Synthesis - James Swallow [46]
“Do you understand that?” he asked the moving arms. “Or do you think of Tylith as I would think of an EPS conduit or a warp coil? As a component, a piece of hardware?”
And then he wasn’t thinking of the Kasheetan anymore. He was seeing Melora Pazlar, her delicate face dis-colored by the same bruising, her eyes closed, her life ebbing away.
“No,” he said with determination, ending the thought before it could fully form. “No,” he repeated, this time insisting, silencing his subconscious. The moment made him annoyed and uncomfortable in equal measure. On Efros, the nature of relationships between the sexes facilitated informality as a matter of course, an open attitude that only the Deltans could better. Xin Ra-Havreii exemplified that… or, at least, he had. Melora had changed him. He found his thoughts returning to her at inopportune moments; he found himself considering her in ways that he had never done with other female company. This was such a moment; he thought of the unfortunate Lieutenant Tylith, and suddenly he was afraid that the same fate could befall Melora.
“Doctor?” The voice startled him, and he turned to find Lieutenant Sethe watching him, the Cygnian’s milk-pale face in a flat frown. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Ra-Havreii snapped, with more force than he would have liked. He’d been so compelled by his thoughts that he hadn’t heard the other man approach. “What do you want?”
“You seem troubled,” said Sethe. He was attempting to be considerate, in a rather ham-fisted way.
Ra-Havreii felt his color rise, his cheeks turning dusky. Suddenly, he felt foolish, indulging a moment of pointless worry about Melora when there were matters of far greater import at hand. “Of course, I’m troubled,” he retorted. “Someone broke my ship.” The engineer pushed past the lieutenant and strode angrily away.
• • •
The message came an hour or so after the Titan had been corralled inside the spacedock platform. As before, it was terse and to the point, a demand masquerading as a request, in Riker’s eyes, but one they were ill advised to ignore.
The machines wanted to meet them. The signal originated from the nearest of the artificial moons, one of the “FirstGen,” as White-Blue had called it. The wording was clipped and formal, a call for the repatriation of their fellow artificial intelligence and an offer to address the crew of the Titan directly.
Riker forestalled an argument from Vale by immediately placing his own authority on the away mission. He let her quote the same regulations that he had thrown at Jean-Luc Picard on a dozen or so occasions, and then he returned with the same counter that the Enterprise’s commanding officer had used: “Captain’s prerogative, Number One,” he told her, watching her jaw set as she realized he wouldn’t back down on this. And he wouldn’t, not an inch. Even if they were talking about machines, forms of life so alien that they shared nothing in common with an organic creature like William T. Riker, he still wanted to see them with his own eyes. See them face-to-face, if such a thing were actually possible.
Vale wanted a full security detail to beam down to the meeting site first and secure the location. The captain disagreed. He would take his wife, in her capacity as Titan’s chief diplomatic officer, Lieutenant Commander Pazlar as science officer, and two security staff. There was no telling what reaction a more aggressive posture