“It is, okay, that’s the thing,” Jackdaw agreed. “But you have to understand the power structure here, Joe. The rich like to be rich, and they don’t want a bunch of poor people running around making things unpleasant for them. That’s what we are in The End. The lowest of the low, as far as they’re concerned. They can do whatever they want, and get away with it.”
“So the authorities know about this? Condone it?”
“Joe,” Michelle said. “We’re giving you the shorthand version here. If you’d like, we can talk all about the socio-economics of it later. The gist is, the division of rich and poor here in Cyre is an enormous gap, more of a chasm, with less and less middle class all the time. The very poor, which is most of those in The End, are considered disposable in order to make room for the new poor, which used to be the middle. The authorities wouldn’t really mind if a plasma bomb wiped us all out, except that it might be a bit of a public relations problem. When they catch us breaking the law, though—even a ridiculous law—they have no problem with killing as many of us as they can.”
“That’s crazy,” Kyle muttered, shaking his head. “It makes no sense.”
“You’ve been here long enough to know better than that,” Michelle reminded him. “You know about the gulf between the rich and the rest of us.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And you have heard of other altercations. The one last month, when seven teenagers were shot by the cops? Remember?”
“Of course. I just hadn’t put it all together into a pattern yet.”
“It’s a pattern,” Alan said, the first time he’d spoken. His handsome, lined face was grave. “Just not a pretty one.”
“Can’t something be done?” Kyle asked.
“We’re working on it, okay?” Jackdaw said. “But we need more time.”
Kyle almost laughed, but he realized that would be a bad idea and contained it. “You?” he asked, trying to keep the disbelief from his voice. “What are you, some kind of revolutionary group?”
“A revolution is exactly what’s needed,” Roog said.
“But ... you’re not very many. Especially against such an entrenched power structure.”
“We have friends,” Michelle told him. “Supporters. We are more than you see here, many more. Now tell me, Joe Brady. Was I right to trust you?”
Kyle wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. He felt certain that they were fighting a hopeless battle, unless their “friends” were far more numerous and powerful than they were. This tiny group couldn’t hope to battle Cozzen’s authorities on their own, much less the rest of Cyre. There was, though, the flame of righteousness burning in their eyes, the fire of those who believe they’re on a sacred quest, and Kyle knew better than to underestimate people who thought that way. These were true believers, and from what he’d seen today there was every chance that their cause was just.
Which still didn’t make it his cause. He had served Starfleet because he believed in the things Starfleet stood for, which included accepting the basic decency of all beings, and striving for equality and fairness. Hazimot, he had known, had not come close to measuring up in those areas, which made it a perfect place to hide from Starfleet. But he hadn’t reckoned on the cost of life in such a backward society making itself known in such a direct and immediate fashion. He had hoped to live on the sidelines until he felt ready to go back and take on Starfleet himself. The sidelines had shifted, though, and suddenly he seemed to be straddling the center, expected to take a position one way or the other.
While he contemplated, Jackdaw had jumped up and run out the doorway. Now he came back in. “It’s all clear out there,” he announced. “We can go back out anytime.”
“I don’t think it’s fair of us to expect Joe to make up his mind this second,” Michelle said. “We’ve thrown a lot at him in a short time, and it’s been a traumatic evening.”
“As long as you’re sure he won’t turn us in,” Melinka said, her tone one of warning.
“Will you, Joe?”
“Of course not,” Kyle promised. He wouldn’t, either. Certainly not before he had amassed a lot more information. Even if he wanted to, at this point any claim he made would be his word against theirs, and they could probably get him locked away for a very long time if he tried to make trouble for them.
Besides, he had no reason to. So far as he could tell right now, they were on the side of the angels.
As if to underscore that idea, Michelle stood up and then offered him a hand, helping to hoist him to his feet. When he was standing, she was very near him, and he could feel the warmth of her body, smell the slightly salty tang of her skin. “Let’s go home, Joe,” she said. “And I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”
He hadn’t had a better invitation all day.
