CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
10:58:42 hours -- Bridge
“Tactical, report.”
“Shields are at ninety-three percent, all weapons charged and ready on your order. Intruders are still present on the engineering deck. Main engineering is sealed off. The security team is not inside. I’m reading six lifesigns. Four Borg, one Terran, and one Andorian.”
Four drones against the chief engineer and the assistant chief engineer? Adele sighed wearily and gripped the arms of her command chair. She activated the comm. to check in with the security team. “Bridge to Quigley, what’s going on down there?”
“We’re sealed out. O’Connor ordered a level five evac and we can’t get in without her override, and she won’t answer her comm. I can see her on the security feed, she’s in there with Lieutenant Telek and the drones. Telek has a rifle, but Maren’s just standing there at a console working. I have no idea what she’s doing, but there’s a drone headed for her position. If you want us in there, it’ll have to be on your override.”
“Hang on just a second, Quigley,” came Adele’s short reply.
On the bridge, Adele activated her own comm.. “Bridge to engineering, report.”
Maren’s voice sounded annoyed as she responded. “Please don’t open that door, Captain, and tell John to stop interrupting me on the comm.. I’m almost finished. O’Connor out.”
Finished? Finished with what? Adele thought. Before she could request clarification, a flustered-looking brunette ensign came rushing onto the bridge, looking sick to her stomach as she saw the cube on the main display.
“I’m Ensign DiSilva,” she explained breathlessly, “I’ve been ordered to take the bridge controls and flood engineering with omicron radiation to kill the drones.” She sat down at the engineering console and picked up the neural interface headset as if to put it on, and her eyes widened at the sight of Icheb lying unconscious next to the viewscreen.
“Wait a second,” Adele said, “if you’re supposed to be flooding engineering with radiation, why are O’Connor and Telek still in there?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the ensign, “O’Connor ordered everyone out and she stayed behind, and then Telek went back inside just before the doors closed and sent me here. He said if I don’t hear from him or O’Connor by 1102 hours, I’m supposed to do it even if they’re still in there.”
Bewildered, Adele activated the comm. again. “Bridge to O’Connor, what the hell is going on down there?”
*****
10:59:00 hours -- Main Engineering
Maren couldn’t spare a second to answer the captain, and she didn’t have anything to report yet, anyway. She had almost, but not quite finished her modifications when the first drone reached her. As it lifted its arm, she ducked, more out of instinct than anything else, as she was focused completely on the console in front of her. She didn’t even register Telek’s voice right away as he shouted, “Get down!”
Abandoning the frail-looking young Terran female lieutenant to defend herself and the engine room against the Borg had gone against everything that made Telek an Andorian, so as the heavy blast doors had descended, he had quickly given orders to the next officer down the chain of command, and rolled underneath the door just before it closed. He knew there would probably be hell to pay professionally if he survived this, but he would rather die or lose his rank than to live a long and comfortable life as a coward.
He raised the phaser rifle he’d gotten out of the emergency weapons locker to his shoulder, aimed at the nearest drone and fired, hitting the approaching cyborg square in the face and dropping it to the floor. Maren looked at him wide eyed, her concentration having been momentarily broken as the phaser beam narrowly missed her. “Nice shot,” she gasped. “Thank you,” she added sincerely, but in the next breath, she began to chastise Telek even as she returned her attention to her console. “In less than three minutes, this room will be filled with deadly radiation, unless you ignored that order, too,” she reminded him. “I told you to evacuate and go to the bridge.”
“I sent DiSilva to the bridge with the same orders you gave to me,” Telek reassured her. “If we survive the next three minutes, feel free to file a report,” he added dryly, once again bringing the rifle to bear. Maren noted that Telek’s distraction had done one good thing -- the drones were now looking at him, and not the slipstream drive. The tall Andorian fired another shot, which was easily adapted to. He’d waited too long. He swore under his breath in Andorii as two of the remaining drones began to advance on his position.
At the console, Maren completed her last-second modifications, but as she moved to enter the activation sequence, the fourth drone reached her and threw her aside with incredible force. There was a sickening crack as she slammed headfirst into a support beam a few meters away, and she collapsed to the floor, fighting desperately to stay conscious. She barely managed to shout, “Overhead field emitters, now, Telek!” before the world went dark.
*****
10:59:31 hours -- Bridge
On the bridge, Adele divided her concern between the situation in engineering and the potentially much worse situation just outside the Tesseract. Maren wasn’t answering her hail, but no systems had yet been compromised and Adele was reluctant to open the blast doors without a status report from the engineer herself. She had to trust that whatever it was that Maren and Telek were doing in there, they had a plan to protect the ship.
As for the other situation, Adele was tense, but pleased so far at the way the ship’s defensive systems were holding up against the usual assortment of Borg tactics, now that they were up and operational. They had easily defeated the tractor beam and cutting beam, and the Borg seemed to be taking a moment to rethink their approach.
“T’Pring, report,” she demanded.
