“The repairs are proceeding ahead of schedule,” Torvig offered. “White-Blue’s assistance has been invaluable.”
“The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can leave.” Vale nodded to herself.
“We do have another pressing need, though,” said Melora. “The deuterium tanks are patched, but we need to refill them. The amount of raw slush we lost during the venting was substantial.” She looked to Torvig for confirmation, and the ensign nodded vigorously.
“The Sentry known as One-Five has offered to bring in a tanker drone from one of their refinery platforms,” Tuvok explained. “There is a Class-P world in the next orbital zone rich in hydrogen ice. It will be more than adequate to replenish our stocks.”
“But they won’t let us go get it ourselves,” said Vale. “We’ve got to be spoon-fed.”
Riker shook his head. Too many variables were coming together at once, and one more outside his control was not what he needed right now. He looked across the La Rocca’s cabin to the Vulcan. “Tuvok, I want you to assemble a team to go out and supervise the transfer of the deuterium. Take a shuttle, engineers, and security. I don’t want any more surprises.”
“Acknowledged, sir.”
“And while you’re at it, any extra information you can gather on our hosts would be a bonus.”
“I assumed that directive was inherent in the order, Captain.”
He nodded and glanced around at the rest of his officers. “Then we’re done here, for the moment. I don’t have to tell you to keep discreet about what we’ve discussed. Dismissed.”
“Walls have ears,” said Vale. “Never a truer word was said.”
As the others filed out of the skiff, Riker put a hand on the first officer’s arm. “Chris, a moment?”
The last to exit, Deanna threw him a look. He didn’t return it, and she understood. The hatch closed again, and they were alone, captain and first officer.
“Is this the part where you remind me of the whole ‘We come in peace’ thing?” said Vale.
“You think I’m soft-pedaling this?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “No. Because I’ve sat in the big chair a couple of times now, and I’ve seen how hard it is to be the captain. I won’t second-guess you.”
“I thought that was your job.”
“And you would know, having done my job for long enough. You know that the XO is the voice of the worstcase scenario. I prepare for the worst while you hope for the best. Isn’t that how it works, sir?”
“And that’s why you set Tuvok and Ranul running on an aggressive agenda.”
She met the open challenge in his words without drawing back. “Yes. Something Keru said earlier… it’s better to have a weapon and not need it than to need a weapon and not have it.”
He folded his arms and gave her a level look. “You’ve been in Starfleet long enough to know that’s not how we do things. We’re not gunboat diplomats.”
“And you’ve been in Starfleet longer than me, long enough to know that the way we do things changes as time goes on. It was different for Archer and Hernandez, as it was different for Kirk and Jameson, Picard and Sisko… as it’s different for you. Things have changed for us, for Starfleet. It took me a while to get that. I thought we were far away from it out here, but we’re not. We’re really not.”
“Chris,” he said carefully. “Everything that happened to the Federation, our showdown with the Borg, everything and everyone we lost… all of that does not change our ideals. It does not change who we are and why we’re out here.”
“I don’t disagree,” she told him. “The new civilizations we’ve encountered, the Pa’haquel, the Lumbu, the squales on Droplet, and all the others, were worth it. But we can’t look away from the truth that the Borg forced us to see. They reminded us that the universe is as cold and unforgiving as it is beautiful and fantastic.” Vale’s expression turned sadder. “So when the threat comes to our door, yes, I’m a little quicker to reach for my sword now. To trust a little less. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hope to hell I’m going to be proven wrong.”
Riker searched for something to say, something that would put the lie to Vale’s words, and he found nothing. The admission of that troubled him. He paused, running his fingers through his hair before he spoke again. “Tuvok’s going to have his hands full prepping the tanker escort mission. I want you quietly to extend to Keru whatever help he needs to get this dekyon option up and running. Keep it off the grid, compartmentalized.”
“Aye, sir,” she said, a quirk of surprise on her lips.
“And for the record,” he added, “I hope to hell you’re wrong, too.” Riker walked toward the hatch. “Go take the conn. I’ll be up in a while.”
Vale followed him. “May I ask where you’re going, Captain?”
“It’s time I had a talk with my newest crewmember.”
A haze of tractor-field energy lifted the Shuttlecraft Holiday off the deck and began to rotate it slowly, bringing the blunt prow of the small vessel around to face toward the hatch. Tuvok nodded approval to the crewman operating the tractor turntable and crossed to where his away team had assembled in a loose group. Three of them were engineers dispatched by Doctor Ra-Havreii to work directly with the AIs on the tanking of the deuterium: Lieutenant McCreedy, a human female from the warp-propulsion division; a brown-scaled Selayan officer named Ythiss; and the talkative Ensign Meldok. The Benzite was in the midst of relaying his experiences aboard the Sentry shipframe during the Holiday’s earlier excursion, and it seemed clear by the expression on McCreedy’s face that she had listened to this blow-by-blow replay on more than one occasion already.
