“Aquiel” is episode thirteen of season six of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The Enterprise has arrived at a communications relay station near the Klingon border delivering supplies, but the station isn’t responding. Riker, Geordi, Worf and Dr Crusher beam across. Once Geordi turns off the audio, a banging is heard and a dog is found in a service duct. Worf reports there’s no-one onboard and the shuttle is gone. The doctor has found what she thinks is cellular residue, the remains of one of their lieutenants.
Worf is cutting the deckplate the residue is on out with a phasor as the doctor tells Riker there is blood near it matching Lt. Aquiel Uhnari. She has to take the deckplate back as she can’t get anything from it there. Geordi can’t get past the security lockouts on the computer as it looks like someone tried to break into the coded message storage.
Geordi remains behind with the dog and works on a console in what looks to be Lt. Uhnari’s quarters. He’s running through her station logs and correspondence files, without a working picture; it seems that Uhnari did not like her recently posted fellow lieutenant, Rocha.
The captain is in sickbay with Dr Crusher and Riker. The doctor hasn’t managed to get a clear DNA sample yet. When asked what killed the person, the doctor suggests a high-level phasor. Riker asks if a Klingon disruptor could have done it. Possibly. Riker explains the attempt to get the encrypted messages to the captain. Picard says there hasn’t been a Klingon raid in seven years and he doesn’t want to cause an incident.
Geordi finally manages to get visual working on the logs and correspondence. Uhnari is talking about a dream again, and she thinks she knows why she’s having dreams of danger. The Klingon is getting more aggressive all the time. The last time, he locked disruptors on the station. Geordi reports to the captain that the Klingon, Morag, patrols the border here and harasses the station when it passes. The captain will speak to the governor.
The governor, Torak, is competitive. The captain apologises; he realises now that Torak didn’t know what was happening onboard the station. Picard will take it up with Gowron instead. Torak says that Gowron won’t bother with such a minor incident. Ordinarily, no, but the captain was his Arbiter of Succession. Thanks for Torak’s help; the captain will be sure to mention his name to Gowron. The governor suddenly discovers a pressing desire to help investigate.
Geordi is now in his quarters listening to Uhnari’s logs. She mentions countermanding an order Rocha gave, then here’s a sound and the recording ends. On the station, Worf reports finding DNA from one Klingon. Geordi is now back on the station and Riker asks how it’s going. Geordi has gone through all of Uhnari’s logs but is still searching for Rocha’s. Whatever happened to the encrypted files had a cascade effect on the storage. He can’t find the files anywhere. Then Captain Picard contacts Riker; the governor has arrived.
The governor arrives in the observation lounge. He will prove they did not kill Lt. Uhnari. And she is brought in. Uhnari explains that Rocha was on edge whilst they were running a level 2 diagnostic, but he’d been irritable since he’d arrived. Halfway through, she was attacked. She tried to get to the weapons locker, but isn’t sure what happened next. Though she did get into the shuttle. Torak reports she was found on the Klingon side of the border
Dr Crusher still hasn’t managed to identify the remains. Uhnari can’t remember what happened, saying it was if all the memories were drained out of her. Geordi has become attracted to someone who is at the very least a murder suspect, one who’s record is far spottier than Rocha’s. And, once again, he’s become attracted to a person in a way that, when she finds out, gives off that creepy stalker vibe.