Disclaimer: Schlock Mercenary and all related material is the property of Howard Taylor. Star Trek and all related material is the property of Paramount Pictures Inc. The plot, however, is mine.
Data's calm voice cut
through Picard's panic, as he reported.
"Sir, the anomaly has
just collapsed. There is a vessel where it used to be."
Picard
looked at Worf, who, anticipating the order, said, "The ship is of
unknown type, moderately damaged, and …" He trailed off.
At
that moment, the ship stopped bucking and shuddering.
"Well,
what is it, Mr. Worf?"
"The power levels I was reading from
the unknown vessel were several orders of magnitude greater than any
known ship is capable of producing. Also, the life-signs I detected
were varied, but there were several humans on board. I also did not
detect a warp drive, though I could not scan the whole
ship."
"Curiouser and curiouser" murmured Picard. "Why
couldn't you scan the whole ship? More importantly, why have the
Borg stopped attacking us?"
"The Borg have ceased attacking us
and are now attacking the newcomer. The unknown ship has raised some
sort of gravity shield that is preventing both the Borg weaponry and
our own sensors from penetrating. However, it appears to lack the
ability to block transporter beams."
The Touch-and-Go
emerged from the vortex into a scene of pandemonium. Numerous
cube-shaped vessels and several smaller, more irregular craft were
attacking a single sleek white ship. As Tagon watched, however, the
cubes and their attendant craft ceased firing, turned, and assulted
the Touch-and-Go. Ennesby slammed up the shields and turned to the
Captain, who was already starting to look confused.
"Ennesby,
what's going on?" Tagon asked.
"Well, to put it in terms
that you can understand, we came out of the swirly vortex thingy,
appeared here, and got attacked"
"I know that, Ennesby, I
meant specifics," said Tagon, irritated at the flying maraca's
attitude
"Oh, you mean like why they attacked?"
"Yes,
exactly."
"No idea. I do have some good news, though. First
off, with the info I got while our shields were down, they're using
some kind of electromagnetic shields, far inferior to our own
gravitics. Secondly, they seem to be relatively limited in terms of
weapons frequency capability, so I can modify the shields to only
block their weapons, so I can still scan them. Additionally, their
weapons appear to be pretty weak. We should have no trouble surviving
them. And-"
He was cut off by a soft whine. Tagon whirled
around, looking for the source, and spotted a number of humanoid
shapes materializing. He tensed, activated his armor, and drew his
pistols.
Once these invaders appeared fully, Tagon instantly
realized that they were heavily, cybernetically modified, given the
assorted tubes, implants, and devices he saw protruding directly from
their skin. On top of that, they seemed to have some sort of armor,
though it didn't look very tough. The intruders all spoke
simultaneously, but all said the same thing, with the same timing and
inflection, something that really creeped Tagon out.
"We are the
Borg. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated."
Tagon
couldn't remember what assimilated meant, but it sounded bad, and
he understood that the part about resistance being futile meant that
these things were hostile.
They were also slow, especially
compared to the soldier-boosted veteran mercenary. The Captain
pointed his gauss pistol at the advancing drones, and blazed away.
The last of the monstrosities was dead before the first finished
falling.
"Not so futile after all. Ennesby, what the hell
happened? How did they get through the teraport interdiction
fields?"
"They didn't teraport in. They used some unknown
kind of short-range teleportation, which neither our shields nor our
interdiction fields can block. I think if they do it a few more
times, I'll be able to modify the shields to stop it. Huh, well
what do you know?"
Tagon didn't like the sound of that last
sentence, but before he could say anything, Ennesby
explained.
"They're trying it again, but not here this time.
I'm detecting numerous intrusions throughout the ship. I'll stop
the ones in uninhabited areas, but the crew seems like they're
dealing with the intrusions fine."
Sergeant Schlock was
relaxing in his bathtub when he heard the whine. He knew that the
ship was in some kind of space-time thingy he didn't understand,
but, as he had been told, there wan't anything he could do about
it. However, when he saw the thing appear in a glow of green light
and try to attack him, he decided there was something he could do
about this. Pulling his plasma cannon from his mouth, he primed it
and pointed it at the intruder.
"I don't know how you got in
here, but if you don't get out now, you'll be dead"
Ignoring
both the verbal threat and the glowing, humming plasgun backing it
up, the Borg advanced, until a lethal stream of plasma slammed into
it. The drone's shield flared, but quickly failed beneath the
onslaught, as the Borg drone was turned into molten metal and
carbonized ash.
Nick and Shep were watching cartoons in the
lounge, when they heard the hum of the Borg transporting in. Both
turned to watch, and heard the pair of drones intonation.
"We
are the Borg. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be
assimilated."
Confused, the two turned to each other.
Nick
asked "Wudda'ya think dat means?"
Shep responded that he
didn't know, but that it didn't sound friendly.
Nick agreed,
adding that they didn't look like very nice people, and they
probably shouldn't be aboard in the first place.
That agreed
upon, the two men decided to teach the "not very nice people"
that it isn't very nice to come onto other people's ships without
an invitation, and proceeded to power up their armor. The Borg,
having had very little experience with powered armor, and nothing
like that worn as a standard uniform by the Toughs, attempted to
fight back, but Nick and Shep were tremendously strong and tough even
before the soldier-boosts and powered armor were factored in.
