by David Mack
The security chief stepped carefully across the grid-grated catwalk, mindful of its low guardrails and the precipitous drop into the workings of the deflector dish. Shuffling along for the last few steps, he sidled up to Torvig and asked, “Hiding?”
“I desired an isolated place in which to think.”
“Your quarters aren’t private?”
“I’ve not yet earned enough seniority to receive private accommodations,” Torvig said. “Since my return, Ensign Worvan has asked me one hundred thirty-four questions about what I observed during our incarceration in Axion. He’s been most persistent in his efforts.”
Keru tilted his head. “Gallamites are like that.” He looked out the narrow gap to see the majestic lines and mass of Axion, shining against the sprawl of the cosmos. “Is something bothering you, Vig? You seem … out of sorts.”
“I’m unaware of any direct irritation to my person.”
“No, I mean, are you experiencing anxiety about something?”
Torvig shifted his weight back and forth, from one foot to the other, and his mechanical hands clenched the railing in front of him. “Is it true that the Borg armada has reversed course and is on its way here?”
“Yes,” Keru said.
“Then my answer is yes. I’m feeling anxiety.”
“It could be worse,” Keru said, heaving a disappointed sigh. “While we were in Axion, a lot of people from here and the Enterprise and the Aventine boarded a Borg scout ship and fought in close-quarters combat. We lost Rriarr, Hutchinson, Tane, Doron, and about half a dozen other really good people. And sh’Aqabaa might live through surgery, or she might not.” It was a bitter sting for Keru that he had been denied the chance to fight the Borg face-to-face. Even after so many years, he would have found such violence deeply cathartic for his beloved’s death at their hands. Now, facing much less forgiving odds, he doubted he would have such an opportunity again.
He looked at Torvig and realized the squat, short ensign was quaking. “Calm down, Vig,” he said. “Officers don’t shiver.”
“I apologize, Ranul,” Torvig said. “I’m having trouble remaining objective about our circumstances. Until now, I’d considered the Borg as a phenomenon, or as an abstraction of accessories and behavioral subroutines for a holodeck program. Now that I’m about to face them, I realize that I’m not ready.”
Keru squatted next to Torvig and patted the Choblik’s armored back. “You’ll be fine, Vig. Nothing to be scared of.”
“At the risk of sounding insubordinate, I disagree,” Torvig said. “Do you recall my tests of the crew? The ones I used to verify a link between my crewmates’ anxious behaviors toward me and their feelings about the Borg?”
Rolling his eyes, Keru said, “How could I forget?”
“I now have a greater understanding of one part of that equation,” Torvig said. “Now I’m afraid of the Borg, too. It was a mistake for me to compare their cybernetics with those of the Choblik. The Great Builders’ technology was a boon to my people—it gave us individuality and sentience. The Borg’s technology takes away those things. It debases its members.” He let go of the railing and lifted his bionic hands in front of his face, flexing them open and shut. “I imagine my mechanical elements betraying me, and it frightens me. That’s what it would be to become one of the Borg.” Looking plaintively at Keru, he added, “Don’t let them do that to me, Ranul.”
Keru reached out and clutched Torvig’s bionic hand, thumb to thumb, flesh to metal, and he looked his friend in the eye. “I won’t let it happen, Vig. To either of us. You have my word.”
* * *
Most of the beds in the Aventine’s sickbay were still full when Captain Dax walked in, and Dr. Tarses and his medical staff looked wrung out by a day of gruesome surgeries. She caught his eye with a wave and waited while he walked over to her.
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
Up close to Tarses, Dax saw that the young doctor’s hair was matted with sweat, and his eyes were red from exhaustion. She nodded and said, “Where is she?”
Tarses took a few steps and motioned with a tilt of his head for Dax to follow him. She walked with him past one row of biobeds, and then past a triage center, into a recovery ward. All of the beds in this compartment were occupied as well. Near the far end of the ward was the person Dax had come to talk to. She reached out to Tarses and tugged his sleeve. “I’ll take it from here,” she said, and he acknowledged the dismissal with a polite nod and let her continue past him.
