The Thunderchild
-i-
GRIM VARGO WAS KICKING HIMSELF.
Not literally, of course, and not even on the surface so that anyone could have seen. As he sat cooling his heels in the brig of the Thunderchild, he seemed utterly calm, even relaxed. His legs were crossed at the knees and he had his arms crisscrossed behind his head, his eyes closed feigning sleep.
“You’re not fooling anyone, you know.”
It was Captain Matsuda who had spoken to him, standing just outside the brig, looking extremely annoyed.
“I’m not?” said Grim, his eyes still closed. “Damn. And here I was so hoping to pursue a career in the theater.”
“And you can wipe that smirk off your face.”
This prompted Grim Vargo to open his eyes, and he snickered. “No. I really can’t,” he said, his smirk firmly in place.
Matsuda had a round, craggy face that looked like a road map of a thousand campaigns. Under other circumstances, Vargo wouldn’t have minded bending elbows with the guy and throwing back a few drinks.
Then again, it was drinks that had gotten Vargo into this fix in the first place.
Once he’d dumped Seven of Ann or whatever the hell her name was, he had put as much distance between himself and that misbegotten woman as possible. Believing that he’d gotten off lightly, and relieved to be rid of her, he had broken out a bottle of his best Romulan ale, still the most gloriously illegal drink around. It had burned wonderfully on the way down. He’d drunk way too much of it, and it had taken far too long for his ship’s proximity alarm to penetrate the drunken haze that had settled upon him. By the time he’d reacted, the damned Thunderchild had practically been on top of him. Activating a cloaking device doesn’t do a damned bit of good when a starship has its freaking tractor beam gripping you.
They had demanded to know where his passenger was, and when he told them he had no idea what they were talking about, they’d hauled him off his ship and tossed him in the brig so he could stew for a while.
The thing was, he had no reason to cover for Seven. None whatsoever. He owed her nothing. She’d been evasive and lied to him from the start, and if Starfleet wanted to go and collect her, that should certainly be no problem for him. But as he stared up at Matsuda, with his crisp uniform and look of arrogant superiority, he knew two things beyond question: he was ten times the space jockey that this Starfleet dandy would ever be, and he wasn’t going to give up Seven or her last known location…
…at least not without making Matsuda sweat over it.
“Where is she?” Matsuda demanded for what seemed the hundredth time.
“Haven’t a clue.”
“She’s no longer on your ship. We’ve searched it thoroughly.”
“Oh. I thought you meant my mother. ’Cause I got nothing on that. But if you want to know where your mother is, can’t help you there, either. Haven’t seen her since I kicked her out of my bed over Rigel V.”
Matsuda didn’t smile. Fortunately, Vargo hadn’t expected him to.
“There’s no point in lying about it,” Matsuda continued, not even deigning to reply to Vargo’s jibe. “My people have already been over your ship. We’ve found DNA traces of Seven of Nine. She was your passenger. You had her aboard your ship when you left Titan and departed without permission—”
“I don’t need your damned permission to go where I want,” Vargo said, and he was on his feet. He dropped the smug, calculating persona. He was annoyed with himself for doing so, because he knew that’s what Matsuda wanted: to get him angry, to make him blurt something out. He didn’t care. He needed to rub Matsuda’s nose in it. “And I did more than ‘depart without permission.’ I outsmarted you. That’s what’s really burning your biscuit, isn’t it, Captain. That you, with all your technology and personnel, got outsmarted by a space jockey and his two-bit ship.”
“A two-bit ship with illegal technology on it. We will be confiscating it, of course.”
“That cloak is mine!” snarled Vargo. “I got it fair and square in salvage.”
“It’s illegal.”
“So is what you’re doing.”
“I’m under orders.”
“I’m underwhelmed.”
Matsuda’s back straightened, his shoulders squaring. “Mister Vargo…”
“Captain Vargo.”
“…I don’t have an infinite amount of time to engage in this.”
“Well, then, I guess you’re the one under time pressure, because my docket is wide open.”
“There is concern that Seven of Nine represents a possible danger to Federation security.”
