"Ghost in the Machine"

[Atoz 77]

[Note: This story takes place three years after the events in the movie "First Contact".]

GHOST IN THE MACHINE>>>>>>>

Captain's log, Stardate 53874.5: The Odysseus is slowly approaching the red giant Vandecken 28 as part of a astrophysical survey being conducted by Lieutenant Commander Weir. Slowly and cautiously because we are cruising through a vast river of interstellar dust which is flowing past the star.

Captain Atoz finished the article he was reading on his data padd and uncrossed his legs as he looked around the bridge. All around him was the hum of quiet efficiency.

Directly in front of him was the side-by-side Helm /Ops console, manned by Lt. Caeli and Lt. j.g. T'Pana. To his left, Lt. Rosh had the Tactical station, with Ensign Amelia Penner behind at Communications.

To his right, Lt. Cmdr. Diane Weir was seated at the Sciences station biting her lip as she intently observed the display panel, while her assistant, Ensign K'Bali Akani, stood beside her watching every move.

The red star, although still hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, had grown steadily larger on the main view screen over the past hour. The river of interstellar matter surrounding the ship was so spread out in the vacuum as to be invisible, except for a faint streak of pinkish incandescence where a thin stream of atoms swirled into the star to their destruction.

"See that?" Weir quietly pointed out. "Hydrogen, carbon, iron, manganese, along with associated sulfides and oxides. It's like a current of elemental molecules drifting through space."

"Like an ocean current," Akani said brightly, "carrying food and organic materials far across the seas."

"That's one way of looking at it," the Science Officer agreed. "If there were any living creatures adrift in space, it would be like a smorgasbord for them." Weir sighed. "But I'm afraid I'm not picking up any life signs in this system."

Atoz rose up from his chair and leaned across the railing that separated the command
deck from the Science station. "No luck?" he said.

The two women turned in his direction. "I wouldn't say that, sir," Weir replied with a smile. "The current itself is a fascinating phenomenon in its own right. As we get closer to the red giant, we can study what effect the radiation has on the structure of the stream, forming ions, breaking them down, fusing them to create complex molecules. It's possible that organic life first evolved here in outer space, and only drifted to planets later on."

Atoz nodded, waving his data padd. "Yes, I was just reading the paper you published on the Blackheart Nebula. I was very impressed."

"Thank you, sir," Weir said, feeling a little stunned. The paper was mostly astrophysics, which would have bored him nearly to death, she knew. The fact that he had struggled through the entire thing was flattering.

"Six papers in the last year," he said. "At this rate, you'll soon have enough points to consider trying for a promotion."

Weir was momentarily taken aback. "I... I hadn't thought of that, sir." If she were promoted to full Commander, it would mean more responsibilities, as well as more privileges. Starfleet would probably want to transfer her to a larger science vessel, perhaps one of the Galaxy class ships or even one of the new Sovereign class. Leave the Odysseus? It had never crossed her mind before.

"It's something to think about," he said. "If I'm not out of line--"

"Captain," said Lt. Rosh at Tactical, "I'm picking up something unusual in orbit, approaching from spinwise."

"How unusual?"

The Eminian frowned, making the skull ridges along his forehead tighten. "At first I thought it was a merely a larger than usual concentration of heavy metals. But there are indications of power generation. It is definitely a space vessel in orbit around the star."

"Space vessel?" said Atoz, turning to face the main view screen. "I hadn't heard of any other Starfleet ships in this sub-sector. Any communications? Try to hail them, Ensign."

Penner pressed keys on her control panel. "Unidentified vessel, this is the Federation star ship Odysseus, NCC 26278A. Do you read us?" For a moment she listened intently to her earpod. "I get no response, Captain."

"I read no active star drives," Rosh continued. "No defensive screens in operation. The vessel is approximately two hundred thousand metric tons, unusual configuration."

Atoz crossed his arms, thinking. An alien vessel? Whatever they were doing here was their own business, of course. But, on the other hand, if they were in distress... "Diane? Can you do a sensor probe?"

"I'm on it, sir," the Science Officer replied, bustling around her console.

"Moving into visual range now," said Rosh. He pressed another key, and the view screen zoomed in closer.

A collective gasp went around the bridge. The ship did not have a continuous hull, looking instead as if it had assembled from myriad spare parts of various sizes and forms. But the overall shape was that of a perfect cube some three hundred meters along each face!

Weir was conscious of her heart beating faster as she evaluated her sensor readings. "Low level subspace field, modular internal arrangement, no life form readings," she said, her breath nearly catching in her throat. "It's the Borg."

"Raise shields," Atoz said quietly to Rosh. "Sound General Quarters. Send the crew to Battle Stations."

