The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [175]
It had been exactly the same on the other doors. No sign of forced entry, and none of the occupants—all new arrivals—had reported anything missing. Worf arranged interviews for all of them with his security team and then retired to his quarters to review what he had found so far. Perhaps studying the data he had acquired would offer a clue.
“Commanders Worf and La Forge,” the captain’s voice came over the ship’s communications net, “please report to my ready room.”
“On my way,” Worf responded.
Captain Picard had read the reports filed by all his department heads and was not pleased. “We’re now flying freely,” Picard began, taking a cup of tea from the replicator, “and I should very much like to give the ship’s repairs a good shakedown as soon as possible. Yet I find we’re experiencing a spate of minor malfunctions, most recently the problem with the doors on Deck 8. I also have some reports of replicator and holodeck malfunctions.”
Geordi grimaced. “These malfunctions are small, but they’re proving pretty tricky to track down.”
“Tricky?”
Geordi spread his hands but didn’t look too concerned. “Well, it’s taking up a lot of man-hours, but it’s nothing too difficult. And, to be honest, it’s pretty much what I expected after the repairs and upgrades anyway.”
Picard sipped his tea and nodded understandingly. “Teething troubles. Version conflicts.”
“Version conflicts,” Geordi agreed with a sigh. There was a lot of feeling in his voice. He shook his head. “The bane of Starfleet engineering.”
“You’re certain that’s the cause.”
“Personally? Sure. But as chief engineer, no. We’re following up on every avenue.”
Picard nodded approvingly. “I must confess that some of the circumstance does remind me of the effects of Wesley’s ‘evolved’ nanites.”
Geordi grinned. “Would you believe that was the second or third thing I thought of? But there are definitely no nanites on the loose this time, sir.”
“And you, Mister Worf, have another theory that may account for some of these events?”
“It is possible there may be a thief on board.” Worf couldn’t get the distaste out of his voice. Not only did he believe the old Earth saying about “honor among thieves” to be nonsensical, he couldn’t even imagine how a thief could have any honor. “Security is conducting interviews and background checks on all the newly arrived crew members.”
“Good. I want to test out maneuvering control with translunar orbital insertion exercises on the next watch, and I would prefer there to be no more malfunctions.”
“We’ll do our best, Captain,” Geordi promised. He left, and Worf moved after him.
“Mister Worf, a moment,” Picard said. Worf paused at attention, hands behind his back. “Worf, you may find that there isn’t always a need to be too much of a micromanager about small things like door malfunctions. But if ever it comes to it, you’re showing signs of learning to be a good XO.”
“Thank you, sir, but it is not an ambition that I have.”
Geordi had returned to engineering and was making good progress with starting up the new dilithium chamber and the warp simulations. He was almost convinced that he could relax, when there was a sudden, distant, scream. “What was—” Before Geordi could finish the question, an alarm began warbling. Geordi glanced at a screen. “Uh-oh, we’ve lost an EPS junction.” He turned to the nearest ensign. “Shut down everything that goes through junction four-oh-one-four-kappa and reroute to a backup.”
“Aye, sir,” the ensign replied, already getting on with it as he spoke.
Geordi jogged out through a wide corridor toward the Jefferies tube where junction 4014 kappa was located. The source of the scream was immediately obvious.
He had been a human in his early thirties, in the yellow trim of an engineering uniform. Now he lay sprawled at the opening of a Jefferies tube. One of his half-closed hands was badly burned, smoke still curling from his sleeve. There was another burn on his face,