The cruiser quaked and shuddered as Mezoti and Azan ploughed down the corridors. Every once and a while the whole ship would lurch beneath their feet, as if making a sudden leap to the side. They'd stumble, use the bulkheads as support, and then begin running again.
They knew that the ship's tremors weren't being caused by the Borg – that first salvo alone was so devastating that the wounded cruiser would never have survived a second strike from the cube. Rather, the shaking was being caused by the aftermath of that first attack. The ship's structural integrity was failing, torn asunder by the powerful Borg blast. It was only a matter of time before something in the disintegrating cruiser fatally rupture, causing a string of explosion that would reduce the Wysanti vessel to nothing more than a cloud of debris floating against the dark backdrop of The Gap.
The main lighting had been offline since that first blow, and even the backups flickered now and again. Something – or more probably several somethings – had caught fire and was burning, spewing an acrid smoke that clung to the ceiling. A low, persistent rumbling could be heard.
The ship pitched, the deck slanting at a slight degree. This time it did not right itself after the tremors had ceased. They hesitated, feeling disoriented by the conflicting messages being fed to them by their eyes and the ship' artificial gravity systems.
"Mezoti!"
Mezoti glanced over her shoulder at the Wysanti man jogging towards them. "Taré? What are you still doing here?"
"What, you thought I was going to leave here without you? When the cruiser decided that it suddenly didn't want to exist anymore, I asked the onboard computer to give me your location. A merry chase it led me on, too: the infuriating thing couldn't seem to decide where you were."
"We've been moving," Mezoti said.
"Excuse me?" Azan interjected. "Can this wait? We have to get off this ship before it truly does cease to exist."
"Yes, of course," Taré answered, and the three of them began moving again. "Just where is it that we're going?"
"The launch deck," Azan answered briskly.
"We want an interceptor," Mezoti added as they rounded a corner.
"I appreciate a dramatic escape as much as the next person, but under the circumstances I think an escape pod would have done just as well."
Taré was beginning to sound out of breath. It wasn't surprising: none of them were doing especially well running through the smoke-filled corridors. They were engineers, entomologists and sculptors, and while they kept themselves in good shape, they didn't have the physical training for this kind of situation.
"Mezoti has a plan," Azan said, doubt evident in his voice.
"Actually, I'm glad you found us, Taré," Mezoti said between gulps of air. "We could always use another hand. You can put those creative impulses of yours to good use as pilot and make sure the Borg don't blow us into atoms."
"Well, I can certainly try – wait, what?" They passed a sign pointing them towards the launch deck and reminding them that it was off-limits to everybody except authorized personnel. "I thought the Borg didn't attack things that it doesn't consider to be a threat."
"I plan on making us a threat," Mezoti said, determination evident in her voice despite the hoarseness caused by the smoke.
They arrived at the doors to the launch bay, which, after a brief jerk, slid to the side to grant them access. There were usually three interceptors aboard a fully equipped cruiser. One was missing, presumably used as an escape vessel during the evacuation. The three of them ran towards the nearest craft, tapping open the side door that would let them in.
They scrambled inside the interceptor. Taré, as per his brief instructions, headed towards the pilot's chair, dropping himself in it with little grace. Mezoti and Azan moved directly towards a panel inset into the wall on the right side.
"I hope I can modify this thing," Azan muttered as he began working away at the panel.
"You'll figure it out, don't worry," Mezoti answered, briefly dropping an encouraging hand on his shoulder before moving towards the front of the interceptor. Taré had activated the small ship's engines, and it presently rose from the deck with a low-pitched whine. He spun the craft around, glad that the controls on the interceptor were clearly indicated and relatively simple to figure out. He turned the ship around to face the launch bay doors.
"How do I open the doors?" Taré asked.
Mezoti shrugged. "Shoot them."
"Right," Taré said, his tone flat and mordant. "You know, Mezoti, I'm certainly glad that you decided to take my advice and inject a little more excitement into your life, but your timing really needs some work."
