Resistance - J.M. Dillard [82]
As the two made their way forward, they encountered a series of steps leading down to a semi-enclosed area. Nave didn’t like it; it was harder to see if anyone was coming in either direction. And, like Chao, she found the surroundings distracting. Built into the bulkheads were blinking consoles—ungainly, cluttered things with masses of exposed circuitry so that Nave found it impossible to distinguish the working parts from the controls. On the opposite side stood a massive workstation, large enough to accommodate six standing workers; its main screen displayed a rotating, glowing red legend, but all other controls were dark, as if the main systems had been shut down.
Nave frowned at it. “It’s a schematic of this ship.”
Beside her, Chao spoke. “This could be the helm.”
Nave grunted. “And the weapons station.” She lingered an instant. It was tempting to discharge her weapon into the heart of the station, destroying it—but the risk of alerting the Borg was too great. Her primary responsibility was to locate Commander Worf and assist him in destroying the queen.
“Makes you wonder where everybody is,” Chao said softly.
“Waiting,” Nave answered and started moving again.
They wandered past more stations and equipment, a jumble of consoles and controls, panels and dark monitors. To Nave it looked as though every department of a starship—engineering, life support, communications, weapons, navigation—had been crammed together in a one-hundred-meter space.
Another handful of steps led them up to a narrower, curving corridor, one even darker than the rest of the Borg vessel. Nave found it claustrophobic: the curve and darkness both restricted her line of sight. And it did not help matters that the corridor was lined on both sides with rows of empty Borg alcoves.
“These are their alcoves,” she whispered to Chao. When Chao shot her a quizzical glance, she added, “Where they sleep.”
“Do you think they’re all awake now?” Chao whispered back.
Nave shook her head—if they were, she doubted the ship’s stations would be unmanned—but her reply was unnecessary. In the next instant, Chao’s question was answered.
Nave froze as she spotted a dark form in the alcove that had just come into view on her left. She raised her rifle, aware that Chao, beside her, had done the same.
If it had moved, she would have instantly killed it.
But it stayed motionless in its narrow cubicle, bathed in faintly pulsating gray light. Chao raised her weapon to fire; Nave reached out to the side and pressed her hand against the nose of her companion’s weapon, lowering it. The Borg was not moving and posed no immediate threat. It was best to save the power cell. The more they fired, the more the Borg would adapt. This one still seemed to be in hibernation.
Not daring to breathe, Nave neared cautiously; as she did, she passed through the elbow of the curve. Beyond stretched a hundred more alcoves, each one inhabited by a solitary dark silhouette. It was like stumbling onto a graveyard of unburied dead—worse, because these dead might well spring back to life in the blink of an eye.
For an instant, she considered forging ahead into the forest of sleeping Borg and hoping they did not wake—it would be faster than turning around. But the prospect of what would happen if they did made her stop and turn to Chao. Better to face the few drones they had left behind than to be caught in the middle of a swarm.
“Double back.” Nave spoke so softly she could scarcely hear herself, but Chao—wide-eyed, solemn with fear—nodded in reply.
They turned and headed the way they had come. Rifle gripped tightly, Nave took the rear and kept glancing over her shoulder, expecting at any moment to see movement in the shadowy alcoves, to see eyes open, bodies stir, limbs move…
They attack on sight…
But the dreamers remained silent and still. Even so, it was not until Nave had made it back past the area of the ship’s jumbled, artless control consoles that she finally released a long breath and realized