Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [88]
And even so, straight through the ring of Picard’s words, Riker forced himself to do what was his duty. “What about the Prime Directive? We can’t guard the whole galaxy.”
“Even the Prime Directive must have its elasticity,” Picard said firmly, and there was no doubt that he had thought about this, had already endured and forded the difficulty of this very question. He paused, and moved forward on his bridge, all eyes on him. “From a distance, this may look like Utopia, Will,” he said, broadly enough for all to hear, “but when you’re staring right at it, it’s something else. It’s a tyrant and demands our grappling with it. There will be no tyranny here,” he said. “Refusing to make a decision is its own kind of cowardice.”
Riker moved to the captain’s side, and the two men stood before the vast viewscreen and all it held. “You’re that certain?” he asked. He wondered why the rock of resistance still sat in his stomach. He knew perfectly well that Captain Picard was no grandstander, that such a man would turn the ship and run in the other direction if there were a way to avoid using the weapons, yet he still had to make this one last request, that Picard simply say yes, he was certain.
But the captain said nothing. He merely gazed sidelong at Riker, exercising his command right in that simple silence.
Riker nodded and backed off a few steps, making his own message clear.
The captain turned, and standing on the dais with the whole blackness of space as his backdrop, he addressed the faintly lit bridge. “All right, what do you have?”
“Sir,” Worf began immediately from the opposite stage, “we’ve concluded that it backed away from its first attack on us because it reached its absorption capacity. We’ve calculated its drain on us at the point it moved off, and think it’s possible to overload it.”
“Risks?”
“We would have risk if we had possibility. Our phasers simply can’t put out enough power to do what must be done. It dissipates its energy faster than we could pump it full.”
Picard pressed his lips tight and tried to envision such a creature, but all he could do was glare at the undeniable readouts and see that it was true. Behind him, voices buzzed, annoying him as flies annoy a horse. Geordi. Wesley. Geordi. Wesley again, arguing. An exchange of whispers, grating on Picard as he tried to dig out a miracle solution, and finally he spun around, demanding, “Have you two got something to add or not?”
Both Geordi and Wesley flinched, and Wesley’s cheeks flared red. “Oh … no, sir.”
“Yes, sir,” Geordi contradicted.
“But it doesn’t work,” Wesley hissed, tugging at Geordi’s sleeve.
“Data told you how to make it work.”
“But what if it doesn’t?”
“When you’re going to die, a one-in-a-million chance is better than nothing, Wes!”
“By the devil!” Picard roared. “What are you talking about?”
Wesley dropped into self-conscious silence while Geordi fought with himself and won. He approached the captain and said, “Wes has an idea how to increase the ship’s energy output through the phaser systems, sir.”
“All right,” Picard said then, “I’m listening. Keep it short.”
“Wesley, tell him.”
Wesley licked his lips and brought his narrow form up beside Geordi. “Well, sir, it’s a phaser intensification system that pulls more firepower with less base energy by breaking down the first phasing cycle into increment frequencies, then reintegrating the phasing all at once in the final cycle. Mr. Data gave me some clues that should make it work, and Geordi thinks we can-“
“The point is, sir,” Geordi interrupted, speaking just as fast as Picard had asked for, “if we could modify the ship’s phasers to this theory, we could fill that thing up with about five times the energy it got when it-“
“Yes, I understand the science, Lieutenant. That’s very radical, what you’re describing.” Picard stepped down from the viewscreen bank and strode