Star Trek: The Q Continuum (34 page)

“Maybe later,” Q said. It was tempting to play with the Tkon again, try out some of his new ideas, but he didn’t want to be pushed into anything he was uncomfortable with by simple peer pressure alone.
If I wanted to just go along with the crowd, I could have stuck with the Continuum. I’m only going to do what I want to do—just as soon as I figure out what that is.

“I see,” 0 answered. He looked disappointed in Q, but refrained from any further criticism. “Well, why don’t you sit this one out while Gorgan and the others show you how it’s done.” He nodded at his companions, who began to descend and disperse to the far-flung borders of the Tkon Empire, their very substance shrinking and growing more compact as they accommodated themselves to the mortal plane of their respective targets. Soon they appeared to be no larger than the individual denizens of the worlds they had each selected, but appearances, in this case, were extremely deceiving. “They’ll just soften them up for us,” 0 told Q. “You and I, maybe we can deliver the coup de grâce later on, after our friends have had their fun.” He strolled over to Q and rested his celestial frame upon an invisible chair. “You’ll like that, Q. The final test. The exam to end all exams. That’s what makes it all worthwhile, you’ll see.”

“Really?” Q asked, too keyed up to sit. He watched the receding forms of Gorgan, (*), and The One with mixed emotions. Part of him, the part that had thoroughly enjoyed raining overripe fruit upon the palaces of Ozari-thul, wished he was going with them. Another part, from which his trepidations had emerged, waited nervously to see what sort of stunts Q’s old acquaintances were intent on.

“What kind of final test?” he asked.

“Later,” 0 promised. “For now, just sit back and enjoy the show.”

I’ll try,
Q thought, settling back into a comfortable curvature of space-time, adjusting the gravity until it fit just right and resting his head against a patch of condensed dark matter. He had to admit, in spite of his occasional reservations, there was something exceptionally stimulating about not knowing what was going to happen next.

Galactic barrier, here we come,
Riker thought as the
Enterprise
came within sight of the perilous wall of energy. He wasn’t looking forward to justifying this decision to Captain Picard, in the unlikely event that they ever met again. Two empty chairs flanked the captain’s seat; with Picard away and Deanna off in sickbay, the command area felt even lonelier than usual.

“There it is,” Ensign Clarze called out unnecessarily. Even through the stormy chaos of the Calamarain, the luminous presence of the barrier could be perceived, shining through the temperamental clouds like a searchlight through the mist and throwing a reddish purple radiance over the scene upon the viewer.
Let’s hope that it’s not luring us on to our destruction,
Riker thought. At maximum impulse, they would be within the barrier in a matter of moments.

“Steady as she goes, Mr. Clarze,” he instructed. A loose isolinear chip, its casing charred by the explosion that had liberated it from a broken control panel, drifted between Riker and the viewscreen, pointedly reminding him that the gravity had gone the way of most of their shields.
Thank heaven we still have life-support,
he thought,
after the beating we’ve taken.
He suspected that the old
Enterprise-
D, as durable as she was, would have already succumbed to the Calamarain’s assault.
We upgraded just in time.

“Shields at eight percent,” Leyoro reported. Small wonder that the ship felt like it was shaking itself apart. The Calamarain, perhaps becoming aware of Riker’s desperate strategy, threw themselves against the hull and what remained of the deflectors with the same relentless ferocity they had displayed for hours now.
Don’t they ever get tired,
he thought,
or is that just something we solids have to put up with?

“Data. Barclay. Where’s that extra energy?” He smacked his fist against the arm of the chair. “We need those shields.”

“Scanning for it,” Barclay said from the aft engineering station. Now that the pressure was on, the nervous crewman seemed to find a hidden reserve of professionalism, or maybe he was just too busy to be frightened.
This had better work,
Riker thought, drawing comfort from the fact that Geordi had looked over Barclay’s findings and seconded Data’s technical evaluation of the plan.
That’s as much as I can ask for, given our lousy situation.
“Yes,” Barclay reported, “I think I’m reading something now. The bio-gel packs are being energized by the proximity of the barrier. I’m picking up definite traces of psionic particles.”