He found the appropriate controls and jabbed them. A pair of purple beams of direct energy projected from the interceptor, slamming into the unshielded doors and blasting them outwards into space. The interceptor shuddered as the launch deck explosively decompressed, all the air rushing out into the dark void. Tapping at the controls, Taré lead the interceptor out of the cruiser.
"Mezoti," Azan called from the back of the ship. "I could use some help."
Mezoti rose from the co-pilot's chair and moved to join Azan at his panel.
Taré flew the ship gently away from the cruiser until he was fairly certain that they wouldn't get caught in the explosion if – when – the drifting cruiser detonated. Nearby, another one of the three cruisers limped, clearly wounded and leaking plasma, firing madly away.
"It would help if I knew what we're trying to do," Taré called out.
Mezoti answered him from the rear of the interceptor: "The Gap is an area saturated with subspace to the point that it essentially blocks all normal functioning on that plane of space, but it's got fixed borders where a stellar nursery extinguished itself long ago. I think that we can modify the tractor beam on this ship in order to extend those borders around the Borg cube."
"So? They'll just cruise out at impulse, then."
"On Rysanti, dominant hives of ants use smell to communicate. Other insects have learned that if they emit a smell so powerful that it overwhelms those smells, it cuts off communication, leaving the ants confused and vulnerable." Mezoti could remember giving this same speech to her students – two, three days ago? It seemed so long ago now. "The Borg use subspace to communicate between drones – much faster and efficient than usual circuitry. If we can cut their communications, it might destabilize them long enough for the fleet to destroy it."
"You're expecting the Borg to act like a bunch of bugs?" Taré asked somewhat incredulously.
"Exactly," Mezoti answered confidently. "I've seen it done before, or at least something similar. Back when I was on Voyager – the ship that freed us from the Collective – they used the same tactic to evade four cubes!"
"But… don't the Borg adapt?"
"Yes…" For the first time, Mezoti sounded uncertain. "Although back then, it was a lack of subspace and not an overabundance…" Taré could practically hear her shrug. "Subspace is subspace – not even the Borg can change that. And if they've made any additions since then as a result of that encounter… well, we'll see what happens." There was a pause. "For now, just take us next to The Gap's event horizon, between it and the cube, but try and avoid the cube itself as much as possible."
"Staying away from the Borg will not be a problem," Taré answered, glancing at the pilot's display and charting a quick mental route that would take them to the desired point next to The Gap. An elliptic curve, one that gave the motionless cube a wide berth.
As Taré piloted the interceptor, he tried listening in to Azan and Mezoti in the back of the vessel as they discussed the modifications they had to make to the ship's tractor beam, but they were using technical terms that he was completely unfamiliar with and was quickly confused. Instead, he turned his attention towards the scene unfolding outside.
The cube was still in the process of repairing itself from the powerful blow that it had received from the combined trio of cruisers. Taré could still see the large hole in the cube's infrastructure where the energy ball had carved a chasm in the metal landscape. It sat in space without moving – it's engines either not yet repaired or their energy diverted to other purposes – but it was hardly an inoffensive object. Every so often, the Borg would fire its green energy weapon, which caused untold damage if not outright destruction on whatever it had been targeted against.
The Wysanti's fleet only saving grace thus far was the sheer number of screening interceptors, making it difficult for the Borg to get a clear shot at the more threatening gunships and cruisers. Although Taré knew from the briefing that they should have retreated back to the homeworlds should the ambush fail, Taré didn't note any conspicuous absences that couldn't be explained by the Borg's counter-attack. Apparently whoever had taken over from the defunct Sizm had decided that a wounded though hardly toothless cube might just be their best chance at victory.
The cruiser he had seen leaking plasma before had ceased firing and was drifting in space. The cruiser they had been on was still being racked with small, pocket explosions. The third was leading the charge against the Borg, it's purple lances joined by the torpedo barrages launched by the gunships. Although the Borg still had that shield of theirs erected around the cube, the damage they had previously sustained and the sheer number of attack vectors meant that some of the shots were punching through, although they weren't doing much damage.
