by David Mack
The vinculum tower loomed ahead of them. Giudice clutched the braking clamp on his pulley and slowed his descent. On either side of him, the rest of his team decelerated. Moments later, their feet made contact with the tower, and they braked to a halt as they bent at the knees to absorb the impact. With practiced ease, they detached their safety lines and dropped down onto the platform in front of its recessed entrance.
Davila nodded at the bulkhead which had sealed the tower’s entrance. “Looks like they were expecting us.”
“I guess we’ll have to knock,” Giudice said. “Cruzen, want to do the honors?”
While her comrades took cover around the corners from the entrance alcove, Cruzen moved forward. The petite, innocent-looking brunette removed her backpack, opened it, and retrieved a peculiar demolition charge. It was a malleable chemical explosive with a binary chemical detonator. Though less powerful than Starfleet’s most advanced photonic charges, it would suffice to open the passage—and it had the advantage of being able to function despite the energy-dampening fields being generated by the Aventine and its strike teams.
Cruzen primed the detonator and fixed the charge in place against the barricade. She made a final tap of adjustment and then sprinted back toward Giudice and the others. “Fire in the hole!”
She ducked around the corner with Giudice half a second before a massive explosion spouted orange fire out of the alcove and rocked the entire Borg probe. The cloud of fire and oily, dark smoke persisted for several seconds. Aftershocks trembled the vinculum tower as the blast effects dissipated.
“Hell of a boom, Cruzen,” Giudice said. “I hope the vinculum’s still in one piece.”
“Should be,” she said. “I used a shaped charge.” She peeked around the corner. “Looks okay from here.”
He heard the heavy percussion of approaching footsteps. “And what about the drones guarding it?”
“They’re fine, too,” she said.
“Great.” He unslung his rifle and thumbed off the safety. In a smooth pivot step, he rounded the corner and fired several controlled bursts directly into the advancing company of Borg. There were so many, in so dense a formation, that he didn’t need to aim. All he had to worry about was running dry on ammo. Glaring left and right at his teammates, he snapped, “What’re you waiting for? Invitations?”
As if suddenly remembering why they’d come, Davila, Regnis, and Cruzen stepped out on either side of Giudice and formed a skirmish line. Davila and Cruzen fired while Giudice reloaded, and Regnis held his fire until he and Giudice could cover for the others. Working together, they cut down rank after rank of drones. For a moment, Giudice almost felt guilty about it, as if he and the others were shooting defenseless foes. Then he remembered what any one of those drones would do if it laid hands on him or any member of his team, and he resumed firing.
Regnis said to Giudice between blazing salvos, “Lieutenant? You know we’re all down to our last two clips, right?”
Giudice shouted back, “Yes, Bryan, I see that.”
“Well, I still see a lot of drones coming, sir.”
“I see that, too, Bryan. Everyone, aim for effect!”
The team’s shots became more precise, but the attacking drones drew inexorably closer. Then, all at once, there seemed to be only a half-dozen of them left standing. Unfortunately, that was when all four of the team’s rifles clicked empty.
The drones prowled forward, pale revenants of malice.
“Crap,” Giudice muttered.
Davila said, “We were close, too.”
“Too bad the Borg don’t give mulligans,” Regnis said.
Reaching toward her belt, Cruzen asked, “Grenades?”
“No,” Giudice said. “It might damage the vinculum.”
The six Borg were only a few meters away. Giudice and his team had retreated to the edge of the platform and had nowhere left to go. Giudice wished he could just shimmy back up the zip line. He glanced upward and had an idea. “Everybody down!”
He used his weapon’s gel-flare attachment to paint all six advancing drones with radiant green splatters, and then he hit the deck beside his team.
Less than two seconds later, an overpowering barrage of sniper fire from the distant sides of the probe tore through the six drones. As Giudice had guessed, sharpshooters from other strike teams had wanted to help him take the vinculum—they just hadn’t been able to identify their targets in the dark.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Giudice said as he and the others stood and eyed the captured vinculum. “Teamwork.”
