At the moment, she couldn’t face the more serious question—whether that really was Will Riker on the bridge. The answer might mean that her beloved was dead, or seriously injured, or he’d been possessed by some alien intelligence. Still, Troi knew she had to discover the truth, and the place to start would be Will’s quarters. He had been normal when he left the bridge to go to dinner, and he’d been poison to her after his return.
Panting heavily, Deanna removed her combadge so they couldn’t find her with the ship’s computer. Then she stopped to listen—to see if anyone was following her. No one could scramble up and down these ladders without making noise, although she didn’t hear any. Of course, even without her badge, they could use tricorders to find her, but they couldn’t get around any quicker than she could, unless they reactivated the turbolifts. The worrisome thing was that she had no idea how many crew members had fallen under Riker’s spell. Was she the only one who had an odd kind of immunity?
While stopped, Troi looked around to get her bearings. She finally found a plaque on the wall of the tube that identified it as serving deck nine. That was a small piece of luck; Riker’s quarters were not completely out of reach from this part of the ship. She plowed onward until she found a tube leading up, then she began to climb.
Troi figured that she could get to Riker’s door, but how could she get it open? She would need a phaser to disable the circuitry, and then something to pry the door open. Her arms and legs aching, she climbed until she reached the access panel on deck eight. She lunged for it, just as it popped open in her face.
Deanna instantly collapsed against the ladder, expecting a phaser beam to streak out of the opening, but instead a tentative voice called, “Hello? Who’s down there?”
It might be a trick, thought Troi, but they had her in point-blank range, and there was no need for them to use tricks. She waited breathlessly until two blue antennae bobbed over the edge of the opening. Finally a long, blue head followed the antennae, and the saturnine face of Rhofistan, the transporter operator, peered curiously at her. “Counselor Troi?”
“Yes,” she said, letting out her breath. “Are you ... are you aware that the ship is headed to Lomar?”
“Lomar?” asked the Andorian. “Where’s that? And why is everything locked down?”
“Help me out,” she said with relief. “The ship’s been taken over ... by an intruder, I think.”
“That would explain much,” said the Andorian, lowering a long arm to her.
After pulling her out, the two of them stood in the corridor, looking around, trying to catch their breath. Troi noticed the phaser on his belt.
“Good, you’re armed,” she said, “and we need that.”
“We must fight other members of the crew?” he asked in alarm.
“No, we have to get into a door.”
“I’d like to get into a transporter room and several other places,” said the Andorian, “but there are only crew quarters on this deck. Nothing vital.”
Deanna frowned and brushed back a dark lock of hair. “That’s probably why there are no guards down here yet. He’s got command of everyone on the bridge, but not the whole ship.”
“Who has control?”
“Come with me,” ordered Troi. She led the way down the corridor, scanning the bulkheads for any tools or weapons they could use. Spotting an emergency panel, she opened it and grabbed a first-aid kit, a tricorder, and a small tool box full of spanners and wrenches.
A moment later, Troi paused in front of a turbolift, which didn’t open at her approach. “We can’t get in there,” Rhofistan said glumly.
“I know.” Troi continued to study the support frame surrounding the door. The long, slim pieces of metal looked awfully strong to her.
“May I have your phaser for a moment?” she asked, placing her other articles on the deck.
“Certainly, Commander.” His blue fingers drew the weapon and handed it to Troi.
“Stand back.” With pinpoint bursts, she sheared off two metal slats about two meters long from the door frame. Rhofistan gathered them up as they clattered to the deck.
“Come on, we’re almost there.” Troi handed the phaser back to the Andorian, picked up the other articles, and charged down the corridor. When they reached Riker’s door, she flicked on the tricorder and checked for life-signs. To the relief of her thumping heart, she found one weak life-sign inside.
Deanna pointed to the control box to the left of the door. “Do you think you could disable that?”
