Encounter at Farpoint Read online

  That had been sixteen months ago. Farpoint Station, an incredibly complex and advanced facility was now reported to be finished and waiting to serve interstellar vessels. Starfleet’s best analysis teams did not know how the Bandi had managed it.

  Picard’s sealed orders were simple. Find out.

  How did they do it? How could an apparently nonindustrial, pastoral society design, construct and activate the most advanced base in known space in such a short time? There was no question that Starfleet wanted to use the station, but first Starfleet wanted answers.

  That could mean an extensive stay at Farpoint. The most recent surveillance team had come back knowing only as much as they had begun with. The official contact teams had produced equally fruitless results, even after months of intensive surveys. Picard would have to do better.

  “Difficult,” Picard murmured half aloud.

  “Pardon, sir?”

  Picard looked up.

  His second officer, Data, was peering at him; his luminous yellow eyes were bright with curiosity.

  “Starfleet’s instructions. I was thinking aloud. I was thinking that will be difficult to implement. Don’t you agree, Data?”

  “How so, sir? Simply solve the mystery of Farpoint Station.”

  From Picard’s left, Lieutenant Commander Deanna Troi leaned forward and smiled gently at Data. “As simple as that.” The ship’s counselor’s voice was softly musical and lightly accented. As a half-Betazoid, she had inherited the ability to communicate telepathically with Betazoids, but her telepathic communications with other species were limited to being able to feel their projected emotions. Some she could not “feel” at all. She had learned to speak from her human father, and the gentle cadences of her speech patterns were soothing. She discerned early that people wanted to share themselves with her, and they listened to what she had to say. That fact had been one of the reasons she had chosen her profession. As personal advisor to the captain, she served in a liaison capacity as a translator, a buffer, a counselor between him, his crew, the ship’s complement, and the life forms at their many points of call.

  Picard smiled at her comment. “Yes, Data. Perhaps you see it as simply a puzzle to be solved. I see it as a problem in logistics, strategy, and diplomacy as well. The problem, Data, is that another life form built that base. How do I negotiate a friendly agreement for Starfleet to use it as a staging station and at the same time snoop around trying to find out how and why they built it? How do we do it without offending them?”

  Data frowned slightly. “Query. The word ‘snoop’?”

  Picard blinked in surprise. “Data, how can you be programmed as a virtual encyclopedia of human information without knowing a simple word like snoop?”

  The android paused briefly, and Picard could imagine him instantaneously scanning his prodigious memory banks. “Possibilities. A kind of human behavior I was not designed to emulate. Or a term of English vernacular I have not yet encountered. I believe it to be an archaic form. . . .” Data trailed off, frowning to himself.

  “It means ‘to spy . . . to sneak,’ ” Picard began lightly.

  “Ah!” Data interrupted in delight. “To seek covertly, to go stealthily, to slink, to slither. . . .”

  “Close enough—” said Picard, holding up a hand to halt the rest of Data’s recitation.

  Troi began to smile and she tried to suppress it.

  “To glide, creep, skulk,” Data continued enthusiastically. “Pussyfoot, gumshoe . . .” He trailed off, suddenly aware of the look of annoyance on the captain’s face. “I understand now, sir. Thank you.”

  Picard opened his mouth to explain to Data that Starfleet expected him to function as something more than simply an animated thesaurus, but before he could speak, Troi gasped behind him.

  She clutched at herself and nearly toppled to the floor. “Captain—”

  Picard turned quickly to look at her. Troi was convulsed as if by an intense physical pain. She looked as if her mind were being seared. “Captain!” she gasped. “I’m sensing . . . a powerful presence. . . .”

  “Source?” Picard snapped.

  Troi blindly shook her head, unable to answer. The mental hold was loosed abruptly as a bridge alarm went off. Troi weakly slumped in her chair as the bridge complement scanned their consoles, puzzled and concerned by their readings. Data moved quickly to the console at the science position and studied the panel.

  Worf frowned over his console. “Something strange on the detector circuits, sir.”

  His voice was drowned out by a second bridge alarm that honked loudly and demandingly. At the same time, the huge main screen at the front of the bridge flickered. The view of space ahead suddenly altered. Picard involuntarily caught his breath as a shining, sparkling grid appeared, stretching across the whole of space ahead of them. It seemed impossibly huge, but also as delicate as a spiderweb, composed of interlocking geometric shapes.

  Data looked up from his console, his face only slightly perturbed—as much alarm as the android ever displayed. “The object registers as solid, Captain. Or as an incredibly powerful force field. But if we collide with either—”

  Picard nodded and turned to Lieutenant Torres, the officer at the conn position beside Worf. “Go to Condition Yellow. And shut off that damned noise.”

