Star Trek: TNG: Cold Equations II: Silent Weapons (26 page)

Here’s hoping I’ve long since drifted off to sleep by then
.

His first visit was to René’s room. He leaned in the open doorway and filled with an ineffable bliss as he watched the boy sleep. Nothing in life gave him greater comfort than seeing his son safe and at rest in his own bed. He had come to view these moments as fleeting instants when, no matter what else had gone wrong in the universe, this much remained right.

For the sake of stealth, he reached down and slipped off his shoes. Then he padded across the room, his sock feet silent on the carpeted floor, to stand beside René’s bed. The boy’s breathing was slow, deep, and regular, and beneath closed lids his eyes darted to and fro.
When I was his age, I dreamed of the stars—or so my father always said. But I’ve already given René the stars.
He gazed with wonder at his son.
What could he be dreaming of?

It was a question only René might be able to answer, but Picard wasn’t selfish enough to wake the boy just for that. He reached down and gently stroked René’s fine, almost silken hair. Then he gave the boy a whisper of a kiss on the top of his head before he stole away, sneaking from the room with a light step and bated breath.

His plan to skulk into his own bed without waking Beverly was dashed when he slipped through the open doorway to see her lying awake, staring at the overhead. She turned on her bedside lamp and acknowledged him with tired eyes. “Thought I heard you come in.”

“I stopped to check on René.”

She stretched and yawned. “I figured.”

He removed his uniform jacket and tossed it into the corner. “Trouble sleeping?”

“Some.” She watched him sit on the bed and pull off his pants. Her poker face was impenetrable. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

A kick sent his trousers into the corner atop his jacket. “What about me?”

“What you did at the reception. Saving my life.” Her features scrunched with disapproval. “What the hell were you thinking, Jean-Luc?”

He paused with his undershirt half-off, still wrapped around his arms. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” There was real anger in her voice; it was quiet and deeply buried, but its presence was unmistakable. “I was standing right next to you. I saw everything you did.”

Curious but alarmed, he pitched his undershirt into the corner, then turned to face his wife. “And what, precisely, did you see?”

Crusher’s blue eyes bored into him. “You were standing in front of an armed assassin, almost close enough to touch her. And with the lives of two heads of state hanging in the balance, you pulled
me
to the floor. You shielded
me
.”

Her ire had taken him by surprise. “Would you have preferred I let her shoot you?”

“What I would have preferred was for you to defend the president.”

Despite his sincere wish to remain calm, he felt himself growing defensive. “That’s why she has the Protection Detail, Beverly. Defending her is
their
job, not mine.”

“Funny, I don’t recall Captain Kirk making that distinction when he saved President Ra-ghoratreii from a sniper at the Khitomer Conference.”

Stung, he recoiled and stood. “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve—”

“You swore an oath!”

“To defend the Federation, and obey the lawful orders of my superior officers and our elected leaders. I’m a Starfleet officer, not a palace guard.” He softened the edge in his voice and tried a different tack. “If I’d tried to intervene, I might have gotten in the agents’ way and actually prevented them from doing their jobs.”

She crossed her arms and stared at the ceiling, pointedly avoiding looking at him. “I didn’t think this was the sort of man you were when I married you.”

Unwilling to suffer her harangue at point-blank range, Picard moved to the end of the bed, desperate for some literal and figurative space in which to regroup. “Maybe I wasn’t.”

Combing her fingers through her sleep-tangled red hair, Crusher spent a few seconds with her eyes shut. When she opened them, she eyed Picard as if he’d betrayed her. “What are you saying, Jean-Luc? That three years ago you would’ve leaped to her defense?” Dismay and disappointment darkened her angular features. “Has becoming a father changed you that much?”

“I think it has.” He looked at Beverly but remained silent until she met his gaze and with a subtle easing of her brow signaled that she would let him have his say. “I admit that I chose kin over country. But I think that decision was not only right but logical.”

He saw that she harbored doubts, but he pressed on. “If Nanietta Bacco had been killed last night, the Federation Council would appoint a president pro tem and schedule a special election. In six weeks or so, a new president would be elected and sworn in. In the interim it would be a tragedy and a political mess of epic proportions, but our system of government is designed to cope with such things. It would go on.”

Picard edged his way back along the bed, gradually closing the distance between them. “The same would be true if the assassin had killed Imperator Sozzerozs. In the short term, we and the president would have had our hands full preventing it from leading to war, but within days Sozzerozs would be succeeded by his son. From a grand-scale political standpoint, the death of one head of state is little more than a footnote in the history of a civilization.”

He sat down on the bed beside her and lowered his voice. “But if I had lost you, there would be no replacing you in my life—or in René’s. The same would be true if I’d been killed. Or worse yet, both of us. . . . Beverly, I waited a long time to start a family, perhaps too long. But now that I have one, nothing in the universe matters more to me. Not my president, not my oath of service, nothing. If that diminishes me in your eyes . . . so be it.”

Crusher spent the next minute deep in thought, mulling all that he had said. He sat beside her, quiet and patient, waiting to see if his confession had made matters better or worse. Then she rolled over, turning her back on him, and tugged the bedsheets up over her shoulder.

“Beverly . . . ?”

“Go to sleep, Jean-Luc.” She reached out and turned off her bedside lamp. “I get the feeling tomorrow’s going to be another very long day.”

19

Twisted, shattered, bent, and burned, it remained a marvel of engineering. No matter how much damage it had suffered in the course of its capture the previous night, La Forge reminded himself, it was still a Soong-type android.
Well, ninety percent of it, anyway.

