Synthesis - James Swallow [101]
“If the damage we’ve seen was caused by a Null attack, is it possible the AI’s mentality was affected as well?” Pava asked, moving to keep her back toward the sheer steel walls and the remotes in her sight line.
“Like shell shock?” Dakal wondered aloud. “Possibly.”
Tuvok stood his ground, watching the drones. “If a system has sufficient complexity to achieve sentience, then logically, it could be susceptible to mental impairment, just like an organic intellect.”
“Brain damage,” muttered Sethe. “Maybe even psychosis? What if that’s the reason this moon is isolated from the others? Because it’s insane?”
He had barely finished speaking the words before the lopsided drone skipped forward and shot out a triclawed limb. The remote plucked the Starfleet-issue tricorder from the Cygnian’s grip and drew it back before he could react, shambling away. Sethe started after the alien machine, then thought better of it and halted.
Dakal saw other, smaller manipulators bend in to touch the device, the fine tools at their tips turning and whirring. In seconds, the drone had cracked the tricorder’s shell and taken it apart, dismantling the unit into its smallest components.
“Oh,” said Pava. “We lose a whole shuttle, and now that? The captain’s going to dock our pay at this rate.”
The bits of the tricorder vanished into the interior of the drone as it moved away, faltering over its own cables as it retreated.
Looking up, Dakal saw movement and felt a curious moment of amusement bubble up inside him. He chuckled dryly. “I think it may have wanted an offering,” he noted. “See?” He pointed.
One whole side of the bent pyramid was moving, the long plane of dark metal sliding back, downward into the ground at their feet. As it fell away, it revealed the interior of the enclosed space, an area as large as a cargo bay, crammed with more cables in a webbed riot around devices that defied any immediate categorization.
As well as they could, the stumbling drones closed their circle around the Starfleet officers, forcing them to back toward the growing opening.
“We could break out past them if we wanted to,” said Pava, her phaser now at the ready, all hesitation gone from her stance.
Behind his faceplate, Tuvok shook his head. “We came here to learn more. We will not accomplish that by remaining on the surface.” The retreating metal wall ended its fall with a low, hollow booming. “Follow me,” said the Vulcan as he moved inside. “But proceed with caution.”
Dakal threw a last look at the motley collection of drones and warily followed the commander into the unknown.
The mood in the observation lounge was grim, a sense of concern and sublimated fear on the faces of everyone around Melora Pazlar. She laid her long-fingered hands flat on the surface of the curved table and glimpsed her own reflection in the polished black surface. I look tired. Old and tired.
The truth was, the science officer had to think hard for a moment to remember exactly when she had last slept. Melora had disabled the day-night cycle controls in stellar cartography, the subroutine that would slightly dim the lab’s lights in accordance with the circadian mean of the room’s occupants. Elaysians didn’t need as much rest as some humanoids, but they weren’t Vulcans; they couldn’t stay up for days without ill effect. The more she thought about it, the more Melora felt the creeping fatigue descend on her. She wanted to go back to her quarters, shrug off the tight constraints of her g-suit, and drift away in the embrace of zero gravity.
But not yet, she told herself. Focus on the task at hand.
Christine Vale was nodding to herself. “So we were on the beam all along,” she said, following the conclusion of the captain’s words in his conversation with White-Blue. “We put our foot in a war, and some of it has stuck to us.”
Xin Ra-Havreii looked up briefly from the padd in front of him and gave Vale an arch sniff of amusement. “What a delightful