Gulliver's Fugitives Part 23

Worf and Shikibu left before the doctor could speak again.

She had wanted to wish them luck.

Worf stayed in communication with the bridge and got to the corridors outside Warp Engineering just before the one-eyes.

"They could appear at any moment," Wentz had said, though she couldn't pinpoint the spot where they would ingress into the corridors, or even if they would use the corridors at all.

Worf paced quickly, choosing a route through the corridors that would regularly circle him past Engineering. A smoking rage fulminated inside of him, a hatred for the devices infiltrating the ship, and for the people who invented them and set them in motion.

He felt the muscles in his thick neck tighten like steel cables. He growled softly, as the feeling of tautness and readiness spread through his body, a sublime combination of absolute control and feral abandon. To Worf, honest, unsublimated rage was an intoxicant bordering on ambrosia.

But now there was something different about it-his secret quest for glory called with a voice separate and distinct for destruction of the one-eyes. It spoke to him of a future triumph that would spread his name throughout the Federation and the Klingon Empire and keep it alive when he himself and his children's children were dust, and maybe long after.

Primed and ready, Worf found himself breaking into a run as he mentally rehea.r.s.ed his various attack strategies. He kept his internal dialogue confined to his native Klingon tongue, reasoning that the one-eyes wouldn't be able to decipher it if they picked up his brain waves.

At a certain point Worf realized something was amiss. He hadn't heard from Wentz for at least a minute. If the one-eyes had not entered the corridor but instead taken a different route into Engineering, Wentz would have told him. And if they had entered the corridor as expected, he would have found them by now. Unless they were ...

... following behind him.

He slowed to a walk. He kept his thoughts confined to the most uniquely Klingon elements of his heritage-the bleeding hands of love's touch, the trial-by-pain of his Rite of Ascension ...

Presently he heard the hum of the infernal one-eyes behind him, closing slowly with him as he maintained a steady walk. The sound stabilized and he sensed they'd picked what they regarded as a safe distance from which to observe him. They weren't going to let him lay hands on them again, or so they thought.

Worf had already planned what he would do at this moment.

He opened his mouth and let out a magnificent yell, a shout from the secret catacombs of his soul. It was the traditional Klingon death-howl, a signal to the inhabitants of the afterworld: beware, a Klingon warrior is coming.

And even as Worf yelled, confusing the one-eyes with this incomprehensible behavior, he brought himself to an abrupt halt, and with predatory agility reversed his momentum, turned, and caught his pursuers off-guard.

The two devices had just begun to slow down as Worf reached up with both his powerful arms, gathering the one-eyes in, pushing them tightly together.

In a split second he saw the dents he'd made on one of them in their previous meeting. This time a victor will be decided, he told himself.

He felt their antigravs kick in with all their power, dragging him forward, and he heard the whine of the armed one-eye's gun charging to blast him with radiation.

But before it could fire, Worf dug in his heels and stopped himself, then whirled with all his strength like a discus thrower-whirled once, twice, accelerating the one-eyes at the rim of his turn with all his strength and speed. Then he smashed them against the bulkhead.

One of the two devices slipped out of his hands. It was the locksmith one-eye. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it move away, slowly and tentatively, as if it were stunned. He held onto the other, whose gun had quit whining and whose antigravs were fading. He smashed it again and again into the bulkhead, hearing and feeling it come apart in his hands, the jagged edges of sheet metal and IC's cutting into his flesh. Still he felt parts of it moving, and he continued to hurl the mangled ma.s.s against the wall, until he realized it had disintegrated and he was holding only a piece of metal cha.s.sis.

He dropped it and looked down. One little solenoid relay near his boot continued to click stubbornly. He crushed it underfoot.

He looked down the corridor, and saw the other one-eye, the locksmith, floating slowly, b.u.mping intermittently into one wall. He sprinted after it, locked his hands together and struck it right on top, crushing its antennae. It hit the deck and rebounded upward. He grabbed it and tore it apart piece by piece, savoring the moment.

When he was done, he composed himself, cleared the thick satisfaction from his throat, and touched his communicator.

"Worf to La Forge."

"La Forge here."

"I have destroyed the locksmith and its guard."

"Worf!" Geordi gave a primal triumphant yell. "Whoooooeeeeeeee!"

"Interesting, sir. Is that an attempt at a Klingon death-howl? It wants for a bit more frenzy."

"That wasn't a death-howl, that was a job-well-done-howl."

"I believe I can destroy others if you can give me their positions, sir."

"The others are closer to Wesley, and he's about to try his device on them. I'm going to send you up there anyway, Worf, but let's hope Wesley can get rid of them without any more risks on your part."

As Shikibu walked along the corridor toward her cabin, she recognized she was in too agitated a state for what lay ahead. She needed the tranquil state known in Zen archery as mushin.

