Resistance.

by J.M. Dillard.

Prologue.

IT BEGAN AS IT HAD BEFORE: CLAUSTROPHOBIC dreams, a sense of impending evil, the shattering of sleep with a desperate, rasping gulp of air.

In darkness, Jean-Luc Picard threw back tangled sheets and rose. It seemed he had done so countless times, had risen in the grip of a vague terror and made his way, blind but knowing, through his unlit bedchamber. He entered the lavatory and paused in front of the mirror.

"Light," he uttered hoa.r.s.ely, and there was light.

In the glare he winced at his reflection. He looked the same: clean shaven, with lean, sharply sculpted features, a gleaming bald crown. Yet something was subtly different, something was subtly wrong. He studied his face intently, seeking explanations for his sense that he, that his entire world, had gone awry.

Beneath his left cheekbone, the skin twitched. The movement was barely perceptible. Picard leaned closer, grasping the edges of the cool counter. Had it been his imagination, the product of paranoia triggered by the elusive, disremembered dream?

No. The muscle in his cheek spasmed again, briefly, then rippled. Alarmed, Picard placed a hand to it and felt a hard object beneath the flesh, an object that was neither tooth nor bone, but inhuman.

He withdrew fingers that trembled despite his efforts to steady them. The object pushed hard, now, against the inside of his cheek, like a child-sized fist trying to force its way through his skin.

The sense of pressure mounted until it became nigh unbearable. In horror, Picard watched as his cheek stretched beyond all possible limits, until the hard, steadily lengthening cylinder emerged from within his body and erupted through the flesh.

Astoundingly, there was no blood, only a single bright flash of pain. A slender, gleaming silver arm emerged and extended itself a hand's breadth, then paused an inch before the mirror. A whir: the servo's end bloomed and opened, revealing skeletal fingers, razor-keen, deadly fingers meant for grasping, killing, transforming...

"The Borg," Picard whispered. Flashes of the dream returned: infinite rows of metallic honeycomb cubicles, filled with the a.s.similated, mindlessly awaiting a directive; the surgical chamber, efficiently modern yet medievally grotesque, its walls lined with prosthetic limbs, eyes, sharp saws, burning lasers; worst of all, the queen herself, no more than a disembodied head with shoulders, her dark lips curved upward in the most wickedly smug of half smiles, her liquid black-bronze eyes full of promise and threat...

We were very close, you and I. You can still hear our song.

Not again. Not again, not again.

Shining metal fingers clicked and flexed inches away from his eyes, blotting out his reflection, his individuality. Picard sank to his knees, still gripping the counter. This time, his shriek was not silent...

The sound-which emerged as no more than a loud groan-jarred him to full consciousness. In the instant of disorientation that followed, he pressed his palm to his cheek and discovered, to his profound relief, only human flesh. His breathing was shallow, rapid; he forced it to deepen and slow, and let reality reclaim its hold on him.

This was his bed, and Enterprise's night. He was now, truly, awake.

"Jean-Luc?" A voice, soft and drowsy, beside him; the sound of long, slender limbs sliding against sheets. "Jean-Luc, you're all right. You were dreaming."

"Beverly." His voice was hoa.r.s.e with sleep; he cleared his throat. "Yes, of course, I'm fine. Just a dream."

She rolled onto her side. He could see her silhouette though not her expression; she had propped her elbow against the pillow, then rested her head upon her palm. Her hair spilled down to brush his shoulder. "What was it about?"

He tensed slightly. He knew the nuances of her tone well; she was the doctor now, not lover or friend. And she was asking a question whose answer she already knew.

"I was talking in my sleep, then," he said flatly, wryly.

She nodded. He sighed as she persisted: "Feel like talking about it?"

"What's there to say? I don't know why I'm dreaming about the Borg. It was all resolved long ago."

Even before she spoke, he read her skepticism in the way she slightly drew back her head. "A wound as deep as yours won't ever heal completely, Jean-Luc."

"Then help me forget." He took hold of the arm supporting her head and gently pulled; she didn't resist but laughed and let herself roll toward him, almost on top of him. He gave her a swift kiss, and they smiled at each other in the darkness.

"I'm sorry it still troubles you," she said gently.

He shrugged. "It's not troubling me. It was just a...subconscious hiccup, that's all." He stroked her hair. "Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep."

