Disclaimer: Star Trek…it's not mine. If it was there'd be more lightsabers in it. And, as it turns out, there are plenty of lightsabers in Star Wars. That one's not mine either.

Chapter 2: Passage

Unit K78 of the K700 series jerked loose from his alcove. His eye was glazed and stung from the smoke in the air, but his original nature had been Klingon, and his new nature cared little for pain. Eye stinging or not, K78 would perform his duties. He was as close to being the captain as the Borg Matrix would allow. His duties were close inspection of navigation, weapons control, and achievement of primary target. K78 had even been the one to start the ripple in the pool of the Matrix's thoughts.

Cut off the head of the snake to kill the body.

The Enterprise.

The Queen had been right to try and assimilate the Earth of the past, but she'd been wrong about the time. K78 proposed assimilating the Enterprise of the Federation snake, but not the A, B, C, D, or E version of the ship. The original. The Enterprise NCC-1701 captained by James Tiberius Kirk. Assimilate that ship, stopping its descendents from causing havoc with the Matrix, and the Earth would fall.

K78, and the entirety of the Matrix, believed this Enterprise would be an easy conquest, not having the integral information Jean Luc Picard had gained when he became Locutus of Borg, but they had been wrong. Underestimating their opponent once again. The crew of this Enterprise was more resilient than expected, they had even managed to figure out a way around the reactive shielding far faster than any species before them. Even faster than their counter parts on the Enterprise D.

If emotion hadn't been completely erased from his programming, K78 would have been angry. He would have felt the sting of failure. As it was, he felt nothing.

He walked down the hall, his heavy boots and improvements clanking on the grated floor. He walked past sparking conduits and a pile of dead drones before reaching one of the thousands of computer consoles. He plugged in, and the damage report filled his mind.

9000 Borg, dead.

87 sections breached.

Shield Generators all but gone.

15,000 wounded.

Loosing atmosphere and life support systems.

And, there was black hole looming before them.

The engines were shot, fried when the cube was jerked out of warp speed, and the transwarp coil had split in two. Options for survival were non-existent. There wasn't even enough power left in the transporters to beam onto the Enterprise, not that the pathetic excuse for a human ship would fair much better than the cube.

The little ship still had power though, had managed to swing their nose around and put all of their tiny might into escaping the black hole. A millisecond of calculations told K78 the ship wouldn't escape the black holes grasp. Not even if they dumped their warp core and tried to ride the shock wave out of harms way. The muscles twitched around K78's lips. The Klingon in him wanted to smile and laugh at the fate of the fabled Enterprise, even though he'd not been able to best them in battle.

The console K78 was connected to went wile, and the Borg "captain" knew why without checking his uplink or the ships systems. The damage done to the ship was fatal. Had they not been so close to the black hole, repairs would be easy. The ship shuddered and started to collapse as it was drawn in. Through the eyes of the Matrix he watched as drones were thrown out into space, as great jagged chunks of his vessel were ripped and shredded by the gravitational force.

K78 closed that eye, and opened another. He was inside what was left of the navigation computer. He set one last course: Ramming speed down the black hole's throat.

He closed that eye, and opened it in weapon's control. Only half the weapons were still viable, but he only needed one. With a single thought he engaged a tractor beam.

K78 opened his real eye, and watched as his console was torn out into space. He looked down the black hole's gullet, and couldn't help but laugh. It was a series of great guffaws.

"Today," he said, his Klingon voice thick and powerful. "Is a good day to die."

:***:

They have us in a tractor beam," Hikaru Sulu said. He was hunched over his board, trying to find a single vector that would allow them to escape from the black hole. It was impossible. "We're being drug in Mr. Spock."

Spock didn't say anything. He let the comment roll right off his back. He had himself under control again. "Mr. Sulu, bring us around one-hundred and eighty degrees, engines at maximum."

"Aye sir," Sulu said. His face was grim, lips bent, eyebrows furrowed. His hands worked the controls. Again, every member of the crew could feel the great ship groaning and the hull plates stretching as the Enterprise tried to follow the commands of the First Officer. The movement on the view screen was slow, but stars began to appear like the light at the end of the tunnel.

"Great Scott," Dr. Leonard McCoy said the moment he stepped out of the turbolift. His eyes were wide and glassy with awe and fear as he looked at the view screen.

"Doctor," Spock said turning to look at McCoy. "The Captain and Ensign Chekov require medical attention."

"They require a lot more than that," McCoy said. He braced himself on the rail that ran around the center of the bridge.

"We've beat a black hole before," Spock said. It wasn't just encouragement. It was fact. "We've beat the Borg. They won't drag us into the hole with them." Spock turned to the red shirt at auxiliary weapon's control. "Prepare phasers on a rotating frequency, target that tractor beam generator."

Spock looked back at McCoy and cocked an eyebrow. His lips were pursed, and McCoy thought he looked smug.

"I can't, sir," the red shirt said.

"What?" Spock said turning to face the red shirt. McCoy saw the change as surprise replaced smug.

"The phaser banks are fried, sir," the red shirt said. "From the last volley."

"Prepare torpedoes, then," Spock said.

"We don't have that much time," Sulu said.

Spock's eyebrow twitched, and he spun back to the front of the bridge. The Borg ship was breaking up as it went in. Chunks as large as the Enterprise were stretched until they were spaghetti thin, and seemed those thing strands of ship took forever to slide down the black hole's throat. He knew what the affect was, gravity. That was all. If they couldn't do something—if he couldn't do something—the Enterprise would undergo the same noodle treatment. Spock looked at Kirk's prone form and damned him for putting him in this position.

"Swing us around," Spock said. He walked to the Captain's chair and sat down. "Engage engines at maximum warp."

"Mr. Spock?" Sulu twisted to look back at the Vulcan. His face was opened like a book, fear and surprise, maybe even a little betrayal, could be read there.

"Sling shot, Mr. Sulu," Spock said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We're going to sling shot around the black hole, just as we planned."

"Aye, sir," Sulu said. He set about his work, swinging the ship around, back towards the black hole, and engaged maximum warp. The black hole grew.

Author's note: Sorry about the length of time it took to put this up. I'm trying to find a way to be able to get a chapter up at least once a week, preferably on Friday or Saturday. But, with my chaotic work schedule it's hard to find time to work on this and my original work. Hopefully we'll get something lined out.