Tiffany's First Adventure

Chapter Four

The interference created an illusion of movement on the screen that you simply couldn't ignore. There had to be, your brain kept telling you, something there. You just had to be able to put it together. And a tactical readout was no more comforting. It could show clearly the position of the Enterprise, and clearly that something unidentified was definitely out there, somewhere, but transitory readings of directed movement in between appeared and were replaced so constantly that it told you nothing. Shaking his head away from it and rubbing his eyes, Picard ordered the tactical off. Flickering space returned. The cycle renewed itself. A panel would sound. Readings would be corrected. Alarms would be discounted. It was maddening. It was kind of cycle that made you almost not pay attention when a panel when it did sound. Automatically, almost offhand, you checked what you were supposed to check, no more, no less, expecting nothing. Which was what almost happened to Worf. Checking the panel without enthusiasm, he suddenly slammed a hand onto the console.

"Captain!"

And a distinctly ship-like, albeit unidentifiable, object appeared on the screen, dangerously close.

Riker threw himself out of his chair. "Red alert! Weapons!"

And the Enterprise swung around at a dangerous angle. But the object proved difficult to track. Phaser fire seemed to reflect off the energy waves and bounce randomly around. Watching it made you want to duck. The Enterprise took fire, but exactly where that fire had come from was anyone's guess. Reports of damage flooded in.

"Get this ship about!" Picard yelled. "Get a course lock!"

The Enterprise swung about to redeem itself, right in the face of clear empty space. The interference retreated. Everyone stood and stared, waiting for some sort of visual adjustment that would assure you that there was something there.

"There's nothing to lock onto," Guire reported.

Riker stared, unblinking. "Where the hell did they go?"

"I'm not getting anything to track," Guire reported. "And the vent is remitted. We should be able to lock..." Guire turned in resignation, awaiting instructions, back to Picard, but he stood, Picard, staring.

"Sir," Guire assured, "there's nothing out there."

In normal black space, when the panel sounded again, there were no distractions.

"Whatever it is," Picard growled, "after it."

"Sir," Worf showed his teeth triumphantly, "we've got them."

"Red alert. Shields up."

La Forge rushed onto the bridge, to a tactical station.

"Engineering," he said. "Ready to fire from up here. Get that phaser lock up. We can't waste any time." But the more he looked at the panel, the less intense his voice became, the less certain. "Wait a minute," he said to no one in particular, and then got Worf's attention. The way the engine signatures were reflecting off the vent waves, he pointed out, "they're all identical. We're seeing bits of the same thing all around us. This isn't a lot of little ships, Captain, it's one big one."

Riker turned back to them with a certain amount of dread in his voice. "How big?"

"About the size," La Forge worked at the panel, looking up to the screen image as he finished his sentence, "of a Romulan warbird."

The Tammuz appeared on the screen.

Taposs, opening communications, looked as perplexed as everyone looking back at him.

"Captain," he said uncertainly to Picard.

"Captain," Picard answered in kind.

"We've been chasing each other."

"Apparently."

Riker looked back and forth between them. "So, where are the Jem'Hadar?"

And La Forge looked up from the panel. "And where's the Integrity?"

The Integrity's bridge was bathed in red alert. Nechayev stood in the center, waiting. As Commander Burdell turned at the opening of the turbolift behind him, she turned as well, to where Tiffany, La Rue, and Mana stood, a little dazed and the worse for wear.

"Welcome aboard, " Nechayev greeted them. "I'm sorry if you hadn't intended to be here," she said to Mana. "Emergency transporter procedures have a tendency to lock onto whatever is alive."

"I am more than happy to have been transported out of that hold, thank you, Admiral. There's nothing I would rather do without than the sensation of staring through a forcefield at empty space. However, I should return to my ship."

"The last we heard from the Tammuz, they'd gone off after one band of Jem' Hadar. The Enterprise is after another, and we're after a third."

