Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Rough Beasts of Empire

by David R. George III

  “Sir, the New York is firing on the fourth cube,” said Lieutenant Dunlap. “They’ve raised their transphasic shields.”

  “Then raise ours,” Vaughn replied, looking over at the ops officer. For a second, Vaughn took strength from his own order, from the added layer of defense that would be erected around his ship. Then he peered back at the main viewer.

  In the distance, a second red beam erupted from another Borg cube, slicing through the atmosphere of Alonis and deep into its violet waters.

  “Fire!” Sisko yelled, raising his voice to be heard over the clamor of the Borg attack. He stood beside the command chair, gripping its back to keep his balance as the sickly green streak of energy pounded into New York. He didn’t hear any acknowledgment of his order, but on the main viewscreen, he saw the ship’s phasers leap into the void until they found the fourth Borg cube. The beams flashed through random color changes as Cavanagh adjusted their resonance frequencies on the fly. Still, the Borg vessel continued discharging its weapons, a red energy ray piercing an Alonis ocean and into a city, a green one tracking with New York as it raced toward the cube.

  “Phasers reduced the Borg’s shield strength by sixty-five percent,” Cavanagh said, “but they are now having no effect.”

  “What about our shields?” Sisko said. The Nebula-class ship trembled beneath the Borg offensive, a heavy drone feeding back through the shield generators, but the damage sustained seemed minimal.

  “Transphasic shields holding steady at ninety-three percent,” Lieutenant Commander Plante confirmed from her ops console.

  Good, Sisko thought. Until they could eliminate the Borg weapons, they would need the shields in order to interfere with the Collective’s assault on the Alonis. “Cease fire and alter course to juxtapose the New York between that ship and the planet.”

  At the conn, Ensign Jaix glanced up from his panel. “Sir, the Borg are firing on Alonis.”

  “And we have to stop them from doing so,” Sisko told the young Catullan officer, his voice hard.

  “Yes, sir,” Jaix said. “Altering course.” A quaver in his voice made him sound both chastened and scared.

  “Lieutenant Wilkes,” Sisko said, looking over at the environmental-control station on the periphery of the bridge, to his left.

  “Sir?”

  “I want all outer sections along the top of the primary hull evacuated at once,” Sisko said. “See to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wilkes said, turning back to her controls.

  Sisko watched the Borg ship slide toward starboard on the main viewer as New York rounded the cube, to the side facing the planet. The nearest of the Alonis orbital defense platforms came into view, its hull blackened by a Borg attack, its weapons left mute. “Interpose us between the cube and the planet. Show them the top of the primary hull.” Though such a maneuver would render the saucer section of the ship vulnerable, it would also better protect the flattened secondary hull, which housed the engineering section as well as the twin nacelles. All three structures depended from the bottom of the saucer.

  On the screen, Sisko saw the green energy beam stop firing. At once, a relative quiet descended about the bridge. It didn’t last.

  “Moving into the line of fire,” said Jaix, his inflections divulging his uncertainty.

  The Borg ship filled the main viewscreen. New York shook violently as the primary hull made contact with the red energy beam. A loud whine pervaded the bridge—and, Sisko thought, probably the entire ship.

  “Shields down to eighty-five percent, but holding steady there,” said Plante. “Hull temperature is rising beneath the beam.”

  “Captain,” Cavanagh said, her tone urgent. “The Borg have locked onto us with a tractor beam.” The ship quaked again, harder. “They’ve deployed a cutter.”

  Sisko knew from Starfleet’s encounter with the Borg at Wolf 359 that the indefatigable enemy used a cutting beam to carve off sections of the ships it battled and to extract those sections for study. But they’re done studying the Federation, he thought. As soon as our shields go down, they’ll simply slice us apart.

  “Shields down to seventy-one percent,” said Plante. “Seventy . . . sixty-five.”

  “Fire all weapons,” Sisko ordered. “Include the transphasic torpedo with the photons.” The crew of New York had utilized four upgraded torpedoes to destroy the third Borg vessel, leaving them with just one of the advanced weapons.

  “Aye,” said Cavanagh.