Lightning crashed across the prow of the saucer section, and sparks spewed from the engineering station, the electrical spray gushing toward the ceiling instead of raining upon the floor as they would have under ordinary gravitational conditions. It looked like a geyser of fire. Barclay had no choice but to step back from the sparking console while he waited for the emergency circuits to shut down the geyser. “Commander,” he said, chagrined, “I can’t monitor the bio-gel packs anymore.”

Terrific,
Riker thought bitterly. “Data, take over from your station. Divert whatever energy we’ve absorbed to the shields immediately.”
It will have to be enough.

“Yes, Commander,” Data acknowledged, his synthetic fingers flying over the control panel faster than any human eye could follow. “Initiating energy transfer now.”

Here goes nothing,
Riker thought. Everything depended on Barclay’s wild scheme.

“Shields back up to seventy percent,” Leyoro reported in surprise; Riker didn’t think she was the sort to believe in miracles. “The readings are very peculiar. These aren’t like any deflectors I know, but they’re holding.”

And just in time,
Riker thought as the ship plunged into the barrier. He braced for the impact, wondering briefly if it was even possible for the ship to be knocked about more than the Calamarain had done. The light radiating from the viewer grew brighter and for an instant he believed he saw the Calamarain flash strangely, their vibrant colors reversed like a photographic negative. Then the whole screen whited out, overloaded by the incredible luminosity of the barrier. The hum of the Calamarain, and the thunder of their aggression, vanished abruptly, replaced by a sudden silence that was almost as unnerving. It was like going from a battlefield to a morgue in a single breath, and creepy as could be.

“Commander,” Leyoro exulted, “the Calamarain have withdrawn. They can’t stand the barrier!” She let out a high-pitched whoop that Riker assumed was some sort of Angosian victory cry. A breach of bridge protocol, but forgivable under the circumstances. He felt like cheering himself, despite the eerie quiet.

But, having shed the Calamarain at last, could they survive the barrier? He hoped that their adversaries, in choosing the better part of valor, had not proven wiser than the
Enterprise.
“Mr. Clarze,” he commanded, “come to a full stop.” He didn’t want to go any deeper into the barrier than they had to, let alone face whatever dangers might be waiting on the other side, with the ship in the shape that it was. “Leyoro, how are our new and improved shields holding up?”

The deathly hush of the barrier had already spread to the ship; the lights of the bridge dimmed, then went out entirely, leaving only the red emergency lights and the glow from the surviving consoles to illuminate the stations around him. The familiar buzz of the bridge faded as lighted control panels flickered before falling dead. The forward viewer was useless, the screen blank. They were flying blind, more or less.

“Sufficiently, I think,” Leyoro allowed. “The readings are difficult to interpret; the psychic energy bombarding the ship is the same energy that is maintaining our shields, which makes them hard to distinguish from each other.”

“How much longer can we stay here?” he asked, cutting straight to the crux of the matter. He felt a dull ache beneath his forehead, and recalled that Kirk had lost close to a dozen crew members on his trip through the barrier, their brains burned out by some sort of telepathic shock. He suddenly wondered if his decade-long psychic bond with Deanna could have left him peculiarly vulnerable to the telepathic danger of the psychic energy now surrounding the ship.
Lord only knows what it’s doing to my frontal lobes,
he thought,
even through our shields.

Leyoro shook her head, unable to answer his question. Her glee over eluding the Calamarain had given way to concern over their present status. He saw her grimace in pain, then massage her forehead with her fingers.
Never mind my brain,
he thought,
what about Leyoro’s?
It had not occurred to him before that her modified nervous system, permanently altered by the Angosians to increase her combat readiness, might put her at risk as well.

He looked to Barclay and Data instead. “How long?” he asked again, wondering if the real question wasn’t how long they
could
stay within the barrier, but how long they dared to.

“It is impossible to state with certainty,” the android informed him. “As long as the bio-gel packs continue to draw psychic power from the barrier, we should be safe, but we must allow for the possibility that these unusual energies, which the bio-gel packs were never designed to accommodate, may burn out the packs at any moment, in which case our situation would become significantly more hazardous.”

