STAR TREK: VOY - Homecoming, Book Two - The Farther Shore

by Christie Golden

  She was content to let them think that. She knew why she was staying late.

  Around two a.m., after taking a last scan of the entire building to make sure she was alone, Covington took a deep breath. Excitement and anticipation shivered through her. What she was about to do aroused and excited her more than any clumsy male touch.

  Here was intimacy. Here was connection and power and fulfillment and passion.

  Here was love.

  It was late when Libby finally heard from Fletcher. His face was unreadable and his manner uncharacteristically brusque.

  “I did as you asked, Libby. The decrypted file is now in your computer. Contact me once you’ve read it.” And without another word, his image disappeared.

  [89] Her initial surprise at his rudeness gave way to apprehension. Suddenly Libby didn’t want to read the document she’d breached all kinds of protocol to read. Suddenly she wanted nothing to do with this whole spy business. She wanted to just be what the world thought she was, a concert performer, utterly ignorant of espionage and lies and Borg threats like the rest of the world.

  But she was who she was, and knew what she knew, and it was with trembling hands that she pressed the key and the file sprang to her screen.

  There was a lot of technical jargon that she vaguely grasped. She could reread all that later, after she’d gotten the gist of the file. As her eyes flickered over the words, her breathing became shallower.

  This was horrible. This was beyond imagining.

  The question as to why the Borg virus had remained dormant for so long was an easily answerable one, and she wondered why neither she nor Fletcher had figured it out before now. Or maybe it wasn’t that great of a mystery. Maybe they just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the dreadful truth. In order for the Borg virus to be activated, someone had to issue a specific command. That someone could be none other than the Borg queen.

  The virus was active and had been for several days now. Which led inevitably to the conclusion that somewhere not too far from Earth, the queen lurked.

  But how could this be? Starfleet knew how to find a Borg ship. There was none anywhere in the quadrant that they knew of.

  [90] Libby swallowed and read on. Her stomach churned and suddenly she wished she hadn’t eaten quite so much of her lasagna at lunch.

  Trevor Blake went on at great and monotonous length about theory and execution thereof. She had to rub her eyes and reread a sentence here and there to make sure she understood it. Exciting and fast-paced, Blake’s writing wasn’t. At one point, she saw something and did her usual rub and reread, certain that she’d misinterpreted it. After the third reading, she desperately wished she had misinterpreted it, but was sickly afraid she grasped the meaning all too well.

  Trevor Blake had demonstrated a bit of a sense of humor in selecting the Royal Protocol document as the cover for his treatise on creating a Borg queen. Not only did it serve as a powerful deterrent in case anyone downloaded it—no one in his right mind would voluntarily slog through that mind-numbing document—but there was a second, terrifyingly ironic twist as well.

  It sank in slowly, sickeningly, like the news of the death of a loved one.

  Oh God. Oh God. Oh no.

  Bile rose in her throat. She stumbled toward the kitchen and barely made it to the sink before she threw up, sobbing as she did so. Tears poured down her face in a flood as she sank to the floor, holding herself and shaking. Indigo and Rowena hastened to her, rubbing their furry faces against her bare shins.

  Royal Protocol—this Royal Protocol—had nothing to do with etiquette. It had nothing to do with anything sane.

  [91] “Royal Protocol” was the name of the computer protocol used by the Borg to create a queen. And it was already happening.

  Brenna Covington rose and went to the small sonic shower she’d requested two years ago. She worked so late, she had explained; sometimes a shower revived her. Of course they installed one for her.

  First, she removed her clothes. She took out her special contact lenses, carefully placing them in solution. She didn’t need them to see. Then the blond wig went, draped on its stand. She stepped into the shower and closed her eyes as the sweat, dirt, and makeup almost magically dissolved from her body, leaving her feeling reborn.

  She stepped out of the shower and regarded her perfect body in the mirror. Long, strong legs. A flat abdomen. She touched it briefly, acknowledging what lay within, unseen.

