War Stories: Book Two

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “—then yes, we are reading—”

  “—what you are reading.”

  Fabian sighed. “I wish I could say that was a relief.” He was about to tap his combadge when an indicator light went on over the doorway to the lab.

  The da Vinci was at yellow alert.

  Abramowitz pursed her lips. “That can’t be good.”

  “Never is,” Okha muttered.

  “Stevens to bridge. This may not be the best time, sir, but we’ve pried open the golf ball, and, uh—well, it’s interesting.”

  “Good job, Stevens. Report,” Gold said.

  Taking this as a sign that he could go on at greater length despite the alert, Fabian said, “Apparently this is some kind of small, mobile weapon. The outer casing is designed to survive space travel and protect the components, which is why we couldn’t read it until we got it open. We’re gonna do a more thorough analysis now. Unless there’s a more pressing concern?”

  “Not for you. We’re just playing it safe up here, waiting to see if the Dominion wants to crash the party. Let me know what you find out.”

  “We will, sir. Stevens out.” He turned to look at the diminutive, bald-headed aliens next to him. “Okay, Mutt, Jeff, let’s get to work.”

  “I am 110.”

  “I am 111.”

  “There is no Mutt—”

  “—or Jeff here.”

  Again, Fabian sighed. Stick with Duffy for the jokes, he admonished himself.

  As he ran the tricorder over the golf ball, he decided to brave a question. “If you two don’t mind my asking, how did a couple of Bynar civilians wind up on the da Vinci?”

  “None of our kind—”

  “—has ever joined Starfleet—”

  “—although we have assisted Starfleet—”

  “—in many computer-related endeavors.”

  “It was decided—”

  “—that one pairing—”

  “—should serve as observers on a Starfleet Corps of Engineers vessel—”

  “—during this time of war—”

  “—to render assistance where needed.”

  Smiling, Fabian said, “That’s very considerate. You consider enlisting for real?”

  The two Bynars exchanged glances. “We have—”

  “—considered it.”

  Fabian wondered if he had hit upon a sore point. Before he could pursue it, however, two security guards entered. At least, Fabian assumed them to be security. True, they were enlisted personnel, based on their lack of rank insignia, and their uniforms had the gold trim of operations, but Fabian knew a grunt when he saw one. For one thing, they were armed; for another, they had that tense, coiled look that every security guard he’d ever known had—and that no engineer he’d ever met could master. When engineers got tense, they became all frazzled; when security guards got tense, they shot things.

  “Can I help you guys?” Fabian asked.

  “Yellow alert,” the shorter, paler one said. “SOP is that we stand guard on any projects. Core-Breach’s orders.”

  Fabian laughed. “‘Core-Breach’?”

  “That’s Lt. Commander Corsi’s nickname behind her back,” Okha said with a grin. “Nobody’s had the guts to say it to her face.”

  “Well,” the darker, taller guard said with a grin, “not twice, anyhow.” He stuck out a hand. “I’m Vance

  Hawkins.”

  Fabian returned the handshake. “Fabian Stevens. Just came on at the starbase.”

  “Stephen Drew. Welcome to the loony bin, Stevens.”

  “We have—”

  “—found something.”

  Turning around, Fabian saw that the Bynars looked excited. At what, he wasn’t sure. They didn’t carry tricorders, and they had spent the time since Drew and Hawkins entered communicating with each other in a high-pitched whine. Fabian asked them what they found.

  “We have found—”

  “—access to the computer core—”

  “—of the golf ball.”

  “‘Golf ball’?” Drew said with a smirk.

  Okha looked with annoyance at Stevens. “See what you’ve done? Now even the twins are doing it. This is how we wind up with bad names for things.”

  Primly, Abramowitz said, “There’s nothing wrong with golf balls.”

  Looking at his tricorder, Fabian said, “Maybe, but there’s a lot not to like about this one. Can you guys access the core?”

  “Of course,” 110 and 111 said in perfect unison.

  Then they went back to their high-pitched whine. Looking at Okha, Fabian asked, “What is that they’re doing?”

