Seven of Nine - Christie Golden [25]
Seven knew fear. She had never seen anything like this vessel before.
None of the people with whom they traded had that kind of ship. Who were they? What did they want? She padded back to her mother's side, the skorrak bird and her failure to catch it forgotten.
"Keela." Her mother's voice was calm. "Go inside.
Now. Put through a message to the Council. Tell them- " A blast of light burstftom the ships. It reached clear to the ground and began to slice up chunks of Seven's world. The ground trembled and Seven fell hard. She splayed out her legs and dug her claws in an attempt to hold on as the earth bucked beneath her.
Buildings collapsed about her. Mammoth trees, centuries old, toppled and fell. How long this went on, Seven didn't know, but when she finally lifted her head she saw devastation beyond her ability to fully comprehend These intruders had not only shattered her world, they had taken it. From this vantage point, Seven could look down into the heart of the city. Except that the city was now completely gone.
It had been scooped out like a cub might scoop a pawful of sand, and all that remained of a city that housed ten thousand souls was a huge, gaping tear in the good earth.
They came out of the shadowy jungle like walking nightmares. Bipedal, like the Graa, but unlike them in all other ways. Part pale flesh with no muzzles or fur, part black and frightening-looking machine, they charged forward, utterly unafraid. Seven yelped in terror. Her mother recovered and launched herself at the intruders, teeth and claws bare. so "Run, Keela! RUN!"
Seven froze, unable to obey. The intruders fired a strange weapon at her mother and the mighty huntress dropped like a stone. The intruder who slew her mother now lifted its eyes and fastened them on Seven. A single blue eye-the second had been replaced with a red light-stared at the small, cowering kitten. She for it was female-parted full, gray lips and uttered a sentence "We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile." Without warning, Seven erupted into motion. She jerked in a series of violent convulsions, arching her chest up and slamming her head down hard. Paris and the Doctor leaped into action.
Tom fumbled for the right hypospray, his heart in his mouth. His fingers betrayed him and the instrument toppled off the tray to the floor. Before he retrieved it, cursing his clumsiness, Seven's flailing had ceased.
Cardiac arrest.
Seven of Nine was dying.
D"= Sawe-, AND OUT OF THE SMWCE, A VOICE...
"Mother." A gentle shake. "Mother, wake up!"
"Kalti Druana? Nonored Kalti, please. .. " Seven shook off her sleep and sat up in her bed. Old bones and ancient muscles protested, but she ignored them. She had lived with the aches and pains of old age long enough so that they had become friends to the great artist. They were proof positive that she was still alive, that she had made it successfully through another day and had not slipped into the eternal darkness and silence that eventually waited to embrace her.
The children, her daughter Oplik and her daughter's mate Rel, had woken her. "What is it?" Seven asked sleepily. "What is wrong?"
"We are under attack, " Rel replied somberly. "orders have been given to the populace to congregate at certain areas. From there, they will try to transport us to more easily defensible ground " Seven permitted herself a humorless smile. If her planet full of peaceful artists were indeed under attack, there was no place that was "defensible." They might run, frightened, but in the end, if a conqueror wished to take the planet, taken it would be. For millennia the Lennli had been undisturbed save for trading vessels. The planet held no strategic position, brought forth no unique minerals. Its treasure was its people and their talents, nothing more but certainly nothing less.
But she had to keep pretending,