Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [65]
Kirk’s brow slightly tucked, a clear worry behind the flame in his eyes. Those famous hazel eyes—Picard recognized them as if he’d known James Kirk in these younger days. Everyone in Starfleet knew that face, those eyes. And that empathy, that pain at having had to watch Hansen die, how much of that had been ignored by history? Picard had smirked sometimes at the somewhat burlesque hindsight turned toward James Kirk’s activities. This young captain was often the subject of academy jokes and spoofs.
No one would spoof him if they were here watching today. No one with any circumspection of soul could possibly take lightly the young captain’s misery, the weight of responsibility he obviously felt right now. He was clearly out of range, yet he still felt responsible.
Desperation voiced itself again over the crackling comm. “Can you see it, Enterprise? Can you see it? Becoming visible in the center of my screen!”
“Do you have phaser capacity?” Kirk demanded edgily. “We’re still out of range.”
“Negative,” Hansen mourned, “phasers gone, weapons crew dead.”
Kirk turned his head to speak over his right shoulder to his communications officer, but Picard noticed the young captain never took his eyes off that ship. “Make challenge! Warn that ship off!”
“Trying to, sir,” his communications officer said. “They don’t acknowledge.”
The ship on the screen fired, but not a weapon Picard recognized. A plasma cloud boiled toward them, a gluey see-through salmon mass, almost pretty if one didn’t know what it could do. Like the business end of an avalanche the plasma cloud rolled toward the screen. And it was fast—
A loud thrum blew from the forward screen’s audio system. The screen switched back to a view of the command center as the systems began to break down under fire. Now they could see the pathetic, brave Hansen as he suddenly arched back in a supercharged convulsion. His hands clawed in agony, his mouth gaped toward the ceiling. He was quite aware of his own last moments, and Picard grimaced to see it.
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—successive surges of energy blew through Hansen’s body, through the whole command center, through the whole asteroid. The noise was like a kettledrum without a damper.
The whole bridge crew, and Picard too, winced at the pain suddenly in their eyes, as the bright destruction bloomed across the entire screen, a hurtful white light of plasma reaction. James Kirk shielded his face with his right hand, and his sedate first officer was driven to flinch and blink at his side.
Picard actually looked away briefly. No point going blind, was there?
As he turned away, his gaze fell upon James Kirk, on James Kirk’s sorrowful eyes, and Picard noticed the depth of sadness, of worry. In just those short seconds of conversation, Kirk had invested in a relationship with Commander Hansen. Interesting—the young captain’s intense empathy with other people was palpable right now, apparently even with people he didn’t know.
Commendable. I didn’t know that about him.
And in that moment, Picard took a chance to appreciate where he was standing—a scrupulously detailed representation of the bridge aboard the first starship named Enterprise. A charmed place, rather like the secure milk-and-honey childhood dream everyone had in common, a cloud-woven place everyone recognized. This was the quixotic beginning of Starfleet’s reach out into deep space, the Federation’s first great manifestation of farsight, and this ship its first deep-space anticipator.
And it was a pleasant looking place as well, tidy and rather simple, slate-blue and black work areas racing-striped with bright Starfleet-red.
Now Mr. Spock moved away from the captain and quickly took his seat at the science console to confirm the terrible facts they all knew already.
“Outpost 4,” he began, then turned to look at Kirk meaningfully, “disintegrated, Captain.”
Spock seemed deeply affected—and Picard had been long ago conditioned not to expect that from a Vulcan. But Spock was not your garden-variety Vulcan. He was less laconic, less stiff than one might