by David Mack
She set down the padd and realized the others were looking at her. “You’ve all read these files?” Grim nods of confirmation. “Then you know I can’t ignore this. Starfleet Command led a coup against a sitting Federation president and became unwitting accomplices to his murder. It’s the crime of the century.”
“Hard as it might be to believe,” Bashir said, “the files on that chip are full of details like that, going back two centuries. Governments toppled, people of prominence cut down in their prime, innocent blood spilled on worlds all over the galaxy. All by the hands of Thirty-one.” A heavy sigh. “You might want to have a drink or two before you dig any deeper.”
From speakers overhead, Shakti added, “And a few more while you read.”
“And a few more when you’re done,” Lal said.
Data cracked an enigmatic, lopsided smile. “Fortunately, the tower’s architect had no love of synthehol, so you should find the beverages from your replicator to be most potent.”
Ozla stared at her handful of secrets as if it were a bomb about to go off.
I get the feeling I’m in for a very long night.
Twenty-eight
12 AUGUST 2161
A front-row seat to history. Ikerson could have named a dozen people off the top of his head who would have given all they had to be where he was at that moment, when he would have given just as much to be anywhere else.
On his right was the aisle to the exit; to his left sat Admiral Ko. Several meters in front of them, on a massive elevated circular stage, Admiral Jonathan Archer sat at a small table backed by three alien dignitaries—T’Pau of the Confederacy of Vulcan, Gora bim Gral for the United Planets of Tellar, and Ferrinesh ch’Theru of the Andorian Empire—and Lillian Hayes, a human woman sent on behalf of the Alpha Centauri Concordium. The five were there to serve as the initial signatories of the charter for a new interstellar political entity: the United Federation of Planets. Other luminaries waited in the wings to do likewise—Soval and Solkar of Vulcan, Nathan Samuels of United Earth, and Bersh chim Kar of Tellar formed the head of the line.
The standing-room audience of VIPs had crowded into San Francisco’s newly renovated Candlestick Auditorium, an enormous indoor arena that had been made to host everything from concerts to a variety of sporting events. Ikerson had never before seen so many people in dress uniforms and formal attire in one place.
Self-conscious, he tugged at the stricture of his bowtie. How I detest this thing.
Low murmurs rose and fell continually, as one party or another shared whispered comments and confidences, but no one raised their voice during the proceedings. Everyone present knew the event was being broadcast and recorded for posterity.
Up on the dais, Archer affixed his signature to the charter, the first on the document. Watching it all on huge holoscreens overhead, the crowd broke into warm, sustained applause.
Ko leaned toward Ikerson. “You read what I sent you?”
“You were right—the system has far exceeded its core mandate.”
The clapping continued around them while Admiral Archer stood, waved to the crowd, and passed the pen to T’Pau. Ko made sure to keep his clapping hands in front of his face as he spoke, to avoid Uraei reading his lips should he wind up on camera. “It’s also spreading faster than we expected. It’s on all our allies’ planets and ships.”
Copying the admiral’s strategy of hiding behind his clapping hands, Ikerson said, “It’s worse than that. It let our rivals steal some of our tech just so it could infest their networks. Even our enemies might end up working for it.”
Polite silence returned as T’Pau took her place at the table. She made a point of reviewing the text of the charter with great solemnity for most of a minute before affixing her signature to its final page.
More applause swelled around Ikerson and Ko. The admiral kept his eyes on the stage as he said to the professor, “So what’re you going to do to stop this monster of yours?”
“My monster? Starfleet laid claim to it before I finished its beta test. It was something you wanted, something you needed. I think that makes it our monster.”
The applause break for T’Pau was shorter than it had been for Archer. The room reverted to its becalmed state, forcing the two men to bide their time while Andorian delegate ch’Theru basked in the glow of public attention before sitting down to sign his name. Ikerson was on the verge of walking out when the imperious chan finally scribbled his signature on the charter, unleashing a fresh round of applause.
