STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JEAN-LUC PICARD

by David A. Goodman

  There was a life-support belt in the shuttle; it projected a low-level force field around the user, providing oxygen in case of emergency. I adjusted the field so that it would surround the desk, and attached it. Then I secured several magnetic clasps to the surface.

  I got in the shuttle and lifted off, hovering a few feet off the ground, and then maneuvered the shuttle over the desk. I slowly lowered the shuttle until I heard a thunk as the magnetic clasps attached themselves to the belly of the craft, and then I began a slow ascent into space. I hadn’t had a lot of time to calculate how much acceleration those clasps could take, but as long as we took it slow I figured I should be all right.

  That was when the captain called.

  “Laughton to Picard,” he said. “What the hell is taking so long?”

  “Uh, sir, there was some difficulty…” I said.

  “We’ve just received a distress call, get back to the ship immediately,” he said. This was a problem. I was pulling out of the atmosphere but still inside the planet’s gravity well. If I increased my acceleration, I wasn’t sure the clasps would hold against even the limited air resistance.

  “Picard, acknowledge!” Laughton was a little panicked, for good reason. If the Stargazer failed to acknowledge a distress call because we were busy getting him a new desk, he could lose his command.

  “Acknowledged, sir,” I said, and pushed the throttle forward. It seemed to be all right for a moment, and then there was a slight jolt. I checked my scanner; the desk was tumbling back toward the planet. I switched on the communicator.

  “Picard to Transporter Room,” I said. “Emergency.”

  “Transporter Room, this is Chief Mazzara,” the voice said. Wonderful. Anthony Mazzara, now 16, had been made a transporter chief petty officer. He had not matured in the least since throwing an egg at me four years ago.

  “There’s an object falling away from my shuttle,” I said. “You need to lock onto it and beam it aboard.”

  “What is it? Is it dangerous…”

  “I’m giving you a direct order!”

  “Okay, okay. Calm down…” I was fast approaching the shuttle bay of the Stargazer and had to deal with my approach and landing, so I couldn’t monitor what was happening with my cargo. As I settled onto the landing pad, I heard from the transporter room.

  “It’s a desk. What am I supposed to do with it?” It was a very good question.

  I informed Chief Mazzara to just get it off the transporter pad and wait for instructions. I then raced to the bridge, where his father was at ops and Captain Laughton was in command. I took over the conn and hoped that I would have time later to properly explain to the captain why I had to use the transporter to retrieve his “equipment.”

  The ship had gone to maximum impulse power soon after I’d landed and we were headed to the inner part of the system. The planet closest to the sun had a large mining operation. One of the miner’s ships had lost engine power and was now being pulled into the star. By the time I assumed my post, the magnificent orb was growing in the center of the viewscreen. The mining ship wasn’t even visible against the orange conflagration.

  “Are we in transporter range?” Laughton said.

  “Not yet, sir,” Mazzara said. I silently hoped his son had gotten the desk off of the transporter pad.

  “Try to raise them,” Laughton said. Black, who was at communications, said there was no response. It didn’t mean they were dead—there were still three life signs on the mining ship, and this close to a star’s magnetic field older communications systems had a tendency not to work well. Or at all.

  “How long until we’re in transporter range?” Laughton said. I checked my board.

  “Eleven seconds,” I said. Though Laughton was often a strange man with deplorable priorities, he also knew how to be a captain when necessary. He sounded cool and confident, which, with a sun growing on the viewscreen, went a long way in keeping the rest of us calm.

  “Transporter Room,” Laughton said. “Stand by to lock onto the crew of that ship.” I had a moment of fear over what the response would be.

  “Acknowledged,” Anthony said. “Standing by.” Good, he must have moved the desk out of the way. I again looked down at my panel. We were a few seconds from transporter range when an alarm flashed.