Dax approached the problem patient without hesitation and placed herself at the foot of the bed. “What’s this I hear about you not wanting to return to duty?”
Lonnoc Kedair stirred from her torpid, dead-eyed languor to meet Dax’s accusing stare. “It’s not about what I want,” the Takaran woman said. “It’s about what I deserve.”
“If I could, I’d give you a month’s liberty,” Dax said. “I read Simon’s report. You got mangled pretty bad on that Borg ship. Unfortunately, we have about four thousand more of them on their way here, and I need my security chief back at her post.” She frowned as Kedair turned her head and averted her eyes. “In case I wasn’t clear, I’m talking about you.”
“You were clear,” Kedair said. “I wasn’t. I’m not saying I deserve time off. I’m saying I deserve to be in the brig.”
Just what I didn’t need, Dax fumed behind a blank expression. Something to make my day a little more interesting. “Care to elaborate, Lieutenant?”
Kedair seemed unable to look Dax in the eye. The security chief shut her eyes, massaged her green, scaly forehead, and combed her fingers through her wiry black hair. “On the Borg ship,” she began, and then she paused. After a grim sigh, she continued, “I made a mistake, Captain.”
“Stay here. I’ll convene a firing squad,” Dax quipped.
“Curious choice of words,” Kedair said. “Because that’s basically what I did.” Looking up, she added, “I caused at least three friendly-fire deaths during the attack, sir. Maybe more.”
Dax stepped to the side of Kedair’s bed and moved closer to her, so that they could speak more discreetly. “What happened, Lonnoc? Specifically, I mean.”
“I was looking out across that big empty space in the middle of the ship,” Kedair said, her eyes turned away while she searched her memory for details. “I thought I saw an ambush closing in on one of our teams. It was so dark, and everybody was wearing black, and with TR-116s in their hands, at a distance, they looked like Borg with arm attachments.” Dax nodded for her to go on. “With the dampeners, we didn’t have any comms, so I fired a warning shot at the team that was—that I thought was being ambushed. I signaled them to turn and intercept.” Kedair closed her eyes, and her jaw tensed.
Wary of pushing too hard, Dax asked, “What happened next?”
“The first team took cover and waited for their targets to close to optimal firing distance. Then they—they lit ’em up.” She shook her head. “A few seconds later, the squad leader called cease-fire, and they popped off a few gel flares. That was when I saw what had happened.” She bowed her head into her hands for a few seconds, then she straightened and added, “Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa’s still in critical condition. The rest of her squad from Titan is dead.”
The rest of Kedair’s actions on the Borg scout ship after the boarding op were starting to make sense to Dax. “Is that why you volunteered to stay behind when the Borg Queen attacked? To try and make up for your mistake?”
“I did that because it was my duty, and because it was the right tactical choice,” Kedair said defensively. “Please don’t psychoanalyze me, Captain. I can always go see Counselor Hyatt if I’m in the mood for that.”
“I think Susan might echo my diagnosis,” Dax said. “But you’re right, it’s not my job to give you therapy. It’s my job to give you some perspective and put you back at your post.”
“You ought to put me out an airlock,” Kedair grumped.
Sharpening her tone, Dax sa
id, “That’s enough, Lieutenant. Listen to what I’m telling you. You did not pull the trigger on Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa and her team. It’s not your fault.”
“How can you say that? I flagged my own people as a target. I gave the order to fire. How can it possibly not be my fault?”
“It’s called the ‘fog of war,’ “Dax said. “You go into sensory overload. Everything happens so fast, you can’t process it. Mistakes happen.” She sighed as she confronted painful memories from her years on the Destiny and on Deep Space 9. “I saw it a lot during the Dominion War. It had nothing to do with how well trained someone was or the quality of their character. In combat, you have no time to think. Information gets scrambled. You’re surrounded by chaos, and you try to do the best you can—but no one’s perfect.”
