The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [43]
“No, you won’t,” the captain said evenly. “At least not until you have gotten some sleep yourself. I need you clear-headed, Doctor, not sodden with exhaustion. Is that understood?”
Beverly Crusher drew herself up regally, then, as the captain’s eyes held hers, her tight mouth relaxed into a weary but still impish smile. “All right, I’ll agree to rest, Captain,” she said, “as long as you agree to do the same. Commander Riker can receive those hourly reports while you sleep. I wouldn’t want to have to declare you unfit for duty, either.”
Nobody still seated at the table looked at Jean-Luc Picard—everyone was suddenly fascinated by their fingernails, or the tabletop, or imaginary threads on the sleeves of their uniforms. Even Data’s customary candid gaze was averted.
The captain took a deep breath, then nodded. “Consider it a bargain, Doctor.”
Jean-Luc Picard sat woodenly in the copilot’s seat aboard the shuttlecraft that slowly maneuvered through the Maxia-Zeta star system. Every nerve and muscle in his body was screaming with agony from the physical stress he had just undergone … but his body was in topnotch condition, compared with his mental state.
The captain could not move, could barely blink, and every lurch and movement of the small craft seemed to explode inside his head with pain. The smell of smoke and the stench of burning instrumentation pervaded his nostrils; the reek seemed to have permanently bonded with the charred fabric of his uniform.
And all that was as nothing to the pain in his mind and heart.
I have lost my ship. I have lost my ship. I have lost my ship. The words repeated themselves in his mind like some kind of insane mantra, until Jean-Luc Picard thought that it would be infinitely easier to curse all the gods there ever were, then die—or go silently mad. Gazing at the smoldering, abandoned hulk with the identification code NCC 2893 that had, an hour ago, been a gleaming Constellation-class starship, Picard felt the fabric of his existence crumble and fall apart.
I have lost my ship. They had entrusted the deep-space exploratory vessel Stargazer to his care, and he had lost her to an unprovoked attack by an unidentified vessel. The ship floated in the viewport of the slowly withdrawing shuttlecraft like a scarred and burned toy, hardly seeming real anymore.
Let it be a dream, a nightmare, the captain thought, childishly squeezing his eyes shut and willing time toturn back. Let it be then, not now. Let it not have happened.
But when he opened his eyes many heartbeats later, Stargazer’s black-marked hulk was still there, slowly dwindling in size. Soon she would vanish altogether, lost to him forever. What could I have done to prevent this? Picard wondered, absently rubbing left-handed at the filth smeared across his face, smelling again the burning and the fumes from his uniform’s sleeve. There must have been something. And even if there hadn’t been, what am I doing here? A good captain is supposed to go down with his vessel …
Someone touched his shoulder gently, but Picard did not start, nor look around. “Captain.” The first officer’s voice reached him, soft in the stillness. “The medical officer can see you now.”
Stargazer was growing ever smaller as the little fleet of shuttlecraft grouped into formation for the long voyage to the nearest Federation outpost. Picard silently shook his head at the young officer. No doctor could heal the wound in his soul, and he did not deserve the oblivion of sleep, because he had lost his ship.
“Sir,” the man tried again, a note of unwonted gentleness in his voice, “the medic would like to see you now.”
“I’m all right, Commander,” Picard managed to say, his voice hoarse from shouting orders above the noise, and from inhaling the fumes.
“Respectfully, sir, you are not. You’re injured, Captain. Your right arm …”
Dully Picard looked down at his arm and noticed, for the first time, that a deep, ragged gash extended from below the elbow up through the deltoid muscles. Blood was oozing out of it sluggishly, dripping off his fingers. There was a puddle