by David Mack
“Aye, sir,” Navok replied.
“Meeting adjourned,” Leishman said. The junior officers split up and left the compartment. The chief engineer circled around the table to greet Hernandez. “Captain. A pleasure.”
“Glad to be of service, Lieutenant.” Hernandez motioned toward the table of consoles. “Care to show me your biggest technical hurdles?”
“Sure,” Leishman said. She turned to the console and called up several sets of schematics on adjacent displays. “We have two small problems to deal with. The first is that we need to shore up our transphasic shielding to keep the Borg from slicing us in half before we hit them with the energy dampener.”
Hernandez reached forward to input some commands. She paused before touching the interface. “May I?”
“Be my guest,” Leishman said.
After centuries of dissecting and trying to improve on Caeliar technology, Hernandez found it easy to analyze and reconfigure twenty-fourth-century Starfleet software and hardware, which was much simpler by comparison. She rewrote power-distribution algorithms and adaptive shield-harmonic subroutines as if by instinct. By her reckoning, she had, in a matter of seconds, advanced Starfleet defensive technology by at least a decade.
She turned to the wide-eyed chief engineer and asked, “What’s your second problem?”
Neither Leishman nor Helkara responded right away. They were both mesmerized by the designs and formulas that Hernandez had crafted in front of them.
After a few seconds, Leishman snorted with amusement. “Something tells me you’re gonna have a bright future at Starfleet Research and Development, Captain.”
“We’ll see,” Hernandez said. Then she prompted Leishman, “Your second ‘small problem,’ Lieutenant?”
“Right,” Leishman said, calling up a new array of complex computations on the tabletop’s assorted display screens. “We’re tracking the Borg ship you located, but it’s pretty far away from here.” She directed Hernandez’s attention to a specific equation. “The problem is one of control. Once we engage the slipstream drive, we’ll catch up to the Borg in a matter of minutes. But if we come out of slipstream too soon or too late, we’ll be too far away to make a sneak attack. They’ll have time to raise their defenses, and we might end up the hunted instead of the hunter. Unfortunately, our sensors and conn weren’t made to drop in and out of slipstream with that degree of precision.”
Hernandez studied the data on the screens and considered what Leishman had said. “Yes,” she replied. “I see the problem.”
Leishman said, “Does that mean you can help us?”
“That depends,” Hernandez said. “Do you think you can persuade Captain Dax to let me fly her ship into combat?”
The chief engineer threw a questioning look at Helkara, who replied, “I think that can be arranged.”
* * *
Dax emerged from her ready room feeling charged and impatient. Captain Picard had told her to have a plan before taking her ship into action; with her plan in place, she wanted to be in motion, tearing through a quantum slipstream for a rendezvous with a Borg ship whose minutes now were numbered.
Taking her seat beside her first officer, she asked, “How much longer, Mister Bowers?”
“Ten minutes at the most, Captain,” Bowers said. “We’re beaming over the last of the reinforcements from Enterprise and Titan right now.”
She leaned closer to him and lifted her chin toward Erika Hernandez, who was seated at the conn. In a whisper, she inquired, “How’s our new pilot doing?”
“Fine, so far,” came Bowers’s hushed reply.
“Good,” Dax said. She swiveled her chair toward the tactical station, where Lieutenant Lonnoc Kedair was working with an intense focus on her console. “Tactical, report.”
The Takaran security chief snapped her head up and answered with poise and calm, “Transphasic warhead yields adjusted for shield collapse only. Our own shields have been updated to stay a few steps ahead of the Borg’s weapons”—she nodded toward Hernandez—“courtesy of our guest.”
Dax shot an appreciative look at Hernandez. “Sounds like you’ve had a busy morning, Captain.”
“Haven’t we all?” replied Hernandez.
Looking to ops, where Ensign Svetlana Gredenko was filling in for the critically wounded Lieutenant Mirren, Dax asked, “Ops, do we still have a solid lock on the Borg scout vessel?”
