“Captain’s probably hoping to lose ’em in there,” one of the security guards said.

  “All right,” Kieran said, “let’s get to work. We need to seal the breach and get this damn blast door back up.”

  They were the worst days of Sonya Gomez’s life.

  The loss of Denny Russell had hit her the hardest. They’d been classmates at the Academy, after all. His deadpan calm had always been a welcome contrast to Sonya’s nervous enthusiasm.

  But all of them were devastating losses to the Enterprise. The eight whose bodies hadn’t been scanned were found wedged into odd parts of engineering after they sealed the breach. It hadn’t been easy—working in a nebula with the Borg searching for you made for difficult and tense work—but they did it. Nine of the nineteen were the security guards assigned to engineering when the ship was at red alert, who would not have left until all the engineers were out. The ten engineers’ names were imprinted on Sonya’s brain from seeing it on a display: AMPALAYON, BRACKEN, BRUNER, DELLA GUARDIA, EL’SRYK, FRIEDEL, MEYERS, RUSSELL, T’LOTA, ZELENETSKY.

  As soon as engineering was back online, Geordi came back along with Data and Wes, and shared with the others the plan to modify the deflector dish to emit a high-EM phaser blast big enough to take out the Borg cube. What was left of all three shifts of engineering was tasked with this, and some people from security were brought in to assist.

  Still, the names flashed in Sonya’s vision, but she refused to let it get to her, not when they were forced to leave the nebula, not when the Borg subsequently attacked them, not when the Borg kidnapped the captain, and not when the Borg cube broke off and made a beeline for Earth.

  We’ll have time to grieve later.

  Shelby had taken a team over to the Borg cube to get it out of warp drive, and possibly rescue Picard. Once they were at impulse, the ship’s warp power had to be transferred to the deflector so they could use the weapon. Sonya was standing at the warp core, her hand hovering over the control that would execute the program she and Reg Barclay had hastily written to perform the transfer. For now, they were pounding away at warp nine-point-six just to keep up. In less than an hour, they’d have to shut down the warp engines anyhow, just to keep the structural integrity field from failing. As it was, Kieran was standing over the SIF readout with the same nervous tension that Sonya hovered over her console, keeping an eye on it to make sure it didn’t break down sooner.

  Then the Borg ship went out of warp. Wes took the ship to impulse, and as soon as the warp engines stopped, Sonya ran the program. “Power being diverted to the deflector.”

  Kieran smiled grimly. “SIF reading nominal.”

  From the tactical systems station, Marguerite Sherman said, “Deflector at seventy percent power and rising.”

  A feed was coming in from the bridge. Sonya had been barely paying attention to it until the away team reported back. What caught her ear were Worf’s words, in reference to the captain, whom they did not rescue: “He is a Borg.”

  Oh my God.

  Reg shot a nervous look at Sonya. “He—he is a Borg? What does—what does that mean?”

  Sonya shook her head. “I wish I knew.” She shuddered. “No, I take it back, I don’t wish I knew. Not even a little.”

  Riker was arguing with Shelby and Crusher about getting the captain back versus firing the weapon—with Riker on the side of firing the weapon—when the Borg hailed the ship.

  The voice technically belonged to that of Jean-Luc Picard. It was the voice that Sonya still heard in bad dreams about hot chocolate saying, “Yes, Ensign, it’s all over me.” But now, the voice that had distressed her a year and a half ago was a dull, mechanized montone.

  “I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service us.”

  Riker’s voice followed. “Mr. Worf—fire.”

  Marguerite said, “Power’s building. Energy discharge in six seconds.”

  Everyone in engineering moved to stand behind Marguerite to see the weapon that would devastate the Borg.

  The energy beam hit the Borg cube.

  And had no effect.

  “No,” Sonya muttered.

  From the bridge, Worf confirmed: “The Borg ship is undamaged.”

  “It can’t be.” That sounded like Shelby.

  “We’re losing the coolant!” Reg said.

  That was followed by the computer’s confirmation, which was scarier in its matter-of-factness than Reg’s hysterical ranting. “Warning: Warp reactor core primary coolant failure. Warning: Exceeding reactor chamber thermal limits.”

