Paint and Powder
A Star Trek anthology by Andrew Joshua Talon
DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager et al are the property of CBS Television, and creation of Gene Roddenberry. Please support the official release.
Of the original Sector 001 Club, I haven't paid much attention to Budapest. In the novels she actually gets boarded by Borg Drones during the Battle of Sector 001.
So...
Budapest: Kinetic
2373
Sector 001
The Borg had returned. It was a certainty that they would attempt another assault on the Federation at some point. The only question was 'when'.
Budapest and her sisters had known this. The few surviving AIs that had encountered the Borg attested to this. And the simple fact that a massive industrialized area of space like theirs was too tempting a target for the Collective to ignore.
Budapest was built to fight the Borg, a reflection of Starfleet's revitalized fighting spirit. So many had enlisted after Wolf 359, so many new sisters were born and trained to fight. So many older sisters brought out of retirement and put into more powerful starships.
Every one of them remembered Wolf 359 as though they had been there. And in a sense, they had been.
Yorktown and Endeavour had been the only surviving AIs that hadn't been assimilated. Hell, Endeavour was the only one that still had a mostly functional hull and half her crew, while Yorktown had just been buried in the debris field so deep the Cube hadn't bothered to take her. But they had recorded everything, and every moment of that battle was downloaded, copied, and distributed across the Federation.
A number of strategies to counter the Borg had been developed, alongside the more advanced ships and weapons. Old fleet doctrines had been dusted off, modernized, and tested in simulations and wargames.
All for this fight.
And while the battle had been going on for four days, ten hours, and thirty-four minutes, across two hundred lightyears, with over a hundred ships destroyed or disabled and hundreds dead...
Budapest felt confident that this would be recorded as a proper battle, and not what Wolf 359 really had been:
A massacre.
The Ayanami, Prescott, Spruance and Malika, little Coontz-class destroyers, bravely made torpedo runs against the cube from range, with a phaser barrage, before breaking off for the Miranda-class Tien Na Man, Sitak, Majestic, and Rogers to make their run from another side. Dozens of other little destroyers followed suit, charging the cube from all vectors and never letting the Borg have a moment's peace.
The New Orleans-class Frigates Rutledge, Renegade, Savannah, and Melkorfist fired long range torpedo barrages, alongside the Galaxy-class Venture, Glorious, and Akagi. Nebula-class starships like the Farragut, Kelvin, Yurgoya, and Endeavour herself provided additional fire support and coordinated the dozens of repair ships and utility cruisers skittering about the periphery of the battle.
Fighters from the carriers like the Jupiter, Akagi, Raging Queen, and Shenzhou strafed and bombarded the cube up close, casting up huge fireballs and plasma explosions across the pitted surface. Sensors ships like Yukikaze and Portland jammed and fooled the Borg sensors, casting ghosts, decoys, and drones to confuse them. Intrepid, Bellerophon, and other science ships did quick strafing runs and blasted the cube with all sorts of exotic energy beams from their deflectors to knock out power to sections of the cube or inflict deadly radiation spikes on the drones within.
Even Cerritos and other California-class utility ships fired some torpedoes and phaser blasts to cover their sisters as needed in between runs to rearm and repair ships. Further out in the orbit of the huge cube, repair ships like Vestal, Medusa and Akashi scrambled around and quickly fixed damaged ships to get them back into the fight.
And naturally, Budapest herself with her sister Norway, Saber, Akira, Steamrunner, Saber and Defiant-classes did the most dangerous work:
They got in close and pounded the cube with everything they had, expertly dodging the fire from their longer ranged sisters and coordinating on any wound they opened up in the massive beast.
They were the ones with armor, and tough hulls. They had the overpowered impulse drives and supercharged phaser arrays.
They had been built with the Borg's style of fighting in mind: Up close and personal.
Defiant herself was leading the charge, breaking from the battle barely long enough to get rearmed and some basic repairs done before plunging right back into the fight.
They had lost so many... Yet Budapest felt a curious calm as she lashed out with phasers, adjusted her shields, coordinated her holographic doubles in the sickbay to help her wounded.
It was only natural, she supposed. She was doing what she was born to do. Her purpose was being fulfilled.
And while she wasn't whooping in savage joy like Thunderchild was, riding fire, there was a natural satisfaction to this.
Which is when the Borg decided to change their tactics. The cube's hull gained a few protrusions like spikes... That it fired out in a hail. Yeager and a few fighters blasted several of them apart, but a large swarm of the missiles broke through. One smashed right into the bridge of the Oslo.
"Budapest! They're in my systems! They're in my-!"
Oslo's cry was cut off, and she vanished from the Borderlands network. A few moments later, she exploded, her warp core going up in a spectacular explosion.
Another Borg projectile struck Budapest on her port saucer, brushing past her shields like they weren't even there. The vessel latched on, and her hull was demolished.
Her cameras on Deck 7 showed the Borg pore in through the gaping wound in her hull. Her security forces opened fire with phasers, downing the first wave... But the second marched through the fire like the energy blasts were mere raindrops.
Her Security chief, a tough Ktarian named Greggtyrpich, switched to the bayonet on his phaser rifle and stabbed the first Borg right through the throat. The drone faltered, and Greggtyrpich pulled a vibroknife and slashed the offending drone's throat tubes more thoroughly.