"What do you mean, there are three of them? How can that be?"

Mana, suddenly uneasy, darted to a panel. Requests to the computer to show the Tammuz, to contact the Tammuz, to plot the location of the Tammuz were met with the same perfunctory "unable to comply. Interference from the spatial anomaly is limiting sensor range. The Tammuz is not within contact range."

"We'll rendezvous with our own as soon as we can," Nechayev tried to reassure her. "We're having a tremendous amount of trouble navigating through this interference. It's worse now than it's ever been."

That it would get worse the closer they got, that was all Mana said as her attention and uneasiness were drawn back to screen, to space.

"Kaleus to Nechayev. We've locked onto the Jem'Hadar again, and are proceeding to track. This may be a little tricky."

"Just try not to lose them again," Nechayev answered. "Let me know when we've got a strong enough lock to fire on them." And she turned to me. "How much experience do you have on a Defiant-class ship, Mr.?"

"La Rue, Sir. Absolutely none."

"Then you'd better get down there."

She nodded to a helm station, and I hopped down to it. "Yes, Sir."

Then she turned, "Mana--" and paused in her ordering, her attention drawn to Tiffany, and the hand thing again, rubbing and flexing it. "Maybe you'd better stay behind, Ensign."

"I don't need to stay behind. It's just--"

"A pressure injury from a conduit that blew just as we were transporting." Mana stepped up to Tiffany's side. "It shouldn't be serious."

Nechayev nodded them both to a panel. They went. I shifted in my chair so that I had a glimpse of Tiffany, so that it might facilitate the psychic messages I was trying to send her, about thinking too much. I was hoping she wouldn't try to understand, would just let the incident go, would appreciate that she'd been bailed out of a potentially awkward situation, and continue on from there. Of course, she didn't.

"I had this before," she said to Mana, who never looked up from the panel.

"Do you want to get left behind?" Then she did look up, and winked at Tiffany. "You're not from around here, are you." And then she returned to her panel. "Admiral," she said suddenly, "there's something out there."

"There'd better be."

"No, I mean, it's beginning to look as if we're not tracking the Jem'Hadar after all."

"It's beginning to look," Burdell confirmed, "as if it's only one ship, not a lot of smaller ones, and a big one at that."

"How big?" Nechayev asked.

I came back to see the tactical that Burdell was tracking.

"Too big for a Federation ship," I said.

The look I shot straight at Mana, and her curt "well, don't look at me," brought Nechayev.

"Stand down, Mister," Nechayev said to me as she examined the panel. "This is way too big for a warbird."

As the Integrity moved in, as Nechayev ordered magnification, it was there, simply there. A Borg scout in extremely bad condition, rotating slowly and randomly, lay directly in our path.

Damn.

And from some dark corner of the bridge someone said it, "out of the frying pan."

Nechayev stepped closer to the screen, astonished. As the scout rotated, we could see that one corner of it was open to space. Jagged edges of metal that couldn't quite decide whether they were reaching in or out, warned us away, and lured us in.

"No Jem'Hadar did that," Nechayev breathed.

"No, Sir," Burdell answered. "Pressure and fatigue stress damage to the hull indicate a possible origin inside the ship. There are also elemental traces on the hull matching those of the surrounding asteroids."

"An asteroid collision didn't do this, either."

"Not by itself. But in combination with a sufficiently violent internal catastrophe, the result would be consistent with what we're seeing."

"Where's the rest of it?"

Burdell worked on the request. "On one of the larger asteroids nearby," he finally said. "It has some gravitational pull. I'm reading a massive debris field. Lots of ambient radiation in the lower atmosphere. Corrosive waste. I wouldn't recommend going down there."

"Back us away from here, slowly, the way we came in."

Burdell nodded. Slowly but surely, the scout began to recede on the screen.

Mana's uneasiness returned, in spades. She acted as if she would speak, but all she did was bite her tongue. I wondered, vaguely, why she could possibly want to stay here. It wasn't until the screen was entirely clear, at least clear of the image of the scout, that she turned away from it. She turned back to her panel. And did nothing.

