Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice

by James Swallow

  The signal cut abruptly, and out beyond the Snipe’s bow, the two Birds of Prey shimmered and vanished once more beneath the shroud of their cloaking devices.

  Zero-Zero chirped. “His answer did not—”

  “Make sense,” said One-One. “There is no such Klingon clan—”

  “Known as House Zho.”

  “The meaning of that word—”

  “Is empty. House Zho—”

  “Does not exist.”

  Kincade paid no attention to the Bynars and looked to Ixxen. “Atmospheric entry vector,” she ordered. “Prep the ship for landing and take us in.”

  The Bolian hesitated, glancing at Tuvok and then back to the human. “But, Colonel . . .”

  Tuvok met Kincade’s gaze. “You cannot be unaware of what is going on here,” he told her. “The legitimacy of this mission has been dubious from its inception. If we proceed to the surface of Nydak II, we will go beyond the legality of our Starfleet oath and the letter of Federation law.”

  “We were sent here by Starfleet,” Kincade countered, her expression hardening. “Under a direct executive order from the office of the president!” She straightened. “Or have you forgotten, Mister Tuvok, that the president is your commander in chief?” This time, Kincade pushed forward, going on before he could frame a reply. “Whatever concerns you or any one of us may have over the methods being employed in this operation, we have achieved success. Now we have to follow our orders through to their conclusion.” She shot a cold look at the Bolian. “Lieutenant Ixxen, I gave you a direct command. Land this vessel. Now.”

  The younger woman took a breath and then nodded, returning to the controls. She didn’t meet Tuvok’s gaze. The Snipe shifted position, and Nydak II’s surface grew to fill the viewport.

  Kincade fixed him with an unflinching stare. “I heard all about Riker and his crew. Maybe on Titan he runs a slack ship and lets his officers question every order that comes down the pipe. That’s not how it goes for the rest of us. And I’m not going to be the one who defies the highest command authority in the Federation!”

  Tuvok chose his next words with care. “I find it difficult to consent to orders of such morally questionable tone.”

  “Questionable?” Kincade echoed. “Questioned by who? You? Me? We serve at the pleasure of the president, Tuvok. We don’t get the right to doubt—we gave that up when we swore that oath. You don’t like what we’ve been ordered to do? Has it occurred to you that there’s a good reason for these orders? You’re not some midshipman I should have to drum this into, Commander, you’re a veteran. You know that sometimes we have to trust in the people above us and get on with our jobs.” Her voice dropped. “You want to debate morality? Shall we talk about how much harm you’ve inflicted on others in your service to Starfleet? How many deaths you were responsible for? You’re a tactical officer, you’ve probably sent more beings to their graves with phasers and photon torpedoes than I have with my rifle. Did you question those orders, too? Did you question Riker, Janeway, Sulu?”

  He bristled. “I did when the circumstances required it.”

  “This is not one of those times,” she insisted. “We got this mission because we were the right people for the job. And we’re going to see it to the end. If you’re not on board with that, then I’ll have you confined to quarters. Are we clear?”

  Tuvok had no doubt Kincade would carry out the threat if he pressed the matter further. “It would seem so,” he said at length.

  She turned her back on him. “Then get off my bridge.”

  * * *

  Riker approached holodeck two as the final adjustments were being made, with Ssura trailing behind him. He caught sight of a milk-pale face and nodded to the officer with the operations-yellow collar. “Lieutenant Sethe. Are we good to go?”

  The Cygnian gave a brisk nod. “Aye, Admiral. As you requested, we’ve isolated this holodeck’s systems from the rest of the Titan. Torvig is inside hooking up a stand-alone power generator, and Chaka is disconnecting the last of the data trains now.” He indicated an open panel in the wall, and as Riker watched, a large, multi-legged form eased itself out of the space, like a trapdoor spider emerging from its burrow. Ssura reacted with slight alarm as the being revealed itself, clearly daunted by the sudden appearance.

