Star Trek: TNG: Cold Equations II: Silent Weapons (39 page)

Data gave Worf’s arm a single firm shake. “
Qapla’,
Worf.”

They released each other, and then Worf made his exit.

“I guess this is it, then,” La Forge said.

“I suppose it is.” Data’s brow creased with concern. “Are you still upset about my decision to continue searching for Emil Vaslovik?”

La Forge sighed. “No. I just hate that we have to keep saying good-bye.” He shrugged. “I keep hoping that one of these days you’ll come back—to Starfleet . . . to the
Enterprise
.”

“I may yet do those things, Geordi.”

“Or you might get killed again. Or just vanish.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Data. I’m not trying to jinx you, I swear. But I keep wondering: What if you leave and I never see you again?”

“As Captain Picard might say, this is not good-bye—merely farewell.” Data placed a reassuring hand on La Forge’s shoulder. “I give you my word: we
will
meet again.” He pulled La Forge into a bear hug and gave him a friendly slap on the back, then they stepped apart. “Take care of yourself, Geordi.”

There was nothing else to say, and they both knew it. Data offered him one last smile, and then he made his own exit without a backward glance.

As La Forge watched his best friend walk away toward the unknown, he was filled not with sadness or with fear, but with joyful hope.

Data had given La Forge his word, and that was all the engineer had needed.

If he promises we’ll meet again . . . we will.

•   •   •

Exhaustion pulled Picard toward his bed, but the peaceful vision of his slumbering son anchored him in place. He leaned in the doorway of René’s room and watched the boy’s chest rise and fall with the slow rhythm of sleeping breaths. All the times when Picard fretted over his son’s safety, or any of what felt to him like a thousand other interrelated details that would determine the shape of the boy’s future, fell from his thoughts in moments such as this.

He yawned. As devoutly as he wished he could forgo sleep and spend his nights watching over his son, he knew it was time to rest. “Dream of a better world,
mon fils
.”

Fearful of waking him, Picard padded away with light steps, drifting like a ghost back into his and Beverly’s room. Like him, she was dressed for bed; unlike his dark gray flannel pajamas, her nightclothes were pale and diaphanous, barely equal to the demands of propriety—not that it mattered, as she was already half beneath the bedcovers. The lamp above her side was off, and her face was lit by the soft glow of the padd in her hands.

Picard sat down on his side, kicked off his slippers, and rolled over toward Beverly as he pulled the blankets up under his arm. “Work or pleasure?” She lifted her eyes from her reading and shot a suspicious look at him. He nodded at the padd. “Your night reading.”

“Crew fitness reports. Nothing puts me to sleep faster.” She turned off the padd, then rolled away from him to set it on her end table. “I guess I’ve had enough.” As she returned to her sitting position, he leaned forward for a good-night kiss. She pulled away. “It’s late.”

“You’re still angry with me?”

She sighed. “No. . . . Go to sleep.”

Experience told him that her denial was tantamount to a confirmation. “Beverly. I can tell you’re upset. Please—tell me why.”

“I’m not
upset
.” She reclined against her pillows and fixed her forlorn gaze on the ceiling. “If I had to put a word to what I’m feeling, I guess I’d say I’m . . . 
troubled
.”

He sat up and turned toward her, hoping to draw her out with eye contact, open body language, and a gentle tone of voice. “By what? . . . Is this about what happened on Orion?”

“Of course it is, Jean-Luc.” She touched his arm. “I’m not asking you to explain yourself again. I understand
why
you did what you did, protecting me instead of the president.” Her blue eyes were shadowed with sorrow and disappointment. “I’m just not sure I can accept it.”

Her sentiment wounded him. “Did my decision
offend
you? I love you, Beverly, and I won’t apologize for putting your safety and René’s first when I make my decisions.”

She sat up quickly as she flared with anger. “Do you listen to yourself? That’s exactly the kind of sentiment you used to condemn in your officers when you commanded the
Stargazer
.”

