Star Trek: The Next Generation: Vendetta Page 8

Riker swept her up in both arms and was amazed at the total lack of weight. It was like lifting paper or the wind. Guinan was muttering under her breath now, as if her mind were far away. A couple of syllables, over and over, not making any sense....

  He didn’t have time to stand around and try to decipher it. Instead, he turned and ran with her to the door, Geordi and Data right behind him. Several concerned crewmen started to follow, but Geordi stopped them with a sharp, “We don’t need a mob! Stay put.”

  The crewmen did as they had been ordered, and as the doors hissed shut, they started talking excitedly amongst themselves. They were all tremendously concerned, because everyone was extremely fond of Guinan, and none of them wanted to think that she had come down with anything serious. But so little was really known about her that no one could really be certain just how serious “serious” was.

  The Ferengi ship approached the three massive objects that lay before them with extreme caution. They waited for some acknowledgment—verbal communication, an assault—something. But there was nothing. It was as if the Borg didn’t know they were there, or simply didn’t care.

  Turane studied the surface of the ships carefully. They were solid, unknowable, and yet they seemed to pulse with a life all their own. “Keep us steady, helm,” he said softly.

  The helmsman muttered a brief acknowledgment, but he was also mentally cataloguing the wives (most of them his) he would never see again, the various properties and holdings that he would never enjoy, and the various rivals that he would never have the opportunity to kill.

  “There seems to be no way in,” said Martok, studying the schematics that the sensors were feeding him.

  Daimon Turane stroked his chin thoughtfully and ran a finger absently across his sharp teeth. “Something that huge? And it has no shuttle bay?” he said thoughtfully. “No loading dock? Nothing?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  Turane nodded briefly and then said, “Hailing frequencies.”

  “Hailing frequencies open, sir.”

  Turane raised his voice slightly as he announced, “This is Daimon Turane of the Ferengi. Am I correct in assuming that you are the entities known as,” and he paused thoughtfully, as if straining to remember their name. Always better, when commencing business dealings, to let the opposition know that they were barely worth your time. “Known as the Borg?” he finished after a suitable amount of hesitation. He was rather pleased with himself. He had spoken with just the right amount of nonchalance and casual boredom.

  There was no reply.

  He frowned and a Ferengi frowning was no prettier than a Ferengi smiling. “Are you the Borg?” he demanded again.

  The three massive ships remained in stony silence, uncommunicative, unknowable. For all that they seemed interested in the Ferengi craft, the Borg might as well have been great chunks of floating, lifeless rock.

  Turane sensed the cold disdain that was radiating from his crew. “Martok,” he said with barely concealed anger, “ready a landing party of myself, medical officer Darr, and two security men.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise, Daimon?” asked Martok.

  Turane spun and faced him, his anger at the eerily silent Borg, at his brother, at his entire situation in this godforsaken nowhere area of space—all of that spilling out at his first officer. “I don’t give a damn whether it’s wise or not! It’s what I’m going to do! Do you have a problem with that?”

  In contrast to the fury of his commander, Martok was surprisingly quiet. “No, Daimon.”

  “Good.” His anger still barely in check, he said, “The cube in the middle. Scan it. Find the source of peak energy emissions and prepare to beam us over.”

  “Yes, Daimon.”

  Daimon Turane started for the door and paused only to say, with triumph lacing his voice, “This is the dawning of a new age for the Ferengi!”

  “As you say, Daimon,” said Martok. He sat quietly thoughtfully, as Daimon Turane walked off the bridge, shoulders squared, confident in his ability to pull off one of the greatest deals of their time.

  The moment he was gone, Martok looked around at the rest of the crew. There was unspoken sentiment in their eyes. Indeed, the sentiment did not have to be spoken. They all knew what was what, and they all knew how long they would be stuck out there if Daimon Turane were in charge.

  “He’s insane,” said the helmsman finally. “The reports we’ve heard of the Borg…it’s like trying to reason with a black hole. He’s risking all of us. We should be getting out of here. This is not profit. This is suicide.”

