He was smart enough to grab a lifeline when it was offered. He smiled back. "There were definite similarities in strategy."
"Jean-Luc," she said with mock umbrage, "are you saying I wore you down?" She pressed closer against him and stroked his smooth pate. He extended his arm across her shoulders and rested his head against her silky, fiery red hair.
"I"m just saying that I could tell resistance was futile."
"If you call a few pathetic excuses "resistance,"" she said, obviously enjoying the opportunity to needle him.
It had been nearly three months since the Enterprise crew had succeeded in its mission to hunt down and destroy the Borg-a.s.similated Federation science vessel U.S.S. Einstein. At the end of that mission, Beverly had sensed and taken advantage of an opportunity to cajole Picard into the most hopeful undertaking of his life: starting a family with her.
There had been no denying that, on some level, he had wanted this for a long time. The need had been awakened in him nearly ten years earlier, when his older brother, Robert, and young nephew, Rene, had been killed in a tragic fire at the family"s vineyard home in Labarre, France.
Beverly"s reason for wanting a family was just as poignant to Picard. Her only child, Wesley-whom she had treasured not only as a son but as the last surviving remnant of her late husband, Jack Crusher-had evolved many years earlier into a Traveler, a wondrous being capable of moving freely through time and s.p.a.ce...but he also was no longer fully human. The more Wesley had grown into his powers as a Traveler, the less frequently he had returned to visit with Beverly. He had appeared at their hastily arranged, low-key wedding a few months earlier, but there was no telling when he might return-or if he ever would.
After the Einstein was destroyed, Picard had thought they"d earned a chance to seize their dream. After all, Voyager had destroyed the Borg"s transwarp hub to Federation s.p.a.ce a few years earlier. The Enterprise and her crew had stopped the most fearsome Borg cube ever encountered. And the last rogue Borg element in Federation s.p.a.ce seemed to have been eliminated.
For a moment, Picard had dared to hope. He and Beverly had started their family. And less than a month later, as they were still marveling at their newly conceived son, the Borg had begun their blitzkrieg into Federation s.p.a.ce.
You should"ve known. You"ve always known.
There was no going back now. He and Beverly had committed themselves, and they were going to see this through, to whatever end awaited them. Even as they huddled in the dim light of their quarters and shut themselves away from the gathering storm, he knew that this interlude of happy domesticity had never been fated to last. It was doomed to end in tragedy, like every other moment of joy he"d known in his life.
"It"s time," he said with a glance at a chrono set on the end table beside him. He extricated himself from her embrace and stood. Then he picked up the tricorder from the sofa and turned it back on, to admire the image of his son again, even if just for a moment. "You"re right. He"s amazing. In every way."
He switched off the tricorder and set it on a table as Beverly stood beside him. She laid her warm hands on either side of his neck and kissed him tenderly. Resting her forehead against his, she said, "I"ll be in sickbay if you need me."
"Meet you back here when it"s over."
She nodded somberly, her demeanor calm. They let their hands fall away from each other, and she stayed behind as he left, to avoid the awkward ritual of another farewell in the corridor. Sharpening his mind for battle, he left their quarters at a brisk step and headed for the turbolift, which would bring him to the bridge.
In less than an hour, the Enterprise would arrive at the Federation world of Ramatis, near the Klingon border. If Picard and his crew had responded quickly enough to the planet"s distress signal, the Enterprise might arrive only a few minutes later than the Borg cube that was on its way to the planet.
Picard knew that the time for diplomacy was past.
It was time to go to war.
From his first glimpse of the scorched and glowing northern hemisphere of Ramatis on the Enterprise"s main viewer, Worf knew that every living being on the planet"s surface was dead-and that the Borg cube in orbit was responsible.
"No life signs on the planet," said Commander Miranda Kadohata, the ship"s second officer. "It"s been cooked down to the mantle." She swiveled her seat away from the ops console to add, "The Borg cube is sweeping up all the satellites and defense-platform debris in orbit, probably for raw materials."
Disgust churned up bile in Worf"s throat. An enemy that would conquer a world to possess it could be hated and still be respected as an adversary. The Borg, however, had undertaken a campaign of slaughter without even the pretense of a.s.similating the people of the Federation. Their mission had been defined in stark terms by their actions at Acamar, Barolia, and now this ill-fated world. The Borg agenda was nothing less than genocide.
