Star Trek: Mustang
Life or Death, part 2
“The Defiant has dissapeared” Alyan reported.
“Good. How long till the Borg ship is in firing range?” Bret inquired.
“One minute!” Lran responded “One minute 'till the battle for the Federation begins.”
Jana Adr reappeared re-appeared, carrying a Compression Phaser rifle and a pair of TR‑116 sniper rifles
“What are those?” Adan asked, pointing at one of the TR-116s.
“New rifle designed for Borg-fighting.” Jana said “They’ll shoot right through a wall.”
“Why didn’t you replicate more of them?” Bret asked
“May I say something rather blunt without insulting you, sir?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I have not replicated more of them because your demented, useless computer just revoked my security clearance! That’s why!”
“I'll fix that. Computer - restore Jana Adr to level nine security clearances.
“Restored.” The computer replied
Jana Proceeded to open the bridge’s weapons locker and removed several hand phasers. Lran clamed one of the TR-116 rifles while the rest took standard hand phasers. Elara rushed to her quarters and returned with a century-old phaser number one, and began trying to polish the emitter heads with a corner of her shirt.
Then their time to prepare was gone.
The speakers abruptly announced the very ominous litany of “We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships.”
Here, Jana made a valiant effort to shut it off. The console sparked and several speakers blew out, but the rest continued “We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
“Take us in. I want to be looking right up their shield emitter.” Bret said
“I wonder what Borg are like once they’re not invulnerable.” Lran said “I bet they aren’t nearly so aggressive!”
a borg disruptor flashed out, catching an invisible point in space. Defiant appeared, spraying the side of the cube in pulse phaser fire.
Mustang dived in. At what was really far to close a range, six quantum torpedoes lashed out. Five of the borg shield emitters erupted as they were shredded by zero-point energy. Almost simultaneously, two quantum torpedoes took out a disruptor emplacement as Defiant attacked. Mustang and Defiant spun away and retreated towards the fleet.
The fleet opened up. Photon torpedoes and phasers were aided by a handful of tri‑cobalt devices. The dark interstller space was lit by a thousand brillant explosions. In one area near the lower right hand corner, a salvo of torpedoes found it's way through the shield and burst against the cube's superstructure. But the Borg withstood the attack.
“Report on the status of the cube!” Bret ordered.
“It has lost more than ten percent of its shield.” Adan said.
“It’s lost the ability to adapt to our weapons!” Jana shouted
“Bring us about for another run!” bret ordered
there was a explosion and a shower of sparks. Adan ducked as a display above the primary tactial control exploded.
On the veiewscreen, the Steamrunner-class USS Camaro closed in, only to be gutted by it's own topedoes as they exploded on the Borg shield. It's final phaser burst dissapated easly on the hull of the Cube.
“We’ve lost our torpedo launchers!” Adan announced “Their reload circuitry blew out.”
“We could strafe it with Phasers.” Alyan suggested.
“Good idea!” Bret said “Lran, full impulse”
Mustang rushed past the cube, firing pulse phasers and a short phaser burst from the aft array. In response, a Borg disruptor connected with Mustang just starboard of the bridge. The little ship shuddered as it lost it’s shields. Ablative armor erupted in a cloud of metal. Power baffles blew, and mustang spun sideways and came to a stop.
The USS Agustus cut in front of them, and the aged Maranda was literally blown apart by a borg torpedo aimed for Mustang.
“Warp, impulse, and thrusters are all out!” Aron reported
“so we can't move at all.” Bret stated
“aye. an somethin’s beamed aboard!”
The viewscreen flickered and died. The last image it showed was the USS Freedom taking a hit in the neck and breaking apart.
Lran voiced what everyone was thinking “Borg drones!”
“I confirm!” Jana said “Two in engineering and four near the main magazine.”
“Contact the admiral and tell him we have been boarded!” Bret said
“Yes, sir” Jana said and began to lower her rifle
“No, not you!” Bret said “If you can see those things, then keep an eye on them! Elara, you can run a com unit…”
She nervously moved to the comm console. Sitting down, she keyed the mike and said
“A…um…tell the admiral our engines are out…a… we’ve been boarded…” the fact that she now had a terrible case of stage-fright was quite obvious. “We should be fine…yes…thank you.” She slumped back in the chair.
“I didn’t think you would get that nervous about an emergency call.” Bret told her “I’m sorry.”
His apology was interrupted by Jana who said “Captain, they’ve assimilated the magazine controls and are assimilating secondary engineering consoles!”
“We can’t let them assimilate us without a fight. Jana, you and Adan hold the bridge…”
Jana’s rifle cracked and everyone looked at her “We have one less drone to deal with.” she said, pumping the action.
“Pick off as many as you can!” Bret said “Elara - see if you can flood all subspace frequencies inside the ship with static!” Elara began pressing a series of buttons. Within seconds the buzzing noise from the speakers announced that she had succeeded.
“Lran, come with me. We’ll take the fight to the Borg” with that Bret walked into the turbolift. Lran followed, putting on her rifle’s headset. The doors snapped shut and they were gone.
Jana walked up to the Captain’s chair and swung it around so that the back faced her. Then she set her rifle on it, and using it as an impromptu rifle rest, began to take aim again.
The rifle barked again. Jana muttered “Missed!” as she worked the action.
The rifle cracked again and then Jana said “There’s a drone headed for the crew quarters. Something damaged the sights and I can’t risk missing.”
“The engneering crew!” Alyan said “They’ll be assimilated!” he seized the compression phaser rifle from where Jana had set it against a wall. “Get yourself a phaser, Elara. Let’s hunt some Borg!”
As the security team stalked down the hall, Bret realized that he could very well loose his ship again. mustang was one of the finest ships in the fleet, and he would not let the Borg have it without a fight. Nothing would take his ship without a fight.
