by Peter David
Chapter Twenty
"Delcara?" whispered Picard.
He placed his hands against the crystalline
encasement and felt, even more strongly than before, the
warmth pulsing through. Inside the crystal she was
naked, every line of her body as he remembered it
from that night when he caught glimpses of it through
her diaphanous clothing. Her eyes were closed,
her hair long and cascading down about her
shoulders.
Deanna Troi gasped once, her hands
flying to her mouth, as if she wished she could take
back her initial startled reaction. Guinan
stood impassively, but it was clear from her
demeanor that she was affected nonetheless. Only
Data, of course, was utterly nonplussed.
Instead, he held his tricorder before him and
calmly studied the readings. "She is alive,"
he said.
"Of course I'm alive," said Delcara with
annoyance, standing next to her body, apparently
unaware of any difference between the appearances of,
ostensibly, the same woman. "I am the life.
I am the life of this entire ship. The pilot,
with a powerful enough mind to use my body and soul as a
physical channel for the wants and desires of the
Many. Without such a pilot, they lack focus.
They lack control. They're undisciplined, like
a huge class of rowdy children. Don't
you see?" she said in frustration. "They are the
dead! The dead need the living if they are going
to function! The dead cannot haunt themselves. They
need--"
"A victim," said Guinan quietly.
"You're a victim. A means to an end."
"A glorious end."
"Come out of there, Delcara," said Picard.
"Come join us. It's not too late." He ran
his hands across the crystal. "This barrier separates
us. It needn't."
"Ohhh, Picard," sighed Delcara. "Dear
Picard. Exquisite Picard. I am so
tired of trying to explain the realities of the spirit
when you are so obsessed with the unrealities of the
flesh."
"I refuse to accept this!" thundered Picard.
"I cannot simply turn my back on you and allow
you to ... exist ... in this condition. Frozen
between life and death, between heaven and hell. Spending
an eternity in purgatory for sins that you did not
commit."
"Oh, how you do overdramatize, sweet
Picard," said Delcara. She smiled
ruefully, and passed a ghostly hand across his
face. "I have thought of you for so long. Wondered
what would become of you. Wondered how far your
drive would take you. It is truly a pity.
Had we met in another life ..."
"Perhaps we have," Picard said softly. "Perhaps
ours are two old souls, striving to reach one
another. This barrier is all that stands between us."
"The Borg stand between us. The unbalanced
scales stand between us."
"No!" said Picard, and he drew himself up in
righteous indignation. "No. Only this barrier. For
this barrier is a creation of your own need for
revenge. You can grow beyond that need, put aside
your hatred and fury. Come out from your encas ement.
Return with us."
"It's not too late," whispered Guinan.
"Bond sister, it's not. I know you believe it
to be--"
"I believe what is true. I believe
what I know. This is useless. Return to your
ship. There is nothing for you here. G." And when the
away team didn't move, the holograph shouted
"Go!" and then, even more loudly, "Go!"
And the holograph vanished.
And all around them the crystal walls
came to life Faces, hundreds, perhaps
thousands, all contorted, all infuriated, all
consumed by a passion that surpassed death, and they
screamed in voices that echoed and re-echoed, through the
corridors and into their minds, "Go! Leave us!
You are not wanted here! We are the Many! You are
the few!"
"No!" shouted Picard, his hands to his ears.
Beside him, Deanna Troi was on the floor, her
mind on the verge of shorting out from the empathic
overload. Guinan staggered, putting up her hands
in a defensive maneuver, and Data was at
Troi's side, trying to aid but not knowing how.
"Stop it!" Picard shouted again.
"You cannot have her! You have no claim to her!"
"I have claim!" shouted Picard. "I have as
much claim as you! You have no idea what she has
meant to me! I have held, in my mind's eye, the
image of her throughout my career!" He could barely
hear himself over the deafening roar of voices that were
trying to shout him down. "Ever since that night at
the Academy, I have seen her as a
personification of what I was striving for! The
living embodiment, whether imagined or not, of my
greatest goal! She was the galaxy to me! She was
the mystery of discovery, the calling of the unknown! I
have truly loved no other woman in my life,
because the stars are my lover, and she is the stars!
By day I gaze out at the stars and see her image
beckoning to me, calling me further and further.
By night I lie in my cabin and dream of her.
