He was curious; he’d found only a smattering of information on them in the ship’s computers. There had been far more about the Trexatians because of the earlier war. They were a competitive race that embraced technology; physical appearance and abilities were enhanced by prosthetic eyes, limbs, cybernetic implants. Eye and hair color, as well as facial structure, were constantly changed; skin was colored and etched to create interesting designs and textures. Precious metals and gems were embedded in eyes, ears, and skin, woven into hair. The culture valued its notion of beauty above all else — except perhaps its ability to steal whatever it could from other planets.
The Repoki, on the other hand, were a gangly, orange-skinned people with opaque white eyes, blunted features, and little racial variation. Picard knew nothing more about them, except that their level of technology was behind that of the Trexatians and perhaps two centuries behind that of the Federation.
“They value social cooperation as well as financial independence so that the individual will not burden society; nonfunctional art is considered frivolous. They are isolationist but not xenophobic. They wish to exist undisturbed, with little interest in how their culture or technology could be enhanced by interaction with other worlds.” She paused. “That was our greatest challenge seven years ago, when we met with their representatives. The only reason they have contacted us now is that they now desperately require our help. But there is a greater challenge to surmount now.”
“Which is?”
Conversation ceased for a moment as they arrived at the lift and entered. “Bridge,” Picard ordered, then turned his face toward T’Lana, who stood beside him.
As the lift began to move, she answered his question. “Bigotry. Since the Repoki place a high value on social cooperation, they frown on thievery and self-aggrandizement. They find Trexatian culture morally repugnant, the people vain and corrupt. This, added to their outrage over the murders of their citizens and the invasion of their mines — the very basis of their monetary system — will prove a most difficult obstacle in bringing them to peace and acceptance of Trexatian culture.”
“I suspect,” Picard said, “that the Trexatians find the Repoki backward and naïve.”
T’Lana gave an affirming nod. “As well as physically repugnant. And they do not comprehend their lack of aesthetic appreciation. Each side, therefore, feels it is morally superior to the other. This is the greatest challenge to a lasting peace. Apparently, our efforts seven years ago were unsuccessful in terms of assisting the Trexatians in becoming more open to other cultures’ perspectives . . .”
As Picard listened, a comment formed in his mind about the need for a swift resolution, since without vadinite, the Trexatian population would soon be decimated by disease. But as T’Lana continued, her voice slowly faded and became unintelligible, like the far-off buzz of an insect.
Pressure mounted in his skull; soon even the buzzing was silenced by the pulse of his own heart.
Picard blinked and scowled, trying to shake off the sensation, to concentrate on the words T’Lana’s cherubic lips were forming, but he could hear only the sound in his own head.
A virus, he decided. Or perhaps some abnormal residual effect left from his early experience with Shalaft’s syndrome. After hours, he would make a point of consulting Beverly.
T’Lana’s lips had stopped moving and she was studying him with intent curiosity.
A muscle in his cheek spasmed.
Fierce, abrupt, and inescapable, the dread of the previous night’s dream descended on him. The thrumming heartbeat that filled his ears transformed — or had it always been thus? — into a chorus of distant whispers.
This is not happening, Picard told himself with infinite force, infinite fury. He would not permit a nightmare spawned by events long past to become reality. Whatever this was, it had nothing to do with the Borg. Could not have anything to do with the Borg. Any remnants of them were scattered, helpless, without a queen to direct their activity. He had had the pleasure of snapping her writhing, inhuman spine himself, with an impossible strength born of adrenaline and desperation. Admiral Janeway dealt them an even more crushing blow from the Delta Quadrant. Picard had read the reports following the triumphant return of the Starship Voyager. The Borg were scattered. Lost without access to a considerable portion of their network of transwarp conduits. They could not possibly have regrouped so quickly.
This was merely a symptom, the onset of a physical malady or neural malfunction. He would will it away, would escort T’Lana to the bridge, would notify Beverly at the first opportune moment.
