Star Trek - TOS - BEST DESTINY by Diane Carey

Author:Diane Carey [Diane Carey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-08-06T16:28:10.733000+00:00

able almost immediately betrayed him this time just by existing.

No shock. Just raw, unpadded devastation.

At his side, demanding composure of himself, Robert

April

labored through his own grief, clutched to the core by the

sound of his friend's misery.

He arranged himself off his aching knee and sat down

beside

George, against the tilted wall.

"Jimmy didn't want to watch the game from the

bench," he said

pacifically. "He knew we meant to sacrifice

ourselves for him and

for any who might stumble this way in the future.

He's the same

blood and thunder as you are

...

a prodigality you should be proud

of tonight." He swallowed dryly and added, "We must

be proud of

them both tonight."

Together he and George gazed across the dim hold at

the white

spacesuit and the motionless girl whose face was

fortuitously

turned away from them. Her chest moved up and down in

carefully

regulated shallow respiration.

At least she wasn't awake to know what had

happened to Jimmy,

to know that her sacrifice had been for nothing.

Across the deck, Carlos Florida looked also,

then turned away

and huddled even closer to his monitors,

doing a job that a few

small hours ago had been Jimmy's.

The hold divided into private places.

Robert allowed himself a cemetery sigh. "He

knew Veronica

risked her life for him, and perhaps hoped to return the

gesture. At least he believed he did that much.

Our two young people . . . both

valiant under fire."

"Both dead," George trembled out. "Like us."

His face felt like shriveled fruit. Pain

drummed behind his eyes,

and around his heart, which his son had thought was made of

marble.

Robert let his own throbbing head drop back against

the hull

wall. A ruddy British pink appled his cheeks,

and his otter-brown

eyes filled with warm esteem.

"When an officer disobeys direct orders for the

sake of his crew,

he's either hanged

...

or promoted. That's because of the character

of decisions made in the unkind arbiter of the

field. Jimmy chose to march into a cannon's mouth

on our behalf. And he knew we could see it all

happening .. . perhaps he left a message for you in

his final

defiance. He wanted to show you that he'd learned what

you

brought him here to learn."

Despite the timbre of his words, his Coventry

accent painted a

quiet English lane for them to stroll, made

sparrows sing where

there were only sparks, made a lake with reeds where

there was only

puddled lubricant, and flew flags where there was no

wind.

"You understand, don't you, George?" Robert

hoped. Salient

emotion rose on his face, drew him through a

half-dozen expres

sions, any one of which might have been a tearstain upon

a letter

home. He turned and pliantly gripped his old

friend's hand, in spite

of bandages, in spite of blood, to put to flesh the

precious thing for which a boy had sacrificed

himself. "He was thinking like a man."

He tensed. He waited for it. Wondered if it would

hurt much.

Brrraaackkk-

were all the superstitions and wishful thinking right? Was

there life after death? If he opened his eyes, would

he see heaven?

With my record? Better keep the eyes closed.

He'd felt the strike, the airlock hitting the

enemy ship, felt the

muscles of metal give, then the jolt of hitting

something tougher

than the thing he was in, and a sudden stop. No sound

other than

the shriek of his tiny, pressurized tomb as it was

crammed beyond

its capacity to withstand.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.