  Even through the noise and vibration of the Borg attack, Sisko felt the launch of the torpedoes through the deck plating. He peered at the viewscreen to watch the red bolts speed toward the Borg vessel. They reached their target quickly, detonating in several concentrated blasts, with a pair of phaser shots attempting to exact their own tolls. The green tractor beam collapsed first. A second later, both the red beam meant for the planet and the white cutting beam guttered and then went out.

  “Borg shields down to nineteen percent,” Cavanagh called out.

  As though loosed by New York’s attack, a torrent of green pulses suddenly shot from two points on the cube. “Hang on,” Sisko said, tightening his own grip on the back of the command chair. The bolts rocked the ship. Barely able to stay on his feet, Sisko looked upward and through the transparent-aluminum dome that crowned the bridge. Through it, he could see the threatening form of the Borg cube, spewing forth its destructive venom. “Jaix, get us out of here,” he yelled.

  “Our shields just failed,” Cavanagh said, the sound of fear tingeing her voice for the first time.

  She should be scared, Sisko thought. One more energy pulse, maybe two—

  “Jaix!” Sisko shouted, looking over at the conn, seeing the ensign’s fingers flying across his controls.

  “Sir, the helm is not responding,” Jaix said, his voice on the edge of panic.

  “Power conduits burned out when the transphasic shields overloaded,” Plante said, searching for answers at ops.

  “Reroute to auxiliary power,” Sisko said. “I don’t care if you have to get out and push, get this ship moving.” Dreading what he would see, he peered up once more through the bridge’s transparent dome. The Borg cube seemed to hover above them, like the head of a hammer about to be brought down with crushing force.

  But nothing happened.

  “What’s—”

  The Borg vessel suddenly flew apart in a tremendous explosion. Sisko looked back down at the main viewer to see sections of the cube hurtling in all directions, and beyond it, the apparent source of its destruction: James T. Kirk. He turned and sprinted the few paces over to the tactical station. “How long?” he asked, gazing down at one of the readouts, where numbers that could only be velocities tracked the fragments of the Borg ship twisting through space.

  “Twenty seconds,” Cavanagh calculated.

  “Jaix?” Sisko said, knowing that the thrusters would not be able to move the ship out of danger in time. “Plante?”

  “Power junctions have fused shut,” said Plante. “I can’t complete a circuit for auxiliary power.”

  Sisko dashed back to the command chair, where he reached for the intraship comm control on the right arm. “All hands,” he told the New York crew, “brace for impact.” On the viewer, smaller and larger sections of the demolished cube turned end over end, several sizable fragments growing large on the screen as they drew nearer.

  Sisko looked upward again, through the bridge’s hemispherical peak, in time to see a large fragment of the Borg vessel’s outer structure slam into the top of New York’s primary hull. The sound of the collision boomed through the air, a sound like no other Sisko had ever heard on a starship. Even as he stumbled and fell to his knees, he kept his gaze locked on the transparent dome. A crack appeared, followed by an electric-blue flare as an emergency force field automatically snapped into place.

  The ship bucked again, and again, coincident with the roars of other impacts on the hull. “Three more pieces,” said Cavanagh. “None of them as big
as the first.”

  Sisko rode out the crashes of the Borg debris against New York’s hull, then rose back to his feet. He padded down to the front portion of the bridge. On the main viewscreen, the starfield turned slowly. “Status,” Sisko said as he stepped up between ops and the conn.

  “The ship is tumbling toward Alonis,” said Ensign Jaix, “but I can stop us with thrusters.”

  “Do it,” Sisko ordered, then looked to Lieutenant Commander Plante.

  “Four hull breaches reported, all contained,” Plante said. “But one of the Borg fragments penetrated the starboard nacelle.”

  “So the warp drive is out,” Sisko concluded.

  “And the impulse engines,” Plante added. She peered up at him from her station. “We’re dead in space.”

  U.S.S. James T. Kirk advanced on the fifth Borg vessel. After Vaughn’s crew had destroyed the first two cubes and had helped their counterparts aboard New York finish off the fourth, only two of the enemy ships remained. Both had opened fire on Alonis.

