Blind Man's Bluff

Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco

Sometime Earlier


Admiral Alynna Nechayev remembered nearly every word of the conversation she’d had with Mackenzie Calhoun weeks earlier. They had been filled with consequences to which Calhoun was utterly oblivious.

Calhoun had been dutifully reporting back to her about the events on the remote world of AF1963, which had resulted in the death of Selar and the discovery of mindless bodies being “grown” in a subterranean lair. Most of the bodies, according to Calhoun, his image flickering on the communications screen, had been destroyed in the massive explosion that Selar had touched off… the explosion that had enabled Soleta and the infant Cwansi to escape, even though it was at the cost of Selar’s life.

“Do you have any idea what intentions these D’myurj might have had for them?” she had asked Calhoun. She had labored to keep her voice flat and even and not betray, in the slightest, the concerns that were hammering through her brain.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Calhoun had said, “and consulting with my people. We have a theory…”

“I’m all ears.”

“Well,” Calhoun had said, leaning in slightly toward the screen, “our initial question, of course, was why they would have all these bodies being grown with what were essentially blank slates for minds. But if you walked into a large warehouse and saw uniforms hanging there with no one in them, you wouldn’t wonder what the purpose of them would be, correct? Wouldn’t wonder what they were designed for?”

“Not especially. I would assume that they were designed to be…” Her voice had trailed off. “Truly? You think they were designed—”

“To be worn. Yes. Something in the genetic makeup of half-breeds enables either the D’myurj or their associates the Brethren to transfer themselves into these bodies, once grown.”

“But, good lord, why?”

“Any number of reasons. Infiltration. Manipulation. Passing themselves off as members of the Federation, in an undetectable disguise. They might be creating wars in the hopes of ‘testing’ us to see if we rise to the occasion. According to anyone who has had contact with them, they keep claiming that they want to advance us. Soleta told me about something that happened some months ago, during the Paradox incident,” he said, referring to a time ship that had gone missing temporarily. “She encountered an alien vessel that appeared to be upgrading the Paradox. Advancing it. Outfitting it with improvements.”

“Are you saying that might have been the D’myurj?”

“It fits the pattern. A race dedicated to evolution of what they see as lower species, no matter what the cost. Individuals purporting to be beneficent when they’re really destructive. Who knows how far it goes back? There was an incident I studied involving a probe—I think it was called Nomad—that was upgraded and advanced when it encountered another, more advanced entity.”

“I know of that incident, yes. We had theorized it was the Borg.”

“But why would the Borg upgrade something else? They just take. They don’t give. That might well have been connected to the D’myurj as well. That means we’re talking at least a century of their getting involved in Federation affairs.”

“It sounds to me, Captain, as if you’re treading on very thin ice here. Pulling together disparate strands and trying to weave together a whole that doesn’t quite work. Still,” and she had drummed her fingers on her desk, “this merits further investigation, at the very least. It would probably be wiser to keep this quiet, at least for the time being.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Admiral.”

“All right. And, Mac… my condolences on the loss of Doctor Selar. A tragic story all around.”

“Thank you, Admiral. Calhoun out.”

The screen had gone blank, leaving her leaning back in her chair, her thoughts racing. Calhoun knows. Something is going to have to be done…

There had been much thinking on her part about that, and some discussions that she had not especially been looking forward to, nor did she enjoy them while she was having them. In doing so, however—in taking firm actions regarding Calhoun and what he did know, or didn’t know but strongly suspected—Nechayev had set upon a course that she knew was ultimately going to cost her one of her most reliable and useful allies.

But it could not be helped. If Calhoun had to go, then he had to go. And she had to do whatever was necessary to make certain that happened. There was too much riding on it.

He was clever, though, and even though he trusted Nechayev implicitly, he would not blindly fall into line and obligingly march straight into a trap. He had survival instincts that made cockroaches look like lemmings.