She is in my thoughts and my soul! There never has
been anyone before or since who has captured
all that I am. She is the stars! She is my
life! Give her to me, damn you all! Damn
you, you pathetic shades who know only hate and
nothing of wonder. Give her to me!"
Picard allowed himself a brief flash of
pride. He'd come a long way in the field of
romantic extemporizing. He'd also come
to realize that Delcara's madness was rejecting
all manners of entreaties based on the rational
and the sane. So instead he had turned
to dramatic, ardent claptrap in hopes of
breaking through the barriers and reaching her. It was
overemotional, overwrought, and somewhat overdone.
And it also had just enough of the truth in it to add genuine
pain. Perhaps even more truth than he wanted
to admit.
The Many screamed and howled in
frustration, their anger and bodiless fury pounding
against the structure that gave them both life and
eternal damnation, and Picard would not back down,
would not allow the hysterical wailing of the many to wear
him out.
And the image of Delcara stepped forward from the
body that was imprisoned. The ugliness had fallen
away from her, the physical manifestations of the
usurping of the beauty within her erased as if
by magic. The holographic representation was
sobbing openly, and she reached towards Picard, her
hand passing through him once more. Picard's grip
flexed convulsively on the crystal entombment
...
And within the crystal, the eyes of Delcara
began to open.
And the planet-killer shook, as if with fury.
Picar
d lost his grip and stumbled forward, cracking
his forehead against the edge of the crystal column.
He hit the floor and rolled onto his back, just
in time to see the rest of the away team shimmering, their
bodies enveloped in an odd effect that looked
similar to the transporter, but different.
"What's happening!" he shouted.
The away team was gone.
Inside the crystal, Delcara's eyes had
shut once more, and the holograph turned towards
Picard, her face shining with excitement. "I have
my own transporter capabilities, sweet
Picard. You spoke such pretty words of love
to me that I knew we must remain together. So I
sent the other people back to the ship. Even Guinan,
whom I will always love."
"But we can't stay here, Delcara, this
vessel--"
"Is under attack, dear Picard." She
smiled. "The Borg are here."
In her quarters, Reannon Bonaventure
gazed out into space and saw the three huge Borg
cubes dropping out of warp space and firing upon the
massive vessel that hung nearby. Her breath
caught, her eyes widened ...
And she screamed a word.
"Borg!" she howled, a word torn from her
innermost self.
The security guard who had been standing outside
her door heard her and his eyes widened in shock.
She hadn't uttered any comprehensible words
until that moment. That he knew. He
immediately pulled out his phaser, ready for trouble, because
from her alert he fully expected that there would be a
Borg soldier within, perhaps trying to capture her
and return her to the Borg.
He darted into the quarters, and all he saw was
the woman, standing in the middle of the room, and she was
screaming over and over again, "Borg! Borg!
Borg!", flapping her arms as if trying
to take flight. But there was no sign of any
attacker within, and the guard paused in his initial
inclination to call for a security back-up.
"It's all right!" he started to say, but that was
all he managed to get out before things weren't all
right. Reannon moved with incredible speed and
swung with all the strength in her mechanical arm.
It connected with the security guard's face,
breaking his jaw, and rendering him unconscious before
he even hit the floor. Reannon grabbed the
dropped phaser and bolted out the door.
She ran out into the corridor, looking around in
confusion, and then ran to her right.
She darted down the corridor and saw a
familiar symbol near one door. She knew
she'd been in the room before, although she couldn't
remember why or what it was. Everything was a
fog to her with a few beams of light piercing through, and
those lights were pulsing and black and evil. Living
horror was eating away at her brain.
She ran in and stopped in her tracks.
She was in sickbay. The handful of Penzatti
still recovering from their wounds (the rest having been
moved to private quarters) looked up at her
sullenly.
For a moment she didn't connect anything, and then
her mind painted a picture for her. It was a
picture of soulless, mechanized creatures that were
living prisons, committing unspeakable and heartless
acts throughout a cosmos. And she had been one of
them, and she had murdered, and destroyed, and she had
not cared, and she wanted that life back, a life
that horrified her and soiled her, that was like a stench
to her--
She staggered back and crashed into an equipment
stand, knocking medical tools off it. She
grabbed up one or two and stared at them, the part of
her brain that was functioning, instantly intuiting the
purpose of them.
