Chapter VIII
Picard stared unseeingly at the wall of his quarters, his mind numb from shock and horror. Replayed in his mind over and over again was the sight of the black-as-night city destroyers descending to the cities and unleashing their terrible destructive power on the Earth.
A bleep disrupted his preoccupation with Earth's fall. Thankful for any distraction, he said, 'Enter.'
In walked what was, to his mind anyway, the best distraction on the ship. 'Am I intruding, Admiral?' asked Lieutenant Thames cautiously.
Picard paused a moment before answering, having found himself on the verge of saying, Not you, ever. 'No, Lieutenant. I was just thinking.'
'I think we all have been, sir,' she replied, her voice breaking momentarily before she regained her studied professionalism. 'You asked to be brought up to date with all of reports from the fleet.'
Picard nodded affirmatively. He gestured to one of the seats. 'Have a seat.'
Thames walked across and sat down gracefully. Just as she turned to sit, Picard found himself staring and shook his head once.
Thames gazed back at her commanding officer, sat opposite her, convinced she had caught him staring - and she was not bothered about it. She hid a secret smile, which had risen unbidden from out of the cover of the horror and misery occupying her mind, and focussed her attention on the padd she carried. 'After the evacuation census that we carried out before the battle, we worked out that we evacuated nearly two billion people.'
Picard briefly closed his eyes, new pain flowering. 'From all the colonies?'
'No, sir. Just from Mars, the moon and Earth. Saturn and Jupiter were hundred percent casualties. No survivors. There were seven billion casualties on Earth, three billion on Mars and ten million on the moon.'
Picard nodded slowly, and Thames marvelled at how he could take on such bad news without flinching, as she had done when she had seen the figures. However, it remained to be seen how he would react under the other news she had.
'I regret to say that I have a further piece of bad news. The President's shuttle never reached DS9. The Devoras found wreckage in sector 25549 that matched the configuration and size of the President's shuttle.'
'I assume,' said Picard deliberately, 'that it is reasonable to believe that the President and the council are all dead.'
Thames nodded, upset to see him distressed like this. 'I am sorry sir. Not only that, but the aliens have attacked and destroyed Barzan, Betazed, and Klaestron. Using their projected course and possible plan of attack, it seems that they are heading almost straight for Bajor and the wormhole.'
'Our destination.'
'Yes, sir,' Thames replied. 'However, we've completed an analysis of their new weapons systems and their hull armour. I corresponded with Captain Data about this. It appears that the hulls of the city destroyers and the mother ships are made of some form of polymorphic metal.'
'Polymorphic?' echoed Picard, a confused expression on his face.
'Yes, sir. It's completely theoretical at the moment, which is why I had to correspond with Captain Data. He said it is designed so that it can shape itself into any form it wants. It is theoretically able to respond to an electromagnetic pulse of some form, but tests so far have proved futile.'
'And if they are able to control it someway, creating modifications for their hulls would be a simple process.'
Thames smiled at him briefly, and Picard seemed to react strangely. He covered it expertly.
'Sir, I also checked the research. A polymorphic hull has one major drawback. To get it to be flexible, it needs to be significantly weaker than a duranium hull. If the shields fell, the Enterprise's weapons alone would be easily able to destroy any of their ships – even a mother ship.'
Picard treated her to one of his rare, dazzling smiles. 'You have done excellently, Lieutenant.'
Thames received the compliment gracefully, although she was tempted to smile herself. 'I have also completed an analysis of their new weapons systems. It appears they have copied Romulan disruptor technology, although they have necessarily modified it. The city destroyers are only armed with that weapon and, of course, their supergun, but the mother ships appeared to be equipped with other weapons alongside that.'
'Have we any ideas as to what they might be?'
'No, sir. We will have to wait for a demonstration. I for one do not want to find out.'
Picard nodded. 'Neither do I, Lieutenant.' He sat up again. 'I can see I'm not going to regret promoting you to Ops.'
'I sincerely hope not, sir,' replied Thames, earnestly. In fact, I think you're going to really enjoy it.
The Enterprise led the fleet into an orbit around the blue planet of Bajor. Further away in space, close to the small asteroid field known as the Denorios Belt, hung the shape of Deep Space Nine, the last Federation outpost in the Alpha Quadrant. Whilst the undamaged ships entered orbit around Bajor, the Enterprise led those that were badly damaged to the repair bays of DS9. As soon as Picard felt that the fleet was able to sort itself out, he beamed over to DS9 to meet with Captain Benjamin Sisko in the latter's office.
