2.

BEVERLY CRUSHER WAS WAITING FOR THEM ON the bridge.

She was glad that she had no medical duties too pressing to keep her from welcoming the new counselor. Beyond that, she was glad for another chance to keep an eye on Jean-Luc.

Beverly had not shown it, of course, but she was concerned for his sake. The nightmare had unsettled him more than he had admitted, and earlier that morning, in engineering, he had seemed...off. Not himself. She had known him for decades, and their friendship had grown progressively more intimate over the years, until they had at last confessed their love for each other.

She recognized every nuance of his moods so well that she knew he was still troubled. But this was more than being upset over a dream, or over the memory of what the Borg had done to him long ago.

There was something else wrong, something neither emotional nor physical, nothing she could put her finger on. Something unusual had happened that he had yet to confess. Whatever it was, it so troubled him that he was hiding it from her.

She had done her best to ignore the fact that morning and kept her mind focused on her duties. When the time was right, he would speak to her about it; she knew she could trust him to do so.

In the meantime, she stood beside Worf, who sat in the captain's chair. The Klingon had never been one for idle conversation, but this morning, he was even more taciturn than usual. Beverly knew that Jean-Luc had already given the good news to Worf about his promotion to permanent first officer...but judging from the Klingon's dark mood, the encounter had not gone as the captain had planned. She had intended to congratulate Worf when she first arrived on the bridge, but one glance at him made her decide to keep her mouth shut.

So she stood, waiting with arms folded, staring silently along with Worf out at the stars. The rest of the bridge crew had picked up on the Klingon's mood; the tension hung in the air, blanketing everyone like heavy fog.

Beverly was relieved to hear the turbolift doors open behind her. She turned, ready and smiling, to greet the captain and the new counselor.

But the look on Picard's face made her smile freeze into place. Anyone who did not know the captain as well as she did would not suspect anything was wrong, but Beverly could see beyond his calculated, false composure. The small muscles between his eyebrows were taut and gathered, and while his expression conveyed warmth and welcome, she saw beneath it: saw the haunted, hunted look in his eyes. Whatever had been bothering him had just struck again, with a vengeance.

She decided at that instant to confront him as soon as possible. If she had to order him to sickbay on the pretext of a medical examination, so be it. She could no longer wait for him to come to her with an explanation. This was the face of a man who needed her personal and professional help.

Jean-Luc moved across the bridge-not with his usual brisk, intensely no-nonsense stride, but with his slower "diplomatic" pace, the one he reserved for showing visitors around the ship. The newest addition to the crew walked beside him; the two approached Beverly and stopped. Nearby, Worf vacated the captain's chair with unusual alacrity and stood at grave attention.

"Counselor T'Lana," Jean-Luc said, his voice gracious, showing no sign of turmoil, "this is my chief medical officer, Commander Beverly Crusher."

"Doctor." The counselor gave a graceful nod; her manner lacked the stiff formality of most Vulcans. She seemed uncommonly relaxed around humans. It certainly explained why she had received commendations for her diplomatic work and her counseling, this ability to adapt her mannerisms to put those from other cultures at ease. "It is my pleasure to meet you." She was a small woman-a full head shorter than Beverly-with a slight frame and possessed of a beauty humans would term "cla.s.sic." Her eyes were heavy lidded, giving her a dreamy look incongruous with the rest of her Vulcan features.

"The pleasure is mine, Counselor." Beverly returned the nod, impressed that someone from T'Lana's planet would not shirk at using the word "pleasure."

Picard gestured at the flight control console. "And this is Lieutenant Sara Nave."

Nave swiveled in her chair, her pale, freckled face beaming despite the fact that she was being introduced to a being who supposedly disapproved of such displays of emotion. Yet T'Lana did not seem at all discomfited. Beverly liked Sara Nave, though she knew her only as a patient. Nave had come down with the Carda.s.sian pneumovirus only a few months earlier, two days after she had returned from an away mission. The disease was rare in humans and often fatal, but somehow, Nave had held on. While she was recuperating, she managed to keep the sickbay staff entertained by her crackling sense of good humor and tales of her hijinks while at the academy-despite the fact that she was physically ill and miserable. Crusher learned afterward that Sara had a reputation among her Enterprise crewmates as a practical joker. But on duty, she was all business.

