* Disclaimer. I don't own Star Trek. Although how cool would that be? This is just something I do for fun and not for money. Okay now that's out of the way, on to the nerdy stuff. *
An away team of four materialized inside the largest intact section of the crashed Borg ship. Four wrist-wrapped flashlights powered on simultaneously. With phasers set to a rotating modulation and tricorders set to a constant scan, they immediately initiated defensive protocols for the dangerous away mission. Aside from Tuvok, all of them developed watery eyes from the rancid smell. They buried their remonstrations and continued with scans.
Chakotay plodded forward in the feverish heat, stepping over the Borg corpses. "There must be thousands of drones around here. All dead."
"They had to have been going pretty fast on impact," Harry speculated.
Tuvok conducted several Vulcan-quick calculations assisted with his tricorder, "According to the dispersal pattern of the debris field, I estimate the speed upon impact was one quarter impulse."
"Not much of a crater; they must have been trying to make an emergency landing." Chakotay said.
"A very unsuccessful one." Seven pointed out, as she straightened her bearings, burying her fear. "This was a long-range tactical sphere." Her scans lead her through a corridor, indicating the nearby presence of a partially shielded terminal, glowing a foggy green. "There is still power running through this junction."
"See if you can download anything that'll tell us what happened here. Harry, keep her company," Chakotay said before he turned around to continue the investigation. "Tuvok and I will keep going this way. We'll rendezvous at this junction in 10 minutes."
"Be careful, Commander." Seven said with a worried expression. Her and Chakotay had become very close recently. But as a subordinate it would be inappropriate to publically display affection, even when the chance suddenly increased that one may possibly never see the other again. She caught his amiable glimpse before the moment passed.
"See you soon," he gazed upon her with a vaunted brilliance before confidently resuming the mission with Tuvok at his side.
They ventured deeper into the center of the large sphere fragment, encountering dismembered Borg corpses still kicking with a computed instinct. Small fires and fallen bulkheads made the difficulty surge. Impassable corridors impeded the efficiency of their investigation, causing Chakotay to gain more anxiety with every added minute. Clouded sections remained dark and unpowered while some flashed emerald light at random intervals. Along the way Tuvok had discovered that although the ship was in a million pieces, the Borg pilings were autonomously reconnecting damaged circuits, regenerating pathways.
They came across a pitch-black hallway as Tuvok's tricorder caught his attention. He analyzed the mysterious section, interpreting very complex data. "Curious."
Chakotay rotated toward Tuvok. "Got something?"
"I'm detecting dense concentrations of chronometric particles, 22 meters down this section."
They directed their lights down the foreboding corridor, illuminating only a tiny fraction of it. "Let's have a look," Chakotay said, leading the way.
Ablative metal fragments and hanging bio-tubes cluttered their path. Intermittent electric zaps lit the murky interior like a lightning storm. Several left and right turns and 22 meters later they came across the source of the particles, suspended inside a reinforced containment chamber. A spherical object, no more than a human hand-width in diameter rotated fleetly on an unpredictable axis. It gave their tricorders some very strange readings.
"My scans can't make heads or tails of this thing," Chakotay said, still analyzing his results.
"I am getting equally inconclusive readings. It appears to consist of several unidentifiable isotopes." Tuvok visually examined the chamber, and then returned to his scanner. "However, the flood of chronometric energy is forming a temporal rift within this section."
Chakotay thought maybe this was a cloaking device of some sort, but realized that the Borg have never implemented cloaking technology in the past. Why would they? He thought. This must have been something completely different. He decided curiosity didn't outweigh the risk of staying there. It was time to get back to the others. "Alright, take one last scan, and let's get out of here."
Seven alternated between her tricorder and the Borg interface, reconstructing fragmented data-blocks into translatable LCARS unicode. She verbalized her first conclusion to Harry, who was innocuously examining the surrounding area. "The interlink core of this ship utilizes technology assimilated while I was still in the collective."
"What do you mean by that?" Harry said with attention slightly diverted by his scans.
"It means this ship did not originate in the time period that Anshar claimed."
"Maybe they traveled to the past and then back to this time. You once told me that the Borg traveled back in time and tried to stop Zephram Cochran's first warp flight."
