Orpheus - Chapter 3
Aug. 9th, 2010 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
r_scribblesA Bit more Orpheus, and Ch 4 should be up very soon too, you lucky ducks!
ORPHEUS
-x-
Three
-x-
Tasha made three attempts to get through to Maddox directly. After failing to connect for the third time, she decided that the contact details the scientist had given Data years ago would have to be out of date, and tried going via the main channels for the Daystrom Institute instead. This wasn’t much more helpful. Every time she asked to speak with Maddox, she was passed through to somebody else – with no explanations and certainly no Maddox. Eventually she managed to get through to Dr Kwon. The senior Cyberneticist looked nervous and hurried.
‘Commander Yar.’ Kwon managed the tightest, fakest smile Tasha had seen in a long time. ‘How can I be of assistance to you?’
‘I’d like to speak with Dr Maddox,’ she told him.
Kwon nodded faintly, the false smile frozen on his face. ‘Hmm,’ was his only reply.
‘I can’t get through with any of the contact details that he left,’ Tasha added. ‘I was hoping you’d be able to put me through, or at least point me in the right direction. Is he working at a different department now?’
‘I’m afraid Bruce is no longer with us,’ said Kwon.
Tasha blinked. ‘He… he died?’ She knew he had been sick – Data had been in close contact with him for many years, and had spoken of Maddox having a severe bout of Bojo Fever not long before their final encounter with Lore. The fever had left Maddox with serious complications – he’d been in and out of treatment ever since, as far as she knew, and was unlikely to reach old age. Her heart thundered as she considered the possible ramifications of Deanna seeing two dead people in her dream.
Kwon shook his head. ‘He left.’
Tasha exhaled in relief. ‘Where did he transfer to?’
‘No, Commander Yar. He left Starfleet, about a year ago.’
Tasha began to feel despair creeping in on her again. ‘Do you know where he is now?’
‘You have no idea how much I wish that I did, Commander.’
‘Why’s that?’
Kwon chewed at his lip a little. ‘I’m sorry, Commander. I really can’t say any more. Maddox isn’t here, and I very much doubt that you will find him. It’s a very big universe out there. I’m sorry I couldn’t be any more help.’
Tasha gave Kwon as polite a farewell as she could manage given her frustration, and terminated the communication. It didn’t take an empath to tell her that Kwon was holding back vital information.
She frowned at the blank screen for a while. She tried to access Maddox’s personnel files but found them blocked. She tried to override the block, but found that the Daystrom Institute’s computer systems wouldn’t grant clearance to the Enterprise’s systems. She frowned at the screen some more. Then she got up, stretched, fed the cat, replicated herself a coffee, sat down at her desk again and began trying to hack in to the Daystrom Institute’s computers.
She had been making slow progress for about half an hour when she heard the door chime. She ignored it. The chime sounded again. Again, she ignored it, hoping that whatever it was was unimportant enough for whomever it was to give up eventually and go away.
‘Tasha,’ called Geordi from the other side of her door, ‘I know what you’re doing in there.’
She frowned and tried to work faster.
‘I don’t really want to have this conversation through the door,’ added Geordi, ‘and I can’t imagine that’d be ideal for you, either…’
Tasha stopped, rubbing the bridge of her nose. ‘Better come in, then.’
The doors opened at her command, and Geordi stepped through, alone. He waited until the doors were shut again behind him before he spoke.
‘You really thought no one would notice you using your personal computer terminal to try to hack into the Daystrom Institute’s classified files?’
Tasha stared at him for a moment, then turned back to her code breaking attempts. ‘I take it from the fact you haven’t brought any Security Officers with you that you’re not here to have me thrown in the Brig.’
‘Not just yet.’ Geordi watched over her shoulder as she worked. ‘I came here to tell you you’ve got four hours. That’s as long as I reckon I can cover up for what you’re doing here. After that, you’re on your own, so you’d better hope you can come up with some damn good proof that what you’re doing right now can be justified.’
Tasha stopped and turned to him. ‘Thank you, Geordi.’
Geordi shrugged with a heavy sigh of resignation. ‘Guess I can’t just turn my back on that stupid carrot Q’s dangling in front of us after all.’
‘Well, I really appreciate it. I can’t imagine your fiancée will be too happy with you breaching security protocol like this.’
‘Actually,’ replied Geordi, ‘she’s the one who caught you out. The four hour cover was her idea. I think experiencing Deanna’s nightmare really affected her. She’s got that look of determination in her eye.’
Tasha turned back to the computer again. ‘The “don’t even try to talk me out of this” look. I know it well. Guess I owe you both one, then…’
Still watching over her shoulder Geordi sucked through his teeth, sharply.
‘What?’
‘You’re really gonna do it like that?’
‘Geordi, after fifteen years as Tactical Officer, I think I know how to get through encryption codes…’
‘Yeah, and if you had a whole ream of information that you needed and a couple of days at your leisure, I’m sure what you’re doing would suit you just fine, but you’ve only got four hours, and all you need is the one file.’
‘Well, what would you suggest?’
