by David Mack
“Even in your present state, you’re more vibrant than any of the millions of Caeliar in Axion. And though our association has so far been—from my perspective—incredibly brief, I have come to think of you as my friend. And so … for purely selfish reasons … I want you to survive, and enjoy living, and help me continue the Great Work.” His words were heavy with sorrow as he added, “I don’t want you to die, Erika. So I’m begging you to let me help you. Please don’t make me stand aside and watch you die. If I cannot give you your freedom … at least let me give you back your life.”
His heartfelt plea would have brought her to tears had her eyes not been as red and dry as the Martian desert. “All right,” she said, flashing a sad smile. “But only because you’re doing it for selfish reasons.” Noting his confused silence, she explained, “It makes you seem a little more human.”
“I’ll try to take that as a compliment,” he said.
* * *
Hernandez was only partially conscious as Inyx levitated the metal slab on which she lay and guided it telekinetically through the vaulted, cathedral-like spaces of Axion.
As they passed a long line of massive, narrow open archways that looked out on the landscape of New Erigol, she caught the sweet, heavy scent of a gathering storm. She turned her head and saw the hills and trees strangely luminous with bright sunlight, beneath ominous clouds that were black and pregnant with rain.
Then she and Inyx turned down a dark, narrow passage that led to a dead end in a circular chamber. The ceiling spiraled open above her, and the walls rushed past as she and Inyx were lifted in silence to the top of one of the city’s towers.
She asked, “Where are we going?”
“To my operating theater,” he said, evoking heartbreaking memories of Valerian’s ugly demise. Perhaps sensing Hernandez’s unspoken reaction, he added apologetically, “It’s the only facility equipped for the procedure.”
Their ascent slowed.
“What will the Quorum say?”
“They’ll forbid it,” Inyx said. “Which is why I won’t tell them until after it’s done.”
Hernandez chuckled softly at Inyx’s insolence toward his superiors. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
They arrived in a circular room much like the one at the start of their vertical journey, and Inyx guided her steel stretcher down another passage that was far shorter. At its end, a door slid open, admitting them to his laboratory.
Nothing had changed about the lab since her last visit, except that the carbon-black stain on the metal operating table had been expunged. The tall and narrow space was still packed tightly with machines throbbing with low-frequency sounds and pulsing with scarlet light. Overhead, a web of slack, silvery cables surrounded the room’s periphery. The only gap in the tangled mess was directly above the operating table, where the long, irregular machine hovered without support beneath the closed, clamshell-shaped skylight.
Inyx guided the stretcher onto the operating table, and out of the corner of her eye, Hernandez saw the two metallic surfaces fuse into one.
Above her, the protruding implements of the surgical machine began to glow with crimson energies, and a surge of terror coursed through her.
“It’s important you understand the procedure and the risks,” Inyx said. “I want you to make an informed decision.”
“So, inform me,” Hernandez said, hiding behind bravado.
He gestured to the hovering contraption. “With this machine, I will introduce a limited quantity of catoms into your body. These nanomachines will effect repairs to your damaged bones and organs, and they’ll modify your genetic code.”
Hernandez swallowed her anxiety. “Sounds okay so far.”
“Because of certain immutable limitations of organic cellular replication, the catoms will need to remain part of your body to monitor the Change’s effects. Once incorporated into your body, the catoms will be sustained partly by your biology, but primarily by Axion’s zero-point quantum field.”
“You talk like you’re selling me a used car,” she said. “Skip ahead to the risks.”
Her rebuke silenced Inyx for a moment. Then he continued, “My chief concern is that you will not be able to commune with the gestalt. Sidra died because her mind rejected contact with the Caeliar. The catoms in your body will not stabilize unless they can form a bond between your mind and the gestalt.”
“Bond? Commune with the gestalt? What does that mean?”
