Star Trek - TNG - Vendetta Read online

  Picard forced himself to stand, forced himself from bed and

  brought his arms up against the brutal slamming of the

  wind. "Who are you?" he shouted, and again, "Who

  are you?"

  She floated towards the door and stopped

  momentarily to turn a gaze on him that was ancient

  beyond belief.

  "I am pain," she said. "I am loss. I

  am grief." And then her voice became

  diamond hardness, and she threw wide her arms and

  cried out into the wind, into the souls that chorused with

  her, "I am implacable, unstoppable! I am

  passion made into fury, love twisted to hate!

  I am vendetta!"

  The wind came up and knocked Picard back.

  He stumbled over his bed, and his head smashed into the

  wall with a sickening thud. He slid down onto

  his pillow, and even then, all he wanted was one

  last glimpse of her.

  Vendetta whispered in his mind, and then he

  passed out.

  When he awoke in the morning, his blankets were

  twisted around him, and despite the coolness in the

  air, there was a thin film of perspiration all over

  his body.

  The dream of the previous night had not faded with the

  morning sun, nor would the recollection diminish

  in the succeeding years, although naturally some of the

  immediacy was lost as time went on.

  He never told anyone of the events of that

  night. At night he would sometimes lie awake,

  waiting for her to reappear, waiting for her

  to return and explain the puzzling descriptions of

  "soulless ones," and of that mysterious

  self-description.

  He made a study of all the events

  surrounding the planet-killer, including the

  frustrating open-ended question of the nature of its

  origin. The theory was that it had been created by one

  of two great races locked in combat. But what

  races? Why were there no traces of them? Had they

  both wiped each other completely from existence?

  Questions. These and dozens more, none of which he was able

  to satisfactorily answer throughout his Academy

  career. Eventually he moved on to other things, and the

  questions were forgotten.

  But not the biggest question.

  Every so often he would listen to the winds, but they would

  not call to him again after that night, and they never

  whispered that word. The word that would haunt him as much

  as the woman who came to him that night

  Vendetta.

  ACT ONE

  Chapter Two

  Dantar the Eighth looked across the table at

  Dantar the Ninth with total satisfaction, his

  antennae twitching slightly in approval.

  Dantar the Ninth, for his part, was preparing for the act

  of drawing a well-honed knife across the torso

  of the carefully prepared zinator, the animal's

  lifeless eyes staring up at Dantar the Eighth and

  his family.

  It was an extended family, to be sure,

  by human standards. By the standards of the Penzatti, the

  race of which Dantar was a member, it was merely

  average. Smaller than average, in fact--

  thirteen family members, including the three

  spouses and assorted children. Yes, smaller

  indeed. Dantar the Eighth was occasionally the butt

  of jibes from his fellow workers, and he brushed off

  such japes with brisk comments about quality versus

  quantity. Secretly, though, he toyed with the

  idea of acquiring yet another mate, or perhaps

  simply producing more children with the ones he had. So

  many choices for a healthy head of a Penzatti

  family.

  Dantar the Ninth, eldest son of Dantar the

  Eighth, was taking his carving responsibility quite

  seriously. The zinator had been meticulously

  prepared by his mother, anointed with all the proper

  scents and spices for this day of appreciation to the

  gods. Dantar the Ninth had not suspected for a

  moment that his father would be permitting him to perform the

  actual carving.

  He paused a moment, taking a deep breath,

  his tongue moving across his dry green lips. His

  three-fingered hand, wrapped around the blade of the

  knife, was trembling ever so slightly. But

  to Dantar the Ninth, it felt as if a massive

  tremor had seized hold of him and was shaking him

  for all he was worth. His graceful antennae were

  straight out and stiff with tension. In his other hand was

  the long, two-pronged fork, prodding carefully at

  the pink, uncooked zinator skin--deliciously,

  delicately raw--and every member of his family was

  watching and waiting for him to do something, already.

  It was not as if it were such a difficult act.

  Just draw the knife across, start carving up. The

  beast was dead already, for pity's sake; he just had

  to slice it to be eaten. What he was carrying on

  himself was the weight of expectations, of tradition,

  the father passing the responsibility on to the son.

  Each cut had to be perfect, each slice

  precise, each ....

  He felt a hand resting gently on his forearm.

  He turned to look at his father, who squeezed his

  arm tightly and said, not unkindly, "I know how you

  feel. If you can't do it ..." And he

  deliberately allowed his voice to trail off.

