Star Trek: Second Generation

by Totem Of Storms

The Enterprise 1701-D begins its mission of exploration. This is a new spin on the series, starting from the beginning. Read the intro (chapter 1) for more details.

10. Episode 4c: Trials of Temptation

Star Trek: Second Generation – Trials of Temptation

"Captain's log. With disasters on New Hope still ongoing, my command crew continue to be tested by Q. As yet we have been unable to determine a reason for these tests, though I hope that the reason will become apparent quickly."

Picard was rereading the latest reports when Riker called him to the bridge.

"You asked to be notified when Worf reappeared," Riker said with a tight smile. "He turned up a couple of minutes ago; he slipped right past me apparently. Went into Ten Forward and now he's heading up here. He should be here in a couple of minutes."

"I look forward to his explanation," Picard said, returning the tight smile. The disappearance of their tactical officer, which had gone unnoticed for nearly an hour until he failed to return to duty, had caused some confusion, especially when checks against the computer showed that Worf was aboard the IKS Dawnbringer. Picard had eventually chosen to dismiss the matter by taking the simple measure of blaming the entire incident on Q.

"Mr Data," Picard said as he sat down in the centre seat, "what's the status on the Pyrian ship?"

"Unchanged as yet," Data reported. "They have made several orbits of the first planet and moved briefly to its moon. They have responded only minimally to our enquiries as to their purpose here. I believe that they are cautiously waiting to see what happens next before proceeding."

"That would be my assessment as well," Picard agreed. "With this planet's SD network in such a state we're not exactly in a position to oppose them if they choose to attack."

"They're not likely to do so," Riker pointed out. "We've still got half of the network active."

"But most of that half is still on one side of the planet," Picard reminded him. "No one has had time to adjust the orbits of them, even in the last few days. The main thing holding them off at this point is the uncertainty about the disruption."

"Which is holding most things off at this point," Riker said, conceding the point. "Let's face it, that's keeping most things uncertain."

"With a bit of luck we'll have some kind of long term plans in that..." Picard trailed off as he realised that Riker had sharply looked up at the ceiling, clearly distracted by something. "Commander?"

"The disruption; something's happening to it," Riker said, his gaze fixed one a point somewhere beyond the ship's hull.

"Confirmed sir," Data said, having turned to his console and checked several screens in a couple of seconds. "Disruption amplitude is increasing rapidly. I estimate that a shockwave is imminent."

"All hands, brace for impact," Picard called out, the computer registering the command and automatically relaying it around the entire ship.

He barely had a chance to think about what might happen here, and what this might entail. The words had barely left his mouth when the entire ship jerked downwards, the inertial dampeners failing to catch the unexpected change in direction until everyone had already left their seats and lost contact with the floor.

A creaking sound echoed through the ship; it was a sound that Picard had heard only a few times before, and never to this degree. Every piece of isosteel in the ship had been struck by the subspace shockwave, which nothing else in the ship could feel. Every one of them from the deflector array through the long range sensors and communications arrays, the warp nacelles, and even the transporters were all trying to tear free of their housings, and throwing the ship around in the process.

It was a harrowing sound for any spaceman to hear, since it meant in no uncertain terms that the ship was under attack from a force that they were unable to counter, or oppose. Any effort to adjust their course would put more strain on those systems; any attempt to take control would only make things worse...

"We are approaching the atmosphere rapidly," Data called out over the alarms and sirens that had started up. Somehow he had managed to stay in his seat, despite everything. "At this angle we will hit in-"

There was an abrupt flash that obscured everything for a split second of peace before the shock hit again, throwing them once more out of their seats. Picard wondered what had happened, before Data supplied part of an answer.

"Our position appears to have change to the far side of the planet without otherwise changing our attitude," the android announced. "We are now being pushed away from the planet."

"Best I could do," Riker called out. "I can't focus properly through all of this chop."

"How long is it going to last?" Picard replied, unable to shout and relying on the better senses of either officer who would be in a position to answer him.

"I can't see far enough to tell," Riker replied. "Whatever's going on it just keeps coming!"

"I'm registering what appears to be a slight drop in the magnitude of the shockwave," Data announced. "I believe that it is starting to stabilise..."

It was hard to believe. And continuing to ride it out, listening to reports coming in from the planet and the Fearless of further troubles, it was hard to bear.

It was thirty minutes later when things finally stabilised. The Enterprise had been pushed over thirty six thousand kilometres by then: had Riker not altered their position they would have been pushed right through the planet and nearly as far out the other side, which was an uncomfortable thought to say the least. The last few minutes of it were when things had started to become bearable, with the jolting and screaming of stressed metalwork reducing as the pressure eased off. But even those few minutes had been painful.

"What's the status of the disruption?" Picard asked as he was finally able to remove the restraint webbing that he had deployed from his seat a couple of minutes into the ordeal. Around him others did the same.

Data was working furiously, but clearly had some spare processing power available to answer. "Background noise from the disruption has increased by a factor of thirty; the shockwave was a side effect of the increasing amplitude. I am attempting to catalogue the effects of the new level of noise."

"The SD network seems to have been badly hit again," Riker said, running a hand through his hair as he gazed off through the bulkhead. "There isn't a lot of it left in orbit... Though it doesn't seem to have been pushed nearly as hard as us."

"The SD network was closer to the planet," Data reminded him. "New Hope has no heavy satellites requiring a higher orbit."

"It almost doesn't have a starbase," Riker interjected sharply, his gaze shifting a few degrees. "Starbase Fifty Two is in a bad way."

"Agreed," Data said. "I estimate that its orbit has been adjusted significantly; I will need more time to estimate its new trajectory and path."

"Take us back into orbit," Picard ordered. "What's the state of the Fearless?"

There was a pause while both Data and Riker checked on that one. "They are intact," Data announced eventually. "And appear to be under power."

"They are," Riker concurred. "They're making for orbit."

"Admiral Trab is hailing us," Data suddenly declared.

"On screen," Picard instructed, standing up as he did. Whatever else happened, Starfleet could at least be relied upon to some degree to pull itself together after a disaster like this.

The screen was cut heavily with static when it came up; some kind of low level static had been common enough over the last two months, and so Picard guessed that this was just the new level that it was happening at. It didn't disguise the fact that Trab was leaning heavily on a console, one antenna bent at an unnatural angle and a cut across his forehead that was slowly leaking dark blue blood.

"That was an impressive escape that you pulled there," he said as his opening greeting.

"Commander Riker saw fit not to see us pushed into the planet," Picard replied. "Admiral, what's the status of the starbase?"

"Badly shaken, but mostly holding together. A starbase doesn't have as much isosteel spread out through it as a starship, and you did enough damage when you came through two months ago that most of it just tore loose before it could pull us too far. I've got my people working on our probable orbit right now... We might need assistance settling the orbit again."

"What about on the planet?" Picard enquired.

"Reports are sketchy; we've got serious disruptions cutting up subspace communications, and radio isn't much better with the storm fronts that have picked up all over the planet. Mostly it seems to have been earthquakes and the like down there."

"The subspace shockwave would have struck the planet's own subspace shadow," Data supplied. "Unlike a starship, the planet's mass would have been affected equally..." He paused as he checked some new information. "Sirs, the planet's magnetosphere is currently in a state of extreme flux from the increased noise from the disruption."

"What about it?" Trab asked. "Are we talking about increased radiation penetration?"

"No sir. However, I have a science team currently analysing some information from the solar stacks in Diana; their site safety officer expressed concerns over the risks should a larger disruption of this kind occur." Data worked furiously at the controls once more. "I cannot say for sure, however..."

"The stacks are still active," Riker supplied. "It looks like they're going crazy; output is all over the place."

"Standard procedure would be to scram the entire system," Data declared. "At this point, I do not believe that they can safely do that."

"Safely, as in..?" Picard left the question hanging in the air.

"They have three isosteel tuning forks," Data replied calmly. "Each of which is currently soaking up vastly more power, in a much less predictable manner, than they were designed to. The exact results are not predictable, but an explosion in the gigaton range cannot be ruled out."

Picard and Trab exchanged a horrified look at this news. "Is there anything that we can do?" the Andorian asked.

"We cannot assist from here. I would need to go down to the surface to investigate and assist from there," Data declared.

"Take an engineering team and transport down-"

"Captain," Data objected, "the transporters cannot be used safely in this amount of subspace noise. And a shuttle will take too long, and may be potentially risky."

Picard froze for a moment, unable to see any options in this situation. And then he realised that they did have one, which no one else possessed. He swung around, facing to his right. "Commander, I wouldn't normally ask this of you, however..."

"We are in a somewhat urgent situation," Riker admitted. "Data, you're with me," he commanded, standing up and moving into a clear space. Data followed suit, standing calmly beside him. "We'll be in touch," Riker declared before raising a hand in a sharp gesture. With a flash of light, both officers vanished.

---

To a spaceman, your surroundings shaking themselves should have been no particular surprise. The ship vibrated every time you did a fast manoeuvre, or from one of a dozen external forces. None of them were particularly pleasant to be around, but none of them were particularly bad for the most part.

Lieutenant Aden had discovered that he couldn't quite get his head around a planet moving in the same way. They were too big: they should not be able to shake like that.

The noise coming from the solar stacks hadn't helped matters; when whatever it was kicked off the solar stacks themselves had also kicked off, making a howling noise that was picked up by every piece of isosteel in the area.

It had been a brutal half an hour before things had quietened down enough for them to hear themselves speaking. His aural implants, a potential extra when working in engineering and a very useful thing to have in the hazard team, had cut out several times when the sound started reaching damaging levels, and he was acutely aware that such implants weren't common; there were a lot of people around here who would be in dire need of medical help if they were going to hear again in future.

More worrying had been his concerns about the structural integrity of the building that they were in. It had shaken and wobbled and generally not looked very stable at all. Falling masonry had attested to the limits that some of these buildings could handle, and despite having lived through a number of earthquakes, Aden was badly shaken by being stuck in the midst of this one.

Unclenching hands that had become bruised from being clutched around a railing so hard for so long, he staggered upright, breathing hard and getting himself back under control as best he could. Around him others were doing the same, though he noted that some still clutched at supports. The howling had died down somewhat, and the ground no longer shook as much, but there was clearly still something dramatic going on, and as an engineer, especially one on the hazard team, he had little option but to do something about it.

Still staggering somewhat, he headed for the main control centre; at least there he would be able to find out what was going on. The site staff had refused to allow the Enterprise crew access to the local commnet, citing security regulations and the need for operational clarity. It had ended up being more of a problem for the foundry staff than the Enterprise crew in the end, because of how communications had to be run through people who were then too busy to do their regular job.

Now of course, with the Starfleet personnel unable to get in contact efficiently with the local crew, it was a bit less of a joke.

The foundry was laid out, as with many structures on what was essentially a flatlander colony, in a fairly open style. From where he had come to a stop during the earthquake, Aden had to cross a lobby area that was the size of a large meeting hall, and then head up a flight of stairs to the next pseudo-plaza, which was ringed with desks and doorways leading off into the rest of the facility. Security at the bottom of the stairs should have stopped him from passing, but the barrier had failed sometime about ten minutes earlier, and the guards had more or less abandoned their posts in the confusion.

Aden tried to pound his way up the stairs, but between his own uncertainty on his footing and the debris that had fallen onto the stairs forced him to cut back to a slower pace. A couple of people on the stairs, caught there when the quake hit and then unable to move clear of the debris when it started falling, were clearly injured, and for a moment he nearly slowed down to help.

Normal Starfleet protocol in emergencies was to help the wounded. Help survivors and prevent possible deaths by treating injuries as soon as possible. Even engineers had to take that same view.

Hazard teams had it the hard way. On a hazard team, you were trained to look for the bigger emergency. Not for glory, or the prestige of fixing something bigger and more impressive than someone's broken arm, but because you were the one who might be able to fix it when no one else could.

He ran on, hoping that their cries wouldn't haunt him too long.

Security into the main facility was still intact, since it was more than a simple barrier intended to stop random strangers walking in. The guards there were mostly on permanent loan from Starfleet, and didn't even try to stop him getting to the door to the control centre. Getting past the door of course was a whole different matter.

He slowed enough to realise that the door wouldn't open before he hit it; the screen next to it, where security codes could be entered or passes swiped, was showing a test screen as some part of the system rebooted itself. The door had sealed itself fully, preventing anyone getting in; how contrary this was depended on your point of view regarding the tuning forks.

Aden was about to resort to desperate measures, such as trying to find a weapon to burn the door open, when a flash of light next to him resolved itself into two officers.

"Uh... Commander... How did you-"

"I'm not sure that we have time for questions," Riker pointed out. "What's the situation?"

"That noise," Aden said, indicating the world in general where the howling of stressed isosteel was forming a background to everything. "That's the tuning forks going crazy. I don't think that they can shut it down with everything in this state. And the security systems have rebooted, so we can't get in."

"Data, can you force the door?" Riker asked.

"The door was intended to withstand significant force being applied," Data pointed out. "Combined with the damage to the frame," he added, indicating some signs of buckling around the top, "I do not believe that I can open it."

