Resistance

by J. M. Dillard

  Worf studied his expectant crew and considered the situation. “We will discuss this in the captain’s ready room,” he said, indicating for her to head in before him. She smoothly crossed the bridge while Worf moved to speak privately with Ensign Allen. He waited until the doors to the ready room closed behind the counselor before speaking so that he could not be overheard. He wanted to have his discussion with T’Lana before he revealed the nature of his plan.

  • • •

  T’Lana was still standing when Worf entered the ready room. The acting captain walked behind the captain’s desk and gestured for T’Lana to sit first, but she remained on her feet. The situation was too serious for a relaxed discussion, and she expected the encounter to be brief. She felt no small amount of helplessness: the ship was heading for disaster, and she was unable to stop it. No one aboard the Enterprise had taken her advice, and she did not expect this time to be any different. But she felt compelled ethically to try again, to state her position — as forcefully as possible.

  But before she could do so, Commander Worf faced her. His expression and posture were even more fearsome and challenging than usual as he asked, “Before our argument begins, I must have your answer: Why do you dislike Klingons?”

  The question was entirely unexpected. “I neither like nor dislike Klingons,” T’Lana said, “though I find your race to be more emotional and hot tempered than even humans. But your culture shares some values with that of Vulcans: personal honor, for example.”

  “Then is it me that you dislike?”

  T’Lana stiffened. The question might have unnerved someone with less control; certainly, Worf’s eyes were unsettling enough. Despite his defiant demeanor, T’Lana still saw the light of attraction in them.

  And she did not, she told herself firmly, respond to it at all — although his fierce expression and stance reminded her of bold brush paintings she had seen of ancient Vulcan warriors.

  “I see no point in pursuing such a useless topic,” she said. “I urge you to reconsider returning to the Borg vessel. Captain Picard refused to listen to reason — and the away team was either killed or lost. Now he himself has been assimilated by the Borg and will be used to do the one thing he wished to avoid — destroy the Enterprise and harm Starfleet. How many more are you willing to sacrifice, Commander?”

  Beneath his thick, knitted brows, his deep-set eyes were narrowed, his breathing had quickened. One of his hands had unconsciously clenched in a fist. T’Lana looked pointedly at it and said, “You see? If your return had anything to do with logic, you would not be angry at me, Commander. But it has nothing to do with reason and everything to do with emotion. That is why I do not approve of your being in charge of this vessel; you have demonstrated that you let emotion guide you in making the most critical of decisions.” She realized that her pitch had risen slightly, almost as if it contained a trace of heat. Impossible, she told herself. She did not permit herself to indulge in anger. No doubt she was simply reflecting the Klingon’s mannerisms back to him.

  Had the desk not been between them, he would have stepped closer, a mere hand’s breadth from her face. His eyes, his expression betrayed the fact that he knew precisely the incident to which she referred. Even so, he demanded, in a deadly low voice, “What are you speaking of, Counselor? When did I demonstrate such a thing?”

  “When you rescued Jadzia Dax,” she said, un-cowed. “It was a rash, purely emotional act. The spy Lasaran was killed as a result . . . as were countless others, in a pointless war.”

  He recoiled at that. His expression went slack, and his broad, straight shoulders bowed slightly beneath the weight of an invisible, intolerable burden. T’Lana got the impression that he would have liked to sit down, but he was far too proud. He lifted his chin. “That is not common knowledge. The incident with Lasaran was classified. How is it that you learned of it?”

  “I served as counselor,” she said, “on the Starship Indefatigable. Karina Wozniak was my captain. We were on an errand of mercy on the outskirts of the Dominion War zone when we were attacked by the Jem’Hadar. Captain Wozniak and most of the bridge crew were killed in that attack.” She paused. “Later I served as a diplomatic liaison to the Romulans. I worked for Starfleet Intelligence and, as a result, learned the details of Lasaran’s murder.”