“And I’m concerned that the Federation represents a danger to my security. And since I’m the one who’s being deprived of property and freedom without due process, I think I’m the one who’s got the more legitimate concern here.”
“Why are you protecting her?” demanded Matsuda.
Vargo’s perpetual smile widened. “To piss you off.”
To his surprise, Matsuda actually smiled slightly at that. “Congratulations. You’re succeeding.”
Suddenly Matsuda’s combadge went off. He tapped it. “Matsuda here.”
“Bridge to Matsuda. Traber here, sir. We’ve got a Borg cube heading our way, being towed by a science vessel, the Einstein. The Einstein claims they’re bringing it to Earth for analysis, but—”
“Signal Red Alert. I’m on my way.”
“Captain!” Vargo said.
“Not now,” Matsuda said, starting to turn away.
“Yes, now!” There was something in the genuine urgency of his voice that prompted Matsuda to turn back to him.
“You’ve got twenty seconds,” Matsuda told him.
“Okay, yes, I admit it, she was on my ship,” Vargo said, speaking as quickly as he could. “She was talking about the Borg being a threat. She was completely convinced of it.”
“Ten seconds left, and I’m not impressed.”
“Bring me up to the bridge with you. I might be able to help.”
“Five seconds, and I’m leaving now—”
“There’s a code phrase that can shut the Borg down!”
That stopped Matsuda cold. The Red Alert klaxon was blasting, and personnel were scrambling to their battle stations. But they could just as easily have been in the middle of a deathly quiet room for all that it distracted Matsuda. “A code phrase,” he repeated.
“She told me what it was.”
“You tell me.”
“Let me out of here first.”
“We don’t have time to argue about this.”
“No,” said Vargo, “we don’t.”
Matsuda’s lips twitched and then he turned to the guards who stood on either side of the door. “Bring him,” he said curtly.
Seconds later the force barrier in front of the brig vanished. The guards reached in and grabbed Vargo by the arms. Then they hauled him along after Matsuda and headed as quickly as they could up to the bridge.
-ii-
Matsuda had seen Borg cubes before. He had, after all, commanded the ship during the legendary Battle of Sector 001 in which the Thunderchild, along with the Enterprise and two dozen other vessels, had fought a valiant last-ditch effort against an invading Borg cube. The Thunderchild had been scarred and they’d lost personnel in the battle, but they had survived. Matsuda still had the medal he’d been awarded for valor. It was in a box in his quarters. He wondered if he should go back and put it on so that the Borg would be intimidated.
The Einstein had come to a halt not far off, and the Borg cube remained silent behind it. That much was evident on the viewscreen. “Status report,” said Matsuda briskly as he entered the bridge.
Commander Traber, a brusque, hyperefficient officer with a bit of a nonregulation belly that Matsuda constantly hounded him about, turned and started to speak when he saw Vargo being brought onto the bridge by the two security guards. He paused and glanced at Matsuda in confusion. Matsuda offered no explanation. Traber gave a small shrug. “Einstein is holding at two hundred thousand kliks. Detecting low-level energy activity on the Borg cube, but Einsteinis claiming that it presents no threat.”
“We’re in communication with them?” asked Matsuda.
“Yes, sir, with Captain Rappaport.”
“Put him on screen.”
The image of the science vessel and the Borg cube shimmered and was replaced by the smiling face of Howard Rappaport.
“Greetings, Captain,” said Rappaport. “You are looking well.”
“Thank you, Captain, but how I’m looking is not an issue here. The issue is why in the world you’re towing a Borg cube the size of a small moon behind you.”
“Why…that would be at the orders of Admiral Janeway,” Rappaport said calmly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “She is aboard the cube. She decided that it would be best if it were brought back to Earth for further study.”
“Really. That’s interesting,” said Matsuda. “You wouldn’t mind if I verified that with Starfleet, would you?”
“Captain!” Rappaport sounded surprised, even a bit hurt. “You are not taking my word for it? I am distressed that you are exhibiting such distrust.”
“It’s not a matter of trust, it’s…”
“Captain,” Vargo muttered in a low voice.
