Agent Kistler joined the huddle. "A doctor's coming."

Press liaison Kant Jorel asked, "Should we take her pulse?"

Piniero threw a glare at him. "Are you a doctor now?"

Abrik cut in, "I wouldn't touch her if I were you. Last time we checked, those Borg implants of hers still work."

"Oh, for crying out loud," Bacco grumbled. "Move." She reached a hand toward Seven but paused as Akaar called to her.

"Madam President," the gray-haired admiral said, his voice loud and bright with the promise of good news. "The all-clear signals have been verified, and Captain Picard has confirmed that the Borg threat is over."

Piniero asked with naked cynicism, "For how long?"

"Forever," Akaar said. "Captain Picard reports that the Borg...no longer exist."

Wide-eyed, Abrik stammered, "H-how?"

"The captain a.s.sures me it is 'a long story,' which he will explain fully in his report."

"He d.a.m.ned well better," Bacco said. "Because that's a story I want to hear." The sound of the secured door opening prompted her to look over her shoulder. One of the Palais's on-call doctors and a pair of medical technicians hurried inside, and Agent Kistler waved them over toward Seven.

"All right, everyone," said Agent Wexler. "Move back, please. Let the medical team through. Thank you."

Even as the others retreated to make room for the medics, Bacco stayed by Seven's side. The stricken woman was whimpering and sobbing into her shirt-sleeves.

The doctor, a young Efrosian man who sported a haircut and a goatee that were trimmed much shorter than was customary in his culture, kneeled beside Bacco. "Madam President, we can take it from here," he said, opening his satchel of surgical tools.

"Just give me a moment," Bacco said. She reached out and placed her hand lightly on Seven's shoulder. Leaning down, she whispered in as soft and soothing a voice as she could muster, "Seven, it's Nan. Are you all right? Can you hear me, Seven?"

Bacco waited, her hand resting with a feather touch on Seven's shoulder. Then she felt a stirring, a hint of motion.

Seven's breathing slowed but remained erratic. In gradual motions, she lowered her arms, pushed herself from the floor, and rolled onto her back. As her face and left hand came into view, Bacco gasped.

The Borg implants were gone. A tiny ma.s.s of fine, silvery powder lay on the floor where Seven had rested her head, and a glittering residue clung to her left hand and temple.

"Seven," Bacco said, stunned. "Are you all right?"

With her beauty no longer blemished by the biomechanical scars of the Borg, Seven looked up at Nanietta Bacco with the tear-streaked face of an innocent.

"My name is Annika."

30.

Rubble and dust crunched under Martok's boots and cane as he struggled to the summit of a great mound of shattered stone and steel, which only that morning had been the Great Hall.

He ignored the bolts of pain shooting up his broken leg. It had been crudely set and splinted with long, inflexible strips of metal salvaged from a ruptured bulkhead on the Sword of Kahless. His flagship's sickbay and all of its medical personnel had been killed during the calamitous battle against the Borg hours earlier. Without any of the advanced surgical tools that could repair his fractured femur, he had been forced to settle for a more old-fashioned treatment of his wound.

At the peak of the smoldering mound of debris, he steadied himself and kept his weight on his good leg. Pivoting in a slow circle, he drank in the devastation around him. The First City was a husk of its former self. Only the scorched, denuded skeletons of a few prominent architectural landmarks were still recognizable. Where once the city's main boulevard, the wo'leng, had cut like a scar from the Great Hall to the smooth-flowing waters of the qIJbIQ, its second great river, significant portions of the broad thoroughfare had been erased by chaotic smears of smoking wreckage and crashed transport vessels.

Thick clouds of charcoal gray and deep crimson blanketed the sky. A sharp, acrid bite of toxic smoke was heavy in the air, and the profusion of airborne dust left the inside of Martok's mouth dry and tasting of chalk. It reminded him of historical accounts of Qo'noS in the years immediately following the Praxis disaster, which had pushed the Klingon homeworld to the brink of environmental collapse. This was a catastrophe almost on par with that one. Seven major cities on Qo'noS had been destroyed before the Borg cubes had, inexplicably, withdrawn on reciprocal courses, back toward the Azure Nebula.

