"Aye, sir," Worf said. "Dispatching."

They watched in silence as the saucer section's impulse drive flared for those few moments, then faded back, providing the huge disk with just enough thrust to coast toward the dangerous parameters of the ent.i.ty's shrinking cage. For Riker especially, this terrible moment had its profundities. There were many kinds of civilizations that would never have provided him the chance to die here today, at least in a place of his own choice. The beauty of technology awed him. It was the freedom to build what floated outward before them, the freedom to strike toward greater goals and more profitable accomplishments, to have the resources to use the wealth of their healthy society to create marvels like the one he'd just seen, and it was the freedom to die in s.p.a.ce if that was the turn of the day.

He glanced once again at Captain Picard, and yes, it was there too. Awe. The captain didn't seem afraid. More than anything, he looked a bit miffed at the ent.i.ty for making him break his ship in two.

Or is it something else? Riker wondered. I know him so little.

Their trance was broken as Picard turned to Troi and bluntly asked, "Getting anything at all?"

The black curls of her hair made her face seem pale, the dark eyes set there like onyx chunks. "Nothing yet, sir."

"Worf, any changes in its energy pattern?"

Worf's guttural response carried a distinct impatience. "Only the same flux and shift it's been doing all this time, sir."

"Lieutenant Yar, you keep an eye on the locations of the saucer and that thing. I want to know if they're about to run afoul of each other, and I want to know ahead of time."

"Yes, sir," she said, and instantly bent over her glossy board.

"On second thought, best we not wait. Mr. Riker, let's make a noise in the darkness."

Riker nodded, never mind that it was a silly gesture. His throat was dry and he didn't want to speak up until he'd swallowed a few times. Then he tapped the command intercom and said, "Riker to engineering. Do we have warp power?"

Engineer MacDougal spoke up so quickly she might as well have been on the battle bridge with him. "Stardrive is still down, sir, but we should have it back on line soon. It was an electrical burnout and not a matter of power generation."

"I'm not asking for warp drive yet," Riker said, watching Picard to see if this was what the captain had in mind. "I just need a flush of power through the tubes. Say, ten percent. Enough to keep its attention off the saucer until they're out of the area. Be ready to shut down immediately so we can hide again too."

"I understand what you need, Mr. Riker, but warp power isn't that easy to control. There has to be a grace period on either side of the flush."

Riker glanced self-consciously at Picard, who was watching him, and acknowledged, "Whatever works. And whenever you're ready. Riker out."

Now they would make a noise. They would flip a coin in the dark warehouse and hope its tiny ring could be heard but not found.

Up from the bowels of the engineering section, deep within the core matter/antimatter reactors that made a starship what it was, came a surge of raw power. Even that tiny surge, that ten percent, could be felt.

Then there was a change on the screen. The crackling infrared diffraction image of their pursuer suddenly paused in its search across the bottom of the viewscreen, and made a deliberate turn in their direction.

"It's coming after us," Yar reported. She gripped the edge of her panel, refusing to look up at the screen. Instead she watched the two target points, starship and hostile, close toward one another. Her voice quavered. "Direct line."

"Point-three-zero sublight, helm," Riker said, gripping the headrest of LaForge's chair, "heading, two-two-four mark one-five."

"Aye, sir."

"Faster, LaForge."

"Aye, sir, executing."

"Lieutenant, is it following?" the captain asked, not turning.

Yar nodded, even though he wasn't watching her. "Aye, sir. It is."

"Speed?"

"Point-four sublight."

"All right ... " Picard didn't sit down in the command chair despite his movement toward it. "Let's cast the pearls and see if the swine follows. Lieutenant LaForge, increase to fifty percent sublight."

"Point-five, aye."

The beheaded stardrive section, its energy-rimmed nacelles now its most prominent feature, slid around on an imaginary rail and cut diametrically across the ent.i.ty's search pattern, exactly opposite to the heading of the saucer section, away from the swirling gas giant, away from the tiny belt of asteroids that would someday pull together into a new planet and circle the proud little sun of this system.

"Captain," Worf said, breaking the concentration, "MacDougal reports we now have sufficient power for shields, but not stardrive and not much for weapons. She estimates just a few minutes for those."

Picard nodded without looking.

"I think it's working, sir," Riker told him, his voice so low that it hurt his throat. He mentally ticked off the distance between stardrive and the saucer, and the time needed until the saucer section could be considered safe. "Good thinking, Captain."

"Sir!" Tasha rasped, sudden horror in her voice. "It's-"

"I see it. Full about. Power up the shields! Get that d.a.m.ned thing's attention!"

"Powering up," Tasha said instantly. "Battle shields at full."

No matter how careful the plan, no matter the amount of hardware, the high-tech physics, the level of mathematics and detailed a.n.a.lysis-no matter any of that, mankind had never been able to second-guess, sideswipe, or overcome plain old bad luck. Who could know how long the thing had been roaming the galaxy, doing what it was doing today? There was no way to know what habits it had developed, what preferences, what impulses it had learned to follow. And who could know what it spotted?

