Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [41]
Picard tried to ignore the slight. “If there is nothing else, this meeting is adjourned.”
“Good idea,” said Ben Zoma, pushing his chair out for emphasis.
Wu didn’t hesitate to take the hint and leave the room, nor did Daniels. Dojjaron paused to leer a bit more but eventually made his exit as well, and Ben Zoma followed.
That left the captain and Serenity alone together in the observation lounge. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then she said, “I’m sorry.”
“You do not owe me an explanation,” Picard told her.
“Nonetheless,” said Serenity, “I should have said something.” She looked at her hands. “I was just afraid—”
“That I would think you less attractive if I knew you had borne a child?”
“Not just a child,” she said, meeting his gaze again. “A young lady. They grow up quickly in Magnia.”
“I have heard,” the captain said, “that they grow up quickly everywhere.”
“Maybe so,” Serenity allowed. She looked at him. “Was I wrong to think as I did?”
A good question, he conceded. “It would not have made any difference.”
“And now?” she asked.
Picard shook his head. “None. In fact, someday I would like to meet this daughter of yours.”
“It’s a promise,” Serenity said. “Provided that we stop Brakmaktin. And that you get back to Magnia someday. In both cases, pretty long odds…wouldn’t you say?”
He didn’t know how to respond to that.
“There are those,” she continued, “who would say that a man and a woman who have feelings for each other and a rather uncertain future should seize whatever opportunities they’re given.”
“Really,” said the captain.
Her brow furrowed. “Why aren’t we doing that?”
He smiled at her. “Because we place other considerations ahead of ourselves…and each other.”
Serenity smiled back. “If you didn’t, I probably wouldn’t want you so badly.”
He swallowed, trying to take in her beauty and resist it at the same time. “Nor I you.”
Nikolas had spent the minutes following Brakmaktin’s turnaround sitting quietly and watching the viewscreen, reluctant to do anything that might encourage the Nuyyad to change his mind. But hours later, all the battle cruiser’s surviving instruments still told him they were heading for Federation territory and leaving the Ubarrak mining world behind.
Though Nikolas hadn’t allowed himself to acknowledge it before, he was tired as hell. Sleeping on the same ship as Brakmaktin had been nerve-wracking from the beginning, and it had gotten worse the deeper they penetrated into Ubarrak space.
Now they were going in the opposite direction. For the time being, at least, the nightmare was over. In celebration, Nikolas was going to get some shut-eye.
Getting up from the console at which he had been sitting, he made his way through the obstacle course of mineral-deposit pillars and exited the bridge. Then he took a lift three decks down to the corridor where he would find his adopted quarters.
Like the armory, the bridge, and several other parts of the ship, it was growing a smooth, blue and orange skin, not to mention an army of stalactites and stalagmites. Nikolas paid no attention to them, no longer impressed by what he now thought of simply as Brakmaktin’s preferred decor.
He had placed his hand on the door-opening plate and was waiting for the metal slab to slide aside when he heard something—a sharp sound like a heel hitting the deck. Though he knew it had to be something else, he turned to satisfy his curiosity.
And felt his heart start hammering.
There was someone at the end of the corridor, barely discernible in the dim light. Not Brakmaktin. Someone human-looking—a female, Nikolas told himself.
How could that be? He had believed that he and the Nuyyad were the only intelligent life left on the ship. Had one of the Ubarrak crewmen regained her faculties somehow? Or at least the ability to move around?
Then Nikolas got a better look at her face and realized it wasn’t an Ubarrak after all, and found himself cursing under his breath. It was her again…
Gerda Idun.
She looked puzzled, disoriented, just like the last time Nikolas