Star Trek: The Next Generation: Vendetta Read online

  “Much obliged, Doctor.”

  He turned towards Reannon. She sat there on the edge of the biobed, staring at nothing. She was there because someone had put her there, and she wasn’t going to move until someone retrieved her, like some pathetic lapdog. Geordi took her gently by the hand, still cold as ice, and said, “Come on, Reannon.” He tugged her slightly and she slid off the bed, following him as he pulled her along.

  They walked through the sickbay and this time the Penzatti looked away, although a number of them shuddered. The only one who continued to stare at her, Crusher noticed, was the one who had attacked her earlier: Dantar. But his green face was unreadable, his antennae unmoving. His body was tense, as if waiting for the former Borg to make some move, but she gave no sign that she was aware of his existence. Aware, really, of anyone’s existence, including her own. Geordi guided her out the sickbay door, and the moment she was gone, it was as if the entire sickbay sighed in relief.

  Dantar looked up when he saw that Crusher was standing over him. “Yes?” he said quietly.

  “Are you all right?” she asked him. As a matter of course, she was studying his injured leg and nodding with satisfaction at the way in which it had healed.

  “You mean am I going to attack that thing again?”

  “You’ll pardon me for being curious.”

  He shrugged. “You explained the situation to us. Furthermore, such aggression would do nothing to bring my family back to life. I see no point to it.” He smiled, and it looked more like a grimace. “Do you?”

  “No,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Let’s make sure that we all remember that, shall we?”

  Geordi led Reannon down the corridor, ignoring the puzzled glances from crew members who passed by. Actually, it was easy to ignore the glances, since he couldn’t see them. What he was able to do, however, was sense people’s reactions through their body heat and the auras they gave off. Whenever someone would be approaching, the emissions of their bodies seemed to flicker as they noticed Geordi and his companion, but were uncertain who—or what—they were seeing. Then their pulse rates would jump, or their heartbeats would increase; the general air of their aura would flicker wildly with barely repressed alarm as they realized the nature of Geordi’s companion.

  It put him in mind of ancient times when people would see lepers and run screaming in hysterics. It was a prejudice, pure and simple. Reannon had not asked for this calamity to befall her, but now she was paying the price for it. Geordi wanted to shout at them, to chide them for their fear, but he saw no point to it. All they saw was a representative of the race that had destroyed thousands, even millions, of lives. A race that had perverted Captain Picard into something dark and twisted. No wonder they wanted to give her a wide berth. Still, it was damned irritating.

  They stopped in front of a set of doors and Geordi turned to her. “Reannon,” he said, making an effort to say her name to her as many times as he could—hoping that sheer repetition would get some sort of response—“Reannon, this is the holodeck. I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”

  The doors hissed open as they entered and stepped out into the vast room with the glowing yellow grids. As the doors closed behind them, Geordi said, “This is a place where we can create anything we like that’s within our computer records. I’ve been doing some preparation, and I got something I think you’ll want to see. Computer,” he said more loudly now, “run program La Forge lA.”

  Instantly the yellow grids disappeared, and Geordi and Reannon were standing on the bridge of a ship. As opposed to the clean, efficient, spit-and-polish bridge of the Enterprise, this ship had a certain grunginess and tackiness about it. There was litter on the floor, and a number of instruments looked as if they were being held together with spit and bailing wire.

  Geordi heard the sound of metal scraping against metal and recognized it instantly. Someone was trying to repair something.

  Over in the far corner was a Jeffries tube that extended up into the ship’s inner workings, and a pair of legs was sticking out from within. He heard a grunt and a muttered curse and promises that the ship’s time left for gallivanting around the galaxy was short. “Excuse me,” he called out.

  “Yeah, what?” called back a distinctly female voice from within the Jeffries tube.

  “I have someone I want you to meet.”

