Pazlar's avatar perked up. "That's right," she said. "I need to check something." She picked up her padd-which was part of her projected holopresence-and worked quickly while the conversation continued around her.

"You both make good points," Vale said to Rager and Tuvok. "However, the fact that energy bursts are being directed from here toward the Federation, at the same time that the Borg are slipping through our defenses, is highly suspect. Even if the Borg didn't create the thing sending the pulses, they might have discovered it and found a way to exploit it."

Keru added, "Or maybe it is using them against us."

"Also a possibility," Vale said. Turning to Tuvok, she added, "Either way, if there is a link between this phenomenon and the Borg, it'll be our job to stop it."

"To borrow a human expression," Tuvok said, "'easier said than done.' If the Borg have established a stronghold in a cloaked star system, there will be no way to estimate their numbers until it is too late to turn back. We might well find ourselves severely outnumbered."

Keru nodded and looked at Vale. "He's right. It's not like we can call for reinforcements out here."

"I've got something interesting," Pazlar interrupted. She relayed her padd's information to the wall viewscreen. "I cross-referenced the star charts we got from the Pa'haquel and the Vomnin to see if they'd ever noted a star at these coordinates. They have." She got up and walked to the monitor to point out details as she talked. "In fact, we noted it ourselves, in a wide-area mapping survey several months ago, before we entered its 'dark zone.' It was a main-sequence star, high metallicity. Its gravitational signature indicated several planets in orbit. About eight hundred years ago, it started fading, and its gravitational signature changed in a way that suggests it lost its planets. Approximately seven hundred years ago, it went dark. So, today, to anyone within seven hundred light-years, it's as good as invisible."

Riker asked with real curiosity, "What happened to it? Did it go supernova? Collapse into a black hole?"

"No, sir," Pazlar said. "It just...went dark."

Keru deadpanned, "Gee, that's not ominous." He turned to Riker. "If they don't want to be seen, maybe we don't, either."

"Agreed," Riker said. "Tuvok, do what you can to reduce our sensor profile. Rager, deploy subs.p.a.ce radio boosters at shorter intervals, in case we need to get a signal back to Starfleet in a hurry. Keru, get your security teams ready to make an a.s.sault on the Borg, and be ready to repel boarders. Pazlar, keep a.n.a.lyzing the energy pulses, and report any new findings." As he pushed his chair back from the table, he said to Vale, "Commander, put us on an intercept course for the source of those pulses, maximum warp." Riker stood and made a quick exit, followed by the other officers.

They moved as a unit down a short pa.s.sage to the bridge. There, Riker settled wearily into his chair as Vale ordered the course change. The pitch of the engines' whine climbed rapidly as t.i.tan accelerated to its maximum rated warp speed. On the main viewscreen, the stars were no longer just streaks or even blurs so much as snap-flashes of light racing past, forming a tunnel of light around the Luna-cla.s.s starship.

Vale finished making her circuit of the bridge and placed herself just behind Riker's left shoulder. "I just had a worrying thought," she said in a confidential tone. "It seems to me that someone who'd turn their star system invisible probably won't be thrilled to receive visitors."

"Good point," Riker said. "Take the ship to Yellow Alert."

Ranul Keru took two steps inside the auxiliary engineering lab and realized he was surrounded.

Machines of alien grace were grouped together in what seemed to Keru like a haphazard fashion, leaning against one another, clumped in tight cl.u.s.ters, or set front to back in ragged lines along the lab's bulkheads. The odors of chemical solvents and superheated metal a.s.saulted Keru's nostrils, and he stepped carefully through the maze of incomplete inventions.

He followed his ears. Despite the blanketing hum of whirring generators, hissing ventilators, and purring servos, he still discerned the irregular tapping and sc.r.a.ping of a tinkerer at work. On the other side of an incomplete frame snaked with wires and patched with isolinear arrays, he caught the flash of a phased-pulse welding iron. When the red-ringed indigo afterimage faded from his retina and he could see again, he spied his friend Torvig eyeing a misshapen gadget on the bench.

