Part 19 (2/2)
At tactical, Lieutenant Reese's youthful and delicately feminine features hardened with resolve. ”Targets locked, sir.”
Lieutenant Kedam at ops added, ”Kearsarge and Exeter have their targets, and Prometheus has initiated multivector a.s.sault mode.” A signal beeped on Kedam's console. He eyed the display and glanced back at Bateson with a crooked grin. ”New orders from Starfleet Command, sir: Reengage the Borg.”
”Typical bra.s.s,” Bateson said, rolling his eyes.
”Prometheus has its targets, sir,” Kedam said.
Bateson decided that if ever a moment had called for the invocation of Shakespeare, this was it. ”Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! Fire at will!”
His blood was hot in his veins and his pulse heavy in his temples, almost to the point of vertigo, as he gazed in awe at the staggering volume of sheer firepower that the Atlas and its allies loosed upon the Borg cubes. Great cl.u.s.ters of blazing warheads and brilliant slashes of phaser energy lanced through the black monstrosities in orbit of Vulcan and pummeled them into wreckage and dust. Any piece large enough to be detected by a scanner was targeted and shot again, until every hunk of bulkhead and every vacuum-exiled drone had been disintegrated.
”All targets eliminated,” reported Lieutenant Reese.
”Secure from Red Alert,” Bateson said, cracking his first smile in weeks. He gleamed with satisfaction at his first officer. ”Thank Starfleet Command for their permission to engage-and tell them the attack on Vulcan is over.”
Erika Hernandez gasped for breath and couldn't fill her lungs. Her mind was empty of thoughts but filled with white agony. All at once, dozens of cubes and countless thousands of drones had been annihilated, and their savagely curtailed suffering was too much for her to shut out or shunt aside.
Then came the real pain.
Psionic attacks pierced her memories like spears of fire, searing her to the core of her soul. Every engram jolted into action was transformed, b.a.s.t.a.r.dized, tainted into a memory of torment and violation.
She was a child again, screaming for rescue as her family's home went up in flames, and blistering licks of orange heat consumed her beloved stuffed-animal companions...
No, our house never burned...
A dank bas.e.m.e.nt, a dust-revealed shaft of dull gray light through a narrow window, her uncle sitting beside her on a sofa with torn upholstery and old stains, his hand resting somewhere that it shouldn't have been...
He never did that! It's a lie!
She was sixteen and on her back in the snow, on a slope in the Rocky Mountains. Kevin, the boy she'd adored since eighth grade, was on top of her-with his hands at her throat and a narcotic haze clouding his crazed countenance. Her flailing and kicking and twisting bought her no freedom, not even one more tiny breath. She scratched at his wrists but couldn't reach his face. He was exerting himself, and clouds of exhaled breath lingered around his head, which was backlit by a full moon, giving him an undeserved halo as he throttled her.
That's not what happened! He was my first love!
None of her protests mattered. Each stab into her psyche twisted another cherished moment of her life into something sick and shameful. Every milestone of achievement, every fleeting moment of tenderness and connection, was trampled. It was the psionic warfare equivalent of a scorched-earth policy. Her foe intended to leave her no safe haven, no place to retreat, nowhere she could go to ground.
Hernandez didn't know how to fight something like this. It was too powerful, too ancient, too cruel. It had no mercy, and it possessed aeons of experience with shattering minds and devouring souls. A destroyer of worlds, an omen of the end of history, it was not merely the Borg Queen-it was the singular ent.i.ty beyond the Queen, the very essence of the Collective.
A cold darkness enveloped her, and she felt her fear being leached from her, along with joy and sorrow, pride and shame. This is a.s.similation, she realized. It's even worse than Jean-Luc said. All you can do is surrender.
Physical sensations returned with an excruciating spasm.
Hernandez's back arched off the deck, and fiery needles shot through her arms and along her spine. A scream caught in her constricted throat, behind her clenched jaw. Sickly green light was all she saw in the dark blur that surrounded her.
Helkara shouted, ”Pull the rest of the leads! Now!”
”Not yet!” Leishman said. ”Too much residual charge!”
Hands pulled at cables that snaked under Hernandez's skin, and she heard the hiss and felt the tingle of a hypospray at her throat. ”We're losing her,” Helkara fumed. ”Somebody get a medic! Chief, get that first-aid kit over here!”
The convulsions ceased, and Hernandez let her body relax on the deck. Her vision started to clear and sharpen, but she felt utterly drained, and she began s.h.i.+vering intensely.
”Bring blankets,” Leishman said to someone running past.
Hernandez reached out and took Leishman's forearm in a weak grasp. ”Queen,” she croaked, surprised at how difficult it was for her to form words. When she tried to speak again, all that issued from her lips were reedy gasps.
Helkara leaned in and asked Leishman, ”What'd she say?”
”She said, 'Queen.' I guess the Borg Queen shook her up.”
”No kidding,” the Zakdorn science officer said.
Vexed by their obtuseness and quickly losing consciousness, Hernandez let go of Leishman's arm and grabbed Helkara's collar. She yanked his face down to her own and stammered in a brittle whisper, ”The Qu...Queen...”
Helkara pried her hand from his uniform and straightened his posture. ”Is on her way to Earth-we know, Captain,” he said, placing her weakening hand on her chest and patting it in a patronizing manner. ”We'll deal with her next. Right now, you need to rest. Just hang tight till the medics get here.”
The sedatives they had given her were kicking in, and the edges of her world were growing soft and fading away.
Morons! she raged, imprisoned inside her tranquilized body. She wanted to warn them, but then she sank into the smothering arms of dark bliss, unable to convey a simple report: The Queen is here.
The news was almost too good for Nan Bacco to believe it. She kept waiting for the correction, the retraction, the nuanced clarification that would negate what she and her people had just witnessed on the subs.p.a.ce-feed monitors in the Monet Room.
A hushed conference between Seven of Nine and Admirals Batanides and Akaar ended, and Akaar strode to the head of the conference table. He lifted his large hands and silenced the nervous chatter that had filled the room.
”We've just received confirmation from Starfleet Command,” he said, lifting his chin and letting his long gray hair frame his squarish features. ”The Borg attack fleets at Vulcan, Andor, Coridan, Beta Rigel, and Qo'noS have been routed.”
He had more to say but was cut off by the room's thunderous applause and whooping cheers of jubilant relief. Bacco permitted herself only a tight, grateful smile, for fear of tempting the Fates with premature celebration. She caught sight of a deep frown on Piniero's face, and then she noticed that similarly grave expressions were worn by Batanides, Akaar, and Seven.
Akaar lifted his palms again and hushed the a.s.sembled cabinet members and advisers. ”There were reports of infighting among several other Borg battle groups, but those have now ceased-and all remaining Borg attack fleets are once again on the move.” He met Bacco's questioning look and added, ”Including the one on its way to Earth.”
4527 B.C.E.
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