But not just yet.
“How is everyone coping?” he asked.
“Medically, most of the crew appears to be fine. Dr. Crusher and Nurse Ogawa were cleared very quickly, and they’ve been helping in the sickbays on McKinley. So far everyone’s been in the clear. They’re trying to process our people through the rest of the tests as quickly as possible. They’ve even got a dozen or so EMH programs running. I’m glad we aren’t forced to use one of those on ourship very often. They don’t quite have Beverly’s bedside manner.”
Picard crossed over and sat behind his desk, sinking into his chair. Riker continued. “Worf has to depart for Deep Space 9 as soon as possible, perhaps first thing in the morning. Things are getting very tense with the Dominion, and they need him back there. Chief O’Brien’s going to have his hands full finishing the repairs on the Defiantthat the McKinley techs started. Data’s eye and skin have been repaired. And, understandably, Deanna’s been especially busy since we returned; she’s coping well with the workload . . . though she swears she’ll never touch a drop of tequila again.”
“Pardon?”
Riker grinned for perhaps the first time in days. “She got a little drunk down there with Cochrane, sir. But I can assure you it was purely in the line of duty.”
“What was it like?” Picard asked suddenly, leaning forward. Riker looked at him quizzically. “The Phoenix.What was it like? I got to . . . I touchedit, but you . . . you rodein it! You and Geordi were partof it. Mankind’s first warp flight!”
Riker’s demeanor loosened a bit, and he focused his eyes on the windows, out into space. “I don’t know if I can describe it. I’ve never felt anything so unsettling since flight training at the Academy, and this was even worse. I wasn’t sure that we weren’t going to blow apart at any second, that the ship wasn’t going to scatter me through space nearly three hundred years before I was even born. The whole time this song was playing, earsplittingly loud, and my teeth were vibrating. And we saw the Enterpriseout of the window and . . .”
Riker paused, as though collecting his thoughts. “We take it for granted, Jean‑Luc.” He rarely called the captain by his first name, but at this moment it seemed to come naturally. “We move among the stars every day at high warp, surrounded by all the comforts of a posh hotel. But being there, jammed into that little cockpit, with my teeth chattering and my ears ringing as we just barely made warp one . . . It was the fastest I’ve ever moved in my life.”
The two officers sat in silence then, Riker staring into the darkness of space, Picard closing his eyes and clasping his hands together.
After a brief time, Riker sniffed, and wiped at his nose. Picard opened his eyes again, as Riker cleared his throat. “Geordi is working with the McKinley crews on cleanup, but I’m going to have to order him to take some down time. Barclay is . . . well, I think Barclay may be asking for a transfer off the ship. He seems ill‑at‑ease with everything that’s happened. You know how he is with people, anyhow. I think he may just want to take on a less exciting atmosphere for a while.”
Picard’s mouth pursed into a grim smile. “There are times when I think that might be the best choice myself.”
Riker hesitated, then handed the padd to his captain. He didn’t seem to want to acknowledge its contents; neither did Picard. “This is the final casualty report. We lost seventeen back on Earth from the ASRV landings. One hundred and forty‑eight crewpersons were assimilated by the Borg. All of them are now dead. Those that weren’t killed in combat–or as a consequence of the plasma coolant that flooded engineering–apparently couldn’t survive the death of the queen.”
Picard nodded without speaking, remembering the malfunctioning drones who fell around him and the hideous sight of the mottle‑skinned woman dissolving before his eyes.
“Do you think we’ve seen the last of the Borg? Now that their queen is dead?”
Picard sighed heavily. “We can always hope. But I don’t think so, Number One.”
Riker continued his oral report. “The bodies of those who were assimilated have been quarantined to the Borg Sciences unit for study. Finally, twenty‑five people were killed in combat against Borg drones. Total loss: one hundred‑ninety crewmembers.”
Picard looked down at the padd in his hand, frowning. The names scrolled by slowly, in no particular order. Carter, Lynch, Batson, Nelson, Eiger, M’Rvyn, Tret, Kewlan, Rixa, Porter. . . all of them dead. Not just dead, but assimilated, thendead. They couldn’t even be properly buried until they had been taken apart by Starfleet scientists. And given some of the secrets which he knew some subsections of Starfleet were capable of holding, Picard wasn’t even sure that the crewmembers’ families would everreceive their kin’s remains.
As if to underscore this thought, the padd scrolled down to another name. Hawk, Sean Liam (Lieutenant).He, too, knew about some of Starfleet’s darkest secrets. Or rather hadknown.
“Were we able to recover Lieutenant Hawk’s body?” Picard asked, almost too softly for Riker to hear.
“No, sir. We’re assuming that it stayed in low Earth orbit for some time after we left 2063. Data thinks that atmospheric drag would have brought it down eventually. It . . . would have burned up then.”
Picard shut his eyes tightly, remembering the scene. He, Worf, and Hawk had all been in their environmental suits, their magnetized boots allowing them to traverse the ventral side of the Enterprise’s hull. They had just about freed the maglock servo clamps for the particle emitter dish–in their attempt to stop the Borg from using it as an interplexing beacon to summon other Borg cubes–when Hawk was caught by a Borg drone. Shortly thereafter, with Borg nanoprobes creeping through his bloodstream, controlling him and necrotizing his flesh, Hawk had tried to stop Picard from completing the command sequence to free the final clamp. Worf had then blasted Hawk with his phaser rifle, sending the young lieutenant tumbling away into the void of space.
Picard remembered the look on Hawk’s face, as the last vestiges of his humanity fought against the Borg nanoprobes coursing through him.
Even if Hawk had burned up in the atmosphere, Picard doubted that that was what had ended his life. Assuming that Worf’s phaser blast hadn’t killed him, the lieutenant had most likely suffocated in his environment suit, frightened and alone as his humanity was torn from him. Picard shuddered. He knew what it was like to have his consciousness subsumed within the hive mind of the collective. After the Borg queen had been destroyed, what then? What had Hawk thought in the last few hours of his life, separated from both humanity and the collective?
“Damn,” said Picard softly, putting the padd down on the table. Riker stood and leaned forward, momentarily putting a supportive hand on his captain’s shoulder, and then exited the room without a word.
The padd blinked. Hawk, Sean Liam (Lieutenant). Hawk, Sean Liam (Lieutenant).
Such a loss. So enthusiastic and passionate. So much promise . . .
Hawk had been on the ship slightly less than a year, transferring with a group of others onto the newly commissioned Enterprise‑E.It didn’t take long for him to be assigned to the conn during alpha watch. He was bright and fast, and well‑liked by all. He had said how pleased he was to serve aboard Starfleet’s flagship, which he considered a special honor since he was only a few years out of the Academy. But that time had been long enough for Hawk to forge a personal relationship with a man whom he loved, long enough for him to rise in the ranks, long enough for him to reach his own personal crossroad.