Star Trek: Shatnerverse: The Return by William Shatner & Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Author:William Shatner & Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Star Trek, Fiction
ISBN: 9780671526092
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1996-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR

After only two days, .they no longer thought of themselves as stowaways, but as parasites in a living body. Because there was no other way to think of the Borg ship. For all the machinery it was composed of, for all the pipes and conduits, the power mesh and waveguides, there was another component buried beneath the duranium and the plasteel ….

Flesh.

Engineered and transfigured.

Ripped from whatever worlds and forms that had first given it life. Now woven into the mechanistic nightmare of Borg technology.

The stink of it was everywhere. Fetid fluids dripping on the metallic decks. Soft shapes glistening and pulsing at the end of darkened corridors or twisting overhead as they propelled whatever moved inside them, all to serve the collective.

Beverly Crusher had never seen a ship like it. Had never been briefed about any Borg ship like it.

But each fresh atrocity that Picard saw, each wave of revulsion that sickened his heartmeach was accompanied by what he imagined was the whisper of the collective, deep in his mind, telling him that this was right, that this was good, that this was the way all should be and would he.

The ultimate union of flesh and machine.

The destiny of all forms.

To join the oneness in which all could merge.

To return to the oneness which called to them all.

Including JeanLuc Picard.

Near the end of their first day aboard the Borg vessel, they discovered a blind corridor that Picard had concluded served no purpose. Thus, they could rest there without fear of Borg work crews disturbing them.

“Why would the Borg create something with no purpose?” Beverly had asked.

Picard didn’t know. The blind corridor ran to an exterior bulkhead. Perhaps it was some sort of aifiock mechanism that would have a purpose if the ship ever docked. But for now, it was simply empty space, ignored by the collective, so it was safe. As far as that word had any meaning on a Borg vessel.

The end wall also had a viewport.

But they kept their backs to it.

Less than a minute of staring into the infinite ripples of the transwarp dimension was enough to induce nausea.

Beverly rationalized that they were looking at distortions in more than three dimensions—phenomena the human eye had not evolved to see, and thus a vista of which they could make no sense. Picard dared look into his memories of the collective, but it was clear his mind had not evolved to hold the mysteries of transwarp, either. Nothing he remembered on the subject made sense. And as he and Beverly rested, all he could think of was withdrawing. From everything. But Beverly remained strong. For him.

Now, two days after they had come aboard, Beverly checked a readout on her wrist-mounted tricorder. They still wore their armor. The solid dark coverings helped them blend into their surroundings. At a distance, they might be Borg themselves. Picard quickly banished that image. It felt closer to the truth than he liked.

“We’re coming up on seventy hours, JeanLuc.”

Picard nodded. He knew what she meant.

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