Worf spoke to the security team again. "Doctor Crusher will attempt to disable the queen-but the instant it seems that she is not successful, fire to kill." He paused, and his voice dropped even lower. "I realize that we want our captain and our crewmate to be recovered safely. But our first priority is to stop the Borg-at any cost. Am I understood?"

"Understood," Beverly said softly, along with the others. She caught Nave's eye at the instant it flickered with a ghost of pain. She was sure no one else saw it, no one but herself, because she felt the very same ache.

"Very well," Worf said. "According to Captain Picard, we have only two hours before the queen wakes and the Borg vessel is online. It is imperative that we accomplish our mission before either of those events occurs."

As they stepped onto the transporter pads, Beverly drew in a breath. The air was cool here and pleasant; she remembered how hot and dank it had been when the Borg had taken over the ship, and she steeled herself.

"Mister La Forge," Worf said into the air, "on my mark."

"Ready," La Forge's voice replied.

Worf nodded to Ensign Luptowski. "Energize."

Beverly watched as the normal world, the sane world, dissolved into nothingness around her.

12.

NAVE MATERIALIZED WITH THE AWAY TEAM ON one of the uppermost decks of the Borg cube.

She had been sitting at the helm of the Enterprise when the Borg ship had first loomed close on the viewscreen. Hanging dark and ominous against an incandescent moon, it had reminded Nave oddly of images from old stories, of haunted Gothic mansions peopled by white, soulless ghosts of the ancient dead. The same feeling took hold of her again, as she got her bearings on the catwalk suspended high within the cavernous ship. This was the exact spot where Lio had been taken, where DeVrie and Costas and Satchitanand had died. Their ghosts whispered to her as she swayed a bit, staring down at the spiraling decks below.

They now attack on sight...

The interior of the ship was as haphazard and ungainly as the outside, dim and bland and shadowed-far dimmer, even, than the Enterprise's night. What few colors existed were muted shades of dulled gray and bronze-the color of inanimate things.

Beneath Nave was a vast downward spiral, a maze of metal wrought like a spider's web but without the elegance. A conduit was stuck here, a railing there, another deck, a wall of circuitry fully exposed, as if someone had stripped away the bulkheads to reveal the internal workings of the ship, unable to be bothered by concerns of elegance or privacy.

Far below, so far they were no bigger than the first knuckle of Nave's little finger, Borg drones slept, mindless and dreamless, in tiny, dark alcoves. Nave's mind immediately went to Dante's Inferno; surely this was the innermost circle of h.e.l.l, where souls were trapped in eternal suffering. And that brought her mind back to Lio.

But Dante had said that the innermost circle was bitterly cold; that was surely not the case on this ship, so humid that mists swirled about Nave's feet. Sweat already glazed her upper lip and forehead.

Nave forced her gaze upward, at the away team: Worf leading, then Leary, Crusher, and Diasourakis and Chao side by side. Clutching her phaser rifle close, its b.u.t.t pressing into her collarbone, Nave brought up the rear, her body angled sideways in order to follow the movements of the team while still being alert to any threats approaching from her direction.

"There," Worf said softly. Nave craned her neck and looked beyond Chao's straight spill of dark hair, beyond Diasourakis and Leary and Crusher, to the Klingon, who pointed at a light-faint and pulsating and unmistakably green in the colorless landscape-emanating from an arched entryway in the near distance. "That would be the queen's chamber."

The team moved forward, each step punctuated by another pulse of the green light. In the silence, Nave heard the whisper of ghosts.

As the catwalk was intersected by a perpendicular walkway, Crusher hissed a warning. Nave turned, instantly on the alert. The phaser rifle was thicker than her two arms laid side by side, fastened to her body by a thick strap so there was no danger of her dropping it. Some officers complained that the weapon was unwieldy, but Nave swung it around as though it were an extension of herself.

A Borg drone was closing in on them from the side, moving faster than Nave had antic.i.p.ated. By the time the away team slowed to react, Diasourakis was directly in the drone's path.

Nave saw no more than a blur of white and black and fired a split second before all the others; the rifle's blast was painfully dazzling. A small nova exploded at the level of the drone's chest. It staggered, bent neatly and impossibly backward at the waist, then steadied itself and straightened before restarting its inexorable move forward.

Nave fired again. This time, the beam from her rifle and Worf's converged and scalded the drone, brightening the shadowed corridors to daylight. It writhed briefly, then fell, scorched and lifeless, to the metal deck.

