Imzadi_ Triangle Part 12

"Oh, I know I owe them nothing. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that I have to make my own way in this galaxy. I have to be my own man, whatever it takes, and I certainly can't be that if I stick with Starfleet."

She nodded, looking quite noncommittal. He wondered what was going through her head, but she was inscrutable.

"And if you could strike back at Starfleet," she said abruptly, "and at the Federation by doing something that would hurt their interests ... would you?"

"Depends," he said.

"Mmm." She nodded again, but this time she looked approving. "Good response. If you had simply said 'Yes,' I would know that you are lying, or desperate to say anything in order to endear yourself to me, regardless of its veracity. You are a man of annoyingly deep-rooted morality, Riker, that much I know. Most of your ilk are, even the disaffected ones such as yourself. Do you know what the parameters of those 'depends' might be?"

"I couldn't say for sure. I suppose I'd know it when I saw it."

"Would you draw the line at killing?"

He didn't hesitate in his response. "I've killed when I had to. I'd kill again. If I'd had my way, the mission that landed me in prison would have resulted in a h.e.l.l of a lot of dead Carda.s.sians had I managed to accomplish that."

"Could you kill Picard?"

For some reason, Riker rose from his "couch," as if the mere mention of Picard required that he stand at something vaguely approximating attention. "If I had to," he said after a moment. "I'd rather not... he see ... he's a decent enough man."

Mentally he kicked himself, since he'd almost slipped by saying, "He seems a decent enough man." Phrasing such as that might very well have tipped her off, or at least given her suspicions. Recovering quickly, he added, "I don't feel any overwhelming loyalty to him. Sometimes I feel as if I hardly know the man."

She seemed to take all this in. And then, without a word, she turned and walked out. As she pa.s.sed the guard, she nodded slightly and he activated the forcefield once more.

Riker sat back down on his uncomfortable couch. Well, that had gone about as well as could be expected.

Sela was up to something, of that much he was certain. Saket had spoken any number of times of his favorite student, his greatest pupil, but he'd never mentioned her name. Riker chalked that up to discretion that was practically ground into Saket. But he'd certainly described this mystery pupil in sufficient detail that Riker felt as if he knew her. It had since become clear to Riker that this Sela was that pupil, and more, that Sela had had dealings with Picard, Will Riker, and the Enterprise.

Furthermore, he was positive that she would not have staged the breakout if she hadn't had some sort of plan in place. And if that was the case, then it was imperative that Tom Riker get himself involved in it. Of course, if it was an attack or plan that was aimed at the Carda.s.sians, he would zealously partic.i.p.ate with a clear conscience. On the other hand, if it was indeed a mission that was directed at the Federation, then he would have to do everything he could to stop it.

Wouldn't he?

That dark thought crossed his mind for the briefest of moments, and then Tom Riker brushed it away with determination. Of course he would stop it if it was going to harm Starfleet or the Federation in some way. There was no question about it.

And he spent the rest of the day, and well into the night, convincing himself of that.

Sela sat in her quarters, drumming her fingers impatiently on her desk. Then there was a chime at her door. "Come," she said.

The door hissed open and the tall, rather pale Romulan who had been hovering in the corridor outside the lockup entered. He inclined his head slightly in greeting. Sela, for her part, did not seem particularly interested in cordialities. "Well?" she asked.

The Romulan she was addressing was named Kressn, and he was an empath.

It was a matter of some curiosity that Romulans, an offshoot race of the Vulcans, possessed none of the formidable mind powers that their parent race displayed with such facility. No one was entirely certain why that should be the case. Some felt it a matter of mere genetics, but that did not seem a satisfactory answer. For others it came down more to a matter of societal upbringing.

In their distant past, the Vulcans had been a bloodthirsty, savage, and warlike race. While the Vulcans, in order to save themselves lest they obliterate their entire race through endless bloodshed, had transformed themselves into paragons of logic, the Romulans had taken another direction entirely. They retained much of the aggressiveness and desire for conquest that had nearly brought their forebears to utter ruin. Since they had never become what anyone could possibly think of as a contemplative race, they had never found the inner strength of mind that the Vulcans had, nor had they managed to unlock the potential for telepathic abilities that afforded the Vulcans the ability to mind-meld.

