Star Trek-TNG-Novel-Imzadi 1 Page 9

  "And what happened then?"

  Riker shrugged. "It all went downhill. The

  ship; my life ... just ..." And again he

  shrugged, this time a bit more fatalistically.

  "Sometimes you just don't really appreciate how

  key someone is to your world until they're gone. And

  then, of course, it's too late."

  They sat there for a few moments longer, and then

  Wesley suddenly cocked his head slightly in that

  gesture that Riker had come to know so well.

  "Crusher here."

  Riker didn't bother to stand by and watch

  Captain Crusher have a conversation with thin air.

  Instead he walked back into the other room where

  Deanna's body lay in a perfectly

  preserved state and rested a hand on the covering.

  "I'm sorry, Imzadi," he said softly.

  "I tried."

  He heard Wesley's soft footfall, and

  then the captain said, "I have to go. Sudden

  groundquake on Cygnia III. Code One

  disaster situation." He paused. "You're

  welcome to come along, Admiral. There's ...

  well, I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing here

  for you except fairly unpleasant memories."

  "That may very well be, Captain, but as I

  mentioned to you, Lwaxana Troi's wishes in the

  disposition of her things were quite specific. And

  Lwaxana was always a tough woman to say no

  to."

  "All right, Admiral. Whatever you say."

  Crusher paused. "It stopped raining. If you'd

  like, I'll walk you back to the house before I go."

  Riker nodded.

  They walked out of the mausoleum together, their

  feet squishing softly into the now spongelike

  ground. The clouds were passing and hints of

  sunlight were already streaming through. As they approached

  the house, the admiral turned to Crusher and took

  him by the shoulders.

  "It's been a pleasure seeing you again,

  Wes."

  Crusher grimaced. "I just wish it could have been

  under more pleasant circumstances."

  "So do i. Maybe next time it will be."

  Then, in a rather nonregulation but perfectly

  understandable move, Riker embraced Crusher

  firmly, patting him on the back. Then he

  took a few steps back, and both of them, without

  any intention of doing so, simultaneously tugged

  on their respective uniform jackets,

  straightening them. Each saw the other making the

  gesture, and they both laughed.

  "Good sailing, Captain Crusher. The

  Hood is a good ship. I served on one of her

  predecessors. Fortunately she has a fine

  captain at the helm."

  "Good luck in your future endeavors,

  Admiral Riker. I hope you find happiness

  ... and some peace." Then Crusher tilted his head

  and said, "Crusher to Hood. One to beam up."

  Wesley Crusher's body shimmered out, and

  Riker was alone.

  He found the Holy Rings of Betazed. They

  were, for no reason Riker could determine, in

  Lwaxana's closet. He shrugged and put them

  with the pile of other materials, trinkets, and

  mementos that he was organizing in the living room.

  Mr. Homn had vanished. There had been no

  ^w of explanation. No good-byes. When Riker

  had returned to the mansion, Homn simply

  wasn't there. It was as if he'd done his job

  to its conclusion and, once having reached that conclusion,

  had no reason to remain. And so he had left.

  Left Riker with a huge pile of material to go

  through.

  Betazed had an excellent museum of

  antiquities, and Lwaxana Troi's

  collection was going to be a considerable and

  valuable addition. Riker had made the

  arrangements for it to be taken away, and they had

  only asked that he go through everything first to remove

  any possessions that might simply be considered

  personal andof no interest to the general Betazed

  public.

  Lwaxana had left no family behind. The

  furniture had already been cleared out, donated

  to a local charity. All that were left were the

  keepsakes that Riker was now sorting through.

  Having gone through all the other rooms in the

  house, he now approached the one he least looked

  forward to: Deanna's.

  He opened the door, and sure enough, it was what

  he had anticipated. Lwaxana had left

  everything exactly as it was, like a shrine to her

  daughter. The room was decorated in large

  splashes of purple, with various small statues

  --the type that Deanna had liked to stare at for

  hours on end.

  And in Deanna's closet, he found a box.

  It had a lock on it, but the lock wasn't

  closed. Riker opened the lid, curious as to what

  he would find.

  He recognized everything that was in the box.

  Everything had been perfectly preserved, no

  matter how arcane or trivial. There was a

  piece of vine from the Jalara Jungle. There was

  the headband that she had been wearing at Chandra's

  wedding. There was her study disk on "Human

  Dysfunctions." There was ...

  "Good lord." He reached down and picked up a

  small but sharp rock. It had a discoloration on

  it that was quite clearly blood. "She even kept

  this."

  He looked further and found the poem.

  He read it over, separated by decades from the

  youthful exuberance with which he'd penned it.

  Phrases that he could remember sounding so clever

  to himself when he'd come up with them now sounded trite,

  facile. A kid who knew nothing, trying to sum

  up in a few lines of poetry feelings that even

  now, as an old man, he couldn't completely

  frame for himself.