"Counselor," Nave said. "Welcome aboard."

"Thank you," T'Lana said. "I am pleased to be here."

Picard glanced in Worf's direction; neither of them directly met the other's gaze. "And this is my...first officer, Commander Worf." There was the slightest hesitation in Jean-Luc's voice. Beverly could guess at the word that had entered the captain's mind but that he had not uttered: temporary. She shot Worf a swift, surrept.i.tious look; the Klingon's ma.s.sive shoulders were tight, bunched. He was uncomfortable in the captain's presence, which meant that something unpleasant had indeed occurred during their meeting that morning, but she couldn't imagine what it had been. Surely Worf had no reason to turn down a promotion.

Worf directed his attention downward to the Vulcan. "Counselor T'Lana," he said stiffly. "It is an honor to meet you."

T'Lana looked him directly in the eye. She regarded the Klingon in silence. The ease and grace she had carried onto the bridge with her evaporated. Nothing overt in her posture or expression changed, yet without moving a muscle, without so much as narrowing her eyes, she managed to convey something approaching...disapproval. Beverly wondered if she had been too quick to commend the counselor's ability to interact with the crew. Either T'Lana wasn't as comfortable addressing Klingons as she was humans, or something else was transpiring at the moment.

"Commander," T'Lana said with a slow nod before turning to Picard. "I would like to meet the rest of the senior staff when it is convenient, Captain."

Worf couldn't help but think that the counselor had turned away from him in a pointed way. He would have chalked up her terse manner as being a typically Vulcan attribute, but there was something more there, something almost approaching emotion. He could not entirely mask his curiosity, particularly when he saw that Doctor Crusher seemed to have noticed something was off as well.

He had never known a Vulcan to be overtly rude, but Counselor T'Lana did not strike him as an ordinary Vulcan. As a rule, Worf did not like most members of the race: they were aloof, cold, unable to hide the distaste they felt in the presence of more emotional beings. T'Lana was different. Worf had watched her from the moment she set foot on the bridge. She seemed relaxed, free of her people's extreme selfconsciousness. She was clearly comfortable being among a mostly human crew. And there was-or had it been his imagination?-something approaching warmth in her eyes. That is, until those eyes had focused on him.

Now, as she turned away, Worf noticed the fineness of her features. When he first began to serve alongside humans, he had found the faces of their females to be vaguely repulsive: their noses were too narrow and short, their lips too thin, their teeth too small and even. The smoothness of their foreheads seemed bland, unformed.

Over time, he had come to accept and finally to appreciate them. And all the things about Jadzia-things that once would have offended him, her straight, even, fine features-he came to see as delicate and beautiful.

Counselor T'Lana was beautiful in the same way.

The realization unsettled him, since Jadzia's death, he had avoided noticing such things. In fact, he had instructed Ensign Sara Nave in the use of the bat'leth and never once noticed that she was female. But he could not deny at that moment that he was drawn to the new counselor, in spite of her coolness toward him.

Beverly measured her reaction as best she could under the situation. T'Lana's subtle snub of Worf would have been lost on most of the bridge crew, but it did seem to the doctor that T'Lana had just turned her back on him.

Jean-Luc's manner remained smooth, though he blinked once, rapidly, in surprise. "Of course, Counselor," he replied. "Commander La Forge is currently completing a task in engineering. I'll introduce you to him when he's available. In the meantime, since you prefer to report for duty..." He gestured at the chair that had been Deanna Troi's.

To get to it, T'Lana had to move past Worf. Beverly watched with curiosity as the pet.i.te Vulcan sidled by him without even meeting his gaze.

Was it possible, she wondered, that this person, whose Starfleet record indicated enormous respect for other societies, was a bigot when it came to Klingons?

