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| - What did I think when I reached Earth? I was just glad the trip was over, frankly. What? I’m Bajoran. You humans may think it’s something special, but Earth to me is just another Class M rock like a thousand others. Only difference is I have to pay taxes to it, same as I would if the Federation was headquartered on Vulcan or Tellar. I materialize on a transporter pad at Starfleet Academy. My luggage doesn’t. Found out later it got beamed to Kabul by mistake. Typical. A human cadet waiting at the transporter pad looks me up and down. Blond, dark brown eyes. “Um, Cadet Kanril Eleya?” I guess he’s confused by my gray-and-green Militia technician uniform. I nod at him. He’s a nice looking guy, looks about my age. His collar has third-year pins on it and the divisional colors say science track. He’s still staring. “What, do I have something on my face?” He jerks a bit. “Um, no. Sorry, I was told to come get you and take you to Captain Ben-David’s office. I wasn’t expecting … What uniform is that?” “Bajoran Militia. I’m an inter-service transfer. I was an NCO, naval gunnery specialist.” “NCO?” “Uh, ‘non-commissioned officer’? I was a sergeant.” “Oh!” I see the light panel turn on in his mind. “You mean a noncom.” “‘Noncom’, got it.” “Well. Um, follow me, Sergeant Eleya.” He starts away and I shoulder my kitbag and follow him. “By the way, Eleya’s my given name, not my surname.” “Sorry. I’m Jerrod Dalton, Astrophysics major.” “Nice to meet you.” After meeting with Captain Peter Ben-David to get my classes and uniforms sorted out, and making a trip to the Academy hospital for a round of immunotherapy against Earth pollen and so forth, I get settled in and start familiarizing myself with the campus. They’ve got me in an old-style two-person dorm room roughly the same size as the Kira’s bridge. My roommate’s a second-year, a human woman with black hair, brown skin, and almond-shaped eyes. She’s Jasmine Velasquez, a warp core major who tells me to call her Jazz. Apparently her family’s been in uniform since the Revolutionary War, whatever that is. Starfleet has a much looser uniform code than the Militia so the first thing I do is start growing my hair back out. I still can’t grow it as long as I had it as a teenager but eventually I’ll have a ponytail again. Officer training’s mostly like I expected: a lot less physical, a lot more mental. I’m in classes six hours a day—everything from weapons engineering, my major, to conversational Rihan—and I hit the gym afterward to keep in shape. I start learning a new art. The humans call it krav maga and Starfleet made it part of the Command Conditioning regimen almost two centuries ago. It’s not very different from the Cardassian-influenced military boxing I learned in basic, so I catch on fast. About once a week, usually Friday night, I end up booted out of the dorm room. Jazz keeps bringing people back, boys and girls both, about half of them not cadets and rarely the same ones twice, and nonhumans more often than not. I’m not averse to the odd hookup myself—Hell, I vividly remember waking up with a hangover next to two passed-out Klingons with a cracked rib and several bruises in embarrassing places—but she puts me to shame. Normally I go to the library but three months in I hit up an off-campus club for a drink because this time Jazz brought back a girl and a guy. I file into the melee and try not to think about it. The music’s loud enough that last part isn’t too hard. After a few dances with people I don’t know from Tor Jolan, I go up to the bar and order a Hathon hammer. I’m a little surprised the bartender even knows what one is, never mind having the ingredients. Somebody comes up beside me and flags down the bartender. “Scotch and soda for five!” It’s Dalton’s voice. I turn. Dalton’s face, too. “Hey there,” I say. He turns to me in surprise and smiles. “Well! If it isn’t Sergeant Kanril!” I laugh. “That’s Cadet Kanril to you, dospek.” He grins. I never noticed it before but he’s got nice teeth. “You here with someone?” I shake my head. “Roommate kicked me out for the night.” “Boy or girl?” “Yes.” He looks confused for a moment, then his eyes widen. “You mean to say—” I nod to confirm and take a sip of my drink. He turns his head away and whistles through his teeth, then turns back to me as the barman, who I