‘She’s dead.’ Logan’s voice held a quiet reverence.

Thawn found her jaw slack as she gazed up at the hanging form of the husk of a Borg Queen. When she managed to speak, her throat felt as if she’d been screaming. ‘I thought,’ she rasped, ‘Admiral Picard killed the Queen months ago.’

‘He killed a body.’ Logan stepped slowly about the suspended cadaver, eyes locked on the rotten remains of the heart of the Collective. ‘Starfleet’s killed Queens before… Wolf 359, Sector 001, Voyager killed at least one before the pathogen’s release. These are just vessels.’

Thawn swallowed. ‘They exist simultaneously?’

His expression creased. ‘Perhaps.’

‘You don’t know? You were in the Collective -’

‘Knowledge, memory from in the Collective… it doesn’t work like that. We didn’t conceive of the Queen as an individual drone just because she inhabited specific bodies.’ His voice creaked like words struggled to contain the meaning he needed to convey. ‘But these aren’t just vessels for a programme. For at least a time, this was the Queen.’

At last, Thawn fumbled her tricorder up to run the scan. ‘This flesh has definitely been decomposing for over ten years. But it’s hard to be sure because of the cybernetics.’ Where skin and muscle had rotted away, it was not bone beneath but tarnished metal.

‘This Diamond carried a queen on an important mission sometime after the pathogen’s release,’ Logan breathed. ‘Then the corruption must have killed her and disconnected the ship. It’s been lost ever since.’

The ship had not been silent. Throughout its dim and wretched chambers, echoes of metal had sounded out, reverberations of the deck. The Diamond may have been dying, but it was not dead. But the next rumble that ran through the plating was something else, a deeper hum accompanied by a distant whirring. Logan and Thawn both froze, and from behind them, Cortez said, ‘Oh, shit.’

They turned to see the engineer at the central panels, all lit up now. She looked back at them, eyes widening. ‘Guys? The ship’s reactivating.’

‘That’s what the probe was doing,’ gasped Logan. ‘Reconnecting the Diamond. The Cube must have been looking for this ship to recover the Queen.’

‘Can we stop this?’ said Thawn quickly. ‘There’s so much damage here, this thing can’t be reactivated immediately. Can we access the systems, shut things down, lock the probe out?’

Cortez ran her hands over the controls and shrugged. ‘There’s nothing I can do. It looks like this chamber’s been locked out from manual interface.’

‘It is,’ said Logan, and Thawn caught his eyes on the dangling interlink cables. ‘The Queen connects to the Diamond directly from here. She’s still plugged in. Even if she’s dead, only she could disconnect this room.’

‘Then we need to find,’ said Thawn, ‘somewhere else.’

Another light flashed on the control panels, and Cortez slid across to it. ‘What the… the Diamond’s detecting another transwarp conduit opening.’

‘It’s already generating one and getting out of here?’ said Thawn.

‘The Diamond didn’t do this. Something’s coming out.’

‘The probe must have sent a signal for backup,’ said Logan.

‘It’s not the Borg.’ Cortez turned to face them, stunned. ‘It’s Endeavour.’

‘Conduit integrity is collapsing.’ Airex didn’t speak loudly, but his urgency carried his words across the bridge. ‘We have to leave now.’

‘Exiting transwarp!’ called Lindgren in the affirmative. ‘Hang on!’

Valance’s grip on the armrests of the captain’s chair was iron-tight. ‘All hands, brace! Red alert!’

Endeavour tumbled back to impulse speed like a warp field had collapsed around her. Inertial dampeners worked enough to stop them from being smeared against bulkheads, but did little short of that. Athaka was thrown from his station at Ops, Beckett had to crawl back into the tertiary command chair, and Lindgren worked well to stay at her controls. The ship slowed and steadied, and the crew gathered themselves.

Kharth had somehow kept her position through willpower alone. ‘Report. What’s our status?’

‘All systems operational,’ groaned Athaka.

‘Navigational deflectors took a pounding,’ said Qadir, ‘but we’re ready.’

‘Airex.’ Valance looked to her right. ‘Where are we?’

He took a second to check. ‘At least two hundred light-years from our point of origin, Captain. Right where we intended to be.’

Shepherd let out a low whistle. ‘You mean we just ripped the Borg’s own transwarp conduit back open and rode piggyback, and it worked?’

‘Only because of the subspace fractures from the collapse of the Cube’s initial conduit and how recently the probe had entered transwarp,’ said Airex, jaw tight. ‘This was a one-way transwarp ticket.’

