Standing on the bridge of Sizm's flagship next to Azan and Rebi, Mezoti watched as interceptors and gunships cruised in space in front of them. Taré and Rebi's wife had also come aboard, but only the three former drones had been called up to the vessel's bridge, leaving the other two Wysanti behind in the ship's spartan crew quarters.
Taré hadn't been especially pleased to see Mezoti depart. Clearly out of his element in the highly militarized environment aboard the cruiser, the sculptor had been nursing a bad case of cabin fever barely three hours after they had departed Wysanti the day before. Mezoti, who had spent most of her childhood aboard starships – not to mention Borg cubes – adapted easily to the regulated pace of life.
Mezoti had been in the middle of a much-needed nap when she heard the summons to the bridge. The events of the last two days had been draining, and the tension aboard the cruiser seemed to permeate the air. What little sleep she had managed to grab had been restless and plagued by nightmares of large walls filled with row upon row of drones regenerating in their alcoves.
Mezoti watched the ships on the screen as they moved in and out of defensive patterns. Their constant, purposeful weaving reminded her of the bees she had studied as an entomologist. Considering the opponent that they were about to face, thoughts of hives and drones weren't particularly welcome at the moment, but Mezoti couldn't help herself. She wondered if it had something to do with their ever-increasing proximity to the Borg.
The Wysanti numbered their vessels. Mezoti startled herself with this thought, a rather obvious statement for anybody that had grown up amongst Wysanti, but Mezoti, immersed in the culture as she was, had never made any connection between the Borg's intensely number-oriented designation system and the Wysanti's own tendency to number their vessels rather than name them. She wondered what about Wysanti culture had led to that particular means of identifying ships. Back on Voyager, she'd observed that most Alpha Quadrant species had been almost obsessed with naming things. Ships, nebulae, bodies of water…
Mezoti shook her head, confused by the rambling train of her own thoughts. She decided to concentrate on the view afforded by the screen in front of her. The darting interceptors stood out sharply against the dark purple patches of space and the single sliver of pure blackness that had given the region of space the nickname of The Gap. In the distant past, this area of space had been a stellar nursery. For some reason or another, the formation of the stars had been aborted and the nascent stars had simply collapsed in on themselves after consuming all their hydrogen. Though they hadn't been massive enough to create physical gravity wells like a black hole, the presence of so many stars collapsing in on each other had had an adverse effect on subspace in the immediate area, suffusing that layer of space with a powerful blanket of subspace radiation – essentially disabling any device that needed subspace to function as it was unable to pierce through the interference to access subspace itself. It was like trying to run electrical current through a wall of rubber. All that remained was one narrow corridor where warp and subspace communications could still pass.
Mezoti cocked her head to the side. For some reason, the visual display before her stirred something vague in the back of her mind. She had seen this – or something like this – before. Again, her thoughts drifted on their own accord to the time she had spent aboard Voyager. There was a link here, and it felt important, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was.
Suddenly that train of thought was drowned out by another thought pattern. These were not her own thoughts, however. It was alien yet familiar, a distant, imprecise warbling. Focusing on it, Mezoti thought she could begin to hear a voice – no, many voices all saying the same thing. They spoke in discordant harmony, calling out to her, snaking through her mind with the seductive memory of the unity and perfection she'd once knew…
"The Borg," Mezoti said, involuntarily taking a step forwards towards the viewscreen. She couldn't see anything, not yet, but they were coming.
From his command chair, Admiral Sizm looked at her. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," Azan answered in her stead. "I can hear them too. They're getting closer."
"Better than sensors," Sizm muttered. He rose from his chair and motioned to his communication officer. "Patch me through to the rest of the fleet." The officer nodded that the connection had been made, and Sizm turned back towards the screen. "Attention all vessels: the Borg are incoming. Assume Pavise Formation."
On the screen, Mezoti saw the ships that made up the Wysanti's fleet re-deploy into their pre-determined formation. The three capital cruisers arranged themselves into a triangle with Sizm's own ship at the apex. The dozen or so gunships flared from this triangle, placed in position to provide support fire wherever it may be needed. Finally, a veritable swarm of interceptors arranged themselves in a concentric screen in front of the other vessels. Although Borg vessels were superior to all the craft employed by the Wysanti, it was obvious to everybody that interceptors wouldn't even be able to make a dent on the metal surface of the Borg cube. Their purpose was to bodily shield the other vessels long enough for Sizm to implement whatever his plan was.
Mezoti glanced towards Sizm and was surprised to see the admiral looking right back at her. Or rather, he was looking at the three liberated sentients standing on his bridge, who by their own admission were in contact with the enemy. Mezoti could hear the multiplicative voice of the Borg in her mind, but she knew it had no control over her. Hearing them again after all this time had been a shock, but she realized now that the lingering remains of her assimilation were no more dangerous than a voice over the intercom.
Of course, Sizm didn't know this and probably had every right to be suspicious. She was about to say something to reassure him when one of the officers manning a station set against the back of bridge called out:
"We have contact with the Borg!"
