Tales from the Captain's Table

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “Ten seconds,” Mike called.

  To my right, the captain said something, but I couldn’t make out his words above the noise of the wind. Another sound suddenly grew in the cabin, though, even as Mike continued his countdown. Hearing the familiar whine of the transporter, I couldn’t help but turn and peer back toward the small platform in the aft section of the shuttle. I felt enormous relief as three forms materialized there, all of them moving.

  Spinning back to my console, I was just in time to see a fireball blaze into existence amid the greenery of the massive rain forest below us. “The shuttle’s down,” Mike reported.

  Again, I felt a presence beside me. “Land us as quickly as possible,” the captain said in my ear. “I don’t care where. We can’t take the chance that the active sensors, the explosion, or the transporter have given us away.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I worked the helm controls, pointing the shuttle’s bow down at a steep angle, at the same time taking us into a tight turn. We would spiral down to the planet while maintaining as narrow a flight profile as possible.

  As we turned, the volcano came into view. The massive mountain rose high into the air, a dark, dense column of smoke, ash, and rock exploding from it and obscuring its peak. Farther below, rivers of glowing lava streamed from rents in the slopes and flowed downward.

  For a moment, an eerie calm settled over the noisy cabin. I heard a moan behind me, and guessed that one of the crew members of the first shuttle had suffered injuries when their craft had been struck by the volcanic debris. I could only hope that they hadn’t been hurt too badly.

  “How much time until we land?” the captain asked.

  I checked the altimeter, but before I could reply, Mike suddenly yelled once more. “I’m reading weapons fire.”

  I acted even before the captain called for evasive maneuvers, but too late. A bolt of energy hammered into the shuttle, and I felt grateful that we’d powered down the warp drive after reaching the system. Still, the shuttle sheared from its course, and I worked to bring the helm back under my control. As I did so, a second energy blast sliced past the bow, missing us by only meters.

  “I’ve got a read on the source of the weapons fire,” Mike reported.

  “Aim phasers,” the captain ordered.

  “I’m reading just one battery on the ground,” Mike continued. “Coordinates are—”

  Another energy burst slammed into the shuttle, and then another. The cabin shuddered, and an overload surged through the engineering circuits. I saw the result on the readouts as the generator spiked and shut down.

  The shuttle dropped a thousand meters in just seconds.

  The backup engaged automatically, throttling up and braking our rate of descent.

  Again, the captain spoke from a position beside me. “Crash us,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “Keep the shuttle as intact as possible, but make it look as though we’ve been blasted out of the sky, before we really are blasted out of the sky.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, even as I searched through my years of experience at the helm for the best possible method of complying with the captain’s orders. At that moment, a burst of coherent blue light streaked past the viewports, and an instant later, another shot pounded into the hull. My readouts showed a power surge course through the circuitry again, and the transporter went down.

  “Brace yourselves,” I yelled to the others. I tensed my own body, and positioned one of my hands at the antigrav controls. I desperately hoped that the plan I’d extemporized would work.

  Then I cut the main power, and the shuttle fell from the sky.

  As I stood in the doorway of Hana’s barn, peering out at the rain and thinking back to that mission, I realized that I couldn’t simply leave Sentik IV. For the assignment to thwart the renegades, I’d been asked to step away for a brief time from my regular Starfleet duties in order to take part in the dangerous, potentially deadly reconnaissance, all in the name of the greater good. Although the parallels were hardly exact, I saw a similar set of circumstances with respect to Hana’s situation.

  While she hadn’t asked me to look after her, somebody else—Rosenzweig—had, and I had to wonder if, given the chance, my father would have done so too. In order to stay on Sentik, I would have to take a few more weeks away from the Enterprise and the preparations for its upcoming voyage, but Xintal—Commander Xintal Linojj, my executive officer—was more than capable enough to step in for me. Spending time with Hana might be uncomfortable and unsatisfying, maybe even difficult, but I’d obviously experienced far worse things during my lifetime. As I saw it, a greater good was involved there too: Hana’s need for care might not have been as dramatic as the need for Starfleet to protect the Federation from terrorists, but it was a real cause nonetheless, and one that I had the power to serve.

