Star Trek: Titan - 006 - Synthesis

by James Swallow

  Dakal looked out at the anomaly with his naked eyes and saw a raw wound torn across the sky. Rainbows of hellish light flooded out as particle interactions that never should have occurred took place, spherical shocks of energy dispersal radiating outward in surge fronts. The first of these kissed the far side of the refinery platform, and the entire complex shook with a hammer-blow impact. The ensign lost his balance and fell against the pilot’s chair with a yelp.

  He felt strong fingers clamp around his arm and haul him back to his feet. “Commander Tuvok!”

  The Vulcan didn’t answer, instead moving him out of the way to take the flight controls. Back in the crew compartment, he heard Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa call out that the hatch was secure and the docking tube detached.

  “The remote,” Dakal said. “Cyan-Gray’s drone…”

  “Passed us in the corridor,” Sethe told him. “Racing as if it was trying to break warp velocity. If machines can panic, then that’s what they’re doing.” The Cygnian broke off as he saw the roiling, churning shape of the spatial anomaly. “And that must be the reason…”

  “Flight positions,” said Tuvok. “Ensign Dakal, Lieutenant Sethe, please stand clear.”

  Dakal got out of the way in time to let Pava dash past him and slide into the copilot’s chair. Then the view outside lurched, and the Holiday lifted off.

  “We have to get away from here!” muttered Sethe.

  “I am endeavoring to do exactly that,” said Tuvok, his tone as calm and metered as if he were discussing a matter of inclement weather.

  The Holiday powered away from the landing pad, and the commander put it into a hard turn that strained the inertial dampening field. The ensign grasped a stanchion for support, unable to take his eyes off the anomaly. The colors and form of it were unnatural, and the way it writhed and flexed, it was as if the universe were trying to force it closed, expunge it before it could fully manifest.

  Then it burst open, exploding with monstrous violence.

  The subspace rip widened, and forms were disgorged from within it. Long ropes of strange, glittering, shimmering matter lashed out like whips, spinning away, end over end. Some of them twirled around and curved into rough globes; others sputtered and discorporated, unable to maintain enough critical potential to exist in this alien realm. Already, the anomaly was shrinking, but the things it had granted passage to swarmed, moving like oil across water.

  The largest, a thick lash of molten matter, flexed along its length and creased the upper surface of the refinery platform. From their viewpoint, it seemed like only the merest of touches, but it lit a trail of fire and destruction behind, slicing through sparking force barriers and tearing open whole sections of the Sentry station.

  Shipframes and drones burst from the docks, desperate to escape, and the backswing of the stroke tore them apart. With a sudden sense of horror, the Cardassian realized that the freakish streak of flame was homing in on the AIs, striking with deliberate, calculated malice.

  “Is it alive?” breathed the Andorian.

  A chime sounded from one of the other consoles, and Dakal went to it. “We’re being hailed. It’s Lieutenant McCreedy on the tanker.”

  He touched a keypad on the panel, and the engineer’s voice cut through the air. “Holiday, do you read me? Are you seeing that?”

  Dakal replied, and his voice sounded dead and distant in his ears. “We see it, Lieutenant.”

  NINE

  Riker stood at the tall, narrow window of his ready room, leaning forward on one arm, resting against the frame. Outside, blinks of light from welding drones were just visible where they were working on the starboard warp nacelle.

  “I couldn’t get a read on it,” he admitted. “I don’t know if what I was seeing was the real thing or just a simulation.”

  Behind him, his wife frowned. “Assume for a moment that it was real,” Deanna said. “Tell me what your gut feeling was.”

  He glanced back at her and gave her a wan smile. “You’re the counselor in this marriage, not me.”

  “You’ve picked up some of my good habits. Don’t think before you answer, Will. Just give me the first impressions that come into your mind.”

  The captain pictured the avatar in his thoughts. “Intelligent,” he said. “Defiant. Afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of us, of me, I think.” Riker folded his arms. “I’ll tell you what it felt like. It was like listening to me talking to my father when I was fifteen years old. Only this time, I’m the parent who thinks he knows best.”

  “You think she’s like a child, then? That could explain some aspects of her behavior.”

  “More like a moody teenager. One with the power of a cutting-edge starship at her fingertips.”

  Troi crossed the room, thinking aloud. “I’ve spoken to Xin, to Torvig and Chaka. All of them noted similar behavior patterns to the ones you described.” She sighed. “A persona in flux, trying to find stability, to know itself.”

  “Can that be possible? From newborn intelligence to awkward adolescent in a day? If she’s evolving that fast, how long before she reaches the equivalent of adulthood or beyond?”

  Troi shrugged. “I’m not even sure we can measure the avatar’s development against humanoid standards.” She paused. “And did you notice? You referred to her as ‘she’ just then, not ‘it.’ ”

  Riker nodded to himself. “So I did. It’s hard to keep that in mind. She’s not like any other artificial intelligence I’ve ever come across, not since Data and the other Soong androids. Even the original Minuet the Bynars created doesn’t hold a candle to her.” He sighed. “She’s alive, Deanna. Don’t ask me how to explain it, I just know it.”

