DESCENT Read online

  Not just information but a bald threat. A promise.

  The same Borg found Data among the corpses and furnishings and continued, “Artificial life-form: Starfleet. Rank: lieutenant commander. Name: Data.”

  Riker held very still and willed Data to do the same, to keep from responding to what seemed more like a beckoning than an analysis.

  The Borg looked at each other as though sending silent messages. What were they saying to each other now that they knew whom they were fighting?

  How could they know Data’s name?

  Riker was about to yell his question out when one of the Borg leaped, its face flushed nearly purple with unmistakable rage.

  Hearing a distinct “uh-oh” go off in his head, Riker pushed off and dodged for the back of the room, trying to get closer to Worf and Corelki so that they could make a stand, combine their fire, try something wild. Worf had the quickness to cover him with nearly constant phaser shots.

  A ghastly shriek filled the room—a scream, a howl—and in the middle of his run Riker instinctively turned.

  The Borg were rushing them! Physically attacking like Celts charging from the Highlands, plunging down on them.

  Riker took several blows before he could even see which Borg was hitting him. The breath was crushed from his body, and striking back was nothing more than his training reacting for him. In his blurred peripheral vision he saw Data dispatch a Borg with one kick, but another Borg screamed, shrieked, blew in like a storm wind, and slammed Data backward against a wall so hard that the wall gave way.

  The Borg weren’t firing their weapons—they were fighting, wrestling! Trying to kill with their hands!

  This is crazy! It’s impossible! Where’s their pattern? Where’s the predictability!

  Riker wanted to get a breath and shout something, anything, to encourage his team, but the Borg were on him, punching, kicking, teeth gritted, humanoid eyes shrewish as they pummeled him. Over in the corner, two more of them were pummeling Worf, and even with his Klingon fury boiling and that inhuman strength coming to bear, Worf was losing.

  Taking the Borg’s blows on his arms and doing everything he could to protect his vital organs, Riker tried to back himself against a support beam and maybe get one arm down. If he could just touch his communication badge, just send one split-second message through to the ship, the transporter could home in on their drumming heartbeats and pull them out of this.

  If he could just get a hand down there without getting his head crushed . . .

  Losing. We’re losing. . . . We’ll be like these others, draped over the desks, torn in half. . . .

  “Stop it!”

  Riker flinched under the blows he was taking. Had he shouted? That voice hadn’t been Worf’s deep boom.

  The two Borg who were on him broke away suddenly, and he found himself sagging, staring.

  “Stop it!”

  He focused on the sound, and found it.

  Data? The shimmering android face, normally a perfect impassive etching, was twisted with frenzy, and there was acid in the golden eyes. Data snarled, then seized two handfuls of cybernetic coils and hoisted one of the Borg full into the air and right over his head.

  “Stop it!” he shrieked again and flung the Borg against a console.

  The console collapsed under the great stress, and the Borg went down, crumpled.

  A chance, a fleeting chance. Now Data would turn on another Borg and cut their numbers by another . . .

  Riker stared, his lungs begging for air, and his flash of hope soured.

  Data didn’t turn on another Borg. He grabbed at the throat of the same Borg, the one who was already down.

  He hauled the Borg up and slammed it against a wall and growled in its face. “Stop it!”

  Data was roaring mad and showing it.

  “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” With every word, Data again slammed the Borg into the wall. His expression was virulent, his face jaundiced and rabid.

  Riker wanted to pull him back, but he knew he didn’t have the strength. Nobody had that kind of strength. And the desire to stop him was not very strong. He too was taking each blow as satisfaction.

  But it was all over in a wink, before he could even find his legs and think about using them.

  The demolished victim slumped to the floor at Data’s feet.

  As though waking from a dream, Data blinked downward. He seemed confused. The violence drained from his face, leaving only a void quickly filling with question.

  The other cyborgs, now acting like the single-unit extensions Riker had expected at first, stepped back from their attacks, let their eyes go blank, and simply dematerialized.

