Re-born – Or to take up arms against a sea...
by HoD Ro' Matlh & Ensign Jason Hawk & Sogh Marla Varquis & Sogh Thor'nan Mal'Kor & Soghla' Marie St. Helene & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Jared

Post Details

Title		Or to take up arms against a sea...
Mission		Re-born
Author(s)		HoD Ro' Matlh & Ensign Jason Hawk & Sogh Marla Varquis & Sogh Thor'nan Mal'Kor & Soghla' Marie St. Helene & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Jared
Posted		Tue Jan 03, 2012 @ 5:09am
Location		The Collective
Timeline		A few hours later

It was green.

At first there was nothing else but slowly shapes began to emerge from the green; angular shapes. Eventually these would resolve themselves into walls and pipes, but of now were vague images.

Hope stood in the green mist with the small Vetus at her side. She knew she was still on the Klingon ship, and that they were all gathered, listening to what was going on through some device Jared had placed onto her implant. They had said this is how she would find her father. As she thought about him, she found herself walking through the mist, and the sound of her footsteps on hollow metal arrived at her ears. in front of her in the mist was a dark figure she couldn't quite make out...

"This place is like a Dream, Hope," the little man said soothingly beside her. "You know how if you're dreaming and you know it, you can do whatever you want? This is a little like that. You can't change things, but you choose what you want to see. You choose where to go. You can make the mist tell you things you want to know."

"The things you see can't hurt us while we're here. They might still be scary, and you might not want to see them. But it has to show you what you ask. So if you want to see your parents, you'll see them. You just have to focus on the things you want - like trying to remember something you've forgotten."

Hope stared at the green swirling mist, she had not seen anything like it before and yet there was something on the edge of her thoughts.... All she had to do was think of them he had told her and they would appear.

She thought of a million things to say to them when she saw them again, her family, her mum and her beloved dad who she worshipped above everything else.

She held her bear closer and pictured a scene in her head, their favourite place, a meadow covered in daises and buttercups and a narrow brook that ran along side of it. The water was cool enough for her to play in and feel it run through her toes. They would be there waiting for her and she held her bear even tighter.

The mist began to fade and vague images of a tree could be made out, and the sound of water running. Soon she was standing in her meadow, but it was not quite as she remembered it. The sky was green with clouds and the Brook was enclosed in a dark metal pipe. The grass was there but as she watched, on each blade a small number appeared as the Borg mind sorted and catalogued the material for potential use.

A figure appeared beside her. It was the Ship's first officer, Wilcock. He was cold and distant to her.

"This place has no appreciable value," his voice echoed by others, invisible around her. "The life forms are primitive and un-salvageable. There is no significant technology. It will be deleted from the catalogue."

The green mist rushed back, and as desperately as she tried to hold on to the image in her mind it faded. All she could clearly remember was the sound of water and her father laughing. The rest of the memory was gone. She and Jared were alone in the mist again.

"No...." she whimpered just as the last image began to grow fainter and die away from her thoughts. She turned to Jared and shook her head and a small indiscernible tear made a rivulet down Hope's cheek. A moment or so later she wondered why.

"Interesting," Jared commented. "This seems to be your mother and father's memories. But they seem to be losing those memories. Their... new friends must have decided the memory is no longer important."

"Is there somewhere else you want to be, Hope?"

Another memory replaced her favourite one and this time she was in her bedroom. Her mother had come in to tuck her up in bed and read her a goodnight story, a favourite one of hers. Her mothers laughter echoed around the space and for a moment she was in a happy place, all confusion and fear gone with just her and her mother. Her voice sounded like music to Hope's ears.

Jared examined the toys with interest. The childhood environment of a species told you a lot about it, and he knew he didn't have long before the collective noted the active memory and... interfered.

Toys. Miniature caricatures of real life people, places, and objects. It seemed humans were a species who saw childhood as a rehearsal for real life, rather than a phase of it.

There was no real air in this place, but he and Hope both felt the... chill as the collective took interest. They were still quite unaware of the intrusion, but they could sense the memory being accessed, and were giving it priority for analysis.