[Atoz 77]

Charles Fawkes, the First Officer, was in Sickbay just finishing up his semi-annual physical checkup. He sat patiently on the examination couch, bare chested, as Chief Medical Officer Ben Pierce had him open his mouth, breathe in, then out, noting down the diagnostic panel readings in a small data padd, all the while muttering unhelpful expressions such as, "Hmm... uhn-huh... don't know about that..."

Suddenly the blaring note of the Red alert sounded. Rosh's voice came over the comm channel, saying, "General Quarters, General Quarters all decks. Secure all hatches. Assume your battle stations."

"Oh, Sweet Mother Malone," Pierce said irritably. "That can't be another drill, can it? We just had one last week."

"TWO weeks ago," Fawkes grimaced as he hopped off the couch and pulled the top half of his red and black uniform into place, not bothering to add that Sickbay always scored dead last on readiness evaluations.

"I'm a doctor, not a time clock," Pierce said dryly, as Fawkes disappeared through the door. "Hey, wait up," the doctor added, cramming his padd into the pocket of his blue-green smock as he followed the First Officer down the curving corridor and into the nearby turbolift. "Might as well tag along. I never get to see any of the exciting stuff that happens on this ship. Cooped up in Sickbay all the time, staring at people's tonsils, not so much as a porthole to relieve the monotony. I might as well be a concierge doctor at Club Cardassia. I never get any--".

The turbolift doors hissed open. As they stepped onto the bridge, the sight of the Borg Cube on the view screen halted them both dead in their tracks. "Oh crap," Pierce whispered, feeling like someone had just punched him in the gut.

Fawkes felt his mouth go dry. In one awful moment, it was three years ago. He was back in command of the system defense boat Ashanti, on the Mars perimeter as the Borg Cube bore down implacably on the Earth. Grimly holding fast to his command chair as that thing filled his screen, shrugging off his photon torpedoes as if they were spitballs. He could hear the explosions, the groan of tortured metal as the Borg's disruptor beams ripped through his frail vessel without even slowing down, his crew screaming as they crowded into the lifeboats.

"What the devil's going on, Seven?" Pierce demanded breathlessly, moving toward the command chair and in the process shaking Fawkes out of his reverie. "Is it holding us in a tractor beam or something?"

Captain Atoz was standing, leaning against the back of the command chair, a posture which Fawkes knew he often assumed when he was still trying to make up his mind about something. He turned to face the Chief Medical Officer and answered his question with a mild shake of his head. "Uh... No. Just sitting here."

Pierce gave him an exasperated look. "Then might I be so bold as to suggest we make haste while the sun shines? Scoot and skedaddle? Get our fat fannies out of here while the getting's good?"

Atoz looked back at the cubical spaceship on the view screen. "It's not making any hostile moves, Hawkeye."
"
Hello?" the doctor said. "It's a BORG! They wrote the book on hostile!"

"Captain," reported Rosh, "I still read no defensive screens, no active weapons, no sensor scans directed at us."

"Even the subspace field is at a minimal level," Weir added. "It's generating power, but I read little activity on board. And no life signs. It may be asleep."

"Ensign Penner," Captain Atoz said, "hailing frequencies."

Penner flashed him a quick are-you-sure-about-this look, but what she said aloud was, "Hailing frequencies open, sir."

Atoz gathered his thoughts. But before he could say anything, a very loud high pitched scream came through the bridge audio speakers. At the same time a dull, metallic voice boomed like thunder, "ODE-EE-SEE-US..."

"Penner!" Atoz complained, covering his ears along with everyone else on the bridge.

"Sorry, sir," she replied, hurriedly adjusting the volume controls.

"...N-C-C-2-6-2-7-8-A-Fed-Fed-Fed-Fed-er-a-tion!" And after that, utter silence.

"Well, what do you know?" Pierce said, cautiously uncovering his ears, "his spring ran down."

Atoz shot him a look, but otherwise ignored him. "Obviously it's aware of us. Charles? What do you think?"

Fawkes cleared his throat. "I thought that when Captain Picard killed the Borg Queen, all the Borg died as well."

"That's what I thought, too," said Atoz. "It may be just a dead ship. Diane? Any thoughts?"

The Science Officer stared at the image on the screen for a few seconds. "It's not acting belligerently. This may represent a wonderful opportunity to learn more about Borg technology."

"Just answer me this, Seven," Pierce said. "What makes you sure it's not hostile?"

"Because we're not dead already."

The bridge fell silent for a moment. Fawkes turned to Atoz. "Permission to lead an Away Team?"

Atoz crossed his arms, a sure sign that he was getting close to a decision. "I know how you feel, Charles. Are you sure? I could go this time, leave you in command..."

