Section 31_ Rogue - Andy Mangels [78]
Picard smiled. “Well, I didn’t say it would be easy, Mr. Data. Consider it a challenge.”
“I do indeed, sir.”
“We’ll get right on it, Captain,” La Forge said. “We can also modify another probe to look inside the energy screen, to get a better handle on what the scoutship’s got in store for it.”
Picard nodded his approval. “Make it so.” Geordi and Data excused themselves and returned to their work.
Zweller remained behind, looking intrigued. “I’d like to know more about this energy field you keep referring to, Johnny,” he said to Picard.
Picard studied his old Academy friend’s eager expression. Ordinarily, his impulse would have been to tell him everything he knew. But during the flight back to the Enterprise, he had seen how Zweller’s own colleagues had distrusted him. Riker, Troi, and Dr. Gomp had made him aware of their suspicions that Zweller had illegally aided the Chiarosan rebels; Gomp had even gone so far as to suggest that Zweller had prearranged their capture by the Army of Light.
Batanides was evidently having the same misgivings. “You’ll be briefed in due course, Commander,” she said coolly. “In the meantime, there are a few questions we need to ask you.”
Picard couldn’t have agreed more.
Turning back toward Riker, he said, “Please ask Counselor Troi to come to my ready room, Number One. Immediately.”
“What the hell kind of reunion is this anyway, Johnny?” Zweller said, looking surprised. “What exactly is going on here?”
“That’s something I’d like to know as well.” Picard spread his hands across the ready-room desk and settled back in his chair. Batanides and Troi sat on the sofa on the other side of the small room. Both women were looking intently at Zweller, who stood with his arms at his sides, fists clenched.
“Your shipmates have leveled some very serious charges at you, Corey,” Batanides said.
“Is this an interrogation, Marta?” Zweller said angrily.
Picard sighed. He would have thought that forty-plus years of starship duty might have mellowed his old friend’s youthful hotheadedness.
“No one is interrogating you, Corey,” Batanides said, leaving an unspoken but obvious yet hanging in the air.
“Nevertheless,” Picard said, “these charges are serious, and must be answered. And there’s also the matter of your DNA having been found on the combadges we recovered after the fight in Hagraté. The circumstantial evidence would suggest that it was you who removed those combadges from Commander Riker and Counselor Troi after they were struck unconscious in the melee.”
“I noticed that Chiarosan disruptors can lock onto subspace signals,” Zweller said, nodding. To Troi, he added, “Don’t bother to thank me for saving your lives.”
Picard considered that for a moment. “If that’s so, then you certainly have earned my thanks. But Counselor Troi and Commander Riker have both told me that Grelun granted you privileges that he denied to his other prisoners. So I still must ask you: Did you supply arms or assistance to the Army of Light?”
Zweller pointed at Troi. “Why don’t you get the answer from your Betazoid? You obviously don’t have any faith that I’m going to tell you the truth, or else you wouldn’t have sicced a telepath on me.”
“I’m only half-Betazoid, Mr. Zweller,” Troi said calmly. “I can only pick up emotions, not specific thoughts.”
“And what is it you’re ‘picking up’ from me?”
“I sense mainly that you are a master of evasion. As well as a skilled manipulator of people. And of the truth.”
“Come now, Counselor,” Zweller said, his lips turning upward in an asymmetrical half-smile. “In my experience, that description could fit just about any front-line Starfleet officer who’s managed to stay alive as long as I have. Present company excepted, of course.”
Picard bridled at Zweller’s verbal jab, but said nothing. There was no point in allowing his old friend to provoke