think is Napean but I never actually found out for certain, comes back with several glasses on a tray. “Listen, I’m here with some friends—” “Well, then I won’t keep you.” “I was about to ask you to join us, Kanril.” “I wouldn’t want to impose…” I trail off as he gets an insistent look in his eye. “Oh, what the phekk. Lead on, MacDuff.” I scoop up my glass and start to tell the barman to open a tab before I remember that Earth doesn’t use money. Humans, what can I say? They’re weird. His friends are a Vulcan named T’Shae with boyishly short black hair and pale skin who’s flat as console surface, a striped Bolian named Roro Brosh, a blue-and-purple Saurian named Sherik Akas who claims to be distantly related to the President, and an aristocratic-looking blonde Romulan named Arahael t’Rannoch. “Everyone, this is Kanril Eleya.” Chorus of hellos. “Hi there,” I reply. “What’s that you’re drinking?” t’Rannoch asks. I raise the glass. “Hathon hammer, cocktail somebody on my homeworld came up with. Start with bloodwine, then add two shots of kava juice and one of kanar, then you shake the whole thing over ice.” “Kanar?” Dalton looks confused. “Cardassian liquor, something like forty proof on average.” We chat for a while about drinking and classes and holodramas, the usual kinds of things, and eventually leave the club and go to a burger joint down the street that’s been operating under the same family since the 1970s. I let Dalton order for me. The burger he picks has something called ‘avocado’ on it. The taste is hard to describe; Bajor doesn’t have anything even close as far as I know. The others say good night at about half past eleven. Dalton and I don’t. Somehow I end up back at his room. His roommate’s out for the weekend visiting family someplace called Johannesburg. I ask Dalton why he isn’t. “Call me Jerrod,” he tells me, cracking a bottle of wine. “And in answer to your question, I’m from Aldebaran.” “And that means?” “It means I’m closer to home than you are, Kanril, but I still need a seat on a starliner.” “Call me Eleya. Cheers,” and we clink glasses and drink. The wine’s from the Napa Valley further north. Not all that different from Bajoran springwine, maybe a little more alcoholic. I don’t remember afterward who started what or when; I’m just glad I remembered to get my contraceptive implant renewed the day before. I’m sober enough to ask him between kisses if he’s with either of the women we had dinner with. He pulls back long enough to answer, “T’Shae and Arahael are with each other, Roro’s married, and Sherik isn’t interested in mammals.” “Oh. That’s good.” Then we’re pulling at each other’s clothing, then we’re nude on the floor—what happened to the couch? Hell if I know—and I’m screaming aloud as he takes me, kissing and nibbling at the ridges on my nose. I don’t know how many times we made love that first night—I wasn’t exactly in a condition to count—but the light of dawn finds us tangled in a mess of sheets in his bed. He’s still asleep. I stroke his hair for a moment, then walk to the window, my front wrapped in a sheet, and watch the sun start to rise over the dark azure waters of San Francisco Bay, glittering off the water. I hear him shift in the bed behind me. “Morning,” he says. “You’ve got a great view,” I tell him. “Yes, I do,” he murmurs. I turn and catch him eyeing my ass. I snicker and look back at the bay. I feel more than hear him come up behind me and he kisses my neck. I start to laugh but it turns into a sigh as he turns to nibbling my shoulder. The sheet falls away and I allow him to lead me back to the bed. That’s that. After that night Jerrod and I are inseparable. We study together, we spar together in the gym—I win most of the time; unlike him I’ve had practical experience—we meet up almost every night, with or without our friends, and we spend most of our weekends together in varying stages of undress. Three weeks in he tells me he loves me; I decide I agree soon after. End of the semester we apply for a coed room. Four months after that I start telling him about my people’s betrothal rituals, and I’m only half-joking. Then one morning, just over a year after we met in Club Berliner, I wake up and Jerrod’s nowhere to be found. No note, no audio message on the console. He left in the night, didn’t even make me breakfast. I go to Admiral Bartila and learn the son of a