  Martok nodded slowly. “Trust me, my friends,” he said with a hiss, “I am watching out for all of our safety. And if I see that safety jeopardized…I will take appropriate steps. I will take them…very, very soon.”

  Guinan had been whisked into a back examination room the moment that she’d been brought down to sickbay. Riker, Data, and Geordi started to follow automatically out of concern, but Crusher put up a firm hand. “She’s my patient,” she said in no uncertain terms. “I don’t need an audience.”

  “Will she be all right?” asked Geordi.

  “I’m a doctor,” said Crusher primly, “not a psychic. Which reminds me,” and she tapped her communicator. “Crusher to Troi. I’ve got Guinan down here in sickbay and I’d like you on hand.”

  “On my way,” came Deanna Troi’s concerned response.

  “Why Deanna?” asked Riker in surprise.

  Crusher raised an eyebrow. “Doctor/patient confidentiality, Commander. Or to put it in a slightly more earthy context: None of your damned business.” With that she turned and entered the examination room, the door sliding shut behind her.

  Seconds later the sickbay doors opened, admitting Deanna Troi and, right behind her, Jean-Luc Picard. Deanna glanced around, and before Riker could get a word out, she headed straight for the side examination room, as if guided by a beacon. Without a word, she entered and then was cut off from view as the doors hissed shut once more.

  “What happened, Number One?” said Picard with urgency. “Did she give any warning—?”

  “Nothing,” Riker told him. “She seemed very distracted, and then she was in the middle of a sentence and just keeled over. I picked her up and brought her straight down here.”

  Picard looked understandably concerned. He and Guinan had some sort of history together. Guinan had hinted at it but not gone into it, and Picard had remained resolutely tight-lipped, as he did about almost everything. The depth of that history, and of his feelings for her, was as much a mystery as was Guinan herself.

  “Did she say anything?” asked Picard. “Anything at all?”

  Riker ran through his mind the mutterings that Guinan had uttered while he had cradled her in his muscular arms. “It was something like…‘vendor.’ Over and over again.”

  “Vendor?” and Picard frowned. He paced briskly, his hands behind his back. “Vendor? Are you sure?”

  “As I said, Captain, it was difficult to make out.”

  “But why would she be talking about a salesman of some sort?” Picard shook his head. “It makes no sense.”

  “It obviously made sense to Guinan. She was very insistent about it.”

  “Then we’ll simply have to wait here until she’s recovered enough to tell us what she meant,” said Picard. He glanced around at his senior officers. “I see no need for all four of us to be waiting here.”

  Data inquired politely, “Will you be leaving, sir?”

  Picard gave him an icy look, and Riker stepped in quickly. “I think we should be minding the bridge, Mr. Data. Come along.”

  Obediently, if uncomprehendingly, Data and Geordi followed Riker out, leaving Picard alone in the sickbay. In the corridor Geordi said, “Whatever there is between the captain and Guinan, he obviously wants to keep it private.”

  “And we’ll respect that, Mr. La Forge.”

  “No question.”

  “If the captain has anything to tell us, he will.”

&nb
sp; “No question.” And then, after a moment of thought, Geordi added, “Of course, until such time that the captain chooses to tell us, we’re all going to speculate one hell of a lot.”

  “No question,” said Riker.

  Picard, in the meantime, remained in sickbay. He gave up pacing after a short time, because it brought to mind the cliché image of the expectant father waiting for some sort of word about his wife in labor.

  After what seemed an interminable time, Bev Crusher emerged from the examining room. If she was surprised to see Picard there, she didn’t say so. Instead, she simply folded her arms and announced, “She’s fine.”

  Picard had finally seated himself but now he stood, shoulders squared, posture correct as always, ramrod-perfect. He smoothed his jacket and said, “What was wrong with her?”

  “You don’t understand, Captain. When I say she’s fine, I mean she’s fine. I mean I can’t find anything wrong with her. I have absolutely no idea why she passed out, and Deanna’s empathic scan doesn’t pick up anything.”

  “Does Guinan know what happened?”

  “If she does, she’s not telling me.”

  “She’ll tell me,” Picard said firmly, and headed for the examining room.