  “So this is why . . .” Worf began, then trailed off; he seemed to look past her, at a distant memory, then collected himself with singular dignity. “I agree, it was a poor decision, one that I have regretted each day since. I am sorry for the death of your captain and your crewmates. If it were possible, I would change the past. But I cannot. I want you to know that . . . I have refused a promotion to become the permanent first officer of the Enterprise — for the very reason you mention. I do not feel worthy of command. I asked Captain Picard to find a more appropriate replacement. In the meantime, I command this vessel, and I will decide the best course of action.”

  His words were uttered with perfect sincerity; humans would have said, He has spoken from the heart. This was not the hot-headed Klingon she had judged him to be. T’Lana looked on him and felt some of her resistance toward him melt away. “And you feel the best possible decision is to violate the order of your captain? I urge you: take the ship to safety and alert Starfleet. Await the arrival of Seven of Nine, who is now best qualified to find a solution.”

  Worf studied her a long moment, then said, “I have heard of the incredible loyalty of Vulcans to their commanding officers. Is this true?”

  The image of Wozniak’s charred features flashed in her mind as she answered, calmly, “It is.”

  “Your Captain Wozniak . . . were you with her during the attack?”

  “We were both on the bridge.”

  Worf gave a slight, respectful nod, as if acknowledging the horrific memory. “Were you . . . able to help her?”

  “She could not be helped,” T’Lana answered, her voice tight, controlled. She had worked through the memory many times, she reminded herself; it no longer troubled her. The past was simply the past. Wozniak was gone and no longer suffered. “I could not tell whether she was alive or dead. Her injuries were too grievous. She certainly would not have survived being taken to sickbay.”

  “But you would have saved her life if you had been able.”

  “Of course.”

  “Does logic always override loyalty?”

  T’Lana did not answer immediately, and the Klingon took advantage of her silence.

  “You were loyal to your captain,” Worf said. “That is something I respect. And I am loyal to mine — even though I am refusing to obey his last command to me. I will not leave and allow him to cause irreparable harm to Starfleet. He has suffered this dishonor once before. I will accomplish his goal: to stop the Borg.” He paused. “In order to achieve what is best for the captain, and for the crew, I must disobey him. But emotion does not always have to be separate from logic. Ensign Allen is, right now, contacting Admiral Janeway so I may discuss the situation. If we fail, Starfleet needs to be prepared. At the same time, I need her permission for something as well. However, I should warn you that if she does not grant me that permission, we will be going back anyway. Because if we do not stop the Borg here and now, millions will die.” A faint ripple of emotion — grief? T’Lana wondered — crossed his features. “Do you understand, Counselor? We have the opportunity to save millions. If this crew must die in order to do so, then we will do so willingly.

  “I do this for the good of the many, not for the few or the one,” Worf continued, with unaffected eloquence. “Is that not logical?”

  T’Lana stared at him a long moment. She thought she had understood the Klingon; now she saw that her opinion of him had been one-sided and simplistic. She had failed to realize the depth of his intelligence or his wisdom. She opened her mouth to say, Perhaps it is. But a voice filtering through the ready room interrupted her.

  “Crusher to Worf . . .”

  Worf answered the signal. “One
moment, Doctor.” He glanced down at T’Lana. His defensiveness was entirely gone. His manner was solicitous, even gentle. “Did you have anything further to say, Counselor?”

  She shook her head and answered just as gently, “No, sir.”

  “Dismissed.”

  • • •

  Worf sat heavily at the captain’s ready room desk. Confessing his feelings had been painful, but he felt that T’Lana had deserved the truth. He admired her for confronting him — he had expected no less of her — and for stating her opinion forcefully. She was very different from any other Vulcan he had met.

  After he had explained his reasoning, he could not read her expression — it was too subtle for human, much less Klingon, eyes — but she seemed to have finally understood his decision.

  At any rate, there was no time to argue with her any further on the subject.

