“We are the Borg.”

The most terrifying words known to any sentient life form moved across the bridge like the cold breath of doom, making everyone who heard it know with that one sentence, their lives were about to end. No one spoke, but neither could they breathe as they listened to that toneless, mechanical voice echoing through their ears, a prelude to the horror that was to come.

“Lower your shields and surrender your ship. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

The Borg cube, one of four, loomed large in the view screen of the USS Maverick and for a second, Chris Larabee thought they might as well have been the four horsemen of doom. As he sat in the command chair, possibly for the last time, watching the inevitable enveloping his crew and his ship, he forced himself to keep his eyes fixed on the screen ahead. Chris simply could not bear to have his comrades look into his face and realise he had no tricks to save them.

Against this enemy, they were utterly powerless.

The Maverick might have been able to fight off one cube perhaps even two, but four was beyond the ship, and they all knew it. The enemy had them surrounded, and there was nowhere to run, even if they did manage to get past the blockade. The transwarp drives on the Borg ships would overtake them quickly, long before they were beamed off the bridge into a living hell.

The idea of his entire crew, over a thousand men, women and children becoming assimilated, where everything that made them who they were was trapped in a prison they would never escape, was more than he could bear. Beside him, he didn’t have to look at Mary to know she was thinking about Billy, his young life ending before it even had a chance to begin. It made him feel guilty, being grateful Adam was presently on Earth, spending a month there attending bridging classes to aid his future application to Starfleet Academy.

Chris had so wanted to be there for him and hated the fact the boy would be losing another parent. He hoped Adam was strong enough to bear it.

“Chris,” Buck finally spoke.

“I know,” Chris swallowed, closing his eyes and steeling himself for the inevitable.

“It’s okay pard,” Vin looked over his shoulder at him, the Vulcan’s cobalt coloured eyes conveying without needing to go into detail, he understood this had to be done. “We’re with you.”

A hand reached for his and Chris relented enough to let those long, slender fingers intertwine between his own. Feeling the warmth of her touch made Chris finally turned to meet Mary’s gaze. Chris wanted to tell her he was sorry, that he should have been a better Captain so that he could have found a way to save them. Yet there was no recrimination in her blue-grey eyes, even if they were filled with sorrow. While she did not weep, he still could tell she was crying inside.

“Save us, Chris,” she said quietly, her eyes glistening with emotion. “Save us before it’s too late.”

“I’m so sorry,” Chris whispered, unable to say anything else. The apology was not just to her but to the rest of his crew whom he had so utterly failed.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she said softly. “You did everything you could. Now you need to do the only thing left.”

Chris nodded and faced front again, glaring at the cubes who would not wait much longer to begin taking them. With a deep breath, he uttered what might be his final order as master of this vessel.

“Computer, initiate auto-destruct.”

AN HOUR EARLIER

Chris Larabee was happy.

After the death of his wife and child, he resigned himself to being merely content. True happiness without the love of his life seemed to be an unreachable goal, and though he had moved past the anguish of losing them, he knew the future would always bear the taint of their absence. Still, his existence was not one of complete despair. There were glimmers of sunlight through the grey of his life, where hope penetrated the shadows of his heart.

Becoming the master of the USS Maverick meant the achievement of a lifelong dream, even if the sweetness of the prize was offset by the bitter aftertaste of his widowhood. His captaincy brought him other boons, some that were completely unexpected and others that were familiar like a warm blanket. Buck Wilmington returned to his life, cementing a friendship that began at the Academy into brotherhood by the time Buck took his place as Chris's first officer.

Waking up at Starfleet Medical after the Battle of Sector 001, Chris had thought he was having a pleasant dream about Marcus Larabee until he opened his eyes and saw a face just as thoughtful and kind. Meeting Josiah Sanchez was like getting back that absent-minded old man, surrounded by his books and wearing his out of place bow ties. With a bottle of Saurian brandy, Josiah could make him think he was talking to his father again, allowing him to hide nothing, including the vulnerabilities Chris tried so hard to hide.

When he first met Vin Tanner on the bridge of the Rutherford, Vin had been terrified of his own shadow, but somehow, they made a connection Chris still did not understand. It was like the younger man knew precisely what was in his head, without Chris ever needing to say it. Unlike most people who trod lightly around the Captain, Vin did not. The Vulcan was unafraid of him because just like Chris, Vin knew his place was forever at his Captain's side.

Then two things happened to alter his world entirely and told Chris in no uncertain terms, life could throw you for a loop at the slightest whim.

From across the different dimensions, he found Adam again. It was not the child he buried, Chris was not so deluded he thought that for one moment, but this Adam, a teenager, had never known his father and had just lost a mother. They were both wounded in their way and yet the familial connection they made upon first meeting was undeniable. Drawn together by similar needs, he had become Adam's father, and Adam had become his son.

The kid who was seventeen years old never knew a life that wasn't a struggle, and it was with pride; Chris was able to give him a new start. Now Adam was in San Francisco, undertaking a months worth of classes to help him qualify for admission to Starfleet Academy in the next year. It fulfilled a few of the fragmented dreams Chris mined in secret when his own Adam was born.

Yet even getting Adam back was nowhere as surprising as what happened the instant he laid his eyes on her.

When Mary stepped into his Ready Room that first time, Chris knew he was lost. The only time he had ever felt a reaction so strong, was the moment he laid eyes on Sarah Conley. Suddenly, the grief that assailed him for so many years became a thing in the past, to be finally put away instead of being an ever-present reminder of his loss. It was time to move on, and though he fought it hard, it was impossible.

Chris Larabee had fallen in love with Mary Travis the moment he saw her.

Now, as he lay next to her sleeping form on his bed, his fingertips tracing small circles against the luminous skin of her shoulder, blinded by the glimmer of her golden hair, he knew he was happy.

Watching her sleep, her lips curled with a little smile of contentment, dreaming what he hoped were beautiful dreams inspired by the night they share together, Chris knew he wanted to wake up to this sight every morning for the rest of his life. Of course, it was a secret desire he shared with no one because he was still Captain of the Maverick and unless he was ready to make a more permanent commitment, something neither of them was prepared for, they would steal moments like this for the foreseeable future.

While Adam was away, no doubt engaging in the kind of debauchery that brought a tear to Buck's eye and a new streak of grey in Chris's hair, Chris invited Mary to dinner the night before, and it ended with her staying over. Billy was having a sleepover with Lilith at Audrey King's quarters, giving them freedom from their parental duties and the leave to explore the intimate side of their relationship for the first time.

"Hey," she smiled when she fluttered her eyes open and saw his face over hers.

"Hey," Chris greeted her with a kiss. "Sleep well?"

With a look of feline satisfaction, Mary let out a wistful sigh. "Eventually."

A swell of masculine pride raced through him, and he grinned. "It's not my fault you're an animal who wouldn't let me rest. I could barely keep up with you."

"Me?" She shoved him gently, and as Chris landed on his back, Mary took the opportunity to roll on top of him crushing his bare chest with her own naked flesh and relishing it when she felt Chris's arms circling her waist.

With playful mischief, she retaliated without repentance. "Well, I'm used to Vulcan stamina."
Chris's eyes narrowed. "Lieutenant Travis, that was a shot across the bow. There's gotta be something in the regs about impugning a captain's performance."

"I'm afraid not," she shook her head sweetly. "You'll just have to prove it."

Laughing, Chris rolled on top of her suddenly and lowered his head to kiss her. "I'll show you Vulcan stamina...."

"We can't leave this here," Vin Tanner told Julia Pemberton as they stared at the collection of chrome, iron and rubber spread out across the floor of his quarters where the coffee table usually sat.

Julia nodded in agreement. While she saw some order in the parts arrayed before her, to the uninitiated, it was just a big mess, and Vin would have a lot of explaining to do when Alex returned to their quarters after duty and saw it. "You should have told me you were building this thing. I would have assigned you one of the empty storage holds to keep it."

Vin shrugged unhappily, somewhat chagrined he had not considered the idea when he was first struck with the inspiration for his latest' project'. "I didn't think it would be that hard. I figured I'd have it done in a few hours."

Julia stared at him. "You're kidding."

The Vulcan bristled even further, disliking his mechanical ability being questioned. "I've built things before!"

"Model ships Vin! Model ships! This is not a model ship, this is a 2018 Harley-Davidson 114ci Fat Bob! I mean it's as great as bikes can get from that era! Look at it! It's got 124ci barrels and Mahle pistons and an M8 camshaft. Not to mention the inner cam bearing, high capacity lifters, adjustable M8 pushrods, clutch pack with 1270mm springs! This is a piece of art! You don't build it in a few hours!"

"Okay, okay!" Vin threw up his hands in mea culpa since she lost him right after the word bike. "Can you help me put it together or not?"

Vin had tried to do the work himself, but it became quite apparent to him, especially after Julia made her recital, he was out of his depth. He honestly believed he could get it done during the afternoon before Alex got back from her shift, but as the day progressed and his frustration mounted, he was forced to call in reinforcements.

Julia swatted him on the shoulder. "Not before Alex gets back!"

"Ow! You know I'm starting to see why Ezra hasn't asked you to move in yet."

"Remarks like that are not going to convince me to help you," she huffed.

"Sorry, sorry!" Vin's apology came complete with an unrepentant smirk. "Come on, Julia, please?"

Julia threw up her hands in defeat, unable to deny the man when he gave her that puppy dog look. If it was able to penetrate Alex Styles's tough demeanour, Julia stood no chance whatsoever. She was too much of a soft touch. "Alright, I'll help, but first things first. We're going to transport this whole thing to Cargo Bay 2. That will save you from being murdered when Alex gets home."

"Thanks, Julia," Vin grinned and planted a grateful kiss on her cheek. "You're the best."

"Yeah, yeah," Julia shook her head in resignation. "That's what all you men say until I mention the word commitment."

"This is where the wealthy and the powerful rule. This is her world, a world apart from mine. Her name is Catherine, and from the moment I saw her, she captured my heart by her beauty, her warmth and her courage. I knew then, as I know now, she would change my life forever."

"He comes from a secret place, far below the city streets, hiding his face from strangers, safe from hate and harm. He brought me there to save my life. And now wherever I go, he's with me in spirit, for we have a bond stronger than friendship or love, and although we cannot be together, we will never ever be apart."

"CUT!"

Josiah Sanchez exchanged a look with Charlotte Richmond, both telegraphing the same thought to each other to commit homicide if they heard those accursed words one more time. Both inhaled deeply as if the intake of oxygen would settle their rising exasperation at the lone spectator watching their rehearsal for the Maverick's drama society's production of Beauty and the Beast.

"What's wrong with it now, Commander?" Charlotte maintained her calm, turning a barely concealed look of irritation at Ezra Standish who was watching the opening scene of their play.

From the front row before the stage, Ezra rose to his feet and exhaled an exaggerated air of disappointment. He was wearing a grimace, and in Josiah's opinion, that would be an accurate depiction of the pain Ezra would feel when the Counsellor gave him a knuckle sandwich if he continued on his present course.

"I am," Ezra paused to find the right word, "if I am employing the correct vernacular, not feeling it. You two are meant to be tortured lovers, your tragedy must swallow the audience whole from the very onset. If they do not believe you two are hopelessly in love, then they will hardly endure the next three hours of this production, will they? Right now, I do not believe I see that level of commitment from either of you. I need more."

Josiah's spine stiffened, trying to draw from that well of infinite patience allowing him to do his job but he had been trapped on this Holodeck for the last two hours having been coerced to take on the role of the Beast, replacing Lieutenant Stevens who had come down with Rigellian flu. Audrey King, who was a member of the society, had asked him to step in but he had not realised Ezra who was directing this particular production, would turn into the 24th century's version of Cecil B DeMille.

"I think it was fine," Josiah replied, maintaining his calm, relaxed Counsellor's facade even if he was rumbling inside like a volcano. "Don't you think it was fine Lieutenant?"

"I think it was perfect," Charlotte gave Josiah a look revealing the sincerity of her words. No matter how much of an ass their director was behaving, Josiah's delivery of that speech was perfect. Hell, if a man said such things to her, she certainly would follow him anywhere.

"Well I am the director," Ezra retorted, not liking this mini-coup developing between his leading man and lady. "It is my opinion that must be satisfied."

That did it for Josiah.

"Lieutenant, would you like to join me for lunch?"

Charlotte brightened into a smile. "Why, Counsellor, I would love to."

Ezra stared at both of them. "Ladies, gentlemen, we are still in the middle of rehearsal!"

Both Charlotte and Josiah ignored him as they descended the steps from the stage and strolled past Ezra, seemingly not having heard a word he said.

"Now, you are being childish!" He called out after them when Josiah called for the arch to appear. The familiar doors of the Holodeck appeared, sliding open to reveal the corridor outside. Both officers continued to ignore the Security Chief, lifting their chin in haughty indifference as they left the room.

Ezra watched them leave and then mused to himself. "Perhaps it was something I said?"

Inez Recillos caught a glimpse of Buck Wilmington the instant he walked into Four Corners and was somewhat surprised to see him. Glancing at the chronometer on the wall, she knew Buck should be on the bridge, keeping an eye on things since from what he mentioned at dinner the night before, Chris was taking a personal day. Considering their missions of late, what with the diplomatic duties the Captain had been undertaking, negotiating treaties with several new planets who were joining the Federation, he needed the break.

Then she noted JD Dunne was also here, seated in one of the booths facing the window, afforded a spectacular view as the Maverick travelled at warp through the frontier. The young man's usual enthusiasm and bright personality were nowhere to be seen, but then again, Inez, like the rest of the ship knew what was at the heart of his melancholy. Casey Wells, his girlfriend since he arrived on the Maverick almost a year and a half ago, was leaving the ship.

"Buck," Inez waved him over as the First Officer made eye contact.

As always, Buck felt his heart skip a little at the sight of the lovely bartender who no longer looked at him as the pest who was still on the make, but someone she genuinely cared for. Tearing his gaze away from JD whom he was headed towards, Buck made a slight detour and went to the bar instead. Catching the direction of Inez's eyes before she turned to him, Buck guessed she was just as concerned for JD as he was.

"Hey Darlin'," Buck greeted.

"What are you doing here? I thought the Captain left you in charge of the bridge today?"

"He did," Buck nodded in affirmation. "But Alex is at the con so she'll keep us from running into an asteroid or something. Actually, I was here because JD should have been on duty ten minutes ago and the boy's never late."

"Oh," Inez's expression turned into one of concern because being late for one's shift when it came to JD, was an indication of a more significant problem than mere tardiness. "She hasn't even gone yet. What's he going to be like when she does leave?"

"I don't know," Buck shrugged unhappily as he leaned against the counter, eyeing JD, who was nursing a drink in silent misery. "But he's young, and she's really the first girl he's fallen hard for. That can be tough to get over."

"True," Inez nodded, although she could hardly compare her own experience with JD's. Raphael had been her childhood love, and until his death at the Battle of Cardassia Prime two years ago, she had never imagined life without him. In the last three months, she had started to move on, and Buck had played a large part in her healing. Still, first loves were hard to forget.

"I mean, I can't blame her. Bajor is going through a whole lot of change right now, and the girl's never spent any time there. I can understand her wanting to go back there for a few months, to reconnect with her people. Besides, it's not like she's going forever. Chris says she's the best Yeoman in the fleet. Whoever fills the slot she leaves behind is only going to get the job temporarily until Casey is ready to come back."

"One can manage a long distance relationship," Inez pointed out. "I did it for years with Raphael. It was hard, but we pulled it off."

"That's right," Buck nodded, no longer intimidated by her mention of her dead fiance. He was confident enough in her feelings for him and understood Raphael was a big part of her life. One that could not be forgotten simply because they were in a relationship now. "Anyway, I better go get him before he throws himself into the warp core or something."

"Good luck," Inez sighed, retreating when she saw Lt. Opa waiting at the far corner of the bar for service.

It didn't take long for Buck to cross the floor of Four Corners to join JD at his table. The young lieutenant was nursing a mug of coffee whose milk scum indicated the beverage was so far untouched. JD did not appear to notice his arrival, a further sign the boy was still heartbroken over Casey's impending departure.

"Hey, JD," Buck announced himself.

JD looked up at Buck, his brow furrowing in confusion as he stared at the First Officer, wondering why the man was here when he ought to be on the bridge when the realisation struck him like a hammer. His eyes widened as he sat up, comprehending Buck had sought him out because he should be on the bridge too. JD didn't need to look at the chronometer to know he was late for duty and sprang up from his seat.

