Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [128]
Crusher thought about it for a moment. “I don’t see why not,” she said at last.
Simenon snorted. “This is getting more sickly sweet all the time.”
“Hush, you,” Cadwallader told him as Crusher got two burly nurses to move the divider aside.
When Ben Zoma was revealed, they all stared at him for a moment. Then Joseph went to stand by his bed, and Asmund as well.
Morgen nodded approvingly. Old comrades banding together against the tide of events—no matter where that tide might take them. He was mightily glad he could call these people his friends.
Then he realized that it was almost time for the maneuver to begin, and the Daa’Vit held on to a convenient projection from Cadwallader’s biobed.
* * *
This time things were a little different. On the downside, they didn’t have full warp speed capability. On the upside, they knew what to expect.
Hunched over his engineering console, Geordi ran a couple of last-minute checks. Satisfied that all was in readiness, he turned to the command center.
“Ready to go,” he told the captain, who’d been standing in front of his chair and looking back at the chief engineer, waiting patiently for just those words.
Picard looked just slightly the worse for wear—a big improvement over his condition a little more than half an hour before. Or so Geordi had been told, and by no less dependable a source than the first officer himself. Of course, Dr. Selar’s ministrations had helped the captain regain some of his form—and a change into a new uniform hadn’t hurt either.
“Thank you, Commander,” said Picard. With perfect aplomb he sat down in his chair. “You may commence.”
Without further ado, Geordi turned back to his monitor, where the blue-line representation was once again in effect. Rather than approach the desired configuration by stages, as he had before, he went right to the final product: two flat surfaces, one fore and one aft, each pitched at an angle of thirty degrees to the ship’s long axis.
After all, they had no time to fool around. Geordi was confident that their current warp capability would be enough to hold the shields in place for the duration of the maneuver—but maybe not much longer than that.
For just a second before he input the change, he paused to consider the possibility that they had pushed their luck a bit too far—that this time the maneuver wouldn’t work, or that they’d be torn apart in the process. Geordi looked around at the familiar figures on the bridge—defined in electromagnetic patterns that only he and his VISOR could decipher. Even in that tiny tick of time, he was able to consider them one by one: Picard. Riker. Troi. Worf. Data. Wesley.
The chief engineer smiled. If the maneuver failed this time, if they had miscalculated, it had at least been one hell of an adventure.
Steeling himself, he gave the computer its marching orders.
Idun Asmund studied the face of Gilaad Ben Zoma. It was gaunt and bloodless, so different from the handsome, smiling countenance that had been the man’s trademark. It was painful for her to look at him—but being a true Klingon, she forced herself to do it anyway.
After all, he was dying. Not quickly, not without a fight, but he was dying nonetheless. And there might not be too many more opportunities to see him while there was still breath left in him.
Asmund looked at Pug. He knew also that Ben Zoma wasn’t long for this world. She could see it in his eyes. It occurred to her that Pug might even feel responsible for what had happened. After all, he was a security chief—one of a breed that would sooner die themselves than see something happen to their commanding officers.
She sympathized, feeling responsible as well. Hadn’t it been her knife that had stabbed Ben Zoma? And wasn’t it her lapse of vigilance that had allowed Greyhorse to obtain it?
Asmund recalled the first time she’d ever seen anyone die. Though she and Gerda had been too young to understand at the time, her family was embroiled in