Riker didn't exactly appear thrilled by this news, and with a grunt of annoyance waved a hand sharply at the door in a chopping motion. There was a grinding sound and the door slid back, protesting all of the way.

"You know, I'd heard about this, but I didn't entirely believe it," Aden commented as Data and Riker led the way towards the control centre.

"I'm still getting used to it myself," Riker commented.

Further comments were forestalled by their entry into the control centre. It wasn't in as much chaos as the rest of the building; there was more of a sense of things having fallen over more tidily simply because there was less available to fall over.

Joel Davey and Bryan Chambers, the shift supervisor for the stacks, were already present and trying, clearly, to keep things under control. Several members of staff were around them, working to keep things intact, or at least to try to stabilise them. Both turned in surprise as the trio of Starfleet officers entered the room.

"Mr Chambers," Data said, straight into business and seemingly unconcerned by the state of disarray. "What is the situation?"

Chambers didn't seem to be immediately about to answer, a certain natural dislike of Starfleet, combined with the sheer surprise at their presence, combining to keep him quiet for a few seconds. Joel jumped in with an explanation in the meantime.

"I don't know what's happened to the disruption but the tuning forks have gone crazy," he declared, gesturing to the three main status screens. Each one showed one of the tuning forks, and each one showed rapidly fluctuating levels and indications. Alongside these were eight displays, each showing steadily rising numbers.

"We can't take the forks offline while they're jumping around like this," Chambers informed them, clearly wanting to get his bit in. He was a slightly tubby man, and starting to go bald, with a scowl firmly etched onto his features. "And we need to take them offline soon, because the buffers are nearing capacity."

"What happens when those reach capacity?" Riker asked.

"Optimistically they'll shut down," Aden said.

"Which should scram the system," Joel added. "But if the system scrams right now then we're in serious trouble because we can't be sure what will happen. With this much energy going through the forks, we could be looking at an implosion or worse. Whatever happens, those buffers going offline will probably trigger it."

Data considered this for a second. "Commander, could you-"

"I can't take the forks offline," Riker said flatly. "I don't know enough about the science to risk it." He considered for a moment. "I can however..." He made a sharp gesture and the indicators for all of the buffer units abruptly dropped to nearly zero. "Any good?"

Chambers looked stunned, gaping at the screens. Data and Aden, mildly inured to such strangeness, looked over the screens in a more business-like manner.

"If you just dumped the entire load from the buffers, then we're in good condition," Aden said tentatively. "We've got until the buffers top up again which will be..." He looked expectantly at one of the operators, a young Andorian who gave an uncertain shrug.

"Power has been climbing too unpredictably to say. Probably fifty minutes at the most though, and then it'll need discharging again."

"What would we need in order to safely scram the system?" Riker asked.

"The main risk at this point is in the power surge as we take the forks out of alignment," Joel explained. "We need extra buffering capacity in case we get a bigger surge; we've got the forks tuned to the minimum state we can find at the moment, but we can't shut them down in their current energetic state, and if we try to move them to a less active frequency then we've got to go through a more active one first."

"In which case the buffers will overload before we can get it out of that state. Unless you can..."

"I can't be certain of how well I'd be able to keep it up," Riker replied. "So we're back to looking for additional buffering capacity."

"We might have some," Aden said slowly. He had been thinking the problem over as best he could, checking against anything that he could come up with that could handle the kind of power surges that they would be dealing with, and he had just come up with a somewhat crazy idea.

Everyone treated him to a confused look. Data was the first to voice their confusion. "Lieutenant, the buffer systems that we are speaking of are highly specialised devices. There are no spares nearby."

"In fact there are," Joel corrected him. "Normally we've only got three of them in action at a time, and the other five rotate duties so that we can repair them as and when we need to. We've literally got all of our spare capacity in use right now."

"I didn't say that we were going to use buffer systems like that," Aden said, still thinking as calmly as he could about the somewhat audacious plan.

"Are you serious?" Riker asked. "You want to use one of those things as a buffer?"

Aden blinked, caught off guard by the sudden apparent non-sequitur. The realisation that his mind was, on some level, being read by a superior officer didn't help his sense of calm much, but did at least give him an excuse to rally himself properly. "They're the highest draw applications in the entire solar system; they have to channel ridiculous amounts of power at a time. They'd be perfect."

"And also impossible to reach if I wasn't here," Riker pointed out with a faint smile.

"You've got high power cabling, right?" Aden asked Chambers.

"We've got kilometres of the stuff," Chambers replied, clearly still trying to catch up. "Why?"

"The main quad looks like it should be big enough to handle it," Riker declared, indicating a map on the wall.

"Okay..." Aden paused as he started to take in the enormity of what he was about to do. "This is completely crazy..."

---

Miles O'Brien jogged to a halt at the foot of the main steps from the solar stacks into their main quad. A call had gone out for every Starfleet engineer in range to congregate there, which was an alarmingly small number given the number of them within the solar system. With the subspace interference rendering transporters unusable, only those engineers who were on site at the solar stacks had been able to respond.

"Any idea what's going on sir?" one crewman asked him as he stopped on the edge of the group that had assembled.

"Not a clue," O'Brien replied. "All I know is that this place needs to be shut down and apparently there's a plan to make that happen."

Three figures came down the steps, not quite running but hurrying as much as they could under the circumstances. O'Brien recognised them easily: Commander Riker, Commander Data, and Lieutenant Aden. Well, he reasoned, if someone was going to work something out...

"Listen up!" Aden called out, apparently in charge of this particular project. Without waiting for everyone to fully pay attention, he continued. "This place is going to be in serious trouble in the near future. We need to shut down the tuning forks, and in order to do that we need to increase the amount of power buffering capacity that this place has. We've got a piece of equipment coming in to use as a buffer, which we're going to need to wire in very quickly, test, and then have ready to use, and we've got at most, thirty minutes to do it."

"Actually lieutenant," Data corrected him, somewhat pedantically, "Commander Riker's efforts to discharge the buffer units may not have worked properly; they cannot reach full capacity, and we have less than twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes to ship in, wire in and test a new buffer unit isn't long enough," one of the engineers pointed out.

"Shipping it in isn't a problem," Aden responded before turning back to Data. "Isn't it?"

"Admiral Trab has made the necessary arrangements," Data assured him.

"I can see the one that they're giving us," Riker said, his gaze fixed somewhere overhead. "Give me a minute to get my head around this..."

"We're ready when you are," Aden said as some of the facility's engineers appeared at the top of the stairs, unrolling thick power cables as they came.

O'Brien looked around, wondering what this might mean. He'd heard the various rumours going around about what had been happening with the command crew, including some particularly wild ones about commander Riker. But if some of those were true...

"Incoming," Riker warned them, raising a hand and then making a decisive gesture.

The flash of light was one that O'Brien was passingly familiar with; he'd been on the ship at Farpoint and had played a decent enough role there to see Q in action a couple of times. But this flash was bigger than anything he had seen Q pull off, seemingly covering the entire quad. It lasted for several seconds before clearing and revealing...

For a few seconds even O'Brien was startled by the impossibility of what he was seeing. The thing that sat in the middle of the quad was easily a hundred and fifty metres wide, with about half of that width being taken up by the four petal-like sensor and shield arrays extending out from the main body. The main body itself was basically a stubby cylinder with a few projections coming out of what was now the top of it. The whole thing was done in the standard Starfleet colour scheme of greys with black writing and red or blue lighting across some sections.

It was a shape that most of them had seen at least once in their lives. Such things were found in various designs across most inhabited planets; this was a lower-middle range model, with smaller cousins that only came in at about a hundred metres wide, right up to the largest-scale ones found in orbit around capital worlds like the Earth or Vulcan which would be twice this size, or even bigger.

The ring of strategic defence platforms that surrounded every planet was a standard sight; since the days of the war with the Klingons, and with the constant threat of Pyrians deciding that your world was up for grabs, such a line of defences was vital. Each platform could operate independently or in concert with the other platforms in orbit or under the control of a ground based station, utilising their on-board torpedo and phasers to protect the world that they orbited. But each one also possessed something bigger than the conventional weapons, and O'Brien now realised what Aden meant about a new buffer unit.

"The main cannon on these platforms is designed to handle the kind of surge loads that the solar stacks are giving out," Aden declared to his stunned audience. "We're going to wire the output from the stacks straight through that cannon, discharging the energy straight up rather than storing and buffering it."

O'Brien had to admit, it was a daring plan, and one that probably hadn't been formally approved by various high ranking individuals simply because it would have taken too long to explain. But it made sense: the main cannon was designed to take the total power output of the platform and channel it into a single beam that could puncture the shields of some larger designs of ship in a single shot. It was these, more than anything, which had kept Starfleet intact during the war against the Klingons. He wasn't certain about how it would work out in the long term, but it was clearly the best that they were going to get.

"As we've said, we don't have much time here," Aden reminded them. "Chief, I need you to take half of the team and get the cannon ready for action. I'll take the other half and get to wiring it all in. Now we really don't have time for lots of questions here, so everyone get moving!"

---

Riker watched the activity around the quad with a mixture of anticipation and annoyance. Everything was going quickly enough, with the patch job being fairly easy once O'Brien and Aden got themselves co-ordinated properly; the SD platforms were intended to be able to take external power, in the event that their own power supplies were deemed insufficient to a siege. The tricky part was actually wiring the whole thing together and getting it to accept a variable load of the kind that they would be throwing at it.

Beside him, Data watched with a calm interest, unperturbed by the idea of the imminent destruction that could be unleashed around them at any moment. He had offered his services, and been politely turned down by a harried Aden, citing the issues of co-ordinating the team as it was without someone working at a hundred times the speed of everyone else.

"Is something wrong commander?" Data enquired after a couple of sidelong glances at Riker. "You appear dissatisfied with how things are proceeding."

"Have you ever had the feeling of being a bit useless in a situation?" Riker responded.

Data considered this for a moment, and then nodded. "I have." When Riker treated him to suspicious look, Data nodded. "At Starfleet Academy, there was an accident. Another cadet was trapped in the midst of an electrical discharge. I would not have been able to enter the field to attempt a rescue without being destroyed. The cadet died because of my inaction."

"How did you deal with it?" Riker asked.

"Though I cannot feel emotions such as despair, my neural network began to enter a long-term feedback loop where I was unable to avoid thinking about the situation. In the end I had myself upgraded; the basic EM shielding that Doctor Soong installed in me was replaced by more advanced shielding which can withstand significant stress. I was able to abate the feedback loop by taking action which changed key variables in the loop. Why do you ask?"

"I've got the power of the Q inside me Data," Riker reminded him. "And I can't do anything to help in this situation. How would that make you feel?"

"You are hardly unable to help commander," Data reminded him. "You drained the buffer units and gained us time to implement a more complete solution, and this solution could not have worked without your ability to bring the SD platform down to the ground so quickly."

"Yeah, I've done some donkey work," Riker declared. "Data, with these powers I should be able to just wave my hand and fix this entire situation. Instead, I've been deliberately held back; I can't process information fast enough to stabilise the tuning forks, I don't know enough to just wire the platform into the power lines, and I don't have the range to stop the disruption properly." He paused, glowering out at the distance. "You got around this by getting yourself upgraded. I have that option as well."

"The offer that Q has made to you is, no doubt, tempting," Data admitted. "I can see a number of possibilities that I would engage in should I acquire such power. Ultimately though, I feel that such power would distance me from my friends aboard the Enterprise." He considered for a moment, and Riker was aware of the multiple layers of computation that were going on in the android's mind. "Without knowing Q's motives for offering these gifts, I cannot say for certain what I would choose in the end."

"That's what it comes down to, isn't it?" Riker said grimly. "Knowing that Q is offering this gift, but not knowing why..." He paused to consider, and then looked sharply at Data. "Has he offered you anything?"

"He has not," Data admitted. "Given the variety of gifts so far, I cannot say for sure what he might be able to offer me. Humanity would be an obvious choice, and yet given other gifts that he has already offered, I feel that it would be too obvious for him. Other than that I cannot see what he might offer. It would be interesting to find out. I suspect however that it would be... Unpleasant." His head tilted for a moment as if considering his choice of words. "I do not envy you the choice that you must make regarding these abilities, especially in the light of the current situation."

Riker nodded, brooding silently. There was a lot to be said for keeping your options open. He had once heard that in order for free will to truly be free, you needed to understand the full consequences of the choice that you were making, and also needed to make a choice that wouldn't close off options. In this case that didn't work in either direction: losing the power of the Q by giving it up would close off an awful lot of options, but at the same time accepting that power might close off a lot as well.

What he needed was insight. Some glimpse of what Q was really up to in all of this; an undeniable third truth so that he could at least have a definite direction to head in.

Out in the middle of the quad the crew were starting to dismount from the main body of the platform. Aden and O'Brien were remaining there a bit longer, but there was clearly an air of finality about it.

"Do you think that they're ready?" Riker asked, more from habit than anything else. The sense of anticipation in both engineer's minds was potent enough for him to know that something was about to happen.

