Chapter 10: The e"Q"uasion becomes difficult.
Well well So this is the federation Captain that has to save the Galaxy from the Borg? a voice asked from behind Christ. Christ turned around and looked at the face of a man he had seen in Acadamy many times .. Q!
Oh no . Q! was all Christ could say as he looked into the only face in existence Christ had hoped never to lay eyes on. I hope you realize what you are up against Q said. What are your intentions? Christ asked, trying not to answer anything. I came here to see if there was any hope left for this Galaxy. If you don t stop the borg for once and for all, I might have to scratch this Galaxy of of my possible list for my Honeymoon. Q answered. Christ realized Q had information Christ needed. Explain! he ordered.
Come come Captain. If you know enough about me to recognize me you should know better that to ask such questions. Q answered with a smile. Q, let s get one thing straight. I m not like the other Captains you have pestered before, Picard and Janeway! I don t play games. Either you tell me what you know or you ll be ignored. Whatever happens by your doing then is your responsabillity not mine. What you do that is none of my business. So if you re here to help, help but if you re here to pester us! Give it your best shot! Christ shot off to Q annoyed that he d run into this omnipotent AssHole this soon into their mission. If you re gonna be that way! Fine. Have a taste of pestering then! Q yelled enraged, and he made a gesture with his hands, disappearing in a bright flash of light.
RED ALERT! MAN ALL BATTLE STATIONS! ALL DEFIANT WINGS SCRAMBLE SCRAMBLE! CAPTAIN TO THE BRIDGE Suddenly came schreaking out of all speakers and communicators. Damn was the only thing Christ could utter as he latterly fell onto the bridge when a big explosion rocked the carrier.
report! Christ yelled as he got to his feet. Borg cubes sir. 4 of them. They appeared out of nothing as if they were sent here by Q or something! Falo answered. Naj Treeg! Get the Carrier out of here at high warp as soon as all vessels have launched Christ ordered. Then he tapped his communicator. Shake to Authority and Commander. Nesnaj Ezri, I want you to coordinate the attack on one cube each first. Send one wing each for the first attack. See what you can do with normal phasers and torpedoes first. I don t want to alarm them on our other new tricks up or sleave. Concentrate fire on the absolute center of the cube. Keep the Battle cruisers on the background as much as possible. We ll have to take the carrier out of harms way but we ll be watchin your every move and provide you with UADSA information as it comes in! Christ spewed out the orders again. Again everybody understood and complied with smoothness and ease never seen on a starship before. Well well So this is the federation Captain that has to save the Galaxy from the Borg? a voice asked from behind Christ. Christ turned around and looked at the face of a man he had seen in Acadamy many times .. Q!
Oh no . Q! was all Christ could say as he looked into the only face in existence Christ had hoped never to lay eyes on. I hope you realize what you are up against Q said. What are your intentions? Christ asked, trying not to answer anything. I came here to see if there was any hope left for this Galaxy. If you don t stop the borg for once and for all, I might have to scratch this Galaxy of of my possible list for my Honeymoon. Q answered. Christ realized Q had information Christ needed. Explain! he ordered. Come come Captain. If you know enough about me to recognize me you should know better that to ask such questions. Q answered with a smile. Q, let s get one thing straight. I m not like the other Captains you have pestered before, Picard and Janeway! I don t play games. Either you tell me what you know or you ll be ignored. Whatever happens by your doing then is your responsabillity not mine. What you do that is none of my business. So if you re here to help, help but if you re here to pester us! Give it your best shot! Christ shot off to Q annoyed that he d run into this omnipotent AssHole this soon into their mission. If you re gonna be that way! Fine. Have a taste of pestering then! Q yelled enraged, and he made a gesture with his hands, disappearing in a bright flash of light.