Her mother still laughed, but there was a sterile, canned part to it now, as if it had been recorded on tape and now was played on a loop track. Her cupboard door opened, the cupboard mummy always checked before the light went out, and a Borg figure stepped through. Another appeared at the door to her room. They ignored the little girl clutching her covers on the bed, the Vetus still beside her and the laughing woman.

Instead they began to examine the articles in the room. Items, such as the computer interface on the wall were suddenly tagged with a serial number that seemed to float in green in the air in front of it. Some toys were tagged, others discarded.

The mother stopped laughing at Hope's distress and turned to look at her, "What is wrong, little one?"

The voice was not Hope's mother and the sound of it put a chill down Jared's spine. It was a Borg queen, inserting herself into the role of carer and maternal protector for the child.

It was easy to think of the queen as an individual - a single, malevolent leader Borg out to lead her minions to conquer the galaxy. Jared knew enough of the Borg to know that was a confused way to think. The queen was the Borg consciousness with a face. The Collective's conscious mind at it's most focused point. Far more dangerous. Her voice hinted the Borg hive-mind was beginning to sense the intrusion somehow, and starting to show an interest.

Far sooner than he'd expected. But... adapting was what the Borg did.

Jared wasn't hard-wired into the system. His synaptic emitter meant he was piggybacking on Hope's thought process. While it gave him no control over the process, it did have one advantage - the queen would struggle to sense him there at first.

"Hope?" He said warily, looking around at the drones and the not-quite-mother. "Perhaps this isn't such a good place to stay either. Maybe it would be best if you took us elsewhere."

So she took him to an earlier memory one which she remembered well. Her loving father had called her 'his princess' and most of her favourite stories were of handsome princes and pretty princesses. They started off well in far off lands, there was always some problem to overcome but in the end they lived happily ever after.

It was her fifth birthday party and she had asked for a prince and princess party. It was to take place on the ships small holosuite. Her mother could turn her hand to anything, she was so clever and so loving. She had made everything so special and so the scene opened before Jared and Hope.

The doors parted with their predictable hiss and her mother took her across the drawbridge. Her mother was the Queen and her father the King who waited for her at the entrance to a castle. Hope had such a pretty sparkly white dress on that swirled about her as she turned. Her hair was piled up and dressed with a tiara and she held a wand in her right hand. She was in such a hurry to get there and see her best friend Ben.

"Slow down" said her mother "There's plenty of time."

There were not many children on the ship but everyone made an effort when it was one of their birthdays. Hope's was no exception and they had made the castle so pretty and of course in pink which had been her favourite colour once upon a time.

The castle was dressed in swathes of material and soft furnishings, fairy lights hung everywhere and the sky was dark and dotted with a million stars in the sky or so it appeared to her as a little girl who had just become five.

Ben appeared at her side smiling and handing over her gift and making her open it straight away. It was a pair of fairy wings which she put on immediately. She was so happy and while her mother and father talked she and Ben ran off to find the twins.

As she ran she began to notice subtle changes. The castle was no longer pink, but pale green, and much more cube shaped than she at first thought. Amongst the gathered guests were dark figures of Borg. She began to look around for her friend Ben but he was missing now. As she looked the Borg were more and more common while the crew of the Fairchild seemed fewer in number, and oblivious to the threat. Hope wanted to call out. The image shimmered as the Borg mind recognised the projection as a fake and began to unpack it, searching for the holoemitters, field generators and other devices hidden around the room.

Jared watched the scene as Hope shrunk back against a wall. He suddenly noticed that the numbers and tags appeared AS she looked at an object or an area.

They were following HER train of thought, he realised. They might not even be aware of what was happening. They probably just thought her mind was one of their million drones, marking information of interest for the collective to analyse.

He moved over to the her.

"I know this is scary, Hope. But you have to understand about the... people who've taken your parents. You're seeing how they think. Each time you go to a safe memory, they're following. Looking at the memory and deciding what they think is important, and what's not."

"I don't like it. You're clever, make them stop." she asked quietly.

