9
'I will see you on Betazed soon.' She dematerialized. 'I have faith in you, my darling. But be wary of Picard. He is a most clever human.' Her mother's final thought to her before leaving Enterprise last week had shimmered in Deanna's mind like the transporter effect, and Deanna had clutched it to her like a talisman ever since.
Intent on preserving her place and thereby saving her life, she'd proceeded about her duties with a flair her counterpart had rarely shown. She'd actually enjoyed finding ways of teaching this Will Riker the meaning of the term "Piss Off " so much that she had taught it to him several times regardless of his reputation as a fast learner. And as for the deaths she'd caused, well, they should have known better than to fail their superiors or defy the Empire.
Sickened, Deanna thought. That had been Lwaxana's adjective for how Deanna truly felt about the Empire and her new life here. They both knew what that sickness would eventually give birth to and had made their plans accordingly.
"Apologies again for my behaviour yesterday, Captain." She repeated a variation of some of what she'd been saying for about the twentieth time in the past two hours. Deanna was being her charming best. Then her charming best cracked under an onslaught of icy liquid mercury. "Enough of this! What is it you want of me? Torture someone, or something? Fine. Would you like me to kill for you? Not a problem – just tell me who! Captain, someone is just outside, lurking in the corridor, and has been listening to us since we started. Who is it!?"
Picard stood: "I'll leave now to let the two of you to get reacquainted." He gave her a final measuring look as he left. Deanna looked at the newcomer, disbelieved, and flung up every mental shield she possessed.
"Yes." Guinan said as she came in. "Do let's talk about it." Her eyes never left the Betazoid's as she made herself comfortable and steepled her fingers.
"I dreamt of vampires last night," Deanna returned. She pondered musingly: "That must have been you. Just like old times. Get over it already. It was over a hundred years ago."
"Just like a counsellor I used to know." Her words dripped scorn. "The Deanna Troi I've met here has been far more helpful with this than you ever were."
It is you. The same private thought was in both their minds at the same time.
"Reacquainted," Deanna felt a little numb. "Then– this Captain Picard knows you -–"
"—- He knows both of us come from the same somewhere else. And how is the Empire anyway? Has Jamand VI; the J`n finally been subdued? Are you and Riker still a love-thing? They are here, too." She glanced away. "Or they were, anyway. Until now, that is."
"You've become soft, Guinan. You wouldn't still be here, otherwise."
Something darkened in Guinan's naturally dark face. "Oh, really," She said. "And tell me, now, just which one of us is it locked behind a forcefield?" Deanna flushed. 'How I wish the Empire's dear old venerable diplomat Lwaxana Troi could see you right now!'' A smile never seen by Enterprise's crew spread across her face.
The Sickbay had been silent for a while. Picard's face was command impassive and showed nothing; Riker's face was drawn. Guinan sat with her head bowed and no one could see her face. No one else had been brought into the circle yet. Dr. Crusher toyed with her hair. She said: "Their quantum signatures match." She looked over at Guinan. "Oh, Guinan? A belated welcome to our universe would appear to be in order here." Guinan didn't react.
Riker looked at the El-Aurian. "Guinan? Where is your counterpart?"
"I didn't kill her if that's what you mean. And the two of you have never met." Guinan finally looked up. "None of my race here were successful in eluding the Borg. Resistance was futile." She looked back down again.
Picard forestalled the next question. "Not now, Number One. More important here is –-"
"—- Is how we get back our own Deanna. And send this new bloody bitch back!"
"Will, if I had wanted an emotional scene here, I'd have invited Mr. Crusher!"
Riker took a deep breath. "Understood!" Sickbay went quiet again.
The lavish dinner in Troi mansion had been very private and was over. Plates of denuded Kelpian had been taken away and Mr. Hom had been very, very firmly dismissed. All the safeguards, both physical and mental were in place and functional.
Tama Mansii knew he'd been invited for reasons beyond the usual, and that she was taking no chances of eavesdroppers. She began talking. He appeared relaxed as he listened and sipped his drink. Lwaxana knew he was anything but. She finished her story and then waited patiently for his response. It took time. "Of course, I would love to help you, Lwaxana. We go way back. But I can't. I know nothing, and naturally I will know nothing about what you've asked, inferred or suggested."
Liar, Lwaxana thought. But the fear of Empire displeasure ran deep in everyone; there would be no convincing him and she would just have to find another way. At least nothing too incriminating had actually been divulged prematurely. The secret would be safe. She leaned across the table and smiled reassuringly. "Of course. Thank you for, well, for letting me vent. But mmm, perhaps you could be so good as to indulge me in another fashion, and I'll help you vent this time." She sipped and then inclined her head suggestively. They laughed, took hands and glasses, and headed for the bedroom.
