“No. No…there’s not,” Will replied, but Mudak paid him no mind as he pulled him out of the dorm and toward the small, squat temporary building that housed his office.
Worf couldn’t quite believe it when he saw Riker hauled into the office by Mudak and shoved unceremoniously into a chair. To a certain degree, he couldn’t get past the fact that Tom was identical to Will. He felt as if he were seeing his longtime commander in such an abused condition, rather than a known traitor and felon. “I don’t know what you hope to discover, Mr. Worf,” Mudak said as he moved around his desk and took his place behind it. “The Betazoids already scanned his mind and said there was no knowledge of what transpired on the planet. I don’t see why you think you’ll have better luck.”
“But you will allow me to question him?”
“Well…” Mudak smiled, his dark and merciless eyes almost glowing with an ebony light. “Considering the Klingon reputation for information extraction, my assumption had been that you were going to hurt him. Who am I to stand in the way of that?”
“Hopefully it will not come to that.”
Mudak studied him curiously. “Really? Hmm. Are you sure you’re a Klingon?”
“If that was meant as humor, I did not appreciate it,” Worf said stiffly. He moved around Riker, looking him over. “Tom.”
Riker didn’t respond.
“Tom,” he said again.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Riker looked up at him. There were bruises on his face, a cut just above his eye, and his lower lip looked swollen. “Worf? That you?”
“Yes, Tom.”
“Will…” He coughed heavily, sounding as if he was trying to clear half a ton of debris out of his lungs. “I’m…I’m Will Riker…”
“You have been positively identified as Tom Riker,” Worf said flatly. “Starfleet confirms that Will Riker is back on Earth….”
“She’s out there, Worf…wasting time here…” His voice drifted in and out. “We can…go get her…take you to her…”
The statement startled Worf. “It’s a trick!” Mudak said, but Worf paid him no mind. Instead he crouched next to Riker and said, “You know where she is…?”
“Where…no…don’t know…but…feel her…take you…”
“This is nonsense,” Mudak said. “You said it yourself, Worf: Starfleet reports him as back on Earth….”
Riker shook his head with what appeared to be extreme effort. “Not…me…left…left holosuite…message…outsmarted myself…” His shoulders shook as if he were laughing, and then he coughed once more. “It’s me, Worf…get me…get me out of here…”
“If you are Will Riker,” Worf said, “then what happened to us on—”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Mudak said quickly. “No, you don’t. You’re not going to start asking him Enterprise trivia questions, the answers to which he could easily have found out from ships’ logs or any of a hundred public sources. Or anecdotes that Will Riker might have shared with his other self back when Tom was aboard the Enterprise.”
“If this man is William Riker, I have to know it.”
“This man is my prisoner, and there is no way that I am going to allow you to make a mockery of that. He got away from me. No one gets away from me,” Mudak said, his voice beginning to rise above its normally quiet and controlled tone. “He is going to stay here until he rots.”
“Even if he is not Tom Riker?”
“He is Tom Riker! There has been no mistake. I do not make mistakes, therefore none has been made.”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Really.” Mudak took a step closer to Worf. “And tell me, Klingon…were I to stand here, let you ask questions, be ‘satisfied’ that he is your man and leave with him…how much of a fool would you consider me to be? After all, the Klingons and Romulans have a historic alliance. Perhaps it is being restored, and your presence here is an indicator of that.”
“What are you saying?” Worf demanded, sounding rather dangerous.
“I am saying that if I were the Romulans who had broken Riker and Saket out…and the Klingons were my allies…I would simply ask for a well-known and somewhat respected Klingon to be sent to Lazon Two for the purpose of declaring that a mistake has been made and walking out with a Cardassian prisoner.”
The atmosphere in the office seemed to crackle with energy, and then the tense silence was broken by Riker’s voice as he said, “Worf…remember when…you announced your engagement…?”
