by Peter David
Then she reached up, her hand slow and hesitant, until her fingers came to rest on the VISOR. They traced the curve of it, lingered over the circuitry that was at either end in the earpiece.
“I’ll be damned,” whispered Geordi, afraid to talk above a hush, lest it ruin the mood.
“Undoubtedly, it is the mechanical aspect of your visual prosthetic that has caught her attention,” said Data, watching with fascination. “It is the closest analog to her own recent experience.”
“What . . . what do you think I should do next?”
“Let nature take its course,” said Guinan. “Not exactly an original piece of advice, but one that bears repeating.”
Then Guinan looked up, aware that something had changed.
Guinan was as attuned to the mood of Ten-Forward as the average person was to the beating of their heart. So when Dantar entered, she sensed immediately that something was wrong.
The Penzatti was coming slowly towards the table, a fixed and determined expression on his face. His antennae were quivering slightly, as if from anticipation of something. His gaze was fixed on Reannon.
“Geordi,” said Guinan softly, but with enough firmness that it immediately alerted Geordi that something was wrong. She didn’t need to add to it, but instead rose and said pointedly to Dantar, who was still some feet away, “Welcome to Ten-Forward. How can I help you?”
The next moments seemed to telescope outward, as if taking an eternity, although actually they only occupied a few fleeting seconds.
Dantar’s hands had been behind his back, and suddenly one of the crewmen at a table noticed something and shouted a warning, starting to rise from his seat. Dantar’s hands now swung into view, and in either hand he was holding a Keldin blaster, the hand weapon of choice of the Penzatti. It was deadly, powerful, and accurate. He took aim at Reannon, shouted, “Murderer of my family!” and fired.
Geordi lunged toward Reannon, crying out a warning. She didn’t respond to it, still mesmerized by Geordi’s VISOR. He slammed into her, knocking her back and sending her tumbling to the floor, away from his grasping arms.
At that moment the crewman who had called out the alarm got to Dantar just as the Penzatti fired at where Reannon had been. The blasters discharged their powerful bolts and blew out the nearest window of the Ten-Forward lounge, creating a hole that was more than a foot wide. The results were predictable and instantaneous.
With the roar of a hurricane, air was immediately sucked out of the room.
People screamed and cried out, grabbing at each other and at the furniture which was affixed to the floor. The vacuum of space pulled at them with all its force, and they resisted with everything they had.
Dantar had grabbed the nearest piece of furniture, but in so doing had lost his grip on his blasters. He watched in horrified helplessness as the weapons skidded across the floor and out into the vastness of space.
Reannon had been closest to the window, and she was yanked up off her feet. Her arm went through the hole and her head was about to follow, when a screaming Geordi La Forge leaped forward, heedless of his own safety, and grabbed her by the leg. Geordi then lashed out with his own foot, hoping to hook it around a table leg, and he missed. He was dragged forward inexorably by the pull of the air and then stopped as Data clamped his hand onto Geordi’s ankle. Data, for his part, had sunk his fingers right into the table top and wasn’t budging. Guinan was holding on fixedly also, her flowing gown whipping around her, and she was trying to shout something that no one could make out.
Data, Geordi, and Reannon formed a human chain, Reannon suspended in midair, one arm out the window, the rest of her barely anchored within the safety of Ten-Forward. And even that safety was becoming questionable. Her feet were floating above the floor as the air rushed around her, her head bumping up against the window. Geordi was shouting her name, his fingers quickly becoming numb as the temperature dropped.
He thought he was that way for months, years. Actually, it was barely seconds, and then the great pull of space promptly ceased. Reannon thudded heavily to the floor, doing nothing to break her fall, and there was an audible hiss as air flooded back into Ten-Forward to replace that which had been sucked out into space.
Geordi knew that as the emergency systems of the Enterprise kicked in, a force shield sprang into existence directly over the hole, re-establishing hull integrity until an emergency crew could arrive to more permanently repair the breech.
Geordi let out a gasp and released his grip on Reannon’s leg. Then he flexed his fingers to try and get the blood flowing again, and even as he did so he was calling out, “Is everyone okay? Everyone all right?”
There were ragged cries of confirmation from all around, as the shaken crew members verified that they were in one piece.
Dantar was lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. “Did I kill her?” he was moaning over and over again. “Did I kill her? Can my family rest now?”
“Your family!” shouted Geordi from across the room on the floor. He put one hand down to start and push himself upwards. “Your family would be thrilled to know you’ve turned into a—”
And then he stopped as his hand felt something warm and wet and sticky beneath it. His head snapped around, trying to discern the source. And when he realized what it was, he shouted out, “Data!” with more alarm than the android had ever heard in the chief engineer’s voice.
Reannon was lying on the floor, blood pouring from her left shoulder, a shoulder that had no arm.
She didn’t know enough to cry out in pain or shriek. She merely stared at the absence of appendage with a kind of distant fascination, as if it were happening to someone else.
Instantly Geordi realized what had occurred. When there was a breech of hull integrity, the force field covered over that breech and sealed it off. It had also tried to push Reannon’s arm back in—but instead, the arm had been sheared off as it was shoved up against the jagged remains of the transparent aluminum window.
