Picard knew there was no time to check the area, to see who else might be watching this confrontation on the platform. He knew that the instant he turned his attention from Krawl and the guard was the instant the overseer would attack.
Which meant he had only one option.
Picard brought his gloved fist up into the overseer's nose, doing no useful damage, but causing considerable pain.
Krawl's head snapped back, and after only a split second's hesitation as he grabbed his nose, the Klingon overseer whipped his agonizer probe from his belt and spun it around so its crackling induction tips faced Picard.
Beside Krawl, the Klingon guard did the same.
But both of them had taken too long.
Because as they faced Picard with their agonizer probes, Picard faced them with both disruptors drawn.
"Drop them," Picard said.
Krawl answered by slashing his probe toward Teilani.
She ducked back, flipping over the platform railing like a gymnast so the probe swept by her without connecting.
"Wrong move," Picard said.
"Then shoot me, and attract the attention of all the guards." Krawl feinted with the probe and Picard stepped back, knowing that if he fired the disrupter even once, he would have to be prepared to fire it until it was exhausted.
And then, as if fireworks were suddenly going off, flashes of red and blue light played over the platform.
Teilani was quickly pulling herself up from the asteroid's metal ground. She wasn't wearing a discharge suit, so she had only seconds to reach the insulated safety of the plasteel platform before she would begin to draw tendrils of charged plasma.
"Jean-Luc," she said breathlessly, gazing straight up. "Look up!"
But Picard kept his eyes locked on Krawl's.
"The Enterprise," Teilani insisted. "It's moving!"
Only by force of will did Picard refrain from looking up. Only by intense concentration did he not look at Teilani as she finished climbing back to the platform.
But Krawl looked up, and Picard felt sick as he saw the overseer's face contort into a hideous grin of black and broken teeth. "You lose, Terran. She's ours."
It was too much for Picard.
He had to look up.
And the Enterprise was alive above him.
Her nacelles, dark only moments ago, were now glowing red and blue with the power of antimatter annihilation. With the power that was needed to fly among the stars themselves.
But she was flying alone now, without him, sliding forward toward the gaping monstrosity that was the crossover device, leaving her captain behind, forever.
"No . . ." Picard said. She couldn't go yet. He had made his plans. He was going to get her back.
"Jean-Luc!" Teilani shouted in warning.
Picard dropped his gaze just in time to see Krawl lunge for him, agonizer probe leading the way, one hand curled into a savage claw to tear at his eyes so he would never see anything again.
Picard had no choice, no time for thought.
And he fired both disruptors from the hip.
Two incandescent shafts of twisted golden energy writhed forward, catching the Klingon overseer in mid-leap, splashing, flashing across his body like a ravenous liquid, engulfing him even as that light burrowed deep within, to bring hellfire to his eyes, his mouth, a dozen random places on his body, so that light streamed from him, dissolving him, changing him, if just for an instant, into a luminous being.
Krawl was gone before he could fall to the ground.
The only sound of his destruction was the thud of his agonizer probe hitting, then rolling along the platform until it dropped off the side and clattered onto the asteroid's metallic surface.
The disruptors were warm in Picard's hands, and he realized with a fierce sense of satisfaction that he did not regret what he had done. He only wished it had lasted longer.
The delta-shift overseer had deserved to die more slowly. More painfully. Picard owed that to his young ensign. And to all others whom Krawl had tortured before that.
And then he heard the sound of one man applauding. Hollow, mocking.
"You liked that, didn't you?"
It was his counterpart. Recovered. Still dazed, but now fully upright on the platform, with the Klingon guard beside him.
"You proved my point," the regent said. "We are exactly the same, deep inside."
Picard trembled with an emotion he could not name. But it left him feeling naked and exposed.
His counterpart pushed the Klingon guard forward. "Go ahead. Do it again. Feel the power, Jean-Luc. The control."
Picard longed to throw the disruptors away. But he couldn't. He needed them. Not to kill. But to—
He looked up to see his ship sliding forward, into the maw of the device.
That's why he needed the weapons. To stop that from happening. To stop the loss of everything he cared for. Everything he had left.
Beside him, Teilani urged him to act. "Just shoot them, Jean-Luc. Both of them. We have to go."
But the mirror Picard mocked him. "That's a good excuse, Jean-Luc. Shoot them. Shoot me. Kill me the way you killed your brother and his nephew."
Picard held the disruptors to his ears to shut out the awful things his counterpart was saying. "I didn't kill them! I wasn't there! I couldn't know!"
His counterpart started forward. "Liar," he taunted Picard. "You can't fool me. I can read your mind, Jean-Luc."
Picard shoved one disruptor under his arm, fumbled with the setting of the other.
And for that moment he was defenseless.
"Take him!" his counterpart shouted at the Klingon guard.
The guard leapt forward.
Picard swung out the disruptor.
Teilani's elbow found the Klingon's temple and crushed it with a single blow.
The guard hit the platform without even a whimper or the sigh of death.
Picard held the disruptor on his counterpart.
His duplicate self looked up. To the ship. The ship.
"You're losing her, Jean-Luc. You'd better run.