“Aye, Captain,” Gredenko said.
“Helm,” Dax said, “is the slipstream drive online yet?”
“Affirmative, Captain,” said Hernandez. “Main deflector is fully charged, and chroniton integrator is online. Ready to engage on your order.”
A signal chirruped on Bowers’s armrest display. He silenced it with a tap of his index finger and said to Dax, “The last of the strike-team members are aboard, sir.” Something on his screen made him do a double-take. “And you have a visitor.”
“A what?”
Bowers relayed the message to her command display, at the end of her chair’s right armrest. He lowered his voice. “It’s Commander Worf from the Enterprise, sir. He beamed aboard with the last squad of reinforcements, and he’s waiting for you in transporter room one. Says he won’t leave till he sees you.”
Dax stood from her chair. “Tell him I’ll be there in a minute. Until then, hold the attack.”
“Understood,” Bowers said.
“You have the bridge, Commander,” Dax said.
She strode to the turbolift as quickly as she could without looking as if she was in a hurry. The ride to Deck Three took only a matter of seconds, and then she walk-jogged to Transporter Room One. The door slid open ahead of her, and she entered to see Worf standing alone in front of the transporter platform. In one hand he held his bat’leth, in the other his mek’leth. He regarded her with quiet resolve. “I request permission to join your attack on the Borg, Captain.”
Dax looked at the transporter operator, an imposing male Selay whose cobralike cranial hood was marked by a colorful pattern that reminded Dax of hourglasses. “Dismissed,” she said.
“Aye, Captain,” the Selay replied. He put the transporter console into standby mode and made a quick exit. The door closed with a muffled hiss behind him.
Dax walked slowly toward Worf as she asked, “Does Captain Picard know you’re here?”
“Yes,” Worf replied. “He granted my request to volunteer for this mission.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Dax said. “Captain Picard doesn’t think we should even attempt this mission. So why would he loan me his first officer?”
Bristling at the naked suspicion in her tone, Worf broke eye contact and lifted his chin in a display of defiant pride. “When it comes to fighting the Borg, I am one of the most experienced tacticians in Starfleet. Even if the captain does not approve of your plan, he wants you to have the best possible chance of success.”
“Can I let you in on a little secret, Worf?” Dax leaned closer as he looked back. “The way you lifted your chin and looked away just then? That’s one of your tells. Every time you do that, I know you’re hiding something.” The abashed look on Worf’s face—and the speed with which he averted his fuming stare—told Dax she had scored a verbal direct hit. “Why don’t you try telling me what you’re really doing here?”
Worf sighed and set his weapons on the transporter platform behind him. “Captain Picard did ask me to try to change your mind about the attack. He considers it a foolhardy effort.”
“And what do you think of it, Worf?” She tried to look into his eyes, but he turned his head to show her his stern profile.
“What I think is not important,” he said.
“In other words, you agree with me, but you don’t want to dishonor your captain by second-guessing his orders.” His silence told her more than anything he might have said in response. “Let me ask you a question,” she continued. “If we don’t take the offensive in this battle, what are we supposed to do? If Captain Picard objects
to my plan, what’s his?”
The Klingon’s prodigious eyebrows knitted together above the bridge of his nose as he frowned in irritation. “The captain has not yet presented his plan,” he said.
Dax reached out and placed her hand on his arm. “Let me save us both a lot of talking, Worf. I’m sure that if you tried, you could give me a dozen good reasons not to go forward with the attack, and I could give you a dozen good reasons why I should. But in the end, it’ll all come down to one simple fact: This is my command; I call the shots here. Starfleet protocol demands that I show Captain Picard deference because of his seniority, but if push comes to shove, he doesn’t outrank me, Worf. I’m a captain, the same rank as him. This is my ship, and I am taking her, and her crew, into battle. And that’s final.”
He looked at her with both respect and pride. “That is exactly as it should be,” he said. “And I will be proud to serve under your command.”
“That’s kind of you to say, but you’re not coming with us,” Dax said. “The Enterprise needs you more.”
