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"Is he nuts!?" Benjamin Sisko yelled at his viewscreen.
Lt. Commander Sarah Lochley looked a mess. Her face was black with grease and ash, and her usually well-ordered red hair was sticking out at all angles. "No, Captain Sisko. If we knock out that source, we may well collapse the collective."
"But then again, we may not, Commander!"
Lochley held her ground. "This whole operation has been a gamble, Captain. This is another. But we won't get another chance like this one."
Sisko was about to say something, but stopped himself. He said "Understood, Commander Lochley," and closed the transmission. He nodded to his young Ferengi helmsman, a resident of Defiant Station who had volunteered for service, and turned out to have a gift for piloting. "Ensign Nog, lay in a course to those coordinates and prepare for atmospheric flight."
The young ensign bared his pointed teeth in a grin as he said, "Aye, sir."
Sisko stood in the center of the bridge, arms firmly crossed behind his back, as the screen shifted to the now horrid view of Earth. Green Borg weapons fire flashed by them as they left the battle. Some fire appeared on the viewer as the Intrepid began entry into the atmosphere.
"Out of the frying pan...into the fire," said Sisko as his ship shook beneath him.
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The Lakota's away team materialized in the sparking mess of the sphere's interior. They were virtually unnoticed by the drones around them, as most were repairing something. Tuvok took out his tricorder and ran a scan.
"There is a central area that does not conform to the rest of the ship. It would seem to be a command center. It survived the explosion,but retained heavy damage, like the rest of the ship."
Riker nodded. "Let's split up." Riker indicated the two security officers that beamed over with them, DeMarco and Ross. "You two take this route..." He pointed out the way on Tuvok's tricorder. "Remember, only fire when it's absolutely necessary. We need to be here long enough to complete our objective."
The two officers left briskly, and Riker and Tuvok were on their way. All four of them were armed to the teeth, carrying two phasers a piece, and each team had a photonic grenade launcher. Riker and Tuvok kept their phasers low, to avoid being perceived as a threat. After ten minutes of dodging drones and climbing over wreckage, they were close. Demarco and Ross met up with them.
"Did you have any difficulty?" Tuvok asked them.
Ross spoke up. "No, sir, they are too distracted to pay us any mind."
Riker shook his head. "I don't excpect Locutus to be distracted." He lifted his phaser. "Get your weapons ready. When your phaser hits a shield, throw it away and use the next one."
Everyone got their phasers ready and moved forward. They stepped over some dead drones, one of which was cleaved in half by shrapnel. Tuvok paused and pointed at the portal ahead, it lead to the command center. They moved quicly in and raised their phasers, getting in defensive stances. No drones attacked them. The room was torn apart, with dead drones lying about. They walked in, waiting for the attack. Everything here was quiet.
Then DeMarco found something. "Captain...I think it's him." He was kneeling down by a Borg under some wreckage, running his tricorder over it. The Borg was on its stomach. Riker came over and knelt by DeMarco. He turned the Borg over and confirmed the security officer's discovery.
The face he looked at now reminded him nothing of the kind, brilliant, reserved man he knew as his captain. All he saw in that face was the spectre of death."Is he dead?"
"No, sir. He's unconscious, and his body has sustained internal injuries.
"Tuvok," Riker gestured for the Vulcan to come and help with Locutus. "Let's get him out from under this."
Riker stood up and tapped his combadge. "Riker to Lakota."
The signal that came back was breaking up. "Captain? We're under heavy attack!"
"We found Locutus, and we have to get out of here."
Lochley's voice was becoming hard to make out. "We...lower shields..."
"Lochley!" Riker started programming his tricorder. "I'm setting up a transporter beacon, lower shields for one second and beam us over."
Static, then, "try...Captain."
Riker set down the tricorder, and all four of them with Locutus, stood around it within it's two meter range. A minute went by, and nothing.
"Riker to Lochley..." He tapped his combadge, but got back the negative signal chirp."Damn."
"Captain!" DeMarco exclaimed.
Riker turned and saw what he was excited about. Locutus began to stir.
"Tuvok!" Tuvok had brought a small medical kit with him, with several hyposprays. One of them was a strong tranquilizing agent. Tuvok was at Locutus' back, and pressed the hypo to his neck. Before it took effect, Locutus swung his weapon arm around, ripping DeMarco's chest open, and smashing Tuvok in the side of the head, crumpling both men.
Locutus turned to Riker with his arm still raised, green and red blood dripping from it. He had a slight grin on his face.
"Incorrect strategy, Number...one..." Locutus' eyes closed, and he fell to the floor.
Riker ran to Tuvok's side, and saw that his skull was collapsed in from the temple back. He was dead. He looked at Ross kneeling by DeMarco, and by the look on Ross' face, he knew the prognosis.
His commbadge crackled. "Captain?"
"Lochley! Can you get us out of here?"
"Aye, sir, it may be a rough ride. The sphere's defenses are starting to activate."
"Tuvok and DeMarco are dead. Three to beam over," Riker didn't want to leave behind the bodies of his comrades, but he couldn't risk the power drain on the transporter. It would be a piece of luck if they got out at all. "Energize."
