potential threat?" he demanded. There was no
trace of sarcasm, despite the Borg
soldier's immobile state. Riker had
identified something that could be hostile, and Worf
wanted to make sure that he knew what to shoot,
should there be a problem. Indeed, some might say that
the Klingon had a terminal case of itchy trigger
finger--terminal for whomever the phaser was pointed
at.
"That's him," said Riker. "Although it seems
at the moment we have everything in hand."
"Then I shall be here in case they get out of
hand," said Worf firmly, and that was clearly that.
Riker moved around to where Geordi was standing,
having heard Geordi's muttering of discovery.
"What have you got, Mr. La Forge?"
"Take a look at this," said Geordi, and
he pointed to the Borg's upper arm.
Riker leaned forward and frowned. "What is that
...? A kitchen knife or something?"
"That's right," agreed La Forge. "See here?
Somebody jammed it into the components right here," and
his finger traced the area in the air just above. "It
didn't stop the Borg. Didn't kill him.
But it scrambled him real good. And I think it
saved his life."
"I'm not following," admitted Riker.
Worf was frowning, which was not unusual, but this was
deeper than the norm. "I do not understand, either.
How could an attempt to kill it, in fact,
save it?"
Rather than answer Worf's question directly,
Data said, "I believe that Geordi is
correct. This component here, just above the
trapezius, is--"
"Hold it," said Riker, and again he tapped his
communicator. Under ordinary circumstances, and
even extraordinary ones, Riker felt no
compunction in handling everything himself. But the Borg,
and anything having to do with them, was a special
case, and Riker wanted to keep his commanding officer
absolutely current with every development, as it was
happening. "Riker to Captain."
"Yes, Number One," came Picard's
voice.
"We found a Borg soldier. Alive."
"Alive?" Picard was clearly
astonished. Small wonder. No living being had
as much personal experience with the Borg as Picard
did, and he knew the unlikelihood of such a
discovery. "How is that possible?"
"If you'll keep this line open, I believe
Mr. La Forge and Mr. Data were about to inform us
of that." He then nodded his head in the direction of
his two officers.
"There is a kitchen knife," said Data, for
benefit of Picard, who couldn't see it,
"protruding from one of the parts that is removed from
Borg soldiers when they are disabled. We have
theorized that this component--situated on the upper
arm, just above the trapezius--was what kept the
Borg soldiers in touch with their central mind.
This particular component would send a steady relay
message to the central mind, and the central mind
would, in turn, relay a message back. It was
a continuous loop, and when the component was removed
... either from the Borg soldier, or by means of
destruction of the origin point ... the loop would be
severed and the soldier would be destroyed."
"A very Alexandrian solution to a Gordian
problem," commented Picard.
"This technology, as advanced as it is,
apparently didn't take into account something as
primitive as a kitchen knife," Geordi now
continued. "It's a total fluke.
One-in-a-million shot. I think what
happened is that the knife jammed into the
circuits, scrambled them, and created a continuous
feed loop right within the Borg soldier himself.
Basically, he sends out a steady message for
instructions and then answers himself. But he can't
give himself instructions, so essentially he's a
blank slate. He's sitting and waiting for some
sort of acknowledgment that just isn't coming, because he's
the beginning and the end of his own little world."
"He has no idea that their ship was
destroyed," said Riker.
"Not a clue. He's a circuit to nowhere,"
Geordi told him.
"And if we remove the knife? Or the
component?"
Geordi waved his hands like a magician's.
"Then pfoof. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
"Amen," said Riker.
"I want him brought up here," said Picard.
"I would not advise that, sir," Worf said
sternly. "If he self-destructs,
he could pose a threat to whoever is near."
"No, he won't," said Picard sharply.
Perhaps a little too sharply, because he sounded
slightly calmer as he continued, "We know what
happens when they destroy themselves. They've done it
in our presence any number of times. The Borg
waste nothing, including the energy for some
pyrotechnically impressive explosion. I
want him up here and, if possible, salvaged."
"Yes sir," said Riker. "We'll be right
up. Riker out."
Geordi was staring at the Borg's face. It
was one of the oddest things he had ever seen. Alive,
yet dead. He started to reach out to touch the
warrior's face, and Worf immediately grabbed
Geordi's wrist. La Forge looked up in
surprise.
"I would not advise it," Worf said with a
firmness that indicated this was far more than advice.
Yet Geordi couldn't help but look down.