The helm alarm sounded again. Nechayev jumped at it.

"Hail that ship! Find out who--"

"No need, Sir." I couldn't help but sound resigned.

Nechayev's enthusiasm waned, as well, as the scout reappeared on the screen.

"What are we doing back here?" she said.

But she suspected, as did we all, the cause of it. Burdell laid it out, that the reflections of an object as dense as the scout were the only thing the computers could find to lock onto to set a course. "The radiation from it is the source of the strongest nonrandom signals in the area. No matter what direction we try to go in, the computers will pick up reflections of these signals and send us right back here."

Nechayev stood and stared out at the scout as we neared it and sat, a little too close if you asked me, but no one did.

"So maybe," Nechayev was trying to speculate, "the same things that led us here will lead the Enterprise and the Tammuz here. Mister La Rue, can you locate any other ships in the area?"

"There's something. It must be other ships. I don't know what else it would be."

But Mana came over to correct me. "No, no, no," she chided me like a schoolmarm. "Look at the bandwidth you're using. It's because of the vent waves. What you're seeing here, and here," she pointed out the readings on the display, "aren't other ships. They're reflections of the scout. If we go after them, we'll just be chasing in circles."

The Admiral was awaiting confirmation, and I knew it.

"Mr. La Rue?"

And eventually that was it. Time up. There's only so long, after all, that you can keep an admiral waiting. I turned to Nechayev in resignation. "I can't tell whether there's anything out there or not."

"Admiral," Mana said, "the Enterprise and the Tammuz are engaged in battle. They aren't looking for us. They don't even know that we need looking for." Getting no response, she continued. "But they do need our help. We have to get back to them. With all due respect, Admiral," Mana waited until Nechayev had acknowledged her presence before she said the rest of it. "We can't just sit here hoping for someone to come for us. We don't even know that there is anyone left out there to come for us."

"Suggestions?"

Mana straightened up and suggested matter-of-factly that "when existing technology fails to meet current demands, the logical next step is intensive R and D."

"R and D?"

"Research and development."

"Great," I told Mana, "I'll hop down to the warp core and invent some qualitatively new--"

"Can you not see what is right in front of you?" Mana gestured frustratedly to the image of the scout on the screen. "It's the largest untapped repository of advanced technology in the galaxy! And it's sitting 1000 kilometers away! And there's nobody home."

Nechayev stood and stared out at the scout.

Burdell was antsy.

We all were, to an extent. We couldn't just sit there forever. We waited for the decision. I leaned there and wished I'd had my cards. Of course, I'd have shuffled them, and in this silence, it would have drawn too much attention. I leaned, stole a glance at Tiffany, who was giving the look back to me, infinitely La Rue, biding my time. Biding it until what, I'd asked her once, wondering just what she meant by that. Admiralty, she'd said. And what was wrong with that? Look around you, she'd said, by that time, all the fun will be over. Fun. At this moment, I didn't want to be an Admiral. I had achieved the seeming impossible--absolute contentment at being an ensign. I didn't want to have to make this decision.

"Admiral," Mana said more quietly. "We must save ourselves."

Nechayev turned to Burdell. "Could anything be alive on that ship?"

"I don't see how."

And when she nodded to him, Burdell nodded to me, called for security. Almost as an afterthought, he turned to Mana. "Since this was your idea, you won't mind joining us."

"I wouldn't have it any other way."

Could anything be alive on that ship? No, Sir, I don't see how. Despite having heard the words, despite having faith in them the way you have faith in your superior officers, once materialized, you were on the alert. You had to be. This was simply too important. Weapons drawn, we all pointed ourselves in different directions and looked, and listened. Burdell was immediately scanning. The hum of the tricorder was the only thing that grounded you, besides your own breathing. Everywhere was decay and desolation and silence, and the vague perception that the death of it all didn't make you feel better when perhaps you had suspected that it would, somehow.