"Oh man, Buck, I'm sorry!" JD began stuttering apologies before Buck placed a hand on his shoulder and bid him to calm down.

"It's okay," Buck pushed him gently back in the seat. "Just take a moment to catch your breath before you discombobulate something."

JD sank down against the soft cushioned seat and exhaled loudly. "I'm sorry Buck, I just got to thinking and lost all track of time."

Sliding into the seat across him, Buck patted him on the shoulder. "Hey kid, I get it. I do, but you can't let it drive you crazy."

"I'm not," JD protested immediately and then realised if he was so distracted that he missed going on duty, then Buck was right, he was letting it do just that. "It's just that I'm going to miss her so much. I mean I figured we were going to be together forever...."

"JD," Buck met his gaze. "You're in Starfleet, and that is a tall order for career officers like us. Transfers happen, people move around. You got to get used to the idea that there are times when you're gonna be away from the people you love. Casey ain't breaking up with you, she's just going home to spend some time with her people."

JD sighed, knowing Buck was right, but he feared she might like it so much on Bajor, she might never come back, and Buck had also touched a nerve. While he intended to remain on the Maverick as long as possible, what if he was transferred or promoted to another ship? They might never see each other again. The idea made his gut twist in dismay.

"I know," he nodded. "Casey's been talking about going back there for a while now. Since Bajor is more or less settled after the war and everything. I think she wants to find out if she has any family back there."

"That's fair," Buck nodded. Casey was adopted by Admiral Wells when her parents had died trying to smuggle her into a refugee camp during the Occupation. For the most part, Casey was raised human, but looking in the mirror every day, was a reminder to the girl she was not. She hailed from one of the most spiritual races in the galaxy, a spirituality she knew almost nothing about. "Bajorans put a lot of stock in their religion, I can understand her wanting to learn more about it, and you've got to accept it."

"I do," JD took a sip of his coffee and then winced in disgust because it was cold. "I mean, I will. I'm just going to miss her, that's all."

"I know," Buck said in understanding. "In the meantime, come on. You've got duty, and I've got to get back to the bridge before Alex decides she can run the Maverick without us."

"Right. Thanks, Buck," JD said gratefully, aware as First Officer Buck had the power to be a lot less forgiving than he was at JD's absence on the bridge.

"Any time kid," Buck patted him on the back as they both headed towards the door. "Anytime."

"Good lord woman, it's just a wedding!"

Rain stopped short as she strolled across the pristine white sand and gave Nathan Jackson the Trill version of the Evil Eye. Even though she was wearing a bikini with a bright floral sarong around her waist, the Transporter Chief still managed to look quite menacing. The couple was presently standing on the holographic creation of Maafushi Beach in the Maldives, where Rain was perfecting the programming required for the upcoming nuptials between Chanu and Claire Moseley.

The scene was perfect, with crystal blue sea and gorgeous sunshine overhead. Further along the beach, the venue was set with snow-white chairs arranged in neat rows, split by the aisle of rose petals leading to the altar. Beneath it, stood a floral archway composed of red and white roses, carnations and baby breath. The effect was quite spectacular and had taken some programming to get just right. Framing the ceremony were tiki torches that would be ignited when evening came.

That had been the easy part, the reception was much more complicated, but Chanu and Claire were good friends and Rain who had planned several weddings during her numerous lifetimes as a Trill, had volunteered. Naturally, she wanted everything to be perfect, but it was taking considerable time and Nathan, a man who was bored by all things frivolous, couldn't understand the need for such fanfare.

"Just a wedding, Nathan? Just a wedding? Was the leaning tower of Pisa just a tower? Was the Mona Lisa just a painting of a really bored woman waiting around for her boyfriend to take her out, or the Obelisk of K'haroska just a rock? This is a work of art, and it has to be perfect! I mean, this wedding sets the tone for the whole marriage. This is a day that will follow them forever. You can't imagine the pressure."

"I can't even imagine forever. For all you know, Chanu and Claire could be divorced in a month. They haven't even lived together! You know the first time she finds his socks in the sink, there could be blood."

"Doc, you're killing the romance here," she shook her head in exasperation. "That does it, when we get married, you're not allowed to plan anything."

"That's because there's nothing to plan," Nathan said as a matter of factly. "We're going to have it at the saloon in Four Corners."

Rain's eyes widened. "Excuse me?"

"Yeah, it will be great," Nathan said enthusiastically, having put a lot of thought into his own nuptials since this all began. The healer reached the conclusion it was not wise to let Rain plan any of it if this business with Chanu and Clare's wedding was any indication of how overboard she was going to go. "We'll do it in the Magnificent Seven program, you know in the old West. With Josiah playing preacher and performing the ceremony at his church. Then have the reception at the saloon. It will be perfect."

"Yeah since you'll be by yourself!" Rain exploded. "In a saloon? You want to have our wedding in a saloon? It's a good thing you haven't even asked me yet, or else I'd have to spit in your eye!"

Nathan threw his hands up in defeat. "Well, I won't then, not that I was planning to."

"Fine," Rain sniffed and turned her back to him, arms folded.

"Fine," Nathan grumbled doing the same.

"You really weren't going to ask me?" Rain looked over her shoulder at him a second later.

"I didn't say that," he frowned because a few months ago, he considered proposing until Rain suggested they move in together instead. In retrospect, it seemed like the best course for a relationship only a few months old. "I was going to ask eventually."

"Eventually?" Rain turned around.

"Yeah, we were ready."

"When?" She eyed him suspiciously.

"Whenever," he shrugged, having the sneaking suspicion he might have just talked his way into proposing marriage.

"Whenever? What does that mean?"

Nathan groaned. "I don't know whenever! Right now if you want."

"I do," she challenged.

"Hold on to that thought," Nathan returned, his brain needed to play catch up. "You're saying if I asked you to marry me right now, you would?"

"Yes," Rain nodded, suddenly realising where they were right now. "I guess I would."

"Okay then," Nathan broke into a grin and lowered himself dramatically on one knee. "Will you marry me?"

"Yes," Rain beamed happily taking his hand. "But we're not having my wedding in a saloon."

"Oh well," Nathan straightened up, "we'll just have to call the whole thing off."

"NATHAN!"

Even though she had the bridge in the absence of the Captain and the First Officer, Alexandra Styles left the command chair vacant. She was more content to remain at her post at the science station, continuing her survey of the local area for star mapping purposes. Much of the area had only been charted briefly by passing probes, and an in-depth study of the sector had been absent until now. With the Maverick's mission to the frontier opening up much of this wilderness to the Federation, now more than ever accurate data was essential.

Suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, the ship lurched violently, sending Alex slamming against her console. Across the bridge, yellow alert klaxons began screaming through the air at the same time amber warning lights blinked furiously across every console and every panel.

"What the hell just happened?" Drew Katovit, who was manning tactical immediately demanded.

It took a second for Alex to regain her balance to be able to study her console to determine that answer. When the readings appeared before her, she stared at the view screen ahead for confirmation. The stars were no longer rushing past them at high warp, but instead almost at a standstill.

"We just dropped out of warp."

"How?" Drew's questions came within seconds of Chris Larabee's voice echoing across the bridge.

"Captain to the Bridge, what the hell is going on?"

As Alex scanned the area and found the answer, her eyes widened in horror at the materialising view of the giant singularity appearing out of nowhere in front of them.

"Captain, you need to report to the bridge immediately."

If one did not know what it was, the phenomena could almost be considered beautiful.

In the same way one admired a great white shark swimming through the ocean, an engine of nature, perfectly formed for its environment, the quantum singularity before the Maverick was similarly magnificent. Drawing to it all matter unfortunate enough to be caught in its gravitational field, the accretion disk composed of particulates, filaments of light, debris from fragmenting asteroids and threads of shredded comets, surrounded the dead eye staring back at the crew of the Maverick.

Within ten minutes of the singularity appearing in front of them, Chris Larabee and the entire Senior Staff were on the bridge. Chris was in his command chair with Mary in her seat, neither displaying any sign of the intimacy they shared not long ago. Buck returned to the bridge a few minutes before Chris, allowing J.D. to relieve Jewel Chun who was impatiently awaiting his arrival at navigation, only to be disappointed at having to leave when things started getting interesting. Once again, Alex was sharing the length of her station with Ezra who resumed his position at tactical, grateful to abandon the world of the theatre for something less cut-throat.

The Maverick had not stood down from yellow alert, with all hands reporting to their posts. The civilian crew were ordered back to their quarters, while Josiah remained at his desk, his com channel open for anyone who might need counselling during the crisis. It was always difficult for the civilians on board the Maverick, who so often were unwilling participants in the danger facing the ship. Meanwhile, Nathan had no doubt mobilized his medical team in anticipation of injuries to the crew.

"How the hell did we not see it before that thing was right on top of us?"

Chris's question came out a little more harshly than the Captain intended, making Alex flinch in reaction. As the one who had the Con when the alert was sounded, not to mention the Science Officer of the Maverick, Alex should have detected the singularity long before the proximity sensors on the Maverick went into overdrive. While she knew he was not blaming her for what was happening, Alex couldn't help feeling she had failed somewhat for not suspecting this situation was on the horizon.

"Captain, I've been conducting surveys for star mapping purposes all morning. I saw no evidence of a singularity of that size at any point. It just...just appeared." Her expression showed her complete bafflement at how this came about and glancing at her, Chris felt immediately bad for the tone of his question.

"It's okay Alex," Buck spoke up, noting the guilt in her voice as did Vin, who shifted his head just enough to cast his wife a look of concern if not silent support. "We know nothing got past you."

"This isn't your fault Alex," Chris added, giving a little nod to show her he did not hold her accountable for anything. "It's just strange, that's all. Have you been able to get any readings off it at all?"

"Aside from the usual gravimetric disturbances, minimal," Alex frowned unhappily. "For me to get better readings, we'd have to get in closer."

"Closer?" Mary stared at Chris, not liking the sound of that one damn bit. Even now, seeing the singularity from the safety of her seat on the bridge, she felt a shudder of fear run down her spine. The black eye of the thing, from which nothing could escape, was like the entrance to oblivion. If the Maverick were to be caught, she didn't even want to think of what would happen, not just to her but to Billy.

"Don't worry," Chris gave her a little smile of assurance. "We'll remain beyond the gravitational pull of the event horizon. Still..."

Chris faced the phenomena that had taken up nearly all the space on the view screen. The Maverick was holding a position at a safe distance, but even that still felt too close. As Chris studied it, something about it felt wrong. His instincts, relied upon so frequently to save his life and that of his crew, was nagging at him. Something didn't feel right, and the sensation made the hairs on the back of his neck stand.

Buck, who knew his Captain well enough, noticed the intensity of Chris's gaze upon the image on the viewer. The First Officer of the Maverick knew something was going on behind Chris Larabee's penetrating eyes, and it usually meant the difference between life and death.

"Captain, what's on your mind?"

"I'm not sure," Chris admitted before speaking up louder. "Vin, take us in at one-quarter impulse, get as close to the accretion disk as you can without getting us pulled in."

As expected, Ezra Standish spoke up immediately. "Captain, the sudden appearance of that spacial behemoth is still a mystery to us. I would recommend keeping our distance until we know more about it."

"Which won't happen if we don't get any closer," Buck countered before Chris could. "We need to know what we're dealing with. Other ships are going to be coming through this area, we have to know all we can learn about that singularity, so we can warn them."

Ezra frowned unhappily forced to concede the point because Buck was correct. They did need to know how such a phenomenon could appear so suddenly before them. There had been ships through this area in recent months, and not one of them recorded the existence of a singularity. There was a mystery here, Ezra was sure like the Captain, but he was just unconvinced how much they ought to risk trying to uncover it.

"Alex, Ezra, monitor the intensity of the gravitational field, the instant it approaches anything resembling the limits of our ability to break away, we'll be withdrawing." Chris offered Ezra a nod of acknowledgement to show he was not dismissing Ezra's worries in the slightest. "Got that Vin?"

"Aye Sir," Vin replied, the helmsman watching the sensor readings on his own display, conscious of what they were riding into.

As the Maverick proceeded forward, the stars moved almost lethargically while the ship was at impulse. The approach to the singularity took place at a snail's pace, which was what Chris expected. Vin was taking it slow, and for good reason, they needed to initiate braking thrusters at a second's notice if the gravimetric forces tugging at them became more insistent.

"God it's huge," Mary whispered under her breath.

"That must have been a hell of a dense star that collapsed for it to produce a black hole that big," J.D. commented, his eyes switching from the screen and his instruments as the Maverick proceeded ahead.

The ship shuddered suddenly, with everyone on the bridge feeling it.

Another alarmed screamed in their ears, and the Maverick immediately halted position. As the whine reached a crescendo in their ears, they saw something hurtling past them in the view screen, tumbling in a free fall towards the event horizon. The asteroid was breaking up even as it passed them, the impact with the Maverick, along with the intense gravitational field carrying it forward was too much for it to maintain its structure.

"Damage report!" Buck snapped.

Julia Pemberton's voice replied almost instantly. She spoke through static, her features appearing as a grainy image on the screen. "We're okay. It just scuffed the paint, that's all."

"We appear to be experiencing some disruption to our communications systems," Ezra spoke up, explaining their poor reception. "With all the turbulence we are experiencing the closer we approach the singularity, the greater the interference to sub-space."

"Understood," Chris nodded. "Ezra, raise our shields. I don't want us harming the paintwork any more than we have to," he said for Julia's benefit. "I still have a couple of payments left to make. Julia, monitor the situation, in case we need any additional power getting away from that thing in a crunch."

"Already done Sir," the perky redhead answered promptly, proving once again why she was the absolute best at what she did.

"Raising shields," Ezra announced, just as the Maverick began to shudder again. This time, the gravimetric forces could be felt through the hull and beneath the soles of their feet. While the ship continued its slow approach, everyone who was standing found a reason to grab something for support.

"Captain," Vin spoke, "I don't reckon we ought to get any closer than we already are. I'm fighting to keep the ship from going any faster like it wants to do thanks to its forward inertia."

"Understood," Chris nodded. Vin Tanner was one of the best pilots he knew, and if the Vulcan believed going ahead might end up with him being unable to pull them out, then it was a warning Chris was taking seriously. "Alex, are you close enough for your scans?"

The Science Officer did not answer, and her silence quickly pulled the attention of the other senior staff in her direction. While Vin's focus was still fixed on helm controls, Chris could tell by the stiffness in his shoulders, he was listening to what was happening at the science station.

"What is it?" Chris broke the silence, needing an answer immediately because Alex's troubled expression was putting them all on edge.

"Captain," Alex looked up at Chris, her expression mystified. "I'm registering matter at the centre of that singularity."

"What? How can that be? You shouldn't be registering anything at all!" Buck exclaimed, understanding her puzzlement. In fact, they all did.

Chris was thinking fast. If there was something at the centre of the singularity, then everything they knew about black holes was wrong. In truth, all Chris expected to learn from Alex's scans were the readings on the energy particles being ejected from the relativistic jet, the composition of the accretion disk and the level of energy output from the photon sphere. Once past the event horizon, the singularity itself would prevent any kind of scan. If Alex could scan it, then it meant...

"Vin! Turn the ship around!"

Chris's order was so sharp, everyone on the bridge jumped.

Like always, that was all the prompting Vin needed to do exactly what the Captain demanded. The Maverick banked hard to port, with the singularity becoming a blur of colour as the ship started to fight the gravimetric currents tugging it in the opposite direction.

"Bring her to maximum acceleration!" Chris didn't bother explaining himself, but everyone on the bridge knew Chris would not make such a statement without good reason.

"Chris, what is it?" Buck finally asked.

"Alex shouldn't be able to scan anything past the event horizon of that singularity, because if she can...."

Alex caught on to her Captain's line of thought. "It's not a real singularity. It's been created."

"Are you telling me someone built a singularity?" Buck stared at the image of the black hole, now shrinking in the view screen before them.

"Why not?" Ezra interjected. "The Romulans have been powering their warbirds with miniature quantum singularities for some time now. It stands to reason that someone somewhere might be able to construct a larger version like the one we have just encountered."

"Who?" J.D. stared at the senior officers, unable to imagine who would have that kind of technology.

Chris did not answer because knowing someone had created the thing was not the problem, it was the who of it that had the Captain of the Maverick hollering for Vin to get them out of the area fast. "Vin, as soon as you get clear, I want you to go to Warp 9. Get us out of here as quickly as possible. J.D., prepare a Class One probe to launch in case we can't transmit to Starfleet."

