Synthesis - James Swallow [100]
Dakal’s gaze rose farther and found that what had seemed from a distance like some sort of open entranceway was, in fact, too far off the ground for any of them to reach. The building, if that was what it was, appeared to have been formed by the motion of jagged triangles of steel emerging from the surface of the machine moon. Locked together like some strange three-dimensional puzzle, the plates surrounded something that gave off wavelengths of coherent radiation that were detectable by tricorder scan.
Pava rocked on the balls of her feet and made some experimental lunges at the opening above them. “The gravity is lighter here but not light enough. Perhaps with a boost, I could make it up there.”
Sethe sighed. “Maybe we were wrong to come. This could just be some sort of power substation, not even a terminal at all.”
“It is the only location within scanner range generating any regular energetic output,” Tuvok replied. “We have detected no other signs of life on this construct.”
Dakal rested against a metal outcropping and considered that for a moment; it wasn’t strictly true, as the nearby lines of power-carrying pylons could also be considered a sign of “life”—but then the idea of following them over the distant horizon to wherever they led did not appeal. Zurin wanted just to rest. To sit down and take off the damned helmet.
The light shifted again, and for a long second, Dakal stared at the motion without really seeing it. Then the static returned to the comm channel, and this time, it was a heavy rush, like the surging of waves on a shore. He looked up as Pava called out a warning, and he jerked away from the metal wall in shock at what he saw.
Eight drones had emerged from around the apex of the dark pyramid, some of them floating on glowing thruster coils, others many-legged things that clambered around the iron peak, clinging on with clawed talons. They were made of brass and a strange, nonreflective ceramic that resembled bone. Glassy devices filled with sparking components and slow-turning cog wheels worked their limbs and torsos. Some had heads that were fashioned after blank cubes, others odd knots of cable with deep-set ruby eyes. All trailed festoons of wire from their backs that vanished away behind the pyramid, perhaps into unseen sockets concealed beneath the metal landscape.
The machines dropped around them in a rough circle, each drone chattering, some babbling to themselves, others beaming light-pulse signals to one another faster than the Cardassian’s eye could follow.
Tuvok and Pava had their phasers in their hands, pointed toward the ground but equally ready for hostile action. Sethe raised his tricorder and swept it back and forth.
“Zero-Three,” said Tuvok in a clear and firm voice. “Do you hear us?” One of the drones came closer, and the Vulcan addressed his question directly to it.
The machine didn’t respond, cocking its head in a quizzical gesture. It moved oddly, in the manner of a person injured or perhaps the victim of a stroke, favoring one side of its body where a pair of snakelike manipulators hung limp and apparently useless. Closer now, Dakal noted that it also sported blinded lenses among its cache of eyes; in addition, melt marks like those on the fields of iron were visible on its carapace.
“They all have signs of the same damage,” noted Pava, her thoughts paralleling his.
A couple of the remotes stumbled when they walked; others bumped into one another and reacted by halting, staring dumbly at nothing. One of the flyers circled in an endless, apparently purposeless loop. Dakal frowned. “I think they might be malfunctioning.”
Sethe nodded the moment he spoke. “Yes, that could be it. The tricorder is reading the passage of data packets through the systems of this one.” He pointed at the closer drone. “They’re chaotic, repetitive. Some of the routines seem incomplete.