Kyle tried to picture him, and came up with a vague impression of a severe man in his fifties, with thick black hair and a pinched face. “I believe I’ve met him once or twice, but I don’t really know him.”
“He’s very loyal to those in his command,” Dugan said. “My impression is that he barely knew Yeoman Hall, but he’s very concerned about what happened to him.”
“So am I,” Kyle confessed. “Do we know the cause of death?”
Dugan hesitated before answering, as if he needed to decide how much to reveal. “An autopsy was conducted last night. There’s evidence of brain damage—some kind of interference with the operation of his brain’s limbic system. More specifically, the hippocampus.”
“Caused by what?”
“That we don’t know,” Dugan replied. “He’s still being examined to see if that can be determined.”
“And that could have killed him?” Kyle asked. “That damage?”
“Not by itself, no. But the force of your blows, in combination with the preexisting condition, possibly might have.”
Kyle looked at the floor, carpeted in institutional blue. “So I did kill him.”
“It’s quite possible that you did, yes. Or contributed to his death, which would probably be more accurate. I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Kyle said sadly. “I’d like to be able to contact his next of kin, if that’s possible, to express my deep regret.”
“I’ll try to get you that information, sir. In the meantime, we’ve checked your computer’s memory, and it confirms your version of events.”
“I could have faked that,” Kyle suggested.
“You could have,” Dugan agreed, his narrow, hooded eyes fixed on Kyle’s face. “But you would have had to work fast. We were there shortly after everything started happening. And the computer was recording events the whole time—it would have been pretty tricky of you to fake the record without any gaps in the real-time log.”
Kyle had intentionally kept the computer recording everything, just for that reason. Once the authorities had been notified, he knew one of their first priorities would be to investigate what the computer had observed from the first phaser discharge on.
“Did Mr. Hall have any genuine reason for coming to see me?” Kyle asked. “Was he bringing a message from Bonner, or anyone else in the command?”
“Not that we’ve been able to determine,” Dugan responded. “He went off duty at eighteen hundred hours, and last anyone knew he was headed to his home in Daly City. There seems to have been no Starfleet-related reason for him to even have still been in uniform, much less passing himself off as on official business. That’s how he got through the door of your building, by the way. And he had a Starfleet keytag to make it seem on the level. It wasn’t activated—wouldn’t have got past a first-year cadet—but it was good enough to get into a century-old civilian apartment building.”
Kyle felt defensive. “It’s a nice place,” he said quickly. “Lots of atmosphere.”
“I’m sure,” Dugan replied. “And substandard security.”
“Which is normally not a problem,” Kyle countered. “I’ve been living there for years. This is the first time I’ve been attacked. So statistically, it’s still a good bet.”
“Statistically, most people only get killed once,” Dugan pointed out. “We’re not charging you with anything, sir. And we’ll keep investigating Yeoman Hall, to see if we can figure out what he was doing there. But if I were you, I’d be a little careful.” He looked away, wordlessly dismissing Kyle.
“I will,” Kyle assured him. “And thanks.”
His own office on the twenty-third floor of the Headquarters skyscraper tower was, Kyle thought, a good deal more “lived-in”-looking than Lieutenant Dugan’s. As he kept books at home, he also had a cabinet full of them here. One wall was entirely covered in old-fashioned paper maps. Some were antiques—a map of the battleground at Antietam, from the American Civil War, in which one of his ancestors had distinguished himself, for instance, and a map of San Francisco from the twentieth century. Others were nautical charts of the world’s oceans, and still others two-dimensional printouts of stellar cartography—not especially practical, but he still enjoyed looking at them. He liked being able to see the lines on his maps and visualize himself at a particular point in time and space.
