In a level, dignified voice, she said, "It's a d.a.m.ned good thing you switched to the command track, Captain. Because if this was you as a counselor, you suck at it."

"That is called insubordination, Lieutenant. And if you keep it up, it will get you a court-martial."

The security chief smirked. "Good to know. Now, at least I have something to shoot for."

Axion was windless and silent beneath the endless night of deep s.p.a.ce. Erika Hernandez drifted alone through the motionless air that surrounded the city-ship inside its invisible force field.

Darkness and starlight were reflected to perfection on the brilliant facades of the metropolis, which gleamed with its own inner light. Hernandez felt the awareness of the millions of Caeliar who dwelled in the city. Now conscious of her bond with the gestalt, they shied from her in subtle ways. They would never deny another mind in their communion, but many of them radiated discomfort at the discovery that it now included a non-Caeliar.

As meticulous as the Caeliar kept their city, to Hernandez, it still felt less antiseptic than either of the Starfleet vessels she'd visited in the past several hours. Inside the sheltering embrace of the city, she caught the fragrance of green plants-gra.s.s and trees, bushes, flowers-and the rich scent of fertile earth. Water still danced in the fountains.

None of that distracted her from her search.

Inyx had left the Quorum hall before she'd finished her proposal to the tanwa-seynorral. As soon as he'd gone, he'd started masking his thoughts from the gestalt, withdrawing from contact. Apparently, the Caeliar appreciate privacy on a personal level as well as a cultural one, Hernandez realized. Nonetheless, she suspected that she knew where he would be.

She was correct.

She descended without a sound, her posture relaxed, legs crossed at the ankles, arms at her sides. Air displaced by her pa.s.sage tousled her mane of dark hair and fluttered the fabric of her Starfleet uniform. For the sake of nostalgia, she alighted on the glossy black water of the reflecting pool by the petrified tree. Inyx stood beneath the tree's bare boughs, in whose ragged shadows he seemed to have partially vanished.

Without causing so much as a ripple, Hernandez walked calmly across the pool to the tree's small island at the far end. She bounded onto the isle with her last step and landed with balletic grace in front of Inyx.

Feigning boredom, he said, "I wondered how long it would take you to master that trick."

"Not long," she said. "Less than eight hundred years." She c.o.c.ked a teasing eyebrow. "Told you I was a fast learner."

"About some things," he said.

She ambled past him and made a slow circle of the tree, letting her hand play across its gla.s.sy, obsidian surface. "I've never seen you in such a hurry to leave the Quorum hall," she said. "Did my proposal bother you that much?"

"I made my objections to the gestalt," he said, and then he added, with an extra degree of sarcasm, "But of course, you know that, since you are, apparently, completely attuned to the gestalt and can share in it whenever you please."

She took his rebuke in stride, because she had already sensed his pride in her accomplishment. "I'm sorry I lied to you, Inyx," she said. "But your people aren't the only ones who value privacy."

He made a derogatory huffing noise inside his air sacs, which puffed up around his shoulders. "There is a difference, Erika, between privacy and secrets-and between secrets and deceptions." His ire dissipated. "What's done is past. I'm more concerned about your next potentially fatal mistake."

"I know it's a risk, but I think it's worth taking," she said. "And the Quorum agrees with me."

"By a narrow margin," Inyx replied.

"I'm certain it will work," she said.

"Certainty is not the same thing as infallibility," he said. "If you're wrong, or if you've underestimated the Borg's capacity for adaptation, you might be condemning this galaxy and many others to aeons of oppression."

"If I'm wrong-if I fail-I'm counting on you to persuade the Quorum to honor the spirit of our agreement and protect the galaxy from the Borg."

He said with grim regret, "I can't promise that, Erika."

"Promise me that you'll try," she said.

With a small bow from his waist, he said, "You have my solemn pledge. I will try." Melancholy seeped into his voice. "I wish it didn't have to be you taking this risk."

"Well, it's not like anyone else is in a position to do it," she said. "You sure can't, and neither can those starship crews." She shook her head. "Believe me, if there was another way, I'd take it."

"If you do not wish to make such a sacrifice, why go?"

"Because my people need me, Inyx. They need me to step up and do something no one else can. And all those people trapped in the Collective need me even more than the Federation does. I failed a lot of people when I let the Romulans get the drop on me and destroy my convoy. I led my crew into captivity, and then I failed to control them, and millions of your people died. All these centuries, I've been living with those failures, with no way to atone for any of them. Now, I might have that chance."

Inyx pa.s.sed a long moment in somber reflection.

"The consequences of failure seem clear enough," he said. "But what would be the price of success? If your plan goes as intended, what will become of you, Erika? Will you ever come back to Axion? Will I ever see you again?"

