Part 7 (1/2)
By sacrificing his Imzadi.
She would never have done that to me, he told himself. Vivid recollections of his month of brutal captivity on Tezwa paraded through the theater of his memory. In those dark hours, when he had been beaten and broken, tortured and terrorized, only two things had kept him anch.o.r.ed in himself. One had been the indelible memories of music, of melodies and virtuoso performances by jazz master Junior Mance; the other had been the unshakable certainty that his Imzadi would never give up her search for him, that she would never abandon hope. Now he had repaid her devotion with a hollow appeal to duty.
He threw off the covers and sat up on the side of the bed. Leaning forward, he planted his face in his palms and imagined himself returned to the fateful moment, hours earlier, when Hernandez had made her proposition. Replaying it in his mind, he tried to conceive of how he could have answered differently, of some case that he could have made for not leaving the away team. There were no answers.
Every time he asked himself the question again, he was forced to admit that no matter how futile it might seem to hurl his s.h.i.+p into a war that was already all but lost, he was being driven by instinct-and drawn toward something.
”Computer, cease white noise,” he said, and the breathy whisper of air through leaves came to an abrupt end. ”Unshade the windows.” The sloped, rounded-corner windows above his bed lost their dark tint and became transparent, revealing the backlit blue radiance of the nebula. Several of t.i.tan's shuttlecraft were on their way back, their tractor beams towing large sections of hull salvaged from demolished stars.h.i.+ps.
Watching the recovery operations in the nebula, he felt as if abandoning Deanna had blasted him to bits and that he was now struggling to piece himself back together from broken parts. He would do a fair job of presenting himself as functional and whole, but he knew that without Deanna, he would be like a phaser rifle field-stripped by a cadet and then misa.s.sembled, with one vital component left out, forgotten on the ground.
In other words, he castigated himself, useless.
A comm signal filtered down from the overhead speaker, followed by the voice of Commander Hachesa. ”Bridge to Captain Riker,” said the acting first officer.
”Go ahead.”
”Update from the Enterprise, sir,” replied Hachesa. ”They and the Aventine will rendezvous with us in fifteen minutes.”
”Acknowledged,” Riker said. ”Tell Lieutenant Commander Pazlar and Commander Ra-Havreii to meet me in transporter room two in ten minutes.”
”Aye, sir. Bridge out.”
He stood and stretched. ”Computer, fade up lights to one-half,” he said, and the room slowly brightened. Shambling groggily toward the bathroom, he hoped that a shower would revive him before it was time to meet with his former captain. The chrono on his end table displayed the time as 0617 hours.
Not bad, he thought. I almost got an hour of sleep. Except it wasn't quite an hour, and I never actually slept. He tapped a padd next to the bathroom sink and turned on the cold water. He cupped his hands, filled them beneath the icy stream, and splashed his face, shocking himself to full alertness.
He blinked at his dripping-wet, haggard reflection in the mirror. Who needs sleep, anyway?
”Energizing,” said the transporter officer.
Jean-Luc Picard turned to face the raised platform. The system powered up with a resonant hum. To his left stood Beverly and Worf, and on his right were Captain Dax and Commander Bowers from the Aventine.
In front of them, three columns of sparkling bluish-white particles surged into existence and adopted humanoid shapes. Even before the radiance faded, Picard recognized the welcome sight of his old friend and former first officer, William Riker, standing at the front of the platform.
The transporter effect dissipated. Standing behind Riker were an Efrosian man with long white hair and a flowing mustache to match, and a slim, blond Elaysian woman who wore a motor-a.s.sist armature over her uniform, from neck to ankles.
Riker descended from the platform, and Picard stepped forward to greet him. ”Welcome aboard, Captain,” Picard said, shaking Riker's hand and flas.h.i.+ng a wide, friendly smile.
”Thank you, Captain,” Riker said, his own smile guarded and ephemeral. He let go of Picard's hand and gestured to the two officers who had beamed in with him. ”Allow me to introduce my chief engineer, Commander Ra-Havreii. And I think you know my science officer, Lieutenant Commander Pazlar.”
”Indeed, I do,” Picard said, nodding to the duo. ”Commander Ra-Havreii, it's a pleasure. Your reputation precedes you.”
Ra-Havreii lifted his snowy brows. ”That's what I'm afraid of,” he said, with a weariness that belied his jesting tone.
Dax stepped forward and met Riker with a smile. ”It's good to see you again, Will,” she said. Nodding over her shoulder, she added, ”This my first officer, Commander Sam Bowers.”
