Hobson, his voice filled with utter disbelief.
"What?!" Korsmo was completely
incredulous. "How the hell fast can they go,
anyway?"
"I believe I said that Borg upward speed
has not been determined," said Shelby. Although she
knew it was her imagination, she felt as if
tremendous forces were pressing against her body.
Warp speed increased exponentially. They were now
moving at 3,053 times the speed of light. It was
incredible. Mankind couldn't go faster
than this, she, thought, and perhaps wasn't meant to.
"Borg at warp nine-point-nine-nine," said
Hobson, and, indeed, the Borg ship was now
pulling away, its speed virtually double that of the
Chekov.
"I don't believe it," excla imed Peel.
"That requires nearly infinite power."
"The Borg have a knack for acquiring what they
need," Shelby said. "If they never have such power
themselves, then they acquire it from some race they
conquered. They're very efficient that way."
With every passing second the Borg ship became
smaller and smaller. "Full magnification,"
ordered Korsmo, and for a brief moment the departing
Borg ship loomed larger, but then it began
to recede once more.
"We're losing speed," said Hobson
hollowly.
"Bridge to engineering--to was
Anticipating what the captain was about to say,
Parke cut him off. "The Borg attack
damaged us, Captain. I can't give you the
full ten minutes."
"What can you give me?"
There was a pause, and then, with true understanding of
her commanding officer's frustration, she said simply,
"My apologies."
He looked at the screen and watched the Borg
ship grow smaller and smaller, hurtling on its
way. And he considered his actions of the past few
minutes. "Mine to you also, Chief," he said after
a moment. "Power us down to safe cruising speed,
helm."
"Reducing to warp six," said Hobson, unable
to totally hide the relief in his voice.
Korsmo stood, hands behind his back, and watched
the Borg ship become as small as any of the stars
that hung in space before them. He sighed. "They
ignored us."
"To all intents and purposes, yes, sir,"
agreed Shelby.
"Send word to the Enterprise at Penzatti,"
he said. "Tell him the Borg have been sighted,
and feed them the coordinates." He paused and then
added, with a trace of satisfaction, "Maybe those
bastards can move at warp nine-point-nine-nine,
but subspace radio moves at thirty times that.
Let's see them move faster than that."
"Do you think," said Hobson after a moment, "that
they can do warp ten?"
They all looked at him. "Basic
physics, Mr. Hobson," said Korsmo, with a
touch of the dry humor that usually accompanied him.
Shelby couldn't help but notice that he was sounding
more like himself, and was grateful for it. He continued,
"Warp ten can't be reached. It's infinite
speed."
"But if anyone could, the Borg could," Shelby
said.
Korsmo stared at her. "No one could."
"Captain," she said, "I hope you're right.
The Borg have already put enough uncertainty into the
universe. I'd hate to think that the absolute
speed limit of the universe is just another rule
for the Borg to destroy."
"Oh, don't worry, Commander," said
Korsmo. "I've generally found that the
pre-eminent rule of the universe is that
Jean-Luc Picard can handle anything. As long
as that's intact, I imagine the laws of
physics have very little to be concerned about."
Chapter Eleven
"Your sister?" Picard sat back in his
chair, amazed. "Your sister?" he repeated.
She shrugged slightly. "Well, not sister of
blood, which is the main way that humans accept
sibling relationships. But we were bonded as sisters
Guinan put up a hand. "I'm getting ahead
of myself. Let me try and explain ..."
"Yes, I think you'd better," said Picard
firmly.
Troi, for her part, was amazed. She had never
seen Guinan appear any way other than at
peace with herself and utterly in control of a situation.
Everything from the appearance of Q to the disappearance
of the captain when the Borg attacked had been
taken in stride by the unflappable Ten-Forward
hostess. Now, though, for the first time, Guinan
actually seemed discomfited.
"I told you once," she began, "that my people were
attacked by the Borg, that many of us died, and we were
scattered by them. What I did not mention to you was
our first awareness of the Borg. It came when we
found Delcara."
"How old is Delcara?" asked Troi.
"About as old as I am," replied Guinan.
Then she smiled, although there was little humor to it.
"You're not going to ask a lady her age now, are
you?"
Picard leaned forward intensely. "When did you
find her? Tell me about her."
There was something in Picard's voice that
indicated far more than normal interest in the
response. Troi could not help but notice the
anxiety from her captain, his curiosity about this
Delcara far beyond the normal interest that this
situation would elicit.
