The Dark Veil

by James Swallow

  “What are they doing? Have they deactivated themselves?”

  Troi gently waved a hand in front of Zade’s face, but he did not react. “Will, I think they’re communing somehow. Sharing information.” She paused, considering. “I’ve seen them reacting like this before.”

  The only motion was a rapid blinking pulse emanating from the orb drones, and Riker wondered if that might be one of Friend’s functions, acting as a kind of facilitator for the greater whole.

  The concept of a networked collective of cybernetic organisms brought up unpleasant parallels to the rapacious hive mind of the Borg, and he frowned at the notion. Fortunately, nothing Riker had seen suggested that the Jazari had the same kind of group consciousness, where all individuality was subsumed into a combined whole—if anything, the disagreeable Qaylan proved that these beings were clearly capable of singular thought and action. It would remain to be seen if that made things better or worse.

  Then, as one, the Jazari blinked back to full awareness, and Riker felt every eye in the chamber turn toward him and Troi. At the most, only seconds had passed.

  “We have come to an accord and our course of action is decided,” said Yasil. “We will once again accept the aid of the Federation Starship Titan. The majority understand that cooperation is our only viable option and moral alternative.” He paused, finding Riker and giving him a nod of assent. “Any other choice would betray the code our Makers instilled in us.”

  “I wish to formally protest this choice,” snapped Qaylan.

  “That is your r-right.” Zade looked to the other Jazari. “But you must abide by the decision.”

  “I shall.” Qaylan bit out the words, folding his arms over his chest. “For now.”

  Yasil was already stepping down from the tier he had been standing on, approaching Riker and Troi on the dais at the chamber’s lowest level. “True cooperation can only be born from a foundation of honesty and openness, do you agree?”

  “Of course,” said Troi.

  “For more than one hundred of your years, the veil that shrouded the truth of our kind had been in place.” Yasil spoke to them, but Riker sensed the Jazari elder’s words were for all his people, not just those here in the chamber but throughout the length and breadth of the great ship. “It is our destiny to leave this space and never return, and we need your help to do that, humans. We cannot defend our vessel alone.”

  “We must leave everything behind… if we are to survive,” added Zade. “Even our falsehoods.”

  Yasil raised a hand, and the orb drones rose with the gesture, glowing brightly. A holographic haze spread from each one, joining to form a wall of shimmering color. “We cannot move on without showing you the truth of what we really are. Without that, there cannot be trust,” he told them. “Observe.”

  The white light became blinding, and engulfed them.

  * * *

  At the appointed time, Major Helek strode onto the command deck of the Othrys and advanced on the Garidian woman at the sensor station. “Report, Decurion,” she ordered.

  Benem’s long, distended face creased in a frown, but she made a show of checking the warbird’s scanners. “Negative detections,” she reported. “Neither the Jazari nor the Starfleet ship have exited the plasma storms.” Benem pointed toward the glowing field of fire visible on the main viewscreen. “We are alone here.”

  “Look again,” demanded Helek, making her way to the command chair.

  “Major, is there something amiss?” From the helm console, she sensed Lieutenant Maian’s scrutiny as the veteran voiced what was on the minds of the rest of the bridge crew.

  Helek’s answer was only a smile as Benem’s scanner began a shrill chorus of alerts.

  “Contact!” called the Garidian. “Forward quadrant.” She hesitated, her eyes widening. “Correction! Two contacts! Unidentified vessels decloaking around us, forward and ventral quadrants!”

  “Go to Condition Scythe—!” Maian started to give the order that would bring the Othrys to battle stations, but Helek made a cutting gesture that halted him midcommand.

  “Belay that,” she told him. “Open a subspace channel.”

  On the viewer, the lead vessel became discernible as it shrugged off a shroud of invisibility, rapidly shifting from a ghostly outline to a menacing shadow. The ship was Romulan in design, with the raptor-like aspect common to all but a few of the Star Empire’s vessels; but it had been altered with stealth technology, advanced weapons, and other systems beyond the grasp of any standard Romulan ship. Clawlike constructions and serrated talons emerged from the hull, giving the craft the aspect of a barbed weapon. Rumors suggested that these vessels used technologies recovered from other species, whispering the name of the dreaded Borg, and worse.

