Author's Note: To EYES (if they ever read this again) – I just wanted to
say something. While you are quite entitled not to like my stories, I feel
I have to point out that knives are effective and SILENT weapons that can
be used in many situations that guns cannot. I don't see why it is wrong
for my characters to carry them, considering what they are.
And another point is that it is quite possible for people of other cultures to use different weapons – as both seen on Stargate: SG-1 and Star Trek: Voyager. Mia carries a sword because she comes from a different culture than that of Earth, and is therefore not subject to military standards – just like Teal'c.
P.S: I'm sorry about that, but I felt the need to explain my story. I rather like it the way it is, and hope most people do too!
~Cheeky.
* * *
JANEWAY:
I crept through the Borg Cube, careful not to let any of the drones catch sight of me. They probably wouldn't attack, because I was careful not to look threatening in any way, but it was best to be cautious. Colonel O'Neill was a few steps behind me, as was Tom. The others – B'Elanna, Seven and Lieutenant Colonel Riley – had left a while ago, and were going in a different direction to us.
We had all thought that would be the best idea, so that if one team was captured, the other might still survive. And it also helped that both Riley and O'Neill had some kind of ancient explosive called C4 that they guaranteed would destroy the Borg engines and transwarp coil. While I was a little sceptical about that, I trusted Jack. And if said it would work, then it probably would.
Trusting Jack, and for that matter Riley, was something that was instinctive as well as logical. Something about Jack, not only made me want to help him like I would help any member of my crew, it also made me believe that once his loyalty and word was given, they would not be broken unless you betrayed him. He reminded me of Chakotay like that.
Thoughts of Chakotay and my crew brought my thoughts back to Voyager. Oh, I hope they would have her up and running soon! Quite aside from the obvious need of rescue, I also wanted Voyager up and running again, because there was something almost painful to a Captain to seeing her ship unable to fly. Voyager hanging in space like that was like a blind and wounded warrior. It simply seemed sad and somehow wrong.
Finally we reached our destination: the transwarp coil. It had taken us longer than I had thought it would, but when I glanced at Jack, he nodded. We were still on time then. Both Jack and I had agreed that it would be dangerous to communicate with each other once we had split up, both via comm. link and radio. So we had no way of knowing if the others in position, except for the faith that Jack had in Riley and her ability to be in position at the right time.
He glanced at the band on his wrist – I believe it was a old 'watch' – and then mouthed, "Five minutes!" I nodded, and joined Tom at the door. We glanced into the room and noticed the two Borg drones stationed in the room. Damn. We needed to get of them, and as soon as we did, all the drones would know where we were.
Before either Tom or I could do anything, Jack had slipped into the room, and had quickly and efficiently slit one drones throat. Tom was a beat behind him, knocking him out with the 'zat' gun. Before we had split, Jack had shown him how to use it. It was rather like a phaser, in the fact that it could stun as well as kill and emitted a pulse of energy.
Tom and I guarded the door while Jack set the charge. I glanced quickly at him, as I could already hear the drones approaching, but he was almost finished. It hadn't taken him more than about a minute. Jack checked his watch as I turned back to the door. "How much longer Colonel?" I asked softly.
"Fifteen seconds." He replied just as quietly.
I watched the drones approach, their eerie eyes fixed on us. A shiver of fear ran down my spine as I recognised the features of familiar species. That's what scared me the most about the Borg – the inhuman movements of familiar faces. You could recognise them for what they had been, but you were always reminded of what they were now. Part of something else, no longer individual. And the thought of that terrified me more than I was willing to admit. It was that loss of uniqueness and individuality that made us different from everyone else.
The drones had almost reached us by now and I watched that gap getting smaller and smaller. Fifteen meters...ten meters...
"Done." Jack said, and his words prompted us into movement.
Tom slammed the button to shut the door and then shot it with the zat, halting the Borg for a time. Meanwhile I raced over to Jack, who gave me a boost up towards the ceiling in one efficient movement – and directly under ventilation grate. I slipped it off quickly and hauled myself inside. Then I braced myself against the sides and reached down to give Tom a hand. Once he was up, the two of us pulled Jack into the vent and shut it, a second before the Borg managed to override the malfunction and entered the room.
