DESCENT

by Diane Carey

  As the Borg stooge approached, Lore shook his head and continued to peer into the corridors.

  “I am concerned about my brother,” he said. “Crosis, I don’t believe he really wants to be part of our great future.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  TROPICAL HEAT burned right through the imaging relays of the forward viewer. Even with the compensators working until they smoked and the screen automatically shading what was out there, the sheer power of a sun at proximity range couldn’t be dampened. The brightness moved and surged with every volcanic heave in the sun’s corona.

  Hiding here in this very hot haven, the Enterprise was a very hot boat.

  Beverly thought she’d pass out if they had to stay here much longer.

  “Hull temperature’s rising,” somebody reported from the starboard side.

  Beside her at the aft station, Barnaby offered yet another of his many grim truths. “Sir, metaphasic shielding is losing integrity.”

  No surprise. Nothing—no trick, science, or sorcery—could allow them to stay here for very long. It was a miracle they’d stayed here this long.

  “Can you stabilize it?” she felt obliged to ask.

  “No,” he said flatly. “We won’t be able to stay in here more than another three or four minutes.”

  “Do we have warp engines yet?”

  “The last estimate was another half hour.”

  Grim silence fell. No options.

  “Sir?” Taitt interrupted. “I have an idea. . . .”

  Beverly stepped toward her and shot her an expression that said “Talk.”

  No, actually, it said “Talk!”

  “I think,” Taitt said, “we could induce a solar fusion eruption that would destroy the Borg ship.”

  Barnaby almost knocked Beverly aside. “What?”

  Nervous, Taitt turned in her chair. “We’d need to direct a highly energetic particle beam onto the sun’s surface. It should disrupt the photosphere and produce a superfluid gas eruption. If we target the right spot, the eruption could envelop the Borg ship.”

  Barnaby’s mouth dropped open. He stared at her and shook his head, then shook it again.

  Beverly watched his reaction and tried to judge it. A crazy idea was worth pursuing under these circumstances, but it was also just plain sensible to watch the reaction of the most qualified person on the bridge.

  She swung to Taitt. “How do you know this’ll work?”

  As soon as the words jumped from her lips, she heard how stupid a question that was. If it didn’t work, so what? Given the circumstances, they were already doomed, so they might as well act crazy.

  After all, they had a whole sun at their fingertips, and even the Borg weren’t as powerful as a torrid, fuming, blistering solar firebox.

  “I did my senior honors thesis on solar dynamics,” Taitt was saying. “I hypothesized that it could work.”

  Beverly just stared at her and blinked the sweat out of her eyes to drain down her temples.

  “Excuse me,” Barnaby said, “but this isn’t the Academy. And a student’s thesis is a long way from a workable plan.”

  Taitt leaned forward to direct a glare at him. “I’ve already configured the tractor emitters to create the particle beam, and I’ve targeted a point on the surface so the eruption will engulf the Borg ship.”

  Her tone said what Beverly had been thinking. Why not? What did they have to lose?

  “If her calculations are off,” Barnaby pressed, “the eruption could engulf us.”

  Taitt eyed him. “Well, I’ll just have to make sure my calculations are accurate.”

  There was a definite combativeness in her voice now that she’d been goaded by the cloying heat and the knowledge that they had to try something or go out and face that Borg ship without warp power to back them up. She could afford to be blunt now. She might as well.

  Beverly straightened her back. “Let’s do it.”

  “Yes, sir!” Taitt replied.

  Apparently Barnaby caught the streak of desperate hope. He plunged for his controls and picked up on what Taitt was doing, enhancing anything she had trouble finding, focusing anything she had trouble focusing upon, plotting distances, measuring solar reactions, gathering the sun’s power to do their bidding once—just once.

  They all knew how tough the Borg ships were. Fire at them, do no damage; be fired upon and lose half your power. Borg ships had attacked the Federation and nearly won, against starship after starship. . . .

  “Come on, come on,” Beverly murmured, staring at the hazy shape of the Borg ship beyond the sun’s blast-lamp brightness on their screens.

  “Working,” Taitt squeaked, but her voice caught in her throat. She was betting not only her career but her life as well. All their lives.

  “Calculations complete,” Barnaby said, “I hope—”

  “Fire,” Beverly told him instantly.

  “Firing!”

  The ship shivered with added effort as energy was stolen from the precious metaphasing and funneled into a beam that pierced the sun’s corona and drilled to its surface, thin as a wagon master’s whip.

  Almost instantly the sun bucked in reaction. The great natural blast furnace kicked outward with an arm of superheated corrosive power. The eruption caught the Borg ship in a giant thermocautery and turned it into so much scoria in a half second.

  Faster than phaser fire. Faster than thought.

  “She did it!” Barnaby choked. “The Borg ship has been destroyed!”

  Shocked at the speed of their trick, Beverly stared at the screen, squinting until her eyes hurt. Was that it? Was it done so quickly?

  How many Borg lives were ended now because of her? Rationally she understood how things had to be, but her instincts pulled at her down. Thousands of lives, even Borg lives, had just been snuffed out on her order.