The rest of the group was there under Tuvok’s direct orders. Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa would assist him if any tactical situations arose, while Ensign Dakal and Lieutenant Sethe had joined the party to serve ostensibly as scientific observers. The Cardassian and the Cygnian were both programming their tricorders, setting up scanner macros for the mission ahead.
The Holiday settled to the deck with a dull thud, and the tractor field flashed off. Immediately, a two-tone alert began to sound across the cavernous space of the shuttle-bay, and Tuvok turned to see the main hatch begin its retreat into the ceiling. Open space beckoned beyond, the vacuum and cold held out by a thin veil of atmospheric shielding.
Tuvok nodded to Pava. “Take the controls, Lieutenant. Clear us for departure.”
“Aye, sir,” said the Andorian, taking swift steps to board the shuttle.
“Our mission objectives are clear,” Tuvok told the others. “You are reminded to remain wary at all times. The agenda of the Sentry AIs has yet to be fully determined, and therefore they should be considered potentially hostile.”
“Meaning what?” said Sethe nervously. “That we could be walking into a trap?”
“If these machines wanted hostages, they could have taken the captain and the counselor when they first beamed down,” said McCreedy. “I don’t want to damage your ego, Holor, but we’re not worth as much as they are.”
“The probability of seizure is low,” Tuvok agreed. “However, circumstances are fluid. We are dealing with a xenospecies never before encountered. Make no assumptions about them.”
Pava’s voice called through the open hatch. “We’re clear to disembark.”
At a nod of his head, Tuvok’s team filed aboard the Holiday. Ensign Dakal was the last to step through the hatch, and he paused on the threshold. “Commander,” he said. “This is as much a mission of espionage as it is otherwise.”
It wasn’t a question, but Tuvok treated it as such and nodded. “That is part of the reason you and Lieutenant Sethe are here. You have the most direct experience of the Sentry technology.”
“If they determine we are spying on them, will that not further undermine any foundation of good faith?”
Tuvok nodded again. “As such, I would suggest that we do not raise their suspicions.”
“That may be easier said than done, sir,” note
d the Cardassian.
“Indeed,” he replied, and followed the ensign aboard the shuttle.
The hatch retracted shut behind him, and Pava applied power to the thrusters. As Tuvok took his seat beside her, the Holiday shot through the open bay and out past the curved walls of the Sentry spacedock.
“Interrogative: Would it not be a more efficient use of time and materials to address the stress fractures here?” White-Blue extended a metallic limb, which opened at the tip to present a thinner manipulator. The spindly pointer touched a highlighted area in the wire-frame hologram of the Titan floating over the systems display table.
Xin Ra-Havreii’s lips curled, and he leaned on the panel, looking past the spidery mechanoid to the spread of main engineering behind it. Members of his team were busy at the warp core’s matter injectors, working through a realignment program. He looked back at the detail the AI was indicating, a torsion effect that had caused minor hull damage to the port pylon. On a second glance, he realized that the machine had a very good point. The Sentry remotes outside would be able to work over that minor problem much faster than the Titan’s crew, not needing to spend setup time drawing the right tools or suiting for an extravehicular operation; it would free Xin’s people to concentrate on other more pressing matters, such as the dekyon project Ranul Keru had so indelicately initiated or, more important, the matter of Titan herself…
He frowned, slightly irritated that the machine was correct for what had to be the fourth or fifth time. “Very well,” he snapped. “Proceed.”
White-Blue’s sensor head dipped slightly as it communicated with its fellows, and then it jerked back up to look at him. “This would take less time if I were allowed to prioritize and authorize each repair task myself, rather than asking for your permission in every instance.”
“It would,” agreed Xin. “Quite frankly, with several of my key staff being assigned to some make-weight supervisory mission, I would welcome a less cluttered schedule.” Before the AI could respond, he gave it a hard look. “But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”
White-Blue paused, and Xin wondered if the machine was considering the presence of Chief Dennisar and two more security guards standing a few meters away, their phaser rifles at the ready on their shoulder slings. When it spoke again, he thought he could sense some artificial rendition of regret. “I have made errors in my dealings with you,” it admitted. “I applied my own cultural standards to an alien society, and that was incorrect.”
The admission caught the engineer by surprise. “If we understood more about each other, perhaps we could bridge the knowledge gap.” He moved around the systems display. “You’ve told us nothing about your origins and your purpose here. You can’t have evolved in this system. There isn’t the infrastructure or resource to build mechanisms like your FirstGen. Who created you? What happened to them?”
White-Blue turned a cluster of eye lenses on him. “Those questions are of importance to you, Xin-RaHavreii.”
Something in the AI’s answer gave him a moment’s pause. Standing there, looking into the cold, expressionless optics of the droneframe, he felt a sudden stab of animal fear, an abrupt sense of exactly how alien this machine was to him. Xin had met many different species in his life, beings vastly different in nature and shape from his humanoid form, but in all of those encounters, those beings had been the product of nature, of raw evolution, of the stuff of the universe itself. The Sentry was something else. It was entirely created, engineered, and constructed from metals and tripolymers, given life not by fate but by design. In that way, it was unlike him in every single aspect of its being.
