by David Mack
On Bacco’s order, most of the Federation Council had been ferried offworld, along with the majority of her cabinet, as part of the official continuity-of-government plan. Scattered to dozens of remote sites throughout—and, in a few cases, just beyond—Federation territory, dozens of elected and appointed officials awaited the final signal from Earth that would begin the process of presidential and legislative succession.
The interoffice comm on her desk buzzed. Bacco sighed, plodded back to the desk, and opened the channel with a poke of her index finger. “What is it, Sivak?”
“Admiral Akaar and Ms. Piñiero are here, Madam President,” replied her elderly Vulcan executive assistant. “They insist on presenting your midnight briefing.”
“Fine,” Bacco said. “It might be the last one they ever make, so we might as well get it over with. Show them in.”
She jabbed at the switch and closed the comm. A moment later, the east door of her office slid open. Agent Wexler stepped in ahead of Fleet Admiral Akaar and Esperanza Piñiero, and the door closed behind them.
“Computer,” Bacco said. “Lights, one-third.” The recessed light fixtures in the room slowly brightened to a lower-than-normal level, allowing her to see her guests with a bit more clarity and without having to squint like a blind woman.
As soon as her eyes adjusted, she got a good look at Akaar and couldn’t suppress a resentful frown. She gestured at his crisp, perfect-looking uniform and salon-perfect mane of pale gray hair. “How do you do it?”
“Madam President?”
“You’ve been awake the past two days, just like the rest of us,” Bacco said. She nodded at Piñiero. “But Esperanza and I look like we’ve been chasing a fart through a bag of nails, and you look like you just stepped out of a replicator. What gives?”
Akaar shrugged. “Good genes?”
“You’re not endearing yourself to me, Leonard.”
“My apologies, Madam President.”
Circling behind her desk, Bacco replied, “Bring me some good news, and maybe we’ll call it even.”
“We have some,” he said, “but not much. Thirty-six minutes ago, the Imperial Romulan warbird Verithrax sacrificed itself to halt the Borg attack on Ardana. Casualties on the surface are still disastrously high, but if not for the heroism of the Verithrax’s crew, our losses there would have been total.”
“Which Romulan fleet was the Verithrax loyal to?”
“Donatra’s,” Piñiero said.
Bacco nodded, as if it were all perfectly normal, but she knew that it was nothing shy of extraordinary. If the Federation and the Imperial Romulan State both survived this war with the Borg, there would be no denying that Donatra and those loyal to her had committed fully to an alliance, in both word and deed. “Has there been any reaction from the Romulan Star Empire?”
“No,” Piñiero said. “Praetor Tal’Aura probably hasn’t heard the news yet. For that matter, Donatra might not even know.”
“Then make sure we’re the ones who tell her,” Bacco said. “Send an official expression of gratitude on behalf of myself and the Federation to Empress Donatra.”
Piñiero nodded and made a note on a small data padd she kept handy in her jacket pocket.
Looking back at Akaar, Bacco asked, “Anything else?”
He blinked once, slowly, and cocked his head at a slight angle. “We have received a credible if not entirely corroborated report that the planet Troyius was spared from a Borg attack, thanks to an intervention by the Corps of Engineers.”
Bacco’s eyes widened; her curiosity was piqued. “How?”
“According to preliminary reports,” Akaar said, “the U.S.S. da Vinci made the planet disappear.”
“Forgive me for repeating myself,” Bacco said. “How?”
A perplexed glance was volleyed between Akaar and Piñiero, and then Bacco’s chief of staff replied, “No one knows, ma’am. But as soon as Captain Gomez and her crew bring the planet back, we’ll be sure to ask her.”
“Unfortunately, that is the end of the good news, Madam President,” Akaar said. “A Borg attack fleet is eighty-four minutes from Earth, and our perimeter defense groups have been unable to slow its approach. As we feared earlier, the Borg have completely adapted to the transphasic torpedo. And whatever had them shooting at one another has stopped.”
