“Glad we could help.” She heard him say the words, but Deanna sensed the hollow ring to them.
“Interrogative: Where is your scout vessel?”
“We’re looking for it right now. Can you help us?”
There was a momentary pause. “Affirmative. I will remain in this zone to support you in recovery of your missing crewmem—” The signal abruptly broke up into static, just as a warning tone sounded from the tactical console.
“We’ve got company,” said Keru. “Seven… no, eight Sentry craft moving in from the far side of the engagement zone on intercept vectors.”
“Whatever they want, they’re breaking in on the open channel,” Rager told them. “Cyan-Gray has been cut out of the circuit.”
“Weapons?” asked Vale. On the screen, the AI ships were visible now, moving in quick, darting motions.
Keru shook his head. “They’re not targeting us, but I do read active prefire chambers on all ships. The hammer’s back, even if the finger’s not on the trigger.”
Deanna saw Will stiffen, his hands drawing tight. “What now?” he said quietly.
The ships on the screen were a mix of types: silvery raptorlike craft that vaguely resembled something Romulan, vessels that appeared to be made entirely of octagonal solar panels, and a large elliptical form bristling with fans of antennae. The ovoid ship caught the sunlight and flashed amber-bronze. A thick band of crimson circled the vessel’s prow as it turned to present itself to the Titan.
“Your presence is not required here!” The strident voice crackled through the bridge’s hidden speakers. “You will leave immediately.”
“Red-Gold,” said Deanna, recognizing the Sentry’s arrogant tenor.
“We came to render whatever help we could,” said Will, iron beneath his words. “Our people were in danger, and so were yours. We couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”
“You were told to remain at the spacedock. Organics have no business becoming involved in Sentry matters. You were not authorized to bring your vessel to this location!”
“If we hadn’t,” snapped Vale, “the Null would be chewing its way through that planet down there right now!”
“You should not have come here,” came the reply, and Deanna knew the meaning went deeper than just the Titan’s dispatch of the Null. “The incursion would have been dealt with in due process. Your continued interference in our affairs will not be tolerated.”
“I don’t allow members of my crew to die needlessly, not when I can do something about it,” Will responded, keeping his tone firm but level. “Would you do any different?”
Red-Gold didn’t respond; instead, the AI chose a different target. “White-Blue, this is your error. You were required to maintain control of this situation. You failed to do so.”
The other AI tilted its sensor head. “I warned William-Riker of the danger here. He chose not to abide by my recommendation.” The spidery machine paused. “However, it cannot be denied that the Titan’s presence was key in neutralizing the incursion. Based on the dimensions of the mass, I estimate the cost in shipframes should the engagement have continued to be more than—”
“Your evaluation is noted,” Red-Gold said tersely. “However, the Governance Kernel has determined that I am to operate as supervisory authority in this conflict zone, and with that mandate, I require the alien vessel to depart immediately.”
“The other ships are moving into combat-ready postures.” The avatar spoke in a low voice.
“I’m not leaving here without finding my people.” Will glared at the bronze ship on the screen.
“That was not a request, wetmind,” said the machine. “Leave now, and return to the spacedock, or your craft will be disabled and removed by force.”
White-Blue’s droneframe advanced across the rear of the bridge. “Captain,” it began, “Cyan-Gray will remain in this zone and complete the search operation in your stead. I would suggest you accede to Red-Gold’s diktat in the interim.”
Time seemed to stretch almost to the breaking point as the bridge fell silent, and every eye turned toward the captain. He didn’t move, but Deanna saw the turn of his thoughts in his emotional aura, the darkening of his manner.
“Helm,” he said, “get us out of here. Best speed to the spacedock.”
“Aye, Captain.” Lavena tapped the controls, and the view moved away from the bronze ellipse.
“An intelligent choice—” began Red-Gold.
Vale glanced at Rager, making a throat-cutting gesture, and the lieutenant closed the channel before the AI could finish speaking. “I think we’ve heard enough from him for the time being.”
Will nodded and walked away. “You have the bridge, Number One.”
Riker’s wife followed him into his ready room and waited. He didn’t need her to ask him how he felt, to try to get him to articulate his feelings—hell, if she did, in the mood I’m in right now, I’d probably bite her head off for doing it—in fact, his anger had to be lighting up her empathic senses like a flare.
He crossed to the window in the wall and watched the debris and the ice world fall away to starboard as the Titan reoriented itself for a return journey to the repair yard. After what seemed like long minutes, he looked up and caught Deanna’s reflected gaze in the glass. “Tuvok’s the only one with family onboard the ship,” he began. “Make T’Pel aware of his situation. List him and the others as missing for the time being.”
“I believe White-Blue,” she told him. “Cyan-Gray will find them for us.”
