Standing between the vexed doctor and the unhappy couple, Vale was determined not to say anything more until one side or the other broke the standoff. As she'd hoped, the captain took the initiative. "How long will the stasis last?" Riker asked.

"Strictly speaking, it's not stasis," Ree explained. "The treatment will slow your child's growth almost to the point of halting it, but she will still draw nourishment from-"

Troi interrupted, "Did you say 'she'?"

The doctor's tail halted in mid-swing, and he seemed frozen, as if he were trapped by invisible amber.

Vale knew from some of her earlier conversations with Ree that he had been avoiding using gender p.r.o.nouns when referring to Troi's terminally mutated fetus, because he felt that calling the child "it" would somehow depersonalize her and make her loss easier for Riker and Troi to cope with. Although Vale had no medical or psychiatric training to speak of, she was convinced that Ree was crazy if he believed that his choice of p.r.o.noun would ease Troi's and Riker's pain one d.a.m.n bit.

A low rasp rattled deep inside Ree's long, toothy mouth, and his head dipped in a gesture that Vale thought might suggest shame, disappointment, or perhaps both at once. "Yes," he continued, with an air of resignation. "She will continue drawing sustenance from your body, even as her growth is impeded by the targeted synthetase inhibitor."

Riker nodded. "Is this a onetime treatment?"

"Unfortunately, no," Ree replied. His tongue darted from between his front fangs, two quick flicks. "To avoid harming the fetus-and your wife-I have to keep the dosages very small. She will need daily injections to maintain a safe equilibrium. I also wish to make clear that this is not a solution, merely a delaying tactic. It will postpone the imminent risk of the fetus growing and puncturing the uterine wall, but it doesn't change the fact that the pregnancy itself is unviable."

Troi asked, "How long can we use this treatment?"

"I don't know. It's experimental, and there are many variables. We might be able to stall your pregnancy for months, or your body could reject the TSI, and we'd be back where we started. I can't guarantee it will work for long, or at all."

"Until it does," Vale said to Ree, "I need to insist you remove Commander Troi from active duty."

The captain cut off Ree's reply. "Absolutely not. If this works, there won't be any imminent threat to her health, so what would be the point?"

Vale modulated her voice into a diplomat's tones. "The point is that until Dr. Ree can observe her reaction to the treatment, we won't know how safe she really is."

"Commander Vale is correct," Ree said to Riker. Then, to Troi, he added, "A period of observation would be in your best interests, my dear counselor."

"Fine," Troi said. "Monitor my bio-signs with a transponder and let me go about my business. I don't need to be confined to a bed-here or in my quarters."

Riker added, "Would that be acceptable to you, Doctor?"

"It won't be ideal," Ree said. "But it will be sufficient." He reached over to a nearby surgical cart and picked up a hypospray and a biometric transponder implantation device. "Are we agreed, then, on this futile and utterly-"

"Doctor," Vale snapped, terminating another potentially inflammatory elocution of the doctor's sarcastic rant about patients ignoring his advice.

Ree's tongue flitted twice in the cool, antiseptic-scented air of sickbay. Ostensibly accepting defeat, he sagged at the shoulders and said to Troi, "May I proceed?"

The counselor nodded her a.s.sent, and Ree went to work. A gentle press of the hypospray against Troi's left bicep injected her with her first dose of TSI. He switched to the transponder implantation device, manipulating it and the hypospray with one clawed hand, whose digits, Vale saw, were capable of surprising dexterity. Ree placed the tip of the squat, cylindrical device against Troi's left forearm, a few centimeters above her wrist. "This might sting a bit," he warned.

A soft popping sound from the device was overlapped by Troi's stifled yelp of discomfort. Then it was done. Ree put away his tools while Troi ma.s.saged her forearm. The doctor turned back with a medical tricorder in hand. He activated it, made a few adjustments, and mused aloud, "Yes, it's working. Signal is strong and clear. Very good."

Riker sounded edgy as he asked, "Are we through here?"

"You may leave any time you wish, Captain," said Ree. "I need your wife to remain a few moments longer while I gather baseline data from the transponder."

"Just go," Troi said to her husband, in a tired, resentful monotone. "I'll be fine." Riker seemed both angered and relieved by her dismissal, and he marched out of sickbay without so much as a glance backward.

The door sighed closed after his departure, and Ree turned off his tricorder. "I'm finished," he said to Troi. "Please come back for a more detailed checkup tomorrow at 0900."