Nonetheless, it could not reasonably be argued that there wasn't some genetic predisposition for mind powers. They couldn't have come from nowhere. That being the case, the potential for mental abilities must have existed equally in both the Romulans and Vulcans. Whereas the Vulcans had made the most of their potential, the Romulans had allowed that same potential in themselves to wither and die ... possibly because their contact with the Vulcans had been severed more than a millennium earlier, at the time of Surak. Not being present for the Great Voyage of Discovery that the Vulcans had embarked upon, the Romulans simply didn't know, as a race, what they could do. Once they had become aware, however, when they had embarked on a campaign of war against the Federation a century earlier, there had been a movement afoot to try and play a sort of mental "catch-up" game with their cousins.

It had not been overwhelmingly successful thus far. There had been, however, a few small triumphs here and there. One of those triumphs happened to be Kressn. Tested at a young age and found to have definite psi potential, Kressn had been taken from his parents and handed over to the Tal Shiar. In his training over the years, Kressn had been found to have three major strengths: First, he was a gifted empath, capable of discerning the truth or falsehood of a subject's statements, as well as a range of other emotions; second, he had a knack for infiltration. It took a great deal of his concentration, but under the proper circ.u.mstances, he was capable of masking his presence from others in a room, much like old Earth ninjas or the fabled phantom people of Qu'uan. He would simply "convince" an onlooker to look in a direction other than that where Kressn happened to be. There was limited use to this ability: He wasn't capable of using his empathic abilities during such times, since retaining his "cloak," as he liked to call it, required all his concentration. Furthermore, if it was a very crowded room, sooner or later someone would b.u.mp into him and-at that point-not help but notice him. And if there was a surveillance camera, he was more or less dead.

And third, he was that rather rare breed, a projecting empath, capable of investing key emotions in individuals and "pushing" those emotions where he desired them to go.

In short, Kressn had his uses and his functions, which Sela had found out firsthand.

"Well?" she said again. Sometimes Kressn, seemingly off in his own world, did not answer without repeated prompting.

"He is holding something back ... of that much I am certain. Are you positive he is who you think he is?"

"Of course he is." She rose from behind the table and circled the room. "Besides the fact that I know him on sight, Saket referred to him as Riker. And when I first encountered the Enterprise, I did full intelligence workups on all her senior officers. Riker was an only child. And I ran a full scan on his molecular structure from our own transporter records. It's fully human, meaning he's not a shapeshifter. So unless he somehow managed to pull a twin brother out of thin air within the last couple of years, that's William Riker."

"Very well. But he's still holding something back."

"Aren't we all," Sela remarked dryly.

"Perhaps." Kressn's tone lowered to something approaching conspiratorial. "Perhaps his presence there was some sort of trap. An attempt to infiltrate our operation."

It was clear from her general demeanor that she wasn't especially accepting of that notion. "You're asking me to believe that Starfleet consigned one of its top officers to a Carda.s.sian hard-labor camp, in the hope that perhaps he could become friendly with a Romulan-a Romulan whom I have known my entire life and has an uncanny knack for seeing through duplicity-and then, on the off chance that the Romulan was rescued, Riker would be able to survive the a.s.sault and manage to save the Romulan's life so that maybe, just maybe, bis new captors won't kill him? Is that the tortured logic you're asking me to accept, Kressn?"

"I am simply asking you to accept that all is not necessarily what it seems with the prisoner."

"Very well," Sela said impatiently. "Consider it a given. Putting that fact aside ... what about the things he did say. Was he telling the truth?"

"He certainly believed what he was saying. It was definitely the truth as he believed it. However, bis thoughts are finely tuned."

"Meaning what? That he's a telepath?"

"No. No, nothing quite that refined. But he has had training in mental disciplines that exceed anything Starfleet is currently offering. What it does mean is that if he had something he wished to keep hidden, he might very well be able to do so in such a way that nothing short of a deep probe would be able to dig it out."

"Can you do it?"

He shook his head. "Beyond my capabilities, I'm afraid. We have technology that could extract the information, but he might very well put up such a fight that whatever's left of him when we're through would be useless."

"We're going in circles here, Kressn," Sela said impatiently. "Give me your final a.s.sessment. Give me something I can work with."

"Very well. He is, without question, an angry and disillusioned man. He does not feel any particular attachment to Starfleet. If he feels anything for anyone, it would be for this Deanna person you mentioned. Your bringing her name up definitely provoked a mental spike from him. His feelings for her are exceedingly raw."

"Saket always told me that raw materials are the most useful, since they can be molded into so many different things," Sela said. She leaned back against her desk, stroking her chin thoughtfully. "Anything else?"