Matsuda shot him an annoyed look but then saw Vargo’s expression and realized that he wasn’t interrupting just to be annoying. There was definitely something on his mind. “Einstein, please stand by.” Rappaport’s image remained on the screen, but he was no longer able to see or hear into the Thunderchild’s bridge. “What is it, Mister Vargo, and this had better be good.”
“The way he’s talking…it’s very formal. He’s not speaking with any contractions. It’s the same way that Seven spoke. If that’s unique to the Borg…” His voice trailed off.
And now Matsuda’s comm officer, Lieutenant Tina Rogers, also spoke up. “Captain, I was noticing something else: the signal we’re receiving isn’t in sync.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean when the captain speaks, his words aren’t quite matching up with his mouth. It’s off by maybe a half second.”
“Why would that be?”
“I don’t know. The only thing that comes to mind is that what we’re seeing…isn’t what we should be seeing.”
“Some sort of device is causing us to see other than what we should be seeing? Hardly standard issue in a Starfleet vessel.”
“No, but the Tholians have it,” Vargo said. “Where do you think I got the technology to fool your sensors when you were initially trying to probe my ship.”
“I had wondered about it,” Matsuda said. “How kind of you to admit to even more interaction with known hostile races. I believe Starfleet is going to have a good deal to say to you when we get to the nearest base.”
“Living to get to a starbase should be the least of my problems,” replied Vargo.
Matsuda grunted, tacitly acknowledging Vargo’s point. “Mister Yarrow,” he said to his tactics officer, “give me a target lock on both the Einstein and the Borg vessel.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Put me back on with him,” said Matsuda, and then he turned toward Rappaport once more. Rappaport still had the smile fixed on him.
“We were wondering if you had forgotten about us over here,” said Rappaport easily.
“Einstein, I am going to have to formally request you to hold your position while I verify your orders with Starfleet,” Matsuda told him.
“I am afraid that Admiral Janeway was very specific in her desire to approach Earth with all possible speed.” Rappaport came across as if he were trying to sound apologetic but was having trouble remembering how to do so.
“I will be more than happy to speak to Admiral Janeway about it, if she would care to beam over.”
“That would be problematic, since I notice you have your shields up. And…oh, dear…you have also targeted us,” said Rappaport. “You are acting in a most hostile manner, Captain.”
“Produce Admiral Janeway now. Don’t force us to take further action.”
“Very well,” Rappaport said. “I will put Admiral Janeway through right now.”
The screen shimmered, and Tina Rogers spoke up. “Captain. I think I’ve managed to punch through whatever they’re using to scramble the image.”
The picture on the screen reconfigured, and it was all Matsuda could do not to gasp.
The creature that was staring at them from the screen was Kathryn Janeway in name only. Tubes festooned her bald head, and her skin was a hideous grayish white. What they could see of her shoulders was clad in form-fitting black leather.
“Send an alert to Starfleet. Tell them what’s happening,” Matusda said with forced calm.
“Unable to comply, sir,” said Rogers. “Our transmission beacons are being scrambled.”
Somehow Matsuda wasn’t surprised. “Bring phasers online, arm quantum torpedoes.”
“It will do you no good,” said the thing that had been Kathryn Janeway.
“If you think you’re going to assimilate us…”
“No,” she replied tonelessly. “We have evolved. We have transcended. You will not be assimilated.” She paused. “You will be absorbed. Resistance is futile.”
Matsuda saw no reason to wait. “Get that thing off my screen,” he snapped, and the image of the creature formerly known as Janeway vanished. “Navigation, get us out of here, emergency warp. Mister Yarrow, torpedoes to the Einstein, full phaser barrage on the cube. And…fire,” he said.
Yarrow activated the Thunderchild’s offensive weapons. The phasers cut loose at the Borg cube, while a barrage of torpedoes was unleashed upon the Einstein.
Not for a second did Matsuda believe that they had a hope against the Borg. His entire plan now was to lay down sufficient suppressing fire so that the Thunderchild could tuck tail and run. The Federation was going to need them; hell, the Federation was going to need every ship they had, because this cube looked to be ten times the size of the previous one, and that one had almost single-handedly wiped out humanity.