  He addressed the invisible Beverly Crusher. “Yes, Doctor?”

  Her voice was filled with the exhilaration of discovery. “Worf, remember you said that I should ask for whatever I needed to complete my research on the Borg?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Well,” the doctor said exultantly, “I need you.”

  Worf frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “I mentioned the feminizing hormone that can transform a Borg drone into a queen . . . The human analogue would be estrogen. It’s so simple, I should have seen it immediately — the antidote is an androgenic compound.”

  “A what compound?” The term sounded vaguely familiar, but he could not place it.

  “Androgenic. Androgen is the human male hormone. Klingon males have a very similar one that produces masculine sexual characteristics; in fact, they have the most potent form around. If I could have a blood sample from you, I know I could develop something fast acting that would neutralize the queen immediately.”

  Worf hesitated. In the interest of saving time, it was simplest to kill the Borg queen with conventional weapons. But he also realized the value of science. The more they could learn about the enemy, the better they would be able to defeat them.

  “How soon do you need the sample?” he asked the doctor.

  “Now, if I’m to have any chance of developing something by the time we reach the Borg ship again.”

  “I will come to sickbay momentarily,” he said as he cut the connection.

  A moment later, Ensign Allen’s voice broke in. “Commander Worf, I have the admiral.”

  “Patch her through,” Worf said as he sat behind the captain’s desk.

  He turned the screen to face him as the Starfleet insignia was replaced with the face of Admiral Janeway. Worf had never met the woman, but even on the small screen she appeared to be a formidable presence. She seemed particularly tense at the moment, in fact. Worf suspected that he knew why.

  Not one for simple pleasantries, she got right down to business. “I have recently received a communiqué from Seven of Nine, Commander Worf. She reports that her long-range scans do not show the Enterprise at the rendezvous coordinates. I assume you have an explanation for that as well as for why your captain is not the one speaking with me now?”

  “Yes, Admiral,” he said stoically.

  “And the reason?” she asked.

  “We have engaged the Borg.”

  11

  Sara Nave sat in silence in the conference lounge along with T’Lana and Lieutenant Nelson from engineering. It was an odd trio, to say the least. Nave had known Nelson only in passing; the few conversations they had were centered around warp core specifications. She always found the information enlightening but not exactly interesting. T’Lana, meanwhile, had already proved to be a hard nut to crack, and Nave wasn’t ready for another go-round. It was easier just to sit silently and wait for Commander Worf than try to bother coming up with any topics for discussion. Regretfully, that left her with her own dark thoughts.

  Nave’s heart was in a very strange place. After she had heard Lio’s dying screams, she had alternated between excruciating grief and numbness. Now she was in limbo, wanting to mourn, to cry, but she couldn’t. Because now she had hope of rescuing Lio, and now her mind was busy churning out a hundred different scenarios of how she would find Lio on the Borg ship, how she would feel when she saw him, how she would ultimately save him.

  Intruding on all this was the single sinister thought: Was it possible that the Borg had simply killed him?

  No. No. The Borg would have sent him back, like the others. Once they had finished using him for his comlink connection with the ship, they would have identified him as the leader of the away team and assimilated him for his tactical knowledge. What would be bad for the Enterprise meant hope for Nave.

  So she was forced to hope that the Borg transformed him — the last thing he would have wanted. Since she had transferred to the Enterprise, she had occasionally overheard a senior officer making a comment about Captain Picard’s time as Locutus, about how horrifying it had been for him and for the crew. About the sense of violation the captain must have felt.

  Am I being selfish, wishing the same for Lio, just so that I can bring him back?

  Anxiety clutched her midsection, made it difficult for her to draw in a deep breath.

  Behind her, the conference room doors opened. She did not turn; she knew from the sound of his step that Commander Worf had returned from sickbay.

  Immediately, she straightened in her chair and forced her dazed, grief-exhausted mind to still. You need to remember only one thing: you’re going to the Borg ship. No matter what happens to Lio, you’ll have the chance to avenge him and your friends. And you’ll have the satisfaction of helping to stop the Borg.

