Dark Mirror (20 page)

“I should have thought there would be some sign. Does anyone have any new thoughts on why he should have gone missing?”

“Well, there may have been a matter of advancement involved.” Riker’s eyes flicked briefly up toward the ’lift doors, where Barclay still stood at ease, his eyes on Picard.

“Kowalski’s, or someone else’s?”

“Difficult to say, Captain. There were crewmen underneath him who didn’t like his style—who may have waited for him to get a rotation that would put him out of plain sight and give someone an opportunity to hit him. We’re questioning the few who might have had motive.”

“Very good,” Picard said, as if none of it mattered. But he had his own ideas about what that questioning probably involved. And knowing the cause of Kowalski’s disappearance, he felt unhappy about it. Under no circumstance, though, could that be allowed to show. “Carry on, then,
and make sure all systems remain in readiness. Otherwise you’ll have a little less cause to smile.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing some of that smirk fall away from Riker, and to cover his own annoyance at having to treat a fellow officer that way, even in a place like this, he leaned back and said, “Get me Mr. La Forge.”

With a sullen look, Riker leaned over toward the center seat, touched one of the controls on its arm. “Engineering,” he said. “La Forge.”

“
La Forge here, Commander,”
said Geordi’s voice. It sounded annoyed.
“Is old Shiny still having his nap?”

Riker grinned like a schoolboy hearing another one get caught in a wicked act.

“I stopped needing afternoon naps after kindergarten, Mr. La Forge,” Picard said softly. “The refulgence of my head is unabated, and as for you,
you
are asking for trouble.”

“
Uh, just a joke, Captain,”
said the voice from engineering, rather desperately. “
You and Commander Riker both know I have the highest respect—”

“Spare me the platitudes,” Picard said, resigning himself to the fact that he was going to have to conduct himself like an Academy instructor with a crowd of rude, raw, obstreperous one-week’s cadets, all jockeying for position to see who could be the boldest, all continually needing to be slapped down. “Status report!”

“
Engines are nominal, Captain.”

“When I say ‘report,’” Picard said, trying to keep his voice soft, and he much hoped dangerous, “I mean a
full
report, Mr. La Forge, not these sullen half-answers you seem to find so amusing. Must I come down there myself and apply a little encouragement toward more detail?”

“
Uh, no sir,”
La Forge said, somewhat hurriedly, a slightly cringing tone to his voice now. “
But really, there’s nothing else to report. The switchback equipment is on standby for the moment. We’re checking it over as per
routine to make sure it took no damage during the inclusion.”

“See to it,” Picard said, “and make quite sure. I may well be down for a visit myself later on. It would be rather annoying to come all this way and then have a malfunction. Certain people would not be amused.”

This was a stab in the dark, but he could guess that this ship would not have been sent out this far, and had the results it had had, and be expected to fail. The interest at Starfleet,
this
Starfleet, must be tremendous—and he suspected the penalties for failure, right up and down the line, would be dreadful.

“
Uh, no sir,”
Geordi said.
Not Geordi,
Picard reminded himself with pain.
This La Forge.

“Very well. Out.” Picard hit the control that Riker had touched and saw a look of faint scorn on Riker’s face. “You have something to contribute, Number One? Feel free.”

“You’re too easy on him. One of these days he’s going to get the wrong idea and try something smart.”

“For him?” Picard said softly. “Or for you?”

The stroke went home. Riker looked very briefly taken aback, then smoothed his face over with that smile again and said, “Captain, you know I support you completely.”

The lie was so total and transparent that Picard couldn’t hold his face still, much less keep the look of incredulous-ness off it. Then again, neither could anyone else on the bridge. He glanced swiftly around at their actions. O’Brien was in the seat that was usually Data’s: Picard found himself wondering who was transporter chief here, whether there even was such a function. He rather thought that someone from security probably managed the transporter. Beside him sat Ensign Crusher—
an
Ensign Crusher. For a moment he fought the urge to lean forward and get a look at that young face, to see what changes were in it here. But Wesley looked fixedly ahead, giving all his attention to the screen.

