Part 7 (1/2)
He had sensed a little anxiousness in her voice as they exchanged pleasantries, though she seemed well in command of the situation-and in command of Sawliru. It was obvious to Picard that the outcome of this conference was important to her.
The captain had personally escorted each party to the conference room and, before beginning the talks, had checked with Worf, who had done an un.o.btrusive tricorder scan on each of them. He was not surprised to learn that each member had concealed a personal weapon of some sort about them. He wasn't troubled by the fact; he had dealt with negotiations between well-armed hostile parties before, and was confident in his ability to handle any situation that might arise. He did, however, have Worf post a pair of security guards in the corridor outside.
He smiled warmly, his best conference smile, and began.
”Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Enterprise. I hope we can find a resolution here-”
”You can start,” interrupted Alkirg coldly, ”by having those ... things stand in our presence.”
Jared laughed-a harsh, unpleasant sound. ”That will be the day,” he said.
The combatants were off to a fast start, Picard sighed to himself.
”Both parties are present as equals aboard this s.h.i.+p,” Picard calmly explained. ”I don't know the customs of your homeworld, but here the matter of protocol exists at my whim. Everyone will remain seated for the duration of the conference.”
”Very well, Captain,” Sawliru said, halting a hot reply from Alkirg with a sharp glance. ”We are ready to begin.” There were curt, answering nods from the androids.
”Very well. Force Commander Sawliru, if you would be so kind as to repeat what you told me earlier about your mission.”
”Certainly, Captain,” the thin, hawk-faced man said. He took a deep breath, and began speaking. ”I was ordered by the Vemlan Council to seek out and capture a group of androids accused, among other crimes, of disobeying orders and stealing the freighter s.h.i.+p Conquest. I was placed in command of a fleet of eight vessels and ordered to proceed along the Conquest's trajectory.
”We tracked the s.h.i.+p to the Hevaride system, where we detected traces of its pa.s.sage. In a surprise and unprovoked attack, the Conquest appeared from within an asteroid node and completely destroyed the Vemlan navy s.h.i.+p Avenger. She also traded shots with the Nemesis and the Vindicator. Several of my crew were killed. We lost track of her after that, and only found traces of her again after the probability storm.”
Kurta s.h.i.+fted restlessly and caught Jared's eye. The android captain didn't move a muscle, Picard noted, but his wife's expression spoke volumes. She looked as if she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar-interesting. Then he could a.s.sume that at least part of the Force Commander's story was true.
”What orders are the crew of the s.h.i.+p in question accused of disobeying?” he asked.
”The list is too long to repeat completely here, Captain,” the Force Commander said, calmly. ”I think that the most pertinent one would be the act of leading a genocidal war against all human life on Vemla.”
Jared was on his feet at once, fury in his eyes, his index finger stabbing accusingly at the military man.
”Sawliru,” he said quietly but strongly, ”you are as good a liar as ever.”
”Calm yourself, Jared,” the Force Commander said, seemingly unaffected by the display. ”We are simply talking here. And I, for one, think it's time that we revealed our little secret, don't you?”
Jared remained stubbornly on his feet. ”You walk in here after slaying hundreds of thousands of my people and dare accuse me of leading a war of genocide? Your hypocrisy astounds me!” he said, his head lifted proudly.
”Facts are facts, Jared,” the Force Commander said, menacingly. ”You should know them better than I. You killed millions in an attempt to wipe your creators out. We are not here to discuss my alleged moral shortcomings, we are here to discuss your surrender.” Sawliru's low, even monotone sent a chill up Picard's back.
”Jared, you will sit,” Picard commanded in a low but firm voice. Jared waited for a few moments, staring deeply at his antagonist, before he retook his chair. His eyes never left the Force Commander's.
Once the android was seated, Picard took a deep breath, and began to address the Force Commander's words.
”Are you serious in this accusation, Force Commander?”
The smaller man took a rectangle of plastic from his belt. ”If your computers can display this image, I think it will bear me out.”
Picard nodded, and took the square. He placed it on the scanning console in front of him. A large screen at the end of the room lit up, as the computer deciphered the alien information and converted it into something a little more digestible to its subsidiary systems.
The Force Commander rose with a respectful nod to Picard, and walked over to the display. He looked at it for a few moments, as if seeing it for the first time and viewing it as art.
The picture was unmistakably that of Jared, his face twisted in a grimace of pure rage. He was wearing a brown coverall that was ripped and burnt in places. A wide bloodstain covered his chest, almost a parody of the sash of command he wore. In his hands was an evil-looking black weapon from which smoke and flames spewed forth. It was a perfect picture, almost as if he had posed for it. The expression could not have been affected; such raw ferocity, Picard felt, can only come from the bowels of the soul.
The Force Commander turned to the rest of the a.s.sembled after he had let the feeling of the image sink in. ”This is a view of Alpha Cla.s.s Android Jared, taken at the ma.s.sacre on the steps of the Great a.s.sembly building, two months after his escape from the gaming arena. Over seven hundred unarmed civilians were killed in a lightning raid by twenty-four rogue androids, led by this same unit.” He turned to the captain. ”This is what you have let aboard your vessel, Captain Picard. A death machine.”