T’Lana was speaking again — a short phrase — then she paused for a response. Fighting to ignore the chaos in his head, Picard watched carefully as she formed the words. He could not hear them, but he managed to read them.
Captain Picard. Are you unwell?
He opened his mouth to answer, to reassure, but no sound emerged, as if he were still prisoner in a dream, unable to find his voice.
Captain Picard?
With agonizing effort, he forced out the words. “I’m fine.”
He could not hear himself utter the word “I’m.” But with “fine,” the sense of pressure evaporated as quickly as it had appeared; the whispers in his mind fled. His own voice emerged as startlingly loud. In a disconcerting instant, the world returned to normal. He let go a long breath of pure relief.
T’Lana was gazing at him with calm expectancy.
“Just a headache,” Picard said, annoyed at himself for such a clearly crippled explanation. He could not imagine how he must have appeared to the Vulcan during the episode.
She appeared to accept his excuse but said no more. They rode in silence, while Picard mentally repeated the mantra:
This is not what it appears to be; there is a physical explanation. This is not what it appears to be.
This is not the Borg . . .
2
Beverly Crusher was waiting for them on the bridge.
She was glad that she had no medical duties too pressing to keep her from welcoming the new counselor. Beyond that, she was glad for another chance to keep an eye on Jean-Luc.
Beverly had not shown it, of course, but she was concerned for his sake. The nightmare had unsettled him more than he had admitted, and earlier that morning, in engineering, he had seemed . . . off. Not himself. She had known him for decades, and their friendship had grown progressively more intimate over the years, until they had at last confessed their love for each other.
She recognized every nuance of his moods so well that she knew he was still troubled. But this was more than being upset over a dream, or over the memory of what the Borg had done to him long ago.
There was something else wrong, something neither emotional nor physical, nothing she could put her finger on. Something unusual had happened that he had yet to confess. Whatever it was, it so troubled him that he was hiding it from her.
She had done her best to ignore the fact that morning and kept her mind focused on her duties. When the time was right, he would speak to her about it; she knew she could trust him to do so.
In the meantime, she stood beside Worf, who sat in the captain’s chair. The Klingon had never been one for idle conversation, but this morning, he was even more taciturn than usual. Beverly knew that Jean-Luc had already given the good news to Worf about his promotion to permanent first officer . . . but judging from the Klingon’s dark mood, the encounter had not gone as the captain had planned. She had intended to congratulate Worf when she first arrived on the bridge, but one glance at him made her decide to keep her mouth shut.
So she stood, waiting with arms folded, staring silently along with Worf out at the stars. The rest of the bridge crew had picked up on the Klingon’s mood; the tension hung in the air, blanketing everyone like heavy fog.
Beverly was relieved to hear the turbolift doors open behind her. She turned, ready and smiling, to greet the captain and the new counselor.
But the look on Picard�
��s face made her smile freeze into place. Anyone who did not know the captain as well as she did would not suspect anything was wrong, but Beverly could see beyond his calculated, false composure. The small muscles between his eyebrows were taut and gathered, and while his expression conveyed warmth and welcome, she saw beneath it: saw the haunted, hunted look in his eyes. Whatever had been bothering him had just struck again, with a vengeance.
She decided at that instant to confront him as soon as possible. If she had to order him to sickbay on the pretext of a medical examination, so be it. She could no longer wait for him to come to her with an explanation. This was the face of a man who needed her personal and professional help.
Jean-Luc moved across the bridge — not with his usual brisk, intensely no-nonsense stride, but with his slower “diplomatic” pace, the one he reserved for showing visitors around the ship. The newest addition to the crew walked beside him; the two approached Beverly and stopped. Nearby, Worf vacated the captain’s chair with unusual alacrity and stood at grave attention.
“Counselor T’Lana,” Jean-Luc said, his voice gracious, showing no sign of turmoil, “this is my chief medical officer, Commander Beverly Crusher.”