'Captain, we have a lot of damaged ships, and a lot of injured personnel. I'm afraid I'll have to take over command of DS9, until this crisis is over.' Picard's voice was apologetic, but it was an apology that covered steel.
'I understand, Admiral,' answered Sisko, taking a seat behind his desk. 'I assume that we are to use the wormhole as an escape passage in case the aliens attack and destroy both the planet and station?'
Picard sat down opposite, his face creasing with worry. 'I sincerely hope that it will not come to that, but you are correct. We are almost certain that they are going to attack Bajor as soon as possible. I need this station to act as a rallying point and as a base from which to launch a counterattack.'
'Understood. DS9 stands ready to join the fleet.' Sisko paused for a moment. 'Are we looking at heavy losses here?'
'No,' said Picard, in a tone that said that he had been worrying about it too. 'They've attempted to go straight for their primary targets at once, and they've practically ignored the fleet unless we've deliberately got in their way. Considering the size of our force, we've sustained only light casualties. However, we're not breaking through their defences.'
'Would it help if we had any more ships?'
Picard frowned. 'My senior staff believe not, but it couldn't hurt.'
'May be we should contact the Dominion for help.'
Picard shot a look at him. 'You do know that the Jem'Hadar force at Cardassia was wiped out totally.'
'Maybe the Gamma Quadrant forces have something we could use against them,' qualified Sisko. 'The Alpha Quadrant forces didn't have all the resources the Dominion itself has.'
Picard nodded glumly, accepting Sisko's idea as a good one; one that he had been considering for a while now. 'I hoped that it would never have to come to this.' A thought crossed his mind.
'Maybe we should hope for another Borg attack. Probably they'd wipe each other out in the battle and we could pick up the pieces.' Sisko failed to muster a smile at Picard's flippancy, the gravity of the situation weighing heavily upon him. Thus, when the next thought came to him, he was able to disguise his horror that he could even think of such an idea.
He had to say it slowly, so that he could be sure that he had said it. 'Admiral, it might be feasible to bring the Borg into this conflict deliberately. On our side.'
Picard stared at him in utter horror, but Sisko continued, aware of the Grand Admiral's feelings. And of his own. 'It could be done. We could employ you as Locutus of Borg. The Borg that the Enterprise found in the Argolis Cluster recognised you as Locutus, and there's no reason that you might not resume that persona.' Sisko watched Picard, who was beginning to get over his disgust and revulsion and look at the idea dispassionately. 'I know how you feel about it, Admiral. I feel the same way, but it may be our only hope. I believe that this is not the moment, but it might be the only way if we suffer the same fate here as the fleet did at Earth.'
Picard's face was expressing horrors that did not come through in his voice. 'That is, unfortunately, a very good idea.' Something that had been niggling at the back of his mind for a while suddenly exploded into life.
'The Borg!' he shouted explosively. 'The invasive program! Q told me they had no immunity. We could use the invasive program that we designed for the Borg to try to destroy the alien ships!'
Sisko frowned and sat behind his desk, observing Picard warily. 'How do you mean?'
Picard smiled, looking a bit less tense. 'When we recovered Hugh from the Argolis Cluster, we toyed with the idea of sending him back with a new form of computer virus that Geordi La Forge and Data designed. Eventually, we decided that the program's use was immoral, but we kept it in case it would become necessary to use it.'
'And you don't feel that it is still unjustified to use it against the invaders?' asked Sisko.
Picard looked at him stonily. 'They've already announced their intentions clearly enough. In the case of these invaders, I can't imagine anyone would have any moral compunction to not use it. And I think it's time we levelled the scores.'
Sisko smiled ferally. 'Where is the program kept?'
Picard thought for a moment, and then dismay crept across his face. 'On the Enterprise....' His voice faded. 'The Enterprise-D. Destroyed on Veridian III.'
'You mean it's not kept in the Starfleet Archives... I forgot; Starfleet Archives was destroyed during the attack on Earth.'
'Not only that, it was deemed too sensitive to be released to the standard Starfleet library computer updates, so the only place that it exists in now is what's left of the Enterprise-D's computer core.'
Sisko grimaced. 'Makes it difficult.'