  Gone, as suddenly as they’d appeared.

  “Captain, the alien ship is breaking orbit!”

  Geordi La Forge didn’t mean to raise his voice, but he did so all the time and just hoped the captain might be used to it by now. Starfleet officers were supposed to be serene and calm and never raise their voices, but today he’d just have to live with not being perfect.

  Maybe it was a twinge of guilt. Maybe he wanted to be down there with the away team, doing the other half of what he and Riker had started.

  “Set an intercept course,” Picard was saying to the helm ensign. Then, to Tactical, he added, “Continue firing. Transfer auxiliary power to shields.”

  Geordi leaped to action at his Engineering console on the aft bridge. Now he had something to do. The hum of the great starship’s enormous engines and unthinkable bottled power came up through his legs as the big ship turned and surged to full impulse.

  The brilliance of impulse power had been overshadowed by the discovery of hyperlight, but at times like this he could feel the miracle of sublight—power compounding on itself while the starship was still a part of nature, still moving at less than the speed of light. Maneuverability was at its peak, the stars were clear and defiant in the sky, the starship’s pure muscle flexed.

  Would’ve been pretty, had it not been for that ship out there.

  He turned to look at the forward screen. Through his VISOR he saw the heat radiated from his shipmates, saw that they were all tense, and on the screen he saw the spectral representations of stars on the star field, and power emanations from that ship.

  And he saw the thing open up.

  Staring like an idiot, he stumbled forward until the tactical station stopped him. A light . . . opened up. A big hole in the material of open space, shining in their eyes.

  The enemy ship looped into the portal, plunged deep inside, and the thing closed up again.

  Everybody stared, even Captain Picard.

  “Mr. La Forge?” the captain asked.

  “They’re gone, sir,” Geordi uttered. “Our sensors indicate there was some kind of subspace distortion just before they disappeared. I’ll have to study these readings before I can get more specific.”

  They also saw that this wasn’t just a dime-store deep-space energy portal. This one had opened up on purpose, under somebody’s control.

  This was an escape hatch.

  The captain fixed an accusative scowl upon the silent vista of space.

  “Take us back to Ohniaka Three.”

  Which side of the looking glass am I on today?

  Will Riker pushed himself shakily to his full height. He was breathing like a bellows, and his legs shook under him so violently that he had to concentrate in order to take a step. He looked at Worf.

  The Klingon was across the room, still crouched in attack stance as though he didn’t believe the retreat either. He was ready to pounce, but willing to take Riker’s lead.

  So . . . lead.

  Riker pushed himself forward—yes, he still had his knees—and moved toward Data. Worf moved forward too, and they converged on their enigmatic crewmate.

  If Data could somehow have been spontaneously violent, then now he could be spontaneously shocked. His normally placid face shimmered with spent energy, and he seemed dazed, puzzled, unsure of his own memory
of the past moments’ vulgarities.

  That uncertainty in itself was unsettling to see. Data had memory banks, not a memory, and he shouldn’t have that just-awakening look in his eyes, wondering if he’d really just pulverized an entity that was no less living than he was.

  Then what were they seeing?

  Riker shoved down his apprehension and moved closer.

  “Data?” he began gently. “Data, are you all right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Data answered.

  Too quickly.

  If he meant he hadn’t had an arm pulled off, then he was all right. But how was he . . . inside?

  “What happened?” Riker prodded.

  Data gazed downward, as though seeking his momentary rage the way a curious child might turn over a dead hornet and look for the stinger.

  He blinked again, then looked up. Stiffly he turned to Riker and Worf and picked through corruption in search of objectivity.

  “I got angry,” he said.

  Chapter Five

  Enterprise, Sickbay

  SHIP’S COUNSELOR DEANNA TROI felt her stomach automatically tighten as she entered sickbay.

