Synthesis - James Swallow [26]
Ranul didn’t need to give the orders; Cel and Krotine entered the lab in a textbook deployment, each covering a sector of the room. The Trill followed them in, leading with his phaser. He saw the module from the wreck, the beam, the babbling tide of lights and sound from the wall screen. And across the room, Dakal and Chaka. Oddly, the big arthropod didn’t seem to have noticed the security team’s dynamic entry; she was too engrossed in the alien device.
Lieutenant Sethe pushed toward him. “I cut all the ODNs!” he shouted. “But it won’t shut off!”
After all the trouble it had taken them to get this device back to the Titan, after nearly being trapped by those drones and slow-cooked in a sea of background radiation, Ranul felt a flash of anger at the choice he was going to have to make. “Take cover,” he called, aiming his weapon at the unit.
“No!” The cry was loud and scratchy, the vocoder around Chaka’s neck grating with feedback from the force of her intent. “Stop!” She came forward, waving her free limbs. “Let it finish! Let it—”
And suddenly, the green beam winked out, the buzzing hiss it made as it cut through the air abruptly silenced. For a long moment, no one spoke; the only sound was the rising-falling whoop of the alarms in the corridor.
“It wasn’t an attack,” insisted Chaka, moving to the display console. Incomprehensible symbols and strange traceries of light warped across its surface, motes of color moving like odd fish in a dark ocean. “It was a download.”
“A very aggressive one at that,” Sethe retorted. “If I hadn’t isolated the lab, it could have spread through the whole ship!”
Ranul gripped his phaser tightly, not convinced the danger was passed. “A virus program?” Digital attacks on starships were not unknown; he thought of reports he’d read of vessels like the U.S.S. Yamato, obliterated by an ancient Iconian dataphage that overloaded its critical systems. Despite all of the firewalls and counterintrusion systems Starfleet laced its computers with, at this level of sophistication, you could never be certain anything would protect you from the next alien threat.
“I am fairly certain it is benign,” Chaka replied.
“Fairly?” echoed Sethe. “If I had been in the path of that energetic pulse, it would have burned a hole right through my chest.”
“It may not have been aware of you,” said the Pak’shree, working one of the other consoles.
Ranul threw a nod to Cel and Krotine. “Ellec, get me a portable force-wall generator down here, right now. Balim, secure the perimeter.” With a chorus of acknowledgments, the two security guards moved to carry out their orders. “Lieutenant Sethe,” Ranul addressed the Cygnian. “Is that thing a threat, or isn’t it?” He pointed at the device. “Because it certainly looked dangerous to me.”
When he didn’t answer straightaway, the Trill glanced at Dakal. “Ensign? You want to weigh in?”
The young Cardassian was silent for a moment, studying his tricorder. “According to the readings I got when it was, ah, discharging, it appears that the device has an internal power tap we hadn’t previously detected.”
Ranul was liking this less and less. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have it beamed out into space.”
“It didn’t kill us,” he said simply. “That beam discharge would have brought down a charging Jem’Hadar at twenty paces.”
“That’s not enough.”
Chaka turned, presenting her bulk toward the security officer. “Males,” she huffed. “Always defaulting to conflict in any circumstance.” She waved a foreleg at the corrupted display screen. “Imagine if you were locked in a room and unable to communicate with the world outside, Commander.” The Pak’shree’s tone became brusque. “Wouldn’t you use any means at your disposal to call out? Even, if you were desperate enough, a method that might be seen as destructive?”
“You’re telling me this thing is trying to get our attention?” He snorted. “I’d say it succeeded.