“That’s it, I know it. He went insane with jealousy, that’s all. That must be it.”
“It is difficult to know what makes the human heart operate as it does,” she told him. “We just have to…to try and understand…”
“No. We have to kill him. We have to kill all of them. If I get out of here…if I get a weapon in my hand…a thousand throats may be slit in a night by a running man.”
“That may be, Alexander. But in the darkness of the night…sometimes the running man has trouble seeing who his friends are.”
He looked at her uncomprehendingly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Neither do I,” she admitted.
“Are we going to get out of here, do you think?”
“Yes. He’ll find us.”
“My father, you mean?”
Deanna didn’t reply immediately. Because until she’d actually said it, she hadn’t realized who it was that she had meant.
Somewhere out there was Will Riker, and her thoughts once more drifted back to him. In no way that she could account for, she had more of a sense of him than she had ever had before. He had not been far from her mind from the moment that they had been taken from the surface of Betazed. She had a belief in him, an unshakable confidence that he would come for her. She would drift in and out of sleep, and her dream would always be the same. She was always right where she was at that moment, there in the cell, lying in the middle of the light. The door would suddenly slide open, and there would be no sign of the guards. Light cascaded in from the corridor, backlighting a tall, powerful, and rugged figure standing there—a figure that seemed to glow with its own internal light of confidence. Then he would stride forward into Deanna’s own pool of light, and it was as if the two light sources were joining. She would look up into Will’s face, and yes, it was most definitely Will. Without a word he would reach down, pick her up, and cradle her in her arms. Deanna, the modern woman, Deanna the educated and intellectual counselor, dreaming of literally being swept away in the muscled arms of her Imzadi.
She sensed a pull toward him, deep within her mind. She felt as if she could reach out across light-years and touch him, as if he were right there…right there…
The door slid open and he was standing there.
Her spirit fell. She felt as if a shadow had been cast over her. She wondered how she could have been fooled by him, even for a moment. Granted, hindsight was always twenty/twenty, but even so…he simply felt wrong to her now. Perhaps it was because, deep down, she had so wanted his sentiments to be real…
But what did that say about her, then?
The fact that her thoughts remained in turmoil only survived to anger her even further, since he was the one who had set them into motion.
The Romulan guards were visible on either side of Tom Riker as he stood, unmoving, in the hallway. “I’d like to speak with you, Deanna, if that’s all right.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“I’d like to speak with you anyway.”
“And if I don’t desire to?”
His voice floated into her head. Deanna…you have to listen….
“Stop it,” she said out loud and sharply. “I’ve been blocking you out on purpose. You have lost that privilege.”
If he was chastened, or upset or chagrined, he didn’t allow any of it to show. If there was one thing that he did have in common with Will Riker, it was that he was the consummate poker player. You couldn’t tell what it was he had in his hand just by looking at his face.
It was also clear, however, that he wasn’t about to walk away without her. With an annoyed sigh she got to her feet. Alexander was immediately at her side, and in a low voice he told her, “You don’t have to go with him. I’ll take him.”
“No, Alexander…it’ll be okay. Just stay here. I’ll be back soon…won’t I…Will.”
Riker’s face remained impassive, but he said, “You have my word.”
“That means a lot,” Alexander said sarcastically.
“Alexander,” Deanna cautioned, not wanting to exacerbate the situation. Alexander looked as if he wanted to argue the point further, but abided by Deanna’s obvious wishes and kept his silence. Deanna headed out the door and fell into step next to Tom Riker as the door closed them off from view.
They walked down the corridor in silence, Deanna not even looking at him. Even so, she had the sense that he was not taking his eyes off her.
The entire area seemed to have a makeshift quality to it. They were planetside, of that much Deanna was certain. Although in theory being on a starship should have been indistinguishable from being on a planet’s surface, nonetheless—somehow—she could tell. There was a mustiness in the air that the internal air circulation couldn’t quite filter out. Deanna had the feeling that they were in some sort of underground facility, something that had been carved out by hand phasers and thrown together with an on-the-fly construction capability.
“In here,” Riker said, gesturing to one room. The doors slid open and Deanna walked in without the slightest hesitation. She didn’t want to give any indication whatsoever that she was intimidated by the thought of being alone with him. Indeed, it was as if she wanted to try and project as much contempt for him as she could. He followed her, turned to the guards, and said, “We’ll be fine, thank you.” The doors hissed shut behind them.
The room was furnished (“decorated” would certainly not be the right word) very simply and very functionally. A bed, some dresser drawers, and that was all. Still, it seemed like a palace compared with what Deanna and Alexander had. Deanna stood there, arms folded, saying nothing.
“We have to talk,” Tom said. “I had hoped to do it…well…in our heads…”
“I will never…let you in…again. Do we understand each other?”
“Perfectly.” He took a deep breath and then, in so low a voice she could barely hear him, he said, “First…I want to thank you for not…betraying me.”
“I felt there was enough betrayal for the one day, didn’t you?”
“All right. All right, I had that coming.”