  That feeling didn’t make any sense, but it always happened to her as she came into this area. Possibly it was a reaction to the faint medicinal smell that never went away, or perhaps it was her awareness that this was where people ended up when they were in real trouble.

  In her mind she knew that sickbay was just another lab, a place where problems could be solved and discoveries made, but that didn’t help her stomach.

  She allowed herself a crooked smile. If others had this feeling, it would be Deanna’s job to come up with a soft clinical explanation and send them on their way somewhat purged.

  Sickbay was very quiet.

  Where was everyone?

  This place was worse when it was silent than when it was bustling with wounded or ill crewmen.

  Oh, what an unforgivable thought, she scolded herself, and pushed on into the inner examining rooms.

  “Beverly?” she called. “Are you in here?”

  From the senior medical officer’s desk area, a voice called back. “Yes, Deanna, I’m in here. Thinking about yarn.”

  What an elegant voice their senior surgeon had. If I had a voice like that, I’d be on the stage.

  “Yarn?” Deanna murmured, and frowned.

  Everyone always told Deanna she was beautiful, a perfect combination of Grecian black eyes, tumbling black curls, and ivory skin, and people used exotic terms when they wanted to give her a complement, but when she herself thought of beauty, she thought of Beverly Crusher.

  Beverly possessed a certain balance and symmetry that Deanna envied in the dark hours of her day, the cheekbones and glowing copper hair of some lingering Irish queen, and a lurking mischievousness that rarely showed itself but that definitely lurked behind her azure eyes.

  And here they were, both scientists instead of painters’ models.

  Deanna shook her head, smiled again, and strode through sickbay into the office.

  Beverly was sitting behind her desk, leaning back, with her blue medical smock flopping over the arms of the chair at her sides. Her hair was uncombed and still looked good—certainly a Celtic magic trick Deanna had never mastered—and a devilish half grin pulled at the doctor’s cheeks.

  “Did you say ‘yarn’?” Deanna asked. “You mean, like a tall story?”

  “No,” the doctor said. “I mean like thread. Yarn. The long thin twisted material sweaters are knitted from. I was thinking of colors of yarn and all those pretty names the manufacturers give them. You know . . . seafoam green and periwinkle blue, slate black, Vulcan red, Bordeaux, roccelline, strawberry, Quaker gray . . .”

  “Oh,” Deanna responded. “Where is everyone?”

  “It’s lunchtime. Goldenrod, Mars orange, shamrock—”

  “Lunch? Aren’t your interns and nurses on some kind of rotation?”

  “Of course, but I don’t care for rotation. I like them to be able to go to lunch together. Sit down. Talk to each other about things that don’t involve touch pads and retrieval indicators. I like them to get to know each other.”

  Deanna sat down on the consultation couch and crossed her legs.

  “Don’t delude yourself,” she warned. “They’ll talk about those things anyway. We’re all obsessed with our jobs. What if something happened and you needed them for some medical emergency?”

  “Deanna, they’re only two decks away.”

  “That’s true. Why were you thinking about thread? You don’t sew, do you?”

  “No, and I don’t knit either, but I’d like to learn someday,” the doctor said, rolling back again, and the chair creaked under her.

  “You should have that creak fixed.”

  “I like the creak. It’s the chair’s way of singing to me.”

  “Oh . . . sorry.”

  Beverly ran a finger along her chin and gazed at the ceiling. “Do you ever get the urge to do something underhandedly female? Something completely vile and one-sidedly womanish?”

  Deanna switched her legs around to push a few seconds by, and felt her smile twist up again. “Like what?”

  “Like having a quilting bee.”

  “A quilting what? Bee?”

  “Every now and then I get an urge to go off to the Ohio countryside and sit around a really big wooden table with lots of splinters in it, and talk to a lot of extremely plain women about gourd ladles and lye soap while we stitch patches of fabric onto a big fat quilt that looks like ten suns rising.” She shifted her gaze to Deanna and added, “How do you think I’d look in black clothes with one of those little white caps?”