"Hi, Vig," Keru said, making a small wave of greeting. "I buzzed a couple of times but got no answer, so I let myself in."

The Choblik engineer rolled his head to one side, an oddly endearing affectation that Keru had learned was used by Torvig's people as a gesture of trust-an unspoken show of faith that the new arrival would not go for one's jugular. "It's good to see you, Ranul," Torvig said. He trotted in bouncing steps toward Keru, his prehensile tail undulating behind him to help preserve his balance. When the squat, cervine young officer was closer to the burly Trill security chief, he craned his head back to make eye contact. "Is there something I can make for you?"

Keru grinned, being careful not to bare his teeth. "Maybe," he said. "You seem busy enough, though. What're you working on?"

"Prototypes and scale models," Torvig said. He gestured with one of his silvery bionic arms toward his workbench. "Let me show you." He flounced like an excited child back to his U-shaped work area, and Keru followed him.

Long, mechanical arms studded with tools and utilities reached down from the ceiling, where they swiveled from ball joints. A few curious devices hovered or tumbled in place, like tools abandoned in zero gravity. One side of the dark gray work surface was littered with dust, metal shavings, stray isolinear rods, optronic cables, and hundreds of sparkling bits of debris. Heat lingered in the air, a testament to interrupted efforts.

Standing upright at the end of Torvig's work area was a narrow, rectangular slab more than two meters tall, half a meter wide, and barely four millimeters thick; it was black and cast a mirror-quality reflection. "I've been working on this for many weeks," Torvig said, aglow with pride. "What do you think?"

Keru was at a loss for words. He wasn't certain if the slab was meant to represent an engineering achievement or an artistic one. Not wanting to offend Torvig, he finally settled on a neutral and factually incontrovertible declaration. "Shiny."

"Yes, it resists biological and synthetic residues even better than I had hoped," Torvig boasted. He directed an expectant stare at Keru. "Go ahead. Try it."

Again, Keru had no idea how to respond. He looked at Torvig, whose stare did not waver. All right, Keru told himself, he asked you to try it out. That implies it does something. It's functional. Just look for an "on" switch or something.

He leaned close to the black slab, eyed it with unblinking intensity, and traced its edges with his vision, desperate to suss out some clue to its purpose. Then he caught his reflection on its flat surface, and he paused to wince at the new gray hairs that had crept into his dark beard. Torvig's voice was close behind him. "You don't know what it is, do you?"

"Sure I do," Keru lied-and then he remembered how proud Torvig was of the slab's resistance to biological residues. "I was just admiring your workmanship, was all." He reached out and lightly touched it with one calloused fingertip.

The slab came alive with color and motion. Information scrolled across its surface just below Keru's eye line, and images and schematics arranged themselves in convenient blocks beneath a command interface with links to every officer and noncom he supervised. He was so impressed at the streamlined efficiency of it that it took him a moment to notice that all of the written elements of the interface had been rendered in his native language-and not merely the dominant version of Trill, but his own local dialect. "That's amazing," Keru said. "It's like it was made just for me." Suspicious, he asked, "You didn't make this just for me, did you?"

"No, of course not," Torvig said. He nuzzled the slab with his snout, and the entire interface changed, muting its colors, reconfiguring its iconography and even the audible qualities of its feedback tones into something completely unfamiliar to Keru. "I made this for everybody," Torvig continued. "It can recognize the biometric signature of every t.i.tan crew member and present the data and options they are most likely to need at any given moment. When one is on duty it displays work-related options. During one's off-hours, it becomes more personal, recreational." The Choblik snagged a small remote control from the workbench with the bionic hand at the end of his tail. "Best of all," he added, "it's even configured for our shipmates who prefer to see in other spectra than visible light, and it has ultrasonic as well as subsonic modes." Torvig entered a few commands on his control device, and Keru felt a few fleeting pulses of heat from the slab, which was otherwise blank and silent.

