Brothers in arms

A Chapter by Dave Donovan

the last thing one expects is to come across someone who you think is dead..

Ensign Beatty stared at the hole in Engineering in disbelief, wondering just how he was going to sort THAT out.

“It’ll need a pretty big force field to hold that lot when the cube’s gone.” said a voice beside him. Beatty woke from his reverie to see that his best friend, Ensign Carla Yates, was standing beside him. She looked a little worse for wear, her hair dishevelled and her face covered in blood and filth, but she seemed okay. It took him a moment to realise she was shaking, probably with fear.

“We’ll manage.” He said at last. “C-come on; let’s see if we can salvage anything in here.”

The two cleared the wreckage from the consoles and then examined the status of the ships’ systems. Most of it was working fine, except for the gaping holes in engineering and the decks above and below. Some parts of the ship were experiencing power fluctuations, but that could have been because there was a dirty great cube in the hull.

Stranger still, Beatty noticed, there were temperature rises in decks twenty seven and thirty one. That wasn’t normal. He’d have to figure that one out as soon as he could. Right now, though, he needed to see if the twin warp cores were okay.

Tapping the commands into the console, he reviewed the data the computers told him. Most of the equipment was working fine, but there were some leaks in the EPS conduits that needed to be looked at.

“Looks like we’re taking a trip up the Jeffries tubes, then.” Yates said, cheerily. “You can go first.” She handed him the tool kit she usually carried at her hip and then motioned towards the tubes on the right of the engine room.

“The Captain put ME in charge, remember?” Beatty smiled, knowing she was bossy and ‘take-over-ish’. “You go first.” He handed back the tools then added: “I’ll stay here and see if I can isolate exactly where the leak is for you.”

“Okay.” Yates gave a wry smile, and then headed off to the tubes at a trot.

******

The top of the Jeffries tube opened out into a narrow alleyway that led to the plasma relays and the access ways to the other parts of the ship. Yates paused at the top of the ladder for a moment, wondering why the temperature was so darned high. Slowly, she continued on her way, wiping the sweat from her brow as she went. She came to the exit point at deck 36, and then paused again. Did a shadow move past the grill, or was she imagining things? Stepping forwards, she determined to investigate further. Whatever �" or whomever �" it was, they weren’t afraid of being discovered. Stepping closer to the grill, she tentatively peered out into the corridor, only to see the most horrific sight that almost made her gasp out loud.

There, lying on the floor was the mangled body of a Borg drone, its’ head twisted and torn apart, obviously left for dead by the rest of the drones. But for the fact that its’ eye piece was missing, she would have never guessed it was dead �" or at least deactivated. Those pallid, grey features left little to the imagination. The cybernetic attachments looked as though they had been inserted while the poor guy was still kicking and screaming, as the edges of the skin were ragged and torn.

What the hell were the Borg doing up here? They couldn’t have accessed these points from anywhere they caused holes in the ship; they were way above and below their current position. Something didn’t add up here, she thought.

Anyway, as far as she knew, the Borg always removed the essential parts of their fallen comrades, who then de-materialized into thin air, leaving nothing but a burn mark on the floor where they fell. So, why was this one still here and what were they up to?

She tried to peer past the body, but was only able to see a small amount of the corridor beyond. In the distance, two other Borg were carrying a device of some kind that seemed to be firing a green, pulsating ray at the security phasers positioned at each corner of the corridor. As the ray hit home, the phasers were instantly melted into a sizzling mass.

Concerned she would be discovered at any moment, Yates back tracked to engineering and hoped to tell what she had seen to Beatty. He would need to tell the Captain, she thought, almost stumbling on the way down the ladder to see him. Pausing for a moment to catch her breath, she sighed. “Calm down, girl.” She told herself, hearing her voice echo loudly in the confined space of the tube.

******

Beatty watched the relays intently, almost ignoring everything else in the room as he tried to figure out where the leak was. Satisfied he could not isolate it, he tapped his comm-badge. It chirped quickly, signalling it was ready to send. “Beatty to Yates, I’m having trouble isolating the leak, looks like you’re on your own for the time being.” Silence, Not even the crackle of static; where was she?

“Carla?” still silence. Something was wrong. “Where are you?” what the hell could have happened to her? Beatty stepped over to the entrance to the Jeffries tube, peering up at the ladder to see where she could be. No sign. What could be keeping her? Where could she have gone? He peered into the darkness once again, squinting to see if he could see her outline, or even a shadow of her coming down the ladder. Nothing; Not a movement or a sound.

Wait. There was a sound. Like metal against metal. A heavy, clanging sound that rang in his ears like a bell with each second that passed. Whatever it was, it was coming down the ladder swiftly.

Beatty watched for a moment, waiting to see what was on its’ way down. A sudden chill shook him as he realized where he had heard that sound before.

He had been waiting for his father on Reman nine, a small mining colony out on the edge of known space. The sound had come from something large and covered in metal, something that filled him with terror at the very thought of it, something that brought back violent memories of his family being assimilated. Assimilated by the…. “BORG!” he hissed as quietly as he could, barely able to disguise the disgust in his voice.

Quickly, he ran to the equipment locker to find some sort of weapon he could use before the Borg drone got to him. If he could do something, maybe he could get some kind of revenge against them, some sort of retribution for the deaths of his family. Maybe then the nightmares would stop, maybe then he could get some peace in his life before he died. One thing he was certain of, he would not go down without a …

The hand that touched his shoulder felt cold and machine-like. Revulsion drove him, causing him to spin around and bat the arm away before smashing the other arm with the small device he had picked up moments before into the soft side parts of the creature that stood before him.

“Hold!” shouted a voice from the other side of the room. The two combatants swung to stare at the owner of the voice. A single Borg stood at the entrance to the Jeffries tube, arm out stretched.

“We are not your enemy.” The older-looking Borg said mechanically. “We are here to help you. Desist from your current course of action and we will not harm you.”

“Like HELL” Beatty shouted, pulling the weapon from the side of the monster beside him, and throwing it at the head of the one who had just spoken. “DIE, YOU MURDERING SCUM!”

Out of the blue, like a golden-clad flash of light, Yates tackled the Borg to the ground, the weapon missing them both by millimetres.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Beatty demanded of her, struggling clear of the Borg that was still gripping his shoulder. “Let me GO!” he shouted. The Grip loosened and he flew from across the room, dragging the older cyborg off of his friend and pulling her to her feet.

“These are REBEL Borg!” Yates explained, brushing herself off as much as she could. “They’ve left the collective and have become independent.”

“Nobody can trust them, they’re not human!” Beatty pleaded with her, almost shaking her to get his point through. “They’re cold-blooded killers! Monsters!”

“I feel your pain.” The older Borg intoned as it climbed back to its’ feet and approached Beatty calmly. “I understand your anguish…BROTHER!”

******

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