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PrologueIT BEGAN AS IT HAD BEFORE: CLAUSTROPHOBIC dreams, a sense of impending evil, the shattering of sleep with a desperate, rasping gulp of air.In darkness, Jean-Luc Picard threw back tangled sheets and rose. It seemed he had done so countless times, had risen in the grip of a vague terror and made his way, blind but knowing, through his unlit bedchamber. He entered the lavatory and paused in front of the mirror.“Light,” he uttered hoarsely, and there was light.In the glare he winced at his reflection. He looked the same: clean shaven, with lean, sharply sculpted features, a gleaming bald crown. Yet something was subtly different, something was subtly wrong. He studied his face intently, seeking explanations for his sense that he, that his entire world, had gone awry.Beneath his left cheekbone, the skin twitched. The movement was barely perceptible. Picard leaned closer, grasping the edges of the cool counter. Had it been his imagination, the product of paranoia triggered by the elu
Prologue
1BY SHIP’S MORNING, PICARD WOKE TO FIND Beverly gone and his mind clear, free of its nocturnal terror. He dressed, and by the time he mentally reviewed the tasks of the day, he had convinced himself that the Borg chatter had been no more than a vestige of the dream.The first stop was engineering. Picard entered to find the android B-4 sitting, legs sprawled with un-selfconscious gracelessness, clad in the mustard jumpsuit he routinely wore. His expression bland and benign, B-4 let his ingenuous gaze wander, without curiosity, over his surroundings. Picard could not determine whether the android had actually registered the captain’s entry, or the presence of Geordi La Forge or Beverly Crusher.“Captain Jean-Luc Picard,” B-4 said at last, without inflection. From experience, Picard knew this was not a greeting; B-4 was merely parroting the name of an object he recognized. But for the sake of the others, the captain took it as such.“Good morning, B-4,” he said briskly, with false cheerfuln
2BEVERLY CRUSHER WAS WAITING FOR THEM ON the bridge.She was glad that she had no medical duties too pressing to keep her from welcoming the new counselor. Beyond that, she was glad for another chance to keep an eye on Jean-Luc.Beverly had not shown it, of course, but she was concerned for his sake. The nightmare had unsettled him more than he had admitted, and earlier that morning, in engineering, he had seemed…off. Not himself. She had known him for decades, and their friendship had grown progressively more intimate over the years, until they had at last confessed their love for each other.She recognized every nuance of his moods so well that she knew he was still troubled. But this was more than being upset over a dream, or over the memory of what the Borg had done to him long ago.There was something else wrong, something neither emotional nor physical, nothing she could put her finger on. Something unusual had happened that he had yet to confess. Whatever it was, it so troubled him
3IN HIS QUARTERS, PICARD SAT AT HIS COMMUNICATIONS screen and watched as the insignia of Starfleet Command faded, to be replaced by the image of Kathryn Janeway.The admiralty suited her. She had aged little, despite the trauma of years trying to get Voyager and her crew safely home; her reddish chestnut hair, pulled back from her face and carefully gathered into a coil, was only beginning to show the first few streaks of silver at the temples. Picard had always liked dealing with her. Janeway was direct, plain-spoken, with handsome Gaelic features arranged in an open expression. Although she was capable of guile if duty demanded it, she disdained it; you always knew where you stood with Janeway.She smiled at the sight of him. “Captain! To what do I owe the pleasure of this subspace visit?”Picard could not quite bring himself to return the enthusiasm. “It’s good to see you again, Admiral. But I’m afraid the circumstances are less than pleasant.”Her demeanor became at once utterly seriou
4THE EPISODE LASTED NO MORE THAN A MINUTE, but to Beverly, it seemed to continue for an infinite length of time because there was nothing she could do to stop it, no medical help she could render to ease the horror of what Jean-Luc was enduring. There was no point in sedating him; whatever he—or rather, the Borg—said might be helpful.It ended dramatically. One instant, Beverly was staring down into the blank yet driven gaze of the Borg, listening to the faint, eerie chorus of many voices joined into one. The next, she was gazing into the eyes of the man she knew as Jean-Luc Picard, who was abruptly silent.He fell, limp, against the bed, exhausted by the wave that had overcome him. For several seconds, he lay panting until at last he caught his breath and said, “I heard it. Every word that I spoke…And all of it is true.”Beverly no longer had any doubt; no emotional trauma, no illness, could possibly re-create the voice of the Borg so faithfully. Worf, too, was leaning over the captain w
