by Peter David
Picard forced himself to stand, forced himself from bed and
brought his arms up against the brutal slamming of the
wind. "Who are you?" he shouted, and again, "Who
are you?"
She floated towards the door and stopped
momentarily to turn a gaze on him that was ancient
beyond belief.
"I am pain," she said. "I am loss. I
am grief." And then her voice became
diamond hardness, and she threw wide her arms and
cried out into the wind, into the souls that chorused with
her, "I am implacable, unstoppable! I am
passion made into fury, love twisted to hate!
I am vendetta!"
The wind came up and knocked Picard back.
He stumbled over his bed, and his head smashed into the
wall with a sickening thud. He slid down onto
his pillow, and even then, all he wanted was one
last glimpse of her.
Vendetta whispered in his mind, and then he
passed out.
When he awoke in the morning, his blankets were
twisted around him, and despite the coolness in the
air, there was a thin film of perspiration all over
his body.
The dream of the previous night had not faded with the
morning sun, nor would the recollection diminish
in the succeeding years, although naturally some of the
immediacy was lost as time went on.
He never told anyone of the events of that
night. At night he would sometimes lie awake,
waiting for her to reappear, waiting for her
to return and explain the puzzling descriptions of
"soulless ones," and of that mysterious
self-description.
He made a study of all the events
surrounding the planet-killer, including the
frustrating open-ended question of the nature of its
origin. The theory was that it had been created by one
of two great races locked in combat. But what
races? Why were there no traces of them? Had they
both wiped each other completely from existence?
Questions. These and dozens more, none of which he was able
to satisfactorily answer throughout his Academy
career. Eventually he moved on to other things, and the
questions were forgotten.
But not the biggest question.
Every so often he would listen to the winds, but they would
not call to him again after that night, and they never
whispered that word. The word that would haunt him as much
as the woman who came to him that night
Vendetta.
ACT ONE
Chapter Two
Dantar the Eighth looked across the table at
Dantar the Ninth with total satisfaction, his
antennae twitching slightly in approval.
Dantar the Ninth, for his part, was preparing for the act
of drawing a well-honed knife across the torso
of the carefully prepared zinator, the animal's
lifeless eyes staring up at Dantar the Eighth and
his family.
It was an extended family, to be sure,
by human standards. By the standards of the Penzatti, the
race of which Dantar was a member, it was merely
average. Smaller than average, in fact--
thirteen family members, including the three
spouses and assorted children. Yes, smaller
indeed. Dantar the Eighth was occasionally the butt
of jibes from his fellow workers, and he brushed off
such japes with brisk comments about quality versus
quantity. Secretly, though, he toyed with the
idea of acquiring yet another mate, or perhaps
simply producing more children with the ones he had. So
many choices for a healthy head of a Penzatti
family.
Dantar the Ninth, eldest son of Dantar the
Eighth, was taking his carving responsibility quite
seriously. The zinator had been meticulously
prepared by his mother, anointed with all the proper
scents and spices for this day of appreciation to the
gods. Dantar the Ninth had not suspected for a
moment that his father would be permitting him to perform the
actual carving.
He paused a moment, taking a deep breath,
his tongue moving across his dry green lips. His
three-fingered hand, wrapped around the blade of the
knife, was trembling ever so slightly. But
to Dantar the Ninth, it felt as if a massive
tremor had seized hold of him and was shaking him
for all he was worth. His graceful antennae were
straight out and stiff with tension. In his other hand was
the long, two-pronged fork, prodding carefully at
the pink, uncooked zinator skin--deliciously,
delicately raw--and every member of his family was
watching and waiting for him to do something, already.
It was not as if it were such a difficult act.
Just draw the knife across, start carving up. The
beast was dead already, for pity's sake; he just had
to slice it to be eaten. What he was carrying on
himself was the weight of expectations, of tradition,
the father passing the responsibility on to the son.
Each cut had to be perfect, each slice
precise, each ....
He felt a hand resting gently on his forearm.
He turned to look at his father, who squeezed his
arm tightly and said, not unkindly, "I know how you
feel. If you can't do it ..." And he
deliberately allowed his voice to trail off.