  He entered and saw Guinan standing next to the table, looking calm and self-contained. She was just adjusting her headgear. Nearby sat Deanna Troi, looking quite distracted, and Picard noticed it immediately. But first he turned his attention to his Ten-Forward hostess as he said, “How are you feeling?”

  “Fit,” she said. There was something in her voice—a hint of that distractedness that Riker had indicated typified her mood before she had passed out. But it didn’t seem especially drastic. “Fit and well. I’m probably just overworked.”

  “You do seem to spend every waking hour in Ten-Forward, Guinan,” allowed Picard. “Even for one of your…special gifts…that seems a bit extreme. Still…do you have any other explanation for your sudden faintness?”

  “Nothing comes to mind,” she said.

  For the briefest of moments he thought Guinan was keeping something from him. But that would mean she was lying, and there was no way in this cosmos that he was going to accept the notion that Guinan would lie to him. He would just as readily believe that the Federation was actually a front set up by the Romulans. Or that all of space travel was actually a huge case of collective mass hysteria on the part of the human race, and mankind was still mucking around on the planet Earth.

  Still…

  “Does the word Vendor mean anything to you?”

  She appeared to give it some thought, and then she shook her head. “No special significance other than the obvious.”

  He regarded her with a feeling that was alien when it came to Guinan—suspicion. Not suspicion that she was keeping something from him, but that—bizarre as it sounded—she was keeping something from herself.

  Picard was far from satisfied. “Guinan, do you have any idea at all what could have caused that sudden weakness? It’s so unlike you.”

  She frowned. “The only thing I can think of,” and she slid off the examining table as she spoke, “is that it has something to do with others of my race. We are sensitive to each others’ moods. If there was something happening, something that affected us…”

  “I thought your people had been scattered after the Borg attack,” said Troi.

  Guinan afforded her a brief glance. “Scattered, Counselor. Never separated.” She turned back to Picard. “An overwhelming feeling, Captain. I can’t be more specific than that, if that’s what it is, in fact. As soon as I know more, you will too.”

  She started for the door, and then Picard stopped her with a simple question: “Is it the Borg?”

  She looked back at him over her shoulder, and Picard might have been imagining it, but he thought a brief shudder passed through her.

  “Bet on it,” she said.

  The four Ferengi materialized in the main corridor of the center Borg ship. There had been nothing really to distinguish one ship from the other. Just an arbitrary decision on Turane’s part.

  The landing party was puzzled by what they saw. Corridors that seemed to go on forever, an incredible labyrinth that didn’t seem to have been designed so much as having organically grown somehow, in all directions and yet with a ruthless, systematic efficiency. Whereas Ferengi ships had aspects to their layout that contributed, in a variety of ways, to add personality to their surroundings, the Borg ship was quite the opposite. The Ferengi began to explore, and wherever they looked, wherever they searched, they found that the Borg personality seemed defined by their utter absence of personality.

  Darr was studying the readings from his medical instruments. “I’m not detecting any individual life readings, Daimon,” he said after a long moment.

  “Then what do you call those?” said Turane immediately, having taken a step back in forcefully controlled alarm. He had his blaster out immediately. Coming his way, with slow, measured, ominous tread, was a Borg soldier.

  “Halt!” shouted Turane, for the Borg was bearing down on him, his gaze unwavering, his right arm encased in an ominous sheath of metal. “Guards! Stop him! He’s going to attack me!”

  The guards were standing directly in between the oncoming Borg and the alarmed Daimon. And then a clanking alerted them to the approach of a second Borg soldier from behind. They spun and faced him, the face on the second one as deadpan as the first.

  “Stop them, you idiots!” shouted Daimon Turane. “What are you waiting for?!”

  The guards looked at each other, an unspoken decision passing between them. Then, as one, they lowered their weapons and stepped back, flat against the wall, leaving a clear path to their commanding officer.

  The blood drained from Daimon Turane’s face, and his heart raced. He looked in front of and behind him, the Borg soldiers closing in, and a fearful curse emerged from his thick lips. “This is treason!” he howled. “This is mutiny! Darr, do something!”

