Slings and Arrows 01_ Sea of Troubles - J. Steven York [8]
The entire time, Picard refused to leave the bridge. He felt a duty to his friend Roger Adrian. This grim detail demanded his full and uninterrupted attention. But he knew the search could not go on forever.
“Mr. Data, anything at all?”
Data swiveled his chair to face the captain. “Only small pieces of melted wreckage. Based on analysis of the surrounding nebula, I can account for at least seventy percent of the Samson’s makeup-duranium alloys and organics-in elemental form. It appears that she was largely vaporized by the plasma, and the loss of antimatter containment would have completed the process. It also appears that either she was unable to launch her shuttles, or if she did, they were unable to escape the flare and were vaporized as well.”
A chirp came from his console. Data immediately turned and examined the panel displays. “Captain, I am picking up a solid object in a dust cloud six hundred kilometers from the Samson’s last position. Two meters in length, duranium hull. It appears to be the Samson’s data recorder. But it must be badly damaged. I am picking up no transmissions or energy output.”
“Conn, move us to within transporter range. Data, beam the recorder aboard, and see what you can recover from it. I want to know what happened to the Samson.”
Lieutenant Hawk headed for Ten-Forward at 1330 hours with the idea of having a cup of Vulcan spice tea and reviewing the main deflector schematics before his crew orientation.
He wasn’t sure what to make of all the extra duty that Captain Picard was loading on him. He couldn’t decide if the captain was testing him in some way, or if he’d merely gone too far with his “plank-owner” speech, and this was Picard’s way of putting him in his place.
It really didn’t matter. Either way, he’d give it his best, determined to prove himself to his new captain.
Picard was a larger-than-life character to him, one he’d heard about from his earliest days at the Academy. The man was both legendary and infamous. Legendary because of his twenty-two-year mission on the Stargazer and his invention of the Picard Maneuver, and the shorter but even more historic mission of the EnterpriseD. Infamous because of his role as an assimilated Borg drone named Locutus, in the devastating Battle of Wolf 359. Under Locutus’s guidance, thirty-nine ships had been lost, and nearly eleven thousand crewmen killed.
Subjectively, Hawk knew that the assimilation process left no freedom of will, and that upon his rescue, Picard had been instrumental in defeating the Borg. Still, he could understand the uneasy tone he’d heard in the voices of some older officers at the San Francisco Yards when they were discussing Picard.
Either way, it was difficult to work for a legend, and Hawk was still trying to relate to the man underneath.
He walked into the lounge-which, despite neither being on deck ten nor in the forward section, was referred to as Ten-Forward by the holdovers from the D-with a large engineering padd under his arm, and was almost to the bar when he spotted Linda Addison sitting at a table near the viewports. She was not looking out the windows as most of the other patrons were, but instead was quietly watching the watchers, a full cup of black coffee in front of her.
Linda did not notice him as he placed his order and strolled over to her table, hoping to discover what had caused the rift between them. He stopped politely several paces short of the table before he spoke. “Linda?”
She looked over at him, then smiled slightly when she recognized him. “Sean.” Her voice was warm, her tone welcoming. It was strangely at odds with the brusque dismissal she had given him earlier.
“Can we talk?”
She gestured at the chair across from her. “Please, sit down.”
He slid into the chair, and they looked at each other for a bit, she still studying him with that curious smile.
After several moments, he broke the uneasy