Star Trek: The Next Generation: Vendetta Read online

  “They died?” whispered Picard, amazed in spite of himself. “The rest of their race was wiped out by the Borg, and they simply—ceased to exist?”

  “They did not die in the way that you understand,” she said. “They simply languished, becoming more and more shadows, beings of no substance at all. Time lost meaning to them. They knew, in a distant and oblique manner, that the prototype was continuing on its course, and what had been intended as a test run was now the final statement that they would make. The soulless prototype was achingly slow, but eventually—centuries, most likely—it would cross the galaxy and reach Borg space. There, they felt, the Borg would be destroyed. But their hearts were not in the notion any longer, for they had always been givers of life, not death. Their mightiest weapon was left uncompleted, sitting outside the galaxy, in its great dock.

  “They died all together, all at once, like a great rush of air, or the death rattle from hundreds of throats. And yet…and yet…”

  Her voice trailed off a moment, as if she were lost in thought, and then she continued, “…and yet they could not completely die. They were too wondrous a race, more so than they would have imagined. Just as you, dear Picard, and your people, are capable of greatness beyond that which you expect—so were they. Their collective consciousness refused to die. Their bodies and minds may have given up the ghost, but their essence—their essence would not go quietly. Their essence roiled and seethed with the cosmic injustice of it all, and it occupied the remarkable weapon that had been created with the skill of their hands and the strength of their intellects. You would say that they haunted it. They occupied the great ship that had remained behind, and there they stayed.”

  “You offer stories laced with fantasy and fable,” said Picard. “Metaphysical, instead of physical, science. Technology was discovered decades ago on Camus II amidst the ruins of a long-dead civilization.”

  “Was it, indeed?” said Delcara with an air of barely held patience. “And perhaps the Borg were responsible for that race’s assassination?”

  “Or perhaps that race was a colony or offshoot of the race that developed your planet-destroyer,” said Picard. “The technology on Camus II was capable of mind transference. Also, the denizens of Arret were able to store their consciousness in mind-encasing globes. Isn’t it far more likely that some rational, scientific explanation exists to explain whatever was done to—”

  “Why do you persist in this!” Her voice was filled with fury, her eyes snapping and wrathful. “I speak to you true, of glories of spirit and desire beyond human ken, and you wish to drag it down into mundanities! I tell you the ship was haunted by homeless spirits, lost and alone…”

  “Until you came,” Guinan said.

  “Until I came,” agreed Delcara. Her ire seemed to have passed as quickly as it appeared. “They cried out to me and I heard them, once I was close enough. I was drawn to the magnificence of their creation. They loved me, welcomed me, saw me as their salvation and ally, their rescuer, their goddess. The ship needed someone to complete the work. I did so. And then it needed a physical host to guide it, and that I did willingly. Throughout the years of loneliness they faced before I came, they dwelled on their miserable state and, more and more, contemplated revenge on the soulless ones. I became the vessel of that revenge.”

  “Is it what they wanted,” said Guinan, “or what you wanted?”

  Delcara went to Guinan and for the first time actually looked her straight in the eye. Guinan stood with her hands invisible, tucked deep into the respective sleeves of her garment. She seemed—to Picard—to be in a vaguely defensive posture.

  “Every so often, bond sister,” said Delcara, “there is a union that is the perfect meshing of desires. Such was mine and my vessel. We are as one. My ship protects my physical body, keeping it safe from all harm. It protects and gives a channel to my desire for revenge against the cursed Borg. And I, in turn, provide the drive to supplement the dream of the vessel. The souls of the damned inhabit that ship, my beloved Guinan. My sweet Picard. The damned reside there. And I am their guardian angel.”

  “The guardian angel of the damned,” said Picard icily, “was Satan.”

  “Why, sweet Picard…how Judeo-Christian of you.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Delcara!” said Guinan impatiently. “We trusted each other. We told each other secrets that we swore to keep forever. I thought you cured of your hopeless hatred for the Borg.”

  “Cured? No, Guinan. Never cured,” and as she spoke, it almost seemed as if the lights were dimming. “Am I supposed to simply live with the knowledge that the Borg are out there and can continue to do as they please, where they please? Am I to accept the misery they have caused me and millions of others? Perhaps for a time I was able to tolerate that knowledge. Perhaps I was able to hurl it away, to try and reconstruct a life and pretend that it was a life worth living. But I was disenchanted with that notion, Guinan. I was shown the folly and futility,” and with each word her voice became louder, angrier. “Hopeless hatred, Guinan? No. No, not hopeless. That, “she said, pointing out the window with quivering finger, “that gives me hope. That gives me strength. That gives me might.”

  “And might makes right?” said Picard.

  She looked at him with dark amusement. “Of course might makes right.”

  “But the Borg were mightier once. Did that make what they did right?” he demanded.

  With a raised eyebrow she replied, “The Borg were mightier. Not anymore.”

  And with that pronouncement she turned, walked through the bulkhead, and vanished into space.