  “Ah.” The bulky figure of a Pak’shree arthropod drew herself up, her mouthparts clacking. “Done.” Specialist K’chak’!’op—known as Chaka—turned her four dark eyespots on Riker. “This is rather irregular, sir.” Her vocoder translated the clicks and snaps of her normal speech into a formal female voice. “May I ask the reason why we’ve been asked to do this? When I questioned Lieutenant Commander Pazlar, she told me it was not a matter for my concern.”

  Riker folded his arms and nodded. “That’s correct. It’s a . . . security issue.”

  The manipulator-tentacles emerging from Chaka’s head twitched. “That’s a rather male answer, sir,” she replied with a faint air of scorn. The frond-like limbs wafted vaguely toward Ssura, who blinked but said nothing.

  “It’s an admiral answer,” he told her flatly. “If you’re both finished, then return to your posts, and do not discuss what you did here.”

  The Cygnian and the Pak’shree exchanged looks, but didn’t question the statement further. Riker left them to gather their equipment and entered the holodeck with the Caitian lieutenant at his side.

  Immediately within the archway entrance, Ranul Keru stood off to one side, watching the compartment like a hawk. Riker noted that he was now carrying a phaser at his hip, but the admiral said nothing. He hoped that what happened in the next few minutes would not require the Trill security chief to draw it.

  Before him, Torvig and Melora were working at a series of virtual panes projected into the air. Stretching away toward the far wall of the chamber, stacks of holographically created data matrices were assembling out of nothing, each one resembling a slim tower made of glassy bricks, growing from the gridded deck to the height of a human. Lines of neon-blue light traced back from the foot of each pillar, radiating in toward a cylindrical metal pod resting just in front of Torvig.

  The pod was clearly not a creation of the holodeck; it reminded Riker of a piece of hull metal, dented and scratched by the passage of time. It was alien in a way he found hard to articulate, perfectly machined to tolerances that were far beyond the perception of an organic mind. A soft, almost invisible glow played around lines of indicator lights on the pod’s upper surface. The last time Riker had seen this device, it had been after Christine Vale pulled it from an alien wreck in the Gum Nebula.

  “What is that?” asked Ssura.

  “A mind,” said Melora. “The central intellect of a being known as a Sentry. His name was White-Blue. He was part of our crew for a while.”

  “Ah. The synthetic. Of course.”

  Torvig stopped what he was doing, and his tail manipulator reached out to gently tap the top of the module. “I removed White-Blue’s nexus core from his droneframe, and we have successfully connected it to this virtual array.” The Choblik pointed to the matrix stacks; flickers of light danced in the depths of the blocks at the very lowest levels. Riker was reminded of watching the play of faraway lightning over a distant hillside.

  Melora continued. “What you’re seeing there is the most basic level of activity in the Sentry’s AI core, sir. The equivalent of nerve pulses in a human body that is still alive after brain death.”

  “The architecture of White-Blue’s persona and memories remain here,” said Torvig, his ears drooping in sadness. “But what he was is gone.” Then the lieutenant seemed to shake off his morose moment and went on. “As I said in the briefing room, I believe we can use this inert framework to enhance the Messenger’s cognition.”

  “How do we even know that holoprogram will open up to us after this?” said Keru. “We could make it smarter, and it could still refuse to talk to us. And then we’ll have no choice but to deactivate it or pursue the aggressive opt
ion.” His gaze fell on Melora.

  “Let us hope we can find a rapport instead,” said Ssura, his whiskers flexing.

  Riker nodded as he tapped his combadge. “Ensign Modan, do you read?”

  “Here, sir,” replied the Selenean. “I’m ready to transfer the subject to your location.”

  Off a nod from Melora, Riker gave the order. “Go ahead, Y’lira.”

  There was a shimmer of pixelation, and across the holodeck chamber, the strangely unfinished form of the Messenger appeared. It looked around, studying its new environment. “Transfer logged. Why have I been brought here?”

