The mysteries of a wolf-rayet star unfurled on the holographic viewscreen, yet the scroll of precise sensor data offered no titillation.  The revelations from the proton spectrometers and the neutrino imagers couldn’t hold her focus.  Her attention was soft; the holographic representation of the star they were orbiting was only remarkable because it looked like Addie herself.  When Yuulik tilted her head to the left, an opportune solar flare even gave the star a ponytail, just like Addie’s.

Yuulik blinked.

She snapped her head to the left and snarled at her companion, who was sitting at the other end of the astrometrics console.

“How can you simply sit there?” Yuulik asked.

T’Kaal didn’t look away from the console’s LCARS interface.  She didn’t even blink at Yuulik’s exclamation.  What a shame.  Evidently, she needed to be louder next time.

“I am doing my duty, commander,” T’Kaal replied.  She appeared far more attentive to her scientific responsibilities, searching for meaning in the sensor readings or some such.  For whatever reason, T’Kaal held more space for the two-dimensional computer display than her chief science officer.

Huffing, Yuulik lurched to her feet.  She shoved her chair back.  T’Kaal plainly didn’t understand.  Yuulik stalked across the compartment and patted an equipment locker, causing the access panel to retract.

“But she’s out there,” Yuulik hissed while she pawed through the storage tray of tricorders.  “Addie is skittering between decks where our internal sensors glide off her.  I’m not going to close my eyes and wait for her to kill again.  Ketris showed me her Borg-killer tactical training.  It’s nothing to laugh at.”

“I find no humour in the situation,” T’Kaal replied. “Security will find her.”

“You honestly think our security officers could outwit a child? Let alone my child?” Yuulik asked emphatically. She swatted at the tricorders with her hand, sending a few of them crashing to the deck.

She growled, “Where are the damn phasers?”

T’Kaal looked at her, finally acknowledged her.

“I’ve done the research,” T’Kaal told her.  “I’ve read the relevant Starfleet duty logs.  When synthetic beings achieve existential distress, they typically want to merge with, kill or worship their creators.  None of those are viable options.  Taes wants you here.  Where you’re safe.”

T’Kaal nodded towards the pair of security officers standing by the doors.

“You are in command of the stellar survey.  Lead me.  Lead us,” T’Kaal said in what felt like a slapdash attempt to stroke Yuulik’s ego.  However, Yuulik’s ego was primed to accept whatever stroking it could get.  It felt good regardless.

Yuulik blinked twice at T’Kaal.  She hoped she would understand what that meant.

Tilting her head back, Yuulik accessed the communication system by saying, “Yuulik to Lieutenant Nune.”  She had assigned Nune to lead the Addie problem in science lab two.  Security could search for the synth on foot, and Taes could banish Yuulik to astrometics, but Yuulik’s team could invent a technological solution to make locate and stop Addie.

When Nune acknowledged the communication, his voice echoed.  A distinctive clattering sound followed his words.

Yuulik scoffed, and she demanded, “Excuse me, lieutenant, are you bowling?”

“Ah well, yes and no,” was Nune’s reply.  “Call it kinetic brainstorming.  The team was stuck on how to find Addie through the sensor dampeners.  Our planning degraded into a recursive loop.  Taes ordered us to stay together in large groups and now moving our bodies has done the trick!  We think we’re on to something.“

“What?” Yuulik asked, screaming to the overhead as if Nune might hear her through the decks rather than the comm system.  “What is it?”

“Lieutenant Hunter calls it bumper cars,” Nune said.  “It’s more of a notion than a strategy just now.  I’ll contact you as soon as we know more.  Nune out.“

As soon as the comm beeped to signal the channel’s closing, T’Kaal spoke up.

“Commander, I believe I understand why the original A500 domestic androids were programmed with anti-Borg tactical training,” T’Kaal said.

Yuulik put her hands on her hips.  When she blinked at T’Kaal again, it wasn’t with the same affection as last time.

“How did you find that secret in the wolf-rayet star?” Yuulik asked.

“The same as anything else of worth.  Practice,” T’Kaal answered.  She tapped on her LCARS panel to access one of the panes three levels down and plucked it into the air above her console as a hologram.

“This man,” T’Kaal said, pointing at the photo on the Starfleet personnel dossier, “was one of the dozens of designers for Addie’s bio-neural personality program.  In 2374, he was an engineer aboard the USS Madison, and he barely survived the battle of sector zero-zero-one against the Borg.  He had the opportunity, skill and motive to hide the programming from his peers.”

“How do you know?” Yuulik asked.

“That he would take his revenge?” T’Kaal responded.

Yuulik sighed.  “What is the probability of an android babysitter on Mars ever meeting a single Borg drone?  He couldn’t have predicted the tele-assimilation of Frontier Day.”

When T’Kaal considered Yuulik, her jaw tightened, but her shoulders relaxed.  Yuulik couldn’t remember the last time she had ever been able to describe any tiny facet of T’Kaal as loose.

“During the Dominion incursion, back in the Ianua system,” T’Kaal said, “I visited you in the med bay.”

The corner of T’Kaal’s lips moved, but it wasn’t quite a smile.

“I made you tea,” T’Kaal said.

Through a snicker, Yuulik retorted, “You mean when you ransacked Doctor Nelli’s collection of medicinal herbs?”

T’Kaal said, “Exactly that.  It was a process as much as an outcome.  What did I teach you?”

The memory didn’t bubble up for Yuulik immediately.  Playing and replaying the events in her mind, she mostly remembered T’Kaal rummaging through Nelli’s office in the half-light of 0300 hours.  That had been the first time Yuulik had seen T’Kaal make a mistake, knocking one of the jars clear off the shelf.  Yuulik had laughed and laughed until a DOT had cleaned it up.  The essential memory came to her only when Yuulik stopped fighting so hard for it.

“Kahr-y-Tan,” Yuulik finally said.

At that, T’Kaal did smile.

“My parents hated that teaching, that philosophy,” T’Kaal said.  “I wasn’t always as evolved as I am today.  I can admit the philosophy resonated with me because my parents disapproved.  I can see this philosophy between the lines of the biographical details and I can see it between the lines of the tactical coding.

“There is a time for everything.”