SINGULARITY 08 By HECK Comments to heck@heckster.co.uk CHAPTER EIGHT THE ELEVATED AMBIENT temperature was taking its toll on some of the party, as they crouched in the cramped Jefferies Tube. The heat and humidity were energy sapping and almost stifling. Deanna Troi dabbed with a handkerchief at the rivulet of perspiration that ran uncomfortably between her breasts. The journey through the Jefferies Tubes had been a hard slog. Not far now, she told herself. Her empathic senses told her that, although they were suffering from the heat as much as she was, there was a sense of quiet determination among the team. The schematics on Riker's padd showed they had entered a Tube that passed adjacent to engineering. He pointed this out to Picard, who called a halt. "Geordi", Riker whispered, holding the plans so the Chief Engineer could see. "Where's the hatch we want?" "Right here". Laforge tapped a finger on the screen. "It opens in corridor C, right around the corner from the main doors". "OK. So, now we wait fifteen minutes. Right, Captain?" "Right, Number One". Picard indicated the floor. "Make yourselves comfortable, ladies and gentlemen. Worf and Brenhya should be with us very soon". The two in question moved cautiously along the corridor toward the Deck Eight access hatch and ducked inside. There was insufficient room for them to move abreast, so they progressed in file, Worf leading the way with phaser in hand. Brenhya followed, crouching in the limited headroom, careful not to let her bundle of weapons bang against the walls. They made rapid progress through the cramped spaces, meeting no opposition. Worf looked back from time to time, to see how his companion was faring under the heavy load. Her body glistened with sweat, but she smiled to tell him she was doing just fine. They reached the foot of yet another ladder, one deck above engineering, and set off along yet another Tube. This Tube seemed somewhat narrower than others, and they found themselves having to almost crawl. Worf came to a halt as they came to a junction in the maze of crawlspaces, edging his head around the corner to see that the way was clear. A bright blue beam sang as it speared through the air, missing Worf's head by inches. He jerked back into comparative safety. "Four of them", he said, in response to Brenhya's unasked question. "I will try to take them out with my phaser". Brenhya nodded her agreement. Worf coiled himself ready for action. He launched himself across the junction, phaser spitting twice as he moved. Two drones vaporised instantly. The light of battle in his eyes, Worf leaned around the corner and fired again. His shot cleaved the air beside his target's arm, but missed it's mark. A section of the wall behind the drones exploded in a shower of sparks. Annoyance showed on the Klingon's face. The more shots he wasted, the more chance there was that the Borg's personal shields would adapt, rendering his weapon useless. Brenhya risked a brief glance around the corner. A blast from a Borg weapon coruscated past her eyes, searing her eyebrows with the heat of it's passage, and leaving her dazzled and blinking. "Are you all right?" Worf's solicitous voice was full of concern. "I'm fine. Just seeing spots in front of my eyes". She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "OK in a second". The Lieutenant peered round the corner again. The drones were now less than twenty-five yards away. He shot another drone, but the single survivor kept on coming. He fired again. A squareish, transparent shield flashed into existent, protecting the drone and rendering Worf's phaser ineffective. With a growl, the Klingon retreated behind the wall again. "His shield has adapted". "What does that mean?" "It is too complicated to explain quickly. Suffice to say that my phaser is now inoperative". The venom in his voice laid the blame firmly on the useless thing in his hand. "Not to worry". Brenhya smiled as she laid down her bundle and took her bat'leth in hand. Worf watched her with curiosity. He thought she would be hard pressed to use the curved weapon effectively in the restricted space on the Tube. One of Brenhya's many skills was that she could throw a missile with all but supernatural accuracy. The bat'leth was not made for throwing, but she was nothing if not inventive. Her hand closed around one of the hand grips. Her long arm went back, and came round in a fast, sweeping arc. The five kilo blade, propelled by the extraordinary power of the warrior's arm, flashed as it coptered along the corridor. The drone looked up, no surprise registering on his impassive face as he fired at the whirling, glittering projectile. He missed. The bat'leth took him full in the mouth, slicing through his face towards, due to the angle of his body, the back of his neck. His head, minus the lower jaw, parted company with his body and bounced down the Jefferies Tube. Twin jets of oily-looking blood hosed from the ruined remains of his neck and lower face, spraying the walls red as the body exsanguinated in a matter of seconds. "You throw well", Worf rumbled. Brenhya inclined her head, accepting the compliment. "We must hurry", Worf continued. "They will be alerted to our presence. We must reach the captain as soon as we can". Their route led them past the decapitated corpse, and Brenhya plucked the fallen bat'leth out of the mess. She wiped it on the body. In the confined space, they had difficulty avoiding the welter of gore that coated the walls and floor. The footing was