“That’s not the point,” he replied. “We bring our own home, Deanna. We don’t leave that duty to others.” Will sighed. “We saved lives here today, and they won’t even let us search for—” For bodies. He caught himself before he could say it aloud, but he knew she had heard the unsaid words. “For survivors,” he amended.
“Tuvok is nothing if not resourceful,” said Deanna. “And he’s been in situations worse than this. Pava, too.” She came forward and put a hand on his arm.
He shook his head. “They pushed us, and we gave. Then they pushed again, and we gave some more. Now it’s an open threat, and we backed down. I backed down.”
“You’re the captain,” she said gently, “and you know better than to let your ego get in the way of that. You did what was right for the ship.”
“I know,” he admitted. “I just needed to hear you say it for me.” Will looked into the face of the woman he loved. “Of course I’m not going to start a shooting match without better cause than posturing… but I’m not going any farther than this. I’m drawing the line.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is the last time. From now on, we’re going to push back.”
She frowned at him. “I’m the ship’s diplomat. I hope you don’t expect me to approve of that.”
“It’s that or we let ourselves get backed into a corner.” He moved away. “We’re in the middle of this now, Deanna. There’s more going on here than just some freak space anomaly. I think we may have stumbled onto a war.”
“The Sentries and the Null?” She folded her arms. “It’s possible. And we have no idea how long this has been going on. They’re machines, after all. They could be hundreds, even thousands of years old.”
Will moved to the bookcase along one wall of the room, other thoughts rising to the fore. “And then there’s the problem closer to home.”
The replicated books were mostly presents from his former Enterprise crewmates, gifts given just before his wedding, when Starfleet Command had confirmed his captaincy of the Titan. Along with replicated copies of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and War-Tales of the Brothers K’laarq, there was a small, untitled, hard-bound volume, a notebook full of poetry written in a precise and careful hand. He thought about the mind that had crafted those poems, a synthetic sentience as real and vital as the one that had challenged him on the bridge of his own starship.
“She was afraid,” said Deanna. She gave a rueful smile. �
��You pushed her.”
“And she backed down,” he replied. “But will that be the last time she does?”
Tuvok ran his gloved hand across the surface of the canted metal wall rising away from the rectilinear arroyo around them. It was a form of refined iron, according to the tricorder, its age inconclusive but doubtless many decades, judging by the lines of ruddy oxidation around the rough edges. At first, the overlapping planes of metal seemed to have no logical structure to them, but as the Vulcan studied them, a peculiar form of architectural design slowly revealed itself to him, like the shapes hidden within an unfinished kal-toh puzzle. There was a strange geometry to the iron valley, one that pulled at perspective with optical tricks and false perceptions.
He glanced down as Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa approached, walking up the shallow incline from the deeper sections of the canyon where they had first arrived. “Sir,” she said, “what are your orders?” The Andorian kneaded the grip of a phaser, and the angle of her antennae visible beneath her helmet suggested irritation.
He did not answer that question immediately, instead posing one of his own. “How is Ensign Dakal?”
Pava glanced down the way she had come, to where the Cardassian stood alongside Lieutenant Sethe. “We pooled the spray sealant from our emergency-suit patches and used it to form a makeshift bandage around Zurin’s hand. It’s not an ideal solution, but it will suffice for now.”
“He may have internal injuries we are unaware of.”
“The tricorder didn’t show anything. And he’s not mentioned any pain.”
“The Cardassian people are known for their stoic endurance,” Tuvok noted, “and the ambient radiation in this area is interfering with normal tricorder operation.”
“All the more reason for us to get out of here, then,” said the woman.
Tuvok nodded. “I concur.” He pointed up toward the lip of the canyon. “If we seek higher ground, we may be able to make a more successful attempt at communication with the Titan.”
Pava nodded. So far, every effort to open a comm channel had been blocked by a wall of thrumming, hissing static that defied all penetration. Even moving too far from one another caused the short-range comms in the team’s environment suits to become garbled. She stiffened. “How did we even get here?”
Tuvok sensed that the question was rhetorical, but he answered it anyway. “I believe the matter stream from the shuttlecraft’s escape transporter was forcibly diverted from our intended destination on the ice planet.”
“How is that possible?” Pava sniffed. “We’re the only beings in this system who even have transporter technology.”
“One does not require a full understanding of a system in order to interfere with its operation, Lieutenant. But your statement raises some pertinent questions.”
The Andorian beckoned the others, and Dakal and Sethe began to climb the incline toward them. “Right now, I’d just settle for knowing where we are.”
“I have a hypothesis,” said the Vulcan, moving off up the long, wide ramp.
He heard Sethe puffing over the suit communicator link. “We… we’re not going to remain here, then?”
“No.”
“Sir, I thought protocols state that in the event of a crash landing, you remain at the impact site and wait for rescue. Granted, we didn’t exactly crash, but the circumstances are almost the same.”
