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Escape from the Trenditan - PG RATING
R/T, Zlanna@aol.com cont.

Admiral Riker sat motionless in the chair studying Doctor Riker. The boy had his dark hair and height and strangely enough, his blue eyes, but as with Betazoids, his son's eyes had no pupils, just twin blue disks that dared you to avoid looking at them. Will could only imagine the impact those eyes had on female crew members. Now, however, those eyes were full of anger and, Will recognized the emotion from his own encounters with his father, enormous disappointment. "It was a stupid mistake! You, you of all people should have known what the blue flash meant. How could you just stand there Dad and watch them kill her?"

Will remembered that Deanna had said he was close to his son, so he tried to remind himself that this man's anger was more frustration than hatred. "Luke, there are some things you don't understand." Immediately, the younger man's face softened a bit. Although he had not thought of it before, Will wondered if the boy were at least partially empathetic. "I know this will sound difficult to believe, but"

Data, who had been quietly standing beside the Admiral interrupted, anticipating that if he stated the situation, the doctor might be more accepting of the story. "Doctor Riker, the Admiral has just returned from the Forever World."

"The Forever World is 200 parsecs from here! You haven't left the ship." Luke protested, but somehow the comments were not said venemently.

"Yet, that is what happened." Data continued. "We, both the Admiral and I went back in time to the point at which Deanna Troi was murdered by the Sindareen at the Sindareen peace conference. Counselor Troi was saved and the Admiral and I came forward in time."

Luke listened quietly now. He had heard his parents relay the story of how they had finally given in to the Imzadi bond and been married many, many times. Reaching up with the back of his hand, he brushed his cheek as he remembered how his mother always smiled and put her hand on his father's forehead each time they retold the tale. It was if after 40 years they still could neither one believe it had taken them 20 years to get to the point they decided to marry. Luke's grandmother had always insisted that they had set a record for being Imzadi before getting married.

"After arriving in this time from the Forever World, the Admiral had no memory of the intervening 40 years that he skipped."

Luke turned to his father, "Then you were unfit for duty! Why did you go to the bridge, if you had no memory of how to fight the Trenditan?"

"Because, I had no memory of the Trenditan!" Will answered. "In my time, before I went back to rescue Deanna, there were no Trenditan. I didn't know I would have anyone to fight."

"Mom." Luke said quietly.

Admiral Riker stared at his son, confused. "What?"

"You always call her Mom." They stood contemplating each other. Each wondering what the other was feeling. Finally Luke shifted his gaze, unwilling to continue the confrontation now that he picked up his father's grief. "I, I'm only a partial empath - not like Mom. I sometimes take a while." Swallowing the younger Riker crossed over to a desk and picked up a padd, though he didn't read it. "I know what it is like to lose an Imzadi. I am sorry."

"And I know what it is like to lose a mother. I'm sorry too." Admiral Riker wondered how to bridge the silent chism that hung between the two, but Luke made the first move for him, coming to him and clutching the Admiral , the younger man's tears falling silently. It was unexpected and Will was at a total loss as to how to react. Gingerly he wrapped his arms around the doctor and softly he said, "Luke. Listen to me. I don't believe that your mother is dead. I think I can bring her back."

Drawing back, Luke wiped his tears quickly unable to make eye contact with his father again. "Dad, you can't keep going back to the Forever World and saving her. It isn't right. Maybe it was before, but not this time."

"Listen," Will began, "the Trenditans can travel through time with ease. I will force one to take me back in time and then I will not come forward again."

"It doesn't make any difference, don't you see? She is dead - you can't bring her back to life."

"Deanna is not dead!" Admiral Riker looked at Data, pleading to both of them. "She is not dead." Luke tried to center himself. He should have known that his father would be incapable of accepting his mother's death. Here he had thought his father's composure was from too much Star fleet in his veins, but it was only denial. Reaching for a hypo, Luke suddenly found his arm stopped by the vise like grasp of his father. "Luke, listen to me. In the other timeline before I travelled back using the Guardian of Forever, I lived through your mother's death. I lived through your grandmother, Lwaxana's death. I know what it is like to feel them slip away gradually from your thoughts. Deanna didn't slip away. She simply ceased to exist - in this dimension. And, I still feel the connection. She still lives, somewhere."

