The Farther Shore - Christie Golden [70]
Seven shook her head. “Not pain. The peculiar buzzing sensation I described earlier has returned. It is increasing in intensity.” She paused. “Now it has stopped.”
Kaz and the Doctor exchanged glances. The Doctor picked up a medical tricorder and began to examine her. Irritated, Seven brushed it aside.
“We do not have time to waste analyzing my malfunctions,” she said. “It is likely that this is caused simply by insufficient regeneration.”
“How does it compare with the times the queen has attempted to contact you?” the Doctor persisted.
“Similar, but different. Doctor, it has ceased troubling me. You should cease troubling me as well.”
The Doctor glowered, and despite the direness of the situation, Kaz hid a smile at the banter.
“Besides, there is no danger of the queen attempting to contact me. She is not even in the quadrant.”
Kaz’s smile faded as the Doctor’s glower melted into [209] an expression of fear and concern. He lifted his gaze from the medical tricorder and stared at Seven. “Yes, she is,” he said softly.
“Your Majesty,” stammered Trevor Blake, “you’re not ready for this yet. Your implants could get overloaded. Give them a few more hours.”
“I do not have a few more hours,” Covington snapped. Blake was brilliant, but he irritated her no end. “Seven of Nine, Icheb, the Doctor, and Dr. Kaz have all disappeared. It doesn’t take a great leap of intellect to surmise that they have joined with Janeway and are presently hard at work trying to find a cure for the virus. Their research will lead them to the inescapable conclusion that there is an active queen in the quadrant.”
“They don’t know it’s you,” Blake pointed out.
“If they get that far, they could possibly figure out the rest. Regardless, they will be able to interfere sufficiently to set us back years. I won’t have it. Not now, not when I have come so close—”
Tears welled in her eyes and she bit her lip as the memories of the joining flooded her. She couldn’t abandon her drones. Not now, not ever. The only way they could attain perfection was through her.
“I have to do it now,” she continued, recovering. “The doctor will monitor my physical reactions and I’m certain that you will do the same for the information download. Proceed to link me with the computers.”
He nodded, looking distressed, and began.
Montgomery was furious. Right under his nose, dammit. They’d zipped out right under his nose without [210] a by-your-leave. All three prisoners and the doctor who had, obviously, been a part of the scheme.
He couldn’t afford to publicize the escape. He had a pretty good idea where they’d gone anyway. He was just about to contact Watson when a fresh new series of alarms started going off.
He knew what they meant—there had been unauthorized phaser fire in the facility.
“Location of phaser fire,” he ordered the computer. It gave him a list of no fewer than seventeen instances in fourteen different places scattered throughout the facility. What the hell was going on?
“Casualties?”
“No casualties reported.”
Confused, Montgomery repeated, “No injuries?”
“Negative.”
“Who fired the phasers?”
“There is no record of any registered individual firing phasers in the facility.”
This just kept getting stranger. Doggedly, Montgomery continued, trying to get some answers that made a modicum of sense.
“Did the phasers malfunction?”
“Negative.”
For a moment, Montgomery simply sat in his chair and gaped. Give him an enemy, a weapon, and a clear shot, and he knew what to do. But this—how did you fight nonsense?
Then he knew. “Any life signs in the area in which the phaser fire occurred?”
“Negative.”
Holograms. Holograms everywhere, in one of the [211] most well secured Starfleet facilities on the planet—hell, in the quadrant. He stabbed a button with a forefinger.
“Attention staff! The threat we face is holographic in nature. Repeat, it is a holographic threat. Respond accordingly.”
They were all good people,