Part 3
Tina watched as Tom flew a ship. It had to be the Trident, since the bridge was wrong to have been hers. He was sweating with concentration, trying to coax more out of the vessel. She then watched as the look on his face changed to horror. Tina shifted her gaze to the viewer in front of her. The giant phoenix she had seen in Deanna's dream was before the vessel, currently swallowing in its crest another ship, one she instinctively knew was the Excalibur. From behind there was a very un-captain like yelp from Shelby. "Not again. I won't lose him again. Arex, Get those people out of there!" Tina knew they weren't going to succeed. But she couldn't tear herself from what she was watching. Flame continued to swallow the other ship as she heard the frantic yet ordered sounds of a bridge crew doing their jobs in a crisis. There were not any screams or yelling, just the tone of voice that belied the confidence and sure reactions of the people speaking.
The ship disappeared from view, gone again. Tina absently heard the Trident's security chief say that they only managed to get about a third of the crew before the ship had been destroyed. Calhoun had not been among the ones retrieved. Shelby ordered the crew to get the ship out of there before they too fell victim. Tom's fast actions bought them another minute of life, until the bird caught them as well. Tina felt every death. When Tom died, for some reason she could not keep from crying.
Unlike when she was in Deanna's nightmare the scene did not repeat. Instead she now flew on the back of the bird herself, now heading back toward the Federation, and home. Every planet the bird passed it at least grazed the surface. Finally it slowed. Tina did not know where she was. The next thing that came to her consciousness frightened her more than anything had in her life. A nest of flame loomed in front of her. The bird alighted on it, settling on it the way a sparrow would when nesting. Behind her she felt the presence of people she knew. Behind her were Tom, Deanna, and Julie. Will was nowhere to be seen. They all wore the mask of death from something horrible. Tina could not bear anymore. Crying out she surrendered to grief beyond any known.
"Security over ride, authorization Thompson gamma 16." Katie overrode the lock on the ready room door when LeBeau did not respond to the call that there had been a response to her earlier message. The Commander lay face down on the desk. She apparently passed out sitting at the desk. A quick check confirmed that she was unconscious, but breathing. "Thompson to sickbay. We have a medical emergency in the Captain's ready room."
When Ogawa entered the ready room she had expected to find the Captain. He was not known for listening very well. Instead she found the First Officer in much the same state she had found Will and Deanna the night before. "Transporter room, two to beam directly to sickbay."
Katie watched as they two of them disappeared. Absently she returned to her post and looked at Heath. "Who's next?"
Ogawa was not a happy person. What she had thought had been isolated had just now claimed the First Officer. LeBeau was lying on the biobed unconscious, while Deanna was in the other room, her vital signs showing that she might be on a relapse. Will had been summoned. The Captain looked worn thin but at least he was conscious. Julie was in her quarters, and from what could be read from sickbay, she was in a normal sleep, for the moment. "I could try what I did for you and Deanna but I don't know if it will work. She hasn't been out that long and with humans it seems the neurotransmitter functions are different enough that being in this state poses less of a risk than it does for Betazoids, but since she was born with the telepathy, I can't be positive that she will respond."
"How did you know what Dee and I were going through, exactly?"
"LeBeau and Julianna purposely formed a telepathic rapport with you and the Counselor. They experienced your dream. Julie came out of it on her own, but I had to give the Commander a stimulant to wake her. It might be that what ever is causing this cannot grasp on to a child's mind, or it may have to do with the fact that Julie is ¾ human. If it was just the mixed blood keeping Julie out of this Deanna should have a similar reaction. It could also have to do with the pregnancy. I just don't know at this point. We aren't equipped to monitor telepathic overloads here. Although after some of the stunts Deanna has pulled on us before I really think we should look into this type of phenomenon more. Do you want me to try what I did with the two of you?"
"Unless you can think of something better. I don't want Jules to go through that again." He looked a little forlorn and tried not to think too loudly lest Julie wake up and over hear him. And not just for her sake. I thought I had lost her once today; that is quite enough for a lifetime, thank you.
