Then the Starfleet vessel, which the colony"s sensors had just identified as the U.S.S. Ranger, accelerated instantly to a velocity that was almost off the scale. The sensors tried to keep up with it, but all that Talgar saw on his display was a jumble of conflicting data-and then the Borg cube vanished in a blaze of white light. His display went dark, but from outside his office came a blinding flare at least twice as bright as Khitomer"s sun. It faded away within seconds, but a tingle of heat lingered in the air.
Talgar poked at the unresponsive desktop interface for a moment before he glared at Nazh and said, "Get Colonel Nokar on the comm, now."
Nazh, for once, didn"t complain or procrastinate. He powered down the interface and triggered its restart sequence. It took nearly half a minute before the system was working again and a comm channel had been opened to the underground command bunker, from which Nokar had been directing his pointless, surface-based defense campaign.
"Colonel," Talgar said, "report!"
"We"re still a.n.a.lyzing the Starfleet ship"s attack," Nokar said. "It looks like they shifted their vessel just far enough out of phase to breach the Borg"s shields before sacrificing their ship in a suicide attack."
Wary of being too optimistic, Talgar asked in a neutral manner, "Status of the Borg vessel?"
"Destroyed, Governor," Nokar said. "Vaporized."
Talgar marveled at the news. "Qapla"," he said, as a salute to the fallen heroes of the Ranger. Then, to Nokar, he added, "Where be your gibes now, eh, Colonel? A thousand times I"ve heard you mock our allies, and now you get to keep drawing breath because of them." He wasn"t surprised that Nokar had no riposte for that, and as he cut the channel he imagined a sullen expression darkening the colonel"s weathered, angular face.
Turning to Nazh, Talgar said, "The Empire hasn"t seen an act of courage like that since Narendra, and it"s time the High Council heard about it. Open a channel to Chancellor Martok."
Decades of diplomatic service had taught Talgar to make the most of opportunities when they presented themselves. For years, the chancellor"s foes on the High Council had been impeding his efforts to forge a tighter bond with the Federation. Their most recent obstructions had entailed diverting Defense Force ships and resources to avoid aiding the Federation in its renewed conflict with the Borg. Calling the escalating struggle "an internal Federation matter," a bloc of councillors, led by Kopek, had begun undermining Martok"s influence and authority in matters of imperial defense. But that was about to change.
An image flickered and then settled on the governor"s desktop display-it was the stern, one-eyed visage of Chancellor Martok himself. "What do you want, Talgar?"
"The Borg have come to Khitomer, old friend," Talgar said, "and our allies have defended us with their lives." Over the subs.p.a.ce channel, he sent Martok the colony"s sensor data of the three Starfleet ships" battle and the Ranger"s decisive victory over the Borg cube. As he observed the chancellor"s reaction to the news, he knew that his a.s.sumption had been correct: This was the ammunition Martok had been waiting for to sway the Council.
In his guttural rasp of a baritone, Martok asked rhetorically, "You know what this means, don"t you?"
"Yes, my lord," Talgar said. "It means this is the hour when men of honor go to war."
The command center of Starbase 234 was collapsing in on itself, and all that Admiral Owen Paris could think about was finding a working comm terminal.
Fire-control teams scrambled past the admiral on both sides as he stumbled over the wreckage strewn across the floor. Flames danced in the shadows between buckled walls, and a cloud of oily smoke gathered overhead, obscuring the ceiling.
Paris grabbed a lieutenant whose black uniform was trimmed at the collar in mustard yellow. "Is your console working?"
Grime and blood coated the woman"s face, which contorted in frustration as she replied, "No, sir." She freed herself from his grasp with a rough twist and continued on her way.
He tightened his left fist around the data chip he"d carried from his office and staggered forward, through the mayhem of firefighters shouting instructions over the tumult of tactical officers issuing battle orders. A thunderclap of detonation rocked the station with the force of an earthquake.
Someone called out above the din, "Shields failing!" Then another bone-jarring blast knocked Admiral Paris off his feet and reminded him that even a bunker of cast rodinium was no match for the weapons of the Borg. He landed hard atop a mound of twisted metal and shattered companel fragments that tore through his uniform and lacerated his forearms and knees.
