Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [9]
The Andorian nodded. “I’ll try to remember that, sir.”
Abruptly, the captain’s voice filled the lounge. “Commander Ben Zoma, please join me in my ready room.”
“Acknowledged,” said the first officer.
Ben Zoma turned to Urajel again and shrugged. “Duty calls. But I’d like a rematch sometime.”
“As you wish,” the engineer told him.
Then Ben Zoma left the lounge and made his way up to the bridge level. As he exited the turbolift and headed for the captain’s sanctum, he exchanged glances with Commander Wu. But she didn’t seem to have an inkling as to why he had been summoned.
Pausing outside Picard’s door, the first officer waited to be admitted. Then he entered the room and saw his friend sitting behind his desk, a quizzical expression on his face.
“What now?” Ben Zoma asked as the ready room door slid closed behind him.
“You won’t believe this,” Picard told him, “but I have just spoken with Serenity Santana.”
The first officer looked askance at his friend and superior officer. “You’re joking, right?”
“Not at all.”
Ben Zoma’s mind raced from the impossible to the merely improbable. “But that would mean…”
“That is correct,” Picard confirmed. “She is back on our side of the barrier.”
Chapter Three
PICARD REMEMBERED how it had been.
“Soon?” he asked.
“Very,” she said.
Then they came over the rise and he found himself looking down on the place she had described. She had come close to doing it justice, but no words could have captured its beauty. As the wind blew roughly through his hair, he said as much.
“You see?” she said, her smile mischievous in the mountain sunshine, her eyes as soft and dark as liquid obsidian. “I don’t lie about everything.”
He frowned. It seemed so long ago. And yet it had only been a matter of months.
As she pulled his shirt off him, her eyes were drawn to his scar. Her fingers, tiny creatures full of curiosity, explored the shape and dimension of the damaged flesh.
“How?” she asked.
“An indiscretion,” he said. “A blade in the wrong hands. And an artificial heart.”
“Don’t your people have cosmetic surgery?”
“They do,” he said. “And maybe someday I’ll let them take care of it. But for now, I like the reminder.”
She looked up at him slyly. “And your heart? It’s an adequate replacement for the one you lost?”
He smiled a little, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand. “There is a way to find out…”
For all he knew, he would never get the chance to see her again. This would be it for them.
The lake water was cold on her skin. He could tell by the gooseflesh on her arm as she reached up to him.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said. “Trust me.”
As he lowered himself into its depths, he saw that she was right. The water wasn’t as bad as it looked, the bite of cold quickly giving way to an awakening, as if his every pore were independently aware of everything around it.
And of course, of her as well.
She had known the reality of the situation. They were, after all, from different places.
He opened his eyes and saw her lying beside him on the grass, her skin bronze in the flawless sunlight. He didn’t want to wake her, didn’t want the moment to end.
But she must have heard him stir, because she reached for him and laid her hand on his shoulder. Her touch was warm and delicate, like the feathers of an exotic bird.
Covering her hand with his, he closed his eyes again and dreamed of waking beside her.
It had been like a dream, and dreams were made to end.
One moment, the light in her eyes was alive. The next, a shadow had swallowed it.
Setting his teeth against the inevitable, he looked back over his shoulder and saw that the sun had crossed behind a treetop. The day was growing longer, thinner.
They still had some time together, but not much. Not as much as he would have liked. After all, he had another lover, waiting patiently for him in the star-pricked night that overhung the day.
And her name was Stargazer.
But somehow Serenity was back. She