“Doctor.” The counselor gave a graceful nod; her manner lacked the stiff formality of most Vulcans. She seemed uncommonly relaxed around humans. It certainly explained why she had received commendations for her diplomatic work and her counseling, this ability to adapt her mannerisms to put those from other cultures at ease. “It is my pleasure to meet you.” She was a small woman — a full head shorter than Beverly — with a slight frame and possessed of a beauty humans would term “classic.” Her eyes were heavy lidded, giving her a dreamy look incongruous with the rest of her Vulcan features.
“The pleasure is mine, Counselor.” Beverly returned the nod, impressed that someone from T’Lana’s planet would not shirk at using the word “pleasure.”
Picard gestured at the flight control console. “And this is Lieutenant Sara Nave.”
Nave swiveled in her chair, her pale, freckled face beaming despite the fact that she was being introduced to a being who supposedly disapproved of such displays of emotion. Yet T’Lana did not seem at all discomfited. Beverly liked Sara Nave, though she knew her only as a patient. Nave had come down with the Cardassian pneumovirus only a few months earlier, two days after she had returned from an away mission. The disease was rare in humans and often fatal, but somehow, Nave had held on. While she was recuperating, she managed to keep the sickbay staff entertained by her crackling sense of good humor and tales of her hijinks while at the academy — despite the fact that she was physically ill and miserable. Crusher learned afterward that Sara had a reputation among her Enterprise crewmates as a practical joker. But on duty, she was all business.
“Counselor,” Nave said. “Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you,” T’Lana said. “I am pleased to be here.”
Picard glanced in Worf’s direction; neither of them directly met the other’s gaze. “And this is my . . . first officer, Commander Worf.” There was the slightest hesitation in Jean-Luc’s voice. Beverly could guess at the word that had entered the captain’s mind but that he had not uttered: temporary. She shot Worf a swift, surreptitious look; the Klingon’s massive shoulders were tight, bunched. He was uncomfortable in the captain’s presence, which meant that something unpleasant had indeed occurred during their meeting that morning, but she couldn’t imagine what it had been. Surely Worf had no reason to turn down a promotion.
Worf directed his attention downward to the Vulcan. “Counselor T’Lana,” he said stiffly. “It is an honor to meet you.”
T’Lana looked him directly in the eye. She regarded the Klingon in silence. The ease and grace she had carried onto the bridge with her evaporated. Nothing overt in her posture or expression changed, yet without moving a muscle, without so much as narrowing her eyes, she managed to convey something approaching . . . disapproval. Beverly wondered if she had been too quick to commend the counselor’s ability to interact with the crew. Either T’Lana wasn’t as comfortable addressing Klingons as she was humans, or something else was transpiring at the moment.
“Commander,” T’Lana said with a slow nod before turning to Picard. “I would like to meet the rest of the senior staff when it is convenient, Captain.”
• • •
Worf couldn’t help but think that the counselor had turned away from him in a pointed way. He would have chalked up her terse manner as being a typically Vulcan attribute, but there was something more there, something almost approaching emotion. He could not entirely mask his curiosity, particularly when he saw that Doctor Crusher seemed to have noticed something was off as well.
He had never known a Vulcan to be overtly rude, but Counselor T’Lana did not strike him as an ordinary Vulcan. As a rule, Worf did not like most members of the race: they were aloof, cold, unable to hide the distaste they felt in the presence of more emotional beings. T’Lana was different. Worf had watched her from the moment she set foot on the bridge. She seemed relaxed, free of her people’s extreme self-consciousness. She was clearly comfortable being among a mostly human crew. And there was — or had it been his imagination? — something approaching warmth in her eyes. That is, until those eyes had focused on him.
Now, as she turned away, Worf noticed the fineness of her features. When he first began to serve alongside humans, he had found the faces of their females to be vaguely repulsive: their noses were too narrow and short, their lips too thin, their teeth too small and even. The smoothness of their foreheads seemed bland, unformed.