“Um, what he said,” Barclay confirmed, twitching nervously. Paradoxically, his self-conscious mannerisms had returned as soon as the immediate danger passed.
He works best under pressure,
Riker guessed.
The less time he has to fret about things, the better he copes.

“Understood,” he said. “Good work, both of you. Contact Commander LaForge and tell him to start repairing the damage done by the Calamarain. Top priority on the shields; with any luck, we can get our conventional deflectors up and running before these new bio-gel packs burn themselves out.”

“What about the gravity, sir?” Barclay asked. Despite the anti-nausea treatment from Nurse Ogawa, he still looked a little green around the gills. Simple spacesickness, or was Barclay’s cerebrum also taking a beating from the barrier? Riker recalled that the engineer’s brain had been artificially enhanced once before, when the Cytherians temporarily increased his intelligence. Barclay’s IQ had returned to normal eventually, but it was conceivable that he could have picked up a little heightened telepathic sensitivity in the process.
Data may be the only crew member aboard who is entirely immune to the effect of the barrier,
Riker realized.

Riker shook his head in response to Barclay’s query. “Shields first, then the warp drive. We’ll just have to put up with weightlessness a little longer.” To keep up morale, he allowed himself an amused grin. “Think of it as a vacation from gravity.”

“Now that we’re free of the Calamarain’s damping influence,” Leyoro pointed out, “the warp engines may be operative again.”

That’s right,
Riker thought, immediately tapping his combadge. “Geordi, we’re inside the outer fringes of the barrier, but the Calamarain have retreated. What’s the status of the warp engines?”

“Not good, Commander,” Geordi’s voice stated, exerting its own damping influence on Riker’s hopes. “I don’t know if it was the Calamarain or the barrier or both, but the warp nacelles have taken an awful lot of damage. It’s going to take several hours to fix them.”

Blast,
Riker thought, not too surprised. As he recalled, the barrier had knocked out Kirk’s warp engines, too, the first time he dared the barrier. Plus, when you considered all the pounding they had received from the Calamarain’s thunderbolts, and with minimal shields there at the end, he figured he should be thankful that at least the com system was working. “Go to it, Mr. La Forge. Riker out.”

“It may be just as well, Commander,” Data commented. “It is impossible to predict the consequences of going to warp within the barrier itself. I would be highly reluctant to attempt such an experiment without further analysis of the unknown energies that comprise the barrier.”

Except that that may be a risk we have to take,
Riker thought,
especially if the Calamarain are waiting for us right outside the barrier.
“What about those angry clouds we just got rid of?” he asked Leyoro. It was possible that the Calamarain, assuming the
Enterprise
destroyed by the barrier, may have left for greener pastures. “Any sign they’re still hanging around out there?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Leyoro said unhappily; it was obvious that the security chief did not like having to keep disappointing her commander. Just as obviously, her head was still bothering her. She rubbed her right temple mechanically, while a muscle beside her left eye twitched every few seconds. “The barrier is so intense it’s overwhelming our sensors. They can’t detect anything past it.”

So we’re blind, deaf, and numb,
Riker concluded. The big question then was what was more dangerous, staying inside the barrier or facing the Calamarain?
We already know we can’t beat the Calamarain as is,
he thought,
so our best bet is to stay put until Geordi can get the warp drive working again, then try to make a quick escape.
He surveyed the bridge, inspecting the faces of his crew, and was glad to see that all of them, including Barclay, seemed fit enough for action. He considered sending Leyoro to sickbay for a checkup, but there was a host of people aboard, all of them in danger; he couldn’t afford to start relieving officers just because they might have a suspicious headache. His own head was throbbing now, but none of his people looked like they were ready to keel over.

Yet.