Disregarding their guns, the two massive soldiers attacked with fists
and feet. Nick punched one drone in the face, and the sheer force
behind the blow turned the metal-reinforced skull into jelly, an
instantly lethal blow that sent the drone flying into the back wall.
Shep grabbed the other drone's outstretched assimilation arm, spun,
and pitched at the drone Nick had already dispensed with. The second
drone hit so hard it crushed the ribs of both and shattered its
reinforced spine.
All across the ship, drones materialized, and those that appeared near crew members were quickly dispatched, by both firearms and physical assult. The drones that appeared in uninhabited areas were eliminated by Ennesby, who simply increased local gravity until the Borg were crushed under their own weight.
On the bridge, Ennesby informed his captain that the shields had been modified to prevent further intrusions, and that he had traced them as definitely coming from the ships attacking them. He also noted the presence of the white vessel firing upon their attackers, though the damage that ship was doing was decreasing as the more numerous forces adapted their shields.
Picard was growing frustrated. Though
the Battle Mode program was functioning perfectly, and his ship was
no longer under attack, he saw the lessening of the damage his ship
was doing. To add to his irritation, the ship the Borg were focusing
on seemed to be ignoring the Borg.
In the silence, Worf spoke up
"Sir, more transwarp signatures inbound"
Picard was
astonished. More ships? He knew the Borg had ships to spare,
but this many to attack one group was already an incredible number,
and the Borg were sending more?!
Suddenly a trio of Cubes
exploded. Everyone knew that Borg ships didn't just explode, but
there had been no visible weapons fire.
Riker stated the most
obvious conclusion "They must be using some sort of weapon that we
can't see."
Data rapidly analyzed the relevant sensor logs,
and discovered powerful gravity disturbances emanating from the
unknown ship and lancing into the Cubes nanoseconds before they
exploded. Quickly modifying some code, he programmed the computer to
show intense, focused gravity distortions as orange cones.
"We
should be able to see them now" he reported, and just in time.
Cones sprang from the unknown vessel once more, and, completely
bypassing shields, slammed into a quartet of the smaller Borg ships,
destroying them instantly.
Ennesby was controlling the ship's
battle maneuvers as crewmen rushed to their stations when an evil
grin spread across his face.
Kevyn was the first to notice, and
asked the AI what was happening.
"They don't have interdiction
fields" was the only answer, but Kevyn instantly understood. Tagon
was a little slower.
"So what if they don't have interdiction
fields? Kevyn told me that the terapedo engines were burnt
out."
"True," Kevyn replied, "the gravitic drives are
burned out. However, the teraports are working fine."
Understanding
dawned. "So… we can teraport explosives into their
ships?"
"Exactly."
"Well, what are you waiting for? Do
it!"
Ennesby asked "What about that other ship, the one
attacking the Borg?"
"Forget them. Remember Rule 29?"
"Yes,
captain. 'The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more, no
less.' But I figure since they were getting pounded, if we save
their lives from these things, they may very well be
grateful."
"Grateful enough to reward us for saving
them?"
"Yes sir. After all, even if we save their lives now,
we can still easily destroy them if we need to, given what we've
seen about their weapons and shields."
"Okay, Ennesby, you
win. Protect them from our shots."
"Sir, we're being
drawn towards the unknown vessel! They're using some sort of
gravity bubble. We can't break free!" Worf cried out.
Picard
responded calmly "Well, I hope they have a good reason for
this."
Worf was incredulous "So we just sit and wait?" he
sputtered angrily.
"As you yourself have pointed out, we cannot
escape. We do not wish to anger our apparent saviors, especially
since they have demonstrated their clear technological
superiority"
Worf was opening his mouth for a retort when a
blinding flash filled the viewscreen, which automatically dimmed to
avoid retinal damage to those viewing it.
Terapedoes appeared without fanfare in the centers of several of the cubes, and then, with quite a lot of fanfare, detonated. The shields of the Cubes surrounding those that were torn apart by the blast were strong, but not nearly enough to stop the twenty-five-gigaton-plus detonations, and they too were torn apart.
Ennesby's carefully calculated
spread of terapedoes wiped out the entire fleet with a minimal use of
munitions, but he had a surprise coming.
Thirty-five more Cubes
dropped out of transwarp, shocking Ennesby. His shock did not hamper
his intelligence, however, as he launched another precisely
calculated volley of terapedoes that obliterated the armada.
As the light subsided from the bridge of the Enterprise, Worf managed to say "It appears they did have a purpose to that. They must have projected their shields to protect us, because our own would have fared no better than those of the Borg." He paused in surprise, double-checking his instruments before telling his captain about this new development.
"Well, sir, I got all of them, and our
enemy's enemy is safe for the moment. Shall I hail them?"
"Do
that."
"I believe that I should use radio signals as well as
our standard FTL communicators, given their technological direction.
They may have developed some other kind of FTL communicator, one
which is incompatible with our own, or they may not even have
one."
"Good idea."
"Thank you."
"What is
it?"
"We are being hailed…by radio."
