Tales from the Captain’s Table (3 page)

“You look like a man who’s ready to pay his tab,” Cap observed with a wry smile.

“I am, actually.” He turned to Picard. “It’s about my honeymoon. Three weeks on the Opal Sea.”

“I believe, Captain, that you declared that subject off-limits,” Picard said, his eyebrows aloft with mild surprise.

Riker smiled. “I changed my mind. Call it captain’s prerogative.”

“You seem uninjured, Captain Riker,” said Klag in a teasing voice. “It could not have been a terribly successful honeymoon.”

Well aware of the Klingon belief that a shattered clavicle on the wedding night is a portent of good luck, Riker favored Klag with a lopsided grin. “Maybe my sickbay is just better equipped than yours.”

Riker noticed that he had become the focus of the intense attention of perhaps a dozen of his fellow skippers. Carefully arranging his thoughts, he considered where best to begin his tale….

That day started with the mother of all hangovers. I woke up with my hands bound behind me, facedown on moist, slippery wood with a snippet of weird Pelagian music playing over and over in my head. Trouble was, I hadn’t had anything to drink.

Actually, I ought to back up a few hours and explain how I ended up in the smelly bilge of that rickety old wooden sailing ship in the first place.

Deanna—my new bride—and I had arrived on Pelagia two days earlier. You may or may not have heard of the place. It’s a Class-M planet dominated by oceans. The only landmasses on the entire globe are chains of volcanic islands, and the weather is damned close to paradise almost from pole to pole, nearly all year long. The planet’s single biggest vacation destination is called the Opal Sea, a place of iridescent green water, golden sandy beaches, and almost uniformly friendly humanoid natives.

And pirates.

No kidding. Pirates.

With wooden ships.

Into which they sometimes toss hostages that they catch unawares while jogging on their planet’s idyllic golden beaches.

I admit, I wasn’t as vigilant as I should have been. On the other hand, this
was
my honeymoon. Bridegrooms usually don’t expect to get clonked over the head at times like this.

I suppose I was mesmerized by the foamy boundary between the surf and the sand, watching the dawn beginning to brighten the water, when somebody coldcocked me. The pirates must have had someone lying in wait for me at the beach, down by the rocks. I’m still not sure exactly how it happened, but I got hit from behind, judging from the pain I could still feel in the back of my head as I pushed myself up to my knees in the dim, swaying, briny-smelling room that I soon learned was the hold of an honest-to-gods Barbary Coast–style pirate ship.

My first attempt to get my feet under me sent me sprawling straight to the slick wooden deck, and the noise evidently attracted the attention of a pair of low-ranking pirates. They were male Pelagians, with the same turquoise skin coloration that Deanna and I had adopted for the duration of our stay on—

“A moment, Will,” Picard said. “You never told me that you and Deanna underwent surgical alterations for your honeymoon trip.”

Riker tried to react nonchalantly to Picard’s interruption. “It’s a pretty common procedure on Pelagia these days. It helps visitors fit in, and you can have it done on several of the main southern islands, where the tech caps that are enforced on the rest of the planet don’t apply.”

“I’ve not had the opportunity to visit the place myself,” Picard said. “But I’m familiar with the technological restrictions. They don’t permit any electronics on most of the planet, and limit mechanical and chemical technology to the equivalent of Earth’s Napoleonic Era or earlier.”

Riker smiled as he recalled the prohibition against food replicators in parts of Paris. “They have a very good reason for it, as it turns out,” he said. “But I’m digressing.”

“Get up, Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf,” said one of the two pirates in my welcoming committee. “The captain has business with you, heh.”

Like the freebooters who terrorized the high seas on my home planet around seven centuries ago, these rough, bearded men wore breeches, leather boots, rough shirts—or no shirt—and bandannas. They also fairly bristled with knives, as well as muzzle-loading pistols I recognized from a holodeck pirate scenario I ran a couple of times with Lieutenant Commander Keru, the
Enterprise
’s stellar-cartographer-turned-security-officer. They almos could have passed for the pirates of the Spanish Main.

Except for their people’s characteristic turquoise-colored skin.

“You heard us, Urr’hilf,” said the second pirate. “Captain Torr’ghaff wants to talk to you about collecting the ransom, heh.”

I figured out quickly that they had mistaken me for somebody else. It was an easy deduction to make, since I didn’t exactly look like myself at the moment. But I hadn’t adopted the name Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf, and had no idea who the hell that was.

Still, I had to admit that the name had a familiar ring to it. Just as I had to face the fact that this Torr’ghaff, who was evidently my captor, was likely to be pretty unhappy if he were to realize I was somebody other than this Urr’hilf person.

Better play along, then,
I told myself as the two pirates marched me to a ladder and then up onto the ship’s main deck.

Warm salt spray stung my nose. I squinted into the aquamarine-hued sky, in which the orange sun now stood considerably higher than it had when I’d gone out for my morning jog.
Deanna knows I’m gone by now,
I thought, figuring maybe three or four hours had passed since my disappearance.
She and the others must have mounted a search by now. Surely they’ll—

“So you could count on Captain Picard to bring the resources of the
Enterprise
to bear in rescuing you,” interposed Klag, who then killed off yet another
warnog.