  Marguerite said, “Warp engines shutting down—weapon powering down,” which matched what they were saying on the bridge.

  “They couldn’t have adapted that quickly,” Riker said.

  “The knowledge and experience of the human Picard is part of us now. It has prepared us for all possible courses of action. Your resistance is hopeless, Number One.”

  Hearing Locutus’s dry, mechanical tones speak with Picard’s voice chilled Sonya to her toes. We’re dead.

  Kieran said quietly, “The Borg ship’s leaving.”

  Or not. Sonya wasn’t sure why the Borg didn’t finish them off, but gift horses had bad breath, as her sister always said. “All right, we need to get warp drive, deflectors, and shields back online. Let’s move it, people.”

  Later on, when she would tell people about it, they would say it was anticlimactic. Sonya thought that was insane, and said so. They chased the Borg—who plowed through a Starfleet armada at Wolf 359—to Earth, managing to bring Picard back home along the way. Or, rather, Locutus, as the captain was still a Borg drone. But Data was able to use Locutus—with some subconscious help from Picard himself—to put the Borg to sleep. The cube exploded over Earth shortly after that.

  The first person to give the anticlimactic declaration was Belinda, whose face on the comm screen looked disappointed. “That’s the best you guys could do.”

  “I’m not about to argue with the results, Bee.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re home, at least, mija. You gonna come down and see us?”

  Evasively, Sonya said, “I don’t know…depends on the repair schedule.” Belinda’s soccer career had come to an end due to a knee injury, and she was back living with Mami and Papi—which, unfortunately, was tense for everyone, as Mami was not pleased that her eldest daughter had come home. Sonya really didn’t want to face the familial strife after barely surviving the Borg.

  “How’s that boyfriend of yours?”

  She broke into a huge smile. “He’s wonderful. It’s been great—we just get along so well. We can talk about anything, really.”

  “But you just talk about engines, right?”

  Sonya was about to tartly answer in the negative, until she thought about it, and realized that she and Kieran did talk about work a lot. Then she remembered their last date before the Borg mess. “No, that’s not all we talk about. I loaned him my Brautigan book.”

  Belinda’s eyes went wide. “The one Papi gave you? Wow, this must be true love.”

  When she turned fifteen, Sonya’s father had given her a twenty-first-century leather-bound edition of The Complete Works of Richard Brautigan, which had become her favorite book. She had told Kieran about it, and he asked to borrow it, see what all the fuss was about, especially since he’d never heard of Brautigan.

  “So how’s he like the book?”

  “Don’t know, he hasn’t read it yet. Anyhow, things are going great with Kieran.”

  “Glad to hear it, Ess. Looks like you’re doing well on that luxury liner.”

  “It’s not a luxury liner!” Sonya said defensively, and proceeded to give a lecture to a laughing Belinda about the state-of-the-art nature of the Galaxy-class vessel.

  Eventually, they finished, and Sonya signed off, giving another evasive answer about whether she’d be able to get down to Vieques to visit the family. Then she went down to engineering, since her shift was about to start.

  She came across Kieran in the corridor. “I can’t win,” he said without preamble.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m finally back on Earth for the first time in years, so I figure, great, I can drop in on Mom and Amy, see how they’re doing. There’s only one problem.”

  Smiling impishly, Sonya said, “They’re on vacation on Betazed?”

  “They’re on vacation on Betazed. I completely forgot about that.”

  Kieran had told her about the vacation his mother and sister were taking two months ago. Somehow, Sonya couldn’t bring herself to be surprised that she remembered that and Kieran didn’t.

  “So now I’ve got nowhere to go, unless you have a better offer?” Kieran waggled his eyebrows.

  “Honestly, I don’t,” Sonya said quickly, trying to ignore the pit that opened in her stomach just then. “Belinda and Mami are at battle stations, and—”

  Kieran held up a hand. “Say no more.” He’d heard her stories about the on-again-off-again war between Guadalupe Gomez and her oldest daughter, and therefore knew that when it was on again, it was best to be elsewhere. “Tell you what. I suggest that we suck up mercilessly to Geordi and volunteer to stay on board during the repair cycle.”