  There was an annoyed sigh, and several tools dropped down from inside the tube and clattered to the floor. Then the woman dropped out as well. Her eyebrows and the ends of her hair was slightly singed, and there was a general air of impatience about her. Geordi allowed himself a mental pat on the back. The lessons he learned about imparting the illusion of life to holodeck recreations had been well served.

  “So?” she asked impatiently. “What’s the deal here? You are…?”

  “Geordi La Forge. And you are here courtesy of an extremely detailed psych profile left in Starfleet computers by a woman who was afraid of dying alone in space and leaving nothing of herself behind. So…Reannon Bonaventure, I want you to meet Reannon Bonaventure.”

  Now that Geordi had the opportunity to view her up close, in the flesh, so to speak, he saw that she, in fact, bore only the most superficial of resemblances to Troi. Her thick black hair was pulled back in a bun, and she had none of the aristocratic air that surrounded the Betazoid counselor. Instead, she had a down-and-dirty air about her, an earthiness that he found ingratiating.

  The holodeck Reannon slowly circled the real Reannon, absently tugging on her ear in thought. She bent down slightly, resting her hands on her knees and putting her face right up to the vacuous woman. Then, from the same slightly stooped position, she turned to Geordi and said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  She took the Borg’s face, squeezed it in one hand, turned it to the left and right and studied it. “I know I’m not much of a morning person,” she said at last, “but this is ridiculous.”

  “This,” said Geordi, “is what happened to her at the hands of the Borg. I wanted her to see you. To see what she had been like, so that she could be that way again.”

  “Well,” and Reannon stepped back and spread her arms wide, the gesture encompassing all within their view. “This is it. This is what there is to me. They’ve got this whole legend built up around me. ‘The Brass Lass.’ ‘Course, the problem with brass is that it tarnishes.” She stared once more at her future. “Tarnished something bad, didn’t it.”

  “Could you say something to her?” said Geordi. “Something that will—”

  “That will what?” Reannon’s voice was suddenly sharp and angry. She was stalking the bridge like a caged animal. “I mean, what the hell did you do this for? What’re you, the ghost of Christmas yet to come? I mean, look at this! You show me this…this pasty-faced thing that’s going to be me, and you ask me what I have to say to it? Here. Here’s what I say to it,” and she leaned into the face of the real Reannon and shouted, “You’re an idiot! Okay? You’re a freaking moron! I mean, look at you! Look at you,” and her voice was shaking with fury. “After everything I’ve been through, after everything I’ve dodged and the life I’ve led, I’m going to wind up like that? That stinks! How could you have let yourself get into this!” she shouted at herself. “You’re a zombie! You’re a walking space case! I mean, I figured if I die, okay, so I die, and that’s all. But this? This isn’t dead! This isn’t anything! This is just a…a waste!”

  Geordi was astounded. He hadn’t been sure of what he was going to get by programming the holodeck for such fidelity to the original persona of Reannon Bonaventure, but he certainly hadn’t expected this. “Reannon—” and he wasn’t even sure whom he was addressing.

  The holodeck Reannon had hurled herself into a chair that was in front of her sensor apparatus. “Just go away, would you, please?”

  “Reannon, only you can help yourself,” said Geordi.

  She spun around in the chair as if it had been hurled by a slin
gshot and said, “Are you saying I can avoid this? That there’s something I can do to prevent this from happening?”

  “No,” said Geordi. “No, there’s not. Not a thing. But you can help restore yourself to reality.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think so,” said Geordi with a confidence he didn’t feel.

  Reannon slowly rose from the chair and walked across the bridge to face herself. She took the Borg woman by the shoulders and said softly, “Oh, baby…what have you done to yourself?”

  She did not reply to herself.

