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  For the late Kimberly Yale. In a time when few editors in the comic world would work with an openly gay writer, she gave me my first Star Trek assignment. She is missed. A.M.

  To Jessie M. Martin (1924–1999). She had been looking forward to reading this book, but left us too soon. M.A.M.

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  PROLOGUE

  Stardate 50907.2

  Population approximately nine billion . . . all Borg. Picard’s breath fogged the large window on his cabin wall, the moisture momentarily making the view of his homeworld indistinct and devoid of color. Even now, five days after they’d been uttered, Data’s words reverberated through his mind as he once again relived that terrible moment on the bridge. On the main viewscreen had been an Earth altered beyond belief, its continents transformed into a bleak technological sprawl, its oceans dark, its atmosphere thin and gray. Caught in the temporal wake of a Borg sphere, Picard and his crew had seen with their own horrified eyes what the Borg had wrought by fleeing into Earth’s past.

  But the Enterprise had pursued them, and in so doing, stopped the Borg from assimilating Earth, and ensured the completion of humanity’s historic first warp flight.

  Picard closed his eyes and straightened his posture, moving his forehead off the back of his hand. His breath evaporated, and Earth was restored to its tranquil blue and white.

  And now we’re back in the present, Picard thought somberly. Earth is as it was, at least as far as we know . . . although who really knows what effect our presence in the past—however carefully controlled and covered up—has had on this timeline? He had told his crew that they were going back to repair whatever damage the Borg had done, but how much change had his own actions in the past had upon the present?

  Picard didn’t like thinking about the issues inherent in the temporal tampering, though the analytical portions of his mind had wandered there all too often in the last few days. If the Enterprise crew aided Zefram Cochrane’s 21st-century voyage, hadn’t they always been there in the mists of history, however unrecorded? And if the Borg had conquered Earth and had then been beaten back, hadn’t that always occurred? Following Data’s own theoretical ruminations on the topic, Picard had been forced to tell him to keep the subject to himself; he was tired of thinking about it.

  Better than thinking about the alternative, the voice in the back of his head would tell him. Picard and his crew were already dealing with the direct consequences of their journey, and even though they had saved the future of mankind, the reward of that knowledge seemed to pale when stacked against the costs. It had taken La Forge and his engineers a couple of days to create a makeshift replacement for their lost navigational array, one capable of reproducing the effect that had allowed them to journey to the past in the first place. During that time, Will Riker and Worf had been busy rounding up the ASRV lifeboats that were jettisoned when Picard had initiated the Enterprise’s autodestruct sequence.

  Once that danger and Borg threat had been stopped, retrieving the nearly 200 escape pods had proven more challenging than his officers had expected; some had made it to Earth, some had lingered in orbit. Although about three-quarters of them had made it to the rendezvous point on Gravett Island in the South Pacific, crewmembers from some of the other autonomous survival and recovery vehicles had been grounded elsewhere—mostly due to Borg-related system glitches. Many of those had dispersed into the regions they landed in, some taking refuge in the wilderness in case of Borg pursuit, others trying their best to blend in with the ragged factions of postapocalypse humanity they encountered.

  Most of the repairs to the Enterprise had to wait until the ship got to McKinley Station, where they were now docked. Most of the crew were still in the long queues for the starbase’s massive medical complex; they had to be quarantined, scanned, and decontaminated, not only for any possible Borg infection, but for any viral or bacterial pathogens they may have picked up while in the past. It wouldn’t do to release a 21st-century virus, whether natural or bioengineered, into the 24th century.

  After being given clean bills of health, the crew would have some time off. How much time was unknown at this point. Engineering crews—all wearing biohazard containment suits—were scouring the ship, removing the self-replicating Borg technology from corridors and circuit panels and Jefferies tubes. Many of the ship’s main systems would have to be repaired as well. Panels were off the walls, and circuitry was spread across the deckplates. Only a year out in the Enterprise-E and we’re already in need of a major overhaul, thought Picard, his ruminations still dark.

  Picard’s own cabin was untouched, and, except for the occasionally malfunctioning environmental controls, it offered him a place of rest and solitude. He knew that the repair crews hadn’t touched his ready room yet. He suspected that Riker had told them not to. It too had not been violated by the Borg or their technology, but the display case which had held models of the previous Starships Enterprise was still half-destroyed, smashed by the phaser rifle Picard had swung at the case during his fit of pique. You broke your little ships, the woman from the past had said. Lily Sloane had known that the battle against the Borg was too personal for him. But it wasn’t until afterward, when he saw the wrecked models, that Picard had seen it too.

  He heard a knock, and the door of his quarters swished halfway open before grinding to a halt. “Captain?” a voice questioned. Two strong hands pushed the door the rest of the way into its wall recess, and Picard turned, seeing a familiar face. Like the captain, Riker had hardly slept the last several days, and the bags under his eyes showed it.

  “Rather a mess out there, wouldn’t you say, Number One?” Picard asked, gesturing out the door, where work crews could be seen removing Borg conduit hoses from a ceiling duct.

