Текст книги "The Red King "

Автор книги: Michael Martin

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“Riker here. Go ahead, Christine.”

“You wanted hourly reports on the chase, Captain.Titan andValdore are still slowly closing on the Romulan fleet. We’ll be within transporter range inside of two hours. And none of the ships are showing any sign of having noticed us yet.”

Very strange. “Any challenges yet from Neyel military vessels?”

“No, sir. And Jaza has been scanning constantly. He even found a way to increase sensor net acuity by cannibalizing and replicating some of the circuitry from those Tal Shiar listening devices we picked up back in Ki Baratan, in the Romulan Senate chambers. We’ve detected a few warp profiles, but no Neyel ships have expressed any real interest in us, and they’ve made no active scans.”

That struck Riker as even stranger, given the Neyel’s historic penchant for paranoia and aggression. Perhaps the sainted Ambassador Burgess had done her peacemaking job here a mite toowell.

“Any change in the fleet’s warp field oscillations?”

“Negative. They’re still displaying the same electronic ‘thumbprint’as the Red King.”

Riker exchanged a significant glance with Deanna, and he knew at once that her thoughts were mirroring his own. The intelligence that’s evolving inside our restless new protouniverse reallyhas gone…sleepwalking.

“There’s something else, Captain,”said another businesslike voice. This one belonged to Jaza. “I’ve just completed some new long-range scans on the G-eight star system that lay along the fleet’s heading when we first detected their warp signatures yesterday. The fleet has passed through the system, and the primary star has been…disrupted.”

“Disrupted how?”

Magnetospheric distortions are kicking up huge flares and prominences, some stretching nearly fifty million kilometers from the photosphere.

Riker blanched, as did Deanna. Neither of them were astrophysics specialists, but they both knew that such huge solar events in either the Sol or Betazed systems would be considered unparalleled catastrophes. Starfleet would respond with nothing short of planetwide evacuations.

“Inhabited planets?”

“Local stellar cartographic data is incomplete. But if therewere any typical M-Class worlds in that system, there certainly aren’t any therenow .”

Riker felt his body slacken, and his chair shifted backward to take up the suddenly dead weight. Somehow, after an indeterminate and indeterminable amount of time, he straightened and found his voice.

“Was this another spatial effect created by the protouniverse?”

“Not directly, sir, according to my latest scans. The star seems to be responding directly to subspatial distortions consistent with the deliberate activation of multiple tandem warp fields in extremely close proximity to the star’s photosphere.”

“You’re saying…Donatra’s fleet caused this on purpose?”said Deanna, her jaw hanging open.

“We won’t know their intentions for sure until we talk to them, Commander,”Jaza said. “But that’s certainly how things look from the bridge.”

Or maybe the Red King likes to play with matches in its sleep,Riker thought.

“What about the rift’s ongoing general effects on the composition of local space?” he asked aloud. “Any changes?”

“The general integrity of normal space is still deteriorating steadily along predicted and measurable curves. No surprises reported by listening postDugh, for whatever that’s worth. Bottom line: I still expect that within a few weeks at the outside, most of the systems located within two parsecs of the rift will be blotted from existence, violently. Just as Lieutenant Pazlar’s initial holographic models predicted.”

“It’s trying to clear out a space it can grow into,” Deanna said, her tone a mix of sobriety and horror. “And take over.”

Unless we somehow nudge this “Sleeper” back down into a deeper sleep,Riker thought. Or persuade it to finish waking up someplace else, someplace very far from here.

He was suddenly and uncomfortably reminded of his own ancestors, who had “cleared” an entire continent on Earth, heedless of the fact that it was already occupied.

“Keep closing the distance between us and Donatra’s fleet,” Riker said. “And keep me informed. Riker out.”

He saw that Deanna was regarding him in silence. “And once we catch up to it?”

He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “We board one of Donatra’s ships and try to…persuade this thing to start making nice.”

“Are you sure it’s safe to assume that it wantsto make nice?”

He allowed his smile to fall as he began absently placing the toppled, captured chess pieces back on the board before him. “As our esteemed Capellan admiral might say, I’m going into this with open hearts and hands.

“But also with phasers locked and loaded.”

Chapter Eleven

R ed.

Lost in a ruby sea and embraced by silence, he gradually became aware of tiny noises, mechanical sounds that whispered and sluiced along, steady yet hidden. The red had finished its violent churning and had finally calmed, steadied itself into tranquil crimson stillness near the top of the stein.