"It is possible."
She rummaged through a few more gigaquads of data, drone manifests, maintenance logs, tactical updates, until she uncovered encrypted data. Using some unconventional decryption algorithms that she'd learned over the years, she quickly decoded the data. It was information in regards to some kind of new propulsion method, using controlled chronometric particle emissions. With limited time, she began downloading the massive database, knowing she would be able to examine it later. Half way through the download she realized that 10 minutes had passed. Chakotay and Tuvok hadn't returned, and she began to let uncertainty turn into apprehension.
The broken ship suddenly rocked and rumbled, violently shaking all around them. The ground had caused Harry to stumble off balance and land within kissing range of a fallen drone. "What's happening, Seven?" Harry said with a trembling voice as small debris fell, stinging them like bees.
Seven reacted sharply, frantically punching her tricorder, unable to believe the results of the quick scan. "A temporal rift is causing rapid geologic instability on this planet. We must evacuate immediately." Finally letting worry get the best of her, she slapped her communicator, "Seven of Nine to Chakotay."
No response.
"Seven of Nine to Chakotay, respond."
Long moments passed as the earthquakes intensified.
Harry began to suppress his panic. After regaining his footing, he made his own attempt at communication. "Kim to Chakotay, do you read me?"
"Right behind you, Harry." Chakotay said, stumbling closer at an invigorated rate with Tuvok racing behind him. "Sorry I'm late," he said to Seven, noticing her indulgently relieved expression. "I think it's about time to get out of this bucket. Chakotay to Voyager, four to beam out."
They waited a moment while they realized Voyager wasn't going to respond to his hail. He tried again and once more, yet received nothing but silence.
Still with his tricorder in hand, Tuvok made a suggestion. "The temporal rift is apparently blocking our transmissions. Perhaps we should find a way to the surface."
"Agreed, let's go!" Chakotay exclaimed, promptly leading them away. He grabbed Seven's arm and wrapped it around him, making sure she stood on her feet, and crutched her to the front.
B'Elanna was manning Harry's station in his absense. With Voyager's sophisticated sensors at her disposal, she quickly took notice of the desperate situation happening. "Captain, I'm picking up some intense seismic activity on the planets' surface not far from where we beamed the away team."
Janeway perked from the Captain's chair as her heart dropped at the news. "On screen."
The monitor displayed a tiny chasm expanding from under the Borg wreckage. Lava began to flow from it, bubbling outward to envelope the surrounding sand dunes as some of the ship fragments tumbled down the expanding fissure. Janeway stood up and snapped toward ops, "Beam them back, now!"
Few agonizing seconds passed. B'Elanna responded in a regretful tone, "I'm having trouble getting a lock on them, Captain." She swiftly reset the pattern buffers, took all the available power from the impulse engines and dumped it directly into the annular confinement beam. "I'm going to try it again." Professional taps on the console with no time to think made B'Elanna the best person for the job. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't lock on to their signals. "They aren't close enough to the edge for me to get a lock on them. We'll have to wait until they get closer."
Tactical had sounded alarms, beeping repeatedly until the relief tactical officer reported with a nervous inflection, "Captain, I'm detecting, four transwarp signatures, bearing 154-082, about 3 million kilometers from the port stern."
"That makes things interesting," Tom smirked with sarcasm.
Janeway quickly sighed, wishing she had more time to dwell on the decision to come here. "Interesting isn't the word I'd use," she said trying not to chasten the helmsman. She returned to the Captain's chair, reluctant to leave the system, reluctant to stay. But she remembered that no one, not even the Borg, could bully her around. "Battle stations." Janeway issued the order, and instantly over a hundred crewmembers steadily prepared for a devastating Borg attack.
The battle-ready crew manned their stations. Tactical had already begun to rotate shield harmonics. Security officers emptied weapons lockers, grabbing as many type-3 phasers as they could, and reconfigured them to hold off a potential boarding party.
As Janeway keyed and analyzed scenarios on her tactical display, Anshar stepped from the turbolift and onto the bridge with a more stable stride, heading toward B'Elanna. He pushed her aside ungraciously, and swiftly plunged his new assimilation tubules inside the Operations station. The Doctor had followed him all the way from the Cargo Bay, certain that Anshar was only trying to help.