RED ALERT! MAN ALL BATTLE STATIONS! ALL DEFIANT WINGS SCRAMBLE SCRAMBLE! CAPTAIN TO THE BRIDGE Suddenly came schreaking out of all speakers and communicators. Damn was the only thing Christ could utter as he latterly fell onto the bridge when a big explosion rocked the carrier.
report! Christ yelled as he got to his feet. Borg cubes sir. 4 of them. They appeared out of nothing as if they were sent here by Q or something! Falo answered. Naj Treeg! Get the Carrier out of here at high warp as soon as all vessels have launched Christ ordered. Then he tapped his communicator. Shake to Authority and Commander. Nesnaj Ezri, I want you to coordinate the attack on one cube each first. Send one wing each for the first attack. See what you can do with normal phasers and torpedoes first. I don t want to alarm them on our other new tricks up or sleave. Concentrate fire on the absolute center of the cube. Keep the Battle cruisers on the background as much as possible. We ll have to take the carrier out of harms way but we ll be watchin your every move and provide you with UADSA information as it comes in! Christ spewed out the orders again. Again everybody understood and complied with smoothness and ease never seen on a starship there were allready two wings launched when the Borg cubes appeared, the launching was completed in minutes. In the mean time, the 2 wings of defiants swarmed around the cubes using the missles to take out any torps fired at the carrier.
Sir, we re being hailed by the lead borg cube Aerdna said. Very well, on screen. Christ sighed, thinking he d hear the old we are the borg speech.
A borg face appeared. I am 1 of 10, unamatrix 003. I wish to negotiate your surrender to our superior forces. The borg said. Christ, and anyone else that heard it were stunned. eer. There s nothing to negotiate about. You will lower your shields and surrender your ships or leave this section of space at once. Resistance is futile Christ replied. He could hear Dnevel chuckle behind him, and couldn t help but smile as he heard it.
Your assumption is flawed. We are the superior force and therefore you cannot win this battle. Surrender and explain why you brought us here at once! was the answer from the Borg which surprisingly called himself I .
Listen Christ said on a reasoning tone. You re obviously a reasonable guy! Let s start over. I am Captain Christ van Silfhout of the Federation starship USS Shake. We are on a peacefull mission of exploration and you attacked us unprovoked. We have nothing to do with however you came here Now why don t you tell us a little bit of you.
This converstation is futile, you re explaination does not compute. You shall be assimilated was the only answer the Borg gave before the screen went black.
Sir they re firing again. The esign on Tactical said. Falo, get to the Dutch and launch. We ll have to cut em up with as many forced plasma beams as possible, and we need to do it simultaneously or else they ll adapt, and send the information back to the hive. Christ said to falo. Then over the Comm: Ezri and Nesnaj, each order your wings to attack one cube with plasma cutter beams at my mark. Both the Command battle cruiser should target one as well. Falo and I will both target two cubes with our cutter beams. Noone fires until I give the command and noone forgets to fire when I do. Is that clear! Christ spewed as Naj Treeg was developing sweat on his face from the extensive evasive manouvres he was pulling the carrier through.
In unisin everybody answered Yes sir. Only one minute later the carrier was fully empty, and it s hull section separated. This threw the borg off for a few seconds, discontinuing their operations for a few seconds. The Tactics developed by Naj Treeg positioned every single vessel in the perfect position in those few seconds.
FIRE! Christ shouted. Simultaniously 27 Forced Plasma Beams shot though space, resembling a scene from a 21st century house partie lasershow. The 4 cubes were all hit by multiple beams. Two of them exploded emediately as they were hit by the bigger and more powerfull beams on the Shake and the Dutch, but pretty soon after that the other two exploded as well. The armour on the surrounding vessels was the only difference between being obliterated by the exploding cubes blasts and the minor damage they did sustain.
In a few seconds space was once more a silent place, and nothing reminded of the horrible encounter the Shake s crew went through just now.
All ships return to your launch bays except for wings Alpha and Delta. Stand down red alert. Christ said. Assenav, I want to know why you did not see those cubes coming! I ll be in my ready room! Councellor! he ordered and went from the command chair to the ready room. Councellor, do you have anything to say about anything that just happened? he asked before the doors could close.
Sorry sir, I m not sure. I did sense something from the borg cubes And that s what s so strange! I Shouldn t! Lucyanna replied.
What did you sense? Christ asked. Confusion, anger. They did not know how they got here Christ. That s sure. They were not here by their own free will. She answered.
