Destiny_ Gods Of Night Part 17

2381.

14.

His cup of Earl Grey was long since cold, and Jean-Luc Picard stared at the padd in his hand and found no answers, only the gnawing emptiness of unanswered questions.

Why had the Borg changed their tactics against the Federation? What was the reason for their mad frenzy of murder, the wholesale slaughter of worlds?

Picard had thought he knew the Borg, understood them even as he'd loathed them. He'd been perplexed by their desperate pursuit of the mysterious and elusive Omega Molecule as an emblem of "perfection," but at least their obsession with it had been consistent with their cultural imperative toward the a.s.similation of technology and biological diversity. Genocide, on the other hand...It didn't fit.

The pragmatist in him didn't want to look beyond the surface. From a practical standpoint, all that mattered now was fighting the Borg, halting their advance, and ending the war.

But the part of him that was still an explorer needed to know why. Something had changed, and he needed to understand.

He paced in front of his desk, padd in hand, trying to rea.s.semble the pieces of the puzzle into something that made sense. The timing, the targets-he saw no patterns in them.

His door chime sounded, and he was grateful for the interruption. "Come."

The portal hushed open, and Worf entered, followed by La Forge. "Captain," Worf said, "we have something." He nodded to the chief engineer, who continued the report.

"Sensor a.n.a.lysis of the Borg cube we just destroyed picked up something odd," La Forge said. "Traces of sirillium."

Picard lifted an eyebrow. "Sirillium? Out here?"

"That's what I said." La Forge stepped beside a wall companel and activated it. He accessed the ship's computer with touch commands as he continued. "I figured there were two likely explanations. One, the Borg might've started using it in their ships or weapons."

That struck a chord in Picard's memory. "The Tellarites used to arm torpedo warheads with sirillium, back in the twenty-second century."

"Right," La Forge said. "So did the Andorians. But that'd be a fairly primitive solution for the Borg, so I took a closer look at the samples we detected." He called up a series of images on the companel screen. "All the traces we found were on external hull fragments from the Borg ship, or floating free with other atomized matter. We recovered debris from their weapons system, and it had no traces of sirillium. Neither did interior bulkhead plates, or sections of their life-support system. And that led me to my second possible explanation: They picked it up in transit."

With a flick of his finger, La Forge changed the display to a starmap of the surrounding sectors. "There are only two sites near Federation s.p.a.ce with high enough concentrations of sirillium gas to leave deposits that rich on a Borg cube. One is the Rolor Nebula, on the Carda.s.sian border, past the Badlands."

A glance at the starmap revealed the Rolor Nebula to be, quite literally, on the far side of the Federation from the Enterprise and the recent spate of Borg attacks. Picard asked, "And the other?"

La Forge enlarged a grid of the map-the sector adjacent to the Enterprise's position. "The Azure Nebula, precisely twenty-point-one-three light-years from here. I ran an icospectrogram on the Borg cube's most likely route from there to here, and I found sirillium traces at regular intervals."

Picard looked to Worf. "ETA to the nebula at maximum warp?"

"Twenty-two hours," Worf said. "Course plotted and laid in, ready on your command."

Picard gave his XO a curt nod. "Make it so." To both Worf and La Forge he added, "Excellent work, gentlemen."

"Thank you, Captain," La Forge said. "I'm heading back to engineering-see if I can push a few more points over the line and get us there in twenty-one hours." He nodded to Worf and the captain, and then he made his exit from the ready room. Worf, however, remained behind.

"Something else, Worf?"

The XO frowned. "If Commander La Forge is correct, we can expect to face significant resistance when we reach the nebula." He looked Picard in the eye. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Granted."

In a quiet but still forceful baritone, Worf said, "You need to rest, sir."

Picard turned to walk back to his desk. "Your concern is appreciated, Commander, but I-"

"Captain," Worf said, blocking Picard's path. "You have been on duty for more than twenty hours. I suspect you have been awake for at least twenty-two."

The captain stiffened in the face of his first officer's confrontational behavior. Even though Worf generally respected human customs and courtesies, moments like this served to remind Picard that having a Klingon for an XO would take some getting used to. Taking care not to blink or demur, he looked into Worf's eyes and replied gravely, "Do you mind, Mister Worf?"

Worf made a low growl of protest and stepped aside. As Picard walked by him, the brawny first officer grumbled, "You know I am right. Sir."

Picard stood behind his desk and rested his hands on the back of his chair. "What I know, Mister Worf, is that you've been awake even longer than I have."

Worf grunted. "True. It would be best if you and I were both well rested before taking the ship into battle."

The dead weight of his own feet and the dull aching in his muscles persuaded Picard to admit that his first officer was right. "I trust you've a.s.signed new watch commanders for the next two shifts?"

"Yes, sir," Worf said. "Commander Lynley is on the bridge now, and Lieutenant Commander Havers will relieve him at 0800."

Picard sighed. He found Worf's new ability to antic.i.p.ate his decisions both rea.s.suring and irritating. "Very good. I'll be in my quarters-and I'll see you back on the bridge at 1600."

