Myriad Universes 02_ Echoes and Refractions - Keith R. A. DeCandido [200]
Data shook his head. “If my years of serving with Captain Picard are any indication, he will investigate and exhaust every possibility before he resorts to wholesale destruction.”
“Luckily, dear brother,” Lore said with a faint smile, “I’m not quite so hobbled by conscience. If we do make it back to Turing in one piece, the first thing I’m going to do is teleport a quantum warhead right down Subcommander Taris’s throat, and then I’m sending a matching set to Romulus and to the Klingon homeworld. And why stop there? Another for Cardassia Prime? One to the Breen home planet? And let’s not forget Earth, of course.”
Data wore a sad expression. “All that we have accomplished with our infiltration network, all that we might yet accomplish, and you would waste it all in a mad fit of genocide?”
Lore snarled, but it was Isaac who next spoke. “What 'infiltration network’ would that be, Data?”
Before Data could answer, the Haakona was rocked side to side by a large impact.
“Well, something got through their shields,” Lore said with bitter satisfaction.
At the edge of Isaac’s awareness, a voice suddenly called, strange but familiar. It was calling to him, and to Data, and to Lore. And beyond that familiar voice were countless others, hundreds, thousands of them, all calling out to one another in concern and curiosity.
“The Turing subspace network,” he said in a low voice, his eyes meeting Data’s. “It…”
Data smiled, as he subvocally responded to Lal’s hail. “It would appear,” he said aloud, “that Captain Picard’s stratagem has been successful.”
“Direct hit on her communications array,” Thomas reported with evident pride. “She’s gone silent.”
“Good.” Ro nodded. Of course, with the warbird’s communications down, there was no way to parlay with the subcommander, to see if there was any chance of them standing down. Which was just the cost of doing business; but still, Ro would have liked the alternative of suing for peace at some point. “Let’s keep them too occupied to fire on the planet, but not do so much damage that she’s destroyed.”
“Shields at forty-five percent, Commander.”
“And don’t let them destroy us, Prophets protect us.”
“Why, Laren,” Quaice said with a smile, “I didn’t know that you were religious.”
“I’m not,” Ro answered, her lips drawn into a line. “But I figure every bit helps. Ensign?” She turned to the young woman at the ops station. “See if you can raise the captain now that the damned interference is down.”
“Aye.”
Ro sat back in the chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “Maybe he’ll have some idea how to get out of this that doesn’t end with either the Haakona or the Enterprise floating as clouds of debris, if not both.”
“Well,” Quaice said, with guarded optimism, “he is the captain, after all.”
11
“Captain Picard? I have made contact with my father.”
Geordi La Forge looked up from his tricorder, glancing at the young android across the room. The four newcomers, fashioned to resemble the Federation’s various rival powers of the moment-Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian, and Breen-were standing at the opposite side of the chamber, silently. Like La Forge, they had looked up at the announcement that Lal had reached her father, and seemed almost as pleased as Geordi was at the thought of Data’s safe return.
It wasn’t until that moment that La Forge realized that, in the years since Data disappeared, nearly a decade before, he’d all but given Data up for dead. When he had contacted the Enterprise-had it really been only two days before?-La Forge’s first reaction was confusion, followed quickly by anger. It was as if, learning that Data wasn’t really dead, La Forge found it almost impossible to forgive his old friend for leaving without any explanation, simply disappearing into thin air. And when Data had simply appeared without warning on the bridge of the