CHAPTER NINE

"The Borg?" Captain Avin asked, not quite sure what was going on.

Chakotay wanted to put his face in his palm, but decided it wouldn't be very professional. During the month they'd been working with the Republic crew, they hadn't really had the chance to explain that they were dangerously close to Borg space. "They're a hive-mind of cybernetic-enhanced sentients who think it's their responsibility to absorb the knowledge of everything in the universe," he blurted out. "We need to get to D-Six, now!"

"They sound more curious than they do dangerous," Avin remarked.

"Did I mention they absorb knowledge in a very... invasive manner?"

"Ah." Avin nodded. "Navigation, are we ready for that jump yet?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Then make the jump, crewman."

"Yes, Sir."

This time, they flashed to hyperspace for only a few seconds before returning to realspace. In the distance a massive black cube dwarfed D-Six as it exchanged fire with the Dreadnaught.

Avin picked up a mic from a nearby console. "Commander Kenor, sitrep."

"Good to hear from you, Captain Avin," Kenor's feminine, slightly irritated voice came back. "I was starting to wonder if you'd ever find us out here."

"I'm touched," Avin replied sarcastically. "Anyway, our new friends wanted me to warn you that the cube you're in a slugging match with belongs to a hive-minded civilization that's on a mission to take over the universe."

"We heard," Kenor shot back. "They declared that they were the Borg, we were going to be assimilated, and resistance was futile."

"How did you reply?" Avin asked, winking at Chakotay as if to say, Watch this.

"We fired a full salvo. That shut them up quick. But I have to say, that ship can really soak up damage. They're repairing almost as fast as we can fire."

Avin turned to the tactical station. "Do we have a firing solution on the Borg yet?"

"Yes, Captain."

"D-One through D-Five are to use ripple fire pattern Leth-Niner-Isk. D-Six is to continue firing at targets of opportunity."

"Yes, Captain."

Chakotay watched with no small degree of surprise as the space around the Outbound Flight lit up as the Dreadnaughts cycled their turbolasers and ion cannon in rapid succession. He tapped his commbadge, thinking of anything they could do to help.

"Chakotay to the Bridge."

"Bridge here. Lieutenant Fernandez reporting, Sir."

He frowned. Wasn't Tuvok supposed to be at station right now? Or some other senior officer? "Where is Lieutenant Commander Tuvok?"

"In his quarters, Sir. He had a personal matter of some urgency, Sir."

Chakotay allowed a slight smirk to cross his face. He was well-acquainted with the feeling and apparently even Vulcans weren't immune to it either. In any case, with Voyager firmly clamped onto Outbound Flight's turbolift pylons, there was no real need to keep the bridge fully staffed. "Lieutenant, how many torpedoes do we have left?"

"Six, Sir," the reply came back immediately.

He turned to Avin. "Voyager has six photon torpedoes left," he offered. "We can help target the cube's weak points... well, the weakest spots it has, anyway."

Avin nodded. "Prepare a firing solution and await my command."

Chakotay relayed the instructions to Lieutenant Fernandez, taking a step backward so as not to get in the way of the chaotic symphony that seemed to be taking place around him.

A dull thud came from the ship-to-ship comm, followed a moment later by a voice. "Master C'baoth?"

Avin leaned over to Chakotay. "That's Commander Leroun on D-Three."

C'baoth, meanwhile, grabbed the mic. "This is C'baoth."

"We just lost our port turbolaser battery," Leroun reported. "The surge knocked out our forward shields, and now the crew is reporting boarders appearing all over the ship. We've deployed security personnel to contain the boarders but so far they are just looking around. Your orders?"

The Jedi Master put the mic down and turned to Chakotay. "Well, since you seem to know so much about these Borg, what do you suggest we do?"

"Don't let them get close to anything," Chakotay replied after a moment's consideration. "The Borg learn by assimilation-injecting nanomachines that can rewrite biology and technology to serve themselves."

C'baoth nodded and held the mic back up. "Commander, instruct your crew to keep their distance. You have my authorization to shoot if necessary to keep the intruders away from your crew or any control stations until we can take care of the problem."

While Leroun acknowledged, Chakotay looked at C'baoth with a slanted, incredulous frown. "What do you mean, 'take care of the problem?' The Borg are not just a problem you can easily take care of!"

C'baoth waved across the bridge, ignoring him, and moments later, Lorana walked up. "Lorana, go with Master Helsani and Master Ma'Ning to D-Three and help them eliminate the intruders. I do not want anything from this mission falling into the hands of the Borg if they are as dangerous as the Commander here insists they are."

"Of course, Master," Lorana said before turning away.

