He looked around the cluttered laboratory, considering. Time to blank the computers? It scarcely seemed worthwhile... the listening post was still providing valuable information, it might be useful in the future. If Tuarak did not destroy it in a fit of pique, when he returned to find it empty. Nessick shrugged. He was not going to miss Tuarak.
A discreet chime sounded from one console. He turned towards it, touched the controls. "Nessick," he said.
"This is battlecruiser 219-67-C," a voice replied. "Approaching for pickup."
Nessick sighed inwardly. The ship had a name, there was really little point in being so guarded on a secure channel... but, there was no use arguing. "ETA?" he asked.
"Sixteen minutes."
"Excellent, excellent. I will transmit the schematics now, and you may transport the specimen of the device once you enter range... but, I think it is preferable if you dock and I transfer the protomatter fuel by hand. One does not wish to take chances with such a volatile substance."
"Best not to risk the transporter," the voice agreed.
"Quite, quite." Nessick slotted a datapad into the console, tapped out a sequence of commands. "Schematics transmitting over your data channel now. We have a location for a first strike?"
"We have identified a Borg communications node. It is not strongly guarded - we will infiltrate, and proceed along the lines you have described."
"Yes," said Nessick. "Yes, that should prove most satisfactory. How long to reach the node?"
"A matter of - " The voice broke off. Nessick frowned.
"Battlecruiser. Battlecruiser, respond, please," he said urgently.
A long pause, then the voice came back. "We have sensor contacts inbound."
Nessick hurried to another console. "I have tactical telemetry and will transmit," he called out.
"Two inbound. Identifying now -" The voice cut out, abruptly, with a discordant squawk of sound. Nessick muttered under his breath. He keyed in urgent commands on the tactical console.
The display formed as a spray of random visual noise at first, signatures of every scrap of solid matter or energized plasma in the nebula. Then it steadied, and the computer assigned identifications to the objects on scan - and Nessick groaned aloud.
The Octanti battlecruiser was crippled already, warp drive wrecked, shields down, escape pods spitting from its hull. Some short distance away, two sleek elegant shapes were still pounding at the cruiser with white-gold flashes of corrosive plasma fire. Hazari. Nessick's mind raced. Of course, he had had dealings with the Hazari - he had had dealings with half the powers of the Delta Quadrant, it was part of his role - but how had the Hazari come to him, now, like this?
Not just Hazari, he thought, but hostile Hazari. And there was only one reason why the Hazari might be hostile to him.... Somehow, Tuarak must have let something slip, and now Ge'Sirn was here. Nessick was thinking faster than he had ever thought in his life, and the conclusions he was reaching... appalled him.
But there was no help for it. Nessick turned his attention to another console, where a communications icon was flashing urgently. He touched the control. "Nessick," he said.
"This is Ge'Sirn," the Hazari's voice answered. "You've got something of mine. I want it back."
Nessick's hands moved on the control panel. Status lights blinked on and off, changing. Several rooms away, the constant humming of a force field abruptly stopped.
"You have damaged one of our cruisers. Please assure me that you are doing everything in your power to rescue my compatriots from their escape pods. We Octanti are so few in number -"
"They'll keep," Ge'Sirn's voice snarled. "Or, if they don't, what the hell do I care? I want the actualizer. Now."
"You do not have schematics for it? Careless of you, most careless."
"I need the protomatter. And I don't want you to have it. Now transport it, or I open fire."
"No, no," said Nessick, "you will not do that, because if you do, the protomatter may be destroyed in the barrage. Indeed, I am quite certain that it would be destroyed. I am in a position to make sure of that, you see."
There was a brief pause, then Ge'Sirn said, "Then I'll board your station and get it."
"Will you, now?" Nessick knew he had to choose his words carefully. "My station is not large, but it is... complex. I know it well, and you do not. You would have to search a long time to find all my hiding places, a long time indeed."
Another pause. "You've got transporter inhibitors engaged,"said Ge'Sirn. "OK, so I can't beam troops onto your station. But there's nothing stopping me doing a straightforward board and storm. In force. I will flood your little rathole with troops, and there's nothing you can do about it. You better be waiting at the airlock for me, with the protomatter in your hands, because that is the only way you stand even a chance of surviving this, you treacherous little -"
"Yes, yes, you make your point forcefully," said Nessick, "but, nonetheless, I do not think I shall comply." And he cut the channel before Ge'Sirn could answer.
He peered vaguely about the room. He had to be very sure he knew where everything was, now, and there was much to do. The clock was ticking. Two clocks were ticking.
---
The indicators on the airlock extension glowed green. Hard seal. Ge'Sirn smiled grimly.
The door slid open, revealing a docking hatch. It was one of several such dotted about the crazy little conglomeration of modules that was Nessick's listening post. Right now, N'Drask would be connecting up to a similar one, somewhere a couple of hundred metres above and to Ge'Sirn's right - if he had the plan of the station clear in his head.
"Checks out OK," his science officer said, beside him. "Locked, but I think I can get a standard override through the control bus. No radiation or toxins on the other side, either, at least not that I can scan -"
"He won't poison his own breathing air," growled Ge'Sirn. "Let's have it open, then."
"You sure? I mean, this is only a basic unit, and he's got some sort of sensor spoofing going on in there -"
"Open it." The Octanti wanted to hide himself, so much was obvious. Ge'Sirn's grim smile broadened. He couldn't hide from this force.