It took a lot of lovemaking to satiate Lwaxana, but of course it would. She sighed in utter contentment and then rolled to her side of the bed and got up. Her contentment faded into a poison mist. 'So wonderful, and not just in the bed,' she thought. 'Truly I could have married that man. Oh, why, why, why did it have to be like this?' She glanced back at him once more. Mansii lay relaxed in the center of the bed. He was looking at her with his eyes half-open. They closed, and he sighed out his last breath.
"I don't know!" Deanna fretted on the large screen. "Ask Guinan! She crossed over first. Ask her how it happened!" It was next day; they were in the briefing room and Deanna had joined them by way of a large monitor. Picard wasn't willing to let her out for one second due to her enhanced deadly abilities and a ready willingness to use them for her own benefit.
Now Guinan glanced up. "I don't know either, Captain. It was years ago, and in a very different part of space." She paused to let that sink in and then looked at Deanna pointedly. "But, unlike someone we all know, I adapted to my new reality."
Deanna flushed again. No one else she'd encountered here so far had had the ability to make her do that. It just wasn't fair! "Soft, just like I said!" She retorted. "There can be only one reason we're still going at this ad nauseam, Captain. You'd like to send me back. Very noble of you, even though it's only because you'd like your Deanna back."
Her eyes glittered. "Well, I have news for you, Captain: if she's at all like the rest of you, then my counterpart is already dead." She added: "Not that I give a damn."
Riker stiffened as Guinan nodded reluctantly. "Everyone here, we are missing a vital point." He sipped more coffee and then made a face and dialed for fresh. They all looked at him. " And that point is, why is all this happening now. All our investigations indicate nothing unusual about the ship, the crew, our current mission, or the regions of space we've been travelling through. It's still possible an unknown natural phenomenon has caused this event of course….." He tossed his coffee down.
Picard's eyes narrowed. "You're about to suggest that someone is behind all this….."
"My Empire —" Deanna began, then remembered a long-ago horrid soap taste test, and kept her speculating private.
Riker ploughed on: "…..And we know of only one species capable of this….."
"…...The Q." Guinan finished.
Dr. Crusher sat up straighter. "I hate being a lab rat."
"Amen to that, Bev-Bev. Even if I don't know what a Q is."
Deanna was back to her pacing. She'd only been granted limited access to the computer library due to some ridiculous Prime Directive and was bored. She glared outside the forcefield and amused herself with thoughts of what she could do to the four guards there if she were freed. "Computer. Dim for sleep." She bared her teeth at them. "Sleep tight, lady and gentlemen. Don't blame me for your nightmares."
She bolted up. "What —!"
"You were having nightmares." One Security said. Her face was inscrutable.
Deanna groped for the dream. Vampires. She sighed heavily. Guinan!
ISS Security Commander Troi sat relaxed next to Riker in the fetid emotional swamp that passed for the bridge of any warship in the service of the Terran Empire. Recently she'd begun to sense that Wily-Will was evaluating her in every free moment he got. Captain Picard was currently off the Bridge, dictating the customary surrender terms to yet another chastised and phaser devastated planet. She shifted in her seat, stretched languorously and then turned her head slightly. "I've nothing to report, Commander. I sense no deceit in J'n. Their surrender appears genuine."
Riker's attention quickly snapped back to instruments and the main viewer. He snapped: "Keep those phaser conduits hot, Mr. Crusher."
"Oh?" Deanna questioned in her mildest possible voice. "I thought from the way you kept staring at me, you were asking for an update. Is there something else going on in your tiny mind, Commander Riker?" She didn't wait for an answer but went on. "Barring new orders, our next stop is Betazed. You know, I just can't wait to see my mother again." This was only the truth; she had a lot to talk to her about. She smiled dreamily as Riker's face changed.
"Captain on the Bridge." Crusher announced. They all stood and saluted.
"As you were," Picard said. "All has gone well. Weapons, ready photon torpedoes and prepare to destroy a small city, just as a reminder."
"Nothing else, Counsellor-Bitch." Riker said softly. "At this time."
'Don't ignore your instincts….' He was going to go all out for her now; Deanna could feel it, and also knew there was nothing she could do except try not to be there when it happened. Her duties in the Empire most emphatically precluded the discipline and probing of the senior officers' minds, except on orders, or perhaps on a mutual recreational basis. She had already maxed both avenues out with him.