  Torres’ hands danced on the console, and the irritating honking alarm cut off. “Condition Yellow, sir.”

  “Shields and deflectors up, sir,” Worf snapped. Tasha Yar had reached the comm tab on her console and tapped in a signal. She looked expectantly toward the forward turbolift.

  Picard glanced quickly at the screen where the glittering grid loomed larger and clearer as the Enterprise approached. Then he shifted in his chair and said almost conversationally. “Full stop.”

  “Aye, sir,” Torres responded.

  On the viewscreen, the shimmering net of energy seemed impossibly close. The Enterprise was still nearly a light-minute distant.

  “Full stop, sir—”

  Suddenly, the crackling, roaring power of a lightning strike flashed across the bridge. A searing, blinding flash of light poured out of a hole in space next to Picard. Instinctively, the bridge personnel backed away from it, shielding their eyes.

  The column of light shook and then resolved itself into the semblance of a human figure directly in front of Picard’s command chair. There was a brief moment when the outline shimmered uncertainly—and then it stabilized into a figure.

  A human figure.

  Picard blinked, scarcely able to believe that what he saw before him was what appeared to be a man dressed in Elizabethan costume and ceremonial body armor. The clothing details, all in black and white and silver, were perfect—embroidery-edged neck and sleeve ruffs, tight-sleeved doublet laced up the front, paned trunk hose, patterned canions, and the netherstocks covered by knee-high cuffed boots. A short cape was slung over his left shoulder; a ceremonial sword hung at his side. The being had short hair, a pointed beard, and a moustache. The helmet was cradled in his left arm.

  As soon as he realized he had coalesced into an identifiable form, the being offered an elaborate court bow toward Picard. The forward turbolift doors snapped open, and the security team that Tasha had signaled began to lunge forward onto the bridge. The alien merely nodded toward them, and a miniature version of the grid spanned the turbolift door and thrust the security team back. The lift doors snapped shut on their surprised faces.

  The Elizabethan turned mockingly toward Picard and extended another bow in his direction. The voice of the creature, however, was anything but courteous. “Thou art notified that thy kind hath infiltrated the galaxy too far already. Thou art directed to return to thine own solar system immediately.”

  Picard tilted his head almost quizzically. He considered his words carefully, decided to stall for time while be figured out who or what he was dealing with. “That’s quite a directive,” he said calmly. “Who are you and what gives you the right to issue such an order?”


  “In words thou may understand, we call ourselves the Q. Or thou mayest call me that. It’s all much the same thing.” He fluttered his hand to indicate his elaborate costume. “I present myself to thee as a fellow ship captain that thou wilt better understand me.” His voice flattened harshly. “Go back whence thou camest.”

  “You haven’t answered my other question. What gives you the right to order that?”

  Q appeared mildly annoyed. “We are greater than thee. We have achieved our superiority over millenia. Thou art still mud crawlers compared to us. And thou contaminatest the galaxy wherever thou goest.”

  Tasha Yar flicked a glance at Lieutenant Torres, who had eased around in his chair. His hand crept toward the small hand phaser on his belt. Before she could snap an order to stop him, he had drawn the phaser and started to aim it at Q. The alien barely bothered to look; he simply nodded at Torres. A fluttering electric blue wave enveloped the young man, cutting off the sharp scream he had started to utter. He crashed to the deck with the sound of a hard, almost brittle object as Picard leapt to his feet.

  “Stand where thou art!”Q shouted.

  Picard ignored him, fighting to control his anger as he knelt beside Torres. The man looked as if he had been instantly frozen. Troi moved forward to kneel opposite Picard, checking Torres for pulse and heartbeat. A white mist of evaporation rose gently from Torres’ body. Troi was alarmed to feel the intense cold of his almost marble-like flesh.

  “Data, call the medics!” Picard snapped.

  The android reached for the left hand arm panel on the captain’s chair and tabbed a control, speaking urgently to sickbay. Troi finished her brief check of Torres’ body. “I don’t believe it. He’s frozen. Life signs are there, but slow.”

  Picard snatched up the phaser, prudently reversed it, and stood up to shake it under Q’s nose. “He would not have injured you!” He displayed the phaser. “Do you understand this—the stun setting?”

  “Stun?” The alien’s left eyebrow arched sardonically. “Stunning some life forms, Captain, can kill them. Did thine officer run a systems check on my form before he attempted to use that weapon? Besides, even if it would only ‘stun’ me, knowing humans as thou dost, wouldst thou be captured helpless by them? I was merely protecting myself. Now, go back or thou shalt most certainly die!”

  “This ship isn’t going anywhere until this man is taken care of.”

  Q studied the firm set of Picard’s face, the tenseness of his stance, and snorted in amusement. “Typical, of course.” He negligently flicked a damask handkerchief from a pocket in his trunk hose. “As thou wishest.”