Chakotay watched her speak to the other Masters and leave the bridge before turning back to C'baoth. "What good are three Jedi going to do against a ship full of Borg?"

"Watch and learn, Commander." was the only thing that C'baoth said in reply. "Watch and learn."

.

.

The Rock Dragon had much better medical facilities than the Millennium Falcon, one being a smuggler's freighter and the other a modified Hapan transport, Jacen reflected, but they were both equally cramped.

He sighed and turned his head to the side, noticing Tenel Ka and Lowbacca attending to his sister's eye. His own wound didn't need much, as some bacta and a simple synthflesh patch worked, but the poison had been a little more difficult. Even so, after running through some Jedi purification techniques he'd been taught, the numbness was finally leaving his leg.

It was still going to take a while to heal, he realized as he rolled over. The leg still hung limply, and it was painfully obvious that he'd be of no use in a melee. Not in his present condition, at least.

Across the room, Jaina finally sat up on another fold-out medical bed. For the time being, she wore a crude patch over her right eye. Then she came to her feet and strode over to her brother, sitting down next to him. "How's the leg feel?"

"Not like much at all," Jacen admitted. He didn't have to answer, given that as twins the two Jedi shared a sort of bond, but it was better than listening to the computers hum while the other three Jedi were off searching for anything at all in ExGal 4. "How about your eye?"

"I think I pushed out most of the venom, but there was so much of it..."

He nodded. There wasn't much that they could do for her eye with the limited facilities aboard the Hapan transport, and it would be a while before they got back to anything that remotely resembled civilization. With no person among them really trained in Jedi healing techniques, and no field medics handy, nobody was even really sure how badly Jaina's eye had been damaged by the staff's venom. "Think you'll still be able to fly?" he asked.

She snorted. "Doesn't look like I have much choice, for now at least. I'm hoping that I won't have to get a bionic eye, but..." Jaina shrugged, then stood up. Moments later she returned with a dejarik board. "I'll play you."

.

.

When the turbolift car opened on D-Three, Lorana immediately noticed the unfortunately familiar acrid, burnt smell of battle damage. Dreadnaughts had been used by the Republic's naval forces since well before she had even been born, and although most of them were incredibly crew-intensive, they had a well-deserved reputation for being able to soak up damage and keep on hitting.

Compared to D-One, which was in almost perfect condition, D-Three had suffered the worst battle damage during the ambush so many years before. It had then been repaired using materials from the storage core, but the storage core had been designed to keep fifty thousand colonists fed for about ten years' worth of hyperspace travel, and only included a limited supply of equipment for the ships. It most certainly did not have any of the thick, superconducting armor plating that comprised the outermost layer of the Dreadnaught's hull. Instead, the maintenance teams had made do by welding plates of standard durasteel alloy across the worst of the hull breaches, hoping that the small size of the breaches and the shields would prevent any further damage in the strange galaxy. Other areas, such as where the team from Voyager had entered, were too far away from anything critical to be worth patching and so had simply been sealed off.

In the cargo section of the ship where the turbolift shaft was, the power was completely out and only the dim, eerie glow of emergency permalight panels lit the pathways ahead of them. The three Jedi strode along toward the command section in silence that was punctuated by the sound of electricity arcing in the distance. Occasionally the main lighting would flicker on for a moment, only to immediately die out again.

When they reached the central turbolift core, after a brief debate they opted to take the stairs since the command deck was only a few decks above. The decision was made somewhat easier due to the fact that they were able to jump from one landing up to the next.

The command deck itself was well illuminated. As they approached the bridge itself, Lorana heard the echoes of blasterfire and when the doors slid open to the bridge, she saw that the crew had barricaded themselves at one end of the bridge. In the middle about a dozen gray-skinned, metal-clad aliens of varying physiologies advanced with an odd gait on the bridge crew. Several of them were lying on the deck with gaping holes blown out of their metal plating. Now, every time a shot hit one of the aliens, a faint greenish shield flared to life around them and they continued approaching. Despite this, the bridge crew concentrated their fire on the right-most alien, who collapsed in a smoking heap after about a dozen shots converged on him.

"Now," Master Ma'Ning ordered. The aliens were barely a meter away from the barricade, and in one smooth movement the three Jedi ignited their lightsabers and made a flying leap toward the Borg.

Lorana aimed herself for the left-most intruder. In a quick, chopping motion she instantly bisected the drone and also got the attention of the nearest drones. They began to converge on her, but she rolled backward and held the saber in front of her in the classical en garde stance. One of them tried to reach for her only for a quick flick of the glowing blade to dispose of that notion (and its appendage).

