Tales from the Captain’s Table by Keith R.A. DeCandido

Nadir .
    The control panel looked dead, its lights darkened. Pulling himself up level with it, Picard confirmed the observation—there was no response to his commands. The shuttle was devoid of even emergency power, meaning it was no longer transmitting his distress signal.
    Peering through the forward observation port, he saw a mess of splintered branches above him, mute testimony to the path he had taken in his fall. And yet, he hadn’t perished. Apparently, Van Dusen had done something right.
    Picard didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but the Skellig wouldn’t need much time to find him. For all he knew, they had followed him down through the atmosphere and were training their weapons on him at that very moment.
    With his external sensors dead, there was but one way to find out.
    Sliding down the incline of the deck, Picard made his way aft to the supply locker and removed one of the three charged phasers inside it—not that it would be of much use against five ships’ worth of Skellig raiders. He also secured a tricorder and affixed it to his uniform. Then he found a medical kit, took out a hypospray, programmed it for a mild painkiller, and administered it—grateful for the relief it brought him. Finally, he climbed up to the hatch and pushed the stud that would slide it open.
    But the door didn’t slide. It just sat there. Apparently, the mechanism had been damaged in the landing.
    Picard scowled. He had contemplated the possibility of all sorts of deaths over the course of his career. Suffocating in a crash-landed shuttle was not one of them.
    Grabbing the hatch’s interior handle, he put his shoulder behind it and pushed as hard as he could. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the door grudgingly began to move forward.
    When the opening was wide enough for Picard to get through it, he stuck his head out and looked around. All he could see were black tree branches with wide orange leaves.
    The ground was a good five or six meters below, but the branches offered him a plentitude of hand- and footholds. Tucking his phaser away, he wrestled himself free of the Nadir and started to make his way down.
    It was only after Picard had dropped the last meter or so to the forest floor and ventured out into a clearing that he caught sight of the Skellig. They had indeed followed him through the clouds and were banking in formation overhead.
    But they didn’t seem to be coming after him. They were firing at something else—a cluster of tall, elegant towers that Picard hadn’t noticed previously. Obviously, he had managed to land in the neighborhood of a city.
    So much for avoiding population centers . This was clearly a big one.
    As Picard watched, the raiders lashed at the towers with barrage after barrage of emerald disruptor fire. It was obvious that the Skellig were after something the planet’s inhabitants possessed. But the beleaguered occupants didn’t fire back.
    Naturally, Picard sympathized with the defenders. But without a starship and a crew to back him up, he had nothing to offer them in the way of help—even if he were certain it was advisable which, knowing precious little about the situation, he wasn’t.
    Besides, his own survival was still very much in jeopardy. The Skellig might have been occupied at the moment, but they would eventually come after him with their weapons blazing. Otherwise, he might tell the Federation what they had done, and put a Starfleet task force on their trail.
    Picard looked up at his shuttle, partially hidden in the grasp of the trees’ stout, interwoven branches. If he remained with the Nadir , it would be a bit easier for a rescue mission to find him. But it would also be easier for the Skellig.
    His best bet was to get away from the shuttle and move deeper into the forest, and hope Starfleet eventually tracked him down via his combadge. With that thought in mind, he proceeded in a direction directly opposite that of the towers.
    However, he hadn’t taken