar. “Change him back,” he said.

  The Kelvan’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t answer.

  “Change him back.”

  “He was insolent,” Jomar remarked.

  “Nonetheless,” Picard insisted, his tone unrelenting.

  The Kelvan reached for one of the studs on his belt. A moment later, as if by magic, Brentano was standing in front of them again, looking a trifle dazed but otherwise unharmed.

  “What happened . . .?” he asked.

  “That’s what I would like to know,” said Santana. She glared at Jomar with unconcealed animosity.

  “A misunderstanding,” Picard assured her. “Nothing more. Nor is it likely to happen again.” He glanced at Jomar. “Isn’t that right?”

  The Kelvan shrugged. “It will not happen again,” he agreed.

  “It
would be best,” the second officer advised, “if we forgot about this and resumed our work.”

  Taking her cue from him, Santana managed to submerge her anger. “Commander Picard is right,” she told the other Magnians. “Let’s just get back to what we were doing.”

  Having done her part to smoothe things over, she helped Brentano back to his seat. A moment later, Jomar and the other colonists returned to their workstations as well.

  Nonetheless, the damage had been done. The second officer could see that with crystal clarity. None of the colonists would be comfortable working with Jomar after what they had just seen.

  Nor could Picard blame them.

  Unfortunately, the Kelvan was still the foremost authority on vidrion generation. Despite everything, he would have to remain in the control chamber for the foreseeable future.

  But he wouldn’t remain the Stargazer’s only representative there. The second officer resolved to dispatch one of his other engineers as well—perhaps Simenon himself, since he and the Kelvan seemed to have a good rapport.

  As for Santana . . . she seemed inclined to remain alongside Brentano for the moment, helping him see what it was about his work that had produced the Kelvan’s objection. A good idea, Picard reflected.

  He had barely completed the thought when Santana glanced at him. I’m glad you think so, she replied.

  The second officer acknowledged her remark with a nod. Then he tapped his communicator and asked Vandermeer to beam him up.

  He would still speak with Williamson, to at least let the man know what had taken place. Despite Picard’s concerns about the Magnians, this alliance was still important to the Stargazer.

  And he didn’t want Jomar’s penchant for insensitivity to wreck it.

  Chapter 13

  Picard watched Shield Williamson’s reaction from across a large and ornate wooden desk.

  “With luck,” the man said, “what the Kelvan did was an isolated incident and we’ll see no repeats of it.”

  “That is my hope as well,” the Starfleet officer told him.

  Williamson sat back in his chair. “Actually, Commander, I’m glad you’re here. My engineers have pointed something out to me.”

  “Oh?” said Picard.

  “They see an opportunity to not only repair your equipment, but to modify it—much as your people are modifying our shield technology to make use of the Kelvan’s vidrion particles.”

  “Which systems are we talking about?” asked the second officer.

  “Sensors and tractors,” said Williamson. “However, I should tell you . . . for these modifications to be of any utility, you’ll require Magnian operators.” He paused. “And from what I gather, you’re already uncomfortable with our presence aboard your ship.”

  Picard was surprised by the remark, but he absorbed it without flinching. “Am I to assume you’ve been reading our thoughts?”

  The colonist smiled. “We haven’t had to. It’s apparent in the way your people look at us, the way they follow us wherever we go.”

  “As I instructed them,” the second officer admitted.

  “Because you don’t trust us?”

  Picard sighed. “Because I cannot afford to.”

  “An honest answer,” Williamson observed.

  “To an honest question,” Picard replied.

  They both fell silent for a moment.

  “Consider this,” Williamson said at last. “We’re operating on faith as much as you are. Once we help you repair your warp drive and your weapons systems, what’s to keep you from taking off for Federation space. . . and leaving us to defend ourselves against the Nuyyad?”

  The second officer frowned. “Which could be why you want to place some of your people on the Stargazer. . . to keep us from reneging on our bargain when the attack comes.”

  The Magnian’s eyes narrowed. “Touché.”

  Picard shrugged. “My apologies. It seemed to be the obvious response.”

  This time, the room seemed to echo with their silence.

  “Any agreement,” said Williamson, “is only as strong as the intentions of the parties involved in it. If there’s some way I can convince you we mean only good . . .”

  Unfortunately, Picard couldn’t think of one.

  “Mind you,” he said, “I want to trust you. My instincts tell me to trust you. I just don’t have the luxury of trusting you.”

  And his trust had been watered down by recent events, though he didn’t feel compelled to mention that.

  Williamson smiled a little sadly. “Does that mean that you’re turning down our offer?”

  The second officer couldn’t deny the appeal of sensor and tractor enhancements, considering they didn’t know how many Nuyyad vessels they might eventually be facing—or how powerful they might be.