During the fifth year of the reign of the empress, on an unusually chilly summer night in the largest city on Rzom, the eleventh planet in the primary solar system of the Tkon Empire, a young man stood on the wide crystal steps leading to the front entrance of the imperial governor’s mansion and exhorted the crowd that had gathered in the spacious and well-lit plaza to hear him speak. A life-sized statue of the empress, carved from the purest Rzom marble and posed heroically atop an elegant pedestal at the center of the plaza, looked on in silence.

“Why,” he asked the onlookers rhetorically, “should we pay exorbitant taxes, wasting the resources of a lifetime, just to preserve an overcrowded old world millions of miles from here, whose time has come?”

About a third of the crowd, most the same age as the speaker, cheered his words enthusiastically, while others muttered among themselves or cast angry yellow stares at the youth upon the steps. A contingent of five safeties, clad in matching turquoise uniforms, flanked the crowd, watching carefully for the early signifiers of a brewing disturbance. The faces of the safeties were fixed and expressionless, displaying no response to the young man’s fervent oratory. Pacification rings waited patiently on the fingers of each safety’s hand, linked to sophisticated neutralization equipment embedded in the very walls and pavement of the city. So far, there had been no cause to employ the rings, but the safeties remained alert and ready. Nervous faces, perhaps even the governor’s, peered through the curtained windows of the palace, viewing the drama from behind the safety of reinforced crystal walls.

“That world is our birthplace,” a woman shouted indignantly from the forefront of the crowd. From the looks of her, she was a governmental functionary of approximately the sixth echelon, whose reddish hair was already turning silver. A disk-shaped emblem melded to the collar of her insulated winter mantle proclaimed that she had voluntarily donated more than her allotted share to the Great Endeavor.

The young man’s partisans among the crowd, students mostly, greeted the woman’s passionate outburst with jeers and laughter. Emboldened by their support, the speaker on the steps hooted as well. “I wasn’t born there and neither were you,” he shot back, winning another round of cheers from his contemporaries. Despite the chill of the evening, on a world little known for its warmth, his vermilion cloak was open to the wind and flapping above his shoulder as he spoke. His ebony locks were knotted in the latest style. “I’m proud to say that I was born here on Rzom—and to Hades with decrepit Tkon!”

Many of the older spectators clucked disapprovingly and shook their heads. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” the aging functionary said. “You don’t deserve the blessings of the empire!”

One crystal step above and behind the youthful firebrand, unobserved by either his supporters or detractors, nor by the watchful eyes of the vigilant safeties, Gorgan watched with pleasure as the public debate grew more heated.
It’s always so easy,
he thought,
pitting the young against the old. This new plane is no different than any other realm.

The graying woman’s admonition was seconded by others in the audience. This time those rallying around her matched the volume of the young people’s catcalls and derisive glee. “That’s right,” another man yelled. He looked like an archivist or invested myth reader. “Go live among the barbarians if that’s what you want. Real Tkon know that the homeworld is worth any sacrifice.”

The open show of opposition seemed to rattle the leader of the dissidents, who stepped backward involuntarily, passing effortlessly through the immaterial form of Gorgan, who casually eased to one side for a bit more personal space. The proud young Rzom faltered, momentarily at a loss for words, but Gorgan came to his rescue, whispering into the youth’s ear in a voice only his unconscious mind could hear.

“Blessings? What blessings?” the speaker demanded, parroting the words that flowed so easily from Gorgan’s lips. “Over fifteen percent of the empire’s adult laborers are devoted to the empress’s misguided Endeavor, and over twenty-seven percent of the entire imperial budget! All to keep the inner planets from meeting their natural fate. Can you imagine what else could have been done with all that time and treasure, the advances we could have achieved in art, science, medicine, exploration, and social betterment? The finest minds of a generation are being squandered on a grandiose exercise in sentimentality and nostalgia.” His voice grew bolder and more confident as Gorgan fed him subliminal cues. “Our ancestors had the courage to physically leave Tkon generations ago; we should have the courage to let go of it spiritually at long last. Let’s work together to enhance the future, not preserve the past!”

“Hear, hear!” cried a young woman, barely past adolescence, her emerald tresses knotted so tightly that not a single strand blew freely in the wind. “Tell them, Jenole!”

