Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of War! (Part IV)
The lead cube lost most of its stabilizers from the impact of the blast. It spun slowly, but uncontrollably along the all three axes. An entire corner of the cube, roughly an eighth of the ship was simply gone.
The Enterprise itself was forced to alter course and dive to avoid being damaged in the wake of the weapon used. The shockwave hit them regardless, and the Enterprise was thrown back away from the cube.
“Report! Just what the hell was that?” Picard screamed, pulling himself back into the chair he had been thrown from.
Geordi scrambled to his terminal and started reviewing the logs.
“Sir… That came from the Romulan Warbird!”
“OPEN A CHANNEL TO THEM!!!” he screamed, his blood boiling.
Admiral Tomalak appeared on the main viewer smiling, apparently oblivious that he nearly destroyed the Enterprise along with the Borg cube.
“Need something Captain?” asked the Admiral mockingly.
“Firstly, I expressly forbade you to fire on the lead cube while we were trying to rescue our party onboard. SECOND… That was not a Romulan weapon you fired. What did you do, Admiral?”
“Captain, Captain… Don’t you see that I saved your life? Why, that cube was about to destroy you when we intervened, entirely at of the goodness of our hearts.”
“You used magic, didn’t you?” Picard accused, knowing full well the answer.
“We simply took the opportunity to learn more about what this fight was all about and how best to succeed. You would have, and have done, the same in your position, Captain.”
“Your stupidity nearly cost us everything! Q is onboard that cube! If he’s captured or killed, the game is over, Admiral. Restrain your dog. When this is over, Don’t be surprised if Q stops you or I or anyone from access to magical science.”
A flash of green impacted into both ships. Each vessel shook under the pressure from the weapons fired by the other cubes.
“I’m afraid we shall need to deal with this later, Captain. As you can see, we have a fight to finish.”
With that, the admiral closed the channel abruptly, leaving a red-faced Captain Picard behind.
Onboard the Romulan Warbird, rather than angry, Tomalak was overjoyed at the situation.
“Well done, Lieutenant! Well done!”
Lieutenant Kitara bowed slightly in acknowledgement of her accomplishment.
“How soon can we fire the weapon again?” the admiral asked, excitement building readily.
“It will take more time to absorb enough of the magic particles into the ship’s systems before we can fire another volley. But the longer we store up energy, the more powerful the blast can be. However, it will require at least an hour to recharge the capacitors to the level we just fired with.”
Tomalak didn’t like the idea of one hour delays between shots. He would have to plan his attacks strategically. “Let me know the moment we can fire again.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Chrysalis and Luna stood in horror of the scene before them. Discord lay against a wall, hoisted off the ground by the pipe sticking clean through his chest. The pipe was positioned straight through the middle of the creature. Nopony could have survived such a wound.
“Ow-wee!”
Twin stunned faces gaped at the creature suddenly coming back to life in front of them.
Discord shook his head, cracked his neck from one side to the other, then scratched the area around the pipe.
The two ponies’ jaws dropped to the floor simultaneously.
“Shouldn’t you be dead?” Chrysalis asked, looking him up and down for anything that could have possibly explained this.
“Why? Did you think a little pipe could hurt me?” He pushed himself off of the pipe, landing on his feet as though he had merely hopped down from a barstool. He stretched out and cracked his back some more.
“That pipe went straight through your heart!” Luna protested. “By all accounts, you should not be alive.”
“Oh pish posh!” said Discord, waving his hands in dismissal. “I would never keep my vital organs in such an exposed place.”
“Then where…” Chrsyalis tried to ask, but merely trailed off as her imagination completely failed to provide any possible explanation.
“Now, now, a girl never tells! Shall we adjourn to a more hospitable locale?”
Discord clicked his fingers and waited to reappear onboard the bridge of the Enterprise. To his surprise, he found himself and the two ponies still standing onboard the Borg cube.
“Oh poo!” Discord sulked. “The pipe most have hit my teleportation gland. I knew I should have put that somewhere else!”
