Part 14 (2/2)
She and the rest of her strike team keyed the replicated dampeners attached to their uniform equipment belts. Senior Petty Officer Antillea switched on several more of the small spheres and lobbed them down the pa.s.sageways and around corners. All around them, and everywhere one of the spheres rolled, the faint lighting inside the scout s.h.i.+p faltered and went black, along with any powered machinery or data relays.
The intimidating thunder of converging footsteps slowed. Looking out through the vast empty s.p.a.ce in the middle of the probe's hull, toward sections along its opposite side, sh'Aqabaa saw dozens more sites going dark. Then the entire probe shuddered, and darkness descended like a curtain drop.
”Seek and destroy,” sh'Aqabaa said, advancing toward the enemy, her finger poised in front of her rifle's trigger.
Then the Borg drones quickened their pace. In the uneven light of the flare plasma, shadows both ma.s.sive and misshapen crowded in her direction. As she turned the corner to her right, Antillea was at her left shoulder, while Rriarr and Hutchinson broke down the left corridor. In unison, they opened fire.
Muzzle flashes lit the pa.s.sageway like strobes, and the explosive chatter of the rifles was deafening. High-velocity monotanium rounds tore through the oncoming wall of Borg drones, spraying blood across the ones advancing behind them.
Gunfire echoed from every deck of the s.h.i.+p.
Another rank of drones fell, holes blasted through their centers of ma.s.s, vital organs liquefied by brutal projectiles. And still the next waves never faltered, never hesitated. Not a glimmer of fear or hesitation crossed their pale, mottled faces, and sh'Aqabaa knew they would never retreat or surrender. This was a battle to the death.
Her rifle clicked empty. A push of her left thumb against a b.u.t.ton ejected the empty magazine as her right hand plucked a fresh clip from her belt and slapped it into place.
In the fraction of a second it took her to reload, the drone in front of her charged, grabbed the barrel of her rifle with one hand, and forced it toward the overhead. His other hand shot forward, and sh'Aqabaa caught the glint of emerald light off a metallic blade. She twisted from the waist and pivoted, dodging a potentially fatal stab.
A staccato burst of gunfire flew past her and perforated the drone, who let go of her rifle as he collapsed backward.
Sh'Aqabaa nodded her appreciation to the Bolian officer who had fired the rescuing shot, then leveled her weapon and felled another rank of drones.
Lines of tracer rounds overlapped in the deep green twilight. Drowned in the buzzing clamor of the a.s.sault rifles were the distant alarums of struggle and flight from other sections of the s.h.i.+p. Can't let ourselves get pinned down, sh'Aqabaa reminded herself. Have to keep moving.
She shouted over the buzz-roar of her rifle. ”Second Squad! Advance, cover formation, double-quick time!”
Behind her, the second six-person team that had beamed in with hers hurried down a corridor perpendicular to the one in which she and the rest of First Squad were fighting. Within seconds, the rapid clatter of weapons fire reverberated from Second Squad's new position.
Then came an agonized caterwauling from behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. Rriarr had been impaled by a drone's deactivated drill, which had penetrated the Caitian's armored combat-operations uniform by sheer force.
A scaly hand shoved her to the right. ”Move, sir!”
As she slammed against the bulkhead, sh'Aqabaa saw Antillea suffer a killing jab that had been meant for sh'Aqabaa herself. A drone plunged a stationary but still razor-sharp rotary saw blade attached to the end of his arm into the Gnalish's throat. Antillea twitched and gurgled as blood sheeted from her rent carotid, but she still managed to squeeze off a final burst of weapons fire into the drone. Then the reptilian noncom and her killer fell dead at sh'Aqabaa's feet.
The Bolian ensign tried to provide sh'Aqabaa with covering fire, but she could see that he was beginning to panic.
Feeling the battle rage of her Andorian ancestry, sh'Aqabaa screamed a war cry and resumed firing, eschewing safe center-of-ma.s.s shots for single-round head shots. Each sharp crack of her rifle sent another bullet through another optical implant, terminated another drone, dropped another black-suited killing machine to the deck missing half its head. Then her rifle clicked empty again. She ejected the exhausted clip and jabbed the b.u.t.t of her rifle into the face of the drone charging at her, knocking him backward. Then she fired a round of flare gel into the face of the next-closest drone.
It bought her only half a second, but that was all she needed. She slammed a fresh magazine into her weapon and unloaded in three-round bursts on the remaining drones in front of her. When her third clip was empty, so was the corridor.
