by Ron Richard
(Standard disclaimer: Paramount owns all rights and allows us to play in their world.)
Part 2 of 3
Beverly watched the photon tube containing the body of her beloved partner as it exited Mistral's airlock. It was brilliantly lit on one side as it drifted toward the Kiyaadi sun, turning gently. He would have liked it that he ended his days in such a peaceful system. Soon the tube was out of sight of primitive Human eyes, but not out of Human memory.
"Goodbye, Jean-Luc."
Beverly took a deep breath and headed for the Command Cabin. She hesitated as she approached the left-hand seat. It had never seemed so empty. Jean-Luc had usually done the piloting when necessary, just because this was 'his ship.' Beverly was competent enough, but Jean-Luc had always been the better pilot. And also, she never quite felt the thrill that he apparently did. He had always seemed to have a connection, if not an actual relationship with powered vehicles, whether it was driving a Grenthemen water hopper or a two-million ton starship. Forcing herself to sit, she brought main power on line and plotted the necessary course. Before engaging, she looked out the cockpit windows at the vastness that still separated her from Federation space, for which, at the moment, she had no longing. For a full five minutes, an overwhelming dread swept over her.
'I don't want to die alone . . .'
Finally, she mentally slapped herself. 'I'm a Starfleet Captain; I can make this trip; I have the training and knowledge necessary.'
Beverly took another look out the window.
'If not the desire . . .'
The rainbow effect of Mistral's warp drive engaging gave Jean-Luc's coffin a final, departing salute.
* * * * * * * * *
"Find anything interesting?"
"Radiogenic isotopes caused some odd terminal mutations, but other than that, Eebronian life doesn't seem to be much different from most known microbes. What sustains them sustains most others and what kills them kills most others, but Starfleet Medical will have its database full and complete." She leaned back, rubbing her eyes. "You stopped by just in time. My eyes were starting to cross."
"Perhaps we should both take a break. Join me in the holosuite for a walk?"
Beverly interlaced her fingers above her head and stretched out to her full length, tilting back in her chair.
* * * * * * * * *
"How many times must I tell you not to do that? Do you think this house and everything in it has survived for six-hundred years by maltreating it? Or would you rather just have a replicator that could crank out a dozen new chairs at a single word?"
Robert Picard smiled as he listened to the shouting voice of his father in the next room as Jean-Luc was finally getting the dressing down he deserved.
"This is real wood! It came from a living tree and was painstakingly fashioned by Human hands! This is real craftsmanship; made to last not just one lifetime, but generation after generation!
He deserved it. He knew it aggravated Father; that's why he kept doing it, the little swine. Maybe now he would get what's coming to him.
"Whether you care or not, these chairs have a history. They survived the shelling of this house in 1917 by the English and the Augment fire bombings in 1996. They've had not only Picards sitting in them for centuries, but dignitaries; French royalty, great scientists! Did you know that Jacques Cousteau himself used that chair you just destroyed? It's in the family journals, not that you'd care!"
Jean-Luc always was doing that, testing the envelope in everything, whether it was climbing higher than anybody else in a tree or seeing just how far he could push Father. This time he wasn't getting away with it.
"Right . . . now go have your Maman tend to that cut on your head and then off to bed with you immediately. You can just do without your supper tonight and think about what you've done. Allez!"
Robert's smugness was all the more satisfied later when he heard the sobbing coming from his brother's room. This was the first time since Jean-Luc had been in nursery school that Robert had heard that.
* * * * * * * * *
"Mmm . . . that sounds like a good idea. What'll it be this time, mountains, beach, forest . . . what's wrong?"
"What? Oh, nothing . . . I'm not feeling too adventurous today. I think I would like to just stretch my legs for a bit."
Beverly leaned back farther in her chair and appraised her obviously distracted partner, "All right. Well in that case . . . WHOA!!"
As she tilted back on the rear legs, Beverly overbalanced and fell backwards. Jean-Luc's arm shot out to try to catch her, but he wasn't quite quick enough. She hit hard. Her body had arced as it fell and the back of her head whiplashed savagely onto the deck plate with a loud crack.