Worf looked at him. “Yes…”
“In Ten-Forward…you looked at Geordi and me…you saw me sitting there…you looked right in my eyes…when I raised a glass to you…” He paused and then, with a ferocity that Worf wouldn’t have quite believed possible, he said, “What I really wanted to do…put my fist…down your throat…”
And then he passed out.
Without hesitation, Worf said to Mudak, “This is Will Riker. I want him freed at once.”
“This is my prisoner,” replied Mudak, “and you will take him over my dead body.”
For a moment, Worf’s hand drifted toward the phaser he had slung from his belt…
And Mudak’s blaster was already in his hand. Worf hadn’t even blinked, and so could scarcely believe what he had just seen. Mudak was conceivably the fastest draw he’d ever met. “And if you should get past me,” Mudak continued, as if pulling the weapon on Worf had required no effort at all, “in case you have forgotten, there are half a dozen guards outside the door, and many more between you and the vessel that you landed nearby. Would you care to take on those odds, carrying an unconscious body?”
Ever so slowly, Worf lowered his hand. “I will be in touch with Starfleet,” he informed him. “This does not end here.”
“By all means, I eagerly anticipate hearing from you again. Good evening, Mr. Worf.”
He drifted in and out of consciousness, and he could hear Deanna calling to him…and, oddly enough, he began to hear Lwaxana as well…he heard echoes of a future, and Lwaxana was screaming at him, “You should have saved her! She asked you! She begged you!”
Deanna
Go to her…you can do it…
Deanna
You can find her…I’ve given you that…go…
Deanna…Imzadi…help me…
The fierceness of the slap across his face brought him to wakefulness. He stared, bleary-eyed, up at Mudak. “Oh. Hi.”
“Your Mr. Worf seems to have been rather convinced that you are, in fact, Will Riker.” Mudak was slowly circling him, his hands behind his back. “Now I know that this is not the case. I know this. But I also know what else is going to happen. He is going to go back to Starfleet…and Starfleet will approach the Cardassian government…and there will be inquiries, and they will want to see you, and subject you to examination and deep-scan probes. And sooner or later, they may decide that, yes indeed, they believe you to be this William Riker. But this is a difficult proposition…because if you are indeed William Riker, which I assure you you are not, then that means that the reports of William Riker being back on Earth are false…and that Tom Riker, who indisputably helped with the assault on Betazed, is still running around free. So if they took you back, then the situation would result in my having no prisoner…a rather serious stain on my record…and Starfleet would have William Riker back.
“However,” he continued, “if something were to happen to you…if there was no Tom Riker to be argued over and examined…that would be a different matter. If there were no William Riker on Earth, then that would simply be Starfleet’s problem. Who knows? Perhaps he ran off to join the Maquis as did his duplicate. And Tom Riker would just be another dead prisoner. Case closed. I doubt my government would even pursue the matter much beyond the initial Starfleet inquiry. ‘Tom Riker?’ they would say. ‘Tom Riker…ah yes, here’s his file. Oh dear. We regret to inform you that Tom Riker is dead. Shot while trying to assault one of our top security people. Tragic shame, really. On to the next case.’ ”
Mudak
nodded approvingly over the scenario that he had just described. “Yes. Yes, I like the sound of that quite a bit. Do you understand where I am going with all this, Tom?”
Riker began to drift off again.
“Very well. I see we’re just going to have to end this clean, then.” He pulled out his blaster and aimed it point blank at Will Riker’s head. “Good-bye, Tom.”
That was when he suddenly heard blaster fire out front. Mudak turned to head out and see what the problem was…
And the entire front of Mudak’s office was caved in. The forward section of a Klingon scout ship smashed through with explosive impact, sending a shower of debris all over. Mudak tried to bring his phaser to bear, but it was too late as the front end of the ship ran him over, crushing his right arm and sending the blaster tumbling from his now useless hand. He went down, screaming, pinned under the vessel, pounding on it in futility with the left arm.
The entry port to the vessel irised open and Worf leaped out. Riker was lying on the floor, looking stunned, and Worf went to him and slung him over his shoulders. He headed back to the ship, stopping only long enough to look down at Mudak.