  "This is terrible. I can't believe I wrote

  this." And then he picked up the headband, fingering it.

  "And I can't believe you liked it. I can't

  believe you--"

  He was surprised to find that his face was wet.

  He wiped the tears with the headband and felt

  the softness of it against his face and started to cry

  harder.

  He had thought he'd finished with the grief.

  He'd thought he'd been able to move on. But there,

  sitting on the floor of a room once belonging to a

  young, vital woman, he realized that he had never

  moved on. Never put it behind him. His entire

  life reeked of unfinished business. And he would

  never be able to finish it. There had been so much he

  had wanted to say--and would never be able to because time had

  outsped him before he'd even fully grasped the

  notion that he was in a race.

  It was never going to get better. Despite

  all his accomplishments, his great failure--the

  failure that everyone had told him he'd had no

  reason for shouldering--wd always be with him. Alw.

  He clutched the headband even tighter and tried

  to remember a time when he felt no pain.

  THE BEGINNING

  CHAPTER 11

  Lieutenant Will
iam t. Riker punched

  the bulkhead and managed to bruise his hand rather

  badly. The bulkhead, for its part, didn't

  seem to care all that much.

  He stared once more, with utter hatred, at the

  packed suitcase that sat in the middle of his bed,

  as if angry the thing even existed. "This really

  stinks," he informed the case, and went on to add,

  "I can't believe you're doing this." The

  suitcase showed as much interest in Riker's anger

  as had the bulkhead.

  "Lieutenant Riker to the bridge," came his

  captain's voice through his communicator.

  He tapped it with his hand, which made it feel

  sore all over again: "On my way." He cast

  one last angry glance at the suitcase and the

  bulkhead, which had obviously conspired to make his

  life just that much more miserable, before heading out the door

  and up to the bridge.

  He drummed impatiently on the railing

  grip of the turbolift. Everything about the ship

  seemed slow and frustrating. For that

  matter, everything about his life seemed slow and

  frustrating. He had places to go, a career

  to forge ... and the fates had conspired to slow that

  career to an agonizing, frustrating crawl.

  The 'lift door opened out onto the cramped

  bridge of the Fortuna, and Riker stepped out.

  He nodded a brisk acknowledgment to Captain

  Lansing and took his place at the survey station.

  Lansing, middle-aged and content with the

  relatively low point in the pecking order that he

  had reached in his career, swiveled in his chair

  to face Riker. "I thought you might want to know,

  Lieutenant, that we'll be arriving at Betazed

  in ..." Lansing paused and glanced at the

  helmsman.

  "Twenty-seven minutes," said the helmsman.

  Riker noticed that everyone on the bridge

  seemed to be staring at him.

  "And we thought that you might want to spend your

  last half hour aboard our vessel with our

  small but sturdy bridge crew," continued

  Lansing.

  Riker frowned. "That's very kind of you, sir."

  Lansing rose, drawing his portly frame out

  of the command chair. "You did make it quite clear that you

  did not want any sort of going-away

  function."

  "Yes, sir. And I appreciate your

  honoring my request."

  "You know the wonderful thing about being in command,

  Mr. Riker?" Without waiting for Riker

  to respond, Lansing continued, "You get

  to ignore the wishes of your junior officers

  whenever it suits you. Mr. Li, if you don't

  mind."

  Navigator Kathy Li rose from her chair

  and brought her hands around. Riker saw that she was

  holding something, and he fought down a grin when he

  saw what it was: a large cupcake with a sparking

  candle lodged serenely in the top. And the ^ws So

  Long, Cupcake--Li's nickname for him--

  were scrawled across the top of it in pink icing.

  Captain Lansing said, "Computer. Run

  "Riker Farewell Program One-A."'"

  The bridge was promptly filled with the sound of

  Dixieland music, and now Riker laughed out loud

  in spite of himself.

  Over the music, Lansing called out, "We

  decided to compromise, Mr. Riker--a

  send-off, but with a very proscribed time

  limit, namely twenty-seven--excuse me,

  twenty-six now--minutes."

  Riker made the round of the bridge crew,

  shaking hands and laughing and no.ing, accepting with good

  grace their best wishes for his new assignment.

  Kathy Li kissed him rather passionately--they had

  made some minor effort to be discreet over their

  relationship while serving together. They had, of

  course, fooled absolutely no one, andwith his

  imminent departure she saw no need

  to pussyfoot around. They broke for air and she

  patted him on the face. "It's been a lot of

  laughs, cupcake."

  "No more than that?" he said mischievously.

