keep the satisfaction from his voice--the
satisfaction of a Klingon who knew that battle
was joined. "Firing," he said.
The Enterprise cut loose and their offensive
array peppered one of the Borg ships, which was already
suffering under the strain of resisting Delcara's
blasts. But the Borg ship didn't dare turn
its attention away from the planet-killer, for that's
where the uni-mind of the Borg was concentrating its
assault. So the Enterprise continued to barrage
the ship, draining its power levels faster and
faster.
"Commander, incoming hail from the Chekov,"
announced Worf.
"Tell him we're washing our hair," shot
back Riker. "Continue fire, Mr. Worf,"
and he looked at the planet-killing vessel that
was assailing the Borg ships with blast after blast.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
On the Chekov, Captain Korsmo was on
his feet, his fists clenched in white-knuckled
fury. "What in hell do they think they're
playing at!"
"Power levels of the Borg ship currently
under assault by the Enterprise are down
fifty-nine percent," said Hobson. "Other
Borg ships are sustaining damage.
All are still attacking the planet-killer."
"That's what they're supposed to be doing!
Get me Riker, now!"
"No response, sir."
"Damn it! Lock phasers on them!"
"On whom, sir?" asked the tactical
officer.
"Enterprise!"
Shelby turned in her chair and looked at
Korsmo in astonishment. "On the
Enterprise?" There was no disguising the shock in
her voice.
"I gave them a direct order, and they're
disobeying. Mr. Davenport," he snapped at
the tactical officer, "I said lock phasers!
Half-strength, enough to shake them up and let them know
we mean business!" The veins were distending on his
throat.
"Phasers locked," said Davenport with
deathly calm.
"Fire!" snapped Korsmo.
"Delcara, you cannot keep me here against my will,"
Picard was shouting over the din. "You must return
me to my ship!"
"This was what you wanted! To be with me!" she
said. "That's what you told me!"
"Not to be here! Imprisoned on this engine of
destruction!"
"I can't leave them! And you mustn't stop me!
The battle is joined, and I'm your ship's
only hope of salvation!"
He knew she was right. Even with the emergency
procedures and strategies they'd developed, the
odds were still long against the Enterprise remaining
intact through a battle with even one Borg ship,
much less three.
"Return me to my ship, then," he said again.
"That is my place."
"Your place is with me. You said so!"
"Delcara! Concentrate on the here and
now!" shouted the Many.
"Shut up!" howled Delcara, "Shut
up!"
The ship trembled around them even more forcefully
than before, and the scream of the Many was truly frightening,
for they howled with something they had never expressed
before. That no one thought they could express.
Pain.
"My God," said Riker. "Look at that.
It's ... bleeding."
And so it was, or so it appeared. On the
surface of the planet-killer, bubbling out of a
crack in its hull was some sort of clear, thick
ooze, a mile in length.
"Some sort of energy conversion plasma," said
Data, quickly scanning the sensors. "Utilized
for conducting energy throughout the body of the
planet-killer."
"All weapons, on the Borg. Fire!"
"Sir!" said Worf. "The Chekov has
opened fire on us!"
The phasers of the Chekov sped across the distance
separating them from the Enterprise in the blink of
an eye.
Davenport looked up from his station. And his
voice was, once again, utterly neutral, as
he said, "Missed."
Korsmo turned and faced him. "Missed?"
"Yes, sir."
"Fire again!"
The phasers lanced out.
"Oops. Missed again," said Davenport.
There was dead silence on the bridge. Korsmo
saw the way that Davenport was looking at him, and
turned to see Shelby regarding him in the exact
same way.
And for a moment--just the briefest of moments--he
saw himself the way they were seeing him. He saw
all the rationalizations he'd been using, and all the
reasons he'd followed that seemed like good reasons
at the time. And he saw what might be behind those
reasons. All of that, reflected in the eyes of
Shelby and the rest of his bridge crew.
He knew he wasn't a bad man, or a
bad officer. He knew that, in his heart. But he
didn't see any of that in the way his people were looking
at him. And after a long, soul-searching stare, he
wasn't seeing it in himself either.
When he spoke again, it was with quiet irony.
"Having trouble with targeting today, Mr.
Davenport?"
"So it would seem, sir."
"Think you could target a Borg ship any
better?"
A slow smile spread across Davenport's
face, a smile matched by Shelby and the others.
"It's a bigger target, sir."
"All right. The ship at"--and he glanced down
briefly--"seventy Mark eighteen. As I
recall, Commander Shelby, phaser beams at the
higher end of the band are more effective."