Just now, though, Kyle sat at his desk, chair turned away from it, looking at a shadowbox frame above the bookshelf in which there were some other items with a deeply personal meaning to him: his wife’s wedding ring, the key to the first house they’d lived in, up in Alaska, and a holoimage of her outside that house, holding their baby boy, Will, in her arms. She had been standing in the shadow of a tall fir, but the sun’s rays had fallen on her as if cast there by one of the ancient Dutch masters, picking her and the baby out and limning them clearly against the dark backdrop. Her hair was golden in that light, reminding Kyle of a honey jar in a window with the sun beaming through it, and her smile had been equally radiant.
Less than two years later, Annie was dead, leaving Kyle and young Will on their own.
Kyle turned away, suddenly. That was not why he’d come in here, he knew. He had to figure out why someone would want to kill him, not lose himself in a past that could never be reclaimed.
Starfleet was primarily a scientific, exploratory, and diplomatic agency, not a military one, but there were always conflicts brewing at various points around known space, and therefore always something to which Kyle should be paying attention. Recently, the U.S.S. Stargazer had found itself in some difficulty in the Maxia Zeta System, for instance. The ship had been nearly destroyed, but her crew had survived, drifting in a shuttlecraft for a few weeks until being rescued. Kyle was trying to draw together all the information he could on the attack in hopes of learning who had done it, and what its captain, one Jean-Luc Picard, might have done differently in its defense.
Could the attack have had something to do with that? Kyle wondered. The Stargazer’s assailants were still unknown, and maybe they preferred to stay that way. Of course, Kyle Riker wasn’t the only person working on that mystery, not by a long shot. He wasn’t even the most high-profile. Why would they come after me? he asked himself. I’m the least of their worries.
Well, not the least, he mentally amended. He was good at what he did, and if—when—he found out who was behind the attack on the Stargazer, whoever had done it would be sorry they had survived. But even granting that, it still seemed unlikely that Yeoman Hall had been responsible for an attack so far away, or would have any connection to the mystery attackers.
Still, he noted “Maxia Zeta,” down on his padd, and then turned his mind toward his next priority. But before he could continue, his office door tweedled at him.
“Come in,” he said.
The door opened and two security officers—not Lieutenant Dugan—stood outside. Chief Petty Officer Maxwell Hsu, an aide to Admiral Owen Paris, stepped in, looking more than a little uncomfortable. “Mr. Riker, sir…the admiral would like to see you,” he said haltingly.
“He normally just calls when he wants to see me. What makes this time different?” Kyle knew his directness would take the aide off guard, which was why he did it.
Maxwell cleared his throat and examined his feet. “I…I don’t know the answer to that, sir,” he said. “I just know that he asked me—” here he raised his hands slightly, as if to indicate the security officers waiting in the corridor. “—us…to come and escort you to him.”
Kyle pushed his chair back, pressed his palms flat against the surface of his desk, and rose to his feet. “Well, then,” he said with forced affability, “I guess we’d better find out what he wants.”
They walked briskly through the halls, the security officers a couple of strides behind Kyle at all times, as if they thought he might make a break for it. He didn’t know what it was about, but he knew he didn’t like the feeling. First, that someone had tried to kill him, compounded by the fact
that he had actually, albeit in self-defense, killed his assailant. And now this, being escorted through Starfleet Headquarters as if he were little more than a common criminal. It was infuriating.
And not a little terrifying.
Instead of Admiral Paris’s office, they led him to a nearby conference room. Hsu motioned for Kyle to stay put while he poked his head inside. A moment later, he emerged and gestured Kyle in with a halfhearted smile. Kyle walked in, completely at a loss as to what he should expect.
If he’d had hours to think about it, he still would not have expected what he saw.
At the end of a long, oval table polished to a high gloss, Admiral Owen Paris sat rigidly upright, giving him an avuncular, sympathetic smile. To his right, on the table’s side, Vice Admiral Bonner eyed him appraisingly. To Bonner’s right, an assortment of Starfleet brass, human and non-, most known at least in passing to Kyle. Charlie Bender, F’lo’kith Smeth, Teresa Santangelo, and two others Kyle couldn’t put names to.