* * *
Erika Hernandez manned the Aventine’s conn and eyed the black, oblong vessel on the main viewer with dread and enmity.
Her hatred was fueled by what the probe and the other Borg vessels had done at the Azure Nebula. She was beginning to understand the threat that the Borg Collective posed to Earth and its Federation. She could only hope that her wrath would be strong enough to overcome her fear when the time came to add her voice to the Collective’s dissonant chorus, in an effort to bring at least part of it under her control.
At the aft stations of the bridge, Captain Dax and her first officer, Bowers, conferred in muted tones with the Aventine’s science officer, Helkara. They and the other officers on the bridge all presented calm appearances, but there remained a palpable undercurrent of tension. No one wanted to speculate about what might be happening inside the Borg ship. We’re all hoping for the best and expecting the worst.
An alert beeped on the ops console. Ensign Gredenko silenced it with a feather touch and said, “The Borg ship just vented a small amount of plasma.”
Dax and Bowers hurried back to the center of the bridge. “Magnify,” Dax said.
The image on the viewscreen snapped to a close-up view of a small exhaust portal low on the Borg ship’s aft surface. Another brief jet of rapidly dissipating plasma appeared. Moments later, two short plumes occurred in quick succession. “The delay between ventings has been exactly five seconds,” Gredenko reported. The bridge crew watched with anticipation. Then came three rapid spurts of plasma. “Five-second delay,” Gredenko repeated. “Counting down to next venting. Three … two … one.” Right on cue, a series of five fast plasma ejections sprayed from the port. “Fibonacci pattern and timing confirmed.”
“All right,” Bowers said. “Mister Helkara, lower the dampening field. Kandel, keep the shields up and the weapons on standby, just in case it’s a trap.”
Helkara tapped at his console and replied, “Dampening field is down, sir.”
Immediately, Hernandez heard a few lonely Borg voices from aboard the probe. They had been cut off from the roar of the Collective, and they sounded disoriented and afraid. She stole nervous glances at the rest of the bridge crew and quickly realized she was the only one who heard the panicked drones.
“Lieutenant Kedair is hailing us from the Borg ship,” Kandel reported.
“On speakers,” Dax said.
Kandel replied, “Channel open.”
“Lieutenant,” Dax said, speaking up toward the comm, “this is Aventine. Go ahead.”
“The Borg probe is ours, Captain,” Kedair replied. “The vinculum is intact, and we’ve taken it offline while we make our modifications for Captain Hernandez.”
Dax nodded. “Good work. Is it safe for her to beam over?”
“Not yet,” Kedair said. “There are still a few drones kicking around in here, but we have them cornered. Once we finish them off, we’ll be ready to proceed to phase two.”
“Well done,” Dax said. “Keep us posted. Aventine out.”
The channel closed with a barely audible click from the overhead speaker. Hernandez’s thoughts drifted as she tuned out the bridge’s muffled ambience of urgent business. Her mind reached out as if to the Caeliar gestalt, the way it had in Axion when she’d eavesdropped on her captors. Now, however, she was listening to the Borg drones on the probe ship.
A bond was formed, a communion of sorts
… and then she was seeing through the drone’s eyes.
It was wounded and immobilized, lying on a deck inside the Borg ship. To her eyes, the interior of the probe vessel looked more like an automated factory than a starship. A celadon glow suffused its vast, deceptively open-looking architecture.
She felt the drone’s labored breathing, the dull pain throbbing in its abdomen, the quickened beating of its heart. Its thoughts were chaotic and wordless, little more than surges of emotion and confusion. Then it reacted to the presence of Hernandez’s mind with a desperate attempt to merge. It reminded her of the way a hungry infant might reach for its mother.
Its vulnerability and fear took hold of her, and she felt a deep swell of compassion for the mortally wounded drone. Don’t be afraid, she assured the drone, acting on a reflexive desire to provide comfort. The drone relaxed; its pulse slowed. As its breaths became deep and long, it began to feel to Hernandez like a psychic mirror that reflected her will and desires.