The two drones paused for a moment as if trying to decide how best to approach the Jedi. They separated and started walking around, apparently trying to encircle her, but she would have none of it. Her saber again flashed, severing the head of the one nearest to her, and she turned her attention to the other whole drone.

It suddenly reached out to her, but instead of slicing its arm off, she dropped and rolled, taking one of the drone's legs off at the knee as she did so. When she stood back up and turned around, it was all she could do to keep herself from laughing. The drone that had just lost its leg was hopping awkwardly, trying to keep its balance, while the headless drone was staggering forward in a drunken fashion. She waved a hand and the two drones crashed together and went down in a heap.

She looked over toward Helsani and Ma'Ning, and found them standing in the middle of a ring of dismembered drones.

"I guess you two won't be needing a hand," she remarked.

Ma'Ning smiled. "No, we have plenty of hands already," he replied, levitating a metal-encased Borg hand in front of him.

Feeling a brief flicker, she spun about and saw that the one-legged drone had crawled up to her. Another flash of the lightsaber later and the drone was now both armless and one-legged. It wriggled uselessly but was unable to move. She could have sworn that it was glaring at her with its electronic eye.

"What should we do with this one?"

Master Ma'Ning pursed his lips and studied the immobile drone. "I think that Master Hkalle would be very interested in studying it. We'll put it in one of the detention cells and let him decide."

.

.

Kyp, Lowbacca and Tenel Ka returned around a half-hour later. Each carried a crate of material except for Tenel Ka, who couldn't carry a crate and hold a lightsaber at the same time; as a result, she was bringing up the rear.

"Here," Kyp said as he tossed a couple of medpacks at the twins. "I think these ought to be useful."

Jaina frowned. "You looted the base?"

"Just putting some abandoned supplies to better use," Kyp said with a laugh. "It's not like Yomin Carr could find any use for those in his current state."

Shaking her head at Kyp, Jaina tore open one medpack and pulled a bacta patch out of it. After checking the date to make sure it was still fresh, she flipped up her eyepatch and took off the old bacta patch, then applied the fresh one.

In the meantime, the others were busy unpacking the crates. Tenel Ka handed Jacen a simple glass jar containing one of the brown beetles. "We found this in the station commander's room," she explained.

"Looks like they did know about the beetles after all," Jacen remarked, giving the jar back.

"Yeah," Kyp agreed. "Then we found these."

Jacen craned his neck to get a better view of the stuff that had just been put on the dejarik table. In the middle were two roughly ovoid, purplish blob creatures. "What the kriff are those?"

"Communications devices, or rather creatures, of some sort. They were in Yomin Carr's room. One was already dead when we found them."

"And the other?"

Kyp frowned. "It came alive when we touched its front ridge. That's how we found out it was for communication. Some other alien of the same species as Yomin Carr answered, and laughed when he saw me. He warned me that I'm going to be, ah, dead if I keep sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong." The Jedi chuckled at that. "Then he broke the link. We haven't managed to get this thing to respond since then."

Jacen grabbed a makeshift crutch and hopped off the medical bed, making sure not to put weight on his left leg. Then he ambled over to where the strange, blob-shaped creatures were and put a hand on the one Kyp had indicated was alive.

He normally had a talent with any kind of alien life, in that he could easily communicate with it, but in this case his talent didn't help him; the creature was obviously dead. He shrugged. "I guess we could stick them in a stasis chamber to keep them from decomposing... further." He wrinkled his nose slightly. They were already beginning to smell bad, or maybe that was how they normally smelled. He decided not to push the thought further.

"Yeah," Kyp agreed as Lowbacca took both dead creatures into the cargo hold. "Well, we've completely turned this base upside down. Why don't we check out Helska and see what happened to that shuttle?"

Jacen looked down at his leg. Injuries or no injuries, they couldn't forget about the scientists who had gone to Helska. "Maybe we should have gone there first."

"I think Lowbacca and Jaina can pilot this ship," Tenel Ka finally said. "Jacen and I should be able to handle the turrets."

"Then that's settled," Kyp said, turning and heading for the ramp. "Meet you guys in orbit."

A few minutes later the Rock Dragon broke orbit and vanished into hyperspace.

.

.

The sheer volume of fire that was being exchanged by the Outbound Flight's six Dreadnaughts was, to put it simply, awesome. In his entire career (including the past few years spent in the Delta Quadrant), Chakotay had never seen any civilization capable of holding their own in a slugging match with the Borg. Some tried, but invariably the Borg sent more cubes and those civilizations were soon assimilated like the others.

Voyager, of course, was an odd exception. They had seen more action against the Borg than any other Starfleet ship (being lost in Borg territory tended to have that effect) but he could only attribute their continued survival to sheer dumb luck. There had been so many close calls, so many near misses that one more hit would have been the end of their existence. Sometimes they had been caught between the Borg and another threat like Species 8472, and the Borg in that case had gone for the bigger target and mostly ignored Voyager.

