Tales from the Captain's Table

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  I tapped lightly at her door.

  “Demora,” came a whisper from the bedroom, barely audible. I think it was the first time Hana had said my name since we’d first spoken, just after my arrival.

  I opened the door and peered inside. Hana lay in bed, and I walked over to stand beside her. When I gazed down at her, I was shocked to see tears pooled in her eyes. It seemed inconceivable to me that Hana would be sad to see me leave.

  Before I could say anything, Hana spoke again. “Demora,” she repeated, and a tear spilled from one eye and down her cheek, leaving behind a quicksilver trail. “I need help.” The words still came in a whisper, so low that I wasn’t sure that I’d heard them correctly.

  “Hana, you’ll be all right,” I said, not knowing what else to tell her, but also believing the basic truth of my assertion. Hana was old and failing, but she could still get around, no matter how slowly. There was enough food stored in her cabin now—I’d restocked her cupboard both from what I’d cut down in the fields and from the food synthesizer aboard the Armstrong—and she seemed strong enough to prepare simple dishes for herself.

  “No,” Hana said, looking up at me with a wounded expression. “I won’t be all right. I…I need help.”

  Suddenly, I understood that Hana’s tears were not for me, but for herself. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “What do you need?”

  “I can’t get up,” she said, and now tears slid down both sides of her face. She wept, I realized, because she thought that she could no longer take care of herself.

  “Hana,” I said, “I can bring your breakfast to you here. We can prop you up against the pillows, and you can eat in bed. You don’t need to get up.”

  “I need to go out back,” she said, the very act of having to ask for such help obviously a terrible embarrassment for her.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I can use my shuttle’s transporter to—”

  “No,” she pleaded.

  “Well then,” I said, considering how else I might be able to assist Hana. “I guess I can rig something up, bring it in here for—”

  “No,” she interrupted again, beseeching me. “Please…not yet, Demora.”

  “All right,” I said. I leaned in over the bed and took hold of Hana, sliding one hand around her back and placing the other on her arm. I felt her recoil automatically from my touch, her flimsy body tensing, but then she relaxed her muscles. With great care, I helped her to the edge of the bed, and then up onto her feet. Her body seemed no heavier than if it had been made of paper.

  It took us a long time to move out of her bedroom, through the back door, and over to the outhouse, but we eventually made it. Afterward, I walked her back into the cabin and headed for the table, where I intended to sit her down. But Hana told me that she wasn’t strong enough, and that she’d rather go back to bed, if I wouldn’t mind bringing her breakfast there. I did as she asked.

  After we’d both eaten—she in her bed, and me at the table in the main room—I told Hana that I needed to visit the shuttle, and that I’d be back in a few minutes. I didn’t know if she realized that I’d been scheduled to leave Sentik that day, but it was clear that if I did, she would not be able to survive on her own.

  As I activated the transporter recall, I had no idea what I was going to do.

  I sat at the Armstrong’s primary console, staring at it as though an answer might suddenly materialize there. On the navigational display, I saw the course I’d plotted that would take me back to Starbase Magellan, the Enterprise, and my crew. On the communications console, I saw the indicators that told me the system was ready to record and transmit a message.

  Sitting motionless for a long time, I reviewed the impossible choice I had to make. Leave Hana—my grandmother—alone here on Sentik, unable to take care of herself; relocate her against her will, and in so doing, risk the journey killing her; or—

  “Or what?” I asked myself aloud. Was I supposed to forgo living my own life in favor of somebody at the end of theirs? Somebody who’d never shown me even the slightest amount of love?

  I continued staring at the shuttle’s primary console, until in my mind it morphed into something else, into a control panel I’d once seen half a quadrant away from Sentik IV. It sat in the middle of the renegade base, in the middle of the immense rain forest, on a forbidden world.

  For the third time since I’d arrived at Hana’s, my memories took me back to that mission.