A long huff of breath puffed the sacs that curled over Inyx’s shoulders and dilated the ends of the tubules on his head. “It’s difficult to explain, Erika. It’s about becoming part of something greater than yourself and accepting your place in it. Reduced to its most basic level, you must surrender or perish.”
Fletcher’s warning came back to Hernandez: They want our surrender. “And if my subconscious mind resists …?”
“Then what happened to Sidra will happen to you, as well.”
New waves of anxiety christened her forehead with sweat. She glanced nervously at Inyx. “How hard is it to surrender?”
“That depends on you.” He looked up at the machine, then back at her. “We don’t have to do this. I can mend your immediate injuries and forgo the rest of the procedure.”
She shook her head, feigning defiance and resolve. “No,” she said. “If I back away from this now, I might never have the courage to come back. I’m ready now.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, sounding doubtful.
“Yes,” she said.
Inyx levitated up from the floor. “Very well,” he said, and he began making his final adjustments to the machine.
A guilty voice inside Hernandez’s head justified the rashness of her choice: If it goes wrong, and I die like Sidra did, it’ll be justice. I’ll get what I deserved. As the device looming directly above her face thrummed with power and glowed with light, she lost herself in its ruby glare. No turning back now, she told herself. Whatever happens … happens.
Inyx rested his cilia on her shoulder and spoke in a soothing baritone. “I’m going to use a low-power energy wave to guide your brain into an unconscious state. Most of the changes to your body will take place while you’re sedated. When the catoms have completed their fusion with your genetic matrix, I’ll bring you back to consciousness. Those first moments will be critical, Erika. As you awaken, you must open yourself to the gestalt and accept its embrace. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Yes. And, Inyx …? Thank you.”
He gently nudged a few snowy-white hairs from her eyes. “Breathe deeply,” he said to her. “We’re about to begin.” Then he withdrew, floating like a ghost to the master control panel behind the transparent wall to her right. She did as he asked, and slowly inhaled, filling her lungs. Then, as she let the air escape, her senses faded, and she knew that she was being sedated. When she opened her eyes again, it would be to face either a new life or an instant death.
Darkness fell for a moment that might have lasted forever. Then the distant glimmer of light and life beckoned her upward, out of an abyss of shadow.
She felt like flowing water, free and moving in the current of something greater than herself, a fluid with no boundaries, no beginning and no end, just momentum and union. For a moment, part of her mind cried out in alarm that she was drowning. Through an act of will, she silenced her fear and gave herself a new frame for the experience: I’m in the womb.
There were voices, millions of them, each distinct, none exalted over the others. Ideas and forms and concepts filled Hernandez’s thoughts, every one of them hers for the taking if she wanted it, but if she averted her thoughts they fell away, forgotten. Images and sounds buoyed her. She was afloat in a sea of memories and daydreams, all equal in substance and value.
All of it was hers to enjoy, but none of it was hers. It wasn’t anyone’s, and it was everyone’s. Information and power were all around her, as abundant as the air she breathed. She was immersed in it, was part of it, and gave
it a focal point. Other loci were moving throughout the city, and one was beside her. They and she were like stars orbiting Axion.
Sound returned. “Open your eyes,” Inyx said softly.
Her eyelids parted with reluctance. Above and around the operating table, Inyx’s lab looked exactly as it had before the procedure, but Hernandez saw it with a new vision. She felt a reciprocal tug from the machines that surrounded her—a give and take that enabled her to sense their energy levels and, she presumed, direct their function by thought alone.
Rain slashed against the clamshell skylight directly above her, and the storm-blackened sky flashed with lightning. Half a second later, thunder rocked the city.
Inyx stood at her side, his cilia-fingers waggling together in front of him. “Your catoms are stable. How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. Then she looked down at her hands. Their skin was rosy and taut and their muscles toned, and all the scars she had acquired in her youth as a rock climber had been erased. At first, she sat up slowly, in the cautious manner to which age had made her accustomed. None of her old aches and pains were with her, so she pivoted and swung her legs off the side of the bed, appreciating all of a sudden how lean and firm they were beneath her delicate silver-white raiment.
