Slings and Arrows 01_ Sea of Troubles - J. Steven York [30]
“Mr. Hawk and his security people will still be looking for you.”
She-it, he had to keep reminding himself-looked at him again. “He won’t find me unless I want to be found, I assure you.” The Changeling turned, and as it did, changed into a white-furred Pyrithian bat, which sped past Hawk, triggering the door. It flew through and vanished into the corridor outside.
Hawk ducked his head through the door, but the Changeling had already vanished. He stepped back inside, and the doors closed behind him. He and Picard looked at each other for a moment. “I appreciate what you said, Captain, about Linda.”
He frowned. “Don’t. It was a strategy. We negotiated a seemingly insignificant point, and the Changeling made a concession, no matter how small. I was offended by its use of her form, but I could have ignored it if it suited the needs of the negotiation.”
Hawk frowned. “I don’t see how that accomplished anything, Captain. Taking the form of Counselor Troi, mentioning Dr. Crusher and those other women, whoever they were, it all seemed calculated to push your buttons.”
Picard considered a moment. “Those were all women who were important to me at one point or another in my life. The Changeling could only have learned of their importance to me by reading my personal logs.”
“Then it’s already deep inside our computer files, Captain. I’ll have to run security scans to see how bad the damage is.”
“Perhaps not as deep as you believe, Mr. Hawk. There simply hasn’t been enough time to crack many deeply encrypted files. The Changeling focused on my files for its own reasons: to unnerve me, to learn things it could use against me, to make me feel vulnerable, and most of all to demonstrate its power over me. Well, it doesn’t matter. The Changelings may be used to being worshipped as gods, but I will not bow down before this one.”
“And I don’t trust it, Captain. I think this time it’s asking for, to consider your offer, is just a stall.”
“I don’t know if you’re right, Mr. Hawk, but we won’t be waiting to find out. It’s time to finish work on our Changeling trap.”
CHAPTER 10
Geordi La Forge climbed down the long ladder next to the warp core, scanning the plasma flow with his VISOR as he descended. He reached the main engineering level and nodded in greeting to one of several security officers assigned to engineering. Then he turned and stood looking up at the towering warp core, watching the glowing stream of drive plasma emerging from the injectors, flowing up the core and out into the warp nacelles. The injector timing still seemed a little off.
Despite the distraction of the Changeling threat and the increased security, La Forge had continued to work on improving warp engine performance inside the nebula. He wasn’t going to let the Changeling prevent him from fulfilling his original mission of enhancing the Enterprise’s combat performance.
He turned away from the core and was surprised to see Data standing at the master engineering console, accompanied by Lieutenant Huff from security.
“Data! What brings you down here?”
Data looked up at him. “Geordi. I am glad you are here. I am attempting to develop an algorithm to anticipate the Changeling’s movements through the ship’s service passages, and this requires accurate and detailed schematics. I require your command override code to access the shakedown logs.”
La Forge suddenly felt awkward. Data was one of his closest friends, but there were security protocols in place, and the shakedown logs had been identified as a priority target for the Changeling. Still, he felt funny questioning Data. Now, with his emotion chip installed, Data could be insulted, or have his feelings hurt the same as anyone else. More easily, actually, since the emotions were so new and powerful to him.
Before saying anything, La Forge scanned Data with his VISOR. Everything looked right. He could see the glow of Data’s power supply, the flow of positrons through his matrix. Yet Starfleet Intelligence assured them that