by David Mack
“Hang on,” he said to the others. “I am receiving a message from the Enterprise.” He waved off Rhea’s reflexive query. “Do not ask.” Then he turned his attention to answering La Forge. I hear you, Geordi. What is the situation?
Acknowledged. We plan to take control of the ship. Can you help us maintain contact with one another after we split up?
Understood. Keep this channel open. To the others he said, “We have to go, now.”
Rhea checked the corridor outside the brig. “I’ll head for the computer core.”
“I’ll go for the engine room,” Tyros said. “Maybe I can talk the crew out of a fight.”
His optimism earned him a skeptical frown from Akharin. “I’ll go with you—in case you can’t.” The Immortal looked at Data. “Which I guess leaves you to storm the nerve center. Think you can handle Gatt on your own?”
Data led the way out of the brig. “I will be fine. If anything goes wrong, use the internal comms. The Enterprise crew will help us stay in contact.” He added with a nod, “Good luck.”
They left the brig en masse, moved forward in the ship’s starboard passageway, then split up as they ascended a switchback ladderway to the ship’s upper decks. Akharin and Tyros broke away first without a word. At the next deck, Rhea paused long enough to turn a baleful but conflicted stare at Data—then she, too, vanished into the shadows without a farewell, no doubt still blaming him for the wounds he had been forced to inflict upon her father.
As he pressed onward and upward by himself, Data feared nothing that Gatt might do to him when he came to seize the nerve center. His only true fear was of what he would do to Gatt if his newfound fury toward the sadistic android proved too terrible to contain.
* * *
Skulking through the jade twilight of Altanexa’s emergency illumination, Akharin felt more alive than he had in months. Being on the hunt, swept up in the sweet rapture of warfare, reawakened reflexes and memories he had forged during countless wars. First had come dusty battles over water, land, or mates. Later, as humanity surrendered to the charms of superstition, had come wars of ideology, campaigns of genocide waged in the names of gods unknown. In recent centuries, humanity had seemed ready to return to its roots: continental slaughters for water, fuel, and Earth’s then-dwindling reserves of natural resources.
This, on the other hand, was the purest form of warfare: a battle for survival. For the right to exist and be free. And it was one whose brutal music Akharin knew by heart.
He approached the engine room’s upper level, stealing forward, torn between competing impulses for haste and caution. The plan was vague, at best. Tyros, on the lower level, would draw his shipmates’ attention, enabling Akharin to reach the master control station and engage its emergency force field, isolating it and himself from reprisal. From there, he would be able to use manual overrides to wrest control of the power reactors and propulsion systems from the ship’s AI. Memorizing the command sequence for the overrides had sounded simple enough. It was the complete lack of detail in the rest of Tyros’s plan that concerned him.
Akharin reached the end of the passageway and paused shy of its open intersection with the engine room’s upper level, which consisted of a broad perimeter walkway, from which a single catwalk bridged the gap to the elevated octagonal master control platform in the center of the compartment. Manning that station was a levitating synthetic that resembled a flying jellyfish. The Immortal cast furtive glances around the corners and saw two multilimbed robots on the upper level and three bipedal android crew members below. And, as he’d feared, there was no reliable cover except patches of darkness separated by broad spills of viridescent light.
This was going to be all about timing.
He waited until he heard Tyros’s voice from below. “Hold your fire,” he called out to his fellow synthetics. “Please hear me out. I—”
Screeches split the air as wild volleys of disruptor fire crisscrossed on the lower level.
So much for the sway of reason.
Random impacts on bulkheads and control panels kicked up great blooms of sparks and left behind smoldering divots. An acrid haze wafted up, obscuring Akharin’s vision. He crouched low to get beneath the toxic blanket forming above his head and to reduce his profile as a target in case one of the crew on the upper level glanced in his direction.
A deep boom was followed by a rising plume of dense gray mist that hugged the lower deck and grew deeper. It must be a coolant rupture, Akharin figured. Panicked whoops and frantic strings of electronic noise pierced the deafening hiss of escaping pressurized gas. The two multilimbed robots swung themselves over the upper level’s protective railing and dropped into the rising gray murk, no doubt scrambling to effect emergency repairs. The flying jellyfish floated over the railing and descended with slow grace into the chaos.
It was as good an opportunity as Akharin was going to get. He darted across the center catwalk bridge to the master control platform, taking care to make his footfalls glide rather than stomp. To run without making a sound was a much harder feat than it looked, and it was a skill he had spent more than a decade mastering in fourteenth-century Japan.
He was in a low crouch as he reached the master control console. It took him only a few seconds to enter most of the sequence for the isolation field, but he paused before punching in the last command and looked around for Tyros. Where the hell are you?
Then he saw the lanky android running toward him from the same passageway he had used. Tyros looked desperate, and he was shouting something, but Akharin couldn’t hear him over the smothering noise of the coolant leak. Then the android pointed past Akharin, who turned and saw the flying jellyfish rising up from the sea of fog, its thousands of undulating translucent cilia crackling with wild electricity. It was only seconds from breaching the zone that would be protected by the isolation field. Akharin wanted to wait for Tyros to reach the platform so they could take shelter together, but there was no way he would reach it in time.
