Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [90]
She stood slowly. The CS men helped her up, and the group resumed its progress across the bridge.
Still the emotions swirled within her, rising up from deep places long forgotten, more and more intense and insistent, as if to make themselves known in her last moments so that she could die with her totality. Tears were streaming down her face.
They neared the steel door that Lomov broke. As Troi was pushed through she sensed the presence of Picard, Riker, and Data very close behind her.
Then, suddenly, she felt the unmistakable body-dissolving rush of the Enterprise transporter.
In the next moment she found herself standing, safe and sound, in the Enterprise transporter room with her shipmates.
Chapter Seventeen
THE FOUR OF THEM checked in at the bridge, and found that the ship was safe. All the one-eyes had been destroyed. The engines had been repaired enough to keep the ship in orbit around Rampart, with shields and a capability of warp four. The sensors had found a hole in the nebula and contact had been established with Starfleet.
Picard went into his ready room for a few minutes. When he emerged he said the Enterprise would be leaving this star system in an hour and Starfleet would be further pursuing the matter of the Huxley.
Worf was still busy with security mop-up and Geordi was asleep somewhere, so the four went to the conference room to debrief each other.
Troi still didn’t know how the beam-up had been accomplished.
“We have the illustrious Data to thank for that,” said Picard. “He, Riker, and I had been hiding in a storeroom behind a lab, along with the Dissenter named Amoret, when a one-eye gained entrance through an air shaft.
“Data caught and disabled the one-eye, and then dismantled its antenna array. He fashioned a communicator out of the parts and tuned it to a frequency that would Punch through the surface jamming and give the Enterprise our coordinates. When all of us were in the same spot—just after your fainting spell on that bridge at CephCom—Data signaled the Enterprise. O’Brien was at the transporter controls. He’d stood there for two solid days waiting for any kind of signal from the planet’s surface.
“Now, here was the keystone of Data’s plan: He made sure Riker and I knew nothing about the one-eye he’d dismantled or about the communicator he’d made. He hid it all from us, even stuffed the dead one-eye back up the air shaft where we wouldn’t see it. When we were caught, none of us humans—whose brain waves could be read—knew what Data had done. The one-eyes couldn’t read his brain, so his secret was safe. All he had to do then was wait until we were all together so he could signal the Enterprise and have us beamed up.”
“How did you disable the one-eye?” Troi asked Data.
“I will refrain from taxing you with an exhibition, Counselor, as I have noticed that humans have a peculiar reaction to it. Suffice it to say that I confused the one-eyes with my poetry. My poetry is apparently hard to classify as poetry at all, and the one-eyes momentarily stymied themselves trying to figure it out.”
Troi didn’t know if she should ask the next set of questions, or pursue them on her own. Why had she experienced those vivid visions of mythical characters? What were their meanings? And why had Crichton appeared to experience them as well?
Picard’s communicator came to life.
“Worf to Picard.”
“Picard here.”
“Sir, from our new position, atmospheric conditions are allowing us to pick up video from the planet’s surface.”
“Thank you, Worf. Send it down here, please.”
Picard swiveled the monitor on the table so all could view it.
They saw the same memorial video piece on Ferris that Troi saw outside Crichton’s office—the same carven-oak face, the dates of birth and death.
Then an attractive newscaster’s face appeared on the screen. She said that although the