  Guinan leaned forward, hands on Picard’s desk, and she looked as though she were fighting to compose herself. He put hands on her shoulders to steady her, and she said, waving him off, “It’s all right. I’ll be fine.”

  “In all the time I’ve known you, Guinan, I’ve never seen you quite as discomfited as you were just now.”

  She eased down into a chair and looked up at him with curiosity, even a touch of admiration. “Discomfited. Oh, yes. I’ve seen a good friend—a dear friend—reject rational explanations in favor of—how would you put it—?”

  “Metaphysical claptrap,” offered Picard.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. Her fixation on that alone would be enough to discomfit me. The fact that she’s backed up by a weapon powerful enough to lay waste to a galaxy makes it doubly intimidating. You, on the other hand,” she said, “faced with the woman of your dreams—you were utterly in command. You never fail to surprise me, Captain.”

  He stared out the window of his ready room at the powerful ship that was mere kilometers away. “Occasionally,” he admitted, “I even surprise myself.”

  Delcara merged back into the oneness of the ship and felt the cool oneness of the many welcoming her.

  “Hello, my children,” she said. “I trust you did not miss me overmuch.”

  We missed you completely, they sang within her. We love you, Delcara. We need you, Delcara. Never leave us.

  “I cannot promise never, my children,” she told them.

  And she felt something even as she said this, a sort of…resentment. A bright, slivering shard, white-hot next to the coolness that was the normal state of the oneness. She found it disturbing and unsettling. “What is wrong?”

  You love someone else. They sounded petulant, their song hitting a discordant note.

  “How I feel for others does not matter,” she said. “Whatever other feelings I may have had pale in comparison for how I feel about you and about our mission. I have given myself over to you, willingly and gladly. You question that now?”

  You listened to the things they said. You thought of going back to them. And to him.

  She was quiet for a long moment.

  “I thought of it,” she admitted, for there was no point in denying it. “It could not be helped.”

  If you love us…if you value our mission of vengeance…

  “You are not alive, except in your determinat
ion not to let the great injustice of the soulless ones go unpunished. I share that determination. But I have a living mind, a mind that is accompanied by flesh and blood. And those…inconveniences, if you will…prompt me to consider other avenues. To dwell, for a few flittering moments, on the might-have-been’s, and the never-will-be’s. I cannot help that. When I see Picard again, and I relive those comparative few moments we had together…”

  You loved the Picard?

  “I love no one anymore,” she said. “I dare not. But there is much in him that reminds me of loves past. I see some of my life mates within him. They had much of his spirit, his determination. There is a blazing glory of life in him that draws me to him, like moth to flame. But I will not allow the curse that pursues to destroy him. I cannot help how I feel, my children. But I can help what I do.”

  We want no one else to have you. You must be ours. You are needed for the great mission of vengeance, and in performing that mission, you have our devotion. But we must have yours. For if we are the will, you are the way.

  “I know,” she said. “And I will be as one with you. That is what we both wish.”

  And that is how it shall be. For eternity, and beyond. And do not, the voices added darkly, do not think of leaving us. It upsets us. It threatens the vendetta, and the vendetta is all.

  “I would not upset you, my children, for all the world. You know that.”

  We know. But we wish to hear it again…and remind you. You are ours, and we are yours. Forever.

  Guinan had long since departed, at Picard’s request. But the captain had remained in the ready room, lost in thought. So lost, in fact, that at first he did not hear the buzz at this door. This led to a more urgent summoning, and finally he did look up and call out briskly, “Come.”

  The door hissed open and Deanna Troi was standing there. “Captain—?”

  Through the open door he caught a glimpse of Riker and Worf at their stations, surreptitiously looking in the direction of the ready room. When they realized that the captain had noticed them, they quickly snapped their heads around and gazed at the front viewscreen intently, as if embarrassed that they’d been “caught in the act.”

  “Yes, Counselor,” he said, and gestured for her to enter. The doors closed, blocking the bridge from view. Inwardly, Picard smiled, calling up an image of Riker and Worf leaning against the door with drinking glasses against their ears.

  She took a seat opposite him and said, “I sensed you were disturbed, Captain.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised, Counselor,” he said, forcing a smile. “The appearance of this…woman was something of a shock to me.”

  “What sort of shock? A pleasant one? Unpleasant?”

  “A shock,” he said simply. “I don’t know if I’ve really digested all the ramifications just yet.”

  “You’re saying you don’t know how you feel about her appearance?”

  He arched his eyebrows. “You’re saying that you do know how I feel?”

  “You are most ambivalent,” she admitted. “That, in and of itself, is disconcerting for you. You dislike not knowing your own mind.”

  “It’s called mixed feelings, Counselor,” he smiled, although the smile did not seem to touch his eyes. “It’s not something I tend to indulge in all that often.”

  “If at all,” she said.

  “If at all,” he agreed. “I have something of a reputation for singlemindedness. It’s a reputation that I prefer to live up to.”

  “How do you feel about this woman? This Delcara?”

  He considered it, trying to put into words the emotions that were rolling through him. Images danced through his head, visions of a time past, and of a face and voice that had haunted him all these many years.

