eyes for a moment to compose himself. When he opened
them, he was actually able to smile wanly.
"I've already worked out a good deal of my--
difficulties--during my shore leave on earth,
counselor, as you well know. Still, I
wouldn't be human if the prospect of facing them
again wasn't a bit ... daunting. I do not
expect, however, that it will interfere with my ability
to do my job."
"I would never presume to believe as much,"
Troi said. "I find it curious, though, that I
sense no concern from you regarding this new force
we've learned of. A force much more powerful than the
Borg."
Picard drummed his fingers momentarily on his
desk. "This is a big universe, Counselor.
I always assumed that somewhere out there, there would be a more
powerful entity than the Borg. And whomever we
encounter next, there will be someone stronger than them.
If I were daunted by the concept of encountering
powerful beings, Counselor, I doubt I ever would
have left the comforting environs of earth. New
encounters? I thrive on them. It's what I
live for. What we are looking at,
Counselor, to use the old saying, is the devil
we know versus the devil we don't. The Borg
are simply devils that I know all too
well."
"You feel that whatever we encounter, even if more
powerful than the Borg, won't be as great of a
threat."
For a brief moment he relived the hideous
feeling of the Borg implants that had become a
part of him; the unyielding and inhuman invasion of his
mind, his soul, and the raping of his knowledge and personality;
how they had managed to destroy, with no problem at
all, his will to resist; how they had put him through a
very personal and very singular hell that bore the name
"Locutus."
"No one could be," he said gravely.
"Captain--"
He stood, the very decisiveness of the motion
silencing Troi. He walked around to the observation
bay and stared out at the stars that telescoped away
from them as the ship proceeded, at warp 6.5, to the
devastated home of the Penzatti. "I won't
let them do it to me, Counselor. I had never
been the type to view every new race, no matter
how powerful, in terms of how much of a threat they
pose. We're not out here to explore new threats
and new civilizations, and I will be damned if the
Borg now force me to consider every new encounter, first
and foremost, in regard to their ability to hurt us.
That's not what we're about. That's not what I'm
about. And I will not let the Borg do that
to me. I won't," he finished fiercely.
Troi nodded slowly and smiled. "I have no
doubt. And for the Borg's sake, let us hope that
the next individual they encounter is somewhat more
weak-willed than you. Otherwise, I don't
think they stand a chance."
He smiled thinly. "That, Counselor, is
definitely the least of my concerns."
Chapter Five
Daimon Turane of the Ferengi was bored out of
his mind.
Even for one of the F erengi, Turane wasn't
much to look at, with his eyes unfashionably set
close together, and a piece of his left ear missing,
thanks to a business disagreement some years back.
When he spoke, it was with the heavy rasp that
signalled the beginning stages of an incurable
disease that attacked the lungs. Within five years
he would doubtlessly be on some sort of
artificial support, or need new lungs
entirely.
All that he could have taken, though. It was his
current assignment that threatened to drive him
mad.
Turane had landed this unprofitable, dead-end
assignment--an assignment that had sent him and a
crew of ten Ferengi misfits to the farthest reaches
of Federation space and beyond. Ostensibly, the
reason given was that the Ferengi were looking to expand
their trade horizons. The Ferengi were annoyed
with constantly butting heads with the Federation, and
expansion was mandatory if they were to survive as a
merchant race. His superiors even had the
temerity to tell Turane that this was a plum
assignment and that if he were successful in finding
new markets, he would be covering himself in glory
and profit in the name of the Ferengi.
This he knew to be unadulterated nonsense.
The reason he was here was simple. It was his
appearance, his coarse manners (coarse even for the
Ferengi), his deportment. In fact, in his
general, overall being, he was an embarrassment
to his brother, who just happened to hold a high
rank in the Ferengi command. And his dear, beloved
brother had made damned sure, at his earliest
opportunity, that Turane be shuffled off to somewhere
where he couldn't do any damage to his brother's
precious career.
So here he was, he and the rest of his crew
aboard the marauder ship, in the heart of the Beta
Quadrant, at the outer fringes of known space.
Within a couple of days they would travel beyond
anything that had been explored and exploited by the
Ferengi. Just one ship, with no backup, no
support, no interest from the central council--
no nothing.
Turane's first officer, Martok, glanced
around from his station in response to the low growling that was
coming from his commander. "Is something amiss,
Daimon?" he asked deferentially.
