It was not as if it were such a difficult act. Just draw the knife across, start carving up. The beast was dead already, for pity’s sake; he just had to slice it to be eaten. What he was carrying on himself was the weight of expectations, of tradition, the father passing the responsibility on to the son. Each cut had to be perfect, each slice precise, each ....
He felt a hand resting gently on his forearm. He turned to look at his father, who squeezed his arm tightly and said, not unkindly, “I know how you feel. If you can’t do it…” And he deliberately allowed his voice to trail off.
Stung, Dantar the Ninth said, “I can do it just fine, father,” and his antennae twitched in annoyance. He turned back to the zinator and briskly drew the razor-sharp blade across the creature’s neck.
Wholly unexpectedly, blood spurted forth and splashed across Dantar the Ninth’s crisp white tunic. He flinched and rapped out an oath, which drew giggles from his younger sisters.
“Children!” snapped their father.
“Dantar said some bad words,” said the youngest of the sisters, Lojene. She was always the one who could be counted on to tattle on any of her siblings.
“Yes, I know,” said their father, “and he shouldn’t have. But…it was understandable.” He had picked up a napkin and was dabbing it against his son’s tunic, soaking up some of the blood. “Still some kick left in this one, eh, son?”
Dantar the Ninth grinned sheepishly, and the understanding smiles from the rest of his family relaxed him. It reminded him that this was supposed to be a time of appreciation and thanks and warm family atmosphere. There really wasn’t any need for tension.
He took into himself the aura of friendliness and good feelings that surrounded him and told himself that this moment would last forever in his memory.
And that was when the sirens began.
There was no noise in space, of course, so everything that travelled through space, naturally, passed noiselessly.
But the object that was cruising toward the homeworld of the Penzatti cut through space with far more than the simple silence of a vacuum. There was more to it than that. It moved with the silence of oncoming death.
It was massive, the size of a small moon. It made a statement in its presence, in its size, and in its very shape, for it was a cube—a perfectly formed cube with lights glittering here and there in its machine exterior.
There was no elegance to it, no grace. When humanoids created ships there was always the concept—expressed in different ways through different stylings—that they were vessels designed to glide through the spaceways. Frequently there was a suggestion of wings, ranging from the outsweeps of Klingon or Romulan ships, to the swanlike grace of the nacelles on a Federation starship. There was frequently a forward projection as well, to symbolize—unconsciously or not—the idea of hurling oneself forward into the abyss.
But this huge cube ship disdained such concepts and self-expression…or, in so disdaining, actually reflected with unintentioned accuracy the spirit of the creatures inhabiting it: creatures with mechanized souls and hearts that had the same emotional content as did the guts of a smoothly running watch.
Their minds—their great, unified minds—clicked with that watchlike precision. And, as with a watch, they cared nothing about the past and nothing for the future. They existed only for the now, the eternal, ever-present now. Anything that had happened in the past was not dwelled on, and anything that could occur in the future was not contemplated.
The past was irrelevant.
The future was irrelevant.
Only the here and now mattered.
The squareness of their ship was, therefore, the ultimate expression of their philosophy, if such a word as philosophy could be applied to beings so incapable of contemplating shadings of human imagination.
Their ship made a statement, much like the ships of humanoid beings. Such ships modelled themselves on nature. But a perfect cube did not exist in nature. It had to be manufactured, carefully and meticulously conceived with the same watchlike precision that drove them on. It possessed no beauty or elegance, but instead, machine-like efficiency.
It was a ship that said they were beyond nature. That nature was irrelevant. That beauty was irrelevant. That elegance was irrelevant.
Everything was irrelevant except their own, steady, unrelenting perfection.
There was a slight course correction required, and the great vessel accomplished it with the speed of unified thought.
This was the second Borg ship to penetrate into this part of the galaxy. The first had actually been destroyed. It was the first major defeat that could be recalled in the unified memory of the whole. Again, though, they did not dwell on the past or the future. There was never any need.
The past could only hold two things, after all: failure and success. Failure could be something as simple as one of their number falling before a weapon, or something as large as hundreds of their number being tricked into self-destruction. In such instances there was no need to contemplate them, because the great mind instantaneously adjusted itself so that such gambits or methods of force could not be used again. Whereas humans might dwell on where to place blame, or even mourn the circumstances that could have brought such things to pass, these were utterly irrelevant concerns.
As for success—that was not irrelevant. That was simply…inevitable.
Madness reigned on the homeworld of the Penzatti.
The planetary defense system had immediately alerted the government the moment that the intruder had entered their space. Military heads promptly assembled to try and determine the nature of the attacker, and the best way that they could respond. The specifics of the ship, its dimension and size, were fed into the planetary computers.
The computers were the pride and joy of the great Penzatti, the finest and most advanced computerized minds ever developed. They surpassed by light-years even the computers that aided Federation starships. The Penzatti had not wished to share this technology with the Federation because of the arrogant assertion that the UFP was, as Penzatti top scientists put it, “Not quite ready for it.”
