Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [100]
“Concerned, Picard queried the computer about her whereabouts. It told him that she was in her room—even though she was supposed to be on her way to engineering, to help calibrate a new navigation system.
“Even more concerned now, the captain had Pug Joseph dispatch a security team to Gerda’s quarters. At the same time, Ben Zoma ordered Cadwallader to conduct an internal sensor search for Gerda—just to confirm that she was truly in her room. We’d had instances of people forgetting their communicators, and he didn’t want the security team wasting time on a wild chase of—what is the expression?” He looked to Worf for help.
“Goose,” the Klingon offered. “A wild goose chase.”
“Right. Thank you. After a little while—internal sensor searches being the slow things they are—Cadwallader determined that Gerda was not in her quarters at all. She was on the shuttle deck—where neither McDonnell nor myself were responding to Cad’s intercom calls. Moments later the captain, Ben Zoma, and Pug burst in and rescued me—just as Gerda’s blows were starting to connect again.”
Morgen smiled humorlessly. “You see what I mean? Dumb luck. Except for anticipating Stroman’s desire to sketch the rikajsha, Gerda did everything right. She picked a time and a place when I would be relatively isolated from other crewpeople. McDonnell was the only one who would be around—and he was someone she could easily deal with. What’s more, there was little chance of anyone finding my body before she made good her escape.” He stopped himself. “Do you know about that? The escape, I mean?”
The security chief shook his head. “Not very much. As I said, the computer was far from helpful.”
“It was masterful—in theory, anyway. The Tagh’rat—the Klingon splinter group’s ship—was awaiting Gerda’s signal. When she finished with me, she needed only to contact her allies and open a hole in the shields—using the shuttle deck’s instrumentation. By the time the hole was recognized and closed by bridge personnel, the Tagh’rat would have gotten close enough to snare Gerda in its transporter beam and take off.”
Worf had to agree. It was a good plan. If Gerda had been successful in her assassination attempt, it would probably have worked.
“I wish,” the Daa’Vit said, “that I could have made Stroman part of my escort. I didn’t have that option, though. He died at Maxia Zeta.”
“Too bad,” the Klingon remarked.
“Yes. It is.”
Worf let a moment go by before he resumed his questioning. “Tell me…did Gerda try to take her life after she was apprehended?”
Morgen looked at him. “I believe she did.”
The security chief nodded once. “Thank you. You have been most helpful.”
Fifteen
Picard sat in Geordi’s office and scrutinized the readouts on Geordi’s desk monitor. “Insufficient data,” he read.
“That’s right,” said the chief engineer. “We can’t construct a really dependable model for the professor’s theory—we simply don’t know enough about subspace physics.” He sat back in his chair. “Of course, we’ve been able to come up with some relatively dependable models. But to do that, we had to make some rather large assumptions.” Touching a space on his keypad, he brought up one of the models to which he was referring. “This is an example. If all our assumptions are correct, we ought to be home free at twenty-six degrees. But if we’re off a bit here or there, we could need as much as thirty- six degrees.”
The captain looked at him. “However, you still think the basic theory is sound.”
Geordi nodded.
“And the warp engines are capable of bearing that kind of burden again?”
He nodded again.
Picard gauged his officer’s confidence level. It was about as high as he’d ever seen it—despite the trouble with computer modeling.
“All right, then,” he told La Forge. “Let’s give it a chance.”
Geordi leaned forward again. “You’ve got it, sir. I’ll just need a few minutes down here to finalize things.”
The captain stood.