“Besides, this ship isn’t big enough for the population. Even with the other ships in nearby sectors, it still wouldn’t be enough,” La Forge said.
“We can’t introduce this without at least telling the Council about it,” Troi said. “And I have no real sense that they will accept what they consider further meddling on our part. A central theme of the protests has been an objection to the Federation’s role.”
“I think it’s safe to say that few are left who might be considered to be in their right minds,” Morrow said.
“On the contrary,” Data interjected. “By now the majority of the planet has had their minds restored to what would be considered proper by any medical authority.”
“Quite right, Data,” Picard said solemnly. “But in so doing, we’ve unleashed a firestorm of unrest that will certainly claim countless more lives before we have any hope of restoring order.”
“Captain, what would it take to do just that?” Troi asked.
Picard looked at Vale. “Lieutenant?”
“Well, let’s see,” Vale began, her brow furrowing. “We’d need thousands of peace-keeping troops to keep everyone from arguing and fighting. That would mean using troops, who are more used to ground actions than police work. Then, the Diplomatic Corps, I suppose, would need to send hundreds of teachers or psychologists to give them the kind of moral training that most people receive as they grow up. And, given that both races naturally tend to be aggressive, there would probably be resistance to being taught how to behave. The majority are adults, after all, so they would resist training.”
“Following that scenario, sir,” Data said, “I would estimate it would take seventeen months three weeks and five days before enough personnel were on this planet to make an effective difference.”
“Thank you, Mr. Data,” Picard said.
“What you’re missing,” Morrow said, “is that we don’t have hundreds of people available today. With the rebuilding going on throughout the Federation, plus the aid we’ve been giving the Cardassians and to the Genesis sector, we’re stretched beyond thin.”
“And I gather there are other hot spots brewing, as always, where our forces might be required,” Vale added.
“It seems there’s a chance for peace to properly take root,” Morrow muttered.
“Too true, Ambassador,” Picard said. “Our corner of the universe has so many intelligent races that there will probably always be some form of trouble. However, history has shown us that things do change, usually for the better. The Klingons became our allies after decades of carnage, and recently even the Romulans proved helpful in our war with the Dominion. One can only hope the Praetor has learned some lessons and one day they too may be called our friends.”
“I hope you’re right,” Vale said.
“We clearly do not have the manpower this world needs, so we’re faced with our original choices,” Crusher said.
“Any further opinion?” Picard paused and was met with expectant looks. “Very well, then. I will consider all that you have said and will issue my orders shortly. For those of you heading back to the planet, I suggest you take advantage of being here to eat and clean up before returning. Dismissed.”
Everyone stood, and Picard let them all pass by as they headed either to the bridge or the corridor. In their faces he saw a mixture of concern and confidence. He and Beverly exchanged a long look that he had no trouble reading. He knew her heart, her reluctance to tamper with an already afflicted people. She looked exhausted, in desperate need of sleep, but he found himself noting how attractive she was despite the strain. He shoved that stray thought aside and remained in the lounge as the doors closed. Taking his seat once more, he gazed out among the stars and let the arguments echo again in his mind.
A stray spark caused Anh Hoang to drop her tool. It fell ten meters to the ground and reverberated with a loud clang. People scattered, some automatically putting their hands over their heads while others scurried into doorways, seeking shelter.
“It’s all right, I just dropped the spanner,” she called out.
“You must be more careful with your tools,” Taurik said. He appeared completely unruffled, which was to be expected. She envied that self-control, the ability to remain calm regardless of the madness surrounding them both. Her team had beamed down to the city—she’d already forgotten its name—an hour earlier. Taurik had requested additional engineering help to repair damage to the power generators. His team had consisted of himself, a sociologist, and a security officer who professed to being completely unskilled with tools. As a result, Taurik had tried to handle the repairs while the other two kept watch at the main entrance.
Hoang had beamed down with Cobbins, a tall, painfully thin black woman from security, and Chafin, a gamma-shift maintenance worker. Immediately, Cobbins had gone to plan with her colleague from security while Chafin had ambled over to the sociologist, whose name Hoang couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter, since she had to concentrate on helping Taurik with the mess that was the main control panels. A mob had managed to get past the local peace officers. Their rampage through the building had caused a cascade effect that robbed the city of light and power. Fortunately, the weather was warm, so heat wasn’t an immediate issue.
While Taurik had set to work deep within the machinery, Hoang had clambered up a ladder and begun checking connections between the control panels and the generators. Things seemed fine; no one had bothered to climb this high just to cause trouble. However, several connections had been jarred loose, spoiling the alignment, and she was working with the spanner to set things aright.
“Do you require assistance?”
“No thanks, Taurik,” she called out. “One of the lines sparked. I’ve got it tightened down.”
“But your spanner is still on the ground.”
“I improvised.” She grinned and held up a different tool, similar in length to the spanner.
“It is not recommended,” he said dryly.