Keru recoiled from the bloodwine, wondering what had possessed him to order the vile drink, suspecting Bishop-Walker of pulling a prank on him. He scanned the vast room for the bartender, butTitan ’s mess hall was dark and conspicuously empty at the moment. Almost.

“Aren’t you done yet?”

Keru turned. His companion wasn’t looking at him, but rather reclined in his chair, his crossed feet resting atop the corner of the table, opposite Keru, his nose buried as usual in that odd human book he never seemed to tire of reading. Keru looked at his face, recognized the sapphire eyes, the strong jaw, the rumpled-but-stern smile, and found that he couldn’t answer at first. His throat felt dry and parched, his tongue swollen. “What did you say?” Keru whispered finally.

Sean finally met his eyes. “I said, aren’t you done yet?” he repeated with a chuckle. “It seems like you’ve been contemplating that drink forever, and I really want to hear about your new ship.”

A wave of anxiety slammed into Keru. “I didn’t order any damn bloodwine.”

“Oh, I beg to differ,” Sean laughed. “Personally, I dunno how you can stand it. Too bitter.”

Keru’s anxiety mixed with confusion. “Sean,” he breathed. “What are we doing here? We’re supposed to be back on theEnterprise .”

Sean’s expression turned to one of disappointment. “Oh, come on,” he complained, snapping closed his copy ofPeter and Wendy and tossing it onto the table as he sat up and leaned toward Keru. “You’re kidding me, right? You have this new ship, this new life, and you’re still clinging to the past? Whoa, who the hell is that?”

Keru turned. In the shadows, Dr. Ree walked past their table, dragging the corpse of an enormoustarg behind him. Keru winced. The stench of the Klingon animal was stifling, but Sean seemed unaffected by the smell; his eyes were merely alight with awe at the sight of Ree.

“That’s the CMO,” Keru said dismissively. “Look, we don’t have to stay here.”

Sean ignored him. “What is he, a Pahkwa-thanh? I’ve never seen one in the flesh before. There’s, what, less than a hundred of them in Starfleet?”

“Something like that,” Keru said. “Can we leave now?”

“Okay,” Sean said amiably as he refocused on Keru. “Where can we go next? What’sTitan ’s engine room like? Do you think Captain Riker would mind if I visited the bridge? I’d love to see what the conn—”

“No!” Keru snapped. “Sean, look, I…” He faltered, trying to re-form his emotions into words. “I just want us to go back home.”

Sean tilted his head to one side. “Youare home, Ranul. I’m just visiting.”

“No, I meanour home, back on—”

“Knock it off,” Sean said. “Honestly Ranul, I knew you could be a stick in the mud at times, but you’ve graduated to becoming an honest-to-goodness killjoy, you know that? What’s the matter with you?”

Keru’s hand closed tightly around the stein. He looked back down into his drink, the choking scent of it at once unbearable and irresistable.

“It’s the damn bloodwine,” he rasped. “I can’t get the taste out of my mouth. It’s poisoning me.”

Silence had settled between them. Finally Sean agreed with him. “Yeah,” he said quietly, his voice sounding sad for the first time. “Yeah, I’m afraid it is.”

Keru met his eyes, felt tears streaming from his own. “Am I dying?”

Sean shrugged and gave him a lopsided smile. “Let’s just say you aren’t exactly living.”

Keru reached out, tried to take Sean’s hand, but his old love was beyond his reach. The realization crushed him. “Why’d you come here?”

“Honestly? Maybe just to kick you in the ass.” Sean’s eyes brightened. “How am I doing so far?”

Keru laughed in spite of himself. “Up to your usual standards, I think.”

“Let’s just assume you meant that as a compliment and move on, shall we?”

Keru’s laugh turned bitter. “Move on to where?”

“I need to get going, Ranul. And you have a life to get back to.”

Keru hesitated. “I just wish…”

“Yes?”

“I just wish we had more time.”

Sean’s eyebrows drew together. “Was the time we had really so terrible?”

“What? You know that isn’t what I meant,” Keru protested.

“Hey, you’re the one from the culture that reveres memories above all else. What am I supposed to think when you make choices like this?” Sean gestured at the bloodwine between them. “Becausethis doesn’t honor what we had together.”

Keru shut his eyes and bit into his lip. With a deep breath, he said, “I’m not sure I can do this without you, Sean.”

“Then let me be sure of it for both of us.”

Keru looked at his drink again. With deliberate effort, he relaxed his grip on the stein, and pushed it away from him.

“There’s the big lug I know and love,” Sean said approvingly.

