CHAPTER TWO

Captain Jean-Luc Picard sat in his quarters, relaxing and listening to a light, melodious piece of classical music. It was the first time he had actually relaxed in three days. It seemed that when things happened aboard the Galaxy class starship Enterprise- NCC 1701-D, they all happened at once. It had been one of those weeks, first Picard had been instructed to go to a planet called Tirol Three, to take medical supplies, which was a tedious job in itself. Tirol Three was not a member of the Federation but they had declared a state of medical emergency, and Starfleet couldn't turn its back on them, and so on a wing of mercy the Enterprise had been on hand.
Dr. Crusher and her medical team had been flat out battling to invent a cure for the epidemic that had broken out there. Picard had instructed a ship wide, level one diagnostic to be carried out, just to keep him busy but it had turned up more problems than enough. Picard had no medical research abilities and therefore had nothing else to do so he had been in engineering helping for most of the time.
Valuable crewmembers such as Commander Riker, Counsellor Troi and Lieutenant Worf had been off ship at a conference on Earth, and were to return shortly.
Picard turned off the music as he couldn't sit and do nothing for very long, and went to greet his bridge officers in the main shuttle bay. It would be half an hour before the shuttle was due to rendezvous with the Enterprise, so Picard walked slowly around the ship on his way to the shuttle bay. He did not tour the ship very often but once in a while he took it upon himself to see that things were running smoothly, although he had every confidence in Commander Riker's ability to see that they were. He eventually got to the large shuttle bay doors and went in. Inside various crewmembers acknowledged his presence with a nod of the head and he returned the gesture with a smile. Picard walked over to a console where Ensign Golgo was working and asked when Commander Riker's shuttle would be arriving.
"Commander Riker is hailing the Enterprise now, Captain. He is indicating that he will be ready to dock in two minutes." Golgo said, working his console.
"Very well. He is earlier than we expected. Thank you, Ensign." Picard said and stood to wait for the arrival of the shuttlecraft.
After two minutes Riker hailed again requesting permission to dock, the reply was a yes from Captain Picard. Ensign Golgo worked his controls to open the outside shuttle bay doors. As the doors opened Picard couldn't help but feel that the depths of space were his home, and the sense of pride at being out here amongst the stars. The twinkle of lights against the unending darkness was majestic, and yet somehow a bit unnerving at the same time but it was home all the same and nothing else mattered.
Picard saw the shuttlecraft as a white block floating through space as it came in closer to the force field that kept all the air from rushing out into the vacuum of space. Ensign Golgo asked Commander Riker to shut off his engines so he could use the tractor beams to bring the shuttle in safely. Soon the shuttle had landed and three bridge officers emerged, Picard greeted each in turn.
"Welcome back Will, Deanna, Worf." He said pleasantly while shaking each of their hands.
"It's good to be back." Riker said tiredly.
"How was the conference?"
"Boring." Commander Riker stated immediately, not having to think of an answer to describe it.
"Different." Troi said with a slight shrug of her shoulders, and not wanting to be negative about anything. Worf just grunted unhappily in his usual Klingon way. Picard led the way out of the shuttle bay and the three officers followed.
"I realize that quantum meta-physics isn't everyone's cup of tea but every Starfleet officer has to know something about it. You're lucky you got off with it until now, I had to do it as part of my training at the Academy, and that ran over two semesters." Picard said trying to console each of them.
"I couldn't cope with one week never mind two semesters. I just wish they would make it more interesting that's all." Worf replied.
"So did anything interesting happen while we were away, Captain?" Inquired Troi.
Picard told them of the weeks events as they turned the corner and got into the turbolift, "...so you didn't really miss anything, in fact you probably had more fun than I." Picard exclaimed.
The turbolift deposited Riker and Troi on deck eight; Picard told them there would be a briefing at seventeen hundred hours, giving them enough time to rest. Worf got out at deck two and Picard continued up to the bridge.

Picard emerged from the turbolift and walked down the ramp to his command chair. Ensign Crusher was at the helm and Data at ops, Lieutenant Detaith was at tactical and had been there covering Worf's shifts while he had been away; apparently Detaith was the only officer that Worf would trust to cover his shifts. Just as Picard was sitting down Detaith informed him of an incoming message from Starfleet command.
"In my ready room please, Lieutenant." Picard instructed as he got back up out of his seat and went into his office.
Picard sat at his desk and activated the terminal; the message had been relayed from the bridge and before long he was talking to Admiral Nakamura.