"They'll keep following us, I'm afraid. The way to stop them changing your happy safe memories is not to go to them. There's other places we can go. You can look into their memories too. Think hard. Try to find a memory of some place that doesn't seem to be familiar to you."

Hope closed her eyes and when she opened them they were both standing on the peak of a mountain. Below them white, pink and blue clouds swirled around them like waves on an unknown shore. Snow the colour of pale green sparkled with frost. The air tasted so sweet as if she could just drink it just by opening her mouth.

Distant gentle twin suns balanced on the horizon and three moons of different sizes hung delicately in the sky like baubles on a Christmas tree. Night was closing in as the stars she loved to watch appeared in the sky like fireworks. The brightest ones first the more fainter ones randomly appearing as she thought of them. Her eyes stung with tears that betrayed her she felt so lonely.

She surprised herself by thinking up such beauty and had wondered how she could do such a thing just by thought alone. It would be so hard to leave it.

Jared looked around wide eyed at the staggering scene. It was breathtaking, and certainly a billion miles from anywhere Hope would know. He didn't know the planet, but the stars had a... familiar look to them. The constellations were rearranged a little, but he'd spent time in the neighbourhood at some point. He had a vague sense that this was somewhere near the border of Gamma and Delta quadrant, out near the galactic rim.

They only had a minute or two to look in awe. With a sound like a gentle drawing of breath, a Borg drone stepped out of the empty air, and then another.

Labels and numbers flickered into view - faster this time, as though they had already been there, but hidden. The to drones had a slightly puzzled look.

They're wondering why they're examining a scene that has already been catalogued and analysed, Jared thought. This was a mistake. It's going to make them curious.

The air started to swirl nearby, kicking up a swirl of dust. As they watched, the dust began to take a slightly... feminine shape...

"I think we need to go again, Hope!" Jared whispered urgently. "Somewhere they already know about, that they won't find interesting. Hope... can you take us to where your father is now?"

A swift wash of green mist swept the alien landscape away, but this time the greenness remained. The murkiness of the mist slowly resolved itself into the complicated angular shapes and surfaces of a Borg ship.

Before them was a table - like a medical operating table, surrounded by machinery and two Borg drones. And on the table was Hope's father.

He looked quite normal. Still dressed in his Starfleet uniform, without any sign of injury whatsoever. He was lying still. Breathing, and for all the world looking like he was asleep - except his eyes were open, staring calmly up at the roof above.

She ran to him instantly and wrapped her self round him. "Daddy, daddy we have to go." she pleaded trying to pull him off the table. "Come on daddy try, please try, please." There was nothing she could do because she wasn't strong enough and so she called out. "Jared please help me...."

Jared quietly stepped over to a nearby terminal. This was a mental projection of a Borg data terminal. But the information it showed would be real - fed through the link to the collective.

He tapped a few keys on the display, and read the information that displayed.

"Captain, can you hear me?" he asked quietly.

Jared's voice was quite audible in the medbay. The FHew crew had been listening carefully to everything the TiQ had been saying, trying to piece together what was going on from only his comments.

Ro was standing in front of his science officer, trying hard to piece together what was happening from the snatches of conversation Jared was saying aloud. The girl was asleep and they could not hear her end of the conversation.

"I am here, Ancient," Ro' rumbled trying not to wake the girl. "What have you found?"

"We're in the borg vessel with Hope's parents. It's a reconnaissance and surveillance sphere. Not a big ship. Looks like it's already taken quite a beating as well, and not just from the Fairchild. This has been in quite a fight recently. Looks like it picked the Fairchild as a manageable way to replace damaged parts and drones."

"Hold on. Something isn't quite right here."

Jared moved away from the terminal, and warily approached Hope and her father. It was suddenly occurring to Jared that it made no sense for the father to be unharmed. He should be halfway to drone-hood by now...

Ah... of course.

Hope was accessing her father's own memories. He had no idea what he looked like at the moment. They were seeing his own self image - his memory of his own appearance. The reality would be... altogether different.

Jared looked at the two drones standing beside the table. THEY weren't working from memory.

He leaned down beside Hope.