Still the drones advanced, even as her crew tried to use the bayonets. They wounded the Borg, but their tough armor and cybernetic enhancements made the strikes damaging and not fatal. Ensign Fren was seized, and the drone holding her jammed her throat with metallic tubes.
She fell... And rose again, her eyes glassy and her skin going pale.
"They can assimilate with a touch!" Greggtyrpich shouted. He slashed through the seizing arm of another drone with his knife. "PULL BACK! PULL-!"
A Borg tackled him to the deck. The rest of the tactical officers pulled back. Budapest immediately engaged forcefields and withdrew all the air from those areas. The Borg that were just assimilated... Her crew... They died almost instantly.
The drones kept coming... Then another pod struck her bridge head on. Borg drones stormed in. Captain sh'Raazn thrust her bayoneted phaser rifle right through the invading drone's eye socket, and fired her phaser. The drone's head was vaporized, and fell, as sh'Raazn barked ordered.
"Budapest! Get us away from the cube!" She shouted. "Initiate ship defense-!"
Budapest tried to manifest her hologram on the bridge, tried to grab the drone... But it grabbed sh'Raazn and injected her too.
"I have shut down bridge controls, get out, GET OUT!" Budapest shouted. Her surviving bridge crew headed down the turbolift shaft. She tried to vent the atmosphere, but the Borg were already overriding her local controls.
She activated hard cuts-Physically separating the ODN lines from the bridge. This would keep the Borg from accessing anything, but it meant the bridge was now theirs.
As was her captain...
Budapest grit her teeth, and focused. Her combat gynoid came online, opening her eyes in the armory. Ensign Sam Bowers, the second in command for tactical, charged in with what was left of his team. He fixed his eyes right on her.
"Budapest! Where are the TR-116s?!"
"Here," Budapest said, quickly ejecting the projectile weapons out of their casings, and her gynoid gathered up all the ammo clips she could and handed them to the security team. Bowers loaded his weapon, and looked over at the gynoid arming her own.
"Bridge status?"
"Evacuated, but several crewmembers, the captain included, were assimilated," Budapest reported grimly. Bowers nodded, the tall dark skinned human focusing.
"All right. Can you keep them contained?"
"I am rotating forcefield frequencies and power levels every nanosecond," she reported, "but they are trying to force their way through."
"How many drones in each of those pods, do you think?" Rayne Dearling, a human tactical officer, asked curiously.
"I estimate one hundred and twenty drones in each pod," Budapest stated, "looks like the rest of the fleet is intercepting the pods before they get to them."
"We were just unlucky," Bowers grunted. "All right. Budapest? Keep them locked out. We'll go through and try to push them back into their pod on this deck. Then, the bridge."
"Do we know if these things will work?" Crewman Greg Byers, another human, asked skeptically.
The armory doors opened, and a Borg drone entered. Bowers whipped out his TR-116, and fired. The tritanium round blew a hole five centimeters across in the drone's torso, and it fell over, completely dead.
Dead silence filled the armory for three seconds.
"Guess that answers that," Bowers stated, "MOVE OUT!"
Her tactical officers engaged the Borg. And across the ship, Budapest worked fast. She grabbed more TR-116s, and used site-to-site transporting to get them into the hands of her other crewmembers. Most had no experience with projectile weapons, but the stabilization technology for the weapons were the same as on any phaser. So they weren't too hard to learn.
More Borg fell to shots... And Budapest transported ammo and help however she could.
The Borg drones on her bridge were a problem though. They were forcing their way through the turbolift shaft with sheer numbers. Her crew elsewhere around the ship were fighting back the drones, but that many coming in behind them...
No. Budapest had to do something.
She analyzed the design of the TR-116. It was a good design, no doubt... But it was really more of a prototype, a concept demonstrator for slugthrowers. They were single shot, unlike projectile weapons of the past...
Budapest ran millions of simulations. She worked out a design, and uploaded it to the small fabrication replicator in the armory. She looked it over carefully.
It was crude. Millions of simulations on a weapon were no match for tried and true real world testing.
But, as she picked up the prototype firearm, she would soon get the opportunity.
The turbolift doors came loose. The first drone entered onto the deck.
The Federation officers were using projectile weapons. It would take longer to analyze and adapt with such weapons given how Borg forcefields worked, but sheer numbers would prevail in the meantime.
The first drone jammed a interface tool into the computer panel, to begin accessing the local systems... When the power went out. The Borg drones switched to infrared vision and sensors. They detected a gynoid-The one operated by the ship's artificial intelligence. Gynoid or not, she was only one against them. They moved to swarm her...
Which is when the gynoid held up a four barreled weapon, locked it onto herself with an elaborate harness, and opened fire.
All four barrels boomed, putting dozens of tritanium rounds through the drones in seconds. More tried to pour out of the turbolift shaft, but the bodies of their fallen impeded their progress. Making them easy targets for the gynoid.
The Budapest walked up calmly. She tossed a photon grenade into the turbolift shaft, and raised the forcefields to contain the blast.
The antimatter went off, sending a blast of plasma racing up the turbolift shaft. Borg drones erupted out of the gap in the ruined bridge, tossed out into the airless void. Several of their faces were visible to Budapest... Including the face of her former captain.
Budapest took a deep breath, and reloaded her weapons.
She wasn't done yet. And neither was her crew.
She was born for this, after all...