Gradually the realization dawned. 'I will have to act first. 'She thought about the types of strategies, crew, and weapons she would need for the task. She would also have to decide who would take the fall, and just who should get the subsequent promotion. 'Shouldn't be too hard …...'
And in that moment Deanna Troi realized just how much like her counterpart she had become. She no longer cared about her former life. She no longer cared that Riker was out to kill her, or she him. It was just how life went.
Long live the Empire. She wept inside.
Enterprise had made orbit around Betazed. Lwaxana's face was on main screen. "Thank you, Captain Picard. And of course, it would be an honour if you would join the Troi family here for dinner tonight." She smiled. "I have specially ordered that escargots be on the appetizer menu with des cuisses de grenouille on the main."
"I will consider it, Mrs. Troi. Enterprise out." "Picard to Troi. You are granted permission to disembark." Picard's always cold gaze slid sideways to his first officer. Her voice came back. "Thank you, sir. On my way."
Riker was already on his feet. "Permission to leave the Bridge, sir?"
"Granted, Number One."
His handpicked team was waiting for him near the main transporter. They had all received special training on Vulcan which would cloak their thoughts from the cursed Betazoid. Security had been paid off and were ready. They disabled any incriminating monitors and went to work in a nearby Jeffries tube. Two minutes and it was done.
Deanna entered and mounted the transporter stage with her guards. Her chilly eyes met those of the saluting transporter officer. "You may energize, Mr. Obrien."
Obrien did so and threw an arm across a his face as sparks and flames rained everywhere. Security barged in on cue and Obrien went down under their agonizers. It was too late, of course. Then Riker entered without his bodyguards. He took his usual arrogant stance in a spot where she would clearly see him doing nothing to save her.
Deanna was being firmly held in place in the transporter beams. She began screaming as she felt her body begin to disintegrate rather than dematerialize. It was a slow painful process; Riker had ensured that it would be. Her eyes met his face. He wore a twisted satisfied grin. She committed that expression to memory.
"That's only according to their way of thinking, Captain Picard. Your Starfleet Command needs to get real! By my way of thinking, this was an admittedly enjoyable execution. One that I carried out on your counterpart's own orders." Deanna added with emphasis. "I had no inkling of having been switched dimensions either." She watched Riker's face. "So just face it, Wily-Will Riker, none of your precious laws have been broken. Go and blame your goddamned Q, or whatever, and not me!" Suddenly that felt very important to her. She took a moment to taste the feeling. Her line of thinking screeched to a halt like a Rigelian skralk when it finally scents its prey. 'My lifespan would undoubtedly be much longer if I stayed here' — and there was Guinan, again watching her with that knowing sardonic look of hers. She flushed yet again. Damn that woman!
"It would be hard work," She said. Guinan and Picard were talking in private in the ready room. "But I also sense it might just be possible."
"Two teas; Earl Grey, hot." Picard returned to his chair with their drinks. "But I'm afraid she can't stay aboard Enterprise much longer. There's more to this as well. Starfleet Command will have to be informed soon, and I very much doubt that they will want her back, even if she tenders her Oaths again."
"I'm still here, Jean-Luc." Her voice had a cutting edge. "When we met, you were the captain of Stargazer at the time, you remember; and you alone of the entire Federation immediately knew where I came from, surmised some of what I did, and never spoke of it to anyone. Was it necessary for me to stay with you? Of course not! And having decided to stay, have I ever since given you any cause for doubting me?"
"Only out of regard for my sanity now and then." Picard smiled despite himself. "And for good reasons too."
Guinan did not smile back. "You should know that I was loyal to my Empire, and I have never been soft. Never, not even once, nada." There was that unique Guinan pause of hers. "I tortured and interrogated people; it was my job, and I cared nothing for any of their subsequent proven innocence or guilt." She was examining her hands now, and lovingly caressed her fingers. She raised them palms-out for Picard to inspect. "Nope." She shook her head. "No blood anywhere." Guinan dropped her hands back in her lap. She turned away just slightly. "And of course there were those many actions I carried out just for pleasure; they never fell under my official duties. You would consider all of them horrible. Do not interrupt me please; I know what you'll ask next, and the answer is no! Like this Deanna, I hold no remorse or guilt for what I have done." The voice under the hat changed; richened. She turned back. "But this new universe, containing a Federation and Starfleet that is not soft but simply different, and yet strong, and holds such promise for great things; well it calls to me, Captain, it is very attractive to me, and it requires a different reply. The correct response to this new situation was to adopt and hold to those behaviours which your Earth, and your Federation calls "civilized"." She sipped some more of her tea. The captain was making to speak. "I thought I said don't interrupt me." She deliberately let a little bit of her old self show, and made Picard drop hot tea in his lap all by himself.