What he wasn't ready for, and what it seemed that no one was ready for, was when the air abruptly split open as a shockwave tore outwards from the platform, accompanied by a flash of light that was blinding in its intensity. Both of these kept coming, pounding at Riker's mind and body in a constant force to rival that of gravity for the impact that it was having on his life. Purely by instinct he reached out into his new capabilities and stretched them out to block off what was assaulting him.

The return to normality was almost as shocking as the sudden force of sound and light had been. There was a ringing in his ears, and beyond that ringing everything sounded like it was coming from an incredibly long way away. When he tried to open his eyes he couldn't see anything beyond the flash-burnt images on his retina and the darkness behind them.

His other senses began to kick in, and he scrambled to make use of them, a monkey with ideas above its station trying desperately to tap into things that were beyond its ability to truly understand. Somewhere along the line he felt something click into place and he became properly aware of his surroundings once more, though through what sense he wasn't sure; everything was a series of dull shapes that echoed and reformed off each other, giving an idea of where things were, but little beyond that. To one side three massive shapes burnt brightly in the air, the noise that they produced giving shape to the rest of the world by its echoes.

Beside him Riker saw a shape move, and after a couple of seconds of effort he managed to resolve it as Data, crouching over him where he suddenly realised that he had fallen. The android was clearly speaking, but Riker couldn't hear anything over the ringing sound.

Focusing, he reached backwards into the sense of his own body, seeing in his mind what state it was in, and what state it had been in previously. Some differences he discarded immediately: food being slightly more digested than it was a few minutes ago wasn't a problem, and neither was his mind being further advanced than it had been. Eventually he managed to focus down to his ears and eyes, seeing the damage that had been done to them; delicate nerves and structures were shattered or torn. He concentrated on them, rolling back time as he pulled them back together and repaired the damage.

He wasn't sure exactly how long it took, but when he opened his eyes and was able to see, Data was still there.

"Commander, are you alright?"

"Not exactly; I just had to rebuild my eyes and ears. What happened?"

"I would suppose that the cannon activated without warning," Data replied, his tone helpful rather than the sarcasm of someone having to state the obvious. "Such weapons are not normally used inside an atmosphere, and so the flash and noise were to be expected."

"Just not that soon," Riker acknowledged. Only now did he look at the platform and its cannon. Or try to.

A misty wall hung in the air a couple of metres away from him, obscuring his view. The beam was still visible as a dim glow, but nothing else was. It was, he realised, the same kind of barrier that Q had summoned at Farpoint when he wanted things to be separated.

"May I suggest alacrity commander," Data said helpfully. "There are still people on the other side of this barrier who are not protected from the ongoing effects."

Abruptly, Riker realised that this was true. He gestured sharply at the wall and it rushed away, extending up and to the sides as it moved to enclose the beam that was pounding into the sky. After a few seconds the barrier came to a halt, now a cylinder ten metres wide, following the beam upwards as far as Riker could see.

Engineers lay across the quad, some obviously in pain while others just seemed to be unconscious. Only two were standing upright, and Riker didn't bother running to them but simply teleported himself and Data to them.

Aden and O'Brien were both clearly unstable, but were upright and trying to remain that way. Neither looked entirely happy about it though, right down to the burns that they were both sporting from the super-heated air around the cannon.

"Are you two okay?" Riker asked, astonished that they were still up at all given the fact that they had been the closest of all.

"Wha?" Aden gave a very bleary look that was diminished somewhat by his eyes being totally black. Now that Riker knew what to look for he saw that O'Brien's eyes were in the same state and both of their minds were currently showing a lack of visual input and hardly any audio input. Both of them, hazard team members and combat engineers, were equipped to withstand the more obvious dangers of bright lights and loud noises. But after something so bright and so loud... Those implants took time to recover sometimes.

Leaving the two to recover, Riker looked around the quad once more. No one was standing any more. His senses extended further out beyond the quad, finding people in the offices who were just as badly affected. Trying to help them was... He wasn't able to simply wave his hand and fix things.

Was this a third sign?

---

"I'd call it highly unorthodox," Trab said as he watched the main screen with critical interest. A sensor plot had been overlaid over the view of the planet, showing a line pointing straight up into space. "We're lucky that nothing was over it when it went off."

"It worked though," Picard reminded him. "In fact it's still working."

"How we're going to get it back up into orbit is beyond me," Trab grumbled good naturedly. "Platforms like that aren't intended to be on the ground."

"I'd agree with that," Aden admitted. "The force of the cannon was actually pushing the whole thing into the ground; it had sunk at least a metre and was looking like it was going to head even lower when I came back up here."

"How long do you think it will keep going?" Picard asked. The numbers around the sensor ghost image of the beam showed it to be as strong as it had been for the last twenty minutes, showing no signs of abating.

"They're burning off the power from the buffers at the moment," Aden explained. "That shouldn't take too much longer, then the beam power should drop off and they can use the buffers for their intended purpose while they scram the system."

"Sir," a crewman said as she came up to the captain. "Stellar cartography has reported in. Apparently there's nothing for the beam to hit within fifty light years. If it keeps going for another hour it will be directed towards Leng-132; they aren't willing to give precise numbers as yet regarding how close it will get until they've had a chance to run further simulations."

"Thank you crewman," Picard said. "Ask them to keep working on it and to give us their best guess; once commander Data is available again I'll have him assigned to assist them with the analysis."

"Aye sir," the crewman replied, turning to leave.

"A very unusual situation," Trab admitted. "It's not a surprise that they're having trouble with the numbers."

"Captain," Worf called from the tactical position. "We have finished deployment of the navigation buoys around the beam's geosynchronous orbital position. I'm continuing to plot orbital paths of other satellites in an effort to determine if they are in danger."

"Once Starbase Fifty Two comes over the horizon we should be able to assist with that," Trab offered. "For now, navigational beacons will have to suffice. The idea of something flying into that beam unawares..."

Picard nodded sagely at that. With lasers, phasers, and other beamed weapons only being visible, and detectable, by the effect that they had on other objects, the beam currently blasting into space was invisible to sensors except where it hit something. Occasional flickers were visible as smaller particles flew into it, but otherwise the only reason that they even knew that it was there was because of the sensor plot that they were projecting for its course and the data being broadcast by the facility.

Further down the line the beam might cause trouble elsewhere; over light year distances it would disperse somewhat, making it less powerful, but if it held cohesion sufficiently it would be able to strike a ship or planet with devastating force somewhere in years to come.

Any additional rumination on the subject was cut short as there was an abrupt flash of light and three figures appeared on the bridge.

"Commander," Picard said, nodding to Riker, who stood in the middle of the trio. "I take it that things have calmed down somewhat."

Data answered that one before Riker could, which made a kind of sense; Data would have a better grasp of the technical details. "The buffers are almost completely discharged. They will be able to scram the forks without additional assistance."

"Excellent," Picard declared. "What about casualties?"

"Fortunately, that call appears to have been a bit pre-emptive," Crusher answered. "Large numbers of burns to those closest to the cannon, along with the damage to eyes and ears from the beam's discharge. No actual fatalities, but a few people are taking some convincing that they are going to be alright again, especially when effectively deaf, blind and with burns impeding efforts at tactile communications."

"Do you need any further assistance down there?" Trab asked.

"I'm done down there," Crusher said with a shake of her head. "We've handed over to the staff at the local hospitals. Commander Riker brought the worst of the Starfleet cases up here, and we've got the rest being ferried up by shuttle. Cybernetic replacements for eyes and ears are one thing that we haven't been running low on recently, so it should be a few days before we're back to normal. For the current situation," she added hastily. "Frankly, I need to get back to dealing with our own people," she added, looking pointedly at Aden.

He shrugged, and then winced. Though his sight and hearing had been saved, he still had first degree burns across both hands and his face, as well as scarring down his right side where the heat from the beam had been at its greatest. Immediate medical treatment had cut out the worst of the situation, and genetic engineering was seeing to most of the rest of it, but he was clearly still in a certain amount of pain. "I'll head down to sickbay in a few minutes; I'll be okay until then."

"Hazard teams," Crusher muttered. "I'm sure they're worse patients than doctors are meant to be..."

"I've never been sure either way," Picard commented with a faint smile. "Well, in that case, baring another emergency..."

"Uh, on that subject sir," ensign Marlow called from the back of the bridge. "I just did a scan to check on the state of the Pyrian ship. It looks like they were hit by the shockwave, the same as us."

"Have we received a distress call?" Picard asked.

"No sir, we've had no communications from them since the disruption increased in magnitude," Marlow replied.

"Pyrian ships use isosteel ribs around the main hull for warp travel," Data supplied, "but their sensor and communications arrays extend out forward from the ship. It is possible that those systems were damaged during the shockwave."

"That would be consistent with the changes in their ghost field," Marlow admitted. "They're moving into L2 orbit with the first planet, but it looks like they're doing it slowly."

"If they're not in danger then they might object to an intrusion," Riker pointed out.

"And if they are they wouldn't be able to call for help," Trab replied. "Contact the Fearless and have them investigate. The last thing we need is the Pyrians insisting that we deliberately sabotaged or attacked their ship. No hostilities, but I want some answers from that ship."

"Well, in that case," Picard said, not sounding too hopeful, "baring another emergency... We should be able to run things down for the night. Admiral?"

"I don't have any objections," Trab allowed. "I could do with going over some details with you before I return to Starbase Fifty Two."

"Of course. My ready room? Commander, you have the bridge."

"Aye sir," Riker acknowledged, heading for the centre seat.

---

With various reports to file after her discussion with Lieutenant Aden, Deanna Troi hadn't managed to get in touch with the captain yet. She could technically demand a meeting with him whenever she needed it, and she knew that some of her colleagues took the attitude that it was their job to be officious in that manner. Her empathic sense made that impossible though; to literally perceive resentment or annoyance and seek to deliberately exasperate it required a mind-set that she considered ultimately unsuitable for any position of authority.

She had spent some time reviewing Starfleet protocols that might pertain to Commander La Forge's situation. Some further time had been spent checking crew evaluations. And then the shockwave had hit them and a commissar had little place in such an emergency except when it came to the unpopular duty of deciding who got first place in a life pod.

With things now calmed down somewhat, she was preparing to take her concerns to the captain when there was a flash of light from the room adjoining her office. Not quite as paranoid as some, but more so than others, she came up quickly, her hand sliding to the draw of her desk where her issue phaser was kept. There were few ranks that were permitted such a dubious luxury as a full issue weapon like that; even security personnel had to check their weapons in and out each day, including logging power levels to show their levels of usage. A commissar, who would by default be heading up a counter-revolution or be the first target of a revolution, was felt to need one at all times, at least by those in the threat assessment division.

She paused then. There were few things that could make a flash like that. Q, at present, was the main suspect, and trying to use a phaser on him was an exercise in futility if ever there was one. She concentrated, trying to get a sense of any kind from her quarters. And what she got back surprised her.

The sense was distinctly human rather than the blank space that she got from Q or the harder to read patterns of other species. And it seemed, to her senses, to be confused.

She moved to the door quietly and listened for a few seconds before opening it. By that time she had gained further impressions of the person on the other side of the door: male, probably western-ethnic or flatlander, probably in some kind of position of authority.

The man on the other side of the door was as she had more or less expected; the Caucasian appearance that meant either western ethnic origin or a flatlander, while his style of dress suggested an office job of some kind. He looked confused even at her first glance, but when he actually focused on her he looked, if anything, more so.

That wasn't a surprise to Deanna: the uniform of a commissar wasn't that different from that of other Starfleet divisions, with black shoulders, sleeves and trousers and the majority of the torso being a base colour to denote an operational area; red for command, yellow for operations (including security and engineering), blue for sciences (including medical), and finally a royal purple for the commissariat. The colour, more than anything else, was distinctive enough to get people's attention.

"Uh, I'm sorry," he said raising his hands in a kind of surrender. "Can I ask where I am?"

"You're on the USS Enterprise," Deanna answered, reading him carefully as she did. "In my quarters."

"Okay..." He seemed to consider. "My name is Joel Davey; I'm the site safety officer at the solar stacks in Diana. Commander Riker was meant to be sending me to one of our secondary sites so that I could assist getting the team there briefed..."

He appeared, to Deanna, to be telling the truth. It was normal enough for people meeting a commissar unexpectedly to bluster and be nervous. But sometimes that actually helped, because those who simply came out with the truth had less background noise going on to get in the way. Mr Davey appeared, to all intents and purposes, not to be hiding anything.

"I know that Commander Riker has been busy," she admitted. "I haven't been directly involved in the situation, but I'm aware that he has been down to the surface to assist there at least for a while." She sighed. "I'd rather not interrupt him if he's in the middle of anything important. I'll see if we can get in touch with this secondary site of yours. Once Commander Riker is available again I'll let him know what has happened; we don't want too many people going off course after all."

---

Tasha stepped into her backup quarters and lay down on the bed, her legs dangling over the edge of it. With her own quarters now being little more than a direct link to Turkana IV, she had requested alternative quarters so that she at least had an actual bed to actually sleep in. She had tried sleeping in that in-between place that Q had provided, but the constant bustle of activity from the rest of her gang, combined with the attentions of Colin, had conspired to make it impossible for her to sleep there.

