The
bedroom doors to Fleet
“I’ll
get the holovid ready, Poe,” Koester said to Q as he started digging through a
drawer in the display cabinet behind his desk.
“Could you grab some popcorn?”
“Sure, Pooh. No
problem,” Q answered, heading toward
the replicator before stopping in front of one of
personal decorations Koester displayed on the bulkhead of his quarters.
Koester
emerged with the holovid chip to find Q gently running her fingers over the
letters of the plaque attached to his wall.
His mood changed slightly as he moved up behind Q, putting his arms around the petite woman, his cheek softly
against hers.
“Do
you miss her?” Q asked, sounding
solemn.
“Sometimes,”
Koester admitted. “Sometimes I wake up
in the middle of the night and think I’m still there.” Koester now reached out, his hand touching
the Starfleet emblem on the top of the Dauntless-74658’s
dedication plaque, the only piece of the Intrepid-class vessel that still
existed. The two looked at the plaque
for another moment, then moved to the couch, Q picking up a large tub of buttered
popcorn from the replicator along the way.
“So
why didn’t you attend the festivities in 10-Forward?” she asked Koester as the
movie he chose started on the wall-mounted viewer and the two snuggled closer.
“Wasn’t
in a party mood,” the young starship commander answered, placing an arm around Q’s shoulders. “And with the lull in the fighting, I wanted
to spend some quality time with you.”
* * * *
In
the 10-Forward lounge, the party was in full swing. Many of the off-duty bridge crew, the entire
compliment of Marine Special Contingent
41, and many other crewmen were taking the time to celebrate. The celebration was not for anything in
particular, just the fact that the Dauntless
had managed to survive its battles against Dominion forces, and that at the
moment things were quiet. But no one
knew how long that quiet would last.
* * * *
On
holodeck 3, Ensign Alasdair Wallace adjusted his leine, a long saffron yellow shirt, and the hauberk he
wore, pulled the longsword out of the dark moist
earth, and joined the army that stood still and silent
before him.
“Computer,
start program.”
A
musical chime preceded the loud raucous noise of the army as it suddenly came
to life. Wallace looked up and down the
ranks of soldiers, actually simple peasants and farmers mostly, then across the
broad field at their enemy, the large, well equipped, well trained army of
Ensign
Wallace had taken months researching the background and history of ancient
Hefting
a wooden shield with one arm and the longsword in the
other, he glanced down to his left at the man on horseback. History recorded Robert the Bruce and his
Scottish army the victors at
Wallace
saw the representatives of the English army start to move forward in what was
expected to be brief negotiations that would avoid the battle. Little did they suspect...
The
program suddenly froze again as the red alert klaxons sounded throughout the
starship.
“Bloody hell!” Wallace snarled as he thrust the longsword back into the dirt. “Computer, end program and exit.” The scene faded away around Wallace as the holodeck doors parted and he hurried off to his battlestation, still wearing the leine
and little else.
* * * *
Crew
members rushed out of the turbolifts and onto the
bridge, including Fleet Captain Koester, who took his place in the center seat,
flanked on his left by Ship’s Counselor Kethry
Sutherland and on his right by First Officer Virgil Dylan Kane.
“What’s
the situation, Exec? Cardassians? Jem’Hadar? Breen?”
“No,
Skipper,” said Kane, grimly. “Worse. The Borg.”
Space, the Final Frontier…
These are the voyages of the
starship Dauntless!
Its ongoing mission;
To seek, to
chart, to explore…
Slipping the surly bonds of Earth,
Going where none have been before!
Star Trek:
Dauntless
“Family Ties”
By
PJK
Captain’s
Log, Stardate 52735.8:
In
the midst of war, we have encountered our only greater horror. A Borg Cube.
Koester, out.
“We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ship,”
announced the hive voice of the Borg over the bridge speakers. Fleet
No
place to run... The Borg vessel was much
faster than the Federation starship.
No
place to hide... In the open depths of
space, there was nary a star, planet, or moon around which to maneuver.
“Resistance is futile.”
“Resist
this!” Koester said defiantly, then leaned forward in
his command chair. “Mister Ga’gh, lock all phaser banks onto
the Cube. Load and arm all photon and
quantum torpedo tubes. Fire at will.”