“So what do we do now?” asked Luna.
“I guess it has to be the old fashioned way.” Discord tapped his little comm. badge from Picard. “Oh Captain, my Captain. It would seem we’ve hit a bit of a snag and will need some assistance from our gracious host.”
Picard’s voice came through the comm. garbled from static. “I’m a little busy at the moment, Q. Can’t you transport yourself back?”
“I’m afraid that capability has been momentarily blocked.”
“We still can’t beam you out of there until you’re closer to the hull, can you manage to get there?”
“Fortunately my exceptional sense of direction was unharmed. We are not that far now.”
“We need to launch soon, I’ll send the Defiant, but you’ll only have one chance. If you’re not there in ten minutes, you won’t be getting off that cube!”
“We’ll be there Captain,” Discord said confidently.
“Picard out.”
The channel closed. Discord looked at the two of them. “We may need to speed things up a bit. I may have exaggerated how close we really are.”
“What do you mean?” asked Chrysalis nervously. “How long will it take?”
“Between carrying Luna’s sister and my unfortunate wound, I’d say closer to twenty minutes.”
Both ponies gulped. “We better get moving then,” said Luna.
“Helm! Swirl around the cubes in a circle as fast as you can! Tactical! Fire at anything green except those friendly greens!”
Pinkie’s command was anything but conventional. The only advantage was, with such overwhelming randomness, the Borg found it difficult to adapt to her patterns.
“Pinkie, Captain Twilight says they’re nearly finished charging the core thing,” Rarity reported. “She wants to know when to release the trap.”
“How should I know?” asked Pinkie.
“I think she means to contact Picard and ask him, Pinkie,” Applejack commented.
“Oh! Okie-Doke! Rarity could get the shiny-domed person on the line?”
With the connection established, Picard stared back at them on the main screen.
“Are you nearly ready to deploy the weapon?” he asked.
Pinkie saluted for some reason. “Yes sir! Captain! Sir!”
“Good,” Picard replied, ignoring any outlandish antics from Pinkie. “We are going to attempt one last rescue of the stranded ponies onboard the cube. Get into position and try to avoid provoking the cubes. Launch as soon as you get the word. Then get the hell out of there. Understood?”
Pinkie crossed her chest with her hooves, waved them, and stuck one in her eye.
Picard was at a loss. “Is that a yes?”
Applejack cut across. “That’s a yes, Captain. We’ll be ready.”
“Good. Picard out.”
“What?” Pinkie asked in reply to the stares she was getting from Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash.
“Come about!” Commander K’vada yelled aboard the Klingon Bird of Prey. “We’re going through the bottleneck!”
“Sir?” one of his subordinates questioned, trying to understand the order.
“We’re going to run the gauntlet, right between the gap between those two cubes.”
“That’s suicide, Commander!”
“Do it or relieve yourself, Lieutenant!” K’vada barked.
“Aye, Sir.”
The Bird of Prey flipped around, straight on course to run between the two massive ships.
“Ready the disrupters, but do not fire. Wait until their soft underbelly is fully exposed.”
The crew had no idea what their leader was planning but was fairly sure it would involve a trip to Stovokor. The IKS Hegh’ta had fought many successful campaigns. Their commander had fought many more, but in all that time, the crew or its ship had never attempted such a risky maneuver. Before they neared even a hundred kilometers, the energy blasts of Borg weaponry shot out to greet them.
A tractor beam locked onto them, only to be released by a quantum torpedo from the Enterprise.
“Evade their pitiful attempts and hold her steady on course,” said the commander, eyeing the scene carefully.
The helmsman dodged shot after shot as it neared the gap. The Bird of Prey paled in comparison to the size of the massive cube, but in that lay their advantage.
“Prepare to fire, but wait for my command.”
All around them, shots burst forth from both cubes aimed straight at the ship. The Helmsman evaded most shots, but the occasional shot would impact the shields and drain them down to the bone.
“Arrgh! I said evade those weapons you useless bloodworm!”
