The Q Continuum_ Q-Space Part 12

A moment later, the balcony was empty.

Fifteen.

Lem Faal was not about to leave the bridge quietly. "I'm warning you, Commander Riker, you'll regret interfering with this operation. My work is my life, and I'm not going to let that go to waste because of a coward who doesn't have guts enough to fight for our one chance to break through the barrier."

"Perhaps," Riker answered, losing patience with the Betazoid physicist despite his tragic illness, "you should worry more about the safety of your children and less about your sacred experiment."

Summoned by Lieutenant Leyoro, a pair of security officers flanked Faal, but the scientist kept protesting even as they forcibly led him toward a turbolift. Claps of thunder from the Calamarain punctuated his words. "Don't lecture me about my children, Riker. Sometimes evolution is more important than mere propagation."

What exactly does he mean by that, Riker wondered. Surely he couldn't be saying what Riker thought he was implying? Faal's starting to make my dad sound like father of the year. Even Kyle Riker, hardly the most attentive of parents, never seemed quite so eager to sacrifice his children's well-being on the altar of his overweening ambition. Riker refused to waste any further breath debating the man. If it weren't for the failure of the warp engines, they would have already been long gone by now, whether Faal liked it or not.

The turbolift doors slid shut on Faal and his grim-faced escorts. Riker breathed a sigh of relief. "Mr. Barclay, please take over at the engineering station." Riker wasn't sure what precisely Barclay had to do with Faal's unexpected arrival on the bridge, but now that Barclay was here he might as well replace the injured Schultz.

Faal had no sooner left, however, when a blinding flare at the prow of the bridge augured the sudden return of the baby q. A second flare, instants later, brought the child's mother as well. "Sir?" Barclay asked uncertainly.

"You have your orders, Lieutenant," Riker said, aggravated by yet more unwanted visitors. When had the bridge of the Enterprise turned into the main terminal at s.p.a.cedock? "Can I help you?" he asked the woman in none too hospitable a tone. Blast it, I was hoping we'd seen the last of these two.

The toddler stared wide-eyed at the swirling colors of the Calamarain as they were displayed on the main viewer. "Frankly, I was in no hurry to revisit this ramshackle conveyance," the woman said disdainfully, "but little q insisted. He simply adores fireworks. Perhaps you could fire your energy weapons again?"

"Our phasers are not here to entertain you!" Leyoro snapped, offended by the suggestion. She took her weapons very seriously.

Riker didn't blame her. This was no laughing matter, although he hardly expected a Q to appreciate that. Things kept getting worse, no matter what they tried. A crackle of lightning etched its way across the screen, throwing off discharges of bright blue Cerenkov radiation wherever the electrical bursts intersected with the s.h.i.+p's deflector s.h.i.+elds. The rattle of thunder was near-constant now; it almost seemed to Riker that the persistent vibrations had been with them forever. His determined gaze fell upon the female Q and her child. Hmmm, he thought. Both Barclay and Geordi seemed to find the malfunction in the warp nacelles pretty inexplicable. Well, he could think of few things more inexplicable than a Q.

He rose from his chair and strode toward the woman. "There wouldn't be any fireworks at all if we weren't dead in the water," he accused. "Is this your doing?"

"You mean your petty mechanical problems?" she replied. "Please, why would I want to go mucking about with the nuts and bolts of this primitive contrivance?" A Calamarain-generated earthquake shook the bridge, and q squealed merrily. "We're simply here as spectators."

Riker considered the female Q. Since her previous visit to the bridge, she had discarded her antique sports attire for a standard Starfleet uniform, as had the little boy. He wondered briefly what they had done in the interim. Did infant Q's require naps? More important, why would this Q want to prevent the Enterprise from leaving? The other Q had done nothing but encourage them to turn back.

"Maybe so," he conceded. It was entirely possible that the Calamarain were responsible for the failure of the Enterprise's warp drive, in which case it was even more urgent that they find a way to communicate with the cloud-beings. "But you must know something about Captain Picard. What has your husband done with him?"

"Oh, not that again!" she said in a voice filled with exasperation. "First the doctor, now you. Really, can't you silly humanoids do without your precious captain for more than an interval or two? You'd think that none of you had ever flown a stars.h.i.+p on your own."

