Part 15 (2/2)

The six Borg were only a few meters away. Giudice and his team had retreated to the edge of the platform and had nowhere left to go. Giudice wished he could just s.h.i.+mmy back up the zip line. He glanced upward and had an idea. ”Everybody down!”

He used his weapon's gel-flare attachment to paint all six advancing drones with radiant green splatters, and then he hit the deck beside his team.

Less than two seconds later, an overpowering barrage of sniper fire from the distant sides of the probe tore through the six drones. As Giudice had guessed, sharpshooters from other strike teams had wanted to help him take the vinculum-they just hadn't been able to identify their targets in the dark.

”That's what I'm talking about,” Giudice said as he and the others stood and eyed the captured vinculum. ”Teamwork.”

Erika Hernandez manned the Aventine's conn and eyed the black, oblong vessel on the main viewer with dread and enmity.

Her hatred was fueled by what the probe and the other Borg vessels had done at the Azure Nebula. She was beginning to understand the threat that the Borg Collective posed to Earth and its Federation. She could only hope that her wrath would be strong enough to overcome her fear when the time came to add her voice to the Collective's dissonant chorus, in an effort to bring at least part of it under her control.

At the aft stations of the bridge, Captain Dax and her first officer, Bowers, conferred in muted tones with the Aventine's science officer, Helkara. They and the other officers on the bridge all presented calm appearances, but there remained a palpable undercurrent of tension. No one wanted to speculate about what might be happening inside the Borg s.h.i.+p. We're all hoping for the best and expecting the worst, Hernandez brooded.

An alert beeped on the ops console. Ensign Gredenko silenced it with a feather touch and said, ”The Borg s.h.i.+p just vented a small amount of plasma.”

Dax and Bowers hurried back to the center of the bridge. ”Magnify,” Dax said.

The image on the viewscreen snapped to a close-up view of a small exhaust portal low on the Borg s.h.i.+p's aft surface. Another brief jet of rapidly dissipating plasma appeared. Moments later, two short plumes occurred in quick succession. ”The delay between ventings has been exactly five seconds,” Gredenko reported. The bridge crew watched with antic.i.p.ation. Then came three rapid spurts of plasma. ”Five-second delay,” Gredenko repeated. ”Counting down to next venting. Three...two...one.” Right on cue, a series of five fast plasma ejections sprayed from the port. ”Fibonacci pattern and timing confirmed.”

”All right,” Bowers said. ”Mister Helkara, lower the dampening field. Kandel, keep the s.h.i.+elds up and the weapons on standby, just in case it's a trap.”

Helkara tapped at his console and replied, ”Dampening field is down, sir.”

Immediately, Hernandez heard a few lonely Borg voices from aboard the probe. They had been cut off from the roar of the Collective, and they sounded disoriented and afraid. She stole nervous glances at the rest of the bridge crew and quickly realized she was the only one who heard the panicked drones.

”Lieutenant Kedair is hailing us from the Borg s.h.i.+p,” Kandel reported.

”On speakers,” Dax said.

Kandel replied, ”Channel open.”

”Lieutenant,” Dax said, speaking up toward the comm, ”this is Aventine. Go ahead.”

”The Borg probe is ours, Captain,” Kedair replied. ”The vinculum is intact, and we've taken it offline while we make our modifications for Captain Hernandez.”

Dax nodded. ”Good work. Is it safe for her to beam over?”

”Not yet,” Kedair said. ”There are still a few drones kicking around in here, but we have them cornered. Once we finish them off, we'll be ready to proceed to phase two.”

”Well done,” Dax said. ”Keep us posted. Aventine out.”

The channel closed with a barely audible click from the overhead speaker. Hernandez's thoughts drifted as she tuned out the bridge's m.u.f.fled ambience of urgent business. Her mind reached out as if to the Caeliar gestalt, the way it had in Axion when she'd eavesdropped on her captors. Now, however, she was listening to the Borg drones on the probe s.h.i.+p.

