Part One

Giants in the Sky

Beneath the sky’s triumphal arch

This music sounded like a march,

And with its chorus seemed to be

Preluding some great tragedy….

Begirt with many a blazing star,

Stood the great giant Algebar,

Orion, hunter of the beast!

His sword hung gleaming by his side,

And, on his arm, the lion’s hide

Scattered across the midnight air

The golden radiance of its hair.

—“The Occultation of Orion,”

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Prologue

W e swim through space, the void’s chill brisk against our flesh. We huddle closer, closer, basking in each other’s warm glow, in the caress of each other’s tendrils [love/ kinship/let’s play!]. Distant starwarmth beckons from ahead, drawing us toward it [hunger/hope]. Shall we dive beneath space, fold the starpull currents about our bodies to reach it faster? No, our need is not yet great; it is enough to swim [patience/prudence/relax and savor existence!].

Now a cloud of dust impinges, tiny specks of [coldstuff/deadstuff] flaring into briefest life as heat and vapor against our hides [tickles/fizzes!]. We drink the tiny bursts of lifewarmth, [soothing/heightening] our hunger ever so slightly. We spread our tendrils wide, stretching them longer, thinner, growing membranes between them to catch more coldstuff [need/exercise/sheer joy of changing!].

A ripple sensed from below space [curiosity/caution…familiarity!]—more kin are coming! Few, but welcome. They breach the surface, the lifewarmth and starpull eddies of their emergence washing over us, slaking our thirst, and we cry out to them in [greeting to strangers/joy at reunion!].

But wait—something is wrong [puzzlement/can we help?]. They do not return our calls. They are hardened, sheathed for defense! Are they a threat [defend/flee]? No [disbelief/compassion], they are our own, they must need our help! We cry to them [sympathy/concern], but they are still. No, now they strike out [danger!/where?]—wait, no, they strike at us! This cannot…[disbelief/agony] Their stings pierce our hides, burning us. Our breath and fluidice bleed out into the void. Our siblings’ minds cry out to us, deafening us, then fading to silence. We are dying! [loss/anguish/betrayal/Why?] No time to ask. No time to focus, to armor ourselves, we must flee! [panic/ exposed/alone!] We need help! We cry out for other minds [terror/pleading] Someone, anyone! [—who— ]Barely felt [real/imagined?]—we cry out again! [—who— ]Yes! Help us! [—who are you?— /come/desperation/ grief/ rage/—no—get out —/pain/despair/—get out of my mind— /dread/dying/why?/NO!/—NO!!— ]

Chapter One

U.S.S. TITAN,STARDATE 57137.8

“No!!”

Deanna Troi bolted upright in bed. For a moment she felt adrift in the dark, in a void whose emptiness chilled her bare flesh. She wasn’t sure where she was, or even who she was. She felt terrible fear, but did not know why.

But then she felt hisarms embracing her, bringing her home. Will. Her imzadi.Her husband. Her captain. Her anchor. When he touched her, she was never lost.

She relaxed against him, and they stayed that way for a precious moment. Then he spoke softly. “The nightmare again?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “The same sense of…intrusion…yet different. Not as malevolent.” Talking about the recurring nightmare brought unwelcome flashes of memory. It had been over three months since Shinzon of Remus and his viceroy Vkruk had raped her, using Vkruk’s telepathy to place themselves in her mind while she made love with Will; yet although the nightmares came less frequently of late, her memory of the event remained as vivid as ever, and she knew it always would. What made it worse was that it had been her second telepathic sexual assault, the first being at the hands of the Ullian historian Jev nearly a dozen years ago. He too had usurped Will Riker’s place in her perceptions, forcing her to relive an erotic memory which he twisted into a violation. It was a testament to Deanna’s love and faith in Will that she was still able to take joy and comfort from his touch today.

Sometimes it took a little work, though. Reliving those memories intensified the fight-or-flight impulse the dream had triggered, and suddenly she felt a desperate need for personal space. She clambered out of bed and moved to the windows, not stopping to don a gown first. Over the past few months, Will had grown accustomed to her occasional need not to be touched, so he didn’t follow. “Not as malevolent?” he asked, his voice gentle. “You seemed pretty scared.”

Deanna stared out at the stars, gathering her thoughts. “I don’t remember. It was as though…something else’s fear was being forced into me.”

“Something? Not someone?”

“It felt very alien. Yet…somehow distantly familiar.” She shook her head, giving a slight, nervous chuckle. “Never mind. It was just a dream. A bit of undigested chocolate.”

“You sure of that, Ebenezer?” She didn’t have to turn to see the smirk on his face. “You’ve been contacted through dreams before. Eyes in the dark,”he intoned in a spooky voice that made her laugh.

“Anything’s possible, I suppose, but there’s too little to go on.” She gazed out at the stars. “Something alien, but familiar…probably some symbol my brain pieced together, representing anxiety at the unknown. A natural enough response, considering our mission.”

She could feel his excitement at the mission that lay before them, and she shared it even without her empathy. Titanand her crew had been meant for pure exploration, but had been forced to defer that mission when Starfleet had assigned them to head a diplomatic task force to Romulus, assisting with the rebuilding efforts following Shinzon’s bloody coup and subsequent self-destruction. Right afterward, Titan’s aid in the search for a lost Romulan fleet had led to a fall down an extradimensional rabbit hole into the Small Magellanic Cloud, over 200,000 light-years from home. In theory, that had been an explorer’s dream come true, but dealing with the destruction caused by the Red King entity and the rescue of the Neyel from their disintegrating homeworld had left no chance for real exploration. And then it had been back to Starbase 185 for two weeks of repairs and debriefing, and another two weeks and change moving out beyond Federation space, past Beta Stromgren, past Kappa Velorum, and finally, last night, past the farthest benchmark laid by Olympiaon its Beta Quadrant survey eight years ago. From this point on, nobody knew what lay ahead.