“Exciting? I think the word you meant to use was ‘horrifying.’ Sir.”
“Puh- tay-to, puh-tah-to. The point is, Chiro, that’s just one avenue of investigation. We also want to run some tests that we think could help advance Doctor Marcus’s research into new applications for the Jinoteur Pattern. Ideally, we’d have those datasets ready for her by the time she and her team reach Regula One.”
Nogura rubbed his chin. “Two points, sir. First, I’m not comfortable with any of these recommendations. While I understand the enthusiasm the R and D teams have for the work we’re doing out here, I think they must have skipped the section of Lieutenant Xiong’s report in which he makes clear how fragile the array currently is.”
The senior admiral seemed to be losing patience with the conversation. “You’re just being overcautious. I know these things ripped a new hole in your station last year, but that’s the past. You need to put that behind you and focus on the present and the future.”
“I believe I am, sir.”
“Well, I don’t agree. And neither does Starfleet Command. You’re sounding all the same alarms you did when we pressed you to bring the array on line in the first place. You were wrong then, Chiro, and the R and D experts are telling me you’re wrong now.”
“I don’t care what your experts are telling you,” Nogura said. “The only person I know who deserves to be called an ‘expert’ when it comes to this array is Xiong. And frankly, I’m inclined to trust his recommendations over yours.”
The shift in Severson’s bearing was subtle, but Nogura read it clearly enough to know he had just lit the fuse on the man’s temper, and that it was about to blow. “All right,” said the senior admiral. “If you won’t heed my recommendations, then you leave me no other choice but to make it an order. Admiral Nogura, as of now, I am ordering you and all personnel under your command to carry out the research plan and experiment schedule proposed by Starfleet Research and Development and sent to you by me during this conversation. If your team wishes to run supplementary experiments, they may, but only after they have completed the test series prescribed by Starfleet R and D. Is that understood, Admiral?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good.” After a moment’s thought, Severson asked, “What’s your second point?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“A moment ago, you said you had two points. I heard your first. What was the second?”
Nogura nodded, his memory jogged. “Ah, yes. Don’t ever call me ‘Chiro’ again. Nogura out.” He stabbed the button on his desk that terminated the subspace channel, and his screen blinked back to black, erasing the shocked reaction of Admiral Severson.
Sitting alone with his cold coffee and simmering temper, Nogura dreaded the reaction from the team in the Vault when he relayed Severson’s orders. As much as Nogura disliked being micromanaged by the Starfleet brass, he knew that Xiong was going to hate it far more.
“Are they out of their goddamned minds?” Xiong’s dismay escalated as he read each successive page of the proposed experiments and protocols from Starfleet Research and Development. “It’s like they never read a single word I sent them.”
He sat behind the desk in his office, which overlooked the main floor of the Vault. Klisiewicz sat in one of his guest chairs, and Theriault stood against the wall. All three Starfleet scientists read from data slates on which was loaded the same report. As they pored through its contents, Klisiewicz was aghast and Theriault looked perplexed.
“Question,” Klisiewicz said. “Do they know that none of our software for the array is written to do any of this? ‘Blowing up planets’ wasn’t in the original program specs.”
“I don’t think they care,” Xiong said. “All they know is that we did it by accident, so now they want to be able to do it on purpose.” He hurled his data slate away, and it cracked against the wall. “Dammit! This is exactly what Carol Marcus warned us about!” He kicked his chair back as he stood, so that he would have room to pace behind his desk. “I told her not to worry, that Starfleet would handle this thing responsibly, that they wouldn’t try to weaponize it.”
“Got that wrong,” Theriault mumbled.
Xiong knew her ire was directed at the Starfleet brass, so he let her quip slide. “Yes. Yes, I did. Now we have to deal with this mess.”
“You can’t let them go forward with these experiments,” Klisiewicz said. “Forget that we aren’t set up to run any of them. Half of them run the risk of breaching the array.”
Theriault added, “He’s right. Some of these protocols will drain so much power from the support grid that we could start losing containment.”
“What are the odds of that?” Xiong asked.
“Call it sixty-forty for a breach,” Theriault said.
The new orders were a total nightmare, as far as Xiong was concerned. If he refused them, he was looking at a court-martial and possibly a life sentence in a Federation penal colony. If he obeyed them, there was a good chance he’d accidentally unleash the Shedai, destroying the station, killing thousands, and possibly subjecting the galaxy at large to innumerable horrors. All he’d ever wanted to do was find out who the Shedai really were, and maybe, over time, get them to shed new light on an entire era of history for which little hard evidence or firsthand accounts remained in existence. Pressing them into service as slaves and turning them into a top-secret superweapon of unimaginable power had not been part of his agenda.
He slumped back into his chair. “Y’know, when Carol Marcus came here a couple of years ago and told me we could use the meta-genome and the Jinoteur Pattern to do things like regenerate tissue or extend our subspace communication range, I thought that was cool. But when she started going on about making planets out of nothing, I thought she might be crazy.” He pointed at the data slate in Klisiewicz’s hand. “But these orders raise the bar on crazy around here. Compared to what these idiots want us to do, Marcus’s plan for spinning dark energy into new planets seems almost quaint by comparison.”
“Maybe we need to talk with Commander Liverakos, up in the JAG office,” Theriault said. “Capturing the Shedai was one thing. Enslaving them is another.”
Her suggestion made Klisiewicz perk up. “Can we prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Shedai are essential to the operation of the array?”
“Maybe,” Xiong said. “Without an occupied crystal, we couldn’t interface with the Shedai’s network at all. It seems pretty clear to me that without the Shedai, there’s no machine.”
Eyes wide with hope, Theriault said, “Then that’s our case.”
“I don’t know,” Xiong said. “Sounds pretty flimsy to me. And if we’re wrong, we could be looking at twenty-five to life. Do we really want to take that chance?”
Theriault reproached him with a cockeyed stare. “Would you rather live with these evil experiments on your conscience?”
“I know I wouldn’t,” Klisiewicz said. “I think Vanessa’s right, Ming. We should ask for a legal opinion from the JAG office. If we have any grounds for declaring these orders unlawful, I think we should tell Starfleet Command to stick them back where they got them.”
In his heart, Xiong knew that Theriault and Klisiewicz were right. History was full of casual villains who had rationalized their crimes with the long-discredited excuse, “I was only following orders.” Xiong didn’t want his name added to the list of those who had tried to hide their own weaknesses of character behind an empty appeal to authority.
“I’m not sure who’s going to be angrier,” he said. “Nogura or Starfleet Command.” He took a deep breath that did nothing to calm the anxiety-driven bile creeping up his esophagus, then he stood up. “Who’s ready to volunteer for a free court-martial?” Klisiewicz and Theriault raised their hands with a comical eagerness that made Xiong smile. “All right, then.” As he led them out of his office, he muttered glumly, “Let’s go get crucified.”