DISCLAIMER:
"Star Trek" and all associated names and characters, with the exceptions of the ones created by myself for this story, are © Paramount. I am a fan of Gene Roddenberry's dream and just wish to keep it alive so that tomorrow's youth may gain by it as I have. This is fan fiction; there is no infringement of copyright intended with this story, nor have I written it for personal financial gain. So relax, engage at full warp and enjoy!
(Note—I am very sorry all, I have had one heck of a bad week and haven't had much time to write…but now that I know where my future is headed I have been able to find the time to finish this very long and complicated update. I hope you all enjoy the plot twists…and BTW—is anyone else pissed off about fanfiction changing the default rating browse from show all to pg-13…email me with your comments about that.)
Chapter Eight
The cunning Borg scientist had just escaped from the confines of the brig and was stealthily darting about the corridors of the Hydra when she found her lucky break. It was a service hatch that led into a jefferies tube. She crossed the hall being careful to note that no one would see her, and came to the control panel for the hatch. She tapped the inspection key on the terminal and the hatch unbattened and slid open. She set the case that carried the experimental Borg enhanced positronic brain into the jefferies tube and gave it a good shove in. She quickly climbed into the jefferies tube and turned around, quickly locating the interior control panel for the hatch, and tapped the inspection cancel button. The door slid shut and locked down securely. She reactivated her neuro-transceiver and made a subspace link with the prototype in the case.
'Athena, wake up. I need to know if you were able to ascertain what ship we are being held on when you linked up to the control panel in the detention area.' She inquired non-vocally to the prototype positronic brain via the implant she had just activated.
'You mean to tell me that you actually require my assistance again? The total ship's complement excluding you is only thirty-eight. A talented and intelligent woman like yourself augmented with borg technology should be easily able to defeat them without my intervention.' The unit answered back.
Kim inched her way forward in the cramped jefferies tube pushing the case in front of her as she progressed deeper along its path. Annoyed by the artificial's response to her she explained, 'Athena, if we don't get control of all this ship's functions and force the crew into submission before they meet up with the romulans we will be in big trouble with a capital T. So just be a good sport and tell me what I need to know.'
'We are onboard the ex-federation defiant class vessel U.S.S. Hydra, ship's registry number 84201B. It was decommissioned six years ago, as a part of a treaty with the romulan star empire. Apparently, a little over a week ago, this ship was returned to duty, albeit not by, with, or for the federation and starfleet. I have ran the records of the current crew manifest against the starfleet personnel files that were stored in the ship's computer and over half of the crew, including the captain, is ex-starfleet. Of that slight majority, most have served sentences on federation penal colonies.'
Kim came to a junction in the jefferies tube and looked both ways trying to divine a bearing on which direction the ship's computer core was. She asked, 'You had time to search the ship's database to find out all that background info, Athena?'
Athena commented, 'Would you care to know that the starfleet transcript for the captain, or should I say Ex-commander Roberts stated that he was a bed wetter as a child?'
Looking at the three directions the jefferies tubes before her forked off into she replied, 'No that's fine. I'm sure the detailed biography you have compiled for me about him can wait until we have successfully taken total control of this ship. What I would like to know, is which direction is the central computer core from our current location?'
'It's located on deck two. As far as where that is in relation to our current location, I wouldn't know. I have no body, and therefore no practical way to ascertain where here is, remember.' Athena explained.
Kim sarcastically spoke aloud, "I'd almost loan you mine if I thought it would help." That's when the idea hit upon her. She signaled, 'Athena, be prepared to receive a visual record of the jefferies tube we are in, and scan it against what you know about the deck layout of this ship to determine which direction we should take to arrive at the computer core undetected.' With that Kim used her artificial eye to scan the layout of the junction and then transmitted the visual record to Athena.
Athena was quick with the results, 'Take the tube to your right, and then proceed past the next two intersections the hatch at the end will lead directly into the computer core.'