Kedair’s eyes narrowed. “Sounds like an excuse,” she said. “And not a very good one, either. I don’t want to make excuses, Captain. I should have verified the target before I told my people to fire.”
“I’ve read a lot of reports from squad leaders who were on that ship,” Dax said. “I doubt you really had the time to check every target. No one did. Under the circumstances, I’d say your actions were entirely reasonable.”
Angrier, Kedair replied, “I was sloppy. I lost track of where my people were. It was my job to know.”
Vexed by Kedair’s toxic brew of self-pity and self-loathing, Dax leaned forward and took hold of the security chief’s collar. “I’m trying to be patient, Lonnoc, but you’re not making this easy. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. This is war. It gets bloody. People die. Deal with it.” With a shove, she released Kedair and continued, “The team on the other level could have fired gel flares first, just to see who they were shooting, but they didn’t. That was their call, not yours.
“Add up the facts. You had no communications, in the dark, in hostile territory, while under attack, and you made an honest mistake. You want to blame yourself? Go ahead. Wail and gnash your teeth and cry yourself to sleep at night—I don’t give a damn. There was no criminal negligence here and no criminal intent—in other words, absolutely no basis for a court-martial.
“So I’m giving you a direct order, Lieutenant: Get your ass out of that bed, and report to your post on the bridge. We’re less than ten hours from facing off with a quarter-billion Borg drones in more than four thousand cubes, and I don’t plan on letting you goldbrick your way through it. Understood?”
Kedair stared at Dax in shock, her eyes wide, her jaw slack, her back pressed as deeply into her pillows as she had been able to retreat in the face of Dax’s harangue. The Takaran woman blinked, composed herself, and sat up. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, facing Dax.
In a level, dignified voice, she said, “It’s a damned good thing you switched to the command track, Captain. Because if this was you as a counselor, you suck at it.”
“That is called insubordination, Lieutenant. And if you keep it up, it will get you a court-martial.”
The security chief perked up. “Good to know. Now, at least I have something to shoot for.”
* * *
Axion was windless and silent beneath the endless night of deep space. Erika Hernandez drifted alone through the motionless air that surrounded the city-ship inside its invisible force field.
Darkness and starlight were reflected to perfection on the brilliant façades of the metropolis, which gleamed with its own inner light. Hernandez felt the awareness of the millions of Caeliar who dwelled in the city. Now conscious of her bond with the gestalt, they shied from her in subtle ways. They would never deny another mind in their communion, but many of them radiated discomfort at the discovery that it now included a non-Caeliar.
As meticulous as the Caeliar kept their city, to Hernandez, it still felt less antiseptic than either of the Starfleet vessels she’d visited in the past several hours. Inside the sheltering embrace of the city, she caught the fragrance of green plants—grass and trees, bushes, flowers—and the rich scent of fertile earth. Water still danced in the fountains.
None of that distracted her from her search.
Inyx had left the Quorum hall before she’d finished her proposal to the tanwa-seynorral. As soon as he’d gone, he’d started masking his thoughts from the gestalt, withdrawing from contact. Apparently, the Caeliar appreciate privacy on a personal level as well as a cultural one, Hernandez realized. Nonetheless, she suspected that she knew where he would be.
She was correct.
She descended without a sound, her posture relaxed, legs crossed at the ankles, arms at her sides. Air displaced by her passage tousled her mane of dark hair and fluttered the fabric of her Starfleet uniform. For the sake of nostalgia, she alighted on the glossy black water of the reflecting pool by the petrified tree. Inyx stood beneath the tree’s bare boughs, in whose ragged shadows he seemed to have partially vanished.
Without causing so much as a ripple, Hernandez walked calmly across the pool to the tree’s small island at the far end. She bounded onto the isle with her last step and landed with balletic grace in front of Inyx.
Feigning boredom, he said, “I wondered how long it would take you to master that trick.”
“Not long,” she said. “Less than eight hundred years.” She cocked a teasing eyebrow. “Told you I was a fast learner.”
