by David Mack
“There’s another scenario to consider,” Riker said. “What if they succeed but only temporarily? The Borg Collective is based on adaptation. Even if she frees all the drones from the Collective’s control, who’s to say it’ll be a permanent shift?”
Nodding, Picard said, “Those are all valid concerns. In success or in failure, Captain Hernandez’s proposal—what little we know of it—will present us with staggering logistical and tactical crises. In just over eight hours, the first wave of the Borg armada will reach us. Whatever backup plan we intend to prepare, it needs to be ready by then.”
Riker leaned forward and folded his hands together. “If this turns into a shooting match, I think the Caeliar can take care of themselves,” he said.
“Against these odds?” asked Dax.
“That I don’t know,” Riker said. “But if the fight turns against them, the Caeliar can open a subspace tunnel and slip away. Which doesn’t help us but would keep the Omega Molecule generator out of the Borg’s hands.”
Dax frowned. “Captain Picard made a good point the last time we talked with Captain Hernandez. A team of twenty-second-century MACOs outflanked the Caeliar and destroyed one of their cities. That gives me the impression that strategy and tactics aren’t the Caeliar’s forte. What if the Borg get the better of them? What if they can’t escape to safe ground?”
“Then we have a problem,” Riker said.
“More than a problem, Will,” Picard said. “A disaster.” Resting his hands on the headrest of his chair, he continued, “If Hernandez fails to disband the Collective, our top priority must be to prevent the Borg from assimilating anything of the Caeliar. If that means abetting their escape, so be it. But if the only way to keep their city-ship from the Borg is to destroy it, then we need to be prepared to take that step.”
Dax keyed in some commands on the tabletop interface at her seat. She called up a map of Axion on the wall companel behind Riker. “This is based on scans and observations made by Captain Riker’s away team while they were in Axion,” she said. “It shows the approximate position of the Omega Molecule generator. That’s what powers the Caeliar’s civilization, and it’s probably our best chance of destroying them if we have to. If we can destabilize the generator when the armada’s on top of us, we could vaporize them instantly.”
“Along with the rest of the galaxy,” Riker said. “We’d also end warp flight in most of the local group. Not exactly what I’d call a plan for victory.”
Arms out, palms up, Dax said, “If you know another way to destroy Axion and the Borg at the same time, let’s hear it.”
He rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Well, we know the Caeliar can modify their subspace passages for time travel.”
“Tell me you’re not serious,” Dax said. “What do you plan to do? Go back in time, find the origin of the Borg, and wipe them out before they ever existed?”
“Why not?” Riker said. “They tried to do it to us.”
“And look what that got them,” Dax said.
Picard raised his voice. “Captains, please.” He waited for Dax and Riker to calm down and acknowledge him. “We need to consider every alternative at this stage, no matter what the ethical or broader tactical consid—”
“Bridge to Captain Picard,” Worf said over the comm.
“Go ahead, Commander.”
“We are detecting extreme levels of local subspace disruption,” Worf said. “And we are being hailed by Axion.”
“Red Alert, Mister Worf. I’m on my way. Picard out.” As the channel clicked off, he added to Dax and Riker, “Captains, will you join me on the bridge, please?” Picard was already stepping through the door to the bridge by the time Dax and Riker had risen from their seats. He had no idea what fresh calamity was unfolding, but he had a sinking feeling that, as with so many events of late, it would be one for which he had no plan.
* * *
Riker hurried onto the bridge of the Enterprise several seconds behind Captain Picard, who was met at the trio of command chairs by Commander Worf. Picard and Worf conferred in tense whispers as Riker and Dax moved past them, down to the center of the bridge. Then came Picard’s authoritative baritone: “Commander Kadohata, put Captain Hernandez on-screen.”
Kadohata tapped a sequence of commands into the ops console, and the main viewer blinked from an image of Axion to the youthful beauty of Erika Hernandez.
Beside her was an alien with a bony, skeletal body and an enormous, bulbous head fronted by a stretched, frowning visage. Riker looked at the being’s pearlescent sea-green eyes, its skin of mottled purple and gray, and the tentacle-shaped ribbed air sacs draped over its shoulders, and he realized that its head reminded him vaguely of an octopus.
