DESCENT

by Diane Carey

  Blinking to clear his vision, Riker stumbled forward and tried to see across the rugged landscape. Yes, a compound of some sort. Not a converted ruin, but some sort of modern fortress, probably native to the planet and taken over by the Borg.

  His heart pounded at the sight of it. If only the Enterprise were here, they could beam into that thing in five seconds and scan for the captain and the others. They could take their people back and gain control over what was happening here.

  He wanted some control, any control, so much he could taste it in the dust between his teeth. Why hadn’t he beamed up to the Enterprise when he had a chance? Maybe he’d made the wrong decision. Instead, he had to have his hands on the planet, had to be close to what was happening. If he’d had his head about him, he could’ve had a starship to wield at these beings. A Federation starship, with sensors and weapons and unthinkable power.

  But here he was, armed only with a phaser and a Klingon.

  He was about to sigh, when suddenly the air got caught in his throat.

  Voices! More footsteps.

  He and Worf grabbed for each other, and together they ran across the crest of the hill toward the only trees and brush that would cover them. For a planet covered with plant life, there wasn’t much being provided when they needed it.

  Riker tried to push through the weeds and branches, wincing every time a twig snapped, when abruptly he slammed into a plastic figure that didn’t give so much as a quarter inch when he hit it.

  He stumbled backward, bumped into Worf . . .

  And they both stood staring, for that was all they could do. Stare, and appreciate the demonic symmetry of the three Borg holding weapons trained on them.

  Will Riker held very still and watched the three inhuman beings who had so neatly taken them. They held still, and watched him back.

  Well, this was one way to engage the enemy. At least whatever happened next would be a step toward answering the dozen questions he’d been saving up.

  Something told him this could work in their favor. Didn’t make any sense, but at least the situation was advancing.

  That’s crazy, he thought. Am I that frustrated with not knowing what happened to the captain? If they don’t kill us here and now . . . maybe I’m not so crazy.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “Talk to us.”

  The Borg held their silence.

  He tried again. “Is one of you in command?”

  He glanced at Worf and at the last second avoided asking the Borg to take him to their leader. If the situation hadn’t been so damned serious, it might’ve been almost that trite. Human meets alien. Now what? Would their search begin here, or end here? The Borg hadn’t fired yet. That gave him a chance.

  Riker stared at the beings that had the drop on him and Worf, and made a decision to control the moment. If it was the last thing he did, he would force them to make the next move.

  The Cell

  “Are you actually getting emotions from Data?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do you sense that he’s really having the emotions, not just being forced to say he is, or being controlled remotely in such a way that there is no Data?”

  Picard swung around from his thoughtful pacing and glared down at Deanna Troi. “Your empathic abilities are more than just a convenient trait now, Counselor,” he said. “They are crucial tools, and very possibly the only weapon we have. I want you to tell me exactly what you have picked up from Commander Data. Is he actually experiencing emotion?”

  She hesitated, then said, “He is definitely feeling these emotions for himself, sir.”

  She had a hard time putting her finger on what she had felt, and Picard had a hard time giving her a few seconds to gather the perceptions.

  After a moment she said, “He also experiences a perverted joy at having these feelings. It’s intoxicating for him, but he’s not feeling a range of emotion.”

  “Explain that.”

  “Anger comes and anger goes for him. So do jealousy and hatred, but when they go, they aren’t replaced by anything. There’s no ebb and flow, as there would be with you and me. For us, anger fades and we begin to reason through it. Data doesn’t have that ability.”

  “But he is having the feelings?”

  “Oh, yes. No outside source is providing artificial reaction, if that’s what you mean.”

  In a little show of victory, however premature, Picard snapped his fingers. “Then we stand a chance of triggering other emotions. Or getting through to him with influences of our own. Activating memories or other feelings that he holds in his repository of behavior patterns. All right,” he said, turning to her again. “I’m going to issue orders.”

  Troi stood up, plainly confused about what orders he could possibly give her, locked up here in a stone cell.

  “Any chance you get,” he said, “work on Data. Perhaps we can make something click· Some arrangement of words, some memory. We must talk to him as much as we can. But be sure you say nothing about the location of the Enterprise or any of our away teams.” He paced away until he could feel the forcefield again. “I hope La Forge thinks of that. . . . I’m sure he’ll talk to Data as much as he can.”

  “If any of us has a chance of breaking through,” she said, “Geordi does.”

  “Yes,” Picard murmured. “With every pulsebeat, this situation becomes more grave. The Borg under Lore’s control are even more dangerous than they were before, because their mechanical predictability is gone. Data possesses volumes of information about Starfleet and the Federation. If Lore gains access to that information . . .”

  Troi shuddered. “Don’t even think it.”

  “We must think it, Counselor. And there’s something to be said for Data. Something inside him is obviously holding back, since Lore doesn’t seem to have that information yet. Assuming Beverly made it back to the Federation, as ordered, the Fleet should be arriving soon.”

  He stepped away from the cell opening, moved closer to her, and lowered his voice.

  “Counselor, if the opportunity arises, I intend to put myself between Lore and the Federation.”