"Yes sir," said Shelby proudly.
"I may forget myself on occasion, but I never
forget facts," said Korsmo stiffly. "Mr.
Davenport--blast them to hell when ready."
"Commander Riker," announced Worf, "the
Chekov has begun firing on a Borg
vessel."
Sure enough, there was the Chekov, darting
towards another of the three Borg cubes, letting
fly with everything it had.
At that moment the Enterprise shuddered.
"The Borg ship we were attacking has locked
onto us with tractor beams," announced Worf.
"Shields are failing."
Geordi had come up from engineering to the engineering
station on the bridge, enabling him to react faster
to what was happening. "Modulating nutations," he
said.
"Shield failure continuing," said Worf.
"Ninety ... eighty ..." It was a countdown
toward death. "They have ceased firing on the
planet-killer. Full concentration on us.
"Shields at sixty ... fifty ..."
"Fire phasers, varying the harmonics.
They've adjusted for the upper end. Try the lower."
"Phasers firing," announced Worf.
"Minor power disruption on the Borg," said
Geordi. "They're still smarting from the
planet-killer. Their power systems are down
sixty-seven percent."
"Fire antimatter spread."
The Enterpris
e was giving it everything they had.
"Shields holding at fifty ... dropping
to forty," announced Worf.
"Nutonic variation failing," said Geordi,
like a death knell. "Seconds at best."
And the Borg ship trembled as the anti-proton
beam of the planet-killer struck to the core.
Sparks and power surges leaped throughout the ship.
"Tractor beam gone!" said Geordi.
"Full reverse!" shouted Riker. "Work on
restoring shields! Give us some distance!"
The Enterprise hurtled away, and seconds
later one more stab from the planet-killer blasted the
Borg ship to pieces. It created a
massive cloud of dust and rubble, and through it
sailed the doomsday machine, triumphant,
wounded, bleeding, and with the other two ships pursuing
it.
"Sometimes," Riker said, "seconds are all
we need."
They struck again and again at the gaping wound that had
been carved in the hull of the destroyer. The
Chekov concentrated fire on one of the remaining
restored, the Enterprise dove towards the other
unoccupied Borg ship.
The plan was unspoken and simple attack the
Borg ships and give the planet-killer enough
leeway to destroy them with its superior
firepower.
Riker prayed it would work. And he kept on
praying right up until the moment when the
planet-killer ceased firing.
"We hurt!" cried the Many. "We
hurt!"
"I'm sorry!" Delcara screamed. "I'm
sorry, my children. I should never have listened to him!
He distracted me! I let myself think of things
other than our purpose!"
"No, Delcara, listen--" said Picard,
forgetting himself and reaching out. His hand passed right through
her and rested against the crystal. "Listen to me--"
And then he heard it. The sound that was like an
explosive, controlled popping. The sound he would
never forget.
A Borg had appeared within the heart of
Delcara's vessel.
Then he heard more. And more. God, how many?
At least half a dozen.
They were coming towards him from just around the corner, and
Picard's phaser was in his hand. A chill struck
to his spine. They wanted to destroy Delcara.
They might even want to recapture him. The
thought of returning to that living nightmare called
Locutus was almost more than he could stand, and when the
first of the Borg appeared, he opened fire using the
maximum stun setting.
The Borg staggered and fell over, and immediately a
second was behind him. Picard squeezed off
another shot and then quickly altered the frequency
on the E-M band and fired again. A second
Borg went down, and moments later, a third.
The holographic image of
Delcara had vanished, as if afraid to oppose
her greatest nightmare face to face. Picard
charged forward, rolling forward and firing. A fourth
Borg went down, but suddenly a fifth stepped
into view. It targeted Picard with its gleaming
mechanical eye and raised its huge metal
arm. Electricity leaped out from the end, and
Picard lunged to one side, barely out of the way.
The Borg stalked forward, the image of
Picard now locked firmly into its mind. It
stalked forward, firing again when it saw Picard
dodge between two of the crystal slabs. From hiding,
Picard fired again, and this time the protective
shield of the Borg adapted to his phaser fire.
The soldier was now ready for any phaser
attack.
Picard flattened his back against one of the
crystal slabs, his heart pounding so furiously
he was certain the Borg could hear it.
The Borg stalked slowly forward, the uni-mind
of the Borg exercising caution. Its tracking eye
swept across the array of crystal slabs in
front of it, trying to find the one called
Picard. The image of the human was firmly in
place ...
