She hesitated, looked down a moment, then sighed. “I don’t know, Captain. Data is different. If the grain is somehow affecting him it has more to do with biology than psychology.”
“I realize that.” Pulling his arm from Beverly for the last time as she closed her medical case, Picard tugged at the sling and cast her an appreciative glance.
“Your arm needs more than I can do for it here,” Beverly said. “The bone is set and mending but sensitive. No more rabble-rousing.”
Picard nodded, caring less about the condition of his arm and more about the condition of his ship. He returned his attention to Deanna. “What I need to know, Counselor, is if there’s anything I can use when dealing with him.”
Deep brown eyes looking distant, then intently at Picard, Deanna finally said, “Work with his insanity, rather than against.”
Twisting toward the opening lift doors, Picard bumped his still tender elbow on the Klingon’s high command chair. He winced in pain and sucked in a breath of the stale bridge air that still reeked of smoke and burnt circuits.
Riker stepped off the lift, followed by Kadar.
“Nearly ready to get underway. Warp speed should be available in a few minutes,” Riker said. “We’ll only be able to manage about warp four—there’s too much structural damage.”
Picard knitted his brows. “Let’s hope it’s enough. Sensors indicate Enterprise Battle Section is nearing warp three. We can catch up if she maintains speed.”
“It’s only a matter of time before Data fixes whatever Geordi did in the computer,” Riker pointed out. “And once we get there, what can we do? Kadar’s engineer is injured, and even if he wasn’t, the disrupter core is fused.”
“Torpedoes?” Picard asked.
“They are operational but damaged,” Kadar said, lowering himself into the command chair. “The entire system could short out any moment. I have contacted Qo’noS. They will be ready for the Enterprise with ten cruisers. If we fail to stop the android . . .”
Kadar let the sentence trail off, but it hammered into Picard nonetheless. The Klingon captain obviously understood the sensitivity and perhaps had also gained some respect for the Federation and its Starfleet.
“Vessels in this sector?” Picard asked Riker.
“Nothing within range. The Excalibur is Ambassador class, but it’s twelve days away at maximum warp. They’re the closest.”
“We have nothing, Picard,” Kadar said. “Not even the element of surprise. Our cloak is destroyed, your android will see us coming, and in a ship he believes is the enemy’s.”
“Us” and “we.” It was the closest Kadar could come to an apology . . . and it meant a great deal. Picard nodded his acceptance.
“We have one thing in our favor,” Picard said. “Where is Urosk?”
Surprised, Riker looked from Kadar to Picard. “He and his men beamed up. They’re also making repairs.”
“Get him on the comm.”
Riker nodded, mumbled permission from the Klingon communications officer as he walked over to the console, and pecked at the controls.
“On screen,” he said.
Turning toward the main viewer, Picard cleared his throat. “Captain Urosk.”
Urosk, on the bridge of his own vessel, appeared as the screen flickered to life. “Captain.”
Picard stepped forward. “I’m in need of your help—”
Cutting Picard off, Urosk stood and stepped closer to his viewer. His now unmasked face filled the screen. “We are prepared to leave orbit at a course of your choosing. Give us your coordinates and we will beam you aboard.”
A slight smile curling his lips, Picard nodded his thanks.
“You have a plan, sir?” Riker asked.
“Indeed I do, Number One,” Picard said. “Though. I can’t say you’ll enjoy it. And I know I won’t.”
The Hidran bridge was cool and dreadfully humid. Uncomfortable, but breathable. Urosk’s face, perhaps because the breathing mask was gone, was less harsh than it appeared on the planet, his expression was calmer.
Few words had been spoken between the two captains since Picard had beamed aboard. Perhaps Urosk felt somewhat responsible—Data had been reading their version of shared Hidran/Klingon history when he’d eaten the grain. They all assumed the same thing—the android was in some sort of a logic-loop. The conclusions he’d been reading had become his own, all because of the grain’s impact on his organic components.