“Data!” Geordi cried out, not exactly sure what he expected the android to do. Data, however, did something immediately. He moved quickly to Reannon and lifted her up in his powerful arms. Within moments the front of his uniform was soaked red with blood.
Geordi was on his feet, tapping his communicator and alerting Crusher that he was on his way down to sickbay with the severely injured Reannon. They ran out just as Worf and the security team ran in. Worf’s face registered amazement for just a moment as he saw the truncated stump that had once been Reannon’s arm, and then Geordi and Data were gone. Data’s legs were churning up distance with formidable speed, and it was all that Geordi could do to keep up.
Worf’s face returned to the normal Klingon scowl with which he was far more comfortable, and then he and the security team strode across the Ten-Forward lounge to the prostrate form of Dantar. A crewman was sitting flat on top of the Penzatti to make sure he didn’t go anywhere. They needn’t have worried. Dantar was still asking over and over again whether the Borg was dead and his family avenged.
Worf frowned, an expression only slightly different from his normal one. If the Penzatti man had lost his mind, or was even faking having lost his mind as a bid for sympathy, he was about to find Worf an extremely unsympathetic audience.
Dantar looked up at him, wide-eyed, and in a broken voice he said, “They kept crying out to me. The souls of my family, crying out. They wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. Are they at rest now? Are they?”
“Yes,” said Worf with no trace of patience. “Their souls are resting comfortably in the brig, and you’ll be joining them momentarily.” And without another word he hauled the Penzatti male to his feet and dragged him out of Ten-Forward.
Picard entered sickbay and walked directly to Geordi, who was standing outside the operating room, unable to bring himself to go in and witness firsthand how things were going. Data was with him, having had no particular compunction about entering the operating room, but sensing that his friend could
use whatever support Data’s presence might entail.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Fine, Captain. A little shaky, but fine.”
“Guinan said the Penzatti was wielding some sort of blasters,” said Picard. “Where the devil did he get them?”
Geordi cleared his throat. “I did some checking on that,” he said. “They were being stored in the armory, and entrance to the armory is governed by computer access. But the Penzatti have always been extremely good with computers, and Dantar managed to discover the access codes and get in to retrieve them. It’s moot at this point. I saw them get sucked out into space.”
“I want the access code changed—”
“Already done, sir.”
Picard nodded approvingly. “Good. And I understand Mr. Worf has attended to new living arrangements for our rather aggressive guest. So the remaining problem is our former Borg patient.”
Crusher emerged from the operating room, having already disposed of her bloody garments and switched to fresh ones. Normally the fields that were generated around the operating arena cleansed wounds immediately. But when a patient was bleeding as profusely as this one was, one couldn’t help but get her hands dirty.
She came straight towards Geordi, her fury boiling over. “You said you could take care of her!” she said angrily. “You said you’d be responsible! You stood right here and sweet-talked me about all the good you were going to do her. A fat lot of good you’ve done so far, wouldn’t you say, engineer?”
“I saved her life!” protested Geordi. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
“I sent a woman out of here with two good arms and she came back with one. That’s what counts.”
“Mr. La Forge is clearly upset with what happened, Doctor,” Picard said with command firmness. “I hardly think it necessary to berate him.”
“You’re not the one who was ankle-deep in blood,” said Crusher.
“I sure was!” said Geordi hotly. “There was blood on my hands, and on my uniform, and on my conscience, because all I was trying to do was help this woman and instead she keeps getting injured while in my care. So you want to heap guilt on me, Doctor? Go ahead. Go right ahead. Because it’s only going to be a fraction of what I’ve already heaped on myself.”
She pursed her lips and then stepped to one side. “You want to go in and see her? Go in and see her.”
Geordi nodded briskly and then went past them and into the operating room.
Crusher watched him go and then shook her head. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I just don’t get it. What is this fixation that Geordi’s developed on this woman?”
“He fixes things,” said Picard with a shrug. “He lives every day with something that repairs his eyesight. Plus he has his duties as chief engineer which, at its core, means that he is in charge of all sorts of repairs. So instead of a broken machine, he sees a broken human, and he feels the need to repair her.”
“It may be something else as well,” said Data thoughtfully. “It may be that when he looks at her, he sees her in a way that we do not, and perceives possibilities where others would only see . . .”—and he paused, searching for the right word—“. . . windmills,” he finished.
Inside the operating room, Reannon was sitting up. And she was staring.
“How are you, Reannon?” asked Geordi. In his mind he heard the saucy voice of the holodeck Reannon replying, “Just fine, how the hell are you?” Here, though, in the real world, he was getting nothing.
She continued to stare, and Geordi realized that she was looking at something very specific. She was looking at her arm.
“It was the best I could do on short notice,” came Crusher’s voice. Behind her, Geordi heard the distinctive footfalls of Picard and Data. “Given time, I can clone her a new arm once I’ve had time to grow skin samples. Or, if she decides to stay with this, I can create skin grafts over it to hide the metal. It’ll take a bit of experimenting to match her rather pale complexion, but I can do it. No one will even know it’s a prosthesis.”
