Part 17 (1/2)

The whispers were not emotionless, wordless directions being issued to a swarm of drones to repair or modify or defend some part of the s.h.i.+p of which they themselves were a part.

This time the whispers were laden with emotion. They also conveyed a straightforward series of messages, messages that jolted him fully awake the moment their meaning penetrated his drifting consciousness.

His eyes snapping open, Picard lurched upright as if jerked by a giant puppeteer, almost tumbling to the floor before he could regain full control of his body and get to his feet. Heart pounding, he crossed the ready room to the door, already hissing open at his approach. With difficulty, he held his pace to a smooth but rapid stride as he made his way down the ramp and onto the bridge.

”Ensign Raeger,” he said, coming to a stop directly behind the conn officer, ”how long until rendezvous with the Wisdom?”

”Approximately seventy-seven minutes, sir.”

”Shorten that if you can. Mr. Worf, are there any Borg s.h.i.+ps nearby?”

”Other than the two accompanying the Vortex, none within standard sensor range, sir.”

”Initiate a maximum range scan, Mr. Worf. Start with the immediate vicinity of the Wisdom.”

Tensely, Picard waited, watching the viewscreen as the warp factor inched higher and Worf initiated the scan. To his relief and puzzlement, the scan revealed nothing remotely Borg-like in the vicinity of the Wisdom. There might still be time to warn Sarek.

But to deliver that warning without also alerting the Borg would not be easy.

Twenty.

ORDINARILY the Borg Queen would have paid scant attention to the Link that had just been initiated. She preferred to review the information such a Link would provide only after it had been filtered and stored and the Link itself terminated. Entering directly into a Link was often both unpleasant and counterproductive. It would expose her directly to the emotions that totally organic creatures were subject to, and the very presence of those emotions could easily obscure vital aspects of the message the creatures were trying to transmit through the Link.

But this, she saw immediately, was a member of Species 642. Another member of that Species had once provided her with what promised to be truly invaluable information, so she decided to enter directly into the Link.

At first, the information itself was, if looked at logically, unremarkable. A small s.h.i.+p with two sentient beings aboard had supposedly ”appeared out of nowhere.” Not a startling occurrence, given the variety of star drives that were in use throughout the galaxy, and the s.h.i.+p itself obviously presented no threat. Later, this pair claimed to have come from an ”alternate universe,” though the creature Linking the information did not seem to have a clear concept of what the term even meant.

Sometime later, a second, much larger alien s.h.i.+p of unknown design and origin had made itself known, its commander professing an interest in one of the beings aboard the earlier s.h.i.+p.

Until that point, she had been less involved with the information itself than with her efforts to isolate herself from the emotions in which the creature constantly shrouded itself. But then an image virtually erupted from the creature's mind, an image far more vivid than anything that had come before: an image of the larger s.h.i.+p's commander as the creature had seen it briefly on a viewscreen.

She recognized the alien commander instantly, even though she had not seen him for nearly three subjective centuries.

His name, when she had captured him, had been Picard.

She had hoped he would willingly act as bridge between the Borg and his troublesome species, 5618, but he had stubbornly and irrationally resisted despite all the rewards she had offered, not the least of which had been power and authority almost equal to her own.

And so, in order to gain access to his knowledge and memories, she had been left with no choice but to transform him into the drone Locutus.

But then, during her failed first attempt to a.s.similate Earth, the Federation had somehow stolen him from her and then used what he had learned of the Borg to defeat her, at least temporarily.

She was never able to determine precisely what had happened to Locutus after that. She had studied the fragmentary records s.n.a.t.c.hed from Starfleet computers during her second-and successful-attempt to a.s.similate Earth, but she had been unable to find anything beyond the fact that he and his s.h.i.+p had gone missing and was presumed destroyed in the interim.

Then, in her abortive attempt to minimize the ma.s.sive losses suffered in the a.s.similation of Earth, she had unexpectedly been given an opportunity to a.s.similate not just twenty-fourth-century Earth but more than three hundred years of its history.

