DESCENT

by Diane Carey

  She nodded, connected with him in a fundamental gaze, and saw in his face that he read her perfectly.

  And she knew her eyes told him, Hurry!

  Chapter Twenty

  The Borg Hall

  PICARD STOOD before Data and assumed his most implacable posture. He held his eyes unmoving, his shoulders back, arms down.

  If Data intended to follow the order given to him by this megalomaniac, then that order would be carried out upon his staid commanding officer without so much as a flinch from his victim.

  If Data meant to initiate himself fully into the realm of mindless obeisance, then his hazing would be faced down by ultimate individuality.

  Fearless, Picard glared at Data as though Lore and the Borg audience were vanishing around them. For these last seconds, Data would answer to him once and finally.

  And he wasn’t dead yet.

  The realization struck him right through his own determination. He certainly should be . . .

  Data was staring back, electric bewilderment charging his features. Somehow, between Lore’s control and the signals from the ethical program, he was rising to independent thought. He was a child, awakening to rub his eyes and discover the difference between dream and reality and to find that the dream was the colder of the two.

  His lips hung open, his decision dangling in the air.

  “No,” he murmured. “It would be wrong. . . . ”

  From one side, Crosis snatched the weapon from Data, who glanced down at his empty hand.

  Lore shook his head. “I didn’t think you’d be able to do it. You’ve spent too many years among humans.”

  As if seeing Data had become too painful, Lore turned away.

  Picard was watching carefully enough to see the connections between Lore and Crosis, and sure enough, Crosis barked, “Hold him!”

  Two Borg lunged forward to snatched Data by the arms.

  With a wave to the assembled Borg along the walls, Lore said, “I’ve asked many sacrifices of you! Sacrifices I knew were necessary to build a better future. I want you to know that I ask no more of you than I am prepared to give myself. I am willing to make the greatest sacrifice of all . . . my own dear brother.”

  He reached out to another Borg and was handed a weapon for himself.

  Playing at a great sadness that no semi-mechanical being could tell from the real thing, Lore turned back to gaze upon Data. Picard saw the pretense for what it was worth, but what was there to do? Appeal to these Borg?

  There was a time, he was ashamed to say, when he could understand them. That time was past. These were evolved beings, and he could not deduce in what direction they had developed.

  Lore was raising his weapon. Picard tensed his legs—reflex, to save his officer from extermination? Or do as he had ordered Troi and La Forge—let Data be killed?

  Instinct flooded through him. He tensed forward. He would show Data one last truly human act—

  A black-gray flash invaded his periphery.

  Someone shouted, “No!”

  Picard ducked out of the way, answering his instincts from another direction.

  One of the Borg jumped to the stage and shoved Lore’s weapon up, away from Data, so hard that the weapon flew out of Lore’s hand and cracked against the stone.

  Hugh!

  Crosis whirled, his own weapon raised to slaughter Hugh, but another phaser bolt, a good old-fashioned bolt of bright red Starfleet phaser fire, cut across the room. Crosis’s face erupted with shock as he was struck in the chest. He went down boiling with the thousand emotions he had once thrown in the faces of those who now broke from their hiding places.

  Picard straightened up and quickly spotted Riker and Worf at attack stance deep in the hall, ready to fire again. Around them, Borg loyal to Hugh and to themselves as individuals jumped from the crowd and charged Lore’s followers.

  Pandemonium broke out. Borg against Borg, hand to hand. Impossible to tell the Robin Hoods from the sheriff’s men.

  Picard watched the scene almost as if viewing a historical tape, for this was history occurring before his eyes.

  The Borg were making their own history.

  Though he was hungry to participate, even to orchestrate, Picard forced himself to back away and motioned for Riker and Worf to do the same. Phaser fire dropped off as his officers obeyed him, letting Hugh and his people fight their own battle.

  Hugh’s forces, finally in charge of their own destiny, caught the rhythm, and the heat of the melee intensified. The noise level rose as the Borg shouted and howled at each other, wide-eyed and catching the fire of their purpose. Motioning to his men to stand by, Picard wanted to believe the medieval philosophy that those whose quest was purest would be the ones to succeed, but he’d faced reality all his life and was standing by to tilt at the odds with phasers if necessary.

  As the Borg howled and fought around him with newly characteristic viciousness, Picard nodded at Riker and thought he got a nod back. Riker held his phaser up but ready. Good—he understood.

  A flash caught the captain’s attention in a field of thrashing motions. Worf was waving at him and pointing toward one of the entrances.

  Picard ducked a pair of wrestling Borg and glowered to show that he didn’t know what Worf wanted him to look at. An instant later he comprehended that Worf wanted him to see not something, but nothing.

  A terrifying nothing.

  Data and Lore were both gone.

  The Lab

  Data knew where to go. Something within him told him where Lore had gone.

  He felt the pulling of causes and desires in his mind, pulses from two directions, three, maybe more. He could not identify the sources of all his thoughts, nor did he want to. These were his thoughts.

  He would rise above the impulses being received. He would not be controlled. Independence was the mark of a living thing.

  “Lore!” he called. He gripped his phaser firmly but could not yet make himself raise it.