Admiral Paris half-rose from his chair and swept his arm toward an empty chair, looking very lonely all by itself on the near side of the table. “Come in, Kyle, please,” he said, his voice familiarly gruff. “I’m sorry for all the formality.”
“I’m sure there’s a good reason,” Kyle offered, generously, he thought. He took a seat in the suggested chair.
“Do you know everyone?” Paris asked.
Kyle looked at the two strangers. “Almost,” he replied. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Right, sorry,” Paris said. With appropriate arm movements, he added, “Captain Sistek and Captain Munro. Kyle Riker.”
“Pleasure,” Kyle muttered, convinced that it would not be.
The conference room was anonymously Starfleet—lots of gray and silver, with no windows and mostly undecorated walls. The wall behind Owen Paris had a large reproduction of Starfleet’s arrowhead symbol mounted on it, and the wall Kyle faced had a holoimage of the old NCC-1701 Enterprise soaring through space. It looked like a room meant to emphasize that what was discussed in it was more important than the surroundings.
“The reason we’ve brought you here, Kyle,” Paris began, “with all these people and all the special treatment, is that an accusation has been made against you. An accusation that, should it be true—and let me say at the outset that I don’t believe it to be—but if I’m wrong and it were true, would be a very serious matter indeed.”
“Does this have something to do with last night?” Kyle asked. “Because if it does—”
Owen Paris waved away his question. “No, not at all,” he said. “I’m sure you had a terrible night because of that, and I guarantee we’ll get to the bottom of it. But this is a completely separate matter.”
“Okay, then,” Kyle said. “Please excuse the interruption.”
“Feel free to speak at any time,” Paris told him. “This is not a formal hearing of any kind, just a—well, let’s say a casual meeting to make you aware of what’s going on.”
“If I’m being accused of something, that doesn’t sound very casual,” Kyle pointed out.
“That may have been a poor word choice,” Paris admitted. “There has been an accusation made, to Vice Admiral Bonner, but so far no evidence has been presented to support it. We’re not at the stage of bringing formal charges, or doing anything other than launching an investigation that I suspect will be fruitless. But the matter, having been raised, can’t be dropped without the investigation.”
Kyle, not having slept to begin with, was beginning to lose patience with the way Paris was dancing around the issue. “So what’s the accusation?” he asked.
Owen Paris looked at the others, as if wishing someone else would take the lead. No one did. Vice Admiral Bonner shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and the others remained still, looking at either Kyle or Owen and waiting for the admiral to continue.
Owen cleared his throat before going on. “The attack on Starbase 311,” he said. “It’s been theorized that you, being the only survivor, might have had something to do with it. That you were somehow in league with the Tholians.”
Kyle couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I almost died in that attack!” he exclaimed. “I’ve had nearly two years of therapy. I still see those Tholians in my dreams, and sometimes when I’m awake, hunting me down, chasing me from room to room, killing with utter brutality.”
“And yet, here you are,” Vice Admiral Horace Bonner said. His voice was calm and even, with a musical ring to it. A tenor’s voice, Kyle thought. Bonner had black hair, neatly cut and combed to the rear off his high forehead. His eyes were small but glimmered with intelligence, and his mouth, set now in a sort of half-frown, seemed extraordinarily wide for his narrow head. A strange-looking man, Kyle assessed, but not necessarily unpleasantly so.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the story,” Kyle said impatiently. “If not, I’d be happy to tell it again. What’s thirty thousand times, between friends?”
“We’re all familiar with it,” Owen assured him. “That’s not at issue here.”
“It sure sounds like it is,” Kyle shot back. “Because in my version there is no part where I conspire with the Tholians to kill everyone on the base.”
“It does seem odd, however, that you would have been spared,” Bonner observed. “The Tholians went room to room, as you’ve said. They dismantled equipment, checked ventilation ducts and Jefferies tubes, even went so far as to blast holes in walls to make sure they weren’t missing anyone. And yet, they left you alive.”