From behind her she heard the confused shouting of
voices--medical personnel. She scrambled
to her feet and ran out the door just as
Dr. Crusher and Dr. Selar entered from the
opposite side of the sickbay. They didn't
understand what had set the patients off, but a
number of them were now shouting and crying out about the
Borg. Things had happened so quickly that none of the
medtechs had seen anything.
"They must sense somehow that we're encountering the
Borg," said Crusher, who knew that the ships had
just appeared mere kilometers away. Riker had
alerted her, and she was preparing sickbay in dread
anticipation of heavy casualties.
"That is a logical assumption," agreed
Selar. And it was logical. It was also
incorrect.
On the bridge all eyes were riveted to what
was happening on the screen.
The three Borg ships, an awesome and
terrifying sight in and of themselves, had opened fire
on the planet-killer. They were not using
half-measures. Instead all three were letting
fly with everything they had. The powerful beam that had
once carved up the Enterprise like a roast was
now trebly powered as it ripped into the hull of
Delcara's ship.
And then three shapes began to take form on the
Enterprise bridge.
Worf immediately had his phaser out, and Riker was
on his feet, both of them anticipating that Borg
soldiers were about to appear. Then the light flashed
away, and when it faded, everyone on the bridge was
amazed to see Guinan, Troi, and Data standing
there. Just as conspicuous as their presence was the
captain's absence.
"Report, Mr. Data," said Riker,
wasting no time at all.
Data looked around, not in surprise so much as
interest in the surprising turn of events. "We
discovered the living body of Delcara, sir, and were
assaulted by the remains of the beings that created the
planet-killer. Captain Picard stated an
eloquent case for Delcara's release--"
"Which appears to have backfired," said Guinan.
She shook her head. "If it's all the same
to you, Commander, I'll return to Ten-Forward. I
can't do anything here." Her gaze drifted to the
image on the screen, saw the pounding that the
planet-killer was sustaining. She turned
to Riker and said quietly, "I assume that you
can." With that, she departed the bridge.
Picard stumbled and went to one knee as the
planet-killer shook around him.
"You see, lovely Picard," called
Delcara. "You see the power of those you would have me
turn my back on?"
"I ask you to turn your back on hatred!"
said Picard.
"They don't understand such things. They only
understand this."
The planet-killer fired back on the Borg
ships. The anti-proton beam lashed out and force
shields appeared around the cubes, absorbing the
impact. They glowed from the intense battering they were
forced to endure, but they also gave as much as they
got, an
d cracks in the neutronium hull of the
destr oyer began to appear.
And the Many screamed in fury and fear, "You
are not focussed! You are not concentrating! What
is wrong with you!"
Picard covered his ears, but it was purely a
reflex action. The true volume was inside his
head, and he knew it wasn't even directed at
him. The true target of the anger was Delcara, and
he wondered how she could possibly withstand it.
"Nothing is wrong with me!" shouted Delcara.
"He has corrupted you! The Picard has
corrupted you!"
"He has not corrupted me! He cannot! If
anything, he has given me the purity of love!"
she said desperately.
"This has nothing to do with love! This has to do
with our vendetta, yours and ours! Now, attack
them! Attack them with the anger and vengeance that
drive you, as it drives us. Attack, or we
are surely lost!"
Delcara turned away from Picard and spread
her arms wide. Within the crystal, her body
seemed to tremble for a moment.
"Damn you!" she cried out. "And damn
me!"
"The Borg are ignoring us, sir," said
Data, already seated back at ops and functioning
as if nothing extraordinary had occurred to him.
Troi, for her part, could barely speak, still
overwhelmed by the mental assault they'd been
subjected to on Delcara's vessel. Riker
had wanted to send her to sickbay, but she had
insisted on remaining at her post, even
though she appeared pale and shaken. "They are
concentrating their full power on the
planet-killer."
"Damage sustained by the Borg?"
"Their power level has dropped an average
of twenty-one-point-three percent. The
planet-killer is draining their force shields.
They are, however, inflicting considerable damage
upon the planet-killer as well. If the Borg
are able to re-energize their power nodes, as they have
in the past with great speed, and continue their
assault--"
"Then the captain dies, along with a weapon that
the Borg actually fear and respect. Mr.
Worf, target the closest Borg vessel."
He sat down in the command chair, adjusting his
jacket the way that Picard did, fully aware
of what Korsmo's reaction would be when the
Enterprise opened fire. "Full photon
torpedo spread and phasers. Everything we've
got including the kitchen sink. Fire."
No less aware was Worf, but he could not