A Time to Die

by John Vornholt

  Wesley Crusher nodded; sometimes discretion was the better part of valor. “Good-bye, Commodore Korgan,” he said. “Thank you for your honesty.”

  Go with speed, Traveler. Please take this parting gift.

  The Medusan filled Wesley’s brain with the most sublime, blissful thoughts he could ever imagine—birthday parties, puppies, vacations, lullabies—and he was suddenly transported to his past and overwhelmed with happiness. I’m home! This is home! Wes began to whistle, leaping down the stairs like a ten-year-old. With a joyous laugh, he found himself skipping up the hill in his beautiful San Francisco.

  Jean-Luc Picard sat on bare red stone, gazing out the archway carved in the side of a sheer, deeply striated cliff. His dwelling was about a hundred meters from the top of the bluff. Beneath him floated sulfurous mists which hid a murky river that ran with potable water only a few weeks a year. Above him was a hot, desolate plain. The heat of the day would reach him when the sun struck his level. This humble abode, hollowed from the red rock itself, was no more than a hovel; he had a few clay bowls and utensils and a pile of linen upon which to lie. In the corner sat a large clay pitcher shaped like a brujgar horn in which to catch water from the spring just above him. Vulcan tribes had inhabited such cliff dwellings for millennia, dating back to when they had been violent savages. The warrens in the cliff were easy to defend and stayed relatively cool for a village in the Vulcan high desert.

  The captain’s only nod to modernity was a stack of dog-eared Dixon Hill novels in the corner. He had pens and a journal in which he had yet to write a word. There was nothing in his present circumstances he wished to record for posterity; he wished only to wake up from this horrible nightmare and get on with his life.

  As befitting his hermitic lifestyle, Picard had let his beard grow. He wore Starfleet exercise garments, which were more comfortable than the thick Vulcan robes everyone around him wore. Humans tended to sweat much more than Vulcans, and a shower was not available to him, unless he switched to a different holodeck program.

  Jean-Luc heard footsteps on the stone walkway just beyond his open door. He wondered if it was a visitor come to see him. A moment later, he was disappointed to see it was just another holodeck character—a wise-looking Vulcan who often stopped to dispense pedestrian platitudes and try to engage him in conversation.

  The old Vulcan cleared his throat and said, “Only Nixon could go to China.”

  “I’ve heard that already,” muttered Picard. “Go on your way.”

  The Vulcan stood for several seconds, as if the hermit might change his mind and talk, and Picard considered yelling at him to go. No, that would look very bad on his next evaluation, and that one was crucial, whenever it would be. Now it was time to take the kettle off the fire and let the boiling water come to a rest. And I’m the kettle, thought Jean-Luc.

  “Conditions are favorable for rain this afternoon,” remarked the old Vulcan, studying the golden sky.

  In response, Picard rolled onto his blankets and stared at the rugged wall at the back of his cavern. He presumed that Counselor Colleen Cabot and her assistants were watching him through the fake wall, if they even bothered to pay attention to him anymore. He supposed that some of this neglect was his own fault, because he had let it be known that he didn’t want to see many of his shipmates under these circumstances. They were respecting his wishes…thus turning him into a recluse.

  He had avoided further proceedings on the Rashanar matter, but now he was beginning to miss the day-to-day interaction with others. The incident was over, as far as everyone else was concerned; for him, it had only prolonged the embarrassment and started an open-ended incarceration.

  I have to find some way to cope, he decided, or I will go mad.

  “Good morning, Jean-Luc,” said a friendly voice from the doorway. He turned to see that the Vulcan had finally departed and was replaced by a fair-skinned woman who looked rather youthful, her blond hair blowing gently in the warm breezes of the cliff. As usual, Counselor Cabot wore flattering civilian clothes. He had only seen her in a Starfleet uniform twice, during his inquiry and at the memorial service for the Juno’s crew. She made a few notes on her padd. He felt like a zoo animal being visited by the zookeeper. According to Nechayev, Colleen Cabot had done him a considerable favor by allowing more psychological evaluation, but it didn’t feel that way to him.

