And now that he knows, the real joy can begin. Watching Riker fall apart—watching him withdraw from everyone and everything, watching him desperately trying to protect himself from unknown dangers, will be the greatest pleasure we have known.
But what if he—?
He won’t. He can’t. He can only react, becoming more and more fearful and uncertain, until we allow him to die.
To die. We do like the sound of that.
Yes, we do.
Engineer Lars Gunnarson was sleepy. He knew, of course, what his shift was, and that it required him to work during the night when most of the people he knew were sleeping. But knowing it didn’t make sleeping during the day a whole lot easier. There was light outside, and noise, and things going on that he wanted to be part of. So he got what sleep he could, and often came to work more tired than he should have.
But, he rationalized, it’s not like the transporter is often used during my shift anyway. I have to keep it maintained and running, and on those rare occasions when it’s needed I have to operate it. He thought he could live up to those requirements on an abbreviated sleeping schedule, at least until he rotated back to days, which he greatly preferred. And he was glad that he was here on Earth, at Starfleet Command, instead of out on a starship, where who knew what kinds of demands might be made of him.
But he had received one reprimand for dozing off on the job. Another would get him booted down a rank and lose him this assignment, which came with a certain amount of autonomy that he enjoyed. So he struggled to stay awake and aware, just in case. He was doing that, on this occasion, by poring over a manual for impulse engines, which he had not yet had the dubious pleasure of working on. The material was dense and, obviously, quite technical, and when he heard footsteps just outside the transporter room, he was in the middle of a very difficult paragraph. When the door whooshed open, he still hadn’t made it to the end, and he was trying to grasp the concepts firmly in his mind. “Be right with you,” he said, battling to maintain his focus on the page.
Suddenly the thought that whoever had entered might be an officer swept into his head, and he began to turn, ready to offer a salute and an apology if necessary. But he had barely begun to spin around when he caught a flash of a red uniform sleeve coming toward him. He tried to raise a hand to dodge but he was too late. An impact, a bright flash of light, and then Lars Gunnarson’s world went dark.
Sleep, in the weeks and months after the attack on Starbase 311, had been a virtual stranger to Kyle Riker. When exhaustion finally overtook him and he succumbed, dreams almost invariably followed—nightmares that left him thrashing about and screaming, waking up in a bed drenched in cold sweat, heart hammering, throat dry. Then another extended period of wakefulness would occur, when closing his eyes and drifting off seemed almost as terrifying as being back on the starbase during the assault. Finally, the cycle would repeat; sleep would come, and with it the dreams.
Under the skillful care of Kate Pulaski, his physical injuries were healed, bones knitted, internal organs mended on a cellular level. Meters of damaged veins had been replaced by synthetic ones, and one ruined kidney was removed, with an artificial one substituted in its place. The body, Kate had explained, is basically a complex machine, and machines can be fixed. Sometimes they were better than they had been, when all their parts were strictly organic.
But the mind, she had said, is a different story altogether. Certainly there were specific physical repairs that could be made to the brain, but there were limits to what those could accomplish. And Kyle fought against some of those. Memories of the most terrible parts of the Tholian attack, for instance, could have been wiped from his memory by careful surgical manipulation of his brain. Kyle had refused. He was a military strategist, and the lessons learned from the Tholian attack—and the disastrous, limited defense—on Starbase 311, were not lessons he wanted to forget. He would, he insisted, learn to live with the memories, but he would not lose them.
And he was right. It took time, and a hellish amount of hard work, with Kate and a whole team of counselors and therapists, but he eventually made a kind of peace with his own inner turmoil and as he did, the bad dreams became more and more rare. He learned, once again, to welcome sleep, to accept it as a refuge from the demands of the day, and to consider dreams a kind of nightly vacation from real life and concerns. Some nights, still, it was harder to achieve sleep than others, and some nights the nightmares returned. But they were unusual, now, and not the norm.