As quietly as possible we slipped through the ventilation system across the cube. I began counting the vents as soon as we had started moving and focused on the directions Seven had given me. It was all we had, because Borg cubes were designed to look the same all over. Which made it hard to navigate when you could be anywhere on the ship.
As we crawled along the tunnel I heard the occasional grunts and curses from the two men behind me. They were having trouble moving quickly because the vents were so narrow – and for once I was glad I was "petite". It made things a lot easier...but I would never admit that to anyone else.
Eventually we reached the vent we needed to exit from. And it wasn't soon enough – we had been crawling for ten minutes, which meant we had five minutes before our charge went off. Or at least, I hoped it would. Jack was confidant that the technology was too basic for them to adapt to. He had muttered something about it happening before, but I didn't want to ask because of the pain I heard behind those words.
I carefully eased the vent covering back, revealing an empty corridor...or at least what I could see of it was empty. I braced myself against the edges of the vent and peered at the corridor from a better vantage point. "All clear." I said.
But just as I had levered myself up again, Jack tapped my foot. "Let me go first." He said.
I glanced back at his serious face, and there must have been something in my expression because he added gruffly, "I'm better armed than you and we need you for the technical stuff anyway."
I gave him a wry half smile and he raised an eyebrow in return. I knew the other reason Jack wanted to go first, even though he didn't say it. He didn't have to. I was the Captain of Voyager and nobody wanted me injured or killed by the Borg.
Carefully, I slipped past the vent opening so that Jack could slip down after checking the corridor again. Once he had called the all clear, I slipped down and dropped quietly to the metal floor. Tom dropped down a second after me. As soon as he had, he gave me a boost so I could close the vent. "Let's go." I said once I had finished.
We headed off down the corridor to the right. It didn't take very long for us to run into a group of Borg drones working in the corridor. We ducked around a corner before they could see us. "Can we go around them?" Tom asked me.
I thought back to the directions Seven had given me and everything I knew about Borg Cubes. Then I nodded. "Yes, I think so."
"Good." Jack said. "Because we have four and a half minutes before we need to be out of here."
I nodded again and set off down the corridor on the left. The detour took a minute or so, and we managed to successfully avoid the drones. We kept going, winding our way quickly through a maze of identical corridors, having to duck around corners to avoid the odd group of drones walking around.
A few meters from our meeting point we hit a problem. There were a set of occupied Borg alcoves blocking the corridor. Tom looked to me for instructions. I looked at Jack and he shook his head. We didn't have time to go around, so I did the only thing I could. I motioned Tom forward. He looked at me in surprise, but followed my unspoken order anyway.
Jack, Tom and I then pent one of the longest and most agonising minutes of my life creeping through the corridor. My nerves felt as if they were jumping out of my skin and my stomach was tying itself in knots, But I let none of it show on my face. The last few steps were the worst. We were so close...
And then finally we were through and around the corner. I sighed with relief and heard the others doing the same behind me. Wiping my sweaty palms on my pants, I increased my pace a fraction and glanced at Jack, who had come up beside me. "How long?" I asked.
"Two minutes." He replied.
A second later we rounded a corner and came face to face with Riley, Seven and B'Elanna. "Colonel." Riley greeted.
"Lieutenant." Jack replied.
I took a second look over the rest of my crew. Tom, who had gone to stand next to B'Elanna, was slightly rumpled and dirt smeared, as were Seven and B'Elanna. But there were no injuries besides a few bruises, and I breathed a sigh of relief. "Well," I said, "shall we find the exit?"
* * *
RILEY:
As I followed Seven and B'Elanna down the maze of identical corridors, I let part of my mind wander. By now it was instinct to watch for and process threats. Years of military training and fighting the Goa'uld had given me the skill to be able to separate parts of my mind, so I'm on constant alert without even realising it.
I was still on edge from the confrontation in the assimilation chamber. Emotions I had always been able to hide or ignore were bubbling to the surface. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't bury them anymore. I could feel it all tearing me up inside in an almost detached way. And that scared me far more than the emotions themselves. What had I let myself become?
