The Soldiers of Fear (3 page)

"Good." The admiral's mouth tightened. "I hope I don't have to explain"

"I understand the urgency, Admiral."

"If those ships are what we believe them to be, we're at war, Jean-Luc."

How quickly it happened. One moment he was on the bridge, preparing for the day's duties. The next, this.

"I will act accordingly, Admiral."

The admiral nodded. "You don't have much time, Jean-Luc. I will contact you in one hour with transmissions from the attack on the Brundage outpost. It will give you and your officers some idea of what you are facing."

"Thank you, Admiral," Picard said.

"Godspeed, Jean-Luc."

"And to you," Picard said, but by the time the words were out, the admiral's image had winked away.

Picard felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

The Furies.

The rest of the staff looked as stunned as he felt.

Except for Data. When Picard met his gaze, Data said quietly, "It will take us two-point-three-eight hours at warp nine to reach Brundage Station."

"Then lay in a course, Mr. Data, and engage. We don't have time to waste."

THE LIGHT SEEMED TO GROW in intensity inside his eyelids as Bobby struggled to wake up. That had been one terrific nightmare. The Brundage Station attacked and overrun by the devil. Wow. He'd have to tell Judy about that.

He was hot.

He pushed at the blankets, but he was uncovered. Then he moaned. He would have to get up now and fix the environmental controls. Someone had probably messed with his room as a joke. The other members of the crew knew that Bobby Young hated temperatures above thirty-two degrees Celsius. He also hated humidity, and the faint smell of sulfur was making his nose itch.

He felt melted to the bed, as if his body made a permanent indentation in the mattress. A band tightened across his chest. Next time he would warn them; his lungs seemed to expand in the heat, and it was not a pleasant sensation. Maybe he would even order them, as their commanding officer, not to play games anymore.

The light grew in intensity, so that the protection of his eyelids felt thin and unimportant.

His bed was softer than this one, and he realized that no one could mess with his environmental controls, not since Wong had made his room a virtual sauna. After that Bobby had put three different levels of security devices on all his personal effects, including room controls.

A chill ran down his spine despite the heat. The feeling of the nightmare returned, thick and heavy.

"What in the?" He tried to sit up, but the band on his chest turned into a restraint. He tried to grab at it with his hands, and found that his arms were imprisoned across the biceps.

He forced his eyes open. The light was blinding and he couldn't see beyond it. He had never seen a light so bright. His eyes watered, and a stabbing pain shot through his head. He tried to bring an arm up, but the restraints caught him.

He couldn't protect himself.

If this was a practical joke, it had better end quickly.

Although deep down, he knew it wasn't.

He swallowed, took a deep breath, and tried to keep the panic out of his voice. "Judy? Airborne? Wong? What's going on?"

No one answered. His shiver grew. He took a deep breath of air that tasted of sulfur and was so humid that it burned his lungs. It hadn't been that bad a moment before. He coughed, jerking against the restraints, feeling bruises form on his chest. The heat grew more intense, and he almost thought he felt the lick of flames on his legs.

"Wong?" Bobby tried again, only this time his voice wobbled.

Laughter startled him. Deep, throaty laughter that made him want to back away, only he couldn't. He was strapped in place.

"I am afraid your friends can no longer hear you."

The voice sounded mechanical and forced. Suddenly the bright light shut off, and Bobby slowly opened his eyes. Green, red, and black spots danced in front of him. Behind the spots, he could see a figure. He squinted, and his eyes adjusted.

A face came into view.

A red, smiling face.

A face covered with maggots that crawled in and out of its long slanted eyes.

A face with a black snout.

A face with ram's horns in place of ears.

Bobby screamed.

A red hand the texture of leather covered his mouth. Long yellow fingernails scratched his skin.

The hand smelled of rotted flesh. Bobby tried to twist away, but he couldn't.

"You may scream only when I allow you to," the creature said. "I enjoy screaming in its proper place. Now is not the time. You will be quiet, won't you?"

