Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [70]
As easily as ignoring a nagging ache, he rerouted his awareness away from the internal warnings and looked around for the mechanical stock he would need-yes, there it was. He had been concerned that in the midst of a crisis, supply engineering hadn’t managed to deliver these small stock crates in time, but here they sat, stacked neatly before him. He gazed at them in the same manner as he had gazed at the letters on the door. On top of the stack was an authorization chip that simply said: Request of Lt. Commander Data. Esn. F. Palmer-okay.
Time was limited. Yet he was hesitating. Never before had he found himself literally at odds with himself, literally battling his own body to make it do what his programming-his … conscience-had always considered wrong. Deception. Disobedience. It was not in his progr-in his nature.
His left hand twitched and opened. Geordi’s insignia clattered to the deck with a metallic ting. Data looked down at it.
Impassively he stooped and picked it up. If he took it with him, the starship’s mainframe would pick up on it and use it as a locator beacon, and would tell the bridge that Geordi was with him. Such a consequence … he would leave the insignia behind.
He would leave it.
He paced toward the exit and went to the nearest computer panel, still looking at the insignia in his hand.
“I will leave it,” he insisted. His voice in the empty hangar deck was a loud sound. Why did this insignia whisper to him?
He put it down quickly. So quickly that it spun on its pin and ended up sideways. He paused.
Almost as quickly, he pulled off his own insignia. It too was gold, platinum-identical to the other. Except that this was his, what he had earned, and that was Geordi’s. Each was encoded with the biopulse of the owner, including identity, and microsensors, and miniature communicator-Starfleet jargon called these insignia the “minimiracles” of recent science.
But today it was the shape and not the science that intrigued Data. Today his attention was held by the modern-day heraldry of the Starfleet emblem and what it meant to such as him.
His powerful heart pumped harder, a heavy muscular action, like the great machine that it was. He heard it thud clearly through his body, and felt the strain upon his systems as each struggled to push its own interests through his biomechanical nervous system, unsure which of the impulses to follow.
With a gesture of finality, he placed his own insignia on the panel beside Geordi’s and turned away, leaving them there together.
When he knelt beside the crates the engineers had left here on his order, his body began to settle down as it recognized a task at hand. As the pumping of his heart subsided to its usual cadence, Data began opening the crates of specialized parts and mnemonic encoders and set about constructing a makeshift cloaking device small enough for a shuttlecraft.
“Now wait a minute!” Riker slid off the desk and fanned his hands before Troi. “We can’t just interfere!”
“We must,” Troi said, loudly this time. She felt the color rise in her cheeks and anger take over her heart. How dare he stand in her way!
“Now look,” Picard angrily reminded, “I called this meeting for a clear reason and it’s getting muddled. If I’m going to be forced into making a decision, I intend to have all the precedents behind me. Let’s streamline this, and that’s an order.”
Before Riker had the chance to respond, Troi leaned toward Picard, the first time she had changed position since all this started. “Captain, humans are interventionists by nature. Since ancient times, and even before that, we’ve intervened in the course of evolution by selective marriage, all the way back to tribal beginnings when the chief got his choice of the fairest, youngest, strongest maidens, and they had children who grew up to be the decision makers for the whole tribe. It is our heritage!”
“That’s nonsense,” Riker accused.
“Not necessarily.” Crusher pressed on. Her tone had a defensive sting and she turned a cold shoulder to