And suddenly Picard was everywhere.
Every single slab had an image of Picard
poised in it, ready to attack. Each one was
distorted, furious, howling a challenge.
The Borg turned left and right, its arm moving
to one side and then the other. Nothing but Picards.
It fired a burst of electricity to the right,
electricity harmlessly ricocheting off a
crystal slab, and Picard charged in from the left.
But at the last second the Borg saw him coming and
swung its mechanical arm. Picard caught a
jolt of electricity that numbed his right arm, and
he dropped the phaser. He fell to one knee and
rolled to the side as the Borg came towards him,
and then he lunged forward, slamming into the soldier
in the midsection. The Borg had prepared for
phaser attack but, insanely, not a physical
attack. The Borg did not anticipate,
only adapted. It was the single advantage the
captain had. Picard and the Borg went down in a
tangle of arms and legs and prosthetics.
The strength of the Borg was overwhelming as it
tried to bring the end of its mechanical arm up
towards Picard's face. It drew closer and
closer, Picard shoving with his one
functioning hand as hard as he could against the arm. It
seconds left.
And suddenly he released his grip on the
mechanical arm altogether and slid forward the length of the
Borg soldier. Picard's hand lashed out and
gripped the Borg's shoulder. The Borg brought
his artificial arm directly into Picard's
face and was about to blast enough electricity into the
captain to render him unconscious and,
possibly, dead.
Picard ripped away the circuitry on the
Borg's shoulder, the circuitry that kept the
soldier in communication with the Borg uni-mind. Like
a marionette severed from its strings, the Borg's
head lolled back instantly. Picard rolled
to one side as the soldier immediately turned into a thin
line of ash and vanished.
He felt a flash of triumph for perhaps a
second. And that was when he heard the hideous whine
of a phaser at a high setting--his phaser.
He scrambled to his feet and almost screamed.
It was a Ferengi, one that had been transformed
into a Borg. And he was firing on the crystal
chamber that held Delcara, using the phaser that
Picard had dropped.
From the sound and intensity of the beam, Picard could
tell that it was on setting 16. It was a setting
so powerful that it could destroy a volume of
metamorphic rock some 100 meters across. It
was drilling full-bore into the crystal encasement,
and whatever that casing was made out of, it wasn't
going to be strong enough. That it was resisting as much as
it was
was nothing short of miraculous.
And Picard's voice and the voice of the Many were
raised together, and they howled, "Stop!"
In front of the crystal, the holograph of
Delcara sprang into existence, the phaser beam
naturally passing right through her. She was holding up
her hands, as if trying to ward off the pounding of the
blast.
The Ferengi-borg did not stop. In
seconds the crystal blackened and cracked, and the
body of Delcara began to fry, the pure skin
shrivelling, the beautiful hair burning like straw.
The holograph screamed, a scream that would
follow Picard to the end of his days, and vanished.
Picard was already in motion, charging towards the
Ferengi, and the alien suddenly ceased fire,
spun, and aimed the phaser straight at
Picard. Whereas the crystal had momentarily
resisted a setting-16 phaser blast, albeit
it not especially well, Picard wouldn't
survive for a second.
There was no way he could dodge it.
"No deals," said Vastator of Borg, and
pushed the firing buttons.
Chapter Twenty-one
"The planet-killer has ceased firing,"
announced Worf. "However, it is still moving. The
Borg are now concentrating fire on it. Their
power levels are beginning to increase."
"Mr. La Forge, get ready with that warp
bubble. Mr. Chafin, bring us right down their
throats at full impulse. Mr. Data,
monitor engineering and computer release. The timing
on this one is going to have to be computer-perfect, and
I want you handling it."
"Yes sir," said Data.
"Emergency antimatter generator standing by,
sir," said Geordi.
"Approaching Borg vessel, sir," said
Chafin. The monstrous vessel loomed larger and
larger. In the distance there were flares of the Chekov
firing upon the other one.
"We will be in range in fifteen seconds,"
said Data. "Fourteen ... thirteen ..."
"Channeling emergency antimatter generator
through main warp nacelles," said Geordi.
"Preparing for release."
We're going to be looking right down their
throats, thought Riker grimly.
Data was counting down. Riker could practically
feel the surging of the engines, holding the
explosive force of the warp field in place.
With the Enterprise not firing, the Borg ship was
paying them no mind at all. Instead it was continuing
to pound the planet-killer.
"Three ... two ... one ..." Data said.