Take Command.
Will Riker had wanted to be a Starfleet captain for a long time, and recently after he had been offered the captain's chair on the Melbourne (when he had seen the ship's shattered hulk floating among the other wrecks at Wolf 359 where the fleet hadn't been able to stop the Borg Cube, let alone slow it down), but he hadn't expected or even wanted to become a captain the way he'd briefly become.
It was the nightmare of every single Starfleet First Officer, to be promoted to captain following the deaths of their commanding officer, and Will Riker was no exception.
He had been paralysed with horror when he had seen Captain Picard clad with the same black cybernetic armour of the Borg, but when he had seen his captain's eyes as 'Locutus' levelled the Borg's promise and the threat of what would become of the Federation, Will Riker had been chilled to the bone.
Jean-Luc Picard was perhaps one of the most passionate people he had ever met in his life, off-set by his almost Vulcan manner of calm although Will knew it was down to experience and judgement the captain had that demeanour.
But his Borg self…
Locutus may have looked like Picard, may even have sounded like Picard, but the Borg was like a programmed robot or a computer. It had been one of the most difficult orders he had ever delivered, telling Worf to fire the deflector after many hours of work had gone into devising a weapon readily available to the Enterprise crew to defeat the Borg, a weapon more powerful than their phasers and photon torpedoes.
As a Starfleet officer and one trained for command, Will Riker had gone through and logged many hours of combat both real and simulated. But the Borg were nothing like any of the enemies Starfleet had ever encountered. Races like the Breen, Romulans or the Cardassians might have powerful weapons at their disposal, but most weapons and defences encountered by Starfleet were comparable to what the Federation.
Not so with the Borg, if what they'd come to learn about them since Q had flung the ship into that cube's flight path and how they consumed ships and races' technologies were anything to go by, but the way the Borg had just snatched the information about the deflector weapon being prepared on the Enterprise, and the speed by which they had adapted their ship was frightening.
In a voice that was almost gloating, Locutus had told them the knowledge and the experience of Picard was now theirs, and it had prepared them for possible courses of action that could be taken against the Borg invasion. That was terrifying news - as an experienced and highly decorated Starfleet captain, Picard had access to up-to-date information of Starfleet operations. And if the Borg had access to that knowledge….
Riker knew the danger only too well.
The Borg ship would smash through the defences Starfleet would put up in their path like a photon torpedo smashing glass. Picard had been briefed on the defences Admiral Hansen was putting up at Wolf 359, where the fleet would make its stand against the cube but as Shelby had pointed out, Picard knew about the defences and with his knowledge of Starfleet operations and tactics, the battle was sure to go terribly wrong for the Federation; if the Borg Cube was capable of withstanding a deflector blast where all of the ship's power routed through the warp reactor with the knowledge of a single man absorbed into their Hive mind, Riker did not need to imagine what was going to happen with the battle. The Enterprise had received a communique from Hansen the Borg had engaged the fleet, but thanks to the damage caused to the warp core, Enterprise would arrive too late.
Riker did not want to take command of the ship. It was like Guinan had said, he was afraid of letting go, afraid of saying it both aloud and in his head Captain Picard would never come back after being turned into a Borg.
He didn't want to admit it, and he knew that while the crew had considered the possibility of it happening and how Hansen had given him the battlefield promotion to Captain, Riker just couldn't see it.
Guinan had come to him, the El-Aurian woman showing once more to have the instinct to pass on her advice like she was a telepath who could sense the turmoil in the minds of everyone around her. Riker had been overly emotional during the meeting whereas Guinan had been incredibly calm, as always, but she had helped him. She had made it clear to him that she had to let go of Picard because there was a chance they could never get him out of that Borg ship, and heal him.
The rest of the whole mess with the Borg had been harrowing; the rescue of Picard had gone off without a hitch, and they'd resumed a course after the Borg Cube - Riker did wonder what the Borg had been thinking when they had designed a ship like that; it was as if the Borg had deliberately turned the insides of their ship inside out for reasons he couldn't grasp - while Data worked with O'Brien and Beverly to bring Picard back after Data had found the Borg subspace communications, and had worked out a way of blocking it.
After the Borg ship was destroyed once Data had sent the Borg to sleep, on the suggestion of Captain Picard reaching through the cold, computerised evil of the Borg, Picard was back and after a number of surgeries to restore his human nature although Beverly was horrified by the Borg implants in Picard's body, horrified enough to keep them there since many of them were vital and were as dangerous to tear out as a lung or a heart was, and Beverly had plans to keep the captain in sickbay for a while in order to observe him; a decision Riker knew his captain truly did not like, not one little bit.
When Data made progress and managed to get through to Picard, Riker had selfishly been delighted the captain would be back. Now the Borg ship was destroyed, Picard would be returning to the ship, but would it be that simple.
And why was he so guilty at thinking it?
His mind remembered the way he had argued with Picard when the captain confronted him about the way he had turned down command of the Melbourne on top of doing it before twice, and he recalled his conversation with Deanna. He had grown comfortable onboard the Enterprise, learning and working with Picard, but now he had been a captain, Will wondered if he would be a captain ever in his life.
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