Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [40]
Data’s pale brows drew tight over his nose, raised slightly in a delicate expression, proof-at least to Geordi-that somewhere under the voltage were feelings that could be hurt. In a near whisper, he responded, “I promise to try, sir.” Unable to meet Riker’s eyes, anymore, he slipped past Geordi and strode quickly toward the spectrometry lab. A breath of the door, and he was gone.
Riker watched him go, saw the tension in synthetic shoulders and the kind of stride a human walks when he’s trying to keep from running. Burned into his memory were Data’s android eyes tightened in that expression of humility and distress, an expression that said he hadn’t meant to offend anyone. Riker leaned after the android as if drawn by sudden obligation. He might have taken a step.
Had Geordi not drawn his attention.
“If he gives into that kind of attack,” the navigator said, “he’ll be risking his life, Mr. Riker.”
Gaining control over his voice, Riker quietly said, “I’m afraid that may be our best chance to save ourselves.” He turned toward the monitors again, only to find himself blocked off as Geordi shouldered in front of him.
“So that’s okay, then? Sacrifice Data because he’s not alive?”
“Look, Geordi, I don’t-“
“Are you telling me it isn’t true that you always choose him for away missions because he’s more expendable?”
Riker glared into the thin metallic visor and imagined the tension around LaForge’s blind eyes. “As you were, Lieutenant.”
“Would you try as hard to save his life as you tried to save mine on the bridge?”
“Man your post, mister!”
LaForge hesitated a telling moment, then stepped back, the muscles in his neck twitching, his arms like tree limbs at his sides. “Aye, sir. Anything you say.”
Chapter Six
THE GREAT WARRIOR prowled his technology’s ramparts, slowly gaining a foothold. He smelled battle. He tasted the raw meat of challenge upon his tongue like blood and ripped flesh. He heard the howl in his mind, the song of warriors shrieking through his instincts, and he couldn’t abide the price of peace. He knew, deep in his soul, that there would be trouble long before there was peace, and every fiber of his being prepared for it now, lest he be surprised later.
“Worf.”
Only great effort blocked the growl of response and replaced it with a civilized word. “Yes?”
“The captain’ll want a report when he gets back up here.”
Worf turned to the supple feminine body and the storybook face over it. She looked like a girl who was dressed as a boy. A girl from the stories his adoptive human parents once told him, stories that never satisfied his hunger for adventure. Very young was he when his Starfleet parents gave up telling him stories of girls who dressed as boys to fool the churchgoers and replaced them with meatier tales by Bram Stoker, Melville, Dumas, Stervasney, and Kryo to satisfy their rare son. Those he could chew. Those made him howl.
“He will not be happy with what we have to say, Tasha,” he told her, quieting his thunderous voice as they stood together on the upper deck, buffered from the bridge by the tactical station a few steps forward.
“I know,” she agreed. Beneath the lemon cuff of her hair, clear gray eyes kinked at the prospect of facing Picard. “I’ve been doing a study and you’re right. That thing’s working a pattern all right, but the pattern does have some random movements in it. It must be designed to be unpredictable.”
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” was his husky bass agreement. “It’s working out a search that’s deliberately hard to evade. It gives us less than a fifty percent chance of escape.”
“That’s a more-than-fifty percent chance of getting caught.” Tasha bit her lip and took the whole problem personally. “And that