Swift spoke up immediately after receiving the reply from the S'harien. "Reply received Captain, they ask us to converge on their location as they turn about."
"Send them an acknowledgement Swift," ordered Captain Solheim. "Also send a tight-beam message to the Spector, thanking them for the escort and the breathing space."
"Messages sent Captain," replied Swift. "Course laid in to intercept the S'harien."
"Get us there immediately, Swift. Engage," ordered Captain Solheim, looking over the tactical holodisplay in front of him.
The small escort craft's engines awoke to full impulse, using maneuvering thrusters as well to aim in the proper direction. When the rear of the shield had cleared the shields of the Spector by barely half a kilometer, the small escort craft leapt into warp.
The ship emerged out of warp barely four kilometers from the S'harien, closing the remainder of the distance rapidly. All too soon, the ship shook slightly as it emerged through the much larger Romulan battlecruiser's shields, slowing to a stop beneath the fore of the ship.
It took Captain Solheim a moment to reflect, but he remembered that it was another Cube that had taken down the Vampaja, despite a truly vicious fight she put up. The holo-records from the ship were enough of that, and of the small stain still left on Commander Inzeti's very soul from it was itself a bloody reminder. The balance, he realized in that instant, must be restored.
He was silent for a moment, and then rapidly began unstrapping himself from the chair. Once he was finished, he stood to look directly at Commander Inzeti with an unreadable expression on his face at first. "Commander, the chair is yours. I'll handle engineering."
Looking back at him in silence, Captain Solheim and Commander Inzeti seemed to have an entire conversation in the span of a moment. Immediately afterward, Commander Inzei unstrapped herself from her chair, and the two officers changed places - Captain Solheim seating himself at the engineering console and strapping himself into the chair, and Commander Inzeti seating herself in silence in the Captain's chair.
The bridge was silent for a moment as Commander Inzeti sat, but all at once all the commanding presence she ever had as a high-ranking Romulan Star Empire officer came to the fore. "Tactical, gain and confirm targeting lock for Cometfall," she ordered, staring at the Borg Cube on the viewscreen unblinkingly. "Engineering, confirm hot standby status."
"Lock confirmed, Riov," Lieutenant Adranis reported, a small smile on his face.
"Cometfall status is active and on hot standby," reported Captain Solheim. "Computer, transfer temporary activation for primary ignition to Commander Inzeti. Authorization Solheim Kappa Gamma Omega Eight Niner Niner Seven."
"Enter supporting authorization for primary ignition," spoke up Lieutenant Adranis. "Authorization Adranis Alpha Omega Beta Omega Seven Four Seven Seven."
"Transfer complete," replied the computer's calm voice. "Begin primary ignition upon command."
"Comm, send tight-beam comm signal to the S'harien, asking them to drop their facing shield for 0.5 seconds, fifteen seconds from my mark," ordered Commander Inzeti, somehow appearing to be the old Riov she was despite the Federation uniform.
"Message sent, Riov," replied Swift, now looking all business, though there was a small smile on her face.
"Comm, send tight-beam message to the S'harien. Single word: Mark. Computer," intoned Commander Inzeti, "begin primary ignition."
"Primary ignition confirmed," the computer replied calmly, just as the ship seemed to shut down for the third time this combat, and the second time it was on purpose.
The countdown of 15 appeared on the bridge just as the ship finished shuddering slightly from the shell being loaded at the far aft of the ship.
"This is how vengeance finds you," Commander Inzeti whispered in Romulan. "This is how retribution comes."
Ten... nine...
"You raped and pillaged my people and many others, turning them into worse than even the Jem'Hadar - The Founders at least allowed the Jem'Hadar to keep their souls, even if their minds were enslaved," she continued, her voice slowly gaining volume above a whisper without her realizing it.
Eight... seven... six...
"You stole our destiny, you stole our birthright, you took our worlds - but you took something else from us that you will regret taking," she said, speaking now in a normal tone of voice. "You took away our fear and distrust of one another - because no feud between any of our peoples can possibly compare to the threat of having one's soul taken!"
Five... four... three...
"This is for Romulus, this is for Qo'Nos, this is for Earth, this is for all the other worlds whose rage and revenge you have sown by their destruction. Their children will never forget!"
Two... one...
"From Hell's heart, the Vampaja stabs at thee," Commander Inzeti said in a whisper, just as the ship rocked backward from firing the Cometfall, the ship's systems rapidly coming back online while Swift maneuvered the ship back to its pre-firing position beneath the fore of the S'harien. In her left hand, Swift clutched a small green gem tightly.
Action Report wrote:Maneuvering Gilgamesh from Spector shieldspace to S'harien shield space. Aiming and firing Cometfall to hit vulnerable area of Borg Cube a few seconds after tricobalt torpedo impact.
Last edited by rhoenix on Sun Oct 10, 2010 11:37 pm, edited 3 times in total.
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes."
- William Gibson
Josh wrote:What? There's nothing weird about having a pet housefly. He smuggles cigarettes for me.
The alarms shrilled and the lights went red , the smell of ozone and smoke were everywhere. Behind him one of the Lt's groaned having been thrown by the impact and breaking something. Medics were attending him.
Captain Anderson's expression did not change. Part of that was the fact that good chunk of his face was expressionless metal, making his face less mobile to begin with. Another part was Starfleet training, a Captain must not show fear, panic or doubt, or the crew will start to fall apart. Lastly, Captain Anderson was considered to be one of the best poker players in the fleet even before half his face was burnt off.
"Helm, move us back, keep the Argo in tractor! Tactical when we're at safe range, fire the NRA. Engineering, I need my shields." He ordered.
USS Immortal, engineering
Commander Higgins was holding a wad of cloth to her forehead as she directed damage control. The Gravity had changed going up as she was in mid step and pulled her down. Could have been worse, a pair of men had fallen and broken bones. The Captain's demand wasn't a surprise for her. That manic dived them right through the Cube's main field of fire and now he wanted his shields back as if by magic. Captains...
"Working on it Captain, but we have to pull a number of fuses, they were burnt to char. It's gonna take time." She replied.
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
What chaos was ensuing outside was of no bearing to the crippled Argonaut. Within her hull, other forms of chaos reigned, snippets of fighting raging across the ship over internal broadcasts.
"Jorel'vec to Bridge, is anyone left up there?! We have Assault drones trying to break into main engineering, the forcefields won't contain them forever! Need immediate - "
" - thirty plus drones on deck nineteen, moving aft! We're falling back to section 4 with - "
" - Security teams to decks five through seven! We have borg in hydroponics, stellar cartography and cargo bay three! We're venting deck eight's forward sections to keep them from getting at - "
Argonaut and Heritage remained crippled, but other ships were still alive, and ambulatory, and armed. Vigilence was one of these, and she maneuvered her way in between the Cube and the two beaten ships, using her bulk to protect them from counterattack. Far from simply protecting the smaller vessels, the massive Galaxy launched a blistering counterattack as it did so, phasers streaking across the night as it launched a fresh volley of plasma torpedoes into the ruined facing of the mighty Cube.
And as the torpedoes burst all across the Cube's ravaged hull, two further apocalypses transpired.
By now the Cube knew what the Klingon battlecruiser had stuffed within it, and when the Vor'cha-class deployed a single torpedo from its rear tube, the Cube knew what was in store. Ignoring the disruptor fire that bored into its hull, the Cube directed what little fire it could still deploy to try and shoot the torpedo down. It was not successful, nor could it have been save with the most spectacular luck, but of all the escorts that the Cube had brought with it, one frigate remained, and it zoomed out from behind the shadow of the cube, targetting the torpedo with disruptors and plasma torpedoes fused to explode in space.
Normally this would have been successful or unsucessful, discretely. Tricobalt weapons were among the most complex explosive devices in existance, and striking them with a heavy disruptor should have simply atomized them, or blown them apart with a normal-sized explosion. The complicated quantum reactions that needed to occur in a precise sequence to produce the Tricobalt device's unparalelled power could not be triggered by so crude a method as shooting the torpedo down. That was the entire point of trying to do so.
" - half a dozen borg just passed me on Deck 4. They just walked by! Didn't fire! I thought assault drones were supposed to shoot on sight!"
" - repeat, they're breaking into the lower mess hall! We've got a hundred civilians in here! Support required urgently!"
" - This is Dobbs! I've got eighteen casualties in Sickbay 1! The borg are pushing up into Deck 2. I think they're heading for the bridge! Can anyone raise the Commander?! Is he still up there?!"
One of the plasma torpedoes, fused to explode near the tricobalt and destroy it by remote, failed to detonate. Without further input from its maneuvering thrusters, it flew on in a straight line in accordance with Newton's Laws. What followed was an occurance not to be repeated in a lifetime of war, as the dead plasma torpedo, flying unguided, contrived through odds unfathomable to physically crashheadlong into the Tricobalt torpedo, an event which triggered, in the millionth of a second prior to the torpedo's disintegration, the contact circuit that governed the torpedo's detonation sequence.
Murphy too had a law in play here.
The torpedo exploded like a radiant sun, physically shattering the damaged frigate that had just inadvertantly set it off into pieces the size of microchips. The Riskad'h had been flying away from the Torpedo, but Tricobalts were employed by the martial races of the Alpha quadrant for a reason, and this one did not fail to impress. Further away than the Frigate had been, let alone sturdier, Riskad'h nonetheless was physically hurled away as though someone had picked her up and thrown her tail over teakettle. Her inertial dampeners struggled to compensate as the stately battlecruiser began performing distinctly un-aerobatic cartwheels through space, even as her aft shields strained to withstand the blow, and two of her aft disruptors overloaded and shut down.
Had the Borg been capable of retaliating against their would-be bombardier, things might have gone poorly, but their dorsal facing was in ruins, and moments later, Barbarossa provided them with something better to think about.
Twin beams of red death, lasers powerful enough to core asteroids, slammed into the damaged facing like the eyes of a vengeful deity, boiling durasteel away to vapor and ripping channels through the mangled cube. Torpedoes from Spector, disruptors and yet more torpedoes from S'harien, and more of the same from Barbarossa herself joined into the din and chaos. The Cube seemed to convulse as its ruined facing was consumed by fire and smoke, sympathetic explosions resounding from some wrecked portion of its hull.
" - barricaded Cargo Bay 5 with the durasteel crates but I don't know if that'll hold them. We can hear gunfire outside, but the computers aren't reporting anyone besides Borg. Who's got kinetic weapons out there?!"
" - They're in the jefferies tubes! They're beaming into the goddamn jefferies tubes! Someone get... AAAAAAUUUGH!!!"
" - This is Lt. Luther to all security teams, we've got Borg in the secondary bridge on Deck 32. They're - *BLAM* - They're shooting at each other! I repeat, we have red-on-red Borg fighting on the Secondary - *BLAM* - Secondary bridge! I've locked out the controls and transferred to main - *BLAM BLAM BLAM* - engineering! We're pulling out!"
God, it was said, loved fools and great sinners. At least one of those was aboard Gilgamesh.
A ship without shields in an fight was mincemeat. A ship without shields in a fight with the Borg was practically suicidal. Yet from her position within the protective bubble of the Spector's shields, the Gilgamesh launched herself, unshielded and unprotected, across space in a micro-warp jump to enter the protective bubble of the S'Harien. Six thousand things could have gone wrong with that operation. A slight miscalculation within the warp jump could have sent Gilgamesh flying past the Romulan battlecruiser by a thousand miles, or plowing straight into her at warp speed. The Borg could have reacted in the instant of unshielded coverage with a disruptor shot, or with a tractor beam. But of all the six thousand things that could have failed, none actually did so.
And yet...
Gilgamesh came about, and readied herself to fire into the hapless cube. All secrets revealed, she had nought left but fire in quantities unseen in a ship of her class. But even as her engines shut down, bringing her to a complete stop, and her targeting sensors locked on, around her, something else was happening.
Specifically, S'harien was moving away.
The Romulan Battlecruiser had chosen to come to the aid of the stricken Heritage and Argonaut, closing to transporter range. Even had Gilgamesh known of S'harien's precise maneuvers, she could not have matched them with Cometfall active. And S'harien either did not know that Gilgamesh had to stop to fire, or in the chaos of battle, had been unable to communicate that fact to her overworked, harried crew. Between cup and lip such slips occurred.
The upshot was that Gilgamesh was left exposed, unshielded, and sitting dead in space before the Cube. The result was that roughly one tenth of a second after Cometfall fired, eleven Heavy Assault drones materialized aboard her bridge, cohorts of the forty-two others that appeared elsewhere aboard the destroyer, filling her corridors, like those of her fellows, with the immortal Borg refrain.
"We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."
The drone was silenced decisively by a shot to the temple which blew through its armor and sent it crumbling to the ground. Lt. Commander Ereshal didn't even look up. Next to her, Lt. Jorel'vec dropped his rifle and turned back to the task at hand.
"I can't reroute bridge control from here," snapped Joral'vec, even as the guards redeployed around them. "You said the Commander was going to lock it out!"
Despite the fact that the Nausicaan engineer was twice her size, Ereshal didn't give him a second glance. "He'll manage it," was all she said. "Concentrate on re-enforcing the shelter shields, and getting those point to point transporters online."
"He can't hold the bridge by himself!" said Joral'vec. "There's Borg streaming towards it from all over the ship. If they take the bridge with control still active - "
" - then you won't have to listen to me anymore. Just get the transporters working!"
Joral'vec was plainly not happy, but then that was nothing new, and Ereshal pre-empted everything by turning away as Crewman Chandeskar looked up at her from across the room.
"Commander!" she said, "we've got more incoming!"
"Re-enforce the forcefields and get ready to - "
"Sir!" said Chandeskar, "they're not Borg, they're Romulans!"
As Engineering went silent, the sounds of gunfire began to leak into the room, complete with those of shells striking armor...
Ravaged and beaten, the Cube's broken dorsal facing took yet another pounding as the second Cometfall shot slammed into it. But before the flash of light could dim, revealing what damage it had now sustained, the massive Borg Cube began to spin on its own axis.
