Twenty-Seven.

PICARD could almost feel the impatience radiating from Kirk as Ensign Raeger guided the Enterprise into the nebula. The Borg were still almost five minutes distant, but Kirk, seated where Counselor Troi normally sat, was leaning forward tensely, gripping the arms of the chair as if he thought he could speed up the ship by sheer force of will.

"All stop," Picard ordered as the last vestige of the external universe disappeared from the now completely blank viewscreen.

"The nebula is essentially identical to its counterpart in our own timeline, Captain," Data said. "Its extremely high levels of ionization severely restrict the range of our sensors as well as the Borg's. In most areas, the range appears to be less than one hundred thousand kilometers. However, because of the size and energy differentials between the Enterprise and the Borg ships, we will be able to detect approaching cubes at least twenty thousand kilometers before they can detect us."

Picard nodded tensely as Data switched to a broad-sweep, directional sensor scan, giving them, they hoped, a few additional thousands of kilometers of warning. Once that was done, there was nothing to do but wait and hope that the fragmentary memories left behind by Locutus were reliable and that his own extrapolations from those memories were valid. If not, the nebula they had searched out would be the grave not only of the Enterprise but of the Federation and the Alliance and probably much more.

Ten minutes later, the first cube appeared on the screen, moving toward them through the nebula at the Borg equivalent of minimum impulse. At a word from Picard, Raeger maneuvered the Enterprise laterally, keeping out of the hypothetical range of the Borg sensors. Soon a second cube appeared, its nebula-limited sensor scan overlapping that of the first.

Then a third appeared, and a fourth. The Borg were doing just as the Locutus memories had suggested: using the bulk of the fleet to methodically sweep the entire nebula while a smaller number remained outside, waiting to vaporize the Enterprise the moment it was flushed out, like a rabbit out of a briar patch.

Picard pulled in a breath as Raeger positioned the Enterprise halfway between the projected paths of two of the approaching Borg. "Now, Mr. La Forge," he said.

Picard waited, hardly breathing, as Scott's and La Forge's jury-rigged modifications were switched in, routing the outputs of the holodeck computers through a maze of buffers to the circuits that controlled the deflectors.

Abruptly, the viewscreen shimmered and went blank.

An instant later a half dozen warning lights flared. The Enterprise was, according to the sensors, surrounded by an impenetrable cube-shaped sh.e.l.l.

Which was precisely what they had been hoping for.

"Go to visual subsystems," Picard ordered.

The viewscreen remained blank, but the warning lights went out.

"Computer," La Forge said, "show projected positions of approaching vessels."

The four cubes reappeared, their images blinking to indicate they were not real, merely an indication of where the computer thought the actual objects were.

They waited.

Finally, Data spoke. "We are almost certainly within the area in which their sensors overlap."

Picard held his breath for another few seconds, as did almost everyone else on the bridge, until the images of the two nearest Borg cubes drew even with the Enterprise.

"Match their speed and course," Picard said even though Ensign Raeger was already doing precisely that.

Finally, the nebula began to thin and the blinking images vanished, replaced by real images provided by the visual observation subsystem. A dozen more cubes came into view in rapid succession as the nebula continued to thin. Finally, the stars reappeared.

By now the Borg sensors had almost certainly regained full function.

And directly ahead, well outside the nebula, another Borg cube came into visual range. One of the sentries, waiting to blast the Enterprise when it emerged.

Still holding his breath, Picard waited.

Nothing happened except that the cubes that had just emerged from the nebula turned and reentered at a different angle so they would sweep a different corridor.

Picard resumed normal breathing. Captain Scott's jury-rigging had worked.

And the fragmentary Locutus memories had been right. None of the cubes, not even the ones posted outside the nebula where their sensors were fully effective, had "noticed" the one additional cube that all their sensors must have detected. Like drones that were not programmed to detect humans inside a Borg ship unless they tripped over them, these ships were programmed only to detect the Enterprise or other similar ships. They were not programmed to detect a Borg ship that appeared out of nowhere-unless that ship was on a collision course with one of the others or posed some obvious, programmed-for threat.

"Set a course for the Vortex," Picard said into the relieved silence, "impulse power until we're past the sentries." Standing up abruptly, he looked down at Kirk, still seated in Troi's chair. "Could I speak with you a moment, Captain? In my ready room?"

Kirk glanced at Data and the viewscreen in front of him. "Sure, if there's time. This is one deadline I don't dare miss, much as I might like to."

Annoyed at himself for feeling uncomfortable, Picard watched as Kirk leaned close to the ready room's softly lit aquarium and the fish gliding gracefully back and forth. He had brought Kirk here to- To what? Not apologize, but... make sure that they... understood each other? Kirk, he suspected, would be far better at this, whatever "this" was. Kirk might be too impulsive for Picard's taste, but the man's obvious skills in dealing with people- "Its own containment field?" Kirk asked, looking up from the aquarium.

