Section 31_ Rogue - Andy Mangels [110]
Sooner or later, Hawk knew, their luck was going to run out.
Hawk examined the singularity once again on the passive sensor display. It seemed indestructible. He closed his eyes, feeling utterly defeated.
“Report, Lieutenant!” Picard barked.
“It… didn’t work. I don’t understand it. I must have mis-keyed one of the command pathways.”
Hawk heard a voice behind him. “I do not believe that is so, Lieutenant.”
“Data!” Hawk said, startled. He turned in his seat and saw that Data was now standing in the crew compartment. Except for the cable that connected his metallic skull to the bulkhead, he appeared none the worse for wear.
“Forgive me, Lieutenant. I did not mean to startle you.”
“Data, what happened to the AI you were fighting?” Picard said as he rolled the scoutship past a disruptor tube an instant before it fired. Hawk noticed that the Captain’s hand was on his phaser.
“It has been… neutralized. My internal housekeeping subroutines are purging its remaining code-structures from my physical matrix even now.”
“Excellent. But can you get back inside the array?”
“Not in the same manner as before. I just checked the information channel through which I originally entered the array, and I have determined that it is now filled with electronic ‘antibodies’ designed to cancel out any recurrence of my original externally introduced abort-command sequence. It is the positronic equivalent of an inoculation against a viral infection. I am afraid that we must find another avenue of attack.”
Picard finally seemed to be running out of patience. “Data, don’t you understand? We don’t have time to look for another avenue of attack!”
Attack. The notion struck Hawk like a clap of thunder. Attack! That’s the key. “Maybe we already have one,” he said.
“Let’s hear it, Lieutenant,” the captain prompted, still obviously intent on staying one step ahead of the Romulan guns. A disruptor salvo rocked them at that precise instant, and the scoutship’s responses to Picard’s piloting seemed to be growing sluggish. Heaven only knew how badly they’d been damaged.
Hawk took a deep breath, then plunged forward. “Data, if the array’s own defenses were to malfunction and attack the singularity’s containment facility, wouldn’t that bring on an abort automatically? And send the singularity back into subspace immediately?”
“That was the scenario that I originally attempted to make the singularity’s containment machinery believe,” Data said calmly. “However, I would still have to transmit the abort order through command pathways from which we are now blocked.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Hawk said, his words piling onto one another in his excitement. “What if the array’s defenses really did start shooting at the singularity’s containment field?”
The android nodded, evidently grasping the idea. “In that event, the Romulans’ own failsafe programs should initiate an abort command on their own from within the singularity’s subspace containment system. I would not need to send any such command myself.”
“All right, gentlemen,” Picard said, now clearly preoccupied with keeping the ship in one piece. “How might we accomplish that?”
“What about trying to alter the containment facility’s sensor profile?” Hawk said hopefully. “We could make the singularity itself appear to be surrounded by a fleet of invading ships.”
“And thus in danger of suffering a fatal containment breach,” Picard added, nodding.
“Unfortunately,” Data said, “The systems that govern sensor data are now closed to me as well.”
Hawk’s spirits flagged again when he heard this. Then he glanced at Picard, and saw a slow smile spreading across the captain’s face.
“Maybe there’s another way to go about Mr. Hawk’s idea, Data.” Picard then handed the conn back over to Hawk. Though the evasive flying kept him busy, the lieutenant listened carefully to the captain’s words.
“Tell me about the