kosst amojan was offered early graduation and shipped out with the USS Planck for a two-year survey mission in the Gamma Quadrant. The only response I ever get from him is, “Sorry. Had to do this. Be well.” They say love and hatred are two sides of the same coin. I can vouch. I cry myself to sleep every night for over a week. Commander Thrass flat-out orders me to go see a counselor because my grades are suffering. After a couple sessions with a Perikian Bajoran shrink named Toris Lem I learn how to sleep alone again and I get myself back on track. I satisfy my needs with friends like Jazz and t’Rannoch and the odd hookup. I don’t have the inclination or time for anything else. The classes get harder the closer I get to the end of OCS. On Thrass’s recommendation I add some command school classes my third and final semester. They’re the hardest of all, but the challenge is exciting. I never really thought about wearing the red and white of a combat CO until a week into that semester. Graduation for the Class of 2403. Starfleet flies my parents all the way to Earth for the occasion. It’s good having connections. My new dress whites are a lot more comfortable than my old Militia dress uniform was, but you know how it is: they make them to look impressive, not for comfort. I’m in the top three percent of my class. I lost too much ground after Dalton left to have a shot at valedictorian and I racked up too many demerits for leaving my quarters a mess anyway, but I’ve still got ribbons for academic and athletic performance, and my Silver Cross is unique in the class. I see my father standing in the third row, beaming, when Admiral Daisuke Hussein pins a Starfleet ensign’s single brass pip to my chest. Yes, I still hate him with a passion, even today. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with him and the bastard left without a goodbye or a reason. Took me almost three years to be able to have a steady relationship again, and my next boyfriend still didn’t last four months before we split up. Jerrod Dalton hurt me worse than that Orion did, and I still wake up every once in a while from nightmares about her. Anyway, for the next three years or so I had a pretty typical career path. They put me on one of the big Regent-class cruisers, USS Betazed, as a section head in forward gunnery. After the first couple of days the rank-and-file crewmen decided they liked having a former noncom for a boss. We were posted to the border with the remnants of the Romulan Empire to keep an eye on things and provide humanitarian aid on request while Taris and Sela had their dustup. Rumors were already flying about the Tal’Shiar getting out of control, and we even heard there was a would-be splinter state calling itself the Kreh’dhhokh Rihan forming from refugees, disaffected RSN crews, and remnants of the few Ship-Clans that survived the supernova, almost a hundred light-years rimward of where we were in Zeta Andromedae. We didn’t give much credence to that last one at the time, more fools us. The aid? Off the record? Well, obviously the Federation had an ulterior motive. No, don’t get me wrong, we’re absolutely supposed to help people regardless of present or future allegiance, because we’re the good guys and it’s the right thing to do. Besides, Nova Roma wasn’t exactly doing itself any favors by blockading planets with curable epidemics, and a lot of the fringeworlds were having to deal with long-term refugee populations with resources the central government didn’t even have. We could feed them, and we did, with or without the consent of the Senate. But if we could sneak a few outlying planets away from the Empire by doing it, why not? By the time my second tour on the Betazed was up the Council had declared war on the Klingons over the crap J’mpok was trying to pull in the Hromi Cluster, and I notified Command that I wanted a front-line post. Didn’t work out. They came up short on officers who spoke Bajoran and Cardassian and they wanted somebody with Militia experience to liaise on Deep Space 9—apparently their last assistant liaison officer got into it with a vedek and was, uh, politely asked not to come back—so instead I got sent home to B’hava’el for six months. Boring, predictable assignment for the most part, mostly paperwork. I did get assigned to deal with a Dominion delegation once, though, which was