  I verified the download of data from the renegades’ computer system to my tricorder, the transfer rate blinking in green numerals across the panel display. Our basic mission had been to obtain details of the renegades’ impending operations, and to identify the locations of any additional bases that might exist, but what I’d found in their comp system was much more than that. Once we delivered the information to Starfleet Command, they would be able to shut down the entire operation.

  As I waited for the volumes of data to download, I worked the console into which I’d patched my tricorder, and from which I’d burrowed into the base’s computer network. Sitting in the small room that housed a power substation, I reconfigured the display and brought up the information most vital to Starfleet Command. Reviewing it, I understood that the admirals’ suspicions had wildly underestimated the scope of the renegades’ strategy. Without the intelligence I had uncovered, the Federation would soon find itself at grave and possibly irreversible risk.

  Abruptly, an alarm sounded, and a moment later, a male voice emerged form the comm system. “Intruder alert, intruder alert,” it said. “Perimeter breach in section thirty-one alpha.” I studied the data transfer, expecting it to be interrupted at any second, but the bits continued to flow.

  Behind me, I heard the room’s lone door glide open. “Demora,” Mike called. “They’ve found us. We’ve got to get out of here.” For the moment, I ignored him, and instead concentrated on bringing up a schematic of the base. “Demora!”

  “It’s not us,” I declared. “We’re not in section thirty-one alpha.”

  “That could be a code,” Mike said. “They might—”

  “No,” I told him, tapping into the comm system in the base’s command center. I grabbed a small silver speaker sitting on the panel and lifted it to my ear. I listened as one of the renegades ordered the prisoners brought to him. “No, it’s not us,” I said again to Mike. “They’ve got one of the other teams. Maybe both of them.”

  “Then they’ll be looking for us soon,” he asserted. “How much longer before you’ve got what we need?”

  I threw down the speaker, sending it skittering across the panel, and checked the status monitor. “Sixty seconds,” I said.

  “I hope we’ve got that long,” Mike said earnestly, and exited the power substation, obviously to resume standing guard for me.

  Mike and I had arrived at the base on our fourth day hiking through the jungle. Theoretically, the captain and his partner should have arrived there before we did, since they’d taken a more direct route, but we’d received no signal that they’d succeeded in the mission. The third team also could have arrived before us, but again, we’d received no such signal. And so it had fallen upon us to find a way inside in order to retrieve the data Starfleet Command needed.

  As Mike and I had reconnoitered the base perimeter, happenstance had provided us a chance. Very close to where we hid in the jungle, a renegade guard had exited the compound, for no reason we could determine. Gambling that we weren’t walking into a trap, we pounced, incapacitating the guard and hauling him back to the access hatch. Quickly, we utilized his hand and retina prints to breach the base’s biometric safety measures. From there, it had been a short trip to the room with the computer interface.

  I toggled the speaker selector, sending the command-center audio feed from the individual speaker I’d just used to a panel speaker. I listened as I heard a commotion, and then the sound of flesh against flesh. I recognized the voice of a man on our third team as he cried out in pain.

>   Behind me, the door slid open again. “Demora.”

  Over the comm system, I heard one of the renegades order both prisoners interrogated without regard to their health or survival. “Mike,” I said, turning to look at him, “they’re going to torture—”

  “That can’t matter right now,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Nothing’s more important than that intelligence.” He pointed to where my tricorder sat atop the console.

  Knowing he was right, I turned back and checked the status monitor. “Ten seconds,” I read, and then, “Five…three, two, one.” I ripped the shielded patch cord from my tricorder. “Let’s go,” I said.

  As Mike and I headed out the door of the power substation, I heard behind us the transmitted moans of the two people who’d made up our third team. Again, I felt the urge to do whatever it took to find them and free them, but I also knew that Mike was right about the critical importance of returning to Starfleet Command the renegade intelligence we’d collected.

  And so we ran.

  We didn’t stop for an hour as we retraced the path we’d hacked through the rain forest. Once we’d cleared the renegade base, we’d sent a signal both back to the shuttle and to the captain’s team, but so far, we’d heard nothing from either. For the moment, we could only hope that the engineer had been able to repair the shuttle and could get us off the planet and back to the Federation.