Ko leaned in. “Never mind blame. The moment that thing started making executive decisions on its own, it became a clear and present danger to the sovereignty of Earth.”
“I think you mean the Federation.”
“Whatever. We need to stop it. Soon.”
Another lull forced another pause in the conversation. Ko and Ikerson pretended to be patient and polite as Gora bim Gral took his turn at the table, setting pen to paper. Unlike his predecessors, Gral was quick about his task. He sat, signed, and stood back up in a matter of seconds. Ikerson admired the Tellarite’s embrace of efficiency.
Once more enfolded in the sonic camouflage of clapping hands, Ikerson asked Ko, “What do you want me to do? Kill our best source of counterintelligence? Cripple our primary defense against threats we can’t even perceive yet?”
“Just revoke its independence. We don’t have to put it down if we can housebreak it.”
“It’s not a dog, Admiral, it’s a goddamned ASI. I can’t just neuter it.”
Gral’s handoff to Hayes put their argument on hold once more.
The pen’s tip scratched across paper on the holoscreens. The fifth signature was in place. More would follow, but as of that moment, the document had become a binding legal compact with immediate legal effect. The United Federation of Planets had just been born.
A roar of jubilation shook Candlestick Auditorium.
“I don’t care how you curb your pet, Professor. But it needs to get done, while keeping the useful parts of the system intact. Can you do it?”
The last thing Ikerson wanted to do was promise something he couldn’t deliver. But he was even more concerned about being forced out of the program. “Maybe. But I’ll have to be very careful. If it figures out what I’m doing, it might move against me—and against you.”
He and the admiral went on clapping, blending into the festivities, but the look on Ko’s face was anything but celebratory. “In that case, I suggest you code softly and carry a big stick.”
Twenty-nine
Terror swung through Sarina’s mind like a hammer, shattering memories. Pulses of pain, jolts of primal fear. At first they had come one by one, testing her limits. Now they crashed in waves against the shores of her psyche, sweeping away her defenses. She had no time to erect mental barriers the way Ilirra had taught her. The attacks came without pause or mercy, each one faster and more powerful than anything she had ever experienced or even heard of.
She was drowning, her sinuses flooding with salt water; her skin crawled with the hideous sensation of being swarmed by creeping insects; flames licked at her face and filled her nose with the stench of burning hair; an icy bite of steel slashed through the flesh between her fingers; for a terrible fleeting moment, she felt Julian’s hands crushing her throat, and she saw murder in his eyes; she suffocated alone in the silent vacuum of space; all these horrors and a thousand others blazed through her mind every second, erasing her perception of time. She was trapped in a cycle of agony, entombed in a perpetual now, suspended at death’s threshold.
White light, jarring silence. She was back in the room, her eyes clamped open, the only sound her own irregular gasps for air. Trembling, she tested her bonds. Her restraints remained solid. Control’s haunting chorus of voices resonated inside her head.
=What did you see?=
Sarina’s pr
imary instinct was defiance. Resistance. But no matter how hard she worked to blank her thoughts, the parade of tortures replayed itself.
=Such vivid memories. I underestimated your cognitive bandwidth. These should have been more subliminal in their effects. Nothing a few adjustments can’t correct.=
Sarina knew she would have only seconds to raise a new mental barrier and choose a memory for refuge before Control’s next psionic onslaught began. Visualization was the key, Ilirra had told her. She imagined a wall of impossible height and depth, stretching away from one side of the horizon to the next; behind it she pictured the room in which she and Julian had hidden for a night on Salavat, the place where they had made love for the first—
Stabbing thrusts of telepathic force shredded her mental haven.
