Resistance - J.M. Dillard [74]
“La Forge to Worf.”
Worf pressed his combadge. “Go ahead, Commander.”
Geordi’s voice was uncharacteristically flat, defeated. “We tried to pinpoint the queen on the Borg vessel, but there just wasn’t enough time. If we had another hour, I could probably pull it off. She’s a very small needle in a very big haystack. I’m sorry, Worf.”
“I know that you did your best, Commander,” Worf said. He kept the channel open and turned to Luptowski at the transporter controls. “We will need to drop the cloak to beam to the cube. As soon as we are away, Commander La Forge can reinitialize the cloak. However, the Borg will be immediately alerted to our presence. If their behavior remains consistent, they will instantly perceive us as a threat and attack. Our only option, as I see it, is to beam into the same coordinates as the captain and the first away team had. Tactically, it will not be a strong position, but we won’t have time to beam any farther away from the queen’s chamber.”
“Agreed,” Nave said with a nod.
Worf addressed his security team. “We will provide cover for Doctor Crusher so that she can administer the injection to the queen. Once the Borg are disarmed, she will gather samples.” He looked pointedly at Crusher and frowned. “You will need a phaser rifle.”
The doctor shook her head. “I’ll have to make do with the phaser. The rifle is too cumbersome with the medkit.” Her hand fell on the hypospray. “Besides, this is all the weapon I need.”
Worf spoke to the security team again. “Doctor Crusher will attempt to disable the queen—but the instant it seems that she is not successful, fire to kill.” He paused, and his voice dropped even lower. “I realize that we want our captain and our crewmate to be recovered safely. But our first priority is to stop the Borg—at any cost. Am I understood?”
“Understood,” Beverly said softly, along with the others. She caught Nave’s eye at the instant it flickered with a ghost of pain. She was sure no one else saw it, no one but herself, because she felt the very same ache.
“Very well,” Worf said. “According to Captain Picard, we have only two hours before the queen wakes and the Borg vessel is online. It is imperative that we accomplish our mission before either of those events occurs.”
As they stepped onto the transporter pads, Beverly drew in a breath. The air was cool here and pleasant; she remembered how hot and dank it had been when the Borg had taken over the ship, and she steeled herself.
“Mister La Forge,” Worf said into the air, “on my mark.”
“Ready,” La Forge’s voice replied.
Worf nodded to Ensign Luptowski. “Energize.”
Beverly watched as the normal world, the sane world, dissolved into nothingness around her.
12
NAVE MATERIALIZED WITH THE AWAY TEAM ON one of the uppermost decks of the Borg cube.
She had been sitting at the helm of the Enterprise when the Borg ship had first loomed close on the viewscreen. Hanging dark and ominous against an incandescent moon, it had reminded Nave oddly of images from old stories, of haunted Gothic mansions peopled by white, soulless ghosts of the ancient dead. The same feeling took hold of her again, as she got her bearings on the catwalk suspended high within the cavernous ship. This was the exact spot where Lio had been taken, where DeVrie and Costas and Satchitanand had died. Their ghosts whispered to her as she swayed a bit, staring down at the spiraling decks below.
They now attack on sight…
The interior of the ship was as haphazard and ungainly as the outside, dim and bland and shadowed—far dimmer, even, than the Enterprise’s night. What few colors existed were muted shades of dulled gray and bronze—the color of inanimate things.
Beneath Nave was a vast downward spiral, a maze of metal wrought like a spider’s web but without the elegance. A conduit was stuck here, a railing there, another deck, a wall of circuitry fully exposed, as if someone had stripped away the bulkheads to reveal the internal workings of the ship, unable to be bothered by concerns of elegance or privacy.
Far below, so far they were no bigger than