Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice (26 page)

There was a reluctance in the air that he found disquieting. As captain, Riker had always allowed himself to be open to any suggestion from any one of his officers. He fostered that to better make use of his crew's skills, but here and now it seemed that no one wanted to be the first to take the next step down the path opening up before them.

He saw them behind him, reflected in the ports, each of them sharing glances, weighing their thoughts but still keeping their own counsel. Ranul Keru wore an expression of grim determination while Melora Pazlar remained deeply troubled. At the far end of the table, Torvig's hands knit over a padd, his head bowed and his large eyes averted. Riker had ordered Y'lira Modan to remain with and monitor the holographic “Messenger” down in the laboratory compartment,
and now he wondered if she would have been any more ready to speak up, had the Selenean been here.

In that silence, Riker again felt the weight of the burden he was carrying, the same burden he had passed to everyone else brought into his circle of trust. The pressure had not lessened in the act—if anything, Riker knew it more keenly now. Each person he called upon to help him was one more measure on the scale, one more career he was risking above and beyond his own. He thought about the
Titan
's officers, beings like his chief engineer Xin Ra-Havreii or the ship's senior medical officer Shenti Yisec Eres Ree. . . . After all the trials and challenges they had faced as crewmates in the past few years, it was not an exaggeration to say Riker trusted them implicitly and that he valued their advice beyond all others'. But did he have the right to drag even more of his colleagues into this conspiracy?

Part of him wondered if it was fear.
Am I afraid that they would talk me out of this course of action?
No. It wasn't that at all. . . .
If I ask of Ree or Xin or any of the others, I know they'll offer their help. But can I really put more of my people at risk?

Riker's true fear was of what would come if he ultimately failed in this. His career in Starfleet would be extinguished like a snuffed candle, perhaps those of Deanna and Christine as well. His first, best destiny taken from him, and criminal charges laid at his feet.

It wouldn't just be his head on the block; his wife and executive officer would suffer, and he would drag the others down with him, taint the name of
Titan
and her crew for decades to come. They would speak of him in the same sentence as men like Erik Pressman, Robert Leyton, and Lance Cartwright, and his officers would pay a high price. Riker shook his head slightly.
No. For now, we keep the circle close. And if the worst comes, I'll take the full onus upon myself.

At last, Keru cleared his throat. “Admiral, at this point we have to consider the most expedient alternative. Remember, that program down there is just a copy of an intercepted signal. We caught it on its way somewhere else, and whomever it was actually sent to has probably conversed with the original by now. Whatever data the Messenger has is losing value with every passing moment we sit here and discuss it.”

“I'm aware of that, Lieutenant Commander,” said Riker. “What do you propose we do about it?”

“Back in the lab, I said that we've accidentally got ourselves a prisoner. I suggest we treat it as such, sir. We conduct an interrogation.”

“The Messenger will not respond as an organic life-form would,” said Torvig. “You could no more cross-examine it than you could question a replicator.”

“By their very nature, holoprograms have a baseline degree of sentience,” Melora broke in. “Something that has been a debated issue for several years now. Are we actually suggesting we use forcible coercion against an intelligent construct?”

“We don't know how smart it is,” Keru replied. “And I'm not talking about torture, Melora.”

“Really?” The Elaysian turned her hard gaze on the Trill. “Because I think you
are,
Ranul. Torvig is right when he says that simply questioning the Messenger won't work. It's not going to slip up and accidentally admit something like a person might; it won't respond to threats or to rewards. So that means the only way to get to what it knows is through invasive means.”

“That could be attempted,” said Torvig, and Riker saw his ears fold back against his head, reflecting his
bleak tone. “We could aggressively decompile the program. Break it apart, effectively. There is a strong chance a lot of core data would be lost, however, even under the best of circumstances. I believe the Messenger would attempt to self-delete before we could complete a full brute-force decryption.”

“Are you sure?” asked Keru. “It hesitated when it spoke about deletion. I think it must be programmed with some kind of self-preservation instinct. We could use that against it.”

