First Contact, page 9
To the right, a noise.
The Klingon whirled, rifle in hand, and aimed it at the sound’s source, a hatch in the bulkhead. The others fell into position in a half-circle beside Worf, all training their rifles at the hatch, which slowly opened.
Something began to emerge from the shadows; Worf caught a glimpse of a pale face, a black sleeve. The six warriors leaned in and fingered their weapons, ready for the kill.
The face finally came out into the arc of light cast by the rifles’ beams and became recognizable as Dr. Crusher, hair dark and face shining with sweat. She looked up, blue eyes wide, at the rifle barrels circling her head, and said in a small voice, “It’s only me.”
Worf relaxed with a disappointed grunt and stepped forward to offer a hand, but the doctor had already crawled out and was extending an arm to Nurse Ogawa, who stared curiously at the assembly of weapons. “Doctor, are you all right?”
Crusher nodded. “Yes—but we have wounded here.”
Worf turned to the nearest guard. “Lopez—get these people back to deck fourteen.”
Lopez moved forward to the opening and proferred a hand to Nurse Ogawa, who was already climbing out; the two flanked the opening and assisted the others while Crusher continued speaking, her pale brow furrowed with worry. “There was a civilian with us—a woman from the twenty-first century. We got separated.”
The Klingon gave a swift nod. “We’ll watch for her.”
The urgency in the doctor’s tone increased. “She has no idea what’s going on, Worf. You’ve got to find her.” Then she turned and headed off with her patients, leaving the Klingon to wonder just how unsettling it would be for someone born three centuries ago to step from a war-ravaged Earth onto a Borg-beseiged Enterprise.
He gave the thought no longer than it took to draw in a single breath, then motioned his guards to follow him, onward to the inevitable encounter with the enemy.
* * *
Picard led the way down the assimilated corridor, with Data a close second and the five guards following just behind. Impossible to look at what had been the pale, shining halls of the Enterprise-E (a new ship, yes, but his ship, and the Enterprise all the same), to see them darkened, reduced to a chaotic jumble by the Borg taint, and not feel the same rage, the same sense of violation as when they had filled his skull with metal and circuits and taken away his name.
As he rounded a blind corner, he slowed; the others readied their weapons for quick aim. Yet he did not slow quite fast enough. Before he or any of the others could react, two Borg drones walked past them.
Behind him, all but Data jumped and raised their weapons.
Picard stretched out an arm in front of them as if to literally hold them back. “Wait—hold your fire.”
Once again, he knew the inexplicable; the collective had sensed them yet felt no fear, sounded no alarm. The guards watched in frank amazement as the Borg pair did precisely what Picard expected: continued past the group without the slightest reaction.
“They’ll ignore us,” Picard explained, secure in his knowledge, yet feeling a thrill of adrenaline course down his spine all the same, “until they consider us a threat.”
He began to walk slowly behind the two, motioning for the others to follow. After a brief time, they came to another intersection and turned the corner Picard knew would lead them straight to the heart of the collective.
The instant he rounded it himself, Picard held up a hand again for the others to stop: some fifteen yards directly in front of them stood the tall double doors marked MAIN ENGINEERING… the one recognizable landmark.
All else had been corrupted by the same insidious, creeping tangle of tubing, wires, power packs, and circuitry, all jammed together without thought for convenience or design. And between it all—just as he had dreamed—Borg drones stood slumbering in their specialized alcoves, each face bloodless, emotionless, stripped of any sign of individuality, of life.
Close enough to touch.
The two walking Borg slipped into their alcoves and closed their eyes to sleep the dreamless sleep of the collective.
“Captain,” Data said beside him, and Picard looked up to see Worf and his contingent arriving from an adjacent corridor. With a flick of his hand, the captain motioned for the two teams to merge. United, the group moved cautiously past the sleeping drones, Picard and Data in the lead, Worf and his officers fanned out in a semicircle toward the motionless Borg, ready to provide cover should any wake.
The distance to engineering’s double doors was short, but never, Picard decided, had he ever taken so long a walk. The temperature in the corridor was stifling, yet beneath his sweat-soaked uniform, he felt oddly chilled, for the sight of those doors evoked again the mysterious image of a woman’s upcurved lips, pale yet seductive, and the low, beckoning whisper: Locutus…
Again he tried to summon her face, yet the memory stayed maddeningly elusive; like the Cheshire cat, only the smile remained.
At last, the goal was reached. Picard stood beside Data, rifle at the ready, and watched the android push away the invasive vines of Borg technology to reach an access panel on the bulkhead beside the doors. This, Data opened; inside, amid the circuitry, lay the emergency release handle. The android coiled a white-gold hand around it, then looked to his captain.
Picard glanced back at the security team. Ready, each of them; he tightened his grip on the rifle, then gave Data a nod.
The android pulled.
The captain drew in a breath. Fear gave way abruptly to obsession: he was nothing more than human, but they had violated him, hurt him. And somehow he would find a way to kill them all, destroy their race, make them pay for what they had done to him and every other assimilated soul.
And for what they had done to the Enterprise. The ship had become a symbol of their crime against him, and he would die before he let them have her.
