Elric, Jim & Krystal - Earth Spacedock
Jim deadpanned Elric. "Did all my existence only happen so you could make that joke?"
Krystal couldn't help herself, and laughed a bit. "Well... it had to be done one of these days," she said.
Elric smirked, but before he could respond they heard a moaning sound from within the laid out bodies. The Captain stood up and walked over. Before him was a grey skinned human. Elric recognized him. "Professor Raven?" he said shocked.
The older man was half assimilated, and appeared nearly out of it. His lips dry, patches of technology in his temple and tubes feeding around his shoulder. Consciousness was scarce.
"It's Elric," the Captain said to him as he lifted the man's head off the ground. "Do you remember me?"
Raven groaned. The horrors he'd been through still fresh in his mind. "Just... just kill me," he said to the Borg. "Just do it. Do it!" And then he caught Elric's face. "You... What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same thing, Professor," Elric replied, relieved. "I thought you retired?"
The man was helped into a sitting position. "You can never keep an old treasure hunter down. I pulled favours to come here and examine an artifact I suspected was 8th century Metron. Your science officers were just making headway when... the... No!" He seemed to recede into shock. "Resistance is futile."
"Snap out of it!" Elric searched his pack for an immunosupport nanite hypo and injected Raven with it. "You're lucky you were rejected by the Mirror Borg."
After a moment, he seemed to calm down, but Elric wasn't sure if it would be enough.
*Click!?* Zeta blurted in defiance.
"He's going to be fine, Zeta," Elric argued, getting the older man to his feet. "We have to take him with us and we have to keep moving."
Krystal tightened her grip on her weapon but chose not to say anything.
The Omega Operatives kept watch, but didn't say much either. Suddenly, a pair of drones started coming down a corridor towards them. The Omegas shot them down. Then, another drone. Then another.
In the corridor, Elric pulled Raven behind the Omega Operatives with one arm and fired his rifle passed them with the other. He then turned to Raven who seemed to be saying something in a daze.
"There can't be.... They can't be here," he said to no one in particular.
Elric tried to calm him. "Don't worry, Professor. There's a medical bay on the Engineering decks. As soon as we get you down there, you'll be alright."
A few Borg suddenly came up from behind the group. Elric turned his aim and fired into the incoming drones several times.
"Marco... Intelligence, said the acquired... devices would send both Undine and Borg... He said both," Raven gritted in between his pain. "They can't be.... Impossible--"
The Captain looked at him. "What are you saying?"
"We are the Borg," Raven finished as his eyes suddenly lit up.
Elric shot a rear-attacking drone, point-blank, in its head, that had suddenly reached them. He then went back into his bag and injected Raven with another hypospray. "The Omega Ops have this, Professor. They're the best of the best."
Jim turned to Raven. "Believe me, we've seen worse."
"It's worse," Krystal growled as she joined the fight.
The Omegas kept on shooting. Soon, stronger looking drones were joining the fight in place of their weaker cousins.
Elric dodged an energy pulse and fired antiproton bolt bursts out of his autocarbine rifle at the drones in front of the group. "You Omegas are experts at this, right??" Elric said, fearfully, as the feeling of impending Mirror Borg doubled upon them.
Several drones were taken out ahead of them by Elric, but when he turned to check the approaching group from behind, they were right at their feet. A large drone punched through Elric's personal shield and grabbed his firing wrist. Another two grabbed Professor Raven, who was already on the floor, and dragged him off into an indiscernible abyss of horror.
"Professor!?" Elric yelled in futile.
The menacing drone, now within Elric's shield bubble, attempted to shoot tubules into Elric's throat, but Zeta intercepted them in mid-flight with his own two cables. The spider then crawled onto the drone and began working its pointy spider-appendages to deactivate its shoulder motor systems from the drone's exoskeleton. The assimilation arm limped dead and Elric force-palmed the drone in its chest, sending it out of his shield, and into another two incoming drones. Zeta leapt back onto Elric's arm, sucked in his own cables, and the Captain aimed and fired his full auto sweep mode. Rapid antiproton bolt bursts were heavily pumped out into every single close-range drone in front of him. A pile of bodies began to build before his final shot was adapted.