So she had to lure him in, and the only way to do that was to play upon the trust that he already had in her. Trust was not something that Mackenzie Calhoun embraced easily. He was the most suspicious bastard in the galaxy. The flip side of that, fortunately enough, was that once that trust was given, it was a sacred thing with him. He was relentless with his enemies, but utterly dedicated to his friends. In some respects, it was arrogance on his part. Once he trusted someone, the trust became self-sustaining, a reason unto itself. The notion that someone could betray that trust never entered into his thinking because if he trusted someone, then they were permanently worthy of it. Circular reasoning. Q.E.D. It was the one vulnerability in Calhoun’s intellectual makeup, and the only one that she was in a position to exploit.

She intended to do just that. And the first step in that process had already been put into motion.

Nechayev was sitting in her office, absolutely immobile. Anyone glancing in at her would have thought that she was either dead or a statue. Her gaze focused on thin air, as if she had selected a particular point at random and was now putting all her attention on it. She could have remained that way for an indefinite period. If an earthquake was shaking the building to pieces around her, it would not have jolted her from her meditative state. She had “preset” her mind so that only one thing would allow her to be roused from her contemplations.

The office intercom beeped and her aide said briskly, “Admiral. Captain Calhoun is here.”

The Admiral blinked once, twice, and then pulled herself back into the real world. “Admiral?” came the aide’s voice a second time, but she was already clearing her throat and saying, “Send him in.”

The doors hissed open and Mackenzie Calhoun strode in. Despite everything that he had been through and all that had happened recently, his back was as ramrod straight as ever, and there was a dangerous determination in his eyes that underscored his indefatigable personality. He was a cork in an ocean, capable of being pushed down by waves and storms but always bobbing back to the surface. He could never be kept down.

It was her job to find a way to do so.

You’re his friend. He trusts you. You need nothing more than that to do what needs to be done.

She stood, none of the uncertainty or hesitation in her mind evinced in the slightest in either her face or her body language. “Mac,” she said, extending a hand. “Good of you to come.”

He shook it firmly. “Always happy to when you summon me, Admiral.”

“I hate to think of it as a summoning,” she said, gesturing for him to seat himself, “but instead simply a chance to catch up and confer with an old and valued ally.”

“I appreciate that.” Calhoun sat as she indicated he should do, smoothing the legs of his uniform trousers but never taking his purple eyes away from her. Yet despite the fact that his gaze was fixed upon her, she had no doubt that he was hyper-aware of the world around him. If someone came charging in through the door, hoping to get the drop on Calhoun, they would find themselves eating phaser before they had taken two steps into the office.

Nechayev took her seat as well. “I assume you know what this is in regards to.”

“Well, I would imagine you didn’t have the Excalibur divert to Earth just because you felt a deep need to inquire after my health. I assume this has something to do with the Brethren and the D’myurj.”

“Partly.”

“Partly?” One eyebrow lifted slightly. “I would have thought entirely.”

“I’m an admiral, Mac. It’s my job to think about more than one thing at a time. I won’t lie to you: this business that you discovered on AF1963 is incredibly disturbing.” She made certain to paste an expression on her face that conveyed just how disturbed she was. “The notion that there are people in Starfleet who are not what they seem… that there may be some sort of alien intelligence insinuating itself into the highest ranks of command…”

“But this isn’t the first time you’ve had to deal with this sort of threat.”

Now she was the one who was cocking an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I follow your meaning, Captain.”

Calhoun doubtlessly noticed the change in her voice to a more formal tone, but as was typical for him, he didn’t allow it to affect the way he was conducting himself. “I’m fairly sure you do, Admiral. I know about the conspiracy some years back, when those parasitic creatures—offshoots of the Trill symbionts, from my understanding—were taking over the minds of Starfleet officers. I assume your office looked into that matter, but I don’t believe there was ever a fully satisfying explanation as to all the detail until they resurfaced more than a decade later in the Bajoran Sector.”

Nechayev rocked back in her seat, her jaw going slightly slack. “How in the hell did you find out about all of that? The information was sealed, in the deepest recesses of…” Her voice trailed off and then she answered her own question. “Morgan.”