For what seemed like an eternity, he existed in the blue haze of the transporter effect. The transporter room of the Lakota came into vision, faded again,then they finally arrived on the pads.
A medical team was waiting for them with a gurney. He and Ross lifted Locutus onto it, and a restraining field activated around above him.
Riker walked out of the transporter room and tapped his commbadge. "Riker to Selar."
"Sickbay, here, Captain."
"Locutus is on his way to you. Put him in a stasis field until the current crisis is over."
"Aye, sir."
Riker stepped into the turbolift and leaned back on the wall of the car. He rubbed his hands over his eyes and through his hair. Locutus had already personally killed two of his crew. He began to wish he had heeded Captain Sisko's warnings about this mission.
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Captain Sisko gripped the arms of his chair tightly as his ship tore through the atmosphere towards its target. Weapon fire from below constantly flashed at them, but Ensign Nog was a skillful pilot, and managed to avoid most of it.
"Have we got an idea what we are targeting yet?" Sisko yelled to his science officer, Lieutenant Ketal.
Ketal turned from her station. "Aye, sir. It's a tower in what used to be New York City. It's one thousand meters tall."
"My god...can we take it out?"
"It would take a lot of torpedoes, sir, and scans show that area to be highly active."
Sisko rubbed his beard, as the ship shook from a weapon hit. "Mr. Eddington, bring the Tri-Cobalt devices online."
Eddington raised his eyebrows. "Aye, Captain."
The Tri-Cobalt devices were going to be installed on Intrepid-class ships as a high-yield weapon to be used in desperate situations. They never got out of the test phase, but Sisko found the reports and made it happen. He just hoped they would be enough.
The Intrepid broke through the clouds above New York. The surface was a Borg-grown nightmare. Nothing about it resembled the Earth that had existed six years ago, every trace of Earth-borne life erased.
The target loomed high aboved the skyline of the city, almost obscured by a fog that seemed to be a consant here now. As the Intrepid bore down on the tower, several small Borg vessels apeared on the viewer, firing at them en masse.
"Shields down to seventy-five percent Captain," Lieutenant Commander Eddington reported.
Sisko nodded. "Helm, maintain course." The Environmental Controls station exploded, sending the crewman manning it flying. "Damage report!"
"Hull breach on Deck Twelve...ODN network pathways severed at several points...shield grid is on the verge of overloading." Eddington wiped his brow with one hand, punching his weapons controls with the other.
"Are we in range?"
"In twenty seconds,sir"
"Prepare to fire." Sisko just hoped they would last twenty seconds.
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"Data, your ships have been unable to stop the Starfleet vessel."
Data worked at a huge holographic input station, commanding his fighters. It seemed that the Alliance had re-built their shield and weapons systems from the ground up, using advanced technology. The ships attacking the Borg should not have been able to cause as much damage as they have.
The new-class ship continued to press on towards their position atop the uni-complex tower. The vessel was firing phasers and torpedoes constantly at her attackers, and retaining heavy damage. As it came within range of the tower, Data poured on the tower's weapons. He took off one warp engine, then the other. The vessel immediately lost control and descended rapidly toward its ultimate doom. Data smiled.
His smile faded as the tower was rocked by a violent explosion. The picture on his large viewscreen shifted as the tower began to lean severely. The Starfleet ship had damaged them somehow, but how? They didn't carry any weapons that could cause this much damage.
NO!
A second explosion, and the huge tower broke in two, the unweildy top flipping over and crashing to the ground. As it hit, all of its self contained power sources lost containment, and the resulting explosion took out a one mile radius from ground zero.
The Borg on planet Earth began to die a screaming, violent death.
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"We've lost contact with the Intrepid, Captain," Lochley said sadly from the Tactical station.
Riker nodded slowly as he watched the show on Earth. There were hundreds of flashes as Borg structures began self-destructing, unable to compensate for the sudden loss of the collective.
The fleet had begun to regroup in orbit, and the losses were staggering. There were now only six Starfleet ships left, including the Lakota and the Odyssey. He had just received a transmission from General Martok, who had survived and was en route to Earth with his eighteen warships. The Cardassians, Romulans, and Jem'Hadar had all lost most of their ships.
"Lochley, prepare to send a message to Defiant Sta..." He stopped as the Lakota rocked from weapons fire. "What the hell...?"
Commander Lochley frantically tried to get shields up. "Captain, several Borg ships have begun powering up..." The viewscreen showed cubes powering up, firing weapons wildly. A Romulan Warbird took several hits and exploded.
"Get us outta here! Riker to fleet, set course for Defiant Station and engage immediately!"
The fleet came about, dodging Borg weapons and debris, and flew out at full power. They met up with the Klingons, and as they joined the fleet, the mass of ships recloaked.
Riker slumped into his captain's chair, his thoughts darker than they were before the batle. They had lost much, but had they gained anything? He was more unsure of the future than ever.
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Locutus of Borg was lying on his back in the Lakota's sickbay, in a stasis field. The field virtually froze him in a moment in time, unable to move or even wake up from his slumber. The monitor recording his functions recorded no brain activity, no activity of any kind.
Deep.
Deeper than even Locutus was aware of....
There was a voice.
Locutus...
End of Part 1