By Nathan Warner
Four Defiant class starships are in a race against time to stop a Borg attack on Earth
Captain Reggie Goethard gazed in shock at the horror of what he was seeing. His attack wing of four Defiant class ships had just dropped out of warp into a field of carnage. Fragments of Galaxy class starships were drifting past the viewscreen, engulfed in flames—the oxygen from the exposed hulls feeding the fires. He shielded his eyes against a sudden, brilliant flare of light. Squinting through it, he caught the aftermath of Borg energy weapons cutting the U.S.S. Halcyon in half. There in the center of it all, like a rectangular black hole, the Borg Cube glowered with faint green energy emanating through the chinks in its colossal superstructure. This time, though, it hadn’t been alone.
Earlier that morning, the Borg had launched a swift and decisive surprise attack across the Federation. Nearly 100 Cubes in total had advanced on major star systems. Only once the battles commenced did it become apparent that the entire endeavor was meant to distract Starfleet from a stab at their heart. The Federation sensor field in the Oort cloud picked up a transwarp conduit forming just outside of the human solar system. Once again, the Borg were taking a swipe at Earth. Without a second to spare, the U.S.S. Recompense, Defiant, Rejoiner, and Retrieve fell back toward Earth from Alpha Centauri, where they had just added Borg debris to the Mintauri asteroid field, eliminating a couple Borg Spheres before they reached the central planet. The Defiant had been visiting Earth from Deep Space Nine under the command of Avery O’Toole when the call to battle went out. It easily fit in among Goethard’s “Wolf-pack,” as these Defiant starship squadrons were called. Regardless of the details, they were late to the hastily scrambled rendezvous at Jupiter, where all nearby Starfleet vessels were rallying. But by the time the Wolf-pack entered the Sol System, the Borg cube in question had pushed the Federation’s makeshift frontline to Earth’s Moon. Risking warp in the solar system, the small fleet of Defiants dropped into a flaming graveyard above New Berlin. The damage was unbelievable. Most of the ships holding against the Borg advance were science and exploration vessels.
“Report!” Goethard bellowed. The U.S.S. Recompense, shuddered beneath him as a Borg beam narrowly missed them to starboard on its way to find a larger target. It must have landed its mark because a shock-wave from an explosion rocked the Recompense back to port. Lt. Ashley Ramble blew her blond locks out of her eyes from the Conn.
“The fleet is being picked apart!” She said, interpreting the data from her readout.
“Survivors?” Goethard asked his Tactical Officer, Lt. Will Dramon. Dramon hesitated as he read his screen.
“1,251 life signs...no, 1,223 life signs in the wreckage,” he reported, and then grasped at his console as if to catch something slipping through his fingers. “Now, 1,210!” he said, emotion cracking his voice.
Goethard took in the scene. In less than 5 minutes, their tiny squadron would be the only “fleet” left to contend with this beast, which was taking its time—almost relishing its homicidal handiwork. There was some comfort in that as it bought precious minutes for Earth, which was practically defenseless again. Yes, Spacedock, which could have contended with the Cube, was in the middle of a costly upgrade and would not be able to offer much assistance.
They knew exactly where and when to hit us! Goethard realized in disbelief, and then out of his memory surfaced a report several weeks ago of a missing Federation transport, which had been carrying some top brass to a review of some new Tellerite colonial habitats. A day later, Starfleet intelligence had found some residual energy signatures reminiscent of Borg technology that had crossed their logged flight plan. Admiral Loess was among the missing. And if he had been assimilated, then that would go a long way to explaining what was happening here today. The Borg had gained unprecedented access to all of Starfleet’s latest defense information!
His thoughts vaporized as a nearby blast rocked the Recompense at least ten degrees upward. Goethard’s attention snapped back to the situation at hand, just as a flaming wreck spiraled into their path. He couldn’t quite make out the designation on the warp nacelles.
“U.S.S. Highborn!” Lt. Ramble pronounced as she reflexively dove the ship below its twisted hull. A trail of embers and debris scattered before them. To see a proud ship of the line and its crew snuffed out so casually soaked the onlookers in rage. Goethard’s own fury had reached a breaking point, but with a deep breath, he put it all aside. There were more pressing matters on hand.
