Reunion - Michael Jan Friedman [107]
“Don’t,” Morgen told her. He laid his great bony hand
on her bed. “I just thought it was time you received a visit from your friends.” He regarded Asmund. “All of them:” The blond woman nodded, returning the Daa’Vit’s gaze. “That’s right. Or at least, that’s the reason he gave me. And when the ruler of the Daa’Vit Unity summons you, you don’t dare disobey.” Morgen laughed and turned to the patient again. “For the record, it was actually more of a request. was Cadwallader’s smile got a little broader. “That’s all right. Frankly, I don’t give a damn why you’re here. I’m just glad that you are.”
“Guttle’s Maw,” the professor spat out. “What’s next? Hugs and kisses all around?”
“What’s going on here?” Morgen followed the voice to its source, and saw Dr. Crusher standing at the threshold of her office. “I thought Commander Cadwallader might want some familiar faces about her-particularly now.” The Daa’Vit smiled charmingly. “Won’t you join us?”
Crusher seemed surprised-pleasantly so. “I’d be delighted.” Joseph turned to Morgen. “If it’s all the same to you,” he asked, “I’d like to be with Captain Ben Zoma.” He glanced at Cadwallader. “You understand, Cad?” “Of course,” she told him. “Wait,” Asmund said. She looked at the doctor, indicating with a jerk of her thumb the divider that hid Ben Zoma from view. “Can we remove it?”
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 down-side, 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. Seiar’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 tom 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