  Did captains feel this way? Did they hide their distress or was it trained out of them?

  Tears pressed at the back of her eyes. She fought them down. Couldn’t let the crew see. She’d already made a sackful of mistakes—weakness would have to wait its turn.

  To keep control of her expression, she gritted her teeth hard and held her breath for a pulsebeat.

  She suddenly couldn’t wait to hand Picard his damned ship again, run back to sickbay, and spend the rest of her life wondering why anyone would want to be in command and be forced to make these decisions every day.

  “Helm!” she shouted. “Take us back to the planet! Full impulse!”

  Her throat was raw. She felt like the one who had been blowtorched.

  But she’d never again let anyone tell her a sun wasn’t a living thing.

  “The situation is too ugly now. We can no longer hope to maneuver it to our advantage. We can no longer expect to survive. That changes everything. We’ve gone beyond saving our own lives.”

  Jean-Luc Picard paced the cell with burgeoning ire. He felt hot. He’d felt that way for a half hour, if he could still rationally judge the passage of time. He couldn’t get the parching out of his throat, or the sensation of being caught on a turnspit.

  He paced before the forcefield, back and forth until he felt nauseated, letting the active energy lift the hairs on his arms and remind him of the moment’s severities.

  At the side of the cell, Troi sat on the bench where La Forge lay. Picard saw that his words were affecting Geordi, but it was time. All Starfleet personnel knew they might face this moment when it was their turn to throw themselves on the gun.

  La Forge was weak, but paying attention to the captain. His brown face was dusty with fatigue and strain, painted with sweat but resolute.

  Troi was enduring despair in funereal silence.

  “It now becomes our responsibility,” Picard went on, “to stop this cancer here and now, before it advances into Federation territory again. We must stop Lore and Data in any way possible. I want you both to understand that. If there has been any theme to these events, we must comprehend that it has been a
good thing, not a bad one, that the three of us have been captured.”

  He stopped pacing and turned to face them, determined that they shouldn’t miss his meaning. He should have explained all of this to them hours ago.

  Troi was watching him, her eyes dark with grief. La Forge’s face was turned toward him, and he was listening.

  “We might easily have wandered the surface of this planet for days and never discovered Lore’s plot,” Picard went on. “Once the Enterprise set off for Federation space to rouse Starfleet on our behalf, we could have become lost in those valleys and been useless to our fellow soldiers against this cause. But that’s not what happened. Now, though we will very probably die, we will die with our goal clear and with a chance to succeed. We have a chance that other people look back in history and wish someone had possessed—a chance to prevent a holocaust before it begins.”

  He drew a deep breath, squeezed his fists tight, and forced himself to stand very still.

  “Our purpose now is to stop Data and Lore at any cost. Ultimately we will be separated, and those are your standing orders.”

  The cell held his words for a heartbeat, then fell heavily silent.

  “Aye, sir,” La Forge responded. He sounded much too ready to fulfill that order, as though the words were finally a relief for him.

  Troi fixed her eyes on the wall beyond the engineer’s shoulder. “Yes, Captain.”

  “Very well,” Picard droned. “They’re keeping us in this cell for a reason. Eventually they’ll take us out of it. When that happens—”

  The forcefield behind him suddenly intensified, then snapped away.

  He pivoted and stepped back just before Data appeared at the cell entrance pointing a weapon.

  Sudden desire to physically attack the android shot through the captain, just before the pitiful reality hit him: Data could lift all three of them with one hand and throw them against the wall.

  Picard moved between Data and the other two. This time he felt something in his own posture that hadn’t been there before, as though his own words had fallen most heavily upon himself. He had failed until now to be the center of events. No more.

  “You’re killing Geordi,” he said. “He won’t survive another session.”

  Data stopped walking forward and glared at him.

  Perhaps he saw in Picard what Picard had found in himself—the courage to be the one to die first and most horribly on behalf of his crew. If anyone was to be taken this time, it would be Picard.

  He didn’t quite expect to have his wish granted so easily, but Data waved the weapon and said, “I did not come for him. I came for you.”

  Relief washed through the captain’s mind. Whatever happened now, at least he would be at the core of it and possibly be a catalyst in bringing it all to a swift, if not peaceful, end.

  He glanced back at Troi and La Forge.

  The young engineer was sitting up partially, against the stone cell wall, the nano-cortical fibers protruding from his scalp, each fiber catching a beam of the artificial light from the corridor. There was fear in his face for what Picard was about to endure.

  Troi swallowed a few times but said nothing.

  Picard told them with his glance that their new mission was about to begin and that he would be the one to initiate it.

  Follow your orders, he urged them with his eyes, and we will change the future.

  She nodded.

  Message received, obviously. They would both think about it while he was gone, and the necessary courage would rise.

  Without looking back, Picard strode through the cell and let Data reactivate the forcefield. There was a certain elemental victory in striding forward as though he knew where they were going.

  “Do you remember your Starfleet oath, Data?” he asked, keeping his eyes forward.

  “Yes, of course,” Data said.

  “You’re breaching it left, right, and backwards, do you know that?”

  Telltale hesitation broke the android’s stride. “Yes,” Data finally admitted.