"I think the captain's right. I think there might
be something salvageable here. There's something that ...
I don't know, I can't put my finger on it."
"I'm sure the captain will be relieved to know
you agree with him, Mr. La Forge," said Riker
as he tapped his communicator. "Riker
to transporter room. Seven to beam up."
"Another survivor?" came O'Brien's
voice. These days, no matter how difficult the
situation, he sounded inordinately cheerful.
Marriage was wearing well on him.
Geordi stared thoughtfully at the Borg
soldier. The soldier stared back up at him with
unseeing eyes. And even if those eyes could see
him, Geordi wouldn't be able to tell. He could
see thermal readings to the precise centigrade,
but he couldn't see a person's expression.
"Not another survivor," said Geordi
thoughtfully. "Another victim."
Picard sat on the bridge, staring at the
savaged planet below them, and yet only part of his
mind was on it. The rest was dwelling on
Guinan's mishap earlier. And the word she had
supposedly been muttering in Riker's arms. The
word that she could not remember having said.
Vendor.
It made no sense. And yet, somehow, it
nagged at him.
He felt as if he should know it or
understand it. He felt as if it should have some sort of
significance to him.
&n
bsp; It tickled and probed at his subconscious.
He leaned back in his chair for a moment, then
stood. The bridge crew watched him, waiting
patiently for some new order, but none was
forthcoming.
Vendor.
That wasn't it. He knew without knowing why that that
wasn't it. And he also knew, without knowing why, that
the truth was buried somewhere in his mind. There was
someth ing he had long forgotten, something that he should be
remembering but couldn't, or wouldn't. It nagged at
him, poked and prodded him, frustrated and
infuriated him.
Vendor.
Ven ...
"Damn," he said in quiet frustration.
Chapter Seven
The Starship Repulse slowed to impulse when
the sensors detected something entering the outskirts
of the Kalish star system. The Repulse had
simply been passing through, on their way to Howell
320 with a couple of Federation ambassadors
aboard, hot to defuse a potential civil war
on that strife-worn planet. The war was on the
verge of breaking out because of a cure to a plague that
was being withheld by the government, in hopes that the
unfrly factions would do them the service of
dropping dead from it. The unfrly factions were
getting unfrlier by the day, even the hour.
Now, however, concerns over a civil war were quite
secondary. Especially when Captain Ariel
Taggert saw the readings that were coming through on the
preliminary sensors.
"I don't assume," she said grimly, "that
we might have, say, a large spider crawling
across the sensor dish somehow. Or perhaps something
equally innocuous to explain this away," she added,
brushing her thick red hair out of her face.
"Captain," affirmed the ops officer, "I
wish I could. This thing we're picking up ...
it's hundreds of miles long. And heading our
way."
Just to make matters all the more irritating,
Taggert's communicator beeped. She touched it
and said, not especially patiently, "Yes?"
"We've stopped," came the annoyed
voice of a woman.
Taggert sighed. "No, Doctor, we have not
stopped. We've gone to impulse drive."
"That's as good as stopping."
"Doctor, instead of wasting time chatting with me,
I think it'd be in your best interest to get
sickbay prepared. We may have a problem on
our hands."
"Problem? A larger problem than helping those
people on Howell 320?"
"Yes, Doctor Pulaski, a considerably
larger problem. Shall we say--to give you an idea
--a problem a few thousand times larger than the
ship you were serving on before you returned to us?"
There was dead silence for a moment. "The
Enterprise is over two thousand feet in
length. Something thousands of times bigger ... that's
monstrous."
"Very good, Doctor," said Taggert. Damn.
Pulaski was a superb doctor, and Taggert had
been thrilled when she'd been reassigned to the
Repulse, the ship she'd left to join the
Enterprise crew. But blast, she could be
difficult to deal with sometimes. "Now, you get
ready to do your job, because if that thing is hostile,
we're going to have more casualties than you know what
to do with." She didn't bother to add that chances
were, the entire ship would be a casualty, if
push came to shove.
She didn't have to say it, and Pulaski
didn't have to ask about it. Instead, she said
simply, "I read you. Sickbay out."
Taggert turned back to face the screen, although
her eyes had never fully strayed from it.
"Sensors and viewscreen on maximum," she
said slowly. "Go to yellow alert."
The shields came up, and the Repulse
proceeded cautiously forward.