A bond was formed, a communion of sorts...and then she was seeing through the drone's eyes.

It was wounded and immobilized, lying on a deck inside the Borg s.h.i.+p. To her eyes, the interior of the probe vessel looked more like an automated factory than a stars.h.i.+p. A celadon glow suffused its vast, deceptively open-looking architecture.

She felt the drone's labored breathing, the dull pain throbbing in its abdomen, the quickened beating of its heart. Its thoughts were chaotic and wordless, little more than surges of emotion and confusion. Then it reacted to the presence of Hernandez's mind with a desperate attempt to merge. It reminded her of the way a hungry infant might reach for its mother.

Its vulnerability and fear took hold of her, and she felt a deep swell of compa.s.sion for the mortally wounded drone. Don't be afraid, she a.s.sured the drone, acting on a reflexive desire to provide comfort. The drone relaxed; its pulse slowed. As its breaths became deep and long, it began to feel to Hernandez like a psychic mirror that reflected her will and desires.

Then a pair of Starfleet personnel turned the corner a few meters away. They had weapons braced at their shoulders as they advanced on the fallen drone.

Hernandez lost sight of the difference between herself and the drone. Its fear became hers as it stared into the barrels of two rifles, pointed at its face from point-blank range.

A shocked half-whisper pa.s.sed her lips, and she felt the drone speaking with her, as if they shared a voice: ”No...”

The bond was broken in a crack of gunfire.

Slammed back into the solitude of her own consciousness, Hernandez recoiled with a violent shudder. She gripped the sides of the console to steady herself. Her eyes glistened with tears of anguish and fury, as if she had just witnessed the slaughter of her own flesh and blood. She knew that the Borg were still the enemy of humanity and its allies and that the Collective had to be stopped, but now she was also convinced that there was more to this implacable foe than she had been told-and perhaps more than Starfleet and its allies realized.

A brown hand settled gently on her shoulder. Bowers leaned down and asked quietly, ”Are you all right, Captain?”

For a second, she considered telling him about her vision of the drone, but then she thought better of it. These people are terrified of the Borg, she realized. If they think I'm bonding with the enemy or sympathizing with them, there's no telling what they might do to me.

”I'm fine,” she lied. ”Just nerves, I guess.”

Bowers nodded. ”It'll be a while before they're ready for you on the Borg s.h.i.+p,” he said. ”Maybe you should go back to your quarters and rest a bit before we start phase two.”

Hernandez forced herself to muster a grateful smile. ”Sounds like a good idea,” she said. She got up and walked to the turbolift as Bowers summoned a relief officer to the conn.

Before she stepped inside the lift, Dax intercepted her. ”I just wanted to thank you for all your help today,” Dax said. ”I doubt we'd have succeeded without you at the conn.”

”You're welcome, Captain,” Hernandez said. ”Could I ask a favor in return?”

Dax's eyebrows peaked with curiosity. ”Depends. What'd you have in mind?”

”Seeing as you mean for me to pose as the Borg Queen in an hour or two, it would help if I knew as much about the Borg as possible,” Hernandez said. ”Can you give me clearance to review all your files about them? Including the cla.s.sified ones?”

”Consider it done,” Dax said. ”But be warned-there's a lot of it. I doubt you'll get through it all in an hour.”

That drew a genuine smirk of amus.e.m.e.nt from Hernandez.

”Don't worry,” she said. ”I'm a fast reader.”

Lonnoc Kedair's first order after the Aventine deactivated its dampening field had been to have wounded personnel beamed back to the s.h.i.+p for emergency medical treatment.

Her second order had been to make sure every drone on the probe vessel was ”one-hundred-percent dead.”

”As opposed to mostly dead?” T'Prel had inquired with her trademark arid sarcasm. Kedair had responded with a withering glare that made it clear she was in no mood for witty repartee.

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