“Sensor sweep complete, sir. Standing by for preliminary computer analysis.”
“Good. Lieutenant Nix, open a hailing frequency to the cube,” Adele ordered.
“Yes, Captain.” She touched her console briefly. “Done, sir.”
Adele took a deep breath and tried to project an air of absolute confidence as she addressed the Collective in a level, threatening tone. “Cease your attempts to assimilate this vessel, or you will be destroyed.” She hoped she sounded braver than she felt, but she knew it wouldn’t matter one way or the other to the Borg. The only reason she was even warning them is that years of diplomatic training told her she had to, unless fired on first, and the cube hadn’t fired a shot.
Predictably, the Collective answered, “Your vessel carries relevant technology. Your distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.”
Adele bit back the angry reply that sprang to mind. Resistance might not be futile, but mouthing off almost certainly was. Instead, she ordered Iden to cut the comm. link, then turned to Ryzal at tactical.
“Commander Ryzal -- ” before she could give him the order, Par Renn interrupted urgently from secondary ops.
“Captain, something is draining our shields. I can’t tell where it’s coming from. We’re at sixty-eight percent and falling fast.”
“Confirmed,” added Ryzal at tactical. “Shields are failing.”
“Forty-seven percent,” added Renn. “Twenty-nine per-- ”
“I get it, Ensign Par. Why are they failing?” Adele interrupted sharply, eyeing the cube on the viewscreen.
Borux, at primary ops, spoke up before his subordinate. “It’s some kind of energy field. Origin unknown, but it doesn’t appear to be coming from the Borg ship. Their shields are failing, too.”
Adele exchanged a glance with Ryzal. “I don’t like the sound of that,” she said warily. As she did, she caught sight of something strange in her peripheral vision, and turned her head just in time to see her first officer dematerialize off the deck in front of her in a swirl of greenish-white energy.
Every starship captain had a few self-imposed, unwritten rules. One of Adele’s was never to utter the words “Oh, my God,” in response to anything that happened on her bridge. The phrase evoked shock and helplessness, emotions antithetical to what she expected from herself and her crew. It simply wouldn’t do to have the captain saying something like that in any kind of emergency situation. But as Icheb disappeared, for the first time in her six years in the captain’s chair, she very nearly broke that rule, biting the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood to keep from verbally expressing her shock and panic.
No sooner was he gone than the Borg cube on the viewscreen was rocked by a massive explosion, the shockwave of which slammed violently into the relatively unprotected Tesseract. The ablative armor dissipated the worst of the impact, but the ship lurched roughly, and Iden Nix tumbled backward, saved from injury by Par Renn, whom she landed against. He grunted as he fell against his console under her weight, but both officers were unharmed and quickly resumed their duties.
“What the hell just happened?” Adele demanded as she let go of her death grip on the arms of her command chair. “Did one of you fire on that cube?” she asked, turning her head to look at the two tactical officers.
“Negative,” replied Ryzal. “We did not fire.”
“Computer, locate Commander Icheb,” Adele requested, hoping against hope that someone had simply transported the XO to sickbay, as she had requested when he had first been knocked unconscious a few minutes prior, but having a sinking feeling that was not the case.
Her worst fears were quickly confirmed by the perpetually soothing voice of the computer. “Commander Icheb is not aboard the Tesseract.”
“Scan them again, T’Pring. See if you can find him, and figure out what just happened to that cube.”
“Yes, Captain,” replied T’Pring, sounding even calmer than the computer. On a personal level, Adele couldn’t decide whether she wanted to smack the Vulcan woman, or be her. But as a captain, she was damn glad someone on the bridge was keeping it together, because she was worried she was about to fall apart.
****
11:00:46 hours -- Main Engineering
Telek had a major obstacle to worry about before he could carry out his now-unconscious boss’s order to bring the field emitters online. The same drone that had pushed Maren aside was now standing between him and the console she had been working at.
Suddenly, the ship rocked violently, and the drone took its attention off of Telek to assess the situation. It was exactly the opportunity he needed. Time seemed to slow down as, taking a deep breath, he rushed the drone from behind with impressive speed and used his now-useless phaser rifle as a blunt weapon, swinging it forcefully at a spot on the cyborg’s head that was free of exoplating and connecting before the drone could anticipate his attack and duck out of the way or block his swing. The drone went down, and Telek went with it, grabbing at any tube or wire that looked vital and pulling until the drone -- a female, he saw now -- stopped struggling a moment later. The whole maneuver took maybe three seconds, but Telek felt like he had just won an entire war.
He jumped back up to face the console, and, eyeing the last two approaching Borg, quickly brought the overhead field emitters online. As he did, the remaining drones froze, jerked, and dropped unconscious to the floor.
Telek breathed another Andorii curse and stared in stunned amazement as relief washed over him. He turned to look at his fallen colleague, who was beginning to regain consciousness. He quickly walked over to Maren and knelt down beside her, visually assessing her injuries. She was bleeding from a nasty laceration on her head and appeared dazed, but the rest of her body looked unharmed. Nonetheless, he discouraged her getting up as she tried to push herself to a sitting position. “Lie still. I’ll call medical. What did you do to those drones?”