She yawned, then settled against him, her cheek nestled beneath his collarbone. In an instant, she was out again-a doctor's talent, learned long ago in medical school. He teased her about it, but it was a talent he envied, especially now that he lay staring up at the night ceiling fully awake, feeling the regular rise and fall of her breath against his ribs.

The dream left him troubled. He had not thought of the Borg in a very long time. He could not remember the last time he had consciously relived the horror of his existence as the human/machine hybrid named Locutus. He did not understand why such memories should surface now. More important, he did not know why they should prove especially disturbing.

In his ear, the faintest of whispers.

"What?" He tilted his chin down to glance at Beverly. She was soundly sleeping; he decided she had murmured while dreaming. He gazed back up at the overhead, then closed his eyes, determined to dismiss all foolish anxiety and return to sleep himself. He drew in a breath, then released it as a sigh and let his body rely completely upon the bed for support.

Another whisper, too soft to be intelligible.

Picard opened his eyes. This time, he did not look down at Beverly; this time, he knew that she was not the source. For the solitary voice was soon joined by another, then another...until it became a faint, distant chorus of thousands.

You can still hear our song.

It was, Picard knew with a certainty he wanted urgently not to possess, the whisper of the Collective.

It was the voice of the Borg.

1.

BY SHIP'S MORNING, PICARD WOKE TO FIND Beverly gone and his mind clear, free of its nocturnal terror. He dressed, and by the time he mentally reviewed the tasks of the day, he had convinced himself that the Borg chatter had been no more than a vestige of the dream.

The first stop was engineering. Picard entered to find the android B-4 sitting, legs sprawled with un-selfconscious gracelessness, clad in the mustard jumpsuit he routinely wore. His expression bland and benign, B-4 let his ingenuous gaze wander, without curiosity, over his surroundings. Picard could not determine whether the android had actually registered the captain's entry, or the presence of Geordi La Forge or Beverly Crusher.

"Captain Jean-Luc Picard," B-4 said at last, without inflection. From experience, Picard knew this was not a greeting; B-4 was merely parroting the name of an object he recognized. But for the sake of the others, the captain took it as such.

"Good morning, B-4," he said briskly, with false cheerfulness. Silently, he nodded a greeting to La Forge and Beverly.

Geordi stood next to the android. Beverly stood across from the two of them, her arms folded, her expression carefully professional, that of chief medical officer and nothing more. Technically, since B-4 was not human, what was about to occur could not be called a medical procedure. Nonetheless, Beverly had insisted on coming.

Geordi's features were composed as well, but there was a poignant undercurrent in his prosthetic crystalline eyes. Data had been his closest friend, and spending time with B-4-Data's double in physical form only, certainly not in personality, intelligence, or att.i.tude-had only served to underscore the loss of that friend. Geordi had worked the past few months with B-4 in hopes of summoning Data's memories-to re-create, if possible, all that Data had been.

The effort had proved cruelly futile. B-4 had regurgitated names, snippets of events from Data's past, but had never put them into context, had never shown the slightest interest in their meaning.

But as he had wandered the Enterprise's corridors, Geordi so often in tow, B-4 had kept Data's ghost alive for them all. Picard still struggled with a sense of guilt: in the most human and loving of gestures, Data had sacrificed himself so that his captain and crewmates might live. Even months later, Picard was visited too often by the horrible instant of materializing on the bridge, of seeing the dazzling flash of the Scimitar's destruction, of knowing that Data was dead, incinerated into nonexistence...

There had not even been time enough to say good-bye. He missed Deanna Troi dreadfully; she was serving with her husband Will Riker aboard the t.i.tan now, and only in her absence had Picard come to realize how much he had relied on her as a counselor not only in professional matters but in personal ones as well. He was limited now to remembering what she had told him shortly before she left the Enterprise with Will: Data's final act was one that brought him the most happiness; it gave his entire existence the greatest meaning. Yes, he could have lived centuries longer...but what's the use of immortality if there's no meaning to it?

Case in point, Picard thought, looking at the android in front of him. As the captain took his place beside Beverly, B-4 sat staring vacuously, oblivious to the feelings of the humans surrounding him. Data, of course, would have been keenly aware. Picard tried, and was entirely unsuccessful, to suppress a memory: Data, standing in the scalded dust of the desert world Kolarus, lifting B-4's head from the sand and holding it before his eyes in unwitting imitation of Hamlet contemplating Yorick's skull. Brother, Data had called him. So like Data, to have yearned for the closest of human relationships.

