Star Trek_ Generations - J M. Dillard [62]
She turned her head then, and shared a look with Will. At the sight of her face, he allowed his command demeanor to soften for a fleeting instant. She did not quite smile; she could read his expression so well that it was hardly necessary to read his emotions. There was regret in his eyes, and a light that said he would have liked to have had the time to prove Picards vision of the future wrong.
That future certainly seemed wrong now, in the face of one that said they might all die together. Impact would pulverize the ship unless something could be done to ease it. Yet that future, too, seemed wrong.
Data looked up from his console at last, and the faint trace of relief on his fear-stricken face gave her an inkling of hope.
I have rerouted auxiliary power to the lateral thrusters, he called to Riker. Attempting to level our descent …
Will it be enough? Riker shouted.
Uncertain, sir. The thrusters have sustained minor damage. There is no time to assess it and attempt repairs. I estimate a forty-percent chance that they will fail …
And sixty percent that theyll hold. Ill take those odds. Riker leaned to one side, struggling to hold on with one hand while the other pressed the comm control. All hands brace for impact!
Troi glanced up for one final look at the viewscreen, and recoiled in surprise. Veridian IIIs green and blue surface could no longer be seenonly lavender sky.
She leaned forward onto her console. The ships shuddering increased until she could no longer think, could scarcely even draw a breath, could only hold on blankly, mindlessly, as around her, consoles erupted into flame …
At a sudden, high-pitched screaming, she tried to raise her head; gravity pressed it back down. She pressed one cheek against the console and turned her face in the direction of the shriekan almost humanoid cry.
Amid the vibrating, smoking blur that was the bridge, she saw the screams source: a far bulkhead crumpling, like paper being slowly crushed. It was the sound of metal buckling, of the ship screaming. She looked at the viewscreen and saw a jumble of green and brown.
The jolt began at her feet, as intense, as icy-hot as lightning, and spread upward to her skull. Impact, she realized, and at the second the thought occurred to her, it was almost instantly blotted out, shaken loose from her stunned brain and replaced by darkness as she hurtled up and forward, toward the screen …
Soran raised his disruptor and squinted at the cloud of dust and smoke rising from the collapsed rock archway where Picard had wriggled beneath the forcefield. The scientist jumped down a level, weapon ready, his mind full of fury; there was no time to deal with distractions! He should have killed the human outright, when he first came, to save himself the annoyance now.
But no, you had to be softhearted. And why? Youll soon have the blood of two hundred thirty million on your head … What [
] one more?
A breeze stirred, dispersing the haze to reveal a scorched hole gouged in the earth where the captain had lain.
But no Picard …
Frustrated, Soran peered around him at the shifting wisps of smoke. No sign of the captain …
But the sky above his head glimmered, with a sudden, distantly familiar splendor that made Soran catch his breath and look up.
A snake of brilliant rainbow light thrashed across the sky, so bedazzling him with its promise, its beauty, that his wide eyes filled at once with tears.
No time. There was no time to search for Picard, no time to do anything save scramble up the scaffolding and prepare himself for escape from this temporal hell.
Soran climbed, eyes blinded by the ribbons blazing glory, by tears. His heart, once heavy at the thought of the deaths of Veridian IVs inhabitants, of Picard, of those aboard the Enterprise, now seemed light, absolved of any wrong by the coming wonder of what he was about to embrace. Leandra …
What was the Terran parable? A jewel, a pearl of great price. Worth anything, everything, to possess. Surely he, above all others, understood the tale. The nexus was worth any number of lives;