"We don't want to do without the captain," Riker insisted, ignoring the woman's ridicule. She was sounding more like her mate every minute. "Wherever Q has taken him, he belongs here, on this s.h.i.+p at this moment."

The woman made a point of scanning the entire bridge, as if looking for some sign of Captain Picard's presence, then returned her attention to Riker. "That doesn't seem to be the case," she said with a smirk.

"s.h.i.+elds down to twenty-seven percent," Leyoro reported. A few meters away from Leyoro, a small electrical fire erupted at the aft science station. Ensign Berglund jumped back from the console just as the automatic fire-suppression system activated. A ceiling-mounted deflector cl.u.s.ter projected a discrete forcefield around the flickering blaze, simultaneously protecting the surrounding systems from the flames and cutting off the fire's oxygen supply. Within seconds, the red and yellow flames were snuffed out and Berglund cautiously inspected the damage.

At least something's working right, Riker thought, grateful that the fire had been taken care of so efficiently. Now if he could only get the warp nacelles functioning again...! Maybe if we shoot our way out of here, he thought, without holding anything back? "Lieutenant Leyoro, target the phaser beam directly in front of us, maximum intensity." He had held back long enough; the Calamarain needed to learn that they could not threaten a Starfleet vessel without risking serious repercussions. "If you can disengage from contact with the enemy, Counselor, now would be the time to do it."

Deanna nodded back at him, acknowledging his warning. "Just give me a second," she said, closing her eyes for a heartbeat or two, then opening them once more. "Okay, I'm as prepared as I'll ever be."

"Fire when ready, Lieutenant," Riker ordered. He glared at the turbulent vapors upon the viewer. "I want to see the stars again."

"My feelings exactly," Leyoro agreed. A neon-red phaser beam ploughed through the seething chaos of the Calamarain, cutting an open swath through the iridescent vapors. Riker winced inwardly, hoping he was not burning through scores of Calamarain individuals. Am I killing separate ent.i.ties, or merely diminis.h.i.+ng the ma.s.s of the whole? He would have to ask Deanna later; right now he didn't want to know. Beside him, Troi bit down on her lower lip as the beam seared past swollen clouds filled with angry lightning, and gripped her armrests until her knuckles whitened; obviously, she had not been able to cut herself off entirely from the emotions of the Calamarain.

"Ooh!" q exclaimed, pointing enthusiastically at the screen. He stuck out his index fingers like gun muzzles, as little boys have done since the invention of firearms across the universe, and red-hot beams leaped from his fingertips to sear two burning holes in the visual display panel. Riker jumped out of his seat to protest, terrified that the playful child would create a hull breach beyond the screen. Blast it, he thought. This is the last thing I need right now.

Thankfully the female Q was on top of things. With a snap of her fingers, she squelched the child's imitative phaser beams and repaired the damage to the main viewer. "Now, now, darling," she cooed to the boy, "what have I told you about pointing?" Thus chastened, q meekly hid his tiny hands behind his back.

Blast it, Riker thought angrily. The last thing he needed right now were the two Q's and their antics, even though he seemed to be stuck with them. He sank back into the captain's chair and concentrated on the Enterprise's efforts to carve out an escape route. As he had requested, Riker soon saw the welcoming darkness of open s.p.a.ce at the far end of the tunnel the phasers had cut through the Calamarain. Now there's a sight for sore sensors, he thought. "Straight ahead, Mr. Clarze. Full impulse."

"Yes, sir!" the pilot complied, sounding more than anxious to leave the sentient thunderstorm behind. Riker was gratified to see the distant stars grow brighter as the unscratched viewscreen transmitted images from the s.h.i.+p's forward optical scanners. Here goes nothing, he thought, crossing his fingers. Once they were clear of the clouds, perhaps their warp engines would function again.

"Riker to Engineering," he barked, patting his combadge. "Prepare to engage the warp drive at my signal."

"Acknowledged," Geordi responded. "We're ready and willing."