As she leaned forward to stand up, her hair spilled in front of her face—in long, lustrous black coils. She touched her face and throat. Gone was her brittle and age-loosened skin. Her fingertips found only the soft, graceful lines of her jaw. In a moment of vanity, she wished for a mirror … and one took shape in front of her, coalesced from billions of motes of nanoscopic, programmable matter that lingered in the air.
“Did I do that?” she asked, staring in wonder at the free-floating oval mirror, which reflected back the sight of her as she might have been at the age of eighteen, had she worn her hair in an epic, wild mane that fell to her lower back.
“Yes,” Inyx said. “You did. And you can do much more, if you want to. I can show you how.”
Giddy with excitement, she tore her eyes from the lissome echo of her youth in the mirror and looked at Inyx. “Show me everything,” she said.
“Look up,” he said. She did as he asked. Above them was the skylight, rattling beneath the fury of the wind and rain. “Open it,” he told her. “See it open in your mind.”
The moment played in her imagination and became clear.
Then it became reality. The skylight opened.
Rain, warm and pure, surged through the open space and doused Hernandez and Inyx. She closed her eyes and reveled in the sensation of the droplets pelting her face and bosom.
He placed his arm against her back. “Rise with me.”
Her feet lifted from the floor of the lab.
She and Inyx levitated together, ascending into the downpour. They passed through the frame of the open skylight, into open air. Until that moment, she’d thought Inyx alone had lifted her up. Then he removed his arm … and she soared.
Violent gales buffeted her with rain, and twists of blue lightning split the shadows and cracked the heavens with thunderclaps. She cried out in a panic, “Inyx!”
He was nowhere to be seen, but she heard his calming counsel close by. “Don’t be afraid … it can’t hurt you now.”
And she knew that it was true.
She opened herself to the power that radiated up from the city and unlocked the potential that now suffused her body. Gaining speed, she shot upward, slicing through the stormhead, fearless, baptized by the storm as she flew like a bullet.
She wept with joy; it felt like freedom incarnate.
Like an arrow piercing a target, she burst free of the tempest and exploded into blue sky and golden light. Spreading her arms wide to embrace it all, she turned in a slow spiral, feeling the wind and the sun warming her rain-drenched body, and her head lolled back to glory in her transformation.
Then came the gentlest tug of restraint.
It was subtle but undeniable, as if an invisible, silken cord had been tied around her ankles, anchoring her to Axion and rescuing her from her inner Icarus.
“Everything has a limit,” explained Inyx’s disembodied voice. “Our gifts are made possible by Axion’s quantum field. Beyond a certain distance, our powers diminish greatly. Within and near the city, however, you’ll have nothing to fear.”
His words haunted her thoughts as she looked again at the sky and saw the dark scar of the planet’s growing shell taking shape in high orbit. This is what Veronica was warning me about, she realized. How could I have been so stupid?
The Caeliar had granted her eternal youth and functional immortality—but only as long as she remained in Axion. It was nothing less than a life without end in captivity. She would never be freed, not even by death.
Her joyful tears turned bitter as she confessed the truth to herself: I just made myself a prisoner forever.
2381
13
“Aperture two-alpha, opening now,” reported Lieutenant Sean Milner, the Enterprise’s gamma-shift operations manager. “Ship emerging. It’s the Aventine. They’re signaling all clear.”
Picard nodded. “Noted, Lieutenant.”
A demonic whispering stole the captain’s attention for a moment: it was the voice of the Borg. He tried to see through the cerulean churning of the Azure Nebula on the main viewer. The susurration had no words, no message he could discern. After a few seconds he realized that the Collective wasn’t speaking to him; it didn’t even seem to be aware of his presence … yet. But he knew that it was nearby, somewhere on the other side of one of these shortcuts through space.
An electronic tone warbled from the operations console. Milner, a tall and square-jawed Londoner, checked his console and pivoted around to report, “It’s Starfleet Command, sir.”
