Enigma - Michael Jan Friedman [34]
The answer was as clear to him as the rank of biobeds behind Gerda, which were full of sedated crewmen from the Antares: He couldn’t. He could only hope for a chance to prove his courage.
“Will I see you later?” he asked, dreading the answer.
She didn’t say anything. She just stood there, her eyes narrowed in high contempt. And after a moment or two, she left.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Greyhorse whispered, though there was no one left to hear it.
But of course, it was.
Having returned from the Antares, Wu was on her way to the brig to speak with Ulelo again when she heard someone call her name. Looking back, she saw that Lieutenant Bender was trying to catch up with her.
“Can I speak with you a moment?” Bender asked.
“Of course,” said the second officer. She gave some thought to the most convenient place. “My quarters?”
“Sure,” said Bender.
A turbolift ride later, they were sitting in Wu’s anteroom, looking at each other across a bamboo coffee table. “What did you want to speak about?” asked the second officer.
“Ulelo,” said Bender, “what else?”
What else indeed.
“I just spent some time with him,” said Bender, “and something occurred to me. If he sent out those transmissions, which I still can’t believe, he couldn’t have done it of his own volition. Someone had to have programmed him.”
Wu weighed the possibility. It made as much sense—or as little—as any other theory she had considered. “I don’t suppose you have any proof of this?”
“Not a shred. But if you know Ulelo, it’s the only explanation for what he’s done.”
“Well,” said Wu, “I am interested in why Mister Ulelo did what he did. However, I’m more interested in the people those transmissions were meant for.”
“The captain asked me about them too,” Bender noted, “but I still don’t have a clue. Ulelo doesn’t seem to be able to keep them straight in his mind.”
Unforunately, Wu knew that from experience. But maybe that would change this time. Maybe Ulelo would shed some light on the Federation’s mysterious assailants.
And help to undo some of the damage he had done.
Chapter Nine
ULELO WAS A LITTLE DISAPPOINTED when Wu came to visit him. He had hoped it would be Emily Bender again.
No—it was too soon for that, he told himself. Emily Bender had just been there a few minutes earlier. She probably wouldn’t come back for some time.
“How are you?” Wu asked, once she had sat down with Ulelo on his side of the electromagnetic barrier.
“Fine,” he told her. “And you?”
“To be honest,” she said, “I’ve been better. Some of our ships have been attacked.”
Ulelo was concerned. “Was anyone hurt?”
“We’re not sure,” said Wu. “We don’t know who did it, either. The ships in question have stopped communicating.”
That didn’t sound good.
“All we know,” Wu continued, “is that the attackers have an advantage over us—some kind of tactical superiority that allows them to defeat us at every turn.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Ulelo. Who wouldn’t be?
His visitor regarded him for a moment. “As I say, we don’t know any more than that. But we’ve made some guesses. You know those transmissions you made?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Wu leaned forward. “We think that’s where our enemy’s tactical advantage came from. We think they took the information in those transmissions and used it to make their weapons more effective against us.”
Ulelo felt the blood drain from his face. His transmissions had allowed them to do that? But he had sent them to his masters, not a bunch of hostile aliens.
He told the second officer that. But it didn’t seem to make her feel any better.
“Mister Ulelo,” she said, fixing him with her gaze, “your masters and those hostile aliens…they’re one and the same.”
The same? he wondered. How could that be? His masters weren’t enemies of the Federation. They had no reason to launch attacks on Starfleet vessels…or did they?
Ulelo licked his lips as the question echoed inside him. If his masters hadn’t planned on using the information he gave them to attack the Stargazer’s sister ships, what the devil