“Yes, sir.” The Andorian drew his phaser, checked the setting, and swiftly demolished the control box in a shower of sparks. A Klaxon sounded, and Troi looked around, knowing this forced entry wouldn’t go unnoticed on the bridge.
Troi grabbed one of her metal rods and used it like a crowbar on the door. Grunting and groaning, she didn’t make much progress until Rhofistan grabbed the other slat and slammed it into the door jamb. The big Andorian was about twice as strong as a human—almost as strong as a Vulcan—and he quickly opened a slit of several centimeters. As the siren continued to howl overhead, both of them gripped the door with their fingertips and pulled in opposite directions. With a cracking sound, the door finally broke loose and slid freely.
“Will!” cried Deanna, rushing into the room with the first-aid kit in hand. She found Riker sprawled on the deck, barely breathing, his skin clammy and hot as if a fever were raging. Her first instinct was to call sickbay for help, but then she realized that wasn’t an option in the absence of her combadge. Not that calling sickbay would help in any case, at least until the imposter was exposed. As Rhofistan took up position at the door, phaser drawn, Deanna opened the first-aid kit and pulled out a hypo full of lectrazine, an all-purpose stabilizer.
“Hang on, Imzadi,” she whispered. “I knew that wasn’t you up there.”
She administered the hypospray to his neck and held her breath, waiting for a reaction. Will looked as sick as Beverly and her crew, but she was hoping that she had caught him before he slipped into an actual coma.
Without warning, a phaser beam streaked down the length of the corridor, and Rhofistan returned fire. As more phaser beams crisscrossed the air, the Andorian was forced to duck into the stateroom. “They’re coming!” he warned.
Deanna grabbed Will’s shoulders and lowered her ear to his chest, but all she heard was his ragged breathing. “Come on, Will, wake up! Get better!”
Rhofistan shrieked, staggering back from the door with a nasty phaser burn on his thigh. Troi fumbled in the first-aid kit for anything that could bring Will around, but she heard the pounding of boots coming closer. She thought about picking up the phaser, which had fallen to the deck along with the Andorian, but she couldn’t win a shoot-out with security officers. Instead she lifted Will’s head and cradled it in her arms.
“Don’t move!” shouted a voice, and Troi looked up to see gold tunics crowding the broken doorway, and phaser rifles aimed directly at her.
nine
For a moment, confusion reigned in the confines of Will Riker’s quarters, as a security detail confronted what they thought was a band of mutineers. Deanna Troi could tell from their startled expressions that they didn’t expect one of the renegades to look exactly like the acting captain they had left on the bridge.
Troi stared at the man she had punched in the chest a few minutes earlier, and he muscled his way past the others. He glowered at her, while his phaser barrel stayed pointed at her chest. “I ... I don’t know what’s going on here,” he murmured, “but you’re going to the brig.”
“This is Commander Riker!” Troi insisted desperately. “He’s ill. We have to get him to sickbay. Believe me, I know Will Riker, and that’s an impostor on the bridge!”
The officer’s face showed a flash of doubt, but he finally stiffened his spine and waved to his comrades. “Arrest them all, and get them to the—”
“Johnson, don’t be a horse’s ass,” croaked a voice. Deanna felt a rumbling in
her breast, and she realized with joy that it was Will, talking and awake. She hugged him even tighter.
“I told you in your last review,” Riker continued, his voice gaining strength, “that you react without thinking. You’re a good man, but you want to get control of that temper of yours. There’s always time in any situation to think.”
Johnson looked really confused, and he backed out of the room, shaking his head. “I don’t know ... I don’t feel well either.”
“Help me sit up,” Will whispered, smiling weakly at Deanna. She rose to her knees and pushed him forward, noting that his skin still felt clammy.
Riker gazed from one officer to another—they numbered four now that Johnson had run off—and they gripped their phasers nervously. “We’re in no shape to hurt you,” said the commander, “so you can lower your weapons and talk to us.”
