Star Trek The Next Generation®

by David A. McIntee

“No, that’s not what I meant at all. Actually I just think that with her being transferred, and then me being transferred . . . that maybe it all worked out for the best after all.”

  Leah frowned. “Wait a minute . . . You mean you were going to lose interest in her?”

  “Not exactly. We could have been happy, we were good together. It’s just that there’s always the thought at the back of my head that . . .”

  “That . . . ? Come on, Geordi, what was the downside. What was she not?”

  “She wasn’t Leah Brahms.”

  “Oh.” The mask came down again, hiding her thoughts.

  “Yeah.” All things considered, he’d rather not have said as much straight out.

  “Well, I guess that shows something.”

  “Yeah,” Geordi sighed, “I guess it shows you were right. I can’t get that balance between confidence and—Well, anyway. I’m sorry.”

  “For what? I was going to say I guess it shows commitment. Or stubborn denial.”

  “Why don’t we just call it a compliment.” He raised his glass. “To Doctor Brahms.”

  She raised her glass in return. “To Intrepid. And the mission to revive her.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Geordi agreed.

  5

  La Forge felt weird sitting at the ops console, watching the Challenger’s main viewer. When he had first joined the crew of the Enterprise, he had been the conn officer, despite his already established proficiency in starship engineering, because that was the only slot available for him at the time, and because of his fervent desire to serve on the Enterprise.

  Now here he was, back on a Galaxy-class ship, and almost but not quite back in the past. The only difference was that he was in the left-hand seat instead of the right-hand one. Maybe looking into the past was just like looking into a mirror.

  A note came up on his console, and he turned to face the center seats. Scotty was in the captain’s chair, with Hunt and Dr. Brahms on either side. “The Agamemnon is moving into formation with us.”

  Scotty perked up. “About bloody time too. Kat, drop us out of warp. Transporter room, are you ready to bring aboard our final team member?”

  “Ready,” a woman’s voice replied.

  “Geordi, Leah, would you like to accompany me down to transporter room one and greet our latest guest? Mister Hunt, you have the bridge.”

  La Forge and Brahms immediately rose and made for the turbolift with Scotty. Geordi couldn’t help but wonder who the Agamemnon had brought, and what specialty he or she would bring with them. He found himself hoping it might be Miles O’Brien, who was the best practical engineer he could think of other than Scotty himself.

  In the turbolift, Scotty glanced at them both. “I hear from Guinan that you two were catching up in Nelson’s.”

  “I’ve found a few familiar faces aboard,” La Forge said. “It’s nice to catch up with friends I haven’t seen for a while.”

  Scotty nodded, in mock-thought. “I’m glad to hear it. A crew needs to be a family, if you know what I mean. The best starship crews always are.”

  The turbolift doors opened, just short of the transporter room door. A female chief of medium height with graying hair was waiting at the console. “Have Agamemnon signaled their readiness to transport, Carolan?” Scotty asked.

  “Just a second ago.”

  “Right you are then, go ahead and energize.”

  Carolan deftly brushed the controls, and a figure shimmered into being on the shining transporter pad. The new arrival was tall and lanky, with a wide, angular face and spiky gray hair that was cropped short. He wore loose clothing and a rather irritating smug expression.

  La Forge was horrified. “Rasmussen?! Berlinghoff Rasmussen is on this team?”

  Brahms nodded, looking surprised at his reaction. “Yes, do you know—Oh, of course you do, he was apprehended by the Enterprise, wasn’t he?”

  “‘Apprehended’ isn’t quite the word I’d use. Caught red-handed is more like it.”

  Rasmussen stepped down from the platform, shaking hands with Scotty, then caught sight of Geordi. “Wait, wait, I remember you! Lieutenant La Forge.”

  “It’s Commander La Forge now.”

  “Ah, sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you belowdecks, so to speak.”

  La Forge tapped the pips on his collar. “Three pips, Rasmussen. I don’t know what a Commander’s insignia was in your time, but—”

  “Same, actually, but they were more sort of . . .” He patted the right side of his chest, just below the collarbone. “Here.”