From the moment he’d dropped out of warp, one thought was foremost in his mind—he knew he had to attempt a rescue of the people out there before engaging the enemy. And it wasn’t just because he had a number of friends amid the wreckage. There were thousands of officers out there and hundreds of cadets caught in the battle during training missions – all now helplessly drifting at the mercy of space itself. Goethard couldn’t live with himself if they perished while he was exchanging angry blows with the Borg. At the same time, the longer he pulled his punches, the nearer the Borg would come to Earth and the chances rose of massive casualties planet-side. In a moment of clarity, he stood up from his chair.
“Signal the U.S.S. Defiant, Rejoiner, and the Retrieve,” he said, “Follow our lead.” He tapped his plan into his console, sending the signal to his tiny fleet, while muttering, “Every life is someone.” He turned to the Conn. “Lt. Ramble,” he called, “when we drop our shields, I need you to keep those Borg weapons from scuffing our shiny new hull.”
“Aye, sir,” Ramble replied, successfully keeping the adrenalin out of her voice.
“Take us in,” Goethard commanded. The Recompense and the three other Defiant starships surged forward through the debris field of federation starships. “Drop shields!” he ordered, as they approached the drifting Saucer fragment of the U.S.S. Halcyon.
“Commander,” he motioned to his First Officer, Wen Lee, “begin beaming in as many survivors as we can take!” Lee nodded and moved to the science console to take over transporter controls as the four Defiants swooped over the Cube from a high angle of approach, snatching the living from the dead. Even as he sensed lives were being saved, Goethard’s heart was heavy. The Defiant class was such a small starship—only a handful of the total survivors could be saved. Goethard touched his fingertips together under his nose as he bent his brow over the tragedy. “Like the Valkyrie,” he murmured sadly, recalling the spirits of Norse mythology that flew over the field of battle to decide who lived and who died.
“The Defiant reports 45 rescued,” Commander Lee reported. “The Rejoiner and Retrieve managed to save 50 each, and we pulled out 53 souls ourselves.” Were they supposed to call that a success? The news had struck Goethard in the gut with their powerlessness.
198—out of at least 1,000! He thought, desperately turning his attention away from the haunting thoughts of the men and women they were forced to leave behind. He had done all that he could, but that was small comfort. Rallying his strength, he desperately bent his constitution back into shape. This wasn’t over, and now they needed to try and save even more lives.
“Signal our pack – rejoin formation,” Goethard whispered, his voice weak from the emotion.
“Sir?” Lt. Ramble asked, not clear on the order, and not daring to take her eyes away from the Cube on the screen.
“I said, form up!” Goethard bellowed. “Let’s make these monsters pay for what they’ve done today!”
“Aye, Sir!” Ramble confirmed. Almost instantly, the Wolf-pack pulled into formation and flared towards the angular walls of the Borg Cube, which had somehow found the time to pick through debris as it slowly made its way towards Earth.
Don’t you touch them! Goethard thought, but said aloud, “Analysis of the Cube?”
“Extensive damage to their superstructure,” Dramon replied, interrogating his tactical readout, “But their main systems are still intact and they are maintaining a dispersal field to prevent transport.”
“Estimated time to put them down?” Goethard asked with a growl. Dramon shook his head.
“Twenty minutes, give or take,” he replied, mentally comparing past Borg encounters against the excellent Defiant track record. Goethard tapped his temple. A migraine had laid siege to his concentration. It didn’t take his high Academy grades in Spatial Relativity and Related Rates to realize that this estimate was too long. More people were going to die—a lot more.
“We don’t have twenty minutes, people,” he said.
“Sorry, Sir,” Dramon returned, “but unless you’re hiding the Doomsday Device under your chair, it will take that long for our Pack to pick them apart.” Goethard tapped his temple again, but he was out of good ideas.
“Sir, I have a suggestion,” a voice near the back of the bridge interjected. Goethard swiveled his chair to see a young woman wearing a Cadet uniform. Her short black hair almost gave her a Vulcan appearance.