"Yes." Kressn cleared his throat and said, with what sounded like mild annoyance, "He finds you rather attractive."

"Does he?" She smirked at that. "Well, if there was any question as to whether he's really William Riker, that certainly resolved it. It was part of his psych profile when I first researched him: He considers himself quite the ladies' man. Apparently a number of ladies share that a.s.sessment."

"And would you be one of them?"

She looked at him, her gaze hardening. "You overstep yourself, Kressn."

He bowed slightly.

"These are different times, Kressn." She moved back around her desk. "Different times call for different measures. Tell me, Kressn ... if we brought William Riker into our plan, and it was he who was responsible for the death of an entire race ... how do you think that would reflect on Starfleet and the Federation?"

"You do not need to ask me that," he told her mildly. "You already know the answer."

"Yesss," she smiled. "And I think it an option that we would most definitely be benefited in exploring. I think that William Riker and I will be able to be of tremendous use to one another."

"I have no doubt, Sela," Kressn said. "I have no doubt at all."

CHAPTER.

had wanted to surprise her mother, but that had proven somewhat problematic. The moment that she had arrived on the transport to Betazed, she had been spotted by a longtime friend of the family, Silvan, who relayed the information telepathically to another friend, and so on down the line. Betazoids for the most part had telepathy of limited range, but with the advent of something as momentus as Deanna Troi's return to Betazed, the news followed a brisk chain of telepathic ricochets so that the news arrived at Lwaxana Troi's doorstep within approximately forty-five seconds of Deanna's having set foot on her homeworld. As a consequence, Lwaxana had a good deal of time to prepare for her daughter's arrival.

Immediately she contacted 135 guests in preparation for a banquet to honor her daughter's visit. She also let several very eligible Betazoid bachelors be aware of the fact that her wayward daughter had returned and that she was, you know, not getting any younger. Certainly the pa.s.sage of time had done nothing to diminish her daughter's good looks, fine figure, and other a.s.sets that-on the whole-made her a superb catch, and the fact that she had gone unsnagged for this long only worked in a gentleman's favor, because at this point Deanna must be starting to realize that time and matrimony wait for no one, not even a Daughter of the Fifth House. In short, there was every possibility that she might be a lot less choosy these days, and that was to everyone's advantage.

And, of course, anyone who married Deanna would have the deep honor of having the famed Lwaxana Troi for a mother-in-law.

As she broadcast this, Lwaxana had the strangest feeling. It was the sound, in her head, of telepathic doors slamming. She wasn't entirely sure why that would be, but she was willing to shrug it off as not being of very much consequence.

It should be noted that when Silvan sent out the original thought-cast about Lwaxana, he had noticed that Deanna seemed engaged in lively and pleasant conversation with what appeared to be a Klingon father and son traveling together. This in and of itself did not appear particularly significant, however, and as a result Silvan did not happen to pa.s.s that along in the message. This was a pity, as it might have given Lwaxana at least some measure of warning. As a result, she had none. So when she greeted her wandering daughter in the grand foyer of casa Troi, she was not at all prepared for what was about to happen.

Mr. Homn, Lwaxana's towering manservant, stepped to one side as Lwaxana almost stampeded over him to get to her daughter. "Little One!" she said out loud, knowing that for some bizarre reason Deanna found it extremely off-putting to speak purely through the mind. "Did you tell me you were coming? Did I forget?" She draped an arm around Deanna's shoulders and strolled with her into the main sitting room, tugging her as if she were afraid that Deanna was going to bolt at any moment. "I know, I know, I'm getting on in years. You might have told me that you were coming for a visit and I simply forgot."

"Mother, you know better than that," Deanna gently scolded her. "You forget nothing. Your mind is as sharp as it ever was."

Lwaxana laughed, sounding surprisingly girlish considering that her girlish years were long gone. "There are some people," she said, as if sharing a naughty secret, "who would say that that isn't much of a compliment."

"We pity those people," Deanna deadpanned.

"Mr. Homn, some tea ... Earl Gray, piping hot. Jean-Luc got me addicted to the stuff," she told Deanna, looking a bit embarra.s.sed, "and now I just don't know what to do. It's not easy to come by here on Betazed, although I do have my methods and a rather long reach. Come, sit on the-"

Then Lwaxana suddenly stopped her cheerful burbling and stared at her daughter as if Deanna had grown a nose in the middle of her forehead. She folded her arms and, acquiring a slightly worried demeanor, said, "All right, Little One. What is it you're nervous about telling me?"