Michelle’s apartment, like the others in this building of illegal squatters, wasn’t luxurious, but she had made it as comfortable as possible. She had brought in what seemed like tons of fabrics and covered the windows, the walls, the furniture, with loose, draped fabric that made the place at once intimate and inviting. Her bed was mounded with mismatched pillows, most of which had ended up on the floor over the space of the last forty minutes or so. Kyle lay back with his head against one of them, his arms behind his head, and Michelle’s head rested in the crook of his right arm. One hand trailed across his stomach and chest as they talked, toying with the small hairs there. Candles burned on a nearby table, adding their aromas to the mingled scents of man and woman.
“So I hope this wasn’t just a ploy to win me over to your cause,” Kyle said softly, stroking Michelle’s long, soft hair.
She playfully punched his solar plexus. “How can you even say that?”
“You have to admit the timing is a little suspect. We’ve both lived here for ages, but nothing like this ever happened until tonight.”
“Strong passions run deep in me,” Michelle told him. “They get mixed up sometimes. Politics and fear stir things up.”
“And I just happened to be available?”
She laughed and slapped him again. “Are you trying to be a jerk, or does it really come that naturally to you?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why I’m here,” he said.
“You’re here because I find you attractive. Because I thought we could bring each other pleasure, and once again, I was right. I told you I trust in my own judgment. Is that too complicated for you?”
“Maybe too simple,” Kyle replied. “I’m a pretty complicated guy.”
Michelle turned and boosted herself up on her elbows, looking at him. Her lips were soft and pink and the way they felt beneath his was one of his very favorite recent memories. “None of us are here because we’re easy cases,” she said. “In The End, I mean. The ones who can just go along and get along don’t wind up here. Only the interesting ones do. The ones with stories to tell. You’ve got a story, don’t you?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “I’ve got a story, all right. It’s a doozy. But I’m not telling it, not here, not tonight. Some of us have to go to work in the morning.”
“Why do you live here? You work pretty regularly, you must get paid okay.”
“I guess because I’m not an easy case either,” he answered.
“Must be a good story, then.”
“Oh, it is.”
“Full of love and hate and betrayal and passion? Those are the best stories.”
“I think it’s safe to say all those elements are present in mine,” he said. “What about yours?”
“I don’t have a story,” Michelle said, closing her eyes. Her lashes were long and thick and, like the rest of her face, perfectly formed. “I’m the exception that proves the rule.”
Kyle reached out and touched her perfect chin. “I don’t believe you.” As he held it, she opened her eyes and it was like staring into the sky on the clearest summer day imaginable. He felt lost, as if he were falling into the vortex of their blue.
“I gues
s you’ll have to stay around for a while,” she said. “So you can find out if you’re right or not.”
“I can think of worse things to do,” Kyle said.
“I can think of better things.” She pushed herself forward, so that her face was closer, and tilted her chin, bringing her lips against his again. “Much better things.”
Chapter 19
There was, Will had always believed, some kind of mystical connection between the night sky and romance. And because he had romance on his mind, he found himself looking forward to a scheduled trip to the moon with more eagerness than he had previously expected. Various squadrons would be going to stay for a few days in Tycho City there and to work on some flying exercises. He was going, which was great, and Felicia was going, which was even better. He figured there would be a chance to get her out under the starry lunar sky and really find out what he meant to her. And to let her know what she had come to mean to him, which seemed to become, with every passing day, all the more urgent. Besides, it was a chance to get off-world, and that in itself was reason to celebrate.
Probably because he was so excited about the trip, the days before it seemed to drag along interminably. He went to classes, he did homework, he played strategema and racquetball and poker and parrises squares. From time to time he went out with friends, but much as he wanted to be alone with Felicia he really wanted to save that until the Tycho trip. It all seemed so numbingly routine. During quiet moments, when he was eating or lying in bed waiting for sleep to claim him, he ran through different scenarios in his head, but they all included him and Felicia.