Her hands shook only slightly as she lowered her weapon.

Before she reacted, she had not even looked at the drone's face; she could not have said whether it had been Lio, whether it had been Picard. Along with the others, she stared down at the dead creature. Its features were indistinct, bland, unremarkable; Nave could do no more than identify the species as humanoid.

As she lifted her gaze, she caught the doctor's. Crusher had been gazing down at the drone's body; as she looked up, her eyes met Nave's. Neither woman spoke, neither gave any overt sign of acknowledgment, but Nave understood completely. She and Crusher had both come onto the Borg vessel for the same reason. She and Crusher had both been terrified by the possible ident.i.ty of the murdered drone.

The away team moved on in silence.

It was no more than thirty meters to the source of the pulsing green light, the arching entrance to the lone walled-in structure on the ship. But the slow, stealthy march seemed interminable. Nave shifted her gaze constantly toward the rear, toward the sides, toward the front, where Worf led the way. It will happen, she told herself, and happen quickly. They would reach the queen's chamber. There would be a few more shots fired, then Crusher would inject the queen and all would be well. Picard and Lio would be discovered whole and be restored.

At least, she tried hard to believe it. She had thought, before she came aboard the Borg vessel, that she would have time to scan the chalky features of each drone before she fired, that she would have time to recognize Lio if he appeared and somehow magically stop the others from firing on him. Now she realized such a thing was impossible. She had hoped before to encounter Lio in his guise as Borg; now she wished for just the opposite.

Just as the away team neared the intersection of two catwalks, Nave saw them, approaching from the rear: six drones in pyramid formation, one in front, two in the second row, three in the last. They appeared out of the shadows as if materializing magically from the ether. They were all moving at speeds much faster than she had previously read in the reports. There was none of the lumbering that was typically a.s.sociated with the hulking beings. They were fierce in their movements.

The lead drone wore a black optoscope that extended forward and rotated as it studied its prey; it caught Nave's gaze with its single humanoid eye, its expression frighteningly blank. At the sight of her, it lifted a cybernetic arm, which terminated in razor-sharp fingers that opened and closed, a deadly bloom. It reached for her, its blades champing together like the teeth of a hungry predator, ready to strike.

"Six approaching from the rear!" Nave shouted.

She fired on the drone, peripherally aware that Chao had closed in on her right flank, Diasourakis her left.

The Borg with the blooming blades moved in first. Nave's burst hit it squarely in the midsection. Like the first drone, this one buckled backward, then righted itself.

Nave fired a second time, a third, as Chao and Diasourakis followed suit; the dimness was lit by a rapid-fire series of dazzling blasts. She heard Worf's shouted orders to Leary, followed by phaser fire behind her, and realized that the Borg had attacked on two fronts.

Chao and Diasourakis were emptying their weapons on the second and third drones, trying to bring them down. But like Nave's, their targets stopped, rallied, then kept coming.

"Recalibrate weapons!" Nave yelled.

Somewhere behind her, Margaret Leary screamed.

Nave had no time to turn. The drone intended for her-its finger blades extended, clawing the air-was only two meters away.

But Leary's cry was too similar to Lio's; it filled her with murderous rage. She recalibrated with practiced swiftness, and the corner of her mouth tugged down as she fired. "I won't let you win this time," she said, her voice low, ragged.

The burst hit the drone in the gut, lifting it off its feet and propelling it backward. Nave stared through her scope and waited, but the creature did not rise; it lay on its back, the scorched black carapace smoldering.

Diasourakis had managed to take down his target, but Chao's had adapted again. As she struggled to recalibrate in time, a drone came within arm's reach, an instant away from striking. Nave and Diasourakis both fired on the drone, but it remained on its feet.

When it reached for Chao, Nave grabbed her arm.

"Retreat!" She pushed Chao to the left, onto the intersecting catwalk, giving them breathing room; Diasourakis followed.

Nave glanced over her shoulder. Behind Diasourakis, a cl.u.s.ter of drones-a black-and-white circle of flesh-had paused in the intersection of the two walkways, as if uncertain whom to pursue. Nave craned to look past them and caught a glimpse of Worf's russet hair and ma.s.sive shoulders, of Crusher's and Leary's pale faces, of a flash of blood. They had veered right as Nave and her party had veered left; the drones who had attacked from front and rear had now converged, separating them.