Stung, Dantar the Ninth said, "I can do it just
fine, father," and his antennae twitched in
annoyance. He turned back to the zinator and
briskly drew the razor-sharp blade across the
creature's neck.
Wholly unexpectedly, blood spurted forth
and splashed across Dantar the Ninth's crisp
white tunic. He flinched and rapped out an
oath, which drew giggles from his younger sisters.
"Children!" snapped their father.
"Dantar said some bad words," said the youngest of the
sisters, Lojene. She was always the one who could be
counted on to tattle on any of her siblings.
"Yes, I know," said their father, "and he shouldn't
have. But ... it was understandable." He had picked up
a napkin and was dabbing it against his son's tunic,
soaking up some of the blood. "Still some
kick left in this one, eh, son?"
Dantar the Ninth grinned sheepishly, and the
understanding smiles from the rest of his family relaxed
him. It reminded him that this was supposed to be a
time of appreciation and thanks and warm family
atmosphere. There really wasn't any need for
tension.
He took into himself the aura of friendliness and good
feelings that surrounded him and told himself that this
moment would last forever in his memory.
And that was when the sirens began.
There was no noise in space, of course, so
everything that travelled through space, naturally,
passed noiselessly.
But the object that was cruising toward the homeworld
of the Penzatti cut through space with far more than the
simple silence of a vacuum. There w
as more to it than
that. It moved with the silence of oncoming death.
It was massive, the size of a small moon.
It made a statement in its presence, in its
size, and in its very shape, for it was a cube--a
perfectly formed cube with lights glittering here and
there in its machine exterior.
There was no elegance to it, no grace. When
humanoids created ships there was always the concept
--expressed in different ways through different
stylings--that they were vessels designed to glide
through the spaceways. Frequently there was a
suggestion of wings, ranging from the outsweeps of
Klingon or Romulan ships, to the swanlike
grace of the nacelles on a Federation starship.
There was frequently a forward projection as
well, to symbolize--unconsciously or not--the
idea of hurling oneself forward into the abyss.
But this huge cube ship disdained such concepts and
self-expression ... or, in so disdaining,
actually reflected with unintentioned accuracy the
spirit of the creatures inhabiting it creatures with
mechanized souls and hearts that had the same
emotional content as did the guts of a smoothly
running watch.
Their minds--their great, unified minds--
clicked with that watchlike precision. And, as with a
watch, they cared nothing about the past and nothing for the
future. They existed only for the now, the
eternal, ever-present now. Anything that had
happened in the past was not dwelled on, and anything
that could occur in the future was not contemplated.
The past was irrelevant.
The future was irrelevant.
Only the here and now mattered.
The squareness of their ship was, therefore, the
ultimate expression of their philosophy, if
such a word as philosophy could be applied to beings
so incapable of contemplating shadings of human
imagination.
Their ship made a statement, much like the ships of
humanoid beings. Such ships modelled themselves on
nature. But a perfect cube did not exist in
nature. It had to be manufactured, carefully
and meticulously conceived with the same watchlike
precision that drove them on. It possessed no
beauty or elegance, but instead, machine-like
efficiency.
It was a ship that said they were beyond nature. That
nature was irrelevant. That beauty was
irrelevant. That elegance was irrelevant.
Everything was irrelevant except their own,
steady, unrelenting perfection.
There was a slight course correction
required, and the great vessel accomplished it with the
speed of unified thought.
This was the second Borg ship to penetrate
into this part of the galaxy. The first had actually been
destroyed. It was the first major defeat that could be
recalled in the unified memory of the whole.
Again, though, they did not dwell on the past or the
future. There was never any need.
The past could only hold two things, after all
failure and success. Failure could be something as
simple as one of their number falling before a
weapon, or something as large as hundreds of their
number being tricked into self-destruction. In such
in stances there was no need to contemplate them, because the
great mind instantaneously adjusted itself so that such
gambits or methods of force could not be used again.
Whereas humans might dwell on where to place
blame, or even mourn the circumstances that could have
brought such things to pass, these were utterly
irrelevant concerns.
As for success--that was not irrelevant. That was
simply ... inevitable.
Madness reigned on the homeworld of the
Penzatti.