  The medical team arrived at that moment in the turbolift. The barrier grid that had obstructed the security men did not appear. Dr. Asenzi, the assistant chief medical officer, shot a look at Q, then at Picard. The captain gestured him to Torres and he moved quickly down to the man. The medics followed, trailing emergency aids and a floating stretcher. Asenzi scanned Torres quickly and efficiently, his low voice smoothly reading out the results. Finally, he nodded to his medical team and they lifted Torres’ body onto the floating stretcher and started moving him toward the forward turbolift.

  “Is he still alive?” Picard asked.

  “He’s in cryo-sleep. We can handle it,” Asenzi said; but there was something in his eyes and his tone of voice that said, “But maybe we can’t.” Asenzi followed the medical team into the turbolift. The doors sighed shut behind them.

  Picard turned toward Q, who had ignored the entire interlude and turned his attention to the inspection of his elaborate costume. “This is how you demonstrate your moral superiority?”

  “On the contrary. This is how I demonstrate my physical superiority.”Q frowned abruptly, looking around the bridge as if seeing it for the first time. “I see that this costume is out of date. Thy little centuries go by so rapidly, Captain. Perhaps thou’lt better understand this.”Q moved his hand slightly.

  Again the rumble of thunder shook the bridge. The searing flash of light filled the bridge again—bright enough to be blinding even through closed eyelids. Picard could see the bones of his own hand silhouetted in the glare. When his vision returned, he could see that Q had changed. The beard and moustache had vanished. The Elizabethan garb had become the green officer’s uniform of the 1980’s U.S. Marine Corps. Three rows of medals were precisely lined up on his left breast, and the fore and aft cap sported the silver bars of a captain.

  “Actually,”Q said briskly, “the issue at stake is patriotism. You must get back to your world and put an end to the communist aggression. All it takes is a few good men.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “The evil empire, Captain—the struggle for freedom. The need to make the world safe for democracy.”

  Picard shook his head, as if to clear it. What was Q talking about? “You’re still in the wrong time! That nonsense is centuries behind us!”

  “But you can’t deny, Captain, that you’re still a dangerous, savage child-race.”

  “Certainly I can deny it,” Picard shot back. “I agree we still were when humans wore uniforms like that four hundred years ago. . . .”

  The Marine Q pushed closer to Picard, interrupting harshly. “At which time you slaughtered millions in silly arguments about how to divide the resources of your insignificant little world. And four hundred years before that, you were murdering each other in quarrels over tribal god-images. And since there have been no indications that humans will ever change—”

  “But even as far back as the time of that uniform, we had begun to make progress. We had begun the work of ending hunger and disease, poverty and illiteracy. We stamped out plagues, we ended famines. We taught nations how to rebuild themselves from the devastations of war. We were children growing up. We may not have known how to do the best job, but we did the job and we learned from our mistakes. We made progress. Rapid progress. We are still making progress.”

  Q twisted his mouth sardonically. “Oh? Shall we review your so-called rapid progress?” He moved his hand again in that same little gesture. Picard didn’t flinch when the thunder and lightning came again. Picard recognized it as a trick—a bit of stage magic to startle the audience, to frighten him and throw him off balance. Well, it wasn’t going to work.

  This time, the Marine gear changed to the stark officer’s uniform of the mid-21st Century wars. Now Q was a Fourth World Mercenary. Harsh and ugly. Every historian’s nightmare: the soldiers who could not feel, could not be afraid, and could not be stopped. The healthy, clean-shaven look was replaced by an ugly, unshaven automaton face. You pointed him at a target and gave him the order to capture it or kill it. He would not return until he did.

  Q spoke and his voice sounded slow, slightly drugged, as he made his point. “Rapid progress, Captain, to where humans learned to control their military with drugs.”

  “And your species never made a mistake—? Never learned better—?”

  A beep sounded from Worf’s Ops console, and he reached out to tab a control. “Ops,” he murmured. The low-voiced report brought a quick smile to his dark face. He turned toward Picard and nodded. “Sir, Dr. Asenzi reports Lieutenant Torres is going to be all right.”

  Q watched as a sigh of relief rippled through the bridge complement. “Concern for one’s comrade. How touching.”

  Worf tensed as his eyes shifted from the contemptuous intruder to Picard. “A personal request, sir. Permission to clean up the bridge?” he meant Q.

  As satisfying as it would have been to say yes, Picard shook his head. Worf started to protest, but Picard stared him down. They’d had one casualty already. Picard didn’t want any more. He wouldn’t risk any others until he knew what he was dealing with. Behind him, Tasha had come down the ramp from the horseshoe toward the command area.