And what absolutely terrified me was that I was going to have to deal with all the sadness, grief, frustration and anger I had been suppressing for almost a year. I didn't want to go through all that again. The first time had almost destroyed me. I felt as if I was going mad with it all. I would have quite happily curled up into a little ball in a corner at that moment and just stopped fighting. But I had always been a fighter, and I couldn't just give up. And then suddenly we were at the shield generator and I wrenched my mind fully onto the task at hand with a sigh of relief.
I quickly wired the C4 with nimble and practiced fingers, before I set the timer. The little red numbers stared at me from the clock, but remained unmoving. This would be the hard part. I had to set this exactly right, so that the Colonel set his, the charges would be 60 seconds apart.
"Done." I said, as the numbers began their countdown. "Six minutes."
Seven nodded, and I slipped out of the room without a word. B'Elanna looked at me for a second before following her. We moved quickly down the corridor, with Seven leading the way. Almost unconsciously my hands hovered near my guns, an instinctive reaction to the dangerous situation thanks to years of military training and fighting the Goa'uld.
I noticed as we slipped along the corridor that B'Elanna kept shooting glances at me. They weren't quite hostile, but they weren't exactly friendly either. I was wary for a minute, and then shrugged it off. I'd deal with it when we got off this ship, because now was not the time or the place.
It was fairly easy to avoid the various drones with Seven's knowledge of the Cube – which was only helped by the fact it hadn't changed much, if at all. As a result we reached the meeting place about a minute before the rendezvous. I looked at Seven. "We have a minute to wait." I told her. "Will we be alright here?"
"Yes." Seven replied. "We will be moving again before the detect us."
"What about the drones?" B'Elanna asked softly.
"Drones only access this room if the systems are damaged." Seven replied just as softly.
There was a movement of silence before B'Elanna spoke again. "How long?" she asked, and I could hear the tension in her voice.
"Two and a half minutes." I replied.
Nervously, B'Elanna fingered the hilt of the knife I had given her. "Where are they?" I heard her mutter under her breath.
Thirty seconds slowly passed and I was reminded of an old physics class back in high school and Einstein's theory of relativity. I have no idea why I though of it, but I did. It just sort of popped into my head. For us, each second seemed like an hour ticking slowly by, whereas in the middle of a fight, 30 seconds can disappear in the blink of an eye. Thankfully I was saved from the insane ramblings of my mind by the arrival of the Colonel, Captain Janeway and Tom Paris.
"Colonel." I greeted looking him over.
He was dirty and rumpled, but I couldn't see any injuries. He gave me a slight nod, and I knew that he had successfully set the charge. "Lieutenant." He replied.
"Well," Janeway said, breaking the silence. "Shall we find the exit?"
"Indeed, Captain." Seven replied.
Together we slipped out of the small unremarkable room that had served as a rendezvous point, and began walking down the corridor once more. The transporter room, to which we were heading, was only a few meters down the corridor. Jack and I took the lead, drawing our guns. It didn't matter who heard us now. There were five drones in the room. Jack and I shot them, and the were dead before they could even finish turning around. The cold efficiency of our movements shocked a part of me that felt like it was just waking up. And I thought again, what have I turned into?
But no matter, because we had to get out of here. As soon as the room was safe, Seven and Janeway began powering up or programming foreign bit of technology. I had no idea what they were doing, except getting ready to get us out of here, and that's all I really needed to know. Jack and I turned back to the door, to where drones were coming down the corridor in response to the earlier shots.
As soon as they got in range, Jack and I began firing again until the bullets didn't seem to do more than slow them down. Damn, those things adapted fast! Vaguely, I felt B'Elanna and Tom step up behind us. But I ignored them, drawing my zat. I fired at the approaching drones. Then when I saw that it wouldn't really make much difference, I slammed the door shut and fired at the controls.
"How long?" I heard Jack ask behind me, as I realised that Tom had been using the Colonel's zat against the Borg.
"Now." Seven said.
Quickly, the six of us ran to the small platform that signalled the base of the transporter. I felt the tingling sensation, so familiar from the Goa'uld transport rings, and suddenly we were somewhere else. Which was just as well, because it was at the moment that one side of the Borg Cube exploded, and the rest quickly followed...until all that was left was a pile of drifting debris.