Luke studied his father. "When my Imzadi died," he said slowly, "I felt an abrupt end to the link." Turning to his father, he studied him for a moment. "I told Mom once, but she didn't think it was possible, that somehow, I still feel sometimes like the link is there too. She said that we all bound together, and it isn't unusual for Imzadi to feel the connection even after they have died. Grandma claimed that she felt Grandpa's presence long he died." Luke paused for a moment thinking, trying to fight down the memory of the dreams that haunted him at night. Still, his father's optomism was contagious. "Let me see your face."

"What?" Admiral Riker stammered.

"Your face, come here." Luke's voice raised in pitch and he grabbed a medical instrument and began to study the Admiral's lip. "Your scar is gone. When you came from the Forever World, it was your consciousness that came into the body you had possessed before."

"Scar? From Deanna when she bit me?"

"Yes. Mom had some crazy disease and went biserk and grew old. She bit you while kissing you. You refused to let Doctor Crusher seal it properly. You claimed that it gave you character. Finally Mom insisted you let me erase it a few years ago.

Data, long forgotten by the father and son interjected, "As I suspected, Sir. Your 'soul' if you will, simply came into this time line - into the same body. Your corpeal form did not blink out of existence at all."

"Yes!" Luke exclaimed. "Which, if we are lucky means that your memories remain intact, you simply can't access them yet. Dr. Selar! Dr. Selar! Come here please!"

Riker was astounded to see the Vulcan physician still on board the Enterprise. She had aged, though barely in the 40 years since he had known her. She nodded stoically listening to the problem that confronted them. Sitting down next to the Admiral, she began the mind meld, searching for the memories that Will Riker had assumed he did not possess. Finding them, she then began to help him link his long term and short term memories. Finally she sat back exhausted. Admiral Riker however, appeared renewed. "Luke. I am sure your mother is not dead. Even before I lost my memory I had already begun to suspect that the Trenditan transport their victims to another place during the flash and then recreate a 'mold' if you will of the body of the person they have transported."

"If that is true, Admiral, why is there always the by products of bone and blood when we kill a Trenditran with a phaser?" Data asked.

"Because we are seeing the remnants of the mold. I am not even certain that we are killing them when we blast them." Admiral Riker announced.

"You think if you grab one as they disintegrate, they will transport you with t hem?" Luke anticipated.

"Maybe, or maybe they will simply create a mold from me and transport me with them."

"It is a dangerous assumption, Admiral. You could be wrong. And even if you are not, how will you return?" Data asked.

"I don't know." Will Riker admitted. "But I owe it to Deanna to try."

"We owe it." Luke said. "You might need a physician."

"No!" Will insisted not wanting to see his only son killed. "It is too great a risk. You are staying here."

Luke's eyes pleaded as much as his words did. "Dad. I was in love with a girl - she was Betazoid. She was killed by the Trenditan. You, of all people, know what my life is like. Let me go with you. I have nothing to leave behind."

Data studied the Senior Staff as they gathered around the conference table. They had entered with their heads bowed down, quietly making their way to their usual seats. Several gave Doctor Riker a pat on the shoulder as they filed in, but none dared meet the gaze of the Admiral.

"We have come through a lot since the tragic accident that resulted in the retirement of Admiral Picard and Doctor Crusher. During that time, we have all learned a great deal about the Trenditans. Mostly we have learned how to run from them!" Six eyes shot up at the Admiral. Nodding now that he had their attention he continued, "I do not intend to run any longer. For sometime I have believed that the Trenditans simply transport their victims into their dimension when they appear on a ship. I do not believe that they kill their victims, as is commonly believed." Interrupting before the questions could start, Riker continued, "what we send into the solar flares or what is left when we blast them is but the by-products of the mold they create to hold them while they are here."