He would not let them hurt him again, even if it meant his own death.
Data pulled harder, then harder still. With a loud snap, the handle broke off in his hand. The doors remained closed.
Picard let go the breath and felt the group tension just as abruptly deflate; for an instant, he felt like laughing, and shared a whimsical look with Data.
“Perhaps we should just knock,” he told the android, but before he finished speaking, a chorus of hums came from behind them, then a series of whirs and clicks.
He turned to see a dozen Borg emerge from their alcoves and begin to advance toward the team with implacable, deadly calm.
“Ready phasers,” Worf ordered, his voice steady but impassioned, warrior-fierce. His officers obeyed, standing motionless as the drones drew nearer, nearer, until at last the Klingon said, his voice lethally determined, “Fire.”
Eleven eye-dazzling streaks of light radiated outward from Worf’s group; four found their targets, tearing into black-clad Borg torsos with whines and sizzles as the beams encountered metal and flesh. Four Borg fell backward, killed—or rather, Picard decided, freed. Freed so that the original owners of the flesh bodies and helplessly trapped minds could escape the special hell that was assimilation, the special hell he had known as Locutus. Had death been an option then, he would have met it gladly.
Beside the captain, Data whirled about, lifted his rifle, and fired at a drone who was on the verge of making it past the protective semicircle of guards. Picard repressed the urge to join the battle, instead reattaching his rifle to his belt and hurrying to another access panel on the other side of the doors. Within a few seconds, he had opened the panel, and he began pulling out the circuitry and rearranging it; if the others managed to cover him long enough, he would be able to override the lock.…
He worked furiously, trying to concentrate, to ignore the sounds behind him: the whine of the phasers, the steadily approaching army of metallic footsteps, the thud and clank of Borg bodies falling. Body after body after body, yet the sound of more and more footsteps still came.…
But he worked—and was near success when Worf gave the warning cry, “Captain—they’ve adapted!”
The phasers went silent, leaving only the steady clank of metal footfall.…
Picard pulled the final adulterated bit of circuitry free and jammed it into the proper socket.
Immediately, the panel sparked, then went dull; the doors jerked open a thumb’s span to reveal darkness. Picard rushed to the doors and tried to pull them apart.
It worked. The doors gave a slight groan, then began to slide slowly apart, until they were open almost enough for Picard to slip inside. If he could just make it to the plasma coolant tanks…
Out of the darkness, a phosphorescent white face, white hands surged toward him.
Instinctively, Picard recoiled, but behind him lay bulkhead, an empty alcove; the battling security guards and Borg drones blocked all avenues of escape. The drone closed in, its blank chalk face indistinguishable from the others, its androgynous hands reaching out for Picard’s neck.
Picard stared at those hands and saw something black, sharp, metal unsheath itself from under each of the white fingernails, something that sought to reclaim Locutus. The collective’s knowledge seized him once again: these talons, once inserted beneath the skin, would entwine their swift, evil tendrils about his spine, his nerves, his brain, and give birth to a Borg.
He would not have it, he swore silently, would not have it. He was willing to fight to the death—not to the assimilation—but hand-to-hand combat was out of the question. One touch, and he would be theirs to control.
He lifted the butt of his phaser rifle, ready to strike despite the impossibility of victory.
The drone’s fingers came within centimeters of grazing his neck—then sailed up high overhead; in an instant of utter confusion, Picard watched as the cyborg’s torso, then legs, swung upward into the air, as a different black-uniformed body stepped into its place.
Data, he realized gratefully. The android lifted the drone high overhead, then hurled it across the corridor. With a loud metallic crash, it struck an empty alcove.
Yet even as the Borg went flying through the air, three more swarmed forth from the shadows inside engineering. One seized Data’s neck, the other two his arms and shoulders; he struggled to break free, but his attackers were stronger and pinned him fast.
Picard moved to run toward his friend, but more drones stepped between them and began to stalk the captain with hands extended, talons extruding from beneath their fingernails. His choice was agonizingly clear: rush the Borg who blocked the path to Data and be seized by them as well, or abandon his friend, get the team out, and survive to fight another battle.
“Captain,” Data said softly, plaintively, and despite the confusion, Picard heard and met his friend’s gaze. Data’s eyes were wide, stricken, yet strangely calm, and in that single word Picard heard many things: a plea for help, a statement of friendship, an admission of fear. Yet there could not have been time for Data to have triggered the emotion chip.…
In a single instant, the Borg drew their prey back into the shadows of engineering. The doors rumbled shut.
Please, Picard begged silently of both captors and victim, don’t activate the emotion chip.…
At once he whirled, returning mentally to the battle, and saw the security contingent firing uselessly at the Borg, who moved safely now behind invisible shielding. The skirmish line was collapsing; no time for foolish bravery.
“Regroup on deck fifteen!” he shouted, his voice near breaking. “Don’t let them touch you!”
And he ran, weaving around his pursuers with a grace and speed born of mortal desperation. As he did, his peripheral vision detected Worf and a few of the guards scrambling up an access ladder; others leaped for one of the many Jefferies tubes in the engineering corridor. Picard headed first after Worf’s group, but a group of Borg had already moved there to cut him off.