But the Calamarain would not release them so easily. Thick, viscous vapors flowed over and ahead of the s.h.i.+p's saucer section, encroaching on the channel before them. Lightning speared their s.h.i.+elds repeatedly, giving them a rough and b.u.mpy ride. To his dismay, Riker saw their escape route narrowing ahead, the gathering cloud front eating away at that tantalizing glimpse of starlight. "Keep firing!" he urged Leyoro, despite an almost inaudible whimper of pain from Deanna. Hang on, he told her wordlessly, lending her whatever support his own thoughts could provide. We're almost out.

A single scarlet beam shot from the saucer's upper dorsal array. Two hundred and fifty linked phaser emitter segments contributed to the awesome force of the beam, striking out at the enveloping throng of the Calamarain. On the screen, heavy acc.u.mulations of ionized plasma steamed away beneath the withering heat of the phaser barrage.

And still the furious cloud kept coming. Despite the unchecked power of the Enterprise's phasers, a roiling flood of incandescent gas poured over them as fast as Leyoro could boil it off with her phasers, if not faster. Riker couldn't help being amazed by the sheer immensity and/or quant.i.ty of the creature(s) pursuing them; even on full impulse, it was taking several moments to fly clear of them. He felt like he was trying to outrace an animated nebula.

The choppiness of their headlong flight increased every second. Riker was thrown from one side of the chair to the other as he struggled to ride out the violent squall. There was no way he could have shouted out any additional orders even if he had wanted to; it would have been like trying to converse during the downward plunge of a roller coaster. His stomach rushed up into his throat as the Enterprise executed a full 360-degree barrel before stabilizing, more or less, on an even keel.

Additional fires broke out around the bridge, more than the automated system could cope with. Smoke and the smell of burning plastic tickled Riker's nose. At the operations console, Data dealt with a small blaze swiftly and effectively by opening a flap in his wrist and spraying the flames with some of his own internal coolant. Other crew members followed his example, more or less, by resorting to the handheld fire extinguishers stored beneath each console. Riker took pride in the bridge crew's performance; they had coped with the outbreak of electrical fires without even a single command from him. You can't beat Starfleet training, he thought.

Through it all, the baby q appeared to be having the time of his life. He squealed happily as the Enterprise careered through the gap in the Calamarain at close to the speed of light. Defying gravity, the boy turned somersaults in the air, occasionally blocking Riker's view of the screen. Enjoy this ride while you can, he thought, because we're not doing this again.

The child's mother just shook her head in obvious disdain. "Barbaric," she muttered. "Utterly barbaric."

Sorry we couldn't provide a smoother trip, Riker thought sarcastically. Frankly, the female Q's low opinion of the s.h.i.+p was the least of his concerns.

Instead, his attention was focused on the rapidly shrinking opening ahead of them. He could barely see the stars now, only a small black hole in the substance of the Calamarain that looked scarcely large enough for the Sovereign-cla.s.s stars.h.i.+p to squeeze through. C'mon, he thought, faster, faster, spurring the Enterprise on with his mind even though he knew that they could not possibly accelerate any further without their warp capacity. Would they make it through the gap before it closed entirely? It was going to be close.

Ultimately, the s.h.i.+p tore through the advancing edges of the tunnel, leaving frayed tendrils of glowing mist behind it. Staring at the main viewer, Riker saw a vast expanse of interstellar s.p.a.ce, bisected briefly by their own crimson phaser beam before Leyoro ceased fire. For the first time in hours, he could no longer hear the discordant thunder of the Calamarain, although that blessed silence would not last long unless they left their gaseous foes far behind them. Riker didn't need to see the input from the rear sensors to know that the Calamarain had to be hot on their heels.

"Riker to La Forge," he ordered, hoping that the damping effect on their warp engines did not extend beyond the boundaries of the Calamarain. "Give me everything you've got."

Sixteen.

Years of beaming to and from the Enterprise had accustomed Picard to instantaneous travel. Even so, the ease and speed with which Q switched settings remained disconcerting.

The jade cliffs were gone, replaced by crumbling gray ruins that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Toppled stone columns, cracked and fractured, leaned against ma.s.sive granite blocks that might once have composed walls. Dry gray powder covered the ground, intermixed with chips of broken gla.s.s or crystal. Gusts of wind blew the powder about, tossing it against the desolate landscape, while the breeze keened mournfully, perhaps longing for the bygone days when the ancient structures had stood tall and proud. No sign of life, not even vermin, disturbed the sere and lonely ruins.

