Even before the transporter released its iron grip on Commander Riker,
he heard Walters' voice, angry and cursing. Standing outside the
Ensign's room in the Ministerial Palace, Commander Riker ran up to the
door.  "Walters? Let me in. It's Riker."

The room monitoring system answered, "Do not disturb mood is engaged.
Would you like to leave a personal message for the occupant?"

From inside the room a loud crash was heard. "Commander! Help!" Riker
withdrew his phaser to blast open the door but Troi clutched his arm,
"Will, be careful. He isn't alone. There are several people with him."

"Idit'iat?" Riker asked.

"Yes, she's there, but there are others too." Troi said.

"Wait here." Riker ordered, then he shot out the door lock with the
phaser. Manually he pulled the doors apart and found himself facing the
entire away team. Walters and Idit'iat were holding Ensign Cenax, who
was struggling against them, jerking them sideways as they clung to his
shoulder pressing him against a wall.

"Commander Riker. Cenax is a Borg!" Walters shouted.

Aiming his phaser at Cenax, Riker fired. As expected, the Borg shield
went up protecting the spy, confirming his identify. Cenax threw off
Idit'iat but Walters clung to the Cenax's shoulder like a pit bull whose
every instinct was to hang on even tighter the more his prey struggled
against him. Idit'iat came back around Cenax, taking his head in her
hands and gave a sharp twist. Riker watched in amazement as he heard the
nauseous grinding of bone splintering. Cenax's neck fell limply to one
side and Walters, flush with his battle anger, flung the dead Borg to
the ground with a triumphant flourish. Ensign Idit'iat met Riker's
stunned stare with a grim, arrogant glare of her own.

It was over. Commander Riker realized he had been holding his breath as
he had witnessed Idit'iat's show of brute strength. He exhaled in one
long sigh, still finding it impossible to believe that the young ensign
could break the neck of a Borg with such ease, but glad to learn that
she hadn't been the Borg spy. It was Deanna's muffled cry that alerted
Riker to the fact that someone was behind him. Before he could turn
around to face her, a hand clamped around his, crushing his fingers
against his phaser, shaking his hand violently causing Riker to drop his
weapon.

"So good of you to come to us, Riker. We have been waiting for you to
join us ever since you refused our hospitality at Starfleet
Headquarters." First Minister Wlekz hand was clamped over Troi's mouth.
He pushed her over to Walters who caught and held her, pinning both arms
behind her back. 

Riker tapped his communicator badge, "Riker to Enterprise."

"Oh, nice try Commander, but we have blocked all communications to your
ship." Wlekz laughed. "We will allow you to return of course, once you
have become one of us."

Refusing to give up, Riker searched desperately for an escape route, but
there was none. Behind Wlekz stood the Agricultural Minister and two
guards. Riker and Troi were outnumbered. Ensign Idit'iat took a step
toward the Commander. In a gesture of resignation, Riker shrugged and
held his hands up in a universal sign of surrender. Idit'iat smiled and
casually reached for Riker's hand, at which point the Commander
side-stepped Idit'iat and with lightening speed, relieved her of her
phaser in the process. 

"You will never assimilate us!" Riker's defiant shout reflecting the
fury and frustration raging within him. He turned to Deanna and knew he
had only one card left to play. He could not allow them to take her. He
had learned from Picard the horrors of assimilation. Drones were not
zombies without feelings, without knowledge of the atrocities they were
committing, but silent, powerless witnesses unable to protest, unable to
resist the orders of the collective yet fully aware of what actions they
were forced to perform. How much worse to be an empathic observer. To
helplessly feel the fear, to experience the agony as if it were your
own, to hear the bitter cries of the victims as you robbed them of their
humanity. He would not allow the Borg condemn Deanna to such a fate. 

Wlekz spoke to Riker but his eyes were on the Counselor. "Come
Commander. Put the phaser down. You don't want to die. And as you can
see, you are clearly outnumbered here. One shot is the most you would
get off before we vaporized you." Wlekz was approaching Troi, a small
box in his hands and Deanna's eyes were staring at the contents. Time
was running out. Wlekz was about to insert the Borg device into Troi.
Riker raised the phaser and trained it on Deanna. One quick shot was all
he needed to get off. Picard's words came back to him. "Every time you
kill a Borg drone you will be doing them a favor." His thumb raised the
setting to kill. There were some things worse than death and while he
had spent his life trying to cheat death, now he saw it as his salvation
and well as hers. 

"No!" Deanna screamed, but her scream was only one of many. The small
guest room walls reverberated with the voices combating one another.
Wlekz was shouting at Troi, the guards were yelling at Idit'iat, the
Agricultural Minister was urging Wlekz on and Riker realized above it
all he was screaming his refusal to be assimilated. And then amid the
screams Riker saw Deanna's eyes meet his and they didn't contain the
plea to take her life as he expected. They were wild with terror, not of
Wlekz but of him. Riker hesitated, caught between his desire to protect
her from the Borg and his determination she not be condemned to their
eternal hell.

So intent was Riker on his internal struggle that at first he didn't
hear what Deanna was saying. He forced himself to concentrate on her
words. "They are not Borg, Will. Look!"

