Enigma - Michael Jan Friedman [35]
He didn’t think anyone had ever told him. And he also didn’t think he had ever asked.
But now that he thought about it, it made sense that they would use his transmissions against Federation ships. It made perfect sense. So why had it never occurred to him before? What was wrong with him that he hadn’t seen it?
Ulelo had known that he was betraying his friends by transmitting that data. But he had never considered the extent of that betrayal. He had never asked himself if what he was doing might get someone hurt—or even killed.
Emily Bender had asked him if he was being controlled by someone—if he was a puppet. The more he considered the possibility, the more he wondered if she might have been right.
But even if it were true, it didn’t absolve Ulelo of what he had done. It didn’t render him blameless. Starships had been attacked, entire crews placed in deadly jeopardy. They were his responsibility, all of them.
His.
He imagined the remains of a starship floating in space, corpses and spindrifts of blood expanding from one end of the debris field to the other. He wanted to wipe the scene from his mind, but he couldn’t. Helplessly, he watched the dance of death….
“Mister Ulelo?” said Wu.
He looked up, suddenly relieved of his torment, and saw that the commander was watching him.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asked.
He did. Or at least he thought he did—it was so hard for him to think at the moment.
“It would help a great deal,” said Wu, “if you could tell us more about the people we’re dealing with.”
“Of course,” he said, eager to lend a hand. He started to describe his masters—and then stopped.
It was strange. Ulelo could still picture them, but he couldn’t find the words he needed to speak of them. He couldn’t even attach a name to them. You named them before, he thought—and he had. But try as he might, he couldn’t name them now.
It made his pulse race. Commander Wu needed his help. How could he fail her this way?
The second officer frowned. “Maybe something will come to you. If it does, I hope you’ll let me know.”
“I will,” he promised. And he would. Just as soon as he could get himself to remember….
“Any luck?” Picard asked.
Wu, who was seated on the other side of his desk, shook her head. “I don’t believe so. Ulelo seems to regret what he did, but he’s still not giving me anything to go on.”
The captain stroked his chin. “I wish we at least knew why he did it. That might illuminate everything else.”
“Actually,” said Wu, “Lieutenant Bender’s got a theory about that. She believes Ulelo was programmed.”
Programmed, Picard repeated inwardly. Like an automaton, dedicated to serving a distant puppet master.
“It would explain a lot,” he conceded.
“Unfortunately,” said the second officer, “there is no way to prove it. At least, not conclusively.”
The captain shook his head. It would help if he knew when Ulelo had become involved with whomever he served. Months ago, perhaps, when he was on shore leave with the Polaris, his previous posting? If that were so, he could have been transmitting information even before he came to the Stargazer.
For all Picard knew, there were moles like Ulelo scattered throughout the fleet, each one assigned to a different starship. Some of them might be com officers, some of them engineers, some of them science officers. And unlike Ulelo, they would still be free to collect information.
It occurred to Picard that he should share this thinking with his fellow captains. He needed to warn them that there might be spies on their vessels as well…
Before the situation got any worse.
Two days into the Iktoj’ni’s passage through the sector Starfleet had warned them about, violence erupted. But it wasn’t the kind Nikolas had expected.
It started in the corridor between the main cargo bay and the engine room. Nikolas and Odzig, a lean, narrow-faced Skezeri, had just finished repairing a dead spot in the gravity grid. They were on their way to repair another one when they passed two other crewmen.
One was a human, a redheaded female named