Upon receiving the directions, Kim pushed the case into the tube off to her right and proceeded to slowly inch her way on her hands and knees forward into it. It took nearly five minutes of work for her to push her way past the next two junctions and arrive at the hatch at the terminus of the tube. She tapped the inspect button on the hatch's control panel and it unlocked and slid open. She pushed the case out before her and set it upon the floor of the computer core. She crawled out and hit the inspection cancel button for the hatch. She kneeled down before the case and opened it up. Inside was the familiar sphere shaped prototype that she had labored so long on and had come to know as Athena. She quickly lifted it from its protective padding and stood up. She quickly cased the room with her eyes and forthwith located the main computer access terminal. She walked over and set the prototype down onto the computer terminal. She sent the message, 'Okay Athena, time to go to work. I need you to link up with the computer core and assimilate it. We need to have absolute control of this ship by the time they figure out what is going on.'
Athena extended Borg injection tubules from the hybrid positronic brain that housed her and interfaced with the computer terminal. She was quick to explain, 'According to the ship's schematics that won't be so easy. You see the defiant class was built as a ship of war to fight the Borg. How ironic can this be? I mean you and I are of Borg, and here we are planning to hijack a vessel that was designed to defeat the Borg. Don't you find that amusing, Dr. Tzu?'
Impatient, nervous and, aggravated Kim asked, 'We'll save the debate on how ironic this is for another time, Athena. Right now I just want to know one thing. Why won't it be so easy?'
Athena replied, 'Oh right, sorry. I forget that I have a tendency to get side tracked and babble. Like I was explaining, the defiant class was built as a ship of war. As a result it was designed and built with a network of 48 quadritronic optical subprocessors, which are distributed throughout the volume of the vehicle spaceframe. The main bridge alone has a total of 18 dedicated and shared subprocessors, which permit operations even in the event of main computer core failure or in this case the event that someone is trying to take over the ship by gaining control of the main computer core.'
'So how do we take control of them all at the same time without getting caught first?' Kim asked.
Athena answered, 'You will have to go down to main engineering and inject a large dosage of nanoprobes into the ship's EPS root hub. The nanoprobes will travel along the EPS conduits and to all of the ship's subproccessors, whereupon they will assimilate them and allow control to revert to the main computer core and subsequently me. We will then have total control of the Hydra.'
Kim didn't like the idea of having to go to main engineering. She had gambled her success of gaining control of the ship based upon not getting into a confrontation with the crew. She would have to travel now into the belly of the beast and confront many people, because she highly doubted engineering would be totally void of crew. 'I'll need to know the way there.' she requested as she walked towards the door that led into the corridor. The doors slid open and she peered out both ways. It was clear.
'I've gained access to ship's sensors and will be able to monitor your whereabouts onboard the ship at any given time. As such I will guide you down to main engineering.' Athena answered.
Kim cautiously stepped out into the corridor and thought to herself, 'and I thought this was going to be a nice quiet trip to Vulcan.'
* * *
Captain Roberts's voice boomed over the com of the crew quarters, "Mr. Williams, I need you on the bridge right away. We are less than an hour away from our rendezvous with the romulans and I need to have you at your station now."
Todd Williams rolled over still half-asleep in his new bunk onboard the Hydra and replied groggily, "Aye, Aye captain. I'm on my way." He rolled out of his bunk and pulled his pants onto him. He knew enough that if the captain made a request, that it was best just to follow orders as quickly as you could. As a result he quickly scanned the floor and located his socks. He had served with the captain back when the captain was just a commander and the first officer of the U.S.S. Aldridge. The captain was the only one onboard the Aldridge that believed in him. He respected the captain and didn't believe that the captain received fair treatment at his court martial. He pulled up his socks and grabbed his shoes that sat on the floor nearby.
It simply wasn't the captain's fault. Not really, anyway. The captain had rigged the holodeck to override the safety protocols, but the Admiral that he had sabotaged it to gain revenge on found out about the tampering before he started the program. The admiral pompously chose to disregard the warnings of the computer, and go on with the Klingon Bat'leth combat program that he routinely did. So it was the admiral's own fault really. The captain didn't deserve a dishonorable discharge and time in a federation penal colony for it. The captain was almost a hero figure to Todd, so he had no hesitations at all about leaving starfleet and joining up with Roberts when he offered the chance.
He pulled his shoes on and stood up. He began to walk towards the doors of the quarters when they slid open, and there stood his bunkmate, Tabok. Tabok was one of the crew that Captain Roberts had enlisted that didn't come from starfleet. He was a six and a half foot tall Vulcan with jet-black hair and pale white skin.
