Seth was already doing it.
Within moments they had restored their
equilibrium, but that was all. All systems were
still out, and the Repulse hung there in space,
helpless.
"I'm not interested in you," came the voice
of the machine with such force and unexpectedness that
Taggert actually jumped slightly. "I'm not
interested in your starship. All I want is the
Borg. When I fired on you, I used my force
beam at a fraction of its strength. If I'd
used full strength, you'd be dead. Remember that.
You would be dead."
With that comment ringing in their ears, they watched
impotently as the planet-destroyer swallowed the
large pieces of Kalish VIII. Then, having
eaten its fill, it turned without a word and headed
off across the Beta Quadrant.
Unknowingly, towards the Enterprise.
But knowingly--all too knowingly--toward the heart
of the unknown space wherein lived ... the Borg.
Chapter Eight
Vendetta ...
A dazzling array of images and voices, and
then there was the maddening glimpse of something, something
huge and ancient and capable of great destruction.
And that word ...
Vendetta, it whispered in her mind.
Vendetta, it seared into her soul. And an
image, an image of a woman with hair the
co lor of space and eyes that were ancient and
suffering. Vendetta, and it was a warning, and it was
a prayer, and it was ....
Deanna Troi sat up in bed, her body
covered in sweat, and she was gasping and disoriented.
She had that odd feeling that one gets when
awakening in a strange place, except she was in
her own cabin. But that was not where she had expected
to be.
Her heart was pounding, her pulse racing. She
fought to obtain some degree of equilibrium and,
after a few minutes, did so. Her breathing
returned to normal, her thoughts, to the quiet,
orderly pattern that she forced them into.
An empath, surrounded by beings who had no
control over their emotions mentally, never had an
easy time of it. She constantly had to practice
mental disciplines in order to screen out the steady
cacophony of emotional baggage that every human
carried. It was as if someone with very, very acute
hearing had to stuff cotton balls in their ears or
otherwise go deaf from the barrage of sounds that they
would be subjected to.
Such shields as Deanna used were an effort,
but it had become almost a casual effort. No one
even knew she was doing it, for it had become
second nature.
But something was trying to break through those barriers
now. She had a feeling that, whatever it was, it
wasn't doing so intentionally. But somewhere, somehow,
there was someone with such a forceful power of will that they were
virtually leaking telepathic impressions that were
being discerned by ...
Guinan?
Could that have somehow been what caused her to pass
out?
But what was it? What was trying to get through?
What in the world was out there?
Deanna lay back in her bed, pulling the bed
covers closer up so that they were just under her chin. Just
the way she'd liked it when she was a little girl and
her mother had tucked her in at night. Somehow the
covers seemed to provide a shield against the
monsters that lurked in the shadows--the monsters that
defied empathic detection, but were there nevertheless,
ready to consume unwary little girls.
She stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure
out what was happening. But the more she thought about it, the
harder it became for her to think, the more leaden her
thoughts. Her eyelids seemed utterly unwilling
to stay up, and the darkness became even darker.
Darker still ... Darker still ... and there was the
darkness of space.
One by one, pinpoint lights seemed to come on--
one by one, as if someone were snapping them on with a
switch somewhere. And each of those lights became a
glowing star.
A ship cut across her field of vision. It
Deanna felt a distant tickle of confusion and
fear. The ship was of a design that she had never
seen before, a design that seemed ancient. It was
oval, with a single, abbreviated warp nacelle
extending from the top. It glided through space with a
singularity of purpose ... but how could she divine
that from a ship? A ship couldn't have a purpose;
only the individual who was piloting it.
The events in the dream flowed forward. Troi
could neither stop nor control it or do anything
except hold on for the ride.
And then, suddenly, she was inside the ship. She
looked around at the tall, glistening banks of
controls. They were primitive-looking in
comparison to the glistening, seamless padds of the
Enterprise. One had a tendency to take things
for granted, and certainly the modern technology
of the Enterprise was one of those things.
Slowly she circled the interior of the ship, and
then she realized that she had no body, that she was
exploring with her mind. It was an incredible feeling
of liberation, and she was almost giddy. She was
undetectable, invisible. She could go anywhere, do
anything. ...
Then she saw her.