Burdell took the first step. "This section is livable, for now," he concluded. "Just don't go that way." And he gestured down the corridor to his left.

We went to his right.

All along it was dead machinery, empty stations. Walking through the stale and unmoving air, stepping over or maneuvering past fallen pieces of unidentifiable junk made the ship seem much too hot, until you were forced to pause and you put your hand against a surface that was much too cold. All of us trying to behave as if this meant nothing to us couldn't cover the stench of the sheer magnitude of destruction here. It was simply impossible to ignore.

Mana stopped suddenly, and in my scanning I nearly didn't notice.

She looked back at me, startled by my proximity. Never having been one to let an opportunity pass me by, I let her have it.

"Logic next step, huh?" I said. "Since when do Romulans care so much about logic, anyway?"

"We," she threw out her chest, "are infinitely logical."

"Oh, is that how we got into this mess, through the flawless application of impeccable Romulan logic?"

"I don't think I like you."

My single laugh echoed mercilessly through the corridor. "Ha! That's the first thing you've said that I believe."

Burdell's one step back and singular expression were enough to restore order.

That and the fact that from behind him shown faintly light that was not being reflected there by us. It was seconds after Burdell had folded the tricorder and put it away before you realized that the humming had not stopped, that it was coming from the ship, down there, towards the light. We stopped at the edge of being able to hear it.

Mana whispered to Burdell, "I thought you said there was nothing alive over here."

His tricorder came back out. "I'm not reading any life forms."

Tiffany concurred. "The energy signatures are too weak to support anything. Residual activity, slow and rhythmic. It's like delta waves."

"Delta waves?"

"The low-frequency residual brain activity you see when everything except autonomic systems have stopped functioning."

"You mean it's what you see when someone's recently dead."

"For all intents and purposes, yes."

The light dimmed suddenly, then resumed, but Tiffany was already headed that way. She was out of arm's reach before I could make a move to try and stop her. As I came around the corner with Burdell, Tiffany and Mana were approaching the empty but humming station. Tiffany scanned the machinery and Mana toyed with the interface.

"Well Engineer Med Tech," Mana said without looking back to Tiffany, "give us your professional opinion."

Tiffany was undaunted. She probably didn't even realize she was being insulted. It was one of her charms, that.

"The rhythm is losing integrity and the wavelength is disintegrating," Tiffany said. "I can't tell much about it, but I can tell it's disregulating." Tiffany shook her head. She spoke as if she were thinking out loud, as if engaging more neural circuitry in the task would make it easier to solve. Two pathways, I supposed, were better than one.

"It's as if the fabric of the machine is breaking down at a very elemental level. The processes and information are being lost. It's like neural degeneration." Mana jumped on her assessment, ignoring a final and confused, "how is this possible?"

"Then we've got to access what we can out of it now. Before the degradation reaches the point where any information we might be able to use is lost."

"Access, how?" I asked her, looking around. "There aren't any panels, controls."

"La Forge," Mana thought out loud, returning her attention to the station. "We need La Forge. We should not have split up with the Enterprise. That was a mistake."

"But we had to split up," Tiffany reminded her. "We were chasing more than one band of Jem' Hadar. It wasn't as if we had a choice."

And Mana almost behaved as if it surprised her, being reminded.

"Yes, of course. You're right. Damn."

It was at that point that Tiffany was summoned back to the Integrity, to sickbay. Again, if things hadn't been going so fast one of us would have taken time to notice that no one aboard should have been sick, that no one had been before we'd entered this space. But as it was, Burdell and Tiffany simply exchanged a look. Tiffany shrugged. Burdell nodded. Tiffany stepped some away to transport, and with her gone, Mana was all business again.

"No controls, no panels," she was saying as she toyed with the station in a dangerously seductive way. "Nothing external. The only way to interface with the system is through the individuals."