Worf became bellicose. “Do not be foolish, Ezri. You will need every advantage you can get against the Borg.”
“I already have an advantage,” she said with a broad smile. “I’m a Dax, remember?”
A proud gleaming broke through his wall of gloom. “It is at times like this that I see Jadzia in you,” he said. “Are you certain you will not reconsider my petition?”
“Positive,” Dax said.
He stood. “Then I wish you success and glory in the battle to come. Qapla’, Ezri, daughter of Yanas, House of Martok.”
She got up and stood in front of him. “Qapla’, Worf, son of Mogh.” Then she wrapped her arms around his barrel-thick torso and hugged him with all the strength she could muster. He returned her embrace for several seconds, and then they parted.
He picked up his weapons from the platform, climbed the stairs, and stepped onto a transport pad. Turning back, he said, “Victory against these odds will be almost impossible.”
Dax narrowed her eyes. “I wouldn’t say impossible.”
Worf replied, “I meant for the Borg.”
* * *
There were a thousand potential distractions on the bridge of the Enterprise, but every time Captain Picard looked up from the padd in his hands, his eyes found the blackened cavity of his ready room. Engineers and mechanics carried out scorched bulkhead panels and the charred remains of his chair and a crate’s worth of his personal effects, all incinerated.
He fixed his eyes once more on the padd, which felt cold in his palm. Updates from the Aventine confirmed that Captain Dax and her crew would be ready to launch their bold—and possibly suicidal—attack on the Borg within a matter of minutes.
It’s an audacious plan, he admitted to himself. I only wish it didn’t seem so … futile. Perusing its details, he feared all the ways that it could fail. If the Borg adapt to the transphasic torpedo, the Aventine will be an exposed target. Even if the strike teams board the probe, there’s no guarantee they’ll prevail. And those crude weapons are bound to produce friendly-fire casualties. He frowned as he scrolled through a summary of the plan’s later phases. Worst of all, it could backfire beyond our worst nightmares. If the Borg assimilate Captain Hernandez, there’s no telling what kind of evil we might unleash on the galaxy.
A female voice with a vaguely British accent interrupted his pessimistic musings. “Excuse me, Captain.”
He looked up to see Miranda Kadohata, the ship’s second officer, standing in front of him. “Yes, Commander?”
“The final roster of personnel who’ve transferred to the Aventine is ready, sir,” she said. “I routed the report to your command screen.”
He nodded and started calling up the file. “Thank you.” After a few moments, he realized Kadohata was still there, as if she was waiting for something. He looked up at her. “Something else, Commander?”
She raised her eyebrows as she glanced away. The gesture accentuated the normally subtle epicanthic folding around her eyes, emphasizing her mixed European-Asian human ancestry. “Starfleet Command passed along a suggestion from Seven of Nine, but I’m not sure you’d approve of it, sir.”
Her apprehensiveness piqued his curiosity. “Go on.”
“There is one weapon we haven’t considered using on the Borg,” she said, “and maybe we should.”
“And that would be …?”
“A thalaron projector,” Kadohata said. “Like the one Shinzon had aboard the Scimitar.”
Picard recoiled slightly. “A thalaron weapon,” he muttered. “Rebuilding such a device would antagonize every power in the quadrant—an outcome your predecessor died to prevent.”
“I’m aware of that, sir,” Kadohata said. “However, a cascading biogenic pulse powered by thalaron radiation would, in theory, be able to destroy the Borg’s organic components. Without their drones or the organic portions of their ships—”
Picard cut her off with his raised hand. “Point taken, Commander,” he said. Then the port turbolift door opened, and he saw Worf step onto the bridge. “We’ll continue this another time.”
“Aye, sir,” Kadohata said, and she turned and walked back to ops. As Kadohata settled in at her post, Worf offered a discreet nod of greeting to Lieutenant Choudhury at tactical, then sat down in his chair beside the captain.
“I talked to Captain Dax,” Worf said.
