She stood in front of the vinculum, which a team from the Enterprise had captured and taken offline. The vertical shaft was capped at its top and bottom by diamond-shaped, emerald-hued polyhedrons. An intricate cage of protective black metal surrounded each major component, and the core shaft was surrounded by several rows of horizontal bands. It vaguely reminded Kedair of a warp core on a Federation starship.

Irregular impacts echoed in the cavernous s.p.a.ce outside the vinculum's tower. Kedair looked down the pa.s.sage and through the blasted-open entrance to see her people clearing the corpses of Borg drones from the tower by tossing them over the edge of the entrance's exterior platform, into the belly of the ship, which was a random-looking pit of snaking pipes and jutting machinery.

Kedair fought the urge to contact sickbay on the Aventine and pester Dr. Ta.r.s.es for an update on the wounded personnel. Just let the medics work, she told herself. She dreaded going back to the ship. Sooner or later, she would have to write and submit her after-action report for this mission, and she was torn over whether to describe her blunder as the result of incompetence or of negligence. All that really mattered to her was that the officers who had obeyed her order to fire not face a court-martial; as far as Kedair was concerned, they were as much victims as the people they'd shot.

"All squad leaders have checked in, Lieutenant," T'Prel said, interrupting Kedair's guilty ruminations. "All drones have been neutralized, and all decks have been secured."

"Good," Kedair said. She stepped away and tapped her combadge. "Kedair to Aventine. We're ready for the engineers."

"Acknowledged," Commander Bowers replied over the comm. "They're beaming in now."

There was a faintly electric tingle in the air before the first sparkle of a transporter beam appeared in the darkness. Then six figures took shape in a flurry of particles and a euphonic wash of sound. The effect brightened the entire vinculum chamber for several seconds. When it faded, Lieutenant Leishman and five of her engineers stood before the mysterious Borg device, holding toolkits and eyeing their surroundings with equal parts apprehension and professional curiosity.

"This ought to be interesting," Leishman said, smirking at the vinculum. "a.s.suming Voyager's technical specs are accurate."

Unable to stomach Leishman's good mood, Kedair extinguished it with a glower as she said, "Whatever you're gonna do, Mikaela, do it fast. It's time to give the Borg a new queen."

17.

A flash of movement and a snap of jaws, the sting of fangs breaking flesh, a rush of terror- Deanna Troi awoke with a shudder and pulled her arms up and in, striking a defensive pose. Her hands and feet were stiff and cold, and a tingling of chilled gooseflesh traveled up her legs. Exhaled breaths became white clouds above her. Shaking off her disorientation, she realized she was no longer in her quarters.

The room was narrow, but its ceiling was far above, at a dizzying height. A clamsh.e.l.l-shaped skylight was directly over Troi, who tucked her chin to her chest and examined her own situation. She was lying on a dull metal slab and surrounded by bizarre machines, which pulsed with violet light and whose purposes she couldn't begin to divine. An especially large and fearsome-looking contraption hovered near the ceiling, above a point several meters past the foot of what Troi surmised was an operating platform. Along the top of one wall, in the only area uncluttered by machines and un.o.bstructed by crisscrosses of drooping cables, was a broad observation window.

Inyx stood behind a transparent barrier to her right. He appeared to be engrossed in a complex task and did not yet seem to be aware that Troi had regained consciousness.

She reached slowly toward her chest and gingerly touched where Ree had bitten her. Searching with her fingertips, she found the rips in her uniform but no corresponding wounds in her flesh. Though the air in the laboratory felt cold to her, she wasn't in any real discomfort. Closing her eyes, she focused on the sensations from within her body, in an effort to a.s.sess her own condition. No pain, she realized. That's good...I hope.

Troi opened her eyes to find Inyx looming over her.

"You're awake," he said in his mellow baritone. "Good."

Inyx, like the other Caeliar, projected no emotional aura that Troi's empathy could detect. If his intentions were sinister or duplicitous, she had no way of knowing beforehand. She propped herself up on her elbows and asked, "Where are we?"

"In my lab," Inyx said. "It was the only sterile facility in Axion that was properly equipped to a.s.sist you."

She tried to swallow, but her mouth felt too dry. "The last thing I remember, Ree attacked me."

"A misunderstanding, apparently," Inyx replied. "He used his species' natural venom to place you temporarily in a suspended state. It was a crude solution to your dilemma, but it did briefly stave off the immediate crisis."

Panic quickened her pulse. "Venom?"

"There is no danger, Deanna," Inyx said. "I've purged the toxins from your system and stabilized you-for the moment. I didn't wish to take any further steps without your informed consent, however. That's why I've revived you."

