Part 30 (1/2)

Then he looked at Picard, who nodded slowly, as if with a dawning comprehension. Riker sensed that something unspoken was transpiring between Picard and Hernandez.

Finally, Picard said to Hernandez, ”You're not disbanding the Collective...are you, Captain?”

”No,” Hernandez said. ”We're a.s.similating them.”

A two-meter-tall oval of mirror-perfect quicksilver took shape behind Hernandez, who turned and stepped through it without so much as a ripple. Then the oval faded into vapor, sublimated into nonexistence, leaving only Inyx on the screen.

Riker snapped, ”What's going on? Where'd she go?”

”To the source,” Picard muttered.

Glaring at Inyx, Riker said, ”Show me where she is!”

”As you wish,” Inyx said.

The Caeliar's image dissolved to that of a view from deep inside a ma.s.sive Borg vessel. A haphazard, slapdash collage of metal, tubes, wires, ducts, and random machinery filled the screen, all of it illuminated through its narrow gaps by a sickly viridian light. The point of view roved through the dark, industrial-looking labyrinth until it found open s.p.a.ce and arrowed down toward the vessel's core. Pa.s.sing like a phantom through solid matter, the image speared its way into the central plexus, to the most elaborate Borg vinculum Riker had ever seen.

In the bowels of that biomechanoid horror, Erika Hernandez walked without fear toward an advancing phalanx of Borg drones. Behind them, atop a dais festooned with regeneration pods and a plethora of bizarre devices, stood the Borg Queen, commanding her foot soldiers forward to intercept her rival.

”No!” Riker shouted. ”You have to stop her! She doesn't know what she's doing!”

Inyx replied, ”I a.s.sure you, Captain, Erika knows exactly what she is doing. And I would have stopped her if I could.”

Riker watched, horrified, as the drones set upon Hernandez in a savage pack-and impaled her with a.s.similation tubules.

29.

Hernandez fell into the arms of the drones and gave herself up, surrendering to their violations. Viselike hands seized her arms and ripped every loose fold of her clothing. a.s.similation tubules extended from the drones' knuckles and pierced Hernandez's flesh, each puncture as sharp as a serpent's bite.

A cold pain coursed through her, surged in her blood, and clouded her thoughts. There was no fury in the drones as they smothered her, only the brutal, simple efficiency of machines subjugating flesh and bone.

Beyond the one-sided melee, the Borg Queen stood on her dais and regarded Hernandez's fall with haughty dispa.s.sion.

The voice of the Collective flooded Hernandez's mind like seawater pouring into a sinking s.h.i.+p, and her thoughts drowned in the aggressive swell of psionic noise. Panic bubbled up from her subconscious. For a moment, she wished she had prevented the drones from injecting her. It would have been within her power to turn them back, to wrest them from the will of the Borg Queen, but instead she had let them strike unopposed-because that was the plan and had been from the start.

A black fog of oblivion enfolded her.

This is the only way, she told herself. The only path.

None of the Caeliar could do this for her. Hernandez knew that only she could serve as the gestalt's bridge to the Borg. The Caeliar, with their bodies of catoms, were immune to a.s.similation; the Borg's nanoscopic organelles needed at least some trace amounts of organic matter to invade and transform as part of the a.s.similation process. In the body of a Caeliar, the organelles would find only other nanomachines-all of which would be far more advanced and powerful than the organelles and utterly impervious to them.

It would have been equally futile for any member of the Starfleet crews to volunteer for Hernandez's mission. Without the Caeliar catoms that infused her body, and which had altered her genetic structure, another organic being would be unable to survive the a.s.similation process while acting as a conduit for the focused energies of the gestalt.

Only I can do this, Hernandez reminded herself. I have to hang on. Can't give up...not yet.

The icewater in her veins turned to fire as a.s.similation organelles and Caeliar catoms waged war for possession of her body. Needles of pain stabbed through her eyes, and a burning sensation p.r.i.c.ked its way down her back.

Every inch of her was consumed with excruciating torments. Two deafening voices raged inside her head: the soulless roar of the Collective and the hauntingly beautiful chorus of the gestalt.

As the Collective became more aware of the gestalt through its bond with Hernandez, the singular intelligence behind the Borg launched a mind-breaking a.s.sault on her psyche. Unlike the first time the Borg had a.s.sailed her, however, Hernandez wasn't alone. Reinforced by the shared consciousness of the Caeliar, she dispelled the Borg's demoralizing revisions of her memories. Its lies broke like waves against an unyielding seawall.

She felt the Caeliar gestalt rea.s.sert its primacy in her mind and body, and then it landed its own first blow against the Collective, dredging up fragments of an ancient memory-bitter cold and empty darkness, loneliness and despair, fading strength and dwindling numbers. And, above all, hunger.

Paroxysms of rage shook the Collective, and Hernandez knew, intuitively, that the Borg armada was firing en ma.s.se at Axion, unleas.h.i.+ng every bit of destructive power it could marshal. All of the Collective's hatred and aggression was erupting, and the Caeliar had become its sole focus. As the bombardment hammered Axion's s.h.i.+elds, however, there wasn't a glimmer of distress or even concern in the gestalt. At best, the Caeliar reacted to the fusillade with equal parts curiosity and pity.

So much sorrow and anger, opined the gestalt. Such a desperate yearning...but it doesn't know what it seeks, so it consumes everything and is never satisfied.

A surge of strength and comfort from the gestalt flowed through Hernandez, and the chaos of its struggle with the Borg gave way to a sudden peace and clarity.

Then the Caeliar projected their will through her fragile form and usurped control of the Borg Collective.

The Caeliar gestalt beheld its savage reflection.

The Collective looked back, hostile and bewildered, like a wild thing that had never seen a mirror nor caught sight of itself in still waters.

Inyx perceived the shape of the Collective and was shocked at how it could be both so familiar and so alien. Two great minds, the Collective and the gestalt, had shared a past until their paths had diverged. The Borg had been forced down a road of deprivation and darkness, while the Caeliar, despite being wounded, had been afforded the luxury of a more benign destiny. Now their journeys, separated by time and s.p.a.ce, had converged.

A roar of voices spoke the will of the Borg.

You will be a.s.similated. Your diversity and technology will be adapted to service us. Resistance is futile.

The gestalt was overwhelmed with pity for the primitive and autocratic posturing of the Collective. Like a child that had never been disciplined, it laid claim to all it surveyed, seized everything within reach in rapacious flurries of action, and never once questioned if it had the right to do so.

Brute force was the Collective's tactic. The drones that surrounded Axion outnumbered the Caeliar population five to one. Across the galaxy, there were trillions of drones, in tens of thousands of star systems, on innumerable cubes and vessels. Had the Collective's conflict with the Caeliar been one of simple numbers, there would have been no contest.

How tragic, Inyx mused openly in the gestalt. It doesn't understand at all.

Ordemo Nordal replied, All it sees is power to be taken.

Edrin, the architect, asked, Do we know who it is?

It's time we found out, said Ordemo.

The tanwa-seynorral focused the gestalt's attention on breaking through the noise of the Collective, penetrating to the true essence of the Borg, exposing its prime mover, revealing the mind at its foundation and the voice behind its Queen.