Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [125]
Picard shook his head and came down from the platform. “If it had …. Never mind. … Thank you, Chief.”
From all around them came the whooping of the red-alert sirens. Picard touched his communicator. “Picard to Number One.”
“Captain,” Riker’s voice said, “forgive me if I say I’m very glad to hear you!”
“Let’s save the rejoicing for the moment,” Picard said. “What’s the situation?”
“The other Enterprise is in restart cycle,” Riker said. “Looks like they had to shut down the warp engines toward the end of their computer problems, but they didn’t have time to get too cold: we only have a few minutes’ grace.”
“I don’t intend to linger, Number One. Pick a direction and go to warp five immediately. I’ve had enough of this neighborhood.”
“Yes, sir,” Riker said with relish. “Mr. Redpath! Bearing one, two, five, mark eight, warp five, go!”
Picard didn’t hear the response, but he could instantly feel the subtle difference in the ship’s “feel” as she went into warp. Troi was helping Geordi down off the pad; he was still weak and looked pallid. “Mr. La Forge,” Picard said, “my apologies. You’ve suffered worse than anyone else in this operation. And worse yet, we still need you.”
Geordi nodded. “It’s all right, Captain. We’ve got the goods. At least I think we have.”
“Get down to engineering and find out,” Picard said. “Commander Riker! Have a full team prepared to meet Mr. La Forge in engineering.”
“Commander Hwiii is ahead of you, Captain,” said Riker, “literally. He and a team of fifty are waiting. Tell Mr. La Forge that a platform to support the apparatus is built and waiting for him.”
“Acknowledged.” Picard looked over at Troi as Geordi went out. Troi’s face looked odd. Then odder still—and then she sneezed.
Picard laughed a great laugh … and it felt extremely good. “My feelings exactly, Counselor,” he said, looking down at himself. “Let’s get out of here and slip into something more comfortable.”
Engineering was in havoc when Geordi got there. People were running in all directions, shouting at each other, waving instrumentation, pieces of equipment, padds; the sense of nervousness and excitement in the air was thick enough to taste, let alone cut. Still, as Geordi walked in, there were shouts of approval and cheers, and a few noisy and approving wolf whistles from female crew. When he stopped near the main status board, half to get his breath and half to cope with the reaction, applause broke out all through the section.
He grinned, weakly still, and made his way over toward where great thick cables had been laid down from the main power supply junction, leading off to one side. There, a side bay that had been full of diagnostic boards was suddenly crammed full of three large, square instrumentation pallets. About thirty people were working on them at the moment, wiring in an astonishing assortment of equipment, everything from running tricorders in series and parallel to what seemed a small ion-discharge apparatus. Coasting around one side of it, as if swimming through the air, came Hwiii, whistling hurriedly at someone, “I don’t care how many of them you have to use, just get them hooked in, we don’t have time!”
Geordi grinned. Hwiii laid eyes on him and “swam” over to him at speed, nudging him not too hard under one mostly bare rib, and laughing delphine laughter. “Welcome home! Thrice welcome! We’re ready for you. Quick, where’s the rest of it?”
Geordi handed him the chip. “It’s this or nothing.”
Together they hurried off to one of the status tables on the side that had been installed specifically for the inclusion apparatus and dropped the chip on its reading plate. “Load in,” Geordi said.
They watched the screen together as the information scrolled up. “Perfect,” Hwiii crowed. “This is it, this is the one that didn’t get away!”
“Some of it did. They locked us out. We’re just lucky one of the antiviral protocols didn’t follow the path up and erase the chip.”
Hwiii swung his tail. “Never mind.