  “I must apologize for the welcome, “Leah interrupted. “Commander La Forge is—”

  “Oh, think nothing of it, Doctor Brahms,” Rasmussen said with a beatific, and slightly contrite, smile. “The Commander’s reaction is perfectly understandable, under the circumstances. I doubt any of his shipmates from the Enterprise would have really been happy to see me again. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  “You made quite an impression,” La Forge said pointedly.

  “An unfortunate and unpleasant one, I know. And I regret it, and offer my unreserved apologies. I know that any of you from whom I tried to steal would be unhappy to see me again. Well, apart from Mister Data, of course, who isn’t really capable of unhappiness. He might understand, actually.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Really? He seemed quite—”

  “Data’s dead.” Geordi didn’t even realize until the words had escaped his lips that he wasn’t hesitating over whether to say dead or deactivated.

  “Dead?” Rasmussen looked genuinely surprised. More incredibly, he looked genuinely dismayed as well. The smile faded from his face. “I’m sorry to hear that. He was quite an incredible . . .”

  “Piece of merchandise?”

  “Creation.” Rasmussen looked lost for a moment. “He was an incredible creation.” That was an opinion with which Geordi couldn’t disagree.

  Rasmussen couldn’t blame Geordi La Forge for being unsociable. His reaction to the offer of a drink in the ship’s lounge was a bit more than unsociable, but Rasmussen couldn’t really blame him for that either. After all, he had tried to steal his stuff, his shipmates’ stuff, and kidnap his friend.

  Frankly, Rasmussen thought, if I was one of the Enterprise crew, I’d have slugged me on the spot. He hoped that thought didn’t belatedly occur to La Forge, or anyone else now on this ship, who had been on the Enterprise back then.

  Back then. The phrase was a sick joke. Even back then was two hundred years in his own future.

  He looked around the cabin they had given him, and was vaguely reminded of his trip to the Enterprise nearly fifteen years ago. It probably wasn’t exactly the same as the accommodation there, even though this was the same class of ship, but he wasn’t familiar enough with it to notice the differences. He did, however, notice the differences between it and in the penal colony in New Zealand.

  Actually, now that he came to think of it, the penal colony gave him a bigger room. And an outdoors. He suspected, though, that the extra room was so that there would be space for the endless parade of historians and the like who had come to gawk at him like some kind of resurrected Neanderthal. Not that they had treated him badly, but he knew he was an attraction to them, like a zoo animal.

  That some of those historians had been rather pretty mitigated his capitivity, though. He couldn’t fault the twenty-fourth century for its women. They were among the few things that didn’t depress him these days.

  When he first came to this century he thought it would be wondrous and magical, with advanced technology he could take back, “invent,” and amaze people with. After so many years eating mostly replicated food, he found he wished he’d never heard of that particular device. And he was amazed that they still used transporters, in spite of all the horror stories that the free press had been disseminating back in the 2150s when they were invented.

  The novelty, basically, had worn off, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Th
e worst was that, even though he was a scientist, and an engineer of sorts, he didn’t understand a word of the technical journals to which he had subscribed. When he met a few schoolchildren who knew more about warp theory than he did, he knew he didn’t have what it took to get up to speed.

  Then came the offer of this trip, and he knew it was his calling. A ship from his own time. A ship and a technology he knew and could understand. How could he refuse the chance to be useful again?

  How could he refuse the chance to meet more lovely ladies of Starfleet?

  As Nog left the bridge at the end of his shift, Tyler Hunt ran to catch the same turbolift. “Hold up, Nog!”

  Nog stuck a leg between the doors to prevent them closing. It was his heavier leg, the biosynthetic prosthesis that he had been stuck with since the Battle of AR-558 during the Dominion War. “What can I do for you, Commander?”

  As the doors snapped shut, Hunt called out, “Elevator halt.” Then he turned to Nog. “That Rasmussen bloke worries me.”