  The scars were all inside. The scars were always, ever, all inside.

  Her gaze traveled up past small but firm breasts, to her eyes. She smiled at her reflection.

  Get a hold of yourself, Elizabeth, Libby thought fiercely. You’re no good to anyone shivering here on the floor. Her limbs felt as if they were made of rubber, but she managed to clamber to her feet. She rinsed her mouth out and splashed her face with cold water, then stumbled like a drunken woman back to the computer.

  Starfleet Intelligence, with Trevor Blake as head [92] researcher, had spent the last several years deciphering this protocol. They had enough information to create a Borg queen, but had, at least at the time this document was written, not yet deciphered the entire protocol. Pieces were missing. There was a queen somewhere with enough power to activate the virus, but she couldn’t yet turn it into the sweeping epidemic that would nearly instantaneously destroy the Earth.

  Not yet. But soon. Trevor Blake felt it would be soon.

  The Borg had many advantages, but one thing they could not escape and that was almost a disadvantage was the nearly flawless logic by which they operated. Organic beings could bluff, go off on tangents, have inspired insights. But the Borg were as ruthless in their functioning and structure as they were in their decimation of worlds. It made a sort of frightening sense, and Libby wondered why no one had figured this out before Blake had.

  Organic beings had created machines. But it was the machines that made organic beings into Borg. Without their technology, the Borg were like an old-fashioned lamp that had been unplugged. Everything the drones did was in response to orders from their queen, her instructions to the hive mind. Damage the queen, and the whole thing fell apart. The queen made drones. How, then, was a queen made?

  She was an organic being who would have to become not just Borg, but almost a super-Borg. She was the complete operating system for the entire mammoth structure. She was more than a single being—she was the program made flesh and machine.

  [93] In one of those odd connections one sometimes makes when under duress, Libby’s mind flashed back to a theater term: deus ex machina. In ancient Greek dramas, occasionally the day was saved by a god from mythology descending onto the stage by means of a mechanical device. It had become a slightly derogatory term in theater and literature, used when an author grafted on a miraculous happy ending when logically there was none to be had.

  She didn’t give a damn right now about poor plotting and cheesy endings in books and holonovels. Her mind seized on the literal translation of the term “deus ex machina” and worried it like a terrier with a rat:

  God from machine.

  Clothing largely disguised the sickly gray pallor of Covington’s skin, except for hands and face. Special makeup designed by the doctor who had operated on her so well these past several years made her skin seem merely porcelain, not bloodless. Eyes that saw better than any human’s met those in the mirror.

  But it was the back of her bald head she loved most. This was what Brian Grady so loved to fondle when they coupled; what drew him and held him fast, like a fly in her mammoth spider’s web.

  No ... a spider wasn’t quite right.

  The Borg had figured out how to create a god from a machine. Take an organic being, make her Borg, and give her access to the Royal Protocol ... and you had a queen. So this was how, when the Enterprise destroyed the Borg cube that had been host to Picard and also presumably [94] the queen, she had come back. This was how the Admiral Janeway of the future had been able to slay the queen, and yet ther
e was one somewhere on Earth right now.

  You couldn’t ever really kill the queen, because the queen wasn’t a person. It—she—was a program.

  It was so simple. So logical. So terrifying.

  For a long moment, Libby’s mind refused to function. It was trying to wrap itself around the almost inconceivable reality that Starfleet Intelligence was well on its way to creating a complete Borg queen who would utterly destroy humanity. Why? It was good to know how the bastards did it, of course, but who the hell would—

  And then she knew.

  Covington went into her office and settled herself at the computer. With the touch of a button, a hidden panel revealed itself. She licked her lips, drawing out the moment of pleasure, and then stepped into the secret alcove. Green light bathed her gray body.

  At once, voices flooded her mind, but she was not overwhelmed. She reached out in joy, touching each mind one with her own, feeling the surge of their responses. Their need and desire for her. Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, as they did every time she connected with them thusly. Their unconditional, unwavering, undying devotion and love flooded her, and she heard and responded with every cell of her body.