The planetary defense system had immediately
alerted the government the moment that the intruder had
entered their space. Military heads promptly
assembled to try and determine the nature
of the attacker, and the best way that they could
respond. The specifics of the ship, its
dimension and size, were fed into the planetary
computers.
The computers were the pride and joy of the great
Penzatti, the finest and most advanced computerized
minds ever developed. They surpassed
by light-years even the computers that aided Federation
starships. The Penzatti had not wished to share this
technology with the Federation because of the arrogant
assertion that the UFP was, as Penzatti top
scientists put it, "Not quite ready for it."
The computers oversaw all defense systems,
teaching systems, and regulatory systems--
everything that the Penzatti had, at one time, bothered
themselves with. And now--definitely--seemed to be a
time when the great brains of the computers would be needed
the most. The sheer size of the invader, the aura of
merciless power that clung to it like a canker, was
positively overwhelming.
The great mechanical minds that advised the
Penzatti spit back an identification in
less than a second--two, simple, haunting
words
THE BORG
Now the Penzatti military braintrust was not
alarmed. Certainly they had heard of the destruction
and devastation that the dreaded Borg had inflicted
upon other parts of the Federation. But other parts were not the
Penzatti, whose mighty computers could easily and
effortlessly solve the problem of the Borg.
Difficulties imposed upon other races were not
difficulties that would faze the mighty
Penzatti. Especially not on this day of days, the
day on which the mighty Penzatti gave thanks
to their great gods for making them Penzatti, rather than
a lesser race.
All of this occurred to the great military leaders
of the Penzatti, until two more chilling words
appeared on the great computer screen of the great
computer. Two words that sounded the death knell of a
people. And the words were
AT LAST
Outside the house of Dantar there was
pandemonium. Inside the house of Dantar it
wasn't much better.
Children were crying, or were shouting out questions in confusion.
They didn't understand anything of what was happening.
In truth, their leaders in the faraway
capital city didn't have much better
comprehension.
Dantar the Eighth grabbed his eldest son's
arm and swung the boy around, looking for some sign
of fear, some indication of just how much he could trust
his son at this moment when a crisis of global
importance appeared to be hanging over them.
Everywhere was the unyielding, pounding klaxon of the
warning sirens.
The boy's face was set and determined.
Dantar the Eighth gave a mental nod of
approval. To be flustered over the carving up of
some pointless meal that it seem
ed none of them would ever
taste--that was acceptable. Now, though, when a
genuine situation of danger had arisen, now was the
time when he needed his son to be a man, to become
a man before his time. Of course, Dantar thought
bleakly, it was possible that his son's time might
never come.
The last time that klaxon had sounded was twenty
years ago, during a major attack by the
Romulans. The mighty defensive computers of
Penzatti--the omnipotent brain of his world--had
conceived and executed a plan of attack and
counterattack, and it had succeeded. But there had
been casualties--gods, had there been
casualties, including Dantar the Seventh and
Sixth.
Dantar the Eighth could not dwell on that now.
He tried to ignore the crying of his wives and
other children and instead looked his son in the eyes. The
boy's antennae were quivering fiercely.
"We must be brave, my son," said Dantar
the Eighth. His son nodded in quick agreement.
"Our family and our people need to defend themselves.
Down below us--"
"The weapons bay," said Dantar the Ninth.
All of the more well-to-do families of the
Penzatti kept a well-stocked weapons bay.
The Romulan invasion had left deep mark and
scars that never quite healed. "I'll get down there
immediately."
He turned and headed to the lower portions of the
house. Dantar the Eighth, meantime, shoved his
way through the pawing and grasping hands of his family.
They wanted to hold him, embrace him, clutch
at him and plead for him to tell them that there was nothing
wrong, that everything was going to be all right. However,
he had no time to waste with such matters. He
muttered quick assurances as well as he
could before pushing through and going to the computer screen that
hooked him in--along with the rest of the Penzatti
families--with the great computer mind of their
planet.
He placed his three tapering fingers into the
identifying slots, and the screen glowed to life.
He expected to see the usual three-cornered
emblem of the Penzatti appear on the screen,
along with a message of personal greeting.
Instead there were simply two words, which he stared
at and still did not comprehend.
""At Last"?" he murmured. "At last
what?"
The military minds of the great Penzatti were at