What is this place? Picard wondered. That which he saw about him reminded him of what was left of the Greek Parthenon after the Eugenics Wars, except on a vastly larger scale. Piles of stone debris blocked his view in most every direction, but he could tell that the original structure or structures had been huge indeed. The ruins seemed to extend for kilometers. He looked upward at an overcast sky, through which a cool, twilight radiance filtered. If ever a ceiling had enclosed any part of the ruins, no trace of it remained, except perhaps in the hundreds of tiny crystal shards that sparkled amid the dust.

Picard blinked against the wind as it cast the sand into his face, and he stepped behind the shattered stump of a colossal stone column for shelter from the gritty powder. The climate felt different from Tagus III: the air more dry, the temperature cooler, the gravity slightly lighter. He suspected he wasn't even on the same planet anymore, although his and Q's latest destination seemed M-cla.s.s at least. "Where are we now?" he asked Q, who stood a few meters away, heedless of the windblown powder. He was getting d.a.m.ned tired of asking that question, but there seemed to be no way around it. He was merely a pa.s.senger on this tour, without even the benefit of a printed itinerary. "And when?"

"Don't you recognize this place?" Q challenged him. He kicked the gray powder at his feet, adding to the airborne particulates. "Surely, a Starfleet officer of your stature has been informed of its existence? We're still a couple million years in the past, to be fair, but this particular locale looks much the same in your own tiny sliver of history."

Intrigued despite himself, Picard inspected his surroundings, searching for some clue to his present whereabouts. The sky above was no help; the heavy cloud cover concealed whatever constellations might have been visible from the surface. He contemplated the truncated column before him, running his hand over its cla.s.sic Ionic contours and leaving a trail of handprints in the dust. The wandering aliens who had once posed as G.o.ds to the ancient Greeks had left similar structures throughout the Alpha Quadrant; this could be one of any of a dozen such sites discovered since Kirk first encountered "Apollo" close to a century ago, or another site as yet uncharted by Starfleet. Was Q about to claim kins.h.i.+p to those ancient Olympians who had visited Earth in the distant past? Picard prayed that wasn't the case. The last thing he wanted to do was give Q credit for any of the foundations of human civilization. If I had to pick Q out of the Greco-Roman pantheon, though, he thought, I'd bet a Ferengi's ransom that he was Bacchus or maybe Pan.

None of which gave him a clue where in the galaxy he was.

"Stumped?" Q asked, savoring the mortal's perplexity. "Do let me know if this is too difficult a puzzle for your limited human mind."

Picard opened his mouth to protest, to ask for more time, then realized he had fallen into playing Q's game. The fewer minutes we waste, the sooner I'll return to my s.h.i.+p. "Yes, Q," he admitted freely. "I'm at a complete loss. Why don't you illuminate me?" And with all deliberate speed, he added silently.

Q scowled, as if irked by Picard's ready surrender, but he wasn't ready to abandon the game just yet. "Perhaps a slight alteration in perspective will refresh your memory."

Picard felt an abrupt sense of dislocation. His surroundings seemed to rush past him and, in the s.p.a.ce of a single heartbeat, he found himself standing elsewhere within the same ruins. He staggered forward, dizzy from the rush, and braced himself against a fragment of a fallen wall. I think I like Q's usual teleportation trick better, he thought, steadying himself until the vertigo pa.s.sed. He lifted his gaze from the gravel at his feet-and spotted it at once.

What from the side had appeared to be just more jutting granite rubble was now revealed to be a lopsided stone torus about three meters in diameter. Its asymmetrical design looked out of place among the scattered evidence of ancient architecture. Green patches of corrosion mottled its brownish gray surface, although the torus appeared more or less intact. Q waved at him through the oblong opening at the center of the torus, but Picard was too stunned to respond. Suddenly, he knew exactly where he was.

"The Guardian," he breathed in awe. He had never seen it in person, but, Q was correct, he was of course familiar with its history. More precisely known as "the Guardian of Forever," it was the oldest known artifact in the universe, believed to date back at least six billion years. Since its discovery by the crew of Kirk's Enterprise, the Guardian had been the subject of intensive study by Starfleet yet had remained largely an enigma. Picard glanced about him at the dilapidated stone ruins that surrounded the Guardian; archaeological surveys conducted in his own century had proven conclusively that the crumbling masonry was little more than a million years old. The Guardian predated the other ruins by countless aeons, having already been incalculably ancient before the temples or fortresses that rose up around it were even conceived. Here, he thought, was antiquity enough to daunt even Q...perhaps.