The Enterprise sickbay doors hissed
open and Picard entered. He slowed enough to give
quick, understanding, and sympathetic nods to those members
of the Penzatti race that had been brought to the
Enterprise for treatment. As Dr. Terman had
mentioned, the Curie abilities were already
overtaxed.
He walked past one Penzatti who reached up
and grabbed his arm as he went by. "Are you the
captain?" he asked urgently.
Picard gently disengaged the strong
grasp from his forearm. "I am Captain Picard,
yes. If you'll excuse me for a--"
"I am called Dantar," he said. Although he
had been mended and was resting comfortably, the damage
done to his body and to his spirit was clearly
evident. "I am afraid that I did not conduct
myself especially well when dealing with your men. They
were exceptionally patient with me while I was in my
... delirium. I appreciate that, and wanted
to commend them."
"I will relay that to them," said Picard, trying
to hide his impatience. For all his skills, no
one had ever accused him of having a superb
bedside manner.
"Are we still in orbit around Penzatti?"
"For the time being."
"Good." Dantar let his head fall back.
"There's nothing there for me, and yet I can't bring
myself to want to leave it just yet." He looked
back up at Picard. "My blasters. My
twin Keldin blasters. Your man Worf
removed them from my person as soon as I was
"Doubtlessly, they're in the armory. They'll
be there for safekeeping."
"They'll be safest with me. We Penzatti
value our weapons very highly," said Dantar.
"Those Keldin blasters were passed on through my
family, father to son. They are extremely
powerful. They could punch a hole through the side of
your ship."
"Then they are definitely staying locked up,"
said Picard firmly. "I'm sorry, Dantar,
but that's the way it will be. There will be no risk of
puncturing of my ship."
"But Captain--"
"Excuse me," said Picard, and he turned
and walked into a private examining room.
There he saw a formidable sight.
For a moment his heart leaped into his throat and
took a choke hold there. It was the first time he'd
been confronted by a Borg since his hideous
encounter in which he'd been transformed into a
mechanized puppet of his former self. He had
dreaded this moment, but now that it was here, he realized
that the worry had been larger than the actual
encounter. Now, when he was finally facing the
creature that haunted his dreams, and had caused
him to wake up screaming three times in the past
months, he saw no threat. He saw
only an object to be pitied.
At least, that's what he kept telling himself.
The Borg soldier was strapped to a vertical
biobed, the one that, mere months ago, Locutus
of Borg had been on. The biobe
d was lowered
into place, and the soldier was staring straight ahead.
Staring might not have even been the right word, for staring
implied that some action was being taken. The Borg's
eyes simply happened to be pointing in that
direction.
Unlike the more limited medical tricorders,
the biobed was capable of giving a full medical
readout, even on the hard-to-scan Borg.
Beverly Crusher was studying them carefully.
Nearby were Geordi, Data, and Riker.
The side of Data's head was open, exposing
a complex array of circuitry.
"I don't know if this neural link is going
to work, Data," Crusher was saying. "The
microcircuitry integrated into the skin of this
soldier is far more extensive than what we
dealt with in the case of ... Captain," she said,
seeing him for the first time.
He said nothing, merely nodded his head
slightly, and then slowly circled the unmoving
Borg warrior. The others stood respectfully
silent, aware of the thoughts running through the
captain's mind. Aware of the private horror
that he was, to some degree, reliving.
"So the interactive circuits are interacting
with themselves, eh?" the captain said after a time.
"Looks that way, sir," said Geordi.
"Data was hoping to get around it the way he did
with you--by severing the link on a neural level."
"It won't work," repeated Crusher firmly.
"This soldier is too far gone. At least with the
captain, there was still some Jean-Luc Picard
helping us, fighting to come back to us. There's nothing
here, though."
"I don't agree," said Geordi. He could
not understand the feeling of curiosity that was overwhelming
him every time he looked at the Borg soldier. Of
course, he remembered what curiosity did to the
proverbial cat, but he didn't care. He was
determined to figure out just what it was he found so
fascinating about this individual. "I think it's
worth the risk."
"The risk," said Crusher, "is that if we
make a wrong move--if we don't figure out
a way to deal with this built-in
self-destruct mechanism--we're going to wind
up with one dead Borg."
"There's someone trapped in there, Doctor,"
said Picard fervently. "I concur with Mr. La
Forge. We cannot stand idly by while some poor
devil is being held prisoner
to microcircuitry and implanted hardware."
He stared straight into the glassy, unblinking