“Am I the only one who has a problem with this?” Melora's eyes narrowed. “Just for a second, Ranul, pretend you're talking about an organic being instead of a holographic construct. Now think about what you're suggesting. It's not only a violation of the law, but of ethical conduct.”

“It's a hard choice,” admitted the Trill. “But if there's misuse of power taking place at the heart of the Federation, then we have a duty to expose it. We have to find out if that's the case or if this is all a misjudgment. . . . We can't ignore the possibility. And to do all that may require us to agree to things we might not be comfortable with, to cross a line—”

“To cross
another
line,” Riker broke in, the words coming up from nowhere. He shook his head, and suddenly he felt tired. “If I look over my shoulder, what am I going to see? One compromise after another. Orders disobeyed. Secrets kept. Choices made.” He turned away from the port to look at his friends and colleagues, wishing that Deanna was there to offer him some kind of solace. “I don't like where this is leading me . . . where this is leading
us
.”

Torvig blinked. “Admiral, I think I may have a proposition. But it is quite . . . radical.”

Riker spread his hands. “What have you got, Lieutenant?”

The Choblik's tail wavered in the air behind him. “At the moment, we believe the Messenger encodes data confirming illegal acts originating inside the Federation Council. Acts that we, as sentient reasoning beings, see as immoral and unethical. But to reach that data, we too are faced with the prospect of committing what may also be a similarly troublesome action. Unlike us, the Messenger has no stake in the content of the data it is withholding. It does not understand the ramifications of that data. For want of a better term, it simply does not care. It does not have that capacity.”

Keru was nodding. “Because it's just a medium for transmission of information. A padd doesn't care what's written on it, no matter if it's a love sonnet or a hate speech.”

“What if it
could
make that distinction?” said Torvig.

“You want to . . . convince it to open up to us?” Melora's crested brows came together. “Persuade it to see our point of view?”

“That's not possible,” said Keru. “Modan said the Messenger is intelligent, but we know it's not intelligent enough to make those kinds of distinctions.”

“Suppose we allow it to be so?” Riker watched as Torvig warmed to his subject. “We uplift the Messenger to a higher level of self-awareness! We give it the intelligence to understand the ramifications of what it is carrying!”

“You're suggesting we give it the right to choose,” said Riker, thinking it through. “Lieutenant, I don't have to remind you what happened on this ship the
last
time a semi-sentient system gained awareness.”

“This won't be like the Avatar,” insisted the engineer. “What I propose is merging the Messenger program with an existing, stand-alone artificial intelligence matrix. An inert AI system we already have on board
Titan
.” Torvig pushed his datapad across the table toward the admiral, and Riker gathered it up.

On the padd's small screen was a wire-frame graphic of a spider-like mechanoid: the inanimate droneframe “body” of the alien Sentry construct known as Second-Gen White-Blue.

*  *  *

The wind was bitter and laced with tiny particles of snowfall, but Natasha didn't seem to mind it. Deanna Troi followed her daughter through the cobbled streets from the flyer park overlooking the blue waters of the Tromsøysundet Strait. She had been concerned that the four-year-old might have reacted poorly to the chilly, sub-arctic air, but Tasha was already apple-cheeked and thrilled by the presence of the snow and ice.

They crossed into the heart of the city of Tromsø, one of Norway's northernmost urban centers, skirting the shopping district and the historic edifice of the Arctic Cathedral. Troi bought hot, sweet tea for them from a vendor and they eventually found themselves at the Grimsdottir Rink, originally built for Earth's winter Olympics in the late 2200s.

Tromsø was a popular destination for off-worlders from planets with a colder climate than the Terran standard, and while there was something to be said for the bracing chill in the air, Troi preferred the warmer climes of the Mediterranean, which reminded her of her childhood on Betazed. She laughed with Tasha as the girl toyed with a snowball, wondering if her daughter's
dismissal of the cold came from her father's side; Will had, after all, grown up in the wilds of Alaska.