Sizm rose from his chair, all thoughts of the former drones seemingly forgotten. "On display," he said.
The screen flickered, leaping forwards through the screen of interceptors as it magnified the image. When this telescoping action was completed, a single Borg cube floating in the centre on the screen in all its terrifying glory. It didn't look any different from what Mezoti remembered as being the basic Borg design that she had known twenty years ago, although she was certain that the Borg had had plenty of opportunities to upgrade their systems as they assimilated new civilizations and adapted to new threats.
A pall of silence had fallen over the bridge. The cube approached without hesitation, stars falling into the background and behind its dark mass, some twinkling as they faded from the colouring of the dead stellar nursery. Green lighting produced by its energy systems seeped from its black surfaces. It was, to a person, the embodiment of all the fears they'd ever entertained about this dread race.
"Sir – the Borg are nearing weapon range," an officer called nervously from the back of the bridge. The warning broke the entrancement that the sight of the Borg cube on the screen had produced in the bridge crew.
"Tell the screen ships to begin their bombardment. Leave the gunships in holding pattern, but tell their commanders to be ready to pounce on any large chunks. Prime the weapon and tell me when we come into range."
The weapon? Mezoti wondered. The cruisers were armed with several phaser banks and plenty of photon torpedoes, but somehow she didn't think Sizm was referring to those. She didn't know what he had planned, and it had her worried.
There was a crackling from all around them, a burst of static noise, followed by the same multifold voice that Mezoti had been hearing in the back of her mind for the past few minutes:
"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and prepare to be boarded. You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
On the screen, the picket ships of the interceptors answered by firing at the cube, a swarm of small purple bolts darting from the small vessels, splashing harmlessly against the Borg's shields. The Borg didn't seem to take any notice, flying blithely through the ineffective barrage, not even bothering to fire at the interceptors. Several of the small craft had even needed to move out of the way of the cube or it would have ploughed right into them; the literally single-minded nature of the Borg taking no notice of such paltry resistance.
"Sir? The weapon is primed and the cube has entered range."
"Excellent," Sizm said. "Here's where we find out if the price we've paid for this technology was worth it. Fire!"
Mezoti felt a rumbling forming beneath her from the bowels of the ship, making the deck plating vibrate under her feet. Though she couldn't see it, at that moment waves of blue-white energy rippled across the surface of the cruiser, crackling and sparking as it leapt through the void. The same phenomena occurred on the surface of the other two cruisers forming the lower rung of the central triangle. Finally, the energy arced away from the prow of the cruisers, curving towards the other ships and meeting similar streams of power from the other cruisers. The glimmering energy streams feed into each other, forming a ball of sparkling power. There was a single second, or perhaps even less, when the ball seemed to freeze in space.
Suddenly, with a final burst of energy that caused an ephemeral wave of blue light to sweep over the prows of the three Wysanti cruisers, the ball launched itself forwards. The perfectly targeted weapon hurtled through the void, moving as fast as any torpedo, heading straight for the Borg cube. It crashed into the unprepared ship, sphere into cube, an explosion of light spreading from the spot where the ball smashed into the side of the cube and tore into its mass. When the light faded, Mezoti could see a gaping hole in the side of the cube where conduits and corridors had once existed. Green energy sparked randomly from inside the hole where energy conduits had been severed, and Mezoti could see several other power sources on the vessel flickering or dying altogether.
A loud cheer went up from the gathered Wysanti on the bridge of Sizm's cruiser, and no doubt on every vessel in the assembled Wysanti fleet. The wounded Borg cube hovered unmoving on the screen, a testament to their success where many others had failed before.
Mezoti, on the other hand, was in no mood to celebrate.
"What have you done?" she asked, stalking towards the centre seat of the bridge.
"What have I done?" Sizm repeated incredulously, as if unable to believe that the question had been posed. "I've saved Wysanti, that's what!" Sizm sounded as cheerful as all the others, a strange expression on such a characteristically dour character.
"You used a new weapon on the Borg! Don't you understand? This was just a raid for drones. But if the Borg think that we have technology worth assimilating, that we've come up with some new means of resistance, they're going to keep coming at us until they got their hands on this new weapon. We're going to be overwhelmed with cubes!"
Sizm's cheerful expression dropped from his face with remarkable alacrity. He didn't seem to appreciate being lectured on his bridge by someone who was, essentially, a civilian observer forced onto him by Military Command and whose expertise lied in bugs rather than tactics.
"Look, Honoured Teacher," Sizm pronounced her title with undisguised sarcasm, "I'm not sure if you noticed, but we've just stopped a Borg cube that was heading towards Wysanti. Does that cube look like it's going to be posing any threat anytime soon?"
Sizm turned his attention back to the screen, paying no more attention to Mezoti. He stood up. The beast had been impaled, and it was time to finish the job.
"Order the gunships to move in and target the damaged area of the cube. Full bombardment – let's make sure there's nothing left of these monsters."
