Malefictorum Read online

“A focused beam of sound?” Gold asked. “I thought those were weapons that were left behind centuries ago?”

  Corsi shook her head. “They were developed about four hundred years ago, sir, but they’re still no less effective than a sword or a knife.”

  Gomez pressed a touchpad, and the monitor to her left flickered to life. Line after line of text scrolled by. “Wow.”

  “What?” Gold and Corsi asked in unison.

  Gomez held up one long finger. “Give me a second.” She reached over and pressed a control that slowed the scrolling. “Those results that the other array generates? It looks like they do control another program on the padd.”

  Corsi leaned over Gomez’s shoulder, trying to read the lines of gibberish that were scrolling by on the monitor. “How can you tell?”

  Gomez pointed at a line on the screen. “I can’t read the exact language, but these look like very basic ‘if–then’ subroutine structures. Look at this—” The engineer’s fingers ran over several lines of programming, all of which held an identical character structure.

  “You’re right,” Corsi said. “That line’s in each subroutine. Should we call Faulwell to see what the characters mean?” As the resident linguist, Bart Faulwell loved alien languages. Corsi wasn’t sure she wanted to unleash this particular one on him, though. Anthony would kill me if Faulwell ended up dead.

  “What about Soloman?” she asked. It wasn’t out of the question that the Bynar computer specialist might find something they couldn’t.

  “That may not be a good idea, either,” Gomez said. “If he plugs into this programming, I’m not sure what it could do to him.”

  “We already know what it does to humans,” Corsi said.

  Gold wagged a finger at Corsi. “She’s got a point, Gomez. The last thing I need right now is to break in another first officer.”

  Corsi shuddered at the thought of Mor glasch Tev as first officer, hoping the reaction had gone unnoticed. While she had no doubt that he hadn’t been involved in this—she was certain that he was arrogant enough to brag about how he’d developed the technology if he’d been even remotely involved—the thought of the irritating Tellarite being in a position of greater authority made her begin to seriously consider a transfer. In an effort to cover her reaction, she said, “But if it’s the extra equipment that actually does the damage, wouldn’t the array give it the pitch modulation?”

  Gomez stared at the now-stagnant lines of programming on the monitor. After a few seconds, she dropped the small probe onto the table. “You may be right. I’m guessing the program only triggers the equipment. The problem is, all I really can do is guess.” Sonya reached up to tap her combadge, but Corsi stopped her.

  “Wait a minute. Before we do this, we should open the other padds. If it needed this additional equipment to kill Caitano, how’d it kill Deverick? Both he and Pattie had copies of the file downloaded to their padds. Those came directly from Starfleet, not the Gamma Quadrant. How’d it kill Deverick if it didn’t have the extra equipment? For that matter, why is Pattie still alive?”

  Gomez reached over and grabbed the padd that had been found on Deverick’s sofa. “Let’s find out.” Once she cracked the case, Corsi was beginning to wish she hadn’t. The same set of equipment stared at them from the inside of the case of Deverick’s padd.

  There’s only one way I know of that that could work.

  Gomez opened Pattie’s padd.

  Corsi stared, speechless, at the third padd. While she watched, a third tiny device was forming inside the padd’s case.

  “Nanites,” Gomez whispered. “The original brought nanites with it so it can replicate. Pattie’s probably alive because she finished the novel before the nanites finished the emitter in her padd.” Her eyes widened as a thought struck. “Wait a minute. He uploaded it to the library? Computer, call up the cross section on computer core processor one-seven-six. I want to see element zero-one-hundred to zero-two-hundred. Route it to the monitor at this workbench.”

  The monitor in question flickered, and the image of what looked to Corsi to be a wounded circuit appeared. Tiny dots flickered over the damage like an infestation of ants.

  “Is that what I think it is, Gomez?” Gold asked.

  “Yes, sir. They’re in the system,” Gomez said, her tone hardening. “Captain, we had nanites infest the computer core when I was on the Enterprise. Problem was that then, they were sentient, so it tied our hands on how to deal with them. If we can prove that these nanites aren’t sentient, it’s a simple matter of using the gamma pulse generators on the computer core. Whoever programmed these things probably gave them a single-minded goal.”

