Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [86]
“I think that’s pretty simple, Ira,” Data heard himself/his father say, as if afraid to disturb the machinery. “The same people who could build something like this …” He gestured to the android, “something that wouldn’t have crumbled into dust long ago.”
… Graves … and Vaslovik. Soong had traveled with them, searching for AI artifacts. They found something …
… copper-skinned individual was perfectly preserved …
“Quite an achievement, isn’t it?” Graves replied. He studied the form carefully for several seconds, then rechecked the results of their earlier scans on his tricorder. “How it’s designed to mimic biological processes, but is simultaneously so resilient.” Then the smile faded. “We still don’t know why someone would be chasing it. Maybe this is something we don’t want to revive.”
“What?” Soong asked. He had been watching the main control grid run through some sort of self-diagnostic and was making some tentative guesses about how it functioned. He had decided it was likely that they could manipulate the device with tricorders and the professor’s strange little gadget, but Graves’s question distracted him.
“That’s exactly what I was wondering,” Vaslovik said.
“Why do you think someone was chasing it?” Soong asked.
“Use your eyes, lad,” Vaslovik said. “Someone shot him in the back.”
Soong glanced down at the hole and noted that, yes, the stress marks in the chest indicated that the damage had been caused by an attack from the rear. “As he was walking toward this machine?” Soong asked. That didn’t seem to make sense somehow.
“No,” Graves interjected. “He was shot first. Probably just inside the airlock door. Then he managed to crawl through the airlock.” He pointed at the spot on the floor where the android’s systems had failed.
“With a hole in his back?” Soong asked.
“Yes,” Vaslovik said admiringly. He had walked over to stand by the rotating table and looked down at the body. “With a hole in his back.”
“But who would shoot him?” Soong was starting to feel annoyed. What was the point of all the discussion about events from half a million years ago? More and more lights were coming on all over the device and there came a soft hum from beneath the rotating table.
“Probably your friend outside,” Vaslovik suggested. “Seems logical.”
“Shot him with what? I didn’t see any weapon.”
“Probably fell into the chasm,” Vaslovik speculated.
“Even if you’re right, what does this have to do with the first one we found?” Soong asked, his mind now engaged by the riddle. “The human-looking one?”
“You mean Brown? I don’t know,” Vaslovik said. “Though he’s obviously a much more recent vintage. Couldn’t be more than a few decades old. I think he might have been overlooked by the Starfleet cleanup crew. Not surprising considering where we found him.”
“So, we have three androids,” Graves said. “One very recent, obviously destroyed by a phaser blast. Another much older outside the airlock. He looked to me like he had features of some kind—a definite morphology. And then there’s this one.” He glanced down at the featureless hulk before them. “He has no features, no sex organs, no markings of any kind. Suggests something, doesn’t it?”
Soong considered options. He didn’t like any of them. “That he wasn’t finished. Maybe this device gives them a final form.”
“Maybe,” Vaslovik said. “But I think there’s another possibility we need to consider.”
“This one is much smaller in stature,” Graves observed. “Different models? Different castes, even? Perhaps there was a social upheaval.”
“Also possible,” Vaslovik conceded. “But I think you’re overlooking another, more emotional option. I don’t think he was shot outside these doors. This damage is too severe. I think whoever did this—our friend outside, most likely—did it as the doors were closing. What does that suggest to you?”
Neither Graves nor Soong spoke.
“You two don’t spend enough time around real people,” Vaslovik sighed. “Spite, gentlemen. Sour grapes. Whoever—whatever—this was, he had gotten clean away and someone shot him in the back just