“And …?”
“She declined to approve my transfer,” Worf said. “And she is proceeding with the attack.”
Picard breathed a disappointed sigh. “Of course she is.”
“You do not approve of her plan,” Worf said.
“It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove, Mister Worf,” Picard said. “I simply lack Captain Dax’s confidence in her odds of success.”
Worf shifted his posture, straightening his back. “I reviewed her attack profile,” he said. “It is bold, but I believe it has a reasonable chance of securing the Borg probe.”
“Yes, but what then, Number One? Does pitting Captain Hernandez in mortal psychic combat with the Borg Queen strike you as a viable strategy? Or as yet another in a long line of hopeless delaying tactics?”
Undaunted by the captain’s pessimism, Worf replied, “I will not know until I see how the fight ends.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, Mister Worf.” Picard frowned. “Are you certain you tried every argument to dissuade Captain Dax from going forward with this?”
“She did not give me the chance,” Worf said. In a more diplomatic tone, he asked, “May I offer some advice, Captain?”
“By all means, Commander.”
“A lesson I learned while I was married to Jadzia remains just as true today about Ezri: She is a Dax. Sometimes they do not think—they just do.”
16
Ezri Dax took a breath and settled her thoughts. Within moments, she and her ship would plunge headlong into the chaos of battle. She was determined to take one brief moment of quiet before the storm in order to steel herself for whatever followed.
Months earlier, when Captain Dexar and Commander Tovak had been killed, Dax had stepped up to fill the void at the top of the Aventine’s chain of command. That moment had inaugurated her captaincy. The one that was about to unfold—an arguably insane, all-or-nothing assault on which depended the survival of everything she had ever known—would define her captaincy.
On the main viewer, stars stretched past, pulled taut by the photonic distortions of high-warp travel.
She wiped the sweat from her cold palms across her pant legs and set her face in a mask of resolve. It was time.
“Helm,” Dax said, “engage slipstream drive on my mark.”
Erika Hernandez keyed the commands into the conn and answered, “Ready, Captain.”
Dax looked at Bowers. “Sam, tell the transporter rooms and strike teams to stand ready. Tactical, raise shields and arm torpedoes.” She lifted her voice. “Three. Two. One. Mark.”
Hernandez patched in the slipstream drive.
It was like being shot through a cannon of blue and white light or a faster-than-light patch of whitewater rapids. A peculiar, quasi-musical resonance filled the ship, like the long-sustained peal of a great iron bell but without the note that started it ringing. Dax detected no real difference in the sensations vibrating the deck under her feet, but adrenaline and anxiety were enough to crush her back against her chair.
Then the rush of light became the black tableau of space, and at point-blank range in front of the Aventine was the Borg reconnaissance probe. As promised, Hernandez had guided them out of their slipstream jaunt with surgical precision, into a perfect ambush position against the Borg.
Dax sprang to her feet. “Fire!”
“Torpedoes away,” replied tactical officer Kandel.
Three electric-blue streaks arced toward the Borg ship and flared against its shields, and a fourth sailed through with no resistance and hammered the long, dark vessel amidships.
Kandel reported, “Direct hits! Their warp field’s collapsing!”
“Stay with them, helm,” Dax said, before she realized that Hernandez was already compensating for the changes in the Borg ship’s velocity. Not bad for a person who learned to fly starships in a different century, Dax mused.
Hernandez matched the Borg’s course and speed almost perfectly, then said, “We’re at impulse, Captain.”
“Strike teams, go,” Dax said.
Gredenko relayed the order from ops to the Aventine’s twenty transporter sites, which included four upgraded cargo transporters and six emergency-evacuation transporters. More than two hundred Starfleet security personnel were, at that moment, being beamed inside the Borg probe. If the estimate of the ship’s drone complement was accurate, her people could expect to outnumber the enemy by a ratio of four to one.
Dax hoped that it would be enough, because once they were deployed, there would be no reinforcements—and no turning back.
