Star Trek: TNG: Cold Equations II: Silent Weapons (3 page)

“That’s the way of things,” Dygan said, staring through the amber lens of liquor in his hand. “We love best those we loved first.” Then he took a maudlin turn. “Some things truly are irreplaceable.” He banished his blue mood with an affected smile. “But sometimes they come back, eh? Your old friend Data, for instance.”

“Yeah. . . . Data.” Being reminded of his best friend’s reincarnation left the normally gregarious La Forge momentarily speechless. More than four years after he had helped Data go to his doom aboard the
Scimitar
to save Captain Picard from the madman Shinzon and destroy a thalaron weapon that could exterminate entire worlds, La Forge had found himself assisting in his friend’s return—inside the android body his creator, Noonien Soong, had made to enable himself to cheat death. All at once, four years of grief had been made moot; four years of loneliness and slow healing had been rendered meaningless. La Forge was overjoyed to have his friend back, but to his surprise, he had also discovered that he felt angry. He masked his unease with an awkward smile. “I still haven’t really got my head around that.”

Dygan struck an apologetic note. “I didn’t mean to pry, or open old wounds.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He dismissed the perceived offense with a wave of his hand. “As we say on Earth, water under the bridge.”

After picking up and contemplating the tequila for a few seconds, Dygan set it back down with exaggerated caution. “I don’t mean to make light of how confusing your situation must be, but I have to say . . . I envy you, just a little bit.” He looked La Forge in the eye. “There are few things I wouldn’t give to bring my best friend back from the grave.”

The younger man’s admission dredged up La Forge’s submerged guilt. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I’m not. Having Data back is . . . amazing. If I could’ve done it myself, I would have. But the way it happened raises questions I don’t know how to answer.”

“Such as . . . ?”

At first, La Forge was reluctant to speak. Then he put aside his reticence and decided to confide in Dygan. “Well, for starters, on a purely semantic level, it’s not really him but a
copy
of him. The original Data—body, mind, and soul—went up in flames with the
Scimitar
. This new Data has most of the original’s memories . . . but not quite all of them. His memory of that life ends at the moment he uploaded his engrams into B-4’s positronic matrix. But—and here’s the part I can’t quite get a handle on—except for a gap of about a day, he
remembers
being the Data I knew. And what are we, any of us, except the sum of our experiences? If he remembers the life he lived, how can I say he’s not really him?”

Silent and pensive, Dygan ruminated on those points for a moment. He looked down at the glass in his hand. “Perhaps we should have saved this conversation for after the first round.”

“You opened the floodgates,” La Forge said.

“So I did.” A far-off look in Dygan’s eyes gave La Forge the impression he was thinking something profound. Then the Cardassian said, “I think that if he wasn’t the man you knew, you’d have been able to tell when he was standing in front of you. Did he seem the same?”

La Forge thought back to the moment he saw Data sit up on the worktable inside the lab on Mangala, and the discussion they’d had before he departed the
Enterprise
in the
Archeus,
the ship the android had inherited from his father. “Yeah, he did. In every way. . . . It was him, I’d swear it.”

“Then it was him.”

Could it really be that simple? Was it possible that all the philosophical and ontological conundrums that seemed to accompany Data’s resurrection were, in fact, irrelevant? La Forge wanted to think so; questioning his friend’s return had felt like an act of denial, as if he were experiencing the stages of grieving in reverse—in effect, mourning his grief.

“I hope you’re right,” he said.

Dygan slapped a reassuring hand on La Forge’s shoulder. “Trust me, sir.” He lifted his glass, and La Forge did the same as the Cardassian added, “To old friends.”

“To old friends,” La Forge said.

He and Dygan downed their drinks in single pours—then both men doubled over as they sprayed the deck with spit-takes. La Forge gagged and smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in a futile bid to rid it of the sickening taste of
kanar,
and Dygan dropped his glass as he coughed and gasped for air. From the end of the bar and around the room came the knowing chortles of their shipmates. Pulling himself upright against the bar, La Forge groaned. “An hour from now I’m gonna be really sorry I did that.”

“Then I envy you again,” Dygan said with a grimace, “because I’m sorry
now
.”

•   •   •

Joyful shrieks and squeals spilled into the corridor from the
Enterprise
’s day-care nursery, and Doctor Beverly Crusher felt her son René’s pulse quicken as his excitement level surged in response to the sound of other children playing. The toddler tried to sprint ahead of her, only to be restrained by her gentle hold on his wrist. “Calm down, René,” Crusher said.

The nursery, located a couple of compartments away from sickbay on Deck 7, was a bright and cheerful space set up by the ship’s Denobulan assistant chief medical officer, Doctor Tropp. Its walls and carpeting had been remodeled in soothing pastel hues, and it had been stocked with a variety of toys—some educational, some simply fun, all safe and hypoallergenic.

Crusher let go of René’s hand as the door hushed open ahead of them, and he scampered inside, his cherubic face bright with glee as he joined his friends, a handful of young children of various humanoid species who ranged in age from eighteen months to three and a half years. At two and a half, René was right in the middle of the pack, but his friendly disposition and gentleness of spirit enabled him to interact easily with both the older and younger children. Seeing him hug his friends hello brought Crusher a feeling of contentment and an easy smile.

Looking up, she caught the eye of the nursery’s principal adult supervisor and beckoned him with raised eyebrows and a small wave. Hailan Casmir was an Argelian teacher, musician, and puppeteer who appeared to be in his early thirties. He wore his blond hair in a loose mane that framed his lean, angular features, which were accentuated by his close-cropped, honey-hued beard. Casmir was married to one of the ship’s engineers, a Bajoran woman named Lieutenant Taro Trinell, with whom he had fathered a daughter, Taro Katín, who was just a few months younger than René and had recently become one of the boy’s favorite playmates.