"Thank you," Troi said, without sounding the least bit grateful. She got up from the biobed, glared at Vale, and walked out of sickbay in a hurry.

Vale waited until she was gone and the door once again closed before she berated the doctor. "A biometric transponder? Thanks a lot, Doc. I wanted her relieved of duty, not tagged for research."

"And I wanted her pregnancy terminated, not stuck in slow motion." Ree plodded away from her in heavy steps. "As it is, we are only postponing the inevitable."

The first officer sighed. "Story of my life, Doc."

As the phaser blasts started flying, Ranul Keru almost forgot that it was only a holodeck simulation.

The pa.s.sageways of the Borg transwarp hub complex were so close that he could touch both sides at once by extending his elbows. Through the open-grid framework that surrounded him, Lieutenant Gian Sortollo, and Chief Petty Officer Dennisar, he saw the fast-moving silhouettes of Borg drones. The enemy was converging on them from every direction, swarming on levels above and below them, harrying them with a steady barrage of energy pulses that screeched through the thin air and stung the back of his neck with hot sparks as they flashed off the dark bulkheads around him.

Keru filled the corridor ahead of him with covering fire as he yelled to Dennisar, "Block the side pa.s.sage!"

The Orion security guard pulled a finger-sized metallic cylinder from his equipment belt, thumbed open its top cap, and pressed its arming b.u.t.ton. Then he pitched the capsule underhand down an intersecting corridor that led to a ramp from the upper level. He leaped past the corner and yelled, "Fire in the hole!"

Sortollo and Keru ducked against a solid block of infrastructure and turned away.

A thunderclap and a brilliant flash. The plasma blast rocked the structure, and a rolling cloud of fire spilled out into the main pa.s.sage, between Dennisar and Keru. Through gaps in the walls, Keru watched several levels of the Borg facility collapse inward, glowing hot and dripping with slag.

Then a deep groaning resonated around the three men, and a powerful tremor robbed them of solid footing. A grinding of metal was underscored by a deep, steady rumble. The walls around them began moving, reshaping themselves, sealing off the damaged area and making new paths inside the complex.

"Sortollo," Keru shouted over the din, "send in the scouts."

The human security officer detached a hexagonal block from his equipment belt and pressed a b.u.t.ton in its center. Then he hurled it with a sideways toss and sent it skidding along the deck ahead of them. In the span of seconds it seemed to break apart into thousands of pieces-and then all the pieces skittered away in different directions, vanishing into the tiny s.p.a.ces between the machines, the slots in the deck grilles, and the open ports of various machines.

Moments later, the lights began to flicker, plunging entire levels of the complex into darkness. Some of the deep hum of machinery faded, making the clanging footsteps of approaching drones all the more ominous.

Sortollo pulled his phaser rifle from its sheath on his back and checked the tactical tricorder mounted on the top of the weapon. "Nanites are working," he said. "I've got a signal. Ahead and right to the central plexus."

Keru motioned the two men forward. As he followed them, he plucked a cylinder from his own equipment belt, twisted its two halves each a half turn in opposite directions, and lobbed it behind them. He heard its soft pop of detonation and knew that Ensign Torvig's c.o.c.ktail of virulent neurolytic pathogens was spreading in a thick, syrupy puddle across the deck, a lethal greeting for any Borg drone that came into contact with it. Then he drew his own rifle and quickened his step.

Ahead of him, Dennisar stopped short of pa.s.sing a T-shaped intersection, poked his rifle around the corner, and fired off a fusillade of shots to cover Sortollo, who jumped forward and tumble-rolled to safety on the other side.

It was Sortollo's turn to lay down cover fire as Dennisar waved Keru to continue past him. "Go ahead, sir," the Orion said. "We'll cover your-" His eyes went wide and his body started to twitch. Then snaking tubules erupted from the wall behind him and mummified him in a blur of black movement. The wall split open, transformed into a biomechanoid maw, and the hideous tendrils pulled Dennisar inside.

Sortollo lurched away from his corner as more a.s.similation tubules sprang from it, writhing like ravenous bloodworms. He fired frantically at the wall, vaporizing chunks of it.

Keru sprinted forward, trying to find a position from which he could cover Sortollo, but then the floor was no longer beneath his feet. He fell forward into a pit of churning cables, tubing, and wiring that coiled like serpents around his legs and pulled him downward. Struggling to steady his aim and avoid shooting off his own foot, Keru pumped a dozen full-power shots into the tangled ma.s.s that held him. The blasts had no effect.

