The Sky's The Limit Part 34

"I must agree." Worf's fist tightened around his gla.s.s. "His death has robbed us of a fine officer." He paused. "As well as a friend."

"It's...'Ironic' would be the wrong word, I guess, but..."

"But?"

"Data always wanted to be human. Be...alive. And in the end, like all human life..." Geordi didn't finish his sentence but just spread his hands. "I guess none of us were expecting it."

Worf thought about it. What La Forge said was true. Data had always sought to be human. In the struggle against the Praetor s.h.i.+nzon he had died. "Death is the inevitable conclusion of life."

"He always thought there was a possibility that he could eventually cease functioning, but I know I always expected him to outlive all of us."

"As did I," Worf admitted. He sipped at his prune juice, and both men fell silent. "He sacrificed his life to defeat an enemy," Worf rumbled at last. "Data sought to share the life of a human, but-" He smiled, showing teeth. "He died like a Klingon." Worf gazed into his juice. "I do not know if Data would have thought about the possibility, but I am sure there is a place for him in Sto-Vo-Kor."

Geordi pursed his lips. "I never thought of it that way, but I guess there's not much that would surprise me anymore." He cheered up, with a little visible effort. "Which reminds me, Worf, how are you and Spot getting along?"

This was the last subject Worf wanted to discuss right now. "She is...under control." Geordi laughed. "She is as soft as a tribble and does not understand her place! But she will adapt."

"And so will you, once she gets you trained." Worf only glared in reply. "Hey, you've already switched from calling her 'it' to 'she.' "

"At least I could always tell the creature was female," Worf said pointedly.

Geordi laughed again. "Yeah, that you could. I've never been than much of a cat person either." He turned as someone approached, and Worf did likewise. It was one of Geordi's engineering crew. "Commander, do you have a moment?" Worf considered simply saying no but realized the woman was speaking to Geordi. "We're getting reports of door malfunctions on Decks 8 and 9."

Malfunctioning doors didn't sound like a threat to Worf, but it was unusual. The unusual was more often a threat. "What kind of malfunctions?" Geordi asked.

"Jamming open, mainly." Now Worf's interest was piqued. Doors were made to close for many reasons-privacy, convenience, safety-but aboard any kind of s.p.a.cegoing vessel, they were vital to maintaining atmosphere if there was a hull breach. For a moment, Worf thought about leaving it to engineering, but Geordi's team would be taxed to the limit as it was, with testing all the new and newly repaired engine systems. Besides, he wanted to know first whether this really was an engineering problem. A thief would find jammed doors quite useful.

Ordinarily this sort of variation from the norm would be an XO matter, in Worf's opinion. With no XO on board, most of the duties of the post had ended up in Worf's lap, and he would not s.h.i.+rk any duties. If looking after Spot was a duty he had accepted, this was another one he should accept. "Show me these doors," he said.

Spot had been enjoying herself in the crawl s.p.a.ces. Some tunnels came out into Jefferies tubes, giving her access to different decks. She had free run of the s.h.i.+p now, and there were a lot more easily accessed gaps opening out of the crawl s.p.a.ces than there had been allowing her in.

There were places to run, places to slink, and places to climb up or down. And there were so many places to hide, more than she had ever imagined.

The strange new scent was closer now, and there were sounds ahead too. There were always sounds in crawl s.p.a.ces, of course: beeps and chirps and all sorts of very artificial sounds. This was an organic sound. There was something in here with her, ahead. It wasn't one of the other cats on board, as she knew them all by sight and scent. It wasn't a prey animal, either, or any other creature Spot had encountered before. This was entirely new and gave Spot pause.

Spot had met new creatures before, of course. There was a first time for every creature she had met, and she had always reacted the same way. She would sniff, and watch, and think. Then she would repeat those stages as often as she needed before approaching. If nothing else, she needed to know whether the creature was prey or a threat. If it was neither, then she could look at her other options. Suddenly, it came out of a side pa.s.sage, a few body lengths in front of her. She stopped silently, not wanting to alert it if it hadn't already noticed her.

