Chapter III

When Joral Brijeda left duty, he generally went down to the Ten-Forward bar for a drink before carrying on with his evening.

He entered the bar area and cast his eyes around, finally lighting on Lieutenant Hedly, who smiled and raised her glass to indicate that it was empty. With a grin, he made his way over to the bar and ordered for both of them before carrying the two glasses over to their table.

'Thanks, Jor,' said Hedly with a smile as she swapped her empty glass for the full one.

'My pleasure,' replied Brijeda. He leaned across the table and gave the security chief a quick kiss. 'You're not usually off this early, are you?'

Hedly shook her head. 'Not usually. I'm just taking a break before we arrive. Commander Riker's let us all take time out before then.'

'Where are we going anyway? I thought we were just doing border patrol.'

'Distress signal. Not sure what the details are yet.'

Brijeda held up his hands. 'Don't worry about it – I'll know if I need to know.'

Hedly grinned. 'You've definitely spent too much time around me.' She drained her glass and looked suggestively at him. 'Come on, I haven't got much time.'

Brijeda raised an eyebrow. 'Can't a man have some rest?'

'Not with me.'

Thirty minutes later, Hedly rolled to one side in the bed, a smile lighting up her flushed face. Beside her, Brijeda gasped for breath. 'I don't think I can keep up anymore…'

Hedly propped herself up on her elbow and gazed fondly at the Bajoran. They had met while she was serving her placement on Deep Space Nine and hit it off straightaway. When she had been assigned to the Enterprise, she had been delighted to find that he had beaten her there and they had picked up where they left off, both in and out of bed.

Or at least, Hedly had. She had an energy that not many had ever been able to keep up with and she knew how much it frustrated Jor that he couldn't. She knew he was seeing other women and, to be honest, she didn't care. It was probably a signal to her that he wanted to move on; he just hadn't found the bravery to say it yet.

Rather than speak, Gaia instead slid out of the bed and made her way quietly to where her uniform had been dumped unceremoniously on the deck. Brijeda sat upright, propped up on his elbows, and watched her as she dressed silently. 'Is this the part where I never see you again?' he said eventually.

Hedly hid a smile. 'No, of course not. The Enterprise isn't that big.'

'I meant -'

'I know what you meant.' Gaia turned, her trousers dangling from her hand and regarded Brijeda with a half-smile. 'Look, I know about the other women. It's OK.'

Jor pursed his lips and nodded slowly. 'OK. So we're finished because of that?'

Hedly shrugged and turned round to put her trousers on. Slowly. She smiled as Brijeda squirmed and said, 'We're finished, Jor, because I say we're finished. It's been nice, but I think we both want to move on.'

She finished dressing and turned round to face him again. 'Don't we?'

Brijeda looked at her, his face serious. 'Have you been seeing anyone else?'

For a moment Hedly considered lying. Instead, she answered, 'Yes.'

Brijeda's face fell. Gaia lost her good mood and, angry with herself, just shook her head and grabbed her commbadge, which promptly bleeped. 'Hedly here,' she snapped.

'Lieutenant, I need to see you in the captain's ready room,' said Commander Riker. 'If you're prepared...?'

'Yes, sir,' said Hedly, her voice calm, although she was seething inside. 'I'll be there in five minutes.'

'Understood.'

She turned and looked at Joral again, who had wrapped the sheet around himself and sat on the edge of the bed. 'Look, I'm sorry -' he began and then stopped himself. He dropped his head. 'I'm sorry.'

Hedly sighed. 'It's OK. Forget about it.'

As she made her way to the door, Jor called after her, 'Say hello to Rosanna Thames for me.'

Hedly paused in the open door, looking confused. 'Why -? What the hell are you talking about?'

Brijeda frowned. 'She's working with the captain. I... assumed that she's in the team you're putting together.'

'The captain?' Hedly frowned back at Brijeda. 'The captain's taken a leave of absence.'

Brijeda looked confused before his eyes widened and he scrambled out of bed, hunting for his clothes. 'I need to see Commander Riker!'

Riker and Troi listened to Brijeda's story in a state of some confusion, as the science officer related his conversation with Captain Picard. When he finished, Riker had his head in his hands, his elbows resting on the desk before him. Eventually, he raised his head to fix Brijeda with a baleful look. 'Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Commander. I would be grateful if you say nothing of this matter to anyone else on-board ship for the time being...'

'Yes, sir,' replied Brijeda.

'Dismissed.' Brijeda and Hedly both left the ready room, looking grateful to be out of the way of Riker's mood.

As the door slid closed behind the two junior officers, Riker stood up and paced to the other side of the desk. Troi felt that, had her friend had a tail, he would have been lashing it wildly about in frustration. Instead, Riker clasped his hands tightly behind his back, his hands white with tension.