"I know this is already frightening for you, little one. But they're not quite telling you the truth with what you see here. You need to concentrate, and make them show you your father as he really is."

Jared gently but firmly pulled her away from her father amid broken sobs an heartache. She trusted Jared enough to be led by him. He kept a firm hold on her but all the time she kept her eyes on her father.

As the girl focused on her father's form, something seemed to crumble off the surface of his body and uniform - like sand blown by wind. Her father's healthy skin tone and undamaged uniform gave way to pale skin, black carapace, and partially attached bionics.

Pain like no other pain she had felt before in her short life poured out of her like a broken tap. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms about herself in an effort to bring comfort to a soul so badly wounded and tormented by such sights as she had experienced. No one let alone a child should ever have to go through such horror.

The shock of emotion that went through Hope washed out through the collective like a sonar ping through an ocean - a brilliant beacon to any who... had been searching...

The two drones turned, ponderously slowly, and her father turned as well. All three looked at her and spoke with one voice.

You will return to the collective and complete your assimilation. Resistance is futile. The Collective must grow.

"They said I have to go with them." Hope whimpered "what will happen to me if I don't?"

You WILL be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

"They're wrong, Hope. You have a choice. A choice your father didn't have. You don't have to go with them if you don't want. Captain Ro will fight to protect you if you choose it."

Ro's hands bunched into fists as if ready to fight right there in the hold of the FHew.

Another figure appears now. Female... mostly. She smiles down at Hope, "Why do you resist us so? We only seek to improve the quality of life for all species. See your father is here, and you will join him again soon."

She did not seem to see Jared.

"Daddy?" Hope called out to him

"Our little Princess." he called to her but his voice echoed with others around him, those which she could not see. "Its time to leave and come with us, you must do as we say. You will comply."

She had always been a good girl and had always done as she was told. Her longing to be with them was so overpowering. It was better to be with him than not at all. Better than being faced by doctors and then having nothing and no one at the end of it. She turned to Jared and made the hardest decision she had ever had to make in her young life.

"I have to go." she told him "I want to be with them."

"It's not really him, Hope," Jared said gently, right beside her. "It's his voice and his shape, but it's not really him. It's an image they want to trick you with. He wouldn't want this."

When Jared spoke the queens head snapped around as if she had heard him but could not yet see him. see searched the space where he stood, but without being able to focus on him.

Jared looked warily at the Queen. He'd been so confident when he'd set this up. So assured they could stay one step ahead of the collective. But it had been more than a century since he'd encountered the Borg, and he'd almost forgotten what they were like. Always adapting. Always one step ahead of where you expected them to be.

She couldn't hear him, could she? He wasn't connected to the collective - he was feeding neural information straight into Hope's synaptic network. How was that even possible?

Hope noticed Jared's reaction and at the same moment the Borg Queen's eyes locked onto Jared. She smiled pleasantly, "Well, this is a surprise. We don't get many of those any more. You don't look like Species 397. How is it you know how to use their technology?"

Jared thought hard. The device he was using was not Vetus in design. The species that had invented it... the Borg called them 397. They'd called themselves the Luminar, but they were no longer around at any rate. He had no collection to the collective, only to her! The Borg shouldn't be able to...

Oh.

They didn't even need to connect to his mind. They were connected to Hope's. As far as they were concerned Hope was already Borg. They must be reading the synaptic projection straight out of her conscious thoughts.

Damn they were good.

Hope looked at the Borg Queen. She came across as loving and compassionate to Hope how could she be anything else. If she went with her then at least she would be with her father no matter what happened they would be together. She wouldn't be so sad any more but she wouldn't be human any more either. There would be so many things she would miss and something told her they wouldn't have chocolate ice cream on a Borg ship.

The queen could read her mind and smiled back at her, "You have no need to fear what you will loose. If you would like you can have the taste of ice cream and chocolate in your mouth all day everyday. Why should you be denied that. Your human body is inferior and requires constant vigilance, care and maintenance. We will enhance it so it will not suffer the effects of poor diet or malnutrition."