Bobby swallowed, trying to keep his gorge from rising.

"Won't you?"

Bobby nodded.

"Good. When I release your mouth, we will have a civil discussion." The creature's voice was deep and cultured, at odds with its appearance, and somehow more menacing because of it. This was no monster that Bobby was facing. This was something evil. Intelligent and evil. And it knew how to get at him, like some nightmare loosed by his own mind.

"Won't we?"

Bobby nodded again. The creature's breath was as foul as its skin. The creature removed its hand. Bobby's skin crawled where the creature had touched him. Despite his best efforts not to, Bobby wiped his mouth against his shoulder.

The creature laughed. Heat from its mouth touched him like tiny flames.

Bobby shuddered. He tried to hold his body still, but he had never felt such an urge to run in his entire life. The creature's mouth was full of long sharp teeth, and threads of saliva showed each time it parted its lips.

The saliva shimmered green.

"What do you want from me?" Bobby asked. He needed to gain control of this situation. If he could get the creature to tell him what it needed, maybe he could leave then.

That was the only solution he could think of. All his Starfleet training had abandoned him except for a last, tenuous grasp on the panic building within. Somehow this thing had breached all of his internal defenses and made him feel like a frightened child again instead of an officer.

"Such an original question." The creature grinned at him, revealing those awful pointed teeth and that green-tinged saliva. Bobby tried to suppress his recoil. "Isn't it?"

"We were told we should always expect it of humans," another voice answered. A face appeared behind the creature's. An almost human face, but not quite. She had stunning features: oval eyes, a narrow nose, and high cheekbones. But Bobby barely noticed them.

His gaze was on her hair. Or what should have been her hair. Instead the strands moved on their own. It took only a moment for him to realize that he wasn't seeing hair, but small, writhing snakes that hissed and snapped at him.

Poisonous snakes.

Rattlers, cobras, copperheads.

She smiled. She knew what he was looking at. She touched the snakes almost as if trying to make sure they were in place and perfect.

"What do we want from you?" she asked as she leaned closer to him. The creature leaned with her. "Simple. We want to know your fear. You see, we like your fear. We enjoy it. And we want to use it." She laughed and the snakes surrounding her head moved even faster.

A maggot fell from the creature's eyes onto Bobby's face.

Bobby screamed, trying to shake it off. The creature laughed as it bent over and pulled the intense bright light back over Bobby's face.

"Now," the voice said. "Tell us what we want to know. Give us all your fear."

And into the bright, intense white light, Bobby screamed again.

And again.

AT 1000, PICARD'S SENIOR STAFF had reassembled in the conference room. In the last hour, Data had ingested all the historical information he could find on the Furies. Riker had prepared the crew for the possibility of war. Troi had advised families on how to protect the children from the difficulties the starship would face. The list went on. Picard knew that each task had just begun when he needed the staff in the conference room again. La Forge had managed to get the engineering crew to double-check the engines and weaponry; Dr. Crusher had revamped sickbay into an emergency center; and Worf had prepared his security team. But none of those jobs could be finished in an hour. To prepare for battle of this scale took days, sometimes weeks.

During the last hour Picard had studied Captain Kirk's personal logs from the first Starship Enterprise, and the information he found unnerved him. Kirk had been called in by a panicked Klingon admiral who felt he needed one devil to fight another. As it turned out, the Klingon had been right. Kirk and the original Enterprise had defeated the huge Fury ship. But just one Fury ship destroyed much of a Klingon fleet before Kirk managed to win.

Picard glanced around. His officers all sat at the conference table. His seat at the head was empty, because he couldn't sit. He had to pace.

The transmission from Brundage Station had just played on the screen. Protocol had obviously been lax on Brundage not unusual on a distant outpost but the four station members had worked with professionalism once the crisis became apparent.

Except for the fear they had all displayed when that horrible visage appeared on their screen. Picard had understood their fear. That face, vaguely similar to the demons portrayed in European artwork and sculpture, had sent a shiver through him. But he had held that feeling back. He had seen worse things in his time.