  “It’s a rapid-fire form of communication in straight binary code, and moving at a somewhat ludicrous speed.”

  “Have you ever tried to translate it?”

  Okha frowned. “No. Why would I?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Abramowitz said, “maybe to get some insight into another culture?”

  “That’s your job,” Okha said with a shrug.

  “It should be our responsibility.”

  Suspecting that he was opening an old argument between these two, Fabian said, “Never mind.” He turned back to look at the Bynars, who had now placed two hands—one the left hand, the other the right hand—into the opening Fabian had created in the golf ball. “Should they be touching it like that?”

  The high-pitched whine got a bit louder, and the Bynars’ eyes seemed to roll up into their heads. Fabian noticed that whatever they were saying was perfectly matched. They were uttering their rapid-fire binary code in perfect unison—which, he realized, was why it seemed louder. He had been recording everything with his tricorder already, but now he set it to make a separate record of just the Bynars’ utterances, and to attempt a translation once they were finished. It was as much for his own curiosity as anything, but he thought it might also provide insight into the golf ball.

  “That’s really outstanding.” Fabian looked at Okha and Abramowitz, who seemed less than impressed. “I mean, that level of communication with a computer, it must just be—” He shook his head. “Outstanding.”

  Abramowitz smiled. “You said that already.”

  Shrugging, Okha said, “We’ve all gotten used to it.”

  A very loud, high-pitched wail cut off any response Fabian might have made. He—and everyone else—turned to see 110 and 111 crying out in what looked like pain.

  “Get them out of that!” Okha cried.

  Even as Hawkins and Drew rushed over to the golf ball, Fabian said, “Wait! We don’t know what separating them will do!”

  Ignoring this admonition, Hawkins grabbed for 110.

  That was followed by a flash of light, a massive electrical discharge, and Hawkins being hurled across the lab and into a bulkhead, which he hit with a rather sickening thud.

  Drew tapped his combadge even as he backed off from 111. “Drew to sickbay. Medical emergency in the lab.”

  “On my way,” came Tydoan’s voice.

  Neither 110 nor 111 had budged, though they were still screaming. Fabian listened carefully. “I think they’re still screaming out binary code.”

  “Who cares?” Okha said. “We have to separate them.”

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Drew said.

  Fabian ran over to the assorted tools he’d found when he was trying to reassemble his tool kit. He needed one particular tool that he’d seen. He was amazed when he saw it before, as he thought his mother was the last person in the entire galaxy who actually had one.

  C’mon, c’mon, it’s in here somewhere.

  The Bynars’ screams continued.

  Finally, he found what he thought might work.

  As he rummaged, Drew said, “What, you’ve got some super-scientific gizmo that’ll get ’em outta there?”

  “Something like that,” Fabian said as he stood up, holding a long piece of metal, with two small prongs at the end of it. One of the prongs was movable.

  Drew frowned. “What the hell is
that?”

  “A wrench.” Fabian rummaged some more and found a pair of nonconductive gloves. “Everybody stand back,” he said as he put them on.

  Abramowitz and Okha did so—Drew did not, but stayed about a meter behind Fabian. Fine, if Mr. Security Guard wants to keep an eye on me, who am I to say no?

  Slowly, Fabian approached the golf ball. 110’s (or was it 111’s?) left hand was in the left-hand part of the opening, with 111’s (or 110’s) right hand in the right-hand part. Both their mouths were wide open, letting loose with a maddening barrage of high-pitched ones and zeroes. This close, Fabian could see the arc of electricity linking them to the golf ball—indeed, that was all that linked them. Neither hand was actually touching any part of the inner workings of the golf ball, which made Fabian’s life easier.

  I hope to hell this works.

  He shoved the wrench in under 110’s (or 111’s) hand.

  A flash of light encompassed his eyes, and the next thing Fabian knew, he was lying on the floor, on top of something rather lumpy, and feeling a bit dazed. “What happened?” he asked in a slurred voice.

