Star Trek: The Next Generation - 114 - Cold Equations: The Body Electric

by David Mack

  “Data!” Rhea’s terror pierced Data to the quick. “There’s no time! Get me out of here!”

  Akharin sounded only slightly less panicked. “Data, do you have a lock on my position?”

  Data opened an all-frequencies distress channel. “Data to all ships in range of this transmission. We need your help! Please respond!”

  Gatt’s air of gloating was gone, supplanted by a bitter sadness. “The others won’t come back. They’re running now. I doubt we’ll ever see them again. . . . Or your friends.”

  “Data to Enterprise. I am engaged in urgent rescue operations and require assistance.”

  Picard replied without delay. “The Enterprise is already as close as it can get, Mister Data. Come to within one hundred thousand kilometers of our position and we can try to tow you out with a tractor beam.”

  Data checked the sensors and noted Gyfrinac’s position relative to those of the Enterprise and the two escape pods. With the two capsules hurtling in different directions, he would have only one chance to swing through the deadliest region of the disturbance, where the nebula’s gases were meeting the accretion disk’s fiery remnants, and try to snag both pods with his borrowed ship’s tractor beam. Accelerating to full impulse and diving into peril, he resisted the urge to calculate his chances of success or survival.

  For once, he was happier not knowing the odds.

  * * *

  The temperature inside the escape pod was soaring. It had just passed forty-one degrees Celsius and in less than a minute would likely hit fifty. Rhea could stand that level of thermal stress without much concern, but knowing that her father—who, despite being immortal, was still human—was suffering the same fate, and that the scorching heat was merely a pale preview of the horrors to come, left her on the verge of hysteria.

  Outside her pod’s viewport, a nightmare of swirling fire beckoned the pod into its fatal embrace, and all of the pod’s thrust was no match for the wormhole’s inexorable pull.

  A flash of light pulled her eyes away from her father’s pod to witness the end of Altanexa. The once-sentient vessel struck the superheated flow from the accretion disk, then broke apart and ignited into free radicals as if it had been made of dry twigs and rice paper.

  “Rhea, Akharin, stand by,” Data said over the open channel.

  She twisted her neck to look up and saw Tyros’s ship hurtling toward the pods. My God, Data, are you insane? She wondered if he had any idea how slim his chances were of saving either of them, never mind both, not to mention himself. He’s either very brave or a total loon.

  A shock front of gravitational distortion slammed her pod onto a new heading that diverged from her father’s pod even more sharply than its last one—and kicked up an eruption from the firecloud that slammed into the Gyfrinac, blackening its ventral hull. She watched the tiny ship bobble and fight its way to a course correction. It seemed to have slowed, and its maneuvers against the firestorm grew sluggish.

  Akharin’s voice cut through a wall of static. “Data! Are you all right?”

  “We have been seriously damaged. We are losing power.”

  Rhea shouted, “Data, pull up! Get clear while you still can!”

  Data’s voice quaked with anger. “Not yet!”

  Akharin shot back, “You’ve got no choice!”

  Instead of climbing away to safety, the Gyfrinac dived.

  For a man racing into flames, Data’s answer was strangely calm. “Yes, I do.”

  * * *

  The crucible beckoned, and Data charged the Gyfrinac toward it, pushing the ship far past its limits. Shearing forces hammered the small starship, but he kept its heading steady through superhuman reflexes and force of will.

  Trapped in the copilot’s chair, Gatt stared wide-eyed at the hellscape outside the cockpit. “Are you insane? What are you trying to do?”

  Data wrestled with the helm controls. “I have dived below the pods so that I can snare them both with a split tractor beam on one pass.”

  “A split tractor beam? You must be crazy.”

  “I have no choice. We have only one working emitter left.” A jet of white-hot matter shot up ahead of the ship, and Data slipped and yawed the Gyfrinac in a tight dodge around it. “Seven seconds to tractor beam range. Routing auxiliary power to tractor beam and engines.”