At that moment everything seemed to freeze in time, except for Christ. Well . Are you ready to listen to me now? Or should I grab some more cubes from the Ga Delta quadrant? a voice came from behind. Christs blood starten boiling again .. Q!
Very well, talk! Christ yelled. Aren t we easily angered! Q said in reply and he motioned his fingers. In a great flash of light the surroundings changed. Christ found himself hanging in space. He could breathe, and felt no cold or heat, but he was defenately hanging in space.
Now, you re gonna hang here and cool off for a minute Q said. And with a bright flash Q disappeared. Christ looked around a bit. Then, he noticed he was not that far above a planet. In stationary orbit so it seemed. The planet looked grim. It looked like it was covered in metal, and green lights could be seen through holes in it s green brownish cloudcover. Then something started moving from the surface. First one small object, then two, then 10 and within seconds it seemed like the entire planets surface rose up towards Christ.
After a few moments Christs heart skipped some beats. He could finally see what it was that was lifting off from the surface. Cubes .. Spheres ..Borg Cubes and spheres THOUSANDS OF THEM!
Then a bright flash came. Christ was back in his ready room. Q was standing right in front of him, and was looking straight into his eyes. Now will you listen to me? Q asked. Do I have a choice? Christ replied with a question .
Ofcourse you do . Just keep in mind that the fate of this Galaxy depends on what you do with the opertunity to save it i am offering. The cold sarcastic voice of Q said. Christ thought about it for a second and said: Okay. Okay, let s assume this is not a ploy concocted by you to make us miserable or to entertain you with. What s the bottemline? What do you want, and what is going on? . Q looked at Christ, thinking about what to make of this Human. He sure was no Picard, but somehow the way Christ refused to give Q the benefit of the doubt interested Q. Well, you just saw what this is all about. Q said. No I did not. I saw thousands of Borg ships take of from someplace. Nothing else. Christ replied. sigh Do I have to spell it out for you? That was the closest Borg staging area to the Alpha Quadrant. The taskforce you saw taking off was the taskforce with the objective to assimilate sector 0-0-1 and the rest of the Beta and Alpha quadrants. That s what you just saw! Q said, annoyed because Christ seemed to want everything spelled out for him. How close to the Alpha quadrant? Christ asked. Besides the fact that that is irrelevant, I am not allowed to give that kind of information to mear mortals. Q answered. Then why show me this at all. What do you expect me to do? Turn around, and tell Starfleet what you showed me? And then what? Christ asked in an agitated voice. Q looked at Christ and then said Accept the federation can never withstand this attack force. Accept that Humanity is not able to secure it s own survival. Christ looked at him in disbelief. I ve read about you! You ve been telling us that from day 1! We ve proven you wrong time and time again. We will do so again. We will survive! . Q sighed one more time and then said. Well . You now know what is in store for you. And if you continue on this useless mission, you ll be further and further away from the solution to the problem than you are now. You re choice. Accept Humanities failure or Accept it s assimilation. I ll be back And with that statement Q left.
Christ thought for a few seconds and tapped his communicator. Assenav, come to my ready room please . On my way.
Assenav entered the ready room and sat down. Assenav, is it possible to scan long range for a large disruption of subspace? Christ asked his UADSA operator. Sure sir, no problem. How far away do you want to scan? She asked him. Well, I want to know if there s a large disturbance in the Delta Quadrant moving toward us. He explained. Ah . That s tough. I guess there s not enough range even on the UADSA to do this. We ll have to enhance the UADSA with external sensor data. I guess for what you intend to do we need the Hubble Tribute Array. She thought out loud. We ll need clearance from Starfleet for that she added.
Very well. I ll make sure we get that clearance. Prepare the needed adjustments and stand by. I ll be on the bridge in a few minutes. Dismissed. Christ said. Assenav left and Christ punched in the controls he needed to to get Admiral Picard on the line. You can t have made it to the destination yet, I assume there s trouble? the Bald man on the screen asked. Well, I suppose we d best handle it as such for now sir. I just spoke to an old friend of yours again. Christ started explaining. The face of Picard turned dark and full of desgust. Q! he hissed. Yes sir. I must say the experience was not what I ve expected from Q. He seems to want to help us defend ourselves against the Borg. Christ stated. And he couldn t just apply at the academy huh? What happened? Picard asked, knowing very well how frustrating Q can be.