"Admiral, it is good to see you again. What can I do for you?"
"It's good to see you as well Jean-Luc. We have just received a message from a freighter out near the Neutral Zone, apparently a Romulan Warbird is chasing them. Since you are the closest ship, you are ordered to render aid. However, one of our deep space probes has lost contact with us so will you send a shuttle with a repair crew to fix it."
"Of course, Admiral. Our routines of late have been quite slow, I've had to invent work just to keep the rest of the crew busy while the medical team were rushed off their feet; so something useful to do would be very welcome- by most of the crew at least. The only thing is that Commander Riker and two more of my bridge officers have just arrived back from Earth. I shouldn't think they would appreciate me sending them back out again so soon."
"Ah yes, the infamous series of lectures that every Starfleet officer has to endure on quantum meta-physics, I remember them well- some of the best sleeps I ever had whilst at the Academy." Nakamura replied, chuckling slightly. "Seriously though, you are the closest ship again and we were hoping to get some information on an energy disturbance that has recently appeared in that vicinity."
"Okay, Admiral your request is my command. Picard out."
"Goodbye Jean-Luc." With that Picard stepped back out onto the bridge and signaled Commander Riker that the briefing would be in ten minutes instead.

Ten minutes later all of the bridge crew assembled in the conference lounge. Picard motioned the meeting to begin and began by telling them about his recent conversation with Admiral Nakamura. "...I'm afraid, Commander that you will have to take another away team and shuttle to fix the probe."
"When, sir?" Riker asked.
"As soon as possible. I'm sorry you have had no time to rest." Picard said, a bit concerned about his officers.
"It's okay, sir. We got some sleep on the journey home." He looked around at Troi and Worf, "and plenty at the lectures."
"Right then, the Enterprise will go to the aid of the freighter and rendezvous with you in twelve hours. Select your away team, Commander."
"Data, Geordi, Worf and a repair crew. Geordi will you select the repair crew?" Riker asked, looking at the chief engineer.
"Aye, Commander." La Forge said.
"Dismissed." The meeting broke up and everyone left the conference lounge.

Half an hour later the away team met in shuttle bay two, it consisted of Riker, Data, La Forge, Lieutenants O'Boil and Redpath. The team boarded the shuttlecraft Goddard and soon they were off again at warp three heading for the probe. At that speed, the shuttle would arrive at the probe in four hours. This gave the repair crew ample time to go over the specs for the probe, and try to find out what may have gone wrong with it.
The shuttle stopped at a distance of five hundred meters from the probe and Riker caught sight of the great spatial rift, it was enormous with a diameter of about one thousand meters across. Data tried to scan the anomaly but the shuttlecraft's sensors were not as good as the Enterprise's and there was too much interference. Geordi said that the probe would be able to penetrate it, so they beamed over with all of the equipment they would need to try and get a better reading. As the transporter was finishing the lights in the room blinked out and everything plunged into darkness. There was some commotion as the away team fell to the floor unconscious.

The lights suddenly came back up and the assault team looked down at the people they had just incapacitated. Commander Troi stared at one of them in particular. It was Commander Riker. She looked at him with such intensity that the others began to look as well. "He is just like our Commander Riker, though not as stupid." She said to no one in particular. Worf caught her attention as she saw him studying a man of about thirty with gold skin, intently.
"I have not seen anything like him before, Counsellor. I do not think he is human." Worf said as he touched the man's neck and moved his head to one side. "His skin is cold, Counsellor and he does not appear to have a pulse in his neck."
"Maybe he's dead. What did you do to him?" Troi asked the Klingon officer.
"I just grabbed him around the waist, he struggled and I felt something click like a switch or something, and then he fell to the floor, Counsellor." Worf said as he showed her with actions to try and make it clearer.
"Bring him with us, we will take him back to the Enterprise and study him there. Use another hypospray on the others so they do not regain consciousness for a while. We need time to get away undetected." She snapped the orders at her people and they quickly got to work.

Troi's team beamed back to the shuttlecraft Fearless and set off back through the anomaly. The Enterprise was waiting to pick them up and soon all were aboard.
"Get me Captain Picard." Troi yelled at a guard that was on duty in the shuttle bay.
"Yes, Commander." The ensign snapped to attention, saluted, then hailed Captain Picard to come down to the shuttle bay.
"On my way," said the captain over the intercom system, and clearly not amused at having been summoned by a mere ensign.
Troi instructed the away team to take the gold skinned man to engineering. When Picard arrived, she told him what had happened and that the man was in engineering. Both of them went off together to see this strange being.