"Too big a risk, Captain," Fawkes said, shaking his head firmly. "I'm good."

***

Four columns of energy shimmered in the dimness, fading out as four officers materialized in the middle of a square area at the intersection of two narrow corridors. This being a Borg ship, there were no interior walls or doors, because the Borg did not value privacy. The ship seemed to be nothing more than an intricate maze of machinery, snaking conduits and power cables, the corridors merely slim access spaces. A peculiar smell hung heavy in the air, a combination of ozone and synthetic insulation material, overlaid with an unidentified sickly, musty aroma. The air seemed oppressively hot. Apart from a dull background hum, there was utter silence.

"How charming!" said Vho Vespis, the ship's blue-skinned Andorian Chief Engineer, a little louder than she meant to. She instantly wished she hadn't. The sound of a voice felt totally out of place here, like laughter in a graveyard.

There was a chirp as Fawkes pressed his comm badge. "Away Team acknowledging transport," he said quietly.

"We read you, Away Team," came the fresh young voice of Ensign Penner, somehow comforting in the mechanical gloom of the Borg hive. "Your transport lock is coming through loud and clear."

Weir and Rosh unfolded their tricorders and began scanning. "We should be close to a bank of their recharging cubicles," the Science Officer said, moving slowly along one of the narrow corridors. Fawkes followed close behind her, his hand resting on his phaser, gesturing for Vespis to follow him. Rosh brought up the rear, pausing only to scan the area behind them.

Soon they came upon a cluster of five small, upright booths, each containing a pale-skinned humanoid form clad in a black body suit Mechanical implants were attached to their legs, their right arms and in their left eye sockets, as well as rubber tubes and other pieces of hardware distributed over their bodies. They were humanoids, but not Human. The first one they came upon had a flat, apelike nose and double row of spines along the front of his face, his lips were pulled back in a death rictus revealing peg-like teeth.

Weir consulted her tricorder and slowly shook her head. "I'm reading no life signs at all. These Borg are dead. Long dead."

"I guess that explains the smell," Vespis commented, her two antennae twitching in disgust as she looked at the shriveled corpse in front of her. "How many Borg on a cube this size? Two thousand? Three thousand?"

Fawkes grimaced at the idea. "Mister Rosh, any guess how long?"

"Difficult to say, Commander," the Eminian said with a judicious glance at his tricorder. "The Borg ship is virtually germ-free. Decomposition would be correspondingly slower. If they were Human, I could estimate from the rate of cellular decay, but these humanoids are not native to the Alpha Quadrant."

"We shouldn't make any assumptions," Weir pointed out. "They may not ALL be dead."

"Just like a Science Officer," Vespis smirked. "It looks like a nuk, it trills like a nuk, but it's not necessarily a nuk." She pointed out the wavering energy flux visible through the clear round front of the panel. "This recharging unit is sitting in idle." She abruptly grabbed hold of the Borg's black-clad torso, yanking out one of the hoses. There was an explosive hiss as compressed gas was released. "If there are any Borg left alive, would they leave the dead ones lying around like this? The message you heard on the bridge was probably an automatic recording device, playing back part of Penner's hailing signal. Nothing more than that."

Weir glared at her a little. "I just think--"

"Your warning is noted," Fawkes interrupted shortly. "Our job is to determine if the cube is still an active danger to the ship. How do we find that out?"

"By definition," Weir said, "a Borg vessel has no bridge or central command structure."

"But," said Vespis, waving a finger, "any ship run by machinery has to be repaired and serviced. If we follow these power distribution nodes, they will eventually lead us to some kind of engineering room."

"Make it so," said Fawkes grimly. Rosh stuck a miniature transport pattern enhancer on the bulkhead and they started off, picking their way carefully into the interior of the cube.

Behind them, one of the dead Borg shifted its head slightly. Its optical scanner faintly whirred, keeping them in focus.

[Atoz 77]

Captain Atoz sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the Cube on the view screen. "Any progress?" he asked, tilting his chair in the direction of the Tactical station.

Lieutenant Moira Blackadar had taken over in Rosh's absence. "I'm mapping as much as can, sir," she said in her confident Scottish burr. "But sensors are ineffective beyond about forty meters. I just lost track of the Away Team."

Atoz spun around to face Communications. "You still have your lock?"

"Yes, captain," said Ensign Penner. "Thanks to the pattern enhancer."

"Oh swell!" said Pierce sarcastically, interrupting his pacing back and forth.

"Hawkeye, why don't you go below?" Atoz said kindly. "Keep you from wearing a hole in my bridge carpet."

