Author's Note: I apologize for the delay in getting this chapter out, but battle scenes always take me a bit longer to plot out, and I ran into a bit of writer's block during the process. So blame the delay on the block, not on me.
Disclaimer: I think you get the hint.
Chase the Stars
Chapter 9: Strike
Eleven Autobots met their leader in the Enterprise's shuttle bay, already morphing back to their own robotic forms. Only Metroplex and Sandstorm remained in their human bodies. Metroplex was too big as a robot to engage in the close combat the others would be getting into, but knew he'd be called into action eventually. He stood by the wall, watching the others preparing their weapons. Sandstorm, being a pacifist, would not be participating in the fighting at all.
Ultra Rodimus glanced at him, noting the unhappy look on his face. The young Autobot leader walked over, crouching down to speak with him. "I apologize for not including you in the main assault force, Metroplex, but you will have the opportunity to destroy something before the battle is over. You're the only one among us who can destroy an entire cube ship with one attack, so you'll be backing us up if anything happens. You're our last line of defense."
The city-bot brightened at that, blue eyes glowing with eagerness. Ultra Rodimus grinned at him, then rose and headed back to the others.
"Autobots, to battle!"
They approached the Borg ships and the Borg-infested station from the side, pretending to be bits of space debris until the Borg sensors got a lock on them. They managed to get closer than anticipated before the three cubes began powering up their weapons.
"Now!"
Immediately, all of the Autobots swerved and descended upon the station. Sizzling bolts of raw energy tore gaping holes in the station's hull. Spreading out, the Autobots shot through the holes, vanishing from sight.
"Why are they going in?" Riker wondered, staring at the viewscreen.
"Becasue they know from your records that Borg ships and Borg-infested ships can regenerate," Metroplex responded over the commline. "They want to do as much damage as possible while limiting the chances for regeneration. While we try our hardest not to get into a situation that calls for or causes a large amount of collateral damage, when we do get into those situations, you wouldn't believe the amount of damage we can cause."
"Look!"
An entire row of windows along one side of the station blew out, belching flame. Atmosphere began rushing out, sucking everything around the holes out into space. Borg drones were dark spots against the pale hull as dozens were ripped out of the station. Slowly, ever so slowly, the holes closed again, but not before several dozen Borg drones had frozen to death in the extreme cold of open space.
Inside the station, the fighting was intense. The Cybertronians had gotten split up somewhere along the line, and they were scattered through the station. Some were making their way toward the Borg ships still docked. Their paths, usually carpeted with Borg bits, were fairly easy to spot. And, in the Autobot Prime's case, very hazardous to follow.
The young Prime had armed himself with an acid pellet rifle, which was a specialized type of energy/projectile weapon. Instead of firing just energy bolts of just projectiles, that rifle fired both. The current ammo load was a combination of plasma and an extremely powerful acid called difluorine, which Perceptor had discovered during one of his experiments. Anything hit by those projectiles was instantly reduced to a sizzling pool of goop, which then ate into everything it touched. Ultra Rodimus was leaving a path of melted deck behind him, and any Borg trying to follow it fell prey to the acid.
Ultra Rodimus ducked down another corridor and found himself in a fair-sized chamber. And what he saw there froze him in his tracks with horror.
The room had once been a recretion lounge. The Borg had turned it into the place where they completed assimilating new victims, cutting off parts of their bodies and replacing them with cybernetics. Blood stained the floors, and the stench of rotting flesh, from the parts that had been cut off, hung thick in their air. Hair-raising screams rose from somewhere in that chamber.
Inside the young Prime, the Matrix stirred.
The sparks contained within had been alerted by the horror coming from the Matrix Bearer and had made their way to the crystal's exposed face to see what was making him so horrified. When they saw what he was looking at, their horror surpassed even his. And when they saw a terrified, half-assimilated child being cut apart, tears running down her face, that horror quickly transformed itself into rage.
Dozens of Borg drones flowed toward the young Prime. He didn't even look at them. His body was flaring with power, surrounded in an aura of blue-green fire as the Matrix came awake. His eyes were glowing so brightly that the whites and pupils were drowned out by the green of his irises. Then his back arched, and the Matrix erupted with power.
The flash almost blinded the watching Enterprise crew. The viewscreen automatically compensated for the brilliance, but everyone on the bridge (with the exception of Data), had to blink flash spots from their eyes before they could see again. When they could see clearly again, they stared.
Blue-green flame was consuming the entire station, engulfing it in the grip of a power the ship's sensors almost burned out trying to register. Two of the three cubes had pulled away from the station, but the third, closest to the source of the strange fire, wasn't quick enough and fell prey to it. A terrific explosion lit up the dark of space as the station and the cube detonated.
"I guess even Primus hates the Borg," Metroplex mused. "That was the Matrix."
"The same thing that struck at Q?" Picard asked.
"The one and the same."
"There's something I don't get," Riker commented. "You said that power was the Matrix, and that it was Primus. That makes no sense."
"You'll have to get all the details from Ultra Rodimus, but the basic explanation is that Primus is inside the Matrix," Metroplex told them. "Now, let's concentrate on what's happening now. You can pester Prime for details later."
On the viewscreen, the blue-green glow was beginning to fade. When it finally cleared, the station and one of the cubes were gone. A shape surrounded by a faint aquamarine aura flew toward another cube, vanishing inside.