Immediately,
beams of phased energy shot out from the phaser
strips all over the hull of the Dauntless,
followed quickly by scores of both photon and quantum torpedoes. The weapons struck the exterior of the Borg
vessel, tearing huge chunks out of it’s surface.
The
Borg ship continued to move closer as if the Dauntless were merely adrift and powerless. As it neared the Federation starship, a
tractor beam lashed out at it, attempting to lock onto the resisting vessel.
“Shield
nutations are resisting the Borg tractor beam,” Lt Ga’gh announced.
“Indicating
20% damage to the Borg vessel,” reported Lt Commander Phillip Winters at Ops.
“Mister
Fry,” Koester ordered to his Helmsman. “Get
us out of here!”
“Aye,
sir,” Fry responded as he kicked the Dauntless
into full impulse and prepared to jump to warp.
“Borg
vessel in pursuit,” Winters added.
“Skipper,
we’re being scanned by the Borg vessel,” Chief Pono Kyman announced, his voice sounding strained. Koester looked over at the Mission Ops
station, concerned, and noticed Kyman sweating
profusely.
“Are
you okay, Chief? You’re not looking
well.”
“I’m... I’m fine, Skipper,” Kyman
replied, hesitation in his voice.
“If
you need to get relieved and go down to Sickbay, Chief...,” Koester suggested,
remembering the Master Chief Petty Officer’s El’Aurian
heritage and their history with the Borg.
“No,”
Kyman answered a little too forcefully. “I’d much rather stay here at my post.”
“Very
well,” Koester said, returning his attention to the viewscreen
as Counselor Sutherland glanced over at Kyman. The Chief noticed her gaze and quickly
returned to studying his console’s readouts.
“Status?”
asked Koester.
“Borg
cube, 50,000 kilometers and closing,” reported Winters
in his typical British accent.
“Shields
down to 78%” added Ga’gh.
“Evasive pattern Delta, Mister Fry. Now!”
Fry
tapped the commands into his console, and the Dauntless nose-dived relative to the cube, turning back on its own
course. The maneuver took the Borg hive
mind by surprise, and it took the Cube a moment to reverse course and pursue.
“Warp
speed now, Mister Fry!”
“The
Borg vessel is firing!” Ga’gh exclaimed.
Before
the Dauntless could jump to warp, the
bolt from the Borg ship struck the starship, sending sparks flashing from a
number of the bridge stations.
“Commodore,
we’ve lost shields!” Ga’gh reported,
his normally deep voice sounding two octaves higher with stress.
“Borg
vessel has us locked in it’s tractor beam,” Winters
announced, remarkably calm, like he was announcing the time of day.
“Ga’gh, get those shield nutations
back up!” Koester ordered, even as green swirls of light appeared in his
peripheral vision. The Dauntless was being boarded.
“Mister
Kane, call away ‘repel boarders,’“ Koester ordered as the first Borg drone fell
in a hail of hand-held phaser fire, to quickly be
replaced by two new drones.
The
Starfleet Marines, who had abandoned the party in 10-Forward when the red alert
had first been called, now fanned out around the Sovereign-class starship,
their compression rifles and hand phasers
automatically rotating beam frequency to overcome as many of the invading Borg
as possible. But it was a losing battle
as more and more drones beamed aboard, and the Borg eventually adapted to the phaser frequencies.
Members of the Dauntless
crew found themselves at the mercy of their worst nightmares as drones captured
them and injected nanoprobes into their bloodstream,
the first step toward assimilation.
“Get
those shields back up!” Koester shouted as he held off a drone hand to hand.
“I’m
trying, sir,” Ga’gh yelled back, dividing his
attention between trying to restore the nutated
shield program and defending himself from a Borg who relentlessly moved forward
toward him.
“Ahhhhhrrrrrr!”
Everyone
on the Bridge heard the shout as the turbolift doors
opened and Ensign Jason O’Brien Blackfoot T’Vet Korsal, or O’B as the crew called him, came charging onto
the bridge, Bat’leth in hand, and swung into the
chest armor of the drone attacking Ga’gh.
