Fortune's Light - Michael Jan Friedman [3]
And then, maybe half an hour after Picard’s retreat from the bridge, the doors of the forward turbolift parted to reveal the tall, straight form of the Enterprise’s first officer. Riker wasn’t smiling.
He took the bridge in with a single glance, saw that the three seats constituting the command center were all vacant, and seemed to know immediately what that meant. He went to the ready room doors and stood before them to signal his presence.
A moment later they opened, and the first officer disappeared inside.
It was a quick ending but a satisfying one. And, Wesley told himself, he had been a privileged audience of one.
Then he heard the muted conversation in the aft stations: “I told you he’d come straight here. No way he wouldn’t tell the captain about it.” “All right, already. Dinner’s on me, next shore leave.”
Wesley chuckled to himself. Well, maybe not an audience of one, exactly. But a privileged audience nonetheless.
He regarded the ready room entrance, beyond which some new drama was undoubtedly taking place, if the expression on Riker’s face had been any indication. Never a dull moment around here, Wesley told himself.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard considered his first officer across his ready room desk. “So, Number One? Care to tell me about it?”
Riker had been silent for some time, just staring into space. At the captain’s invitation, his eyes focused.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Of course.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “It’s hard to know where to begin.” And then, a moment later, it seemed that he had found a propitious place. “Have I ever mentioned someone named Conlon —Teller Conlon?”
Picard thought about it. “I believe you have,” he decided. “A friend of yours at the Academy, wasn’t he?”
“More than a friend, sir. My best friend. And not just at the Academy. We shipped out on the Potemkin together, and then on the Yorktown.” Riker paused. “Five years ago, we were detached from active duty to serve on the team that forged the Impriman Trade Agreement.”
“Ah, yes,” said the captain. “Quite impressive, the job you did there. Stole a planetful of valuable resources out from under the noses of the Ferengi, as I recall. Or, more precisely, you recovered it, after trade with the Federation had been cut off for twenty years.”
It had all been in Riker’s service record, a file with which Picard had become quite familiar back when he was reviewing first officer candidates for the Enterprise. And the Impriman affair was one of the things that had set Riker apart from the others.
“The Imprimans wanted only one trading partner—the Ferengi, or the Federation.” The first officer grunted. “Truth be told, Teller deserved more credit for getting them to choose the Federation than I did. He really got into the Impriman psyche—came to understand them better than anyone had before him. Imprima seemed to hold this great … fascination for him. So much so, in fact, that when the Federation established a trade liaison office there, he volunteered to oversee it.”
“And he got the post,” said Picard.
“Hands down. Hell, I didn’t want it. And Teller had the full support of the madraggi—the political-economic entities that make up what passes for government on Imprima.”
“So your friend stayed,” observed the captain. “And you left.”
Riker shrugged, but it was less a shrug than an upheaval. It was as if his tunic had suddenly become two sizes too small for him. Did his discomfort have something to do with the transmission from Starbase 89? No doubt.
But Picard could wait to hear the rest of the story. For a change, he had no other pressing business. He could afford to let the younger man proceed at his own pace. “
I left,” confirmed Riker. “Shortly after that, I was made first officer of the Hood, and our assignment was way the hell on the other side of Federation territory. I lost touch with Teller. A couple of times he sent messages to me via subspace packet or through some mutual