“Hello, Captains,” Hernandez said. “I’m glad I found you together, as this concerns all of you.”
Picard stepped forward, passing between Dax and Riker to place himself at the forefront of the conversation. “Captain Hernandez,” he said, “have the Caeliar agreed to help us?”
“Yes,” she said. “After a fashion.”
Suspicious, questioning looks passed between the captains on the Enterprise bridge. Turning back toward the main viewer, Picard asked, “Would you care to be more precise, Captain?”
“First, I should apologize to all of you and your crews for misleading you, but I give you my word that I believed it was in everyone’s best interest for me to do so.”
Holding up one hand, Picard cut in, “Misleading us? About what, Captain?”
“It would take too long to explain,” she said. “Besides, you’ll see for yourselves soon enough. All I can say is that old habits die hard, if at all, and if I learned anything living with the Caeliar, it was how to play my cards close.” She looked at Riker and then at Dax as she continued, “Will, Ezri, thanks for treating me like part of your crews. It was nice to feel like I was home again, back in Starfleet. I knew I’d missed it, but until today, I hadn’t realized just how much.”
“Captain,” Picard said, “what’s going to happen?”
“I honestly don’t know for certain,” Hernandez said. “No matter how this plays out, you and I probably won’t see each other again. If I and the Caeliar fail, then we’re all about to have a very bad day. And if we succeed, then something new awaits us—all of us.” She smiled. “Wish us luck.”
Riker eyed Picard’s profile. The elder captain was standing slackjawed and at a loss for words as he watched Hernandez close her eyes and lift one hand in front of her, fingers spread wide, as if she were reaching for some unseen object.
Just as Riker was about to ask Picard what was wrong, Inyx spoke and snared everyone’s attention with his mellifluous baritone. “Captains, for your own safety, I recommend you move your vessels to within one kilometer of Axion—immediately.”
Picard still seemed frozen, so from the aft deck of the bridge, Worf called out, “Helm, put us alongside Axion, distance eight hundred fifty meters. Commander Kadohata, relay those orders to Titan and the Aventine.”
Kadohata and Lieutenant Weinrib gave overlapping replies of “Aye, sir” as they carried out Worf’s orders.
On the main viewer, Hernandez’s raised hand began to glow. A nimbus of light formed around it, growing so bright that it shone through her fingers, making them blaze red like hot coals. Her face was the very portrait of serenity. She opened her eyes, which burned with an inner fire, and she said, “It’s time.”
A hush fell over the bridge.
Captain Picard tensed with a sharp intake of breath.
Proximity alerts shrilled from multiple consoles.
“Massive energy surge from the Caeliar city,” called out Lieutenant Choudhury at tactical.
“Subspace tunnels,” added Lieutenant Dina Elfiki, who was racing to keep up with the rush of data on her console. “Thousands of them, opening in a spherical distribution around Axion.” The attractive, chestnut-haired science officer added, “The city is definitely controlling them, Captain.”
Worf replied, “Shields up!”
Riker wished that he was on the bridge of his own ship at that moment, but he was also grateful that his crew at least had Vale, Tuvok, and Keru back aboard to lead them in his absence. On the viewscreen, Erika Hernandez maintained a steady countenance.
Choudhury looked at Worf. “Borg cubes are emerging from the subspace tunnels, sir—thousands of them. The entire armada.”
“Split screen,” Worf said. Kadohata adjusted the main viewer to show two images: Hernandez and Inyx on the right and, on the left, the arriving Borg armada surrounding Axion and blotting out the stars with their sheer numbers.
Dax sounded as if she simply couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “The Caeliar brought the Borg here sooner? Why?”
Riker shrugged, equally dumbfounded.
Then he looked at Picard, who nodded slowly, as if with a dawning comprehension. Riker sensed that something unspoken was transpiring between Picard and Hernandez.
Finally, Picard said to Hernandez, “You’re not disbanding the Collective … are you, Captain?”
“No,” Hernandez said. “We’re assimilating them.”