“Kedion pulse,” she explained weakly, looking up at him. “I overloaded their neural transceivers.” It hadn’t been as precise a job as she’d done on Icheb, but it had worked.
“Are they dead?” he asked urgently.
“No,” she replied, wincing with pain, “they’re in neural shock. They’ll regenerate. Get security in here. And activate a level ten containment field.” She touched her hand to her aching head, then examined the blood that coated her fingers with detached interest. She felt weirdly disconnected from the situation, like it was someone else who was lying on the floor bleeding and giving orders. Suddenly realizing they had about thirty seconds before Plan B went into effect and they got fried by radiation, she added, “Telek, call the bridge!”
*****
11:01:34 hours -- Bridge
Despite the panic of the moment, Adele was relieved to hear Telek’s voice on the comm. At least that meant engineering was still in one piece. “Status report?” she said, miraculously sounding calmer than she felt.
“For the moment, the deck is secure,” Telek replied, and Adele let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “Please tell Ensign DiSilva not to flood us with omicron radiation,” he added, and Adele nodded at the ensign, who breathed a visible sigh of relief and completely removed her hands from the engineering console.
“Done, Lieutenant,” Adele replied.
“And we need security down here, we have several unconscious drones.”
Unconscious? Adele thought warily. “Security is waiting outside,” she replied. “What’s O’Connor’s status?” she asked.
“She’s injured. I’m taking command for now.”
“Understood,” Adele replied. She wondered how severe Maren's injuries were, but there was no time to inquire further. “I need maximum power to shields, sensors and transporters, right away, Telek.”
“Aye, sir. Telek out.”
“T’Pring, have you found anything?” Adele asked the science officer.
“I cannot locate Commander Icheb’s combadge or bio-signs aboard the cube. It’s possible the energy field that is draining our shields is also interfering with our scans, or the Borg themselves may somehow be blocking it.”
“What about the explosion?” Adele asked. “Any idea what caused that? Are they completely disabled?”
Par Renn cut in. “Our sensors are being compromised by the energy field, Captain, but the readings we did get show similarities with whatever caused the damage to the Borg cubes in the Aris and Tyndoran systems.”
Iden Nix’s voice sounded surprised as she said, “Captain? I’m getting an incoming transmission.”
“From the Borg?”
“No, sir. The signal is being routed through our own subspace communications array. It’s coming from the buoy we lost yesterday,” Iden added, somewhat ominously.
“On screen.”
The face that appeared on the main display was most definitely not Starfleet. A humanoid alien with striking green eyes, dark hair, olive skin and a knobby-looking ridge running from his nose to his hairline announced flatly, “We have your first officer. We may even give him back if you cooperate. Proceed to the coordinates I’m transmitting now. We have much to discuss.” The visual feed switched to an image of Icheb, still unconscious, lying on an alien biobed.
“Wait just a minute,” said Adele, rising to her feet and studying the image of her XO and his surroundings, trying to get as much visual information as she could. “Who are you? Why have you taken my officer hostage? I’m sure you realize I can’t lead my entire crew into something that could potentially be a trap on nothing but a stranger’s demand, even if you do have my first officer.”
“Then come alone,” the man replied simply, as his image replaced Icheb’s on the screen. There was something utterly menacing in his tone, yet Adele could sense ... Wait a minute, I can sense him? she realized suddenly, and her mind started racing. That means he’s nearby. She could sense the alien’s emotions -- anticipation, triumph, malice, distrust .... and hope. There was a strong feeling of hope present, too. Hope for what? What does this man want?
“Return my officer. Then we’ll talk,” she said firmly.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he replied casually. “I believe he and I have even more to talk about than you and I do.”
Adele narrowed her eyes in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Everything will be explained when you come. I’ll be waiting.” Without another word, he cut the comm. link. Adele stared at the screen for a moment, then turned to face the rest of the bridge. To an officer, they all wore the same bewildered expression as Adele was sure she had on her own face. Even T’Pring had an eyebrow raised.
Adele found her voice again and started giving rapid-fire orders. “T’Pring, scan everything around us and see if you can find evidence of a cloaked ship,” she said. This elicited another raised eyebrow, but T’Pring nodded and went to work. “Someone find out what’s at those coordinates we were sent,” continued Adele, “and figure out what the status of that Borg cube is. Borux, you’re acting first officer. You have the bridge. I’m going to go find out what’s going on with our uninvited Borg guests.”
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), and eventually, whether to get involved in certain things that may or may not concern them ... those are the things the board will want to weigh in on. Remember all those ethical dilemmas Janeway agonized over? That's the purview of the advisory board -- evaluating the tactical, ethical, and legal considerations of major decisions whenever they have the luxury of discussing those decisions in advance. 
