Gulliver's Fugitives Part 4

Within the same second he was already drawing his phaser and shouting a warning to his fellow crew members.

But the one-eye had already intercepted his thought, acquiring him as a target, and the one-eye was faster. It fired.

A silent and invisible stream of radiation pa.s.sed through Timoshenko's chest, destroying all tissues it touched. He collapsed like a stricken bull.

Frazer, the other security man, was already drawing his phaser. Another blast of radiation from the one-eye caught him in the head and upper body, and he fell.

Riker, who had been standing next to Troi at the moment the attack began, pushed the counselor to the ground and managed to get both of them partially into a recessed doorway.

"Stay here," he told her.

He peered around the corner of the bulkhead, just in time to see Ferris knock Picard cold.

A snarl escaped Riker's throat. His rage swept away caution as he moved to help the man to whom he owed his own life many times over.

But the one-eye instantly read the burst of energy in Riker's limbic system. It turned to face him. Riker realized he had no weapon. Frazer's phaser was still in his lifeless hand, under his body. Timoshenko's had skidded several meters away.

Ferris and Crichton watched Riker as they propped up the unconscious form of Picard.

Ferris let Picard go and came forward. It seemed to Riker as if he wanted to fight, wanted to abandon procedure in favor of a primitive need for enemy-blood.

Riker was surprised Ferris could do something so stupid. He got control of his own anger and looked for a way to exploit Ferris' lapse.

"Major Ferris." Crichton's voice was like a bucket of cold water. "Let the one-eye do its job."

Ferris held Riker's stare for a moment and then stepped back. Riker could hear a whine build in the one-eye. He realized the one-eye was readying itself for firing. He searched around for a path of escape, and found none.

Suddenly Timoshenko, face white and sweating from the pain of his internal wounds, reached up and grabbed the one-eye from behind in a bear hug. His superb musculature momentarily overpowered the one-eye's antigravs, and he pinned it to the floor under his torso.

He looked up at Riker, his shout escaping through clenched teeth. "Go!"

The one-eye released another stream of radiation into Timoshenko's body. He bellowed.

Riker pivoted and ran. He ducked into the doorway where Troi still crouched. He grabbed her hand.

"Come on. Holodeck."

They ran, pa.s.sing the doors the teacher and her students had just entered. Troi didn't look back. She felt the numinous emotions of death flowing down the corridor and into her mind. One stream, not two.

"Open!" shouted Riker as they reached the farthest holodeck room.

The sound of hard footfalls reached their ears as the doors whooshed open. Riker pushed Troi in first, then followed, the doors hissing shut behind him. The room was empty.

Riker tabbed his communicator.

"Lieutenant Worf."

"Worf here."

"Where are you?"

"Bridge, sir."

"The devices brought on board by the men from Rampart are weapons. Put the entire ship on alert. The captain has been taken hostage."

There was a pause, then Riker could hear the alert klaxon.

"We are tracking the captain through his communicator," said Worf. "He is unconscious. In the corridor outside your present location ...

"Now his signal is moving. They are apparently taking him away, in the direction of transporter room four. The same transporter they beamed in on. Their other one-eyes are stored there, under guard by my men."

"Worf, I just saw a one-eye kill two security officers before they had a chance to draw their phasers. I don't want you to allow your men to endanger their own lives or the captain's by attempting direct action before we understand what we're up against."

"Acknowledged."

"All right, I'm coming to the bridge. Is the route clear?"

"Affirmative."

Troi touched her communicator. "Worf, when we left the security men, I sensed one of them might be alive."

"Checking ... Timoshenko's communicator indicates life signs."

"Send a medical team but remember what I said about the one-eyes," said Riker.

"Yes, sir."

Riker and Troi silenced their communicators.

"Open," said Riker.

The doors parted. Riker and Troi peered out, then hurried back up the corridor.

When they came upon Timoshenko and Frazer, Timoshenko was breathing stertorously. Frazer was already dead.

They knelt over Timoshenko.

