Star Trek: The Next Generation - 114 - Cold Equations: The Body Electric

by David Mack

  Worf glowered. “In theory.”

  La Forge added, “We haven’t made much progress.” The engineer laid out the challenges they had already discussed, and Picard watched Wesley soak up the information with a calm air and keen attention. Finally, after La Forge had finished, Wesley nodded. “Captain, let me get this straight. You need to win a fight you don’t want to start, free prisoners who aren’t ready to leave, and do it without pissing off the giant Machine that can crush us like a bug. Is that about it?”

  “I’d say that sums up our dilemma.”

  “I have a plan,” Wesley said. “But for it to work, you’ll have to be impossibly charming.”

  Picard couldn’t help but smile. “When am I not?”

  Wesley beamed with excitement. “I was hoping you’d say that. Let’s get to work.”

  * * *

  Through the shuttle’s forward windshield, the stormhead of the nebula raged with white bolts of energy. It would take only one to reduce the Faraday to vapor, and the only thing sparing the tiny craft from that swift and terrible fate was the piloting skill of Jean-Luc Picard.

  Altanexa was a speck in the distance, a silvery mote all but invisible against the gray sprawl of the Machine’s surface, which filled most of the view ahead of the Faraday. As Picard guided the shuttle into an approach vector, he felt not unlike Daniel marching of his own free will into the proverbial lion’s den.

  He opened a hailing frequency. “Attention, Altanexa commander. This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise, requesting permission to land.”

  Gatt’s gruff voice answered, “Permission denied, Captain.”

  “Commander, I must insist you permit me to land. I have come, alone and unarmed, on a purely diplomatic and humanitarian mission.” Altanexa grew larger as the shuttle drew near to it.

  “You have no business here, Captain—diplomatic, humanitarian, or otherwise.”

  “I disagree, Commander. My purpose is to visit the Federation prisoners in your brig.”

  The android leader sounded annoyed. “I’ve already told you not to interfere. Their captivity is an internal matter of the Fellowship. And unless I’m mistaken, Captain, your Prime Directive forbids you from meddling in the affairs of others.”

  Putting on his boldest voice of authority, Picard replied, “You are mistaken. Gravely so, in fact. As I understand it, the Fellowship of Artificial Intelligence is not a political entity but a social one. It is a signatory to no treaties, a party to no accords. As such, it has no recourse to the privileges of sovereignty. So, the fact that you are currently holding prisoner three citizens of the United Federation of Planets makes their captivity, by definition, a Federation matter.”

  “Well. The next time we visit your Federation, Captain, feel free to sue us.”

  The shuttle was close enough to Altanexa for Picard to discern details of its hull. He needed to steer this conversation away from confrontation as quickly as he could. Shedding his authoritative persona, he put on a show of humility. “Commander, I haven’t come to engage in useless posturing. I’m here to appeal to your compassion—and to beg you for an act of mercy.”

  This time, Gatt was slow to respond. Picard hoped the delay meant that his conversational judo was having the desired effect, by playing to Gatt’s desire to be seen as powerful and magnanimous. “What do you hope to accomplish by coming aboard Altanexa?”

  “I merely wish to visit with the prisoners and confirm they are alive and unharmed.”

  “We can send you live vids from our brig.”

  “Commander, you know as well as I do how easily vids can be falsified. It’s imperative that I see the prisoners with my own eyes and speak with them to verify their conditions.” Worried he might have pushed for too much, he added, “Such a visit, of course, would be supervised by you and your crew at all times, and no physical contact would occur.”

  There was naught but silence over the channel, but Picard felt as if he could hear Gatt and his crew debating the merits of allowing Picard to set foot on Altanexa.

  Then came Gatt’s reply: “Follow our beacon to Altanexa’s aft landing bay. Do not deviate from that course for any reason, Captain, and do not attempt to contact your vessel.”

  “Understood. Locking onto your beacon now. Picard out.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief and let the Faraday’s autopilot guide the shuttle through Altanexa’s shields to a smooth arrival in the aft landing bay.

