"Open fire!" Worf shouted, and Leary obeyed. One Borg, caught in the brilliant beam from Worf's rifle, spasmed briefly as the energy surge enveloped its body; it dropped quickly as the blast faded.

Crusher held back, thinking to let the other security team members move past her to join the fight-but she glanced over her shoulder to see Nave and the two others standing shoulder to shoulder, firing on a second group of drones who were attacking from the rear.

"There are other Borg behind us," she shouted, pulling her phaser from its holster. Worf was far too engaged in the battle to acknowledge if he heard. She considered her options as a second Borg fell, then a third reeled from a blow but recovered to continue its approach. Worf and Leary kept firing, but the drones reacted not at all to the blasts, not even pausing when directly hit.

"Recalibrate!" Worf ordered. At the same time, Beverly fired her own phaser, dropping the Borg.

Worf adjusted his weapon smoothly, swiftly, and resumed firing at the next oncoming Borg, but Leary's malfunctioned. She frowned at it as she repeatedly pressed a control.

The lead drone-its prosthetic arm terminating in a slowly rotating claw hook-sensed her weakness and lunged forward. Leary glanced up, startled, and fired her unrecalibrated weapon. It had no effect, and before she could step back out of the way, the drone sunk its claw into her shoulder.

Leary cried out sharply. Miraculously, she stayed on her feet, the hook still in her flesh, and jammed the hilt of her rifle into the drone's jaw. It staggered backward, just long enough for Worf and Beverly to dispatch it, firing in unison.

Crusher holstered her phaser and, with hand on her medkit, darted to Leary's side. The claw had bitten into the young woman's right deltoid, then ripped a ragged seam all the way into her biceps. Blood rapidly soaked the shoulder and sleeve of her uniform, and began to drip onto the deck. Amazingly, Leary was still standing. She had shifted her weapon over to her left side, nestling it against her rib cage as she adjusted it one-handed. She discharged a blast as Crusher did a quick scan of the damage.

"You have to let me help you," Beverly half shouted in her ear. "That's a deep laceration. If I don't fix it, you'll wind up fainting from blood loss."

"No time," Leary mouthed, but her eyes were dazed, her skin pale; a dark curl had fallen forward and clung to her sweat-dampened forehead. Even so, she kept firing.

Resolutely ignoring the approaching Borg, Beverly focused on her patient's wound. She couldn't reverse the blood loss Leary had already experienced, but she could at least slow it. She pulled her stimulator from her kit and applied it to Leary's wound. At the same time, she fumbled in the kit with her free hand, searching for her emergency hypospray.

Leary fired twice more, then swayed on her feet; her hand dropped from the trigger, leaving the rifle to dangle from her body by a strap. Crusher caught her before she fell.

"Worf!"

He did not slow his pattern of firing and recalibrating, but his gaze flickered to the side and took in Crusher and Leary-able to stay on her feet only because the doctor wound a supporting arm beneath her shoulders. The Klingon moved immediately in front of them and gestured for Beverly to go to the right, onto the intersecting catwalk.

Desperation encouraged Crusher to move herself and her burden fast, even though Leary's boots dragged against the deck. Worf followed, still firing at the Borg, his back to Crusher. Pulling Leary with her, Beverly staggered along a good twenty meters until she realized that Worf was no longer firing.

She looked back over her shoulder, awkwardly, trying not to discomfit Leary.

Worf was still behind her, though she could not see Nave and the others. But the Borg had gathered in the intersection of the two walkways. Inexplicably, they turned away from Crusher and Leary, away from Worf, and as a whole began to move toward the source of the firing.

Worf hesitated, then took a step in the direction of the drones, clearly thinking to join his stranded colleagues. At that same instant, Leary fainted, and Crusher sank beneath her weight.

"Worf! Help!"

The Klingon hurried to her side and scooped Leary up into his arms. They moved quickly out of the Borg's line of sight. At last, Worf stopped and gently lowered Leary to the floor.

Crusher knelt beside her patient and did a quick scan. "It's blood loss," she said, and Worf hovered above her. She ferreted the hypo from her medkit. "I can give her some tri-ox to keep her going for a while, but ultimately we're going to need to get her back to the ship for a transfusion."

"How much time does she have, Doctor?"

"A few hours."

Worf gave her a pointed look. "If we do not make it back to the ship in less than two hours, it will not make any difference for her."

Beverly fell silent. She had been thinking only of her patient, but if the away team was still here after the queen and all the drones awoke, no amount of tri-ox would save Leary.

She emptied the hypo into Leary's good shoulder, then sat back on her heels and counted the seconds. On five, Leary's eyes fluttered open.

"Ooh," she said. "Dizzy."

"It'll pa.s.s," Crusher soothed.

Leary blinked a few times, then tried to push herself up. Crusher helped her sit. "You're right," Leary said. "That is better."

"Good. Now, how about you hold still for me this time? I'm going to apply some more stimulation to speed up the healing."

"Sure." Leary sighed. She leaned back against the bulkhead.

As Beverly applied the stimulator, she glanced up at Worf, who was repeatedly pressing his combadge and frowning. "What's wrong?"

