Doomsday Machine
-i-
WHEN THE SURGE CAME, SEVEN OF NINE WAS caught completely off guard.
She had been leaning against the crystal column and was about to step away from it when a sensation that was both new and familiar hammered into her. She gasped and her body became paralyzed. Even though she had been seeking the contact, her survival instinct told her to pull away. She was unable to do so. Her hands felt as if they were glued to the column.
“Seven!” shouted Geordi, but she didn’t hear him. His single voice was crowded out by what seemed the thousands in her head. Thousands of voices, but all of them speaking as one. It was different from what she had experienced within the Borg collective, however. In that instance, the unified voice of the Borg spoke in a flat, uniform manner. Here, though, the voices spoke in a sort of harmony, as if one speaker had recorded his voice over and over again, but in different pitches, so that they blended together into a seamless whole.
And they sounded angry.
You are Borg. You are what we were created to destroy.
I was. I no longer am.
We sense you. We sense them. We have slept for so long. Others have come to us, probed us, violated us. We have remained silent. Hidden. Afraid. We had forgotten our purpose. You have reminded us. They have reminded us.
They?
An image suddenly presented itself into Seven’s mind. It was two vessels that looked very much like Borg cubes except molded into the shape of starships. They were closing in on the Enterprise, which was desperately trying to pull back, get some fighting distance. The Borg starships were preventing that. Seven had no idea of just how much time the Enterprise had left, but she suspected it wasn’t all that much.
They have come. They have come and we can hide no longer. You have come, and you would invade us. You are they whom we were designed to destroy.
Not anymore.
You reek of them. Your thought processes are theirs.
I am what they have made me. But I have transcended that. Moved beyond that.
You tell yourself that. We do not believe it. You seek to hurt us. We will hurt you.
Seven screamed as pure mental feedback washed through her brain. The One Voice—for that was how she had come to think of it—was trying to batter her away, both physically and emotionally.
I am not going to hurt you. I want to help you. I want you to help us. I want to aid you in doing what you were designed to do.
You seek to assimilate us. You are Borg.
I want to destroy the Borg. They threaten the race that spawned me. They must be stopped.
We will stop you.
Seven of Nine, whose internal clock was hyper-precise, lost track of time. She could have been interacting with the One Voice for seconds or minutes or centuries, for all she knew. She felt as if her head was exploding. She was being barraged with images, but they were coming at her so fast and furious that it was impossible for her to distinguish one from the next. The doomsday machine, which had slumbered for so long, seemingly dead, without a guiding mind through which it could focus its energies, was rousing from its coma. It was then that Seven realized their extreme danger. It was possible that this machine, this biorobot, this creature that was a perfect synthesis of technology and biology, could assume complete control of her mind. Rather than be a collaborator, she could wind up being—irony of ironies—assimilated by the planet killer. Were that the case, it could exploit her mind and transform her into a mere shell of herself while simultaneously using her brain to power itself.
Unless she gained control of the situation, she might well be unleashing yet another unstoppable force upon the galaxy. A force that would no doubt have learned from its past mistakes and not allow itself to be dismantled the way it had last time.
And then something brushed past her mind, something that was not originating from the One Voice. She sensed Spock’s presence. There was no articulation of words, nothing beyond a calming influence that she didn’t even know she needed but was grateful for receiving.
It was like providing her an anchor in the midst of a buffeting tornado. Steadying herself, she thrust her mind back into the maelstrom of the One Voice. I am as dedicated to stopping the Borg as you are.
You cannot prove that. You—
I can. Survey my cerebral cortex. Probe the implants that are there. Witness the virus contained within, designed specifically to destroy the Borg.
For a moment the whirlwind of mental fury lessened. It was enough for her to catch her mental breath. She could sense the machine doing exactly what she had instructed it to do. Her instinct was to recoil, to pull away, but she fought the impulse because she had to give herself over to it, no matter how intrusive it felt to her.
This will destroy the Borg?
That is the intent.
In order to implement it, you will give yourself up to assimilation so that it can occur.
If need be.
Self-sacrifice is your plan?
It is the secondary plan.
And the first?
You.
-ii-
Geordi watched as Spock stood next to Seven, his fingertips lightly on her face. He desperately wanted to ask what Seven was saying: she’d been muttering in a low voice as if she were in deep conversation with someone. At least she’d calmed down from moments before when she’d been screaming as if in agony. He’d never seen anything like it. All the strength had gone out of her legs and she’d sagged against the crystal. Yet she was being kept up by her hands alone, as if they’d formed some sort of powerful suction attachment to the column.
Spock had taken it upon himself to intervene. Geordi remembered what Seven had said about Spock’s mind possibly being overwhelmed by whatever sort of mental prowess was behind the planet killer. Spock had assured Geordi, though, that he was proceeding with caution. Rather than a full-blown mind-meld, he simply brushed his thoughts against Seven’s, steadied her so that she could cope with whatever it was that she was facing. He had said that he would probe no farther than that, for fear of literally shredding the poor woman’s consciousness.
Now Seven had regained her feet, and although she was not outwardly acknowledging Spock’s involvement, she was focused once more upon her task. Her breathing had slowed back to normal, and she didn’t seem like she was under assault anymore. Satisfied at this turn of events, Spock tentatively removed his hands. He remained near her, however, waiting to see what would happen.
She continued her muttering. Geordi caught Spock’s eye, but Spock simply shook his head. The message was clear: even with his acute hearing, Spock couldn’t discern the specifics of what she was saying. It was simply too slurred, too under her breath. For all Geordi knew it wasn’t even coherent words.
Then she said something that he did, in fact, understand: “You.”
“You what?” asked Geordi, wondering if she was addressing him and needed him to do something.
That was when Seven’s hands melted directly into the crystal.
At first Geordi didn’t understand what he was seeing. It happened so quickly, so unexpectedly, that he thought something had gone wrong with his ocular apparatus. Then he realized and, with a cry of alarm, started forward.
Spock turned and said, far more sharply than Geordi had ever heard him speak before, “Stay where you are.”
The surface of the crystal was rippling like the surface of a pond. Seven moved forward, sinking into it, first up to her elbows, then her shoulders and head. Geordi couldn’t understand how something could be solid one second and liquid the next, and wondered if the substance was more like mercury than crystal. In the time that it took for that thought to cross his mind, Seven was completely enveloped by the crystal.
“She’ll suffocate!” Geordi said. Dashing past Spock while ignoring his cautions, Geordi grabbed at the column. His hands banged up against solid crystal.
“She will not suffocate,” Spock said confidently.
“You can’t be sure of that!”
“No. But I can be reasonably sure.”
“Reasonably?”
Seven was frozen inside the crystal. Geordi reached for his phaser.
“That will not be necessary, Commander.”
It was not Spock who had spoken to him.
Geordi stopped in midmotion and slowly lowered his hand.
Seven of Nine was standing outside the crystal. Her body was still inside, but there was what Geordi assumed to be a hologram of her less than a meter away from him. Just to make certain, he reached out. Sure enough, his hand went right through her.
“Seven?” he asked in a low voice. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I am being perfectly preserved.”
Geordi would not have thought it possible that Seven’s voice could be even more inflectionless than it already had been, but he was surprised to discover that he was wrong. Whatever humanity had been present in her before seemed stripped away. Instead there was a monotone that made the Enterprise computer voice seem positively garrulous.
“I have,” she continued, “made contact with the core mind of the planet killer.”
“And…now what?” asked Geordi.
“Now,” she said, “we go to work.”