"Ok. But I am going to warn you, if their reaction to the two of you coming out of this was to gauge, you are going to know she is coming around before I do, and it won't be pleasant either. So brace yourself."
"Do it." Will was not a religious man, but something within him stirred, for just a moment, and he silently let a very small prayer come forth.
Throughout his career and life Captain Will Riker had waking nightmares in the form of war, starvation, plague, simply put suffering and death in every known form. He had witnessed not just real life death but had felt it in the form of shared grief from Deanna, as well as holding her up during the worst that could happen to a person and still survive. He had even experienced the dream terrors that were plaguing his wife and Justina at the moment. None of that held a candle to the shear terror and abject insanity he felt after Alyssa administered the hypo. Not being an empath, and only recently able to have any form of mind to mind contact with anyone but Deanna, he was overwhelmed by the images that flooded his mind. Not just of the flying death plaguing their subconscious but of the pure insanity of a psychotic episode. He learned in an instant every failure his friend had in her life, every time she had found herself ordering someone into danger, her own capture as a mere junior grade lieutenant at the hand of the Cardassians and Founders during the Dominion war. He saw every nightmare she had rolled into a few moments. He watched as he saw Tina crawl under her childhood bed screaming, a monster sniffing her out. He saw her crying at her grandmere's funeral. He knew he should try to stop himself, but the grief and fear the woman was feeling overcame he sense to try to block it out. Absently he realized this must be how Deanna felt every time she had counseled a truly insane person. The emotion flooded him and he was helpless to control it any longer.
An eternity passed and then incoherent thought flooded him. A primal fear which engulfed him into itself. He felt himself fall as he began to scream, with no cause other than he was more frightened than he had even been when he thought he was watching his daughter being burned at the stake.
Again Will found himself again lying on a biobed in sickbay. He clutched his head from the remnants of a headache he would not soon forget. It nearly eclipsed the one from the virus that had given him the telepathy in the first place. All he could remember was fear; fear as he had never known it before. A groan escaped his mouth.
"Welcome back Captain. This time you fell prey to the psychotic overload from Tina. The good news is I think it worked. The bad news is until we knew what is causing this I think it would be a much better idea for the lot of you to stay here or monitored from your quarters. I haven't found a clue. I have even detailed Ben to try to find something technological, as well as having Karen and Quenten working on it."
"I guess you get the big chair, for what it's worth. Anything happen in the time I have been out?"
"Well, we got a response from the Trident. They are looking into anything that remotely resembles what we have. They also say the Excalibur is en route to them and should get there within the day. You can see the message for yourself if you want. We on the other hand have a little over six days left. We could try to cut that a little but not without risking over loading the warp drive."
"At least we're not in any real trouble at the moment, or I would argue with keeping us all."
"You wouldn't win, especially since I am the ranking duty fit officer around here at the moment. Tina should be ready to leave here in an hour or so, and Deanna was starting to come around a bit. But the three of you are relieved of bridge duty until this is over. If I didn't have a gut feeling that we would need at least one of you to sort this out I would say totally relieved of duty for the duration. But I am going to need to have you at least somewhat responsible. So here's the deal. Any thing that you guys want in the way of information that we find, you've got. But under no circumstance are any of you going to have access to the bridge, if we need something we will ask for it. Until then though I want you four to work together to figure out everything you can from the telepathic angle, in other words Julie too. That is something that we cannot work on with the computers or the ship. Got it?"
"Yes ma'am." Shakily standing Will left to join Deanna, only to finally feel in his aching head the little mental tickle that accompanied her simply being awake and near him.
"Imzadi?" Deanna croaked.
"Welcome home love." He held her more fiercely than he had meant to. I have missed you. Don't ever scare me like that again.
"I'll try not to. What happened?"
"We were hoping you could tell us." Dr. Ogawa stood at the door watching her friends. "All we know is what Tina and Julie managed to find out. Will remembered a fire and you and Julie being hurt, that's it."
"It's rather fuzzy. If I prepare I can usually remember almost all of my dreams. But I wasn't. I know I remember feeling Julie, Will and Tina with me." She was nearly crying. She gripped Will's hand. "They were taking everything away from me, a piece at a time. They even took the baby." She was crying now.