"There he goes."
Inside the cube, the battle was still raging. Most of the fighters had gotten sepaprated and were spread throughout the cube. The Protectobots had managed to remain together and were fighting as a group, watching each other's backs.
"Eat scrap!" Blades snarled, ripping off another barrage from his shrapnel rifle. About half a dozen drones were ripped to shreds, and about a dozen more were severely damaged but still continued to advance.
"They just keep coming!" Hot Spot took aim at another clump of Borg trying to approach and dispatched them with one shot from his fireball cannon. The searing heat vaporized the closest drones, incinerating anything organic and reducing the mechanical components to molten slag.
"The Enterprise's files did say they were persistent," Groove quipped, brandishing his borrowed concussion rifle. The bursts of compressed air, delivering a force of over 20,000 psi to whatever they hit, had already smeared more than a few drones across the bulkheads. The sonic weapons had proved almost useless and had been abandoned.
Reluctantly, First Aid shouldered the grenade launcher he'd been given and fired several of the shells that Perceptor had put together, carrying a load of plasma coolant instead of the traditional explosive, down the corridor into the midst of a mass of drones. The medic hated war, hated fighting, but he did what he had to do.
The Autobot comm band crackled to life. "The station and one of the cubes are space dust," Ultra Rodimus informed the others. "We'll take down this cube. 'Plex, think you can handle the last one before it takes off?"
The others could hear the feral grin Metroplex sported in his response. "With pleasure."
Beginning his morph back to his robot body, Metroplex launched himself out of the shuttle bay. The instant he cleared the ship, the change went into hyperdrive. Within thirty seconds Metroplex was back in his true form.
Picard barely managed to keep his jaw from dropping open in pure shock.
He'd heard that Metroplex was big, but hadn't really believed it. Now he was seeing the proof with his own tow eyes, watching as the giant steel behemoth moved toward his target.
"Now that's a big robot," Riker commented, sounding as stunned as Picard felt.
"Not one I'd want to get on the wrong side of," the captain said in response, and Riker grunted his agreement.
The cube, noticing the huge robot coming in its direction, began to move away. It didn't get very far. Metroplex's entire arsenal opened fire on it all at once. Over a dozen energy beams and missiles smashed into the cube, shattering the hull. If that had been the only damage, the ship could have repaired itself very quickly, but no less than half a dozen of those energy beams scored direct hits on the engines. The result was a terrific explosion.
A satisfied smile touched Metroplex's face. "I handled it."
Ultra Rodimus chuckled. "That you did. Hang around a while, would you? Things are getting a bit hairy over here."
"Will do." Metroplex headed back toward the Enterprise, choosing to perch on the ship's "back", between the warp nacelles, to wait.
Ultra Magnus was fighting his way toward the Protectobots when Springer appeared, dashing down the corridor with Arcee clutched to his chest. Magnus's sharp eyes instantly spotted the telltale puncture marks on the female's upper arm; a Borg had gotten close enough to inject its nanites into her.
"Get her back to the Enterprise!" Magnus ordered before Springer could say anything. The triple changer nodded and raced past, heading for the outer hull. Magnus contacted the starship. "Enterprise, we have wounded incoming!"
"We'll be ready," was the response.
In another part of the ship, Shadow was fighting with all of her ability, but the situation wasn't looking good. She was completely surrounded by Borg drones. The shreded remains of other drones carpeted the corridor, but still they came. She was about to call for help when she felt a searing pain in her right forearm. Looking down, she saw a pasty-white hand inches from her arm, two writhing black tubes emerging from the back of it and sticking into her flesh. She blew the Borg away and ripped the tubes loose, but it was already too late.
A shriek echoed down the corridor. An intense blast of compressed air cleared one corridor, covering the walls with crushed Borg. Mirage shimmered into view, face twisted into a snarl of rage. He grabbed the staggering female, holding her close, and turned the full fury of his concussion cannon on any other Borg drone he saw. Then he reengaged his cloaking device and dashed away, thinking only of getting Shadow to safety.
Deep in the bowels of the ship, Ultra Rodimus's eyes blazed with rage as the report reached him. The Autobot leader was in his robot form, shrunked down to human size, and he was using his full arsenal against the drones coming toward him. Something inside him twisted, and he suddenly transformed. A part of his mind registered that the form he'd transformed into was an unfamiliar one, but that fact didn't register with the rest of his mind.
With a furious roar, he pounced.
Razor-sharp claws tore into anything within reach. His armor blocked all attempts by the Borg to inject their nanites into him. He tore through them like a hot knife through butter.
"Fall back!" he roared into his comlink. "Back to the Enterprise! Metroplex, once we're all off this thing, blow it back to the Inferno!"
The others were heading for the hull as fast as they could when Ultra Rodimus met up with them. They shot startled glances at him, surprised to find a robotic feline, armor smeared with biological and mechanical fluids, in their midst. Then they reached the hull, blew a hole in it, and evacuated. The instant they were a safe distance away from the cube, Metroplex struck. Behind them space erupted with a silent fireball as the Borg ship blew.
Tbc...
And that's another chapter. Sorry about having to hurt Shadow, but please don't bite my head off yet. Just wait for the next chapter to appear before you start reading me the riot act. The next chapter should be coming out fairly soon. Now send me some reviews and I'll get to work on it!