A glint of light off the saucer's hull ... a tiny leak of subatomic particles from the impulse fusion reactor ... a high-frequency output from maintenance? These were things that would be completely ignored in the daily running of a starship. But somehow, something told the menace that this was the likeliest source of dinner. Its bug brain got stuck on the idea of that target instead of this one, and so it turned on the saucer.

Picard spun to Worf. "Anything?"

"No change, sir," the Klingon said clearly and fiercely. "We're putting out twenty times the energy being emitted from the saucer section right now, but it doesn't seem impressed."

"Make a tight pa.s.s. We've got to draw it off."

Geordi LaForge fought to keep his hands from shaking on the controls at the idea of sweeping by that ma.s.s of ugly. What he saw with his enhanced vision was so vicious a knot of power that he avoided looking at the screen. He would fly on instruments; he would do as ordered. He would push the ship past that nightmare and swing around it on the end of an invisible rope.

Too bad this ship didn't have a chicken switch.

The ship swung through s.p.a.ce, doubling back toward the crackling energy field of its enemy. Now the saucer section was dominant in the viewscreen, and between them and it. A wall of blinding, snapping electrical tongues, a terrible prism to look through.

LaForge increased speed without being told. He knew what he had to do. Give that firecracker a taste of raw antimatter.

For one self-indulgent moment, he looked toward Data. The android was deceptively impa.s.sive, a human form wrapped in infrared, a man-figure of hot and cool places, all moving inside a glow. As nothing mechanical could, Data felt the gaze and returned it. He responded only with a significant lifting of his straight brows. Together, at least. Like soldiers should die if they must die at all.

Behind them, Riker held the helm chair more tightly than he meant to. Now the screen before them was ablaze with the closeness. If luck went with them, they'd be in big trouble d.a.m.ned soon. A spear of anger pierced him when he saw the saucer section's impulse drive come back on. Argyle knew it was following them now, and that they were too hopelessly slow to get away. Even so, like a turtle trying to get off a road in the middle of traffic, the big disk kept surging forward on full sublight. Frustration bent its ugly face over him. He wished Picard had insisted one of them stay. All at once the saucer section needed a real command and not just engineers.

The ent.i.ty stepped up speed to follow, and stardrive did the same, even faster. The ship tipped as LaForge swung it around in front of the enemy's electrical body. As they pa.s.sed it they saw that it was indeed more flat than round, a gigantic field of computer fakery, yet somehow completely animated, somehow walking around in s.p.a.ce without the screen it was supposed to be displayed on. Its electrokinetic bands sparked and erupted as the stardrive section plowed past it and swished off in the other direction.

Picard came up between Data and LaForge. "What the devil! Nothing?"

"No response," LaForge said, and somehow he was disappointed.

"Worf!"

"No explanation, sir," Worf boomed. "It's unrelenting on the saucer."

Data looked up and said, "Perhaps it is something more than an insect, Captain." And as he said it, he looked across the small bridge at Deanna Troi, who stood now beside Tasha, ominously silent, leaving herself open to a.s.sault by mind weapon.

"Shark," Riker muttered.

"Number One?"

Riker turned to the captain. "It's a shark focusing on one fish in a school. It ignores tastier morsels for the one it focuses on."

"Sir." Troi spoke up suddenly. Her voice was a shock on the compact bridge. "We must draw it off. The saucer-"

"Won't stand the attack, I know, Counselor, I know. Shields to full power. Engineering, this is the captain. Have we got warp speed?"

"MacDougal, sir, and barely. I can give you up to warp three."

"Do so! And I want an emergency antimatter dump on my mark-"

Riker spun around. "Sir?"

"We're going to make d.a.m.ned sure it can't ignore us again. We're going to crash the gate, and right now. That thing is not going to-"

"Sir!" Yar choked. "It's closing on the saucer! Burst of speed at point-seven-five-"

"Set course dead center on it, warp three and engage!"

Both LaForge and Data actually c.o.c.ked their heads toward each other as though to see if they'd both heard the same thing, and that the captain saw it.

"I said engage!" he thundered. Then his voice lowered to a whisper, like a gathering volcano. "We're going right through that pretty b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Chapter Seven.

PICARD STOOD HIS battle bridge as though it were a chariot. In his hands he held the reins of chargers, in his eyes the image of the enemy.

Even to Riker, who himself was a tree trunk of a man, Picard suddenly seemed larger than life. Every ship had its no-win scenario; this was theirs. Despite the primitive programming of that thing out there, it was very efficient and it had them cold. They were going to have to deal with it; there was no getting away.

It filled the screen now, leaving no black edges, a wall of fulmination and color, just the kind of thing a mother tells her children never to touch, never even to think of touching. The stardrive section aimed its great cobra's head for that wall and jammed forward at all the speed she could muster. And even warp three-warp anything-was impressive and terrifying enough for anyone in his right mind.

In the last few seconds, Riker closed his eyes. He had to, to accept the fact that he was about to die to save the others. That was his unspoken duty, he knew; it was why the ship separated at all-when push came to shove, the stardrive section was expendable. They were supposed to sacrifice themselves, to step in front of the bullet. This was the whole idea.

