The Sky's The Limit Part 36

You are chosen to take over the s.h.i.+p, by Admiral Satie's expressed wish. Far be it from me to object; after all, it was I who let her down. I could have taken the s.h.i.+p out there, beyond the fringes of known s.p.a.ce, and yet I know, deep down inside me, that I wouldn't have enjoyed it even half as much as you are bound to do. As I have said before, I am an engineer at heart, always have been, and the prospect of leaving my work at the yards behind for years, perhaps even decades, of exploration in deep s.p.a.ce left me cold, I'm sorry to say. It's an important job and a great one, I am sure, but it is not my job. It's an honor to have been considered as the captain of the Enterprise, but I know that it's an honor reserved for someone like you. If there is anything being an engineer has taught me, it's that there is always a best tool for any job-and that for any tool there is always a perfect job. I know what my perfect job is. It is not command.

The other part of the reason I chose to disappoint Admiral Satie that way was my desire to be with my family. From the beginning, my wife made it very clear that she would not go into s.p.a.ce with me, no matter how long I was gone. The Enterprise would've been big enough for the crew's families to accompany them on their first mission, but that wasn't enough of an incentive for my wife, Solveig. She is a public works manager, and there is little call for such a person on a stars.h.i.+p in the depths of s.p.a.ce. As important as my work in Starfleet has been to me, my wife and my children are more important, they are my everything, so I said good-bye to the Enterprise and all the people on board, knowing full well that I stood a very good chance of never seeing either of them again in my life.

When he had first read the letter, some fifteen years ago, Jean-Luc had had great difficulty believing it. At the time, Jean-Luc had wondered if the man was merely a coward. He'd heard of the accident with the torpedo launcher that had killed twelve engineers during construction. Had the man lost his nerve for s.p.a.ce travel? Did the unknown frighten him so much? Back then, Jean-Luc had almost considered him a failure as a Starfleet officer.

And to be so tied to family! Jean-Luc had basically destroyed his relations.h.i.+p with his father for the sake of Starfleet and outer s.p.a.ce, and his relations.h.i.+p with his brother Robert had not fared much better. When he'd first met Will, he'd told him, "I'm not a family man," and that had most certainly been true. For most of his life, Jean-Luc had maintained a careful distance from family ties. Viewed through that lens fifteen years ago, Halloway's stated reasons had seemed flimsy at best.

He had reread the letter only once since that first time, and as on that occasion, he was struck by the foolishness of his younger self-this time, even more so. Estranged from his family, of course he'd thought he could do without it. But time had proved the thoughts of that younger, more arrogant man untrue. There had been the encounter with the Ressikan probe, where Jean-Luc had lived the life of a man named Kamin for thirty-five years in less than half an hour. There he had married and had two children-not to mention one grandchild-and though he had been glad to return to his own life, the part of the experience that had always stayed with him was the joy he had felt at seeing "his" two children grow from infanthood to maturity, together with the sadness that he had never been able to experience all that firsthand.

Not to mention that without his brother, he doubted he could have ever pulled through the ordeal the Borg collective had put him through, when they had a.s.similated him and turned him into Locutus. Robert had watched over him afterward, helping him regain his confidence in himself and his abilities.

And then...there had been the fire. After his reconciliation with Robert, he'd vowed to spend more time with his family, but sadly the duties of the Enterprise had meant it never came to pa.s.s. Robert and his son Rene had both perished before their time, and Jean-Luc had never been so aware of what they had brought to his life until then.

Now, fifteen years after he had first read the letter, Jean-Luc could understand why Halloway had attached so much importance to his family. It was an opinion Jean-Luc himself had come to in the end.

The man had hardly been a coward or a failure.

Actually, do I have any way of knowing that? Beyond that letter, Jean-Luc had no idea what had happened to Thomas Halloway. His early, casual dismissal of the man had meant that he had never again given him much thought. He couldn't even recall seeing his name in a Fleet bulletin over the years, or on one of the promotions lists-or, heaven forbid, casualty lists. But then, there were a lot of names on those lists.

He had had one encounter with his predecessor, though, in a way. Once, Q had shown Jean-Luc another world-possibly another time-line-where he'd never ascended to the captaincy. He'd still been stationed on the EnterpriseD, but as a lowly lieutenant j.g. in the sciences division. At the time, he had focused on his own problems, but one detail of that other world had stuck with him: the captain of the Enterprise had been Thomas Halloway. That, sadly enough, had been the closest he'd ever come to meeting him: being on the same s.h.i.+p in an alternate reality. That experience had caused him to reread Halloway's letter for the first time, but even then, it had never occurred to Picard to find out what Halloway was really up to.

