Captain Decker materialised on the bridge of the Excelsior, and moved swiftly to his chair, Amy moved to the security station reliving the Engson.
"Sir, where is Engson Bates?" Quiche asked.
"He didn't make it. Lt. Crusher, are you picking up any Borg activity?"
"No, sir. No sign of Borg vessels." She responded. The control panel chirped. "Wait, One Borg scout. It had been modified with a Clingon cloak. It's opening a Transwarp aperture."
"Sir, we should stop it." Quiche suggested.
"I think the Captain has another idea." Amy put in. Quiche just looked puzzled.
"Get the Borg ship in a tractor lock, and take us into the Traswarp aperture."
"Eye sir."
The Excelsior slid into the Transwarp network.
"Sir there is some sort of large scale disturbance in the Transwarp network." Amy called.
Decker leaned forward the read glow of the alert indicators bathed his face and gave him a predatory look. "Lets just find the right location and get out of here."
Lt. Crusher nodded, and began to move the ship through the network of corridors. "Sir I think we are at the right coordinates, but we can't open the aperture."
Decker looked around but before he could ask for suggestions Crusher chimed in again.
"Sir the aperture is opening."
The ship coasted back into normal space, although, Decker thought, it's hardly normal. They were on the outskirts of a huge star system.
"Sir." The Engson who had replaced Bates said. "The outer planets are gas giants, but the closer to the centre you get the larger they become, and the denser their compositions become. The first planate is the size of Jupiter."
"Understood, Crusher I think we can disregard protocol, I'd like to get to the centre some time today. Warp three."
As the Excelsior moved into orbit of the sphere, the space-time continuum was ripped open as a connection into transwarp opened.
Alarms sounded on the bridge, it was almost defining.
"Someone turn the bloody alarms off!" Decker yelled.
As the Engson finally got to grips with it the alarms stopped and silence rang out over the bridge.
"Thank you."
"Sir, there is a Borg, um, well the word ship doesn't really do it justice, coming out of Transwarp." Amy said.
"Good god." Engson Gomez exclaimed from opps.
Decker agreed with the sentiment, or perhaps, the term deus ex machaicha would be better suited.
"We really don't stand a chance." Amy said.
"Sir, I would suggest we find a way to destroy Atlantis before the Borg take it over." Quiche said.
"Captain." Gomez put in. "I believe we could cripple the Borg vessel. There are Synaptic nodes, that connect the collective on this ship, if all of them could be destroyed simultaneously the chain reaction would probably destroy the collective at least on a local basis, and cause chaos among the Borg mother ship and all the others in the area."
"Ok. We divide our recourses. Lt. Commander Brown Take a security detail and Gomez to plant antimatter mines on those nodes, remote detonate them when you get back to the ship, I will take a security detail and find a way to destroy Atlantis."
The Crew scattered in their respective directions.
Minutes later Decker materialized in some sort of amphitheatre along with six security guards including Engson McKenzie, Engson Shauna McKenzie was the younger sister of one of Decker's old friends, Commander McKenzie had been there last time, at the earth colony. He looked around, it was a dream come true, hi dream, ever since he was small, he had always dreamed of Atlantis, that fabled lost city, he'd read all he could, from Plato to Rand Felm-Ath, digesting what they had to offer on this lost civilisation, but never, not even in his wildest dreams did he ever expect to be standing here, in the Atlantian home-world somewhere near the centre of the universe, thousands of millions of light-years from earth. The sensation was only slightly marred by the nagging thought that he was here to destroy it all.
"Sir we should be moving." McKenzie said. "The scans show that there is some sort of control centre in the next chamber.
Decker nodded and they set off in to the bowls of Atlantis. Before too long they found what they were looking for, it was a large complex, with a tower strangely similar to the one they had found at the Waypoint. Around the edge there were consoles and a sires of ominous tubes.
"Sir, from the recordings at Waypoint we have been able to decipher there language, so this should be a lot less haphazard and safer than the expiration at waypoint." One of the Officers said.
"Understood, can you bring up a schematic of this place?" Decker asked.
He turned to the console and began working on it, a moment later a lift platform unfolded from the central column. "Sir if you will just step onto the platform?" He said.
Decker just nodded and gestured for Engson McKenzie to join him. They stood on the platform and it began to descend, it took them through the shell and into the interior of the Dyson sphere.
"Ok sir." The Officer's voice came over the com as the hologram appeared around them. "You should be seeing a schematic of the sphere. It's massive, a diameter of about the equivalent of earths orbit. Oh, um, it appears that it surrounds a binary system." They looked at the hologram; it did show that there were two suns circling within the sphere. "If this is correct then the forces that this structure is under are tremendous, and it is a miracle of precision engineering that keeps it from collapsing into the suns. If we could nock it just slightly then the forces would cause it to collapse."
"Are you saying all we have to do is give it a quick shove?" Decker asked incredulously as the platform started to ascend.
"In theory yes, but we would have to give it one hell of a large shove to move something this bug, and anything within the circumference of the inner planet's orbit will be pulled into the sun. So it would be quiet difficult."
"Ah so we can't just use the tractor beam?"
"No sir. What the hell? Stop that thing!"
"Garvin!" McKenzie yelled.
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit." Was the only response that came, there was a scream from the com and then nothing. The lift moved painfully slowly back to the upper level.
As it reached the top Decker and McKenzie jumped off, only to see four Atlantians step out of the, tubes on the walls.
"Oh no." Decker gasped. "Not again."
McKenzie dropped into a defensive stance pointing her phaser rifle at them.
"Welcome to the begging of a new world Captain." It maid the word captain sound derogatory.
"Why have you don this to us?"
"You think that we helped you, back at Waypoint, for nothing, no you reminded us that we are an extinct people. Do you want to know why we became extinct?"
"No but I get the impression that I don't have a choice." McKenzie laughed at Decker's glib remark.
"Oh how witty captain. We were not destroyed by a more advance race, there is non-who can fight against us and win. We are the perfect race combined from the DNA of hundreds, but we are not a race in our own rights, we are your future, your perfection, the perfection, the future of the whole galaxy. That was our undoing."
"What?" McKenzie looked like a small child walking into a quantum physics lecture.
"They are an amalgamation of all the races from their domain, pretty much most of the universe known or otherwise, but they do not reproduce, they can't, can you? They have to engineer from a base, one of the other races."
"Essentially correct, we need the base code and proteins to start from, we, for all our advances, have not yet been able to create a stable base code, so we take it from the lesser beings, and super-evolve them, inputting the necessary code to make ourselves. We died out when another advanced race, broke down subspace in a perimeter around this system to stop us leaving, without a steady supply of base materials we died out."
"Oh god! You talk about us like we were crops." McKenzie said she sounded outraged. Decker put his hand on the younger woman's shoulder; he had a feeling that wouldn't be the worst of it.
"So what you think you can restart your race with only the four of you?"
"Oh no. We are not that naïve, we have all the crew of your ship, and we may be able to use these Borg, if not, their transwarp network will allow us to breach the subspace brake."
Suddenly as if on cue Decker's com badge chirped.
"What is it?" He barked.
"Sir, we are being pulled into the sphere, and their dose not seem to be a way to brake free." Quiche's voice responded.