He tilted his head slightly in acknowledgment of her realization.

“Are you out of your mind?” she said.

“Admiral…”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“With worry, yes,” Calhoun said, not backing down in the slightest from Nechayev’s ire. Naturally, his assumption was that her concern stemmed from worry over confidential materials and Starfleet security. Her worries were actually more broadly based, in that the powerful computer entity in control of the Excalibur might somehow figure out her complicity in all of this.

“We stumbled upon a potentially massive threat to the very foundations of Starfleet,” Calhoun went on, oblivious to the real concerns on Nechayev’s mind. “A threat that goes so deep it’s impossible to determine who to trust and who not to.”

“You think that hasn’t occurred to me, Captain? You think I don’t know that I have to proceed with utmost caution because I can’t be certain who I can talk to without playing into the enemy’s hands? This race, this D’myurj… I’m not sure what to make of them. Their motivations are murky at best, contradictory at worst.”

“I know,” said Calhoun grimly. “There are the ones who claim that they’re only interested in advancing the cause of humanity, except they don’t care who they hurt while endeavoring to do so. And then there are the others who feel that their race should be running things since, from an evolutionary point of view, they’re the best qualified.”

“Based on all that, don’t you think I have enough problems without having to worry about your ship’s computer strolling through secure files in the Starfleet database? I could have you brought up on charges, Calhoun. I could have your ass thrown into solitary until you rot. You understand that, don’t you?” She leaned back in her chair and tiredly rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Why do you do this to me? Why do you put me in these kinds of positions?”

“To be entirely candid, Admiral—”

“That would be greatly appreciated.”

“—it was not something I instructed Morgan to do. She did it on her own because she knew that I was concerned about potential threats to Starfleet from within, and she decided to see if there were any similar cases that were being kept under wraps.”

Nechayev lowered her hand. “So you’re passing the blame onto her?”

“No, because she gave me the option of listening to what she had to say or not doing so,” Calhoun said evenly. “I could have told her to forget it… literally. Instead, once I knew she had the information in her possession, I remonstrated her for the means by which she went about acquiring it, and then I told her to tell me everything. The buck stops with me, Admiral. It’s my ship, and I take responsibility for everything that happens aboard her.”

“Well, that’s terrific, Mac. I’m thrilled you’re that conscientious.”

“You don’t sound thrilled.”

“Imagine that.” She shrugged. “All right. Nothing to be done about it now. Not sure there’s really any point to clapping you in irons, as much as it might give me a sense of satisfaction.”

“I wasn’t aware that Starfleet had irons anymore.”

“We bring them out for special occasions, and I think this would most certainly qualify. But never mind that,” she went on briskly. “I’m just going to have to trust you to keep this information to yourself.”

“Have I ever given you reason not to trust me in the past?”

“No,” she said softly. “No, you haven’t. And I’ve no reason to think otherwise now.”

“Your vote of confidence is greatly appreciated,” said Calhoun, shifting in his chair. “You’re sure that this new business with the D’myurj is unconnected to the parasites?”

“Reasonably so, yes. But that doesn’t lessen the paranoia level. It’s difficult to know exactly who to talk to about this entire business, so obviously I have to proceed carefully.”

“I appreciate that you’re talking to me about it.”

“You’re the one who brought it to my attention, so obviously…” Her voice trailed off and then she added, “And I’m honored that you trust me.”

“We’ve been through far too much for me to stop trusting you at this point,” said Calhoun easily. “And besides, I rely on my instincts enough that if there were something wrong with you—if you were duplicitous in some manner—I would know it.”

Good. Good. His ego and overconfidence will be the end of him yet. None of those thoughts were conveyed in her expression. “I have no doubt that you would. However, Mac… and we’ve been a while coming to this point, for which I apologize… the reason I wanted you to come here really has nothing to do with the subject of what you discovered on AF1963.”