"Chris, what is it?" Buck insisted because Chris's reaction spoke to something worse on the horizon that no one but him could see.

"There is only one species we know, that can build a singularity of that size," Chris explained. "They don't use it to power any ship, they use it as a way into our dimension."

"Into our dimension? Buck stared blankly at him until understanding flared in his eyes. "Oh shit."

"What?" Mary almost threw up her hands in exasperation, her stomach turning into knots at the fear she could see not only in Chris's face but now also on Buck's.

The singularity was growing smaller and smaller in the view screen, the danger being left behind, but the tension levels on the bridge had skyrocketed.

"I think I know," Alex spoke up, racking her brain as to why her Captain was reacting so strongly to the realization the singularity was a construct, not a natural phenomenon. "Species 8472?"

"They were in the Delta Quadrant!" Ezra balked in response.

When USS Voyager had returned from its exile in the far reaches of the galaxy, in the Delta Quadrant, its Captain, now Admiral Kathryn Janeway had provided valuable information on a previously unknown part of space. However, it was the ship's experiences with the Borg that Chris paid close attention to. To return home, Voyager had to cross the vast space of Borg territory and had more encounters with the Collective than any other ship in the Fleet. One of those encounters included a partnership with the Borg, where the Collective was forced to accept Voyager's help to defeat Species 8472.

Species 8472 lived in a dimension known as 'Fluidic Space' and were by their accounts, the only sentient life forms there. When the Borg penetrated the barriers between the dimensions in an attempt to assimilate them, the Borg discovered a race resistant to their assimilation process and far more vicious than any they encountered. In retaliation for the contamination of their genetic purity, Species 8472 pursued the Borg into normal space and unleashed a devastating invasion that not only threatened the Collective but all life forms.

Only with Voyager's help was Species 8472 defeated and it was assumed hostilities had ended, but the presence of this artificial singularity meant something had changed. Species 8472, to date, was the only race they knew who used quantum singularities as a portal to and from their dimension. Chris knew if this was here, then Species 8472 was not far behind.

"Captain," Alex spoke up. "We're free of the gravimetric turbulence. We can go to warp."

"You heard the lady Vin," Buck prompted. "Take us to maximum warp, we need to warm Starfleet, they could be coming our way."

"Are you sure, Chris?" Mary asked, hoping they weren't premature in their assessment since there was not yet any sign of this deadly enemy.

"Mary," Chris turned to her. "They can open a portal anywhere in the galaxy. They chose to do it here, not in Borg space. That can't be a coincidence."

"Going to warp," Vin announced ignoring the discussion behind him, his fingers moving across his display with reflexes unmatched by anyone else on the Maverick.

The reassuring sound of the warp engines bursting to life boomed softly in their ears as the Maverick surged forward, leaving behind the glittering canvas to become shooting stars streaking past them. The sensation of reaching high warp, lasted for only a second before the Maverick experienced another violent jolt. This time, no amount of inertial dampeners or shields could protect the crew from the turbulence.

Buck was almost thrown off his chair, prevented from hitting the floor by Chris's hand, gripping his shoulder. Mary had grabbed Chris to avoid landing on her hands and knees, while Alex and Ezra fell forward, only to be halted by their respective stations. Vin managed to stay in his seat, refusing to be dislodged because he had to steer the ship right after its sudden jolt. J.D. did hit the floor, landing on his side.

"J.D.!" Buck reacted instinctively.

"I'm okay!" J.D. groaned, feeling an ache along his ribs he knew he would have to get checked out later. Right now, he was only interested in returning to his post.

"What now?" Chris demanded as he heard fresh klaxons screaming through the air. Instead of yellow alert, however, the panels were flashing in angry red colours, a clear signal to all that whatever calamity was upon them was much worse than what they had experienced earlier when they first encountered the singularity. Indeed, the screen in front of them maintained the view of the black hole they just left.

"We've been knocked out of warp again," Alex answered, her eyes scanning the console. "Ezra, are you seeing what I am?"

Ezra studied the display on his tactical station, trying to confirm the readings Alex was viewing with such astonishment. "I am afraid so. Captain, we have just encountered a massive emission of graviton energy emanating from ten thousand kilometres off our starboard bow. I cannot calculate it," he looked up from his console. "It is simply off the scale."

Chris had no idea how jarring it was to see Ezra's consummate gambler's mask completely lowered because what lay beneath it, was nothing less than shock.

"Captain, it's a transwarp aperture!" Alex exclaimed.

Chris didn't need to hear anymore. "VIN! GET US MOVING NOW!"

"Aye Sir," the Vulcan replied, fingers moving fast across the console trying to force the engines back into operation. Helm control was behaving sluggishly after the destabilization of the warp field the ship used to achieve faster than light speed.

"PROXIMITY ALERT."

The main computer's cool announcement seemed surreal in the face of their dire circumstances, especially when Buck's order to change the direction of the view screen's image revealed the aperture materializing in front of them. As if someone had torn a hole in space, the gap of light and energy was nowhere as mesmerizing as the six objects that appeared through it.

"Oh my God," Mary uttered a strangled gasp, never realizing there could be something worse than being caught by a black hole until this moment.

The Maverick had spent almost a year and a half preparing for this enemy and yet seeing them face to face for the first time, Chris knew they might have been deluding themselves into believing any preparation was going to be enough. The memory of what occurred the last time he confronted them over the skies of Earth, on the bridge of the Rutherford, suddenly surfaced in his mind. Clenching his jaw, Chris Larabee knew he was not losing another ship to them.

To the Borg.

As the lead ship closed in on them, penetrating their shields with the same ease others of its kind had used to dismantle Federation forces with terrifying ease, the green strobe of a scanning beam moved across the bridge. No one could breathe as they all stared at the ships before them, thinking the same thing, that they were going facing a hell worse than death.

Although right now, compared to assimilation, death would be a mercy.

Six.

There were six of them. When Chris Larabee faced the Borg at the Battle of Sector 001, there was just one of them. One ship had managed to decimate almost twenty-seven starships, with the loss of life so massive, Starfleet was crippled. If not for the extraordinary pooling of resources which allowed Chris to gain Josiah Sanchez as his Counsellor and caused Mary Travis to be drafted from the diplomatic corps to a starship posting, there wouldn’t have been enough crew for its ships. What victory they achieved at Sector 001 had come about because of luck, nothing else.

And that was one ship.

Chris stared at the six cubes and felt for the first time, this was one fight he might not win. He was not afraid to die. Anyone who signed on for a career in Starfleet knew this was a possibility. Space was a beautiful place, but it could kill you quicker than you could blink if it desired. Except in this instance, they wouldn’t even be given the dignity of death. No, if they were beaten now, he and his crew would be facing a living hell, and that was the one thing Chris could not bear.

As the green scanning beam moved across his bridge, allowing the Borg to catalogue each of them as raw material to be acquired and processed, he closed his eyes and told himself he could not show fear. If his crew saw he was afraid, it would infect them, and that simply would not do. They had to believe he could get them out of this, like he had delivered them from the Dominion task force more than a year ago and more recently the quartet of Romulan warbirds.

The scanning beam vanished and following it were the familiar words Chris still remembered in his nightmares, his blood turning cold at having to hear it again.

“We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ship. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

Screw that, Chris thought to himself, even though his hardened expression telegraphed the words to the rest of his comrades. Instead, he sat up ramrod straight in his chair and shook off the fear that gripped him earlier. His crew needed him to be strong and believe their Captain wouldn’t let the Borg take them without a fight. Furthermore, if it came down to it, Chris knew he had the will to take them all to oblivion to escape assimilation. Tapping his combadge, Chris spoke in a voice of perfect calm.

“Captain to all hands. Battlestations.”

The order jumped started the rest of the Senior Staff who liked their Captain, were temporarily paralyzed with fear at what those six Borg cubes meant to their continued existence the instant the scanning beam began moving across the bridge. As the alarm for battle stations screamed throughout the Maverick, mobilizing everyone on board to the extreme danger, the crew were rushing to their posts while department heads checked in with the First Officer, voicing their readiness to accept whatever order the Captain gave them.

“Buck,” Chris leaned over and whispered in the ear of his oldest friend. “Whatever happens, we are not letting them take the ship.”

Buck met Chris’s eyes and understood immediately what Chris was telling him. “Scorched Earth?”

“Yeah,” Chris nodded. “When the time comes.”

“If it comes to that, I’m behind you Chris. One hundred per cent.”

Mary, who was seated next to Chris and Buck, overheard the exchange and said nothing in response. She knew what it meant and thought it made her quake inside with fear, Mary knew it was an act of last resort and faced the horror of assimilation, one she could accept. She would rather die as Mary Travis then survive as some random number in the Borg’s collection of drones. Reaching for Chris’s hand, she squeezed it once, drawing his gaze to her.

She gave him a little smile, telling him just as Buck had done verbally, she was with him no matter where their course took them.

Chris was grateful for that because it was one less thing to worry about.

“Captain the Borg have completed their scan. What are your orders?”

As always, Ezra Standish was a mask of calm as he waited for Chris Larabee to save them if he could. However, as he was a betting man, Ezra honestly didn’t think much of their chances, but like Chris, he would rather die fighting than surrender to a fate worse than death.

As Maude often claimed, assimilation would be a waste of his God-given talents.

“Initiate ablative generator and then let Alex take over shield operations, I need you at weapons.”

“Aye Captain,” Ezra nodded, his eyes shifting away from the six Borg cubes to nod at Alex.

“Vin,” Chris continued speaking in a calm, almost reflective tone, his hands steepled beneath his chin. “Take us to the Vikaris quasar at maximum burn. We have to stay ahead of them for as long as we can. They can’t use the transwarp drive without overshooting us, but they can still match our speed. We’ve got to be faster to get beyond the range of their weapons. Their weapons have only one purpose, to drain our shields so they can board us.”

“I’ll keep us ahead,” Vin promised thinking this was too much like the last hour of the Rutherford’s life.

Vin was with Chris with during the battle over Earth, forced to take the Con when the officer holding that post had been killed by a power surge. He had been less than two months off a starbase posting, and the Battle of Sector 001 was his first. Vin remembered how the shockwave of the destroyed cube had reached the already fragile ship and finished her. Although the Captain didn’t know it and Vin never saw any reason to enlighten him, Vin had been the one to drag the unconscious man into a life pod, never imagining he was saving his future best friend’s life.

“Engineering. I want all power to propulsion and the shields. No matter what, we’ve got to keep them off us long enough to get to the quasar.”

“You got it, Captain,” Julia Pemberton answered promptly. “Spit and baling wire.”

An involuntary smile stole across his lips at the remark, thinking how it had struck him the same way when she assumed command of engineering after the casualties on the Rutherford left her in charge. She was a junior lieutenant then, whose sunny disposition hid nothing less than nerves of duranium. She’d held the ship together, gave the Rutherford her day as they helped Jean-Luc Picard obliterate the Borg cube intending to assimilate Earth.

“Right,” he managed a grin.

“Captain,” Ezra spoke up. “At your command.”

“Do it.”

“Armour deployed.”

Across the hull of the Maverick, thanks to the specifications provided by the USS Voyager upon its return to the Alpha Quadrant, the shield emitters powered by the newly installed ablative drive, began sealing the galaxy class ship in a near impenetrable cocoon of energy. Due to its mission on the frontier, the Maverick had been one of the first ships to be outfitted with the technology, and even though Chris had been irritated by the additional time spent at Space Dock, he was never more grateful for it now.

From the outside, the ship looked as if it was encased in armour, but the illusion was apt, the ablative drive was capable of withstanding a direct hit from a Borg ship. Within seconds, the entire vessel was protected, with its pigeon blue hull now taking on the gun-metal grey of a warship. While Chris had no idea whether the technology was ever intended to be tested against six Borg ships at once, it still gave them a fighting chance.

“PUNCH IT VIN!”

The instant the armour was deployed, Vin Tanner was poised to act. Even before Chris finished the sentence, the helmsman fired the engines, having already plotted the trajectory through the cubes and then the course to the quasar. The enormous dying star exuded enough radiation to make it difficult for even the Borg to find them, and that was a margin wide enough for escape.

The Maverick lurched forward at maximum warp, the burst of acceleration feeling like an explosion under their feet as the ship blasted ahead, flying directly towards the lead Borg ship. As the Borg cube shifted position to avoid the collision, Vin pulled up hard forcing the Maverick into a near ninety-degree climb along the patchwork hull of the cube with less than a hundred feet to spare. Everyone on the bridge fell back in their seats while Ezra and Alex held on to their stations because not even anti-gravs was going to keep them from sprawling.

The Maverick reached the top of the Borg hull only to have two Borg ships attempting to cut them off. Performing a perfect barrel roll that should never be tried on a vessel this size, Vin turned the Maverick sharply to starboard and passed through the narrowing gap between the two cubes. Both enemy ships were incapable of pulling up in time, and it was with some satisfaction Vin saw they had collided. An explosion of white and amber followed the impact, and though it was nowhere capable of destroying either cube, it allowed the Maverick to slip past the blockade of ships.

“That was awesome!” JD managed to say, admiring the skill Vin had just displayed to escape the enemy.

“Don’t mean a thing if we can’t stay ahead of them,” the Vulcan shrugged, too busy keeping the Maverick flying to accept any compliments, which in his opinion were premature.

“Captain, they’re in pursuit,” Alex reported. “Three Borg ships have broken off and are coming after us.”

“Three?” Buck stared at Chris. On the viewer ahead, the screen revealed the triad of ships behind them, growing steadily as they match the Maverick warp for warp.

“They’re not here for us,” Chris guessed in the last few seconds. “They’re here for that damn singularity. They want to know what Species 8472 is up to. It’s why they’ve sent six ships.”

“Captain, they’re closing the distance” Ezra warned, waiting impatiently for the gloves to be taken off his firing controls. “They’re firing!”

The Maverick shuddered dangerously as she was struck by the Borg energy blast. The shockwave was felt throughout the ship and alarms screamed in protest at the abuse, but all systems were still in the green.

“Shield strength down to 90 per cent,” Alex announced from her station. “It’s holding.”

Chris took no pleasure in the report. The Borg were six ships, and they had more than enough resolve to pound the Maverick relentlessly until the armour buckled. She was nowhere safe yet, not until they got to the quasar.

“Thank you, Kathy,” Buck whispered, feeling immensely grateful at Voyager’s Captain for bringing this technology to them. He didn’t want to imagine how quickly this fight would have ended otherwise.

Another blast rocked the ship, and it was followed by two more in quick succession.

“Captain, they’re trying to adapt to the armour. We’ve lost another five per cent shield strength.”

It was time, Chris thought, to pull out their ace in the hole. “Fire transphasic torpedoes, full spread. I want that lead ship taken out.”

“With pleasure Sir,” Ezra answered promptly, his hands flying over his console with the same speed he dealt cards and earned his reputation as the best card player, according to William T Riker, in the fleet. Well, best in the Federation, Ezra thought silently, but he didn’t wish to brag about it.

Within a second of Ezra inputting the final command, the Maverick’s weapons bank, usually host to photon torpedoes, unleashed a trio of amber energy blasts. Resembling shooting stars, the weapons hurtled across the distance between the starship and the enemy, striking the Borg cube across the face. One after another, the explosions that followed ripped the vessel apart, ending it in a brilliant explosion that lit up the entire view screen.

“YES!” JD exclaimed, pumping the air with his fist in jubilation.

“Target the second cube and repeat!”

Even if JD’s exuberance felt good to hear, Chris was realistic. They were hopelessly outmatched with even one Borg ship, let alone five, and as far as he was concerned, one lucky shot did not mean they were out of trouble.

“Firing torpedoes!”

Before the debris from the lead ship had cleared, a fresh triad of transphasic torpedoes escaped its banks, just as the Maverick was struck again on the starboard section of the hull. The ship shook from the impact but drew some satisfaction when the torpedoes struck the enemy ship. Once again, the darkness of space was temporarily illuminated by the brilliant explosion of a second Borg cube. However, what elation there was to be taken from its destruction was brief.

“Captain, the remaining Borg cubes have broken away from their position at the singularity,” Alex lifted her gaze from her station, wearing an expression of grave concern. “They’re coming straight for us.”

“How long until they get here?”Buck asked, suspecting it would be minutes if they were lucky. Seconds, if they were not.

“One minute until they intercept us,” she replied.

