Gulliver's Fugitives Part 6

"Widen the view."

"Twenty kilometer radius. The same tunnels are visible."

"Okay. Select a likely beamdown point ten to fifteen kilometers from the building. Check it out thoroughly. You and Troi will beam down with me. We're going to find the captain and beam back up with him. Worf, what's the status of our mechanical intruders?"

"Confined to decks six and three."

"Any vital ship's operations threatened?"

"No. And we should be able to contain them where they are."

"Is there a secure transporter room I can use for beamdown?"

"Room Six, sir."

"We'll take it. Riker to La Forge."

"La Forge here," came the voice from Engineering.

"You'll command the ship while Troi, Data, and I are on an away mission. You can execute an evasive maneuver and drop the shields long enough for us to beam down. Away team, let's talk in the ready room."

As she sat with Riker and Data in the ready room, Troi felt a pang of guilt and responsibility. The tragedy of Timoshenko and Frazer's deaths, of the captain's capture, and of whatever might happen next, seemed traceable in a chain of causes that started with her original encounter with the alien Other-worlders. That encounter had caused Picard to stop the ship and search, and then to find the recorder marker. And Troi was sure she had somehow summoned the Other-worlders in the first place. Her amnesia still prevented her from knowing why.

Her rational counselor voice told her that she couldn't really be blamed since she would never have intended harm. She tried to push the guilt aside.

"The Rampartians have a primitive level of technology by Federation standards," Data was saying. "There is a question of why our security staff did not discover the one-eyes' capabilities before transporting them aboard."

"Our people checked them thoroughly," said Riker. "But I suspect that the Rampartians had the jump on us from the beginning; that they stole information on Starfleet technology from the minds of the Huxley crew, and after they somehow disposed of the Huxley, used the information to perfect their capabilities against future Starfleet ships-like us."

"Commander," said Troi, "Crichton knows about the Other-worlders, or at least about some aliens a.n.a.logous to them. It's a secret he shares with no one. I felt it very strongly when I asked him."

"That might be significant."

"Might? I think it's the linchpin of his mind."

"Then it's significant," said Riker. "But right now I have to stay on my main track-retrieving the captain. I welcome your empathic impressions; in fact, we need them, but I don't have enough time now for a full psychoa.n.a.lysis of Crichton."

"What about Oleph and Una, here on our own ship?" asked Troi. "What if they have something to do with the Other-worlders as well?"

"Worf and his staff are monitoring them. I didn't have the chance to tell you before, but Worf seems to be involved with Oleph and Una. He's got something secret going with them."

"Then I think we should question him."

"I already have, and found out nothing. But Worf's got their confidence, and a favored position to observe them-he'll report when he finds anything. We'll just have to trust him. Right now we have to think about the captain. We'll beam down in five minutes," he said, rising.

Troi thought Riker was missing the mark. But a counselor's view wasn't always in accord with the rest of the officers', and she had gotten used to that a long time ago. Her different view was what made her useful.

Her earlier feeling of guilt subsided as she experienced a surge of stubborn pride. After all, she was a top expert on the most complex phenomenon in the universe, the mechanism of consciousness. If the mystery of the Other-worlders was hers to solve, then so be it.

She followed Riker and Data out of the ready room and onto the bridge. Her gaze fell on Worf, who looked up and registered her stare. She sensed that Worf was concealing something. Whatever it was, there was no time to ask him about it now.

Chapter Six.

RIKER, TROI, AND DATA beamed down into an abandoned ore-extraction factory. The site had been chosen by Data.

Crepuscular blue nebula-light spilled in through the top of the roofless building. Catwalks, snake-spiralling cables, and a delirium of metal pipes spread out above and below the away team's perch, a small platform along a wall of the building.

Data tuned his tricorder to a GEO setting that would help him find any shaft or duct that communicated with the natural tunnels underground. The threesome took a several-minute tour around the floor of the facility, returning eventually to the vantage point of the platform. Data wasn't able to pinpoint a way down, though in one area he had found a concentration of methane gas he p.r.o.nounced "intriguing."

"Your taste in beamdown sites runs to the Spartan, Mr. Data," said Riker.

"Spartan?" asked the android, as he reviewed information on the small display screen of his tricorder. "As in Sparta, Helen of Troy's queendom?"

"No," said Riker, his gaze resting on a large cart still containing its load of lead-colored rock. He imagined a populace that sweated and strained in futility. "Let me refine that a bit ... Myth of Sisyphus, man pushing a boulder up a hill forever-endless, mindless toil."

"Your metaphor is cogently conceived," Data said, as he ran his collected measurements through the tricorder's programs, in search of the elusive pa.s.sage down into the ground.

"Data, speed is of the essence here."

"Perhaps you can help me, sir."

As the two consulted, Troi stood a few steps away. She glanced at the chrome surface of a tank and saw her reflection, but perceived something else there as well. Another sentience. She opened her empathic perception a bit, then suddenly tried to seal it off, as she felt the presence of an Other-worlder. Too late.

The Other-worlder responded instantly. She felt it approaching. She'd initiated unintentional contact.

The reflections on the surface of the tank shifted and melted. She found she couldn't look away. Her face disappeared from the chrome. A new image expanded and became the reality surrounding her.

