Synthesis - James Swallow [110]
“Mostly,” added Dakal, pointing with his uninjured hand. “The damage we saw on the surface is also visible here. The same carbon scoring, the same melt effects.” He was pointing to a lower level, visible through gaps in the structure. Down there, illuminators flickered in feeble spasms, revealing blackened expanses of ruined wire.
“Imagine what a shortcircuit would do in a place like this,” said Pava. “Less a spark, more a stormfront.”
Tuvok looked past her. A pair of the unkempt drones that had surrounded them on the surface had followed the group into the pyramid, keeping their distance, loitering away from them, sometimes getting caught up in each other’s cables, other times chattering mindlessly in binary. Now the two machines were static, observing. It was not lost on the commander that the drones were blocking the path should the Starfleet officers decide to head back the way they had come. The machines were clearly escorting them into some sort of rendezvous.
And ahead, where the echoing corridor opened up to present a hoop-shaped balcony, he believed they had reached it.
Pentagonal tiles made of corroded silver ringed a wide oval of empty space, another vent chimney that fell down toward an orange, magmalike glow. A long, low console, detailed in what appeared to be bone and some variety of lacquered crimson wood, stuttered open, like a music box on clockwork cogs and age-worn pistons. The panel was oddly asymmetrical, with a keypad that mirrored the pentagon shapes of the tiles. Tuvok examined the grouping and symbology of the switches and quickly came to the hypothesis that the system operated on a base-twelve paradigm.
“This is more than just functional,” offered Dakal. “The design, I mean. It’s… elegant.”
Tuvok raised an eyebrow, considering the ensign’s statement. Certainly, there was a clear aesthetic tone to the construction of the console, with inlaid metals worked carefully into the bone keys. This was no mass-produced mechanism stamped out in modular sections by a fabricator—it had been handmade.
The Vulcan switched his suit comm from internal to external address and glanced around. “FirstGen Zero-Three. I am Commander Tuvok of the Starship Titan. I am here. Will you communicate with us?”
For long moments, there was only silence. “I guess not—” began the Andorian, and then the whispering began, rising from the depths of the dark well beneath them.
First ten voices, then a hundred, a thousand. And finally, a chorus a million strong, filling the chamber with a rush like waves breaking on a seashore.
In the dataspace void, strings of chattering, sharp-edged machine code assaulted her, resolving into a hurricane of words that she tasted and saw as much as she heard. A glittering sphere made of liquid gold rolled angrily across the middle of the arenalike space, making aggressive jousting passes around something resembling a collection of spinning steel rings.
“Red-Gold and One-Five.” White-Blue’s voice was a whisper in the depths of Vale’s mind. “I suspected we would find them in conflict.”
The FirstGen elder One-Five projected an impassive wave of steely gravitas. “It serves no purpose to return to this matter and reexamine it,” the AI rumbled on, in the midst of a rebuttal. “This was put to the vote of the Governance Kernel and carried by weight of agreement. Repairs will be completed on the alien vessel, Identifier: U.S.S. Titan, within the allotted task scheduling. Materials pooling will be reorganized to reflect the withdrawals, and processing of recovered minerals from the outer planets will be incremented to restore stocks.”
“Error,” grated Red-Gold. “Error!”
One-Five ignored the interruption. “Our obligation to the aliens will be concluded at this juncture. Referring… Interrogative: Silver-Green, status of search operation?”
A tetrahedron floating high above them drifted down and spun about its axis as it spoke. “No sign of the contingent of organics lost during the Null incursion at the refinery. Conclusion: organic life terminated during incursion event,