Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [124]
“We think so,” Picard said. “But it’s not too late for yours. Mr. Worf, the first officer of an earlier Enterprise of this universe said that the Empire had only two hundred years or so to run. One hundred of those years are gone. It is closer to its fall than ever … and perhaps for reasons that not even your Spock suspected. The Empire is overextending itself, parsec by parsec, day by day. In another—oh, even fifty or sixty years—its forces will be spread so widely through the space it claims to “control” that the control will be a myth. That will be the time for the peoples who have been suppressed to stand up and throw off the yoke. Inevitably, the time will come. If you and your people can be ready for it …”
Worf’s eyes gleamed. “A long time we have dreamed that things might somehow become better. But they were only dreams: no one ever took them seriously or did anything about them. However, to know that the dream is a reality, somewhere, anywhere …”
“The dream is alive, Mr. Worf,” Picard said. “Who knows—maybe in seventy or eighty years, if our Fleet allows, we might put our noses back in to see how you are getting on. Or, if news of this technique for travel between congruent universes gets around, perhaps the Klingons will.” He laughed softly. “I suspect that would make an interesting visit. But this is all conjecture: your worlds’ fates are in your own hands. Just know that we will always wish you well.”
“Damn!” Geordi said. “Lockout! Security protocols are back up. The cores are restoring from backup.”
“Did you get everything?”
“Ninety-eight percent, but if that last two percent was the bit we need …!”
From down the corridor came the sound of the turbolift doors opening, and then the sound of running footsteps.
“No more time,” Picard said. “Get that chip, Mr. La Forge.”
“Mr. Worf,” Deanna said, lifting the phaser. He looked at her in brief shock, then nodded and smiled the ghost of a smile.
She stunned him, and he crumpled to the floor over Troi as the captain touched his badge. “Enterprise,” he said hurriedly, “emergency, three to beam back now!”
They clustered together, Troi with one arm around Geordi, to compensate for the lost transponder, she told herself—but he sagged against her with such alarming weariness that she might have spared herself the excuse. The doorway filled with figures holding phasers, one of them being the other Picard. As the transport effect took them, Deanna caught a last blast of blinding rage from him, saw the face twisted with it, screaming. The phaser beams stitched through them, and as the world dissolved, Deanna heard that other Picard shouting, “Bridge, trace this transport and destroy the source!”
And it all vanished like a bad dream—
CHAPTER 15
—and dissolved into the interior of the shuttlecraft. They stared around them, relieved to be somewhere completely normal, but Picard was unnerved. That ship’s phaser capacity would be back now; it would be easy enough to detect this craft and—
They started to dissolve again. It seemed to take an unconscionable time. But no sooner had the singing whine of the transporter completely washed all other sound away than a sheet of white fire went through the place. Picard watched with a degree of fascination as the walls of the shuttlecraft blew away to nothing around them, the white fire fading to black, then to stars, which faded as well.
Light grew around them again slowly, through the unchanging shimmer, and slowly the transporter room became visible. When the soft singing noise finally dwindled to nothing, Picard and the other members of the away team looked at each other almost in disbelief, and then out at Chief O’Brien, who was bracing himself against his console like a man who needed help in standing up.
He looked at them and said, “I’m glad