  Stung, Dantar the Ninth said, "I can do it just

  fine, father," and his antennae twitched in

  annoyance. He turned back to the zinator and

  briskly drew the razor-sharp blade across the

  creature's neck.

  Wholly unexpectedly, blood spurted forth

  and splashed across Dantar the Ninth's crisp

  white tunic. He flinched and rapped out an

  oath, which drew giggles from his younger sisters.

  "Children!" snapped their father.

  "Dantar said some bad words," said the youngest of the

  sisters, Lojene. She was always the one who could be

  counted on to tattle on any of her siblings.

  "Yes, I know," said their father, "and he shouldn't

  have. But ... it was understandable." He had picked up

  a napkin and was dabbing it against his son's tunic,

  soaking up some of the blood. "Still some

  kick left in this one, eh, son?"

  Dantar the Ninth grinned sheepishly, and the

  understanding smiles from the rest of his family relaxed

  him. It reminded him that this was supposed to be a

  time of appreciation and thanks and warm family

  atmosphere. There really wasn't any need for

  tension.

  He took into himself the aura of friendliness and good

  feelings that surrounded him and told himself that this

  moment would last forever in his memory.

  And that was when the sirens began.

  There was no noise in space, of course, so

  everything that travelled through space, naturally,

  passed noiselessly.

  But the object that was cruising toward the homeworld

  of the Penzatti cut through space with far more than the

  simple silence of a vacuum. There w
as more to it than

  that. It moved with the silence of oncoming death.

  It was massive, the size of a small moon.

  It made a statement in its presence, in its

  size, and in its very shape, for it was a cube--a

  perfectly formed cube with lights glittering here and

  there in its machine exterior.

  There was no elegance to it, no grace. When

  humanoids created ships there was always the concept

  --expressed in different ways through different

  stylings--that they were vessels designed to glide

  through the spaceways. Frequently there was a

  suggestion of wings, ranging from the outsweeps of

  Klingon or Romulan ships, to the swanlike

  grace of the nacelles on a Federation starship.

  There was frequently a forward projection as

  well, to symbolize--unconsciously or not--the

  idea of hurling oneself forward into the abyss.

  But this huge cube ship disdained such concepts and

  self-expression ... or, in so disdaining,

  actually reflected with unintentioned accuracy the

  spirit of the creatures inhabiting it creatures with

  mechanized souls and hearts that had the same

  emotional content as did the guts of a smoothly

  running watch.

  Their minds--their great, unified minds--

  clicked with that watchlike precision. And, as with a

  watch, they cared nothing about the past and nothing for the

  future. They existed only for the now, the

  eternal, ever-present now. Anything that had

  happened in the past was not dwelled on, and anything

  that could occur in the future was not contemplated.

  The past was irrelevant.

  The future was irrelevant.

  Only the here and now mattered.

  The squareness of their ship was, therefore, the

  ultimate expression of their philosophy, if

  such a word as philosophy could be applied to beings

  so incapable of contemplating shadings of human

  imagination.

  Their ship made a statement, much like the ships of

  humanoid beings. Such ships modelled themselves on

  nature. But a perfect cube did not exist in

  nature. It had to be manufactured, carefully

  and meticulously conceived with the same watchlike

  precision that drove them on. It possessed no

  beauty or elegance, but instead, machine-like

  efficiency.

  It was a ship that said they were beyond nature. That

  nature was irrelevant. That beauty was

  irrelevant. That elegance was irrelevant.

  Everything was irrelevant except their own,

  steady, unrelenting perfection.

  There was a slight course correction

  required, and the great vessel accomplished it with the

  speed of unified thought.

  This was the second Borg ship to penetrate

  into this part of the galaxy. The first had actually been

  destroyed. It was the first major defeat that could be

  recalled in the unified memory of the whole.

  Again, though, they did not dwell on the past or the

  future. There was never any need.

  The past could only hold two things, after all

  failure and success. Failure could be something as

  simple as one of their number falling before a

  weapon, or something as large as hundreds of their

  number being tricked into self-destruction. In such

  in stances there was no need to contemplate them, because the

  great mind instantaneously adjusted itself so that such

  gambits or methods of force could not be used again.

  Whereas humans might dwell on where to place

  blame, or even mourn the circumstances that could have

  brought such things to pass, these were utterly

  irrelevant concerns.

  As for success--that was not irrelevant. That was

  simply ... inevitable.

  Madness reigned on the homeworld of the

  Penzatti.

