By Felicia Ferguson
Disclaimer: You know the drill.
Author's Note: At last, we are back to the present. All comments (except flames) are welcome. Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me so far. Your enjoyment and encouragement are wonderful things!
Now
2/?
Donatra had lied. Or at the very least mistaken the strength of her grip over the Romulan forces. Having conducted an inquisition worthy of the Spaniards of Earth's history, she believed that all who had any loyal ties to the Reman had been eradicated. The Federation now had proof otherwise. That is, they would if Deanna could contact them.
Which, according to Commander Lash, would be sometime next week considering she had lost half of her engineering crew in the attack. They had used the last residual power to issue the distress signal, and, hoping to spare further drain on life support, begun to shut down any remaining unnecessary systems.
It hadn't taken long.
Donatra had beamed over several doctors and medical supplies, but Deanna was reluctant to allow outside engineers to aid in the repairs. The commander understood, and the offer was available whenever the Titan's new captain changed her mind.
M'Ret...quite simply disappeared. He had been in his quarters when Riker and Troi had returned from the meeting and was ready for the debriefing which had been scheduled to meet an hour later. However, when the firing stopped and the damaged was being assessed, no one could find him. In truth, Deanna didn't have the manpower to spare to look for him and she certainly wasn't going to enlist the aide of the Romulans when M'Ret wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.
Which brought Commander Troi to a scarred door on deck 5. She paused and looked for the door signal in the array of damaged console buttons. Finally giving up, she simply knocked.
No answer.
"Computer, locate Ambassador M'Ret," Troi ordered.
"Ambassador M'Ret is not aboard this vessel."
Startled by the computer's response, Deanna took a step back and asked, "He's not aboard or he's not alive?"
"Ambassador M'Ret is not aboard this vessel."
Deanna blinked at the unexpected reply. Certain she hadn't heard the computer correctly, she opened her mouth to order a security override on the doors then remembered Lash's shut down procedures. She sighed and wedged her fingers between the two doors hoping to pry them apart. After several seconds of struggling, she stepped back, her shoulders heaving with the effort.
Of course, as luck would have it, no one passed through the corridor. Deanna moved to try once more, but out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a shiny piece of metal hanging from the bulkhead. With a quick jerk and an answering whine, the metal tore from the wall. Deanna twirled it around impressed by her ingenuity then shoved the sharp tip between the doors and pushed.
The doors cracked open after a moment, then eased a little further. Within a couple of minutes, Deanna squeezed through the gap and looked around. Having seen the damage to the rest of the ship, she wasn't surprised to find M'Ret's quarters in such a state of disarray. Chairs were strewn across the room, decorative hangings drooped unceremoniously from the walls, and the glass table top had shattered all over the carpet.
But under the shards of glass lay a data padd. Recognizing it as the one he had used during his meetings with the captain, Deanna picked it up and pressed the display button. What she found astonished her.
Captain,
I regret to inform you that I will not be returning with you from Ch'Rihan. Thanks to your Starfleet technology, I have purchased a site-to-site transport chip and will beam down to the surface soon. I will endeavor by every effort imaginable to encourage the peace movement between our people; however I could not live in exile from my home planet any longer. I do regret that our association will not be prolonged at this time, but do believe that this is not the last you will see of me.
Kind regards,
M'Ret
The beep of her communicator pulled Deanna away from the letter. "Commander," the chief engineer's voice stated, "short range communications are online."
Troi nodded, lowering the padd. "And long range?"
She heard Lash smother a frustrated sigh. "They'll still be early next week. I figured you would want the short range first."
"Good thinking. What about engines?"
"We should have impulse engines late tomorrow and warp drive in three days."
"Good work and thanks. Keep me informed." Deanna pursed her lips, her gaze returning to the data padd. Her eyes reread the ambassador's last sentence. She didn't have any doubt she would see him again. She only wondered under what circumstances.
Deanna turned and slipped between the doors again. Once more in the corridor, she shook her head. There was nothing she could do about M'Ret, but at least she knew where that Romulan was. Now, with communications back online, it was time to deal with another.
***
"I want an explanation and I want it now. Where is Praetor Tal'Aura?" Troi's normal saintly patience was being tried to no end. Apparently, while the Titan was incommunicado, Tal'Aura had become unreachable. Deanna had been assured she was on the Senate premises, but told that she was in urgent meetings and not to be disturbed.
"I would hope that some of those urgent meetings include information on an unprovoked attack on my ship," she bit out as she savagely closed the communication link.
Frustration gushed through her, urging her to her feet to pace the length of the ready room. The transporters were still inoperable, so she couldn't just barge in on whatever 'urgent meetings' Tal'Aura was conducting. She couldn't even fire warning phasers just to get her attention. It was possible they had enough power to launch a probe, but if she even contemplated offering that suggestion to the command crew, they would know she'd lost her mind completely. So, she was still waiting. Now she was merely waiting for the red tape to be cut.
She paused, forcing her mind to calm her raging emotions. Calm. Serenity. That was how she would get through these next days. As her pulse slowed and her mind eased, her thoughts drifted to the one place that she didn't want them to go. To him.
With a sad smile, she glanced around the spartan room. They hadn't gotten around to decorating it. A small model of the Titan sat on one corner of the desk. She picked it up and absently traced its grooves and planes. Her mind continued to drift, latching on to the first memory it found.
He had come to her a few hours after he'd received word of his promotion. "Why now, Will? Why this ship?"
Will pulled her into his arms, hearing the confusion, the uncertainty that lurked beneath her words. "For the first time, its right. I have learned more than I could have possibly imagined from Captain Picard and I now feel able to put it into practice."
Deanna shook her head, her cheek brushing against the soft fabric of his off-duty tunic. "Its more than that, I can feel it."
"There's no hiding anything from you, is there?" he asked with a slight chuckle as he readjusted his hold. "But, you're right. It's much more than that. It's you. I couldn't leave you again."
"But you're still leaving me," Deanna replied, shifting so that she could pull out of his arms. She felt a chill creep into her bones. All they had rediscovered was for naught. She couldn't leave her station aboard the Enterprise. Captain Picard relied on her judgment, needed her expertise.
Emotion churned within her and forced her to turn away from his knowing blue eyes. She might be the empathic, but at times like these, she was certain that Will Riker could read her very soul.
He moved behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders and trailing them down her arms to link their fingers together. The chill eased somewhat, warmed by the heat of his touch. "Listen to me, Deanna, don't judge. Just open your mind and listen."
Deanna felt tears sting the back of her eyes. This was it. This was the point where he would say exactly what she had prepared herself to hear for years. But as the hurt cleared from her mind, she realized she was completely and utterly wrong.
Marry me, Imzadi. Make this next step of the journey our first together.
His words hit her with the force of a phaser blast, with much the same consequences. She was stunned, amazed...she was incapable of words. So instead she turned in his arms, willing her courage to the fore. He wouldn't joke about this. Would he?
She lifted her dark eyes to his blue ones and read the truth within the bottomless pools. And her mind formed an answer without thought. Yes.
Deanna woke from the memory with a sob. Tears streaked down her cheeks as she asked, "Gods, Will, what do I do now? This was our journey, not mine alone. What the hell do I do without you?"
Something whispered across her mind, vague, intangible, but somehow soothing.
***
...to be continued...