Nave turned back to face the enemy, at the same time recalibrating her weapon; Diasourakis and Chao, shoulder to shoulder, did the same. As she moved, Nave took a quick head count: seven drones. Seven to six-almost even odds.

"Let's rejoin the others," she said. "Fire."

The darkness filled with dazzling light; a pair of bright bursts came from the opposite side as Worf and Leary attacked.

One drone dropped, then another; a third staggered, then slowly righted itself. Along with Diasourakis and Chao, Nave kept firing but slowly became aware that no further blasts were coming from Worf and Leary.

She thought of the flash of red she had seen-human blood-and quickly forced the image away, instead staying focused on her firing. The drones still stood in circular formation-backs together, fronts facing outward, but as Nave continued to fire, they moved slowly, deliberately, turning until every one of them faced Nave and her group.

They began to advance, moving out of the intersection and onto Nave's side of the catwalk.

"Keep firing!" Nave shouted. She could not see past them, to Worf and the others. Apparently, the Borg had decided that her group posed the greatest threat.

A series of rapid-fire phaser blasts flared, limning the dark bodies of the drones, dazzling Nave's eyes and clouding her vision with afterimages. Even so, she could see that none of the Borg hesitated when struck. They were moving steadily forward, forcing Nave and her officers to move steadily back.

"Recalibrate!" she called, as she did so to her own weapon. Chao and Diasourakis obeyed, but the slight hesitation allowed the drones to draw uncomfortably closer.

Nave gripped the trigger and squeezed it repeatedly, faster than she ever had in practice, faster than she ever had in her life. Her officers were firing madly beside her; white-hot bursts turned the dimness to daylight. One Borg fell, only one.

The others kept advancing. They were adapting to the phaser blasts more quickly now, she realized, and moving in faster. She could no longer see Commander Worf and his group and did not know whether they had escaped. She did not want to abandon them or separate the away team, but she had a responsibility to her own group. When the drones were no more than two steps away, she called out to Chao and Diasourakis.

"Retreat! Retreat!"

Nave turned and caught the crook of Chao's elbow with her free hand and pulled her along; Diasourakis followed.

She ran madly, blinking as sweat stung her eyes, gasping at the hot, stifling air. The phaser rifle, strapped snugly to her, jammed against her ribs so that she found it hard to draw a breath. She could hear her own boot heels hammering against the metal deck, followed, too quickly, by the inexorable tromp of the Borg's.

After the brightness of the phaser blasts, the corridor seemed darker than ever. Nave dashed recklessly through the faint mists, trying to ignore the fact that she might very well run directly into a waiting group of hostiles.

Abruptly, the deck forked in three directions.

"This way!" She veered hard to the right. The momentum flung her briefly against the railing. She grasped it tightly and caught a vertiginous glance of the hundred or more levels beneath her.

Chao almost collided with her. They caught each other for balance, then separated again. Nave straightened and led the flight.

She ran at top speed, throat and lungs burning, for a full minute, by which time her eyes had readjusted to the dimness. Another stride, two, then she pulled up short, panting.

A few meters in front of her, the deck terminated in a solid bulkhead. Swiftly, Nave glanced behind her. The Borg were following and closing the distance. It was impossible to go back, to try a different route.

Bringing up the rear, Diasourakis had noticed as well. "We're trapped, Lieutenant!"

Nave scanned the area, squinting at the shadows. She tried her combadge. Nothing. There seemed to be no way out, short of crawling over the railing and jumping to one's death-an option she refused to accept. She stared hard at the bulkhead, at the deck and the railings, until she spotted something to her left: a metal hatch covering a broad, enclosed cylindrical shaft. She hurried to it, Chao sticking close to her side, and pulled on the hatch until it yielded.

Inside, illuminated with faint, eerie gray twilight, was a shaft leading down several levels, equipped with metal rungs for climbing. Nave decided it existed because she had simply willed it. She looked up at the approaching drones, then motioned quickly to Chao.

Without a word, Chao tightened the body strap on her rifle, then crawled into the shaft and started climbing down.

Nave turned to Diasourakis. "Go."

He shook his head. "I'll bring up the rear, sir."

Nave did not care to waste time arguing. She lowered herself and started climbing down. The act seemed exceptionally precarious, given that her hands were slick with sweat, the nose of her rifle kept catching on the smooth metal rungs, and the shaft was uncomfortably wide, making her feel exposed. It didn't help matters that the drop below her was dizzyingly infinite.