  The counselor motioned toward his dingy, austere surroundings. “You know, Jean-Luc, I always figured you would pick the Vulcan room, if left to your own devices long enough.”

  “It’s the most like a cell,” he remarked.

  “If you say so.” She gave him a bemused smile, then ducked her head to step inside his hovel. “People keep making requests to visit you, but you have a very short list of those you approve. You really don’t have to be alone, as long as the Enterprise is at home port.”

  Picard sat up cross-legged and looked at his “jailer.” “They have repairs and test flights to make, followed by a new mission. Let them get used to Captain Riker without being overly concerned about me.”

  “That’s very selfless of you,” said Cabot, sitting down across from him.

  “The welfare of the Enterprise and her crew is my first concern,” he answered. “Always has been.”

  The counselor nodded. “That’s right. If you hadn’t been sure the ship was in danger, you wouldn’t have fired on the Ontailians.”

  “They weren’t Ontailians,” said the captain, his jaw clenched tightly. With considerable self-control, he managed to relax and muster a smile for his keeper. “But you haven’t come here to rehash the inquiry, have you? I hope not, because I hate to keep fighting battles I’ve already lost.”

  “Isn’t that what Rashanar is all about?” she asked. “Fighting that never stops.”

  “Yes, that’s one theory. This doppelgänger ship—or more than one—could explain why the Dominion and Federation vessels fought to the death at Rashanar. They didn’t know who or what they were really fighting. They died at their posts, with surrender never an option.”

  Colleen Cabot frowned, then asked, “But isn’t that how Jem’Hadar and Dominion ships always fought—to the death?”

  “No,” answered Picard. “If a Jem’Hadar ship becomes too crippled to be effective, they look to board an enemy ship as soon as possible. The Cardassians were never ones to die needlessly—if there was a way to escape to fight another day, they would take it. But not if the whole crew is blacked out with the ship paralyzed. Think about it, Counselor, how can you have a battle with no survivors? You’re a psychologist—you know the will to survive is one of the strongest instincts.”

  Cabot sat forward. “Yes, Jean-Luc, and you went to Rashanar wanting to solve this mystery, didn’t you? And you solved it—you were successful.”

  Picard narrowed his eyes warily at his keeper. He could see where this line of questioning was going. He had to hand it to Colleen Cabot—she was always working one angle or another.

  “I didn’t make up the replicant ship just to fit the facts,” he said firmly. “Data and La Forge didn’t expect to see what they saw—two identical ships—but they did.”

  “You take me the wrong way, Jean-Luc,” said Cabot with disappointment. “This replicated ship is not only at the basis of your defense; it’s the basis of your mental state and confidence. As long as you are unshakable in your belief in the mimic ship, your case makes sense to me and everyone else.”

  He snorted a laugh. “You mean, I’m either right or delusional, therefore it doesn’t really matter to you.”

  “It matters to me a lot,” said Cabot somberly. “And it should matter to you, too, if you want to get out of here.”

  “But how do you prove me right or delusional,” asked the captain, “except to go to Rashanar and see for yourself? To me and my crew, Data’s word is proof enough. But it wasn’t enough for the tribunal, and I can’t offer you anything else.”

  The young blond woman shrugged and rose slowly to
her feet, brushing the fake red dust off her pants. “If Data were a humanoid, we could use hypnosis, a mind-meld, or some other process to verify his story. But he’s not, and no one else saw the transformation. You’re convinced, but you didn’t see it firsthand either. I guess you’re right, Jean-Luc…Starfleet has to go back to Rashanar.”

  Picard noted darkly, “If we don’t stop this threat, more ships will be destroyed.”

  The counselor sighed on her way out the door. “You attribute too much power to me. What do you want for dinner, Jean-Luc? Something other than healthy Vulcan gruel?”

  “I’ll stick with the gruel,” muttered Picard, lying upon his dusty linens. “It suits my mood.”

