The ship rocked as another impact racked the hull.
"Shields at 40% sir!" Lt Crusher called over the claxons.
"Evasive pattern alpha 5." Quiche ordered.
"Eye sir!" Crusher responded.
Suddenly the deck lurched from under their feet.
The Arga rolled to a stop in a huge chamber, it's interior devoted to the cylindrical matrix in its centre. They all looked up, and up, the cylinder seemed to ascend forever.
"Sir, It seems to be a computer core." Bates said looking up from his console. "I think I have pinpointed a map room similar to the one on earth.
Decker shivered at the memory of that day.
The three of them panned out across the room each trying, in there own way, to take in it's vastness.
"Sir, There appears to be some sort of interface over here." Bates called from the base of the pillar.
"Can you access it?" Asked Decker walking over to join him.
"I think so sir." Bates tapped a control on his Tricorder, and the console beeped into life.
"John, the Romulons are getting close, can you make this quick." Amy called from the Arga.
Bates tapped at the console and the floor began to shudder.
"What did you do?" Amy called running over as the floor around the console began to rise.
"I tried to activate the map reading system." He replied defensively.
The small stage stopped hundreds of feet above the floor.
"This can't be good." Amy said.
An object, that looked suspiciously like a gun swung at them, as did three others on the wall.
"This is not good." Amy said.
Decker closed his eyes as he hared them fire, but nothing happened he felt no impact, no pain, nothing except the floor beneath his boots. He chanced opening his eyes.
"Good God." Bates gasped, Decker had to agree, laid out before him, around him, above and beneath him was a vast, holographic map, all done in shades of green. It seemed to span most of the galaxy.
"Look." Amy said, pointing, the others followed her gaze, it was earth, on the brink of the universe, on the edge of the map, and the planet had a symbol next to it.
"Bates, can you tell me what these symbols mean?"
"I'm not sure sir. Hang on." He turned to the console. "Just one minute. Aha." As he spoke the platform began to move toward the planate.
"Bates." The tone of Decker's voice said it all.
"I put in the sequence of symbols that matched Earth." He said.
They stopped next to Earth. It was nearly as tall as Decker, he put out his hand to touch it, but hi hand went straight through it.
"Sir there seems to be another algorithm here, but it's been encrypted, I think I can bypass the system, but if has been given this level of protection then it might not be advisable to try."
"Go ahead Bates. Give it your best shot." Decker encouraged him now feeling a little sorry for jumping on the man the last time had done something.
After a few seconds the map disappeared and the platform returned the top of the central coulomb. Something descended from the ceiling; they were all court of guard by what happened next. A robotic arm came out a grabbed Bates by the shoulders, it lifted him up and a tube came down to slam into the back of his neck as he was pulled up into what looked like a metal chrysalis.
Quiche picked himself up from the floor. "Status report!" He yelled over the sound of the alarms.
"Shields as 46 % sir, and that last volley took out our torpedo guidance system." Engson Hanigan called from tactical.
"Can you target manually?" Quiche said moving to the command chair.
"I might be able to but we'd need to be at point blank range to insure a hit."
"Lt. Crusher, can you get us within 15 kilometres of the Romulon ship?"
"I'll try." Another impact caused the deck to pitch and role under foot, Quiche was glad he had been seated.
The Excelsior rolled to port avoiding a torpedo barrage from the lead vessel, and pitched downward under the other ship before she could react torpedoes crossed the small gap between the ships and smashed the hull of the larger ship. The Excelsior flipped firing her dorsal phasers and releasing mines to latch onto the hull of the other ship.
The Romulon ship spun with surprising speed to follow the Excelsior its right nacelle venting plasma. From his command chair Quiche had noticed the plasma leak. The Excelsior ducked under another Romulon ship, firing phasers and torpedoes into the dorsal hull of the larger vessel, its pursuer still following it leaking plasma.
Quiche watched as the third ship came around cutting though the plasma trail.
"Detonate the mines!" He ordered.
The lead Romulon vessel exploded, the explosion ignited the plasma trail tearing through the other two ships.
"Sir the lead vessel has bees destroyed the other two are intact but have massive system faller.
The map was shortly replaced with a hologram of the human body.
"What the hell is going on?" Amy demanded.
"I don't know." Decker replied.
The hologram began to change, as streams of text flowed around the room, and gradually changed to English.
With a sudden whoosh the chrysalis folded back to reveal a strange creature, its skin was a green grey colour, it was at least 7 feet tall, and had a long dish shaped face, what disturbed them the most was that it seemed to still have Bates eyes.