“No, but it sure beat climbing back down and then back up just to tighten this up. Besides, I’m done up here. I was about to come down anyway.”
“Acknowledged.” Without another look up, he turned and resumed his work. By then, the others had realized they were in no danger and resumed their posts. Cobbins felt that all doorways should be manned until the sensitive work was done. Chafin took the doorway least likely to be used while Cobbins took the main entrance. While they watched the streets, the security team tidied up the place, collecting the debris into one area.
Hoang climbed down and put her hands on her hips, staring at the control panels. With many of the interfaces shattered, she could either create new temporary interfaces, just to give the controllers something to work with when they returned to maintain the facility, or simply jury-rig everything to run at a steady cycle until new panels could be properly fabricated. On the Enterprise, she knew La Forge would prefer interfaces that would enable him to control the flow. For a city, there was less of a varied need for power. She had charts that showed the peak use periods, so she could rig everything with a timer and the machinery would virtually run itself, allowing the staff to rebuild or help elsewhere. Neither solution was elegant, but to her mind, it didn’t matter. Once they left, the building would be vulnerable again, and who was to say the mob wouldn’t return and destroy things all over again?
No, better to get it up and running in a steady state, leaving the fine-tuning to the local engineers. That decided, she reached into her tool kit and withdrew a padd with a complete set of schematics of the station. There were wiring charts that enabled her to understand where she could reroute power, and she lost herself in thought as solutions presented themselves. A small part of her mind appreciated the work, the distraction from the more exacting problem of replacing the plasma injector and from her personal troubles.
Her brief conversations with Counselor Troi over the last few days had forced her to look at the life she was leading and to question her career
choices. Having made the decision to leave Earth and serve on the Enterprise, she didn’t wish to reevaluate it, but sure enough, she was doing just that. And by thinking of Earth, she was reminded that the bodies of her family were back there, the remains reduced to a few ounces of ash kept in ceramic urns kindly provided by Starfleet. Her apartment had been destroyed in the Breen attack, so she didn’t even have a proper place to display them. They were carefully wrapped in silk cloth and locked away with her few other mementos in Starfleet storage until she found a new home. It never occurred to her to bring the urns with her aboard the Enterprise. They would only remind her of just how much she had lost during the war.
Carefully, she wrapped her index finger around a loose connection and pulled it, detaching it from the wrecked innards of the station. It was a dull green and frayed in spots. If there were time, it could be replaced, but Hoang suspected such niceties would have to wait. She reached in for the bright yellow wire that was its mate and heard Taurik working farther away. For not the first time, she idly wondered if she should ask him for some tips on keeping painful memories at bay, but once more rejected the idea. This was her life and she would have to deal with it in her own way.
With the two wires now exposed, she was able to reach in and carefully remove the damaged isolinear chips that controlled most of the power flow. These would have to be replaced, she realized, and carefully built a stack of them. So lost in the work was she that it only slowly dawned on her that there were new sounds in the facility. Angry sounds.
The mob was returning, she concluded, suppressing a shiver. She looked over her shoulder toward the main door and saw that Cobbins had taken charge, repositioning the few Starfleet personnel available.
“Keep working,” she snapped at Hoang with a powerful voice that belied her small frame. “Finish and we can get out of here. How long do you and Taurik need?”
“I’m not sure,” she said in a surprisingly small voice. It was a voice she didn’t want to hear anymore.
“Well, keep at it!” Without waiting for a response, she jogged toward a supply closet, looking for something.
Hoang continued to work, forcing herself to focus on each chip as she removed it, inspecting it for flaws and adding the chip to the growing stack. There were far more damaged chips than she expected, which implied a deeper problem within the control station.
Despite the work at hand, she paused for several moments and listened to the noise outside, finally recognizing it as similar to the sounds of panic she heard in the streets of San Francisco, when the Breen ships came to rain fire and death. Her fingers twitched at the memory, losing their grip on a chip. It tumbled to the concrete floor, shattering on impact.
Beverly hated waiting. She had waited for Jack to come back from his mission, but he had never returned. She had waited for Wesley to come back from his journey with the Traveler, only to have him make a brief visit and vanish again. She was waiting for this damned mission to end so she could talk to Jean-Luc about her future. And right now, she was waiting for him to summon her to his ready room and make his decision known.
After leaving the captain’s conference, she had checked with the nurses on the status of the few patients remaining in sickbay. With violence escalating on the planet, she was more than a little surprised to see so few serious injuries among the crew. Like the other department heads, she hadn’t stopped a single crewmember from volunteering to go planetside and help out. But with so many inexperienced people below, she had naturally estimated a higher incidence of injuries.
That left her with little to do until the decision came. So, she sat at her desk and began completing patient reports and delved into the paperwork that was so vital to future needs but so deadly dull in the present. Whatever dent she could make, she knew, would be helpful in the days ahead.