  Sonya grinned. “Suits me fine.”

  Turning around, Kieran joined her in walking back to engineering, where they found Geordi talking to someone on a comm screen. They waited patiently until he was done, and when he turned around, Sonya saw a look he hadn’t had on his face since their trip to Starbase Montgomery a year and a half ago, which was also the last time engineers who didn’t report to Geordi got their hands on his engines.

  Seeing the two of them, Geordi quickly put on a happier face. “What can I do for the two of you?”

  “Sir,” Sonya said, “we’d like to volunteer to stay on board during the repairs—help you keep an eye on McKinley’s people.”

  Kieran grinned. “Make sure they don’t turn the warp core upside down or anything.”

  All the tension seemed to leave Geordi’s body. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear you two say that. I didn’t wanna ask anyone else to stay behind, but if you’re volunteering—”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Kieran said.

  “Thank you. I won’t forget this.”

  “Just name your firstborn after us, sir,” Kieran deadpanned.

  Geordi chuckled, and walked over to the warp core.

  Sonya stared up at him incredulously. “Are you nuts? Sonya Kieran La Forge would make a terrible name.”

  They laughed together, kissed quickly, and then Kieran headed off to his quarters while Sonya went on duty for the last formal shift before the repair cycle began.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Captain’s log, stardate 45130.1. We have turned Dr. Kila Marr over to the authorities on Starbase 413, following her unauthorized destruction of the crystalline entity. We are now proceeding to Mudor V.

  “Sonya, good, I need you to—”

  Before Geordi, who had just arrived from the bridge, could finish his sentence, Sonya said, “I’ve realigned the warp coils and run a level-two on the deuterium injectors. They looked a little spotty.”

  Geordi stopped in his tracks and shook his head. “I was just going to mention the warp coils. What was wrong with the injectors?”

  Sonya shrugged. “Nothing major, just a point-one reduction in the flow. I figured it was best to check. The diagnostic’ll be finished in half an hour.”

  “Great.” Geordi grinned. “You’re gonna work me out of a job, Lieutenant.”

  Again, she shrugged. “Just doing my job, Commander.” Not that it’s much of a challenge. She wasn’t so impolitic as to say that out loud, of course. “Of course,” right. Two and a half years ago, I would’ve blurted that out, along with fifteen other stupid things.

  But that was when she had reported on board. She had slowed down, and she’d learned not to babble—at least not so much.

  More to the point, though, she had learned the Enterprise—inside and out. She knew every trick of the warp drive, she knew every plasma conduit, every injector, every ODN conduit, every isolinear chip in the engine room, if not the entire vessel.

  There’s nothing left to learn.

  That wasn’t entirely fair. The ship had its share of surprises, from the faulty replacement piece from McKinley that caused a warp-core breach—and, indirectly, a witch-hunt on the Enterprise, before Picard put a stop to it—to Wesley’s experiment that trapped his mother in a warp bubble.

  Wesley was gone now, finally having enrolled in the Academy, which had disappointed Sonya, but had thrilled Tess Allenby, who had taken over at conn on alpha shift, only to transfer to the Lexington shortly thereafter, along with Gar Costa. The corner office had been reduced to herself, Kieran, and Helga, and had left the latter feeling like a third wheel.

  And then Helga had died rather brutally during the Enterprise’s encounter with some odd dark matter that had been phasing parts of the ship out of existence for brief seconds. The floor under Helga Van Mayter had done that, and rematerialized while she was in the middle of falling through it. It was one of the most grisly deaths Sonya had ever encountered, and it still gave her nightmares, which usually ended with her screaming and Kieran comforting her.

  With Tess, Lian, Wesley, and Gar gone, and Helga and Denny dead, Sonya found that she didn’t really have anyone left on board to talk to except for Geordi and Kieran. There were lots of new faces, including Martin Kopf and Robin Lefler, both recent Academy graduates who were thrilled to be assigned to the flagship. Sonya recognized their excitement from a distance, as she realized with a start that she no longer felt it. Indeed, she’d found herself avoiding Kopf and Lefler because they reminded her too much of how she used to be.

