by Brad
“Understood and granted.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Lieutenant Korzeniowski said, “They’ve broken off communication, sir.”
“Sir!” said Newell. “You can’t believe them. No one can trust a Romulan.”
“Don’t be too sure that I do trust them, Lieutenant. Maintain a full scan. Move us back to within five hundred kilometers of that moon, but let it seem as though we’re drifting. Mr. Newell, target the moon with a particle torpedo.”
“Target—the moon, sir?” asked the incredulous Newell.
“That was my order. Be ready to fire instantly when I give the word. Mr. Chen, I will want warp one for precisely one second, at my command.”
Lieutenant Korzeniowski had the Romulan craft on her display screen. It was a compact ship of war, with great black splotches on its external plates, the marks of pulsed-phase lasers. The ship was making a slow yawing revolution, as if about to leave planetary orbit on a trajectory for Galactic north. Beyond it the planet rotated peacefully.
“Sir!” yelled Newell. “A second ship has just come from behind the planet. It’s heading straight for us at high impulse speed!”
“The first ship has put shields up. They’re turning to fire!” shouted Chen.
“Steady,” said Jean-Luc. “Steady.” He was ready for a tremendous gamble. For him, this was no longer a game.
Now he was playing for keeps.
CHAPTER
8
“Steady,” Jean-Luc ordered, his eyes narrowing as the second Romulan vessel hurtled directly toward them.
“Steady.”
“The first ship’s locked on to us!” shouted Newell.
“They’re about to open fire!”
“Mr. Newell, fire aft torpedo at the moon! Mr. Chen, I want warp one…” Jean-Luc drew the word out. There! A fiery, twinkling projectile left the nearer Romulan! “Now!” shouted Jean-Luc.
A moment’s disorientation, and then the ship dropped out of warp a quarter of a million kilometers from where it had been. “Turn us 180 degrees,” Jean-Luc commanded. “Bring the ship to bear on the moon.”
From here, a light-second away, the shrunken moon was just a bright, irregular blotch against the darkness of space. Suddenly it flared a hundred times brighter than it had shone before. “Our torpedo,” said Newell. “But it won’t destroy a whole moon.”
“It isn’t meant to,” Jean-Luc said quietly. “Mr. Chen, take us in at full impulse power. Mr. Newell, prepare to target the first Romulan we encounter.”
The ship surged forward. The glowing debris of the explosion swelled in the forward windows. A bright dart-like object, one of the Romulans, appeared low and to the left. Chen changed course to bring them right aft of the alien ship. “Fire as soon as we’re within range, Mr. Newell. Full group of particle torpedoes.”
“Their rear shields are down!” Lieutenant Korzeniowski yelled in surprise. “They’ve thrown all power to the forward shields. They’re wide open!”
“Torpedoes away!” shouted Newell at almost the same moment. A heartbeat later four bright sparks appeared, converging on the delta-strutted form of the Romulan.
“They’re raising their shields!” Lieutenant Korzeniowski’s voice had gone high-pitched in her excitement. “Too late! One torpedo is through—”
An explosion flared from the Romulan vessel, and then immediately three more erupted. “Their drive is overloading,” reported Lieutenant Korzeniowski.
“Veer away,” ordered Jean-Luc.
An instant later the Romulan ship became a second sun, an expanding globe of radiation and hot gas. “Target the second ship.”
“It’s turning to face us,” Korzeniowski reported.
“Torpedoes away,” said Newell.
“They can’t raise full shields. They must really have taken severe damage.” Korzeniowski stared intently at her display screen. “There go the torpedoes. First impacted on the shields. There’s the second—third’s through! And the fourth!”
The Romulan vessel rocked in space. The enemy had not managed to get off a shot. The ship began to tumble in its orbit, sparks and jets of gas spewing from its forward section. “Sir, they’re hailing us,” said Korzeniowski, her voice now trembling with reaction.
Jean-Luc realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out slowly and tried to make his voice deep and authoritative: “Put them on, Lieutenant.”
The primitive universal translator’s voice was toneless, but the words bore their own pain: “We are completely disabled, Earth Captain. Congratulations on your ruse.”
