Star Trek: The Next Generation - 113 - Cold Equations: Silent Weapons

by David Mack

  The android started to fall, then she caught a handrail inside the lift pod.

  He fired again, and this time the beam slammed into the android’s gut. Light flared as she was knocked loose, and then she fell, tumbling out of control as she plummeted to the street.

  Civilians screamed and scattered as the android’s body fell. Several dozen meters above the ground, she bounced off a protruding portion of the hotel’s sign. Her scorched, limp form cartwheeled erratically into the fountain outside the hotel’s entrance. The water in the fountain was far too shallow to offer any kind of cushion, and the body landed with a loud splash, a sickening thud, and an ear-splitting crack.

  La Forge saw that he had become the focal point for a couple of hundred bystanders, all of whom watched fearfully to see what he would do next. He tucked his phaser under his jacket and hurried to check on the fallen android. As he leaned over the edge of the fountain to get a better look at the body, a crimson flash of light behind its eyes was accompanied by a muffled pop of detonation. Then black wisps of smoke snaked out of the stricken android’s ears, nostrils, and slack mouth. He frowned; he recognized when someone was covering their tracks.

  He heard Worf before he saw him. “Excuse me. Stand aside. Move.” The Klingon shouldered his way out of the crowd, and Šmrhová was close behind him. They jogged to La Forge’s side and eyed the sparking, smoldering synthetic corpse in the water. Worf put away his phaser and looked at La Forge. “Nice shot.”

  “Thanks.” Sirens wailed in the night, distant but swiftly getting closer. “Now what?”

  Worf stepped over the fountain’s outer wall and waded out to the body. He waved for Šmrhová and La Forge to join him. “Quickly!” They did as he said, and plodded shin-deep through the ice-cold chlorinated water. When they had surrounded the android, the first officer tapped his combadge. “Worf to Enterprise. Four to beam up. Energize when ready.”

  “Acknowledged,” Chen replied. “Stand by, sir.”

  Šmrhová shot a surprised look at Worf. “Removing evidence from a crime scene? I don’t think the Orions are gonna like that, do you?”

  The air filled with the musical hum of an imminent transporter effect, and Worf shot a devious look at the security chief. “It is easier to obtain forgiveness than permission.”

  18

  Bleary and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Nanietta Bacco sat down at the desk in her bedroom and activated the comm display. A vivid image of Captain Picard appeared, and the venerated starship captain greeted her with a polite smile and a curt nod. “Madam President.”

  “I was told this is urgent, Captain. Urgent enough to merit waking me up?”

  Picard’s mien turned serious. “Yes, I believe so. I wanted to inform you of several important developments in our investigation of the attack in the arboretum.” Icons on the screen indicated that he had transferred data files to her. “The body of Esperanza Piñiero was discovered a few hours ago, in an abandoned building within one of the capital’s less wholesome districts. An autopsy supervised by my chief medical officer, and verified by the chief surgeon of the Hastur-zolis and the Orion medical examiner, has proved that Ms. Piñiero was murdered prior to the attack. Her body was held in stasis and then planted for us to find. In short, she was framed, Madam President, and now we know how.”

  Speaking succinctly and directly, Picard summarized how his crew had come to suspect the shooter in the arboretum was an android, and the process by which their investigation had led to the discovery of Piñiero’s android impostor.

  “Has that android been captured, Captain?”

  “Yes, she has, by my chief engineer, Commander La Forge. Thanks to my first officer, the body is now on board the Enterprise, where it is undergoing extensive study. However, we seem to have aggrieved the local police by removing it from the planet’s surface.”

  Knowing the defensive tendencies and volatile tempers of the Orions, Bacco imagined Picard must be grossly understating the matter. “Don’t worry about that, Captain. I’ll have Ambassador Císol explain to them that it’s a matter of Federation national security.”

  “I’ve also been told that the Sahalax Grand Oasis hotel is quite irate about some damage that Commander La Forge caused in the course of capturing the android.”

