Chapter 25: 11001001
[USS Enterprise-D — Jeffries Tube 47-Alpha, Deck 36 — 2364, Day 94]
The Enterprise had been docked at Starbase 74 for six hours when it stole itself.
Cole was three meters deep in Jeffries tube 47-Alpha, hands inside a secondary EPS distribution node, running diagnostics on the power coupling that fed the starboard sensor array. The Bynars—the paired species handling the computer upgrade—had requested all personnel clear the ship for the final phase of their work. Cole had acknowledged the order, filed his departure time with the duty officer, and then crawled into the tube to finish the coupling repair he'd started that morning.
Not defiance. Efficiency. The coupling needed twelve more minutes. He'd be off the ship before the final crew transfers completed.
That was the plan. The plan lasted eight minutes.
The first warning was vibration—a deep, subsonic thrum transmitted through the hull plating into his palms. Engine startup. The impulse drive cycling from cold standby to active propulsion, the familiar harmonic of antimatter containment shifting from dock mode to operational.
Cole pulled his hands from the EPS node. His Tech Assimilation read the surrounding systems in a pulse of involuntary contact: navigation active, helm controls engaged, automatic sequencing running—departure protocol. The Enterprise was leaving Starbase 74.
Without its crew.
He scrambled out of the tube, the toolkit banging against his hip, and hit the nearest wall panel. The corridor was empty. Not the quiet of a skeleton crew but the absolute silence of an evacuated vessel—no footsteps, no conversation, no ambient human noise. Just the Enterprise breathing its mechanical breath, engines building power, the starbase's docking clamps releasing with a shudder he could feel through the deck.
"Computer, ship's complement."
"Current personnel aboard: four."
Four. On a ship built for over a thousand.
Cole's energy perception expanded—the trained, controlled sweep he'd refined over weeks of practice. Fifty meters in every direction, reading energy signatures through bulkheads and decks. Two signatures in Engineering—paired, synchronized, the distinctive doubled pattern of Bynar neural linkage. And two more in Holodeck 4—human, familiar.
Picard and Riker. They're in the holodeck. And the Bynars are running the ship.
The meta-knowledge clicked into place with the precision of a diagnostic subroutine. The Bynars' homeworld computer was failing. They needed the Enterprise's computer as a backup—a temporary vessel for their entire civilization's data. The fake emergency evacuation, the theft of the ship, all of it was desperation, not malice. Two small aliens trying to save their species the only way they knew how.
And Picard and Riker would resolve it. They'd retake the bridge, discover the data transfer, and help the Bynars save their world. Canon played out. Happy ending.
Cole stood in the empty corridor and made a decision.
Stay hidden. Stay useful. Stay invisible.
He retreated into the Jeffries tube network—the capillary system that ran through the Enterprise like veins through a body, connecting every deck, every section, every major system. In the tubes, he was invisible to internal sensors. In the tubes, he could reach anything without being seen.
The first problem announced itself twenty minutes into the flight. The Bynars' data transfer was massive—their entire planetary database, billions of terabytes, flowing through the Enterprise's computer core at speeds the system wasn't designed to handle. The secondary processing nodes were overheating. Cole tracked the temperature spikes through his Assimilation—passive reads through the tube walls, his palms pressed against conduit housings, feeling the data flow like a river pressing against its banks.
Node 7 hit critical first. Cole crawled to the junction point, popped the access panel, and rerouted power from the tertiary backup to supplement the cooling system. His hands moved with the automatic competence of three months' engineering work—disconnect, reroute, reconnect—while his perception tracked the temperature curve. The node stabilized. The data continued flowing.
Node 12 failed eighteen minutes later. Same problem, different location. Cole was already moving—the Jeffries tube network was a maze he'd memorized during his first week, every junction numbered and catalogued in his mental map. The repair took four minutes. The coupling was warm under his fingers, almost too hot, the kind of heat that meant the system was operating at the edge of its design parameters.
His stomach growled. The toolkit weighed heavier than it should have—the neural cost of continuous Assimilation reads adding up, the enhanced metabolism demanding fuel he didn't have. His last meal had been breakfast at the starbase, seven hours ago. The replicators were operational, but using one meant leaving the tubes, meant being visible on internal sensors, meant potentially alerting the Bynars.
Hungry. Tired. Invisible. This is what service looks like when nobody's watching.
He thought of Tasha, somewhere on Starbase 74, probably organizing the evacuated crew with the particular intensity she brought to any situation that involved protecting people. She'd be angry when she found out he'd been aboard. She'd be right to be angry.
Node 19. Node 23. Cole moved through the Enterprise's guts like a ghost, fixing failures before they cascaded, keeping the data transfer stable through pure engineering stubbornness and a set of abilities he couldn't explain to anyone. Each repair cost him—the Assimilation draws draining energy his body couldn't replace without food, the headache building from passive perception in overdrive, the cramped tubes turning his back into a catalogue of complaints.
