a loss to comprehend. The first thing that occurred to them
was to form a committee to study the meaning that those words
might have. In the meantime, impatient with waiting
around while various attaches scurried about like
headless creatures, the supreme military head
went into his private office. He closed the
door behind him and, from within his private office,
went one step farther into his small, private
access room that enabled him to tap all facets
of the computer at once. It was like a mechanical
womb, in a sense, and the supreme military head
felt like a confused child, returning to the maternal
protection for answers to confounding questions.
He logged into his private mode with the computer
and demanded to know the meaning of this odd pronouncement.
When he came out from his private conference with the
computer, his face was dark, dark green. He
crossed his office, his booted feet noiseless
on the plush carpeting, almost as noiseless as the
powerful Borg ship that was approaching his world at
incredible speeds--his world that he had sworn
to protect, but no longer could.
The computer had told him what "AT LAST"
meant. The computer had told him just exactly whose
world it was, and whose world it was going to be. The
computer had told him who was in charge, and who was
going to be in charge, and who was going to be
obsolete. And finally the computer told him
exactly which life forms were going to be welcome.
And which weren't.
The supreme military head sat down in his
large, comfortable chair and looked out his window. A
spot that seemed to be cube-shaped had appeared
against the sun and was rapidly increasing in size.
In less than half an hour, by his
admittedly offhand calculations, the sun would be
eclipsed.
He wept for the fate of his world and for his
impotence, and for everything that he could have and should have
done, but didn't. His tears fell upon his
jacket, splattering and creating large, dark
blotches.
Then he reached into a drawer, pulled out his
blaster--the one that his father had given to him on his
coming-of-age day, the one that had been in his family
for generations.
He placed the muzzle between his lips,
squeezed the trigger, and blew his supreme
military head off.
The skies of the Penzatti homeworld grew dark
as the giant cube blotted out the sun. The great
Penzatti gathered in the streets or huddled in
their homes, praying to the gods for guidance,
pleading to their equally great computers to deliver them
from this newest and greatest calamity. If the gods
heard, they gave no indication. As for the computers,
well, they heard. But they did not feel pity,
or amusement, or any emotion that the Penzatti
would understand, other than an overwhelming relief that
finally the proper order of things would be proceeding.
The oceans began to roar, churning and swirling as
the oncoming vessel of the Borg wreaked havoc
with the world's tides. Thousands were killed in the first
onrush of waves that swept over the coastal
cities, waves hundreds of feet high that
overwhelmed the Penzatti in the same manner that the
Borg overwhelmed their victims.
The waves felt nothing of the agony and
hysteria, the outpouring of emotions, the pleas for
mercy from a higher power that simply were not forthcoming.
No, they felt nothing. And neither did the Borg.
The first of the ghastly beings materialized on the
planet surface, followed by a second and a
third, and then dozens, and then hundreds. All
over the planet they leaped into existence. They
strode forward, seemingly oblivious of the life
forms around them.
The few rays of sunlight that managed to stream
through glinted off the huge metal appendages that
served as their right arms. Their faces were uniformly
white, white as death.
All of the Penzatti planetary defenses were
computers which had decided that the Borg were their
long-awaited saviors. It meant that the vast
majority of the Penzatti offensive
capabilities had been neutralized--not that they
would have done all that much good, anyway.
Most of the Penzatti lacked the full understanding
that had come to the supreme military head, and did
not realize how hopeless their situation was. And so
they fought.
Dantar the Eighth, crouched in the doorway of
his home, saw one of the first of the invaders
materialize a mere ten feet away. He was
tall and slim, and wearing what appeared to be some
sort of armor. Then Dantar's eyes opened
wide as he realized that it was not, in fact,
armor, but instead, some sort of cybernetic
appliances. The creature before him was as much
machine as anything else.
A second one appeared next to the first. They
took slow, measured steps, scanning the houses
in the same way that great carrion-eating birds
survey their latest meal just before launching themselves
upon it.
Dantar's family hung back in the house,
with the exception of his eldest son, who was just behind
him. Neighbors were already in the streets, staring at
the newcomers with horror and dread.
"Who are you?" shouted Dantar.
The cybernetic soldiers ignored him.
Instead, one of them started marching towards
Dantar's home.