  “Screw ’em. They can bill me.”

  Her answer seemed to put the captain at ease. “Thank you, Madam President.”

  “Do you and your crew have any theories about the origin of that android?”

  “Our current theory is that it was sent by the Breen. We know they had unfettered access for an unspecified length of time to the factory the Borg had built for Lore, when he’d promised to lead them to a fully synthetic existence. However, our colleague Mister Data assures us the Breen lack the programming and engineering knowledge to create working positronic brains. Which leaves us searching for clues to explain how this impostor, and the one who impersonated Chairman Kinshal, could have acquired them—or functioned without them.”

  She nodded and stifled a yawn. “Keep me informed of your findings, Captain.”

  “We will.”

  Her mind turned naturally to political concerns. “I’ve also been given to understand that the crew of the Hastur-zolis has been working with your people on the investigation. How has that been? Do you get the sense their efforts are genuine?”

  The captain sat back a bit and considered the question. “To my surprise, yes. My officers tell me that the Gorn have been unusually forthcoming with information and quick to support our actions when we’ve met with opposition from the Orions. To be truthful, they’ve comported themselves more like our allies than like members of a rival power.” He leaned forward, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Do you think that might bode well for the outcome of your summit?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so.” A heavy sigh left her feeling drained, but for the first time since the attack, she felt as if a weight had been lifted from her, and she realized it was because she had been freed from the crushing guilt of doubting her lifelong friend. “Captain, I want to thank you and your crew for all you’ve done since you arrived. I know that I came down on you pretty hard when you got here, maybe harder than I should have. But thanks to you, I know that my friend didn’t betray my trust. I don’t have to wonder what happened; I know.”

  “All part of the service, Madam President.”

  “No, it was much more than that.” As much as she wanted to shed tears of sorrow and relief, she refused to let them fall. In her mind, she could almost hear Piñiero chiding her, It wouldn’t be presidential. “I want you to know that I feel as if I owe you a personal debt of gratitude. You gave Esperanza back to me. Thanks to you . . . now I can grieve.”

  • • •

  Picard struggled to keep his eyes open as he plodded into his quarters. His every step felt leaden, his shoulders ached, and a crick in his neck felt as if it had worsened into a pinched nerve. The day had seemed interminable, one calamity and setback after another. He was relieved to see its end. One can only hope that tomorrow improves our fortunes, he mused.

  Starlight was the only illumination in the main room. The quarters he shared with Beverly and René were located on the starboard side of the Enterprise’s elliptical saucer, which meant they usually faced away from whatever planet the ship might orbit. Now that the ship was holding in a geostationary orbit above the planet’s capital, it shared the city’s schedule of night and day. In just less than ninety minutes, when the planet’s surface and the Enterprise once again faced Pi3 Orionis, the photosensitive coating on the ship’s thousands of transparent aluminum windows would automatically darken to protect the ship’s personnel from being blinded.

  Here’s hoping I’ve long since drifted off to sleep by then.

  His first visit was to René’s room. He leaned in the open doorway and filled with an ineffable bliss as he watched the boy sleep. Nothing in life gave him greater comfort than seeing his son safe and at rest in his own bed.
He had come to view these moments as fleeting instants when, no matter what else had gone wrong in the universe, this much remained right.

  For the sake of stealth, he reached down and slipped off his shoes. Then he padded across the room, his sock feet silent on the carpeted floor, to stand beside René’s bed. The boy’s breathing was slow, deep, and regular, and beneath closed lids his eyes darted to and fro. When I was his age, I dreamed of the stars—or so my father always said. But I’ve already given René the stars. He gazed with wonder at his son. What could he be dreaming of?

  It was a question only René might be able to answer, but Picard wasn’t selfish enough to wake the boy just for that. He reached down and gently stroked René’s fine, almost silken hair. Then he gave the boy a whisper of a kiss on the top of his head before he stole away, sneaking from the room with a light step and bated breath.

