Part 18 (1/2)
”You didn't,” she said. ”I just woke up. Don't know why.”
Jean-Luc nodded once and looked back at the flute. He pulled the ta.s.sel cord taut with one hand and placed the instrument back into its custom-cut indentation on the foam pad, taking care to lay the silken thread parallel to the metal body of the flute. Then he closed the lid gently, picked up the box, stood, and carried it to a nearby shelf. He bore it as if it was a holy relic. Setting the box beside some leather-bound volumes of cla.s.sic works, Jean-Luc was somber, like a man moving with great care because he might be doing everything for the last time. Crusher found the deliberateness of his manner worrying.
”You look exhausted,” she said. ”Are you coming to bed?”
He sighed. ”To what end? I can't let myself sleep. Not with the Collective waiting for my guard to fall.”
”I could prescribe a sleep aid that would-”
”No,” Jean-Luc said. ”No drugs. I have to be ready.”
She stepped beside him and put her hands on his shoulder. ”How ready will you be if you don't sleep?”
”Worf said the same thing.” His eyes became distant, disengaged from the moment. ”Neither of you can hear them, not the way I do.” He frowned. ”I can't sleep. Not now.”
Crusher let him shrug off her hands. She didn't take it personally. Instead, she walked toward the replicator. ”All right,” she said. ”If you're not sleeping, neither am I. Computer, lights one-half.”
”Beverly,” he said in protest as the room brightened.
”Shush.” She stopped in front of the replicator. ”Two peppermint herbal teas, hot.” A singsong whine filled the room; two delicate porcelain cups took shape in a spiral of glowing matter inside the replicator nook. When the sequence ended, Crusher lifted the cups and carried them back to Jean-Luc. She offered him one.
”I'm not thirsty,” he said.
”It'll soothe your nerves,” she countered, but still he made no move to accept the tea. She set the cup down on an end table beside the sofa. ”When was the last time you ate?”
He took a few steps into the middle of the room and gazed out the window at the pa.s.sing streaks of starlight. ”I don't recall,” he said. Then he added, ”Breakfast, I think.”
”Jean-Luc, you have to make time to take care of-”
”Beverly,” he said. There was a deadness in his voice. Crusher had heard it before, in combat veterans suffering from shock. ”In the past twenty-four hours, I've seen two worlds destroyed. Billions of lives, each one unique and irreplaceable, all extinguished.” He turned to face her. ”And it's only just started. Something terrible is coming, I can feel it. Watching Korvat burn was like seeing an omen.”
She inched closer to him. ”An omen? Of what? A disaster?”
His jaw trembled. ”An apocalypse.”
Closer now, she took his hands, tried to anchor him, keep him from being swept away by the undertow of his fears. ”You don't know that,” she said. ”The worst of it might be over.”
”No, Beverly. It's not.” His voice fell to a whisper, as if he feared eavesdroppers. ”The worst is still out there, waiting to fall, like a hammer in the dark.” She watched his eyes glisten with tears as he freed his right hand and placed it softly against her cheek. ”We're out of our depth, now.”
”I can't believe that,” she said. ”I won't. Starfleet's destroyed six Borg cubes in the last few weeks, and five more today. We can stop them.”
”And what have we lost in the bargain?” He lowered his hand from her face, and his tone became harder. ”More than a dozen s.h.i.+ps of the line. Three major starbases. Four worlds. Worlds, Beverly! Billions of lives.” Pacing away from her, he continued, ”I've read Kathryn Janeway's reports from her years in the Delta Quadrant. Her encounters with the Borg. They have thousands of s.h.i.+ps.” He stopped near the replicator and turned back to face Crusher. ”They control vast regions of s.p.a.ce, have almost unlimited resources at their command. Beverly, the Collective dwarfs the Federation. They're gearing up to fight a war of attrition. That's a war we can't win. We just don't have the numbers. Not enough s.h.i.+ps, not enough people. Not enough worlds.” His voice deadened again. ”We can't win.”
Crusher crossed the room and stood in front of him. He looked up at her with a vacant, fearful expression.
She slapped his face.
The smack was sharp and loud against the quiet hum of the engines and made contact with enough force to knock Jean-Luc back half a step and leave her palm stinging. She fixed her husband with a feral glare. ”Snap out of it, Jean-Luc! The man I married is a stars.h.i.+p captain. He doesn't declare defeat when he's still fighting the war.”
