Synthesis - James Swallow [92]
“What do you mean?”
“This is the last time. From now on, we’re going to push back.”
She frowned at him. “I’m the ship’s diplomat. I hope you don’t expect me to approve of that.”
“It’s that or we let ourselves get backed into a corner.” He moved away. “We’re in the middle of this now, Deanna. There’s more going on here than just some freak space anomaly. I think we may have stumbled onto a war.”
“The Sentries and the Null?” She folded her arms. “It’s possible. And we have no idea how long this has been going on. They’re machines, after all. They could be hundreds, even thousands of years old.”
Will moved to the bookcase along one wall of the room, other thoughts rising to the fore. “And then there’s the problem closer to home.”
The replicated books were mostly presents from his former Enterprise crewmates, gifts given just before his wedding, when Starfleet Command had confirmed his captaincy of the Titan. Along with replicated copies of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and War-Tales of the Brothers K’laarq, there was a small, untitled, hard-bound volume, a notebook full of poetry written in a precise and careful hand. He thought about the mind that had crafted those poems, a synthetic sentience as real and vital as the one that had challenged him on the bridge of his own starship.
“She was afraid,” said Deanna. She gave a rueful smile. “You pushed her.”
“And she backed down,” he replied. “But will that be the last time she does?”
Tuvok ran his gloved hand across the surface of the canted metal wall rising away from the rectilinear arroyo around them. It was a form of refined iron, according to the tricorder, its age inconclusive but doubtless many decades, judging by the lines of ruddy oxidation around the rough edges. At first, the overlapping planes of metal seemed to have no logical structure to them, but as the Vulcan studied them, a peculiar form of architectural design slowly revealed itself to him, like the shapes hidden within an unfinished kal-toh puzzle. There was a strange geometry to the iron valley, one that pulled at perspective with optical tricks and false perceptions.
He glanced down as Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa approached, walking up the shallow incline from the deeper sections of the canyon where they had first arrived. “Sir,” she said, “what are your orders?” The Andorian kneaded the grip of a phaser, and the angle of her antennae visible beneath her helmet suggested irritation.
He did not answer that question immediately, instead posing one of his own. “How is Ensign Dakal?”
Pava glanced down the way she had come, to where the Cardassian stood alongside Lieutenant Sethe. “We pooled the spray sealant from our emergency-suit patches and used it to form a makeshift bandage around Zurin’s hand. It’s not an ideal solution, but it will suffice for now.”
“He may have internal injuries we are unaware of.”
“The tricorder didn’t show anything. And he’s not mentioned any pain.”
“The Cardassian people are known for their stoic endurance,” Tuvok noted, “and the ambient radiation in this area is interfering with normal tricorder operation.”
“All the more reason for us to get out of here, then,” said the woman.
Tuvok nodded. “I concur.” He pointed up toward the lip of the canyon. “If we seek higher ground, we may be able to make a more successful attempt at communication with the Titan.”
Pava nodded. So far, every effort to open a comm channel had been blocked by a wall of thrumming, hissing static that defied all penetration. Even moving too far from one another caused the short-range comms in the team’s environment suits to become garbled. She stiffened. “How did we even get here?”
Tuvok sensed that the question was rhetorical, but he answered it anyway. “I believe the matter stream from the shuttlecraft’s escape transporter was forcibly diverted from our intended destination on the ice planet.”
“How is that possible?” Pava sniffed. “We’re the only beings in this system who even have transporter technology.