interesting. Turns out Jem’Hadar hit pretty hard but, protip, their joints are just as vulnerable as yours or mine. No, of course not! The Vorta’s bodyguards just got antsy and needed to blow off some steam, so in the interest of diplomacy some of us agreed to spar with them in the gym. I needed the exercise anyway. I probably would’ve eventually gotten a command by the usual route but, you know that old Klingon saying. We aren’t born great, we have greatness thrust upon us. I don’t always like that I had it handed to me early rather than feeling like I really earned it, but enjoyment isn’t a job requirement. After six months on DS9 my prior request for a front-line combat post finally percolated through the bureaucracy, I guess. By now I’d been a JG from time-in-grade for over a year, and they stuck me on this Shi’Kahr-class light cruiser, the Kagoshima, as second shift weapons officer. “Baby K”, we called the ship, in reference to the much bigger Noble-class USS Khitomer in the same squadron. Captain Alfred Detweiler was a very nice man in my opinion. He kept encouraging me to keep taking command classes over subspace, no matter what he was doing he always had time to lend an ear, and he had a husband and three teenage children on New Leipzig whom he loved to bits. Explaining to them why I was suddenly commanding his ship was without a doubt the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I materialize back on the transporter pad of the Kagoshima as the ship shakes under another hit. The corridors echo with weapons fire. Sher hahr kosst, they’ve boarded us. My combadge crackles. “This is Security Officer Terel Khas! We need help now!” “JG Kanril here, I’m on my way!” I palm the access panel for a weapon and toss a rifle and Type 2 to the transporter chief. “Lieutenant, I am a transporter operator, not a soldier,” the dark-skinned Vulcan answers. “Petty T’Shar, I rather doubt the boltheads are going to care one way or the other! Grab a gun and come with me if you want to live.” The Kagoshima was part of a fleet massing for an assault on a number of KDF positions in nearby systems. Intelligence had just reported that we’d already lost the element of surprise—they caught a surgically altered Orion in Crypto at Starbase 138--when the Prophets decided it would be fun to throw the cosmic equivalent of a bad joke at us. Instead of the Klinks, transwarp apertures opened right on top of us and a superior number of Borg ships emerged and opened fire. First time anyone had seen them since the late Seventies. Wouldn’t be the last. I hit my combadge as I head into the corridor, following the sound of shooting. “Khas, it’s Eleya! Where’s Captain Detweiler?” “Dead!” “Commander zh’Thirial?” “Dead! Everybody who was on the bridge is dead! Sir, look out!” I hear a muffled thud over the comms and then a scream, distorted by loudness. The shooting ahead of us ceases abruptly. By now four or five other redshirts, a mix of security and tactical crew, faces I know, have joined me and T’Shar. I turn the corner for a moment then duck back behind cover. I saw well enough to tell that ten or so Borg drones are doing their unstoppable zombie horde thing. Looks like something out of a bad Earth holodrama. I hand-signal two of the others to sneak to the far corner and lean out again, rifle leveled. Now I spot Khas, a Bajoran noncom from Semmel Province, leaning against the wall, twitching and moaning, with gray spreading from a wound in his neck. I spit, shift my aim, and crack off a shot into his head to put him out of his misery. One drone, used to be a Talaxian, I think, sees me and moves forward. I fire a half-dozen times but the shots shatter on its force field. They’ve already adapted. Phekk, now it’s too close! It raises its arm but I swing the barrel of my rifle and parry the assimilation tubules into the bulkhead. The drone robotically utters, “Resistance is futile.” “Oh, shut the phekk up!” Before it can try again with the other arm I slam the rifle straight forward into its mouth, feeling the static crackle as it passes through the force field, and just hold the trigger down. The drone’s head explodes backwards and bits of it bounce off the one behind it; the trunk drops like a stone. The other drones spin to face me. “Oh, phekk. T’Shar, give me your pistol! The rest of you, fall back!” “Sir!” I set the phaser to overload, holler “Fire in the hole!” and toss it underhand into the midst of the drones, then I turn and jump back through the doorway. “Computer, emergency seal blast door!” The phaser begins to emit a high-pitched whine and the doors slam shut as soon as I’m clear. Then there’s a muffled thunderclap and a staccato series of ringing noises as shrapnel skitters off the dense alloy. “Adapt to that, you son of a whore. Computer, scan for Borg life signs.” Chirp. “There are no Borg life signs remaining on the ship.” “Contact the bridge.” Chirp. “Error. The bridge suffered a direct hit from a Borg cutting laser four-point-two minutes ago. There are no survivors detected.” Over my swearing T’Shar says, “Computer, identify seniormost active officer.” Another chirp. “Lieutenant Junior Grade Kanril Eleya, Shift 2 Weapons Officer.” “Sonuvabitch,” Crewman Vibol says behind me. He’s right. Last I looked I was pretty damn far down in the line of succession. “Computer, hail the Khitomer and patch it through to my combadge, and direct us to Main Engineering, safest route.” A deep voice responds through my combadge. “Captain Yim here. Go, Kagoshima.” “Sir, this is, uh, Acting Captain Kanril.” Silence for a moment, then, “What the fuck?” “My thoughts exactly, sir.” “All right, I’ve got you on scan. The bridge is completely gone—” “Figured that out already, sir. I’m going to try to take command of the ship from Main Engineering.” “Okay, near as I can tell, your engines and most of your weapons arrays are still intact but your primary shields are pretty torn up. I’m going to send over some help. The Borg are moving off for now, headed for the planet. If they come back we’ll cover you.” “Negative, sir, you’re worse off than we are. They come back before we’re underway, forget the recovery op. We’ll set the self-destruct, then you beam us off and get the phekk out of here.” There’s a silence for a moment, then Yim answers, “Understood. I’ve locked onto your combadge and we’re beaming a work crew directly to your location.” There’s a transporter whine near me and a buxom Andorian JG with boyishly short hair, wearing tactical red, materializes with six engineers of various grades. She introduces herself as “Tess Phohl, torpedo officer.” “Kanril Eleya, acting CO,” I respond. “Main Engineering’s this way. Computer, direct the rest of the work crew, fastest safe route to forward shields.” We get to a turbolift and head down two decks to the engine room. A mutton-chopped Andorian chaan meets me. “Bynam! Where the phekk is Lieutenant Hayes?” Ensign Ehrob flicks a thumb at a human lying on a stretcher, covered in burns and moaning as a corpsman fiddles with a hypospray. Looks like an EPS conduit explosion. “He’s still breathing but he’s no good to us like this. I’m acting CHENG for now.” “Seems to be a pattern. All right, I need to set up a temporary bridge here.” “Right away. Kuznetzova!” It’s the solid work of ten minutes to get shields back and full control of the ship shifted to consoles across the front of the section and in the break room on the second level. As we work I quickly quiz Phohl on her background. “Born in the Adris Islands near Andoria’s equator, majored in military history with a naval weaps minor, assigned to the Khitomer after graduation.” “Why’d you join up?” “To piss off my thavan,” she answers with a grin. I drop the ODN coupler on my foot. “Ow. Your what?” “Her thaan father,” Bynam translates. “His family’s been Imperial Guard for centuries. I decided to be contrary.” I slam an access panel closed and take a seat at a workstation rigged up on the break room table. “Kagoshima to Khitomer! We’re online!” “Yim here, and not a moment too soon, Kanril! Reading two Borg probes headed this way, ETA two minutes!” I grit my teeth. I’ve never fought the Borg before today but I know that even the probes are supposedly a match for an Intrepid-class cruiser. “Bynam, set shields, phasers and torpedoes into random remodulation. New frequency every shot.” “By the book, then?” “It’s the book for a reason,” Phohl returns. “Sir, we’ve only got thirty torpedoes left.” “I’m not a ‘sir’, Phohl. I’m a former NCO, I work for a living. ‘Captain’ is fine, ‘ma’am’ if you want to be formal, Hell, call me by my first name, even. Range to target, sixty thousand kilometers. Who’s on conn?” “Uh, I am, ma’am,” brown-furred Caitian ensign in ops gold