An imaginary but still unbearable weight pressed down on Bacco’s shoulders, and she sank into her chair. “Admiral, is there any reasonable possibility that Starfleet can halt the incoming Borg fleet?”
The question left Akaar’s face reddened with shame. “No.”
“Then order all remaining vessels in Sector 001 to break off and disperse,” Bacco said. “Stop wasting ships and lives. Redeploy your forces to protect refugees and outlying systems.”
Akaar clenched his jaw, and Bacco suspected the hulking flag officer was struggling not to protest a direct order. A few seconds passed. He relaxed with a deep breath, and then he answered, “Yes, Madam President.”
Bacco sighed. “Esperanza, do the people of Earth, Luna, and Mars know what’s happening right now?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Piñiero said.
Propping her elbows on the desk and steepling her fingers, Bacco asked, “How are they coping with it? Panic? Riots?”
A soft huff of amusement brought a bittersweet smile to Piñiero’s face. “Nope, not a one. There are silent, candlelight vigils on the Champs-Élysées, in Aldrin Park on Luna, and at the Settlers’ Monument in Cydonia on Mars. Some people are gathering in the wilderness parks or attending impromptu concerts.” Her voice broke, and she looked hastily at the floor. “Families are having reunions,” she continued, her voice unsteadied by grief and fear. “Outgoing data traffic is spiking as people send farewell messages to friends and family offworld.” She sniffled loudly, and then she looked up and wiped the side of her hand under her nose. Her eyes shone with tears. “I guess the world is ending with a bang and a whimper.”
Shaking her head, Bacco said, “Not a whimper, Esperanza, with dignity.”
Feeling her own emotions rising, Bacco swiveled her chair around to look out upon Paris. She stared through her ghostly reflection into the night. An entire world stretched out before her, facing its imminent annihilation and displaying more grace under pressure than she could ever have imagined possible.
In that moment, she was as proud as she had ever been to call herself a citizen of the Federation.
Akaar broke the silence. “I should excuse myself and relay your orders to Starfleet Command, Madam President.”
“Of course, Admiral,” said Bacco. “Thank you.”
He turned on his heel and made a quick exit. Agent Wexler, lurking in the shadows as always, opened the door ahead of Akaar and closed it behind him. Then the compact protection specialist faded back into the dim spaces along the periphery of the room.
Piñiero palmed her tear-stained eyes dry and stiffened her posture. “We still have eighty minutes before the Borg arrive, ma’am,” she said. “Would you like to make a final address to Earth or the Federation?”
Bacco admired the nightscape outside her office window and found at last a place of serenity within herself. “No,” she said. “Why ruin a perfectly good apocalypse?”
24
Picard stood in the open doorway of his ready room, with his back to the bridge. The interior of his office had been gutted to the bare bulkheads and deck plates. All traces of the fire had been meticulously scoured away, leaving the antiseptic shell of the compartment harshly lit by new, uncovered lighting fixtures. It was utterly devoid of any trace of the mementos he’d stored there before the blaze. New carpeting and furniture were scheduled to be installed in a day’s time, after the ship’s engineers and technicians had attended to mission-critical repairs elsewhere throughout the Enterprise.
His thoughts remained fixated on Captain Hernandez’s revelation of the Borg’s true origin. Learning of humanity’s complicity in the Collective’s creation only mad
e it harder for him to accept the staggering devastation the Borg had wrought throughout the galaxy.
He remembered succumbing to the hive mind when it had made him into Locutus. His secret shame in all the years since then had been how easy it had felt to give himself over to it. He had thought it was proof of some vile defect in his character, some classically tragic flaw. Now he understood why it had been so easy, why it had felt so familiar: The heart of the Collective was just the dark side of humanity itself. Even then, his subconscious mind had understood what he had been too ashamed to admit: Despite its pitiless, remorseless drive to crush and possess and devour, the Collective had a human soul.
He heard the soft tread of footfalls on carpeting behind him. Turning his head just a bit, he saw, on the edge of his vision, Worf approaching with a padd in his hand. “Yes, Worf?”