  He took a moment to weigh the benefits against the risks—and made his decision. “In the interest of defending Magnia as well as the Stargazer,” he said, “I’ll accept your operators.”

  Williamson nodded. “You’ve made the right choice, Commander.”

  I certainly hope so, thought Picard.

  Lieutenant Vigo sat with his back against the curvature of a Jefferies tube and watched another piece of conduit casing go sailing past him.

  A couple of colonists were waiting to receive the component farther down the line. Even from a distance, the acting weapons chief could see the concentration on their faces—a concentration that had been there since earlier that morning, when the Stargazer beamed up a supply of replacement parts from the planet’s surface.

  “How’s it going?” asked Lieutenant Iulus, a curly-haired security officer, as he made his way toward Vigo from a perpendicular tube.

  “Rather well, it seems,” said the Pandrilite, watching the Magnians snatch the piece of casing out of the air and fit it into the conduit they were building. “These people have hauled more parts in the last hour than you and I could have lugged in a day.”

  Iulus nodded. “Amazing.”

  “Very much so,” said Vigo. “And yet, separately, none of them can move one of these parts even an inch.”

  The security officer looked at him. “So how do they do it?”

  “By working together,” the weapons officer replied. “When they pool their efforts, they raise their effectiveness in leaps and bounds. At least, that’s how it was explained to me.”

  “You know what?” said Iulus. “They can do it anyway they want—as long as they’re finished before the Nuyyad get here.”

  Vigo grunted softly. That was one way of looking at the situation.

  Unfortunately, Picard had insisted that every colonist on the Stargazer have an escort. Clearly, the commander didn’t want the Magnians to do their jobs any way they wanted.

  It seemed like a shift from Picard’s earlier stance, when he had been willing to place more trust in the colonists. But then, Vigo mused, even commanding officers were allowed to change their minds.

  “Lieutenant?” called one of the colonists from his place at the end of the tube. “Could I see you for a moment?”

  It was the first time any of the Magnians had asked for Vigo’s help. He wondered what the man wanted.

  “I’ll see you later,” he told Iulus.

  “Sure,” said the security officer.

  Then the Pandrilite moved his bulk through the tube, wishing fervently that he could have glided through it like one of the casing components instead.

  Jean-Luc Picard entered his quarters, sought out his bed and sank into it gratefully. It had been a long day.

  All in all, the work had gone well—both on the Stargazer and on the planet’s surface. Simenon had reported that the warp drive was almost functional again, and the colonists were on the verge of bringing their shield generators back on-line.

  And having had a chance to look at Williamson’s proposal regarding the Stargazer’s sensor and tractor systems, it appealed to him even more. If it meant having a few colonists on board during the impending
battle, he could live with it.

  After all, he had gotten this far taking chances. With luck, the same approach would get his ship home.

  The only fly in the ointment was the incident with Jomar. However, there hadn’t been any reprise of it, nor had Picard been forced to deal with any other instances of hostility.

  He closed his eyes, knowing the work on his ship would continue unabated throughout the night. By morning, the second officer hoped, there would be even better things to report.

  Abruptly, as if fate were intent on being cruel to him, he heard a beeping sound. Envisioning an emergency, he swung his legs out of bed and returned to his anteroom.

  “Come,” he said.

  The doors to his quarters slid apart, revealing Lieutenant Vigo. The Pandrilite entered the room a little tentatively.

  “What is it?” Picard asked wearily.

  “I have some news for you, sir.” Vigo looked apologetic. “News you are not going to like.”

  Picard ran his fingers through his hair. “Go ahead.”

  “Remember the shuttle that exploded prematurely? When we were trying to liberate the colony?”

  The second officer nodded. “Of course.”

  “At the time,” said the Pandrilite, “it appeared to be an accident. But just a little while ago, one of the Magnian engineers came across some evidence that indicates otherwise.”

  “You’re saying it was sabotage?” Picard asked.

  “Judge for yourself, sir,” Vigo told him.

  Crossing to the second officer’s workstation, he brought up a red and blue diagram of a secondary command junction. “This is one of the switching points from my bridge console to the remote control node. During the battle, all my signals to the shuttles passed through it.”

  “All right,” said Picard.

  “Take a close look,” Vigo advised. “What do you see?”

  The second officer did as the Pandrilite suggested. After a moment, he realized what Vigo was talking about. The junction had been modified—purposely, it appeared.

  A second data line had been spliced in, allowing the command junction to simultaneously accommodate two completely separate sets of signals. And since the first signal would go through unhindered, the change wouldn’t show up on a routine diagnostic.