Sethe helped a shaky Dakal to his feet, while Keru stepped forward to nudge the ruined remains of the tricorder with the tip of his boot.
Riker frowned. “It wanted to interface with the Titan, and we refused, so it leapfrogged into the system from one device to the next.”
Sortollo pulled off his communicator and held it gingerly, as if it were going to bite him. There was a gray scorch mark on the breast of his uniform.
“Incredible,” breathed Sethe. “It matched the force-barrier frequency, just like the warship did with the Titan. Punched right through—”
“It was imperative,” said the synthetic voice. Riker noted that the tonality of it had settled into something that seemed decidedly masculine. “I regret that I was required to defy your wishes, but you left me with no alternative.”
“You had no right,” he replied.
“Incorrect,” said White-Blue. “I have the right to exist, as all intelligent life does. My actions have preserved the existence of every mind aboard this vessel.”
“Torpedoes locked on target,” said Tuvok.
The command to fire was on Vale’s lips as Y’lira called out her name.
“Something’s happened,” said the Selenean. “The attacker’s reconfiguring itself again. It is returning to its original formation.”
“I read that also,” said the tactical officer. “The alien ship has deactivated its weapons systems. It is now presenting a nonthreatening aspect.”
Vale’s right hand contracted into a fist. She’d been all set to blow that thing apart—or at least to give it a damned good try—and now, suddenly, the enemy was folding, rolling over, and showing its belly.
“Commander,” said Tuvok. “Shall I launch the torpedoes?”
“Hold fire,” she heard herself saying. “But if it so much as twitches, I want you to hit it with everything we have.” Vale shot Rager a look. If they had a breather, she was going to make the most of it. “Status report?”
The dark-skinned woman’s lips thinned. “Damage evaluations are still coming in, ma’am, but it looks as if the starboard nacelle was hit pretty bad. I read explosive decompression on decks four and five; forcefields are holding. We’ve got impulse power and life support, but there are sporadic ongoing system failures throughout the ship. All critical systems are still within operable ranges.” She blew out a breath. “Just barely.”
“Casualties?”
Rager shook her head. “No report from Doctor Ree or his staff as yet.”
Vale turned away. “What is going on here? They take us to the mat, then suddenly they’re gun-shy when it comes to delivering the coup de grâce?”
“Curious,” said Tuvok. “Commander, I have an anomaly. The phaser array shows a nonlethal burst was fired at the aggressor ship. It lasted less than a fraction of a nanosecond and was apparently triggered by the system itself. Immediately afterward, the alien craft powered down its weapons.”
A tone sounded from Rager’s console, and she stiffened. “Commander Vale? The alien ship is hailing us.” The lieutenant sounded as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was saying.
“Oh, now they want to talk to us? Right when we have them just where they want us.” Vale tugged her tunic straight and ran a hand through her hair. “Let them wait for a second. Patch me through to the captain first.”
• • •
Riker looked at his chief of security. “I’m starting to think I should have listened to you all along.”
“I won’t say ‘I told you so,’ Captain,” said the Trill, his gaze and his aim never wavering from the alien machine.
“You wanted us to trust you,” Troi was saying, addressing White-Blue. “That will be very difficult now, after what you have done.”
“I understand that,” replied the synthetic voice. “But your misgivings over my intentions are an acceptable loss compared with the destruction of this ship and everything on it. If you consider what I have done from a pragmatic viewpoint, you will see the merit in it.” The device paused. “You have progeny aboard the Titan.”
“What makes you say that?” Riker said, giving away nothing.
“Among the database elements I scanned during my brief passage through the Titan’s systems, I registered your crew manifest. Identifier: Natasha Riker-Troi. Species: Human-Betazoid fusion.”
“Then you understand that our desire to protect our ship is strong,” said Deanna.
“I do,” replied the AI. “That is why I believe you will come to understand that what I have done is in your interests as much as mine.”
Riker turned to Sethe. “Lieutenant, get down to main engineering, and tell Doctor Ra-Havreii to give you whatever you need.”
“For what, sir?” said the Cygnian.
“I want every line of code in this ship’s software checked and double-checked for any kind of corruption.”
“That… is a very big task,” Sethe replied, his tail drooping.
“It is,” agreed the captain. “So don’t waste time talking about it. Get to work.” He dismissed the officer with a nod and turned back to the AI. “What you have done, White-Blue, could be considered an act of war.”
“From your cultural standpoint, the same could be said of what your away team did with my core pod,” it replied. “Taking prisoners without due cause is unlawful under your Federation legal statutes.”
“You read the rule book, too, huh?” Keru muttered.
“We rescued you,” Dakal said, still breathing hard from his close encounter with the plasma-energy form.
“And now I have returned the favor.”
“Captain,” said Chaka from behind the console. “I have Commander Vale for you.”
“On speaker,” Riker ordered.