In engineering Commander La Forge was getting excited with the problem he was faced with, by now he had already determined that Data was in fact an artificial life form- it didn't take a genius to work that one out. The problem was how this artificial life form actually worked.
The captain and counsellor entered, and Geordi immediately saluted them both.
"Well, Mr. La Forge. What have we got here?" The captain asked rather impatiently, for a mystery was not something he liked.
"Captain, this is some sort of artificial life form. I don't understand how it works because I've never seen anything like it before! It is truly amazing to see something like this." Geordi said a little caught up in the moment. Picard stared at him, his mind working.
"An artificial life form... can you build more?" He asked as a plan suddenly sprang to mind.
Geordi thought for a moment before answering; he didn't want to be too hasty. "I don't see why not, Captain. How many are we talking about though?"
"Well as many as possible, perhaps a whole army in time. What about twenty-five for now though?"
Geordi raised his eyebrows at the thought of all the work he would need to do, and then he remembered whose company he was in and thought that the counsellor would have something to say. "Yes, Captain. I can use the replicator; it shouldn't be a problem. I'll just scan him and then he can be done with whatever you want, I won't need him." Geordi told them quickly as he felt the first touch of the counsellor's mind pressing against his own.
"You," said the counsellor to one of her guards. "Once La Forge has finished here take the artificial life form back to where he came from." Then she turned to La Forge and said, "You'll have to wipe his memory of what has just happened. We don't want to be found out just yet. The hypos will do the same job for the rest of his away team." The guard saluted and Picard and Troi went back up to the bridge followed closely by their personal bodyguards.
La Forge got to work and scanned the artificial life form for all of the information he needed in order to build more androids. It didn't take more than half an hour. "I have initialized the base matrix without wiping out the higher functions. He won't remember what has just happened to him, so get him out of here he's in the way." Geordi told the guard.
"Aye, sir." The guard said as he moved to pick up the android and headed out of engineering at haste.

The shuttlecraft Fearless was again hurtling through space towards the probe on the other side of the spatial rift. This time the crew consisted of the unconscious android and the guard named Yates. Yates pulled the android onto the transporter pad and activated it. Seconds later Data was back on the probe with his comrades.
Yates turned and went back to his Enterprise before he could be detected.

Commander Riker stirred uneasily and took a few moments to get his bearings. He got up a bit unsteadily and staggered over to Lieutenant Redpath to see if he was all right. Riker woke everyone and there were grunts and moans as each came round.
"What happened, sir?" Asked Lieutenant O'Boil who was struggling to sit up and rubbing his head as the momentary dizziness wore off.
"I don't know, Data?" Riker asked, turning to the android.
"I believe that the effects of the transporter and the interference from the anomaly out there may have rendered us all unconscious, Commander."
"Well, is everyone alright? Can we get on with repairing the probe so we can get a sensor reading?" Riker said trying to get his team motivated again.
They all set to work as Geordi ordered Lieutenant's Redpath and O'Boil to take the covering off one of the consoles and carry out a diagnostic. Geordi and Data started using another console in the same room to check the data banks of what the probe recorded recently; they found them to be wiped of any information that may have been useful.
When O'Boil and Redpath had finished, Geordi, Worf and Data set out repairing the probe's systems and soon they were all back on line. Riker took a seat and he and Geordi scanned the spatial rift. Data surmised that they were reading an entirely different space. Riker's heart started to pound as he thought about what Data had just said.
"Could this be the same universe we encountered a year ago?" He asked with a pale complexion at the thought of it happening all over again.
"Yes, that is a distinct possibility." Data said without emotion. Riker's face went ashen and he ordered the team to get ready to depart immediately. While they were packing their equipment up Worf heard a noise coming from the other room, he went to investigate. Worf walked down the short corridor that led into another room like the one he had just left. On the floor, over the other side of the room, he saw a body. Worf stepped over and saw that the body was of a human male, about twenty years old and one that looked distinctly like Wesley Crusher.
"Commander Riker," he called. "Come quickly."
Riker and Data ran to where Worf was and stopped dead. All of Riker's worst fears came true at that point. They looked down at the body and saw that he was injured. "What type of weapon did that?" Riker asked the security chief. Worf took out his tricorder and scanned the charred black wound on Wesley's chest.
"A type two phaser, Federation and set at level five, which should have killed him but remarkably it didn't."
"Good God," Riker commented. "Come on we'll take him with us and see if Dr. Crusher can do anything. He looks as though he has lost a lot of blood, we'd better get going."
"Will that be wise, sir? Letting her see her 'son' like this may be upsetting," said Geordi who had come to see what all the fuss was about.
"He's not her 'son' Geordi but I see your point. We can't leave him here though, pick him up, we'll beam back. Dr. Selar can deal with him if necessary." They all went back into the other room and hailed the shuttle to transport seven back aboard.
Data took the helm and Riker ordered them to proceed at warp five to where the Enterprise was. In the aft cabin, Lieutenant Redpath used a med- kit to try and stop Wesley's condition from deteriorating further. Redpath had gone to medical school for a year before he realized that he was more suited to becoming an engineer. That choice had disappointed his family who were all medical doctors and wanted him to follow in their footsteps but he had told them that it didn't appeal to him and he worked best with machines as patients.
"When will we intercept the Enterprise, Mr. Data?" Riker asked hopeful that it wouldn't be too long.
"Approximately seven hours, sir." Data replied after consulting his console.
"Open up a channel to the Enterprise, Data."
"Channel open. The message that you send will be received in twenty two point three minutes, Commander."
"Thanks Data. Riker to Enterprise. We are declaring an emergency. We have a wounded man on board who requires immediate medical attention. We request that you rendezvous with us immediately. We will not intercept you for another seven hours, Captain and we have something important that best be said in person. Riker out."
"Message sent, sir." Data informed him.