But its age was not its only claim to fame. The Guardian, he recalled, was more than merely an inanimate relic of the primordial past. Although it appeared inactive now, it was supposedly capable of opening up a doorway to any time in history, past or future. Picard briefly wondered if he could use the portal to return to his own era without Q's cooperation, but, no, that was probably too risky. More likely he would simply strand himself upon an unknown shoal of time with no more appealing prospect than to hope for rescue at Q's hands. Better to stay put for the time being, he concluded. Matters had not grown that desperate yet.

Brus.h.i.+ng the clingy powder from his palms, Picard s.h.i.+elded his eyes with one hand while he scanned the vicinity. He and Q appeared to be the only beings alive in the ruins, excluding the Guardian, which was said to possess at least a pseudo-life of its own. "Shouldn't we be expecting your younger self any time now?" he asked Q. At this point, Picard felt he had a fairly good idea of the nature, if not the purpose, of their extended trek through time. "That is why we're here, I a.s.sume."

"A brilliant deduction, Jean-Luc," Q said, his sarcastic tone belying his words. "Even Wesley could have figured that out by now." He strutted across the rubble-strewn plain toward Picard, skirting around the Guardian. "But I'm afraid you're mistaken. My irrepressible earlier incarnation is not coming. He's already here. He's been here all along, only not in any form you can perceive." He pointed at a solitary cornerstone that had survived beyond the edifice it had once supported. "Cast your eyes over there while I adjust the picture for the metaphysically impaired."

In a blink, another Q, looking not much older than the one who had been so taken by the b.l.o.o.d.y spectacle at the jade cliffs, appeared, sitting cross-legged atop the great granite block. His chin rested upon the knuckles of his clasped hands as he stared moodily into the empty s.p.a.ce within the Guardian. Clad in a stark black sackcloth robe that struck Picard as ostentatiously severe, he presented an almost archetypal portrait of disaffected youth, trapped on the cusp between adolescence and maturity. "A rebel without a cosmos," the older Q recalled, climbing marble steps that no longer led to anything recognizable. He swept the top step free of dust and sat down a few meters away from Picard. "I really had no idea what to do with myself back then."

Some of us still don't know what to do with you, Picard thought, refraining from saying so aloud lest he initiate another pointless war of words. The lighting itself had changed when the young Q became visible, throwing deep red and purple shadows upon the angst-ridden youth and his barren backdrop. Tilting his head back, Picard saw that the sky was now filled with an astonis.h.i.+ng display of surging colors that put Earth's own aurora borealis to shame. Flashes of vibrant red and violet burst like phaser fire through what only moments before had been a dull and lifeless canopy. The dazzling pyrotechnics reminded Picard of the legendary firefalls of Gal Gath'thong on Romulus, but the pulsating, vivid hues above him were, if anything, even more luminous. "What's happening?" he asked Q. "Where did...that...come from?"

"Now you're seeing as a Q sees," the other explained. "What you call the Guardian produces ripples in s.p.a.ce-time that extend far beyond this planet's atmosphere. Think of them as fourth-dimensional fireworks," he suggested breezily.

The young Q seemed unimpressed by the unparalleled light show unfolding overhead. His gaze fixed straight ahead, he yawned loudly. A listless forefinger traced the outline of the Guardian in the air, and a miniature replica of the stone torus materialized out of nothingness, hovering before his face. Q examined his creation without much enthusiasm. "At least our ancestors made things," he muttered sulkily.

Atop the immense cornerstone, young Q twirled his index finger and the model Guardian rotated for his inspection. He thrust the single digit into the tiny orifice of his toy and watched sullenly as it disappeared up to the bottom knuckle. Apparently unsatisfied by this diversion, he retrieved his finger, then dispatched the replica back into the ether with a wave of his hand. Leaping impatiently to his feet, his simple sandals kicking up a flurry of dust, he confronted the genuine Guardian. "Show me something!" he demanded.