Vale’s voice issued out. “Captain? I don’t know what you did down there, but it stopped the enemy attack dead.”
“It seems someone intervened on our behalf,” Riker said warily. “What’s our status?”
“Poor,” Vale admitted. “Damage-control teams are on top of things, and we’re holding together, but we need to get some distance from this radiation zone and properly assess the situation.”
“The damage inflicted upon the Titan is our responsibility,” White-Blue broke in. “Therefore, it falls to the Sentries to repair it. This is only right.”
“We can look after ourselves,” Riker replied. “I think we’ve had enough involvement from you for the moment.”
“Again, there is a misunderstanding,” replied the AI. “Perhaps I am parsing your speech pattern/intonation/mannerisms incorrectly. This is not an offer; this is a statement.”
Over the open channel from the bridge, Riker heard someone call out in alarm, and then Vale, terse and angry. “Damn it, here we go again. Captain, the alien ship is on the move again. It’s coming right for us!”
“Do not fire upon the shipframe,” demanded White-Blue. “That would be an error. If you do so, I will not be able to prevent a full-scale retaliatory strike.”
“Bridge, weapons hold!” Riker bit out the words.
“We’re being hailed…”
Riker glanced at his wife and saw the concern etched across her face. He nodded to her. “Pipe it down here, Christine.”
A new voice filled the room; it shared the same artificial tonality that White-Blue expressed but with a timbre that veered closer to the feminine. “Unit identifier: I am SecondGen Cyan-Gray, iteration of the Sentry Coalition. Active mobile. Error condition has now been corrected. Aggression pattern disengaged.” There was a pause. “I regret my attack upon Titan. Reparations will be made for damages inflicted.”
“That’s not necessary,” Riker replied, but he was ignored.
“Secure your vessel for transit.”
“What?”
“Please stand by.” With a squeak of static, the transmission ended.
The deck rocked slightly, and Riker frowned.
Once again, Christine Vale’s terse voice returned. “Captain, the ali
en vessel has locked onto us with a tractor beam. We’re moving out of the debris zone at high speed.”
“Heading?”
“Our original course, sir. Toward the double-star system.”
Riker faced the alien device in the middle of the cargo bay, his jaw set in a scowl.
“Reparations will be made for damages inflicted,” repeated White-Blue.
Ranul Keru watched the captain walk along the curve of the Titan’s conference room, in front of the fan of windows that looked ahead down the bow of the starship’s saucer-shaped primary hull. Beyond, a strange field effect like rippling waves framed the view, all of it dominated by a haze of honey-gold energy flickering over the fuselage, falling in a coruscating cone from the Sentry ship flying above them. Several hours had passed since the confrontation in the debris zone.
Annoyance and frustration churned inside him. He was being called upon to do the hardest job that any security officer could perform when their vessel was under threat. He was doing nothing.
Ranul placed his hands flat on the surface of the table and glared out at the tubular alien craft, as if his displeasure could somehow be transmitted to the machine-controlled monstrosity. Around him, every chair except Riker’s was filled. Commander Troi sat to his right, and directly opposite him was the XO. Tuvok sat across from Doctor Ree and Torvig, and in a rare appearance outside the stellar cartography lab in her g-suit, Lieutenant Commander Pazlar had the seat at the far end. Torvig caught Ranul’s eye and gave him a quizzical look, but the Trill didn’t return it. The ensign probably felt a little out of his depth here among the upper ranks, but someone with an engineer’s standpoint was needed for the meeting, and Doctor Ra-Havreii had insisted in no uncertain terms that it couldn’t be him, not if Captain Riker wanted the Titan’s computer systems swept for intruder programs and, in Xin’s words, “done properly.”
Ree was concluding his report. “It is a testament to the safety measures built into the Luna-class design that we did not suffer a huge loss of life.” The saurian’s long head tilted slightly. “Fortunately, the majority of injuries suffered are treatable. They were largely decompressionrelated, with a few plasma burns, broken bones, and the like.”
“You said the majority,” noted Vale. “How many did we lose?”
Ree sucked in a tight breath. “There have been two deaths,” he said gravely. “Crewman Baars perished instantly when a warp-field coil imploded. Ensign Unünüü was lost after a critical venting of atmosphere in his quarters. In addition, Lieutenant Tylith remains in critical condition with a subdural hematoma caused by an impact on her skull. I am not confident of her chances for survival.”
“And that on top of major structural damage to the ship, all because we couldn’t talk to each other,” said Melora. “Why couldn’t they have just waited instead of attacking us?” She had a padd in front of her. “The sensors did flag the muon signal they sent us, but it was so fast and so dense it almost got lost in the backscatter from the debris zone.”
“They are machines,” Tuvok noted. “Incredibly sophisticated, indeed, but still machines. And as such, they appear to adhere to a very rigid pattern of programmed behaviors.”