Over time, he had come to accept and finally to appreciate them. And all the things about Jadzia — things that once would have offended him, her straight, even, fine features — he came to see as delicate and beautiful.
Counselor T’Lana was beautiful in the same way.
The realization unsettled him, since Jadzia’s death, he had avoided noticing such things. In fact, he had instructed Ensign Sara Nave in the use of the bat’leth and never once noticed that she was female. But he could not deny at that moment that he was drawn to the new counselor, in spite of her coolness toward him.
• • •
Beverly measured her reaction as best she could under the situation. T’Lana’s subtle snub of Worf would have been lost on most of the bridge crew, but it did seem to the doctor that T’Lana had just turned her back on him.
Jean-Luc’s manner remained smooth, though he blinked once, rapidly, in surprise. “Of course, Counselor,” he replied. “Commander La Forge is currently completing a task in engineering. I’ll introduce you to him when he’s available. In the meantime, since you prefer to report for duty . . .” He gestured at the chair that had been Deanna Troi’s.
To get to it, T’Lana had to move past Worf. Beverly watched with curiosity as the petite Vulcan sidled by him without even meeting his gaze.
Was it possible, she wondered, that this person, whose Starfleet record indicated enormous respect for other societies, was a bigot when it came to Klingons?
His expression one of thinly veiled puzzlement, Worf moved to Will Riker’s old station and settled into the chair. T’Lana coolly took Deanna Troi’s former position. She appeared oblivious to the awkward reactions from the three senior members of the crew, the ones who knew enough to realize that the first officer had just been slighted.
Beverly leaned toward Jean-Luc, who was still standing, and said in a low voice, “I’ll be in sickbay if you need me.” The undercurrent in her tone was intentional, one that she knew the captain would pick up on; she was inviting him to tell her what was wrong. And she fully intended to insist, the instant he was off duty, that he come to sickbay for an exam and a little talk.
She turned and headed for the turbolift but had taken only three steps when she was stopped by the mixed chorus of sound: a groan, Worf’s urgent question, “Sir, are you all right?” and Nave’s exclamation, “Captain!”
She whi
rled, intuitively knowing what she would see. Nave was already out of her chair; Worf was up and reaching toward the captain; T’Lana was sitting, staring calmly at the tableau.
And Jean-Luc . . . Jean-Luc had sagged to his knees a step from his chair, torso bent slightly forward, fists curled and pressed against his ears as if to blot out a painful noise. His mouth was still open, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his brow contorted in agony.
She did not remember moving over to him. In one instant, she was standing a short distance away; in the next, she was kneeling beside him, hand on his shoulder, vaguely aware that Worf’s massive bulk was hovering over them.
“Jean-Luc,” she said loudly into his ear, “can you hear me?”
In reply, the captain gasped. His eyes opened, but he did not appear to see his surroundings. His gaze was focused on something far distant and terrible.
“Jean-Luc!” she said again, this time, almost a shout.
He did not hear. Whatever he was listening to was so deafening, so horrible, that it drowned out the rest of his world.
• • •
Beverly managed, with the help of Worf, to get the captain down to sickbay. Nave was left temporarily in charge of the ship. The Klingon had to support the captain’s full weight in order to get him off the bridge. By the time they got off the lift and were moving down the corridor toward sickbay, Picard — not yet able to speak — had come to himself enough to wave away Worf’s and Beverly’s supporting arms and walk, slow and uncertain, on his own.
His face was slack, stricken; he was forcing himself to breathe slowly as he moved. And although he would not meet Beverly’s eyes, she could still see what he was attempting to hide from her: horror, the same horror that had made him cry out in his sleep the night before.
“Jean-Lu—” Beverly stopped herself. Through an act of will, she forced herself to become distant from the distress she felt, as someone who loved the man who was now suffering. She was no more than a doctor now, concerned for a patient. As such, she asked calmly, clinically, “Captain. Can you hear me?”
Resistance Page 3