"Captain," Security Chief Lwana Helms began, "are you saying that you do not think the thousands of people that the Trenditan have captured are dead?"

Admiral Riker knew he needed to answer carefully. Every person in the room was scrutinizing him making up their own mind if he was in his right mind or not. "I do not know, but I suspect that the Trenditan simply transport our people into their own dimension."

"For what purpose, Admiral?" Engineering Chief LaForge questioned.

"That, is something I do not know." The Admiral answered truthfully.

Suddenly the door to the conference room opened. Standing in the doorway was an old friend Riker recognized immediately. She had aged some. Perhaps she looked a few years older, but no more. She stood and quietly asked, "Permission to enter,Sir."

Riker tilted his head. Guinan had never interrupted a staff meeting of Picard's and had never requested entry into one of his meetings, but something about the look in her eyes caused him to nod his concent. "Sir," she began, "I felt it important to let you know my impressions of the Trenditans."

"Why have you not come to me with your impressions earlier than this?" Riker asked.

"Recently," she stared challengingly at him, "there have been several disturbances in the time continuium that I have felt." She contined to look at the Admiral as if her look in itself conveyed all that was necessary to convey. "The last time the Trenditan attacked," she left unsaid, who was attacked, "I felt that person reaching out."

"Ambassador Riker." Doctor Riker replied. "Just say it, you felt Deanna Riker reach out."

The Doctor was clenching his jaw in a manner that the Admiral recognized as a habit of his own.

"Yes." Guinan confirmed, "when Ambassador Riker was attacked, I did not have the impression that she was killed, but merely," the hostess stopped as if searching for the precise word to use, "transported" somewhere.

Admiral Riker smiled slightly. "Thank you Guinan. That was my impression as well. For that reason, ladies and gentlemen," Riker paused for effect, "I and the doctor are going to attempt to get ourselves transported as well during the next attack."

An hour later, Will Riker put a light hand on the shoulder of his son. "Actually I thought they would give us a much harder time than that."

Luke Riker rolled his eyes in a manner that reminded his father of the boy's mother. "They think you are a lunitic gone mad with the death of mother who, at least is only going to get himself killed rather than the entire crew."

"Luke," Will began, "you don't have to"

"We've been over this before, you promised I could come." Luke insisted.

The wait was not long. Admiral Riker sat in the command chair noting that for some insane reason the long plummet of the Enterprise-D's last moments came to mind as the blue flash appeared on his bridge. He tried to clear his mind. He tried to reassure himself that the image was not an omen. Acting swiftly the Admiral and his son both jumped out and grabbed the blue flash of light before it could choose its victim. As he felt the heat of the Trenditan wrap around him Will tried to reach out for the one person in the universe who could cool his fear. He tried not to think about the sacrifice his son was making. He expected to be unconscious. He didn't know why. It just made sense somehow. The first thing he noticed was that his thoughts were entirely unorganized. Flashes of his life came and went like eddies in the ocean, and thoughts rose and decended like the huge waves that broke off the beaches of Betazed. Betazed. Deanna. He saw her as the 22 year old he had fallen in love with, as the 70 year old he had just made love to a few days earlier, as the 35 year old corpse preserved forever in the changed time line. He closed his eyes to plot out the shifting images that bombarded him. He closed his eyes and he breathed deeply. It was contradictory, but he was breathing. He watched her give birth. He gazed at her nude body in the Jalara Jungle. He watched her bent over her dead mother's body. He watched her laughing in ten-forward on the D. Was he dead? Was he about to die? Was he held in some limbo between life and death? He reached out, not because he believed she would be there, but because reaching out for her in times of trouble had become such a routine for him that he did it without thinking. Only this time, she reached out to him too, throwing him a mental life line that would reel him into safety.

Deanna's voice was a mixture of excitement tinged with sadness. "Imzadi! I knew you would come to me."

"Deanna? Where are you? Where are we? Are we dead?"