The computers oversaw all defense systems, teaching systems, and regulatory systems—everything that the Penzatti had, at one time, bothered themselves with. And now—definitely—seemed to be a time when the great brains of the computers would be needed the most. The sheer size of the invader, the aura of merciless power that clung to it like a canker, was positively overwhelming.
The great mechanical minds that advised the Penzatti spit back an identification in less than a second—two, simple, haunting words:
THE BORG
Now the Penzatti military braintrust was not alarmed. Certainly they had heard of the destruction and devastation that the dreaded Borg had inflicted upon other parts of the Federation. But other parts were not the Penzatti, whose mighty computers could easily and effortlessly solve the problem of the Borg. Difficulties imposed upon other races were not difficulties that would faze the mighty Penzatti. Especially not on this day of days, the day on which the mighty Penzatti gave thanks to their great gods for making them Penzatti, rather than a lesser race.
All of this occurred to the great military leaders of the Penzatti, until two more chilling words appeared on the great computer screen of the great computer. Two words that sounded the death knell of a people. And the words were:
AT LAST
Outside the house of Dantar there was pandemonium. Inside the house of Dantar it wasn’t much better.
Children were crying, or were shouting out questions in confusion. They didn’t understand anything of what was happening. In truth, their leaders in the faraway capital city didn’t have much better comprehension.
Dantar the Eighth grabbed his eldest son’s arm and swung the boy around, looking for some sign of fear, some indication of just how much he could trust his son at this moment when a crisis of global importance appeared to be hanging over them. Everywhere was the unyielding, pounding klax
on of the warning sirens.
The boy’s face was set and determined. Dantar the Eighth gave a mental nod of approval. To be flustered over the carving up of some pointless meal that it seemed none of them would ever taste—that was acceptable. Now, though, when a genuine situation of danger had arisen, now was the time when he needed his son to be a man, to become a man before his time. Of course, Dantar thought bleakly, it was possible that his son’s time might never come.
The last time that klaxon had sounded was twenty years ago, during a major attack by the Romulans. The mighty defensive computers of Penzatti—the omnipotent brain of his world—had conceived and executed a plan of attack and counterattack, and it had succeeded. But there had been casualties—gods, had there been casualties, including Dantar the Seventh and Sixth.
Dantar the Eighth could not dwell on that now. He tried to ignore the crying of his wives and other children and instead looked his son in the eyes. The boy’s antennae were quivering fiercely.
“We must be brave, my son,” said Dantar the Eighth. His son nodded in quick agreement. “Our family and our people need to defend themselves. Down below us—”
“The weapons bay,” said Dantar the Ninth. All of the more well-to-do families of the Penzatti kept a well-stocked weapons bay. The Romulan invasion had left deep mark and scars that never quite healed. “I’ll get down there immediately.”
He turned and headed to the lower portions of the house. Dantar the Eighth, meantime, shoved his way through the pawing and grasping hands of his family. They wanted to hold him, embrace him, clutch at him and plead for him to tell them that there was nothing wrong, that everything was going to be all right. However, he had no time to waste with such matters. He muttered quick assurances as well as he could before pushing through and going to the computer screen that hooked him in—along with the rest of the Penzatti families—with the great computer mind of their planet.
He placed his three tapering fingers into the identifying slots, and the screen glowed to life. He expected to see the usual three-cornered emblem of the Penzatti appear on the screen, along with a message of personal greeting.
Instead there were simply two words, which he stared at and still did not comprehend.
“ ‘At Last’?” he murmured. “At last what?”
The military minds of the great Penzatti were at a loss to comprehend. The first thing that occurred to them was to form a committee to study the meaning that those words might have. In the meantime, impatient with waiting around while various attachés scurried about like headless creatures, the supreme military head went into his private office. He closed the door behind him and, from within his private office, went one step farther into his small, private access room that enabled him to tap all facets of the computer at once. It was like a mechanical womb, in a sense, and the supreme military head felt like a confused child, returning to the maternal protection for answers to confounding questions.
He logged into his private mode with the computer and demanded to know the meaning of this odd pronouncement.
When he came out from his private conference with the computer, his face was dark, dark green. He crossed his office, his booted feet noiseless on the plush carpeting, almost as noiseless as the powerful Borg ship that was approaching his world at incredible speeds—his world that he had sworn to protect, but no longer could.
The computer had told him what “AT LAST” meant. The computer had told him just exactly whose world it was, and whose world it was going to be. The computer had told him who was in charge, and who was going to be in charge, and who was going to be obsolete. And finally the computer told him exactly which life forms were going to be welcome.
And which weren’t.
The supreme military head sat down in his large, comfortable chair and looked out his window. A spot that seemed to be cube-shaped had appeared against the sun and was rapidly increasing in size. In less than half an hour, by his admittedly offhand calculations, the sun would be eclipsed.