  “Sir,” I said. “We’ve got an ion surge in helm control…”

  Before I could finish my sentence, my panel erupted. The force of the blast sent me tumbling backwards out of my chair. I looked up, and saw that my console was on fire. The ship’s fire control system immediately doused it. The sound of the blast caused me to momentarily lose my hearing; there was silent chaos around me. I tried to get to my feet, and saw Frank Mazzara standing by the captain’s chair.

  Laughton was slumped back, and his eyes were open; a piece of debris from my panel was lodged in his head. He was dead. Mazzara looked stunned, then turned to the bridge crew. My hearing was returning, and I took over Mazzara’s post at the ops panel—the conn was a charred mess.

  “Status,” he said. Even with my impaired hearing, Mazzara sounded shaky.

  “We’re in transporter range,” I said. “We’ve got no helm control up here.” Mazzara turned to Black.

  “Inform the transporter room to beam the miners on board,” he said. “Bridge to Engineering—”

  “All impulse and warp control circuits completely burned out,” Scully said. “We must have had a build-up of ions on the hull, and it induced transients…”

  “It doesn’t matter what happened,” Mazzara said. “We need to get control

  of the ship back.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Scully said. “The engines have shut down, but we’re still traveling at close to the speed of light. All I’ve got is maneuvering thrusters, they won’t slow us down. I need some time to rig something up…”

  “Transporter Room reports the miners are on board,” Black said. But Mazzara wasn’t listening. He was staring at the viewscreen, where the sun was growing in size.

  “Distance from the star,” Mazzara said.

  “One point five million kilometers,” I said. Our shields were still protecting us, but with no engines to escape the sun’s gravity, they wouldn’t help us if we ended up inside. There was one possibility as long as we did it before we got too close. I started a quick calculation, when I was interrupted by Mazzara’s order.

  “All hands abandon ship,” Mazzara said. He’d also been doing a calculation: at this distance, shuttles and escape pods would still escape the sun’s gravity.

  “Sir, I think we can—” I said, but Mazzara cut me off.

  “Get to your assigned evacuation stations,” Mazzara said. I could see his mind was somewhere else—his family, his children. He was playing it safe for them. Then he did something truly startling.

  He left the bridge.

  This act left the bridge crew momentarily stunned. I wanted to explain my plan to everyone who remained, hoping to convince them we had a chance, but I was out of time. The other members of the bridge immediately began shutting down their stations, preparing to evacuate. There was no time to explain. I had to act.

  “Belay that order,” I said. The remaining crewmen turned and looked at me. By abandoning the bridge, Mazzara had left me in command even though he hadn’t stated it explicitly. I could see doubt in the faces of most everyone, especially Black, who until a short time ago had outranked me. But they obeyed and didn’t leave their posts. Mazzara hadn’t just abandoned the bridge, he had abandoned them, and, with their captain lying there dead, they wanted some hope. Black signaled a cancellation of the abandon ship signal. I leaned into the intercom.

  “Bridge to Engineering, Scully, fire all port thrusters,” I said.

  “Aye, sir,” Scully said. “They won’t last long…”

  “They won’t have to,” I said.

  “Mazzara to Bridge, what the hell’s going on up there? Who countermanded my order?”

  “One
moment, sir,” I said. I checked our position; as long as we started the maneuver before we reached the distance from the star equal to its diameter, we still had a chance. The star was eight hundred and seventy-five thousand miles across—I’d fired the port thrusters at over a million kilometers out. It would work.

  “Mazzara to Bridge, answer me!” On the viewscreen, the sun started to slowly move to the left.

  “Sir, this is Picard—the thrusters, our momentum, and the sun’s gravity are moving us into a high orbit around the star. This should buy Engineer Scully enough time to make repairs.” There was a long pause.

  “Shield status?”

  “Sixty-five percent,” I said, which would give us plenty of protection for the time being. Though I’d saved the ship, I took no pleasure in the fact that Mazzara was humiliated. I needed to change the subject. “Your orders, sir?”

  “Have damage control teams make reports. I’ll be right up,” he said. “Inform sickbay to make arrangements for the captain.”

