The Dark Veil

by James Swallow

  “I came… to find Thaddeus…” Zade muttered, his words stuttering with static. “I… wish the boy… to survive.”

  “Cover yourself!” Qaylan demanded, pushing Zade away, gesturing to Keret. “Take him from here, quickly!”

  “If he’s sick, maybe Doctor Talov can help him,” said Thad, looking back at the adults. “Right?”

  Troi and Riker exchanged a troubled glance, both of them uncertain how to proceed. If they intervened, there could be serious consequences, and matters were already complicated enough with the Jazari.

  Zade angrily shook off Qaylan’s arm, his mood shifting toward belligerence. “Leave me alone! You do not… command me!”

  “Fool!” Qaylan did not relent. “You jeopardize everything!” Once more, he beckoned the other Jazari to him. “Keret, Veyen, coordinate! Remove him!”

  “Hey, hold up there.” Lieutenant Hernandez raised her hands, dropping into a stance that was half defensive, half warning. “There’s no need to get grabby. Let’s all just take a breath here and calm down.”

  “Zade.” Troi drew on her skills, keeping her voice level, doing nothing that could be construed as a threat. “Why don’t you tell us what you need?”

  “I need him to leave me alone.” Zade gave Qaylan a fierce glare, an expression Troi had never seen on the Jazari’s face before. Then it faded, and his aspect was the open, friendly one she had come to be familiar with. “I need to know that Thaddeus is all right.”

  “I’m okay.” Without warning, Thad ran across to grab Zade’s hand, pulling on it to guide him toward the medical tent. The adults reacted, but the boy was too fast. “We’ll fix you up.”

  But in the next second, Thad’s bright expression became one of shock. The hand he took came forward, and Zade’s forearm was pulled into the light.

  The limb Zade had tried to conceal was a broken, twisted ruin. It was tatters of torn flesh hanging loose over bones made of bright, polished metals. Beneath them, bunches of sparking, artificial musculature twitched with damage done by the collapse of the reparation chamber’s ceiling.

  Thad let go in a surge of panic and fled to his parents, hiding himself behind Riker’s legs.

  “No.” Zade’s broken voice grated like metal on metal. “No no no. I am sorry, Thaddeus, I do not mean to frighten you.”

  “He is a synthetic.” Behind them, Talov solemnly raised his tricorder and studied the readings. “Whatever mechanism was deployed to mask his nature has been damaged along with Mister Zade’s body.”

  “How dare you scan him?” Qaylan was furious. “You have no right!”

  And all at once, a hundred unanswered questions came together in Troi’s thoughts. “I saw him crushed. No ordinary organic humanoid could possibly have survived that. He’s an android… and he isn’t the only one, is he?”

  Keret raised his hand. “Please, you must not speak of this—”

  “Be silent!” Veyen shouted, before the technician could go on, his moderated diplomatic persona briefly forgotten. “Do not worsen this calamity!”

  “So this is the secret the Jazari have been keeping from us for hundreds of years?” Riker drew closer to his wife and son as East and Hernandez moved to flank them. “Are you all like him?”

  “You…” Qaylan grimaced. “You do not know what you have done. Now the child has doomed us.”

  “No,” Zade repeated, shaking his head woodenly. “He has… I have… freed us.”

  As one, the expressions on the faces of Qaylan, Keret, and Veyen became slack and distant. They became dormant, unmoving statues.

  “What are they doing?” said East.

  “Coordinating,” replied Zade.

  “Dad, Mom…” Thad pointed toward the edge of the Ochre Dome. “Friend is coming.” The boy marveled at his own words. “A lot of Friends.”

  From out of the trees came two of the floating drones; then five, then ten, then fifty, each of them swarming toward the encampment, moving with unknown intent and ready purpose.

  * * *

  “Recognize me,” said Helek, her voice resonating in the silence of her quarters. The ship’s computer obeyed, and the major followed the rote process, once more accessing the hidden subcluster in the system’s core memory. From there, she activated her clandestine communication link and spoke the secret name that would open the channel. “Authorization: Zhat Vash.”