Then a pair of Starfleet personnel turned the corner a few meters away. They had weapons braced at their shoulders as they advanced on the fallen drone.
Hernandez lost sight of the difference between herself and the drone. Its fear became hers as it stared into the barrels of two rifles, pointed at its face from point-blank range.
A shocked half-whisper passed her lips, and she felt the drone speaking with her, as if they shared a voice: “No …”
The bond was broken in a crack of gunfire.
Slammed back into the solitude of her own consciousness, Hernandez recoiled with a violent shudder. She gripped the sides of the console to steady herself. Her eyes glistened with tears of anguish and fury, as if she had just witnessed the slaughter of her own flesh and blood. She knew that the Borg were still the enemy of humanity and its allies and that the Collective had to be stopped, but now she was also convinced that there was more to this implacable foe than she had been told—and perhaps more than Starfleet and its allies realized.
A brown hand settled gently on her shoulder. Bowers leaned down and asked quietly, “Are you all right, Captain?”
For a second, she considered telling him about her vision of the drone, but then she thought better of it. These people are terrified of the Borg, she realized. If they think I’m bonding with the enemy or sympathizing with them, there’s no telling what they might do to me.
“I’m fine,” she lied. “Just nerves, I guess.”
Bowers nodded. “It’ll be a while before they’re ready for you on the Borg ship,” he said. “Maybe you should go back to your quarters and rest a bit before we start phase two.”
Hernandez forced herself to muster a grateful smile. “Sounds like a good idea,” she said. She got up and walked to the turbolift as Bowers summoned a relief officer to the conn.
Before she stepped inside the lift, Dax intercepted her. “I just wanted to thank you for all your help today,” Dax said. “I doubt we’d have succeeded without you at the conn.”
“You’re welcome, Captain,” Hernandez said. “Could I ask a favor in return?”
Dax’s eyebrows peaked with curiosity. “Depends. What’d you have in mind?”
“Seeing as you mean for me to pose as the Borg Queen in an hour or two, it would help if I knew as much about the Borg as possible,” Hernandez said. “Can you give me clearance to review all your files about them? Including the classified ones?”
“Consider it done,” Dax said. “But be warned—there’s a lot of it. I doubt you’ll get through it all in an hour.”
Hernandez knew she could absorb the data in minutes, but chose to err on the side of modesty.
“Don’t worry. I’m a fast reader.”
* * *
Lonnoc Kedair’s first order after the Aventine deactivated its dampening field had been to have wounded personnel beamed back to the ship for emergency medical treatment.
Her second order had been to make sure every drone on the probe vessel was “one-hundred-percent dead.”
“As opposed to mostly dead?” T’Prel had inquired with her trademark arid sarcasm. Kedair had responded with a withering glare that made it clear she was in no mood for witty repartee.
She stood in front of the vinculum, which a team from the Enterprise had captured and taken offline. The vertical shaft was capped at its top and bottom by diamond-shaped, emerald-hued polyhedrons. An intricate cage of protective black metal surrounded each major component, and the core shaft was surrounded by several rows of horizontal bands. It vaguely reminded Kedair of a warp core on a Federation starship.
Irregular impacts echoed in the cavernous space outside the vinculum’s tower. Kedair looked down the passage and through the blasted-open entrance to see her people clearing the corpses of Borg drones from the tower by tossing them over the edge of the entrance’s exterior platform, into the belly of the ship, which was a random-looking pit of snaking pipes and jutting machinery.
Kedair fought the urge to contact sickbay on the Aventine and pester Dr. Tarses for an update on the wounded personnel. Just let the medics work, she told herself. She dreaded going back to the ship. Sooner or later, she would have to write and submit her after-action report for this mission, and she was torn over whether to describe her blunder as the result of incompetence or of negligence. All that really mattered to her was that the officers who had obeyed her order to fire not face a court-martial; as far as Kedair was concerned, they were as much victims as the people they’d shot.
