Star Trek - TNG - Vendetta Page 6

formidable of challenges, it is a pity that the

  simple act of explaining human goals would

  prove to be so insurmountable."

  "Ah!" said Geordi desperately. "A

  castle!"

  Data swung his head around in the

  direction that Geordi was looking. "Would you be

  referring to that somewhat ramshackle inn

  approximately ten kilometers away?"

  "You see a humble inn, faithful Sancho? But

  I see an extravagant palace that might

  afford us lodgings!"

  Data frowned, trying desperately to share in

  the divine madness of his friend. "I would suppose,"

  said Data slowly, "that if one were to build up the

  exterior considerably--substitute stone walls

  instead of a tattered wooden barricade--and were,

  in addition, to supplement the structure with towers,

  turrets, and a moat ... taking into account all of

  that, I could see where the inn could be transformed into a

  castle."

  Geordi smiled approvingly. "Now you're

  getting it," he said.

  "Am I?" Data considered that. "I am not

  saying that I perceive it as a castle, in the manner

  that you saw--or claim to have seen--the windmill as

  a giant. I am merely analyzing the

  possibilities that the inn could be reworked into a

  castle-like structure."

  "The dreamers are the ones who conceive of what could

  happen," said Geordi, "and the scientists are the

  ones who make it happen. The best of humanity

  are those who combine both traits."

  He urged the broken-down horse forward, with

  Data close behind on the hapless ass known as

  Dapple.

  When Geordi had worked out the holodeck

  scenario concerning the adventures of Don

  Quixote, born Alonso Quixana, he had

  added in a random factor. They were not living out the

  sequential life of Quixote so much as existing

  in his world for a time, with the various elements jumbled

  together. It made for more stimulating entertainment that

  way.

  Moments later they had ridden their mounts into the

  central courtyard of the inn. They caught odd

  glances from those weary travelers who were relaxing

  nearby with mugs of ale. There was some guffawing and

  chortling, and even a good deal of pointing. Data

  absorbed it all but was incapable of taking offense,

  even if these had been real humans rather than

  holodeck simulacrums. As for Geordi,

  well--Don Quixote would not have taken offense,

  and therefore, Geordi would not either.

  He swung a leg down off the horse, and his

  boot caught momentarily in the stirrup,

  almost throwing him to the ground. He recovered just in

  time and managed, with not much grace, to save himself from

  a painful and embarrassing spill. Nevertheless,

  several of the men noticed his near mishap, and got

  a few more chortles at his expense. Data

  gracefully dismounted from his smaller jackass.

  Geordi turned and took a step back,

  surprised by the woman who was approaching them.

  "Guinan?" he said in confusion.

  The hostess of the Enterprise Ten-Forward

  lounge, clad in flowing blue robes and, as

  always, a large, flat-brimmed hat, spread her

  hands wide and said graciously, "If my eyes

  are not deceiving me, we have a knight here in my

  humble establishment."

  "Your--?"

  He turned toward Data in confusion, and then a

  slow smile spread across his face. Data

  confirmed with a nod and said, "Other crew members

  learned of your scenario and requested the

  opportunity to participate and surprise you."

  Geordi nodded briskly and unconsciously

  straightened his shirt a nd rearranged his armor in

  imitation of the little motion the captain did whenever he

  rose or sat--the motion which, in good-natured

  kidding around the ship, had been nicknamed "The

  Picard Maneuver." "A knight errant," he

  said briskly, "is surprised by nothing because he

  expects everything. Is that not right, Sancho?"

  "That is right, sir," said Data affably.

  "We seek lodging," Geordi told her

  imperiously.

  "And do you have money with which to pay for your stay?"

  Guinan had a proper air of skepticism about

  her.

  "Money!" said Geordi in outrage. "Good

  woman, I'll have you know that the lodging of a knight

  is an obligation and a debt that all people are

  expected to support. You should be flattered that I

  have chosen your abode, and relieved that the sword of

  Don Quixote de la Mancha will be present

  for a night to defend this castle!"

  Guinan took all this in and then nodded her head

  slightly. "It would be the height of foolishness

  to argue with so brave and determined a knight. Or

  his squire," she added as an afterthought, with a slight

  nod towards Data.

  "You are most kind," said Data.

  But Geordi wasn't listening anymore.

  Instead, his VISOR'-ENHANCED gaze was

  levelled at a woman who was bent over a

  well, drawing water up in a bucket. Any

  other man on the ship would have had to wait until

  she turned around to see who it was, but

  Geordi's VISOR immediately fed him body

  readings, thermal readouts, and uniquely

  identifiable bio traces that promptly informed

  him of the identity of yet another unexpected

  participant in his holodeck fantasy. He

  wondered for a moment if everyone on the ship was going

  to turn up. How many people had caught wind of his little

  informal birthday party, anyway?

