Star Trek: The Q Continuum (47 page)

He almost killed Q,
the young Q thought in amazement. He could scarcely imagine such a thing, let alone witness it with his own all-seeing eyes. Obliterating the Tkon was one thing; tasteless and excessive and even sadistic, true, but still only affecting one mortal population. But to threaten the immortality of a Q…!

And 0 appeared perfectly willing to do so again. At this very moment, he menaced another Q with a sword in each hand, assailing the Continuum’s implacable quaestor with a bayonet clenched in one and a
kukri
dagger in the other. The savage intensity of his onslaught was slowly but surely winning out over the meticulous fencing skills of the Q, who clearly lacked 0’s gleeful hunger for the kill. The Q fought defensively, wielding a darting saber, but he was beaten backward by 0’s vicious blows. The stranger’s shapeshifting sword rang against the other’s metal cuirass and greaves as he repeatedly slipped past the Q’s desperate parries. “See,” 0 called to the young Q, “the Continuum doesn’t stand a chance. And it’s all thanks to you!”

He’s right,
Q realized.
Q can never forgive me for what I’ve done, none of them can.

But maybe that wasn’t the point. He had never really wanted the Continuum’s approval anyway. Far from it, in fact. All he ever truly craved was the courage to follow his own instincts, no matter where they led.

Driven back by the simultaneous thrusts of a Viking broadsword and an Apache tomahawk, the quaestor tripped over a constellation. He tumbled through space, momentarily out of control, while his weapon slipped from his fingers, evaporating into the ether. 0 pounced on the opportunity; by the time the quaestor righted himself, the point of a sharpened leg bone was at his throat. “Pay close attention,” 0 instructed Q, “and you’ll see how to deal with opposition. This pallid entity”—he pressed the tip of his prehistoric pigsticker hard enough to spill a drop of luminous silver ichor—“will never dampen our fire again. Never!”

Q glanced about him in a panic. The other Q stood by helplessly, even his formidable girlfriend. He could sense that they were all too depleted to rescue their leader, even if they knew how to extricate him from his perilous situation. “Wait!” he asked 0 desperately, stalling for time while he tried to figure out what to do.

“What for?” 0 demanded, brandishing the primitive poniard beneath the other Q’s chin. “Admit it, Q. You’ve wanted to do this a hundred times before.”

True enough,
he conceded. There had been times when he would have liked nothing better than to run the Continuum through with an ectoplasmic skewer. He recalled all those occasions in his turbulent childhood and early youth when this particular Q had disciplined and restrained him, imposing odious limits on the young Q’s freewheeling imagination. All he needed to do now, Q recognized, was stand aside and let 0 deliver a killing blow that might scare off the rest of the Continuum for an eternity or two. Total freedom, unlimited anarchy, beckoned. He could do whatever he pleased. He could become just like 0….

“I have a better idea,” he said.

In a fraction of a second, the young Q traded places with the Q who resembled Picard. Suddenly, the tip of 0’s weapon was poised at Q’s throat instead, with the quaestor safely out of the way.

Now it was 0’s turn to be disoriented. He blinked in disbelief as his mouth fell open. The point of the sharpened bone wobbled in his grip. “I don’t understand,” he began. “What are you do—”

Q grabbed on to the bone with both hands and sent a powerful galvanic current rushing down the length of the filed tibia into 0’s manifested form. The stranger twitched spasmodically as the shock coursed through him, and, for an instant, Q caught a glimpse of subliminal tentacles writhing in pain. His shoes blew off his feet while the ruffled sleeves of 0’s linen shirt burst into flames. 0 stared at Q with a look of anguished betrayal in his bulging blue eyes. “How could you?” he gasped before his bad leg gave out and he collapsed face-first toward the empty abyss of space.

In a strange, uncomfortable sort of way, Q felt as if he had struck down a part of himself.

The young Q stood in dock before the high tribunal of the Continuum, along with 0 and, disturbingly, the disembodied head of The One. Chained and manacled, 0 crooned to himself, his mind seemingly undone by this latest defeat. He rattled his chains in time with his demented ditty and refused to look at Q.

Only a few paces away, with neither arms nor legs to fetter, nor even a torso on which to slither snakelike upon the floor, the severed head of The One had been confined within a sturdy metal cage resting on the floor of the courtroom. His angry eyes, impossibly alive, glared through the bars of the cage while he ground his teeth together impotently, reminding Picard of those rare occasions on which Data’s head had been detached from his body. But Data had never looked so enraged and vengeful.

“Is this it?” Picard asked. “The end of the war?”

“Almost,” Q promised. “All that remains is the disposition of the prisoners, including myself.”

The female Q, still armored Amazonian-style, stood guard between the two outsiders and the young Q, ready to defend Q should either of the alien entities attempt to exact revenge on Q for his betrayal. Her hand rested on the sword at her side. The two other Qs sat in the jury box, looking on with solemn expressions. They had retained their armor, but removed their plumed helmets out of respect for the court.