5PICARD SAT THROUGH THE NIGHT, OCCASIONALLY rising to stare out at the stars streaking by. He felt no fear for himself, only for what his crew might have to endure, only for what he had asked of Beverly, now curled, dozing, beside him.Instead, he felt anger: anger that he was again called upon to fight a nemesis he had thought conquered, an even greater anger that he again had to subject his crew to a horror no one should be called upon to face. Worse, he felt a mounting fury—one he believed he had overcome but that had apparently lain long buried. It was the rage of a man embittered by an intolerable violation, and with it came infinite grief. He had never forgotten that the Borg had used his knowledge to kill: the crews of forty starships, half as many Klingon warships, assembled near the star called Wolf 359…all dead, because of the contribution Locutus had brought to the Collective. He had known many of the perished; at night, he saw their faces more distinctly, saw their graveyard
6“ENTERPRISE ! THEY ATTACK ON SIGHT! REPEAT: They now attack…”Picard was on his feet, but only briefly. The lieutenant’s voice was replaced by a shrill sound that knifed through the captain’s brain and brought him to his knees. At first, he thought the sound was only in his head—like the song of the Borg—until he saw that the entire bridge crew was similarly doubled over.“Sever the connection,” Picard called out to the communications officer, but the young man had already dropped to the floor in agony.In two leaping steps, Worf reached the communications console and worked the controls. “The Borg have piggybacked a signal onto the lieutenant’s comm,” he shouted over the whine. “I cannot terminate the…Incoming!”The bridge rocked as the Enterprise was hit by a tremendous blow. The few officers still on their feet fell to the ground. Nave and T’Lana had both been thrown from their chairs.“Shields are down,” La Forge reported as he pulled himself back up to the console.“Lieutenant Nave, ta
7IN SICKBAY, BEVERLY WAS PERFORMING MICRO -surgery, staring down at computerized enlargements of Borg nanoprobes.Unaltered, they would infiltrate Jean-Luc’s neurons, twisting and intertwining themselves around the double helix of his DNA, corrupting its chemistry, supplanting it, until it became something new and inhuman.Beverly was subtly changing them so that they would mask, not replace, Jean-Luc’s humanity. The process made her recall their last encounter with the Borg—but her memory ran not to the harrowing battles aboard the Enterprise but rather to the moment she had first gazed upon Zefram Cochrane’s ship, the Phoenix.She’d seen old pictures of nuclear missiles, and there was no mistaking the Phoenix’s genesis. If ever there had been a plowshare hammered out of a sword…Which was precisely what she was attempting to do now. If the nanites were successfully implanted, and the captain’s neutralizer chip functioned correctly, the technology the Borg had used to enslave billions wou
8EVEN AS PICARD MATERIALIZED ON THE BORG vessel, he gratefully sucked in air. The atmosphere aboard the Enterprise had become so cold and dry to him that it pained his throat and lungs. Here it was obligingly hot and so moist a fine mist veiled his surroundings.The voice of the Collective was clearer here, utterly pervasive yet somehow less intrusive, as quietly a part of him as his own breathing or the beating of his heart. The part of him that was Locutus found it welcoming. At the same time, he felt his level of anger increase. At first, he thought it was a natural reaction to being back aboard a cube. But slowly he came to realize that Jean-Luc Picard wasn’t angry. It was the Borg.Emotion was not typical of his connection to the Collective. The Borg were systematic. Even with all the added voices, Picard remembered that the last time he was Locutus there was an overall sense of calm. Of reason. The Borg did not see themselves as evil. They were merely performing a function of their
9PICARD WOKE LYING ON A BED. THE BORG CARAPACE covering his chest had been removed, and the chalky skin beneath it was pristine, unscarred, as if it had never been pierced and torn. There was no pain at all, not even from the broken arm.The worst possible thing had happened. He had failed, this just as Janeway and T’Lana had predicted. Had he let his desire for revenge blind him to the inevitability of this outcome?The fact that he had not died filled him with unspeakable frustration, unspeakable fury. He tried to rise and found himself bound by heavy restraints. Vainly, he thrashed against them, near weeping with rage and self-loathing. The one promise he had made to himself—that he would never allow himself to be used again to hurt his own kind—was about to be broken.He took only a small degree of comfort to find that the neutralizer chip was still functioning—for the moment.He was no longer in the birthing chamber but in an open area, next to a single white, solitary wall. Macabre s
10IN SICKBAY, CRUSHER WITHDREW THE SURGICAL stimulator from Geordi La Forge’s temple and watched with satisfaction as his left cybernetic eye flickered, then began to glow reassuringly.“Whew,” La Forge said. He was sitting up on the diagnostic bed, looking much better than he had when Nave and Allen had arrived with him. He blinked and studied Beverly appreciatively. “Now that’s more like it.”“Just some pressure on your optical circuit. That’s what comes of hitting your head so hard.”La Forge rubbed his scalp ruefully. “Good thing I have such a thick skull.”Crusher could not quite bring herself to smile. She was operating numbly, mechanically now. She could not allow herself to feel, to think about anything other than the present moment, until Jean-Luc was finally back safe aboard the Enterprise.Both she and Geordi glanced up as Worf entered, his customary scowl even grimmer than usual.“So, Doc…” La Forge slid off the edge of the bed to his feet. “Can I go? I’ve got things to do.”Bever