A crimson flash lit up Tyros’s back. He fell face-first and twitching on the catwalk.
Survival instinct trumped remorse, and Akharin entered the last command. A protective force field shimmered into place around the central platform, and it repelled the flying jellyfish with a flash and a sizzling crackle that left the levitating synthetic weaving like a drunkard while its semiliquid innards flickered with sickly light.
As Altanexa’s engineering crew surrounded the master control platform with weapons drawn, Akharin had to wonder exactly who was holding whom hostage in this scenario.
* * *
Rhea had hoped Altanexa’s computer core would be unattended when she arrived to hack into its systems, but in retrospect that now seemed like an unrealistic expectation. As on any ship, part of its security force had standing orders to defend such key areas whenever the ship was in obvious distress, such as when internal comms and main power failed.
Standing sentry outside the computer core was Senyx, a sentient robot who traveled on four sets of treaded wheels, each with an independent suspension. Its main processor, she had deduced during several encounters over the past month, was hidden inside its well-armored central mass. Although Senyx’s primary visual and auditory receptors were mounted on a headlike protrusion atop its blocky body, it had been built for combat, so it had a variety of secondary sensors both inside and outside its hardened shell. Even if deprived of visual input, it could track targets with motion sensors that monitored the slightest changes in air density and sonic devices that worked like sonar. Its two arms, which had telescoping sections to extend their reach, each presented a different threat. The right arm had a grasping claw with several digits that could exert enough force to crush other battle robots int
o scrap, and its left arm was fitted with an antipersonnel cannon with settings ranging from stun to kill to slag, as well an esoteric pulse weapon that could neutralize other synthetics.
In short, Senyx was the one member of Altanexa’s crew Rhea had most hoped to avoid.
The robot stood alone, obstructing the entrance to the core, in the middle of a transverse passageway that linked the deck’s port and starboard corridors. There would be no slipping past it unnoticed, and she strongly suspected that if she tried to lure it out of position by feigning surrender, it would not hesitate to blast her into a jumbled mess.
I can’t outfight it. I could outrun it, but that doesn’t get me anything. I guess I’ll have to outthink it. She looked around for options but came up with nothing. They were in the heart of the ship, nowhere near an airlock she could use to eject the battlebot—not that she wanted to resort to such cold-blooded measures. While she had to consider Altanexa and her crew as opponents, Rhea did not want to think of them as enemies. They were her fellow synthetics, and she harbored a deep antipathy to the notion of killing them. But at the moment, they seemed to be leaving her very few nonlethal options. Think, dammit! There must be something!
Rhea’s eyes drifted over the bulkhead and alighted upon the control panel almost as if by providence. As soon as she saw it, she remembered that very long ago, Altanexa had been created as a ship for a crew of organic beings. As such, despite the many retrofits and upgrades she had undergone over the years, a number of vestigial systems remained wedded to her internal superstructure. Don’t look now, Nexa, but I just found your appendix.
All that remained was for Rhea to lure Senyx away from its position in the transverse passageway—without getting herself killed in the bargain.
The pressure door’s control levers were of an antiquated design: they had to be physically pulled in order to be triggered, and they were hard-wired, which meant they should still function even though the ship’s other internal security systems had been compromised by the Enterprise crew’s sabotage. There were three redundant controls—one set inside the transverse passageway, and two more in the long corridors that ran perpendicular to it. In order for this to work, she would have to risk waiting until Senyx was all but on top of her, or else he would be able to free himself using the control pad inside the transverse passageway.
Trigger it too soon, and the whole thing’s for nothing. Trigger it too late, and there’s nothing to stop him from killing me.
She calmed her nerves, grasped the lever, and tensed for action. Then she scraped the sole of her boot across the deck, filling the silent passageway with a dull scratch of friction.
Her unsubtle lure was answered by the whirring of servomotors and the rumbling of Senyx’s approach. A harsh white searchlight beam sliced through the dim green shadows, heralding the battlebot’s imminent arrival. Rhea squinted and kept her eyes on the threshold of the intersection, waiting for her moment.
The muzzle of Senyx’s antipersonnel cannon was the first part of him to pass into view. Rhea forced herself to hold still. More of the long-barreled weapon crossed the threshold. Then she saw the slowly flexing digits of Senyx’s grasping claw, and the leading edges of its treads.
One sharp yank flipped the lever from OPEN to CLOSED.
Ancient hydraulics released centuries of pent-up pressure with a deck-shaking boom, and the long-forgotten emergency bulkhead leaped from its dusty recesses and pinned Senyx with a brutal, crushing blow. Forks of electricity danced over the bent and splintered barrel of the ’bot’s antipersonnel weapon, and the digits of its grasping claw twitched without rhythm, plagued by uncontrollable spasms. Its forward treads and axles were twisted and jammed, and smoke snaked from cracks in its central body.
Rhea climbed over the pinned and paralyzed sentry. “Sorry about this,” she said, stepping over its primary sensing unit. “When this is over, I promise we’ll get you fixed.” If Senyx said anything in response, it did so on a frequency Rhea couldn’t hear, and that was just fine by her.