Jim shouted. "They're adapted!"
The Omegas all pressed a button on their rifles, remodulating them automatically, and resumed firing on the incoming Borg.
Jim turned to one of the operatives. "We need to get out of here, but need a plan! Bring up a shield dome, would you?"
The operative nodded and pressed a button on his wrist gauntlet control panel, generating an orange shield dome around the group, repelling the Borg and deflecting their attacks. Jim turned to Elric and Krystal. "Where do we go now?"
Still unable to process how he lost his old teacher and friend, Elric somehow made out the question directed toward him amidst all the chaos. "The large vertical cargo tube at Section 8 is just around the corner."
Jim sighed. "We don't have enough climbing gear. Can we disable the gravity? Admiral, you mind blowing something up for us?"
In a couple moments, a small explosion rocked ESD, dealing minor damage, and taking the gravity generators offline. Stuff started floating around. The Omegas pressed a button on their control panels, activating their magnetic boots and sticking to the floor.
Jim turned to Elric and Krystal. "Take a hand, and lets go."
The Borg, naturally, had magnetic feet of their own and were already ready for the group as the shield dome dissipated on it's own.
Krystal grabbed on to the closest available person. "Well. Wasn't expecting to go Zero G."
A couple Omega operatives pulled out a pair of cables, attached them to the back of other couple operative's armor, and then passed the other end of the said cables (with a clip on the end) to Elric and Krystal each.
Elric clipped on, trying to balance himself. In a matter of seconds he was able to get his bearings. But a part of him wanted to go back for Raven. What were the Mirror Borg up to by taking him again? "I'm on," Elric reported.
The Omegas blasted a path through the Borg, moving to the transport shaft Elric directed them to.
As the group entered the shaft and began moving downward through the silent tunnel, Elric couldn't help but think about Raven.
"He's really gone, isn't he? You know, at the Academy, the Professor was one of the toughest teachers in Alien Anthropology and Exo-History. For some reason he never went easy on me, and now I wonder if it was because he actually believed in me. It wouldn't be until years later he'd join me in my first expedition to Epsilon Hydra VII. The things I discovered there, and learning he wasn't this scary monster, that he was just as normal as any one of us..."
Elric paused. The group was now passing the first cargo doors for one of the many decks that surrounded the Main Reactor. The central deck, where the nanoprobes were most concentrated, was where the central plexus was being held. Getting through the large central doors without main power wouldn't be easy.
Jim turned to Elric. "Any ideas to open those doors? Should we blast them open?"
"Sounds doable. I defer to your judgement, Captain, and any input from Captain Jade. But we'll probably need protection from a blast."
One of the Omega Operatives started preparing a shield generator.
As the giant shield went up around the floating group, Elric took a moment to check on Zeta to make sure he was okay. "How you holding up?"
*CCcclick! Click, click, holding up.*
Elric noticed something strange on the android spider. An erroneous circuit appeared on his outer body. "Zeta, run diagnostics. Do you detect anything?"
*Click, click, chirp.*
He sighed, taking out one of the omicron cells he manufactured earlier. "A nanoprobe. Just one, huh? Can you take one of these?"
*Chirp!* The spider launched a cable and attached it to the side of the cell. A few seconds later, Zeta fried the external circuit. *Click!*
"That was a close one," Elric said relieved. "Stay safe, buddy."
"Never seen anything like that," Krystal said to Elric.
Jim shook his head and turned to the Omegas. "Plant some charges, would you?"
A couple of the operatives space jumped to the doors and started planting spatial charges.
Elric nodded at Krystal. "Yeah, he's closer to a crystal spinner, which, I believe, whoever created him was going for."
"And I have no idea what that is either," Krystal pointed out.
Jim sighed. "It's a spider?"
"Except you can't step on this one," Elric quipped.
Jim pulled out his tricorder and pressed a button on it dramatically, triggering the explosion and blasting the doors open.