"Doctor, what's he doing?" Janeway noticed Anshar's stone face glowed with a green hue, his eyes had turned a likewise color. The implants protruding from his body had finished repairing themselves, and he looked more like a Borg drone than his old self. Power from the ops console fluctuated as Anshar began inputting new data. The Doctor attempted to reassure the bridge crew with a calm demeanor and posture, not knowing the situation.
"He stormed out of the Cargo Bay a few minutes ago. He said he had to save Seven. Is the away team in danger?"
"We're all in danger at this point," B'Elanna said, resenting Anshar's very rude intrusion of her station, yet stood patiently behind him with her arms crossed in front of her.
The Borg opened fire. Four Borg Cubes targeted Voyager's engines. Tom initiated a set of evasive maneuvers which caused the Borg disrupters to be absorbed on a reinforced section of shields, but still powerful enough to bring them down to 80%.
Tom sat experienced at the helm, hastily composing a symphony of vector calculations on his console, "Initiating evasive pattern Gamma 7."
The ship thundered against the impact of the Borg weaponry, sending sparks flying across the bridge as crewman were fiercely jostled at their stations. Coolant began spewing out from a shattered conduit. The Borg were closing in.
"Shields down to 28%," the tactical officer stated after the last volley.
"They're coming around for another pass, Captain. I can't shake them off." Tom's face became red in anticipation of capture.
"Get us out of here Tom, maximum warp." Janeway commanded as she tightly braced herself.
The Doctor objected, obviously with a different strategy. "What about the away team? We can't leave them down there!"
"Just do it!" The Captain reiterated, noting the Doctor's objections in her mind.
Tom set a random course and attempted to initialize the warp field. But the console denied him access to that portion of helm control. "I, I can't. My commands aren't going through."
The bridge grew dark suddenly before emergency lights illuminated, as if Voyager had completely lost power. B'Elanna stood over Anshar's shoulder, observing him as the assimilation tubules operated the console at a superhuman speed. "Captain, he's rerouting power from all systems to deflector control, including life support."
The Captain deliberated with herself before giving her next order, remembering to trust her instincts, to trust the alien. She walked quickly to ops and poised herself in front of Anshar. "What are you doing, Anshar?"
"Standby. Do not interfere," He said monotonously.
She diplomatically said in a peaceful voice, "Anshar, we need life support. We'll all perish without it."
He continued in his computerized tone without any hint of emotion, "Trust, Janeway. Voyager will not be damaged. Seven of Nine will not be damaged."
The three surrounding him took a step back as a low-pitched hum emanated from all sides of the ship. The deflector dish powered to enormous amounts, emitting extremely brilliant white light. A flash of highly energetic particles exploded spherically outward from Voyager in all directions. These particles smashed against the nearby Borg vessels, causing an amazing amount of damage to them. Tiny explosions inside the cubes could be seen on the viewer.
The bridge crew stood in shock. Anshar removed his tubules, returning control of the ops station to B'Elanna, while her jaw dropped from her observations.
"Captain," B'Elanna said, noticeably confused. "I don't know how he did it, but all the Borg cubes have been disabled." The console revealed another astounding fact. "And somehow he beamed the away team back on the ship. They're in Transporter Room 1."
"Doctor, go see if they're okay." Janeway ordered. He exited the bridge, smiling heavily at Anshar.
All the crewman on the bridge aimed their eyes at the heroic alien, who stood motionless beside B'Elanna, and then reared his head up at her as she spoke to him.
"Glad you're on our side." She said, clearly impressed.
Tom spun around in his chair back toward his station as it beeped with new information. "Don't start the party yet, this planet in front of us is becoming very unstable."
The tiny chasm had exponentially grown planet-wide. Numerous red cracks all over the surface began to collapse under the weight of the massive rock.
"Can you get us out of here, now?" A simper accompanied her question.
"Affirmative Captain, engaging at maximum warp." Voyager jumped at high warp, as the view screen remained on the planet. They watched as it exploded, barely outrunning the shockwave.