Chapter Nine

We stood in the midst of Engineering, next to the ship's mighty warp core. The one survivor of the energy surge stood upright, still unconscious but restrained against the bulkhead.

"The Romulans?" I repeated. Demansky nodded.

"Or someone affiliated with their technology." I looked at Spock.

"The Bek'Tal?"

"Quite possibly."

"And," Demansky added, "even if it is Romulan technology, we've got a big problem, because it means that they've got something they're not telling us about."

"What do you mean?" He pointed to the readout on the screen above the unconscious drone.

"This drone was assigned primarily to an assimilation team. But its secondary function was maintenance and repair for some of the transwarp drive subsystems. One of these included the upkeep of the cloak generators. According to the readout, the Borg are having tremendous difficulty adapting the technology to fit the bulk and mechanics of their ship types, so this guy was spending a lot of his free time repairing overloaded systems. But despite the fact that the Borg can't seem to use it properly, the technology itself is amazing. While the engineering seems very distinctly Romulan, the loading matrix doesn't even seem to concern itself with things like tachyon bursts or antiproton residue. Usually with a cloaking device, these are the first things to be addressed. I mean, they can't program against them entirely, but they can make it hell to try finding them. But this…" he trailed off, staring at the screen. Then abruptly, he turned back towards us. "This one is entirely different." He threw his hands up, indicating he wasn't at all sure what he was seeing.

"The Bek'Tal then, undoubtedly," I said.

"Who are the Bek'Tal?" Demansky asked. I was unsure whether I should reveal that information or not, so I looked at Spock.

"They are," he said, "a Reman dissident group, formed several years ago."

"Reman?" Demansky repeated with a quizzical look. "I thought they were slaves."

"They are."

"Bridge to Captain Allen." I tapped my communications badge.

"Allen here," I said.

"Captain, there's a Priority One message coming in from Admiral Heaton." I could almost feel the blood draining from my face.

"I'll take it in my quarters," I said. I looked over at Spock, who was standing next to Lieutenant Commander Demansky. "Please take over, Mr. Spock." I turned to leave.

"Oh! Uh, Captain…" I looked over my shoulder at Demansky.

"Yes?"

"Your inspection?" He asked sheepishly.

"I'll get to it, I promise." I left engineering, and within a couple of minutes I was in my quarters. I sat down at the desk and punched up the communications console.

"Identify user," the computer requested.

"Allen-four-two-theta"

"Access granted."

"You wanted to see me, Admiral?" His face was angry.

"Allen, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I was saving lives, sir. There were still four people on the Scandinavia who hadn't been assimilated."

"And for the lives of those four people, you very easily might have sacrificed the lives of your crew, not to mention countless lives on Vulcan that your presence might have saved. Tell me, Mr. Allen, do you think that just because Starfleet has brought you into this century and given you a ship to command, that you can blatantly defy orders?"

"No, sir. I…"

"I don't want to hear it, Mr. Allen! Just stay at maximum warp and get to Vulcan."

"Yes, sir."

"And Allen…"

"Yes?"

"Don't give officers from this century weapons from yours." His image disappeared, replaced with the symbol of the United Federation of Planets. I pounded my fist on the desktop. Only one person would have told him that…


"Weston," I said, entering the bridge. "You're relieved of duty until further notice." She looked furious, but strode off the bridge obediently. Jerry gave me a quizzical look.

"Report, Commander," I said, taking my seat.

"Well, the four survivors of the Scandinavia are resting comfortably in sickbay. By the way, Doctor Sarin says you need to come in for a checkup when you have time." I rolled my eyes.

"It never ends."

"No, it doesn't. Oddly enough there were only twenty-five people aboard the Scandinavia when we beamed them up. We can only assume that means the cube beamed most of them back before we got there. We now have the twenty-one drones in the brig, but I'm concerned about keeping them there."

"Aren't the force fields supposed to take care of that?" I asked.

"Well, yes, but we don't know yet whether or not the Borg can adapt to them. Besides, we can't be sure that they aren't sending messages to their cube or to other cubes." His voice got softer. "We need to eliminate them, Captain." I looked down. Eliminate them?

"Helm, time to arrival at Vulcan?"