Really, when one got down to it, Voyager didn't hold much interest to the Borg. After all, they had already assimilated Federation technology and humans. They knew Captain Picard's life experiences, and had the complete knowledge of most who had died at Wolf 359. For
a collective driven by a thirst for knowledge, what was Voyager? The closest analogy he could think of was a gnat buzzing in the ear. An annoyance to be swatted if it got too close, but not deserving of any further attention.

His commbadge chimed, taking him out of his contemplative mood. "Chakotay here," he answered.

"Commander," Tuvok's voice sounded rough and out of breath, "we've taken a direct hit. Decks 1 and 2 have been breached."

Chakotay felt himself stiffen up. "The bridge?"

There was a cough at the other end. "No survivors."

He swallowed, not really wanting to hear the bad news. "Who was on duty?"

"Lieutenant Fernandez and Ensigns Murphy, Henley, and Wildman."

"Shit," he muttered under his breath. Ensign Henley had been a member of his crew on the Val Jean. After four years in the Delta Quadrant, barely more than a dozen of the Maquis crew still survived. Chakotay couldn't help but feel a twinge at the loss of yet another of his crew.

Then there was Samantha Wildman, one of the few crewmembers to have a child on Voyager. Chakotay certainly wasn't looking forward to telling her daughter Naomi what had happened after this was over.

"Do we still have weapons control?"

"I'm on my way to Engineering right now," Tuvok replied.

Although he was talking through the commbadge, Chakotay nodded out of habit. "Then hit them where it hurts."

He strode over to where Master C'baoth stood on the bridge. The Jedi was watching the battle over the monitors, but greeted him without even turning around.

"My condolences for the loss of your crew, Commander."

Having been around the Jedi for several weeks already, Chakotay was starting to become familiar with their strange abilities to sense things most people would not notice. That didn't make it any less creepy for him.

"Thank you, Master C'baoth." He stopped to scan the monitors and noticed that the cube was starting to fire sporadically. "Are you targeting their weapons?"

C'baoth nodded. "Master Coureran is designating targets for the gunners. We could increase efficiency further if all the gunners were Jedi, but for now, this is sufficient."

"I see." Chakotay looked around the semi-chaotic bridge. "Since we found D-Six, weren't we going to enter hyperspace?"

"Navigation is still computing the course," C'baoth replied. "Unfortunately, this galaxy seems to be filled with navigational hazards that we must correct for. If we are not careful, we could pass through a star or worse."

"Can't you just make corrections after entering hyperspace?" Given how advanced the Republic computers seemed to be, and the fact that the ship was crewed by more androids than humans, what the Jedi was saying didn't make much sense.

C'baoth turned and gave Chakotay an annoyed look, as if a small child had asked him a question he had just explained the answer to a minute before. "We are going to be traveling, on average, at Point Four, or over two light-years per minute. In order to have enough reaction time to make corrections, the navigator would just about have to see into the future. While that has been done before, it is not something I would recommend anyone to try on a regular basis."

Chakotay silently nodded and turned back to the monitors, which showed huge chunks of the cube's superstructure blown away. He ran some quick numbers in his head, deciding that about a third of the cube had been destroyed.

"Master C'baoth?" a voice in the pit asked.

"Yes?"

"Message from D-Three. Master Ma'Ning reports that the bridge and engine room have been cleared of intruders. They are checking out the rest of the ship and expect to have it clear within the hour."

"Good," C'baoth acknowledged.

A moment later, a warning klaxon sounded. The Borg vanished as the stars stretched out, and Chakotay was left wondering how they would react.

"They'll follow us," he warned C'baoth. "We still don't know what the upper limit is on their transwarp drive."

C'baoth smiled. "One of the beautiful things about hyperspace travel is that once you enter hyperspace, no sensors can follow you. They can try to calculate our last trajectory, but we will be changing course many times over the next week or so. I very much doubt they will be able to pursue us."

Chakotay nodded, walking toward the displays that were now showing the strange, ever-changing sky of hyperspace. "It's beautiful," he said after watching for several minutes. "Almost hypnotic."

C'baoth walked up beside him and glanced at the screen. "People have been known to go insane from staring into hyperspace for too long."

"When you stare into the void, the void stares back," Chakotay quoted.

"Who said that?" C'baoth asked.

Chakotay sighed and looked back at the displays. "A twentieth century Earth philosopher named Nietzsche," he replied. "I don't necessarily agree with everything he espoused, but some of his observations were quite accurate."