Star Trek - TNG - Vendetta

by Peter David

  Hobson, his voice filled with utter disbelief.

  "What?!" Korsmo was completely

  incredulous. "How the hell fast can they go,

  anyway?"

  "I believe I said that Borg upward speed

  has not been determined," said Shelby. Although she

  knew it was her imagination, she felt as if

  tremendous forces were pressing against her body.

  Warp speed increased exponentially. They were now

  moving at 3,053 times the speed of light. It was

  incredible. Mankind couldn't go faster

  than this, she, thought, and perhaps wasn't meant to.

  "Borg at warp nine-point-nine-nine," said

  Hobson, and, indeed, the Borg ship was now

  pulling away, its speed virtually double that of the

  Chekov.

  "I don't believe it," excla imed Peel.

  "That requires nearly infinite power."

  "The Borg have a knack for acquiring what they

  need," Shelby said. "If they never have such power

  themselves, then they acquire it from some race they

  conquered. They're very efficient that way."

  With every passing second the Borg ship became

  smaller and smaller. "Full magnification,"

  ordered Korsmo, and for a brief moment the departing

  Borg ship loomed larger, but then it began

  to recede once more.

  "We're losing speed," said Hobson

  hollowly.

  "Bridge to engineering--to was

  Anticipating what the captain was about to say,

  Parke cut him off. "The Borg attack

  damaged us, Captain. I can't give you the

  full ten minutes."

  "What can you give me?"

  There was a pause, and then, with true understanding of

  her commanding officer's frustration, she said simply,

  "My apologies."

  He looked at the screen and watched the Borg

  ship grow smaller and smaller, hurtling on its

  way. And he considered his actions of the past few

  minutes. "Mine to you also, Chief," he said after

  a moment. "Power us down to safe cruising speed,

  helm."

  "Reducing to warp six," said Hobson, unable

  to totally hide the relief in his voice.

  Korsmo stood, hands behind his back, and watched

  the Borg ship become as small as any of the stars

  that hung in space before them. He sighed. "They

  ignored us."

  "To all intents and purposes, yes, sir,"

  agreed Shelby.

  "Send word to the Enterprise at Penzatti,"

  he said. "Tell him the Borg have been sighted,

  and feed them the coordinates." He paused and then

  added, with a trace of satisfaction, "Maybe those

  bastards can move at warp nine-point-nine-nine,

  but subspace radio moves at thirty times that.

  Let's see them move faster than that."

  "Do you think," said Hobson after a moment, "that

  they can do warp ten?"

  They all looked at him. "Basic

  physics, Mr. Hobson," said Korsmo, with a

  touch of the dry humor that usually accompanied him.

  Shelby couldn't help but notice that he was sounding

  more like himself, and was grateful for it. He continued,

  "Warp ten can't be reached. It's infinite

  speed."

  "But if anyone could, the Borg could," Shelby

  said.

  Korsmo stared at her. "No one could."

  "Captain," she said, "I hope you're right.

  The Borg have already put enough uncertainty into the

  universe. I'd hate to think that the absolute

  speed limit of the universe is just another rule

  for the Borg to destroy."

  "Oh, don't worry, Commander," said

  Korsmo. "I've generally found that the

  pre-eminent rule of the universe is that

  Jean-Luc Picard can handle anything. As long

  as that's intact, I imagine the laws of

  physics have very little to be concerned about."

  Chapter Eleven

  "Your sister?" Picard sat back in his

  chair, amazed. "Your sister?" he repeated.

  She shrugged slightly. "Well, not sister of

  blood, which is the main way that humans accept

  sibling relationships. But we were bonded as sisters

  until--"

  Guinan put up a hand. "I'm getting ahead

  of myself. Let me try and explain ..."

  "Yes, I think you'd better," said Picard

  firmly.

  Troi, for her part, was amazed. She had never

  seen Guinan appear any way other than at

  peace with herself and utterly in control of a situation.

  Everything from the appearance of Q to the disappearance

  of the captain when the Borg attacked had been

  taken in stride by the unflappable Ten-Forward

  hostess. Now, though, for the first time, Guinan

  actually seemed discomfited.

  "I told you once," she began, "that my people were

  attacked by the Borg, that many of us died, and we were

  scattered by them. What I did not mention to you was

  our first awareness of the Borg. It came when we

  found Delcara."

  "How old is Delcara?" asked Troi.

  "About as old as I am," replied Guinan.

  Then she smiled, although there was little humor to it.

  "You're not going to ask a lady her age now, are

  you?"

  Picard leaned forward intensely. "When did you

  find her? Tell me about her."

  There was something in Picard's voice that

  indicated far more than normal interest in the

  response. Troi could not help but notice the

  anxiety from her captain, his curiosity about this

  Delcara far beyond the normal interest that this

  situation would elicit.