She needed time away from him to think. They had run through dozens of scenarios for taking out the Vikings, and most of them were successes. The ones that weren't were generally down to some kind of highly experimental idea that they had been trying out. Even on the ones that didn't work out as a complete success, they were generally only losing a handful of people; back in the bad old days before she was recruited to Starfleet that would have been exceptional.

But that was the catch: the bad old days. They were, by definition, the way that things had been. For her anyway.

She had tried discussing it with Colin and the others. Tried to work out what they would do once they were in charge of the Turkana and everything that it possessed. They didn't see the problem; they were all still living the bad old days which she had left behind.

She had, simply by habit from being in Starfleet, failed to consider the idea of using hoski sticks as part of their invasion effort. And yet the rest of the gang had been fine with the idea when Colin had proposed it. She had never liked the idea of the sticks when she had been stuck on the streets and corridors of the colony, where a single whiff of that sweet scent could leave you open to whatever they chose to pump out of the PA system. No one could honestly say that they liked the idea, once they understood what the sticks actually did to you. But somehow, despite that, the idea of using them against other people was perfectly acceptable.

Similarly she had looked at how they were going to imprison those who caused trouble during the transition period; other gangs would be bound to look on the change of leadership as an opportunity to make a run for the Turkana themselves. And yet the rest of her gang had been surprised by the idea: hoski sticks or a firing squad had been the options that they proposed when she asked.

It ran through everything that they said and did. The iron self-control that she had needed to develop in order to fit into Starfleet had developed into such a habit that she couldn't relax it and slip comfortably back into her previous life. She was a creature of Starfleet now, and like it or not she realised that she was going to be stuck that way. Falling back into her old gang wouldn't do anything positive to the situation on Turkana IV.

Unable to relax now that the decision was more or less made, she stood and strode out into the corridor once more, not allowing herself to slow down as she returned to her old quarters and stepped into the chamber that they were using to prepare themselves.

Colin was there still, though it looked like most of the others had retired for the night, vanishing into the warren of caves that extended out in every direction from the main chamber.

"You're back quickly," Colin commented, zooming the view through the situation table in on a couple of rooms where the guards were based.

"I needed to talk to you," she replied, coming alongside the table and standing opposite him. "I need you to convince me that we're going to be doing the right thing when we go back there."

He looked at her through the hologram, his expression confused. "Tasha, we're going to be getting rid of the Vikings. How can that not be the right thing to do?"

"I'm not worried about that part," she admitted. "They need to go. But so far we don't have much of a plan for handling things once they are gone. Every plan that I've heard so far ends up with us taking the place of the Vikings, right down to using their methods of enforcement and control. How does that make things better?"

"It'll be better for us," he reminded her. "We'll be the ones in charge. We can set things up however we want then. It's not like it would be hard to enforce it once we've got the Turkana under our control."

Tasha took a slow breath before she responded to that one. "I know that things won't change immediately," she admitted. "And there will be a while that we'll need to use to get things to adjust. But what kind of world are you talking about making?"

He shrugged. "One where we don't need to scrabble around in the gutters or rely on hand-outs from the Vikings. One where we can give the orders for a change and set our own rules. Come on, you know that we used to talk about this all of the time."

"I know that we used to dream about the day when we could take the place of the Vikings," Tasha replied. "All of those dreams where we were the ones giving the orders... We had a game of coming up with silly ideas of what to tell people when we handed out hoski sticks."

"You have to admit, we had some good ideas," Colin pointed out.

"I remember that you managed to get hold of one," she continued. "What did you do with it in the end?"

"I tested it out," he replied with a shrug.

"How? It wasn't on anyone that I knew as far as I can remember."

"No; I didn't want to use it on any of our gang in case the Vikings jumped in while I was doing it. I tried it out on the Makins. You remember them?"

Tasha thought back. She did recall that family: a mother and two fathers with eight children. Or had it been nine? They had tried to live as best they could, scraping together what little there was to feed the children. The gangs hadn't bothered them too much because they lived so close to the edge of disaster; what little they had was used immediately, because like everyone else they couldn't afford any kind of wastage.

And then she remembered one day, which she couldn't be certain of the date of but which she suspected was a week or so after Colin found the hoski stick, when one of the fathers had been found raping his children, seemingly driven by some kind of inner demon, unable to stop himself. Even with rape being that common and lives being that cheap, such a thing was a few levels below what most people could tolerate.

The Makins had, as a family, just fallen apart after that; the children had been traumatised by the experience, and with only two parents they had no chance to keep up any more. Tasha remembered the older children being taken off by one of the gangs, but she hadn't been too worried about that; she remembered having cheered along with everyone else when the father was brought down and beaten to a pulp, and then she had lost interest in the family.

"You got him killed?" she asked mildly.

"I needed to test it," Colin pointed out, not exactly apologetically. "There wasn't much point in all of those plans and ideas without being able to say how they would work out. And that worked perfectly; even better than I expected. I mean, I didn't expect it to end that way, but it turned out okay for us when we got some pieces from their shelter to use."

Tasha hesitated, trying to sort out her feelings now that she knew more about what had been going on. The cavalier way in which he spoke about such things almost tore her apart: on the one hand the memories of her childhood and her upbringing were telling her that life was cheap and easy and this was normal; on the other her more recent upbringing with Starfleet rebelled against the idea.

"I'm sorry Colin," she said, straightening up and turning towards the door. "That isn't the kind of world that I want to build." She started for the door, not bothering to slow down until his hand came down on her shoulder. Reflexes took over, born of both the street and more recent martial arts training, and almost without conscious thought she found herself rather abruptly standing over him as he lay on the floor, dabbing at his broken nose. "I've made up my mind," she declared. "I want to free Turkana IV from the Vikings, and if I have any reasonable chance to make it happen I'll take it. But what you're proposing isn't reasonable."

"Tasha, think about what you're saying," Colin insisted, rising up onto his elbows. "You're turning your back on your home, on your people. On us," he insisted, his tone not making it clear whether he meant the gang that had been given a second chance at life or the two of them personally.

"I know," she said. "Maybe this way things will take a bit longer and might not be as abrupt. But it will come, and when it does I'll make a world that we can both be proud of, not one that's simply a bad copy of the one that we've just taken down." Before he could respond to that assessment of his grand design, she looked up towards the ceiling. "Q, I don't want what you're offering. You can take your gift back."

Whatever else the entity was, he was prompt in responding. An abrupt flash was the only warning that she had as the chamber around her flared up. When it cleared she was back in her own quarters, with her own decorations and furniture. The lights were set just how she liked them, and the padd by her bedside table was showing the page that she had gotten to in the novel that she had been rather laboriously working her way through.

For a moment she simply stood there, not quite believing what she had just done and the chance that she had given up. She held herself firm though until she spotted two things that had changed in the room: on the dresser, in front of the cabin's mirror, there now stood a holograph of two figures, herself and Colin, hugging each other in the aftermath of a spectacularly successful raid on a rival gang's base. There hadn't been anyone to record such an image at the time, so she guessed that Q was responsible.

And besides that, a tattered piece of cloth with four pieces of shrap attached to it.

---

Riker was optimistically checking through some reports when Deanna got to the bridge. Optimistically that is in the sense that he wasn't entirely concentrating and his mind was actually stretching off into the near infinity granted to his senses by Q's gift.

He was starting to understand, on some level, Q's disinterest in Humans. Looking around the ship he found an endless wonder of things to look at, ranging up and down the scale from the patterns generated by electrical flow in the power lines through to the shifting of the planet's magnetosphere.

With all of that going on, it was starting to get hard to remember sometimes that there were people in amongst it all. Partly he suspected that this was a reaction to his inability to help people properly; as a kind of escapism he was finding other things to look at.

Deanna's arrival distracted him somewhat, but not nearly as much as the arrival of the person that she had with her.

"Mr Davey; I thought you were down on the surface still."

"He was meant to be," Deanna replied. "Unfortunately, he ended up in my quarters instead of the secondary control facility."

Riker blinked at that one, looking at Joel Davey in surprise. "Okay... My apologies. I didn't realise that you'd gone off course like that. Has anyone else..?"

"No one else seems to have gone missing or ended up in the wrong place," Joel assured him. "Which, apparently, makes me the first time anything has gone wrong. If you could send me back down..."

"Sure," Riker said, slightly flustered at being caught out like this. "Here goes." He concentrated and raised his hand and with a flash Joel vanished. And with an equal flash, appeared two metres to the left, looking a bit confused.

"Commander?" Deanna asked warily.

"I don't understand," Riker admitted, just as confused. "I sent him down to the surface. Give me a minute here. Worf, you have the bridge." With a flash he vanished, transporting himself halfway across the ship and appearing in an empty turbolift. He looked around, reassuring himself that he was where he had intended to be, and then repeated the gesture, jumping through different locations: his quarters, an unattended section of the cargo bay, a shuttlecraft, another turbolift, and then back to the bridge.

"That worked fine," he declared. "I can't explain what's happened here," he apologised.

"I can still get down to the surface, right?" Joel enquired.

"If all else fails we've got a line of shuttlecraft going back and forth fairly constantly," Deanna assured him. "We'll make sure that you're on one of them."

"Uh, ma'am, the next shuttlecraft heading for the surface will be in the morning, ship-time," the crewman at the operations post pointed out.

"Well, in that case we'll have to find you some quarters until then," Deanna announced, business-like. "I'll see to the arrangements for that. In the meantime..."

"I'll see if I can work out what's happening here," Riker agreed with a nod.

He sat down thoughtfully as Deanna and Joel left the bridge, his attention now fixed on the issue of what was happening here. He was distracted, briefly, by a flash of Q's power from the midst of the saucer section, and when he focused on it he found that Constable Yar's quarters had been restored, with her still in them. She didn't look entirely happy about it.

---

The morning briefings were a trying time sometimes. On the one hand repeats of the same old tales of woe about the current situation were unwelcome, but at the same time good news was so hard to come by that "the same old thing" was actually welcome sometimes.

Looking around the table, Picard guessed that at least two officers were going to report that things had changed.

"Captain," Tasha said as they all sat down, "I think I should inform you that I've rejected Q's offer. I'll be staying aboard the ship."

"I'm gratified to hear it," Picard said cautiously. "May I ask why you've decided this?"

She paused, gathering her thoughts. "I realised how much I've changed in my time in Starfleet. If Q had made the offer when I'd just gone into the academy, or even when we were at Farpoint I would probably have accepted it with no trouble. But... The world that I would have been going back to build isn't one that I would be happy building."

"Well..." Picard paused, uncertain of precisely how to continue. "I'm happy that you've chosen to remain with us; I know that a decision like this cannot have been easy. I hope that everyone else's decisions can be resolved as... Promptly..."

"I might have something to add on that note," Troi said. "I think that I've worked out what Q is trying to achieve with these tests; whether this is the ultimate goal of them or not, I can't be sure."

"Have you had some new evidence?" Riker asked, frowning. "I wasn't aware of anything having happened."

"I can understand that," Troi agreed. "Because I think that Q may have introduced a deliberate blind spot into your abilities. You see, when Commander Riker tried to transport the site safety officer from the solar stacks to a different facility he ended up in my quarters instead. And when we tested it again later Mr Davey only moved a few metres. Combined with Commander Riker's apparent blindness to his presence through his abilities..." She paused. "I spent some time talking to Mr Davey last night. He and I hit off... Very well."

"Very well?" Riker asked with a raised eyebrow and a hint of a smile.

"Very well," Troi agreed, her tone not giving anything away. "I don't believe in love at first sight, but Mr Davey and I have very similar interests, common tastes..."

"Are you suggesting that he is your test?" Picard asked, slightly incredulous.

"So far all of the tests have involved some reason for the... Victim," she said, apparently unsure how diplomatic to be about the choice of words, "to leave the Enterprise. In Worf's case he would be returning to the Klingon Empire. In Tasha's case she would have returned to Turkana IV. In Commander Riker's case, accepting Q's gift would be incompatible with a mortal existence, and he would need to leave."

"Commissar, I don't have any reason to leave," La Forge pointed out. "Q's gift doesn't give me any reason to leave; if anything I'm achieving more than I ever have before."

"Yes," she disagreed. "I was meaning to bring it up at a better time, but... It's relevant to everyone, so I'm afraid that I'll need to make it clear now. I've had reports from engineering of discontent with..." She paused, considering her words. "I don't want to use the term 'cavalier', and 'heretical' is too strong, but how you look at things, most particularly the warp core, has a number of people very worried. Worried enough to come to me about it. These circumstances aren't exactly covered in Starfleet's normal rules and practises, but... If the crew express suitable discontent with your competence or operations style, it can lead to reviews and maybe dismissal." She held up a hand to forestall his objections. "Under these circumstances, where the way you look at the warp core is a thing that engineers tend to understand better than anyone else, it's unlikely that many people would see an issue. But you would still be looking at discontent at least."

