First Contact, page 15
TWELVE
After a tedious, tense journey from the ship’s underbelly, down the crest of the battle bridge’s hull, and below, Picard, Worf, and Hawk at last arrived at the edge of the “crater” in whose center the deflector dish rested. Slowly, slowly, Picard raised his head to peer over the lip—
And heard the two men beside him let go gasps of unhappy surprise. Some fifty meters away, the large dish still glowed—but half of its surface, and the critical stiletto-shaped particle transmitter at its heart, were now obscured by a towering multifaceted crystal. From it protruded scores of isolinear spires, each reflecting star- and Earth-glow-like shards of crazed glass.
As Picard stared in silent rage, two of the spires abruptly blazed with light, illumined by an interior source.
Worf emitted a low growl of disapproval. “We should bring reinforcements.”
“There’s no time,” Picard countered. “It looks like they’re building the beacon right over the particle emitter.” At once, Hawk’s reply filtered through the receiver in the captain’s helmet.
“If we set our phasers to full power, aim them at the center of the dish—”
“No,” Picard countered. “We can’t risk hitting the dish. It’s charged with antiprotons. We’d destroy half the ship.”
Worf’s voice, the sound of pure determination winning over nausea: “There are six Borg. I would not suggest a direct assault.”
Picard sighed. “No… we need another way.” Though what precisely that might be, he had at present no idea.
* * *
With Geordi La Forge beside him, Will Riker leaned against a tall, fragrant pine and watched as, in the near distance, Zefram Cochrane struggled up a steep incline, unaware of the Starfleet engineers surrounding him.
The entire experience with Cochrane had been far, far different from the one Riker’d anticipated. He’d expected a dedicated scientist, a hero, a visionary… and found instead a belligerent, drunken man given to inexplicable, apparently selfish behavior.
The only possible reason Riker could come up with for Cochrane’s wild “escape” was that the doctor had disbelieved their story, had believed them to be somehow affiliated with the ECON, and had played along.… But that made too little sense. No one in the twenty-first century, including the ragged remnants of the ECON, had ever heard of Zefram Cochrane until the Phoenix’s successful flight.
Yet Riker and the away team had proven, time and again, that they were exceptionally familiar with the physics and the design of the warp ship. Riker had himself shown Cochrane the work being done to repair his vessel—something that could not have been done with twenty-first-century technology.
He could accept that the man was erratic, temperamental; he could even accept that Cochrane had a serious addiction to alcohol. But he could not accept that the man had run away from what he cared about most. It was, to quote Deanna, nuts.
The term suddenly gave Riker pause, though why, he could not have said—only that there was a connection somewhere with Cochrane, something obvious that they were missing.
He and La Forge watched grimly as the doctor, panting and uncoordinated from drink, made it halfway up the incline, then stopped, his posture telegraphing alarm. Apparently Cochrane had finally registered the presence of the Starfleet officer who awaited him patiently at the top of the slope, for the scientist turned and began scrambling in the opposite direction.
That effort, too, was immediately halted, for another officer moved out to block Cochrane’s path. Once again, the scientist whirled about and ran in yet a third direction…
Directly toward Riker and La Forge.
Will gave Geordi a nod; together, the two emerged from the trees and stepped directly in front of the fleeing man. La Forge spoke, his normally cheerful voice flat with disappointment.
“Still looking for the bathroom?”
“I’m not going back!” Cochrane gasped, eyes wild with panic, lips and body trembling, forehead pouring sweat despite the chill. The smell of alcohol emanated over-poweringly from him, yet he seemed far too agitated for someone drunk. This was not a rational man, Riker realized; he looked and behaved more like a feverish man in the midst of delirium. Was it possible the man was ill, that the Borg attack had also included bioweapons?
La Forge took another step forward, palm spread, reaching, in a conciliatory gesture. “Doc… we can’t do this without you.”
“I don’t care! And I don’t want a statue!” He lunged as if to push past La Forge; Riker moved in.
