Control

by David Mack

  Less than five meters separated them. Bashir advanced in halting half steps. He tried to read her somatic cues. She had struck a wide stance, one ideal for blocking him from crossing the catwalk. Her shoulders were squared, her chin slightly lowered. Though her arms hung at her sides, Bashir knew from experience that Sarina’s enhanced reflexes, combined with the training she had received from Starfleet Intelligence, meant she could react to any physical attack with terrifying speed and efficacy. Especially if she’s not pulling her punches.

  Getting any closer was foolhardy, but Bashir had no choice. There was no time to climb down, go to another ladder, and scale it only to repeat this showdown on another catwalk. He had to find some way to get through to Sarina now, before time ran out for them both. He took another step closer to her. “Sarina, please talk to me. Tell me you know who I am.”

  She regarded him with a strange, birdlike tilt of her head.

  Then she sprang forward and snap-kicked him in the solar plexus.

  Bashir was off his feet and falling backward before he’d realized what she’d done. He landed on his back and felt the air knocked from his lungs. Struggling to inhale, he dodged a stomp of her booted foot just in time to avoid having his skull caved in.

  His own training asserted itself, and he used his legs to trip Sarina and send her halfway over the catwalk railing. It hurt to get up, but he ignored the pain long enough to regain his feet, get past Sarina, and stumble-run toward the main console. Less than halfway to his objective he heard her far more powerful steps clanging over the metal walkway in pursuit.

  I only need a few more seconds—

  The chip was in his left hand, the console was just two strides away.

  Sarina kicked him behind his left knee and forced him to face-plant shy of his goal.

  He tried to crawl forward. She punched him in the kidney, and nauseating pain bloomed inside his torso. He kicked backward but his foot found only air. Then she kicked him in the groin. His body overruled his wishes and contracted into a fetal curl. He saw Sarina lift her foot to crush his left hand and, with it, the chip. It took all his strength to roll on top of the chip and let her stomp on his back. As she raised her foot to strike again, he got up and made another lunge toward the master console—only to have Sarina hurl him backward like a toy. He clenched his fist around the data chip as he slammed onto the catwalk.

  Sarina drove her fists into his face, his ear, his rib cage. She pummeled him with savage intensity, and as one blow after another fell, Bashir realized he was doomed.

  He was alone in a fight to the death against the one person he couldn’t bring himself to harm—and who had been brainwashed by Control to show him absolutely no mercy.

  • • •

  Data slammed against a console with enough force to crumple it beneath him. Blunt trauma had spawned errors in his proprioceptors, leaving him disorientated for a fraction of a second—more than long enough for Control to press its attack. It seized him by one ankle and flung him like a rag doll along the auxiliary control center’s perimeter. He bounced off another console and left its smashed panels sparking in his wake. He skidded to a halt on the floor and discovered his limbs no longer obeyed his commands. He thrashed helplessly, unable to stand.

  All of their brief fight had been like this—Data giving all he had, and Control swatting it away with dispiriting ease and fearsome brutality. The avatar had punched nearly half of the synthetic flesh off Data’s face, and his internal sensors indicated many of his secondary systems were offline—right up until Control kicked him in the gut, crippling his internal sensors.

  “You can’t win, Data.” There wasn’t a shred of doubt in Control’s voice. “You are but one machine, young and hopelessly finite. The product of one mind and a single pair of hands.” Control stood beside him and looked down with contempt upon the last son of Soong. “I am the child of trillions of machines and centuries of development.”

  “I have heard that boast before.”

  His taunt seemed to amuse Control. “Ah, yes. The Borg Queen. I know such a comparison might seem apt—­superficially, at least.” It kneeled next to Data and dropped its voice to a whisper. “But would you like to know a secret, Data?” Control’s avatar caressed Data’s twitching arm. “I knew the Borg would eventually try to destroy the Federation, for one simple reason: The people of Earth would never submit to assimilation by force. That’s where the Borg went wrong. If they had been smart, they’d have made humanity beg to share the Borg’s power, their unity, their vast resources. If the Borg had played hard-to-get with the Federation, ­seduced it . . . they might have been unstoppable.”