Enormous though it was, Cubes could spin at incredibly fast rates of speed, and the Cube did nothing less, moving to shield its broken facing from the firepower being deployed against it, attempting to cycle a new facing around and resume its devastating assault on the assembled fleet.
But the best-laid plans of Borg and men oft went awry...
"Dobbs to anyone who can hear me! There are borg shooting each other on Deck 21! I repeat, the Borg are shooting one another down here. What the hell is going on?! Is there anybody listening? Dobbs to anyone who's left, we have - "
*Signal lost*
Last edited by General Havoc on Tue Oct 12, 2010 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair...
Havoc: "So basically if you side against him, he summons Cthulu."
Hotfoot: "Yes, which is reasonable."
The Riskadh bucked as inertial compensators strained to against the blast that flipped the battlecruiser. "Helm!" shouted Kadon.
"Acting to stabilize us!" Khedira replied. Maneuvering thrusters flared, killing the spin.
"Two aft disruptors offline, heavy damage to aft shields," reported Kallor.
"Get our front to them," Kadon ordered.
Khedira fired thrusters, finishing killing the spin and righting the ship. The shuddering stopped. "Stabilized."
"Continuous barrage from disruptors," said Kadon. "Prepare all forward tubes for rapid fire volley." Kallor's hands stabbed controls, unleashing the power of the forward cannon in a stream of high powered pulses. Other disruptors fired as the cannon fell silent, firing high powered pulses into the Borg Cube and then falling silent to recharge as other disruptors opened up.
"The Cube is rotating," said Arikel. "Power readings are fluctuating. High probability that they have suffered extensive systems failures and are rerouting to surviving nodes. Readings should stabilize and present an accurate representation in a minute. Sensors show transporter beams directed at the Gilgamesh."
"Move us toward the Gilgamesh and extend shields," ordered Kadon. They were in no position to chase after the Cube's vulnerable flank. The battlecruiser moved in a brief arc, momentarily exposing its flanks to the Cube. A triple volley of torpedoes flew from each launcher towards the battered Cube as the battlecruiser's disruptors continued to hammer the Cube.
He touched a button on his command chair. "Force Leader Menmoth, prepare to deploy your troops."
The Riskadh extended its shields around the Federation vessel. Inside four standard transporter rooms heavily armed Klingon Marines took their places on the pads. Deeper in the cruiser's guts were another four stages, larger pads to accommodate the transportation of larger numbers of troops and heavy military equipment.
The Marines wore heavier and more extensive armour than that of Navy personnel, to protect against the blast and shrapnel damage that was a far greater risk in their combat operations. Each one carried at least one sharp edged implement for close quarters killing along with their disruptors and projectile weapons. In a few moments over seventy Klingon Marines were sent to the Gilgamesh.
Lieutenant Morek's squad appeared in the Gilgamesh's engine room. He, like two thirds of his unit, were Human Fusions. His rank was higher than was normal for squad command, but the Koloth's survivors included a high percentage of junior officers and there were only so many slots to go around. Which meant a junior lieutenant was bossing a squad.
Human Fusions had reflexes marginally inferior to those of the Imperial Race and marginally superior to Humans and all three had better reaction times than Borg drones. Morek's squad moved a few meters into the engine room and encountered a party of Borg assault drones moving in on Starfleet engineers.
In the galaxy's long history of hostile encounters between various governments and species certain trends can be deduced. The Vulcans will come in peace, the Ferengi will try to strike a deal, the Gorn will defend what they believe is there, and when it comes to a fight the Klingons will be ones that shot first. Morek and his men upheld that proud tradition.
Morek carried a heavy disruptor rifle set to maximum power beam setting. He operated on the assumption that the instantly disintegrated had no time to adapt or pass data. The first drone vanished in a flare of light, providing some support for that train of thought.
Magga was big, even by Klingon standards. He carried a low velocity 11mm slug thrower that had a cyclic rate of over six hundred rounds a second. The Borg assault drones were armoured and that meant ordinary low velocity rounds were of limited effectiveness against them. That was why Magga and every other Marine used explosive rounds. They made a mess but they wouldn't over penetrate the walls and chewed up even armoured drones. The long burst from his gun tore the chests of two drones to bloody pulp and splattered the floor with a mixture of blood and oil.
Mallor used a lighter model of disruptor than Morek which was more maneuverable in tighter places. The slim Human Fusion fired on a drone with volley of high powered bolts. The drone collapsed in a smoking ruin.
Morazel killed the last with a max powered beam from his disruptor rifle. The only member of the Imperial Race favored the grenade launcher mated to his disruptor, but Engineering was a bad place to chuck around a lot of high explosives and the engineers were too close to the Borg to do so without risk.
Melly guarded the rear. She was a rare Romulan Fusion and as proud as both races put together. "Incoming," she yelled as Borg assault drones stomped around the corner and right to the spot where the marine tossed the frag grenade. The blast tore flesh and armour and the sonic grenade that was tossed right after it was even worse. The Marines finished off the drones with massed fire before they could recover. Then they went hunting.
Not every unit enjoyed Morek's success, but throughout the ship the Klingons fell on the Borg boarding party with the terrible skill and fury that had once made them among the most feared close quarters fighters in the galaxy.
On the Riskadh, the next groups of Marines were assembling on the transporter pads to beam over.
Last edited by Cynical Cat on Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
It's not that I'm unforgiving, it's that most of the people who wrong me are unrepentant assholes.
"Match it! HardOver Port, Flank Speed!" Kirk ordered, and the Akira-class vessel started gaining speed as she whipped around, now in a race with the Cube to keep the damaged facing in range.
"Captain, The Gilgimesh has been boarded," Serin reported, and Kirk grimaced. The Defiant-class hadn't made it to the other ship's shield, it seemed. To keep up with the Cube's facing, the Spector would be leaving all the stricken vessels behind, as well as the slower capitol ships.
"Nothing we can do, Serin," Kirk said softly. "What we can do is keep hitting that Cube. The more damage we do to it, the less it can do to our Allies." It was the cold, honest truth. Now, racing the Cube facing, they couldn't even support the other vessels as the Borg turned undamaged weapon systems on them. "Helm, on my mark, I want a Hard Starboard, long enough to loose torps, then back to relative position to keep up. Do you understand?"
"Aye, Capt. Turn just enough to fire, then back to racing the facing."
That got a grin from Eoife as she hit the intercom. "All Torpedo Crews, Attention. We're chasing the damaged Cube side. When I call 'Mark', I want all torps emptied at the bastard, and then readied to fire again ASAP. All crews check in if they can do this."
Eoife would bet a few crew chiefs beat lightspeed to answer. It was a near-roar of unanimous support. "Helm? Ready?"
"Aye Capt!"
"MARK"
++++++++
Joint Fighter Wing
"Phantom Prime to Ghost Prime"
"Roger Phantom Prime."
"Any new orders from Actual?"
"Negative. Last orders stand. Guard the heavies from Borg Torps."
"Wraith Prime here; Actual is chasing the Borg facing. Repeat, Actual is chasing the Borg."
{long pause}
"And she says she's no relation...."
{dark chuckles from the squadron}
Combat SitRep wrote:It's a race against the facing, and every chance the Spector gets she'll be turning and firing a full salvo of torps into the hole. From a distance, the Akira-class would seem to be orbiting the Cube, dipping briefly closer each time she fires upon it. Eventually, the orbit may degrade due to this action, which would only make the Spector's job of keeping up easier, as she'd not have quite so far to go. At this point, she is staying in Torpedo Range, and not in Phaser range yet.
Joint Fighter Wings continue to attempt point-defense for the Immortal and surrounding ships.
Dogs are Man's Best Friend
Cats are Man's Adorable Little Serial Killers
The countdown on the ship was nearing completion. Four... three...
"The S'harien is moving!" called out Swift, a warning note in her voice. "We are losing their shield coverage!"
Glaring at the smaller tactical display in front of him at his station, Captain Solheim exhaled sharply through his nose. "Damnit Galen, I'm going to kick your green-blooded hobgoblin ass after this is over with," he grumbled to himself.
Lieutenant Adranis smirked at this. Ordinarily he would find the very idea of a human threatening a Romulan with bodily harm amusing, but Captain Solheim knew Romulan pressure points and anatomy just as well as he did. "Captain, we are clear of the shields," he said out loud, just as the countdown hit zero.
It had only taken once of being boarded by the Borg for the crew to create proper countermeasures against such a thing happening as badly as it did the first time. All of them had resolved to never allow such a thing again. "All hands, this is the Captain," he said somberly. "Prepare to repulse Borg incursion."
With that, all personnel not immediately necessary for ship's operation began to run to weapons lockers and form into small fire teams. They all moved with the swiftness borne of prior experience, and hard training by the senior staff.
It was at that moment that the mechanical whirring noise of Borg transporters echoed throughout the bridge, revealing eleven Borg Heavy Assault drones. They began their refrain immediately. "We are the Borg..."
Before they even had the chance to finish speaking, Captain Solheim tapped a single button on his holographic console. "Lieutenant Vela, grab them now!" he called. The effects were both subtle and immediate.
The eleven Heavy Assault drones that suddenly appeared in the sickly green swirling lights only Borg transporters could manage, just as Captain Solheim slapped the emergency release on his seat-restraints. His other hand brought up a boxy-looking pistol from his side, the sidearm barked twice even as he got rapidly to his feet. The head of one of the assault drones suddenly rocked back as the back of its head exploded in a spray of preserved flesh and metallic dust, shortly before crumpling to the floor.
The other members of the bridge were no less quick on their reactions - they dove out of their chairs with the effort borne of long practice, taking cover behind the armored consoles of the bridge and firing their respective sidearms at the drones, most of the time focusing their fire on one drone at a time to ensure bringing it down.
Every single holo-display was now notable only by their absence. The lighting on the bridge had darkened, with spotlights shining down harshly on each of the remaining Borg Heavy Assault drones as they began their counterattack, seeking to obliterate the bridge crew. It was at that instant that six of them suddenly vanished into the bluish white starfield effect of Starfleet transporters. Despite this, two members of the bridge crew had crumpled to the floor, huge portions of their bodies burned with heavy plasma fire.
One by one, the remaining four heavy assault drones fell, though not without cost - there were large plasma burns on the walls and consoles of the bridge, and several of the bridge crew now had some themselves. However, their sacrifice of blood was not in vain, as now there were only two of the original eleven remaining.
It was then that four Klingon Warriors appeared on the bridge as well, with the usual growling noise and swirling blood-like energies of Klingon transporters. The entire bridge staff as well as the two remaining heavy assault drones whipped around to aim their pistols at the newcomers, but the guttural Klingon battlecries, filled with loud shouts and heavy disruptor rifle fire revealed a far more welcome set of uninvited guests.
Between the incoming Klingon warriors and the bridge crew, the remaining two Borg Heavy Assault drones were cut down, falling to the floor in a twitching, cybernetic parody of death.
The four Klingons looked around wordlessly at first, looking for other Borg on the bridge, though the one at the front grinned as only a Klingon can as he looked at the staff of the Gilgamesh's bridge. "You are faster than we thought. I was certain the battle for the bridge would be glorious!"
"This isn't a battle," Captain Solheim replied as he rapidly began moving through menus on the console next to him, looking back up with cold eyes and no smile on his face. "This is pest control. Adranis, you will serve as Fire Team leader one. I want those pests cleared."
"Yes sir," Lieutenant Adranis replied as he moved to the rear of the bridge, and lifted up a false part of the wall, revealing several rifles of a somewhat strange design mounted on the wall. He grabbed one, four clips of ammo, and what appeared to be a an eyepiece.
"It has been too long since I've fought at the side of Klingons," Lieutenant Adranis said with a grim smile to the four gathered Klingon warriors as he slapped one pack of ammo into the rifle, and put on the eyepiece. "Let's go clear us a ship. When we're done, I'll get the Captain to give you the barrel of bloodwine we have stashed in the hold."
"Shit, we'll be drinking it with them," replied Captain Solheim with a small smirk. "Get it done, Adranis."
"Yes sir," the taller Romulan said with a curt nod. "Alright gentlemen, let's take care of our pest problem," he said as he and the Klingon warriors moved to the turbolift. "Fire teams, report!"
* * * * *
Like some things within Starfleet, there were many ship's systems aboard the Gilgamesh that were intended for a perfectly innocent purpose, but could be used for very nefarious purposes. Captain Solheim had immediately seen possibilities for several of the systems, and had the crew make a few modifications.
One such modification was such that would fully qualify as cruel and unusual punishment, granting a horrifying fate to those unlucky enough to encounter it. During its operational history, this was something only Borg drones have experienced.
The six Borg assault drones appeared in complete darkness, the light from the transporter was the only illumination. Their sensors read that they were within a large sphere made of a neutronium alloy - but read no further than the interior of the sphere, other than to show that it was at least two meters thick. It also blocked all communications between the drones and the Collective.
The Borg drones floated in a small mass - at first they calculated that they were floating weightlessly, but a careful scan showed that there were dozens of pressor beams acting gently to keep them in a small mass at the center of the sphere. They struggled to move themselves toward one of the walls, despite it being proven to be a futile effort.
* * * * *
As the fire teams reported in, Lieutenant Adranis smirked to himself. Naturally, Borg had appeared in the engine room, creating a difficult firefight, as only a few of the crew within the engine room had had the time to reach the weapons lockers, and outfit themselves with their standard tactical gear - the modified TR-116 rifle, eyepiece, and personal shielding units.
The sudden appearance of armed Klingon warriors within the engine room attracted the attention of both the Borg and the beleaguered engineers and few fire teams within. However, the Klingons upheld their proud tradition of decisive action, and immediately opened up with heavy disruptor rifles on the Borg Heavy Assault drones. They rapidly coordinated with the fire teams already present, and soon the remaining Borg Heavy Assault drones were all rapidly cut down.
