Section 31_ Rogue - Andy Mangels [100]
He heard the captain speaking, his voice sounding as though it had traversed a great distance before reaching him. “Any sign we’ve been detected, Mr. Hawk?”
“Negative, Captain. Our cloaking frequency still matches the data we got from the telemetry probes. The maximum harmonic variances aren’t even worth mentioning.”
Picard sounded relieved to hear that. “Good. Mr. Data, it appears there’s nothing standing in our craft’s way. Let’s hope that means there’s nothing standing in your way, either.”
Data paused to damp down the output from his emotion chip. Nervousness was an emotion he did not particularly enjoy.
“Contact with the cloaking field in fifteen seconds,” Hawk said. Data listened as the lieutenant began counting down. He recognized the slight quaver of apprehension in the lieutenant’s voice, and understood its source well enough. After all, if the Romulans had indeed somehow managed to rotate their cloaking-field harmonics at any time since the Enterprise had last probed the area, then the scoutship would immediately become conspicuous. A warbird could be upon them in moments, ending the mission ignominiously-and there would be no time for a second attempt.
Data’s android perceptions were now attuned to an extremely minute resolution, which enabled him to notice the trillions of separate information cycles that occurred every second within his positronic brain. Each of those seconds seemed to last for hours, enabling Data to review most of the onboard library of Romulan literature, music, and drama in an eyeblink. Using an infinitesimal fraction of his positronic resources, Data listened as Hawk continued with his countdown, leaving protracted lacunae between each word.
“Four.”
Data reiterated the mission plan two thousand and seventy-one times, while simultaneously reviewing the probability theory equations of Earth’s Blaise Pascal as well as the collected sonnets of Phineas Tarbolde of the Canopus Planet.
“Three.”
Data monitored and corrected an almost undetectable engine-output imbalance-which he attributed to the close proximity of the subspace singularity-and at the same time revisited Kurt Gödell’s axiom negating the recursive validation of mathematical systems.
“Two.”
He reviewed the mission plan several dozen times yet again while composing a complex contrapuntal string interlude based on large prime numbers and the mathematical constructs of Leonardo Fibonacci and Jean Baptiste Fourier. At the same moment, he extracted from the ship’s computer core the rules to a multidimensional Romulan strategy game that was strongly reminiscent of the meditative Vulcan pastime known as kal-toh.
Stop fidgeting, Data told himself.
“One.”
Just as the ship crossed the threshold, Data transmitted a simple handshake code to one of the buoys located on the Romulan array’s periphery, then patiently awaited a response. After an eternity-which concluded in an almost negligible fraction of a second-the countersignal arrived. The buoy appeared to have accepted his credentials, recognizing him as a part of its own programming. His foot, as Geordi might have said, was in the door.
Data briefly permitted some real-time visual inputs to enter his accelerated consciousness. He watched as the Romulan array winked into existence on the forward viewer, along with the nearest few dozen of the outermost layer of buoys. From the array’s still-distant center, the subspace singularity’s accretion disk stared out like a baleful red eye. Though he was tempted to pause and continue admiring the vista before him, Data instead shut down his optical inputs and shunted those resources back toward his mission objectives. He resumed parsing time infinitesimally.
“I can see some of the nearer cloaking buoys,” Picard said. “There must be thousands of them out there. It’s extraordinary.”
Data felt a stab of envy, since the sensory information he was receiving at the moment couldn’t really be described as sight. For about a femtosecond, he longed to see everything the two humans in the cockpit were