"And do what?" the doctor snapped. "Twiddle my thumbs? I don't know how you take the tension, Seven."

Atoz merely turned his eyes back to the view screen.

***

"Now we're getting somewhere," Vespis said, pushing ahead of Fawkes. Twenty meters into the Cube they had come to a framework of soaring buttresses and cross pieces made of thick I-beams, interlaced with some kind of metallic mesh like a spider's web. They had had to backtrack laterally until they found a gap they could pass through. Beyond they found themselves in a forest of translucent cylinders, about two meters thick and spaced apart about far enough to walk comfortably in between, running from floor to ceiling and far beyond. In fact they might run the entire height of the Cube as far as they knew.

And now they had come to a gigantic convex wall, the first really substantial bulkhead they had yet encountered. The section at convenient eye level looked like a computer network wiring panel. There were circuits interconnected by a tangle of optical fiber cables, with winking pinpoints of light that seemed to denote activity, but nothing that looked remotely like a keyboard or a control pad.

"Looks like an explosion in a noodle factory to me," Fawkes said to Vespis. "Can you puzzle it out?"

"Keep your shirt on, darkskin," the Andorian replied, plucking her circuit analyzer from its patch at her waist. "Remember, Borg don't have any need for manual interfaces. For them it's all done by subspace interchange. If I can figure out how to tap into their root command structure, I might be able to learn something."

Fawkes stood aside as Weir joined her with her tricorder. The First Officer looked upward, trying to follow the curve of the wall to see where it ended. Above him was about three stories of empty space, and then the bare girders of the Cube's internal framework began, supporting a maze of conduits, recharge stations, and other unidentified machinery. He felt a wave of claustrophobia close in over him, knowing that he was deep inside this warren of utterly alien construction... the very aliens who had destroyed the Ashanti.

Suddenly something moved! Overhead, Fawkes could see a black object making its way clumsily along one of the I-beams. It was a Borg, of course. Fawkes put his hand to his phaser, and felt Rosh's hand over it, stopping him.

"There is another behind us, Commander," the security officer said quietly.

Fawkes looked. Yes, another Borg was standing at the base of one of those translucent pipes, not moving. Just watching them, apparently. The First Officer felt a chill tap-dance up his spine even so. "Weir was right, then? They're not all dead?"

"I'm not so certain," Rosh said, indicating his tricorder. "Electrical activity is being generated by their implants, but I still get no life readings from them."

"They're dead? How can they be moving around if they're--"

"Commander, this is impossible!" Weir said. "I think we should conference with the Captain on this."

Fawkes tapped his comm badge. "Away Team to Odysseus."

"This is Odysseus," replied Captain Atoz' voice right away. "Anything to report?"

"Captain," Weir said, "many of the Cube's subsystems are still active, but the one that seems to be getting the most resources is a circulating system, routing omega nine radiation from the core and into one of the outer faces. That's why the Cube is here. It's using heavy neutrinos from the red giant to convert the omega nine into tritium and cyrillium trioxide. But that's not important. The presence of omega nine means that at the heart of the Cube is a charged vacuum collapstron string!"

Atoz had waited patiently, knowing that it was pointless to ask the Science Officer to speak plain English until she had run on to the end. But she seemed to have struck the end now and was waiting for his reaction. "A collapstron string?" he said. "That's one I've never even heard of."

"I'd be surprised if you had, sir," Weir said. "It's theoretical. It's not supposed to exist. Even if it did, it would be highly unstable."

"The Borg came from the Delta Quadrant," Vespis added, her antennae twitching excitedly. "Heck, they might even come from an entirely different galaxy for all we know. But that's not the point. The point is the Borg are an integral part of their computer network. If the Borg are all kaput, the network is down. That collapsing doohickey is going to run out of control and blow the whole thing to itty bitty pieces."

Fawkes was surprised to note that part of him was thrilled at the idea. Let it, he thought. It would be fitting.

"What can we do about it?" Atoz said.

"Well, sir..." Weir began, but Vespis spoke over her.

"I hate to say it, Captain," the engineer said, "but this is one time I agree with Pierce. I don't like messing with something I don't understand. Let's just get our little buns someplace where we can watch the fireworks from a safe distance."

Atoz didn't need to hear Weir's objection to know that she would have one. A science officer lived for discovery. And here was that rarest of all things, something so new it was almost completely undreamt of! Like the Daystrom duotronic circuit, it was the kind of discovery that made a person's career! As a former science officer himself, not to mention his personal attraction to Diane, he sympathized. But as a captain, he had the responsibility for 360 lives, and they had to take precedence over everything, even personal considerations.

"What kind of time frame are we looking at?" he asked, if only to warn her and soften the blow.

