Star Trek: Enterprise - 017 - Rise of the Federation: Uncertain Logic

by Christopher L. Bennett

  But before Travis could answer, Rey interrupted. “Sir, over there.” He gestured toward a central building. “I’m picking up life signs inside. Low level, as if they’re . . . you know.”

  Travis nodded, his features grim. “Are they Vanotli?”

  “Hard to tell without getting closer, but I think so.”

  Zeheri stared. “They have people alive in there? Prisoners?” Had she found the missing victims?

  “Not exactly,” Travis told her. “But there’s no time to explain. Rey, can we get them out?”

  Before he could answer, an alarm sounded. A female voice emerged from a loudspeaker somewhere. “Unauthorized sensor activity detected,” the woman intoned with unnatural calm. “This area is restricted. Vacate these premises or your life functions will be compromised.”

  Rey made an odd sound: “Uh-oh.” He then elaborated, “Drones coming in.”

  “I hate that voice,” Travis grated. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  They ran for the wall. Zeheri and Ganler had to struggle to keep up, for the strangers were startlingly fast despite their bulk. But Travis took her hand—his own was surprisingly cool—and pulled her after him, while Rey took Ganler’s upper arm and helped him forward. The strangers used their exceptional strength to help Zeheri and Ganler over the wall first—another thing that convinced her of their benevolence—and quickly pulled themselves up Ganler’s rope to follow. But Zeheri saw two of the angular, gray mechanical sentries come into view around the warehouses and called a warning. Katrina raised her odd pistol and fired at the nearer of the two. Instead of a bullet, it fired a bright beam of some kind, like a searchlight only tighter, brighter, almost like lightning. And it had the effect of lightning, causing an explosion where it struck the sentry. The machine, hovering by means no one outside WWA understood, faltered and fell, and a moment later the second one succumbed to Katrina’s lightning gun the same way. “Glisp,” Ganler sighed as he stared at the spectacle, before Zeheri urged him down the rope. After all, there must be more than two mechanical sentries.

  The strangers jumped down from atop the wall as easily as before, while Zeheri made her way more slowly down Ganler’s line. Impatiently, she let go of the rope, dropped, and rolled to her feet. Refusing to be upstaged by the strangers despite their superior strength, she called “Come on!” and ran forward, ignoring the pain in the ankle she’d twisted slightly when she landed.

  The others followed her lead through the winding, narrow streets of the ancient fortress city, and a few moments later she noticed Travis jogging beside her, holding something out for her. “You dropped this.”

  It was her hat. Grinning at him warmly, she took it from his hand and planted it firmly atop her head once more.

  * * *

  “I was an inquisitor,” Urwen Zeheri told Travis and his colleagues as they and Ganler basked in Najola Rehen’s hotroom, drying their clothes and hair. The expected storm had finally opened up, its fierce wind and rain sufficient to stymie WWA’s sentry machines in their pursuit, its lightning interfering with the radio signals they used to communicate. Zeheri could be reasonably sure they had not been tracked to Rehen’s home, and that they were now safe from surveillance within its thick walls and storm-shuttered viewslits. The government’s mechanical spies—be honest, WWA’s mechanical spies—grew more pervasive by the day, but as far as Zeheri knew, they had not yet devised one small enough to sneak inside a home like a snel bug.

  “I’d been investigating a series of mysterious deaths and disappearances in the outer zones,” she went on. She was aware that Travis had deftly deflected her questions about his own group by asking about her; but she’d found that recalcitrant witnesses could often be encouraged to open up by a little give and take. Besides, it was nice just to be listened to for a change. “Nobody else saw a pattern, or wanted to; the victims were just vagrants or bottom-income laborers, the kind of people who vanish all the time and have no one to miss them. At least, that’s the way people think now,” she added with a grimace. “With all the new industries and machines to shelter us and tame the climate, they feel we no longer need every hand working together to survive the harsh times. So the industries and their government cronies hoard their gains and encourage us not to care about those left out in the elements.”

