Tales from the Captain's Table

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  I’d been presented with choices, of course, first whether or not to go to Hana’s aid when Rosenzweig’s message had arrived, and second, whether or not to return to Magellan and the Enterprise after just a week there, or to stay and care for Hana a bit longer. In both cases, I’d somehow concluded that the right thing to do would be to help Hana, my reasoning no doubt based on my fundamentally unfulfilled desire for a strong, happy family.

  The truth was that I hadn’t ever had much of a family life. Until I was seven years old, I lived exclusively with my mother, not even meeting my father until after she died. I’d met none of my mother’s relatives; if she’d even had any, she never spoke of them, deftly avoiding any questions I’d ever raised. Once I went to live with my father, I found a similar circumstance, although I did eventually meet my father’s parents and aunt.

  My resentment fueled by my recollections, I swung the scythe furiously, downing the plants and sending some of them flying several meters away. Chilled when I’d first come out of the cabin, my body became overheated, my skin wet with perspiration. I wanted to cry out in frustration. Didn’t I deserve a real family? I asked myself.

  But I had no family, not really, and yet there I was, leaving behind, at least for a time, the life I loved in order to meet familial responsibilities. But why should I feel obligated, I wondered, to somebody I hardly knew, I didn’t like, and who obviously didn’t like me? I was paying the price for being Hana’s granddaughter, and yet I’d never experienced any benefits from that relationship.

  After half an hour, spent from my exertions in the fields, I stopped. I lay the scythe down and put my hands on my knees, pausing to catch my breath, which came in great, gasping gulps. Once my respiration had calmed, I headed toward the barn, where I intended to retrieve some baskets in which I could then collect the crops I’d chopped down. But as I neared the barn, I thought of Hana on the floor beside her bed, and my concern rose for her once more. I switched direction and went back to the cabin.

  When I walked inside, I saw immediately that both Hana’s bedroom door and the back door stood open. I crossed to the far wall, verifying as I passed Hana’s bedroom that she was not there. I peered outside, but didn’t see her, and so I waited for a few minutes, until the door to the outhouse began to open. I quickly ducked back inside, not wanting Hana to know that I’d been watching for her.

  A few seconds later, I stepped through the door. Hana was there on the path to the outhouse, her head down, shuffling toward the cabin. I noticed that she still hadn’t changed out of her nightclothes.

  “Hana,” I said, choosing simply to ignore what had happened earlier. “I’m going to make breakfast for us now.” The day had already slipped into the afternoon, but neither one of us had yet eaten.

  Hana stopped and looked up.

  I waved, and then not waiting for a response, I went back inside and started to prepare our meal.

  That night, I dreamed of family. But not mine.

  On the mission to infiltrate the renegade base, I’d brought the shuttle down hard into the middle of the rain forest. I’d let us fall from the sky, as the captain had ordered, our engine power shut down. Fortunately, although the transporter had been knocked out by the second weapons strike, the two systems I needed for my plan had remained intact.

  As the shuttle plummeted toward the jungle canopy, I utilized the emergency thrusters to decelerate at the last moment, engaging them in the few seconds before we hit. The green expanse of the rain-forest cover braked us even more, and once we’d penetrated the top level of vegetation, I overcharged the antigravs. We didn’t exactly soft-land—part of the frame twisted upon impact, and fractured in a couple of places—but the shuttle did come down relatively intact.

  Everybody survived the landing with cuts and sprains, scrapes and contusions. The three officers from the first shuttle had been more seriously hurt when their craft was hit. All three of them had suffered burns and broken bones, and the engineer had also had the forward portion of her foot severed.

  While two of us broke out the medical equipment from the emergency survival cache and treated the injuries of the crew, two others used the equipment we’d stowed before the mission and erected a sensor veil about the shuttle. Above us, the jungle canopy showed almost no signs of our violent passage through it, most of the leaves and other vegetation more or less snapping back into place behind us. It would take some time for the renegades to locate us, and with any luck, they would in the interim believe that everybody aboard the shuttle had died in the crash.