Geordi paused momentarily before sighing again. ‘God dammit, I already swore off having any more to do with this once today, it isn’t even a civilised breakfast time yet and here I am up to my neck in it again.’ He pushed at her shoulder. ‘Scoot. And if anybody ever asks how you came up with such a fast decipher code, just tell them it was a bolt of inspiration from the blue, or a dream or something… anything but me.’
Tasha gratefully surrendered her chair to Geordi. ‘You’re not even here.’
But Geordi’s only reply was ‘Shhh’.
-x-
Not long after the second hour had passed, Geordi stopped tapping away at the computer and raised his head.
‘Bingo’.
Tasha got up and hurried over to the console. ‘We’re in?’
Still reading the finally unlocked personnel file, Geordi answered her question with a ‘Holy crap’ of alarm.
‘What?’
‘Kwon told you Maddox had left?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Looks like “absconded” is a better word for it.’ Geordi pointed at the passage he’d been reading.
A slower reader than Geordi, Tasha felt her jaw growing slack as she went over the paragraph. The Bojo Fever had dealt Maddox complications, all right – an inadequate recuperation period had left him with some brain damage and considerable psychological imbalances. Over the years, he had grown more and more obsessed with his work. It had become his entire existence – and then, news had come to him of Data’s destruction, and Maddox had snapped. He’d suffered a complete mental breakdown. Efforts had been made to help him through with counselling and therapy, but eventually Kwon had seen no alternative but to regrettably have him committed. On the night before he was to be taken to a secure hospital, however, Maddox had escaped, taking all his notes and several valuable, unique pieces of the Daystrom Institute’s equipment with him. He’d never been found.
‘We should have heard about this,’ Tasha muttered. ‘If they wanted him and their equipment back safe with them instead of floating round the universe where anybody can get their hands on them, then the whole of Starfleet should have been told to keep a watch out for him. But instead they hush it allup. Why?’
‘Oh God.’
Tasha looked across at Geordi. Whatever he’d just read, it had dismayed him almost to tears.
‘I think I just found out why,’ he replied. He pointed at some text further down. ‘Look what he stole.’
‘Graves’ machine… that son of a bitch… and…’ Tasha found herself instinctively rising to her feet in anger as she finished reading the sentence. ‘That bastard! Those bastards! What was Lore even doing there? They were under orders to disassemble him so he could never be put back together again. They were keeping him to experiment on all that time? Throughout the Borg attacks? The Dominion war? They were practically begging for that genocidal maniac to fall into the wrong hands.’
‘And now there’s a mad scientist out there with a machine that stores personalities and the intact body of one of the universe’s most dangerous individuals, and they could have so easily prevented it all,’ added Geordi. ‘They hushed it up just to cover their own backs.’
Tasha forced herself to sit down again and carry on reading. ‘Well, I think we found pretty good justification for breaking their security codes.’ She shot Geordi a little glance. ‘Any time you want to admit I was right all along about Deanna’s dream will be fine with me.’
Geordi wasn’t in the mood for any lightening of the tone. He frowned at the screen, lost in his thoughts.
‘Data was in Graves’ machine,’ he said. ‘That must be how he’s reaching out to Deanna.’
‘What do you mean, “Data was in the machine”?’
‘He let them copy his personality and memories onto the machine the last time he visited the Daystrom Institute.’
‘Yeah. He told me. But that was just a temporary backup plan – they were supposed to delete it again straight away…’
‘I think we’ve just found out,’ Geordi replied, ‘how reliably the Daystrom Institute’s Cyberneticists do what they’re supposed to do.’
-x-
Oh! Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling,
Oh! Grave, thy victory…?
The lights brightened, the doors opened, Maddox walked in. Always the same, ever since he’d been brought back online. How long that had been, he could not tell.
The bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling,
For you but not for me…
‘How are we today, Data?’ Maddox asked. ‘Still no change?’
No change. Of course, there was no change. He could still barely move, he was still bewildered by fluctuating operational systems and uncontrollable emotions. He was still in the wrong body, and there was still that voice. The only changes were the occasional variations in the voice’s repertoire of 20th Century Terran ditties, and the fact that, slowly but certainly, the voice was growing louder.
‘The bells… of Hell…’ he murmured along with the singing in his head.
Maddox crouched down close to him. ‘What’s that, Data?’
‘…go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me…’
‘Is this today’s song?’
‘From Earth’s “Great War”,’ Data replied with difficulty, ‘as it was then known.’
‘Is that how you see this, Data? As a war?’
‘You have left me at war with my own body,’ said Data. ‘With his body.’
Maddox rubbed his forehead in exasperation. ‘How many times do we have to go over this? Lore is gone. His personality’s been wiped – completely deleted.’
‘Memory cannot be overwritten,’ Data insisted, ‘not completely. Something remains…’
‘You’re wrong, Data. I was very thorough. This is all just in your head.’