  “Me too. He reminds me of the kind of people my uncle always used to do business with.”

  “You know what I mean. He’s not just a guy who made a mistake once and got himself in too deep. More like it’s in his blood, you know?”

  Nog knew exactly what he meant. “I think so. I’ve known quite a few like that. Before I joined Starfleet.”

  Hunt canted his head. “If my formative years were filled with people like that, I think I’d have seen the service as the quiet life.”

  “You didn’t join Starfleet for the ‘quiet life,’ then?”

  “Nah. Joined up to see the galaxy, really. Belong to a family, of sorts.”

  “What about your own family?”

  “Orphan.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” Family was everything, as far as Ferengi were concerned. If you didn’t have family, how did you learn to negotiate and do business? Exploitation, after all, began at home. “I wonder if the captain would let me put a guard on him.”

  “Somehow I doubt it. Innocent until proven guilty, and all that.”

  “Elevator resume. Deck ten.”

  “Nelson’s?”

  “Where else?”

  “Good thinking. Promotion material. Wish I wasn’t still on duty.”

  The turbolift deposited Nog a short distance from Nelson’s, before taking Hunt back up to the bridge. Even though it was now packed, it was a long-held tradition that the senior staff would be afforded seats, and Nog quickly found his way to the table at one end of the windows, where Commander La Forge was sitting with Qat’qa and Barclay. Qat’qa saw Nog and beckoned him over, then turned to whisper something in the ear of the nearest seated junior officer.

  Said junior officer leapt to his feet and slid the chair across before disappearing into the standing throng. “We saved a seat for you,” Qat’qa said.

  “Thanks.”

  “If you studied engineering, how did you come to be a security chief?” Qat’qa asked.

  “It was the position that was open. I’d been a ground pounder in the Dominion War, and chief engineer on Deep Space 9. Now when the chief engineer slot opens up on Challenger, I’ll apply.”

  La Forge understood. “It happens that way on a lot of Starfleet ships,” he said to Qat’qa. “When I first joined the Enterprise, it was as flight controller, because that was the slot I was rated for. After a year, the chief engineer position became available.”

  “What made you want to become a starfleet engineer?” the Klingon asked.

  “That’s really two different questions,” Nog said.

  “It is?”

  “I wanted to join Starfleet because of the officers I got to know on DS9, mainly Chief O’Brien and Captain Sisko. When I saw the things they did, and the way they worked together, for a greater good . . . I wanted to do that too. It’s a sort of project that’s inside, and feels good. Engineering . . . I always had a talent for it, like my dad.”

  “Your father’s an engineer?”

  “He was.”

  “Was? Oh, he’s not—”

  “No, no . . . I didn’t mean that. He was an engineer on Deep Space 9. Now he’s . . .” Nog looked a little embarrassed. “Well, he changed jobs. He’s not an engineer any more.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “It’s a shame, because he was really, really good at it. I mean, he never had any formal training, he just learned as he went along. But he had a natural talent, an instinct.”

  “Innate talents are things to cherish,” Qat’qa proclaimed.

  “Absolutely.”

  “So why did he give it up?”

  “Circumstances changed. It’s a long story.”

  6

  As the Challenger entered the Agni Cluster, Tyler Hunt was pulling a double shift, to ensure that every department was ready for the job it would have with regard to the Intrepid, and to ensure that those departments not involved didn’t lose any productivity on their own projects. Most people showed signs of strain when they pulled such a long shift, but Hunt actually lived for it.

  Scotty fell into step beside him as he walked, and Hunt slowed down slightly, to keep step with the older man’s pace. “Captain.”

  “What’s up, Tyler?”

  “I’ve arranged a schedule for away teams to the Intrepid.” He handed Scotty a padd with the details. “Starfleet was pretty clear about making sure the remains of the crew are taken care of before any other work begins.”

  Scotty gave an approving nod. “And rightly so.”

