Stargazer Oblivion Read online

  Iulus, who was inserting a chip into the holographic projector in the center of the table, shot Pfeffer a glance. “As I recall, I had to drag you in here kicking and screaming a few weeks ago. Or was that some other blond security officer?”

  Nearly a month earlier, when the Stargazer was at Starbase 32, Iulus had purchased a series of performances by the London Symphony Orchestra recorded on isolinear chip. In order to savor them properly, he had resolved to play them one a week.

  At first, only Kochman and Vandermeer had been inclined to join Iulus for his private concerts in the lounge. But little by little, the others—Ulelo and Emily Bender included—had been lured in or otherwise found their way there.

  Two weeks ago, they had heard a piece by a Tellarite composer. Then, last week, they had listened to something by a Rigelian. This week was devoted to Sulak—a Vulcan.

  “I’ve been looking forward to this,” said Vandermeer. “They say that if you close your eyes, you feel as if you’re trekking across Vulcan’s Forge.”

  “Indeed,” said Urajel, an Andorian, “and I heard it said of the Tellarite piece that you feel as if you’re slogging through Beggerin Marsh. But I felt no such thing.”

  “You didn’t like the Tellarite piece?” asked Kochman. “I thought everyone liked it—even our pal Ulelo, and he’s not easy to please.”

  “Yes,” said Vandermeer. “It’s the rare composition that gets the Ulelo stamp of approval.”

  Kotsakos turned to Iulus, who had finished inserting the chip into the holoprojector and was taking his seat. “Speaking of approval,” she said, “how do you like engineering?”

  Iulus had embarked from Earth with the Stargazer as a security officer. It was only after Captain Picard took command of the ship that Iulus asked for and received a transfer to the engineering section.

  “I like it,” said Iulus, as he turned down the lights. “It’s keeping me on my toes.”

  “More so than security?” Pfeffer asked, feigning astonishment.

  “Hey,” Iulus said generously, “security was great. I just wanted something a little more—”

  “Don’t say it,” a wincing Emily Bender warned him.

  “—stimulating,” Iulus finished.

  Kochman rolled his eyes. “He said it.”

  Pfeffer leaned forward in her chair like a she-wolf who had caught the scent of her prey. “More stimulating, is it? Let’s see you say that when I’m beaming down to some uncharted planet with an away team and you’re up here running diagnostics on the starboard plasma injectors.”

  That got a grin out of everyone except Urajel, who as an Andorian wasn’t inclined to do much grinning. Even Iulus had to smile, conceding that the security officer had scored a point with her remark.

  “Fair enough,” he told Pfeffer. “But how are you going to feel when I’m examining alien technology on some mysterious, abandoned ship and you’re recharging phasers in the armory?”

  This time, everybody at the table laughed. Even Urajel seemed vaguely amused at the exchange, though Ulelo wouldn’t have staked his life on it.

  It was like this almost every day. Banter. Stories of personal achievement and failure. Encouragement. Good-natured gibes. And though Ulelo didn’t take part in it as much as Emily Bender and her friends did, he would have been a liar if he said he didn’t enjoy it.

  And it wasn’t just the conversation in which he took pleasure. It was the people—regardless of which crewmen Emily Bender associated with on any given day. He liked them all. He liked being among them. He liked feeling as if he were part of them, and they a part of him.

  Just then, the holoprojector conjured a miniature orchestra in black tuxedos. Iulus shushed everyone to silence. And a moment later, music began to issue forth.

  The melody was as eerie as it was ethereal, a variety of stringed instruments and pipes evoking a desert with a harsh, unyielding wind racing through it. Ulelo saw now what Vandermeer meant by her reference to Vulcan’s Forge.

  He looked about in the light thrown off by the holographic projections and saw enjoyment on the faces of his companions. Had he been able to see his own face, it would no doubt have looked the same.

  Ulelo basked in the moment. He savored it. He savored everything about it.