"Tell me, Hope," Jared asked softly, "were your parents cruel people? Would they abandon you leave you on your own without help, just on a whim?"

She shook her head. Her parents were kind and loving, simply the best.

"Then think, Hope!" Jared said intently. "Why would they leave you in that pod, alone? If they care about you, it could only be because they were desperate. Because there was something so terrible they couldn't let it happen to YOU!"

"You need to think about it! Otherwise you're saying your parents would just throw you off the ship without a thought, alone!"

"Your father's body is still with these people, but not the person he was. Who he was is fading away. Being swallowed up into... her."

He looked the girl in the eye.

"Make no mistake. If you go with her, it'll be like dying. Who you are would disappear. The Borg never sing, never dance, never play, and never smile."

He turned and looked at the queen and the drones flanking her. The queen was still smiling, thoughtfully.

"I don't even need to make you believe me on this one, Hope. You're connected to them. You can read their thoughts just as she can read yours."

He gestured towards the looming drones.

"Look into any of their memories and tell me when was the last time any of them ate ice-cream. Or sang a song. Or hugged someone they cared about. Or even closed their eyes felt the sun shining on their face."

She couldn't think of what to say and confusion sent a wave around those about her. What should I do? Where should I go? What will happen to me? Do I turn left or right? "Its not fair. I want my family back, I want my friends back the way things were." She turned to Jared "Your clever Jared bring them back... please." she begged him as if it was the last thing in the universe she had left "Please Jared, make it right, make it like it was before."

The Queen laughed, "Yes, Jared. Your clever. Make it like it was before. You can undo all the damage that has been done, can't you. Make it like it was when you were a boy."

Her voice took on a melody that cut through Jared's spine like ice water. It was a song nearly four million years old, but echoes of it had been heard in the childhood songs of a thousand races. At the same time in the hold Hope's sleeping mouth opened and she began to sing.

The sun is shining
It's time to play
But all the children
have gone away

Not in their homes
Not in their bed
Daddy made a wish
And now they're all dead.

Now when the queen spoke, the voice of Hope echoed it for the crew of the FHew to hear both sides of the conversation. "Ask him where his children are? Ask him where his people are? I don't lie to you about who we are, but he lies all the time."

As the crew realised who it was speaking, May'Bel leapt back from the girl in alarm. He glanced at Thor'nan to see that he had the detonator handy.

Ro frowned, "I didn't even know he had kids."

Jared's eyes narrowed. He could hear Hope's voice echoing the Queen's words. And as he couldn't see her lips moving HERE, that meant it was Hope's ACTUAL voice.

He was thinking fast. You HAD to think fast to stand any chance with... her.

"The voice I get," he said warily. "You can't control musculature yet, but anyone mildly inclined towards sleep talking... well... it wouldn't be hard to plant the suggestion in their subconscious and feed them the words."

"But the song... you're not old enough to know that song. Not by a long shot. No Borg is."

Marie stood off to one side, hoping fervently that whatever the point to the arguement the strange little TiQ was having, he would save her bacon.

You've backed yourself into a corner good and proper this time, she remonstrated with herself.

What was I meant to do? Leave the girl to her fate?

Yes! What's she to you? She's just another faceless nobody. You saw plenty of them on Nouvelle Nouvelle Caledonie. What's special about this one?

I saw plenty on Nouvelle Nouvelle Caledonie all right. More than enough to last a lifetime. I left them because my life was more important....

That's right. Remember that.

....and that was a mistake I've spent the intervening years regretting. My life isn't more important.

So why are you regretting your decision now?

That was the stumbling block. Why indeed was she regretting her rash statement that she would rather be in an escape pod than here on the FHew if Hope was jettisoned?

There wasn't a chance in hell that Ro' was going to back down. He might look old and tired but Marie knew she didn't stand a chance against him in a fight. Given that that was the only way to force him to change his mind then Marie was left without options. Anyway, she mistrusted appearances when it came to Ro'. Certainly, she was not about to stake her future on the hope that he was too weak to put up any real defence.

