Chapter 14

Will Riker was not the most patient man. He was as quick to anger as he was to laugh, and his moods could change for the better or worse in a matter or moments. He knew that as he was maturing, he was gaining more patience, but at times it was all he could do not to throttle his subordinates.

Above all he expected attention to duty from them, just as the Captain did. It annoyed him that because Captain Picard was such a stickler for adherence to duty, once he was off the bridge, the crew seemed just slightly off their game, just enough to make Riker doubt they were taking him as seriously as they should. LaForge seemed to stare off into space, literally, instead of checking his coordinates, although it was difficult to catch him doing this with his Visor. Data tended to go off on even more tangents when Picard was away, as though he believed Riker was actually interested in subjects such as the mating habits of the slugs native to Andoria. Somewhat thankfully, Data had left the bridge some time ago to assist Yar with her search for Ra'Val.

And right now, his patience was being tested in other ways. Captain Picard had been gone three hours on board the Andorian cruiser and hadn't checked in yet. Meanwhile Chief of Security Natasha Yar had turned the corridors of the ship into a de-militarized zone looking for a mysterious and apparently invisible Vulcan cult leader. Filling in at her post stood Lt. Worf, who seemed to have even less patience than Riker.

Riker looked up as the turbo lift door swished open and in walked Counselor Troi. Crusher had updated him that Troi had been cleared for duty when it appeared that she was recovering from her head wound more quickly than expected. Despite her own troubles, she had given him a pep talk recently, as only she was capable of doing. He was grateful for her presence generally, and especially glad to see that she was feeling better. Things between them had never officially ended as far as he was concerned, but Troi might have seen it differently.

Soon after they had first fallen in love, she had expected more from him at the time than he could provide her. He had just been promoted to Lt. Commander aboard the Potemkin, when she was on Betazed carrying out diplomatic duties for various high powered officials, and things between them became more difficult logistically. Now that they were back aboard the Enterprise, those professional barriers seemed like they should no longer matter, yet somehow they did. All of his old feelings for her flooded back each time he saw her, and he knew there was no way she wasn't aware of it. But, he feared, she no longer felt the same about him.

He nodded at her as she walked down the ramp, and sat down elegantly in her chair. "Counselor," he said, and returned his eyes to the arm of the command chair. Yar's hourly report was streaming in right then. He frowned as he read it and then looked up at Troi with a scowl. "Twenty decks have been searched with no sign of Ra'Val. That's nearly half the ship," he snapped in frustration. His expression brightened as he looked at her. "Can you sense anything, Deanna?" he asked hopefully.

Troi knew she had to become accustomed to people asking her if she could "feel anything" if she were to find a place on board this ship. Even Will who had known Deanna more intimately than anyone except her mother, expected her to use her telepathic skills as frequently as possible. Didn't he remember how difficult it was for her to open hers senses to so many beings at once? Control of her empathic abilities took more discipline than could ever be taught through Starfleet training. At least Will had some understanding of how these things worked, as opposed to Captain Picard, who apparently believed that she could turn her powers on and off like an old fashioned replicator. It was also arguable whether Picard considered her more valuable than an old kitchen replicator at this point.

Picard had no idea how she could be of real benefit to the crew, and she knew he was struggling with her presence still; just as he was struggling with the presence of children, civilians, T'Pel, and Beverly Crusher and her son. For such an apparently solid persona, she was learning he experienced nearly constant inner turmoil, at least where emotional subjects were concerned. A lesser person might have just ceased functioning after some of the heartache he had experienced, but instead he pressed on as though nothing of emotional importance had ever happened to him. Picard had built a wall for reasons most likely related to past traumas. Those kinds of walls sometimes never broke down even with years of counseling. She told herself to be patient with him and the trust would come.

Despite her slight annoyance and fatigue from her concussion recovery, she smiled at Riker. "For the last hour I have been sitting in my quarters doing my own sweep of the ship. A mental sweep, you could say," she added. "It may sound strange to you, Commander, but I do sense a different kind of presence. Different than my own, and different than T'Pel's. The best way I can describe it is that it is…somehow masked."

"And you think this presence could be Ra'Val?"

She nodded. "Yes."

He smiled tightly. "I know it must be difficult, Counselor, but please continue to sweep periodically if you are able to. If you think T'Pel will help you, by all means, please work with her."
"She is a very powerful telepath," agreed Deanna. "And far more powerful than me. But I sense she is also experiencing barriers to discovering whether Ra'Val is here with us."

"Well he is her brother," said Riker. "I can't believe the Captain is too happy that she—"

"Commander!" shouted Worf suddenly. Riker jerked around in his chair. "The Andorian ship is departing."

The young man filling in at ops turned halfway in his seat. "They are traveling at full impulse power sir."

"Dammit, people, I need to know these kinds of things when their engines are powering up, not when they're leaving us in the dust," snapped Riker.

"Should I fire on the ship, sir," grumbled Worf. "We are still within phaser range for another 30 seconds."

"No!" exclaimed, Riker, hopping up out of the chair. "We're not firing on any ship Captain Picard is on. Pursue them at three quarters impulse just enough to overtake them. What is the Andorian ship's maximum warp capacity?"

"Warp eight, Commander," piped up LaForge. "We'll have no problems running them down if they enter light speed, sir."

"Let me know when we get within transporter range," said Riker. "I want a full sensor sweep for his communicator. We'll get him out of there," he added in a voice quiet but determined.

About a minute after he left Zatha in the conference room, her subordinates must have found her, judging by the blaring alarms now sounding through the ship. Picard raced through the ship, heart beating wildly, slowing only a few times to duck around a corner when he saw an Andorian crewmember. "I'm getting too old for this," he thought to himself more than once as he climbed down utility ladders and crawled through maintenance tubes in order to avoid trouble and get to the shuttle bay. Luckily for him most of the crew was busy preparing for the trip to Vulcan, although security was clearly on alert. Despite the size of the cruiser, the crew was smaller than that of the Enterprise, and certainly resembled a military force.

He had figured out the settings on the gun Zatha had given him; there appeared to be only two: stun and kill. He had no intention of killing anyone, but if he needed to, he would stun whoever he needed to in order to get off the ship. The problem was how to escape the ship. Zatha had been clever enough to help him stage an escape, but the rest was apparently up to him. As he neared the shuttle bay, he heard shouts. Spinning around, he spotted two tall, wiry Andorians rushing for him from the other end of the hallway, weapons drawn. Instinctively, he ran like hell.