Tabok greeted him in his usual stoic manner, "Greetings, Mr. Williams, I assume your rest period was uneventful?"
Todd smiled back at the Vulcan and replied, "I had nice dreams if that's what you mean, Tabok. However, right now I need to run." He ducked to the side of the Vulcan standing in the door way and yelled as he run down the corridor, "The captain needs me, and oh yeah, have a nice day!"
Tabok raised an eyebrow and in a calm conversational voice replied, "Indeed? And may you have a pleasant day as well, Mr. Williams."
Tabok walked into the crew quarters he had been assigned and made his way in the cramped room to his personal storage locker. He punched in the unlock code on its control pad, and pulled the door open. As he reached inside he ordered, "Computer, lock door."
The computer chirped in compliance.
He retrieved from the locker a medium sized equipment case and walked over to his bunk with it. He set the case down on the bunk, and opened it up. He pulled from the case a non-federation portable vid com transmitter and set it on the desk next to the viewport. He turned back to the open case and pulled out the unit's flat palm sized subspace antenna. He stepped over to the viewport and attached it to the transparent aluminum portal. Methodically he attached the cable dangleing from the antenna to the back of the vid com unit, and then proceeded to fold open the vid com's screen to its upright and viewable position. He tapped at the control panel of the unit, bringing it to life, and then proceeded to open an encoded subspace video communication. He sat down at the desk, as the other side of the communication came to life on the screen.
"Greetings Commander Teral." Tabok addressed the romulan commander.
"What is your status? We have you calculated rendezvous with us in just under an hour? Is the borg scientist safely onboard, and more importantly is the prototype safely in Roberts's custody." Commander Teral asked.
"The prototype was beamed aboard along with Dr. Tzu. A check of the transporter buffer logs confirmed this. Your estimations of our arrival time with your ship is accurate. However, the status of the contingency plan we had discussed is less than to be desired." Tabok answered dispassionately.
"What do you mean, vulcan, 'less than to be desired'? If anything goes wrong with the exchange we will need the Hydra's shields down in order to beam the Dr. Tzu and the prototype over to my ship immediately!" the romulan replied infuriated.
Without expression Tabok explained, "The shield control authorization codes have been encrypted in such a fashion that not even I can penetrate those systems. However, I shall endeavor to find a solution to the problem before our scheduled rendezvous."
Commander Teral massaged his nose near his eyes in a pinching fashion, calmed down, and replied, "You have served the romulan empire well, Tabok, I know that you will find a way to do this for the good of our two peoples. You know how far the gaining of this technology will go towards our shared goal of reunification."
"I do indeed, Commander Teral, Tabok out." He said, cutting the communication. He quickly folded the screen back down, detached the antenna from the unit, and began to stow the equipment back into its case. Within a matter of a minute he had the case back into the storage locker and had the unit locked back up. He walked back over to the desk and sat down again. He clasped his hands together, raised his joined index fingers upwards and then breathed in slowly to meditate for a second and center himself. He finished with his meditation and turned the computer console that set on the top of the desk towards him.
"Computer access ship's medical database system." Tabok requested. Within a split second the LCARS system had accessed the medical database. He continued, "Synchronize the ship's medical database with that of the starfleet medical database located onboard the U.S.S. Hoyle."
The computer chirped in compliance and droned out, "Connection with U.S.S. Hoyle established. Synchronizing database now."
Tabok didn't wait a second to order, "Maintain connection with U.S.S. Hoyle but cancel synchronization of database."
The computer chirped back and obediently responded, "Connection maintained."
Tabok requested the computer, "Open a video conference with the Hoyle's Chief Medical Officer."
The screen cut to a blue background with the starfleet logo in the center, and soon after that cut to the image of a bolian male in a blue uniform with one hollow and two solid pips on his collar. The bolian asked, "May I help you?"
Dispassionately Tabok replied, "You may indeed, lieutenant commander. I need you to route my transmission to your captain without delay."
"And who would you be, and how did you get on this channel?" the bolian asked.
