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SUICIDE MISSION

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If anyone is wondering whether I would be brave like the lady in this story: nope!  The few other female characters that I’ve invented for some of my stories are accurate for me, but this woman is the exact opposite. A bit of a stretch, but I thought that I’d try it. Oh yeah, it’s another AU.

 

“Permission to come aboard?” the human female operative requested.

“Granted,” said a surprised and bemused Gul Dukat, who ordered her transported from her tiny scout ship onto his Galor-class warship.

Without preamble, she faced him and asked, “Am I correct that Enabran Tain is on board this ship?”

Brow ridges climbed. “What makes you think so?”

“I’m with Starfleet Intelligence.” She could tell that her gall amazed and amused the gul (a pun that she’d always privately enjoyed).

“Follow me,” he commanded, without answering her question.

He ushered her into a small room. Two menacing-looking guards approached her.

“I know,” she said. “Remove my clothing. May I do so myself, without your assistance?”

An increasingly fascinated Dukat nodded silently to the burly guards, who subsided (rather reluctantly, she thought).

As she complied, she also wordlessly offered a tiny container, which at Dukat’s nod, a guard accepted.

“What’s this?” the gul wondered.

“A tooth. For your DNA identification purposes.”

He quirked a smile.

“Just thought I’d save your men the trouble. It’s a baby tooth, but it’s still valid, naturally.”

Once it was glaringly apparent that she concealed nothing, she was told to sit, and one of the guards beckoned for others outside to enter.

She noted with satisfaction that her audience contained not only Tain, but also his operative Garak, and even Legate Damar. She quietly kept her inward “eureka” to herself.

“Well, young lady,” began Tain. “I understand that you asked for me by name. Most people, from a variety of other cultures, do their very best to avoid me. I must admit that you have me rather intrigued.”

“Starfleet Intelligence sent me.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“To give you information about a dreaded enemy.”

“To give us information rather than to try to withhold it, and oblige us to forcibly take it: a novel approach. And about a dreaded enemy, you say: more dreaded than we are?”

“Infinitely.”

His brow ridges rose.

Now she produced a lopsided smile. “I hope that that doesn’t offend you. I know that your people value your fearsome reputation.”

All of the Cardassians revealed mild humor at that.

“We’re pretty thick-skinned; not to worry. Anyway, continue.”

“First, sir, may I request that you ask the guards to leave? This is highly sensitive information, for only your most trusted upper-echelon people.” At Damar’s slight frown, she added, “You can see, Legate Damar, sir, that I’m hardly dangerous: no possible weapons.” She spread her arms, exposing her lack of modest cover-up attempt; indeed, she had made no such timid display from the very beginning.

Damar shrugged and nodded, even as Dukat boasted, “I think that we can handle her.”

She smothered her own slight humor at Garak’s sideways look at Dukat’s probably not unintentional double-entendre. All four men were, indeed, just as the extensive intelligence reports painted them.

When the guards had left, Tain asked tolerantly, as if he were humoring her, “All right, now who is this…ferocious enemy?”

She exhibited no amusement in return, and answered somberly, “The Borg.”

He frowned. “We haven’t really tangled with them. But we’ve had reports that your Federation, and some others, have.”

She made no attempt to hide her relief. “Our reports had indicated that you had not, and I’m certainly gratified by your confirmation.”

“Why? Why do you care what happens to us? I would have thought that your Federation should be pleased if any two of your enemies destroyed each other.”

“Perhaps in some cases,” she responded honestly, bluntly. “But not in this one.”

Visibly intrigued, he urged, “What makes this instance special?”

“We believe that your empire might well be all that stands between the Borg…and the entire Alpha Quadrant.” At their expressions, she hastened, “I know, the irony of this is powerful; your empire did, after all, just save the whole quadrant from the Dominion. And I’m certainly not oblivious to the fact that you personally, Legate Damar, sir, more than anyone else, were the source of that salvation. But I’m sorry to have to tell you that, if given a choice between domination by the Dominion or by the Borg, we’d gladly choose the Dominion.”

After a brief, somewhat stunned silence, Garak posed, “And between either of those and our empire?”

“We’d choose you,” she responded unhesitatingly. Inwardly, she couldn’t tell if the four were subsequently proud or disappointed, at being only the third most terrifying. She explained, “From the human perspective, you-all are more ‘normal,’ more like us. Your emotions are intact. Jem’Hadar seem to feel only hate, anger, aggression. But the Borg feel nothing at all. That makes them more totally alien to all of us than anyone else.”

Garak couldn’t resist a smile. “The obvious exception: your allies, the Vulcans.”

She shook her head. “The Vulcans’ feelings are as varied as yours and ours; they simply conceal them, control them.” She leaned forward, in earnest. “Even when you hurt us, you know why you’re doing it; you have a reason, whether that reason is rooted in practicality or sadism, you still comprehend the ramifications of what you’re doing. The Borg are not even aware of our feelings, or of their own cruelty; they’re oblivious to it. You-all experience the animosity, the revenge, the expediency, the self-preservation, perhaps even the sadism, or whatever, that motivates your actions, however cruel, sadistic, and heartless those actions may seem to us of the Federation at times. We don’t approve of your extremes, but at least we understand your motivations. The Borg know nothing of motives. They are one vast machine mind, no more sensitive to the damage and suffering that they are causing than is a soil-reclamator bulldozing its way through an Earthly rabbit warren.”

Their brow ridges were up throughout her recitation, both at the growing realization of the true horror of the Borg, and at her frankness in discussing their own rather depraved abuses of her people and others, even while she sat in their presence in her completely vulnerable, undressed state.

Garak was equally frank. “I’m sure that you’re aware that we’ve committed many atrocities and mutilations, sometimes the worst that can be devised. What makes the Borg worse?”