Don't resist, she told herself, just let the thoughts and feelings play themselves out.

She allowed herself to think of the one-eyes themselves. That thought subsided. Other thoughts stubbornly jumped in to fill the void: Wesley touching her hair in the Ryoanji rock garden and her heart rate's corresponding jump ... her Archery Master's "parting-with-life-verse" he composed and spoke as he died ... the marble pattern on the inside cover of a book she once saw ...

The thoughts became more random and spa.r.s.e, until, by the time she'd reached her cabin and gotten what she needed from it, she was in the state of mushin. Ready.

The two security men flanking Wesley didn't have their phasers drawn. If Wesley's Cyclops-buster didn't work, the security men had no weapons they could safely use on the one-eyes; they could only retreat and attempt to hustle Wesley and his machine into a safe haven.

The machine was a lopsided ma.s.s of small generators and wave-guides, an awkward package Wesley held with both hands as he walked. The thing's power source was already on, and it hummed and purred, ready, like an obedient little animal, to release its energy at the prompting of Wesley's touch on its activation b.u.t.ton.

"Two of the intruders coming your way from star-board," said Wentz over Wesley's communicator. "Shikibu will arrive at your position to provide more support, but not until after the one-eyes get to you. I don't know what's been keeping her."

Wesley saw they were not in a good spot to make a stand. One of the security men started to run back to the closest door to set up a place for retreat. It seemed awfully far away. Before he got there a one-eye came gliding, alone, around the corner from the other direction.

Wesley fumbled for the b.u.t.ton on the Cyclops-buster. His hands were shaky and he almost dropped the machine before he triggered his shot. The Cyclops-buster built up a charge, accelerating its special subatomic particles for final release. He heard, as counterpoint, the whine of the one-eye as it prepared to fire at him.

He aimed the Cyclops-buster at the one-eye.

The one-eye and the Cyclops-buster fired at nearly the same instant. Wesley felt part of a wave-front hit him; a wave of nausea and anguish.

But he'd fired in time. The one-eye blossomed suddenly into a spherical cloud, bright and dark patches alternating around its surface, spinning and pullulating with mesmerizing complexity, and it made him think of Shiva. Suddenly the cloud expanded outward, past him, and he knew the neutrinos were pa.s.sing through him and the bulkheads by the billion, but they were benign as they sought the void outside the ship.

Wesley felt feverish and uncoordinated as he reset the controls on his Cyclops-buster. He looked at the two security men; they seemed to be experiencing symptoms as well. The one next to him shook his head to try and clear it, while a second man, far down the corridor, retched and held his midsection.

Wesley realized that the Cyclops-buster had disrupted the one-eye's shot, and saved them from a lethal dose of radiation.

Yet the encounter wasn't over. Wentz had said there were two of the intruders. If they had arrived together, Wesley could have annihilated them both. But the Cyclops-buster needed thirty seconds of charging before it could fire again, and the digital counter said twenty still remained.

At that instant the other one-eye came around the far corner, many meters ahead.

The one-eye moved closer toward him. This time it would fire at closer range, to make sure of the kill.

Wesley turned to run for the open doorway, knowing already that it was much too far. The one-eye would have plenty of time to fire.

Now he saw that Shikibu had arrived and was standing near the open doorway.

In one hand she held her seven-foot-long bow. On the other hand she wore a leather glove. Under her belt were several slim tritanium arrows.

At this moment, after clearing herself of all distracting thoughts, Shikibu's mind was in perfect repose-like a mirror, or the surface of a lake on an absolutely still day.

Her breath slowed down and found an unconscious rhythm, and her posture found a balance around the centerpoint called the tanden, just below her navel.

She perceived the one-eye, sensed its motion and direction, but had no thoughts or feelings about it.

She reached, without rational hesitation or irrational fear, for an arrow from her belt.

The one-eye observed Shikibu through its lens as it moved toward Wesley. It saw the large bow she held, and the arrow. It knew what it saw was a potential weapons system, but of manual operation, requiring forethought to fire. And as it scanned her brain waves it found there was no forethought, no purpose, no thought at all. So it concentrated on knocking out the primary target, the young man with the machine that had just destroyed another one-eye.

Wesley felt as though he were trying to wake up from a dream. His legs were sluggish from the effects of the other one-eye's blast. He tried to think them into moving as he kept his eyes on the door and on Shikibu.

He saw Shikibu move through discrete postures and motions as she grasped the arrow, nocked it on the bowstring, and raised the bow. He saw her pull the great bowstring back until it reached its maximum tension. She seemed to be in no special hurry as she took aim, sighting past the grip of the bow.

She was still far away but Wesley saw on her face, as if with magnified clarity, the peaceful expression of a contented child. Why doesn't she shoot! he screamed silently.