Councillors Kopek, Qolka, and Tovoj had died with the home guard fleet and a force of their allies defending Qo'noS. Councillors Grevaq, Krozek, and Korvog had died with Martok's fleet. Most of the other members of the High Council were at that moment missing in action, and Martok had no idea which of them would turn up alive or dead.

For the moment, Martok alone was the High Council, and the temptation to wield unitary power was taxing his will; the call of ambition was powerful, and it was all he could do to remind himself that succ.u.mbing to it was what had fatally undermined his predecessor, Chancellor Gowron.

I will not make that mistake, he vowed. I will not be that man. That will not be my legacy.

He limped across the ruins to stand with General Goluk.

"Do we have casualty reports yet, General?"

"Only preliminary numbers, my lord," Goluk said, poking at the portable computer in his hand.

Martok scowled to mask a sharp jolt of pain from his leg. "Tell me," he rasped.

"Sixteen million dead in the First City. Another seven million in Quin'lat, eleven million in Tolar'tu. Based on rough estimates from Krennla, An'quat, T'chariv, and Novat, we believe their combined death tolls will exceed forty-three million."

A dour grunt concealed Martok's dismay. "So, seventy-seven million worldwide?"

"Yes, my lord. Though, as I said, that's just an estimate."

Nodding, Martok looked away and let his eyes roam across the vista of death and destruction. Despite the solemnity and tragedy of the moment, he permitted himself a sardonic grin.

Goluk asked, "Is something amusing, Chancellor?"

"This is the second time since I became chancellor that the Great Hall's been leveled," Martok said. "I could be wrong, but I think I might be the only chancellor who can make that claim." He stabbed the rubble with his cane, and bitter laughter welled up from his throat. Shaking his head, he continued, "Do you know what irritates me most?" He glanced at Goluk and then looked at the shattered stone under their feet. "I'd finally learned my way around this maze, and now I have to start over again."

Both men laughed, though Martok knew neither of them had any mirth in his heart. Though the Borg had been routed, to call this a victory would at best be an exaggeration.

The day was theirs, but no songs would be sung.

President Nanietta Bacco closed her eyes and drew a long breath to calm her frazzled nerves and steady her shaking hands. She waited until the pounding of her heart slowed by even the slightest degree, and she nodded to her press liaison, Kant Jorel, and her chief of staff, Esperanza Piniero. "I'm ready."

Piniero said to Agents Wexler and Kistler, "Let's go."

The two presidential bodyguards stepped forward and were the first ones through the door at the end of the hallway. A deep susurrus of echoing conversations filled the air. Bacco walked with her shoulders back and her chin up, leading her entourage into the main chamber of the Federation Council, which occupied the entire first floor of the Palais de la Concorde.

Her eyes adjusted to the dimmer lighting in the chamber and to the glare of the spotlight pointed at the lectern on the podium along the south wall. Every seat in every row on both the east and west sides of the chamber was filled, including those in the supplemental rows. The visitors' gallery was packed to capacity, and a row of security personnel held back a standing-room-only crowd of Palais staff and VIP guests along the north side of the speakers' floor.

Bacco wondered if the intensity of interest demonstrated by the staff, diplomats, councillors, and guests was any indicator of the public's interest in the address she had come to deliver. I guess I'm about to find out, she decided.

She moved to the lectern at the front of the podium and waited while the Council's leaders called for quiet. A constellation of small red lights snapped on in the shadows on the opposite side of the room, informing her that live subs.p.a.ce feeds of her address were being transmitted throughout known s.p.a.ce.

From her right, Piniero gave her the ready signal.

Speaking to the half-shadowed faces in the gallery and the focused stares of the councillors, Bacco intoned in her most stately voice, "Members of the Federation Council, foreign amba.s.sadors, honored guests, and citizens of the Federation...this day has been a long time in coming."

As the glowing text of her speech crawled up a holographic prompter situated just off-center in front of the lectern, Bacco continued almost from memory, delivering the first address in decades that she'd composed without the aid of her chief speechwriter, Fred MacDougan, and his staff, who were all still light-years away from Earth, caught up in postevacuation chaos.

"It is my pleasure and my honor to be able to bring you good news," she said. "The Borg threat is over.

"The officers and enlisted crews of three starships have done what so much of our marshaled might could not. A joint effort by the Starships Enterprise, t.i.tan, and Aventine has turned the tide this day, bringing an end not just to the Borg invasion of our s.p.a.ce but to the tyranny and oppression of the Borg throughout the galaxy."