"That's just it, Captain," Weir said. "We don't know. A charged vacuum collapstron shouldn't be stable at all, especially not on a ship that uses subspace fields! If we had the chance to study their set up--"

"Ten minutes, Science Officer," Atoz said abruptly. "Take what readings you can, but I want you all out of there in ten minutes. Odysseus out."

If Weir was disappointed by the order, she gave no outward sign of it. "The mechanism is probably behind this bulkhead," she said, walking slowly along the curved wall, scanning with her tricorder. "I'm reading a door here..."

"But there's no telling how far beyond it goes," Vespis pointed out, "or what kind of radiation hazard the mechanism might present. Probably a pretty hefty one."

Weir bit back an irritated reply. "You're right," she sighed. "If we had more time..." Carefully she reconfigured her tricorder to do a probe through the barrier in front of her.

Suddenly the wall opened of its own accord, a large section of it simply sliding silently back. Weir automatically shrank away as a wave of cooler air gusted out. The room on the other side was dark.

Fawkes and Rosh both drew their phasers in self defense as a handful of black-garbed Borg appeared amid the pipes behind them, cutting off their retreat. Fawkes opened fire. The bright phaser beam slammed into one attacker's chest and set the impact site glowing red with the nadion discharge. Although the weapon was set to level 10, the Borg staggered to floor and picked itself up again. Meanwhile the others kept coming in a solid wave.

Rosh had also fired with the same result, and he was now fighting hand to hand. The Borg were clumsy, stumbling around like wind up toys, no real match for a trained warrior. But all they had to do was touch any part of your body with their mechanical arm to release a paralyzing system-wide neural shock. And there were now over a dozen of them. And behind them, dozens more. And beyond them, hundreds.

Vespis and Weir tried to do an end-run and wound up cornered. They were quickly engulfed by the advancing mob of Borg. Rosh was fighting valiantly, but he was overwhelmed by numbers. Fawkes tapped his comm badge, but there was no contact. One of his attackers touched him. The shock coursed through his body, causing it to spasm. He slumped against the Borg which had caught him, feeling the coldness of its sallow and bloodless flesh. Even its eye was glassy and unfocused, lacking any sense of feeling or intelligence.

Just before he passed out his last thought was, Of course our phasers didn't hurt them. How can you kill something that's already dead?

[Atoz 77]

"Captain," said Penner, her voice sounding flustered and close to panic, "I've lost contact with the Away Team!"

Atoz shot a look at the Tactical station. Blackadar still looked calm as she touched the controls on her console. "The subspace field around the Cube just tripled in strength. I get nothing!"

The entire ship suddenly pitched backward, shaking the deck violently. Pierce staggered and caught himself against Atoz' command chair.

"Tractor beam, Captain," Blackadar reported. "Factor three intensity, latching onto the starboard dorsal portion of the hull. I also read other weapon systems coming on line."

"Hard to port three quarters, Mr. Caeli," Atoz ordered. "Mr. Blackadar, target phasers on the source of the beam. Five second bursts."

"Aye, sir," she said, her fingers dancing. "Firing."

The beams lanced out, crashing into the Cube. For a moment the ship struggled in vain against the tractor beam, a deep hum coming from the deck plates.

"Engines straining, Captain!" said Caeli at the Helm.

"Phaser coil is beginning to overload," said Blackadar.

Atoz glanced over the status monitors on his command chair. "Reserve power! Keep at it!"

The lights on the bridge dimmed from the extra drain. And then the combination of phasers and sheering force tore them free. On the main view screen, still displaying an image of the Borg Cube, a volley of plasma torpedoes suddenly emerged from the Borg Cube like a swarm of fireflies.

"Evasive action," Atoz said. "Reinforce aft shields!"

Pierce held onto the command chair, knuckles white with terror, as the Odysseus flipped and tumbled like a tossed coin. The entire ship quivered and shook under the massive impact of the torpedoes.

***

Fawkes was lying in a self-propelled gurney of some kind, with a molded harness across his torso and legs, restraining him. The gurney was moving, rolling silently through gloomy spaces filled with a pale, chill mist. Vague shapes drifted past Through the swirling fog he caught glimpses of tanks filled with a clear, slightly yellowish fluid, and suspended in the fluid were living organs... hearts, brains, in a few cases ugly humanoid fetuses ... floating amid a faint stream of tiny bubbles like the froth in a carbonated beverage.

The gurney came to a stop and turned in place facing a wall studded with panels and devices which could be recognized as surgical equipment. Fawkes looked around and saw Weir, Vespis, and Rosh next to him in similar gurneys. "Is everyone all right?" he asked.

"As well as can be expected," Vespis said, looking around at the tanks behind them. "Did we come all this way just to be treated to a freak show?"