“And you are?” Goethard asked with a frown.
“Oh...Alice...Alice Aspen, Sir—sorry, Sir,” She sputtered, “I’m Cadet Aspen interning on the U.S.S. Halcyon.” Goethard felt a prick of conscience—this young woman was one of the lucky survivors they had rescued minutes before. He could still see the green blood across her forehead—clearly not her own, and the patches of soot on her clothing from plasma explosions on the bridge of her Galaxy class. He bit off the numerous remarks that came to mind—all variants of: “We’re a little busy right now!” Instead, he found himself gesturing to her.
“Yes, Cadet, you have a suggestion?” he asked.
“Oh!” she said, nervously, stepping forward a little. “Well, it’s a bit out there, really, but I read a paper last semester by a Tellerite professor on a method of beam-guided teleportation for penetrating deep substrate – it was a method for mining ore through magnetite interference – and it occurred to me in Sickbay that it might be applicable in certain tactical situations, such has this one.” Goethard caught himself tapping at his headache again, which had gotten significantly worse with the Cadet’s presence on the bridge.
“Cadet, time is pressing,” he growled, “so if you have a suggestion, make it now, please—otherwise leave the Bridge in the hands of those who know how precious these seconds are.” Alice stiffened at attention like she was at drill.
“Yes, Sir,” she said, “very good, Sir! What I meant to say, Captain, was that we could modify a Class 3 subsurface penetrator probe with a transporter signal enhancer tied to a matter stream beam emitter—to cut through their dispersal field.”
Goethard was practically stabbing his finger into his forehead now as Cadet Aspen continued nervously. “We would fire the probe through the damaged superstructure, penetrating deep inside the Cube,” she continued, struggling to keep her voice strong. “The probe would generate an energy beam that would link with us from inside the impact cavity. We could use this to tunnel into the Cube, cutting through their transport scramblers.”
“What possible reason would we have for beaming over to the Borg ship, Cadet?” Dramon interjected, saving Goethard from cutting her off.
“Oh, not us,” the Cadet replied, genuinely surprised at the confusion. “We’d be beaming over our Antimatter pods from Engineering—rigging the containment fields to collapse after transport.” Goethard had turned back to the viewscreen and was staring ahead at the Cube, which was finishing up its sadistic dissection of an Excelsior class’ Engineering quarter. The Cadet’s words slowly materialized in his mind. And in a moment, he saw what she was getting at. He thrust his finger at the screen.
“During transport, the antimatter is held in the containment field,” he exclaimed, “but as soon as it rematerializes over there, we’d drop the field and the matter of their ship would react to the antimatter cloud we’d have created, initiating an explosion in the Cube’s interior equivalent to…” He gestured for Dramon to fill in the blank.
“Upwards of 1,000 photon torpedoes!” The Lt. said, calculating it in his head. “Enough to atomize their ship!” The bridge was deathly silent as Goethard turned to Dramon.
“Is it possible?” he asked in disbelief. Dramon nodded towards Cadet Aspen.
“Yes, I think the kid has a point!” he said excitedly. “Still, we’ll have to carefully maintain a lock on our data link in order to successfully transport – it’s going to require some fancy flying.”
“Did you hear that, Ramble?” Goethard asked.
“Yes, Sir,” Lt. Ramble said, taking her eyes briefly away from the helm to nod. “If you need a line of sight, I can give it to you.”
“How long will it take to reconfigure the probe?” Goethard asked Dramon. The Lt. gestured toward Alice.
“With Cadet Aspen’s help, we could have it ready in two minutes, but I’d feel better if we hedged our bets and made it three probes,” he suggested. Goethard took a deep breath.
“Do it….It’s a crazy idea—but it’s just the sort of crazy that the Borg can’t predict,” he said, turning back to Ramble. “Signal the Pack that we’ll need them to lay down suppressive fire while we deliver the package. I’m sending them the plan now.”
“Yes, Sir,” Ramble nodded, never taking her eyes off the Cube. Behind her, Lt. Dramon’s Tactical Station lit up.
