Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [3]
An hour later they were all gone, and Kyle was left alone. He ordered the computer to repair the wall now that the forensic team was done examining it.
Lieutenant Dugan had recommended that he get some sleep, but Kyle knew that was impossible. Every time he closed his eyes he was back on 311. He could hear the emergency Klaxons, see the flashing red alert lights, taste the adrenaline and fear that had been in his mouth as he scrambled from room to room. No, sleep was the last thing he wanted to try just now. Instead he went to his bookshelves and withdrew a biography of Napoleon he’d been meaning to get to, then sat back on the couch to wait for daylight.
At the Starfleet Command plaza station, Kyle disembarked from the monorail and took the stair-lift down to plaza level. There, he had to pass through a security station where two alert-looking security officers scanned him. Instead of going to his own office, as he normally would have, he headed for the office to which Lieutenant Dugan had asked him to report. The office was in the main Headquarters building, seventh floor, on a long hallway lined with closed, numbered doors.
He was, he had to admit, a little relieved to find that the room really was just an office, and not a cell or a hearing chamber. Dugan sat behind an orderly desk, speaking to his computer, and he looked up when Kyle came in. “Mr. Riker,” he said with a friendly tone. “Thanks for coming. Have a seat.”
Kyle sat. The office, he noted, was sparely furnished, as if Dugan didn’t really spend much time in it. Beside Dugan’s desk there was a credenza with globes on it, depicting Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, and two visitor’s chairs. Holoimages hung on the walls-landscapes of planets Kyle couldn’t identify but which clearly weren’t Earth. The images changed as Kyle watched them, one planetscape dissolving into another in random sequence. “If I were to guess, Lieutenant Dugan, I’d say you were not all that happy about being chained to a desk. You seem to be a man who’d rather be in deep space.”
“I’ve spent some time on a starship,” Dugan admitted. “It’s always fascinating. But there’s nothing wrong with good old momma Earth, either.”
“That’s my attitude too,” Kyle said. “Our own planet is almost infinite in its variety. I like a little trip off-world as much as the next guy, but I’m always glad to see her in the forward viewscreen when I come home.”
Dugan glanced at a screen that Kyle couldn’t see, and when he looked up again his expression was more serious. “Mr. Riker,” he began. “I have a little more information now than I did last night, at your apartment.”
“It’d be hard to have less.”
Dugan chuckled. “That’s true. The man who attacked you was named Yeoman Second Class William Hall. He was assigned here, at Headquarters. His primary duty was as an assistant clerk in Vice Admiral Bonner’s command. The vice admiral’s office has notified his next of kin, family back in Arkansas, I gather. Do you know Bonner?”
Kyle tried to picture him, and came up with a vague impression of a severe man in his fifties, with thick black hair and a pinched face. “I believe I’ve met him once or twice, but I don’t really know him.”
“He’s very loyal to those in his command,” Dugan said. “My impression is that he barely knew Yeoman Hall, but he’s very concerned about what happened to him.”
“So am I,” Kyle confessed. “Do we know the cause of death?”
Dugan hesitated before answering, as if he needed to decide how much to reveal. “An autopsy was conducted last night. There’s evidence of brain damage-some kind of interference with the operation of his brain’s limbic system. More specifically, the hippocampus.”
“Caused by what?”
“That we don’t know,” Dugan replied. “He’s still being examined to see if that can be determined.”
“And that could have killed him?” Kyle asked. “That damage?”
“Not by itself, no. But the force of your blows, in combination with the preexisting condition,