All Good Things__ - Michael Jan Friedman [51]
Q smiled a hideously wrinkled smile. “You’re forget-ting, Jean-Luc. I said you destroyed humanity.” “By doing what?” pressed Picard.
“That’s for me to know,” said the entity, “and you to find out. I thought I made that clear already.”
The human swore. “When will this take place? How are you—”
Suddenly, he was no longer on the Pasteur, no longer in the future. He was back in the present, on the bridge of the Enterprise. The anomaly was on the viewscreen. And Q was nowhere to be seen.
On the other hand, the onmipotent trickster had left him a going-away present—the cane he’d been leaning on in Beverly’s ready room. Tossing it aside, Picard walked forward to ops. “Report, Mr. Data.” The android consulted the monitors on his console. “The anomaly is two hundred million kilometers in diameter, sir. It is a highly focused temporal energy source which is emitting approximately the same energy output as ten G-type stars.”
The captain considered the information. “And what is the source of that energy?”
“I am uncertain,” replied Data. “Sensors have been unable to penetrate the anomaly.”
Picard thought for a moment. In the future frame, the android had suggested that they…
“Data… what if we modified the warp deflector to emit an… inverse tachyon pulse? That might scan beyond the subspace barrier… and give us an idea what the interior of this thing looks like.”
The android seemed a little surpri~d, but he considered it. “That is a most intriguing idea,” he concluded. “I do not believe a tachyon beam has ever been put to such use.” He paused. “What is more, I had no idea you were so versed in the intricacies of temporal theory.”
The captain smiled at the irony. “I am not—but I have some friends who are. Make it so, Mr. Data.”
“Aye, sir.” He stood up from his place at ops. “I believe we can make the necessary modifications in main engineering.”
Picard nodded. As Data headed for the turbolift, the captain turned back to the viewscreen. The anomaly roiled on, a symbol of annihilation that he didn’t yet understand. However, he was determined that he would.
“A gift from a friend?” asked Riker. He was standing beside the captain with the discarded cane in his hands. Picard glared at it. “Yes,” he said. “A very old friend.”
As Ensign Calan sat at her conn station, with little to do except watch the anomaly shimmer and burn on the viewscreen, her thoughts drifted back to an earlier time. She couldn’t help it. When one had been through what she’d been through, it was difficult to leave it behind.
Like Ensigns Ro and Sito before her, Calan was a Bajoran. And like all Bajorans, she had been through hell at the hands of the Cardassians who had held her homeworld in thrall.
One memory in particular separated itself from the rest. It harkened back to the initial phase of the Cardassian occupation, when the worst atrocities were visited on her captive people.
Back then, Calan had labored in the kitchen of the Marjono prison camp—one of the larger facilities of its kind. Of course, the conqueror race had had no com-punctions about putting children to work. In fact, they seemed to take satisfaction in it, as a sign of how thoroughly they had subjugated the Bajorans.
Little did they know how grateful she was for the job—because after the Cardassians had eaten their meal, it was her assignment to gather the dishes and bring them in for cleaning. And if she was quick about it, she could slip a crust of bread or a jenka root into her shirt, and share it with her fellow prisoners later on.
It wasn’t as if Calan wasn’t scared of retribution in those days; she was as scared as anyone else. But sometimes, hunger outweighed fear. What’s more, it made her feel good to know she was striking back against the Cardassians in her own, small way.
If she had been older, she would have known that it was only a matter of time before she was caught. She would have predicted it as a certainty. But being a child, she didn’t see it coming—and, perhaps reluctant to cut off their clandestine food supply,