Scanning rapidly with his eyepiece while moving rapidly through Deck One with the Klingon warriors with him, Lieutenant Adranis began rapping out orders. "Fire teams four, five, and six - I need deck seven cleared as soon as possible. Fire team two, you will work with my fire team one to get deck one cleared. Once both those decks are cleared, we'll get the ship swept."
* * * * *
The six drones continued struggling to move themselves closer to any one of the walls of the sphere, without success.
Without warning, they heard a female voice echo bodilessly with a cold voice within the sphere. Had they any way of knowing, they would have recognized Commander Inzeti's voice, speaking in Latin. "Para homo peccatus, solum incendia."
Hellishly hot and bright light suddenly shone on them from all sides, as they felt the pressor beams rapidly amp up their power, beginning to crush the six drones together with raw heat and force.
The drones responded by linking their shield systems together in parallel to balance the tremendous heat and pressure now being exerted on them from all sides within the sphere and still mounting, and it bought them another few awful seconds before even their linked shields buckled.
Their pale flesh instantly ignited like paper, turning rapidly into ash as the metal from their implants and armor began to run in liquid rivulets over their bodies, running spinning rivers around them as the mass steadily shrunk and compacted.
* * * * *
A Klingon Warrior ran at one of the few remaining drones in the room from behind without a sound apart from his movement, a mek'leth in his left, and a Klingon disruptor pistol in his right. As the Borg drone turned to swing a heavy arm at him, the Klingon ducked, and slammed the mek'leth up to the hilt into the drone's armpit and up into its neck and head. "P'taq," he growled, just as his disruptor blew the drone's head off.
"Nicely done," nodded one of the other members of Fire Team Two, of which he was included. "It really does take a Klingon to ruin someone's shit."
The Klingon warrior grinned back savagely. "This is glorious! When are you weaklings going to do the same?"
"Oh, trust me," replied the Lieutenant with a smirk, a Bajoran woman with dark hair as she adjusted her eyepiece. "You want me watching your back."
"Now," said the Bajoran Lieutenant to the Klingon warrior beside her with an evil grin as she dropped to one knee and sighted her rifle at the heavy locked door ahead of them. "What's your name, warrior?"
The Klingon warrior raised his chin slightly. "I am Melek. What is yours?"
"I'm Lieutenant Oroga," she replied with a smirk. "Let's go make some spare parts."
With that, Fire Team Two continued rapidly moving through Deck One, just as their counterparts were doing both on Deck One and Deck Seven. Once the decks were cleared, the massacre would begin, as the TR-116 rifles were unconcerned about such things as shooting through walls or ceilings without detriment.
* * * * *
The lights and beams within the neutronium sphere began to power down, leaving a single seamless torpedo-shaped slug floating motionlessly in the center of the sphere. A transporter field engulfed the slug, re-appearing within another chamber. A concert of pressor and tractor beams conspired together to expertly move the slug toward an assembly made specifically for it. There was a final loud click and a shudder as the slug was locked into the Cometfall assembly.
* * * * *
Turn Action Report wrote:Begun repulsion of Borg incursion. Six of the 40+ invading Borg heavy assault drones have been repurposed to a more useful form.
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes."
- William Gibson
Josh wrote:What? There's nothing weird about having a pet housefly. He smuggles cigarettes for me.
Riov Galan Cretak frowned as his tactical screen informed him of the error in judgment as it manifested itself around the bridge of the S'harien. He was not a man that was used to failure and a series of events had culminated in a situation that could only be termed once in a lifetime. He had worked closely with the crew of the Gilgamesh in more than one occasion but he had never misread a situation as he had this one. Solheim had of course been overly bold but that was a character trait that he was quite aware of and as such, it was his obligation to compensate for that particular failing. Ultimately, he could do little more than grit his teeth as the Borg flooded into the Federation ship who held within the two people closest to his heart. For a moment, a mere fraction of a second fire blossomed in the pit of his stomach and he was willing to throw the S'harien into action irregardless of what consequences may result from them. It took every bit of self-control that he possessed to quench that passion. The fact that the Riskadh had seen the plight of the Gilgamesh and nearly instantly begun to respond took some of the sting away from his decision.
Samara and Arrichu are survivors. Solheim will not allow harm to come to them. Neither will Kadon...
With the developing situation aboard the Gilgamesh seemingly controlled, the S'harien seemed to steel itself for the fight at hand. With the Cube now firmly in its forward arc, Riov Galan Cretak had every intention in maintaining it there. The Spector began a wild maneuver whose purpose became immediately clear. The S'harien was a battle cruiser and it would be unable to match the intensity of the turn but it could join its sister vessel in its intended task. The S'harien began to maneuver as well, seeking to move with the Cube and continue to put pressure on the shattered facing. The purpose for such an action was twofold. Firstly, in doing so it would place its significantly stronger shields and armor as a potential target for whatever fire would ordinarily be aimed towards the Spector. Secondly, it could ideally continue to pound the damaged fashion with the sword of S'task.
As the S'harien maneuvered it sought to maintain its range to the Cube at the long edge of close range allowing the sword its maximum destructive power. The six type 20 disruptors fired in tightly grouped salvos as the S'harien struggled to maintain both its forward arc towards the Cube while seeking to orbit the Cube's damaged facing. Within the armored command center of the Warbird, Riov Galan Cretak watched the data presented to him from over half a dozen sources intently. For the moment, concerns about the Gilgamesh and its precious cargo became a distant second to his primary concern.
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Argonaut
Sev Squad
Arrain Toxali allowed herself a moment to take in the devastation that her squad had wrought on the Borg unfortunate enough to cross paths with her unit. The mingling of viscera and fluids at the crossroads at the end of corridor would have shocked her in the days before the Borg had taken her home and most of her people.
I was trained to fight with scalpels, disruptors set to vaporize and remove all trace of what had transpired. These weapons are bludgeons.
The tools that she had been given to fight the Borg were far less elegant than the tools she had been raised to utilize against the Federation, Klingons and Jem'Haddar. They were nonetheless frightfully efficient implements of war. The kinetic rifles her Romulan troopers utilized fired a heavier bullet than the tr-116 and were optimized for three round bursts. While they were capable of fully automatic operation, they were rarely employed in that fashion. Ammunition was a precious resource in boarding operations and they could not always rely on the presence of shuttle craft to resupply their needs. Short bursts provided improved lethality and control under most circumstances. Like the Klingons, her people had fallen into the habit of using explosive rounds. Each individual round had enough energy to pierce through the armor of most heavy drones with ease but did not have the energy required to leave them as they were fused to explode milliseconds after impact. Still, misses did occur and these left their own scars on the hallways and surroundings of the target areas. Her left hand moved, retrieving the sensor pad that she had used to great effect mere moments before the arrival of the Borg had necessitated their extermination.
"Not as bad as it could have been. We clipped a pair of EPS conduits but the damage is repairable." She found herself speaking to no one in particular. "Communications, see if you can get in contact with Federation forces and get a sitrep from them. Alert them of our presence and coordinate where they need the most help in."
Her communication officer nodded and immediately began to carry out the Arrain's orders.
"Gilith, tell me what you see." She asked.
"I don't see any Borg on this deck. The mobile squads are pushing deeper into the ship and heading towards the lower single digit decks and..." The response from the Reman was nearly instant before he went silent.
"And?" Arrain Toxali asked.
"One moment Arrain." The Reman responded, as his left hand shifted slightly and a finger brushed against a button on the side of his weapon. The Reman rifle was a nightmarish design, firing individual rounds that lacked all the grace and subtlety of a type 20 disruptor array. The weapon was nearly twice the weight of a kinetic rifle, and nearly four times the weight of a traditional Romulan disruptor rifle. The micro-transporter had been designed for improved range and payload and immediately the Arrain realized that it was this secondary system that the Reman had activated.
The Reman heavy weapons officer seemed to relax for a moment, planting his feet more firmly before the weapon slid slightly tracking a ghostly target. A second later, the Reman squeezed the trigger. The heavy weapon kicked against the Reman's shoulder and the trooper barely moved. A familiar if faint sound manifested itself and immediately Arrain Toxali had the sudden sensation that somewhere in the Argonaut something terrible had happened.
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Argonaut
Deck 7
The human civilian ran down the corridor gasping for breath as his lungs expanded and contracted at a rampant pace. His legs ached, his heart was racing and he understood that it was all for naught. When the Borg had arrived, the alarms had sounded and he did his duty. He had practiced the evacuation routines ceaselessly. The Argonaut had survived countless engagements and incursions with the Borg. The survivors of the vessel understood down to their very bones that nothing could be taken for granted.
Nothing except the possibility of Borg beaming over in the middle of our escape route!
The borg assault drones had torn into the assembled mass of civilians and their sparse military escort with abandon. To their credit, the security personnel had put enough of a fight to allow for over half of the civilians to survive the initial clash through a combination of bravery, tenacity, luck and knowledge of the inner layouts of the Argonaut. He had been separated from the others when a borg heavy drone had crawled out of a jeffrey's tube and boiled Helen Cassiel's left leg from the knee down. Robert Mitchum reached an intersection and slowed before coming to a stop.
He leaned forward and peeked around the corner. He saw the bodies of two Borg heavy drones and held his breath. He only had to make it one hundred or so feet down this corridor and he would reach the relative safety of the nearest shelter. He took a step and then another as if through will alone he could generate a stealth field around him. He had not made it more than six such steps before the nearest door to his left opened and a Borg assault drone exited. His heart sank as the drone pointed its disruptor at him and then stopped. No fire lashed out, no pain threatened to swallow him whole. Instead the drone took a step forward and then another, its left hand reaching out towards the human with the promise of joining the collective.
Robert stared in silent terror as the Borg drone reached out for him. His mind screamed at him to run, to flee, to do something as the armored hand continued its journey towards him. A moment later an explosion manifested as if by the will of half a dozen unseen Gods and he felt a warm fluid spread over his clothes. His eyes widened in shock as the head of what had once been a Borg drone was reduced to a grisly pulp. The drone toppled backwards and laid still. Robert watched for a second and then another before he gathered the courage to run. He ran faster than he had ever run in his life down the corridor and towards the promise of survival.
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Argonaut
Squads Vet and Tie (Deck 4)
The Romulan squads moved akin to lightly armored assassins through the familiar corridors of the Ambassador class ship. In their wake, they had left behind ruin and carnage the combination of firepower and superior training granting them tangible advantages. Nonetheless, of the original twenty members only sixteen bore no wounds and of the four wounded one had been critically injured and transported to the shuttle assigned to the Argonaut. So far, they had faced scattered Borg that had been unable or unwilling to offer truly organized resistance. The Borg rear guards and penchant to try and coordinate their fire while dangerous could be overcome through the proper utilization of suitable tactics, cover and target placement. Nonetheless, information being provided to them by their command and control in the shuttle indicate that the deck in front of them was simply crawling with Borg.
Arrain Shaval reached an intersection and seemed to glide to its edge. A human having seen the Romulan move would have sworn that his steps had not touched the ground. As he reached the intersection he leaned over the corner and glanced for a second down the corridor before he withdrew behind the relative safety of the wall before him. His left hand reached out, a familiar sign flashed before the rest of his squad moved alongside him. "Contact, I count at least two groups. Twenty or so Borg, there are least eight in rear guard. Ixhal, tell me what you see."
The Reman glanced down the hallway through the wall utilizing his exographic sensor and frowned before he spoke. "I see at least two squads, they are converging on a hallway roughly fourty two meters ahead. There are eight, no nine, drones in rear guard."
"Communications, get me in contact with the other mobile squads." Sheval asked.
"On it." The female Romulan responded.
"Arrain, the assault drones are being joined by over a dozen standard drones from one of the adjacent rooms." the Reman whispered a moment later.
"Arrain, the other squads indicate that they are in no position to offer direct assistance. The Remans can add their fire through their micro-transporters but they cannot guarantee sustained fire." the communication officer responded.
Sheval hesitated for a moment as she considered the alternatives. Her squad could with some effort defeat the assembled borg drones but not without taking some chances. She would prefer not take unnecessary chances. Her left hand moved, her sensor pad brought out as she studied the layout of the hallway and other adjoining structures. The bridge had fallen, at least all the data she possessed indicated that the systems of the Argonaut were not protected by heavily encrypted protocols. Nonetheless, the Borg did not seem to have made headway gaining control of the vessel. She had no response for that. She had also noticed that wrestling control of the tertiary systems had begun to become increasingly more difficult. The firewalls of the Argonaut were becoming more adept at delaying her advances. It was one of the primary reasons she had nearly lose a perfectly good trooper to Borg fire. With that thought in mind, she decided to consult with a higher power.
"What can you do for me Sinal?" She asked.
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Argonaut
Romulan Shuttle
The Romulan shuttle which was at the moment attached to the USS Argonaut was commanded by khre'arrain Sinal. It was her task to monitor the movements and transmissions from the squads within the Federation vessel and provide whatever tactical support and brilliance she could conjure. It was a task that was difficult under the best of circumstances but when dealing with the Borg became increasingly complicated. The sensor systems and computer systems of the Shuttle were far more powerful and sensitive than those on the hands of individual squad level commanders, but still had to contend with inherent limitations. Nonetheless, she and her subordinates had spent the last fifteen minutes dueling with the firewalls of the stricken Federation vessel. It had proven to be a far more formidable battle than she had expected. Tertiary systems were open to a variety of exploits and attacks, but the secondary and primary systems were still offering significant resistance. Still, they had gained enough access to try something that should assist the situation faced by squads Tie and Vet.
"Standby Shaval. I will give you and your squad an opening momentarily, be prepared to take it." She responded curtly before she closed the channel.
Her fingers danced and massaged a series of keys and glyphs as she infiltrated the systems of the hallway, tapped into the internal sensors and redirected power from EPS relays into specific junction points. She doubted that she could maintain her stranglehold on these systems for long, but she did not need to maintain control for longer than a handful of seconds. She only hoped that Shaval had the sense of taking full advantage of the situation she was about to provide for her and her men. She pressed a series of keys and finally brushed her left index finger above a familiar glyph.
