"Sir, we've reached Ligon II." The helmsman turned to his captain awaiting his next command. A strange wave of excitement emanated from the man that Commander Deanna Riker's empathic abilities effortlessly sensed.
Although their full mission was only known to the captain of the ship and those directly involved, there was a definite buzz among the crew that there was something so secretive, it had to be exciting.
"Where's Lt. Watts?" her husband growled, not bothering to hide his foul mood. It was bad enough that the secrecy of the mission gnawed at her husband, but having unfamiliar Bridge crew during this mission was unacceptable.
"He's ill, Sir," the unfamiliar man answered quickly, "he went to sickbay."
Captain William T. Riker sat in his captain's chair eyeing the viewscreen on the forward facing wall of his ship's Bridge. Sitting next to him as his ship's senior counselor, Deanna's Betazoid black eyes studied him carefully while he rubbed his newly re-grown beard. "Establish an orbit around the planet."
His attention shifted to his wife's face and his brows furrowed with the same thought he he'd voiced several times since this mission began. "I don't like it, Deanna," he complained, his voice rumbling as he stared at the brown and blue planet on the screen.
The situation was peculiar, she had to admit. Some time after refusing the Federation's last invitation for membership, Ligon II seemed to close itself off from communication with most outside planets. Now, after several years of silence, they made contact with Starfleet and requested a visit from a list of specifically named Starfleet officers.
Ligonians excelled in their use of their natural resources to provide potent cures for several diseases. When they chose isolation, those skills were sorely missed.
Deanna's husband told her of how eager the Federation politicians and Starfleet brass were to reestablish trade with these people. They deemed the mission to escort the requested officers to Ligon II of highest priority.
"It'll be fine," Deanna assured him softly, her voice barely more than a whisper so that no one else could hear them. There was no time for him to respond when the turbo-lift doors slid open, revealing a very irritable admiral and his fiancée.
Admiral Jean-Luc Picard disliked being in the dark even more than Will did. Even though Jean-Luc was quite skilled at hiding irritation from everyone else, Deanna knew better. Her empathic ability, thanks to her Betazoid half, allowed her an intimate sense of the Admiral's present emotional state.
For Deanna, emotional patterns were like fingerprints, unique to every individual. Once familiar with someone, she could recognize the "feel" of that person whenever they were nearby.
As for the Admiral, years of working with him allowed her to know his inner workings probably as well as he knew them, if not better. This was obviously a thought she would never share with the man, as he did not relish the idea of someone knowing more about him that he did.
The Admiral and her husband's eyes met for an instant and both pairs targeted the viewscreen. Their thoughts were so in sync, Deanna was sure their thoughts at the moment were identical. If not for the uncomfortable circumstances, Deanna would've found it amusing and reminiscent of their time on Enterprise.
"Orbit achieved, Sir," the helmsman called out, this time not turning from the panel at his station.
Deanna focused on the Admiral's fiancée and the erratic emotions swirling wildly inside the woman. Doctor Beverly Crusher was once her best friend on the Enterprise but they'd been so preoccupied with their new lives that their friendship, unfortunately, had become little more than the occasional correspondence.
With the news of Beverly and Jean-Luc's wedding, Deanna had hoped that would change. Unfortunately, their nuptials were postponed until their current mission had been completed but it did bring them together nonetheless.
Having taken her friend's hand in hers, Deanna tightened her grip hoping to give strength to her disappointed friend. The red-haired woman's faced turned quickly to her, eyes wide and startled at first, then relaxed in with a warm smile. "Deanna, it's good to see you!"
Deanna stood. The time that had separated them seemed to melt away as they drew in for a hug. It was like meeting with a beloved family member after only a short vacation away. Their friendship had lost nothing. It hadn't become the strange awkwardness that Deanna feared it would be but instead she had her friend, more like a sister, back in her life.
In her joy, Deanna wondered even more why the Ligonians made such a request. Why did they specifically request "Captain Picard, Doctor Crusher, and Counselor Troi? What changed their minds from being isolationists to contacting Starfleet with the promise of rekindling trade?
Deanna researched the planet and was reminded of a mission that had once brought them here. Their assignment on the Enterprise was sixteen Earth years ago.
For a Ligonian, that was roughly half a lifetime. On average, they only lived up to thirty to forty Earth years. This meant all those they'd met during that mission would probably be elderly if they had not already perished from natural causes. The people Deanna remembered meeting were all of an age equivalent to their twenties if human.
