Resistance - J.M. Dillard [83]
Chao flashed a shaky smile over her shoulder. “That was more than a little nerve-racking.”
“Yeah,” Nave said. The corridor changed into an open catwalk with railings again; she lifted her face and scanned the overhead maze of pipes, circuitry, and interconnecting walkways. She was looking for another shaft, a lift, anything that would take them up. She sighed and looked back down at Chao. “We’re going to have to go back to the shaft where…” She barely managed to catch herself in time. Sara had almost said where Diasourakis fell. “We need to get back to the away team. And if we can’t find them, we’ll need to figure out a way to destroy the queen ourselves.”
Chao’s expression darkened at the unspoken words. “Aye, sir.”
They moved on in silence, Nave yielding constantly to the impulse to look behind her, to make sure none of the sleeping Borg had awakened and followed. She suspected that most of the conscious Borg were on the uppermost level along with the queen. And if she and Chao were unable to find Worf and the others, there was very little chance that two security officers could get very close to the queen.
But Nave would certainly try.
Her vision, always sharp, had adjusted completely to the feeble light. She had been scanning for the small hatch leading to the shaft; it finally came into view, some fifty meters distant. Nave broke into a loping run. There was little time left, she realized, to complete the mission—less than ninety minutes.
Chao followed close on her heels.
So intent was Nave on her destination that she failed to notice two figures approaching from a walkway to her left. By the time she saw them and drew herself up short, they stood directly in front of her, blocking access to the hatch.
Immediately, she raised her rifle—but a second quick look at the pair made her hesitate to fire.
They were Borg. The first was hairless, sporting the black carapace, the optoscopic eye, the prosthetic arm that doubled as a weapon. Its features were bland, unremarkable, as if worn away by years of service to the Collective.
The second was newly assimilated, apparently being escorted back from recent surgery. Its hair was covered by black metal molded to its cranium; tubes emerged from the crown of its head and connected to apparently random spots on its neck, cheek, chest. Like other Borg, its movements were stiff, its expression wooden, but the face was not altogether pale. It wore a slight flush, and the areas on its skin where the tubes had been inserted were still red from the insult.
It still had two hands—human hands—and two human eyes. Despite the distance, despite the dimness, Nave knew that they were still clear and green.
“Lio,” she breathed. “Oh, Lio.”
Beverly listened to the sound of her heels ringing against the metal deck—a lonely, solitary sound—as she slowly approached the Borg queen’s chamber.
She could not see inside, of course—a quartet of drones, standing shoulder to shoulder, guarded the entry. Their silhouettes were black against the ghastly greenish glow beyond. Their faces were hidden, but Beverly knew instinctively that Jean-Luc was not among them, just as she knew instinctively that he was inside the chamber, somewhere very close to the queen.
“Excuse me,” Beverly said to them lightly, just as they lifted their heads to indicate they had spotted her. She saw an odd humor in the situation, even though she was trembling in her Starfleet-issue boots. “There’s something I’d like to show you. If you would just follow me…” To sweeten the offer, she fired her phaser at one, just to get it riled up. The setting had been on stun. She wasn’t about to waste a usable setting on a distraction.
One took a single forward step, and Beverly did not wait. She turned and ran at full tilt in the opposite direction, glancing only once over her shoulder to be sure they followed. She dashed back over the metal catwalk, then careened to the left at the first intersecting walkway.
She ran until the rails turned into bulkheads, until the bulkheads turned into