'That is an understatement,' agreed Picard, nodding sadly. 'It may not, indeed, be recoverable at all.'
For a long moment, they sat silently, contemplating the options before them, limited as they were.
Picard finally turned to Sisko, and said, 'We're not getting anywhere like this. What we need is some rest. The defeat at Earth was a savage blow, and I want to let the fleet have some respite before we announce any plans for the future battles. I'll be in my quarters aboard the Enterprise.'
So saying, he got up, nodded at Sisko, and left the office.
Ships passed silently through the darkness surrounding the space station near the wormhole, but few passed through the swirling white fire that provided passage to the Gamma Quadrant, nearly 70,000 light years distant on the other side of the galaxy.
A pair of Federation starships did so, however, on their way into the Gamma Quadrant to try to secure a refuge for the civilians of the fleet as the vast force awaited the Aralla attack that bore down upon them with ponderous inevitability.
And, shadowing them, screened from probing sensors by their mass, was a small Jem'Hadar fighter.
Scarred and battered, with very few of it's crew still living, it limped behind the two starships into the wormhole.
Of a crew of twelve, four survived, all Jem'Hadar. The First had died, and the Second, Ramel'Eglek, was injured, but his spirit kept him going. One of the fastest Jem'Hadar to rise to the position of Second, he was a feared warrior and an astute commander.
At the moment, he stared impassively through the eyepiece that showed an image of the two starships before them, and silently blessed his luck that the Federation ships had not scanned his fighter. The cloaking device that he had taken from a destroyed Klingon vessel would have been useful, but his immediate superior, Omer'Igal, had taken it to the other side of the wormhole. By now, it would be incorporated into the Dominion fleet.
Ramel'Eglek's ship had been part of the combined Cardassian/Dominion fleet defending Cardassia. Nearly a thousand vessels, swept aside by the invading forces that obliterated the planet.
The Jem'Hadar had all died, thrown into the battle recklessly and uncaringly by their Founder and Vorta commanders. Those commanders had also died in the battle, dead with their ships, or burned to death in the fires which had consumed the cities of Cardassia.
That defeat had been a severe blow to the Jem'Hadar, not merely because of the loss of their only Alpha Quadrant ally. Before, even when they had been defeated, the Jem'Hadar would inflict severe injuries on their opponent, making their win naught but a Pyrrhic victory, and allowing the Dominion to come back and win a second time. So far, across the galaxy, the Jem'Hadar had been supreme.
And then these invaders came. The fire and death was not a worry for the Jem'Hadar who faced them, but the invulnerability could not be accepted by the Dominion's warriors. Ramel'Eglek could still see the fighters and attack cruisers destroying themselves against the shields of the city destroyers in a last desperate attempt to stop them.
And they kept coming.
Ramel'Eglek removed the headpiece, his calm face revealing none of the inner turmoil that swirled around his mind. He had been known as one of the most fearless and exuberant Jem'Hadar to be produced, and he had been stunned into horrified silence by the onslaught of the indestructible black ships, unable to summon his bloodthirst at the moment it was most needed.
Realising that Omer'Igal needed to be told of the coming force, he had pulled his ship from the battle as the invaders broke through the Jem'Hadar lines. He had later learnt that, aside from Cardassian ships which had broken and fled to the fleet now orbiting DS9, his fighter was the only survivor of that fleet which had fallen before the invaders.
The Jem'Hadar could not beat them, he realised, and that realisation was chilling for a Jem'Hadar, close to sedition or even treason. He had twice contemplated taking his own life in the time after the battle, but he had stayed his hand so that he could report to Omer'Igal, who was the greatest Jem'Hadar of all time.
Few Jem'Hadar were gifted as imaginative or visionaries – Omer'Igal was both. He had seen a future for the Jem'Hadar that did not include their dependence on either the Vorta or the Founders. Ramel'Eglek had attended a private meeting between Omer'Igal and four of the most powerful Firsts, one of which was the famed Omet'Iklan, one of the few Jem'Hadar to kill a Vorta and get away with it. It was only a shame that Weyoun had been recloned. Still, his last clone had died in the ruins of the Cardassian capital.
That meeting had inspired his rebellious instincts. That same day, he had sworn his absolute obedience to Omer'Igal, and his army inside the Jem'Hadar. He had more supporters than even the Founders realised.