"Captain, I was a teacher of my many vocations in the Terran Empire; I introduced and nurtured this young Deanna Troi in the arts of torture when she chose it as her vocation. So, the question now becomes this: Can you trust that my Oaths to this new Starfleet and Federation will continue to be upheld? Do you still trust me, Jean-Luc?"
Picard mopped up the spilt tea. He moved around a while and then looked thoughtfully out the port. 'The naked stars?' Guinan wondered fleetingly, thinking of Worf. Then he turned and sat down again. He drained his tea and finally met her eyes. Picard said quietly: "And the answer to that question is…. yes, implicitly. But you knew that already, didn't you."
"I did, Captain. Thank you. Then, in time, and with hard work, we will be able to trust her." She got up to leave. Then she turned. Her hands moved involuntarily. "But Dr. Crusher never will."
The Enterprise captain spent a long time gazing into his aquarium. 'My lionfish.' He thought. 'Each as beautiful as both Guinan and the Betazoid counsellor, and all in possession of a deadly armada of poisonous spines draped in gossamer.'
"In conclusion, Captain, we were just a bit too late to save her. It is regrettable; she was a fine officer. Quite frankly, sir, she was also as fine a lover as anyone could have wished for as well." Riker was well-known for his coarseness, but had he laid it on a bit too thick? He took a breath and continued: "The transporter should be repaired shortly, more investigations are underway, and Chief Obrien is in custody doing time in the Agony Booth as we speak."
"Thank you for your report, Number One. It appears everything is complete and in order on your end. Of course, the venerable Lwaxana Troi is going to be most displeased that her daughter has accidentally died. Unfortunately, it falls on me to deal with that." His smile belied his words. "Perhaps if we were to accidentally grant her access to Obrien….."
Riker wore his twisted grin again. "Excellent….If I may be dismissed, Captain?"
"One more thing, Commander. I think I should introduce you to Enterprise's replacement Security Commander before you leave." He touched buttons. "You may come in now."
Three high-ranking Security officers entered. They were not from the Enterprise crew. Lwaxana Troi followed. Her face was a death-head's mask. Obrien came in next, followed by Deanna Troi. They were both in seemingly good health. Security stood off to one side and drew phasers on the gaping first officer.
Picard was suddenly holding a weapon on Riker as well. "My ready room appears to be getting quite crowded….." He looked at Deanna. 'I could do with one less person here.'
Deanna smiled radiantly at her captain. She was caressing her agonizer. Her mind slid into Riker's in a similar fashion. 'My, my; and what do we have here…..'
Wily-Will Riker put his hands in the air. He wasn't able to do anything else. "I don't suppose you'd just let me shoot myself instead?" He shivered. "Pretty please?"
They were lounging together in the tub again. Lwaxana had been giving Riker little breaks from their attention now and then. Now her eyes glittered as she said: "It's all for the better, my dear." She dunked herself. "His death must be public, and as slow and painful as we can make it. You agree?"
She'd spoken aloud, and Deanna cocked a wary eye at the big bar of soap. It appeared safely out of her mother's reach but….. "Yes," It seemed safest to leave it at that. Lwaxana wasn't going to be getting over the assassination attempt any time soon, if ever. She lifted out a sudsy arm and hand for the wine goblet and continued mind-to-mind: 'Have you gotten anywhere with my, er, dilemma, Mother?'
'All technology and information regarding physically transferring between here and that contemptible mirror universe lies solely in the hands of the Empress. I haven't even been able to ascertain for sure if any such technology really exists.' Deanna had averted her face. 'I'm sorry, Little One. Truly I am. I know it's what you call home, and I want for you to be able to get back. I should not have called it that, and I'm not done trying.'
'It's not that!' Deanna's lip trembled. Tears trickled down her face. 'This Empire is cruel! It's sick, nasty, soooo evil, and vicious and-and, well, you are too, and-and I, I don't know why or h-how but I've stopped caring about it. I've stopped caring, I've stopped Caring — it doesn't bother me if I never make it back, and-and I love you so much —ohhh…'
Lwaxana flung her arms around the young woman. Their tears mingled. Oh, Powers!
"You should have seen them!" Q'ute giggled to her friend. "Their faces! Sobbing all over each other; I helped with more soap dribbling in their eyes and mouths —"
"You call that fun?" Came the rejoinder. "I've got a Borg Queen so confused that they've almost forgotten how to assimilate!"
They sensed an approaching adult Q simultaneously and shut up.