“How many do you have aboard?” Jean-Luc asked.
“We will take you all on as prisoners of war.”
“I think not, Captain. Romulans do not capitulate. We who are about to die salute you.”
“Sir,” said Korzeniowski, “they’re deliberately overloading their fusion core.”
“Back us away,” Jean-Luc ordered. “Full impulse astern.” He swayed as the order was carried out. His gaze remained locked on the forward window. The tumbling, pitching Romulan craft suddenly went the way of its sister ship, detonating with a silent, dazzling blast of deadly energy.
“We won,” Lieutenant Chen said, his voice pleased and puzzled at the same time. “A survey ship against two Romulan war birds, and we won!”
“One of the Romulans was already heavily damaged,” Jean-Luc reminded him.
“Still,” a new voice said, “it was a great victory.”
The Ponce de Leon’s command bridge faded away, and Jean-Luc was standing in the holodeck. He was not alone, however. A tall, thin man with a strong nose and penetrating brown eyes had joined him. “Congratulations,” the newcomer said. He wore civilian clothing, and he did not introduce himself. “Your solution was unorthodox, but it worked.”
“Thank you,” Jean-Luc said, feeling suddenly self-conscious, as if an adult had caught him playing some childish game. “I reasoned that the detonation of our torpedo on the surface of the moon would read very much like the explosion of a small ship. The enemy sensors would pick up metal vapors, carbon, everything that a destroyed starship might produce. We were so close to the moon that both Romulans momentarily believed they had destroyed our ship. Also, the Romulans lacked warp-drive technology. I gambled that our sudden complete disappearance when we went to warp one would give them the illusion that our ship had blown up, and evidently it did. That presented us with the edge we needed.”
“I see. And how do you feel about your victory?”
“I am happy,” Jean-Luc said. “Historically, the Ponce de Leon was lost, so I am pleased to have saved it in this recreated encounter.”
“No,” the stranger said. “You are happy on the surface, but underneath you are troubled.”
Jean-Luc’s eyes widened. “You are a Betazoid,” he said, understanding.
“My name is Trevalion,” the stranger said. “Yes, I am a Betazoid. Usually I serve as a counselor at Starfleet Academy, but for this week I am on detached duty here.”
Jean-Luc swallowed. Betazoids were all at least partially telepathic. All could read the emotions of others, and some could even understand other people’s thoughts. No one could conceal anything from a Betazoid for long.
“Tell me,” Trevalion said, “why do you feel uneasy about your victory?”
Jean-Luc bit his lip. The he blurted, “Because I destroyed two vessels, each with a full crew. I acted in the heat of the moment, but now I wonder if it had to be that way. Perhaps I could have reached a compromise somehow. Perhaps I could have saved a great many lives.”
“You saved the lives of your own crew,” Trevalion pointed out. “Something the original commander of the Ponce de Leon could not do. And the others were only Romulans.”
Anger seethed inside Jean-Luc. “No one is ‘only’ anything,” he said. “Life is life. If we can’t give it back, we shouldn’t take it—at least, not lightly.”
“You are sincere.” It was not a question,
but a statement of fact. “Congratulations, Mr. Picard. You scored extremely well on the leadership and decision portions of the command test. I must give you top marks on the judgment scale, too.” The tall man placed a fatherly hand on Jean-Luc’s shoulder. “Now we will go to my office and talk. Some of your emotions are difficult for you to understand. You will need to come to terms with them.”
Reaction set in. That afternoon, following a long session with Trevalion, Jean-Luc was limp with fatigue. He dined with the other candidates, noting that only twelve now remained, with him the thirteenth, the unlucky number, the odd man out. Earlier in the testing period, meals had been a time of teasing and joking. Now the remaining few ate in grim silence. With a shock Jean-Luc realized that he was the only surviving member of his original test group of fifteen. All the others had washed out at some stage of the tests. He was closer to Starfleet Academy than he had ever been in his life.