“Oh, shut the hell up,” Keru laughed. Then, after a moment he whispered, “I miss you.”

“I know,” said Sean. “But that’s okay.” He grinned and started to walk away. Keru’s heart ached to watch him go, but then he saw that Sean had left his treasured book behind.

“Hey, Sean,” Keru called.

Sean turned back one last time.

Keru smiled. “Have an awfully big adventure.”

Sean Hawk winked at him, and the darkness melted away.

Chapter Twelve

STARDATE 57028.7

“D o you think this will really work, Captain Riker?”Donatra asked, her saturnine face glowering out across Titan’s bridge from the main viewer.

Seated in the command chair, Riker saw that her gaze seemed to linger for a moment on Frane, who was standing quietly near the turbolift in the raised aft area of the bridge. She no doubt was looking askance at his lax security, though to Riker the Neyel’s presence was merely a gesture meant to convince Frane that Titan’s multispecies crew was indeed a product of cooperation rather than conquest.

“I think a lot of that depends on just how good this artificial intelligence of yours turns out to be, Commander,” Riker said, crossing his legs.

“Don’t discount the expertise of your own people, Captain. They stopped a civil war on Romulus, which is no small feat. So I have to imagine that they’ll be more than up to the task of handling a simple case of—what is it you humans call it?—‘demonic possession.’ ”

Riker smiled gently at that, realizing that she was attempting to lighten the mood with a bit of gallows humor. “Is your team in position, Commander?”

“We’re standing ready.”

Riker rose and cast a nod toward an attentive Cadet Dakal, who was watching him from the forward ops console. Looking back up toward Donatra, he said, “I’m headed for the transporter room now. My ops officer will coordinate the precise beam-in time with your crew.”

“Then we’ll see you shortly, Captain. Donatra out.”The image of the Romulan commander vanished, replaced by a velvet-black starscape. Several dozen of the fixed stars that were now visible, however, weren’t stars at all. They were moving slowly, in an almost languid drift against the fixed backdrop of infinite night.

Warships, flying in formation, nearly thirty-thousand kilometers distant. Romulan vessels, D’deridex– and Mogai– class all. And all of them were no doubt heavily armed.

Riker gave silent thanks that none of the errant vessels seemed as yet to have noticed their pursuers.

He turned to face Vale, who was staring at the tiny blips displayed on the screen, no doubt preoccupied by thoughts very similar to his own. “You have the bridge, Commander,” Riker said. “I’ll be leading our away team myself.”

She frowned as she fixed him with a level gaze. “Respectfully, Captain, you’re too valuable to place yourself at risk.”

Tuvok stepped forward from the aft tactical station. “I must agree, sir.”

Riker looked toward Deanna, who was seated in her customary position to the immediate right of his command chair. Though she was gazing up at him with an expectant expression, she said nothing.

“Objections noted,” Riker said. “But this situation is too critical for me to keep it at arm’s length. If we should fail, it won’t make a hell of a lot of difference whether I’m out taking the point or back here aboard Titan.”

Besides,Deanna said to him silently, in a wordless speech that shimmered along the mental-emotional link they shared, you can’t just chicken out in front of Donatra, can you?

Well, I suppose thereis that,he thought back, knowing all too well how useless denial was when pitted against Deanna’s empathy.

His eyes once again locked with Vale’s, he said, “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Commander Keru when he called me from his sickbay bed to try to talk me out of leading this mission. You see, I made a solemn promise to our former CO.”

“Excuse me?” Vale said, brushing a stray wisp of auburn hair back behind her ear.

“Captain Picard anticipated that my new first officer might be…overly nervous about my possibly stepping into harm’s way—and might even try to stop me from doing it from time to time.”

She nodded gravely. “Just like I’m sure you used to do with him. Sir.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Commander,” he said with a lopsided grin.

Vale sighed, obviously realizing she’d get precisely nowhere pursuing this particular tack. “And may I ask you what, exactly, you promised Captain Picard?”

“That I’d politely ignore you on occasions like this.” Looking toward Tuvok at tactical and Jaza at the main science console, he said, “Commander Tuvok, Lieutenant Commander Jaza, you’re both with me. Christine, you’re in charge until I get back.” Then he turned and strode toward the turbolift, entering it just ahead of the other two officers.

As Riker had expected, Deanna followed the group inside, wordlessly scolding him. Riker turned and exchanged a quick glance with Frane, who had remained standing vigil on the bridge; once again, Frane was unconsciously worrying the bracelet on his wrist, but with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious medallions or revered family heirlooms. And as the turbolift doors closed, Riker saw something in the Neyel’s dark, hooded eyes that resembled admiration.