"She was beautiful," she began. "A luminous
presence. I've never met anyone like her since;
only those who were, at best, faint copies.
She radiated peace and harmony, at least at
first, and that was reflected in her outer beauty
hair as black as the depths of space, skin that
seemed to shimmer. And she was a powerful telepath.
Hers was a mind attuned to the wonders of the
galaxy, and the ebb and flow of destiny. All that was
reflected in her eyes. Eyes that ..."
"Eyes that gazed directly into the back of your
head," said Picard. "Eyes that spoke
volumes, even when they were silent."
"Yes," agreed Guinan. "Hers was an
ancient soul, with an ancient sadness that followed
her always. She was part of a race called the
Shgin," she said. "The Shgin lived in deep at
the far rim of what you call the Delta
Quadrant of the galaxy."
"Where the Borg are," said Picard.
She nodded. "Where the Borg are," she
confirmed. "Now, the Shgin were a warlike race,
so when they first encountered the Borg, they loved the
challenge. They welcomed the foe." She pursed
her lips. "They lived to regret it. Or rather,
they didn't live to regret it. The Borg
massacred them as thoroughly as they did anything and
anyone else. Delcara had a mate and two
children. All were lost. Delcara and a handful of others
escaped the Borg destruction, and over the years,
the
rest of the Shgin died until only Delcara was
left. She wandered the galaxy, alone, lost.
Either she found planets that were uninhabited, or
else once-populated worlds that had been
"visited" by the Borg. By the time we found her,
she had been alone for many years. The solitude,
the horror of that aloneness, weighs
heavily on one. It took us a long time to draw
her out of the emotional cocoon that she had created
around herself. I had a hand in that--a considerable hand,
really. Delcara and I became close friends--
close enough to be bonded in a relationship
approximating what you would call
"sisterhood." During that time Delcara learned
our ways. The ways of peace and attention
to emotions and to listening. She even fell in love
with one of my people, and they married. And then ..."
She paused, and it was obvious. "The Borg
attacked," Picard provided.
Guinan nodded. "The Borg attacked," she
affirmed. "They slaughtered so many of my people,
including Delcara's new mate. When I found
Delcara afterwards, I had to drag her away from the
broken body of her lover. The screams," and she
touched her fingers to her temples, "the screams
live on to this day."
"The poor woman," whispered Troi.
"To lose all her loved ones ... twice ...
to the Borg ..."
"It consumed her," said Guinan. "Totally.
I tried to get her to stay with me, but she wasn't
the woman I'd known. She's become dark,
foreboding, and all the beauty of her was blackened and
blasted by the horror and the loss and the helplessness.
She disappeared, years ago, and I never had any
idea where she went."
"I think," Picard said slowly, "that I'm
starting to get a damned good idea."
At that moment his communicator beeped and he
tapped it. "Yes."
"Sir," came the deep voice of Worf,
"we have received a number of communiques relating
battles and encounters--both with the Borg, and
apparently with the entity which Captain Korsmo and
Commander Shelby credited with the Borg destruction
here at Penzatti. Shall I--"
"Tell Mr. Data," Picard said
abruptly, "that I wish to meet with him immediately.
Then in fifteen minutes I want all senior
officers in the conference room. Guinan, you too."
"Captain, the messages--"
"We'll hear them then, Mr. Worf."
"Yes, sir."
Picard turned towards Guinan and Troi the
moment the communication was cut. "I'm fairly
certain I can sum them up without hearing them. And that
summation is that a war that is hundreds of
years old may be coming to a head--and we'll all
be caught in the middle."
Once again the senior officers were grouped around
the conference table, except the tension level in the
room had increased substantially.
They had just spent the past several minutes
hearing report after report, message after
message. A huge, planet-devouring ship.
A mysterious woman from Guinan's past. An
attacking Borg ship. Picard's heart had
jumped when he'd heard about the individual
battles that the Chekov and the Repulse had
faced. How many more were going to die until this
business was finished? he wondered bleakly. How
many comrades dead? How many bodies buried,
ships lost. How much was it going to take to stop the
madness once and for all?
The same thoughts were going through Riker's mind,
particularly when he'd heard about Shelby's
vessel locked in combat. He'd grown to like her,
even become fond of her ... at least, as fond
as one could become of a woman whom he'd wanted
to belt at one time.
"You seem distracted, Number One,"
Picard said suddenly.