"That's the way the Borg work," I reminded her. "Biochip implants.

That's the whole point of the system. The biological creatures aren't separate from the machinery. The only way to get information out of the computers is through one of them."

"I wish we could find one of them, then, just one."

Nechayev paced the bridge, trying to find an angle where she didn't have to see the scout, but there wasn't one. If it wasn't the screen she was seeing it was a tactical display, or an energy signature, or a reflection from a nonfunctioning station. You couldn't escape it. She found herself wishing for the vent to act up again, to cloud sensors sufficiently to make it all go away. Turning on a heel, she headed to her ready-room.

"Anything from the away-team?" she asked communications as she went.

"They're returning to the ship now, Admiral."

"Have them report to my ready-room."

"Yes, Sir."

And she made damn good and certain that it wasn't until the ready-room door closed behind her that she let herself act as if she had a headache. From the window at the far end of the room, a corner of the scout intruded on her view. Nechayev went to the replicater and ordered.

"Tarkalian tea."

The tea appeared, and Nechayev reached to take the cup, but she didn't, quite, at the vague perception of, from off behind her, a sort of movement, appearance. It was the perception of something being there that hadn't been a moment ago. In a single movement Nechayev was turning to Hugh and slapping at her combadge. "Burdell! Get in here! Now!"

But Hugh spoke over her words. "This is a Federation ship?"

And before she could think of how to respond, Burdell burst through the door with weapon drawn, stopping abruptly at Nechayev throwing out a hand. All of her attention stayed on Hugh as she answered tentatively that "yes, this is a Federation ship."

Nechayev let her hand come down, slowly. "I am Admiral Nechayev of the Federation ship Integrity."

"What is your purpose for being here?"

She explained their position, offering no resistance to Hugh making a good thorough visual inspection of the room as she began, except perhaps for a slight hesitation. "Our purpose?" She glanced back at Burdell, and told the story--about the Romulans, the Jem' Hadar, the interference that had brought them there and wouldn't let them get away. She had reached this point when Hugh walked right past Burdell, at whom Nechayev waved to hold his place. At a bit of a loss how to proceed, Nechayev simply followed Hugh out to the bridge.

Much to the chagrin of the rest of us.

A particular order of business: Any opportunity to make the appearance of defending a superior officer is an opportunity not to be wasted. Despite Burdell's keeping a close eye on things, when I saw what was happening, I came forward, drawing my weapon, but keeping it down low, since firing in the direction of an Admiral is never anything you really want to be doing. Despite Nechayev's waving for me to stay back, I looked for an opportunity to creep up. Long since having finished trying to answer Hugh's question, and having all but given up on the prospect of receiving any response, Nechayev made up a step between them.

"Do you understand?" she said to him.

Hugh turned to her and replied simply, succinctly. "I understand. You are lost."

I couldn't stand it. "We are not lost. Federation ships do not get lost. We know exactly where we are, and exactly where we need to be." But my confidence faltered with my voice when Hugh turned to looked me over. "We're just momentarily confused about the exact spatial relationship between the two, that's all." Bad save. "We're not lost."

Mana took the opportunity to remind all of us and to inform Hugh that besides, "we won't leave without getting what we came for."

Although I was glad to have that attention off of me, I felt a little for Mana as Hugh turned to her, and looked her over. Without shifting his attention away, he spoke back to Nechayev.

"This is a Romulan?" he said.

"Yes," Mana answered directly to Hugh, indignantly, "it is."

"And they brought you to my ship?"

Mana's jaw dropped.

"They did not bring us here," Nechayev corrected. "We came here in pursuit of the Jem'Hadar, the ones who attacked us and headed toward the vent." And, again, no response. "The Jem'Hadar," she repeated. "Surely, you must be aware of them."

"You can't expect them to share information," Mana said past Hugh to Nechayev. "They're not designed to do anything but take." Hugh turned to Mana and reached to take her weapon. He seemed oddly unprepared for the way she clung on to it, tried to tug it back from his grasp.