  “You fell on top of me is what happened,” came a muffled voice from under him, which he realized was Drew.

  Clambering into a standing position, Fabian chuckled. “I did tell you to stand back.”

  Drew also got upright. “Remind me to listen to you next time.”

  “Fine. Listen to me next time.”

  Sighing, Drew said, “Yeah, you’re gonna fit in just fine here.” He looked around.

  Fabian did likewise and was at once glad to see that 110 and 111 were now separated from the golf ball and distressed to see them unconscious—possibly dead—on the floor. The little boxes they each wore on their belt—some kind of processing unit, he knew—were broken and smoking, small components falling onto the deck next to them.

  Tydoan entered then, along with two other people, one an older human male, the other a young human female, all in blue-trimmed uniforms.

  “What is it this time?” the Bolian asked. Then he noticed the security guard against the bulkhead. “Not Hawkins again. I’m going to just give him his own damn bunk in sickbay. Copper, Wetzel, look him over. I’m gonna take a look at the twins.”

  The other two started examining Hawkins while the elderly Bolian knelt down next to 110 and 111. As he ran the scanner over them, he started muttering, “Damn stupid engineers sticking their noses in where they don’t belong, and then they wonder why they’re hurt all the time. Should just retire and be done with it.”

  “Will they be okay, Doctor?” Fabian asked.

  Tydoan ignored Fabian as he finished his examination. Then he stood upright, groaning. Fabian thought he heard the Bolian’s knees actually crack. “They’ll be fine,” he finally said. “Bynars can take a heaping dose of juice, but this was more than a heaping dose. I’ll bring ’em to sickbay and—”

  “That won’t—”

  “—be necessary.”

  Fabian looked down and saw that the Bynars were both starting to rise.

  “Hang on, you two,” Tydoan said. “You took a major jolt, and—”

  “The ‘jolt’ we took—”

  “—is well within—”

  “—standard Bynar tolerances, Doctor.”

  As they spoke, Fabian’s tricorder beeped. He looked down at the display, and his jaw became unhinged. Oh, this isn’t good. Quickly, he switched his tricorder off and purged the records of the Bynars’ utterances, suddenly quite grateful that he’d isolated them.

  “We thank you—”

  “—for your concern—”

  “—but it is unwarranted.”

  “Besides, we have critical information—”

  “—that we must impart to Captain Gold—”

  “—right away.”

  Fabian looked at Tydoan. “I’m afraid they’re right, Doctor.”

  “Fine.” The doctor threw up his hands. “Don’t take care of yourselves. What do I care?” He walked over to Hawkins.

  “Stevens to Gold,” Fabian said, tapping his combadge. “We have some more information on the golf ball, sir. And it’s not good.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Fabian sat in the observation lounge, along with Gold, Corsi, and the two Bynars. They had waited that long to have the meeting only because 110 and 111 needed to replicate new data boxes. Apparently their ability to function at a slow enough level to interact with other life-forms was aided considerably by those boxes, and without them, they’d never be able to process data slowly enough for anyone else to understand.

  “The golf ball appears to be a multipurpose weapon, Captain,” Fabian said, calling up the sensor schematics from his tricorder on the lounge’s viewscreen. “Its housing, as I said before, is the same as that used by the Jem’Hadar for their torpedoes. It can survive the ravages of space and of atmosphere with little difficulty. It’s also equipped with three different miniaturized directed energy weapons of similar design to that of a Jem’Hadar warship.”

  “How powerful?” Corsi asked.

  “The yield is roughly equivalent to that of a Defiant-class ship’s phasers.”

  “Gevalt,” Gold muttered.

  “There’s more, I’m afraid.” Fabian touched a control, and the image focused in on another component of the inner workings. “What you’re looking at there is a propulsion system that allows the golf ball to travel at speeds up to full impulse. In addition, it contains a computer core that is very complex, which 110 and 111 were able to commune with briefly.”

  “We are still—”

  “—recovering from the shock—”

  “—but we learned that the device—”

  “—is capable of independent motion—”

  “—and firing, based on a sophisticated—”

  “—artificial intelligence.”