"Beverly! BEVERLY!" Jean-Luc shot to her side. "You all right?" There was no response. A horrible feeling came over him. He quickly felt for the pulse in her neck . . . Nothing. "Oh my God, Beverly!" Desperately, he repositioned his trembling fingers on her throat . . . there . . . a faint throbbing . . . THINK . . . first thing to do is . . .
"Computer, activate the EMH!"
The holographic Doctor immediately appeared in the room, "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."
"Beverly has been severely injured from a fall. She could be . . ."
But before he could finish his sentence, Jean-Luc was interrupted by a sigh from Beverly, who was fluttering her eyes. The Doctor's medical tricorder was out.
"Minor concussion from an impact to the occipital bone. There is some edema, but she won't require surgery, I can take care of it right here."
The Doctor retrieved a servo from his medkit and waved it over the bruised area. "Please lie still for a few more seconds . . . that should do it. How do you feel?"
With Jean-Luc's assistance, Beverly sat up and blinked confusedly. "I'm fine . . . I guess." She looked over at the hologram. "What are you doing here?"
"No harm, Doctor. You should be fine in a few hours. Try to avoid anything strenuous, if at all possible." He turned to Jean-Luc, "Anything else?"
The color was just now beginning to return to Jean-Luc's face. His voice was hoarse, "No thank you, Doctor. Thank you."
"My pleasure. Computer, deactivate EMH."
Jean-Luc helped Beverly up and back into her chair. His eyes never left hers. "Are you sure you're all right?"
Beverly rubbed the back of her head and nodded. "I hate to admit it, but that light bulb of a doctor actually does good work. Now, I believe we were about to go for a walk?"
* * * * * * * * *
"Computer release helm to manual control! Deactivate armor!"
Beverly cried out, "What are you doing?"
"We'll never make it at this rate. We have to get away and I have to see where we're going!"
Jean-Luc seized the manual steering column and kicked up the engines to three-quarters impulse. The acceleration pulled them back into their seats. Mistral screamed forward, banking and diving at his command. The nimble sloop fled for safety, twisting and dodging, doing anything to avoid the deadly bursts. The diabolical fingers of energy reached out for them, lunging and striking. A pair of vortices formed ahead of them. Jean-Luc veered away. More vortices formed. More deadly arcs were hurled at them, but he anticipated them all. Beverly wasn't at all happy with the wild ride, but she realized that Jean-Luc's crazed slalom piloting was just what they needed to get out of this. Only animal instinct could have maneuvered through this somehow self-aware ion storm. The computer would have doomed them both.
A bolt passed frighteningly close off to starboard, buffeting the spacecraft. Jean-Luc shifted his weight in the seat, took a new grip on the steering column and increased speed to point-nine impulse power. Mistral charged forward.
Beverly had naturally engaged her safety restraints. It was difficult, but she managed to monitor the sensor console, despite the fact that they were pitching and plunging like they were on some horrid carnival ride. She glanced over at Jean-Luc. She didn't think he was aware of it, but as he piloted Mistral, he was actually laughing.
Beverly checked the sensors again. "We're less than ten-thousand kilometers from the perimeter . . . just another minute or so." The buffeting at the outer rim was even worse. The ship was being kicked about like a pebble on a busy sidewalk.
Mistral exited the peripheral clouds of the ion storm and the familiar sight of the stars greeted them. The buffeting ceased. Seconds later, the now functional warp drive was engaged. The storm was left fussing and fuming behind them, once again. They were not out of trouble yet, however.
"Beverly, monitor subspace. See if the sensors can detect anything unusual. Last time, that storm retreated into subspace and reappeared right in front of us. Let's see if we can avoid that this time.
"Right." Her hands played over the console, fine tuning the sensors. "Bingo. There's an anomaly forming in a secondary realm. I've got the aft sensors focused on our storm, too. It seems to be vanishing from the sensors at an inverse rate. I'm linking the data to the helm."