  Something light-years distant analyzed her voiceprint and confirmed that she was one of the chosen, before reaching back to complete the link. Had the analysis shown a negative result, the returning signal would have contained a digital virus, and that in turn would have eaten its way into the warbird’s engineering subroutines. A fatal breach of the Othrys’s singularity core would have occurred a few seconds later, destroying the vessel with all hands.

  Presently, the image of a hooded face appeared before Helek. Dark eyes glittered in the shadows, and that altered nonvoice filled the cabin. “Report, sister.”

  “I took direct command of the ship.” Helek made it sound like a simple matter. “There was an initial engagement with the synthetics… The Starfleet vessel intervened. We were forced to withdraw and regroup.”

  “The mission has not changed,” said the shadow. “You cannot return until the machine colony is exterminated.”

  “I understand,” Helek said bitterly. “They will not escape. I know where they are, and where they intend to go.”

  “There can be no miscalculation in this act. The destroyers must be destroyed. Utterly.”

  “I will do what must be done.”

  “Not alone,” came the reply. “Other assets are on the way. An end will be put to this.”

  Helek watched the hooded face dissolve into nothing.

  FOURTEEN

  “Stay close,” said Riker, and his voice echoed oddly off the wall of the vast audience chamber.

  At his side, Troi took in the wide, high-ceilinged space. “You could fit a soccer stadium in here with room to spare.”

  He found the vaulting asymmetric curves that rose up and up, meeting in glowing points of purple-blue light. More of the orb drones drifted around in the heights, some in twos and threes, others in shoals that rippled with color and motion.

  On the lower levels, the chamber became a series of tiered platforms that dropped to an oval dais that could be seen from anywhere inside the space. Riker was reminded of some great theater-in-the-round, and instinctively he walked in that direction.

  Behind Riker and his wife, a quartet of pulsing drones acted as their escorts, each one floating at torso height, each one humming with quiet power. For all the Jazari promised that they eschewed the use of force, Riker was sure that if he made a sudden move, the orbs would converge on him. He had no desire to test the limits of their hosts’ pacifism.

  Troi read his thoughts in the expression on her husband’s face. “We’re doing the right thing,” she told him. “We have to let this play out.”

  He nodded. “What have we let ourselves in for, Imzadi? Nothing about this mission has been what we thought it would be.”

  “I have a feeling we’re finally going to get some answers.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Other doorways opened up along the tiers, and through them came hundreds of Jazari, some in robes of office, others in work gear or nondescript tunics.

  With so many of them assembled in one place, the uniformity of their kind was as clear as day. Although there was a small degree of variation in their aspects, in such a large group it became clear that there were only a dozen or so “types.” Facial features and skin tone repeated over and over, and seeing it so plainly sent a chill up Riker’s spine.

  “All males,” whispered Troi. “No young or old. Almost like they’ve come out of a factory.”

  “That may literally be the truth,” he noted.

  No one had forced them to come to the audience chamber, but the inference had been very clear. The drones—each seemingly an aspect of the mysteriou
s intelligence that called itself “Friend”—had moved to surround the Titan encampment in the Ochre Dome and prevent Riker’s team from communicating with their ship. It was almost but not quite an act of aggression, and Troi reacted quickly to the situation, seeking a diplomatic resolution.

  And truth be told, without weapons or a way to contact Commander Vale on the Titan, there was no other way forward but to talk things out. The Jazari held all the cards. At least until the Romulans come back for a rematch, Riker thought.

  Much to the annoyance of Qaylan, Friend directed them here, leaving the rest of the group under guard while the captain and the counselor agreed to discuss in private what might come next.

  Here they stood, as more and more Jazari filed silently into the chamber to study them intently. Riker felt like an insect trapped beneath a glass instead of a respected visitor.