Reannon was studying her new arm. Its ribbed metal sections glinted in the soft light of the sickbay operating theater. The fingers came to slight points rather than the rounded edges of normal fingers, and when she closed her hand into a fist, it made a soft clacking sound.
“She appears much more attentive to objects and the world than she did before,” observed Picard. “Obviously her time with Mr. La Forge is having some degree of positive influence.” The remark was aimed rather pointedly at Crusher.
It was a mild barb that was not lost on her. “So it would seem,” she admitted. “Still, I’d feel more comfortable if Deanna had some time with her. Psychology is her field, not Geordi’s.”
“The Counselor wasn’t picking up anything from her earlier,” said Picard, “but it’s more than possible that—”
“Look!” Crusher said suddenly.
Reannon was staring at her mechanical hand, and the edges of her lips had turned up ever so slightly.
“She is smiling,” observed Data. “That is the first significant facial reaction that she has displayed.”
“She is smiling,” said Crusher, regarding Reannon closely. “I’ll be. All right, Geordi, you have my full apologies. You’re clearly making headway with her.”
“No, I’m not,” said Geordi sourly.
They looked at him with surprise. “How can you say that?” asked Crusher. “To get an emotional response from someone who seemed as brain-dead as . . .”
“Yeah, but don’t you see what she was responding to?” He took the metal hand firmly in his own. “She’s happy because she has a part attached to her that’s mechanical. Artificial. She’s smiling because whatever part of her is alive in there is happy because she’s taken her first step back towards being a cybernetic organism.”
“You’re saying that—” began Picard.
And Geordi nodded. “Yeah. The only reason she’s displaying any sort of emotion is because she thinks she’s taken the first step toward becoming a Borg again. And she’s happy about it.”
He released her hand and, with a discouraged shake of his head, walked out of the operating room.
Chapter Thirteen
“THAT’S ALL we can tell you, Jean-Luc. I wish we knew more.”
The face of Ariel Taggert was on the screen, having replaced the image of moments ago of the Repulse hanging in space, moving at one-half impulse power. When the Enterprise had arrived in the Kalish star system and found a battered starship and several planets missing, they had thought the worst . . . until they managed to open a channel to the Repulse and learn that loss of life had been minimal. “It’s a big monster, and it’s powerful,” continued Taggert. “I’ve fed you all the specs that our sensors were able to pick up. When we last saw it, it was heading out of the system at two-eleven mark four.”
Data, seated at ops, quickly ran the coordinates through on his charts. “Captain,” he said, and then amended, “Captains,” since the comment was really addressed to both of them, “that would be in line with our projected origin of the device.”
“Device.” Taggert shook her head. “A chronometer is a device. This thing was a monstrosity. This thing, and whoever was controlling it.”
“You definitely communicated with it,” said Picard.
“Ooooh yes. And it had a few choice words for us that, boiled down, amounted to, ‘Stay the hell out of my way.’ If she’s out for the Borg, then I certainly wouldn’t want to be in the Borg’s shoes.”
I’ve been there, and I wouldn’t want to be there again, either, Picard thought. Out loud, he said, “Shall we take you in tow, Ariel?”
She made a dismissive wave. “Save your energy. We’ll have repairs effected within twelve hours to be on our way again. Besides, in the condition we’re in right now, we wouldn’t do you a damned bit of good. A few phaser shots and some maneuvering tricks aren’t going to help. Not that attacking that thing with all systems go would do you
any good.”
“It’s that powerful?”
“Oh yes,” she said with quiet conviction. “I’ve never seen anything like it, Jean-Luc. Not ever. You can’t stop it. No one can stop it.”
“We’ll have to try.”
“Then God watch over you, Picard.”
“If he will. Enterprise out.”
Ariel’s image vanished, replaced by the Repulse, and Picard turned to Data. “Mr. Data, what will be the next star system that the planet-killer encounters?”
Data didn’t even have to glance. “If it continues its present course, the planet-killer will next enter Tholian space.”
“Oh, wonderful,” said Riker. “They’ll be thrilled to help out.”
“Sarcasm, Number One? Perhaps you can employ it against the planet-killer,” Picard said.
“From what Captain Taggert was saying, phasers and photon torpedoes had no effect,” Riker said drily. “Perhaps other weapons might be in order.”
“I’ll have Mr. La Forge prepare some slingshots. Mr. Data, set course on two-eleven mark four. Warp factor seven.” He pointed slightly in that small shooting motion he’d developed. “Engage,” he said.
The Enterprise leaped into warp space and was gone.
Taggert watched them go, then said, “Bridge to sickbay. How you doing down there, Kate?”
“Holding up,” came Pulaski’s reply. “You didn’t send us as many injuries as I figured you would.”
“I’m mellowing in my old age,” said Taggert.
“Old age beats the alternative.”
“Yeah.” She paused. “Let’s hope Picard doesn’t have to deal with the alternative. Bridge out.”
She returned to her command chair and stared out at the stars hanging in front of them. She felt woefully insignificant.
“Be careful, Picard,” she said.
“Captain,” Worf began, and then paused, rechecking the sensors on his tactical board as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “I believe we’ve found the planet-killer.”