"The baby is fine. He is not under any stress and he is not suffering from any trauma. He did better than any of the rest of you." Alyssa's confident tone and mental posture assuaged Deanna's worry.
Deanna sighed. It took her a moment to reorient herself, but she returned to trying to remember her nightmare. "I remember a giant flaming bird. And I was flying on his back. I saw the bird destroy planets, and then I saw her destroy Tom and the Trident. Then the whole thing more or less repeated itself."
"Well that's not much more than we already knew. I want the three of you to try to see if you can piece anything else together. By that time we might have something else from the rest of the crew." She hoped at least. "Deanna, you are going to be groggy for a little while, you might even feel like nodding off. I would currently caution against it for a few hours. I think you might be able to keep from falling back into this fugue if the lot of you stays conscious for a while. Now, why don't you two go back to your quarters and eat. Then try to work with each other. See if you can piece anything you might have missed. When Tina wakes up I well send her to you. And remember what I told you Captain, no duty other than from your quarters."
"Yes Beverly." For the first time in the last day, Will found his trademark impish grin. The two of them took their leave of the Doctor and returned to their quarters. Sighs of relief poured from them when they reached home. Generally they did not telepathically monitor Julie, but both were relieved when all either of them could sense were the normal dreams of a little girl. Will was the first to speak after they requested something to eat. Not surprisingly they chose comfort foods from childhood. Will ordered a large plate of macaroni and cheese while Deanna opted for Spaghetti.
"When you first started talking about what happened you said they, any clue as to why?"
"Other than it felt right. I know I saw several people that could have been involved as more than characters. No one ever spoke to me in any sort of direct way. It was truly nightmare language. I am not sure at all who or what we are dealing with at the moment. I do think the phoenix is the most important thing. Do have a idea on that one?"
"Actually I can tell you that if you also feel that Tom is involved the phoenix has to do with those two ships. I got to here a bit about how their Thallonian came on board. According to the entire crew of the Excalibur a phoenix erupted from the Thallonian homeworld destroying it. Also after I had one of my frequent dressing downs from Jellico he mentioned that one of my logs was nearly as unbelievable as the Great Bird that destroyed Thallon. My guess is whatever the creature was is going to be involved in whatever is going on, as far as I know you never knew anything about that."
"No about the only thing you remembered to tell me about was Robin Lefler's mother unnerving you. I never could figure out exactly why, but you seemed to feel like you had seen her before, but you never exactly told me who she reminded you of. I do know that Jean Luc also felt the same way about the woman. Other than that I know very little about either of those crews."
Will contemplated a noodle for a moment. The whole thing made as much sense as trying to see the block of cheddar while eating it melted. You could fathom a whole once existing, but you could not truly rebuild the original block even after the cheese cooled. The thought traveled through his mind and he wondered if he had ever been in a state to which an analogy like this one truly made any sense.
The sky was awash with the colors of fire. Bright red embers flittered, mixed with the amber yellows of a hearth fire. Blues and small patches of black peppered the scene, completing the ambience of a burning log, when what should have been seen was the normal star speckled void of space. Lieutenant Carlotta Lesman felt in awe of the view before her. Mixed within the reverence was a tinge of fear, although it took her several moments to remember why she felt the emotion. She took in the rest of the scene before her. After an undeterminable amount of time she realized what she was seeing, the glowing embers she had been watching were actually the flecks from wings of fire beating around her. Finally she saw them, creatures of fire, flying in every direction around her. Hundreds of them, if not thousands, surrounded her.
Anxiousness and anticipation filled her empathic senses and she had trouble trying to decide what was her own emotion and what was of the creatures around her. She watched as the creatures, both large and small, flap lazily from what appeared to be nests, much like humanoids at a party socializing. It was while watching them she remembered the briefing earlier that afternoon. These must be the creatures that were causing the problems for the command staff. They had apparently even injured the Captain and Commander LeBeau was currently recovering from an encounter from them as well. With the realization came the reason she had felt fear when she found herself in the dream she now realized was a dream.