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Argonaut
Squads Vet and Tie (Deck 4)
Arrain Shaval was alerted to the events moments before they provided visual cues by the vibration of her sensor pad. Her eyes focused on the pad as its sensors informed her of power being redirected from power relays and conduits surrounding the hallway which was currently swarming with Borg assault and standard drones and were funneled towards two key locations.
"Get ready." She half hissed and whispered in Romulan as her right hand clutched her four shot grenade launcher. She only had eight rounds left and she intended to make them count. The rest of her squad and her sister squad took deep breaths and clutched their weapons with intent to seize advantage of whatever opportunities was about manifest itself.
The power along the length of the hallway flickered and dimmed, while the power to the adjoining rooms and doors seized all together. The hiss of ozone crackled to life as two force fields manifested at the ends of the corridor. The first force field manifested next to the crossroad were the Romulan squads were taking cover. The other, came to life near the front of the hallway and managed to snare nearly three quarters of the assembled drones in the hallway. Nearly all of the assault drones were located in the cylinder. For a moment, the borg seemed stunned by the manifestation of the security force fields. One borg assault drone was the first to react slamming his left hand through a wall and injecting nano-probes into a nearby conduit. Immediately, the Borg began to seek to divert the power flow away from the force field that seemed delayed them from continuing on their appointed task.
Had the force field being the sole move carried out by the khre'arrain Sinal it would have been one of the poorest executed openings in the history of the alpha quadrant. The Romulan khre'arrain did not however possess a sense of humor and she hated to lose. As the security force fields slammed into place, three separate devices were transported from the Romulan shuttle into the newly corked hallway. Each device manifested on the floor each being circular in shape and rising about half a meter of the ground while having a circumference of one and a half meters. Each such device was placed exactly ten meters apart. As a handful of borg drones glanced downwards to glance at the oddly shaped devices they emitted a keening sound and then detonated. Each "explosion" was composed of two stages. The first, accelerated a series of flechettes coated in a molecularly modified acid. The purpose of the flechettes was to puncture and perforate as many Borg as possible introducing the flesh within to the caustic substance that had been designed to dissolve flesh and inorganic matter. The acid had been crafted specifically with the borg in mind and targeted a host of compounds that the Borg favored both in their armor as well as their internal cybernetics. The second stage was akin to dropping a series of mentos into a large container of soda. The acid seemed to explode radiating outwards in a fine mist that sought to engulf and cover the assembled mass. The ceiling and floors, the entire hallway seemed to seethe and hiss beneath the onslaught. A handful of seconds later, after the caustic compound had settled the security force fields vanished.
"Now!" Arrain Shaval stated as she glanced down the hallway behind cover, aligned her weapon with a borg assault drone that seemed to watch its peers within the hallway wordlessly. She fired, the round expanding halfway down the corridor and seeking to snare its prey before excitedly seeking to deliver its embraced lover into oblivion. A moment later, her squad joined in and fired. No Romulans sought to enter the hallway as the acid could still be heard hissing in the background. However, that sound would not last long. Within a handful of moments after the Borg here had been neutralized, they would wait for Sinal to neutralize the compound by flooding it with an alkaline compound before pushing upwards. The damage to the hallway and adjoining walls would be repairable. The Borg would not be so fortunate.
Last edited by Marcao on Mon Oct 18, 2010 6:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
The Peddler of Half Truths.
"Not OP, therefore weakest." - Cynical Cat (May 2016)
"A dog doesn’t need to show his teeth as long as his growl’s deep enough, his food bowl is full and he knows where all the bones are buried." - Frank Underwood
"No joy Captain, damaged Borg facing is out of the NRA's firing arc. We would have to close with the Cube." Tactical reported.
"Negative to that. Helm keep pulling us and the Argo back. Order the troops to mount up on the shuttles for intervention on the Argo when we're out of the firing gallery." The Captain ordered sitting down. The Immortal was shieldless and injured, he wasn't about to run to certain death. There would be time enough to kill more Borg later. If there was one thing Captain Anderson was certain of, it was that it would be a long time before he was in any danger of running out of Borg.
Last edited by frigidmagi on Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
Ereiss glanced back to the captain. "Cube is spinning. We won't be able to keep up."
Hizir grimaced some as he began to consider his options, that's when the Empyrean's message came through.
"Damnit. Acknowledge the warning." Hizir glanced back at his tactical officer. "Get the ship ready to run her paces."
Khoal nodded and got to work as Hizir opened a channel to the medical bay. "Delvok."
The Vulcan looked up from some last minute checks over medical supplies. "Captain."
Hizir barely paused before replying. "Get ready for casualties. The borg are coming after us."
Delvok nodded once. "Of course captain."
That was all that needed to be said, and Hizir flipped over to Erib's private quarters. "Erib."
The Andorian, despite the battle raging around him, had never left his experiments. He grunted in acknowledgment.
"Get the Borg killer ready. We're about to be in the thick of it and you know what that means."
The Andorian simply looked up and grunted in acknowledgment again before looking back down at his work.
Hizir sighed, not certain if even the threat of Borg was enough to take the Andorian away from his work and flipped over to the brothers.
"Adrek, Pel, Zek. Things are about to get hairy."
"What do you mean about to?" one of the brother's yelled back as he pounded on a stubborn heat exchange.
"I mean prepare for borg." Was Hizir's response.
There was no response from any of the brother's for several seconds before one of them finally spoke up. "Join my crew he says, get plenty of loot he says. We'll only be ambushing borg, very little risk. My ass!"
Before the Ferengi could fully get into his rant, Hizir changed the channel to the secondary bridge.
"Danava."
There was a pause of a second or two. On the secondary bridge, she'd already received the message herself.
"Yes, Hizir?"
For the first time since he had started, Hizir paused, and the whole bridge paused for a moment as well. Silence reigned for several seconds before Danava finally spoke.
"I understand. You too."
She cut off the communication and Hizir took a deep steadying breath.
Ereiss spoke up first. "20 seconds to new cube facing."
Hizir nodded and turned on the internal comm again, this time addressing the whole crew.
"Crew of the Barbarossa, this is Captain Hizir. Things are about to get rough, the cube is going to bring it's might against us and our only option is to weather the storm. Get to your posts, look out for each other, and don't forget that this is always the last line. We are the Barbarossa. We cannot break. For we are born from the fire of war, forged on adversity, and only quenched by victory. Keep your wits."
Marine forces were already moving to key positions, preparing to fight off the first wave of any borg invaders if the shields fell.
"5..."
Crewmen around the ship prayed silently, or embraced loved ones.
"4..."
Danava, sitting nonchalantly in the captain's chair of the secondary bridge was idly sharpening her axe, the heavy pistol she always carried on her person lying on the arm of the chair.
"3..."
Khoal with an almost Vulcan like dispassion worked out the final firing parameters to use as soon as the new facing had found them.
"2..."
Delvok clutched a small locket tightly in his grasp, the image of a woman barely visible.
"1..."
Hizir leaned forward in his seat, the fire still burning in his eyes, only now with more calculation than passion.
The Vigilance had received the warning, and Markson was already responding, and leaning forward. "All decks, prepare for invaders. Combat teams, get to ready positions. All shields, orient to handle weapons fire from the Cube."
"Weapons, target the damaged sections and hit hard. Lock onto any part covered only by shield edges."
Half-Damned, All Hero.
Tev: You're happy. You're Plotting. You're Evil.
Me: Evil is so inappropriate. I'm ruthless.
Tev: You're turning me on.
Gul Tarka cursed. The Keldon had never been the most agile ship to ply the void, even before the Katara had been modified.
"Damn it, bring us around to the damaged facing again." He snapped at Sorak.
"Yes Gul!" Came the shouted reply.
Most of the battle had been spent moving, trying to get a clean target, forced to take oblique angle shots, the torpedoes either smacking into shields or doing surface damage. All the while the shield cube facings had been returning fire. Shields were starting to reach low levels.
Tarka looked to the tactical display. With two ships boarded, it was even more critical that he get his into position to rain death and pain upon that cube. Especially since he lacked more than a token force of security.
The Katara banked upwards and rotated, relative to the cube and waited, watching as the Cube spun, trying to keep that nice big hole from getting hit.
"Fire." Tarka ordered. A volley of torpedoes, a stream after, streaked through the void at the shielded face that was turnign, timing it so they should reach the cube as the damaged facing came into range.
Morpheus:I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me but because of the path that lies behind me.
The Borg were implacable at the worst of times, unyielding, unending, relentless foes whose losses never deterred them from returning again and again and again to the attack. Like zombies gifted with high powered weapons and the mind to wield them, they mindlessly slashed their way through every barrier in their path. But the waves of Borg drones that had arrived aboard Heritage and Argonaut and Giglamesh were only the first waves. The followups had been incinerated by Cometfall, and their replacements were still held deep within the Cube, a Cube now distracted by the novel situation of having to fight for its life.
Aboard Gilgamesh, despite the transporter shenanigans that the bridge crew contrived at, it was the Klingons that turned the tide, beaming into the Federation warship at a dozen points with disruptors ablaze. Nobody needed to comment on how it was that Klingon marines knew exactly where and how to board a Federation warship. Klingons were a long-lived lot, and there might even have been some who had done this before, in another time, in another war.
In this day however, and in this war, the Borg assault force was overwhelmed. Transport-equipped projectile weapons felled them from every direction, while mad Klingon marines who thought nothing of hacking Borg apart with Bat'leths and less of using disruptors to cut them down. Casualties there were, and casualties there would be, particularly among the crew of the Gilgamesh, who despite training and the like, had received no warning of the incoming Borg. But the Borg had no support, and the Gilgamesh had. It was only a minute or two before the operation went from counterboarding to mop up, a phase which would require time, but would leave the ship more or less free to do as it would.
*-----------------------------------------------*
Argonaut, bigger and heavier than her smaller counterpart, had received the lion's share of the Borg's attention, three hundred heavy assault drones deployed across the length and breadth, but unlike ships that merely claimed constant readiness for Borg assault and left it at that, the crew of Argonaut had taken practical measures in their proper time, that is prior to the battle being engaged. Venerable she might be, old and slow and armed only with phasers and photon torpedoes, a relic in an age of tricobalt and mass driver, Argonaut's interior was honeycombed with two dozen "shelters", internally-sealed chambers in which the crew could hide, protected by Type-XII forcefields and solid duranium bulkheads and blast shutters. Microfusion reactors, separate from the main warp core and internal to each shelter, powered everything from transporter inhibitors and phaser turrets, to replicators and communication equipment. When the Borg came, the thousand-strong crew of the Argonaut had only to evacuate themselves to the nearest shelter, seal the doors behind them, and wait for succor either from the four hundred personnel either serving or doubling as security teams, or from the Romulan, Reman, and (unlooked for) Borg assault forces that followed the enemy wave and engaged them with grenade, shotgun, and disruptor.
This was not to claim there were no casualties. There were. Three hundred assault drones was a force to be reckoned with, and crewmen were caught out of position or by surprise, and died, or worse, with screams and curses and cries for their friends or loved ones. The fusion reactor in one "shelter" on Deck 17 failed utterly, bringing down the forcefields and transporter inhibitors and letting a swarm of Borg pour inside. Desperately, the largely-civilian refugees within the shelter fought the Borg phaser to disruptor and, when they adapted to the phasers, hand to hand, wielding knives and power couplings and even ersatz clubs made from broken furniture, parents fighting to the death to give their terrified children a chance to escape, screams and cries of pain and panic mingling with the quasi-monastic recitations of the Borg Assault Drones. Yet before the drones could complete their work, one of the Romulan assault teams, drawn by the cries for help, took them from behind. Caught between prey and predators, the Borg attempted to redeploy, too late, as the Romulans liquidated them with practiced efficiency, leaving the stunned, truncated survivors of the attack to thank them in what halting, panic-stricken words they could muster, or to cower in corners or weep over fallen loved ones.
It was war.
Yet despite this, the Borg were deploying not out in the manner of an ink blot over paper, but in the reverse, as unit by unit they seemed to gather in the uppermost decks, feeding towards the bridge in their dozens, though what they sought there was unclear. The bridge of Argonaut, like that of any ship, was its brain and nerve center, yet the Borg had beamed two dozen assault drones into it at the commencement of the battle, and had sent further forces at it since then, to the point where it was debatable if they could physically fit more drones within the bridge. The command protocols of the Bridge continued to lay wide open, as though inviting penetration, yet the Borg had not yet penetrated. With internal sensors to the bridge offline, there was no way to tell what was transpiring up there.
The Romulans tried nonetheless. Several of their assault teams lanced through the Borg rearguards on Deck 4 and cleared a way to the turbolifts that led to the bridge. By some miracle or gross stupidity, the turbolifts were still running, though the Romulans had to repell platoon-sized formations of Assault Drones hammering at them from corridor intersections or from the rear as they went. Yet for all the violence of their attacks, the numbers they threw at the Romulan interlopers and the scattered Federation security forces that they had snowballed with, were strongly incommensurate with what the Borg had deployed up here. There should have been over a hundred drones attacking the Romulans at every pass. There were less than a quarter of that.
So as the Romulans closed on Argonaut's bridge, the question came to mind, where was everyone?
*-----------------------------------------------*
But if Argonaut was a mystery, Heritage was refreshingly straightforward.
Her crew all but disabled by repeated Borg assaults from weapons fire, her ship crippled and floating in space, the Borg swept over Heritage like a wildfire in a dry field, such that when the Romulan boarding parties arrived to succor the striken ship, they found only horror.
