Star Trek - TNG - Vendetta Page 8

  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--"

  "Pfaw!" snorted Turane disdainfully.

  "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