With his helm controls linked to the sensors, Jean-Luc could easily spot the counterpoint of the storm as it attempted several times to reappear at their position again. This time, however, Mistral was able to stay well ahead of it until, after two hours of dodging it, enough distance was put between them that the ion storm no longer registered on any sensors. The waters ahead ran deep and free of shoals.
* * * * * * * * *
Seven and a half hours after the initial contact, Mistral and Enterprise had closed to a distance suitable for proper two-way visual conversation. Naturally, both ships had exchanged databases while en route to each other, but this first Human contact after so many years was ambrosia to Jean-Luc and Beverly. They were nearly home.
They sat anxiously in front of the large monitor in Mistral's great room as the display came into focus. The screen soon showed a very familiar setting. Immediately, applause erupted from all the Enterprise Bridge crew. Thorpe indulged them for about ten seconds, then shut them down.
"All right lads, as you were. Let's allow the Ambassador and the Captain a word in edgewise, shall we?
Jean-Luc was grinning like a raccoon at the sight of the bridge of his old ship, "Thank you, Captain Thorpe. Thank you all. You're certainly a sight for sore eyes."
Beverly was just as tickled, "We're very glad to be here. This feels like coming home again after a long vacation."
"Well, Captain Crusher, Ambassador Picard, I hope you're ready to get back to work again after that vacation. I would say the Federation most certainly has plans for you."
* * * * * * * * *
"Just remember, this was your idea."
"You'll be fine."
In the deepest recesses of his mind, Jean-Luc allowed himself a quick thought, 'Easy to say when one is naturally gifted.' The music started and there was no room for any more mental activity other than concentrating on the dance. Jean-Luc's excellent ear noted the tempo and key easily. He could most likely play this waltz on his flute given a bit of practice. Getting his body to respond in rhythm was another matter. As Beverly had endlessly told him while practicing, "It's just a simple box step. Anyone can dance. Your feet will pick up the pattern automatically."
Simple. Anyone can do this . . .
He plastered his well-practiced, diplomatic cheesy grin on his face that could be maintained without effort and tried to focus on the rhythm. It was a struggle. One of the hardest parts was keeping eye contact with Beverly. There was a nearly irresistible urge to drop his gaze to his feet. His chin started to lower a couple of times and Beverly gently squeezed his hand as the prearranged signal to remind him. As long as he could maintain this level of concentration, the dance demonstration for the Kiyaadi should go off without a hitch. The musical piece was only about two minutes long, but Jean-Luc could swear that it went on into next week. There were two or three moments that almost came to disaster when his feet nearly decided on their own to step right instead of forward or back instead of left. But at the last microsecond each time, they kept it together. It was truly fortunate that the music was short. It seemed the longer his feet tried to maintain the pattern, the more easily distracted they were. Beverly had told him the complete opposite, but of course, when she practiced dancing, she actually improved with time. It was a curious phenomenon to Jean-Luc.
A few years later, the music came to the finale and Jean-Luc and Beverly gave their practiced, elegant bows to one another. This move was no problem. Jean-Luc actually enjoyed it, because he could perform it with flourish and confidence. There was no rhythm to be maintained. The long breath that he had been holding slowly let itself out like a coolant relief valve on a warp core. He could feel his heart rate starting to return to normal and he also allowed himself to relax his neck muscles, which up till now he had not realized were clenched.
The Humans stood hand in hand while thirty-thousand multi-colored frogs applauded thunderously with their flippered feet in the enormous Amphitheater. Beverly whispered quietly out of the left corner of her mouth, "You were wonderful . . . I told you it would be alright."
Out of the right corner of his mouth, Jean-Luc responded, "Personally, I would rather face down a Dominion battle fleet, but thank you."
* * * * * * * * *
There was only room for one thought in Jean-Luc's mind: flight! It wanted them. They had to run.
"Computer release helm to manual control! Deactivate armor!"
Mistral's deck heaved sickeningly from the renewed turbulence. The once-again transparent cockpit showed a myriad of eddies and whirlpools, all filled with hatred and fury toward the Humans, who were intensely aware of It.
Beverly looked as though the Devil Himself were treading on her coat tails, "What are you doing?"