"I was attempting to contact the other members of the away team. My communicator is inoperative."

Instinctively, Beverly pressed hers; it, too, was dead. Without thinking, she said at once, "Jean-Luc." Locutus was of course expecting them-and would do everything possible to make their mission more difficult. Trying to find the missing crew members would cost precious time. And they were separated not only from Nave and the others but from the Enterprise as well.

Worf gave a grim nod. "I would suspect a damping field."

Beverly looked around her. They had wandered into a more sheltered area, where the open railings were replaced by bulkheads on either side. A bit farther down was an ominous sight: dark, empty alcoves, the alcoves where the drones slept. Would they be returning, she wondered, or were these reserved for the soon-to-be a.s.similated?

Worf paced warily beside her, his hand resting on his rifle. "I suspect the drones that attacked us had been guarding the queen. And I expect there are many more in her chamber...If we cannot locate the other members of the away team, we will need to come up with a new strategy."

"I've come up with a hypothesis," Beverly said. "I think that the same mechanism that prompts the Borg to secrete the queen's nutrient gel is the same one that triggers their hypervigilance in guarding her."

"Interesting," Worf said.

Beverly checked Leary's wound; the dermis was starting to knit together nicely, enough to check any further bleeding. "You're good for now," she told her patient.

Leary got at once to her feet and turned to Worf. "I'm ready for action, sir. I know we don't have much time..."

"Good," the Klingon said. "We will head back toward the queen's chamber. There are only three of us and there are no doubt several drones guarding the queen. We will have to create a distraction so that Doctor Crusher can administer the hypospray that will deactivate the queen."

"What if I'm the distraction?" Beverly asked.

Worf turned sharply to look at her, but his expression was faintly pleased; he had, she realized, been thinking of suggesting it. "It could work," he said.

Leary wasn't following. Slightly aghast, she looked from Worf to Crusher. "But the doctor..."

Beverly gave a tight little smile. "The Borg may be moving faster, but they still don't run," she said. "But I sure can."

13.

"HE FELL."

Sandra Chao's voice, soft yet ragged, filtered up to Nave and echoed in the wide, empty shaft. Nave closed her eyes and pressed her forehead hard against her knuckles as she clung to the metal rung. At least Diasourakis's scream had stopped reverberating.

"He-" Chao broke off and took a few seconds to gather herself before continuing. "It was hard for me to see. When you fired...the Borg fell, I think, and knocked Greg off the ladder."

Nave kept her eyes closed a long moment. When she was able, she opened them and raised her face. Overhead, there was no sign that anyone else had followed. "Let's keep going," she told Chao. "Two more landings, then we'll see where we are."

They continued down in miserable silence. They pa.s.sed another landing; then, as Chao neared the second, she reached out carefully, caught hold of a guardrail, and pulled herself onto the landing. Her boots clattered against the metal. "I think it'd be best if you waited, sir," she called to Nave, then cautiously opened the hatch and peered beyond it.

She looked back at Nave. "It's all right. The corridor's empty."

The landing was large enough only for one. Chao stepped through the open hatch, then turned and waited.

Nave reached for the guardrail above the landing and made the mistake of glancing down at the fathomless drop; she jerked her gaze up sharply and instead focused on Chao, who stood on the other side of the hatch, offering her hand.

Using the guardrail, Nave swung herself over and came down hard, on both feet, on the landing. Chao helped her climb through the hatch; both women paused to study their surroundings. The deck was similar to the one above, except that there were no drones within sight.

Nave hit her combadge. "Nave to Worf..." She let go a sound of disgust. "It's dead."

Chao tried hers, with the same result. "They must all know we're here."

Nave raised her face to study the outer bulkheads, trying to figure out the ship's skeleton in hopes of finding another shaft that would take them back up to the queen's chamber and, with luck, the rest of the away team.

"It's not your fault," Chao said suddenly, softly.

Nave scowled down at her.

"About Greg. You were trying to save him. It wasn't your fault, the way it happened."

Nave averted her gaze and shrugged. Chao was wrong; it was her fault. The shot from her rifle had hit the Borg-who struck Diasourakis when it fell. And Greg had fallen such a horribly long way that his body had to have been completely shattered-too damaged for human medicine or even Borg technology to repair. He was utterly, irrevocably gone. But there was no point in arguing about her innocence or guilt with Chao.

"There's nothing either of us can do about it," she said shortly, then let go a breath and looked back at Chao. "We can only get back up, to the queen's chamber, and do what we're here to do."

"Aye, sir."

Nave stared up at the distant bulkheads again and finally saw what she was looking for. "And to get there"-she pointed-"we need to go that way."

As the two made their way forward, they encountered a series of steps leading down to a semi-enclosed area. Nave didn't like it; it was harder to see if anyone was coming in either direction. And, like Chao, she found the surroundings distracting. Built into the bulkheads were blinking consoles-ungainly, cluttered things with ma.s.ses of exposed circuitry so that Nave found it impossible to distinguish the working parts from the controls. On the opposite side stood a ma.s.sive workstation, large enough to accommodate six standing workers; its main screen displayed a rotating, glowing red legend, but all other controls were dark, as if the main systems had been shut down.