His expression one of thinly veiled puzzlement, Worf moved to Will Riker's old station and settled into the chair. T'Lana coolly took Deanna Troi's former position. She appeared oblivious to the awkward reactions from the three senior members of the crew, the ones who knew enough to realize that the first officer had just been slighted.

Beverly leaned toward Jean-Luc, who was still standing, and said in a low voice, "I'll be in sickbay if you need me." The undercurrent in her tone was intentional, one that she knew the captain would pick up on; she was inviting him to tell her what was wrong. And she fully intended to insist, the instant he was off duty, that he come to sickbay for an exam and a little talk.

She turned and headed for the turbolift but had taken only three steps when she was stopped by the mixed chorus of sound: a groan, Worf's urgent question, "Sir, are you all right?" and Nave's exclamation, "Captain!"

She whirled, intuitively knowing what she would see. Nave was already out of her chair; Worf was up and reaching toward the captain; T'Lana was sitting, staring calmly at the tableau.

And Jean-Luc...Jean-Luc had sagged to his knees a step from his chair, torso bent slightly forward, fists curled and pressed against his ears as if to blot out a painful noise. His mouth was still open, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his brow contorted in agony.

She did not remember moving over to him. In one instant, she was standing a short distance away; in the next, she was kneeling beside him, hand on his shoulder, vaguely aware that Worf's ma.s.sive bulk was hovering over them.

"Jean-Luc," she said loudly into his ear, "can you hear me?"

In reply, the captain gasped. His eyes opened, but he did not appear to see his surroundings. His gaze was focused on something far distant and terrible.

"Jean-Luc!" she said again, this time, almost a shout.

He did not hear. Whatever he was listening to was so deafening, so horrible, that it drowned out the rest of his world.

Beverly managed, with the help of Worf, to get the captain down to sickbay. Nave was left temporarily in charge of the ship. The Klingon had to support the captain's full weight in order to get him off the bridge. By the time they got off the lift and were moving down the corridor toward sickbay, Picard-not yet able to speak-had come to himself enough to wave away Worf's and Beverly's supporting arms and walk, slow and uncertain, on his own.

His face was slack, stricken; he was forcing himself to breathe slowly as he moved. And although he would not meet Beverly's eyes, she could still see what he was attempting to hide from her: horror, the same horror that had made him cry out in his sleep the night before.

"Jean-Lu-" Beverly stopped herself. Through an act of will, she forced herself to become distant from the distress she felt, as someone who loved the man who was now suffering. She was no more than a doctor now, concerned for a patient. As such, she asked calmly, clinically, "Captain. Can you hear me?"

Picard shot her a sidewise glance and nodded. Slowly, the terror that had come so swiftly upon him eased, and his breathing slowed. It took him a few more steps to say hoa.r.s.ely, "Yes. Yes, I'm fine." As the three of them entered sickbay, he straightened and seemed to regain control of himself, then cleared his throat. "Thank you, Mister Worf." He directed a fleeting glance at the Klingon. "You may return to the bridge."

Worf shot an uncertain look at Crusher, who nodded. The Klingon turned and disappeared through the double doors.

Beverly led Picard to one of the diagnostic beds and gestured. He sat on the edge, his hands propping himself up. "So," she said, with feigned casualness, "shall we talk about it first, or should I just go ahead and start the exam?"

Jean-Luc looked grim, haggard, but there was no subterfuge in his gaze, his tone. "The exam won't show anything."

"Why not?"

He glanced down at the floor, miserable. "Because nothing...physical happened."

"Something happened, Jean-Luc. You collapsed. And you're not leaving here until I find out why."

Reluctantly, he looked up at her again. "I heard them."

It was the softness, the certainty in his tone that p.r.i.c.ked the flesh on her upper arms, on the nape of her neck. She did not ask who they were, perhaps because she feared she already knew the answer.

His eyes focused on a distant point somewhere beyond her left shoulder. "I had tried to tell myself the dream was nothing more than that...a dream. But I heard their voices even after I woke up. It was so faint that I convinced myself I hadn't really heard them. But it happened again, when I was with Counselor T'Lana. Unmistakable. And now..." He paused and shook his head as if trying to clear away the vestiges of the experience.

