Chapter Twenty-Seven
We stood on the transporter pad, ready to beam down to Earth. The battle, we had been told, was centered in San Francisco. Apparently, the intention of the Borg was to take out Starfleet Headquarters first. This made sense; it ought to be easier to take the rest of the planet over if they could cripple the power behind the Federation. I felt bogged down with all the equipment I was carrying. Still, it made me feel better to know that everything the Federation had to offer in the way of personal protection was literally strapped to me at this moment.
"Energize," I said.
The world around me shimmered in a dazzling display of what Heisenberg would have labeled the impossible. It reappeared in the form of heavy rain and lightning. Starfleet had determined that this was the best weather for fighting the Borg, since the ionic distortion would hopefully mess with their ability to function as a hive, and they had created this storm as a result. To me, it seemed only to add to the melancholy fears I already had.
We materialized in the middle of a street, and immediately we began looking for the rest of the ground assault teams. They weren't hard to find. Ahead of us, near the bay, we could see phaser beams lancing out in the rain. We ran as hard and fast as we could, eventually meeting up with the rest of the force. It only took a few minutes for me to find Picard, who was shouting orders to various teams. As I looked across the bay, I could see that the Borg were advancing slowly, methodically, across the Golden Gate bridge. It seemed ironic to me somehow.
"Good to see you, Captain," I said breathlessly to Picard as we joined the ranks.
"Glad you made it, Mike," he returned. "We're covering the bridge, but there will be other entry points into the city. I want you and your squad to cover the north sector." I nodded, wiping the rain from my eyes as I did.
"Good luck," I said simply, wishing that I could say more.
"You too, Mike," he replied, then turned back to the duty at hand. I noticed LaForge among the fray, toting his weaponry and wearing a look of readiness.
"Team," I said, "follow me." We jogged toward the northern end of our front, cringing with the whine of phasers and the explosive sound of mortar fire as we went. Finally, we reached the far end of the front, drawing our phaser rifles first.
"Spread out," I said. "But keep close. Be ready to fall back at my command."
Ahead, on the bridge, I could make out the faint outline of the Borg front. They were marching slowly, indifferently, through the pelting rain. It seemed to me that hundreds of people were shouting all at once that the Borg had adapted to their weapons. I wondered at the veracity of this, and as a test I fired my phaser at one of the drones. The beam bounced harmlessly off of its protective shield. The Borg were already stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades, and some of the drones were busy clearing the bodies out of the way of the approaching masses.
Meanwhile, to the north another group of drones was approaching. These had not even been fired upon, but very quickly we learned that they, too, had adapted to our phaser modulations. I took a deep breath and prayed a silent prayer. Then I turned to my team. They were completely soaked and already miserable. It was at that moment, I think, I fully realized what it meant to be a captain. I dropped my phaser into the mud, and reached behind me to withdraw my twenty-fourth century shotgun. I held it high for a moment, looking at each member of my team. Then I drew a deep breath, smelling the rain and the ionized air as I shouted at the top of my lungs.
"Charge!"
We ran toward the Borg as fast as we could. The rain pelted our faces, stinging as we ran into it. Lightning flashed, glittering off of the metal carapaces of the Borg as we rushed them, sighting them in with our weapons and waiting for the killing range. In that moment, I knew what true hatred was, and I fed off of it. In the past couple of months, my actions had resulted in many deaths. This had been difficult for me to deal with at first; I had spent more than one sleepless night mulling over it.
But now something else had taken the place of my conscientious brooding. I hated the Borg, and I was more than ready to kill as many of them as I could, as violently as I could. I almost had an itch to reach for the bat'leth behind my back. But I waited; that moment might come, but it was not here yet.
We charged until we were within firing distance of the Borg, then we stopped and took aim and fired the first volley. Within seconds, hundreds of Borg drones went down, twitching in the final agony that was paradoxically their relief from a life of enslavement. The blasting sound of the shotguns rang in my ears, coupled with the heavy sound of the rain slapping against our suits and the not-so-distant thunder. Joining the rest of the cacophony was the sound of battle-cries among us. It served only to fuel my hatred of the Borg. I was ready to kill these bastards.
"Keep firing!" I yelled, as if it were necessary. The Borg kept advancing, and we kept shooting them down, over and over. As it was on the bridge, eventually the bodies began piling so high that several drones stepped forward to clear them out of the way of the advancing throng. I focused on those drones, and fired as quickly as my electronic sights bore down on them. After all, these weren't medics, they were drones. Every step in impeding the Borg would help.
"You bastards!" I shouted, rushing forward a little ahead of the fray. Finally, in the moment when it most counted, my fears had finally given way to something more primal. I wanted to single-handedly disembowel each one of these drones. For what they had done to my race. For what they had done to other races. For what they were about to do. I shot at them until my weapon finally signaled that it was empty, then I threw my weapon in their direction, a cry of ultimate hatred.
