Part 15 (1/2)
Two more drones down. Four. Six. They kept getting closer.
Darrow set her weapon to full auto and strobed the corridor with a steady stream of tracers. Then her clip ran dry.
Kedair and T'Prel snapped fresh clips into place. Able to count the rear rank of drones in a glance, the Takaran security chief switched over to full automatic and mowed down the final handful of Borg in the corridor. She released the trigger as the last drone fell in a b.l.o.o.d.y, shredded heap. The tang of blood and the acrid bite of sulfur hung heavily in the sweltering darkness.
”Like clockwork,” Kedair said to her team. ”Nice work. Let's keep moving. Malaya, ch'Maras, on point.”
The rear guard moved past Kedair and the others and advanced through the pa.s.sage, occasionally peppering the overhead or the bulkheads with streaks of flare gel. As she followed them, Kedair retrieved her spare dampener from the deck, deactivated it, and put it back on her belt.
At the end of a long corridor, they arrived at a T-shaped intersection. The perpendicular pa.s.sage was open on one side into the great empty s.p.a.ce that surrounded the vinculum, which was housed in an hourgla.s.s-shaped structure at the probe's center. Kedair stared out at the other sections of the s.h.i.+p. From the highest deck to the lowest, the interior of the probe was almost as dark as s.p.a.ce, except where weapons fire flashed white, explosions blossomed in crimson, or flares bathed their surroundings in lime green. The constant, echoing rattles of rifle fire reminded Kedair of the sound of construction work.
Movement caught her eye from the opposite side of the s.h.i.+p. A group of black shapes moved in quick steps through the murky shadows, heading straight toward a Starfleet strike team that had its back turned to the ambush. Out of force of habit, Kedair reached toward her combadge before she remembered that the energy dampeners had cut off all communications. She considered shouting a warning to the other strike team, but then she thought better of advertising her squad's position, and she doubted that her voice would carry all that distance with enough volume to pierce the din of the ongoing battle.
There's more than one way to get someone's attention, she realized, and she lifted her rifle, put her eye to the scope, and targeted a bulkhead support beam near the Starfleet team. Her single shot pinged off the metal beam, startling the other Starfleet team, whose sharpshooter immediately turned his weapon toward her. Kedair looked up from behind her scope and pointed emphatically in the direction of the coming ambush.
The sharpshooter and his fellows dropped into covered positions and took aim at the approaching pack of drones. From a distance, all Kedair saw was a blaze of tracers and the violent, twitching dance of the mortally wounded. Then the Starfleet squad's commander was up and shouting, but Kedair couldn't hear what the man was saying. The shooting came to an abrupt stop, and the squad fired some flare rounds down the pa.s.sageway.
As soon as the corridor brightened, Kedair saw what she'd done. A bullet-riddled Starfleet strike team lay on the deck in a spreading pool of its own blood. Four of her brothers and sisters in arms had been shot down on her command.
Kedair wanted to scream as if she had been the one who was shot. Denial and guilt collided in her thoughts while she stared wide-eyed at the carnage she'd carelessly provoked.
”Sir,” T'Prel said, ”we need to keep moving and clear this deck.” The Vulcan woman's flat, uninflected manner of speaking conveyed no sympathy or pity for Kedair's tragic mistake, and that suited Kedair perfectly.
”All right,” Kedair said. ”Take point with Englehorn.”
T'Prel and the human man stepped away and continued the sweep through the Borg probe. Kedair turned her back on the b.l.o.o.d.y consequence of a moment's error, already knowing she would bear its memory with shame until the day she died.
Enterprise security officers Randolph Giudice, Peter Davila, Kirsten Cruzen, and Bryan Regnis stood guard beside an opening that led to the probe's center. Two of their s.h.i.+pmates-an acerbic Vulcan woman named T'Sona, and Jarata Beyn, a hulking Bajoran man whom Giudice had nicknamed ”Moose”-used compressed-gas tools to sink self-sealing anchor bolts into a bulkhead opposite the gap.
Giudice winced at the series of sharp pneumatic hisses and reverberating thunks of metal piercing metal. ”Hurry up,” he said, impatient to be on the move again.
He tried not to think about the fact that Dr. Crusher had told him he shouldn't be moving around at all for a few more days; it had been less than ten hours since she and the rest of the Enterprise's medical staff had spliced him, Davila, and Regnis back together after their harrowing fight with the Hirogen boarding party.
Hiss-thunk. Hiss-thunk. ”Anchors secure,” T'Sona said.
Jarata threaded four thin but resilient cables through the eyes of the anchor bolts, then affixed the cables to grapples c.o.c.ked in the barrels of four handheld launchers. ”Ready to go,” he said to Giudice.
”Nice work, Moose,” Giudice replied. He slung his TR-116 across his back and picked up one of the grapple guns. Davila, Regnis, and Cruzen did likewise. ”Time to go to work,” he said, bracing the device against his shoulder. He shut one eye and peered with the other through the launcher's targeting scope. ”On count of three. One...two...three.”