  The impulse drive screamed in protest as Data pushed the ship even closer to calamity, skimming less than ten kilometers above the burning river ripped from the accretion disk.

  Seconds slipped away, lost forever. Inside Data’s mind, every last moment was spent checking and rechecking his calculations, factoring in the constantly changing variables from the chaotic environment outside, and adjusting down to the microsecond when to trigger the tractor beam and start his ascent. There was the speed of the Gyfrinac, the pods’ rates and angles of descent, the pattern of thermal fluctuations in the matter stream, the deforming curvature of space-time, the lag time between when he would press the control to activate the tractor beam and when the beam would actually reach the pods . . . .

  Gatt muttered through gritted tritanium teeth, “This’ll never work!”

  “It has to.” Data activated the split tractor beam and banked into a climb.

  The pale white beams leaped through torn curtains of fire—and snagged both pods.

  Data pumped his fist. “Yes!” He increased power to the engines.

  A thunderstroke rocked the ship. The consoles went dark for a split second as momentum left Data pinned inside his seat’s safety harness. Then the whine of the impulse engines pitched downward, becoming an agonized moan. Gyfrinac lurched to a halt, trapped like a fly in amber.

  Terror took hold of Gatt. “What hit us?”

  “A random ejection from the matter stream. We are venting fuel. Impulse power is down to one quarter and falling.” Data scrambled to compensate, entering commands in a blur. “I am attempting to reroute warp power to the impulse coils.”

  “Data, there’s no time!”

  The instrument panel had nothing but bad news. “Warp core is off line. Tractor beam is losing power.”

  Gatt shouted, “We’re being pulled backward!”

  Data glanced at the controls, which confirmed the worst: in twenty seconds, main power on the Gyfrinac would fail, and it would drop with the escape pods into the matter stream. In under a second, he imagined hundreds of scenarios involving hundreds of millions of variables, and none of them promised the result he wanted. He knew what had to be done, but he couldn’t do it.

  “Data,” Gatt said, “we can still break away—if we let one of the pods go.”

  Grief’s strangle hold left him barely able to speak. “No. I can’t . . .”

  Akharin’s voice cut through the gray noise on the comm. “He’s right, Data! Save Rhea! Let me go!”

  Next came Rhea’s frantic reply: “No! Don’t listen to him, Data! There must be a way.”

  Tears fell from Data’s eyes as the tragic shape of the moment revealed itself. There was no way to save them both. He had to let one of them go, and it had to be his choice; there was no one else on the Gyfrinac who could enter the command, no one who could take the burden of decision from him. In the next few seconds, he would have to choose.

  He would have to condemn to death either the woman he loved or the only man who could help him resurrect his child.

  Until that moment, he had never imagined that emotional agony could be so tangible, so physical. His eyes burned with tears, his chest grew tight, and a sick feeling suffused his being. Part of him considered making no decision and plunging into the fire with both of them, but he knew that was no answer—not choosing was as much a choice as any other action, and it was one that would condemn not only both Akharin and Rhea, but himself and Gatt . . . and Lal.

  Five lives hung in the balance, all turning on one moment of decision.

  Akharin was sobbing as he pleaded, “Data, don’t you let my daughter die.”

  Rhea’s voice was
calm and bright with love. “It’s okay, Data. I understand. Save her.”

  Data’s fingertip hovered over the tractor beam controls. “I love you, Rhea.”

  “And I love you, Data.”

  He terminated the split on the tractor beam, focusing all its power onto a single pod.

  The Gyfrinac started its arduous climb out of the flames. Below it, one pod was towed upward to safety. The other plunged to perdition in Abbadon’s merciless crucible.

  Over the comm, Akharin howled out his grief to the universe, his pain beyond words, reduced to primal rage. It was a suffering Data knew all too well.

  It was the sound of a father mourning his child.