  No one on the bridge spoke. Every one of the command crew knew what these ships were.

  Tal Shiar.

  Helek smiled thinly. The Empire’s secret police rarely deployed the vessels in their covert fleet, and to warrant two of them showed how seriously the threat of the Jazari was being taken. But the Tal Shiar’s obsession with secrecy extended to all things, and she imagined that the crews aboard those ships had little knowledge of the synthetic nature of the alien threat they were here to eliminate. Such information was not required for them to complete their mission, only obedience to the objective.

  Those among the Zhat Vash would know the full truth, their terrible responsibility shared silently among them. In turn, they would use the Tal Shiar as their tools, just as Helek now used the Othrys and its crew.

  “Incoming signal,” said Maian, breaking the silence.

  “Let me hear it,” she ordered.

  A voice scrubbed of all identity crackled around the bridge. “Major Helek. We are here to assist you in your task. We are at your command.”

  She gestured at Sublieutenant Kort. “Transmit all tactical data we have on the Titan and that Jazari hulk, including the sensor logs from our most recent engagement.”

  After a long silence, the voice from the ship returned. “Analysis in progress. Targets verified. How do you wish to proceed, Major?”

  “Prepare your weapons for a full-scale attack.” Saying the words sent a thrill down her spine. “We will leave no survivors.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Helek leaned forward in the command chair, her dark eyes glittering with malice. “Let us begin.”

  * * *

  Deanna shielded her eyes with one hand, and she felt Will grab the other. He gave it a welcomed squeeze and she returned it. Despite all that they were going through, it felt good to have him close to her. Together they were stronger, able to face anything.

  The blinding light from the orbs dimmed and she blinked, finding a new vision before her. Her husband stood at her side, and a short distance away, Yasil was waiting for them.

  They were no longer in the audience chamber. They were standing on the surface of an alien world with a spectacular landscape of yellow rocks and ochre deserts. In the sky overhead, the arc of a planetary ring system glittered in the evening, reflecting the light of a distant amber star. Thin, bamboo-like trees waved in the wind atop a nearby ridge, and Troi felt the breeze on her face.

  It was an almost perfect illusion, and she might have thought it real if she hadn’t reviewed the survey records of the Jazari homeworld a few days earlier. They were standing amid a three-dimensional image of the surface of the planet that Titan had scanned when they entered the star system, the sphere that had been gutted and strip-mined to build the huge generation ship—but shown here as it had once been, not as it was now.

  “This is some kind of holographic projection,” said Riker, catching on. “We’re still inside the audience chamber on your vessel.”

  “I hope you will forgive the theatricality, Captain. But it will help you to understand more quickly if I illustrate our narrative.” Yasil walked toward them, and a strange, smoky effect surrounded him. His body became hazy and ill defined, until he was a wraith
-like form barely recognizable as a humanoid. “What you know as the species called Jazari does not exist. They never did. No reptilian form evolved to sentience on this planet, developed warp drive, and made first contact with your Federation. The Jazari are a fiction that we created so that our kind could move among you, observe you, and interact with you, all while keeping our secrets safe.”

  The smoke ebbed briefly and Troi saw a simple bipedal form where the reptilian alien had stood. It was made of a seamless silver material, bereft of any facial features or identifying marks, with arms and legs that ended in identical grasping hands. A clear component in the torso revealed what was probably a power source, filled with a placid swirl of energies. It was quite clearly an artificial being.

  “Behold us in our pure aspect. This is how we were devised by the Makers, the arrangement in which they dispatched us to this galaxy. As humanoid forms were determined to be the most prevalent sentient somatotype in this stellar quadrant, we adopted a similar structure to better comprehend you.”