"All right," he said, turning to face his crew. "We are going in as soon as the doors are open, we will set up a secure perimeter in the space beyond this lock. Looks like some sort of receiving area for cargo, and it communicates with the docking port N'Drask's on. Once we've linked up with N'Drask, we cut the ships loose with a skeleton crew so Nessick can't slip past us and get aboard. Then we sweep this place, section by section, corridor by corridor, room by room."
"Till we find him?" someone asked.
"We find him, or we find his damned transporter inhibitors or whatever sensor jammers he's got out. Take those out, and finding him gets a lot easier. Or we can just find the protomatter, take that, and blow the whole station on our way out. I'm easy."
There were muttered grumbles of assent from the ranks. "OK, then," said Ge'Sirn.
"Door's opening," the science officer said.
The hatch swung inwards, revealing the barren metal chamber of an airlock beyond, another hatch in the wall ahead. Ge'Sirn stepped through, armed troopers crowding after him. "Think that inner hatch is locked on a separate circuit," the science officer called out. "Opening now."
The inner hatch opened, and Ge'Sirn saw - a wall, beyond it. A metal barrier, a simple barricade. Useless. He raised the stubby corrosive-plasma gun in his hands, took aim, fired. The metal burned away in white-hot, flaming droplets. Ge'Sirn kept firing until the barrier was comprehensively destroyed. He waited a while before leading the way over the hot, smouldering deckplates.
The receiving area was a vast empty space, loading gear stacked neatly against the far wall. The Hazari troops formed up, weapons ready, their eyes vigilant. Ge'Sirn looked about him. There was no movement in the room -
He frowned. Was there a voice, though? He thought he could hear some kind of voice - somewhere, at the edge of hearing -
There was a very definite boom and crash from somewhere close at hand. He looked up. A catwalk crossed the room, a little below the vaulted ceiling, and N'Drask was on the walkway now, leading his own crewmen into the station. "He blocked the damn door!" he called to Ge'Sirn in aggrieved tones.
Ge'Sirn looked round again, spotted a ladder up to the catwalk, gestured to N'Drask to take it. He was charting the exit points from the loading area in his mind's eye. The station was complicated - but it was not so large, after all. They would keep this room secured as a base, and spread out slowly -
"Told my ship to stand off," N'Drask said as he joined Ge'Sirn.
"Me, too." Ge'Sirn glanced at the science officer, who nodded. "OK. So there's just us, until we get the transporter inhibitors down." He looked at his own crew, and at N'Drask's. "Think we've got enough here to deal with one Octanti."
"Damn sure we have," said N'Drask. "Though I guess all we want's the protomatter, right?"
"And I don't want Nessick to have the designs for the actualizer," said Ge'Sirn.
"Yeah," said N'Drask, "but by now he'll have looked it over, he'll have some idea how it works -"
Ge'Sirn lifted the plasma gun in his hands, looked at it pointedly. "So he will."
There was a pause, during which he could hear N'Drask gulp. "All right, then," N'Drask said, reluctantly.
"Just so long as we're clear on that," Ge'Sirn said. He frowned. He still couldn't shake the feeling that someone was whispering.
"I've got some idea of the layout," N'Drask said. "He had to be talking to us from some control centre, right? Now, there's a bunch of modules with serious electronic hardware in them -"
He stopped. Ge'Sirn was looking straight past him, at something else. An intercom panel on the wall. A panel with an alert light flashing.
Ge'Sirn strode over to the panel, flipped the switch. "This better be surrender," he said.
"Ah, regrettably, no," Nessick's voice replied. "I just wanted - well, I suppose, I wanted to see how things were progressing. And to apologize. I do regret, I most deeply regret, what I have been forced to do. But you left me no choice. No choice at all."
"Where are you?" Ge'Sirn demanded. Nessick's voice had sounded strange and faint, over the rising buzzing in his ears.
"Ah, I am on my way to take control," said Nessick.
"Control of what?"
"Oh, this situation. And your ships. You should not judge all Octanti by the standards of an academic like myself. The survivors from the battlecruiser are spacewalking to your destroyers now. They are highly competent soldiers, they will easily overwhelm the few of your crew left aboard."
"Like hell! They won't have time to take control of the systems before I knock down your transporter inhibitors, and once my crew get back aboard -"
"That will not happen," said Nessick. "It is something, as I say, that I regret bitterly. But it had to be done. I wonder, what sensory cues have you been perceiving? I understand that some people feel a tingling in the flesh, or smell strange odours, but the most common sign of infection is an auditory one. Have you been hearing anything, Ge'Sirn? Voices, perhaps?"
He was hearing voices. A torrent of voices, growing louder and louder -
"I monitored many sources of information." Nessick's voice was fading in the rising storm. "I even had some devices of our most deadly enemy. Working with those, now, required precautions, many precautions. I have disabled those precautions, especially for you. I repeat, I do regret this, most sincerely, most sincerely indeed. I would not willingly have given even one living soul over to them -"
Ge'Sirn was no longer listening. His face was turned towards N'Drask, and it was growing pale, not with shock or any emotion, but as part of the process, the process which was making dark lines of circuitry spread under suddenly pallid skin, was drowning his own consciousness in the roar of a billion voices in his head -
The being that had been Ge'Sirn faced the one that had been N'Drask, and they spoke in unison.
"We are the Borg."
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