Pondering the degree to which Inyx must have examined her to be able to cleanse her system of Pahkwa-thanh venom, Troi surmised that he had likely become privy to all of her extant medical issues. "You know that I'm pregnant...don't you?"

"Yes, Deanna."

After days of running from the heartbreaking truth of her situation, confessing it almost felt like a relief. "Do you also know that it's not going well?"

"That much was clear when I saw that its mutation had threatened your life," Inyx said. "I would like to help you."

Tears rolled from her eyes and blazed fiery trails across her cold cheeks and over the edge of her jaw. "The captain of t.i.tan is my husband and the father of my child," she said. "I want to go back to my ship and be with him."

"I'm sorry, Deanna, that won't be possible." Before Troi could protest, Inyx added, "t.i.tan escaped orbit and returned to your Federation approximately ten hours ago."

The news cut through her like a blade. Shock dominated her thoughts. My Imzadi left me? He's gone? Denial took hold. "How could t.i.tan be back in the Federation already?"

"It repurposed a subs.p.a.ce pa.s.sage that we had created for reconnaissance purposes," Inyx said. "With a.s.sistance from Erika Hernandez, t.i.tan's crew enlarged the subs.p.a.ce aperture and used it to make a near-instantaneous journey home. As I'm sure you can imagine, the Quorum is feeling rather vexed."

Troi lay back on the slab and covered her face with her hands. "I can't believe he left me," she muttered.

The part of her that was an officer understood Riker's actions perfectly. No doubt, he'd been forced to choose between saving the ship and the majority of its crew or risking their freedom for the sake of the already captured away team. Viewed in that light, Troi knew that her captain's decision had been logical. But the part of her that was a wife shrank beneath the crushing emotional blow of Will's abandonment.

Inyx said, "Deanna, we really can't afford to wait any longer. I am ready to a.s.sist you medically, but I require your permission to proceed."

She lowered her hands and folded them protectively across her abdomen. "Dr. Ree wanted to do this days ago," she said. "I wouldn't let him. I don't know why not. Maybe I was hoping for a miracle." A surge of emotion constricted her throat. It took her a few tries before she could continue. "But I guess it's time to accept that maybe some things weren't meant to be."

"I don't understand," Inyx said.

Troi replied, "I'm giving you permission to proceed. To terminate my pregnancy."

The imposing Caeliar scientist recoiled from her, as if in horror. "Deanna, I think you've mistaken my intentions." He recovered a small measure of his composure and continued, "As I've explained to you before, the Caeliar abhor violence and will not terminate sentient life for any reason. Likewise, for us to abandon a life in peril that could be saved is also anathema." Resuming his proud bearing, he finished, "I was not asking to end your pregnancy, Deanna, but to repair it."

"You could do that?" she asked, amazed at the very idea.

"And more," Inyx said. "I have spent a considerable fraction of the past several centuries learning about humanoid biology, mostly for Erika's benefit. However, I am certain that I possess the knowledge and expertise to restore the proper, natural genetic pattern of your fetus and to repair the damage in the unfertilized ova of your uterus. While I won't impose my cures on you or your child without consent, I am not too proud to beg you to accept my help." He transformed the waggling cilia at the end of one of his arms into a semblance of a long, bony humanoid hand, and he extended it in invitation toward Troi.

"Grant me your permission, Deanna," he said, "and I will heal you-and your child."

The pa.s.sage through the catacombs of Axion grew narrower with every step Keru and Torvig took. "Where are we going, Vig?"

"Just a bit farther, Ranul," Torvig said. "If my senses are accurate, there should be an opening twenty-two meters ahead."

Their voices and scuffling steps echoed and carried in the pitch-dark tunnel. "I wish you'd told me we were going spelunking," he said to the Choblik engineer, his voice echoing off the close walls. "I'd have brought one of the palm beacons."

"Not necessary," Torvig said. "There is an increase in the ambient light ahead, at the tunnel's terminus."

Keru's eyes saw nothing but the same pools of darkness broken by occasional patches of deep shadow. "I'll take your word for it, Vig." He looked back over his shoulder and found the path back just as dark as the path forward. "I wonder which one of our Caeliar observers is trailing us right now."

"You could simply ask them," Torvig said.

"I don't really care that much," Keru replied.

They continued walking without speaking for thirty seconds, the two of them shades barely visible to Keru's eyes, and then Torvig said, "The pa.s.sage slopes downward here. Mind your step."