The Enterprise approached the Neutral Zone and Captain Picard instructed Detaith to open up a channel to the freighter. He immediately rose from his command chair and straightened his uniform top with a sub- conscious tug.
"Freighter. I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation starship Enterprise. You requested aid from us. How may we be of assistance?" He asked as the message was sent over sub-space.
An Andorian appeared on the screen, he was quite tall and looked slightly flustered. "Sorry, Captain. We were being chased by a Romulan Warbird but when we crossed the Neutral Zone back into Federation space half an hour ago, they broke off all pursuit. Sorry you came all this way for nothing, Captain." The Andorian at the helm of the old freighter said.
"Any idea why they were chasing you?" Picard asked.
"Just our cargo, we are carrying medical supplies but I don't know what they would want with those. We were taking them back to our planet."
"Will you require any repairs to be done to you vessel?" Picard asked.
"We received damage to our shields, communications systems and some bumps and bruises to the crew but nothing we can't handle. Thank you anyway, Captain Picard." Picard looked at Troi who looked back at Picard.
"Mr. Detaith, scan for any Romulans that might still be in the area. I want to be certain that they've gone- or as certain as we can be since we can't detect them if they're cloaked." Picard said, glancing over at his temporary tactical officer.
"Aye, sir." Detaith said from Worf's console at the back of the bridge.
"I don't sense anything sinister, Captain. He is telling the truth." She said to the unspoken question.
"Okay." Picard sighed and turned back to the Andorian on the view screen. "I suggest you stay away from the Romulans, for a while at least. Picard out." With that, Detaith cut off the communication and Picard sat back down again. "Anything yet, Mr. Detaith?"
"No, sir. I am reading clear space, no Romulans."
"Very well, we may as well go to the rendezvous point and wait for Commander Riker's shuttle, though I shouldn't think he will be finished yet, it has only been two hours since we left him." Picard got up and moved towards the turbolift. "I'm going to my quarters, Detaith, you have the bridge."
"Aye, sir." Detaith said as he strolled down to the command chair. Picard went up the ramp and stepped into the turbolift, leaving the bridge.

Five hours passed uneventful which was in itself beginning to make people feel nervous. On a starship, you had to learn to expect the unexpected but recently nothing had happened, everything was too quiet. Detaith shifted uneasily again in the captain's chair and let out a long sigh.
"Something wrong, Lieutenant?" Troi asked a bit concerned and picking up on his emotional state.
"No, no I just wish something interesting would happen." Detaith replied sounding very bored. Just then the ensign at tactical reported a distress call coming in from Commander Riker's shuttle. Detaith leaped to his feet a bit delighted that something was happening at last. They listened to the audio message and Troi began to look worried when it had finished. Detaith called the captain and relayed the message to his quarters. Picard listened to the message intently and ordered the bridge to go to warp seven immediately, he added that he would be up on the bridge shortly and left his quarters.
Picard emerged from the turbolift on the bridge and asked the counsellor what her opinion was of the situation.
"He's very anxious, Captain. I'm sensing that he is very nervous and unhappy with the situation he is in. I can't tell you any more than that other than his emotions are very strong."
"Okay, open a channel to Commander Riker, Mr. Detaith."
"Channel open, sir." Detaith said taking over at tactical again.
"Picard to shuttlecraft. Drop out of warp and wait for the Enterprise to come to you. We don't want to overtake you. We are proceeding at warp eight." He finished the message and turned to the ensign at helm. "Ensign, increase speed to warp eight... engage."
The Enterprise sped off through the darkness of space to the aid of its shuttlecraft.

A/N: Please leave a review. Thanks.