Here is Chapter 13. Only three more to go and they'll probably be posted Saturday. (Have to see Bill&Ted's Bogus Journey on Friday #B-) CHAPTER 13 Captain's Log, Stardate: the past. We are in pursuit of the Stardrive section of the Enterprise, after it was commandeered by Lieutenant Commander Data, Lieutenant Worf, and Chief Engineer Scott. To add to the problem, we are being slowed down by towing the energy creature behind us, but it is necessary. Engineer's Assistant Gomez assures me that we will be able to make the time jump as soon as we reconnect the sections of the Enterprise. On a more ominous note, more and more of my crew are either unable or unwilling to remember that Scott is Chief Engineer. They remember someone named Geordi LaForge at that post. I am going to look into the matter. Picard got up from behind the desk in his Ready Room. He was disturbed by everyone's insistence that they had never heard of anyone by the name of Montgomery Scott. And now Pulaski was becoming more and more convinced that he was the head of a conspiracy to deceive everyone on this ship. His supposed purpose for this conspiracy eluded him. Wearily, he stepped out onto the Bridge. No one seemed to notice him enter. All eyes were on the forward viewscreen. On the screen, this era's Enterprise hung motionless in space, flanked by not one, but two Borg ships. One ship was larger than the other by about a half. Even from this distance, Borg were visible walking along the hull of the Enterprise, stopping every so often to remove a section of the hull for further analysis. 'Not again,' thought Picard. 'Now I have to deal with the loss of the Stardrive, the Borg, and possibly the death of every lifeform from this era.' Riker was about to tap his combadge to signal Picard when he noticed the Captain standing just outside the Ready Room doors. "Captain, the Borg just came into range. Sensors indicate that the dilithium trail left by the Stardrive Section ends right where the large Borg ship is. There are no traces of either the ships destruction, or damage to the Borg." "I sense Q's hand in this," said Picard gravely. "Is it possible, that he pulled a switch?" "'A switch.' I don't understand." Riker's puzzlement was evident, due to the lack of his ever present grin. Picard sympathized with him. He didn't quite understand either, it was just a dimly formed idea in the back of his mind. "What I mean is, do you think it possible that Q switched the Stardrive Section with the Borg ships, sending the Enterprise home to our time?" "Knowing Q, anything's possible. I would say that it's probable, considering that the Saucer can't reach Warp speeds and we'd have no way to get back without his help," answered Riker. By now, the distance between the Enterprise and the Borg had decreased to less than 10,000 kilometers. "Arm all weapons," ordered Picard, even though he knew that only phasers were available. He also knew, as did most of the Bridge crew, that they would have to be extremely lucky with the few phaser shots available to them before the Borg fully adapted. 'Not the most promising of situations,' Picard thought to himself. Aboard the Enterprise, Geordi had already expended all photon torpedoes and drained all the phaser banks into the smaller Borg ship. Nothing worthwhile had happened. Most of the firing had been due to a feeling of revenge over the fate of the Stardrive Section. He knew that there was no hope left for any of its occupants. He just sat there, staring blankly ahead, not noticing when the Borg soldiers walked into view of the camera. He couldn't help but think that it was all his fault, somehow. 'If only I had been on the Enterprise...' Then the more realistic part of him answered, 'You'd be a Borg by now. Besides, this is the Enterprise.' The fact that it was an inferior design to the one he knew didn't matter. The name meant something, and he had watched the most recent bearer of that name be destroyed. Slowly, in the back of his mind, an idea took shape. It was, admittedly, a long shot. And, he'd need some help to pull it off, but at least it was something to do. He only hoped that there was someone left alive on the Stardrive Section, and that it had not yet been incorporated into the Borg. On the Bridge of the Enterprise, Kirk stared at the viewscreen, speechless. If a ship of that size could so easily be captured by the Borg, how could his ship, his crew, hope to do any better. If he was unprepared for the absorption of the Stardrive, he was definitely surprised by the face that appeared next on the viewscreen. It stared out at him with the cold, steely malevolence that he remembered over fourteen long years. The face was a computer reconstruction, he realized, by the way the image wavered and the mouth refused to move when it spoke. "Kirk. I have waited nearly a century to defeat you, to punish you for what you did. My crew are all gone, destroyed by your treachery, but I still have life, of a sort. On two occasions have you sentenced me to death, but I have survived. I now impose sentence on you." "Khan, what do you want. And what do you mean, a century. It's only been 14 years." "Jim, sensors indicate that the transmission is being broadcast from the Borg ship, but not from one specific location. It is as if the entire ship were hailing us," Spock reported. Kirk turned back to the screen as the voice spoke again. "To you it has been years, but to me, to me it has been a century. First Marla, my wife, then Joachim, then, nearly, myself, Kirk. But no, I held on and now, you die." The transmission cut off and Kirk looked at Spock. "Clearly insane, Captain. His years of isolation must have effected his mind." "I hope you're right, Spock. I also hope that he's powerless to carry out his threat." Kirk's only answer was a shudder running through the ship, as two tractor beams locked onto the twin engine nacelles and began pulling them off. The Borg did not engage their cutting beam, just pulling the engines closer and closer. Kirk at first wondered how only one ship could do that, without just pulling the Enterprise closer. Then he realized that the larger ship had locked onto the Enterprise's forward hull while the other ship pulled at the rear. 