Star Trek_ Generations - J M. Dillard [79]
He fell backward, but soon righted himself again to see Kirk pushing himself to his feet. Together they moved away from the scaffolding, toward level ground; a sudden play of light above them made them both gaze upward, at the jagged streaks piercing the bright sky.
Were running out of time, Picard said, fighting a surge of despair. Yet at the instant he said it, his eye caught something to ease that despair: On the ravines opposite side, half of the bridge still stood, suspended in midair.
And upon it lay Sorans small, black device.
Look! He pointed. The control paddits still on the other side. A quick glance around them showed that there was no way through the impassable peaks to the bridges other side. The only way to reach it was to climb down the dangling edge he had just rescued Kirk from … and jump across.
Ill get it, Kirk said, obviously having come to the same conclusion, for he was already moving back toward the dangling bridge. You go for the launcher.
No, Picard countered firmly. The scaffoldings supports were clearly in danger of giving way entirelyand he had no desire to be responsible for Kirks dying a second time. They had already come uncomfortably close enough to that. Youll never make that by yourself. We have to work together.
He moved to turn; Kirk stepped into his path, and with a warmth usually reserved for very old friends, put his hand on Picards shoulder and said, We are working together. Trust me. Go.
Picards first instinct was to refuse, to insist on helping retrieve the paddbut he knew that Kirk was right: Time had grown short, and he could no longer afford the luxury of watching over Kirk to be sure the Starfleet legend came to no harm.
At the same time, he could not shake the unsettling premonition that Kirk was in mortal danger; and so he, Picard, would have preferred to go after the padd himself. But both he and Kirk knew that a twenty-third century captain was no match for twenty-fourth century technology. And so he released a barely audible sigh and surrendered to the inevitable as he said softly, Good luck, Captain.
Kirk grinned; the act lit up his face with a brilliance that matched the writhing sky. Call me Jim.
And as Kirk stepped back onto the broken bridge, he found himself remembering a part of his life he had not thought of in … eighty years, was it? It scarcely seemed that long ago, when he had wakened, sweating, from the dream of falling down the sheer rockface of E1 Capitan.
Thats right; in reality, Spock had rescued him. But in the dream he had fallen endlessly, eternally, with no Spock, no friend, no one to save him …
And the day he had been aboard the Enterprise-Bthe day he had been oddly overcome by a premonition of his own death; the day, according to Picard, that he had indeed diedhed experienced the same sensation.
He felt it again now, the instant his foot stepped onto the metal bridge: emotional free fall, the sheerest terror and bliss. Terror, because he knew Spock would not be there to catch him; bliss, because he was once again doing what he had been born to domake a difference. There was no time for thought, for reflection, only for pure mindless action.
There were two hundred fifty million lives at stake and those of a well-trained, loyal Enterprise crew. Surely the lives of those shipmates alone were worth the sacrifice of his; he had seen their captain, and if Picard was representative of twenty-fourth-century Starfleet, then these were exceptional individuals indeed. What was it Spock would have said?
It is merely logical, Jim: The good of the many outweighs the good of the one.
This half of the bridge sloped dangerously downward. He took mincing half-steps, half-walking, half-sliding as he clutched the rails with both hands, his eyes fixed on the remote device, which lay on the opposite half of the broken scaffolding, the half that still remained