After their shields were rained upon by debris, the floating group could then see into the main corridor, finding Mirror Borg technology plastered to the walls, floor and ceilings. Mirror Borg drones were seconds away from reacting to the blast and, beyond the drones, into the distance that reached the end of the main corridor, was the large Engineering open area that housed a central plexus positioned against Spacedock's reactor. Elric looked concerned.
"Well... shtako..." Krystal deadpanned.
Jim glanced over at the Borg. "This'll complicate things."
"If only these were our universe's Borg," Elric said, missing the tactical anonymity.
Jim chuckled as he motioned the Omegas to start firing. "I know." He looked around to watch for any surprises from other directions. Nothing from below. He looked up, and saw swarms of robotic Borg spiders running down the walls towards them. He started firing at them. "We were followed!"
"I didn't even know the Borg had those?" Elric said as he unclipped himself and pushed off into the corridor for zero-G combat. If he had any explosives, he would have used them, but he wasn't nearly as equipped as the Omegas. As Elric moved through the corridor, he fired antiproton bolt bursts left and right at passing drones until he was stopped by the palm of another drone in mid-flight.
Elric rotated himself, upright, aimed and fired several bolts into the Borg, close-range, until it was knocked off its magnetized bearings and off into the open area. Elric was way ahead of his team, as he corrected his backward movement back to forward and entered the Main Reactor control area.
Jim and the Omegas quickly followed, flying over to the corridor and then remagnetizing themselves down, tossing a grenade through zero-G into the larger cluster of them, blasting them away. The Omegas then started walking towards the Main Reactor control area, blasting away the drones Elric left behind.
"I softened them up for you, by the way," Elric commented, in hopes of adding that to the record.
The other drone he had thrown in there suddenly came flying toward him as the Borg spiders caught up and began to scatter at Jim's and the Omega Operative's magnetized feet. Elric rotated himself into a kick but his leg was caught by the incoming drone. The two flew back into a wall, with Elric taking the brunt of the force through his back. Catching the thrusting assimilation arm of the drone with one hand, Elric then launched a counter attack, spinning himself backward so that his other elbow impacted across the drone's face. The heavy-hit knocked it out and Elric spun again and kicked the unconscious body down the previously exploded corridor. He then looked down, passed his floating feet, at the spiders all over the floor.
Suddenly, a robotic arm buzzed passed Elric, catching his eye and, to Elric's left, he could see several Borg robotic arms coming from all over the room, working and piecing together a bulkier and larger drone; the likes of which he'd never seen. The large drone continued working, operating a console, while the room added features to him like it was nothing. As the drone turned, Elric could see that it was Professor Raven.
The Omega Operatives turned to Jim, and he nodded. They all deactivated their magnetic boots and floated upwards, firing their rifles on full spread, blasting robot spider after robot spider until they were all destroyed. Jim turned to the larger drone, and noticed the resemblance. "Well, this is disappointing. He's definitely too far gone now. Arm your T116-Bs, aim, and fire on my command."
The Omegas pulled out their T116-Bs and aimed at Raven of Borg, waiting for Jim's order.
"Wait!" Elric held up his hand as he floated over. The horror of seeing Raven in a monstrous state was heart-wrenching and nearly impossible to comprehend. "We can't fire that close to the Reactor!" Elric reported. "Not to mention we can still liberate him if we hit him with a balanced dosage of my rifle's condensed omicron beam and immunosupport hypos. He's not too far gone. He can't be. He's much stronger than that."
"Its a little late to think about that right now!" Krystal yelled. "So unless you want to join him fire already!"
Jim shouted back. "It won't work! We fought a drone of this size before; he's got some kind of omicron radiation resistant shielding!"
Elric took aim of Raven with his rifle. "Then we remove the shielding, enough to get an omicron beam through. You guys are the Borg experts but yet you let Raven get taken back on Deck 65. Where was your experience then??"
The increasingly growing Raven drone activated a holo screen which was monitoring Spacedock's progress in connecting with the Borg of this universe. The connectivity was at 90%. As Raven moved to take a position between the group and the central plexus, two robotic arms quickly began manufacturing a wrist-mounted cannon upon his left arm. The cannon wasn't even finished being built, but the undead Professor was already aiming and loading its upcoming energy discharge.