  The planetary defense system had immediately

  alerted the government the moment that the intruder had

  entered their space. Military heads promptly

  assembled to try and determine the nature

  of the attacker, and the best way that they could

  respond. The specifics of the ship, its

  dimension and size, were fed into the planetary

  computers.

  The computers were the pride and joy of the great

  Penzatti, the finest and most advanced computerized

  minds ever developed. They surpassed

  by light-years even the computers that aided Federation

  starships. The Penzatti had not wished to share this

  technology with the Federation because of the arrogant

  assertion that the UFP was, as Penzatti top

  scientists put it, "Not quite ready for it."

  The computers oversaw all defense systems,

  teaching systems, and regulatory systems--

  everything that the Penzatti had, at one time, bothered

  themselves with. And now--definitely--seemed to be a

  time when the great brains of the computers would be needed

  the most. The sheer size of the invader, the aura of

  merciless power that clung to it like a canker, was

  positively overwhelming.

  The great mechanical minds that advised the

  Penzatti spit back an identification in

  less than a second--two, simple, haunting

  words

  THE BORG

  Now the Penzatti military braintrust was not

  alarmed. Certainly they had heard of the destruction

  and devastation that the dreaded Borg had inflicted

  upon other parts of the Federation. But other parts were not the

  Penzatti, whose mighty computers could easily and

  effortlessly solve the problem of the Borg.

  Difficulties imposed upon other races were not

  difficulties that would faze the mighty

  Penzatti. Especially not on this day of days, the

  day on which the mighty Penzatti gave thanks

  to their great gods for making them Penzatti, rather than

  a lesser race.

  All of this occurred to the great military leaders

  of the Penzatti, until two more chilling words

  appeared on the great computer screen of the great

  computer. Two words that sounded the death knell of a

  people. And the words were

  AT LAST

  Outside the house of Dantar there was

  pandemonium. Inside the house of Dantar it

  wasn't much better.

  Children were crying, or were shouting out questions in confusion.

  They didn't understand anything of what was happening.

  In truth, their leaders in the faraway

  capital city didn't have much better

  comprehension.

  Dantar the Eighth grabbed his eldest son's

  arm and swung the boy around, looking for some sign

  of fear, some indication of just how much he could trust

  his son at this moment when a crisis of global

  importance appeared to be hanging over them.

  Everywhere was the unyielding, pounding klaxon of the

  warning sirens.

  The boy's face was set and determined.

  Dantar the Eighth gave a mental nod of

  approval. To be flustered over the carving up of

  some pointless meal that it seem
ed none of them would ever

  taste--that was acceptable. Now, though, when a

  genuine situation of danger had arisen, now was the

  time when he needed his son to be a man, to become

  a man before his time. Of course, Dantar thought

  bleakly, it was possible that his son's time might

  never come.

  The last time that klaxon had sounded was twenty

  years ago, during a major attack by the

  Romulans. The mighty defensive computers of

  Penzatti--the omnipotent brain of his world--had

  conceived and executed a plan of attack and

  counterattack, and it had succeeded. But there had

  been casualties--gods, had there been

  casualties, including Dantar the Seventh and

  Sixth.

  Dantar the Eighth could not dwell on that now.

  He tried to ignore the crying of his wives and

  other children and instead looked his son in the eyes. The

  boy's antennae were quivering fiercely.

  "We must be brave, my son," said Dantar

  the Eighth. His son nodded in quick agreement.

  "Our family and our people need to defend themselves.

  Down below us--"

  "The weapons bay," said Dantar the Ninth.

  All of the more well-to-do families of the

  Penzatti kept a well-stocked weapons bay.

  The Romulan invasion had left deep mark and

  scars that never quite healed. "I'll get down there

  immediately."

  He turned and headed to the lower portions of the

  house. Dantar the Eighth, meantime, shoved his

  way through the pawing and grasping hands of his family.

  They wanted to hold him, embrace him, clutch

  at him and plead for him to tell them that there was nothing

  wrong, that everything was going to be all right. However,

  he had no time to waste with such matters. He

  muttered quick assurances as well as he

  could before pushing through and going to the computer screen that

  hooked him in--along with the rest of the Penzatti

  families--with the great computer mind of their

  planet.

  He placed his three tapering fingers into the

  identifying slots, and the screen glowed to life.

  He expected to see the usual three-cornered

  emblem of the Penzatti appear on the screen,

  along with a message of personal greeting.

  Instead there were simply two words, which he stared

  at and still did not comprehend.

  ""At Last"?" he murmured. "At last

  what?"

  The military minds of the great Penzatti were at