  “Where’s the Cutlass?” Vaughn asked. He sat in his command chair, while his first officer continued to stand in at tactical. After Nurse Ni-Jalikreii had treated Lieutenant Magrone, she had overseen his transfer to sickbay.

  “The Cutlass is still fighting the sixth cube,” Dunlap replied from the ops console.

  Vaughn nodded. He could take his ship to join Cutlass’s battle, but both of the remaining cubes needed to be stopped. Though it would take longer than for a multiplicity of ships, even a single Borg vessel could lay waste to the population of Alonis. And since arriving, the fifth cube had gone completely untouched by the Starfleet force.

  “The instant we’re in range, open fire,” Vaughn said. The crew had used their final two transphasic torpedoes in the barrage they had launched against the fourth Borg vessel, leaving them with only their standard complement of weapons. They would randomize the frequencies of their phaser blasts, but Vaughn understood that victory would likely require more radical measures.

  “Fifteen seconds,” T’Larik said, interpreting the data from her conn readouts.

  Vaughn eyed the magnified image of the fifth Borg cube on the main viewer, his gaze drawn to the red beam cutting through the atmosphere and into the waters of Alonis. He felt a visceral response. Down on the planet, he knew, people were dying—dying for no better reason than that a number of Federation citizens had dared to resist the attempts of the Collective to assimilate them.

  Hatred welled up within Vaughn. Though he grew up with a wanderlust and a yearning for exploration, his dreams had been interrupted too often by death. After decades in intelligence, years in which he had actively safeguarded the hopes and desires of trillions, he’d finally found the courage for genuine self-examination, and the strength to revisit his own youthful aspirations. Leaving the shadows of both the intelligence business and his own misguided attempts at self-preservation, he had joined Deep Space 9 as Kira Nerys’s first officer, had taken Defiant on a months-long journey of discovery into the Gamma Quadrant, and had along the way rediscovered the core of his own being. His three years aboard DS9 and, to an even greater extent, his two years leading the crew of James T. Kirk had been the best of his career—of his life.

  But a combination of circumstance and necessity had brought him and his crew to Alonis. Reports from across the Federation painted a grim picture of the Borg invasion. Whole worlds and populations had already been devastated, and the two remaining cubes sought to visit the same fate on the planet and people below. Whatever the cost, Vaughn could not allow that to happen.

  “Five seconds,” T’Larik said.

  Vaughn saw the Borg vessel unleash its weaponry in a confusing array of colors. Red and white beams flashed toward Kirk alongside green pulses of energy. Vaughn had just enough time to think that he had never read any reports of such an attack, but then the Collective had little experience against transphasic shields. Clearly, they sought to adapt.

  The Borg salvo landed even before James T. Kirk could fire its own weapons. Inertial dampers failed for a moment as the ship pitched violently backward. The kick threw Vaughn from his chair. He landed hard against the deck and felt his right shoulder give way. He opened his eyes to darkness, and in that second, thought that he had been blinded. But then he picked out the glow of the conn, and then of other stations around the bridge. Only the emergency lighting had failed.

  Vaughn heard Rogeiro’s voice, and it took the captain a moment to decipher his words through the din: “Firing weapons!”

  Vaughn neither felt nor heard Kirk’s phasers and photon torpedoes let loose, but when he looked up at the main viewscreen, he saw a volley of destructive energy smash into the near side of the Borg cube.

  Almost smash into it, Vaughn thought, even as Rogeiro called out his own verdict.

  “No effect.” The Borg shields held against the Starfleet weaponry.

  “Keep firing!” Vaughn yelled, though as he looked at the main viewer, Kirk’s phasers and photon torpedoes showed no signs of abating. Vaughn tottered to his feet, but as he stepped forward in the dim light provided only by the instrumentation around the bridge, he tripped and went down again. He landed with his legs draped over a body.

  “Transphasic shields down to seventy percent,” said Rogeiro. The Borg learned quickly.

  Vaughn pulled himself from atop Lieutenant Commander T’Larik, then reached down and felt for a pulse at her neck. He found her heart rate, weak but present, obviously slowed by whatever injury had felled her. When he pulled his hand back, his fingertips came away tacky with T’Larik’s blood.