“Sir, they’re analyzing us!” he shouted, monitoring the beams of energy interrogating their hull on his screen. The Cube halted its advance on Earth, and now began moving confidently in their direction, slowly revolving around its Z-axis, alternating the angular faces of its hull toward the approaching Federation ships – maximizing its dynamic sensor readings on the Federation gnats. Goethard had seen this behavior before—at the battle of Thermate last year.
“Evasive maneuvers!” he cried. The Defiants split formation just as deadly beams of green energy rushed into their midst. The Recompense was buffeted by a narrow miss, but it was a miss.
“Inertial dampers to maximum!” Goethard called, clutching at his chair. “I want you to push this ship to its limits!” It was the order Ramble had been waiting for—she’d gotten top scores at the Academy in tactical evasion, and she hadn’t had too many opportunities to put her talent into practice. Her hands flew into a blur over the helm and the Recompense strained to keep up with her commands. Even with inertial dampers redlined, Goethard was still experiencing a couple G’s. He gripped his armrests to steady himself as Ramble piloted the ship into a death spiral over the head of the cube, keeping just ahead of their targeting sensors. Slowly, but surely, they were closing the distance needed to deliver the probes to the enemy hull without being vaporized by defensive fire.
All around them, their squadron swooped like angels of vengeance intent on blasting this demon of Sheol into the fires of Tartarus. Their bursts of Quantum torpedoes concussed into the Borg vessel, biting deep into the enemy’s broken skin. And in response, the Borg weapons lanced out blindly – it’s targeting was poorly matched against the agile speed of the Defiant class. As the Pack gave cover, Goethard was counting the seconds in their spiral down to the Cube.
“9...6...3...NOW!” he ordered. Ramble let go of the controls and the ship instantly righted itself, pointing directly into the bald crown of the Cube. Without a hesitation, Lt. Dramon struck his console and three class 3 probes flared out of the Recompense and arched forward, burying themselves over 1,000 meters inside the Borg cube—deep beyond the superstructure. Just the place to crack this nut, Goethard thought, and turned to his science station.
“Do we have a signal, Lee?” he demanded.
“Yes, loud and clear...no, wait, its gone!” the Commander reported.
“Match their rotation, Ramble!” Goethard bellowed, as he noticed the Cube pulling away from them. Lt. Ramble tucked the Recompense into a tight dive over the Cube and they caught the link again.
“Engineering,” Goethard called, “prepare a site-to-site transport of our Antimatter containment pods!”
“They’re all yours, Captain,” came Chief Engineer Radcliffe’s raspy grumble—clearly not appreciating the misappropriation of ship property. Goethard stepped forward, leaning over the Conn.
“Signal the Pack to pull back,” he told Ramble. “These fireworks are going to light up the dark side of the Moon!” While he waited for Ramble to confirm the message, he took one last look at the enemy. The Com beeped.
“Message received, Sir!” Ramble reported.
“Energize!” Goethard growled. There was no surge of phaser fire, no burst of torpedo barrage, just the silent knowledge that several metric tons of antimatter were changing hands.
“Report?” Goethard inquired impatiently. Commander Lee shook his head.
“It IS transmitting, Sir,” he said assuredly. “The carrier beam is a narrow bandwidth and there is a lot of interference from the dispersal field, so the upload rate is slow.”
“How long is this going to take?” Goethard asked, fighting down his worry that the Borg would turn their attention back to Earth.
“I’d say...30 seconds,” Lee replied, mentally projecting the rest of the way.
“Sir!” Dramon called, directing everyone’s attention back to the screen. The Borg Cube was slowing its rotation and had begun to move again—towards Earth.
“Stay with them, Ramble!” Goethard urged.
“I’m on them,” the Lt. acknowledged, “like Tellerite lice on an Andorian scalp.” Goethard shook the mental image from his head and turned to stare at his Commander.
“Lee?” he inquired impatiently.
“Just a few more...seconds,” Lee mumbled, “And...we are...THERE! Canisters away!”
“Disengage the containment fields!” Goethard roared. Dramon’s fingers fluttered over his console.