Captain Picard"s voice snapped orders through the grim hush of the bridge. "Helm, intercept course, full impulse." The captain looked at Worf. "Destroy the Borg ship."
"Aye, sir."
Worf moved to stand beside the ship"s chief of security and senior tactical officer, Lieutenant Jasminder Choudhury. The lithe, fortyish human woman"s unruly mane of raven hair was tied in a tightly bound ponytail much like Worf"s own.
"Prepare to execute attack pattern Tango-Red," Worf said. He discreetly pointed out a reading on her console to her. Dropping his voice to a coaching whisper, he added, "Increase the frequency of the transphasic shielding"s nutation."
"Aye, sir," Choudhury said with a polite nod as she made the adjustment. She was highly skilled and a quick learner, Worf had observed. When they had first met, he had been concerned that her philosophy regarding security matters-which she shared with her deputy chief, a Betazoid man named Rennan Konya-might be too pacifistic. After seeing them both in action during the mission to stop the Borg-a.s.similated science vessel U.S.S. Einstein, however, Worf no longer had any doubts about their competence, or their ability to wield force when necessary.
As the captain rose from his chair, Worf said, "Arm torpedoes and target the Borg vessel."
He noted with approval how deftly Choudhury found the Borg vessel"s known vulnerable points. "Locked," she replied.
Confident that she had no further need of his oversight, he moved to an aft station and configured it to gather damage and casualty reports.
Around the bridge, he saw hunched shoulders and clenched jaws, people tensed for action in a battle that would require little more than pressing b.u.t.tons. Kadohata was the exception. Her countenance of mixed Asian and European ancestry was the very portrait of calm, and her British-sounding accent conveyed the same unflappability that Worf had come to expect from the captain. "Borg vessel in firing range in ten seconds," she reported.
The Borg cube loomed like a nightmare on the main viewer.
Worf longed for the raw physicality of the great Klingon battles of old, fought on fields of honor where warriors faced one another with blades to test both prowess and courage. War was more glorious then, he brooded. But death remains the same.
"The Borg cube is arming weapons," Choudhury declared.
Three shots struck the Enterprise. Deafening concussions rocked the ship, and consoles along the starboard bulkhead crackled with sparks, belched acrid smoke, and went dark.
Captain Picard glanced at Worf. "Now, Number One."
"Fire at will," Worf said. "Helm, execute attack pattern!"
Streaks like blue fire blazed away from the Enterprise and ripped into the towering black grids of dense machinery that served as the outer hull of the Borg cube. Large segments of the Borg ship disintegrated as the torpedoes exploded, and a cobalt-colored conflagration began to consume the cube from within.
Then it returned fire.
The bridge crew was thrown like rag dolls rolling in a drum as the Enterprise"s inertial dampers overloaded. Everyone was hurled to port, and they plummeted as the ship kept rolling. In the span of just a few seconds, they struck the consoles along the port bulkhead, tumbled across the overhead, and dropped hard back to the deck as the ship"s artificial gravity and inertial compensators reset themselves.
Worf"s nose caught the scent of blood, which mingled with smoke and sharpened his focus. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees and looked first to the captain-who was bruised and had suffered a sc.r.a.pe on his forehead, but was not seriously hurt-and then to the main viewer, on which he saw the Borg cube consumed from within by an indigo fury. The cube collapsed into itself. Its core of blue fire turned blinding white...and then the ship was just a cloud of carbon dust and superheated gas.
If we could arm all of Starfleet with these weapons, Worf imagined, we could end this war with the Borg on our own terms.
He finished a cursory review of the damage and casualty reports and moved to the captain"s side to help him up.
"Thank you, Mister Worf," the captain said once he was back on his feet. "Damage report."
"Hull breaches on decks twenty-six through twenty-nine, and the ventral shield generators are offline."
Picard nodded once. "Casualties?"
"Several on the lower decks," Worf said. "Mostly blunt-force trauma. No fatalities."
"Good," Picard said. "Are the sensors still operational?"
Worf stole a quick look at Kadohata, who wobbled her hand in a gesture that meant sort of. Worf looked at the captain. "Their function is limited."