  Lore stood working frantically at a computer console made of cannibalized parts from various conquests, and even from pieces of conquered Borg who had refused to bend to the wishes of the One. Now he turned.

  “Be careful with that weapon, brother,” he said, his expression suspiciously amiable. “Somebody could get hurt.”

  “What are you doing?” Data asked him. A direct question. No intimidation intended. He wished to receive a direct answer in response.

  “I have a way out of here,” Lore said. “I’m willing to forget about what happened back there and take you with me.” He smiled and tilted his head conspiratorially. “We don’t need anyone else. We’re brothers.”

  Definition: brothers—1. male children who have the same parents or who have one common parent; 2. males who share common allegiance, character traits, or purpose.

  Parent? No. He and Lore were products of the same builder, not a parent. Not a nurturer whose values they could ponder and choose from, emulate or discard in an effort to become better.

  And there was no common allegiance for them. Lore had offhandly proclaimed them brothers, and Data had accepted that claim.

  An error. No—a mistake. Something an intelligent creature might make.

  Mistakes could be corrected.

  He stood unmoved by Lore’s invitation.

  Lore lowered his chin and intensified his gaze as he offered a bribe. “I’ll give you the chip our father made. It contains more than just emotions. It has memories . . . memories our father wanted you to have.”

  Lore moved his finger, and Data shuddered from deep within himself. The gush of sensation from Lore was suddenly cut off, and Data felt himself being sucked empty.

  This time, though, he didn’t fight it.

  Better to be empty than to be manipulated. He raised his phaser and prepared to aim.

  Movement flashed across his sensory inputs. Lore was diving to one side, reaching for a weapon on the console. Lore was twisting toward him now.

  Without pausi
ng to analyze either his counterpart’s purpose or his own, Data opened fire.

  As the bolt of energy lanced from his weapon, Data allowed himself to endure the satisfaction of doing the one thing no machine could do. He made his own choice.

  His hand remained tight on the phaser until the weapon had discharged more than enough destructive energy to penetrate Lore’s thoracic shielding.

  Overload. Lore froze in step, nerves drawing inward, head tilting upward, arms back, legs beginning to shudder. Threads of electrical feedback crackled around his head and shoulders as his systems overloaded.

  His face—was this astonishment?

  Data released the trigger of his phaser, and the inevitable played itself out from within Lore’s body. Disruption. Superreaction. Breakage.

  When Lore fell, the floor reverberated with his weight, so excessive for his narrow body.

  His body, and Data’s.

  Brothers . . . but only in appearance.

  Data knelt beside the sputtering form. The impact of the fall had broken open the camouflaging flap on the side of Lore’s head. Bared circuitry hissed out of order and effervesced with surging power that would soon burn critical connections.

  Lore’s eyes were open, of course, but there was also focus.

  He gazed up at Data, and there was unmistakable sadness there.

  Data refused to be moved. “I am going to deactivate you now,” he said.

  Clearly damaged, Lore tried to gather enough connections to speak.

  “If you . . . do that . . . you will never . . . feel emotion again. . . .”

  Data put down his phaser and found one of the tools he had used to inflict unthinkable torment upon Geordi.

  But he would not think about that. He would complete the task at hand.

  He would execute Lore.

  “I know,” he said, “but you leave me no other choice.”

  The words were easily spoken, but his inner systems contradicted them. He knew what a choice was now, and he knew he was making one. He could elect to repair Lore, to try to make use of so valuable a commodity, so rare a being, to explore the complicated construction that allowed Lore to be what he was, and have the expanse of thought that he had . . . Lore was the key to the next step in his evolution.

  But he did have a choice. He was making it.

  “Good-bye, Lore,” he said.

  Lore blinked up at him, but only once or twice. Most of his systems were paralyzed now. “I . . . love you . . . brother.”

  Of his own accord, with decisions made from his own thoughts, regardless of incoming signals or absent instructions, Data completed the last step in the shutdown.

  The little lights stopped blinking. Lore was still. His eyes remained open, but there was no life.

  There was no Lore.

  The Hall

  “Enough!”

  Showing that he was certainly a living being, Hugh emerged from the stumbling tangle of cyborg bodies, gasping out his command with enthusiasm. He seemed surprised.

  “Enough,” he said again, and this time everyone heard him.

  Captain Picard motioned again to Riker and Worf to hold back. From where he stood, he could see Riker with his foot on one of Lore’s Borg, phaser aimed down into the entity’s pasty face, and Worf holding the wrists of another.

  All around, dead and injured Borg littered the hall. Hugh’s comrades—how could he tell them from any other of their kind?—were holding off the remaining few of Lore’s followers, who seemed to have lost their will to resist. Or perhaps they had lost their purpose when they saw their leader retreat.

  Not the first time in history.

  Hugh’s Borg friends seemed confused about what to do next. Hugh stood above them on Lore’s platform, looking around, not sure of the next stage in his conquest.

  Picard straightened and wished he knew the origin of this conflict. What was Hugh doing here in the first place? Why had he decided to fight?

  Riker must know—he and Hugh had appeared at the same time. There had to be a connection.