La Forge sat back in his seat, a stunned expression on his face. "I haven't," he started before stopping. "I hadn't noticed any trouble," he said, his expression suggesting that he was thinking back and perhaps revisiting some recent conversations in a new light.

"Suffice it to say," Troi continued, "Mr Davey and I have been getting on well, but ultimately we would either have to be ships passing in the night, or one of us would have to move; he is based locally, with a local job, while I'm based on this ship."

"So if you are correct about this being a test from Q," Picard said slowly, "then everyone has the challenge to remain here or move elsewhere."

"Yes. I don't know if that is Q's ultimate goal or whether it is part of something bigger, but I believe that this is the means that this test is working by."

"Captain," Data asked abruptly, "have you received a test of any kind?"

"I haven't seen Q since he turned up on the bridge to announce that the tests would be continuing," Picard replied. "Whether that means that I am to be spared or not I find hard to understand. What about yourself?"

"I have received no test," Data admitted. "As for yourself, I cannot be sure of why this is."

"Well, we are at least forewarned as to what to watch for," Picard said. "Now, if that concludes our unusual business..." He trailed off as he noticed Riker's gaze focused somewhere below the deck. "Commander?"

"Stellar cartography," Riker replied a bit absently. "It looks like they're getting excited about something; I can't tell what from here."

"Excited enough to warrant attention?" Picard asked.

"I hope not," Riker replied. "They've got charts showing the orbit of both moons up right now, and they don't look happy about something on them."

Picard paused, debating the possible issues involved in jumping in on a department like this. But if there was a problem... He tapped at his commlink. "Picard to stellar cartography lab. Please respond."

There was several seconds delay as someone presumably tried to find a commlink to answer with. Eventually the call was accepted by a gruff voice that had a distinctly Gorn tone to it. "This is Ensign George in stellar cartography." Picard blinked at the decidedly Human name that was provided. "I was about to inform my colleagues that I would be contacting you regarding an urgent matter."

"Well, since we are now in contact, perhaps you can inform me," Picard suggested.

"There is no need captain," another voice interjected, this one being less clearly placed but with an aggressive edge and a hint of an accent which suggested an Andorian. "We have not yet concluded that there is a real danger."

"If there is a danger," George continued, "we will have less than a day to deal with it before disaster strikes." Picard noted a few startled looks around the table; Gorn were normally blunt and not given to exaggeration, so whatever was going on here was probably as serious as was being suggested. So why was there disagreement about how serious it was? "I request your investigation in the matter."

Such a request, Picard knew, should normally have gone through a head of department. In this case, stellar cartography would report to the head of science, a somewhat rotund Andorian by the name of Quill; she tended to avoid meetings, having been promoted to a managerial position based on her exceptional science skills, and never quite managing to get the hang of the managerial part of the job. The last performance review that Picard could remember seeing had mentioned her enthusiasm for the sciences, her generalised knowledge about the subjects that her subordinates would come to her with, and her almost total reliance on a Vulcan she had managed to get transferred over from the quartermaster's office to handle the paperwork side of her job.

If Ensign George felt that this was worth bypassing normal procedure in such a matter then, at least to some degree, it must appear very serious. And that seriousness apparently involved the moons...

"Commander Data and I will be down immediately," Picard announced. "We will review your findings and make our assessment from there. Picard out." He tapped the button on his commlink with a degree of finality. "Commander, can you continue this briefing; I'll want a summary of the salient details once I return to the bridge."

"Aye sir," Riker replied.

The turbolift ride down to stellar cartography was rapid, and for the most part in a pensive silence as Picard brooded. Data, supposedly immune to emotions, once again displayed the lie of that concept by proving himself uncomfortable with the silence.

"Captain, if I may note, you appear to be unusually concerned by this situation."

"I am," Picard admitted. "I hope that it is undue concern. But the Gorn tend not to exaggerate in my experience. For one to declare that something is important while others are insisting that it isn't does seem significant."

"You believe Ensign George over the other?"

"I think that the tone of voice of that other whom we heard was one of someone who didn't want to believe what was in front of them. I hope that there has been some matter of exaggeration in this situation, but I can't be certain, and I have a feeling that it won't be."

The conversation was paused as the turbolift doors opened, allowing two crewmembers to come into it. They nodded politely to the officers, and requested a deck two below where Picard and Data were heading.

Once they reached stellar cartography, Picard became aware that he may have been called in to mediate rather than provide a professional or scientific opinion. Lieutenant Quill was now present and being quite territorial at a fair volume. Ensign George, distinct for being the only Gorn present, appeared unperturbed by this and had simply started speaking louder to match this. Around them smaller arguments may have been going on, but now seemed to be on hold as the two officers competed to be heard; at least it hadn't devolved into a fight, because Gorn tended to win those against anything other than Vulcans or augmented Humans.

"-had no right to go to the command staff about this matter without consulting me on the subject," Quill blazed, offended into taking her responsibilities seriously for a change. "This is a complete disregard of-"

"Ensign George didn't contact me," Picard announced as the door closed behind Data and himself. "I contacted him on the advice of Commander Riker, who noticed a potentially serious situation was being reacted to. Now, I would appreciate some kind of indication of the severity of this situation."

"We need time to make an assessment of-" Quill began before George jumped in.

"The second moon is being knocked out of orbit," he announced bluntly.

Picard paused, unsure whether he had heard that one correctly. At least it seemed to have silenced everyone else in the room for a few seconds. "The second moon... Is being knocked out of orbit?"

"The same subspace shockwave that nearly pushed this ship into the planet is still acting on the moon and altering its orbit," George insisted.

"There is no proof of this," Quill interjected, her antenna twitching urgently. "The moon showed no reaction to the initial shockwave when the magnitude and frequency increased, and since the shockwave passed we have no indication of further subspace activity."

Picard held up a hand for silence, then gestured Data over to the console where they were plotting the course of the moon. "How serious is this? Is the moon going to leave orbit?"

"Our current calculations-" George began before being interrupted.

"Are flawed and based on insufficient information," another Andorian objected. "We don't have enough of a dataset to make a proper assessment."

"Nonetheless," Picard stated flatly, cutting across the interruption, "I would like to hear what these calculations show."

"They show that the moon is being pushed away from the disruption," George declared, semi-crystalline eyes flexing as they focused on Picard. "Were it currently on the half of its orbit that took it away from New Hope, it would not be sufficient at this time to push it out of orbit. At present it is moving towards the disruption, and so is being slowed down."

"I can confirm that captain," Data announced. He indicated the chart on the screen. "The second moon has a highly eccentric orbit, with an apogee roughly twice that of its perigee." The chart showed the normal orbital track of the second moon as an ellipse with the furthest point from the planet indeed being twice the distance as the closest point. "Currently the moon is heading for perigee, and over the last twelve hours has been showing a significant deviation from its regular course. While the change is not enough to be immediately apparent, it is clearly visible over the period since the disruption increased."

"We still can't be certain of the long-term implications of this," Quill objected. "We can't even be certain of the source of this issue."

"I do not dispute that lieutenant," Data acquiesced. "However, that it is occurring, and has only been doing so since the disruption increased, also cannot be denied. Similarly, the magnitude of the change is clear, and while the long-term implications may be hard to predict, I would suggest that the medium-term ones are very clear." He turned back to the console and tapped a few keys, extending the line showing the current course of the moon. It wasn't entirely clear, and wavered somewhat where the probability indication caused it to become a cone rather than a single line, but it was clear where most of the line ended up.

"It's going to crash into the planet?" Picard asked, somewhat aghast at the prospect. Shifting moons around like that...

"I would estimate impact within eighteen hours if the collision occurs on this pass," Data declared. "I will need to run a more complete calculation of the numbers; however I estimate the chances are greater than fifty percent as a first approximation. If it does not occur on this perigee then the chances increase significantly with successive perigee."

"But we don't know what could be causing it?"

"I would theorise a subspace noise, similar to that which is interfering with our communications, which operates on a subspace level which interacts with the subspace shadow of the moon. We still understand very little about how these shadows occur or how to interact with them beyond the minimum necessary to power a subspace dynamo off it."

"What about the subspace dampeners that Commander La Forge has been working on?" Picard suggested.

"Possible, but I lack sufficient information to make an accurate prediction," Data admitted. "They may reduce the effect somewhat and help to stabilise things, but whether it will be enough remains to be seen, especially as this will only prevent the subspace interference; it will not restore the moon to its original orbit, or prevent other effects that may interfere. If I may suggest, sir, Commander Riker may be the best person to speak to regarding that at present."

"You think that he could solve this?"

"I believe that he should be able to restore the moon to its original orbit. It is not a long-term solution as it would need to be done at least once a day, however it would buy us time."

Picard nodded, considering this option. They were, to some degree, coming to rely on Commander Riker too much in this situation. But what choice did they have? He tapped at his commlink. "Captain Picard calling Commander Riker, urgent."

There was only a delay of a couple of seconds before Riker came back on the channel. "Yes sir?"

"It would appear that Ensign George wasn't exaggerating the possible severity of the issue after all. I'm going to need to request your particular assistance urgently if we are to avert this disaster."

There was a delay of a couple more seconds, and then a flash of light as Riker appeared in the room with them. "Some kind of emergency?"

"Data, explain," Picard instructed.

Data, used to such orders, summarised the salient points of the emergency as quickly as he could. "At present we have no means of stabilising the moon's orbit," he concluded.

"You need me to reset its orbit," Riker guessed, staring off into the distance where Picard guessed the moon currently was.

"I don't like the idea of calling on you like this," Picard said. "But at the moment I can't see another option. The level of hazard this represents..."

"It's more than we've faced so far," Riker agreed. "I'll see if I can boost the orbit at least..." He trailed off, concentrating hard on whatever he was focusing on beyond the bulkheads of this room. Cautiously, slowly, he raised his hand, his scowl deepening as he did. Then abruptly he shook his head. "I can't do it," he declared. "There's just too much of it; I can get my head around the mass of the Enterprise, but something the size of the moon, even this one... I can't get it to line up properly."

Picard paused, quelling an urgent need to challenge his first officer on that statement. To have something so powerful at their disposal, and yet to have it almost impotent in the face of a threat of this kind was almost unbearable.

It took him several seconds to consider that whatever he was feeling must be mild compared to the strain that Riker himself had to be operating under.

"Take your time over it Commander," he advised. "In the meantime, Commander Data, I need you to head down to engineering and get production of these dampeners accelerated as far as possible; I'll inform Admiral Trab and see what we can do about getting further plans together."

"Captain," Data said as Picard turned to leave. "I would advise at this time that evacuation be considered as a serious option."

There wasn't much that Picard could say to that. No one wanted to admit defeat in such a manner, and yet, as they had all suspected at some time over the last two months, that admission might only have been delayed by all of their actions to date.

---

Ensign Slaan was attending the Admiral, making notes based on the morning reports. The Admiral was a fine example of the Andorian management style to Slaan's mind, which was to say that things were never prioritised properly, and the Admiral was easily distracted from significant issues. It was easy for Slaan to see why his grandfather spoke so disparagingly of Andorians and occasionally appeared to yearn for the days when Vulcans had been close to imposing some kind of order upon the wanton species. That was, of course, before the Humans had turned up and imposed their kind of order on everyone.

This morning the Admiral wanted to concentrate on the situation with the Pyrian ship that had appeared in the system several days earlier and which the Fearless was handling perfectly well without needing their hands held.

"Admiral, we must discuss the situation on the surface," Slaan insisted. "The loss of power from the solar stacks has caused widespread issues; the solar stacks provided sixty percent of the civil power requirements for that continent."

"You can start by having the people who insisted on keeping the stacks running arrested for reckless endangerment," Trab declared, getting hold of the wrong end of the stick as usual to Slaan's mind. "And have a check made to ensure that none of our other power supplies are going to be adversely affected in this manner."

Slaan paused for a second, looking over his notes where the first item indicated a possibility for bringing the stacks back online which had been proposed. Clearly this wasn't the time to bring that up. Instead he added a note on the arrest warrant and then tried to line himself up for the next item on the list: production of food now that so many vehicles had been commandeered for rescue work and no one was gathering in crops properly or making deliveries.

A bleeping caught Trab's attention before Slaan could do so however, and the Admiral responded to it with what Slaan considered almost undue haste; there surely hadn't been reason to seem quite that enthusiastic about getting out of the morning briefing.

"Trab here."

"Sir, I have Captain Picard for you," the communications officer reported. "He indicates that it's extremely urgent."

"Put him through," Trab instructed, sitting back in his seat and turning to face the screen where the communication would be displayed. When Picard appeared, Trab actually managed to smile, which Slaan had noticed that he never did during the briefings. "Captain, what has gone wrong now?"

"The orbit of the second moon," the Human replied bluntly. "My stellar cartography division have been observing its orbit and have noticed that it isn't accelerating as it should while it approaches the planet. The lower acceleration means that it is effectively falling out of orbit. We estimate impact on the surface in less than eighteen hours."

Trab now decided to straighten up, and Slaan admitted to himself that the Admiral could be relied upon to take things seriously when he chose to. "Remind me, how big is the second moon?"