But that might have been wishful thinking.

“The transporter is solidly locked on the coordinates provided by Commander Donatra,” said Lieutenant Radowski, who stood behind the main transporter room’s wide, curving control console. “Romulan shield nutation, modulation, and frequency data are all programmed exactly as specified. But environmental readings at the beam-in site are still dodgy.”

Though Radowski was speaking in low tones, Troi had sensed from the moment she’d entered the room that the young man was far more nervous than usual. And who could blame him? He was about to deliver Titan’s captain into a situation that might well prove to be lethal. Especially if the shields of the target Romulan ship somehow turned out to be less permeable than expected, even with the shield data Donatra had provided. And if that turned out to be the case, then the away team could find its atoms scattered over millions of cubic kilometers of Magellanic space in a fraction of a second.

Don’t eventhink that,Troi told herself as she pushed down the torrent of refulgent anxieties that streamed not only from Radowski, but also from the taciturn Admiral Akaar and Titan’s uncharacteristically somber new chief engineer, Dr. Ra-Havreii. The latter two senior officers—both clearly uneasy about having to allow subordinates to step into harm’s way—flanked Radowski behind the transporter console. They watched in silence as the away team members, all of them now outfitted in environmental suits, double-checked the status of their phasers, comm circuits, and tricorders before making their way up onto the round transporter stage.

After Tuvok and Lieutenant Rriarr, a Caitian security officer, took up protective positions on either side of the captain, Troi strode to the last empty pad, between a not-quite-so-serene-as-usual Science Officer Jaza and a palpably jumpy Ensign Crandall from engineering. The latter winced as he set his toolkit down at his feet with a too-loud clatter.

Will favored the away team with a backward glance and a reassuring grin that Troi could tell buoyed everyone, at least a little. “Sounds like everyone is ready.”

From beside the console, Akaar nodded with great solemnity as he touched his combadge. “Akaar to bridge.”

“Vale here.”

“The away team is prepared for transport, Commander. Are Donatra’s people still in position?”

“They’ve just signaled again that they are.”

“Confirmed,” Radowski said, glancing at his board, where a new stream of data had apparently just begun scrolling. “Preparing for coordinated transport in twenty seconds.”

“Good work, Lieutenant. And Will?”

“Go ahead, Christine.”

“Godspeed. But if I eventhink you might try to leave me in permanent command ofTitan , I’m coming after you. Sir.”

Will’s grin expanded, in obvious appreciation of his exec’s penchant for dark humor. “So noted. I’ll try to be home in time for dinner. Mr. Radowski, energize.”

Radowski executed Will’s order, and to Troi’s eyes, Titan’s transporter room dissolved. She wondered if the temporary state of nonexistence through which she was passing in any way resembled what the Sleeper experienced during his long journey toward wakefulness.

IMPERIAL WARBIRD RA’KHOI

His breath sounding a bit too loud inside his helmet, Riker found himself standing in a broad alcove lit with a subdued, greenish light. He wondered if the beam-in had taken significantly longer than usual, or if his imagination had merely decided to work a double shift. He assumed the former, since it wasn’t every day that one beamed straight through a D’deridex-class warbird’s formidable deflector shield envelope, and with Romulan cooperation no less. Looking around, he saw that the other members of the away team were positioned just as he’d expected. Tuvok and Rriarr had their weapons drawn—also just as he’d expected.

“Captain Riker,” said the familiar voice of Donatra, which echoed slightly in the high-ceilinged chamber. Ensign Crandall responded with a startled yip, nearly tripped over his toolbox, then settled into an embarrassed silence.

Riker turned toward the voice that had called to him, as did the rest of his party.

“Welcome aboard the Imperial Warbird Ra’khoi,”Donatra said. She stood at the front of a group of four Romulan officers, including herself. Like the Titanteam, she and her staff were dressed in pressure suits and helmets, the livid orange-amber of the Romulan garments presenting a sharp contrast to the stark Starfleet white. The quartet stood in a rough circle, evidently having just beamed over from the Valdore.

Jaza, Tuvok, and a pair of Donatra’s people ran some quick scans and within moments determined that the room—an alcove adjacent to the main engineering section—was utterly empty. Riker and Donatra then exchanged quick introductions of their respective teams. Seketh and Daehla, both of whom were running scanners, were apparently youngish women, a decurion and a sciences specialist respectively, while Liravek was an imperious male centurion of perhaps early middle age.