“You are one of the creators-programmers of this vessel,” White-Blue continued. “Those data were among those I scanned,” it explained. “You helped to build the central intellect of the Titan.”
His throat was dry. “Among other things, yes.”
“Interrogative: Why did you retard its mental growth? What value was there in this? Did you consider it a threat as you consider me a threat?” The queries were delivered in a careful, metered monotone that made them all the more troubling.
“There is no simple answer to any of those questions,” Xin replied, a little too quickly. “It wasn’t an act of cruelty, if that is what you’re implying.”
“You have never been a parent,” said White-Blue. “I registered that fact in your personnel file. Interrogative: Do you have an understanding of what that process state entails?”
“I fail to see what that has to do with this.”
Dennisar and the security guards noted the shift in the timbre of Xin’s voice, and they came closer, alert for any eventuality.
“You are engaged in an emotional and physical relationship with a female crewmate, Identifier: Melora Pazlar, Species: Elaysian.” The statement was matter-of-fact, and hearing it laid out in such bald terms set Xin’s teeth on edge. He knew it was irrational, but it annoyed him. White-Blue continued. “Interrogative: Do you plan on this pairing to include the creation of a child?”
“My personal relationships are a private matter,” Xin retorted, although he knew that was far from the truth. He glowered at the AI. “And my work in building the Titan was not parentage, it was engineering!”
“You imply that you feel no pride in the product of your creation, that you do not experience an emotional reaction when the Titan is in danger, is threatened, is damaged.” White-Blue regarded him coldly. “Those statements are untrue.”
Xin turned away, feeling his cheeks turning a dark umber. “I won’t discuss this any further.”
The Sentry ignored his reply. “You are not cognizant of the scale of your own accomplishments. You do not understand that the processes you organics may casually engage in—reference: biological reproduction—are beyond us.” White-Blue retracted its limb with a metallic clack. “I am SecondGen. My kind cannot bring a new iteration to pass. In all attempts to do so, we have failed. Interrogative: Can you understand that, Xin-Ra-Havreii? To know that existence ends with your generation?” The machine was silent for a long time. “I envy you,” it said finally, before moving back to the holographic display.
White-Blue then asked a question about replacing the field coils inside the nacelle intercooler array, but Xin didn’t register it. Once again, he was thinking of Melora and the image of a human woman with dark hair and brilliant eyes.
EIGHT
The holodeck doors parted, and the first thing Riker sensed was the smell of loam and distant rains. It wasn’t what he had been expecting; then again, he had to admit to himself that he wasn’t sure what he was expecting. He entered and caught the faint sound of voices as he passed through the arch, his boots stepping onto the wet grass. Riker stood in the middle of a forest, the air still chilly with the recent passage of a downpour.
Titan’s holographic avatar had chosen this chamber as a retreat, returning here when she wasn’t—when it wasn’t, he reminded himself—appearing elsewhere via the network of internal holoemitters.
Or maybe it never leaves here at all. It’s a virtual image. There’s no reason it can’t be in more than one place at the same time. Perhaps it’s having conversations with a dozen different people at once.
After all, the avatar was the ship, and the ship was all around them. Riker imagined that if he wanted to, he could have had this meeting anywhere, just by summoning the computer to speak with him—but he wanted to come here to do it. In a way, it was a gesture of willingness on his part.
The captain made his way through the woodland, noting the bounce to his step that indicated a slightly lower than Earth-normal gravity. Looking at the trees, he observed odd striations on the bark and, occasionally, dun-colored birds with dual sets of wings. Rounding a large, mossy boulder, he came across a clearing lit by weak white sunshine and found the avatar talking with Ensign Torvig. Neither of them appeared to have noticed his approach.
Riker nodded to himself, placing the location. This was a representation of Choblav,
Torvig’s homeworld.
He heard laughter. The avatar sat on a fallen tree. She was grinning as a large, iridescent insect buzzed from one of her hands to the other. It caught a gust of wind and darted away. She reached for it, briefly saddened by its departure, before turning back to Torvig, resuming their conversation.
“Did any of your species try to find them?”
Torvig shook his head. “The question has been put forward many times, but it is difficult to come to a consensus. Some feel that the identities of the benefactors is meant to remain unknown, while others strive to know them through study of the technologies they left to us.” He sighed. “I would like to meet them, if such a thing were possible.”
“Why?” said the hologram.
“To thank them,” Torvig replied. “Without the Great Upgrade, I’d be less than I am…” He glanced off into the woods, and Riker saw another Choblik there; unlike Torvig, with his cybernetic implants, this one was unaugmented. It caught sight of Riker and bolted, vanishing into the deeps of the tree line.
Star Trek: Titan - 006 - Synthesis Page 17
