by Peter David
“Then we’ll charge first. Bridge to engineering. Come in, Parke.”
There was a pause and then a voice that sounded on the verge of panic. “Bridge, Chief Engineer Parke is dead. They’re . . . they’re all dead. They’re . . . this . . . this is Ensign Toomey, sir.”
Korsmo nodded approvingly. “Pull yourself together, son. That’s good. Ensign, I just saw our left nacelle go floating by, so I assume warp isn’t very likely. Impulse?”
“I can give you half impulse sir, but not for very long.”
“It’ll be long enough. Get ready, son.” He turned to Shelby. “Full ahead,” he said quietly, aware that he was giving his last order.
“Captain,” said Shelby, making sure her voice didn’t catch in her throat. “It’s been an honor serving with you.”
“Yes.” Korsmo smiled. “It has, hasn’t it.”
She shook her head and punched in the course. The ship staggered forward on a collision course with the Borg, on its final run.
And a massive object cut in front of them.
“What the hell?!” demanded Korsmo.
It dropped down, almost from nowhere, gleaming white against the scarred surface of the Borg cube and blocking the suicidal path of the Chekov.
Korsmo had a split-instant to make a decision. He made it. “Hard aport!” he shouted, and instantly Shelby cut hard to the left. The newcomer banked hard and neatly dove out of the Chekov’s way. It angled down and away from the Borg ship and suddenly a tractor beam had grabbed the Chekov firmly, taking it in tow.
It was a starship, and even through the battered viewscreen, Shelby was able to make out the registry number on the underside of the saucer section: NCC-2544. “It’s the Repulse!” she said.
“The Repulse?” Korsmo couldn’t believe it. “What’s she doing here?”
“Saving our butts, Captain.”
The Repulse swung around, releasing its tractor beam hold on the Chekov, and headed back towards the Borg ship.
“Open a channel. Repulse! That you, Taggert?”
“You’ve looked better, Korsmo,” came the voice of Captain Ariel Taggert. “Sit back and watch the fireworks. Our engineer Argyle has got a knockout punch that Commander Shelby should find familiar. And our sensors say that the Borg ship won’t have enough power to repel it for another ten seconds. Fortunately, we’re ready in three . . . two . . . one . . . fire!”
Power churned around the deflector dish of the Repulse, and an instant later a massive charge of energy lashed out. It struck the Borg ship dead on, and huge pieces of the craft were blown away, faster than the monster could possibly repair.
Shelby’s eyes widened. “That was Geordi’s idea! Powering an energy blast via the warp engines and pushing it through the main deflector dish! But they were prepared for it when we tried it!”
“They may be prepared this time,” said Korsmo, “but they weren’t ready. They may not have been expecting it from another ship, and they didn’t have the power to counter it anyway.”
The structure of the Borg ship actually seemed to crumble inward, power cells unable to cope with the sudden and total loss. The entire ship was held together by the collective strength of the Borg, and with no strength, there was no ship. As the Repulse kept up with the blast, second after long second, the Borg ship tried to rally, but it had no defenses to muster.
Shelby and Korsmo watched in helpless amazement as the Repulse, using the strategy that didn’t work for the Enterprise, blasted the Borg ship. The vessel lost all cohesion and simply came apart, huge fragments tumbling away.
“Son of a bitch,” said Shelby. “It would have worked. Riker will be pleased to know.”
Riker leaped forward, under the swinging arm of Reannon, and hit the controls. The Enterprise surged gamely ahead, the impulse engines roaring.
The Borg ship’s subspace field seemed to be twisting like a thing alive as the Enterprise ripped away. Geordi, fighting down his shock over the sudden and violent appearance of Reannon, quickly rerouted the navigation systems through the engineer station and pushed the impulse engines as far as they would go. He watched the monitors, sure that any second the overworked engines were going to blow the saucer section clear off the secondary hull.