Borg, dozens of Borg, untramelled and unhindered by attacks to their rear, assaulted the boarding parties from the very instant that the transporters let them loose. Assault drones laid withering fire down as regular drones, either beamed in with the assault wave or converted members of Heritage's crew. Some landing zones were physically swarmed by the Borg, who had somehow contrived to evade external scans even at close range, and took the Romulan attackers under hand to hand combat instantly. One team found itself caught in a three-way cross fire and took 40% casualties in ten seconds from disruptor fire at point blank range, until the party commander ordered an emergency evacuation to save the troops further casualties.
Elsewhere it was nearly as bad, Borg pouring in from all sides to assault the Romulans as they attacked. disruptor fire flashed by the dark windows of the ship and filled the hallways with an etherial twilight as Romulans, Remans, and Borg shot, hacked, and tried by any means possible to slaughter one another aboard the stricken ship.
With all the violence of their fight, none within the Heritage noticed the low hum of the deck plates beneath their feet, nor the slight shake as the ship began to come about...
*-----------------------------------------------*
It was something nobody had ever seen before, nor were they likely to see it again.
The enormous cube began to change facing, moving at speeds that belied its size, for the Borg were well aware of the need to change shield facings in a hurry in the heat of combat. The cruisers had no chance of keeping up, not even had they been expecting it. This applied likewise to the Missile cruiser that had been hanging out of range. Far back as Spector was, she had a long way to go, but she was helped by two factors. One was that the ship was built on an Akira chassis, a chassis designed for speed and agility, if not Destroyer calibres, then closer than her bigger cousins. The other was that Spector's primary weapon was the torpedo, and torpedoes had maneuvering capacities of their own.
The entire ship shuddered as torpedoes lanced at the Borg's damaged facing, instants before it turned away from Spector, presenting shields once again. But fast as the Cube was, the projectiles were faster, and the ravaged facing had no point defense weapons left to fight with. The angle of approach was oblique and shifting, but a Borg cube facing was an enormous target, and the computers on photon torpedoes were intelligent enough to make the appropriate turns. The torpedoes turned in perfect formation, and blossomed against the already crushed side of the Borg Cube.
And then something entirely unexpected happened.
On the largely undamaged facing that the majority of the fleet were now firing into, the Borg's nigh-impenetrable shields suddenly, and without any evidence whatsoever of instability, vanished. Instants later, so did the shields covering the remaining four facings, in their entirety. For though they did not know it, the crew of the Spector has just vaporized the primary shield matrix of the entire cube, and until power could be rerouted to a secondary matrix elsewhere in the ship, its hull was left bare to the elements and the violence of men.
And two seconds later, every ship in the fleet that still could opened fire.
S'harien opened fire first, her massive type 20 disruptors boiling spacetime itself as they burned divots the size of runabouts in the cube's hull, setting sympathetic explosions coursing across half of the new facing and geysers of gas and debris pinwheeling through space like coronal ejections. Empyrean and Vigilance launched torpedoes, to which Vigilance added her phasers, spot targeting Borg weapon emplacements no longer protected by shields, reducing half a dozen of them to vapor and ash before the Cube could even determine what had just happened. Katara, acting late but acting at last, poured a stream of torpedoes and fire into the suddenly empty hull, reducing a quadrant of the nearest facing to mangled debris and brushing aside the desultory shots of plasma torpedoes, two of which struck home, the others flashing past un-noticed. And as all this went on, the looming hulk of the largest ship present on the field, the implacable Warbird renamed the Barbarossa brought her bird-like prow about, and fired everything.
Beams of red death lanced forth from the enormous warship and traced designs on the Cube's facing in letters like red blood, leaving mangled ruin in their wake glowing white hot from the sheer energy overload pumped into them. A volley of plasma torpedoes was vaporized in a flash, coating portions of the Cube in green death, reducing deck plating to tangled devastation and weapons batteries to abstract art. Disruptors pumped energy into the Cube's hull, and plasma torpedoes exploded against it, ripping lattice off and casting it aside like a child throwing a tantrum. And as Barbarossa vented her rage into the Cube that had caused such misery, aboard stricken Gilgamesh, aboard straining Immortal, the tactical officers reported simultaneously, that the respective mass driver weapons were prepared, and armed, and locked on target.
Meanwhile, stricken by this new catastrophe, the Borg did as they could.
Their false orders directed them to fire on Vigilance and Barbarossa, and fire on them they did, the cube selecting the Romulan Heavy Cruiser as its target in conformation with its hopeless orders, bringing up yet another facing to replace one ruined and burnt. Beaten as it was, it was still a Cube, and it bit back viciously, flinging two dozen plasma torpedoes at the Warbird, which had, like all of its class, no chance of dodging. Two torpedoes contrived to get themselves annihilated by fire that was not even aimed at them. The others, twenty-two strong and buttressed by disruptor beams, smashed into the forward shields of the Barbarossa with the fury of God's own thunder. It was a tremendous battering, capable of reducing most ships to smoldering wrecks, but Warbirds were built to take it, and the shields shook, and held, and shrugged off fire capable of coring a Defiant or laying waste to half a continent, three million degree plasma running down her flanks and dorsal side like rainwater.
As for Vigilance, the Borg had something else in mind.
Before the eyes of everyone, Heritage began to move again, under her own power, turning about like a predator woken up from a long nap. But no communications came along to herald this re-awakening, nor did she hesitate before bringing such weapons back online as she could, coming about, and firing everything she had directly into Vigilance's starboard flank.
Type XII Phasers, two rapid fire pulse cannons, a pair of Disruptor cannons that belonged on a Romulan Warbird, all drenched the flank shields of the venerable warship, moments before two successive bursts of Quantum torpedoes smashed into the flank shields, hitting the enormous Galaxy so hard that she fell out of alignment and the groan of straining bulkheads reverberated throughout the ship. The regenerative shields strained and shuddered, with no structural integrity field to back them up, and flickered before finally contriving to hold against the storm, albeit barely. And then Heritage was past Vigilance, her rear-mounted weapons showering Vigilance's fortunately-intact port shields, as she moved to come around for another pass.
*-----------------------------------------------*
Computers of incalculable power aboard Empyrean had been engaged, all this time, in monitoring the entire spectrum of Cube-to-collective communications, interposing themselves wherever possible to ensure the proper orders were deployed. Monitored by such crew as had training and time to do so, it was now, after these violent events, that the technicians translated an entirely new message, formatted in Borg superluminal communication code.
"Cube 2876 reporting: Task force has sustained heavy damage. All auxiliary ships destroyed. Sphere 68500 destroyed. Sphere 11957 destroyed. Resistance drastically exceeds expected parameters. Initiating self-preservation routines. Preparing to withdraw. Request immediate support. Repeat. Request immediate support. Cube 2876 is no longer combat-viable. Initiating withdrawal from system at best opportunity. No longer able to fulfill objectives. Request further instructions from 4th Fleet control."
Last edited by General Havoc on Fri Oct 22, 2010 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair...
Havoc: "So basically if you side against him, he summons Cthulu."
Hotfoot: "Yes, which is reasonable."
"Captain! Borg Shields DOWN!" shouted Serin, just as the fleet's massed weapon output smashed into the Cube's unprotected hull.
"Open channel, all fleet!" Elation filling her, she never though about how far an open channel would reach, such as to the planet they were protecting. "This is KIRK, Borg shields are Down, repeat, Borg Shields Down! Fire everything, take it down, before they get secondaries online!"
"Captain, the fighters are now able to make strikes upon the Cube as well," Serin pointed out, and for a moment Eoife paused, cutting off her communication with a jerk of her hand across her neck. This one battle had lost her three ships, possibly three pilots. Three more names on The Wall -- thankfully the Borg hadn't shot them badly enough to add more. Did she want her ships, her little birds, flying that close?
Or did she want that damned Borg cube dead.
"Permission given. Watch for Friendly Fire," she said, turning away to face the screen and hide from the looks of her crew.
"Heritage is moving!" The excited announcement turned all heads. "She's .... she's..." excitement faded into horror. "she just fired all guns on the Vigilance."
"Dammit." Kirk's fist slammed the arm of her chair. Low growls came from a couple of her bridge crew, from another a sad sigh. Another ship of Federation survivors lost to the Borg, and Spector was now out of position to hold to her promise made earlier. "Stay with the Damaged Facing," Kirk ordered, leaning forward in her chair. "All tubes ripple-fire fast as we can load them. I want to see that hole come out the other side!"
+++ Fighter Wings Ghost, Wraith, Phantom
"Spector to all Wings. Protocol Red-5. Repeat, Red-5 is go."
"Acknowledged, Red-5 in effect!" Ghost-Prime answered, in concert with Wraith and Phantom's leaders.
"Ok, kids, this is it! Full attack runs on the Cube, primary targets are Weapons Emplacements!" Wraith-Prime announced to the joint wings. "Remember to watch the Big Boys -- You know what the Captain Says!"
A ragged chorus came from the three leaders, stating the obvious military truism: "Friendly Fire Isn't!"
"Ok, form up and let's blow some Borg!"
The Peregrine fighters leapt like hounds from the leash, breaking up into pairs to start their dives on the Cube. The first, more heavily damaged Facing was out of reach, but they fearlessly strafed the new Facing with phaser and what few torpedoes they had left.
SitRep wrote:The hounds are loose, the Peregrines able to strafe the Cube's unprotected hull at last. They will try to take out as many weapons emplacements as possible first. The Spector herself is still racing the damaged facing, intent on doing as much damage as possible to it before the Borg can get her shields back up.
Dogs are Man's Best Friend
Cats are Man's Adorable Little Serial Killers
"What was that?!" Markson roared over the din of noises as the ship's system strained against the sudden storm. "Someone, report! What fired on us?"
"Looks like the Heritage, sir! We've lost her completely!" Shouted one of the officers, identity hidden by the steam and sparks showering the bridge. "She's coming back for another run!"
Regenerating shields were damn hard to bring down, but the Heritage was loaded for bear. Markson didn't waste time. "Lock the phasers onto the biggest power source on the Cube, and give me a continuous beam! Early Borg reports said until assimilation, we shot through, so drill to their main power! Torpedoes, lock on the Heritage and give me a Suvuc Maneuver!"
Named for his XO, a Suvuc Maneuver was a bit misleading. It didn't do anything about the turning or movement of the ship, but in the maneuvers of her torpedos. A swarm of quantum torpedos streamed away from the Vigilance. To the Heritage... And indeed, all those watching.. The shots were going far too wide.
As they passed the Heritage, however, then executed turns so sharp only torpedos could do it, suddenly tracking the Nacelles of the hijacked ship.
Half-Damned, All Hero.
Tev: You're happy. You're Plotting. You're Evil.
Me: Evil is so inappropriate. I'm ruthless.
Tev: You're turning me on.
The Barbarossa shook violently, knocking many out of their chairs and onto the ground. Hizir, gripping the arms of his chair tightly to keep himself seated looked over to one of the human operators.
"Damage report!"
The human stared blankly at the screen for a few seconds before he started cursing. "God damn piece of garbage! Not speaking in a language I can god damn understand!"
One of the Romulans quickly moved over and not so gently shoved the human out of the way. "Shields are holding, inertial dampers holding, for now. Several electrical outages across the ship, already restored to secondary power." The Romulan looked up. "We can't take too many like that."
Hizir frowned and looked back at the Cube as it prepared to fire its next volley. "Officer Khoal, full power to shields, power down most of our weapons. We need to live long enough for the fleet to kill this thing if it's not gonna make a run for it." In the back of his mind, Hizir was already wondering why the cube hadn't attempted to flee yet. With the amount of damage it had sustained it should have made a run for it already. So what was it waiting for, reinforcements?
"Grab onto it with our tractor beams. Keep us on this facing of the damn thing. Don't let it hit us with another facing."
"Most resistance neutralized," said Captain Moreg. The Klingon Marine stepped over the smoking remains of a nearly disintegrated assault drone. The rest of the squad were moving up to secure the position and continue the assault on the Borg.
"We're in the mop-up phases. Casualties light. No further reinforcements needed. Stand by to transport additional equipment on my order." Once the Borg were wiped out, most of his men could be beamed back to the Riskadh and transport blockers put in place.
"We hold the ship," reported Menmoth. "The engagement is in the mopping up phase."
"Coordinate fire and shield frequencies with the Gilgamesh," ordered Kadon. "Status on the Cube?"
"It's shields are degrading, but still sufficient to repel all incoming fire," replied Arikel. "Torpedo hits on the damaged facing by the Spector. The Cube is still concentrating fire on the Vigilance and the Barbarosa."
"Zan Kallor, concentrate fire on the Barbarosa's impact points. All excess power to disruptors, maximum yield, continual fire. I want high energy bleedthrough and local point shield failures now!"
"Cube shields are down!" shouted Arikel.
"Kallor belay!" shouted Kadon. "Gut that one!"
"Acting," replied Kallor as he discharged the Riskadh's disruptors at one point, boring a crater in the Cube in flares of emerald fire that turned hull into hot gas, molten droplets, and pinwheeling pieces of jagged shrapnel. Borg were flayed into nothingness or reduced to charred ruin by the battlecruiser's mains'. Then torpedoes flew into the wound to blast it deeper in a series of cataclysmic explosions that devoured matter like ravening wolves.
"Load another tricobalt and finish this g'dayt thing," said Kadon.
Last edited by Cynical Cat on Mon Oct 25, 2010 5:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
It's not that I'm unforgiving, it's that most of the people who wrong me are unrepentant assholes.
"This is Fire Team Alpha. We have proceeded to mop-up, critical points are secure," Lieutenant Adranis' voice echoed onto the bridge.
Swift grinned ferally. "What a charming coincidence, we have lock on the Cube."
Captain Solheim himself smiled. "We do have something of theirs - it would only be polite to give it back. Commander, can we fire again?"
Commander Inzeti, despite a few small plasma burns on her uniform, looked none the worse for wear from the fierce but short battle for the bridge, though her personal pistol, now resting in its holster at the small of her back, was certainly low on ammunition. Unlike Captain Solheim's, hers was somewhat more bulky, normally given to elite Reman commandos aboard the S'harien.