“Ezra, get ready for another volley,” Chris instructed, knowing this time the Borg would come in on an attack vector, anticipating an enemy was capable of giving as good as it got.

“JD.” Buck regarded their navigator. “Deploy a Class 9 probe with a copy of our mission logs before the rest of those Borg ships get here. Starfleet needs to know what’s happening.”

“Aye Sir,” JD nodded and immediately got to work, no longer displaying any signs of their deep personal relationship. He knew the importance of the order and the narrow margin of time he had to carry it out. Starfleet had to be warned of the danger, not just from the Borg but the threat posed by Species 8472.

Glad Buck had taken care of that bit of business, Chris gave Mary a quick look to see how she was doing. The woman’s face was pale, revealing her fear, but she was controlling for his benefit. Chris loved her for that but could do nothing to express his gratitude because she was right, there was too much to do.

Another jolt from the Borg vessel indicated just how determined the Collective was to add the Maverick and its crew to its number, prompting Chris to check in with Engineering. The Maverick was taking a beating, and while the armour was holding, its strength was finite. “Engineering, what’s our status?”

“We’re still in good shape, Captain,” Julia answered brightly. Chris wondered if she was maintaining her optimism for the sake of her engineering team or did she really believe they would come out of this unscathed. If it was the latter, Chris wished he had her faith.

“Divert every watt of power to the shields. The rest of the Borg ships are converging on us, and I have a feeling they’re going to try and buckle the armour.”

There was a slight pause, and Chris knew right there and then, his first assumption about her demeanour was correct.

“Aye Captain, I’ll do what I can.”

As Chris terminated the conversation, he looked over his shoulder and saw Ezra’s expression softening because he knew the woman better than anyone else. Ezra could tell just like Chris, the spirited redhead was rattled.

“She’s scared,” Buck said quietly in Chris’s ear.

“Who can blame her?” Chris muttered back when another blast from the Borg ship jostled him forward.

“Ezra, fire torpedoes again!”

“Firing,” Ezra returned promptly, and the viewer revealed three more torpedoes streaking out of the Maverick’s torpedo banks. This time, however, the Borg ship had adapted enough to flip on its side at the last minute, evading the deadly energy blasts, letting them pass harmlessly by.

“Damn it!” Buck swore just as the Borg ship fired again.

This time the jolt felt sharper, and Chris knew their armour strength was down even before Alex made the announcement.

“Armour strength has been reduced to eighty per cent.”

The cube continued its dogged pursuit, increasing speed now that it was aware reinforcements were on route. Vin was doing his best to avoid the blasts, but the Borg were laying down so much firepower it was impossible to evade them all. If a lesser pilot had been at the helm, Chris knew the Maverick would have been in worse shape.

“Captain, I’m reading an aperture forming on the cube,” Alex announced, her expression dark.

“What?” Chris stood up from his chair and stared at her. “Let’s see it.”

The image on the viewscreen immediately shifted, presenting them a view of the Borg cube. In the middle of its front face, a circular hatch appeared, no larger than the doors of the Maverick’s own hangar bay. For a moment, Chris thought it looked like a single monstrous eye blinking open. The familiar strobe of eerie green light was unleashed into space, followed quickly by a Borg sphere. The ejected craft swiftly blasted away from the mothership, heading straight for them. Smaller than the Maverick, it was able to narrow the gap between them rapidly.

“Evasive maneuvers Vin!” Chris shouted, having recognized this tactic once before. Not from a Borg sphere but a Jem’Hadar ship on a kamikaze run.

But it was too late.

The impact was nothing less than catastrophic when the sphere smashed into the Maverick’s starboard nacelle. Across the starship, everyone felt the collision. Chris and Buck were both thrown from their seats. Mary, remained in hers only because she had slammed into the headrest of the Captain’s chair before she was bounced back into place. Ezra and Alex both went tumbling against the far wall, narrowly avoiding a section of panelling that exploded overhead, raining down sharp fragments of plasteel and glass.

Panels erupted from the overloads while conduits broke free and live wires spat embers across the carpeted floor. Klaxons screamed through their ears while lights flickered and then dimmed across the formerly well-lit bridge. In its place, the bloody hue of emergency lighting bathed the crew and the ruined command centre of the Maverick.

Chris scrambled back to his seat and tapped his combadge frantically. “Engineering, damage report!”

There was only silence.

“Engineering!” He tried again, but still, no one answered.

Glancing at tactical, he saw Ezra’s jaw clench at the continued silence. The Security Chief was hiding his worry by returning to his station. Alex did the same, clutching her arm in pain and Chris could tell by the angle she’d dislocated it.

“What’s our status?” Buck demanded. “Is the armour still up?”

“No,” Ezra shook his head. “The armour is down, our shield strength is almost entirely depleted. They targeted our shield emitters. The collision caused too much damage to the array. ”

“Captain,” this time it was Vin who spoke up. The helmsman seldom did, but the streak of green blood across his face and the grave expression on his face told Chris to expect the worst.

“We’ve got maybe enough power for twenty minutes of warp, then we’re back to impulse.”

Chris closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to determine what to do next because communications appeared to be down, and he had no idea how badly his ship was damaged. However, Vin’s statement told him he had run out of options. Compounding that terrible realization was the appearance of the remaining Borg vessels. The viewer had not sustained damage and showed the arrival of the enemy ships moving out of formation to surround them.

And with that arrival came the dreaded realization, they had nowhere left to run.

NOW

"Computer, initiate auto-destruct."

Chris could not believe it had come to this. An hour ago, he was sharing a bed with the woman next to him, the same woman who now stared at him with love, even as he uttered the order that would see them both dead in a matter of minutes. He surveyed his bridge, bathed in the red glow of emergency lighting, thinking the colour of blood seemed macabrely appropriate under the circumstances. His senior staff, his friends, stared back at him with understanding, not disappointment at the words spoken, aware this was how it had to be and was glad for it compared to the alternative.

"Self-destruct initiated, command officers verification code required."

The main computer's indifferent voice interrupted his thoughts, reminding Chris his task was only half-done. On the viewscreen in front of him, the four Borg vessels loomed ahead, supremely confident their prey was done. As he thought of them infecting his bridge with their evil, taking his ship as well as their souls to become apart of their obscene menagerie, it made his next exchange with the computer so much easier.

Meeting Buck's gaze, his oldest friend as always revealed his solidarity with a nod and prompted him to keep going. Delay was something they could ill-afford and would cost them dearly if they squandered it. In the background, the whine of emergency klaxons felt distant as Chris closed his eyes and spoke in a quiet voice.

"Captain, Larabee, Christopher. Command authorization code - Nimrod."

"Voice pattern recognition accepted." The computer returned promptly and then added. "First Officer's verification required."

Buck didn't mince words and answered just as quickly. "Commander, Wilmington, Buchanan. Command authorization - Palomino."

"Voice pattern recognition accepted. Self-destruct commencing."

A countdown appeared on one of the panels on the wall, telling them just how much time they had left. Buck uttered a loud exhale, not realizing how bitter those words could be to say, even though it was the only play they had left.

"I'm sorry," Chris apologized, not just to Buck but to the rest of his staff. "I'm sorry I couldn't..."

Chris couldn't finish. The rest of his words died in his throat as the main computer began the countdown. It couldn't end yet, not like this. However, even as those defiant thoughts surface, Chris wondered what did he think he could do. If they made a run for it, the Borg would follow, and with their dwindling warp capabilities, they would catch up to the Maverick. Furthermore, with their depleted shields, the enemy could beam directly onto the Maverick to fill his ship with drones, or worse yet, spirit his crew away to the Borg vessel.

Even if they managed to stay ahead of the Borg, then what? Chris would not risk any population with the threat of assimilation by running to them for help. There was nowhere they could go the Borg wouldn't follow and reaching anyone else would doom them to the same fate. The Borg were relentless, they would follow the Maverick anywhere.

Or would they?

The idea came together so fast, he was almost dizzy from the speed of it. It was insanity, pure insanity, the logical part of his mind cautioned, but then the part of him that ignored the reasoned approach, who took risks, told him he had nothing to lose. Better to die trying to escape, then simply wait for a computer to make it so.

"Computer, belay self-destruct."

"Authorization code.."

"Captain, Larabee, Christopher. Command authorization code - Nimrod." Chris interrupted hastily before the computer could finish.

"First Officer's..."

"Buck," Chris shot him a look to do the same.

"Uh...Commander, Wilmington, Buchanan. Command authorization - Palomino."

"Voice pattern recognition accepted. Self-destruct aborted."

"Chris?" Buck stared at him in question, his mind whirling as it caught up with what the Captain intended. "What have you got in mind?"

Chris didn't answer him because he had an idea, and the success of it depended on how quickly it could be put into effect. He'd make his explanations to those who needed it later, right now, he had to act while he still had time to do it, before the Borg locked onto the Maverick with their tractor beams.

"Ezra, drop our shields and raise the cloak."

Ezra Standish's jaw dropped open in astonishment but Ezra being Ezra, who was never at a loss for words very long, quickly found his voice. "Captain, even if we raise the cloak, it will not take them long to detect us. They possess far more sophisticated scanning equipment than we do."

"A few minutes is all we'll need," Chris said sharply, not liking the editorial because he was perfectly aware of this already. "Do it now."

The pointed tone of Chris's voice told Ezra he'd do better than to argue. "Aye Sir, dropping our shields and raising our cloak."

"Captain," Alex spoke up, feeling the same concerns as Ezra and considered it her duty to speak up and make him aware of the risks, even if it was likely her advice would be ignored. "We can certainly deploy the cloak since we don't need the shields for that but if we take one direct hit..."

"I know the risks," he bit back sharply before turning to Vin because right now her words were just white noise. "Vin, maximum warp the minute the cloak is fully deployed."

"You got it," Vin replied, entirely at ease with whatever Chris demanded, no matter how outrageous it might sound to the others. He wasn't about to bother the Captain with useless questions when he could tell just by the urgency in his friend's voice, Chris Larabee had a plan. "Where are we headed?"

"Straight into the singularity."

An audible gasp rippled across the bridge as everyone gaped at the Captain in shock. Everyone except Vin that is, because as far as the helmsman was concerned, Chris Larabee had just pulled another rabbit out of his hat.

"Right away," he nodded, knowing just how far he could get them on what was left of warp power.

"Ezra?" Chris turned to the Security Chief.

"Shields are down, and we will be under cloak in three...two...one..."

Before Ezra could finish the sentence and Chris could issue the order, the Maverick exploded forward at Warp 9.

Emergency alerts immediately screamed their protest at the sudden acceleration in the Maverick's present condition, and the ship shuddered violently in agreement. No sooner than it surged ahead, the saucer section dipped sharply, descending at the steep angle necessary to bypass the Borg vessel directly in front of them. All around the crew, the stress to the structural integrity of the Maverick felt more potent with the absence of shields to blunt the turbulence.

With the disappearance of the Maverick behind its cloak, the Borg's reaction was just as violent. It was unclear if the Collective ever assimilated a Romulan warship to be familiar with the technology, but the sudden attempt by the starship to make a run for it caught them by surprise. Furthermore, the failure to lock on a tractor beam when they had the chance, allowed the Maverick to slip past their net. Unleashing a massive burst of weapons fire on the space previously occupied by the wounded craft, the Borg tried to force their prey to the surface once more.

"Captain, they're firing all weapons banks!"

"I know, I know!" Chris cut her off. "Vin, evasive pattern delta!"

Under Vin Tanner's control, the Maverick continued its sharp descent, closing the distance to the first Borg ship before diving beneath it. Flying along the underside of the cube, Vin was able to avoid the energy blasts fired by the other vessels. So far, their cloak maintained their anonymity, but like Chris, Vin took nothing for granted. Every inch of space he could put between the Maverick and the Borg was an advantage they desperately needed.

The rest of the bridge crew watched Vin's expert piloting of the Maverick through the viewscreen, with white-knuckles and clenched stomachs. Vin performed another tight maneuver between two closing Borg ships, carrying out a barrel roll that had everyone clutching any sturdy surface to keep from being flung across the bridge again. All the while, the senior staff found themselves staring wide-eyed at the sideways view afforded by the monitor screen.

"Chris, are you sure about this?" Buck asked once the Maverick completed its 360-degree turn and the whirlwind of the last few minutes subsided temporarily. Even if he admired Chris's bold move, the singularity may not be any safer for them than the Borg they were attempting to escape.

"Honestly, I have no idea," Chris admitted readily, not about to pretend this was nothing but a Hail Mary pass. "But anything's got to be better than blowing ourselves up to avoid assimilation. The Borg might try to come after us if we go through the singularity, but I'm betting they won't risk alienating Species 8472. The only reason they weren't entirely wiped out the last time is that they had help from Voyager. I can guarantee you, I don't intend to be that accommodating."

"It's a hell of a gamble Chris," Buck said with just as much honesty, "but it's not the first time you've saved our skins doing something stupid."

"I'll say," Mary commented from her seat, drawing Chris's attention for the first time since this battle began. Allowing himself a moment, he wanted to make sure she was alright, just for his peace of mind.

"You okay?" He asked her gently, unable to give her any more than that.

"I'll be fine," she assured him, brushing back a lock of gold hair shaken loose from the hair clip she used to keep it in place, tucking it behind her ear. In truth, she was terrified as hell, and the rough ride they were enduring was making her sick to her stomach, but Chris had given them a fighting chance at survival, and for that, Mary would suffer anything for him.

"Captain, the Borg are in pursuit!" Ezra reported as the ship continued to weave and dip, determined to stay ahead of the enemy weapons and their tractor beams. The larger ships were faster than most, but Vin was using every last bit of power left in the propulsions systems to reach the singularity, ahead of them.

"How are they tracking us?"

Chris had no illusions the Maverick could remain undetected by the Borg for long. The Borg's technology was formidable, accumulated over centuries of assimilating thousands of races throughout the galaxy. It stood to reason, at least some of those unfortunate races might have devised a method of seeing through a Romulan cloaking device.

"I cannot say for certain, but considering the damage done to the nacelle, we could be venting any number of gases and raw plasma. While the Borg are unable to target us specifically, they do know in which general direction we are headed."

"Well, that's better than nothing," Chris shrugged. "Vin, take her to Warp 9.9."

Aware of how the increased speed would affect his ship, Chris almost wished Julia Pemberton would contact the bridge to chide him for taking such reckless action. The fact that she had yet to do so concerned him more than he cared to admit. Without looking at tactical, Chris had no doubt Ezra felt the same.

"JD, how long until we get to the singularity?" Buck demanded, having given up his attempts to reach engineering or the rest of the ship to get a report on the damage sustained by the collision and worse yet, casualties. Not only was comms cut off from Engineering but he was unable to reach Sick Bay and determine how many people they'd lost when the starboard nacelle was struck.

JD immediately brought up the image of the singularity in the distance, his fingers flying over his console to give Buck a more accurate answer. "Two minutes."

Staring at the singularity now looming larger and more significant in the view screen, Buck took some comfort that it was not a true black hole or else entering it would mean nothing less than annihilation. This one was a doorway to a situation almost as perilous as the one behind them. Still, it was probably the first time anyone had looked upon such phenomena and considered it a source of salvation, instead of doom.

Hoping to have better luck at a different station, Buck noted Alex was crouched beneath her science controls, one of the consoles that had taken severe damage when the sphere had rammed them. Even as he approached, he saw the science officer attempting to repair the damage. Meanwhile, Ezra was at tactical, his own hands moving across the console, trying to draw power from every system he could access to boost their shields when it was needed.

"How bad is it?

"Not as dire as I thought," Alex craned her neck to look at Buck before going back to work. "I've rerouted the sensors to the secondary array we use for stellar mapping. It is nowhere as powerful as the main one, but it should do the job until we can get around to conducting repairs. I think the reason the comms are off all over the ship might have to do with a power surge in the communication array."

"It's more than that," Buck dropped to his knees so he could speak without Ezra hearing. "I've tried my combadge, no one in engineering is answering."

Alex's gaze shifted in Ezra's direction and understood Buck's desire for discretion.

"We were hit on the starboard nacelle Buck," Alex said quietly, "that's hella close to the Engineering deck. There could be any number of reasons why they're not able to contact us. If the warp core has been compromised or anti-matter containment failure, Julia might be focussed on maintaining our primary system instead of focussing on the comms."

"I hope you're right," Buck nodded. He prayed Inez was in her quarters along with the rest of the civilians after the yellow alert was sounded because he had no wish to go through what Ezra was probably suffering about Julia.