  Her ivory brow puckered. “You mean sacrifice yourself? Captain, I—”

  “To stop Data and Lore, yes, I will. That is my responsibility, Counselor. In case I do not survive, I’m going to leave you with this: my recommendation that this planet be wiped clean. We dare not allow any of these Borg, or even Commander Data, to survive as they are. We would be sacrificing our entire civilization.”

  Troi was troubled; her face reflected the distasteful concept. She seemed ready to disagree. “Are you recommending an armed assault?”

  “No,” he told her. His attempt to get through to her was so strong that his voice scraped in his throat. “I am recommending planetwide sterilization. These Borg intend to destroy the Federation. This might be our only chance to stop them.”

  Stone walls, stone ceiling. A sense of walking backward into time, into the jaw of the mountain.

  The passage was rock-lined, but it had obviously been cut by machines. How long ago? Riker couldn’t tell. There wasn’t enough light here even for a visual assessment. The floor was dry. Cargo containers of various types lined the walls, so there was some kind of survival project going on here. The air wasn’t heavy, didn’t smell of anything that would offer a clue.

  Well, he’d given these Borg the chance to make the next move, and this was it. Herding him and Worf through some kind of mountainside tunnel or mine, and now into a chamber where several more Borg stood in silence and regarded the two captives with . . .

  No, not the expected Borg impassivity, but open curiosity and individual concern.

  Concern? Riker blinked to get the rest of the sand out of his eyes. Maybe he just wasn’t seeing right yet.

  When he stopped blinking, a figure had stepped out from behind the group of Borg to his left. Another Borg.

  With sudden lack of prudence, Riker stepped forward, right through what he was s
ure was just his wild imagination.

  “Hugh?” he gasped.

  “What are you doing here, Commander Riker?” the familiar Borg asked.

  Riker held his breath. He wasn’t imagining it. Hugh was here!

  When he didn’t answer soon enough, Hugh spoke again. “Hasn’t the crew of the Enterprise caused enough damage already?”

  Riker and Worf both stared again, but this time the fear had fallen away and they felt only astonishment.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Riker demanded.

  “Please,” Hugh said firmly. “The walls here are old and brittle. Come with us.” He stepped away and ducked through a crude passage.

  Riker glanced at Worf, then nodded.

  The Klingon went first, and Riker followed. Other Borg came after him, but none of them held weapons now.

  Hugh was waiting for them in a shallow chamber about a fifth of a kilometer deeper into the mountain. He kept his voice down, and it was strange indeed to hear a Borg lowering his voice, concerned about secrecy, about his safety and the safety of his confederates.

  “We live here,” Hugh said. “I and several other Borg who broke away from the collective. And from Lore. When I returned from your ship with the individuality you gave me, I found it difficult to live among the collective, to have so many voices in my head again when I had heard the one voice of my own mind. I thought I would lose myself in them.”

  He paused, and his expression conveyed how important his individuality had become to him. He looked human, even in that awful mechanical Borg body armor. He looked like something trapped.

  “My presence began to have an effect on other Borg. They came to see that they too could shut out the voices and listen to their own thoughts.”

  “Considering how Borg ships are organized,” Riker said, keeping his tone sympathetic, “that must have been disruptive.”

  Hugh nodded. “Collective decisions became impossible. Tasks went undone. Soon our ship was virtually adrift. I came to believe that having a singular mind was nothing but poison for us. Having to think for ourselves was too painful. We had too much of this danger called individuality.” He looked up at Riker. “It is a burden.”

  “Yes, it is,” Riker said. “But it’s also a gift, Hugh.”

  “For us,” Hugh snapped back, “your gift brought nothing but pain, Commander.”

  Worf pushed between them. “You blame us for what has happened to the Borg?”

  Hugh’s words were scorched with anger as he glared into the Klingon’s eyes. “You gave me a sense of individuality and sent me back to the collective. You must have known my experiences would be passed on to others.”

  “We considered it,” Riker admitted. “We knew it was a possibility.”

  “Then you made it possible for Lore to dominate us!”

  “I do not accept that,” Worf insisted. “Lore is only one being. The Borg could have stopped him.”

  “You don’t know the condition we were in when he found us,” Hugh spat back.

  A gritty silence fell for a few seconds, and Hugh was clearly fighting for control. He had once been almost a machine, and now he was almost human, and neither, apparently, had been sufficient.

  “Before my experience on the Enterprise,” he said quietly, “the Borg were a single-minded collective. The voices in our heads were smooth and flowing. But after I returned, the voices began to change. They became uneven . . . discordant. For the first time, individual Borg had differing ideas about how to proceed. We couldn’t function. Some Borg fought each other. Others simply shut themselves down.” He paused and looked away. “Some starved to death.”

  Riker battled down a wince. “And then Lore came along?”

  Humiliation brought a tinge of bronze color to Hugh’s pasty complexion, and he looked up sharply. “You probably can’t imagine what it is like to be so lost and frightened that any voice which promises a change will be heard.”

  “Even if that voice says he must control you?” Worf deplored.

  “That’s what we wanted!” Hugh said. “Someone who could show us a way out of confusion. Lore promised clarity and purpose. It was . . . irresistible.”