With only his right hand free, he found it difficult to push himself back to his feet. Then a pair of delicate but strong hands locked around his bicep and pulled him upright.
He turned his head and saw the base"s chief of security, Commander Sandra Rhodes, nod toward a short stairway to the command center"s lower level. "This way, sir," said the lithe brunette. "I"ve got a channel ready for you." A resounding boom seemed to tremble the foundations of the planet, and more chunks of debris fell from above, crashing to the deck all around them. One close call coated them in dust. Rhodes stayed by Paris"s side as she pressed one hand into his back to keep him moving forward.
Scrambling down the steps, Paris cursed himself for leaving something so vital until it was long past too late. He"d made his share of mistakes in life-not least among them the Tezwa debacle, in which he"d actually conspired with other Starfleet officers to unseat a sitting Federation president-and he"d borne his guilt and his regrets in silence. But there was one burden he could not bear to take with him to the grave.
The lights stuttered and went out, plunging the underground chamber into darkness. Only the pale, faltering glow of a few duty consoles remained lit, beacons in the night. From behind, Rhodes"s insistent but gentle pressure guided him forward.
His ankle caught on something sharp and hard, and he tripped. By instinct he reached out to break his fall- The data chip fell from his hand and plinked brightly across the rubble-covered floor, its tiny sound the only clue to where it had landed. Scuttling back and forth on all fours, he began to hyperventilate. Owen Paris, the model of stoicism, was on the verge of tears, his chest heaving with panicked breaths.
"I dropped it," he called out to Rhodes. "G.o.d help me, Sandy, I dropped it!"
He swirled his hands over the stinging shards of shattered polymer on the ground as he searched in blind desperation for the chip. His palms grew sticky with caked dust and his own blood. From close by he heard Rhodes shout to the firefighters, "We need some light over here! Now!"
Sharp cracks heralded the ignition of several bright violet emergency flares in various directions around him. Some were held by members of the base"s command team, some by engineers struggling to contain the fires. A few of them worked their way toward Paris, who continued rooting through the debris until the scarlet glow cast everything into harsh monochrome shadows and highlights. Then a glint of light caught the data chip"s edge, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the dust.
A deafening concussion was followed by the roar of an implosion that brought down half the command center"s ceiling. More than a dozen Starfleet personnel vanished beneath the cascade of broken metal and pulverized rock.
No time to lose now, Paris admonished himself, and he left Rhodes behind as he lurched and barreled ahead toward the still-illuminated console. With his last steps he fell against it, and he fumbled the data chip in his b.l.o.o.d.y fingers for a few seconds until he inserted it into the proper port on the panel.
As he began entering the transmission sequence, another station nearby exploded. Shrapnel from the blast raked his face and body, and a dull thud of impact on the side of his neck was the last thing he felt before he landed, numb, on the deck.
Stupid old man, he chastised himself. Slow and stupid.
Rhodes was at his side a moment later, looking frightened for the first time that Paris had seen since his transfer to Starbase 234 four months earlier. "It"s a neck injury, sir," she said. "Don"t try to move." Over her shoulder, she cried out, "Medic! The admiral"s down! I need a medic over here!"
Paris"s voice was a dry whisper of pain. "Sandy," he rasped, fearful that she might not hear him over the crackling of flames and the settling of debris. He said again, "Sandy."
She leaned down and said, "Don"t talk, sir. Moving your jaw might do more damage in your neck." She was trying to sound unemotional, but in his opinion she was doing a lousy job of it.
"Listen to me, Sandy," Paris said. "It"s important."
"All right," she said, steeling herself.
He tried to swallow before he spoke, but his mouth was dry and tasted of dirt. "Message on the data chip," he said, his voice growing reedier with each word. "Send it. Hurry."
It was to her credit, he thought, that she chose not to argue with him. Instead, she clambered over to the console and wiped off the fresh blanket of soot and crystalline dust. After a glance at the settings he had already keyed in, she shook her head. "Encryption protocols are down without the main computer."
"Doesn"t matter," Paris said. "Send it."
