Unification - Jeri Taylor [26]
She frankly thought dealing with Klim Dokachin would be like melting butter. He seemed transparent to her in his need for ego stroking. He was a being whose identity was deeply involved with his work, who derived his satisfaction from the execution of his duties, and who wanted to be recognized for his expertise. It would not be difficult to give him what he needed.
Gazing out at the starfield as they raced toward Qualor Two, Troi felt a momentary twinge of melan-choly. She had been in some turmoil lately, examining her life and trying to come to some decisions about her priorities. She did not particularly enjoy this process; by nature she was given to equanimity, and tended to accept life as it was dealt to her without a great deal of angst or examination.
But something extraordinary had happened to her recently, and she felt irreparably changed by it. The whole experience had taken less than twenty hours, and yet she knew that it had altered her life.
It had been a strange set of circumstances that had led to the situation. She was on the bridge with Chief O’Brien when Will Riker was busy elsewhere and the captain had taken three young winners of the school science fair on a tour. A chance phenomenon, the collision with a quantum filament, had catastrophical-ly damaged the Enterprise and killed the bridge duty officer, Lieutenant Monroe.
Sealed off from the rest of the ship, with communications systems down, Troi found herself the ranking officer on the bridge—and as such, acting captain.
It had been frightening at first; she wasn’t familiar with emergency protocols and if it hadn’t been for O’Brien and Ensign Ro she would have floundered.
But the situation called for her to make a difficult and risky command decision, one in which she had to reject the intelligent option for which Ro argued eloquently. She had stood everyone down, trusting her own instincts—and won the day.
A horrible phrase came to mind, one she knew was used in reference to Terran animals: the taste of blood. It was said that a newborn wild animal who had lost its mother might be tamed if it were retrieved shortly after birth. But if it were allowed the taste ofblood—a fresh kill—its feral nature would be stirred, and the animal would revert to its primitive state, never again satisfied with the tepid pleasures of domesticity.
The phrase had been running through Troi’s head ever since she had risen to the moment and captained the ship in a time of crisis. Since then, nothing had come close to providing the heady excitement of that experience. She performed her tasks competently, and she was sure no one was aware of her inner confusion. But the world of the Enterprise seemed to her drawn in tones of sepia—colorless and pale. She felt an indescribable yearning for something wild and potent in her life, something extraordinary.
Her mother, she knew, would tap into those feelings instantly if she were on board. But her solution was not one that would satisfy Troi. Lwaxana was still entreating her to abandon this demanding career, return to Betazed, get married, and have children. Troi believed that someday she would probably do just that—but she wasn’t anywhere near ready. Lwaxana’s pleas had far more to do with her desire to become a grandmother than with Deanna’s desire for home and hearth.
“We are approaching the orbital surplus yard of Qualor Two,” announced Worf, and Troi noted that she was comforted by the gruff, sure tones of the Klingon. She gazed at the viewscreen and saw that they were coming on an incredible sight: a vast ocean of spaceships—old, abandoned, decommis-sioned-stretching as far as the sensors could see, a graveyard of once proud ships from throughout the Federation. It was an eerie sight, this silent armada of ghostly vessels, and she realized with a sudden shiver that each of those abandoned hulks represented stories of ordeal, daring, and mystery.