Worf stopped a respectful distance from Picard and said, “La Forge and Kadohata are completing their modifications to the subspace transmitter and the main deflector.”
“How much longer?”
Worf said, “Both systems will be online in two minutes.”
“Excellent,” Picard said. He looked at the indentation in the ready room’s bulkhead where a replicator once had been. The sight of the empty space made him want a cup of Earl Grey tea.
Refocusing his mind on work, he asked, “Have we heard from Titan or the Aventine?”
“Titan has locked in the coordinates of the Caeliar’s home system,” Worf said. “The Aventine has given us the software to generate and maintain a subspace microtunnel stable enough for a high-complexity signal.”
Turning away from the hollowed memory of his ready room to face Worf, Picard asked, “Is Captain Hernandez ready?”
“Almost,” Worf said. “Lieutenant Chen will help Lieutenant Commander Pazlar monitor the link to the Caeliar from Titan. When they signal ready, we can initiate the soliton pulse.”
Picard nodded and walked to his chair. Worf followed, always close at his shoulder. They settled into their chairs, and Picard regarded the battle-scarred hull of the Aventine; every scorch and breach was rendered with perfect clarity on the main viewscreen. “Any news from Starfleet Command?”
“No change,” Worf said. “The Borg attack fleet is thirty minutes from Earth and Mars.” He took a cautious look around the bridge, where everyone was working with quiet determination. Lowering his voice, he continued, “I have a question, sir.”
In the same confidential tone, Picard replied, “About?”
“Admiral Jellico’s orders.”
“How did you …?” It took Picard a moment to reason it out. “Captain Dax told you.”
“Yes, sir,” Worf said. “A few minutes ago.”
Picard frowned and nodded. “I take it you don’t approve.”
The semirhetorical statement provoked a scowl from Worf. “Running away would not be my first choice.”
“We’re long past first choices, Worf,” Picard said. “The idea of surrender doesn’t sit well with me, either, but the admiral may be right this time. When Earth falls, the war’s over.” Sensing Worf’s protest, he held up a hand and continued, “Naturally, there’s a plan for the continuity of government, but once the core worlds are gone, there’ll be little holding the Federation together. Betazed and Trill will try, as will Bajor, but only until the Borg reach them, a few days from now.”
Worf looked away from Picard and directed his intense stare at the forward viewscreen. “And what will become of us?”
“You mean the Enterprise?”
“And the Aventine and Titan,” Worf replied.
“That’s a very good question,” Picard said. “To be truthful, I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”
Grim anticipation mingled with dark amusement in Worf’s expression. “Then it might interest you to know that we are surrounded.” He pointed at the tactical display on the armrest of Picard’s command chair. “The Borg armada dispersed in a radial deployment from the Azure Nebula. At present, all sectors adjacent to this one are under Borg control.”
Seeing the situation rendered as a simple graphic made Worf’s point clear to Picard. “We have nowhere to run.”
“Precisely,” Worf replied. “Neither can we remain here. The Borg will seek us out. So … if we cannot flee, and we cannot hide, logic dictates that we should attack.”
Picard needled his XO. “Channeling Spock again, are we?”
“I am merely stating the facts,” Worf said.
Tugging his tunic smooth, Picard replied, “Be that as it may, we won’t be doing any of those things just yet—not until we see the results of our current undertaking.”
A muted tone beeped from the ops console. Commander Kadohata silenced it and swiveled her chair around to report to Worf and Picard, “Commander La Forge confirms the subspace transmitter and the deflector are online and ready to go, sir.”
“Very good,” Picard said. He looked left, toward Choudhury at tactical. “Lieutenant, hail Captain Hernandez on the Titan. See if she’s ready to proceed.”
“Aye, sir,” Choudhury replied. She keyed the message into her station’s companel, and a few moments later she was answered by a bright synthetic tone. “Captain Hernandez and Lieutenant Commander Paz-lar both confirm they’re ready to go.”