This time she resisted. "Sir, if we send a signal in the clear to Starfleet Command, the Borg-"
"No," Paris protested, marshaling the last of his strength to make sure she understood. "Not...to Starfleet.... To my boy."
Rhodes"s teary eyes reflected Paris"s sorrows as she replied, "Aye, sir." She worked at the failing console for several seconds, and then she returned to Paris"s side, kneeled beside him, and took his hand. "It"s done, sir."
"Thank you, Sandy," Paris said, the last vestiges of his ironclad composure deserting him as his strength faded. "I needed him to know," he confessed, "...that I"m sorry."
She cupped her hand under his cheek. "I"m sure he knows."
"Maybe. But I had to say it.... I had to say it."
As a final eruption of stone and fire engulfed the command center, Owen Paris was grateful that he"d been spared the indignity of tears.
Picard felt like the calm at the center of a hurricane. He had plunged his ship and crew into battle with a single order: Destroy the Borg cube. Telling his officers what to do was his role; telling them how to do it, he left to Worf.
"Helm, lay in attack pattern Sierra-Blue," Worf said over the steady comm chatter of tactical reports from Gibraltar and Leonov. The two vessels were already engaged in a losing battle against the Borg cube that had entered Korvat"s...o...b..t and begun bombarding the surface. Worf continued, "Lieutenant Choudhury, arm transphasic torpedoes."
"Armed," Choudhury replied, entering commands with fast, quick touches on her console. "Twenty seconds to firing range."
Picard stared at the magnified image of Korvat on the main viewscreen. The planet"s...o...b..tal defense platforms had all been reduced to tumbling clouds of glowing-hot junk. Crimson blooms of fire erupted on the planet"s surface. From ops, Kadohata reported, "The planet"s surface defenses have been neutralized."
Picard flashed back for a moment to the scenes of devastation he"d witnessed on Tezwa less than two years earlier. Then the damage had been inflicted by Klingons using photon torpedoes; he shuddered to imagine what horrors the Borg had just wrought. If only we"d been here a few minutes sooner, he cursed silently as the situation unfolded around him.
"The Borg are locking weapons on the planet"s capital," Choudhury said. Then she added with surprise, "The Gibraltar"s maneuvering into their firing solution!"
Everyone on the Enterprise"s bridge turned their eyes to the main viewscreen as the other Sovereign-cla.s.s ship positioned itself between the Borg cube and its target, rolling to present as broad a barrier as possible. A searing beam of sickly green energy from the cube slammed into the Gibraltar just behind its deflector dish. The Gibraltar"s shields collapsed, and the green energy beam ripped into its underside. Fissures spiderwebbed across its exterior, spread through its elliptical saucer section, and buckled the pylons of its warp nacelles. Vermillion flames and jets of superheated gas erupted from broad cracks in its hull. Picard winced as if he were watching his own ship fall beneath a mortal blow.
Then a flash of white light filled the screen, and when it faded seconds later, the Gibraltar was gone.
"We"re in firing range," Choudhury said. "Locking weapons."
"Fire at will," Worf said.
On the screen, a quartet of brilliant blue projectiles raced toward the Borg cube as it fired again at Korvat"s capital city. The Alexey Leonov tried to emulate the Gibraltar"s self-sacrifice, only to be picked off by a dense fusillade from the Borg cube. Another blinding flare whited-out the main viewer.
All four of the Enterprise"s transphasic torpedoes found their target. Even as they broke the Borg cube into pieces and consumed them in blue fire, the Borg got off one last shot-a ma.s.sive pulse of emerald-hued energy that arrowed down through Korvat"s atmosphere and laid waste to its capital.
Two fire clouds blossomed like obscene flowers on the screen in front of Picard, who for the second time in one day bore witness to a burning world and its dispersing black halo of collateral damage.
Worf left his chair and prowled from station to station. "Commander Kadohata, scan the planet"s surface for survivors."