'Like an interstellar game of 'Tug-o'-War',' thought Sulu to himself, unable to do anything to prevent the destruction of the Enterprise which would ensue, should the hull rupture when the nacelles were removed. "Any suggestions," asked Kirk. No one said a word. Geordi ran along the corridors of the Enterprise, but everyone was concentrating on finding a solution to the Borg so no one noticed him. He ran into the Transporter Room and began to reprogram the console. The Transporter Operator turned from where he had been recalibrating one of the wall panels, but was phasered before he could raise the alarm. Finished, Geordi stepped onto the platform and prepared to beam out. The console was locked and his would be the last normal beam-out. Further, the console could only be reactivated by his voice command. No one else would be able to get it to function correctly, anyway, after Geordi's reprogramming. The Transporter Room shimmered around him, and was replaced by the familiar confines of the Engineering Deck, deep within the Stardrive Section. He cautiously checked to be sure that there were no Borg anywhere near Engineering before he set to work. He had accessed the ship's computer and set to work rerouting a myriad of control circuits before he heard it. At first he thought he had imagined it, but then he heard it again. The dull thud of a footstep. It echoed hollowly in the empty ship. 'Empty except for me and who, or what?' wondered Geordi in the back of his mind, as he hurriedly tried to finish what he was doing and get into hiding. He was more than three quarters of the way done when the next footstep came, unnervingly close. Geordi worked faster. He was about to press home the final modification when behind him, he heard the whisper of a movement, the soft padding of a footstep on carpeting, and a large shadow fell over Geordi's shoulder and across the panel where he was working. Without thinking, Geordi turned, drawing his phaser, and fired. Kirk's spirits had been buoyed somewhat by the arrival of the other ship, the one McCoy kept calling the Houdini. Then he saw how ineffectual the other ship was against the Borg. Its phaser bursts lit up space and its photon torpedoes created dazzling explosions, but did nothing to even slow the Borg down. The Borg ship that had swallowed the first Starship had now begun to advance upon the disc-shaped newcomer. "Captain, sensors show what may be a power build-up on the larger Borg ship," reported Spock, looking into his viewer. "Can't you tell for sure, Spock?" asked Kirk. "Impossible at this time. The Borg on our hull have damaged some of the primary sensor equipment and their individual readings are interfering with what sensors are still available to us." "We've GOT to DO something!" shouted Kirk. He was used to fighting machine intelligences, having done so on many occasions in the past, but they had been nothing like the Borg. If something did not conform to their purposes, it was either assimilated or termed 'irrelevant' and ignored. He had a feeling that most of his ship and crew, unfortunately, fell into the former category. "Keptin," Chekov spoke up, trying to get Kirk's attention. "One of the transporters has just been actiwated. Internal scans also show that vun of the shuttlecraft has been transported somevhere else, not vithin current scanner range. Vait! There goes another vun." The lights on the Bridge began to dim. "Spock, what's going on?" "Captain, main power has been diverted to Transporter Room 3. Also, life support and 75% of emergency power. Total Warp energy is now being beamed somewhere. The power output is too high to register on my scans. I would estimate that it is in the 1,000 to 2,000 GigaWatt range," reported Spock, calmly. "Spock, do you know what you're saying?" McCoy's ice blue eyes seemed to pierce through the Vulcan. "Indeed I do, Doctor. Someone in this vicinity is using 97% of ship's power for an unknown and presumably hostile purpose." Kirk was concentrating so hard on finding a solution to this latest threat, that he just let McCoy and Spock go on verbally sparring, barely registering in the back of his mind. Ensign Gawron dove out of the way of the phaser blast. Geordi, seeing who it was, had tryed to throw his aim off at the last second. He succeeded in moving the phaser beam just above where Chris's head used to be. By now, Chris was peering out from behind an Engineering console, phaser in hand. "Sorry, Chris. Just a little jumpy I guess," said Geordi, trying to force a laugh. "What are you doing here, anyway? I thought the Borg would have rounded everybody up to make ready for the assimilation process." "They did. I was hiding in the auxiliary dilithium store. Between the radiation and the shielding in my rad suit, they couldn't detect me. What are you doing here?" "I've come up with