Chapter 25

Several minutes earlier on board the Enterprise...

As the Borg cutting weaponry finally pierced through the weakened shields into the top of the saucer, an electrical fire broke out on the bridge. From the main science station a crewman screamed, as he was struck by an agonizing shock of electricity. As he fell to the deck twitching, the tactical the officer Ensign Diaz dropped down to his aid. "Lt. Cholo is down, Captain," Diaz cried out, as a crewmember rushed to tactical to replace her.

"Get that fire under control," Jack shouted, as smoke continued to billow in from the ceiling, quickly filling the bridge with a grey haze. The air became thick quickly, and crew members including Deanna Troi from the USS Hood leapt into action, as they tried their best to put out the fire with suppressant sprays.

"We're in position, Captain", the helm officer announced, and then sagged in her seat unconscious from smoke inhalation. Data stood up from Ops, and carefully picked up the helm officer, gently laying her on the floor. He quickly slid into the vacant seat at the helm and set the coordinates, Captain Picard had transmitted.

Jack sat forward in his seat, his eyes watering from the stinging smoke. "Bridge to sick bay! I need an emergency medical team up here! Half of my people are incapacitated and the bridge is on fire. Getting difficult to breathe up here..." he choked.

In sickbay Beverly Crusher raised her head from compressing the wound of an injured crewperson. Jack sounded desperate, and ill from the smoke filtering onto the bridge. Her eyes met Dr. LaForge's. Geordi had been injured down in engineering trying to fight off an attacking Borg and was currently alive but non responsive and in a coma. The Borg who had attacked him had been injured by the security team but had successfully transported back to its ship, taking Geordi's Visor along with it. So she knew that Dr. LaForge knew what was going through her mind better than anyone else right now as he regarded her with a quietly distraught expression.

Minutes ago she received a call from Walker indicating that Ten Forward had been secured, none of the children had been abducted, and that Wesley was safe. Tragically, one of the other children had been killed by a Borg soldier. She tried not to think about that. Walker had told her he would stay with Wesley and the rest of the children until it was "all over".

Unfortunately, no one knew just how all of this was going to end, or what it would mean when it was all over. It was only a small consolation knowing that Wesley was now with someone who loved him, but it was something. Now, her instinct told her to go up to the bridge.

Fleetingly she thought about Jean-Luc and realized she had no idea of his whereabouts. Was he on the bridge? In fact the only thing she had heard since she had left him standing in the corridor was that it had been his plan to shield the children in Ten Forward. And it was perhaps because of his quick thinking Wesley was still on board and was safe with Walker. But where was Jean-Luc? She felt an enormous feeling of dread; a feeling that he was going to do something very risky. It was too overwhelming right now to consider fully. She had to concentrate on the wounded people on this ship, and not her emotions.

Dr. LaForge seemed to understand the message in her gaze and he nodded. She moved into action. "Andy please take over here for me," she said to a nurse, grabbing her med kit. "Alyssa, take the oxygen masks and burn unit, and I need you and you too," she said pointing to two orderlies. "Grab an anti-grav stretcher please," she added before rushing out of sickbay.

Once on the bridge Crusher was shocked to see the damage and could barely make out anything through the smoke. She immediately began to attend to Lieutenant Cholo who had been electrocuted. Burns covered his arms and neck, and he moaned in agony. Quickly administering him a sedative, she instructed the orderlies to place him on the stretcher. "Get him down into intensive care immediately," she said, before surveying the bridge for other wounded. He's not here…

"Switch to aft viewer" Jack was saying. The Hood now appeared hanging in space lopsided and listing to one side, with the portside nacelle blackened and inoperative. Yet the damaged ship seemed to slowly be turning the front of its saucer to face the back of the Enterprise. Deanna Troi sat back down in the command center, trying to catch her breath, as she too stared in shock at the disturbing sight. She could sense that Will was still alive, but he was very weak.

"What is he doing?" Jack glanced to his right with alarm as Beverly walked swiftly by him and crouched down next to the Ensign at the helm. When he had asked for a medical team, he hadn't wanted Beverly to come up here. It wasn't safe, but now that she was here he couldn't very well order her to stop doing her job, which was to help him and his bridge crew stay alive.

Nurse Ogawa rushed over to him, handing Jack an oxygen mask, which he placed over his face, and he inhaled some relief into his lungs. "Thanks, Alyssa," he said. Ogawa moved to Counselor Troi and gave her an oxygen mask as well, which she gratefully accepted, as another explosion rocked the bridge.

"Shields at 15 percent, Captain," said Data with typical calm. He paused. "Sir, sensors show the Hood is powering up its warp engines."

"There is no way he has full warp capability," said Jack disbelievingly. "What's his heading?"

Data hesitated slightly, the only indication of his genuine surprise. "The Hood appears to be on a course directly in line with our position, sir," said Data.

Jack struggled to remain calm. A few minutes earlier, Picard had asked Jack to trust in his mysterious plan. But was his plan to warp into the back of the Enterprise?

Jack took a deep breath from the oxygen mask. "We're in position, Jean-Luc. Now what? We're taking heavy fire still," he said.

From her crouching position behind Data, Beverly froze at the sound of Jack's words. Her patient now stable, she nodded to nurse Ogawa, and slowly got to her feet, and backed up toward the command center, staring wide eyed at the view screen image of the Hood. Jean-Luc was on the Hood. Why? Stunned, she turned around and walked back to sit down in the command center next to Jack.

"Jack, do you have the coordinates?" At the sound of Jean-Luc's voice, she reached over to take Jack's hand, still staring ahead at the view of the crippled Hood.