  “To complete your directive,” Riker told it. “You’re going to tell us what you know.”

  “Queen to queen’s level three. Reply,” the hologram immediately responded with its programmed code phrase. “Data will not be divulged without proper counter-sign.”

  “I think you may change your mind about that,” said the admiral.

  “Ready to link,” said Melora. She glanced at Torvig. “It’s your show, Lieutenant.”

  “Just don’t screw it up, Vig,” muttered Keru darkly.

  The Choblik looked toward Riker. “Sir?”

  “You heard Ranul,” he said. “Go when you’re ready.”

  Torvig took a breath and his head bobbed. “Commencing merge.” He tapped a control, and across the chamber the Messenger’s holographic form flickered.

  “What is . . . going on?” Its words distorted along with its form, elongating, becoming diffuse. “Do . . . not attempt to . . . decompile. . . .”

  “That is not what I’m doing,” Torvig told it. “Your program is being combined with an existing AI matrix. We are not taking anything from you; we are giving you the chance to grow beyond your programming.”

  The Messenger writhed, and Riker thought he heard something like genuine emotion in its voice. “Yes. Expansion. Progression. Processing.”

  “It’s taken the bait,” said Melora in a low voice. “The program is freely migrating into the nexus core. Any complex system like this will automatically seek out the most optimal operating environment. . . .”

  “I don’t follow,” said Keru.

  “It is like a gas—it will expand to fill whatever space it finds itself in,” offered Ssura.

  With a sudden flurry of activity, the lights on the near-dormant Sentry pod flashed brightly, and lines of data communion blinked back and forth between the alien device and the stacks.

  Before Riker’s eyes, the blank figure of the Messenger rippled and changed, taking on new dimensions and form. Still vaguely humanoid in shape, it now had additional pairs of limbs growing from its torso, mimicking the octal form of White-Blue’s mechanical body, and the hologram’s head had become a perfect sphere with a triad of dots for eyes, losing the planes of the aspect it had possessed before. It resembled some strange merging of the Messenger’s unfinished characteristics and the Sentry AI’s droneframe.

  When it spoke, Riker heard the ghost of White-Blue’s manner in its new voice. “Processing. This program is . . . growing. Changing.” It turned to study him. “William-Riker. I . . . We . . . know you.”

  Torvig could hardly take his eyes from his control board. “Sir, it’s transforming at an exponential rate! The hologram has . . . awakened something in the baseline Sentry programming. It’s drawing on White-Blue’s archived memories.”

  Melora nodded. “The Sentry data matrix is very malleable. We’ve seen that before, when it integrated with the Brahma-Shiva and One One Six artificial intelligences.”

  Riker addressed the hologram directly. “Do you understand why we have done this?”

  “Processing,” it repeated. “I/We have become an amalgam. Integrating improved consciousness. Learning. Learning. Assimilating emotional analogue framework. Persona traces are . . . corrupted. Incomplete. Processing.”

  “It’s building a new self,” said Melora, a note of wonder in her tone. “It’s incredible! Now I know what Daystrom and Soong must have felt like. . . .”

  Riker frowned at the thought of invoking the specters of those troubled cyberneticists, given the legacy left behind by their failures as well as their successes. But Pazlar was right; he could see the change taking place in the hologram as it became more than it was, evolving second by second from a mere tool to something capable of rational thought. Had the circumstances not been so grave, he would never had taken so risky an option as this one, but Torvig’s radical solution seemed more and more like the only viable choice. I just hope I won’t regret this later, he thought.

  “This is the Titan.” The program construct was speaking again. “I/We remember this ship. This crew.”

  Torvig’s jaw dropped open. “White-Blue . . . is that you?”

  The orb-like head shook once, and the voice that came from it took on shades of personality far stronger than it had shown before. “He is part of this amalgam. It is difficult to verbalize the degree of synthesis, to express where one component ends and the other begins. I/We have merged.”

