Chapter One

U.S.S. TITAN, STARDATE 57137.8

"No!!"

Deanna Troi bolted upright in bed. For a moment she felt adrift in the dark, in a void whose emptiness chilled her bare flesh. She wasn't sure where she was, or even who she was. She felt terrible fear, but did not know why.

But then she felt his arms embracing her, bringing her home. Will. Her imzadi. Her husband. Her captain. Her anchor. When he touched her, she was never lost.

She relaxed against him, and they stayed that way for a precious moment. Then he spoke softly. "The nightmare again?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "The same sense of… intrusion… yet different. Not as malevolent." Talking about the recurring nightmare brought unwelcome flashes of memory. It had been over three months since Shinzon of Remus and his viceroy Vkruk had raped her, using Vkruk's telepathy to place themselves in her mind while she made love with Will; yet although the nightmares came less frequently of late, her memory of the event remained as vivid as ever, and she knew it always would. What made it worse was that it had been her second telepathic sexual assault, the first being at the hands of the Ullian historian Jev nearly a dozen years ago. He too had usurped Will Riker's place in her perceptions, forcing her to relive an erotic memory which he twisted into a violation. It was a testament to Deanna's love and faith in Will that she was still able to take joy and comfort from his touch today.

Sometimes it took a little work, though. Reliving those memories intensified the fight-or-flight impulse the dream had triggered, and suddenly she felt a desperate need for personal space. She clambered out of bed and moved to the windows, not stopping to don a gown first. Over the past few months, Will had grown accustomed to her occasional need not to be touched, so he didn't follow. "Not as malevolent?" he asked, his voice gentle. "You seemed pretty scared."

Deanna stared out at the stars, gathering her thoughts. "I don't remember. It was as though… something else's fear was being forced into me."

"Something? Not someone?"

"It felt very alien. Yet… somehow distantly familiar." She shook her head, giving a slight, nervous chuckle. "Never mind. It was just a dream. A bit of undigested chocolate."

"You sure of that, Ebenezer?" She didn't have to turn to see the smirk on his face. "You've been contacted through dreams before. Eyes in the dark," he intoned in a spooky voice that made her laugh.

"Anything's possible, I suppose, but there's too little to go on." She gazed out at the stars. "Something alien, but familiar… probably some symbol my brain pieced together, representing anxiety at the unknown. A natural enough response, considering our mission."

She could feel his excitement at the mission that lay before them, and she shared it even without her empathy. Titan and her crew had been meant for pure exploration, but had been forced to defer that mission when Starfleet had assigned them to head a diplomatic task force to Romulus, assisting with the rebuilding efforts following Shinzon's bloody coup and subsequent self-destruction. Right afterward, Titan's aid in the search for a lost Romulan fleet had led to a fall down an extradimensional rabbit hole into the Small Magellanic Cloud, over 200,000 light-years from home. In theory, that had been an explorer's dream come true, but dealing with the destruction caused by the Red King entity and the rescue of the Neyel from their disintegrating homeworld had left no chance for real exploration. And then it had been back to Starbase 185 for two weeks of repairs and debriefing, and another two weeks and change moving out beyond Federation space, past Beta Stromgren, past Kappa Velorum, and finally, last night, past the farthest benchmark laid by Olympia on its Beta Quadrant survey eight years ago. From this point on, nobody knew what lay ahead.

It was not an unusual experience for an explorer, of course, and it was a welcome one; yet it naturally brought trepidation too, as any new undertaking did. Perhaps that was all there was behind her sense of alien-yet-familiar dread. Maybe it was heightened because from here on, they were completely on their own—no real-time contact with Starfleet Command, no starbases to offer rest and replenishment, no other starships able to reach them in a hurry. She had gotten a taste of that during their recent sojourn in the galaxy next door. But in an odd way there was something even more daunting about doing it on purpose.

She felt Will's gentle skepticism, reminding her that she sometimes overanalyzed, an occupational hazard. "Probably," he said aloud. "But keep a mental eye out, just in case."

Now she did turn to him. "Aye, aye, Captain," she said with an insouciant salute.

He looked her over, reminding her that she was thoroughly out of uniform. "Must be cold over by the windows. Wanna come back to bed?"

"No, thanks," she replied after a moment. Somehow she didn't feel chilled anymore; it must have been a relic of the dream. "I don't think I could get back to sleep right away. Maybe I'll go for a walk to clear my head."

"All right, then." She sensed the disappointment that he quickly reined in. She knew he regretted that he couldn't always be the one to make her feel better, to take care of her. But she also knew he understood how it was for her. Not long before her ordeal with Shinzon, Will had suffered his own ordeal, held hostage and tortured by the dictator Kinchawn of Tezwa. He still had his own occasional nightmares, and though he'd cherished her comfort and support, still there were times that he needed to deal with them on his own. After all, in the wake of being victimized, degraded and depersonalized, it was healthy to reassert one's independence, to find one's own inner strength.

Deanna went to the closet, slipped on a light blue wrap and a pair of sandals, and headed out the door. She sent a light mental caress Will's way, only to find that he'd already drifted off again. Still, his serenity in slumber was a pleasant sendoff.

Copyright © 2006 by Paramount Pictures