Jared's eyes never left the Force Commander, and it was only Kurta's hand on his arm that restrained him from doing immediate violence.
”Do you deny this?” the military leader asked, almost pleasantly. Picard could detect a trace of enjoyment in his voice, something that went beyond pure devotion to duty. Did the Force Commander have a personal vendetta, he wondered?
”I deny nothing,” Jared said, harshly. ”But aren't you telling only one side of the story, Sawliru?”
”There is only one story to tell. I will leave the full story of the war to be told by Mission Commander Alkirg,” he said, indicating his a.s.sociate and nominal superior.
The woman bowed her head in acknowledgment, and turned to the Starfleet officers, purposefully placing the androids outside of her field of vision.
”Our people have a turbulent background, Captain,” she explained. ”Vemla has been plagued by wars and death and destruction. Up until three hundred years ago, we were a number of warring continental nation-states, looking threateningly down at each other over our common moats, the oceans. We spent vast sums of resources on weapons of defense and offense while many of our people went hungry and cold.” Alkirg looked up at Picard, her gaze cold and unsympathetic. ”We were barbarians.
”Then the Saren contacted our planet. They traded much valuable alien technology to us, as well as the knowledge that we were not alone in the universe. They sold us machines we wouldn't have had the knowledge to build for another thousand years and gave us technical information on a million different subjects. We paid dearly for the information, for we intended to use the advanced learning to create yet more sophisticated ways to kill our neighbors. It was a frightening, terrifying time.
”Then a group of scientists discovered that one of the pieces of unknown alien equipment sold to us by the Saren was an automated factory which produced positronic microprocessors.”
Picard nodded. Positronic technology was the key to artificial intelligence; of all the Federation's scientists, only Dr. Noonian Soong, Data's creator, had managed to perfect it.
”We studied the processors thoroughly, however, and learned much. After thirty years of fiddling we were able to design a suitable housing for them and began the construction of the first androids.
”With the aid of that first generation of computers-machines so much faster and smarter than any we could hope to create on our own-the art of producing them was greatly enhanced. Soon they possessed tremendous strength, had endless endurance, and could be made relatively cheaply. They could even think, after a rudimentary fas.h.i.+on,” she said, and sniffed disdainfully.
”The first androids were designed as military hardware, but the usefulness of the design had other applications. Instead of h.o.a.rding this technology, the scientists spread it among all the states of our world, and soon the production of androids began on a large scale. We soon realized that the mechanical servants we built could be used to manufacture and farm at high volumes with very little cost.
”As resources became more available, we found that there was little left to fight about. Many of our differences drifted away during that time, and we began to celebrate them, instead of fighting over them. Nations began to see each other as neighbors instead of compet.i.tors. The concepts of cla.s.s struggle, allocation of resources, and distribution of wealth faded away as people all over the world became wealthy, in material terms.”
”Keep in mind that this didn't happen overnight, Captain,” interrupted Force Commander Sawliru. ”There was a long period of readjustment; it is difficult to unlearn what you have spent millennia learning. We came together slowly, first as a loose coalition, then as a unified political system.”
”All due to the androids,” remarked Picard.
”To a large extent, yes,” replied Alkirg. ”Androids could be used to do things no Vemlan would desire to. The boring and dangerous jobs. It was an android that went to our moons before living beings went, and androids that mined our oceans for precious minerals. Androids that cleaned our cities. Things that were impractical or impossible for living beings to do.
”As time went on, we built better androids. The first ones looked like Vemlans, but they were relatively unsophisticated. Much time and energy went into design improvement. We gave them better brains, better bodies. After a while, the androids themselves were a.s.sisting in the design of new generations.
”A hundred years ago, we had reached a plateau in our refinement. There were three main cla.s.ses of androids: Alpha units, which were used by the scientists and other learned people for help in research; Beta units, which were widely used for domestic tasks, maintenance, and entertainment; and Gamma units, which were designed for repet.i.tive tasks and dangerous work.”
The woman took a breath and made a broad sweeping motion with her hands. ”It was truly a Golden Age, the kind we had dreamt about, but never dared hope to live in. Our units were versatile and sophisticated. We wished for companions for our children and our elderly and a means to distinguish between androids, to personalize them. We found early on that using the same face and body for many androids was maddening when it came to finding a particular one, so we programmed a random function into our construction computers. Every unit that came out of the factory had its own face and size and shape. We made them male and female for aesthetic reasons, and added programming to give them simulated emotions, also in random patterns. Each unit had a distinct personality so that it could interact with Vemlans on a day-to-day basis without seeming machinelike.”
”You created a race of slaves,” growled Jared.
”We built machines,” corrected Alkirg emphatically. ”Machines like this s.h.i.+p, that computer, a ground-effect vehicle, an artificial satellite, a mechanical dishwasher. Machines, not people.”
”You gave us emotions,” countered Kurta. ”You built us in your own image.”
”We programmed the illusion of emotions. You have no true feelings. Captain, may I continue, or must I be interrupted after every sentence?”