Part 21 (2/2)

The lights flickered back to full strength as Bowers said, ”Helm, evasive pattern sigma. Give tactical a clear shot at the other side of the Borg s.h.i.+p.”

”Aye, sir,” replied Lieutenant Tharp. The Bolian guided the s.h.i.+p through a series of rolling maneuvers that dodged the Borg's next barrage. Then a fresh wave of phaser and torpedo hits from the Aventine halted the Borg's attack.

”Cease-fire,” Bowers ordered. ”Gredenko, damage report.”

The ops officer's hands moved lightly and quickly over her console as she compiled data flooding in from several decks and departments. ”Weapons grid overload,” she said. ”s.h.i.+elds offline. Direct hit to the main deflector-minor damage, but we've lost the ability to generate a dampening field.”

”I'll bet that was the Borg's intention,” Dax said.

Gredenko added, ”There's more, Captain. We've also lost our long-range comms. Complete system failure.”

”Sam, start beaming our people back,” Dax said. ”I want them off that s.h.i.+p, on the double. Then I want it fragged.”

”Aye, Captain,” said Bowers, relaying the order to Kandel with an urgent nod.

A moment later, Kandel looked up from the tactical station and said, ”Scattering fields are going up in the core of the Borg s.h.i.+p-and the boarding parties report they're under attack!”

Bowers snapped, ”By whom?”

Kandel's reply confirmed Dax's fear: ”By the s.h.i.+p, sir.”

The walls were alive, and the floors couldn't be trusted. Hungry maws filled with s.h.i.+ning cables writhing in viscous black fluids had started to appear in the middle of bulkheads and corridors, as if invisible knives were slas.h.i.+ng wounds into the s.h.i.+p's metal flesh and revealing its biomechanoid innards.

Helkara looked around the transforming vinculum tower in shock. Over the deafening screeches of wrenching metal, he shouted, ”What the h.e.l.l is going on?”

”The s.h.i.+p's adapting,” Kedair said, looking around in terror at the collapsing catwalks and wildly undulating wires that whipped like angry serpents in the s.p.a.ce around the s.h.i.+p's hollow core. ”That means it's about to start either killing us or a.s.similating us. Either way, I'd rather not stick around to find out.” A booming groan from the s.h.i.+p seemed to answer her.

Leishman and a Mizarian paramedic named Ravosus strained to lift Erika Hernandez to her feet. ”C'mon, Captain,” Leishman said, grimacing under the effort of lifting the semiconscious woman. ”We have to get you out of here.”

As they carried her toward the exit, Hernandez's eyes snapped open, and her hand lashed out and snared Kedair's sleeve. ”The Queen,” she said. ”She's here. On this s.h.i.+p.”

Kedair tapped her combadge, intending to order the rest of the boarding teams to evacuate the Borg s.h.i.+p. Her metallic insignia returned a dysfunctional-sounding chirp that signaled an error. ”Must be a scrambling field,” she said, thinking out loud. She pried Hernandez's fingers off her arm, then pointed across the narrow causeway that had been extended to link the vinculum tower to the interior structure of the Borg vessel. ”You three, get Hernandez to a beam-out point. Go!”

Helkara blocked the exit and protested, ”What about you?”

”I have to set the detonator on the transphasic mine,” she said. Then she added a lie: ”I'll be right behind you. Go!” A hard slap on the Zakdorn's back impelled him into motion. Leishman and the medic hurried along behind him, supporting the dazed but now weakly ambulatory Hernandez between them.

One minute for them to cross the bridge, Kedair calculated, two minutes to the nearest enhanced transport site. Add a minute for insurance. She turned back and faced the dark heart at the center of the Borg vessel. The inside of the vinculum tower was now a horror show of biomechanical viscera spreading like a cancer, metastasizing into every open s.p.a.ce. To reach the transphasic mine and set its detonator, she would have to fight her way through that snaking ma.s.s of lethal, merciless pseudo-flesh and hold her ground for at least four minutes.

There was no point sending anyone else to do it; she was the only one likely to have a chance of success...and she decided that she'd gotten enough of her people killed for one day.

From a sheath on the back of one of her slain comrades, she drew a sword with a monomolecular edge. Alone and resolved, she gazed into the yawning cavity of steel teeth, slithering sinew, and oily black death. It taunted her with evil whispers, as if daring her to rush in where all others feared to tread.

She lifted her blade and charged.

Every turn seemed to lead to a dead end. Dark chords of panic rang out from all directions, echoing and vanis.h.i.+ng into the shadowy recesses. The inside of the Borg probe was a maze of snaking conduits and sliding walls. Great slabs of machinery moved of their own volition behind the facades, traveling with deep rumbles and earsplitting screeches.

Erika Hernandez had recovered most of her strength and was sprinting behind Leishman and Helkara, with Ravosus close behind her. She wished they could run faster. In theory, Helkara was leading them out of the industrial-style labyrinth, back to one of many secured platforms where a quartet of transporter-pattern enhancers had been set up to facilitate a rapid evacuation of the s.h.i.+p. In practice, he was steering them down pa.s.sages to nowhere.

They rounded a corner, and Helkara slammed into a solid wall of layered metal plating and overlapping conduits. Leishman ran into him, and Ravosus collided with Hernandez and then awkwardly backed away, into the corridor from which they'd come.

Helkara stumbled backward and squinted in pained confusion at the barrier. ”What the...?” Staring in dismay at his tricorder screen, he said, ”There should be a pa.s.sage here.”

”We were warned about this,” Leishman said, pulling Helkara back the way they'd come, past Hernandez, around the corner. ”The s.h.i.+p's reshaping itself, corralling us.” As soon as she had turned the corner, she stopped, looked around, and asked with obvious alarm, ”Where's Ravosus?”

Hernandez opened her catom senses to the energies that dwelled inside the Borg vessel's vast machinery, all of it guided by a sophisticated inorganic intelligence. She saw the patterns in its alterations of form, and she felt it focusing itself to strike. Behind all of it, she heard the voice of the Queen.

”He's gone,” Hernandez said. ”Follow me.”

She led her two remaining comrades down a narrow pa.s.s between two bulkheads. It was barely wide enough for Leishman to pa.s.s; her shoulders sc.r.a.ped the sides, and Helkara had to shuffle-step at an angle to follow. Several meters away, at the end of the sliver-thin pa.s.sage, the sickly green glow of the s.h.i.+p's energy-transfer systems lit the way.

Leishman called out in alarm, ”I'm snagged on something!”

Hernandez stopped and looked back. Black tendrils squirmed up through holes in the waffle-grid deck plates and snaked around Leishman's ankles and up her legs. Hurrying back to the trapped engineer, Hernandez saw Helkara reaching for his phaser. ”Stop,” she said, holding out one hand. ”You could hit Mikaela!”

Helkara stared past her, and his jaw went slack as a shadow fell over him. ”I think we have bigger problems,” he said.

Her catom senses had already told her what was happening, but she needed to see it for herself.

She looked over her shoulder.

The path ahead went black. The pa.s.sage was closing on them.

Resistance is futile, hissed the Queen, invading the sanctum of Hernandez's thoughts.

We'll see about that, Hernandez projected in reply.

”Take my hand, Mikaela!” she shouted. ”Gruhn-you, too!”

The two officers reached out for Hernandez's outstretched hands. She grasped their wrists.

The walls pressed inward and reached for the trio with eager tentacles. The deck fell away beneath them.

And another took its place.

She had found the royal frequency and made it her own.

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