11SARA NAVE SAT IN SILENCE IN THE CONFERENCE lounge along with T’Lana and Lieutenant Nelson from engineering. It was an odd trio, to say the least. Nave had known Nelson only in passing; the few conversations they had were centered around warp core specifications. She always found the information enlightening but not exactly interesting. T’Lana, meanwhile, had already proved to be a hard nut to crack, and Nave wasn’t ready for another go-round. It was easier just to sit silently and wait for Commander Worf than try to bother coming up with any topics for discussion. Regretfully, that left her with her own dark thoughts.Nave’s heart was in a very strange place. After she had heard Lio’s dying screams, she had alternated between excruciating grief and numbness. Now she was in limbo, wanting to mourn, to cry, but she couldn’t. Because now she had hope of rescuing Lio, and now her mind was busy churning out a hundred different scenarios of how she would find Lio on the Borg ship, how she w
12NAVE MATERIALIZED WITH THE AWAY TEAM ON one of the uppermost decks of the Borg cube.She had been sitting at the helm of the Enterprise when the Borg ship had first loomed close on the viewscreen. Hanging dark and ominous against an incandescent moon, it had reminded Nave oddly of images from old stories, of haunted Gothic mansions peopled by white, soulless ghosts of the ancient dead. The same feeling took hold of her again, as she got her bearings on the catwalk suspended high within the cavernous ship. This was the exact spot where Lio had been taken, where DeVrie and Costas and Satchitanand had died. Their ghosts whispered to her as she swayed a bit, staring down at the spiraling decks below.They now attack on sight… The interior of the ship was as haphazard and ungainly as the outside, dim and bland and shadowed—far dimmer, even, than the Enterprise’s night. What few colors existed were muted shades of dulled gray and bronze—the color of inanimate things.Beneath Nave was a vast d
13“HE FELL.” Sandra Chao’s voice, soft yet ragged, filtered up to Nave and echoed in the wide, empty shaft. Nave closed her eyes and pressed her forehead hard against her knuckles as she clung to the metal rung. At least Diasourakis’s scream had stopped reverberating.“He—” Chao broke off and took a few seconds to gather herself before continuing. “It was hard for me to see. When you fired…the Borg fell, I think, and knocked Greg off the ladder.”Nave kept her eyes closed a long moment. When she was able, she opened them and raised her face. Overhead, there was no sign that anyone else had followed. “Let’s keep going,” she told Chao. “Two more landings, then we’ll see where we are.”They continued down in miserable silence. They passed another landing; then, as Chao neared the second, she reached out carefully, caught hold of a guardrail, and pulled herself onto the landing. Her boots clattered against the metal. “I think it’d be best if you waited, sir,” she called to Nave, then cautious
14A SINGLE DRONE STOOD GUARD AT THE ENTRY TO the queen’s chamber, its face obscured by shadow, its body backlit by pulsating greenish light.Beverly’s phaser had already proved useless once. She knew that she couldn’t rely on it in the queen’s chamber. Besides, she had a more important weapon to focus on once they were inside. With Worf’s permission, she set the phaser to overload and sent it skidding along the ground toward the lone Borg. It stopped a meter in front of the drone.She held her breath as the drone took a step forward to examine the mystery object. That was all they needed as the phaser exploded beneath the drone. For one millisecond, its body froze, the dark mass at the center of a dazzling nova. Then the blast faded, and the drone crumpled and dropped.Leary and Worf stood motionless in place, weapons trained on the open entry to the chamber. Like them, Beverly did not move but held perfectly still, listening for the sound of approaching footfalls.She could hear only her
15A KLINGON’S STRENGTH DID NOT QUITE MATCH that of a Borg. Worf’s hand began to tremble with the effort of holding Locutus’s saw arm back. The blade grew closer, closer, until at last it sliced through the fabric of his uniform just beneath his chest.And then it stung his skin. Worf felt the warmth of blood as it ran down his midsection; the realization made him roar and squeeze his fingers even more deeply into Locutus’s throat. The drone’s eyes bulged slightly; its lips parted as it gasped for air.The saw blade stuttered as it hit the edges of the Klingon’s ribs. Worf did not flinch at the pain; instead, he came to a decision. He would let go of the saw arm, let it take him—so that he could seize Locutus’s neck with both of his hands and kill him.We will die together, he promised the captain. It would be a good way to die.Yet, in the fleeting second that Worf let go of the thick prosthetic arm, it went suddenly limp and fell to hang at the drone’s side. Astonished, the Klingon let go
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