Unable to hold back the tears welling in her eyes, she replied, "I don't know."

"Then perhaps you've finally received your wish," he said, with a tenor of defeat. "You'll finally be free of Axion...forever."

She placed herself directly in front of him. "Maybe," she said. "But that doesn't mean I'm happy about it."

With both hands, she reached up and gently pulled Inyx's ever-frowning visage down to hers. "I probably won't get a chance to do this later."

She kissed his high, leathery forehead with tender affection. "Good-bye, Inyx."

28.

"Whatever Captain Hernandez is planning, it involves the Borg, and that means it has the potential to go horribly wrong."

Picard stood at the head of the table in the Enterprise's observation lounge and watched the seated Captains Riker and Dax nod at what he had just said. At his invitation, they had beamed over to meet with him in private aboard the Enterprise, so that they could confer without risking the interception of their conversation by the Borg-or by the Caeliar.

Exasperated, Dax replied, "You want a contingency plan for what to do after we're surrounded by more than four thousand Borg cubes?"

"Better than not having one," Riker said, scratching pensively at his salt-and-pepper-bearded chin.

Dax blinked, conceding the point, and replied, "For that matter, we'll need one even if she succeeds. I mean, have we even thought about how we're supposed to repatriate a quarter-billion ex-Borg from across the galaxy?"

"We're getting ahead of ourselves," Picard said. "Frankly, as powerful as the Caeliar seem to be, I doubt they-or any other ent.i.ty, short of the single-letter variety who shall not be named-can effect such a change by force."

"There's another scenario to consider," Riker said. "What if they succeed but only temporarily? The Borg Collective is based on adaptation. Even if she frees all the drones from the Collective's control, who's to say it'll be a permanent shift?"

Nodding, Picard said, "Those are all valid concerns. In success or in failure, Captain Hernandez's proposal-what little we know of it-will present us with staggering logistical and tactical crises. In just over eight hours, the first wave of the Borg armada will reach us. Whatever backup plan we intend to prepare, it needs to be ready by then."

Riker leaned forward and folded his hands together. "If this turns into a shooting match, I think the Caeliar can take care of themselves," he said.

"Against these odds?" asked Dax.

"That I don't know," Riker said. "But if the fight turns against them, the Caeliar can open a subs.p.a.ce tunnel and slip away. Which doesn't help us but would keep the Omega Molecule generator out of the Borg's hands."

Dax frowned. "Captain Picard made a good point the last time we talked with Captain Hernandez. A team of twenty-second-century MACOs outflanked the Caeliar and destroyed one of their cities. That gives me the impression that strategy and tactics aren't the Caeliar's forte. What if the Borg get the better of them? What if they can't escape to safe ground?"

"Then we have a problem," Riker said.

"More than a problem, Will," Picard said. "A disaster." Resting his hands on the headrest of his chair, he continued, "If Hernandez fails to disband the Collective, our top priority must be to prevent the Borg from a.s.similating anything of the Caeliar. If that means abetting their escape, so be it. But if the only way to keep their city-ship from the Borg is to destroy it, then we need to be prepared to take that step."

Dax keyed in some commands on the tabletop interface at her seat. She called up a map of Axion on the wall companel behind Riker. "This is based on scans and observations made by Captain Riker's away team while they were in Axion," she said. "It shows the approximate position of the Omega Molecule generator. That's what powers the Caeliar's civilization, and it's probably our best chance of destroying them if we have to. If we can destabilize the generator when the armada's on top of us, we could vaporize them instantly."

"Along with the rest of the galaxy," Riker said. "We'd also end warp flight in most of the local group. Not exactly what I'd call a plan for victory."

Arms out, palms up, Dax said, "If you know another way to destroy Axion and the Borg at the same time, let's hear it."

He rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Well, we know the Caeliar can modify their subs.p.a.ce pa.s.sages for time travel."

"Tell me you're not serious," Dax said. "What do you plan to do? Go back in time, find the origin of the Borg, and wipe them out before they ever existed?"

"Why not?" Riker said. "They tried to do it to us."

"And look what that got them," Dax said.

Picard raised his voice. "Captains, please." He waited for Dax and Riker to calm down and acknowledge him. "We need to consider every alternative at this stage, no matter what the ethical or broader tactical consid-"

"Bridge to Captain Picard," Worf said over the comm.

"Go ahead, Commander."

"We are detecting extreme levels of local subs.p.a.ce disruption," Worf said. "And we are being hailed by Axion."

"Red Alert, Mister Worf. I'm on my way. Picard out." As the channel clicked off, he added to Dax and Riker, "Captains, will you join me on the bridge, please?" Picard was already stepping through the door to the bridge by the time Dax and Riker had risen from their seats. He had no idea what fresh calamity was unfolding, but he had a sinking feeling that, as with so many events of late, it would be one for which he had no plan.