This night, because of the stresses of the day, Kyle had suspected that it might be hard to let go and allow sleep to come, and he’d been correct. But it had come, finally, and he had slipped into a solid slumber, without dreams. When he heard the familiar hum of a transporter beam, he thought at first that it was a dream. He was groggy and thickheaded, and he tried to just roll over in his bed, away from the sound.
But his eyes flickered open as he did, and he saw the glow reflected on the wall near his bed. Instantly awake, he shot up and looked toward where the beam was just fading away, expecting to see another attacker coming at him. The room was empty, though. Maybe it had just been a dream, after all. He blinked a couple of times, trying to see through the darkness of the beam’s aftermath.
Not empty, after all. Where the beam had been, there was something on the floor. He couldn’t make out the details, in the dark room, but what he could see was a low, flat disk, just a little smaller than the holographic target in a game of velocity. Unlike a velocity disk, though, this one wasn’t floating through the air, but sitting on his floor with solidity and some kind of purpose.
What purpose it might have struck Kyle, and he leapt from the bed, running for the open door of his bedroom. Beyond the door was a short hallway, with a bathroom and a room that he used as an office, and then leading into his large living room. He had just cleared the bathroom door, heading for the living room, calling out to the apartment’s computer, when the bomb went off.
The first thing Kyle noticed was a flash of light and his own shadow cast before him, stark and hard-edged against the suddenly bright room ahead. The flash was succeeded simultaneously by a deafening roar and a shock wave that lifted him off the floor and hurled him against the living room’s far wall. He slammed into it hard, just about where his shadow had been, trying to turn to hit it shoulder-first but without enough time. Instead, his left arm and the left side of his face made contact, and then he fell off the wall and onto the floor. Finally, a wave of searing heat struck him, burning his right side.
The apartment’s computer took over then. A sprinkler came on in the bedroom, extinguishing the fire, and a force field contained the worst of the heat there. The computer informed him that authorities had been notified, for the second time in two nights. This time, Kyle didn’t argue with it. He lay on the floor, bleeding and burned, until they arrived.
“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Riker.”
He sat up in the biobed and looked at the doctor, who was just putting away his dermal regenerator after having used it on Kyle’s burns. “Every time somebody tells me that, I’m lying in an infirmary somewhere,” Kyle said with a bitter grin. “I’m beginning to think luck isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Dr. Trbovich smiled back at him. He was a kindly looking, slightly stout, avuncular fellow with a shock of white hair and an infectious grin. His blue coat was snug around the waist and ribs. “You had a bomb go off in your apartment. You didn’t suffer any broken bones. You had some cuts and burns, all of which were easy enough to fix up. You’ll be sore for a few days, probably, but you’re still here to complain about it. If you hadn’t woken up, you’d be much worse off than you are. I count that as pretty fortunate.”
“I suppose,” Kyle agreed, wincing at a stabbing pain in his ribs as he reached for his shirt. One of the emergency medical technicians who had brought him in had been kind enough to grab a fresh jumpsuit and a padd from his office for him, since his clothes had been torched in the fire and t
he pajamas he’d worn had needed to be cut from his body. “But more fortunate still are all those people who slept through the night without anyone trying to blow them up.”
“Well, yeah,” the doctor said. “I can’t disagree with that. You’ll be fine, though. You should rest here for another couple of hours, just so I can monitor your progress. Then you should take it easy for a few days. I’d like to see you again in a week so I can check your progress, okay?”
“Got it,” Kyle assured him. He pushed his hands through his sleeves and then sat on the biobed until the doctor left the room to go check on other patients.
What he hadn’t told the doctor was that, in the bomb’s aftermath and in the ambulance shuttle that brought him to Starfleet Command from his ruined apartment, his mind had been full of horrific images. Tholians, intense heat barely contained within their shielded suits, features completely hidden, bizarre sticklike weapons emitting fuzzy red rays that spread death and destruction everywhere. For a moment, in the shuttle, Kyle had been convinced that the medic sitting next to him would turn and reveal a red, crystalline face glowing with heat, and he’d felt about himself for a weapon he could use in his own defense. The moment had passed, though, and reason had returned.
