Resistance - J.M. Dillard [42]
She had calmed; her arms were still folded, indicating her unwillingness to concede, but she was listening carefully. “I’ve been doing a great deal of research. Obviously, the queen is a drone who is being transformed into a female. My hunch is that it’s far more than a simple surgical procedure, that biochemistry is involved. The Borg are half organic. There has to be a biomedical way to halt the transformation process—”
Picard interrupted. “This is still conjecture? You haven’t yet discovered a method?”
She shook her head. “I need more time.”
“Then your line of research will have to wait.” He paused. “Even if you did find a way of halting the metamorphosis in time, someone would still have to get past the Borg in order to do it.”
“Jean-Luc,” she began softly. He heard the unspoken plea to find any other way.
“Someone must be transformed,” he said, his tone hard. “Someone with special knowledge of the Borg, their ship, their queen. Can you offer a more logical solution?”
“No,” she admitted. “But what happens if we do this and something goes wrong?”
“That is a question we can’t yet answer. But we already know with certainty what will happen if we don’t do this.” He sighed and lowered his voice. “Look, I’m no more pleased about this than you. I would prefer any other option—if there was one. But all personal feelings must be put aside. I am the best candidate. And I must have a perfect connection to the hive mind.” He fought to keep the pain and anger from his tone. “I won’t lose anyone else because of my ignorance.”
Her shoulders relaxed slightly; the emotion left her face and tone, replaced by the intent look of the scientific mind at work. “I have all the records, and Borg nanoprobes. I can adapt them for our purposes.” She paused. “And we’ll implant a neutralizer chip, of course, to protect you from total assimilation. You’ll hear every directive the hive does, be privy to all the Borg’s information. But you’ll still be yourself—capable of free thought and action.”
Picard gave her a grim smile of gratitude; he knew it wasn’t easy for her. “How long before I can be ready?”
She directed her eyes up and to the right as she calculated. “The actual work on you won’t take more than fifteen minutes. But give me an hour to prepare.”
“Make it less,” the captain said. “We haven’t that much time.”
Picard sat in his quarters, listening to the haunting strains of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and trying to quell the evil specters evoked by the knowledge of what was to come. There were flashes of the Borg operating room…of the terror of being a small mind closed off, imprisoned by the thundering voice of the Collective…the agonizing frustration of being encased inside a body no longer his own to control, of hearing his own voice speaking on behalf of the Borg while he, the individual trapped inside, could do no more than scream silently with outrage.
Each Borg drone represented just such an individual mind—trapped, forced to watch its body behave mindlessly, against its will…The magnitude of the tragedy was incomprehensible.
Now one of the drones was being altered, changed into a new creature—one with her own will and her own individuality, one bent on crushing those of others. He shuddered at the thought of himself as Locutus, supine in the operating theater while the queen, her skin moist and glistening, leaned her face close to his and whispered to him of their joint future as she stroked his cheek with cold, inhuman hands…
He quashed the unpleasant memories, replaced them with the one memory of pure triumph, unrivaled relief: the instant he had divorced himself from Locutus and the hive mind, and reached out, as Jean-Luc Picard, to grasp Data’s arm.
Sleep, he had said. The utterance brought unspeakable satisfaction, for it was his own voice, so long silenced, that was speaking. It was his restitution for the crimes wrought by Locutus; he was giving his crew the information they needed to stop the Borg, to save Earth. Data had heard and had understood.
Those