No, to meet Ro' in open combat was just suicidal. It didn't even hold out the hope of a quick death; Ro' would beat her to a pulp as an example to the rest of the crew. Then she'd have to suffer under May'bel's less than tender ministrations. Compared to that, the escape pod was a realistic option.

So her options came down to this: Jared pulled off a miracle or Marie lived out her last remaining days in the cramped confines of an escape pod.

No, there was one other option – she was assimilated. That one didn't bear thinking about.

The Queen laughed. At first Marie thought she was laughing at her but no, the Queen was not so omniscient - not yet anyway.

"You think so linearly, little man. You still think of the Borg as a species; the pale skinned race you met a thousand years ago. But we've become much more than that. Our memory reaches though cultures and peoples far older. And so much wider!

"That song echoes through the legends of a thousand cultures back to the oldest histories of the galaxy. A song of a single choice. A single wish that stole away a billion lives."

"So where are the children, Jared?"

Jared sighed, his face tired.

"I haven't lied. I've told the story a thousand times to a thousand long dead ears. I've just grown tired of telling it. So I stopped, when they stopped asking."

Jared's eyes darkened. His voice filled with more malice than the crew had ever heard from the little man.

"How many billion have you consumed, Borg? I made one choice. You make your choice every day."

"You don't seek to improve life. You HAVE no control over your actions. A billion brilliant minds blurred together loosing all sense of self, all spark of life, all joy of being. A billion futures rendered down into one selfish desire to consume. You'll lie this child into submission and then hollow her insides out without a whisper of remorse. For all your collaborative intelligence and adaptive brilliance, your motives are no more complex than any bacteria. You're a disease with it's own starships. So don't presume to lecture ME on morality!"

Hope reached out to him and took his hand.

The Queen was not put off, "We are the essence of all people. We are their combined desire and will, unfettered by individual doubt and remorse. It is a deep desire of individuals in all species to belong, to have acceptance, a place, a purpose. We give them that. We take away their weakness and their doubt and replace it with understanding and acceptance. None of the Borg are left out. We are the collective. Now, she has joined us the desires of this little one will be added to those of the others. Her biological distinctiveness will be added to our own. In a sense we are the Essence of what it is to be a species, distilled and honed. Once added to the collective no Borg can be forgotten, since they are shared by all who remain."

She took a step forward, "You on the other hand, forget. You have drunk the essence of a billion souls without even learning their name. In a hundred years everyone you know and protect on that ship of yours will be gone and you will forget them and never look back, just like you will forget this girl and a billion billion faces before her. You don't want to protect her. You want to keep her from being with her family. You are selfish, Jared of Vetus. You have always been so, and you are even now."

Jared heard the title and realised the Borg had worked it out. They knew who he was now.

Jared regarded the queen coolly.

"No," he said gently. "No... Not any more. I have been selfish. I've been malevolent. I've been depraved, and there were times that I've been downright psychotic. I've been many different types of people over the centuries, and not all have been good. But now? These days? I'm something different."

"You however... Borg, you seek to swallow all consciousness up into yourself, making yourself all that's left. If you get your way, altruism will be meaningless. You'll be the only self left to serve."

He glanced at Hope.

"Your choice is simple, Hope. You can choose to go with her, in which case we'll respect your choice. You'll be with your father physically, but you'll have only hours before both of you stop being you. And they probably won't be pleasant hours. Or you can ask us to fight for you. There's no promises. We might fail. But if you want to stay with us, Ro is one of the Klingon empire's greatest generals, and we won't let you go without a fight."

He turned and walked past the queen, over to one of the terminals. Then he paused and glanced at Hope again.

"If you're having trouble choosing, look into her mind, and see what she's got planned for you once they have you. She can't lie to you that way."

He glanced over at the Drone of her father.

"Or perhaps... Have a look into his mind. Not the drone - that's just an echo of all of them. Find what's left of him in there, and ask if he really wants you to come to him, knowing what it would mean."

Hope looked at her father who was almost unrecognisable now but for his eyes. His intense blue eyes were now fading to the coldness of steel. "Daddy" Hope whispered "Tell me what to do."

A voice, an echo from light years away called to her and said one word.

