Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [39]
He glanced to his left. “Captain?” he prodded. “Here she is.”
“Yes. Very pretty.”
An inward groan rattled through Riker’s chest. The captain simply stood there and eyed the ship sidelong as if unwilling to commit. Minutes ago Picard had questioned his relationship with the old ship. Now he was being belatedly loyal to the EnterpriseD.
Luckily, they couldn’t see the whole starship anymore, but only the glossy hull plates rolling by as the pod came up close to the rim of the saucer section and angled its way automatically toward the airlock. Now the rivets, bolts, carvel plating, and construction stencils were up close and intimate, no longer looking like a ship at all, luckily.
Riker turned away from the captain and punched the clearance to dock. The pod would nuzzle itself in. He found himself wishing the thing were manual so he had something to do besides the two of them standing here being aware of each other.
The pod’s docking cuff hissed, the security clamps chunked into place, and the airlock pressurized with a nearly living breath. Automatically the airlock port slid open, and before either Riker or Picard could escape, a smiling wraith flew toward them.
“Welcome aboard, Captain!” Deanna Troi said.
Riker grinned. Troi looked glad to see the captain here, finally. Her Grecian features were etched along narrow jaw and cheekbones, her large black eyes were prominent than in years past, her dark hair shining.
The captain seemed unmoved by her enthusiasm. Even irritated by it.
“Good morning, Counselor,” he drawled. “Thank you for your eagerness, but I’d rather—”
“Jean-Luc …” a sultry voice interrupted, clearly to keep him from finishing his sentence.
Riker stepped out of Doctor Beverly Crusher’s way as she moved across the deck and slipped her arm into Picard’s.
“Beverly,” the captain greeted her.
“Welcome aboard,” the doctor said. “How are you feeling?”
The captain sighed. “You’re being custodial.”
“That’s my job.”
“Captain! Captain, good morning!”
What was this—a mass mugging?
Riker stepped more out of the way. Engineer Geordi La Forge, his dark features and his cybernetic eyes shining with emotion that shouldn’t have been showing there, plowed between the two women and grabbed the captain’s business hand and started pumping. La Forge was the same age as Riker, yet there was a perpetual boyish cheer in him that always made Riker feel like the big brother.
“And Engineer La Forge as well,” the captain grumbled. “How totally unexpected. All right, where’s—”
“He’s right behind me, sir!” La Forge turned and craned down the corridor, where along came a familiar face. “Data! What took you so long?”
“I was distracted by the wonderful music coming from the rec area,” Lieutenant Data said. His metallic-gold face was animated with delight. “Someone is in there playing Smoky Mountain music. I love Smoky Mountain music! It is so downhome and toe-tapping. Do not you all love it too?”
“You all …” Riker echoed, and glanced at Troi.
For years Data had been an ideal android, completely cool, a little curious, but seldom ruffled. Recently, though, he had been given a strange invention for a walking computer to possess—emotion. A chip in his positronic brain gave Data something that Riker had thought unprogrammable. How were feelings, reactions, sensations, needs, programmed into a machine?
Well, apparently it had been done. How well, nobody knew yet. The chip could be turned on and off at Data’s will, but he pretty much left it on and indulged in a mosaic of appreciations denied him until lately. Fear, humor, disgust, cheer—all these things had eluded the unflappable android, even more steely than a Vulcan, because Vulcans possessed underlying emotions. Data hadn’t had any … or at least, not many.
Riker never quite believed Data was exactly the mechanical box he was reputed to be, or in fact that the medical computers said he was. There had always