Now, though, he didn’t think himself capable of simply sitting calmly in the infirmary. His mind was racing. The bomb, combined with all the other stressors of the past couple of days, had brought back the flashbacks. Kyle knew this was a danger signal. But it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about with a strange doctor, someone he didn’t know. Especially given the threat to his career from whatever trumped-up charges he might be facing on the starbase attack—if his credibility was to be questioned, the idea that he was seeing perfectly innocent medics as Tholian killers wouldn’t be advantageous.
He didn’t want to sit around the infirmary, and he couldn’t help thinking of himself as a target there anyway. A bomb had been transported into his apartment. Certainly, there were transporters in civilian hands, and in the hands of enemy alien races. But the majority of transporter technology in and around San Francisco belonged to Starfleet. Add to that the fact that the assassin who had visited his home the other night had been from Starfleet, and he had to be concerned about his safety, even right here in the middle of the Starfleet Headquarters complex.
Maybe especially here.
With the friendly doctor examining another patient, Kyle finished dressing and hurried from the room. The hallways carried the same slightly sweet, antiseptic odor as infirmaries everywhere—and Kyle had been in enough over the past couple of years to become very accustomed to it. Doctors and nurses strolled through the hallways, talking and laughing, but there didn’t seem to be much sense of urgency. This time of night, Kyle figured, most people—with the exception of cases like his, of course—were either sound asleep at home or in their biobeds, and emergencies were rare.
He turned a corner, hoping to put more distance between himself and Dr. Trbovich, when he saw a familiar figure virtually blocking the entire hallway. The man was large, with broad shoulders and a muscular neck. Close-cropped, wiry hair clung to his head. He wore the gold uniform of engineering, and even from behind, Kyle could recognize Benjamin Sisko.
“Ben?” he asked, incredulous at seeing the man here. Ben Sisko had just graduated from the Academy a year ago. Ben was a protégé of Curzon Dax; the ambassador had introduced him to Kyle on the Livingston a few months back.
The man turned and, in fact, it was Ben Sisko, who wore an ensign’s single gold collar pip. But he looked terrible—his face drawn and sallow. If he hadn’t had rich brown skin, Kyle thought he’d have looked positively green.
“Mr. Riker,” Ben said. His voice sounded as shaky as Kyle’s legs felt. “What are you doing here?” He indicated a bandage over Kyle’s left eye. “Are you okay?”
“A little misunderstanding with an explosive device,” Kyle explained. “Nothing too serious. What about you? Aren’t you still posted to the Livingston?”
“Yes,” Ben said, tugging at his uniform collar. He flashed white teeth in a quick smile. “But they let me come back for this. Jennifer just had our baby.”
“You’re kidding,” Kyle said, sharing Ben’s grin. He put out a hand, which Ben enveloped with his own, and they shook hard. “Congratulations, Ben, that’s great!”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “It’s a boy. We’re calling him Jake.”
“That’s a fine name.”
“Thanks. I can’t sleep, though—Jennifer was in labor for almost twenty hours, and now she’s snoozing but I’m just too excited.”
“I don’t blame you a bit,” Kyle said.
Ben looked at the floor. “Do you—do you want to see him?” He spoke almost shyly, though with his deep voice the effect was a little odd.
Kyle realized that this was the first time since the bomb went off that he’d stopped thinking about his own problems, and was glad to continue that trend for a while longer. “Sure,” he said gladly. “I’d love to.”
Ben started down the hall. “They’re right in here,” he said, stopping at the door to a private room. He said “Open,” and the door obeyed. Inside, the room was mostly dark, with a soft glow coming from one light in a corner. Kyle followed Ben Sisko in.
