jul/aug A momentary Resistance

[Ryan Horn]

A momentary Resistance

The dark haired woman rushed into the room. Her security reds long since battered and torn from hard use. In the not so great distance, she could hear the rhythmic shuffling of feet headed in her direction. Closing her eyes and swallowing hard, she quickly keyed in the sequence to seal the door behind her. When it failed to move, she cursed and pulled off the control panel, revealing the circuitry underneath. Moments later, she successfully short circuited the controls, closing off the view of a Borg drone just turning the corner.

Her breathing came out in ragged gasps, and her eyes were wild as she knocked over the furniture near the door making a rude barricade.

Backing away from the door, she screamed in fear and denial as she heard the pounding on the door. After long moments, she forced herself to turn away from the door and turn on the computer. The isolated console was one of the few on the ship not tied to the main computer core. Her temporary seal wasn’t going to last long, but before it broke, there was something that needed to be done.

“To whoever receives this message, I am the last remaining survivor of the USS Miranda Hall.”

…..

The ship had been going through her normal paces when it happened. While she wasn’t the best ship in the fleet, she’d always gotten the job done well and efficiently. If she hadn’t been caught in the limelight as often as other ships, it was just a matter of time. Which was why, when the battle started, it had been a shock to everyone on board that the Borg had targeted her.

Their initial insertion on board had come in just below the bridge, almost immediately cutting the rest of the crew off from their leadership. Several decks had been flooded with the attackers before a counter assault could even be attempted. And yet, despite the sudden loss of leadership that hadn’t prevented the crew from fighting back against the invaders. If anything, it had driven them into a frenzy of action. Angered beyond reason, some security members had literally thrown themselves into the fight as they tried to stem the tide of the Borg infection. A tactic that had shocked and slowed the assault for long hours, but had not allowed them to turn them back.

Taking a more drastic approach, engineering had shut down environmental controls, hoping to raise the heat to levels the drones could not survive. It had made the ship slightly more hostile to the invaders, allowing the poisonous insurgence to be halted, and even momentarily turned back. Unfortunately, the crew themselves could only handle so much of the heat, and a second surge of reinforcements broke through the lines, further spreading the infection.

Despite their losses, the fight continued. The defenders, forcing the swarm to pay for every deck, even as hope dwindled and faded. After days of fighting, it became less about winning, but enduring long enough for reinforcements to arrive. As days turned to weeks, it darkened to being not even survival, but about depriving the Borg of their victory.

…..

The pounding was louder now. The door had been reinforced, but without any power it was just a matter of time. Forcing herself to turn away, she continued with a tremulous voice.

“Engineering came up with the idea. By scrambling the core, we’d generate a tremendous electromagnetic pulse. The ship would be lost of course, the stroke too much for it to survive. But at least this would be one ship that would not be joined to the Collective.

I’m sure it would have worked too, had the Captain had been one of the first taken. I’m not sure how they turned her, but we’d no sooner keyed in the startup sequence, before we lost control of the core entirely.

That was ten days ago. But that was the last time we had any chance. “

Tears flooded her doey brown eyes. “Now I’m the last one left. I’ve sealed the door, and barricaded myself inside. It won’t be enough. I know that now. But I hope, I pray, that someone else will see this message and avenge us. This is Lieutenant Meh…”

Before she could continue, the door bowed and then burst inside, metal fragments spraying across the room. Her screams of pain and fear overwhelmed by the repeated chant of her former crewmates.

“Resistance is Futile”

…..

Borg Drone 1 of 20 stood up from where it had fallen. It noted, without emotion, drone 12 of 14 moving away from it, the nannite injector on its arm already folding back inside. The USS Turkina had been under attack for no more than a few moments, and the drone formerly known as Lt. Miranda Hall was the first to have been brought into the collective. She had been the first from the Turkina to encounter the Borg, and despite her body's attempts, the nannites had completed in mere moments what internally had seemed like weeks.

In a small corner of its consciousness, it recognized the last resistance fading. Moments later all that remained of Lt. Miranda Hall, her biological and technological distinctiveness, was absorbed into the Collective. Moving as the collective ordered, Drone 11 of 20 followed the others of its kind repeating the phrase that has proven so true as it moved forward.

“Resistance is Futile”

Edited August 17, 2012 by Ben Walker