  He knew that such feelings could jeopardize the success of his mission. But he couldn’t help it. The company of others felt too good for him to give it up.

  Even though he knew he couldn’t enjoy it forever.

  Strange, Guinan thought, as she considered the slumbering specimen of humanity she had rescued from Steej’s detention facility. How very strange.

  The first time she had encountered this “Dixon Hill” fellow, they were in a place called San Francisco at the tail end of Earth’s nineteenth century. She remembered him as a balding but distinguished-looking—and yes, unexpectedly charming—individual.

  And she remembered also the way he had stared at her then, as if he already knew her.

  As Guinan would find out a bit later, he did know her—knew her quite well, in fact. In the twenty-fourth century, they would serve together on a starship called Enterprise, along with people named Data, Riker, Troi, La Forge, and Crusher.

  Apparently, “Hill” was the captain of that twenty-fourth-century vessel. However, he had gone back in time to oppose the Devidians, a time-traveling species that had infested San Francisco in order to steal neural energy from the city’s multitude of cholera victims.

  And his name wasn’t Hill, no matter what he currently wanted her to believe. It was Picard.

  He looked younger now than when she had seen him in San Francisco, and not just because he had a full head of hair. He seemed more energetic, more dynamic, more animated. But he also seemed more naïve in a way.

  Guinan didn’t think the older Picard would have fallen into the trap in the plaza as easily as his younger version did. She felt confident that with the benefit of long experience, he would have sniffed the trap out somehow.

  She wondered where he was in the course of his career. Her guess was that he had already joined the fleet to which his Enterprise belonged—or would belong, since Picard’s Enterprise probably hadn’t been built yet. However, he looked too fresh-faced to have been made a captain.

  A subordinate, then, Guinan decided. A lieutenant or some such thing. And more than likely, he was here in Oblivion on official business, which had been rudely interrupted when the bomb went off in the plaza.

  She took unexpected comfort in watching the fellow sleep. And these days, her comforts were few and far between.

  But then, it was hard not to like him, hard not to care what happened to him. He was so earnest, so obviously intent on doing the right thing.

  And he had been so grateful when she got him out of the detention facility, so amazed at her generosity. After all, who in her right mind would take that kind of risk for a complete and utter stranger?

  Guinan sighed. Who indeed.

  She wished she could tell Picard that he wasn’t a stranger—that the “tough spot” she had mentioned had taken place back in San Francisco, and that she had escaped it by virtue of his willingness to take a risk for her.

  She closed her eyes and tried to retrieve the images. It wasn’t difficult, though she had lived a long life and had acquired a great many memories.

  Guinan had followed Picard and his people into a cave beneath the city, in search of his Commander Data’s head—a rather long and complex story in itself. But as events unfolded, each more curious than the other, she cracked her skull against a rocky outcropping and was knocked unconscious.

  It was then that Picard’s Devidian adversary fled the cavern through a glowing portal—actually a conduit through time. Unaware of her injury, the team from the Enterprise gathered to follow the Devidian through.

  Guinan remembered their eagerness, the hard, determined looks in their eyes. And their voices, stretched taut with urgency, as they echoed in the eerie confines of the cave.

&n
bsp; But she was bleeding profusely. Without help, she would probably have died in that place.

  Luckily for her, Picard was more perceptive than his comrades. As he prepared to follow them through the portal, he caught a glimpse of Guinan and realized how badly she was hurt.

  So instead of vanishing along with his officers, he remained there in the cave with her. He knew he might be giving up any chance of returning to his proper time, but it didn’t matter. Her survival was more important to him.

  When Guinan woke, she saw Picard sitting there beside her. He had bandaged her head with a strip of cloth and stopped the bleeding, effectively saving her life.

  While she managed to stay conscious, she expressed surprise that he had stayed to help her. After all, he had stranded himself in the process, cut himself off from everything and everyone he had ever known.

  Guinan remembered exactly how he had answered her, word for word. She could hear it now, precisely as she had heard it then: “I can’t very well let anything happen to you. You’re far too important to me.”