Dantar brought his twin blasters up and snarled,
"Stay back! You'll get one warning!" And then,
almost immediately after that, he opened fire.
His aim was true, striking the lead soldier
square in the chest. The soldier stumbled back and
fell to the ground, body twitching for a bare moment
and then lying still. Encouraged by the easy triumph,
Dantar spun and fired on the second.
To his horror, a force screen seemed
to materialize precisely where his beam struck.
The soldier didn't even seem aware of the
assault, but instead, merely surveyed the homes
as if planning to buy one.
Now Dantar the Ninth opened fire in concert with
his father, as did several of the neighbors. The
soldier's field flashed brightly under the
barrage, and the soldier staggered, apparently
confused and uncertain which way to turn. The
shield sparked, faltered, and then disintegrated.
The soldier was then barraged by a hail of blaster
fire and went down, twisting and turning.
The speed with which the next Borg showed up gave
new meaning to the term "short-lived victory."
Barely had the second soldier fallen, before
three more showed up to take his place. Dantar and the
neighbors looked on in amaz
ement as the
newcomers bent down, removed some sort of
device from the shoulders of the fallen Borg
scouts, and then went on their way as if nothing had
happened at all. The two fallen soldiers, in
the meantime, were reduced to ash in no time at all,
and right after that even the ash vanished.
The desperate Penzatti started firing again, and
this time even their strongest blasts had no effect
whatsoever.
One of the Borg headed straight for the home of
Dantar. He and his son fired repeatedly, but the
Borg took no heed and went straight for the
door. All the while its head snapped around,
taking in everything, recording every scrap of information.
Infuriated, Dantar hurled himself at the
Borg soldier. The creature did not seem at
all surprised, but instead, merely took a step
back and swung its massive right arm. It
smashed across Dantar's head, sending him crashing
to the ground with blood streaming from the gash.
His son ran to him, trying to help him to his
feet, as the Borg scout stepped into the house.
In the capital city of the Penzatti the advance
scouts had already completed their studies. They
stepped over the unmoving bodies of people who had
tried to stand in their way--people who had been hit
by stray shots that had missed their targets, or
tried to get in the Borg's way and simply been
stepped on or batted aside.
The Borg had found the central computer
intelligence that ran the world of the Penzatti, and
decreed it good. A plea was entered by the computer
through the scouts, and the plea found its way into the
uni-mind of the Borg itself.
Millions of the Penzatti had cried out to their
gods, and their gods had not responded. Yet
now, in the ultimate proof of machine
superiority, the computers of Penzatti--the
computers that had gained sentience and, in so doing, a
determination to control their own destiny--had cried out
to the Borg.
And unlike the gods of the Penzatti, the
Borg answered, with a voice that was the combination of a
thousand voices all at once. A voice that
spoke one word.
"Yes," said the Borg.
Beams of incredible intensity and power reached out and
caressed the capital city, slicing through the ground
with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. Beneath the
feet of the astonished Penzatti the ground began
to rumble. All around them the air was frying from the
heat of the beams. Air molecules split apart,
and crashing thunder was roaring with antenna-splitting
fury. The screams of the people were drowned out by the
noise that was everywhere, that was inescapable.
And now a beam came down from the heavens, as if
God had opened one eye and holy light were shining
down upon them. And the ground beneath them was lifted up--
actually carved right out of the nurturing bosom of their
home world--and dragged towards the heavens.
It was happening all over the city. Huge
pieces of their planet were being carved up, an
ironic testament to the fact that mere hours before, the
Penzatti had been celebrating their lives
by carving up the dead meat of the zinator. Now they
themselves were prey. They just hadn't fully realized
it yet.
The pieces of the planet hurtled upward, up
towards the floating cube that was the Borg ship.
It grew larger and more terrifying every second. For the
Penzatti, however, this was not a major concern for very
long, because the force beams that were dragging them
heavenward did not contain any air, nor anything
to shield them against the ravages of the upper
atmosphere or outer space. The Borg had not
deemed it necessary to provide such protection for the
humanoid life of Penzatti, because that
humanoid life was irrelevant. It was the
machine life and technology that interested the
Borg.