"What are you? And what have you don with Bates?" Decker asked of it.
"You silly boy, we have don nothing with your friend, he is still here." The creatures voice was low and musical, and contained a derogatory tone.
"Where is he?" Brown asked.
"You are so young, so naive?"
"What have you don with Bates." Decker yelled.
"I am Bates!" The creature's yell echoed around the cave. "Haw do you think we were able to communicate with you understand your primitive language?"
"Who are you calling primitive?" Decker snapped.
"So young, and naive." The creature chuckled.
"Why are you here?" Amy asked trying to change the subject.
"We are here to protect." Decker gaped. "We know the Romulons, and the Borg are after our technology, we know you want to stop them, we know non of you stand a chance of getting to The Home-world without help, we are here to stop you from ever getting there."
"John, I'm picking up Borg drones beaming in, what? Damn?"
"What is it?"
"The Borg drones they disappeared."
"Oh, shit." Decker looked up at the Atlantian. "If you don't help us then the Borg will get the information they need, they will assimilate your society, and then they will destroy the quadrant, the universe! Do you want that on your shoulders!" By the end he was shouting.
"We can withstand the Borg, we have withstood worse in our history."
"You know overconfidence is not a good trait."
"Once you worshipped us as gods."
"Even on would be gods! You have no idea what you are dealing with, you have never met them, you don't know…" the Atlantian's earlier words gave him an idea. "You clam to know what Bates knew. If that is true then you must know what the Borg are like."
"Yes, we know that you managed to beat them on numerous occasions. If a race like yours can then we certainly can."
This was not going the way Decker wanted, a change in tactic was needed. "Why then, if you were so grate dose your civilisation lie in ruins, why if you were so grate is your race extinct?"
"That is non of your concern!" the creature yelled.
"Bollocks, someone stood up to you, someone had the power to destroy you."
The Atlantian considered this for a moment. "Very well, you may take the coordinates of The Home-word. For all the good it will do you."
The Atlantian turned to the console. The hologram changed back to the map, and focused in on Earth. "This is your home planate." The view panned around to show a small planetoid. "This is were we are, the beacon world." The view shifted again to show a dark region of space close to the galactic core. "This is our Home-world." In the dark regon there was a massive system over twenty planted in total, and in its centre, a giant space station, no it wasn't a station.
"A Dyson sphere?" Decker gasped.
"Yes, the ultimate power of a twin core."
"But how do we get there?" Amy asked.
"Now that is the question." The Atlantian responded.
Suddenly a Borg drone appeared behind the Atlantian, plunging assimilation tubules into its neck. Without thinking, without hesitating Decker grabbed his phaser rifle and fired through the Atlantian's chest into the Borg drone. Amy opened fire beside him.
"John we have to get out of here, if the Borg have some sort of personal cloak then we are venerable."
"Yes." Decker said bending over the destroyed drone. "Not a cloak, they've assimilated the Jem' Hadar."
"That can't be good. We have to go now." She Stepped over to the console and tapped one control. As the lift descended Decker picked up Bates Tricorder, it was still recording. He closed it gently and pushed it into a pocket.
By the time they were back on the floor John and Amy had formulated a plan. Amy walked over to the Argo and pulled one of the antimatter mines from the back. They attached it to the base of the reactor.
"John." She said setting it. " We have two minutes to get out of here." They jumped into the Argo. "The explosion will turn the surrounding desert into glass, if we aren't out we will not survive."
"Fair enough." Decker said doing a hand brake turn to spin the craft.
They sped down the corridors toward the entrance.
"Thirty seconds." Amy said as they entered the Entrance shaft. Blocking their way was a small contingent of Assimilated Romulon solders. "Twenty seconds." Amy called; Decker hit a pad and Ablative Armour flashed over the craft. He tapped another control and from a small mounting on the underside of the craft a photon torpedo fired, Glass and fragments of drone rained down the small craft as it sped on. "Times up." Amy called; they were only a couple of meters from the surface.
Back on the Excelsior, Quiche sat back in his chair, and surveyed his handiwork.
"Sir the interference has cleared up." Lt. Crusher said excitedly. "We can beam the away team up."
The Argo broke the surface just a head of the shockwave. The sand tore upward turning to glass under the extreme heat. Before it could hit the surface of the planet it was hit by a large chunk of glass and tumbled sideways rolling, molten rock erupted from the huge fissure and spewed toward the Argo.