Valance opened her mouth to point out they could deal with one problem at a time, but there was a chirrup from Tactical. ‘Captain.’ Qadir’s voice took on fresh urgency. ‘There’s a Borg ship out there. Bigger than anything I’ve… ever heard of.’

She stood. ‘On screen.’

The Diamond looked like someone had taken a Cube, tilted and warped and stretched it. But she could see the scoring on the hull, the rending in its body, the damage it had taken. They were in deep space, light-years from any planets and here, in the dark between the stars, they had finally found their objective. A stronghold the likes of which she’d hoped to never see for herself.

‘It’s on low power,’ said Airex, hands racing over controls. ‘Definitely not fully operational. But…’ He clicked his tongue. ‘It looks like it’s regenerating. I can detect the Alpha Wreck probe; it’s docked with the Diamond and is running on full power.’

‘Captain, I think this ship hasn’t been operational for a long time,’ Qadir added. ‘Looking at its shield profile and defences.’

‘This was it,’ breathed Beckett. ‘The Cube was on a repair mission. A rescue mission.’

‘Then let’s not get in each other’s way,’ said Valance sharply. ‘Mister Athaka, can you detect our people?’

‘Negative, Captain.’

‘The Diamond has its shields up; it’s blocking our scans,’ said Qadir.

Kharth stood. ‘Then we go and get them.’ She looked at Valance. ‘Permission to take the Excalibur out.’

Airex leaned forward. ‘If the Excalibur can get close enough, it should be possible to bypass the Diamond’s shields and beam them out.’

‘If,’ said Shepherd, brow furrowing, ‘you can find them.’

Valance drew a sharp breath. ‘Commander Kharth, take Airex and Lindgren and get the Excalibur out there. Bring our people back.’

Beckett got to his feet. ‘I’m going with them.’

Valance stared at him for a moment. She knew she should shut him down but knew what that was asking of him: to sit by her side, silent and pointless, while this unfolded. More importantly, she didn’t have time for an argument. ‘Go,’ she said.

The away team had jumped into a turbolift when Qadir’s console chirruped again. Now his voice dropped a pitch. ‘Captain, the Diamond is activating weaponry. I think it’s spotted us. And it’s not happy.’

‘We didn’t come here to make Borg happy.’ She turned to the front, hands behind her back. ‘We cover the Excalibur. Draw the Diamond’s attention if we have to. Let them rescue our people, then we run.’

And hope they don’t chase us.

‘What are they doing?’ hissed Logan, looking over Cortez’s shoulder at the display.

‘Rescuing us, I guess,’ said Cortez.

‘They’re going to get themselves killed.’

Thawn said, ‘How did they even get here?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cortez, looking between control panel displays. ‘But it’s pissed the Diamond off. This thing’s still a wreck, but its self-repair protocols have been activated by the probe or the Collective, an’ even on a bad day it can eat Endeavour for breakfast.’

‘We need to signal them,’ said Thawn. ‘Find a way to help them beam us out of here.’

‘I still,’ said Cortez through gritted teeth, ‘can’t do anything. And we don’t know where to go. Back to the probe?’

‘That’s got all of its systems working,’ said Thawn. ‘If it’s activating combat protocols, it’ll be maybe even harder to override. We have to do something.’

‘I don’t know what!’ Cortez snapped.

‘I do.’

They turned to find Logan had walked away from the controls and stood before the Queen. In his hand was one of the dangling interface cables. He stared at it as if it were something alien, incomprehensible, when Thawn knew he understood only too well exactly what he held in his hand.

‘Jack.’ Cortez’s voice was tight. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

‘This Diamond ain’t fully reconnected to the Collective, is it?’ he said, looking at her. ‘The probe’s transmitted reactivation protocols, its local network is still up, but it ain’t taking its marching orders from the Collective yet, right?’

‘I… I think you’re right.’ Cortez’s words tumbled over each other. ‘But I don’t pretend to understand this.’

‘And if we let the Diamond carry on, it’s gonna blow up the ship. Assimilate ‘em. Assimilate us. Yeah. You’re right.’ Logan looked back at the interface tube. ‘I shouldn’t do nothin’ stupid.’ Then he rammed the connector into the back of his neck.

‘Let the record show,’ said Lindgren as the Excalibur swung under her command away from Endeavour and towards the Diamond, ‘that this is a terrible idea.’

‘You can stay on the bridge,’ Beckett said roughly from the co-pilot seat beside her.

Lindgren glared at him. ‘Rosara was my friend first. You can stop being a dick.’

Normally, even Kharth would have flinched at Lindgren, of all people, lashing out. Today was not normal. ‘Shut up and focus,’ she snapped from the runabout’s tactical controls. ‘We’ve got one shot at this.’

