by David Mack
Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
* * *
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
for all who dare to oppose the invincible in the name of freedom
Historian’s Note
The main narrative of this story takes place in late 2386, a few months after Julian Bashir and Sarina Douglas’s mission for Section 31 to the alternate universe (Section 31: Disavowed), and roughly two years after the reincarnation of Data (Cold Equations, Book I: The Persistence of Memory) and the resurrection of his android daughter, Lal (Cold Equations, Book III: The Body Electric). This story’s secondary narrative spans several years preceding and following the founding of the United Federation of Planets.
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.
—Dr. Thomas Fuller
Gnomologia, 1732
One
Stunned, bleeding, and falling like a stone, Julian Bashir was half-conscious when he and Sarina Douglas struck the ring-shaped metal platform. She landed on her back with a brutal thud. He crashed down on his right side and heard his ulna break. The fractured bone tore through flesh and fabric, flooding his arm with pain.
He struggled to breathe. His nose was broken, and his lips were swollen and split. He rolled onto his back to get the weight off his broken arm. Above him loomed the auxiliary control center of Memory Alpha’s main computer tower. Beyond the platform, the Federation archive’s underground city of core towers, each over two hundred meters tall and fifty meters in diameter, stretched away in concentric rings and vanished into the far unlit unknown.
All Bashir wanted to do was succumb to fatigue. Defensive wounds on his forearms stung with fresh cuts, and the sickening pain blooming deep within his torso told him he was bleeding inside. He doubted he could stand, much less force himself to endure a one-handed climb up the ladder to the facility’s main console.
Turning his head to look at his left hand was agony, but it had to be done. He opened his fist to see the data chip he had fought so hard to protect. It was intact, which was more than he could say for his palm. The chip’s corners had cut into his flesh because he had clutched it with such ferocity. He tucked the precious chip into one of his pressure suit’s chest pockets.
I didn’t come this far to quit here, he told himself.
Trying to sit up made his head swim. He rolled onto his left side and fought to push himself away from the metal grating. Get up. Get up!
His pulse thundered in his temples and made his skull feel as if it were being broken open from within. Probably a concussion, he realized. His suspicion was confirmed by a nascent urge to vomit. No time for that now. Have to keep moving.
Raised edges on the steel deck’s diamond-shaped grating bit into his knees and palm as he crawled to the ladder. He locked his one good hand on a rung and looked back at Sarina. She lay still, twisted and pallid. There was no time to assess her injuries; only minutes remained for Bashir to finish the mission that had brought him here—his first and perhaps last chance to strike the deathblow that would end the vile cabal he knew as Section 31.
He knew he should climb, but his heart demanded he go back to help Sarina. In spite of the ticking clock, he couldn’t forget he loved her. How much he would always love her.
Bashir let go of the ladder and looked back, but his conscience halted him. If I go to her now . . . how many more will die because I was selfish? This mission was bigger than her life, or his. Too much was at stake.
With his one good hand, he climbed the ladder. His broken right arm dangled, useless and vulnerable. Stabbing sensations filled his gut as he pulled himself upward. It took all his will to keep his grip on the rungs and continue his ascent; his body was desperate to give in, surrender to gravity, and plunge into the shadowy abyss between the core towers.
By the time he reached the apex of the ladder and clawed his way onto the control center’s upper level, he was delirious with exhaustion. He spent a moment on his knees, fighting to catch his breath. Ahead of him, at the end of a twenty-meter catwalk, was the auxiliary control panel of the main core. Bathed in icy blue light, it beckoned him. A glance at his wrist chrono confirmed he had barely two minutes to reach the console and finish this war.
He reached up and seized the catwalk’s railing. Every muscle in his body burned in protest as he pulled himself to his feet. Holding the railing to steady himself, he plodded forward. Each step shook drops of blood from the broken bones of his right arm.
The closer he got to the main console, the softer his vision became. He hoped to remain conscious long enough to complete his task, one staggering in its simplicity: all he had to do was insert the data chip into the secure input node on the console. The embedded software on the chip would do the rest.
If only we could have uploaded this remotely, instead of having to carry it into the most heavily guarded data archive in the galaxy—
The dull pressure of a punch was followed by a knifing pain between Bashir’s shoulder blades—ice-cold at first, then white-hot. He couldn’t see the dagger in his back, but he knew for a fact it was there.
Bashir tried to soldier on, only to find he could no longer feel his legs. They buckled under him as if they were made of rubber. He used his left arm to break his fall, but his bearded chin slammed onto the catwalk’s steel plates.
So close . . . The console was just a couple of meters away. Bashir fought to pull himself forward, his bruised and slashed left arm laboring to drag his entire body weight the length of two long strides that suddenly might as well be two light-years.
Behind him, halting steps echoed on the catwalk.
At the base of the console Bashir fished the data chip from his pocket. Clutching it, he extended his blood-caked hand toward the console’s secure input terminal only to find it stubbornly out of reach. To finish his mission, he needed to stand one last time.