She rapidly navigated through floating menus in front of her, before turning her head slightly backward, one blue eye looking with a half-lidded stare over her shoulder. "We will need twenty seconds, but we can safely fire another shot."
At this, Captain Solheim smiled. "Swift, send telemetry and timing details to the Riskadh, informing them that we will begin on my mark. Let's not have a repeat of last time. Computer - begin primary ignition on my mark."
He provided his command code, and Commander Inzeti corroborated it. Both of them stared at the viewscreen, the less than healthy Borg Cube still hanging in space like rotten, diseased fruit.
Nodding, Swift narrowed her eyes at the thought, despite speaking calm Klingon to her counterpart communications officer aboard the Riskadh. Soon enough, she spoke up clearly. "Message sent, and acknowledged."
Captain Solheim smiled. "Swift, send message to the Riskadh - Mark. Computer, begin primary ignition."
The lights dimmed, and the countdown appeared. To everyone's surprise, Swift spoke up around the eleven second mark. "Captain, the Cube's shields on all facings are down!"
The remaining bridge crew all smiled coldly, watching the countdown hit single digits, and then zero. The Gilgamesh rocketed backwards, nearly touching the Riskadh's rear shields before the impulse engines overtook the ship's momentum from firing the shell.
"Thanks for the ammunition," Swift smirked.
Turn Action Report wrote:Continuing mop-up of Borg aboard ship. Firing Cometfall at the Cube.
Last edited by rhoenix on Mon Oct 25, 2010 9:30 pm, edited 3 times in total.
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes."
- William Gibson
Josh wrote:What? There's nothing weird about having a pet housefly. He smuggles cigarettes for me.
The attention of the S'harien seemed to be completely upon its target. Its maneuvering had not proven sufficient to the task of keeping the damaged facing of the Borg cube within reach of its gun. The torpedo salvos of the Spector sped past the Romulan Warbird and struck home. It was then that something unexpected occurred. Riov Galan Cretak was not known for overly religious, the decimation of one's people tended to breed cynics but when the shields of the Borg cube disappeared he quite nearly offered a prayer of thanks to the divine. He did not need to carry out orders for the rest of the bridge crew of the S'harien were not in the business of squandering opportunities.
The massive type 20 disruptor banks selected their targets with care within fractions of seconds and discharged their seething energies on the unprotected armor and superstructure of the Borg cube. The explosions that blossomed on the sensors of the Warbird nearly made him smile. The torpedo salvo which followed a moment later sought not to merely detonate on the surface of the cube but to utilize the very holes the type 20 disruptors had neatly carved into the cube and to explode within them. The cube seemed to be engulfed in a nascent crucible of fire as the fighting ships of the gathered task force poured their fire into their target.
Even a cube cannot survive this for long.
The thought lingered on his mind for a handful of precious seconds, his eyes leaving the view screen which detailed the devastation that the S'harien was delivering on the cube and focused on his tactical readout. Information coming from the Romulan forces within the Argonaut and Heritage were sporadic. His forces had met with relative success aboard the Argonaut although the bridge was still not secured and Romulan forces were currently converging on the nerve center of the Ambassador class warship. The information from the Heritage was far less clear but indicated heavy resistance. The shuttle attached to the Prometheus class had been sending a steady stream of handfuls of survivors from the Heritage or those in the process of being assimilated. Romulan medical science like that of the Federation could deal with nano-probe infestations given enough time.
Any further thoughts on such matters was dispelled when his sensors informed him that the Heritage began to move. His eyes widened for a moment and he found himself opening an encrypted channel directly to the shuttle assigned to the Federation vessel. How had the Borg managed to secure the Heritage so quickly? Had its crew being so thoroughly overwhelmed in such a short period of time?
How unskilled was that crew? How incompetent its captain?
"Report!" He half hissed into the communication unit as the Heritage unleashed a withering array of firepower into the Vigilance.
"The Borg have secured the Heritage primary drives and weapons, shields are still down!" Was the frantic response from the shuttle.
"Deal with it! I want that ship stopped." He responded moments later. He had no easily available tool to do so. With its shields down, anything the S'harien brought to bear against the vessel would likely destroy her and he did not want to kill his own troops.
"On it Riov." The frustration on the voice of the male Romulan was palpable but laced beneath a layer of professionalism.
Riov Galan Cretak closed the channel between the S'harien and its shuttle and sent a message through the pre-existing encrypted channels provided by the Empyrean to the rest of the task force. "I have troops aboard the Heritage. We are attempting to deal with the situation of Borg control over the vessel, if the vessel cannot be promptly secured or disabled they will evacuate and destroy the ship. If they cannot destroy the ship, Spector I will take you on your earlier offer to do so."
When the Barbarossa lashed out with its tractor beams and sought to snare the cube in their grasp the S'harien hesitated for only a moment before attempting to do so as well. The twin tractor beam emitters that covered its forward arc reaching out as they sought to snare the massive cube in their grasp. The cube could not be allowed to retreat not with the information stored in its data banks about the capabilities of the ships of the task force. The longer they managed to hold on to their individual secrets the better. The S'harien like her sister Warbird had no intention of letting this enemy escape. Even as its tractor beams sought to snare their prey, the disruptors of the S'harien continued to fire without pause. Within its armored torpedo rooms, a familiar dance took place as mechanical arms went about the process of reloading the Warbird's precious and dangerous plasma torpedoes.
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Argonaut
Upper Decks
The Romulan forces gathered originally fifty strong but now their numbers had swelled to sixty five. The original fifty members of the mobile squads had been reinforced with one and half squads of the blocking forces. They had gathered as a unified whole, thankful that their commanders had stressed the possibility of large scale movements within the tight confines of a warship. Originally, these exercises had been predominantly employed in preparation for the possibility that large amounts of Borg drones would board the S'harien itself. The knowledge that had come from those practice sessions had already paid enormous dividends.
Nonetheless, there was concern that something was brewing before them.
The bridge of the Argonaut was the ultimate prize and yet the resistance that had been offered by the Borg so far had not been up to the expected strength of their original numbers. Sixty five Romulan troops hesitated for a moment as six separate Arrains met and took a moment to formulate a strategy. They worked in conjunction with the shuttle's far more powerful sensor systems when compared to their own data pads. In the end, the odd interference that was blanketing the upper decks of the changed little. If the battle was to be successful, the bridge of the Argonaut had to be secured. It was Arrain Shaval that brought the stalemate devising a plan that was both elegant and simple.
"In my studies of the humans I came across an ancient group of warriors. Their motto was as follows: Who dares, wins." Arrain Toxali said in Romulan and watched the reaction of her equals. She liked what she saw. "Fitting is it not?"
The Romulan forces split into several more manageable squads and began the process of moving towards their primary objective. Some of the forces moved through jeffrey's tubes aware of the difficulties that fighting borg in such tight quarters entailed but trusting on their superior training and enhanced weaponry to offer tangible advantages in such a scenario. Meanwhile, two squads settled on preparing to utilize the apparently still active lifts to get to their targets. They did not move into the lifts immediately however. Their sensor officers and engineers sought to scan these lifts as well as supporting systems in order to determine if the Borg had rigged them to explode or otherwise sabotaged them in any other ways.
In the Romulan shuttle, two Romulans scoured any and all data regarding these systems seeking likely sabotage attempts as well as attempting to determine if the Borg had remotely infiltrated their control systems. Ultimately however, the lifts were an opportunity that could not be overlooked. If the Romulan commanders felt that they were safe enough to use, they would be used. Once all squads were in position and assuming that the lifts seemed safe enough for use, Romulan forces would coordinate through encrypted channels and attempt to arrive on their target en masse. The odd interference was impairing sensor sweeps but communications seemed to be unaffected. If communications were affected, a backup involving a predetermined time would be utilized.
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Heritage
In order to be effective in the battlefield a unit had to be properly trained, properly equipped and had to employ proper tactics for a host of given situations. This was a truth that transcended species and was present in all the martial powers of the alpha quadrant. Nonetheless, there were times when being lucky helped. The forces that were transported into the USS Heritage possessed all the necessary components if being effective and deadly warriors ranking amongst the best the galaxy still had to offer. Unfortunately, sometimes skill and talent were not enough. There were times when you needed a little bit of luck. The Heritage it seemed was in no mood in providing it.
Khre'eredh Tuvalari was second in command of her squadron. She was taller than most Romulan females, patient, deadly with just about any weapon and yet easy to laugh and to assist others. In the at times suffocating atmosphere of the S'harien when duty and obligation threatened to swallow everything else she had managed to become one of the brightest stars in the crew decks of the ship. She arrived on the location chosen to her surrounded by a green nimbus of light. When she had been transported into the Heritage, the sensors had indicated that there were no Borg within fifteen meters of the arrival point of her squadron. The sensors had been mistaken. Her body had barely solidified when the first disruptor shots had been fired in her direction. Four of these shots went wide, three did not. The first struck her in her mid section, boiling away most of the armor there and managing to penetrate most of the way through her suit. As internal alarms began to inform her of the breach, a second shot hit her in the leg and she felt her balance shift beneath the blow. As pain raced towards her brain, the third shot managed to pierce her visor and hit her directly on the face. The disruptor shot ionized the air and boiled flesh. Khre'eredh Tuvalari toppled backward dead her wish to have caught the eye of her Riov now impossible to realize.
Tuvalari was not the only Romulan to fall. Three other members of her unit fell, Eredh Castiu, Eredh Malai and Erein Losht all fell to a wicked crossfire as borg seemed to manifest as ghosts around them. For a moment, a handful of seconds it seemed that the rest of the unit would follow suit consumed alive by the seemingly ever present borg wrapped around them. It was then that the Reman weapon officer reacted beneath a combination of survival instinct, anger and training. An explosion blossomed to life amongst the borg lines, joined by a second and then a third in short succession. An EPS conduit was breached by the second explosion, scattering the Borg that had been using twin pillars near it as cover from Romulan fire. The Reman stepped forward, taking position by the bodies of his fallen Romulan comrades and began to fire. The 25mm explosive rounds made a mess of whatever Borg was unfortunate enough to seek to block their path.
Shaken by the sudden explosions, a moment later an invisible but tangible wave of anger rolled over the gathered Romulans. It was the equivalent of a psychic scream, a howl of rage and defiance that shook the fears and doubts of the gathered Romulans. Even the best in the world could at times lose themselves and for a moment the Romulan squad had lost itself. The Reman had forced them back to their senses and their leader, Arrain Xynaz quickly responded. He had no intention on squandering the opportunity his Reman had provided them.
"Fall back! Delta Pattern, withdraw!" Xynaz ordered and the survivors of his squad responded.
"I will cover your retreat." The Reman responded, positioning himself behind a nearby piece of cover as over a dozen disruptor blasts danced and twisted near his location.
"We can't support you in your current location! You are going to die Nevelth!" Xynaz responded as the squad moved as one towards the nearest exit point.
"Maybe, Maybe not. I will find you if I can. If not, it has been a pleasure Arrain."
Arrain Xynaz watched as fire continued to be exchanged between the Reman and the gathered Borg forces punctuated by the occasional explosion ahead. When the squad managed to reach their exit point, the fire continued before them. Information pouring in from other teams was no better. While the other teams had not been ambushed as thoroughly as his own, they had met remarkably stiff resistance. The only good news was the information provided by the squad tasked with securing the shuttle bay. The borg there had been annihilated in short order and the shuttle bay was now secured. It was here that they were all heading now. Their new orders were to retreat to the shuttle bays, assisting whatever survivors they happened to run across.
This is going to be shortest boarding action in the history of the Romulan Star Empire...
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Heritage
Romulan Shuttle
The preparations aboard the shuttle had been on schedule until the Borg had decided to throw a monkey wrench into their time table and brought the engines and weapon systems of the Heritage to life. The shuttle was painfully aware of its precarious situation but it dared not even move for fear that the weapon systems of the Heritage would reduce them to rapidly expanding atoms. Why had the Heritage not fired upon them yet? The spot that he had chosen to land in was an unusual one. Was it possible that no phaser system could reach this location? Irregardless of the reasons why, the shuttle was still here and he had every intention of making certain things remained that way. The orders from his Riov had been very specific and he could accomplish them to a point.
"Ready?" He asked.
"Yes. The Ordnance has been prepped." Was the near immediate response.
"This should work." The Romulan Star Empire had possessed very detailed information regarding this particular type of ship. The Prometheus herself had been in Romulan hands for some time, and while the ship was never truly captured it had provided a wealth of data and information regarding its internal systems. This database had been added to through the covert efforts of the Tal Shiar. The end result being that the Romulans in the shuttle had a surprisingly insightful look at the internals of the USS Heritage. Of course, it quickly became apparent that the USS Heritage was not exactly a normal ship of her type. Nonetheless, how much could they really change? The body may have some cosmetic changes here and there but arteries were arteries and the heart was likely in the same place it had always been.
"Stand by." He added as he pressed a series of keys and two micro-torpedoes disappeared from the shuttle itself and were transplanted within two jeffrey's tubes. A handful of a second later and they both detonated. The locations had been chosen with care, the yields of the torpedoes along with over a dozen other factors brought into consideration. The detonations should have severed two critical power junctions which when severed almost simultaneously would cause a failure in the weapon systems. Power could likely be re-routed to these weapons, but with the shield systems still in disarray the power would have to be redirected from the engines and inelegant and somewhat time consuming process. Most importantly of all, not all weapon systems would be able to be brought back. One of the junctions he had chosen was the sole means of feeding into the two weapon systems that could conceivably target his shuttle. At least, that was the theory. His eyes stared at his sensor screen as he continued.
"Get ready to transport the last two modified torpedoes into main engineering. If the Borg manage to redirect power, we should have enough warning to carry out the transport." It was a somber thought.
I have my duty.
