Worf turned, recalibrating as he did so, and tried to help Leary, but it was too late. In her weakened state, Leary had been overwhelmed by the drones. It had happened so quickly that she could not even let out a sound. Worf had not been aware. With a howl of rage, Worf fired and brought down her killer, then wheeled about again to look behind him.

Locutus was back on his feet, a mere five meters away. Worf recalibrated and banked another shot. This time, his aim was off, and the field absorbed the blast. And as the field brightened from the impact, Worf recalibrated, stealing another glance at the queen as he did so.

Doctor Crusher had fallen, and the queen-now conscious-stood glaring down at her.

He would, the Klingon realized, have to shoot to kill. There was no longer any time to spare; he would have to find a way to the queen himself and destroy her.

He lifted his rifle again, prepared to take aim-and frowned. Locutus had, in the wink of an eye, disappeared.

A millisecond later, the nutrient bed on which the queen had lain slammed against Worf's legs and hips, knocking him to the deck. He fell hard onto his tailbone but managed, through supreme effort, to keep his grip on his weapon. He slapped one palm against the deck, thinking to push himself immediately to his feet...

...But before he could, he looked up to see Locutus, standing over him, the saw arm lifted.

The saw arm came down, biting into the rifle with sparks and a harsh grinding sound. Locutus lifted the arm; the weapon came with it, and with a sharp jerk, he sent it flying through the air. It struck the field and clattered to the deck, sliding to a stop on the opposite side of the chamber.

Before the saw arm came down again, Worf rolled to his side. Locutus followed, relentless.

It was not in the Klingon's nature to flee. Determined, he threw himself on the drone. With one hand, he caught hold of Locutus's forearm and forced it away; with the other, he seized hold of the drone's neck.

He intended to overpower the captain-drone, then get to the queen in order to kill her-but Locutus was far too strong; the whining saw drew inexorably closer to the Klingon's chest. Worf realized he would not even be able to hold his ground, and he let go a roar of fury and frustration.

There was only one thing left to do: die, killing Locutus. It would save the captain from further dishonor...and it would give Worf an honorable death.

An honorable death, he told Jadzia silently, for both of us.

As the saw blade neared his heart, Worf increased the pressure on Locutus's neck until it was strong enough to kill a human.

Without an instant's reflection, Nave fired her phaser rifle at the guard-drone, felling it. The blast was so near Lio that he staggered-Nave could not bring herself to think of him as a drone, an "it"-and bounced off the railing before regaining his footing.

She had a choice, she realized as she and Chao quickly recalibrated their weapons. They could leave him here, turn and head back to the forest of the sleeping Borg-but other than the obvious risk, it would waste even more priceless time. Or they could attempt to get past him-a possibility, since he was unarmed and with only two human hands to fight them.

The question was resolved in a heartbeat: in the distance behind her, lights flashed on.

"The console area," Chao said quickly. Nave heard the faint sound of footsteps. "They're waking up."

Nave fired at the deck in front of Lio's feet. The reflected blast stopped him, made him raise an arm to shield his face-a distinctly human gesture, she decided, she hoped. Once it faded, he began to move steadily forward again.

"Don't fire!" she told Chao as she recalibrated. "Get ready to run past him. I'll aim at the center, in front of his feet, so steer clear when you go. If you get yourself hit, I won't be able to help you."

Chao gave a swift nod. Nave fired again at the deck, squinting at the brilliance as Chao, compact and muscular, dashed past Lio's tall, lanky form. She swung out as she did, brushing against the railing-and Lio, as he lifted his arms in response to the blast.

But she made it to the other side, a bit shaken from the proximity of the burst, then turned to Nave.

"Over here, Lio!" she called to the drone. "Over here!" And as she lifted her rifle, she directed a nod and a pointed glance at Nave.

Nave lowered her own weapon and readied herself to run.

"Now," Chao said.

