The Rise of Iconia

Chapter 24

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Chapter 24

The Borg had gone back to their cube, and most of the Federation commanders had returned to their ships. Picard sat in the briefing room on A with his great-grandfather, Kirk and The First. Beverly had flashed over as soon as she heard the news of Marie from her husband.

Picard felt defeated, and he imagined that he looked it as well. His first impulse had been to simply pull his sister-in-law out of her Borg persona, but intellectually, he knew that was not something he could do. Obviously, it was within his power, but as his prime universe self had tried to tell Riker years ago when Janus gifted powers to the young man, if you save one person, you have to save them all. Where does it stop?

But he was horrified at what his brother's wife had become. Rene, his nephew, had joined Starfleet, and was training as a fighter pilot. Picard had quietly watched the boy's progress, and was impressed. Robert, unfortunately, had died in a fire at the vineyard, shortly before Picard became Q, as he had in the prime universe. But what he now saw of Marie's future was terrible. He wondered what circumstances had led to her being assimilated.

Beverly was sitting beside him, holding his hand, while Kirk and Spock sat across the table from him.

"Are you going to be okay, Jean Luc?" Kirk asked

"Yes," Picard said, "I believe so. It will just take a bit of time to get accustomed to the fact.."

"I can understand that," Kirk replied. He turned to the First and said, "You haven't said much, Spock. What's your take on all this?"

"Fascinating," the Vulcan commented.

"Something a bit more helpful, Spock?" his friend asked.

"I would if I had anything, Jim. This situation is unique to my experience, however," The First explained. "Obviously, we are dealing with time travel by the Borg, and that travel is from the future. We have no real understanding what might change if we intervene."

Picard eyed the Vulcan in surprise. "I did not consider intervening to even be an option, Spock."

"Nor should it be. As we have discussed before, if we intervene we risk setting a dangerous precedent that we may not be able to follow always."

"We know," Beverly said, "that below the surface, the personality of the drone remains. I would assume that it also remains in a queen."

"Such an assumption, while not without merit, is far from certain," Spock said.

"Agreed," Picard said, "but nevertheless, it should be explored."

"Have any of you bothered to check how much of her physically remains?" Kirk asked, his face full of compassion.

In response, Beverly let her mind drift out to the Borg cube, where she found her husband's sister-in-law. When she scanned Marie, she was horrified at what had been done to her. In revulsion, she withdrew, then fighting nausea, she reached out again. This time, she didn't look at what little remained of the woman. Instead, she touched the mind, and was rewarded with a sense of the Marie Picard who had been at her wedding.

What shocked the Q, however, was that Marie had apparently desired what had been done to her. Surprised, she dug deeper into the queen's mind, making sure there was no trace of her passage, and found what she was looking for.

"Her human body is almost non-existent now," she said as she finished, "but what is even more disturbing is that she wished for this."

"She wanted to be assimilated?" her husband asked. "Why?"