Despite the Borg maintaining their pursuit, firing blindly in their direction in the hopes of making a lucky shot, Chris knew with the approach of the singularity dead ahead, the Collective was going to be the least of the Maverick's problems. Now, as it grew more massive in the viewscreen, Chris wondered if flying into the heart of the maelstrom was the best course of action.

When the shockwave from another stray Borg energy blast shook the ship, Chris brushed away the unproductive second-guess. They had no choice, it was this way or face certain doom, either by assimilation or by blowing the ship. Almost on cue, Ezra reminded him of what was now required of him.

"Captain, we will need our shields to enter the singularity. We must lower the cloak."

The cloak had given them their advantage, but Chris knew as well as Ezra, the closer the Maverick got to the singularity, it would be subject to tremendous gravimetric turbulence capable of tearing her apart if they did entered without their shields. As it was, their shield strength was depleted thanks to the collision and may still be incapable of protecting them if they entered the vortex.

"Do it," he nodded. "Then fire transphasic torpedoes again. With our shields raised, we should be able to withstand the blast."

"Captain, I would not bet the house on that."

"And I thought you were a gambler."

"I prefer better odds but," Ezra studied the progress of the Borg ships on the still functioning display at his tactical station and replied, "at present, we appear to no other alternatives."

"Isn't that the truth?" The Captain muttered reaching silently and saw Mary gripping the armrests of her chair tightly, no doubt frightened for herself and her son, hoping he wasn't risking all their lives with his hazardous plan. Covering her hand with his own, Mary looked at him with confidence. Chris was sure he did not deserve.

"Do it now and fire torpedoes."

"Aye Captain," Ezra answered when suddenly, the reddish glow of emergency lighting which had bathed the bridge since the encounter with the Borg sphere vanished. The room flooded with the bright illumination of main power and with a burst of static, overlapping comm signals filled the air. Department heads were chattering in unison, creating a cacophony of noise that became impossible to discern.

"We just got comms!" JD said excitedly, and no sooner than the apparent announcement was made, the image of Julia Pemberton appeared on the main viewer. Behind her, Engineering seemed to be in the same wretched state as the bridge, but the lit panels and crew working diligently at numerous stations told Chris it was still functional.

"Sorry for the radio silence Captain," Julia smiled, and her eyes shifted past his shoulder long enough for Chris to know she was surveying the bridge to ensure Ezra was alright. Without needing to see for himself, Chris knew Ezra was similarly relieved. "We've had some problems down here."

"I can see that," Chris managed a genuine smile. "Good to see you, Lieutenant."

"Likewise, althoughI couldn't help but notice you seem to be taking the ship towards the singularity."

"That's correct," Chris didn't bother with any more explanation than that. "Lieutenant we need as much power to the shields as we can get."

"Chanu and I are already rerouting power from our auxiliary systems," Julia explained, anticipating the request the instant she was able to repair the sensors and determine their present trajectory. "I can give you sixty percent shields, no more. I need the rest to keep the warp engines online, at least until I can conduct repairs to our starboard nacelle."

"That will do," Chris replied with approval as he saw Buck returning to his seat again.

"Captain, we have decloaked, and I am raising shields," Ezra announced at the same time. Once again, the Maverick began shuddering violently as the Borg were able to target them directly. Julia's timely rescue with the increased shield strength was the only thing keeping them from destruction. This time Vin's steerage was limited because the Maverick had only one direction it could go.

"Alright then," Chris leaned back into his chair and saw the singularity staring back at him like the flaming eye of some dark god. "We're going in."

"Damage report!"

Buck Wilmington demanded as the Maverick shook off another blast from the Borg ship, sensing the drain on the shields almost as if the power was being sucked from his own bones. Behind them, the four Borg cubes continued their relentless pursuit, even if their determination to catch up to the Maverick seemed an almost desperate attempt to keep the outmatched starship from entering the singularity. He supposed there was some comfort to be taken in knowing Species 8472 scared the Borg as much as it did the rest of them.

"Shield strength down fifteen per cent!" Alex exclaimed as she struggled to maintain her footing in the face of the battering the Maverick was taking.

"Shit," Chris swore from the centre seat, just as aware as Buck they could not keep losing shield strength while attempting to enter the rift created by the singularity.

The increasing gravimetric forces as they flew past the edge of the accretion disk towards the photosphere was terrible enough. It would be nothing compared to the turbulence they would experience when they crossed over the event horizon. Unlike typical black holes, this singularity was not a region of dark space but a blinding white light which only proved this was no natural phenomena. If they lost any more shield strength, the ship would break apart long before the Borg could claim her.

"Ezra, fire transphasic torpedoes! Get those bastards off us!"

"Aye Captain," Ezra complied, not even bothering to tell Chris that the resulting shockwave might harm the Maverick. At this point, he was sure the Captain would not care. His display provided him with a view of the ships in pursuit and Ezra aimed for the lead ship in the chase. The transphasic torpedoes had worked better than any of them believed, but the Borg were continually evolving, there was no telling how long the advantage would last.

"Firing torpedoes!"

"On screen!" Buck ordered, and from his station, JD complied, giving them all a glimpse at what Ezra's volley was about to do.

The torpedo struck the first Borg ship, and though there was a slight shimmer as the Borg shields were penetrated, it was no match for the technology brought to them from Kathryn Janeway. The triad of torpedoes flared across the surface of the hull, each explosion was more intense than the one preceding it. By the time the third one hit its mark, the cube was no longer visible beneath the brilliance of the blast. The ship cracked apart like an egg. While the Maverick's crew were nowhere out of trouble, it still felt satisfying to remind the Borg they were not as invulnerable as they liked to believe.

"Borg cube destroyed!" Alex announced, giving Ezra a brief smile before the reality of the situation asserted itself. "The remaining three are still in pursuit."

"Fire again Ezra! Use all our torpedoes if you have to, but we're not entering Fluidic Space with those assholes following us!"

"You turn a lovely phrase Captain," Ezra remarked, his gaze fixed on his console, already setting up his targeting screen to unleash another barrage of torpedoes at their enemy. "However, I do not think it will come to that. Fortunately, our last trip to space dock ensured we are sufficiently armed to dispatch these brigands without exhausting our supply."

How the man managed to squeeze in so many words in such a short space of time was beyond Chris. Nevertheless, the Captain was glad to hear the report anyway. By now the Maverick was shaking harder and harder, with everyone on board able to feel the turbulence as they were being carried forward by more than just their engines. Klaxons continued to whine throughout the ship, issuing redundant warnings to the rest of the crew at what was about to happen.

"Distance to singularity."

"Ten thousand kilometres and closing," JD answered Buck promptly over the sounds of the ship's shuddering. "We'll be past the event horizon in twenty seconds."

Once again, if this were an actual black hole, they would never know it until the crushing death in the singularity.

"The Borg are continuing their pursuit," Alex announced, working side by side with Ezra at tactical, taking up the duties usually his responsibility as he plotted a new firing solution for their enemies.

"Ezra, where are we with those torpedoes?" Buck shot the Security Chief a look, not liking what the bombardment by the Borg was doing to their shields. They were about to ride into a maelstrom and doing it with their shields weakened was going to cause structural damage they could ill afford at this point.

"Torpedoes away!"

Once again, the viewscreen shifted its perspective from the singularity to the vessels in pursuit. The three Borg ships loomed large before them, but it was telling that they had not already succumbed. If not for the upgrades, one vessel would have been enough to finish them, as it had done at Wolf 359 and the Battle of Sector 001 to a Federation armada.

The Borg, an unimaginative lot, had not altered their attack formation, lacking the ability to adapt to tactical thinking. Their superior technology was usually all they needed, but when faced with new situations, as they had when they first encountered Species 8472, they could be defeated. The torpedoes struck the hull of the nearest ship and the explosion that followed lit up the viewscreen. In less than a second, the flames were extinguished by the vacuum of space and the debris quickly swept away by the currents of the accretion disk.

"Fourth Borg ship destroyed!"

"Nice shooting Ezra," Buck said with relief, "what about the other two?"

Alex didn't answer for a moment, studying her console to give him an answer. Lifting her eyes to his, her expression remained grim. "They're not giving up Commander, they're still maintaining pursuit."

"Damn," Buck swore under his breath and turned to Chris. "Permission to continue firing Captain."

"Belay that, we don't have time," Chris said over the sound of the tremors in the hull.

The Maverick, even with its shields, was shaking so severely his teeth were chattering as he spoke. Glancing over to his right, he saw Mary's eyes were fixed on the screen ahead, the view now shifted back to the singularity ahead. Her pallor was as white as the knuckles she was digging into the armrest of her chair. No doubt her reaction probably mirrored everyone on board the ship.

"Warning, structural integrity is down 10 per cent."

"Vin, take us to full impulse!" Chris ordered ignoring the computer's voice of doom.

"You got it," Vin who had been ignoring the chatter behind him, answered almost laconically as if Chris had just asked him to take a leisure flight, not entering the singularity like a bat out of hell.

As it was, they lost the warp field the instant they were within reach of the accretion disk, the turbulence unable to maintain its stability. Forward inertia was pulling them towards the eye at near faster than light speed already, with Vin using their thrusters to ride the rapids. Full impulse would be sending them through the singularity like a bullet. However, they couldn't survive the trip if the Borg continued to deplete their shield strength.

"Going to full impulse now," Vin announced just before the Maverick accelerated in a burst of power, making everyone lurch forward in their seats and against their stations.

Space became a blur of colour as the vortex surrounded them on all sides, swirling radiation and the debris from the objects caught in the gravity field, turning it in a slurry of matter and energy. At the centre of this maelstrom was the singularity. Approaching it was like flying into the sun and Chris had to look away from the screen to avoid the assault on his retinas.

"Entering the singularity in ten seconds," JD managed to shout, and even though his voice was loud, Chris could hear the fear in it.

As the radiance from the vortex expanded across the view screen until they could see nothing else, Chris had to question whether or not he had done the right thing by taking this gamble. The ship might not survive the entry, and if it did not, Chris would have condemned a thousand people to die.

No, he had faith in Vin Tanner's ability to get them through this if nothing else.

The helmsman said little as always, but even though none of them could see Vin's face, except maybe JD, he was concentrating hard. Vin knew how the Maverick handled and had an intimate knowledge of her maneuverability. Knowing how much he could push her had allowed the ship to perform things he never imagined a craft of this size was capable. Yet the Maverick was his ship to fly, and when he was at the controls, they soared together.

"Come on darlin'," he said under his breath, using a term of affection he reserved for only one other, "you can do this."

Almost in answer, the Maverick entered the singularity without further delay, ignoring the bombardment of the Borg ships, the wailing of the emergency sirens throughout all decks and even the shuddering of its superstructure. It disappeared into the brilliant white light while riding the current of gravimetric eddies threatening to pull the Maverick apart. As he guided the ship into the heart of the rift, Vin thought of the term the pilots of old used to describe a moment like this.

Threading the needle.

When it felt as if the quaking could get no worse, and their bones felt ready to be shaken out of their bodies, the violent turbulence came to a sudden stop. The light that blinded them all on the bridge vanished and what remained in place could not be called space, even if its designation contained the word. The screen revealed a place that bore an uncanny resemblance to the view of the world from the bottom of an ocean. Instead of the reassuring blackness of space, sprinkled with the diamond glitter of stars, there was a vast expanse of green, stretching into Infinitum.

"This is it?" Mary looked at him. "This is Fluidic space?"

"Yeah," Chris nodded, staring at the screen with a frown. He'd reviewed Kathy's data tapes about the area when Voyager's mission logs were finally released by Starfleet after its return. Rising to his feet, he took a step closer to the screen as if getting closer would help him determine what it was that wasn't sitting right with him at his first viewing of the dimension.

Buck, on the other hand, was concerned with more practical matters. "What's our status?"

"Our shields are at fifty per cent," Alex answered automatically, aware this was what would be of most concern to the First Officer.

"What about the Borg ships?"

Ezra never got a chance to answer the question because the Maverick rocked with a familiar shudder. Dormant emergency alerts resumed the siren cry of warning, reminding everyone on the bridge their entry into Fluidic space had not eliminated the Borg threat after all. The two cubes appeared on screen again, ready to resume their pursuit even in this alien territory.

"Permission to fire Captain," Ezra frowned, wanting to be rid of these cybernetic scavengers once and for all. It appeared entering Fluidic space was not enough to deter their relentless pursuit. The Captain's gambit, however, had given them enough breathing room to avoid assimilation, and in this realm, the Borg were just as vulnerable as they were.

"Do it," the Captain snapped, but there was something in his face that made Ezra do a double-take before the urgency of the situation forced him to dismiss the observation for now.

Suddenly before he could fire, emerging from the swirling mist in front of them, with little or no warning were a phalanx of ships Chris knew immediately were bio-ships. Remembering Kathy's report, Chris recalled Species 8472 were capable of detecting the compression waves caused by vessels entering their dimension. If they had been the ones to establish the singularity in the Alpha Quadrant, it made sense they would be close by.

"Hard to port Vin! NOW!"

Vin barely had time to bank the Maverick hard, avoiding the ships rushing past them. The bioships swept past the starship, barely noticing the Federation intruder. Instead, their focus seemed to be on the Borg ships in pursuit. As alerts shrieked loudly in their ears again, the view screen revealed the new arrivals moving to intercept the Borg cubes behind them.

"What the hell?" Buck stared at his science officer. "How did we not see them coming?"

"I'm still trying to recalibrate what's left of our sensors in this environment!" Alex returned tautly, her hands already moving quickly over her console, trying to configure her station to avoid any more surprises. "Fluid space isn't empty, it's full of matter."

Mary suddenly stiffened in her chair, her eyes widening as an alien sensation flooded her thoughts. For a second, she wasn't sure what she was sensing. Not long ago, Mary encountered the Val' ea, a telepathic race of children who'd infected the minds of the Captain and the senior staff. That invasion had been inadvertent, resembling the feeling one got in a crowded room surrounded by too many bodies. The sensation she now felt was entirely different. She could feel them crawling around inside her skull, winding tendrils of connection in her language centres as if creating new wiring.

Once established, the message they had to deliver made Mary jumped up, breathing hard.

Chris got to his feet just sharply at seeing nothing less than panic in her blue-grey eyes. "Mary, what is it?"

"Chris," she raised her eyes to him. "We have to get out of here now!"

"What? Why?"

There was fear in her eyes, and for a moment, Chris thought the situation might have finally snapped her formidable nerves. Mary wasn't a military officer, she'd spent her life as a diplomat. The last year had seen her thrust well and truly out of her comfort zone. He supposed it wasn't impossible that there were limits to how much she could handle at one time.

Closing her eyes, trying to shut them out, she stared at him and stated, "I can hear them."

Her statement forced even Vin to look over his shoulder in concern. Thanks to Mary, Vin was able to erect the mental shields essential to his race's ability to keep their telepathic tendencies under control, but while she had been able to guide him, her own talent was weak. It was her marriage to Syan of Vulcan and the mating bond between husband and wife that surfaced Mary's own latent abilities. Unfortunately, it made her susceptible to the thoughts of powerful telepaths who were able to slice through her mental shields easily.

"Hear who?"

"Species 8472. Chris, they think we're guilty of something. I don't know what but they're holding us responsible. They keep saying we did this to them!"

"Did what?" Buck asked just as mystified.

"Doesn't matter," Chris cut in and helped Mary back to her seat. "Vin, get us out of here. If Mary's right, they'll be coming after us when they're done with the Borg. We need to put as much distance between them and us while they're fighting it out. JD, drop a sensor buoy to mark the spot. Without stars and subspace, we're navigating blind."

"Aye Sir."

As the Maverick took flight away from the confrontation between the two warring races, the senior staff watched the battle unfold as the bio ships opened fire on the two lone cubes. Firing a single continuous stream of power that lasted seconds, the beam of energy from the bioship cut the enemy cube in half. The display of power was enough to send the cube into overload, and the explosions flaring across its hull climaxed in a brilliant flare of light.

"Jesus Christ," Buck whistled. "I thought our transphasic torpedoes were nasty."

"I was under the impression the Borg cubes acquired the technology to defeat Species 8472," Ezra commented, his own attention fixed on reviewing the tactical data on the aliens, especially after hearing Mary's statement.

On cue, the single Borg ship fired a different weapon, one that was not the familiar energy-draining blasts that threatened to take apart the Maverick shields. Resembling a Romulan disruptor blast, the emerald coloured torpedo hurtled through space and struck one of the bioships nearest to it. The smaller, organically designed craft seemed to shimmer at the assault, and for a moment, it appeared it might have been compromised.