Calhoun crossed his legs, tilting his head slightly in that way he had that made him look like an inquisitive dog. “What, then?”

“You touched on it already in the course of this meeting. It’s Morgan.”

“Ah,” was all he said at first.

“I’m worried, Mac,” she said. She had interlaced her fingers tightly and was now leaning forward on her desk. “Once upon a time, she was a living, breathing being with a soul and a conscience. But the being—the creature, if you will—that’s taken up residence within the core of the Excalibur… that isn’t Morgan.”

“We’re not entirely sure of that,” said Calhoun guardedly. “She’s not the woman she was, I’ll give you that. And I freely admit that there have been some changes in her personality. But she’s become cut off from humanity. It’s impossible to say whether she’s Morgan Primus having undergone behavior alterations due to an existence that neither you nor I can begin to comprehend… or if she’s an incredibly sophisticated computer simulation that thinks she is Morgan Primus, when she’s truly…”

“A ghost in the machine?”

He nodded. “A phrase coming from a philosophical work about mankind heading inevitably toward self-destruction.”

“Exactly.”

“Written centuries ago and yet,” he gestured around them, “mankind is still here.”

“True enough. But if Morgan Primus decided to shrug her shoulders and rid herself of us, I can’t entirely say she wouldn’t be successful.” She started ticking off her concerns on her fingers. “She’s astoundingly powerful. She has access to all manner of information, as you’ve just demonstrated in this very conversation. And as near as I can determine, she is more or less bereft of conscience. What if…?” She hesitated, as if she were just coming to the realization instead of having thought it all out ahead of time. “What if she decided to send a self-destruct pulse into every shipboard computer all at once? She would have access to the prefix codes. She could override every attempt to manually stop the self-destruction. What if she decided she wanted to wipe out the entirety of Starfleet in one shot?”

“Why would she do that?”

“Would she need a reason?”

“Generally speaking, yes, she would.”

“Because she feels threatened. Because she wants to issue a warning. Because you beat her at chess. Any one of a dozen reasons, and I don’t accept your contention that she requires one, but even if she did, it certainly wouldn’t have to be a good one. True?”

“True,” Calhoun admitted. “All it would have to do is make sense to her, even if it made none to anyone else.”

She paused, keeping her gaze fixed upon him, trying to get a read off him. None was forthcoming. She’d never played poker against him, but she couldn’t imagine what his poker face was like, other than to think that he epitomized the concept of inscrutability. “Mac,” she said finally, “you are one of the best strategic thinkers I’ve ever encountered. I can’t be telling you anything that you haven’t already considered. Am I right?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

“So I’m saying things you already know.”

“More or less.”

“So you’ve been… what? Fencing with me? Just automatically being defensive of someone you consider one of your crew?”

“More like letting you play devil’s advocate in order to solidify things that are already in my mind.”

She carefully projected an air of frustrated helplessness. “Then tell me how this ends, Captain. If you’re as concerned about Morgan as I am—and I believe you are, if indeed not more so—tell me that you’ve got something up your sleeve. That you’ve analyzed the situation and are already making plans to address it.”

“I have, and I am.”

Nechayev immediately perked up. “Really.”

“Really,” and he nodded. “The truth is that I’ve studied the situation, and I’ve been giving it a good deal of thought, and I’ve come to conclusions as to what can and should be done about it. I believe that Morgan poses a threat both to my ship and to the Federation. I can tolerate one, but not both.”

She looked at him in confusion. “Do I even want to know which would be the sticking point for you?”

“Probably not.”

“All right,” she said agreeably. “I won’t ask. What I do want to know is: What do you have planned to deal with it? I assume that you’re going to try and find a way to disengage her or purge her from the Excalibur’s computer core. What methods do you plan to employ?”

His answer surprised her, although in retrospect she imagined that it really should not have: “I would rather not say at this time, Admiral.”

She tried not to look taken aback. She couldn’t recall a time when Calhoun had been less than fully forthcoming with her. “You’d rather not.”

