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  They were packed into what had to be a core area big enough to hold the Enterprise . They were all floating, limbs tangled up in limbs, faces moving slowly past the viewport.

  Faces frozen in terror and pain.

  It was like a giant, slowly moving, zero-g dance of bodies.

  Lense was studying her tricorder, a bead of sweat dripping off her forehead.

  “Can you tell me what killed them?” Gomez asked.

  “No,” Lense said, “I can’t, exactly. There seem to be varied reasons. None of this makes any sense.”

  “You’re telling us?” Vale said.

  “What?” Gomez said, flipping her tricorder into action.

  Geordi forced himself, after the doctor’s strange comments, to study the mass in the vacuum on the other side of that port.

  She was right. He couldn’t tell right off what had killed the people closest to the port. Some seemed to show signs of the decompression that came with being tossed alive into space.

  Other bodies looked like they had been cut apart in some way. Some bodies were missing arms; others, legs; a few, heads.

  Still others had puncture wounds of different types. Actually, the more he noticed, the more he saw that they all had puncture wounds.

  Then something caught his attention to the right of the port, just inside the core. A movement out there that didn’t seem to fit in with the slow waltz of the dead. He studied the area, trying to make himself see only the patterns in the dead limbs and faces.

  Then he saw it again. A movement along one of the body’s arms.

  “There’s something moving in there!”

  He pointed to the right, and both Gomez and Dr. Lense aimed their tricorders in that direction. Something small and dark was chewing on an arm, swallowing hunks of flesh as it burrowed inside.

  Geordi felt his stomach twist as the entity disappeared into the body, leaving a pretty good hole in the dead flesh.

  The creature looked like a combination between a crab and a wasp, and clearly was able to function in the nonatmosphere environment of space.

  He looked at the body closest to him. There were small holes of different sizes all over it as well.

  Suddenly Dr. Lense stepped back from the window, as if it had shocked her. “This is a breeding nest,” she said.

  “The bodies are food?” Geordi asked.

  “Exactly,” Lense said. “Placed there for the hatchlings.”

  “And the eggs have hatched, it seems.”

  “Less than an hour ago,” Lense said, “from what I can tell.”

  “Which is why we scanned no signs of life in this ship,” Vale said.

  “Well, there’s life now,” Gomez said.

  The bodies were starting to move more and more as the creatures devoured them, drilling in and out, making the cloth ripple on some. Every time Geordi got a glance at one of the creatures, he wanted to smash it, like a spider crawling on the floor.

  How did they get in here, if they were spaceborn creatures?

  Geordi scanned past the bodies at the walls of the core. There were large tubes, big enough to easily fly the da Vinci through, that seemed to lead up through the ship, more than likely to hatches on the surface. And around the walls there were docking ports. This core had served more than one function. It was the loading and unloading area, more than likely for supplies. Through one of those ports—that must have been how the creatures got in.

  The bodies were floating up into those tubes as well as in the core.

  “Can you tell where the main nest is?” Gomez asked.

  Dr. Lense shook her head. “I think you’re looking at it. The eggs were planted in these bodies. Some of these people were still alive when the eggs were planted.”

  “Now I know I’m going to be sick,” Vale said.

  “Where are the adults?” Gomez asked.

  “Dead,” Geordi said. “I’ll bet those are the twelve killed in the fight with the Enterprise .”

  “You mean these creatures are intelligent?” Vale asked. “And twelve of them did all this?”

  “Oh, they are intelligent, all right,” Dr. Lense said, nodding. She pointed to a body floating beyond about twelve humanoids. “A hive-mind sort of intelligence, more than likely passed down from one generation to the other. There’s one of the egg-layers.”

  Geordi followed where she was pointing and finally saw one of the adult creatures, clearly dead.

  “More than likely there was an entire swarm of these things that took over this ship, but they must die when they lay their eggs.”

  “And now we have a new swarm growing right in front of our eyes,” Gomez said. “The offspring of a swarm that killed hundreds of thousands of humanoids for food.”

  “Exactly,” Dr. Lense said.

  Geordi tried to imagine a man-sized creature that looked like a crab and wasp coming at him. He didn’t like the thought at all. But Dr. Lense’s theory did answer one question.

  “That explains why this ship was attacking the farming colony,” Geordi said.

  Dr. Lense nodded. “They were looking for more food, so that more of their young could be born.”

  They all stood there in silence, watching the creatures grow larger and larger by the minute. Finally, Vale asked, “Now what do we do?”

  “We get team two,” Gomez said, “and return to the da Vinci . The last thing the Federation needs is a swarm of humanoid-eating creatures attacking ships. So, we’re going to toss this thing into the sun before any of these creatures can escape.”

  That will not be allowed.

  The voice seemed to fill Geordi’s head, making him feel dirty.

  All of them, including the two Bynars, had their phasers out at the same instant. But the voice hadn’t come from one place. It had come from the hive, and Geordi knew it.

