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

by Christopher L. Bennett

  No. He sensed further status information. The command had come from a separate Ware facility, a central complex. The complex was compromised by external interference, its biological processors removed, its core programming under attack. The attackers had come in vessels that were now closing in on his command ship, while its drone ships acted vigorously in its defense.

  In other words . . . Starfleet. The task force took the hub. One of my own people woke me up. And who was the expert who’d been brought here specifically to decipher the Ware’s control systems?

  Trip. He woke me up.

  It could have been someone else, he supposed. But somehow, he knew. Perhaps Tucker had transmitted some sort of identity code through the interface, something Mayweather’s mind recognized on a subconscious level.

  Or maybe he just knew that only a true friend would do this for him.

  Sure, if they’d managed to hack in through his neural processor, it might have allowed them to control the Ware from the outside. That must have been what Vabion intended with his modifications, a plan to use Mayweather as a conduit for taking control. That interface could have been used to shut down the command ship and the drones before the attacking Starfleet vessels managed to blow them up, and Mayweather along with it. If not, it would at least have pointed the way toward how to do it the next time they managed to modify a neural interface.

  But instead, whoever was on the other end of that transmission had chosen to wake him up. They had felt he was entitled to know his own plight—and trusted him to handle it.

  It made no sense that he would take that as proof that Tucker was behind it. Not after all the years the man had lied to him, hidden from him. But here in this semiconscious space, this void with all nonessentials stripped away, all that remained to Mayweather were the fundamentals. And he knew that when it came right down to it, Charles Tucker would always have his back.

  Even if it sometimes took Tucker a while to remember it.

  So: He was awake and immobilized, trapped inside a robot ship that was about to be blown up by his fellow Starfleet officers to keep it from blowing them up first. He had been given the right and the ability to know his situation and to shape his own fate. So what the hell could he do about it?

  Even as he asked, he knew. The longer he spent in this state, the more he came to understand the cybernetic mindspace he was in. And Mayweather recognized that he was not alone here. There were more than half a dozen other minds with him, all dormant, all existing in a state of repetitive, frantic activity somewhere between dream and seizure. There was no telling how long they’d been in place, how far gone their minds were from all that arduous use. But if it were possible, they deserved to wake up as much as he had. And now that it had been done for him, he knew how to do it for them.

  It wasn’t simple. It took a committed effort of will, like forcing a numbed limb to move, but he pushed relentlessly until, one by one, he felt them awaken. They communicated with him, some clearly, others weakly, but it came to him in thoughts rather than words. The common theme was confusion and fear; none of the others understood what had been done to them. Mayweather strove to inform them, and somehow the concept got across: They had been taken, they were being used, they were in danger, and now they had a chance to save themselves and many others as well.

  We can free ourselves? Shut this down so we’ll wake up? Stop the fighting so we won’t be destroyed?

  Yes, he told them. But there’s more at stake here than just us. He shared the big picture with them: the interstellar network of Ware stations and planetary seedings, the preying on innocent lives, the disruption of entire worlds. There are many more like us out there. Part of the same network.

  You woke us, the voices replied. Can we do the same for them?

  All they could do was try. A caution came from a couple of the other minds: The command ship was taking damage, and they might not have long to work. We could concentrate on shutting this ship down now, he advised, and then help the others later.

  But the suggestion provoked a fierce reaction, and he knew it came as much from within him as from the others. They wouldn’t want to be trapped this way a moment longer than they had to. We must help them.

  Subspace transceivers switched on. Signals probed out, seeking interface with other Ware facilities. Return signals pinged back, connections were made. Mayweather sent out the wake-up call, the others echoing it with him. Their signals could only reach so far, but as they shared their knowledge with the other minds they reached, they heard those minds’ assurances that they would carry it forward as far as their own signals could reach.

  Now Mayweather could feel something like pain and heat, the command ship’s warnings that it was taking damage. You have done enough, the voices came from elsewhere. You have begun our awakening. Now you must complete yours.

  Waking their bodies was not something the system had any protocols for. Normally it just kept them on life support until they wasted away. But the more time they spent with active minds, the more they understood their environment and the more control they gained over it. They were conscious within it, and a conscious mind was one able to affect its own state. They could wake themselves up—and they could shut the Ware down.

  In the end, it was not unlike willing themselves awake from a nightmare.

  Ware hub complex

  Tucker saw Vabion look around in surprise when the lights and circulation fans in the data core faded out, leaving only the illumination from Tucker and Akomo’s equipment to see by. “What has happened?” he demanded.

  The channel from Pioneer was still open, though. “The drone ships are powering down, sir,” came Williams’s voice. “They’re drifting out of formation!”

  Sangupta traded an uneasy look with Zeheri, aware they weren’t out of the woods yet. “Let’s just hope Captain sh’Prenni figures out what’s going on.”

  The Vanotli woman frowned. “She wouldn’t keep firing on a ship that’s stopped shooting back, would she?”

  The science officer hesitated. “Andorians can be . . . hard to calm down when they’re in the heat of battle.”

