Myriad Universes 02_ Echoes and Refractions - Keith R. A. DeCandido [194]
The android nodded. “It is possible.”
“Mister La Forge,” Picard said, “could you provide the necessary information?”
The first officer wore a confused expression, but shrugged. “Yes, Captain.”
So it was that a few moments later, another small gateway appeared, this one about a meter square, hovering at shoulder height in one of the unused alcoves. Beyond could be seen the bridge of the Enterprise, with Ro Laren in the captain’s chair, and Doctor Quaice sitting at her side.
“Captain?” Ro said, surprised but obviously pleased. Sito could hear her voice as clearly as if she were talking through an open doorway from another room.
“Commander,” Picard said, “it appears that our plans have changed.”
The captain outlined their situation in brief, and then told Ro the role he had planned for the Enterprise.
Sito saw the smile spread across Ro’s face. “Captain,” she said, with a sly glance at Doctor Quaice, “I think you may have just saved me from a court-martial. I was about to do that anyway, and your orders be damned.”
Picard chuckled. “And that is why I left you in command.”
One by one Isaac’s senses began to process information again, in fits and starts, and while his processes were still clouded by the discordant impressions engendered by the disruptor, he found that he was able to complete entire cogitations once more.
He was not alone.
The room in which he found himself was a cube roughly three meters on a side. He and the other two Soong-types, Data and Lore, had evidently been dumped unceremoniously on the cube’s floor, if their attitudes and postures were any indication. Harsh lights glared from panels overhead, and aside from the sealed and locked door along one wall, the room was featureless.
Isaac searched his memory banks, but was able to produce only confused and conflicting images of the interval between the moment the Romulans opened fire with their disruptors in the concourse and the moment he found himself with the others in this featureless room. He had vague recollections of returning to awareness once or twice, only to be shocked back into pained senselessness by disruptor fire.
Isaac attempted to initiate contact via the subspace transceiver in his head, but received only static in response. Wherever they were was still blanketed in interference.
Which raised the question: Where were they?
Isaac was climbing to his feet as the other two androids began to stir. His internal sensors detected minute coriolis fluctuations in the local gravity, suggesting that it was artificially induced, rather than being caused by a massive gravitating object. And the faint vibrations he could detect through the floor were suggestive of a generator employing a confined quantum singularity, instead of the frequencies associated with a dilithium-based matter-anti-matter reactor. There were a finite number of craft that fit that profile, all of which were manufactured by one interplanetary power.
“We are on board a Romulan starship,” Isaac said aloud.
“Brilliant deduction, wooden boy,” Lore said, eyes squeezed shut, his lip curled in a sneer. “What was your first clue? Could it have been the fact that it was Romulans who shot us?”
Data sat up from the waist, his legs still straight out before him on the ground. “Forgive my brother, Commander Isaac. His behavioral circuits may still be somewhat impaired from the disruptor’s effects.”
“Oh, do you suppose so, Sherlock?” Lore snarled. “Maybe the wooden boy here can be your own personal Watson, and together you can try to solve the mystery of the missing sense of humor.