  Breathing heavily and drenched in sweat, Mike and I finally slowed, and then stopped. For several minutes, we listened to the jungle around us, trying to detect any sound that might indicate that we’d been followed. We heard nothing of the kind.

  “I think we’re clear,” I said.

  “I hope so,” Mike replied. “Now we just—”

  A high-pitched whine suddenly filled the air, increasing rapidly in volume. I recognized it as the sound of an overload, and quickly drew my phaser and checked it. The power indicator reflected the imminent detonation of the weapon.

  “Overload,” I said, and I reached back and hurled my phaser into the jungle, as far from us as I could. It was quickly lost from sight, though I heard it strike several leaves in its flight. I ducked behind a tree, and Mike followed suit, taking cover a short distance from me. Several seconds passed, and then an explosion rocked the rain forest.

  Mike and I looked over at each other, but before we could say anything, another whine pierced the day. Mike drew his own phaser, but even as he did so, a second and then a third whine commenced. The renegades had triggered self-destruct commands not only in our phasers, but in our tricorders as well, obviously blanketing the jungle with the deadly signals.

  Mike quickly tossed away his phaser, and then his tricorder. I pulled my tricorder’s strap from around my neck, then opened its storage compartment, from which I pulled a blank data tape.

  “Demora,” Mike called to me as the whine from my tricorder grew louder. I didn’t answer, instead focusing on pushing the tape into the recording slot. Out where Mike had thrown his phaser, a second detonation occurred.

  As I activated the data transfer, I knew it was too late. I hauled the tricorder back and flung it away. It exploded before it hit the ground, and then Mike’s also blew up.

  Mike ran over to me. “Did you get the data off-loaded?” he asked.

  “Not onto tape,” I said. “But I’ve got it up here.” I tapped a finger against my forehead. “I viewed the most critical intelligence as I downloaded it at the base.”

  “Well done,” Mike said. “But now they know where we are, so we have to keep moving.”

  We continued on through the rain forest.

  Two hours later, as I’d begun to grow concerned that the shuttle had not yet been repaired, it broke through the jungle canopy. A great sense of relief rose within me as Mike and I stopped and watched it descend. Knowing that we would escape this place, and that we would succeed in our mission to help secure the Federation, I lamented only the apparent loss of at least two of our crew.

  The shuttle lowered slowly toward the ground, its antigravs evidently returned to working order. It came down amid the enormous trunks of the rain-forest trees, and settled atop a mass of undergrowth about twenty meters from our position. Bushes and twigs cracked and snapped beneath its weight as it alit.

  Once the shuttle had landed, I started toward it, reaching up with my knife to slice through the vegetation along the way, but then I felt Mike’s hand close around my upper arm. I looked over at him, and he mouthed the word “Wait.” I gazed back over toward the shuttle and saw the silvery white of its starboard hull visible in patches through the leaves. As I watched, the hatch slipped open with a mechanical hum audible even at that remove.

  I waited, as Mike had prompted me to, and he stood motionless beside me. Nothing happened.

  “Where is she?” Mike asked quietly, obviously referring to the Starfleet engineer we’d left behind to repair the shuttle. He clearly didn’t trust the situation. Seconds passed, and with each one, I became more suspicious as well.

  But then the engineer appeared in the hatchway. She peered out into the jungle, doubtless aware of our presence from the signal we’d sent to her, as well as from her ability to scan for the frequency of our sensor veils, which she knew. As her gaze passed over our position, she and I made eye contact briefly, although she gave no indication that she had seen me. “Captain Green,” she finally called out.

  I looked again at Mike, and saw on his face the same mixture of confusion and wariness that I felt. The captain who led our mission was not named Green.

  “Commander Brown, Commander White, Specialist Gray,” the engineer continued. “I’ve repaired the shuttle, and we can now depart.”