“They thought I was dead,” Kyle objected. “Hell, I thought I was dead. Take a look at my medical records. Ask Dr. Pulaski what shape I was in when she started working on me.”
“Hardly an impartial witness,” Captain Sistek put in. She was a Vulcan, with typical Vulcan features—straight black hair, slanted eyebrows, pointed ears. The only thing Kyle found unique about her was her nose, which was long and aquiline. She spoke with her head tilted back a little, giving the impression that she was sighting down it, as if it were some kind of weapon.
“My…relationship with Katherine began when I was in therapy,” Kyle insisted. “Not before. I was hardly in any position to romance her when they took me off the starbase, unless she has an odd attraction to jellyfish. I was near-dead, more than half the bones in my body were broken, I had lost enormous amounts of blood. Katherine herself said that she had never seen anyone so badly injured. If I was in cahoots with the Tholians, they sure are lousy allies.”
“ ‘With friends like that,’ eh?” Owen quoted.
“Exactly,” Kyle said. “I’d like to know just who is making this charge.”
“Should it ever go beyond this stage, to a formal complaint, you will have that opportunity,” Owen promised him. “But for now, that person’s identity will remain confidential.”
He kept up a strong front, but inside, Kyle was shaken. The attack the night before had been one thing—the threat of physical violence was unpleasant, but he had survived violence before. A body could be mended. But this threatened to attack his career, the very thing that had carried him through those bad days after the destruction of 311. Kyle had, for most of his adult life, defined himself through his career. He was an asset to Starfleet, an important cog in the big wheel that kept the peace and explored the galaxy. Without Starfleet, he would be lost.
And it could get worse yet. There could be prison time, if he were found guilty of treason. Starfleet justice was fair but firm. If whoever was behind this had somehow trumped up evidence against him, then he could be looking at a hard fall.
“So,” Kyle said, working to keep his concern out of his voice. “Where do we go from here?”
“As I said, there’ll be an investigation,” Owen replied crisply. “I’ll keep you informed of its progress as we go. If formal charges are to be brought, I’ll let you know that as well. Kyle, this is not a railroad job, and no one is out to get you. But we need to follow procedure. I’m sure you can understand
that.”
“I understand,” Kyle said. Something else had been nagging at him, and suddenly he realized what it was. He decided not to bring it up now, though, but to hold back in case it was something he could use later on. Vice Admiral Bonner had seemingly known details that he had never reported—at least, that he didn’t remember having told anyone, though his first few weeks in therapy were pretty fuzzy in his mind—about the attack. He had described the Tholians looking into the ventilation units and Jefferies tubes, but he was pretty sure he had never shared the fact that they had torn apart equipment and walls looking for more victims. That meant that Bonner’s source, whoever it was, had some good information—information no one alive should have had.
His future was looking more bleak by the minute.
“We’re dismissed, then,” Owen said. “Thank you for your cooperation, Kyle.”
The meeting broke up, and Kyle started back toward his office, without escorts and without a backward glance. But Owen Paris caught up to him before he’d gotten very far from the conference room. He tried on a wan smile, but it didn’t fit well and he dropped it. “Kyle,” he said, taking Kyle’s arm in his hand. “I want you to know I feel terrible about this.”
Kyle nodded. He just wanted to close his eyes and drift off to sleep right there. He wouldn’t go back to his own office after all, he decided, but he’d go home and get some sleep, if he could. If the Tholians in his brain let him. “I know, Owen,” he said. “You have to do what you have to do.”
“That’s right.” Owen sounded gratified to be let off the hook so easily. “Say, Kyle. Today’s Father’s Day. Have you heard from Will? I saw him in class yesterday. He’s a terrific lad.”
“Will?” Kyle asked. He recognized the sound of his own son’s name, but was so tired, so distracted that he almost didn’t make the connection. “No. He’s in town?”
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