"We'll never make it at this rate. We have to get away and I have to see where we're going!"
Jean-Luc seized the manual steering column and kicked up the engines to three-quarters impulse. The acceleration pulled them back into their seats. Mistral screamed forward, banking and diving at Jean-Luc's command. The diabolical fingers of energy reached out for them, lunging and striking. The nimble sloop fled for safety, twisting and dodging, doing anything to avoid the deadly bursts. They were in trouble. There was too far to go before safety could be reached and It was zeroing in on them. No hope. Jean-Luc felt Its focus on them. He felt apprehension such as he had never experienced. It pulled at his very soul, dragging it into the depths . . .
A pair of vortices formed ahead of them. Jean-Luc veered away. He knew what lay in wait for them there. His instincts were dead on. Two energy bolts with enough power to slice a moon in half charged through the spot that Mistral had occupied a moment before. A wave of relief passed over Jean-Luc when he saw his success. The anxiety eased a bit. His confidence increased. More vortices formed. More deadly arcs were hurled at them. Jean-Luc shifted his weight in the seat and took a new grip on the steering column. He looked ahead out the cockpit windows with a steely gaze. Death waited for them a hundred times over before they could reach the perimeter of the storm. Somehow that made it all the easier. He increased speed to point-nine impulse power. Mistral charged forward. His eye never wavered on the course ahead. He anticipated every move; every attack was avoided. As he piloted the crazed slalom course, every part of him reacted. His hands became one with the control stick, his body leaned into every turn, his eyes locked on every detail. Mistral became more than a vessel. She was an extension of him. In truth, Jean-Luc had become Mistral. He was not aware of it at the time, but he was actually laughing.
In a strange, jovial voice, Jean-Luc announced, "Nearly there . . . just . . . another minute or two!"
At that moment, a fearsome tongue of murderous power leaped for them from the lower stern quarter. Jean-Luc anticipated it and executed a brilliant surge of power combined with a gut-pinning negative-zee dive. Mistral's stern came up, trying to avoid the bolt from below. But this one was just too close. The outer periphery of the arc passed within half a kilometer. Had the ship been struck directly, she would have been annihilated instantly. This close pass still was powerful enough to sheer off the impulse engines, taking the stern cabin with them. Mistral reeled from her mortal wound, spinning out of control. Emergency bulkheads engaged, sealing off the forward part of the ship. Jean-Luc and Beverly were flattened helplessly into their seats from the centrifugal forces. There was nothing to be done anyway. Main power was non-existent, the computer was gone, shields were down and life support was completely destroyed. The warp core had not been breached, but every system on the ship was offline or destroyed. Mistral was dead.
With each rotation, they could see the vortices forming about them and the potential for death in each one. They could feel Its satisfaction; they could feel the imminence; they knew It was about to kill them. That's what It wanted. All of Its fury was now focused here, now, on them.
The ship's spinning slowed, allowing the dazed Jean-Luc and Beverly to move from their seats. There was a sense of air moving within Mistral's dead hulk. It was cold, like the stinking draft out of a slaughterhouse. The thin atmosphere strummed with a low moaning, like a thousand condemned souls calling out in agony. Something stirred in the interior of the crippled ship. It came forward, a slumping, hooded figure, robed all in black. Bony fingers gripped the black, gnarled handle of what seemed to be . . . a sickle. A scraping sound accompanied each step as naked bone met deck plates. A skeletal hand peeked from the rotted, black material of its sleeve as the apparition pointed. A hollow, faraway voice emanated from the thing.
"Prepare thyselves, mortals!"
The being slowly moved forward, approaching the stunned Jean-Luc and Beverly. Stopping a meter away, it reached up to pull back the black hood obscuring its head.
"SURPRISE! Did I scare you?"
Jean-Luc and Beverly reacted together.
"Q!"
