by David Mack
“They took a chance on the better angels of their natures, reached out to a new ally, and transformed the Borg Collective into something benign, perhaps even noble. I am informed that across the Milky Way, trillions of drones have been liberated, their free will restored.”
As quickly as she had earned the room’s praise, now she felt its condemnation. Bitter whispers traveled among the councillors, and disapproving noises hissed in the gallery.
“This outcome might feel inadequate to those among us who want revenge on the Borg. I understand, I assure you. There is no minimizing the scope of the tragedy we have endured. According to even our most conservative estimates, more than sixty-three billion citizens of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, and the Imperial Romulan State were slaughtered by the Borg during this invasion.”
She paused to compose herself, and she swallowed to relieve the dryness in her mouth and throat. “Sixty-three billion lives cut short,” she said. “The mind boggles at the scope of it. Such a horrific crime against life seems to demand payback, in the form of a proportional response. But we must move beyond hatred and vengeance. The Borg Collective no longer exists, and we must remember that those who carried out its atrocities were victims themselves, slaves taken from their own worlds and their own families. Now the force that controlled them has been disbanded, and its emancipated drones have vanished to points unknown. There is, quite simply, no one left to blame.”
A deep and thoughtful silence hung over the chamber, and Bacco took it as a positive sign as she pressed on.
“Let us instead remember those whose actions have earned our trust and our gratitude. Our staunch allies, the Klingons, stood with us in our hour of need and inspired us with their fearlessness. We witnessed great acts of gallant bravery and sacrifice by starship crews from the Imperial Romulan State and the Talarian Republic. The warbird Verithrax sacrificed itself in the defense of Ardana, and the Talarian third fleet was all but destroyed holding the line at Aldebaran, halting the Borg’s advance in that sector. These heroic gestures must never be forgotten.” Murmurs of concurrence filled the room.
Bacco found it difficult to read the next portion of her address, but she had no choice. The truth had to be faced.
“It is unfortunate,” she continued, “that at a time when we should be rejoicing in our victory, we must mourn losses so tragic. It’s natural, at a time such as this, for us to think of ourselves. We had not yet completely recovered from the Dominion War, and now dozens of worlds—including Deneva, Coridan, Risa, Regulus, Korvat, and Ramatis—lay in ruins. Dozens more, including Qo’noS, Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar, suffered devastating attacks. And we must remember that the Borg did not discriminate between us and our unaligned neighbors. They inflicted widespread damage on Nausicaa, Yridia, and Barolia. It is all but impossible to quantify the true scope of this calamity, to calculate the unestimated sum of sentient pain.
“In the aftermath of such a monumental catastrophe, the prospect of rebuilding appears daunting. Some might say it’s impossible to recover from such a disaster. I say it is not only possible, it is essential. We will rise anew. We will rebuild these worlds, and we will heal these wounds. We will reach out not only to our own wounded people but to those of our allies and our neighbors and even to those who have called themselves our rivals and our enemies.”
Polite applause interrupted her, and she accepted it with a humble nod of thanks and acknowledgment. Then she lifted her voice and declared, “We will not shrink from the challenge of raising back up what the Borg have knocked down. We will honor the sacrifices of all those who fought and died to defend us, by committing ourselves to repairing the damage that’s been done and creating a future that they would have been proud of.
“We will also rebuild Starfleet, to guarantee that all we have gained, with so much suffering and sacrifice, shall be preserved and defended.”
This time, the clapping and cheering from the gallery were thunderous. Emboldened, she spoke more strongly, punching her words through the clamor.
“More important, though Starfleet is needed for recovery and reconstruction and to render aid, we will renew our commitment to its mission of peaceful exploration, diplomatic outreach, and open scientific inquiry. The Luna-class starships will continue—and, in Titan’s case, resume—their missions far beyond our borders: seeking out new worlds, new civilizations, and new life-forms and offering, to those that are ready, our hand in friendship.
