Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [16]
“Captain,” Riker asked, “may we have a word with you, sir?”
Troi’s distress was no longer obvious. It had been carefully cloaked by her professionalism once again, and only those who knew her very well could tell that her hands were held a little too tightly against her lap as she sat in her lounge in the command area and told them her story of dreams. And there was only one person here who knew her that well.
Will Riker watched her, forcing himself not to interrupt, not to say anything after he too had finished describing the incident in the corridor, no matter how silly it sounded. He simply stood by, as the others focused on Troi. It hadn’t been easy for her, telling the captain that she had a dream that wouldn’t go away, and for Riker describing that person-or whatever he was-in the corridor had been just as strenuous. Only Captain Picard’s studious attention to their silly stories told them that he’d seen enough in the galaxy not to dismiss such things as silly.
The captain stood over Troi now, absorbing the whole idea of her dream with what Riker had told him about. Earth ships, humans in uniform-somewhere there was a common denominator. He meant to find it.
“Can you describe your perceptions more specifically, Counselor?”
Troi tipped her pretty head. “I’ll try to verbalize them, Captain, but I must advise you these are imprecise explanations. Telepathic impressions are sometimes too vague for interpretation.”
“Do your best.”
She nodded once. “My mind describes to me several different historical periods, not necessarily all of Earth, though the clearest ones seem to be human or humanoid. Perhaps that’s simply because of my partly human heritage-I can’t say. Some, though … some are so alien that I don’t know any words to describe what I’ve seen.”
“Alien, you say?”
“Yes, very obviously so. But the ship I envisioned was definitely of Earth.”
“Believe me, we’ll get to that in a moment. Go on.”
She paused, but not for long. Picard wasn’t a man she cared to keep waiting. “There’s a haze of apprehension … urgency … resistance. But no violent intent.”
“You can’t be sure of that!” Tasha interrupted from the afterdeck with her usual serenity. She caught Riker’s eyes, and his disapproval, but she plugged on. “I mean … if they’re alien sensations, then Deanna could be misinterpreting them completely. To their home beings, those impressions might be hostile, aggressive, and dangerous.”
“You’re too suspicious, Tasha,” Riker said defensively.
“I’m doing my job,” she retaliated. Not so much as a glimmer of regret marred her conviction. She knew perfectly well she was volatile-it was an advantage. Unlike Worf, who constantly worked to control his Klingon explosiveness, Tasha would stand up for the worth of her own. Riker saw that in her eyes as he looked back at her now, in the underlying ferocity beneath her face, and indeed it caused him to back down. Not until he’d been silent for several seconds did he realize how completely she had gotten her point across.
Troi picked up on the tension immediately, though she needn’t have been telepathic for that. It chewed at her; her job was to keep watch over the emotions and mental states of the starship complement, to guide them through tensions and head off the truly harmful contretemps that came and went in this kind of extended separation. How awful to be the cause of this … how terrible.
She tipped one hand up as it leaned against her thigh and said, “No … Tasha’s right. Because though there’s no perception of aggressive intent,” she said, pausing then to say the one thing that truly frightened her, “doesn’t change the fact that I’m receiving glimpses of violent destruction.”
Not giving those ominous statements any chance to take hold on the imaginations of the bridge crew, Picard lowered into his command chair beside her, hoping to put her and everyone at ease. He was aware of the effect these little disturbances were having on the crew, especially when they saw Deanna Troi’s usual poise inexplicably shattered. “Can you focus on that?