Jennifer Sisko slept soundly in a comfortable bed, her baby snuggled up on her chest, wrapped in a blanket. All Kyle could see of the boy was a dark circle of a face, but he seemed to be a handsome baby—not that Kyle would have expected anything less than that from the union of Ben and Jennifer, as attractive a couple as one could hope for.
Ben’s face was in shadows as he stood with his back to the light, spine straight despite his exhaustion, and hands clasped behind his back, looking down at his wife and son, but in it Kyle could see a range of powerful feelings. Love, gratitude, relief, and respect, he thought. Then he remembered what Admiral Paris had told him, what seemed ages ago now. “What time was he born?”
Ben looked at a chronometer on the wall as if it had recorded the moment. “Twenty-three fifty-four,” he said.
“So, yesterday. Just. Congratulations, Ben. Your son was born on Father’s Day.”
Ben broke into a broad smile. “I guess you’re right.”
“It really is a kind of miracle, Ben,” Kyle said.
Benjamin Sisko nodded gravely. “Yes. Definitely a miracle. I just…I can’t even begin to find the words that describe what I’m feeling right now.”
“You don’t need to, Ben. I’ve been in your shoes.”
Ben nodded again and they stood in silence for a few moments, watching the mother and child sleep. But while they observed quietly, Kyle heard voices out in the hall. The one that caught his attention belonged to Dr. Trbovich, but instead of his usually folksy self, his voice was raised in something like alarm.
“Surely this can wait,” he said insistently. “The patient is resting after a very serious incident. I don’t want him disturbed.”
Kyle glanced up at Ben, catching his eye. Ben shrugged but both men kept quiet, listening.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” another voice said firmly. “We need to take custody immediately. We have medical facilities in the brig if he’s still in need of treatment.”
The brig? Kyle wondered. Why…?
“You can’t just walk in and take away one of my patients,” Dr. Trbovich declared. “I won’t have it.”
“This warrant says we can,” a third voice chimed in. “Now, where is Kyle Riker?”
Chapter 4
Ben Sisko walked over to the room’s doorway, and Kyle’s heart jumped in his chest. The man was going to turn him in! But instead, Ben spoke in a soft voice. “Close.”
The door slid shut, and Ben turned to Kyle, his expression curious. “What’s this all about, Mr. Riker?” he asked in an anxious whisper.
Kyle blew out the breath he’d been holding. “I’m not sure, Ben. There’s some sort of…it seems ridiculous to say ‘conspiracy,’ but that’s what it’s looking lik
e…against me. A couple of nights ago a Starfleet crewman tried to kill me in my apartment. Ridiculous charges have been leveled against me by some anonymous source, who went straight to the admiralty. And tonight someone beamed a bomb into my place, nearly finishing the job. I know I haven’t done anything to merit being arrested by Starfleet Security, so I have to believe that if I let those men in the hall take me away, I won’t be coming back.”
“But…that’s crazy,” Ben said. “Starfleet doesn’t just make people disappear. There are rules, procedures. Due process.”
“Normally, I’d agree with you,” Kyle told him. “This isn’t normal, though. There’s something going on, something that isn’t right. I don’t know what it is or who’s behind it. But whoever it is wants my head.”
He watched Ben carefully as the younger man processed this data. Out in the hall, they could still faintly hear the security officers arguing with Dr. Trbovich.
“Ben, you don’t know me that well, but I hope you know I’m an honest man,” Kyle pleaded. “I just want to stay free of all this until I can figure out what’s going on. Even if they don’t kill me, if they lock me up I won’t have a chance to defend my name. But since there have been two attempts on my life in the past two nights, both seemingly with Starfleet participation, I think killing me is the likeliest outcome.”
Ben glanced at the door. The voices had faded away down the corridor. He looked back at Kyle and nodded his head. “You’re right, Mr. Riker. I don’t know you that well. But Curzon has spoken highly of you, and I’ve learned to trust the old man. So I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here.”
Kyle let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He’d only met the Trill ambassador a few times, and was now very grateful that he had left a good impression on him.
Deny Thy Father Page 4
