Every time I find myself disdaining the younger generation as essentially illiterate, along comes another writer to disabuse me of that. Geri (yes, that Geri), Andrea, Tim… these authors will someday make their mark—of that I have little doubt.

Speaking of someone who has no damned business writing this well in his early twenties, Matt Gurney—or, as I affectionately refer to him, "The procrastinating little SOB"—has finally delivered on his promise to begin contributing stories involving the USS Gallant.

It was well worth the wait, I'd say.

Though I've attached my name to this, my part is about as minimal as one could contribute while still deserving a mention. Make no mistake; this is Matt's story.

Enjoy.

"Command Performance"

By Matthew Gurney

(with Joseph Manno)

Crossing foot over foot like a drunken hockey player stumbling through drills, Lieutenant Commander Patrick John Connolly struggled to stay standing. The deck was pitching from side to side as various inertial dampeners failed and restarted at random, and he was giving it his all to stay on his feet. Moving towards his goal was secondary to the issue of remaining upright, but he was still valiantly trying to walk forward between feats of balance.

The deck tilted left; he leaned right…

…the deck suddenly tilted right…

…and he flew, face first, into the corridor wall.

“Shit!” He slid with little dignity down the bulkhead to land in a heap on the deck—which, of course, had seemed to finally stabilize.

I’ll have to remember that. All that’s needed to stop the ship from shaking is for me to break my nose against a computer display.

He pushed himself up and set off again down the erratically lit corridor. Defiant-class ships were supposed to be easy to move around in; even under the worst of conditions, their compact design ensured that you were never far from anything.

That, of course, was assuming that a hull breach wasn’t blocking the most direct route and several timely alternates, and today wasn’t going well enough for that to be the case.

Arriving at a corridor intersection, he stopped momentarily, pressing his palm against the flow of blood from his smashed nose. He knew the ship intimately, but couldn’t for the life of him remember which way to turn now.

Must have a concussion, he thought.

Figures that I can self-diagnose a head injury and still be have no idea where to go.

Knowing that he could stand here until the ship finally gave out and still not be sure of the direction, he chose to go left and set off at a quick clip. The ship took a hard hit and he went down, but the momentum both of his run and the impact threw him forward, and he was able to roll back onto his feet and set off again, with no worse injuries than a little carpet burn on his hands.

Looks like my luck is changing, he thought, giggling. I could have broken my neck! His giggles became outright laughter as he swayed to a silent rhythm towards Warhead Control.

He should have been a pianist, he knew.

His first memory was banging at the keys of the ancient Steinway in the living room of his family’s summer home. Two hundred years before, someone had paid a small fortune to have it moved there from Earth, but it had stood more or less ignored since the death of its master.

He’d banged and banged and banged, laughing delightedly at the sounds he was making. He’d had no concept that each key produced a different note; he’d just known that slamming his tiny fists down on the shiny things had made a wonderful racket. Mischievousness had still been far too advanced a concept for his young mind, but he’d grasped that the big people would probably react to this level of noise, and he’d cackled with glee and banged away.

Then he’d leaned too far back, trying to get at much "oomph" into his performance as he could… and fallen off the piano bench.

Lying on his back, disoriented and stunned, his laughter immediately morphed into a plaintive wail. As he'd lain there, sobbing loudly, he'd suddenly realized on some level that this was silly, and wailed louder.

His mother had arrived a moment later and scooped him up into her arms, making a variety of calming noises. He hadn't really been injured (other than for a toddler's dignity), and that quickly faded—leaving him looking longingly over his mother’s shoulder at the big thing that made such terrific noise.

Hey, I know where I am!

The sudden realization that he’d been going the right way all along abruptly ended his warp down Memory Lane. A large label, in typical Starfleet lettering, identified this as Control Room: Ventral Phaser Cannon, Port Side. He was exactly where he needed to be, and as he continued on past the room patted the sign gratefully.

Idly, he wondered why such things were labeled; anyone working on a starship would know their duty station and quickly memorize the rest of the ship's layout, to boot.

It's a courtesy for boarding parties. Wouldn't want your enemies not to feel at home while pillaging your ship, now would you?

His head had cleared somewhat; he was aware enough to know that he wasn’t truly lucid. His mission—jettison the warhead module before it exploded while still attached to the Gallant’s hull—was clear in his mind, and he decided he’d better start focusing on it, lest he arrive there having forgotten what he was supposed to do.

Jettison the warhead.

Jettison the warhead.

Filled with resolve, he’d continued down the corridor, hearing but not truly registering the shrill ring of his ship’s phaser cannons cutting loose a lethal salvo of particle energy. He kept one hand against the corridor wall, feeling his way forward and using it for balance.

Jettison the warhead.