"B-4," Geordi said, with the same gentle tone he had used so often with his old friend, "do you realize what we're about to do?" La Forge unconsciously fingered the laser wrench in his hand. Nearby sat open storage compartments: one the size of a torso, another that of a human cranium. A third was designed to house limbs. B-4 would soon return to the state in which they had first discovered him: disa.s.sembled.

The android looked in turn at each of them: Beverly, Picard, then back at Geordi.

"You are sending me away," B-4 said.

"Yes," Geordi answered, his tone infinitely patient. "You're going to the Daystrom Inst.i.tute. They're going to study you and learn about your design, how you were made."

"How I was made," B-4 echoed tonelessly. He glanced at the storage compartments, then at the deck.

"We're going to deactivate you now," Geordi persisted. "Most likely permanently. We talked about all this, remember?"

"I remember," B-4 replied, distracted by the movement of another engineer pa.s.sing by en route to her station.

Apparently more for himself than the android, Geordi added, "It's a good thing you're doing, B-4. You're helping science."

After a brief silence, B-4 looked up at La Forge and asked abruptly, "What is it like to be deactivated?"

Geordi was caught off guard; Beverly stepped in.

"It's like...nothing," she said. "Like being nowhere at all. It's not uncomfortable. Humans might compare it to a dreamless sleep."

"Nothing?" B-4 tilted his head in painful imitation of Data.

Geordi recovered and nodded. "You won't see or hear anything. You'll no longer receive any input."

B-4 blinked, considering this. "That sounds very boring. I do not think I want to be deactivated now."

Geordi shot an openly helpless glance at Picard. Beside him, Beverly shifted her weight, clearly uncomfortable.

"B-4," Picard said sternly, "it's too late to change your mind. You already agreed to be deactivated. That was a good decision, one you must abide by." Now was not the time for dialogue. True, the situation might trigger memories of a lost friend, but swift action was required lest it turn maudlin. B-4 was not Data, and that was that.

There followed a slight pause. "All right," B-4 answered mildly.

Picard directed a curt nod at Geordi. "Please deactivate B-4, Mister La Forge."

Geordi hesitated no more than a heartbeat, then with his free hand, reached for a panel at the back of B-4's neck, opened it, and pressed a control.

B-4 froze: his eyes no longer blinked, his head no longer moved, his limbs no longer fidgeted in realistic representation of human motion. Even the blandly pleasant expression had resolved into one of soulless vacancy. In less than a millisecond, he was transformed from sentient being to inanimate object.

Picard had expected the moment after to be the easiest. To his surprise, it was the hardest-for there, in front of them, sat Data, just as he had appeared all the times they had been forced to shut him down. There was no longer B-4's vacant expression and witless repet.i.tion to remind them that this was someone, something else. Picard's throat tightened; he recalled a time, many years ago, when Command had wanted to deactivate Data for study. He remembered how hard and eloquently he and Data had argued against it, and won.

Now it felt as though he had ultimately lost.

Standing beside Picard, Beverly gave a few rapid blinks, then regained her composure. Geordi, his tone soft, his words forced, said, "I'll finish up here, Captain. He'll be ready for shipment within the hour." He lifted the laser wrench in his hand and fingered a toggle.

"Very good," Picard said. He turned on his heel and tried to leave Data's memory behind, in engineering-just as he had earlier dismissed the dream about the Borg.

It had been a strange night, followed by a strange morning; Picard could not entirely rid himself of the odd feeling the world had somehow gone awry. Nothing more than mental phantoms, he exhorted himself. Nothing real: just ghosts. Ghosts and whispers...

As he rode the turbolift up toward the bridge, Picard's mood gradually began to lighten. His next task would be a far happier one: he had been planning an announcement with great care. The previous night, after he had received some antic.i.p.ated news from Starfleet Command, he and Beverly had each enjoyed a gla.s.s of wine and laughed over his nefarious plan for delivering said news. They had planned, too, a small celebration of the senior crew after hours.

Picard was nearly smiling when the turbolift slowed and arrived at the bridge, but by the time the doors opened, he had already forced a frown in order to produce a properly grim expression.