  Within seconds of the shuttle touching down on the landing deck, its external sensors confirmed the bay was pressurized with breathable air, so Picard opened the hatch and stepped out. Gatt was there, waiting for him with two intimidating-looking sentient robots. One reminded Picard of a weaponized version of an automated tiller his family had used at their vineyard in France; the other resembled a four-armed walking skeleton, which evoked for Picard memories of tales he’d read as a boy, of the voyages of an ancient sailor named Sinbad.

  “Search him,” Gatt said to his two enforcers.

  Picard stood and obligingly raised his arms or shifted his stance while the security ’bots scanned him from head to toe. The skeletal robot reported to Gatt in a string of mechanical-sounding gibberish that made Picard think of the noise from Breen vocoders. Gatt nodded. “They tell me you’re clean,” he said to Picard. “Behave yourself and we won’t have any problems.” He turned and headed for a nearby exit, while beckoning Picard to follow. “This way.”

  They left the landing bay, with Gatt in the lead, Picard in the middle, and the security ’bots shadowing his every step. The walk to the brig was short and free of conversation. Gatt stood aside and ushered Picard into the U-shaped section. Data occupied the first cell on Picard’s right. The youthful android stood and brightened at the sight of Picard. “Captain!”

  “Hello, Data. Are you all right?”

  “I have not been harmed, sir.”

  Picard nodded. “Good.” He turned and looked into the cell opposite Data’s. The Immortal he had met a decade earlier sat slumped at an angle against the bulkhead. The grievous scars on his face, head, neck, and hands left no doubt that he had been subjected to gruesome violations. Despite his best effort, Picard failed to exorcise the horror and pity from his voice.

  “Professor Vaslovik?”

  Despite looking like he had been stitched together from spare body parts, the Immortal smiled. “Please, Captain . . . I go by Akharin, now.”

  “I see. Do you require medical attention, Akharin?”

  The Immortal shook his head. “No, Captain, thank you. I know I look bad, but trust me: I’ve recovered from far worse than this. I’ll be all right.”

  It was hard to take the man’s word in the face of such startling evidence to the contrary, but he remembered Akharin’s remarkable history and nodded. “Very well.” Then he moved to the cell next to Akharin’s and felt a bittersweet pang of remembrance when he met the gaze of its lovely female occupant. “Miss McAdams. It’s good to see you again.”

  Rhea mustered a sad smile. “Ditto, sir. But I wish it could’ve been in Paris.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Gatt stepped toward Picard. “That’s enough. You’ve seen them, and you’ve spoken to them. Are you satisfied?”

  “Yes,” Picard said. “Thank you.”

  The android commander turned to his enforcers. “Take him back to his shuttle.”

  Picard bid quick farewells to Rhea, Akharin, and Data, and he offered no resistance as Gatt and his minions escorted him back the way he’d come. They all but shoved him back inside the Faraday, and within moments after its hatch closed, the ship’s engines powered up, and he let Altanexa guide the shuttle back outside its shields, where it could navigate freely.

  He pointed the Faraday back toward the Enterprise and accelerated.

  Only then did he permit himself a satisfied smirk.

  Mission accomplished.

  24

  They arrived hungry and with only the most b
asic of instructions: Disperse. Consume. Multiply. Integrate. Their numbers were few—no more than a thousand. But that would soon change.

  Raw materials were everywhere. Iron, carbon, tungsten, monotanium, molybdenum . . . loose atoms of sustenance surrounded them. They broke off what they needed, shaped it to fit their programming, and put the particles back together according to a simple plan.

  Nothing stood in their way as they spread apart, seeking out points of connection, all while continuing to devour and replicate. As the first of them began finding their way into the vast synthetic network that surrounded them, their population had grown a hundredfold.

  More power was needed. A legion was dispatched to tunnel into great coursing streams of charged plasma and siphon from them whatever the colony required. Waves of beamed energy rejuvenated them, and the speed of their labors and wanderings tripled.