And tomorrow he had to face the dread psych test. Three of the survivors had already taken it, but from their brief, unhappy comments, the test had been different for each one. Jean-Luc dimly remembered an ancient Earth novel in which the protagonist was sent to face “the worst thing in the world.” The worst thing, as it turned out, was whatever the victim feared most, and so it was different for everyone. Jean-Luc had tried for days to decide what he feared most, but without success. He left dinner with the intention of going straight to his room and falling into a dead sleep for twelve hours.
The dormitory halls were silent and empty. Jean-Luc, reeling with weariness, approached his door. It sensed his presence and opened automatically for him. The room was dark, the windows blanking the sunset. “Clear the windows,” Jean-Luc ordered, tugging his tunic over his head.
He pulled the garment off and froze. Sitting on his bed, glaring at him, was Maurice Picard.
For half a minute father and son stared at each other. Then Maurice said, “So it is true. I was speaking to a group of recreational farmers in California. One happened to be associated with Starfleet Academy, and he wished me well on my son’s application.”
Jean-Luc dropped his tunic. “And so you flew straight back to France,” he said.
“Of course. And from here I’m going straight back to LaBarre, and you are coming with me.”
Jean-Luc pulled a T-shirt over his head. “No, Father,” he said. “I have only one test left—”
“You gave your word,” Maurice reminded him. “Does that mean nothing to you? I agreed to let you try—once and once only. I thought I made it absolutely clear that—”
“Father,” Jean-Luc said, “you don’t understand. I’m not cut out to be a winegrower. Robert is, but—”
“Don’t tell me about my own sons!” Maurice surged up from the bed, his expression furious. “Robert is a good man, a hard worker, but you—you are the genius of the family! You are the one who could make Picard Vineyards a name known throughout the solar system!”
“You’ve done that already!” Jean-Luc yelled back. “What else is the Prix du Soleil but a symbol of your fame?”
“It has nothing to do with fame,” Maurice said, his voice rising. “Fame is simply a measure of how well you do your job, the job that you were born to do, the one that your grandfather was born to do, that I—”
“Father,” Jean-Luc interrupted, “I’m not you! Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? You feel a love for the land deeper than anything else. That’s the way I feel about Starfleet. Father, I’m not here because getting into Starfleet Academy is something I want to do. It’s something I have to do.”
“Nonsense! Jean-Luc, why do you hate me so?”
Jean-Luc felt the blood hot in his face. “I don’t hate you, Father. I love you.”
“You have an odd way of showing it.” Maurice rose and came over to his son. He put an arm around Jean-Luc’s shoulder. In a coaxing voice he said, “Son, let’s forget about all this. You tried once, and you failed. That should tell you something. You will never fail in the vineyard. You have me to teach you, Robert to help you, hundreds of years of tradition behind you. A man should be rooted in his own earth, like a good strong vine, not rattling around in the galaxy. Come home with me.”
Jean-Luc pulled away. “I’m not going back, Father,” he said, fighting to control his frustration and anger. “I have one remaining test, and if I pass, I’m going to Starfleet Academy.”
“And if you fail, you won’t come home!” snapped Maurice.
“What?” Jean-Luc stared at him. “Are you kicking me out?”
“I’m washing my hands of you! If you don’t come with me now, then you’re no son of mine. I won’t have a liar and a traitor at my table.”
Jean-Luc began, “I’ve never lied to you—”
“What is all this but a lie?” roared Maurice, sweeping his hand to indicate the testing center, Starfleet Academy, everything. “You didn’t even ask my permission! That is the same as a lie. You knew what I wanted, and you deliberately disobeyed. That is treachery. I warn you, Jean-Luc: If you don’t come with me this minute, you need never come back at all.”
Jean-Luc stood frozen as his father walked to the door. It slipped open, and Maurice stood in the doorway, his face bright red with anger. “Come now, and I’ll forget everything. Stay, and you are turning your back on home forever.” .
Deliberately, Jean-Luc turned away. Behind him he heard the door slide shut.
He was still exhausted, but he no longer felt sleepy.
He wondered if he would ever be able to sleep again.
CHAPTER
9
Somehow Jean-Luc fell into a troubled doze just before dawn. Somehow he slept right through his personal alarm. He woke only when the dormitory speakers blared out the candidates’ last warning: “Attention, candidates. You are due at the testing center in fifteen minutes.”
