They seemed remarkably resilient…particularly considering the number of them that kept saying the same thing to her:
“Nice landing.”
This time it was Lieutenant Sheligo. Tall and gaunt, with some burn marks on his face from the crash that had not yet been attended to, Sheligo had practically bent his lanky frame in half to scrunch up on the ground with his wife and child. At that moment, he was idly stroking the hair of his still-trembling three-year-old, and he glanced up at Troi with a wan expression as he said it.
Troi had long since stopped taking it personally, or as some sort of criticism or commentary on her “inadequacy.” She had come to realize that, rather than a critique, it was a method of irreverent congratulations. The shaken crewmen still couldn’t quite believe that they had managed to survive the last fiery moments of the great starship’s demise. Commenting on her piloting skills was a way of laughing off the nearness of their deaths. They weren’t attacking her. They were thanking her.
At least, that was what she chose to believe.
And she said to Sheligo the same thing she’d started saying to everyone else who felt obliged to comment on the narrowness of their escape: “We walked away from it.”
“That we did,” agreed Sheligo, and gave her a thumbs-up gesture. It was, after all, a sensible philosophy that had existed since, very likely, the Wright brothers had their first crash. Any landing that one could walk away from was a good one.
She noticed Geordi La Forge approaching, and she smiled to him, nodding in greeting. La Forge asked her jauntily, “Get a souvenir?”
Deanna paused in her steps. “Pardon?”
“A souvenir.” He reached behind him and held up a piece of metal. It was blackened and scuffed; she thought it was from the ship’s hull, but she couldn’t be sure. “Everyone’s getting them. There’s certainly enough to go around. Lost a huge section of the underbelly in the skid. Pieces scattered all over the trench we left behind us.”
“Got any spares, Commander?” inquired Sheligo.
“Sure,” said Geordi. He reached into a satchel that he had slung around his shoulder and extracted a rounded piece. He flipped it to Sheligo, who caught it easily on the fly.
“It seems a bit…morbid,” allowed Troi. “Don’t you think?”
Sheligo turned the metal over in his hand, studying it. His little daughter stopped her trembling momentarily as her attention was caught by the sun’s reflection off the shard. He didn’t even appear to hear Deanna’s questions.
“Morbid?” said Geordi. “Why?”
“Well…what happened here, it was…most unfortunate,” she pointed out, picking the words as delicately as she could. “It was somewhat traumatic for all concerned. Aren’t you at all worried, Lieutenant,” she said to Sheligo, “that your daughter might find it a distressing reminder of what happened? And Geordi…you were the chief engineer. Won’t you find it upsetting to have a piece of the vessel that is no more?”
“Counselor,” Geordi replied easily, “are you kidding? This”—and he held up the piece of metal—“this is a good-luck charm. This is a reminder of a ship that held together and saved us all. A ship that I’m going to have fond memories of, no matter what her fate was. And a reminder, I guess, that—above all—she was still just a ship. A thing of metal and parts. But we’re still alive, and that’s a great way to be.”
“Certainly beats the alternative,” Sheligo commented.
At that, Deanna had to smile. “You know what, Geordi?” she said in even, good humor. “Sometimes I think that you missed your calling. Have you given thought to the joys of being a ship’s counselor?”
“I’ll take it under advisement. If you’ll excuse me…” he said as he headed off. Then he called over his shoulder, “Oh! Counselor!”
“Yes, Geordi?”
He grinned and gave a thumbs-up gesture. “Nice landing.”
She bowed slightly in an acceptance of the compliment that was both grudging and amused.
As she walked, she became more aware of the warmth of the sun upon her. Had they not happened to crash, uncontrolled, on this world, it might have made a credible location for shore leave. It was certainly pleasant enough, temperate and enjoyable. Would that the circumstances had been different.
No one else seemed to be in especially dire straits at that moment insofar as trauma counseling was concerned. She shouldn’t have been surprised, really. These crewmen of the former Enterprise, they were determined, hardy stock, and at present the fact that they were still breathing (or whatever was their preferred means of air circulation) was enough to see them through. Later on would come the delayed effects of survivor shock. There could be trembling, or sudden, startled screams in the middle of the night. Many of them, particularly the younger ones, would never be able to look upon a starship with the same sense of security that had always served them so well. They would always know that the protective shell between them and the unforgiving vacuum of space was much more fragile than they had previously thought. Oh, they’d known it intellectually, of course. But knowing it in one’s head was one thing. Knowing it because one’s heart was thudding with fear as one was scrambling to questionable safety in the ship’s saucer section while the rest of the vessel was on a countdown to doom…well, that was something very different.
And it wasn’t going to be her problem.