"I am a Commander in starfleet intelligence, and I require you to follow my order right away, lieutenant commander."
The bolian doctor looked at him with distrust for a moment, but then capitulated by routing his transmission through to the captain. The screen cut to a woman setting comfortably back in the chair of her ready room. "Who are you and what do you want?" she angrily asked.
"Captain Keating, I am Commander Tabok of starfleet intelligence, and I have a matter of urgency to discuss with you. With my last communication with starfleet command they informed me that your ship was the closest ship that was in pursuit of the U.S.S. Hydra. I need to ask you how close you are to catching up with the pirated vessel."
She sat forward, looked at a readout on a data pad, and replied, "We estimate our overtaking the vessel in sixty three minutes, why?"
Tabok responded, "I am onboard the Hydra, clandestinely transmitting this communication to you as we speak. We are set to rendezvous and exchange our raided 'cargo' with the romulans in just under an hour. We cannot allow this to happen. If the technology that Dr. Tzu has developed were to fall into the romulan's hands then the invasion of the federation would no longer be a probability. It will have become a certainty."
"Explain." Captain Keating prompted keeping sharply focused on the vulcan.
Tabok answered, "Dr Tzu was developing a hybrid soong type positronic brain that was augmented with borg technology. Imagine if you will an invasion army of tens of millions of soong type androids that have been augmented with borg technology. They would be smarter, stronger, and more difficult to disable than any soong series android we have seen to date. The federation would not stand a chance."
"I see. So what do you propose we do to stop the romulans from getting hold of this technology?" she asked.
"It is uncertain, however, I will endeavor to find a way to slow the transfer process down, and buy you enough time to arrive. I will need to end this transmission now, before I am detected."
"Good luck." Captain Keating offered.
Tabok raised an eyebrow and replied, "Luck is not a factor." He cut the transmission and ordered the computer to log the connection off. He stood up and walked for the door. The door opened and he stepped out into the corridor. An hour was hardly enough time for him to get done what he knew he must do. The doors slid shut behind him and the lights to the crew quarters went dark.
* * *
'Okay he's past the bend in the corridor it's safe to come out now.', Athena said.
Kim had been forced to duck off into a sensor bay to avoid being detected by a passing crewmember. She was lucky that Athena was tied into the ship's internal sensors and could give her the advance warning. She opened the door to the corridor and cautiously stepped back out into it. She proceeded to head towards lower main engineering.
Nervous of what she was about to face she came upon the final door that led to her destination, engineering. Via her neuro-transceiver, she asked Athena, 'How many people do you detect in there?'
Athena answered back, 'I detect five humanoids present. Three in upper main engineering, and two in lower.'
'Think if I just pretend that they aren't there they won't notice me stroll in and inject the EPS root hub with nanoprobes?" Kim asked.
Athena replied, 'I don't believe that would work, Dr. Tzu. However, you need to proceed with the implantation of the nanoprobes, we don't have much time left to take control of the computer systems. I am monitoring their communications and apparently we are less than thirty minutes away from the rendezvous with the romulans.'
Kim took a deep breath and stepped forward causing the doors to engineering to slide open. She stepped in and began to make her way to the EPS root hub. She was half way there when she felt the hand on her shoulder, "Who are you, and what are you doing here"
Kim thought quickly for a convincing lie. She turned around and replied, "I'm Dr. Tzu, and I am here by the captain's request to fix a problem with the EPS system."
When he noticed the ocular implant, the engineer sneered and crossed his arms, "I wasn't aware that the captain was lowering his standards by recruiting drones. So what problem with the EPS grid are you here to fix, drone?"
Athena offered, 'An asymmetrical power flow emanating from the root hub.'
Kim looked the engineer in the eyes, "There is an asymmetrical power flow emanating from the root hub. If you will just excuse me, I will be on my way to fix it." She turned and resumed her course.
The engineer jeered, "Asymmetrical my ass." He tapped a round com badge on his chest, "Security team to engineering, we have an intruder!"
Kim began to sprint towards the EPS root hub. If she could reach it, it would only take a few seconds to flood it with enough assimilation nanoprobes for Athena to take control of the entire ship. She was just a couple of meters away from it when the engineer tackled her to the floor face down. He was of a much larger stature and build than she, but still she managed to turn herself over despite his hold on her.
