To Our Own
Chapter 5
The base was still under construction when the attack came. Sixty percent of the facility was fully operational, the rest was covered in plastic tarps, and noodles and noodles of wiring hung from holes in the walls and ceilings. The equipment that was supposed to connect to all that wiring hadn't even been requisitioned yet.
Only a skeleton crew was assigned to run the sections that needed overseeing. A handful of technicians and DoD sub-contractors with security clearance even she didn't have. Most would have been reassigned and gone before the installation was up and running. At last count, nine of them had been taken.
The soldiers on site were mostly MPs, but she did have, or used to have, a full contingent of agents under her and Colonel McNamara's direct command while the 314 Project was being set up. Half had already begun their genetic enhancements. Maggie wondered if it was a coincidence the—what did Agent Gates call them? The Borg? Took all but a lucky few of her enhanced soldiers.
The Borg took other personnel as well, including McNamara. Not counting her agents, at least fifty base personnel were missing. The number could go up or down depending on how many people were off base, or managed to escape during the attack.
They took equipment by the ton. Bleeding edge machinery worth hundreds of millions. Maggie didn't expect the equipment to be replaced soon.
Most significantly the Borg took every atom of their uranium and plutonium stores. Maggie suspected the fusion materials had been the true aim of the Borg's infiltration. From all reports twenty black armored Borg "beamed" into each level and began marching through the complex, only stopping when attacked, or when a piece of equipment caught their attention. Otherwise, they systematically converged on the Radioactive Containment Unit.
Security footage from the RCU showed the first five Borg that reached its security door. One inserted wires from from its fingers into the security pad and gained access within seconds. Once inside each Borg walked up to a containment vessels holding the radioactive material, touched their casings, and vanished with them in a shimmer of green light. Then a few moments later another group of Borg entered the RCU and inserted their tubules into the monitoring equipment left behind. They stood motionless for a little over two minutes before vanishing with a piece of technology. Then another group arrived, then another, the process repeating until the room was stripped bare. Not even a single shielded fiber optic cable was left behind.
Billions in technology stolen, half their staff assimilated on the spot, or taken away to be assimilated somewhere else if Agent Gates was right, and one hundred pounds of weapons grade uranium and plutonium now in the possession of a seemingly unstoppable, hostile alien force.
It was an absolute disaster.
The only reason Maggie still had a job was because the Borg, for some baffling reason, left ADAM untouched.
According to Gates once a victim is assimilated into the Borg Collective the Collective knows everything the assimilated victim knows. So the Borg most certainly had knowledge of ADAM after Dr. Angleman, her co-lead on the project, was taken.
ADAM, the most advanced piece of technology on Earth, a creature very much like the Borg themselves, yet they ignored section 314 completely.
It didn't make sense.
Reports of the Borg attack had gone all the way up to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, maybe even the President, and Maggie heard there was speculation at the Pentagon that the Borg were afraid of ADAM, and that's why they avoided it. As 314's project leader, and the only senior member of the project to evade capture, they needed her now more than ever to keep developing what they believed was their only defense against the Borg.
Maggie was less confident it was fear that kept the Borg from taking ADAM. From everything Agent Gates told her the Borg possessed mind-boggling technology. Tech at least four hundred years more advanced than anything seen on Earth. Their transporter alone made them terrifying enough to loosen any rational person's bowels. So why would they be afraid of a tool created by humans who, when compared to the Borg, were primates throwing bones at the sky?
Still no one at the Pentagon wanted to hear Maggie's reservations, and she she knew better than to offer them.
She accepted her orders to get the Initiative up and running as soon as possible. With the assurance they would find her a hundred billion dollars, more staff, and another Colonel, so she could continue the 314 Project with an eye set on mass production.
Maggie made it clear to the Pentagon that before the attack the Initiative was on scheduled to begin full operations in six months, but the Borg attack had delayed their time-table by at least a year. So they shouldn't expect anything substantial before then. For once there was no push back, or threats of replacing her with someone who could get faster results. Ward himself promised to give her all the time she needed.
It almost made Maggie believe in miracles.
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After a four minute shower and a change of clothes, Maggie was entrenched in her office doing what would have been McNamara's job of taking phone calls from every stripe of Pentagon official who demanded a report on the Borg attack.
After things settled down at the Initiative she'd eventually have to meet with most of them in person, but until then they'd have settle for grilling her over the phone. She avoided a debrief by the National Security Council, at least. Thankfully, Ward would have to suffer through that nightmare, not her.
Maggie recounted the survivors' accounts, as well as the content of Agent Gates's report, but Maggie's lack of detailed Borg knowledge only caused anger and confusion in the admirals, generals, and DoD adjuncts she spoke with. Communications became even more hostile when Maggie couldn't adequately explain to what extent national security was compromised after the assimilation of so many personnel with high security ratings. Maggie thought she might go deaf from all their screaming.