  Strolling down the corridor of the holosuite wing of Medical Mental Health, Counselor Cabot was troubled. She couldn’t fulfill the charge given her, because there was no more information to be gleaned from Captain Picard, or any of the others connected with this incident. He was as sane as anyone in Starfleet. Keeping him here was unnecessary. Rather than hold him here, they should just give him a medical discharge and be done with it. The Ontailians had all left Earth to return to their own space, so dragging this out seemed pointless…unless there was something to be gained.

  The young counselor was still deep in thought when she opened the door to her office and walked toward her cluttered desk. A hulking figure whirled around in the chair, startling her. He was a formidable presence indeed.

  “Admiral Nakamura,” she said, catching her breath. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought it was time to talk,” the distinguished officer answered crossly. “We don’t have much of it before we have to decide what to do.”

  Colleen tossed her padd onto her desk. “I’ve reached a dead end. He doesn’t know any more about the mimic ship than he’s already told us. If you send Picard to Rashanar, he’ll only try to destroy it.”

  “You must have ways to influence him,” pressed Nakamura. “Drugs, posthypnotic suggestion—there must be a way to get him to capture this weapon, so we can study it.”

  Cabot felt resentful toward Nakamura’s patronizing attitude. She no longer cared about the promised fast-track promotion. “Why not send a fact-finding mission?” she asked. “A whole task force to study it or capture it…or whatever you want to do.”

  “No. The Ontailians are too touchy now. Remember, they control Rashanar. It has to be a covert mission. My department has been collecting and studying Dominion technology, and a shapeshifting spacecraft—what a coup that would be!”

  Cabot seethed at the unfairness of the whole situation; however, she still had one big card to play in this game—Jean-Luc Picard. He was her property until she chose to let him go, but now the captain wasn’t foremost in her thoughts.

  “I’ve heard something,” she asked, trying to hide her worry, “that Beverly Crusher might end up in charge of Starfleet Medical?”

  The admiral shrugged his brocaded and bedecked shoulders. “Oh, that’s just a rumor. Whenever Dr. Crusher is in town for a few days, you always hear that.”

  “She holds no love for me, not after the way I’ve treated Picard. If that should happen, I’ll have no future in Starfleet, no matter what you do to help me.”

  Nakamura straightened his tunic and stared pointedly at her. “Forget Crusher and concentrate on the task at hand.” He stopped as an idea hit him. “Data! He would be more pliable than Picard. At least there are ways to program the android. He’s malfunctioned twice in recent memory—at Rashanar and at the Ba’ku planet, so he is due for reprogramming.”

  The imposing admiral rose from Cabot’s desk and strode toward her, headed for the door. “Just make the captain comfortable, but not too comfortable, so he’ll be happy to get out of here when the time is right. I know you can do that without any problem.”

  She cringed as Nakamura passed her. Colleen had begun to dislike her chief benefactor intensely. Colleen had known his backing wouldn’t come cheap, but this was not how the young counselor wanted to succeed in Starfleet. However, like Beverly Crusher, Nakamura would be a bad one to cross.

  Either way, I’m screwed, she mused.

  Chapter Two

  ON THE BRIDGE of the Enterprise, acting captain William Riker stood over La Forge’s shoulder and watched readouts dance across the auxiliary engineering console. This was their first warp trial since making repairs in orbital dock over Earth, and Riker wanted the test to go well. On the other hand, going too well might mean an early departure for their next mission…and leaving Captain Picard and Data behind.

  “The deuterium slush is running a little rich,” said Riker. “What do you think, Geordi?”

  “Hmmm? What?” The engineer blinked his ocular implants at his captain, his mind light-years away.

  Riker acted as if he hadn’t noticed the lapse. “The deuterium slush looks rich to me. That might indicate the matter reactant injector needs to be replaced, which ought to be good for another day in dock, shouldn’t it?”

  La Forge mustered a smile. “Yes, sir, I believe the injector does look a bit off. We’ll have to take it apart and see.” Then he frowned anew, distracted by more than repairs to the warp propulsion system.

  “I’m sure Data will be all right.”

  “Why did they need him again?” demanded La Forge. “They took away his emotion chip and ran him through a battery of tests and diagnostics. There was nothing wrong with him! Now they have to do it again? I just don’t get it.”

