Engines Of Destiny Part 4

"Then perhaps I should leave you to your work," she said quietly, and once again she was gone.

As the door to the corridor hissed shut behind her, he realized he'd been holding his breath.

Guinan made her way slowly back to Ten-Forward, walking the corridors rather than taking the near-instantaneous turbolift system. She needed time to think.

Something was wrong.

She felt it but she didn't understand it any more than she had understood what she had felt that day, on an earlier Enterprise, when she had first become aware of Captain Scott's existence. Or what she had felt, barely six months ago, when he had been resurrected from the Jenolen.

Was this signaling the beginning of what the "feelings" had warned her about then? The beginning of whatever role she still had to play in Captain Scott's life?

But no answer came.

There was only the maddening frustration of utter helplessness, of knowing that something was coming but having no idea of its nature or its direction. Animals staked out as bait in those barbaric hunts that had been popular on nineteenth-century Earth must have felt this way, she thought with a silent grimace, when the first scent of a distant predator reached their nostrils.

But she was no helpless animal.

And she was not alone, despite how it often felt.

Stopping at the nearest companel, she linked to the bridge. "Captain," she said, her calm tone belying the feeling of urgency that gripped her, "I must speak with you."

Captain Jean-Luc Picard settled back on the couch in his ready room while Guinan stood silently in the middle of the room, her eyes not meeting his. Others would have thought her the epitome of calmness, but Picard knew better. He knew that, for her, the barely noticeable rigidness in her posture, the slightly compressed lips, the avoidance of eye contact-all these were the equivalent of anyone else's pacing the room on the verge of a panic attack. He had never seen her like this, not ever. Time and again, on the Enterprise and elsewhere, when events around her had been spinning out of control, she herself had never even come close to losing control. Sometimes she had been the only one, an island of wait-and-see calm in the midst of chaos.

"What do you know of Captain Scott's plans?" she asked abruptly.

Picard shrugged. "Nothing specific. As I understand it, his intent is to review the technological advances made while he was in the Jenolen transporter, although I suspect he is at the same time indulging in some innocent nostalgia."

"How so?"

"In addition to summaries of a few thousand articles only an engineer would understand, he's been accessing the logs of previous incarnations of the Enterprise. But I don't believe there's anything to worry about this time. He hasn't been drinking and he hasn't been spending any time in the holodeck simulation of the first Enterprise, even though he would have a legitimate reason to do the latter. He's already had at least one offer from the Academy, suggesting he lecture to the cadets about his era in return for an accelerated course in all the engineering developments he's missed out on."

"And he has no other plans?"

"None that I am aware of."

"What of the Narisians? Are you certain his reports tell the entire story of what happened there?"

"I suspect they do not," Picard said with a faint smile, "but given his record I cannot but believe that any omissions were made for good cause."

"One man's good cause, even a good man's good cause, can be another man's disaster." For just an instant, her eyes seemed to glaze over. "To 'rescue' someone who doesn't want or need to be rescued, for example," she murmured, then blinked, as if consciously pulling back from whatever precipice her mind had unwillingly approached.

"Do you have reason to believe this is the case with Captain Scott?" Picard asked.

Guinan closed her eyes for a moment, as if marshaling her strength-or perhaps testing her balance. "No reasonable reason, just a feeling, a worry."

"You don't need me to remind you that you've had such feelings before," he said, the beginnings of a frown narrowing the corners of his eyes. "Or that they have virtually always been proven valid in some way."

"I know, Captain, I know. But it's different this time. The feelings are somehow related to Captain Scott and his being here, out of his own time. There's more, much more, but I don't know what it is, what any of it is." She s.h.i.+vered, something he had never seen her do. "It's like when you catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye, a glimpse of something that terrifies you even more than death itself, like the first time someone sees a Borg cube. It's bearing down on you, but when you look directly at it, it's gone. But you know it's still there, just outside your range of vision, still coming. I know it's still there. And I know it's meant to be there, that Captain Scott is meant to be here, but..."

Picard watched her startling performance, fully realizing for the first time the true depth and intensity of the turmoil that boiled beneath her rigidly controlled exterior. He rose from the sofa and stood facing her, surprising himself by gently laying his hands on her shoulders.

"You've seen me through any number of dark times," he said quietly when she didn't draw back from his touch. "Your intuitions have saved me more than once, on the Enterprise and before. If there is anything I can do to help you through... whatever it is that's troubling you, please, let me do it. Let me help you this time."