“You are going to need some new guards,” he informed him.
Then he leaped into his ship, the door irising shut behind him. Moments later, with a roar, the Klingon vessel angled upward and shredded the ceiling of the office building like so much tissue paper. Within moments they were gone.
Deanna sat up so abruptly that Alexander’s head tumbled off her stomach. He cracked his skull on the floor but otherwise was completely awake and alert. He looked at her in confusion. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
She stared right through him…and there were tears of joy streaming down her face as she whispered, “I sense him…I feel him…oh, Alexander…I sense him as clearly as if he were right here…I didn’t think it was possible…”
And with that she lay back down and went back to sleep, leaving a completely confused young Klingon to stare at her and wonder why, for the first time since they had been captured, Deanna Troi had a wide grin on her face.
Nineteen
Worf kept the scout ship moving briskly through warp space as Will Riker used the shower facilities in the rear of the vessel. They were cramped and rather spartan, which was more or less the way everything in a Klingon vessel was, but Riker didn’t complain. After a few minutes, looking as if he actually had a grasp of where he was, Riker emerged. The clothing he had been wearing from the prison camp was torn and soiled, and so he had changed into a simple black tunic and pants from a storage chest in the back. For a Klingon, it was merely the base layer of clothing upon which they piled on their leathers, armor, and assorted accoutrements. For Will’s purposes what he was wearing was sufficient, albeit a bit big on him. The boots, however, were hopelessly huge, so he didn’t even bother with them.
“Are you all right, Commander?” Worf asked once Will dropped into a chair next to him.
Will nodded. “I’ve been better,” he admitted. “Now that you’re here, Mr. Worf…now that I’m off that place…it’s becoming easier to focus my thoughts.”
“You seemed rather distracted on Lazon Two.”
“That, Mr. Worf, is putting it mildly.” He leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes. “So how did you get on with Lwaxana?”
“Commander, with all respect, there must be better times to discuss this. Do you have a way of finding Deanna?”
“Lwaxana is quite a woman, isn’t she.”
“Yes, she is,” Worf said impatiently. “But that is not relevant—”
“She can get into your head.”
“True. But—”
“She got into mine.”
“Commander.” Worf’s irritation was starting to grow beyond his ability to control. “We need to find—”
“Deanna, yes. And we’ll do it because Lwaxana got into my head.”
This brought Worf up short. “I…do not understand.”
“Worf…Deanna and I, well…we had a sort of connection, forged when we first got together.” Suddenly Riker seemed uncomfortable discussing it, but he steeled himself and kept going. “A link, if you will. She taught me certain disciplines…helped me with expanding my mind, so to speak. And we can…communicate without speaking. I’m sorry, this is very personal…I haven’t spoken of it, really, and I’m not happy with talking about it now. But hell…you’re practically family, right?”
It was a ragged attempt to lighten a difficult moment. It was greeted by a silent stare from Worf.
“Right. Anyway,” continued Riker, “Lwaxana, she…also has a bond with Deanna. It comes from being mother and daughter…and she reinforced it just before Deanna was taken away. When I went to her in the hospital, Lwaxana…pushed the link into my mind. Took what was already there in me, and her, heightened it to the nth degree and downloaded it. She cross-wired Deanna and me, is the best—if somewhat inefficient—way that I can put it.”
“Are you saying…you can read her mind? From here?”
“No. That would be simple. But I…” He closed his eyes once more, letting out a long, deep breath. “I can sense her. And I can bring us…to her…”
As Worf watched in silent disbelief, Riker’s fingers rested upon the controls. He seemed to be reaching out, beyond the vessel, beyond himself.
When he was a young Klingon on Earth, there had been a young girl living next door to Worf who had some sort of ancient game she called a “Ouija board.” Ostensibly it was devised for the purpose of communicating with the deceased. The girl would sit there for hours on end, her fingers resting on some sort of pointer, asking pointless questions and having her fingers “guided” by otherworldly spirits, providing answers by drifting the pointer from one letter to another. It seemed patently absurd to Worf. If the deceased were inclined to communicate via the living, why couldn’t they simply take over someone’s body and talk in a straightforward fashion?