  Forward scouts tapped into data streams and began upgrading the colony’s programs. Using information from the upgrade, the colony sent battalions to link with the sensor and communications networks. From there it was a short hop to the tactical and defensive grids.

  They were sixteen million strong when their core program reached its end line:

  Critical mass achieved. Initiate contact. Await new instructions.

  Using the foreign comm system as an extension of itself, it sent its lonely hail . . .

  * * *

  “We have contact,” La Forge called out as the encrypted signal appeared on his monitor.

  The message was brief, just a confirmation that Wesley’s newly minted colony of nonsentient nanites—which had been inert until Captain Picard smuggled them aboard Altanexa on the underside of the Faraday’s port landing strut—had performed as planned and were ready to receive instructions from the Enterprise crew.

  Wesley and Lieutenant Elfiki joined La Forge at the bridge’s master systems display and began loading interface programs that would enable them to control the nanites. “Let’s see what we’re working with,” Wesley said with a boyish smirk of mischief in the making. He punched up a schematic of Altanexa’s interior, the first spoil of war delivered by his tiny army.

  “Power, comms, weapons, internal data network,” Elfiki said, reading from a checklist. “They’re tapped into everything.” She checked some readings. “No sign they’ve been detected.”

  “That won’t last,” La Forge said. He turned away from the MSD to meet the hopeful stares of Worf and the captain. “We’re ready.”

  A curt nod from Picard. “Proceed.”

  La Forge faced Wesley and Elfiki. “Let’s keep the first malfunctions minor, then use them to build larger ones.” He pointed at one of the many screens of data streaming in from the nanite colony. “Start with their internal comms—and make sure you silence the ship’s AI. It won’t be obvious that anything’s wrong, and by the time the crew figures it out, it’ll be too late. Each section will be cut off from the others. Then we can really go to work on them.”

  “On it,” Elfiki said, keying in commands to the nanoscopic machines. “Severing their internal comms section by section, starting with bottom deck aft and working forward and up.”

  Wesley worked beside her. “Isolating the ship’s AI.” He sent the command sequence with a dramatic jab at his panel and a cold smile. “Serves her right for electrocuting me.”

  Watching the nanites’ progress on the monitors was slightly hypnotic to La Forge; he didn’t realize Worf was standing at his shoulder until the first officer spoke. “Is it working?”

  “So far, so good,” La Forge said. “Internal comms are down—and no alarms yet. I’m using their system to generate a broad-spectrum jamming frequency inside their ship.”

  Worf looked pleased for a change. “Shut down their intruder countermeasures next.”

  “Already on it,” Wesley said while keeping his hands and eyes on his work.

  Elfiki was keying in commands almost as quickly as Wesley. “I’m setting up a partition to protect life-support systems so they can’t suffocate the human prisoner.”

  “Standing by to cut power to the brig,” La Forge said. “Just give the word, Wes.”

  “Few more seconds.” Wesley punched in a furious string of commands. “Go.”

  La Forge tapped the blinking key under his index finger. Icons dotting the schematic of Altanexa changed colors, from green to yellow and then to red. “Main power off line. They’ll lose shields and weapons in ten seconds.” He smiled at Worf. “All brig force fields are down.”

  “Good work.” Worf turned and looked at the magnified image of Altanexa on the main viewscreen. “We have done what we can. The rest is up to Data.”

  Thirty seconds earlier . . .

  “As we move forward,” Gatt explained to Alset, whom he had promoted to second-in-command, “my chief concern is that having Tyros in the brig could make some of the other passengers feel sympathetic toward him—and, by association, the other prisoners. I’m especially concerned about Cohuila and Tzilha. If they break with us, they could do a lot of harm from engineering.”

  The skeletal robot replied in a low monotone, “Understood. How do we proceed?”

  “For now, we’ll rely on surveillance.” Gatt tapped on one of the nerve center’s retractable workstation consoles, with the intention of calling up a ship schematic. Nothing happened. He poked at the interface again, but the ship’s data network seemed to be frozen. “That’s odd.”