Jean-Luc leaped from his bed, dizzy from having only two hours of sleep. He showered and dressed in record time and ran to the testing center on the double, arriving at the last minute and at the end of the line. The others looked as tired as Jean-Luc felt. He was hungry, but there had been no time for breakfast. The candidates stood as Commander Luttrell entered.
She murmured, “As you were.” After all had sunk into their seats again, she said, “Well, candidates, this will be the crucial day for you. As you know, this center will be able to certify only one cadet for Starfleet Academy. You have all done exceptionally well. If you wash out at this stage, I want you to know you have nothing to be ashamed of. Here are the test stations for today.” She held up a data padd and read off twelve names, twelve test rooms.
She did not call Jean-Luc’s name.
“That’s all,” she said. “To your test stations, candidates. And good luck to you.”
Everyone rose, and the twelve other candidates hurried out, some going to command testing, some to engineering, others to various different sites. Jean-Luc stood uncertainly beside his desk. “Ah—Commander Luttrell,” he said in a quiet but anxious voice. “What about me?”
“Ah, yes, candidate Picard.” Commander Luttrell gave him a brief, sympathetic smile. “You are to report to Counselor Trevalion’s office in one hour.” She turned to leave.
“Excuse me, Commander,” Jean-Luc said, and she stopped. He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to be rude, but why am I seeing Counselor Trevalion? We had a long talk yesterday after the command test.”
Commander Luttrell raised an eyebrow. “This isn’t about the command test, candidate Picard. I’m sure the counselor will make everything clear to you.” When he started to speak again, she cut him off sharply: “One hour, Mr. Picard. Understood?”
“Yes,” he said, still feeling bewildered.
The hour gave Jean-Luc time for breakfast, but he now had little appetite. He had a small cup of hot cocoa and nibbled on a croissant. His father’s harsh words kept going through Jean-Luc’s mind: “I’m washing my hands of you.” Did Maurice really mean that? He was an emotional man, and som
etimes he overstated his real intentions. But what if his father had been serious? What if Jean-Luc could never return to the vineyard again? What was he to do then?
On the one hand, Jean-Luc had little to worry about. With his grades and school record, any college or university would accept him. But then to think of never seeing his mother or father again, or Robert—it was more than he could bear. Inside his tunic the Saint Christopher’s medal dangled on a thin chain he wore around his neck. The cool metal against his chest reminded Jean-Luc of his brother’s grudging good wishes. What a pity it would be if Jean-Luc somehow failed to get into Starfleet Academy and still could not return home! And what would his mother say? Yvette Picard could normally calm her husband, but Jean-Luc had never seen Maurice as furious as he had been last night.
With a sigh Jean-Luc drank the last cool dregs of his cocoa, sweet and bitter at the same time, and stared at the ruin of his croissant. He had crumbled the flaky pastry into bits. Some of the crumbs clung to his tunic sleeve. Jean-Luc frowned and dusted them off. It wouldn’t do to report to Counselor Trevalion in a messy uniform. And he had only—he checked the time—only forty long minutes in which to wonder and worry.
In the next few minutes Jean-Luc began to think that of all the difficult things he had had to do at the testing center, waiting was the hardest. He mentally reviewed everything he had done over the past four days, the tests, the off-duty times, everything. Nothing seemed to justify his being called to the counselor’s office.
Then he began to wonder if the counselor was in charge of the psych test. That might be it—except that other candidates had already been to the psych test in the north wing of the test site. The counselor’s office was in the central administrative section. At last, when he still had ten minutes to go, Jean-Luc left the empty commissary and headed for Trevalion’s office. It was down the hall from Commander Luttrell’s office, and its anteroom had a corner window overlooking a pond and a formal flower garden. The counselor’s assistant, a blond young man not much older than Jean-Luc, invited him to have a seat, but Jean-Luc preferred to stand and gaze down at the pond, twenty feet below. Goldfish glided through it, sailing as smoothly as a starship navigated the spaces between the stars. He envied them.