Time seemed to slow down as the tunnel collapsed in on them. They didn't have much of a chance for escape but the chance was there. One of the things in question was whether Janeway would take it. The other thing in question was would they survive if she took the chance?
"Can we engage the warp drive, Harry?" She asked.
Harry checked his console "Yes, Captain. But..."
Janeway waited for him to elaborate.
"The second we hit the nebula again, there's a chance the warp drive would overload to the point of a breach. The sudden deceleration also might burn out our engines. Either way, we'd be dead."
Janeway thought about it. Well, at least those questions had been answered. Unfortunately the answered hadn't been what she wanted to hear. How had things gone so wrong? She had faught the beings of the Delta Quadrant for many years, and now, two years after leaving that region of space, they were going to die.
Janeway slammed her fist on the arm of her chair. This wasn't fair. There had to be some way out of this. And then, there it was. Janeway looked out at the swirling gases as they slowly caved in on them. Swirling. That meant that there could still be a spiral of clear space for them to go through! That is, if they could plot a course through it at warp speed. Another chance, another question. But one worth taking unanswered.
"Perhaps I shouldn't kill all of you..." The Queen said over the comm "Maybe one of you is worth sparing..."
"I can assure you, you don't need to do that." Janeway told her while sending a private message to Tom who nodded his head without turning towards her.
"Is that really you captain? Surely you would want at least one of the crew to survive."
"Well of course I would... If I knew that they wouldn't be assimilated the second they stepped aboard your ship!"
The Queen didn't answer. Janeway hadn't expected her to. Of course, she also hadn't expected the Queen to beam herself directly onto the bridge either. Which is exactly what happened. Nine phasers were drawn, one by each person on the bridge, and aimed at the intruder. But only eight of those nine were lowered when the Queen beamed herself off the bridge.
Now, most people know that when boarding a Federation starship uninvited, you have about ten seconds to make a move before you're overrun. The Borg Queen had made the most of that precious time. At the three second interval, she had grabbed and tranquilized Tom. At seven seconds she had planted modified nanoprobes into the conn, and at the tenth second, she left the bridge...and so had Tom. She had abducted him.
Everyone on the bridge was in shock. The speed with which the Queen had moved was incredible. And the fact that she had taken Tom only shook the crew up further. Janeway seemed to be the only one, other than Tuvok, capable of taking action.
"I've targeted the Borg ship Captain." Tuvok announced.
"Fire!" Janeway said as she ran to the conn "Harry, see if you can't get a lock on Tom and bring him back!".
"Already working on it Captain." Harry replied.
A lance of light leapt from one of the foreward Phaser strips towards the Borg. A band of energy from the rapidly gaining explosion intercepted the phaser beam's tip and slammed into the Borg ship instead. Something within the Borg ship exploded and bodies began streaming from the great hole and into the maelstrom of fire.
"Direct hit." Tuvok stated "The Borg ship is drifting away from us."
"I could've told you that was going to happen, Captain." Seven said from her station "The explosion has triggered a chain reaction like I said it would, and it is seeking more sources of Nutrion particles. The phaser beam was a prime source."
"How nice of you to tell us now." Janeway muttered "Tuvok, cease fire. We may kill Tom doing that."
That is if it hasn't already. But she kept that bit unsaid.
There were voices. Hundreds of them. And in an instant, they were silenced. Radiation poured into the Queen's ship like water through a burst dam, killing anything and everything in it's path. Every deck had been depressurized and all had sustained heavy damage. Every major systems was failing. Soon, even impulse engines would be lost, and the Queen too would die. The human, that she now clutched in her grasp, was only protected by the severely limited personal shield projecter that had been installed on her body. But it wouldn't last long, soon it's power source would fail, and they would both be killed by the radiation that had permeated the ship. To their left, the Queen could see straight out into the nebula and it's wrath, for that was how close they had been to the great fire that had ripped this part of the ship apart.
Emergency force fields came on and pressure began returning to the wrecked area around them. Dead drones could be seen everywhere, and no survivors could be seen anywhere. She could only hope that this human would be worth the expense of the fleet Janeway had destroyed.
Janeway. She should have taken her instead. Although the last time she had been assimilated, thousands of Borg had been severed from the Collective.
Our ship's systems are failing, and we are losing speed. The last living Borg told her. You must leave in the Kir'sha
The Kir'sha was her personal escape pod, specially eqipped with an enhanced Transwarp Coil and weapons. And that's exactly where she was going to go.
Activate and the detonate the Transwarp Coil once I've left. She told them. Voyager must be eliminated.
"The Borg ship is still adrift." Tuvok announced.
"I can't get a lock on Tom, Captain." Harry told her "There's too much interference."
"Get a tracter beam on that ship!" Janeway yelled.
Harry pressed a few buttons on his console, but wasn't rewarded with the confirmation tone of a solid lock.
"No luck, Captain."