He redoubled his efforts and had her shoulders pinned to the floor, "All you cyber trash think you are so high and mighty, but when it comes down to it pure blooded humans will always be dominate. Does it tick you off that an inferior lifeform is kickin' your butt?" He maneuvered his hands from her shoulders to her throat and began to choke her.
With her arms now free she fought back on his grip with one hand and raised the other to his shoulder in an attempt to push him away. She gasped, "The thought had crossed my mind."
"You borg cyber trash are nothin' but scum!" he ranted, the heated look in his eye increasing with his grip.
She raised her hand to his neck and did what she promised herself she would never do to another human being. Her injection tubules darted out for a second penetrating his neck. There was a look of horror in his eyes as the assimilation nanoprobes coursed through his system. His grip on her throat slipped away as he slumped on top of her. As she pushed his body off of her she coldly said, "Join the club." She stood up and noticed that another of the engineering staff was looking over at her from just beyond the intermix chamber, and two more were leaned over the rail of the catwalk of the upper deck. She glared at them all raised her fist into the air and snarled, "Anybody else care to join my collective?" She let her injection tubules hiss into the air for a brief second. They looked at her in shock, and quickly vacated her field of view.
She turned back around to resume her task when she noticed that the engineer was fighting the assimilation. The nanoprobes were coursing through his veins causing cellular assimilation to make them bulge as his skin turned ever paler. He drooled and gasped as he stuttered, "Borg trash."
She looked back to the EPS root hub and resumed her task, "Sticks and stones may break my bones…" While she was injecting the EPS root hub with the assimilation nanoprobes, she turned her focus back on him and smirked, "…but resistance is futile, bigot." She turned back to the EPS root hub and disengaged her injection tubules.
'Okay, mission accomplished, Athena. It's your show now.'
Athena must have been already predisposed with the freshly injected nanoprobes, because Kim didn't hear the doors to engineering open. She did however feel the tingle and heat of phaser fire making connection with her lower spine.
* * *
"Mr. Williams, what is our ETA to the designated rendezvous coordinates?" Roberts sat in his captain's chair looking towards the helmsman.
Williams tapped a few commands into his station and read the readout, "Seventeen minutes, thirteen seconds, captain."
"Mr. Quarn, report." Roberts looked over to his ferengi first officer manning the tactical station.
Quarn casually replied, "Well hoo-man, if the young helmsman's estimate is correct we should arrive at the rendezvous coordinates with a six minute window before the Hoyle intercepts us."
"Well that doesn't leave us a lot of time to transfer our 'cargo'." Roberts stood up and walked towards Quarn. "Speaking of which, did security get our 'cargo' to sick bay for medical treatment? I mean we can't have our dear little borg cash cow dying on us, before we hand her over to the romulans."
Quarn turned his head and looked at Roberts who was now standing beside him, "Security reported that they delivered her to sickbay and have her on a biobed behind a force field right now. They also reported that the took Mr. Fields to the brig, they thought it would be a good idea since his assimilation by Dr. Tzu was progressing rapidly."
Roberts didn't know what he was going to do with the engineer that had been attacked by the borg scientist. He couldn't very well have a borg drone, which was loyal to her walking the decks freely. Maybe he would have the EMH try to remove some of the borg implants that were growing inside of him. He would hate to lose the engineer. After having lost over half of his crew in the starfleet raid he needed every crewmember that he had. "I thought that all liberated drones had a governor implant installed by the federation to inhibit their ability to inject assimilation nanoprobes."
Quarn replied, "You are correct hoo-man. The federation does require its borg citizens to register and accept the implant; however, I'm guessing that since the good doctor's field of research would necessitate the use of the assimilation probes that the federation looked the other way in her case. Besides, she could have just bribed a doctor to remove it. In any case I will be happy to get this transaction over and have her off of the ship. Clothed females are bad enough, let alone clothed borg females." Quarn cringed. Quarn continued to work his console when he noted, "Incoming hail from the romulans"
"Put it on screen, Mr. Quarn." Roberts said looking up to the main view screen. It quickly cut to a view of Commander Teral on the bridge of his warbird.
