ROLLERCOASTER
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The Price
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Lester Llewellyn died a hero…
Tasha sat back, frowned at the words she had just written, and quickly deleted them. Lester Llewellyn hadn't died a hero at all. He had been a hero – he had left humanity as a hero – but he had died several hours later as a mindless shell, like so many good men and women that were lost that day. She'd seen the bodies. She'd helped separate the ones they recognised – 'their' dead – from the others, so they could give the drones who were once their colleagues a fitting funeral. But what separated the ones whose faces they knew from the ones they hadn't seen before? They were all Borg at the end. Looking at Llewellyn's pale, lifeless, mutilated form, there had been nothing left of the junior Security Officer that she'd known. Nothing left of the lanky Welshman – the first of his family to ever leave the planet – who couldn't hold his liquor and carried, by his own admission, a torch for Worf bigger than the Cardiff Olympic Stadium's. He'd always been so desperate to impress the Klingon, even though he knew nothing would ever happen between them… he'd always been so determined to prove himself a brave and noble warrior. Taking advantage of Worf's temporary return to the Enterprise, Llewellyn had seized that opportunity a few days ago – or 300 years ago, depending on how you looked at things – and had gone with them to fight the Borg on Deck 16. He hadn't come back with them.
Several members of that team hadn't come back from Deck 16 with them. And now all that was left of those brave crewmen were pale, hollow shells. The Borg had taken everything from them – everything.
And that was what she'd presumed had happened to Data. When she'd seen a pair of grey hands clamouring to pull the android through a gap in the door, she'd believed that she would never see him again, and she'd died inside. She had had to force the despair and grief and horror deep down in order to survive, and she herself had become an automaton, battling her way back to the Bridge, then quietly awaiting orders from her Captain… most of the time. When she had been ordered to abandon ship, a part of her had snapped – a bit of that panic she'd felt when Data had been dragged under the door had risen back to the surface, and she'd begged to be allowed to stay and try to find the android. Her request had been soundly denied, and she had been escorted onto an escape pod, her hopes destroyed, her imagination alive with what might have been happening to him.
Because they'd been warned. Dammit, they'd been warned, and although she'd repeated that warning to him several times after engaging the Borg, still he'd put himself in danger's way. And she had still let him.
She hadn't known that the Captain was staying behind to rescue the android himself until they'd received the transmission that the Borg had been eliminated and Data liberated, hours later. According to Captain Picard, it had been a snap decision to do so. His reasoning for not allowing Tasha to make the rescue mission herself still held – she didn't know what she was up against; Picard did.
She still didn't know what they'd been up against – not really. All she had were Data and Picard's reports, and she knew - she knew – that those reports didn't tell the full story.
Everything was different now. She had been relieved when she'd heard that Data had been pulled back from the Borg's clutches, but she hadn't rejoiced the way she had all those other times that the android had been returned to them from almost certain death.
She hadn't rejoiced because nobody ever truly comes back from the Borg. Not completely. Just as the bodies of Llewellyn and all those other men and women had been left disfigured, just as Jean-Luc Picard had been left with the scars of Locutus on his soul, so she expected Data to now remain tainted by the Borg for the rest of his days.
She thought about this as he approached her table. She could tell from his stance that he was still operating without emotions. It was a mercy that at least during the difficult past year Data had spent operating with the emotion chip, he had found a way to temporarily switch it off at will. She wasn't sure how he'd have coped over the last two days otherwise. She certainly wasn't sure how he'd cope once he elected to switch them back on… if he ever elected to switch them back on. She'd read in the report that when the Borg had taken him, they'd overridden that control he'd fought to exert over his emotion chip. They'd forced him to experience everything they'd done to him with his still-raw capacity for fear, horror, humiliation and misery unhindered… and she could tell what it was they had done to him – what it was that he had omitted from his report. Even without his emotions, she could see it in what was left of his eyes. She could practically smell it on him. Were she in his position, she'd never want to feel emotions ever again if she could possibly help it.
She reminded herself quickly that she had been in his position, if she was correct about what had happened in Engineering. Lurid memories of Turkana flashed through her mind. Some of the things that had been done to her, and that she had made the decision to do in order to survive… the shame she felt back then still haunted her. Whatever it was exactly that had happened to Data, it would seem that they were going to be in the same boat from now on – dirty people with dirty pasts that could never be made clean again.
He sat down opposite her.
'Hello, Tasha.'
