A Time to Hate

by Robert Greenberger

  “Clemons to Taurik, get your people out here to help. It’s a mess!”

  Without acknowledging, Taurik looked at his charges, both of whom nodded ready. Not that Hoang felt ready or even willing to wade into a battle, but she had to aid her colleagues.

  In a tight cluster, the three walked toward the entrance, and with every step the shouting grew more distinct. People wanted power, wanted to be able to see in their homes, wanted to know why Starfleet was depriving them of their routine. The people were whipping themselves into a frenzy. The storage units near the building had been overturned, and tools and raw materials were suddenly being turned into weapons.

  Anh looked for Studdard’s massive form and found him surrounded by at least a dozen people, all screaming at him. Clemons was several feet away, being attacked with something heavy. He ducked under it and swept a leg to tackle his opponent. Weathers, who had come at a run, was firing at people who were hurling stones from the nearby rooftops. Shattered concrete made running tricky, as did the lack of lighting, since the nearest light pole had been bent at something like a forty-five degree angle.

  “Hoang, assist Studdard. Porter, come with me,” Taurik said as he took off at a run toward Clemons, who was now being pounded with fists.

  Anh jogged to the crowd surrounding the much larger Studdard. His eyes seemed sympathetic, his hands patting the air as he tried to answer their harangues. She was worming her way through the people, trying to get close to the security guard, when someone ran a hand into her hair and yanked her off her feet. She fell to the ground and tried to get back up, but a booted foot found her hand and ground it against the concrete.

  “We’ll deal with you in a minute,” the old man snarled and then turned toward Studdard. He withdrew a thin obsidian stick on which he pressed a hidden release. A gleaming steel blade emerged, long and thin but very deadly.

  Anh reacted instantly. With her good hand, she aimed and fired a burst. The man jerked spasmodically and fell to the ground beside her.

  Few had seen the man attack Hoang. They only knew that one of their neighbors had been felled by a Starfleet officer. That was enough to touch off a fresh round of violence, and people began pounding Studdard with their fists. A woman, her child in a carrier on her back, reached for Hoang. Grateful, the engineer accepted the hand, but when she was halfway up, the woman’s foot kicked out, smacking her in the belly and propelling her several feet away.

  Shock and anger replaced the stab of pain, but Anh only gripped her phaser more tightly. She did not want to fire out of emotion, but from need. Studdard certainly had need of her. Fists drove him to one knee, and he swung wildly to protect his head. Hoang took aim and fired in a wide arc with the hope of dispersing the crowd. As expected, some fell, and others ran. The security officer flashed her a smile and then reared back and planted a punch on an oncoming attacker. The man was knocked back and over a fallen form.

  For the next several minutes, the fighting was artless, with the starship personnel doing what they could to contain the violence and keep people out of the facility. The last thing they needed was to lose all the repair work they had already done. Every so often, Hoang saw Weathers or Taurik handle a crowd of people, but she concentrated her attentions on Studdard, as much to use his bulk as a human shield as to provide backup.

  At one point, they were back to back, watching people regroup. “Crazy, huh?” he muttered to her.

  “Not something they really trained us for,” Hoang admitted.

  “Guess not. I got my riot training after the Academy. Guess engineers skip that course.”

  “Well, you get to skip warp theory in exchange,” she replied with a tired smile.

  “Good thing. Way too much math for me. Hey, look over there!”

  Hoang turned her head to see a crowd of people run away from Weathers, who had knocked down several with a phaser shot. They were running blindly, and in their panic they didn’t notice the woman who had kicked Hoang, the one with the baby, lying on the ground. She had one arm around the infant, still in his carrier, and was holding her ankle with her other hand. She had obviously twisted her ankle.

  She was going to be trampled.

  Hoang began to run toward the crowd but judged she was too far away to reach the woman in time. Instead, she raised her phaser, eyes glancing over the setting to be safe, and then fired. She had hoped to divide the crowd, sparing the woman. At first, people ran right or left, away from the beam, although it struck two immediately, and they fell. One man leapt over one of the fallen bodies, but he caught his foot in some loose clothing and went sprawling. He fell right on top of the woman and the infant, and all Hoang could hear was the combined scream of man, woman, and child.

  The man was scrambling to his feet, ready to keep running, ignoring the woman and child. Hoang was already there, her legs spread to prevent the man from going anywhere. She turned her attention to the woman and saw her cradling the child, who did not appear to be breathing. When the engineer reached toward the woman to help, the gesture was greeted with a snarl. Hoang recoiled, then stood for a moment, watching. All other sounds receded, and her field of vision was limited to the bodies in her immediate area.

  “Is the baby hurt?” Hoang asked in a quiet voice.

  The woman did not respond. The man, though, tried to break away, but Hoang grabbed his upper arm and whipped him about, forcing him to look at the woman. Silently, they watched as the woman cuddled the baby, listening for any sign of life. As the woman whimpered, Hoang strained her hearing for any sign from the infant. No cry of pain, no sound of any sort.

  “Dorset bitch,” the man said to himself.