Around me, my team was running out of ammo as well, but the Borg kept coming. It was time for hand-to-hand combat, I knew. I experienced a momentary wave of fear. This was the moment I had been dreading for months. I knew that I was afraid of what the Borg could do at close range. They were like zombies, spreading their uncaring tendrils of death with a single touch. But somehow, it didn't matter in that moment. I suddenly did not care if I died, as long as I took them with me. The most important thing in my mind was that they not succeed. They must not take the day, no matter what it took to stop them.
"Activate armor," I said, pressing the button on the side of my suit.
I took a deep breath and drew my bat'leth. I turned and looked at the woman I loved. We shared a long moment through the rain.
"Stay behind me," I said, trying to be brave for her.
"Like hell," she said defiantly, drawing her own bat'leth. I smiled, despite the conditions.
"I love you," I said.
"I love you too," she returned, and we shared a brief kiss. I didn't care at that moment who saw me. For all I knew, this was the last moment we would ever share together. I turned toward the oncoming Borg, wishing that they could understand, if only for a moment, what had just passed between myself and Julie.
Without a word, we charged the Borg. I like to think that the raw hatred I felt at that moment was shared by everyone in my team. I ran toward them, raising my blade as I did. Jerry was beside me, crying out as we moved forward. Finally, it seemed, he and I were making a difference. In the space it took for us to reach the Borg, I felt the depth of our friendship as I'd never felt it before. I remembered moments from our childhood, each one embodied in a raindrop hitting my face.
We were ten years old, playing Star Trek in the back yard. Our warp engine was an upside-down bicycle, our bridge the sandbox in my back yard. We argued over who would get to be Captain Picard this time, each of us wanting to be the one who would lead the crew to eventual safety. Jerry won, of course.
Now the tables were turned. We were grown up now, and I was in command. Behind us, hundreds of officers charged, the sound of their boots hitting the mud competing with the noise of the thunder. The pace of our group quickened; I was now running as fast as I could just to stay ahead. The Borg loomed closer, walking at their slow, indifferent pace.
At last, we crashed into the Borg, the sheer momentum of us ploughing through their front line and knocking many of them back. I swung my bat'leth with every ounce of strength I had at the nearest drone, decapitating it instantly. I wanted to stop moving forward, but the surging masses behind me pushed me further into the tangle of drones. Around me I could hear screams, but I was disoriented, and could not tell if they were screams of victory or of pain.
Finally, we had stopped advancing, and the real fighting began.
Instantly, I felt hands running over me. Black nanotubes shot out at my neck, bouncing harmlessly off of the skin-thin protective shield. Each time something would connect, I could hear the faint buzzing crackle of the suit. I only hoped that it would last the battle, and I still nearly jumped out of my skin each time it happened.
I found that I could not pick my targets at this close range, so I began swinging wildly, driving the Borg back and injuring or killing the nearest ones. The rest of my team seemed to see that this was working, so they began doing it as well. We advanced in stages, slashing forward for several steps, then holding our ground as the Borg drones would retaliate. Once, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone's shield falter, leaving him vulnerable. It only took a couple of seconds; the Borg struck, and his skin was crawling with nanites before he could hit the ground. At the back of my mind, I puzzled at what had gone wrong with his suit.
It happened again, and again. Two more down. I focused nearly everything I had on the closing drones in front of me, but every split second that I had to spare was spent studying the people who were falling. Then I saw it.
There were Borg on the ground, crawling among the legs of the other Borg and our people. All it took was a quick reach up from a drone on the ground, and the shield was deactivated. It was a sickening reminder to me that the Borg had yet another fantastic advantage over us: they were fighting with a unified mind.
"Watch out for drones on the ground!" I shouted, as another officer went down screaming and grasping at her collar. Instantly, everyone around me began keeping an eye out in all directions.
I felt someone brush up against me from behind, and in an instant I could see that Jerry was beside me. Together, we made two blades, which worked much better than one. The Borg in front of us were going down much faster, and I realized as I stepped over convulsing bodies that we were actually advancing slightly.
A small beam of light flew overhead from behind us, landing in the midst of the Borg ahead. For a long second, nothing happened. Then we had to shield our eyes as an explosion ripped scores of drones into shreds, sending pale white and metallic chunks in all directions. Someone had thrown a grenade of some sort. I smiled in spite of myself. Hell, I thought, I didn't even know we had grenades available.
More grenades began flying overhead, carrying with them a powerful punch that threatened to break the front line of the Borg from behind. As if to underscore this, the air was suddenly filled with the sound of powerful thrumming engines. Several runabouts flew overhead, delivering phased death to the drones in front of us. The Borg might have the ability to adapt to weapon modulations, but a full blast from a ship-sized phaser bank was enough to overload and vaporize just about anything. Columns of white-hot light replaced whole sections of the Borg, the only trace of their existence a smoldering black mark on the rain-drenched soil.