  And he had smiled as he said it.

  Then, as Guinan began to lapse into darkness again, she had asked Picard if the two of them were destined to become friends. And he had said of their relationship in that distant future, “It goes beyond friendship.”

  But she would have to wait nearly five hundred years to learn any more than that. And when the time came that she was finally enlightened, she would be confronted with the real irony—the real twist in the weft of their relationship.

  Because when Guinan came to understand what Picard meant, when she finally came to appreciate the depth of their friendship, it would be her turn to wax cryptic.

  And for good reason.

  After all, Time could be as volatile as a mugato, and as treacherous as a Rigelian ring serpent. It wasn’t a thing to be tampered with or taken lightly.

  Or rejected, she thought with a pang of loss.

  If Guinan revealed too soon what had happened in that cave beneath San Francisco, she would throw everything off for Picard. She would warp the portion of his life that he had yet to make for himself—the joys and the tragedies and the triumphs he had yet to experience, all of which would conspire to make him the man she had known.

  And would know again, if all went as it should.

  It wasn’t just a matter of withholding the details of their first meeting from him. Guinan couldn’t even tell him that such a meeting had taken place. She had to keep it all a secret, no matter how much it had meant to her at the time, no matter how critical it had been to her survival.

  Simply put, Picard couldn’t be allowed a glimpse of his future. Because if he knew too much about it, that future might not come to pass.

  And after what he had done for her back in the nineteenth century, he deserved to have the future of prestige and accomplishment that he would earn for himself.

  It’s funny, Guinan thought. Until she saw Picard sit down at that bar, she hadn’t wanted anything—but now she did. Suddenly, she had a goal in life, something she needed to do.

  It didn’t entirely lift her out of the malaise in which she had been languishing day after day, bereft of joy for so long she couldn’t bear to think about it. She had her doubts that anything would accomplish that, ever.

  But at least for a little while, her life had a purpose again, and that in itself was something to be thankful for.

  Chapter Six

  AT THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT, as Admiral Arlen McAteer sat there in the third row of the San Francisco Bay Theater, he didn’t have much confidence in Mister William Shakespeare.

  He had decided to attend this production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth only because he had heard good things about it back at headquarters. But the show was almost over, and he hadn’t found a great deal to admire about it.

  McAteer didn’t like what he had heard from the three witches. He appreciated even less the sentiments of Shakespeare’s long parade of ghosts. And as the actors playing Prince Malcolm and his noble allies rushed onto the corpse-littered stage, McAteer had a feeling he wasn’t going to love what they had to say either.

  All anybody seemed to want to talk about were the mistakes Macbeth had made. But to the admiral’s way of thinking, they weren’t mistakes at all.

  So the guy was ambitious. Since when was that a bad thing? Ambition was what had gotten McAteer his admiral’s stripes, and ambition was what would propel him to the top spot in all of Starfleet before long.

  The admiral knew his history. The situation hadn’t been all that different in Shakespeare’s time. People didn’t get ahead unless they pushed a little. So what was Shakespeare so ticked off about?

  Probably somebody had beaten the guy out of a job. Somebody named Macbeth, maybe. And from then on, he had it in for people with initiative.

  That was it, McAteer concluded on a note of satisfaction. Shakespeare was just jealous.

  Meanwhile, on the stage, Prince Malcolm was looking worried as he stared off into some imagined distance. “I would,” he said, “the friends we miss were safe arrived.”

  Siward, an old fellow with a thick, gray beard, had his eyes on the bodies lying about the stage. “Some must go off,” he said soberly. “And yet, by these I see, so great a day as this is cheaply bought.”

  Malcolm looked back at Siward. “Macduff is missing,” he said. “And your noble son.”

  Siward’s jaw fell. Obviously, thought McAteer, in light of what he had just heard, the old guy was reconsidering how cheaply the day had been bought.