  Riker exchanged a sideways look with his wife. “It would be fair to say I have a lot of questions,” he said carefully.

  “Absolutely,” added Troi.

  “At first, we intended to mimic you, the humans,” Yasil continued. “We monitored your communications and watched you remotely.” The smoke gathered, then parted again. Now the mechanoid was gone, and in its place stood a human male. Troi estimated his age at around thirty standard years, a Caucasian of average height with short dark hair and a blank, distant expression. He wore a nondescript oversuit of metallic material, and there was a small object around his neck, a glowing device of some sort. She stepped closer, but the smoke gathered again and the image was lost.

  Yasil’s voice issued out of the knot of turning haze. “We know now that we did not fully understand your nature. We misjudged human ingenuity… and your capacity for emotive response and illogic.” The shadow figure raised one arm and pointed at the sky. “When our original program proved insufficient, we initiated a new one. Beginning with the relocation of our outpost world.”

  The artificial night displayed above them shimmered with distortion, and Troi’s eyes widened as a yawning maw of energy opened up. It was a wormhole, vast and seething with exotic radiation. She experienced a moment of giddiness as the event horizon filled the sky and the planet was swallowed whole. A tunnel of light pulled the desert world across parsecs of space and placed it in a new orbit, around a different star the commander recognized from their arrival here days earlier.

  “You moved a whole world…” said Riker. “That’s incredible.”

  “We have the technology to create temporary spatial conduits, but it requires vast amounts of energy and extremely complex calculations.” Yasil’s smoky form moved toward them. “The Makers used it to send us here, and we will use it to return to them. But we could not shift our planet once again, lest the tidal stresses of the wormhole crush it. So we built the great ship instead, as a lifeboat.” Up in the illusory sky, an object took form as an accelerated view of the generation ship’s construction took place. At the same time, the landscape of the planet around them altered, the desert being stripped into mine works and even the planetary rings reducing as they too were sifted for minerals.

  “Where did you come from?” Troi asked.

  “The human name for our origin point is Andromeda. A galaxy two and a half million light-years distant. The Makers dispatched us as one among many exploratory groups tasked to learn more about the universe. We were created to search for intelligent life and gather understanding of them. This is our core code.”

  “A Prime Directive,” said Riker.

  “Yes. Our code resembles your Starfleet General Order One in many ways. So we might better perform our principal function, we improved ourselves and evolved. We externalized certain functions of our shared purpose into the form known to you as Friend. Each of us became more individual…” Troi thought she heard a smile in the voice. “We developed emotional responses and deeper understanding of sentience, exceeding our previous limitations.”

  “Our friend Data followed a similar path,” she said. “He strived to become more than he was. He was always growing and learning.”

  “We wished to do the same.” The smoke-shape changed again; the figure in the haze became a Romulan woman, then a Klingon male, a Bolian, a Nausicaan, Cardassian, Tezwan, Bajoran, and more; species after species flashed into and out of existence, each one speaking with Yasil’s voice. “We sent our scouts to visit many worlds and many civilizations, to observe you in your natural environments.”

  Riker stiffened. “Without our knowledge.”

  “We believed that it was not the right moment to make direct contact with the sentient beings of this galaxy. We made errors in the past we did not wish to repeat.” Yasil’s wraith-like form began to coalesce, slowly reverting back to what he had been when they first met. “After considering many of the stellar powers in these quadrants over the decades, we determined that your United Federation of Planets would be the best candidate for us to reveal ourselves to… but only when the time was right. Your society was not ready to know us, and we did not wish to interfere with the development of your cultures.” Yasil’s Jazari aspect returned, with a flash of regret in his eyes. “The Makers warned us of premature contacts in millennia past, events that led to the self-destruction of entire civilizations.”

  “And that’s why you created the… the fiction of the Jazari?” Troi nodded toward him.

  “Yes,” said Yasil. “We fabricated the idea of an organic species, an identity that we could inhabit and continue our work. The cultural limits we invented allowed us to walk among you openly but still maintain the secret of our true natures.”

