Three - Michael Jan Friedman [78]
Picard heaved a sigh as his first officer moved up to join him. “Well played,” said Ben Zoma.
The captain nodded. They had suffered injuries, but none of them fatal. And they had accomplished their objective—they had gotten Gerda Idun home.
Watching the photon flight vanish into the distance, he said, “Mr. Paxton, send a message to the commander of the Independent. Congratulate him on his ... victory.”
“Aye, sir,” said the com officer.
Ben Zoma smiled. “Nice touch.”
Picard shrugged. “I would hate to be accused of poor sportsmanship, Number One.”
“Captain,” said Paxton, “I’m receiving a message from Lieutenant Vigo.”
Picard turned to him. Vigo? “What does he say?”
“He says he needs help, si.”
The captain didn’t understand. What kind of help could someone need on Wayland Prime?
Then Paxton relayed the rest of Vigo’s message.
Picard frowned. Given the atmospheric conditions on the installation world, the weapons officer must have been trying for a long time to transmit his call for help.
He turned to Idun. “Wayland Prime, Lieutenant. Best speed.”
[236] “Aye, sir,” came the helm officer’s response as she punched in the coordinates.
Finally, Picard said, “Transporter Room One, this is the captain. Can someone tell me what happened down there?”
It was Joseph who answered. “We had some unforeseen trouble, sir. Gerda Idun wasn’t what she seemed.”
And he went on to tell Picard what had transpired, including Simenon’s role in the affair and Gerda’s most timely act of heroism.
“At least,” the security chief added, “that’s the way Ensign Nikolas described it.”
The captain was so taken aback by Gerda Idun’s treachery, he didn’t even ask what Nikolas was doing there. Obviously, he had misjudged their visitor—misjudged her badly.
It made him value the Asmunds of his universe that much more.
Chapter Twenty
GREYHORSE LOOKED DOWN at Gerda, her hands and face swaddled in bioplast bandages, the sedative he had administered lulling her to sleep on a biobed.
She seemed so peaceful, he mused. So serene. So different from her waking self.
More like Gerda Idun.
But—despite what thoughts the doctor might have entertained earlier—he had concluded that he didn’t want a softer, more human Gerda. He wanted the Gerda he had, boiling to the brim with warrior aggression.
And had she been killed on the bridge instead of merely burned, Greyhorse couldn’t imagine how he would have gone on living. He loved her that much.
Reluctantly leaving her side, he moved on to his next patient. Nikolas seemed to be experiencing some [238] discomfort, despite the painkiller the doctor had administered.
“You shouldn’t be in pain,” Greyhorse told him.
The ensign turned to him, his eyes pleading silently. “I would have gone with her,” he said.
The medical officer tilted his head. “I beg your pardon?”
“I would have gone with her, Doc. With everything, I still would have gone.”
Greyhorse was about to ask whom Nikolas was talking about. Then he realized he knew.
He wished he could have given the ensign some word of consolation, but he wasn’t very good at such things. All he could give was his sympathy—because if anyone in the universe knew what Nikolas was feeling, it was Greyhorse.
“Hey,” said a rasping voice, “how about a little service down here? What kind of sickbay is this?”
The doctor looked past Nikolas and a few of his other patients, and cast a disapproving eye on Simenon.
“Wait your turn,” he said.
Then he left the heartsick Nikolas to take a look at Lieutenant Refsland.
The man known as Scott stood in front of the transporter room’s control console, feeling the burden of every year he had survived and every wound he had ever sustained, and helped guide the matter stream into the mechanism’s pattern buffer.
After a moment or two, he saw a blinding white column of light. But then, that was how it was with even [239] the most mundane transport, from one room to the next. And this was a lot more than that.
This was a cross-universe event, a breaking down of the barriers between reality and reality. It was the type of thing that