Riker hurried onto the bridge of the Enterprise several seconds behind Captain Picard, who was met at the trio of command chairs by Commander Worf. Picard and Worf conferred in tense whispers as Riker and Dax moved past them, down to the center of the bridge. Then came Picard's authoritative baritone: "Commander Kadohata, put Captain Hernandez on-screen."

Kadohata tapped a sequence of commands into the ops console, and the main viewer blinked from an image of Axion to the youthful beauty of Erika Hernandez.

Beside her was an alien with a bony, skeletal body and an enormous, bulbous head fronted by a stretched, frowning visage. Riker looked at the being's pearlescent sea-green eyes, its skin of mottled purple and gray, and the tentacle-shaped ribbed air sacs draped over its shoulders, and he realized that its head reminded him vaguely of an octopus.

"h.e.l.lo, Captains," Hernandez said. "I'm glad I found you together, as this concerns all of you."

Picard stepped forward, pa.s.sing between Dax and Riker to place himself at the forefront of the conversation. "Captain Hernandez," he said, "have the Caeliar agreed to help us?"

"Yes," she said. "After a fashion."

Suspicious, questioning looks pa.s.sed between the captains on the Enterprise bridge. Turning back toward the main viewer, Picard asked, "Would you care to be more precise, Captain?"

"First, I should apologize to all of you and your crews for misleading you, but I give you my word that I believed it was in everyone's best interest for me to do so."

Holding up one hand, Picard cut in, "Misleading us? About what, Captain?"

"It would take too long to explain," she said. "Besides, you'll see for yourselves soon enough. All I can say is that old habits die hard, if at all, and if I learned anything living with the Caeliar, it was how to play my cards close." She looked at Riker and then at Dax as she continued, "Will, Ezri, thanks for treating me like part of your crews. It was nice to feel like I was home again, back in Starfleet. I knew I'd missed it, but until today, I hadn't realized just how much."

"Captain," Picard said, "what's going to happen?"

"I honestly don't know for certain," Hernandez said. "No matter how this plays out, you and I probably won't see each other again. If I and the Caeliar fail, then we're all about to have a very bad day. And if we succeed, then something new awaits us-all of us." She smiled. "Wish us luck."

Riker eyed Picard's profile. The elder captain was standing slackjawed and at a loss for words as he watched Hernandez close her eyes and lift one hand in front of her, fingers spread wide, as if she were reaching for some unseen object.

Just as Riker was about to ask Picard what was wrong, Inyx spoke and snared everyone's attention with his mellifluous baritone. "Captains, for your own safety, I recommend you move your vessels to within one kilometer of Axion-immediately."

Picard still seemed frozen, so from the aft deck of the bridge, Worf called out, "Helm, put us alongside Axion, distance eight hundred fifty meters. Commander Kadohata, relay those orders to t.i.tan and the Aventine."

Kadohata and Lieutenant Weinrib gave overlapping replies of "Aye, sir" as they carried out Worf's orders.

On the main viewer, Hernandez's raised hand began to glow. A nimbus of light formed around it, growing so bright that it shone through her fingers, making them blaze red like hot coals. Her face was the very portrait of serenity. She opened her eyes, which burned with an inner fire, and she said, "It's time."

A hush fell over the bridge.

Captain Picard tensed with a sharp intake of breath.

Proximity alerts shrilled from multiple consoles.

"Ma.s.sive energy surge from the Caeliar city," called out Lieutenant Choudhury at tactical.

"Subs.p.a.ce tunnels," added Lieutenant Dina Elfiki, who was racing to keep up with the rush of data on her console. "Thousands of them, opening in a spherical distribution around Axion." The attractive, chestnut-haired science officer added, "The city is definitely controlling them, Captain."

"Incoming vessels," Choudhury announced.

Worf replied, "Shields up!"

Riker wished that he was on the bridge of his own ship at that moment, but he was also grateful that his crew at least had Vale, Tuvok, and Keru back aboard to lead them in his absence. On the viewscreen, Erika Hernandez maintained a steady countenance.

Choudhury looked at Worf. "Borg cubes are emerging from the subs.p.a.ce tunnels, sir-thousands of them. The entire armada."

"Split screen," Worf said. Kadohata adjusted the main viewer to show two images: Hernandez and Inyx on the right and, on the left, the arriving Borg armada surrounding Axion and blotting out the stars with their sheer numbers.

Dax sounded as if she simply couldn't believe what she was seeing. "The Caeliar brought the Borg here sooner? Why?"

Riker shrugged, equally dumbfounded.