“There are those who might doubt our ability to do all of these things at once. To them, I would say, don’t underestimate the United Federation of Planets. Just because we have suffered the brunt of the injuries in this conflict, do not assume that we are weak or vulnerable. Don’t mistake optimism for foolishness or compassion for weakness.
“With patience and courage, this can become a time of hope. As long as we remain united, we will emerge from these dark and hideous days into a brighter tomorrow, and we will do so stronger, wiser, and safer than we were before. Together, we can become the future that we seek and build the galaxy we want to live in. It will not come about quickly or easily. But until it does, never flinch, never weary, and never despair.
“Thank you, and good night.”
Bacco stepped back from the lectern as the chamber shook with deafening applause. Shading her eyes with one hand, she saw that the councillors and the visitors in the gallery all were standing as they delivered their roaring ovation. She waved to both tiers of councillors, then to the far end of the room, before Piñiero and Wexler coaxed her to leave the podium and follow them out of the Council Chamber.
Her entourage, including security adviser Jas Abrik, fell into step around her as they moved to the exit and quick-stepped into the hallway beyond.
Only once they were through the door did Bacco realize that the corridor was now lined with members of the press. Questions were shouted at her from both sides, the words overlapping into a muddy wash of sound. Jorel and Piñiero repeatedly hollered back, “No comment! No questions, please!”
At the far end of the hallway, Wexler and Kistler ushered Bacco and her senior advisers into a secure turbolift, then stepped in after them, placing themselves directly in front of the doors as they closed, muffling and then erasing the hubbub of pestering press run amok.
Bacco sighed heavily. “Thank God that’s over.”
Kant Jorel replied, “It went well, Madam President.”
“Yes, Jorel, I know. I was there.”
Rebuked, he bowed his chin. “Yes, ma’am.”
“It was a wonderful speech, ma’am,” Piñiero said.
“It was all right,” Bacco replied. “If Fred and his people had been here to polish it, it would’ve been great.” She threw a pointed look at Abrik. “Whose idea was it to put them all on the transport to Tyberius? Was it Iliop? I’ll throttle him.”
He replied, “No idea, ma’am, but I thought the Churchill homage at the end was a nice touch.”
“Absolutely,” Piñiero agreed. “It’s what people needed to hear.”
Frowning, Bacco replied, “It’s what I needed to hear.” The pressure of the past month, far from being lifted, only seemed to weigh heavier on her shoulders. “The Borg are gone, but now everything else is up for grabs.”
Abrik tilted his head sideways. “There’s certainly the potential for a period of instability.”
She looked at the middle-aged Trill as if all his spots had just fallen off. “Instability? When there’s a water shortage on Draylax, that’s cause for instability. We’ve got a dead zone for a hundred light-years in every direction around the Azure Nebula. More than forty percent of Starfleet’s been destroyed. Sixty-three billion people are dead. Deneva’s been wiped out, and our economy’s about to implode. We’re long past unstable. When the shock of all this wears off, I think we’ll look back on the last sixteen years with longing and envy.”
The turbolift doors opened onto the top floor, and the group stepped from the li
ft into the lobby outside Bacco’s office. Wexler and Kistler entered the presidential office first. They stepped clear of the doorway to let Bacco, Abrik, Jorel, and Piñiero file in, and then the two agents faded into the woodwork, as always.
Bacco stepped behind her desk and looked out the panoramic window at the nighttime cityscape of Paris. She was filled with a sense of foreboding, a feeling that there was always some new evil lurking in the darkness. “It’s a whole new ball game,” she said. “But we have no idea who’s playing—or what the rules are.”
Piñiero replied with a shrug, “That’s what keeps the job interesting, ma’am.”
EPILOGUE
Mourners moved in slow packs, their steps leaving crisp prints in the fine-ground regolith of pulverized stone and flesh. Tuvok noticed that the graphite-colored powder stuck to everything—his boots, his pants, his wife’s shoes, the hem of her jacket, the tips of her close-cropped hair.