Troi kept quiet, letting Riker get to the point where he wanted to talk rather than prompting him. Eventually, he turned and fixed her with a glare. 'So, what the hell has a young lieutenant got to do with this?'

Troi shrugged. She had her suspicions, but… 'Do you really think that's the most important question right now?'

Riker scowled for a moment, but then nodded with a weary resignation. 'No, you're right.' He unclasped his hands and stretched, trying to shake loose the tension from his body. 'Let's make an all-hands announcement. I wanted to keep it to senior staff, but I think we need to make sure that there aren't any other officers that the captain's decided to dragoon into a trip to Earth. We'll leave out the details.'

'Agreed,' said Troi. 'What about after this mission's completed?'

'I think we'll need to head for Earth,' replied Riker, after a moment's thought.

He moved closer to Troi, who found herself gazing up at him. His voice was quiet. 'Deanna, what really worries me isn't that the captain needs a leave of absence; that's understandable. What if this decision to take Lieutenant Thames with him is due to something that happened in the parallel universe?'

'What do you mean?'

'I've never seen the captain more shaken than in the last few days,' murmured Riker, as if he was talking to himself. His eyes didn't focus on Deanna, instead looking past her. 'It really was like talking to a different man.'

His eyes met hers. 'What if he's re-enacting something from the past – the other past? What if Lieutenant Thames means something more to him than we realise? What if -?'

He broke off, unwilling to continue. Troi touched his arm gently. 'What if she was his wife?'

Riker looked amazed at the suggestion. 'Do you know that for certain?'

'No,' replied the Counsellor quietly. Riker raised an eyebrow at her response, and she continued, 'But it does make sense. He said that he wanted to see his wife again when he was dying in the parallel universe. She was returning from a mission and he wouldn't survive to see her again. I assumed that she was here somewhere, but I wasn't sure where. Until…'

'You can't be certain, though?' Riker insisted. At Troi's shake of the head, he looked grim. 'It's equally possible that something happened between the two of them that wasn't so good.'

He sighed and sat down. 'I want to think the best of him, De, but I think of the man I know, and the one I've talked to the last couple of days…' He looked up at the Counsellor, his expression perturbed. 'I'm not sure that I trust him to do the right thing anymore. And I don't think we've done the right thing either, for him or us. He took us completely by surprise: neither of us was expecting what we saw. We shouldn't have let him leave the ship –'

'I suggested he take the leave of absence, Will!' snapped Deanna, shaken by Riker's angry voice.

'I know you did!' Riker bit back. His tone softened slightly. 'Damn it… of course I know that.'

Surprised by both Riker's anger and her own, Troi moved around and took the seat opposite him. For a moment, neither of them spoke, lost in their own thoughts.

Eventually, it was Riker who broke the silence. 'Let's make the announcement and get this mission out of the way first. Then we'll decide what to do about the captain; after all,' he added with a tentative grin, 'it's not as if we can do anything about it now.'

Deanna shared his smile. 'No.'

Riker stood and moved to the door. Just before he got there, he turned and looked at Troi. 'I'm sorry, Imzadi.'

Troi's smile became playful. 'I like you when you're feeling guilty.'

With that, she swept out of the room past him, leaving the first officer looking aghast in her wake.

As the pair made their way back onto the bridge, Data got up from his position in the command chair, saying, 'Commander Riker, we're picking up a silhouette on our navigational sensors. It corresponds with a Nebula-class starship.'

Riker didn't try to hide his surprise. 'A silhouette? It's adrift without power?'

Data nodded. 'Yes, Commander.'

'OK, bring us out of warp and do a sensor sweep.'

In a flare of light, the Enterprise dropped out of warp and down to impulse power, her powerful scanners sweeping through space and locking on to a dark shape within moments.

The gloomy unlit shape of USS Spirit hung against the stars, silent and foreboding. Her hull was unmarked and undamaged, yet her warp nacelles were dead and no light shone in any of the windows dotted across her hull.

Coming to a dead stop, the Enterprise overshadowed the smaller vessel like a shark dominates its prey, pointing her nose directly at the bridge module on top of the saucer.

Riker stood with his hand resting on the back of Data's chair, his eyes on the screen. 'Data, any signs of life?'

'No, sir,' replied the android, his eyes fixed on his instruments. 'No power readings or heat emissions of any kind either. The warp core appears to have shut down completely.'

Riker's face was grim. 'Meaning: no life support.'

'Affirmative,' confirmed Data. 'The temperature on the Spirit is significantly below human tolerable parameters and continuing to fall.'

Riker kept his attention on the screen. Some ancient instinct was stirring in the back of his mind, an instinct born in the darkness of ancient prehistory, one that came alive when the eyes of the predator were searching. This feeling was telling Riker that something terrible lurked in the darkness and cold on the dead starship before him, a feeling given birth by those three simple words: She's killing us.