Keru slowed his pace just enough to adjust his stride to the new descending grade. He noticed the sharpness of Torvig's silhouette in front of him, and he realized that he, too, could now see the growing illumination ahead. The air was getting warmer as they advanced toward the pale blue flicker.

"Vig, how'd you even find this pa.s.sage?" he asked.

"I would rather not answer with too much specificity, since we are being monitored," Torvig said. "Let it suffice to say that the senses I was granted by the grace of the Great Builders enabled me to perceive a shift in Axion's quantum field. I attuned my senses to its particular properties and traced the field to its source point. Which is six-point-two meters ahead."

The ensign's explanation drew a smile from Keru. It hadn't occurred to the Trill security chief until that moment that though the Caeliar had destroyed the away team's tricorders, Torvig's bionic enhancements-including his cybernetic eyes and his a.s.sortment of advanced computing and sensory devices-made him an ideal, self-mobile subst.i.tute for the lost equipment. Only a few months earlier, Torvig had put his implanted systems to good use saving t.i.tan after an ill-fated encounter at Orisha with the Eye of Erykron. After a feat like that, Keru mused, filling in for a tricorder must seem like child's play.

The duo reached the bottom of the sloped pa.s.sage and made a hard switchback turn. Then they moved from the shadows into twilight and into the heart of a blue sun in a few short steps.

Keru lifted his arm to shield his eyes. The duo stood on a ledge overlooking a vast, hollow sphere of a chamber. Hovering at its center was a huge, brilliant orb of electric-blue fire. Its deafening roar, like an endless thunder of crashing waves and the angry buzz of a hundred billion bees, overpowered him.

Averting his gaze, Keru looked at Torvig, whose metallic eyes blazed with reflections of majestic azure lightning. "Vig!" Keru shouted over the sonic a.s.sault of the hidden sun. "What is that thing? Is it the Caeliar's power source?"

"I believe so, Ranul," Torvig said, his normally quiet voice cybernetically amplified and frequency-shifted to cut through the noise. "Its output exceeds my ability to measure."

Another squinting look around convinced Keru that sabotage was out of the question. The distance from their ledge to the burning orb was at least a hundred meters, and if the scorching tingle on his skin was any kind of warning, he was certain he didn't want to get any closer to the object than he already was. There appeared to be no other vulnerable points or exposed systems inside the polished silver-gray chamber. He also suspected that whatever the orb proved to be, destroying it would no doubt prove to be a death sentence for every living thing on New Erigol, starting with himself and Torvig.

He patted Torvig on the back and nodded for the ensign to follow him. They returned the way they had come, and after gazing into such intense light, the darkness seemed much deeper to Keru's eyes. "I don't get it," Keru said, his ears still ringing from exposure to the bone-shaking wall of sound. "If the Caeliar have that much power at their command, why go to the trouble of harnessing a sun and a planet?"

Torvig replied, "I suspect that the planet and the star were sh.e.l.led in order to mask this source, sir. If it were possible to study the link between the two sh.e.l.ls, I might hypothesize that the harnessed star provides the energy to support the sh.e.l.l around the planet, whose purpose is to contain the emissions of this exotic-particle generator."

"Exotic particles?" echoed Keru. "What kind of particles?"

"I have not yet identified them," Torvig said. "They are more energetic than anything I have observed before now."

Keru wished that he and Torvig had access to t.i.tan's main computer and sensor module. He asked, "If the planet wasn't covered up, how detectable would those particles be?"

"To anyone with the ability to scan that frequency, they would be the brightest energy source in the galaxy."

It took a moment for Keru to process Torvig's report, and when he did, he began chuckling at the irony of it.

The engineer seemed perturbed by Keru's reaction. "I was not aware that I had committed a faux pas or spoken in jest."

Regaining control of himself, Keru stifled his chortling and said, "I'm not laughing at you, Vig. I'm laughing at the Caeliar." He imagined his friend's bemused reaction concealed by the darkness. "I just think it's funny that a species that puts such a premium on going incognito uses a power source that can be seen from across the universe."

18.

Beverly Crusher stepped inside the holodeck and found herself surrounded by green leaves, blue sky...and mud.

The portal closed behind her with a deep, soft rumble of servomotors and a m.u.f.fled thud of contact. Then all she heard was blissful quiet. A mild breeze susurrated through the thick walls of leaves and grapes and rippled the shallow puddles in the muddy lanes between the vineyard's rows. The rich aroma of turned earth mingled with the sweet scent of country air after a night of spring rain. Tattered clouds sped by, high overhead.