"No Will. We are not dead. We are slaves - slaves to the Trenditans, but at least we are together."

"Luke came too."

"I know, he is here. The Betazoids have joined together. Our telepathy allows us to tolerate the constant time shifts. The humans go mad quickly. Keep you eyes closed and follow only my thoughts, my love."

Riker listened to Deanna's voice in his head. He felt as if he were floating on the water, her words holding him up, bearing him along, gently pulling him to some safe shore. "There are very few Trenditan left. Certainly not enough to do all the manual labor required to keep their society running. They transport us during the day to a particular, static, time and we work for them in the fields. They would work us day and night, but they know we wouldn't last long then. During the resting phase they bring us back to their dimension. That is where we are now. Concentrate only on surviving the night, tomorrow will be easier." Gradually Will felt himself relaxing and drifting off to sleep. It wasn't difficult with his eyes closed and listening to the soothing sound of Deanna in his head. The last thing he heard as he fell asleep was the voice of Luke insisting if anyone could free the slaves it was Admiral William T. Riker. "Too bad," thought Will, "that the Admiral hasn't a clue what to do."

"Will! Will! Wake up!" Deanna's voice called. Will Riker started to open his eyes, but what he saw were flashes of a Borg, Picard jeering at him from the Borg ship, a Klingon Captain standing over him, Luke with a baby in his arms. "Will! Close your eyes. Listen only to my voice. We will be transported soon." The Admiral felt his stomach churn and then he heard Deanna's voice, clear and confident and reassuring. "Its okay, Imzadi. You are safe now."

Admiral Riker opened his eyes. Before him was Deanna but she appeared much younger than before. "How, how old are you?" he asked in wonder.

Deanna laughed. "To be honest I'm not sure, but judging by the fact that you have no beard and the color of your hair, I'd say we were both under thirty and probably around our mid-twenties. We go back and forward in time constantly from day to day, never knowing what our appearance will look like. We cannot go back further than the time in which we were born. That is why younger slaves, like Luke, do not appear with us on each work crew. They are sent to a more recent locale.

"Has anyone escaped?" The Admiral asked.

"No one has even tried. There are not even theories as to how to escape. Quickly. We need to begin work." She handed him a shovel, motioning to join a pack of people that were beginning to plow a field by hand. Riker took in the strange scene. For the look of the land and the people they could have been on Earth around 100 B.C. The fields stretched as far as the eye could see. A magnificent river, nearly a mile wide, ran through the fields and a very basic irrigation system of hand dug canals led from the river to the crops. Most of the crops appeared to have been corn or wheat, but the stalks were stripped and the laborers were digging the ground under with hand tools.

"Why the manual labor? Why don't they use machines?" Will asked, following Deanna obediently.

"I'm not sure. There is much I don't understand." Deanna shot him a quick smile then joined the line that was trudging through the field.

A Trenditan moved quietly among the group. The blue hued shape approached Deanna and Will. "You!" a voice sounded, "Come!" An alarm sounded and Riker felt Deanna's fear fill him with panic. "Deanna! Deanna, please! I can't think." Riker yelled. He felt her struggle to control her emotions.

"Maybe I can learn something that will help us get back." he whispered, but her despair revealed her belief that he was a dead man.

Five blue streaks of light gathered around Admiral Riker. In his head the Admiral heard, "Come." Obediently, Riker followed in step - he had no choice. Behind him, collapsed on the arm of her son, Deanna Troi Riker reached out to her husband and received his promise to return to her.

Admiral Riker followed the lights feeling like he was caught in the middle of a bad vid-film with bad special effects. He had gone a short ways when they abruptly stopped. Darkness enveloped him and he felt a strange tingling sensation. Once again images jumped out at him, moments of his life darted back and forth without pattern or meaning. Then the rate at which the images changed slowed until at last they coalesced into one specific moment. It was a strange moment to pick. It was the moment at which Deanna Troi gave birth to Ian Andrew Troi.

"Explain."