  “But you still care,” Travis said, eyeing her appreciatively.

  She flushed. “At first, I didn’t. I thought the cases were a waste of my time, let them gather dust on my desk while I pursued more glamorous homicides and assaults. Finally my chief inquisitor pressured me to clear my caseload, and when I looked at the files together, I noted a pattern. Most of the victims had last been seen at or near one of the charity fabricators WWA had installed in the outer zones the year before.”

  “I thought you said the corporations didn’t care about the poor,” Rey put in.

  Rehen had just come in from the kitchen, bearing mugs of hot cider for her guests. “They care about their image,” the diminutive journalist told him. “WWA hoped a conspicuous act of charity would distract the press from some of our burning questions about their sudden, inexplicable burst of innovation over the past four years.”

  “Makes sense.” Rey took a sip of his cider, visibly suppressed a grimace, and forced a smile toward Rehen. “Wonderful.” The journalist rolled her eyes and moved on, trading a smirk with Zeheri. The young stranger had been flirting steadily and unsuccessfully with Rehen since the moment he’d laid eyes on her, seemingly unaware that, as mistress to an apprentice, the journalist was committed to chastity. His ignorance was another sign that these strangers were from someplace very far indeed.

  Travis’s eyes fell upon Zeheri, and she found herself glad she had no apprentice. “So you suspected WWA in the disappearances?”

  She cleared her throat. “Not at first. Who was I to doubt our great benefactors? But it was the only lead I had, so I looked into it. And I began to meet resistance, the kind you get when people have something to hide. At first I thought it was just about avoiding bad press, but then I started to get hints of something more going on. There were questions about how Vabion had made all these amazing breakthroughs. He and his assistants couldn’t have achieved such enormous advances in so many fields of science all at once. There must have been others working on them too, but there were no signs that he’d recruited other scientists, no papers in the literature that would point toward any of these inventions. If anything, Vabion seemed to be turning away scientists and engineers who wanted to learn more about his factories and fabricators.”

  “They are automated,” Rehen reminded her with long-suffering patience.

  “But someone had to design and build the automation. That’s where I ran into a stone wall.”

  She turned back to Travis. “Then a source within WWA contacted me and told me that there had been a few mysterious deaths among the wealthy buyers of WWA’s new fabricators and other machines, and that they’d stopped since Vabion started the charity program in the outer zones. He said that people within the company suspected a connection.”

  “Right,” Ganler said. “And that’s when they found his body outside the walls after a level six cyclone.”

  “I couldn’t accept that it was suicide,” Zeheri went on. “But the chief didn’t want to hear the case I was starting to put together. She’d just wanted me to close some unimportant cases to improve the department’s record. Once it became clear I wasn’t going to let go, I found myself fired—supposedly for wasting department resources on frivolous investigations, but, well, the chief owns stock in WWA. So do most of her superiors. Nobody wanted answers to the questions I was asking.”

  Rey smiled at Rehen. “Except for you and Ganler?”

  Rehen sighed, at both the question and the ulterior interest behind it. “She got Ganler interested in her crazy ideas. Me, I think she’s just looking for some big conspiracy that she can
prove to get her job back. But, well, we go back a long way, and Ganler needs the practice.”

  Zeheri resisted the urge to needle her old friend about her willful blindness. It wouldn’t be fitting in front of guests. Besides, Rehen was really putting herself on the line by sheltering and assisting Zeheri, even if she didn’t buy Zeheri’s theories about what was going on inside WWA. Taking on the corporation that practically ran the government was not a particularly safe undertaking from a career standpoint, as Zeheri had learned. And she couldn’t blame the levelheaded Rehen for looking askance on where Zeheri’s conjectures had led recently. There were times when Zeheri herself feared she was going mad. That was why it was so heartening to meet these strangers whose technology was as inexplicably advanced as WWA’s, and whose innate abilities were so extraordinary.

  No more patient indulgence, then. “And now you’re here, Travis. And you obviously know a lot more about what’s going on in WWA than I do. So it’s your turn to answer some questions.”