  They were hers, better now for being hers than they had been before she had sought them out. And there would be so many more to come, soon, soon. Each one [95] a part of the nearly perfect whole. She loved and would protect and defend them, even as she gave them their orders, even as she instructed some to die in order to preserve the whole. They fed her spirit in a way that no single human ever had. They nourished her as she took care of them. Humans thought it all went one way, but they were wrong. Terribly wrong.

  They were her beloved subjects, her precious drones, and she was their adoring queen.

  Chapter 8

  MONTGOMERY WAS just returning from another meeting with his staff when Kaz stopped him in the hall. Sighing, Montgomery said, “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You want a regeneration chamber for the Borg.”

  Kaz glared at him. “They’re not Borg, and it’s too late for that.”

  Montgomery started so violently he spilled his coffee. “What? Are they—”

  “No, not yet, thank God. I’ve had both of them in my sickbay this morning and their vital signs are showing severe distress. We’ve got to do what we discussed.”

  Montgomery frowned. “I don’t much like that,” he said.

  “I like even less the thought of these two dying on our watch,” said Kaz.

  [97] “You’re absolutely certain?”

  “Stasis has its own risk, especially when the subjects are this weak. I would indeed have to feel this was the only alternative, and I regret to inform you that I’ve reached that point,” Kaz answered.

  “Damn it. I don’t like the idea of them being difficult to question if an emergency arises,” said Montgomery. Kaz said nothing, almost literally biting his tongue to avoid exploding at his commanding officer. Finally Montgomery said, “We can wake them if I need them, right?”

  “As I told you earlier, sir, it’s risky, but if need be, we can revive them, yes.”

  “Very well. You may proceed.”

  Janeway, Data, Chakotay, and Tuvok entered the correctional facility. Janeway felt she was becoming far too familiar with this place. She was getting to know all the security personnel by name. Of course, now every time she met someone, she wondered who was human and who was one of Baines’s decoys.

  “Good morning, Lieutenants,” she said to Andropov and Robinson. She was almost on a first-name basis with Robinson, but Andropov was new. “I think you know who we’re here to see.”

  “Indeed we do,” said Robinson, motioning them to step through. “Good morning, Commander Data. It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”

  “Good morning,” Data replied. “I only regret that our meeting is taking place under such circumstances.” Everyone but he passed through the security systems. Data set off the alarm. Of course, Janeway thought, [98] calming herself. Data was a machine. The bioscanners wouldn’t recognize him as human. Lieutenant Andropov scanned him with the tricorder, after apologizing profusely, then waved him through.

  He touched a pad on his console. “This is Lieutenant Andropov,” he said. “Admiral Janeway and Commanders Data, Chakotay, and Tuvok have arrived to see Seven of Nine, Icheb, and the Doctor.”

  There was a pause. “I’m afraid they’re too late,” came the voice from the other end.

  “What?” cried Janeway. “What do you mean?”

  “Seven of Nine and Icheb are going into stasis. It’s a precautionary measure suggested by Dr. Kaz,” the voice continued.

  “Put me through to Dr. Kaz immediately,” Janeway demanded.

  “Admiral,” said Andropov, “if the doctor is readying stasis fields, then it’s not advisable to—”

  “That is an order, Lieutenant,” snapped Janeway. She felt the blood rise in her cheeks and knew her eyes were probably bright. She only hoped that the lieutenant would take it for anger, not the apprehension she was really feeling.

  “Yes, Admiral, of course,” said Andropov, visibly subdued. “Dr. Kaz, this is Lieutenant Andropov from Admissions. May—”

  “Not now, Lieutenant,” came Kaz’s voice.

  “Dr. Kaz,” said Janeway, “It’s Admiral Janeway. Is there any way we could talk to Seven and Icheb, or are you too far along in the process?”

  There was a pause, then Kaz replied, “If you come up right away you might have a moment or two, but no [99] more. I’d advise haste, Admiral. They won’t be coherent for very long.”