A two-meter-tall oval of mirror-perfect quicksilver took shape behind Hernandez, who turned and stepped through it without so much as a ripple. Then the oval faded into vapor, sublimated into nonexistence, leaving only Inyx on the screen.
Riker snapped, “What’s going on? Where’d she go?”
“To the source,” Picard muttered.
Glaring at Inyx, Riker said, “Show me where she is!”
“As you wish,” Inyx said.
The Caeliar’s image dissolved to that of a view from deep inside a massive Borg vessel. A haphazard, slapdash collage of metal, tubes, wires, ducts, and random machinery filled the screen, all of it illuminated through its narrow gaps by a sickly viridian light. The point of view roved through the dark, industrial-looking labyrinth until it found open space and arrowed down toward the vessel’s core. Passing like a phantom through solid matter, the image speared its way into the central plexus, to the most elaborate Borg vinculum Riker had ever seen.
In the bowels of that biomechanoid horror, Erika Hernandez walked without fear toward an advancing phalanx of Borg drones. Behind them, atop a dais festooned with regeneration pods and a plethora of bizarre devices, stood the Borg Queen, commanding her foot soldiers forward to intercept her rival.
“No!” Riker shouted. “You have to stop her! She doesn’t know what she’s doing!”
Inyx replied, “I assure you, Captain, Erika knows exactly what she is doing. And I would have stopped her if I could.”
Riker watched, horrified, as the drones set upon Hernandez in a savage pack—and impaled her with assimilation tubules.
29
Hernandez fell into the arms of the drones and gave herself up, surrendering to their violations. Viselike hands seized her arms and ripped every loose fold of her clothing. Assimilation tubules extended from the drones’ knuckles and pierced Hernandez’s flesh, each puncture as sharp as a serpent’s bite.
A cold pain coursed through her, surged in her blood, and clouded her thoughts. There was no fury in the drones as they smothered her, only the brutal, simple efficiency of machines subjugating flesh and bone.
Beyond the one-sided melee, the Borg Queen stood on her dais and regarded Hernandez’s fall with haughty dispassion.
The voice of the Collective flooded Hernandez’s mind like sea-water pouring into a sinking ship, and her thoughts drowned in the aggressive swell of psionic noise. Panic bubbled up from her subconscious. For a moment, she wished she had prevented the drones from injecting her. It would have been within her power to turn them back, to wrest them from the will of the Borg Queen, but instead she had let them strike unopposed—because that was the plan and had been from the start.
A black fog of oblivion enfolded her.
This is the only way, she told herself. The only path.
None of the Caeliar could do this for her. Hernandez knew that only she could serve as the gestalt’s bridge to the Borg. The Caeliar, with their bodies of catoms, were immune to assimilation; the Borg’s nanoscopic organelles needed at least some trace amounts of organic matter to invade and transform as part of the assimilation process. In the body of a Caeliar, the organelles would find only other nanomachines—all of which would be far more advanced and powerful than the organelles and utterly impervious to them.
It would have been equally futile for any member of the Starfleet crews to volunteer for Hernandez’s mission. Without the Caeliar catoms that infused her body, and which had altered her genetic structure, another organic being would be unable to survive the assimilation process while acting as a conduit for the focused energies of the gestalt.
Only I can do this, Hernandez reminded herself. I have to hang on. Can’t give up … not yet.
The icewater in her veins turned to fire as assimilation organelles and Caeliar catoms waged war for possession of her body. Needles of pain stabbed through her eyes, and a burning sensation pricked its way down her back.
Every inch of her was consumed with excruciating torments. Two deafening voices raged inside her head: the soulless roar of the Collective and the hauntingly beautiful chorus of the gestalt.
As the Collective became more aware of the gestalt through its bond with Hernandez, the singular intelligence behind the Borg launched a mind-breaking assault on her psyche. Unlike the first time the Borg had assailed her, however, Hernandez wasn’t alone. Reinforced by the shared consciousness of the Caeliar, she dispelled the Borg’s demoralizing revisions of her memories. Its lies broke like waves against an unyielding seawall.