  His plan to skulk into his own bed without waking Beverly was dashed when he slipped through the open doorway to see her lying awake, staring at the overhead. She turned on her bedside lamp and acknowledged him with tired eyes. “Thought I heard you come in.”

  “I stopped to check on René.”

  She stretched and yawned. “I figured.”

  He removed his uniform jacket and tossed it into the corner. “Trouble sleeping?”

  “Some.” She watched him sit on the bed and pull off his pants. Her poker face was impenetrable. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

  A kick sent his trousers into the corner atop his jacket. “What about me?”

  “What you did at the reception. Saving my life.” Her features scrunched with disapproval. “What the hell were you thinking, Jean-Luc?”

  He paused with his undershirt half-off, still wrapped around his arms. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” There was real anger in her voice; it was quiet and deeply buried, but its presence was unmistakable. “I was standing right next to you. I saw everything you did.”

  Curious but alarmed, he pitched his undershirt into the corner, then turned to face his wife. “And what, precisely, did you see?”

  Crusher’s blue eyes bored into him. “You were standing in front of an armed assassin, almost close enough to touch her. And with the lives of two heads of state hanging in the balance, you pulled me to the floor. You shielded me.”

  Her ire had taken him by surprise. “Would you have preferred I let her shoot you?”

  “What I would have preferred was for you to defend the president.”

  Despite his sincere wish to remain calm, he felt himself growing defensive. “That’s why she has the Protection Detail, Beverly. Defending her is their job, not mine.”

  “Funny, I don’t recall Captain Kirk making that distinction when he saved President Ra-ghoratreii from a sniper at the Khitomer Conference.”

  Stung, he recoiled and stood. “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve—”

  “You swore an oath!”

  “To defend the Federation, and obey the lawful orders of my superior officers and our elected leaders. I’m a Starfleet officer, not a palace guard.” He softened the edge in his voice and tried a different tack. “If I’d tried to intervene, I might have gotten in the agents’ way and actually prevented them from doing their jobs.”

  She crossed her arms and stared at the ceiling, pointedly avoiding looking at him. “I didn’t think this was the sort of man you were when I married you.”

  Unwilling to suffer her harangue at point-blank range, Picard moved to the end of the bed, desperate for some literal and figurative space in which to regroup. “Maybe I wasn’t.”

  Combing her fingers through her sleep-tangled red hair, Crusher spent a few seconds with her eyes shut. When she opened them, she eyed Picard as if he’d betrayed her. “What are you saying, Jean-Luc? That three years ago you would’ve leaped to her defense?” Dismay and disappointment darkened her angular features. “Has becoming a father changed you that much?”

  “I think it has.” He looked at Beverly but remained silent until she met his gaze and with a subtle easing of her brow signaled that she would let him have his say. “I admit that I chose kin over country. But I think that decision was not only right but logical.”

  He saw that she harbored doubts, but he pressed on. “If Nanietta Bacco had been killed last night, the Federation Council would appoint a president pro tem and schedule a special election. In six weeks or so, a new president would be elected and sworn in. In the interim it would be a tragedy and a political mess of epic proportions, but our system of government is designed to cope with such things. It would go on.”

  Picard edged his way back along the bed, gradually closing the distance between them. “The same would be true if the assassin had killed Imperator Sozzerozs. In the short term, we and the president would have had our hands full preventing it from leading to war, but within days Sozzerozs would be succeeded by his son. From a grand-scale political standpoint, the death of one head of state is little more than a footnote in the history of a civilization.”

  He sat down on the bed beside her and lowered his voice. “But if I had lost you, there would be no replacing you in my life—or in René’s. The same would be true if I’d been killed. Or worse yet, both of us. . . . Beverly, I waited a long time to start a family, perhaps too long. But now that I have one, nothing in the universe matters more to me. Not my president, not my oath of service, nothing. If that diminishes me in your eyes . . . so be it.”

  Crusher spent the next minute deep in thought, mulling all that he had said. He sat beside her, quiet and patient, waiting to see if his confession had made matters better or worse. Then she rolled over, turning her back on him, and tugged the bedsheets up over her shoulder.