”Tane, collect Antillea's belt,” sh'Aqabaa told the Bolian, who nodded, despite his face being frozen in an expression of shock. Without a word, he kneeled beside the slain Gnalish, removed her equipment belt, and strapped it diagonally across his chest as if it were a bandolier.
On the other side of the intersection, Lieutenant Hutchinson was doing the same for Rriarr. Her backup, a Zaldan enlisted man, stood sentry, checking up and down the various pa.s.sageways for any sign of new attackers. The probe resounded with far-off gunfire.
Loading a fresh clip into her TR-116, sh'Aqabaa stepped beside Hutchinson. ”Ready?”
”Yes, sir,” Hutchinson said. ”Now what?”
”Reload, regroup, and go forward,” said sh'Aqabaa.
Hutchinson and the others fell into step behind sh'Aqabaa, who led them back up the main pa.s.sage. Second Squad was several intersections ahead of them, apparently having made quick work of whatever they'd encountered along the way. ”Check all corners,” sh'Aqabaa said to her team. ”Take no chances.”
Around the first few corners, they found only dead drones. As they got closer to Second Squad, the area looked clear. The pa.s.sage was open on their left to a wide, yawning s.p.a.ce in the middle of the probe. In its center, on an elevated structure, was the secure area where the cube's vinculum was housed.
Ahead of sh'Aqabaa and First Squad, a spark flashed off the edge of the partial left wall. She and the others pressed against the bulkhead to their right and crouched for cover.
”Stray shot?” Hutchinson speculated.
”Maybe,” sh'Aqabaa said, peering into the shadows on the far side of the s.h.i.+p. ”Be careful, and watch the flanks.” She stood and led her team forward to catch up with Second Squad.
A burning sledgehammer impact in sh'Aqabaa's gut knocked her backward before she heard the crack of gunfire or saw the flash of tracer rounds slamming into her and her team.
Then she was on the deck, doubled over and struggling to hold her abdomen together. A sticky blue mess like the core of a smashed kolu fruit spilled between her fingers.
She heard heavy footfalls drawing closer, and she wondered if it was the Borg coming to finish them off.
I won't be a.s.similated, she promised herself. She fumbled with one blood-slicked hand to pry a chemical grenade from her belt. She barely had the strength to pull it free.
Dark shapes hove into view above her.
Sinking into a dark and silent haze, she decided it didn't matter anymore. It's over, she thought. Her strength faded, and the grenade slipped from her grasp, along with consciousness.
The oppressive monotony of the Borg probe's interior was one of the most disorienting environments Lonnoc Kedair had ever seen, and the near-total darkness enforced by the energy dampeners only made it more so. Every time her eyes began to adjust to the shadows, another blinding flash of rifle shots or another stream of tracers made her wince and turned the scene black again.
Marching footsteps echoed from a few sections ahead of her and her squad from the Aventine. Red targeting beams from Borg ocular implants crisscrossed erratically in the dark.
Kedair waved her squad to a halt with raised fist. At her back was T'Prel, and across from them were Englehorn and Darrow. With quick, silent hand gestures, Kedair directed Darrow and Englehorn to alternate fire with her and T'Prel. Then she looked back and signaled ch'Maras and Malaya to guard the rear flank.
She detached an energy dampener from her belt and primed it. Twenty-odd meters away, at the intersection, a platoon of Borg drones rounded the corner, spotted her and the rest of her team, and sprinted toward them, firing green pulses of charged plasma from wrist-mounted weapons.
Their flurry of bolts dissipated into sparks as it made contact with the outer edge of the squad's dampening field. Then Kedair lobbed her spare dampener at the drones, aimed her rifle, and waited for the Borg's roving ocular beams to go dark. They all went out at once, like snuffed candles.
With a tap of her finger against the trigger, a stutter-crack of semiautomatic fire dropped two drones to the deck.
T'Prel crouched beside Kedair and snapped off a fast series of single shots, and each one found its mark at a drone's throat, just above the sternum.
The rear ranks of drones hurdled over their dead, in a frenzy to reach the intruders.
Whoever said this s.h.i.+p would have only fifty drones was either lying or out of their mind, Kedair decided as she fired the last few rounds in her clip. There was no break in the buzz of weapons fire while she and T'Prel reloaded; Englehorn and Darrow had started firing just in time to overlap them.
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