After Christ had told Picard the whole story, the authorization for the usage of the H.T. Array was given, and Assenav was now scanning the Delta Quadrant for big subspace distortions. After 15 minutes she found what they were looking for. Got it sir! Anomaly moving at . Warp 9,921 heading for . Us . Alpha quadrant I mean. No, wait, the anomaly is gone. It seems it just dissipated. It slowed down and dissipated. Assenav reported the readings. Ezri had her sensors tied into the UADSA s and analised the data. Captain. The anomaly was caused by a number of objects all traveling at high warp. She said to inform Christ. How many objects? he asked her. She punched some keys 15.000 sir, of various sises. Christ looked at her in shock. 15000 vessels? That s more than Starfleet built in her existence! How can the Federation face this many Borg s? He knew the answer but refused to accept it. Why did they dissapear from scanners? he asked. Unknown sir. Ezri replied The most logical assumption would be that they decided to stop somewhere. They slowed down before dropping out of warp, suggesting no incident but intent. Naj Treeg jumped in. Christ looked at the Vulcan who had turned to face them. You re right. They stopped because they wanted to. But why did they want to .. he said. Then the Admiral, who d been on an open channel all this time, said: I ll have to inform Starfleet of this. They will undoubtedly put this to the federation council. I ll get back to you as soon as I have some more information for you. Picard out. And the connection was terminated.
STAFFMEETING! In my ready room right now! Christ ordered. As he did he went to his ready room and waited until the bridge crew was assembled. He informed them all of the situation giving a recap of what happened the past few days. What I want from you is figure out a way to slow the Borg down, or even defeat them. I want you to prepare because if my feeling is right, this is something we, the USS Shake, are gonna fight first. We ll be the first ones to reach them, and fight them.
Everyone looked at each other. No ne had any ideas. Then Lucyanna decided to jump in. Sir I can speak for anyone here. Everyone here thinks we haven t got a chance agains that sise of Borg force. We re not even gonna be noticed by them . Not even the entife fleet is gonna be able to make a single dent in one of the vessels. We re toast!
Christ looked around in disbelief and then there was the bright flash again. One that was becoming familiar by now: Q! After the flash was gone, he found himself on a planet. Obviously an M class planet. Q was there As well as lucyanna . Christ wondered why. Q What are you up to? Christ asked. Captain. Don t tell me you re still not convinced of the futility of a federation-Borg battle? Q replied sarcasticly. Okay, I admit it. We haven t got a chance of beating the Borg on our own. There! Are you happy now!? Christ practically yelled at Q. You humans, you can get so emotional about things.! Q smirked. Even about such a thing as being inferior to another species.! He added. Christ freaked, and lucyanna jumped in. Q, what are your intentions. I can sense your feelings Q and they do not contain joy in what you tell us or how we react. I assume you re not doing this for your own enjoyment but why then .? Q looked at the Betazed with surprise. I brought the two of you here because I wanted you to discover something .Grand. and with that, the ground began to shake. Slightly at first but progressively worse and worse. Then, only a few meters before them, the ground started to rise. Before they could begin to think about what was going on a building had appeared before them. Q was gone.
Well . This is new! Lucyanna smirked and glanced at Christ. Damn, you wanna go in don t you? She asked. I don t need to answer that do I? Christ answered. Together they started towards what looked like a door. Christ used his tricorder to scan the structure and the controls for the door. According to my tricorder this is billions of years old! he said in awe. Lucyanna confirmed the findings of Christ, and punched the doors controls. Got it. She said and the door opened. Emediately inside the lights came on. On the floor two circular pads appeared, leaving no room to stand anywhere else. Christ and Lucyanna stepped in. As they both stepped on one of the circular pads the room came to life and before the two knew what was going on they disappeared and reappeared in a completely dark room. Slowly a humming noise grew in volume until it filled what sounded to be a great hall. Then lights started to flicker. Then the hall was completely eluminated. A fantastic view unfolded before the two.