"Aye, Captain." He walked toward the door and paused before stepping in range of its motion sensor, so that he could turn back and add, with his unique brand of irony, "Sweet dreams."

Picard's valediction was a good-natured warning: "Good night, Number One." Worf answered with a wry smirk and left the ready room. Picard sighed and returned to his desk. He picked up his half-consumed cup of tea, carried it back to the replicator, and keyed the matter reclamator. The cup and its cold contents vanished in an amber swirl of dissociated particles.

Around him, the Enterprise resonated with the swiftly rising hum of the warp engines rapidly pushing the ship to its maximum rated velocity, and perhaps even a fraction beyond. The stretch of starlight outside the ready room window, normally a soothing backdrop, now raced by in frantic pulses. Even the stars knew that the Enterprise was headed into danger.

Picard had promised Worf he would rest, but he doubted he would sleep tonight, with the Collective looming on the horizon.

The voice from the overhead comm roused Miranda Kadohata from her troubled, fitful slumber a few minutes shy of 0500.

"Bridge to Commander Kadohata," said Lieutenant Milner, the gamma-shift operations manager.

Kadohata's eyes snapped open. Her heart was palpitating furiously, and the muscles in her chest and arms twitched with nervous energy. Rescued from one of a night-long series of anxiety dreams, she was grateful to be woken. "Kadohata here."

"You asked for notice when we had a comm window," Milner replied. "I have one coming up in twenty seconds. It'll be short-a couple minutes, tops. You still want it?"

She was already out of bed and scrambling into her robe. "Yes, Sean. Patch me through as soon as the channel's up."

"Will do. Stand by."

Leaning left, she caught her reflection in the mirror beside her bedroom desk and finger-combed her straight, sable hair into a smooth ponytail and twisted it into a knot on the back of her head. Her eyes were a bit red, and the circles under them were too dark to hide. It doesn't matter, she told herself. There's no time. It'll be fine.

She had left standing orders with the junior operations managers to let her know whenever there was an opportunity for her to get a real-time signal out to her family on Cestus III. When she'd first come aboard the Enterprise, she'd made a point of speaking to her husband and children via subs.p.a.ce every day. Their infant twins, Colin and Sylvana, couldn't understand her words, of course, but she wanted them to hear her voice as much as possible while she was away. She had recorded herself reading them bedtime stories while she had been pregnant, and Vicenzo, her husband, made a point of including those recordings in the twins' nightly routine.

Aoki, their first born, was another matter. It was chiefly for the five-year-old's benefit that Kadohata was so diligent about these comms home, however brief they might be. The girl was old enough to miss her mother, to feel the ache of absence, and for Kadohata it was worth any amount of lost sleep and expended favors to keep herself in Aoki's daily life.

Her comm screen snapped to life, the bright blue-and-white Federation emblem almost blinding in the night-cycle shadows of her quarters. Milner's voice filtered down from overhead as a string of numbers and symbols flashed past along the bottom edge of her screen. "Hang on," he said. "I'm routing the signal through about four different boosters in the Klingon Empire."

The second officer grinned. "How'd you swing that?"

"I know a bloke who knows a bloke who has friends on the High Council." She understood his meaning: Worf had used some of his old diplomatic connections with the Klingon chancellor's office to secure this extraordinary favor.

She made a mental note to thank Worf the next time she saw him privately. Then the screen in front of her blinked to an image of her husband, Vicenzo Farrenga. She smiled at the sight of his round, jovial face and immaculate coif of dark hair. "What time is it there, love?"

"We're just sitting down to dinner," he said. With a quick tap of a key, he switched the comm's feed to a wider angle that revealed him, Aoki, and the twins around the dining room table. "How 'bout there?"

"Middle of the night, as always." She hadn't worried about the differences in local times. As her calls home had become less frequent, Vicenzo had made it clear that he didn't mind being woken at any hour. Ringing in at dinner had been a lucky break, though; it meant she got to see the children.

Sylvana grabbed up fistfuls of strained-something and flung it in globs on the floor. Colin seemed content to smear his dinner on his bib. Aoki waved frantically from the far end of the table. "Hi, Mummy," she said, her bright voice echoing.

"h.e.l.lo, sweetheart." Kadohata wished she could teleport to her daughter's side and just hold her. "Have you been helping Daddy with the twins?"

Aoki nodded, and Vicenzo replied, "I couldn't do it without her." He winked at the girl, then continued, "She's a natural."

"I'm happy to hear that, love. What's for dinner tonight?"

Vicenzo pointed out each dish. "Colin's turning mashed peas into a fashion statement, Sylvie's doing some redecorating with her strained carrots, and Aoki and I are enjoying some vegetable moussaka, fresh corn, and spinach salad."

"Impressive," Kadohata said, nodding her approval. With a teasing lilt, she asked, "Real or replicated?"

He gave a small shrug. "Mostly real. I think the dairy products are replicated, but all the vegetables were grown here in Lakeside, and the pasta's made fresh at a market in town."

"Glad to see my lectures about eating healthy have stuck with you," she said.

Nodding, he replied, "We're being good, I promise. Looks like you have, too. You look great."

She shook her head. "I look horrid."

"No," Vicenzo insisted. "You really don't."

