Star Trek: The Next Generation: Starfleet Academy #6: Mystery of the Missing Crew by Michael Jan Friedman

PROLOGUE
    Earth Date 2338
    Data opened his eyes for the first time and realized that he was lying on a stone slab in the middle of a large clearing. The sky overhead was a blanket of unbroken gray, the air still and unnaturally silent.
    And he wasn’t alone.
    There were four people standing over him—three men and one woman, all of them humanoid, all of them dressed in brightly colored Starfleet uniforms. One of the four, a thin man with blond hair and high cheekbones, knelt to get a better look at him. Of the entire group, he was the only one dressed in the cranberry of command.
    “He’s awake,” the man said, his eyes widening. He seemed surprised at his own conclusion.
    Data didn’t respond with a remark of his own. After all, he wasn’t sure that one was called for.
    “Amazing,” muttered one of the other officers, a man with freckles and red hair. He was glancing at his tricorder. “Electronic activity in the area where his brain would be just jumped … to a whole other level.”
    “Our presence must have tripped some sort of activation system,” commented the third member of the party, a broad man with hard, dark eyes and a black beard.
    A fourth officer knelt beside the thin man. This one was a woman, with pleasant features and light brown hair. She was wearing the blue of the medical corps.
    “My name is Dr. Reynolds,” she said, “but my friends call me Kathy Lou. And this,” she added, tilting her head to indicate the thin man in the command uniform, “is Commander Sahmes. His friends call him Tim.”
    The android understood what they were doing. “I am called … Data,” he told them.
    “Data…?” the thin man repeated. It appeared that he was asking for a surname.
    “Just Data ,” replied the android. He sat up on his slab and brushed a thin layer of dust off his clothing. He had no idea how long he’d been here, but it had to have been a while if he’d gotten this dirty.

    A question occurred to him. “If I may ask,” he said, “what ship are you with?”
    “We’re with the Tripoli ,” said Commander Sahmes. “Why?”
    Data thought for a moment. “I have no recollections of the Tripoli ,” he said. “However, I am aware that it is a Hokule’a -class vessel. Dr. Ingraham knew the registry number and class of every ship in the fleet. Starships were his hobby.”
    Commander Sahmes eyed him closely. “Dr. Ingraham … you mean one of the colonists?”
    The android returned his gaze. “Yes.”
    “Dr. Frederick Ingraham,” noted the redhead, consulting his tricorder again. “Biochemist. Civilian. Came to Omicron Theta a little more than a year ago, with the second wave of colonists.”
    The commander grunted. “Thank you, Mr. McAvennie.”
    Abruptly Data remembered something. It wasn’t anything specific … just a vague sense of danger, followed by an eerie silence.
    “Dr. Ingraham is gone,” he said suddenly. “They are all gone.”
    Dr. Reynolds nodded. “Yes, Data, they are. Do you have any idea what happened to them?”
    Data wanted to provide her with an answer, but he couldn’t. “I do not know,” he confessed. “I was not … activated at the time.”
    “Not activated?" repeated Sahmes. His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the android. “But didn’t you say you knew Dr. Ingraham? That he’d told you about ships and their registries?”
    “I did not speak with Dr. Ingraham,” Data replied. “I simply have his memories. In fact, I have the memories of all four hundred and eleven colonists who resided here.”
    Dr. Reynolds shook her head. “We don’t understand.”
    “I was programmed with information each of the colonists recorded at one time or another,” he explained. “I do not know why this was so … only that it was .”
    The commander frowned. “I see.”
    It appeared to Data that he didn’t see at all. Obviously, the android told himself, he had a few things to learn about human nature.
    “But if you weren’t sentient at the time … how