Synthesis - James Swallow [143]
Titan spun into a tumble, falling end over end on a headlong, unguided course. Debris from the earlier victims of the incursion was batted aside, bits of shipframe and clouds of flash-frozen fuel slush crowding in around the vessel.
Then, at last, the Null form reached the limits of its criticality and dissipated, its energy spent on its adversary. Released from the death-grip, the Titan steadied and rode out the spin as puffs of the thrusters brought it to a stable attitude once more.
The Starfleet vessel turned back level with the plane of the ecliptic, with her bow aimed back at the great bulk un-coiling over the Sentry planet. The thing was changing shape as it moved, losing its earlier aspect in favor of one that resembled a monstrous cephalopod. Tentacular lengths were attaching themselves to the distended mass, clawed tips splaying open to reach for new targets.
Riker fought off a moment of head-swim from his ship’s spinning dive and stood up, squaring himself in the middle of the bridge. “Report!” he barked.
“Shields down to sixty percent,” said Vale. “Stress damage on all decks. We really took that one right on the chin, sir.”
“We must end this.” White-Blue’s head pivoted upward as the machine assisted Melora back to her feet. It was insistent. “Our survival coefficient has entered a negative—”
“That’s enough.” Riker silenced the machine with a hard look. “I want another option.”
“No.” The avatar crossed toward him. Her attire changed, shifting into something that was not a Starfleet uniform, not the strange gown she had exhibited before, but an ever-changing merge of the two. “This choice is the only one.” He heard real, raw hurt in her voice, and the words twisted inside him
“You told me no once before.” Riker shook his head. “I didn’t allow it then, and I won’t allow it now.” He glanced around his bridge and finally back to the avatar’s troubled, earnest face. “We’ve lost too many people in the last few months. Too many lives thrown away. Too many deaths.”
“I have to do this!” she insisted.
“I’m making it an order. You will stand down.”
“Will…” Deanna was at his side, a hand on his arm. He sensed her at the edge of his thoughts, and abruptly he was remembering a day aboard the Enterprise, years ago now, when his wife-to-be had faced up to the same terrible onus he did now, as part of her commander’s exam. To weigh the choice of knowingly sending someone to their death.
Riker had willingly marched into the face of certain destruction on many occasions and, through fate or luck, lived to tell of it, but to let someone else take that step… to give permission and then stand aside… The sudden burden of it hollowed him out.
The strength of his reaction shocked him; it came on him from out of nowhere, hard and cold, taking shape even as he held the moment in his mind. It… no, she… she’s come so far so fast. We’ve hardly had time to know her, and now this?
The avatar pleaded with him. “I want this, Captain. Don’t stop me.”
“No,” said Ra-Havreii in a leaden, broken voice. “No, sir, don’t stop her. She has to be free to choose, don’t you see?”
Riker rounded on him. “She’s part of my crew, Doctor.”
“Exactly!” shouted the Efrosian, his eyes shining. “And like every one of us, she has the right to self-determination. But she’s born from a machine incapable of making independent choice—whatever you demand of her, she must obey you. As long as you retain command authority over this vessel, she’s incapable of defiance!”
“Because you are the captain of my ship.” The hologram shimmered.
Ra-Havreii pushed himself away from his console in a burst of movement, pressed by the force of his emotion. “You have to give her the choice,