Spontaneous, powerful applause and cheering erupted from the gallery and the councillors' tiers. Bacco basked in the roar of approval for a few seconds, and then she motioned for silence. Gradually, the room settled, and she continued.

"In keeping with the finest traditions of Starfleet, these three crews accomplished this not through violence, not through some brute force of arms, but with compa.s.sion. This war has been brought to an end not by bloodshed but by an act of mercy.

"They took a chance on the better angels of their natures, reached out to a new ally, and transformed the Borg Collective into something benign, perhaps even n.o.ble. I am informed that across the Milky Way, trillions of drones have been liberated, their free will restored."

As quickly as she had earned the room's praise, now she felt its condemnation. Bitter whispers traveled among the councillors, and disapproving noises hissed in the gallery.

"This outcome might feel inadequate to those among us who want revenge on the Borg. I understand, I a.s.sure you. There is no minimizing the scope of the tragedy we have endured. According to even our most conservative estimates, more than sixty-three billion citizens of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, and the Imperial Romulan State were slaughtered by the Borg during this invasion."

She paused to compose herself, and she swallowed to relieve the dryness in her mouth and throat. "Sixty-three billion lives cut short," she said. "The mind boggles at the scope of it. Such a horrific crime against life seems to demand payback, in the form of a proportional response. But we must move beyond hatred and vengeance. The Borg Collective no longer exists, and we must remember that those who carried out its atrocities were victims themselves, slaves taken from their own worlds and their own families. Now the force that controlled them has been disbanded, and its emanc.i.p.ated drones have vanished to points unknown. There is, quite simply, no one left to blame."

A deep and thoughtful silence hung over the chamber, and Bacco took it as a positive sign as she pressed on.

"Let us instead remember those whose actions have earned our trust and our grat.i.tude. Our staunch allies, the Klingons, stood with us in our hour of need and inspired us with their fearlessness. We witnessed great acts of gallant bravery and sacrifice by starship crews from the Imperial Romulan State and the Talarian Republic. The Warbird Verithrax sacrificed itself in the defense of Ardana, and the Talarian third fleet was all but destroyed holding the line at Aldebaran, halting the Borg's advance in that sector. These heroic gestures must never be forgotten." Murmurs of concurrence filled the room.

Bacco found it difficult to read the next portion of her address, but she had no choice. The truth had to be faced.

"It is unfortunate," she continued, "that at a time when we should be rejoicing in our victory, we must mourn losses so tragic. It's natural, at a time such as this, for us to think of ourselves. We had not yet completely recovered from the Dominion War, and now dozens of worlds-including Deneva, Coridan, Risa, Regulus, Korvat, and Ramatis-lay in ruins. Dozens more, including Qo'noS, Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar, suffered devastating attacks. And we must remember that the Borg did not discriminate between us and our unaligned neighbors. They inflicted widespread damage on Nausicaa, Yridia, and Barolia. It is all but impossible to quantify the true scope of this calamity, to calculate the unestimated sum of sentient pain.

"In the aftermath of such a monumental catastrophe, the prospect of rebuilding appears daunting. Some might say it's impossible to recover from such a disaster. I say it is not only possible, it is essential. We will rise anew. We will rebuild these worlds, and we will heal these wounds. We will reach out not only to our own wounded people but to those of our allies and our neighbors and even to those who have called themselves our rivals and our enemies."

Polite applause interrupted her, and she accepted it with a humble nod of thanks and acknowledgment. Then she lifted her voice and declared, "We will not shrink from the challenge of raising back up what the Borg have knocked down. We will honor the sacrifices of all those who fought and died to defend us, by committing ourselves to repairing the damage that's been done and creating a future that they would have been proud of.

"We will also rebuild Starfleet, to guarantee that all we have gained, with so much suffering and sacrifice, shall be preserved and defended."

This time, the clapping and cheering from the gallery were thunderous. Emboldened, she spoke more strongly, punching her words through the clamor.

"More important, though Starfleet is needed for recovery and reconstruction and to render aid, we will renew our commitment to its mission of peaceful exploration, diplomatic outreach, and open scientific inquiry. The Luna-cla.s.s starships will continue-and, in t.i.tan's case, resume-their missions far beyond our borders: seeking out new worlds, new civilizations, and new life-forms and offering, to those that are ready, our hand in friendship.