  “Yes, sir. From the reports I’m hearing, the Borg circuitry got farther into our systems than we realized. We’re lucky we made it back in one piece,” Riker said. He didn’t need to add the words “this time.”

  Picard sat on his couch, gesturing for his first officer to sit opposite him. It was late, but until the Borg matter was completely concluded, Picard didn’t mind Riker interrupting his all-too-rare quiet time. The padd his first officer carried hadn’t escaped the captain’s notice, and as much as Picard might not wish to face the duty it represented, he knew that he must. He owed it to them.

  But not just yet.

  “How is everyone coping?” he asked.

  “Medically, most of the crew appears to be fine. Dr. Crusher and Nurse Ogawa were cleared very quickly, and they’ve been helping in the sickbays on McKinley. So far everyone’s been in the clear. They’re trying to process ou
r people through the rest of the tests as quickly as possible. They’ve even got a dozen or so EMH programs running. I’m glad we aren’t forced to use one of those on our ship very often. They don’t quite have Beverly’s bedside manner.”

  Picard crossed over and sat behind his desk, sinking into his chair. Riker continued. “Worf has to depart for Deep Space 9 as soon as possible, perhaps first thing in the morning. Things are getting very tense with the Dominion, and they need him back there. Chief O’Brien’s going to have his hands full finishing the repairs on the Defiant that the McKinley techs started. Data’s eye and skin have been repaired. And, understandably, Deanna’s been especially busy since we returned; she’s coping well with the workload . . . though she swears she’ll never touch a drop of tequila again.”

  “Pardon?”

  Riker grinned for perhaps the first time in days. “She got a little drunk down there with Cochrane, sir. But I can assure you it was purely in the line of duty.”

  “What was it like?” Picard asked suddenly, leaning forward. Riker looked at him quizzically. “The Phoenix. What was it like? I got to . . . I touched it, but you . . . you rode in it! You and Geordi were part of it. Mankind’s first warp flight!”

  Riker’s demeanor loosened a bit, and he focused his eyes on the windows, out into space. “I don’t know if I can describe it. I’ve never felt anything so unsettling since flight training at the Academy, and this was even worse. I wasn’t sure that we weren’t going to blow apart at any second, that the ship wasn’t going to scatter me through space nearly three hundred years before I was even born. The whole time this song was playing, earsplittingly loud, and my teeth were vibrating. And we saw the Enterprise out of the window and . . .”

  Riker paused, as though collecting his thoughts. “We take it for granted, Jean-Luc.” He rarely called the captain by his first name, but at this moment it seemed to come naturally. “We move among the stars every day at high warp, surrounded by all the comforts of a posh hotel. But being there, jammed into that little cockpit, with my teeth chattering and my ears ringing as we just barely made warp one . . . It was the fastest I’ve ever moved in my life.”

  The two officers sat in silence then, Riker staring into the darkness of space, Picard closing his eyes and clasping his hands together.

  After a brief time, Riker sniffed, and wiped at his nose. Picard opened his eyes again, as Riker cleared his throat. “Geordi is working with the McKinley crews on cleanup, but I’m going to have to order him to take some down time. Barclay is . . . well, I think Barclay may be asking for a transfer off the ship. He seems ill-at-ease with everything that’s happened. You know how he is with people, anyhow. I think he may just want to take on a less exciting atmosphere for a while.”

  Picard’s mouth pursed into a grim smile. “There are times when I think that might be the best choice myself.”

  Riker hesitated, then handed the padd to his captain. He didn’t seem to want to acknowledge its contents; neither did Picard. “This is the final casualty report. We lost seventeen back on Earth from the ASRV landings. One hundred and forty-eight crewpersons were assimilated by the Borg. All of them are now dead. Those that weren’t killed in combat—or as a consequence of the plasma coolant that flooded engineering—apparently couldn’t survive the death of the queen.”

  Picard nodded without speaking, remembering the malfunctioning drones who fell around him and the hideous sight of the mottle-skinned woman dissolving before his eyes.

  “Do you think we’ve seen the last of the Borg? Now that their queen is dead?”

  Picard sighed heavily. “We can always hope. But I don’t think so, Number One.”

  Riker continued his oral report. “The bodies of those who were assimilated have been quarantined to the Borg Sciences unit for study. Finally, twenty-five people were killed in combat against Borg drones. Total loss: one hundred-ninety crewmembers.”

  Picard looked down at the padd in his hand, frowning. The names scrolled by slowly, in no particular order. Carter, Lynch, Batson, Nelson, Eiger, M’Rvyn, Tret, Kewlan, Rixa, Porter . . . all of them dead. Not just dead, but assimilated, then dead. They couldn’t even be properly buried until they had been taken apart by Starfleet scientists. And given some of the secrets which he knew some subsections of Starfleet were capable of holding, Picard wasn’t even sure that the crewmembers’ families would ever receive their kin’s remains.

