by Peter David
Millions of the Penzatti had cried out to their gods, and their gods had not responded. Yet now, in the ultimate proof of machine superiority, the computers of Penzatti—the computers that had gained sentience and, in so doing, a determination to control their own destiny—had cried out to the Borg.
And unlike the gods of the Penzatti, the Borg answered, with a voice that was the combination of a thousand voices all at once. A voice that spoke one word.
“Yes,” said the Borg.
Beams of incredible intensity and power reached out and caressed the capital city, slicing through the ground with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Beneath the feet of the astonished Penzatti the ground began to rumble. All around them the air was frying from the heat of the beams. Air molecules split apart, and crashing thunder was roaring with antenna-splitting fury. The screams of the people were drowned out by the noise that was everywhere, that was inescapable.
And now a beam came down from the heavens, as if God had opened one eye and holy light were shining down upon them. And the ground beneath them was lifted up—actually carved right out of the nurturing bosom of their home world—and dragged towards the heavens.
It was happening all over the city. Huge pieces of their planet were being carved up, an ironic testament to the fact that mere hours before, the Penzatti had been celebrating their lives by carving up the dead meat of the zinator. Now they themselves were prey. They just hadn’t fully realized it yet.
The pieces of the planet hurtled upward, up towards the floating cube that was the Borg ship. It grew larger and more terrifying every second. For the Penzatti, however, this was not a major concern for very long, because the force beams that were dragging them heavenward did not contain any air, nor anything to shield them against the ravages of the upper atmosphere or outer space. The Borg had not deemed it necessary to provide such protection for the humanoid life of Penzatti, because that humanoid life was irrelevant. It was the machine life and technology that interested the Borg.
The result was that the Penzatti who had not already died in the quakes, or from shock, found it increasingly impossible to breathe. They ran to try and find someplace to hide, but there was no place. Their lungs pounded, their heads swirled, their blood boiled in their veins, and when they screamed the death knell of their race, it was not heard, because finally there was no air to carry it.
Once the pieces of the Penzatti homeworld were brought aboard, the Borg quickly broke it down. Never ones to waste anything, the Borg reduced the bodies of the Penzatti to their basic molecular structure and fed them directly into the energy cells that powered the Borg.
That done, the Borg proceeded to slice up the rest of the planet. It was a big job and would take time, but they were in no hurry. With their clockwork precision they would simply go forward—click, click—like unyielding, unstopping cogs in a watch, grinding up whatever was in their path.
The wives and children of Dantar the Eighth recoiled in horror as the Borg soldier glanced around. Then it went straight for the computer set up in the corner. The words AT LAST still glowed serenely on the screen.
The Borg did not see, did not sense, the sudden attack of one of the wives. She came in quickly, screaming “Get out! Get out of our home!” and she was swinging the carving knife grabbed off the table. The Borg, at the last moment, seemed to be aware of a threat and half turned, not in a defensive move, but out of curiosity as to what new form of attack would present itself.
The carving knife slammed into the Borg’s shoulder circuitry, into that same piece of machinery that had been removed from the Borgs who had been shot down earlier in the battle. The Borg whirled, face impassive, but its body twisting and convulsing as if shot through with electricity. It spun in place, its arms pinwheeling around, and one of the massive arms struck the little girl, Lojene, who had wandered too close. Such was the power in that prosthetic device that it crushed her skull immediately.
Lojene’s mother screamed, as did Dantar the Ninth, who had run in in a desperate, last-ditch effort to save his family. His father was still lying outside the house, barely conscious, and the boy knew that it was up to him. He lunged forward, darting in between the whirling arms and slamming into the Borg, smashing the soldier against a wall.
Dantar the Eighth, meantime, had just regained consciousness, and was staggering towards his home. Through the open door he could see his son struggling with the Borg soldier, slamming the creature against the wall, and he felt a flash of pride. It changed quickly to horror when he saw his wife cradling the unmoving, bloodied body of his youngest daughter. He screamed, and for a brief moment, Dantar the Ninth was distracted by the cry from his father.
The Borg soldier’s right arm lashed out, still in that convulsive state, and ripped across the boy’s chest. The lad staggered back, blood fountaining, and he sobbed his father’s name once before falling back onto the floor. His antennae twitched spasmodically for a moment and then fell limp.
The air was an overwhelming cacophony of sounds and howls and crying, and Dantar the Eighth could not hear even his own screams of mourning. But he saw the Borg soldier, still staggering, with a knife sticking out of its arm, and he saw his family cowering.
He started to clamber to his feet. Blood was streaming from a gash in his forehead and blinding him in one eye, and he paused the barest of moments to wipe it out, snarling all the while his hatred and fury at this murdering creature.
And then the air sizzled around him.
He spun and looked heavenward in shock. Blazing beams were descending from the sky, slicing through the horizon line. Acreage flew, trees were struck down or set blazing, and beneath him the ground began to rumble ominously. He was unaware that other parts of his world had already been sectioned and removed with merciless efficiency…that indeed, purely by happenstance, his little piece of the world happened to be the last little piece of the world. Just as someone, during any war, had to be the first or last person to die, so, too, did some piece of the Penzatti homeworld have to wait its turn to be the very last absorbed by the Borg. Fate, and the luck of the draw, had given Dantar and his family and neighbors and city a few more minutes of life.