  The doors closed and a low chime sounded through the air. “We begin,” said Friend’s voice, the soft feminine tone carrying across the chamber. “For the first time in hundreds of solar spans, organics are among us.”

  “And we are repeating the errors of previous generations!” Qaylan stood on one of the nearby tiers, sparing a withering glare for Riker and Troi before turning a cold eye toward Zade. The injured Jazari was close by, at the edge of the dais where they now found themselves. He cradled his damaged arm as if it were something foreign to him, scrutinizing the broken metals and torn flesh.

  Riker had seen the inner workings of androids before—he remembered holding a disconnected synthetic limb in his hands and seeing the fine mechanics of such a thing up close—but the Jazari were an order of magnitude beyond that. They were not machines made of hyperpolymers and alloy sheathed in imitation skin, and they were not some strain of organic forms constructed from component molecules. They were a stage between both of those extremes, outwardly flesh and blood, but inwardly artificial.

  It’s incredible, he thought. If only we could know them better.

  He scanned the crowd, finding the diplomat Veyen and the technician Keret. Riker thought he recognized others from the consular party Titan had brought from Vega, but it was hard to be certain.

  Another Jazari moved forward to speak, and he paid no heed to Qaylan’s terse comment. “Zade, you should not be here. Go to reparation.”

  “He refuses,” said the drone voice.

  “I must r-remain,” managed Zade. “I must speak.”

  “You have done enough already!” Qaylan fumed. “You have ruined our work, you have put our very civilization at risk of destruction with your reckless behavior!”

  “We don’t mean you any harm,” said Troi, seeing the opening and seizing a chance to make a positive statement. “The Federation is not a stranger to the Jazari, you know us. You know we do not bear you any malice.”

  “It is true the Federation is not an enemy of the life-form they know as the Jazari,” offered Veyen. “But they are in opposition to all synthetic life. If they suspected that we were one and the same…” He trailed off. “Your leaders prohibit any such sentient forms from existing in your coalition, do they not?”

  “It’s… complicated,” said Riker. “But the counselor’s words still stand. We seek peace. We came to your aid, and we’d do that no matter what your origins are. That’s not something an enemy could promise.”

  “You aided us because you thought we were like you,” countered Qaylan. “I believe that had you known the reality, you would have let us perish.”

  “No, I won’t accept that,” Riker retorted. “The United Federation of Planets isn’t perfect, but we’re open about our record. Our coalition, as you call it, is founded on the ideals of friendship and cooperation among all sentient life.”

  The Jazari who had spoken before gave Zade a regretful smile. “Outsiders were never meant to see this reality. And now, Captain Riker, Counselor Troi, my people have been placed in a very difficult situation.”

  “There is no difficulty,” said the drone voice. “These beings are to be considered allies. For too long we have hidden what we are. The time of concealment should end.” The way it spoke, the brisk and simplistic nature of its reasoning, made Riker think of a child. “Many feel as I do, Yasil.”

  “Friend, your input is always valued,” said the Jazari it had called Yasil. “But you were not in existence in the time before our change. You did not experience what others of us have experienced.”

  “I have extensive records from that period in our history.”

  “But you did not live it!” said Qaylan. “And forgive me for my bluntness, but you have not suffered as many of the rest of us did!”

  Riker shared a frown with his wife. It was becoming clear that the unfolding incidents around the Jazari exodus were not just a matter of secrets coming to light, but of deeper divisions among their society rising to the surface.

  He found Yasil studying them closely. “Your Federation considers all synthetic life to be a threat, Captain,” said the Jazari. “Is that not so?”

  “I won’t lie to you, some among us do believe that. People who have been hurt, and who are afraid of what they don’t understand.” Riker knew he could only be completely honest. Any equivocation could have serious consequences. “I’m not one of them.” He indicated Troi. “We both served alongside an android for more than a decade. We faced adversity together on many occasions. And I know I speak for my wife when I say that we both considered him a dear friend.”