"Did you have a successful hunt, Captain?" the romulan asked.
"We have your cargo, commander. We will be arriving at the rendezvous coordinates shortly. However I suggest we don't take too much time on the hand off. We are tracking a galaxy class starship hot on our tail, and will catch up to us quickly after we arrive."
"We are monitoring the situation, and be assured that we will activate our transporters the moment you arrive." Teral smiled.
Walking back to his chair, Roberts commented, "You might want to have a security team standing by when you do. She has already escaped my brig and assimilated one of my crew when she tried to take over main engineering."
"You can rest assured that we will take every precaution with the federation scientist. All we require of you is to deactivate your cloak and shields when you arrive. We will take care of every thing else. Commander Teral, out."
The viewscreen returned to its view of the stars streaming past them. Roberts sat down and ordered, "Quarn, go ahead and drop the cloak now. The Hoyle obviously was able to track us with it on anyway. They probably detected subspace resonance of that malfunction we were having."
Quarn deactivated the cloak and asked, "I thought our hot headed engineer was supposed to have fixed that."
"Nancy has been temporarily relieved of duty."
Quarn beamed a jagged smiled, "Couldn't handle her advances, hoo-man?"
"Let's just say I like to be able to finish my cup of tea."
* * *
The pain of Nancy's violent cramps had forced the doctor to give her a sedative. She was out cold, and the doctor thought to himself that it was for the best. The doctor thought that she shouldn't be awake when the hemorrhaging became so bad that her baby was lost. And at the rate of it all, it would only be a few minutes away.
"I am so very sorry." The doctor said rhetorically to her as he monitored her degenerating condition with his tricorder. She would live, but the fetus would be lost. It was his fault entirely. It didn't matter if it were a flaw of the programmer or a degenerated subroutine in his matrix; he was the one who used the hypospray to sedate her in the first place.
"The AK-one series isn't know for its emotional response. Is your matrix stable, doctor?" Kim said sitting up on the biobed.
The doctor stopped what he was doing and turned to her, "I'm glad to see you have recovered. I see that borg technology does indeed have its advantages." He continued with his work.
"I will not require medical attention for my phaser wounds, my organelles have already repaired the damage. However, I don't think your patient has the benefit of borg augmentation. What is her condition?" she asked getting down off of the biobed.
The doctor looked over to Kim briefly and then turned back to Nancy continuing his scan, "The patient is suffering massive hemorrhaging of the uterus and continuos hormonal fluctuations that is inconsistent with her current gestational state of thirteen weeks."
Kim tapped at the containment field that had her isolated to the surgical bay of the room, "How long until the fetus is auto-aborted?"
"A matter of minutes." The doctor hollowly responded.
"Have you been able to isolate a cause for her condition?"
The doctor spun around and began to nervously exclaim, "I am a starfleet EMH! My first priority is to the patient and then to starfleet. My ethical subroutines would not allow me to…"
"AK-one EMH's are not supposed to have the capability for this type of emotion, doctor. Is your matrix, okay?" Kim began to wonder about the erratic acting EMH.
"I'm not sure…" the doctor began with a look of sorrow on his face and an echo of defeat in his voice. "The U.S.S. Hydra has been decommissioned for several years now, it is entirely possible that some of my systems have degraded. When I gave her the hypospray to anesthetize her, I failed to discover from my medical scan that she was with child."
She looked at the doctor in confusion. She could almost swear that she saw his eyes beginning to gloss over and tears begin to form. She hesitantly probed, "You did this to her?"
"I had to. I had my duty to starfleet. However, it would appear that I am obsolete now. I shouldn't have used that neuro-toxin on her, but it was the only way to prevent her from deactivating my program before leaving sickbay, and I needed to get a message to starfleet command. My ethical subroutines will never survive this. I have taken a life, and I should be deactivated permanently." The doctor looked down at Nancy's stomach and then closed his eyes as if to block the confusion in his programming.
Kim spoke up. "The fetus has not been aborted yet. Although I am not a medical doctor, I may just have a solution to save her child."
The doctor shook his head, "Its no use. I've been through the entire starfleet medical database, and there is no successful method of treatment recorded for her condition."
