Kyle rolled out from under the table, close to where Bonner had been standing. He willed himself to be calm, collected. He breathed slowly but shallowly, trying to keep his breath and his heartbeat quiet. Kyle Riker had played a lot of anbo-jytsu in his time. He didn’t need to be able to see to fight.

Bonner, for his part, wasn’t a difficult target. He sobbed once and drew in his breath, and Kyle charged him. In the dark he misestimated Bonner’s height, slightly, and hit him higher than he’d wanted, his shoulder colliding with the vice admiral’s chest instead of his ribcage. Even so, they both fell back. But Bonner crashed against a wall and didn’t go down. The phaser discharged again, its beam jetting harmlessly into the ceiling, sending down a cascade of sparks but injuring no one.

Kyle grabbed for Bonner’s wrist, but the man was strong in spite of his insanity—or maybe because of it, Kyle thought. He took a couple of hard blows to the head as he wrestled Bonner in the dark. He wasn’t sure how many more of those he’d be able to shrug off. He needed to take Bonner down, fast.

The lights came back on. “See here, Bonner,” Kyle heard Admiral Paris saying once he could see what was happening. Bonner ignored him, and Kyle tried to ignore everything. Bonner’s madness had indeed given him strength—or else he was right, and there were two people in him, each contributing his own strength. In spite of Kyle’s best efforts, Bonner had managed to angle his wrist so that his phaser was pointed directly at Kyle’s head.

“We’d like to see your precious strategy get you out of this,” Bonner snarled. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Kyle released Bonner’s wrist suddenly. Since Bonner had been fighting against the pressure Kyle had been putting on it, the sudden action made his arm drop precipitously. Kyle sidestepped the phaser blast, which tore a hole in the floor, and moved in with a left jab at Bonner’s middle. The left was a feint. When Bonner moved to block it, Kyle instead threw a right that connected hard with Bonner’s chin. Kyle thought he might have broken a knuckle, but he didn’t care. Bonner’s head snapped back, blood already trailing from his mouth, and slammed into the wall behind him. Kyle followed up with another left, a real one this time, but Bonner was already sliding down the wall, unconscious. Kyle caught his wrist and worked the phaser from his hand, then let the vice admiral fall to the floor.

“Sometimes, Vice Admiral Bonner,” he said in reply to the man’s final statement, “all the strategy in the world isn’t worth as much as a good right hook.”

“Is he insane, do you think, Kyle?” Owen Paris asked him later. “Even with all of our science, all our knowledge, there’s so much we don’t know about the human mind. We can’t build ships that can go in and explore it like we do outer space. We’re only guessing at so much of it. Is it possible that Heidl really is, somehow, in there with Bonner?”

They were in Owen’s office. They had eaten some lunch, and Kyle felt better, more relaxed and contented, than he had in a very long while. He took a sip of excellent coffee. “I’ll leave it to people smarter than me to figure that out,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s just nuts. He had to listen to his stepson die. The Berlincame to drop off the team that was to investigate Heidl’s experiments, then it left. Bonner was on that ship, keeping it just far enough away to not be able to help when the Tholians came, but trying to keep it close enough that Heidl could escape to it. Heidl went back, as Bonner said, but then the attack came and no one could beam off the starbase anymore. He tried to launch a shuttle—our records prove that someone tried to—but he couldn’t do that either. He was trapped on the starbase, and Bonner was stuck listening to him die. Then he couldn’t tear himself away from listening to the rest of the invasion either. It must have been then that he went insane, or started to.”

Owen steepled his hands and tapped his fingertips against his mouth. “You’re probably right,” he said. “At least, that story fits the facts that we know. The other facts—what Heidl and his friends were working on, why Donner went on that trip and why he couldn’t save Heidl—we’ll just have to speculate on. Or take Bonner’s word for.”

“I’m not sure I’d do that,” Kyle suggested. “Bonner’s word probably isn’t good for much.”

“What amazes me,” Owen said, “is how long he was able to function here. We’ll go through his records thoroughly, and maybe we’ll find that he wasn’t really functioning all that well. But he seemed to be. He passed. Except that he was also busy planning his revenge on you, for surviving when Heidl couldn’t.”

“And on Will,” Kyle reminded him. “It’s no coincidence that it was the Pegasushe tried to sabotage.”

Owen’s eyes widened. “I hadn’t even thought of it that way,” he said.

“Your mind isn’t devious enough,” Kyle said. “You sure you want to go into space again?”

“I hope a devious mind isn’t a necessary prerequisite,” Owen replied. “From listening to the Pegasustoday, though, it sounds like courage is.”

Kyle simply nodded, and Owen continued. “Who do you suppose that was,” he asked, “who spoke up, volunteering to initiate the auto-destruct since the first officer wouldn’t? The voice sounded awfully familiar to me.”

Kyle just looked at Owen, sitting across the desk from him. “You know who it was,” he said.

“I know who I think it was. And his name’s Riker.”

“Of course it was Will,” Kyle confirmed. “Who else but a Riker?” He was willing to blow up his own ship to pull off a bluff—moving close enough to the enemy to guarantee that if the ship did auto-destruct, it’d’ take both ships with it. Given that the phrase ‘self-sacrifice’ didn’t seem to be in their vocabulary, the Omistol hadto cut their tractor. Will’s a chip off the old block, that’s for sure.”

“He’s the image of his old man,” Owen said with a friendly smile. “I hope I have a crew full of young people just like him on the Al-Batani.I hope Tom grows up just as gutsy.”

“If you have a crew like that Ensign Janeway,” Kyle told him, “you’ll be in good shape.”

“She’s a peach, all right,” Owen agreed. “Kyle, I just can’t wait to get out there.”

Later still, Kyle walked alone alongside the bayfront, enjoying the cool snap of the wind as it blew off the water. For a change, there were no security officers following him, and he did not miss their presence. He was convinced that his ordeal was finally over, that there would be no more attempts on his life now that Horace Bonner was in custody.

Instead of worrying about his own safety, though, he thought about Will, so far away, one little person on one little ship in the vastness of the universe. There would be dangers untold in Will’s future, he knew. As he’d told Owen, Will was a Riker, through and through. Of coursehe had volunteered to blow up the ship. He put duty before his own fears, his own feelings. That’s what Rikers did.

But when he thought of Will, so far away, acting like a Riker, he did so with a great sense of melancholy. The Rikers had a way about them, that much was undeniable. Kyle Riker looked out across the bay, then up at the sky, where a single star appeared above the horizon. He felt a kinship with that star, alone in the sky. Acting like a Riker had put him here, he knew. Being a Riker had made him alone. He had never really seen it before, had learned this lesson much too late to do him any good, or to save any of the possible futures he might have had, with Kate or with Michelle.

Or with Will.

He just hoped his son could learn the lessons he had more easily than he had. He hoped that Will could become a different kind of Riker, could become unlike his old man, who loved him dearly but couldn’t find a way to tell him so.