Riker looked up, feeling momentarily
embarrassed, as if he'd been caught
flatfooted at school. "I was just thinking,
Captain," he admitted, "of when I had the
power of Q. I gave it back to him, secure
and confident that I didn't want or need it.
When I think that I had the power, at my
fingertips, to stop a race like the Borg with a
passing thought. ..." He shook his head. "The
lives I could have saved. The good I could have done.
To be able to eliminate the Borg ..."
"Or the Romulans," observed Troi,
pointing out the danger of such thinking. "Or the
Tholians."
"Or the Klingons," added Worf darkly.
Riker looked from one to the other. Then he
allowed a small smile. "Hard to tell where
to dr aw the line, isn't it."
"Sometimes the best way to deal with drawing a
line," said Picard, "is refusing to take the
marker when someone offers it to you for the purpose of
drawing." He shook his head. "There's no point
dwelling on the past, Number One, except in
those instances in which it can be of service to you.
Like now."
He stood, his fingertips resting lightly on the
conference room table. "I believe I know how
all of this relates to one another. It's part
speculation, part theory, with a dash of guesswork, but
I'm reasonably certain we have a workable
hypothesis here. Mr. Data was kind enough to work out
some of the schematics for me as well, based on
historical records."
He walked over to the computer screen, and a chart
of the galaxy materialized on it, divided
into quadrants. The Alpha and Beta
quadrants, comprising the lower half of the
circle, glowed in dark blue. The Gamma
quadrant, entirely unexplored space, was
deep black. The Delta quadrant was also
black, since the majority of it was unexplored,
but a U-shaped red curve delineated that area
known to be Borg space. The territory of the
UFP, the Klingon Empire, Romulan
space, and approximate limits of explored
space, were likewise demarcated in red.
"An uncertain amount of time ago," began
Picard, "the Borg first began their rise to power
in the Delta Quadrant. Whether they
originated from outside the galaxy, or somehow
evolved from machines, or were a sentient race that
embraced machines, all of this is uncertain. But
they encountered resistance from a great and mighty
race, name unknown. Possibly the race that was
known as the Preservers, who seem to have "seeded"
countless planets with humanoid life and then
disappeared."
"Certainly being wiped out by the Borg would
explain that disappearance," said Riker.
Picard nodded and then continued, "For argument's
sake, we'll call them the Preservers, even
if they were not. The war between the Borg and the
Preservers went on and on, and the Preservers were
losing. But while they fought the Borg in the
Delta
Quadrant, they were also busy in a
place as far from the scene of battle as they could
be. You see, they were developing a new and
powerful weapon, and wanted that weapon to be created
as far from the Borg as possible. It was not a
weapon that was intended to be used. It was a weapon
of last resort, a weapon of revenge, should the
Preservers be ultimately defeated. A
weapon that could conceivably lay waste to a large
portion of the galaxy. But better that,
they reasoned, than allowing the Borg to continue their
conquest unabated. The Preservers, or whoever,
felt that they were the last, best hope of the galaxy,
and if they fell, then nothing else mattered.
"But while they worked on creating their ultimate
weapon, they first created a prototype. They
created--this."
On the screen appeared a vast spaceship,
with a huge maw and a body that trailed off in a
vague cone shape.
"In comparison to the projected final
product, it was simplistic," said Picard.
"But deadly, nonetheless. Perfectly designed for
use within the galaxy, for it would devour planetary
masses for the purpose of fuel. It was eminently
logical. After all, the Borg left behind
lifeless balls of rock in their wake. So a
weapon was developed that would, in a beautiful
twist of irony, use those "lifeless"
planets as fuel. They would use the waste
matter that the Borg left over against them."
Riker frowned. "I know that thing. That's ..."
he snapped his fingers to jog his memory. "The
planet-killer! The doomsday machine that the
original Enterprise faced! We learned about
it in the Academy."
"So did we," said Picard. "Neutronium
hull, a beam of anti-proton, consuming
planets ... I'm almost embarrassed we
didn't think of it earlier.
"What I believe happened next is that the
Preservers, or whoever created it, received word that
the war was going badly, indeed, that it was hopeless.
So they launched the planet-killer prototype
while continuing to work on the final version which was
considerably bigger, more powerful, faster ..."
"How much faster?" asked Geordi.
Picard spread his hands. "Logs of the
original Enterprise would indicate that the
planet-killer never exceeded warp four. I would
suspect that the final version would have to go
considerably faster to have any hope of catching up
with a Borg ship."
"But how can you be sure the planet-killer was