Nave sprinted, careful to veer to the side. The burst from the rifle was blinding. She kept her head down, her gaze averted as she brushed against the railing, and did not think about the precipitous drop just past it.

When the blow came, she was entirely surprised. It caught her across the brow, snapping her head sharply back. She reeled, then dropped to her knees, dizzied, nauseated by the pain. For one disoriented instant, she thought she had somehow collided with a low-hanging conduit.

And then hands grasped the uniform fabric atop her collarbone and yanked her onto her unreliable feet.

"Stop!" Chao shouted. "Lieutenant, get away from him! Run! I have to shoot!"

"No," Nave said, vainly trying to make her eyes focus. She could see nothing but Lio's Borg face, unsmiling and pale-or, rather, one and a half faces. She reached for her rifle, thinking not to fire it-shooting a body so close to hers would prove fatal for them both-but to wield it like a club. Her fingers had barely touched it when it was tugged from her. She felt the strap over her shoulder break and give way, heard the weapon strike the deck with a loud ring in the distance. "No, just go! We don't have time. Find the queen..."

Phaser fire rushed past her. Chao was taking aim at the approaching Borg, giving Nave the time to break free of Lio.

She tottered on her feet in a pathetic effort to move away. Running was impossible; her body had become uncoordinated, uncooperative. Something dark loomed toward her-Lio's arm, she realized, as it slammed against the side of her head. There came a breathtaking stab of pain in her neck. Her ribs collided with the railing, which she instinctively clutched as her head and shoulders lurched over the side.

She opened her eyes. Her gaze was fixed on the infinite downward spiral of deck after deck after deck, dissolving into vertiginous darkness: the abyss. The decks swam and shifted, doubling in number, then shifted back, accompanied by a fierce throbbing in her skull; Nave thought she would be sick. Behind her, Chao was still firing, her screams shrill against the dull, steady thrum of Borg footsteps.

"Go!" Nave screamed, but her voice came out faint, weak. "Find the queen...That's an order!"

As she cried out, a roar filled her ears; her own voice, and Chao's, faded to silence. She turned and looked up.

Lio was reaching for her shoulders; he pushed sideways against her, trying to use the weight of her body to loosen her grip, to send her tumbling over the side. Nave held on as she stared up into his eyes.

They were green and clear, lifeless and mindless, Lio's eyes absent Lio's soul. They were the most horrifying thing she had ever seen, and she realized, quite clearly, that she was an instant from death-and that those terrible eyes were the last things she would ever see.

She looked back down at the dizzying darkness.

Let go, she told herself. Why force him to kill you? Just let go and die...It was a better way, to fall into oblivion and decay, rather than survive in eternal purgatory as a drone.

Just hold on, someone said suddenly, calmly, clearly, as if lips had been pressed to her ear. It might have been Chao; it might have been her father.

There was no hope, none at all. The drones were waking up, which meant that the queen had wakened, and there was no more hope of stopping her. The Borg would win, and Lio and Captain Picard would spend eternity as drones. Chao would find herself alone and overwhelmed, and be torn to pieces.

And she, Sara, was already dead, gone as surely as her mother and father had one day disappeared from the living to become memories.

No hope, Nave repeated to herself, as Lio pressed against her, killing her. She tried one last time to find the warmth in his eyes, but there was none, no recognition at all. In that moment, she gave up all hope of saving Lio, all hope of saving herself. She would do as she had promised him before he had left the Enterprise. She would do what he said he had not been able to do for his friend Joel.

With herculean strength borne out of her love and sorrow, Nave pulled Lio with her as she allowed herself to fall over the railing. She could hear Chao's scream follow her as they dropped down the seemingly endless pit until she was too far to hear anything.

Sara had been right earlier.

The last thing she saw were Lio's cold eyes.

Behind the force field, Beverly sat back on her haunches. The sound of Locutus's saw drilling into Worf's rifle brought her back to full consciousness; the pain had caused her nearly to faint. She stared clinically down at her injury and a.s.sessed it. The wrist of her dominant right hand was shattered, useless; she could not bear the attempt to articulate her fingers.