The Grimsdottir Rink was large, but it was hardly full, and one had only to look carefully to see why. A discreet presence of local law officers were posted in the immediate area, in a loose, unthreatening cordon, and within that ring were tall, watchful men in clothing that seemed far too light for the wintry day. Their tunics were nothing like the bulk of the cold-weather parkas worn by Deanna and Tasha; beneath snow hoods, faces of cobalt blue looked out across the milling crowds of tourists and shoppers, purposeful and steady. Antennae curved low over their foreheads, their additional senses carefully deployed to protect their principals.

Human or not, Troi knew military when she saw them. These men were members of the Andorian Imperial Guard, the patterns of their emotions as hard-edged as the hawkish way they scanned the crowds. They were protecting a smaller group of their own kind, a clan-family unit of two mothers and two fathers—a
zhen,
shen,
chan,
and
thaan,
the four Andorian genders required to give life to a child. The bond quartet were enjoying themselves, but she could sense that not all of them were being fully honest with their laughter. Her empathic awareness brushed the surface of a mind familiar to her from days earlier on Luna, and she found herself looking into the eyes of Ramasanar ch'Nuillen. He recognized her, and his emotions went dark, a curtain of self-control falling across them.

Tasha didn't pick up on the interchange; she was already insisting on donning training skates to take to the ice, and Troi allowed it. She followed her daughter,
making gentle turns, watching as Tasha focused all her intent on staying upright.

One of the guardians whispered closer on bright shining blades. “I know you,” he said. The man was young, and his face was a darker blue.

“Sholun, isn't it?” she asked. “We met at the memorial ceremony. You're one of the envoy's aides.”

He rebuffed her attempt at a polite introduction. “Why are you here?” he demanded. “What do you want?”

“This is a public place,” Deanna countered mildly. “And I think my daughter likes the idea of being a figure skater.”

“Find somewhere else to indulge her,” he grated, and a wave of menace came off him like a black cloud. Tasha reacted to it as well, coming to a halt on the ice, her smile vanishing.

He was going to say more, but then two more figures approached across the rink, and Sholun fell silent. Ch'Nuillen moved effortlessly, gliding over the ice with a female Andorian at his side. The envoy shot Sholun a warning glance. “You're frightening the child,” he admonished. “Move away.”

Ch'Nuillen's companion—a pale
shen
of sky-blue complexion and similar age to her bondmate—dropped to her haunches to look Tasha in the eye. “Hello!” By contrast to the envoy, she radiated warmth and good humor, enough that Deanna felt almost compelled to return her smile. “My name is Savaaroa—what's yours?”

“This is Natasha,” said Troi as her daughter became shy and clustered close to her mother's legs. “Tasha, say hello.”

The little girl allowed her grin to come back, and
she waved at the elder Andorian woman, performing a deft curtsy for good measure.

“So polite,” said Savaaroa. “And a natural on the ice, it would seem. Many people would have fallen over doing that.” She glanced at the envoy, and Troi saw them share a moment of silent communication, the kind of unspoken exchange that was common to spouses in every bonded species. “I think, if your mother would allow it, I could teach you how to skate a chasse. Would you like that, Tasha?”

“Please.” She gave her mother a questioning look, and Troi granted permission with a nod. With a scrape of blades on ice, Tasha slid away after Savaaroa, determined to match the Andorian woman's elegant motion.

“Sh'Nuillen has such grace,” Troi noted.

The envoy ignored the compliment, eyeing her coldly. “It was a clever tactic, bringing the child with you.”

Troi felt the press of ch'Nuillen's veiled accusation, and her lips thinned. “There are no
tactics
here, sir. I brought my daughter here because she has never seen real snow before.”

After a moment, the Andorian's bitter mien softened. “Forgive me, Commander Troi. In my line of work it is sometimes a hazard that one tends to think the worst of people in all things. Encountered enough times, you assume it will always be the truth and behave accordingly.” He watched Savaaroa, who was now introducing Tasha to the other members of her bond-group; Troi noted that the
zhen
and
thaan
were noticeably younger. “She loves children. We have been trying for one of our own for some time now, but our
shelthreth
has not borne fruit.” His face
clouded. “We hope that may soon change, given recent events. When my duties are over and we return to the homeworld . . .” Ch'Nuillen halted himself and began again. “I envy you, Commander. You are blessed by the Infinite.”