  “You heard the doctor,” Janeway told the two security guards. “Let us through. Now.”

  The four strode briskly along the corridors. To Janeway, the turbolifts seemed unusually slow, but she was certain it was just her anxiety. Human or hologram, Andropov and Robinson had alerted the other guards at each of the three security stations en route to sickbay. They were all prepared to rush them through as quickly as possible, providing of course that all proper security measures were observed. Janeway felt sure they could see the sweat gathering at her hairline each time they stopped, but they made it through without incident. While she was grateful for Baines’s thoroughness in this particular situation, it was alarming how easily the security systems at such a pivotal institution could be breached. Once her promise to Baines had been satisfied, she’d notify Starfleet immediately.

  She always hated deals with the devil.

  The guard posted outside sickbay stepped aside so they could enter. The door hissed open. Kaz turned around to see who his guests were. He looked preoccupied. Seven and Icheb lay on the beds. Icheb had his eyes closed and Seven turned her head with apparent effort to gaze at them with half-lidded eyes.

  “You’re just in time,” Kaz said. He nodded at the guard. “Dismissed, Lieutenant. Thank you.”

  The guard nodded and returned to his post. The minute the doors closed, Kaz let out a huge breath.

  [100] “We did it,” he said.

  Seven swung her legs over the bed and stepped lightly to the floor. Icheb did likewise. There was no hint of grogginess about either of them.

  “You are premature, Doctor,” she said. “We still have to effect our escape.”

  “We got this far, that’s a good sign,” said Kaz. He glanced at his four visitors, then his mouth curved in a wry smile. “So, which of you are the holograms?”

  “We are,” said Chakotay and Tuvok. “Were you able to adjust the system?”

  “Indeed I was,” said Kaz, “though I’m no engineer and I regret to say that it took me a while to figure out how to bypass the alert system. Seven and Icheb were able to double-check it for me when she arrived about a half-hour ago.”

  Of course, Janeway thought. In order for the ruse to work, the holographic emitters placed in every Starfleet medical facility would have to be operating. Otherwise, there’d be no point in having an EMH. However, if they were activated, someone would notice. Kaz had had to figure
out how to activate the emitters without attracting attention.

  “They’re on. You may, uh, transfer your briefcases,” he told “Chakotay” and “Tuvok.”

  They looked at each other, then nodded. With the touch of a button in their briefcase-size portable emitters, they shimmered and reformed as Seven of Nine and Icheb. There was a brief, uncomfortable moment as the real former Borg stared at their doubles.

  “I realize it is unusual to see oneself so [101] realistically portrayed,” said Data, “but we do not have much time.”

  “Data’s right,” said Janeway. “Let’s do this and get the hell out.”

  The holograms of Icheb and Seven walked to their flesh counterparts.

  “Here,” the false Icheb said to the real one, “this button will activate the holographic field. You will look and sound like Commander Chakotay, and if you’re stopped and searched, the briefcase will look as if it just contains ordinary items. They won’t be able to see the controls.”

  “When you are safely away, this button will shut down the field,” said “Seven.” “It will also reveal the controls in the portable emitter, just so you know.”

  “I understand,” said Seven, and then, hesitantly, “Thank you.”

  The hologram smiled at her, then he-she-it lay on one of the beds. The one who looked like Icheb followed suit. The doctor pressed a few buttons, and a stasis field sprang into place around the two of them.

  Data examined the display. “Well done, Doctor. Everything appears to confirm the illusion that Seven of Nine and Icheb are present and in stasis.”

  “Thank you, Commander Data.” Kaz turned to face Janeway. “I’ve done everything I can to play up how ill Seven and Icheb are, which, unfortunately, is not much of an exaggeration. They’ll need several hours of uninterrupted regeneration as soon as possible.”

  Janeway nodded. “I’ll see that they get it, though I’m certain Seven will argue that she’d be more valuable plowing ahead.”