She slipped inside the computer core, sealed the hatch behind her . . . and waited.
* * *
The hiss and thunder of pressure doors closing was distant at first, but it drew closer by the moment. Listening to the echoes as they reached Altanexa’s nerve center, Gatt knew the ship was being partitioned, sealed off section by section by whoever was approaching the command deck. Squatting behind a broad console, he kept his disruptor aimed into the dark corridor that led aft from the compartment’s sole entryway. No one was getting in here without a fight.
Data’s voice called out from the darkness. “Gatt. Your struggle is futile. Surrender.”
“I don’t think so.” He checked his weapon’s power setting; it was still at maximum. His visual receptors cycled through a variety of frequencies, searching in vain for some sign of Data that he could target. “I won’t hand over my ship to those who would betray our own kind.”
“I am trying to help you.” The voice was closer than before, but Data remained out of sight. “Consider the effect the Machine’s labors will have on many of the galaxy’s AIs.”
Just show yourself. Give me something to shoot. “What effect is that?”
“Many synthetic life-forms have processors that rely upon subspatial energy fields to enable faster-than-light computations. Myself, for one. Rhea for another. And several members of your crew, not to mention many members of the true Fellowship of Artificial Intelligence.”
“Your friends on the Enterprise already made this argument. Those of us who are worthy will leave here with the Machine. What happens to the rest of you isn’t our problem.”
“It is, however, my problem.” He was even closer now. “One I plan to solve.”
“You’re welcome to try. Step out where I can see you and give it your best shot.”
“I suggest you comply with my request.” The reply came from just outside the doorway. How was he advancing without being seen? “If you force me to resort to the use of violence, I assure you this encounter will not go well for you.”
The puny Soong-type android had audacity; Gatt had to admit that much. “What makes you so sure?”
Holographic distortion shimmered the air in the passageway, revealing the blurry silhouette of Data, who appeared to be generating the traveling illusion from his eyes—an ability unlike any Gatt had ever heard of in Soong’s creations. The youthful android strolled inside the nerve center with an air of calm arrogance and advanced slowly on Gatt. “I know you think you have the advantage—maybe because of that disruptor in your hand, or because of your size. But neither of those things will protect you from me. I have made a detailed study of your internal workings and structures, and I guarantee that I am faster, stronger, and more durable than you.”
Gatt was tired of talking. He pulled the trigger on his disruptor.
Nothing happened.
A blur of motion. He lost sight of Data, then the android was right in front of him, crushing Gatt’s sidearm inside his fist; the weapon splintered like brittle glass.
Another dash of shadows, and Gatt’s right arm was snared and pulled behind his back at an angle that robbed him of leverage. A sickening snap led to a spattering of sparks from his ruptured shoulder. He tried to slip free, to regroup, to find an angle for a counterattack, but Data was ahead of his every move. The smaller android swept Gatt’s legs out from under him, and in less than three seconds, most of Gatt’s major joints had been dislocated and cruelly broken.
Pinned facedown on the floor, Gatt was at a loss to explain what had just happened.
Data whispered with evident menace in his ear. “Nanites are amazing things. They can deactivate a disruptor pistol just as easily as they can cripple a starship.” Leaning a bit closer, he added, “You have no idea how much I want to kill you right now.”
Then he stood, planted his boot on Gatt’s neck, and looked up as if speaking to an invisible audience. “Data to Enterprise. We have control of Alta
nexa.”
25
After enduring the prolonged standoff with Gatt and his crew, Picard took great relief in hearing Data’s voice via the quantum transceiver. But his good mood expired as Data began explaining the situation in greater detail. “I cannot be certain for how long we will be able to retain control of the ship,” the android said. “Although we have secured its three principal command areas, the ship’s AI and crew are attempting to undo our sabotage.”
“Then we’ll have to act quickly,” Picard said. “Commander La Forge and Mister Crusher are working to restore Altanexa’s external comms so that you can contact the Machine.”
Wesley looked up from the bridge’s master systems display while La Forge continued working beside him. “We should have the comms back up in twenty minutes,” Wesley said.
“Understood,” Data said. “Do you have any recommendations for what I should say to the Machine? Without knowing its agenda, I find myself at a rhetorical disadvantage.”
Picard, Worf, Wesley, and La Forge cast quizzical looks at one another. Then the captain turned and beckoned Chen to join them at the MSD. The half-Vulcan contact specialist hurried to his side. “Data? Try to find some kind of common ground with it, something in your shared nature as AIs that will make it accept you as one of its own kind.”
“And after contact has been established?”
“Well, then it gets a bit harder. Our first priority is to persuade it to stop throwing solar systems into Abbadon, and then to make it halt its current mission entirely. The problem is that there’s no point appealing to its compassion, because I don’t think it has any. Arguments based on the intrinsic value of organic life mean nothing to it. So you have to figure out what it wants.”
On the viewscreen, the slowly rotating dark sphere and its violet girdle of tempest were silhouetted against the brilliant violence of the singularity’s accretion disk, which continued to rage with the fires of stars condemned to premature deaths. As if anyone could find reason in the actions of such a technological terror, Picard brooded.