Ensconced inside the largest and most extensively equipped research laboratory aboard the
Enterprise,
the captured android body had been under the strictest guard possible. Armed security officers had been stationed inside and outside the lab, and a transporter-scrambling field had been projected around it since the body’s arrival. La Forge had intended to get some rest and start his tests at 0900, but after lying awake for three hours as the victim of an adrenaline rush, he’d given up trying to sleep and arrived at the lab just before 0800, coffee in hand.

The sensor array above the workbench was just finishing its first series of detailed scans of the body when the lab door swished open, and Data walked in.

La Forge put down his padd and stylus, and rushed to meet his friend with a smile on his face. “Data!” The bemused android stuck out his hand for a shake and got a bear hug instead. The engineer gave Data a fraternal slap on the back. “Man, is it great to see you!”

“It is good to be seen,” Data said, returning the backslapping embrace. They parted, and he nodded toward the body on the workbench. “I was told you captured one of the androids.”

“Sure did!” He led Data to the table. “I just took a peek at its insides. It’s definitely one of the androids from the factory we found on Mangala, but it’s been heavily modified.”

Data looked down at the battered duplicate of Esperanza Piñiero. “I can see that.”

“Yeah, they’ve been upgraded to look fully human—or Orion, or whatever humanoid they want, apparently. But it’s not as sophisticated as the chameleon tech in your body. This one swaps out modular parts to change things like height, body mass, and retinal patterns.” He pulled back a phaser-blackened, scorched-smelling flap of artificial skin from the abdomen and pointed at a device inside the torso. “They’ve also got sensor-feedback systems, so they give off life signs and bioelectrical signatures that make them scan like whatever they want.”

As he studied the modified android, Data’s eyes widened. “Intriguing.” A birdlike tilt of his head preceded a wry smile. “But not very efficient. Whoever made these changes was likely a skilled roboticist”—he shot a meaningful look at La Forge—“but a mediocre cyberneticist.” He straightened his posture and circled the table to view the body from the other side. “I find it hard to believe that the same entity responsible for such crude modifications to the body could be capable of successfully activating, stabilizing, and programming a positronic brain.”

“And you’d be right, Data.” He pointed at the head. “Ready for a surprise?” Data nodded, so La Forge carefully detached the exterior cranial plates from the defunct android, exposing the interior of its head. Where he had expected to find a dead positronic matrix from which he might suss raw intel or at least valuable clues, there were only broken, splintered hunks of partially melted black glass. He looked expectantly at Data. “Any idea what
that
is?”

Data was perplexed. “It appears to be volcanic glass.”

“That’s
exactly
what it is. More to the point, that’s all it is.” La Forge crossed his arms and frowned at the mystery lying on his workbench. “How could this thing function with a chunk of glass for a brain? I mean, that’s almost like saying it literally had rocks in its head.”

Poking at the cracked obsidian glob, Data creased his brow. “These fractures and deformations are recent. Could this damage have occurred during the battle for its capture?”

“I think it happened after it hit the ground. Just as I reached the body, I saw a flash of light behind its eyes, and then smoke came out of the ears. I figured it was a self-destruct thermal charge, but I also assumed it was torching a positronic brain, not a glass brick.”

Data plucked a needlelike fragment of black glass from inside the head and held it up to the light. “I think it is safe to assume that when this unit was functional, this brain was intact. Whatever was done to it has been very effective at preventing us from reverse-engineering it.”

“You’re telling me.” He sighed. “I have a dozen more tests to run on the body, but I doubt we’ll find much we don’t already know. The real key to this thing is that jumble of crap it used to call a brain. Problem is, I have no idea how to start deconstructing this mess.”

His complaint seemed to spark an idea in Data. “In that case, Geordi, we need to find someone on the ship who can. Who else has clearance to study this body?”

La Forge shrugged. “No one except you, me, Doctor Crusher, and Lieutenant Šmrhová.”

“Then we need to speak to Captain Picard, and ask him to declassify this technology for study, or elevate the security clearances of all
Enterprise
science and engineering personnel to whatever level is necessary to permit their assistance. I think our analysis will benefit from a synthesis of opinions by experts in a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines.”

The suggestion made La Forge want to laugh; it sounded simple, yet he knew that it would likely be a nightmare once Starfleet Command’s bureaucracy got involved. “Just one problem with that plan, Data: the admiralty will never approve it. It makes too much sense.”

Data seemed undeterred. “True. Fortunately, I believe we are currently in the president’s good graces—and the last time I checked, she outranked the admiralty.”

“I didn’t remember you being this devious.” He grinned and slapped Data’s shoulder. “I like it.” With a sideways nod toward the door, he added, “All right. Let’s go talk to the captain.”

•   •   •

Morning arrived in Ki Baratan, the capital of Romulus, with red skies and sultry heat. A thick haze blanketed the city, shielding it from the blazing eye of the sun even as it smothered the people with its muggy embrace. Pedestrians and venders had begun to pack the streets, and great crowds had already thronged the city’s ocean beaches, eager to take advantage of high tide.

Looking down upon the teeming masses from her private office atop the Hall of State, Praetor Gell Kamemor wished she could lose herself among them.
If only it were so simple.
She pivoted away from the window to face her visitor, Chairwoman Tesitera Levat of the Tal Shiar, whose news had filled her heart with icy wrath. “Do we know who was behind the attack?”

“Not yet, Praetor.” Levat was decades younger than Kamemor, but one would not have thought so, seeing them together. Whereas the praetor still had a proud countenance, a lean physique, and lustrous raven hair untouched by time’s graying hand, the new leader of the state’s intelligence apparatus looked ravaged: thick around the middle, her face creased with worry lines, and her close-cropped, ash-gray hair frosted with white above her ears.