Chapter Four: Lights Out
Author's Note: Stop spazzing, Kokoro; in the words of the window washer, all will be made clear. (I've always wanted to say that; don't you dare steal it!)
Captain's Log, supplemental:
Having been regretfully caught off-guard in neutral space and having engaged the cruiser Alameda ahead of schedule, the Enterprise is currently in a state of moderate disrepair. The ship and crew took a heavy beating from Fenell's attacks but have rallied themselves and recovered quite commendably. We have tracked the last known heading of Alameda and are preparing to pursue the also-damaged Orion Sprinter.
There followed a list of damages and commendations, and then;
There has been a rash of unexplained malfunctions in the last few days. The entire ship has experienced rolling blackouts that extinguish lights, shut down computer terminals, and render even handheld devices such as PADDs, communicators, and tricorders powerless and useless. Engineering offers no sure explanation for these malfunctions, but maintains that damage from the Alameda battle could be causing it. I am confident that my Engineering crew will rise to this challenge as they have risen to all others before.
Personal Log of Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
Although impressed by my crew's response to our recent battle, I find myself uneasy. Perhaps it is knowing that the Enterprise is damaged—a condition I never enjoy—or perhaps it is the presence of the passengers that Admiral Lasham saw fit to deposit on us as if flagging down a common transport. Although they have behaved themselves admirably, remaining in their assigned areas even throughout the battle two days past, I am not comfortable having extra civilians on board. Even the children and families that regularly frequent the Enterprise have been difficult to adjust to. Luckily, the remote Lima Sierra sector is a mere two weeks distant; a far cry from the nearly four years the crew's families have been on board. However, I will be glad to see the back of them.
Of course, my unease may merely be the fault of the unexplained power outages that roam the ship. I myself have heard some of the more imaginative crewmen speculating about 'ghosts' in Ten-Forward. I've never really considered the possibility that the Enterprise might be haunted, and I won't now. It's absurd. However, I must concede that the modus operandi of these power failures do closely match the literary effects of said ghosts on the technology of the living. Taking this ridiculous hypothesis—bzzzzt.
The blackout has just visited my quarters. It maintained for approximately four minutes, and then all systems returned to life as if nothing had happened. It has just occurred to me that a blackout during a combat situation would be most likely fatal.
As I was saying, and have now observed, the only symptom of a supernatural visitation that is missing is the traditional drop in temperature. No such anomaly has just occurred.
End log.
Data sat at a vacant terminal in the computer core, reading every word of the documents that flashed by at humanly unreadable speeds. The lieutenant commander kept one hand on the keypanel, pulling up the records of the basic computer code. A human would not only be unable to read at Data's speed, but the computer code was all but incomprehensible to all but trained experts and Starfleet's only android officer.
Data had been assisting his friend Geordi in repairing the abundant damage to the ship for the last few days. Although the persistent blackouts had merely inconvenienced them at first, things had finally come to a head when one had decided to drop by in the final, crucial seconds of an important computer simulation pertaining to the still-fluctuating warp core. Geordi, who had been waiting on tenterhooks for the results, had thrown an impromptu, suitably dignified temper tantrum, and reassigned a good quarter of the repair teams to finding the problem and fixing it.
He'd repented a few minutes later; once he'd calmed down, of course. The blind chief engineer had sheepishly ordered the crewmen back to their previous jobs and politely asked Data to take a look at it.
Data had obliged, and immediately started assembling other theories, besides battle damage, that might account for the problem. He'd ended up in the overheated, cramped, and (luckily) poorly staffed computer core, checking the legions of gigabytes of data for any variations from the norm.
The computer core was one of the least-visited sites on the Enterprise. It contained four terminals, two of which could be found only by edging around the enormous main computer, which protruded into a small room, and could easily be taken as a wall by the casual observer. As it required only one crewman on duty during non-emergency scenarios, the environment was also badly regulated. When Life Support was failing, it was a horrible place to be for any human crewman. A Vulcan might enjoy the dry desert heat that the supercomputer emitted; few others visited the central core unless directly ordered to.
Data merely registered the humanly uncomfortable environment and went back to the task he had assigned himself.
It was a job that would have taken a dozen programmers nearly fifty years; checking the current code displayed on the terminal screen against an uncorrupted read-only copy. Data had certain advantages; one, he had an uncorrupted read-only copy in his positronic brain, and so could check and read at the same time, and two, he could read almost faster than the computer could display the information.
He stopped abruptly at the brief sound of a soft rustle, looking up from the terminal and stalling the flow of data. Remaining perfectly still, he listened closely for any sound.
The computer clicked and bleeped to itself; the ensign on duty sat idly at the console furthest from the actual core, and therefore the coolest, tapping his station in a manner that seemed suspiciously more like a causal electronic game than any actual duty, and the ventilation system hummed softly in direct counterpoint to the rumble of the warp drive that pervaded the ship whenever it traveled faster than light.