  “Agreed,” Corsi said, “it’s not a good idea to let the creatures making your weapon work think for themselves. If they figured out what they were doing, they might not do their jobs.”

  Gold pulled a stool over from a nearby workbench. “So, if we start at the beginning, we need to figure out if they’re intelligent. Can their programming tell us that?”

  Gomez nodded. “To an extent. We can at least find out if there’s any adaptability written into it.” Grabbing a pair of microtweezers, she reached into Pattie’s padd, and after a few seconds of poking around, lifted the closed tweezers out of the unit. “Computer, please place a microscanner on the table behind me.”

  The unit in question appeared on the workbench. Gomez turned around, placed the tweezer’s contents on a watch glass and slipped it under the viewer. “Good, I got a few of them. Computer, can you extract the programming from the nanites on the slide and route it to my monitor?”

  “Accessing.”

  The monitor that had held the image of the computer core flickered again, and then showed a stream of ones and zeroes. Gomez leaned forward. “Computer, translate the coding.”

  Midstream, the numbers became letters. Corsi shook her head. “I don’t know what we’re looking for here. Is it programmed to adapt, or not?”

  After a few moments’ silence, Gomez said, “No. It looks single-minded. From what I can see here, it looks like it’s programmed to activate when it’s first called, then seek out the power source and build its equipment off of that.” She quickly took a small, sealable container and slipped the slide into it.

  A bad thought picked that moment to appear at the back of Corsi’s mind. “We should warn engineering, if these things decide to go for the warp core…”

  Gomez did just that, and then went back to the monitor. “It looks like they’re programmed to shut themselves down.”

  “So they’re acting like computers executing their programs,” Gold said with a shake of his head. “What about consciousness? Self-awareness?”

  “If they were self-aware,” Gomez began, “wouldn’t they stay active when their job was done? If they’ve evolved outside their programming, then should a shutdown subroutine even engage?”

  “Good question,” Gold said. “If the programming tells it to die, and it listens to that programming, can it be self-aware?”

  Gomez reached with the microtweezers into Caitano’s padd and picked up something. She placed it onto another slide and stuck it on the microscanner. After a few seconds of observing them, she said, “These are inert. They’ve shut down.”

  Gold’s expression grew serious. “Gomez, Corsi, do whatever you need to do to get these things off my ship.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gomez and Corsi replied in unison.

  “Gomez to Conlon, flood the computer core. Use the gamma pulse generators.”

  “Aye, Commander.”

  Closing that connection, she then tapped her combadge and said, “Gomez to Soloman.”

  “Yes, Commander?” the Bynar’s typically flat voice asked.

  “Could you join us in the hololab, please? We have a problem that could use your expertise.”

  “Of course, Commander. I’ll be right there.”

  Before the captain could suggest it, Corsi quickly called sickbay to get a medic to the lab. An instinct she ha
d long since learned to trust was screaming that something was going to go wrong.

  “You said it generates different results for different species. Any idea on what triggers it?” Gold asked.

  Corsi leaned against the workbench. “That’s the big question.”

  The hololab doors slid aside with a soft whoosh, and the tiny Bynar walked in. He bowed his slightly oversized head toward Captain Gold. “Captain. You requested my assistance, Commander?”

  “Yes, Soloman,” Gomez replied, a weary smile working its way onto her features. “What we know is that we’ve got a program in this padd looks like it’s calling on something else. We have an idea of what file it’s calling on, but we need your help to find out precisely what this thing’s designed to do.”

  Soloman stepped over to the workbench. “Of course,” he said.

  Gomez put a hand over the opened padd. “Be careful,” she said. “We’ve got evidence that this program is designed to be a weapon. There are nanites involved.”

  The Bynar took a step back from the workbench. He turned wide eyes on Corsi. “Nanites? Do you believe this is what killed Caitano and Deverick?”