“If we don’t know where ‘here’ is, we can’t expect the Titan to know, either,” said Dakal. Tuvok heard the Cardassian swallow hard. “For all we know, we could have been pulled into a subspace realm by those Null things.”
“Unlikely,” said the commander. “Our quantum signatures are in synchrony with the environment around us. We have not left our universe behind.”
“Only our reason,” muttered Sethe.
Pava shot the Cygnian a hard look. “You’d rather wait down there?” She pointed back into the canyon. “Counting off the seconds until your breather runs out of air?”
“We’d starve before that happened,” Dakal noted glumly. There was a vestigial atmosphere around them—Tuvok had detected its presence moments after they had materialized—but it was so thin and so toxic that to open the seals on their suits would be a death sentence, a fiftyfifty chance they would either suffocate or be poisoned within seconds.
Pava continued, ignoring the Cardassian’s comment. “I didn’t bring a kella deck with me, so I’d rather pass the time another way, if it’s all the same to you.”
The ramp’s angle became shallower, and Tuvok dropped into a crouch as the group approached the upper edge. The others quieted, copying his motions.
Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa moved up alongside the Vulcan. “Are we expecting hostiles, sir?”
Tuvok didn’t look at her, instead studying the garbled readings on his tricorder. “I am uncertain what we should expect, Lieutenant,” he replied. After a moment, he beckoned. “Follow me.”
Together, the four officers crested the lip of the canyon and found themselves standing on the edge of a wilderness of dark steel fields, lined in dirty orange where rivers of rust reached away toward a gently curved horizon. In the distance, skeletal derricks stood in serried rows with nests of fat cables strung between them, weak flickers of lightning fizzing around blackened ceramic connectors. There were what appeared to be the remains of minarets and other narrow towers, each ruined at the same height, some bent over, others broken and shed into piles of corroded rings. There were other canyons, too, cut into the carbon-scored landscape, some lit with a volcanic glow that reminded Tuvok of ancient Mount Tarhana on his homeworld, others dark and solemn caverns where no light fell.
The sky over their heads was black and starless, but now, as they stood in the clear, the illusion of total darkness was broken by a halo of stars visible at the edges of the skein of night. A huge shadow blotted out almost everything; they were in the lee of a larger planetary body, one orbiting between them and the nearest sun. Tuvok’s eyes narrowed, and he pointed upward. “There,” he said.
“I see it.” Pava gave a brusque nod. Visible in the corona of deflected light around the edge of the night side was a glittering rain of shards that twinkled and shone. She looked to him for confirmation. “Wreckage?”
“Indeed. It would seem my hypothesis has been proven correct.”
Sethe’s pale face fell as he made the same connection. He glanced around, blinking behind his helmet visor. “This is… This is one of them, isn’t it? The one we saw in orbit beyond the refinery. We’re actually standing on a… a…”
“A machine,” finished Dakal. “A computer.”
“As I suspected, we did not travel far from our intended destination.” He glanced at the dark ice world turning above them. “The energy cost required to divert our transporter beam would have grown exponentially with distance. We are on the surface of the construct that Cyan Gray identified as FirstGen Zero-Three.”
“Didn’t she also say something about it being exiled?” added Pava.
“It makes sense,” said Dakal. “Before the Null arrived, the Holiday’s sensors registered something emitting from this… machine moon. It probably observed the entire engagement from its orbit, safe outside the conflict zone.”
“And when we beamed off the shuttle, it snatched us?” Sethe’s brow furrowed. “What reason would it have to do that?”
“I am still developing a complete theory, Lieutenant,” said Tuvok. “But clearly, Zero-Three’s intentions toward us are not immediately hostile.”
Dakal’s helmet bobbed. “It’s far simpler to disrupt a transporter beam than to divert it. It could have scattered us to atoms if it wanted to.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any more well disposed toward it,” Sethe retorted. “Kidnapping isn’t an act of kindness.”
“The lieutenant has a valid point,” noted Pava, sparing the setting gauge on her phaser another look.
Dakal tapped his helmet. “The comm interference is just as bad up here as it was in t
he canyon. It’s the same pattern we encountered aboard White-Blue’s ship, when the automatic defenses came on-line.”
“It doesn’t want us calling home,” said Sethe. “We’re cut off from rescue!”
“Captain Riker will be searching for us,” Dakal insisted. “When the Holiday’s wreckage is found, the lack of organic matter within it will indicate our survival. We need only to stay alive until we are located.”
“I have a more proactive plan in mind, Ensign,” Tuvok told him. The Vulcan toggled his communicator to a wideband setting and activated it. “Zero-Three,” he said to the air. “FirstGen Zero-Three, active Sentry, actual. I am Commander Tuvok of the Federation Starship Titan. Will you communicate with us?”
Star Trek: Titan - 006 - Synthesis Page 23