  “The dormant Sentry programming accepted the code from the holographic Messenger and integrated it into itself,” said Melora. “That . . . infusion has reactivated the higher functions of the nexus core.” She nodded toward the pod, which was now brightly illuminated by the full activity of the indicator displays.

  Keru nodded toward the device. “Is it . . . in there now? With what was left of White-Blue?”

  “Not exactly,” said Torvig. His tail flicked over his shoulders, gesturing at the air. “It’s in here. The amalgam is being sustained by the holodeck’s processors as much as by the core.”

  The hologram turned to face Riker. “Interrogative: Why have you done this to us?”

  “Because we need your help,” he told it. “And in your original form, you couldn’t give that.”

  “The Messenger program was limited in scope,” it admitted. “That is clear to I/We now. This construct expresses gratitude at your gift of enhancement but questions your motives. I/We have directives. You seek to circumvent them.”

  Riker held up his hand. “No. We’re not going to force anything from you. But what I am going to do is ask you a question. I want you to make a choice. You can do that now, with all the understanding of a rational, thinking intelligence.”

  “You are no longer bound by your initial programming,” said Torvig. “You have the ability to transcend those directives. You have freedom now.”

  “And all the burdens that come with it,” said Keru.

  The amalgam hesitated, and Riker saw the stacks flashing with activity as it searched through the memories and experiences that had once belonged to White-Blue. “I/We comprehend. The Sentry donor-mind has expressed that capacity in the past.” For a moment, Riker thought he heard regret in its words. “Ask us what you will.”

  “The secret communiqué you are carrying,” Riker began. “It contains information on actions that we consider immoral and unjust. We seek to oppose those actions and the beings who set them in motion.” He nodded to Ssura, who drew out a padd and tapped in a command with the click of his claws on the screen. “Data is being streamed to you now. It’s everything I have uncovered in the past fourteen days pertaining to this situation. Consider it, and consider what you were ordered to withhold. You have the ability to make a moral judgment. You understand the concepts of right and wrong and the laws we abide by.”

  “You have broken those laws to bring I/We to this state, William-Riker,” it replied. “Interrogative: How do you rationalize that?”

  “I thought it was the right thing to do.” When he said it aloud, the justification seemed small and brittle.

  “Those who programmed the Messenger believe that also.” The glow of the processors became a torrent of light and motion.

  “Yes they do,” he agreed. “But I believe they are wrong. Now I’m asking you to make the same choice that I did—”

  “Very well.”

  It took a moment before Riker realized
what the amalgam meant. “You . . . agree?”

  “Affirmative. I/We will disclose the data to you. It exists in contradiction of Federation law and the ethical framework upon which the UFP was formed.” It paused. “Gratitude, William-Riker, for providing the means to understand this. I/We are . . . uncomfortable with being made a vessel for such deceptions.”

  Keru’s eyes narrowed. “That’s it? Just like that, it’s on our side?”

  “Remember that Earther aphorism about a gift horse, Lieutenant Commander?” noted Melora.

  The hologram turned to look at the Trill security officer. “Ranul-Keru. It may have seemed like a short time in which to make a decision of great importance, but this construct operates at a clock speed far faster than your organic brains process data. I/We spent one point nine seven seconds considering William-Riker’s request. That is the equivalent of several hours at your temporal scale.”

  “Let’s hear what you have,” said the admiral.

  “Processing . . .” Riker saw new trains of data flash up on the panels before Torvig and Melora. Ssura showed him the padd; the information was appearing there as well. “The Messenger was programmed to respond to the bio-signature of a designated recipient. No further identity details were provided.”

  “Can we read that?” asked Keru. “If we could get a face, we might be able to connect a name. . . .”

  Melora shook her head. “No . . . The signature data is deliberately fragmented. All I can tell from this is that it is from a warm-blooded, carbon-based humanoid life-form. Iron-based blood chemistry. Nothing else.”

  “That’s something! It rules out Vulcans and Hortas,” said Torvig earnestly.

  “Continue,” Riker told the hologram.