  But Darr was an old man, and he merely cowered behind the nearest security officer.

  Daimon Turane brought his blaster up, aimed at the nearest Borg, and squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing.

  He howled in fury. The energy indicator read a full charge, but obviously someone had tampered with it. Perhaps one of these guards. Perhaps someone else back on the ship. Perhaps even Martok himself. In the final analysis, it made no difference. He was dead, that was all. Dead and gone.

  The Borg were upon him, their heavy clanging echoing around them. They passed in front of each other, in front of him…

  And kept on going in opposite directions.

  Daimon Turane watched in utter confusion as the Borg totally ignored him and went off about their business as if his presence didn’t matter at all. Within moments they were gone, the only thing left behind them being that inexorable clanging. Shortly thereafter, that was gone too. What remained was the steady humming and throbbing and pulsing of electronic life that seemed to fill the walls, the floors, the very air around them.

  Turane, however, did not have the time or the inclination to dwell on it. Instead, his fury was focussed on his guards as he turned on them with the full measure of it and said, icily, “What was the meaning of that outrageous behavior?”

  “This was the meaning,” said the guard, and he swung his heavy blaster up and fired.

  Turane would have been dead right there, had not medical officer Darr hurled himself right into the path of the assault. Darr hadn’t even known he was going to do it, until he did. If he’d given it a moment’s thought, or even had it to do over again, he probably would have stayed rooted to the spot. As it happened, he didn’t have to the chance to do anything ever again, because he died before he could even get out a single word to reprimand the guards for their attack.

  Turane stood paralyzed for a moment, staring at the smoldering body of his medical officer. Then his gaze returned to the guards, who were standing there with singularly stupid
expressions on their faces.

  “Oh hell,” muttered the nearest of them, staring down at their handiwork.

  Turane realized at that point that he had two choices: To stay and try and regain control of the situation by asserting his authority over the security guards who were clearly out to murder him, or to get the hell out of there.

  Daimon Turane was nothing, if not a realist. Without a second’s further consideration, he spun on his heel and bolted.

  The movement snapped the two Ferengi guards from their momentary paralysis. They immediately started firing, but by that time the fleet-footed Daimon had rounded a corner and vanished, their blaster bolts exploding harmlessly behind him. The guards cursed loudly and started off after him.

  Turane tore through the Borg ship, his arms pumping furiously, his blood pounding in his temples. Turane wasn’t in bad shape for a Ferengi, but he was far from fit. Fear for his life, though, lent him some extra strength and endurance. His legs churned up distance quickly, and he ran with no heed to direction other than simply away from his pursuers. His pursuers didn’t make it difficult to keep track of them, for they raised a hellish racket behind them as they followed.

  The frantic Daimon turned another corner and ran headlong into a Borg soldier. They went down in a tumble of arms and legs, Turane shrieking, the soldier eerily silent. Turane grabbed the Borg soldier by the front of his clothing and practically screamed in his face, “Help me! They’re trying to kill me! Help me and I’ll help you!”

  The Borg said nothing. The Borg didn’t even appear to notice that Turane was there. Instead he sat up, brushing Turane aside in an offhand manner. It wasn’t even a gesture acknowledging Turane’s presence as a living being so much as it was just pushing aside an obstacle, as one would a gnat. The soldier got to its feet and kept on walking.

  “You call yourselves soldiers!” bellowed Turane in frustration. “You won’t even fight! I have to do everything!”

  The guards suddenly appeared at the far end of the corridor. “There!” shouted the nearer one, and they opened fire.

  Turane leaped frantically to the left, and the blaster bolts exploded over his head. They blew out some sort of glowing power units, blasting them into fragments, and Turane tripped, knocked off his feet by the concussion. He hit the floor hard, landing wrong, and it tore up his knees and elbows. He skidded and smashed into a nearby wall, and then rolled onto his back, crabwalking and shoving himself backwards. His back slammed up against a corner, his arms up over his head, protecting himself as best he could. Daimon Turane stamped his feet in childlike frustration, howling his fury. “I am the Daimon, damn you!” he shouted. “I order you to stop!”