Picard nodded, relieved that the other had spoken first. "We would've lost it a hundred times over if it didn't have one."

Kirk grinned. "So things still get shaken up when something gets through the shields." He looked back at the shimmery-finned swimmers. "They are sort of soothing. I could've used something like that now and then in the old Enterprise. But I can't imagine that you got me in here to show me your fish."

Picard pulled in a deep breath, a sigh in reverse. "I just didn't want you to think that, when I first saw you and Captain Scott- " He paused, sucking in another breath. "You no doubt sensed occasional..."

"Disapproval?" Kirk asked, smiling.

"That's as good a word as any," Picard admitted.

Kirk made a sound just short of a chuckle. "Understandable. Scotty and I had just screwed up an entire quadrant of the galaxy, maybe more."

"Understandable, perhaps, but what I wanted you to know is, I suspect there was also a touch of envy involved in my reaction to you. Envy for the kind of bond you obviously developed with your crew, something so strong it would lead Captain Scott to do what he did. I didn't realize it at the time, though. Or couldn't admit it to myself. In any event, when I first realized what Captain Scott was attempting, long before I first laid eyes on you, I was thinking things about you that I shouldn't have, and it showed through in my att.i.tude toward you when we did finally meet. I had even found myself wondering how you felt about what Captain Scott had done. Were you appalled? Or gratified? I knew you would never- "

"To tell the truth, Picard-we are telling the truth, right? To tell the truth, I was-well, gratified isn't quite the right word, but flattered? h.e.l.l yes! A bit appalled, too, of course, knowing that he'd taken that kind of risk-and lost-just to save one person. And don't think I didn't tell him so."

"But it obviously didn't affect your relationship. Guinan told me what you did down in Ten-Forward, convincing Captain Scott to keep trying."

Kirk shrugged. "What can I tell you? We were together a long time. On the Enterprise." An almost dreamy looked seemed to swoop across Kirk's face like a shadow but was gone before Picard could be sure. "We were on that ship-those ships-a long time, went through a lot. It does something to you, the Enterprise. To everyone who serves on it, no matter what incarnation. Look at what Spock did for his first commander, Captain Pike. Risked court-martial and worse. Don't tell me you haven't felt it now and then."

He had, Picard realized, belatedly remembering the tremendous risks Riker, Data, and Worf had taken to rescue him after he had been a.s.similated by the Borg. But even then, as Locutus was purged from his body and mind, it hadn't been something he could have comfortably put into words, even to himself. And therefore he hadn't. Now, he nodded.

"I have," he said, resisting the compulsion to qualify his admission with a "perhaps" or an "it seemed."

"In any event," Picard continued abruptly, "I wanted you to know that, now, I have only the greatest admiration for you."

"Likewise, Captain. And under any other circ.u.mstances, I'd say it would be a privilege to work with you again someday." Kirk shrugged. "But who knows? No more than we know about the rules of time travel-or about the Vortex, for that matter-maybe we will. Or already have. But whatever happens," he added with another grin, "it's always nice to know that you made a difference."

Picard smiled. "You certainly did that."

"And so did you. Or should that be 'so will you'? Don't forget, the Guardian not only wants me in the Vortex. It wants you-or Scotty, or someone on this ship, maybe several someones-not in the Vortex. That has to mean something. Have you asked your friend Guinan about that?"

Picard shook his head. "I don't think even she knows. Or if she does, she isn't talking."

"Time, Captain," Riker's voice came over Picard's combadge.

"Acknowledged, Number One."

After a moment's silence, Picard put his hand out. Kirk's eyebrows raised just slightly as he put his own hand out and the two captains shook firmly.

Despite his seemingly unruffled exterior, there was a lump in Picard's throat to match the b.u.t.terflies in his stomach as he released Kirk's hand and watched him turn and, seemingly without a qualm, leave the ready room and head for the turbolift.

So, Kirk thought as the turbolift door opened on the corridor that led to the transporter room, it's time. No more guessing what the Vortex was or what the Guardian really wanted or even whose side the Guinan twins were really on.

It was time to find out. Time to start the process.

Time to be stored in the transporter's pattern buffer, where he would "wait" to be spat out when-if- the Vortex came within transporter range.

Not that he had any doubts...

Pulling in a breath, he stepped out into the corridor.

The Borg Queen was, once again, faced with the impossible.

The Picard creature's ship had disappeared.

It had not been destroyed. It had disappeared.

Nowhere in the teraquads of sensor data received from the hundreds of ships that had been closing in on the Picard creature was there anything to indicate what had happened to it.

Halfway to the Vortex, it had suddenly changed course in an obvious-and seemingly futile-attempt to elude the cl.u.s.ter of Borg ships that would have intercepted it within minutes.

But then it had entered one of the tiny but highly ionized nebulae that dotted this quadrant. And, unlike when it had ducked into that other, even smaller nebula, it had not come out.