“Life readings?” Riker asked.

“The entire crew complement seems to be alive, but unconscious,” Daehla said.

“Comatose is a more apt word, I should think,” Seketh said, consulting her own scanner.

“What could cause such a thing?” Centurion Liravek asked sharply, as though interrogating a group of recalcitrant prisoners. Riker was beginning not to like him very much.

When it became clear that neither Seketh nor Daehla had a ready answer, Jaza spoke up. “This…entity that’s controlling the fleet’s computer systems seems to have altered the environmental control system. I’m picking up high concentrations of anesthezine in the air supply, which didn’t show up on our sensor scans, probably because of interference caused by the shields. If we hadn’t taken the precaution of putting on environmental suits…” The Bajoran trailed off significantly.

“So you’re saying that our…‘Red King’ just wanted to nudge the crew out of its way,” Crandall asked.

Still consulting his tricorder, Jaza nodded. “I’d wager it probably did the very same thing on every ship in the fleet. Our long-range scanners must have missed it because of distance and spatial distortions.”

“The intelligence that hijacked this fleet can lay waste to entire stars and planets,” Riker said. “But it left the crews relatively unharmed. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Jaza shrugged. “Well, we’re positing that our Sleeper has somehow subverted the computers of the entire fleet network, except the Valdore,which wasn’t present at the time of the takeover. Perhaps the entity ran afoul of some sort of personnel-protection fail-safe subroutine in the Romulan rokhelhsoftware. Something like Asimov’s Laws.”

Riker nodded. The fact that the emerging intelligence that had seized control of Donatra’s fleet hadn’t simply killed the crews outright argued in favor of that idea. But it’s wiped out at least one inhabited world so far, whether intentionally or not,he reminded himself again.

He turned toward Donatra and noted the relieved expression he saw through the faceplate of her helmet. “I am grateful not to have found my crews dead, whatever the reason.”

Riker nodded. “We need to access this ship’s computer system,” he said, keenly aware that the Red King’s current beneficence might not last. “Now.”

Donatra nodded back, then immediately took the point, leading the group across a corridor and into an adjacent chamber, a room lined with consoles, monitor screens, and holotanks. A pair of uniformed figures lay across a bank of consoles, their bodies sprawled in deathlike postures. Donatra and Liravek paused beside them long enough to confirm that they were merely unconscious, like the rest of the crew.

With a gauntleted right hand, Riker tapped the external communicator key located near his suit’s neck ring. “Riker to Titan.”

“Vale here, Captain. What’s the away team’s status?”

“We’ve arrived safely, as has Commander Donatra’s team. What’s the condition of our Sleeper?”

“Still yawning and stretching, but apparently only very slowly. Pazlar, Norellis, and Cethente have been continuously monitoring the correlated ongoing breakdown of local space. They’ve found no acceleration in the protouniverse’s spatial displacement rate—at least not yet. But that also means the effect’s not slowing down any, either. Another two weeks, three tops, and…pfffft. We’ll want to be very far away from here when that happens.”

Am I capable of doing that?Riker thought as he considered his exec’s report. Cutting and running just on the off chance Imight manage to save my ship and crew, and get them home? Or do I do my damnedest to head this thing off, and maybe save billions of lives, regardless of what happens toTitan ?After all, in helping to defeat Shinzon, he had been at least partially responsible for opening up the spatial rift that may have ultimately drawn the protouniverse here.

But all he could do at the moment was to cling to the hope that he wouldn’t have to face the answers to his own questions head-on.

Aloud, he said, “We’re about to attempt to gain control of the Romulan fleet’s computer network. I’ll check in with you again once that’s done, Commander. Riker out.”

Crandall carefully set his toolbox on a chair before one of the computer consoles, then uncovered an access panel. He then opened the toolbox and began carefully arranging his instruments on the oilcloth-lined interior of its lid.

“It seems…I don’t know, wrong somehow, to just wipe this Sleeper off the computer network,” the junior engineer said as he worked. “I feel almost like I’m helping to kill somebody.”

“In a way, you are,” Donatra said in matter-of-fact tones. “But what of it? We routinely patrol our computers for signs of our rokhelhartificial intelligences developing self-awareness. Whenever we detect such signs, we purge the affected systems.”

“We don’t have a lot of alternatives,” Riker said by way of encouragement to Crandall as Daehla began pulling her own small instruments and several hair-thin, glowing cables from a compact kit she carried on her hip.

“But why can’t we at least… talkto it first?” Crandall wanted to know.