"Borg?" Wlekz held up a hand and all were quiet in unison as if some
great choir had sung its last note of a tragic requiem. "My dear, of
course we are not Borg." Wlekz kicked Cenax once with his foot. "There
is the last of your Borg spies." Wlekz laughed, a cruel, mocking,
arrogant cackle that was more a taunt than a humorous reaction to
Deanna. "We are their fiercest enemy. We are the galaxy's only hope
against the terror they bring. The Borg invaded our planet stealing that
which was ours and left us with nothing. For years we existed, more
dormant but alive, waiting until finally a ship crash landed on our
world, providing the first host. It was another two years before a
second ship came in search of the first, but we were ready. Ready for
our revenge and the Federation will be our vehicle."

Riker thought Wlekz incoherent until he followed Deanna's terrorized
stare to the box that Wlekz was guarding close to his chest as if it
held something of untold value. 

"We have worked our way slowly towards Earth. The center of your
Federation. You are too weak to fight the Borg without us, but together,
we will conquer them. You are not a perfect host, but with time and
genetic engineering, we can make you symbiotic as were our true hosts."

The small, parasite inside the box wiggled in anticipation of its new
body. Wlekz reached down and gathered it up lovingly in his hands, then
advanced towards Troi.

It all made sense Riker realized. The hot, humid climate. Wlekz's poor
memory of the treaty negotiations. The lack of a formal reception
dinner. The incredible strength Idit'iat used to break the neck of a
Borg. The long hair hiding the quill that would protrude from the back
of each neck. He had thought he was pursuing the Borg, when in reality,
the crew of the Enterprise had been the ones being pursued by both the
parasites and the Borg. Riker desperately searched the faces of those in
the room. One of them had to be the host mother. Destroy the mother and
all the rest would die. But which one should he target with his one
shot? 

"The mother. Deanna. Which is the mother?" At first Riker thought Troi
was too scared to hear him. She didn't answer but with great difficulty
forced her eyes to leave Wlekz's outstretched hands to survey the room. 
"I don't know." Her expression was one of regret. An apology as much for
her inability to prevent what was happening as for her inability to
identify the mother creature.

Will remembered back to his confrontation at Starfleet Headquarters when
he and Picard had fought the same intelligent parasites. One of the
people in the room had to the mother organism. He turned to Wlekz, but
then remembered his confrontation with the First Minister at the
conference the previous day and he knew who he needed to destroy. Always
on the sidelines. Never the leader, but observing everything.

Coordinating every move. Just like Dexter Remmick had done during their
first encounter with the creatures. With one smooth move, Riker twisted
and fired in unison, aiming his phaser at the Agricultural Minister,
knowing if he were wrong he would never get off a second shot, dooming
both he and Deanna. The phaser blasted and where once the Agricultural
Minister had stood, now the mother creature was left, squirming on the
floor. Riker waited for his own death, expecting the others in the room
to open fire on him, but instead he found they had also collapsed on the
ground, parasites scurrying from the fallen bodies towards the mother.
Riker aimed at the mother and fired a second time, destroying her. With
her death came also the death of her progeny.

And this time it really was over - for now.

Will faced Deanna. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she closed her eyes as if collecting herself. When she opened
them she had regained her composure. "It was in front of me all the time
and I never saw it. I was so sure we were looking for Borg spies, I
never considered that we could be facing two enemies."

"Are they sane?"

Deanna wrapped her arms around herself and Riker followed her gaze to
the remains of the mother creature. "No, they are not sane. They suffer
from paranoia and exhibit delusional tendencies. I would say that they
are quite unbalanced. It might be the result of their attempt to use
incompatible hosts. If they were to find a symbiotic host, it is
possible they could be as rational as a Trill symbiont."

Riker considered Troi's answer for a moment, "Abraham Lincoln once said
'an enemy is a friend I haven't made yet.' If we could help these beings
find compatible hosts, we might have a powerful new ally against the
Borg. Mutual hatred has made strange bedfellows before in times of war.
No reason why it couldn't work to our advantage this time."

Captain Picard's voice came over Riker's communicator. "Commander Riker!
We lost contact with you and the away team. The Sinomians were blocking
our communications and transporter functions. It took us a while to
break through. You and the Counselor are appear to be the only living
humanoids on the planet. What happened down there?"

"They had assimilated the entire planet?" Deanna's face whitened at the
disclosure of the magnitude of the infestation.

"Apparently so." Riker tapped his com badge. "Captain, the Counselor and
I were attacked by the same intelligent parasites that we encountered at
Starfleet headquarters. We killed the mother creature, destroying all
her children as well. Did you find any other Borg spies on board the
Enterprise?" 

"No, the ship is secure." Picard answered. "We will transport you up
immediately."

"Acknowledged." Riker watched Troi take a position beside him in
preparation for the transport. It had been a close call. Briefly he
thought of his finger on the phaser button, aimed at Troi's heart and
wondered if he could really have fired on her. He had been so close to
shooting, but he had hesitated. He hoped he would never have to find out
if he could have used the weapon on her. There was too much left to
explore, to experience and it would definitely be more fun to do so
together. "You know, I always suspected we would make a good team,
Counselor."

Her voice answered back just as the hum of an impending transport beam
embraced them, "That was never in doubt, Commander." 

- The End -