The glint of a tear in her eye as she momentarily looked away startled him even more than all that had gone before, but before he could respond, it was gone, leaving him to wonder if it had existed only in his mind.

"I shouldn't have brought this up, Captain," she said, raising her eyes to meet his. Her voice was once again the way it had always been, her face once again a neutral mask. "There's nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do, not yet."

"Perhaps not," he said earnestly, "but you can at least talk to me about it. I can't pretend to understand these feelings you say you have, these premonitions or whatever it is that you can see that no one else can. All I know is that, in my experience, there is no problem so frightening that sharing it doesn't at least make it easier to bear."

She shook her head almost imperceptibly, then lay a hand lightly on his forearm as if she were comforting him. "You're most likely right, Captain," she said with a resigned smile, "but there simply isn't anything more to share. I've already told you virtually everything there is to tell. And there's nothing I can do, nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do-but wait."

"Are you positive about that, Guinan? You say Captain Scott is the focus of these 'feelings,' so perhaps for once the obvious approach might be worth trying. Tell him what you feel. Find out what he says."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, but telling Captain Scott about these feelings is the one thing I know I can't do." She grimaced. "I should not even have told you."

"Is there a reason you can't tell him?" Picard had long ago learned to trust Guinan's unexplained intuitions, but there still were times when he couldn't help but think that she could handle them more... pragmatically. "Or is that restriction part of the 'feeling'?"

"Something like that, yes." She shook her head again, sighing faintly.

"Is there anything in your feelings that prohibit me from talking to Captain Scott?"

She was silent a moment, as if listening to some inner voice, then shrugged. "As you wish, Captain."

He watched her for a moment, half expecting her to change her mind, but she continued to stand silently, enigmatically.

"Captain Scott," Picard said, tapping his combadge. Scott, though he had protested he was merely a civilian pa.s.senger, had been issued his own combadge for the duration of his stay on the Enterprise.

But there was no reply.

As he tried a second time, then a third, Guinan turned to watch him, a frown beginning to narrow her eyes.

"Computer," he snapped as a fourth attempt went unacknowledged, "locate Captain Scott."

"Captain Scott is no longer aboard the Enterprise," the matter-of-fact voice of the computer informed him tonelessly.

Seven.

"COMPUTER, HOW and when did Captain Scott leave the Enterprise?" Picard asked, turning abruptly and moving toward the ready room door and the bridge beyond.

"He departed aboard the shuttlecraft G.o.ddard twenty-one-point-three minutes ago," the computer informed him as the door hissed open.

With Guinan gliding close behind, Picard strode onto the bridge. "Mr. Data, why was I not informed of Captain Scott's departure?"

Data hesitated-that alone told Picard that something was wrong. "Captain Scott's departure was on your authorization, sir."

Riker stood and relinquished the captain's chair. "I take it you didn't supply that authorization?"

"No, Number One."

"The G.o.ddard is no longer within sensor range, Captain," Data said.

"Display route taken by the G.o.ddard."

The starfield on the viewscreen blinked out and was replaced by another, this one with the Enterprise at its center and a string-straight, blinking path leading away. A moment later a series of figures appeared along the length of the blinking path, all extracted from the record the stars.h.i.+p's sensors constantly and automatically made of all objects in its vicinity. The G.o.ddard, the figures indicated, had gone into warp drive within seconds of clearing the Enterprise shuttlebay. It had immediately exceeded the shuttlecraft's design parameters by hitting warp three-point-one.

At a distance of approximately six billion kilometers from its starting point, ten billion from the Enterprise's current position, the path ended.

But nothing, according to the sensors, was at the end of the path.

The thought that the shuttlecraft might have been destroyed darted through Picard's mind, but there was no indication of any significant energy release anywhere along the path, certainly not at its end.

Picard turned to Guinan, who had lowered herself gingerly into Counselor Troi's unoccupied chair on his left. "Guinan? What do your feelings have to say about this?"

"They're saying the same as before, but even more intensely. Something is happening that- "

"Captain," Data broke in, "sensors are detecting a subs.p.a.ce variance consistent with a cloaked s.h.i.+p, either Klingon or Romulan, moving at warp speed."

"Tag its location on the screen," Picard ordered. A moment later a flickering vector arrow appeared several billion kilometers from the far end of the G.o.ddard's indicated path. According to the figures that flickered in time with the arrow, it was moving at warp eight.