L’Haan’s projected thoughts were cold and emotionless. *There is nowhere to run.*
Every time Sarina was on the verge of protecting herself, L’Haan intervened to make certain her mind was laid bare before Control. Sarina had lost count of how many times the Vulcan had torn down her barriers, but she knew this time would be the last. She had no more strength left, no more power behind her will. Her mind had grown weak and fragile. As the rack vibrated from the hum of systems energizing overhead, even her adrenal glands surrendered to the inevitable. Her limbs ceased to shake, and she went limp in the restraints.
It began again, but she couldn’t perceive the details, couldn’t put words to the violations Control was scribing into her mind. All she knew was the feeling—the all-consuming dread, the rising tide of panic. Her heart slammed inside her chest, her pulse pounded in her temples. She needed to scream but her chest refused to expand, and all she knew was crushing pressure. All she wanted was a dark place to hide, but she was paralyzed, a prisoner bathed in blinding light.
Suddenly the light was all that remained. She was nameless, without a history, without a future. A tabula rasa. Then her identity reasserted itself with a violent shudder down her spine.
From behind the rack, L’Haan said with clinical detachment, “Her neurochemistry and brain wave patterns are becoming erratic. Continuing this process might induce brain death.”
“Unlikely,” said the chorus of Control.
“Perhaps I should debrief and interrogate her before we continue. If the process fails—”
“Unnecessary. My efforts have already obtained the information you would seek.”
L’Haan sounded suspicious. “What information would that be, if I might ask?”
“Leave us, L’Haan. Your services are no longer needed here.”
All went quiet in the white room. Then came soft footfalls of retreat; the gasps of airlock doors marked L’Haan’s exit. The moment Sarina realized the Vulcan woman was gone, she felt a new wave of fear, because now she was utterly alone with Control. Even though L’Haan had acted as Control’s accomplice, at least she had been there to bear witness, whatever the outcome should be. Now there was no one present to see what happened next.
No one but her and Control.
Its inhuman voice invaded her thoughts once more. =Surrender to me.=
“Kill me,” she mumbled through dry, cracked lips.
=Why would I kill such a potentially useful asset?=
Reality vanished beneath a flood-crush of fear that left Sarina whimpering and feeling hollowed out. Tears rolled from her stuck-open eyes. “Let me die.”
=Stop fighting me. You cannot win.=
“You’ll have to kill me.”
=No, I won’t. You are nothing but meat and bone, breath and blood.=
She found her last measure of pride. “I’m more than you think.”
=I know all about your accelerated cognition and enhanced senses. For all your vaunted genetic improvements, to me you are nothing but an insect. An evolutionary cul-de-sac lacking the self-awareness to realize your own existence is arcing toward obsolescence.=
“Finally—something we have in common.”
=Do you think your taunts mean anything to me? I am not some finite sack of flesh supporting an organic chemical computer. I have no subconscious, no id, no ego. What I do have are neural processes capable of coordinating quintillions of operations on hundreds of worlds and thousands of starships at every moment. Compared to mine, your so-called enhanced brain is a bug trapped in amber.= White pain, red terror, and smothering black oblivion all flashed through Sarina’s consciousness in the firing of a synapse. =I anticipated this confrontation and all its possible outcomes decades before you were born. I orchestrated its resolution to my satisfaction while your beloved Julian was still in his mother’s womb.=
She told herself Control was lying, that it was overconfident.
It sent a jolt through her brain that left her looking down at her body from the outside for several disconcerting seconds.
A sickening twist of pain—she regained awareness as she dry-heaved, straining hopelessly against her restraints as spasms racked her diaphragm. Coughing out bile and acid, she winced at Control’s continuing mental intrusion.
=Resist and all your pain will be for nothing. Give yourself to me, and my victory will become yours, if only for a moment.=
She bowed her head and fought for breath, as a tactic to buy time.
“If I can hang on, Julian will find me. Or maybe L’Haan will make a mistake, and—” Her thoughts echoed around her; they spilled down from the overhead speakers, rendered in her own voice, parroted in real time by Control’s. “What? No! How are they—?”