" Picard could not fire, not certain what setting he had made in all the confusion.
He could not look up because he couldn't bear to lose his ship.
So he reached out for Teilani's hand and, pulling her along with him, began to run toward the command center.
His boots struck the walkway like claps of thunder. His breath came in lung-searing gasps.
But all he could hear was his counterpart's scornful laughter as its echo pursued him.
And far away, the cries of Robert and Rene and everyone else he had lost and abandoned in his life.
Jean-Luc Picard raced to save the Enterprise.
But he ran to redeem his life.
TWENTY-EIGHT
"Is there something I can help you with?" Deanna Troi asked.
Thirty minutes after he and Janeway had surprised and rounded up the mirror Voyager's twenty-two-member skeleton crew of Cardassians, courtesy of automated transporter control, Janeway was in the command chair. Spock was seated beside her, as acting first officer. T'Val was across the bridge, alone at the conn. And the others from the St. Lawrence were scattered throughout the ship—Scott and La Forge in engineering; McCoy and Beverly Crusher in sickbay with the mirror Spock, and the few Cardassians who had not responded well to the anesthezine; and Riker and Data on security detail, monitoring the dazed prisoners now waking up in the brig.
Those prisoners who were conscious were still not too sure what had happened to them. Riker reported to the bridge that he was taking delight in giving the captive Cardassians a twoword answer: Captain Kirk.
Kirk had taken up position at the security/tactical station on the starship's bridge. If he had been in a mood to consider such things, he would have had to admit he liked this new design, with duty stations set up so they faced the forward viewscreen. Though the rest of his team was actually running the ship, Kirk found that even looking up at that main scre
en was giving him the feeling that he, too, could be involved in their mission.
Even though he wasn't.
Even though he no longer cared that he wasn't.
Kirk held up his bandaged hands to Deanna, nodded to the sensor display. "I can't figure out the voice command for getting the main sensors to recalibrate the resolution settings for plasma-storm interference. If you could . . . just run your finger along that green band . . ."
Deanna reached past him, recalibrated the sensor resolution as he instructed. "Like this?"
At least a thousand data points suddenly sprayed across Kirk's graph. He began to study them intently.
Deanna smiled at him. "From the relief I'm picking up from you, I guess so."
"Thank you," Kirk said without looking at her. He knew the smile he gave her was perfunctory, but the sensor board was all that was important now. That's where the truly relevant information would be displayed. Where he would find the data that would restore him to life.
Because, right now, he was only a shell. Empty of everything vital.
Despite the slowness of the data updates on his sensor board, Kirk had no interest in the bridge's main screen. All it now showed was a visual image, distorted by plasma interference. When Kirk had squinted at it through half-closed eyes, he had almost been able to believe he could see an extremely crude rendition of the twin asteroids, so close together it was as if there were no separation between them at all.
The mirror Voyager was less than 100,000 kilometers away from those asteroids, yet the resolution of the main-screen image made it seem as if the asteroids were millions of kilometers more distant.
At least the same interference that degraded the visual sensors was keeping the Voyager safe from the Sovereign. That renegade ship, which might or might not be under the command of the revived mirror-universe counterpart of Fleet Admiral Nechayev, still patrolled the region around the asteroids. But because of the Sovereign's size, nearly twice that of Voyager, the smaller starship would easily detect the Sovereign before the larger ship could detect her.
Still, none of this had any real meaning for Kirk. Since beaming aboard and ensuring that the bridge was secure, he had delegated the remaining actions of the boarding party to Janeway and Spock. Then he turned his full attention to adjusting the nonvisual life-sign subroutines in the main sensor array. In just a half hour, he had been able to improve the resolution of that data band to pick out individuals among the asteroid's prisoners and guards—not by visual image, but by life-sign signature.
This was the reason he had come this far. The only reason.
But he had not found what he had been so desperate to find.
"You musn't feel so frustrated about your hands," Deanna said to him.
Startled by her pronouncement, Kirk looked down at them now. They were little more than thickly bandaged claws, his flame-ravaged fingers only abstractions within their wrappings, newly numbed by whatever McCoy had injected into them. "Why shouldn't I be upset?" he asked without urgency, not referring to his hands at all.
"Because they'll get better."
Kirk knew that, of course. McCoy had enough artificial body parts in him to set up a used-organ store. These weren't the days of Chris Pike. He had no doubt that he could have his hands repaired, or even grow a new pair, if that's what it took. Eventually. His physical self was not beyond restoration.
But whatever it was that dwelled within the flesh, be that flesh old or new, real or artificial, that was a mystery that not even the science of the twenty-fourth century had begun to address.
What good was a hand without another to hold?
What good was a heart, without love to quicken its beat?
Without such things, Kirk cared for nothing anymore.
He felt his world, his will to continue, collapsing, and he couldn't even lean forward and rest his head on his hands. How could he finish clearing his lot on Chal with hands like these? How could he dare take on the challenge of removing that last, remaining, insufferably stubborn stump?
And what could any of that mean without Teilani?
The overwhelming emotion of loss that dear, sweet, wideeyed Deanna Troi was responding to in him had nothing to do with any deficiency in his physical self.