The phasers had no effect whatsoever on the cube and, to Matsuda’s shock, he never had the opportunity to see how the quantum torpedoes fared against the Einstein. The energy capsules were drawn away from the science vessel before they could impact and instead were hauled directly into the Borg cube.
“Energy surge from the cube!” called Yarrow.
“Surge?”
“Yes, sir! It’s like…” Yarrow couldn’t quite understand it. “It’s like it made them stronger. Like it was fuel for th—Sir! Our shields! They’re gone!”
“What?” Matsuda crossed quickly to Yarrow’s side and gaped in astonishment. “How?”
“We have absorbed it,” came the voice of Janeway. Although her image was gone, she was still forcing her voice through the comm system. Rogers was obviously trying to shut it off but was having no luck. “We will absorb you.” Then she paused and, for half a heartbeat, sounded vaguely curious. “What part of ‘futile’ was unclear?”
Suddenly the ship jolted. Matsuda stumbled forward, catching himself on the command chair.
“Tractor beam!” shouted Yarrow. “Incredibly powerful! It’s pulling us in!”
Matsuda whirled and faced Grim Vargo, who, despite the dire straits they were in, still had that annoying smirk on his face. “Mister Vargo…Captain Vargo…if you have some sort of magic shutdown phrase, now is the time to employ it.”
Vargo cleared his throat and then looked at Matsuda with what appeared to be genuine regret. “Yeah, uh…I got nothing, actually. That was just so I could do this—”
Faster than Matsuda would have thought possible, Vargo suddenly turned and drove a fist into the closest security guard’s stomach. The guard doubled over and his phaser was now in Vargo’s hand. Vargo whipped the phaser around before the first guard was on the floor and opened fire on the second. The phaser blasted him back, sending him hurtling through the air and crashing into the far wall.
Vargo didn’t slow down. Instead, he threw himself toward the emergency exit, avoiding the turbolift. He grabbed the sides of the exit ladder with both hands and didn’t even bother to put his feet into the rungs. He simply slid straight down the exit and out of sight.
The guard who’d been punched started to get to his feet and Matsuda yelled, “Forget about him! We’ve got more immediate worries! Engines, full reverse! Shake us free of that tractor beam! Yarrow, forget the science vessel, full phaser and energy barrage at the Borg cube!”
“Sir, it only made it stronger!”
“Then maybe we can feed it so much energy so fast that it’ll overload! Target the same section of the cube that Picard had us target the last time! Maybe it will have the same effect!”
It was a reasonable gambit. During the Battle of Sector 001, Picard had used his intimate knowledge of the Borg’s cube structure to present a target for the attacking starships. Seemingly nonvital, it had nevertheless triggered a chain reaction that had resulted in the cube’s destruction.
The Thunderchild, struggling in the throes of the tractor beam like a fly on sticky paper, unleashed everything it had on that same seemingly vulnerable point.
It was useless. Worse than useless.
It was futile.
-iii-
Transporter Chief Lindell turned around when the doors to the transporter room opened, wondering who in the world would be showing up now, during a Red Alert.
He didn’t have the opportunity even to get out the words “Who are you?” before a stun blast from a phaser knocked him unconscious.
Grim Vargo ran in without slowing and shoved the insensate transporter chief out of the way with one foot. He was hoping, praying, that what he assumed to be the case was, in fact, the case, or else he was about to embark on a very short trip.
His hands moving quickly over the transporter controls, Vargo found and locked in the coordinates for his own ship, which the Thunderchild had taken in tow. He never would have been able to beam himself over there with the shields up. With them down, however, having been sucked away somehow by the Borg cube, he had the window of opportunity he needed.
He activated the transporter beams, took a deep breath, then ran forward and stepped into the beams just as they flared to life. The Thunderchild’s transporter room dissolved around him and he suddenly found himself on the control deck of the Pride.