'Hi.' She found meeting his gaze difficult. Matters weren't helped by the fact that half of his face was still missing. They had taken the synthetic skin from the same patch of skull that they would have removed for the eye implant had they made him a Drone. He looked like one of the bodies they'd retrieved. She cast her eyes back down to her eulogy.
'I understand that you are writing memorial speeches for the Security Officers lost during the Borg's appropriation of the ship,' said Data. 'I feel that it is a mistake for you to attempt to do so without assistance. It is a task that I believe would be impossible for you to perform alone in the time allotted.'
Tasha shook her head. 'They were my staff, Data. I want to give each and every one of them as fitting a tribute as possible. I owe them that at the very least.'
'The memorial service will be in forty-seven hours time,' Data reminded her, 'and you have twenty-four separate eulogies to write, as well as working extra hours to…'
'Twenty-five,' corrected Tasha. She blinked up at him, frowning worriedly at his nonplussed expression.
Oh God. Didn't he know? Had nobody told him yet? He had to know…
'Pardon me, Tasha, but I was under the impression that twenty-four Security Officers were lost. It is possible that our records are inconsistent, given the…'
'You don't know,' interrupted Tasha, 'do you?'
Data's expression didn't change. 'What do I not know?'
Tasha took in a sharp breath. 'Shit. Data… they told me, so I assumed they'd told you too, but everything being so chaotic right now, I guess…' she felt tears burning the corners of her eyes. 'Oh, God. Data, I'm so sorry…'
Data still gazed at her, confused. 'About what?'
'Starfleet received warning about the Borg two hours before they reached the Terran system,' Tasha replied. 'The Borg cube was spotted by a Science ship off making routine observations. According to the ship's final transmissions, once they realised the cube was heading for Earth, a decision was made to try to slow the Borg down as much as possible, to give Starfleet as much time to gather its defencive force as they could. They knew their weaponry was nowhere near powerful enough to so much as make a dent in the cube, so the Security Chief made the suggestion that… that they ram the cube, in the hope that the resulting warp core breach would do them at least some sort of damage. All hands were lost.' Tasha wiped a couple of errant tears from the edges of her eyes. 'It was the Iris.'
Data sat motionless for a couple of seconds, while the information sank in. 'Jenna. Jenna D'Sora is… was… Security Chief of the Iris.'
'I can't believe they didn't tell you.' Tasha shook her head down at the table. 'Starfleet Command only contacted me about it this morning. They asked me to write her memorial because I'm the last Officer she served under who's still alive.'
'Why would they think to inform me?' Data asked, quietly. 'We were romantically involved for only two days.'
Tasha reached out as though to take his hand in sympathy, but stopped short, deciding to brush her fingers gently over the cuff of his sleeve instead.
'Are you OK?'
'I am not in any distress at present.'
'But you've got your emotions switched off.'
'That is true.'
'And what about when you switch them back on…?'
'I imagine that the recent events will have a negative effect on my…' Data frowned faintly down at her hand, still playing at his sleeve. 'On my feelings.'
'Oh, you think?' Tasha pulled her hand back. 'Data, I know you've been struggling with depression and anger issues as it is since you got your emotions…'
'How do you know that?' Data blinked. 'Have you been reading my Psychiatric Evaluations? You are not cleared to access that information…'
'I just know, OK? I know you. And when or if you ever decide to experience emotions again, I think it's going to surprise you how hard what's happened over the last few days will hit you. We've lost so many good people, and you personally have gone through so much…'
'You do not know what I went through,' interjected Data, quickly.
'Of course not,' replied Tasha. 'You were brought back from the Borg – that's all I need to know.'
Data got to his feet. 'Would it be acceptable for me to write Jenna's eulogy in your stead, Tasha? Besides our brief courtship, we had an amicable relationship for some time. I do not believe that she would have wanted to be one of twenty-five hurried obituaries.'
Tasha nodded. 'I think you're right.'
He turned to go, but she held out a hand to stop him.
'They did slow the Borg cube,' Tasha told him. 'The Borg arrived in the Terran system 20 minutes later than estimated, given their speed and trajectory. It was probably the most important 20 minutes in Earth's history. If it hadn't been for that delay, by the time the Enterprise would have got to Earth, it would have been too late. Without the memories Captain Picard retained from Locutus turned against them, they'd have wiped the Federation out there and then. Jenna died saving humanity – and she died as Jenna, not some mindless Drone, like Llewellyn or the rest of those poor, assimilated bastards. It was a good death.'
Data stared back at her, that old, faint sadness in his eyes. 'She was 33 years old,' was his only reply.
'I'm so sorry,' repeated Tasha.
But Data had already gone.