His thick body tightened. He'd tasted the metallic flavor of the thing's attack before and now- Enterprise crashed into the electrical wall at dead center, and erupted into pyrotechnics with a deafening crack. Voltage snapped throughout the ship, accosting every panel, every living body, a terrible concussion after concussion. Spasms racked through, each one accompanied by a blitz of senseless lights. Riker heard Deanna shriek as it focused on her, but he couldn't even turn around, couldn't even look.

Crack ... CRAAAAAACK ...

And the ship burst out the other side-a shaken vessel, filled with shaken people, sucking a tail of spectral fire after it.

"LaForge, veer into the asteroids! Engineering, this is Picard-"

How could he talk? How could he still be getting sound up out of his throat?

Riker tried to turn again, this time toward the captain, and this time he managed it. Picard was crouching against his command chair, one elbow locked over the chair's arm, shouting into the intercom. "Engineering! Emergency antimatter dump on my mark-do you copy!"

"Engineering ... uh, we copy ... ready when-"

"LaForge, are we in those asteroids yet?"

Trying to push his hands through a snapping electrical field that still swirled around his panel, LaForge pecked the course into the helm. Each time he pecked, his fingers were a.s.saulted by the churning voltage, but he kept on until the ship was driving itself into the dirty trail of preplanetary garbage between the gas giant and the star.

Through a glittering cloud that filled the bridge from bulkhead to bulkhead and ceiling to floor, Riker strained to see Picard and beyond him, Deanna.

She was crouching too, both hands holding on to the bridge rail, her face turned toward one arm as though to shield her eyes and perhaps much more of herself.

But an instant later it was the viewscreen that s.n.a.t.c.hed his attention, in time for him to see the thing drop the bone it was carrying and try to get the one it saw reflected in the stream. Its colors flared and it shot toward them, now huge on the screen, filling it, racing toward them at unimaginable speed. They'd done it-they'd attracted its attention. Too well. "Captain, it's after us!" he shouted over the electrical lightning all around them.

"Full speed!" Picard thundered. He too turned, looked, saw.

"Entering asteroids now, sir," LaForge called, his special sight barely able to stand the dance of lights around him.

Picard's voice rang through the ship. "MacDougal, dump the antimatter tank-now!"

When the exhaust was triggered, it sounded for all the world like a giant toilet flushing. There was a swirl of sound, then a shudder crashed through the lower sections, and in a radical maneuver that was reserved for unexpected containment leaks, the ship regurgitated and dumped all the contents of her antimatter tank. Antimatter washed out from the nacelles and spewed into the asteroid belt. Wherever it struck matter in the vacuum of s.p.a.ce, there was an explosion-a huge one. An explosion that whipped its tendrils of fire this way and that for thousands of miles, some hundreds of thousands. Each blow and its corresponding halo of smaller blows sent matter/ antimatter shock waves plunging across s.p.a.ce, rocking the starship forward each time as she raced to get away.

The ship coursed through the asteroids and out the other side, but as soon as the antimatter was flushed the warp speed fell away and they dropped to an impulse crawl. Everyone on the bridge was thrown forward as the ship whined to compensate for the shocking drop in speed. Riker raised an arm to shield his eyes from the pyrotechnics still running amuck on the bridge, and found the viewscreen in time to see a string of bright yellow explosions, large, small, blinding.

"Keep the shields a priority," Picard gasped. "They'll be weak on impulse power alone, and you may need to tap phaser energy to maintain them. Engineering, do you copy?" He was still hanging on to his chair somehow and funneling orders this way and that while he watched the thing settle into the asteroid belt and sit there eating explosions.

Then one last splatter of color and voltage ignited on the bridge and shocked each of them like a jolt from an exposed circuit. But it wasted no more time. Now it whistled around the bridge with a kind of finality, drew its vortex into a knot, and latched onto Data as though sucked there. It hit him with a stiff hand, knocking him right out of his chair. For every volt of electricity the others were now suddenly spared, Data had to take up the slack. He was dragged sideways and driven backward against the bridge rail until the force could push him no farther. A red-orange envelope formed around him, sparks flashing inside it, and shook him. Within it he shuddered and gasped, the bellows that served as lungs being squeezed along with the rest of him.

"No!" Geordi shouted. This time the menace was familiar, and neither it nor Geordi's reaction was unexpected-by Riker or by Data.

As Geordi bolted from his own chair, Riker caught him at the end of a good old boardinghouse reach, his hand clamping around Geordi's arm like a vise. In the same instant Data used one of those awful squeezes to gasp out, "Stay away! Geordi-"

The static sizzled across Geordi's hand as he reached out, but Data's command made him draw back again. Through his visor he stared at the devilish infrared sheath, and it spat back at him with a strangely comprehensible warning.

"LaForge, as you were!" Picard maneuvered between them. He examined the white field of static as it snapped around Data.

If Data could feel pain, he was feeling it now. If they had any doubt that he could, for this moment they had none.

Riker came around forward of Data, keeping just clear of the static envelope. Only once did he look away from it, only long enough to check on Troi. She was on the upper deck, gripping the rail, staring over it at them, her face lined with concern and antic.i.p.ation. But she looked okay for now, considering.