“I don’t know that I condemned it so much as—”

“Don’t try to rewrite history. Jack told me whenever you read him the riot act for even
suggesting
that my safety or Wesley’s ought to be considered during tactical situations. So I find it more than a bit hypocritical on your part when you lay claim to that privilege for yourself.”

He’d winced when she invoked the name of her first husband, Jack Crusher, who had died in the line of duty under Picard’s command thirty years earlier. “What you call hypocrisy, I call personal growth. It wouldn’t be the first time I had to admit that the beliefs I clung to as a younger man turned out to be flawed. But if it helps you to label me a hypocrite, so be it.”

Frustrated, Beverly shook her head. “Jean-Luc, you’re not just any member of the crew—you’re the
captain
. If your judgment is compromised because you’re ready to place your family’s safety ahead of accomplishing your missions, that puts this ship and its crew at risk.” A frown deepened the lines on her face. “Maybe it would be best if René and I left the ship.”

“To go where?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe to a ground assignment with Starfleet Medical. Or even back to civilian life. I could join the staff of a teaching hospital somewhere. Or open my own practice. Heaven knows there are plenty of worlds in need of new physicians.”

“All right. If that’s what you think is best, I’ll go with you.”

His answer made her recoil slightly. “What? Are you serious? You’d resign from Starfleet? Just like that?”

He didn’t understand why she was so surprised. “You seem to think it’s a viable path for yourself—why not for me?”

“Since when are you ready to hang up your uniform?”

Picard almost laughed. “Is it really so difficult to imagine? Maybe you’ve forgotten, but I almost didn’t join Starfleet. When the Academy rejected my first application, I considered taking a scholarship to study at Oxford. If I hadn’t been so stubborn about proving myself to Starfleet, I might have made a life for myself in the private sector, or in academia.”

His wife signaled her doubts with the elegant rise of an eyebrow. “I find it hard to picture you behind a desk or in front of a classroom.”

“Beverly . . . I’ve been proud to serve as a Starfleet officer. But my career is only a part of who I am. Now that I have you and René, my life has become much larger than I ever thought possible. Being a father has forced me to think ahead not just to tomorrow, or next year, but beyond the end of my lifetime, in ways I never did before. For the sake of my son, I have to think about the future—not just mine, but his, as well. So if you think it’s best that we raise our son somewhere other than aboard a starship, I will support your decision without reservation. I am ready to make changes—to live where and how you want. Give the word . . . and we’ll go.”

Disarmed of her anger by his sincere confession, she tenderly pressed her palm to his cheek. “Just tell me this. What do
you
want to do?”

He smiled and laid his hand over hers. “I want to love my wife and son . . . explore the wonders of the galaxy . . . and command this ship. In
that order.
”

The last remnants of her bad mood melted away, letting through a sad smile. She kissed him and touched her forehead to his. “Sounds like a plan.”

THREE MONTHS LATER

EPILOGUE

A lonely pilgrim in the endless night, Data walked through a jungle of bioluminescent flora on a world that had no sun or moon. The telluric rogue planet made its own heat through thermal venting, massive expulsions of superheated gases from its molten core that kept its oceans warm and its dense atmosphere of hydrogen compounds, methane, and carbon dioxide at an ambient temperature sufficient to keep its surface water liquid without boiling it off into space.

Each footfall he took through the thick nonphotosynthetic foliage lit up the ground beneath his feet, as chemicals in the subsurface mosses reacted with faint green pulses to the pressure of his weight. Broad leaves hanging in his path also lit up as he brushed them aside. It was a beautiful sight, one whose charms might once have been lost on him but now filled him with delight and fascination—but also apprehension, because he knew the phenomenon would make his approach visible from a distance, even this deep inside the forest. He had seen no evidence of complex animal life on this world, so he had no concern that he might attract the notice of predators, but he would have preferred not to have his presence betrayed to his quarry.

Ahead of him, the forest thinned. He quickened his pace, pushed through a bramble as sharp as barbed wire, and emerged from the overgrown jungle to find himself standing upon the shore of a lake that stretched for kilometers on either side of him and extended beyond the horizon. There was no wind here; the still air was oppressive in its humidity. Reflected stars sparkled on the lake’s unrippled black surface. Two kilometers from shore, rising from its mirror image in the water, stood Data’s destination: the Immortal’s newest redoubt.

