| The Next Generation | |
| 139 | |
| Aquiel | |
| 46461.3 | |
The Enterprise is off to the Klingon border to investigate a relay station that has suddenly gone quiet. The reason for the silence becomes apparent as soon as they arrive - the occupants have gone on holiday, and like irresponsible pet owners left the dog locked in a service duct! Actually maybe only one of them took a trip, as there is a puddle of suspicious looking biological residue left on the floor...
Either the pooch managed to tamper with some encrypted messages, or someone else has been to visit, and accidentally caused a security lockup. What they really did was mess up the tuning on the televisions, as they are only showing static. Geordi finally manages to tune one in to the personal records of Lt Aquiel Uhnari - and he immediately drools. Since he is incapable of having a normal relationship with a real person, he decides to settle for a personal log!
Aquiel's logs show that the relay station had been having trouble with a Klingon called Morag. He would get his jollies by locking his disruptors on the station. Picard does his fabled manoeuvre and promptly drops Gowron's name a few times until he manages to get a Klingon governor to investigate Aquiel's death.
Worf scans the station, and surprisingly everywhere he goes he finds Klingon DNA traces! Duh! Governor Toe-Rag turns up and states that the Klingons didn't kill Aquiel, because they have been "escorting" her back to Federation space. She claims that she was attacked by Lt. Keith Rocha, the other officer on the station and escaped on a shuttle. The Klingons found her drifting through the Core Systems...
Unfortunately she doesn't remember anything of it. She had been badly hurt, so does she go to sickbay? Nope. Geordi takes her off to the pub. He tries a really feeble sleaze attempt that would have made even Riker cringe. It really crashes and burns when he admits to her that he knows her so well as he read her entire personal log. Since it didn't work, he jumps back into the murder investigation - now of Lt. Rocha - with her as prime suspect.
According to Dr Bev, the slagging down that happened to the body would have required a phaser set on level 10 for 30-40 seconds. So the guys play "spot the phaser". Is it here? No. Is it there? No. Is it in Aquiel's shuttle and set to kill? Yes! Oh goody, we're going to have a hanging.
Geordi finally manages to dig out Rocha's logs, and finds that one of them has been suspiciously deleted. Aquiel finally breaks down and admits that she did it as it was a letter to Starfleet giving her a bad report. Things are not looking good at all. She rushes into her cabin and drags out a suitcase. She's going to run away! Yeah right. To where and how? Geordi comforts her and says that he believes here, even if millions don't. Just to prove it he slips her a bit of tongue.
Bev finally manages to scrape the hamburger off the floor and get it back to sick-bay for analysis. It doesn't like being left on a plate, so it reaches out and makes a grab for her! It then reforms into an exact duplicate of her hand. Not a bad trick that one. Bev realises that it must be a macroscopic case of a CoalescentOrganism™, that absorbs its victims and then exactly duplicates them. Could Geordi's babe be a slime monster?
Back in Aquiel's cabin, she croons to Geordi: "There's something I want to share with you", and promptly pulls out her psychically enhanced dildo. It will aid their love. Hmm. Geordi takes off his visor and grabs the implement and is just getting into it when... in bursts Riker with his phaser drawn. I guess he wanted the babe himself, if there is a chance that she is actually a BEM.
Aquiel and Morag are taken into custody pending an investigation. Geordi is left moping in his quarters wondering if he will ever find out what girls really look like, when... Aquiel's dog suddenly slags down. It was the blob monster all the time! Geordi calls Dial-A-Phaser and pumps up the volume until there's nothing left. Lucky that.
Since the entire experience has somewhat shocked Aquiel, she goes off for reassignment, and Geordi strikes out once again.
