Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [51]
“Captain, we have a problem …” Succinctly she described their present location and the events of the last twenty minutes. “We need to be beamed away from here, but not off the ship, unless you feel it necessary. Someplace safe from scan, and preferably someplace where we stand some chance of not being disturbed.”
“Other problems,” Geordi said. Quickly he spelled out their difficulty with getting into the computer core. “The information we need requires voiceprint and authorization codes from the security officer or the captain. The counselor has at best one chance in five of getting the right one without instantly alerting the system, and almost certainly her counterpart as well. But the captain could order the security officer to release those codes … I think.”
Troi looked at him, opened her mouth, and shut it again at what he was suggesting. That Captain Picard should beam over here as well
“We have no other chance of getting the material we need out of the computer,” Geordi said. “The thing’s security protocols are phenomenal—there are blocks all up and down the line. If you want to pull us out, we’ll come home. But my guess is that once they realize for certain that a crewman has gone missing, they’ll raise their shields, and after that no one will be able to transport in or out. So you’ve got about five minutes to make the call or pull us out of here. Awaiting orders. Ou.”
He touched the control on the isolinear pad, put it down: it vanished in transporter effect.
They stared at the spot where it had lain and waited.
Picard was sitting in his ready room—that being as good a place as any to be nervous and keep the fact more or less private. His tea had gone cold, forgotten in the face of the material that the away team had beamed over a short while ago. The sociological and historical analysis teams were already working on it, but he could hardly afford the luxury of waiting to see what they said: he had pulled the Starfleet historical material and was skimming it. Picard was terrified by it, and fascinated at the same time—fascinated by the strangeness of it, terrified that he didn’t know where to set to work on it that would do the most good. The feeling wouldn’t go away that there was some vital piece of information buried in it that would make all the difference to his own ship’s problem. And all the while, the continuing silence of the away team had brought the hair up on the nape of his neck again and again, even though he had ordered it, even though it meant they were still all right.
He sighed and turned his attention back to the history of the alternate Starfleet. It was already compulsive reading—and horrific. Its roots appeared to be founded in the chaos surrounding the Eugenics Wars. Khan Noonian Singh and his genetically engineered companions had not been overthrown and driven out in this universe, but rose to command several empires spread over several continents before finally turning on one another in territorial and dynastic warfare, and wiping one another out—not to mention large numbers of other people—with nuclear weapons. The delivery systems for the weapons were not missiles, against which all sides had adequate protection, but large, slow ion-drive craft adapted from the DY-100 “sleepers,” which were maneuverable enough to dodge any antimissile or particle beam fired at them on their way to target. Numerous improvements were made in the ion propulsion systems by the admittedly brilliant science teams of the various warring factions. When the dust settled over the graves of the victors and the vanquished, the technology remained—a propulsion system good enough to push spacecraft into local space travel—even into relativistic travel, dead end though it might be.
Picard reflexively reached for his tea, found it colder than ever,