Perfection, 10 of 28
"PERFECTION"
by Jim Smith
Fine print: I don't own Star Trek and I'm not claiming to. I just own the story. Ask me before you do anything with it.
Chapter Ten.
Left with the Borg Queen's cryptic message, Jimenez and Vystir set to work trying to understand her intentions. Within about two minutes, they silently agreed that Janeway was a distraction they could no longer tolerate, and returned the foredeck of the Hrunting.
Vystir was deeply upset. It had been years since she decided that Borg culture suited her peculiar social needs, and she had spent that time dreaming of the day she would greet the embodiment of that culture. But the Queen seemed dismissive of her, and more interested in Jimenez. There was no rational basis for this conclusion (why would the Queen distinguish between them?) but she couldn't avoid it. For all that she strived for the ideal Borg lifestyle, Vystir was still only an individual, prone to small emotional concerns. By sharing their thoughts, she and Jimenez could better resist their doubts and fears, but it was no Borg Collective.
"I am unworthy of assimilation," she eventually mumbled aloud.
Jimenez looked up from his workstation and put his hand on her shoulder. "That's not true."
"You heard the way she spoke to me," she went on. "She sees through me. I play at what she has achieved. I could never attain perfection..."
He wrapped his arms around her. "Merrani, nobody's perfect. Even the Borg are still working on it. I have to believe that when they assimilate the entire galaxy, they aren't going to just stand pat as a half-mechanical pseudo-race. They'll--we'll transcend all that and evolve into an...an existential singularity."
This intrigued her. "Nathan...your thoughts of that are so...beautiful..." She suddenly returned to her self-pity. "I am small...limited. I derive primitive pleasure from physical intimacy." She pushed out of his embrace.
"Come off of it," he told her. "I'm pretty sure most of the Borg liked to get laid before they were assimilated. You don't have to live up to their standard of perfection to add to it. But we do have to find out what the Queen wants from us."
Vystir slowly nodded, and focused her thoughts on the series of numbers the Queen had recited. Zero point zero three two eight eight five. It couldn't be the frequency of a signal, and the format didn't lend itself to a set of coordinates or a navigation heading. Try as she might, Vystir couldn't commit her full attention to the problem. Her insecurity about her fitness for assimilation began to snowball, as the insecurity itself became cause for self-doubt.
Jimenez recognized her continued anxiety, and resolved to put an end to it. Without warning, he pulled her back into his arms, and kissed her. She hadn't sensed his intent, and the surprise nearly panicked her. But that forced her to give in to impulse, which allowed her mind to unfold. As their mental rapport strengthened, Vystir returned his kiss, pushing against him until she had shoved him back against a bulkhead. She probed deep into his mind, further than she'd gone before, unearthing fleeting images from unremembered dreams. She forgot to be Borg, and gave herself over to becoming one.
After a few minutes of this they both suddenly pulled back. "Phase discrimination," they said simultaneously. The numbers were most likely the proper setting for a phase discriminator. The Borg used that technology to isolate the subspace domains that they used for drone-to-drone communications. Perhaps the general hailing frequency they'd used to get the Borg's attention wasn't secure enough for what the Queen wished to discuss. There was only one way to find out.
Jimenez returned to the pilot's seat as Vystir configured the shuttle's instruments. The Hrunting could cycle a transmission through a subspace domain generated by its transporters, but it was tricky to dial the phase discriminator to precisely 0.032885% positive displacement. Once she'd succeeded, Jimenez knew of it instantly, and wasted no time opening a communications channel.
Nothing. No audio but white noise, and no visual signal. Evidently just opening the channel wasn't enough to solve the Queen's little riddle. There was no way of knowing who was listening to the signal, but Jimenez decided he had nothing to lose. "Hello?"
"Who--?" The audio reception was now fuzzy, but tolerable. "Jimenez? Nathan?"
"Tirava?" Jimenez barely concealed his astonishment. He hadn't heard from the Andorian in nearly a month, when she and Kreighen had been separated from the rest of the Hrunting's crew. Kreighen hadn't been clear on what happened to her. "Tirava, it's me. Where are you?"
"Nathan! I thought they killed you! Are Ijhel and Ajax all right...?" She'd never expected to hear his voice again, so it took her a moment to realize that she shouldn't have expected to hear his voice in her head. "How did you tap into my neural transceiver? There's no way you could be in range..."
Not without the exact phase discrimination. "Utana remembered that she documented some of your Borg implants a while back," he lied.
"What? Nathan, hold on a minute..." There was a great deal of static over the channel, which now began to fade. "I think that's better. I have a friend here who's been keeping the Borg from using this line. Your comm system cuts through the interference, but not much. There isn't much time."
"Tirava, I--"
"Listen, Nathan. I'm at Intercomplex 934. The Zeroes successfully captured it, and they're regrouping here for an offensive. Their slave labor has been gathering materials for some kind of superweapon."
"Superweapon?" Now he knew why the Borg were trying to contact her....to the point of assigning the task to him.
"I just know it involves boronite, yominum, and anti-azidoazide," she explained. "Does any of that mean anything to you?"
Not to him, not directly, but Vystir recognized a connection for him. "No," he said, openly deceiving the last friend he had in the galaxy. "Can't say it does."
"I'm sure it's not good. We have to stop them, Nathan. I don't know exactly what they plan to do with the Xhiryptyr'x in this offensive, but I know cannon fodder when I see it. I've been trying to organize a rebellion."
"That...that sounds like a good plan." Jimenez found his voice wavering as he dissembled, but with a look to Vystir he found the resolve to bluff his way through. "We can be there in about two hours. It'll be a lot easier to get through their defenses if you can give them something more important to worry about. We'll try to identify this weapon. If we can confiscate it, that would give you some leverage."
"All right..." Even through the interference, it was clear she was distracted by her irrelevant personal attachments. "Nathan...Jake is still stranded back at that nebula. The Zeroes think he's dead. If I don't make it...you have to make sure he..."
She had no way of knowing Kreighen had somehow rescued himself. Jimenez couldn't waste time explaining that to her. She'd want to speak to him, and then she'd want to know why he wasn't aboard the shuttle. So he told the truth...as he saw it. "Kreighen will be all right," he said. "We'll all be fine. We'll be together again...I promise."