slippery, and they could not avoid becoming smeared with Borg blood, the soles of Worf's boots and Brenhya's sandals leaving red footprints to mark their passage. They were a little concerned about this but it was unavoidable, so they chose to ignore it. From there on, their progress was unimpeded. The Jefferies Tubes varied in diameter, so that sometimes they could walk almost erect while, at other times, they were forced to all but crawl. The heat and persistent exertion had an effect, even on Brenhya. Her soft leather garments were so darkened and soaked with sweat that they could have filled a small bucket, had they been wrung out. Worf was faring even worse. His Klingon constitution was almost the equal of the warrior woman's, but he was experiencing a raging thirst and was close to dehydration. His heritage, from a species that evolved on a cold, unforgiving world, predisposed him to heat stress, and he abandoned his uniform shirt and jacket in an effort to avoid overheating. At last they closed on their objective. They rounded a curve, to face the pointed phasers of the assault team, who crouched in the cramped tube. A collective sigh escaped the lips of each of them, as they recognised each other. Carefully, making no unnecessary sound, Brenhya placed her bundle of weapons on the floor, opening it to allow the team to select for themselves. "Has anybody any water?", was her greeting. She had recognised Worf's need, although he himself would not have mentioned it. The gratitude on his face when Deanna Troi handed him a flask, however, was evident. He took a long pull, before handing it to Brenhya. "Captain", Deanna whispered. "We should rest awhile before making an assault". Picard gave a grim smile as he selected the Denebian shzachtal, acknowledging Troi's unspoken suggestion that Brenhya, and Worf in particular, be allowed a moment to recuperate. "Agreed". He indicated the stains on their bodies. "I take it that is not your blood?" "No, Sir", Worf replied. "We met some opposition. We should assume that the Borg are aware of us, and may be ready for an attack". "Acknowledged. Suggestions, anybody?" "A frontal assault", Worf said. "No way, Worf". Geordi LaForge was emphatic. "If they're ready for us, they'll just mow us down". "You did not let me finish". A touch of irritation showed in the Klingon's voice. "We would set a phaser to overload by the door. In the confusion after the explosion, we will gain an advantage." Picard, still immaculate in his uniform, despite the sweat trickling down his neck, considered for a moment. "Your idea has merit, Worf. Do you agree, Number One?". Riker nodded. "Very well. That is the plan, then. Brenhya, I would appreciate it if you would hang back, at first". "Wait a minute". Brenhya went on the defensive. "I'm not being left out of this. These Borgers are as much a threat to me as you". "You will not be left out", Picard explained. "But the Borg have phased energy weapons. As skilled as you are, they could slice you in half from yards away. No, I have another approach in mind for you". He edged closer to the woman. "Inside engineering, things will be difficult. The Borg will have reconfigured the whole department to their own specifications. Even Mr LaForge will not recognise anything, other than the basic layout. So I cannot give you directions. But one thing we do know. There will be distribution nodes. These are pyramidal shaped, lit with green, and may be found on the walls or suspended beneath various surfaces. "Once we have fired a number of times, the Borg will adapt to our phaser frequencies. All you need to know about that is that our weapons will then be useless, and it will devolve to hand-to-hand fighting. That is where you come in. We will alert you. Your job will be to take out as many nodes as you can find. Is that clear?" "Clear enough. What good will it do?" "The nodes co-ordinate the actions of the drones. They link together by the use of these, and without them will become disoriented and purposeless". Worf laid a hand on Brenhya's wide shoulder. He had obviously fully recovered from his ordeal and, although he continued to sweat freely. his eyes held the fire of anticipation. "It will be a glorious battle!" Brenhya patted his hand and flashed one of her stunning smiles. "Whatever happens in the next few minutes, I want you to know that I am proud to have met you". She blessed them all with her smile. "That goes for all of you". "Mr Data", Riker said as he acknowledged Brenhya's tribute with a smile of his own. "Will you do the honours?" Data crouched by the hatch, opening it very slightly to steal a glance down the corridor. He disappeared through, and the team knew a tense minute while awaiting his return. It was only a brief wait however, before he reappeared and shut the hatch behind him. Riker glanced round at every body. "Ready, people". It was not a question. As one, they gathered around the hatch. Deanna squatted at Brenhya's side, phaser at the ready. "I'm going to watch your back", she explained. "Until they adapt, anyway". A muffled but nonetheless loud explosion rolled through the corridors. The Starfleet officers burst through the hatch and stormed the engineering department doors, phaser rifles in one hand, bladed weapons in the other. The vertically opening slide door hung twisted and ruined, and smoke obscured the entrance A greenish glow came from within. A couple of bodies could be seen, lying just inside the door, and a few figures staggered about