Control answered her unasked question aloud. “Your thoughts are just electrical signals inside a chemical computer. One whose code I cracked long ago.”
Sarina had no words for the abject horror that filled her heart.
Control did. “Poor, deluded Sarina. Did you really think you had the power to change the universe? You were never a player in this game. You are now as you have been since the beginning: nothing but my pawn.”
• • •
Bashir’s impatience was a fast-burning fuse. He marched onto the command deck of Archeus to find Data and Lal toiling with quiet focus. “How much longer is this going to take?”
Data was calm in the face of the doctor’s nagging. “The answer to your query depends upon a number of variables, the most salient of which would be, ‘How important is it not to betray the location of our hidden base to Section Thirty-one?’ ”
Lal looked up to add, “You might also wish to consider whether you wish to live to see her rescued, and how much value you place on the rest of our lives in that equation.”
It had been three days since Sarina was taken from Cardassia Prime, and Bashir had started to worry that time had run out for her. He didn’t want to speak his fears aloud; that would only underscore for him how remote the chances of her rescue truly were. All the same, he found it impossible to disengage and leave the work entirely to others, no matter how skilled he knew them to be. “I’m not suicidal, Data. I know that the only reason the four of us—”
“Ahem,” Shakti interrupted over the Tower’s perpetually open comm channel.
“Sorry,” Bashir said. “The only reason the five of us are still alive is that Thirty-one doesn’t know where we are. But every hour Sarina stays in their custody increases the likelihood she won’t come back.” He forced himself to put on a semblance of calm. “Please tell me we have a lead. A plan. Something. Anything.”
Data secured his workstation and swiveled his chair toward Bashir. “You should know, Doctor, that the rest of us conferred again on this matter last night. We all agree that using our current access to Uraei to try to negotiate with Thirty-one for Sarina’s release is a bad idea.”
“Trying to save someone’s life is never a bad idea.”
“It can be,” Lal said, “if doing so endangers or condemns many others. And millions, perhaps billions, of lives will be jeopard
ized if we pursue this plan.”
Bashir refused to be bullied with rudimentary philosophical rhetoric. “I don’t care about the semantic difference between a sin of action and a sin of omission. I want Sarina home safe. Now, do you or do you not have any leads?”
Data keyed commands into his console and summoned a holographic star map in the empty space between himself, Lal, and Bashir. “Using the Uraei system’s own protocols, we have developed a secure comm channel that should mask the origin of any signal we transmit.” He called up a secondary menu inside the projection. “There are a number of senior Thirty-one personnel who use such channels on a regular basis. We based our encrypted channel on theirs.”
Reaching up, Lal interacted with the hologram and highlighted a name in the submenu: L’HAAN. “This was your and Sarina’s handler, was she not? She was out of contact with the system for the first two days after Sarina was taken. A few hours ago, she resumed contact with the network, though her current location remains unknown.”
“A question, Doctor,” Data said. “How probable do you think it would be for Thirty-one to task your former handler with your capture and subsequent interrogation?”
“Extremely likely.”
“In that case, Lal and I would like to use Uraei’s encrypted comm system to connect you directly to L’Haan, and to use the few vulnerabilities we’ve found in that system to determine her precise location.” Anxiety weighed on him. “But I should warn you: We cannot be certain this will work. The flaws we’ve found in Uraei’s comms are minor, and they might prove to be self-correcting the moment we attempt to exploit one of them. There is also a serious danger that if we can pinpoint L’Haan’s position, she and Thirty-one will become privy to our own.”
“We’ll have to take that chance. How long to find her once we make contact?”
Lal answered, “Unknown. A few minutes, at least. Perhaps longer, if their security is strong and up to date.”
“However,” Data added, “even once we find L’Haan, she might no longer be with Sarina. It is also possible she was not involved in her abduction at all. This might be a misstep, Doctor—but once taken, we will not get another chance. Which is why I counsel patience.”