Jettison the warhead

Jettis–… I wonder what ever happened to Chelsea, anyway? I should look her up.

Somewhere along the line, he’d realized that with a little more caution and some motor control, he could make the big thing make specific sounds. He’d liked the ones on the left side more; they sounded nicer to his ear. One after another, he’d press them down until he didn’t like the sound they made, and he’d go back the way he’d come—again and again and again.

As he grew out of being a toddler, the “piono” had become less of a mystery, but more of an obsession. Gradually he’d learned how to play simple tunes on it, the same sort of songs his mother would croon to him or that they’d crow in his preschool classes. It was slow work, but he kept at it, never realizing how maddening it was for his parents to hear “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” played incorrectly time after time before he’d finally master it.

One day, while in the second grade, he’d arrived home and a woman he’d never seen before had been sitting with his mother. “Patty,” she’d said to him, “meet Chelsea.” He’d politely greeted her, not really caring about whom she was, but then his mother had dropped a bombshell on him.

“She’s your new piano instructor,” his mother explained, trying for the millionth time to stress upon him the proper pronunciation of the instrument.

“Hi,” the woman had said, smiling broadly. The young boy had noticed right away that her teeth were as white and even as the piono’s keys.

She'd understood him, though, because her first question had been, “Why don’t you show me your piano?”

A hissing sound snapped Connolly out of his reverie. Ahead of him, he could see the entrance to Warhead Control, which was, after all, where he was going, he reminded himself. Unfortunately for him (and, by extension, the ship), a plasma fire was burning, green flames reaching out of a blown-open section of the deck. He knew that while plasma fires were only hot up close, they were also highly radioactive, and each second he spent near it he was absorbing more of the deadly rays.

He rubbed his face furiously, hoping to banish the cobwebs that seemed to enmesh his mind. Connolly’s intellect and personality where still completely intact, of course, but his punch-drunk brain couldn’t seem to stay focused. Slapping himself across the face a few times helped; the excruciating pain in his poor nose helped even more. Knowing his mind would soon wander off again, he quickly worked on a way to get past this obstacle.

Extinguishing it is out; the fire’s being fed off the warp core. I sure as hell can’t afford to backtrack and try and find another way… not enough room on either side to go around it… Christ… I’m going to have to go through it…

Taking a few steps back to ensure a running start, Connolly braced his feet against the deck… and his nerves against his fear. He’d once burned his hand with a plasma welder, the searing pain seemed to resurface just at the recollection. Several deep breaths fortified him, a mumbled prayer calmed him… and he started to run towards the fire.

In his mind, time seemed to slow. The reality was quite different, naturally; his journey towards the fire would be at best called a rather indirect one, while a person with less sympathy for his concussion might even have called it a stagger.

Regardless of how he got there, get there he did, leaping over the gaping hole in the deck like a drunken hurdler, screaming in pain as the heat scorched his uniform and seared the skin on his back and the back of his legs. He landed in a tangle of arms and legs on the far side of the plasma fire, moaning in pain and struggling not to pass out.

He failed.

***

Chelsea had sat down on his bench at his piono and Patty had been livid. He hadn’t known who this woman was, but she was sitting in his spot and he hadn’t wanted her there.

“Do you know Bach’s Minuet I?” she’d asked him gently, and he’d shaken his head no.

All of his anger had vanished the instant her fingers came down on the piono… and her magic entranced him immediately. Even after his years of working on it, he couldn’t make any music nearly that beautiful. The stream of clear and perfect sound washed away his anger and sullenness, and when she’d finished playing and put her hands in her lap, he’d found himself almost desperate to hear more.

“How…?”

She’d smiled at him, knowing how much he’d been affected by the simple piece. “Do you want to learn to do that?” she’d asked. When he’d nodded eagerly, she’d replied, “Good. Let’s teach you to read music.”

A deafening crash snapped him into semi-consciousness and the agony in his flanks brought him the rest of the way to unwelcome wakefulness. He drew in a breath to scream but held the down the cry and used the pain as a motivator, to get him to his feet. He forced them to move him forward, his seared skin seeming tight over his flesh. Little gasps escaped his lips with every step as he neared Warhead Control, and his mind began to wander again—this time mercifully.

Reading music had been frustrating for him; after all, he'd still been mastering the art of reading words. He’d kept at it, though, and Chelsea had quizzed him on it, rewarding success with a song. More of Bach, Mozart, Joel…piano greats from across the centuries… men and women he’d never heard of, writing songs about things he couldn’t yet understand. He’d studied music before he went to sleep at night and practiced his fingerings first thing every morning. He’d been determined to make music like Chelsea could.

Nothing would stop him.