‘In my head,’ Data echoed. ‘In my head all the time, and he is getting louder. He is getting stronger. Mine was always the weaker personality. Even without taking Lore into account, my being was used as a host body for invading personalities with alarming regularity. My consciousness has always been very easy for others to repress, and Lore was all too aware of that. We met on three occasions after being discovered on Omicron Theta, and every time he was able to manipulate me. He shall prevail, eventually, and then what will happen? How do you think that this will end, Dr Maddox?’
Maddox crouched by him again, an expression of sad sympathy on his face. ‘I’ll tell you how I would like this to end, Data – you let go of this guilt, this crippling guilt at being given Lore’s body that’s making you think you can hear your brother’s voice, and you embrace this second chance at life that I’ve given you, and we all go home. I go back to my work, and you go back to all your friends, and your lady friend. Don’t you want that too, Data? To see Geordi again, and Jean-Luc Picard? And Tasha Yar – don’t you want to be with her again?’
Of course he did. But not like this – not like this. He remembered what Lore had made him do to Geordi the last time – and what he had nearly made him do to the Captain and Tasha. She wouldn’t be safe from him. None of them would.
‘I cannot go home,’ he told Maddox.
Maddox got back up to his feet, with a sigh. ‘You will get better, Data. I’m determined. This procedure will be a success. And I hope, for all our sakes, that it’ll happen sooner rather than later.’
-x-
Tasha was glad that Will and Deanna had yet to return to the Titan when Jean-Luc Picard, confronted with the information she and Geordi had pulled from Maddox’s file, put the business with the Vonnegans briefly aside in order to urgently contact the Daystrom Institute. She was more pleased still that the Rikers seemed to come to a wordless decision that the matter was as much their business as the Enterprise’s, and stood by her side, putting up a unified front of quiet indignation as Picard got through to Dr Kwon on the viewscreen.
Kwon was visibly nervous – Tasha was sure that he had to know by that point that their secret files had been hacked, but it didn’t stop him from putting on a shocked act when the Captain told him so.
‘This is most irregular,’ muttered Kwon, ‘a severe breach of security and confidence. I trust that you will deal with the individuals responsible in the…’
‘How dare you,’ Picard interrupted.
‘How dare I…?’
‘How dare you complain to me about breached security and trust. I’ve seen Maddox’s file. I know what happened. I know what – who – was taken. Data wanted to have his brother atomised – he felt that that was the most dignified end for Lore, as well as the safest, but Starfleet command had me persuade him to allow you people to have his remains. He did so on the express instructions that Lore was to remain disassembled at all times, and as securely stored as was possible. But you couldn’t help yourselves, could you? You had to pick over his body like vultures.’
‘That was Maddox…’
‘Maddox was unhinged! You were his superior! You should have never let it get as far as it did, and when Maddox took Lore and Graves’ machine, you should certainly have reported it. Have no doubt, Dr Kwon, that I am holding you, and everybody who has helped to cover this fiasco up utterly responsible.’
‘Captain,’ replied Kwon, ‘I wish I knew how to put this right. Really, I do…’
‘You can start off by giving exact details of everything you know about how Maddox absconded to us,’ said Picard. ‘We have a complex planetary evacuation to deal with at present, but we can release descriptions of the ship Maddox left in and details of where he might possibly have gone to the rest of Starfleet for now – keep everybody on the lookout. Perhaps begin plans to organise a search party. What sort of ship did he take? Did he steal any other equipment from the Institute?’
Kwon hesitated.
‘That wasn’t a rhetorical question, Doctor.’
‘He’s still holding something back,’ said Deanna, quietly. ‘Something we don’t know yet – something that he thinks has even worse ramifications that what we’ve already found out.’
Picard turned from the Betazoid back to the nervous scientist on the screen. ‘What could you possibly be hiding, Dr Kwon? Tell us now, or so help me…’
‘He had an accomplice,’ blurted Kwon. ‘It turns out that over the years she’d been here, they’d come up with a plan. They took her ship, and all of her work as well.’
‘What’s so terrible about that?’
‘Well… she wasn’t really supposed to be here. We were supposed to hand her over to the authorities, but she came to us and begged for sanctuary – for a chance to continue with her work. In return, she agreed to live essentially as a prisoner here, and for her life’s work to become the property of the Institute… of Starfleet. It was for the good of the Federation…’
Tasha could feel a wave of cold panic sweeping over her as Kwon talked. The ominous sensation in her gut was matched by the severity of Picard’s tone.
‘Who were you sheltering, Kwon? To whom did you give access to Graves’ work, and Lore, and that maniac Maddox?’
‘A Romulan Cyberneticist,’ Kwon replied, shakily. ‘The great Romulan Cyberneticist.’
‘Oh no,’ breathed Tasha. ‘Oh, no.’
-x-
Maddox left the cell, shaking his head to himself as the doors closed and locked behind him. He jumped a little when he saw her standing right outside, watching the android on the security monitor intently.
‘What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the cockpit?’
‘The bridge,’ she corrected.
‘It’s small enough to be a cockpit.’
‘It’s still the bridge. And no, I don’t need to be there all the time. We aren’t exactly going anywhere. I wanted to see him.’