Not that it seemed to matter.
The Borg ship surveyed the world below them. Most of the technology had been removed and absorbed. The planet was studded with huge, gaping craters where once an entire race had thrived. This was irrelevant to the Borg. There was one small section remaining below that contained bits and pieces that might be of interest. That, too, was irrelevant, because within moments the cutter and tractor beams would finish their work and that part, too, of the planet would belong to the Borg. And then the Borg would be able to move on.
Except…
The Borg ship suddenly detected something coming their way—something throbbing with power. Something that, from its configurations, seemed to be about as large as the Borg ship itself…no—larger! Something that was coming up fast!
The Borg were not concerned. There was nothing about which they could become concerned. So confident were they, so secure in their superiority and inevitability, that any notion that they were in any way threatened was irrelevant.
Dantar felt the hair on his head crispen, the very air reaching his nostrils thick and heavy with the stench of burning and death. He turned to get into his house, because he realized that this was it, the last moments of his life and his family’s life. He wanted to clutch them to his bosom when the end came.
He started towards his home, and then the ground churned beneath him. He felt his leg twist almost backwards, and he fell, a shooting pain ripping through his left knee. He tried to stand once more and collapsed, howling with pain and fury. He started to drag himself towards his modest home, hand over hand, fingers digging into the dirt, his breath rasping in his chest.
The ground trembled and rippled, like an ocean, and he saw the roof of his home collapse with a sigh. The house crumbled in on itself, walls cracking and beams sna
pping, falling heavily and crushing beyond hope anyone who was inside.
There was the uncomprehending scream of his family, and of Dantar the Eighth, who had been denied the right to die with his family, and those screams were overwhelmed by the death screams of the world itself, and the light—gods—the light that was shining down from above now, surrounding them.
Dantar rolled back onto the front yard, his arms at either side, as if he’d been crucified. He was no longer Dantar the Eighth, he realized. He was Dantar the Last. A part of him told him that he should be running to the rubble, sifting through, trying to pull it off his family and finding if there were any survivors.
“No point,” he whispered through cracked and bleeding lips. He was staring up at the light that was accompanied by a deafening hum. “No point.”
His little piece of the world began to rise into the air.
As part of the Borg uni-mind dealt with the final section of the Penzatti homeworld, the rest focussed on the new intruder. It was definitely a ship approaching them. A ship…and yet, something more. Something far, far more.
The Borg prepared scouts to board the ship for the purpose of study, and then the plan quickly changed when the Borg realized that the intruder was not slowing down or veering off. The intruder was heading straight for them.
The Borg uni-mind fired off a message to the intruder. It was a simple message: SURRENDER.
The reply from the intruder was equally succinct: GO TO HELL.
The intruder cut loose with a beam composed of pure anti-proton. It laughed at the Borg shields and smashed into the Borg ship, ripping apart the upper portion of the cube.
The beam vanished, and Dantar felt the world fall away beneath him as the gravity of the planet reclaimed a piece of itself, desperately, like a mother reaching out for an infant snatched from her breast. There was a dizzying moment of disorientation, and then the ground beneath him collapsed back into the pit that had been formed by its disappearance. It was not a precise fit, nor a smooth landing, and buildings that had not already crumbled now collapsed from the strain. Those buildings had never been created to take this sort of stress. Neither had the mind of Dantar, and it simply shut down.
The Borg did not panic. Panic was irrelevant. Instead, they immediately set their restoration mechanisms into operation, under the assumption that they would have time to complete the repairs before they were attacked again. In their machine-like, precise way, they were ignoring the concept that they might be overmatched.
Instead, as the cube began to restore itself, they sent off another message to the intruder—the intruder, which was momentarily stationary, as if appreciating the power of its assault:
You cannot defeat us. If you attempt to assault us again, you will be punished. There is no power that can withstand us.
And once again the intruder responded, and the Borg became aware that the intruder also responded in the unified chorus of voices. But whereas the Borg voice was a single tone repeated endlessly, the intruder’s voice was a glorious blending of infinite tones. Had the Borg been capable of recognizing such a thing, they would have perceived it as beauty. Beauty, however, was irrelevant.
You believe that because none ever has, said the intruder. You are so accustomed to overwhelming all life forms, that you have no concept of how it would be for you. You’ve never felt the terror of hopelessness before.
Terror is irrelevant, replied the Borg. Hopelessness is irrelevant.
The intruder sighed with the voice of a million million souls. You’re irrelevant, you cosmic bastards.
The beam of the intruder lashed out before the Borg could power up their systems enough to mount a counterattack. It smashed into the center of the massive cube, blasting through and out the other side. The cube trembled and shook, circuits blowing out all over. Cracks appeared all over the surface, and the beam struck a third time, with even greater intensity than before and with a force behind it that was more than simply power. It was a force that seemed to be fueled by a massive indignation, a pounding fury and anger, and infinite voices crying out in triumph.