Ramel'Eglek roused himself from his contemplation, and turned to his Second, if he were to be First. 'Second, when we leave the wormhole, activate frequency 5547, and focus on these co-ordinates.' He handed the other a padd, and the Second nodded silently, not commenting.
Ramel'Eglek fitted the headpiece over his eye again, and watched as the wormhole swirled open at the far end, and space was once again revealed. A few moments later, the starships they had used as cover jumped to warp, and the little fighter was alone again.
The Second spoke. 'First, I have locked onto the co-ordinates you ordered. We are receiving a signal.'
Ramel'Eglek nodded. 'Activate my private comm.'
A flicker of light played over his eye, recognising his retinal pattern, and Omer'Igal's face appeared. 'Report.'
'We were utterly defeated, First,' said Ramel'Eglek calmly.
Omer'Igal drew a sharp intake of breath. 'Survivors?'
'Other than ourselves, none.'
'The invaders?'
'Utterly indestructible. Any attack would be folly at best, suicide at worst.' As he stated the litany of disaster, Ramel'Eglek's voice stayed calm.
Omer'Igal remained silent, face impassive after his initial shock. 'Very well. I will attempt to make the Founders see my point of view. I believe that we shall have to ally ourselves with the fleet massing at DS9.'
Ramel'Eglek looked surprised. 'You know of it?'
Omer'Igal smiled slightly. 'We are massing a fleet at these co-ordinates. Join us there.'
'First,' acknowledged Ramel'Eglek with a nod. The channel cut out, and he removed the headpiece thoughtfully.
'We also believe that the attackers are progressing through the Beta Quadrant to meet up with their Alpha Quadrant force in order to attack here. By far the largest proportion of ships attacked Earth, but other starships outside the fleet reported encountering enemy ships at other locations at the same time as they attacked Earth.' Sisko glanced at Picard, who was staring silently at the wall just behind the captain's left shoulder. With a faint grin, Sisko moved to the other side of the room. Picard didn't move. 'However,' he began, 'the invaders have been spotted turning four planets in the Klingon Empire into custard.
Picard nodded once, and Sisko waited patiently. After a short moment, Picard frowned, and looked at the captain. 'Custard?'
'That's what you get if you don't listen to situation reports,' said Sisko acidly. Picard smiled faintly.
'I apologise, Captain. My mind was on other things.' Picard stood up slowly, wincing slightly at a stabbing pain in his back. 'I have decided what we are to do.'
He turned, and stepped into Ops. He looked at Dax. 'Lieutenant, have the Enterprise readied for immediate departure. Alert my senior staff that we are leaving for Veridian III in two hours.'
'You're going after the invasive program,' stated Sisko, his tone unquestioning. Picard nodded. Sisko held out his hand, and Picard shook it. 'Good luck,' said the younger man.
'Thank you.' Picard turned, and descended from sight in the turbolift.
Sisko watched for a long moment, and then turned to Dax. 'I want a constant, hourly report from every scout ship we have out there. Make sure no enemy ship approaches anywhere near the Enterprise.'
Dax nodded. 'Understood, Benjamin.' As Sisko turned away, she turned to O'Brien, and said quietly, 'What's the invasive program?'
'It was designed to infiltrate and destroy the Borg collective,' said O'Brien. 'It creates a paradoxical geometrical construct within the Collective, which would form a recursive insoluble puzzle. That would cause a fatal overload in the Collective, effectively destroying it. It was designed by Geordi La Forge and Data just before I left the Enterprise.' O'Brien's face became worried. 'What worries me is that it's use was vetoed by Captain Picard, as he was then, on the grounds that using a weapon of mass destruction like that was unethical.'
Dax frowned. 'What could have changed his mind?'
Sisko turned to face them, having overheard their conversation. 'We, Old Man, weren't at Earth, or Qo'nos, or Romulus. We haven't faced these invaders. I hate to think what could cause a man like Jean-Luc Picard to turn from his morals like that.' So saying, he entered his office, face perturbed.
The Enterprise manoeuvred away from the pylon, and headed away from the station at maximum impulse.
'ETA at Veridian III, Captain Data?'
'Four hours, two minutes, three seconds, Admiral, at maximum warp.' Picard nodded, and settled into his chair. It was going to be a short trip.
'Ensign Truper, set course for Veridian III, maximum warp. Engage.'
The Enterprise sailed on into the night.