  As if to underscore this thought, the padd scrolled down to another name. Hawk, Sean Liam (Lieutenant). He, too, knew about some of Starfleet’s darkest secrets. Or rather had known.

  “Were we able to recover Lieutenant Hawk’s body?” Picard asked, almost too softly for Riker to hear.

  “No, sir. We’re assuming that it stayed in low Earth orbit for some time after we left 2063. Data thinks that atmospheric drag would have brought it down eventually. It . . . would have burned up then.”

  Picard shut his eyes tightly, remembering the scene. He, Worf, and Hawk had all been in their environmental suits, their magnetized boots allowing them to traverse the ventral side of the Enterprise’s hull. They had just about freed the maglock servo clamps for the particle emitter dish—in their attempt to stop the Borg from using it as an interplexing beacon to summon other Borg cubes—when Hawk was caught by a Borg drone. Shortly thereafter, with Borg nanoprobes creeping through his bloodstream, controlling him and necrotizing his flesh, Hawk had tried to stop Picard from completing the command sequence to free the final clamp. Worf had then blasted Hawk with his phaser rifle, sending the young lieutenant tumbling away into the void of space.

  Picard remembered the look on Hawk’s face, as the last vestiges of his humanity fought against the Borg nanoprobes coursing through him.

  Even if Hawk had burned up in the atmosphere, Picard doubted that that was what had ended his life. Assuming that Worf’s phaser blast hadn’t killed him, the lieutenant had most likely suffocated in his environment suit, frightened and alone as his humanity was torn from him. Picard shuddered. He knew what it was like to have his consciousness subsumed within the hive mind of the collective. After the Borg queen had been destroyed, what then? What had Hawk thought in the last few hours of his life, separated from both humanity and the collective?

  “Damn,” said Picard softly, putting the padd down on the table. Riker stood and leaned forward, momentarily putting a supportive hand on his captain’s shoulder, and then exited the room without a word.

  The padd blinked. Hawk, Sean Liam (Lieutenant). Hawk, Sean Liam (Lieutenant).

  Such a loss. So enthusiastic and passionate. So much promise . . .

  Hawk had been on the ship slightly less than a year, transferring with a group of others onto the newly commissioned Enterprise-E. It didn’t take long for him to be assigned to the conn during alpha watch. He was bright and fast, and well-liked by all. He had said how pleased he was to serve aboard Starfleet’s flagship, which he considered a special honor since he was only a few years out of the Academy. But that time had been long enough for Hawk to forge a personal relationship with a man whom he loved, long enough for him to rise in the ranks, long enough for him to reach his own personal crossroad.

  Everyone eventually reaches a crossroad, if he lives long enough. Six months ago, Lieutenant Hawk had reached his.

  Chapter One

  Stardate 50368.0

  The coffee cup suffused Captain Karen Blaylock’s hands with a cheery warmth as she strode purposefully onto the bridge of her ship, the Excelsior -class starship Slayton. Though the alpha watch wasn’t due to begin for another ten minutes, she wasn’t at all surprised to see several key bridge officers already hard at work at their consoles, which hummed and beeped agreeably.

  Commander Ernst Roget, her executive officer, turned toward her in the command chair and favored her with a reserved smile. “Captain on the bridge,” he said, vacating the seat for her.

  Heads turned toward Blaylock, distracted momentarily from their vigilance. These were good o
fficers, science and engineering specialists all, and she hated allowing command protocol to interfere with their work, even momentarily. She often envied them their singleminded dedication to discovery. How ironic, she thought, to have allowed her command responsibilities to come between her and the very thing that had brought her out to the galactic hinterlands in the first place: the pursuit of pure knowledge.

  Blaylock nodded a silent as you were, and each crewmember quickly returned to the work at hand. She took her seat and sipped her coffee.

  Commander Cortin Zweller approached Blaylock from the science station on the bridge’s starboard side. His thick shock of white hair was belied by the boyish twinkle in his eye. During the nearly four months he had served as chief science officer, he had proven to be a valuable member of the Slayton team. Though by no means a brilliant researcher, Zweller was well-liked by the other science specialists, an administrator apparently gifted with the good sense not to step on the toes of his better-trained subordinates—unless absolutely necessary.

  “The anomaly still seems to be hiding from us,” Zweller said. “So far, at least.”

  Blaylock sighed, disappointed. The Slayton had last made long-range sensor contact with the subspace anomaly eight days previously, but had turned up nothing since. Several weeks before that, the Federation’s Argus Array subspace observatory had detected intermittent but extremely powerful waves of subspace distortion that seemed to be coming from the region of space for which the Slayton was now headed. Unfortunately, the phenomenon had neither lasted long enough—nor repeated itself regularly enough—to reveal much else.

  How wonderful it would have been, Blaylock reflected, to have discovered an entirely new physical phenomenon while en route to a dreary diplomatic appointment on gods-forsaken Chiaros IV. But Blaylock knew it would be just her luck for the anomaly to return briefly—and then vanish forever—while she and her crew were preoccupied with the tedium of galactic politics.