Magnum One/Magnum One (Mid-American Digital) (Disc Manufacturing).iso/d26/stng_nvl.arc/GEIGER.13

Text File | 1991-08-02 | 17KB | 339 lines

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   -   [e-mail]
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   -   [e-mail]
Semi-Official Net.Nozzle on Rec.Arts.TV (EXCELLENT.Dude #B-) ??????