  Travis exchanged uneasy glances with Rey and Katrina. “There’s not that much we can tell you about Worldwide Automatics,” the big man replied slowly.

  “Don’t try to snow me with what you don’t know,” she insisted. “I’m concerned with what you do know. You knew there were prisoners inside that factory, and you were expecting to find them. You have machines as advanced as WWA’s, but who else on the surface could possibly have that kind of science?”

  “Here we go,” Rehen muttered before removing herself from the hotroom.

  After a moment’s thought, Travis replied, “The important thing right now is that, yes, there are people alive in there. Most are probably too far gone to save, but we might be able to help a few.”

  “ ‘Too far gone’?” Ganler asked in dismay. “What are they doing to them in there? Some kind of scientific experiments? Turning them into robot-people? A mindless army controlled by an electronic brain?”

  “Quiet, Ganler,” said Zeheri. “This isn’t one of your movie serials.”

  “Actually, the kid’s not far wrong,” Rey said. “But there’s no army.”

  Travis hesitated, but then met her eyes and spoke plainly. “That automation WWA uses . . . you must have wondered how it’s so intelligent, so versatile.” She nodded. “Well, there is an electronic brain involved—but it needs living brains too. The machines are called the Ware. They seem benevolent, giving people everything they want, but at a high price.”

  “Sure,” Ganler said. “Only the rich and the government get to live in luxury. The rest of us are lucky to get handouts.”

  “But you’re talking about a higher price,” Zeheri said. “In lives.”

  “They need living brains to boost their computing power. So they take people. They do it in secret—fabricate fake corpses the same way they manufacture food or machines.”

  “Glisp,” Ganler breathed.

  “Although,” Rey put in, “it sounds like they aren’t bothering anymore with your homeless people. Maybe the Ware only expends the effort with people who’ll be missed if they just disappear.”

  Zeheri frowned. “You talk about the Ware like it’s alive. Like it’s actually running things.”

  “It is,” Travis told her, and she could see in his eyes that there was something very personal about his anger. “This Vabion didn’t invent it. It’s using him to spread itself, to get the Vanotli dependent on it so it can prey on your minds.” He rose and began to pace. “Maybe if we can talk to him, explain what’s going on—”

  She stood to face him. “Don’t underestimate Daskel Vabion. He was a genius even before this Ware came along. And there’s nothing that happens in Worldwide Automatics that he doesn’t approve and control. If his machines are taking people and wiring up their brains, you can bet he knows it and approves of it.”

  “Then we need to prove this to your friend Najola. If she can publicize this—”

  “She’d be out of a job faster than Urwen was,” Ganler interrupted.

  “Why can’t you fight them?” Zeheri challenged. “Your people. You have science as good as theirs, and you’re incredibly strong.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Travis replied, though he clearly regretted it. “Right now, the three of us are all we’ve got. We can’t defeat the Ware by ourselves.”

  “But there are more of you. You had to come from somewhere. Who are you, Travis? Where are you from?”

  “Oh, stop avoiding it, Urwen,” Ganler said, then turned to Travis. “You’re Underlanders, aren’t you?”

  “Underlanders?” asked Rey. “What the hell are Underlanders?”

  “Like you don’t know.”

  “It would almost make sense,” Zeheri said. “I used to think they were just an old legend, a cliché from the radio adventures. Ancient peoples who discovered or carved out gigantic underground holds, got heat and light from Vanot’s fiery core. So they never had to spend half their generations struggling against ice or drought or storm, but were free to advance far beyond the surface world, to breed themselves to physical and mental perfection.” She scoffed. “Nonsense, right? But now we’ve been invaded by machines that think, machines that can’t be from the Vanot we know—and here you are, people with extraordinary machines and incredible strength and no clue about Vanotli customs and culture. If you’re not from the Underlands, where else is left?”

  Rey chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know. How about outer space?”

  She frowned. “Outer space? What does that mean?”

  “You know—up there. Other worlds, other stars in the sky.”