  “Aye, sir,” I said. I looked at Laughton. He’d done so much to define life on the Stargazer, it was hard to imagine what this ship would be like without him. I stood over him and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  “Laughton had an ex-wife,” Captain Mazzara said. “She lives on the New Paris colony, and he left instructions to bring his belongings to her in the event of his death. Once there, I want you to handle it personally, Number One.” Since I’d become his first officer, Mazzara had referred to me as “Number One,” an ancient Earth term for the first officer on naval vessels. I assumed it was something he learned on a previous posting, because Laughton never used it. But I didn’t mind it.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. Mazzara was behind his desk in his quarters, which he shared with one of his sons, David, who was now 14. Anthony, now a crewman, was quartered with another engineer. Though he’d been promoted, Mazzara had not moved into the captain’s quarters because of the sheer amount of Laughton’s possessions. (With the giant desk in there, it was now almost impossible to get inside.)

  “Don’t bring an away team,” Mazzara said. “Go see her yourself first. She’s not human, and I don’t know anything about her species. I would go, but…”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Better for you to stay on board.” A first officer’s duty was to protect the life of his captain, even if he didn’t have any respect for him. Mazzara didn’t like leaving his sons. As a father it was admirable, as an officer, disgraceful.

  “That’ll be all,” Mazzara said.

  “You heard him—get lost,” David said. David had been sitting in the back of the room, playing a game on a PADD and looking at us intermittently. Mazzara snapped an admonishment at his son for his rudeness but as usual it did little good. From the first day I came aboard this ship, David had decided to be my personal nuisance. I’d long since learned to take pride in the fact that he couldn’t faze me, which only provoked him more. My new position undoubtedly made things worse. I smiled at the captain and left.

  In the wake of Laughton’s death a month before, Mazzara had promoted me to First Officer. Mazzara never mentioned my countermanding his order. I’d committed a court martial offense, but in order for him to press charges he would have had to mention to Starfleet Command that he’d left the bridge in a moment of crisis. His first act as interim captain, preceding the rest of the bridge crew in an evacuation, did not violate any regulation, but went in the face of thousands of years of heroic tradition: the last man off a sinking ship is always its captain. Starfleet Command would’ve frowned on his behavior, and it might have kept Mazzara from getting the captaincy.

  So though he had the rank, Mazzara had completely undermined his authority. Crewmen snickered about his cowardice. I was in the rec room having dinner with Black, Chief Engineer Scully, and two other officers one evening when I discovered just how bad things had gotten. Black was relaying a story about showing up late for his shift.

  “…I’m pulling on my clothes as I run to the bridge, get on the turbolift with my shirt over my head, and when I pull it down, there’s Captain Quitter who must’ve gotten on before me…” The other officers laughed at the story, but I had a different reaction. The nonchalance that greeted the moniker troubled me.

  “ ‘Captain Quitter’?” I said. “Where did that come from?”

  “Oh,” Black said, realizing that as first officer I might not have been privy to it. “Yeah, someone nicknamed him that, I don’t know who…”

  “It was me,” Scully said. Scully was so vital to his job that he knew it wouldn’t cost him anything to admit responsibility. He was also old enough that he didn’t care if it did.

  “I don’t want to hear it again,” I said. “Next person who says it in front of me goes on report.” I got up from the table and took my tray to the recycler.

  “What’s the big deal?” Black said.

  “The big deal is he’s the captain,” I said, “and even if he wasn’t, he has two sons on board.” I then walked out, and considered that it might seem puzzling that two boys who were such irritants to me could arouse this level of compassion. I suppose, looking back, I might have been jealous that they had a father who was so devoted to them he had essentially destroyed his own career to prioritize their safety.

  * * *

  New Paris was one of Earth’s oldest and largest colonies, dating back before the founding of the Federation. It had a population of over three million, and the planet had a wide variety of populated ecosystems. When we arrived, Mazzara provided me with exact coordinates of the home where Laughton’s ex-wife lived.