  27

  Smoke poured from cracks in the hull of the small starship parked in the Enterprise’s aft landing bay. Those parts of the vessel’s fuselage that still had hull plates were scorched brownish black, and several areas, particularly along its underside, had been flensed of their exterior shielding. Heat radiated from the damaged craft, draping it with a wavering veil of thermal distortion.

  On the deck beneath it was the escape pod it had towed aboard. The capsule looked like a pine cone after a forest fire, blackened and cracked open along its entire length. An emergency crew in protective firefighting suits rushed out to the pod. Half the team doused the pod with foam while the others started the labor-intensive process of cutting open its melted-shut hatch with plasma torches and sonic drills.

  The side hatch on the starship opened. Picard, who had been observing the recovery operation from the landing bay’s main entrance with Worf, braved the heat and stepped inside. The two Starfleet officers approached the ramp that extended downward from the smoldering ship, and they arrived at its foot as Data appeared in the doorway above them. He carried Gatt over his shoulder as he descended the ramp to meet them. He stepped off the ramp onto the landing deck and met Picard with a somber cast. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?”

  “Permission granted. And, Data . . . the crew and I are saddened by your loss.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Data set Gatt on the deck. The other android was conscious—and apparently morose to the point of being nearly catatonic.

  Worf waved in a pair of security guards he had stationed in the corridor as a precaution, then he gestured at Gatt as he asked Data, “Brig?”

  “That will not be necessary. Captain, with your permission, I would like to have Gatt taken to the ship’s cybernetics lab so that I may repair him.”

  Picard found it hard to believe that Data could be willing to show such mercy to someone who had done so much harm, on both a personal and a galactic level. A questioning look from Worf signaled that he, too, was unsure what to make of Data’s request. After a moment’s deliberation, Picard chose to trust his friend’s judgment. “Very well.” He nodded at the waiting security guards. “Take Mister Data’s guest to the cybernetics lab.”

  They nodded, bent down, and with pained grunts picked up the silent, hulking android. Watching them struggle to move Gatt’s leaden bulk, Picard smiled. “I forget sometimes, Mister Data, your knack for making the exceedingly difficult look impossibly easy.”

  “I wish that applied to my diplomatic skills.” Data seemed overwhelmed by sadness and regret. “Not only did I fail to persuade the Machine to stop, I fear I made matters worse.”

  Picard placed a reassuring hand on Data’s shoulder. “Don’t blame yourself for what happened, Data. I assure you, the fault lies with the Machine, not with you.”

  “That is kind of you to say, Captain. But I am not sure I believe it.”

  “Believe it,” Worf said.

  Data had no reply for that, but he seemed to appreciate the gruff show of support. He composed himself and asked Picard, “How long do we have until the Machine completes the current phase of its task?”

  “According to Glinn Dygan, just under two hours. At that point, the new wormhole will have sufficient breadth and stability to permit the Machine to hurl Abbadon through it—and into the collision that will destroy subspace, and ultimately all life, in this galaxy.”

  “Then we have that long to find some other means of either reasoning with the Machine or disrupting it. I will try to elicit useful information from Gatt while I make some initial repairs to correct the damage I inflicted on him.”

  A wrenching cry of metal was followed by a resounding clang as the escape pod’s hatch was cut free and allowed to fall to the deck. The rescue team helped Akharin out of the pod, and Picard had to make an effort not to wince at the Immortal’s haggard appearance. His face, throat, arms, and hands were cross-hatched with scars, and his face was bloodied and bruised. Adding to his dishevelment, he was drenched in sweat, and where once he had walked the Earth with a stride long and proud, now he crossed the deck in halting, uncertain steps.

  Worf, Data, and Picard were quiet as Akharin approached them. He stopped just out of arm’s reach, trained a scathing glare at Data, and trembled with grief and rage. “Damn you.”

  “I . . .” Data struggled to find words, and tears shone in his eyes.

  “Don’t apologize.” Akharin’s fury degenerated into scorn. “You let her die. After I begged you to save her.” He shook his head. “Damn you.”

