Chapter 63 - Teaser!!

I'm sorry about the delay guys. Work and life has been overwhelming and I truly appreciate all those people who messaged asking if I was ok. I am ok, truly, but just overwhelmed.

I've been working all weekend trying to finish chapter 63 and have made some great progress. My goal is to have it out early next week, even if I have to work this entire holiday weekend to do it.

Thank you guys, from the bottom of my heart, for coming on this journey with me and for your great patience.

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Main Conference Room – USS Enterprise, In Orbit Above Kessik IV

Conversations buzzed quietly around the long conference table aboard the Enterprise. Small clusters had formed—senior officers of the Enterprise chatting with one another or with their guests. The room was near capacity, really. Present were Captain Picard’s entire senior staff, along with Captain Jellico of the Cairo, Admiral Pressman from Starfleet Intelligence, General Martok, Ambassadors Synne and Vel, and President Moss herself.

The occasion, if it could be called that, was an impromptu “watch party”—Admiral Gothic’s enigmatic term for the gathering, likely some term from his time and dimension—complete with serving staff circulating in the room taking everyone’s drink orders. They were assembled to view a live broadcast soon to air across the entire Federation: a high-profile interview that had already stirred considerable speculation, including numerous cautious inquiries from his superiors in Starfleet Command and the Federation government.

Picard had, of course, heard of Open Hailing Frequencies!—the wildly popular Federation-wide interview program—but had only ever seen brief clips. Snippets would sometimes find their way into mission briefings or intelligence reports on prominent figures, and while Picard considered the show more spectacle than substance, he was too seasoned an officer to dismiss any source of insight out of hand. Even theatrically edited interviews could reveal glimpses of a person’s character, their instincts, or their motivations. You could learn a lot from such answers and the host of the show did seem to have a way of eliciting answers to questions that would normally not be answered quite so candidly.

Still, that kind of sensationalist programming was far from his preferred fare. He tolerated it as one might tolerate a mildly irritating background hum—useful in its way, at least in some circumstances, but never sought out. Beverly and Deanna, on the other hand, were known to enjoy the show. They occasionally watched it together when the host interviewed someone familiar, or when the topic intersected with the Enterprise’s own missions—an occurrence that, much to Picard’s private exasperation, had happened with unsettling regularity.

Did his two senior officers really need to giggle quite so much while watching it?

And did the show truly require nearly naked men and women dancing provocatively between segments? What possible journalistic value did that serve? He had once posed that exact question to Beverly and Deanna—only to be met with laughter. At their captain’s expense, no less!