  Hoang snapped. She punched the man in the midsection, knocking the air out of him so that he doubled over. Viciously, she kneed him back up and then struck out again with her fist wrapped around the phaser. The man was quickly turned into a punching bag, the recipient of the bottled-up hate and fear that had never truly found its release since the Breen attack. Every hit, punch, and kick was payback for the death of her family, for the war that claimed countless lives, and for the foolishness of the disease that had driven a planet to the brink of madness.

  The man was long past being able to defend himself and soon was not even able to call for help. He was limp, taking the beating without any hope of a swift ending.

  Hoang reared back for another blow, but her small fist was caught in Studdard’s much larger hand. She squirmed for a moment, then went limp herself, her lean body falling against his comfortable bulk.

  “I think he’s paid the price,” he said soothingly.

  “Is he breathing?”

  A pause as he looked over her head at the body on the ground. “Yes.”

  “Then maybe he hasn’t paid the full price,” she said between deep breaths.

  “I’d say he has. His fall killed the baby, but it wasn’t intentional.”

  “Children…they shouldn’t…not out here…no one should be hurt,” Anh said incoherently.

  “No one’s innocent here, no one’s blameless,” Studdard continued, his hand stroking her short hair, providing unexpected comfort. Hoang heard his heart thumping loudly in his chest, his words softly overlapping the now distant sounds of the riot. She didn’t notice that most of the people had been run off or stunned into silence. Nothing seemed to sink in other than his heartbeat. Steady, rhythmic.

  “Heard you lost your own family,” he said hesitantly. “I can see how this would make you more than a little nuts. But you can’t take it all out on this man. He’s done nothing to hurt you.”

  “But, but…he hurt the baby…the baby,” she stammered.

  “The baby isn’t the first innocent to die today. I’d like to think he’s the last, but I don’t know. We won’t know for a while, I guess.”

  “She tried to hit me before, blame me for taking away her power,” Anh managed to say. She took several deep breaths, forcing her body to calm down.

  “No one was in the mood for logic.
Must have been very hard on Taurik,” Studdard said.

  She had to smile at that, and then she looked up at Studdard. His smile created dimples in his cheeks, his white teeth showing through his lips. He held her gently, letting her body regain something approaching normal.

  “I have to let go now, check on my people,” Studdard said after another few moments.

  “Of course. Thank you…”

  “Aaron.”

  “Thank you, Aaron.”

  The big man let go and walked over to Weathers, who seemed to be nursing a sore shoulder. She watched him, feeling a great sense of gratitude. After another moment, she looked down at the body of her victim and was flooded with a sense of anger and mostly of shame. She looked up again, watched Studdard wander off, and realized the sight of him gave her comfort—a feeling she hadn’t had in a long time.

  “Third orbit’s complete,” Peart reported from the tactical station. Data, who had been sitting in the command chair, acknowledged the report, and then watched telemetry come in on the screen directly before him.

  The turbolift doors opened, and La Forge walked onto the bridge. The chief engineer came directly to the command section and took the chair normally used by Counselor Troi. Data watched, measuring his friend’s speed, rate of breathing, and level of distraction.

  “I’m tired,” La Forge admitted. “We’re short-handed up here and stretched to the limit down below. My people just got attacked at the Tregor power station.”

  “Injuries?”

  “Nothing serious, according to Taurik,” La Forge replied. “How’re we doing here?”

  “Fourth orbit has just begun, so one-third of the planet has now been seeded.”

  “Any sign of improvement?”

  “I am still awaiting word from the medical staff on the planet.”

  “Things getting any worse?”

  “Not that we can tell.”

  “Well, I’ll take that for the moment.”

  “Agreed. How goes your own operation?”

  “Dex is due soon with the new plasma injector. But first I had to cut some new deals. Seems the Hermes was short some vital ODN parts, so he had to first pick up spares from the Magellan and that delayed him.”

  “But you are in control of the entire network?”

  “Makes my head hurt to remember it all, but we’re doing some real good here.”

  “I believe we will have to inform the captain of this when he next returns. Sooner or later he will learn of this, and I conclude it is better he learn from us than from another captain.”

  La Forge had a shocked look on his face, but then nodded. “You know, all this time I’ve been dealing with fellow engineers and it never occurred to me that a captain might be in touch to complain…”

  “…or, more likely, offer congratulations,” Data finished.

  “I suppose so, but you’re right, better he hear it from us. In fact, I can only imagine what would happen if he learned of this from someone like Captain Conklin.”

  Data studied the face La Forge made and catalogued it as a sour one. He knew this was considered an undesirable feature. La Forge leaned back in his chair, watching additional information come in from the shuttles.

  “Mr. Peart,” Data said, “any deviation in flight paths?”

  “None, sir,” Peart said. “You have the best flyers out there.”

  “Who’ve you got?” La Forge asked.

  “Lieutenant Perim aboard the Jefferies, Lieutenant Hras on the Chawla, Lieutenant Copern on the Keuka.”

  “Wish we’d had a chance to finish repairing the Ballard. We’re still awaiting some components, but that’s low on the wish list,” La Forge said. He was, in fact, the one who had crashed the shuttlecraft a few weeks earlier.