The svelte second officer tapped at her console and sighed. Her dry, Port Shangri-la accent leached the emotion from her voice as she reported, "Isolated life signs in a number of highland regions and on a few antarctic islands." She filtered the data on her screens. "I"m reading roughly twenty-nine thousand people left alive on the surface, sir." Picard appreciated her artful omission, her choice to emphasize the number of survivors rather than confirm the deaths of more than ten million people. Then she continued, "Toxins in the atmosphere and water are spreading rapidly. If the survivors aren"t evacuated in the next seventy-two hours, they"ll receive lethal doses of theta radiation."
"Lieutenant Choudhury," Worf said, "send Starfleet Command a priority request for evacuation transports."
Kadohata turned from her station to look at Worf. "Shouldn"t we start rescuing them ourselves?"
"We do not have room for that many refugees," Worf said. "We also have nowhere to relocate them to."
The slim human woman looked back and forth in frustration between Worf and the captain. "So we"re just going to leave those people there?"
Picard replied, "We have other mission priorities, Commander." He looked away from Kadohata"s accusing stare and said to Choudhury, "Any reports from the other four targets?"
"Starbase 234 was destroyed," she said, "but it looks like they took the Borg down with them. Khitomer"s safe-thanks to a kamikaze attack by the Ranger." Glancing at her console, she added, "The battles at Starbases 157 and 343 are still in progress." She frowned. "Starbase 157 is sending a Mayday, sir."
Against his better judgment, Picard said, "On speaker."
Crackles of static, wails of feedback noise...and then panicked shouts over the cries of the dying and the erratic percussion of explosions. "...phasers overloaded..." More static. "...hit them with everything we"ve got...still coming..." A scratch of deep-s.p.a.ce background radiation noise. "...all power...can"t break our shields..." A screech and a high-frequency tone pitched in and out on a long oscillation. "...coming right at us! They"re on a ramming trajectory!"
A long, loud burst of noise was followed by silence.
"They"re gone," Choudhury said, her eyes downcast as she closed the channel.
An incoming signal chirruped on Kadohata"s console. She reviewed it in a glance and reported, "Priority message from the Excalibur, sir. They"re signaling all-clear at Starbase 343."
Choudhury looked perplexed at the news. "How"d they stop the Borg without using transphasic torpedoes?"
"With a miracle, Lieutenant," Picard said with dry humor. "That"s Captain Calhoun"s ship. I"ve learned to expect the impossible from him and his crew." He shook his head as he thought of the hotheaded young Xenexian man he"d coaxed into Starfleet all those years ago-and the unorthodox, nigh-infamous starship commander he"d become.
From an auxiliary console, the Enterprise"s half-Vulcan, half-human contact specialist and relief flight controller T"Ryssa Chen heaved a tired sigh. "I"m just glad it"s over."
Her comment rankled Picard. "Glad what"s over, Lieutenant?"
The young woman recoiled from Picard"s curt response, as usual favoring the human half of her ancestry over the Vulcan. Her reply was hesitant and uncertain. "The invasion. The Borg cubes were destroyed."
Picard knew that he had to make the situation clear to Chen, and to anyone else who might have made the same, misguided a.s.sumption about the outcome of the battle they"d just fought.
"This isn"t over," he said to her. "It"s only begun." He got up from his chair and made a slow turn as he continued. "The Borg have been planning this invasion for years, and it won"t end as easily as this. They"re going to keep coming-hammering us every day, week after week, for as long as it takes...until we, or they, are gone."
His officers watched him with grim, resolute expressions as he revealed what he"d learned in his latest brush with the Collective. "This is a clash of civilizations," he explained, "and it will end when one of us falls."
12.
Tuvok found the zero-gravity environment of t.i.tan"s stellar cartography lab inconvenient but manageable, though he had to suppress a deep, subtle tinge of envy at Lieutenant Commander Pazlar"s graceful ease of motion.
Envy. The presence of such a petty emotion shamed him, despite being known to no one but himself. Over the years his control of his emotions had been degraded by one incident after another. It had started years earlier, with a mind meld to his Voyager crewmate Lon Suder, a Betazoid man who also had been a violent sociopath. In his effort to stabilize the homicidal Suder, Tuvok had almost unhinged himself.