She was in a world of scorched ground, of billowing dark smoke and wild squalls of fire. She began to hear and then feel a deep gut-resonating throb, as though of an approaching aircraft or juggernaut.

An Other-worlder, the giant Mirror Man, emerged from the smoke, reflecting on his own burnished surfaces the conflagration around him. He was looking for something. The twin mirror-discs of his eyes shifted in unison. On his body surfaces Troi saw scenes of mechanized warfare, mammoth guns vomiting fire, aircraft diving and strewing bomb-cl.u.s.ters over a jungle, children running with mouths open in silent screams ...

Suddenly the Mirror Man became aware of Troi. He came closer, dragging the leg that had no foot. His eyes became intolerably bright, like flickering arclights.

"You called me," he said with a deep reverberant metallic voice.

"I didn't mean to."

He reached down and picked her up by the shoulders, held her high off the ground in front of him.

She felt as though she were enclosed by steel jaws. Her head was at the level of his chest.

"You want knowledge?" he asked.

She sensed a threat in the question.

"You want to know about Crichton?"

She stared into the fiery images on his chest. "Yes," she said. "You have contacted him?"

"He is now aware of life alien to himself," the Mirror Man said cryptically.

He drew her closer. He was pushing her face toward his chest.

"You want to learn more," he boomed as a sort of half-question.

Through the images of smoke and fire on his mirror-skin, behind them or under them, Troi could see something moving rhythmically. She thought it was his heart, and tried to shake her way out of his grip. She felt her limbs becoming numb and heavy. The paralyzing transformation again!

Then she sensed someone else's mind nearby. She recognized it as Riker's. She focused on it, and as soon as she did, she found herself back with him in the ore factory. He was holding her by the shoulders. The transition was instantaneous.

"Deanna, what's wrong!"

"It's okay," she said. "I'm back."

"You were in a trance."

She let out a long shuddering breath.

"I just had contact with one of the Other-worlders."

"Is it still here?" asked Riker.

"Yes. I can still feel it. It's here but not in our state of being."

"Data, cheek your tricorder."

Data switched it to the BIO setting. "Yes sir, but there is low probability we will detect the alien with this tricorder; even the Enterprise's main sensors could not."

"Good point," said Riker.

"However, I have found something else ... definitely not one of your Other-worlders ... a humanoid outside the building ... stationary."

Riker waved for silence and drew his phaser. Data put his tricorder away and drew his phaser as well. They looked about them at the corrugated-metal walls.

Riker moved in the direction of a door, but Data put an arm out to stop him. He looked back at his tricorder, moving it slowly. Then he motioned his crewmates backward. Riker understood that someone was going to enter. He ducked behind a huge oily metal gear and signaled for Troi and Data to do likewise.

The door swung inward, and steps came toward them, then stopped. Riker peered around the gear and saw, standing on the platform, a red-haired woman, about thirty, wearing somber-hued clothes. As she began to walk forward again, Riker stepped around the gear and into the open. The woman turned toward him, as though she were expecting him to be there.

She appeared to be unarmed but Riker kept his phaser trained on her. They confronted each other tensely.

"What about your two companions?" the woman asked. "Are they shy?"

She motioned toward where Troi and Data were hidden.

"Counselor, Data," said Riker. "Come on out."

The woman watched them keenly as they emerged. Then she seemed to make a decision.

"We're wasting time," she said. "I watched you and heard you talking. The CS could be out there right now, ready to arrest all of us. I think I know why you're here, but I have to hear you say it. You are Dissenters."

"We don't belong to any particular group," said Riker.

While the woman paused, trying to decide what to do, Troi a.s.sessed her. She felt the woman's rebellious spirit and keen intellect, explored her inner emotional mind-set. She decided the woman was an aesthete, a connoisseur of feelings and images. A poet, perhaps? A Dissenter-one of the anti-establishment rebels Crichton had mentioned?

"My name is Amoret," the woman said, then waited for a reaction.

"You don't object to my name?"

Riker looked at Data, who accessed his memory.

"Amoret is a character created by Edmund Spenser, sixteenth-century English poet," said Data.

"No," Riker told Amoret, "I don't object to it."

"You know the meaning of my name, and even spoke aloud of Sisyphus and Helen of Troy. You did that, committed a crime punishable by death, and you aren't a Dissenter? You ought to be."

"I'm sorry, but we can't be involved with you or your activities," said Riker. "If you could leave for just a minute or two, we'll be gone when you come back and you can do whatever it is you intended here."

"I can't risk going back out there!"

"You may not have to," Data said. "The CS are already here."

He pointed upward.

They all looked up. Thirty feet over their heads, silhouetted against the night sky, a group of six one-eyes hovered dead-still in precise hexagonal formation, looking down at them.

Riker reflexively pushed Troi and Data under an overhanging stair-landing. Amoret ducked in with them.

Riker touched his communicator.

"Enterprise, three to beam up now!"

He glanced regretfully at Amoret, sorry he could not help her.

But there was no response from the ship.

Riker tabbed again. "Enterprise!"

"Sir," said Data, as he moved a switch on the tricorder, "we are being electronically jammed, from several directions. The Enterprise can't hear us. It is as if the Rampartians knew precisely which wave patterns to use and already had equipment ready for our arrival."

He adjusted the tricorder again.

"Aircraft approaching."