  Corsi shook her head. “A self-sufficient, self-directing, obscenely fast mobile weapon?”

  “More than that—”

  “—we’re afraid, Lieutenant Commander.”

  Gold shook his head. “Much more, I don’t think I could take.”

  “The golf ball can transmit—”

  “—a computer virus.”

  Fabian smiled wryly. “It almost ate my tricorder. I was recording what 110 and 111 were saying, and they were screaming the code for the virus. Luckily, I purged it before it got too far—though if they’d gone on much longer…”

  “We have already begun a diagnostic—”

  “—of all the computers on the ship—”

  “—to make certain that no other systems—”

  “—besides Mr. Stevens’s tricorder—”

  “—were affected.”

  Gold leaned back in his chair. Fabian thought it interesting that, while Corsi looked a frightening combination of appalled and angry, Gold only looked thoughtful—and not nearly as shocked as Fabian would have expected. Almost as if he knew what was coming.

  “How pervasive,” the captain asked after a moment,

  “would this virus be?”

  “It transmits—”

  “—in machine language.”

  “There is no known computer system—”

  “—that would not be vulnerable to it—”

  “—in theory.”

  Leaning forward, Gold asked, “In practice?”

  “We believe that we were in contact with the program—”

  “—long enough to devise a countermeasure.”

  “Good.” Again he leaned back. “In a set of reports from Starfleet Intelligence that I received two weeks ago, they mentioned that the Dominion was working on something like this. The mobility, they mentioned. The weapons, they mentioned. The virus, they didn’t mention. They also thought the prototype would be ready to go within a month.”

  Corsi pursed her lips. “Two weeks is within a month.”

  “That’s what both Admiral Ross and I were afraid of when they found that thing. And now we lea
rn that it’s worse than we thought.”

  “Red alert. Captain Gold to the bridge.”

  Gold tapped his combadge even as the alert lights bathed the observation lounge in a red glow. “Report, McAllan.”

  “Two Galor -class Cardassian warships and a Jem’Hadar strike ship have warped into the system, sir. The Appalachia and the Sloane are moving to intercept.”

  “Damn. Get us between them and the relay. Our priority is to protect the away team. Gold to Salek.”

  “Salek here.”

  “The Dominion just came to find out what happened to their beacon, Commander. How much more time do you need?”

  “For a satisfactory repair, nineteen minutes, ten seconds. For a repair that will suffice until such a time as this star system is more secure, four minutes, thirty seconds.”

  “Good.” Gold rose from his seat and headed toward the exit. “Transporter room, this is Gold. Get a lock on the away team and beam them back here—”

  The doors closed on him, leaving Fabian with Corsi, 110, and 111. The security chief rose from her chair and headed toward the other exit.

  “Uh, excuse me?”

  Corsi stopped, turned, and regarded Fabian with a look that made the engineer want to crawl under the table for the next six months. “What?”

  “Ah, I’m new—I don’t really know what my duty station is during red alert.”

  In a tight voice, Corsi said, “Unless you’ve been given a specific duty assignment, which you obviously haven’t, you’re to report to your quarters.”

  Without another word, Corsi turned on her heel and left.

  “Is she always that—direct?” Fabian asked the Bynars.

  “No,” 110 said.

  “Usually she is worse,” 111 added.

  “Lovely. Well, I guess I should go to my quarters.” Fabian hadn’t even been in his quarters since he came on board. And to think, I gave up Utopia Planitia for this….

  * * *

  “Captain on the bridge!”

  David Gold rolled his eyes at the words of his tactical officer. “McAllan, knock that off and give me a report.” Since reporting to the da Vinci two months ago, McAllan had insisted on that bit of protocol even though the captain himself found it unnecessary at best and embarrassing at worst. Leaving aside any other consideration, the da Vinci bridge was tiny enough that Gold’s presence there would be patently obvious to anyone on it without the need for it to be blared from the tactical station….