“Done, Sir!” he reported almost instantly. Everyone stared at the screen. There, between the Moon and the Earth, the Borg Cube charged like a maddened bull at a Berellian bullfight. Goethard counted the seconds in the faces of the friends he had lost that day. The anguish of the moments tormented him. Still nothing happened. He straightened impatiently.
“Lee, I…” he began and then the bridge lit like the core of a star. Goethard couldn’t see a foot in front of him—the light was so intense. And then the shockwave struck them. The deck pitched up from Starboard at a 45-degree angle and everyone not thrown to port clung to something—anything for dear life. The Recompense shuddered in the radiating thermal waves as it was blown away from Earth in the cosmic updraft of raw energy. Slowly, the shaking subsided and Ramble climbed back into her seat, righting the ship.
“Report!” Goethard called to Commander Lee.
“The sensors must be damaged, Sir,” he said, “I’m not picking up any Borg debris.” Cadet Aspen stumbled forward from the back of the bridge.
“That’s because they’ve been vaporized, Sir,” she said. Lee glanced at her and then modulated the sensors to scan and measure the total volume of ionized particles. Sure enough, the readings substantiated the Cadet’s suggestion.
“Confirmed, Sir!” he said. “We’ve completely vaporized their ship—there’s nothing left!” Goethard staggered back to his chair. Was it really over? Could it be? They had been flying full-out for so long that this abrupt end to the conflict left his adrenalin pointlessly boiling in his blood. Then, suddenly, he knew where that energy was required.
“Lt. Ramble!” he barked, “get us in orbit of Earth ASAP—and signal the rest of our Pack to follow suit!” He turned to Commander Lee. “Number One, as soon as you can, begin beaming down survivors from our Pack,” he ordered. “We need to get back out there...there may still be some alive!”
The moment of relief and adulation from their victory dematerialized from the bridge as suddenly as the Borg vessel had. The memory of their dead and dying comrades came rushing back, and everyone rerouted their energies to count every moment as drops of precious blood.
In less than 5 minutes, the Recompense had achieved orbit, delivered their survivors to St. Petersburg, as Eastern Europe was facing them, and pulsed back out past the Moon to the scene of the battle. There, they saw it for the first time—the cloud of wreckage. The debris field was massive, for only 25 ships. Goethard stared into it and struggled to find his voice.
“Life..life signs? He managed. Commander Lee turned from his station.
“We’re getting very weak readings—there’s a lot of fluctuation, Captain,” he said, “Anywhere from 35 to 100.” Captain Goethard nodded vacuously.
“Begin bringing them aboard,” he said, evenly.
“But, Sir, we have no idea how many are sensor ghosts,” Lee said. Goethard turned on him savagely.
“I want every single one of those blips brought onboard,” he growled, “Even the ghosts—especially the ghosts!” He fought the tears from his eyes. “Can you do that for me?” he asked. Lee nodded.
The warships scoured the debris, snatching vapors from the wreckage. At last, relief came from civilian transports that had finally dared to leave the protection of Earth. Much to Goethard’s relief, they took over the rescue operations. In the end, they saved 52 more Starfleet officers and crew. Then came the dreaded task of recovering the dead. Captain Goethard personally stood watch in sickbay as the bodies were laid out in front of him. He recognized many of the names, including the one he dreaded most.
Slowly, he stepped forward and bent down next to the covered corpse. Almost without knowing what he was doing, he pulled the covering back. The sight struck him senseless. His niece, Lt. May Goethard lay below pale and cold – she looked peaceful, almost serene. Her posting had been in Engineering on the U.S.S. Halcyon, which took the brunt of the Borg attack. Captain Goethard was flooded with emotion. In the crowded sickbay, he wept silent tears for her. And then standing back, he accepted her passing to the next life with all that remained of his strength. How like the Valkyrie had been his duty that day.
“Goodbye, Mayfly,” he whispered, straightening his shoulders. And bearing her memory, he left to rejoin the living and to congratulate a certain young Cadet on her performance that day. How much she reminded him of May— a kindred spirit!
He whispered the words of the Vulcan philosopher T-Lau: “We come from the unknown and return to it, but here in this known, we find many fellow travelers.”
Comments