Picard’s doppelgänger stared down at the prisoners from an elevated seat behind a high black bench. He had exchanged his armor for a Roman toga, and a crown of laurel leaves rested upon his hairless dome. Recalling the memorable instances in which the later Q had placed Picard (and the rest of humanity) on trial, the real Jean-Luc found it oddly satisfying to see the roles reversed for once.

No walls or ceiling enclosed the courtroom of the Continuum. Tipping back his head, Picard could see the entire Milky Way Galaxy spread out overhead. To think, he mused, that that shimmering spiral of stars and solar systems, a hundred thousand light-years in diameter, contained the whole of the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma Quadrants, holding every species and civilization from the Borg to the Dominion to countless new life-forms as yet unknown. Even in his own time, Starfleet had explored only a fraction of the galaxy above. It was a humbling thought.

The quaestor brought down his gavel, calling the court to attention. “Enemies of the Q Continuum,” he addressed 0 and The One in as stern a voice as Picard had ever heard. “You have been accused of malicious mischief and conduct unbecoming that of highly advanced entities.”

“I reject your authority,” 0 protested, breaking off from his song and shaking his adamantine chains. “You have no jurisdiction over me.”

The One seconded the motion, the jaws of the disembodied head speaking loudly despite the absence of lungs or anything else below them. “All commandments flow from My Wisdom. Thou shalt have no higher laws than Mine.”

The quaestor was unimpressed by the prisoners’ arguments. “Your access to this plane was done at the sufferance of the Continuum, and at the instigation of one of our less prudent constituents.” The magistrate fixed a cold eye upon the young Q, who gulped nervously. Having exchanged his sackcloth robe for prison stripes, Q looked as guilty as he doubtless felt. “This renders the Continuum responsible for your future activities, just as it renders you both subject to our considered rulings.”

For better or for worse, Picard reflected, he and the usual Q seemed to have arrived at the tail end of the trial. Just as well, he thought; as much as he enjoyed seeing Q among the accused, he was eager for this odyssey to reach some conclusion. The sooner Q returned him to the
Enterprise,
the less anxious he would feel.

The magistrate rapped his gavel again. “The entity who quite presumptuously calls Himself The One shall be confined to the center of this galaxy until the heat death of the universe or His sincere repentance, whichever comes first. This sentence is effective immediately.”

“No!” The One screamed as a glowing blue forcefield surrounded His cage, lifting it from the floor and sending it rushing upward toward the very center of the sprawling starscape above. The living head rocked back and forth within His cage, smashing His forbidding visage against the bars. “Mine is the Power and the Glory and the Will. You cannot lock Me away!” His strident denials faded rapidly in volume as the cage ascended into the sky. Picard watched it rise until its tiny blue glow was lost amid the dazzling panoply of the galactic core.

Of course,
he thought, realizing at last who and what this entity truly was. James T. Kirk had reported encountering just such a malevolent force, trapped behind an energy barrier at the center of the Milky Way, during one of the historic early voyages of the
Enterprise
-A. In theory, The One was imprisoned within the core still, even in the twenty-fourth century.
Remind me to leave that particular barrier alone,
he thought, triggering yet another revelation in his mind.

Now the toga-clad magistrate turned his attention to 0 himself. Arrogant and unrepentant, the prisoner waited defiantly in the dock, singing off-key to music only he could hear. His fancy velvet coat, damask vest, and fashionable breeches were soiled and disheveled. His orange-red tresses, once neatly tied, were loose and in disarray, thatches of frizzy hair jutting wildly in all directions. Having lost his buckled shoes in his moment of defeat, he stood barefoot upon a simulated marble floor, his scarred and twisted left foot exposed to view.

“The entity known only as 0,” the quaestor went on, ignoring 0’s self-absorbed singing, “is banished from this galaxy, on every dimensional plane, without hope of pardon or parole.”

“A barricade shall be erected around the galaxy to prevent your return, thus protecting lesser life-forms from your depraved amusements until they are advanced enough to defend themselves against you and your kind.”

It all made sense now, Picard thought, nodding. The galactic barrier did not exist to hold humanity or anyone else within the galaxy; it was intended to keep 0 out. A galactic quarantine, in effect, with a capital Q.

And a quarantine that Lem Faal’s artificial wormhole could undo in a few moments, exposing the Federation and the rest of the galaxy to 0 once more….

0 spat upon the courtroom floor, his spittle eating away at the marble tiles like acid. “You can’t be rid of me so readily,” he vowed, interrupting his sinister ditty to threaten the court directly. “I’ll be back if I have to wait a million years, just wait and see.” His head snapped around to glower at the young Q. The female Q started to draw her sword, but 0 only flung words at his onetime protégé. “I won’t be forgetting you, Q. We’ll meet again, count on it.” His angry gaze swept the courtroom; Picard felt a chill pass over him as 0 looked his way, even though he knew the vengeful prisoner could not see either he or the older Q. “I hope you like games, young Q, because I know whom I’m testing next. You, Q, you.” He fixed his baleful gaze on Q as he resumed his song:

“Enough. The sentence has been pronounced.” He rapped his gavel decisively. “Make it so.”

