DESCENT Read online

  He did not look at the Borg. Eye contact would have been detrimental to efficiency.

  “Resistance is futile,” Crosis said. “You will not fight against what you have wanted all your life.”

  Data continued working. He moved to a wall panel to tie in his gathered information with the ship’s mainframe. The captain would expect correlations, checks, and rechecks.

  What you’ve wanted all your life . . . all your life, all your life . . .

  “I was like you once,” the prisoner said. “Without feeling. But the One helped me. He can help you . . . find emotion. Have you ever felt a real emotion, Data?”

  Data avoided halting his work, pressed on in feeding information about this Borg through to the mainframe.

  Yet something in him echoed the question and compelled him to answer.

  “Yes,” he said. “On Ohniaka Three I was forced to kill a Borg . . . and I got angry.”

  Crosis was still observing him. “How did it feel to get angry? Did it give you pleasure?”

  Process control. Nonlinear feedback. Opensequence multiple-feed.

  “It would be unethical to take pleasure from another being’s death.”

  He spoke the words, but they were processed words, the answer put out when a computer is asked a question.

  And there was more going on inside him than the simple answering of a question.

  “You did not answer my question,” Crosis pressed. “Did it feel good to kill?”

  Data paused in his work. The tricorder went on without him, feeding information.

  The Borg’s words pulled at him, pulled the truth from him.

  “Yes.”

  “If it is unethical to take pleasure from another being’s death,” Crosis went on, “you must be a very unethical person, Data.”

  A compliment and an insult combined. Crosis called him unethical, but also called him a person. Did one require the other?

  “That is incorrect,” Data said. “My creator, Dr. Soong, gave me a program that defines my sense of right and wrong. In essence, I have a conscience.”

  A good answer. Sufficient, direct, complete.

  And yet . . .

  “Do you?”

  He turned to face the new question. Crosis was looking at him.

  “It did not seem to be functioning on Ohniaka Three,” Crosis persisted, “when you felt pleasure from killing a Borg?”

  The eyes drilled into him.

  Data stared back, caught briefly in some kind of mutual study. For a moment his processing grew sluggish.

  There was effort in his resistance as he willed himself to continue acting upon orders.

  “Step away from the forcefield. Your proximity to the field is interfering with my scan.”

  But the Borg prisoner did not move. Crosis’s voice was magnetic. “You enjoyed it.”

  Stop it!

  “The surge of emotion inside you as you watched the life drain from your victim . . .”

  Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!

  “It was unlike anything you have ever known.”

  A struggle welled up from within Data, from depths of his body that should not have reacted to mental stimulus. Heat, cold, nervous reactions, pulsing through his biological systems, overriding the technological controls upon which he depended.

  The voice of the Borg drew him nearer and nearer in his mind, though he had not taken a step.

  Data parted his lips. He sought a response, processed a thousand possibilities before he could speak.

  “It was a very . . . potent experience,” he said.

  Crosis smiled.

  Or perhaps Data only connected a smile with the tone he had heard from human shipmates.

  “You would like to feel that way again,” the Borg said, tempting him.

  Stop it. . . .

  Seconds crept by. Data did nothing during those seconds but remember Ohniaka Three. He had done all he could do to relive the sensation, and now it was coming back to him unbidden, at the beckoning of another machine.

  There was only one answer.

  “Yes.”

  Crosis gazed at him the way others had gazed at him, but without warmth. Not the warmth of heat, but the warmth of caring he had registered from others. Had he truly never felt an emotion? Or were these indeed emotions he was remembering as he longed to be out of here?

  “You would do anything,” Crosis prodded, “to feel that way again. Even if it meant killing someone.”

  Data’s arms began to shudder ever so faintly. Where was his programming? These conclusions should be basic, simple. They should be surface access—

  “No,” he said. “That would not be . . . ethical.”

  “You don’t sound sure of yourself. Are you sure your ethical program is working?”

  Program.

  Ethics shouldn’t be a program. Right and wrong—was there right and wrong to fit any situation?

  Right and wrong so plainly etched as to be applied to life as it could be lived? Could a program anticipate all and any twists taken by the interaction of a hundred billion beings in ten million places?

  Could it?

  Could anyone foretell a right or a wrong ending to all the possible turns of life?

  Had it been wrong to kill that Borg on Ohniaka?

  Had it been wrong, by any definition of the concept, under any tenet, any doctrine, any law . . . to enjoy it?

  He turned away. His strides toward the entrance-way were purposeful. The forcefield would come down and he would go back to his primary function as ordered by—

  “Data,” the Borg called, “do you have a friend?”

  His stride broke. Data stopped. He stared into the forcefield. A friend. Inefficient phraseology, but he understood in the vernacular what was meant.

  “Yes,” he said. “His name is Geordi.”

  The Borg’s optical appliance shimmered. “Imagine Geordi standing in this room. If it meant that you could feel emotion again, the way you did on Ohniaka Three,” Crosis tempted slowly, “would you kill your friend? Would you kill Geordi?”

  Data felt the heat gathering in his system as he had seen storms gather on unaccommodating planets. His mind pumped with images, a thousand at a time, wildly processing memories over which he had no control . . . wanted no control.