"Roughly point two five lunar masses," Picard replied, his tone slipping into what Slaan believed the Humans referred to as being 'heavy', which meant that they were being particularly grave and serious. "Even pooling all of the anti-matter that we have available in the solar system wouldn't be enough to alter its course or break it into safer chunks."

Trab scowled, turning his face towards the window for a moment. Then he turned back, the scowl turning thoughtful. "What about Commander Riker? Does he have any options?"

Slaan couldn't understand what a single Human (he guessed from the name) would be able to achieve that everyone else wouldn't be able to, but Picard appeared to understand. "He's indicated that the moon is too massive; he can move the Enterprise, but something the size of the moon is beyond his ability at the moment. He's working on it right now, trying to pace himself. In the meantime it has been suggested that the subspace dampeners that we've been working on might be able to alleviate the effects somewhat; our present theory is that the disruption itself is causing this by operating on a new subspace frequency that interacts with the moon's subspace shadow. Commander Data is organising the deployment of those dampeners which we do have ready as we speak, and I've ordered production to be accelerated as much as possible."

"That will be hard with the solar stacks unavailable," Trab pointed out. "They need that kind of power in order to produce isosteel."

"Indeed. Which unfortunately brings me to the next suggestion that I have been given: evacuation."

"We'll need to get people away from the impact site," Trab agreed, only to be cut off by Picard.

"Admiral, the impact will be of sufficient force to crack open the tectonic plates that it hits directly; the impact assessment that I've been provided with suggests that the shockwave from an impact of this magnitude could actually shatter all of the plates, or at the very least will cause sufficient shockwaves within the planet itself to increase earthquake and volcanic activity to extinction levels. We're going to lose the planet in less than two days if this hits."

Trab paused to think about that one. "Very well then, we'll start using the transporters-"

"Again, Admiral," Picard interrupted once more, "the subspace disruption makes the transporters useless. We'll need to evacuate people using the shuttles, and a number of those are going to be involved in deploying the dampeners to the moon in an attempt to buy us more time."

This time Trab scowled deeper while pausing. "And Commander Riker can't assist because we need him concentrating on trying to stop the moon from hitting it as well."

"I think that our worst case scenarios have been made real," Picard agreed.

"Very well. Deploy what shuttles you can to recover people; load as many as you can onto the Enterprise and Starbase Fifty Two. I'll have the Fearless recalled as soon as possible in order to assist with that. In the meantime..." The Admiral paused. "I'm going to need a very good speech to explain this one to the population."

---

Sickbay had become a hive of activity once more. Alongside the Starfleet personnel who still needed treating for blindness, deafness and burns, they had the regular cases that were still appearing, and the new cases that had started to appear.

Beverley was in a rush, trying to keep everything moving, when Q appeared.

"I was wondering whether you had given further thought to my offer," he declared as his opening line.

"Q!" Beverley tried to stop herself from jumping as he appeared, then reacted in the time honoured manner of people who are already stressed being pestered by annoying individuals, and getting annoyed. "I don't have time for you right now."

"You could have all of the time in the world if you accept my offer," Q pointed out. "No rushing around, no sudden emergencies to handle."

"Someone needs to deal with them," Beverley declared, trying to push past him and finding that despite his Human appearance he was apparently as immovable as a statue when he wanted to be.

"It doesn't have to be you," he insisted. "All of this fuss and bother; you could let someone else handle it."

Apparently unable to get around him, and now forced into making some kind of decision, Beverley decided. "Q, let me tell you about a story. As part of this story, the world ended and Death, War, Famine and Pestilence rode out as was their appointed role in that situation. But when challenged on this, Death informed the people who had caused the world to end that he was choosing to ride out against them, in order to save the world, because there were still things left undone." She paused.

Q, with all of his power and abilities, must have known where this was going. He could probably quote chapter and verse of the story that she was referencing. But apparently, at this point, he felt it incumbent upon himself to join in with her way of handling this, and chose to ask the question: "What still needed doing?"

"Everything," Beverley answered. "I can't leave here, because everything still needs doing, and I haven't done more than a fraction of it yet." Very deliberately she stepped past Q, ignoring him and as a result failing to see the faintly satisfied smile that flickered across his features for an instant before there was a flash of light and he vanished.

---

John Spartan had deployed down to the surface in the first shuttle that had gone down to pick up evacuees.

There were good reasons for that: he was a class four augment, able to go toe-to-toe with anyone short of a high-gravity Vulcan with a good chance of success and such a person would be vitally important for maintaining peace on a planet where they had an estimated fifteen hours to get people off before a moon crashed down onto them.

There was another reason that he was aware of though, and it was one that he suspected that his colleagues weren't aware of.

He wasn't normally given to self-sacrifice in the dramatic sense. Of course he had known what he was getting into when he had taken the augmentation; you had several months of training and psychological preparation before you were allowed to finally accept the augmentation, and part of that had been them ensuring that he was fully aware of the kind of changes that they would be making to his mind.

A class four augment was a powerful asset, from the enhanced strength and health through to the boosted intellect, augmentation such as ocular and auditory implants, and then through to the less conventional augmentation such as the dispersive webbing to fend off phaser fire, the third lung to recycle air for extended periods, and the micro-chemical plant that could handle various kinds of toxin and the like.

All of that power had to be guarded, and the Eugenics Wars had taught Humanity about the dangers of having such powers running around wildly.

As such a strong sense of loyalty, bordering on the fanatical sometimes, was a requirement of being a class four augment. That loyalty had been refined and tuned over the time that class four augments had existed, but it had always included a healthy edge of willingness to sacrifice themselves to save others when it became necessary.

Thus, he was on the ground. And whether anyone realised it or not, when the final shuttle left he would be staying behind on the surface in order to ensure its safety and, if necessary, give someone else the chance to have his place aboard the Enterprise.

He was sanguine about this; he had known going in that he might need to do something like this one day, and had made his peace with that fact before they had even started on the augmentation process. It would, he reasoned, be interesting to see a moon crashing down like that. He had, quite deliberately, managed to assign himself to a landing site where he was fairly sure that he would be able to see the moon come down without being killed until it had actually hit the ground.

For now, people were behaving themselves; no one was quite sure about the scale of the disaster yet, but Starfleet was making it clear that an evacuation was required. For now there wasn't a panic going on. Whether it was faith in Starfleet or just a sense of unreality that something could go that wrong, or even just that no one had the ability to panic left in them, everyone was staying calm for now.

He glanced up at the sky; the second moon was visible just coming up over the horizon, and would be landing just over the opposite horizon. It was already noticeably larger than he remembered it.

---

Visiting moons of one kind or another was normal for a Starfleet officer. The lunar base on the moon's dark side was a regular visiting spot for academy cadets' underground low gravity training, while the number of other moons that were used to some degree was quite high.

Geordi La Forge had been comfortable in an environmental suit for most of his life, and had no particular fear of lunar environments. At least in this one he could actually see the planet that he was orbiting over; all of the lunar bases on the Earth's moon had been built on the dark side in order to avoid spoiling the view of it.

Since the meeting a couple of hours earlier when he had been informed of how people were reacting to his new ability to understand technology, Geordi had been starting to become aware of how people were reacting to his presence. Where he had previously looked at such behaviour and considered it to be purely professional envy or something similar, he now realised that it was genuine dislike, confusion, or fear.

Geordi would have been the first to admit that he had to deal with people not being entirely comfortable around him. He was used to it, having grown up with the idea ever since being required to have a VISOR. He had never bothered to hide the VISOR, as some people did by taking ocular implants instead. He would if pressed, have said that he was used to being different and to having people look at him differently from other people.

He had now discovered an awkward truth: he was still just as human as everyone else, and just as vulnerable to people treating him differently.

As he worked, setting up the dampeners as best they could manage across the surface of the moon, he considered what he could do about this. Keeping Q's gift would be high on his list of options, because it would give him so much capability in his job. The idea of it being an advantage over other people never really occurred to him; having it would allow him to work on the projects that he wanted to.

But at the same time... Working on the projects that he wanted to was one thing. But when the element of learning things had been taken out and he was just left with simply looking at them to understand them... He had picked up a tricorter the previous evening, intending to use it to scan some components. Without thinking about it he had seen that there was a fault in the tricorter, and known how to fix it instantly. What would previously have taken a few minutes to work out and then a couple of hours to diagnose had been reduced to seconds.

And then it stopped being interesting. He could develop new ideas for things, and could make them work. But he wasn't able to spend time on them, to devote the hours to understanding things the way that he had been doing previously. Now, all of the intelligent parts of his day to day work had been removed, leaving him with nothing but the donkey work. Q had, effectively, removed the interesting part of his work, by design or otherwise.

And even if he could move out of regular engineering work into pure development, he faced two issues as far as he could see it: the same issue with people giving him odd looks, and the issue that he couldn't understand precisely why he knew things or why he did them. He had modified a nanowelder to increase its effectiveness before realising that while he understood perfectly why he had done it there wasn't anything that he could point to in a technical or scientific manual to explain why he had done it. He was operating on principles that had little to do with conventional workings.

He paused for a moment, staring up at the planet overhead and considering. Space was simple in that regard; there wasn't anything big enough for him to see at this distance and so nothing to trigger the sudden flood of knowledge into his mind whenever he looked at something technical.

He felt someone tap him on the shoulder, and turned to find a figure in an environmental suit just behind him. Names on environmental suits were never very useful, since no one aside from the hazard teams had their own suits to use. The face behind the faceplate was clear enough though that Geordi was able to recognise who it was. "Mayweather; something wrong?"

"You'd just stopped sir," Mayweather replied, Asian-ethnic features turned to a look of concern. "So I'd have to ask you: something wrong?"

Geordi chuckled. "You could say that." He tapped at his suit's vambrace control panel, dropping the range of his communications down to just include Mayweather. The crewman seemed concerned by this, but responded in kind. "I need some advice," Geordi admitted. "If you had something, but the only way to keep it was to give up your job and move into a different one, what would you do?"

Mayweather frowned. "This is about that ability you've got, isn't it?"

Geordi nodded. "I've been hearing some stuff about people not liking that I've got this. And I have a feeling that if I keep this ability... I'm not going to be able to stay here. Now I don't want to leave, but... This ability is massive. It could revolutionise all sorts of technical fields."

There was a pause as Mayweather reached down and picked up part of the packaging that the dampener had been shipped in. Geordi realised that they were still on the clock here, and followed suit. "Sir... I can't really offer much advice one way or the other on this subject," Mayweather admitted. "I've been arguing with my roommate for the last few days. I like my work, but the two of us aren't getting along, to the point where I'm thinking of transferring to a different department rather than stay with him. I can see that something is wrong, but he can't. You've got a different situation: you can see that something is wrong, and you've got a way out of it by escaping or by losing this ability I would guess. So my question is: what else are you losing? I don't have many friends aboard, and I didn't really sign on for a long tour in any one place. You seem career to me though."

Geordi paused, thinking on that one. Mayweather was right: he wouldn't just be leaving the job; it would be his friends as well. He would leave behind Data and everything that their ongoing friendship stood for. His friendship, however restricted it was by rank, with the commissar and first officer. The poker matches that they played. He had considered such things, but in a somewhat haphazard manner. Now he focused on that, he realised that this was the really defining factor in the whole thing.

"Thanks," Geordi said slowly. "I'm going to be a minute here." Without further explanation, he took a few steps away from Mayweather, cutting his radio entirely. He looked up into the emptiness, wondering if what he was about to do was even sensible. "Q," he said aloud, his voice echoing oddly inside his helmet. "You there?"

"Of course I'm here," came a voice over the radio. Geordi checked and found that a single encrypted channel had opened itself up. He didn't bother trying to trace the source. "I take it that you've reached some kind of conclusion about my gift."

"I have," Geordi said. "And I'm sorry, but I want to stay here with my friends. And if I keep your gift, I have to leave them behind. So you can have it back."

There was a pause, and then Q spoke again. His tone was as neutral as always, but Geordi was sure that he picked up a hint of something in it. "Very well. I'll leave you the dampeners," he continued. "But I'll take the rest of it back." Without another word the channel cut out.

Cautiously, Geordi turned back to look at the dampener that they had set up. Where a moment before knowledge would have come into his brain unbidden at the sight of it, now he saw only what was there and knew what he had learnt about it the hard way.

There was a bleeping from his communicator, which he hastily acknowledged. "Sir, this is Lieutenant Cargill; your radio was off. Is there something wrong?"

Smiling to himself, Geordi got back to work. "No lieutenant, everything's fine."

---

The main shuttle bay was an unfortunate mess at the moment. Worf looked around with distaste at it as another set of evacuees were offloaded. Turnaround time for the shuttles was being kept to a minimum, but even that was being stretched slowly further. Sometimes it was mechanical issues, and sometimes it was the evacuees themselves.

In this case, it was the evacuees. Worf stalked up to the shuttle just in time for a small human child to throw up just inside the hatch. From the smell, he guessed that this wasn't the first time it had happened on this flight. It also wasn't the first time that this had happened on the other flights.