As with The One, an irresistible force seized 0 and propelled him upward at unimaginable speed, but this time the force aimed the prisoner at the outer limits of the galaxy. “I’ll be back, Q,” he shouted down at them as his raspy voice grew fainter and fainter. “Oh, the games we’ll play, games of life and death and death and death…! How well can a Q die, I wonder. There’s a test for you!”

Cast out of known space, 0 shrank to invisibility somewhere outside the galaxy, in the black abyss between galaxies. Even after he disappeared from sight, Picard could still hear 0 singing madly.

Then something new and different appeared. Picard watched in wonder as a thin violet cord, neon bright in intensity, stretched around the perimeter of the Milky Way, outlining the entire galaxy like a forcefield…or a moat.

Thus is born the galactic barrier,
he realized, awestruck at the enormity of what the Q had done. That glowing cordon, the same immense wall of energy that had confronted daring starfarers since time immemorial, was the first line of defense for over one hundred billion stars, and all the planets and civilizations that orbited those stars, from Earth to the Delta Quadrant and beyond. Although it looked like the merest shimmering ribbon from his current perspective, he knew that this same barrier enclosed a spiral cloud of stars more than one hundred thousand light-years in diameter. It was a cosmic feat of engineering that made the Great Wall of China seem like a fraction of a fraction of a subatomic speck in comparison.
Astonishing,
he thought. Just to be present at this epochal moment was almost worth all the aggravation Q had inflicted on him over the years.

0 had been more than simply exiled, Picard also understood, as the full implications of the Continuum’s decree sank in. Given the crippled 0’s inability to travel at faster-than-light speeds, except via the Continuum, he had been effectively marooned in extragalactic space, over two million years from the nearest alternative galaxy; in essence, he’d been set adrift in a very large ocean with the only shore in sight barred from him forever. Even if 0 set out immediately for the Andromeda Galaxy, he was still going to be alone for a long, long time. Picard almost felt sorry for him; the Continuum’s judgment had been unforgiving indeed.

But what of the young Q? Picard had to admit he was curious to see how his own people would deal with the errant Q.
Obviously,
he thought,
whatever they do, it won’t be enough to curb his appetite for disorder and chaos.
Picard and his crew could testify to that.

“Q,” the quaestor addressed the youth. His oh-so-familiar face frowned in disapproval.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Q said, stepping forward. Unlike the departed defendants, no chains or cage restrained him. He was here of his own free will, proving that he had gained a little in maturity since his panicky flight from justice several millennia earlier. Picard admired the youth’s willingness to face the consequences of his misdeeds.

“Would that we could dispose of you,” the quaestor said mournfully, his expression growing more dour by the moment, “as swiftly and efficiently as the Continuum dealt with your unsavory associates.” He sighed and shook his head. “Alas, you are a member of the Continuum and so we are obliged to undertake the daunting, and most likely unachievable, task of your rehabilitation.” He nodded at the female Q, standing behind Q in the dock. “Will the bailiff please present Exhibit Forty-two B.”

“Certainly,” she agreed. Holding out her hands in front of her, she produced a spinning blue-green globe that lifted off from her open palms to take a position between the defendant and the quaestor, floating serenely in midair. “Do you recognize this world?” she asked Q.

He peered at the globe, then shook his head. “Should I?”

“The planet before you,” the quaestor informed him, scowling, “is one of several that were damaged during the conflict required to apprehend you and your associates. This world, in particular, was injured by your careless attempt at self-defense near the end of that regrettable altercation.”

Picard recalled, if the young Q did not, the diverted asteroid smashing into the Earth many million years in the past, causing death and destruction on a planetary scale.
I still refuse to accept that was really Q’s doing,
he thought. That an asteroid had struck Earth in the distant past, causing mass extinctions all over the globe, was a matter of archaeological record. That Q himself had caused the disaster, in a single careless moment, Picard found harder to accept.
That, at least, must be some twisted joke on Q’s part.
Or so he hoped.

“Oops?” Q said weakly, wincing at the fierce glare his feeble defense elicited from the quaestor.

“The biosphere of this unfortunate world has been grievously harmed,” the magistrate announced. “Your penance is to personally oversee the reconstruction of its environment and any life-forms that may develop therein. Perhaps the rehabilitation of this unassuming world can serve as a model for your own redemption.” He regarded Q dubiously. “Probably a lost cause, but who knows?”

Q did not take the quaestor’s ruling as well as perhaps he should have. “You want me to babysit some insignificant little planet way off in the middle of nowhere? What sort of punishment is that? It’s a complete waste of my abilities and talents. Can’t you come up with a penance that’s more, well, impressive? Twelve impossible labors maybe, or a hazardous quest that no one else would dare?” He grimaced at the floating orb, his nose wrinkling in disdain. “Nothing so tedious and mundane as…that.”

That’s more like the Q I know,
Picard thought.
Supremely self-important even in defeat.