Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [103]
Commander Asmund’s arrest had raised quite a stir. And understandably so. Asmund wasn’t some hostile life-form who’d invaded the Enterprise with her phasers blazing; she was a Starfleet officer who had walked beside them, even sat down to dinner with them—all the while plotting to commit murder in their midst.
For once, even Guinan had been caught off guard. Usually, there was very little that occurred on the ship that got past her. But neither she nor Troi nor anyone else had managed to catch on to the killer—not until Worf identified her by her handiwork. It was disconcerting, to say the least.
As the doors opened, Guinan glanced in their direction. It was a reflex by now, part of the routine of running Ten-Forward. She felt more comfortable knowing who was coming in and who was leaving. And people liked the idea that she took note of them; it made them feel special.
Then she saw who had just entered her domain. Well, she mused, maybe “special” isn’t quite the right word in this case. “Hunted” or “persecuted,” but definitely not “special.”
It was Pug Joseph. And he’d been drinking again. She could see it in the dark, puffy rings under his eyes and in the waxy pallor of his skin.
For a moment, Pug didn’t seem to notice her—maybe because there were a couple of waiters obscuring his view. She watched him scan the area out by the observation ports, eyes narrowed. Looking for his nemesis, she thought: me. Failing to find her, he smiled and took a couple of steps toward the nearest concentration of tables.
Apparently, Pug had gotten tired of drinking in his room. And despite his earlier failures, he still thought he had a shot at taking his binge to Ten-Forward.
Then the waiters moved away, and Guinan was revealed to him. As their eyes met and locked, his expression changed—became tense, almost hateful.
Stifling his fury, he turned and walked out of the lounge.
Beverly lay stretched out on her bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to face the prospect that Ben Zoma was beyond her help. It wasn’t easy. She had done her best, brought to bear all the medical technology at her disposal—and he still had less than a fifty-fifty chance.
That irked her. It wasn’t as if she had never lost a patient—every doctor in Starfleet had to deal with occasional failure. But Ben Zoma had been her husband’s friend, his comrade. He had joked with him, shared sorrows and triumphs with him. In a way, she felt that losing Gilaad Ben Zoma would be letting Jack down. And she desperately didn’t want to do that.
Jack. The thought of him made her turn to the box of tapes resting on her commode. She wanted—needed—to hear his voice.
Opening the box again, Beverly peered inside. She longed to hear something upbeat, optimistic, like the last one—but after a moment she realized that she didn’t remember the content of any individual tape very well. In fact, they were pretty much a blur to her.
It took her a few minutes, but she eventually found a tape that seemed to fit the bill. In fact, she realized with a little pang of delight, it was one of the first subspace messages Jack had ever sent her. She even remembered the messenger who had brought it—a stocky young woman who took her duties quite seriously. She used to check and double-check Beverly’s signature against her records before releasing a tape, no matter how many she brought—at least until they replaced her with someone less memorable.
And it was summer, wasn’t it? Beverly remembered that too, because she couldn’t understand how it could be summer and be so cold. Of course, she’d never lived in San Francisco before. She’d never even lived on Earth before.
But Starfleet’s medical college was in San Francisco, and it was the best in the Federation. And when she’d actually gotten accepted there, she could hardly justify staying on Arvada Three, as much as she loved the colony.
So, shortly after her marriage to Jack, they’d moved to a second-floor apartment in the shadow of Starfleet headquarters—which