Resistance - J.M. Dillard [3]
Picard directed a curt nod at Geordi. “Please deactivate B-4, Mister La Forge.”
Geordi hesitated no more than a heartbeat, then with his free hand, reached for a panel at the back of B-4’s neck, opened it, and pressed a control.
B-4 froze: his eyes no longer blinked, his head no longer moved, his limbs no longer fidgeted in realistic representation of human motion. Even the blandly pleasant expression had resolved into one of soulless vacancy. In less than a millisecond, he was transformed from sentient being to inanimate object.
Picard had expected the moment after to be the easiest. To his surprise, it was the hardest—for there, in front of them, sat Data, just as he had appeared all the times they had been forced to shut him down. There was no longer B-4’s vacant expression and witless repetition to remind them that this was someone, something else. Picard’s throat tightened; he recalled a time, many years ago, when Command had wanted to deactivate Data for study. He remembered how hard and eloquently he and Data had argued against it, and won.
Now it felt as though he had ultimately lost.
Standing beside Picard, Beverly gave a few rapid blinks, then regained her composure. Geordi, his tone soft, his words forced, said, “I’ll finish up here, Captain. He’ll be ready for shipment within the hour.” He lifted the laser wrench in his hand and fingered a toggle.
“Very good,” Picard said. He turned on his heel and tried to leave Data’s memory behind, in engineering—just as he had earlier dismissed the dream about the Borg.
It had been a strange night, followed by a strange morning; Picard could not entirely rid himself of the odd feeling the world had somehow gone awry. Nothing more than mental phantoms, he exhorted himself. Nothing real: just ghosts. Ghosts and whispers…
As he rode the turbolift up toward the bridge, Picard’s mood gradually began to lighten. His next task would be a far happier one: he had been planning an announcement with great care. The previous night, after he had received some anticipated news from Starfleet Command, he and Beverly had each enjoyed a glass of wine and laughed over his nefarious plan for delivering said news. They had planned, too, a small celebration of the senior crew after hours.
Picard was nearly smiling when the turbolift slowed and arrived at the bridge, but by the time the doors opened, he had already forced a frown in order to produce a properly grim expression.
The Enterprise bridge was a study in silent efficiency: a recent transfer from Security, Lieutenant Sara Nave, straw-colored hair loosely coiled at her neck, sat at the conn, studying the stars on the main viewscreen. Nave’s serious expression and consummate professionalism belied her off-duty behavior. At the academy, she’d had a reputation as a fun-loving hellion—the captain recalled that several senior officers had used the same label for him. Unlike her captain, Nave had graduated at the top of her class and was one of the best in her field.
Born on Rigel to human parents—both of them high-ranking officers in Starfleet—Nave had been a prodigy, convinced from early childhood that she wanted to follow in her family’s footsteps. Her academic record was stellar enough to convince Starfleet Academy to grant her early admission; after an accelerated program, she graduated at the age of eighteen. She was now twenty-five, with seven years of outstanding service under her belt—though it was hard sometimes for Picard to believe it, given the fact that Nave looked even younger than she was. Her pixielike features would always give her the appearance of youth, even into old age.
She was not a tall woman, though her limbs were lithe and long—yet her strength was formidable, in part because she had started in Security. She regularly practiced mock combat with Worf using the bat’leth—the quarter-moon-shaped Klingon scimitar—albeit with a slight handicap. Picard was glad to see the two had formed a friendship. Worf did not take easily to new people.
A faint crease appeared