That was a hard realization for her. No one knew what was going to happen next. Obviously they would be reassigned. The question was, where were they going to be reassigned to? It was most unlikely that the entire crew complement of a thousand would simply be kept together, cooling their collective heels, until such time as Starfleet had a ship they could serve on as a unit. They would most likely be split up, sent off to whatever vessels most immediately required their presence. She’d spoken ever-so-briefly with Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and he had seemed confident that another Enterprise would be commissioned. But he had no idea when or where, of course.
The officers might…might…be kept as a group. There was no guarantee of that, but on the other hand, a captain with the weight of authority and long, proud history that Picard carried with him would very likely be able to get his wishes met. If he wanted to keep his command crew intact, he might well be able to do it. But there was no way that he was going to be able to keep a thousand people locked up, idle, while awaiting a new command.
She knew them, Deanna Troi did. Over the course of seven years, she had come to know each and every person on the Enterprise. Knew them with a familiarity and casual, emotional intimacy that she had never thought possible. There had been all manner of reactions from various crewpeople in their encounters with her. Some had approached her openly and eagerly, others had felt uncomfortable dealing with an empath who could sense and assess their innermost emotions. But one by one, they had all grown comfortable. Somehow it simply didn’t seem fair that, after all this time, she was going to lose her large and extended family.
She felt a slight choke in her throat and realized just how much all of this was upsetting her. Attuned to her unconscious needs, her body was already responding to the overwhelming emotion that was beginning to course through her. She was walking with quick, steady strides and was rapidly leaving behind the most crowded section of the temporary, makeshift encampment. She was distancing herself from the others so that they would not see her so disconcerted and at odds with herself.
She was, after all, supposed to be the source of strength, the emotional bulwark for the crew. There were some with whom she herself could relax, and by whom the counselor could herself be counseled. But Dr. Beverly Crusher was busy attending to all too many patients, Commander Will Riker was busy overseeing what might be salvageable from the wreckage of the Enterprise aside from pieces of scrap metal, and Worf…
Worf was…
…well…he was…he was so…Worf.
She sagged against a tree and her breast trembled slightly as she steadied herself. What she was wrestling
with at that moment was weakness. That was how Worf would see it. Who could blame him? To a degree, that’s how she saw it herself. And if there was one thing that Worf in specific and Klingons in general had a problem with, it was weakness.
Deanna had told herself that her relationship with Worf was a blessing to her for precisely that purpose. Associating with him gave her an increased sense of inner strength and determination. That was an extremely positive trait, and one that she was more than happy to acquire. It was not that she didn’t already consider herself a strong woman. But she never had to worry about lapsing into melancholy, or depression, or self-doubt, because if there was one thing that Worf valued above all, it was strength. She did not desire to show weakness to Worf, and in so doing, made herself stronger.
Except…
You’re not being yourself.
That nagging doubt was already beginning to gnaw at her, and she did not particularly appreciate it. She wanted to dismiss it out of hand. The fact was that couples—and she and Worf most definitely were a couple—always learned from each other. Learned and grew, taking the better part of each other (and occasionally the worse part) as their own. Worf’s Klingon stoicism, his unflappability, and his sheer, raw, powerful personality were all of benefit to Deanna Troi, and she valued their time together.
So why was it that there was just the slightest inkling of…doubt?
No. She shook it off. No, there was no doubt. She and Worf had come too far, worked too hard as a couple, to begin having second thoughts. They just…just felt right together. Yes, that was it. They felt right. And if there was one thing that Deanna Troi knew, it was feelings.
Except your own?
She had no idea what this annoying little voice was that persisted in making snide add-on comments and undercutting her confidence, but she couldn’t wait for this most annoying individual to go very far away and leave her to her indisputable happiness with…
“Worf?”
The last utter question came not as a result of her musing over the name of her beloved, but rather from what sounded like a rather familiar sound. It was a low, slightly animal growl. And in the depth of that animal growl, there was a word or two that sounded distinctly Klingonese. To be specific, they were Klingon profanities, which Deanna recognized all too readily and all too well.
And she was sensing something as well. Her empathic powers were anything but consistent; there were some races so alien to her that she was not able to get a reading off them at all. But Klingons were definitely not among that group. Their emotions were so close to the surface that she could have had a frontal lobotomy and still been able to read the average Klingon from half a mile away.
In this instance, what she was sensing was pain. Pure, agonizing, gut-wrenching pain. Not only that, but she also sensed an almost single-minded determination to ignore that same pain, to push it away as far as possible.
“Worf?” she called again. The voice had come from a patch of the forest nearby that was particularly dense. She was having trouble seeing. “Worf?” she said once more.
She heard another muttered Klingon profanity, and this time she recognized the origin of the throat that uttered it, if not the literal meaning. It was definitely not the Klingon security chief who was hiding somewhere within the shielding depths of the forest. Rather, it was his young son.
“Alexander!” she called.
“Go away,” came back the tight snarl.
“Alex—!”
“I said go away!” came his voice again, filled with both agony and impatience. “What part of ‘go away’ didn’t you hear?”
