Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [129]
“Something a little more flashy, Mr. Redpath,” Picard said, sitting down again.
“Aye, Captain,” Redpath said, and keyed in a sequence at his console.
The main viewer’s vista abruptly became dangerous for those prone to motion sickness. “Go to tactical,” Picard said. The screen shifted to a schematic showing the Enterprise’s course and that of the vessel chasing her. Slowly but surely, that other was running her down, as Picard had known it would when he had seen that engine room, the monstrous power of the thing. It’s not fair, he thought quietly. We’re supposed to be on life’s side in this argument. Why can’t the universe break out some odds in our favor?
“Bridge,” La Forge’s voice said urgently, “test cycle failed, repeat, failed. Power fluctuations in our warpdrive seem to be too big for the apparatus.”
“You are going to need to correct that situation, Mr. La Forge,” Picard said as calmly as he could. “Our pursuers are getting uncomfortably close. How long for another test cycle?”
“Fifty seconds for reset,” Hwiii whistled from the background.
“Get on it.”
They watched the viewscreen. Picard began to sweat watching the dot that represented the other Enterprise draw slowly closer.
There was a soft cheep from Worf’s console. “The other vessel is hailing us, Captain,” he said, surprised.
Riker looked at Picard in shock. Very slowly Picard sat down in his center seat again, arranging himself comfortably. “On-screen.”
The viewscreen flickered and went bright with the view of that other bridge. It was like looking in a mirror again, except for the differences in uniform. There were the other Riker and the other Troi, and in the middle, sitting in exactly the same position as Jean-Luc, the other Picard.
“Enterprise,” he said, “we advise you to surrender. You cannot outrun us, and you cannot outfight us.”
Picard allowed himself the slightest smile. “Captain, I told you: you will not be allowed to dictate any aspect of this situation. There is nothing you could possibly say to me that could convince me you would spare a surrendered ship or crew … especially not this one. As for outrunning or outfighting you—even given your engines and armaments, we might have a surprise or so for you. We have resources you cannot begin to understand or anticipate.”
“That is exactly the point,” the other Picard said. “Why throw yourself needlessly into a situation which will only result in unnecessary loss of life? From what we have discovered about you, we can surely come to some kind of compromise, some …”
Picard glanced over at Troi. She merely smiled and put her eyebrows up, a tell-me-another-one expression. To that other Picard, Jean-Luc said, “Your counselor has picked up a favorite theme from rummaging in my mind and the minds of my people, I feel sure, and has briefed you. Her job, of course … and she has a certain competence at it. Though if I were you, I would watch her closely, Captain. She made some interesting suggestions to me regarding the possible disposition of your command.”
That other Troi sat cool and unresponsive. The other Picard shot just one icy glance at her, then turned away. “In addition,” Jean-Luc said, “even if I believed the foolish fiction that you would spare us, any of us, you had better check with your chief engineer about the viability of keeping another ship of our mass in your universe. If we remain here, whether destroyed or not, your universe will suffer serious derangement over time, culminating in waves of subspatial and hyperspatial “distress,” which will rip planets apart and cause their stars to go nova, along a spherical boundary centered on the area of original injection.”
The other Riker turned his head. “They’re bluffing.”
That other Picard did not react in the slightest. He knows, Picard thought. “You don’t care, of course,” he said to his counterpart, “because it won’t happen in your lifetime. And you hope to conceal the fact from your superiors, who I suspect consider this data as theoretical or statistical artifact, not