“No.”

“Well then,” and she folded her arms across her breast, “I am now ordering you to tell me.”

“Then I’m afraid we’re at an impasse, Admiral.” Calhoun didn’t seem particularly upset about it. No surprise there. Calhoun had faced any number of threats in his lifetime, many of them involving weapons aimed directly at assorted vital parts of his anatomy. So squaring off against a Starfleet officer, even a superior one, was hardly going to faze him.

Nevertheless, for form’s sake if nothing else, she couldn’t let it pass unchallenged. “You’re disobeying a direct order?”

“I am taking an action that I feel is in the best interests of Starfleet.”

“You’re not the one who gets to make that decision, Captain.”

“In this instance, Admiral, I believe I am.”

She made an annoyed growl in her throat. “Why do you do things like this, huh? I’m going to say it again, Mac. Why do you put me in these sorts of positions?”

“I’m not trying to do anything to you, Admiral. I’m trying to do something for you. Whatever plans I have for Morgan, it is in the best interests of all concerned to have as few people as possible know about it.”

“Are you saying you don’t trust me, after everything you said before?”

“I’m saying I don’t trust the world we’re living in at the moment. Unless you can assure me, with absolutely one hundred percent certainty, that Morgan is completely unaware of the discussion we’re having right now. Can you tell me, with complete conviction, that she wouldn’t have found a way, via whatever monitors you have in here, to be spying on every single word that’s passing between us?”

Nechayev was about to answer readily and quickly in the affirmative. But then she thought better of it, looking around herself in concern and realizing that Calhoun’s point was well taken. Obviously she thought her office was secure, but wasn’t the entire point of her worries about Morgan steeped in the possibility that nothing was safe from Morgan’s prying “eyes”?

“No, I can’t,” which was an annoying thing for her to have to admit. “But if that’s the case, and she is watching us even as we speak, then she just learned that you have something planned.”

“She would already deduce that,” said Calhoun. “She’s a living computer. She knows the threat she represents, and she has to know that I know it. And knowing that, she would safely assume that I’m preparing for a time when her presence can no longer be tolerated. But…”

“But she doesn’t know what you have in mind.”

“No,” and then he added ruefully, “at least I hope not. Let’s be optimistic and say she doesn’t. If that’s the case, then it would be the height of foolishness to tip her off.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Mac. Who’s to say that the next time you use the transporter, she doesn’t just decide to scramble your molecules from one end of the galaxy to the other?”

“There’s no fun in that.”

“Fun?” She shook her head, once again not understanding.

“Admiral,” said Calhoun, “she is quite possibly the smartest entity in the galaxy. If you’re immortal and all-knowing, then more than anything else, you’re someone who has a great deal of difficulty finding challenges.”

“And you believe that’s how she sees you? As a challenge?”

“I think so, yes.”

“And because of that, she’s going to keep you around, even if you wind up outthinking her and costing her her existence?”

“She probably believes that I don’t have a hope in hell of outthinking her, making her utterly safe while she gets to amuse herself watching me go around like a rat in a maze.”

“So you’re like her pet?”

“That’s probably how she sees it.”

“I hope you’re right, Captain,” she said, “because there’s just as real a possibility that—rather than see you as a challenge—she perceives you as a threat and she’ll dispose of you with no more thought than you would give an insect on the bottom of your boot.”

“Oh, believe me, that’s occurred to me as well.”

“And what do you intend to do about it?”

“Why, obviously, I’m going to attempt to be as much of a challenge as possible. Step up my game to her level.”

“You sound almost excited about it.”

He shrugged. “We brilliant strategic thinkers have to find our entertainment where we can.”

“High-stakes entertainment, Captain, especially if the safety of the Federation—not to mention your crew—hinges upon it.”

“Quite true.”

“That being the case,” she said, concern furrowing her brow, “may I make a suggestion, Captain?”

“By all means.”

“You damned well better win.”

“That,” said Calhoun, “is an order I will most readily follow, Admiral.”