Tycho City, Will knew, was a populous place—so big that it could be seen from Earth on a very clear night. But he’d been there once before and he knew there were some spots on its outskirts—not far away from the Starfleet base they’d be staying in—that were still within its atmospheric and gravity fields but were otherwise traditional lunar landscape, as it had existed even before Neil Armstrong had left the first human footprint there. He would take Felicia out there, alone, and they’d sit close together, looking out at the Earth and the stars. He would take her hand in his and look into her warm brown eyes and say something like, “Felicia, I’ve really enjoyed spending this time with you.” Then she would melt into his arms.
Except there were some occasions in his mental motion picture when she would simply laugh, or even shake off his touch and storm away. He wasn’t sure what he would do if those came true, but he knew his heart would stop beating. Maybe he’d simply walk outside of Tycho’s atmosphere and see how long it took him to suffocate or freeze to death.
When he got to thinking that way he would shake his head and tell himself that he was being stupid. That’s not you, he thought. That’s some lovesick puppy. Will Riker’s a lot of things, but he’s not a guy who’d commit suicide for anyone.
Then again, love changes you, he guessed. If it doesn’t, maybe it was never really there at all.
Tycho City was everything Will had remembered it being—big, sprawling, bustling, full of bright lights and loud noise and riots of color, as if to chase away the deadly silence of the moon’s surface. Everyone who lived there seemed to speak louder than was necessary, and tried to pack more activity into each day than Will did in a week. The pace of life was furious.
For the cadets, the pace was also fast. They woke early each morning, bathed and ate and then went straight to the field for flight practice. Breaking into their squadrons, they flew an assortment of shuttlecraft, mostly ships that would have been mothballed if not for the educational opportunity they offered. On the morning of their last day, Will was at the helm of a twenty-year-old executive shuttle. It was a sleek ship that seated ten, though on this one there were only the four cadets and their flight instructor, a Vulcan named Satek.
Will felt nervous as he eased the ship out of the dock under Satek’s watchful eye. He had done this enough times in flight sims and training runs, but he wanted everything to be perfect this time. The ship responded like a dream to his commands, though, despite its age—it was actually pretty lush, compared to what he was used to, since it had been the private shuttle of a highly placed Federation diplomat, and all its systems were in top working order. The shuttle hangar opening looked awfully small as they approached it, and the nose of the ship awfully large. And despite the low speed Will knew they were holding at, he felt like the ship was accelerating much too fast.
“You’re doing great,” Paul Rice whispered to him as they cleared the hangar bay. “No problems. Give it some power now.”
With the last structure safely behind them, Will knew that it was okay to give it some juice. They would fly out to a series of buoys, perform a few maneuvers around them, then return. The only tricky part yet to come would be landing again, which would also be Will’s job.
Once at the buoys, each of the cadets in the squadron took their turn putting the shuttle through its paces. They worked on accelerated banked turns, figure eights, hard stops, and other aerial maneuvers. As usual, Paul had the surest hand and best control—he was born to fly, Will was convinced. Dennis Haynes, still in Will’s squadron, was uncertain and hesitant, and that showed in his flying. Estresor Fil was workmanlike and by the book, but every move she made felt just a little stiff. She got the job done, though, and Satek seemed pleased with her performance. Jenna Garcia was nearly as smooth as Paul was, impressing Will with her technical acuity and her command of the conn.
Finally, once they had all made a couple of turns, Satek turned to Will. “Very well done, gentlemen. Cadet Riker, please take us back to Tycho City.”
“Yes, sir,” Will said. Jenna slipped from the helmsman’s chair and Will sat down. He glanced over the instrument display. Everything looked shipshape. “Set course for Tycho City, Starfleet hangar bay,” he instructed the computer. A quick look at the navigational reference display told him when the course had been confirmed.