The hall was like a catherdral. The design was fluent and round, and defenately far more advanced than anyone had ever seen. Many unidentified machines, computer consoles and other strange objects were placed against the halls walls and a big column of fluerecant light was fluctuating inside a big cylinder in the middle of the room, remeniscant of an engineering section of a Starfleet vessel, only bigger. Lucyanna and Christ started to look around. Christ looked at the screens and readouts he saw but couldn t make out what they said. Then he heard a scream. Lucyanna!
Lucyanna, where are you? he yelled as he scanned the hall to find where she d gone. No reply. Then, he saw her .. Moving up the room, pulled by two tubes stuck in her sholders. She looked .. Yellowish, with green/gray vaines As if She was injected with Borg nanoprobes.
Christ raced to grab hold of Lucyanna before she was out of reach but he was to late. He tried to grab his phaser but it was gone. All he could do was watch as Lucyanna was pulled screaming and kicking into the ceiling of the hall. Then the screams stopped, and suddenly all the machines in the hall started to come to life. Then, the lifeless body of Lucyanna dropped from the ceiling onto the floor. Christ ran to it, scanned it and found it to be dead. Then a voice bellowed through the hall. Lucyanna s voice. I AM THE CONCIENCE OF MANY! I AM THE ONE WHO BRINGS ORDER. I AM THE MIND OF THE KRYKTPACRI. I AM FUNCTIONING ONCE MORE! is what the voice said . WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY CREWMAN?! Christ yelled facing upward to where the voice came from. YOUR CREWMAN IS ME, I AM YOUR CREWMAN, CAPTAIN van SILFHOUT! was the answer. SHE GAVE HER LIFE TO GIVE ME LIFE. A CIVILISATION S HISTORY PRESERVED TO BE USED FOR THE GOODNESS OF ALL. The voice continued. I WILL BRING YOU BACK TO YOUR SHIP. FIND KRYKTPAC PRIME CAPTAIN. FIND IT AND ACTIVATE THE REDEMTION DEVICE. FULLFILL THE DESTINY OF OUR RACE! and with that, the entire room started to rumble. The devices hummed with power coursing through conduits. GET OUT CAPTAIN! GET OUT! said the voice as the trembling got harder. Christ decided to get to the circular pads on which he and Lucyanna had materialized before. As he got on, he appeared back in the room they had entered in the first place. Q stood outside of the little structure. As the trembling got worse Christ ran out of the Structure just in time to see it dissapear into the ground as it had appeared from it. Then, he started running away from the place the structure had been in. When he looked back he stopped in his tracks. A section of the planet, about the sise of a large metropolis had started to rise, and showed the structure to be a huge vessel. It rose higher and higher, until it vanished from sight. Christ looked at Q who had a sarcastic smile on his face. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO LUCYANNA!? he yelled emotionally. Why captain, I made her part of a billion year old Civilisation, which I may add, holds the key to the survival of the Galaxy. Follow the clue I gave you. Find the vessel you saw lifting off. Then you ll find the key to defeating the Borg .. and Q was gone again Christ looked around looking quite lost for a second as Q reappeared. I almost forgot. He said, and with a bright flash, Christ reappeared on the bridge of the USS Shake.
Captain? What happened? said Falo as he noticed his Captain was back on the Shake. And where is Lucyanna? . Christ looked at the faces looking at him. Lucyanna will no longer be joining us. She s Busy. Christ said, and then headed to his ready room. Falo, get in here!
Falo entered the Ready room and sat down. Christ looked at him. He d have to give Falo, what starfleet did not think he was ready for. There was no choice however. Falo, i hereby give you a field promotion to Captain. The USS Dutch is yours. We ll be seperating in a few hours, after i had a talk with the Admiral. You ll be heading straight into a fight you cannot win. I m effectively ordering you to commit suicide. Will you accept voulentarily or do i have to get Admiral Picard to make it an official Starfleet order?