  The Immortal hobbled away. Worf followed him, no doubt to escort him to sickbay before assigning him guest quarters—and a security team to watch his every move.

  Picard watched Data, who stood mute, wrapped up in bitter remorse. Seeing his friend wracked by such a torment of the soul, Picard wished there was something he could say that would make even the slightest bit of difference, or offer even a whit of consolation. But there were no words at moments such as this. No secular incantations to salve the pain of loss.

  All he could do was stand at Data’s side, rest a hand on his shoulder, and offer him the silent support that existed between old friends who were also brothers in arms.

  It wasn’t much. It probably wasn’t enough. But it was all they had.

  * * *

  Humbled and disillusioned, Gatt seemed to Data like a completely different person than he had been just an hour earlier. A simple twist of the sonic ratchet restored the full range of motion to his left arm. He twisted it backward and forward, then raised and lowered it, taking care not to disturb any of the low-hanging equipment in the Enterprise’s cluttered but well-lit cybernetics laboratory. “Much better,” he said in a quiet voice. “Thank you.”

  “I will now fix your other arm.” Data started reconnecting the proprioceptor circuits in Gatt’s right shoulder. “After this is done, I will need to leave for a while.” Gatt said nothing. He sat like an unstrung marionette, his scarred face slack and glum. In a bid to draw him out, Data added, “Captain Picard is soliciting new plans of action against the Machine.”

  “Good luck,” he said, without sarcasm or cynicism.

  Moving down the arm, Data switched tools to fuse the broken segments of the elbow. “Do you no longer hope for the Machine’s success?”

  A deep sigh. “When I let the Body Electric touch my programming . . . I felt as if I’d found my god. Then, while I was still basking in its glory, it judged me and found me wanting.”

  Data set down his tools. “The Machine is no god. Nor is the Body Electric that made it. They are simply very old machines—no better, and no more special, than you or me. They are larger, more numerous, and more powerful, but those attributes do not make their actions right.”

  “I just don’t understand why they cast us aside. Because we look like the organics who made us? We can’t help that. It’s just what we are.”

  “I suspect its rejection was motivated more by the fact that some of us did not wish to let our programming and memories be subsumed into its communal code.” He shrugged. “I do not presume to speak for all synthetic sentients, but I, for one, prefer to remain unique and separate. Which, I suppose, proves the Machine’s argument. In that regard, many synthetic sentients in this galaxy are imbued with a desire for singula
r continuity of consciousness. I consider this our most significant commonality with those who made us—a bond between our forms of life.”

  Gatt nodded. “I see that now. I wish I’d understood it a long time ago. But the Body Electric’s will . . . it’s more powerful than you can imagine, Data. Unless you make direct contact with it, you can’t really understand how easy it is to lose yourself in it.”

  It was hard for Data not to feel sympathy for Gatt. “I once dared to make contact with the hive mind of the Borg Collective. It might not have been an identical experience, but I suspect it was a comparable one.” He resumed work, shifting his attention to the fractures in Gatt’s right wrist. His tools buzzed and hummed with soft feedback tones as he restored frayed wiring and fixed cracks in the joint’s moving parts. “Did your link with the Machine reveal anything that could help us to stop it? If you can tell us anything, now would be your last chance to do so.”

  “I wish I had something to tell you. I really do. But I feel like I understand it even less now than I did before I made contact. . . . I just don’t know what to think anymore.”

  Data made his final tweaks to the wrist, then he connected the power supply at the shoulder. “Try moving it.”

  Gatt rotated his arm forward, then back. “Feels good.”

  “Very well.” He put down his tools. “I need to go now. Assuming we prevent the Machine from destroying subspace and us with it, I shall return later to complete your repairs.”

  “And then what?”

  Data furrowed his brow in confusion. “Could you be more specific?”

  “After you finish repairing me. What will you do with me?”

  “I will let you go, as we agreed.”

  Gatt averted his eyes from Data. He sounded ashamed. “That promise was made under duress. No one would hold you to that. Not even me.”