Recommendation: Use this incident to test Borg device 2782.
The psi-wave emitter, thought the aspect. This piece of technology was taken from a planet populated exclusively by telepaths. It was similar to a phaser, except it focused psionic emissions from one or more minds onto a target. Since the collective had trillions of minds at its disposal, this device should assist in the assimilation of Q. At the very least, it should drive him away.
The device was being delivered by a conduit and should reach spatial grid 19 in a matter of minutes. All the queen had to do was occupy Q’s attention span.
“You know I would destroy you at the first opportunity. What possible benefits would you derive from a marriage to this aspect?”
“I like difficult women. Have you ever met Kathryn Janeway? Now, she was exciting. But not the kind of girl to bring home to meet Mom.” The mention of Janeway drove her into a rage. The collective had pursued her and her pet drone through half of the Delta Quadrant, and at every turn she had outwitted them.
None of this mattered, however, as the psi-wave emitter had just arrived.
“Now, Q, let us discuss your assimilation.” The psi-wave device came to life. Cube after cube poured its collective concentration into the device, and it channeled it into Q as a pure wave of psionic power.
The wave grew more intense. The side of the cube where the wave struck began to warp, and the unfortunate drones caught in the field simply detonated in a field of red, black, and green gore.
The wave became more concentrated. The mental energy of the entire collective was focused into a pinprick, and that was applied directly to Q’s brain.
“Oh, Unikins, our first fight!” said an amused Q. “You want to play tough?” He suddenly became less jovial. “Fine.”
Warning: Mnemonic parasites detected in spatial grid 19.
Warning: Psi-wave feedback loop initiated.
Warning: Localized collective failure in grid 19.
The collective turned all its attention to disinfecting itself from the parisites Q had introduced. It decided to abandon the cube and the aspect, before Q could cause any more damage.
Suddenly the aspect was much less than she had been before. The vast collective mind was no longer at her disposal. The psi wave shut down, leaving a gaping hole in one side of the ship and hundreds of deactivated drones where it had impacted. The remaining drones were incapacitated. Most of the drones were irretrievable and would have to be reassimilated at a later date.
“We fail to see the purpose behind your activities. You have expended a great deal of energy and time to procure this aspect for a matrimonial endeavor without any hope of a positive response,” said the aspect.
“Does love need a reason?”
“Sexual attraction is irrelevant. One day your species will be assimilated, once we have grown in power.”
“Is that a yes?”
“You may do what you like with the aspect. We are no longer able to adequately control the drones and are powerless to stop you.”
“Finally! I have just the place picked out for our honeymoon.” Q and the aspect vanished from the cube and rematerialized in a one-bedroom apartment on Risa.
“This will only take a moment,” said Q.
“Time is irrelevant.”
“Lie down on the bed.” The aspect complied and lay down. As she did, Q’s brow furrowed and the aspect’s features began to change.
The Borg implants faded away and began to melt off the body. Her eye regrew, and hair sprouted from her scalp. The numerous skin lesions repaired themselves, and finally she was human once more. As a final touch, Q did her hair and makeup.
The woman suddenly stiffened and woke.
“Q! What the hell are you doing here. I don’t like it when you just barge in like that. I’ve told you before I can handle myself perfectly well without you around.”
“I missed you.”
“I didn’t miss you,” said Vash. “I thought I made that clear the last time. And aren’t you married or something?” She noticed the time. “Oh my god, I’m going to miss my shuttle.”
“That’s what I stopped by to tell you. The dig’s been canceled. Something about Borg being sighted in the area.”
“Borg? Since when do they want useless artifacts? Aren’t they only interested in technical things? Why would they bother with something so … irrelevant?”
“Sometimes little things mean a lot,” said Q. Then he vanished, leaving an irritable young woman with an unexplainably sore eye and two missing weeks.
Uninvited Admirals
Penny A. Proctor
Owen Paris wants me to call him. His urgent message is flashing on my comm unit. “It doesn’t matter what time, Gretchen. I have news about Kathryn.” Nothing more, no hint whether it is good news or bad. That is absolutely typical of Owen.