  She looked at him, feigning total

  astonishment. "More than that? With W-the-Thrill,

  I-never-Met-a-Woman-I-Didn't-Like

  Riker? Oh, come on, Lieutenant. You

  wouldn't want more than that. Doesn't fit in with

  your game plan."

  "Are you saying the good lieutenant isn't the

  type to commit to one woman?" said Lansing in

  mock horror.

  "I'm really enjoying discussing my

  psychological profile in a public forum,"

  Riker said.

  As if Riker hadn't even spoken, Li said

  cheerfully, "Remember the old days of space

  travel, Captain? Where every single article had

  to be carefully measured and accounted for because of fuel

  consumption? If you had weight that you didn't

  allow for, it could cost the early astronauts their

  lives. Well"--she squeezed Riker's

  shoulder--?the lieutenant operates on the same

  principle. A real, solid romance--true

  love and everything--wd amount to additional weight in

  his travels through space. Our Mr. Riker

  doesn't like to deal with excess baggage."

  Riker looked at her. "Kathy, are you mad

  at me?"

  She blinked in surprise. "No. Not at

  all. I just know how you are. Or am I wrong?"

  He thought about it and said, "No, you're

  probably right."

  "See there?" said Lansing. "Mr. Li is

  probably right. And that is good enough for me. Mr.

  Riker, do you have any final things you'd like to say

  before you embark on your new and exciting

  assignment?"

  Science Officer Sara Paul was

  going around from person to person, holding a bottle

  of champagne. Glasses had been produced and

  she was filling each of them up about halfway.

  "Anything I'd like to say? Truthfully?"

  "The truth is preferred aboard the science

  exploration vessel Fortuna," said Lansing.

  Riker stared at his cupcake. "Well ...

  to be honest ... I wish I weren't leaving."

  This caused a fairly surprised reaction from

  the others. "But Lieutenant," said Lansing,

  "being promoted to first officer on the Hood ...

  it's a sizable step up. And--"

  "If I were going to the Hood, sir, I'd be

  ecstatic. But I'm not. I'm going to be cooling

  my heels planetside for the next few months.

  I could be far more use remaining on the Fortuna."

  "Lieutenant," said Lansing understandingly,

  "it's an unfortunate piece of luck, I'll

  admit. But let's try being unselfish, shall we?

  We can just thank the stars that the Hood is still in

  one piece. From what I've heard, those

  Sindareen raiders gave her quite a shellacking.

  It's a testament to the Hood, her

  capabilities and her crew, that she not only

  survived the sneak attack but destroyed the

  raiders. Still, she's going to be in dry dock for the

  next two to three months, undergoing repairs and

  overha
uls which were past due anyway. Look at

  it this way--y'll be getting a ship that's better

  than new."

  "But to be planetside ..." Riker shook his

  head ruefully. "I feel like I'll lose my

  space legs. The timing is so lousy."

  "True enough," admitted Lansing. "But what

  are we supposed to do? Your transfer to the

  Hood was arranged a month ago. Who

  expected a Sindareen attack on her? And the

  same time your transfer was arranged, so was the

  transfer of your replacement. We rendezvous with

  him in eighteen hours. We don't need the both

  of you here, and when the vacancy in the Betazed

  embassy opened up--"

  "So why not let him stew on Betazed for a

  few months?" said Riker, hoping he wasn't

  sounding too whiny.

  "Because Starfleet wanted the more experienced

  officer there, Lieutenant, and that's you. Face

  it, Mr. Riker ... you're just too popular.

  Everyone wants you."

  Riker shook his head. "It's been

  years since I've been planetside for more than

  seventy-two hours."

  "You'll get the hang of it," said Lansing

  consolingly. Then he raised his glass. "Lt.

  William t. Riker: Here's wishing you all the

  success in the galaxy, and hoping for a great and

  glorious future. To your future."

  "To your future," chorused the crew of the

  Fortuna.

  Riker nodded and smiled. "To the future," he

  said, and drank the champagne.

  CHAPTER 12

  Riker's first view of Mark Roper, the man

  who headed the Federation embassy of Betazed, was

  what would become a fairly typical view of

  him--bbh his desk, looking utterly besieged.

  Roper, for his part, didn't seem to notice

  Riker at all.

  Roper was heavyset, with graying hair and a

  thick, red nose that God seemed to have slapped

  on one day while He was in one of His more puckish

  moods. Roper had two computer screens on his

  desk and was going from one to the other, tapping notes

  into a small padd in front of him and muttering

  to himself much of the time.

  Riker cleared his throat. Roper glanced up

  at him, nodded briskly in acknowledgment, and then

  promptly, and rather obviously, forgot Riker was

  standing there. Instead Roper continued with his work, saying

  things like, "Unbelievable. Can't expect me

  to be everywhere. They want me to ...? That's

  two conflicting appointments. Now the

  Rigelian ambassador wants to come through? And