As Mezoti watched in disillusionment, the gunships broke formation and began approaching the cube drifting in space. The lead vessel was manoeuvring into position to have a clear shot at the interior of the Borg ship when a lance of green energy erupted from the nearest ridge of the cube. It played against the sparkling blue shields of the gunship for a moment, and then punched through. The advanced Borg weaponry cut through the Wysanti vessel's hull with impunity, making it erupt in a fireball that quickly consumed itself in the void of space.
"What in space just happened?" Sizm cried out as he slammed back into his command chair. All of the tension that had permeated the bridge minutes before slammed back into them, doubled by the shock of the sudden destruction of the gunship.
"I'm… I'm not sure," one of his officers sputtered. "I'm getting readings of intense activity from the cube. They're repairing themselves, but much faster than any of our reports indicated they could."
Mezoti focused on that background warble lying at some lower level of her mind, where she could hear the compound voice of the Borg resonate. They had rerouted all their systems to circumvent the destroyed section, and though weakened, could still operate at a level of proficiency that was sufficient to take on the assembled Wysanti fleet.
"Tell our ships to pull back," Sizm ordered. "Ready the weapon to fire again."
Mezoti felt the same build-up of energy beneath her feet as the trio of cruisers prepared to fire the weapon again. Blue-white energy crackled along the hulls of the ships, strands of energy reaching out to touch each other, coalescing into a roaring ball of destructive force.
Again the ball launched itself into space silently, a translucent wave of blue light playing across the screen for a moment. The ball raced across the void, unmercifully hurtling towards the dark mass of the Borg cube.
Then, barely a few hundred meters away from the collection of bulkheads and conduits that made up the surface of the cube, a dark, opaque screen winked into existence. The thunderous ball of energy splashed against the screen, not exploding as much as diffusing as it came into contact with the dark green shielding. In less than a second, the Wysanti's best hope of defeating the Borg was nothing more than a slowly dissipating sheet of bluish light.
"They've adapted," Mezoti said, pre-empting Sizm's question. Though she had spoken softly, the pronouncement seemed to resonate across the cruiser's bridge like a death knell.
To the Borg, however, stunned surprise was inapplicable to them and irrelevant in others. They fired their green energy lance at the cruiser, striking the vessel on the port side, carving a deep groove in the ship where the primary hull connected to the warp nacelles running along it's side.
In a single instant, standard lighting in the bridge vanished, replaced by the harsh glare of the battery-powered emergency lights. All those who weren't secured at their stations – and many who were – were sent bodily flying over to the right side of the bridge. Consoles exploded in a shower of sparks, raining down onto the cold metal deck. The ship itself shook, and there was a loud crashing sound that didn't forebode very well for the cruiser's structural integrity. Mezoti herself was sent crashing against the other side of the bridge, striking her head against something hard and unyielding.
She slumped to the deck, perceiving the cold metal plating with only part of her body, various patches of nerve endings seemingly unable to decide whether to keep on transmitting their messages. Her vision swam, as if something was rippling across her mind, refusing to settle.
At the same time, perversely, something that had been nagging at her ever since she had first seen the dark colours of The Gap clicked into place, as if the shock of her crash against the wall had been sufficient to dislodge a trapped memory. An idea blossomed in her mind, growing into what she hoped was a workable plan. There were a couple of possible hitches, however – chief amongst them the fact that she couldn't seem to get her arms and legs working so that she could get up.
Then she was rising off of the floor of bridge and into its acrid, smoke-filled atmosphere. It took her a moment to figure out that she hadn't managed to lift herself up without noticing after all, but that someone else was holding her upright. As her vision finally settled and focused, she saw that it was Azan.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"I'm not sure," Mezoti confessed. She experimentally flexed her arm, and was pleased to see that her hands and fingers were responding as they should. She'd been worried that her brutal trip to the floor might have left her paralysed, but apparently her system had only been stunned.
"Come on," Azan said. "We've got to get out of here."
"Yes," Mezoti answered. "We have to get to one of the interceptors."
"What?" Azan replied. "We're going to the escape pods. Rebi has already left – going to make sure his wife is safe."
Azan gently tugged on her arm, pulling her towards the thankfully still-operating turbolifts. As she moved she caught the sight of a Wysanti figure slumped in the bridge's central command chair, his face hidden by the support pylon that had swung down to impale him.
"Is that…?"
"Probably. Please, Mezoti, I don't know how much time we have."
As she let herself be guided towards the turbolift, Mezoti asked: "Azan, how much training did you receive with tractor beams and subspace mechanics?"
Azan seemed surprised at the question, especially considering the circumstances in which it was posed. "It's not my field of research, but we all had to learn the basics to get our engineer's degree. Why?"
"I have an idea," Mezoti told him as the turbolift doors inelegantly closed behind them. "Do you remember that time, when we were aboard Voyager, when I rerouted the visual feeds from the bridge monitors to the cargo bay?"