From the Further Adventures of Captain William 'Kiss My Ass' Riker: Risa Blues

by The Real Malone

After Captain Riker learned of his new assignment, you could say he was disappointed, a little let
down. After a couple more tequila slammers, he was down right morose. Two lines of blow followed
by a Manhattan, and Riker was fuming. He decided that the good and proper way to deal with his pain
and disappointment was to extend his stay on Risa an extra day. A day turned into two days. "Risa is
where I can really be myself, " he would often say without a hint of irony. And from the whorehouse
to the bathhouse the Risians loved Riker. They loved his cheesy smile, his fluffy chest, his off-color
jokes, and his willingness to sleep with anyone or anything he suspected of having a vagina. Most at
Starfleet found him crass and somewhat weird-smelling, but here at Risa, he could be what he truly
was - a drunken bore.

On the third day of his extended leave his ship, the U.S.S. Nancy Pelosi, dispatched Lt. O'Brien to
retrieve him. O'Brien had become quite the expert in retrieving his Captain during his tenure aboard
the Nancy Pelosi. Things went easy when Riker was passed out, not so easy when he was merely
shit-faced. Fortunately this time Riker was snoring drunkenly while O'Brien hustled him into the
shuttle craft. Hours later, Riker came to and stumbled to the front of the craft.

"Hutchinson," he bleated through a head achey haze. "Calvin Fucking Motormouth Hutchinson!"

"Sir?" asked O'Brien.

"Admiral Hutchinson, that's our new command." said Captain Riker.

"What? What about Admiral Picard?" asked O'Brien.

"Starfleet finally got wind of his Xanax and Guinness diet."

"Ah, well, I wouldn't worry about Hutch, sir. He's top-notch." said Mr. O'Brien.

"Hutch!?" Riker sputtered. He could feel the cockpit spinning around him, at least more than it was
already.

"Oh sure, call him Hutch. Everybody does. He's approachable like that. Very easy man to talk to. He's
got a real talent for..."

"Small talk?"

"Oh you know him then?"

"Hutch!" cried Riker. "Don't tell me about Commander Hutch! The man's a total ass! Can you imagine
being in a firefight with that fuck? You'd be having your ass handed to you on a platter while Hutch
would be trying to match the fucking drapes!"

"Oh you're wrong there, Captain." O'Brien said cheerfully. "During the Cardassian War, I watched him
kill two Cardassians with his bare hands."

"You served with with that jag-off?"

"During the Cardassian War? Oh sure."

"He killed two Cardos with his bare hands? Why didn't he just shoot the fuckers?"

"We encountered a space-time thingy. Rendered our phasers inoperable."

Riker nodded. The space-time thingy was the bane of every space captain's existence. A space ship
could be puttering along, minding its own business, when suddenly a space-time thingy could pop up
out of nowhere, and just like that, you're surrounded by a gnarley whirlpool of bad CGI. A space-time
thingy could ensnare your vessel like a jacked-up 4x4 after a night of mudding. The power of the
space-time thingy was immense and unfathomable. It could turn your female ensigns into boys and back
again, bring your demented granddaughter from the future to murder you, cause you to doubt your own
existence, and then, just for a laugh, fling you into back in time to an historically significant
period in history. You were hoping for the historic construction of the Netherlands' first dikes?
Sucker! It's Hitler or nothing with the space-time thingy. Space-time thingys were also known as
space-time maguffins. Riker did not know what a maguffin was, and as such, he stuck to the term
"space-time thingy."

"We were pinned down, just two Cardassians, you see,'Don't worry boys,' he said, and just as calm as
you please, snuck up, choked the life out of one poor bastard, brained the other one with his own
phaser.'

Riker slumped in his seat, his fingers grasped the hard rigid foam contours of his seat; his mind
racing. He needed a bloody mary; he needed a bloody mary right fucking now. What were the
shuttlecraft's bloody mary capabilities? But Riker knew the truth. And the truth hurt. The truth was
that a shuttlecraft's replicators couldn't make a bloody mary for shit. They had sailed between the
stars, conquered the most exotic diseases imaginable, learned how to strip a man to his very atoms
and build him back up again, but yet, still, they could not cure the common cold, and they sure as
shit couldn't replicate a decent cocktail. What had possessed him to make O'Brien his second in
command? The man was obviously an asshole who enjoyed mocking his captain. Worf followed orders. Or
at least Worf followed orders as far as Riker could remember. Riker vowed to make Worf his first
officer. As soon as he recovered from the hangover.