Star Trek: Voyager: Endgame

second. Was it too late? Was it?
    The shuttle rocked from side to side. The cloak!
    A beam had hold of her, forcing the shuttle to drop its cloaking energy!
    Her arms and legs tensed. She felt the buzz of a Borg transporter beam. She'd been found!



CHAPTER 17

    T HE ADMIRAL MATERIALIZED IN FRONT OF THE B ORG Q UEEN — THIS time in the flesh—burdened with the knowledge that she had greatly miscalculated almost everything. She counted on the idea that the past was primitive and she had all the advantages. She had enjoyed her communication with the Queen, had taken time to enjoy herself after so many years of anticipation.
    Now she was caught, and the Queen had her in the Unicomplex, and had possession of the shuttle without having had to come up to the admiral's deal.
    This was a critical error, and Admiral Janeway had allowed it to happen.
    “Very clever,” the Borg Queen murmured, “hiding right on my doorstep. Were you planning to attack us from inside the Unicomplex?”
    The admiral stiffened her lips. She must not speak, not give away anything more.
    “Not feeling talkative?” the Queen chided. “That's all right.”
    The attack came again from the Queen's wrist, but this time there was no protection from the technological shield of illusion. This time the admiral was physically here. The assimilation tubule hurt—a piercing agony at the admiral's throat. Borg technology began instantly to ripple beneath her skin.
    “You and I don't need words to understand each other,” the Queen said.
    The admiral felt her body collapse, her eyes go dark. She gave herself to the the whispering web of a billion Borg voices on their way into her mind.
    But she saw other things in her mind too. Now linked to the Collective, she also saw the the
Starship Voyager
plunge into the nebula clearing, back into the eye of threat's private hurricane. The bridge must be a tense place right now, alight with anxiety and excitement. And yet there was a thrill in the eyes of the officers, all of them as a team, with a single purpose—Janeway, Chakotay, Seven, Paris, Kim, Tuvok—all together again, strong and young. Despite the horrors, this was what they had all been trained for, what they had all intended to do with their talents when they signed on with Starfleet.
    The transwarp hub loomed before the suddenly tiny ship. Without altering course or engaging evasive cautionary maneuvers, the ship entered one of the glowing apertures in the great wheel. With a flash of light, it disappeared.
    The admiral had no idea whose point of view she was witnessing. She listened, helpless to move or react, to the voice of the Collective.
    VOYAGER HAS ENTERED APERTURE EIGHT TWO THREE
    ACCESS: TRANSWARP CORRIDOR ZERO NINE
    * * *
    She now saw a mental picture of herself slumped against a console, her skin gray-blue, mottled, with Borg implants pressed to her features. Before her, the Borg Queen seemed satisfied and curious.
    REDIRECT VESSELS TO INTERCEPT CORRIDOR NINE VOYAGER U.S.S.
    ZERO NINE TRANSWARP
    INTERCEPT COMPLY JANEWAY JANEWAY
    UNABLE TO COMPLY
    The voices were suddenly muddled by a high-pitched whine. The Queen reacted with pain and stumbled.
    Admiral Janeway summoned her sheer force of will and blinked her eyes. The whine began to die down, but the voices of the Borg cacophony were now poisoned with echoes and overlays, jumbled and disparate. There was a nonsensical ring to them now.
    ZERO TRANSWARP
    UNABLE
    COMPLYING VOYAGER NINE CORRIDOR
    The Queen spread her arms in disorientation. Panic painted itself across her face.
    The admiral felt a tiny smile on her own lips. “Must be . . . something . . . you assimilated . . .”
    “What have you done?” the Queen cried.
    “I thought we didn't . . . need words to . . . understand each other.”
    The Queen endured a shooting pain. Beside her, a console exploded, bathing her in sparks. “You've infected us! A neurolytic pathogen!”
    Admiral Janeway found the next smile much easier.
    “Just enough to bring chaos to order,” she said. Her voice was stronger! “Your conduit's shielding is destabilizing . . . look . . . let's watch together, Your Majesty . . .
Voyager
is firing its transphasic torpedoes . . . they're ripping through the interspatial manifold . . .”
    “Voyager
will be destroyed,” the Queen spoke sluggishly.
    “They're ahead of the shock waves,” the admiral said, just to prove she knew. “They'll survive . . . Captain Janeway and I made sure of that . . . it's