"Now?" Beverly prompted, her own voice scarcely louder than a whisper.

"I can make out bits of what they're saying now." He drew a deep breath and stared at her so intently that he seemed to be looking through her. "It's different, though. They sound...almost frantic, if that's possible. Rushed. Urgent. One thing I know is clear: the Borg collective is regrouping. And they're here, in the Alpha Quadrant."

On the bridge, T'Lana sat silently beside Commander Worf and watched the shifting pattern of stars on the viewscreen. The Klingon was brooding, silent, clearly unsettled by what had just happened to the captain. Indeed, the humans on the bridge emanated a great deal of tension regarding the event.

But there was no purpose in speculating on Picard's condition. They would know more when Doctor Crusher gave her report.

T'Lana had been favorably impressed by Captain Picard's presence the first few moments after meeting him. She had expected him to be much more choleric in nature, given his history of relying heavily on emotion and intuition-as well as the fact that he had, in the past, brazenly ignored direct orders from Starfleet Command. Instead, he seemed extraordinarily self-possessed for a human.

But his strange behavior on the turbolift and on the bridge had concerned T'Lana. Admittedly, she was disturbed by the fact that Commander Worf was now in command of the ship. While Captain Picard's reliance on emotion had proved effective, Commander Worf's had not.

She was displeased with herself, however, for her behavior toward the Klingon; she should have greeted him as cordially as she had the others. She knew that the shifts in her behavior would be barely perceptible to most humans. But it was clear that, at the very least, the captain and chief medical officer had noticed something amiss. At the same time, altering her behavior would have been dishonest; her disapproval of Worf was solidly based in fact. And honesty, to Vulcans, was more important than manners. Even after serving for more than twenty years on Starfleet vessels, she was still more Vulcan than Starfleet.

T'Lana had to admit to herself that Worf's personal presence had not been what she had antic.i.p.ated. She had expected to find the most Klingon of Klingons, one who emanated ferocity, instability, ill temper. Given her exceptional telepathic abilities, she had expected to sense the proximity of a disordered, chaotic mind.

She had found none of that. She had sensed a proud Klingon, yes, but also a disciplined officer, not a warrior, who had looked on her with respect and admiration. He possessed a trait unrevealed by the holographs in his Starfleet file, an attractive, intangible quality that had no counterpart in the Vulcan language but that humans referred to as charisma. And T'Lana had been astonished to find that her first instinct was to respond favorably to him...with interest.

Then memory had returned to her and left her unable to respond courteously to him.

Even so, she felt she had made the best possible decision, for the good of the service, by requesting a transfer to the Enterprise. If Captain Picard was in fact incapacitated, Worf would a.s.sume permanent command-a situation that could easily bring about disaster. The Enterprise had already come close enough to it before, courtesy of irrational command decisions. Her logical input as a counselor would be desperately required.

And T'Lana knew all too well what it was like to stand on the bridge of a starship blasted apart and ultimately destroyed, all for the sake of emotion.

Beverly reacted as Picard had antic.i.p.ated: with a bright flash of fear, which she quickly dismissed and replaced with a healthy medical skepticism. His intimate friend and lover was gone, and his chief medical officer stood in her place. He would have expected no less of her. At the same time, he felt a very personal regret for what he had had to tell her, for what she would no doubt discover to be the truth.

"I realize you're convinced of this," she said carefully, "but I'm sure you understand that I can't rule out a physical or emotional component until I've had a chance to examine you."

"Of course." He hoped desperately that the whispers in his head were the result of illness; at the same time, he knew-with the certainty of the Collective to which he had once belonged-that they were not. Without being asked, he swung his legs onto the diagnostic bed and lay back.

As she began to run the scans, he sighed and closed his eyes, grateful for the silence, however temporary, in his skull. On the bridge, the Borg chatter had grown so thunderous that he had buckled beneath it. Words that had previously been inaudible whispers had roared in his consciousness: Alpha...launch ship...attack.