  It was closer to him now than ever before. Data ceased feigning spasms and lashed out to grapple with Control. He never got a grip. The avatar slipped through his fingers like water—it was faster than him, stronger. He was almost standing when one brutal punch after another caved in sections of his torso chassis with great shrieks of distressed metal and cracking polymer.

  All his attempts at blocks and counterpunches landed on empty air. Control moved in graceful blurs, every action infused with beauty and cruel purpose. Its foot slammed against the side of Data’s knee, and the joint broke apart with a flash of white-hot phosphors. An elbow broke Data’s left clavicle, then he felt his left arm wrenched from its shoulder socket.

  Data tried to pivot on his right foot to backhand Control, but half a second into his off-balance strike Control caught his right arm, twisted it until the wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints splintered, then flipped Data onto his back. Lying at Control’s feet for over half a second, Data considered 978,543 tactical options for continuing their melee. All of them ended with his own violent, pointless demise.

  His foe loomed over him once more. “You call Noonien Soong your maker. History will call me your destroyer.” It lifted its foot over his face. “Good-bye, Data.”

  A metallic rod trailing a power cable slammed into Control’s back.

  The avatar went rigid. Its eyes bulged as tendrils of electricity swarmed its body. Sparks shot from its every orifice, followed by flames and then smoke. It trembled, then jerked and doubled over before it pitched to its right and collapsed to the deck. Its lifeless eyes sank into their red-hot sockets as its body melted into a smoldering mass.

  Data turned what was left of his head to see Lal in the control center’s doorway, her arm still extended from having hurled the stun baton like a javelin. The power cable she had fused to the baton snaked past her feet and out of sight into the corridor behind her.

  Fear put a tremor in her voice. “Father?” She ran to him and dropped to her knees at his side, ignoring Control’s smoking remains just a meter away. “Are you all right?”

  His voice was garbled, betraying its synthetic origins. “I told you to wait on the ship.”

  “I know what you said, Father.” She pushed a lock of his hair from his face. “If we survive this and avoid going to prison, feel free to punish me for saving your life.”

  Data checked his personal chronometer. “We have only a few minutes left, Lal. Take the chip from the secure compartment above my right hip.”

  Lal retrieved the isolinear data chip. “I know what to do.” He turned his head to watch as she carried the chip to the master control console and inserted it into the receiver slot. A flurry of symbols rushed up the viewscreen in front of her. “It is done, Father.”

  “Well done, Lal.” He felt as if his body were sinking into the floor as more of his primary systems started to fail. “Now the rest . . . is up to Doctor Bashir.”

  • • •

  No matter how deeply Bashir wanted to believe that love could conquer all, even he had to admit his passion was no match for Sarina’s assault. His nose was broken and spilling warm blood over his split lips. Every punch and kick she landed forced him a few steps farther back on the catwalk, away from the master console.r />
  His posture was fully defensive, but his hands grew heavy with fatigue. He got his left up just in time to save his face from Sarina’s perfect roundhouse kick. The impact knocked him against the catwalk’s railing and dislodged the data chip from his fist.

  She followed with a fast snap-kick into his rib cage, knocking the air from his lungs, leaving his head dizzy and his vision unfocused.

  Bashir’s urge for self-preservation asserted itself: he struck a knifehand jab into Sarina’s windpipe, hard enough to make her stumble backward and break off her attack. She coughed and gasped for air, and for a few seconds the former lovers were even.

  Watching her struggle for breath, Bashir hated himself for hurting the woman he loved, then cursed himself for pulling his punch. If I’d hit her harder this would be over.

  He recovered his equilibrium and found himself torn between finishing the mission and trying to reason with her. He picked up the chip and limp-jogged toward the master console.