Don't think about it. Just move.

Below her, Chao's dark head bobbed. To make moving easier, she had pushed her strap so that her rifle now hung on her back. Nave refused to follow suit; she wanted her weapon as close to her hands as possible.

Overhead, Diasourakis closed the hatch with a dull, final sound. Nave didn't look up. She was too busy concentrating on gripping each new rung firmly, taking care that neither her hands nor her heels slipped, matching her pace to Chao's. They made fair time; less than a minute had pa.s.sed when Chao suddenly slowed her pace.

Nave glanced down, concerned.

"There's a landing here, sir." Chao's voice echoed endlessly.

Nave saw it. It was more like a small ledge, with just enough room for a body to step onto and then reach out to the side to catch hold of a rung. The Borg were apparently none too concerned about personal safety.

"Keep going," she called down. "Let's put a couple more levels between us and them." At the same time, she was aware they could not go too far; the away team now had less than two hours to accomplish its goal.

"Aye, sir."

They kept descending. The atmosphere in the shaft was a steam bath; Nave remained vigilant about gripping the rungs as tightly as possible with her sweating hands. At times, she paused to carefully wipe a hand on her uniform, then to glance overhead to see whether the drones were still in pursuit.

Blessedly, she saw nothing above her but Diasourakis's legs. Ahead of her was the little landing, just below a hatch; she glanced at it as she made her way past it. After five minutes, she decided she would direct Chao to take the next landing. And then it would be a matter of surviving long enough to find another shaft that would take them back up to Worf and the others. Once they had some breathing room, she would try to contact Worf and ascertain the other away team members' status...

Her thoughts were interrupted by a hoa.r.s.e cry. She jerked her head back and stared up at Greg Diasourakis's right leg, which had slipped off the rung and kicked out suddenly to the side.

No, she realized, it hadn't been kicked out. It had been pulled, by a long, dark arm that had snaked out from the landing. By a drone, whose upper torso emerged from the hatch; its shoulders rested on the landing as its white hand gripped Diasourakis's ankle. It and Diasourakis's foot were an arm's length from the top of Nave's head.

His cry was wordless, but Nave understood it nonetheless. With her left hand, she gripped the metal rung. Her body swung precariously to the left, but she ignored it, along with Chao's shouts, and focused instead on catching hold of her phaser rifle. Using her shoulder and right hand, she managed to get the nose up and her fingers on the trigger.

Diasourakis was thrashing wildly now. The drone had wriggled farther out so that its waist and hip rested on the landing. Its humanoid hand still clung to the security officer; its prosthetic saw arm was raised, and the blade was rotating, ready. Slowly, it was pulling him down. Down, and in, to the landing.

Nave leaned back as far as she dared and pushed the nose of her weapon high, higher, then called up.

"Greg! Hold still! Hold still!"

Diasourakis flailed a few more times; Nave couldn't get a bead on the drone without killing them both. And then his leg relaxed-for an instant, only an instant, but it was enough time for Nave to fire.

Given its proximity, the blast blinded her; she felt heat on her face. Instinctively, she dropped the phaser rifle and clung to the rail with both hands, pressing her face against them, squeezing shut her eyes.

In the same instant, she cried out as a deluge of tangled limbs, flesh and bone and hard metal, pummeled her, struck her head and shoulders and back; something razor sharp nicked the back of her thigh. It should have washed her away, taken her down with it, but impossibly, she held on.

She held on and raised her face at the scream, at first high-pitched and in her ear, then rapidly growing lower, fainter, until it faded into nothingness.

She blinked, trying to force her vision to clear, and shouted down at Chao. "What happened? What happened?"

Moments earlier, as the away team neared the intersection of two catwalks-only steps away from the chamber filled with pulsating green light- Beverly Crusher saw the drones approaching from the front.

They had come from what Beverly instinctively knew was the queen's chamber. There were six of them, and she craned her neck anxiously to see past Leary and over Worf's shoulder; she wanted to know if Jean-Luc was among them. He was not, and she did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

Either way, she fought to suppress a wave of fear. The Borg were advancing with their prosthetic weapons wielded.

Worf had led the way, with Leary a close second. Leary at once moved into position beside the Klingon; the two formed a barrier in front of Crusher.