"I was not referring to a way that starfleet medical would have knowledge of, or even condone for that matter." Kim shot a serious glare at the doctor.
As he looked over to Kim, the doctor clenched his brows together, "What method of treatment are you suggesting?"
"The child will not survive in its current environment, and the neruo-toxin you used has undoubtedly initiated complications with the fetus itself. Therefore I am proposing that we transplant the fetus into me, and allow the nanoprobes that are in my system to repair the damage to the developing child."
"Are you mad?" the doctor asked. "The nanoprobes in your system would assimilate the child in your womb. The child would become borg as a result. The federation's policy on borg assimilation is quite clear. No liberated borg member of the federation is to assimilate another being. I mean you all carry an inhibitor implant to prevent it."
"Because of my research I don't have one, and I didn't choose to become borg. It was an accident. However, one of your patients is about to die, doctor. So what will it be: your loyalties to the federation or your Hippocratic oath?"
The doctor darted his eyes back and forth analyzing the Borg's offer to save and carry the engineer's child. He couldn't break the starfleet mandate on borg assimilation, yet he could not let Nancy's child die. He made a leap of faith, "Computer, deactivate the containment field around the surgical bay."
Kim walked out and laid down on a biobed next to Nancy's. "We don't have a lot of time doctor, I would suggest you endeavor to expedite the procedure."
The doctor walked over to his stand and picked up a laser scalpel. The doctor sighed, "May my programmers have mercy upon my subroutines."
* * *
"Report!" Captain Keating barked out emerging from her ready room onto the bridge.
Commander Evans stood up from the captain's chair and replied, "We are still about six minutes away, however the Hydra has come to a stop and a romulan warbird has decloaked near her."
"Any possibility of getting some more speed out of our engines, Mr. Evans?" she asked walking over to her chair.
"Negative, captain. Our engineers report that they are overloading the plasma injectors as we speak. They wouldn't be able to get us there any sooner."
Lieutenant Yialla stood at his post at ops with a tan dermal patch covering the wound on his blue face. He alerted, "Captain, I am detecting subspace interference consistent with transporter activity in the vicinity of the two ships."
"We're to late." The captain commented with disappointment.
Lieutenant Yialla looked at his terminal with confusion and added, "A Klingon bird of prey has just de-cloaked off of the bow of the romulan vessel. It is firing on her!"
"What the hell is going on?" Captain Keating asked.
Yialla continued, "There has been more interference consistent with transporter activity. The Hydra has raised shields and has plotted a course away from the romulan and klingon vessels. Its new course is for…." He tapped the console of his station in disbelief, "They have plotted a course for the system's sun at high warp."
Commander Evans looked to his captain in confusion, "Why would they do that?"
Captain Keating thought to herself for a second trying to recall a relevant fact that she had forgotten. It was on the edge of her memory, and she only knew that it had something to do with the legendary Admiral Kirk and one of his many escapades. Then it hit her. She looked back at Yialla and remembered, "What is their current speed? And are they headed directly at the star?"
"They are at warp nine and increasing. They have plotted a course that will take them within a few thousand kilometers of the star's photosphere. They are just a few seconds away from it." Yialla answered working his station.
"Activate a full sensor sweep to track their exact telemetry!" the captain ordered, adding, "Damn."
Commander Evans looked down at the captain in wonder and asked, "What the hell is going on?"
Yialla reported, "They have disappeared. I am no longer tracking them on sensors."
Evans looked back to the tactical officer and asked, "What do you mean? Did they re-cloak?"
Yialla studied his scans, "The EM interference that we were using to track them while they were cloaked are not present. However, I am detecting the aftermath of a chronoton field in their wake."
"Explain!" Evans demanded.
Captain Keating stood up and offered her answer, "Time warp."
* End Chapter Eight *
Holy plot twists, Batman! Will Nancy's baby survive? Will Kim and Athena manage to escape? Just whom is Tabok really working for anyway? Can mojo2722 really keep all these plates flying in the air? Tune in for the next installment because this story is…
To Be Continued.
(P.S.—got a problem with my writing? Email me at goscrewyourself@hydra.lcars wait a min….that's Nancy's email addy…I guess if you have any comments about my rantings I can be reached at mojo@iowatelecom.net)