Casmir shook Crusher’s hand. “Doctor. A pleasure, as always.”

“Likewise.” She nodded at René. “I just want to let you know I plan on picking him up early today, around 1400, and he’ll be out tomorrow.”

Her news drew a frown of mild concern from Casmir. “Nothing’s wrong, I hope.”

“No, no. Just routine vaccinations, but he’ll have to be isolated for twenty-four hours afterward, just to make sure he doesn’t suffer any unexpected side effects.” She crossed her arms and observed the children’s playtime frenzy with a clinical eye. “How’s everything going?”

“Splendidly,” Casmir said. “Little René’s become quite the ringleader around here. I don’t know how much of that is natural charisma as opposed to the others’ expectations of him as the captain’s son, but he has a knack for setting the tone to suit his mood.”

“Is that really a good thing?”

He shrugged. “It’s neither good nor bad. He’s got a talent for imitating behaviors that he sees, and for persuading others to join him in doing things that he likes. On the other hand, he still has a bit to learn about sharing with others. But all of this is normal for a child his age.”

She knew that Casmir was right. Her first son, Wesley, had gone through much the same process of socialization, though he had been less prone to taking the lead with his peers. Regardless, she harbored concerns. “Be that as it may, Hailan, try to encourage René to let someone else choose the games once in a while. I don’t want the others to fall into a pattern of treating him differently because he’s the captain’s son.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

His answer sounded agreeable enough, but Crusher sensed there was something he was holding back, something he was trying to avoid saying. “But . . . ” she prompted.

“But . . . as he and his peers get older, if they remain on this ship, it won’t be possible to separate their perception of his identity from his relationship to the captain. It’s a natural part of informal socialization among most humanoids to develop layers of hierarchy. In earlier, less developed cultures, adolescent social groups often split along economic lines. These days, the divisions are usually based on achievements, in either academics or athletics. But on board a starship, where life is far more regimented, and a system of military rank defines the interactions of adults, children tend to model their relationships on those they see every day.”

Crusher’s first impulse was to debate Casmir’s point, but she recalled having seen signs of exactly that kind of unconscious caste system aboard other starships on which she’d served, and it was consistent with accounts she’d heard from people who had grown up on starships or starbases. Children of officers tended to socialize with one another, as did the children of noncoms and enlisted personnel. Friendships that bridged those social divisions were common enough among younger children, but in adolescence, cliques tended to self-segregate based on any number of perceived criteria—including not just achievement but also popularity, species, and, yes, the ranks of their Starfleet parents.

Still, it was difficult for her to imagine her sweet, towheaded boy ever engaging in such superficial discrimination. “You raise some good points,” she said to Casmir, “but I’m not sure it’s as inevitable as you make it sound. After all, my first son, Wesley, was the child of two Starfleet officers, and he never treated others that way.”

Casmir nodded. “You’re right—the scenario I’m suggesting is far from preordained. Children’s natural tendencies, the size of their social group, and how they’re raised can all make a huge difference. Though I’d be willing to guess that in the case of your first son, he didn’t start his socialization process as the son of the commanding officer.”

“No, he didn’t.” She turned away from Casmir, hoping to call over René for a farewell hug and a kiss on the cheek before she left to start her shift in sickbay. Then she saw the boy deep in play with his peers, turning tight circles in eager, choppy steps, all of them laughing and whooping and making a happy noise that filled the room. All thought of interrupting him left her mind, and she let herself enjoy the sight of children at play . . . until she realized why their motions all looked so familiar. They all were chasing one another with arms outstretched, fists clenched, thumbs jabbed forward as they whooped at the tops of their lungs; they were pantomiming the firing of phasers, pretending to stun one another, collapsing atop one another in comical piles. And the last child standing was René, who opened his fist long enough to swat the left side of his chest, like a Starfleet officer tapping his combadge to open a channel.

Crusher turned back toward Casmir, who studied her reaction with a sympathetic expression. “So,” he said, “I’ll see you at 1400, then.”

She pretended not to be discomfited by what she’d just seen, viewed now in the context of their conversation. “Yes. If that changes, I’ll contact you.” With a halfhearted smile, she backed out of the nursery and hurried back to sickbay, wondering as she walked whether it might be time to reconsider her family’s future in Starfleet, after all.

2

Like everything else made under the official auspices of the Breen Confederacy, the laboratory code-named Korwat by the Special Research Division was drab, utilitarian, and utterly bereft of even the slightest hint of authentic cultural identity. Any detail, however minor, that might have betrayed the unique aesthetics that underpinned its functions had been stripped away long ago during the facility’s design phase, leaving only the soulless practicality of cold machines.

Of all the places in which Thot Konar had hoped to make his mark and ensure his legacy, none had been so bleak or depressing as this. It was a far cry from the arid beauties of the Paclu homeworld inside the Breen Confederacy, his long-departed place of origin. Having since accustomed himself to the close-packed subterranean cities of worlds that dotted the Confederacy’s border, or the cramped confines of the military vessels he had served on in his youth, he also found his current assignment disconcerting for its extreme isolation.

His only regular company for the last two hundred-odd days had been his subordinate, fellow SRD scientist Chot Hain. Though neither had spoken openly of anything other than their shared work—the revelation of personal details between colleagues was taboo within Breen culture and expressly prohibited by military regulations—a number of subtle nonverbal cues had led Konar to think Hain was female, though he remained unaware of her species. In truth, he wasn’t entirely certain of Hain’s gender, but unless and until new evidence contradicted his supposition, he resolved to think of the expert programmer as a female.