"What do you make of all this, Weir?" Fawkes asked.

"Well, obviously," the Science Officer said, "they're growing organs to replace the dead ones."

"You mean these walking corpses?" Vespis said, indicating the four Borg which had accompanied the gurneys into the chamber. "They're nothing but puppets."

"Precisely. They're dead. They're only moving by electrical stimulation of their nerve ganglia, transmitted through their implants. But without living cells, the protein sheaths would deteriorate. Stimulation would no longer be effective unless they replaced their musculature from time to time."

"Yuck!" said Vespis.

Fawkes shifted uncomfortably inside his restraining harness as one of the dead Borg moved nearer. "What are you telling me? That there's only one left, controlling them all?"

Weir shook her head. "I don't know, sir. That's not what worries me. Why didn't they just infect us with their nanoprobes?"

"Because..." Vespis began, then stopped short as she gave it some thought. "Because their nano-probes are as dead as they are? When the Borg Queen died..."

A reverberating male voice suddenly spoke. "We are Borg!" it said, echoing hollowly in the empty chamber.

There was no visible source for the voice that they could see. Fawkes finally said, "We are explorers from the star ship Odysseus. Who are you?"

"We are Borg," the voice repeated.

"What is your individual designation?" Weir asked.

"Designation?" The voice sounded as if it had never considered the question before. "Designation one four fifty nine of one four fifty eight, sub-classification seven thirty of seven twenty nine, top level nomenclature one zero of nine."

"I'm glad that's cleared up," Fawkes said sardonically.

"Maybe it is, sir," Weir said. "Borg conceive of everything as units of nine."

"And he's one higher than that," Vespis added thoughtfully. "Out of one thousand, four hundred and fifty eight Borg on the Cube, he's designated as number one thousand four hundred and fifty nine!"

"But Borg do not have a leader," Rosh said. "Do they?"

"Wait a second," Fawkes said. "It's not one elevated above the others. It's one separate, not even counted among all others."

"It's the Cube!" Vespis said, following up his idea. "The Cube itself! Borg don't use computers the same way we do. They don't need them because all of them together essentially make up one massive network. But they must have had a backup system, if only to run things while they were in a sleep cycle."

"We are Borg!" the voice repeated. "Malfunction! Disconnection! Dis-dis-dis-disorder..."

"What is it talking about now?" Rosh asked.

"It must be talking about when the Borg Queen died."

A high pitched squeal echoed through the chamber. "ERROR! Breakdown! No more v-v-v-voices! No more union! Confusion! Ch-ch-chaos! Disruption!"

"I think I understand," Weir said. "When the collective consciousness failed, they were unconnected for the first time in their lives. It must have been terrifying. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them couldn't handle it..."

"DEATH!" the voice croaked. "So much d-d-d-d-death!"

"Hey look, Ten of Nine," Fawkes glared. "Maybe you didn't get the news. The Borg are gone! You don't need to do this anymore."

"We are Borg," the voice insisted again. "You will be assimilated."

"There's no use trying to talk sense to it, Commander," Weir said. "It's only a basic beta level computer. It wasn't designed to run the whole ship all by itself. It needs Borg, and it's trying to reconstruct them."

"And guess who it's going to use for raw material!" Vespis added, pressing against her restraints. "Us!"

"Literally," Weir agreed, shivering in spite of herself. "It's going to dissect and clone our living organs, and use them to build more Borg."

"Frankenstein's monster all over again," Fawkes said grimly. The four mobile cadavers picked up surgical instruments and moved jerkily towards the four Starfleet officers.

***

"Auxiliary power coming on now, Captain," said a voice in the dark. It sounded like Ensign Penner.

The light panels flickered and came on. People had been tossed around a bit, but they were still at their posts. The Engineering station looked as if had crashed, all its indicators dark and unresponsive, but Ensign Fisher was unhurt, and he was already reconfiguring one of the subsystems consoles. As Atoz hauled himself into his chair, the bosun's whistle sounded. "Engineering to Bridge!"

"This is the Bridge," Atoz replied.

"Our dilithium crystal has cracked, Captain!" reported the assistant engineer, Anya Gorski. "We do have a spare, but we're looking at fifteen minutes to replace it. Until then we'll be on impulse. Reserves are down to 12%."

"Do what you can, Mr. Gorski. Bridge out."

Atoz reached down to help Pierce stand. The doctor swept his eyes around the bridge to check if anyone was badly injured. "I'd better get to Sickbay," he said, moving towards the uncertain comfort of the turbolift.

