‘We’ve stopped.’ Cortez’s voice was tinny in the gloom, but sounded louder when she reactivated her suit’s torch, and light spilt across the Borg probe’s control room. ‘Dropped out of transwarp, at least.’

Thawn stepped out of the corner she’d been crouched in and advanced on the central panel. Gingerly, she reached for the controls. Hope surged as they sprang to life, bathing the chamber in the Collective’s hues of sickly green, but it was short-lived. She swore. ‘We’re still locked out.’

‘When it processed them coordinates, it triggered a directive.’ Logan’s voice echoed from nearer the door of the chamber. ‘Sounds like that ain’t yet complete.’

They’d lost control of the probe seemingly the moment its navigational systems had realised what it had been fed. None of Thawn or Cortez’s cleverness, or Logan’s experience, could get them access to the systems after that. The Borg technology had bull-rushed through all of their precautions, and before they could come up with any way of circumventing these defences, the probe had jumped to transwarp. It was as if they weren’t there for how little the probe cared for them, and Cortez had soon enough suggested they kill unnecessary lights to preserve power. If it weren’t for their equipment, they’d never have known how long they’d waited. Thawn’s tricorder said eight hours. Her sense of time said either eight minutes or eight centuries.

‘We’re still moving,’ Cortez said after a moment, head cocked as she listened to, felt the ship around her. ‘Impulse. Manoeuvring a bit. We must be headed to something.’

‘More bad news,’ said Thawn, checking the tricorder on the forearm of her suit. ‘We lost the Lancelot somewhere along the way.’

‘Taking a docked shuttle into a transwarp conduit was never gonna end well,’ sighed Cortez.

Logan looked to Thawn. ‘Any chance of accessing even comms?’

‘Maybe,’ mused Cortez, ‘we can manually connect our tricorder to their transmitter and use that to -’

The rest of the words were lost to Thawn as something unseen hit her. It felt like a two-fold blow to the gut and skull and was enough to physically bend her double, force her to grab the console to not fall over. Head swimming, ears ringing, it took moments before she realised Logan had taken hold of her and was pulling her upright.

‘Thawn. You still with us?’ Despite the circumstances, despite the personal hell he had to be going through on top of their nightmare, his eyes were still kind, worried.

‘They’re out there,’ she breathed, throat hoarse. ‘We’re getting closer.’

His brow knotted. ‘More Borg?’

‘Yes.’ But uncertainty shone through. ‘There’s just… something wrong.’

‘They won’t feel like the minds you’re used to…’

‘No, I felt that at Lockney.’ She pressed a gloved hand to her temple. ‘I don’t know how to explain it. Pain.’

Cortez watched as Logan’s head snapped around. ‘You look like you got an idea, Jack.’

‘I got a lot of ideas. None of ‘em good.’ He looked back at Thawn. ‘What can we do?’

‘I can manage it.’ Thawn slowed her breathing. ‘I can block them out. It just takes concentration. I didn’t expect this.’

‘There’s nothing here that’s in expectations,’ said Cortez, jaw tight. The deck rumbled beneath them, and they all had to grab hold of something to stay upright. The engineer swore. ‘That felt like we’re docking.’

‘There’s a Borg structure out here,’ said Logan, ‘and the probe’s found it. This must be what the Cube was looking for.’

‘What I’d give,’ sighed Cortez, ‘for a window.’

Beside Thawn, the control panel flooded back to life. She turned, squinting and checking her tricorder as data scrolled across the screen. ‘The probe’s trying to establish a network connection.’ She frowned. ‘It looks like it’s trying different engagement protocols?’

‘So much for a Collective,’ said Cortez.

Logan leaned over Thawn’s shoulder, his lips moving silently for a moment. ‘Even the Collective changes and develops and advances its software and security. That’s the point of going out there and assimilating everyone. This looks like it’s rolling back to try… older and older protocols?’

‘I still can’t do anything but watch,’ said Thawn, pressing buttons to no avail. ‘Do we check the airlocks?’

‘You mean, board whatever we’ve just docked with?’ Cortez’s shoulders slumped. ‘Might as well stick bad ideas on top of bad ideas.’

‘We might be able to find some system we can access and put out a distress signal,’ Thawn pressed.

Logan shook his head. ‘We’ve travelled for eight hours via transwarp. Help is days away. Even if the drones aboard whatever this is don’t care about us, we don’t have days’ worth of supplies.’

