The Devil's Heart - Carmen Carter [108]
Crusher was silent for a long while. At last he said, “What you ask is difficult, Jean-Luc, but I’ve trusted you with my life, andwiththe life of my wife and children, for over twenty years now. So I guess I’m not about to stop now … Captain.”
Captain … That last word echoed in the air, only the second overlapping voice Picard heard was not Jack’s, and it was muffled as if by fog and the distance of many years.
“No,” whispered Picard, fighting back a sudden panic born of some terrible knowledge that lurked in the shadows of his mind. “I won’t let this be taken from me.”
“What’s wrong, Jean-Luc?” Alarm jerked Crusher back onto his feet.
“Nothing, Jack. I’m just tired.” Picard felt the touch of a ghostly hand on his shoulder. Its fingers gripped him with a disconcerting solidity.
No! Don’t do this!
“Captain?”
Picard opened his eyes to find that he was slumped over his desk once again. He looked up. The man who had called him out of the dream was taller than Jack, and he sported a closely cropped dark beard.
Will Riker … my first officer is Will Riker.
Grief churned through Picard’s stomach, and he swallowed down an upsurge of bile. This was reality; the other scene had been nothing but a dream. He was awake now.
Awake, yet still tantalized by the fading memories of a past spent with other people and other endings to the stories of his life. If he had finished his dream without interruption, could he have continued walking along that alternate path or would it have faded away? Surely, if he had wanted that reality strongly enough, the Heart could have kept Commander Jack Crusher alive.
I did want it, Jack. You must believe that!
Then Picard realized that the dream had been directed by the Collector. His only failing was in matching her control over the Heart. If Jack’s resurrection was truly within the scope of its powers, then Picard could also learn how to conduct such miracles. It would take time, but eventually he could change the circumstances that had led to his friend’s death, and the alternate reality could be recovered.
However, if he gave up the stone, Jack Crusher would be lost to him forever; Beverly would remain a widow; and their other children would remain unborn.
“Captain?”
“Yes, what is it Number One?” asked Picard, automatically walking through the lines of his role as this man’s captain.
Riker stepped back from the desk to deliver his report. “Lieutenant Worf has just intercepted some subspace radio transmissions coming from the periphery of our sensor range. Some race called—” “—called the unDiWahn,” said Picard as one last lingering tendril of his dream coiled tightly around his chest.
CHAPTER 29
The engineering schematic of the Enterprise was covered with red highlights once again. These tags were deceptively neat and orderly, but Riker could envision the messy damage they symbolized a starship becalmed in space with its hull scorched and pitted. This haunting image darkened his thoughts as he and Data listened to Geordi’s updated status report.
“Repairs to the weapons system should be finished within two hours,” said the chief engineer, pointing to a forward section of the saucer where the first barrage from the Plath had drilled straight through the dorsal phaser array.
“So much for our offense,” sighed Riker.
“What about defense?”
Geordi’s hand shifted to another area of the situation monitor that was still livid with contrasting colors; the second blow from the Plath had landed in the engineering hull. “We’ve almost completed the original repairs to navigational shields—” The ones that got us into this mess in the first place. The decision to proceed with repairs had seemed like a sound one at the time, but it was difficult for the first officer to remember that as he stared straight at the consequences