The Dark Veil

by James Swallow

  The complexity of the cybernetic form was darkly fascinating to him. The Romulan Star Empire had always eschewed the development of artificial intelligences, reasoning systems, and androids, barely tolerating those few iconoclasts on the fringes of the scientific community who studied such things. To have this knowledge was to be branded at best a wild-eyed crank, at worst a dangerous radical. But the lure of the forbidden enticed Vadrel, and the truth was he knew more about these kind of machines than anyone was supposed to. It was his sordid little transgression, now eclipsed by a far larger, far more toxic secret.

  With each piece of the Jazari-thing he cut away, Vadrel discovered something new about it. A clever biomorphic sheath around the synthetic’s core frame and organs was durable enough to be accepted as ordinary skin and bones, but in reality it was a cloak. Threaded through the simulated muscles and nerves, on a virtually undetectable level, the Jazari had a nanoscale mesh that generated an adaptive scattering field. Any tricorder scan or sensor sweep passing through it reflected back with what appeared to be readings showing an organic being. Beneath the fake epidermis and the pseudoreptilian countenance, the true nature of the Jazari synthetic was forever hidden.

  He grinned as he examined a mechanical hand, now stripped down to the bare metal bones. The structure seemed woven rather than cast, an elegant design that made other similar forms he had seen appear crude in comparison. Vadrel recalled fragments of outlawed documentation he saw on the Soong-type android that had served in the Federation Starfleet. The Jazari machine was a generation beyond that style of synthetic, an evolutionary step along a path that might one day lead to a fully biological artificial being.

  He explained all of this to Major Helek, becoming more animated as he went on. Vadrel didn’t notice that she was only half listening to him, her expression fixed in a cold, hateful grimace as she watched him cut up the deactivated android.

  “I need you to be certain,” said Helek. “If this is a single machine masquerading as one of them, if there are more—”

  “No, no.” Vadrel interrupted her, waving his hand. Normally, he would never have dared to do so, but he was so enrapt by his new discovery, he temporarily forgot to be afraid of the Tal Shiar agent. “I have compared the secret telemetry you gathered while you were on their ship with the reading from this…” He aimed the laser scalpel in his hand at the gutted android. “It is exactly the same! The bioreadings from every Jazari you came into contact with, they’re identical in form.” Helek seemed doubtful, and Vadrel pressed on, his voice rising. “Don’t you see? It fits with what little we know about them! They hide their true natures, they forbid anyone to deep-scan them. They refuse to use transporters because that would leave a molecular record of their physical makeup!” He threw a gesture in the direction of the ship’s walls. “Did you wonder why it was that we found no sign of Jazari bodies in space after the destruction of their reclaim station?”

  “They recovered their dead.”

  “Of course!” Vadrel put down the scalpel with a sharp clatter of metal on metal. “To hide them from us!” He reeled at the consequences of his own statement.

  Helek glanced toward the polymerized body bag on the floor of the lab, where Hosa’s corpse had been stowed. “It kept up the pretense, even while I was interrogating it. It was only when the risk of the discovery of its actual nature became too great that it used its superior abilities.”

  Vadrel’s enthusiasm waned as he realized something. “The android would have killed us all to conceal the Jazari secret.”

  “Of course it would,” she snapped, as if he were stating the obvious. “They are abominations. Destroyers. It is in their nature.” Helek stepped closer to him, and Vadrel unconsciously backed away, bumping into the partially dissembled corpse of the fallen machine. “You understand the seriousness of this, yes?” Her voice dropped to a breathy, dangerous whisper. There was a light in her eyes that Vadrel had never seen before, a fanatic glitter that would brook no disagreement, no disobedience. “We have uncovered a grave threat, you and I. A danger even greater than the star-death that threatens our homeworld. These machines are a threat to all organic life, everywhere. Those simplistic dolts in the Federation have given these things free rein to go where they will and build their plans against us. The machines want nothing less than to replace us.” She took a shaky breath, as if she were remembering something terrible. “To make all flesh extinct.”