She turned to him, frowning. ‘Even the Borg must need sustenance. I don’t care if we have to find their nutrient paste dispenser and jury-rig it; so long as the drones here don’t move against us, we’ve got a chance.’ Had she not been pushing back against her senses, she suspected she would have felt the helplessness roiling off him. However much he had tried to help her, support her, the look in his eye said it all. Logan didn’t think they had a chance.

Cortez cleared her throat. ‘Well, I’m not sitting here twiddling my thumbs until the drones come for us or we die of starvation. I say we make more bad ideas… and I’m in charge. Airlock it is.’

They had to troop deeper into the probe to find one that had connected to whatever they were docked with. But within minutes, Cortez was tapping the tricorder on her suit’s forearm and nodding. ‘Seal’s good. We can enter here.’

‘Do we need helmets?’ Thawn said cautiously.

‘Drones can survive a vacuum,’ said Logan, ‘but it’s standard for a ship to keep a breathable atmo. Of course, something’s damned wrong here…’

‘Calm down, both of you,’ hissed Cortez. ‘Of course I checked.’

‘What,’ wondered Thawn aloud, ‘is there to calm down about?’

This question was not made easier by Cortez managing to wrangle the airlock doors open, and beyond spilt the vast interior of a Borg ship. Thawn had seen pictures, spent weeks scouring the Federation’s records. But even though she knew better, on some level she’d expected a warren of tight, dark tunnels infested with drones, all like the wreck they’d nearly died on at Lockney.

Instead, it was a cavernous hall, an amphitheatre, a cathedral. Deep into the humid mists of the warm interior stretched a vast chamber, the bulkheads lined by decks where she could see rows upon rows of alcoves for drones. Many were empty. Some were not. Across the chamber criss-crossed gantries and walkways, interconnecting before they led to an elevated metal diamond in the centre.

‘What’s that?’ Thawn breathed, knowing there were so many possible answers to the question.

‘This,’ said Cortez, ‘isn’t like any Cube or Sphere’s configuration I ever saw.’

Beside them, Logan took a faltering step back. ‘No,’ he gasped. ‘Oh, hell, no.’

Cortez turned. ‘What?’

He might have stepped back again, but Cortez grabbed his arm. Eyes wide, Logan looked at her and shook his head. ‘This is a Diamond.’

‘Oh,’ said Cortez in a dull tone, just as Thawn said, ‘What?’

‘Command and control centres,’ Logan said, voice empty. ‘It should be at the hub of a massive Borg operation, it should house…’ He faltered. ‘Countless drones.’

Thawn took a ginger step onto the gantry, her eyes sweeping across the chamber, across the alcoves. Cautiously, she expanded her telepathic senses an iota, like half-opening eyes squeezed shut. Her breath caught. ‘These drones are… confused. Addled.’

‘Jack.’ Cortez spoke quietly, firmly. ‘When Rosara first felt stuff, you had a thought, an inkling. This isn’t a normal Diamond, is it? Not if this is what the Cube was looking for.’

‘Or,’ said Logan, ‘the probe took the data and has run home and we’re in deep -’

‘That’s not what you thought!’ Cortez pressed. ‘Assume, for a moment, we’re not dead. What did you think?’

He closed his eyes, breathing slowing. Then he said, ‘The pathogen.’

Thawn looked back at him. ‘Voyager’s?’

He nodded. ‘The Collective was shattered by it. Countless ships were lost. Destroyed, weakened, disconnected. If this is what the Cube was looking for… if the probe’s had to try to connect to this Diamond using old protocols… if the drones aren’t acting cohesively… then maybe this is a Diamond that fell to the pathogen, and was lost from the Collective.’

‘Then the Cube was trying to recover a command-level asset,’ said Cortez, nodding enthusiastically like he was a child being talked through his maths homework. ‘That makes sense, right?’

‘That means,’ said Thawn, looking up to the central, elevated chamber, ‘these systems might not fight back so much if we try to get access.’

‘Or the drones will be erratic. Unpredictable,’ Logan warned, eyes opened again. But he drew another breath and nodded again. ‘There might be another probe aboard. Something we can commandeer. I don’t like the odds of it, but…’

‘But it’s better than curling up and dying,’ said Cortez with forced cheer. ‘So we go find a bay?’

He shook his head. ‘We want the control centre. We need to figure out the state of things.’

As one, they turned to the network of gantries spilling up to the central, elevated diamond chamber. Cortez swore. ‘Then let’s go.’ She patted her holstered phaser. ‘And hope we don’t gotta blast our way through.’

‘If we blast,’ said Logan, falling back to take up the rear, ‘then we’re screwed.’

‘Come on, Jack. We’re already screwed.’ Cortez gave him a wink, then led the way.