  We spent the rest of the day and night in the shuttle, nursing ourselves back to health. Four of us alternated taking watch and tending to the three burn victims. It took twenty-four hours to complete the treatments for their blistering flesh.

  Our planned reconnaissance and incursion into the renegade base, predicated on having a pair of shuttlecraft, had been completely undermined. We hypothesized that the collision and subsequent crash of the first shuttle, along with our use of the second shuttle’s sensors and transporter, had betrayed our presence to the renegades. The only advantage we’d gained from the fiasco was learning the location of their base—assuming that the weapons battery that had fired on us was positioned on or near their compound.

  That was enough for the captain.

  Rather than escape once we’d repaired the shuttle—among other damage, the hull had cracked in two places, the phaser coils had melted, and the antigrav system had burned out—the captain decided to endeavor to fulfill our mission. While the engineer would remain behind to render the shuttle operational, which would likely take several days, the rest of us would divide up into teams of two and try to make our way on foot to the renegade base; the shuttle’s transporter was beyond repair. Once one of the teams had retrieved the target intelligence, they would signal the others, and the engineer would bring the shuttle to recover the teams and depart. A plan fraught with risks, to be sure, but considering the importance of the mission’s goal, one the captain decided that we should attempt.

  In the middle of our second day on the planet, the three teams outfitted ourselves with phasers, communicators, tricorders, med-kits, portable beacons, individual sensor veils, heavy broad-bladed knives, bedrolls, and water. Less than fifty klicks away, the base would have been within a long day’s journey had our routes to it been unimpeded. Given the dense jungle growth, though, we estimated that it would take us three to four days to reach our destination. We could have utilized our phasers to cut through the vegetation, but while the sensor veils would prevent the renegades from scanning our bodies, they would not adequately mask the output of energy weapons.

  I was teamed with Mike. He and I would travel on a route that would arc west through the rain forest, while another team would arc east. The captain’s team would take the central route, and therefore would likely arrive first.

  Mike and I alternated taking point. Hacking through the vines, trees, bushes, and other plants was backbreaking work, particularly in the thick, humid atmosphere of the jungle. Before long, my arms ached with the efforts of forcing my long, broad blade through the underbrush, and my clothing—a formfitting jumpsuit that allowed great freedom of movement—was soaked through.

  Before beginning our trek, I worried about Mike. He was a youthful man, with soft features and light hair, younger in appearance than in actuality. Although he and I were the same age, he looked probably ten years my junior. Part of that might have been the result of his small stature. But even though his size made him appear fragile, he had little trouble navigating through the dense growth of the forest, and I sometimes had to push myself to keep up with him.

  Throughout our journey, we stopped regularly for water and rest, pacing ourselves so that we would make it to the renegade base with enough energy, if necessary, to carry out our mission. We didn’t speak as we hiked along, our focus on achieving our goal too intense.

  On our first night in the rain forest, we both tried to sleep at the same
time. We sealed our bedrolls around us, and set up a tricorder to passively scan our surroundings within a ten-meter radius. At first, though, we were awakened every few minutes to deal with various creatures as they came near: reptiles, huge insects and arachnids, several small primates, and on one occasion, a lithe, six-legged beast with twelve-centimeter fangs. Fortunately, all ended up either scared of us, or uninterested in large, moving prey. After the first hour, though, we decided that one of us would keep watch for two hours while the other one slept, so that we could each get at least some periods of uninterrupted rest.

  I woke on the morning of the second day of our journey in terrible pain, feeling as though my head was going to explode. As I came fully awake, I cried out, the sensation incredibly intense that the right side of my face was on fire. I reached to unseal my bedroll, but couldn’t concentrate enough to do so.