"Computer," he ordered, "access Starfleet personnel records. Halloway, Thomas Bhupender."

The computer chimed in compliance, and Halloway's service file replaced Jean-Luc's barely started letter on the display screen. After completing construction of the EnterpriseD, Halloway had continued to work on a number of projects at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. First, he had worked with the Advanced Stars.h.i.+p Design Bureau on the design of the new Andromeda-cla.s.s explorers, applying the lessons learned with the Galaxy cla.s.s.

Then he'd gone on to supervise the construction of the Melbourne, the first of a new breed of Nebula-cla.s.s stars.h.i.+ps incorporating some radical design changes. The Melbourne had still been under construction when the call had gone out for all available Starfleet vessels to convene at Wolf 359-the Borg were coming for Earth.

Though the Melbourne was merely five weeks from flight, awaiting only a few tweaks and a shakedown cruise, she hadn't yet had a commanding officer a.s.signed. In fact, as Jean-Luc knew, Will had been offered the command and turned it down, causing a delay as Starfleet looked elsewhere.

With no one else to a.s.sume command and answer the signal, Halloway had given the order to prepare the Melbourne for launch. a.s.sembling a skeleton crew out of dockworkers and engineers, he had run the s.h.i.+p through its launch preparations as quickly as was humanly possible and taken her out into s.p.a.ce, speeding toward Wolf 359...and certain death.

For as everyone had known at the time, no s.h.i.+p returned unscathed from a confrontation with the Borg. Everything in their path fell before them, no exceptions. And that included thirty-nine of the forty s.h.i.+ps Admiral Hanson managed to a.s.semble at Wolf 359.

Like many of those vessels, the Melbourne had been lost with all hands. Destroyed before her ragtag crew had even had a chance to make it to the escape pods, because the Borg had had the knowledge of Jean-Luc Picard on their side.

In a way, he had killed Thomas Halloway.

It was a guilt he had felt many times since that terrible experience. It was technically not his fault, but as Locutus, he had caused the Borg to destroy so many innocent lives. It was a guilt he had come to terms with-as much as that was possible-but coming into contact with the deaths that had happened that day always caused those pangs to return, however irrationally.

Attached to the report on Wolf 359 was a note from one of the workers at Utopia Planitia on that day, a young civilian technician named Isaakerr: I was working on the bridge that day, connecting the main viewscreen up to the s.h.i.+p's systems. Captain Halloway was in the first officer's chair-he always refused to use the captain's chair, saying it was reserved for the man who would really be captain-going over some status reports. Then the call came in.

Halloway went into the ready room, a somber look on his face. When he came back out five minutes later, it looked as though he might've been crying-but I was the only one who could see it. When he turned to face the rest of the bridge crew, it was with a look of grim determination and nothing else. He immediately gave the orders necessary to get the s.h.i.+p ready for launch, cutting corners I didn't think it was possible to cut. The Melbourne had been armed, at least, and she could still be used as a weapon against the Borg.

He gave all the Starfleet personnel the option to stay on board or remain in the dockyard-most stayed, of course-but he ordered all the civilians off the s.h.i.+p immediately. I told him I wanted to finish connecting the viewscreen first. If he was going into battle, he'd need to be able to see what he was doing. He smiled and nodded, telling me to get a move on. He had a battle to fight.

I finished in what was probably record time, and as I was stepping into the turbolift, he came up from behind and grabbed my arm. "I want you to do one thing for me," he said. "If I don't come home today, find my wife and children and say good-bye to them for me. I'm doing this to keep them safe, and I won't let anyone hurt them. Tell them I love them."

I nodded my a.s.sent, and he released my arm. I stumbled into the turbolift, and as the doors shut behind me, tears began to well up in my eyes. I'd always considered Captain Halloway pretty likable and a good boss, but on that day he had been extraordinary. There had been an authority in his voice I had never heard before: he had a job to do, and by G.o.d he was going to do it, even if it wasn't the job he had expected.

He did his job that day. And in tribute to him, so did I.

No coward, then. Jean-Luc found it hard to believe he'd ever felt as poorly of the man as he had. By his own admission, Halloway had been ill suited to command, yet when the time had come to do it, he had done it, and done it well by all accounts.