It was leathery in patches, with short coa.r.s.e hair and stubby protrusions of leather and bone. It seemed to be balanced on several protrusions and flexed them to move. Spot couldn't see any ears or eyes, or any other sense organs, on the creature. It was dark in the crawl s.p.a.ce, so Spot thought maybe she just wasn't noticing them. Or perhaps it had something she wouldn't recognize. There were several types of animal she had encountered in her travels who did not have normal eyes or ears.

It didn't seem to be a threat. It wasn't desirable.

It was prey, then.

Spot leaped, digging her claws into the creature. It thrashed around under her, and she belatedly realized that she didn't know how to kill it. A rodent, or even another cat, she might kill with a neck bite that would crush the windpipe, but this thing didn't seem to have a neck, let alone a windpipe. Spot dug in her claws and bit where she could. Belatedly, the creature extruded claws made of bone, but it was too little, too late.

Its struggles became weaker and weaker. Eventually it was still.

Spot hissed at the unfamiliar taste. It wasn't unpleasant, exactly, but she didn't fancy eating the whole thing. Perhaps, she thought, it would make a good exchange for the favorite food the big Klingon companion had given her.

Deck 8, in a different quarter from Gregory's cabin. Worf carefully eyed the edges of the sixth pair of doors, seeing no scuff marks or scratches that would suggest they had been jammed by manual force. He ran a quick diagnostic on the access panel, and that too seemed to be normal. Finally, he scanned the mechanism with a tricorder; there was definitely nothing wrong with that, either.

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 s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+p'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 circ.u.mstance 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, and the hair on the right side of his head had been shriveled almost down to the skin.

Geordi slapped his combadge. "Medical emergency in engineering!" He tapped it again. "Engineering to Worf."

"Worf here."

"We need you down here on Deck Sixteen. There's been a death."

"On my way."

Worf walked into engineering a bare fifteen seconds later, next to Doctor Tropp. "Where is the body?"

"This way," Geordi said, leading them toward the Jefferies tube.

Any death aboard s.h.i.+p had to be handled in a certain way, regardless of whether it was due to accident, enemy action, crime, or natural causes. Security and the s.h.i.+p's executive officer both had to be notified. With Worf temporarily acting in both capacities, it fell to him alone to make sure that all the proper reports were filed and the captain kept up to date with what had happened.

Worf was used to seeing death, and it didn't trouble him the way it troubled his human crewmates. He felt a slight regret on the technician's behalf that he hadn't fallen in battle against a worthy opponent, but he reflected that the man had at least died doing his duty.

"Plasma burns," the Den.o.bulan said immediately, before he even activated a scanner. "Quite distinctive, I'm sorry to say."

Geordi nodded and peered into the Jefferies tube. A blackened and shattered EPS junction unit reeked of burned plastic. "And there's the source of the plasma. Looks like it blew when Davis was working on it, and the discharge killed him."

Tropp nodded, but Worf preferred to be thorough. "There will have to be an autopsy to be sure."

"I'll get on it right away," Tropp confirmed.

Picard settled into his chair and watched Luna grow visibly larger on the main viewer.

The Enterprise was following the same course that the very first manned interplanetary missions had taken. Back then it took three days to go from Earth to the moon, but the Enterprise, even under maneuvering thrusters, would be there in thirty minutes. Most people, Picard knew, were so used to modern forms of transport that they would never think about how astonis.h.i.+ng that difference was.

"We're approaching the Lagrange 1 point," the conn officer noted.

"Launch target drones," Picard ordered. The lieutenant at ops did so, and Picard glanced at the current tactical officer. "Select targets and fire at will."

The officer nodded and started blowing away target drones with the s.h.i.+p's phasers. "All weapons systems fully functional. Targeting fully functional."

"Very well. Helm, give me a slingshot around the moon and bring us back into Earth orbit at half impulse."