How the crew of the Brundage station reacted bothered him at a deep level. Those reactions were not normal for trained Starfleet officers.

The view of the Furies' descent on the station, and of the subsequent attack, had left him with a restless energy one he wouldn't have time to vent, since he knew the admiral would appear on screen at any moment.

The conference room was silent. That in itself was unusual. His staff would normally have taken the time afforded by the delay in transmission to discuss what they had just seen.

Then the screen filled with the admiral's face. His skin was ashen, his eyes hollow points. That tape had unnerved Picard after one viewing. He didn't know how he would have felt after several.

His gaze met the admiral's, and an understanding carried across the light-years.

"Even though the ships you saw are radically different in design and shape from the first Fury ship, we have no doubt that we are facing the Furies," Admiral Kirschbaum said without preamble. "I don't need to tell you what this means."

Picard nodded. He was turned away from his staff, but he heard nothing from them.

The admiral's lips tightened. His skin seemed to have lines where it hadn't had any earlier in the day. "The Enterprise will be the first ship on the scene, Captain. We need information about the Furies. We need to know how many ships they have sent through the Furies Point. And if the point is a wormhole, as James T. Kirk and the first crew of the Enterprise suspected, then we need to know all we can about that anomaly. It seems to interact only with the Furies, which isn't like any wormhole we know."

"Either that, or they know when it will open," Picard said. "And they were waiting for it."

The admiral nodded. "The Starships Madison and Idaho are six hours away. They will arrive as quickly as they can. There are two smaller Federation ships that will join you, but they will be hours behind the starships. Don't count on them."

Three starships against five Fury ships. From what Picard had read in Kirk's logs, that would not be anywhere near enough if it came down to a fight.

"For the moment," the admiral said, "that's all we can spare. We will be setting up fallback lines of defense in case you have no success."

"I understand," Picard said. And he did understand. The Enterprise's proximity to the Furies Point was the luck of the draw. It meant, though, that Picard's ship and his crew would be the first line of defense in a war that would be difficult to win.

Cannon fodder was what his ancestors called that position.

The admiral knew it too. "Captain, do your best to negotiate, discover what they want. Kirk had some success with that the first time around. His personal logs report he felt that Vergo Zennor of the Fury ship Rath was his friend."

"I have read Kirk's reports and logs."

The admiral nodded. "Good, but I must be clear on one point. If there's a way to close that wormhole, take it. No matter what the cost."

The chill Picard had felt on viewing that tape grew. He always knew commanding the Enterprise might come to this. He was willing to take those risks, but like any commander he always hoped he would never have to.

No matter what the cost.

And only three starships against all the power of the Furies.

"We will do everything we can, sir," Picard said. "The Klingons are nearby. Have they been contacted?"

The admiral grimaced. "They have, but after their first run-in with these monsters, I doubt"

"The Klingons will fight." Worf growled the words. "I guarantee it."

"Mr. Worf," Picard said. His officers knew better than to speak out of turn.

"It's all right, Captain," Admiral Kirshbaum said. "I understand that Klingon honor is at stake here. We are counting on that. We are hoping that they will be able to overcome their memories of that first battle, and their fears. Indeed, we are hoping for help from a number of quarters. But I am afraid, Jean-Luc, that this will not change the fact that you will be on the scene first. Whatever you do will affect the future of this sector."

"I understand, Admiral," Picard said. "But there is one more matter."

The admiral nodded, as if he knew what Picard was going to say.

"Where is the Furies' lifepod containing the poppets?"

Around the room Picard could hear his staff moving, stirring, wondering just what he was talking about. But the admiral knew about the poppets from the first Fury ship. The Furies, it seemed, carried poppets, images of themselves stuffed full of pieces of their lives. Vergo Zennor had filled a lifepod with all the poppets of the crew of the first Fury ship and, right before the ship exploded, sent the lifepod into space. Kirk picked the poppets up and had them stored, waiting for just this time.