  The woman turned, balancing the bucket on

  one sturdy shoulder. She was medium build, the

  black ringlets of her hair falling about her

  shoulders, her tattered and poor clothes hanging

  on her body threadbare in places. She looked

  at him with curiosity. "Senor Quixana!"

  she said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

  He took a step toward her with as much reverence

  and amazement as he could muster. "She stands before

  me! Oh blessed lady, to come to me now when I am

  on my quest! It is she, Sancho!" He

  grasped Data firmly by the arm and pulled the

  android down next to him. "It is the lady

  Dulcinea!"

  Data tilted his head slightly. "It is the

  lady Counselor Troi."

  "Hush!" said Deanna Troi with an

  impatient stomp of her slippered foot.

  "Lady Dulcinea," said Geordi

  dramatically, "long have I worshipped you from

  afar. Now I embark on my great quests, all

  dedicated to the ideal beauty of womanhood that you

  represent. In order that I accomplish great

  deeds, I must have the ideal woman upon which to bestow

  their honor!"

  "But Senor Quixana, don't you

  recognize me?" said Troi. "I am merely

  the daughter of your next-door neighbor. You have

  known me for many years. Why do you now call m
e

  by this strange name?"

  "I call you only by that name which you have always

  possessed, but none have dared utter," said

  Geordi. "But I, knight errant, on

  God's own quest, must--"

  "Report to the conference room."

  The utterly unexpected voice was, to put

  it mildly, a jolt. Geordi's head snapped

  around, as did the others.

  Captain Picard was standing there, in full

  uniform; arms folded across his chest.

  Geordi felt that awkwardness one always felt

  when someone walked into the middle of an elaborate

  holodeck scenario and knocked the props out from

  under one's suspension of disbelief. Not that

  Geordi had been having any sort of easy time

  losing himself in the travails and imaginings of la

  Mancha, thanks to Data's incessantly

  rational view of the world of Don Quixote. Not

  to mention the well-meaning, but jolting, appearances of

  fellow crew members from the Enterprise. And

  now the captain himself had shown up, presumably

  to shut the whole thing down over some emergency or

  other.

  In a way, considering the way things were going,

  Geordi was almost relieved.

  Counselor Troi stepped forward. "You seem

  distressed, Captain."

  Picard turned towards her and his mouth dropped

  slightly. He had not recognized her at first

  and, indeed, had wondered over the overt

  familiarity that a holodeck being was having with him.

  "Distressed ... Counselor," he said

  cautiously, as if still uncertain of whom he was

  addressing, "is an understatement." He turned

  back to Geordi. "I am truly sorry

  to interrupt this scenario, Mr. La Forge. I

  am aware you've put a great deal of energy into it.

  But a matter of some urgency has presented

  itself."

  "Yes, sir," said Geordi. With a sigh and a

  last, quick glance around, he called out, "Computer.

  End program."

  The castlesthovel vanished silently around

  them, to be replaced by the black, glowing grid

  walls of the holodeck. "In five minutes,

  up in the briefing room," said Picard. His

  officers went out quickly in order to change to garb that

  would be more presentable. Somehow, armor or peasant

  rags didn't seem suitable to whatever situation

  might present itself in Starfleet life.

  Guinan walked over to Picard and regarded him

  with bemused curiosity. "You could have summoned

  Geordi, or Data, or Troi, via

  communicators," she said. "Why didn't you?"

  He permitted a small smile.

  "Captain's prerogative," he admitted.

  "An indulgence, if you will. I'm something of a

  Cervantes enthusiast myself. I was

  intrigued to see what Mr. La Forge was going

  to develop." He looked at her askance for a

  moment. "Guinan, are you quite all right? You seem

  a tad ... distracted today."

  Her eyes darkened for the briefest of moments, and

  then she smiled, although when she spoke, it was with her

  eyes half-lidded. "I just haven't been resting

  well lately. It will pass."

  "Well ... if you have continued problems, I

  want you to go to sickbay and have Dr. Crusher

  look you over. Understood?"

  She nodded slightly. He'd never had to give

  her any sort of order in the past, and this was

  probably the closest he would ever come to issuing

  one. So she treated it with appropriate weight.

  "Understood, sir."

  He started to turn away and then Guinan added,

  "Deanna was quite lovely, wasn't she?"

  "Appropriately so," said Picard. "After

  all, she is Dulcinea, the ideal woman, the

  woman that Don Quixote strives for, and for whom

  he endures hardship after hardship. Yet he

  derives emotional strength merely from the knowledge of her

  existence."