responds. I gesture questioningly at his jacket. “‘Operation Return’ is my favorite holodeck scenario.” I rest my face in my palm. “Fine, we don’t have time to be picky. Ahead full.” “Yim to Kanril, we’ve got a malfunction in targeting!” His ship must be worse off than I thought. “Slave your fire control to ours. You can handle the targeting, Phohl?” “With pleasure, ma’am,” she says, giving a toothy grin. Now I’m certain I’m misreading her face—she looks eager, hungry even. I think back to my Academy lessons and start last-minute planning. “All right, remember, people, it’s time on target that counts with the Borg. They’re tough but attrition hurts them as much as us. Ensign M’shass, put them on our starboard and keep us moving, fast. Try to use the lead probe as cover against the trailer. Phohl, scan for load-bearing points, pick a spot, and keep pounding it for as long as you can reach it. Let’s do this!” “Aye, ma’am!” they confirm in unison. We close with the Borg at high speed, the Khitomer below and behind us. “Entering optimum firing range,” Phohl says. “Fire at will.” “I have a lock. Firing!” Spears of coherent radiation limned in all colors of the rainbow erupt from our forward arrays and slam into the lead probe’s shields. The Khitomer adds her fire to ours seconds later. “M’shass, keep us on this arc! It’s working!” “Aye, sir!” We close, continuing to fire again and again. Suddenly I feel a jolt and we begin to slow. “They’ve got us in a tractor beam!” A stream of plasma slams into our shields. “Starboard shields at ninety percent!” Phohl barks. “Conn, hard to starboard!” I order. “Fly us right up the beam!” “Whaaat?” “Just do it! Bynam, prepare to adjust shield phase and frequency, one-eight-zero from the probe!” “Captain, you’re not gonna… Yes, ma’am! Ready!” The Kagoshima shivers around us as the engines fight the tractor beam and the ship begins to turn into the oncoming ship. “Engines to maximum!” I shout at M’shass. “Phohl, divert power to forward shields!” Now instead of fighting the beam, we’re working with the pulling force, taking us towards the probe even faster than before. “We’re gonna hit them!” M’shass yells. “No, set the computer to switch to full reverse after we pass through their shields!” “‘Pass through’?!” “Trust me! Phohl, get a lock on the tractor beam emitter!” Three, two, one, “Bynam, now!” “Adjusting shields!” The two barriers, phased at 180 degrees from each other, collide, merge, and vanish. The computer arrests our forward momentum and Phohl hammers her key, sending a single lance of nadions slamming into the probe’s unprotected hull and blowing a crater the size of our saucer into the tritanium alloy. The tractor beam vanishes in an instant. “Phohl, activate transporter! One photon torpedo, armed for ten-second timer!” “Beaming torpedo!” “M’shass, full impulse! Get us out of here!” Explosive weapons, whether chemical, nuclear, or matter/antimatter, derive most of their damaging force from the shockwaves produced when they blow in atmosphere. In the vacuum of space they’re left mostly with thermal radiation, reducing their potency. They also tend to waste at least half the energy released, since it radiates away from the target. But when a weapon goes off inside a ship, it’s going off in atmosphere, and with no wasted energy. There’s a blinding white flash behind us as the 64 megaton matter/antimatter warhead blows, ripping the probe apart from the inside in a fraction of a second. “Lieutenant Kanril, are you insane?!” Yim’s voice. “It worked, didn’t it?” I shoot back. On the plot the other probe, unable to slow in time, slams into the debris field left by its compatriot, ripping huge gaps into its shields and hull. “Phohl, Yim, hit them now!” “Roger, fire in the hole!” he shouts as the Andorian barks, “Firing!” A volley of quantum torpedoes from the Khitomer and more photons from us crash into the listing probe’s bow and flank and the ensuing blasts tear it to fragments. “See? They’re not so tough!” somebody says behind me. “Don’t get overconfident, Martinez,” Bynam warns. “Actually, she’s got a point,” I comment. “The Borg trade on the fact that everyone’s scared to death of them. Apart from that the only advantage they have is numbers and the fact they can adapt to frequency-based weapons.” “So, you’re not scared either?” he asks in a questioning tone. I look over to him and tell him absolutely seriously, “Trust me, I’m terrified. But when I was in basic Gunny Elwar used to tell us, ‘Soldier goes into combat and he ain’t scared, he’s either dead or stupid.’ Fear the enemy all you want, just don’t let it stop you from doing your job. Phohl, Yim, I need a new target.” Captain Yim’s voice comes through, “Not just yet. Let’s see if we can’t find a few ships that are still in one piece. Strength in numbers, right?” “Sensors!” I bark. “Who’s on sensors?” A dark-skinned petty officer three raises a hand. “Any friendlies?” “I’ve got a warp core signature, just arrived. Olympic-class, transponder says it’s the Seacole.” “Hail them.” The Seacole is a hospital ship that we were supposed to escort to the facility on Relva VII after retaking it from the Klingons, but that’s obviously not happening, and so we spend the next hour rescuing survivors from several disabled ships and ferrying the wounded to the doctors. Another party of probes interrupts us but they’ve already taken heavy damage and prove no match. We move on to the planet itself, gathering surviving colonists by transporter before the Khitomer demolishes the entire site with a torpedo bombardment. By now additional reinforcements, a couple of damaged but warp-worthy Excalibur-class cruisers and a Dervish-class escort, have dribbled in and we begin burning hard for deep space. “Captain, I’ve got a transwarp aperture opening ahead of us. Oh, Scheiße!” I don’t speak that language but I get the gist, especially now that there’s a damn cube on the sensors. It’s blocking our way out. “Screw it, we’ll go through them. We’ve got enough ships now. All ships, this is the Kagoshima. Slave your targeting to ours and hit them like you mean it!” “Sorry, this is Commander Rainier of the USS Ulfberht. Who the hell are you?” Yim’s voice answers, “She’s Brevet Lieutenant Commander Kanril Eleya, and I’m Captain Jay Yim, acting FOIC. Slave your targeting to the Kagoshima, Commander.” There’s a pause, then a reluctant-sounding “Aye sir!” I try not to think about Captain Yim giving me a field promotion. “M’shass, full impulse.” As we close the speakers fill with an echoing voice, as if billions of voices were speaking as one. “We are the Borg. Surrender your vessel. You will escort us to your homeworld—” “I’m getting really sick of hearing that. Phohl, shut them up for me.” “Weapons locked! Firing!” Dozens of streams of glowing particles erupt from our forward phaser banks and the rest of the fleet adds their fire. The cube’s shields spark and glitter under the barrage but hold. M’shass banks hard to port as a tractor beam erupts from the towering side of the Borg ship, but it wasn’t aimed at us. The Mosul, fifteen kilometers behind us, is ensnared and her shields start to collapse. A cutting beam spits out of the side of the probe and slices into the starboard nacelle but the Szczerbiec cuts across the beam and interrupts it with its own shields. We continue firing on that same spot as the Khitomer comes in high and opens up with a full broadside. One shot penetrates on frequency and the emitters for the tractor beam vanish in a fireball; the Mosul quickly breaks off. A beam of confined plasma slams into our forward shields as we come around for another pass. The entire ship jolts and I hear an explosion behind me and somebody screams. “Damage report!” I bark. “Forward shields at 45 percent!” an ops noncom responds. “Power loss to Phaser Two! Casualties in Exobiology!” Phohl shouts, “Damage control to Phaser Two!” as I ask Bynam about the explosion. “EPS conduit blew on the catwalk! I’ve got a man down!” “Status of the cube!” The ship thrums with power as Phohl opens up with the remaining forward phasers. “Nearing shield collapse on this facing!” There’s a pause. “Aspect change in target! They’re trying to roll ship!” “Kanril to all units! Tractor that thing!” Six pale blue beams of projected gravitons snap out from the fleet and grip the cube, as even the Seacole has joined the fight now. The Borg vessel is too strong to stop the turn completely so instead we’re dragged along as it turns, which was more the point anyway. Either way, we’re keeping our fire focused on the same section of shields. Baby K shakes again. “Port shields at 20 percent! Wait, Captain, it worked! Enemy shield failure!” “Arm torpedoes and fire everything we’ve