And another point is that it is quite possible for people of other cultures to use different weapons – as both seen on Stargate: SG-1 and Star Trek: Voyager. Mia carries a sword because she comes from a different culture than that of Earth, and is therefore not subject to military standards – just like Teal'c.
P.S: I'm sorry about that, but I felt the need to explain my story. I rather like it the way it is, and hope most people do too!
~Cheeky.
* * *
JANEWAY:
I crept through the Borg Cube, careful not to let any of the drones catch sight of me. They probably wouldn't attack, because I was careful not to look threatening in any way, but it was best to be cautious. Colonel O'Neill was a few steps behind me, as was Tom. The others – B'Elanna, Seven and Lieutenant Colonel Riley – had left a while ago, and were going in a different direction to us.
We had all thought that would be the best idea, so that if one team was captured, the other might still survive. And it also helped that both Riley and O'Neill had some kind of ancient explosive called C4 that they guaranteed would destroy the Borg engines and transwarp coil. While I was a little sceptical about that, I trusted Jack. And if said it would work, then it probably would.
Trusting Jack, and for that matter Riley, was something that was instinctive as well as logical. Something about Jack, not only made me want to help him like I would help any member of my crew, it also made me believe that once his loyalty and word was given, they would not be broken unless you betrayed him. He reminded me of Chakotay like that.
Thoughts of Chakotay and my crew brought my thoughts back to Voyager. Oh, I hope they would have her up and running soon! Quite aside from the obvious need of rescue, I also wanted Voyager up and running again, because there was something almost painful to a Captain to seeing her ship unable to fly. Voyager hanging in space like that was like a blind and wounded warrior. It simply seemed sad and somehow wrong.
Finally we reached our destination: the transwarp coil. It had taken us longer than I had thought it would, but when I glanced at Jack, he nodded. We were still on time then. Both Jack and I had agreed that it would be dangerous to communicate with each other once we had split up, both via comm. link and radio. So we had no way of knowing if the others in position, except for the faith that Jack had in Riley and her ability to be in position at the right time.
He glanced at the band on his wrist – I believe it was a old 'watch' – and then mouthed, "Five minutes!" I nodded, and joined Tom at the door. We glanced into the room and noticed the two Borg drones stationed in the room. Damn. We needed to get of them, and as soon as we did, all the drones would know where we were.
Before either Tom or I could do anything, Jack had slipped into the room, and had quickly and efficiently slit one drones throat. Tom was a beat behind him, knocking him out with the 'zat' gun. Before we had split, Jack had shown him how to use it. It was rather like a phaser, in the fact that it could stun as well as kill and emitted a pulse of energy.
Tom and I guarded the door while Jack set the charge. I glanced quickly at him, as I could already hear the drones approaching, but he was almost finished. It hadn't taken him more than about a minute. Jack checked his watch as I turned back to the door. "How much longer Colonel?" I asked softly.
"Fifteen seconds." He replied just as quietly.
I watched the drones approach, their eerie eyes fixed on us. A shiver of fear ran down my spine as I recognised the features of familiar species. That's what scared me the most about the Borg – the inhuman movements of familiar faces. You could recognise them for what they had been, but you were always reminded of what they were now. Part of something else, no longer individual. And the thought of that terrified me more than I was willing to admit. It was that loss of uniqueness and individuality that made us different from everyone else.
The drones had almost reached us by now and I watched that gap getting smaller and smaller. Fifteen meters...ten meters...
"Done." Jack said, and his words prompted us into movement.
Tom slammed the button to shut the door and then shot it with the zat, halting the Borg for a time. Meanwhile I raced over to Jack, who gave me a boost up towards the ceiling in one efficient movement – and directly under ventilation grate. I slipped it off quickly and hauled myself inside. Then I braced myself against the sides and reached down to give Tom a hand. Once he was up, the two of us pulled Jack into the vent and shut it, a second before the Borg managed to override the malfunction and entered the room.