inside. Picard's crew rushed through. Deanna and Brenhya hung back, observing from several yards. The warrior held her bat'leth casually, while tension showed in every fibre of the counsellor's body as she held her hand phaser forward and the Arcturian trident at her side. As the smoke cleared, the two women watched as bright flashes of phaser fire lanced through the murk. The Borg fought in total silence, in contrast to the shouted instructions that passed between the Starfleet officers. A body fell through the doors, and Deanna started to go to it's aid. Brenhya's strong hand restrained her, and the counsellor realised that the corpse was Borg. A figure rushed out of the gloom. This time, Deanna's instincts were right on the button. It was another Borg, and her phaser nailed him as he rushed towards them. He vaporised on the run. Brenhya laid a hand on her shoulder. "Well done", she congratulated. A frown creased her forehead as she noticed the stricken expression on Troi's face. "What's the matter?" Troi sobbed once and swallowed hard to gather her emotions. "That used to be Ensign Xylo". She rubbed her cheeks vigorously with her palms. "I counselled him regularly, for the last six months. Such a gentle soul. The Borg take so much more from you than your life". The grief in Deanna's voice touched a chord in Brenhya, and she held the counsellor close for a brief second, trying to infuse her with some of her own strength. Some of the noise inside engineering subsided, and was replaced by the clash of metal on metal. Brenhya gave Deanna's shoulder a quick squeeze. "Sounds like I'm up". She hefted the bat'leth, giving her new friend a wide smile. "See you later". "Brenhya, now!" Riker's yell came as she was already sprinting toward the ruined door. The engineering department was not as big as she had imagined it to be. Well laid out work stations and panels filled the space for the most part, and the only sense of real size she got was from a high vaulted area containing a swirling column of - something - that was barricaded behind stout rails. What she did not know was that the equipment and machinery was now integrated and corrupted with Borg technology. But she had her instructions, find and destroy the node things, and was intent upon it. On light feet she rushed into the space. Just inside the door, a drone was locked in combat with a red-shirted ensign, trying to bring it's assimilation tubules to bear. Brenhya slashed her blade across the drone's back as she passed, severing his spinal column. She ran on without a second glance. A node was attached to the top of one of the work surfaces. Her large hand closed round it and, with a single wrench, ripped it from it's fixings in a shower of electrical sparks. Her lightning reflexes saved her as she ducked a blast from a drone at almost point blank range. She spun on her heel and grabbed his weapon attachment, ramming it into the hole where the node had been. Several million volts shot through his body. He jerked spasmodically as the current fried both his organic and mechanical components. He grimaced horribly, teeth showing translucent as they were lit from behind, wisps of black smoke curling from his ears, eyes and mouth. Picard was struggling with another drone, his shzachtal useless on the floor at his feet. The drone was trying to bring his weapon to bear, and the Captain fended it off while at the same time keeping the other hand, with it's sinister tubules, at bay. Brenhya stepped up behind the drone, took his chin in one strong hand, and with a sharp jerk snapped his neck with little apparent effort. The drone slumped bonelessly to the floor. Jean-Luc acknowledged her help with a grim smile as he picked up his weapon. She gave him a quick wink, and returned to her task The figure of a drone, his ropy entrails spilling out across the deck, fell across her path. A quick glance showed her Worf, bloody bat'leth in hand and a wild look in his eyes, snarling as the heat of battle course through his veins. Then he was gone, launching an attack on yet another Borg. Brenhya found two more nodes in quick succession, and smashed them with the Klingon blade. She began to see the value in what she was doing, as she noticed the Borg becoming less co-ordinated and increasingly sluggish. Warrior instincts took over momentarily, and she drove the wickedly curved blade up and back, to skewer a drone that was coming stealthily up behind her. The Borg was dead before Brenhya even realised she had killed him. She found a fourth node, attached almost secretly under a work bench. She bent down to get a hand to it. A small gasp escaped her lips. Her hand flew to her neck, where she felt twin needle points pierce her flesh. Her fingers closed round an armoured hand, and she yanked the offending tubules from her neck, leaving behind two little runnels of blood that ran down her neck. She felt a little strange, but not at all debilitated as she yanked the drone around in font of her. His tubules had not yet retracted, and she tore them from the back of his hand, ripping open the flesh as she did so. The bat'leth fell from her fingers as she took hold of the drone's throat in her steely fingers. Crouching slightly, her other hand closed about his plated groin and the muscles of her back and arms coiled and turned iron hard as, with a single heave, she hoisted him high above her head. She cast around for somewhere to dispose of her burden. The swirling, seething column of light and energy seemed to be a suitable