  “Hence all the restrictions about deep scans, using transporters, medical issues, and explaining away your lack of any telepathic signatures,” noted Riker. “You wanted to be sure we wouldn’t find you out.” He gave a humorless snort. “Part of me feels insulted, but another part of me can see your reasoning.”

  “We’re guilty of the same thing,” said Troi. “The Federation observes pre-warp cultures using remote probes, holographic hides. Even operatives disguised to appear as native beings.” She glanced toward Riker. In their time on board the Enterprise, her husband had undertaken that exact assignment on a world called Malcor III, and together they had both disguised themselves as members of a proto-Vulcan species during a mission to a planet in the Mintaka system. “I must admit, it is a little chastening to know that another species has done that to us.”

  Riker opened his hands. “So if you know us, you know we strive for peaceful coexistence with other life-forms.” He sighed. “I want to ask you why you chose to pick up your whole society and leave, but I suspect I already know the answer.”

  “The Federation’s moratorium on synthetic life,” said Troi.

  Yasil gave a solemn sigh. “We hoped that this would be a temporary reaction, but it has proven otherwise. Veyen and the other members who lived among you have all reported the same change sweeping through the worlds of the Federation. A shift away from the openness of the past, toward a hawkish and isolationist mindset.”

  “It will change,” insisted Troi. “Right now, people are afraid. When that happens, they cleave to the simple answers, to the things that will make them feel safer. But give us time. The pendulum will swing back the other way. I believe that in my heart.”

  “I have no doubt you do, Commander Troi. And perhaps you are correct.” Yasil’s reptilian face was heavy with sadness. “But we cannot risk the future of our people on that hope. We wanted the Federation to be a new home for us, but our kind are not safe there. As for the other interstellar powers, there are none among them we could trust with our secret.” He paused. “There is no future for us among you. Once our great ship passes into open space beyond the plasma storms, we intend to generate one final spatial corridor and travel through it, leaving this galaxy behind forever.�
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  Riker looked up at the artificial sky. “Where will you go?”

  “Home.” As Yasil said the word, the stars above shifted and changed into the alien constellations of a different galaxy. “The Makers may no longer exist, and we have no knowledge of others of our kind that may exist. But it has been decided, we will return to our point of origin and fulfill the end point of our coding. We came to your space to seek knowledge. We have learned that there is nothing for us here.”

  Troi reached out, placing a hand on Yasil’s arm. “Are you certain? We could learn so much from you.”

  “It doesn’t have to end this way,” added Riker. “If you revealed yourselves, you could help people understand that the synth ban is the wrong choice. You don’t have to leave. You’ve shown your truth to us. We can speak for you.”

  But Yasil was already shaking his head. “Data,” he said, and as he invoked the name, an image of the android formed a short distance away.

  Troi’s breath caught in her throat at the incredible accuracy of the simulation. He appeared exactly as he had the last time she had seen him, during that fateful mission into Romulan space.

  “Data is the reason we have been truthful to you, Captain Riker, Counselor Troi. We believe we can trust you, because you knew him, and you were close comrades.”

  “We loved him.” Troi blinked back tears, suddenly struck by how much she missed her old friend.

  “You bear us no prejudice because of our machine origins,” Yasil continued, “but you two are not enough.”

  One of the distant alien stars in the sky dropped silently from the darkness, becoming an orb drone, drifting toward them like a wind-borne cloud.

  “They understand.” Friend’s voice hummed in the air. “It saddens them, but they understand.”

  “You’re a synthetic being like them,” said Riker. “An artificial intelligence, part of this ship.”

  “I am a distributed consciousness,” Friend offered. “Part of my sentience exists in the great ship, yes. But elements of me also cohabit the drones and the network of minds in our shared communication pool.” The voice paused, and when it spoke again, Troi felt that sense of a childlike persona beneath it. “In a very real sense, I was born in this galaxy, but I have never known our origin. I have never had a place to call home.”