got! Take ‘em out!” “With pleasure!” She slams her fist down on the firing key. The forward launcher goes into rapid fire and half a hundred torpedoes in red and blue from all over the fleet hammer into the side. Huge cracks as wide as a runabout rocket across the cube’s flanks faster than the eye can follow. “She’s gonna blow!” “Conn, get us outta here!” I order. As we flee, the cube writhes in its death throes, clouds of green plasma beginning to spew out of the cracks, but even a mortally wounded beast can still bite. Remaining tractor emplacements ensnare the Mosul and the Ulfberht and another cutting beam slams out and rakes across the upper hull of the former. A secondary explosion erupts, then another, and in seconds the fan-shaped patrol escort is shuddering under a rapid series of blasts. “This is Commander Dalmek! We’re abandoning ship! GHAA—” and the rest is static. Escape pods begin to boil off the Mosul’s flanks, ants fleeing a doomed anthill, as it continues to shake under the continued chain reaction of explosions, and the lights go out one by one as the vacuum of space consumes the flames. The cutting beam, now flickering, snaps out again and rips into the after section of the ship, and a much larger explosion from the remaining torpedoes lays the stern open like a profane flower. “Prophets… T’Shar, drop facing shields and lock onto life signs! Anyone we can bring aboard, get ‘em!” The petty at sensors yells, “Captain, I’m picking up an imminent core breach in the cube! We don’t have time!” “You’re relieved!” Phohl snarls at him. “Initiating transport,” T’Shar announces with typical Vulcan dispassion, like she’s telling us she’s going down to the store. I don’t get Vulcans, I never have. Abruptly the screens showing our rear view go staticky as the cube’s drives finally blow. The radiation pulse washes over our shields a fraction of a second later and the Kagoshima judders as thousands of tons of vaporized and fragmented metal and composite bounce across our hull. The lights change from white to red, indicating we’re on emergency power. “Transport completed, Captain. Thirty-four members of the USS Mosul crew are now aboard. Dispatching remaining medical teams to Cargo Bay One.” That ship carried a crew of two hundred. The Ulfberht brought us under tow for the next couple of days while the battered remnants of the fleet traveled to the nearest Federation transwarp conduit. Day three we managed to get main power back and went the rest of the way ourselves. Baby K spent two weeks in the yard, during which they put me through the “Kobayashi Maru” and made me the permanent captain. We gathered a new crew and went right back out there. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, you know? Vega proved one of the worst defeats in Federation history. Starfleet lost twenty ships and over five thousand people, and of the 2.8 million civilians on Vega IX we got maybe nine thousand out. And we never found out what the phekk the Borg even wanted, besides the obvious, I mean. But in the long run it may have been a lucky break. I know it sounds horrible of me to say that, but the boltheads’ reappearance got the diplomats on both sides to start talking again. That gave us a reason to hope this stupid, pointless war might be over soon. Just the latest in a long string of times our two sides have fought stupid, pointless wars over idiotic disagreements with a complete and utter lack of any conclusive result. Hell with it all. Do I wish things had gone differently in my own career? No, not really. I mean, if I’d taken the usual, longer road to command, sure, I’d probably get a bit more respect, but frankly I don’t really care what people outside my chain of command think of me. I care what my crew thinks, I care what my superiors think, and I care what the Prophets think. And I’m happy where I am. I’ve got good people working with me and I feel like I matter. I’ll probably never make admiral, but to be perfectly frank that’s not what people who join Starfleet ever really want. Sure, we’ve got to have admirals planning things out, but in my experience nobody dreams of being a flag officer when they sign on the dotted line and take the Oath of Service. They dream of being in that chair, on that bridge, making a difference in whatever small way they can.
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