"Intercept course, maximum warp," Picard snapped to Ensign Raeger at the conn, then added unnecessarily, "Don't lose it." Unless whatever it was, Romulan or Klingon, was employing a brand-new form of cloaking technology, there was little danger it could elude the Enterprise sensors.

He turned again to Guinan. "Does this help clarify anything?" he asked. When she only shook her head, he darted a look around the bridge. "Theories, anyone? Suggestions? Will? Lieutenant Worf?"

"It makes no sense, Captain," Riker said, still watching the screen, "but it certainly looks as if the G.o.ddard was intercepted by a cloaked Klingon or Romulan s.h.i.+p."

"This deep in Federation s.p.a.ce?"

"I told you it didn't make sense," Riker said with a grimace, "but what else could it be?"

"It is Klingon, Captain, not Romulan," Data spoke up. The flickering vector arrow had been replaced on the screen by a solid dot, which expanded into a tiny but equally solid image of a s.h.i.+p. "It is, in fact, a bird-of-prey." Data paused, looking from the image on the screen to a host of sensor readouts. "However, it is nearly a century old," he added. "That model has not been produced since the early twenty-fourth-century."

"Crazier and crazier," Riker muttered.

"Open a channel, Mr. Worf," Picard said.

"No response, Captain," Worf said a few seconds later. "However, readings indicate their communications system is activated."

"They're listening but they aren't responding?"

"Apparently."

The tiny image of the bird-of-prey vanished from the viewscreen.

"They have altered the phase of the cloaking field," Data said. "I am attempting to compensate."

"Mr. Worf, where would their last known course take them?"

"Directly to the nearest star, Captain," Worf said. "The Arhennius system is less than three hours away at warp eight. It contains no habitable worlds."

"And beyond the Arhennius system?"

"The next star on a direct line beyond Arhennius is approximately fifteen days distant, but a bird-of-prey of that vintage could not possibly maintain such a speed for more than a few hours. Anything above warp six was used only for emergencies of short duration."

"That is not entirely true, Captain," Data said. "In his memoirs of the House of Gorm, B'ator claims to have maintained warp eight-point-one for three days in order to take part in the final battle of- "

"The House of Gorm," Worf interrupted scornfully, "is far better known for 'making claims' than for the battles it actually fought."

"Let's not lose sight of our primary goal here, gentlemen," Picard reminded them, but even as he spoke, the bird-of-prey reappeared on the viewscreen.

"Compensation successful, Captain," Data said.

"It is still following the same course," Worf said, "and ignoring our hails."

"Mr. Data, can we be certain that the G.o.ddard is being transported in the bird-of-prey?"

"We cannot. The altered cloaking field still produces a great deal of distortion. There appears to be a smaller vessel of some kind present, but it is impossible to determine anything further-except that it is completely powered down. No systems are operating."

"How long until we overtake it?"

Suddenly, Guinan's hand fell on Picard's arm, gripping it tightly. "You have to overtake it before it reaches Arhennius, Captain," she said with quiet emphasis.

Startled, Picard turned toward her. "What is going to happen at Arhennius, Guinan?"

"I don't know. All I know now is that that is where it all starts. The Enterprise must be there."

"To stop it? To help it along? What?"

She shook her head, her fingers tightening even more on his arm. "I truly don't know. But we must be there. That much I do know."

"And if we aren't?"

"You're wasting time, Captain!" she said, a completely uncharacteristic flare of anger in her voice.

Or perhaps fear, Picard thought, a s.h.i.+ver momentarily gripping his own spine. The only time he had heard anything even remotely like this in her voice or seen her demeanor change so radically was when she had encountered Q, the thought of which only intensified his uneasiness. If there was anyone-or any thing-he did not want to ever again be involved with, it was that often childish and always infuriating creature of incalculable power and infinite perversity.

"Will we overtake the Klingon s.h.i.+p in time, Ensign?"

"I can't be certain, Captain," Raeger said, not looking up from the controls. "But we won't be more than a minute behind when it reaches the Arhennius system."

"Mr. La Forge," Picard said abruptly, activating the link to engineering, "can you give us any more? Safely?"

"I doubt it, Captain, but I can try to tweak the warp core alignment and possibly the matter-antimatter ratio. Just don't expect the sort of miracle Captain Scott was famous for on the original Enterprise."