  Vadrel wondered how Helek could know that with such ironclad certainty, but he did not dare to challenge her resolve. He had no doubt that Helek believed what she was saying with every fiber of her being, and the scientist was too scared of her to do anything but agree.

  “We must move quickly. They may already have been alerted to our discovery. They must be dealt with before they can move against us,” she concluded. “The Zhat Vash cannot allow this nest of synthetics to exist.”

  That name meant nothing to Vadrel, and he did not draw attention to it. “As you say.”

  Helek tapped the dead machine’s forehead. “Open it up,” she ordered. “You understand the operation of positronic matrices.”

  “Th-that knowledge is restricted—”

  “Don’t insult my intelligence, Vadrel. I want you to plunder the android’s memories.” Her smile turned feral. “Show me what it knows.”

  * * *

  Talov cleared them away from Thaddeus’s biobed and the Vulcan doctor went into a swift and efficient process, scanning Troi’s son, attending to him with various devices and hyposprays.

  She could do nothing but stand a few meters away and watch helplessly. Troi’s Betazoid empathic senses were bombarded by the confused, chaotic feelings leaking from her son’s unconscious mind, and she had to clasp her hands together to keep them from shaking.

  I’m here for you, she thought, projecting that intent as hard as she could, hoping something in her boy would pick up on it. It will be all right.

  But Troi had no way to know if Thad could sense her presence. His inchoate fear roared silently around her, and any attempt she made to push back against it was like shouting into a storm.

  “Counselor…” Zade stood nearby, his face fixed in an expression of terrible, almost childlike sadness. “Perhaps we could wait outside.”

  She turned toward him, and saw the drone that had spoken earlier drifting near the infirmary’s entrance. “What is that device? How did it know my son was going to have a seizure?” The Jazari glanced toward the drone, and Troi’s patience broke. “Zade. Answer me!”

  “We would never do anything to harm him,” he insisted. “Please believe that.”

  The orb floated closer to them. “I will speak, Zade,” it said. The feminine voice hummed in Troi’s ear, and she noticed that no one else in the tent seemed to hear it. “You may call me Friend, Counselor Troi. I am of the Jazari, and I am not a danger to you or your kind.”

  Troi wondered what of the Jazari actually meant, but there was too much going on to consider that fully right now. “What do you know about my son?”

  “I encountered Thaddeus in the Azure Dome, the chamber bordering this one. We played a game, and I guided him back to you after his… exploration. I am concerned for the boy’s well-being.”

  “Are you an artificial intelligence?”

  “Thaddeus asked a similar question. That definition is insufficient.”

  Zade gave the drone a worried look. “Counselor, please do not speak of this. If the Governing Sept were to learn—”

  “I don’t care about any of that.” Troi spoke over him, heartsick and filled with dread. “All that matters to me right now is my son. I respect your people’s right to your privacy, but if you know something that can help Thaddeus, you must tell me!” She felt tears welling up and swallowed a sob. “Please.”

  “Commander.” Talov’s voice cut through the moment, and the Vulcan approached, his neutral expression betraying nothing.

  Behind him, a Bajoran nurse was applying another neural
monitor to Thad’s temple, and mercifully the boy’s seizures had halted. Her son was pale and drawn, his usual lively color and warmth faded down to a ghost of itself.

  “Thaddeus suffered an attack of severe synchronous neural activity,” said the doctor. “This relates to the damage inflicted on him earlier. I have been able to temporarily halt the effects, but I am afraid this seizure has severely impacted his chances of recovery. Even if I had the full capabilities of Titan’s sickbay at my disposal, I am uncertain more could be done to improve his condition at this time.”

  Talov’s clear and unequivocal evaluation of the situation turned her blood to ice. She waited a moment for the doctor to offer some thread of hope, but when he did not, the trembling in her hands began again.