The door to Warhead Control slid partly open, jammed, and then finally opened all the way with a loud groan of screeching metal. Connolly lurched in, mouth dry from his panting. The control panel he needed to reach was a mere two meters from where he stood, but it seemed like a light-year. He moved forward step by agonizing step, his skin blistering and cracking, gasps becoming cries. He finally arrived at the console, collapsing onto it. He tried to key in the jettison sequence but he hands were shaking. He couldn’t possibly enter command instructions like that.

Hands steady on the keys, he heard Chelsea’s voice say. You can’t make beautiful music with jittery hands. Focus on the notes, the bars, the measures…and let your hands do the work. Don’t over-think it. They’ve made the motions thousands of times before. They’ll do what needs to be done, so long as you remain calm and focused.

She’d told him that just before his first recital, when he was ten years old. He’d come a long way since his first lesson, but standing backstage, peaking out from behind the curtain at more people than he’d ever seen before, had caused him to start shaking uncontrollably. She’d known he’d probably feel nervous, so she’d slipped backstage, decked out in her finest dress with her hair nicely done. She’d held his hands until they stopped shaking, and he’d felt a stirring in his chest when he looked at her. He’d been too young to know it then, but Chelsea had been turning into his first love.

When he’d begun to play, just like she’d said, his hands seemed to know what to do. He’d been almost amazed at how they moved, and he’d quickly gained confidence. His look of focused concentration gradually turned into one of delighted surprise; he’d even had the courage to take his eyes off the keys long enough to look backstage, where he’d seen Chelsea clutching her hands to her chest with joy, eyes glistening, as he’d played his young heart out, giving it his all.

“Warhead module jettison sequence enabled. Standing by to initiate countdown.”

Connolly regarded the console with confusion. “How…?” he mumbled again, not unlike how he had on an afternoon three decades earlier, hearing for the first time just what his piono could do.

Now fully in the present, he steadied his trembling hands just long enough to key in the final code sequence. A klaxon wailed as the computer began to count down from fifteen. The door he’d so recently forced himself through had just become an airlock, and he had only instants to get himself back into Gallant proper before he was carried away with her dangerously damaged warhead.

Having accomplished his task, however, Connolly had no real desire to move anymore. He collapsed to his hands and knees, then to his stomach, laying flat on the deck as the countdown reached zero. He felt himself being crushed by extreme g-forces as the warhead tore away from its moorings and rocketed forward, twisting and turning, its emergency thrusters straining to obey the nav program and avoid any Federation vessels. On some level he regretted that it might detonate on impact with a Dominion ship—not because he particularly cared about enemy casualties, of course; it was just that with the fleets so chaotically mingled in this epic battle, he knew the explosion of the warhead would almost as likely claim human lives along with Jem’Hadar.

He had to content himself with knowing that Gallant herself was safe.

And so Lieutenant Commander Patrick John Connolly resigned himself to his fate. As he sank deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, he was surprised to find that his last thoughts weren’t of his wife and daughters, but of his old piano teacher, a woman whom he hadn’t spoken to in decades… his first love. At last conscious thought deserted him.

He hoped Deep Space Nine was worth it.

***

Some time later—hours, days, he couldn’t be sure—he slowly seemed to rise back up from the pit into which he’d fallen. He was in pain, but it wasn’t unbearable, and when his eyes slowly opened, he saw that he was in a medical bay of some kind, surrounded by dozens of other patients. He didn’t recognize the place, but soon a human male entered his limited field of vision smiled down on him, black hair swept back and shadows across his face.

“Easy there, Commander,” he said, a gentle, well-placed had preventing Connolly from sitting up. “You’re still going to need several more dermal regeneration series for those plasma burns. Your concussion has been taken care of, however. Do you remember anything?”

“I was on the Gallant,” Connolly said, dry lips cracking. “Not much else.”

“That’s to be expected,” the doctor—at least he hoped it was a doctor—said in a charming accent, while scanning him with a medical tricorder. Connolly realized that he was a doctor. “Where am I?” he asked.

“Deep Space Nine,” was the response. “You were hurt in the battle to retake the station. You’re going to be fine. You just need to rest.” Apparently content, he snapped the tricorder shut and set it down on an equipment trolley.

“My ship,” Connolly asked, struggling to stay awake. “What happened?”

The man’s smile froze, and a nurse who’d come over to fiddle with one of the various instruments looked quickly—too quickly—away.

“Rest, Commander,” the doctor told him.

He’d avoided a direct answer.

Which, of course, is answer enough.

Connolly wished he could demand details, wished he could mourn, but he simply didn’t have the strength. As the doctor walked off to tend the next patient, Connolly’s head hit the pillow and he slipped into unconsciousness.

Bach’s Minuet I was the soundtrack to his troubled dreams.