  Riker paused to phrase his answer to Data’s best friend. “Geordi,” he said slowly, “not everyone knows Data as well as we do. To us, he’s a loyal friend and colleague. To them, he’s an exotic life-form, a walking computer, or at worst…a machine. Starfleet is just trying to find answers for what happened at Rashanar.”

  “They’re looking in the wrong place,” countered La Forge. “Data wasn’t convicted of anything. He can’t even tell a lie. If I were a sighted person, the tribunal would have taken my word for what happened.”

  “Data saw more than you did,” answered Riker, shaking his head in frustration. “Listen, I can’t change what’s happened to us. I’ve got a ship to run. We’re all upset about this; however, we have to get over it and do our jobs. You can worry about them on your own time, La Forge. Just shake it off when you’re on duty.”

  The engineer Scowled and rose to his feet. “Captain, I’d like to request a leave…to help Captain Picard and Data.”

  The words kicked Riker in the gut like a hob-nailed boot. He instantly wanted to retract what he had said. Of course, they were all worrying about Picard and Data every minute of the day, whether they were on duty or not; it was pointless to pretend they weren’t. La Forge looked so determined, his jaw set so firmly. He wasn’t the type to fly off the handle like this.

  Seeing Riker’s perplexed expression, La Forge softened his features. “I know you’ve got to run the Enterprise, so you stay,” he said. “Let me see if I can do any good.”

  Riker felt a delicate hand on his back, and he saw another hand reach for La Forge’s shoulder. He turned, thinking he would see Deanna, but it was Dr. Crusher. Unlike the rest of them, she wore a smile that was confident and content.

  “Reconsider, Geordi,” she said in a low voice. “I can tell you that we have help coming from an unusual source. I know it’s hard to be patient when you feel so helpless, but Captain Picard and Data have other allies besides us. If you get involved, you’ll just butt your head against a wall. We need patience more than anything else, we need to have the whole crew ready.”

  “Ready for what?” asked La Forge, sounding unconvinced. “Ready to survey the Jupiter asteroid belt? That’s a mission for third-year cadets. I don’t think I can just stand around and wait for Starfleet to come to their senses.”

  “Are you planning to break the captain out of a secure psychiatric wing?” asked Crusher. “Are you going to storm the S.C.E. and rescue Data? We need to have Starfleet’s blessing when we go back to Rashanar,
not more of our crew under lock and key.”

  From the corner of his eye, Riker caught sight of a relief bridge officer hovering a bit too close, possibly near enough to hear their conversation. “Back to your post, Ensign,” he barked at the young man, whose name he could not place.

  Beverly Crusher gave him another smile. “Don’t worry, Will, nothing we say will go beyond the bridge. We’re all in this together.”

  “That won’t be so easy,” said the acting captain. “In the officers’ club, I’ve heard people whispering about us behind our backs. I’ve heard them repeating the accusations against the captain, saying it was only a matter of time before he cracked up. You know, I think some people in Starfleet are glad to see the Enterprise brought down a notch or two.”

  “Human nature,” replied Crusher. “It’s okay, our mystique can survive. Please, Geordi, hunker down and ride out the storm. At least see what another week will bring. We’ve got a friend who will keep an eye on both Picard and Data.”

  The angry engineer gritted his teeth and returned to his seat, studying the data coming from the warp propulsion system. Riker let out a sigh and silently thanked Crusher; he wished he had half of her confidence that all of this would work out. Even if it did, they would have to spend a long time repairing their reputation. Crusher left his side and had a few words with the nondescript ensign he had noticed before. Riker was suddenly very glad for the doctor’s levelheaded presence. Since she was closer to Picard than anyone, her calm meant a great deal to the crew.

  “Conn,” he said, “set a course back to Earth, warp two.”

  Footsteps sounded across the spotless floor, and all conversation in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers’ laboratory ended a moment before a familiar voice said, “Hello, Commander Data.”

  Lying upon a workbench, Data turned his head to see Admiral Nakamura peering down at him. The admiral was dressed in a lab coat and was pulling on thin cotton gloves, as if he were about to go to work.