Suddenly I am scared for my daughter. When admirals appear uninvited, they rarely have good news. It’s a lesson I have learned over and over.
The first time, I was six years old. I was putting my shoes on, all by myself, when someone knocked at our door. My mother called from upstairs, “That’s probably Aunt Katie. Let her in.”
But it wasn’t Aunt Katie. It was two Starfleet officers whom I did not know, a human woman and a Vulcan man. I stood in the doorway and looked at them silently. They were strangers who had not been invited to our house and I was uncertain of how to react to them.
“Hello,” the woman said. “You must be Gretchen. I’m Admiral Brennan, and this is Admiral Sinek. Is your mother at home?”
“She’s upstairs.” I studied them, trying to decide whether I should be friendly. Even though I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, they were Starfleet officers and seemed to be important. “Do you know my daddy? He’s a starship captain.”
“Yes, we do. You have the same color hair as he does.” Admiral Brennan knelt down so her face was level with mine. Her eyes were sad. “May we come in? We need to speak with your mother.”
“She’s changing the baby.” I did not move. I wanted them to go away.
But then my mother came down, carrying Annie on her hip. “What are you doing, Gretchen? Who is it?”
Before I could answer, she saw the two admirals for herself. She stopped on the second step from the bottom and turned pale. This scared me. Admiral Brennan said in a quiet voice, “We need to talk, Elsa.”
Mother came down the last step slowly and set Annie down next to me. “Take your sister outside,” she told me without taking her eyes away from Admiral Brennan. “I’ll call you in a little bit.”
I didn’t argue with her, even though I didn’t want to go outside. I took Annie’s hand and led her to the front yard. She toddled happily to her sandbox and plopped into it. Her clean clothes were getting dirty, but I didn’t yell at her. If I did she would yell back, and I had the funniest feeling that we ought to be quiet.
A long while later my mother came outside. Her eyes and nose were red. She came and sat beside me on the grass. “You must be a very grown-up girl now, Gretchen,” she said, putting an arm around me. She hugged me tightly.
“Why?” I was deeply frightened. “What did those admirals say?”
“There’s been an accident, liebchen. Your father …” Tears welled up in her eyes. It was the first time I ever saw her cry.
She couldn’t say any more, but I knew. My daddy wasn’t coming home again. “No, I don’t believe it. They’re lying. They’re lying!” I jumped to my feet to run away, but she caught me by the shoulders.
“Be brave, baby. Remember, we are Starfleet, you and I.”
“No,” I cried. “I’m not Starfleet, and I never will be. Never!” I kicked the sand as hard as I could, and it geysered into the baby’s face and filled my shoe. Annie started to cry, and my mother started to cry. Those admirals were to blame for everything, and I hated them.
The clock chimes nine, forcing me back to the present. Owen’s message is still blinking at me, but my hands a
re shaking too badly to hit the Reply button. Taking a deep breath, I leave the kitchen desk and grab the first bottle of wine I see in the cooler. I need to settle down before I call him.
It’s a sauvignon blanc from California. It’s our wine, the one Edward and I drank the night we met. I was nineteen and in full, if private, mutiny against all things Starfleet. That winter, my stepfather was promoted to admiral and Mother threw a party for him. At first I refused to go. All the guests would be Starfleet officers and their spouses, which meant it would be stuffy, pretentious, and inexorable. Annie guilted me into it, though, reminding me how good Kurt had always been to both of us. I came, but brought my attitude with me.
I deliberately arrived at the last minute, meeting the family at the hotel. Mother took one look at me and flushed crimson. “Gretchen! What are you thinking? You cannot wear that—that flimsy excuse for a dress. It’s completely inappropriate.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked with mock innocence, secretly pleased by her reaction. The dress was barely justifiable by fashion and definitely beyond the bounds of Fleet propriety, cut low in the neckline and slit high on the thigh. I wore my hair long and loose, with big earrings and a necklace designed to attract attention. Among the staid and proper Starfleet officers, I would stand out like show poodle in a pack of basset hounds.