Taré was sure to steer the interceptor away from the bulk of the fighting. If anybody noticed the lone ship sliding laterally through the Wysanti ranks, they did nothing to acknowledge it.
There was a flash of light reflected against the hulls of the other vessels. Glancing out the transparent cockpit, Taré saw that Sizm's cruiser had finally succumbed to its wounds and exploded irrevocability. By now, everybody should have had time to get off the cruiser…
Taré shook off the thought, on concentrated on flying the ship. When his elliptic course finally took him along the purple curves of The Gap, he reoriented the interceptor so that the belly faced the anomaly, making sure to stay away from its event horizon. Technically, it shouldn't have any effect since they were traveling at impulse, but Taré didn't feel like taking any risks – any more risks, that is.
"We're in position," he told the two in the back.
"We're almost finished on this end," Mezoti answered.
As Azan and Mezoti turned back to the panel where they were fiddling with the tractor beam, Taré let out a deep breath of expectancy. Suddenly stuck with nothing to do, he could feel the anxiety of their situation creeping over him. When he caught himself drumming his fingers against the pilot's console, he began fiddling with the controls on the console to give him a tactical display.
There was still a preponderance of small purple dots swarming over the screen representing the plethora of interceptor craft just like this one. Squares showed the position of the gunships – there were ten left now – and a single triangle indicated the third, unwounded cruiser. Taré didn't know what happened to the one he'd seen drifting before, but he could guess that it had suffered the same explosive fate as Sizm's cruiser.
Then there was a flash on the screen, so fast that Taré didn't quite catch what it was. But he could venture a safe guess as to its nature when the single remaining triangle winked off the screen.
"Guys? If we're going to do something, it had better be soon."
"Just a few more seconds…" Azan said. "There, got it."
"Keep your eye on that tractor beam, make sure it works well," Mezoti told Azan. Then she walked the short distance to the front of the cockpit and sat down in the co-pilot's seat. She quickly tapped a series of commands into the console. A cerulean beam shot out from the interceptor's belly, the specially modified ray of energy fusing with the boundary of the former stellar nursery. The ship shook as amethyst bolts crackled back up along the tractor beam.
"Azan?"
"Power reflux. The compensators are holding for now."
"Alright then… Taré, move us towards the cube."
"Heading towards the Borg," Taré acknowledged with a slight, disbelieving shake of his head.
As the interceptor moved away from The Gap, Mezoti kept the length of the tractor beam constant, so that the merged margin had no choice but to expand. The forces of the subspace-saturated area were so powerful that they could see the consequences of the pull with their naked eyes, a creeping shift in the colour of the surrounding space towards the purple.
The interceptor began to shudder under the stress of the massive energies being redeployed outside, crawling back up into the ship through the tractor beam.
"I'm shunting the excess energy to the buffers," Azan called out.
"Come on, come on," Mezoti whispered under her breath, keeping her fingers firmly in place on the tractor controls despite the ill treatment that the interceptor was taking.
Ahead, the Borg cube loomed large. It had been firing consistently if somewhat unhurriedly at the Wysanti fleet as it repaired itself. Mezoti could still hear the thoughts of the Collective at the back of her mind, like a lizard lying passively on a rock. Suddenly the lizard stirred, and Mezoti felt as if she was under intense scrutiny. The Borg had noticed them and had surely recognized the tactic they were employing from that battle twenty years ago.
Without warning, Mezoti reached over and across Taré and slammed her palm against the control panel. The interceptor took a steep plunge downwards, both Taré and Azan crying out in surprise as their stomachs lurched in response to the sudden manoeuvre. Barely a second later a green bolt of energy sizzled through space where the interceptor would have been. Mezoti realized that they had been lucky that time, but there was no way that they could avoid the Borg's fire long enough to reach the cube. This little craft wouldn't be able to survive a direct hit.
"Warp!" Mezoti cried out.