Verdant hills rolled one beyond another, along the horizon, past the far end of the straight lane between looming stands of grapevines. The only signs of technology in the otherwise pastoral landscape of La Barre, France, were a handful of metallic towers linked to Earth's weather-control grid.

She turned in the other direction, toward the closer end of the row. Her small, pivoting steps squished and slipped in the slick, peaty muck. As far as Crusher could see, she was alone in the vineyard. There was no sign of workers, and no robotic tenders or harvesters were in use. The vineyard looked deserted.

But she knew better.

Walking slowly and taking care to plant her steps on tiny islands of dry ground scattered along the path, she skulked down the dirt lane until she spied Jean-Luc, two rows over, through a tiny gap in the leafy vines. Her vantage point came and went from view as the breeze rustled the greenery, by turns momentarily revealing him and concealing him with foliage.

Crusher tried to keep her voice down as she said, "Computer, modify program. Give me a temporary pa.s.sage through the vines, to the row where Captain Picard is standing."

A two-meter-wide path appeared without a sound through the two rows of vines that separated her from her husband. She moved in gingerly steps through the pa.s.sage. As soon as she reached her desired row, the holodeck closed the route behind her, silently knitting shut the walls of branches.

The suction of mud on her boots made it impossible for Crusher to sneak up on Jean-Luc, so she didn't try. Still, she approached him slowly, with caution, to gauge his reaction. When she was a few meters away, he turned his head and acknowledged her with a melancholy look. "Beverly."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, stepping beside him.

He gazed into the foliage. "I needed a place to think."

She rested her left hand against his lower back and took a few seconds to look around at the bucolic simulation of his childhood home. "Why here, Jean-Luc? Why now?"

"Because it might soon be gone forever," he said.

"Not without a fight," she said. "The war's not over yet."

Jean-Luc inhaled sharply and stepped away from her. "Are you certain of that?" He walked slowly along the muddy trail, his hands brushing through the leaves and vines, his fingertips lingering delicately over the fragile Pinot Noir grapes. "Why should I believe that Captain Dax's plan will amount to anything more than another postponement of the inevitable?" He stopped and pulled a small bunch of grapes toward him. "At this point, I suspect it's all a matter of too little, too late." Pinching one tiny, violet fruit between his thumb and forefinger, he continued, "No one heeded my warnings when it might have made a difference. Not the admiralty, not the president, not the council. I told them this day would come, but no one listened." He crushed the grape into skin and juice, and dropped it on the ground. Then he looked away, past the end of the row. "Now all of this...history...will be lost. Trampled underfoot."

He resumed walking, moving in quick strides. Beverly stayed close beside him, refusing to let him leave her behind. "So, is that it?" she asked. "You've already lost, so why finish the battle? What happened to the man who demanded we draw a line in the sand and say 'no further'? Is this all that's left of him?"

Near the end of the lane, Jean-Luc stopped and frowned as he gazed toward the distant hills. Avoiding eye contact with Crusher, he reached over and pulled toward him a length of the vine that was thick with leaves and heavy with fruit. Rolling its rough skin between his fingers, he sighed. "A vine is like a person, Beverly," he said, his voice somber. "Some of its nature is the product of heritage, but its personality also reflects its experiences. A gentle season can give it a mellow quality, and adversity can add depth to its character"-he looked up at her-"but only up to a point. There's a limit to how much damage and pain one vine can absorb before it turns bitter and brittle...and before it withers and dies."

He let the vine snap back into the embrace of its mother plant and continued walking, though much more slowly this time. Beverly was certain now that the dark mood that traveled with Jean-Luc was more than just anxiety about the apparent unstoppability of the Borg invasion. Her suspicion was confirmed as they emerged from the narrowed field of vision enforced by the vineyard row, to behold the sight on the nearest hill.

Where she had expected to see Chateau Picard, there stood only the scorched ruin of a house, a pile of charred timbers toppled at oblique angles over the pit of a black and broken foundation. Its interior was nothing but mounds of ash and rubble, cinders and shattered stone-exactly as it had been nearly ten years ago, the morning after the fire that had killed Jean-Luc's older brother, Robert, and his young nephew, Rene.

She took his arm. "You shouldn't do this to yourself."

There were tears in his eyes, and his face looked stricken as he placed his hand over hers. "I'm all that's left."

"No," she said sternly, commanding his attention. "We're all that's left." She touched her belly, where their son grew. "Us, Jean-Luc. Us."

He shut his eyes as tightly as he could to stanch the flow of his tears, and he clenched his jaw to hold back the flood of bitter grief and fear that Beverly knew raged inside him.