It seemed as if the Enterprise actually stretched, space warping back on itself around it, and then the mighty starship leaped free. Ahead of them, space was collapsing into a dazzling, spiralling whirlpool of light. The Enterprise vaulted towards it, the thick legs of impulse power picking up speed with every step.
Reannon swung her metal arm at Riker and he blocked it, slamming a fist forward into her stomach. She doubled over and, with a quick turn, Riker hurled her towards Worf. The Klingon snagged her and held her immobile with a hammerlock.
“Get her the hell out of here!” shouted Riker. As Worf obeyed, shoving her towards the turbolift and following her in, Riker continued, “Geordi, what’s happening! Are we clear? You said we had only seconds!”
The light around them was blinding, blinding to everyone except Geordi, whose VISOR immediately made the brilliance bearable. And then the Enterprise ripped through the undulating fabric of space and out into the blessed peace of normalcy.
“Clear! We’re clear!” Geordi crowed. “We made it!”
Riker noticed, on the screen, that another starship had shown up, and it was at that moment pounding the other Borg vessel with energy blasts that seemed devastating. It looked like the Repulse. He also noted, in a flash, the dire condition of the crippled Chekov. But first things had to be first. “Where’s the Borg ship we dropped the warp bubble on? Did it work?”
The monitor switched to a rear view and there, rippling behind them, was a huge area of space that looked like a lake someone had just dropped a stone in.
It continued to ripple.
Then it flattened, seeming almost to turn sideways, as if something was struggling to get out.
“I don’t believe it,” said Riker. “I do not believe it.”
The space where the Borg ship had been had now coalesced into a visible square, as if someone had simple cut a section out of the fabric of space with shears and walked away with it. The square took on form and substance, and then twisted on its axis and pushed out into a cube.
The Borg ship was back, and directly behind them.
“I think we made them mad,” said Geordi.
Chapter Twenty-two
VASTATOR OF THE BORG pushed the button of the large phaser that was pointed point-blank at Picard.
Nothing happened.
Picard, for his part, was already moving. He knew what the Ferengi did not: that after a type II personal phaser released a sustained blast at setting 16, there was an automatic cool-down period. Otherwise the weapon would overheat and, sooner or later, explode. That cool-down was precisely six seconds.
That was enough for Picard to cover the distance and ram his shoulder into Vastator. The Borg stumbled back, holding on to the phaser as tightly as he could, but Picard grabbed at it and managed to get a solid grip. They struggled, shoving against each other, and then Picard stumbled back, the phaser slipping out of his hands.
He dodged behind one of the upright crystal slabs, flattening against it.
“Picard,” snarled the voice of the Ferengi. It was absolutely uncanny. There was a trace of the persistent obnoxious overtones of a Ferengi, but it was combined with the icy machine-like precision of the Borg. “Picard . . . let us deal.”
The thing was stalking him. “What is there to deal about?” said Picard.
He heard the sudden whine of the phaser and the crystal that he was hiding behind started to superheat. He lunged for cover once more as the crystal exploded. He toyed with the idea of charging again but rejected it. The Borg was too far away, and might even be hiding behind another crystal. Six seconds was too short a time in which to charge a target when you didn’t know exactly where it was.
The crystal slabs were maze-like, providing rudimentary shelter. H
e saw his face reflected in it. His face was screaming, as if the Many were personifying his personal agony. The agony of helplessness. Meters away, Delcara was dying. He knew that. And kilometers away, his ship was in the midst of battle, and he wasn’t there.
What madness had possessed him? He had told himself that coming to the ship, coming directly to Delcara, he could persuade her to abandon the planet-killer. Once that was done, he had been certain the power could then be harnessed for the Federation. The ultimate defense against the Borg.
That was what he had believed. But was it the truth? Or had he been chasing a crazed dream of decades ago, a dream that was conjured up by a young, inexperienced teenager named Jean-Luc, and insanely pursued by an adult madman named Picard.