Operations personnel moved in, aided by medical personnel. The shuttle's passengers were moved out of the shuttle and off towards the rest of the ship, four children who had probably never left their home before and should really have been given anti-nausea drugs before getting into the shuttle, sobbing in the midst of the group while their parents cast hurt looks at the Starfleet crew who were desperately trying to hurry them up in order to get the shuttle moving again.

The puddle of vomit was tidied up as best they reasonably could under the circumstances: it was cleaned out of the hatch's mechanisms; checks were made to ensure that it hadn't leaked any further, and then structural repair cement, normally used as a quick fix for hull breaches or emergency patching of hot or live materials, was sprayed over it. It would be a job and a half to clean the stuff off afterwards, but it was a damned sight quicker than trying to clean up properly.

As the shuttle left again, the pilot muttering curses about small children into the airwaves, Worf checked a padd. Between the Enterprise, Starbase Fifty Two, and the ground based forces, they had twelve shuttlecraft going. Presently, there was a gap while all of the shuttles were in flight, and Worf had a few minutes before the next one would show up.

Tasha Yar joined him as he waited. "Commander."

"Constable. Do you not have evacuees to take care of?"

She gave a bit of a shrug. "I've got a couple of my people who have been getting on my nerves recently; I've delegated the matter over to them now that they've seen me handle the first few groups. Room allocation is being handled by Operations, and I've got my people on standby to handle the ones who object to being stuck in the cargo bays. When's the next group?"

"The next shuttle will be here in seven minutes," Worf declared. "That will make sixteen arrivals so far for the Enterprise. Roughly two hundred and forty evacuees."

"Nearly half capacity," Tasha said softly. "What happens when we reach full capacity?"

"Starbase Fifty Two can handle a lot of evacuees," Worf pointed out.

"Not nearly enough," Tasha said, remembering the discussion between O'Brien and Aden that she had been drawn into several days ago. "We're going to be leaving most of the population down there."

"I believe that everyone is aware of this," Worf admitted, his voice dropping closer to a whisper. "There is little that we can do though: the Enterprise has only a limited life support capacity, and we cannot exceed it if we are to successfully make it to another planet in order to unload these evacuees."

Tasha was silent, and Worf guessed that she was thinking of her homeworld and the people who were left there, unable to escape. He didn't know much about it, beyond what he had heard from Tasha, but Turkana IV didn't seem like much of a place to be left behind.

"What have you decided about Q's offer?" Tasha asked suddenly, confirming to some degree her line of thought.

Worf allowed a faint growl to escape from him. With most people he would have kept it in, but Tasha at least understood the necessities of having to restrain your instincts most of the time and the need to vent occasionally. "I very much want to accept his offer. The idea of returning to the Klingon people has great appeal to me, especially after the taste that Q gave me of life with them." He shook his head. "I have not had a chance to truly experience the differences though, and I do not trust his motives. I intend to refuse his offer," he finished with determination.

"You think that he'll accept that?" Tasha asked.

"I do not intend to give him a choice," Worf informed her. "I may reconsider my choice at a later date, in which case I will make such investigations and efforts myself. But I will not be beholden to Q over this matter."

"That makes two of us," Tasha said, a faint smile touching her lips as she reached out and gently touched Worf's arm, a gesture of friendship and connection that he accepted with a grateful, if gruff, smile and a nod.

---

"Captain," Data called out from the operations station, "our deadline is approaching."

Picard looked up at the main screen. The second moon was shown on one half of it, while the other half showed a graph of its altitude over the last twelve hours and a countdown to its impact. That number, Picard realised, had been somewhat overestimated originally. Of the eighteen hours that Data had originally estimated that they had, only twelve had passed and the moon was already approaching the point of skimming the atmosphere.

The evacuation had gone through as planned, being completed just in time in the end. The withdrawal of the shuttles had left a bitter taste on the planet, where the people had abruptly realised that they were being abandoned. There had been reports of calls going out from all over the planet to the orbiting ships and facilities, pitifully few in number to handle the population left behind, begging for help. Picard had kept listening as long as he was able to, but in the end had ordered Data to shut them off. As always, harder than trying to help was the pain of having to stand back unable to help.

He had resolved however, that they would watch. They could do nothing else; ordering a shuttle pilot into the coming inferno was tantamount to signing their death warrant; the last pilot to leave the planet had been required to activate the shuttle's shields and intruder defences when those being left behind had, with the aid of those already aboard, tried to hijack his shuttle. No, no more help would be going down to the surface, but they would stand vigil at least.

"How long until it touches the atmosphere?" he asked. That was going to be the big one; once atmospheric drag began to kick in there would be nothing to stop the moon from hitting the ground.

"Atmospheric contact will occur in approximately three minutes," Data supplied. "Impact will be roughly ninety minutes after that; however there will be significant atmospheric disruption in the run-up to this."

An hour and a half left, and that was just to the point where the moon impacted the planet. Death itself, including the death of those in shelters who might potentially survive the oncoming cataclysm, might take days or weeks. Beside him, Troi reached out a hand, squeezing his own in support. He glanced at her, seeing the thin smile covering what had to be similar emotions to his own, and returned it gratefully.

Riker strode onto the bridge, looking weary. He had tried on several occasions to shift the moon or alter its course. Every time he had come up against a simple problem: there was a finite limit to what the Human mind could contain. Simply to call something a moon was to stick a nice label on it and tidy it away into a corner where you could pretend that you knew what was going on. But in order to make these powers work on such a scale as this Riker needed to strip away that nice polite illusion and truly understand what was going on there. And in this case the scale was too much for a Human being to handle. And it was starting to show.

"Commander," Picard said, his tone containing a hint of pity that he couldn't restrain. Riker had to be feeling the strain more than the rest of them at this point.

"Captain," Riker said, his tone terse as if merely in passing. He clearly had something important on his mind and wasn't willing to be distracted. "Commissar."

"Commander?" Troi replied, giving Riker a curious look.

"I need to know: you said that you and Mr Davey could be happy together if you let it happen. Is that still true?"

"Well, yes, I believe it is," Troi said, slightly flustered by the unexpected direction of the question. "But I haven't decided anything on the subject."

"No," Riker agreed. "But that helps me make my decision." He glanced around the bridge, and then apparently picked a spot he liked. "Q! Get here, now!"

There was a flash of light, exactly where Riker was looking, and Picard had to wonder about the kind of power that Riker was wielding; was Q obliging him by appearing where he wanted, or was Riker predicting Q's movements?

"You called?" Q said, his tone neutral but with a supercilious air to it. He was decked out in the dress uniform of an admiral now, which didn't seem right for the situation, but may have been correct for a funeral. On Q, it just seemed wrong whatever the occasion.

"I did," Riker growled. "I accept your gift. Make me one of you."

There was a stunned silence from the rest of the bridge crew at this pronouncement. Picard was having to look past Riker to see Q and so even when he turned to face Riker he still had a glimpse, just a split second glimpse of what might have been a hint of disappointment that flickered across Q's features in that instant. He couldn't later be sure whether he had imagined it or not.

"Will!" Troi was on her feet, clearly upset by this development. Q didn't give her time to say any more though.

"You're willing to give up all of this: your mortal existence and everything that goes with it, including all of your mortal priorities and concerns. Very well then Commander William Riker." Q raised a hand-

There was a flash of light. Initially, it surrounded Riker, and then it began to clear. But as it cleared, Picard saw through it as Riker raised his own hand in a matching gesture. And then the whole world flared up around them.

---

John had found a high building to watch from in the end. It had been easier than trying to fight his way out to the hills, and in any event the top of the city's Tower of Art was on the same level as some of the smaller hills nearby.

He had, in the end, developed an entourage. A gang of children had apparently chosen him as their protector and followed him around, possibly in the vague hope that he would be a source of rescue. In the end he had kept them with him because it was easier than sending them somewhere else and probably safer; with a definite short-term this-time-the-world-will-definitely-end in sight, people had taken to the streets in a combination of panic and tourism.

Now the children sat with him, watching as the moon came down lower and lower. He had managed to get access to the internet and pulled up a chart of the moon's surface on his padd. He had then made a game with the children of who could spot a feature on it the fastest using his scope. Currently he was getting suspicious about two of them cheating, but couldn't be bothered to call them on it; it wasn't like there was much of a chance for them to learn in the long run.

Tidal forces had already set in around the area, giving rise to minor quakes. That the Tower of Art stood at all after two months testified to its stability and John wasn't worried particularly about the possibility of it falling over. The kids had been worried by it to begin with, but had eventually just settled down to enjoy the ride.

"It'll hit atmosphere any minute now," John commented. "We'll see some fireworks then."

Put that way, the kids were almost looking forward to it. He couldn't get straight in his own mind what he was doing, or why he was succeeding so well. On one level he hoped desperately that it was his charm that was making it so easy to keep them entertained, because the alternative seemed to be that these children were so accustomed to the idea of death that they could look it in the face and smile as easily as he could.

He frowned up at a speck of light that had appeared in the sky. It was out of place, and alarmingly bright for something that-

Then the entire moon flashed into a brilliant flare of light.

---

Crewman Claire Howard had pulled her shuttle into a position trailing the second moon as it continued to descend towards the planet. She could easily pull up in time in the event that it did something dramatic like exploding unexpectedly, but she wanted to watch this from as close as she could.

It had been a random chance, more or less, that had seen her become a pilot: she had originally wanted to be a chef, before Starfleet's aptitude tests had uncovered a higher than average talent for flying. She had insisted on continuing with her chosen career, but more and more had found herself being pushed into the role of backup pilot. And, secretly and somewhat resentfully, she found that she was enjoying it as well; she personally blamed the El Aurian careers advisor at the academy who had spent a couple of minutes talking about her options and the need for care and attention, of timing and co-ordination, and generally left her feeling that the ability to do one more or less implied the ability to do the other.

Starbase Fifty Two had been her first major assignment; she had travelled on three ships in order to make the three month journey here from Earth, the entire process taking nearly a year, and finding that her preferred career was generally deemed to be of more use than her enforced one. Then once she had arrived things had switched around somewhat as she became a backup courier instead for items that couldn't be safely or reliably transported or broadcast.

In the last two months she had been flying more and more as the call for chefs went down relative to the call for pilots who could handle atmospheric turbulence and reliably get in and out of tight situations. In the last few hours she had been alternating fairly constantly with other pilots, desperately trying to get engineers and equipment onto then off the moon, and getting evacuees off the planet as fast as possible. Now both of those missions were cut short as the end drew near.

Relayed telemetry was being sent off to the Enterprise, while at the same time the engineers who she had picked up from the surface of the moon were busy analysing the readings that they were getting from the sensors that they had left behind. Some of them were even talking about being able to stabilise the moon using the dampeners that they had already set up, but Claire wasn't convinced; it was low enough right now, travelling in such a direction, that nothing would stop it.

She was, she supposed, as guilty as they were of being short-sighted. They were keeping themselves from thinking about the consequences by keeping busy, while she was doing the same by one of the most risky pieces of flying that she had ever done. Few pilots could claim that they had flown in the path of a moon as it was crashing into a planet, and she reasoned that if she was going to be a pilot she might as well get some kind of credit for it.

"Contact should be any minute now," one of the engineers informed her, coming up to sit at the front alongside her. "How long are you going to keep following it for?"

"It's big enough that it will still be sticking out of the atmosphere when it hits the ground," she pointed out. "Once it makes contact I'll pull back; the impact will probably throw up a lot of stuff that we'll want to dodge anyway, so I want to be clear of that."

"Hey, we've got some kind of weird reading from the Enterprise," an engineer announced.

Claire was about to turn and ask what exactly was weird about it when the moon, which currently took up three quarters of her view of the universe through the shuttle's forward sensors, suddenly flashed with brilliant light. For a few seconds the sensors couldn't report anything sensible back to her, and then abruptly the flash faded.

Navigational systems, which had been flashing up warnings about collision alerts and the like for the last fifteen minutes, abruptly fell silent as space became clear.

Then the planet started to glow.

---

Picard watched in a kind of horror as his first officer apparently joined the ranks of the Q. He had been worried that this would happen; a decision made solely in order to save the population, regardless of his own fate.

But would it be enough?

Q hadn't been kidding when he had mentioned Riker giving up his mortal existence, including all of the priorities and concerns: how could the Q exist if they shared mortal concerns? What state would the universe be in if the Q cared for the fall of every sparrow in the same way that they cared for the fate of every particle of space dust? Riker was giving up a Human perspective on the universe, entering a greater and grander world than any of them would have been able to get their heads around.

How long would he be able to hold onto his Human priorities? There was long debate about how the Q perceived time, or travelled through it, or reacted to it. Were they as subservient to it as Humans were? Could they bypass it entirely? Did their greater perception come with a greater processing speed, allowing them to watch events go by at what, for a Human would be, an interminably slow speed?

He wasn't sure how long the flash had lasted now; three or four seconds? Maybe five? Had an age already passed for what had been William Riker? Was he already bored with the mortal issues that he had been subjected to until now? That he had set out with the resolution to fix these issues Picard didn't doubt. That he might only get partway through fixing them was a thought that he didn't want to consider.

