Read Online Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice by James Swallow - Free Book Online
Authors: James Swallow
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three hundred meters up above the city of San Francisco, floating on a stiff breeze. If one could have seen it clearly, the device might have been described as resembling an avian form rendered by an avant-garde sculptor. It was slightly smaller than the common gulls that wheeled and turned over the waterâs edge down by the bay, metallic wings canted to ride the thermals over the cityscape.
Its skin was a composite of near-weightless aerogel compounds, built around a core of advanced microduotronic circuits. It could mimic the flight patterns and some behaviors of a real bird if required, but tonight that functionality was inactive. Its skin tone was matched to the shaded, cloudy sky above. For all intents and purposes, the little drone was invisible.
Bobbing on a compact antigravity motor no bigger than a pencil, the device held its station directly over the open courtyard of the La Sorrento restaurant. Sensor pits along the length of its body continually mapped the target zone beneath it, and the memory center of the unit monitored the ambient environment. It had only one target, and with a machineâs faultless patience, the drone watched Admiral William Riker in everything he said and did.
The bistroâs weather-shield had caused a minor issue at first, necessitating the need to recalibrate the audio scanners in order to isolate Rikerâs conversationfrom the ambient noise surrounding him, but that had been dealt with in short order.
The drone continued to loiter as it had for the past hour. Capable of solar charging or even wireless energy induction, it could remain on station indefinitely. Silent. Unseen. Watchful.
Meet the new enemy. Same as the old enemy.
Rikerâs words were gathered up by the synthetic ear of the device before being shot in microsecond bursts of data to a receiver in the top floor of a nondescript office building several blocks west, near Alamo Square.
On paper, the office was the server hub for a networking concern, a largely unmanned facility populated by rows of data cores and communication routers. In reality, the center of the space was a set of isolated cubicles, each sound shielded from the others by baffle fields. Each cubicle contained a monitor and an operator who worked shifts gathering surveillance data on a dozen different subjects. Some were scrutinized through drones similar to the one shadowing Riker; others through the monitoring of personal communications or data traffic patterns. The facility was known as Active Two.
The operators were trained to show no interest in the identity of their subjects, to treat them with dispassion and clinical regard. They were simply there to provide an observerâs oversight to the mechanical recovery of intelligence materialâbecause no matter what the era, or where the act took place, it remained a truism that even the most clever thinking machine could not spy on someone so well as another living being.
The Vulcan watching the live feed from the drone continued to listen to the admiral conversing with his wife. There were several of her species assigned to thisposting; Vulcan physiology and mental acuity were particularly well suited to the lengthy, concentration-intensive and frequently tedious work of monitoring.
She glanced briefly at a tertiary display that indicated the passage of the recovered data. Typically, surveillance intelligence was parsed and then sifted for usable data on site at this location, before a digest version of the sensor recording was passed on to a higher level; but in this case, it appeared that someone at a more senior security clearance was already tapped into the direct feed, watching it unfold live just as she was. She paused, musing. This was highly irregular, and she considered alerting her superior, who sat several cubicles away at another station.
The Vulcan briefly allowed herself to wonder what it was about Admiral William T. Riker that required such scrutiny, then dismissed
Its skin was a composite of near-weightless aerogel compounds, built around a core of advanced microduotronic circuits. It could mimic the flight patterns and some behaviors of a real bird if required, but tonight that functionality was inactive. Its skin tone was matched to the shaded, cloudy sky above. For all intents and purposes, the little drone was invisible.
Bobbing on a compact antigravity motor no bigger than a pencil, the device held its station directly over the open courtyard of the La Sorrento restaurant. Sensor pits along the length of its body continually mapped the target zone beneath it, and the memory center of the unit monitored the ambient environment. It had only one target, and with a machineâs faultless patience, the drone watched Admiral William Riker in everything he said and did.
The bistroâs weather-shield had caused a minor issue at first, necessitating the need to recalibrate the audio scanners in order to isolate Rikerâs conversationfrom the ambient noise surrounding him, but that had been dealt with in short order.
The drone continued to loiter as it had for the past hour. Capable of solar charging or even wireless energy induction, it could remain on station indefinitely. Silent. Unseen. Watchful.
Meet the new enemy. Same as the old enemy.
Rikerâs words were gathered up by the synthetic ear of the device before being shot in microsecond bursts of data to a receiver in the top floor of a nondescript office building several blocks west, near Alamo Square.
On paper, the office was the server hub for a networking concern, a largely unmanned facility populated by rows of data cores and communication routers. In reality, the center of the space was a set of isolated cubicles, each sound shielded from the others by baffle fields. Each cubicle contained a monitor and an operator who worked shifts gathering surveillance data on a dozen different subjects. Some were scrutinized through drones similar to the one shadowing Riker; others through the monitoring of personal communications or data traffic patterns. The facility was known as Active Two.
The operators were trained to show no interest in the identity of their subjects, to treat them with dispassion and clinical regard. They were simply there to provide an observerâs oversight to the mechanical recovery of intelligence materialâbecause no matter what the era, or where the act took place, it remained a truism that even the most clever thinking machine could not spy on someone so well as another living being.
The Vulcan watching the live feed from the drone continued to listen to the admiral conversing with his wife. There were several of her species assigned to thisposting; Vulcan physiology and mental acuity were particularly well suited to the lengthy, concentration-intensive and frequently tedious work of monitoring.
She glanced briefly at a tertiary display that indicated the passage of the recovered data. Typically, surveillance intelligence was parsed and then sifted for usable data on site at this location, before a digest version of the sensor recording was passed on to a higher level; but in this case, it appeared that someone at a more senior security clearance was already tapped into the direct feed, watching it unfold live just as she was. She paused, musing. This was highly irregular, and she considered alerting her superior, who sat several cubicles away at another station.
The Vulcan briefly allowed herself to wonder what it was about Admiral William T. Riker that required such scrutiny, then dismissed
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