Keru recalled an incident from several months earlier, when Torvig-then a midshipman cadet-had decided to research the mysterious humanoid phenomenon of "gut feelings" by secretly infesting his crewmates' replicated meals with nanoprobes.

"Vig, if I ask you how you obtained the biometric profiles of everyone on the ship, do you have reason to suspect I'll be unhappy about your answer?"

"I believe it to be a distinct possibility," Torvig said.

The Trill sighed. "Then I won't ask." He nodded his approval at the slab. "Amazing work, by the way."

"Thank you. I have an appointment to show it to Commander Ra-Havreii tomorrow afternoon. I'm asking his permission to install them throughout the ship."

"Good luck," Keru said.

Torvig deactivated the black panel, put the control device back on his workbench, and puttered around a moment, imposing a bit of order on the chaos, before he turned back toward Keru. "You said there might be something I could build for you."

"Well, not exactly," Keru said. He felt awkward about his true motive for the visit. "I'm more interested in having you work with one of my security teams. We might have a dangerous away mission ahead of us, and I know you're good at finding ways to help people work together more effectively."

The young ensign's interest took on a keener edge. "What manner of challenge do you expect to face?"

That question brought Keru into territory he would have preferred never to discuss again. "The Borg," he said.

Torvig's enthusiasm dimmed in one surprised blink of his enormous, round eyes. "I see."

It was a delicate subject between them. When they had first started serving together on t.i.tan, Keru had found himself more than a little unnerved by Torvig's cybernetic enhancements. They had reminded him of the biomechanical fusions of the Borg, who years earlier had claimed the life of his lover, Sean.

As a result, for his first few months of shared service with Torvig, Keru had treated the young Choblik unjustly, singling him out for harsher discipline and stricter oversight than he had deserved. Only after Counselor Haaj had forced Keru to start confronting his own prejudices had he been able to put his fears aside and start treating Torvig fairly.

After Torvig graduated from Starfleet Academy and received his field commission to ensign, he and Keru had-to Keru's surprise-started becoming friends. This, however, was the first time Keru had ever come to ask Torvig for a favor.

"I think your expertise with cybernetics will be useful in helping us learn to defend ourselves against the Borg," Keru said, "but I want to make it clear that I'm not asking you to do this simply because you have bionic enhancements. I've learned over the years that brains are often a lot more valuable than brawn in a dangerous situation. I want you on my away team because you're a great engineer-a great problem-solver."

Torvig extended his neck as tall as it could go, and he tilted his head left and then right. Strong emotions made his voice tremble. "'A great problem-solver,'" he said. "That's one of the highest compliments my kind ever bestow upon one another."

"It's got some cachet among my people, too," Keru said.

The Choblik offered one bionic hand to Keru, who took it in a friendly clasp. "You honor me," Torvig said. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me, Vig," Keru said with regret as he released Torvig's hand. "Because if I'm right, we're going to war-and I just put you on the front line."

8.

Though the Enterprise was alone in orbit above a dead planet, its bridge buzzed with activity.

Captain Picard sat in his chair, at the center of the elevated aft level. He was surrounded by the muted chatter of voices over the comms, hushed replies from his senior command officers, and the mechanical clatter of a damage-control team replacing a number of blown-out companels. Worf moved among the bridge's many stations and supervised the crew's intelligence-gathering efforts, while Commander Kadohata directed several simultaneous repair projects from the operations console.

In his hand, Picard held a padd that displayed the most recent dispatches from Starfleet Command. Most of the news from Earth consisted of updated fleet deployment profiles. During normal peacetime conditions, Starfleet might have several dozen ships temporarily out of service for maintenance or upgrades. In addition, up to ten percent of the fleet in service was expected to be a.s.signed to deep-s.p.a.ce exploration at any given time.

