Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [14]
Not empty, after all. Where the beam had been, there was something on the floor. He couldn’t make out the details, in the dark room, but what he could see was a low, flat disk, just a little smaller than the holographic target in a game of velocity. Unlike a velocity disk, though, this one wasn’t floating through the air, but sitting on his floor with solidity and some kind of purpose.
What purpose it might have struck Kyle, and he leapt from the bed, running for the open door of his bedroom. Beyond the door was a short hallway, with a bathroom and a room that he used as an office, and then leading into his large living room. He had just cleared the bathroom door, heading for the living room, calling out to the apartment’s computer, when the bomb went off.
The first thing Kyle noticed was a flash of light and his own shadow cast before him, stark and hard-edged against the suddenly bright room ahead. The flash was succeeded simultaneously by a deafening roar and a shock wave that lifted him off the floor and hurled him against the living room’s far wall. He slammed into it hard, just about where his shadow had been, trying to turn to hit it shoulder-first but without enough time. Instead, his left arm and the left side of his face made contact, and then he fell off the wall and onto the floor. Finally, a wave of searing heat struck him, burning his right side.
The apartment’s computer took over then. A sprinkler came on in the bedroom, extinguishing the fire, and a force field contained the worst of the heat there. The computer informed him that authorities had been notified, for the second time in two nights. This time, Kyle didn’t argue with it. He lay on the floor, bleeding and burned, until they arrived.
“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Riker.”
He sat up in the biobed and looked at the doctor, who was just putting away his dermal regenerator after having used it on Kyle’s burns. “Every time somebody tells me that, I’m lying in an infirmary somewhere,” Kyle said with a bitter grin. “I’m beginning to think luck isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Dr. Trbovich smiled back at him. He was a kindly looking, slightly stout, avuncular fellow with a shock of white hair and an infectious grin. His blue coat was snug around the waist and ribs. “You had a bomb go off in your apartment. You didn’t suffer any broken bones. You had some cuts and burns, all of which were easy enough to fix up. You’ll be sore for a few days, probably, but you’re still here to complain about it. If you hadn’t woken up, you’d be much worse off than you are. I count that as pretty fortunate.”
“I suppose,” Kyle agreed, wincing at a stabbing pain in his ribs as he reached for his shirt. One of the emergency medical technicians who had brought him in had been kind enough to grab a fresh jumpsuit and a padd from his office for him, since his clothes had been torched in the fire and the pajamas he’d worn had needed to be cut from his body. “But more fortunate still are all those people who slept through the night without anyone trying to blow them up.”
“Well, yeah,” the doctor said. “I can’t disagree with that. You’ll be fine, though. You should rest here for another couple of hours, just so I can monitor your progress. Then you should take it easy for a few days. I’d like to see you again in a week so I can check your progress, okay?”
“Got it,” Kyle assured him. He pushed his hands through his sleeves and then sat on the biobed until the doctor left the room to go check on other patients.
What he hadn’t told the doctor was that, in the bomb’s aftermath and in the ambulance shuttle that brought him to Starfleet Command from his ruined apartment, his mind had been full of horrific images. Tholians, intense heat barely contained within their shielded suits, features completely hidden, bizarre sticklike weapons emitting fuzzy red rays that spread death and destruction everywhere. For a moment, in the shuttle, Kyle had been convinced that the medic sitting next to him would turn and reveal a red, crystalline face glowing