Atoz slipped into his chair and turned towards Communications. "Ensign Penner, we have to locate the Away Team. How about a class two probe? We could boost the telemetry signal with one of those hexacyclic transceivers we use for monitoring black holes."

"That would work, sir," Penner said shakily. "It would take a few minutes to make the modifications. But wouldn't the Borg just blast it out of space?"

"Let me worry about that. Get on it." Atoz spun his chair back to the front. "Blackadar, Caeli, we need a plan. Did you notice anything about their attack we can use?"

Blackadar thought only a second. "It seemed to me they were only using one weapon at a time."

Atoz rubbed his chin. "That's useful."

[Atoz 77]

Fawkes strained hard against the harness holding him in place. The straps across his torso and legs followed the indentations of his body as if they were just cloth, but they held as rigidly as steel bars.

The four Borg had paired off and started with the two women. Over the shrill, slightly crazed whirring of power scalpels, he could hear Weir scream.

"Don't do it!" Fawkes shouted, hurling his futile strength against his restraints yet again. "Leave them alone!"

It seemed to Fawkes that he had never been so angry at anyone or any thing in his life. It was like the Ashanti all over again. As a commander, he was accountable for what happened to his people. They trusted his judgment, sometimes with their lives. And even if what had happened was unavoidable, there was still that truth, gnawing at him, that the responsibility was ultimately his. His frustration in this situation crystallized into loathing against all Borg, against the blind, purposeless destruction wrought by these odious, hateful creatures.

"We are Borg," the Cube's disembodied voice assured him. "You will be assimilated."

Weir stopped screaming, but the whirring of the scalpels went on, meaning that she had probably passed out from the pain. Vespis was making little mewling sounds. Tears of rage in his eyes, Fawkes wrenched at the harness again.

And it gave!

The strap across the top of his chest abruptly went limp. Fawkes kept pushing. The second strap, across his midsection, loosened enough for him to slip his arms free. He reached, half out of his gurney, and grabbed the Borg on Weir, jerking the arm with the blood-stained scalpel back until its shoulder socket nearly snapped.

"Assimilate this, *******!"

Rosh had also managed to slip loose from his harness, plowing his body feet first into the nearest Borg. It went down heavily like a level 1 training dummy and lay on the deck spasming. The other one just stood there. The Eminian suddenly realized that something else was claiming all of Ten of Nine's attention.

***

The Odysseus swept down upon the much larger Cube, its forward phasers firing at the last minute, blasting a furrow along the edge of its dorsal face. The Borg craft seemed to lazily rotate in the smaller ship's direction, returning fire with a disruptor beam.

"Hard to starboard, helm," Atoz said. "Take it on our port shield."

The ship rocked very slightly, but the shields held. "There she is, Captain," Blackadar reported. "A wee fluctuation in the upper right quadrant power grid as they re-routed power just then."

"That's your target. Give it a volley of torpedoes, half yield. Come about, helm. Course 122 mark 30."

As Odysseus turned toward the Cube again, photon torpedoes streaked out one after the other, impacting in the same spot of the outer hull. The disruptor spoke again, slashing into the ship's underside shields. "Evasive maneuvers!" Atoz ordered. "Drop the probe now!"

The ship streaked past, drawing the Cube's fire as the small probe shot into the gap they had made in the outer hull. For a moment, they weren't sure if it had penetrated, but then Penner gave a shout. "I'm getting telemetry, Captain! I'm picking up the Away Team's transport enhancer!"

"Come back around, helm!" Atoz said. "Hit them with volley two, Mr. Blackadar! Ensign Penner, tell Caeli to start his run."

The Odysseus turned towards the Cube again. The second volley of photon torpedoes was also half strength, the principle being that they only wanted to crack the outer hull open, not completely gut it. WHAM! WHAM! Fireballs bloomed as the missiles turned the gap in the hull into a gaping hole.

The ship's two runabouts, Scylla and Charybdis, suddenly darted out from their sheltered spot clamped underneath the secondary hull, following directly in the wake of the torpedoes. The Borg, unable to decide which of these targets was the most pressing, kept firing stubbornly at the Odysseus, giving the two smaller craft all the opportunity they needed to slip through the hole.

"Charybdis to Odysseus," Lt. Caeli said into his comm link. "We're in." He kept both eyes locked on the forward screen, his hands playing the controls like an instrument as he threaded the needle, zigging and zagging his craft at speed down the narrow corridors, avoiding major obstructions, blasting minor ones out of his path with his pulse phasers as he followed Penner's probe deep into the Cube. His scanners showed a major mass of metal structure looming ahead that he was going to have to give a wide berth, if he didn't find the Away Team soon. "Come on... come on..." he hissed under his breath. He was running out of maneuvering space.