A short while later the hangar bay loomed in the front viewscreen as the ship’s navigational systems homed in on it. Will kept track of all his displays, and everything looked good for a landing when Satek spoke up. “Computer off, Instructor Satek’s command.”
Instantly the onboard computer obeyed, switching itself off, and the shuttle was under Will’s manual control. “You’re in control, Mr. Riker,” Satek said. “Bring us in.”
“But ... yes, sir,” Will replied. He fought back the sudden wave of panic. He could do this manually, he felt sure, even without a computer. Any pilot worth the name had to know this procedure inside and out. He’d practiced it, run through the steps, simulated it ... that hangar was rushing up at them fast, though, as they entered Tycho’s gravitational field.
“Bring up the nose,” Paul said, reading the situation.
“I know, Paul!” Will snapped, already reaching for the manual flight operations control. He brought up the nose a few degrees and slowed the shuttle’s descent. Next he powered down the impulse engine and brought the manual thrusters to a half-reverse, slowing the shuttle more and making the descent smoother still. “Landing gear down,” he said as he tapped that control pad, more verbally ticking through the checklist than because he expected a computer to do it for him. A slight correction to the X-Y translation control veered the ship to starboard four degrees, and Will continued his steady descent, regulating forward motion through his pressure on the center pad. His breathing was returning to normal now, as he knew he would pull off a smooth landing.
Three minutes later they were docked, with only the slightest bump on contact. “Well done, Cadet,” Satek said, stone-faced in his Vulcan way. Even Paul Rice congratulated him, once they were out of the shuttle and safely on the floor of the hangar. “I could have brought it down without that huge bump,” Paul added. “But I doubt that you did too much damage.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Dennis said. “You did fine.”
“I was nervous,” Will said, “when Satek shut off the computer. Even though I knew I could do it
.”
“Anyone who can’t perform a simple manual landing has no business at the conn,” Paul said.
“That’s true,” Dennis countered. “But usually you know more than a few kilometers from your landing site whether it’ll be manual or not.”
“You can’t count on that, though,” Will put in. “Satek was right to test me. I’m just glad I passed.”
“With flying colors,” Jenna said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’re all still here, aren’t we?”
At least there’s that, Will thought. We’re all still here. And finished with the day’s activity in plenty of time for tonight.
If Will had felt anxious about performing a manual landing in front of his instructor and peers, he was far more nervous about his plans for the evening. He knew he’d be able to grab Felicia after dinner—all the cadets were having a group dinner with some of the officers from the Tycho City Starfleet base—and he planned to invite her out for a walk at the city’s edge, where the lights weren’t so bright and the starscape would be vibrant and alive.
It was what would happen at that point that tied his stomach up in knots. Either he would be able to give voice to his feelings, or he wouldn’t. If he couldn’t then she would probably think him a complete idiot, of course, but that was a chance he had to take. Then the other consideration was whether or not she would return his affections or spurn them. He tried to brace himself for that, but it was like trying to get ready for a kick in the groin—all the mental preparation in the world would be worthless when the foot finally made contact.
During dinner—he barely knew what he was eating, and he was sure he didn’t get much of it in him—he kept looking at Felicia, who sat at a different table, across the room from him. Fortunately, she was in front of him, because it would have been even more awkward if he’d had to turn around in his chair to see her, especially since he’d tried to keep his feelings a secret from even his best friends, lest she get wind of his plans. She was just wearing her usual uniform, but her hair was neatly” brushed and piled on top of her head, and she was smiling and chatting with the officer seated next to her, and Will was certain he’d never seen a more beautiful sight. When the dinner dishes had been cleared away, an admiral got up to speak to the assembly. As far as Will was concerned, the man’s mouth was moving but nothing was coming out, as his attention was fully riveted on Felicia at this point.
STAR TREK: The Lost Era - 2355-2357 - Deny Thy Father Page 19