The Borg sent out a cry of warning to the central uni-mind, alerted the other ships that were approaching and would be there sooner or later. A warning that there was a new force in the galaxy that had to be contended with. And then, with the same eerie silence that marked their arrival, the Borg departed—in a million directions simultaneously. Pieces of the ship and shreds of Borg spread out, some hurling off into the depths of space, others plunging through the tattered atmosphere of the Penzatti homeworld and burning up upon re-entry.
Pieces ricocheted off the intruder but did not inflict even the slightest damage. The intruder merely hovered there for a long moment, taking in the triumph, basking in the first blow struck.
And there was that sigh, that ineffable sigh of relief. A pride in a job well done.
The intruder moved on.
Chapter Three
It had not rained in some time, and the unrelenting sun had baked the ground dry. There was, at least, a steady wind this day, blowing in a northerly direction. It rustled the manes of the two horses who travelled slowly across the dry plain, and carried the incessant clip-clop of their hooves a good distance. Had anyone else been around, they would have been warned of the oncoming of the riders. As it was, there was no one else around to see them or care about them.
Actually, calling the two animals “horses” was excessively kind, even inaccurate. One of the animals was, in fact, an ass. The other was sagging and broken down, and had it been carrying a burden much heavier than that which it now bore, it quite probably would have simply keeled over and refused to go any farther.
The man astride the horse was dressed in black slacks and boots, a wide-sleeved white shirt that rippled in the breeze, and, most oddly, pieces of armor that were affixed to him front and back in a ragtag fashion. Perched on his head was a battered helmet which, in blocking the sun, at least served some purpose. For if the man had launched himself into combat, the helmet would have been of extremely questionable value.
Tucked under one arm was a long, rusty, and somewhat crooked lance; it would have been difficult to discern it as such, but for the fact that he was holding it straight out in front of him in a vaguely offensive manner.
From his slight height advantage, he called out to his companion, “It’s a glorious day, isn’t it, Sancho? You can smell danger in the air, the scent of quests waiting to be fulfilled.”
His companion was dressed less ostentatiously, in simple peasant garments. He inhaled deeply and frowned. “I do not detect any such fragrances in the atmosphere.”
“Oh yes, it’s there. You just have to know where to look. I tell you, Sancho, our great enemy is lurking somewhere out there, waiting for us to lower our guard so that he can destroy us with one of his cunning masterstrokes.”
“Our enemy. That would be ‘The Necromancer,’ I believe you called him. A magician. An enchanter.”
“That’s right. The Enchanter…” His voice suddenly trailed off and he reined up his horse. “Gods! Do you see them, Sancho?”
“Sancho’s” eyebrows creased slightly in mild confusion. “What ‘them’ would that be?”
“The giants!” The horseman pointed with his lance. “The giants! Right ahead of us!”
“I see only a grouping of windmills.”
“No! It’s giants! How can you not see?” The horseman immediately spurred his horse forward, bringing up his lance. “They mock me! They attack! But they cannot defeat a knight errant with the might of God on his side!”
“It is not giants!” said his companion. “It is…”
It was too late. The horseman charged forward, his lance levelled, and a cry of “On, Rozinante!” torn from his lips. The hooves of the horse, the aforementioned Rozinante, pounded beneath him. Although the horse did not charge happily, it charged gamely, not able to recall any time in recent history when it had been called upon to exercise.
&nb
sp; The horse and rider hurtled across the broken terrain, toward the tall structure of the closest windmill, which was turning serenely, oblivious to the idea that it was under attack. The shouts of the companion were lost under the thundering hooves.
The rider careened into the windmill, his lance crashing through the thin material that covered the great arms. The horse banked sharply to the right to avoid the sweep of the steadily turning windmill arms, and the knight errant’s lance was firmly lodged in the latticework. The blades continued to turn, thanks to the steady wind, and the horseman was yanked upward towards the sky, his lance wedged in, his feet kicking in fury.
He clutched onto the skeletal framework of the arm and shouted defiance. He rose up, higher and higher, reaching the top and then sweeping downward once more. He lost his grip on the lance and started to slide. With a cry of alarm he grasped out with desperate fingers and managed to snag onto some of the tattered cloth. He wrapped one leg around the framework as the arm swung downward, but before he could dislodge himself, it began to ascend once more.
Then it stopped, with a jolt. The dehorsed horseman’s head smacked against the wooden skeleton, disorienting him for a moment. Then he looked down.
His companion was down there, holding the lower edge of the blade securely in an unbreakable grip. From within the windmill was the sound of gears grinding against one another, and the other arms of the windmill shook in protest.
“It is safe for you to descend if you do so quickly,” he said.
The horseman groaned in frustration and clambered down quickly. “I was winning!” he protested.
“You were in serious danger of injuring yourself severely,” “Sancho” informed him calmly. “Furthermore, you risked doing so in pursuit of a goal which was unattainable. To perceive this windmill,” and he released the blade, allowing it to go on its way unmolested, “as a giant certainly indicates lunacy. Furthermore, Geordi, I do not understand why you would choose to re-enact a moment of such dismal and utter failure on the part of a literary character.”