I heard victorious cheers behind me, and I was tempted to join in them, but I could already see that the battle wasn't over. It would take the runabouts a long time to take out all of the Borg, and my guess was that they were only going to have time for a few brief strafing runs before they would have to return to the space battle. Still, it did clear the area a bit, and it allowed us to advance.
As we entered the area where the Borg had been, we were instantly hit with a wave of ash. It was disgusting, but at that moment it felt like exactly what ought to be happening. I looked at the re-mobilizing Borg in front of us and screamed in defiance. No words, just a lung-emptying shout that indicated my hatred toward them. I looked over at Jerry. He looked calmly back.
"Let's do this," he said.
We ran, still shouting, toward the Borg. The smoke was clearing a bit from the strafing run, and in the distance I could hear the runabout turning to make its next pass. Ahead, many of the Borg in our general area seemed to be clustered together; some of them weren't even facing us. I wondered at this as we approached. It seemed too easy that we might actually surprise them.
Just as we hit, I realized my mistake. The drones who had been facing away from us stepped out of the way, revealing a crouched drone. It stood, eight feet tall and three feet wide, an impenetrable barrier. One arm was forward, the hand reaching out as if to assimilate us from several feet away. The other arm of the giant Borg beast was extended back so far into the crowd that I could not see its end. It didn't really matter; we were too close and running too fast at it to stop.
In a lightning-quick motion, I saw the other arm dart forward, sinewy muscles rippling and metal glinting. It was only then that my brain registered the long, sharp-bladed appendage thrusting forward. My heart nearly exploded in my chest as it flew by me, lodged for a second in something solid, then withdrew back to its owner's side.
It was soaked with blood.
The bile rose in my throat, and my eyes misted over as I realized that I was not hit. In a confused second – or perhaps longer, I'll never know – I thrust the point of my bat'leth upward, shearing metal and rending flesh as I tore the giant drone's face in half. My blade stuck in its skull, and as the massive thing collapsed backward, my fingers slipped off of the handle.
It seemed to me that everything slowed down for a moment. The drone's body fell through the air, and in that moment I turned to my friend, who now lay bleeding on the ground. I looked down at his chest, but instantly had to look back up. The wound was fatal. There was a huge tear across Jerry's chest, the ragged meat of his chest convulsing with every blood-pumping breath. The shock of seeing him like this hit me, and the tears came streaming out.
"Jerry!" I tried to say, getting about half of it out. Then I knew what I had to do. I slammed my palm against my chest. "Allen to Ascension! This is a medical emergency!"
Nothing.
"Allen to Starfleet Medical!"
Nothing.
"This is Captain Allen! Can anyone hear me?!"
Dreadful, ominous nothing.
Jerry coughed, spitting blood a couple of inches into the air. His body began convulsing, and he grabbed my arm to steady himself. I leaned down closer to his face.
"Jerry," I pleaded through my tears, "I'm so sorry I got you into this. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry…" I kept repeating it, as if saying it enough times would stall the inevitable. But the shaking got worse, and Jerry began to cough up more blood. Finally, he reached a hand up to my head, pulling me down until my ear was next to his mouth. For one small moment, his body ceased shaking, and he was able to choke out a sentence.
"Get 'em for me, Mike."
His hand fell from my head. I started to assure him that I would, but when I looked into his eyes, I saw for the first time since I had known him that they were not looking back at me. A final, ragged breath escaped his lungs, and he was still.
An eternity seemed to have passed; people were rushing past us at breakneck speed, and somewhere, distantly beyond the pounding of my heart in my ears, I could hear the shouting and the thunder. I even saw flashes of light from the runabouts' phasers dancing across Jerry's lifeless face.
I realized that I had just faced death and lost. I knew now what it truly was to lose to death. I was so shocked that I could not breathe, let alone sob. I just stared down, trying desperately to draw in air, and at the same time not wanting to. I would have been perfectly content to have died at that moment, but it simply hadn't happened, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.
I glanced up, seeing the bodies around me. They were officers; we were advancing again. This seeming victory meant nothing to me; everything we could accomplish here today seemed hollow and pointless now.
When the sobs finally came, they came hard. I collapsed onto the ground next to my lifelong friend's body, pounding my fists into the mud in sorrow and rage. For several long minutes I carried on, until bruises had appeared on my hands. Finally, a hand rested on my shoulder. It seemed familiar, and when I turned to look up I found myself staring at Captain Picard. There were tears in his eyes, but he wore a brave face. Behind him, I could see Julie, crying softly. Something inside of me breathed a small sigh of relief that she was alive. In an instant, I turned back to my friend's body, hating myself for that brief repast.
"There will be time to grieve later, Mike," Picard said in a choked voice. He leaned over and gently placed a hand under Jerry's broken body, indicating that I should help him. Slowly, gingerly, we lifted him off the ground.
"What…" it was all I could say. Picard seemed to channel his strength to me, if only for a moment.
"Let's take him home, Mike."