The side of his hand found the console’s edge, but he couldn’t pull himself to his feet. He lost his grip and fell to the deck with his back to the console, facing his slowly approaching enemy, the agent of his imminent destruction.
In that moment Bashir realized two terrible truths.
His mission had failed, and he was about to die.
TEN DAYS EARLIER
Two
It was only natural for Ozla Graniv to expect an unusual reception when responding to such a peculiar invitation, but the Trill investigative journalist hadn’t anticipated being shushed the moment her hosts greeted her.
Double doors parted ahead of Graniv to reveal Professor Ziya Weng, the chair of the computer sciences department at the Dresden University of Technology. Weng pressed her index finger to her pursed lips—a somatic gesture that among most humans had come to mean be silent. Standing beside Weng but searching the campus behind Graniv with anxious eyes was an Andorian thaan, who Graniv assumed was one of Weng’s colleagues.
Weng looked to be a contemporary of Graniv’s—both women were in their early to mid-fifties, of average height, with dark hair betraying the first strands of gray. Graniv preferred to wear her naturally wavy hair loose, while Weng kept hers in a taut bun. The Andorian, meanwhile, stood at least twenty centimeters taller than either of them, and his crown of snow-white hair was tied into a fashionable braided tail that reached his shoulder blades. Both the academics w
ore simple off-white lab uniforms, which made Graniv feel a tad overdressed, even though her ensemble of slacks, shirt, and jacket was, by any reasonable measure, quite modest.
She followed them inside the computer sciences building. Its stately exterior dated back nearly four centuries, but its interior recently had been remodeled in a sleek style. They passed several classrooms set up like amphitheaters, with tiers of seats half encircling a professor’s dais, and a number of offices hidden behind semiopaque doors stenciled with their assigned occupants’ names and honorifics.
A short ride in a lift took the trio down to a long corridor in the building’s lowest sublevel. With each step they moved deeper into the bowels of the building, and Graniv wondered what she had gotten herself into this time.
Weng had approached Graniv two days earlier in Melbourne, after Graniv had finished giving a lecture on journalistic ethics and the role of the news media in an interstellar society. Though their conversation on the way out of the auditorium had been brief and perfunctory, Weng had insisted on shaking Graniv’s hand as they said good-bye. As they shook hands, she had passed Graniv a note folded into a tiny square. Neither of them had spoken of it in that moment; it clearly had been meant as a clandestine missive.
Reading the note later in the privacy of her hotel room, Graniv noted three things about it that kindled her journalistic interest. The first was its invitation, to come and bear witness to something that had the potential to expose a major conspiracy, one with ramifications that might span the entire Federation. The second was its plea that she not mention the letter or the conspiracy, either aloud or in writing, in any public place or over any means of transmitted communication. The third and most fascinating detail was that the note had been scribbled by hand on a piece of paper so old and brittle it nearly fell apart when she first unfolded it.
Was it evidence that Weng was paranoid? Or might she really be onto something so major, so dangerous, that she couldn’t employ any means of communication other than this? Either way, Graniv suspected there might be a newsworthy story in it.
At the end of the long corridor, Weng and the thaan unlocked a door labeled DATA FORENSICS LABORATORY – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. They led her past it, into a sprawling space packed with clutter piled high atop workbenches. Everywhere the Trill looked she saw the guts of old computers denuded of their façades. Loose ODN cables, scatterings of old microprocessor chips, and a million tiny gizmos she couldn’t begin to identify littered the place.
Near the back of the lab stood a large cube-shaped structure. Its frame was wrapped in a translucent silvery mesh secured to an inner grid of secondary support beams. A single bundle of cables penetrated the cube at the center of its roof. The only point of ingress Graniv saw was a door that faced them. She and her hosts remained silent as they neared the cube. This time, it was the Andorian who entered the access code and ushered Weng and Graniv inside. He followed them in and locked the door behind him.
The cube’s interior was as organized as the lab outside was unkempt, and it was evident, even to a nonexpert such as Graniv, that the computer systems inside were beyond antiquated. She didn’t recognize most of the components she saw or the tools that lay in fastidiously arranged rows and columns on sterile sheets between them.
Weng reached up to a small control device dangling from the bundled cables overhead and flipped a few switches. A deep hum pervaded the cube and sent vibrations through the floor that Graniv felt in her molars. Only then did Weng and her colleague exhale in subdued relief.
“Thank you for your patience, Ms. Graniv.” Weng gestured to her peer. “This is Professor Erethilisar th’Firron. He heads up our forensic data research team.”
Graniv shook th’Firron’s blue hand. “Professor. A pleasure.”
“Likewise, Ms. Graniv. I’ve enjoyed your work for Seeker.”
“Thank you.” She looked around the sepulcher of obsolete computers. “Would one of you mind explaining what this is and why I’m here?”
