Three - Michael Jan Friedman [79]
Scott squinted to see through the brilliance of the effect, but he couldn’t. It was too soon to make out the collection of reconstituted molecules inside it, too soon to identify what was slowly but surely materializing.
Come on, he thought. Ye can do it, lass.
Finally the column of luminescence started to narrow, to diminish in intensity. And as it did, its contents began to reveal themselves.
Scott could feel his heart pounding. But then, this was a big moment—the sliver of time in which they found out if their struggle had a future or not.
Taking a deep breath, he watched the last of the light fade from the platform. He saw Gerda Idun take shape. And he saw what she had brought back with her.
Scott’s jaw clenched. Nothing, he thought, eyeing Gerda Idun’s empty-handed posture on the transporter platform. She had brought back nothing.
And she was looking wobbly. Weak-kneed, as if she would topple under the weight of her exhaustion.
Biting back his disappointment, Scott came around the console and rushed up onto the platform. Wrapping Gerda Idun in his aged-thinned arms, he made sure she wouldn’t fall.
In the process, the engineer caught a glimpse of her face. She was averting her eyes so he couldn’t look [240] directly into them, but he didn’t have to. Even obliquely, he could see the pain in them, the devastation.
Only then did he understand—it wasn’t exhaustion that was making her look so unsteady. It was the knowledge that she had failed in her mission. It was the death of hope.
“I’ve lost him,” Gerda Idun muttered, as if she still couldn’t believe it.
“It’s all right, lass,” Scott told her, knowing even as he said it how hollow it sounded.
It wasn’t all right. She knew that as well as anyone.
“Scott?” came a voice over the intercom.
It was fuzzy with static, a result of the last pounding they had taken at the hands of the Alliance. Still, the engineer recognized it as the captain’s.
Scott looked up and said, “I’ve got her, Gilaad.” He hated the words that had to follow. “She’s alone.”
The intercom was silent except for a low buzz. Then Ben Zoma said, in a voice that remarkably betrayed none of his despair, “That’s too bad.”
Scott helped Gerda Idun sit down on the edge of the transporter platform. “We can try it again,” he suggested to Ben Zoma.
“No,” came the reply. “We can’t. They’ll be ready for us. They’ll know what we’re up to.”
The engineer sighed. Ben Zoma was right, of course. They’d had one chance, and they’d blown it.
“Ben Zoma out,” said the captain with heartbreaking finality, and soon after the buzzing stopped.
Gerda Idun took a tremulous breath and buried her face in her hands. “I’ve lost him,” she repeated.
For the briefest moment, Scott had the eerie feeling [241] that she wasn’t speaking of Simenon at all—that she was referring to someone else entirely. Nikolas, maybe? But Nikolas had been dead for months already. Surely, Gerda Idun couldn’t have been thinking of him.
No, Scott assured himself. She was talking about the loss of Simenon. She had to be.
Sitting down beside Gerda Idun, he kept her company in her time of need. He didn’t say anything else. He just sat there with her on the edge of the platform.
After what she had been through, it was the least he could do.
As the Stargazer made her way around the star called Wayland at full impulse, Picard surveyed the work being done on his bridge.
The equipment damaged in the ship’s encounters with the Balduk was undergoing rapid repairs, thanks to a half-dozen of Simenon’s best engineers. It seemed they were all over the place, lying on their backs under half-reconstructed consoles or propping up new plasma conduits.
Unfortunately, it would be some time before the rest of the Stargazer could be restored to full working order.
The captain hoped that wouldn’t be a problem when they arrived at their destination, which would be in just a few minutes. Vigo had made the situation sound fairly desperate.
“Captain,” said Paxton from his comm console, “sensors are picking