By the tenth irate general, Maggie never thought she would miss Colonel McNamara so much.
Frankly, she was grateful when the earthquake struck. It gave her the excuse she needed to put an especially nasty general on hold while she called the Initiative's surviving section heads to find out if the base suffered any serious damage or casualties. Ten minutes later she was back on the phone with her so-called superiors being yelled at.
Eventually she caved and called Gates to her office. She needed him on hand when she got asked a particularly pedantic questions about the Borg she couldn't answer. Maggie didn't relish inviting a subordinate to witness her being berated, but she could not make rational sense of Borg. She needed someone who understood and, most importantly, believed in how they worked.
She was also tired of being called a know-nothing incompetent in subtle, and not so subtle, ways.
She was still on the phone with a Senator from Appropriations when Gates, ignoring protocol and basic courtesy, barged into her office. From the look on the agent's face, and the sweat soaking through his shirt, he'd hauled ass to come tell her something cataclysmic happened.
"I'll have to call you back, Senator Kinsey," Maggie said, lowering the phone to its cradle before the senator could respond.
"What now?"
"Ma'am!"
Gates was breathing so hard he only seemed to get out 'Ma'am' with a great deal of effort.
"Catch your breath, Agent, then tell me what's going on."
Gates gulped in a huge breath, held it, then let it out before he tried speaking again.
"There's a Borg cube floating over the docks!"
"Borg cube?"
Maggie remembered Gates mentioning something in his report about the Borg flying through space in a cube thousands of meters in size. The thought of a construct that enormous within Earth's atmosphere, and armed with the weapons Gates described, was too horrifying to contemplate.
"Show me."
Gates led her to the cargo bay on the south side of the complex. The bay was supposed to have a thirty by thirty foot, 48 inch thick titanium door, but it was one of the first things the Borg beamed away. Beyond the compromised entrance was a hidden road used to haul large equipment to the base.
The Initiative was miles from Sunnydale's docks, but the Cube was clearly visible just a few feet after exiting the bay. Even from a long distance it was easy to recognize the cubed shape of the Borg ship. It was smaller than Maggie expected, but still the largest flying craft she'd even seen.
Other base staff also watched the cube. Half of them looked at the monstrosity with amazed awe, the other half looked like they were about to have nervous breakdowns. Maggie empathized with both reactions, but leaned more towards wanting the thing gone.
"How long has it been hovering there?"
"It rose from the docks approximately ten minutes ago," Gates answered.
Must be what caused the earthquake, Maggie surmised.
"But it's not hovering," Gates said. "It's higher than when I went to tell you."
Is it possible the thing had been underwater this whole time? For how long? Or are the Borg heading back to space? Is that a good thing? Or are they gaining height to attack from a safer distance?
Maggie had too many questions.
Agent Miller, another lucky soldier who managed to avoid assimilation hustled over to them, a walkie-talkie pressed against his right ear.
"Ma'am, we have word Wilkins Army Base is about to scramble two F16s to intercept the Borg cube."
"Damn it," Maggie said. She looked back at the cube and held her hand out at Miller. "Give me that. You two, give me space."
Once Gates and Miller backed far enough away to to not overhear the conversation she was about to have, Maggie switched the HT over to a secure channel. Even secured, she'd need to be careful about what she said. Anyone could be listening, and the base commander's clearance only went so high.
Maggie gave the operator her 14 digit pass code and waited to be connected to Wilkins' base commander.
Three minutes later Colonel Samms's voice roared through the walkie and almost blew out what was left of her eardrum.
"Who the hell is this?"
Maggie didn't take offense. She just dragged the man from overseeing an offensive against an alien craft that suddenly appeared in his proverbial backyard. She'd be annoyed too.
"Colonel Samms, I need you to call back your planes."
"I don't know who you think you are to order me to do anything, but I'm not calling back those F16s on anyone's say-so except the President of the God Damn United States!"
Samms's defiant declaration made it clear he was acting on his own authority. If he actually had presidential authority he'd have told her so and promptly cut the line. And while she hadn't spoken to the President personally, it was strongly implied by twelve people well above Samuel's pay-grade she had spoken to that the president wanted no hostile action taken against the Borg unless absolutely necessary. Maggie was sure the Borg cube slowly levitating up into the morning sky did not merit launching Sidewinders at it.
"Colonel: Oscar-Oscar-November-812-219-Papa-314."
There was a long silence on the other end. The pause went on for so long Maggie wasn't sure if Samms was still on the line.
"If that thing harms even one American citizen I will make it my life's mission to take you down, lady," Samms growled, and then he definitely hung up on her.
A bit late for that, Maggie thought.
She waved Gates and Miller back over.
"Any word on Finn and the other agents that were on patrol?" she asked as she handed the HT back to Miller.