  “Demora?” I heard a voice say, and somewhere in the fog of my consciousness I identified it as belonging to Mike. I didn’t care. I wanted one thing only: to reach up and peel the flesh from my skull. As I moved within the bedroll, though, its material brushed against my face, sending new bolts of pain slicing through my head. Again I cried out.

  “Demora,” I heard Mike say again, and then suddenly I was free, the bedroll gone from around me. I sent my hands up to my face, intending to dig my fingernails into my skin and claw it off. “Demora,” I heard again, closer and louder, and then I found myself unable to move my hands. I struggled, without success, and a high keening sound reached my ears. Somewhere, something hissed, and then everything went dark.

  When I came to some time later, Mike stood over me. The unimaginable pain on the right half of my face had mercifully faded to a dull ache—still pervasive, still torturous, but at least bearable. I raised my hand to feel the area.

  “I wouldn’t,” Mike said crouching down beside me. “It’s swollen, and probably still painful to the touch.” I saw that he held a tricorder in one hand.

  “What happened?” I asked, recalling the monstrous agony I’d experienced, so great that I’d been unable to form coherent thoughts.

  “A creature from this planet,” Mike explained. “It somehow got into your bedroll and stung you in the face. You started screaming, and I pulled you free.”

  “But how? You were standing watch, scanning the area.” It didn’t occur to me for an instant that Mike might have failed to adequately perform his duties.

  “The creature doesn’t show up on sensors, and I never saw it,” he said. “I can’t explain why.”

  Slowly, I pushed myself up to a sitting position. I looked around, but had trouble focusing with my right eye, and I realized that the bloated flesh of my face had pushed it almost completely closed. “Am I going to be all right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mike said confidently. “The creature pumped its venom into you, but I’ve managed to clean your wound of most of it. I’ve administered an anti-inflammatory from the medkit, and a serum that will counteract the toxin. The swelling has already gone down considerably, and any pain you still feel should vanish shortly. You should be back to normal before long.”

  “Thank you,” I said, grateful for Mike’s assistance.

  He nodded, and then said, “However badly the creature’s chemistry hurt you, yours was apparently no match for it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Once it stung you, it only lived a few more minutes,” Mike told me. “I believe some element in your bloodstream poisoned it.”

  “It’s dead?” I asked, and Mike pointed. I followed the line of his finger. On the ground not far from where I sat atop my bedroll, a black, many-legged creature lay unmoving, its hairy digits sprawled outward around a barrel-shaped body the size of my fist. To me, it looked like something out of a nightmare. I felt my mouth drop open at the thought of that thing slicing into my flesh and shooting its bane into me.

  “It’s all right, Demora,” Mike said, obviously recognizing the emotion I felt.

  “I know,” I said, looking over at him simply because I didn’t want to look at the creature any longer. “We should get moving.”

  “We will,” Mike said, standing and backing up to sit on the exposed, misshapen root of a tree. He slipped the carry strap of his tricorder over one shoulder. “Let’s give it a few more minutes, though. I don’t want any leaves or branches brushing against your face right now.”

  “How long will we have to wait?” I asked, the importance of our mission reasserting itself in my mind.

  Mike held up the tricorder and scanned me. “Probably not more than thirty minutes,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, and we lapsed into silence. Around us, the sounds of the forest closed in: water dripping, leaves rustling, branches creaking as trees shifted, birds chirping, other animals scuttling through the canopy far above us. I lowered myself back onto the ground and waited. By degrees, the discomfort I felt in my face diminished.

  After a few minutes, Mike asked me an unexpected question. “Are you married, Demora?” he wanted to know.

  I blinked. “No, I’m not,” I said with a grin, “except maybe to Starfleet.” I gestured with both hands at the rain forest around us, and to the right side of my face, trying to indicate that I’d obviously do anything Command asked of me. I wondered why Mike would have posed such a question to me, and then I realized the reason. “Are you married?” I asked.