It was one of the most elegant but also one of the most strangely alien structures Data had ever seen: an asymmetrical trio of organically curved towers, each composed of several geodesics—soft transitions between the vertical and horizontal planes—that peeled off from the ground and twisted upward around an open core of space. Their exterior surfaces, translucent skins of hexagons over spiral skeletons with horizontal linkages, evoked for him the notion of a beehive’s honeycomb made of pale lavender crystal and pristine white metal that glinted with starlight. Semitransparent habitable bridges linked them and gave the overall structure the aspect of a triple helix. At the water line, the towers flared outward and formed a shared foundation of fluid curves; just below their crown-like apexes, they were fused by insectile arches.

A most elegant design,
Data thought with admiration.
Efficient and beautiful at the same time
. He increased the magnification on his visual receptors and studied the structure more closely. Its outer surface sported a number of artistically integrated systems, such as moisture collectors, supersensitive photovoltaic cladding, and wind turbines that even in such becalmed weather still turned slowly, a testament to their near-frictionless operation. Beneath the skins he saw hints of the towers’ infrastructure, a series of interlocking dodecahedral metal frames.

In a blink he reset his eyes to their default settings and pondered his options for reaching the naturally moated fortress.
I could walk across the lake bed with little difficulty, but there is no guarantee I will find any ingress to the structure under the water’s surface—or that I will find purchase for scaling its exterior
. He began to suspect that his attempt at making a clandestine approach, by beaming down beyond its estimated sensor range and walking to it while shielding his body’s presence and energy emissions from detection, might have been a tactical error.
The Immortal has often proved hostile to uninvited guests . . . but considering our history, it is possible he might make an exception for me
.

He took a leap of faith and deactivated his body’s sensor-blocking systems.

Then he waited.

Less than a minute later, he noted an ephemeral blink of light that lit up the surfaces of the towers that faced one another around their shared open core. It faded, but seconds later he saw a dim blur backed by a ruddy glow. Whatever it was, it moved swiftly toward him, skimming the black lake without disturbing the water’s glass-like surface.

He switched his eyes to night-vision mode. In the pale green twilight, he discerned the empty open-top hovercraft with ease. Examining it in full-spectrum mode, he saw no sign of its forward phaser cannon having been activated, so he stood his ground and awaited its arrival. It halted as it reached the beach less than two meters from him, and then it hovered. He walked toward it, climbed aboard, and sat down in the front seat. As soon as he settled, the craft pivoted about-face and accelerated toward the towers.

Wind tousled his hair into wild tangles as the small craft sped above the lake. The towers quickly dominated his forward view, and as the hovercraft circled around between them to land inside an open parking area, he remained impressed at their sheer scale.
This place could house many tens of thousands if it were located on a populated world,
he noted.
Why would the Immortal desire so vast a structure for his residence?
It was one of many questions that would have to wait for another time. Data knew the Immortal likely harbored innumerable secrets, but he had come here seeking enlightenment about only one.

There was no one to meet him when he disembarked from the hovercraft, but a door that led to the interior of the tower opened as soon as he stepped out of the vehicle. Recognizing the invitation, he crossed the open-air landing area, stepped through the doorway, and wasn’t the least bit surprised when the portal closed behind him. In the corridor, he waited for his next cue, and it came in the sound of a lone violin, its melody faint but its siren purpose clear.

The music led him down a curving passageway and into a turbolift, which delivered him to the top floor of the highest tower. He stepped out into an airy level subdivided by curving partitions riddled with open spaces—forms and textures that echoed the towers’ exteriors. Following the virtuoso solo through the lavish residential penthouse, he passed freshly carved marble sculptures on classic pedestal columns, and brand-new oil paintings on framed canvases suspended in mid-air with wires almost too fine to see—all of them works crafted in the style of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the Immortal’s many aliases.