Riker thought that was an excellent question. He cast a quick interrogative glance at Deanna.

Though her smile was gentle, her reply carried a therapist’s firm it’s-time-to-face-realitytone. “Besides the fact that we have virtually no common frame of reference with it, Mr. Crandall? Don’t forget, we’re talking about an anentropic pattern of inferred sentience that arrived here from an entirely alien, non-Euclidean universe whose physical laws in no way resemble our own.”

Riker’s eyes widened involuntarily. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Crandall looked chastened. “Oh. I suppose when you put it that way…”

Deanna offered the engineer a smile that shone through her helmet’s faceplate. “Your instinct is a good one, Ensign. But it could take decades or even centuries just for us to get this creature’s attention. A little like Micromegas.”

“Who?” said Crandall, pausing in confusion.

“Maybe six centuries ago, Voltaire, a writer from your home planet, told the story of Micromegas, a gigantic being from another world. He was so huge that it was just about impossible for him to see Earth people as living things worth communicating with. And heencountered other beings that were at least that large compared to him.”

Noting Donatra’s impatient glare, Riker placed a reassuring hand on Crandall’s shoulder. “Try not to worry about it toomuch, Ensign. Talking to our sleepwalking intelligence—or least to the computers it’s hijacked—is the rokhelhsoftware’s job, not ours.”

Riker watched in anxious silence as Crandall and Daehla each carefully hooked up their cables and handheld control units, working in tandem to create a pair of seamless interfaces with the warbird’s central computer, and thereby the entire fleet network. Though the entire operation had taken perhaps three minutes so far, Riker was uncomfortably aware of the passage of time. He couldn’t help but wonder what this so-called Red King might do if it were to discover what their plan was before they actually managed to carry it out.

“Actually, what you said a moment ago was only half right, sir,” Crandall said, as he confirmed his final connections with his engineering tricorder. Riker saw his face flush with color as he apparently realized how insolent he had sounded.

“Easy, Ensign,” Riker said. “I’ve never claimed to know everything. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

Crandall sputtered and hawed for a moment, studiously avoiding looking at Riker as he resumed his work. “Yes, sir. What I meant was just that the rokhelhsoftware we’re installing now will replace the resident rokhelhsoftware that our Red King apparently corrupted, then resume that program’s task of talking to the network. And Chaka’s new algorithm will let the new rokhelhknow precisely what we expect it to do.”

“Let’s just hope the rokhelhwill see its way clear to following the new instructions we’re feeding it,” Jaza said. “From my previous experiences with artificial intelligences, they’re sometimes a rather independent lot.”

Riker couldn’t help but think of those few occasions when Data had malfunctioned, had been technologically manipulated, or had been impersonated by his predecessor, Lore; he couldn’t help but sympathize with Jaza’s apprehension.

As Crandall and Daehla began uploading software into the control panels of their respective interface units, Riker turned toward Donatra, who displayed a disapproving scowl.

“You seem to know a great deal about Romulan technology,” she said in a mildly accusing tone. “Hardware and software both.”

Riker nodded. “And it appears to be coming in handy just now.”

“Agreed. But how did you acquire this knowledge?”

He offered her what he assumed she would see as a slightly guilty-looking smile. “About seven years ago, the Enterprise’s second officer came into extremely close contact with one of your empire’s AI security programs.”

A look of understanding crossed Donatra’s face. “Ah. The late android, Data. He must have uploaded a good deal of rokhelhprogram code during that encounter.”

“A pretty fair portion, as it turned out,” Riker said. “Enough to enable one of Titan’s computer specialists to reverse-engineer most of the rest.”

“Since our arrival here in Neyel space?” Donatra said. “I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be tooimpressed,” Deanna said. “It isn’t as though Crewman Chaka whipped up this entire program today. Fortunately for us, she’s been studying the Enterprise’s rokhelhencounter as a sort of ‘pet project’ ever since she first entered Starfleet.”

Riker turned to his wife and grinned. “Looks like we may have lucked out this time.”

No sooner had he uttered those words than he found himself wishing, absurdly, for a stout piece of wood to knock on.

U.S.S. TITAN

Mekrikuk was startled out of a deep slumber. Suddenly aware, once again, of his surroundings– Titan’s sickbay, where he had remained confined ever since his rescue from the Vikr’l Prison on Romulus—the sensation that had awakened him persisted.

Somethinghad reached out for him, had touched his mind. At first, he wasn’t quite sure what it was. Then he closed his eyes. And the image came to him, very clearly.