  Slowly, Geordi made himself look back at the port. At least fifty of the half-eaten humanoid bodies were now lined up facing the viewport, like soldiers on a field. The young creatures were almost four inches long, and getting bigger and bigger as they ate. Bones were starting to show, and creatures crawled in and out of the eyes and mouths.

  And as they ate, the dead bodies seemed to jerk and dance, always keeping in a precise line, staring at Geordi and the rest of them.

  “We should—”

  “—leave.”

  “Agreed,” Gomez said. “Let’s move, people.”

  That will not be allowed.

  Again the hive voice filled their heads.

  “Geordi,” Gomez said, “you’ve got four minutes to find a way to block that thing. And by that I mean one minute. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Geordi said. If he cross-routed the tricorder circuits the way Deanna Troi had once shown him, Geordi thought, he could set up a static field to block the creature’s telepathic broadcasts—probably throughout the ship.

  Then the time for thinking was over. Geordi ran at full speed right behind Gomez and the Bynars and Dr. Lense. Only Vale was behind him.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Captain Gold was stunned as he watched what he had thought was a dead ship come alive right before his eyes. The shields that he had studied on the tapes of the battle between the Beast and the Enterprise suddenly flowed from the ship like water, pouring out and covering everything. “ Da Vinci to insertion teams.”

  He waited, hoping for an answer, but he knew that the teams were too far inside the ship to be reached, and now, with the shields up, there was even more interference.

  “What are they doing down there?”

  “Sir,” Ensign Wong said, “it might not be them.”

  “Shields up!” Gold shouted. “Red alert!”

  The instant he gave the order, the ship below started to power weapons. A moment later, the blast rocked the da Vinci like a powerful earthquake shaking a building. Gold managed to hold on, but just barely.

  “Shields at seventy percent,” McAllan said from tactical. “Damage on three decks. No one hurt.
”

  “Take us back and hold us just out of weapon’s range!” he ordered. “And work on getting a signal through to one of the teams. I want to know what’s happening down there.”

  He turned to Lieutenant Ina. “Put out a call to the Enterprise . I have a hunch we’re going to need them back here at top speed.”

  She nodded.

  “Out of range, sir,” Wong said. “Holding position, but we’re also out of transporter range.”

  “We’ll worry about that when the time comes. Good warning on your part, Ensign.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Wong said.

  Gold leaned forward in his chair and studied the alien ship on the screen, trying to make sense out of what had just happened. Only there didn’t seem to be any sense to be had. Who, or what, had brought that hulk of a ship back to life? Had his people done it accidentally?

  Were his people still alive in there?

  From out here, there was no way of telling and nothing he could do but wait, and try to contact them.

  The problem was, waiting wasn’t something he did easily.

  “Sir,” Lieutenant Ina said, “the Enterprise has responded. They will be back in just under three hours.”

  Gold nodded. Three hours might as well be three days. The Enterprise had barely beat this monster once. He just hoped he didn’t have to go up against it full-on. But if he had to to save his teams in there, he would.

  “Come on, people,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on in that Beast .”

  None of his crew answered him. He actually hadn’t expected them to.

  CHAPTER

  11

  The Beast was alive! Lieutenant Commander Duffy stared around at the rest of his team. All had surprised and shocked looks on their faces.

  The Beast was alive, and yet it couldn’t be.

  They had just spent the last half-hour in what appeared to be the Beast ’s secondary—and only remaining—control room, getting what data they could and trying to figure out how this ship was run. They had been making some pretty decent progress, considering everything they were dealing with.

  First off, the secondary control room was something far bigger than most ships’ main bridges. It had seats for twenty crew, and stations that would take them months to figure out what they were intended to run.

  Everything in the room seemed plush and done to impress visitors, yet it was clearly a functioning control area. And from what they could tell, when the main control room was destroyed, everything was automatically switched to this room.

  Stevens had managed to figure out how to turn on the main viewscreen so that they could see the da Vinci , but beyond that, not much else had been tested yet.

  Now, suddenly, everything was coming alive.

  “Who did that?” Duffy shouted, looking around at his team as board after board became active.

  “Didn’t touch a thing!” Stevens said.

  “Nothing here!” Bart Faulwell replied. The linguist had been trying to figure out the communications panel.

  Pattie waved her two top legs in a negative gesture. “I did nothing to cause this, sir.”

  “Well, someone’s doing something somewhere!” Duffy shouted. “Where’s team one?”

  “Near the core, from what I can tell,” Stevens said.

  Corsi nodded her head in agreement. She had been standing post near the control room door, and was now looking very worried. “I can barely make out their signatures on my scanners,” she said.

  “Could they be doing this?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Bart said, “but I would doubt there’s another control room down there.”

  “This ship’s shields are going up,” Pattie said, four of her eight legs waving in agitation above a control panel. “I am doing nothing, touching nothing.”

  “Weapons are powering!” Stevens said.

  Duffy couldn’t believe this nightmare. How was this happening? How was a dead ship suddenly coming back to life? “Stop them!”