The drones paid them no mind. It was nothing like what Thawn had read about, of the drones impassively going about their business. Some stood in their alcoves, unmoving, regenerating. Others were slumped over, perhaps inert or dead, left where they had fallen. Others were worse, still. One stood and stared at a corner as they passed, and Thawn nearly jumped out of her skin when, at the last second, it raised a hand – only to tap at a bulkhead as if it were an access panel, ignoring them.

The hot air made her squirm in her suit, sweat cascading down the back of her neck. It made her chest feel tight, like a swamp was taking up residence in her lungs, as if the atmosphere of a Borg ship was an infection, a miasma. They’d only brought single water bottles with their supplies, and while she let herself have a swig as they proceeded, she didn’t dare guzzle as deep as she craved.

Then a drone before them, stood stock still as it had loomed in silhouette on the gantry ahead, turned in one sharp movement. Thawn yelped, fumbled her water bottle – then it fell, tumbling out into the oblivion of the open chamber. She did not hear it land and didn’t care as the drone came staggering towards them, faster than any she’d seen move before, a loping, lopsided, dragging pace.

‘To the side!’ Logan barked, and they flattened themselves against the gantry railing. The loping drone barged past them, shoving into Cortez, who almost toppled over. Thawn grabbed her, felt the drone’s elbow in the side of her suit, heard Logan grunt –

Then it had passed, bull-rushing them as if they were nothing, and carried on its loping, nightmarish march down the gantry.

‘How long,’ she gasped once she had voice again, ‘do you think this Diamond’s been separated?’

‘Impossible to say,’ whispered Logan, sounding nevertheless very loud in the tense quiet. ‘These ships are real self-sufficient. Could have been the whole fifteen years.’

Cortez exhaled slowly. ‘We’re at the gantry up. Let’s go.’

They ascended, staggering up steps, moving into the interweaving walkways heading up to the central diamond. The view was not much improved by being able to see more, because what they could see was this ragged and broken army of drones. Even if only one in ten acted as a Borg drone should, that was enough to hold an armada at bay.

The doors to the final chamber were sealed, but Cortez swung to the access panel, popped her tricorder and set to work. ‘The security protocols on this ain’t great. I can do this.’

Thawn shifted her feet. ‘I know we want to do that. But do we want to do that?’

Logan handed her his water bottle. ‘One foot in front of the other.’ He was, she thought, much more in control if he had somebody else to reassure or worry about. That was a little comfort. It meant that she could help the team by letting herself freak out because then Logan would be freaking out less.

‘Right. Got it. Be ready; if anything pisses them all off, this is gonna be it.’ Cortez stepped away from the panel and keyed a button on her forearm pad. The door slid open.

Only darkness greeted them. Then their next inhales took a lungful of stale, putrid air, and Thawn gagged. ‘What is that…’

‘Oh,’ breathed Logan, his eyes wide. It was a simple word. A simple sound. But he filled it with horror and reverence, shock and awe, and before any of them had rallied, he had activated the flashlight on his suit and advanced with his arm raised. Trying to not gag, they followed.

The humidity in this chamber was even deeper, the torches breaking the darkness but not fully breaching the mist. Still, all they saw at first was four control banks arranged in a square, and while the gleam of their systems reflected off their lights, they were not active. Nor was there any sign of drone, active or dead, and there was nothing to account for the heavy putrescence they had sunk deeper into.

‘I get,’ said Cortez, her voice echoing in the dark, ‘that even drones use control panels. That the ships don’t fully run themselves. But what needs a, a control centre like this?’

Thawn knew the answer. She knew Cortez knew the answer. And Logan most certainly knew the answer as his eyes turned skywards into darkness. He could see through it better than them, and it was for their benefit that he lifted his arm, and the torch, slowly.

‘I was afraid of that,’ he sighed, somehow sounding calm despite the sheer terror and horror roiling off him that Thawn couldn’t help but be bathed in stood by his side. ‘‘Cos it’s simple. She needed it.’

The flashlight fell on a shape hanging over them, and Thawn had to bite back a whimper. But the shape didn’t move, didn’t react, and even as murderous shadows amplified the silhouetted figure, cascading them across the bulkhead, all was still and all was silent.

Suspended by her own regeneration system, hanging limp from the bulkheads above them, rotten and putrescent where there was flesh, plating dull where there was metal, there was no mistaking what they had found. Who they had found. They had reached it, the heart of this Borg Diamond, and found it truly dead.

Found a Borg Queen hanging above them, and she was truly dead.