  “You’ve perpetrated a dozen acts that are grounds for court-martial,” Picard said smoothly. “However, I understand that you have been under the control of an extraneous force. I’m willing to take that into consideration.”

  “Fine.”

  A quick answer, in an annoyed voice.

  So there was more than just mechanics at work. There were emotions.

  Picard had always suspected that Data was quite capable of emotion, more so perhaps than Data himself realized, without interference from Lore, without the ethical programming or tampering from outside. Any being capable of independent thought would eventually be affected by those thoughts, capable of defining and acting upon complex concepts of right and wrong and all the subjective abstracts in between.

  Picard knew his crew sensed all this in Data, or they could never have worked with him so closely for so long.

  We know you’re in there somewhere, Data, deeper than any program can explain. You always have been.

  “It’s not too late,” Picard ventured as Data led him into the main Borg hall. “If you remove the fibers, Geordi might recover.”

  “That will not be possible,” Data said as he gestured farther into the hall.

  “Why? Because Lore says so?”

  “It is for the greater good.”

  “Good and bad, right and wrong,” Picard said. “Those are functions of your ethical program.”

  “That is correct.”

  The captain stopped and faced him down. “What does your program tell you about what you’re doing to Geordi? About what you and Lore are doing to the Borg?”

  Data didn’t react overtly. He did stop advancing though, and the weapon in his hand wavered. His yellow eyes narrowed as he grappled with the questions.

  “It tells you these things are wrong, doesn’t it, Data? How can actions that are wrong lead to a greater good?”

  Data stepped back, briefly unsteady. “You are attempting to confuse me.”

  “No, Data, you’re not confused. You’re sensing the truth. Your ethical program is fighting the destructive emotions Lore is giving you.”

  Anguish crumpled Data’s face under a burden of effort. The weapon slipped another inch toward the floor.

  One more inch—

  “There you are, Captain.”

  Data’s voice—no, it was Lore’s—trampled over the progress Picard had been making.

  Lore strode into the hall, leading a clutch of his Borg followers. “Thank you for joining us,” Lore said. “You’re going to help me in a most important ceremony.”

  Crosis and the other Borg gathered along the periphery of the hall and took up positions that allowed them to watch in silence whatever they were about to be taught.

  Lore faced Data squarely and raised his voice.

  “It’s time to put your doubts aside, brother. It’s time to close the door on your past and commit yourself to the great work that lies ahead of us. I need to know that I can count on you.”

  He turned again and waved his hand.

  “As proof,” he said, “I want you to kill Captain Picard.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I DON’T THINK we’ll ever see the captain again.”

  Geordi’s words fell hard on Deanna Troi as she tried to keep him from sweating away all the fluids in his body.

  There wasn’t much she could do but try to keep him still.

  She knew he was anxious to jump up and make good on the captain’s last orders—to die as well as they could and to take Data and Lore with them in the name of the Federation.

  “Things may change,” she told him.

  “You’re dreaming,” he said. “You didn’t feel the change in Data. I did. He was ready to do anything Lore told him to do. It just wasn’t my friend Data. If I had to kill the creature calling himself Data today . . . I think I could.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Geordi. That doesn’t sound like you.”

&
nbsp; “It didn’t sound much like Data either, Deanna,” he said. “You heard the captain. He’s right. We have a job to do. We all know what it is; we just don’t have to face it very often. Well, now we’ve gotta face it.”

  She shook her head and frowned. “I’ve never heard you speak this way.”

  “I’m a Starfleet officer, Deanna,” he said. “Never mind the fact that I spend most of my time playing with circuits and conduits. Look at what he did to me. . . . I don’t want this to happen to anybody else. I sure don’t want it to happen to you. I’m willing to do what I have to, just as Captain Picard said.”

  Deanna sighed heavily. “Oh, Geordi . . .”

  She had no idea what to say to him, and she sensed every surge of noble determination inspired in him by the captain’s words, as well as the dismay he was beating down and the plaguing comprehension that the captain had been right—that it was time to kill.

  She thought she might be about to die when her sensations were drowned in a blasting sound and half the corridor fell away outside the cell opening.

  The two of them threw up their hands instinctively as bits of rock struck the forcefield and ignited a lather of sparks.

  Deanna jumped to her feet, but didn’t have time to take so much as a single step before the sound of running boots hammered the corridor. There was nothing for her to use as a weapon, not even a stone to throw—

  Will! And Worf! Outside the cell!

  She rushed to the forcefield, so close that it picked up strands of her long black curls.

  “Where is the captain?” Worf demanded unceremoniously as he worked at the panel outside to deactivate the forcefield.

  “Data took him away,” she said as the field dropped.

  Will Riker rushed to her side, an electrical current of relief and concern running hot between them, and at the last moment he gestured at Geordi, who was struggling to sit up.

  “There’s not much time. Can Geordi walk?”

  “He’ll need help,” Deanna said. She grasped Geordi’s arm, and Will caught him on the other side.

  “There’s an air duct in the corridor that connects to the tunnel underneath the compound,” he instructed. “You take Geordi through that duct, and we’ll look for the captain.”