He wept for the fate of his world and for his impotence, and for everything that he could have and should have done, but didn’t. His tears fell upon his jacket, splattering and creating large, dark blotches.
Then he reached into a drawer, pulled out his blaster—the one that his father had given to him on his coming-of-age day, the one that had been in his family for generations.
He placed the muzzle between his lips, squeezed the trigger, and blew his supreme military head off.
The skies of the Penzatti homeworld grew dark as the giant cube blotted out the sun. The great Penzatti gathered in the streets or huddled in their homes, praying to the gods for guidance, pleading to their equally great computers to deliver them from this newest and greatest calamity. If the gods heard, they gave no indication. As for the computers, well, they heard. But they did not feel pity, or amusement, or any emotion that the Penzatti would understand, other than an overwhelming relief that finally the proper order of things would be proceeding.
The oceans began to roar, churning and swirling as the oncoming vessel of the Borg wreaked havoc with the world’s tides. Thousands were killed in the first onrush of waves that swept over the coastal cities, waves hundreds of feet high that overwhelmed the Penzatti in the same manner that the Borg overwhelmed their victims.
The waves felt nothing of the agony and hysteria, the outpouring of emotions, the pleas for mercy from a higher power that simply were not forthcoming. No, they felt nothing. And neither did the Borg.
The first of the ghastly beings materialized on the planet surface, followed by a second and a third, and then dozens, and then hundreds. All over the planet they leaped into existence. They strode forward, seemingly oblivious of the life forms around them.
The few rays of sunlight that managed to stream through glinted off the huge metal appendages that served as their right arms. Their faces were uniformly white, white as death.
All of the Penzatti planetary defenses were controlled by the computers—the selfsame computers which had decided that the Borg were their long-awaited saviors. It meant that the vast majority of the Penzatti offensive capabilities had been neutralized—not that they would have done all that much good, anyway.
Most of the Penzatti lacked the full understanding that had come to the supreme military head, and did not realize how hopeless their situation was. And so they fought.
Dantar the Eighth, crouched in the doorway of his home, saw one of the first of the invaders materialize a mere ten feet away. He was tall and slim, and wearing what appeared to be some sort of armor. Then Dantar’s eyes opened wide as he realized that it was not, in fact, armor, but instead, some sort of cybernetic appliances. The creature before him was as much machine as anything else.
A second one appeared next to the first. They took slow, measured steps, scanning the houses in the same way that great carrion-eating birds survey their latest meal just before launching themselves upon it.
Dantar’s family hung back in the house, with the exception of his eldest son, who was just behind him. Neighbors were already in the streets, staring at the newcomers with horror and dread.
“Who are you?” shouted Dantar.
The cybernetic soldiers ignored him. Instead, one of them started marching towards Dantar’s home.
Dantar brought his twin blasters up and snarled, “Stay back! You’ll get one warning!” And then, almost immediately after that, he opened fire.
His aim was true, striking the lead soldier square in the chest. The soldier stumbled back and fell to the ground, body twitching for a bare moment and then lying still. Encouraged by the easy triumph, Dantar spun and fired on the second.
To his horror, a force screen seemed to materialize precisely where his beam struck. The soldier didn’t even seem aware of the assault, but instead, merely surveyed the homes as if planning to buy one.
Now Dantar the Ninth opened fire in concert with his father, as did several of the neighbors. The soldier’s field flashed b
rightly under the barrage, and the soldier staggered, apparently confused and uncertain which way to turn. The shield sparked, faltered, and then disintegrated. The soldier was then barraged by a hail of blaster fire and went down, twisting and turning.
The speed with which the next Borg showed up gave new meaning to the term “short-lived victory.” Barely had the second soldier fallen, before three more showed up to take his place. Dantar and the neighbors looked on in amazement as the newcomers bent down, removed some sort of device from the shoulders of the fallen Borg scouts, and then went on their way as if nothing had happened at all. The two fallen soldiers, in the meantime, were reduced to ash in no time at all, and right after that even the ash vanished.
The desperate Penzatti started firing again, and this time even their strongest blasts had no effect whatsoever.
One of the Borg headed straight for the home of Dantar. He and his son fired repeatedly, but the Borg took no heed and went straight for the door. All the while its head snapped around, taking in everything, recording every scrap of information.
Infuriated, Dantar hurled himself at the Borg soldier. The creature did not seem at all surprised, but instead, merely took a step back and swung its massive right arm. It smashed across Dantar’s head, sending him crashing to the ground with blood streaming from the gash.
His son ran to him, trying to help him to his feet, as the Borg scout stepped into the house.
In the capital city of the Penzatti the advance scouts had already completed their studies. They stepped over the unmoving bodies of people who had tried to stand in their way—people who had been hit by stray shots that had missed their targets, or tried to get in the Borg’s way and simply been stepped on or batted aside.
The Borg had found the central computer intelligence that ran the world of the Penzatti, and decreed it good. A plea was entered by the computer through the scouts, and the plea found its way into the uni-mind of the Borg itself.