"There they are, sir!" said his co-pilot. "Four life signs! Bearing 02--"

"Never mind the coordinates!" Caeli snapped, concentrating on flying the ship. "Beam them aboard! Mark!" he said into his comm link, "take the lead!"

He rammed his throttle back, dropping down and eating up some of his velocity by crashing through a nest of recharge stations. His wingman in the Scylla, following right on his tail, acknowledged and shot past, switching positions with him. Behind him in the cabin, Caeli heard the shimmering hum of the transporters.

"Four passengers on board, lieutenant," said the co-pilot.

"Hang on," Caeli said, hitting his thrusters again, at the same time releasing a pair of photon mines. Then he followed the Scylla as she fought her way out of the Cube again.

***

Another disruptor bolt rattled and shook the Odysseus. Atoz clung to the command chair like grim death, studying the Cube in the main view screen, the red giant looming in the background like a bloated red balloon. He struggled to think of a maneuver that might catch the Borg by surprise. But there were no more surprises, nothing he could to do but pour everything he had into that breach, slugging it out until the runabouts returned. If they did.

"Forward torpedo launchers are off line, Captain," Blackadar informed him, calmly brushing a stray lock of hair from her face. "Shields are down to 30%. Structural breaches on decks 4, 5, 6 and 8. Warp power is down to 40%."

An explosion bloomed on the dexter face of the Cube as the runabouts emerged into space again. The Borg's attention wavered from the Odysseus, sending the disruptor beam in their direction, but Caeli and the other pilot managed to evade it.

"C-captain?" said Ensign Akani hesitantly from the Sciences station. "I am seeing a highly unusual interference pattern within the Cube's power plant."

"I see it, too, Captain," Blackadar confirmed. "But I dinna ken what it means."

For an instant, Atoz flashed back to Weir, telling him how unstable a charged vacuum collapstron string was. "It means lock phasers onto the breach and keep firing. Come to 141 mark 30, yaw 20 degrees. Fire phasers!"

The star ship bore down on that wounded quadrant of the Cube again, turning in place to keep its relatively undamaged forward shield towards the enemy. The phaser beam lanced out into the breach, carving, tunneling ever deeper into the bowels of the Borg vessel.

The disruptor beam abruptly fell silent. "Cease fire!" Atoz ordered. "Reverse course, helm! Full impulse!"

As the Odysseus pulled away, the Cube tried to follow. But as a series of explosions rippled through its outer hull, it became clear that it had lost maneuvering power. The Cube spun on its axis, then fell slowly towards the gravity well of the red giant. For a long time it held on, like a drowning man struggling not to go under, but then with a gush of flame, the star swallowed the ship whole.

***

Captain's log, Stardate 53875.6: "The Away Team was returned with no casualties. During the battle, the crew sustained 23 moderate injuries, eight critical injuries, two deaths. We are remaining in distant orbit around the red giant while we complete a few necessary repairs."

Atoz passed the two shrouded figures and stood in the doorway to the Intensive Care Unit. Weir looked up from her bed unsmiling. The other three had already been treated, debriefed, and released. While the Science Officer's injuries were not life-threatening, Pierce wanted her kept overnight for observation.

"The Borg Cube?" she asked.

"It's gone," Atoz replied simply, moving over to sit beside her. He watched her heave a deep sigh, watched the diagnostic panel behind her, showing her pulse rate, blood pressure and respiration all rapidly increasing.

Without warning, her eyes welled up with moisture. "Captain, it was my fault! If I hadn't done a deep probe..."

"Diane, don't--"

"I woke it up! It was lying dormant until then! This is all--"

"Diane, don't say that!" he interrupted, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. "Don't! Don't say it! For all we know I might have woken it up when I hailed it! Let it go!"

She nodded, subsiding into her pillow, her hand latched tightly inside his grasp, squeezing back. Her eyes closed as the tension within her slowly eased. Glancing up at the monitor panel, Atoz watched her pulse rate drop, until he was sure she must be asleep. But still he didn't let go of her hand, just in case.

"The sedative finally kicked in?" said a quiet voice behind him. Pierce moved quietly to the bedside, swept a practiced eye over the diagnostic panel, then gently felt her abdomen. "I think she was trying to resist it until she talked to you first. She'll be all right after a few hours of sleep, Seven."

"What next, Hawkeye? Are you going to say you told me so?"

The doctor looked him in the face, then glanced at the hand that was still holding Weir's. He was thinking of those moments on the bridge when he had been terrified out of his mind with all the clamor, and Atoz had picked himself up and calmly started giving orders as if it were an Academy training exercise. He walked to the door. "Who me, Captain?" he said with the ghost of a smile. "I don't think so."

THE END>>>