But Worf had fallen, and Locutus was moving in for the kill. There was no time to think about something as unimportant as pain. She had one good hand. Gritting her teeth, she propped herself on it, the injured arm tucked close to her body. The missing hypospray had rolled only a few meters away; she crawled to it on her knees.

Nearby, the fully born queen had grown impatient with her restricted mobility. Rather than wait for her courtiers, she reached clumsily, with unaccustomed hands, for the cables that attached her neck, shoulders, and crown to her overhead energy source.

Beverly clutched the errant hypo. Unseen, she rose awkwardly to her feet and, crouching, approached her enemy from the back.

The queen's hands were behind her neck as she unfastened a piece of sinuous black tubing the way a woman might a necklace. Beverly reached out with the hypo, aiming for one of the queen's up-raised arms.

The instant before she could rest it against the queen's flesh, the black body, the mottled white head, whipped about and faced her.

The liquid bronze eyes were narrowed with fury. "Insect," the queen hissed. She reached out with a bone-pale hand and wrapped it about Beverly's throat; her touch was cool, unctuous, metal hard.

Beverly felt a flare of pain as her trachea, her larynx, were slowly crushed-but she felt no fear, only disgust and determination. She did not waste time considering the fact that she would now certainly die. She had no more than a split second to act, and in that second, she concentrated all of her energy, all of her will, on her unsteady left hand and the hypospray it held.

The queen bore down. Beverly grew light-headed; her vision began to dim. But her left hand continued to move. She felt rather than saw the hypo meet the flesh of the queen's shoulder; she pressed her thumb down and heard it whisper. Only then did she permit her eyes to close and yield to darkness.

15.

A KLINGON'S STRENGTH DID NOT QUITE MATCH that of a Borg. Worf's hand began to tremble with the effort of holding Locutus's saw arm back. The blade grew closer, closer, until at last it sliced through the fabric of his uniform just beneath his chest.

And then it stung his skin. Worf felt the warmth of blood as it ran down his midsection; the realization made him roar and squeeze his fingers even more deeply into Locutus's throat. The drone's eyes bulged slightly; its lips parted as it gasped for air.

The saw blade stuttered as it hit the edges of the Klingon's ribs. Worf did not flinch at the pain; instead, he came to a decision. He would let go of the saw arm, let it take him-so that he could seize Locutus's neck with both of his hands and kill him.

We will die together, he promised the captain. It would be a good way to die.

Yet, in the fleeting second that Worf let go of the thick prosthetic arm, it went suddenly limp and fell to hang at the drone's side. Astonished, the Klingon let go of his grip, thinking that he had somehow managed to kill first.

He pushed himself free and rose to find that Locutus was still standing. He was not dead, merely immobile. Hopeful, Worf glanced quickly in the direction of the force field. Behind it, the queen was motionless, her head bowed.

Beside her, Doctor Crusher lay, just as lifeless and unmoving on the deck.

Worf called out to her. "Doctor Crusher! Can you hear me?"

There was no response.

Worf went immediately to the force field control; a hum, and the field disappeared. He then moved, unsteadily, to Crusher's side. She was breathing. It was shallow but steady. Worf found the medkit, stripped it from Crusher's leg, and opened it to find a scanner. He ran it over the doctor, then looked at the readout in dismay. Her throat had been crushed.

Finally, there was merciful silence. The pain was still there, but the noise had ceased. She wanted to sleep. But in the back of her mind, Beverly knew that she could not do that. To sleep meant to die. Although, at the moment, either would be preferable to the pain.

She barely felt the press of metal against her neck as the world returned around her in a sudden rush. Beverly came to with a cough, then immediately put a hand to her aching throat. For an instant, she was disoriented, half thinking she was in bed, in the captain's quarters-in their quarters-and then she started, remembering the queen, and opened her eyes.