  Corsi sighed. “We can’t guarantee it won’t do anything to you, too,” she said. “There’s a medical team coming. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

  Soloman’s eyes bounced between Corsi and Gomez for a long time. Finally, he took a long look at Captain Gold and nodded. “I’ll do it.”

  “Well,” the captain began, “I’ll get out of your way. Let me know what you find out.”

  “Will do, sir,” Gomez replied.

  Almost as though on cue, the hololab doors opened for Elizabeth Lense. She quickly nodded to the captain as their paths crossed. Once the doors were closed behind him, she asked, “What’s up?” Her eyes went to Soloman. “Why do I have a feeling you’re about to do something stupid, and you’ve called me down for the inevitable moment when it all goes to hell?”

  Corsi half-smiled. “Because you’ve been on this ship long enough to figure out how things always go?”

  Gomez shot Corsi a look. “Because Soloman has agreed to help us figure out something that relates to the software on the padd.”

  Placing a medkit on the table, Lense pulled out her tricorder and pointed it at the Bynar. “If he so much as twitches the wrong way, I’m putting a stop to this.”

  Corsi watched carefully as Gomez turned the padd over to Soloman.

  “This is the file we’re looking at,” Sonya said, using the probe to point to the right line on the monitor. “I can tell it’s calling something else in the file structure, but I can’t tell what it’s meant to do beyond that.”

  Soloman nodded once. “I will determine that, Commander.”

  Before any of the three women could get another word out, the high-pitched chatter of a Bynar communicating with a computer began. The lines on the monitor scrolled by faster than Corsi could keep up. Soloman’s reedlike fingers worked over the opened padd, moving with a speed that she wouldn’t have thought possible if she hadn’t seen it herself.

  What felt like a few minutes later, the Bynar noticeably swayed. Lense and Gomez simultaneously reached forward, steadying his tiny body. Both his hands and the computer chatter stopped simultaneously.

  “Thank you, Commander. I can tell you that it is designed to affect the display of a particular electronic file. I believe that file is entitled Tafock Navar Relal. It takes the readings from the padd’s added sensors and uses that to produce a focused ultraso—”

  Soloman collapsed to the floor in a heap. Gomez looked down in shock as her hands held nothing but air. “Soloman?”

  Lense’s tricorder kept running as she checked him over. Relief filled her voice as she said, “He’s okay. Looks like it overloaded part of his short-term memory. He’s going to have a pounding headache when he wakes up, but that I can treat.”

  Corsi allowed herself to pay attention to what was on the monitor on the workbench. “He was in the middle of saying it generated something when he collapsed.

  “I didn’t hear anything during the—“Ultrasonics?”

  Gomez looked as though the light had gone off in her head at about the same time. “Sonic bullets. So hyperfocused that you don’t hear anything unless you’re the target, and if you’re the target…”

  “It all depends on what result they want,” Corsi finished. “They can either give you a migraine, or turn your internal organs to goo. That works for humans; what about other species?”

  “Different races react differently to different things,” Lense replied, looking up from her perch over Soloman’s still-prone body. “Whoever dreamed this thing up probably knew that. If it’s lethal to humans, I really don’t want to expose anyone else to it if I don’t have to.”

  Gomez slid off her stool and walked over to a less-cluttered area of the lab. “Computer,” she said. “Access the medical database and prepare to generate test representations of the auditory and neural pathways of every Federation species.”

  “Working.”

  A small, featureless, roughly humanoid shape appeared in the corner. It was gray, and its surface was smooth, but Corsi could make out attempts at two arms, two legs, and a head. “What’s that?”

  Gomez folded her arms across her chest. “It’s the base pattern that the computer is working from. I intend to test this thing to see every possible output.”

  Chapter

  9

  Corsi strode into the dissonant cacophony that was Quark’s Bar both anticipating and dreading what she had to do. It looked just like she remembered it: bar full of people of many different species, dabo tables in full spin, drinks and food free-flowing—for a reasonable price, of course. The enormous yellow and orange Cardassian glasswork that she’d learned had always stood in the rear of the bar still glowed, lending its odd shading to the various complexions that filled the bar.

