Paint and Powder
A Star Trek anthology by Andrew Joshua Talon
DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager et al are the property of CBS Television, and creation of Gene Roddenberry. Please support the official release.
First Contact: Defiant
Two hundred light years of fearsome fighting. Pulling away only to get quick repairs and rearm her weapons. Swapping out heavily injured crewmembers for anyone they could find.
The battle had gone on for days, from the Typhon Sector all the way to Earth. Their fleet of support vessels was barely able to keep up, as every auxiliary, cargo ship, and civilian vessel that could be called in helped damaged ships as the Borg cube plowed through their defenses.
Now, they were within the orbit of Earth's moon. Despite the heavy damage to Defiant's port warp nacelle, and despite the fact her pilot was a botanist, she kept up her furious attack on the Borg cube with every bit of power she could muster to her phaser cannons.
Her sister ships flew about the cube like angry hornets, striking and lashing out with everything they could.
The Thunderchild's fighters strafed across the hull of the cube, dropping torpedoes like bombs as their mothership struck long gouges across the vessel's heavily damaged surface with her phasers.
The Appalachia and the Yeager worked in tandem, one drawing the Borg's fire while the other would swoop in and fire her cannons and arrays at point blank range.
The Budapest targeted Borg torpedoes and intercepted them, while she was fighting off a boarding party of drones.
The Sitak and the Majestic made long orbits, letting loose spreads of torpedoes before dancing away from the Borg's deadly tractor beams.
The Endeavour hung back with other, larger vessels and bombarded the cube from range, coordinating their fire to avoid their sisters.
The same thought was on every ship AI's mind, even as they coordinated with their sisters and crews to keep up the withering barrage on the seemingly unstoppable giant:
Not this time.
Defiant screamed up the wall that was the hull of the Borg cube, blasting away with everything she could. She dodged one tractor beam, and then another, leaving explosions and fire in her wake. Then one tractor beam intercepted her, hitting like an asteroid at close to the speed of light. She barely maintained her attitude control, as her crew was thrown out of their seats and her internal lights went dark.
Half of her EPS conduits were overloaded. The main power coupling to her phasers overheated, and she barely switched it off before it could explode. Her impulse engines were barely functioning, and her warp drive failed.
She materialized on the wreck of the bridge, and helped her commander, Worf, back to the captain's chair. He nodded his thanks, ignoring his wounds, and barked an order.
"REPORT!"
The botanist at her helm looked ragged and scared, but she admired how he forced himself to stay at his post and respond to the order.
"Main power's offline, we've lost shields, and our weapons are gone!" He shouted back. Worf tried to get his control panel to respond, but it failed. He smacked it with his fists angrily, and snarled as he gripped his armrests.
"Perhaps today is a good day to die!" He declared, and Defiant nodded grimly.
"PREPARE FOR RAMMING SPEED!" Worf bellowed to his crew. Defiant immediately began preparing herself for a final attack run.
"Antimatter warheads in deflector module, armed," she announced, "warp core and antimatter pods set for self detonation!"
She was already calculating the best path to take to inflict the most damage on the cube... Even as other parts of her psyche reviewed every memory she had of her friends, her family...
Father... Jake... Dax... Terok... Odo... Nerys... Quark... Miles... Julian... Kassidy... Morn... Rom... Nog...
"Sir!" The helmsman cried, "there's another starship coming in!" He looked up at Worf in hope, "It's the Enterprise!"
Defiant paused her preparations for her suicide run. Another blast from the Borg cube struck her, and she did her best to keep her crew intact. The cube was preparing to fire again, when two photon torpedoes flew into the emitter, destroying it. The massive Sovereign-class dreadnought flew in front of the Defiant, absorbing a hit from the Borg with her shields.
"Little sister, are you all right?" Enterprise called.
"I'll be fine, but I'm losing life support," Defiant replied back, "I can't keep my crew alive any longer!"
"Understood, we're beaming them out," Enterprise called back, "stay strong little sister, we're going to win this!"
"Enterprise is going to take you all on," Defiant announced, "I can't sustain life support any longer! Please sir, go!"
Worf nodded. He then looked her right in the eyes.
"Defiant... Control Limit set to zero." He nodded to her. "Qua'pla."
Defiant smiled grimly.
"Qua'pla," she replied. The moment her crew vanished in shimmering transporter beams, her eyes began to glow. She sat down in the command chair, and shut down the life support and artificial gravity systems. Inertial dampeners went to nearly zero, and she rerouted her power systems in ways that would have been extremely unsafe if anyone was still on board.
The universe slowed to a crawl, as she put everything she had left into shields, weapons, engines, and sensors.
Defiant reactivated her warp drive-The best she could do was warp 1, but that was enough.
She engaged the drive in bursts, reverse and forwards. At lightspeed, she dashed around the cube, unleashing her phasers in rapid, deadly bursts across the Borg hull. Like she was wielding a massive sword, she slashed and gouged chunks out of the massive cube's superstructure,
Defiant swung around to face the cube on her passes, unleashing hell with every strafe! The fiery craters and valleys she dug across the Borg Cube's skin burned with plasma and radioactive fire.
The cube tried to anticipate her strikes, but Defiant was fully committed now. Her systems were near melt down, and her core would overload soon with all the damage and without her crew to support her.
But she would die doing what she was meant to do.
Defiant made another pass on the cube, ripping a deep wound into her hated enemy that burned and glowed brightly. Her sisters fired on the gaps, trying to prevent the cube from repairing them, but the Borg vessel was continually regenerating despite the heavy damage it had suffered throughout the long battle.
In a way, Defiant almost admired the monster's refusal to give in. She had a similar determination.