The commander threw his helmsman out of the chair, and took control. He spun the ship wildly in a circle as blasts from the cubes missed the ship and impacted instead into the other cubes.
“Target those impact points and FIRE!!!” he screamed.
The red glow of the disruptors shot across filling the holes left by the impacts of the Borg’s friendly fire. Secondary explosions burst forth from each opening.
The crew cheered their commander who flipped over and headed for another run of the gauntlet. Once again the Borg shot out weapons to stop them and resulted in further damaging themselves in the process. The Hegh’ta helped the process along further opening their wounds for them.
“That’s how you take on two giants!” K’vada yelled, reveling in his great feat. He only just caught sight of it, but after it was too late to do anything about it. The gap between the two cubes closed together at one end until the two cubes smashed into one another.
“For the Empire!” was all K’vada could say before his ship impacted into the Borg ships. The explosion was massive up close with damage reeking havoc all around, but from the perspective of the two cubes in their entirety, it was nothing more than a large dent in their sides.
Across the comm. channel, Jadzia Dax’s voice echoed in the endless Borg corridor, of countless more Borg corridors. And within that maze of endless passages, Discord, Chrysalis, Luna, and the still unconscious Celestia were struggling to reach their goal.
“Chrysalis, Q, are you almost at the rendezvous point?” she asked hoping for the right answer.
“Not just yet,” Chrysalis admitted, huffing as she ran to get there. “We need a few more minutes.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have it. We simply can’t hold out any longer. You’ve got one more minute!”
Chrysalis and Luna shared a worrisome glance. In silent agreement, they nodded. Luna thrust the bulk of her sister up onto her back as best she could. Her wings spread wide, the powers of Nightmare Moon still flowing through her system. Chrysalis spread her own wings lifting off the ground and scooping up Discord in her hooves.
Discord did not fight. The two ponies shot off down the corridor at lightning speeds despite the weight of their burdens.
“Left… Right… Right… Left…” Discord directed as they sailed down hall after hall.
“Are you ready?” Dax asked again, sounding more urgent.
“Nearly… there…” Discord answered.
“I don’t have any more time!” Dax yelled.
The group entered a large chamber with a massive wall in front of them and bridges connecting all around. The massive wall was the inside of the hull.
“NOW!!!” Discord shouted.
The defiant decloaked as it soared by the lead cube.
“Get them out of there!” Captain Dax yelled from the Captain’s chair.
Within the transporter room the familiar glow of hazy blue particles began circulating along each transport pad. The outlines of three ponies and a Draconequus started to appear, not that the transporter chief had any idea was a Draconequus looked like.
The ship banged hard, sending its crew flying. The Defiant had taken a massive hit to the engines. The shields had failed and the damage was irreversible.
“Report!” Dax screamed through the haze of smoke from small fires that cropped up along the terminals in the rear of the bridge.
“Warp drive is offline, Engine 1 is offline, and Engine 2 is down to thirty percent power. We’ve lost weapons and shields.”
Dax wiped the streak of blood trickling down her forehead. “What about the Equestrians? Did we get them?”
The transport chief floundered about trying to get back to his terminal. The transporter had only reached fifty percent reconstitution.
“I’ve got their patterns, but I need more power!”
“Helm, get us out of here!” Dax commanded.
The Defiant limped away from the lead cube, which had turned and now set its sights on the crippled ship. An energy blast shot out only to impact into the saucer of the Enterprise instead, which swooped in to take the hit away from the Defiant.
“Defiant, are you alright?” Picard asked over the line.
“Thanks, Captain. You saved our asses. We need to make an emergency landing. Can you keep them off our backs?”
“We’ll do what we can. What about Q and the others? Have you got them?”
“We’ve got their patterns. We’re working to get the transporters some additional power.”
“Get clear as fast as you can. Picard out.”
Captain Twilight Sparkle had returned to the bridge. They were ready and maneuvering around evading enemy fire as best they could.
“Picard to Twilight, are you in position?”
“We’re ready, Captain,” Twilight replied confidently. “Just give us the word.”