"Mother!" Deanna made no effort to hide her annoyance, not that it would have helped if she had tried. "You know I hate that! I hate when you skim the thoughts off the top of my mind! I want to tell you something, surprise you, and you won't even let me get to it in my own way and time."

"All right." Lwaxana looked as if she were making a physical effort to haul something unseen back into her head. "All right. Go ahead. Tell me."

"You... should be happy about it, actually," Deanna said. "Something's, well... something's come up, and I know that it's something that's been important to you for quite some time___"

Lwaxana clapped her hands together, her dark eyes going wide with excitement. "You're getting married!"

"Mother! For heaven's sake-!"

"I didn't peek!" Lwaxana drew herself up as if her honor were being questioned, squaring her shoulders and looking at her daughter as if daring her to try and accuse her otherwise. "Deanna, I'm not stupid. I figured it out from the things you r just said! At least, I believe I did. Did I? Figure it out, I mean?"

At that, Deanna couldn't hold back a laugh. Lwaxana Troi was not exactly one of the more staid individuals one could hope to meet, even under normal circ.u.mstances. Well, these circ.u.mstances were far from normal. Not wanting to keep her mother in suspense anymore, Deanna said, "Yes, Mother, you figured it out. I'm engaged to be married."

Lwaxana promptly slapped her lightly across the face.

Deanna was momentarily startled, and could feel a faint stinging sensation in her cheek, as much from surprise as anything else. But then Lwaxana immediately leaned forward and kissed the other cheek, and then Deanna remembered.

"The slap to remind you of the pain of married life," Lwaxana said, "and the kiss to remind you that, with love, all can be solved. Congratulations, Little One."

"Fortunately I remembered the tradition after you whacked me," Deanna said, rubbing the sore spot. "Next time give me a little bit of warning, though, all right?"

"Oh, don't complain. You're an engaged woman now, so don't whine about a little pain. So," and she took Deanna's hands in hers and sat them both on the luxurious couch. It was a bright orange with green diagonal stripes. Deanna had hated the couch since her youth. She'd once offered to buy it off her mother, just so she could man the transporter and disa.s.semble the thing one molecule at a time. But her mother had been less than cooperative and wouldn't part with it. "So ... have you and Riker set a date?"

"What?" asked Deanna in puzzlement.

"Riker. You and Will Riker. Your fiance. I know it's Riker; you were thinking of him when you told me you were engaged. Oh, I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't pry, but it's a bad habit I'm trying to kick. ..."

"Mother, I wasn't thinking about Will."

"Yes, you were. He was uppermost in your thoughts... ."

"That's because I have other thoughts occupying the deeper layers."

Lwaxana seemed utterly confused. "Are you saying... you're not marrying Riker?"

"You sound disappointed. I didn't know you felt so strongly about him as a husband for me..."

"Well, you are Imzadi, after all, and you've been together for all this time, and you hadn't written to me and told me that you'd gotten involved with someone new. ..."

"Mother, I'm not obligated to fill you in on it every time I'm 'involved with someone new,' am I?"

"No, of course not." Lwaxana regarded her with open curiosity. "Although now that we're on the subject, how many men have you been involved with over the past years?"

"None," Deanna deadpanned. "I've been with no men in all these years. In fact, I never even really had s.e.x with Will, not ever. I am, in fact, a virgin."

"You certainly know what a mother wants to hear," Lwaxana told her, smiling, her eyes twinkling in amus.e.m.e.nt. "Seriously, Deanna... if not Riker, then who? Not Jean-Luc!" She suddenly seemed stunned.

"No, Mother."

"That nice engineering fellow with the large hair clip on his face?"

"His name is Geordi, it's called a VISOR, and no, it's not him."

"Well, I doubt it's the android... ." She paused a moment to glance at Deanna for confirmation as to this supposition. Deanna quietly shook her head. "Then who... ?" Suddenly she seemed aghast. "Deanna, don't tell me... not... a noncom?!?"

"Have no fear, Mother. You needn't worry about becoming an outcast in polite society. He's not a noncommissioned officer." She took a deep breath, and then said, "Actually, it's ... well... it's Worf."

Dead silence. Lwaxana just stared at her.

"Worf Rozhenko... the security guard," Deanna prompted. "We sat in a mudbath together, remember?"

Still no reply.