To her surprise, he smiled. Almost laughed. ”You don't think I'm the man you married?”
”The Jean-Luc Picard I know would never talk this way.”
His smile soured. ”'Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain mult.i.tudes.'”
”Don't quote Whitman at me. You don't even like Whitman.” She sighed. ”Do you want to know what I've always liked about you, right from the very first time we met?”
”Tell me,” he said sincerely.
”Your faith that there was more good than bad to be found in the universe. I heard you once tell Jack on the Stargazer, 'That's why we do this-it's what makes going to the stars worthwhile.'”
Jean-Luc ma.s.saged his reddened cheek. ”Perhaps I was wrong,” he said. ”Those are the beliefs of a young man. A man who hasn't felt the harsh embrace of cruel machines.” He collapsed on the sofa. Crusher sat down beside him. ”Words will never capture the horror of losing myself that way, Beverly. I can't describe what it's like to be erased. Absorbed. To have everything I am become lost inside a force untouched by love or joy or sorrow. To know that it's stronger than I am.”
”That's where you're wrong, Jean-Luc,” she said. ”It's not stronger than you. It's not stronger than us.” She grasped his hand and lifted it, moved it onto her belly, above her womb. ”We'll survive as long as we have hope,” she said, trying to project her shaken optimism onto him, hoping he would reinforce it with some small gesture, however minor. ”As long as we don't let them take that from us, we can still fight. And they can't take it if we don't let them.” She touched his face as tears rolled from her eyes. ”Don't let them.”
His free hand closed tenderly around hers. ”I won't,” he said, but some part of her knew that he was lying. He was clinging to hope for her sake, but she felt it slipping from him, as the Borg drove it from him by degrees.
”Don't let them,” she said.
15.
Federation President Nanietta Bacco led a procession out of her chief of staff's office on the fourteenth floor of the Palais de la Concorde. ”Don't tell me there aren't any s.h.i.+ps available, Iliop,” Bacco snapped at her secretary of transportation. ”Your job is making s.h.i.+ps available.”
As soon as she stepped through the door, a phalanx of four civilian security guards fell into step around her. Iliop-a tall Berellian man whose spectacles, mussed hair, and ill-fitting toga made Bacco think of him as a cross between an absentminded professor and a Roman senator-lingered half a step farther behind her as he followed her out of the office. ”Madam President, my mandate was to restore the avenues of commerce and normal-”
”We're way past 'normal,' Ili,” said Esperanza Piniero, the president's chief of staff, who was the next person to exit the office. ”Here's your new mandate: Get those twenty-nine thousand survivors off Korvat in the next three days.” The Berellian opened his mouth to argue, and Piniero cut him off. ”Get it done, Ili.” He nodded and slipped away down a side corridor as Safranski, the Rigellian secretary of the exterior, and Raisa Shostakova, the secretary of defense, followed Bacco and Piniero from the office and down a central hallway to the turbolifts.
”Korvat's the least of our worries, Madam President,” said Shostakova. ”FNS is whipping up a panic with images of the attack on Barolia.”
”The Borg are making the panic, Raisa,” Bacco said. ”The media just report it. Besides, corralling the media is Jorel's problem.” To Safranski she said, ”Any word on the summit?”
The Rigellian replied, ”No.”
As ever, his brevity bordered on the pa.s.sive-aggressive and added frown lines to Bacco's brow. ”Why not?”
”No one's taking our calls.”
”Not good enough,” Bacco said. ”Keep trying.”
Shostakova shouldered her way past Safranski-not an easy feat for the squat, solidly built human woman from the high-gravity colony planet known as Pangea. ”We've got an antimatter problem,” she announced as Bacco turned a sharp corner.
Piniero replied for Bacco, ”What kind of problem?”
”A shortage,” Shostakova said. ”We need fuel for the Third Fleet and the reserves are tapped out.”
The chief of staff pulled a personal comm from her jacket pocket, flipped it open, and pressed it to her ear. ”Ashante,” she said, addressing one of her four deputy chiefs of staff. ”We need an executive order authorizing Starfleet to commandeer civilian fuel resources, on the double. Work up a draft with Dogayn and have it in the Monet Room in thirty minutes.” She slapped the device closed and tucked it back into her pocket in a fast, well-practiced motion.