  “Understandable,” Data said.

  “Commander Riker will be insulted you didn’t list him among the best,” La Forge cracked.

  “I would have if he he’d been available. Lieutenant Vale and Counselor Troi are still searching.”

  “Well, that’s something,” La Forge said, and looked over at Data. The android was calculating whether or not having Commander Riker pilot a shuttle would have made a difference in their completion schedule, and the conclusion, which took .00356 seconds to reach, was that at best that shuttle would have completed its work thirty seconds sooner. He was about to offer that opinion but chose not to say anything as a subroutine reminded him that such information, while accurate, was not always welcome.

  “Ever since the doctor started talking about leaving…” La Forge began, then hesitated.

  Data gave him a penetrating look.

  “It’s nothing, really,” La Forge said. “There’s gonna be an opening at Starfleet Medical and she’s thinking about taking it.”

  “Does she believe she will enjoy the experience more than the last time?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. I think seeing Wes got her to thinking about the future and where she wants to be. While we’re weathering this storm with Starfleet right now, it’s clear we won’t be together forever.”

  “No. In fact, Captain Picard’s ability to keep the senior crew intact has defied all probability.”

  “That’s because of the incalculable role politics and dumb luck can play with expectations. But she’s right, we won’t be together for that much longer.”

  “That thought first crossed my mind when we lost Lieutenant Yar at Vagra II.”

  “That was a long time ago, Data.”

  “Indeed. But since then, as various department heads have come and gone, I have assessed the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the command staff and weighed that against Starfleet’s desires for continuity versus their need to staff ships with seasoned officers.”

  La Forge let out a low whistle. “Do you think about that often?”

  “Of late it has occurred with greater frequency, which is understandable in view of our last several months of duty. The doctor would make an excellent surgeon general, given her field experience as well as previous tenure on Earth.” He paused, cocking his head to one side, which indicated deeper computations were taking place.

  “I do know that her absence will be felt,” he continued. “Her lessons have been most helpful to me in assimilating myself with the crew.”

  “Well, she hasn’t said yes. I think she’s still thinking about it.”

  “She will no doubt make the decision that best serves Starfleet as well as her personal ambitions.”

  The flyer neared the capital city and Will thought things were about to be settled one way or the other. By now he figured the Enterprise should be finding his signal and sending help. He hated to admit it but he had dozed for a while as Kyle flew them in silence. Even Bison had the grace to stop complaining.

  No one had eaten, everyone needed a bed and some serious rest.

  And he needed Deanna. The feeling continued to grow with every passing minute, which helped him crystallize his thoughts and also gave him the strength to keep moving.

  His wandering thoughts were jarred when the flyer banked and headed for a small town.

  “What are you doing?” Will demanded of his father.

  “We’re low enough I can see a mob,” his father explained. “We have to break this up.”

  “No, Dad, we don’t,” Will said with as much patience as he could muster. “We have to get Bison to a hospital. We have to tell Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher everything you know.”

  “What he said,” Bison chimed in. “Really, if I can help, fine. If I’m to be executed, fine. But I don’t need another stop on my way.”

  “Shut up, both of you,” Kyle said. “We’ll stop, contain the fight, and move on. It’s what Starfleet does, right, son?”

  Will just shook his head. His father had the controls and he didn’t want to fight for them in case things got out of hand.

  “This has to be the last time,” Will said slowly.

  “That’s the Willy I know.”

  “And
you really have to stop calling me that, Dad.”

  Kyle ignored the comment and set up for landing. Within minutes they were on the ground and the hatch was sliding open.

  “You have the phase pistol, Willy, so you have my back. We just break this up, send everyone on their way and then we can go to the capital.”

  The trio strode out of the flyer, assessed the situation and the Rikers moved forward as one. Before them were at least two dozen men and women, mixed races, and no one was saying anything intelligible. The fight could have started over anything and Will was too tired to begin speculating. He wanted to end this quickly and move on. A part of him also recognized he was doing this to help his father’s guilty conscience but unlike the school, this seemed trivial. And that was the main reason that this had to be the final interruption. Kyle was clearly losing the capacity to judge when it was appropriate to get involved.

  Kyle and Will were two meters from the closest body and they stared at the tangle. They looked at each other and shrugged simultaneously. As one, they reached forward and grabbed whatever limb they could latch onto and pulled. The tangle was quickly separated but no one seemed happy about it.

  “We really have to stop doing this!”

  Kyle glanced over his shoulder to watch as Will grabbed a rifle from an overweight, older Bader, and used it to trip the assailant to his right. Will grimaced at the strain on his right shoulder. Here they were, in some small, out-of-the-way community, charging headlong into a melee without bothering to understand the nature of the fight. By now, these people were probably fueled by enough fear and anxiety that it could have been sparked by spilled milk or a man looking the wrong way at another’s wife.

  All Kyle wanted to do was separate enough people so that emotions could burn themselves out and things could settle down. The town was too small to have peace officers stationed nearby, which put the onus on Kyle.