The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [184]
And then…there had been the fire. After his reconciliation with Robert, he’d vowed to spend more time with his family, but sadly the duties of the Enterprise had meant it never came to pass. Robert and his son Rene had both perished before their time, and Jean-Luc had never been so aware of what they had brought to his life until then.
Now, fifteen years after he had first read the letter, Jean-Luc could understand why Halloway had attached so much importance to his family. It was an opinion Jean-Luc himself had come to in the end.
The man had hardly been a coward or a failure.
Actually, do I have any way of knowing that? Beyond that letter, Jean-Luc had no idea what had happened to Thomas Halloway. His early, casual dismissal of the man had meant that he had never again given him much thought. He couldn’t even recall seeing his name in a Fleet bulletin over the years, or on one of the promotions lists—or, heaven forbid, casualty lists. But then, there were a lot of names on those lists.
He had had one encounter with his predecessor, though, in a way. Once, Q had shown Jean-Luc another world—possibly another time-line—where he’d never ascended to the captaincy. He’d still been stationed on the EnterpriseD, but as a lowly lieutenant j.g. in the sciences division. At the time, he had focused on his own problems, but one detail of that other world had stuck with him: the captain of the Enterprise had been Thomas Halloway. That, sadly enough, had been the closest he’d ever come to meeting him: being on the same ship in an alternate reality. That experience had caused him to reread Halloway’s letter for the first time, but even then, it had never occurred to Picard to find out what Halloway was really up to.
“Computer,” he ordered, “access Starfleet personnel records. Halloway, Thomas Bhupender.”
The computer chimed in compliance, and Halloway’s service file replaced Jean-Luc’s barely started letter on the display screen. After completing construction of the EnterpriseD, Halloway had continued to work on a number of projects at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. First, he had worked with the Advanced Starship Design Bureau on the design of the new Andromeda-class explorers, applying the lessons learned with the Galaxy class.
Then he’d gone on to supervise the construction of the Melbourne, the first of a new breed of Nebula-class starships incorporating some radical design changes. The Melbourne had still been under construction when the call had gone out for all available Starfleet vessels to convene at Wolf 359—the Borg were coming for Earth.
Though the Melbourne was merely five weeks from flight, awaiting only a few tweaks and a shakedown cruise, she hadn’t yet had a commanding officer assigned. In fact, as Jean-Luc knew, Will had been offered the command and turned it down, causing a delay as Starfleet looked elsewhere.
With no one else to assume command and answer the signal, Halloway had given the order to prepare the Melbourne for launch. Assembling a skeleton crew out of dockworkers and engineers, he had run the ship through its launch preparations as quickly as was humanly possible and taken her out into space, speeding toward Wolf 359…and certain death.
For as everyone had known at the time, no ship returned unscathed from a confrontation with the Borg. Everything in their path fell before them, no exceptions. And that included thirty-nine of the forty ships Admiral Hanson managed to assemble at Wolf 359.
Like many of those vessels, the Melbourne had been lost with all hands. Destroyed before her ragtag crew had even had a chance to make it to the escape pods, because the Borg had had the knowledge of Jean-Luc Picard on their side.
In a way, he had killed Thomas Halloway.
It was a guilt he had felt many times since that terrible experience. It was technically not his fault, but as Locutus, he had caused the Borg to destroy so many innocent lives. It was a guilt he had come to terms with—as much as that was possible—but coming into contact with the deaths that had happened that day always caused