Resistance - J.M. Dillard [37]
The sight also evoked the memory of his friend Joel. He had met Joel in the Happy Bottom Riding Club the first night the young ensign had arrived aboard the Enterprise. Joel had had a wicked sense of humor, and he had brought with him a bartender’s guide which, Lio believed, listed every mixed drink (cocktails, Joel called them) ever created. Joel was working his way through the list, and he insisted that Lio join him.
The first night had featured gin and tonics. It was where Lio had first heard of juniper berries. It was the reason he had introduced Sara to the drink the day before.
Lio had lied to Sara: when Joel—or, rather, the thing he had become—had attacked, Lio had fired. The Joel-Borg had stayed on its feet, impervious, until Commander Worf shouted an order for his officers to change the frequency of their phasers. Lio had recalibrated and fired again, this time taking the Joel-Borg down with a blazing, killing blast to its midsection.
It had writhed a second, no more, on the Enterprise deck, then died. And any hope of retrieving whatever remained of Joel had died with it.
Lio had spoken of the incident to no one; all of his fellow survivors had suffered similar traumas when the Borg invaded the Enterprise. Others had certainly been forced to destroy former crewmates. Lio had dealt with it by reminding himself that his hurt was not special.
Yet when he had tried to confess the truth to Sara, he had choked on the words; he had found it easier to lie. He could not bring himself to voice the fact that he had murdered his friend. Picard himself, filled with rage, had ordered them to shoot any assimilated crew members.
But Lio would deal some vengeance to the Borg today; he intended to take no small amount of pleasure in destroying the queen. And then he would return to the Enterprise, and Sara, where he would begin a new and better phase of his life. He had not thought, before he met Sara, that he would ever let himself become entangled in a permanent relationship. She, of all people, should understand the dangers of family life aboard a starship: her own parents had died serving aboard the Lowe, though she never spoke of it. He had learned about their deaths not from her but one of their crewmates.
For Sara, he was willing to live dangerously. But he was not willing to live without her.
He refocused himself immediately. It took him a minute to gather his bearings; they’d materialized some thirty meters from their destination. He nodded to his team. “This way.”
He’d assembled a good group. Amrita Satchitanand was the most experienced, with the steadiest nerves he’d ever seen; she was his backup in case his attempt to destroy the queen somehow failed. Jorge Costas—lumbering and extraordinarily tall, yet with brilliantly fast reflexes—and Noel DeVrie, a deadly shot, would provide cover.
“Remember,” he said, hefting the phaser rifle as they began to move, “no firing unless attacked. We can move freely among them so long as they don’t perceive us as a threat.”
Their steps rang hollowly against the metal decking. It was eerily silent, save for the faint, distant hum of engines. There were no voices here, no movement; a dim grayish light strobed overhead, emphasizing the profound lack of color, of life. Lio focused and suppressed his fear, his memories of Joel. It would all be over quickly: one shot, and the queen would be destroyed and all the Borg rendered harmless. All so easy…
Their destination was the only enclosed chamber in the vessel. At the open entryway, Lio paused.
Inside the vast interior, the light was even dimmer, with a greenish cast.
Lio pressed his combadge and breathed, “Captain Picard…We have found the queen.” He closed the channel.
On a table, encased in a gleaming gelatinous substance, lay a pale monstrosity: a bald head and shoulders, and a spinal cord that emerged, bloody and serpentine, from the incomplete mass