He felt an urge welling deep within him to order that the Enterprise's weapons be unleashed on the Spirit, to obliterate it and leave its grave behind, never to be known again. That urge warred with his sense of duty, knowing that, whatever the danger he suspected, he would have to send his friends into the heart of that darkness, to investigate and uncover the truth of what happened here.

These thoughts flickered through his head and were gone in brief moments, overwhelmed by the years of training to suppress such instincts in the name of duty. Instead, the first officer tapped his commbadge. 'Riker to La Forge.'

'La Forge here.'

'Geordi, I need you to assemble an engineering team for a full warp core restart. It's going to be a space-cold environment, so make sure that the team has full environment gear; you know the drill. Assemble in transporter room one in ten minutes.'

'Acknowledged,' replied the engineer.

'Data –' Riker hesitated, aware of what he had been about to order. He sighed inwardly and said, instead, 'Data, you're to lead the away team. Establish what happened on the Spirit and report back.'

'Aye, sir,' replied the android. 'Lieutenant Hedly, with me.'

As Data and Hedly headed for the aft turbolift, Riker turned to look at them both, feeling the weight of command resting heavily on his shoulders. He felt Deanna's warm hand enfold his. He looked down to see her gentle smile. 'Sit down, captain,' she murmured.

A smile crept over Riker's face, unbidden. 'Aye, sir.'

In the engine room of the stricken starship, silence reigned supreme. Ice crept over the dead black displays, films of white crusting over inert consoles as the freezing cold of space trickled deeper into the heart of the Spirit. Darkness filled the corridors and spaces where once light and warmth had protected the bodies of those who had worked there.

Blue energy sparkled in the midst of the darkness as the Enterprise's transporter beams reached out through space and delivered their cargo. The away team materialised in the midst of the cold and dark, clad in bulky environmental suits and clutching cases full of equipment. As soon as transport was complete, hand torches flared into life, their bright white-blue beams cutting through the gloom.

At the front of the group, Data immediately whisked his tricorder out and began scanning the area. Lieutenant Hedly, carrying a phaser rifle, glared warily into the darkness, her senses alert.

For 30 seconds or so, the only sound was the whirring of the sensors on Data's instruments before the android nodded, satisfied, and closed the device. 'There are no life signs in the immediate vicinity. We shall begin.'

Geordi immediately turned to his second in command. 'Lieutenant Jexler, get your team working on the warp drive and environmental controls.'

As the engineers began work, Geordi turned to look at Data and Hedly. 'What's the plan, Data?'

Data looked pensive. 'We will carry out a full search of the ship when life support is restored; Lieutenant Hedly, co-ordinate the search. Meanwhile, once the computer is online again, we must take a full download of the ship's database and logs to try and ascertain what has happened and where the crew is. You will note that none of the crew appears to have fallen at their posts.'

Geordi and Hedly had noted that fact; the engineering section was completely deserted, and it made sense to assume that the rest of the ship would be in a similar state. This inevitably begged the question that they were there to solve: where was the rest of the crew?

Slowly and patiently, the away team from the Enterprise began to restore systems aboard the derelict Spirit. Data, unwilling to allow anyone to explore the ship until life support was back on-line, instead set his considerable technical expertise to the tedious task of rebuilding computer networks, allowing the rest of the engineers to focus their attention on the physical start-up of the warp core. For her part, Hedly prowled each and every corner of the section, satisfying herself that no nasty surprises lurked in the darkness to endanger her comrades.

Thus it was that she found the first clue to the whereabouts of the crew of the stricken starship. 'Commander!'

At Hedly's shout, Data and Geordi hurried to the corner where the security chief crouched, the torch mounted on her phaser rifle pointed at the bulkhead. Under the beam of light, the dark shadow on the bulkhead was clearly visible.

La Forge glanced at Data, whose tricorder was already out. 'Phaser flash burn?'

Hedly was already shaking her head even as Data completed his scan. 'No,' replied the android as he holstered the tricorder. 'It is the residue left behind after an organic being is vaporised by a phaser beam set to maximum power.'

'Someone was murdered here,' muttered Hedly.

At that moment, there was a crackle and buzz from the central console as power began to hum through the section. Dimly, slowly, the main lights began to flicker into life, revealing what the darkness had hidden. Hedly, Data and Geordi all rose from their crouch next to the scarred bulkhead, beginning to apprehend the horror that lay all around them.

Every bulkhead and deck surface bore a mosaic of scar patterns, each the same hue as the one Hedly had found. Some were simple burn marks, as if a flame had licked across the deck plating, but others were recognisably the shape of figures, their hands raised in various poses of fear and self-defence. Quietly, Geordi said, 'No, Gaia. Everyone was murdered here.'