At least that was the hope. If not, then Data was insane, or damaged, or had malfunctioned. In any case, he had to be stopped. Picard wanted to do that himself, with the help of these two vessels. Otherwise Data, Geordi, and everyone else on Battle Drive might die when the ship met the Klingon fleet.
Through the haze that was the Hidran’s normal breathing environment, Picard squinted at the main viewer. The Klingon vessel was a dot at the center of a bland starscape as it struggled to match the Hidran’s pace.
Riker had stayed with the Klingons to repair as many systems as possible, as Picard and the Hidran took the lead, in hopes of masking the Klingon ship from Enterprise’s sensors.
“I need a current sensor scan,” Picard said to Urosk.
The Hidran captain rose and gestured to a console near what appeared to be the helm. The control panel was higher off the deck than Picard was used to, but amazingly like a Klingon access board.
Pecking at the console, Picard brought up a display of the sector, then tapped the coded-frequency comm badge he’d requested sent from the Saucer. “Picard to Riker.”
“Riker here.”
“Enterprise is approaching warp four,” Picard said, following the flash that represented the Battle Section with his finger.
“We can’t push this ship, Captain,” Riker said. “She’ll tear apart.”
“Damn,” Picard huffed, pounding his fist on the console. What good was any of this? He twisted toward Urosk. “What’s your maximum?”
“Coolant leaks are causing overheating,” Urosk said, his voice more fluid and smooth without the muffling mask. “We can manage warp six. Slightly more if we are lucky.”
“Got that, Riker?” Picard asked.
“Aye, sir. But if we speed ahead to slow them down, that ruins any chance of surprise. Right now surprise is all we’ve got going.”
Tension filling every muscle, Picard stared at the blip that was Enterprise.
“Commander, stand by for further orders.”
Picard closed the frequency and turned fully toward the Hidran Captain. “I need to risk your ship.”
His head tilted a moment and Urosk glanced from Picard’s arm to his eyes. Maybe he regretted his earlier action, or maybe he understood something about commanding a mission.
When the Hidran captain finally spoke, it was for the bridge crew to hear as well as Picard. “I will belay any action I believe an indiscretion. Other than that . . . I give you my ship.”
Light was a turtle, Enterprise the hare.
Picard shifted his weight from one foot to the other on the lower deck of the Hidran bridge. The deck plates were humming, rattling in a way he knew they should not.
The Enterprise battle drive was a dot on the forward viewer—a foreboding dot. A goal Picard needed to reach. Didn’t want to, but that made it no less an imperative.
They could fire on her from here, but without much effect. Torpedoes could be maneuvered around, disrupters or phasers would lose their bite. He needed to be close to her. Close enough to . . . fire on his own ship. To tear apart what he was sworn to protect. To rip at his own soul in the hopes no one else would have to.
Slowly the Enterprise grew on the screen. Too slowly. All this speed underneath him—physics warping, bolts pulling, energy gripping the ship to hold it all together—and yet all too sluggish. And all for naught if she couldn’t be reached.
Data refused to answer any hail.
“Klingon ship firing, sir!”
White-hot globes of power slapped into the Hidran
ship.
“Aft disrupters, fire,” Urosk ordered.
“Clean miss, sir.”
“Again, fire!”
The ship buffeted as another volley crunched against her shields.
“Shields down sixty percent, sir.”
“Vent coolant from decks twelve and thirteen.”
“Send out a frantic SOS,” Picard added, pivoting back to the main viewer. “Aft view.”
Angry orange bolts came screaming from the darkness of space. They almost enveloped the screen before exploding into flame, glaring Picard’s view.
Picard gripped the helmsman’s chair. “Drop aft shields now!”
Shock from the salvos razed the unshielded hull.
“Power down all weapons,” Urosk ordered. “Resend distress call on all Starfleet frequencies.”
Come on, Data . . . a friend in need is a friend indeed. I know your morality is still there, even if misplaced.