Riker reached out and shook Bowers's hand. ”A pleasure.”
Pazlar stepped around Riker and offered her hand to Dax. ”Nice to see you again, Captain.”
”Likewise, Melora,” Dax said with a friendly smile. ”You look wonderful, as always.”
”Says the woman who gets younger every time I see her,” Pazlar said, with a teasing roll of her eyes.
Worf stepped forward and greeted Riker with a firm and enthusiastic handshake. ”Welcome back, sir.”
Clasping the Klingon's hand in both of his, Riker replied, ”Thanks, Worf. How're you liking my old job?”
”Too much paperwork,” Worf said.
”Try being a captain,” Riker quipped. He released Worf's hand and accepted a quick, friendly embrace from Beverly.
”Welcome back, Will,” she said. As they parted, she added, ”I thought Chris and Deanna were coming. Are they all right?”
The stricken look that paled Riker's face warned Picard that something terrible had happened and that Beverly's innocent question had salted an open emotional wound. A sidelong glance at Dax's sympathetic expression made it clear to Picard that she, too, understood what was being left unsaid.
Riker turned his eyes toward the deck. ”I had to leave them behind to save the s.h.i.+p.... It's a long story.”
It was a terrible strain for Picard, in the aftermath of such losses and tragedies as he had recently endured, to mask his own pangs of loss and grief at this revelation. Deanna Troi was almost like a daughter to him-even more so after her long-overdue (in his opinion) wedding to Riker. He'd developed similarly paternal feelings for Christine Vale, with whom he had suffered and been tested in several crucibles that had claimed the lives of many Enterprise personnel-the b.l.o.o.d.y Dokaalan colony incident, the planetwide riots on Delta Sigma IV, and, worst of all, the protracted carnage of the Tezwa debacle.
If it's this deep a wound for me, imagine how much worse it must be for him, Picard thought, trying to impose some perspective on the matter. To lose his wife and his first officer, both at the same time. How could anyone bear that?
Bowers broke the uncomfortable silence. ”I don't mean to be callous, but we have a lot to talk about and not much time. Maybe we should adjourn to a more appropriate setting.”
”Wait a second,” Riker said to Bowers, and then he looked to Picard. ”The Voyager crew has more experience with the Borg than anyone. Shouldn't they be part of this?”
”I wish they could be,” Picard said. ”Unfortunately, Captain Chakotay is in critical condition, and many of his officers and crew were killed. Voyager won't be mobile for several days, and Commander Bowers is correct, we can't wait.” He turned to Worf. ”Are the arrangements made, Number One?”
”Yes, sir,” Worf said. He stepped toward the door, which opened with a soft hiss. Turning back, he said to the group, ”Everyone, please follow me.”
Dax and Bowers were the first to act on Worf's invitation, and Picard gestured to Riker and his officers that they should go ahead of him. After the trio had stepped out of the transporter room, Picard and Beverly followed them and remained at the back of the group.
Beverly didn't say a word as she took Picard's hand. She didn't need to explain why; he understood. In a crisis, Riker had made a decision that would likely haunt him, no matter how the situation ultimately resolved itself. It was a dilemma that could only be fully appreciated by another captain whose wife served with him aboard the same stars.h.i.+p. She gave his hand a brief squeeze and then let it slip from her grasp.
Picard wondered if he could possibly have the courage to make the choice that Riker had made-to desert his pregnant wife in the name of duty, in the service of the abstraction known as the greater good. Then he thought of how much time's merciless fires had already taken from him, and he knew that he couldn't.
He walked in somber silence with Beverly...and wished that decorum had let him hold her hand just a little bit longer.
Sequestered in the Enterprise's crew lounge-a.k.a. the Happy Bottom Riding Club-the three captains and their officers helped themselves to hot and cold beverages that had been set out on the counter by the lounge's civilian barkeep, Jordan. He had ushered out the other patrons before the officers' arrival. Now that the VIP guests were inside, Dax saw Jordan exit through the main portal, leaving the officers to confer in privacy.
Dax filled a mug with fresh-brewed raktajino. She took a sip of her piping-hot beverage and admired the lounge's many decorative touches. Among them were dozens of portraits of Enterprise personnel who had been killed in the line of duty, with small bronze placards denoting their names, ranks, and KIA dates; a map of California, with a star denoting the location of the lounge's twentieth-century-Earth namesake; a replica of that bar's liquor license; and memorabilia of past stars.h.i.+ps that had borne the name Enterprise.