"Aye, sir."

Worf returned to his quarters two hours later than he had expected. As the doors slid open, he instinctively looked around for anything unusual. Everything was as it should be, so he switched his attention to Spot. The creature was not in the same place that he had last seen her. As if the day hadn't been embarra.s.sing enough already, Worf called out, "Computer, where is the feline creature called Spot?"

The reply took a couple of seconds, as if the computer was taken by surprise and had to adjust. "Feline one-four, Spot, is in Commander Data's quarters."

"Did the door open for the cat?"

"Negative."

"Then how did it get out of these quarters?"

"Unknown."

Worf suppressed a snarl as he stalked down the corridor to Data's old quarters. The cat was indeed there, in the middle of the lightless room's floor. She was making a strange and, Worf thought, extremely irritating wailing sound. For a moment, he wondered if the animal was dying and almost called the computer to ask if the s.h.i.+p's veterinarian had reported for duty yet. The cat stopped making the noise and looked intently at Worf. Then it wailed some more.

The cat bounded ahead of him and stood over something that most definitely did not belong in Data's quarters.

It was a leathery organic creature of some kind, a little bigger than Spot herself. It was mostly covered in stiff, wiry hair. Stubby digits-they were too stubby to be called limbs-were half curled and lifeless. Sticky brown fluid had dried around the edges of several cuts and bites. Worf snapped a piece of metal from a shelf and crouched beside the dead thing. He didn't recognize the species.

He had no fear of such a toothless creature, living or dead, but had been trained to follow Starfleet protocol in case of biological hazards that might carry disease or contamination. So he used the metal to turn the body over. It was definitely dead. He rose and fetched a box, hoping that Doctor Tropp was still on duty.

Spot was still looking up at him, and he realized the sounds had been a victory call, the signal of having made a kill. He approved. "You are," he said, "a good cat." He called up to the captain. "Captain, Worf here. I am in Commander Data's quarters. There is...a creature here."

"An intruder?"

Worf shook his head. "No, sir. It is some kind of animal, vermin."

"How did you find this creature?"

"It was already dead."

"Dead?"

"Data's ca-Spot," he corrected himself, "killed the creature. I do not know where she found it."

"It's reasonable to suspect that if one...rodent, if that word applies, has found its way aboard, then perhaps others have too. Have environmental look into it."

"Yes, sir."

"Captain," the conn officer said suddenly, "we're drifting off course. Half a degree. No, a full degree...The moon's gravity well is affecting us more than it should."

Picard glanced at the main viewer, where the pitted and sterile lunar surface was pa.s.sing by. "Compensate."

The ensign calmly made an adjustment, then paled. "Captain!" An alarm began to blare, and Picard knew the malfunctions were back in force. "Maneuvering thrusters off-line!"

"Go to impulse."

"Impulse power off-line!"

"What's our degree of drift? It seems clear it isn't enough to draw us onto the lunar surface."

"No, sir, but it has altered our slingshot course." The ensign was definitely paler than before. "Earth-orbital insertion won't be possible. We are now on a collision course with Earth. I estimate we'll impact off the coast of Madagascar in a little over an hour."

Picard could feel the blood try to drain from his face. He pressed a b.u.t.ton on the arm of his chair. "Mister La Forge, is our warp drive active yet?"

"No, sir. Simulations will be finished in a couple of hours, and the core temperature should reach optimal about an hour after that."

"I'd appreciate if you could hurry that process along, Geordi. We've lost maneuvering thrusters and impulse power, and are on a collision course with Earth."

La Forge's voice was crisp when it came back. "I'm on it, sir."

"Contact Starfleet. Have-" Picard's voice tensed. He knew that everyone would know how much he hated saying anything like this. "Have a s.h.i.+p tractor us out of danger. Request they stand by with transporters in case of need."

Tropp was pulling a sheet over a rec.u.mbent form as Worf entered. "Is this Ensign Davis?"