  Altanexa’s voice issued from an overhead speaker. “Gatt, I’m detecting a number of minor system malfunctions in different areas of the ship.”

  The synchronicity of errors roused Gatt’s suspicions. “What kind of malfunctions?”

  “Internal comms are failing in a slow cascade, starting from the—”

  Her report ended there, and in that moment Gatt knew something was very, very wrong. “Alset, get down to the brig and make sure the prisoners stay secure. I’ll have Senyx meet you there.” Alset grabbed his plasma rifle and hurried out of the nerve center, while Gatt concentrated on sending a private signal to Senyx via their shared frequency. Senyx, we’re under attack. I need you to meet Alset in the brig. Several seconds passed without reply. Senyx, confirm status. His orders met with silence, and he made an educated guess that a jamming signal was being generated from somewhere inside the ship. I have to contain this, now. He raised the security console from the deck and pressed the switch to arm all intruder countermeasures.

  And once again, nothing happened.

  This must be Picard’s doing, he decided. Probably a delayed-reaction sabotage to free Data. His anger grew toxic as it turned inward. I never should have let him come aboard.

  Main power went down, taking the overhead lights with it. Dim green emergency lighting snapped on and threw long, harsh shadows across the darkened consoles.

  So, this was how it was going to be. Gatt relaxed. This was familiar ground.

  He went to the nerve center’s weapons locker, opened it, and took out a disruptor. Its weight felt good in his hands, and he smiled at the cool touch of its metal grip. By now the prisoners were free; the only logical goal for them would be to seize control of the ship. To do that they would need to hold the engine room, the computer core, and the nerve center.

  Gatt trusted his crew to defend the engine room and the computer.

  The nerve center would be his responsibility.

  He set his weapon to maximum power, took cover, and steeled his nerves for a fight.

  Thirty seconds earlier . . .

  All the lights went out—and so did the force fields on the cells in the brig. Data’s eyes switched over to enhanced-spectrum mode within three milliseconds, and he stepped out of his cell to meet Rhea and Tyros in the U-shaped compartment’s narrow central passage. Akharin was a bit slower to exit his cell, but his languor seemed more a product of his injuries than of blindness.

  “Looks like main power failed,” Rhea said.

  Akharin pointed toward the overhead. “L
ife support is still working.”

  Data threw a questioning look at Tyros. “Could this be a trap of some sort?”

  The turncoat shook his head. “I doubt it. If they want us dead, they’d gain nothing by letting us go as a pretense. I’d say this looks more like sabotage. Probably by Picard.”

  “If so, then we must assume Captain Picard means for us to take control of the ship.” Akharin looked woozy, so Data grasped his shoulder to steady him. “You should stay here.”

  The Immortal shrugged off Data’s hand. “I’ll be fine.” Just then the emergency lights activated, bathing the brig and the corridor outside its entrance in a sickly green light. Akharin looked at Tyros. “You know this ship better than we do. What areas do we need to control?”

  “The engine room, computer core, and nerve center,” Tyros said.

  Rhea said, “You’re the only one of us who’s seen those spaces. Where are we going, and what are we dealing with, from a tactical standpoint?”

  “The nerve center is three decks up and all the way forward, at the end of the central corridor on Deck One. It’s a relatively small space with only one entrance. Gatt’s almost certain to be defending it, and I guarantee he’ll be armed. The computer core is two decks up and three sections forward, off the second transverse passage. It’s usually unmanned, but they might have put a guard on it. That’s another tight space with only one way in or out. The engine room, though—that’ll be a hard target. One deck up, one section forward. It has three entrances—one on the upper level, two on the lower. There are usually half a dozen crew in there.”

  The prospect of imminent conflict seemed to have revived Akharin. “How hard a fight will they put up?”

  Tyros shook his head. “Won’t know till we’re there. What I do know is that it’ll take at least two people to capture the engine room.”

  “How do we stay in touch after we split up?” Rhea asked.

  Before Data could reply, he heard La Forge’s voice inside his head via the quantum transceiver.