  Troi spared him a smile. “There’s the gut feeling I wanted.” Then the smile faded. “As for the rest of the crew… there’s a lot of mixed reactions to her, mostly concern.”

  “Their ship is suddenly talking back to them. I’d say some anxiety is justified.”

  “It’s more than that. People feel suspicious. They’re afraid they’re being watched in everything they do and say. There’s no privacy from something that’s inside every screen, every replicator or companel.”

  The captain nodded again, thinking of the clandestine meeting he had been forced to hold aboard the La Rocca. “I know. Ensign Torvig spoke to the avatar about that, and she agreed she wouldn’t monitor private quarters or areas I designated as off-limits.” He gestured around the ready room. “Like this one. It wasn’t an easy sell, though. Titan’s computer system usually monitors all spaces throughout the ship automatically, all the time.”

  “But not usually with an intelligent mind behind them. Cutting off that observation… she would see that as a dereliction of her duties,” said Troi, thinking it through.

  “Just to be sure, I’ve got the Rossini ensigns leading teams to set up cut-out triggers on the sensor links, in all sensitive areas of the ship.”

  “That’s not a gesture of trust,” Troi noted.

  “That word again.” Riker gave her a look and spread his hands, palms up. “Right now, I’m fresh out.” He turned back to the window and paused. The fast-moving motes of the Sentry repair drones were gone. He peered forward, his eyes narrowing. Outside, along the inner surface of the AI spacedock, chaser lights were blinking in a two-one sequence, over and over.

  Troi sensed the new tension in him. “Imzadi, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  A tone sounded from the monitor on the captain’s desk, and he stabbed at it. “This is Riker.”

  “Captain,” said Vale. “You’d better get out here.”

  The ready-room doors hissed open, and Christine Vale’s commanding officer stalked onto the bridge, with the counselor a step behind. Riker slowed a moment as he caught sight of the figure standing in the dead center of the room, a woman in a strange, ethereal gown.

  He frowned at the avatar. “That’s a new look for you.”

  “She just blipped in,�
� Vale explained. “And I have an alert from Melora. Sensors are going wild, sir. There’s an energy distortion event in progress right now out at the refinery.”

  “Something is coming,” said the hologram. “Pushing through from subspace.”

  “Have you been able to contact Commander Tuvok?” asked Troi.

  “No reply from the Holiday as yet,” reported Lieutenant Rager. “But they may not be reading us. A heavy subspace radiation bloom is fouling the comms.”

  “It is the same energy pattern detected at the site of the shipframe wreck,” said the avatar. “Whatever affected it has returned.”

  Riker glanced to Ensign Panyarachun, who was standing a shift at the bridge’s engineering station. “Tasanee, what’s our status?”

  She answered immediately. “Warp drive is still off-line, sir. Impulse is operational, and we have partial deflector and phaser power.”

  As Panyarachun spoke, the turbolift doors to the right of the main systems display parted, and White-Blue’s droneframe staggered out, dropping from a difficult bipedal stance back to a hexapod one. “Captain,” it said, “Titan has informed me of Lieutenant Pazlar’s discovery.”

  “You told him?” Troi asked the avatar.

  “It seemed the thing to do,” she replied.

  “I have communicated with the other Sentries,” White-Blue went on. “The matter is being addressed.”

  Vale glared up at the machine. “Let me guess. The Null?”

  When the AI didn’t reply to her, she turned back to find Riker looking directly at her. “Any hatches open, close them; any systems off-line, spin them up. Get us clear of the spacedock, and then go to full impulse.”

  “Yes, sir!” said Vale crisply. “Rager, Lavena, you heard the man.”

  The women at the conn and ops consoles gave a chorus of ayes and set to work.

  White-Blue picked its way down the ramp from the aft of the bridge. “Captain, this is ill advised. If you proceed with this course of action, you will be entering a danger zone.”

  “Seven of my people are already out there,” he replied. “Don’t think for one moment that I’m going to sit here and leave them in harm’s way.”

  On the viewscreen, the sides of the Sentry maintenance platform receded, service gantries folding quickly away to avoid colliding with the Starfleet vessel’s hull. A shallow shudder went through the ship as it turned into open space.

  “She’s a little sluggish answering the helm,” Lavena announced. “The driver coils are out of sync.”

  The avatar’s gaze turned inward for a moment. “Corrected,” she said. Immediately, Titan’s ride became noticeably smoother.

  The mechanoid came forward on piston legs. “We will not be able to guarantee the safety of this ship if you leave the spacedock.” The AI’s voice rose an octave as its head swiveled to address the hologram. “You realize that.”