"No, Ma'am," both answered.
Maggie suppressed a sigh and schooled her expression to avoid showing her disappointment. Riley was one of her favorites. While commanders were known to have subordinates they favored, Maggie wasn't a typical commander. She didn't want to alienate herself, or Finn, from the other soldiers under her command because she was fond of him.
She liked Finn not just because his body responded to her gene therapy with markedly positive results, but also because he was smart, skilled, and most importantly, loyal to Maggie despite her lack of official military rank. It was a rare thing for a woman like Maggie Walsh to have the unquestioning respect of any man; it was even rarer to get it from a man wearing a uniform.
"I see. I want who ever's still upright gathered in the Mess in—"
Maggie looked at her watch and winced when she realized she'd been fielding calls for six hours straight.
"In three hours. 09:30."
Now that the proverbial cat was out of the bag, Maggie needed to begin planning how the Initiative would deal with the populace discovering the Borg were real. They'd also need to calculate what their own exposure was. There was every chance some hostile government, or worse, the Press, might discover the Borg's attack on the Initiative. They needed to be ready to deal with the fallout if it happened.
They may have to pull up stakes and reestablish their operation somewhere else. Or mothball everything. Maggie needed to get her people ready for every possible scenario.
Of course the NID might have the whole mess covered up by dinner, but Maggie rather not take any chances.
Both agents saluted and started to jog away. Maggie called out to Gates and told him to stay back.
"Ma'am?"
"Come to my office," she said, this time not holding back a weary sigh. "I'm going to need you to help answer every fu—ah, provide details about the Borg folks at the Pentagon might want to know."
"Yes, Ma'am."
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"Well, gosh, look at that!"
Allan Finch was looking. He'd seen many strange things since he began working for Mayor Wilkins, most of them terrible beyond imagining, but watching a clearly alien vessel fly up from the bay was something he never expected to see.
Allen and the Mayor stood on the roof of City Hall. It was one of largest buildings in Sunnydale and its roof gave them a good vantage point to view the cube shaped craft.
"Do you know what that is, Mr. Finch?"
"A space ship?"
Wilkins let out a mirthful chuckle. "Oh, it's more than just a space ship. That is a Borg cube."
"Borg cube?" Allen asked, not understanding what the Swedish had to do with the ship in the sky.
"Oh, you know, from Star Trek? The Next Generation, to be precise."
"Sir?"
Allen's 'Sir?' wasn't a question of him not understanding what Star Trek was, he was familiar enough with the program. Though he had never seen or heard of whatever version The Next Generation was. Allen was never much of a television watcher, he enjoyed digging through the pages of books and learning his way around computers more. No, Allen's question came from his surprise Wilkins knew anything about Star Trek.
"I'm sure it may shock you to know, but I enjoy Star Trek very much," Wilkins said, understanding Allen's dubiousness. "A story about hope for a peaceful future when mankind has come together and journeyed to the stars. So inspiring! So wholesome!"
Allen didn't know what to say. Wilkins always seemed sincere when he spoke of family values, and things being good for the community. Then without a shred of remorse he'd send demons to massacre innocent people who had become inconvenient.
"I suppose so, Mayor Wilkins."
"They've had some wonderfully talented guest stars, too!"
Sunnydale residents were crowding the streets below. There was less panic than Allen expected as the citizens gawked at the Borg ship. Allen suspected the previous night's chaos might have something to do with the small crowd's subdued reaction. Details about Halloween night were spotty, but according to witnesses Allen spoke to, nearly half of Sunnydale's population had been under the influence of a powerful curse. Apparently it'd gotten so dangerous Sunnydale PD stopped responding to calls after the officers they previously sent out vanished without a trace.
"Well, I'm sure this will all work out," Wilkins said.
Wilkins turned around and headed toward the roof access door. Allen followed close behind.
The pair entered the building and descended down a flight of stairs to the fourth floor. From there they made their way to the Mayor's office. They passed low level city hall employees in the halls, each one looking more shaken and nakedly frightened than the next. Wilkins offered cheerful smiles and warm hellos, but didn't appear to notice their trepidation.
Wilkins sat behind his desk whistling a jaunty tune as he picked up the phone and dialed in a number. He stopped whistling when someone on the other end picked up.
"Detective Stein, how are you this lovely morning? Good, good! I'm sure you noticed the unusual craft over the harbor? Isn't that—what do the young people say these days? Cool? Me, worried? No! I'm sure everything will be just fine. Still I do have one issue I'd like you to take care of. I want you to find Ethan Rayne and bring him to me. Oh, and Detective? If he isn't in the best of health when you bring him in, well, you know—omelets!"
Wilkins told Detective Stein to have a nice day before he hung up. With a bright smile he looked over to Allen.
"Alrighty! What else do we have on the docket?"