  Hunger burned in the hot soup of free sensations flooding him, and he whirled around. He glared at the Borg called Crosis and let himself be possessed by an orgiastic truth. He had always known he was strong, but now he knew he was dangerous too.

  And he liked it.

  “Yes!” he said. “I would.”

  Chapter Eight

  STOP IT . . . . STOP . . .

  Anger. The spontaneous feeling of provoked hostility or exasperation directed toward something or someone.

  Antagonism. Murderous rage. Complete venting of frustration. Blind loss of control.

  Animalistic reaction to stimuli.

  Virulent, heart-burning, seething, thrilling release. The shock was half the thrill. And the other half . . .

  A steaming feeling that Data would pay for. A feeling he would kill for.

  His quarters were incomplete somehow, inadequate as he entered and sat down.

  I don’t want to stop it.

  He moved without his optics focused to his desk, and sat down, allowing his thoughts to turn fluid, surging unsheltered by controls he had always taken for granted in his systems.

  Others thought he was calm and reserved. They never suspected the infectious passion he held within himself! All this time and they never knew.

  Exhilarating—this interior game. Better than poker. Almost as good as murder.

  There were eyes looking at him. He felt them.

  Crosis?

  Data turned to return the glare of satisfaction and to show what he had learned and how much he was enjoying the changes.

  He found himself staring into the saucerlike eyes of his pet cat.

  The cat was up on his desk, staring at him a
s cats do, eyes wide and cut with a jewel-shaped pupil, expecting some form of affection, the attention that warm-blooded creatures had come over millions of years to seek openly.

  Until now he hadn’t found any silliness in an android keeping a cat. At the moment it seemed appropriate. Amazing how much the cat’s eyes looked like the eyes of this new breed of Borg . . . the eyes of a predatory animal that enjoyed what it had to do to stay alive and prevail.

  Come here, cat, and teach me your art of ideal fire.

  He fixed his eyes on the cat’s eyes, and like the cat he refused to look away.

  A strange hypnotism set in. A kind of challenge humans described as spine-chilling. Until a few minutes ago, Data could easily have described such a sensation step by step.

  But now he was feeling it.

  The cat backed away from him. The ears flattened—it spat at him suddenly. It waited to see if he would change, but when he didn’t, it hissed at him, scraped the desktop, stabbed at his hand with bared claws, then bolted off the desk and disappeared into the adjacent chamber.

  Data gazed at the doorway. He pressed his fingers to the score marks on the desktop and thought about what he had just seen.

  And he wished to see it all again.

  So he got up, left his quarters, and headed back to the ship’s brig, where the feelings were waiting.

  The Lower Decks

  This was a very big ship. It had always been just a set of decks before, to be gone through and utilized.

  It was more now.

  Now it was a dangerous playland, a great maze in which an android could throw off his stoicism and learn how to sneak.

  The art of heart-pumping adventure was no longer denied to him. Subterfuge, shiftiness, breaching the inaccessible, shaking off the persona of a gold-faced oaf who spoke in complete sentences all the time.

  Poker had nothing on this.

  They had broken the ironbound security systems so stealthily that no one had been alerted. That was the trick.

  Now Data led the way through the ship to the forward dorsal tractor beam emitter housing.

  They’d be there in a couple of minutes.

  Marvelous—he didn’t even care how many minutes-point-seconds. Thrilling!

  Data pushed Crosis behind him and waited for two crewmen to pass them in the adjacent corridor, then watched them go by and let himself enjoy a sudden bizarre hunger. He could have reached out and grabbed them both by the throat. He could have squeezed until his fingers popped the skin and crushed the windpipe.

  And he would have liked it.

  He thought about doing that. Took his time deciding.

  Surprise . . . just thinking about it was thrilling. How much more had he missed in the course of his existence?

  No more. No longer the frigid, withdrawn standoffish android who could explain ramscoop but not appreciate it. He was looking forward to doing some serious appreciating.

  Crosis followed him dutifully through the ship, and Data enjoyed being the leader. He liked having a Borg, whom everyone was afraid of, doing what he told it to do. Follow me. Do this. Do that. Do what I tell you. Do whatever I say. . . .

  “It is not far now,” he said. “Remember not to speak, or the ship’s security network will pick up your vocal vibrations and locate you.”

  The thrill of danger radiated through him, and he almost laughed with the sensation. This clandestine behavior was marvelous entertainment! He wanted to heighten the danger, let the situation become more and more precarious. He started wishing that Crosis would disobey him and say something, so they could do battle with the security system.

  “Here it is.” He prowled his way across the access walkway to the emitter core. “Stand by while I disable the tractor beam. Then we will have a tunnel of escape.”

  Crosis nodded, and his one naked eye flared with emphasis.

  “I can vary the field amplifiers, reduce the graviton polarity to less than five percent, and at the same time prevent interference from auxiliary control until we are gone. This is such fun.”

  Talking to himself didn’t make any sense, but he enjoyed it. He wasn’t really talking to Crosis. It was just that all of a sudden he enjoyed the sound of his own voice.

  “Hey! What are you doing!”