“Doctor—”
“Get away from me!” Cochrane screamed, and in that instant, the word nuts popped into Will Riker’s mind and there remained, along with the memory that earlier had refused to surface.
Nuts. Insane. Words that had once had a literal meaning: people who suffered from various aberrations of brain chemistry, once lumped vaguely under the term mental illness. Four or five hundred years ago, to have labeled someone “nuts” didn’t mean that they were behaving playfully or immaturely or irrationally; it meant that they suffered from either organic damage to the brain or a disorder in its chemistry.
But by the beginning of the twenty-first century, most such disorders were so successfully treated—by such effective, long-lasting medications—that by the time of the Third World War, they’d been forgotten.
The effect of the War That Truly Had Ended All Wars? Every twenty-fourth-century schoolchild could parrot a list; but the one effect that stuck in Riker’s mind had to do with health.
One consequence of the Nuclear Dark Age was the reappearance of long-eradicated diseases: cancer, arteriosclerosis, plague, influenza, polio…
And all mental disorders. In the first half of the twenty-first century, the art of genetic engineering had not yet been perfected; bipolar disorder was still being passed on from generation to generation. And treatments were still primitive, requiring several doses of medication during a lifetime.
Take a dose away—and the disease came back.
All this came flooding into Riker’s mind as Cochrane screamed, then bolted frantically to the commander’s left—the one direction where no away team member waited.
Neither Will nor Geordi followed; Cochrane’s pace was too swift and frenzied for them to outrun.
Riker sighed. “We don’t have time for this,” he said, more to himself than La Forge; in a swift move, he drew his phaser, aimed, and fired.
The mild blast struck Cochrane square in the back, causing him to flail his arms out in an uneven V, then drop onto the dried pine-needle thatch. Riker at once hurried over to him, and, La Forge at his side, looked down at his unconscious form.
“You told him about the statue?” he asked Geordi, in hopes of lightening the moment, but La Forge merely nodded, unsmiling, his expression a mixture of sadness and irritation.
Riker crouched down and carefully scooped the unconscious man up in his arms, trying not to grimace at the noxious smell of moonshine. La Forge motioned to the others, who came out from behind their cover and began to follow Riker as he headed back to the silo. The small contingent was singularly grim and silent, their disappointment in their fallen hero palpable.
Glancing wistfully at the unconscious man in Riker’s arms, La Forge finally spoke. “I just don’t get it. Why did he run? It’s crazy: he was talking like he wanted nothing to do with the Phoenix…”
“I’m beginning to think Dr. Crusher could tell us,” Will answered, looking straight ahead at their destination. Unfortunately, Crusher wasn’t reachable—neither was the Enterprise, and it was the away team’s unspoken assumption that the ship—and all those within her—had been engaged… or worse… by the Borg. Speculation was pointless, however; Riker had a job to do, and if he did it correctly, the timeline would be restored and all his current concerns about the Enterprise crew moot. “Since she’s not here, maybe Deanna can help us instead.”
And help had better come soon—within two hours, in fact—or there would be no point in worrying about the Enterprise or Cochrane or a spacefaring future at all.
* * *
The memory of panic—that heart-stopping moment the captain had let go of the airlock exit railing and trusted his magnetized boot soles to keep him from sailing off into space—provided Picard with the needed inspiration for an attack plan. Within thirty seconds, he had explained to Worf and Hawk what actions were needed and divided the work among them; within another ten, Hawk had departed, leaving the Klingon and Picard to make their way along the slope of the deflector dish.
In his peripheral vision, the captain watched a drone working to attach a component to the dish, then pause and take note of the two spacesuited humanoids in the distance.
Just as mindlessly, the Borg ignored them and finished attaching the component; at once, two nearby crystalline spires lit up.
Picard and Worf moved on, until at last they reached the curving bottom of the deflector array. Past its summit, on the array’s far side, a third spacesuited figure drew closer to the Borg working on the dish: Hawk.