He heard the whine of the one-eye's gun behind him. His legs stumbled as he tried to will himself down the corridor.

Shikibu's expression didn't change as the arrow flew from the bow. It was the perfect release. She had not actively decided to let the arrow go, nor had her gloved hand lost its grip. Rather, the shot had "fallen" at the moment when all conditions were perfect, when the interaction of string, bow, hand, eye, muscle, target, and universe made release necessary. The shot happened as spontaneously as a drop of water rolls off a leaf.

The tritanium arrow flew past Wesley with a tearing sound. It smashed into the precise middle of the one-eye's lens, fracturing through the gla.s.s lens-elements, and deeper, through the microchips and wave generators. It stopped with its point protruding out of the metal back of the one-eye.

The one-eye halted and began to spin wildly on its axis like an insect in convulsions. It made pressure-hissing and metal-screeching sounds. Arcs of energy shot out randomly from its antennae.

Then abruptly it stopped and fell to the deck, dead.

The four humans stared at it, three still stunned from the effects of its partner, the fourth silent as she lowered her bow and then nocked another arrow on the string, ready if another intruder might arrive.

Wesley finally gathered enough of his wits to touch his communicator.

"Crusher to La Forge."

"La Forge here."

"Geordi, the machine works. We just destroyed a one-eye with it. Recommend that as soon as Ensign Taylor finishes a.s.sembling another, we keep the two together to work in tandem, one charging while the other fires."

"Wesley, your voice is a little slurred. You okay?"

"Yeah... . Could you log that Shikibu just saved the lives of myself and two other crewpersons?"

"Noted-and your contribution as well, Wes. We'll have another Cyclops-buster up there within five minutes. Hold your position until then, if you can. La Forge out."

Wesley felt his body recovering.

He went over to Shikibu to say thanks, but her expression made him freeze up.

She looked at him almost as though she didn't recognize him, as though she were seeing him for the first time. She studied his face curiously. Wesley felt awkward.

"Um ... well anyway, thanks," he said.

He cleared his throat and returned his attention to his machine. It was charged and ready to go.

He didn't see the quiet little smile that appeared for a fleeting moment on Shikibu's face.

Geordi was losing his battle with the disabled warp engines. He couldn't get any more power out of them. The ship was already dropping, and the rate of drop was accelerating. Within a few minutes, the Enterprise would enter Rampart's upper atmosphere, and Geordi would have to lower the ship's shields to power it back out-in which case the Rampartian ships would blow the Enterprise into fragments.

Even now the hostile ships were following the Enterprise as it gathered speed in its fall, their weapons primed and ready to fire, with guidance systems locked onto key points along the Enterprise's hull.

Geordi had several of his engineering crew working beside him, riding the mix with imperfectly repaired controls. But he needed someone with the touch delicate enough to make crucial repairs on certain equipment even while it was being operated. He knew of only one person who could do that.

"La Forge to Ensign Taylor."

"Taylor here."

"Is the other Cyclops-buster finished?"

"Finished just now, sir."

"Could you come over here?"

Within a minute she was beside Geordi, her fingers repairing and adjusting the console while he rode the mix.

He saw she needed a hand with a data chip and he reached over to help. His sleeve brushed over an exposed relay and triggered a spark. The spark arced through the air to the sensor-pads on her fingers. She shouted and fell away from the console.

"Chops!"

Geordi called someone else over to ride the mix while he bent over her.

"I can't see," she said. She was crying. He'd never seen her cry.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he kept repeating. He cursed himself bitterly-it was his own fault, he should have known he'd lost too much dexterity to help her at this stage of his fatigue.

And this moment had to be worse for her than it would have been for him had he lost his VISOR. For all the time she'd lived in darkness she'd been treated like a subhuman, an untermensch.

He helped her sit up against the bulkhead, told her to rest and that his crew could take up the slack. He went back to work riding the mix, furious with himself.

But a few minutes later she was standing next to him. She'd removed the sensor pads from her fingers.

"I don't need the hardware," she said. "I know these circuits by heart and I can fix them by touch."

He nodded his a.s.sent and continued to work, not able to bring himself to look at her. He'd robbed her of her sight.

She whistled softly as she worked, and Geordi knew it was for him. It helped.

At this moment, inside of CephCom, Picard, Riker, Data, and Amoret were about to attempt escape from the a.s.sault shelter. They had all agreed that the air vent system was the only option. Now Data had opened the air shaft and Amoret was urging them to go, as she was sure the CS would force their way into the room at any minute.

"I must first conceal something that would be visible to all of you inside the shaft," said Data. He proceeded to tear off part of a large storage box and position it inside the dark shaft. He still had not given any of the others a clue about what he had been hiding from them during the last hours.