‘You’re not going in,’ Maddox announced, hurriedly. ‘Encountering you will only set his recovery back even further.’
‘”Recovery”,’ snorted she. ‘From what I’ve seen, Lore looks perfectly recovered to me.’
‘For the last time, that isn’t Lore. Lore is gone. That is Data. He’s just… confused.’
‘You see what you see,’ she replied. ‘I see something else.’
I’ve programmed the doors to only let me in or out,’ said Maddox, clearly in a hurry to be as far from her as possible on the little ship. ‘You are not going in there, Poklar.’
He scuttled away and, alone with only the security monitor for company, she brushed her fingers tenderly over the screen. ‘Hello, Lore. I’ve missed you. We’re going to have so much fun together, you and I. You think you know suffering now?’ She gave the screen a gentle lick. ‘You have no idea.’
-x-
‘Poklar,’ seethed Tasha. ‘I mean – Poklar!’
‘I know.’
‘After she lied and cheated and stole from her own people until the only place Romulus wanted her was in a prison cell,’ Tasha continued. ‘After everything she did to Data – everything she wanted to do to Data but mercifully wasn’t able to, we end up granting sanctuary to that maniac? Not just sanctuary, but access to our own cybernetic technology? What the Hell?’
‘The only defence I can see,’ replied Picard, ‘is that, at the time she came to the Daystrom Institute, Starfleet was still licking its wounds from the second Borg attack and the Dominion were making their move – we needed all the help we could get.’
‘And that’s another thing,’ added Tasha. ‘Who in their right minds could have believed that those Sadistic contraptions of Poklar’s could be of any possible help to Starfleet?’
‘Perhaps between her escape from you and approaching the Daystrom Institute she was able to think up some more benign, more useful inventions.’
‘Can you really believe that?’
‘I’m just speculating, Tasha.’ Picard paused, watching her. ‘Why don’t you take a seat?’
Tasha had served with Picard for long enough to know that ‘why don’t you take a seat’ was his more courteous way of saying ‘for God’s sake stop pacing around me; I’m trying to think.’ She sat down, her legs still jiggling anxiously.
‘So, what do we do now?’ she asked.
‘What can we do now? We have no idea where Maddox and Poklar might be, and we have a planet full of radiation poisoned civilians in urgent need of rescue.’
‘Captain, I know that you’re in no more doubt than I am that that message was from Q.’
Picard nodded. ‘I know his interference when I see it.’
‘And if he’s gone to all that trouble, then it must be a very urgent matter…’
‘Q would go to far more trouble than that over any trifle, if he thought it was funny.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Tasha argued, ‘the message stayed the same for five years, and then three weeks ago the message changed and Deanna started having the dreams. Now we’re unearthing all this information about Maddox and Poklar… I think something happened three weeks ago – something terrible, and it’s still going on, and I think Q is telling us we need to stop it.’
‘It could still be a wild goose chase, with Q involved,’ replied Picard.
‘Could be. But my gut’s telling me that it isn’t.’
‘Mine too,’ agreed the Captain. ‘I know that Data allowed his memory and personality to be copied onto Graves’ machine shortly before we lost him. Once we have all the details from Kwon, I can advise other ships to be on the lookout for Poklar’s vessel, and to erase Data’s files from Graves’ machine as well as atomising Lore’s body if they find them.’
‘They’re on a two-person ship,’ retorted Tasha. ‘They’ve been gone for months. They could be anywhere.’
‘I wish that we had more to go on, Tasha. But we don’t.’
‘But we do! We have the card.’
‘All that the card says is “Orpheus” and “follow the dream”. It’s gibberish.’
Tasha shook her head. ‘Everything we’ve uncovered so far today stems from clues left in Deanna’s nightmare. After the mind meld, Manek was able to write a detailed account of the whole thing – I’m certain that if we study it, we’ll find more signs. And as for “Orpheus”…’
‘Orpheus didn’t wait around for other people to end his dead lover’s suffering,’ Picard pre-empted. ‘He journeyed into the underworld to rescue her himself. You want us to get Data back, don’t you?’
‘I know that’s not practical,’ Tasha replied. ‘The Vonnegans need to get off that dying planet as soon as possible. And you and Will are going to be needed to organise the negotiations between the leaders.’ She paused. ‘I was wondering, though… do you really need me for all of this?’
‘You’re my First Officer. I always need you.’
‘I’m not exactly going to be vital for the next few days though, am I?’
‘And what if the unforeseen should happen?’
‘Captain, the unforeseen already has happened! What if they’re able to bring Lore online – what then? How many more people could be killed?’
Picard ruminated upon this. ‘Our schedule calls for us to transport the last of the Vonnegans aboard in four days time,’ he said. ‘I’m certain that I’ll need you back by then.’
Tasha nodded. ‘Then, that’s when you’ll have me back.’
‘You do realise that, if we’re right, this won’t be a rescue mission at all. You’ll just be finding their ship in order to destroy Lore’s body and delete Data’s memory from Graves’ machine.’