“All squad leaders have checked in, Lieutenant,” T’Prel said, interrupting Kedair’s guilty ruminations. “All drones have been neutralized, and all decks have been secured.”
“Good,” Kedair said. She stepped away and tapped her combadge. “Kedair to Aventine. We’re ready for the engineers.”
“Acknowledged,” Commander Bowers replied over the comm. “They’re beaming in now.”
There was a faintly electric tingle in the air before the first sparkle of a transporter beam appeared in the darkness. Then six figures took shape in a flurry of particles and a euphonic wash of sound. The effect brightened the entire vinculum chamber for several seconds. When it faded, Lieutenant Leishman and five of her engineers stood before the mysterious Borg device, holding toolkits and eyeing their surroundings with equal parts apprehension and professional curiosity.
“This ought to be interesting,” Leishman said, gazing at the vinculum. “Assuming Voyager’s technical specs are accurate.”
Unable to stomach Leishman’s good mood, Kedair extinguished it with a glower as she said, “Whatever you’re gonna do, Mikaela, do it fast. It’s time to give the Borg a new queen.”
17
A flash of movement and a snap of jaws, the sting of fangs breaking flesh, a rush of terror—
Deanna Troi awoke with a shudder and pulled her arms up and in, striking a defensive pose. Her hands and feet were stiff and cold, and a tingling of chilled gooseflesh traveled up her legs. Exhaled breaths became white clouds above her. Shaking off her disorientation, she realized she was no longer in her quarters.
The room was narrow, but its ceiling was far above, at a dizzying height. A clamshell-shaped skylight was directly over Troi, who tucked her chin to her chest and examined her own situation. She was lying on a dull metal slab and surrounded by bizarre machines, which pulsed with violet light and whose purposes she couldn’t begin to divine. An especially large and fearsome-looking contraption hovered near the ceiling, above a point several meters past the foot of what Troi surmised was an operating platform. Along the top of one wall, in the only area uncluttered by machines and unobstructed by crisscrosses of drooping cables, was a broad observation window.
Inyx stood behind a transparent barrier to her right. He appeared to be engrossed in a complex task and did not yet seem to be aware that Troi had regained consciousness.
She reached slowly toward her chest and gingerly touched where Ree had bitten her. Searching with her fingertips, she found the rips in her uniform but
no corresponding wounds in her flesh. Though the air in the laboratory felt cold to her, she wasn’t in any real discomfort. Closing her eyes, she focused on the sensations from within her body, in an effort to assess her own condition. No pain, she realized. That’s good … I hope.
Troi opened her eyes to find Inyx looming over her.
“You’re awake,” he said in his mellow baritone. “Good.”
Inyx, like the other Caeliar, projected no emotional aura that Troi’s empathy could detect. If his intentions were sinister or duplicitous, she had no way of knowing beforehand. She propped herself up on her elbows and asked, “Where are we?”
“In my lab,” Inyx said. “It was the only sterile facility in Axion that was properly equipped to assist you.”
She tried to swallow, but her mouth felt too dry. “The last thing I remember, Ree attacked me.”
“A misunderstanding, apparently,” Inyx replied. “He used his species’ natural venom to place you temporarily in a suspended state. It was a crude solution to your dilemma, but it did briefly stave off the immediate crisis.”
Panic quickened her pulse. “Venom?”
“There is no danger, Deanna,” Inyx said. “I’ve purged the toxins from your system and stabilized you—for the moment. I didn’t wish to take any further steps without your informed consent, however. That’s why I’ve revived you.”
Pondering the degree to which Inyx must have examined her to be able to cleanse her system of Pahkwa-thanh venom, Troi surmised that he had likely become privy to all of her extant medical issues. “You know that I’m pregnant … don’t you?”
“Yes, Deanna.”
After days of running from the heartbreaking truth of her situation, confessing it almost felt like a relief. “Do you also know that it’s not going well?”