"Lower your weapons and surrender your lives. We will add your Borg's biological and technological collective to our own. Your Borg will adapt to us."
Jim screamed. "We can't. Mirror Borg are way too powerful, so if he lives, he'll remember the mirror Borg nature enough for the prime Borg to want to assimilate him for the information to become way too powerful for us to deal with. We have to destroy him!"
The Omegas crouched, still aiming at Raven of Borg. Jim glared at Elric. "We have no choice."
Krystal growled and just lobbed a plasma grenade at the Plexus itself while she still had an opening.
Borg shielding pulsed as the grenade collided with the plasma grenade. The blast knocked Jim away and created an expanded, zero-g cloud of plasma fire, headed for the group. The Plexus remained undamaged, as Raven moved over to block their view of the plexus.
Jim retreated back to the other Omegas and aimed his rifle at Raven of Borg. He glanced at the holoscreen, which read 99%. "No! That's it, take out that plexus, and anything in the way, with everything we've got!"
The Omegas aimed their rifles at Raven, and went to pull the trigger. Suddenly, the large drone stopped moving, losing magnetism, and the surrounding Borg technology went dark and even more quiet. One of the Omegas turned to Jim. "Sir?"
Jim looked over at the connectivity level: 100%. Jim sighed. "Really?"
Admiral Nat's voice came over the comms. "Turns out some kind of pulse went off and disabled all the Borg the moment they connected with the outside Borg. Apparently somebody installed devices in that general area, which are apparently made to not only repel Undine like they did before, but disable Borg, too, at least the collective connected kind. They must have initially assumed the mirror Borg were all liberated since they weren't linked to any outside Borg, but their connecting to the Borg outside set the devices off."
Jim sighed. "Just how disabled are they?"
Admiral Nat replied. "Completely. Every single bit of Borg tech has been knocked offline across ESD, so the Borg tech that's still there is non-functional. You might as well come back up and let Spacedock's engineers handle them at this point."
A forcefield materialized around the cloud of high energy plasma, containing it just moments before it hit the main reactor.
Nat continued. "Of course, that's the good news. There's bad news, too."
Elric breathed a sigh of relief. It was like a heavy weight had been lifted, but the state of the giant Borg that was Raven remained in front of them. "The Professor did mention his friend Marco from Intelligence. That there were devices which were 'acquired' from somewhere. We should probably find a way to access them and learn more about them." Then he glanced over. "What's the bad news?"
The admiral replied. "Various liberated Borg crew members have been affected, but should be fine. It's the still-alive mirror Borg drones we need to worry about. We can't just beam them to a sickbay because there's too much interference from the surrounding Borg tech. We'll have to tag the drones individually, and if we take too long, they'll probably die."
Elric nodded. "Perhaps we should split up and seek out these drones and hit them with transporter tags."
Jim nodded. "Sounds good." He motioned for the Omegas to go ahead, and started tracking down and tagging drones himself.
Before leaving, Elric turned to examine Professor Raven once more. He slowly moved around to the over-armoured Borg drone to find the grey-skinned man breathing with confused eyes forward. As the Captain got right up to the Professor, he could swear the man was still somewhere inside the massive conglomeration of horror.
"Professor," Elric said on the off-chance he'd actually reply.
Captain Elric reached his left arm up to pull Raven's extended, aiming, canon-arm down when three assimilation tubules suddenly shot out Raven's arm and pierced Elric's arm. Pulling away immediately, Elric ripped the tubules out in shock and agony.
"Ugh!!" He then pulled his sleeve up and exercised his hand to flex his forearm. After a moment, he sighed. "Must've been an automated reflex. I'm fine, though. Like you guys said, the nanoprobes are offline now."
Elric took a hypospray out of his satchel and injected himself just be safe. He gave Raven a discontented, confused look.
"Still. Better get checked out when we get out of here," Krystal said.
Captain Elric agreed. "Will do," he said. He then left the Main Reactor area for the corridors to begin tagging drones.