‘In my opinion, that is rescuing him, Captain,’ Tasha replied. ‘There are fates worse than death.’
ORPHEUS
-x-
Three
-x-
Tasha made three attempts to get through to Maddox directly. After failing to connect for the third time, she decided that the contact details the scientist had given Data years ago would have to be out of date, and tried going via the main channels for the Daystrom Institute instead. This wasn’t much more helpful. Every time she asked to speak with Maddox, she was passed through to somebody else – with no explanations and certainly no Maddox. Eventually she managed to get through to Dr Kwon. The senior Cyberneticist looked nervous and hurried.
‘Commander Yar.’ Kwon managed the tightest, fakest smile Tasha had seen in a long time. ‘How can I be of assistance to you?’
‘I’d like to speak with Dr Maddox,’ she told him.
Kwon nodded faintly, the false smile frozen on his face. ‘Hmm,’ was his only reply.
‘I can’t get through with any of the contact details that he left,’ Tasha added. ‘I was hoping you’d be able to put me through, or at least point me in the right direction. Is he working at a different department now?’
‘I’m afraid Bruce is no longer with us,’ said Kwon.
Tasha blinked. ‘He… he died?’ She knew he had been sick – Data had been in close contact with him for many years, and had spoken of Maddox having a severe bout of Bojo Fever not long before their final encounter with Lore. The fever had left Maddox with serious complications – he’d been in and out of treatment ever since, as far as she knew, and was unlikely to reach old age. Her heart thundered as she considered the possible ramifications of Deanna seeing two dead people in her dream.
Kwon shook his head. ‘He left.’
Tasha exhaled in relief. ‘Where did he transfer to?’
‘No, Commander Yar. He left Starfleet, about a year ago.’
Tasha began to feel despair creeping in on her again. ‘Do you know where he is now?’
‘You have no idea how much I wish that I did, Commander.’
‘Why’s that?’
Kwon chewed at his lip a little. ‘I’m sorry, Commander. I really can’t say any more. Maddox isn’t here, and I very much doubt that you will find him. It’s a very big universe out there. I’m sorry I couldn’t be any more help.’
Tasha gave Kwon as polite a farewell as she could manage given her frustration, and terminated the communication. It didn’t take an empath to tell her that Kwon was holding back vital information.
She frowned at the blank screen for a while. She tried to access Maddox’s personnel files but found them blocked. She tried to override the block, but found that the Daystrom Institute’s computer systems wouldn’t grant clearance to the Enterprise’s systems. She frowned at the screen some more. Then she got up, stretched, fed the cat, replicated herself a coffee, sat down at her desk again and began trying to hack in to the Daystrom Institute’s computers.
She had been making slow progress for about half an hour when she heard the door chime. She ignored it. The chime sounded again. Again, she ignored it, hoping that whatever it was was unimportant enough for whomever it was to give up eventually and go away.
‘Tasha,’ called Geordi from the other side of her door, ‘I know what you’re doing in there.’
She frowned and tried to work faster.
‘I don’t really want to have this conversation through the door,’ added Geordi, ‘and I can’t imagine that’d be ideal for you, either…’
Tasha stopped, rubbing the bridge of her nose. ‘Better come in, then.’
The doors opened at her command, and Geordi stepped through, alone. He waited until the doors were shut again behind him before he spoke.
‘You really thought no one would notice you using your personal computer terminal to try to hack into the Daystrom Institute’s classified files?’
Tasha stared at him for a moment, then turned back to her code breaking attempts. ‘I take it from the fact you haven’t brought any Security Officers with you that you’re not here to have me thrown in the Brig.’
‘Not just yet.’ Geordi watched over her shoulder as she worked. ‘I came here to tell you you’ve got four hours. That’s as long as I reckon I can cover up for what you’re doing here. After that, you’re on your own, so you’d better hope you can come up with some damn good proof that what you’re doing right now can be justified.’
Tasha stopped and turned to him. ‘Thank you, Geordi.’
Geordi shrugged with a heavy sigh of resignation. ‘Guess I can’t just turn my back on that stupid carrot Q’s dangling in front of us after all.’
‘Well, I really appreciate it. I can’t imagine your fiancée will be too happy with you breaching security protocol like this.’
‘Actually,’ replied Geordi, ‘she’s the one who caught you out. The four hour cover was her idea. I think experiencing Deanna’s nightmare really affected her. She’s got that look of determination in her eye.’
Tasha turned back to the computer again. ‘The “don’t even try to talk me out of this” look. I know it well. Guess I owe you both one, then…’
Still watching over her shoulder Geordi sucked through his teeth, sharply.
‘What?’
‘You’re really gonna do it like that?’
‘Geordi, after fifteen years as Tactical Officer, I think I know how to get through encryption codes…’
‘Yeah, and if you had a whole ream of information that you needed and a couple of days at your leisure, I’m sure what you’re doing would suit you just fine, but you’ve only got four hours, and all you need is the one file.’
‘Well, what would you suggest?’