Over the past four weeks, every ship in Starfleet had been recalled to Federation s.p.a.ce and deployed into defensive battle fleets. The only exceptions were a handful of vessels that were simply not fit for service, and a few dozen, including t.i.tan and some of her Luna-cla.s.s sister ships, that were too far away to return in less than two months. The situation had become so desperate that even large civilian vessels were being armed and pressed into service to defend some of the more remote worlds.

Picard shook his head and wondered, How much more of this can Starfleet take? The losses were mounting more quickly than reinforcements could be mustered. If the steady stream of Borg incursions wasn't halted soon, within a matter of weeks rapid attrition would leave the Federation defenseless.

He looked up as Worf and Lieutenant Choudhury approached his chair. "Yes, Commander?"

Worf looked at the security chief and then at the captain. "Lieutenant Choudhury has a theory," he said.

Hopeful, Picard asked Choudhury, "About the Borg ship's entry point into Federation s.p.a.ce?"

Choudhury pursed her lips slightly. "No, sir," she said, straightening her posture. "We haven't been able to track its prior movements beyond half a light-year outside the system."

"I see," Picard said, masking his disappointment. "Then what does your theory concern?"

He noticed Worf casting a sidelong glance at her before she said, "I think I know where the next Borg attack will be, sir."

That commanded Picard's full attention. "Explain."

Worf spoke first. "We have detected new Borg signals and energy signatures in this sector."

"And I think there's a Borg ship closing in on Korvat," Choudhury said. "If we go now at maximum warp, there's a chance we could get there ahead of the Borg." Her eyes fell for a moment on the main viewer, which still showed the burned-black northern hemisphere of Ramatis.

Her use of the singular p.r.o.noun-"I think"-gave the captain pause. He looked to his first officer. "Do you concur with Lieutenant Choudhury, Mister Worf?"

The Klingon shifted uncomfortably for a few seconds, and then he said in his most diplomatic baritone, "I agree that it is possible Korvat is the next target."

"Possible?" Looking back and forth between Choudhury and Worf, Picard said, "Do I detect a lack of consensus?"

More cryptic looks pa.s.sed between the two officers. Then Worf replied, "We agree that there is another Borg ship in the sector, and that we should destroy it."

"But you have reservations regarding the lieutenant's a.n.a.lysis," said Picard, who was trying to get to the heart of the matter with as much tact as possible.

Choudhury was soft-spoken in her response. "Commander Worf's doubts are reasonable, sir," she said. "My conclusion that the Borg are headed to Korvat is more a hunch than a deduction-but I still recommend that we break orbit, set course for Korvat, and proceed there at maximum warp."

"Based on what, Lieutenant?"

She spoke with quiet confidence. "Based on the facts that Korvat is just as likely to be the target as three other worlds in this sector, and, of the four possible targets, it's the only one we can reach ahead of the Borg. If I'm wrong, and one of the other worlds is the next target, we won't reach them in time anyway. And if I'm right, we might be able to give Korvat a fighting chance to survive."

The security chief returned Picard's gaze with steady surety. The captain looked at Worf, who in turn looked at Choudhury and deadpanned, "When you put it that way..."

Picard nodded. "Very well." He raised his voice to be heard across the bridge. "Helm, break orbit and set course for Korvat, maximum warp. Commander Kadohata, send a warning ahead to the Gibraltar and the Leonov. Let them know we'll join them at Korvat as soon as we're able."

"Aye, sir," Kadohata said from the ops console.

"Mister Worf," Picard said. "Step up our damage-control efforts. I need the ship ready for combat when we reach Korvat." The Klingon first officer nodded his acknowledgment of the order and moved away to carry it out.

On the main viewer, the curve of the planet sank below the screen's bottom edge, leaving nothing but the star-flecked vista of the Milky Way. "We've cleared orbit, Captain," reported the conn officer, Lieutenant Gary Weinrib.

Pointing forward with an outstretched hand, Picard set his ship in motion with a word. "Engage."