None of that was anything out of the ordinary.
The ensign shifted sedately and rubbed his hand against his arm, producing a soft sound. Data nodded to himself once, and nearly returned to his work before pausing again.
Ensign Mekél had made that gesture multiple times since he had sat down to his review of the computer, and, when he replayed the two sounds in his head, they were not the same at all. Again, no human would have been able to detect the difference, but then, very few humans would have heard the original sound in the first place.
Stupid! Stupid, stupid!
He called himself three other bad names, hidden in a back corner of the awkward room, a safe distance from the terminal he'd been using. Closing his eyes, he focused for a brief moment, hiding his aura, and therefore his presence, from even the ship's revolutionary sensors.
Damn.
Seconds later, he opened his eyes, watching the android survey the core's compartment. The instant he looked away, however, he moved soundlessly across the room, perching on the chair in front of the only other active terminal. Keeping a wary eye on Data, he wiped any evidence of his presence in the system from the system itself. He'd become quite good with practice, and in the time it took for Data to look back around, he'd erased any trace of not only what he'd done, but even that he'd done it, and vanished, ghostlike.
"Computer, who is in the computer core division?" Data queried the computer, which responded,
"Lieutenant Commander Data. Ensign Ryan Mekél."
"Continue."
"No other life-forms are within the computer core division," it said in its precise feminine voice.
"Acknowledged," Data replied.
"Commander?" Ensign Mekél asked, glancing at him and rising to assist him. He crossed the small space quickly. "Is everything all right?"
"There are no problems, ensign. You may return to your duties," Data reassured him.
"Aye, sir," the young ensign replied, and walked the few steps to his station in silence.
Data surveyed the room once more, deciding not to contemplate what had made him so sure that another person had entered. After all, androids did not possess intuition…right?
He dismissed that possible breakthrough in his development and growth as an artificial life-form for another time. However, he abruptly had several minutes to explore it when the power outage struck his workstation—and everything else within fifty meters.
"Commander?" Mekél said, voice quavering.
"Remain calm, Ensign," he said steadily. "The blackout will move on in an average of three point eight-six minutes."
They sat in silent darkness for, to Data's mild interest, four point four-nine minutes. He absently added that to his calculation of the average time and adjusted his estimate accordingly.
Turning back to his console, he called up the permanent code records again, and resumed scanning. Six point three-seven-two seconds later, by his internal chronometer, he stopped short once more. A section of code had been excised as if with a knife—which was, of course, a theoretical impossibility. When he referenced it with his databanks, he discovered that the missing piece pertained to the replication of fish food.
"Most interesting," he said quietly, and inquired as to when it had been removed.
The computer maintained that it had been deleted a day after the Enterprise's commission. Which was impossible. Data updated these mental files every half-year, and it had been there during his last scheduled download—four months ago, and therefore over three and a half years after the computer thought it had been erased.
He raised one eyebrow. "Intriguing."
Quickly, not even reading the code that scrolled by, he searched for any other missing pieces. However, despite another hour of watching line after line of programming roll across the screen, he found no other anomalies in the mainframe.
Disregarding the desert heat that pervaded the atmosphere so close to the core, Data picked up a PADD and began to enter his report on what he had found.
Data was on to him; he had found the one block of code he hadn't had time to replace. He'd rearranged the dates, but he hadn't counted on the android having the entire computer codes memorized. He sat and seethed quietly, waiting for his chance.
Wait a moment…
Soundlessly, he slipped around to the other hidden terminal; not the one he'd used before. Muting all sounds with a single touch, he filled in the gap he'd left in his cutting and pasting.
Damn it, I shouldn't be doing this, he's better at it. Silly trickster was the one who came up with this, he thought withoutany venom. There. That should do.
The gap in the human ship's code was gone. Ten more seconds at the console erased the automatic records of the code being replaced and the records of the console ever having been used.
He heard the android begin to move a half-instant before he was around the core and in full sight of both consoles, but that half-instant was all he needed. By the time Data had cleared the wall, he was long out of sight.
In passing, he pocketed Data's near-finished report almost automatically. As Data ground to a halt, he paused, spitefully wanting to witness the android's reaction.
"Data to the bridge," he said calmly, tapping the insignia on his chest.
"Picard here," the captain replied via commbadge.
"Captain, I believe there may be an intruder aboard," he said, gaze falling upon where his PADD had lain.
"Understood. Report back to the bridge immediately. Picard out."
The lieutenant commander turned and left without another word. However, had he been a telepath, he would have 'heard' some truly foul curses in several different languages.
Damn! Damn, damn, damn!
He couldn't even communicate with his partner, many decks below. Not with his inability to maintain an illusion and speak telepathically at the same time. He could either blow their covers or handle this on his own.
I guess I've gotten used to having someone to swear to, he thought bad-temperedly, tossing a couple curses along the lines of 'weakling' at himself, and darted off to find a place to hide.