The man beside her, wearing the indigo crest of a licensed commerce artist, gave her a contemptuous sneer. “Spoiled whelp,” he muttered, loud enough for her to hear. Throughout the assembled throng, individuals eyed their neighbors skeptically and began clustering into hostile pockets of two or more, placing physical as well as ideological distance between themselves and those who disagreed with them. Soon the crowd had parted into two hostile camps, glaring at each other and shouting slogans and insults at their fellow citizens. Even the acutely disciplined safeties began to let their masks of neutrality slip, betraying their inclinations and allegiances with a slightly downturned lip here, an arched eyebrow or furrowed brow there.

Marvelous,
Gorgan thought, delighted to see the people turning on themselves, splitting apart along generational lines.
Just marvelous.
It was his curse and his glory that he could only achieve and wield power through the manipulation of others, but that restriction was of little import when such creatures as these proved so easy to beguile.

“And what of the trillions of inhabitants of the inner worlds?” the older woman challenged the youth. “Are you prepared to cope with the countless refugees the dying sun will send stampeding in our direction? Not to mention the loss of our history, the end of all archaeological research into the distant past, the utter destruction of sites and natural wonders hallowed by millions of years of striving and civilization?” She paused for breath, then turned around to face the divided assemblage. “Don’t future generations deserve a chance to gaze upon the sacred shore of Azzapa? Or walk in the footsteps of Llaxem or Yson?” She held out her hands to the crowd, pleading for their understanding. “Don’t you see? If we let Tkon and the other worlds be destroyed, then we’re cutting out the very heart of the culture we all share.”

Gorgan was disturbed to see uncertainty upon the faces of some of the younger members of the audience. He scowled at the aging bureaucrat whose words appeared to be striking a nerve in listeners both young and old.
She’s making too much sense,
he brooded.
Something has to be done.

Leaving the leader of the dissidents to his own devices, Gorgan glided down the steps toward the woman, the hem of his voluminous gown leaving no trail upon the polished surface of the steps. He crept silently to her side until his face was only a finger away from her ear.
You don’t stand a chance,
he whispered.
You’re too old. Your time has passed.

Higher upon the crystal steps, the youth called Jenole attempted to regain the mob’s attention, along with the loyalty of his followers. “Tkon’s no heart. It’s just a planet, a big rock in the endless null…like a hundred million other worlds.” He thumped a fist against his chest, raising his voice to heighten the impact of his impassioned declaration. “The real heart of the empire is right here! On Rzom, and inside us all!”

His fellow students cheered in unison, some of them a bit less robustly than before, drawing murderous looks from the opposing camp. The narrow gazes of the safeties arced back and forth between the students and their critics, watching both sides carefully. The silicon rings on their fingers glinted beneath the elevated lights of the plaza, which cast a gentle, faintly violet radiance over all that transpired.

“But that doesn’t
mean
anything,” the functionary protested, responding to Jenole’s shouted claim to the heart of the empire. She tried to match his fiery intensity, but found her will and energy fading.
It’s no use,
a voice at the back of her mind whispered, sounding very much like her own.
There’s no point, you’ve already lost.
Despite several layers of insulated fabric to protect her from the winter, she felt a chill work its way into the marrow of her bones.
Tkon is doomed. Nobody cares. The sun is dying and so are you….

Still, she tried to rally her spirits, fighting against the despair and hopelessness that descended over her like a suffocating fog. “No, you don’t understand. We have a choice.” She could barely hear her own words over the insidious voice inside her skull
(It’s a lost cause),
but she struggled to force her argument out through her lips. “We can either run from the disaster or prevent it. Diaspora or deliverance.”

“What’s that?” her opponent seemed to bellow at her. “Speak up. We can’t hear you.”

Sadness shrouded her like a heavy net, dragging her down. “What do you want?” she murmured.
There is no hope.
Her chin sagged against her chest as her gaze dropped to the uncaring steps below.
They’ll never learn.
“Why won’t you listen? We have a choice. It doesn’t have to happen….”