‘And we need to be fast,’ said Airex. ‘The Diamond is reactivating its systems. The longer we take, the more resilient its defences will be, and the harder it’ll be for us to beam them out.’

Through the canopy, the Diamond loomed larger and larger, and Kharth’s chest tightened as she realised it was, in fact, on the move. At the front, Beckett read from his display. ‘Endeavour is on the move. She’s looping around the far side to draw their attention.’

‘It’s a Diamond,’ sighed Kharth. ‘It doesn’t have a weak side.’

‘All the more reason to be fast,’ said Airex. ‘The Diamond still has limited power for allocation. Diverting its attention helps us. In time, it’ll swat Endeavour with one hand and not even blink about pinching us out with the other.’

‘So we fly right at it,’ said Lindgren. ‘Simple. Great.’

‘It is definitely,’ said Kharth, ‘simple. Do it, Lieutenant.’

‘Regeneration protocols active. Enemy ship identified bearing one-seven-five-mark-four-two. Directive: eliminate.’ The voice emanating from Logan’s mouth was his and yet not his, echoing and reverberating. He hung from the interface tube, limp and yet ramrod-straight, standing in the shadows of the rotting Queen above him.

‘Did we,’ said Cortez in a small voice, ‘just make this real worse?’

‘He’s not gone,’ said Thawn. ‘I can still sense him. I can sense them, but he’s still… him.’

Logan’s eyes snapped open, ink-black. ‘We will be one again.’

‘You sure?’ Cortez squeaked.

‘Oh,’ said Thawn. ‘Definitely not.’

‘Regeneration protocol priority: Alpha. Elimination protocol priority: Alpha. Override: Rejected.’ Logan twitched, and for a heartbeat, his eyes cleared, and he looked up at them. ‘…can’t… shut this back down…’

When Thawn looked over, she found Cortez had drawn her phaser. ‘I won’t let you screw this worse, Jack,’ the engineer said shakily.

Grey eyes locked on her. ‘Good.’ Then they turned black as night again. Logan spasmed once more, then stiffened as he said, ‘Core meltdown protocol identified. Access… denied. Denied. Denied…’

Thawn rushed to Cortez’s side and put a hand on her forearm. ‘Wait. He’s trying to…’

‘Core meltdown protocol accessed.’ Logan’s head snapped back up. His eyes were still black, but Thawn was certain they were on them both. ‘Execute?’

‘Kill us all,’ said Cortez. ‘He’s trying to kill us all.’ But she lowered her phaser. ‘We can’t raise Endeavour. It looks like they can’t punch through our shields.’ She turned back to the control panel, gaze racing over the feed. ‘Endeavour’s going to engage them. They’re going to get obliterated.’

‘And then,’ said Thawn, ‘there’s a Borg Diamond, active probably on the front door of the Romulans or the Klingons, just as the whole Collective is waking up.’

Logan’s next breath came in a ragged gasp as if his body had forgotten to breathe. His voice rasped as he repeated, almost pleadingly, ‘Execute?’

‘Shit,’ sighed Cortez. ‘You really want to do this, Jack?’

‘Designation… Chief of Security, USS Endeavour. Directive… protect the ship. No…’ He grunted, now straining. Thawn saw tendons standing out on his neck, and once more, Logan spasmed. ‘Designation, Jack Logan. I am… not theirs. I am… not helpless.’

Thawn looked from him at Cortez. If she thought for very long, she realised, she’d be able to feel terror. All there was for now was a dull, thudding sense of understanding of the situation before them. ‘Is there any other way we can shut down this Diamond?’

‘If the Diamond’s new Queen can’t do it?’ Cortez inhaled slowly through her nostrils, and she turned back to Logan. ‘You ain’t helpless, Jack. It’s your play. We’ll follow.’

Another grunt as Logan’s eyes screwed shut. Then, ‘Core meltdown initiated. Maintaining control… preventing override…’

Cortez stepped up beside Thawn, and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘That’ll take a minute or two to really blow,’ she said quietly.

‘Of course,’ said Thawn, her voice rather distant. ‘This is going to happen. And they won’t know. They won’t know it was us, they’ll just think it was some accident. Nobody will know.’

‘The Collective will know.’ Logan’s strained voice echoed in the dark chamber. ‘An’ when they get to hell, they can say who sent ‘em.’

Cortez was thoughtfully silent after that assessment. ‘Lotta ways I thought I’d go. This weren’t it.’

Thawn gave a tiny nod. ‘But it’ll keep them safe. Right?’