She stared deeply into his eyes. “At least when you make us scream, you know why we’re screaming; you may even enjoy it, but you don’t ignore it. The Borg don’t even have the awareness to be considered cruel; they call our resistance futile and our feelings and fears irrelevant.”

Garak made no attempt to hide the slight concern that he felt at her angst.

She added, “Also, if you-all remove an eye from a victim, you don’t replace it with a mechanical one that can see the entire spectrum, instead of employing normal, biological, limited vision. And when you amputate an arm, you don’t attach a nightmarish replacement, that looks like a versatile multi-tool.”

The callousness, both of the Borg and of her recitation stunned the four.

After a brief, impressed, silence, Tain inquired, “Why does your Federation believe that we represent the quadrant’s best defense?”

“Because according to our intelligence, relatively few of your people, and none of them upper-echelon, have ever been assimilated by the Borg.”

The four watched her without commenting.

She went on, “When the Borg assimilate someone, every thought, every memory, every scrap of information that the individual has ever possessed immediately becomes known to the entire Collective. Every drone everywhere in the galaxy is instantly aware of even the tiniest minutiae in that person’s mind.” She could see Tain’s automatic revulsion at that. He treasured secrets, both his own and everyone else’s; they were dear to him, the center of his existence. He almost obsessively desired to possess all of the secrets of others, but he wanted no one else to ever possess his. She saw similar disgust in Garak as well. Dukat and Damar were also repelled, if a bit less violently. She continued, “Unlike your empire, the Federation has already been critically compromised, as have the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire. A member of the Klingon High Council was assimilated nearly three years ago, as well as several whole Klingon ships, complete with their captains. Just last year, the Borg captured and assimilated two highly-placed members of the Romulan Tal Shiar.” She saw full awareness of the gravity of those losses in Tain’s eyes. “Most devastating to the Federation, though, was the temporary assimilation of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. His valiant crew rescued him – a nearly unprecedented event – but the damage was done. Everything that Picard knew at that time, the Borg permanently possess.”

Dukat yielded to brief gallows humor. “Picard. The same one that Gul Madred rather spectacularly and infamously tortured.”

She granted him a vaguely rueful smile. “Yes. He has had it rough, that one.”

“Exactly what are you asking of us?” Tain demanded.

“First: we’d like to advise you…. No, we plead with you; we implore you: don’t let your highly-placed people be compromised! Please, order the guls of all of your ships to self-destruct if they must, rather than let especially themselves, but also their ships and technology, be taken by the Borg; that’s crucial! And all of your higher Obsidian Order operatives, as well, should suicide if necessary to stay out of Borg hands! Can you imagine the devastating damage that could be done, if all that they knew became part of the Collective?? And especially you four: you must be protected at all costs! Or if not, then destroyed, to protect your empire. Your species is a virtual unknown to the Borg, and we must keep it that way. The less that they know about your strategies, your weapons, your psychology, your civilization, the better you’ll be able to defeat them. And someone has to do so! The Borg goal is nothing less than the conquest of the entire galaxy, and then presumably on to the rest of the universe as well. Stop them here! We’ll help all that we can, but as I’ve said, we’ve already been rather hopelessly compromised. But when your warships do have to do battle with their cubes and spheres, and there’s still a chance of avoiding self-destruct: always rotate your weapons’ frequencies and your shields’ harmonics: the Borg quickly defeat ships by reading those crucial values and adapting.”

All of the Cardassians were looking exceptionally impressed by Starfleet’s willingness to volunteer such crucial intelligence.

“Also, I have a datachip containing every single scrap of information on every encounter that our people have ever had with the Borg, for you to study, so that you can prepare strategies.”

Damar appeared mildly startled. “Where do you have such a chip??”

She looked rueful. “In the only place that I could have concealed it; it was why they had to send a woman. May I extract it slowly?”

Tain gave distracted consent; Garak was visibly impressed by her audacity; Dukat blatantly ogled her as she withdrew it; and Damar displayed a milder version of a combination of both Garak’s and Dukat’s reactions. As un-self-consciously as she could manage, she produced it and handed it to an almost eager, smirking Dukat.

Tain observed her quizzically. “Why didn’t your people just send us a coded transmission? Why risk you?”

“Because we simply couldn’t think of any way to absolutely guarantee that our message wouldn’t be intercepted by the Borg. We consider you our ‘ace in the hole.’ We don’t want to call the Borg’s attention to you. We want to keep the Borg as completely in the dark as possible about you. And we don’t want them to know how much you know about them.”

Again the Cardassians were impressed, this time by the elaborate precautions, and the evident desperation of the Federation regarding the Borg.

“And now you should probably kill me.”

They stared at her.

Tain wore a slightly malevolent smile. “Surely you realize that we’ll want to see if we can extract any secrets on any other subject, before we make any decisions as to your disposition.”

She nodded fatalistically. “That’s why they chose someone who has never before worked for Intelligence, and who therefore knows nothing of any non-Borg secrets.”

Garak and Tain both nodded blandly, unsurprised.

“We’ll have to check that, of course,” Tain reiterated.

“I know.” She sighed, the first real demonstrated evidence of concern over her fate.

“It seems a shame, really,” was Dukat’s very mild, half-hearted protest. “She’s been so cooperative, and deserves better.”

Damar looked at him. “And naturally, you’d rather put her to better use.”

Garak agreed. “Yes, Dukat, don’t pretend to be so noble; it doesn’t suit you.”

“Fine,” Dukat conceded. “But, Garak and Damar, don’t you two deny that you’re both similarly tempted.”

She smiled a little at their sparring. “Flattering, thank you. And, whatever you do to me, at least I got to meet you fascinating gentlemen first. Your exploits are almost legendary. I can think of far more boring and wasteful ways to go.”