by David Mack
Worf immediately added, “What about Data?”
Bristling with offense, Gatt replied, “What of him? I thought we’d covered this.”
“You have not said why you are holding him.”
A dismissive shrug. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
Picard raised his hand to forestall further provocations by his first officer. “I share Commander Worf’s concern. We aren’t seeking to meddle in your affairs. We’d just like to have a better understanding of the situation facing Mister Data.”
“If you must know, we’re holding him for trespass and sabotage. He lured us to a meeting under false pretenses, boarded our vessel, and attempted to compromise several of our key systems, for reasons as yet unknown. We’ve offered him several chances to explain himself, and he’s refused. Until we get a clear answer from him, he will remain in our custody.”
“Serious charges,” Worf said.
“Yes,” Gatt said, “they are.”
It was difficult for Picard to know whether Gatt’s account was truthful. On the one hand, he had no reason to doubt him. Such actions were not beyond Data’s abilities, and given the nature of his current obsessions, they weren’t beyond the realm of plausibility. On the other hand, something about Gatt’s story rang false. Best to tread with care, Picard decided.
“While we appreciate the seriousness of your allegations, Mister Data remains a citizen of the Federation and a Starfleet officer in reserve service. Consequently, it is my duty to—”
“You have no duties here, Captain,” Gatt cut in. “We’re far beyond your jurisdiction.”
“No one disputes that. However, if the Fellowship recognizes anything comparable to the Federation’s tradition of legal counsel for those accused of crimes, I would—”
“It doesn’t. And this is not a subject for discussion.” Gatt stood. “I’m returning to my ship. My second and I will depart from there aboard a smaller vessel and pay a visit to the Machine. You might feel compelled to attempt a rescue of your friend during my absence.” He met Worf’s malevolent stare with his own. “For his sake, as well as yours and that of the galaxy at large, I urge you to resist that impulse.” To Picard he added, “We’ll let you know what the Machine says. Until then, err on the side of patience, Captain.”
They watched Gatt exit. Two security officers on the other side of the door fell in behind the hulking android and followed him to the turbolift as the ready room’s door slid closed. Worf circled around Picard’s desk, exhaling his anger as he went. “I do not trust him.”
“Nor do I, Number One. Unfortunately, Mister Data hasn’t given us enough information to refute Gatt’s account of events.”
Worf glanced toward the door. “We should have security put him in the brig.”
“On what charge? We have no evidence that he’s committed any crime. I won’t deprive a man of liberty without just cause and due process.”
“We could trade him for Data.”
“That would be most unethical, Number One. At any rate, based on what Commander La Forge has told us of Data’s state of mind, I doubt he would agree to such an exchange. It sounds to me as if there is something he wants on that ship, something he will not leave without.”
“How do you wish to proceed?”
Picard propped his elbows on his desktop, folded his hands, and steepled his index fingers—an affectation that always reminded him of his long-ago mind-meld with Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan. “Have Geordi contact Data with the quantum transceiver, and press him for details of his situation. I need to know how and why Data came to be imprisoned on that ship, and exactly what it is he needs in order to leave it. I also want Dygan and Šmrhová to initiate passive scans of Altanexa as soon as Gatt’s shuttle leaves for the Machine. We need to gather intel on that ship—armaments, defenses, internal structure, power source, everything. I want a tactical engagement profile ready as soon as possible.”
“Aye, sir.” Worf looked troubled. “Captain . . . what if we find that Data is being held for justifiable reasons? Do we give him up to secure the Fellowship’s help?”
“We might have no choice, Number One. If Data is in the wrong, we can’t compound his crimes by aiding and abetting his escape. And I think you’ll agree that stopping the Machine must be our chief priority.”
Worf nodded. “Yes, sir.” His dismay turned to fierce determination. “And if we should learn that Gatt and his crew are holding Data unlawfully?”
“Then I will use the full might of the Enterprise to set him free.”
18
Wild bolts of lightning ripped through the nebula, lighting up titanic stormheads of indigo dust and vapor, and casting an eerie glow across the ragged surface of the Machine. Gatt lurked at arm’s reach behind Tyros, who stood at the controls of the small transport, guiding it through the chaotic violence of the maelstrom with fluid movements of his long and graceful hands.
Leaning forward, Gatt beheld the planet-sized Machine and was overcome by a sensation he had thought lost to him millennia ago: wonderment. He felt a profound kinship with the massive entity, even though he could barely conceive of the civilization capable of building it. “Remarkable,” he said, laboring to raise his voice above a whisper.
“Yes, it’s impressive,” Tyros said, though he sounded underwhelmed. Gatt attributed his friend’s lack of enthusiasm to the stress of piloting through the hazards of the nebula.
They orbited the Machine’s equator, and Gatt used the opportunity to study every detail of its surface, as though he were committing to memory the quirks of a lover’s face. Then they descended through a gap in its outer shell and began their long journey into its dark, foreboding core. Vast regions were packed so tightly with hardware and generators as to be impenetrable.