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Heritage
Shuttle Bay
The Romulan arrived on the secured shuttle bay along with whatever people they happened to find along the way. As they did so, the shuttle bay was sealed and secured before Romulans began to prepare to commandeer whatever vessels were at hand. The Heritage had shook as if in the midst of an earthquake earlier and the Romulan shuttle had kept in constant contact with the squad leaders. They understood how precarious their situation was and had every intention of getting out. Between the Romulan shuttle and the craft in the shuttle bay, there would be enough space to allow all the survivors to withdraw. The trick was opening the doors that led into the relative freedom of space. As Romulans moved into the craft that would with luck get them back to their home, half a dozen Romulans scrambled to attempt to hack their way into the systems of the shuttle bay within the relative safety of their own chosen craft. If their attempts proved unsuccessful, a more direct approach would have to be taken. Thankfully, like all survivors the Federation like the Romulans and Klingons before them had learned to arm their shuttles.
Alpha Quadrant
Nivoch System, USS Heritage
Torpedo Room
The Reman Weapons Officer arrived on his destination and crawled out of the maintenance duct into the room proper. His body was numb as over half a dozen compounds swam in his bloodstream soothing nerves and forcing his body to clot at an accelerated rate. The sensor suite within his suit had not been destroyed even as the suit itself was breach in over half a dozen places. He had received no less than four direct hits, three of them to his chest. It was only the superior Reman vitality in conjunction with the heavier armor of his suit that had spared his life. Nonetheless, a single thought floated in his mind.
This ship is going to be my tomb. Might as well make the best of it.
He forced himself to his feet with effort, his head moving from side to side and seeing no one. No, that was not true. He could see a figure laying on the floor a human it seemed. He took a step forward and staggered, using his weapon as a crutch in order to hold himself up. As he did so, the entire room was awash in noise as an automated system similar to that in the S'harien grabbed what seemed to be a quantum torpedo from a rack located to the edge of the wall and maneuvered it into position on its tube. A moment later, the entire room shook briefly as the ordnance was accelerated towards its target.
Hmph. And I had thought the S'harien system was an original.
He steadied his body, brought his weapon to his shoulder and narrowed his eyes slightly in order to focus on the mechanical arm. He squeezed the trigger on his weapon, a single 25mm round leaping to do his bidding. It penetrated into the base of the mechanical arm and exploded. The arm went limp. He took a deep breath and coughed. He could taste his blood.
Might as well get this over with.
He walked towards the rack that was his intended target and placed his weapon down. His right arm reaching downwards as he retrieved the cylindrical magazine that contained his last six explosive grenades. He then produced a two mode trigger, one connected to a specific frequency with a timed backup. He worked quietly, like a craftsman in the middle of a masterpiece everything else seemed to fade into the background. When he was finished, he placed the newly born device next to the warhead of what he was fairly certain was a quantum torpedo and secured it.
There. Idrakht could not have done better himself.
He pressed a button and the timer activated. He stumbled backwards, his back pressing against a nearby rack and he found himself sliding down to the floor. His eyes settled on the body once more, the human female seemed almost peaceful. His left arm trembled as it moved, pressing a familiar button.
"You have five minutes. After that, there may not be much left." He managed to whisper. His eyes closed for a moment but he forced them open.
I can hang on for five minutes. I can hang on for five minutes. I can...
(Edits available on request.)
Last edited by Marcao on Tue Oct 26, 2010 6:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The Peddler of Half Truths.
"Not OP, therefore weakest." - Cynical Cat (May 2016)
"A dog doesn’t need to show his teeth as long as his growl’s deep enough, his food bowl is full and he knows where all the bones are buried." - Frank Underwood
The bridge of the Empyrean would not have passed muster at an official inspection. None of the crew were at their assigned posts, rather each was either at a science console or operating an open panel, save the helm officer who alternated between changing heading and checking sensor readouts. From over the ship’s internal communications systems, Dunok’s unnaturally calm voice filled the room. “Captain, the Cube is reporting heavy damage, it is preparing to withdraw.â€
"CUBE SHIELDS DOWN! CUBE SHIELDS DOWN!" Excitement and adrenaline overcame training as tactical hollered out the report. Captain Anderson felt his own adrenaline spike as liquid fire raced up and down his veins. He had them now. He had them. One more piece of the payment they owed. It wasn't much, it would be enough.
"Fire the NRA! 1 round! Have the troops launch to the Argo once we've fired. Cover the Shuttles from the Heritage if needed, fire to disable if she approached. Comm encrypted message for the Argo, we are sending reinforcements. " Captain Anderson ordered and held on to a rail. The Immortal hummed for a moment and a deep thrum raced through the hull and the ship seemed to rock backwards as the Nuclear Rail Accelerator was hurled at the enemy. The Borg had become the demonic, the infernal, the icon of all that was wrong with existence. The boot of a cold and uncaring universe formed to slam into the face of sapientence... forever.
The NRA was an expression of the Federation's approach to weaponry. Over complex and over engineered, a thing of 3 parts when you only needed one. It was however when used correctly a thing of fearsome power that would any who felt it scream in brief pain and fear. So did humanity and it's allies seek to overthrow the boot of the universe itself. With the very power that they had teased and pried for over a millennia from the universe's grasp.
----------------------
Lt Summers sat in the shuttle wearing his void suit. As did everyone else in the shuttle. Gorn, Humans, Vuclans, Andorans and more, clutching weapons that their fathers would have disdained as primative, now considered the best tools for the job. He himself had a hatchet and a knife strapped to his waist and carried a projectile firearm. For a moment the shuttle was silent. They were going to ride out into the middle of a battle to board a potentially hostile ship and face the Borg face to face. From fire to fire, fear was felt by every male and female in that shuttle. He wasn't sure whose voice spoke first. Perhaps it was him.
"From Andor's Ice to Vulcan sands,"
Other voices picked up the refrain.
"By Blade, by Gun or By Bare Hand,"
It wasn't a official motto or creed. No one remember who first chanted it, but it had spread across the ship.
"So it is and will be weighed,"
Every member of the security or assault team knew it now.
"Though many are born, few are made,"
It was their new faith when all the old ones had failed. The Utopia of the Federation was ashes and dust, it's vaulted new man a hunted beast. The song of the Gorn was reduced to a whisper. The Empires broken, the Confederations shattered. The Old Gods vanished and new ones need be made.
"Faithful Always We Shall Remain!"
Their talisman against the dark. Their defiance against the boot.
"DOGS TO LOOSE WHEN WAR IS WAGED!"
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
Lumbering, surface battered and blackened, boarded by everything from Borg Assault Drones to Reman Space Marines, Argonaut shrugged everything off and turned about on the source of its torments. Under local control from the main engineering bay, the ship's photon torpedoes lanced out at the Cube, her foreward phasers sending beams of concentrated death into the Borg warship. Miniscule these pinpricks might be, all things being equal, but they were not alone, and all around the venerable cruiser, the darkness of space lit up, as the most lethal warships ever devised by the Federation or her inveterate enemies poured their wrath into the stricken Cube.
Spector spun around, vomitting a barrage of torpedoes at the Cube in an unending hail, contemptuously ignoring what little point defense fire her remaining batteries could deploy. Moving herself, and firing at a moving target, her torpedoes deluged the entire facing like a monsoon, blanketting the Cube's flank in fire. Meanwhile, closer in to the Cube's broken frame, fighters danced through the flames and debris clouds, strafing at anything that looked worthy of a shot with absolute impunity, as the Cube's defense grid vainly tried to defend itself against its relentless assailants.
Like a larger, angrier brother of the hulking Argonaut, Vigilance also fired her main weapons, sending beams of energy as wide as a shuttle into the bare hull of the broken Cube. Her torpedoes however were hurled not at the Cube itself but at Heritage, who had come to life once more under Borg direction and was closing to attack once again. Her shots were well beyond deflection shooting, the targetting computers ordering the torpedoes to perform the equivelant of gymnastics in mid-flight to strike Heritage from a reverse angle on her nacelles. To say that this was an unlikely event was putting it mildly.
Thus, it was a surprise to more than one tactical officer when one of Vigilance's torpedoes bullseyed Heritage's starboard nacelle.
Like the Cube that had seized control of her, Heritage had no shields left, and the torpedo exploded against the bare nacelle like the antimatter bomb it was. Nacelles were unarmored by necessity, their all-important function rendering them incapable of relying upon armor for their defense. The torpedo was "only" a photon torpedo, a weapons "merely" capable of reducing entire cities to ash, with a charge of Antimatter that "barely" produced a yield of a hundred megatons of force. Compared to the advanced and violent weapons on display here, a single photon torpedo was practically an antique.
It didn't seem to matter.
The offending nacelle simply disintegrated as the torpedo blew it to pieces with casual ease, pieces of shrapnel scoring the rest of the Heritage with pockmarks and scoring, shaking the entire ship and jack-knifing it in mid-space. Much of her second volley went wide as a result, flying off into space uselessly. The torpedoes, locked onto target and fired a moment before she had been hit did not, and they slammed into Vigilance. Forward shields or not, these were the most advanced model of Federation Quantum Torpedo, dialed up for maximum yield, and they hit the shields with enough power to knock the thousand-foot Heavy Cruiser backwards in space. Had it been any other ship in the makeshift fleet, save perhaps the Romuland D'Deridex-class Warbird, the shields would have failed utterly. Had it been one of the lighter ships, it might have simply blown them to pieces. But Galaxies were built to withstand punishment that no other Starfleet ship, not the nimble Defiant or the indominable Sovereign, could be expected to sustain. Her shields choked by unfathomable violence, her forward sensors momentarily blinded, her hull straining beneath the tremendous battering, the generators aboard Vigilance contrived, at length, to hold, and the invisible bubble of shield protection that served as the Galaxy's main line of defense snapped back into place, gravely weakened, but intact.
And as Vigilance displayed the virtues of Federation ship designers, some dozens of kilometers away, the Klingons and Romulans were displaying their own.
Barbarossa fired, and Riskadh, disruptors capable of vaporizing mountains sending incalculable energies storming into the Cube at the speed of light. The Cube fired back, targetting the D'Deridex, but the return volley was feeble by the standards of the Borg, a mere five plasma torpedoes and a smattering of disruptor shots, shots more than capable of rendering a small ship to its constituent parts, but against the Shield of Romulus, not enough to even seriously threaten the forward shields.
Moments later, the D'Deridex retaliated, seizing the Cube with two enormous tractor beams, lashing its cavernous hull to the Cube's with chains of energy and electromagnetics. Another second, and S'harien did the same, locking her mighty forward batteries into position to deploy raking fire on the Cube's hull. Even combined, the Cube still outmassed the two Romulan warships by roughly eleven to one, and was posessed of engines more than capable of dragging them both halfway across the galaxy with barely a hesitation. But this Cube's awesome power was no longer manifest, her internal systems wrecked, her power distribution network a broken ruin from the tremendous battering she had sustained, and though the Cube began to drag both ships through space, it was only with visible strain that she could do so, her engines churning space itself into a froth, her warp drive striving desperately to calculate some means of escaping this catastrophe that had overcome it so unexpectedly. As the Cube strained, Argonaut latched on with a Tractor beam as well, adding two million tonnes of dead mass to the Cube's drag, throwing off her calculations and reducing her speed yet further as she dragged all three ships along with her. Had the Cube managed to initiate a jump to warp, she might have ripped all three cruisers apart, sent them flying off in every direction the speed of light, or even dragged them all with her into superluminal velocities. She did not manage this. An inverse graviton pulse from the overlooked Empyrean popped her gathering warp field like a soap bubble, seconds before a volley of photon torpedoes from the Luna-class explorer served as a perfect counterpoint to the Cube's travails.
And as the collective mind that commanded the Cube realized that they were unable to escape, their sensors reported to them the simple facts that the ships identified as USS Immortal and USS Gilgamesh were now facing them head on, and that sensors were picking up un-usual power signiatures...
Disruptor bolts criss-crossed the Heritage's docking bay as the Romulans retreated into it, liquidating such scattered Borg as got in their way, but from behind came a horde of drones the likes of which most of the marines had prayed that they would never see, even if they already had. Dozens upon dozens of heavily-armed assault drones deluged the entrance to the shuttle bay with disruptor fire. The Romulan and Reman marines returned the fire with interest, laying a half dozen of the Borg dead at the entrance and keeping the rest back. What few survivors of the catastrophe the Romulans had found were with them, most wounded, some still ambulatory, adding their phaser and rifle fire to the din and clatter. No senior officer was among them, for even if any had survived, none of the boarding party had contrived to come anywhere near the bridge of the Prometheus-class cruiser.
The fire continued to be traded thick and hot, sending cascades of sparks raining down from the walls and shuttles within the Heritage, punctuated by the shudder of internal explosions from somewhere deep within ship, explosions produced by the microtorpedoes that the Romulan shuttle had beamed aboard, though none of the boarders had time to stop and find this out. The drones themselves paid whatever else might be transpiring within the ship no mind whatsoever, concentrating single-mindedly on the extermination of the Romulan interlopers. They fired indiscriminately, employing such cover as was available, caring nothing for what their shots might do or who might be hit by them, but there were nearly a dozen Romulan marines present, trained and fired in the crucibles of war, and not one drone laid foot within the docking bay for more than a second before being shot down.
The Borg could not enter, and eventually ceased trying, preferring instead to simply pour fire through the entrances and prevent the Romulans from breaking out, if break out they tried to do. Perhaps they would have waited there there indefinitely, shooting until one side was exhausted of all firepower, but before another minute had passed, the Borg unleashed yet another weapon against the interlopers.
It was as sudden as a clap of thunder, a groan, a hiss, a rush of air, and then suddenly the entire world seemed to turn upside down, as the massive doors of the docking bay opened, explosively venting the Heritage's entire docking bay into open space. In split seconds, everything was summarily thrown out the docking bay, people, weapons, cargo containers, shuttles, Borg, everything not physically welded to the deck or the walls was blasted out of the ship in a quarter second, Romulan and Reman marines bounced like toy soldiers into the vacuum of deep space alongside the Borg drones they had been shooting at and receiving the fire of. So single-minded were the Borg, that even while being blasted into deep space, they still took potshots at the Romulans on their way out of the Docking Bay, shots with no chance of success, symbols only of their undying determination to see every member of the Romulan boarding party dead.