Behind Picard, Worf stood, without his Klingon sash of rank, as he had appeared in the recording earlier. It would have been unwise to spare him more than a glance, but somehow Picard got the odd feeling that this Worf might be more like the one he was familiar with than the rest of these people. His face seemed little changed.
It’s not necessarily an indication,
Picard reminded himself.
Judging alien expression, even in a species as humanoid as the Klingons, could be a business full of pitfalls.

He leaned back in his seat again. “Of
course
you do, Number One,” Picard said as smoothly as he could. “And I trust you implicitly.”
The two or three meters I can throw you!

“So there’s our ration of humor for today,” Picard said mildly. He got up as casually as he could and began to stroll around the bridge, doing his best to master his responses once again. It was a sobering walk, and one that filled him with distress. The ship’s bridge was at best a parody of his own. He walked quietly past the bank after bank of weaponry control and status readouts. The controls for photon torpedoes, and the master status boards for the phaser banks, he understood. There were other panels new to him, giving status in numbers of “disassociation packages,” “sterilizers,” “nova devices.” The first he guessed was the derivative from the old Romulan weapon. He shuddered again at the thought of the dust of a dead world traveling companionably in the orbit of another, so that falling stars would seem to rain down constantly through a sky toward which no eye turned anymore in the evening…. But these other weapons—he would have to do some quiet research work, and as quickly as he could.

He passed behind Worf, watching the Klingon’s eyes shift to follow him. Not a nervous look, but speculative. Casually Picard leaned up against a bulkhead and studied a ship’s schematic, trying to look preoccupied.
What on earth,
he thought,
are those great empty bays down in
engineering? And what’s happened to all the personnel quarters in the primary hull?
There were large spaces showing down there, areas that were formerly subdivided into family quarters, entertainment areas, gyms, libraries: even the arboretum was gone. He leaned in closely enough to pretend to be wiping at a smudge on one of the viewing panels and saw several of those large areas labeled
Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Disassociator Storage; Mass Weapons Transporter One, Two; Razor Field Generation; Terra-forming Equipment: Atomics.
Atomics in several different flavors.

Dégueulasse,
he thought, thoroughly disgusted. He moved casually away and stopped by the engineering panel, gazed at it, still trying to look lost in thought. His revulsion at the weapons load the ship was carrying was briefly replaced by astonishment at the power readings he saw—especially the graph for available power from the warp engines. He made a mental note not to bother trying to outrun this craft, if it came to that. This one could hold high warp speeds, to judge by the engine ratings here, for three or four times as long as his own
Enterprise.
It could also feed much larger reserves of power to the phasers and the photon torpedoes than his own could. He had already been upset by the photon torpedo complement, six times what his own ship had on board. Now he understood the profligacy: he understood where all that power came from. He touched the panel idly, brought up the schematic of the engineering hull, and gazed at it for a moment, thinking that Geordi might have a better chance of getting his counterpart away undetected than they had previously thought—for this engine room was like a barn. It was at least four times the size of the one on his
Enterprise.

He touched the panel again, casually bringing up a schematic of the various power conduits and feeds into and out of the engineering section. There appeared to be three major pathways: one for distribution of power to ship’s
systems; another, bifurcated farther down the line, for the warp nacelles; and a third. This went to some large unlabeled apparatus in the engine room.

Picard swallowed and turned away.
What is that?
he thought. From his memory of their last briefing, he remembered Data’s voice saying,
A considerable amount of power would be required, and there is no planet or other fixed facility in this neighborhood to produce such an effect
From the look of it, that installation, whatever it was, seemed to be absorbing fully a third of the output of these massive engines.

He strolled away from the panel, looking thoughtfully at the forward viewscreen and the slow passage of stars upon it.
Wait here a little while more,
he thought.
Then as soon as it seems natural, I’ll go down to engineering and get a look at that—whatever it is.