  "She was beautiful," she began. "A luminous

  presence. I've never met anyone like her since;

  only those who were, at best, faint copies.

  She radiated peace and harmony, at least at

  first, and that was reflected in her outer beauty

  hair as black as the depths of space, skin that

  seemed to shimmer. And she was a powerful telepath.

  Hers was a mind attuned to the wonders of the

  galaxy, and the ebb and flow of destiny. All that was

  reflected in her eyes. Eyes that ..."

  "Eyes that gazed directly into the back of your

  head," said Picard. "Eyes that spoke

  volumes, even when they were silent."

  "Yes," agreed Guinan. "Hers was an

  ancient soul, with an ancient sadness that followed

  her always. She was part of a race called the

  Shgin," she said. "The Shgin lived in deep at

  the far rim of what you call the Delta

  Quadrant of the galaxy."

  "Where the Borg are," said Picard.

  She nodded. "Where the Borg are," she

  confirmed. "Now, the Shgin were a warlike race,

  so when they first encountered the Borg, they loved the

  challenge. They welcomed the foe." She pursed

  her lips. "They lived to regret it. Or rather,

  they didn't live to regret it. The Borg

  massacred them as thoroughly as they did anything and

  anyone else. Delcara had a mate and two

  children. All were lost. Delcara and a handful of others

  escaped the Borg destruction, and over the years,

  the
rest of the Shgin died until only Delcara was

  left. She wandered the galaxy, alone, lost.

  Either she found planets that were uninhabited, or

  else once-populated worlds that had been

  "visited" by the Borg. By the time we found her,

  she had been alone for many years. The solitude,

  the horror of that aloneness, weighs

  heavily on one. It took us a long time to draw

  her out of the emotional cocoon that she had created

  around herself. I had a hand in that--a considerable hand,

  really. Delcara and I became close friends--

  close enough to be bonded in a relationship

  approximating what you would call

  "sisterhood." During that time Delcara learned

  our ways. The ways of peace and attention

  to emotions and to listening. She even fell in love

  with one of my people, and they married. And then ..."

  She paused, and it was obvious. "The Borg

  attacked," Picard provided.

  Guinan nodded. "The Borg attacked," she

  affirmed. "They slaughtered so many of my people,

  including Delcara's new mate. When I found

  Delcara afterwards, I had to drag her away from the

  broken body of her lover. The screams," and she

  touched her fingers to her temples, "the screams

  live on to this day."

  "The poor woman," whispered Troi.

  "To lose all her loved ones ... twice ...

  to the Borg ..."

  "It consumed her," said Guinan. "Totally.

  I tried to get her to stay with me, but she wasn't

  the woman I'd known. She's become dark,

  foreboding, and all the beauty of her was blackened and

  blasted by the horror and the loss and the helplessness.

  She disappeared, years ago, and I never had any

  idea where she went."

  "I think," Picard said slowly, "that I'm

  starting to get a damned good idea."

  At that moment his communicator beeped and he

  tapped it. "Yes."

  "Sir," came the deep voice of Worf,

  "we have received a number of communiques relating

  battles and encounters--both with the Borg, and

  apparently with the entity which Captain Korsmo and

  Commander Shelby credited with the Borg destruction

  here at Penzatti. Shall I--"

  "Tell Mr. Data," Picard said

  abruptly, "that I wish to meet with him immediately.

  Then in fifteen minutes I want all senior

  officers in the conference room. Guinan, you too."

  "Captain, the messages--"

  "We'll hear them then, Mr. Worf."

  "Yes, sir."

  Picard turned towards Guinan and Troi the

  moment the communication was cut. "I'm fairly

  certain I can sum them up without hearing them. And that

  summation is that a war that is hundreds of

  years old may be coming to a head--and we'll all

  be caught in the middle."

  Once again the senior officers were grouped around

  the conference table, except the tension level in the

  room had increased substantially.

  They had just spent the past several minutes

  hearing report after report, message after

  message. A huge, planet-devouring ship.

  A mysterious woman from Guinan's past. An

  attacking Borg ship. Picard's heart had

  jumped when he'd heard about the individual

  battles that the Chekov and the Repulse had

  faced. How many more were going to die until this

  business was finished? he wondered bleakly. How

  many comrades dead? How many bodies buried,

  ships lost. How much was it going to take to stop the

  madness once and for all?

  The same thoughts were going through Riker's mind,

  particularly when he'd heard about Shelby's

  vessel locked in combat. He'd grown to like her,

  even become fond of her ... at least, as fond

  as one could become of a woman whom he'd wanted

  to belt at one time.

  "You seem distracted, Number One,"

  Picard said suddenly.