  I made the decision. I activated the transporter recall and beamed back to the Armstrong. There, I recorded a message to Admiral Ratnaswamy, explaining the situation and requesting that my leave be extended another three weeks. Since it would be days before I received a response, I made it plain that I would not depart from Sentik IV until the week prior to the Enterprise’s scheduled launch. I’d arrive back at Starbase Magellan with a few days to spare, time enough, I felt, for Xintal to brief me on whatever I needed to know before our mission.

  Before I touched the transmit control, I thought about speaking to Hana first, but determined that I didn’t need to do so. This was my choice, and though I would certainly do my best to honor her wishes during my stay, there could be no debate about her condition. She needed help, and I aimed to provide it for her.

  I sent the message to Starfleet Command, then transported back to Hana’s house.

  When I walked through the front door of the cabin, I was startled to see somebody moving on the far side of the room. I initially thought that a child from the community had entered the house for some reason, and I’d taken two steps forward before I realized that the undersized form belonged to Hana. Stunned because I’d believed her confined to her bed, I stopped for a moment and stared.

  Hana leaned heavily against one of the cupboards that marched along the base of the back wall. She must have heard me come in, because she looked over in my direction. As I’d noticed earlier, her sluggish, purposeful movements made her appear brittle, as though she might break apart at any moment.

  “Hana, what are you doing?” I asked sharply, striding over to her. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I took hold of her elbow, concerned that, left on her own, she might fall, as she had out in the fields.

  “I thought you’d gone,” Hana said, peering up at me with undisguised irritation.

  “No,” I said, returning her pique with my own. “I’ve decided to extend my leave and stay here a few more weeks.”

  “What?” Hana said, her voice rising and her eyes going wide. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because—” Because you’re my grandmother, I thought, but I wasn’t sure that such a declaration would have convinced even me of my intentions. All I knew was that Hana needed assistance, she had nobody else, and staying a little longer was the right thing to do. “Because you need help,” I finished.

  Hana carefully pulled her elbow from my grasp, and then turned back to the cupboard. “I’m old,” she muttered, almost too low for me to hear. “I’m not an invalid.” She opened the cabinet door, and a heavy, plantlike scent wafted out. Inside the storage area sat piled several small caches of what appeared to be different vegetables, fruits, tubers, and nuts. I wondered if she had grown all of it on her own land, or had traded some of her own crops for those of others on Sentik. I suspected the latter.

  As Hana cautiously bent to reach for something, her ancient joints emitted snaps and pops. The sounds seemed to me like the forewarning of an imminent collapse. “Do you want something to eat?” I asked her. “I can go back to my shuttle and prepare a meal for us with the food synthesizer.”

  “We don’t
use food synthesizers here,” Hana said, pronouncing the words as though they were an epithet. She continued reaching into the cupboard.

  “Well then,” I said, “I guess I can make dinner for us here.”

  Hana stopped then, but she didn’t offer a response. She didn’t immediately straighten, either, and for a second, I thought she might topple over. Again, I reached out to steady her. As my hand settled around her upper arm, Hana stood up, reached for it with her other hand, and brushed it away. Then, holding on to the line of cupboards along the back wall, she made her way toward the table.

  Once she cleared the open cabinet door, I knelt down and peered inside. I saw items that looked familiar—tomatoes and strawberries, potatoes and walnuts—and some that didn’t. I recognized the squat, red-leafed plants from Hana’s own fields, though I’d never seen them before my arrival there. Opening the other cupboards, I found various other foods, mostly in short supply. There were also spices, utensils, kitchenware, and several large jugs of water.