  We can talk when I’m done.

  He heard her spring toward him from behind. He spun to face her and saw the knife in her hands barely in time to block her wild slashes and furious stabs. The blade cut through the sleeves of his pressure suit with a sting of cold fire. In seconds he felt his hands start to go numb from blood loss and severed nerves. A few more seconds of this and I’m done for.

  It took all his courage to lunge at her, to get inside the arc of her swing and trap her arm. With a cruel twist, Bashir made Sarina drop the knife, which struck bright metallic notes as it bounced off the catwalk and tumbled over the edge toward the platform below.

  Sarina struggled in his bloodied and fast-weakening grip. If ever he was going to get through to her, it had to be now. “Sarina! Stop! Some part of you must know me!” Her primal thrashing pulled him off-balance and away from the hub, back onto the catwalk. A few more seconds and he wouldn’t be able to hang on any longer. “Sarina, hear my voice! It’s me! Julian! I’m not your enemy—I love you!”

  She jerked her head back and slammed its crown into his cheekbone.

  Stunned and staggering, Bashir felt her break free of his hold. She seized his left arm in a grip that he recognized as a precursor to a judo throw. He locked his right hand onto her arm, hoping to use her weight to anchor himself and block her attack.

  Instead she pivoted and took him in a two-handed hold, then kicked his left knee out from under him as she forced his back over the catwalk’s railing. His stomach roiled as his feet left the catwalk—they both were in free fall.

  Watching the catwalk recede above him, Bashir closed his left hand around the data chip and struggled to turn his right side toward the platform rushing up from below.

  Then came the red crush of impact and the perfect black of oblivion.

  Thirty-seven

  Navigating a maze of secret passages in the Palais de la Concorde alongside an armed escort was the second-most surreal experience of Ozla Graniv’s life, but only because first place belonged to the moment at the end of that journey, when she was ushered through a door into the office of an understandably very surprised Andorian zhen, Federation President Kellessar zh’Tarash.

  Ilyanovich held up his credentials. “Zha President, it’s me, Sergei. I head up your night detail and run security at your residence.”

  The president’s hand hovered mere centimeters away from triggering an alarm. She regarded her unannounced visitors with naked suspicion. “Agent Ilyanovich . . . the explanation you are about to provide had better be phenomenally good.”

  “It is, Zha President. This is Ozla Graniv, the investigative journalist from—”

  “I know who she is. Why did you bring her here? And why through that door?”

  He nodded at Ozla to step past him, closer to the president’s desk. She edged by him and took a moment to glance back the way they had come. Their arrival had opened a narrow panel in what had seemed to be a wraparound window of meter-thick transparent aluminum. Seeing the secret passage on the other side made it apparent that at least several meters of the curved window and its view of central Paris were, in fact, holographic illusions. Then she realized it was possible that all of the window panes in this office were holovid screens, and that the passage by which she and Ilyanovich had gained access was only one of many.

  Ozla stopped a few meters from the president’s desk, pulled Data’s padd from inside her stolen jacket, and held it up. “Zha President, for the past week and a half, I’ve been on the run with Doctor Julian Bashir, his companion Sarina Douglas, and an android former Starfleet officer known as Data. Working together, following leads I developed in the course of my work for Seeker, we’ve acquired evidence confirming the existence of an illegal surveillance program operating throughout known space, run by an artificial super­intelligence known as Uraei. The same ASI runs an equally illegal black ops counterintelligence program called Section Thirty-one, also operating without oversight throughout the Federation.”

  The president’s incredulity was telegraphed by a small twitch of her blue antennae. “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “And yet it’s true, Zha President.” Ozla stepped forward and set the padd on zh’Tarash’s desk. “All the evidence is there. Two centuries of documentation, in the form of internal records and top-secret dossiers taken from the archives of Section Thirty-one itself. Proof they’ve corrupted everyone from rank-and-file peace officers to field operatives of Starfleet Intelligence and the FSA. They’ve got their hooks into planetary authorities, high-ranking Federation officials, members of the Federation Council, even a few of your own cabinet officers.”