Standing up, Picard said, “Then it’s time. Commander Kadohata, power up the transmitter and the main deflector. Lieutenant Elfiki, prepare to generate the soliton pulse. Lieutenant Choudhury, signal the Aventine and Titan, and give them the countdown.”
As his officers snapped into hushed, efficient action around the bridge, Picard noticed that Worf, as usual, had followed his lead and risen from his chair to stand at Picard’s right shoulder. “Captain,” said Worf, “I have another question.”
“Speak freely, Commander.”
“It is my understanding that we are not, in fact, sending a message through the subspace microtunnel.”
Picard nodded. “Correct.”
Worf went on, “However, the mission profile requires us to provide Captain Hernandez with a high-bandwidth channel, on a frequency very much like the one used by the Borg.”
“Also correct,” Picard said, his manner dry and matter-of-fact. “What’s your question?”
“What, exactly, are we doing?”
A wry, crooked smile pulled at Picard’s mouth. I’ve asked myself the same question a hundred times in the last hour. He threw a sidelong look at Worf. “We’re making a leap of faith.”
* * *
Melora Pazlar moved in slow, graceful turns through the zero-gravity sanctuary of Titan’s stellar cartography hololab. She reconfigured the lab’s holographic interfaces on the fly, to take direct control of the subspace transmitter hardware on the Enterprise while regulating an influx of beamed power from the Aventine. At the same time, she had to coordinate with several officers on all three vessels to maintain a real-time FTL datalink, in order to multiply their shared computing power.
A few meters away, between her and the microgravity catwalk that led to the corridor portal, Captain Erika Hernandez and Lieutenant T’Ryssa Chen floated in the weightless space. Chen, a cultural-contact specialist from the Enterprise, was supposed to be helping Hernandez set up her own interface with the hololab, but the half-human, half-Vulcan young woman seemed more focused on floating upside-down while talking Hernandez into a stupor.
“Eight hundred sixty years,” Chen gushed, staring wide-eyed at Hernandez. “Wow! You must’ve learned so much about the Caeliar living among them for so long.”
“Sometimes I think I’ve barely scratched the surface,” Hernandez said. The youthful-looking octocentarian shot a pleading glance at Pazlar. “Commander, are we ready to send the soliton pulse yet?”
Pazlar gave an apologetic shrug. “A few more minutes, Captain. Sorry—we’re working as fast as we can.” In an effort to keep Chen distracted, Pazlar added, “Lieutenant, have you calibrated the alpha-wave receiver to the captain’s brainwave freque
ncy yet?”
“Yup, did it,” Chen replied, before turning her intense focus back toward Hernandez. “I read a sanitized report of your time with the Caeliar, and I really need to ask, if their bodies are composed of programmable matter—”
“Catoms,” Hernandez interrupted.
“Right, catoms—but they told you they made replicas of their old organic bodies and that they perceive the physical world the same way after their transition to synthetic bodies as they did before—but is that really possible? I mean, okay, they can defy gravity and become noncorporeal, and that’s cool—but could they do that before?”
An exasperated reaction fleeted across Hernandez’s face. “I don’t know,” she said.
“But what does it feel like, to be able to do that?”
Hernandez sighed. “Slipping free of gravity is like being one with the wind,” she said. “I don’t know a better way to explain it. As for their little trick of actually becoming one with the wind, I have no idea what that’s like. I can’t do that.”
Before Chen could ask a follow-up question, Pazlar cut in, “Lieutenant, synchronize the delta-wave receiver frequency with the operating frequency of the captain’s catoms.”
“Already done,” Chen said, doing an inverted zero-g pirouette, and then she continued to Hernandez, “If the Caeliar have a steady stream of—no, wait, that’s not what I mean. If they have a … an unbroken—a continuity of memory dating back to their organic selves, but their bodies are completely synthetic now, how did they keep their memories? Was each memory engram individually copied and replaced? Did the old Caeliar brain even use engrams to record memories, like most humanoid brains, or did it use a … um … a cranial-fluid medium, like the Sogstalabians? Or something else, like a crystalline matrix?”
“Honestly, Lieutenant, it never came up.”
“Never?”