"They're hailing us, Sir," the chief of security called out to Will, who was entrenched in his own conversation with the Admiral. Not even a year at her post and Will no longer needed to give orders to Lt. Commander Logan,. As though sensing her Captain's wishes, the woman seemed as empathic as Deanna.
Deanna was sure it was an overwhelming sense of pride for the woman to anticipate her captain's needs. All Will had to do was turn his attention to the woman and nod, and an image materialized on the viewscreen immediately.
The young face on the screen wasn't familiar with the video technology used, his head moved in all directions trying to find the center of the image. "Are the three individuals present?" he asked when he seemed to finally find a suitable spot on-screen.
Will stood up and righted himself, "Yes, they are here on the Bridge. Are you the current Ligonian leader?"
The young man's face left the center of the image after mumbling a curt, "Please stand by." Deanna felt that the man's abrupt response didn't settle Will or Jean-Luc's irritation.
Slowly another face entered the image, a much older face with gravity worn skin. The warmth of his smile, however, spread across his face, stretching his sagging cheeks and creasing his already heavily lined eye edges. Deanna recognized the face, or at least half remembered a younger version but couldn't quite match a name or full memory to it.
"Hello, Captain Picard. The Doctor and Counselor are with you?" The rich voice gave no hint of malice, nor did Deanna sense any.
The Admiral looked to his side as though to reassure himself that the two were still there. "Yes," he answered but then quickly added, "and it's Admiral Picard now."
"Khah mesh!" the man exclaimed then studied something just beyond view. For some reason the universal translator delayed translating the words for a second or two. Deanna realized what was happening. The man was speaking the lingua franca of the Federation and suddenly shifted to his native Ligonian language. The translator required seconds to process the shift.
The words congratulated the Admiral for a promotion in rank but Deanna could tell her husband was poised to ask the man about his fluency in the Federation language after years of isolation when the man on the screen once again switched back to it.
"I am sending coordinates for your..." he hesitated as though he were searching for the word. "Ah, yes. Transporter." The man nodded to something beyond view and the image of his smiling face faded quickly before Will could say a word.
XXX
"I should go with you," Will suggested to the three officers ready to beam down to the unknown but Deanna had no doubt she was the focus of his anxiety.
Deanna brushed the back of her hand against her husband's increasingly hairy cheek. She could learn to appreciate the scraggly thing, one day.
"It'll be fine," she said to him aloud but telepathically she assured him, "I'll be fine, Imzadi." She could feel his jaw relax and took that as her opportunity to leave.
"Don't worry, Sir," the chief security officer called out formally with a firm voice. "They will be returned to you unharmed." the Chief of Security, took her job very seriously and Deanna noticed that Will thought so as well. His muscles noticeably relaxed more, although not fully, as the three requested Starfleet officers and five security officers stepped onto the transporter pad.
Watching the pad beneath her feet glow, Deanna saw the transporter tech's hand slide slowly over his console causing her view to fragment. The last clear thing she could see was the worried look on her husband's face quickly replaced by blocky, hard to make out shapes that rendered into a full view in seconds.
Materializing inside a structure of marble-like walls, the landing party found themselves in a room that was decorated with silken fabrics of all colors draped along alabaster columns. Hard not to be impressed, Deanna tried to recover from the disorientation of the transporter while admiring the craftsmanship of decoration and form.
It wasn't easy to see one view one minute and in the next see something completely different. But with years of practice using the transporter, adjusting to it had become second nature.
While the others in the landing party oriented themselves with their new environment, she examined the decorative paintings on the walls and columns. Many were stretched cloth or leather, molded to the curvature of the wall on which it was mounted.
Not that the walls needed decorating. They were carved with intricate designs of native Ligonian flowers and other foliage. Even the way the halls, with their open ceilings, framed the magenta sky and allowed breezes to blow the fabrics like tousled ribbons. It all seemed like art in motion.
The floors were black and marble-like, veined with lightening streaks of ivory and Deanna loved the sound their Starfleet issued footwear made against the floor, a musical clicking sound. It could only have been no more than two seconds after they'd materialized when Logan led the other security officers into a casual defensive pattern around their charges, the Admiral, the Doctor, and the Counselor.
