All Good Things__ - Michael Jan Friedman [58]
CHAPTER
20
Picard stared at the screen in horror. Was this it? Was this the doom Q had foretold—the one he had failed to avoid, despite his advance knowledge of it?
Riker turned to his tactical officer. “Full scan, Mr. Gaines. Any sign of a subspace rupture?”
The man worked for a moment. Picard dreaded what he would hear.
But when Gaines looked up, he was hardly perturbed. “No, sir,” he reported. “The subspace barrier is intact.”
Everyone seemed to relax. Everyone, that is, except Picard himself. He didn’t understand it, and he said so.
But Riker didn’t seem to feel compelled to give him an explanation. “All right,” said the big man. “Let’s get out of here. Engage cloak.”
“Cloak is not functioning,” Gaines informed him. “We took a direct hit to the starboard plasma coil. Engineering reports seven hours until we can cloak again.”
Riker frowned. “Then we’ll do this the old-fashioned way. Lay in a course back to the Federation. Warp 13.”
Picard shook his head. “No. We can’t leave!”
The admiral gazed at him sympathetically. “We have
to,” he explained. “This is Klingon territory. We’re not
supposed to be here.”
Picard felt himself growing desperate. Couldn’t they see? This was more important than a s,:11y political boundary. This was about extinction.
“No,” he insisted, taking hold of Riker’s tunic. “We have to stay here… to find the cause of the temporal anomaly. I caused it, dammit … though I don’t know how…”
“Captain,” the admiral said, pulling Picard’s hand away from him, “there could be other attack cruisers on the way. We’re getting out of here while we still can.”
Picard was becoming frantic. He knew how hysterical he sounded, but he had to get through to them—to show them how important it was.
“We can’t! We can’t! Will, please… everything depends on this! Please listen to me!”
Too late, he caught sight of the hypospray in Beverly’s handú He started to turn, to fend it off, but he was too slow. He heard a hiss as the doctor released the spray’s contents into his bloodstream.
Fighting the instantaneous effects, he lurched forward…
… and nearly bumped into a crewman as he came around a bend in the corridor. The man, an engineering officer, apologized as he stepped to the side. “Sorry, sir.”
“That’s quite all right,” Picard assured him. Judging by the man’s uniform—and his own—he was back in the present. Without another word, he proceeded along the corridor.
But where was he going? Slowing down, he thought for a moment.
Sickbay. Of course. Beverly had asked him to come down there. She’d said that she wanted to speak with him.
Speeding up his pace, he negotiated another bend and saw the sickbay doors up ahead on his right. Narrowing the gap, he wondered what the doctor wanted to see him about.
Was it Geordi? Had something changed with regard to his condition?
The doors parted as he came near. Making his way through them, he saw that Beverly wasn’t at the engineer’s bed at all.
She was at another one—tending to Alissa Ogawa. The nurse was lying down, wearing a patient’s gown. And—unless the captain’s eyes were going bad—she no longer appeared to be pregnant.
Picard watched as Ogawa’s husband went to her side. He took her hand, tried to comfort her—but the nurse was too distraught. She didn’t want to be comforted.
Obviously, there was something wrong here. Something very wrong.
Slowly, not wishing to be any more obtrusive than necessary in the face of Ogawa’s suffering, the captain moved to Beverly’s side. She noticed him standing there right away. He asked, “You wanted to see me, Doctor?”
“Yes,” she replied. And then, to Ogawa: “I‘11 be right back, Alissa.”
The nurse acknowledged her with a nod. Satisfied that Ogawa would be all right for the moment, Beverly took the captain aside and spoke to him in hushed tones.
“What is it?” he breathed. “What’s wrong?”
“Alissa lost the baby,” she told him, a shiver in her voice showing how much she shared in her assistant’s sorrowú Picard scowled. “What happened?” he askedú
The doctor looked at him. “I think it’s the same