  "He performs deeds to prove himself worthy of

  her, yet feels he never can be worthy of her,"

  said Guinan. She fell into slow step next

  to Picard. "Did you ever have a woman like that,

  Captain? A dream girl? An unattainable

  woman?"

  He paused and pursed his lips. "Once, many

  years ago. A dream girl. The very idea of her

  reality vanishes into the misty haze of youthful

  memory."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" asked Guinan

  in bemusement.

  He turned to her in all seriousness, his brow

  creasing. "It means that I would prefer if you did

  not ask again, Guinan." He turned away from her

  and strode out of the holodeck.

  She inclined her head slightly in the direction

  he had departed. "Message received," she said

  to no one.

  Picard walked briskly down the corridor,

  paying no attention to where he was going. He gave

  quick nods of acknowledgement to all those who greeted

  him, but he didn't pay the least bit of attention

  to whom he was greeting. Thanks to Guinan, his

  thoughts were--albeit briefly--a

  million light-years and half a lifetime

  away. By the time he got to the turbolift,

  however, he had neatly tucked his mind into its

  proper, ordered fashion, and there it would remain,

  if he had anything to say about it.

  Which, as things turned out, he didn't.

  Chapter Four

  The captain of the U.s.s. Chekov

  regarded the vista of space before him and pondered

  about how much less hospitable a place it had

  seemed to become. The endless freezing vacuum was

  dangerous enough without massive cubes that could spring

  out of warp space without warning, filled with soulless

  mechanical beings that crushed everything in their path.

  He winced when he thought about the friends that he'd

  lost in the hopeless fight at Wolf 359.

  Forty ships. Gods, forty ships. And where had

  he been? Too far away. Too damned far

  away.

  And who saved the day?

  "Picard," he muttered, shaking his head.

  From his right-hand side, his first officer looked up

  from the fuel consumption report that she was

  initialing. "Jean-Luc Picard?" she asked.

  He afforded her a glance before allowing a rueful

  smile to touch his lips. "Yes, Jean-Luc

  Picard."

  "The finest captain in the fleet," she said

  firmly, and then, in quiet awareness of the

  importance of politics, she began to add,

  "Present company excepted, of course."

  But her captain waved her off. He

  uncrossed his legs and stood, taking several

  short steps across the bridge. His bridge, the

  bridge of an Excelsior-class ship. It

  was a good bridge, a solid bridge--

  Not an awesomely spacious bridge, however.

  The bridge of a Galaxy-class ship, now that was

  spacious. He'd never had the opportunity

  to step onto one, but he'd heard you could

  practically play field hockey in one of those.

  But
there were only a handful of those magnificent

  ships in the fleet--one of which had been destroyed

  at Wolf 359--and, of course, the finest of those

  rare ships, the most renowned, the most sought after was

  commanded by none other than--

  "Jean-Luc Picard," said the captain

  softly. "You don't have to be

  deferential, Number One. I know how highly

  regarded he is by everyone in the fleet--not the least

  of whom is yourself. I can't blame you at all.

  You were there when he pulled off "The Picard

  Miracle.""

  "Is that what they're calling it now?" she said

  in amusement. "Well, I suppose it was, in

  a way. It was something to see. I thought we were dead

  for sure."

  The rest of the bridge crew, ostensibly going

  about their business, were nevertheless slow in their

  duties, so that they could pay attention to what the first

  officer was saying. There were so many stories of

  destruction and loss surrounding the attack of the

  Borg, that starship crews--what few there were

  left--savored any telling of the one tale that

  ended with the Federation triumphant.

  "It must have been a tense moment," said the

  captain drily. He scratched idly at his

  graying sideburns and glanced around the bridge in

  quiet amusement at his whole bridge crew,

  trying to look as if they weren't paying any

  attention. He caught the eye of his helmsman,

  who grinned sheepishly at being noticed.

  With the air of someone who had repeated a story

  to the point where she had every single beat and dramatic

  moment down pat, she said, "I'll never forget the

  look in Commander Riker's eye when he said he was

  about to give the order for us to ram the Borg ship.

  I'm not sure what he hoped to accomplish--

  damage it, maybe for a few minutes. Buy the

  Earth that much more time. ...

  "And there was this teenage boy at the helm,

  youngest ensign I'd ever seen. I thought he'd

  crack when Riker ordered that a collision course

  be laid in. Give the boy credit. He

  sucked it up, said, "Yes, sir," and laid

  in the course command."

  By now no one was making a pretense of doing

  anything other than listening to her. "What were you

  thinking, Commander Shelby? Right then, when it looked

  all over," asked the navigator. His name was

  Hobson, and he was so fresh out of the Academy,

  he practically looked like he had a sheen to him.

  Shelby paused, scratching her thick red

  hair thoughtfully. Hobson had addressed her with a