Don't you people know who I am? You should give me your companies. I'd do a much better job than you with "Buffy" and "Stargate". At the moment, however, I have none of those corporate empires. I am waiting for them to flood in.
Five: Treachery
"Richard Burke was a model officer," Captain Picard said to the crowd gathered in the mess hall. All were in their dress uniform, and Ratchet and Clank stood amongst the crowd with solemn looks on their faces.
"He was loyal to his Captain and his ship, he always knew the meaning of duty, and he saved us all when he sacrificed himself. Burke was kind, true, just and above all strong in his duty. These are hard times, and we must all draw upon these virtues Ensign Burke so strongly displayed. We will remember you, Richard."
A whistle came from the corner of the room, as Riker signalled the release of the canister holding Burke. Everyone turned towards the window and the canister was launched. It's thrusters propelling it far into space; they watched it until it was just a speck among the distant stars.
Everyone began talking among themselves, in low, solemn voices. Ratchet and Clank approached Captain Picard.
"Captain," Ratchet began awkwardly. "We… we just want to say we're sorry. I still feel it was kinda our fault Burke died."
"Ratchet, it was not your fault." Picard assured him. "Burke died to save us all, and you fought off the last Dominion Fighter. If it wasn't for you, we could all have died."
Ratchet looked up at Picard and smiled. "I'm sure you need some rest. Commander Data will show you to your quarters, and we'll contact you when the shuttlecraft it ready for launch."
Ratchet nodded his appreciation, and Picard went over to the bar to talk to Commander Riker.
"Now," Clank turned back to Ratchet. "Should we start what we discussed?"
"I don't know." Ratchet replied. "They have been kind to us, it doesn't seem fair to use them like this."
"We'll only be using a small portion of the ships systems. After that, we'll leave on the shuttlecraft and they'll never know."
"I still don't like it. It feels like betraying their trust."
"Do you want to find the thief or not?" Clank retorted. Ratchet thought for a moment and finally nodded.
"Alright, but I still don't like it."
They hurried out of the mess hall purposefully, and into the corridor.
In Engineering, Geordie LaForge was bent over a console trying to recalibrate the quantum flux of the warp drive. He had got some strange readings when they went through the wormhole the first time, and he had to be sure going back again was harmless.
"Geordie, you've been working for hours." A female voice broke his concentration. "I'm sure the Enterprise will survive going back."
"I need to check for stellar pollution. If the warp drive gives out too much plasma, then the wormhole could collapse over the Enterprise, destroying it."
"There's only a small chance of that. C'mon, you look tired."
Lieutenant Mackley slid her arms around Geordie and began kissing his neck.
"Well," Geordie stood up from his console and turned to face her. "I suppose I could use a little break."
She smiled. "There's no one else here. And there won't be for a couple of hours."
Geordie smiled and they kissed. She slid her hand up his shirt and…
"Geordie?"
They looked up to see Data by the entrance holding a pad.
"Um… Data, I'm kind of busy right now." Geordie hissed.
"No," Mackley unwrapped herself from him. "Maybe I should go."
She strode out past Data and into the turbolift. Geordie sighed as he watched her go.
"Data, we've talked about this before."
"I know, I am not to interrupt you whilst you are 'getting it on'."
Geordie sighed again. "I'm not getting any younger."
"On the contrary, I have seen a prominent decrease in wrinkles and…"
"Data," Geordie interrupted before he could go on about how young Geordie was for his age. "What is it?"
"I have detected some strange readings from the bridge. I thought at first they were an internal sensor malfunction, but they are working in perfect order."
"Hmm," Geordie took the pad and studied the readings. "Looks like a problem with one of the manifold injectors. We'd better take a look at it." Geordie went to one of the Jeffries tubes and climbed in, Data following.
They slid along to the point where the malfunction had been detected. Geordie opened a panel and scanned the wires inside with a tricorder.
"It looks like someone's manually rewired this thing. There weren't any maintenance crews in operation here were there?"
"I was not informed of any."
"It's pretty simple to fix. I'll just reintegrate this and…" Geordie reached in and put one of the wires back in its plug. "There we go."
Data scanned his tricorder ahead for a moment.
"There appears to be another malfunction in section 31a."
"Another one?"
Geordie replaced the panel and crawled after Data, who had already started on his way.
They reached a door in the tube. Geordie entered a command in to the control panel and the door slid open.
Behind the door, Ratchet and Clank were rewiring one of the panels. They turned to see Geordie and Data and stared at them for a moment, in shock. Before any of them could think, Ratchet pulled something out of his buffer that looked very much like a gun, and sent electric charges through Data with it. Geordie immediately bent down over Data, checking him over. By the time he looked up, Ratchet and Clank were gone. He tapped his comm badge.
"LaForge to Security, Ratchet and Clank are on the run. Capture them!"
Ratchet and Clank ran through the corridors, round corners, through doors and around people.
"I told you this was a bad idea." Ratchet panted.
"How was I to know they had such accurate sensors?"
Suddenly, a forcefield appeared out of nowhere to block their path. They tried going a different way, but another forcefield erected. Their way was completely blocked. Security teams appeared from the each ends of the corridors and pointed their phasers at them. Ratchet shot a burst of electricity from his gun at the forcefield and it overloaded. He drew another weapon and a grappling hook shot out and latched onto the bulkhead above the security guard's heads, and Ratchet used this to swing him and Clank over the security guards and past them. They dodged the phaser fire, and Ratchet (slipping on his Gravity Boots) ran up and along the wall. The security teams raced after them.
Ratchet reached a door and slipped inside. He grabbed a helmet from the cubicle at the side of the room and pulled it on. Clank hanging onto his back, he opened a hatch in the bulkhead and climbed out.
On the bridge, Picard was monitoring the escapees.
"Where are they now?"
"Captain… you're not going to believe this. They're on the deck of the ship!"
"Outside the ship?" Riker exclaimed "Are they mad?"
"Let's see them."
The view on the main screen changed to the deck of the ship. Sure enough, Ratchet was trudging along the deck, Clank strapped to his back.
"Beam them to the brig!" Picard ordered. The figures on screen dematerialised in a shimmer of blue light. Picard stood up and headed towards the turbolift.
"It's time I had a chat with our guests."