by Peter David
“Your interpretation of Starfleet orders—”
“Is the only one that counts, Commander,” and he stressed the last word to underscore the rank difference. “Chekov out.”
And with that final admonishment, the Chekov blinked out.
“Keep trying to raise Captain Picard,” said Riker tonelessly. He stood and walked towards the viewscreen, as if he wished he could reach through and lift the away team right out of the planet-killer and deposit them safely aboard the Enterprise bridge.
And when he spoke next, it was with the tone of someone who was speaking to himself—but, for benefit of the crew. “I refuse to interpret orders in such a way,” he said succinctly, “that it means standing aside and letting the most monstrous beings we’ve ever encountered destroy both our captain and the only weapon that has a hope of defeating them. And if that’s what Starfleet does intend, they can come and explain it in person. In the meantime, that interpretation can go hang.” And you will too, Riker, unless you’re damned lucky, he added silently.
He turned to Worf. “Go to red alert. All hands to battle stations.” He paused, as if for dramatic impact. “Tell the crew to prepare for one hell of a fight.”
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 encasement. 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. Go.” 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. Picard 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 alwa
ys 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, and cracks in the neutronium hull of the destroyer 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 keep the satisfaction from his voice—the satisfaction of a Klingon who knew that battle was joined. “Firing,” he said.
The Enterprise cut loose and their offensive array peppered one of the Borg ships,
which was already suffering under the strain of resisting Delcara’s blasts. But the Borg ship didn’t dare turn its attention away from the planet-killer, for that’s where the uni-mind of the Borg was concentrating its assault. So the Enterprise continued to barrage the ship, draining its power levels faster and faster.
“Commander, incoming hail from the Chekov,” announced Worf.
“Tell him we’re washing our hair,” shot back Riker. “Continue fire, Mr. Worf,” and he looked at the planet-killing vessel that was assailing the Borg ships with blast after blast. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
On the Chekov, Captain Korsmo was on his feet, his fists clenched in white-knuckled fury. “What in hell do they think they’re playing at!”
“Power levels of the Borg ship currently under assault by the Enterprise are down fifty-nine percent,” said Hobson. “Other Borg ships are sustaining damage. All are still attacking the planet-killer.”
“That’s what they’re supposed to be doing! Get me Riker, now!”
“No response, sir.”
“Damn it! Lock phasers on them!”
“On whom, sir?” asked the tactical officer.
“Enterprise!”
Shelby turned in her chair and looked at Korsmo in astonishment. “On the Enterprise?” There was no disguising the shock in her voice.
“I gave them a direct order, and they’re disobeying. Mr. Davenport,” he snapped at the tactical officer, “I said lock phasers! Half-strength, enough to shake them up and let them know we mean business!” The veins were distending on his throat.
“Phasers locked,” said Davenport with deathly calm.
“Fire!” snapped Korsmo.
“Delcara, you cannot keep me here against my will,” Picard was shouting over the din. “You must return me to my ship!”