  “Perhaps Thaddeus could be placed in stasis?” said Zade. “I believe the Federation has a dedicated neuroscience center at Starbase 88. The staff there would have the greatest chance of being able to assist him.”

  “I am aware of that facility,” said Talov. “However, the neural shock of entering and later reviving from stasis would put the patient at greater risk. And I am uncertain we could reach Starbase 88 before his condition deteriorates beyond the point of any logical progress.” The doctor addressed Troi directly. “Commander, the decision is ultimately yours and Captain Riker’s.”

  Troi reached up to touch the combadge on her chest, but faltered before her fingers tapped the gold arrowhead.

  What could she say to her husband, how would she break this to him? Could they abandon their mission and their responsibilities here and now to race across the light-years to the distant starbase?

  “There is another option.” The drone spoke again, and Talov jerked in surprise, clearly unaware that the floating orb was capable of doing so. “The Jazari possess expertise in biotechnology and neural sequencing that could be employed to heal a human.”

  Talov recovered quickly, raising an eyebrow. “I have no knowledge of this. No Jazari medical techniques have ever been shared with the Federation Science Council.”

  “That is so,” said Zade. “We have kept our… advances in this field to ourselves.” He frowned, glancing at the drone. “With good cause. The Jazari neural structure is very different from that of a human.”

  Once again, Troi sensed that Zade was holding something back. But if there was any hope in what the entity called “Friend” was offering, she had to consider it.

  “Theoretically, neural sequencing of the affected areas of the patient’s brain would mean a greatly improved survival ratio,” allowed Talov, “but it also carries the inherent probability of complications in later life. The effects are… unpredictable.”

  “You are correct,” said the voice from the drone. “There are risks, both at this time and to Thaddeus in the future. But the issue before us is the boy’s immediate existence. I would like to see that he does not end before his life has had a chance to truly begin.”

  Troi felt light-headed. This was all moving so fast, but she knew that time was a factor. Delaying a decision could mean the worst for her son. She took a deep breath to center herself. “How would it be done?”

  “Thaddeus can be transferred to one of our reparation capsules,” said Zade. “Essentially, it is a self-contained bioengineering pod that will restore his function.”

  “The process can be completed within a few hours, if you will agree to it,” added Friend.

  Troi gave a slow nod, and once again, she reached for her communicator. “I would like some privacy, please. I… I need to speak to my husband.”

  * * *

  The dead machine’s brain was a work of art, if Vadrel allowed himself to think of it as such. A symphony of positronic neurons, encapsulated inside a core module that not only replicated the model of an organic brain, but excelled it.

  He wanted to take his time over the dismantling of it, and he cursed circumstances for forcing him to attack the device in a crude, incautious manner. The scientist was certain that some of the dead Jazari’s memory engrams and knowledge chains were being lost in the process of peeling back the machine-brain’s layers. In an ideal world, Vadrel would have taken weeks, months even, to ease apart the structure of the core module he had pulled from Redei’s poly-alloy skull.

  But he did not have that luxury. Every so often, Helek came back to the lab to demand a report on his progress, and he could see her patience growing thinner with each subsequent visit.

  Now she stood over him again, her dark eyes glaring imperiously from a face rendered wraith-pale in the greenish light of the laboratory. “I want results,” said the major.

  “I have something to show you,” he replied, reluctantly offering up the information. “You may find it alarming.” He tapped a keypad and a holographic screen appeared above his work space.

  Flickering, ill-defined images filled the screen, but none of them were coherent enough to make visual sense. “This is meaningless,” Helek began, but Vadrel made a halting motion with his hands.

  “Let me explain.” He showed her where the detached android brain was now connected to an isolinear processing unit, allowing him to crudely interrogate the contents of the synthetic’s memory centers. “There are gigaquads of data stored there. The equivalent of a planetary database’s worth of material. It would take a hundred thousand hours just to catalog it all.”