But then nothing happened.

"Oh God," Alex whispered. "Captain, I have a bad feeling they might have been adapting too. The bio-molecular weapon Voyager used against them may no longer be effective."

That was an understatement, Chris thought as he saw the bioships converging on the single Borg cube, now completely defenceless, reminding him of a zebra cornered by a pack of hyenas. Chris almost felt guilty at leaving the cube to its fate, but then he remembered what the Borg were, and how the Maverick had come to be in Fluidic Space.

After that, he felt nothing at all.

As Claire Moseley made her way to Shuttle Bay 2 to properly seal off the area after the devastation caused by the collision with the Borg sphere, she couldn't believe how things could change so radically in one hour.

When the red alert sounded, she and Chanu were in her quarters, discussing where they were going to spend their honeymoon. Chanu wanted them to go to Dorvan V, so she could, at last, meet his family who had settled on the distant colony world with other descendants of the Pueblo Indians of Earth.

It had been problematic for him to see them in recent years since Dorvan V had always been considered disputed territory between the Federation and the Cardassian Union. This had been especially difficult during the Dominion War, and while the Cardassians had left the peaceful community alone, it was exceedingly dangerous for a Starfleet officer to attempt a visit, even for family. Now the territory was firmly under Federation control, Chanu wanted Clare to meet his father Kojay and see the village he had grown up in.

Claire was looking forward to the trip mostly because Dorvan V was not that far away from Deep Space Nine, where her brother Rafe was stationed. It meant he could also participate in the marriage ceremony Chanu was certain his traditional parents would insist upon when they reached the community. The young blond engineer didn't mind. She adored Chanu, and she was interested in spending some time learning about the culture of the Pueblo. It amused her to think that even though Starfleet allowed them to explore distant civilizations and races, there were still some mysteries left to learn about her own people.

Walking along the corridor with her engineering kit in hand, she frowned at the damage caused by the Borg sphere. The passage she was travelling in was dark, and Claire frowned at her insistence to do this repair work herself when Chanu suggested she not go alone. With everyone working hard against time to restore primary functions to the ship, Clare thought it a waste of resources to assign two people to a job she could carry out on her own.

Now that she was faced with the hallway covered in debris, with light panels shattered and tangles of wire dangling from exposed ceiling panels, she couldn't help think the place looked a little scary. Telling herself she was being silly, she continued towards the shuttle bay doors, intending to seal it until the damage on the other side could be assessed appropriately and repaired. At the moment, their situation was too critical to waste power by cordoning off the place with emergency force fields.

Reaching the door, she put down her tool kit and lowered to find the instrument she would need to begin the work. The lack of illumination on the door panel told her the circuitry was probably fried and she would need her engineering tricorder to run a diagnostic of the damage before she could begin the work. She was rummaging through the tool kit when suddenly the door slid open.

Claire looked up abruptly and had just enough time to utter a soft cry of shock before the pain came, and everything she was, ceased to be.

"Hey Alex," Buck leaned against the science station where Alex was presently hunched over her console, tapping furiously as she reconfigured the Maverick's damaged sensor array to function in their new environment.

"Yeah, Commander," she responded, not looking up from the display as she continued to manipulate the digital images on her screen to match the specs she needed for the recalibration of the sensor.

"I didn't mean to snap at you earlier," he apologized, feeling a little guilty at jumping on top of her when the bioships had come out of nowhere. "I know you're doing your best."

Alex lifted her eyes to his, a little smile crossing her lips. "I know that Buck," she gave him a look of affection, not at all slighted by his demand earlier. Still, she was touched at the apology and decided it was very much in keeping with his warm character.

"Those bioships took me by surprise too. Our sensors are used to functioning through a vacuum. In this environment, where we seemed to be surrounded by whatever organic soup is outside, it's harder for signals to come through, especially after the damage we sustained f collision."

"Yeah," Buck nodded in agreement. "At least we've shaken off the Borg. I can't think of any hell worse than becoming one of those damn things."

"Me neither.” Alex raised her eyes to the view screen to see the environment outside. "You know despite the current situation, I think this is an opportunity to gather some valuable intel about the region. Voyager didn't get to spend much time in Fluidic space, so we know very little about it. If they're coming after us, we need to learn as much about it as we can."

"Spoken like every egghead science officer I ever met," Buck grinned. "Gather intel as needed, but we need to get out of here, the sooner, the better."

"Understood," she nodded, showing she was not so enamoured by the possibility of exploring a new frontier that she could forget the danger they were presently facing. The screen before her, previously displaying numerous images had now settled on one set of digitized readings, all flashing green. "I think I've set up our senses appropriately to detect any more bioships before they get to us."

"Good," Buck said with approval and turned to Chris who was still staring at the viewscreen, lost in thought.

The Maverick had left the scene of the battle between the Borg and Species 8472, journeying further into the region. So far, they had detected no sign of anything close to resembling stars or planets, making Chris wonder how on Earth the race lived. They would need some form of terrain to build ships or for that matter, a civilization. Surely they couldn't have evolved living like schools of fish. It was perplexing.

"Chris, Alex has configured the sensors."

Chris drew away from the screen as Vin continued ahead, using thrusters to carry them forward instead of impulse power. He wanted to reduce any chance of creating the compression waves the enemy used to detect them. Even the marking buoys JD had released at intervals were cloaked to ensure they did not leave breadcrumbs for the bioships to follow. Meanwhile, Ezra was at his own station, studying what he could about the bioweapons used by Voyager and how they might be improved so they could be used effectively against the enemy once more.

"What have you got?" Chris asked, once again wearing that slight frown telling Buck something was on his mind, if not what exactly.

"I've configured our sensors to detect massive shifts of liquid density, utilizing the same principle seismologists use to detect the intensity of underwater quakes to predict tsunamis. I've calibrated our sensors to look for mass displacement roughly the size of the bio ships. It will give us a good indication of when they are coming our way. It's an early warning system anyway, at least until Julia repairs our main sensor array."

"Good work," Chris turned back to his chair, with Buck giving Alex a nod of approval to carry on, before following him.

"Buck I want a senior staff meeting in thirty minutes, all department heads present so we can figure out how we get out of this mess. While I'm all for up and leaving Fluidic Space as soon as we can, Mary's warning has got me worried. They opened up a rift in our space, that tells me she might be right about them thinking we're responsible for something. We might need to figure out what that is or risk having an armada coming after us in the Alpha Quadrant."

"Yeah, that's all we need," Buck shook his head and then spoke up. "Chris is something else wrong?"

Chris stared at him for a moment and realized the gnawing sensation he had in the pit of his gut had not gone unnoticed.

"It doesn't look like I thought it would," Chris admitted after a moment.

"Excuse me?" Buck didn't understand as Chris sat down at his seat.

"I reviewed Voyager's mission logs, and the footage I saw of Fluidic space showed a place that looked like you were travelling along the bottom of the ocean. All green and golds, it looked..." he struggled for the right word and picked the closest one that fitted. "Healthy."

Buck turned to the screen to take a closer view of Fluidic space as it was right now and did not see the ocean. If anything, it looked murky like dank water. Vibrancy was not the first word that leapt out at him.

"I know what you mean," Vin said, finally able to look away from the Con now they were out of immediate danger. "When I was growing up on that planet with my foster folks, I fell into this swamp one time and went all the way under. It wasn't deep, but I couldn't get out of there fast enough. The water was no good for drinking, and it was all thick and stagnant. That's what it looks like out there, the bottom of a swamp."

The mood during the senior staff meeting a short time later was understandably bleak.

Once the final tally was made, the casualty list was as bad as Chris feared. They'd lost seventeen crew in the collision with the Borg sphere and nine more during the fiery aftermath due to explosive decompression, structural failure and various plasma fires. Most of the dead were in the service, but a few had been civilians, and those losses hit Chris particularly hard. Forced to put away his anger and sorrow until the proper time, right now, his crew needed his mind focussed on the task of getting them home.

For the first time, Chris could truly appreciate Kathryn Janeway's situation, beyond the words in her mission logs.

As the meeting of the Senior Staff got underway, no one at the conference table could ignore the unnerving sight of Fluidic space beyond the window. The strangeness of the place seemed more potent in light of Chris's suspicions regarding the state of the region. Joining them at the table was Nathan Jackson, Josiah Sanchez and Julia Pemberton. While none of the three had been on the bridge during the battle, it was clear the last hour had also taken its toll upon them.

Nathan appeared exhausted, no doubt because he would have been on the front line, dealing with the casualties flooding Sick Bay after the nacelle had been struck. Nathan, who never appeared to have developed the calluses doctors so often needed around their emotions, might have been taking the loss of the crew even more personally than Chris. The Captain couldn't blame him of course. While Chris received his news of the casualties from reports handed to him, Nathan would have seen them first hand.

Julia's soiled uniform indicated she didn't have time to change before this meeting. Such was the emergency on the ship, expending the time to change her clothes seemed trivial when their survival depended so much on the Maverick returning to full operational status. Her uniform was stained in places with soot and grime. A smattering of it was on her cheek beneath her notice. Chris supposed directing her Engineering team to repair a thousand wounds across the Maverick was far more necessary than her personal appearance.

Josiah, on the other hand, seemed silent. While he would have sat out the battle either in his quarters or the Counsellor's office, Chris imagined he was probably all talked out from trying to offer comfort to the terrified civilian portion of the crew. During these battles, Josiah always made himself available to anyone who needed soothing during the crisis. For many families, the price of remaining together meant facing the same dangers, and for a few, it was simply too much. As Counsellor, Josiah was the voice of the civilian population on the Maverick, and at moments like this, Chris could see just how much of a burden it was.

"Okay, how bad is it?" Chris asked once the meeting was underway, directing his first question at Julia.

Julia let out a sigh and eased into her chair, appearing almost grateful the meeting allowed her to catch her breath. As it was, she'd left her team a long list of instructions so they could keep working while she was here and felt a little guilty she was getting some respite when they were not.

"As you know, our communication array, along with our deflectors, were damaged in the crash. We have limited short-range communication via our combadges, but that's it until the repairs can be conducted. The main engines are still functional, but they need to be taken offline for at least four hours to restore full warp capability. Our biggest problem right now is power. We seemed to be bleeding it out, and if we don't cap it off soon, not even our auxiliaries are going to keep us from becoming dead in the water."

"So that's the good news," Buck spoke up immediately, trying to diffuse the grim mood that fell over them after that somewhat depressing report. "So what's the bad news?"

"Given enough time, we can repair all this damage Captain," Julia met Chris's gaze, wishing she had not put things so starkly but then knew the Captain would want no padded truths. "We've got partial shields restored with what's left of the deflector array. To get back to full operation, we need to go out on the hull and replace the hardware."

"Outside?" Ezra blurted out before he could stop himself.

All eyes turned to him before the Security Chief retreated behind his composed gambler's facade once more. Still, it was clear to everyone he did not like the idea of anyone venturing into the strange environment outside. Least of all Julia.

"Captain," he spoke in his most professional voice, not looking at Julia as he addressed Chris. "That might not be wise. At this point, we have insufficient information about this region and what dangers might lie in it."

Chris tended to agree, but he also knew right now, the Maverick was vulnerable. They'd beaten the odds and survived an encounter with six Borg cubes, Chris did not want to gamble they would be so lucky in a battle with Species 8472 with the Maverick in her present state. "Is there any other way to conduct the repair without you having to spacewalk?"

Julia glanced at Ezra, seeing through his attempt at indifference and knew he feared for her, but just as she was forced to cope with the danger he faced as the Chief of Security, he would have to extend her the same consideration.

"I'm afraid, not Sir. It's more than just the deflector array that's been damaged, we've got multiple breaches across the saucer section that must be sealed. We've got plasma bleeding from the structural damage to the nacelle which can only be repaired from the outside. We simply can't waste the power using emergency force fields. As it is, we're experiencing severe power blackouts in the surrounding area."

"Captain," Buck spoke up, understanding Chris's hesitation after losing more than twenty-five people today, but they would lose a lot more if the enemy came calling when they weren't ready. "We need to get out there," he shifted his gaze towards Julia and then Ezra, "but we need to do this smart. We need to know it's safe first."

"I agree," Alex added her voice to Buck's in support and then glanced at Vin, offering a silent apology for what she was about to propose. "Captain, I can go out there in an EV suit and collect some data, including samples. The transporters are offline, and we need a fast answer. I'll go out there, get a sample of the substance that makes up Fluidic space and get it back for study. EV suits are pretty indestructible, it should keep out any contaminants, and I won't be out there long."

Vin's expression remained as unflappable as ever, but Alex knew if he had a problem with her suggestion, she would hear it when they were alone.

"I'll go with her," Ezra volunteered.

"No," Chris countered immediately. "You need to get working on building us bio warheads. The ones the Borg used on Species 8472 had no effect, and I won't be caught like they were."

"But Captain," Ezra started to argue when he found himself on the receiving end of the Larabee glare, bringing an end to any protest. "Aye Sir."

"I'll go with her," Vin volunteered not looking at his wife because he was not speaking as her husband, but as a comrade. "Because Alex is right. That's not space," he glanced at the window. "Whatever is floating out there, might be capable of supporting life other than Species 8472."

"Oh shit," Buck swore, falling back into his chair, the thought not even occurring to him until now.

"They claim to be the only things that exist in their dimension," Mary reminded, having reviewed the information about Species 8472 before this meeting. "According to Captain Janeway, they found everything on our side a threat to their genetic purity because they were alone in this place."

"With that kind of arrogance," Josiah spoke, finally able to contribute something to this meeting. "They might not consider other creatures living in their realm as true life forms, so from their perspective, they are alone."

"Frankly," Nathan added, "I find it extremely unlikely that they are the only living things in this dimension. I need Alex's samples to be certain of this, but considering how much reliance they have on organic technology, I would say what's out there, would share a lot of similarities to planets in the early stages of biological development."

"Exactly," Alex nodded. "For all we know, this entire dimension of space could be like Earth four billion years ago. It could be a primordial soup out there, full of organisms. Just because Species 8472 believes they're alone, may not make it so."

"Which only proves my point it is dangerous outside," Ezra reiterated. "You should be accompanied by a security team."

"We should keep the party small Chris," Vin advised, "at least until we know what we're dealing with. It may be nothing, but if there is something out there..."

"He's right," Buck agreed. "I recommend one security officer to accompany them."

Ezra would have preferred more, but he was willing to accept Buck's suggestion. He would have preferred to go himself but guessed Chris would never permit it while the ship was still in their present circumstances. He was too valuable to waste.

"Do it," Chris ordered. "In the meantime, it's all hands on deck. Buck, go over the personnel records, re-assign anyone with engineering capabilities to assist Julia with the repairs."

"I can help out, Captain," JD spoke up, usually silent during these meetings because he was still a junior officer. "I mean if it's okay."

"It is," Chris gave the younger man a little smile, perfectly aware of just how versatile JD could be. The kid who beat the Kobayashi Maru had also done pretty well in his engineering classes, Chris had no doubt he would provide valuable assistance to the efforts of the already taxed Engineering team. "Looks like you got another set of hands at your disposal Julia."

"We could use it," Julia gave JD a look of gratitude.

"Okay," Chris looked at Nathan, "how is Sick Bay doing?"

"We've got a lot of wounded," Nathan replied. "Lt. Wo Chin's surrogate went into premature labour when their quarters suffered some structural damage. We've managed to stabilize her, but Wo Chin's husband Kumar took a nasty hit on the head. Doctor Zheng is still in surgery with him." The healer was still somewhat annoyed he had to leave it to his assistant CMO instead of handling it himself, but such were the duties of a department head. "Most of the injuries are the result of radiation leakage and burns from the plasma fires."

"Some of the civilians have offered to help," Josiah added. "They're volunteering to run equipment and food to where it's needed. Casey's rallied the first aiders to help out in Sick Bay. Inez has organized everyone to grab their meals at Four Corners, so we're not overtaxing the replicators. The school is babysitting the children whose parents need to be on duty, using the empty holodecks. People are scared, but having something to do helps them forget where they are, which isn't easy to ignore under the circumstances." Josiah glanced at the window.

"Billy is with them," Mary told Chris Billy had with Audrey King and daughter Lilith when the crisis began, and while she had spoken with him in the last thirty minutes, she knew Chris would have like to have checked in with the boy himself. 