Geordi paused momentarily before sighing again. ‘God dammit, I already swore off having any more to do with this once today, it isn’t even a civilised breakfast time yet and here I am up to my neck in it again.’ He pushed at her shoulder. ‘Scoot. And if anybody ever asks how you came up with such a fast decipher code, just tell them it was a bolt of inspiration from the blue, or a dream or something… anything but me.’
Tasha gratefully surrendered her chair to Geordi. ‘You’re not even here.’
But Geordi’s only reply was ‘Shhh’.
-x-
Not long after the second hour had passed, Geordi stopped tapping away at the computer and raised his head.
‘Bingo’.
Tasha got up and hurried over to the console. ‘We’re in?’
Still reading the finally unlocked personnel file, Geordi answered her question with a ‘Holy crap’ of alarm.
‘What?’
‘Kwon told you Maddox had left?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Looks like “absconded” is a better word for it.’ Geordi pointed at the passage he’d been reading.
A slower reader than Geordi, Tasha felt her jaw growing slack as she went over the paragraph. The Bojo Fever had dealt Maddox complications, all right – an inadequate recuperation period had left him with some brain damage and considerable psychological imbalances. Over the years, he had grown more and more obsessed with his work. It had become his entire existence – and then, news had come to him of Data’s destruction, and Maddox had snapped. He’d suffered a complete mental breakdown. Efforts had been made to help him through with counselling and therapy, but eventually Kwon had seen no alternative but to regrettably have him committed. On the night before he was to be taken to a secure hospital, however, Maddox had escaped, taking all his notes and several valuable, unique pieces of the Daystrom Institute’s equipment with him. He’d never been found.
‘We should have heard about this,’ Tasha muttered. ‘If they wanted him and their equipment back safe with them instead of floating round the universe where anybody can get their hands on them, then the whole of Starfleet should have been told to keep a watch out for him. But instead they hush it allup. Why?’
‘Oh God.’
Tasha looked across at Geordi. Whatever he’d just read, it had dismayed him almost to tears.
‘I think I just found out why,’ he replied. He pointed at some text further down. ‘Look what he stole.’
‘Graves’ machine… that son of a bitch… and…’ Tasha found herself instinctively rising to her feet in anger as she finished reading the sentence. ‘That bastard! Those bastards! What was Lore even doing there? They were under orders to disassemble him so he could never be put back together again. They were keeping him to experiment on all that time? Throughout the Borg attacks? The Dominion war? They were practically begging for that genocidal maniac to fall into the wrong hands.’
‘And now there’s a mad scientist out there with a machine that stores personalities and the intact body of one of the universe’s most dangerous individuals, and they could have so easily prevented it all,’ added Geordi. ‘They hushed it up just to cover their own backs.’
Tasha forced herself to sit down again and carry on reading. ‘Well, I think we found pretty good justification for breaking their security codes.’ She shot Geordi a little glance. ‘Any time you want to admit I was right all along about Deanna’s dream will be fine with me.’
Geordi wasn’t in the mood for any lightening of the tone. He frowned at the screen, lost in his thoughts.
‘Data was in Graves’ machine,’ he said. ‘That must be how he’s reaching out to Deanna.’
‘What do you mean, “Data was in the machine”?’
‘He let them copy his personality and memories onto the machine the last time he visited the Daystrom Institute.’
‘Yeah. He told me. But that was just a temporary backup plan – they were supposed to delete it again straight away…’
‘I think we’ve just found out,’ Geordi replied, ‘how reliably the Daystrom Institute’s Cyberneticists do what they’re supposed to do.’
-x-
Oh! Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling,
Oh! Grave, thy victory…?
The lights brightened, the doors opened, Maddox walked in. Always the same, ever since he’d been brought back online. How long that had been, he could not tell.
The bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling,
For you but not for me…
‘How are we today, Data?’ Maddox asked. ‘Still no change?’
No change. Of course, there was no change. He could still barely move, he was still bewildered by fluctuating operational systems and uncontrollable emotions. He was still in the wrong body, and there was still that voice. The only changes were the occasional variations in the voice’s repertoire of 20th Century Terran ditties, and the fact that, slowly but certainly, the voice was growing louder.
‘The bells… of Hell…’ he murmured along with the singing in his head.
Maddox crouched down close to him. ‘What’s that, Data?’
‘…go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me…’
‘Is this today’s song?’
‘From Earth’s “Great War”,’ Data replied with difficulty, ‘as it was then known.’
‘Is that how you see this, Data? As a war?’
‘You have left me at war with my own body,’ said Data. ‘With his body.’
Maddox rubbed his forehead in exasperation. ‘How many times do we have to go over this? Lore is gone. His personality’s been wiped – completely deleted.’
‘Memory cannot be overwritten,’ Data insisted, ‘not completely. Something remains…’
‘You’re wrong, Data. I was very thorough. This is all just in your head.’