  The shame turned his tone to gravel and put weakness in his eyes.

  Worf inhaled to say something, but Riker managed a flicker in his eyes that kept the Klingon from speaking up. Hugh was moving away from them, deeper into the cavern.

  Complacently they followed him, and they did him the simple favor of listening.

  “In the beginning,” he said, “Lore seemed like a savior. The goal of becoming a superior race, of becoming fully artificial—it was exhilarating! He established order. A way out of the chaos I had brought to my people. We gladly did everything he asked of us. He told us to seize this planet, and we did. Then he sent us out into space to gather our fellow Borg, and we brought them here so they could share in the future he offered us.”

  Riker ducked a low-hanging rock. “A future in which the Borg will become fully artificial, like Lore?”

  “Yes,” Hugh told him, and there was a twinge of distaste in the answer. “Constructing a prosthetic arm, even an eye, is a simple matter. Preserving a person’s consciousness in an artificial brain—that is not an easy thing. But Lore had made a promise, and he knew that for the Borg to believe in him, he would have to keep it. So he began to conduct experiments. And before we realized it, this was the result.”

  He drew them on through another passage to a smaller chamber, where two Borg were sitting with their backs against the rock wall.

  At first there didn’t seem to be anything different about them, except that they were sitting somewhat casually. As Riker approached, though, he saw that what looked like casualness was really lack of control.

  The two Borg were misshapen, twisted, as if by nerve damage. One of them was being racked by small tremors. Barely able to hold himself against the wall, he was slipping to one side. The other was missing an arm and seemed unable to concentrate or focus his vision in the one eye he had left.

  Hugh stepped closer to them and straightened the one who was slipping sideways. “There you are, Trossin.”

  The crippled Borg nodded, even smiled at the small kindness.

  Riker thought his chest was going to collapse from the weight of what he saw, what had happened to an entire civilization—albeit an enemy civilization.

  Hugh stood up again and faced him. “Lore told us that a few would have to be sacrificed for the good of the many. The others treated them as if they were dead. Someone took Trossin’s eye, Kalin’s arm. That has always been the Borg way, so my people accept it. I do not. I saw that they could not survive long, and I brought them here.”

  He stepped away, and stood between Riker and Worf.

  “This,” he said, “is the result of my encounter with the Enterprise, Commander. So you can see why I don’t particularly welcome your arrival here.”

  Riker gazed heavily around the cavern, at the ragged little band of Borg Robin Hoods, hiding in the rocks and hoping somehow to make a difference against a force so much bigger than themselves. He wasn’t quite ready to accept the blame hook, line, and sinker, but he understood why Hugh felt as he did. Under these circumstances, Hugh certainly couldn’t be expected to appreciate being able to feel anything at all. A vicious circle.

  “You didn’t buy into Lore’s plan,” Riker said. “You realized what he’s doing is wrong, and you’re trying to do something about it. Maybe that’s also because of your experience with us.”

  Hugh’s gray face turned thoughtful. Even through his acrimony he was trying hard not to miss something important. The weight of blame was on him, too, and he was willing to take his share of the responsibility. His conflicting feelings were still new to him, still wild horses on long lines, and he was still working to know which ones to trust.

  He sighed. It was almost a shudder. “That may be,” he admitted, “but forgive me if I don’t feel like thanking you.”

  Pa
using to form his thoughts carefully, realizing they had a whole new segment of a society to which they could extend diplomacy, even friendship, Riker hesitated for a few seconds.

  “Hugh,” he said finally, “I’m not asking you to be our friend, but maybe we can help each other. Starfleet ships should be heading this way in a couple of days, and we still have some crew on the planet. Help us rescue the captain and his team, and we’ll help you fight Lore.”

  Hugh shook his head abruptly. “It’s a bad bargain, Commander. Lore’s gunships will destroy your vessels, and a handful of your crew will be no match for the Borg.”

  “What’s the alternative?” Riker pressed. “To sit here in a cave and hope others will defect and join you?”

  “Others will join us. Many are disenchanted with Lore, but they’re afraid to speak out.”

  Riker bit his lip and kept himself from rattling off the episodes through history when one small band of ragtag fighters had beaten back an impossible tide. He didn’t have time to sing all the rebel songs or tell Hugh all the tales of valor that every human child got to hear. Hugh plainly understood that there was a future for the Borg as individuals; he just didn’t have a clue as to how to get there.

  Riker realized there was nothing else he could say. “We came here to get our people. I don’t want to cause you any more trouble. . . .”

  He gestured at Worf, and the two turned to leave.

  From behind him, Hugh’s voice came. “Tell me . . . about my friend.”

  Riker turned to look at Hugh. “Friend?” he said.

  “The human called Geordi.”

  “I wish I could tell you,” Riker said. “We think he’s being held inside the compound.”

  Hugh’s expression changed to one of concern. He glanced around the cavern at the Borg who were hiding. “I cannot help you,” he said uncertainly. “I cannot risk our being discovered.”

  “Okay,” Riker offered. “Don’t help us. But will you at least show us how you get in and out of that compound?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Cell