"No! The systems can't take it!" Azan cried out from the back of the interceptor.
"No choice! They'll blow us out of space." Mezoti grabbed Taré's attention as she said this, trying to convey as much severity and resolve as she could in her return gaze.
Taré seemed to hesitate for a moment. Even without Azan's warning, a blind jump to warp – because surely there was no time to try and plot a course – in the middle of a crowded battlefield could have very fatal results. But in the end, eyes locked with Mezoti's and feeling her determination coming off in waves, he only hesitated for a moment.
"Warp it is," he answered as he pushed the ship to starboard with one hand – there was no need to make an already dangerous jump to warp suicidal by pointing the ship right at the Borg cube – and jabbed the warp controls with his other.
Still dragging the boundary of the The Gap behind them, the interceptor's warp nacelles roared to life. Space around the interceptor bent and distorted as the warp engines performed their eponymous task, and in a sudden burst of speed the interceptor seemed to elongate before leaping forwards. The still active tractor beam pulled the periphery of the subspace anomaly with it, ripping space apart in an amethyst conflagration. It wasn't even a matter of moments before the awesome energy released by the expanding subspace saturation fed back into the tractor beam with which it had become merged.
An explosion ignited on the interceptor's belly as the tractor emitter, dragging an object that resisted the faster-than-light speed at which it was traveling and overloaded by the resulting feedback, gave up the good fight and detonated in a blazing inferno. The interceptor, free of the "weight" it had been dragging, suddenly snapped forwards, tumbling bow over port through space. It dropped out of warp as a series of subsequent explosions effectively turned the interceptor's warp drive into so much scrap metal.
In that very instant, all normal lighting inside the interceptor went disappeared as every console in the small craft registered a surge in power before winking out. Unbridled energy coursed through the interceptor's circuitry, erupting in a shower of sparks as it pierced through the isolation. Azan threw himself to the floor as the console he had been using suddenly flashed white before exploding in a hail of glowing electrical embers.
The rampant overload continued to snake it's way across the interior of the interceptor. Mezoti threw up her arms to protect her face as, in a searing flare, the navigations console turned into a storm of unfettered power, sending Taré soaring across the short distance between his chair and the bulkhead to his left, leaving behind a morass of fused circuitry and sputtering connectors.
Following the rampant detonations, the silence that suddenly descended inside the interceptor seemed unnatural. Mezoti lowered her arms (the skin on her forearms tingled unpleasantly – no doubt she'd been burned in the explosion) and forced herself to open her eyes. She saw the smoking remains of the cockpit through the pulsating afterimage of the navigation console's explosion, a white blur superimposing itself onto her normal vision.
Trying to blink away the afterimage, Mezoti leaned over her thankfully still intact console to peer out the interceptor's window. The small craft was still spinning, but Mezoti could see the Borg cube when the shifting starscape moved in the right direction.
Her heart leapt when she saw that the cube hung in space amongst a roiling quagmire of purple and red. None of the ominous green lighting one would expect to see on a cube shone through – the Borg craft was dead in space. That final, disastrous jump to warp had been sufficient to extend the boundary of The Gap past the Borg cube. The resulting subspace saturation had effectively suppressed any attempts at intra-ship and inter-drone communication.
Her self-appointed mission complete, Mezoti let herself drop back into the co-pilot's chair – then, from the periphery of her vision, she saw Taré lying limply against the opposite side of the cockpit, his back to her. She cried out his name as she pushed herself out of her chair and to his side. She rolled him onto his back and saw that the whole right side of his face had been burned in the explosion, his mahogany-coloured flesh standing out in deep red where it hadn't been charred black. His hair had been singed, and both his eyes remained closed as an arm dropped lifelessly to the deck under the momentum of her roll.
Anxiously, she pressed her hand against the left side of his neck (consciously avoiding the burnt right side), and was relieved to find a pulse under her fingers. With nothing more than the basic first-aid training expected of every Wysanti citizen, she couldn't tell how strong it was, especially with nothing to judge it by other than her own Norcadian physiology, but she could see his chest rising and falling in a regular rhythm.