As quietly as possible we slipped through the ventilation system across the cube. I began counting the vents as soon as we had started moving and focused on the directions Seven had given me. It was all we had, because Borg cubes were designed to look the same all over. Which made it hard to navigate when you could be anywhere on the ship.
As we crawled along the tunnel I heard the occasional grunts and curses from the two men behind me. They were having trouble moving quickly because the vents were so narrow – and for once I was glad I was "petite". It made things a lot easier...but I would never admit that to anyone else.
Eventually we reached the vent we needed to exit from. And it wasn't soon enough – we had been crawling for ten minutes, which meant we had five minutes before our charge went off. Or at least, I hoped it would. Jack was confidant that the technology was too basic for them to adapt to. He had muttered something about it happening before, but I didn't want to ask because of the pain I heard behind those words.
I carefully eased the vent covering back, revealing an empty corridor...or at least what I could see of it was empty. I braced myself against the edges of the vent and peered at the corridor from a better vantage point. "All clear." I said.
But just as I had levered myself up again, Jack tapped my foot. "Let me go first." He said.
I glanced back at his serious face, and there must have been something in my expression because he added gruffly, "I'm better armed than you and we need you for the technical stuff anyway."
I gave him a wry half smile and he raised an eyebrow in return. I knew the other reason Jack wanted to go first, even though he didn't say it. He didn't have to. I was the Captain of Voyager and nobody wanted me injured or killed by the Borg.
Carefully, I slipped past the vent opening so that Jack could slip down after checking the corridor again. Once he had called the all clear, I slipped down and dropped quietly to the metal floor. Tom dropped down a second after me. As soon as he had, he gave me a boost so I could close the vent. "Let's go." I said once I had finished.
We headed off down the corridor to the right. It didn't take very long for us to run into a group of Borg drones working in the corridor. We ducked around a corner before they could see us. "Can we go around them?" Tom asked me.
I thought back to the directions Seven had given me and everything I knew about Borg Cubes. Then I nodded. "Yes, I think so."
"Good." Jack said. "Because we have four and a half minutes before we need to be out of here."
I nodded again and set off down the corridor on the left. The detour took a minute or so, and we managed to successfully avoid the drones. We kept going, winding our way quickly through a maze of identical corridors, having to duck around corners to avoid the odd group of drones walking around.
A few meters from our meeting point we hit a problem. There were a set of occupied Borg alcoves blocking the corridor. Tom looked to me for instructions. I looked at Jack and he shook his head. We didn't have time to go around, so I did the only thing I could. I motioned Tom forward. He looked at me in surprise, but followed my unspoken order anyway.
Jack, Tom and I then pent one of the longest and most agonising minutes of my life creeping through the corridor. My nerves felt as if they were jumping out of my skin and my stomach was tying itself in knots, But I let none of it show on my face. The last few steps were the worst. We were so close...
And then finally we were through and around the corner. I sighed with relief and heard the others doing the same behind me. Wiping my sweaty palms on my pants, I increased my pace a fraction and glanced at Jack, who had come up beside me. "How long?" I asked.
"Two minutes." He replied.
A second later we rounded a corner and came face to face with Riley, Seven and B'Elanna. "Colonel." Riley greeted.
"Lieutenant." Jack replied.
I took a second look over the rest of my crew. Tom, who had gone to stand next to B'Elanna, was slightly rumpled and dirt smeared, as were Seven and B'Elanna. But there were no injuries besides a few bruises, and I breathed a sigh of relief. "Well," I said, "shall we find the exit?"
* * *
RILEY:
As I followed Seven and B'Elanna down the maze of identical corridors, I let part of my mind wander. By now it was instinct to watch for and process threats. Years of military training and fighting the Goa'uld had given me the skill to be able to separate parts of my mind, so I'm on constant alert without even realising it.
I was still on edge from the confrontation in the assimilation chamber. Emotions I had always been able to hide or ignore were bubbling to the surface. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't bury them anymore. I could feel it all tearing me up inside in an almost detached way. And that scared me far more than the emotions themselves. What had I let myself become?