The Enterprise bridge was a study in silent efficiency: a recent transfer from Security, Lieutenant Sara Nave, straw-colored hair loosely coiled at her neck, sat at the conn, studying the stars on the main viewscreen. Nave's serious expression and consummate professionalism belied her off-duty behavior. At the academy, she'd had a reputation as a fun-loving h.e.l.lion-the captain recalled that several senior officers had used the same label for him. Unlike her captain, Nave had graduated at the top of her cla.s.s and was one of the best in her field.

Born on Rigel to human parents-both of them high-ranking officers in Starfleet-Nave had been a prodigy, convinced from early childhood that she wanted to follow in her family's footsteps. Her academic record was stellar enough to convince Starfleet Academy to grant her early admission; after an accelerated program, she graduated at the age of eighteen. She was now twenty-five, with seven years of outstanding service under her belt-though it was hard sometimes for Picard to believe it, given the fact that Nave looked even younger than she was. Her pixielike features would always give her the appearance of youth, even into old age.

She was not a tall woman, though her limbs were lithe and long-yet her strength was formidable, in part because she had started in Security. She regularly practiced mock combat with Worf using the bat'leth-the quarter-moon-shaped Klingon scimitar-albeit with a slight handicap. Picard was glad to see the two had formed a friendship. Worf did not take easily to new people.

A faint crease appeared on Nave's brow as she manipulated a control, keeping the ship on course for the planet Repok. The Repoki had agreed to permit the Federation to help negotiate a truce with their neighbor, Trexat. Commander Worf had command of the bridge, his bony brow knitted in a perpetual slight scowl, his hair falling down his broad back in a long russet braid. Picard was still not quite used to the sight of Worf in the big chair.

Over the past months, the Klingon had behaved with uncharacteristic restraint, a degree of somberness that Picard attributed to grief over Data and the rea.s.signment of so many crew members. The number of changes had required all of them to adapt. It had been hard enough, in the past, when the crew had lost the Enterprise herself; it was harder still to lose each other.

At the sound of the doors opening, Worf swiveled in the captain's chair to glimpse Picard; not quite simultaneously, the Klingon rose and moved for the first officer's position. Picard pa.s.sed by him, turning his face just enough to order sternly, "In my ready room, Mister Worf." He glanced back at navigation. "Lieutenant Nave, you have the bridge."

The captain did not await an answer but headed directly for the ready room and his desk; he settled behind it, aware that the Klingon was following closely. The instant Worf entered, the doors snapped shut, and Picard gestured for him to take the hot seat.

The Klingon never looked comfortable sitting; Worf would far prefer to be standing at attention. Instead, he rested his great bronze hands awkwardly on his knees, looking like the essence of regretfully coiled power.

Picard forced away the smile that threatened, and with a calculatedly reluctant expression, launched into his performance. "Mister Worf," he began, his voice low, "for the past few months you have, in my opinion, fulfilled your role as temporary second-in-command most admirably."

"Thank you, Captain." Worf shifted uncomfortably beneath the words of praise, poised on the edge of his chair, eager to vacate it as swiftly as possible.

"However," Picard said, "I'm sure you can understand that the time has come to find a permanent replacement." He paused a full two seconds to increase the sense of drama, relishing his role. "I want you to know that I made the case quite forcefully for keeping you as first officer. But Starfleet Command had already made its decision long before my recommendation." The captain lifted his hand in a rehea.r.s.ed I-did-all-that-I-could gesture, then sighed.

Worf was as motionless as stone.

"I'm afraid, Mister Worf, that I received the name of the new permanent first officer last night. He will be filling the position immediately."

If Worf felt disappointment, he did not show it; Picard would not have expected him to. "I understand, Captain. Shall I return to my old post?"

The question caught Picard off guard. He had been counting on the Klingon to ask the name of his so-called replacement-especially since the officer was to take over immediately, which implied he was a member of the current crew. Wasn't Worf the least bit curious that someone of lesser rank had been promoted over him? This was not how Picard's little joke was supposed to play out.

Perhaps he had inadvertently offended.

"Mister Worf," he said finally, his tone lightening; at last, he permitted himself to smile. "Forgive me for teasing you. I am proud to report that Command has approved my recommendation and appointed you permanent first officer of the Enterprise."

A pause followed. Picard absolutely expected to hear the words, Thank you, Captain, but they never came.