The woman was seated in the middle of what
appeared to be the main cabin. She was wearing a
starkly functional jumpsuit, and she was watching
the main viewing screen with an obsessive
determination. She was watching for something, and
Deanna had no idea what.
The entire thing had an air of total
unreality about it. All of it was being played out in
eerie silence, except there was some sort of
music in the back of Deanna's head, a nameless
tune that wandered through her brain from time to time,
vaguely classical, with lots of strings
playing.
Lights were flickering across the woman's face.
Lights.
Where were they coming from?
The lights became brighter and brighter, filling the
entire ship, filling her entire being. The woman
never took her eyes off the viewscreen. The
woman ....
She was a vision of beauty. Deanna wondered
why she hadn't noticed it before. She had very long,
black hair, and a narrow face, and dark eyes
set far apart ...
And in those eyes ...
Those eyes ...
Mourning. Anger. Obsession. All of it and
more overwhelmed Deanna as her mind brushed against
the woman's. And a name.
Del ... something ... she couldn't quite hear.
And a word.
Vendetta.
The woman did not react outwardly, but
Deanna sensed herself b
eing pushed away somehow.
She withdrew and hovered nearby, and the colors were just
overwhelming ...
She turned and looked at the viewscreen.
It was the barrier, the barrier at the galactic
rim.
It swirled and crackled in front of them,
electrical displays dancing across it. An
undulating miasma of pure force and power, in the
olden days the barrier had been virtually
uncrossable. Technology had improved, though.
Shielding had been improved. So much more was
possible now, and yet, no one had really
explored much beyond the edge of the galaxy. There was
no point. The distance to the nearest galaxy was
uncrossable in anything less than centuries,
and the Federation had simply shown no interest in
creating and staffing the generational ship that would be
required to make such a voyage. There had been
talk of stocking such a ship with androids similar
to Data, but the plans for duplicating the
Enterprise officer had died aborning, at a
hearing over Data's humanity.
The woman was approaching the galactic
barrier. There was that frightening determination in her
face, the certainty that she had to get through. But
what was driving her? What had possessed a lone
woman to acquire a small, private vessel
for the purpose of challenging the rim barrier? It
didn't seem to make any sense.
The ship hurtled toward the barrier, and then it
began to shake. She handled the controls with
practiced skill and determination. If Deanna
had been in her situation--alone, so utterly,
utterly alone and facing something of such incredible
power--she wondered whether she would have been able
to handle it.
She hurtled into the barrier, and the powerful forces
of the barrier grabbed her ship up and began to toss
it about, as if it were a stone skipping across a
lake. The powerful engines of the woman's small
ship strained against the onslaught, and the
display across the viewscreen was almost blinding.
Deanna felt the ship throb and shake beneath her and
she tried to reach out to grab something for support, but
she had no hands, she had nothing, and the universe was
whirling.
The woman screamed, and it was a scream of
defiance and fury, a scream designed to drag
up her emotions and create from them a shield against
fear. She let the fury overwhelm her, and a
burning desire for ... vengeance.
Vengeance for what?
Vengeance for whom?
Her ship was pounded, and she kept on going.
Her mind was assailed, and she kept on going.
Incredible forces pressed against her shielding, and
her head was pounding, and alternately she felt as
if she was going to freeze to death or have the blood
in her veins boil, but she pressed on, fighting
to keep the ship on course. She was in pursuit
of something, or perhaps running from something, or perhaps some
of both.
The ship trembled around her, but the fury of her
will was insurmountable. It seemed as if the woman were
keeping the vessel moving forward by sheer
determination.
The roar was deafening. It was as if the galaxy
itself had literally sprung to life, to try and
prevent her from attaining her goal. But nothing would
stop her. Nothing could stop her.
It seemed as if days passed. Deanna lost
all sense of time, all comprehension of how long
she was a prisoner here.
And then the forces began to subside. The
perimeter of the galaxy thinned out, the incredible
powers that had been fighting her relenting and
admitting that they had been met, they had been
bested. Her ship shot through and out, into the void.
Deanna--a silent, invisible spectator--
gasped, placing a nonexistent hand against her
nonexistent chest. She stared at the woman in the
command chair.
She was slumped back, exhausted. But then she
pulled herself up and looked out at the void that
faced her, the vast, vast nothingness that lay beyond the
galaxy.