Hesitantly, glancing at one another, the officers lowered their phasers. The commander nodded and went on, “We’re even, because I don’t know what’s going on here either. But I know one thing—when Ensign Paruk’N disappeared, we realized there might be an intruder onboard. We discussed that, remember?”
They nodded at one another, looking more accepting of the idea. Riker coughed and took a raspy breath, but he plunged on. “We also know I’m sick ... and that you may be next. It’s probably the fungus ... the same thing that got the Neptune.”
Troi hugged him protectively and said, “You have to go to sickbay. You got a strong dose of it.”
He frowned worriedly at her. “You didn’t come in when I was eating dinner ... and kiss me? Did you?”
Deanna looked up at the dinner dishes left on the table and shook her head.
“I didn’t think so,” Riker answered, his body shivering. “I know where I got it.”
“We can get him to sickbay through the Jefferies tubes,” said a Deltan officer, reaching an arm down to Riker. He sounded convinced that it was Riker.
“Chief Rhofistan, too.” Troi motioned to the wounded Andorian, who nodded appreciatively.
The four guards helped the first officer and the transporter operator to their feet and guided them into the corridor. Deanna retrieved Rhofistan’s phaser from the deck and tucked it into her belt.
“Are you coming with us?” called the Deltan officer as they helped Riker lower himself into the Jefferies tube.
Troi waited until her beloved was out of earshot, and she answered, “No, I’ve got to go back to the bridge.”
“We could go—”
“No, you can’t come with me,” she insisted, gripping the phaser in her belt. “I’m the only one who can face him.”
“The Enterprise is not there,” said Commander Jagron, pointing accusingly at the elaborate viewscreen on the bridge of the D’Arvuk.
“What?” Captain Picard asked, taking a step toward the display and staring at it. He had heard Jagron give the correct coordinates for the barren stretch of space where they had left the Enterprise. He had personally given his crew orders to wait for their return. What had happened?
“Maybe it’s the infection,” suggested La Forge, standing at his side. “You said the Neptune also did unpredictable things.”
“Yes.” The captain frowned thoughtfully, then added, “Or perhaps they were called away by Starfleet.”
Jagron sneered. “What is more important than this mission—to see if your shelters even work? Besides, the Enterprise is under quarantine, like us.”
“All right, they’re gone,” said Geordi. “Can’t we go back to Myrmidon and try to search for more survivors?”
“Before we do anything,” answered Picard evenly, “we have to broadcast a subspace message, explaining your theory. All the parties have to know there’s a chance that the Genesis Wave can be bent or narrowed by force fields. Do you have those notes I asked you to compile?”
“Yes, sir.” La Forge took an isolinear chip out of his pocket. “I think we could use tractor beams on a massive scale to form a kind of convexo-concave lens.”
“Let’s get the word out.” Picard looked expectantly at Commander Jagron, who scowled and led the engineer to a communications console.
Where would they go? the captain wondered to himself as he stared at the empty region of space. If our enemy has captured the Enterprise, wouldn’t they use it to help their cause?
He walked to the console and looked over Geordi’s shoulder. When the transmission was almost complete, he added, “Two more things: Let Starfleet know that Admiral Nechayev is alive, and put everyone on alert for the Enterprise. If they see it, they are to use caution and allow no person-to-person contact. Anyone who sees the Enterprise should contact the D’Arvuk immediately.”
“Do you really think it will be that easy?” asked Jagron.
“No,” answered Picard, working his jaw as furiously as La Forge worked the communications panel.
Using her mind like a homing device, Deanna Troi crawled through the Jefferies tube under the bridge, trying to find the false Riker. From the pain and nausea that overwhelmed her, she determined that he was sitting in the command chair, right where she had last seen him. He was pumping out telepathic energy like a generator. No wonder he had to sit and remain still. For her part, she tried to remain calm and keep a clear head while she waited in the cramped crawlspace. That meant fighting down bile churning up from her stomach, but Troi managed to maintain her position.