“On-screen,” said Picard, rising from his chair.
Admiral Nechayev’s image appeared on the main viewer. “Good news, Captain,” she said. “Reinforcements are on the way.”
“Glad to hear it, Admiral. Who’s with us?”
She arched one eyebrow in apparent amusement. “Everyone except the Tholians, apparently. The Ferengi even paid off the Breen to send a fleet. I don’t know how President Bacco did it, but if we get through this, I might ask her to turn some water into wine.”
Picard feigned high spirits. “How long until our force assembles?”
Nechayev checked something off-screen before she replied, “The Klingons and the Romulans will have several dozen ships at your position in less than thirty-six hours. Our forces start arriving in forty-eight. A Cardassian battle group will reach you in fifty-six hours, and the Talarians, Ferengi, Breen, and Gorn will be the last to arrive, in about four days.”
“Understood,” Picard said. “We’ll continue scouting the subspace tunnels and holding the line until they arrive.”
“Good luck and godspeed, Captain,” Nechayev said. “Starfleet Command out.” The main viewer blinked back to the cloudy sprawl of the nebula.
Picard looked at Worf. “Commander. Status report.”
Worf checked the display on the end of one of his chair’s armrests. “Repairs complete,” he said. Looking up, he added, “Lieutenant Elfiki is ready to open tunnel three-alpha.”
“Very good,” Picard said. To Milner, he added, “Put me on internal speakers, Lieutenant.”
Milner keyed in the command. “Channel open, sir.”
“Attention, all decks, this is the captain,” Picard said. “The Aventine has just returned from its first jaunt. In a few minutes, we’ll be making our own first trip through one of the subspace tunnels. Please report to your primary duty stations. Senior command officers, report to the bridge. Picard out.”
As Picard settled back into his command chair, Worf said to tactical officer Abby Balidemaj, “Sound Yellow Alert. Raise shields, transphasic torpedoes to standby.”
“Aye, sir,” Balidemaj replied, executing the order.
Picard threw a questioning look
at his first officer. “Feeling anxious about our first scouting run, Mister Worf?”
“No, sir,” Worf said, with a ferocious gleam. “Eager.”
Drawing strength from Worf’s confidence, Picard sat up a bit straighter in his chair and fixed his eyes on the main viewscreen. Far away, beyond a veil of shadows, the voice of the Collective still whispered … and he vowed that he would silence it—soon, and forever. No matter what the cost proved to be.
* * *
Miranda Kadohata looked up from the desktop monitor in her quarters as Captain Picard’s voice echoed over the intraship comm. “Attention, all decks, this is the captain,” he said. “The Aventine has just returned from its first jaunt. In a few minutes, we’ll be making our own first trip through one of the subspace tunnels. Please report to your primary duty stations. Senior command officers, report to the bridge. Picard out.”
The comm clicked off, and Kadohata resumed staring at the blue-and-white Federation emblem on the screen in front of her. Connect, dammit, she fumed. Can’t wait much longer. An icon in the lower right corner of the screen changed, indicating that the real-time signal had been routed to its destination. Pick up, Vicenzo! Hurry!
An image blinked onto the screen: her husband, Vicenzo Farrenga, looking frazzled and standing in a sunlit corridor of Bacco University, on Cestus III. “Miranda? They pulled me out of a lecture. Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
“I have to make this quick, love,” she said. “I can’t explain, but this might be the last time … for a while … that I get to talk to you, and I need you to pay attention.”
He reacted attentively to her urgent tone. “I’m listening.”
Kadohata wanted to shout, Run! Take the children and go, and don’t look back! But she knew that all communications were monitored at times like this, and Starfleet regulations forbade her from sharing what she knew of the rapidly worsening tactical threat against the Federation. Fomenting fear and panic about the imminent Borg invasion would only serve to destabilize the situation. To save her family, she’d have to be more discreet.