  Mike looked at me from where he sat on the root that had grown free of the jungle floor. A smile rose on his face like a morning sun peeking over a horizon. “Yeah, I am,” he said brightly. “Eight years now.”

  “You’re a lucky man,” I said, and meant it. I also hoped that my statement would hold true for the rest of our mission. So far, it had not exactly gone as planned.

  “Yeah,” he said again, and nodded. He was quiet for a moment. Somewhere in the distance, one of the beasts of this world called out, its voice like a bass horn. Then Mike spoke up again. “I’ve also got two sons,” he said. “One of them was born just before we began this mission. I haven’t even met him yet.”

  “You will,” I said, perhaps a little too quickly to be convincing. Mike surely knew as well as I did the dangers that lay ahead of us at the renegade base. The volcanic eruption, the weapons strikes on the shuttle, the hard landing, and my encounter with the spider-like creature this morning might only be the beginning of our travails.

  “Yeah, I know I will,” Mike agreed. He quieted again, peering into the middle distance for a short time. Then he seemed to gather himself, and said, “Wanna see a picture?”

  “Yes,” I answered eagerly, and climbed back up to a sitting position. Mike pulled his tricorder from where it hung about his shoulder, then keyed in what appeared to be a complex control sequence. The device responded with various tones, and then he entered a second code. Finally, he stood up and walked over to where I sat on his bedroll, my legs now folded beneath me. He squatted down and held out the tricorder before me.

  On the display, in what looked like a hospital room, a beautiful woman with long, fiery red hair lay in bed. Sitting beside her, his legs hanging down, was an adorable little boy with full, rosy cheeks, and whose bright hair matched her own. A man and a woman, both older, stood to one side of the bed, and two men, also older, stood on the other. In the crook of the red-headed woman’s arm, his face just visible within the blanket wrapped around it, was a newborn baby.

  “My wife and my firstborn,” Mike said, pointing. “Those are my parents on the left, and my wife’s on the right.”

  “And that,” I said, raising my own finger to point at the baby, “is your new son.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said, and the wide smile returned to his face.

  “You have a beautiful family,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I can’t wait to see them again.”

  On that mission, in real life, I’d said nothing after that. I’d just nodded and smiled, and placed what I hoped was a reassuring hand on Mike’s s
houlder. But in my dream, I opened my mouth to speak. Asleep in Hana’s cabin on Sentik IV, I fought to keep myself from saying anything, fought to take control of my dream self, but I couldn’t. “You’ll see them again,” I told Mike. “Soon.”

  I woke up with a start, propped up on my hands, and with the sensation that I’d just called out in my sleep. It took me a few seconds to orient myself, to recall that I was in my bedroll on the floor of Hana’s cabin, a long distance and a long time from those days in that rain forest with Mike. I listened in the darkness for any sound from Hana’s room, concerned that I might have woken her. Finally, hearing nothing, I lay back down in the bedroll, exhausted.

  I tried to push away the images from my dream, but they stayed with me. Not the shuttle crash or the crew’s injuries, not the hideous creature that had attacked me, but Mike sitting in the middle of that jungle, talking about his loved ones, showing me a picture of them. And I remembered envying him for his good fortune at having such a family, and pitying him for having to be away from them.

  In my grandmother’s house, I closed my eyes in the darkness, desperate to let go of my emotions and get some rest. But when morning came, I hadn’t slept again at all.

  Four weeks after I first arrived on Sentik IV, I prepared to depart. I collected the few items I’d brought from the Armstrong to Hana’s cabin, and transported back with them to the shuttle. I charted my course back to Starbase Magellan and the Enterprise—back to my life—and entered it in the navigational computer. Then I went to bid farewell to Hana.

  When I returned to the cabin, it was nearly midday, and I was surprised to see Hana’s door still closed. In the last week, she’d taken to rising later in the morning than she had previously, and also to retiring earlier at night. And in just the past few days, she twice hadn’t bothered changing out of her nightclothes even after she’d risen.