  I looked over at Hana as she reached the table and dropped into a chair there. Just the short trip from her bedroom appeared to have exhausted her. I couldn’t recall ever seeing somebody who seemed as old as she did at that moment.

  In silence, I gathered a group of the foods I recognized, and out of which I could make a meal. I started a fire in the stove, then washed, prepared, and cooked everything. Hana said nothing as I moved about, and I didn’t feel up to starting a conversation with her.

  Finally, I set two plates down on the table, one in front of Hana, and the other where I would sit. Beside each dish, I put a fork, knife, and napkin, along with a mug of water, which seemed to be the only thing in the cabin to drink. Then I retrieved the chair I’d taken into the bedroom, and sat down across from Hana.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, and smiled. I looked over at her, but her head was down, her gaze apparently on her meal. I shrugged, settled my napkin in my lap, picked up my fork and knife, and started eating. At least I’d finally heard a kind word from Hana.

  But those were the last things either one of said for the rest of the night.

  That first day with Hana set the tone for those that came after. In asking me nothing about my life, in telling me nothing about herself, in saying almost nothing to me at all, she’d made it clear that she had no interest in getting to know me. I supposed I should have expected that, considering our almost nonexistent shared history. To be honest, even though I’d gone to Hana’s aid on Sentik IV, I had little desire to get to know her. She’d always been a stranger to me—as best I could tell, had chosen to be a stranger to me—and I knew that wasn’t going to change in just a few weeks.

  And so we spent most of our days in silence. I retrieved a bedroll from the shuttle and slept on the floor in the main room of the cabin, hanging a blanket over the window in order to block out the moon at night, and the sun at dawn. In the morning, before Hana rose, I’d collect water from the well, check for eggs in the bird coop at the far end of the barn, feed the animals, and get ready to prepare breakfast for us. Hana typically woke midmorning, changed out of her nightclothes, and made her way out into the main room. While she made a trip to the outhouse behind the cabin, I’d start cooking our meal.

  On a couple of occasions, most often in the mornings, Hana appeared to have trouble walking, and I went to her to lend a hand. In every case, my efforts were rebuffed. In time, I learned not to bother even trying.

  After breakfast, Hana would retreat to her bedroom. At first, I thought that she was sleeping through much of the day, but whenever I would check on her, I’d find her awake. Sometimes she sat on her bed, propped up against the pillows, but most often I would find her perched beneath the window in the back wall, atop the chest there. Most of the time, she didn’t seem to be doing anything, although several times I spied a book tucked against the side of her leg.

  In the evenings, we went through the same routine as in the mornings. Hana would come out of her bedroom, make a trip out back, and return to wash up and sit down to dinner. Afterward, she would go back to her room once more, usually without a word other than the thanks she would tender for the meal I’d made for her.

  On my second day with Hana, I searched out the two medics who resided on Sentik. They verified for me the results of their examination of Hana, confirming what she and Rosenzweig had already told me, and what I’d corroborated myself with the medical tricorder I’d brought with me. She suffered from no particular health problems beyond her advanced years. Still, that was enough for the medics to conclude that a journey of any significant length—and certainly any voyage off-planet—would likely kill her.

  A few days after that, I received a response to my request to extend my leave. During those days on Sentik, between making breakfast and dinner for Hana—she ate only twice a day—I would return to the Armstrong. Among other activities, I’d have an afternoon meal; I’d inspect the shuttle’s systems as a matter of course; I’d sometimes download to a padd nonclassified data about the Enterprise’s upcoming mission, so that I could take it back to the cabin to study; and I’d check the comm system. When the message arrived from Starfleet Command, I was pleased to find that they’d agreed to extend my leave, though I really hadn’t given them much choice in the matter. At the same time, Admiral Ratnaswamy made it perfectly clear that he expected me back at Starbase Magellan in time to resume command of the Enterprise prior to the start of its long-range mission.