He had sensed anger beneath the words-or perhaps not anger, since Borg drones were incapable of feeling. But there was something. An outrage of a sort, one that had been brewing for some time now. It was the outrage of a race once consummately powerful, determined to conquer the universe. Now broken, the Borg were determined to seek justice, at last to have their revenge against the one group that had so steadfastly refused to be conquered-and had instead turned into the conqueror.

Humanity.

Picard knew there was no way to prove that what he intuitively sensed was fact, no way to validate it, to quantify it. He was going to have to ask his senior officers to trust him simply because he believed it was so.

And once it became evident to them all that the threat from the Borg was real, he was going to have to ask for even more of their trust.

Such was clearly going to be the case with Beverly. She kept up a sternly professional front during the scans, but in the end, she let go a small, barely audible sigh of frustration. Picard could have told her the results, but it was best to let her see them for herself.

"Nothing unusual showing up," she said finally, and in her voice he heard the same keen disappointment he felt. He had desperately wanted the sound in his head to be something treatable, something that would disappear, anything but the Borg. "No physical cause presenting itself. No tumors, no fever, no detectable infections. The auditory hallucinations aren't the result of psychosis...your neurotransmitters are well within normal range, same as your last physical."

She turned off the diagnostic panel and he sat up to study her. Her features were still carefully composed in the most professional of expressions, without so much as a glimmer of fright. "That's because the auditory hallucinations aren't hallucinations," he said.

She hesitated, clearly unwilling to admit that such a horrific thing might be true. "You know, this could be connected to your experience in the nexus. In a sense, you're still there...at least, a part of you will always remain there. So your past, present, future-all of it's jumbled together. Perhaps what you're hearing is an echo from an earlier time-"

"No," Picard insisted. It was his turn to be frustrated. If he couldn't convince his chief medical officer and closest friend, how was he going to be able to convince anyone else?

And it was imperative that others be convinced, and quickly.

He slipped off the table and stood. "I'm going to need your help, Doctor," he began formally, then his tone softened. "Beverly...I wish, more than anything else, that I was wrong about this. But as dreadful as this is, I can't ignore it, I can't run from it. I can't explain how I know-but I do know-that we must act swiftly, now, to stop the Borg."

"And if we don't?" Her voice was very quiet. She was listening at last, considering for the first time that he might be right.

"Then humankind will be a.s.similated," he answered flatly.

She regarded him in silence. For the first time, he saw a real fear in her eyes and imagined the reflection of Locutus there. She gathered herself quickly, then pressed. "But how can we stop them? Do we just wait for them to come looking for us?"

"No." He gave a grim, not-quite smile. "We don't wait. Because I know precisely where they are."

3.

IN HIS QUARTERS, PICARD SAT AT HIS COMMUNICATIONS screen and watched as the insignia of Starfleet Command faded, to be replaced by the image of Kathryn Janeway.

The admiralty suited her. She had aged little, despite the trauma of years trying to get Voyager and her crew safely home; her reddish chestnut hair, pulled back from her face and carefully gathered into a coil, was only beginning to show the first few streaks of silver at the temples. Picard had always liked dealing with her. Janeway was direct, plain-spoken, with handsome Gaelic features arranged in an open expression. Although she was capable of guile if duty demanded it, she disdained it; you always knew where you stood with Janeway.

She smiled at the sight of him. "Captain! To what do I owe the pleasure of this subs.p.a.ce visit?"

Picard could not quite bring himself to return the enthusiasm. "It's good to see you again, Admiral. But I'm afraid the circ.u.mstances are less than pleasant."

Her demeanor became at once utterly serious, her tone flat; the smile was now no more than a memory. She put her elbows on her desk and leaned forward. "What's going on?"

"The Borg are in Alpha Quadrant," he said. "They're regrouping. Forming a new Collective."

She tilted her chin upward at that, the only sign of surprise she allowed herself; in the s.p.a.ce of a second, however, she had lowered it again, and narrowed her eyes, digging in for a fight. This was not, Picard knew, going to be easy.