  Letting his curiosity lapse until later, Picard stepped toward the platform. “Hugh,” he said, “congratulations on your victory.”

  Hugh turned to him, blinked, then managed only a nod.

  “Captain!” Riker was crossing toward him, holding his phaser in one hand and his communicator in the other.

  “It’s the Enterprise, sir. They’re approaching the planet!”

  No more welcome words had ever been spoken, but Picard’s brow dropped and he roared, “Why are they here? They couldn’t possibly have reached Starfleet and come all the way back already. What happened?”

  “Dr. Crusher has armed parties standing by,” Riker said. Apparently he didn’t want to answer Picard’s question or accidentally get in the line of this particular fire.

  “Give me your communicator,” the captain ordered.

  Riker reached over a clutter of downed Borg and almost tossed the communicator rather than get too close.

  “This is Picard,” the captain barked.

  “Crusher here, Captain. It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “I’m glad you think so. Your opinion may change when we get the opportunity to discuss this later. There is a Borg vessel guarding this area—”

  “The Borg vessel has been neutralized, sir.”

  He paused, and he and Riker stared at each other.

  “Neutralized?” he asked.

  “Destroyed, sir. It wasn’t easy, but we had the sun on our side.”

  Picard tried to absorb the fact that this wasn’t some kind of joke. “Yet another story I can’t wait to hear,” he said. “I want you to use your sensors to locate Troi and La Forge. They’re somewhere inside the lower levels of this compound—”

  “Sir, I’ve got them both,” Riker interrupted. “I can give the ship their coordinates.”

  Picard paused, gave him a surprised-but-pleased blink or two, then said to Dr. Crusher, “Belay that. Commander Riker will provide you with the numbers. Stand by.” He shoved the communicator back. “Do it.”

  “Aye, sir. Enterprise, this is Riker.”

  The captain stepped over the twitching pile of cyborg bodies and past Riker.

  As Worf and the other Borg watched him, he approached Hugh—slowly.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Your arrival certainly turned the tide for us.”

  Hugh nodded again, still unsure of what to do with his victory. “I would not have challenged Lore’s followers. I wouldn’t have thought this could happen for us. But he talked to me.”

  Another nod, this time at the Enterprise’s first officer, who was still speaking into his communicator, doing his best to clean up what had very nearly been a fatal mess for them all.

  Picard’s anger mellowed somewhat. His crew did know what to do, and situations were unpredictable.

  Hugh was gazing at the dead and dying.

  “What is it, Hugh?” Picard prodded.

  The cyborg’s face became animated with questions. “These once were my own kind,” he said, “but I don’t recognize them anymore. They still look like me, but in the evolution of a culture, they have become the enemy. This is difficult for me to absorb. We once worked together for a common purpose.”

  “You had no common purpose,” Picard shot back. “You had a common urge to conqueor. They’re not the same.”

  He stepped closer and lowered his voice.

  “Any colony of ants can work together,” he said. “You know that from your former life. But none of you really got anything out of being automatons, did you? The collective moved and grew, but only physically. There was no real advancement, and nothing good came out of it. Intelligent individuals working together—that’s the true jewel of freedom. If it were easy, it probably wouldn’t be any more worth having than the raw force of the Borg collective. Hugh,” he added quietly, “teamwork is not the same as collectivism. There’s nothing wrong with choosing between them. In fact, there’s great human stren
gth in teamwork.”

  Hugh’s brow puckered, but he didn’t take his eyes away from Picard. The uncertainty began to slip as he acknowledged the courage he and his followers had just displayed. He was beginning to understand that he wasn’t in the collective anymore and that it was the responsibility of an individual to act individually. Being chattel by choice—that would have been the real tragedy.

  Picard stepped away briefly, to let the concept simmer. He called to Riker, “What about La Forge and Troi?”

  Riker looked up. “The Enterprise is in orbit. They’re both aboard. I—”

  A murmur from the Borg milling about drew their attention, and they turned in time to see Data approaching them.

  Picard saw Riker and Worf both tense, but intuitively they waited to see what would happen and to let their captain decide what he was here to decide.

  There was no punitive action, though, as Data simply walked up to them.

  “Lore is no longer functioning,” he said. Then he hesitated and obviously struggled to speak the rest. “He must be disassembled so that he will never be a threat again.”

  A passive face, glowing with the flush of effort—perhaps physically, perhaps not.

  “It’s good to have you back,” Picard said.

  Data looked at him squarely and simply said, “Thank you, sir.”

  Sensing the wisdom of leaving details unpursued for now, Picard turned back to Hugh.

  “What will you do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Hugh said. “We can’t go back to the Borg collective . . . but I don’t know if we can all coexist. We no longer have a leader here.”

  Picard regarded Hugh thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  It took Hugh a moment to realize Picard’s meaning. “Perhaps in time, we can learn to function as individuals . . . and to work together as a group.”

  Thoughtfully, Picard nodded and offered him silent approval with his expression. His words had obviously not fallen on the ears of a robot.

  “Good luck, Hugh,” he said.

  Hugh drew a long breath. “Good-bye.”