She had of course taken immediate advantage of that opportunity despite the obvious potential pitfalls. In one simple operation, she was able to eliminate an increasingly troublesome thorn in the side of all Borg before it had even begun to sprout. And now, in this universe which had come about because of her actions, the planet on which Picard had been born-would someday have been born-no longer existed. It had not existed for centuries except as part of her matrix. He could not have been born on that Earth, could not have grown up to enter a Starfleet that had never existed, could not have found a way to travel back to a point decades before his now-nonexistent birth.

He simply could not exist.

Unless, somehow, that other universe in which Picard had been born still existed.

Somewhere.

But wherever or whenever he was from, he was almost certainly here to destroy her and the universe she had created. It had been his goal at their first meeting and throughout that long-ago series of encounters that had not yet come to pa.s.s in that other universe, and there was no reason to think that it was any different now.

She had no choice but to stop him, to destroy him before he destroyed her.

But in order to be certain that that destruction would be final and complete, she had to learn where and when he had come from.

And how he had gotten here.

Without knowing at least that much, she could not be certain that, when she destroyed him, he would not simply reappear yet again.

With great deliberation, she turned her attention once more to the Link.

The Enterprise had barely dropped out of warp when Scotty, waiting with Kirk and Sarek for Picard and Guinan to beam over from the Enterprise, felt the telltale tingle of a transporter beam locking onto him. He had no time to react, only time enough to wonder what the blazes Picard was up to, before the Wisdom's spartan transporter room disappeared in the fleeting sparkle of the transporter energies.

A moment later the s.p.a.cious transporter room of the new Enterprise materialized around him. Kirk and Sarek were on the pads on either side of him, Kirk looking as startled as Scotty felt. Traces of anger and surprise managed to crack through Sarek's normally impa.s.sive mask, his eyes narrowing as they fell on a grim-faced Picard standing next to the ensign operating the transporter controls.

”s.h.i.+elds up,” Picard snapped to someone on the distant bridge.

”Picard,” Sarek began, his tone stiff even for a Vulcan, ”I demand an explanation for- ”

”Arbiter Sarek,” Picard interrupted, ”please accept my apology for changing plans without warning you. I know I promised to transport onto the Wisdom for our first meeting, but I have obtained new information since that promise was made, information that makes it essential that I speak with you privately, away from the Wisdom's crew.”

”What could possibly justify- ”

”I have reason to believe there is a Borg spy aboard the Wisdom,” Picard interrupted again, overriding Sarek's protests.

”Captain,” Riker's voice came over the intercom, ”the Wisdom's commander- ”

”- wants to know what is going on, I'm sure,” Picard finished for his first officer. ”Tell him Arbiter Sarek will speak with him in a few minutes.”

”What leads you to conclude that such a thing as a Borg 'spy' even exists, Picard, let alone exists on the Wisdom?” Sarek demanded, though he didn't resist as Picard shepherded them all into the nearest turbolift. ”Is it part of the special knowledge you bring with you from the next century?”

Picard shook his head. ”Not in the sense you mean, I'm sure, Arbiter. Suffice it to say that the Enterprise has the means to occasionally intercept certain Borg communications. One was intercepted little more than an hour ago, and- ”

”Precisely how were you able to intercept these alleged messages, Picard?” Sarek interrupted. ”Every transmission from the Wisdom, both in and out of subs.p.a.ce, is automatically monitored, and we have detected nothing.”

”These weren't 'normal' subs.p.a.ce transmissions, Arbiter.”

”And yet you are able to detect and intercept them. In what sense were they 'not normal'?”

”It is difficult to explain,” Picard said with a mixture of uneasiness and impatience. He could hardly admit, at least not yet, that he had once been a Borg and still occasionally experienced ephemeral links with nearby segments of the collective.

”You wish me to a.s.sume, then, Picard, that in the future you claim to have come from, you have developed a technology that makes such detection possible?”