Three hours in, the Bynars' transfer reached its critical phase. The data volume doubled, then tripled. Cole pressed his palm against the main processing conduit and watched the flow through his Assimilation—not reading the data itself, just the volume, the pressure, the strain on a system being asked to hold more than it was built for.
The main computer core's thermal regulators maxed out. If the core overheated, the transfer would corrupt—billions of lives encoded in data that would scramble into meaningless noise.
Cole couldn't reach the core from the tubes. It was too centralized, too monitored, too close to where the Bynars were working. But he could reach the auxiliary cooling system on deck 15—the emergency backup that existed for exactly this kind of thermal crisis, dormant unless manually activated.
He crawled. Fifteen minutes through tubes designed for maintenance access, not sustained travel. His knees ached. His shoulders scraped the walls at every junction. The toolkit caught on a bracket and he had to contort to free it, the motion sending a spike of pain through his lower back that reminded him, forcefully, that enhanced physiology didn't mean invulnerable.
Deck 15. Auxiliary cooling panel. Cole's Assimilation read the system in two seconds—dormant, functional, ready. He keyed the activation sequence manually, bypassing the computer authorization that would have flagged the action in the Bynars' monitoring.
The cooling system engaged. The core temperature dropped. The data transfer continued.
Cole slumped against the tube wall and pressed his forehead to the cool metal. His hands were shaking—the fine tremor of sustained Assimilation use, the neural tax that no amount of training could eliminate. The headache had settled behind his eyes like a permanent resident.
The Bynars are saving their world. Picard and Riker will figure out the rest. My job is to keep the plumbing working.
He kept the plumbing working.
---
[USS Enterprise-D — Jeffries Tube 12-Gamma — Day 94, 1800 Hours]
Picard and Riker retook the bridge at 1747 hours. Cole tracked the event through his perception—two human signatures moving from the holodeck to the turbolift to the bridge, the shift in engine power as manual control replaced automated sequencing, the hail to the starbase.
The Bynars' homeworld was saved. The data transfer completed—thanks in part to cooling systems that someone had conveniently activated. The Enterprise returned to Starbase 74. The crew re-boarded. The Bynars were forgiven—their desperation understood, their crime pardoned by the lives they were trying to save.
Cole emerged from the Jeffries tube network at 1830, reported to the duty officer as returning from the starbase, and went to the mess hall. Three full meals—chicken, pasta, and a steak that the replicator rendered with its usual soulless perfection—disappeared in twenty minutes. The caloric debt from eight hours of continuous Assimilation use demanded payment, and his body collected without mercy.
The debriefing report didn't mention him. The auxiliary cooling activation was logged as an automated response—the computer attributing it to a thermal threshold trigger that didn't actually exist. Cole didn't correct the record.
Sometimes the best work is invisible. Sometimes the hero is the guy in the maintenance shaft, making sure the pipes don't burst while the captain saves the world.
He filed a maintenance report on EPS nodes 7, 12, 19, and 23—routine repairs, discovered during standard diagnostics. Nobody questioned it. Nobody connected the timing. Nobody knew.
Tasha found him in his quarters that evening. Her expression suggested she'd been looking for him since the evacuation.
"You were on the ship." Not a question. Tasha Yar did not ask questions she already knew the answers to.
"I was in a Jeffries tube. Missed the evacuation order."
"You missed it." The skepticism was a physical weight.
"The tubes don't get shipwide alerts reliably. Known issue. I've filed three maintenance requests about it."
"Have you." She leaned against his doorframe. Arms crossed. The posture of a woman deciding whether to be angry or impressed. "And you just... stayed hidden. While the ship was stolen."
"Picard and Riker had it handled."
"You didn't know that when it started."
"I knew the Bynars weren't hostile. Their neural patterns—" he caught himself. Too specific. Too detailed. "Their behavior didn't read as aggressive. More... panicked."
Tasha studied him. The evaluation lasted five seconds—an eternity in Tasha time. "You kept ship systems stable during the transfer. The cooling system activation."
"How did you—"
"I'm the Security Chief, Cole. I checked the logs. The 'automated thermal response' that saved the computer core? That system doesn't have an automatic trigger. Someone activated it manually."
He said nothing. The silence was its own confession.
"You could have stopped them. Confronted them. Called for help." Tasha's voice softened—fractionally, the way steel softens under precise heat. "Instead you hid in the walls and kept everything running."
"Seemed like the right call."
"It was." She straightened. Uncrossed her arms. "But next time? Tell me you're aboard. I spent three hours thinking you were on the starbase, and when I couldn't find you—" She stopped. The sentence had wandered somewhere she hadn't intended.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Be present." She turned to leave, then paused. "Data's waiting in the library. Something about prune juice and 'continued observations.' Also, he says he has twenty-three questions now."
"Twenty-three?"
"He's been counting." The ghost of something warm crossed her face. "Don't keep him waiting."
Cole grabbed his PADD and headed for the library, the afterimage of Tasha's almost-worry settling into the same category as prune juice and Data's questions: things worth protecting.
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