The Hidran Picard remembered as Meliosh twisted from the helm. “Captain,” he said to Urosk, “Enterprise is slowing. She reverses her course!”
“On screen,” Urosk ordered. “Stand by.”
“Standing by, sir.”
Picard tensed. His ship out there, ready to be scuttled at his own order. He stepped back down to the lower command deck. “Captain,” he said, pointing at a tactical display of the quickly approaching Enterprise, “Here, here, and there—main shield generators.”
Urosk shook his head. “Computer locks are not functioning.”
Pulling in a deep breath, Picard turned back toward the main viewer.
Gracefully Enterprise strutted toward them, growing larger as they likewise sped toward her.
“Speed?”
“Half impulse. He is requesting communications.”
“Range?”
“Three hundred thousand kilometers—closing.”
Urosk glanced up to Picard. “You have command, Captain.”
Chest tight, his right arm tensing itself into pain again, Picard stared at his ship, perhaps for the last time—
His ship. His.
“Stand by, everyone,” Picard said, and felt the tension of the Hidran who’d been told to obey his commands. How far could he push them? He could not ask them to give their lives for his ship. Data could be stopped, with some loss to the Klingon fleet, but was that risk the Hidran’s to take? Did they have a duty to sacrifice themselves because Data believed their rhetoric?
How could he ask for their lives merely because they had written their history with a jaundiced eye?
“Captain Picard?” Urosk prodded. “Enterprise is within range.”
“The Starfleet vessel is locking phasers on the Klingon ship.”
Again the Hidran craft shook as torpedoes sped passed her, glancing the shields.
Enterprise ascended as it took an evasive course toward the Klingons.
“One hundred thousand kilometers.”
Picard nodded and narrowed his eyes. “Full shields—power to weapons. Fire!”
The Hidran ship gathered itself and fired. Orange bulbs of energy punched point blank into Enterprise, spreading out over the shields and wrenching the marrow from Picard’s own bones.
“Fire!”
Red snarls of disrupter fire spiraled around Enterprise as she twisted away and volleyed a few torpedoes in defense.
The Hidran vessel shook, pummeled by the shots.
“Bolster the shields!” Urosk called out. “Come about to aft course.”
“Target engineering,” Picard ordered, gripping the edge of the helm console with tense fingers. “Fire!”
Another salvo of torpedoes engulfed her. Picard couldn’t breathe.
The Klingon ship swooped down out of warp and its phasers sliced into Enterprise’s hull.
It burned, by god it burned—as surely if it were his own skin.
“Status!” he barked, hoping he’d done enough.
“His shields are holding.”
Not his shields—mine. My ship!
Hawk-like, the Klingon vessel plunged past her again, brightening space with orange spheres that smashed into Enterprise and sent her bouncing off her course.
“Her shields are weakening!”
Picard mopped his brow with a wet sleeve as Enterprise spat back furious bars of bloody raw power, rocking the ship around him.
Eyes fixed on her sweeping lines as she curled around to fire another blast at her master, Picard yanked up his hand phaser and ordered, “Target aft shields and fire!”
He tapped his comm badge and looked away as the shots rang out. “Riker, stand by!”
The Enterprise captain swung back to the Hidran helm. “Well?”
“One more,” Meliosh assured him.
“Fire then!”
Picard heard the energy scream from the ship—felt the wave of the blast.
“His aft shields are down!” Meliosh yelled.
Picard sucked in a breath of moist air and lifted his phaser to chest level. “Now, Riker! Now!”
Crewman Lopez was the first he’d found. Riker holstered the tricorder but kept his phaser in hand as he tried to position the unconscious man in what would be a comfortable position when he finally awoke.
The tricorder reopened, he checked again for any residual gas, then scanned for Data.
As soon as he beamed aboard the android had left the battle bridge. Probably changed course too. The Klingon and Hidran vessels would be left behind.
Enterprise was alone again, and Riker with it. If Picard’s plan failed, Riker too would die at the hands of ten Klingon battle cruisers.