Jean-Luc was not surprised he hadn't noticed the other captain's name on the casualty lists from Wolf 359. There had been so many dead at that battle-eleven thousand-that he had never been able to truly read them all. Once again, he had come so close to meeting Thomas Halloway, and yet he had failed.

But they had certainly left their marks on each other's lives.

Picard's eyes were once again drawn to the letter on the padd he held in his lap-the last wisdom of a dead man, evidently. Halloway had refused command of the Enterprise because he did not consider himself an explorer, did not want to spend what could quite feasibly be twenty years of his life exploring the vastness of s.p.a.ce.

But he wouldn't have. Despite her original charter to explore the unknown galactic ma.s.s beyond Deneb IV, the EnterpriseD had been forced to turn back only a couple of weeks into her journey, to answer a distress call from one of the science vessels a.s.signed to tail the Enterprise and follow up her discoveries in-depth. The ensuing crisis was taken care of, but the backtracking had put the Enterprise in a position to be the closest s.h.i.+p to Ligon II when Starfleet found itself in need of a vital vaccine from that planet.

From then on, the Enterprise had somehow never managed to make it back out to the Denebian galactic ma.s.s, being sent from mission to mission within explored s.p.a.ce or at least very near it. Starfleet Command had promised to get the s.h.i.+p's mission back on track, but they had come to view the s.h.i.+p as too useful to send away for any length of time. Jean-Luc had protested, of course, and the s.h.i.+p had had its moments "out there," but that hypothetical twenty-year mission with no starbases in sight had never happened, much to his disappointment.

If Halloway had taken command of the Enterprise, he wouldn't ever have been too far from his family. The Halloways had just bought a house on Earth's moon when he'd written the letter-and during the Enterprise's seven years in s.p.a.ce, Jean-Luc could immediately recall at least four times she had ended up returning to Earth!

And if Halloway had taken command of the Enterprise, he wouldn't have died at Wolf 359, as evidenced by that other time-line Q had shown him. With no Jean-Luc Picard to a.s.sume command in his stead, Halloway would have been forced to continue in command and so wouldn't have died on the Melbourne. Jean-Luc wondered if that Halloway had experienced what he had in his time as commander of the Enterprise. Had he been a.s.similated by the Borg and forced to lead the destruction of his own people? Had he been rescued by the best crew-the best friends-a man had ever had? Jean-Luc would never know.

But he would have lived.

Yet now, in this reality, in this world, Thomas Halloway was dead, and Jean-Luc Picard would never be able to meet the man, much to his regret; it now appeared that he had made a mistake in his early dismissal of the man. He would've liked to talk to his family-Starfleet records showed that his wife and children were all still alive, still residing within transporter distance on Earth's moon. But experience had taught him how those who had lost family at Wolf 359 tended to react to the man who had once been Locutus of Borg.

Halloway hadn't been a coward of any sort-just a man who had done what he believed was right, despite the pressures that had been acting upon him. Jean-Luc had come to that realization too late, unfortunately. But perhaps there was something he could still take away from his strange not-quite-a-relations.h.i.+p with the other man.

Halloway had done what needed to be done up until the day he died, and so could Jean-Luc. Perhaps he had messed up at the Ba.s.sen Rift, perhaps the battle with s.h.i.+nzon had taken too large a toll, perhaps he had frozen in place. But that was no reason to stay stopped, to give up now. It would be a grave disrespect to the memories of Data and all the others who had pa.s.sed away over the years to do that. Halloway had kept on going no matter what, and so should he.

His eyes flicked over the closing paragraphs of the letter one last time.

My brief perusal of your file tells me that you have yet to form a family of your own-an unfortunate decision, if you pardon me for saying so. I don't claim to know the reasons why you chose to stay alone; indeed, I don't even know if it was your choice at all. Nevertheless, what I want to say is that a man alone is in bad company, as the saying goes. My favorite writer once wrote that "the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack." It applies not only to animals but also to everybody else. Only in the company of others do we have the chance to fully realize our potential.

Maybe you know these things, maybe you do not. I hope I'm not coming across as patronizing. But as the time for the launch of the Enterprise, with me as her captain, grew closer and closer, I came to realize them for myself. We must all do what it is we are called to do, regardless of what outside factors may be pus.h.i.+ng us in other directions. For me, this is engineering-designing and constructing the craft that take us into the void. For you, this is apparently the command of over a thousand men and women, the discovery of new life, the exploration of deep s.p.a.ce.