  “White-Blue.” There was steel in Riker’s voice. “I am in command of this ship, is that clear?”

  The machine looked at the captain, to the avatar, and back again. “Understood.”

  “We’re clear of the platform and free to navigate,” said Rager. “The station is asking us to, uh, reconsider.”

  “I’m sure they are,” noted Vale.

  Lavena’s webbed hands worked her panel. “Course laid in.”

  “Floor it,” said the commander.

  The starship leapt away from the Sentry cluster, threading swiftly out and past the drifting shapes of the massive moon-sized constructs. Vale saw other AI ships moving in the void. She recognized what had to be alert postures and defensive formations, small fleet elements coming together at focal points in a LaGrange orbit around the Demon-class planet. But more visible were the other vessels that raced past Titan, distending as they vanished into spatial shears. She didn’t have to guess where they were going.

  Riker took a step toward the AI and then paused. He turned back to face the avatar. The strange, almost angelic attire she wore seemed incongruous on the sleek, clean lines of the starship’s bridge. “Thank you for alerting us.”

  She actually looked worried. “It might not be enough, Captain. We’re several light-minutes away from the planetoid. Without warp speed—”

  “We’ll get there as fast as we can,” Riker replied, and faced White-Blue. “Anything you can tell us about what we’re going to face out there will be useful.”

  “Shipframes are already entering the danger zone,” it told him. “The matter will be dealt with by the time the Titan arrives. This vessel’s presence will be redundant.”

  “I’ll take that as a no, then,” the captain retorted, and took his place in the center seat. “Let me know if you change your mind. In the meantime, don’t get in the way of my crew.”

  White-Blue said nothing and backed into an alcove, watching them intently.

  Vale leaned closer to speak so only Riker could hear her. “Run out of patience?”

  He didn’t look at her. “Does it show?”

  The Null tore through the sky above the ice world like a storm made of sword blades. In the shuttle’s copilot seat, Pava felt a shudder of revulsion go through her as she watched the pulsing, sinuous shapes spin and turn. They resembled nothing she had ever seen, shimmering with a gloss that recalled wet, rust-colored flesh in some places, turning black and glassy in others. Patches of the alien matter distorted, and it nauseated her to look too long into the mad geometries it made.

  Tuvok wove the shuttlecraft through the ever-growing cloud of wreckage and ejecta displaced by the attack, and the Holiday shuddered as debris bumped off the deflector envelope.

  “Oh, Suns, it’s coming back around!” said Sethe.

  The largest of the forms, the long, thin coil, was spiraling outward, flexing into a rough loop as it moved. The Andorian wondered how the thing could propel itself. Was it really some kind of vessel or a bizarre form of subspace cosmozoan? A glowing nimbus of dark energy haloed every piece of the freakish intruders. Perhaps it’s some kind of displacement field or—

  “Incoming ships,” called Dakal. “Approaching fast.”

  “I see them, Ensign,” replied Tuvok. “Three Sentry vessels, off the port quarter.”

  The shuttle’s scanners picked them up, and Pava spared the screen on her panel a glance. It showed a trio of conical craft, and as she watched, they split apart and unfolded, reconfiguring themselves on the move into curved structures, similar to the shape of a Klingon bat’leth stood on one tip. Green rays flared from the craft, raking one of the smaller Null fragments and disintegrating it. The AIs swept in, homing on the larger whiplike form, but this time, the emerald fire from the antiproton weapons was sloughed off in great gouts of black sparks.

  The Null reacted. The far end of the massive cord recoiled and lashed out, slamming back and forth in a ricochet between the ships in their tight formation. Thruster nacelles were sliced away, bleeding plasma into the vacuum. Another of the Sentry craft was bifurcated, and the third was stabbed by the tip of the matter strip as it turned solid and punched through the center of the vessel’s mass. The wreckage of the AIs was ignored as the Null shifted again, this time looping into a serpentine aspect, spinning down toward the thin elevator tower that connected the refinery station to the planet below.

  The Null struck out and bit into its prey, then shook and twisted with fangs buried deep to rip open the kill.

  With a flash of detonation, the space elevator was severed just beneath the disc of the refinery. The Null was already spinning away as the orbital station deformed under the sudden and punishing transfer of kinetic energy. The platform bent and broke, separating into burning shards and great ragged wedges of metal.

  “The tether…” breathed Dakal.

  Cut loose, kilometers of semirigid material sank away into the ice world’s gravity, parts of it breaking off and burning as it flashed into the thin interface between space and the frozen world’s atmosphere. But the sparse membrane of air was barely thick enough
to register and certainly not enough to deflect the tumbling cables. In a wave of impacts, the tether tore through the base station and roared out over the ice fields, branding a twisting gouge into the permafrost wherever it fell. It would be several hours before the rain of collisions ceased.

  “What are those things?” The words fell breathlessly from Sethe’s lips. “Is it a weapon? A life-form?”