He turned back to the terminal and began to pull up schematics and crew and repair statistics.

One of the drones stepped forward and grasped at him, it's mechanical arm swinging through him as though he were a ghost.

"I'm going to assume that was the drone's reflex action, and not a show of frustration on your part," Jared said to the queen without looking up. "It cuts both ways, this connection with Hope. It means you can see me, but it also means I can see THIS."

The queen's voice was hard now, "Resistance is futile. We will recover the girl. even if you destroy us, the Borg will prevail. Death is irrelevant. A cube has been dispatched to this area and assimilation will commence."

Jared smiled.

"If I didn't know you were a soulless front end interface for a faceless unfeeling gestalt consciousness... I might almost think you sounded mad."

"Hope? Your decision?"

A finger curled tightly round the ends of her long hair a betrayal of the inner tension she felt. Her eyes a startling blue and human still, glanced back and forth from the Queen to Jared.

Marie knew she couldn't intervene against the Borg Queen – or could she? She'd seen all too many bullies in her youth; people who threw their weight around just because they could.

“You, Queen!” she called out. “You think you're so good, why don't you come here yourself? You've sent an image and we're meant to be frightened? Sorry but it doesn't work that way. Given the choice of surrendering this child to you and dying, I'll choose dying any day. Yeah, yeah, give me all that resistance is futile crap: resistance isn't futile. It's because we resist that you're so single-minded about assimilating us.”

Hope turned her head, eyes still shut. Through her ears the queen could hear what Marie was saying, but as yet she did not respond.

“You really can't work us out, can you? You don't know why Hope doesn't meekly accept the gift you're offering her. You don't know why we don't surrender her to save our own existence. In fact, you don't know why the question even arises in the first place. All you see is the chance to become one with the Collective. And yet you persist in believing that if you assimilate enough of us you'll find the answer. Sorry, it doesn't work like that.”

She knelt before Hope and put her hands on the child's shoulders. “Hope, a famous philosopher from Earth once said Cogito ergo sum; I think, therefore I am. What is often forgotten is the first line of that quote: Dubito ergo cogito. I doubt, therefore I think. Yes, the Collective takes away doubt; it takes away fear and grief and sorrow and all that is horrible in your life. It also takes away happiness and fun and friendship and all the things that make us who we are. It's a bit like taking your favourite food and mixing it up with every other meal ever invented and saying that you should be happy eating that for the rest of your life.”

The child's face showed no sign she could hear or understand the woman.

“Hope, the choice is yours but let me say one final thing. We will give you that choice. If you choose to go to the Collective we will respect that. One the other hand, the Queen has already said that a Cube is on its way. If you choose to stay with us, the Borg will try to take you forcibly. The Queen will try to play you; she will try to appeal to you by saying you can save us by going to her. Believe me, they will not stop with you. They will take all of us unless we're lucky enough to die first. I can not speak for anyone else here but I will do my utmost to protect you if you choose – you choose – to stay with us.”

Hope's voice echoed the Queens, "This is not a trade, or a negotiation. This Drone is already a part of the collective. You strain against the inevitable and cling to your prejudice, just as your ancestors clung to the belief that man could not fly. We will give the child wings. This will happen."

Hope had developed a liking for chess and had enjoyed playing the game with her parents. It saddened her now to think she would never play the game again. So why did she feel like a pawn in the this game of life and death, pushed one way and then the other as she struggled to reach the eighth square.

Not for the first time she wished she could be somewhere else other than here. The hatred between Jared and the Borg Queen was so intense that you could cut it with a Klingon knife. She was overwhelmed and conflicted with such emotions that she couldn't answer.

The queen looked at Jared coldly. "I think this conversation is over... little man."

She gave him a dismissive wave, and Hope watched as his shape seemed to disperse, like smoke when a fan is turned on it.

Hope cried out in alarm.

Jared's eyes jerked open. He snatched the device off his forehead, and looked at it with alarm. He relaxed visibly when he saw there was no green glow of Borg nanites. The queen had simply figured out how to block his signal from Hope's mind.

"I hate that woman," he said with a sigh.