"Focus our repairs on the sensors. We need them to trace the Borg ship"s arrival trajectory."
"Aye, sir."
The captain palmed a sheen of sweat from his forehead and regarded the smoldering planet on the main viewer with a frown. "I"ll be in my ready room, Commander. You have the bridge."
The battered and shaken crew remained at their posts and focused on their jobs as Picard left the bridge. Worf could tell that despite their swift victory over the Borg cube, the jarring blow the ship had taken had rattled the nerves of a few of the younger officers. Figuring that the crew would benefit from a bit of encouragement, Worf made a slow tour of the bridge stations and offered quiet, low-key compliments. It did not have the effect he"d hoped for. By the time he reached the tactical station, he noticed sly, questioning looks pa.s.sing from one junior officer to another.
Choudhury confided to him, "I think you confused them."
He didn"t mean to glare at her, it was just a habit. To her credit, she didn"t flinch from his withering stare. "I was only trying to improve morale," he said, relaxing his expression.
"That"s what confused them," she said.
That drew another glare from Worf, which, in turn, provoked a wan smile from Choudhury. She is teasing me, Worf realized, and he smirked. "You also did well."
"Stop," she joked. "You"re confusing me."
He exhaled heavily in mock frustration. They stood together for a few moments. She stared at the image of Ramatis on the screen. Worf surveyed the bridge and was about to return to the center seat when Choudhury said, "That was home to nearly a billion people. An entire civilization. And it"s gone forever." She looked at Worf. "If the rest of the fleet had transphasic torpedoes, we might be able to stop this from happening again."
"Perhaps," Worf said. "But those decisions are made by the admiralty, and we must respect the chain of command." Choudhury clenched her jaw as if she were struggling not to say something. He found her intensity unusual; she was a tranquil person by nature, and not one to evince strong emotions. "You disagree?"
She returned his inquiring stare with a fiery gaze. "I just wonder sometimes...what if the admiralty is wrong?"
Worf smirked. "Good question." He left her to brood on that and returned to the center seat to monitor the repair efforts.
In fact, Worf shared Choudhury"s sentiments more than he could say. The admiralty, in Worf"s opinion, were making a grave error by not distributing the new weapon design, which had been reverse-engineered from prototypes acquired from an alternate future by the late Kathryn Janeway of the Starship Voyager. Transphasic warheads were quickly proving to be the best defense against the renewed Borg onslaught. The admiralty, however, remained concerned that the Borg would eventually adapt to this seemingly unstoppable weapon, thereby robbing Starfleet of its last effective defense. Consequently, the Enterprise was the only ship in Starfleet that was armed with the warheads. That meant it was up to its crew to find out how the Borg were bypa.s.sing the Federation"s defenses-and to do so while there was still a Federation left to defend.
With each pa.s.sing week, the number of Borg attacks had been rising, and Worf had detected a pattern in their targets and frequency. The Borg"s invasion was building to what he suspected was some kind of critical ma.s.s, and when it was reached, it would be too late to stop it.
Worf glowered at the burning planet on the main viewer. For a billion people on Ramatis III, he reminded himself bitterly, it is already too late.
5.
Dax entered the Aventine"s Deck One conference room to find several of her senior officers waiting for her. She took her seat at the head of the polished, synthetic black granite conference table and nodded to the others.
Bowers sat to her immediate left, and Lieutenant Leishman was seated next to him. Across the table from Leishman was the senior operations officer, Lieutenant Oliana Mirren, a pale and reed-thin woman of Slavic ancestry who wore her blond hair short and closely cropped. Helkara sat between Mirren and Dax. The three humans at the table, Dax noted with quiet amus.e.m.e.nt, each had a cup of coffee in front of them.
As soon as Dax was settled, she said, "Let"s get started."
Helkara leaned forward. "The salvage of the Columbia"s logs is under way, Captain. Ensign Riordan is helping its computer talk to ours, and they seem to be getting on splendidly."
Leishman cut in, "I"d just like to commend Ensign Riordan for his work on this project, Captain. If it weren"t for the schematics he found in Earth"s archives, I doubt we could"ve made a successful connection to the Columbia"s memory banks."
"I"ll note it in my log," Dax said. She asked Helkara, "How much of their data have you translated so far?"