“Picard!” came the voice of the Ferengi Borg again, and again the phaser lashed out. This time, though, it was at the crystal slab to his right. The crystal sizzled and crumbled beneath the onslaught, and Picard put his arm up to shield his face as pieces flew right past him.
So the Ferengi didn’t know exactly where he was. That was comforting. And the crystal blocks were so superdense that they didn’t simply vanish, but instead put up a resistance and even maintained molecular cohesion in defeat.
He cast a glance in Delcara’s direction, but his view was cut off. That was fortunate. He knew it would have been rather disheartening if he could have seen her.
Another crystal—further to his right—blew apart, accompanied by the whine of what had once been his phaser. The Borg was clearly starting to become impatient. “Picard,” he said again.
“What do you want!” called out Picard, and then for good measure dropped back, scurrying crab-like to another crystal slab directly behind him.
“I am prepared to deal,” said Vastator.
“Since when do the Borg deal?” demanded Picard. He didn’t trust the Ferengi when they were normal Ferengi. He sure as hell didn’t trust them when they’d been converted to walking cybernetic nightmares. “I would have assumed deals are irrelevant.”
“You are a special case . . .” and then he paused and added with chilling familiarity, “Locutus.”
Picard held his breath, waiting for the chill to pass through him. “Locutus is dead!” he called.
“Locutus is inoperative. Locutus can be restored.”
“You’ll have to kill me first!”
Vastator fired again at the slab behind which Picard had been hiding moments before. It blew apart especially violently and Picard thanked whatever gods were orchestrating this insanity that he was crouching behind a crystal slab for protection. A number of shards hurtled past him, looking unpleasantly sharp.
“I do not understand you,” said Vastator. His voice sounded farther away, but Picard did not dare to stick his head out and check. Curiosity could kill the captain. “Your resistance is futile. We simply wish to make you a part of the New Order.”
“The New Order!” Picard called back, wishing that he could shoot back with a phaser instead of with words. “The most disdained words in the English language. In the twentieth century they spoke of a New Order, and they were still mouthing such inanities when World War III began. So don’t speak to me of the New Order of the Borg.”
“Come now, Picard,” said Vastator. His voice seemed to be moving once again, and Picard couldn’t tell whether it was closer or further. “Do not forsake the Borg. Do not turn your back on us.”
“Why? Because I’ll end up with a knife in it?”
Another howl of the phaser, another crystal slab blown to bits.
And Picard suddenly gasped and looked down. A shard was sticking out of his right leg, blood trickling from the wound. Pain was creeping through the leg and he felt it starting to go numb.
He heard another phaser blast and it was striking the slab he was behind. As he lunged for another slab to his left, it suddenly clicked into his mind just what it was that the entire crystal set up was reminding him of: a cemetery. An array of closely set headstones, row upon row of the dead buried deep beneath the soil. It was not a pleasant realization.
He crawled on his belly, sucking in dust and coughing. He bit down on his lower lip, determined not to cry out, and gripped the shard that was sticking out of his right thigh. He pulled it out and internalized the agony that threatened to paralyze his entire body.
The vessel around him suddenly started to shake. Something was happening, something else. Something that seemed to suddenly provoke Vastator further. He fired three times, all around Picard, and the captain refused to give in, refused to sit still, refused to surrender, although every nerve ending was screaming for rest. His brain just wanted to shut down, tried to convince him that nothing mattered more than just resting for a few minutes, that’s all, just a few minutes.
“We simply want to improve the quality of life for all species!” announced Vastator, saying words that had a haunting ring of familiarity to Picard.
“How do you intend to do that?” shouted back Picard.
“By improving the quality of the Borg, of course,” said Vastator. “Then the improved Borg will assimilate all species, and there will be an end to war. An end to struggle.”
“An end to imagination!”
“The Borg will assimilate that as well. Imagination assimilation has already begun, utilizing that which was taken from Locutus, and now from Vastator. The Borg continue to adapt and improve. That is why the Borg will triumph. Picard . . . I have endeavored to give you the opportunity to show yourself willingly. Such has not been your choice. So I shall force you.” There was a brief pause and then the Borg said, “Show yourself or I will completely destroy the female.”