And what absolutely terrified me was that I was going to have to deal with all the sadness, grief, frustration and anger I had been suppressing for almost a year. I didn't want to go through all that again. The first time had almost destroyed me. I felt as if I was going mad with it all. I would have quite happily curled up into a little ball in a corner at that moment and just stopped fighting. But I had always been a fighter, and I couldn't just give up. And then suddenly we were at the shield generator and I wrenched my mind fully onto the task at hand with a sigh of relief.
I quickly wired the C4 with nimble and practiced fingers, before I set the timer. The little red numbers stared at me from the clock, but remained unmoving. This would be the hard part. I had to set this exactly right, so that the Colonel set his, the charges would be 60 seconds apart.
"Done." I said, as the numbers began their countdown. "Six minutes."
Seven nodded, and I slipped out of the room without a word. B'Elanna looked at me for a second before following her. We moved quickly down the corridor, with Seven leading the way. Almost unconsciously my hands hovered near my guns, an instinctive reaction to the dangerous situation thanks to years of military training and fighting the Goa'uld.
I noticed as we slipped along the corridor that B'Elanna kept shooting glances at me. They weren't quite hostile, but they weren't exactly friendly either. I was wary for a minute, and then shrugged it off. I'd deal with it when we got off this ship, because now was not the time or the place.
It was fairly easy to avoid the various drones with Seven's knowledge of the Cube – which was only helped by the fact it hadn't changed much, if at all. As a result we reached the meeting place about a minute before the rendezvous. I looked at Seven. "We have a minute to wait." I told her. "Will we be alright here?"
"Yes." Seven replied. "We will be moving again before the detect us."
"What about the drones?" B'Elanna asked softly.
"Drones only access this room if the systems are damaged." Seven replied just as softly.
There was a movement of silence before B'Elanna spoke again. "How long?" she asked, and I could hear the tension in her voice.
"Two and a half minutes." I replied.
Nervously, B'Elanna fingered the hilt of the knife I had given her. "Where are they?" I heard her mutter under her breath.
Thirty seconds slowly passed and I was reminded of an old physics class back in high school and Einstein's theory of relativity. I have no idea why I though of it, but I did. It just sort of popped into my head. For us, each second seemed like an hour ticking slowly by, whereas in the middle of a fight, 30 seconds can disappear in the blink of an eye. Thankfully I was saved from the insane ramblings of my mind by the arrival of the Colonel, Captain Janeway and Tom Paris.
"Colonel." I greeted looking him over.
He was dirty and rumpled, but I couldn't see any injuries. He gave me a slight nod, and I knew that he had successfully set the charge. "Lieutenant." He replied.
"Well," Janeway said, breaking the silence. "Shall we find the exit?"
"Indeed, Captain." Seven replied.
Together we slipped out of the small unremarkable room that had served as a rendezvous point, and began walking down the corridor once more. The transporter room, to which we were heading, was only a few meters down the corridor. Jack and I took the lead, drawing our guns. It didn't matter who heard us now. There were five drones in the room. Jack and I shot them, and the were dead before they could even finish turning around. The cold efficiency of our movements shocked a part of me that felt like it was just waking up. And I thought again, what have I turned into?
But no matter, because we had to get out of here. As soon as the room was safe, Seven and Janeway began powering up or programming foreign bit of technology. I had no idea what they were doing, except getting ready to get us out of here, and that's all I really needed to know. Jack and I turned back to the door, to where drones were coming down the corridor in response to the earlier shots.
As soon as they got in range, Jack and I began firing again until the bullets didn't seem to do more than slow them down. Damn, those things adapted fast! Vaguely, I felt B'Elanna and Tom step up behind us. But I ignored them, drawing my zat. I fired at the approaching drones. Then when I saw that it wouldn't really make much difference, I slammed the door shut and fired at the controls.
"How long?" I heard Jack ask behind me, as I realised that Tom had been using the Colonel's zat against the Borg.
"Now." Seven said.
Quickly, the six of us ran to the small platform that signalled the base of the transporter. I felt the tingling sensation, so familiar from the Goa'uld transport rings, and suddenly we were somewhere else. Which was just as well, because it was at the moment that one side of the Borg Cube exploded, and the rest quickly followed...until all that was left was a pile of drifting debris.