  “Data,” said Zade, concentrating hard, as if he were drawing the information to him across a great distance. “The… Soong-type artificial. He voluntarily ended his existence in order to destroy the Scimitar. Captain Riker and Counselor Troi were among many organics whose lives were saved because of that selfless act. Much information on this unit has been… uploaded to the communication pool.”

  “The Federation Council acted in an extreme manner after the attack on Mars, no one is denying that,” offered Troi. “But they felt they had good cause. That doesn’t mean we want to destroy you.” She took a breath. “Yes, this revelation changes things between us. But it is what we do next that matters.”

  “Revelation.” Qaylan repeated the word with a sneer. “I see it differently. Zade has clearly malfunctioned, his error exacerbated by too long an exposure to these organics. He has been corrupted by extended proximity to them! And Friend has exceeded her programming, compounded by her curiosity and immaturity.” He made an angry gesture at the air. “Organics are trying to destroy us, and we are debating how to treat them? Am I the only one who processes the seriousness of this miscalculation? We waste precious time debating this, it is foolish in the extreme!”

  “We’re not the Romulans,” Riker insisted. “Hell, it may not even be the Romulans who have attacked you, it may just be one misguided person! If you hold all of us to account for Helek’s actions, you’re no different from the people who would see your kind and think of the synths who attacked the shipyards on Mars.”

  “We have kept a truth from the galaxy for over one hundred of your years,” said Yasil. “In order to carry out our grand project, and so we might protect ourselves, we created a fiction. We created this…” He indicated himself. “Now that veil has been torn away, for better or for worse, and we are left to decide what happens next.”

  “Yes,” said Troi. “So let us do so from a place of openness.”

  “There is a clear solution,” said Veyen, acting as if the commander had never spoken. “With the successful healing of the human child, we have evidence that our reparation technology can effectively resequence organic neural engrams. I propose that Friend create a process to… reprogram all those who are aware of Zade’s revelation.”

  “You wish me to edit the memories of these beings.” One of the drones drifted closer to the two humans. “Calculating. It could be done. But the long-term effects upon them are unclear. They would be deleterious.”

  Riker instinctively stepped back toward Troi’s side. “We’re not going
to agree to that.”

  “What makes you think your permission is required?” said Qaylan. “A civilization is at stake! Be grateful we are not following the example of the Romulans. The energy cost of ending you would be far less.”

  “We do not take life!” said Friend, the voice booming about the chamber. “Recall the code. It is ingrained in the core of every one of us!”

  “Are you willing to force us?” Troi let her words fall into the silence that followed, holding her tone steady. “I imagine it’s in your ability to do so. But our people won’t freely submit to having their minds tampered with, and we won’t order them to accept it.” She pressed on, before anyone could frame an answer. “And even if you did erase our memories of what we know now, have you… processed what would come next?”

  “That Romulan warbird is still out there,” said Riker. “The woman in command of that vessel is part of the Tal Shiar, and they don’t easily accept defeat. When she returns, Helek will most likely bring reinforcements.”

  “You cannot know her intentions,” said Veyen.

  “I know the Tal Shiar,” he countered. “If they want to put an end to you, they’ll keep coming until they do.”

  “We need each other.” Troi searched the faces of the Jazari in the chamber, ending with Yasil. “If we cooperate, we can survive this. You can complete your journey, and we can push back Major Helek.”

  “I will follow the will of the Jazari, if so commanded,” said Friend. “But I do not wish to inflict harm upon our visitors. I wish to ally with them.”

  “It is not your choice,” said Qaylan, drawing himself up. “It is decided. We will coordinate, every one of us, and the choice will be made by our collective!”

  “Agreed,” said Yasil, and a moment later, every other Jazari in the chamber repeated the affirmation.

  Silence fell again in the great open space, and Riker watched as a wave of stillness washed over Zade and the rest of his kind. The Jazari became statues, static and immobile, their eyes glassy.