“Leave her alone! You’ve killed her already!”
“There is a spark of life. But I will take it now, unless you show yourself.”
Vastator stood still for a long moment, contemplating the foolishness of it all. “As you wish, Picard.” “Wait!”
And Picard stepped out into the middle of the pathway that led down to the crystal column in which Delcara was contained. Blood was pouring down his leg, and he had to lean with one hand against one of the remaining crystal slabs in order to remain standing.
“Picard,” said Vastator. “You see? The Borg would not have acted thus before Locutus and, later, I were created. The Borg would not have conceived of such self-sacrifice. You value the life of one individual over another. Locutus and I have given the Borg new understanding. Locutus can again.”
“Locutus,” Picard repeated firmly, “is dead.” His face was pale and he felt numbness spreading to his foot. He could barely move his toes. Walking seemed to involve commanding an inert slab of meat that was his right leg in name only.
“I mean you no harm, Picard,” said Vastator. “If I had, you would be dead.”
“Vastator,” said Picard slowly, “who were you before?” He took another step forward.
Vastator was not concerned. Picard posed no threat. His leg was crippled and, besides, Vastator was holding a phaser. “Before is irrelevant.”
“It’s relevant to me,” said Picard.
“I was called Daimon Turane of Ferengi. Daimon Turane is irrelevant. Ferengi are irrelevant. Only the Borg matter.”
“Turane,” said Picard slowly, with effort. He was now barely ten feet from the Borg. “I remember . . . what it was like when I was Locutus. I remember that there was a part of me, hidden away, that they couldn’t touch. And that part was screaming for release, screaming even for death, rather than a continuation of that unnatural existence.”
“You romanticize, Picard. Romance is irrelevant.”
“It’s not irrelevant, damn it!” Picard said, trying not to fall. Now he was eight feet away, and then seven. “This shell called Vastator is not you! It’s some representation, a re-creation. It’s not really and truly you. Fight to be let out. Fight for release. On the Enterprise, we can help you, as I was helped.”
“Depriving you of Locutus was not help,” said Vastator. “It depr
ived you of your place in the New Order.”
“There will be no New Order! Daimon Turane would understand that. Vastator can not. Vastator can’t understand that humanity will fight and keep on fighting. Will never stop resisting, and will always find a way. Throughout our history there have been a series of conquerors, one after the other, and we have survived them all.”
Vastator cocked his head slightly. “You require a better class of conqueror.” He leveled the phaser at Picard’s chest. “No further. Choose. Subject yourself to my wishes and the rule of the Borg, or die. There is no other choice.”
“Fight them, Turane! Fight them—!”
“There is no Turane. There is only Vastator. Choose now.”
“You won’t kill me with that,” said Picard with confidence.
“Is that your last, futile hope, Picard?” said Vastator. “Depending upon an appeal to a being who no longer exists, telling that phantom that it cannot bring itself to put an end to you? You believe that Vastator is inhibited by your petty morals from destroying you with this phaser?”
“Not at all,” said Picard.
“What, then, do you mean, that I won’t kill you?” “I mean that a phaser at setting 16 has a capacity of only ten shots before being utterly depleted. You’re out of power.”
Vastator aimed and fired.
A phaser blast hit Picard dead center of the chest.
The captain staggered back, arms pinwheeling, and then he caught himself on the edge of one of the slabs. He felt a stiffness in his chest, and the wind had been knocked out of him. Vastator strode towards him and squeezed the button again. And this time, there was nothing.
“Maybe eleven shots,” admitted Picard, “although the last one would be substantially depleted. A direct hit at setting sixteen and I’d be free-floating atoms by now. All you had left was one minor burst that would have rendered a hummingbird unconscious. Maybe.”
Vastator tossed aside the phaser and came straight at Picard, leading with his mechanical appendage. A blue-tinged charge of electricity danced around the end of it.