  “Remember?” Reannon said. “Come on. Remember the good times, huh? Huh? Like that time the Ferengi tried to cheat you, and you left them holding the bag? Or the time that those people on Savannah One wanted to make you into a goddess, because they’d never seen a woman with pale skin before? Or how about,” and she smiled, “how about the feeling you got when you were being pursued. The way the adrenaline would pump and your mind would be racing, trying to come up with a new angle. And how about sex, huh? A guy in every port. They all wanted a piece of me, just so they could say they had. I had men in two different sectors claiming they’d been with me at the exact same time. Gods, the sex was great. Come on. Come on, you can’t say you don’t remember that.”

  And there was no response from the Borg woman. She continued to stare straight ahead, impassive, unknowable.

  Reannon shook her now, sounding a little desperate. “Come on,” she said urgently. “You’ve got to remember. You’ve got to say something. Come on. Say something. Speak to me, dammit,” and her voice rose in confusion and fury. “They couldn’t have gotten to me this much. Not me! I’m tougher than that. I’m better than that. Come on!” and she shook her violently.

  Geordi started toward them. “Hold it. That’s en—”

  “Come on!” bellowed Reannon, and she drew back a hand and slapped the Borg woman as hard as she could across the face. Her head snapped around and she staggered back.

  “Get away from her!” shouted Geordi, and he grabbed Reannon from behind, pinning her arms back. Reannon struggled furiously in his grip as the Borg woman slumped backwards and fell to the floor, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Say something!” Reannon shouted. “Say something, you useless slab of meat! I’m trapped in you! Let me out! Let me out!”

  “Computer,” Geordi began, about to issue the order that would terminate the scenario.

  “No!” shrieked Reannon. “No computer! Not yet! Not yet! Please! Wait a moment!”

  “What is it?”

  In a low, barely controlled voice, she said, “Please. Please promise me you’ll do something. Don’t leave me like this. Please. Please promise.”

  “I’ll do everything I can,” Geordi assured her, finding it hard to believe that he was trying to still the concerns of a holodeck recreation.

  “Don’t do everything,” Reannon told him. “Do anything. Do whatever it takes, but save me. Please.”

  “All right,” said Geordi. “All right.”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  Her struggles subsided and Geordi released her. She stood there a long moment, staring at herself. Then she turned towards Geordi and regarded him.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes,” said Geordi.

  “Thank you,” she said, and to his surprise she took him firmly by the face and kissed him passionately. And when she released him, he most definitely did not want to be released.

  She stepped away from him and coughed slightly, then turned and went to the Jeffries tube. “Whatever it takes,” she said one last time. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I got work to do.” But her bravado barely covered the unmistakable sound of fear that filled her voice, and she jumped back up the Jeffries tube before she’d have to deal with it any further.

  “Computer,” said Geordi, “end simulation.”

  The ship surroundings promptly vanished, to be replaced by the steady glow of the holodeck grids once more. Geordi went to the unmoving, de-Borged form of Reannon and said, “How about we go to the Ten-Forward lounge and get a drink. What do you say, huh?” He spoke in a convivial, offhand way, as if in this casual manner he could somehow trick Reannon into speaking. As if the entire thing were some sort of elaborate hoax on her part, and if he caught her off guard and got her to say something, she would be all right once more.

  But there was nothing from her, and Geordi sighed inwardly. Well, no one could say he had no idea what he was letting himself in for. He also knew, though, that he would not be able to get the image of Reannon out of his mind, and that he had to get in to help her.

  He took her by the arm and she obediently went out with him.

  Beverly Crusher entered sickbay and gave a cursory glance around before starting to head for her office to catch up on her paperwork. Then she stopped in her tracks.

  One of the beds was empty, and she knew immediately which one it was. She immediately turned towards the other Penzatti and said, “Where did Dantar go?”

  They stared at her blandly and shrugged. They put on a splendid show of not knowing, and perhaps they didn’t. More likely, they simply didn’t want to know.

  “How long has he been gone?” she demanded. This got even less response. She tapped her communicator and said, “Crusher to security. We may have a problem…”

  There was an uneasy air hanging in the Ten-Forward lounge, as there always was when the crew knew that the Enterprise was en route to a particularly dangerous situation. Word had seeped through the normal grapevines that made keeping a secret on a starship so damned difficult. The general talk was that they were going to be encountering either something that was the Borg, or just like the Borg, only more powerful.