The Admiral was aware of the scene as if in a dream. He was not physically in the room and yet he could observe all that was happening including watching himself hand in the corner, watching Deanna and wishing that he was the one assisting her rather than Data. He remembered vividly the jealousy that he had felt at the time and the great sense of loss he had combated. He felt he had been robbed of the chance to be the father of Deanna's child or at least first child. He had no idea at the time of course, that there might be other children, despite the fact that she had whispered the sentiment to him later that night as he sat by her in her quarters."Explain what?" the Admiral asked confused.

"How?" the deep voice boomed.

How. How had it happened? How was it possible? How. "I don't know." the Admiral admitted. Then a thought occurred to him. "Was the entity involved one of the Trenditan?"

There was silence. The scene before the Admiral froze in time. It was like looking at a still painting of a moment caught on canvas. Then the answer came. "Where?"

Where - where were we? Where did the entity come from? Where did the entity go? "I don't know." Riker answered truthfully.

"Wrong." the voice intoned. Flashes of scenes sped before Riker. Close your eyes, Deanna had warned him. He closed them, but he still felt that he was flying at an ever increasing speed. Moving through space and time. "Deanna!" he projected never expecting to hear her voice in his head, but he did.

"Imzadi. You have returned,but I must go."

The Admiral tried to reach out with his hand but only emptiness greeted him. Emptiness and foreboding. He was once again in the resting place, locked in the 4th dimension as time spun and receeded around him. "Dad! Dad! Reach out to me." Riker heard Luke's voice and tried to concentrate on it. "Dad, this is Belona. She was my Imzadi who I thought was dead, but she lives. Belona will help you Dad, as Mom helped before. Do you remember?"

"Deanna?" The admiral asked.

A sweet, sad voice filled the Admiral's mind. "I am Belona, father of my Imzadi. Deanna Troi of the Fifth House is not here. Listen to my voice and survive the night. Perhaps your beloved will appear again. Stranger things have happened here in this place."

The Admiral followed the Belona's words of the ancient Betazoid poets, but his thoughts were on finding his wife and on escape.

The Admiral never fell asleep but listened throughout the night waiting for Deanna Riker's return. After many hours, he felt the now familiar dizzy sensation as the group was transported to their days work. The terrain was different today. A frozen wasteland stretched as far as the eye could see. Riker had witnessed such desolation before near the artic circle. The first thing the Admiral noticed however was that it was not freezing as it should be. "Dad! Look! Mom is coming!" Will was surprised to see that Luke was standing beside him, his arm around a beautiful, dark haired Betazoid girl who looked several years younger than Riker's son. Following Luke's pointed finger, Will did indeed see Deanna walking slowly toward them, surrounded by five blue lights. Squinting against the glare of the bright sun against the white expanse of the terrain, Will watched his wife approach. The lights stopped and Deanna continued the short path to Riker's side by herself. In his head Will heard her comment, "Most productive evening, Imzadi." Her enigmatic smile gave him hope that perhaps there was a way out of this slavery yet.

Today the job was to sit on the snow and pick up small, round pebbles. It seemed meaningless work. It did provide the opportunity though for Will and Deanna to exchange notes.

"Did they ask you about Ian?" Will questioned Deanna.

"Ian, my son? No! Why?" Deanna kept picking up the pebbles, seemingly hard at work.

Riker relayed his strange experience when he was led away. "So what did happen to you?" he asked, warily watching the blue lights that circled the group.

"I was led to a cave. When I got there time froze still. Moments past much as in our dimension. They never spoke to me. Instead I felt I was being examined somehow." Deanna fell silent still trying to determine why the aliens would have transported Will to Ian's birth.

"Perhaps Ian was one of the Trenditan." Will suggested.

"No, no I don't think so." Troi kept hard at work, stealing only an occasional glance at the circling Trenditan.

Riker decided to take another path. "Deanna, do you remember when Kirk and Spock took Captain Pike back to Talos IV where Pike lived out the rest of his life?"