Falo looked at Christ. Christ was serious, his face told falo that. Sir, i think i can safely say that i trust that you wouldn t order me to do this if the federation s future wasn t at stake. I accept
Good. Now i ll tell you what s going on. We ve got a serious problem as you well know. I ve been on a little field trip, Q style. Lucyanna and me were on a planet, where appearantly an ancient civilisation had a base of operations. I know no more than that they were called the KRYKTPAC and that they have a Redemption device as they call it. Lucyanna is now somehow incorperated into an alien device. I haven t got a clue as to how, but the structure Q brought us to came to life after taking Lucyanna. It claimed to be the concience of an entire civilisation and spoke of the existance of a Redemption Device . I am inclined to assume this is what Q had in mind for us to find and use. Christ explained to Falo.
So you want to go out and find that device? What am i supposed to do in the meantime? Falo asked. Hold up the Borg as much as possible, so we have time to find the device, and the federation needs time to make contigiency planns. Christ answered. Huh . Right .. and how am i gonna do that? With 10 Defiants and a Carrier against 15.000 Borg vessels? Falo returned. That s something you need to figure out. To be quite honest I don t know. All i know is that if you can t do it, noone in starfleet can. Christ looked at Falo, frowned and said You are up to this right? . Falo quickly replied Ofcourse i am, i just hope that we have enough firepower. Christ turned and walked to the bridge saying It ll have to be enough . It s all we have! . He walked to the science station. Ezri, take this tricorder. I ve scanned the whole time i was down there, so i must have picked up some info on the structure i was in. I seem to remember the metalcompounds were really weird. Maybe we can find more of it if we feed the data into the UADSA. Ezri took the Tricorder and uploaded the memory into the computer. Then she faces Assenav and said The data is in there now, but i need to analise it first. It ll take some time before the conversion to UADSA encoding has completed so i won t be done for at least 1 hour. You can join the rest and relax for a while. . Assenav got up from her station, nodded to the captain and left.
Meanwhile in the hallway where the twelve holodecks were located, Lecheim was walking to Holodeck 5. He had some Holodeck time left and thought this would be as good a time as any to relax. As he wanted to get in he litterally bumped into Aerdna. Sorry. I didn t expect anyone here. Most people are not in the mood to relax some strange way. He said to Aerdna after he helped her back on het feet. Aerdna looked at him, wanting to get angry but somehow she didn t. You re right. I would love a real person to relax with that spend my time with holodeck programs. But somehow everyone seems to want to stay in their quarters. What program did you run? She asked him. Well, I ve just been doing some orbital skydiving he answered. Isn t that dangerous? She asked with a surprised face. Nah. The holodeck safety protocols make sure it s not he returned. Why don t you try it?
Very well, I will. Will you come with me? she said. She opened the door after asking the computer to reset the last run program and stepped in. The room she entered was windowed all round and as she turned around she could see the planet around which the orbital platform was circling. There was noone else there but Lecheim and her. On the wall hung some orbital jump suits. Lecheim started putting one on, and then looked at Aerdna. He found her the most intriguing member of the crew. Never in the forefront, but always present. He admired her ability to do her work unnoticed but impecibly. As he d finished putting on his jumpsuit he noticed she hadn t gotten fat at all and he helped her get in. As he touched her skin, guiding her arms into the sleeves it seemed like he got little electrical shocks. He dismissed it as emagination but when their heads came closed he felt uneasy. They looked deep into eachothers eyes. After a few moments he broke the silent moment. Well, we re suited up. Let s jump . And he walked to the exit door. Put on your helmit and stand in front of me. As I open the door, you jump and I ll follow after 5 seconds. He said. Aerdna did what he told her and when they both had their helmets on and confirmed oxygen was flowing richly he opened the door. Emediately the two were sucked out of the booth and were hurdling towards the planet. AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaahhhh. Was the only thing Aerdna could utter. Relax! Nothing the matter. Relax and enjoy the ride. The force fields will do all the work. Lecheim said through the comlink to put Aerdna at easy. Aerdna quickly regained her composure and flipped to face the planet, and Lecheim. She flipt him her middlefinger and dove into a steeper angle. She missed Lecheim by centimeters and whizzed past him. He dove down after her.
Larek to Captain v. Silfhout. Larek said into his communicator.