A phalanx of Borg ships had swept through the entire nebula not once but twice and then a third time. There was no way the Picard creature's ship could have been missed, even with their ionization-limited sensors. Even if it had possessed its own version of the Alliance's "secret" weapon and used it to shift to a different level of reality, the inevitable and spectacular energy leakage would only have made it that much easier to detect.

Nor could it have exited from the nebula. Every cubic centimeter of surrounding s.p.a.ce had been constantly monitored by at least two of the ships deployed around the nebula, all sensors of which were fully functional.

Could Picard have simply returned to wherever or whenever it had come from, she found herself wondering? According to data from the ships that had been monitoring the Vortex, the other, smaller interloper had literally appeared out of nowhere, just as the Narisian Balitor's information had claimed. And the smaller interloper had for some time now been stowed inside the larger. Who was to say that both could not then have returned to wherever or whenever they had come from?

But even if they had, were they no longer a threat? Or were they an even greater threat?

Unless she learned what had happened, she would never know the answer.

Until it was too late.

So completely connected to the cube that carried her that she had literally become a part of the ship, she began to reexamine the data, millisecond by millisecond, from each and every one of the more than a hundred cubes in and around the nebula.

Kirk stepped into the transporter circle.

Despite the suddenly churning stomach that had taken him by surprise as he stepped up onto the platform, he found himself grinning as he turned and looked down at Scotty and La Forge and the rest who had gathered to see him off. The only one that answered with even a subdued smile was Picard's odd friend, Guinan.

Earlier, before his final conversation with Picard, he had been filled with nervous uncertainty despite his calm but impatient exterior. Could he really trust the logic that told him that the Vortex was not synonymous with death? Should he trust Guinan's word that her twin had actually seen and spoken with the Guardian? And that this was indeed what the Guardian demanded?

But now, particularly after Picard's comment about "making a difference," Kirk's uneasiness had given way to a growing curiosity and excitement. It was, in a way, not unlike how he had felt the very first time he had been aboard a starship waiting for the warp drive to be engaged, waiting for energies he could barely comprehend to hurl him through dimensions and distances only mathematicians could describe.

Except that here no one-except possibly the Guinans?- had any idea where or when he was about to be hurled.

Which, now that the moment was almost here, just made him all the more curious, all the more excited.

This must be, he thought abruptly, how Zefram Cochrane felt in the last few seconds before he took his life in his hands and engaged that very first, totally unproven, jury-rigged warp drive.

Winking at Guinan, he pulled in a deep breath and stood up a little straighter as he turned to look at Scotty. "Let's get this show on the road, old friend, before whatever's controlling those cubes sees through your little miracle. If I don't see you again..." He shrugged lightly. Some thoughts didn't require voicing.

A moment later, the tingle of antic.i.p.ation was replaced by the grip of the transporter energies.

The shimmering curtain enveloped him, obscuring the faces looking up at him.

With a sudden surge of almost boyish eagerness he hadn't felt since his retirement, he wondered what was going to happen next.

Twenty-Eight.

WITH PAINSTAKING deliberateness, the Borg Queen continued to reexamine the data, evaluating every aspect of every cube's sensor readings, not just those that the drones had been instructed to watch and act upon.

Finally, she found what she was looking for. Not Picard's ship, but a Borg cube-a cube that seemed, impossibly, to not be part of the armada she had just sent forth.

According to the data, it had first been sensed at the periphery of the stunted, overlapping sensor fields of two of the cubes sweeping the nebula and had then quickly taken up a position midway between the two. The interloper was not part of the phalanx performing the sweep and in fact was not itself producing a sensor scanning field of any detectable kind.

Sensor records of the cubes posted around the periphery of the nebula did not show the cube entering the nebula. They did, however, show it leaving. It had emerged from the nebula in company with the cubes performing the sweep. As the next sweep began, however, it had broken out of formation and headed away from the nebula on impulse power, moving in the general direction of the Vortex.

It took only seconds to confirm with a matrix-wide Link that all cubes were accounted for, not only those in the Terran armada but every single one she had constructed since the moment the time sphere had deposited her in the Terran system over two hundred years ago.

With growing uneasiness, she directed the sensors to focus on the projected path of the errant cube.

As she had expected, it had gone into warp drive minutes after leaving the nebula and was now only minutes from the Vortex and the cubes guarding it.

And it was still on a course that would take it within a few thousand kilometers of the Vortex.

Just as she had expected.

And feared.

"Time to transporter range, Mr. Data?" Picard asked, his eyes fixed on the image of the transporter room confined to the corner of the bridge viewscreen. Even as he spoke, Kirk, on one of the transporter pads, shimmered into nonexistence.

"Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds, Captain."

Even without the tweaking of the pattern buffer control circuits by La Forge and Scott, the matter stream that now contained all that currently existed of Captain James T. Kirk would be safe in the buffer for nearly seven minutes before the pattern began to degrade.

"Ready to complete transport, Mr. La Forge?" he asked redundantly.