"Go forward!" he shouted to Sortollo. "Get to the plexus!"

Sortollo hesitated, clearly torn between a desire to try and save Keru and his training to obey orders. As the synthetic tentacles of the Borg complex yanked Keru's rifle from his hands and pulled him down until only his head was left exposed, Sortollo turned to continue down the pitch-dark corridor-and was felled by a single, ma.s.sive pulse of green energy.

Only after the shot had struck home did the telltale red targeting beam of a Borg's ocular implant slice the darkness.

Then everything halted, frozen in time and s.p.a.ce.

From behind Keru came the deep thunks of magnetic locks being released, followed by the hiss and whine of the holodeck doors opening. A broad shaft of warm light from t.i.tan's corridor spilled into the chilling, hostile darkness of the simulated Borg facility. Then a long shadow bobbed into view, and Ensign Torvig said, "Computer, end program."

The industrial architecture and biomechanical trappings of the Borg complex vanished, along with the security trio's simulated weapons and equipment. It took a moment for Keru's perception to adjust, because the simulation had fooled his senses into believing he had been pulled to a lower elevation than Sortollo and Dennisar, but now all three of them sat on the deck and ma.s.saged their aches and pains.

"Maybe it's just me, Vig," Keru said, "but I think you went a little overboard with this program."

Torvig responded with a bemused tilt of his head. "Odd that you would say so, sir. If the mission reports from Enterprise and Voyager are accurate, then this simulation might not be aggressive enough."

The other two security officers cast alarmed looks at each other. Sortollo said to Torvig, "You've gotta be kidding me."

"I'm not, Lieutenant," Torvig said. "Borg drones are now capable of very fast individual action in combat, and there is reason to believe that Borg ships and structures have become active combatants during battles to repel invaders."

Dennisar looked stricken. "Even the walls are going to attack us? How are we supposed to fight that?"

"That's what we're here to figure out," Keru said, forcing himself to stand. "Torvig's right. The Borg are getting faster and smarter all the time. If we underestimate them, we won't have a chance. So we train until we're ready for anything." He turned and said to Torvig, "Good work on those new gadgets, by the way. Can you protect us from getting eaten by the walls?"

The young Choblik engineer waggled his bionic fingers. "Avoiding or preventing physical attack may not be possible," he said. "However, my research indicates that neural-suppressant injections once rendered persons temporarily immune to the psychological effects of a.s.similation. Implanted neutralizer chips performed a similar function, as did nanites developed by Lieutenant Commander Data and Dr. Kaz. Though all these methods are known individually to the Borg, I have synthesized a hybrid that they will not yet have adapted to. Even if the Borg inject you with nanoprobes, you will not submit to the Collective."

"Won't stop them from just killing us," Keru said, "but I'll have Dr. Ree inoculate the away team, just in case."

That seemed to trouble Torvig, who replied, "Sir, a neural suppressant will prevent my body from interacting with my cybernetic implants. I would, in effect, be incapacitated by the injection. If you still wish me to be a part of your away team, I will have to forgo that protective measure."

Keru frowned. "Is that a risk you're willing to take?"

"If necessary, yes."

"In that case," Keru said, "stay close to me and Dennisar, and load us up with as many of your gadgets as we can carry."

Torvig's tail flipped anxiously behind him. "Sir...I should warn you that my devices are made to exploit weaknesses of the Borg that might already be known to the Collective-and which they might already have remedied. There is no guarantee that any of the devices I've created for your team will be effective."

Sortollo muttered to Dennisar, "Now he tells us."

Ignoring his comrades' pessimism, Keru said, "Don't worry about that. Now that you've given us some tools for offense, we need to focus on defense. Any ideas on that front?"

"Yes, sir," Torvig said. "I've sent you a new deployment plan for your people here on the ship. It should enable your team to defend the same areas with fewer personnel, freeing up additional strength for such key locations as the bridge, sickbay, and main engineering."

Keru nodded. "Sounds good. Anything else?"

"Defending t.i.tan from external attack by the Borg will be very difficult," Torvig said. "The difference in power between a Borg cube and our vessel is too great to overcome. a.s.suming we evade destruction by overwhelming force, the Borg will likely resort to infiltration and sabotage." The Choblik shifted his weight from side to side, like an anxious child. "I have a response strategy," he continued, "but I don't think Commander Ra-Havreii will like it."