  Deanna laughed. “You’d look like a nun having naughty thoughts. You have an evil look about you, you know.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “Is that why you don’t comb your hair? You don’t like to look in the mirror?”

  “Oh, low blow,” the doctor hooted. “One for your side.”

  “Why don’t you just go down to the holodeck and call up an Amish scenario? You could quilt your off hours away.”

  Beverly moved forward slightly, and the chair made a happy squawk.

  “That’s the problem. I could do anything I wanted on the holodeck, but I wouldn’t really be doing it. It’s the people, the conversation, the camaraderie. The holodeck never gets the people exactly right.”

  Leaning an elbow on her knee, Deanna watched the doctor’s sedate face and that nefarious glitter behind those eyes. “That’s right—you don’t use the holodeck very often, do you?”

  “Not anymore. It’s irresistible at first, but that door has to open eventually. I swear I can just barely see the black and yellow grid just behind the mist of every scenario. What do you think? You want to start a quilting club with me? We can make rag rugs and everything.”

  “If you can find a rag on board,” Deanna said with a shrug. “There might be a certain flaw about it. Don’t you think the men will accuse us of being parochial?”

  “Well, they can join if they want to.” Beverly leaned forward again, braced both elbows on her desk, and lowered her head conspiratorially, as though she was planning a heist. “So? What do you say?”

  Deanna stared at her, then laughed. “Why do I feel as though I’ve just joined a coven?”

  The doctor only offered her a smile designed to be wicked.

  “Riker to Medical.”

  “Ah, William the First. A prime target for a spell if ever I met one.” Beverly winked, then straightened and tapped the comm badge. “Sickbay, Crusher.”

  “Doctor, can you and Counselor Troi join us, please, in the observation lounge? We think we’ve got a real problem.”

  “We’ll be right there.”

  She stood up, towering over Troi.

  Troi got up too, reluctantly, and managed not to giggle.

  “Oh, they’ve got a problem,” she said. “They’ve got us.”

  Captain’s Log, Stardate 4698
2.1:

  Because of his unusual behavior on the planet surface, Commander Data has asked to be temporarily relieved of duty. Unfortunately, this means he will not be able to help us investigate a disturbing new change in the behavior of the Borg.

  Observation Lounge

  The quiet librariesque place offered only a gauze of peace to the officers seated around its table of wood and dark glass, a pretense they all knew wasn’t real and wouldn’t hold.

  Riker clenched his hands under the table and took as much solace as he could get from the faces of his captain and his peers. Worf was here, so he knew anything he imagined from those looking-glass moments would be corrected if he got it wrong.

  He was already knotted up from describing what had happened to them on Ohniaka Three, and talking about it hadn’t been any easier or any more purging than going through it in the first place.

  And he was embarrassed. He was a senior officer, supposedly able to deal with the unexpected at any turn. He’d done that before and come out all right, without this layer of ice under his skin that wouldn’t go away.

  But what he had seen on Ohniaka . . . left him cold in the bones.

  Across the table, Deanna Troi and Dr. Beverly Crusher were an oasis of pleasantness for him.

  He took all he could get.

  “They were fast,” he told them. “Aggressive . . . almost vicious. It was more like fighting Klingons than Borg. No offense,” he added, with a glance at Worf.

  “None taken,” the giant of security rumbled.

  “There was another difference. I don’t think they were part of the Borg collective. They acted more like individuals.”

  “What?” the captain said sharply.

  But Riker wasn’t inclined to back down from the captain’s blunt question. “One of them referred to himself as ‘I.’ ”

  “That Borg,” Worf added, “also showed concern for a fallen comrade and called him by name.”

  A frown crinkled Deanna’s ivory brow. “The only Borg who ever had a name,” she said, “was Hugh. And we gave it to him.”

  “Maybe Hugh has something to do with this change in their behavior,” Beverly said.