She receded back into the crowd, as if drawn by some inexorable gravitational force, leaving Gorgan alone and triumphant upon the lower steps.
Despair is a powerful weapon,
he gloated,
especially for those already feeling the tug of entropy upon their bodies and souls.
He contemplated the victor of the debate, standing tall before the imposing edifice behind him, blithely incognizant of the alien influences that had driven his critic from the field.
Arrogance, too, has its uses. With both tools at my disposal, I can sever any bond, tear asunder any union, and work my will on the scraps that remain.

One of those scraps, clad in a cloak as florid as his oratory, trumpeted his cause to the entire plaza. “You see, the rightness of our position cannot be denied! Down with the musty memory of Tkon. The future belongs to the new age of Rzom!”

His peers took up his cry, but at the fringes of the crowd people began to drift away. The older citizens in particular, having lost their most vocal advocate, seemed to lose interest in the confrontation. One by one, they turned away, shrugging dismissively. It was cold out, after all, and they had better things to do. Beneath their crisp, spotless uniforms, the coiled muscles of the safeties geared down to an only slightly lessened state of readiness.

Gorgan noticed the difference and, noticing, frowned. The situation had plateaued too soon and now ran the risk of inspiring nothing more than empty rhetoric. He could not settle for mere words, no matter how inflammatory. It was time to up the stakes, accelerate the conflict to the next level. He eyed the safeties, so self-assured in their authority, and smirked in anticipation of what was to come.
You have no idea what awaits you.

He did not need to draw any nearer to the cocksure youth standing astride the top steps to project his new suggestions into such a willing mind. He rode the momentum he had already brought about to egg the self-infatuated student leader on to greater heights of rebellion.

“Friends, allies, brothers and sisters in arms,” Jenole called out, the regal facade of the governor’s palace looming behind him. “Listen to me. We need to send a message to everyone who has tried to force down our throats their Great Endeavor.” He spat out the name as if it were an obscenity. “To the governor, to the selfish cowards back on Tkon, and even to the empress herself.”

Leaping onto the uppermost step, beneath the carved crystal archway of the grand entrance, he aimed an accusing finger at the statue of the empress upon her pedestal. “There she is,” he hollered, “the architect of this entire insane enterprise.”

Not far away, but separated from this moment and place by a phase or two of reality, a timelost starship captain flinched at the word “enterprise” as he heard it translated into his own tongue. The name reminded him of dangers and responsibilities he was not being allowed to face. “Q,” he began.

“Sssh,” Q hushed him, watching 0 and his younger self watching Gorgan watching the Rzom. “Pay attention, Jean-Luc. You may find the modus operandi quite instructive. I certainly did.”

“Let’s show the galaxy that we mean what we say,” the Rzom youth continued, “that we refuse to blindly worship the past. Down with that monument to folly. Down with the empress!”

Incited by their spokesman, the mob of students rushed the statue, climbing onto the pedestal and throwing their weight against the marble figure. Horrified by this attempt at vandalism, a few of the older citizens tried to intervene, placing themselves between the statue and the next wave of demonstrators, but they were quickly shoved aside by the overexcited students. Fists were raised and angry words exchanged, prompting the safeties to take action at last. “Attention,” the senior safety announced, her voice artificially amplified by a mechanism planted against the base of her throat. “Step away from the statue at once. This gathering is declared a threat to public order and is hereby terminated. All citizens are directed to refrain from further debate and to exit the plaza in an orderly fashion.”

The safety’s instructions chastened a fraction of those assembled, who froze sheepishly in their tracks, then began to slink away; lawlessness did not come easily to people who had known decades of peace and stability. But the majority of the students, whose memories were shorter and whose law-abiding habits were less deeply ingrained, ignored the safety, continuing to clamber over the marble monument like Belzoidian fleas swarming over an unguarded piece of cake, while shouting and cheering uproariously. They appeared to be having the time of their lives, much to the delight of Gorgan. Tools that enjoyed their work always performed better than those who had to be grudgingly forced to their tasks. He nodded approvingly as a jubilant young Rzom started swinging back and forth from the outstretched arm of the sculpted empress.