Riker shook his head as he accepted another uttaberry wine from Cap, who had also been listening intently. “Not exactly. At the time, the
Enterprise
was already where she is right now: in Earth orbit, undergoing repairs at McKinley Station. Deanna and the rest of us came to Pelagia in Captain Picard’s yacht.

Klag scowled in confusion. “How many people do you humans customarily involve in these ‘honeymoons,’ Riker?”

“Just two. But Pelagia is becoming a pretty popular Starfleet shore-leave destination. Deanna and I were happy to give some of our shipmates a ride to Pelagia before going off on our own.”

“Sounds like that was a fortunate decision,” Picard said as Cap handed him a second
dresci.

“Having so many people present on a honeymoon excursion reminds me of a novel I once read when I was an ensign,” said Klag. “It was a tale of interspecies infidelity that involved an Andorian and a Damiani in a romantic septangle. I think you humans would call it an ‘erotic thriller.’ ”

“Or a bodice-ripper,” Riker said.

Picard chuckled. “Or perhaps a bedroom farce.”

“Set in a very large house,” said Cap.

“Would it be all right if I
continued
my pirate story?” Riker said with an exasperated sigh.

“Please,” Klag said.

So I had to have faith that Deanna and the others were taking steps to find me. And though I had no way to know when I could expect to see them, I found the thought enormously reassuring.

Without freeing my hands—they were still bound tightly behind me at the wrists with something that felt like slimy rope—my two pirate escorts hustled me past a group of unsavory crew members who busied themselves swabbing decks and adjusting rigging.

Shortly afterward, I stood before a man who had to be at least two meters tall, a veritable mountain of hirsute muscle. One side of his face bore an impressive, dragon-shaped deep purple tattoo that made him look even more intimidating. His clothing was a good deal more expensive-looking than that of any of his men, and he was clearly in charge.

“Captain Torr’ghaff, I presume, heh,” I said.

Standing tall against an all but infinite backdrop of clear aquamarine skies and gleaming green waters, the pirate chieftain looked me slowly up and down, his dark eyes shielded from the dazzling sun by the wide brim of his long-plumed, purple hat. “Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf. Judging from the music you make in your sound recordings, I had expected you would be taller, neh?”

“I suppose my height doesn’t come across except in person, heh,” I said, still doing my best to nail the local dialect, which I knew the universal translator in my ear could only approximate.

“Fair enough,” the pirate leader said, raising a sharp cutl—

“I wasn’t aware, Riker, that Earth had universal translators during the era of wooden wind boats,” Klag said with a smirk.

Riker sighed. “The Pelagian authorities have made a few exceptions to their tech caps in the interest of public safety.”

“Ah. Like the ‘sound recordings’ your pirate captor referenced.”

“No, actually. Sound recordings are made and exchanged on Pelagia by natural means. Some sort of squid or octopus that reproduces sounds with its tympanic membranes.”

“They use
fish
as musical instruments?”

“Do you want to hear this story or not?”

Klag raised a hand to signal his assent. “Please, proceed.”

“I am delighted that you weren’t too badly injured by my welcoming party, Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf,” the brigand leader said, slipping the cutlass back into the scabbard that dangled from his purple, silken sash. “I have been an enthusiastic listener for many years, heh.”

Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf,
I thought, considering once again the stubborn snippet of Pelagian native music that I still couldn’t get out of my head. I finally understood why.

Urr’hilf was a local musician of some considerable repute. He entertained large crowds on islands and sailing vessels all over the planet. Including at the visitor reception centers located on the main southern islands.

And I realized that he was supposed to be playing at the very seaside hostelry where Deanna and I had been staying. I had seen his pictures—woodcut engravings and painted portraits, actually—all over the lobby and the lounge.

This guy had kidnapped me thinking I was Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf. And now that I understood what had happened, I realized that between my beard and my minor surgical alterations, I really did bear a better-than-passing resemblance to Urr’hilf.

Great,
I thought, considering the unpleasant reality of the rope that still bound my wrists behind my back.
How pissed off is this guy going to be when he realizes how badly he’s goofed?

But I had an even more immediate concern than my personal safety.

“I assume I’m the only hostage you took from the beach today, eh?” I asked Captain Torr’ghaff, taking care to avoid provoking him. Hoping it would make my impersonation of Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf more believable, I tried to appear more than a little frightened.

“You are correct, heh,” Torr’ghaff said.

I heaved a sigh of relief.
So Deanna is probably safe,
I thought.
Along with the rest of my shipmates. They’ve got to be planning some sort of rescue, tech restrictions or no tech restrictions.

Torr’ghaff walked slowly around me and my pirate escorts, evidently scrutinizing me carefully. Had the difference between my height and Urr’hilf’s that he had mentioned before really given me away?

“You aren’t dressed the way I expected either, neh,” he said finally.

I shrugged. “I don’t wear my stage outfits while running on the beach, heh” was all I could think of to say.

He seemed to consider this for what felt like an eternity—time always stretches when both your arms are tied behind your back and a man who carries a lot of cutlery seems to be considering carving you into chum and throwing you into the ocean—before shrugging.

“You’d better hope your people deliver a ransom far richer than you appear to rate just now, eh?” he said at length. The cutthroats flanking me laughed. One of them half-hummed and half-brayed a discordant melody that I assumed to be one of Urr’hilf’s.