Worf was standing over her with a medical stimulator in her hand. He was wan and weak looking, but alive. "How are you feeling, Doctor?"

Beverly pushed herself to sitting, grimacing at the stab of pain in her right wrist, then squeezed her eyes shut at the wave of dizziness. She was having trouble speaking.

Worf put a steadying hand on her shoulder. "It is going to take you a while to mend completely. Your wrist is not yet thoroughly knitted. I had to spend most of the time on your throat."

Beverly gave another cough, then said, "The queen..."

"Dead," Worf said, nodding at a point beyond Beverly's left shoulder. "It was quite impressive."

Beverly turned her head-gingerly, carefully-and followed Worf's gaze.

Standing motionless atop her black prosthetic body, the queen slumped, face toward the deck, her eyes lifeless and empty. Beverly gasped at the profile: every distinctive, identifying feature-the full lips, the feminine curve of the jaw and neck, the sharp nose, the upward slanting eyes-had been washed away, blunted so that it was now completely androgynous. Beverly gave a faint victorious smile.

She turned back to Worf and said suddenly, "Jean-Luc..."

"There." Worf pointed to where the captain stood, silent and still as the queen.

"Is he-?"

"Alive," Worf said. "But in hibernation. I believe all of the Borg have gone into their sleeping state."

Beverly tried to stand up but failed. "I need samples of the drones' DNA so that we can prevent the mechanism that allows them to create a new queen..."

"You need to rest," Worf said.

She frowned. "I don't think so. Hand me my medkit."

Worf considered the request for a moment, then complied. "I need to locate the control for the damping field so that we can use our communicators to locate the rest of the away team and contact the Enterprise." He helped her to her feet before moving to the console.

Beverly nodded that she understood, then rifled through her medkit where she found the hypo and collected a sample from the nearest drone.

"I think I've brought down the damping field," Worf said as he pressed his combadge. "Worf to security team."

"This is Chao," a relieved voice replied, though Beverly could hear a strain in it as well. "The rest of the team is...gone."

"Understood," Worf said, simply. "Stand by to beam out."

Worf then contacted the Enterprise, where Nelson reported from the auxiliary bridge that they were ready to drop the cloak and transfer the surviving members of the away team back.

Beverly confirmed that she had collected enough DNA samples and joined Worf as he took a position beside the captain.

Jean-Luc stood pa.s.sive and unresponsive. His eyes were distant, blank, but Beverly knew from experience that somewhere, deep within, Jean-Luc was there, watching, listening. She took his limp hand and whispered, "We're going home now." And as the beam caught hold of them, causing the queen's chamber to dissolve like an ill-remembered nightmare, she smiled.

Picard drew in a breath. The air against his skin, in his lungs, was no longer forbiddingly cold and dry; it was comfortable, fresh, invigorating. He opened his eyes. Beverly stood over him, smiling. "Welcome home."

She was no longer painted in the blacks and whites and grays of monochrome; her hair was pale copper, glinting and glorious against the vivid blue of her lab coat. The world was once again alive with color.

"Beverly." His voice seemed hoa.r.s.e, unused. "You have no idea how good it feels to be back." He stretched his arms out in front of him and flexed his hands and fingers-warm, living flesh and blood-with pleasure. "The queen...?"

"No longer a threat," she said. "Remember I mentioned I had a hunch? The queen's nutrient gel, which the drones were feeding her, contained an estrogenic-type compound. It can be neutralized by its male a.n.a.logue, an androgenic compound."

"And the cube?"

"Dormant," she reported. "The drones are little more than empty sh.e.l.ls. All consciousness left them when we destroyed the queen. With no connection to the hive and no way to activate a new queen, they effectively shut themselves down. Possibly waiting for a new directive that, we hope, will never come. Admiral Janeway is sending a contingent of science vessels to examine the craft."

"Worf has been in touch with the admiral?" he asked.