* * * * * * * * *
Captain Thorpe was one of those annoyingly handsome and non-aging chaps who had a reputation for coming through every battle perfectly unscathed. For the last ten years, there had been a story circulating through Starfleet about him. During the Dominion War, Thorpe and the crew of the Albatross were once forced into a savage hand-to-hand battle with the Breen. Four of his crew had been killed in the three-hour long bloodbath. Thorpe himself had battled at the forefront the whole time and yet his hair and uniform had escaped quite un-mussed. Many times over the years, he had been compared to James Kirk from a century before, although in his entire career, Thorpe had never once torn a shirt.
His classic visage peered out from the monitor, the Enterprise Ready Room in the background. Thorpe had of course redecorated. There were now a number of ancient cutlasses displayed on the wall.
"Faith, I simply can't tell you how glad we are to find the two of you. Your whereabouts were the subject of much discussion. The disappearance of Ambassador Picard and Captain Crusher had been the talk of the Federation for years. As far as anyone knew, your ship had entered the Bajoran wormhole and had never been seen again, on either side. Massive searches were launched, but to no avail. Mistral was declared lost after three years. When we finally received one of your transmissions, the whole Federation went wild with excitement. We were lucky enough to be the nearest ship to these waters, so we were given the honour of coming out to meet you."
Jean-Luc smiled at his successor, "Frankly, I'm amazed any signal ever got through. The stellar interference is very high out here."
"It was a fluke, really. The signal from almost four years ago had apparently skipped off the Galactic Barrier at least once before it was picked up by a Nyberrite com station. They relayed it to Starfleet Tactical, who reconstructed it. It was nearly unreadable."
"So Captain, what's new back home?" Beverly asked.
"Oh, aside from Admiral Pulaski's famous mutiny, nothing exciting. But the real news is you two. Everyone wants to hear what's happened to you in the years since your message."
The former starship captain and the two current ones chatted personably for some time, catching each other up on Federation gossip and the adventures of Mistral.
Thorpe looked off screen, "Dear me, will you look at the time? I certainly didn't mean to talk until Judgment Day. I should let you get some sleep. We'll see you in our hangar bay at sixteen-hundred tomorrow. I hope you'll join us for afternoon tea; a little tradition we've started on Enterprise."
"We'll be delighted, Captain. Tomorrow, then. Mistral out."
Thorpe's face was replaced by a star field that already looked friendlier.
Beverly looked at Jean-Luc, "Well, my love, our little pleasure cruise is almost over."
* * * * * * * * *
Jean-Luc's fury was evident, "Is this your doing? You've gone too far this time, Q!"
Beverly was no less angry, "What right do you have to . . . you look different, Q. Why is that?" She studied the Continuum being's face. It looked younger and a bit more angular than that of the entity that had appeared to them so many times over the years. This must be another of his tricks.
The faux Grim Reaper replied, "Please, Captain Crusher; don't be so quick to judge. But I suppose Humans can't really help it. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Q." He extended his right hand for Beverly to shake. It was missing a carpal bone and had bits of rotting flesh clinging to it. She declined the offer.
Q withdrew the hand, "Oh, very well. Why is it Humans get so bent out of shape at a little fun?" With a familiar, blinding hiss of light, the figure of The Grim Reaper disappeared and was replaced with a Starfleet captain. "Hmm, I like the new uniforms. Starfleet is finally getting stylish."
Jean-Luc was still angry. "What do you want, Q? Are you here to help us or torment us?"
Q was unfazed, "And I'm very pleased to meet you, Ambassador. My father has told me so many wonderful stories about you." He clapped Jean-Luc on the shoulder and turned to survey the devastation in Mistral. "I take it the maid has the night off."
Beverly and Jean-Luc glanced at each other with realization. Jean-Luc said, "I see. You're not the Q we're familiar with, you're . . ."
"That's right! I'm not Q. I'm Q! You have nothing to worry about! I'm here to help."
Jean-Luc glanced out the transparent canopy, which now sported a large crack. The vicious ion storm still raged outside with dozens of swirling maelstroms of destruction waiting to annihilate them in a nanosecond. He turned back to Q, "You're going to free us from this ion storm?"
Q looked out himself. "Well, will you look at that? You are in an ion storm. Huh! Actually I'm here to help you in your relationship."
(The story concludes in one more part.)