He had seen Deneva’s lush Summer Islands years earlier, when they had boasted pristine white beaches, dazzling cities, and a thriving culture of visual arts and live music. It had been a vibrant, stimulating, and prosperous place.
When his youngest son, Elieth, had told him and T’Pel of his intention to take up residence there, it had seemed an unlikely locale for such a serious young Vulcan man. Then, after Elieth had moved, he had revealed his ulterior motive: He had gone to Deneva to persuade Ione Kitain, a daughter of the Fourth House of Betazed, to become his bride. At the time, T’Pel had decried Elieth’s actions as “illogical.” Tuvok suspected that his wife had used the term as a euphemism for “disappointing.”
Elieth and Ione had wed while Tuvok was presumed lost with the rest of Voyager’s crew, and over the next few years, T’Pel had learned to accept her new, non-Vulcan daughter-in-law. Ione’s sophisticated telepathic skills had helped matters along, but what had finally earned T’Pel’s respect and acceptance was the great contentment and peace of mind Ione seemed to bring to Elieth, whose logic had long felt troubled during his youth.
Squatting low to the ground, Tuvok scooped up a palmful of gray-brown dust, which had the consistency of greasy flour. It clung to his skin even as he tried to clap it off.
T’Pel looked away, past the distant clusters of roving kith and kin to the dead. “Why did we come here, husband? Starfleet told us nothing survived in the Summer Islands and that there would be no remains or relics to recover.”
“I wished to see this for myself,” he said, rubbing his hands clean on the front of his trousers. He stood straight. In every direction, the Summer Islands lay like flat smears barely raised from the ocean, which now was stained brown and black.
Mastering the turmoil of his thoughts had become taxing for Tuvok. Despite the psionic therapy he had done with Counselor Troi to fortify his psychic control and telepathic defenses, which had been compromised by years of neurological trauma, he felt overwhelmed. Primitive emotions threatened to crack his dispassionate veneer. Rage and grief, despair and denial—they were black clouds blotting out the light of reason.
Resolved not to embarrass himself or T’Pel or to disgrace the memory of his slain youngest son, Tuvok stood firm against the darkest tides of his katra, even as he feared drowning in them, submerging into madness and never surfacing again.
“We should return to Titan now,” T’Pel said.
“No,” Tuvok said. “I am not ready yet.”
T’Pel was confounded by his reply. “There is nothing else for us to find or do here. Staying longer serves no purpose.”
“I do not wish to explain myself, T’Pel. I will remain here while I reflect on what has happened. I would prefer that you stay with me, but if you wish to depart, I will not stop you.”
In pairs and trios or in small groups, people both young and old, male and female, and pilgrims of all species milled in stunned shock across the level stretch of total desolation. Tuvok watched them all seek in vain for something that was no longer to be found, for tangible artifacts of loved ones now gone.
An empty hush of wind off the sea roared in Tuvok’s ears, and the breeze kicked up clouds of foul-smelling, choking dust.
When it died down and the heavy cloud started to settle, T’Pel said, “If you are pondering the details of our son’s death, I would urge you to consider that most likely, it was swift and entailed only fleeting pain.”
“The specifics of his demise are not important,” Tuvok said. “I question his decision not to escape with Ione when it might still have been possible.”
“Elieth was committed to law enforcement and to the service of others,” T’Pel said, as if she were telling Tuvok something that he didn’t already know. “If he and Ione stayed behind after the final transports left, he must have thought their choice to be the one that was most logical.”
Tuvok’s sea of troubled emotions swelled and threatened to swallow him whole. He grappled with a surge of irrational fury provoked by T’Pel’s remark. His fists clenched white-knuckle tight, and his face hardened with bitter anger.
“I can see no logic in this, T’Pel. My son is dead.”
* * *
Dark clouds were pulled taut across the leaden skies of Deneva. The ash-covered peaks of the Sibiran Range were obscured by tin-dull mists, and a diffuse light cast a dim gray pall over the desolate hills and plains that spread south from the mountains.