  She did not allow herself to consider for one second the possibility of failure.

  She glanced up as Commander Worf took a seat at the head of the table: the captain’s chair. Nave was surprised by how much she thought it suited him and worried that she was betraying Captain Picard in the process. Nave saw Worf and the counselor exchange quick looks. Apparently they had agreed to a truce: Worf’s expression was determined; T’Lana’s was of course more difficult to interpret, though it was definitely not unkind.

  Despite her emotional turmoil, Nave was curious. After Commander Worf had ordered T’Lana to the ready room, the Vulcan had emerged first. Although she revealed no emotion, tension enveloped her like a cloud. But the counselor had remained on the bridge and sat quietly, as if nothing had happened. Worf had emerged a few minutes later and said he was going to sickbay, while T’Lana had remained maddeningly unreadable. Nave was not even sure she liked the woman.

  But the larger question still hung in the air. What had he discussed with Admiral Janeway?

  At that point, she banished all personal thoughts. Worf was ready to start the oddly attended briefing. She hoped she would find out the answers soon enough.

  “As you all know, we will be heading back to the Borg cube,” Worf said. “I have spoken with Admiral Janeway and, though she is displeased at how the situation has evolved, she agrees with my plan.”

  “Plan, sir?” Nave asked, realizing she was jumping the gun. She was just too afraid that whatever the commander was now planning would leave her out of the mix.

  Worf had obviously guessed her concern. “You will have the chance to avenge the losses of your crewmates, Lieutenant,” he assured her. “But we need to be cautious about this. We need to do it in a way that Captain Picard would never suspect.”

  “Surely the captain would never expect that you would disobey his orders in the first place,” T’Lana said.

  Worf paused for a moment. A rare smile played on his lips. “You are still new to this crew, Counselor. I assure you, the captain knows we’re coming. We just need to make sure that he cannot see us returning.”

  Nave thought she knew what the commander was implying, but it was impossible. At the same time, it was a course of action the captain certainly would not anticipate. “Are you suggesting that we’ll be . . . cloaked, sir?”


  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  Nave nearly laughed when she saw the questioning look on T’Lana’s face. Surely the Vulcan wouldn’t know how to process this information. It was clearly against the terms of the Treaty of Algeron for the Federation to possess a cloaking device, unless in a situation specially sanctioned by the Romulans. Honestly, Nave was a little confused herself. Where would they obtain a cloaking device in time?

  Even taking Worf’s communication with Admiral Janeway into account, there was no way she could have gotten through all the red tape to get permission from the Romulans already. In spite of the threat of another Borg incursion, bureaucrats simply did not move that quickly.

  T’Lana was the first to speak. “The Defiant is the only Federation starship equipped with cloaking technology.”

  “That is not entirely correct,” Worf said, evoking a look of shock from Nave and one of utter curiosity from T’Lana. Nelson alone looked as though he knew what the commander was talking about. Worf nodded to the lieutenant to explain.

  “The Federation has been studying cloaking technology for over a century,” he explained. “While the treaty forbids us to use the technology on our ships, it doesn’t mean we can’t possess it.”

  “That interpretation is a matter of semantics,” T’Lana reasoned. “One that the Romulans would surely take issue with.”

  “True,” Worf said. “But considering the recent coup in the Romulan Senate, combined with their unwarranted attack on the Federation — namely this ship — the Federation is taking a new look at their relationship with the Empire.”

  “Surely, the treaty has not been rescinded,” T’Lana said.

  “As far as Admiral Janeway is concerned,” Worf said, “it is for the time being.” He turned to Nelson. “Lieutenant.”

  “Cloaking technology has been encrypted in all starships’ computers constructed within the past decade,” Nelson explained. “The thought being that the technology should be available in cases of extreme need. The encryption does requires an admiral’s access codes.”