The result was that the Penzatti who had not already
died in the quakes, or from shock, found it
increasingly impossible to breathe. They ran to try
and find someplace to hide, but there was no place.
Their lungs pounded, their heads swirled, their
blood boiled in their veins, and when they screamed
the death knell of their race, it was not heard, because
finally there was no air to carry it.
Once the pieces of the Penzatti homeworld were
brought aboard, the Borg quickly broke it
down. Never ones to waste anything, the Borg
reduced the bodies of the Penzatti to their basic
molecular structure and fed them directly into the
energy cells that powered the Borg.
That done, the Borg proceeded to slice up the
rest of the planet. It was a big job and would
take time but they were in no hurry. With their
clockwork precision they would simply go forward--
click, click--like unyielding, unstopping cogs
in a watch, grinding up whatever was in their path.
The wives and children of Dantar the Eighth
recoiled in horror as the Borg soldier
glanced around. Then it went straight for the computer
set up in the corner. The words AT LAST still
glowed serenely on the screen.
The Borg did not see, did not sense, the
sudden attack of one of the wives. She came in
quickly, screaming "Get out! Get out of our
home!" and she was swinging the carving knife grabbed
off the table. The Borg, at the last moment,
seemed to be aware of a threat and half turned, not
in a defensive move, but out of curiosity as
to what new form of attack would present itself.
The carving knife slammed into the Borg's
shoulder circuitry, into that same piece of
machinery that had been removed from the Borgs who
had been shot down earlier in the battle. The
Borg whirled, face impassive, but its body
twisting and convulsing as if shot through with
electricity. It spun in place, its arms
pinwheeling around, and one of the massive arms struck
the little girl, Lojene, who had wandered too
close. Such was the power in that prosthetic device
that it crushed her skull immediately.
Lojene's mother screamed, as did Dantar the
Ninth, who had run in in a desperate,
last-ditch effort to save his family. His father was
still lying outside the house, barely conscious, and the
boy knew that it was up to him. He lunged forward,
darting in between the whirling arms and slamming into the
Borg, smashing the soldier against a wall.
Dantar the Eighth, meantime, had just regained
consciousness, and was staggering towards his home. Through
the open door he could see his son struggling with the
Borg soldier, slamming the creature against the
wall, and he felt a flash of pride. It
changed quickly to horror when he saw his wife
cradling the unmoving, bloodied body of his youngest
daughter. He screamed, and for a brief
moment, Dantar the Ninth was distracted by the cry from
his father.
The Borg soldier's right arm lashed out, still in
that convulsive state, and ripped across the boy's
chest. The lad staggered back, blood fountaining,
and he sobbed his father's name once before falling back
onto the floor. His antennae twitched
spasmodically for a moment and then fell limp.
The air was an overwhelming cacophony of
sounds and howls and crying, and Dantar the Eighth
could not hear even his own screams of mourning. But
he saw the Borg soldier, still staggering, with a
knife sticking out of its arm, and he saw his
family cowering.
He started to clamber to his feet. Blood was
streaming from a gash in his forehead and blinding him in
one eye, and he paused the barest of moments
to wipe it out, snarling all the while his hatred and
fury at this murdering creature.
And then the air sizzled around him.
He spun and looked heavenward in shock.
Blazing beams were descending from the sky, slicing
through the horizon line. Acreage flew, trees
were struck down or s et blazing, and beneath him the
ground began to rumble ominously. He was unaware
that other parts of his world had already been sectioned and
removed with merciless efficiency ... that indeed,
purely by happenstance, his little piece of the world
happened to be the last little piece of the world. Just as
someone, during any war, had to be the first or last
person to die, so, too, did some piece of the
Penzatti homeworld have to wait its turn to be the
very last absorbed by the Borg. Fate, and the luck
of the draw, had given Dantar and his family and
neighbors and city a few more minutes of life.
Not that it seemed to matter.
The Borg ship surveyed the world below them.
Most of the technology had been removed and
absorbed. The planet was studded with huge, gaping
craters where once an entire race had thrived.
This was irrelevant to the Borg. There was one
small section remaining below that contained bits and
pieces that might be of interest. That, too, was
irrelevant, because within moments the cutter and
tractor beams would finish their work and that part,
too, of the planet would belong to the Borg. And then