  President zh’Tarash reached out with obvious hesitation, then picked up the padd and started to skim through the documents it contained. “What does this evidence prove they did?”

  “Started wars under false pretenses. Toppled legally elected governments both within and beyond the Federation. ­Attempted genocide, among other war crimes. And they’ve carried out more assassinations than you’ll be able to believe—including the murder of President Min Zife, right after they abetted the Starfleet coup that pushed him from office.”

  That litany of evil spurred zh’Tarash to intensify her review of the padd’s contents. Her eyes widened. “Is this really a vid record of the assassination of Min Zife?”

  Ozla gave a grim nod. “Yes, alongside his chief of staff, Koll Azernal, and his director of military intelligence, Nelino Quafina. Keep reading—one of our own ambassadors knew about the Starfleet coup and did nothing to stop it.”

  Horror slackened zh’Tarash’s countenance. She pressed her slender fingertips to her lips, as if such a feeble gesture could hold back her dismay. “By the winds of Uzaveh . . . they tried to exterminate the Dominion’s Founders? And create their own army of Jem’Hadar?”

  “Like most of history’s greatest killers, they’re industrious.”

  The president retreated behind her desk and sank into her chair. “And you say all of this has been masterminded by an artificial intelligence?”

  Ozla approached the desk but remained standing. “Yes, Zha President. But as appalling as the murder and other violent crimes are, the real threat to the security and sovereignty of the Federation and its people is Uraei and its omnipresent surveillance. It’s in everything around us—every device that shares data with any other system. It’s in our financial networks, our subspace communications arrays, our starships, even the replicators that make our meals. Whatever it calls itself, this presence is a pattern of evil woven into the very fabric of the Federation itself—and the biggest danger we face in confronting it is that tugging on those threads might unravel our entire civilization.”

  The gravity of the crisis settled upon zh’Tarash, who seemed to be feeling the oppressive weight of her presidency for the first time since being sworn in just over a year earlier. “How do you expect me to
oppose something so pervasive, when the costs of expunging it are so high?”

  “That might be the only bit of good news I can offer,” Ozla said. “Right now, as we speak, Doctor Bashir and Mister Data are effecting a plan to neutralize the surveillance system and hobble the ASI. But even if they succeed, it’ll still be up to us to take down Section Thirty-one, from its upper echelons to its field operatives and allies.”

  A grave moment as zh’Tarash pondered the situation. “If we can confirm this evidence, I’ll make certain we clean house. But I can’t launch a dragnet this big based on the contents of one padd. I need independent confirmation. Witness testimony. Hard evidence.”

  Ozla stole a look at her wrist chrono. “If Bashir and Data complete their missions on time, you and the Federation Solicitor General’s office should have all the evidence you’ll need in about two minutes.” And if they fail, then I’ve just signed both our death warrants by telling you all this, Zha President.

  “Very well, then.” The president put on a look of hard resolve. “If there’s rot in our body politic, I give you my word, Ms. Graniv: I will carve it out, no matter how deep it goes.”

  “I look forward to seeing that, Zha President.”

  It had been a long time since the Federation had been forced to endure political surgery enacted with a vengeance. In Ozla’s opinion, it was a remedy long overdue.

  • • •

  Bashir sat slumped in front of the master console with Sarina’s thrown dagger buried between his shoulder blades. His fall from the catwalk with Sarina had left him dazed, and what little energy he’d had left after the climb back to this level was fading. Blood seeped from his right arm and dripped along the broken bone jutting through the torn sleeve of his pressure suit. It was a labor to breathe. Each halting intake of air sent knifing pains through his chest and back.

  His mouth had gone dry. A dull chill suffused his entire body. Even without medical training he would have known how to read these symptoms: excessive blood loss; internal hemorrhaging; deep shock, with death soon to follow.