  “Beverly . . . ?”

  “Go to sleep, Jean-Luc.” She reached out and turned off her bedside lamp. “I get the feeling tomorrow’s going to be another very long day.”

  19

  Twisted, shattered, bent, and burned, it remained a marvel of engineering. No matter how much damage it had suffered in the course of its capture the previous night, La Forge reminded himself, it was still a Soong-type android. Well, ninety percent of it, anyway.

  Ensconced inside the largest and most extensively equipped research laboratory aboard the Enterprise, the captured android body had been under the strictest guard possible. Armed security officers had been stationed inside and outside the lab, and a transporter-scrambling field had been projected around it since the body’s arrival. La Forge had intended to get some rest and start his tests at 0900, but after lying awake for three hours as the victim of an adrenaline rush, he’d given up trying to sleep and arrived at the lab just before 0800, coffee in hand.

  The sensor array above the workbench was just finishing its first series of detailed scans of the body when the lab door swished open, and Data walked in.

  La Forge put down his padd and stylus, and rushed to meet his friend with a smile on his face. “Data!” The bemused android stuck out his hand for a shake and got a bear hug instead. The engineer gave Data a fraternal slap on the back. “Man, is it great to see you!”

  “It is good to be seen,” Data said, returning the backslapping embrace. They parted, and he nodded toward the body on the workbench. “I was told you captured one of the androids.”

  “Sure did!” He led Data to the table. “I just took a peek at its insides. It’s definitely one of the androids from the factory we found on Mangala, but it’s been heavily modified.”

  Data looked down at the battered duplicate of Esperanza Piñiero. “I can see that.”

  “Yeah, they’ve been upgraded to look fully human—or Orion, or whatever humanoid they want, apparently. But it’s not as sophisticated as the chameleon tech in your body. This one swaps out modular parts to change things like height, body mass, and retinal patterns.” He pulled back a phaser-blackened, scorched-smelling flap of artificial skin from the abdomen and pointed at a device inside the torso. “They’ve also got sensor-feedback sy
stems, so they give off life signs and bioelectrical signatures that make them scan like whatever they want.”

  As he studied the modified android, Data’s eyes widened. “Intriguing.” A birdlike tilt of his head preceded a wry smile. “But not very efficient. Whoever made these changes was likely a skilled roboticist”—he shot a meaningful look at La Forge—“but a mediocre cyberneticist.” He straightened his posture and circled the table to view the body from the other side. “I find it hard to believe that the same entity responsible for such crude modifications to the body could be capable of successfully activating, stabilizing, and programming a positronic brain.”

  “And you’d be right, Data.” He pointed at the head. “Ready for a surprise?” Data nodded, so La Forge carefully detached the exterior cranial plates from the defunct android, exposing the interior of its head. Where he had expected to find a dead positronic matrix from which he might suss raw intel or at least valuable clues, there were only broken, splintered hunks of partially melted black glass. He looked expectantly at Data. “Any idea what that is?”

  Data was perplexed. “It appears to be volcanic glass.”

  “That’s exactly what it is. More to the point, that’s all it is.” La Forge crossed his arms and frowned at the mystery lying on his workbench. “How could this thing function with a chunk of glass for a brain? I mean, that’s almost like saying it literally had rocks in its head.”

  Poking at the cracked obsidian glob, Data creased his brow. “These fractures and deformations are recent. Could this damage have occurred during the battle for its capture?”

  “I think it happened after it hit the ground. Just as I reached the body, I saw a flash of light behind its eyes, and then smoke came out of the ears. I figured it was a self-destruct thermal charge, but I also assumed it was torching a positronic brain, not a glass brick.”

  Data plucked a needlelike fragment of black glass from inside the head and held it up to the light. “I think it is safe to assume that when this unit was functional, this brain was intact. Whatever was done to it has been very effective at preventing us from reverse-engineering it.”