Resistance - J.M. Dillard [31]
“I have years of diplomatic experience. I have worked with beings from many cultures…and as a result, I have developed a skill that most Vulcans despise but that you humans seem to prize.”
“Which is?” Wozniak interjected, her gaze intense but also amused, curious.
“Intuition.”
Wozniak broke into a broad grin. “Finally…a truly honest Vulcan. I like you, T’Lana. I think we’ll do well together.”
Back on the Enterprise, the image in T’Lana’s mind shifted: The Indefatigable’s bridge viewscreen, filled with Jem’Hadar warships—three tiered, evoking bugs with head, body, wings.
Wozniak had asked her: What does your intuition tell you about the Jem’Hadar?
That in their case diplomacy fails, T’Lana had answered. That they are single-minded creatures whose sole focus is killing. That they cannot be reasoned with.
Yet she would have made an effort, if there had only been time.
Next, she saw a series of images, starting with the face of a Jem’Hadar commander reptilian with skin that seemed carved from stone, his temples and jaw covered by rows of osseous projections. His voice, harsh and gloating: You are surrounded by a dozen of our warships. Prepare to be destroyed.
The screen had gone black. A bolt of light bright as Vulcan’s sun blinded T’Lana for seconds, even with her inner eyelids squeezed shut.
Acrid smoke, the stench of burned circuitry and flesh. The thick haze blanketed the bridge, forcing T’Lana to grope for the captain’s chair, only to find it empty.
On the deck, partially obscured by smoke and the afterimage from the blast, Wozniak, wide-eyed and unseeing, slack jawed, half her face incinerated, revealing ivory bone beneath papery remnants of blackened skin.
Instinctively, T’Lana had moved to lift her, but logic halted the action, with the painful realization that Wozniak, if she were not already dead, would not survive long enough to flee the ship. Others might, and her duty lay with the living. That reasoning propelled T’Lana swiftly past the corpses of her crewmates, past the smoldering consoles and nonfunctional lift, down the nearest auxiliary shaft.
She crawled, gasping for air, down to the next level, then the next, and the next, then ran coughing down the corridors toward the shuttlebay. Along the way, she encountered three crew members still living. She carried and dragged them with her into one of only two shuttles still operational.
The final image: from space, the sight of the Indefatigable, scorched and lifeless, as the massive warships moved off.
T’Lana took a deep, controlled breath, then slowly let it go.
Such was the price of a decision rooted in emotion, such was the cost of heeding intuition.
T’Lana opened her eyes and rose slowly. As always, the image of Wozniak’s charred face remained and rose with her.
After hours, Beverly sat in the captain’s quarters—in their quarters—barely touching the glass of synthehol cabernet in her hand. She longed for a glass of real wine, fine wine from Picard’s private stock, but tonight was not the night for indulgence. The lights had been dimmed, in honor of Enterprise’s night; a single lamp burned nearby on Jean-Luc’s desk, casting sharp shadows.
They were five hours out from their dreaded destination. Sleep was out of the question, and she would need all her energy and wits to face what was coming. This was the hardest part of any mission where lives were at stake—the wait before the storm. It was hard, too, not to stare obsessively at Jean-Luc, to worry when he might next become overwhelmed and collapse.
Seated beside her, Jean-Luc no doubt sensed her worry. It had become their custom, at day’s end, to sit in his quarters, talking and looking out at the stars. Tonight, they were both doing their best to be casual and talk about anything but what was on their minds: the Borg.
“So,” Beverly said, “what do you make of your new counselor?