Oddly, the drones made no attempt to pursue Worf and the others; Picard turned and sped in the opposite direction toward a second access ladder.
Again a pair of Borg stepped into his way, blocking him. They don’t care about the others, he thought, with a fresh, wild surge of horror. It’s Locutus they’re after.…
He spun about to see the first group of drones closing in.
I will not be assimilated. I will NOT.…
He crouched low and hurled himself along the ground like a projectile toward the nearest Jefferies tube and pulled open the hatch. He was about to climb in when a strangled voice came from the deck beside him:
“Help…”
Picard turned. On the deck lay one of the young security guards, hands clawing at his collar, face contorted in frank agony. Beneath the tender skin of his neck, the assimilation device gave birth to a hundred tiny black serpents that lengthened rapidly, branching out like a fine, dark network of veins. Simultaneously, his temples began to pulse, then stretch taut as something metal pushed against the skin, then tore it and emerged with a soft whirr.
A sensorscope.
All this occurred in the fleeting millisecond Picard glanced down; and for another millisecond, he hesitated, staring down at the anguish of this young man.
This distinguished and intelligent Starfleet officer. This Borg.
“Please,” the guard begged. “Help…”
Picard’s chest heaved in a silent sob; he reached for his phaser, and before the horror of what he had to do could stop him, he fired.
It brought no consolation whatsoever to think that he had done what the young man requested.
Before the Borg caught up with him, he scrambled into the tube and slid the hatch shut.
The tunnel was dark, overheated, close, but desperation and adrenaline spurred him until he crawled at phenomenal speed, gasping from the heat and exertion. Only one thing could be worse than encountering the Borg on his own ship’s engineering deck—and that would be to encounter them here, in a claustrophobic Jefferies tube. Certainly, if they were in here, his gasps would give away his location. Yet he could not bring himself to really slow down—only enough to glance over his shoulder from time to time at the unrevealing darkness behind him.
At last he neared the first intersection, and he forced both breath and pace to ease before he dared take the turn that led eventually to an access ladder and deck fifteen. It was only then that he permitted himself to think of Data and the obscene existence that awaited his friend. The thought provoked a shudder; with Data’s already-incredible strength and brilliant android brain added to the collective, the Borg might become truly undefeatable.…
A sharp pain across the skin of his throat made him gasp, pulled him backward; he tried to draw in a breath and could not. The image of the young security officer’s neck and the insidious, unfurling tendrils beneath the skin flashed before him in the darkness.
I will NOT be assimilated—
He dropped his phaser and clawed briefly at the cable strangling him—then wedged his boots against the tube wall and slammed with all his strength backward, away from the pressure.
A body behind him—smaller than expected—groaned as he smashed it back against the opposite wall. The cable loosened at once; he took advantage of his position and plunged an elbow backward.
To his astonishment, he felt nothing but ribs and soft flesh. As his attacker emitted a high-pitched yelp, he whirled about.
And in the dimness saw a dark, sweat-slicked face: the woman from the missile silo, the one who had tried to shoot them down with bullets.
Her eyes were wild, her scorched and torn clothing even more disheveled than when he had last seen her, unconscious and dying on the metal catwalk. Only now, instead of a gun, she held his phaser in her hands.
“You,” Picard whispered, moving toward her. “How did you—”
“Back off!” she shrieked; the phaser in her grasp remained steady, but a spasm of pure rage and terror coursed through her body as she cried out, leaving her trembling in its wake.
She was teetering on the edge of hysteria, Picard realized, and could very easily kill him; all depended upon his response. He drew a slow, settling breath and forcibly relaxed his own features; in a voice both reassuring and authoritative, he said, “Calm down.”
“Shut up,” she spat, then immediately contradicted her own words. “Who are you?”
“My name is Jean—”
“No!” Her expression grew even deadlier; she took a step closer and pointed the phaser squarely at his forehead. “What faction?”
Picard stared at her blankly for a full second before he understood. Of course: she was from the mid-twenty-first century and had interpreted the Borg attack as coming from the infamous ECON. The people of her era were too focused on their own planetary strife to consider that the attack might have come from beyond Earth.
“I’m not part of the Eastern Coalition,” he answered evenly. “Look, this is difficult to explain, but—”
“I said shut up. I don’t care who you’re with,” she countered irrationally. “Just get me out of this—whatever the hell this place is.”
“That’s not going to be easy.”
She waved the phaser threateningly. “Well, you’d better find a way to make it easy… or I’m going to start pressing buttons.”
He studied her, thinking. This woman had come alarmingly close to killing him once (and would most certainly have killed Data if she could have). He was trained in the art of hand-to-hand combat, but then so was she—in a harsher arena where losers did not live long enough to learn from their mistakes. If he bolted now, she would fire, most definitely killing him—and probably herself—with the ricochet off the tunnel walls.
And as long as she stayed with him, he could keep her out of the Borg’s hands.
“Very well,” he said finally, and brushed himself off, then rose to a crouched position and began moving again. “Follow me.”