‘In my head,’ Data echoed. ‘In my head all the time, and he is getting louder. He is getting stronger. Mine was always the weaker personality. Even without taking Lore into account, my being was used as a host body for invading personalities with alarming regularity. My consciousness has always been very easy for others to repress, and Lore was all too aware of that. We met on three occasions after being discovered on Omicron Theta, and every time he was able to manipulate me. He shall prevail, eventually, and then what will happen? How do you think that this will end, Dr Maddox?’
Maddox crouched by him again, an expression of sad sympathy on his face. ‘I’ll tell you how I would like this to end, Data – you let go of this guilt, this crippling guilt at being given Lore’s body that’s making you think you can hear your brother’s voice, and you embrace this second chance at life that I’ve given you, and we all go home. I go back to my work, and you go back to all your friends, and your lady friend. Don’t you want that too, Data? To see Geordi again, and Jean-Luc Picard? And Tasha Yar – don’t you want to be with her again?’
Of course he did. But not like this – not like this. He remembered what Lore had made him do to Geordi the last time – and what he had nearly made him do to the Captain and Tasha. She wouldn’t be safe from him. None of them would.
‘I cannot go home,’ he told Maddox.
Maddox got back up to his feet, with a sigh. ‘You will get better, Data. I’m determined. This procedure will be a success. And I hope, for all our sakes, that it’ll happen sooner rather than later.’
-x-
Tasha was glad that Will and Deanna had yet to return to the Titan when Jean-Luc Picard, confronted with the information she and Geordi had pulled from Maddox’s file, put the business with the Vonnegans briefly aside in order to urgently contact the Daystrom Institute. She was more pleased still that the Rikers seemed to come to a wordless decision that the matter was as much their business as the Enterprise’s, and stood by her side, putting up a unified front of quiet indignation as Picard got through to Dr Kwon on the viewscreen.
Kwon was visibly nervous – Tasha was sure that he had to know by that point that their secret files had been hacked, but it didn’t stop him from putting on a shocked act when the Captain told him so.
‘This is most irregular,’ muttered Kwon, ‘a severe breach of security and confidence. I trust that you will deal with the individuals responsible in the…’
‘How dare you,’ Picard interrupted.
‘How dare I…?’
‘How dare you complain to me about breached security and trust. I’ve seen Maddox’s file. I know what happened. I know what – who – was taken. Data wanted to have his brother atomised – he felt that that was the most dignified end for Lore, as well as the safest, but Starfleet command had me persuade him to allow you people to have his remains. He did so on the express instructions that Lore was to remain disassembled at all times, and as securely stored as was possible. But you couldn’t help yourselves, could you? You had to pick over his body like vultures.’
‘That was Maddox…’
‘Maddox was unhinged! You were his superior! You should have never let it get as far as it did, and when Maddox took Lore and Graves’ machine, you should certainly have reported it. Have no doubt, Dr Kwon, that I am holding you, and everybody who has helped to cover this fiasco up utterly responsible.’
‘Captain,’ replied Kwon, ‘I wish I knew how to put this right. Really, I do…’
‘You can start off by giving exact details of everything you know about how Maddox absconded to us,’ said Picard. ‘We have a complex planetary evacuation to deal with at present, but we can release descriptions of the ship Maddox left in and details of where he might possibly have gone to the rest of Starfleet for now – keep everybody on the lookout. Perhaps begin plans to organise a search party. What sort of ship did he take? Did he steal any other equipment from the Institute?’
Kwon hesitated.
‘That wasn’t a rhetorical question, Doctor.’
‘He’s still holding something back,’ said Deanna, quietly. ‘Something we don’t know yet – something that he thinks has even worse ramifications that what we’ve already found out.’
Picard turned from the Betazoid back to the nervous scientist on the screen. ‘What could you possibly be hiding, Dr Kwon? Tell us now, or so help me…’
‘He had an accomplice,’ blurted Kwon. ‘It turns out that over the years she’d been here, they’d come up with a plan. They took her ship, and all of her work as well.’
‘What’s so terrible about that?’
‘Well… she wasn’t really supposed to be here. We were supposed to hand her over to the authorities, but she came to us and begged for sanctuary – for a chance to continue with her work. In return, she agreed to live essentially as a prisoner here, and for her life’s work to become the property of the Institute… of Starfleet. It was for the good of the Federation…’
Tasha could feel a wave of cold panic sweeping over her as Kwon talked. The ominous sensation in her gut was matched by the severity of Picard’s tone.
‘Who were you sheltering, Kwon? To whom did you give access to Graves’ work, and Lore, and that maniac Maddox?’
‘A Romulan Cyberneticist,’ Kwon replied, shakily. ‘The great Romulan Cyberneticist.’
‘Oh no,’ breathed Tasha. ‘Oh, no.’
-x-
Maddox left the cell, shaking his head to himself as the doors closed and locked behind him. He jumped a little when he saw her standing right outside, watching the android on the security monitor intently.
‘What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the cockpit?’
‘The bridge,’ she corrected.
‘It’s small enough to be a cockpit.’
‘It’s still the bridge. And no, I don’t need to be there all the time. We aren’t exactly going anywhere. I wanted to see him.’
‘You’re not going in,’ Maddox announced, hurriedly. ‘Encountering you will only set his recovery back even further.’