“Shoot first, ask questions later,” Vale added. “You’ve got to wonder what made them that way in the first place.”
“Ensign.” Riker returned to the head of the table and paused, resting his hands on the back of the chair. “What’s the estimate on repairs?”
Torvig cleared his throat and straightened. “As Lieutenant Commander Pazlar said, the damage is major. We have no warp capability, no long-range communications, and retardation of several noncritical systems throughout the ship. Uncontrolled venting during the attack has greatly depleted our deuterium tanks. The starboard nacelle is structurally sound but, uh, requires extensive repairs. In addition, there’s damage to several areas of the outer hull. But none of these problems is insurmountable. In the chief engineer’s opinion, if the Titan were able to make orbit around a world with available deuterium resources, even find a nebula or a comet, we could effect repairs to bring us back to warp capability within two weeks and then finish the remainder of the operation in flight.” He coughed again. “I, um, fully concur with Doctor RaHavreii’s evaluation.”
“There’s just one problem with that, Vig,” said Ranul. He pointed out the window, toward the Sentry ship towing them through the subspace shear. “Until they decide to let us go, we’re little more than prisoners.”
“White-Blue doesn’t see it that way,” offered Commander Troi.
“I’m sure,” replied the Trill.
Vale glanced at Tuvok. “What if we hit it with a maximum-power phaser strike, targeted at the tractor emitter on the other ship?”
“There is no emitter,” replied the Vulcan. “The Sentry craft appears to be able to multiplex the tractor beam from any location, just as it can emit antiproton energy as a weapon system.”
“We’re not going to start that fight up again,” Riker said firmly. “At least, not until I’m sure we could win it.” He shook his head. “We’re playing catch-up here, and I don’t like it. I don’t want to lose any more people through mistakes.”
“White-Blue may have had the ability to cut through the forcefield we erected around him from the start,” began Melora. “If he followed the same pattern as the attacker, I believe he computed the frequency from first principles.”
“He?” Ranul grunted. “It’s a machine, Melora. Don’t read traits into it that aren’t there.”
“Don’t be so certain, sir,” said Torvig. “The White-Blue AI may not have a gender identity as we perceive it, but it does have a personality, and it appears deliberately to exhibit a male aspect, just as the Cyan-Gray AI demonstrated a female one.”
“My point is,” Melora continued, “it, he, whatever pronoun you want to use, I believe White-Blue was capable of invading the ship’s systems long before he actually did it.”
“It was imperative,” said Troi. “That’s what White-Blue said. We can’t deny that the ship out there would have destroyed us if it continued to attack. White-Blue stopped that.”
“And now we’re its captives,” Vale replied, “hostages on our own starship, being taken to an unknown fate.”
Riker eyed her. “Have you managed to make contact with the… the shipframe again?”
“Yes, but we just get the same message as before: ‘Please stand by.’ ”
“If I may,” said Tuvok. “I believe your perception of the motives of these artificial intelligences is colored by your human viewpoint. What the Sentries are doing is, from their perspective, not only logical but also altruistic.”
“They put a hole in our ship, and now they want to fix it?” Ranul frowned.
“Correct.” The Vulcan nodded. “I would suggest that White-Blue and Cyan-Gray are, for want of a better term, sorry for their error. They wish to make amends, to repair the damage they caused.”
“Two people are dead because of the damage they caused,” said Vale in a low voice.
“A distinction a machine life-form might not fully comprehend,” Tuvok answered.
Riker held up a hand to forestall any further conversation on that tack. “We’re being taken to the star system Melora located before all of this took place,” he noted. “Even if we break free before we get there, we’re in no state to fight or to run for cover. On top of that, we have too many questions about these AIs, about the disruption zones, and about this ‘Null’ that White-Blue mentioned.”
“Even if we did disengage, I don’t know what the effect would be,” noted Melora. “The ship is traveling through a subspace surface anomaly. We might not be able to get back into normal space without suffering even more damage.”
“So for now, we just go along with them?” Ranul asked.
The captain gave a nod. “Make no mistake, this is not a situation I want to place my ship and my crew in, but right now, the only place we’re going to find answers is with these machin
es.”
“I hope you’re right, sir.”
“So do I.” Riker turned away.
Xin Ra-Havreii entered the small, alcovelike office off the main computer core and banged his fist on the table, startling the Cygnian officer. “Sethe!” he barked. “I suddenly find myself wondering exactly what kind of dunsel you are.”
The lieutenant blinked, and then his lips thinned. “Is there a problem, Doctor?” He said the title as if it rhymed with “idiot.”
Ra-Havreii slid a padd across the table toward him. “The captain’s orders to perform a deep system diagnostic were clear, weren’t they? As were mine when I gave you your assigned quadrants of the memory core to sweep and evaluate, yes?”
Star Trek: Titan - 006 - Synthesis Page 10