But that was the closest analogue to what Worf was seeing now. It was as if Riker was channeling Deanna’s spirit, and it was completely filling him, calling to him, like two halves of the same soul trying to rejoin. And as this happened, Will’s fingers glided over the controls of the scout ship, setting coordinates. When he opened his eyes, he seemed rather surprised that he had actual headings laid in.
“Is that our course, sir?” asked Worf.
“It would appear so,” replied Riker. He sighed. “Not exactly the most scientific way of going about it, is it, Mr. Worf.”
“ ‘You will follow your heart…through space…and if it be ripped from your chest, you will follow the trail of blood…’ ”
Will turned and gaped at Worf. “Mr. Worf…that was borderline poetic.”
“It actually is a poem. It is from The Klingon Book of 300 Love Poems.”
“Somehow I never saw Klingons as poets.”
“When Klingon males read poetry to females during foreplay, they throw large objects.”
“That would certainly be my reaction to that poem. No offense,” he added hastily.
“I will try not to take any. Course locked in, sir.”
Riker snapped off a quick point and said, “Engage.”
The Klingon scout ship immediately headed off on its new course. As Worf monitored the systems, he asked, “How will we know when we are there?”
“We’ll know,” Riker said confidently.
“You mean you will know.”
Riker nodded, trying to ignore the somewhat challenging tone of Worf’s voice. But it wasn’t possible when Worf persisted by saying, “Is that why you came to Betazed? To put your fist down my throat?”
Riker stared at him. “What?”
“On Lazon Two…you said that when Deanna and I announced our engagement…you envisioned yourself putting your fist down my throat.”
“Worf, my brain was scrambled. Between what they did to me, and what Lwaxana had implanted…I was barely thinking straight. You can’t believe everything I said whil
e I was in that condition….”
“If I had not believed it, you would still be there.”
Will stared at him a moment, then looked away. “I didn’t mean it,” he said softly.
“You sounded most convincing.”
“Well, I’m telling you, I didn’t mean it.”
“Then why were you on Betazed? Why did you come there?”
Riker stared out at the stars that were hurtling past. “I…wanted to visit,” he said at last. “To wish you and Deanna well.”
“Do not lie to me.”
With an angry glare, Will turned to Worf and snapped, “You’re still speaking to a superior officer, Mr. Worf. Watch it.”
“I am speaking to a superior officer whom I rescued from a Cardassian prison planet because his going AWOL left Starfleet unable to vouch for him.”
“Granted,” Riker said after a moment, his expression softening slightly. “But I still don’t appreciate your tone.”
“We have larger problems than my tone, Commander. Why. Were you. On. Betazed.”
“Because…I wanted to make sure that you really loved her. That’s why. I was presumptuous enough to be concerned on her behalf. But I should never have tried to interfere. Perhaps the Prime Directive would be well applied to personal considerations as well.”
“Is that the truth, Commander?”
“Yes, Mr. Worf,” he sighed, “it is the truth. Are you satisfied?”
No, thought Worf.
“Yes,” said Worf.
No words were exchanged for a time, and then Riker said, “I don’t like this. We have no idea where we’re going…and if we inform Starfleet of our whereabouts, they may think I’m the runaway Tom Riker. By the time we get everything straightened out, who knows what might have happened to Deanna and Alexander…”
“If they are not already dead,” Worf said tonelessly.
“They’re not” was Riker’s confident reply. “At least she’s not. I would know. And if she’s okay, then the chances are that Alexander is, too. The point is, we can’t afford any delays. We don’t need to be intercepted by a starship. Between my either being a duplicate or AWOL, and you just having broken me out of Lazon Two, it’s not a good time to have to bank on a stranger’s good graces. On the other hand, we’re heading into this with no backup, with no one knowing where we’re going…not even the heading.”