The
Chief Tactical Officer nodded thanks to his part-Klingon
assistant, then quickly resumed his work trying to raise the shields again
while O’B moved on to attack the other three drones on the Bridge.
“Chief,
look out!” Commodore Koester shouted at Chief Kyman
as the El’Aurian man attempted to lock out the bridge
computer functions through his Mission Ops station. Kyman swung around, ready to confront the Borg attacking him when he
encountered his own greatest nightmare.
The
Borg was a typical drone. Black armor
covered most of the body. What skin was
exposed was deathly white and mottled.
Tubes and wires connected parts of it’s skull to other areas of the neck,
shoulders, and torso. But Kyman could see though all that to the being underneath.
The
being was El’Aurian.
But not simply any El’Aurian assimilated by
the Borg when they attacked El’Auria over a century
before.
Tears
welled in Kyman’s eyes.
“Mother?”
This
being, this drone, this Borg.... had
been Morra Kyman.
The
Chief hesitated, conflicting emotions overwhelming him. The Borg, his mother, moved closer, her right
arm outstretched and the nanoprobe injectors emerging
from her knuckles, yet Kyman remained motionless.
“Chief!”
yelled out Koester, who bolted toward the upper bridge deck, knocking into the
Borg drone and throwing it off balance, but not before the injectors pierced Kyman’s neck. Both
beings fell to the deck, unconscious, and the Commodore reacted with horror as
dark veins began to spread across the
“Get
him down to sickbay!” Koester screamed. “Now!”
“Commodore,
the shield nutation has been restored!” Ga’gh exclaimed as crew members picked up both Chief Kyman and the Borg drone and started carrying them toward
the turbolift.
“Borg tractor beam has lost it’s hold on us.”
Koester
rushed back to his command chair as the last two remaining Borg on the bridge
were disabled. He sat down in the seat,
pressing the intercom button as he did.
“Engineering,
do we still have warp?”
“Aye,
sir,” answered the voice of Lt
“Status of the Cube?” Koester inquired.
“Borg
vessel has ceased fire,” Ga’gh reported.
“Damage
to Borg vessel is 78%, Commodore,” added Commander Bloom. “The Borg appear to
have gone into a regenerative state.”
“Now’s
the time, Skipper,” Kane said.
“I
agree. Helm, heading 025 mark 2. Warp 8.
Kick it!”
Fry,
blood oozing down the side of his face from an injury sustained in the Borg
attack, nodded in acknowledgement and sent the starship into high warp very
quickly.
“Pursuit?” Koester asked a moment later.
“It
appears the Borg vessel is not pursuing, Commodore,” Bloom answered, letting go
of the breath he had been holding as he did.
“Very well. Mister
Fry, maintain speed until we reach Starbase 12. Mister Kane, you have the
* * * *
The
doors to sickbay parted, and Fleet
Around
the main operating bed, both Dr. Q
and the Emergency Medical Hologram huddled over the prone form of the Dauntless’ Chief of the Boat. On one of the closest biobeds
Koester noticed the Borg who had been brought down from the bridge with Kyman. The biomonitors indicated the drone was still alive, though in
an induced coma. The young Commodore’s
first instinct was to shut off the life support unit. Kill the creature that had done this to his
close friend and trusted subordinate.
But intellect quickly took over, knowing the ship’s medical staff was
keeping the Borg alive for a reason, either research,
or a reference point to help Kyman recover.
“How
is he, Doctor?” Koester asked as he stood just outside the quarantine forcefield. Q glanced over her shoulder at Koester.
“Too
early to tell,” she explained. “I think
we may have gotten him down here quick enough, but I’m having trouble flushing
the nanoprobes from his system. It’s almost as if his body is simply giving
in to the assimilation. We’ve already
removed two implants they generated and are trying to head off another.”
“Keep
me updated,” Koester said as he turned to leave, then
suddenly turned back. “One
other thing. What are you
planning on doing with that?” He
gestured toward the Borg asleep on the first biobed.
“That’s
the next one under the scanners here,” Q
answered as she manipulated a tool into Kyman’s
arm. The device emitted a high pitched
hum when it was activated. “We’re hoping
to learn more about how the implants interact as we remove them from her. That way we’ll know more how to help victims
like Chief Kyman in the future.”