  Ross, another of Malcolm’s pals, put his hand on Siward’s shoulder. “Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt. He only lived but till he was a man, the which no sooner had his prowess confirmed in the unshrinking station where he fought, but like a man he died.”

  Not too many characters got out of these Elizabethan tragedies alive. McAteer had learned that much, at least.

  “Then he is dead?” asked Siward.

  “Aye,” said Ross with a sigh, “and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end.”

  “Had he his hurts before?” asked Siward.

  “Aye,” said Ross, “on the front.”

  McAteer saw where their conversation was going. And for once, he found himself approving of it.

  “Well, then,” said Siward, “God’s soldier be he! Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death. And so his knell is knolled.”

  “He’s worth more sorrow,” said Malcolm, “and that I’ll spend for him.”

  “He’s worth no more,” Siward insisted. “They say he parted well and paid his score. And so God be with him!”

  Maybe I was wrong, McAteer allowed. Maybe Shakespeare’s going to surprise me and give Macbeth the nod after all.

  Suddenly, Siward looked across the stage. “Here comes newer comfort,” he said.

  It was then that Macduff came out, carrying a pole in his hand. And what should be perched on the top of it…but Macbeth’s bloody, staring head?

  The admiral made a sound of exasperation and saw several pairs of eyes turn in his direction. Scowling, he sat back in his seat and tried to keep his frustration to himself.

  Crossing the stage, MacDuff presented Malcom with his trophy and said, “Hail, King, for so thou art!”

  McAteer rolled his eyes. The guy who deserved to be king was looking down at them from the top of Macduff’s pole. Malcolm was a little wimp by comparison.

  “Behold,” Macduff continued, “where stands the usurper’s cursed head. The time is free. I see thee compassed with thy kingdom’s pearl, that speak my salutation in their minds—whose voices I desire aloud with mine.”

  The whole damned thing is a load of hooey, the admiral told himself. A waste of time. He couldn’t wait to see his colleagues back at headquarters and ask them what in blazes they had seen in this fiasco.

  “Hail, King of Scotland!” bellowed Macduff.


  “King of Scotland, hail!” Malcolm’s other pals replied.

  Malcolm looked like a guy who had hit the jackpot but was trying not to show it. “We shall not spend a large expanse of time…” he began.

  And I’ll spend even less, McAteer thought, as he got up from his seat, sidestepped his way to the aisle, and made a hasty exit to beat the crowd.

  Making his way across the lobby, he marveled at his luck. He had hoped this evening would be a distraction from his more serious concerns, of which he had many. Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way.

  But then, some problems just didn’t seem to want to go away. They lingered like bits of bad dreams. And one of those problems was Jean-Luc Picard.

  The admiral still didn’t think Picard was capable of commanding a starship. As far as he was concerned, the man was too green, too inexperienced. Had McAteer been in charge of this sector when the Stargazer returned to Earth, he would never have approved Picard’s promotion.

  But he wasn’t placed in charge until a couple of weeks later. And by then Admiral Mehdi, one of his colleagues, had already plunked Picard down in the Stargazer’s center seat.

  If Picard had been the only puzzle in McAteer’s life, it would have been bad enough. However, the sector with which the admiral had been entrusted was quickly becoming a cauldron bubbling with interstellar politics.

  With the Ubarrak, the Cardassians, and any number of smaller players angling for position, armed conflict of some sort seemed inevitable. Certainly, the Federation thought so, or it wouldn’t have beefed up the number of ships at McAteer’s disposal.

  When such powerful civilizations clashed, everything was placed in jeopardy. Lives were lost. Cities were destroyed. And all too frequently, careers were dashed on the rocks of unfortunate command decisions.

  McAteer was determined not to let that happen to him—not after he had worked so hard to climb through the ranks of the fleet. But he wasn’t satisfied to merely stay out of trouble. He meant to leverage the situation to his advantage, so when the last shot was fired and the dust cleared, he would look even better than he had when the battle started.