  “I don’t know how to even start them!” Stevens shouted back as he frantically searched what they had pinpointed as one of the weapons boards. He looked as if he wanted to touch something, anything, even start punching buttons at random, but Stevens was a good enough engineer to know that wouldn’t help.

  “I can tell you it isn’t coming from here!” Bart said. “All these systems are being overridden somehow!”

  As they all watched on the main viewer, the Beast fired on the da Vinci . For the second time in twenty-four hours, an alien cruise ship had attacked a Starfleet ship.

  “ Da Vinci got her shields up in time!” Bart shouted, and everyone cheered as the shot fired from the Beast was deflected by the da Vinci ’s defenses.

  Duffy didn’t know how, but Captain Gold had managed to out-think what they couldn’t figure out down here. The guy never ceased to amaze.

  “ Da Vinci ’s moving off to a safe distance,” Bart said. “No damage, from what I can tell from here.”

  “Okay,” Duffy said, letting out a long breath he felt like he’d been holding since everything went crazy. “Now it’s up to us. We’re inside this Beast and in the driver’s seat. I want control back in this room, or I want this ship dead in space, flatuseless. We go after both, people. We shut down those shields and cut the weapons.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?” Bart asked.

  “Then, if we have to, we blow up this monster.”

  He made sure he caught the gaze of everyone, to see if they understood.

  They all did.

  “Let’s get to work,” he said. “All shortcuts are allowed. I have a sneaking hunch we don’t have much time.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  “We’re not getting in that lift,” Lieutenant Vale said, her voice firm as they ran away from the viewport. “Agreed,” Gomez said. She held up her hand and had them all stop just short of the lift. Then she turned to Dr. Lense. “In your best guess, how long until those things in there are big enough to get out of that core?”

  “And come after us physically, instead of through the ship’s systems?” Dr. Lense asked.

  “Exactly,” Gomez said.

  “An hour, maybe a little more, but I wouldn’t count on it from the rate of their growth and their food supply in there. It might be only thirty minutes.”

  Gomez nodded. She didn’t much like the answer, but at least the answer wasn’t now. They had a little time.

  “Somehow,” Gomez said, “we have to reach the secondary control room.”

  “I doubt that’s going to help,” Geordi said.

  “I agree with Geordi,” Dr. Lense said. “They are controlling the ship from connections in that docking area, using the power of the hive-mind to tap into the ship’s computer and override everything.”

  “How the heck do you know all that?” Geordi asked.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this kind of thing,” Dr. Lense answered. “During the war—one of the Dominion’s subject races . . . It wasn’t these creatures, exactly, but it’s close enough for me to make a guess.”

  “We—”

  “—agree with—”

  “—the doctor,” 110 and 111 said.

  “So we need to cut the power to the docking bay,” Gomez said.

  “Exactly,” Geordi said. “Two decks above us in the engine room would be the place to do that.”

  Both Bynars nodded in unison. “We can—”

  “—cut power there—”

  “—easily.”

  “Access to climbing tube?” Gomez demanded, pulling out her tricorder. “Find us one fast.”

  “Here!” Vale said, moving to a side panel and yanking off the covering. There was a ladder inside.

  “Vale, take point,” Gomez said, “Doctor, you follow her as close as you can stay.”

  “You got it,” Dr. Lense said as Vale headed into the tube and started climbing.

  “I’ll guard the flank,” Geordi said.
>
  Gomez nodded and indicated the two Bynars should follow Dr. Lense.

  She was amazed at how fast they managed to climb that ladder. By the time she ducked out onto the deck of the engineering area, both the Bynars were at a terminal, using their computer-fast speech to form a connection to the computer.

  Vale was guarding them and Dr. Lense, who was studying her tricorder and frowning.

  Gomez stopped Geordi as he came out behind her. On the way up the ladder, she had realized that maybe the hive-mind wasn’t completely telepathic at such a young age. Broadcasting a thought at close range might be easy, but she wagered that listening to some thoughts two decks away might still have to be done through the ship’s systems.

  So she whispered in his ear. “I want a way to blow this ship out of space.”

  “We can do it,” Geordi whispered back. “I can set these black-hole engines to cascade. But damn it—I can’t help feeling that if Captain Picard were here, he’d have found a way to reason with these creatures. Turning an enemy into a friend is better than . . .”

  “Geordi, I wish they were giving us that option. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll order you to take this ship down.”

  Geordi stared at her.

  “I outrank you now. This is my call to make.”

  Geordi nodded and headed off at a run toward the nearest black-hole-drive system. She watched him for an instant, realizing that, more than likely, she had just issued their death warrant.

  “Commander!” Vale said. “We need to keep each other covered.”

  “I’ll help the Bynars, you stay with Geordi.”

  Vale looked relieved and headed off at a run, phaser in hand, after her shipmate.

  The Bynars turned slightly as she approached.

  “They have—”

  “—attacked—”

  “—the da Vinci . It has—”