  The ship rocked again as the Borg weapons stormed the shields and once more momentarily disrupted the inertial dampers. Vaughn climbed to his feet, then stepped over to the conn and dropped into T’Larik’s chair.

  “Shields down to forty-eight percent,” Rogeiro called out. “Phasers and photon torpedoes ineffective.”

  Vaughn searched the displays for the information he needed. He knew what he had to do, and realized that he’d prepared himself for his moment ever since the assignment to protect the people of Alonis had been handed down to him and his crew. He reached up and altered Kirk’s course, decelerating as he set the ship on a deep curve to port, away from the fifth cube. The Borg weapons tracked with them, continuing to devour James T. Kirk’s defenses.

  “Shields at thirty-six percent,” said Rogeiro.

  Vaughn punched in a sharp course change, then shifted the engines back to full impulse and tacked hard to starboard. The bridge quieted at once as the Borg weapons lost their target. Vaughn adjusted the ship’s path again, turning to port and then quickly straightening out. He looked up to see the Borg vessel nearly filling the main viewscreen.

  The cube’s weapons shut down for a moment, then bounded out again and once more caught Kirk. Vaughn heard an explosion somewhere behind him on the bridge, but he ignored it. Instead, he monitored his ship’s course, making small adjustments as the Borg weapons took their toll not just on Kirk’s shields but on all its systems, including the impulse drive.

  The ship rumbled as though it might come apart, and still Vaughn kept it aimed directly at the center of the cube. He watched intently as the distance indicator plummeted toward zero, his hand on the conn’s pitch control. In his head, he estimated the timing of his desperate maneuver. At the last possible moment, he pulled Kirk’s bow upward, taxing the inertial dampers with the rapid movement.

  The Borg weapons broke off again, leaving only the strained whine of the impulse engines to fill the bridge. Vaughn peered at the main viewer in time to see the cube disappear from the bottom of the screen, and for a brief but terrible interval, he thought he had miscalculated.

  Then James T. Kirk collided with the Borg vessel.

  Vaughn had never heard a louder or more horrifying sound. The inertial dampers failed utterly, and Vaughn flew from his seat at the conn. He felt pain in his knees as they struck the console, then saw the stars and a tiny arc of Alo
nis rushing toward him. He had only enough time to think of his daughter—Prynn!—before his head plowed into the viewscreen. Then he collapsed to the deck, motionless.

  Sisko watched helplessly from the command chair as the drama played out on New York’s main viewer. Battered by the fifth Borg cube, its shields failing, its weapons firing futilely, James T. Kirk executed a suicidal dash toward the enemy vessel. Voices and movements quieted around the bridge, and Sisko became vaguely aware that the crew around him also looked on, for the moment halting their efforts—no longer to continue fighting, but simply to keep New York intact. They all watched as Kirk pursued its kamikaze run.

  At the last second, the Akira-class vessel swept upward, its primary hull passing over the Borg vessel by the narrowest of margins. Kirk’s warp nacelles, depending from the ship’s aft section, sheared off as they impacted the upper edge of the cube, the drive structures shattering and then exploding. The red beam aimed at the planet ceased, and a series of smaller blasts bloomed on the surface of the Borg vessel. Its main drive amputated, the crippled primary hull of Kirk spun away into space, clearly no longer under power.

  “Captain,” Cavanagh said from the tactical station, her voice low. Before she could say more, the Borg resumed their attack on Alonis, the red energy beam beating down once more on the planet. Perhaps a third of the cube had been demolished by Kirk’s attack, and still its remaining drones sought the annihilation of a people they had likely never even met.

  Sisko felt helpless, unable to lead the battered hulk of the starship he commanded back into battle. But a sense of abandonment also closed in around him, as though Vaughn had somehow chosen to leave him alone out there, a powerless witness to the eventual obliteration of an entire civilization. Sisko could think of no orders to give the crew, no words of solace to lead them forward.

  On the main viewscreen, far past the fifth Borg cube, another explosion intruded on the eternal night of space. Sisko waited, not wanting to ask the question to which he already knew the answer. Cavanagh made the announcement, her voice barely above a whisper.