"Let him have it," Nechayev said to her.

"Why?"

"Because if they wanted to kill us, they would have already."

Grudgingly, Mana released the weapon. Hugh looked it up and down and let it drop to the floor while his attention turned to the bridge panels.

"They don't seem too impressed with Romulan technology," I said to her. She threw me an insulted look. When she squatted to retrieve her weapon from the floor, I squatted with her, picking up the weapon and handing it to her with what I'd really meant to say. "Next time, just be more careful what you wish for."

Hugh was turning matter-of-factly back to Nechayev. "You will not remain here. You will return to Federation space immediately."

"We would love nothing better than to oblige you," Nechayev said. "Unfortunately, we are unable to navigate through the energy waves here.

Our sensors have nothing to lock onto to take us back to Federation space."

Mana stepped up to Hugh. She spoke in that calm, matter-of-fact, let's give them a chance to appreciate the position they're in way, simply. "If we had technology that allowed us to see through this interference, to read through the energy in this system, we would leave here." But whether or not she'd been successful in communicating her intentions, it was impossible to tell. "There should be a way. It is possible, isn't it. I mean, your ship is using this vent as an energy source, isn't it."

"It is possible," Hugh answered her.

Nechayev, Mana, and Burdell exchanged looks of cautious optimism; looks much more full of the former than the latter.

"Perhaps such a system could be adapted to this ship," Mana said.

Perhaps Hugh was hesitant, perhaps it was just the way they were--so little overt behavior that you simply had nothing to do by to make up your mind

"There's only a slight flaw in your logic, Mana," Burdell said.

"Even if there were such a system, and even if it could be adapted to this ship, we still wouldn't have the technical expertise to operate it. Even Kaleus can't operate on that level of sophistication."

"No," Mana admitted, "but he can." She nodded to Hugh.

I couldn't stand it, worse than before. "We're supposed to give this thing access to ship's operations? We're just supposed to teach them--"

And whether there was indignation in Hugh's voice, or if it was just placed there by me... "I know how to operate your ship," he spit at me.

"Oh, you do. Just how much experience do you have operating Federation ships?"

"We have complete operations and structural information for all major classes of Federation ships, and I have been aboard your Constitution and Galaxy class starships."

Mana chuckled. "He's got a more impressive service record than you've got, La Rue."

"That isn't funny!" I said to her.

Nechayev shook her head. Our cue to shut up. She looked at Hugh the entire time she was touching her combadge and speaking to Kaleus, asking her, "how much luck are you having cutting us a path through this interference to get us out of here?"

"To be honest, Admiral, zero," came the response. "But we're not quite out of ideas."

"Good. Keep up the effort. Just the same, I'm bringing someone down to--have a look at the situation."

From the silence it was obvious that Kaleus had been wholly unprepared for this.

"Might I ask whom?" she said with exaggerated politeness.

Nechayev had a little trouble responding, herself. "It's a little difficult to explain. Suffice it to say that when we arrive, I expect everyone to remain at their posts."

And Kaleus's final "of course, Sir," was simply uncomprehending.

Nechayev gestured toward the turbolift entrance and she said to Hugh, "right this way."

Hugh turned to exit the bridge, with Nechayev right there with him. Mana and I exited after them, so that in the corridor we would be just a few steps behind, just far enough to talk, but to keep an eye on them as well.

"Are you kidding?" I said to Mana as we maintained our allotted distance. "Nechayev's the one who tried to have Picard courtmartialled over it. He had that thing on his ship and was supposed to use it to send information into the collective to kill them all, only he decided it would be inhumane. So he just let it go. What a career move."

"And now it's going to save us from ourselves," Mana said. "Is this what you call poetic irony?"

"This is what you call the shit hitting the fan. Just keep your eyes open. We don't know what this is liable to turn into."