  “Shouldn’t we try to call first?” I said. “It seems strange to go in unannounced.”

  “Laughton’s instructions were to do just that,” Mazzara said. “She doesn’t have a communicator. Wants her privacy.” Me showing up with no warning seemed to fly in the face of that desire, but I decided to follow orders.

  I went to the transporter room. Anthony Mazzara was on duty. I gave him the coordinates.

  “Kind of hard picturing fat Captain Laughton finding a wife,” he said.

  “Belay that,” I said, and got on the transporter pad. There was no bottom to the depths the Mazzara boys would dive.

  I beamed down to find myself in a lush thicket of trees and vines. I could hear a soft rain high above, but the canopy of leaves kept much of it from reaching me. It was a serene and beautiful environment.

  I took out my tricorder and detected a structure not far away. There were no life-form readings, however. I moved through the thicket and in a few moments found a house, one story high, set in amongst the forest, made of indigenous wood and stone. It had a natural camouflage making it impossible to see until I was almost upon it. But my scanning for life-forms was still unsuccessful.

  “Hands in the air,” a woman’s voice said, behind me. I did as she told me. The woman circled around me. She wore a long gown and a wide-brimmed hat, and held a large, formidable-looking rifle, aimed right at me.

  “How did you find me? I know it wasn’t that tricorder, I can fool those stupid things.”

  “Um… I’m from the Stargazer. Captain Humphrey Laughton…”

  “Figured that loser would come bothering me,” she said. “What does he want?”

  “I’m very sorry to inform you…”

  “Wait a minute…” she said, breaking out into an infectious smile. “You’re Jean-Luc Picard… Oh my, it’s been such a long time, and I didn’t recognize you with all that hair.” This caught me off guard. I’d never seen this woman before. But she obviously knew me. She lowered her rifle, so I dropped my hands.

  “I’m sorry, you have me at a disadvantage,” I said. “You know me?” Her demeanor suddenly changed. She seemed slightly awkward with the situation, but also amused.

  “Oh… no… sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

  “Someone else named Jean-Luc Picard?”

  “Yes, strange coincidence, he’s a bald guy, lot older,” sh
e said. “I’m Guinan, nice to meet you. Sorry about the ‘hands up’ thing.” She shook my hand, her grin filled with Cheshire cat irony. “So you’re in Humphrey’s crew?”

  “Well, yes, in a way. On behalf of Starfleet and the Federation, I want to express my condolences on his death.”

  “Oh, that’s very nice, but Humphrey was three husbands ago,” she said. “It’s been thirty years since I’ve even seen him.” Thirty years? She already seemed quite a bit younger than the captain, but that was in human terms. The mysteries were multiplying. “Now, I’m going to need you to get me out of here. They’ve known I was on the planet for some time, and they were probably keeping track of your ship because they knew Humphrey was one of my husbands.”

  “Wait…”

  “I don’t have time to wait; if they detected your transporter beam…”

  “Who are we talking about?”

  We were interrupted by a blast from a pulse weapon, which knocked the bark off a tree right next to me.

  “Them,” she said, taking my hand and leading me off in a run. More blasts, each just missing us. We reached a large stone, and she had us hide behind it. I tried to get a look at our assailant. He had taken up a position about twenty meters away.

  “Who’s shooting at us?”

  “Some mercenary or bounty hunter,” she said “And he’s not shooting at me, he’s shooting at you—he wants me alive.” Every answer she gave led to more questions, but I had had enough. I took out my communicator.

  “Picard to Stargazer, two to beam up…” There was no answer.

  “He’s probably jamming you,” Guinan said. “I’m worth a lot.” She held up her rifle. “If you make a run for that big tree over there, it’ll draw him out and I can get a clean shot.” I looked to where she was indicating; it was a distance.

  “Don’t take too long to aim…”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. Her confidence was reassuring.

  “Ready?” I said. She nodded. I took off. After about three steps I heard a blast that didn’t sound like our assailant’s.