"WHAT DO YOU WISH TO BEHOLD?" the Guardian asked, hundreds of centuries before it ever spoke to Kirk or Spock, its sonorous voice echoing off the acc.u.mulated wreckage of its former housing. An inner light flashed with each syllable of its query, rendering the weathered surface of the portal momentarily translucent. Scientists still debated, Picard recalled, whether the Guardian actually possessed sentience or merely a highly sophisticated form of interactive programming. Was it more or less alive, he wondered, than his s.h.i.+p's computer, the fictional characters that came to life in a holodeck, or even Data? That was a question better suited to philosophers, he decided, than a timelost Starfleet captain.

"Anything!" the young Q cried out in boredom. "Show me anything. I don't care."

"AS YOU WISH," the Guardian replied. A pristine white mist began to descend from the upper arch of the great torus, filling the vortex at its center. Through the falling vapor, Picard glimpsed images appearing, rus.h.i.+ng swiftly by like a holonovel on fast-forward. Visions of the past, Picard wondered, or of untold ages to come? Despite the haze produced by the mist, the procession of images summoned up by the Guardian looked more real and tangible than any he had ever seen on a conventional viewscreen. Picard felt he could reach out and touch the people and places pictured therein, then remembered that he probably could. Gaping in amazement, he tried to capture each new vision as it played out before him: A tremendous explosion cast immeasurable quant.i.ties of matter and energy throughout creation; vast clouds of gas collapsed until they ignited into nuclear fire; drifting elemental particles clumped together, forming moons and planets, asteroids and comets; single-celled organisms swam through seas of unimaginable breadth and purity; limbless creatures flopped onto the land and almost instantly (or so it appeared to Picard) evolved into a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes; humanoids appeared, and nonhumanoids, too, creatures with tentacles and feelers and antennae and wings and fins, covered with fur and feathers and scales and slime. Civilizations rose up and collapsed in a matter of seconds; for an instant, Picard thought he spotted the ancient D'Arsay in their ceremonial masks and rites, and then the cascade of history rushed on, leaving them behind. Machines were born, sometimes surpa.s.sing their makers, and fragile life-forms dared the void between worlds in vessels of every description, leaving their tracks on a thousand systems before shedding their physical forms entirely to become numinous beings of pure thought. There were the Organians, Picard realized, and the Metrons and the Thasians and the Zalkonians and the Douwd...

"No, no," Q exclaimed, not content with the ongoing panorama of life and the universe. "I've seen all this before! I want to see something else. I want to be somewhere else."

"WHERE DO YOU WISH TO JOURNEY?" The Guardian flashed its willingness to convey Q wherever he desired.

The black-garbed youth stamped his foot impatiently, sending yet another fissure through the ma.s.sive block beneath him. "If I knew that, I wouldn't be here in the first place, you pretentious doorframe." He hopped off the stone, raising a cloud of gray powder where he landed, and approached the Guardian. "Show me more," he commanded. "Show me what's new, what's different!"

"Here we go," his older self sighed. He rose to his feet and took Picard by the elbow, leading him over to just behind where young Q now stood. "Get ready," he warned Picard, his words unheard by the youth only a few centimeters away, who quivered with unfocused energy.

Again? Picard thought, readying himself for another change of venue. He'd been on whirlwind tours of the Klingon Empire that had moved at a more leisurely pace.

Within the Guardian, images zipped past so speedily that he could barely keep up with them. He caught only quick, almost subliminal fragments of random events, of which only the smallest fraction could he even begin to identify: a mighty sailing s.h.i.+p sinking beneath the waves, a glistening Changeling dissolving into a golden pool, a dozen Borg cubes converging on a defenseless world, a shuttlecraft cras.h.i.+ng into a s.h.i.+mmering wall of light...

"What now?" Picard asked, unable to look away from the rapid-fire parade of images. "What does he intend to do?"

"Stick a pin in a map," his companion stated. "Entrust his future to the fickle whims of chance." He shrugged apologetically. "It seemed like the only thing to do at the time."

The young Q glanced back over his shoulder, and, for a second, Picard thought they had been exposed. But the youth was merely giving the lifeless ruins one last look before taking a deep breath, closing his eyes, crossing his fingers, and hurling himself forward into the mist-draped opening of the time portal. Picard had only an instant to register the young Q's disappearance before the other Q's hands shoved him roughly from behind, propelling him straight into the waiting maw of the Guardian of Forever.