Although I noticed Mana rubbing a hand across her mouth, I didn't have time to see the sudden smile it was trying to hide.

Mana and I kept our distance even when Nechayev and Hugh entered Engineering. The crew managed, for the most part, to remain at their posts, but work went seriously neglected. Understanding, Nechayev did nothing, she simply approached Kaleus, standing frozen by her station. As Hugh approached, he began to examine the panels there. Kaleus watched him for a moment before swinging an uncomprehending look to Nechayev. A strangled sort of "sir?" was all she could manage.

"We just might be one step closer to getting out of here," Nechayev said to her.

Hesitantly, Kaleus stepped, trying to steer clear of Hugh, around the console where she could see better just what, exactly, he was doing. She explained the status of the situation at Nechayev's prompting, with a couple false starts until her dander was really up about it. "We've been over this and over this," she finally broke into it. "The only way to see through the vent waves is to try to configure a system that can take the fractured images we get and reconstruct them, match them to anything we already have on record."

"Bottom-up processing," Nechayev observed. "Not exactly the model of efficiency."

"It's the best we can do. To compensate for the wave dynamics we would have to root canal the entire ship's circuitry in ways we haven't even invented yet. There's an inherent dynamic processing limit in isolinear systems. It simply can't be overcome."

"You don't mind if I get a second opinion. Just for the sake of argument."

Kaleus stood her ground, crossed her arms, and, furiously and silently, conceded.

"It is a relatively simple problem," Hugh began.

"Relatively simple--" Kaleus's strangled incomprehensibility was back. She stood and stared, open-mouthed and insulted, at Nechayev.

"Admiral," she managed after a moment, "I assure you this is not--"

"It's alright, Kaleus. I'm sure that wasn't a reflection on your abilities." Nechayev turned to Hugh. "The question is, will you help us?"

"They will if they want us out of here," Mana said. When Hugh turned to her, she continued. "That is what you want, isn't it."

"We will have no further contact with you," Hugh said. "You will leave this space."

"Then you'll have to help us. You will give us any information we need on that spatial vent, and the technology to control it. You simply have no alternative."

Hugh stared at her. It made her uneasy, you could tell, but she held her ground. She was, after all, right, and there was nothing any amount of hostility could do about it. "I will assess the situation."

"Give him access to whatever systems he needs," Nechayev said to Kaleus.

Kaleus might have been about to protest, but Nechayev was already headed to the exit, as if this particular decision didn't sit well with her, but, after all, she simply had no alternative. Her "keep me informed," was barely out in the air when Kaleus broke down and said it.

"Admiral, we can't just leave it here."

Nechayev came back enough to get Kaleus by the arm, inviting her to step out into the corridor to continue this.

"This is a hostile force we're looking at here." Kaleus had turned on Nechayev, walking mostly backward to get a good clean shot at Nechayev's face over every word she said, over reminding Nechayev of things she shouldn't have needed reminding about, that this was "one of the most hostile forces there is."

"We need information about that vent, information they possess," Nechayev said. "The only way we can get the information they have stored in their computers is through one of them. He's in there willing to provide exactly that information, and I fully intend to stand by and let him do it. As long as they aren't behaving in a particularly hostile way, we won't be the ones to start anything."

"Yes, Sir, but we should at least have this thing as closely monitored as possible. We don't know what it's doing. It could be up to anything."

"Coming to the aid of travelers in distress," Mana agreed, "isn't exactly their standard method of operation."

"I don't see immediate cause for alarm here," Nechayev said.

Kaleus stopped in her tracks. "Even though they're Borg?"

"Because they are."

Kaleus crossed her arms as if to say that this had better be good.

"Look at it," Nechayev said. "Computers aren't designed to misrepresent information. In fact, they're explicitly designed to avoid misrepresenting information."

"These aren't computers. Not entirely. There's a biological creature in there, and those can be dangerous."