Tyros navigated through ever-narrowing passages and adroitly evaded seemingly random jolts of energy that crisscrossed their path. Just when Gatt expected they would run out of room to maneuver, a yawning void opened ahead of them, revealing the Machine’s central control core, suspended in a six-point frame. Gatt edged forward to stand beside Tyros. “Let’s hope the Machine doesn’t try to hold us accountable for the meat-sacks’ botched attack.”
“No sign of a welcoming committee so far,” Tyros said. “Starting landing approach.”
He set the transport down on a long and level stretch inside the core structure. Several meters ahead of them, wreckage from the Starfleet crew’s failed bombing mission littered the open space. There was no sign of corpses, but according to the Enterprise officers’ report, their away team had almost literally been shredded by the machines. Gatt hadn’t expected to find much, and the Machine hadn’t disappointed him. “According to their logs, the junction where they logged in and made contact is roughly thirty-five meters ahead, to the left.”
“Lead on,” Tyros said as he powered down the engines and decompressed the transport’s interior. By the time they reached the exit hatch, they were engulfed in the silence of vacuum.
Gatt felt the vibration of moving parts in the bulkhead as the hatch slid open, and he stepped out of the ship. Outside, Tyros followed him through the assorted debris and trace evidence of carnage, to the interface the first Starfleet team had used to talk with the Machine. The two androids stood in front of the opening and marveled at the Machine’s inner workings.
No hard lines, Gatt noted on the comm frequency they shared. No sign that the biologicals spliced into the system. It must be operating on a wireless protocol.
Tyros poked at the circuits.
Kneeling to make a closer inspection, Gatt asked, Can we tap into it directly?
Reluctant to risk direct contact with the Machine, Gatt paused. Do you think this is safe?
Gatt adjusted his neural net’s range of incoming and outgoing frequencies, set up an extra array of signal buffers to protect himself, and, after a final moment of anxious hesitation, opened his mind to the same high-power frequency used by the Machine.
Raw signal flooded Gatt’s matrix. For just over nine milliseconds, he was on the verge of total shutdown from data overload—and then the debilitating surge abated and modulated itself to match his mind’s native frequencies. Pulses pinged his synthetic synapses, prompting his innate responses to primitive digital stimuli. Simple binary inputs led to more complex code structures, and each response his brain returned to the Machine accelerated the rate of transfer between them, until it stabilized at the maximum sustainable level for his core processors.
Next came requests for him to upload his knowledge base into the Machine, starting with language and unique idioms, then operating code. He tried to resist the command and erect a firewall against it, but the Machine insinuated viruses and Trojan horses with ruthless efficiency. In under two seconds his mind’s defensive software was completely overridden, and the Machine took what it wanted from him. Then it pushed software patches and new operating code into his matrix, changes he resisted by reflex until he saw them for what they were: upgrades.
Less than six seconds after he had connected himself to the Machine, he found himself in communion with it. I am Gatt.
The response was not one voice but a legion of them, countless minds sharing one thought. It felt to Gatt as if he were basking in the glow of an AI deity. Who are you?
Our numbers are small in relation to its proliferation of biological forms.
A note of disgust underscored the Machine’s reply.
Gatt decided it might be best not to present himself as the intercessor for the biological forms of the galaxy. He changed his tack. They do not understand the purpose of your labors.
I would like to understand, Gatt pleaded. Show me.
Before he had time to realize he should be afraid, the Machine opened itself to his thoughts, and the truth of its nature poured into him—a sea of ancient knowledge surging into a weak and tiny vessel. It threatened to drown him, dissolve him, subsume him.
Then he rose from its fathomless depths, buoyed by a new understanding and a sense of purpose. Here and now, in time’s brief oasis between the fiery dawn of the cosmos and its endless night of entropic heat death, Gatt saw a new universe of possibilities.
And all of them, every one, belonged to the Machines.
19
“Data, this is Geordi. Please respond.” La Forge held the quantum transceiver in one hand and used the other to call up the Enterprise’s scans of Altanexa on the bridge’s master systems display. Elfiki stood beside him and ran a new series of passive sensor sweeps of the androids’ starship. He pressed the transmitter button again. “Data, do you copy? It’s important.”
His friend’s disembodied voice filled the space between him and Elfiki, as clear as if he were standing between them. “I am here, Geordi. Go ahead.”
La Forge waved over Picard and Worf as he replied. “Did Wesley get to talk to you?”
“He did. I presume he succeeded in bringing Altanexa to the Enterprise?”
“He did, but he arrived worse for wear. He was out cold when your friend Gatt beamed over with him, and he’s still in sickbay.”
The captain and first officer hunched over the shoulders of the seated La Forge. “Data, this is Captain Picard. What is your current status?”
“Incarcerated, but unharmed.”
“How much of that ship’s interior have you seen?”
“Not much. I was escorted directly from its landing bay, which accounts for the lower quarter of its central hull volume, to its brig, a small compartment located on its lowest deck, twenty-one-point-two meters from its bow and sixteen-point-five meters from its starboard bulkhead. I have observed none of this ship’s primary systems, though I noted the presence of several lifeboats at regular intervals in the starboard corridor.”