Chris couldn't help feeling exceedingly proud of his crew and the civilians on board. Considering their situation, they had pulled together like a real community, and it made Chris doubly determined to ensure he got them back to the Alpha Quadrant. "Josiah, please give my thanks to the civilians for all their help. I know we are in a difficult situation, but they can be assured we are doing everything we can to get them home."

"I'm certain they already know Chris," Josiah answered, perfectly aware of how much confidence the crew had in their Captain. A short time ago, they were facing assimilation, now they had a fighting chance of survival. It was not lost on anyone it was Chris Larabee who delivered them from this fate. "But I will tell them."

"Alright," Chris turned back to the others. "Ezra, you need to get to work on those torpedoes. Somehow, they've managed to get around the nanite bioweapons developed by Voyager. We've got to regain that advantage. Nathan, you're the most familiar with the Borg assimilation process than anyone else on board. If I'm not mistaken these bioweapons were built using Borg nanites, so give Ezra a hand."

"I can do that, although," he glanced at JD. "JD was helping me with the technological side of it. Ezra, he could explain some of the engineering aspects of the nanites better than I could."

"JD your dance card appears to be full," Buck looked at the kid who was surprised at Nathan's endorsement. "Julia can you spare him to help Ezra."

"Well I suppose you could make it up to me later Commander," Julia flashed Ezra a smirk, knowing perfectly well he would be embarrassed by this personal display. Under the circumstances, a little levity might just be what they needed.

A ripple of amusement moved across the room, especially when Ezra looked like he was blushing proved she’d succeeded on that score.

Clearing his throat, Ezra gave her a look. "We'll talk about that later, Lieutenant."

"It's a date," she winked at him.

"Okay, okay," Chris threw in with a good-natured chuckle before Ezra could turn any redder. "Stop making my Chief of Security twitchy, I need his mind on the job. JD you're with Ezra and Nathan."

Turning to the other couple at the table, Chris issued his last order before Buck called the meeting to a close. "Alex, Vin, suit up. The sooner we know the conditions out there, the faster the Engineering teams can get to work." 

 "Julia."

Ezra Standish caught up with Julia Pemberton after Buck dismissed the Senior Staff from the Conference. Nathan and Josiah were headed to the lower decks where Sick Bay was situated while Alex and Vin went to the airlock to make their 'spacewalk' across the hull. Ezra took the opportunity to speak to Julia, aware time would not permit it later. As it was, JD had already made tracks to the Armoury to begin work on the bio-molecular warhead they intended to use to protect themselves from Species 8472.

Despite the levity she brought to the somewhat tense meeting earlier, Julia was now making a beeline back to Engineering, urgency in every step she took to the turbo lift. He knew by her stride, she was eager to get to work and nothing grated at Julia more than seeing her beloved ship in anything less than perfect condition. Nevertheless, his call had halted her in her steps, and she turned around, surprised because she would assume and rightly so, he was just as eager to get back to his duties as her.

"This is not about me teasing you in there is it?" She asked when he was close enough. "I'm sorry, I just thought everyone was so edgy in there, and you were being so Ezra, we needed to laugh."

"So Ezra?" He stared at her.

"You know, all doom and gloom with the dramatic delivery of a Tennessee Williams play."

"Charming," he gave her an affectionate look. "No, I was not annoyed by that. If I were easily perturbed by any of the things you do, I would have fled when you forced me to share my abode with a feline possessing the demeanour of a Klingon Targ."

"Ezra," Julia gave him a withering stare. "You know Cosmo says that if you share your space with a pet, you are one step on the road to living with someone."

Once again, Ezra cursed the magazine that had been the bane of men for the past four centuries. Julia, who considered it the bible by which she navigated their relationship, was an avid practitioner of the dark arts held in its digital pages. "Yes, having my expensive Persian rug cleaned regularly has really taught me that lesson."

Julia uttered a short laugh, but when she fell silent, Ezra could see she was itching to get going to Engineering and truth was, he was eager to return to his own duties as well. However, after the self-destruct order given earlier, Ezra felt compelled him to take a little time for himself. Soon he would be occupied with Nathan and JD, attempting to construct a bio-molecular weapon using stone knives and bearskins, and the opportunity to speak his mind would be lost.

"Anyway," he resumed speaking, ignoring the scatological wisdom provided by Cosmo, "I have been giving some thought to our situation, and I think when we leave this dreadful realm, we ought to give serious consideration to sharing a living space. After all, since you forced me to buy Huxley, perhaps you should help take care of him."

"Really?" Her eyes lit up, realizing what he was asking her. Once again, Ezra was caught in the dazzling brilliance of those emerald eyes. "Oh, Ezra I would love to!"

Before he could utter another word, he was on the receiving end of an embrace that evolved quickly into a passionate kiss. Even though they could feel time pressing against them as if its presence was given physical form ready to tap their shoulders and remind them they had matters to attend, for the moment at least all was forgotten. Ezra held her close, never understanding what it was, he had done to earn this bundle of sunshine in his life when there were only the seedy backrooms of darkness before. Julia's view of the world was a beautiful place, so unlike his jaded perspective. Yet somehow against all the odds, she understood him and was able to sidestep the deflections of his gambler's character to love the person beneath.

"Well," he said, flashing Julia his trademark dimpled grin when they parted. "We can discuss the details when this crisis is over. Such as what to do about your unicorn collection."

"Me and the unicorn collection are a packaged deal Commander, get used to it." Julia winked as she turned on her heels and headed towards Engineering.

"Not while there is breath in my body," Ezra called after her, smiling as he did the same, going towards the Armoury.

"Captain," Charlotte Richmond, temporarily taking Alex's place at the Science station while the science officer and the officer of the Con were undertaking their mission on the hull, piped up a short time after Chris, Buck and Mary had returned to the bridge. "The sensors are picking up some sort of mass directly ahead of us."

"A mass?" Chris shot her a look from his command chair. "I need a better definition than that, Lieutenant."

So far the screen revealed nothing but the disheartening view of the murky dark substance that made up Fluidic space, but Charlotte's announcement meant there was something there, something they could not see just yet.

"Ensign Chun, let's see it," Buck prompted Jewell who had retaken the navigator's station since JD was down in the Armoury. "Magnify the view 400 per cent."

"Aye Sir."

No one knew what to make of it when Charlotte's 'mass' materialized in front of them.

From a distant, it looked like a giant dutch elm with branches splayed out like a fan, except these branches bore no leaves and even from a distance, it was a tree several thousand miles across. They hadn't even neared it yet, but Chris knew just by looking at it when the Maverick got closer, the thing would make them appear positively tiny.

For a moment, the Captain was struck with the story of Telperion, one of the Two Trees of Valinor featured in JRR Tolkien's Silmarillion. Those books had been his father's favourites and looking at this mass now, reminded Chris of that fabled tree, shortly after the creature Ungoliant devoured its life.

And just like Telperion, this mass with its branch-like latticework looked dead.

"What is it?" Buck asked the question on everyone's mind.

"I can't be certain until our sensors are fully repaired," Charlotte attempted to answer, "But preliminary scans indicate it is definitely organic, with a high concentration of calcium in its composition. Captain, it’s almost ten thousand kilometres across."

"That's almost the size of a small moon," Mary gasped next to him.

Earlier Chris had wondered how Species 8472 had developed civilization in this odd region of space without planets and moons from which natural resources could be mined to build ships and cities. How did they live without something resembling a home? Were they nomadic? He had a thousand questions and wished things were not so hostile between the Federation and the species because he would have liked to have asked them.

"Captain, shall I alter course or should I go in closer?" Nora Densham, who was at the helm, asked.

"Move in slowly," Chris answered, wanting a better look at the mass because they needed to learn all they could about this region if they were going to be traversing its expanse for a time.

"Chris," Buck leaned over in his seat to ask quietly. "Not to sound like Ezra, but is that the best idea? For all we know that could be one of their cities."

"No," Mary spoke up, capturing the attention of both men.

Her inadvertent interruption made her cheeks turn red with embarrassment, and she quickly explained herself.

"I'm sorry, Captain," Mary used his title to indicate she was making this report as one of his officers. "I didn't mean to interrupt, but I don't think there's anyone there. I can't sense their thoughts. They're extremely powerful telepaths. Just one of them passing us by on a ship was capable of penetrating my mind. If there are a lot of them on that structure, I would know it."

Chris trusted Mary's psi ability as limited as it was. On more than one occasion, it had given him an edge, and in more urgent situations, it had saved their skins. He wasn't about to doubt her now. Still, Chris was not one to rely on a single point of view when it came to the lives of his crew and Mary knew that. While he valued her opinion, as her Captain, he needed more.

"Is there any way we can confirm any signs of life on that thing?" Chris directed the question at Charlotte, swivelling slightly in his chair so he could face her. While she was a competent officer, it still felt odd to see her there instead of Alex.

"I'm afraid not Sir. Our sensors aren't functioning fully and are having difficulty differentiating organic composition of everything in this region. We might get better readings after the repairs are done."

"What about tricorders?" Buck suggested.

"That could work," Chris agreed. "But it means sending an Away team there to scan the thing."

"I can do that," Buck offered automatically.

"Nice try," Chris shook his head even before the words left his mouth. "But we've already got a team preparing to leave the ship, so if we get closer, they should be able to take the samples they need as well as run a tricorder reading over the mass. Besides, if no one is there, it might be a good place to hold up while we conduct repairs."

"That's true," Buck agreed since the structure was certainly large enough to provide them ample cover. "Mary, you sure there's no member of Species 8472 on that thing?"

Mary continued to stare at the unique latticework. "I can't say I'm absolutely certain, but if they were there, I'd feel it. I wish we had a Betazoid on board. They'd be able to give you a better answer."

"You're doing fine, Mary," Chris said gently. "Besides, the last time Buck went anywhere near a Betazoid, he almost got slapped."

"I told Deanna I was sorry!" Buck groaned exasperated and shot Chris a dark look for bringing that up, especially when he remembered Will Riker's laughter later. Tapping his combadge, Buck ignored his Captain and reached out to their science officer.

"Alex come in."

Alex, who was with Vin and the security officer Ezra assigned to them, Drew Katovit, were at present in one of the outer airlocks, preparing to leave the ship. "Yeah, Buck, I'm here. What's up?"

"We've encountered a mass, a calcium structure the size of a moon. We'll be within visual range in a few minutes. We're unable to detect any life signs from this range with our sensors the way they are, but..."

"We can do it with tricorders." She completed the sentence.

Chris and Buck exchanged a little smile before Chris spoke up. "We need to know if anything is alive there. It's large enough to provide us with some cover while we conduct repairs, but before I make that decision, I wanted to know if there's any danger. Conduct a preliminary scan and maintain an open channel at all times. Are you armed? "

"We're loaded for bear, Captain." Vin's voice replied before Alex could answer.

"Good," Chris approved, aware that Vin would go nowhere without a weapon. He was almost as cautious as Ezra in such instances. "If you so much as get a twinge something is wrong, I want you three to haul ass and get back here, understood?"

Perfectly aware of how much Alex could get carried away when investigating something new, Chris emphasized his last word for her benefit.

"Don't worry Chris," Vin added. "I'll bring her back kicking....ow! That hurt!"

A soft burst of chuckling rippled across with Buck shaking his head, Chris rubbing the bridge of his nose and Mary rolling her eyes. A second later, Alex replied, her tone professional as ever.

"Understood Captain, we'll maintain contact at all times."

"See that you do," Chris reiterated. "Good luck you three."

Maria Ruiz, the Maverick's Head Nurse, left Sick Bay for the first time since the crisis began, headed for her quarters. After how close they had come to being assimilated, she needed to see her husband Henry and daughter Sofie to make sure they were alright. Maria was grateful, Henry, a botanist in the science department, was able to return to their quarters to be with their four-year-old daughter who would undoubtedly be frightened out of her wits from what had been taking place the last hour.

Doctor Jackson had allowed Maria the time to make the trip, deciding she would be no use to him if she were distracted by worried for her family. He could spare her for twenty minutes if it were put to good use allaying her fears.

Taking the turbo lift to deck fourteen where her quarters were located, the ride was smooth even though the internal lighting seemed to be flickering on and off. Considering the damage to the ship by the collision with the Borg sphere, Maria was grateful they weren't in worse shape. Honestly, she was rather thankful she didn't have to get down there using the stairs or worse yet, access conduits. As the turbo lift hummed along its journey, Maria leaned against the wall, taking a breather, the events of the last hour catching up with her.

There were so many wounded. It shook Maria's resolve to see the effects of plasma burns on some of the victims caught in the explosions caused by the nacelle when it was rammed by the enemy ship. Most had to be heavily sedated for the medical staff to administer dermal regeneration. Medical science had done wonders for healing the tissue victims, but there was no magic pill to make that excruciating pain any less.

Casey Wells had been a godsend because the girl was able to soothe people already in distress and supposed she must have acquired the skill dealing with the Captain on a daily basis. Chris Larabee might have been a beloved figure amongst his crew, but the man had a temper that was just as infamous as his razor-sharp ability to command. Before Casey left the Maverick for her sabbatical on Bajor, Maria made a mental note to suggest she consider a nursing career. Her bedside manner was simply too good to waste.

When the lift came to a stop, and the door slid open, Maria forgot all about Casey Wells. Deck 14, which also included Shuttle Bay 1 was bathed in reddish light, a symptom of the red alert status the ship had been in a short time ago. No doubt the damage had prevented normal illumination from resuming, but when Maria stepped out into the hallway, she couldn't help feeling a little chilled. Conduits were dangling from the ceilings, some wall panels flashing intermittently, while fragments of those that were shattered covered the floor.

A surge of alarm filled her then. Maria wondered how many of the quarters on this deck were occupied. She hated to think Henry and Sofie were alone down here in all this. Hurrying down the corridor, she noted the doors leading to one of the quarters were sliding open and close repeatedly. As she passed by it, she called out.

"Anyone there?"

There was no answer.

Feeling a chill of fear she couldn't explain run down her spine, Maria continued her journey towards her quarters, the need to see her family becoming more urgent with each step forward. Sidestepping a ceiling panel lying across the corridor, she neared her residence and saw the door was closed. A reassuring surge of relief flooded her at the idea, whatever was happening out here had yet to reach them. Activating the panel, the doors slid open soundlessly, once again proving they were still safe inside.

Except the inside of the room was pitch black.

"Henry! Sofie!"

Once again, her demand was met with silence. "Computer lights!"

The computer refused to obey, and the room remained shrouded in darkness, the black tugging at the fray of the reddish glow of emergency lighting pouring through the room. Maria wanted to turn on her heels and run but, her fierce desire to find her family compelled her to step deeper inside to investigate. Perhaps they were gone, driven by the lack of power to join the families congregated in the holodeck.

"Henry, Sofie! Are you in here?" She tried one more time.

Her answer was a strobe of red light, flashing in her eyes. For a second the narrow beam of red blinded her, and as the spots dissipated, the crimson glow illuminated the face from which it originated.

It was Henry.

As Maria began to scream and the door slid to a close behind her, she realized while Henry was present, everything that was her husband was no longer in the room.

When the pillar of the warp core suddenly came alive, humming steadily as it pulsed with energy for the first time in the last hour, Julia along with the rest of the engineering team, let out a collective sigh of relief. Across Main Engineering, panels presently flashing dire readings abruptly shifted course, turning green with recovery.

"The antimatter containment magnetic field is rising Julia," Chanu announced with relief. "It's reached 50 per cent and still climbing."

"Good," Julia smiled and turned to her team. "We still got a lot of work to do, but we've got main power. There are systems all over the ship that are compromised and running on auxiliaries. We've going to stagger our switch back to main power, so we don't overload anything and create shorts. Our primary goal is to restore full power to the engines, shields and begin preparation to repair all arrays damaged during the collision. We need the sensors back at optimal. You've looked out the window, that isn't Kansas out there."

The brief pause to bask in their efforts ended with that sobering reminder. Even though Engineering was located in one of the lowest levels of the ship, they were still provided with enough observation windows to see what was happening outside. The world beyond was far more alien than anything they had ever seen, and right now, without their sensors, they were navigating it blind.

As Julia returned to the central engineering station in the middle of the room, Chanu came alongside her as she studied the display revealing the Maverick's present condition. For the most part, the diagnostic image of the ship revealed sections were either flashing green or amber, indicating the severity of the damage. Only one section appeared to be glowing red.

"What's going on here?" Julia asked Chanu.