Behind him, the ’lift doors slid open, and from around the bridge came the soft sound of people rising to their feet and saluting. For a calculated moment, Picard didn’t turn.

“Well, good morning, Captain,” said the soft voice from behind him.

Calmly he looked her way, seeing in the background that even Riker had risen. Deanna Troi was standing behind him, arms behind her back, eyeing him with a slight smile.

He felt it, then—the brush across his mind, light but in no way tentative, like a veil blown across the skin of his face. There and gone again. He blinked, surprised, and immediately smothered the surprise under an anger that was not entirely generated on purpose. “Counselor,” he said, frowning at her to help the effect.

She raised her eyebrows at him, genially enough, it seemed. “A little nervous this morning, are we?” she said.

He had always hated the medical
we
when it was used on him, and he liked it no better in this form. “You may be able to overhear them, Counselor,” he said, “but
my
emotions are not joint property. When I want your help
with analyzing them, I’ll ask for it. Meanwhile”—
Toujours l’audace,
he thought,
any move not an attack is ground lost!
—“I should think
you
would be the one who should be nervous. One of your staff missing without a trace…” He had had only a few minutes to study the original’s attitude toward Troi, earlier, but it was better than nothing, and the content might as well be used, too. “This is a poor time for your department to start having trouble, considering how heavy its responsibilities are. But then these things will happen, I suppose. Personality conflicts. Perhaps Kowalski’s last promotion came a little too quickly for someone?” He did his best to smile like a man who had a secret. “Or some cause more sensitive… more private. Someone who might have been indiscreet—and someone willing to prevent it, for a price.”

“And if it was?” Troi smiled and turned away from him, utterly unconcerned. “What’s the point of rank if it doesn’t have its occasional perquisites?” She looked sideways at him, enjoying the game. “You haven’t been entirely behindhand in that regard yourself, Captain. Though it has been a matter of comment occasionally that you haven’t taken more. Some people would wonder about that. They’d take it as a sign you’re getting soft.”

“Personal preference,” Picard said, sounding aloof, and wondering what the devil she was talking about. “But never mind that. What efforts have you made to find our missing crewman?”

“Routine investigations are being made. I’ll let you know when we have results.”

It was a dismissal: of him. He didn’t care for it. “And what have you to report on the status of”—he waved at the screen—“our quarry?”

She was moving slowly toward his seat. In just as leisurely a manner, Picard slipped past her and sat down, looking up at her in the manner of a superior expecting a
report from a standing subordinate. Troi made an expression of amusement and surprise and sat down beside him as if she had intended nothing else.

“Since our last contact,” she said, “nothing concrete. A general unfocused sense of low-level anxiety. Not, I must admit, what we would expect from the crew of a ship in the other one’s predicament.” She frowned slightly. “It might indicate that they didn’t understand the predicament they’re in.”

“Surely they will have worked it out by now,” Picard said dryly. “I think you underestimate them, Counselor. Such tendencies are dangerous.”

“If they have worked it out,” she said confidently, “then their behavior is exactly what we would have hoped from these people, at the very best, and closely conforms to the old reports.” The scorn in her voice was considerable. “They’re busily running away, doing their best to avoid us. Whether they know we have both the strategic and tactical advantage of them is hard to say. There’s some indication that their sensors may be better than ours. It hardly matters if they are. Our agent aboard got us the necessary information about their weaponry before his”—she smiled slightly—“unfortunate demise. We’ll be ready for the next phase shortly: within a matter of a couple of hours.”

“Very well,” Picard said then, getting up. “Until then, there are some matters I wish to attend to. Feel free to call me if I’m needed.”

He moved toward the turbolift doors. Barclay, standing there, waved the doors open for him and started to go in ahead of him. Picard let him look the ’lift over, but then shook his head minutely and gestured with his head toward Troi. “Keep an eye on her,” he said softly.

Barclay looked alarmed. “Sir—”