Turane turned on him with a snarl. "Wrong,
Martok? What could possibly be wrong?" He
slowly rose from his command chair. "Out in the middle
of nowhere, on this profitless voyage--we are a
waste, Martok! We have no purpose! We
make no profit! There is no life out here.
There is no new market. There is no purpose
to any of it, other than that my damned brother
doesn't want me around."
All of this Martok knew, and he wasn't
any happier about it than was Daimon Turane.
In fact, he was even less happy about it. With
Turane it was a personal dispute that had led him
to this unhappy situation. Martok was blameless--
he was simply first officer to the wrong Ferengi,
at the wrong time.
There had been discussion among Martok and the
crew that, sooner or later--later, in all
likelihood--the time would come to dispose of
Daimon Turane and put someone else in
charge. Martok, probably. Turane knew
this. The Ferengi command knew this too. Everyone was
expecting it, really, and the only reason that
Martok had not engineered the change sooner was
that--despite his overall unpleasant
personality--Turane had headed up some
profitable missions in the past. Martok had been
his first officer during those escapades, and Martok
had s
omething that most Ferengi did not possess--a
rudimentary sense of loyalty. This had inclined
him to give Daimon Turane as much slack as
possible. Perhaps even find a way of salvaging
something valuable from this dross of an assignment.
Enough was rapidly becoming enough, however. The
crew was growing impatient, and Daimon
Turane was slipping further and further
into melancholy with every passing day. Martok was going
to have to do something because, if he didn't,
officers beneath him were going to take matters into their
own hands. He was quite determined that, if some
unpleasant fate were to befall the Daimon, he
would rather be the engineer of it than a victim.
He started to speak, but before any words got out,
the status board lit up. Martok's head
snapped around in surprise, as did Daimon
Turane's. The rest of the bridge crew, which had
been lost in their private imaginings of a life
without the luckless Daimon Turane, immediately
snapped to their assigned duties when encountering
something new and unexpected.
"What have we got?" demanded Daimon
Turane. For a moment, at least, his lethargy had
slipped away. It had been replaced by some of that
old excitement, that heart-pounding thrill at
possibly discovering something new to be exploited.
Martok was shaking his head in confusion. "They're
so big that at first I thought they were small moons
that had somehow broken away from orbit," he said.
"Now I see, though. They're ships.
Incredibly huge ships."
"On screen," said Turane, turning in his
chair to face the front monitor.
The screen wavered for a split second and then
cleared. On it hung three huge cube
shapes. They were completely stationary.
"What is it?" whispered Turane, daunted
by the immensity of them. "What are they?"
Martok immediately accessed his ship's computer,
scanning all the known ship types. Much of the
information had been cobbled, through means fair and
foul, from the Federation archives. When the answer
to his search came up, he felt all the blood
drain from his face. His throat closed up, and he
desperately tried to control the impulse
to scream in panic. "It's the Borg," he said
in a voice that was just above a whisper.
Daimon Turane, for his part, seemed
utterly nonplussed. "The Borg," he said
thoughtfully, studying the screen. The Borg ships,
already huge, were becoming larger as the Ferengi
marauder vessel drew closer. "How
intriguing."
"I'll order full retreat," said Martok.
Across the way, the navigator was already laying in a
course to take them back in the other direction.
"You'll do no such thing," said Daimon
Turane calmly. "Bring us in toward them."
There was a collective gasp from the
bridge crew at Turane's order. They were
regarding their Daimon with outright horror, with as
much incredulity as if he'd ordered them to open every
accessway and blow the atmosphere out of the ship.
"Toward them?" gasped the navigator in
horror.
"Daimon Turane," said Martok, "this is
the Borg. Are you unaware of what they did
to the Federation? I heard that fifty ships were
destroyed in combat against them at Wolf 359."
"Seventy-nine," the navigator said
firmly. "I heard seventy-nine, but
Starfleet wants to cover it up so the
Romulans don't find out."
"I also heard about the cover-up," said the
helmsman, now speaking up, "but my sources
say eighty-three ships."
"I don't care," snarled Turane, turning
on his men, "if the Borg destroyed every ship in the
Starfleet. Bring us in there and bring us in there now.
Is that clear?"
There was a pause as the bridge crew looked
at each other. Everyone was waiting for someone else
to make a move.
"Now!" thundered Daimon Turane.
