Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [19]
It was—but that didn’t make it any less true. In all his years of space exploration, Picard had never come across anything exactly like Storm—or, for that matter, her fellow X-Men.
Then, on his way back from a confrontation with the Borg in Earth’s 21st century, the captain had found himself embroiled in a scheme by someone named Kang the Conqueror to disrupt established timelines—not only the one to which Picard himself belonged, but also the one where the X-Men fought oppression and injustice.
With the mutants’ help, the captain and his crew had crossed timelines to thwart Kang’s scheme. Then, using the villain’s own timehook device, they had returned to their proper time and place. The X-Men had employed Kang’s timehooks as well—with very different results, it seemed.
Picard leaned forward in his seat. “Rest assured, Storm, we will do everything in our power to find a way to get you home—and to do so as expeditiously as possible. Even without the timehook devices, there are other methods … other options at our disposal. However, finding the right one will require your cooperation.”
“Ororo,” she said.
He looked at her, puzzled by her response. “I beg your pardon?”
“My name is Ororo,” she told him. “Storm is just my nom de guerre.”
The captain smiled. “Ororo, then.” He resisted inviting her to call him Jean-Luc. “As I was saying, we will require your cooperation if we are to help you. We need to determine why the Enterprise returned to its programmed time and place and your X-Men did not.”
“What sort of cooperation did you have in mind?” she asked.
“Dr. Crusher and Commander La Forge would like to conduct some tests,” Picard explained. “They will be painless, of course. But with any luck, they will tell us why you were deposited in our timeline.”
The mutant thought for a moment. “I cannot say I love the idea,” she said, “but I do not think these tests will pose a problem.”
The captain nodded. “Good.”
Storm glanced at one of the observation ports, where she could see stars streaking by. “Do you deal with things like this all the time?” she wondered. “Cross-temporal anomalies and such?”
“More often than I would like,” Picard admitted.
She turned to him again, able to joke despite her team’s plight. “Then whatever they pay you, it is not enough.”
“Since we aren’t paid, as such, certainly not,” he said.
The mutant glanced at the observation port again. “We are moving at a considerable rate of speed. I take it you have been assigned a mission.”
“Only in the broadest sense. I have been asked to attend a planning meeting on another starbase. It pertains to an ally of our Federation known as the Klingon Empire.”
“Commander Worf’s people?”
“The same,” the captain told her, pleased that she had made the connection. “Fortunately, neither Dr. Crusher nor Commander La Forge will be involved in the planning meeting, so your problem will not be neglected. In any case, I hope you and your comrades will make yourselves comfortable while you are here.”
“Thank you,” Storm replied. “You are very kind.”
For a second or so, neither of them spoke. But it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence by any means. Strange as it seemed, Picard felt as if he had known the woman all his life.
“May I ask you a question?” she said at last.
“By all means,” he responded.
The mutant leaned forward. “Do you never get lonely here, so far from the planet of your birth?”
The captain shook his head. “Not at all. I chose this life. In fact, I aspired to it.” He smiled. “Nothing gives me more pleasure than traveling from star to star, seeing what no one has seen before.”
She smiled, too. “I cannot say the same.”
“And why is that?” he asked.
“I have a bond with Earth’s biosphere,” Storm explained. “It is an essential component of my mutant powers. I find it … difficult to be away from Earth for too long.”
Picard regarded her. “You would have gotten along with my brother, Robert,” he said.
She tilted her head to one side. “Would have?”
“He perished in a fire,” the captain told her. “Along with my