“Thank God,” he muttered as he went to the controls and brought them online. A quick study of his present situation told him exactly what he had hoped would be the case: rerouting all available energy into the engines in order to try and break away from the cube, the Thunderchild had cut the Pride loose. He was damned lucky that emergency protocols kept minimal energy going to the transporter room, or he would have been completely out of luck.
He brought his cloak online, breathed a sigh of relief that Matsuda hadn’t yet gotten around to removing it, and vanished. Using the same tactic as he had in Saturn’s rings, he did not bring his engines online. Instead he allowed himself to drift, indistinguishable from a million other pieces of flotsam and jetsam that were drifting through the vacuum.
Then he turned on his viewscreen and watched the Thunderchild’s struggles with the Borg cube. As much as he disliked Matsuda and his insufferable arrogance, he prayed that the ship would manage to shake free of the Borg’s tractor beam. No one deserved the sort of fate that being taken by the Borg virtually guaranteed.
He sent out a silent prayer for aid to the mighty starship.
The silent prayer was met by—appropriately enough—silence.
As he drifted away, he continued to watch as the Thunderchild fought valiantly. More phasers, more quantum torpedoes, and he fancied that he could actually see the ship trembling violently as it tried to go in reverse and break loose of its imprisonment. Considering what would happen if they were taken by the Borg, it might have been preferable for all concerned if the ship had busted apart like a piñata. A quick death in the airless void was probably better than becoming a creature of the Borg hive mind.
It made him think of what it must have been like for dinosaurs, at the dawn of prehistory, struggling to break loose of tar pits as they were slowly dragged down to their deaths.
He saw much the same scenario now. He just didn’t believe what he was seeing.
The Thunderchild was pulled closer, closer still, right up to the surface of the cube.
And then the saucer section began to…there was no other way to put it…dissolve. The metal simply melted as it joined with the Borg cube, being sucked up into it. Slowly at first, but then faster and faster. Grim Vargo had never seen anything like it, but he had the feeling that he would be seeing exactly this for the rest of his life, whenever he went to sleep. It would be in his nightmares, and he would be conjuring up for himself the sounds of Starfleet officers screaming in protest of their fate.
The Thunderchild continued to melt into the Borg cube. He waited to see bodies floating away, but there were none. They must have been pulled in as well.
You will be absorbed.
What part of “futile” is unclear?
He watched it all, wanting to look away but unable to do so. He glanced briefly down at the ship’s chronometer and timed the entire process. It didn’t take long: nineteen seconds. That was the lifetime of the Thunderchild from the point where she first came into contact with the Borg cube to when the tail ends of her nacelles were pulled in and melted against the cube.
Vargo didn’t move a muscle, frozen in place, as if worried that even a physical movement, inside his ship, would attract the notice of the Borg cube.
It did not. The cube’s attention had been focused entirely on the far larger Thunderchild. A ship like his would have meant nothing to the cube, anyway.
He stayed right where he was, not activating his engines, doing nothing, until the Einstein and the Borg cube had gone on their way, leaving him far behind. It was only then that he began to tremble uncontrollably, and he felt a deep ache in the pit of his stomach that warned him he was going to be sick. He barely made it to the head before his stomach ejected its contents.
He slumped to the floor and told himself that this wasn’t his problem, wasn’t his fight. So what if the Borg annihilated Earth, or the entire Federation, for that matter? It was none of his concern. In fact, his life would probably be a damned sight easier with the Federation gone. Indeed, if Captain Matsuda had had his way, Vargo would have died along with the rest of them.
And…wouldn’t it just annoy the hell out of Matsuda if Vargo were able to accomplish something that he, Matsuda, had been unable to?
With that in mind—feeling the need to have one last triumph over a man who, as far as Vargo knew, was dead, or in a state to which death would have been preferable—Grim Vargo sent out an emergency broadband beacon through subspace. His shipboard automatic log had recorded the Thunderchild’s abortive struggle against its enemy, and Vargo sent it along as an attachment to the message.
The message itself was simple, and—unknown to Vargo—evocative of a warning declaration once made by a fast-riding patriot centuries earlier:
The Borg are coming. The Borg are coming.