Synthesis - James Swallow [25]
“Do you ever?” Sethe muttered to himself. He turned to glare at the Pak’shree. “You have a different hypothesis, then?”
Chaka’s manipulators waved gently as her mandibles clacked. “I am not seeing the regular, ordered process of a typical logic system here, Lieutenant.” She pointed with one of her forelegs toward the main display. “Observe the pattern of information flow. It’s irregular. It’s counterintuitive.”
“Probably the result of damage suffered during the attack, or perhaps from Commander Vale’s rather forceful shutdown.” Sethe sniffed.
“No,” she replied flatly. “You’re incorrect once again. It’s not that at all.”
Dakal turned. As interesting as it was working with these two, having to serve constantly as the buffer between Chaka and Sethe’s frictional relationship was wearing on him. He was about to say so when a glitter of light inside the nexus core burned bright green; the flash was so sharp it left a purple afterimage seared on his retina. “What was that?”
In the next second, a rod of crackling emerald energy stabbed out from the alien module and burned into the fascia of the input console across the room. Dakal’s nostrils filled with the stink of burning tripolymer as the beam cut through the touchpad’s surface and into the data matrix beneath.
Chaka was closest to the device, and she reeled away, stumbling over a table and crashing to the deck with a thin, reedy squeal. The forest of tentacles on her head was clamped over her face in reflexive self-protection. Sethe had fallen away from the systems display, and he was scrambling for an emergency panel on the wall. Dakal couldn’t take his eyes off the green beam; pulses throbbed along its length, and spiders of viridian lightning fanned out over the surface of the console. The normal bars and arcs of color that were the Federation-standard interface flickered and writhed, changing even as he watched. A wash of ice filled his veins; the beam was a data stream. It was reprogramming the console.
Lieutenant Sethe’s balled fist struck the emergency panel, and alarms began to sound. Belatedly, Dakal realized that the Cygnian had activated the lab’s isolation protocols, severing all of the room’s systems from the rest of the Titan’s internal network.
The Cardassian ran to the Pak’shree as she struggled to get back up. He tapped his combadge. “Cyberlab to security! We have a situation!”
Chaka staggered up on her hind legs, grateful for his support. “The beam… dazzled me…” she managed.
Across the room, cut off from them by the bar of glowing light, Sethe held up a hand. “Don’t move! Stay clear of the discharge!”
The Pak’shree didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, she lumbered forward, her elliptical head turning back and forth between the co-opted screen and the alien device. The display was a riot of colored pulses and high-pitched, atonal shrieks.
“How is it doing that?” said Dakal. “I scanned its internal structure. There wasn’t enough charge in it to light a hand torch!”
“Clearly, we were both wrong,” noted the lieutenant.
Ranul came to a halt outside the lab doors, his heart pounding from the run down the corridor. Ellec Krotine, one of his security noncoms, stood with her phaser drawn and ready, while down in a crouch a second crewman worked without success at an access panel.
“Report!” he snapped.
Krotine shot him a look. “No warning, sir. The alarms sounded, and Ensign Dakal called for help, but the lab’s self-sealed. We have no idea what’s happening in there.” The Boslic’s face puckered in a frown.
Ranul glanced at the Catullan woman pulling at the panel’s innards. “Anything?”
“Negative,” replied Balim Cel. “It’s sealed tight. Someone must have pushed the panic button. It won’t open without a command-level authority.”
“Stand back.” The Trill officer spoke into the dark companel on the wall. “Computer, recognize. Ranul Keru, Lieutenant Commander. Chief of security. Override code: Keru Two-Six-Sigma-Three.”
“Code recognized,