  Guinan moved among the customers, making small talk and generally letting them know, in her subtle way, that she was there if they had anything they wished to discuss. She moved to a table at which Data was seated, and with a slight inclination of her head that served as a greeting, she sat opposite him.

  “Unusual to see you here by yourself, Data,” she observed. “Usually you’re only here in the company of the others, unless there’s something very specific on your mind.”

  Data pondered that a moment. “I do not believe that is the case in this instance,” he said. “I merely wished to be with my fellow crew members in an informal setting, and so I came down here.”

  “Any idea why that might be?” asked Guinan.

  He shrugged, a gesture he’d picked up from Riker. It had taken him a while to get the hang of when to use it. At first he’d started shrugging in the middle of conversations, totally unrelated to whatever was being discussed. This started concern that Data was developing some sort of twitch in his positronic brain. “I have no idea,” said Data.

  “Perhaps you enjoy it, Data.”

  He gave it some thought. “I do not think that likely. I cannot enjoy an event. At most, I can appreciate the variation in stimuli that are presented when—”

  She put up a hand and said, “Data, let’s just say that you enjoy it and don’t know it, okay?”

  He stared at her and was about to reply, when La Forge entered with Reannon in tow. Heads turned all over the Ten-Forward lounge, and the relative silence that had been present before was now replaced by a low, curious buzz. Clearly Geordi and his new companion were becoming the center of conversation wherever they went.

  Geordi’s gaze scanned the room, and he saw that people were drawing slightly closer together, as if to put whatever distance they could between themselves and the female with him. And the chief engineer, slow to anger, felt his annoyance boiling over.

  “What do you think’s going to happen?” he demanded of the general room. “That if you look at her too long, or accidentally touch her somehow, you might wind up catching it?”

  Guinan was at his side now, a hand on his shoulder, but it didn’t calm him. “She was assaulted! Don’t any of you understand that? Her mind and body were violated, and you’re al
l acting as if it’s her fault! So, before you start looking at her and shying away, maybe you’d better look at yourselves first!”

  He pulled her along with him to the table where he noticed that Data was seated. He was extremely grateful that the android officer was there. Data may have been incapable of feeling the best of human emotions, but he also couldn’t display the worst, such as fear or suspicion. He sat down opposite Data and Guinan, but before he could say anything, Guinan cleared her throat slightly and pointed. He turned and saw that Reannon was still standing, and with a sigh he pulled her down into the chair next to him. “She’s kind of bad on picking up non-verbal cues,” he said.

  “So I gathered,” said Guinan.

  Data was studying her as if she were under a microscope. “Her motor functions are performing admirably,” he said.

  “Yeah, but there’s nothing beyond that,” said Geordi. He rested his head on one hand and sighed. “I feel like I should be doing more, but I don’t know what. I took her to the holodeck to acquaint her with herself the way she used to be.”

  “Did she respond at all?”

  “Not a lick.” He leaned forward, his VISOR inches away from Reannon’s eyes. “Maybe it’s true. Maybe I am just wasting my time.”

  And Reannon looked at him.

  Looked at him.

  It was a subtle change in her face that, of course, Geordi could not discern, but he thought he detected a slight, flickering alteration in her aura, which immediately alerted him. “Data, Guinan…did she…is she curious about my VISOR?” He had not moved a millimeter from where he was.

  “I think curious may be too strong a word,” said Data. “She has, however, noticed its existence. Since she has not apparently noticed anything else, this could be considered a positive step.”

  She was angling her head slightly, studying the VISOR from every direction.

  Then she reached up, her hand slow and hesitant, until her fingers came to rest on the VISOR. They traced the curve of it, lingered over the circuitry that was at either end in the earpiece.