Four grappling hooks soared away through the bulkhead gap, down toward the hourgla.s.s-shaped vinculum tower at the heart of the Borg s.h.i.+p. Each grappling hook penetrated the black tower's chaotic twists of exterior machinery and stuck fast, directly above an entrance pa.s.sage whose access walkway had been retracted into the tower's foundation.
Working quickly, Giudice and his team took up the slack from the cables and secured them as tightly as they were able. ”Moose, T'Sona, watch our backs. We're going in.” He locked a handheld pulley over his cable and then attached himself to it with a safety line that was looped through a carabiner on his belt. In a few seconds, the other three humans had also hooked up their pulleys and safety loops to their zip lines.
”Now the fun part,” Giudice said with a smirk. Gripping his pulley with both hands, he pulled himself up onto the ledge of the barrier that stood between him and the great emptiness on the other side. He waited until Davila, Cruzen, and Regnis were perched beside him atop the barrier. ”Three...two...one.”
They tucked their knees toward their chests and let gravity do the rest. The incline was fairly shallow, less than fifteen degrees, but within seconds, they were hurtling through open air at an exhilarating speed. Deep aches and sharp pangs-aggravated by his sudden, extreme exertion-reminded Giudice of the impaling wound he'd suffered hours earlier.
He stole a glance at Davila and saw that the older man, who had been slashed across his chest, was also in considerable pain. I guess even Starfleet medicine has its limits, Giudice mused. Only Regnis had recovered fully from the Hirogen attack, despite having been garroted nearly to death. Giudice scowled. Some guys have all the luck.
The vinculum tower loomed ahead of them. Giudice clutched the braking clamp on his pulley and slowed his descent. On either side of him, the rest of his team decelerated. Moments later, their feet made contact with the tower, and they braked to a halt as they bent at the knees to absorb the impact. With practiced ease, they detached their safety lines and dropped down onto the platform in front of its recessed entrance.
Davila nodded at the bulkhead which had sealed the tower's entrance. ”Looks like they were expecting us.”
”I guess we'll have to knock,” Giudice said. ”Cruzen, want to do the honors?”
While her comrades took cover around the corners from the entrance alcove, Cruzen moved forward. The pet.i.te, innocent-looking brunette removed her backpack, opened it, and retrieved a peculiar demolition charge. It was a malleable chemical explosive with a binary chemical detonator. Though less powerful than Starfleet's most advanced photonic charges, it would suffice to open the pa.s.sage-and it had the advantage of being able to function despite the energy-dampening fields being generated by the Aventine and its strike teams.
Cruzen primed the detonator and fixed the charge in place against the barricade. She made a final tap of adjustment and then sprinted back toward Giudice and the others. ”Fire in the hole!”
She ducked around the corner with Giudice half a second before a ma.s.sive explosion spouted orange fire out of the alcove and rocked the entire Borg probe. The cloud of fire and oily, dark smoke persisted for several seconds. Aftershocks trembled the vinculum tower as the blast effects dissipated.
”h.e.l.l of a boom, Cruzen,” Giudice said. ”I hope the vinculum's still in one piece.”
”Should be,” she said. ”I used a shaped charge.” She peeked around the corner. ”Looks okay from here.”
He heard the heavy percussion of approaching footsteps. ”And what about the drones guarding it?”
”They're fine, too,” she said.
”Great.” He unslung his rifle and thumbed off the safety. In a smooth pivot step, he rounded the corner and fired several controlled bursts directly into the advancing company of Borg. There were so many, in so dense a formation, that he didn't need to aim. All he had to worry about was running dry on ammo. Glaring left and right at his teammates, he snapped, ”What're you waiting for? Invitations?”
As if suddenly remembering why they'd come, Davila, Regnis, and Cruzen stepped out on either side of Giudice and formed a skirmish line. Davila and Cruzen fired while Giudice reloaded, and Regnis held his fire until he and Giudice could cover for the others. Working together, they cut down rank after rank of drones. For a moment, Giudice almost felt guilty about it, as if he and the others were shooting defenseless foes. Then he remembered what any one of those drones would do if it laid hands on him or any member of his team, and he resumed firing.
Regnis said to Giudice between blazing salvos, ”Lieutenant? You know we're all down to our last two clips, right?”
Giudice shouted back, ”Yes, Bryan, I see that.”
”Well, I still see a lot of drones coming, sir.”
”I see that, too, Bryan. Everyone, aim for effect!”
The team's shots became more precise, but the attacking drones drew inexorably closer. Then, all at once, there seemed to be only a half-dozen of them left standing. Unfortunately, that was when all four of the team's rifles clicked empty.
The drones prowled forward, pale revenants of malice.
”c.r.a.p,” Giudice muttered.
Davila said, ”We were close, too.”
”Too bad the Borg don't give mulligans,” Regnis said.
Reaching toward her belt, Cruzen asked, ”Grenades?”
”No,” Giudice said. ”It might damage the vinculum.”