Muscles visibly tensed when the slapping sounds of bare feet or sandals on the hard floor approached. The elder man they'd seen early on Enterprise's screen, wearing a very bright white robe that contrasted his rich, dark skin supported himself with a gnarled wooden cane of deep cherry colored wood. Flanked by two men with spears, Deanna wondered why, for such a technologically advanced people, they held such primitive weaponry.
Why were they holding weapons at all for that matter? It seemed her security detail felt the same way as hands made their way to phasers hanging on Starfleet uniformed hips.
The man raised his hands up in a sign of good-will, "These are my personal security guards. Their orders are defensive only and they will not harm anyone with no intention to harm me." Deanna sensed the truth in his words but also the unease of his security guards with weapons now pointed towards them.
With one very gentle motion of his hand, Admiral Picard told Logan to stand down and, more importantly, calm down. She obeyed, but her jaw tightened and eyes fixed on the spearmen.
The man's familiar face, now weathered by time, cracked a warm and inviting smile as his arms opened wide to embrace the Admiral. If not for the situation, Deanna knew both she and Beverly would have laughed just from the sight of that. The Admiral was very protective of his personal space. Perhaps the man noticed Admiral Picard's aversion and pulled away, only slightly. "We have met before. Do you not remember me?"
As though a full body appraisal would jar his visitors' memories, the man stood back. Ligonians naturally had almost perfect memory and perhaps did not understand it was not a trait shared by other species. Deanna could not remember him and when the Admiral eyed him skeptically, she knew he didn't either. Beverly lowered her eyes in concentration and Deanna guessed she was trying to remember as well. The Admiral shook his head and apologized to their host.
For only a moment, the man seemed disappointed, perhaps feeling slighted by Ligonian standards, but then Deanna sensed that there was something more pressing, more time sensitive that he could not waste with such petty feelings. "My name is Hagon."
The name sparked an old, long forgotten memory as though desperate to claw itself to the forefront in Deanna's mind. "My wife Yareena and your officer," he paused for a moment as though he were trying to find the right words, "bahnet-ka." Again, the universal translators took a second to adjust to the change in language, "fight to the death."
The memory flooded back as though it was only yesterday and she wasn't alone. The Admiral's reserved expression softened and Beverly's lips curled into a warm smile.
Now they remembered.
Sixteen years ago Lutan, the leader of the Ligonians at the time, conspired to pit Enterprise's chief of security against his wife, Yareena. That chief of security was once Deanna's best friend and she winced at the memory of how long it had been since she'd thought of the woman, Natasha Yar.
Lutan's effort was in the name of honor but was nothing more than a grab for power and in his eyes, his plan was flawless. If his wife died, he would inherit complete control over her assets and if she lived, he would retain his honor. What he didn't count on was Beverly Crusher's medical expertise reviving his fatally wounded wife.
Rightly so, Yareena was furious with her husband. Deemed "First One", a title that gave him very high status and permission to control her assets under her careful supervision, she quickly demoted him to second, while her previous second husband gained "First One" status.
The man before them was Hagon the lower ranking husband that gained the honored "First One" title. But the man that stood there now was quite old and looked nothing like the young male that unfailingly stood by his wife's side.
"Come," he urged them down one of the corridors. The sandaled feet of Hagon and his body guards made a soft slapping noise against the stone floor that seemed to naturally blend into the elegant design of the building, unlike the hard clicks from the landing party's footwear, no matter how pleasant the sound.
As they walked swiftly, Deanna couldn't help but marvel at the soft yellow-colored columns that almost seemed translucent and delicate holding up a lip of a covering above. The fabrics rolled with slight breezes that rushed through the halls from the open entrances.
Hagon stopped when they'd reached deep mahogany-colored double doors made of perhaps a native wood and was protected by four more spearmen. Gently, he pushed one tall door open and peeked inside of the dark room for a long moment. He then finally glanced at the guests behind him, "It is time to enter."
Deanna prepared herself for the dimly lit room as Hagon opened the door wider and stepped through first. Because he'd given his bodyguards a signal to stay behind, the Admiral did so for their security detail as well, and Deanna almost felt sorry for Logan.
She almost hyperventilated with worry as she could do nothing but watch her three charges make their way inside a dark room, unchecked without her.
Deanna could hear the doors slowly close behind them but her mind focused on something else. Even though she could barely make out the shapes in the low light of a few oil lamps hung from linked chains, there were emotions that overwhelmed her. They seemed familiar, like a long forgotten name or face but instead it was a long forgotten pattern of emotions.