"We'll be killed," said Martok quietly.
With slow, deliberate steps, Turane got
up from his chair and walked slowly towards
Martok. The only sounds heard on the bridge
were the soft footfalls of his boots and the steady
beeping from the tacticals informing them of the presence
of that of which they were already aware. Turane's lips
drew back in the Ferengi approximation of a
smile, displaying his double row of sharp, filed
teeth.
"We," said Daimon Turane, "will make more
profit than anyone ever imagined possible. That
is what we will do. Are you saying you don't wish
to be a part of that?"
"No, but--profit?" said Martok, not understanding.
Daimon Turane nodded slowly. "This is a
dead-end ship with a dead-end assignment, Martok.
You know it." He turned to face his bridge
crew, his voice rising. "You all know it. There
is only one way to live the sort of life
respectable for a Ferengi. But to achieve
it--to achieve greatness--we must dare greatness. One
cannot come without the other. The Borg have power beyond
imagining, technology that is decades--even
centuries--ahead of us. If we can
establish a market with them, trade with them, draw
them in as allies with the Ferengi--think of the regard
in which we would be held. Think of the respect!"
What he did not add was, Think of the
putrid expression on my brother's face.
"But the Federation--"
"The Federation does not even know how to deal with us.
What in the world makes you think that they could
possibly know how to deal with beings such as that," and
he pointed at the Borg ships, which were now a few
hundred kilometers away.
"But if we retreat and inform our council of the
Borg presence, wouldn't that be good enough to--"
began the navigator.
Turane cut him off with a quick hand gesture.
""Good enough" never is," he said archly.
"Now, we go in as a crew and share in the profit,
or I go in alone and hoard it all for myself. Which
one of you is cowardly enough to turn away from the
potential for the greatest, grandest, more incredible
payoff in the history of our race?"
The bridge crew looked at each other in
silence.
Daimon Turane drew himself up, and when he
spoke it was with quiet authority and an
apparently unshakable conviction that he would be
obeyed. "Take us in," he said.
The marauder ship moved towards its destination as
the three great vessels of the Ferengi hung
motionlessly in space.
"The Nanites have lawyers?"
In the Ten-Forward lounge of the Enterprise,
Geordi, Riker, and Data were seated around a
table, drinks in front of them. Geordi was
looking at Ri
ker with open-mouthed disbelief and,
havi ng just voiced his incredulity, felt constrained
to repeat it. "The Nanites went out and got
lawyers? You can't be serious!"
"They didn't "go out and get lawyers,"
Geordi," Riker told him. Although he could
understand the chief engineer's annoyance and ire, he
hated to admit that he found it mildly amusing at
the same time. "The lawyers were assigned to them by the
Federation council."
Geordi's hands dropped to the armrests of his
chair, and he shook his head. "This is nuts. This
is just crazy."
"Geordi, I don't see where--"
"I'm sorry, Commander, but with all due
respect, this stinks," Geordi said in
frustration. "Wesley and I worked our tails off
to get together all the research material on the
Nanites that Starfleet had requested. Everyone
said this was it--the key to defeating the Borg. Just
breed them, introduce them into the Borg systems,
and the Nanites would do the rest. It's something so
plain that--"
"Even a blind man could see it?" said Riker
ruefully.
Geordi nodded slowly. "Yeah. That
simple. So here I thought that by now, certainly they
would have bred more than enough Nanites to stop the entire
Borg race if they showed up. Instead, you're
telling me that Step One hasn't been taken because
it's tied up in some sort of debate in the
council!"
"But if what Commander Riker is saying is
correct, Geordi--and I assume it to be,"
Data added affably, "there are many in the Federation
council who feel strongly about Nanite rights."
Before Geordi could start again, Riker stepped in
quickly. "The argument has been," he said, "that
breeding a race of sentient beings, such as the
Nanites, for the express purpose of war and
destruction is contrary to all the Federation
principles and beliefs. The goal of the Federation
is to promote galactic harmony. Creating a
"warrior race"--even a highly
specialized warrior race such as the Nanites
--would undercut everything that the Federation purports
to be about."
"But--"
"There is also the view that it eliminates the
free will of the Nanites, if they are being created
specifically to fight the Borg. Not to mention,
what if the Borg actually managed to absorb the
Nanites somehow? Overwhelm them? It's not
impossible. We don't know what the full
capability of the Borg is. If they did