Perfection, 26 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 Twenty-six.
"Hello, Jake."
Kreighen cursed himself under his breath. The drugs in his bloodstream could block telepathic signals, but there was a big difference between blocking his thoughts from Vystir and preventing her from sensing his approach. And if Vystir knew he was coming, so did Jimenez. So much for a sneak attack.
He motioned for Ajax and Hardcastle to follow him into the chamber. "You don't sound surprised to see me, Nathan."
"I had a feeling you'd come after me."
Kreighen couldn't pinpoint the source of his voice, forcing his party to search further and further into the room. "That's a funny feeling," he called out, "considering you left me to die on the Stormwind."
"You wouldn't have died."
"Why, because the Borg would have assimilated me?" He threw a couple of hand signals to Ajax and Hardcastle, sending them to fan out. "You know as well as I do, they'll let ten people die to assimilate eleven. They're not trying to save everyone, Nathan--they just want to control everyone."
"After all this time, you still don't understand them," Jimenez argued. "They're a decentralized collective, with no leaders. They 'control' each other."
"What about those Borg children you met? Were they controlling anybody?"
There was an uncomfortable silence, long enough for Kreighen to guess what Jimenez would say next. "You ordered their deaths."
"The Borg didn't leave me any choice."
"There's always a choice!" The echo of his shout disoriented Kreighen, forcing him to spend endless seconds to adjust his hearing, and listen for any sign of the ensign's location. "You could have chosen to give in. You just don't like to do that..."
"And you do? Kid, you're as stubborn as anyone I've ever met, and that's saying something. You're not doing any of this to surrender to the inevitable. You're just doing it to spite everyone who got in your way..."
Kreighen figured he got to Jimenez with that one, because it took him a few moments to come up with a response. "Very soon, there won't be anyone to get in our way."
"Dammit, Nathan, this isn't you! You sound like some tin-plated Cardassian warlord!"
"And what is me, Jake? An uptight engineer, tripping over his own words? Were you happier with me when I was bottling up my contempt for what Starfleet did to us? Or is it just that you liked me better when you could pretend I was your sidekick."
"That's not what I meant..." Kreighen needed to get control of this dialogue, and fast. "Has it even occurred to you that all of this just got planted into your head somehow?"
"Planted?"
"You spent a lot of time in contact with those ex-drones back at that prison. Who knows what that could have done to your head."
"Or maybe nothing happened, Jake. Maybe I've just realized what I was always meant to do. Maybe you just never understood me in the first place."
"Maybe so. But if that's the way it is..." Stall, dammit, he told himself, stall! "You deserve to know I respected you. I still do. I didn't come here to kill you, Nathan. You know if I had, I would have already made my move."
"I know," Jimenez admitted. "That's why I've already made mine. You might as well turn around now."
It sounded like a trick, but the beep of a phaser behind him definitely did not. Kreighen spun around to see the weapon pointed at him, in a pair of familiar blue hands. Tirava's whole body was shaking, and her face was dripping with sweat...but he could tell she would fire if he didn't yield.
Carefully, and in plain sight, he slowly knelt down to put his weapons on the deckplate. "Nathan," he said calmly, "what have you done?"
"We couldn't make her understand," Vystir said over Tirava's communicator. It was now clear that this was how Kreighen had been talking to Jimenez for the past few minutes. "So we adapted. It's remarkable, isn't it, Commander? Throughout Betazoid history, no one from my species has ever exerted this kind of control over another person! The skills I have learned from the Borg have made this possible!"
"Swell," Kreighen muttered as he held up his hands.