Riker stared at his face. The security officer had reported aboard only a few months ago, but had already approached Riker as a fellow jazz musician. Timoshenko was a ba.s.s man. Riker had jammed with him on a wild jazz tune with the backing of a holodeck band, and suddenly, without knowing how, they'd hit a sound of pure spontaneity-their egos had stopped playing and some great unknown river of life had taken over. The holodeck computer seemed to have known the moment was special; it had started changing the chord progressions, jamming along with them, adding its own spontaneity. Riker had never known such a state and he'd played rapturously until his lips felt raw on the trombone mouthpiece. Afterward he'd asked the computer to make him a permanent copy of the session.

Troi cradled Timoshenko's head. "Yuri, help is coming. Hang on."

His eyes, their pupils unevenly dilated, looked at nothing.

"Can't," he said faintly.

She could feel life leaving him.

"Yuri. Thanks," said Riker.

Riker and Troi waited, but there were no other breaths. They stood and looked down at the ruined body.

Worf's voice crackled from Riker's communicator.

"Commander Riker."

"Riker here."

"Sir, the one-eyes in the transporter room have overcome the guards we had on them. They're moving through the corridors. I've shut security barriers throughout the ship. I suggest you and the counselor get to the bridge while it's still safe. Take the turbolift aft of where you are now."

"On our way."

Chapter Five.

SITTING ON THE BUNK in her quarters, Security Ensign Shikibu digested the bulletin Riker had just relayed to all crew. Human intruders and robotic devices infiltrating the ship. Already some fatalities among the crew. Orders were to shoot the devices, the one-eyes, if contact with them could not be avoided. Security personnel were asked to report to a staging area near the bridge.

Shikibu checked her phaser, then tied her long black hair into a ponytail. Her delicately arched eyebrows accented a face more appropriate in its elegance to the flowery, courtly games of tenth century j.a.pan than to the Enterprise Security staff. Yet her equability in the face of danger, her absolute calm during the grimmest moments, were well known on the Enterprise. Rumors, quietly bruited about in the Ten-Fore lounge, attested to her almost freakish accuracy with a phaser.

Her gaze swept, without lingering, past the yumi, the seven-foot-long bamboo/waxwood/carbon-fiber composite bow leaning in a corner of her cabin. It was the instrument she used in the j.a.panese art of Zen archery. She had learned the art from a Master before entering Starfleet Academy. It was the reason for her oft-rumored abnormal accuracy with a phaser and tranquility in the face of danger. But she no longer consciously thought about her personal achievements or strengths. A sense of ego was anathema to the practice of Zen archery.

She tabbed her door panel. The door swished open. She entered the corridor, took two steps. Ahead, a box-like metal shape came careening around the bend and then stopped dead, hovering at eye level, a few paces away. It regarded Shikibu with a dark camera eye. Shikibu stared back.

The device matched Riker's description of the mechanical intruders. In Shikibu's mind it became nothing more than a target, no different than the straw targets she used for archery practice. She quieted her thoughts into a stillness like the smooth surface of a lake untroubled by winds. Her sense of self disappeared. There was no longer a separate Shikibu or phaser or target.

Her ears registered a rising whine coming from the metal box. This elicited no special emotion in her. Her hand had already closed of its own accord on her phaser b.u.t.ton. Like snow dropping off a leaf, her arm seemed to find its own moment to move. She raised the phaser and tracked with the metal box as it made a sudden lateral movement. Her finger pressed the phaser b.u.t.ton spontaneously.

Normally the one-eye could intercept the brain waves that signaled the intent and direction of a human's attack. But Shikibu didn't consciously think about her shot before it was fired, thus the one-eye could react only to what it sensed as psych.o.m.otor nerve activity and to what it saw directly. It managed to move but caught a bit of the phaser energy on its side, jarring its aim as it fired its own blast of radiation at Shikibu's head. It wobbled crazily and had to set itself down on the deck.

Shikibu collapsed; her limbs had turned to gelatin. She was still conscious but the half-dose of radiation had stunned and confused her by vibrating the water molecules in her brain. A paroxysm of nausea seized her. After it pa.s.sed she still couldn't understand what had happened or what she should do. She didn't recognize that camera-eyed metal thing resting on the deck nearby, now rising to hover near her.

But she did feel a strong desire to go back to her cabin. She half-crawled, half-rolled back to her door. Her limbs wouldn't work properly. She ordered the door to open and dragged herself across the threshold. A moment later the door hissed shut behind her.

A minute later the one-eye recovered its "wits." Though still mechanically sound, it had lost the information in its temporary memory store, including all memory of Shikibu. It glided away and continued about its business.

