Unification - Jeri Taylor [0]
ADMIRAL RUAH BRACKETT had a secret.
Not a terribly profound one, and nothing that would ever interfere with her duties as a fleet admiral of Starfleet Command. But it was a secret nonetheless and she enjoyed keeping it. There was something titillating about indulging a private idiosyncrasy that was known to no one.
She felt a momentary twinge of guilt as she and her young aide strode into the transporter room of Starbase 234, for her mission was of such importance that she should not be thinking of her personal pleasures. The message she carried had been deemed too important to risk on subspace and was to be delivered only in person. The security of the Federation might be at stake—and yet the foremost thought on her mind was her anticipation of the next few moments.
“Well, Lieutenant, shall we do this?” She addressed her young aide, Severson, who was looking a little pale under the freckles which dusted his face. Lieutenant Severson, she knew, wasn’t looking forward to the experience of transporting from starbase to starship; he claimed it was altogether unpleasant and in fact made him queasy. He suffered it stoically because as her aide there was no way to avoid the process, and after having garnered this plum assignment, he wasn’t about to risk it because of transporter nausea.
“Yes, Admiral.” He waited until she had taken her place on the pad, then stepped on beside her. They made an unusual pair—the tall, regal admiral with her close-cropped brown curls and the smaller, carrot-headed young manrebut in fact they worked effort-lessly together, and for that Brackett was willing to tolerate his frailty with the transporter.
“Let us know when you’re ready, Chief,” she said to the transporter engineer, a seasoned veteran from the planet Nason Barta. He was remarkably fast at entering molecular codes because of the ten digits on each of his appendages.
“I am prepared, Admiral Brackett. Please give me your command.” Brackett smiled. The moment was here.
For the secret was that she loved being transported. She knew most people found that it produced no response whatsoever, physical or emotional; others, like Severson, became queasy or disoriented and felt it actively unpleasant.
For Brackett, it was a transcendent experience. The conversion of her molecular structure into a subatomically dissociated matter stream created a sensation that was rapturous: a mystical-spiritual- sexual experience all wrapped up in one powerful phenomenon. Her consciousness remained intact dur-ing the transport, of course, and in that breathtaking instant of dematerialization and materialization she sensed that she brushed against something unknowable, some mysterious, powerful force that existed only in that brief and sublime moment. She often felt she was a breath away from grasping, from understanding it—but then it was over and she arrived at her destination. And always, she longed for the next time. “Thank you, Chief. Proceed.”
Severson tensed beside her, and Brackett closed her eyes, focusing on the intense experience that was to come. A roaring sound in her ears signaled the beginning of the dematerialization process, and there was the brief, flashing swirl of light and then the sensation of swooping into a void—then blackness.
A second, a fraction of a second—how long was it? Majestic feelings overwhelmed her; was she soaring? Tumbling? Ascending? There it was, that unknowable something; she was reaching out for it, a second more and she would touch it…
“Welcome aboard the Enterprise, Admiral Brackett. It’s good to see you again.”
She looked into Miles O’Brien’s cheerful Irish face and smiled automatically. It seemed as though she were swimming up from a dark crystal pool, and she preferred to remain within its remarkable depths. But of course she had business to attend to.
“And you, Chief O’Brien.” She looked around lYansporter Room Three, still light-headed, getting her bearings. And there was Picard.
She smiled as she saw the familiar face. Jean-Luc Picard was an incredibly attractive man with handsome, chiseled