His thoughts were interrupted when a pair of drones emerged from the door of the ship’s magazine. Quickly he brought his phaser up and fired, but the drone easily repelled the burst. Lran was firing without even bothering to aim. A drone went down, hit several times by the Andorian’s random fire.
The other drone raised its arm. A disruptor emitter emerged. It fired. Two of the security guards were vaporized. Then Lran’s rifle went off again and the drone fell.
“Why would they be acting so inefficiently?”
“The Quantum Torpedoes - they’re trying to assimilate them!”
The magazine door had closed, but it opened when Bret keyed in his override code.
Inside were two Borg drones, both with their assimilation tubules thrust into the casing of a torpedo.
One of the security guards beside Bret screamed, and he realized they were surrounded by drones. And at that second Lran worked the action of her rifle again and it gave a dull click. It was empty
Alyan looked out over engineering, wondering where he had taken a wrong turn. He could see two Borg drones below him. It seemed the Borg were concentrating on assimilating the secondary consoles. In one corner of the engneering room stood a strange device. The green lights emenating from it’s surface clearly marked it as a borg design
“It is a Borg central node” Adan said. Elara pressed a few buttons on her phaser, threw it at the thing. As the old phaser landed on the portable node, it began to emit a high pitched humming.
On the bridge, all seemed quiet. There was a hum and Jana turned from recalibrating her rifle to see a single Borg drone. It extended its assimilation tubules towards her. She fired her TR-116 at it, but the drone’s personnel shield easily repelled the round from the incorrectly-calibrated rifle. Adan pulled out his phaser and fired, but the drone had adapted to phasers. He began to fumble with something beneath his console. The drone fired some sort of cutting beam from its ocular implant, striking Jana in the chest. She stumbled and fell. Adan pulled out something from under his console. The Vulcan pulse wand fired and the drone began to malfunction, raining sparks from its implants. Then a power supply overloaded and the drone vaporized.
Adan slapped his combadge and a buzzing emanated from it. Rushing to the comm console, he deactivated the jammer. Then he struck his combadge again. Knowing mustang’s transporter was offline, he said “Adan to SC-12. Beam Jana Adr to sickbay”. The shuttlecraft still latched to the bottom of the Mustang complied.
Bret shoved the muzzle of his phaser rile through a drone’s personal shield and fired. Even at point-blank range, the beam dissipated against the drone’s armor. Twisting out of the way of an assimilation tubule, he brought the weapon down on the drone’s head. By sheer luck, the handle connected with the drone’s coronal node and the drone deactivated. Lran shoved a new clip in her rifle and fired again.
In engineering, Elara’s phaser overloaded and exploded, taking the portable Borg vinculum with it. Elara shook her head, seemingly disgusted by her own actions.
But Alyan, however, almost smiled when he saw the drones freeze instantly. “Let’s see how well the engines survived.” He said and began to climb down the ladder into engineering.
Bret was shocked when the drones suddenly froze. Lran had gained a long scratch on her neck where a drone had failed to assimilate her, and one of the two remaining security guards was rapidly growing pale as nanites flooded his body.
“Captain’s log, supplemental. Mustang has been saved from the threat of the Borg by the valiant actions of my stepdaughter, who preformed a risky trick with an ancient phaser. We have captured ten inoperative, but alive, Borg drones, who are being held in stasis. We have lost our entire armory crew and all our engineering crew except for our chief engineer. One of our security guards was partially assimilated, and is also in stasis. While our remaining crew struggles to repair the ship, we wait for news of our security officer, who was severely wounded in the fight with the Borg”.
Bret was sitting outside the sickbay, waiting for word on his friend and former Reliant officer. Elara was sitting beside him, none too pleased at having had her actions called valiant on the ship’s log.
“I was thinking” Elara said softly “I would never have become your daughter if it wasn’t for Jana”.
Bret realized what she said was quite true.
After his first wife had died, he hadn’t considered remarrying. Then his communication officer had introduced him to a Trill woman traveling back to her home world aboard reliant. They had fallen in love and been married a year later.
Now it seemed likely that he would loose the officer responsible for helping bring his family together. He spoke. “Don’t start mourning for her. We don’t know for sure yet” but his words were hollow and he knew it.
At that moment the sickbay door opened, emitting Dr. Jonathan, the ship’s surgeon. He was another former friend of Jana, and just the look on his face was enough to tell that he had failed.
“I managed to save her symbiont.” Jonathan said “Adr is wounded, though. It needs to be joined or it won’t have a chance”
Elara’s eyes widened in shock, and she turned to Bret “Is there no-one else aboard?” she asked.
“I’m afraid there isn’t” Bret said “it’s your choice, though”
Elara paused for a second. “You may join the symbiont with me” she said, standing up. She walked through the sickbay door and Jonathan followed. The emergency medical hologram was busy preparing for the upcoming operation and Jana’s body had already been beamed to the stasis chambers. Elara’s only thought was “I never wanted to be joined”.
A dozen ships drifted in space. Several were hardly recognizable. There were more than a few there,once symbols of the wealth, power and ideals of the federation, that were rent, broken and shattered, never to fly again. Amongst the ruins of these the Mustang drifted, but she was not yet dead. Abruptly plasma shot out of her vents, then running lights swept along the hull. On the bridge , Bret reclaimed his seat. “We have warp drive, Capt'an” Aron announce over the intercom.
“Get to work on the shields”Bret said “Lran, Lay in a course for earth. Warp factor nine!” Instantly Mustang complied, and unlike the ships around her that would never move again, she shot off in pursuit of the Borg cube.
A/N:
Bret McCoy is a direct descendant of Dr. McCoy.
In case any of you haven’t realized this takes place during the start of Star Trek: First Contact.