Shiva danced the dance of the universe, his wild hair streaming about a face that was beyond bliss and pain. In one hand he held flames of destruction, in another, the drum symbolizing time and creation. His third hand was in a position meaning "elephant," the opener of the way, and with his fourth hand he gestured "fear not." In his streaming locks could be seen the crescent moon of birth, the skull of death, and the flower of the datura.

As Wesley watched this image from Hindu mythology, this dance of creation and destruction unfolding on his computer screen, he likened it to the dance of subatomic particles, with their births, deaths, and continual exchange of energy-the fire from the explosion that created the universe.

This comparison was not entirely his own. The computer had told him that as far back as the mid-twentieth century, physicists had found, in the concept of Shiva and in other Eastern ideas, eloquent metaphors for quantum and relativity theory, the uncertainty principle, and much else.

Wesley had been studying a lot of Eastern philosophy lately, not because he was naturally inclined to it, but because of Ensign Shikibu.

His first look at her face had sent his mind roaming into the ethereal. He was instantly captivated, but he soon found her to be difficult to understand, and the closer they became, the more he was intimidated by her. Though their new friendship had deepened, there had been no signs of romance so far, and already Wesley seemed to have reached an impa.s.se.

It wasn't just that she was four years older than he. The problem went beyond mere, mundane chronological age. She wasn't like anyone he'd ever met. She was usually silent as a stone, especially when he wanted to talk, and just when he was about to give up and walk away, she would give him a brief smile that sent him into ecstasy for the rest of the day. But she would rarely talk about her personal life, or about Zen archery, and what she did say he often found incomprehensible.

Once, after he'd asked her for the umpteenth time to tell him about that ancient art, she took him to her cabin. She disappeared behind the part.i.tion and emerged wearing flowing robe-like garments of a simple style he'd never seen before, and a leather glove on one hand. She picked up her bow, the largest bow Wesley had ever seen, and fitted an arrow to the string. Lifting the bow, she drew the arrow straight back and pointed it at the wall. She held the drawn bow for at least a minute in a state of strange concentration, her breathing deep and even, her body elegantly poised. There was an ineffable beauty and mastery about her in this posture. She never shot the arrow; she simply put the bow and arrow away and silently opened her door to let Wesley out.

Hoping to understand her better by learning about her cultural background, Wesley started reading about Zen. As it turned out, most Zen writings were in the form of riddles and paradoxes called koan and mondo, which he didn't grasp at all, and which seemed to say that they shouldn't be grasped. He traced Zen's lineage back to the earlier writings of Chinese Taoism, but those writings said that words could not be used to describe Taoism. In search of something less elusive, he traced the lineage even farther back, to the ancient Hindu writings, and found Shiva, the starting point.

Shiva he could just begin to understand. Shiva reminded him of particle physics.

Now, as he watched the dancing Shiva and thought about dancing quarks and leptons, and also about the waves in Shikibu's raven-black hair, a sudden alert klaxon startled him.

He logged off the computer and waited. The klaxon kept wailing. After an uneasy interval, his cabin intercom came to life and he heard Riker announce that dangerous intruders were loose on the ship.

Then a different voice came over his communicator.

"Shikibu to Weh ..."

The words sounded slurred, drunken.

"Wesley here. What's wrong?"

"Can't talk or think ... truder shot me."

Wesley leapt up. He felt himself shaking. She must have been injured badly, disoriented-she was calling him when she should have been calling Security or sickbay.

"Where are you?" he asked.

There was no reply, just the faint ambient noise of a room somewhere on the ship.

Riker's voice broke into the channel.

"Mr. Crusher."

"Crusher here."

"I need you on the bridge. The devices haven't gotten up to your deck level yet, but they may soon. You have to come immediately."

"Sir, something has happened to Shikibu."

"Yes, we know about it. She'll be brought to sickbay as soon as someone from Security can get to her."

"But-"

"Ensign!" Riker became brusque. "The entire ship is threatened and the captain is being held hostage. Put aside your feelings. I need you at your station. Now."

"On my way, sir."

"Worf, where is the captain now?" asked Commander Riker.

He sat in the captain's chair, Troi to his left, Data and Wesley ahead of him at Conn and Ops, Worf behind at Tactical.