‘”Recovery”,’ snorted she. ‘From what I’ve seen, Lore looks perfectly recovered to me.’
‘For the last time, that isn’t Lore. Lore is gone. That is Data. He’s just… confused.’
‘You see what you see,’ she replied. ‘I see something else.’
I’ve programmed the doors to only let me in or out,’ said Maddox, clearly in a hurry to be as far from her as possible on the little ship. ‘You are not going in there, Poklar.’
He scuttled away and, alone with only the security monitor for company, she brushed her fingers tenderly over the screen. ‘Hello, Lore. I’ve missed you. We’re going to have so much fun together, you and I. You think you know suffering now?’ She gave the screen a gentle lick. ‘You have no idea.’
-x-
‘Poklar,’ seethed Tasha. ‘I mean – Poklar!’
‘I know.’
‘After she lied and cheated and stole from her own people until the only place Romulus wanted her was in a prison cell,’ Tasha continued. ‘After everything she did to Data – everything she wanted to do to Data but mercifully wasn’t able to, we end up granting sanctuary to that maniac? Not just sanctuary, but access to our own cybernetic technology? What the Hell?’
‘The only defence I can see,’ replied Picard, ‘is that, at the time she came to the Daystrom Institute, Starfleet was still licking its wounds from the second Borg attack and the Dominion were making their move – we needed all the help we could get.’
‘And that’s another thing,’ added Tasha. ‘Who in their right minds could have believed that those Sadistic contraptions of Poklar’s could be of any possible help to Starfleet?’
‘Perhaps between her escape from you and approaching the Daystrom Institute she was able to think up some more benign, more useful inventions.’
‘Can you really believe that?’
‘I’m just speculating, Tasha.’ Picard paused, watching her. ‘Why don’t you take a seat?’
Tasha had served with Picard for long enough to know that ‘why don’t you take a seat’ was his more courteous way of saying ‘for God’s sake stop pacing around me; I’m trying to think.’ She sat down, her legs still jiggling anxiously.
‘So, what do we do now?’ she asked.
‘What can we do now? We have no idea where Maddox and Poklar might be, and we have a planet full of radiation poisoned civilians in urgent need of rescue.’
‘Captain, I know that you’re in no more doubt than I am that that message was from Q.’
Picard nodded. ‘I know his interference when I see it.’
‘And if he’s gone to all that trouble, then it must be a very urgent matter…’
‘Q would go to far more trouble than that over any trifle, if he thought it was funny.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Tasha argued, ‘the message stayed the same for five years, and then three weeks ago the message changed and Deanna started having the dreams. Now we’re unearthing all this information about Maddox and Poklar… I think something happened three weeks ago – something terrible, and it’s still going on, and I think Q is telling us we need to stop it.’
‘It could still be a wild goose chase, with Q involved,’ replied Picard.
‘Could be. But my gut’s telling me that it isn’t.’
‘Mine too,’ agreed the Captain. ‘I know that Data allowed his memory and personality to be copied onto Graves’ machine shortly before we lost him. Once we have all the details from Kwon, I can advise other ships to be on the lookout for Poklar’s vessel, and to erase Data’s files from Graves’ machine as well as atomising Lore’s body if they find them.’
‘They’re on a two-person ship,’ retorted Tasha. ‘They’ve been gone for months. They could be anywhere.’
‘I wish that we had more to go on, Tasha. But we don’t.’
‘But we do! We have the card.’
‘All that the card says is “Orpheus” and “follow the dream”. It’s gibberish.’
Tasha shook her head. ‘Everything we’ve uncovered so far today stems from clues left in Deanna’s nightmare. After the mind meld, Manek was able to write a detailed account of the whole thing – I’m certain that if we study it, we’ll find more signs. And as for “Orpheus”…’
‘Orpheus didn’t wait around for other people to end his dead lover’s suffering,’ Picard pre-empted. ‘He journeyed into the underworld to rescue her himself. You want us to get Data back, don’t you?’
‘I know that’s not practical,’ Tasha replied. ‘The Vonnegans need to get off that dying planet as soon as possible. And you and Will are going to be needed to organise the negotiations between the leaders.’ She paused. ‘I was wondering, though… do you really need me for all of this?’
‘You’re my First Officer. I always need you.’
‘I’m not exactly going to be vital for the next few days though, am I?’
‘And what if the unforeseen should happen?’
‘Captain, the unforeseen already has happened! What if they’re able to bring Lore online – what then? How many more people could be killed?’
Picard ruminated upon this. ‘Our schedule calls for us to transport the last of the Vonnegans aboard in four days time,’ he said. ‘I’m certain that I’ll need you back by then.’
Tasha nodded. ‘Then, that’s when you’ll have me back.’
‘You do realise that, if we’re right, this won’t be a rescue mission at all. You’ll just be finding their ship in order to destroy Lore’s body and delete Data’s memory from Graves’ machine.’
‘In my opinion, that is rescuing him, Captain,’ Tasha replied. ‘There are fates worse than death.’