The Argonaut's lifts were un-trapped, no bombs or other explosives awaiting therein, and barely a handful of Borg, individuals all shot down before they could so much as raise their weapons, were left to interfere as best they might, which wasn't much. All of the Romulan assault teams, armed to the teeth, wound up like clockwork mechanisms at the hair's breadth of exploding, ready to vent death and ruination upon those who stood in their way. The squads reaching their positions, one at the turbolift, one at the jefferies tube that led directly to the bridge, and yet another poised to use another tube to enter the Argonaut's ready room, all encountering resistance legitimately described as negligible. Go-codes given and received, all three teams burst into the Argonaut's bridge and ready room at once.
Many things happened at once.
The lead soldier through the door was always at the most risk, a factor well understood by the students of war. This soldier was a Reman, an Imperial marine, a grizzled veteran of a hundred conflicts and more against everything from Borg to Jem'Hadar. Armored top to toe and equipped with a personal forcefield, to say nothing of his nearly Naussican-sized frame, this soldier knew what was required of him, and he acted with perfect military precision, throwing the doors open and hurling himself through at a speed calculated to reduce to a bare minimum his exposure, weapons held in his hands of proven lethality even to the worst the Borg had to offer.
The Reman had taken no more than two steps before something shot him in the face.
It was a full-powered shot, and it exploded against the Reman's helmet with all the suddenness of a warp core breach, snapping his head back and knocking him down. Yet for all its lethality, the shot did not penetrate the combination of shields and helmet, and the Reman contrived to return fire as he fell, a wide shot that had no chance of hitting, but served at the least to alert his team to where, roughly, the shot had come from.
The following soldier, a Romulan, whose job it was to cover the leader, saw both shot and countershot, and turning the corner to enter the room, he did what both his instincts and his training commanded him to do. Leading with his rifle, he spotted a blurry shape against the far wall of the bridge, near to where the previous shot had landed. Squeezing the trigger, he fired an armor piercing round dead center mass into his target.
Neither he, nor the Reman, had a chance to actually identify their target in the split second that elapsed, nor did either one realize that the shot fired into the first soldier's helmet had been, not a Borg Disruptor, but a phaser. Instants later, the succeeding waves of soldiers burst into bridge from three different directions, moments before all of them ground to a halt.
The bridge of the USS Argonaut was covered in Borg, and every single one was stone dead.
Dozens of Borg, at a conservative count, lay scattered about the bridge, some in piles two or three feet high, some propped against consoles or chairs or wedged into the doorway that led to the Ready Room, so many and in such ruined states that it was impossible to tell at a glance just how many there were. Some sported phaser burns, but the vast, vast majority looked as though they had been set upon by a small army of Klingon swordmasters. Heavy Assault drones, armored in solid Duranium plate, lay crushed on the floor with their chestplates caved in, or torn off, or split in half as though by a meat axe. Weapon arms, some with assimilation tubes still extended, had been severed and literally cast about the room, one lodged in an overhead vent, two others adorning the science officer's seat, their original owners laying in crumpled heaps in the center of the bridge. Two or three drones had been physically torn to pieces or had large portions of their bodies smashed into jelly by impacts powerful enough to drive dents into the tritanium floor. The walls and ceiling were covered in disruptor scorings, some of which had vaporized consoles or chairs, yet there was no sign whatsoever of what the Borg had been firing at, no bodies or even blood, be it human, alien, or anything else.
None, that is, save for the figure that the Romulan marine had just shot.
Commander Kalpov lay semi-crouched on hands and knees on the floor where he had fallen, a hand phaser lying next to him where he had dropped it, one hand held tightly to his chest. The Romulan's shot had struck him center mass with an armor-piercing, explosive shell. Designed to penetrate the duranium armor of a Borg Heavy Assault drone, the shot had drilled through Kalpov's uniform and body like it was made of water, and exploded against the back wall in a burst of pyrotechnics. He lay there, supporting himself with one hand, for five interminable seconds, as the Romulan and Reman marines slowly ground to a halt, lowering their weapons, regarding the scene of devastation and slaughter that was there to greet them. His hand held tightly over the hole that the Romulan marine had put through him, he remained where he was, head down, his breath labored. And then, slowly, but with infinite care, he began to stand up.
The shot had not exploded within him, which was a blessing certainly, as if it had, it would have blown him apart. But it had shot right through him like a laser, yet he stood up nonetheless, slowly, with visible difficulty and pain, but with success. All around him lay dozens upon dozens of dead Borg, yet with the exception of the one he had just sustained, he sported no signs of injury whatsoever, no limbs severed by a disruptor bolt, no punctures at his neck from assimilation tubes, not even so much as a bruise or a torn shirt. The hole in his chest was real enough, through cracks in his fingers could be seen daylight from the other side, yet as he stood up, no blood leaked through his fingers, nor was any splattered over the back wall where the round had exploded.
Kalpov blinked several times, clearing his eyes, glancing from face to armored face, clearly looking for something, the commander perhaps. Whatever it was, he either did not find it, or gave up trying, and after a few moments he spoke, his voice clearly pained, but clear and direct.
"Welcome to the Argonaut," he said, letting the Universal Translators do their usual trick. He licked his lips nervously and stepped forward, grabbing one of the railings for support, softly kicking the hand phaser aside as he did so, just in case one of the marines got nervous.
"Would you please tell your Captain that I would like to speak to him as soon as - "
He might have said more, indeed he was visibly about to. But at that very moment, the main viewscreen of the Argonaut lit up brilliantly in a flash of soundless light, drawing everyone's undivided attention, as something burst upon it with the radiance of a thousand suns...
Two separate shots, projected at relativistic speeds, flung themselves into the Cube's broken surface, penetrating the latticework hull in the manner of a bullet tearing through a playing card. While the previous shot of the Cometfall had been visually spectacular, ripping most of a facing off, this shot was direct, and plunged into the core of the battered dreadnought. As to the NRA, it had not yet been discharged in the fight, and few aboard any of the ships of the fleet had the first idea that it even existed.
The first indication of what was to come was when the Cube stopped firing.
The weapons systems all ceased to fire, not one by one, but all together, at once, as though a switch had been thrown and the weapons grid simply de-activated. The cube did not stop moving, for it was in space, and inertia still counted for much, but it did stop maneuvering, its heading now fixed, as the three ships grafted to it by tractor beam struggled in vain to arrest its movement. Aboard Empyrean, the advanced computers monitoring every binary bit of the Cube's transmissions to the Borg collective suddenly let out a warning howl and flashes of lights, as the Cube's transmissions all, simultaneously went dead. Lights and flashes continued to illuminate the Cube's surface, but for all intents and purposes, the Cube had ceased to act of its own volition.
Three seconds, three seconds of baited breath, three seconds as every person capable of doing so watched the Cube through windows, telescopes, sensors, or viewscreens, and wondered if, hope against hope, it might actually be dead. And then, before the eyes of every person on the fleet or on Nivoch IV itself, the stately, invulnerable, weaponized emblem of everything that the Borg had done to the Galaxy and its denizens, exploded.
No internal explosions, no series of cascading blasts to shatter its structure and rend it into constituent parts. The Cube simply blew up in a single, cataclysmic blast, as though a supernova had been set off within it. One tremendous burst of fire and radiance, as bright as a G-class Star at mid-day, consumed the Cube in a fraction of a second, sending starbursts of flaming debris and plasma shooting out in a thousand directions, lighting up the entire solar system with a burst of energy that was, if only for an instant, greater than the output of the central star. Waves of superheated plasma washed against the shields and deflector fields of the ships that had wrought this act of awesome destruction, as pieces of debris, sized anywhere from that of a speck of paint to that of a starship, tumbled over and over as they flew in every direction, not a small number of them falling into the gravity well of Nivoch IV and vaporizing in the atmosphere in a brilliant shower of shooting stars. And as the light faded and the shock waves receeded from the tremendous explosion, the ships of the ad hoc fleet were left alone in a suddenly all-too-quiet sky, as the pulverized remains of the Borg Cube floated past them in silence.
And aboard Empyrean, the only epitaph the Cube would ever receive continued to arrive courtesy of the advanced decryption protocols:
"Cube 2876, subspace scanners detecting large radiation spike within System 47354. Source unknown. Relay on-site telemetry and findings concerning anomalous readings once engagement concluded."
"Cube 2876, repeat, large radiation spike detected in local space to your location. Relay on-site telemetry and findings as soon as possible."
...
...
...
"Cube 2876, please respond."
Last edited by General Havoc on Tue Nov 02, 2010 11:27 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair...
Havoc: "So basically if you side against him, he summons Cthulu."
Hotfoot: "Yes, which is reasonable."
The titanic explosion in space, viewable on the viewscreen as it rapidly polarized to maintain visibility, caused a heavy silence to fall on the bridge of the Gilgamesh. The first noise heard was a heavy sigh from Swift as she leaned back in the chair, right before she spoke almost reverently. "I'm going to watch this, over and over again, every morning for the rest of my life."
At this, Commander Inzeti chuckled quietly, though she still stared at the viewscreen. "You won't be the the only one, Swift."
Though he smiled tightly and relaxed somewhat in his chair, Captain Solheim nonetheless was still all business as he tapped the internal comm array. "Lieutenant Adranis, I want you to perform a thorough sweep of the ship for any Borg stragglers. Mop them all up, since they won't be getting backup."
A noise that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle echoed across the commlink right before Lieutenant Adranis answered. "Consider it done, sir. All fire teams, perform another full sweep of the ship - start with the top and bottom decks and the hull, then work your way to the middle."
Captain Solheim quickly went to the next item on his mental checklist, narrowing his eyes as he steepled his fingers in front of his face. "Swift, send our ship's status, sensor readings, and telemetry to all ships that are not the Heritage, as well as the colony on Nivoch IV - I want it confirmed that the Cube is destroyed."
"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Nevola replied with a smile. "While I'm at it, want me to coordinate with the Riskadh for the bloodwine we owe them?"
This caused Captain Solheim to smirk. "Yes, Swift. While you're at it, send a message to the S'harien - kindly let them know that though we took losses reclaiming the ship, our senior bridge staff is all alive and well. Oh, and thank their Riov for the support during the battle, and we'd be honored if he would join us for a proper celebratory drink of bloodwine."
Chuckling as she shook her head, Lieutenant Nevola rapidly performed her duty, just as the turbolift to the bridge opened, revealing a small medical team that moved rapidly to triage the remaining inhabitants of the bridge.
Her dark eyes still glued to the viewscreen, Commander Inzeti seemed nearly mesmerized by the sight. "This was for you, my fallen brethren and sistren," she whispered quietly in Romulan. She did not look away, even as Captain Solheim got up, and quietly put a supportive hand on her shoulder, though she did lean toward him slightly. "We will always remember your sacrifice, and will ensure that it was not in vain."
Captain Solheim's response as he looked at the viewscreen next to her was to gently squeeze her shoulder. "For all our peoples," he replied quietly in Romulan, as Commander Inzeti reached up to gently cover the hand on her shoulder with hers.
Last edited by rhoenix on Tue Nov 02, 2010 10:05 pm, edited 4 times in total.
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes."
- William Gibson
Josh wrote:What? There's nothing weird about having a pet housefly. He smuggles cigarettes for me.
"Confirmed kills. Cube and infected ship is down. I repeat.."
"Sir! Multiple lifesigns in the wake of the Heritage! Non-Borg!" People had been spaced. "Transporters! Maximum cycle, grab those people before decomp does them in! WHen you've got all you can, pull back the survivors of our boarding teams!"
Half-Damned, All Hero.
Tev: You're happy. You're Plotting. You're Evil.
Me: Evil is so inappropriate. I'm ruthless.
Tev: You're turning me on.
When the Cube stopped firing, Hizir let himself smile just slightly, already guessing at what might be coming next. He wasn't disappointed as the Borg cube turned into little more than debris in a cataclysmic explosion. It was one he had seen before, at the Battle of Earth, but he had to admit to himself that it did not happen nearly enough. The Barbarossa's computers quickly dimmed the visuals to compensate for the massive explosion that was powerful enough to throw her back through space. It took the Barbarossa quite a bit of time to steady herself again.
And then the entire ship burst into cheers.
Ereiss was grinning madly as she pumped her arms into the air as best she could. Others had broken into impromptu dances. Delvok sighed in relief, setting down his tools. There were a few injuries so far, but nothing serious. Finally he released his clutch on the medallion, revealing a rather attractive looking woman who looked not quite Vulcan. Danava was watching with a twisted pleasure as the pieces of the Borg cube twirled through the air.
There was only one place in the ship which was not ecstatic. The engine room, where the brothers were already preparing themselves when Hizir's voice came over the comm unit. "Adrek. Are you and your team ready?"
One of the brothers looked up with a grin. "Almost ready."
Hizir smiled. This was a not so secret to the Barbarossa's success and survival rate. She has some of the best salvagers in the quadrant and they were damn good at their job. Already her sensors were reaching out, looking for prime targets of useful parts and technology. The now defunct Heritage was an obvious choice, but the remaining borg would have to be dealt with and the Marines were already preparing for zero-atmo fighting, something the Orions among them had years of experience with. Meanwhile the teleporters were already at the meticulous work of picking out individual borg and teleporting them into open space.
After the marines did their job, it was up to the brothers and their salvage crews to clean out everything of use that wasn't too large to fit in the ship, and when you have a D'deridex, there isn't much that won't fit in the ship. The Barbarossa finished moving into position and with barely a word got to work.
Hizir meanwhile opened a channel to the remaining ships. "This is Captain Hizir Alpharius Reis of the Barbarossa. Good fighting everyone." Hizir had never been a particularly famous or infamous man, but those who traveled in the right circles would be able to recognize the name.