And yet, she continued to feel uncertain. Rarely had she and Picard been on opposite sides of a debate, and this disagreement came at a time when she was thinking of moving away from him—no, away from the ship. She knew Starfleet Medical offered a lot of opportunities and would give her access to colleagues she rarely saw in the flesh. Still, the Enterprise remained in the forefront of exploration, encountering more new life-forms and more cosmic conundrums than could ever be experienced on a single planet. And the ship had become her home.
So lost in thought was she that it took the sound of a throat-clearing cough to make her look up. Picard stood there, a sympathetic look on his face. He took a seat opposite her and waited for her full attention.
She saw the answer in his eyes. The set of his firm jaw.
“You’re ordering me to introduce my cure,” she said quietly.
He nodded. “I’ve been through the arguments several times, Beverly. Clearly, this planet and its people do not have the luxury of time. You will give them that time and let them live.”
“But live what kind of life? Emotionally and creatively stunted?”
“Until now, they were happy and proud. That should be the same when this is over,” he said. “The Federation opened their eyes to one problem, and you are giving them the time to decide their fates for themselves.”
“When the new plant life is introduced into the environment, it needs to be as pervasive as the liscom. We’ve already determined that eradicating that plant was impractical. The same will be true for this plant. What choice are we really giving them?”
Picard folded his hands on her desk, leaning forward. His voice was that of a captain making a hard choice, and she felt some sympathy for the position she helped put him in. “The choice to take a long-term approach to their planet. I keep coming back to that. It’s not for you or me or even the Federation to decide. They can keep your solution or systematically eradicate it. But they will be choosing for themselves, as it should be.”
“But they have tasted these emotions,” she countered. “Who knows how this will affect their future?”
“Not us, certainly,” he agreed in a sympathetic voice. “But you’re offering them a future, which is more than they’ll have if we do nothing. Have the simulations been double-checked?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied, putting on her business voice. “Moq is certain we have it right.”
“Begin synthesizing the compound. I’ll recall our best pilots and prepare the shuttles to begin seeding the world. I need to inform the Council. Do you want to be there to help explain matters?”
Crusher considered, mentally delegating work to Tropp and Moq, imagining having to explain the problem and the cure to the two Councils. Then she imagined Picard or Troi trying to do that and she nodded her head slowly. “I found the answer, I should be the one to explain it.”
“You sound like you’re admitting to a crime, which this is not,” he said with true sympathy in his voice.
“No matter how you explain this, Jean-Luc, I do not feel good about what we’re about to do,” she replied.
He gave her that sympathetic look again, which this time made her want to scream. Picard then got up, clearly done with his task. At least he had the courtesy to give her the bad news in her own office.
Chapter Seven
“WHAT’S THAT SMELL?”
Will was startled by the thick, husky voice. He turned his head and studied the waking form of El Bison El. The once-drunk man was stirring and studying his predicament.
“More importantly, I guess is: where am I?”
“You’re with me,” Kyle said. “Remember me?”
“Rugan. Ruken. Rucker.”
“Riker.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” the man said, his voice still slowed by drink. “You tied me up.”
“Didn’t want you to hurt yourself,” Kyle said without looking back.
Bison looked once more at his bindings, shrugged and tried to get comfortable. He winced once or twice and then focused on Will.
“Who’re you?”
“William Riker, first officer of the Starship Enterprise.”
“T
hat’s a long name. You guys related?”
“I’ve been asking myself that question for years,” Will said, earning him a disapproving look from his father. “Why have you been running?”
“I murdered Unoo.”
His voice implied remorse, which Will appreciated. Sympathetically, he nodded and said, “Yes, you did.” He poured some of the raktajino into a mug and handed it over. Bison had just enough mobility to accept the drink and reach it to his lips. He smelled it, wrinkling his nose and started to lower it. One glare from Will and he picked up the mug and took a sip.
“She was a pain in the ass. And this drink tastes like dirt.”
“And she deserved to die?”
“No, but she was still a pain.” Another sip. “And this mud needs a kick.”
“I can agree she was a pain,” Kyle added, and Will returned the angry look.
“So why did you grab me? To take me back for more experiments? Maybe carve out a bit of my brain this time? Well, this time there’ll be a fight. Count on it.”
Will and Kyle exchanged glances, the younger man concerned with the rage he saw in Bison’s eyes. He had expected remorse for the murder of Unoo, but there wasn’t even a hint of that now.
“We’ve come to take you with us,” Kyle said. “No more experiments. No more tests or drugs.”
“And I can take your word for it, eh? You, my jailer?”
Kyle didn’t let the barbs bother him and he remained steadfast in dealing with Bison.
“Take my word or not, you will come with us.”
Bison pulled on his restraints, careful not to spill his drink. “And where might we three be traipsing off to?”
“Back to the capital. To the chief medic.”
“Can’t come up with a good enough lie, can you? So it is back for more tests. Federation cretin. I have a good mind to bring legal action against you and your president.”
“He’s your president, too.” Kyle’s tone indicated that he wasn’t amused by Bison.
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