  The crowd was just what she wanted. There was no way Quark would risk making a scene in front of so many customers. She’d never actually interrogated an ambassador before, but she had interrogated Ferengi. Getting the slippery businessmen to divulge anything they didn’t want to without offering monetary gain was usually just as difficult as it sounded.

  No sooner was she through the door than a tall, lithe Orion female almost clothed in a diaphanous white dress whose hem barely passed her hips greeted her. An aroma of cinnamon followed, strong enough to plow its way through the general smell of the mass of people, as well as their respective dinners and drinks. Her flaming red hair was pulled up on her head, ornately braided strands dangling around her slender green neck. “Welcome to Quark’s,” she said, her voice perfectly balanced between loud enough to be heard over the gambling patrons and not loud enough to be yelling.

  “Hello, Treir,” Corsi said, matching her for volume. Judging by the woman’s reaction, she hadn’t expected the newcomer to know who she was. Corsi smiled. “One Hundred Ninety-fourth Rule of Acquisition. It’s always good business to know your customers before they walk in the door.”

  The Orion frowned. “Let me guess. You’re here to see Quark.”

  “Got it in one. If the ambassador isn’t available, let him know he’s interfering in a Starfleet investigation. His government might not like that too much.”

  Was that a snort of derision, or did one of the dabo tables give out? “That would require the ambassador liking his government. I take it you haven’t heard—”

  “About the problems he’s had with the Grand Nagus? Or about the fact that the Grand Nagus’s first clerk owes him a favor? Or are you talking about the fake Grisellan icons?”

  One red eyebrow rose. “You’re well-informed,” she said, having the decency to sound surprised.

  “Just knowing my customer.”

  Before Treir could say another word, the nearly slavering Ferengi ambassador appeared behind her. “Welcome to Quark’s,” he said, the tone in his voice far more of a “Can I show you my collec
tion of Risean art?” than a real welcome. “It’s always nice to have our Starfleet friends pay us a visit. Treir, has our guest asked for anything to drink?”

  “No,” the Orion said.

  “Well, the couple at table three have. Could you take the order to them?”

  Treir glared at the Ferengi before walking off.

  “I’m here on business, Ambassador,” Corsi said as she pulled Caitano’s altered padd out of her shoulder bag. “Does this look familiar?”

  The Ferengi’s oversized lobes perked. “Business, you say? Well…”

  She didn’t like the way his voice had trailed off. “Look, we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the long, obnoxious, diplomatic red-tape way. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got two dead bodies on my ship because of this thing.”

  Quark turned a shade of green that Corsi couldn’t recall ever seeing in nature. “Two dead bodies?” he asked, his eyes widening.

  Corsi forced herself not to smile. Quark’s reputation preceded him by several parsecs, and he knew it. Fortunately, she knew that he knew it. If Ro Laren was right, the fact that Quark essentially acted as a fence in the trade of an illegal weapon would be enough to throw diplomatic relations between Ferenginar and the Federation into a tizzy. Add the deaths of two Federation citizens as a result of that trade, and Corsi didn’t even want to think of the kind of problems Federation President Zite would give Grand Nagus Rom. Diplomatic immunity only extended so far.

  Still, trafficking in weapons was something that Quark should have known better than to attempt. He already had one charge on his record, and Corsi figured there were probably far more instances that never made it to the filing stage.

  A glimmer of dread seeped into the Ferengi’s features. Corsi didn’t have to turn around to figure out who must have been standing behind her. Everything was going precisely as they’d planned. “How are we doing, Quark?” The congeniality in Captain Kira’s voice sounded forced. “I trust you’re not giving our guest any trouble?”

  “Captain,” Quark said, his smooth tone firmly in place and accompanied by what Corsi suspected was an all-too-usual This isn’t what you think it is grin. “Of course not. As a representative of the Ferengi government, it would be—”