  Green, Brown, White, Gray, I thought. Not one of the names belonged to any member of the mission crew. She’s being coerced, I concluded. Forced to call out to us, she was trying to warn us of the dangers, while at the same time attempting to save her own life. Had she simply refused to call to us, she likely would have been killed by the renegades.

  “What should we do?” Mike whispered beside me. As I turned to respond, the shriek of an energy weapon cut through the moist jungle air. A single short burst was followed by a longer one, and a beam of intense light sliced through the vegetation directly to my left. As I instinctively ducked down, I saw the engineer collapse in the hatchway, revealing a renegade behind her in the shuttle. The man, tall and muscular, had obviously aimed in our direction based upon a scan of our sensor veils, but hadn’t yet spotted us visually. Remaining in place seemed an untenable option, though, since he would doubtless sweep the area with his weapon.

  As though my thoughts had driven him, the renegade leveled his weapon again and fired into the jungle. Once more, a lethal ray cleaved the air, closer to us this time, less than an arm’s length away. I turned and darted for cover, and felt Mike’s presence beside me as he followed.

  I headed for a gargantuan tree just a few steps away, its enormous trunk at least three or four meters in diameter. Throwing myself down behind it, I thought I’d made it in time, but then intense pain erupted in my foot. An involuntary cry escaped through my gritted teeth as Mike landed on the ground beside me.

  The weapons fire stopped momentarily, but then the wail of the renegade’s weapon once more pierced the rain forest. Behind me, I heard the blast strike the tree, which trembled beneath the onslaught. I imagined the scorched crater that must have been opened in its trunk.

  “Are you hit?” Mike asked me.

  I nodded, and said, “My foot.” I drew my knee up toward my chest so that I could examine the damage. As I did so, the scent of seared flesh—my flesh—reached my nose. I immediately felt sick to my stomach, but pushed the sensation away. I looked at my boot, where the renegade’s weapon had scored a glancing strike. The upper portion of the boot’s surface had been charred, and a tear penetrated through to my foot. I saw an open wound within, my skin burned black, but the energy bolt had also cauterized the injury.

  “Ca
n you move?” Mike asked me.

  “I’m going to have to, aren’t I?” I said, already trying to stand by bracing myself against the tree. Then the weapons fire began again, the streaks of lethal light screaming past the tree, first on one side, then on the other. When they stopped, the singed vegetation surrounding us hissed as though communicating to us whispers of death. “We need to find deeper cover,” I said, well aware that the only weapons we now possessed were the broad-bladed knives we’d been using to slash our way through the jungle.

  “Right,” Mike agreed. He stood up and moved to my side, where he tucked a shoulder beneath my arm, helping to support me as I stood on my uninjured foot.

  Suddenly, a familiar whine rose from the direction of the shuttle: a phaser or tricorder set to overload. The sound increased in pitch, and then abruptly grew louder. Beside us, I saw a glint of alloy as a phaser went arcing down and into the brush a few meters away.

  I pushed away from Mike at once, intending to hobble forward, find the weapon, and toss it farther away from us. But Mike held me back and forced me down onto the ground, then raced toward the screeching phaser. “Stay there,” he ordered me. “You’ve got the intel.” He raised his long knife over his head and swung it rapidly in short arcs and thrusts, driving through the undergrowth and searching for the weapon that threatened us.

  The frequency of the whine increased higher still, clearly only seconds away from detonating.

  “Mike,” I called, wanting him to try to find cover, as unlikely a prospect as that seemed.

  At the last instant, Mike glanced over his shoulder at me, and then he spread his body wide, obviously attempting to shield me and protect the vital information I carried in my head.

  And then the phaser exploded.

  I saw a burst of flame bloom on either side of Mike, the yellow-red fire enveloping him for just a moment before it receded. Around me, shrapnel from the blast shot through the jungle, tearing through the plant life. I heard numerous metal fragments strike the tree behind me, and I felt one shoot into my forearm, but I seemed otherwise unscathed by the explosion.