  “I agree, we need to take things slowly and with respect.” Hunt looked relieved. “I was kind of afraid that you’d want to push on ahead.”

  “Don’t worry, Mister Hunt. Respect for the past isn’t something I’m likely to disregard.”

  “Aye, sir. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking about it from that angle.”

  “So, what’s your schedule?”

  “Doctor Ogawa has assembled a medical forensics team to recover the remains of the crew, and bring it back to the Challenger to be separated out into individuals. Barclay and I have checked over the stasis units and their separator modules, and they’re perfect for the job. Starbase 410 have done us proud, actually.”

  “What did ye expect from Q’Hap? Call a meeting of the senior staff in the briefing room for twelve hundred. I want to go over the status of the Intrepid before we reach her.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Scotty preferred to be in engineering when he could get away with it, but that was disappointingly infrequent these days. There were too many responsibilities as captain for him to be down there as often as he liked.

  Since the ship could be controlled from the master systems console in engineering, he had been tempted, when he took command of the ship, to move everything to there. Back on the old Enterprise, with Jim Kirk, he had been able to tell the state of the ship by the vibrations from the deck plates. On a Galaxy-class ship, he couldn’t, but he could tell how healthy the engines were from the sound the warp core made, just the way a doctor could listen to a person’s heartbeat if there were no medical tricorders around.

  At least he could sit by the bridge’s engineering station, and keep an eye on things from there. He was pleased by what he saw, and could tell that Vol was doing him proud. A chronometer chimed on the display, reminding him that it was time for the briefing.

  Scotty settled into the chair at the end of the briefing room table, which was, to his mind, the most comfortable chair in any of the ship’s working areas. Perhaps it wasn’t as comfortable as his favorite chair in his quarters, but it was a damn sight better for his back than the center seat on the bridge.

  He cast a look around at the people gathering round the table. On his left, in front of a wall displaying models of previous vessels named Challenger, were Tyler Hunt, then Nog and Ogawa. On his right, sitting by the curved windows that looked out on one of the cluster’s orange suns, were Leah, Geordi, Barclay, and Qat’qa. Vol sat at the far end of the table. “Mis
ter La Forge,” Scotty began, “you’ve been on Intrepid, so how would ye describe the state of the ship?”

  “The hull is more or less intact, barring a few punctures, and the interior has been left as it was on the day she was lost. The thing that throws a spanner into any normal salvage plan is that, physically, the structure of the ship is a couple of thousand years old, not a couple of hundred.”

  “That’s impossible,” Barclay protested. “Unless someone was building NX-class ships before we did.”

  Alyssa Ogawa shook her head, and tapped the padd that was in front of her on the table. “I’ve got Doctor Crusher’s report here. The DNA analysis of some of the organic matter coating the interior surfaces matches known medical records of a number of her crew. It’s definitely the Intrepid which was lost in 2161.”

  “Could it have traveled back through time?” Vol asked. “Something like what happened to the Columbia.”

  Hunt shrugged. “Maybe, but surely it would have been found before.”

  “Space is pretty big, and the ship pretty small. It was pure chance that the Enterprise detected it,” La Forge reminded them.

  “Aye, there is that,” Scotty said. “But Leah and I have had a wee chat about this, and run some numbers.” He touched a control set into the tabletop, and a holographic display sprang to life in the air above the center of the table. It showed a standard illustration of a gravity well as a weight dragging down the center of a rubber sheet. “Everybody knows time runs slower at the bottom of a gravity well.”

  “Starfleet Medical uses the effect quite extensively when stasis fields can’t be used,” Alyssa said with a nod. “A few hours for the patient near a suitable gravity well can give his doctors weeks, or even months, to prepare his treatment.”

  Leah spoke up. “Exactly, and what Intrepid encountered was the reverse of that effect.”

  “Gravity can only get as low as zero,” Nog pointed out. “Even what we call negative gs are just gravity pulling a change of direction. How can it reach such negative numbers to have an effect like this?”

  Scotty leaned forward. “It canna, in normal space.”