  “For so long,” he said slowly, “the events that had occurred in my youth were so confusing to me. Such a—” and he paused, “such a bizarre night of recollections. I was truly unsure whether they had happened to me or not. There was a certain romance to that entire incident. I am not by nature, Counselor, a romantic person. And I do not have an overabundance of such memories. So to discover that what occurred had its basis in reality has me somewhat unsettled. You see, I’m not certain whether I’m pleased or disappointed.”

  She smiled. “The magic loses its luster when you discover it was done with mirrors.”

  “Precisely. Even so, if I am to believe her story, there is a certain degree of ‘magic’ involved. She spoke of being drawn across a galaxy to me, of ‘sensing’ my existence somehow. Now you must admit there is not a great degree of scientific basis for such things. Do you believe all that is possible, Counselor? That some mysterious fate, or power beyond our understanding, could have bound us together somehow?”

  She shrugged her slim shoulders. “I certainly have firsthand knowledge of such occurrences, Captain. After all, I had a fiancé who painted portraits of a woman he did not know. No one was more surprised than he when she showed up, virtually out of the blue, with a sense of him that was on par with his awareness of her.”

  “Yes. Yes, I had forgotten about that,” admitted Picard. “At the time, I must admit, I had grave doubts about the validity of all of it.”

  “I know you did,” smiled Troi. “You considered the possibility that it was somehow all an elaborate ruse on my fiancé’s part.”

  “You were aware of that?” he asked with surprise. “You said nothing to me of it.”

  “There was nothing to say. You were—and are—a rational man, and in that instance you were being faced with extremely irrational, even impossible, circumstances. It was natural for you to believe what was to you the far greater likelihood that some sort of deception was at hand.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “But since it seemed that everyone was doing as they truly wished, and since I had no real proof other than my own inbred skepticism, I kept my peace on the subject. And now…”

  “Now your skepticism is challenged once more,” said Troi. She hesitated. “Do you love this woman, Captain?”

  “Love her?” Picard looked amazed that she would ask.

  “Yes. Do you?”

  He gestured in a touchingly helpless way. “I don’t even know her.”

  “Sometimes that’s beside the point.”

  “Not to me.”

  “There is such a thing as love at first sight.”

  “Nonsense. The notion is as absurd as…”

  “As faster-than-light travel? As instantaneous transport? As an android wishing to be human? As feelings linking you to another individual, even though a galaxy may separate you?”

  He sat back in his chair and sighed. “You know,” he said grudgingly, “you missed your calling. You should have been a lawyer.”

  She smiled at his mild discomfiture. “Why do you think I’m called Counselor?”

  Suddenly Troi’s eyes widened. “Captain! She’s moving off!”

  Picard spun in his chair and saw that Troi was correct. Quite without warning, the ship that was Delcara’s home was suddenly in motion, pulling away from the Enterprise with speed that was amazing, considering its massiveness. Picard’s practiced eye told him that she was moving at full impulse power.

  He leaped to his feet just as he heard the summons at the door of the ready room. He started forward and snapped out a quick, “Come.”

  The door opened and Riker was standing there, arms behind his back, seriousness in his demeanor. “Captain, the planet-killer is—”

  “On her way, yes, I saw,” said Picard. “Lay in a pursuit course immediately.”

  “It’s not just that. Long-range sensors have picked up a new visitor. A Borg ship—on an intercept course with the planet-killer.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Picard stepped out onto the bridge, the uncertainty and confusion of his recent discoveries falling away from him. Romantic notions and half-memories of his youth were somewhat disturbing to him. But a crisis, an emergency into which he was thrust—these were things he understood. P
icard disliked intangibles, particularly when they impaired his ability to do his job.

  When encountering an unknown ship, Picard never immediately assumed any sort of alert status other than employing his own native caution in an unfamiliar situation. It did not create a good first impression to be bristling with weapons and have one’s shields firmly in place. That made it seem as if the Enterprise was perpetually ready for war, hence, extremely warlike. First would come efforts to establish communications, talk with their new acquaintances, and make all the normal overtures of diplomatic interchanges.

  However, when encountering a known hostile such as a Ferengi or a Tholian, Picard would order a yellow alert. There were certain races which considered it a sign of weakness, even stupidity, if you approached them with anything less than full defensive fields in place. They would either take advantage of you or even display their disdain for you by immediately attacking, on the assumption that you were ripe for conquest.

  When the Borg came on the scene, however, there was room for only one way to proceed.

  “Red alert,” snapped Picard.

  Immediately the red-alert klaxon sounded the ship. All personnel moved with practiced efficiency to their battle stations. The shields leaped into existence, and the weapons batteries were charged up and brought on line.

  “All stations report ready, Captain,” Worf informed him. There was pride—even something that could pass for excitement—in his deep Klingon voice. As well as he performed his normal, day-to-day duties, there was clear anticipation within him whenever a crisis presented itself. “We are presently in pursuit of the planet-killer.”

  “Time to the interception of the Borg ship?”