  Uncertain of where to start with such a mountain of data, Vadrel had experimented by searching the memory for something specific. On an impulse, he told the processor to scour the dead machine’s mind for anything relating to Romulus.

  “See what I have found.” The scattered, indecipherable images on the screen became clearer as the memory core gave up a specific recollection.

  It showed a busy city street on a sunny day, as seen through the eyes of someone walking among crowds. The point of view paused as a face appeared in front of them.

  A Romulan face. An older man, working behind a mobile server cart. He looked directly through the screen and although there was no sound component, Vadrel could almost hear him say the words Jolan tru as he mouthed them, before accepting a few coins in exchange for what appeared to be a cup of solok tea.

  Then the view moved on. The memory continued to unfold, the viewpoint moving to pass over buildings and pedestrians. “Watch carefully now,” said Vadrel. Helek had not spoken since the footage began to unfold, and he knew he had her full and complete attention.

  The view tilted up to take in a particular pillar—a tall, narrow construction ending in the giant sculpture of a raptor made of old, greenish copper. Helek let out a gasp and Vadrel froze the image.

  “You recognize it, of course?”

  “That is the terminus obelisk on the Avenue of Right. Outside the old Dartha wall in Ki Baratan.”

  “This machine possesses a memory of being on Romulus,” said Vadrel. “In our capital city.”

  Helek peered closely at the image, then pushed Vadrel aside so she could operate the holo’s controls herself. She ran the footage back a few seconds, then isolated a section of the image and enlarged it. A narrow building made of yellow stone lay in the center of the frame. “This is the Fejek Gallery. It was destroyed in a fire twelve years ago. I know because I was in the capital on that day. I saw it burn and collapse. It was never rebuilt.” She paused. “Could this be a simulation?”

  “Possibly,” he admitted. “But if so, the level of detail is unparalleled. I believe it is authentic.” Vadrel added Helek’s bit of information about the date to what he had already learned, and gave her an encouraging nod. “There’s more. Let the memory continue onward.”

  The major did as he asked, and presently the footage caught a moment when the path of the viewpoint passed a mirrored wall near the Second Circular. Helek froze the image again and found the reflection of a face framing the eyes that had captured all these scenes.

  A young Romulan woman stared back at them. She had a plain, unremarkable aspect and the kind of garb favored by islanders fro
m the White Sea territories. She was utterly commonplace, a person who would be instantly forgotten by most who saw her, easily lost in the crowd. The perfect appearance for a spy.

  Helek went back to the dead Jazari and plucked at the skin of his face. “This flesh is as much a cloak as the masking field that hides their true nature. I wonder, did they pick this reptilian aspect at random?” She gave a grunt of grim amusement. “They can cover their machine forms with any skin, appear as any gender, from any race.”

  “I’ve scanned several hours of memory from this period,” noted Vadrel. “She… I mean, it, visits several museums and libraries. Sites of historical significance. Over a two-day period, it observes six different plays at an open-air theater.”

  “No military or strategic locations?”

  “None that I have seen.” He paused, considering. “If I were to hazard a guess, I would say the machine was conducting an ethnological and cultural survey.”

  Helek gave a dismissive snort. “A spy is a spy,” she replied. “Are you certain this memory belongs to this particular android?”

  He frowned. “There is a possibility it may be from another one of its kind.” Vadrel moved to the gutted machine corpse and used a penlight to illuminate a component inside the android’s braincase. “Observe. This appears to be a near-field communication array. I believe the Jazari synthetics can use it to transmit data instantaneously to one another over short distances. This Romulus memory could have been shared via that mechanism.” Vadrel took a moment to phrase his next words carefully, wary as he always was of antagonizing the Tal Shiar agent. “Major, I know I don’t have to state that our discovery here is of grave military importance. I feel we must bring this to Commander Medaka immediately and inform the fleet. There may be Jazari infiltrators at large throughout the Empire at this very moment!”