“About some things,” he said.
She ambled past him and made a slow circle of the tree, letting her hand play across its glassy, obsidian surface. “I’ve never seen you in such a hurry to leave the Quorum hall,” she said. “Did my proposal bother you that much?”
“I made my objections to the gestalt,” he said, and then he added, with an extra degree of sarcasm, “But of course, you know that, since you are, apparently, completely attuned to the gestalt and can share in it whenever you please.”
She took his rebuke in stride, because she had already sensed his pride in her accomplishment. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Inyx,” she said. “But your people aren’t the only ones who value privacy.”
He made a derogatory huffing noise inside his air sacs, which puffed up around his shoulders. “There is a difference, Erika, between privacy and secrets—and between secrets and deceptions.” His ire dissipated. “What’s done is past. I’m more concerned about your next potentially fatal mistake.”
“I know it’s a risk, but I think it’s worth taking,” she said. “And the Quorum agrees with me.”
“By a narrow margin,” Inyx replied.
“I’m certain it will work,” she said.
“Certainty is not the same thing as infallibility,” he said. “If you’re wrong, or if you’ve underestimated the Borg’s capacity for adaptation, you might be condemning this galaxy and many others to aeons of oppression.”
“If I’m wrong—if I fail—I’m counting on you to persuade the Quorum to honor the spirit of our agreement and protect the galaxy from the Borg.”
He said with grim regret, “I can’t promise that, Erika.”
“Promise me that you’ll try,” she said.
With a small bow from his waist, he said, “You have my solemn pledge. I will try.” Melancholy seeped into his voice. “I wish it didn’t have to be you taking this risk.”
“Well, it’s not like anyone else is in a position to do it,” she said. “You sure can’t, and neither can those starship crews.” She shook her head. “Believe me, if there was another way, I’d take it.”
“If you do not wish to make such a sacrifice, why go?”
“Because my people need me, Inyx. They need me to step up and do something no one else can. And all those people trapped in the Collective need me even more than the Federation does. I failed a lot of people when I let the Romulans get the drop on me and destroy my convoy. I led my crew into captivity, and then I failed to control them, and millions of your people died. All these centuries, I’ve been living with those failures, with no way to atone for any of them. Now, I might have that chance.”
Iny
x passed a long moment in somber reflection.
“The consequences of failure seem clear enough,” he said. “But what would be the price of success? If your plan goes as intended, what will become of you, Erika? Will you ever come back to Axion? Will I ever see you again?”
Unable to hold back the tears welling in her eyes, she replied, “I don’t know.”
“Then perhaps you’ve finally received your wish,” he said, with a tenor of defeat. “You’ll finally be free of Axion … forever.”
She placed herself directly in front of him. “Maybe,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.”
With both hands, she reached up and gently pulled Inyx’s ever-frowning visage down to hers. “I probably won’t get a chance to do this later.”
She kissed his high, leathery forehead with tender affection. “Good-bye, Inyx.”
28
“Whatever Captain Hernandez is planning, it involves the Borg, and that means it has the potential to go horribly wrong.”
Picard stood at the head of the table in the Enterprise’s observation lounge and watched the seated Captains Riker and Dax nod at what he had just said. At his invitation, they had beamed over to meet with him in private aboard the Enterprise, so that they could confer without risking the interception of their conversation by the Borg—or by the Caeliar.
Exasperated, Dax replied, “You want a contingency plan for what to do after we’re surrounded by more than four thousand Borg cubes?”
“Better than not having one,” Riker said, scratching pensively at his salt-and-pepper-bearded chin.
Dax blinked, conceding the point, and replied, “For that matter, we’ll need one even if she succeeds. I mean, have we even thought about how we’re supposed to repatriate a quarter-billion ex-Borg from across the galaxy?”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Picard said. “Frankly, as powerful as the Caeliar seem to be, I doubt they—or any other entity, short of the single-letter variety who shall not be named—can effect such a change by force.”