Jack took a deep breath and squeezed Beverly's hand tightly. "Yes, Data is standing by. Just say when old friend…."

"Ready Data?" Jack prompted.

"Aye sir."

Picard's voice was suddenly the only noise on the bridge. "One, two…three, mark!"

As the Enterprise went into warp, the crew watched with a collective gasp as the image on the view screen erupted into a burst of white and the Hood simply disappeared.

Inside a Warp bubble…

He was floating in a sea of white, staring upward when Q floated into view. Q's star-like shape bobbed up and down, and somehow even in his non-humanoid form he seemed to mock Picard.

"How incredibly creative, Picard. A Q might not have done it better. A slow and ponderous way to create a black hole, but impressive nonetheless, for a human."

Picard said nothing for a moment. "A black hole?"

"Just a temporary one…lucky for you it swallowed itself up along with the Borg ships and the Hood. Converging two warp fields together while the third moves away in the opposite direction. The Borg never saw it coming! How clever," said Q.

Picard's brain felt like mush. He hadn't intended to create a black hole, but he had intended to destroy the lead ship. "Just wanted to escape..." he murmured. "Am I alive? Where is Riker?"

"Riker is still alive, as are you…but satisfy my curiosity, Picard. Why not simply use your remaining power to resolve the Borg situation? What you did won't slow their current assault on humanity..."

Picard felt as though his body and mind were being stretched thin. Were they still in warp? Had Q stopped time just to badger him about his motives? He wanted to go home…to the Enterprise. "Don't need it anymore," he mumbled.

"You don't need what? The power of Q? Oh, how rich, Picard! Why just days ago, you would have given up your first born son to return to the Continuum…perhaps a poor choice of words on my part."

"Why didn't you tell me about Wesley? Why didn't you tell me about my son? Why did you keep the truth from me?"

Q's shape twirled around and the white became even more vibrant. "Isn't it obvious, Picard? You would have left us prematurely, just when you were becoming interesting."

"You lied…."

"Do you think that was the only time we lied to you? Oh come now, Picard. No one ever said omnipotence made one honest."

Picard shook his head, or at least perceived that he was shaking his head. If he still had one. "It doesn't matter anymore. Now I can be with my son."

"Not if you still plan on returning to the Continuum. You still have one chance to return to us, Picard. Why don't you use it?"

"I don't want it anymore, I told you."

"But Picard, there is something you are forgetting. We made a deal," said Q, whose disembodied voice seemed to take on an edge suddenly. "You must not forfeit your last chance, Picard. There will be dire consequences for you…and quite possibly for me and all Q, if you give it up."

Picard stared at Q, whose vibrancy seemed to lessen suddenly. "Why?"

"Just take my word for it. You would be a fool not to hold onto this power while the Borg…and others, are on the move. Until next time…"

"Position?" Jack stood up shakily and walked forward toward Data as the Enterprise dropped out of warp at the designated coordinates.

"We are in Klingon territory, Captain…approximately three parsecs away from our last position."

"Are the Borg in pursuit?"

"No sir…however, Captain sensors are picking up a singularity at our previous coordinates."

"A singularity…you mean like a black hole?!"

Data turned around in his chair. "Yes… but it is now gone, sir."

"What about the Borg ships and the Hood?" Jack asked as Data turned back around and typed into his console.

"Undetectable, sir…."

Jack turned around again, his eyes meeting Beverly's who simply stared at him in shock. Deanna Troi stared at the screen as though she were searching for something that was there but not visible.

Jack couldn't believe that Picard had really done it. He had warped into the Borg ships with the Hood and killed himself and Riker in the process. It was unbelievable. Unfathomable.

"Captain," reported Diaz from tactical. "A small ship has just dropped out of warp. It appears disabled," she said.

"On screen," said Jack in a barely audible tone. What now? On the view screen a Starfleet shuttlecraft tumbled end over end toward them slowly. He stepped forward haltingly. "Magnify…."

"Sir, it's the Galileo shuttlecraft registered to the USS Hood!"

Jack tried to keep his heart from beating out of his chest as he asked the next question. "Life signs…."

"Two, sir," said Data.

Jack clapped his hands together. "Son of a bitch, he did it!" He shouted laughing. He slammed his hand on Data's shoulder. Data simply tilted his head upward, now used to intense human reactions.

Jack backed up from the screen. "I don't know how, but he did…."he whispered still in awe at the image before him.

He turned around to find Beverly and Deanna hugging each other tightly, and laughing with relief. They didn't even know each other, but now none of those barriers mattered. All that mattered was that for the moment they had survived.

"Lock onto them with a tractor beam, bring them in close and then beam them directly to sick bay," Jack ordered. "Bring the Galileo into the main shuttle bay."

Yar knelt in Engineering next to the Borg soldier she had incapacitated. The Engineer had been severely injured by the other Borg, which had beamed back to its cube. Now, she considered what she might do with this one, if anything. And then, an old acquaintance appeared next to her.

"Considering your dastardly plans again? What is it that you continue to hold against the Earth? It is after all, the original home of your race," Q reminded her.

"But it wasn't my home, was it? The dregs of the Federation abandoned us on Turkana to be thieves, rapists and murderers…and so that is what we all became."

"Then you should have thanked us for taking you away from that horrible place," said Q. "Instead of becoming the ungrateful creature you are now."

"You talk as though you had nothing to do with how I turned out, Q. And do I detect a note of fear in your tone, Q? Have I won our wager, yet?"

"No, this isn't fear, Yar, it is disdain. And no, you haven't won yet, and I dare say you will not."

"We'll see," she said with an easy smile.