Death in Winter - Michael Jan Friedman [26]
A team would have to go outside the ship and do the job with phaser rifles. Jack Crusher was the first to volunteer, and Joseph was chosen to go with him. It made sense. Both men had experience performing hull repairs and had proven they could negotiate the ship’s exterior.
That last part was important. After all, the transporters weren’t working, so Picard couldn’t provide them with a lifeline. They would have to make the trip to the nacelle and back on their own.
Crusher and Joseph looked cool and determined as they climbed out an airlock and started their journey. With the sensors down, the captain couldn’t watch them. He could only keep track of their progress via their helmet communicators.
It took a long time to cut through the nacelle assembly, but that was understandable, considering the thickness of the ship’s skin. Then they sliced into the transfer tunnel, and the energies collected there shut down their communicators-forcing Picard and his remaining officers to guess how the expedition was faring.
And the guesses grew more dire as time elapsed. Too much time, they decided after a while. Over the objections of Ben Zoma, Picard’s first officer, the captain donned a containment suit and went after his men. Minutes later, he discovered Joseph drifting alongside the hull, unconscious.
Picard could have gone after Crusher and tried to bring both men in. However, he chose to bring Joseph in first-and because of that decision, both he and Pug survived.
Because he had barely negotiated the curve of the Stargazer’s hull, putting her nacelle out of sight, when the ship bucked savagely beneath his feet.
There was no air in space to carry the noise, but something had exploded. At first, Picard thought it might have been the warp-field generator, but that would have been massive enough to destroy the entire ship. Later he would find out it was just a pocket of accumulated energy.
When it went off, it completed the job Crusher and Joseph had started, jerking the nacelle free. But Picard couldn’t see that from where he was crouching on the hull. For the moment, all he knew in his heart was this: that his friend Jack Crusher had perished.
The captain brought Joseph back inside the ship, then went back out to find Jack. And he found him, all right. But as he had feared, his friend was dead.
When Joseph came to, he said he had blacked out in the face of all that energy. At the time, no one guessed that it was just a story, and that Joseph had lost his nerve. He had run, abandoning Jack, leaving him alone to carry out their assignment.
That was why, in the end, Joseph had survived and Jack had not-because the security officer had escaped the blast when the energy pocket finally exploded, severing the nacelle.
On the Stargazer, no one suspected that Joseph had panicked. No one knew that Jack’s death might have been avoided-that he might have survived if his colleague had remained alongside him a little longer.
Joseph kept his guilt over Jack’s death locked inside him for years, allowing it to eat at him like a Regulan bloodworm. He might have kept it there the rest of his life except for a visit to Picard’s EnterpriseD.
Joseph and others who had served on the Stargazer were reunited there for the coronation of one of their colleagues-a D’aavit named Morgen, who had become a captain by then. And for the first time since Jack’s death, Joseph was placed in the company of Jack’s widow, Beverly.
At the urging of Guinan, Picard’s El-Aurian bartender, Joseph told Beverly the truth about her husband’s death. But far from hating him for it, Beverly forgave him.
“That was a long time ago,” the captain pointed out.
“Still,” Joseph insisted. With what seemed like an effort, he smiled. “On top of that, Doctor Crusher’s been good to me. I’d like to pay her back a little.”
Picard looked at him. “Good to you…?”
Joseph shrugged. “You remember that problem I had for a while-with alcohol?