She went to her navigational instruments. She was
definitely going to need them, for there were no stars
to guide her. But no ... she was using no
coordinates, Deanna could see now. Yet she
was guiding the ship, straight and true,
clearly hell-bent on some destination. But Troi
had no idea what it could be.
And then Deanna began to sense it. Sense
them. Sense someone calling, beckoning, like the
ancient sirens of myth. And with the same determination
as ancient sailors had known when they devotedly
smashed their ships onto the rocks in trying to get
to the unreachable women, so, too, was this mystery
woman now sending her ship hurtling forward toward
voices that only she could hear. Except
Deanna heard them too.
Help us, they whispered. Avenge us.
We have been waiting such a very long time ... we
thought no one could hear us.
And the woman responded to the voices in
Deanna's head. "Anyone c ould have heard you,"
she whispered, "but they had to listen. And they had
to know where to look."
Where are we going? Deanna whispered. Who
are you? Why am I seeing all this? How?
Time seemed to stop, and then the woman gasped.
Deanna turned and saw what was on the screen,
and she couldn't believe it.
It was huge, immense beyond all reckoning.
Some sort of device, with great spikes, and a
maw, and ...
And it was crying.
At last, it said over and over again, at
last. You've come to us. And we can destroy our
destroyers.
What's happening! Deanna screamed
soundlessly. I don't understand! This is madness!
I have to stop this! Stop this now!
And the woman slowly turned and looked at her
--looked right at her.
"You can't stop it," she said. "It's already
happened. This will be the culmination of something that was
started centuries before your birth. I am a link
in the chain. The final link. I will be the pilot.
The instrument. And you will bear witness."
Deanna shook her nonexistent head.
Witness to what? she demanded.
"To the destruction of the soulless ones." She
pointed at the great machine that hung before them. "It
begins here. It ends when the last of the soulless ones
are as dead as the last of my kind."
But why am I here? How am I here?
"You heard the songs of the minds," she said.
"We have engaged the soulless ones for the first time and
destroyed them. We have engaged those who
would stop us from destroying the soulless ones, and they were
helpless against us. The minds and souls of the lost are
rejoicing, and their song was," she paused, "quite l
oud.
It is difficult for me to quiet them sometimes.
Do not worry, though. You will have the sense of us, but
not the knowing. Not yet. Not until he knows. He
deserves to be the first to know. I shall endeavor
to quiet them in the future, so they will not disturb you
further."
Wait! Deanna cried out ...
And then they were gone.
And she was gone.
And she sat up.
She stumbled out of bed, her mind awhirl with
images, and grabbed a robe around herself. Names and
concepts were smashing against each other in her head,
coalescing, and she cried out into the darkness,
"Personal log!"
"Working," came the serenely calm voice of the
computer. "Personal log of Counselor
Deanna Troi now operating. Awaiting
entry."
"A dream," she said urgently, "and it was
..."
Lights. And energy.
Flashes.
"There was a woman, and she was ..."
A shouting in her head, a feeling of rejoicing.
"Ven ..." She put her hands over her
ears, trying to narrow her thoughts, to call it up.
An image of huge towers, like spikes, and no
stars, and, "Ven ..."
"Awaiting a complete sentence," the computer
prompted. It was programmed with grammar from every
known language and would occasionally help out when a
speaker was apparently having difficulty.
Troi rubbed her temples as if she could
somehow physically push her brain into working. "I
had a dream," she said slowly, "and ... and ..."
Ven ...
"I can't remember," she said softly.
INTERMISSION
"Try to raise them again," said Martok
impatiently.
They had lost contact with the Daimon, and with the two
guards, and with Darr, and it had been hours since
any of them had checked in. Martok knew what
the guards intended and dismissed the notion that Darr
could have posed any impediment to the plan. But enough was
definitely enough, and as much as he disliked the
notion that he might have to send another landing party in
after them, that's what he would do if absolutely
necessary.
The other Ferengi on the bridge were looking
to him for guidance and leadership, and he would be
damned if he would let them down. If for no
other reason than that he knew, firsthand, what could
happen to a leader when the crew had lost confidence
in his ability to lead.
The three Borg ships hung there, unmoving.