"There are those who might doubt our ability to do all of these things at once. To them, I would say, don't underestimate the United Federation of Planets. Just because we have suffered the brunt of the injuries in this conflict, do not a.s.sume that we are weak or vulnerable. Don't mistake optimism for foolishness or compa.s.sion for weakness.

"With patience and courage, this can become a time of hope. As long as we remain united, we will emerge from these dark and hideous days into a brighter tomorrow, and we will do so stronger, wiser, and safer than we were before. Together, we can become the future that we seek and build the galaxy we want to live in. It will not come about quickly or easily. But until it does, never flinch, never weary, and never despair.

"Thank you, and good night."

Bacco stepped back from the lectern as the chamber shook with deafening applause. Shading her eyes with one hand, she saw that the councillors and the visitors in the gallery all were standing as they delivered their roaring ovation. She waved to both tiers of councillors, then to the far end of the room, before Piniero and Wexler coaxed her to leave the podium and follow them out of the Council Chamber.

Her entourage, including security adviser Jas Abrik, fell into step around her as they moved to the exit and quick-stepped into the hallway beyond.

Only once they were through the door did Bacco realize that the corridor was now lined with members of the press. Questions were shouted at her from both sides, the words overlapping into a muddy wash of sound. Jorel and Piniero repeatedly hollered back, "No comment! No questions, please!"

At the far end of the hallway, Wexler and Kistler ushered Bacco and her senior advisers into a secure turbolift, then stepped in after them, placing themselves directly in front of the doors as they closed, m.u.f.fling and then erasing the hubbub of pestering press run amok.

Bacco sighed heavily. "Thank G.o.d that's over."

Kant Jorel replied, "It went well, Madam President."

"Yes, Jorel, I know. I was there."

Rebuked, he bowed his chin. "Yes, ma'am."

"It was a wonderful speech, ma'am," Piniero said.

"It was all right," Bacco replied. "If Fred and his people had been here to polish it, it would've been great." She threw a pointed look at Abrik. "Whose idea was it to put them all on the transport to Tyberius? Was it Iliop? I'll throttle him."

He replied, "No idea, ma'am, but I thought the Churchill homage at the end was a nice touch."

"Absolutely," Piniero agreed. "It's what people needed to hear."

Frowning, Bacco replied, "It's what I needed to hear." The pressure of the past month, far from being lifted, only seemed to weigh heavier on her shoulders. "The Borg are gone, but now everything else is up for grabs."

Abrik tilted his head sideways. "There's certainly the potential for a period of instability."

She looked at the middle-aged Trill as if all his spots had just fallen off. "Instability? When there's a water shortage on Draylax, that's cause for instability. We've got a dead zone for a hundred light-years in every direction around the Azure Nebula. More than forty percent of Starfleet's been destroyed. Sixty-three billion people are dead. Deneva's been wiped out, and our economy's about to implode. We're long past unstable. When the shock of all this wears off, I think we'll look back on the last sixteen years with longing and envy."

The turbolift doors opened onto the top floor, and the group stepped from the lift into the lobby outside Bacco's office. Wexler and Kistler entered the presidential office first. They stepped clear of the doorway to let Bacco, Abrik, Jorel, and Piniero file in, and then the two agents faded into the woodwork, as always.

Bacco stepped behind her desk and looked out the panoramic window at the nighttime cityscape of Paris. She was filled with a sense of foreboding, a feeling that there was always some new evil lurking in the darkness. "It's a whole new ball game," she said. "But we have no idea who's playing-or what the rules are."

Piniero grinned and replied with a shrug, "That's what keeps the job interesting, ma'am."

EPILOGUE.

Mourners moved in slow packs, their steps leaving crisp prints in the fine-ground regolith of pulverized stone and flesh. Tuvok noticed that the graphite-colored powder stuck to everything-his boots, his pants, his wife's shoes, the hem of her jacket, the tips of her close-cropped hair.

He had seen Deneva's lush Summer Islands years earlier, when they had boasted pristine white beaches, dazzling cities, and a thriving culture of visual arts and live music. It had been a vibrant, stimulating, and prosperous place.