“You have it. Launch your package then get the hell out of there. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Captain.”
The view screen cut off.
“Twilight to Reg, start the overload.”
“Yes, Captain,” said Reg looking around for what he needed to do next.
He connected the last of the loose connectors, feeding additional anti-protons to create an imbalance. From the terminal, he deactivated the safety net and set the warp core to progressive acceleration. In three minutes time, there was going to be a spectacular show for those who could see it.
“Overload started. Three minutes until core implosion.”
“Launch the core, Mr. Barclay,” ordered Captain Twilight.
“Aye, Ma’am.”
Reg activated the sequence on the console. All around the core, small locks unhooked and separated. With the core disconnected and the anti-grav unit taken offline within the protective shielding, the core floated loosely off the ground.
“Transporting the core now, Captain,” he reported as he activated the transporter.
The core started to fade behind the glow of the transporter field, but sparks immediately replaced them.
“No.”
The transporter sparked and popped as the circuits within overloaded and burnt out. Smoke rose from the fried hardware.
“No, no, no, no, no! Not Good! Captain, we have a problem.”
“What is it Reg?”
“The transporter’s offline, I can’t fix it in time!”
“WHAT!?” Twilight cried with simultaneous expressions of horror filling every other pony’s faces.
“What ever shall we do?” Rarity cried.
“You reckon Picard might come back in get us if we asked him?” Applejack offered.
“It’s worth a try. Twilight to Picard. Twilight to Picard! We’re in trouble. The overload has started, and we can’t get away. Can you help us?”
Static was the only reply.
Reg looked at the timer he had setup to keep track of the core implosion. Only another two minutes remained. He didn’t realize it was going to be the countdown to his own demise.
“We…your message…. We’re…oming…get you.” a garbled message came in. Twilight couldn’t recognize the voice.
The cubes detected the overload and attempted to leave. But their last command had been to protect the lead cube at all costs, and no new commands had arrived. The other two cubes latched onto the lead cube with tractor beams and attempted to maneuver away at sub light speeds. The lead cube was too badly damaged to survive at warp.
The U.E.S. Harmony sat adrift unable to flee with a warp core bent on the destruction of everything in its reach.
The five ponies left their posts and joined together in one last hug.
“It’ll be alright.” Twilight whispered to them. She didn’t actually believe that, but it was all she could manage.
Pinkie, ever the high spirit, lifted her head long enough to spot a blinking light on a terminal.
“What’s that?” she asked hopefully.
Twilight walked up to the terminal and examined the information.
“I don’t believe it!” she said, honestly shocked.
“What? What is it?” asked Rarity.
Before Twilight could reply a blue haze of transporter particles enveloped everypony, and they were whisked away from their doomed vessel.
When they rematerialized, Twilight was again astonished to find their rescuer was none other than the Andorian freighter captain.
“Welcome aboard,” Captain Stahn said, smiling. “Get us out of here!”
The freighter lurched into their highest warp possible, which wasn’t very fast at all, but it was enough. The freighter disappeared from normal space leaving behind the three cubes limping away from the Harmony, which appeared to be following them from behind.
Reg smiled to himself as he stepped off the transporter pad. With the ship having no place to escape to, he altered its course to follow the Borg.
The warp core levels reached critical aboard the ship. The last component of the puzzle, monoceros particles flooded the anti-matter mix chamber with a spell to bind them to every explosive reaction.
A bright flash of light shot out, with an empty darkness following suit. The darkness surround the cubes before twisting into a spiral. The three cubes were helpless in its wake. Everything outside the wake lay still and unbothered. Everything within was forced into the dark spiraling disk, pulling everything down into its center, a micro-singularity. As the cubes neared the center the pressure surrounding them burst through their shields and started compressing the hull. The cubes rapidly compressed themselves together into one condensed sphere. By the time they reached the center, that sphere was no bigger than six meters across.
The condensed ball disappeared along with the micro-singularity behind it. Space returned to normal as if the cubes had never been.