a plan to defeat the Borg, or at least the Borg ship that has us trapped." Geordi went on to explain his plan to the young Ensign, who volunteered to do what he could to help. Geordi put him to work, rerouting the power couplings on the Warp Drive circuits, while he crawled into a Jeffries tube to check the actual power conduits. After working for twenty minutes, the modifications were complete. They looked at each other in apprehension when Chris asked, "But will it work?" Geordi answered, "Cross your fingers, just in case, 'cause here goes nothing." Geordi slammed home the button that would send out the pre-recorded signal to the original Enterprise and start siphoning off its power. Behind them, as they studied the control readouts, the Warp Core began to grow brighter. Along with the brightness, came the high whine of power. Soon, the Warp Core was pulsing with the combined power of two Starships, the pulses coming so fast, that the eye could barely discern them from a solid, incandescent glow. The monitor screens began to change. On the Saucer, Picard was giving what may be his last order. "All hands to stations. Prepare for collision course! All non-essential personnel to the escape pods. Disengage tractor beam from the creature and jettison the log buoy." Riker, like the rest of the Bridge Crew, looked at Picard in astonishment. 'He can't be giving up,' he thought in disbelief. "Sir, are you sure? I mean, couldn't the creature just eat the Borg's energy like it did to us, rendering them powerless?" "We could, Number One, if the creature was conscious. It is not. It appears to be hibernating now, while it 'digests' our energy," Picard said with resignation. "Course laid in, Captain," stated Wesley Crusher. "Maximum speed at an angle of 45 degrees to the closer Borg ship." Picard had told him to lay in the course that would damage the Borg the most, giving no regard to the safety of what was left of the Enterprise-D. "Why 45 degrees, Wes?" asked Riker. "Because of the orientation of the Borg ships, a collision at 45 degrees with the nearer of the two, will send us directly into the other Borg ship, currently dissecting the original Enterprise," he answered matter-of-factly, as if it were apparent, or should be, to everyone. "Captain," said the Lieutenant at Ops. "Reading a power surge from the closer Borg ship. Its center is the exact geometric center of the Borg ship, and it radiates outward from there. There is also a subspace link of some sort with the original Enterprise." On the viewscreen, the Borg ship had stopped moving. Impossibly, it was still growing larger, expanding as its surface began to split and tear. Glimpses of bluish-grey metal could be seen fleetingly through the crackling of static and the flare of explosions. The disturbance on the screen was so bright, so violent, that the viewscreen shorted out, filling with static. On the Borg ship itself, all was in a well-order, cybernetic panic. The loss of atmosphere did not concern the Borg, whose self-contained life support systems made the need for air unnecessary. The major concern was the immense power being generated. It wreaked havoc with the Borg subspace net, cutting off communications within the Borg mind itself. Only the occasional, half-completed thought made it anywhere, usually not where it was intended, however. The three Enterprise crewmen were running through the Borg ship, Data directing them back along the path they had come while escorted by the Borg. The Borg were paying no attention to them now, and they took full advantage of the fact. Many times, their path back to the Enterprise was blocked by airless regions which had been sealed off. The group lost valuable time by retracing their steps and going around the damaged areas. Occasionally, the local light dimmed, or flared brilliantly as an explosion blasted a section of the Borg ship, or a Borg soldier, into hundreds of component parts, not all of them inorganic. With the Enterprise in sight, however, their progress was halted by a wall of solid energy. It advanced on them slowly, backing them up against a section of the Borg ship. Immediately, the wall started to flow around them, trying to assimilate them. It had been the group-mind's last coherent order and the ship still tryed to obey. The trio could feel metallic probes plunging through their skin, examining their internal structure. The wall released Data immediately, convinced by his robotic workings that he was already a Borg. Realizing that someone in the Stardrive Section was responsible for their predicament, he tapped his combadge, the only one the trio had left. "Data to Enterprise. Do you read, Enterprise. Three to beam up immediately, these coordinates." Someone on the ship heard him, because just as the wall of energy began to singe the front of Data's uniform, the wall disappeared and a transporter beam yanked them aboard. A split second later, the wall was back in place, advancing outward, forcing the ship to retreat before it. The Borg ship exploded. Enjoy...and let me know what you think. ** " (Quantum Leap) If at first you don't succeed, Leap, Leap again! "Will you stop STARING at me!" - Homer J. Simpson Doug Geiger - geiger@klaatu.cs.canisius.edu Semi-Official Net.Nozzle on Rec.Arts.TV (EXCELLENT.Dude #B-) ?????? -- ** " (Quantum Leap) If at first you don't succeed, Leap, Leap again! "Will you stop STARING at me!" - Homer J. Simpson Doug Geiger - geiger@klaatu.cs.canisius.edu Semi-Official Net.Nozzle on Rec.Arts.TV (EXCELLENT.Dude #B-) ??????