Definitely five seconds by now. No one on the bridge had dared to speak, and even the ship's computer had stopped making any noises as if holding its breath. And still that flash went on.

Or was it? Picard couldn't be sure with the way that his eyes were starting to water from the glare, but he was sure that it was flickering, wavering like a candle in the breeze.

Then, with a finality that left them all blinking as their eyes tried to adjust once more, the light cut off.

Picard barely had time to consider this before he had to move, trying to catch Riker as he collapsed. Troi and Data both moved at the same time, Troi helping to set Riker down as gently as possible on the deck while Data pulled out a tricorter and started checking it.

Over them all Q hadn't moved beyond lowering his hand and looking down to watch them as they tended to their first officer.

"Interesting," Q said, perhaps a hint of respect creeping into his tone.

"Q, what have you done to him?" Picard asked sharply.

"Done? I've saved his life," Q announced as if it should have been obvious. "Or his sanity; maybe both. He took on the mantle of the Q, became one of us, and then cast it aside. Only he tried to cast aside his ability to handle his increased perceptions before he cast aside those perceptions. If I hadn't intervened he would have burnt his brain out in a second."

Picard wasn't sure how to react to that one, and turned to Data. The android was looking at his tricorter with a frown, and then nodded. "All of these readings indicate a normal Human," he admitted.

"What about elsewhere," Picard said, indicating the main screen with a flick of his head. At present the screen was still showing what had been on there before, only now the graph appeared to have gone crazy, with the line coming very close to the point where it would have hit the atmosphere, and then jumping back up to the position that it would normally have been in at this point in its orbit.

Data returned to his station as Troi called for a medic for Riker. After a few seconds Data paused as if having to reread the results that he was getting. "Captain... According to these readings the moon has been restored to its normal orbit, and the subspace distortion has vanished." He checked some more readings. "I cannot say for certain, but it would appear that the damage on the planet and to Starbase Fifty Two has been fixed as well."

"Deus ex machina," Picard whispered.

"Hardly Captain Picard," Q interjected. "When Zeus descends from Olympus in order to fix the problems of the mortal world, traditionally he returns there in order to tidy himself out of the way. He isn't meant to abandon his powers once his task is completed." Picard looked up at Q, wondering about the strange, unreadable tone of voice; no longer neutral and yet so hard to define despite that. "Human ex machina," Q declared, his tone softening somewhat, before there was a flash of light and he vanished.

For a moment Picard simply looked at the place where Q had stood, before Data drew his attention back to the situation at hand.

"Captain, Admiral Trab is hailing us."

Standing, Picard nodded to Data. "Put him on screen," he instructed.

The display of the state of the moon vanished to be replaced by the main control deck of Starbase Fifty Two, with Admiral Trab square in the middle of the view. For some reason the Admiral looked irate.

"Picard, what just happened? I thought that Riker wasn't able to do anything to help."

"He wasn't Admiral," Picard replied, a sense of relief coming over him as the source of the admiral's annoyance became clear. "He was trying right up to the last minute, and then had to accept Q's offer of joining the Continuum properly in order to actually achieve the results that he wanted. He then apparently nearly killed himself restoring himself to Humanity."

"Couldn't he have done that a bit sooner rather than leaving us all in suspense?" Trab griped, possibly a bit unfairly to Picard's mind. But it was the annoyance of someone who had been slowly tensing up for things to go badly wrong and had then suddenly had them turn out alright. You were allowed that.

"We're still trying to assess precisely what he did in the end," Picard said, ignoring the question. "So far he appears to have restored the moon to its proper orbit and closed off the subspace disruption."

"I take it that you haven't checked on your evacuees then," Trab said sourly. "I had a dozen of them in here demanding better conditions while they were aboard when they rather abruptly vanished. I would like to think that he just made the ungrateful shekey vanish altogether, but I have a feeling that they've been returned to the planet's surface."

Picard glanced at Data who had started bringing up new displays on his console. After a few seconds Data nodded slowly. "Confirmed sir, our evacuees have vanished. I am getting reports on the subject from various members of the operations crew."

"Well," Picard said thoughtfully, "I suppose he couldn't be expected to explain things at the same time as solving all of our problems..."

---

It was two days later that they were able to sit down and discuss things properly. Crews had been needed to help restore what had not already been restored, and to assure people that the disaster was now over. While major damage had been repaired, much had been left undone in the six point three seconds which Data assured them that Riker had possessed the full power of the Q.

Starbase Fifty Two and the SD network had been almost totally restored; Trab was complaining about the colour scheme that Riker had used in the repaired sections, but everyone had put that down to him simply needing something to complain about. The SD platform in Diana had been left there, though had acquired a rough and ready shelter which gave the impression that it was now meant to be a formal part of the facility now.

Evacuees had been returned to their homes, and the Starfleet personnel who had been on the surface had been returned to the Enterprise or Starbase Fifty Two. Ambiguous feelings had made remaining on the surface unwise for Starfleet personnel until they had managed to convince people that it was safe again. The only exception had been John Spartan, who had apparently been entertaining a group of children. Clearly, it took all sorts.

Injuries were the one major thing that Riker hadn't bothered to fix. Over half of the population were listed as being injured now, and the count of deaths had risen to one and a half thousand, an uncertain number of which was attributed to rioting during the final minutes before the moon was due to hit.

One of the injured, Picard had found time to accept a visit from in amongst the chaos of those two days.

"I must say, I did wonder about where you had got to over these two months," Picard said as he handed over a mug of coffee before sitting down on the ready room's sofa as well.

"I'll admit, I did have moments where I considered calling you up," Lucien admitted, sitting to favour his right leg and hip where they were still encased in a support frame. "The idea of being stranded down there while the moon falls out of the sky isn't sitting well with a lot of people."

"Traditionally disasters like that shouldn't happen that quickly," Picard pointed out. "How did your studies go in the end? You were looking for ruins I believe."

"I found plenty," Lucien declared. "Mostly a lot more recent than I wanted to. Most of the ones that pre-date Federation settlement here were so badly obscured by the time I reached them that they were almost useless. But I was able to get access to some of the museums and check their records, and I found some interesting material in them."

"And did it help you?"

"To some degree," Lucien admitted. "Not as conclusively as I would have liked, but it is progress. I'm going to be heading back down to the surface and taking another look while I can, but I thought that I should come up and say hello while I had the chance."

"Well, you're welcome to come back aboard for longer if you want to," Picard offered. "And when we leave I'm sure that we can offer you transport once more."

"I'll see what happens on that front," Lucien said with a grateful smile. "I don't know how long I'll be stuck here in the end."

Picard was about to answer when there was a bleep from his commlink. "Data to Captain Picard. Please respond."

"I thought all of the crises were out of the way," Picard muttered with a mock weariness. He tapped at the control on his commlink. "Go ahead Data."

"Captain, I have an unusual message for you: Q would like to speak with you."

Picard straightened up at that one. Q was not the kind to request an audience or announce one in advance. Something very different or special must be going on for this to occur. "It seems that we may have to cut this short," Picard apologised to his guest. "Q isn't exactly the sort to wait politely for meetings."

"I understand," Lucien agreed. "I'll be in touch with you captain; you may find my final results to be quite interesting." With a certain amount of haste, to be expected from someone trying to avoid getting in the way of the Q, Lucien departed.

Picard barely had time to draw a preparatory breath after the doors closed before there was a flash of light and Q appeared. The entity was now in the grey and blue uniform of a Starfleet lecturer, and for some reason had neglected to put himself up to the rank of Administrator or even Senior Lecturer, instead showing merely the rank of Lecturer. He also sat, even managing to come close to lounging as he did so, with one arm along the backrest of the sofa. His expression was still studious however, as if he was studying everything that went on around him and handing out marks.

"You wanted to see me Q," Picard said, trying to keep his tone neutral. No one had seen Q since he had apparently saved Riker's life, and Picard wasn't looking forward to the experience.

"I did," Q replied. "I thought that you had earned an explanation, for all of the good that it will do you, as a reward for participating in the test that I set you."

"The test that you set me? Q, you didn't test me," Picard assured him.

"Did I not? How many times did you have to restrain yourself from ordering your crew to reject my offers? How many times did I hear you profess your faith in them and their decision making? You were tested more thoroughly than they were Captain Picard."

Picard paused, not sure how to take that. With everyone else being tested by their need to leave the ship it hadn't occurred to him that he could be tested by restraining himself from asking them to stay. "So what were these tests in aid of? Did we pass?"

"You only pass or fail an experiment when you collect or miss results," Q declared without rancour. "We collected the results, and so we passed. Lab rats don't pass tests, they survive them. And you all survived admirably," he admitted, his neutral tone softening just a hint from being totally emotionless. "As to the tests themselves, they were quite simple in one respect and incredibly complicated in another.

"You know how powerful the Q are captain," Q continued. "As individuals we can do incredible things. But we are rarely challenged, if ever. You on the other hand are challenged constantly. You build up ties and bonds between each other. It is one of the reasons that you failed the trials at Farpoint, and the reason that I spared you from the sentence of extinction."

"You spared us? You were the one who condemned us," Picard objected.

"An advocate or lawyer argues for or against a case; a judge may pronounce sentence; the jury find guilt or innocence," Q declared. "The entire Continuum judged you to have failed the trials and voted for your extinction. I refused to carry it out, and the test that I ran here has more than vindicated me in my decision.

"The Q don't need to work together often. Concepts that you consider normal are, to us, alien. Things like teamwork and loyalty, we barely understand. It was only by subjecting your crew to situations where their trust and loyalty to each other could be tested to breaking point that we were able to learn about them.

"In Commander Riker's case we learned that his feelings of helplessness could drive him to abandon his Humanity on the limited possibility that he could return himself there. But only once we provided Commissar Troi with an alternative as a potential mate: his loyalty to her held him back until he could risk leaving her without also leaving her uncared for.

"Lieutenant Commander Worf was probably the most disappointing case out of all of you: he had loyalty to you, and loyalty to his genetic heritage, but it was his distrust of us that ultimately decided things for him.

"Constable Yar was promising; the loyalty to her new crew balanced against the loyalty to her old gang. In the end the balance was tipped by the manner in which she had outgrown her old world and the rules that it worked by.

"Doctor Crusher had to face the loyalty to her child who needs protection from the dangers of this ship against the issues of abandoning everything else that this ship represents. She chose in the end to continue to grow in this place rather than to cower, risking her child so that he can develop and grow alongside her. That was promising.

"And Lieutenant Commander La Forge, to whom I gave the gift of understanding technology. He turned that down in order to stay here, remaining with his friends rather than move elsewhere and make new friends or simply abandon those friends entirely."

"And Data?" Picard asked. "Did you test him?"

"He is still trying to learn loyalty as much as we are," Q declared. "I have another alternative in mind for him."

Picard paused, unsure how to take that. In that delay however, Q stood.

"I will be leaving you now Picard. Don't think that I am abandoning you though: I will always be watching you." With that declaration made, or warning given, he raised a hand and vanished once more in a flash of light.

Somewhat shaken by the experience, Picard moved over to his desk, sitting down in the seat and considering this carefully. The arrogance which presumed that they could never be subjected to tests like this without their consent was one of the reasons that Q had given for their condemnation at Farpoint. Picard thought that he had made his peace with that concept, but now he discovered that he hadn't done so.

A bleeping came from his desktop, and he frowned at it. It shouldn't do that: he had locked it before Lucien came into his ready room, and it shouldn't announce emails when it was locked. But no, apparently it was unlocked; probably, he guessed, something to do with Q.

Glad of the distraction, he tapped at the desktop to bring up the email, finding a video message from Admiral Wood. The good natured American smiled as the video came up, his tanned features suggesting that he had moved back to his Californian office once more.

"Captain, I wanted to extend our congratulations to you and your crew on the resolution of the situation at New Hope. I understand that Commander Riker is due some special commendations in fact, and I would appreciate you passing those on to him.

"To business though, I'm here to give you your marching orders. Once the Broadway arrives at New Hope I want the Enterprise to stay long enough to ensure proper hand-over and then head out to join the Newton and the Berners-Lee in sector nine one three. You will personally have command of the group. You will be following up the latest sensor drones that were sent past the Omicron Theta colony and which show that the radiation levels left over following the attack have dropped to a low enough level to allow hazard teams to make a landing there. It's been twenty six years and we still don't know what happened there; now you get to do a bit of digging and find out. There was some debate about whether or not to include your ship, but apparently your Lieutenant Commander Data isn't going to be too worried about digging around the remains of his homeworld. I leave it to your discretion if you think that it might cause problems.

"I'll have orders and congratulations issued formally in a couple of hours; I just wanted to get the personal message in before that came out. Well done Jean-Luc, and well done. Wood out."

Picard sat back as the video ended, thinking once more. Omicron Theta, a colony wiped out in unexplained circumstances twenty six years earlier and filled with so much radiation as to make recovery even of the bodies impossible.

Q had mentioned that he had an alternative in mind for Data, and that he would still be watching them as they went on. Was this the next test being put to them already?