"Oh, that," Chanu frowned. "We've got power fluctuations across that entire deck. I sent Claire down to seal off Shuttle Bay 2, so we didn't have to use force fields, but the problem might be more extensive than we originally thought. Claire's probably trying to deal with it down there."

"Well I'll head down and give her a hand,," Julia said, heading towards her toolbox after noting the issue was starting to spread. "You stay here and keep working on restoring shield strength, or else you'll have Captain Larabee on the horn, and you don't want to be on the receiving end of his angry voice."

“Everyone ready?”

Alexandra Styles inquired of her two companions, one of which was her husband and the other being Drew Katovit, Ezra Standish’s trusted Assistant Chief of Security. After squeezing into their environmental suits, or EV suits as they were called to cause less strain on the tongue, they now stood in one of the many airlocks of the galaxy-class starship preparing to step into Fluidic Space.

“Let’s go for a stroll Darlin’,” Vin Tanner winked through his visor before taking a step next to her while cradling the same type phase rifle Drew was carrying behind them.

“I’m good Commander,” Drew commented.

“Initialise gravity boots,” she ordered, tapping the controls on the forearm of her suit and immediately feeling the magnetic pull of the boots against the deck beneath her. Glancing quickly over her shoulder, she saw Vin and Drew had done the same before she reached for the airlock panel to open the doors.

Red lights immediately flashed throughout the small space, giving warning of the decompression about to take place, with all three bracing themselves for how different this was going to be in comparison to a typical spacewalk across the hull. It was no void on the other side of the door, but an emptiness that drew out the oxygen like poison from a wound. An air pocket might even be formed.

They were not disappointed. The translucent substance poured through the opening doors of the airlock like a boat being submerged underwater. In a matter of seconds, the ‘fluid’ for want of a better word, rushed past them and if it were not for their magnetic boots, all three would have been flattened against the wall from the sudden deluge. It took less than ten seconds for the airlock to be filled entirely and a further ten seconds before any of them felt steady enough to proceed.

Even though she was leading the Away Team, Vin stayed close to Alex.

No matter how much being a Cardassian prisoner shaped Alex’s situational awareness when it came to trouble, at the heart of her, Vin knew she was a scientist first. Alex loved nothing more than a puzzle and exuded almost Vulcan patience when she was trying to decipher one. He knew despite the danger they were in, Fluidic Space checked all the boxes of her scientific curiosity, which was why he insisted on coming with her. He had no desire to let her fascination get herself killed.

The Maverick had closed the distance to the mass while they were getting ready to leave the ship, and now as they stood at the mouth of the airlock looking out, they realised how much it dwarfed the starship. Its branches spread so wide before them, its edges were lost in the murkiness of Fluidic space. Completely organic in its design, it twisted and turned, curled in some places and angled in others, but there was no doubt in any of their minds, in the absence of planets or moons, these odd constructs could afford the life forms in the realm the same comforts.

“Oh my God,” Alex whispered as she left the airlock, pausing just long enough to shake off the momentary disorientation that came with walking across the hull like a fly. “Look at the size of it.”

“Reminds me of coral,” Drew observed. “I went diving off the Great Barrier Reef during one of my furloughs, and this looks like some of the older, dead coral.”

“That would not be an inaccurate analogy Lieutenant,” Alex agreed, thinking the mass did look like greying bleached coral. She reached for the tricorder hooked onto her belt and began scanning, wanting to gather as much data as possible as they made their way across the hull to reach one of the nearest branches of the coral, a word she liked much better than the mass.

“What can you see?” The Captain’s voice filled all their comms.

“Not much,” Vin remarked not as interested as Alex. His blue eyes were searching the expanse before them, thinking now more than ever of how much this place reminded him of the bottom of a swamp and by that analogy, the things that might be living in it. “We decided we’re gonna call the mass the ‘Coral’ since that seems to fit better.”

“I like that,” Buck Wilmington’s voice added a second later.

“Captain” Alex spoke up after a moment, raising her eyes from the readings on her tricorder. “Judging by my initial scans, Fluidic space is some form of organic plasma. It contains high volumes of water, electrolytes, dissolved proteins, glucose, amino acids, minerals, lipids and phospholipids. In this environment, it is doubtful Species 8472 is the only life form here. I’m already detecting microbes in the solution. This stuff is the perfect environment for life to thrive.”

“Alright,” Chris’s voice grew taut because all of this seemed to confirm Vin’s earlier suspicion they better mind their step while being out here. When the Away Team returned to the ship, all three would have to undergo decontamination to ensure none of these microbes would spread to the Maverick if harmful. “Keep your eyes open in case any of those life forms decides to show up.”

“Already on it,” Vin replied, exchanging a nod with Drew about where his priorities lay.

Alex was removing a vial from one of the pockets on her sleeve and extracting a sample of plasma for Nathan’s examination. While her scan had detected microbes, it would require the doctor’s expertise to determine their exact nature. Filling up the vial, she quickly replaced it in one of the pockets of her suit before speaking again.

“Captain, we’re going to head towards the...” Alex threw a quick glance at Vin and Drew, “Coral. We’ll keep the channel open as ordered.”

The trio crossed the saucer section of the Maverick, their boots clunking against the metal with each step forward. The ship had moved as close to the nearest branch of the coral formation, to ensure their boosters when fired would not have far to carry them across the gap.

Vin thought travelling across the hull in Fluidic space felt like trying to walk along the bottom of a swimming pool. The viscosity of the plasma made their limbs feel heavier, worsened by the cumbersome EV suits. Vin, who liked most Vulcans did not enjoy being in the water and longed for the vacuum of space after a few minutes of crossing the football field-sized saucer section of the Maverick.

“We should have just worn scuba gear,” Drew commented as the edge of the hull came into view. “We could just swim over there.”

“Only if you want to end up in Nathan Jackson’s dog house,” Buck spoke through their comms. Having been on the receiving end of the doctor’s ire after handling a plant on an alien world that ended up giving him a severe allergic reaction, Buck knew how annoyed Nathan could be about quarantine regulations not being observed. The man had Buck stuck in decontamination for a day, all the while giving him a stern lecture on why what he did was just plain dumb.

“Captain,” Alex spoke suddenly, her brow furrowing as she stared at the display of the tricorder, “I’m detecting what may be life sign readings.”

Her statement made Vin and Drew immediately freeze in their tracks. Both men began surveying the area around them, attempting to glimpse what it was Alex had detected, their weapons raised in readiness to fire.

“Can you identify it?” Chris demanded, his voice tense and Vin knew he was on the cusp of ordering them back to the ship.

“They’re not bio-ships,” Alex quickly clarified. “They’re moving too slowly, and their pattern seems erratic. I think I need to recalibrate the tricorder to get a more detailed reading.”

“Oh Alex, I think I know why the tricorder is having trouble detecting them.”

“Them?”

Vin’s comment made Alex look up immediately and what she saw was a bloom of luminescent creatures coming into view through the translucent plasma surrounding them. In size, they were no larger than the humans gaping at their sudden appearance, but that was where the similarity ended. Their bodies closely resembled jellyfish with long, slender tendrils swaying gracefully behind them as they swam off the Maverick’s bow at an almost languid pace. As they moved, their dome-like bodies pulsed with an array of colours, from blue to green and then a deeper shade of purple.

Alex realised as she scanned them, the creatures swam so closely together it was most likely the reason the tricorders and the Maverick’s sensors had been unable to distinguish them from a single life form instead of many. Nevertheless, the introduction to the wildlife of Fluidic space took place without incident. The school continued along their potentially migratory course, unconcerned by the new arrivals observing them with such fascination.

“Chris, are you seeing this?”Vin asked since Alex was busy conducting her scans.

“Yeah,” Chris nodded from the bridge, similarly fascinated by what he was witnessing on the view screen. “What are they?”

“Closest definition I can give you is some form of Medusozoa. They certainly bear a lot of the characteristics of free-swimming medusa phase jellyfish.”

“Alex,” Vin prompted, more eager to get moving now he’d seen this. As pretty as those creatures were, it only proved his point. Things were living in the vastness of Fluidic Space, and not all of them might be as harmless as the life forms they had just seen. “We need to get moving.”

“He’s right Commander,” Chris agreed, proving once again, that even though they were separated by space, he and Vin still knew each other’s mind even from this distance. “Move on. We need to start repairs right away.”

“Aye Sir,” Alex lowered her tricorder and pushed the scientist into the background and assumed the sensibilities of the Maverick’s third in command. Giving both Vin and Drew a nod, she led the way, resuming their journey to the coral.

After years trying to find a way to create a defence against the Borg nanoprobes, it was quite a surreal experience for Nathan Jackson to find himself in a position where it was necessary to make them even stronger. The idea of giving the Borg a further edge felt profane, especially when no more than an hour ago, the Captain of the Maverick had been prepared to blow the ship to save them from the horror of assimilation.

Although they had agreed to meet in the Armoury, Nathan had contacted Ezra and JD respectively and directed them instead to Sick Bay. While they would eventually end up in the Armoury to modify a torpedo into a bio-molecular warhead, the work to remove the vulnerability Species 8472 had exploited to the Borg’s expense, had to be conducted in the private laboratory attached to his office.

“I suppose the first question we must ask ourselves,” Ezra stated as he, JD and Nathan stood around the doctor’s workbench. “How was Species 8472 able to render the Borg bio-weapons completely ineffective?”

“Well they would have to get around the nanites of course,” JD stated the obvious. “Although how they did that is another thing entirely. Didn’t Voyager’s doctor design the things to fool Species 8472’s immune system?”

“That’s right,” Nathan nodded. Having read the medical files on the species, Nathan knew the reason the Borg had been unable to assimilate Species 8472 was due to the race possessing one of the most sophisticated DNA strands of any life form in existence. With an immune system designed to obliterate any invading organism, the Borg nanites stood no chance until Voyager manufactured a way around it. “Voyager’s doctor....”

Despite himself, Nathan could not help but cringe at the notion of a holographic doctor had been responsible for administering all medical treatment to Voyager’s crew for seven years. However, Nathan brushed away his prejudice and the bad taste in his mouth. The program was responsible for devising a way to manipulate Borg nanites like never before.

“The Doctor,” Nathan resumed speaking, “was able to fool Species 8472’s immune system into not noticing the nanites, allowing them to slip in and begin the assimilation process under the radar. It was a good idea, but the instant the weapon was used, I can’t imagine how the species wouldn’t have taken steps to innoculate themselves against the danger. My guess is, they probably found a way to detect non-organic particles and purge themselves of it the minute it hit their system.”

“This does not bode well for us then,” Ezra sighed. “If they can detect Borg particles, then we have lost the only hand we could play.”

“Then what do we do?” JD asked, frowning at their lack of options.

“I’m not sure,” Nathan admitted honestly. “I wish we had access to the Borgs’ systems to know what exactly happened when they fired their weapons on those bio-ships. I’m sure they would have sensor data that might give us an idea of how those weapons failed. If we could have scanned the bio-ships when the weapon was deployed, it could have given us a clue on where to start.”

“Unfortunately, we were rather busy at the time,” Ezra pointed out dryly.

“Don’t I know it?” Nathan raised his eyes to stare at the glass wall of his laboratory facing Sick Bay.

Following his gaze, Ezra felt immediately guilty for the comment, since the Maverick’s infirmary was at present filled to capacity with wounded, to say nothing of the poor souls in the morgue. Nathan and his staff were on the front line of that carnage, and his brown eyes showed how haunted he was by the loss of every life he was unable to save.

“I am sorry, Nathan,” Ezra quickly apologised, “I did not mean to imply...”

“I know that Ezra,” Nathan stopped him before he could finish. “But you get what I mean.”

“I do,” Ezra nodded. “Unfortunately that does not aid our situation.”

JD, who had been silent until now, waited for the two men to move past the moment before making himself heard. “What about all the stuff we were doing together?”

When JD first arrived on board the Maverick, he’d been enlisted to aid the doctor with the technological aspects of nanotechnology since engineering disciplines were outside the scope of Nathan’s expertise.

“Oh that,” he shook his head already discounting the idea. “I was trying to create our own version of the Borg nanoprobes, except I was calling them artificial antibodies. I figured they might dispense some form of electromagnetic charge, microscopic from our perspective but enough to short out the Borg nanoprobes.”

“That does not at all sound very safe,” Ezra stared at him, disliking the idea of having thousands of microscopic gremlins turning his bloodstream into a shooting gallery.

“It isn’t, which is why I didn’t pursue it,” Nathan shrugged.

A sudden knock ended the debate for the moment, and all three men turned to the lab’s entrance to see Casey Wells standing at the doorway, appearing embarrassed for intruding.

JD looked away immediately, refusing to meet Casey’s gaze, and though the action caused hurt in her eyes, Casey did not react to it. The two senior officers made no comment about the frosty exchange between the young couple, aware Casey and JD were going through a rough patch, due to the girl’s decision to go to Bajor. JD, who was in love with Casey, had difficulty reconciling himself with her decision since it could mean her departure from the Maverick might end up being for good.

“Hey Casey,” Nathan ignored the tension between the young lovers. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said meekly, “but have you seen Maria around?”

“She should be here somewhere,” Nathan returned before realising he hadn’t seen the woman since she left Sick Bay some time ago. While he supposed Maria could still be catching up with Henry and little Sofie, the woman was a dedicated nurse who would not stay away for long when there were so many in Sick Bay needing her care. “She didn’t come back?”

“Not since you told her to go see Henry and Sofie,” Casey replied, avoiding making eye contact with JD who was now taking an interest.

“That’s not like her. I mean I let her go because I figured her head wasn’t going to be on straight until she saw for herself they were okay, but she wouldn’t stay away from Sick Bay this long.”

“How long?” Ezra questioned, no longer sounding like the affable southerner but the Chief of Security with razor-sharp instincts.

“Maybe forty minutes,” Nathan answered after giving it some thought. “Look its probably nothing, I mean with all the damage, it might have taken her a little longer to get to Deck 14.”

“Deck 14?” JD shot Ezra a look. “Isn’t that where we’ve been experiencing intermittent power drains? She might have gotten stuck in a turbo lift or something.”

Ezra’s thoughts were nowhere that benign, and for a few seconds, he said nothing, thinking hard. Deck 14 had some crew quarters, which Ezra had ordered evacuated due to its proximity to Shuttle Bay 2, the closest point of entry to the port nacelle heavily damaged in the collision with the Borg sphere.

An ugly idea formed in his head, but with the same instincts that made him the best card player in the fleet, Ezra knew he could not discount it. Without another word, Ezra tapped his com badge.

“Captain, we may have a problem.”

“Well at least the turbo lifts are working,” Julia commented as she and Terry Greer, one of her junior engineers, took the journey to Shuttle Bay 2 to assist Claire Moseley with the repairs.

“That’s true,” Terry nodded. “I wasn’t looking forward to climbing all the way down to Deck 14 carrying our equipment. I have had enough of climbing to last me a lifetime.”

Julia uttered a short laugh perfectly aware of the reason for Terry’s dislike. “You still haven’t gotten over your last shore leave huh?”

Terry made a face at her commanding officer, comfortable enough to take such liberties with the woman. She and Julia were crewmates for almost a year now and had become friends.

“I didn’t mind meeting Drew’s parents, but honestly, climbing K2? What is it with men and this need to prove they can withstand the elements? Didn’t we just go through ten thousand years of civilisation so we could have soft sheets and indoor plumbing?”

“I date a man who loves to play a Southern cardsharp in the Old West. I have no standing to comment.”

“That’s true,” Terry smiled back when the lift doors came to a stop.

The first thing that struck Julia the instant the doors parted was the rush of warm air into the lift. The change of temperature was so contrasting, she felt it against her cheeks almost immediately. It was soon followed by the enveloping humidity that swiftly went to work forming beads of sweat beneath her hair and her uniform.

“Why is it so hot in here?” Julia asked as the reddish glow of emergency lighting caught her attention.

“Maybe the environmental controls have been damaged.,” Terry suggested as she followed Julia out of the lift.

They had gotten no more than a few steps ahead when a beam of crimson light struck Julia in the eye. After being on board the Rutherford during the Battle of Sector 001, Julia knew immediately what was happening. More importantly, she knew what had invaded her ship.

“RUN!”

“What?” Terry stared at her blankly until more points of light appeared, and the previously evacuated deck came alive with bodies that should not have been there.

“MOVE,” Julia ordered turning back to the turbo lift, shoving the younger woman ahead.

Terry Greer stumbled towards the open doors of the turbo lift, running into its safety, but when she looked over her shoulder, Julia Pemberton was nowhere behind her.

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