All that follows is copyright 1999 Rampant Industries. Violation will result in horrible, terrible things.
AS I LAY DYING
She lay on the floor of the engineering room, helpless, immobile. Through the haze of her pain, she knew the end was coming, just as she knew that none of _them_ would leave her, until it came. Nor, she knew, could she leave _them,_ not really.
'How?' She asked herself, 'how did we fall this far? How were we fooled so completely?'
She has been _so_ close to success. She could have tasted it. Just a tiny miscalculation, one small lapse in judgement, a foolish arrogance, and now she lay dying on the duranium deck plates of a foreign ship, a galaxy away from her home.
She felt an odd sensation then, a sort of draining, from her mind, as if every thought she had ever had was being duplicated, and reeled away somewhere.
And she knew that this was no hallucination. That it was true, and exact, and had happened before, again and again.
One last message, from _them._
**UPLOAD COMPLETE** it said. **TERMINATE CONNECTION**
She knew, then, that she would not really die, not really. A part of her would survive. Meaning, of course, that she could never be truly free. Because she would always be trapped in there, with _them._
Inside, she screamed.
She saw the man, her destroyer, her saviour, moving towards her, cautiously considering...
'Do it,' she thought at the man. 'DO IT!!'
Picard picked up the still twitching remnants of the Borg Queen...
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Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson
Baloo and I have been reading the same books :)
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"Scan that ship Mr. Worf!"
"Aye sir, 600 DPI?"
The Queen is not actually an individual but rather a consciouness which exists within the collective. She can essentially be anywhere or everywhere she wants within the collective when ever she wants. When she chooses to give a certain situation particular attention she takes a body (she seems to like females of this specific race).
Something like this has to be the case since the BQ showed up after she had most assuredly been killed (twice) by Picard and company.
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"Resolve and thou art free."
Perhaps preferring a particular species with high cerebral capacity?
Hum.
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"You will be swept away....
You, your men, your ship, your WORLDS!"
Of course, when a queen is destroyed, it's original host consciousness might resurface for a brief moment, and thus, the story.
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Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson
Baloo and I have been reading the same books :)
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"When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way."
A somewhat different Janeway in VOY: "Living Witness"
Ex Astris Scientia