One of her patients was a member of the maintenance crew for the bridge, and he had described how odd it was to be working in the access space under the bridge, and to have your hand in the center of the captain’s chair or the ops console. She could envision that now, and she had no trouble finding the circular compartment under the command chair.
Still Troi had to wait, fighting the revulsion, until she decided that her foe wasn’t going to move or react to her presence, if he even knew she was there. They were on course to wherever, and they didn’t seem to be worried about anything. That was all Deanna needed to know. She wanted to open the compartment, crank her phaser to overload, and stick it in a strut inside the command chair. The resulting explosion would put this creature out of commission. Permanently.
But tempting as the plan was, it wasn’t an option, at least not one she could live with. So with a quick yet careful shot with her phaser she began to saw her way through the deck itself. If she could just talk to this being for a moment perhaps they could reach some sort of—Alarms went off, and the lighting in the passageway changed to red-alert status.
Guess he’s not in the mood for a chat, she thought, as she continued drilling the deck with her phaser. Ducking back into the Jefferies tube, Troi narrowly avoided a collision with Captain Picard’s chair as it fell through the fresh hole in the bridge’s floor. Phaser reset to full stun, she popped up through the hole and fired before the imposter or crew could react.
What followed seemed to surprise the rest of the bridge crew almost as much as it surprised Troi herself.
Nothing happened at all.
Riker had been looking over the shoulder of the science officer when Troi aimed at his side. He didn’t even seem to notice, much less react, when the beam first struck him. Finally, when he realized that his crew was staring at him dumbfounded, he began to draw his own phaser.
“Didn’t I tell you to take care of her?” he said, apparently irritated, but at no one in particular. Troi’s head pounded and she felt faint. She reset her phaser.
“Stop.” Her voice sounded to her own ears like it was emerging from the end of a long tunnel. “Please don’t make me kill you.” The imposter continued to raise his weapon.
Whoever you are and whatever you want, I’m sorry I have to do this, she thought as she watched the form of the man she loved disintegrate under her fire.
When the acrid smoke surrounding the panel behind Riker cleared, Troi looked around at the bridge from an angle she had never expected to see. Scattered everywhere were sprigs of gray vegetation—like mistletoe—along with
the pieces of the chair and deck. The bridge crew gaped at the wreckage and the bizarre remains of their commander. One of them bent over and dropped to his knees, vomiting. Deanna knew how he felt, although her own nausea was fading.
She dragged herself out of the jagged hole. “That was not Commander Riker. The real Riker is in sickbay by now.”
She crossed to the ops station, trying to sound confident and collected. “Computer, turn off red alert!” she ordered. The noise instantly stopped, and the lighting returned to normal.
Deanna breathed a loud sigh of relief. “Let’s get communications going, and all systems back to normal. Conn, bring us to full stop.”
When they just stared at her, the counselor resorted to her most sympathetic tone. “It’s all right, none of you are to blame. The ship is infected by ... something. We’ll get things squared away in no time.” She hoped that would be true.
Pacing the bridge, Troi stopped at the conn and noted that they were still on course to a planet she had never heard of. “Do any of you know why we’re headed to Lomar?”
Still stunned, the young officers looked at one another and shook their heads. It was as if they had collective amnesia and couldn’t remember being under the sway of a clump of moss, which was now scattered around the deck.
“Okay,” she said, “at least put out a distress signal, and do it now.”
That order was simple enough that the tactical officer, the same one who had fired at her earlier, managed to tap his board. “Distress signal going out on all channels.”
“Full stop,” reported the conn.
“Unlocking transporters, doors, and main hatches,” the officer on ops said.
Troi nodded slowly and smiled. “Thank you. Get a repair team up here, too.” She looked around at their stunned expressions and added, “And call relief for yourselves. I think all of you could stand a visit to sickbay.”
STAR TREK: TNG - The Genesis Wave, Book Two Page 10