place to dump him. She turned and approached the column, the struggling figure of the Borg helpless in her powerful grasp, and prepared to hurl him into the vortex. "Brenhya!! No!". The urgency in Geordi LaForge's voice was unmistakable. "Throw him in there, we're all gone!" The warrior woman nodded. With a grunt, she brought the drone down hard across her raised knee, snapping his spine like a twig, and tossed the body aside like so much garbage. Her foot lashed out under the workbench, smashing the node into a thousand pieces. She retrieved her weapon and looked about her. The Borg were still fighting, although several of them staggered slightly. There must be more nodes. In the vaulted area, where the column of energy stood, her eyes alighted upon a walkway, about halfway up the wall. The floor was transparent, and she could see two Starfleet bodies lying on the clear surface. Four Borg were up there, firing down at the melee below, and glowing green on the wall was another node. She could see no stairs between the levels, but a small platform and a system of chains and gears seemed to be the link between the two. She stood on the platform. Nothing happened. The floor above was over nine feet high. Her long legs bunched under her, and the tremendous muscles of her thighs propelled her upwards in an explosion of stupendous power. Her steely fingers hooked over the edge of the floor above, and her magnificent biceps rolled up into rock hard mounds as she levered herself up onto the floor above and gained her feet in one easy action. She was aware of a dull ache in her neck at the point where the assimilation tubules had penetrated her golden skin. She shook her head and ignored it. One of the drones turned to intercept her. He aimed his weapon-arm and the air sizzled as a beam of energy sliced toward her head. She swerved to the side, the beam splitting the air inches from her shoulder. The bat'leth sliced upwards, taking the drone full in the groin and neatly bisecting his body as far up as his diaphragm. But the blade lodged tight in his armour and was pulled from her hand as the Borg fell. Undaunted, she snatched the slim stiletto from her wrist guard. An underhand throw, with the force of her powerful hand behind it, lodged the blade deep in the throat of one of the remaining three drones. She was upon the other two before they had a chance to react. A hard elbow smashed into the face of one, driving his optical implant deep into his head, fatally destroying the brain tissue behind it. She pushed him aside, and by the time he hand hit the floor she had grabbed the weapon-arm of the last drone. A mighty twist from her muscular hand broke his radius and ulna, almost wrapping the two bones around each other. The Borg did not, of course, react to the pain, but brought his other hand round in a sweeping arc that would have taken much of the fight out of her. But it did not connect. She blocked the blow with her forearm, and in the same motion split his lip with the edge of her hand. The impact rocked him on his feet. Before he could recover, she got her hand under his crotch and boosted him off his feet and over guard rail. Arms and legs flailing, he fell the nine feet to land on his back, right across the rail that guarded the swirling vortex. His body folded unnaturally, and he lay draped like a discarded blanket. The woman ran around the transparent balcony to the node. It was about seven feet up the wall, and she took it out with a single high kick. Like a group of clockwork toys whose springs all ran down at the same time, the Borg all came to a halt. Some toppled over where they stood; others remained standing, arms and heads hanging loosely. With a final roar, Worf's blade sliced the head from a Borg drone, the Klingon unable to stop the blow as the drone staggered to a halt. Oily red blood sprayed across the Lieutenant, covering him in gore. He made a fearsome figure. A deathly silence fell. Some of the younger Starfleet personnel sagged against the work stations or into the chairs. Others just stood and stared at the carnage about them, hardly believing that they had survived. Of the fourteen people that had assayed into the battle, nine remained alive. Up on the balcony, Brenhya leaned on the rail and looked down. "Is that it?", she called to Worf. "Yes!" The Klingon's eyes were still afire with battle lust. "We are victorious! It was a glorious battle!" "Mr Worf!" Jean-Luc Picard's voice held a rebuke. Worf was suitably admonished. The Captain turned his face up to Brenhya. "You have our gratitude. It is doubtful that we would have survived without your help". A look of concern crossed his face. "Your neck. What is wrong?" Her hand went to her throat. Her fingers found a livid swelling, hot and tender to the touch, where the tubules had penetrated. Her brows knitted. "I don't know. One of the Borgers stuck my neck with something. It's probably nothing" But she was beginning to feel a little light headed. The swelling throbbed a little, and was painful to touch, but apart from a dull ache it was not causing her any pain. She became aware of a slight swimming sensation, and her vision blurred a little. "Now that I come to think about it ..." She turned away from the rail, and made her way to the elevator. In two steps, her head swam and she lost all visual perception. Her knees turned to water, and she felt herself sinking to the floor. Her last conscious awareness was the voice of Picard directing Data to rush to her aid.