  “Don’t give me fantasy tales!”

  Rey laughed again. “You’re the one believing in mole people from the center of the planet!”

  “But that makes more sense than, than flying through vacuum! I’m not naïve. I know the other planets are barren rocks or balls of ice, and other stars are too far away to reach.”

  At a look from Travis, Rey broke off. “If you say so.”

  “So enough nonsense,” Zeheri told Travis. “Are you going to tell me who you are, where the Ware comes from, or not? Are you . . . Did your people make it?”

  “No,” Travis told her. “We’re still learning about it ourselves. But it’s a danger to all of us, and we can help each other find ways to fight it. That’s all that matters right now.” He fidgeted. “I wish I could answer all your questions, Urwen, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.” He took her hand, and she was struck again by how pleasantly cool his was. “All I can tell you is that we’re here to help. Can you trust us?”

  She looked into his eyes for a long while. There was still something off about the golden hue of his pupils, about his cooling fins and spots, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen so much sincerity in anyone’s face. She wanted to believe him. She wasn’t sure she should trust that feeling—maybe it was just a side effect of the other things she wanted to do with him. But somehow she trusted it—trusted him—in spite of her better judgment. Maybe it was just that he was too strange to be unreal, if that made any sense.

  “I trust you,” she said. “And I’ll help you if I can.”

  “Good,” Travis replied. “I think we should get some sleep now . . . but in the morning we’ll begin working on a plan.”

  As they filed out of the hotroom, Ganler sidled up to Zeheri. “No doubt about it—they’re Underlanders,” he whispered.

  She wanted to argue, to insist that they must be with some secret research group in a foreign hold. Maybe the Ware had been some project of Fetul’s mad war machine, and Travis was part of some secret government group still uncorrupted by WWA’s money. Surely that would be a sane explanation.

  But as she lay awake in the deepest hours of the night, she could no longer deny that she hoped Ganler was right.

  11

  May 23, 2165

  Vulcan Council Chamber, ShiK
ahr

  “. . . AND HOW LONG, ADMIRAL, had you been acquainted with then-Minister Kuvak?”

  Jonathan Archer tried his best not to lose his patience at the questioner, an overweight, elderly Vulcan named Stom who continued his obtuse interrogation with blithe, methodical slowness. “As I already told you, Councillor, I never met First Minister Kuvak until the moment T’Pau and I entered the High Command chamber with the Kir’Shara.”

  “And yet your entry was timed to coincide perfectly with Minister Kuvak’s deployment of a to’tsu’k’hy neuropressure hold against Sublieutenant Torac, his acquisition of Sublieutenant Torac’s firearm, and his use of said firearm to hold Administrator V’Las hostage.”

  “I had no knowledge he intended to do that. We arrived at a critical moment, and we just happened to give Kuvak the distraction he needed to act on his own.”

  “Then you acknowledge that Minister Kuvak had the premeditated intention to stage a coup against Administrator V’Las.”

  Archer took a deep breath. It was entirely possible that Stom was deliberately trying to get him to lose his temper. He’d heard a lot of rhetoric already about the dangerously aggressive nature of humans and their Andorian allies, scare tactics from High Command loyalists hoping to convince Vulcan to re-arm itself. He refused to play their game. “As we all know, Councillor, Administrator V’Las had just committed mass murder against the Syrannite enclave in the T’Karath Sanctuary, had ordered his orbital defenses to fire on an allied Earth vessel, and was attempting to launch a preemptive war against Andoria based on fabricated claims that they’d developed a Xindi planetbuster weapon. Even though the Andorians had been warned of the attack and had readied their defenses, V’Las ordered the invasion to proceed anyway, with reckless disregard for the Vulcan lives that would be lost for no reason. It seems to me that V’Las forced Kuvak’s hand.”

  “Yes, you mention that the Andorians were warned of the High Command’s classified operations plans. That warning was delivered by then-Ambassador Soval, was it not? With assistance from the crew of the Earth vessel Enterprise, which you yourself commanded at the time, did you not?”