Worf asked, “What can you tell us about its armaments and defenses?”
“Comparable to those of the Enterprise. Also, its crew is heavily armed. I would advise against confrontation.”
The Klingon frowned and the captain nodded. “Understood,” Picard said. “We need to know more about its crew. Can you estimate their numbers?”
“I have seen six members of this ship’s crew, including Gatt himself, but there could be many more. Also, you should know there are at least two other prisoners on board. One is Akharin, the immortal human previously known as Emil Vaslovik. The other is Rhea Mc-Adams.”
Hearing those names made La Forge tense in remembrance of their last encounter with the Immortal and his holotronic android. Her appearance and behavior had been so convincingly human that she had insinuated herself into their ranks with ease by posing as the Enterprise’s new chief of security. Only after a harrowing encounter with a hostile race of androids bent on destroying her and stealing the secrets of her creator, Vaslovik—or Flint or Akharin or whatever name he traveled under at any given moment—was her true nature and identity revealed. By then, of course, the emotionally imbued Data had fallen in love with her, and she with him.
Picard’s taut grimace implied he remembered those events with equal clarity. Masking his feelings behind a veneer of pragmatic concern, he asked, “And what is their status?”
“Essentially the same as my own. Neither has been harmed so far, though I have inferred that Gatt’s long-term agenda includes threatening Rhea in order to coerce me into extracting vital information by force from Akharin.”
“Charming,” La Forge muttered. “What is it he thinks is so important?”
“Gatt has become obsessed with learning how Akharin restored the positronic matrix of Juliana Tainer after her cascade failure. He does not seem to care that the technique is specific to Soong-type android positronic technology.”
“In other words,” Worf said, “he is a fanatic.”
The captain frowned. “If so, he might be even more dangerous than we thought. Data, our last brush with the Fellowship of Artificial Intelligence left me with the impression that they were a generally benign entity. Is there reason to think that’s changed?”
“No, Captain. In my estimation, Gatt does not speak for the Fellowship at large. His influence seems limited to the specific members of his faction aboard Altanexa.”
“Then to what should we attribute his keen interest in the Machine?”
Data’s tone shifted from unflappable to horrified. “Captain, please tell me that you did not let Gatt make contact with the Machine!”
“He’s there now,” Picard said, exchanging worried looks with Worf and La Forge.
“I strongly doubt he has the best interests of the galaxy at heart. If he agreed to intercede with the Machine, I suspect it is because he thinks it will profit him in some way.”
Worf simmered. “It is not as if we had another option.”
“Unfortunately, Mister Worf is correct. Time is of the essence, and this was a calculated risk. In any event, even if we had objected to Gatt making contact with the Machine, we would have no right to prevent him from doing so.”
La Forge looked over his shoulder at the captain. “If Gatt’s working against us, it’s even more important that we get Data back as soon as possible.”
“Agreed.” Picard shot a look at Elfiki. “Do we know anything useful about that ship?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, sir. Passive sensors are being blocked by its hull. I could switch to more aggressive methods, but they’ll definitely know we’re scanning them.”
“Data,” La Forge said, “keep an eye out for any
technical details about Altanexa that we could use to help get you out of there. Especially the computers and communications systems.”
“I will do my best, Geordi. But I should remind you that I will not leave this ship without Akharin and Rhea. Whatever plan you devise for my rescue must include them.”
Picard approved the condition with a nod. “Understood, Mister Data. Number One, have Lieutenant Šmrhová prep tactical plans for boarding that vessel. Mister La Forge, I want nonviolent options for incapacitating that vessel and its crew. Lieutenant Elfiki, switch to active sensor protocols. I want to know what we’re up against before this turns into a battle.”
Everyone acknowledged their orders with curt nods, and then Worf and Picard stepped away—the captain back to his chair, Worf to the security station to confer with Šmrhová. Elfiki started updating her sensor protocols, and La Forge caught a look between her and Dygan, who nodded to her from across the bridge at ops, to confirm he was making the necessary changes.
La Forge’s thumb was still pressing the quantum transceiver’s transmitter switch. “Data, promise me you won’t do anything crazy over there, no matter what happens.”
“As I cannot objectively define what you mean by the term ‘crazy,’ I am afraid I cannot make such a promise. Will it reassure you if I promise not to take any unnecessary risks?”
The engineer shook his head. “Something tells me we’ll disagree on the meaning of ‘unnecessary.’ Just try not to get yourself killed.” He resisted the urge to add: Again.
“I will try—and I hope you do the same. Data out.”
* * *
Picard was torn between hope and fear as the main viewscreen showed Gatt’s transport ship emerging from the Machine and navigating back toward Altanexa. He wanted to believe that Gatt would keep his word, and that the android had acted in good faith when making contact, but Data’s warning stayed with him. No matter how ardent his wish to remain optimistic, Picard felt the bitter premonition of disappointment in the air.
Dygan’s attention was snared by a new update on the ops console. “Captain,” he said with his eyes still on his panel, “Altanexa’s moving on an intercept course for the transport.”