She felt the Caeliar gestalt reassert its primacy in her mind and body, and then it landed its own first blow against the Collective, dredging up fragments of an ancient memory—bitter cold and empty darkness, loneliness and despair, fading strength and dwindling numbers. And, above all, hunger.
Paroxysms of rage shook the Collective, and Hernandez knew, intuitively, that the Borg armada was firing en masse at Axion, unleashing every bit of destructive power it could marshal. All of the Collective’s hatred and aggression was erupting, and the Caeliar had become its sole focus. As the bombardment hammered Axion’s shields, however, there wasn’t a glimmer of distress or even concern in the gestalt. At best, the Caeliar reacted to the fusillade with equal parts curiosity and pity.
So much sorrow and anger, opined the gestalt. Such a desperate yearning … but it doesn’t know what it seeks, so it consumes everything and is never satisfied.
A surge of strength and comfort from the gestalt flowed through Hernandez, and the chaos of its struggle with the Borg gave way to a sudden peace and clarity.
Then the Caeliar projected their will through her fragile form and usurped control of the Borg Collective.
* * *
The Caeliar gestalt beheld its savage reflection.
The Collective looked back, hostile and bewildered, like a wild thing that had never seen a mirror nor caught sight of itself in still waters.
Inyx perceived the shape of the Collective and was shocked at how it could be both so familiar and so alien. Two great minds, the Collective and the gestalt, had shared a past until their paths had diverged. The Borg had been forced down a road of deprivation and darkness, while the Caeliar, despite being wounded, had been afforded the luxury of a more benign destiny. Now their journeys, separated by time and space, had converged.
A roar of voices spoke the will of the Borg.
You will be assimilated. Your diversity and technology will be adapted to service us. Resistance is futile.
The gestalt was overwhelmed with pity for the primitive and autocratic posturing of the Collective. Like a child that had never been disciplined, it laid claim to all it surveyed, seized everything within reach in rapacious flurries of action, and never once questioned if it had the right to do so.
Brute force was the Collective’s tactic. The drones that surrounded Axion outnumbered the Caeliar population five to one. Across the galaxy, there were trillions of drones, in tens of thousands of star systems, on innumerable cubes and vessels. Had the Collective’s conflict with the Caeliar been one of simple numbers, there would have been no contest.
How tragic, Inyx mused openly in the gestalt. It doesn’t understand at all.
Ordemo Nordal replied, All it sees is power to be taken.
Edrin, the architect, asked, Do we know who it is?
It’s time we found out, said Ordemo.
The tanwa-seynorral focused the gestalt’s attention on breaking through the noise of the Collective, penetrating to the true essence of the Borg, exposing its prime mover, revealing the mind at its foundation and the voice behind its Queen.
Wrapping herself in the shelter of a hundred million hijacked minds, the Borg Queen sought refuge from the scalpel-like inquisition of the Caeliar. With patience and precision, the gestalt evaded the crude latticework of enslaved minds and found the Queen lurking in the dark heart of it all. Then it pushed past even her, in search of the truth.
Cut off from the Collective’s core essence, the Borg Queen stumbled in confusion—deposed, disoriented, directionless.
Locked in the core of every Borg nanoprobe was the key to the Borg’s ethereal shared consciousness, an invisible medium that spanned great swaths of the galaxy. Unseen, it was never heard directly except through the Queen. Its presence was always felt by every drone, and every sentient mind it pressed into service amplified its power.
At first, it seemed less a personality than a collection of appetites. It was fear and hatred and hunger, and beneath even those primal urges lurked a deeper wound, the impetus for its insatiable appetites: an inconsolable loneliness.
It had no memories of its own, no name beyond Borg, but as the gestalt took its full measure, it was recognized by one and all for what and who it truly was.
Sedín, said Inyx, baring his grief for what had become of his confidante and beloved companion of several aeons. Sedín had been brilliant, imaginative, and ambitious. To see her debased into a violent scavenger was both horrifying and heartbreaking. Even worse was contemplating the atrocities she had wrought on other sentient beings. Those were crimes beyond atonement.