The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [181]
All Men Doubt You
Michael Schuster & Steve Mollmann
Historian’s note:
This tale is set in late 2379 (Old Calendar), during the epilogue of the feature film Star Trek Nemesis.
JEAN-LUC PICARD STARED AT THE PADD AND, SIGHING, finally checked it off. There. Virtually all his crew was gone now. He leaned back in his chair, turning to look out the window of his ready room.
The Enterprise had been ensconced in one of the San Francisco Fleet Yards’ orbital drydocks for a week now. It was a homecoming of sorts; almost nine years ago, the first components of the starship had been assembled here. The journey home had been a slow one, but not unexpectedly so. One didn’t relinquish all control over the ship’s forward motion to a small Nova-class starship like the Foundation without experiencing what Will had likened to being dragged across the beach by a tired tortoise. After the battle with Shinzon that had ended with Jean-Luc’s decision to ram the enemy ship, the Enterprise had lost her warp capability and was in need of being towed home. The Foundation was equipped to provide such a service, and her captain was glad to help out.
Yes, he’d been glad to help the captain and the crew he credited with “saving Earth yet again,” but that had just made Picard feel guilty. He had been totally inactive after he had slain Shinzon on the control deck of the Scimitar—it had taken Data to save the day by sending Picard to safety and detonating the Scimitar’s thalaron matrix before it could release the deadly radiation within. The Enterprise had lost many crew members on that day, and Jean-Luc felt each loss deeply, but Data’s was the deepest of all. For fifteen years he’d been able to look forward across the bridge and see the android’s head, covered in its slicked-back hair, there in front of the viewscreen—and now that was gone, all because Jean-Luc had just stood there, holding the corpse of Shinzon in his arms.
Since their return to Sector 001, some minimal repairs had been carried out—Beverly had compared it to “stabilizing” a patient—but the real bulk of the work had yet to get under way. There were a lot of parts to be requisitioned, a lot of labor to arrive, and a lot of design work to be done. Until then, there wasn’t much for anyone to do on the damaged hulk that was the Enterprise, and so Picard had elected to allow leave for anyone who had requested it—which seemed to be basically everyone. Between leave and transfers, the entire senior staff was gone: Will and Deanna were on their honeymoon on Pacifica (though they wouldn’t be returning in any case, as they would be heading to the Titan), Beverly was transferring to Starfleet Medical again, Geordi had requested some time on Earth to visit an old friend, Christine also was moving over to the Titan, and Worf was visiting his parents in Minsk. Most of the rest of the crew had requested and been granted leave as well.
But Jean-Luc stayed with his ship. He had things to do. There were reports to fill out on what had happened on Romulus and in the Bassen Rift, there was a major structural repair to organize, there were personnel assignments to sort and approve, there were…
There were a lot of things. But most of all, he just wanted some time alone. To think about what had happened. I wrecked my ship, he thought to himself. Purposefully rammed it straight into Shinzon’s battle cruiser because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Unfortunately, when he did think recently, they weren’t the best of thoughts. The idea of organizing this repair, rebuilding the Enterprise, assembling another crew for her, taking her out on a new mission…somehow it held very little appeal for him. Not after what had happened. Maybe it was time to return to Labarre, to settle down, to put an end to a part of his life that he had previously thought integral to his happiness. He just wanted to stop for a while.
He’d thought these thoughts before, of course. When he’d been forced to abandon the Stargazer at Maxia Zeta, he’d deemed himself unfit for command before he’d even been summoned