  Riker looked up, feeling momentarily

  embarrassed, as if he'd been caught

  flatfooted at school. "I was just thinking,

  Captain," he admitted, "of when I had the

  power of Q. I gave it back to him, secure

  and confident that I didn't want or need it.

  When I think that I had the power, at my

  fingertips, to stop a race like the Borg with a

  passing thought. ..." He shook his head. "The

  lives I could have saved. The good I could have done.

  To be able to eliminate the Borg ..."

  "Or the Romulans," observed Troi,

  pointing out the danger of such thinking. "Or the

  Tholians."

  "Or the Klingons," added Worf darkly.

  Riker looked from one to the other. Then he

  allowed a small smile. "Hard to tell where

  to dr aw the line, isn't it."

  "Sometimes the best way to deal with drawing a

  line," said Picard, "is refusing to take the

  marker when someone offers it to you for the purpose of

  drawing." He shook his head. "There's no point

  dwelling on the past, Number One, except in

  those instances in which it can be of service to you.

  Like now."

  He stood, his fingertips resting lightly on the

  conference room table. "I believe I know how

  all of this relates to one another. It's part

  speculation, part theory, with a dash of guesswork, but

  I'm reasonably certain we have a workable

  hypothesis here. Mr. Data was kind enough to work out

  some of the schematics for me as well, based on

  historical records."

  He walked over to the computer screen, and a chart

  of the galaxy materialized on it, divided

  into quadrants. The Alpha and Beta

  quadrants, comprising the lower half of the

  circle, glowed in dark blue. The Gamma

  quadrant, entirely unexplored space, was

  deep black. The Delta quadrant was also

  black, since the majority of it was unexplored,

  but a U-shaped red curve delineated that area

  known to be Borg space. The territory of the

  UFP, the Klingon Empire, Romulan

  space, and approximate limits of explored

  space, were likewise demarcated in red.

  "An uncertain amount of time ago," began

  Picard, "the Borg first began their rise to power

  in the Delta Quadrant. Whether they

  originated from outside the galaxy, or somehow

  evolved from machines, or were a sentient race that

  embraced machines, all of this is uncertain. But

  they encountered resistance from a great and mighty

  race, name unknown. Possibly the race that was

  known as the Preservers, who seem to have "seeded"

  countless planets with humanoid life and then

  disappeared."

  "Certainly being wiped out by the Borg would

  explain that disappearance," said Riker.

  Picard nodded and then continued, "For argument's

  sake, we'll call them the Preservers, even

  if they were not. The war between the Borg and the

  Preservers went on and on, and the Preservers were

  losing. But while they fought the Borg in the

  Delta
Quadrant, they were also busy in a

  place as far from the scene of battle as they could

  be. You see, they were developing a new and

  powerful weapon, and wanted that weapon to be created

  as far from the Borg as possible. It was not a

  weapon that was intended to be used. It was a weapon

  of last resort, a weapon of revenge, should the

  Preservers be ultimately defeated. A

  weapon that could conceivably lay waste to a large

  portion of the galaxy. But better that,

  they reasoned, than allowing the Borg to continue their

  conquest unabated. The Preservers, or whoever,

  felt that they were the last, best hope of the galaxy,

  and if they fell, then nothing else mattered.

  "But while they worked on creating their ultimate

  weapon, they first created a prototype. They

  created--this."

  On the screen appeared a vast spaceship,

  with a huge maw and a body that trailed off in a

  vague cone shape.

  "In comparison to the projected final

  product, it was simplistic," said Picard.

  "But deadly, nonetheless. Perfectly designed for

  use within the galaxy, for it would devour planetary

  masses for the purpose of fuel. It was eminently

  logical. After all, the Borg left behind

  lifeless balls of rock in their wake. So a

  weapon was developed that would, in a beautiful

  twist of irony, use those "lifeless"

  planets as fuel. They would use the waste

  matter that the Borg left over against them."

  Riker frowned. "I know that thing. That's ..."

  he snapped his fingers to jog his memory. "The

  planet-killer! The doomsday machine that the

  original Enterprise faced! We learned about

  it in the Academy."

  "So did we," said Picard. "Neutronium

  hull, a beam of anti-proton, consuming

  planets ... I'm almost embarrassed we

  didn't think of it earlier.

  "What I believe happened next is that the

  Preservers, or whoever created it, received word that

  the war was going badly, indeed, that it was hopeless.

  So they launched the planet-killer prototype

  while continuing to work on the final version which was

  considerably bigger, more powerful, faster ..."

  "How much faster?" asked Geordi.

  Picard spread his hands. "Logs of the

  original Enterprise would indicate that the

  planet-killer never exceeded warp four. I would

  suspect that the final version would have to go

  considerably faster to have any hope of catching up

  with a Borg ship."

  "But how can you be sure the planet-killer was