"We'll be there in 'bout forty-five minutes, Cap'n." I got up.

"Let's continue this in the Ready Room," I said. Jerry followed. Once we were inside, I sat down and put my head in my hands.

"Jerry, you know that we…that Starfleet…has the capability of saving those people."

"Mike, there's no time. The procedure would take too long, and there are far too many of them to do it all at once. Besides, think of how crazy it's going to get in Sickbay very soon. I don't want to do it any more than you do, but I don't see that we have any other choice." I sighed and stared out at the stars. Most of them streaked past my sight very swiftly, distorted by the distinct properties of the warp field around the ship. Some, however, being further off, appeared to move very slowly, and were visible from my window for several seconds. How many of them, I wondered, have the Borg invaded?

"This really is war, isn't it?" I said rather than asked. The weight of decision was bearing down on me, and suddenly all I wanted was to go home. Jerry sat across from me.

"It sure is."

"Jerry, I don't think I can do this…this whole 'captain' thing."

"What do you mean?" he asked. "What else can you do?"

"I could go home. I could return to my own time, where I belong." Suddenly there was fire behind Jerry's eyes.

"And do what! Wait for the Borg to invade there? Hope that it doesn't happen in your lifetime, and spend the rest of your life pitying those descendants of yours whose fate it is to be assimilated?"

"Jerry, I can't…"

"Face it, Mike!" he yelled, standing up. "You're afraid!" He suddenly remembered his rank and sat back down, visibly calming himself. "I'm sorry, Captain."

"You're right, Jerry. I am afraid. I'm afraid of what could happen to me, but I'm more afraid of what could happen to other people because of me." Jerry folded his hands and leaned across the table.

"But don't you see? We're all afraid. Every one of us is afraid. Even Tex…do you think all that macho crap is for real? Of course it isn't. He's just trying to hide the fact that he's terrified of what the future holds. None of us wants to think about what could happen out there. But we have a job to do. We have people to protect. We have a responsibility, Mike, and we can't shirk that. People need us." I shuddered, again looking at the stars. He was right, of course. Our unique blend of knowledge gave us an upper hand that would have taken years to produce from the Academy. An eternal moment passed between us before the dust seemed to settle.

"What's the best way to…take care of the Borg problem?" I asked. Jerry sighed, leaning back. His eyes looked off, far beyond the bulkhead.

"Probably the safest way is to beam them into space. At warp speed, they'll be torn to pieces from the inertial force. They'll never feel a thing." I gripped the corners of the table and stood slowly.

"Let's do it."


The brig of the Ascension was, perhaps, the nicest facility for containing prisoners that I had ever seen. It was well lit, comfortable, and warm. Too warm. I began to feel sweat forming on my brow as we entered. Like a Borg ship. Apparently, prisoners were kept in the closest facsimile of their environment that was possible.

As we entered, I saw them. Each one was performing a different task, but they all seemed to be bent on the same basic goal: find a way out of the brig. One drone stood at the opening, continually prodding the force field and causing it to crackle with energy discharges. Others were searching the floor plates for weaknesses or cracks. Still others were pounding the wall methodically, trying to eventually break through. All of them save the one at the entrance seemed oblivious to our presence.

The force field tester had been a Bolian male. His ashen face, once a brilliant blue, now only barely sported the famous vertical ridge as his working right eye widened at our presence. The sensor covering his left eye socket came on, and a thin beam of red light shot across the room, scanning first Jerry, then Spock, then me. Just as suddenly as he had looked up at us, he seemed to determine that we were not a threat, and went back to testing the force field. Jerry cleared his throat and tapped his communications badge.

"Transporter room three, lock onto the Borg drones and prepare for a site to site transfer."

"Aye, sir," came the perplexed voice of Ensign Perez. There was a beat. "Locked on, sir. Where do you want them sent?" I looked into the face of the drone in front of me. Did he have a family somewhere?

"Beam them into space," I half whispered. "Energize." Immediately, the drones shimmered and disappeared. I felt the blood drain from my face, and I suddenly became nauseated. Jerry placed a hand on my shoulder.

"I think you did the right thing," he said.

"I'm glad someone does," I said over my shoulder as I walked out of the room.