"How is he?"
Mezoti turned to face the voice, momentarily surprised before she remembered Azan's presence aboard the interceptor. Azan was getting back to his feet after his backwards lunge. Something had gashed his forehead, and a thin stream of brown blood trickled from the wound and down his cheek, but he looked otherwise no worse for the wear.
"Still breathing," Mezoti replied, flinching internally at her less than sterling answer.
Azan nodded in acknowledgement, then walked over to his console. Finding it defunct, he moved over to an adjoining console. He typed in some commands, the controls beeping softly.
"I'm getting strange readings from the Borg cube," he said. "It looks like the whole cube has been powered down, but I'm reading an increase in activity. No energy, though." Azan paused, considering. "I think they might be bringing some kind of redundancy system online."
Mezoti licked her lips. She had been afraid that the Borg had come up with an adaptation to having their internal subspace communications cut off after their encounter with Voyager all those years ago. If the cube was able to restore itself to full operating capacity…
Leaving the prostrate form of Taré on the interceptor's floor, Mezoti jumped back into the co-pilot's seat, looking for any controls on her console that could be used for communications. Finding the appropriate console, she thumbed the button that would allow her to transmit on all available frequencies.
"Attention, Wysanti fleet. The Borg cube has been provisionally incapacitated. Its defences are down and it is incapable of returning fire. But this situation is only temporary: given time, the cube will repair itself. All available craft should concentrate their fire on the cube now. I repeat: the Borg cube is temporarily powerless and vulnerable, but it won't be for long."
Mezoti switched off the broadcast. For an anxious moment, she wondered whether the rest of the fleet would listen to her – she hadn't identified herself, and didn't have much in terms of credentials even if she had. But if they ignored her call, Wysanti might lose its last best chance to defeat the Borg.
The interceptor's spin had slowed as struggling thrusters came back to life, and Mezoti spent several seconds clutching the co-pilot's console, waiting for the spinning starscape outside the window to show her the cube. When the vessel's spin finally allowed her a view of the disabled cube, she also saw flashes of blue and purple light streaking across the now-rippling backdrop of The Gap. The torpedoes and disruptors slammed into the unshielded mass of the Borg cube, triggering explosions and tearing large pieces of the mechanistic vessel off.
Mezoti' experienced a surge of relief at the sight of the spectacle. The fleet had heeded her call. With so much firepower concentrated against it, and with all it's defences down, it looked like this cube would no longer pose any threat to the homeworlds.
Though the surviving gunships seemed to be leading the charge, Mezoti spotted several of the smaller interceptors swarming around the cube – making certain that they stayed out of the way of the firestorm unleashed by their larger sister ships – pecking away at the other side of the cube with their own low-powered disruptors. Even with no shielding, the disruptors could do little more than gash at the mangled surface of the cube. Still, every little bit helped, if only to damage whatever conduits the Borg were using as countermeasures to the sudden lack of subspace and stave off a possible return to operating capacity.
Then the Wysanti fleet and the Borg cube vanished behind the contours of the bulkhead surrounding the cockpit window. At that point, Mezoti no longer cared. She'd seen enough – she was certain that the cube was doomed.
"We got it!" she announced for Azan's benefit.
"I know," he said. "I'm monitoring it with what few sensors we still have left. It looks like it's only seconds away from–"
There was a flash of yellow-and-red light from somewhere beyond the interceptor, lighting up the interior of the cockpit. It faded after a few seconds, leaving nothing but the glow of distant stars.
"Warp core breach," Azan finished unnecessarily.
Mezoti suddenly felt very tired, the weight of the past few days coming crashing down on her. She wanted to just let herself go limp in the co-pilot's seat, but she knew she couldn't allow herself to rest just yet. They needed help – Taré most of all.
She thumbed the controls for the communications systems again. "This is a distress signal. We're aboard an interceptor that's been disabled and we have wounded, one critically. Our coordinates are as follows…"