Seventeen.

According to standard Starfleet guidelines, it took zero-point-three-five seconds to go from impulse flight to warp travel. According to Riker's chronometer on the bridge, Geordi and his engineering crew did it in zero-point-two.

It wasn't nearly fast enough.

Riker felt a momentary surge of acceleration that trailed off almost immediately as the Calamarain hit them from behind like the front of a hurricane. The s.h.i.+p's inertial dampers were tested to the limit as its propulsive warp field collapsed instantaneously, causing the vessel to skid to a halt through friction with the cloud's billowing ma.s.s. The storm enveloped them at once, much to the delight of little q, who clapped his tiny hands in synch with the thunder.

Riker was considerably less amused. Dammit, he thought. It's not fair! He was no Betazoid, but he could practically feel the distress and disappointment permeating the bridge. Baeta Leyoro swore and slammed a fist into her open palm. Lieutenant Barclay poked at the engineering controls rather frantically, as if hoping to reverse their readings. Only Data appeared unaffected by the das.h.i.+ng of their hopes of escape, looking preoccupied with his repairs to the operations console. "Let me guess," Riker said bitterly. "No more warp drive."

Barclay swallowed nervously before confirming the awful truth. "I'm afraid not, Commander. Something's interfering with the field coils again."

"If this is typical of your expeditions," the female Q sniffed, "it's a wonder that you humans ever got out of your own backwoods solar system."

If we'd known the likes of you were waiting for us, Riker mused, we might have had second thoughts. Outwardly, he disregarded the Q's needling, preferring to address the problem of the Calamarain, who at least refrained from waspish gibes. He was starting to wonder, though, whether this was truly a new ent.i.ty at all, or if the original Q had simply had a s.e.x change. Granted, he had already seen both Q and his alleged mate at the same time, but somehow he suspected that materializing in two places simultaneously was not beyond Q's powers.

"Shall I go to impulse, sir?" Ensign Clarze asked.

Riker gave the matter a moment's thought. Was there any way they could outrace the Calamarain? Given that they had previously encountered the cloud-creatures in an entirely different sector several years ago, he could only deduce that the Calamarain were capable of faster-than-light travel on their own, a.s.suming that these were indeed the very same ent.i.ties that had attacked Q aboard the Enterprise during the third year of their ongoing mission. Certainly, the storm had managed to keep pace with them at impulse speed.

"No, Mr. Clarze," Riker declared evenly. They were running low on options, but he was determined to maintain a confident air for the sake of the crew's morale. "Well, Mr. Data?" Riker asked, addressing the android. "It's looking like you're our best hope at the moment."

If all else failed, he thought, he would have to order a saucer-separation maneuver, dividing the Enterprise into two independent vessels. The Calamarain appeared to clump together as one cohesive ma.s.s; possibly they could not pursue two s.h.i.+ps at the same time. In theory, he could distract the sentient cloud with the battle section while the majority of the crew escaped in the saucer module. Naturally, he would remain aboard the battle bridge until the bitter end-and hope that Captain Picard eventually returned to command the saucer.

Apparently tired of standing upon the bridge, the female Q and her little boy had, without even thinking of asking anyone's permission, occupied Riker's own accustomed seat, to the right of the captain's chair. The child sat on his mother's lap, sucking his thumb and watching the main viewer as if it were the latest educational holotape from the Federated Children's Workshop. Riker didn't waste any breath objecting to the woman's brazen disregard of bridge etiquette and protocol. Why bother arguing decent manners with a Q? I wonder how long they'll choose to stick around if I have to separate the saucer, he wondered. Would they transfer to the battle bridge as well, and stay all the way to the s.h.i.+p's final annihilation?

Before he sacrificed one half of the Enterprise, however, along with the lives of the bridge and engineering crew, Riker intended to exhaust every other alternative, which was where Data came in.

And the Universal Translator.

"I believe I have," Data stated, "successfully developed a set of algorithms that may translate the Calamarain's tachyon emissions into verbal communication and vice versa, although the initial results may be crude and rudimentary at best."