  On my thirteenth day on Sentik, two and a half weeks before I would have to depart, Hana was late rising. As midday approached, the thought rose in my mind that perhaps she’d passed away during the night. Filled with trepidation, I knocked lightly at her door. When I received no answer, I pushed it partway open and poked my head inside.

  The bed was empty.

  Surprised, I threw the door wide and stepped into the bedroom. I first looked to my right, toward the chest that sat against the back wall, but Hana wasn’t there. Before I could look elsewhere, I heard a sound. I turned and peered down, to the floor to the left of the bed, and saw Hana on her knees, apparently struggling to pull herself up.

  I raced to her, kneeling down beside her and putting my arms around her shoulders in an attempt to steady her. She was still in her nightclothes, I saw. “Are you all right?” I asked, and I could hear the concern in my own voice.

  “No,” she replied, and I thought she meant that she’d suffered some sort of injury when she’d fallen, or perhaps that some condition had overtaken her and caused her to lose her balance. But then, just as she’d done on each of the occasions when I’d tried to aid her physically, she pushed me away. No didn’t mean that she wasn’t all right; it meant that she didn’t want my help.

  “Hana, please,” I said, and I reached out to her again.

  “No,” she barked, the word louder and sharper than before. I pulled back, struck by her vehemence, both because of the contrast with her overall infirmity, and because of the anger I heard in her voice. But then something made me think that perhaps it was not anger I heard, but fear. Except that didn’t make any sense to me. Hana and I might have had, at best, a strained relationship, but I could think of no reason that she would fear me.

  “Hana, I just want—” I tried again.

  “Get out,” Hana cut me off. “I can do it myself. I’m not an invalid.”

  I felt my mouth drop open. Was this Hana’s pride speaking? It astonished me to think that at her age she could demonstrate such foolishness.

  “Hana—”

  “Get out!”

  I stayed there on my knees, astounded—and angry. I’d taken leave from my Starfleet captaincy and traveled light-years to see this woman I hardly knew, because I’d been told that she needed my help—and she did need my help—and that was how she treated me. I didn’t need or even expect her gratitude, but neither did I need or expect her enmity.

  “All right,” I said calmly, frostily. “If th
at’s what you want.” I felt immature for saying the words, for the attitude behind them, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’d tried more than once, and I couldn’t force Hana to accept my assistance—not in that manner, anyway. I rose and walked from the room, then continued past the fireplace and through the front door.

  Outside, the weather had grown colder as winter approached. It had rained on most of the days since I’d arrived, but it was dry at that moment, though the gloomy sky threatened to change that. I stopped and put my hands on my hips, considering what to do. I alternately felt sympathy and resentment for Hana, but going back inside didn’t seem like a viable option right then.

  Before me stretched Hana’s crops. They were clearly dying, their leaves flagging, the surfaces of the plants duller in color than they had been, and in some cases, beginning to rot. Hana did not have much left in the way of supplies, and there before me was the reason why: She’d obviously been unable to reap most of her crops before her physical condition had deteriorated as much as it had. That she had managed to harvest any of the plants at all amazed me.

  I wasn’t concerned about a lack of food for Hana, at least not while I remained on Sentik, because I knew that I could supplement her supplies via the Armstrong’s food synthesizer. Anticipating that Hana might protest, I’d already brought some of her fruits and vegetables, roots and nuts back to the shuttle for analysis. Later, the food synthesizer would be able to reproduce approximations of them. If need be, I supposed that I could also gather some of Hana’s crops myself.

  Right then, though, the failing crops presented a different opportunity for me. Still feeling the adrenaline rush of my emotion, I paced over to the barn and searched through it until I found the tool I was looking for: a scythe. I grabbed it and carried it out into the fields, where I hefted it and sent its arced, pointed blade slicing through the stalks of the short, red-leafed plants nearest the cabin. The forceful, almost wild movement felt good. I moved down the first row of plants, felling one after another, then moved back the other way down the next row, all the while pondering why I’d gone to Sentik in the first place.