Data was difficult to scan with a tricorder. Riker couldn’t link in to the ship’s computer to get a tack from the android’s comm badge, and he wasn’t about to actually ask where Data was. Once again Picard had ordered no easy task.
Riker scratched at his leg—it only itched now—and continued up the corridor. He glanced down at the tricorder. “Faint energy readings,” he mumbled. Could mean anything.
He ambled up the corridor, waiting for a sound, an indication, something that might give him an edge.
Suddenly the tricorder graph shot off the scale.
A smile tugged at his lips. An edge.
He adjusted the right buttons, and headed where it told him.
Twenty meters straight, ten left, another five left. At least that’s what he figured—the tricorder didn’t account for walls, it only told him linear direction.
He marched slowly, cautiously. Data could set a trap as easily as the next Starfleet officer. And the android had an advantage—the ship’s computer at his disposal. He could move force fields and drop emergency bulkheads, effectively trapping Riker where he stood.
He looked down at the tricorder again. What if that was a force field reading?
No—it fluctuated, a wild lash across the graph.
He pressed on. There was no place else to go.
Up one corridor, vigilantly down the next.
Mumblings . . . No—yelling—up the hallway.
Riker stopped, listened a moment, then discreetly edged himself up the next corridor, careful not to trip over any crewmen that happened to have fallen in the path.
“You can’t win, Data,” Picard yelled, and Riker heard a phaser whine.
The only return argument was another phaser blast.
He poked his head around the corner, making sure to keep himself hidden from view. Picard was using a door alcove as cover at one end of the hall, Data was doing the same toward Riker’s position.
Picard fired again, a bright orange lance sparking off the wall above Data and chipping the plasticine onto the android’s head.
The captain’s phaser was set to kill.
“You’re alone, Data,” Picard said. “The Klingon Empire will live a thousand years longer than you could hope to survive. Give up now while you still have the chance.”
Data returned the fire and nearly connected with his target as Picard fell back into the d
arkness of the alcove.
Boldly, Picard rolled across the hall to another door way, squeezing off two shots as he went. The deck in front of Data flared into smoke and spark, obscuring his view.
“Captain,” Data said, his voice normal if somewhat muted, “I cannot give you this ship. I have sworn an oath and will not break it.”
“There are no oaths,” Picard said. “Starfleet is ours.” The captain poked out of his cover and fired again. The dart of energy flew past Data and Riker had to yank his own head back as it glanced by.
Only a few meters apart, Data and Picard traded volleys again. Riker sank back against the wall, setting down the tricorder and resetting his phaser.
Stun. Heavy stun.
Picard fired once more, and the whine of his powerful setting whipped past again.
“Let us help you, Data,” Picard yelled. “Put down the phaser and surrender control of the ship and you’ll be kept alive—perhaps to fight another day. But stand in our way now, and we’ll destroy you!”
One . . .
Riker tensed and pushed himself up to a squat.
Two . . .
He checked the phaser setting again, and also prepared to reset it to kill if he had to.
Three!
“No!” He leapt out—skid up the corridor—and fired.
An orange spear knocked Picard back into his alcove and through the door.
Riker dove, rolled onto a knee, and aimed at Picard’s limp form—ready to fire again.
Breathing heavily he looked up at Data. “You okay?”
Eyebrows slightly arched, the android nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Our good captain here had me confined when I found out what was going on,” Riker explained bitterly as he rose. “I escaped the Klingon brig—made it to their transporter room. I’m almost glad they knocked out your shields. I’m not sure where I would have gone.”
Data pushed himself up from his crouched position. “I am pleased to see you are well, sir—”
“No time for that, Data.” Riker gestured toward the nearest turbolift. “Report ship’s status.”
His phaser now at his side, Data began for the lift. “We are back on a course toward the Klingon Neutral Zone. Shields are down and I suggest—”
The android stiffened, his entire body gripped in energy.
FOREIGN FOES Page 23