  The two semi-machines turned and found themselves cornered by a middle-aged technical maintenance engineer wearing a tightly zipped protective suit over his uniform. The man’s name was Solario, Data remembered.

  “Commander! What are you doing?” Solario moved closer to them, but stared at Crosis and looked ready to fight. “Do you need help, sir?”

  “Yes,” Data said instantly. “I am being held hostage. We can take him together.”

  The engineer was flabbergasted and not sure what to do against that thing over there, so he made a dive for the wall communicator panel because he couldn’t get to his comm badge through the protective suit.

  “Security! This is—”

  Data’s hand chopped across one side of the man’s head, and Solario went down in a stunned heap, eyes still open but void of focus now.

  That was fast.

  Data bent over the man and sighed, “He is still alive.”

  Behind him, Crosis approached and stood looking at the engineer. Then he smiled at Data. “Too bad.”

  The Bridge

  A hub of troubles. The aft science station.

  The diagnostic graphic screen twisted and coiled as it did its best to show them what a pipe through space looked like.

  Captain Picard scowled at the screen and the unnatural hole that had provided his enemy escape. Beside him, Riker also watched and didn’t seem at all charitable toward that hole either. Worf was observing from behind them at Tactical, quite unwilling to leave his position. When that ship reappeared, the Klingon was determined to be ready.

  Geordi La Forge gave them a few moments to absorb the vision, then pointed at the screen.

  “Our current theory is that the Borg have established several transwarp conduits throughout subspace. A ship entering a conduit is immediately accelerated to an extremely high warp velocity. It’s like falling into a fast-moving river and getting swept away by the current.”

  “How fast would a ship travel through one of these conduits?” Picard asked.

  “We don’t know. Normal subspace limitations don’t apply to transwarp variables. Based on the distance we covered in our trip through the conduit, I’d say the speed is at least twenty times faster than our maximum warp.”

  Picard pushed down the dozen questions that suddenly leaped up in his mind, and before he had a chance to choose one, Riker moved forward at his side and asked, “How do the Borg gain access to the conduits?”

  Geordi’s VISOR flashed in the bridge lights as he turned a little. “The Borg ship emitted some kind of high-energy tachyon pulse just before we saw the subspace distortion. It seems as though the conduits are keyed to respond to tachyon transmissions on a specific frequency.”

  Adding up the thousand dangers and bottling a shudder that they’d even come this far without being shaken to bits, Picard asked, “Is there any way for us to duplicate the—”

  “Captain!” Worf shouted just as a percussion of alarms and warnings erupted on his panel. “A shuttlecraft is leaving Bay Two!”

  “Who authorized that launch?” Picard demanded as he shifted to Worf’s side.

  “There is no authorization.”

  “Tie me in.”

  “Tied in, sir.”

  “Picard to shuttlecraft! You are ordered to identify yourself and return to the ship immediately.”

  They waited. Seconds crawled by.

  “No response, sir,” Worf said.

  “Lock on to the shuttlecraft with a tractor beam and bring it back.”

  Ordinarily such a maneuver could have been a split-instant delivery—to reach out, grab an object, draw it back in. The starship nearly had hands to reach with and extensions of her great power in her biceps.

 
; Picard stepped an inch closer to Worf, because the ship’s arms were still at its sides.

  “Tractor beam has been disabled.” The Klingon was furious, holding back his tone, sitting on his instincts and forcing himself to make the reports sounds clinical. “Command overrides are not functioning.”

  Riker came toward them. “Can you tell who’s aboard the shuttlecraft?”

  Worf worked again, counterintelligence thrumming through the security functions on the massive systems control console.

  “A subspace emission is interfering with the sensors,” he thundered.

  “Captain,” Geordi blurted from aft, “I’m picking up a tachyon surge! I think they’re trying to trigger the conduit!”

  “It is the Borg prisoner!” Anger flashed in Worf’s eyes that his security net had been breached. “And Commander Data!”

  Picard snapped his fingers, and the crew read his mind. Instantly the forward viewscreen reached into space and found the shuttle, then made a picture that taunted them heartlessly because they couldn’t do anything fast enough or strong enough to stop it.

  The two-man light short-range sublight shuttle flew away from them like a bullet from a pistol, the hot gas burning from its thrusters as if to laugh.

  And before it, also laughing, the coiling pipe in space suddenly opened a comfortable mouth and swallowed the shuttle.

  Very simple. Very fast.

  “The conduit has closed,” Worf reported tightly. “They’re gone, sir.”

  They made a bet and gave themselves five minutes to weave their way through the enormous ship to the shuttle bay. They made it in three.

  The feelings had rolled and bumped in Data’s mind and his body as he had piloted the shuttle at high speed away from the Enterprise. He thought back on those seconds, waiting to be blown to bits, and he sank into the memory the way a truant child savors a broken window.

  He knew there was a risk, but even the risk was tasty. It was succulent! He had delayed activating the vortex for just a few seconds, wondering whether or not Picard would fire on the shuttle, knowing Data was on board. They would also know that Crosis was on board.

  They probably think I am being kidnapped!

  He threw his head back and laughed. Crosis watched him, and smiled.