"Absolutely not, Captain," said Admiral Alynna Nechayev over the subs.p.a.ce comm, her angular features and silver-blond hair framed by the edges of the desktop monitor in Picard's ready room. "The risk is too great, and you know it."

Picard found it difficult to remain calm when he knew the stakes were so dire. "I think the potential benefits outweigh those risks, Admiral. If my officers' a.n.a.lysis is correct, and a Borg cube is on course to attack Korvat, our best chance of defending the planet is to give the new torpedo designs to the ships that are already there."

Nechayev shook her head. "We've reviewed your a.n.a.lysis, Jean-Luc. It's inconclusive, at best. The cube you've detected could be en route to any of a number of targets. The only reason your ship is en route to Korvat is because it's the only potential target you can reach in time to make a difference."

"That's true, Admiral," Picard said. "But if you're wrong-if Korvat is the target, and the Borg attack it before we can arrive-you'll be committing two Federation starships to a futile battle, and condemning millions of people on that planet to death. And my instincts tell me that my chief of security is correct-Korvat is the target."

"I'm not dismissing your instincts, Jean-Luc, especially not when it comes to the Borg. But this isn't a matter of second-guessing your tactics in the field. Beyond the possibility that the Borg might adapt to transphasic weapons if we overuse them, transmitting that data over a subs.p.a.ce channel creates an unacceptable risk of its interception by the Borg. What if they break our encryption protocols, a.s.similate the transphasic torpedo, and turn it against us?"

She was right, and that only added to his frustration. "I acknowledge the risk," he said, "but an entire world and millions of lives hang in the balance."

"No, Jean-Luc," replied Nechayev. "Hundreds of worlds are at stake, along with nearly a trillion lives. And I can't let you jeopardize all of them on a gamble to save one that might not even be under attack."

"What if we can confirm that Korvat is the next target?"

He heard the regret in her voice as she said, "The answer would still have to be no."

Picard sank into a quiet despair. "Has it come to this? Are we prepared to sacrifice entire worlds because we're not willing to risk our own safety for theirs? Shall we let simple arithmetic dictate who should live and who should die?"

Remorse stole the certainty from Nechayev's eyes and left her with a grim and weary mien. "You see the battlefield, Jean-Luc. I have to see the war."

Lieutenant Rennan Konya felt the tension in the air.

Commanders Kadohata and La Forge flanked a wall-mounted companel in the chief engineer's office, adjacent to main engineering. Konya and Dr. Crusher stood opposite them. Coursing between them all was a palpable aura of anxiety that emanated from everyone in the office, including Konya himself.

He suspected that only he could detect the tangible quality of the group's shared concern, thanks to his carefully trained Betazoid empathic talent. By the standards of his own people, he was a weak telepath, one whose limited gift was unequal to the profound task of making reciprocal contact with the higher minds of others. Instead, he'd focused on teaching himself to read a more primitive region of people's minds-the motor cortex. Its signals were simpler to interpret and far more accessible.

In hand-to-hand combat it gave him an almost imperceptible advantage: He could feel what opponents intended to do a split second before they did it. It also had distinctly pleasant uses in more personal situations, but sometimes it worked a bit like empathy, to tell him when people were fearful or anxious. This was one of those times.

"We need something new," said Kadohata, who had summoned the others to this midnight brainstorming session. "Our best weapon against the Borg was neutralized when they captured our multivector pathogen at Barolia, and Starfleet's worried that the Borg will adapt to the transphasic torpedoes if we use them too often." She lifted her chin in a half nod at a star system diagram on the companel's screen. "If Choudhury's right, we'll be seeing the Borg again in less than an hour. So think fast."

Crusher shrugged. "Unless we can get a sample of the new 'royal jelly' the Borg are using to gestate their queens, I'm not sure I can update the androgen formula."

Kadohata asked, "What kind of changes could the Borg have made to block the formula from working?"

"Protein resequencing, or maybe new antigens," Crusher said. "Even a targeted biofilter would be enough to screen out the formula."