Kurt put his arm around her in a gentle hug. “It’s all right, Elsa. At least everyone will have something to talk about besides how gray my hair is—what’s left of it, anyway.” His eyebrows rose just a little, which was his way of showing amusement.
Later in the evening, he touched my shoulder. “Let me introduce you to someone.”
I turned, found myself staring at two young officers. One of them was smiling, the other looking at me intently. “Gretchen, I’d like you to meet Lieutenant Will Patterson and Lieutenant Edward Janeway. Gentlemen, my daughter Gretchen.”
Will Patterson was friendly as a puppy as he shook my hand, and about as smooth. I chalked one up for the dress. Then Edward Janeway took my hand, and I felt as if all the oxygen had just been sucked from the room. For a moment I couldn’t breathe. He was tall, with features that were too hard-edged to be called handsome. But his eyes … his eyes were fixed on me as if he had nothing else to look at. “How do you do?” I managed to say.
“Would you like some wine?” he asked, not letting go of my hand. I nodded mutely, and he led me away from his friend and my stepfather, and we spent the rest of the night sipping sauvignon blanc and sitting in our own little world at a corner table.
He came to see me the next night. I was a junior in college, majoring in Terran literature but playing with the idea of a career as a singer, and occasionally I performed at a small café near the university. The night after the party, I looked out at the audience and there was Edward. He sat at the table nearest the stage and he wasn’t wearing a uniform. He stayed for all three sets, rarely taking his eyes off me, and then walked me home.
My private mutiny was doomed from that night on. We married at the semester break, in the outrageously archaic dress-uniformandcrossed-swords ceremony that Edward and everyone in my family (except me) wanted. I thought of it as my formal capitulation to Starfleet. The surrender was not unconditional, though. I drew the line at moving to San Francisco, despite the fact that Edward was attached to Headquarters. We lived in my apartment until I graduated, and then found a home in rural Indiana, not far from where Edward grew up.
This home.
The life we made for ourselves and our daughters revolved around his duty and Starfleet. I learned all the things a career officer’s wife learns—the loneliness of long separations, the stolen joys of unexpected reunions. I developed the “Starfleet ear,” the ability to hear the unspoken in the brief and monitored messages from space. I learned to navigate through the tyranny of unofficial hierarchies and unwritten protocols. Above all, I came to share the pride of the service. On our tenth anniversary, Edward was offplanet at a diplomatic conference, and we celebrated through a delayed subspace message. That was the night I realized my mother was right after all. I never wore the uniform, but I was Starfleet.
Two months before our thirtieth anniversary two admirals came up the walk, uninvited, as I worked in my garden. Will Patterson, pale and red-eyed, and Sarah Brennan—the second-oldest officer still on active duty—found me on my hands and knees, planting pansies. “We need to talk, Gretchen,” she said, using exactly the same tone she had used forty-three years earlier. It was as if time melted away and I was six years old again, and frightened.
I refused to look at her. “Talk, then.” I kept my head bent to my task, tried to pretend they weren’t really there.
“There was an accident,” Will said gently, and still I would not look at him. I just dug a little more furiously, hoping he would go away. He didn’t.
“Edward?” I finally asked, but I knew the answer before he spoke. Edward was dead.
It’s funny the way the mind reacts to such things. I remember thinking that I needed a purple plant next, there were too many yellow all in a row. It was very important to choose just the right flower.
“Let’s go inside,” Will suggested, but I shook my head.
“I have to finish the pansies.” I still refused to look at him.
“They are Edward’s favorites.” My private mutiny resumed at that moment: Courtesy be damned, I wasn’t going to let them into my house. I was done with Starfleet and with uninvited admirals.
