"... Do you know why Lore killed him?"

He immediately feels sympathy for Lore, caught in a strange universe.

"Lore believed, most likely correctly, that Dr. Soong preferred myself over him and that was sufficient reason. Lore was very much prone to killing anyone who was not fully aligned with himself. He was responsible for orchestrating the original attack on the Omicron Theta colony."

Jerach boggles.  "Were you already - enemies?  Rivals?  I can't imagine anything like that -"  Well, maybe if someone brought one of the Tenevri into this universe?  But even so, he doesn't think he'd see them as personal enemies?

"And what do you mean about being aligned with him?"  Maybe it was something about ideology, like the Tenevri propaganda?

"Lore attacked myself and my fellow crew members on several occasions both before and after the incident during which he killed Dr. Soong. We responded appropriately to those incidents. As for aligned with him, I am largely referring to a classified incident in which he managed to place himself in a leadership role. It was that incident which left me with no reasonable choice except permanently deactivating him."

Jerach frowns.  "Attacked - unprovoked?"

He can't but be disturbed at Data's reticence; it's understandable, but not reassuring.  "I know you can't share Starfleet secrets, but - what sort of incident was it?  The sort of thing which would've led to the same result for a... normal human?  And... you did save a backup copy, right?"

"We retrieved Lore in a disassembled state from a hidden laboratory on Omicron Theta years after the attack. Lore attempted to induce me to betray my crew and when he failed he forcibly deactivated me and impersonated me. He also revealed at that time that he was responsible for the attack on the Omicron Theta colony which killed 411 people.

"It is perhaps arguable that he was provoked to cause that attack by poor treatment from the colonists but as they are all dead and only limited records survive that is difficult to assess. Regardless, I do not feel that poor treatment justifies his actions. In the case of his first encounter with the Enterprise he was in no way provoked by the crew but perhaps he worried that his crime would be discovered somehow and took preemptive actions to protect himself.

"In the second incident, where he killed Dr. Soong, one could argue that he was somewhat provoked in a long term sense by Dr. Soong's previous decision to disassemble him. That said, Dr. Soong expressed no such desire during our time with him. He was at any time under apparent immediate threat. It is possible he was concerned that the crew of the Enterprise might attempt to take him into custody but I was the only crew member present at the time and I did not take any direct action towards that goal.

"In the third classified incident he successfully subverted my programming and those he directed killed hundreds more people. In theory, he could still be reactivated but he has proven his ability to escape custody before which makes imprisonment difficult. It could be argued that he should be tried in Federation Courts for his actions but for the moment he is in storage at the Daystrom Technical Institute."

Well, that does sound like a tough situation.  Jerach bows his head.  He's not willing to say Lore was exactly unjustified... not now, when he's only just lost his own previous world... but he can't really argue the point.  And it might help that it's Data saying it.

"You can't put him inside a computer again?  Or... are you afraid he'd hack his way out anyway?"

He turns back to Lieutenant McEdwards to see how she's taking this.

Lieutenant McEdwards is a bit apprehensive about the idea that Data was subverted. Hopefully whatever vulnerability exists has been fixed. The story also... doesn't quite add up. What's been described doesn't sound like it would result in the events being classified. So she's wondering what the secret is.

Data adopts an expression of confusion for a moment and then one of realization, "Ah, myself and Lore are not software constructs; our minds are tied indelibly to our bodies. It may be possible to emulate our minds as software constructs but I have not consented to such study nor approved such study on Lore.

"My understanding of your construction is that you are more likely to be transferrable but it's still not a guaranteed procedure. It's not yet clear whether your programming would adapt successfully to the small discrepancies in the structure of different quantum cores."