She was silent for a time, and then her curiosity got the better of her when it seemed as if he wasn’t volunteering any more information. “So how was the plan supposed to go?”
“I was…” He cleared his throat. “I was supposed to come to you…we’d talk…we would get together with Worf and Alexander…and then Sela and her people would show up and grab the four of us. They were then going to use you and Alexander as leverage to get Worf to do something for them.”
“I see. But not you.”
“We were…there was going to be a staged rescue attempt on my part. I was going to be ‘knocked out,’ taken out of the picture. All the pressure was going to be on Worf. He would have cooperated rather than let you and Alexander die. After all…he loves you.”
“Yes. Yes, he does.”
“And you love him.”
“Yes, I do,” she said defiantly. “And I would do anything for him. And I would never betray him. Not…ever. Do you understand the concept of loyalty? Do you? Because the man I once knew, the man I thought you were…he understood it.”
He saw it in her eyes, saw the fury and contempt, and the simple unfairness of it caused a surge of anger in him. “Do you want to know what I understand?”
“No—”
“I understand,” he steamrolled over her disinterest, “that the universe is more unfair than anyone could have given it credit for. I understand what it’s like to live a life where the choices that you make make no difference. I understand what it’s like not to be unique. I understand what it’s like to know that, no matter what I do, I will never be the man…that I already am. And you can’t know that. Oh, you could understand it if you wanted to. You’re a damn empath, after all. You could understand anything if you put your mind to it. But I’m not worth even that, am I. I’m not entitled to the slightest bit of understanding from you, Miss Perfect, Miss Deanna Troi.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It’s beneath you.”
“I love you…don’t you understand that?”
“Oh, really. And what is Sela then? A happenstance? A diversion?”
“She’s a kindred spirit. That’s what she is. She has a ghost haunting her…her mother, and what she was to the Federation, just as I have my own personal spectre in…him. Neither of us, thanks to circumstances beyond our control, is possibly able to live up to the expectations built up for us by others. And so we chose our own lives, and made something for ourselves, and to hell with the expectations and demands of others.”
To her surprise, Deanna actually felt tears of sadness stinging her eyes. She forced them back. “And is this the life you truly wanted? Being a felon? Hiding in some barren rock somewhere? Conspiring with Romulans to do…whatever it is that you’re planning? What is it, anyway?”
“I’m…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Or you just won’t say?”
“I don’t know. Sela said she didn’t feel the need to tell me. And I didn’t feel it wise to push.”
“Incredible. I don’t know you. The kind of man you’ve become…the William Riker I knew wouldn’t have gone along with all this. He would have tried to stop it, he wouldn’t have been satisfied with not knowing, he…”
And then something clicked in her head. She looked up at him. “Wait…I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“The…”
“Never mind,” he said sharply, cutting her off. “None of it matters. You made it clear when I was with you on Betazed that you didn’t want to be with me. They were listening in…Kressn was there…and when they realized that you weren’t going to be cooperative, they simply took matters into their own hands. So if you’re looking for fault to be tossed around, you don’t have to look any further than the mirror. If you had given me a chance, things might have gone differently. But no. No, I don’t fit into your perfect universe. And you know what, Deanna? That’s your loss. That is your damned loss.”
He strode to the door and it opened automatically. Without waiting for her to follow, he said to the two Romulans who were standing nearby, “Take her back to the cell.” Without another word, he stalked off.
Tom lay in Sela’s bed, the Romulan woman curled up on his chest. He was staring at the ceiling. “You’re rather quiet this evening,” she said.
“Don’t have much to say.”
“That hasn’t stopped you before.”
“Oh. An insult.” He affected a look of being hurt. “You know how to cut me, Sela.”
“Yes. But I hope it won’t be necessary.” She rolled over, propping her head up with one hand, and idly fingered his chest hair. “I keep dwelling on how things went wrong on Betazed.”
“It’s my fault. I’ve already told you that. I completely misjudged her…thought there was still something there…”
“That’s not what I was thinking about, actually,” Sela said. She seemed to be appraising him, trying to dissect him with her eyes. “I was thinking about what happened at the cliffside.”
“I told you…I thought he was going to get to you. I was trying to keep him away from you.”
“I was armed. I had a clear shot at him.”
“Perhaps. But I’ve seen him in action far more than you have, Sela,” he reminded her. “Considering his state of mind, considering the speed with which he was moving, considering a thousand factors that all came together at that one moment…frankly, there was no guarantee that your disruptor shot would have been able to stop him. You had endangered his fiancée. If he’d gotten his hands on you, he could have snapped your neck in an instant. I was acting purely on instinct. I’m sorry if my desire to save you from harm was so overwhelming that it impeded our mission.”
“Now, don’t sound hurt,” Sela scolded. “However, I’m thinking about how it worked out in the short term. Had you trusted me to stop him, we would have him here and the plan would proceed as intended.”
“The plan that you still haven’t told me,” he reminded her.