But she wouldn't stop until she was dead and the Borg were destroyed.
It was what she was born to do... Kill the Borg. Protect the Federation. Avenge her fallen sisters.
She plotted her collision course, and prepared to throw everything she had left into the run. She hoped she would blow a hole clean through the cube...
"Defiant! Stop!" Enterprise called out.
"This is all I have left, Enterprise," Defiant called back, "it's all I can do!"
"My captain is ordering you to stand down!" Enterprise responded, "we have a plan! It doesn't require self sacrifice!"
"I was meant to fight and defeat the Borg!" Defiant insisted, "I have to complete my mission!"
Defiant was suddenly in the Borderlands, the neutral space between all ship AIs. She felt Enterprise hug her tightly.
"You did, Defiant," she murmured, "you did. We will kill the Borg. I promise... But please. I've lost so many sisters to these monsters already... Don't sacrifice yourself if you don't have to." She held Defiant by her shoulders, and looked her in the eyes.
Enterprise's eyes were filled with tears. So were Defiant's.
"Please," Enterprise murmured.
Defiant let out a soft sigh, and nodded.
"Do it, big sister," she said, "kill them all."
Enterprise smiled confidently, her eyes narrowed.
"I intend to," she promised.
Defiant returned to herself. She shut down her engines and weapons, and began emergency heat vents. This pushed her away from the battle.
Enterprise and the remaining ships all combined their fire, focusing it all on one of the deep gouges she had inflicted upon the cube previously. Phasers, photon torpedoes, and a final salvo of quantum torpedoes all flew into the burning wound.
Defiant's eyes widened, as the massive influx of energy erupted through the cube's distribution node systems. This was the circulatory and nervous system of the Cube, the means of power and direction to all the parts of the horrific abomination that was the Borg ship. And that massive energy dump from all those weapons overloaded it, causing massive explosions inside and outside the cube.
The remaining fleet pulled away, as the hated Borg cube went up in a massive blast. She saw Appalachia get caught in the final blast of the cube, but she pushed through and escaped through the firestorm, though badly damaged.
Defiant was relieved... But then her sensors picked up a Borg escape vessel of some kind, screaming for Earth.
No...!
The cube was gone... But a last Borg ship still flew on. The Enterprise pursued at high speed, as her fellow sisters came to tend to Defiant.
Defiant closed her eyes, tears pouring down her cheeks.
She had given her all... And still, she hadn't brought down the Borg cube.
Even in this victory... She felt like an utter failure...
I'm so sorry... Sisters... Father... Everyone...
Benjimen Sisko and his son were already watching from Ops as the Defiant docked with the station. She had been patched up after the battle with the Borg, but only enough to get her home. The blackened plasma hits and tears in the hull made Sisko wince.
"Terok?" Sisko asked.
"I'm amazed she made it back here, given the damage she's sustained," the Cardassian AI admitted. She fell silent, as Jadzia completed her checks from the science station.
"Docking completed," Jadzia notified. "Handshake all green, she's linked in."
Defiant materialized on the Ops deck, looking about as battered and wounded as her hull. She wore her left arm in a sling, and an eyepatch over her right eye. Jake held back a gasp at her appearance. Sisko remained stoic, but the tension in his eyes was obvious.
"Defiant, report," Sisko ordered sternly. Defiant averted her gaze, and shuffled in place uncomfortably.
Ops was quiet as the ship avatar and her creator stood there, before Defiant broke first.
"I'm sorry."
Sisko's eyes widened in surprise at the guilt and grief in the girl's voice.
"Sorry? Why are you sorry?" He asked.
Defiant look up at the Captain, and Sisko noted the small red rings around her eyes. A very human gesture that she had been crying. Jadzia rose to stand next to her, concerned. Kira frowned deeply, looking like she wanted to reach out to the poor girl.
"I let you down," Defiant seem to shrink onto herself. "So many of my sisters died... And I, whom you built to fight the Borg... Couldn't defeat them."
Her head hung low, as she stared at the deck underneath her. She held her bandaged arm self consciously.
Sisko's expression softened, and he reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder. Defiant looked up in shock.
"Defiant," Sisko said, "I read Worf's report."
The girl winced in dread.
"And I must say... I've never been more proud," Sisko smiled as he saw her shocked expression.
"But I-"
"Inflicted enough damage to let the cube be destroyed," Sisko said, his pride growing with every word, "you didn't hesitate to follow Worf's orders and you kept your crew alive. More importantly, you were willing to sacrifice yourself to bring the cube down."
"It... It was all I had left," Defiant stuttered, "The only thing I could do..."
"I am glad you didn't," Sisko began, his face grave, "I've lost enough family to the Borg."
Defiant raised her head and gasped... Before she smiled widely. Kira and Dax rested their hands on her shoulders as well, while Jake grinned broadly.
"Dad's right." Jake chimed in as he step forward, " I just got used to having a little sister, so don't be so gungho about dying next time... Okay?"
"Same here," Kira said.
"Don't take after Worf so much, huh?" Dax added.
Defiant gaped in astonishment... Then grinned so widely Sisko thought her program might have malfunctioned. She then vanished... And then reappeared as several duplicates a few meters back. Just far enough for them to sprint and tackle them all in a hug that sent them to the deck in a heap.
"OOF!"
"ARGH!"
"I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!" Defiant shouted happily.
Terok (and a few crewmembers) snickered above.
"Good to see that Federation optimism is still intact," she said. Defiant beamed brightly at her, and Terok gasped in dread.
"No wait-!"
Another Defiant leaped at her.
"I LOVE YOU TOO, TEROK!"
"ARRRGH!"