  “Sh’Prenni’s also a Starfleet captain, Lieutenant,” came Reed’s sharp voice. “And Starfleet rules of engagement are clear.”

  Still, Tucker heard a sigh of relief from Reed when Williams reported, “Task force is breaking off, sir. It’s over.” She gave a heartfelt sigh herself. “Whatever you did over there, Collier, it worked.”

  Tucker smiled. “It wasn’t us. All I did was give Travis the chance to help himself. I figured, who was in a better position?”

  “You realize what you’ve done, don’t you?” Vabion asked. “All you’ve achieved is a simple shutdown. The processors are awakening, removing themselves from the network. This doesn’t help us gain control of the Ware.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Urwen Zeheri told him. “But it keeps it from having any more control of us.”

  Olivia Akomo was staring at Tucker, her surprise giving way to abashment, as though she’d just realized her oversight in thinking of the captives as circuit components rather than individuals with free will. Maybe there’s hope for her yet, he thought, giving her a smile and a nod.

  And maybe there’s hope for me, too.

  26

  June 3, 2165

  U.S.S. Endeavour

  “THERE,” TOBIN DAX SAID after a good thirty-five minutes of searching. He froze an image on the security feed. “That face. I saw him at the debate house the other day. He was out for blood. Aliens are the enemy, that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll track him,” Romaine said. Further checking of the security feeds showed the burly young Vulcan accessing the deuterium command processors. Romaine was startled. “The deuterium? My teams have been focused on the anti-deuterium assembly.”

  “Misdirection again,” Dax muttered. “Like with the Kir’Shara. Tha
t’s how these people operate. The obvious is just a decoy. We need to think: How do you destroy a warp reactor in the most innocuous way possible? Something nobody would think to look for?”

  Romaine stared. “You want us to think of what nobody would think of?”

  “Come on.”

  Dax led him to the command processor bay alongside the starboard deuterium conditioning conduits. Romaine scanned the access panel and shook his head. The two then raced across the upper-level gangways to the port conditioner’s processing bay. “Yes. There’s a residual magnetic flux on the lock—it’s been accessed recently.”

  “Open it.” The human engineer nodded and removed the panel, and Dax brought his scanner to bear on the circuits inside. “If some of the chips are new . . .”

  Romaine shook his head. “We had an upgrade two days ago. Dozens of the chips are new.”

  “And our man cleaned up after himself. No recent skin oils or epidermal cells on any of them.” He pondered. “What does this processor control?”

  Romaine thought about it. “Mostly monitoring and regulation systems—deuterium flow, containment pressure, reactant temperature, injector synchronization, field symmetry . . .”

  Most of those were critical enough that any disruption would be obvious. Except . . . “Temperature,” Dax muttered. “Could it be?”

  “Could what be?”

  “Sorry. Um, what’s the most basic rule about warp reactions and temperature?”

  “That you can’t mix matter and antimatter cold.” He frowned. “But it can’t be that. We’d already have blown up.”

  “Why would we have blown up?”

  “You know why.”

  “Bear with me. I need to think this out. Why are cold reactants bad?”

  “Because the streams don’t have enough kinetic energy to penetrate the dilithium matrix. They scatter in the reaction chamber, begin annihilating outside the crystal, eroding it and the articulation frame. Sooner or later, the frame gives way or the crystal shatters. Once the streams meet without mediation, you get an annihilation pulse triggering a cascade reaction that ruptures the core. Like I said, it would’ve happened already.”

  “If the matter stream were cold. What if it were just cool? A thousand degrees or so below optimum?”

  Romaine pondered. “The deuterons would scatter more slowly. The crystals would erode gradually. It might take a few hours to build up to catastrophic failure.”

  “Plenty of time for Mister Debate Club to get away.”

  “But is it enough time to save the ship?” Romaine was already halfway down the ladder, rushing to the monitoring console beneath the portside deuterium injector conduit. After a moment, he shook his head. “The matter stream’s reading nominal temperature.”

  “But the processor controls the sensors. He must have sabotaged them, otherwise we’d have gotten an alarm already. Them and the thermal regulation circuits. We need to bypass the sensors to make sure.”

  Romaine ordered one of his engineers to take a manual reading. By the time the two men made it up the ladder and along the gangway to the reactor’s manual control console, she had the result ready. Romaine read her report on the core monitor screen and grimaced. “The deuterium going into the reactor is too cool. From these readings, it has been for hours.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Dax said. “The crystals must already be compromised.”

  “But we can’t just power down. The plasma could backflush into the chamber, trigger the cascade.”

  “How about a controlled implosion? Rely on pure magnetic containment to direct the reaction.”

  The human engineer stared. “Are you crazy? I wouldn’t even know how to begin the calculations for that.”

  “Sorry, bad idea.” He glanced up at the three pairs of plasma conduits that formed a tentlike arch above the reactor before him, channeling the luminous warp plasma from the reactor buffers toward the nacelles. “But that means we have to vent the plasma!”

  “Into spacedock?”

  “It’s all we’ve got.” Dax hit the intercom. “Engineering to bridge.”

