Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [70]
Picard stepped to the corner of the room, turned his back to Maddox and tapped his combadge. “Picard to Crusher.”
There was a brief pause, then the exasperated voice of the doctor. “Crusher here. What is it, Captain?”
Picard cocked an eyebrow. “Are we having a bad day, Doctor?”
Crusher sighed. “No, Captain. The sixty-five people who are crammed into sickbay and the additional forty or fifty who are lined up outside my door are having a bad day. I’m just having a very, very busy one. What can I do for you?”
Picard decided that there was nothing he could do to placate Crusher at the moment and cut to the point. “Can Commander Maddox travel?”
“If he has to,” Crusher said. “But I strongly suggest you go easy on him, sir. Whatever Sam did for him obviously reversed whatever was maintaining his coma, but there’s no way to know what aftereffects there might be.”
“Understood, Doctor. How are the casualties?”
“All things considered, Captain, it could have been worse,” Crusher said. Then she added in a softer tone, “Go easy on yourself too, Jean-Luc.”
Picard felt one corner of his mouth lift. “Recommendation noted, Doctor. Picard out.” Turning back to Maddox, the captain said, “Apparently Dr. Crusher feels you’re fit enough to travel. I’ll clear it with Admiral Haftel. We leave orbit in two hours.” He started to leave the room.
Taking another sip of water, Maddox asked, “Are you headed back to the ship now, sir?”
Pausing in the open door, Picard shook his head. “No,” he said. “I have another visit to make before I head back.”
Security detention areas all look the same, Picard reflected, then wondered how tired he needed to be before such a trite observation could intrude on his consciousness. Sam—or whatever his name truly was—sat on the single bunk, looking quite composed, back against the wall, long legs crossed at the ankles. He had stripped off his medical technician’s disguise and was wearing some overalls one of the security officers had given him. Deanna Troi had already checked the transporter logs and found no indication about when the bartender had beamed down, but several crewmen swore they had seen Sam in the lounge just before the attack had begun. How had he done it? Picard wondered. And why? To spy on the Federation flagship? Steal secrets from a key scientific installation? Give life back to a man he didn’t know? Save two officers from what had looked like almost certain death? It was an odd commingling of events and it would require some effort to untangle the threads.
Picard saw Haftel standing near the invisible barrier, then looked around for a security officer. Haftel said, “I dismissed him. No sense in wasting manpower when there’s plenty of other things to do.”
Picard nodded, then said hello to Sam.
“How are you, Captain?” the bartender drawled pleasantly. “How’s the ship?”
“The ship … can be repaired. Some of her crew, unfortunately, cannot.” Picard felt a small coal of anger that he had banked deep in his breast flare up into a lick of flame. He would find whoever had sent the “iceship.” He would find them, and then he would … But then he forced the thought down. Vengeance wasn’t the goal, he knew, but then he had to ask himself, What was? Comprehension, perhaps? Would understanding why twenty-nine people had died ease the pain of mourning families? He somehow doubted it, but knew it was the only path he could permit himself.
Sam stared at the floor, then ran a hand across his jaw. “I’m sorry, Captain. I truly am. I’m sure I knew some of them and probably would have liked to know them all.”
The bartender’s obvious regret permitted Picard to release some of his own anger and regret. “Thank you,” he said, then discovered he couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he turned to Haftel. “Has he told you anything important?”
Haftel shook his head. “Not unless you count his secret formula for the perfect dry martini. He says he wants to