It
seemed against his better judgment, after all the years of training summed up
as ‘The only good Borg is a dead Borg.’ But Koester knew his Chief Medical Officer
understood what she was doing, and was well equipped to handle any emergency
that might arise in sickbay. Deciding to
get out from under people’s feet, Koester left sickbay and headed directly for
his ready room.
* * * *
Captain’s
Log, Stardate 52736.0:
With
no sign of pursuit, we are now within a day of arriving at Starbase 12, where
our injured will be cared for in the base Infirmary.
Still no word on Chief Kyman’s
recovery. However, I have been notified that the
majority of the Borg drone’s implants have been removed or shut down, including
it’s interplexing
beacon. The drone, if it survives, is no
longer a member of the Collective.
Koester, out.
* * * *
Fleet
Captain Koester was still sitting at the desk in his ready room, reviewing
damage and casualty reports, when the door chime sounded. He looked at the doors with a mixture of hope
and dread.
“Come.”
The
doors swished aside and Q
entered. She looked particularly
unkempt, her long brown hair, normally pulled back tightly in a ponytail, hung
loosely around her head, some strands covering her face. Blood, a mixture of red, green, and dark
brown, stained her medical tunic.
“How
is he?” Koester asked with concern as he offered Q a seat on the couch and then sped to the replicator
to bring her a cup of herb tea with a cinnamon stick in it.
Q gratefully accepted the cup, taking a
long sip from it before answering, “He’ll survive. But I won’t know exactly how much damage the
implants did to his brain until he wakes up.”
Koester
nodded, taking a seat next to Q, who
closed her eyes and leaned her head against Koester’s shoulder. “What about our... uh... guest?”
“Well,
the EMH and I managed to stabilize her.
It will be some time though before we find out if any of her humanity...
or in her case, El’Aurity? Well, whatever... If she
reverts to becoming an individual again.”
“It’s... I mean, she’s El’Aurian?”
Koester asked, suddenly jolting upright.
“Do you think the Chief was aware of that?”
“I
don’t know. Why?”
“Because
when that Borg attacked him, he froze.
And it wasn’t fear I saw in his face.
More like... concern. A deep sadness.”
This
information started Q thinking. She put the teacup down on an endtable and quickly rushed to the door, Koester following.
“What
is it?” he asked as they both darted into the turbolift.
“I
want to test a hypothesis,” Q
answered as the doors swished shut.
* * * *
“It’s
just as I suspected,” Q said as both
she and Koester stared at the medical monitor.
Koester recognized some of the information displayed, but did not have
the medical knowledge to fully understand it.
“What
are we looking at here?”
Q looked up at Koester, a smirk on her
lips, and answered, “I took DNA samples from both Chief Kyman
and the El’Aurian Borg, and the results were as I
expected. They’re family.”
“What?!?”
Q pointed out half a dozen spikes
displayed on the monitor.
“Here,
here, and here... There can be no
doubt. Chief Kyman
and that Borg are closely related. And
by closely I mean within two generations.”
A
moan from one of the nearby biobeds drew both their
attentions. By the time they moved over
to where Chief Kyman lay, the EMH had responded as
well.
“How
do you feel?” Koester asked Kyman as he gripped the El’Aurian man’s unbandaged arm.
“Like
hell,” Kyman croaked.
“What happened to me? I had some
of the strangest dreams.”
“You
were attacked by the Borg,” Q explained
as she passed the scanner of a medical tricorder over
Kyman’s prone figure.
“The drone managed to inject you with nanoprobes,
but we managed to remove the implants in time.”
Kyman’s face took on a deathly pallor.
“Then
it wasn’t a dream this time?” he said, his voice little more than a
whisper. Concern etched the faces of
those around him.
“What
did you experience, Chief?” the EMH asked Kyman. The Chief seemed for a moment to lose himself in the memories.
“I
heard their voice.... in my head. All the time. Never a quiet moment.”
Kyman paused for a moment, accepting a cup of
water from Q to quench his parched
throat before continuing. “I was
compelled to listen, compelled to obey, fighting against it the whole time
until... until...”
“Until what,
“Until
she told me to relax... That everything
would be alright. That we were together
again.”