The Klingon began to sway ever so slightly; Picard glanced beside him and saw Worf put a gloved hand to his stomach.
“Mr. Worf—you’re not going to vomit in there. That’s an order.”
“Aye”—a gagging sound began to rise in the burly officer’s throat and was quickly strangled—“sir.” Slowly, miserably, he turned and began to move off in another direction from his captain, toward his assigned task.
Picard hurried onward and found the access point, a section of hull labeled MAGLOCK PORTAL TWO. He squatted down, careful to keep the soles of both boots pressed firmly against the ship’s outer surface, then popped open the deckplate panel. Beneath lay a web of circuitry and controls.
As soon as the Borg realized what he—and the two men at maglock portals one and three—were doing, they would pursue. Thus, he worked as swiftly as memory and skill permitted. He knew the Enterprise-E intimately, having studied every single system in great detail and devoting himself to mastering her design and anatomy; but he had known the Enterprise-D many years longer, and there were some subtle but crucial differences between the two ships.
Unfortunately, there was less time than he’d hoped. A shadow fell nearby on the pale, gleaming hull; Picard glanced up to see, some twenty meters away, a drone heading slowly, deliberately toward him. Almost simultaneously, a bright phaser blast caught his attention, and he looked across the array to see Hawk lowering his rifle, while a wounded Borg went skidding backward in a shower of sparks, metal soles screeching, arms flailing for purchase.
As distracting as the image was, instinct bade him look back at Hawk, who was furiously working again and utterly unaware of the approach of yet another drone, this one from behind.
“Hawk!” he shouted into his helmet.
Too late, too late; before the young man could position his weapon and fire, the drone was upon him, reaching out with ghost-white, inhumanly strong hands—hands, and translucent nails from beneath which extruded talons, black and slick and writhing, as if alive. Like a living thing, they would slither, serpentine, beneath the flesh of Hawk’s neck, seeking first the spine, then the tough and fibrous cord, and the brain.…
Picard closed his eyes briefly. Hawk did not scream, did not cry out, but the comm link between them was still open, and he heard the primal, horrified gasp, then the sound of tortured breathing as the talons found their way home.
Then silence. Picard at once returned to his task, after a swift upward glance at another steadily approaching drone, now a mere five meters away.
The hull beneath his feet shuddered slightly; almost simultaneously, Worf’s voice filtered through the comm link. “The magnetic constrictors are disengaged!”
“Get up to Hawk’s position and complete the cycle,” Picard ordered; there was no time to go into sad detail as to the lieutenant’s fate.
The reply was a brief pause, during which, the captain assumed, the Klingon attempted to deal with his own pursuer, then Worf’s adrenalized warning: “They’ve adapted!”
At last, Picard stopped his work, still not finished, but the Borg was now only two arm lengths away. He reached for his phaser rifle—useless against the Borg, and yet not entirely so—and fired at the stretch of hull between himself and his pursuer.
The deckplate gave way with a shriek, causing a powerful blast of gas to stream from the gaping tear. The force of it knocked the drone onto his back, but Picard felt no surge of exhilaration.
For in front of him, four, then six, spires began brilliantly to glow.
* * *
As the Borg reached for him, Worf bared his teeth, all motion-sick misery submerged by the demands of battle. The captain had spoken earlier of the Borg’s deadly assimilation talons, and he, Worf, had every intention of avoiding such a dishonorable fate. But he purposely stood his ground as the Borg neared, permitting the creature to almost catch hold of his spacesuit, only then whipping forth the curving bat’leth hidden on his back.
With a swift and shining slash, the weapon neatly severed the drone’s forearm, in a spray of quickly extinguished mechanical sparks and blood, blood that hung in tiny, perfectly round droplets, some of which bound together to form larger, gelatinous-looking masses. The forearm began to sail upward, above the Borg’s head, then lingered there like a lazily afloat, grotesque balloon, tethered to the elbow by thick tubing.