Their eyes were starting to adjust and before she could make out a shape lying on the only bed in the room, Deanna tried desperately to separate the emotions in the room, focusing on the one strange pattern, but there were so many at once. It was line trying to hear one voice inarorm full of excited, chattering people.
Shock, disbelief, unbridled joy, regret. There were so many emotions, it piqued her curiosity to see what her companions' eyes had already adjusted to see.
Objects in the room came into focus and she could first make out the form of a large bed most likely made from the same wood as the double doors. Its ornate decorations were carved into its foundation and boards. The same silken fabrics that decorated the halls decorated the bed to form the flowing, conical canopy reaching all the way to the vaulted ceiling.
What grabbed their interest, however, was the woman in the bed. Her silvery hair and pale, although ashen, skin proved her other-worldliness, obviously not a common Ligonian. The woman's eyes fluttered open and her light eyes shifted from one face to another.
Ligonians were known for their dark, exotic features and this woman had none of them. Her light colored hair spilled over her shoulders and down her chest, pooling on the blankets at her waist. Her pale skin, dull with advanced age, reflected the light in the room and her eyes took on a lighter hue against the light of the lamps than those with darker eye colors would.
Deanna could not make out the specific colors but as she studied the face of the woman, she didn't have to. She knew those features anywhere and the realization of the person in the bed hit her as the emotional patterns had earlier. Beverly Crusher's voice, a barely audible whisper, "How?"
"Tasha?" Deanna spoke her name and it seemed to hold in the air for an eternity of seconds.
A weak voice from the bed broke the silence, weak but joyous nonetheless, "Yes, Deanna, it's me."
"That's impossible!" Admiral Picard protested, voicing absolute disbelief. "Tasha Yar died sixteen years ago!"
It was unsaid how much older this woman was compared to the age Tasha would've been. There were so many questions but from what Deanna could tell in the dim light, the woman smiled at the statement calmly and answered with what sounded like a gritty rasp," Yes, sir. I died."
Deanna felt nothing hidden, only truth. The woman in the bed, at least as far as Deanna could sense, believed she was Deanna's deceased friend, Lt. Commander Natasha Yar.
"How can this be?" the Admiral's frustration continued. Deanna knew he disliked practical jokes and increasingly felt as though he were now dropped in the middle of one. Deanna knew proof, explanations, or both were needed immediately before he called for the security detail and their immediate return to the ship.
"Sir, that's why I asked Hagon to request Doctor Crusher and Deanna... Counselor Troi as well," she quickly corrected herself. "They can prove to you who I am and then I can explain everything."
That was a statement Deanna filed on the side that this was indeed her friend. Obviously, this woman knew the extent of the Admiral's patience.
Without a word, Beverly reached for a sample tube and her medical tricorder she always carried on missions, even now as head of Starfleet Medical.
She took a sample of the woman's blood in the tube and attached it to the tricorder. It would upload the information of the blood to the ship in orbit and search for identification.
Everyone waited silently and seemed to hold their breaths while the device processed the DNA profile returned from the database on the ship.
Beverly looked up in disbelief but her nod was all the Admiral needed. He quickly shifted his attention to Deanna, "What do you feel?"
Deanna tried to form the words to explain the intricacies of empathic sensory, the fingerprint-like patterns were reliable but only to a degree. There was no concrete, scientific method to absolutely be sure but she gave the only answer she could, "I think this is Tasha."
Deanna felt a flood of emotions when she finally said the words. Perhaps she couldn't bring herself to believe it until the thought was out there. Perhaps she felt the emotional rush from her two companions as well as from Hagon and Tasha. Either way, there were too many emotions to process and they were too overwhelming: acceptance, confusion, satisfaction, worry, more confusion, elation, and something she did not expect at a time like this... sorrow. Deanna fell into a nearby chair.
"Tasha, how are you here?" Beverly seemed ready to ask move but perhaps there were so many that she could barely form just the one.
The elderly woman in the bed motioned toward the two chairs next to where Deanna sat recovering from the flood of emotions.
When Jean-Luc and Beverly sat, Hagon seated himself in a chair on the other side of the bed closest to Tasha.
"I'm dying," Tasha began. "I don't have much time so I'll tell you my strange little story the best and quickest way I can."