It’s funny the way the mind reacts. Look at me now, standing in the kitchen, indulging in memories instead of calling Owen Paris. I suppose I don’t want to face his news tonight any more than I wanted to listen to Will that day. Or that other day, six years ago, when Will and Owen came together, without calling first.
That day I came home and found them waiting on my front porch. Just the sight of them made the summer day seem chilly. I remember thinking that there were never two more opposite personalities than Will Patterson, whose every emotion showed on his face, and Owen Paris, who could be stoic as a Vulcan. That day, they both looked miserable.
I sat down with them. “Just say it,” I said tersely. There was no need for pleasantries; we all knew why they were there. Admirals don’t drop by to chat.
“There’s been no word from Voyager or Kathryn in over six weeks,” Will said, his voice heavy with emotion. “The ship is now officially ‘Missing.’”
“Missing,” I repeated. From their expressions, I had expected worse. Then I realized, they believed much worse. “Have you searched? Found anything—debris, warp bubble, anything like that?”
Owen answered. “There have been searches. There’s no sign of the ship, Gretchen. It’s simply gone.”
I smiled. “That’s all right, then.”
The two men exchanged worried looks. They thought I had snapped, or was in denial. I laughed at them. “Will, Owen—you both know Kathryn. She doesn’t quit, and she wouldn’t go quietly. If her ship had been destroyed you would have found something, some trace of it.”
Will put a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go inside, Gretchen. We can tell you a little about the mission—”
“No,” I interrupted him. “You are not going to come into my home and take my hope away from me. Tell me what you must right here. Then I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.” I turned to Owen, remembering that his son was on Kathryn’s ship. “And you will go home and tell Cinda everything I say, do you understand me, Owen Paris? You are going to let her keep some hope, too.”
He looked at me in surprise. Very few people chide admirals. I tried to tell myself that they were loyal friends who didn’t abandon me after Edward’s death and that this wasn’t easy for either of them, but at that moment I was angry. Angry about Kathryn, angry about Edward, about my long-dead father, about everything that Starfleet had ever forced upon me.
Will cleared his throat before speaking. “It was a very dangerous mission, involving Maquis in the Badlands. I’m sorry we can�
��t give you the details, but the odds are the ship was destroyed.”
I shook my head. “How can you, of all people, say that, Will? You’ve known her since the day she was born. Owen, you are her mentor. You both should know better.”
“You have to face facts, Gretchen,” Owen said.
“The only fact you have is that the ship is missing.” My voice started to rise, and I took a short breath to get it back under control. “Nothing more. You are jumping to conclusions, and I won’t have it. Until you show me hard proof, I choose to believe that Kathryn’s out there somewhere.” I stood. “You’ve delivered your message, and I appreciate it. Now I have to take care of the dogs, and then I’m going to have a cup of coffee. If you want to stay and tell me about your grandchildren you’re welcome. Otherwise, please leave.”
Poor men. I didn’t give them much quarter that day. They looked at each other in some silent, secret admiral code and tried to decide what to do. Owen left and Will came in. We talked about his grandson, I think; I don’t remember a single word he said. After he left, I broke the news first to Phoebe and then to Mark. It was only then that I cried.
It’s getting late. I leave the kitchen and wander into the room I still think of as Edward’s study. These days, it is my office, but somehow Edward’s personality is indelibly stamped here. This is where he spent hours working out the kinks in his ship designs, taught math to Kathryn and Phoebe. This is where he once tried to write a novel, before the Cardassian threat began to consume him. In the quiet of the night, I can still feel his presence when I sit at his desk.
I’m doing it again. Thinking about something else so I won’t have to think about calling Owen. I try to remember if I’ve spoken to him since the war ended. Cinda and I had lunch together, but it’s been a long time since I spoke directly to Owen.
In fact, it’s been since the night two years ago when the comm unit beeped loudly at two o’clock in the morning. Bleary-eyed, I turned it on and found Owen, still in uniform, staring at me. “I’m coming over, Gretchen. Now.”
Strange New Worlds IV Page 21