It was true that she had lost weight in recent weeks, restoring the fine angles of her mixed European-Asian ancestry. What she didn't want to tell him was that most of her weight loss had been stress-induced, as the Enterprise had become the Federation's princ.i.p.al instrument of defense against the Borg.

"Thank you, love," she said, lowering her eyes. On the other end of the channel, Vicenzo sensed her fatigue and her fear, and like her he masked it with a sad smile of quiet desperation, for the sake of the children.

Oblivious of the unspoken tension, Aoki asked in a loud and shrill voice, "When are you coming home, Mummy?"

"Inside voice, honey," Vicenzo murmured, hushing the girl.

Kadohata shook her head. "Don't know, love. Soon, I hope."

Aoki pressed on, "Where are you?"

"She can't tell us that, sweetie," Vicenzo said, circling the table to pluck Aoki from her chair and into his arms. "It's not safe for her to say things like that over the comm. Bad people might be listening." Watching him comfort her made Kadohata miss the embrace of her little ones that much more.

The little girl locked her arms around her father's neck and rested her head on his large, rounded shoulder. "I'm sorry, Mummy," she mumbled.

"No need to be sorry, love," Kadohata told her. Forcing a smile, she said to Vicenzo, "Happier thoughts, right? Big day coming up next month."

"I remember," he said. "Eight years."

"What's the gift for that anniversary?"

He chuckled. "Bronze. Had a devil of a time thinking up a gift for that one."

"You've already bought my gift?" He nodded, and she grinned. Vicenzo had never been one to leave things until the last minute. "I should've known." Feigning seriousness, she added, "I suppose you'll expect me to get you something, now."

"I wouldn't want you to go to any trouble."

She almost laughed. "Liar."

A double-beep over the channel heralded an interruption. From the overhead speaker in her quarters, Lieutenant Milner warned, "Twenty seconds, sir."

Kadohata looked away from the image of her family on the screen and said, "Thank you, Sean." Then she looked back. "Time's up, loves. I have to go."

Vicenzo looked as if he'd had his heart cut out. "Stay safe, Miranda. We miss you." Aoki lifted her head from his shoulder and crowed, "We miss you, Mummy!"

"I miss you all, too," Kadohata said. "Very much. I'll comm again as soon as I can, but I don't know when that'll be."

"We'll be waiting.... Love you."

"Love you, too."

She and Vicenzo reached out and each pressed a fingertip to their comm screen, an illusion of contact transmitted across light-years, for the last few seconds before the signal was lost and the channel cut to black and silence.

A sinking feeling became an emptiness inside of her as she plodded back to her bed and slipped under the covers. It had been barely two hours since she'd watched the Borg lay waste to Korvat. If they weren't stopped, sooner or later they would reach Cestus III. It would only be a matter of time.

Visions of her beautiful children being turned to fire haunted her when she closed her eyes. There was nothing she wouldn't do to prevent that, she was certain of it. She would kill, die, or sacrifice the ship and whoever or whatever was necessary, if doing so saved her children.

But tonight, alone in her quarters, her face buried in the soft clutch of a pillow, all she could do was sob with rage for the lives she had already failed to defend.

From dead asleep to wide awake-Beverly Crusher blinked her eyes open wider and inhaled. There had been no sound, no sudden change in her surroundings. She had been on the edge of slumber's gray frontier, inching her way over the border, when a jolt and a shiver had pulled her back.

Rolling over, she looked for her husband. Jean-Luc's side of the bed was empty, his pillows untouched. He hadn't come to bed yet. It was just after 0500. She had gone to bed at 0315, after the ship had secured from general quarters. I guess I did doze off, she realized. For a little while, at least.

A small, soft b.u.mp of a sound carried into the bedroom, through the doorway that led to the suite's main room. Crusher pushed off the lightweight but pleasantly warmed sheets and blanket and eased herself out of bed, into the relatively chill air. She suspected that Jean-Luc had been at the climate controls again; he preferred a crisp coolness in their living quarters, a temperature a few degrees below where she was comfortable. And so they wrangled. It had been the same way with her first husband, Jack, decades earlier.

The skin on her arms and legs turned to gooseflesh until she shivered into her bathrobe and tied it shut. She was grateful that at least the deck in their living area was carpeted. The plush, synthetic fabric was warm under her feet as she padded to the doorway and peeked into the main room.

Jean-Luc sat on the floor with his back to her. He was still wearing his uniform. On the floor beside him, a tarnished, engraved copper box with a foam-pad interior lay open and empty. In his hands he held his Ressikan flute, a keepsake recovered from an alien probe that years earlier had gifted the captain, in the span of a few minutes, with the memories of another lifetime, the last message of a dying world and people.

In that other life, he'd lived as a man named Kamin, raised a family, and learned to play the flute. Its music, he'd told Crusher, often soothed his nerves and dispelled his sorrows. She knew how much he treasured that instrument. He turned the narrow, bronze-hued flute in his hands and gently straightened a twist in the silken cord of its white ta.s.sel.

Taking sudden note of her presence, he looked over his shoulder. "Beverly," he said in a hushed voice. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."