Ventriloquism

ASHER raised an eyebrow in mild annoyance as he tapped commands into the console in front of him. It felt like he was missing a limb, almost... It had become second nature to link to whatever he was using and now he was forced to simply....operate it.

He quickly found most of his efforts wasted. General access was granted, of course, but beyond the normal, almost 'tourist' functions of ship diagrams and glossaries, he couldn't pull up anything. No mission logs, no sensor readouts, and worst of all, no reports on the Interphase.

He stepped back from the console, hands folded behind his back, eyes closed, thinking. He could draw as much power as he needed from the Leviathan, but without his badge, he was limited to the processing power of his normal matrix... considerable, to be sure, but not what he needed to hack past security encryption's without being caught. He needed to be able to move around the ship or at least find a way to get someone to check on the Interphase and bring him his commbadge. That damn Lieutenant had been more of a hindrance than help on that front.

ASHER's normally stonecold face blinked as an eyebrow rose slowly. Perhaps there was a way to make the officer more useful. ASHER stepped back into the Imaging Platform of the lab and stood at attention, closing his eyes.

He very carefully felt out the emitters currently holding him. There were 14 backups, so that shouldn't be a problem. The next job was just as simple..... accessing his own visual matrix allowed him to see the energy output of each emitter in the lab. As he'd suspected, normal holodeck quality.

Since he had the ability to control the solidity of his matrix, he could amp the power up or down. Grabbing a tricorder to aid in keeping his programme intact during the next step, he gradually upped the power to a few of the emitters well beyond their capacity.

Snap, crackle, shimmer.... and instantly there was an alert sounded in the room. The fact that there was a fire didn't disturb him, however. He quickly shut down the tricorder, returned his own power intake to normal, and concentrated again.

The emergency protocols inlaid in the computer removed most access limitations to hardware during emergencies, so that Engineering didn't always have to send a team to clean up messes . He accessed the internal comm links on the ship and accessing his memory, adjusted their settings to filter his voice.

"Hololab to Flight Deck..." He spoke and nodded in grim satisfaction as his voice echoed over the line, sounding stunningly like the Trill Lieutenant.

"Flight Deck here, Lieutenant Taylor."

"I'm doing a little research up here, Flight Deck, and I can't leave for a very long time. There is a commbadge sitting on the helm console of the Interphase ship we just picked up. Could you have someone bring it up here? I might have to run to my quarters to get a few tools, so just have them set in on the console."

"Acknowledged, Lieutenant Flight Deck out."

Nodding again, ASHER stood at attention, allowing his eyes to glaze over, so as to look like any other matrix that might be running in the lab, waiting.