"Don't worry about him," Keru said. "What's your idea?"

"We need to isolate system functions throughout the ship," Torvig said. "Not with firewalls, but by shutting down the data network. Each console must be dedicated to one task, so that Borg drones can't seize low-priority stations and use them to access the ship's main computer and command systems."

Imagining the potential consequences of Torvig's strategy, Keru winced. "That could be a real handicap in combat, Vig. If a dedicated station goes down and we can't reroute its functions to a working console, we could end up in big trouble."

"As I said, Commander Ra-Havreii will not like it."

Dennisar grumbled to Sortollo, "He'll like being killed by the Borg even less."

"We all will," Keru said, shooting a silencing glare at the human and the Orion. Turning back to Torvig, he said, "Write up a contingency plan for combat situations. We'll bring it to the XO and let her decide."

"Yes, sir."

The Choblik looked at the deck, then away from Keru, which gave the Trill security chief the impression that there was something else on the engineer's mind. "What's wrong, Vig?"

"I am concerned that I might be a liability to the away team," Torvig said. "While I'm honored to help you and your team prepare, I'm not sure how much help I'll be inside a Borg facility. My talents are better suited to working in a lab than fighting in a battle."

Keru patted Torvig's back. "Relax, Vig. You'll be fine." He grinned at his friend. "Most of my people can only hold two phasers at a time. You can hold three. You'll be a natural."

Torvig seemed unconvinced, but he replied, "I will do my best, sir." He glanced at the doorway. "With your permission, I will draft my contingency plan for Commander Vale."

With a nod, Keru said, "Dismissed."

The young engineer bounded out of the holodeck. Keru looked at Dennisar and Sortollo, who were still sprawled behind him. "Go get some chow, and be back here at 1800," he said. "We're running this sim again until we can get past the first level."

The two security officers pushed themselves to their feet and limped out of the holodeck. Watching them go, Keru had to wonder if maybe Torvig was right. He was starting to feel as if he was asking too much of him. After all, Torvig had been an ensign for less than six months.

Doubts plagued Keru's thoughts. How can I expect someone so young to face something like this? What if he's not ready? Do I really want to risk getting him killed just so he won't think I've lost faith in him? He shook off that notion. I haven't lost faith in him. He can do this, I'm sure of it. He'll be fine.

Then he imagined his friend falling into the hands of the Borg, just as his beloved Sean had fallen years ago.

No, Keru promised himself. Not this time. Not to Vig. I talked him into joining this mission, and I'm making sure he comes back from it...even if that means I won't.

He had an hour before Dennisar and Sortollo returned.

"Computer," he said. "Restart program. From the top."

Riker stepped out of the turbolift onto the bridge and was met with anxious stares. Vale, who was manning the center seat, rose to surrender the chair to him. He nodded and said, "Report."

"Warp drive and main power are back online, but long-range communications are down for the count, along with most of the sensor array." Vale handed him a padd with a summary of the ship's status. He skimmed it as she continued. "Ra-Havreii networked the subs.p.a.ce transmitters on the shuttles, only to find out that the subs.p.a.ce booster relays we've been leaving behind us are all offline."

He almost had to laugh. "Of course they are." Settling into his chair, he ruminated aloud, "Whatever we're moving toward just muzzled us, but it left our tactical systems alone. Why?"

Lieutenant T'Kel looked up from the security console and offered, "Perhaps because it doesn't see us as a threat."

"Then why did it disable us?" asked Riker.

The Vulcan woman shrugged. "A warning shot?"

From the other side of the bridge, Tuvok added, "It might also have been an accident. An ent.i.ty with such power could easily have destroyed us while we were incapacitated. The fact that it did not suggests that its intention was not to kill."

"Or that it thought it had killed us," Vale offered.

Sariel Rager swiveled her chair away from the operations console and joined the conversation. "Sir, I think it's worth noting that the pulse that hit us did so only after we'd run some fairly high-energy scans of our own. It's possible we provoked the target's curiosity, and it may not have realized we'd be so vulnerable to its sensors."

"All good points," Riker said. "Cease active scanning of the target. Pa.s.sive sensors only from this point forward."

Rager nodded. "Aye, sir."

"Ensign Lavena," Riker said to the Pacifican flight controller, "resume our last course, maximum warp."