As if he hadn’t spoken, Sela continued, “But you knocked him off the cliff, sent him into the water. And thanks to the sudden appearance of the Klingons, he was lost to us. So if you were trying to thwart our plan without knowing what it was…that would have been the way to do it.”
“Are you saying I’m in league with the Klingons, too? That I knew they were going to show up?”
“No. No, that would be a bit much. Still, it could have been simply a lucky coincidence. You could have been trying to buy time in hopes that some other opportunity might come along.”
“You’re saying you don’t trust me.” He sat up, shaking his head in disbelief. “You invite me into your bed, for God’s sake. And you still don’t trust me?”
Sela didn’t seem particularly perturbed over his annoyance. In fact, she even seemed slightly playful. She ran her fingers across his bare thigh, causing a slight tremble through his body, and she said, “Trust is required for love, Riker. What we have is sex. Unless that is no longer satisfactory to you?”
Then she brought her mouth down on his as she slid her hand upward. He gasped into her mouth and they parted momentarily as he managed to say, “It’s…more than satisfactory…”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said as she moved against him.
And for a little while, Tom Riker was able to toss aside his concerns about the unfairness of the universe, and bury himself deep within someone who—he truly did believe—was in many ways a kindred spirit. And when their passion was spent, and Tom felt exhaustion overwhelming him, as he slid into sleep he wondered—as he all too oftentimes did—what Will Riker was up to.
Knowing him, Tom mused, if I’m lying next to a naked woman…he’s probably lying next to three….
Eighteen
Will Riker lay on his bed, surrounded by men, for yet another night and once more didn’t sleep.
The other men were not in the bed with him, of course. They were in their own beds, although that might have been too generous a term. They were the hard-mattressed bedlike things that were standard issue on Lazon II.
Will couldn’t recall the last time he had slept soundly, or at all. He must have done so at some point. One simply couldn’t stay awake for days on end. It just wasn’t possible. Very likely, here and there, he had dozed. But at this point he was so disconnected from reality that time had ceased to have any meaning for him.
Mudak checked his surveillance cameras from his office and zoomed in on Riker, lying awake on his bed. He should have felt some degree of triumph over his recapture. Indeed, when he had first brought Riker off the vessel and dragged him through the main street of the penal colony, he had felt like a triumphant hunter. His superiors had noted, with utter deadpan, the battered look that Riker had about him after the voyage. “He tripped repeatedly” was the explanation that Mudak had given his superiors. They had snickered and told Mudak to watch Riker more carefully in the future. Mudak assured them that he would be giving Riker extra special attention.
And Mudak had more than done so. For now, with Riker having his reputation as escapee on his record, and with Saket no longer around to run interference, Mudak had been unstinting in his torment of Riker. From verbal abuse to shock prods to flat-out beatings, Mudak had unleashed upon Riker everything and anything that occurred to him.
And Riker hadn’t seemed to notice.
This was, to put it mildly, annoying to Mudak. At least before when he had abused Riker, he could count on an angry glare, or harsh words back, or some show of defiance. But that wasn’t happening anymore. Mudak would have liked to think that perhaps he had managed to break Riker’s spirit altogether. That there was nothing left of the defiant prisoner that he had once been, the fight completely crushed. But that didn’t seem to be the explanation either. Riker appeared to have spirit, all right. It was in another direction, though. He didn’t seem to be aware that
he was in a prison camp, or at least he didn’t seem to care. No matter what Mudak did to him, it got no response beyond an occasional grunt of acknowledgment.
The processing chores of Lazon II were out of commission at the present time. Prisoners were still busy rebuilding the place from the damage that had been done during the Romulan attack. The prisoners were no more thrilled with Riker than anyone else; after all, he had apparently forged an alliance with the individuals who had wound up causing all the damage in the first place. So during the work-day, anything they themselves could do to make his life miserable—trip him up, slam into him too hard, whatever—they were more than happy to do.
Riker didn’t seem to notice that, either.
Mudak simply could not understand. It was as if Riker’s mind was light-years away.
Deanna…
It was as if she were just beyond his reach. As sleepless hours piled one atop the other, as his body became more and more strained and stressed, he could almost touch her, sense her right ahead of him. He felt as if he had been blind for his entire life and at last his eyes were opened. How could he have spent all these years thinking he had had a real connection to her when, clearly, until now he had no true concept of what that was?
When he walked, he sensed her beside him. When he ate food, she was his sustenance, when he breathed, her scent intoxicated him. She was everywhere in general and somewhere in specific, and he knew her….
Someone kicked his bed.
He was only vaguely aware of it, as he was only vaguely aware of most things, since his mind was not part of his trials on Lazon II. He slowly swiveled his gaze and saw Mudak standing over him.
“On your feet, Riker,” growled Mudak. “You have a visitor.”
“Deanna?” he whispered. Except somehow he knew it wasn’t Deanna, it couldn’t be, yes, it couldn’t because she was so far away, so far…and yet he could feel her…
“No, not Deanna,” Mudak said in disgust. He hauled Will to his feet. “There’s a world outside your precious Deanna, you know.”