Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [85]
“Yes, sir, I underst-Data! Stop it!”
“Riker, what is it! Report!”
“He’s arming the shuttlecraft’s weapons, Captain, he’s going to fire blind to attract that thing. Data, kill those weapons. That’s an order.”
“Sorry, Mr. Riker,” Data said calmly, “but I must draw its attack before you come near enough to be caught also. I do not believe the dinghy puts out sufficient energy to draw its attention while you’re still at this-“
“Riker!” Picard’s voice shot through the system.
“We’re picking up massive energy readings. It’s got to be right on top of him out there! Do you see it?”
“Switching,” Riker snapped. Perspiration rolled down his forehead, and became a sheet of moisture when the viewscreen cleared.
In space in front of him, the shuttlecraft’s blocky form was dwarfed by the all-too-familiar and too hideous spectral image that had become his nightmare. It closed on Data’s shuttlecraft with lightning speed and swallowed it whole while Riker watched helplessly, and it took up half his visible space in the process. As it devoured Data’s ship, it reached a long electrical arm through space toward Riker.
A chill streaking down his arms, he smashed his fist on the comlink. “Enterprise! Beam us up now! Now!”
The nauseating sensation of beaming began almost instantly. The captain must have been ready for this, must have anticipated it. Riker gave himself to it, as though that would help, and stared into the viewscreen as he felt himself dematerializing. But he was still able to see the viewer clearly enough when the shuttlecraft was torn to bits, its tiny impulse engine blasting outward in a dynamic explosion.
Agonizing seconds later the interior of the research dinghy was gone and the transporter room’s dark gray textured walls were forming around him. Above him the soft lighting, below him the glowing platform-beside him … another form materializing.
He reached out as soon as he could, but instinctively recoiled from the crackling electrical sheath that enveloped Data once again. This time it seemed to have a sense of purpose-or was he imagining it?
“Data!” he shouted without thinking.
The electricity snapped a few more times, then faded. Riker stepped toward Data instantly. Just in time to catch him.
The platform thumped as Captain Picard and Geordi LaForge appeared out of nowhere and knelt beside Riker and the collapsed form of Data. His android eyes stared up at nothing. His heart still beat dutifully. His pulse still made a steady drum in his wrists. Biomechanics still worked the shell he had called his body. But the essence of life that had possessed a courage no machine could duplicate-Was gone.
Chapter Twelve
DATA LAY IN a wedge of bright, tight surgical beams in the dimmed main sickbay lab. Physicians, neurologists, microengineering specialists, robotics experts hovered over him, but no one could shake the poisoned apple from his throat. He lay there on the table, his face less placid than a corpse’s might have been, his expression caught in a moment of surprise, perhaps even revelation.
To Picard, the elemental darkness rested in the room was like a Poe stanza. He paced around the small group and looked again into Data’s opalescent eyes, and longed again to understand what the android had seen at that last moment. The chamber experience was still with him, making him feel somehow separate from these people who hadn’t been through it. He thought he knew now what resurrection could be like, what it would be like to be caught by that thing-only to reawaken with new knowledge and be able to use that knowledge. He had reawakened to a monumental difference in his own perceptions. Colors seemed brighter, smells nicer, shapes crisper. There was a sudden wonder to being so consummately alive.
Over on that table, Data’s face had that kind of wonder on it, but he hadn’t come back.
When Beverly Crusher finally backed away from the table, her face limned with frustration, even anguish,