The Zakdorn inflated his lower lip while he pondered his answer. It gave him an unflattering resemblance to a Terran bullfrog. "About thirty-five percent, I"d say," he responded at last. "We"re dividing our time between downloading the sensor logs and the flight records."
Dax turned her attention toward Mirren. "Have you made any progress in a.n.a.lyzing their data?"
"Some," Mirren said. "By cross-referencing the two sources, we"re developing a simulation of the Columbia"s crash landing and its approach to the planet. We"re starting from the last synchronous data points and working backward from there."
Bowers nodded and then asked, "How far along is the sim?"
"We"ve locked down roughly the last forty seconds before the Columbia impacted the surface," Mirren said. "It looks as if the ship had been on autopilot as it-" A dry crinkling sound stopped her in midsentence. She glowered across the table.
Leishman unwrapped a bite-size piece of chocolate, which Dax suspected was from the chief engineer"s jealously guarded personal stash of sweets. Years earlier, on Defiant, her colleagues had routinely raided her hidden candy cache, and Dax suspected that history would soon be repeated. Leishman popped the morsel into her mouth and started to chew. She froze as she realized that everyone else was staring at her. Through half-masticated chocolate, she asked in a defensive tone, "What?"
With the ire of an interrupted elementary-school teacher, Mirren replied, "Do you mind?"
"I get low blood sugar," Leishman said with guileless sincerity through cocoa-colored teeth. "Makes me cranky."
Dax smirked at Sam Bowers"s put-upon expression, because she knew from experience that what her XO really wanted to do was laugh. He and Dax both appreciated Leishman"s knack for finding out what annoyed high-strung people and then exploiting it for her own clandestine amus.e.m.e.nt. Apparently, Leishman had decided that Mirren was going to be her latest victim.
Bowers glossed over the interruption. "Mirren, you said the Columbia"s autopilot had been engaged?"
"Aye, sir."
"Any idea by whom?"
Mirren shook her head. "Not yet. We"re not even sure when it was activated. It might have been online for minutes, or it could"ve been flying the ship for years."
"All right," Dax said. "We still have twenty-one hours to work on this before we have to pull up stakes. Sam, I want all our resources focused on this. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Bowers replied.
She planted her palms on the tabletop. "Thank you, everyone. Dismissed." The others stood half a second after Dax, and they moved in a ragged line toward the door to the aft corridor. Leishman fell into step a couple of paces behind Mirren and began whistling a soft and erratic melody. It took only a few seconds for Mirren to look back at Leishman and fume through clenched teeth, "Must you?"
"Sorry," Leishman said. "Helps me think."
As the group exited the conference room, Dax hoped that Mirren developed a sense of humor soon-because if she didn"t, she was going to be on the receiving end of Leishman"s subtle but deliberate irritations for a long, long time.
"This place gives me the creeps," said engineering crewman Yott, his voice echoing down the Columbia"s empty D Deck corridor.
Chief Celia Komer looked up from the antiquated power-distribution node she was dismantling, brushed a sweaty lock of hair from her face, and scowled teasingly at the fidgety young Bolian man. "Don"t tell me you"re seeing ghosts, too?"
His eyes darted one way, then another. "Not ghosts," he said. "But something"s been following us since we came up from E Deck." A low, reedy moan of wind disturbed the dusting of fine-particle sand they had tracked down from the surface.
Komer sighed. She pointed her palm beacon aft, down one round-ribbed stretch of pa.s.sageway. Then she turned it forward to light up another before aiming it squarely into Yott"s face. "Who"s following us? The invisible man?"
"Chief, I"m serious. There"s something here."
"Fine." Komer hated to humor superst.i.tious behavior, but it seemed to her that the only way to get Yott back to work would be to take him seriously for a few moments. She set down her coil spanner, stood up, turned, and lifted her tricorder from its holster on her hip. "This"ll just take a few seconds," she explained. "I"m running a full-spectrum scan for life-forms and energy readings. Anything special you want me to look for?"
Yott shook his head and continued to shift his gaze every few seconds, as if he expected something to try and ambush him.
"Y"know, you ought to lay off the raktajino," Komer said with a grin, hoping to lighten the mood. "It makes you jumpy."