Do not waver on your true path. Follow it, no matter what doubts may plague you. But try not to walk that path alone.

Jean-Luc had had occasion to regret over the years that he had never formed a family. But perhaps he had forged one-Data, Will, Deanna, Beverly, Geordi, Worf. If there was anything he had learned in the past harrowing year aboard the Enterprise, from the first problems at Rashanar to the last battle in the Ba.s.sen Rift, it was that he did have a family. They had stood by him when the rest of Starfleet had seemingly deserted him, when the Enterprise had undergone some of her toughest trials, as long as Jean-Luc had served aboard her or her predecessor. And as Halloway had told him, he had drawn his strength from them. And, he hoped, he had provided a source of strength to them.

They might be scattering across the galaxy, but they were still his family.

And there are certain obligations one has to family. Jean-Luc closed the window containing the service record of Thomas Halloway, bringing that impossible letter back on the screen. He cleared what was there and readied himself to start over.

Yet first there was one other thing he could do to honor the memory of his fellow captain. Halloway had not a.s.sumed captaincy of the Enterprise because he believed himself unsuited to exploring the universe. But unfortunately, the stars.h.i.+p had done precious little of that over the past fifteen years. It was high time that he rectified that.

"Computer, begin recording a message." The computer chirped its acknowledgment. "Admiral Janeway, this is Captain Picard. I'd like to set up an appointment to discuss the Enterprise's next a.s.signment with you sometime soon. Personally, I believe it's time for the Enterprise to get back to the purpose for which she was designed-exploration. You told me I'd had too many of the 'easy' a.s.signments recently; well, I'd like to get back to the hard ones."

Maybe that would serve to get the Enterprise back "out there." He could only hope. But that was a matter for another time. He ordered the computer to transmit the message to Starfleet Command, and then turned back to his letter.

Dear Will, It is an old tradition in Starfleet that captains whose executive officers are promoted to captaincies of their own pa.s.s on some of their own collected wisdom, usually in the form of a letter. I'm not sure, however, how much "wisdom" I am qualified to pa.s.s on, but I can do my best. No one ever wrote me such a letter, but that does not mean that I can't perform the service for you. I must honestly admit that there were days I thought this time would never come, and I am glad that you now feel ready to move on to the next step in your career.

As pleased as I am that you have finally accepted captaincy-especially of such a fine s.h.i.+p as the t.i.tan-I'm even more pleased on the occasion of your recent marriage. One of my greatest regrets is that I have spent much of my life alone. We all need someone to share our lives with-in the time I spent living the life of Kamin, one of his greatest joys was that everything that happened to him, from the birth of his children to the end of the world, there was someone to share with. In Deanna, you definitely have such a person.

But we all have family in other places as well, myself included. Something I've come to realize is that you, Will, are my family. And so is Deanna, and Worf, and Geordi, and Beverly...and Data. No matter what may happen to us, as we now spread out to walk our own paths, we will always have one another. I consider you one of my best friends-we've certainly come a long way from that first awkward encounter in my ready room where I spent most of the time complaining about children! Even as you and Deanna depart on the t.i.tan for the distant reaches of the Gum Nebula, I hope you remember that. Whatever you need, I will be here for you. And I am sure you feel the same way in return.

Another thing to remember, Will: follow the path that is yours. Do not let the doubts of others-or yourself-get in the way of that. Like myself, you've always been an explorer at heart, and you're embracing that by a.s.suming command of the t.i.tan, a s.h.i.+p designed for long-term missions of exploration, much like our old Enterprise was. It's a path we've strayed from over the years, and I am glad that you'll be returning to it-it's my hope to return to it soon myself.

It's an easy thing to say, of course, not always an easy thing to do. Remember Data and the ridicule he experienced over the years in his quest to become human? The indignities he sometimes suffered at the hands of those who did not understand? And yet, he always continued forward, never doubting what he was meant to do. Over the past year he especially suffered, given the removal of his emotion chip, which we saw as a major setback. But Data was never deterred-he simply absorbed the new circ.u.mstance and moved forward. In the end, he gave his life for what he believed in, embracing one of the most human characteristics of all, our capacity for self-sacrifice. It is an honor I'm not certain I was worthy of, but I will respect what he did for me by doing my best to live up to it.

There is another man whose life encompa.s.sed these values. He always did what he thought was right, like Data, from birth right up to the end of life. I'd like to tell you about him. Heaven knows it's a story that cannot be told enough.

Let me tell you about the life of Thomas Bhupender Halloway...