"It's the mechanical consciousness that's at the surface here, not the biological being," Nechayev said as she walked. "The being has to adapt to the machinery. It has to be inhibited. And they are Borg. They show up, they state their purpose, and they carry it out, in the most efficient way that presents itself. They want us gone from here. That's all they care about. They'll do whatever it takes to make it happen."

"If we're such a threat to them," Mana said, "why don't they just destroy us?"

"You've seen their ship," Kaleus offered. "They're in no shape to pick a fight."

"Which isn't to say that they won't be aggressive in some other way. I'm afraid I have to agree with Kaleus, Admiral. They have to be considered hostile."

"If they wanted the ship, they'd be here in force, not just one of them. They waited until I was alone to contact us at all. And when they did contact us, they sent a single individual to ask us questions. He could have taken whatever information he'd wanted by force, but didn't. Everything we've seen so far suggests that they're trying to avoid confrontation, not provoke it."

"So what you're saying is--"

"We're suspicious because we perceive that they're doing us a favor. But that's only from our point of view. From their point of view, they simply want us away from them."

"So, from their point of view--"

"They're doing what's in their best interest. And the fact that it's also in our best interest is irrelevant. I don't see any reason to think they're up to anything. I don't see any reason to think they have the capacity to be up to anything."

"So, you're saying we can trust them?" Kaleus asked.

"For all intents and purposes, yes."

From the ports in such a remote part of the ship the space outside looked normal. With no sensors but your eyes, the vent energy seemed to not exist. Perhaps every so often there was a vague ripple, like heat coming up off a roadway. Perhaps is was fatigue. The only things definite were the stars. And Nechayev's words. "Won't be the ones to start anything." Mana repeated the words to herself, mocking the sentiment. "Damn."

She touched her combadge. "Mana to Chitin. You were right."

Speaking very low, Mana's attention was on the space outside as she assured Chitin that she couldn't risk leaving the ship, that too much was happening too fast. She assured him that their hands were full here, that no one would be monitoring transporter logs. And outside there was just the briefest wavering shadow of a partially uncloaking warbird, and then it was gone. As Mana turned her attention to the inside of the corridor, Chitin materialized. Without a word right away, they walked. The PADDing of their feet was the only sound down here, and a hum so steady and stable it made you crazy.

"We should not have begun this," Chitin said abruptly.

"We've come too far to back out now. We have to see it through. We're so close now this has to work. It has to. Besides, I'd rather die out here than return home empty-handed."

"Either way," Chitin agreed, "it would not be different for us. The Tal Shiar does not reward failure. But full-scale civil war--"

"Will start with or without us if we can't prevent it, if we can't provide the Tal Shiar with an advantage to crush the military. So much energy in this space. So much potential. If we could harness this energy, the way the Borg do, for five minutes, we would own our empire, the way we should. No. The only way to save ourselves is here."

Mana stopped and looked out. The scout seemed so close you could almost believe that you could reach out and touch it.

"Why are they being so tolerant, these humans?" Chitin said. "They should be jumping at the chance to exact revenge. I don't understand this behavior."

"Adaptation."

Chitin had no response.

"Something Tiffany keeps talking about."

"Tiffany?"

"Our engineering med tech. These humans are being so tolerant because they've adapted to this. They've encountered the Borg enough times that they're beginning to think of them as normal, as a part of the normal environment. Humans are infinitely adaptable. It's one of their great strengths."

"Don't look so admiring of it, Mana. It doesn't help us. You said they would fight. You said they would do anything."

"We need the Enterprise. We need Picard. He'll fight. In front of that Admiral he will do anything." Mana stepped closer to the port and looked out at the scout, thinking it through. "This scout is putting out the only nonrandom signals in the area. Every ship we tried to send out here locked onto it. Any ship here has to lock onto it, eventually. The Enterprise will be here."

"And the longer we wait for them, here, where everyone is getting along so famously..." Chitin let his voice slip away. His point was made. He could tell from the way Mana looked.