Other traumas-including a period of brutal incarceration on Romulus before he"d joined the crew of t.i.tan-had exacerbated Tuvok"s difficulties. Most recently, Tuvok"s mind had been telepathically hijacked into the service of s.p.a.ce-dwelling life-forms known to Starfleet by the nickname "star jellies." While in their control, he had a.s.saulted Pazlar and compromised the ship"s security. Under the care of Counselor Troi, he had begun learning Betazoid techniques for channeling and controlling his emotions, but he remained wary of his feelings and the damage that they could do when he failed to master them.
"I have the next set of projections ready," Pazlar said. The delicate Elaysian reached out, her arms wide, and pulled the holographic image of the galaxy closer, compressing its scale with a balletic drawing together of her palms until they were centimeters apart. She and Tuvok towered like cosmic giants in the midst of the spiral majesty of the Milky Way, which girdled their torsos in a broad band. "That"s the source of the signals," she said, pointing out a blinking red pinpoint half a meter in front of them. "And here"s a model of the signals" trajectories." She waved dozens of pale-blue beams into existence, all of them emanating in a tight, fan-shaped cl.u.s.ter from the pinpoint and reaching toward Federation s.p.a.ce.
"Highlight the segments of those trajectories that fall within Federation s.p.a.ce," Tuvok said.
Pazlar sighed. "Sure, since you asked so nicely." She entered the command into the holographic interface, which left an odd pattern of blue lines cutting through a tiny, red-tinted region demarcating Federation territory. "There"s no way to tell where any of them terminate," she said as Tuvok patched his padd into the computer and began noting major UFP star systems along the beams" paths. "For all we know, they"re looking at another galaxy and we just happen to be in their way."
"That is a possibility," Tuvok said. "However, unless we investigate it, we cannot know for certain." A list of star systems appeared on the screen of his padd. He skimmed it and said to Pazlar, "Please enlarge the map of the Federation."
The simulation zoomed in on the red patch and expanded it until it surrounded them and all but filled the hololab. At that magnification, the angles between the various beams became far more subtle. "There must be dozens of populated systems within a light-year of each pulse," Pazlar said.
"Eighty-three, to be precise," Tuvok said, correcting her careless approximation. "However, I propose that we can limit our search to a specific region." He transmitted a set of data to the computer, and it appeared in the simulation as a dense cl.u.s.ter of yellow dots in a corner of the three-dimensional map. "Magnify, please." He waited until Pazlar had enlarged that isolated region, and then continued, "The recent Borg incursions into Federation s.p.a.ce have all occurred along the border between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, from Acamar to Ramatis." Pointing at the lone bold, blue streak that cut through the image, he added, "If these energy pulses are being used by the Borg, then this would likely be their conduit."
"I don"t see any populated star systems near it," she said. "But if its terminus opens in interstellar s.p.a.ce, that might explain why Starfleet hasn"t been able to locate it."
"Possibly," Tuvok said. He paused as he traced the beam"s path through the cloudy stain of the Azure Nebula. A tiny detail snared his attention. Pointing at the nebula"s center, he said, "Magnify again, please." Pazlar reached out and cupped the nebula in both hands, then she spread her hands and arms apart, instantly ballooning the gaseous cl.u.s.ter to dozens of times its previous size. The narrow beam of blue light cut straight through an astrocartographic marker. "Most curious," Tuvok said.
"That"s one way of putting it," Pazlar said, eyeing the image with surprise and wonder. "It pa.s.ses right through that supernova remnant." She chuckled. "If the Borg are using that beam as some kind of subs.p.a.ce pa.s.sage, that remnant"s the end of the line. Even in subs.p.a.ce, if they hit that, they"d be dead."
"Indeed," Tuvok said. "And if that is their entry point into Federation s.p.a.ce, the radiation from the remnant and the nebula would provide them with excellent cover from the region"s sensor network." He arched one eyebrow in satisfaction. "We should inform the captain immediately."
Pazlar mumbled, "Mm-hm," and she began entering a new series of commands into the hololab"s interface.
Tuvok watched her for a moment, expecting her to explain her sudden burst of activity and inspiration. After several seconds, he concluded that the intensely focused and independent-minded science officer was not going to volunteer such information. He would have to ask her for it.