Worf tried not to inhale too deeply. The entire planet had a dusty, smoky odor, like a lingering tang of burnt hair. During his approach from orbit, via shuttle with Jasminder Choudhury, he had seen no traces of green on the planet’s surface. Until they had pierced the bottom of the cloud cover, in fact, they had barely seen the surface at all. All but the most extreme polar latitudes of Deneva were encircled by rings of ash, dust, and smoke—the airborne residue of its vaporized cities.
He stood on the scorched plain and watched myriad shuttles and small ships descend from the death-polluted sky and seek out remote places to set down. Hundreds of thousands of people had come to Deneva in the past few days, since the travel interdiction had been lifted. The Federation had quarantined its surface until Starfleet had verified that visitors and returning denizens would face no lingering threats, either from the Borg or from radiation and other toxins. According to a message he had received that morning from his son, Alexander, conditions were much the same on Qo’noS and many worlds of the Klingon Empire.
A few meters away from him, Jasminder kneeled and scanned a patch of soil with her tricorder. She switched off the device. “Close enough,” she said, standing up as a gust of warm air pelted them both with sand.
Worf squinted against the stinging breeze. “Are you sure?”
“The whole planet’s a cinder,” she said. “One patch of dirt will serve as well as another. We should get started.”
They walked together to the back of their borrowed shuttle from the Enterprise and opened its rear hatch. Most of the passenger compartment had been filled with tools, supplies, and their one piece of precious cargo. Jasminder grabbed two shovels and handed one to Worf. “Thank you for coming with me.”
“I am honored … and moved … that you invited me.”
She favored him with a small, bittersweet smile, and then they stepped out of the shuttle and returned to the spot she’d selected. This, she’d told him during the flight down, was where her family home had stood, before the Borg had erased it from existence. They circled the spot she’d marked until they stood on either side of it, facing each other.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Shovel tips were pressed into the dry, blackened soil and driven deep with pushes from their heels. The parched skin of the planet cracked and broke as Worf and Jasminder pulled on the shovels’ handles. The two officers lifted thick clumps of dirt and heaved them to one side. They dug at the hard ground for a few minutes, until they had excavated a pit three-quarters of a meter deep and half a meter wide.
Setting aside the shovels, they returned
to the shuttle and retrieved more supplies. Jasminder brought a large, clumsy-heavy pouch of chemicals, and Worf hefted a small drum of water onto his shoulder. They methodically emptied both into the hole.
Worf waited behind while she returned to the shuttle for the last and most crucial element.
She returned carrying in one hand a diminutive twig—Worf thought it hardly deserved to be called even a sapling, let alone a tree. He waited while she lowered it into the soaked and fertilized hole they’d prepared, and he held it upright and steady while she shoveled the dirt back in around its linen-wrapped roots. She tamped down the dirt with her boots, and then she piled more on top, until at last she had crafted a gently sloping round island around the skinny oak’s wrist-thick trunk.
By the time Jasminder had finished, tears were flowing from her eyes, but she herself was quiet. She took a few backward steps, setting herself at a remove to survey her handiwork.
Worf stood beside her and said nothing. Across the blood-hallowed ground, the wind whispered its benedictions.
Jasminder wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, without once taking her eyes off the tree.
“It’s so …” Grief robbed her of words. He reached out and rested his arm across her shoulders. She huddled beside him, under his embrace, and then she started over. “It’s so tiny.”
With a firm yet gentle clasp of her shoulder, he pulled her close and said, “It is a beginning.”
* * *
Xin Ra-Havreii stood at the forefront of a throng gathered at the broad, starboard-facing windows in Titan’s arboretum. Much of the ship’s crew had departed two weeks earlier for extended shore leave, after it had limped home to the Utopia Planitia yards above Mars for repairs and upgrades—all to be made under Ra-Havreii’s expert supervision.
The Efrosian chief engineer stroked one long droop of his ivory-white mustache and speculated that his absent shipmates would regret not having been aboard to see that day’s event with their own eyes.