Undaunted, the Borg lunged, extending a surviving hand transformed into a collection of deadly, double-edged knives. Worf spun away, neatly avoiding the blades that swiped at his torso.
But one of them caught a small piece of fabric on his leg, filling his helmet with the urgent hiss of rapidly fleeing oxygen.
With a warrior’s will, he forced his attention away from the hole on his leg, away from all panic, and instead focused everything on his weapon and his foe. In the millisecond before the Borg recovered to lunge again, Worf lashed out again, determined, fearless, and directed the bat’leth’s blade into his enemy’s neck, beneath the jaw, into the yielding skin, into the rigid metal spine.
He recoiled from the outpouring of floating blood and sparks, and watched, gasping, as the Borg shrieked silently and convulsed before dying. And when it had surrendered its small, mindless life, the metal soles of its boots held it fast and upright while its limp body swayed, languid as seaweed on an ocean floor.
Only then did Worf permit himself to realize that his vision was dimming, that his lungs were gasping desperately for air that had already gone. He stumbled, dizzied, as the suit’s built-in alarm filled his head: “Warning: decompression in forty-five seconds…”
* * *
Protected behind a curtain of spewing gas, Picard worked furiously, digging through mazes of complex circuitry until at last he found what he sought: one of the embedded hydraulic levers that controlled certain of the ship’s moorings. With extreme effort, he pulled the lever upward, then twisted.
From deep within the Enterprise-E’s heart came a shuddering vibration and the silent but unmistakable sensation of a metal clank.
Picard sighed, grateful for the small success; yet his gratitude turned to anguish when he glanced up to see Worf, standing barely conscious on the far side of the dish, his suit leaking vapor at an alarming rate.
Nearby, the portal where Hawk had been working still lay open.
Even had there been a chance that he, Picard, could physically reach the Klingon, he would no doubt be too late—and in addition, the responsibility of completing the task fell to him.
He started at the realization that one of the three final isolinear spires had come brilliantly alive; the huge crystalline structure of the beacon began to pulse, section by section, as it began to power up.
Impossible to reach it in time.
Impossible, yet he was bound to do it.
Vibration on the deckplate beneath his boots: foot-steps. He whirled and saw that the pursuing drone had patiently made its way around the long curtain of venting gas and was only two body lengths distant. Picard moved in reverse—one step, then two, until he found himself backed against the array’s upward slope.
The Borg raised a cybernetic arm, the hand of which had been replaced by a jagged circular saw. A small muscular flick, and the saw began to whirr.
With total dispassion, the Borg wielded the weapon, drawing closer.
Impossible. Impossible, yet…
I will not yield again.
Without thought, without reflection, he reached down and hit the magnetic control on the spacesuit’s thigh. Immediately the green light went dark; the metal soles clicked, then became stomach-wrenchingly light.
Picard began floating upward, into space, beyond the Borg’s lethal grasp. The sensation was at once terrifying and enormously exhilarating, enough so that he had to force himself to maintain his concentration, to draw in his legs at the proper time and then kick with all his might against the curving hull.
The act hurled him over the head of the hapless Borg, through the upper reaches of the curtain of spewing gas, toward the far side of the array and Hawk’s panel. He tried to maintain control, to keep his legs tucked in, his arms folded to his chest, but the lack of gravity made it difficult, and he found himself spinning wildly through the void, arms and legs flailing…
Until at last he crashed into the hull. He scrambled for a handhold, found one, and remagnetized his boots, stomach and head still spinning.
Within a few steps, he reached the deckplate Hawk had removed and reached down into the open access panel to activate a series of controls, then grab the hydraulic lever.
A pull, a twist. Beneath his feet, the sensation of a thunk as massive clamps were released.
Immediately, Picard focused his gaze on the deflector dish’s perimeter and watched as the first bolt attaching it to the Enterprise was blown outward, into space.