Nave frowned at it. "It's a schematic of this ship."

Beside her, Chao spoke. "This could be the helm."

Nave grunted. "And the weapons station." She lingered an instant. It was tempting to discharge her weapon into the heart of the station, destroying it-but the risk of alerting the Borg was too great. Her primary responsibility was to locate Commander Worf and a.s.sist him in destroying the queen.

"Makes you wonder where everybody is," Chao said softly.

"Waiting," Nave answered and started moving again.

They wandered past more stations and equipment, a jumble of consoles and controls, panels and dark monitors. To Nave it looked as though every department of a starship-engineering, life support, communications, weapons, navigation-had been crammed together in a one-hundred-meter s.p.a.ce.

Another handful of steps led them up to a narrower, curving corridor, one even darker than the rest of the Borg vessel. Nave found it claustrophobic: the curve and darkness both restricted her line of sight. And it did not help matters that the corridor was lined on both sides with rows of empty Borg alcoves.

"These are their alcoves," she whispered to Chao. When Chao shot her a quizzical glance, she added, "Where they sleep."

"Do you think they're all awake now?" Chao whispered back.

Nave shook her head-if they were, she doubted the ship's stations would be unmanned-but her reply was unnecessary. In the next instant, Chao's question was answered.

Nave froze as she spotted a dark form in the alcove that had just come into view on her left. She raised her rifle, aware that Chao, beside her, had done the same.

If it had moved, she would have instantly killed it.

But it stayed motionless in its narrow cubicle, bathed in faintly pulsating gray light. Chao raised her weapon to fire; Nave reached out to the side and pressed her hand against the nose of her companion's weapon, lowering it. The Borg was not moving and posed no immediate threat. It was best to save the power cell. The more they fired, the more the Borg would adapt. This one still seemed to be in hibernation.

Not daring to breathe, Nave neared cautiously; as she did, she pa.s.sed through the elbow of the curve. Beyond stretched a hundred more alcoves, each one inhabited by a solitary dark silhouette. It was like stumbling onto a graveyard of unburied dead-worse, because these dead might well spring back to life in the blink of an eye.

For an instant, she considered forging ahead into the forest of sleeping Borg and hoping they did not wake-it would be faster than turning around. But the prospect of what would happen if they did made her stop and turn to Chao. Better to face the few drones they had left behind than to be caught in the middle of a swarm.

"Double back." Nave spoke so softly she could scarcely hear herself, but Chao-wide-eyed, solemn with fear-nodded in reply.

They turned and headed the way they had come. Rifle gripped tightly, Nave took the rear and kept glancing over her shoulder, expecting at any moment to see movement in the shadowy alcoves, to see eyes open, bodies stir, limbs move...

They attack on sight...

But the dreamers remained silent and still. Even so, it was not until Nave had made it back past the area of the ship's jumbled, artless control consoles that she finally released a long breath and realized she had been holding it the entire while.

Chao flashed a shaky smile over her shoulder. "That was more than a little nerve-racking."

"Yeah," Nave said. The corridor changed into an open catwalk with railings again; she lifted her face and scanned the overhead maze of pipes, circuitry, and interconnecting walkways. She was looking for another shaft, a lift, anything that would take them up. She sighed and looked back down at Chao. "We're going to have to go back to the shaft where..." She barely managed to catch herself in time. Sara had almost said where Diasourakis fell. "We need to get back to the away team. And if we can't find them, we'll need to figure out a way to destroy the queen ourselves."

Chao's expression darkened at the unspoken words. "Aye, sir."

They moved on in silence, Nave yielding constantly to the impulse to look behind her, to make sure none of the sleeping Borg had awakened and followed. She suspected that most of the conscious Borg were on the uppermost level along with the queen. And if she and Chao were unable to find Worf and the others, there was very little chance that two security officers could get very close to the queen.

But Nave would certainly try.

Her vision, always sharp, had adjusted completely to the feeble light. She had been scanning for the small hatch leading to the shaft; it finally came into view, some fifty meters distant. Nave broke into a loping run. There was little time left, she realized, to complete the mission-less than ninety minutes.

Chao followed close on her heels.

So intent was Nave on her destination that she failed to notice two figures approaching from a walkway to her left. By the time she saw them and drew herself up short, they stood directly in front of her, blocking access to the hatch.

Immediately, she raised her rifle-but a second quick look at the pair made her hesitate to fire.

They were Borg. The first was hairless, sporting the black carapace, the optoscopic eye, the prosthetic arm that doubled as a weapon. Its features were bland, unremarkable, as if worn away by years of service to the Collective.

The second was newly a.s.similated, apparently being escorted back from recent surgery. Its hair was covered by black metal molded to its cranium; tubes emerged from the crown of its head and connected to apparently random spots on its neck, cheek, chest. Like other Borg, its movements were stiff, its expression wooden, but the face was not altogether pale. It wore a slight flush, and the areas on its skin where the tubes had been inserted were still red from the insult.