Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [223]
* * *
Hans Werber had to admit that the accommodations in the Starfleet brig were a little better than in the Stargazer’ s. But that didn’t make him feel a whole lot better.
Hearing the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside his cell, he looked up—and saw a familiar if unexpected face through the barrier.
“Picard?” he said.
“In the flesh,” said his visitor.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Werber confessed.
Picard regarded him. “You mean because you tried to stun me in my sleep and take over a vessel under my command?”
“Well,” said the weapons officer, “yeah.”
The other man smiled a taut smile. “I don’t believe I will forget that incident anytime soon. But neither will I forget that you helped me uncover Jomar’s clandestine activities—or that, in the end, you put your resentment aside and did what your duty demanded.”
Werber shrugged. “You didn’t have to come here to tell me that.”
“I also didn’t have to put in a word on your behalf with the judge advocate general,” said Picard. “Nonetheless, I did. Perhaps he’ll take it into account when he tries your case.”
The weapons officer couldn’t believe it. “You did that for me? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I am not,” his visitor assured him. “I wanted the court to have all the facts in front of it.”
Werber didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.
“We’ll see each other again,” Picard told him. Then he turned and started down the corridor.
“Hey, Picard!” the prisoner called, getting to his feet and approaching the energy barrier.
The other man stopped and looked back. “Yes?”
“You know what?” said Werber. “I was wrong. You’re going to make a hell of a captain someday.”
Picard nodded. “I hope you’re right.”
Epilogue
United Space Probe Agency Escape Pods
S.S. Valiant
2069
One
Dennis Gardenhire checked his instruments. “Hold on,” he said. “It could be a rough ride.”
Activating the reverse thrusters, the navigator felt them slow the escape pod’s descent. Then he made adjustments in the shape of their shields to minimize the stress of entry.
Gardenhire had piloted a pod prototype a dozen times before the Valiant left Earth orbit, and gone through escape simulations a hundred times more. But penetrating the atmosphere of an alien world with shield generators that hadn’t been dependable for weeks and an inertial damper that hadn’t worked correctly from the beginning…
That was a different story entirely.
Still, Gardenhire asked himself, what choice did they have? Their pod was low on fuel and even lower on nutritional packets and potable water, and this was the only habitable world they had come across.
Through the pod’s observation portal, he could see the ragged white of dense clouds ripping past them. But they were high clouds—sixty-five thousand kilometers high. The pod still had a long way to go before it reached the planet’s surface.
Gardenhire looked around at the other faces in the escape vehicle. They looked back at him with trust if not complete confidence, knowing he would do his best to land them safely despite the pod’s limitations.
There was Coquillette, the little medic who had seen them through everything from seasickness to bedsores. And O’Shaugnessy, the craggy-faced assistant engineer who had nursed their engines as deftly as Coquillette had nursed the crew.
There was Santana, the stoic and uncomplaining security officer, and Daniels, the astrophysicist with the wicked sense of humor. And finally, Williamson, the balding supply officer who had bullied them into surviving one day after another, regardless of whether they wanted to or not.
By getting this far, they had already set themselves apart as the lucky ones, the ones on whom Fortune had smiled. Only twelve of the Valiant’s fourteen escape pods had cleared the explosion that destroyed the ship, and one of those twelve had fallen victim to a plasma breach days later.
The units that remained intact were packed with six or seven people each, with so little living space that only one person could move around at a