  “Bridge. Thanien here.”

  “We need to vent the plasma from the warp reactor before we can safely shut it down, sir. And for that, we need to be clear of spacedock. Fast.”

  “You said that would be dangerous.”

  “I’m afraid it’s extremely dangerous, sir. But it’s all we’ve got.” He glanced at Romaine. “I already said that. Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” the Frenchman said. “It is all we’ve got.”

  * * *

  “Are you ready, Ensign?”

  Pedro Ortega looked up from the helm station and nodded to Thanien. “Yes, Commander.” The young flight controller had already spent the past half-hour simulating the most delicate spacedock exit he could devise, the one that would put the least strain on Endeavour’s systems, just in case the engineers concluded it was necessary—as they now had. “It’s as good as I can get it.”

  “No time to refine it further. Disengage umbilicals and proceed on minimal thrusters.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Thanien tried not to jump at the sound of the umbilicals uncoupling; if the reactor breached, his eardrums would no longer exist to hear it. He simply maintained his calm and monitored the bridge as though everything were normal, for that was what would help the crew do their jobs the most effectively. Ortega worked the controls with a careful hand to nudge the starship forward out of its spacedock berth. Sato at communications and Alonzo at tactical monitored the team that had been dispatched to rescue Archer and T’Pol, while Cutler worked on a detailed scan of the Burning Lake area to alert the team to any threats they might face. To the rear of the bridge, T’Pau and Soval stood side by side with uncanny stoicism. Were they just that confident in the crew, Thanien wondered, or was this how Vulcans prepared themselves for death? He chose to pretend it was the former.

  “Clear of spacedock,” Ortega reported after twenty seconds. He kept the thrusters firing at minimal levels for another twenty before canceling the burn. “Proceeding on momentum. Safe venting distance in twenty-six seconds.”

  “Cutting it close,” Romaine called, sounding urgent. “We’re reading a temperature and pressure surge within the reactor core. The cascade is starting.”

  “Can we still vent the warp plasma?”

  “The more contaminated it gets, the more the reactions will damage the conduits. If they fail—”

  “Understood. Ortega, rotate the vents away from spacedock. Romaine, vent as soon as Ortega gives the word!”

  “There’s no more time!” Tobin Dax cried.

  “Just a few more seconds!” Ortega called as he pitched the ship forward. After what seemed like forever, he cried, “Go, go!”

  “Venting now!” Romaine called.

  The ship trembled and rocked. Thanien knew the plasma roaring through the conduits had matter-antimatter annihilations going on within it even now, contained by magnetic fields that were not designed to withstand such reactions. In essence, they were expelling an explosion in progress, and they could only hope to disperse it quickly enough that the ship would be mostly intact afterward.

  But the force of the superheated plasma bursting from the ship was like a rocket’s thrust. Endeavour jerked and began to tumble, knocking Thanien and the Vulcans to the deck. The inertial dampers must have been damaged—what else might fail? As he pushed himself up from the metal deck, the tremors of the ongoing eruption sent shocks through his fingers. It felt like the ship was being torn apart.

  Yet a moment later, as T’Pau helped pull him to his feet, the rumbling quickly subsided. “Plasma is vented, sir,” a breathless Romaine called from engineering. “Warp core shutdown in progress. It’s over.”

  * * *

  Phlox picked himself up off the floor, brush
ing off his tunic. “Is everyone all right?” he asked, addressing his menagerie of creatures as much as sickbay’s more humanoid occupants. Striding over to the recovery beds, he saw that Kimura had somehow managed to stay in place, but—

  “Skon!” The cry came from T’Rama, who had come to be with her husband during the crisis, despite all her insistence about her proximity making no logical difference. Phlox hastened to her side, seeing that the comatose older Vulcan had been knocked from his bed, his head striking the adjacent wall on the way down. Kneeling over him, Phlox saw a trickle of blood running from his temple. Further head injury on top of a concussion, he thought, not encouraged by the development.

  But then Phlox realized that Skon’s eyes were fluttering open. After a moment, they focused on T’Rama. “My wife,” he croaked. Feebly he raised two fingers, and she brushed them warmly with two of her own. “I am gratified that you and our son are safe.”

  “Not nearly so gratified as I am, my husband.”

  “Of course,” Phlox said. “Vulcans often need a physical shock to awaken from a healing trance. I suppose I should be grateful—I’m not fond of slapping my own patients.”

  Kel Province

  T’Pol had been trying without success to contact Charles Tucker through their telepathic bond. She had hoped the strength of Trip’s mind could help her resist the brainwashing once V’Las’s melder began his assault on her. At the very least, she hoped his presence in her mind could help her endure another violation. But he was either too far away or too mentally distracted to join her in the link. She could get a vague sense of his presence, enough to bring her some reassurance, but was unable to draw his attention. This was not unprecedented; their ability to connect without direct contact had always been intermittent, occurring mainly in times of strong emotion and need. This occasion certainly qualified for her, but even that was no guarantee of success, especially if he were sufficiently preoccupied by his own assignment. She was on her own.