  The shift went uneventfully—a welcome respite after the tumult of their disastrous mission to the Melona IV colony and subsequent pursuit of the crystalline entity responsible for the planet’s destruction—and Sonya went back to her cabin, asking the computer for messages. She barely registered the usual litany of journals, personal messages from Mami and Papi, and various duty-related queries, but was shocked to hear the computer conclude the list with: “A communiqué from Captain Schönhertz of the U.S.S. Oberth.”

  Sonya blinked. I didn’t know the captain got the Oberth. Her old professor had always sworn she’d never take starship duty again, and Sonya wondered what had changed her mind.

  “Computer, play comm from Captain Schönhertz.”

  The round face and thick, curly blond hair of Katrine Schönhertz appeared on the small comm screen on her desk. “Hello, Sonya. I hope this message finds you well. I’ve been hearing good things about the work you’ve been doing on Enterprise. You’re probably wondering why I’m calling from a ship, since I said I’d never take starship duty again if my life depended on it. Well, my life doesn’t depend on it, but I got an offer I really couldn’t refuse. It’s a one-year project that will be studying some new ways of dealing with antimatter. We’ve got one slot left on the team, and I brought up your name. I’ve appended the missions specs to this message. This position is for a full-grade lieutenant who knows her way around an antimatter injector, so you fit the bill nicely—or, rather, you will shortly.” Schönhertz’s eyes suddenly went wide, and she said, “Okay, I wasn’t supposed to tell you about your impending promotion, but your CO’ll probably be giving you the good news in a day or two.”

  She barely listened to the rest of the message. I’m getting promoted! She was thrilled to see that her hard work had paid off and that she’d be advancing—

  —to another position on the Enterprise that wasn’t likely to be qualitatively different from the one she had now.

  Worse, even the vessel’s missions had become mundane. No, that’s not fair—nothing that happens on this ship can possibly qualify as mundane. But her complaint to Geordi that she wanted to be there when the Enterprise came across what was out there was now three years old, and after two Borg attacks, getting involved in a Klingon civil war, playing host to everyone from primitive colonists to Vulcan diplomats to transcendent aliens to Acamarian thugs to Counselor Troi’s insane mother, encounters with Shelliak, Romulans, Ansata terrorists, Gomtuu, Tallarians, two-dimensional creatures, and more spatial anomalies than she could shake a stick at, not to mention regular visits from Q, Sonya began to grow weary of it. Too many of those missions had body counts attached to them.

  Besides, she had her career to think of. Where could she go from here? Geordi wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and that pretty much cut off her only real avenue of advancement. If she was going to be a chief engineer, which was something she truly wanted, it wasn’t going to happen here unless something happened to Geordi, and that didn’t bear thinking about.

  And then there’s Kieran. With a shock she realized that she hadn’t even thought about him until now, which was horribly unfair, as Kieran had become very important to her. Indeed, he was pretty much the only thing tying her to the Enterprise right now.

  That’s not enough. It was a thought that left her sad. But she had worked too hard to become the best Starfleet officer she could. For three years, that meant learning the ropes on the flagship. Now, though, the best thing she could do for her career was move on.

  Schönhertz had said there was only one position, so Kieran couldn’t come with her. Besides which, Kieran had already made it clear on numerous occasions that he had very little ambition within Starfleet, which jibed with his slow promotion track. He’d be lucky to make lieutenant commander by the time he was forty. And he’d also said numerous times that he had no interest in leaving the Enterprise.

  Of course, that was before we started dating.

  Taking the transfer would mean breaking up with Kieran. Or at least separating from him.

  No, breaking up. She could barely keep up with duty and a relationship with somebody she served with. Subspace relationships were never, in Sonya’s experience, successful. The only ones she’d seen work were people who were already married or otherwise committed before the separation, and she and Kieran weren’t anywhere near that level yet.