"Will, I'm not as up on the adventures of Captain Kirk as you are." Deanna replied.

"Well, the important point is that everything on Talos IV was an illusion. Nothing was real. Deanna, I don't think we travel to different times or places. I think we are exactly where we are at the end of the day - during the resting time. I don't even think we are picking up pebbles right now." Riker waited. Troil was silent, but continued tothe work. Finally she spoke, "I will talk of this with you tonight Imzadi, for now, empty your mind for your thoughts are not your own." And fill your bucket quickly, you are getting behind.

Admiral Riker watched the Trenditan guards carefully as they circled the group. Occasionally a new Trenditan would arrive. Each time the appearance of a Trenditan would occur at the same spot on the frozen landscape and whenever a Trenditan left, Will noticed they always walked to that same spot as well. Thinking back he remembered that when he was transported to Ian's birth, he also had been escorted a ways before the guards had stopped. Perhaps the Trenditan required some sort of mechanism to transport themselves to where they wanted to go through time and space. Everyone had always assumed that the Trenditan possessed the ability, much like the Q Continuum, to travel on their own through time, now Riker was beginning to doubt that was true.

Will watched himself work in a rather detached way. Picking up pebbles and loading them into a bucket was a mindless, unproductive task. Whenever a race used slaves, it was generally for economic necessity or advantage. What was the economic advantage of picking up and depositing pebbles? Unless, he was right and this was an illusion in which case the group was not picking up pebbles at all but was engaged in a task that required the same hand movements. The question was, what would such a task be and why were the Trenditan bothering to create the illusion?

Several hours later the Trenditan gave their captives a food break. Will stretched his aching muscles and helped Deanna up. "You know I haven't been this stiff since I helped Data reconfigure the phase inducer modulator two years ago."

Deanna laughed, "You two spent three days on your hands and knees pulling one chip after another and until the pile of chips was nearly as tall as you and then another three days putting in the new chips! I remember."

Will stared at his wife. "Yes, I remember how sore my hands were from the repetition of the work. Deanna, I might know what we are doing here."

Back on board the Enterprise, Data was busy analyzing the data he had collected over the past three years since the appearance of the first Trenditan. Each time a Trenditan arrived on board the Enterprise, there had been a momentary drop in the energy level sent out by the warp phase inducer which had then spiked at the exact moment the Trenditan appeared. Now, at least Data knew how to recognize the arrival of a Trenditan. Data turned back to his terminal to consider the information he was receiving from Admiral Riker's locator beacon. The beacon was currently sending out signals from deep within the Alpha quadrant. It was a sector of space that the Federation had not yet explored. What was curious to Data, was that there did not seem to be any temporal distortion affecting the beacon. Perhaps the Trenditan were not 4th dimensional beings at all as they reported to be, perhaps they were simply using a long distance transporter beam. Data prepared his report for Starfleet command and waited. He did not have long to wait before his answer came. It was short and concise. "We are sending a reinforcement ship - we can only spare one. Await the arrival of the Difiant and proceed with all due haste."

Data arched his eyebrow as he read the communique. The Defiant? That was unusual."

*************

On the planet Admiral Riker slipped a pebble into his pocket to examine later. Then he continued to fill his bucket. Usually he dreaded the "resting time" as a time of chaos, but this day he anxiously awaited the moment when he could test his theory.

After several more hours the Trenditan gathered the group of workers together and transported them back. Once again time seemed to change from moment to moment. Reaching inside his pants pocket Riker's fingers sought out the pebble as he closed his eyes to the myriad images that flashed before him. He felt the small, round pebble change shape. It was a small, rectangle. He felt the front and back for the tiny, engraved lines he knew would be there. An isolinear chip. He now had two facts to work with: everything they experienced during the day was an illusion and anything that occurred during the resting time was real. Riker now turned his attention to a new problem. How to function within the resting time?

To be Cont.

I only do this for the pleasure of Imzadi fans. If you enjoyed the story or if you have suggestions, please send your comments to:Zlanna@Imzadi.org.