For just a moment she considered heeding the youth’s pleadings, but then she promptly rejected the notion. Clearly Alexander was in distress, and she would do him no favors by ignoring whatever it was that the lad was going through. She started to push her way through the brush.
“Dammit, Deanna!” Alexander protested, but after that he fell silent, as if realizing that his protests weren’t getting through to her and it would be less than dignified for him to keep repeating instructions that weren’t being heeded.
The area was heavily shaded, and it took Deanna’s eyes a moment to readjust. There was a sharp, tangy aroma from the trees that she found positively invigorating. But whatever benefits she might have garnered from the pleasantness of her surroundings quickly evaporated when she saw the dire straits that Alexander was in.
She could tell by the way in which his leg was twisted at an odd angle that the limb was broken. His trousers had a streak of blood across the upper thigh. He had stripped off the right sleeve of his shirt and was endeavoring to bind the break…to create, with the help of a nearby sturdy branch, a sort of makeshift splint.
Alexander had grown in recent months. Indeed, his development had been nothing short of astounding. Worf had sanguinely claimed that that was fairly standard for young Klingon males. Once they reached a certain age in the maturation process, they underwent a growth spurt that covered, within one year, the amount of development that would normally consume two to three years or more in a human male. It was as if, once a young Klingon survived the normal travails of extreme youth—thereby proving himself worthy of survival—the body then hastened development so that the Klingon would be less vulnerable, and for a shorter period.
At that particular moment, though, Alexander—who by Earth standards was bordering on adolescence—looked all too vulnerable. He was just reluctant to show it.
“What happened?” she gasped.
“I got trampled,” grumbled Alexander.
“Trampled?”
“When people are running for their lives,” Alexander observed, “they tend to run over whatever’s in their way…particularly anyone shorter than they are. Don’t worry, I’m taking care of it.”
“ ‘Taking care of it’? Alexander, you need medical attention. And your father…”
“My father,” grunted Alexander, “was busy. Hold on a moment.”
“What are you going to—?”
He had taken a firm grip on his upper leg, and then Alexander gritted his teeth and suddenly twisted the leg around. He tried to hold back the yell of pain, but was only able to contain it for a moment before a howl erupted from his lips. Deanna, her empathy on full boil, gasped in sympathetic pain. When he made the abrupt movement, she could actually hear the sound of the bone snapping into place.
His eyes rolled back into the top of his head, and for a moment she thought that Alexander was going to faint. But then his eyes became twin orbs of glistening steel and he willed himself to remain conscious. “Do not,” he said between gritted teeth, “ask me if I’m all right.”
“Are you—” The question came so naturally to her that she had to bite off the inquiry in midsentence. She tried her best to ignore her own roiling emotions as she said in as authoritative a voice as she could, “We have to get you to your father.”
“I told you, he was busy. Much too busy to worry about me.”
“Alexander, that’s unfair.”
“Yes, I know.”
“He was on the bridge! He couldn’t abandon his post—”
“His post.” Alexander made no effort to hide his contempt. “The ship had a warp-core breach. People were running everywhere. He made no effort to look for me, no effort to make sure that I was safe. I know why. It’s perfectly obvious why.”
“Oh?”
“He didn’t care whether I was safe or not.”
“Alexander,” she sighed, “that’s absurd. Your father cares about you. Is this why you crawled off here with your injured leg? To punish him somehow? To prove something?”
“This,” he informed her, “is the Klingon way. If a warrior is injured…he tends to it himself. If he can stand, if he can fight, then he deserves to continue. If he cannot tend to himself, then he becomes a burden on others, a drain on resources.”
“Your father taught you that?”
“Of course.”
“Fine. Then let
me teach you something. A very old saying, and it’s not Betazoid. It’s an Earth saying. You remember Earth, where your grandparents live.”
“Of course I remember,” Alexander said with impatience. “I lived there for a year, after all. They were…they were good people…for humans,” he amended quickly.
“Yes, well, the Earth saying is that no man is an island. Do you know what that means?”
Alexander was busy affixing his leg to the makeshift splint and barely seemed to be listening. “Beyond the obvious, that no man is an island any more than he is a rock or a bush or a continent…not really, no.”
“It means,” she said patiently, “that we all need each other. That none of us is completely self-sufficient.”
He looked up at her. “And it was an Earthman who said this.”
“Yes. The quote in full,” and she paused, pulling it from her memory, “is ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ ”
“Done?” asked Alexander.
“Yes!” Troi said in surprise. “John Donne!”
“Who’s John?” Alexander clearly looked confused.
“John?”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care if this ‘John’is done. I was asking if you’re done.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know whether to be amused or abashed. “Yes…”
“Good.” He lay back, resting his head on the ground. “Then I’d appreciate it if you’d go away and let me lie here with my leg throbbing in peace.”
“No. I’m going to summon help.”