But everything to do with the loss of his soul.
"Irony?" Deanna asked. "It's coming off you in waves."
Kirk held up his hands, as if in losing them, he had lost the ability to hold on to life, to hold on to the woman he loved. "All I ever wanted was to be able to touch life, build something, create something with these."
Deanna was unconvinced. "That's not all you ever wanted. Not really." She scanned Kirk's sensor board with all its individual life-form traces, filtered by age, sex, and species. Watching her, Kirk realized that the technological display, at least, could make obvious what his emotional state could not, so he was not surprised at her next question.
"Who are you looking for?"
Kirk hesitated, wondering if he could ever explain to anyone else what Teilani had become to him. How could that simple question be answered in mere words?
Quietly waiting for his answer, it seemed to Kirk that Deanna had no interest in going elsewhere on the bridge or in the ship until he responded, as if she had somehow chosen the well-being of James T. Kirk as her own personal mission.
Kirk studied her face, noting the dark alien heritage of her empathetic eyes, as distinctive as Spock's ears. "You're the ship's counselor, aren't you."
"On the Enterprise at least."
"We didn't have one of those on my Enterprise."
Deanna smiled at him, she was always smiling, and somewhere in the back of his mind, in whatever subroutines of his own that were still running, Kirk recognized it as a comforting smile. "Of course you had a counselor," she said. "Except on your Enterprise, he was probably called the ship's doctor. And he most likely concentrated on keeping the command staff stable."
Kirk frowned. He wondered if the counselor had ever loved as he had loved Teilani. He wondered if she had ever lost that love, lost all meaning to her life, been caught in a despair so dark and deep that not even the fiery birth of a sun could illuminate its depths.
But she was looking at him now as if she did know, as if every terrible thought that had tormented him in this past half hour were laid bare before her. He felt exposed, dissected, like a sample on display in some ancient naturalist's study.
Kirk was suddenly grateful that he hadn't had a counselor as advanced as this one on his ship.
But Deanna didn't appear to care what he thought. Only what he felt. "Who are you looking for?" she asked again. Her smile was gone.
Kirk hesitated only a moment, then used his elbow to activate Teilani's personnel screen—one he had created himself. Let's see if this charming, persistent expert can sense real loss, he thought bitterly. He believed she wouldn't have a chance.
Kirk stared down at the picture of Teilani that accompanied the sensor board's personnel display. The image had been recorded only a few months ago, in Chal's blissful summer. She had been outside their cabin, currying Iowa Dream, emphatically warning Kirk that he absolutely, positively, must not take her picture while her hair was a mess and she was all sweaty.
But Kirk had taken it anyway.
Teilani had retaliated by attacking him with a bucket of water, and he had laughed so hard she had pinned him easily, demanding the sensor camera, insisting that she would erase that image.
But the day had been warm, the weather clear. And very quickly they had surrendered to the magic of being in each other's arms.
Much later, when they had stirred themselves from the blanket they had spread upon the ground, and made their way to the clear and rushing stream to swim, Teilani had forgotten all about the sensor camera and the picture.
But neither one of them had forgotten that day.
Neither one ever forgot those timeless gifts that came to them so easily.
That image had become Kir
k's favorite picture of her. A perfect moment in a perfect day.
The counselor surprised him. "Oh my," Deanna said softly, her cheeks red. Kirk had no doubt what Deanna was reacting to. He would never forget those moments, those eternities, in Teilani's embrace. Never. "Teilani, of course. We met during the virogen crisis. And you believed she would be in the camp."
Of course that's what I believed, Kirk thought in sudden despair. Why else would I come here, have risked what I have risked? "It was the only place that made any sense," he told her. Then he found himself, under the counselor's compassionate gaze, outlining all the reasoning, all the details he had learned from the mirror-universe rebels, that had led him to conclude that the prison camp would be the one and only place where Teilani would be taken.
Deanna continued to watch him intently all through his explanations, and the comprehension in her eyes was so absolute that Kirk was forced to wonder if she had learned how to actually read minds.
"You're certain she's not in the camp?" Deanna asked.
Kirk tapped another control with his elbow, read out the figures that were displayed. "Three thousand, two hundred, and fifty-two individuals are in that camp. Two thousand and twenty-two are human. Fifteen are Bolian. A handful of humanoids are so close to human it doesn't matter. And the rest, the guards, are Klingons, Cardassians, and thirty-five Bajorans."
"And you couldn't have missed her among all of those?"
"I programmed the computer myself," Kirk said, making no attempt to hide his desolation. He wanted there to be some way it would be caught up by Deanna's empathic ability and taken from him forever, so he would never feel anything again. "Teilani's parents were Klingon and Romulan. A distinctive mix. But the computer can't find anyone who matches her criteria." He took a deep breath, felt the tremor that passed through him. A tremor he did not want to acknowledge.
A tremor Deanna Troi understood. Felt. Shared with him.
"Captain Kirk . . ." she said in a low voice, as if somewhere a child were sleeping. "Why do you think she's dead?"
Deanna might as well have torn out his heart for asking that question.
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