Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [83]
And this moment had to be worse for her than it would have been for him had he lost his VISOR. For all the time she’d lived in darkness she’d been treated like a subhuman, an untermensch.
He helped her sit up against the bulkhead, told her to rest and that his crew could take up the slack. He went back to work riding the mix, furious with himself.
But a few minutes later she was standing next to him. She’d removed the sensor pads from her fingers.
“I don’t need the hardware,” she said. “I know these circuits by heart and I can fix them by touch.”
He nodded his assent and continued to work, not able to bring himself to look at her. He’d robbed her of her sight.
She whistled softly as she worked, and Geordi knew it was for him. It helped.
At this moment, inside of CephCom, Picard, Riker, Data, and Amoret were about to attempt escape from the assault shelter. They had all agreed that the air vent system was the only option. Now Data had opened the air shaft and Amoret was urging them to go, as she was sure the CS would force their way into the room at any minute.
“I must first conceal something that would be visible to all of you inside the shaft,” said Data. He proceeded to tear off part of a large storage box and position it inside the dark shaft. He still had not given any of the others a clue about what he had been hiding from them during the last hours.
“This is crazy!” said Amoret. “We don’t have time!”
Picard put a calming hand on her shoulder.
“Please trust him.”
The red-haired woman stared back at him. They held a momentary silent colloquy—she accepted his advice because she knew him with the intimacy of a wife or lover, and he saw her familiarity and had to turn away so as not to be distracted by the odd feeling. A stranger knew his innermost self.
Data lowered himself back down from the air shaft.
“The concealment is complete. We may now exit.”
In the next instant the blast door at the other end of the room exploded inward. CS men rushed in and arrested Picard, Riker, Data, and Amoret.
Chapter Sixteen
TROI WAITED, handcuffed and under heavy guard, outside Crichton’s office.
Far down the hallway, she spotted the Dissenters as they were herded along by one-eyes and CS men. The Dissenters were turned away from her, but she could see that all those from the caves were there, plus Amoret, who, though a prisoner, was wearing a CS uniform. They disappeared around a corner.
A moment later a guard led Troi into Crichton’s office.
His bald head was covered by the standard CS helmet. He had the rasters turned up very bright, burning in electronic hellfire everything that met his eyes.
He was terrified. Troi perceived that clearly.
“You’re useless to me,” he told Troi. “Your captain, your first officer, and your android are no longer necessary either. I’ve already defeated your ship. You can’t touch me now.”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
Crichton swiveled his chair around and pressed a button. On a monitor behind him, an image appeared: the Enterprise as seen by the cameras of one of the Rampartian ships surrounding it. The Enterprise was plunging down toward the planet, the dull red heat of atmospheric entry already showing on its shields.
Crichton watched the image for a moment, in silence.
Troi allowed herself no panic. She had to stay focused on Crichton; figuring him out was the only way she could help the thousand people on that ship.
She strained to pick up everything she could.
His inner terror was pushing toward the surface. It was waiting to erupt. She was herself a contributor to the terror, but it was larger than any one person. It was as big as an entire alternate universe, as big as the Other-worlders, the realm of myth and imagination.
But if it was the Other-worlder phenomena, it was much worse for him than it had been for her. He had a psychotic, paranoid reaction to it. He didn’t know what it was and didn’t want to know.
Since she couldn’t see his face, she found herself looking