Weng motioned Graniv toward an empty chair in front of an old flat-panel monitor. “Have a seat, and we’ll explain.” As Graniv sat down, Weng said, “This is the modern equivalent of what used to be known in our profession as a Faraday cage.”
“It’s designed to prevent signals from passing in or out,” th’Firron added. “Except through secure hard lines.” He looked up at the bundle hanging overhead. “Like these.”
“I’m familiar with the concept,” Graniv said. “What’s this one used for?”
“Sensitive research,” Weng said. “From time to time, the university takes on projects for Starfleet or the Federation. To ensure absolute security, we sequester them in here.”
Wary of blundering into a treason charge, Graniv cast a nervous look around. “Got any government projects going on right now?”
“Not at the moment, no. And we cleared out everything else so we could show you this.” Weng nodded to th’Firron, who used an old-fashioned keyboard and trackpad to power up a machine that looked too old to still exist, never mind function. The rectangular monitor in front of Graniv flickered to life and displayed a primitive-looking system interface, within which he called up an even more ancient command mode: a black square with garish green text.
Graniv leaned forward and squinted at the monitor. “What the hell is this?”
“Something I found a few weeks ago,” th’Firron said. “I was conducting research into data recovery on a salvaged computer drive from the twenty-second century. Once I got it running inside an archived shell, I started dissecting its operating software. That’s when I found this.” With a flourish of keystrokes and a tap on the keypad, he called up a flood of command-line source code that scrolled up the monitor faster than Graniv could read it.
She looked over her shoulder at th’Firron, who seemed to be trembling with excitement. “And this is newsworthy because . . . ?”
He halted the text scroll with another tap on the keyboard. “This code was meant to be hidden. Invisible. And by the standards of two hundred years ago, it was.”
“But today’s forensic software is more than a match for its encryption protocols,” Weng added. “Which is how we recovered the entire module intact and isolated.”
“Good for you. But what is it?”
Both of her hosts wore troubled frowns. “That’s just it,” Weng said. “We’re not sure.”
“We have a sense of what it does,” th’Firron said. “Or at least, what it could do.” He scrolled to a different section of the code string. “It’s made to monitor routine data transmissions on all known frequencies. Everything from personal comms to Starfleet channels, even encrypted data.” He highlighted another section of the code. “This lets it track the usage of household appliances. It analyzes financial activity, everything from credit transfers to investments. It logs transporter coordinates and reports the locations of starships, both civilian and military.”
Weng’s mood darkened. “And it might do more. Lots more. We’ve only just started to plumb the depths of what this thing was made to do.”
Graniv remained puzzled by the scientists’ reactions. “Okay, you found a privacy nightmare from two hundred years ago. Why does that matter now?”
“Because it’s still active,” Weng said. “Show her, Thili.”
“Long story short,” th’Firron said as he booted up a new interface on a parallel monitor, “this legacy module is part of the compiled-and-locked source code for every modern system that has even a smidge of computer technology—which is to say, almost everything.” He summoned a string of modern-looking system source code. With a few taps on the screen, he highlighted sections of identical code shared by the old and new systems. “The entirety of the legacy code is running in the root kits of planetary utility systems, power grids, communication networks, subspace relay platforms, replicators, military and paramilitary weapons, holosuites.
If you can you name it, it’s probably running this code in the background.”
At once the gravity of the situation became clear to Graniv. “Now I get why we’re looking at it in here. But why the handwritten note? Why the silent treatment on the way in?”
“Because,” Weng said, “any mention of Uraei—”
“That’s the original name of the software module,” th’Firron interjected.
“—would be picked up by audio sensors built into our personal comms, our computer workstations, our building’s security grid. The software is designed to be alert for any mention of itself. If it hears us, it’ll send up some kind of red flag and mark us as targets—as security risks to be contained or even eliminated, depending upon how much it thinks we know.”
“Contained? Eliminated? By whom?”
“We don’t know yet. But we’ve been seeing references in the code to something known as Section 31. Does that mean anything to you?”
Graniv shook her head. “No, but I know someone I can ask about it.”
“For all our sakes, be careful.” Weng palmed sweat from her forehead. “This thing sees all we do and hears every word we say, public or private.”
“Even here on Earth?”
The question raised th’Firron’s white brows. “Especially here on Earth. It’s everywhere.”
If what Weng and th’Firron had told Graniv was true, if such a grotesque invasion of the privacy of Federation citizens was not only in use on Earth and possibly elsewhere, she knew it would be a government scandal greater than any she had known.
She stood and nodded, as if to reassure them. “All right. I’d like to come back in a day or two with an expert of my choosing, someone we can all trust. After he vets your findings, we’ll decide how to proceed. Okay?” Weng and th’Firron nodded. “Good. Until then”—she threw her parting words over her shoulder on her way out of the Faraday room—“keep this under your hats.” Left unspoken was the part they all took for granted: Or else we’re all as good as dead.