Janeway slammed her fist down onto the conn. Things weren't going her way either. The station wasn't responding to any of her commands. Whatever the Borg Queen had done to it, she had succeeded.
Janeway shifted her gaze to a medium sized device sitting next to the conn. Her eyes went wide as she looked upon it's polished black finish and outdated looking controls. She knew what it was, and she knew what Tom had done with it. She couldn't help herself from thinking of using it. She really didn't want to use it. But something inside her forced herself to pick it up off the floor. A feeling of excitement filled her and burned through her veins as she placed onto the conn. Tuvok noticed.
"Are you certain that, that: the device you are attempting to install, will be able to bypass the Borg's sabotage?" he asked.
"No." She admitted "But what's the harm in trying?"
Tuvok didn't answer.
Janeway caught a brief whiff of plasteel burning as the twin cables burned through the surface of the console to the other side. The few seconds that passed seemed like forever before the control deck lit up and announced that it had successfully hacked into the ship's systems.
"Harry," She said without delay "I need you to try and get me some extra speed. Try using the warp core to accelerate us beyond maximum impulse." doing that would mean abandoning her earlier idea. But at this point, it was irrelevant.
"Uh, Captain, are you sure-"
Janeway turned to face him. A new fire in was in her eyes. Like the fire of a predator's prey trying to survive, willing to do anything it would take.
"-I'll try." He decided to say.
She smiled at him, faintly, then turned all her attention to the task at hand. She grabbed the control stick in the center of the deck and tested it's sensitivity by nudging it to the right. Voyager made an all-too-quick turn to the right, out of the collapsing tunnel, and into the nebula. Janeway nudged the stick to the left in an attempt to correct their course. Voyager overturned and went into a sideways spin. She tried pulled the stick to the right again, but just a little bit. Voyager's spin slowed down and soon they were going straight again.
"I think I have a feel for the controls now." Janeway announced.
"I couldn't tell." Tuvok said almost sarcastically.
Janeway ignored the comment "Where's that speed Harry?"
"Working on it, Captain. It should be... there!" As if on cue, Voyager lurched foreward and sped into the nebula at a blazing speed. Janeway held the control stick in a death grip, fearing that her sweating hands might make her slip. Unfortunately this made her pull the trigger. a Phaser beam launched itself foreward and was intercepted by another band of energy. Only this time the effect it had was far worse than before. The energy band spawned new ones, and they in turn spawned their own.
Luckily, Voyager as going at such great speed that they passed them without a hitch. Almost. One hell of an energy band came up from behind and slammed into Voyager's hull. All shields overloaded and shut down, allowing the energy band to strike Voyager unprotected. The violent shaking that followed was too much for anything to withstand. Consoles broke free of their braces, people were sent bouncing around the rooms and halls, and worst of all, the warp core was automatically ejected. Janeway heard the viewscreen crack and break free before blacking out. Voyager tumbled freely and uncontrollably out of the nebula. There were no signs that anyone left aboard was still alive. The explosion finally reached the nebula's edge, and from there, it grew to twice it's size within ten seconds, and from there, it consumed all space whithin thirty light years. Farther than Seven had expected it to. Voyager was nowhere to be found within...
I'm dead. That was Janeway's first thought when she awoke. There wasn't a sound around her, and she had the distinct feeling of floating freely in space.
"Captain," a voice said gently beside her "can you hear me?"
"Doctor?" Janeway said weakly without opening her eyes "Is that you?"
"Yes, it is." the hologram replied. "Now hold still."
"Do I have a choice?"
"In the condition you're in, I don't know. Perhaps if Sick Bay hadn't been ripped from the very foundation of the ship, I would run an analysis."
"Mmm." Janeway groaned "How much of the ship is left?"
Janeway couldn't see him frowning, but she knew he was "Only seventy-six percent of the saucer section remains. The other twenty-five percent is now part of the large star we're in orbit around, along with the rest of the ship. Every deck is open to space at some point or another, and of course, all the power we have is being fed into life support. We can't even afford the luxury of gravity."
"Is that why I feel like I'm floating?"
"Yes it is." The doctor's tricorder began beeping, and a sudden spike of pain erupted in Janeway's abdomen.
"What's the damage?"
"One of your kidneys has ruptured, there's minor breach in your heart, and part of your nervious system is completely inactive. I need to perform surgery on you soon, but if someone doesn't happen upon us, you will die."
Janeway wanted to nod, but her neck wouldn't budge. She couldn't even feel it.
"I'm going to give a mild sedative mixed with a healing agent, Captain." the doctor told her "It will help your body to preserve itself while we wait."
Janeway nodded, or at least she tried to. The doctor placed the hypospray to Janeway's neck, and injected her with it's contents. Before the doctor could leave, Janeway said "We saved them."
"Captain?"
"We saved them." She said again. "We saved the people of the Alpha Quadrant." Then she drifted to sleep, a slight smile on her face.