Star Trek: The Next Generation - 114 - Cold Equations: The Body Electric by David Mack

Author:David Mack [Mack, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781451650778
Amazon: B007EDZ02E
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 2012-12-20T08:00:00+00:00

17

It never ceased to amaze Gatt how easy it was to lie to organic life-forms. How could species so gullible have survived long enough to invent anything as transcendent as artificial intelligence?

The transporter beam of the Enterprise faded, giving Gatt a clear view of the transporter room and its occupants. The human commanding officer was flanked by his male Klingon first officer and a human woman in a blue surgeon’s coat. Behind the three of them, manning the control panel, was a Bolian man in an engineering uniform and, beside him, a Bajoran woman whom Gatt would have pegged as a security officer because of the combat rifle in her hands even if he hadn’t noticed the mustard hue of her shirt collar. Off to one side of the small compartment, near the door, two personnel whose uniforms were trimmed in blue waited with what Gatt surmised were portable medical kits and an antigrav stretcher. They all stared at Gatt, who stood on the transporter platform with the unconscious Wesley Crusher cradled in his arms.

“He needs help,” Gatt said, feigning tender concern.

The doctor waved her people forward and joined them at the edge of the transporter platform. As the two junior personnel took Wesley from Gatt’s arms and lowered him onto the antigrav stretcher, the chief medical officer scanned the unconscious Traveler with her tricorder. “He’s suffered a neurological trauma consistent with an electrical shock.” She skewered Gatt with an icy glare that betrayed deep personal animosity. “What the hell happened to him?”

“We aren’t sure,” Gatt lied. “He was guiding our ship here through hyperwarp, but no one told him our vessel is sentient. I think she resisted him when he started using his abilities to accelerate us beyond normal warp flight. One minute everything was fine, and then things started going wrong. Nexa was fighting him, but he refused to break contact—he said we’d be lost in some parallel dimension if he didn’t guide us back. But as soon as we returned to normal space, he collapsed, and our ship’s warp drive went off line.” He mimicked a gaze of warm regard and admiration for the stunned Traveler. “We might’ve all been lost. He saved us.”

The commander stepped forward. “Welcome aboard the Enterprise. I’m Captain Jean-Luc Picard. This is my first officer, Commander Worf, and our chief medical officer, Doctor Beverly Crusher. To whom am I speaking?”

“Gatt, first among equals on Altanexa, speaking on behalf of the Fellowship of Artificial Intelligence.” It was more than exaggeration for Gatt to present himself as someone who spoke for the Fellowship. No one actually held such a privilege, but he presumed the Starfleeters wouldn’t know that. In fact, he and his companions on Altanexa, including the ship itself, were barely members of the Fellowship at all. Castigated and censured by their fellow AIs more times than he cared to recall, they were, at best, a radical splinter faction, a band of denigrated outcasts.

His ruse seemed to work, however. None of the Enterprise

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