“Who?”
asked Q, glancing up at Koester to
see if he shared her suspicions.
“My... my mother.” He
looked at the faces of those around him, growing concern replacing the
weariness. Trying to sit up, gentle
hands held him back down. “But it was
just a dream, right? I mean, she was
killed over a hundred years ago. She
couldn’t possibly be...”
“
Kyman’s breathing returned more to
normal. He lay back again, shutting his
eyes for a moment. When he opened them
again, Q was holding a padd.
“I’m
sorry to do this to you right now, Chief,” Q
said, holding the padd forward where Kyman could see the screen.
“Do you recognize this person?”
The
image on the screen showed a woman, strangely scarred, yet not at all like the
Borg she had been mere hours earlier.
Her skin color was much more closer to normal,
though still pale by either human or El’Aurian
standards. She remained bald, but the
tubes and circuits were no longer present.
It would just be a matter of time before hair and other natural features
would grow and fill in.
“Mother!” Kyman shouted, again
bolting upright on the bed. “Where is
she? Is she alive?”
“She
was the Borg that attacked you on the bridge,” Q answered. “Pete managed to
disable her without killing her. She was
brought down here to Sickbay so we could study her. We had no idea until just a few moments ago
that she was in any way related to you.
You just confirmed our suspicions.”
“Where
is she? When can I see her?” Kyman asked, trying to climb out of bed. His progress was blocked by the EMH, who
scolded him sternly.
“If
you don’t get back into that bed, I will tie you down, Chief.”
Kyman seemed poised to disobey the holographic doctor until
he looked at the faces of Koester and Q.
“Oh,
fine,” he mumbled.
“You
need rest, Chief. Your body was invaded
by foreign biotechnology. You need a
chance to regain your strength. If you
follow my directions, three days in Sickbay and two weeks in quarters and you’ll
be fit for duty. If you don’t....” Q’s
expression grew stern. “Three weeks in
Sickbay and a month recuperating at Starbase 12.”
Kyman huffed, then laid back down
on the bed.
“As
for your mother,” the EMH added. “Her
vital signs are improving. Her
biological functions are responding to treatment. However, she is still in a coma. There’s no way of knowing when she may come
out of it. If
she comes out of it.”
“I’m
sure she’ll be fine,” Q said,
throwing an acid look at the holodoc. “I’m sure both of you will.”
* * * *
Captain’s
Log, Stardate 52737.2:
We’ve
been in orbit around Starbase 12 for two days now and repairs to the Dauntless have commenced. We are also awaiting replacements for the 12
members of my crew killed in the Borg attack.
Chief
Kyman seems to be well on his way to recovery. And to our surprise, his mother, Morra, formerly a Borg drone, is responding well to
treatment and is on her own road toward recovery.
Our
only question now... What do we do with
her?
Koester, out.
Koester
watched from within the CMO’s office. At the desk beside him, Q monitored the vital statistics of both her patients out in the
main ward of Sickbay.
“So
far they’re both doing alright,” Q
told her Commanding Officer. “In fact, I
would have to say she’s making a miraculous recovery, considering she was a
part of the Collective for over a century.”
“So,
what do we do with her?” Koester asked, obviously confused. “I don’t think we can keep her aboard, but
where do we send a former Borg.”
“Who
says we have to send her away somewhere, Pooh?” Q asked, looking up at Koester as she
spoke. “I read a report sent out by the Prometheus that the crew of Voyager has managed to bring a human
back from the Collective successfully.”
“And
Voyager isn’t exactly in a position
to just drop that former Borg off at a Starbase or
Federation member world, are they?”
A
bleeping alarm on her panel drew back Q’s
attention. The monitor indicted that
Chief Kyman’s biobed no
longer registered life signs.
“Oh
no,” the Doctor said, quickly glancing out the clear, round wall of her
office. She breathed a sigh of relief
when she saw Kyman standing alongside his mother’s
bed, holding the unconscious El’Aurian woman’s
hand. Q and Koester quietly moved out into the ward to join him.
“She
doesn’t quite look like I remember,” Kyman said
without turning to acknowledge Q and
Koester’s presence as he softly stroked his mother’s scarred face. His hand paused over a small implant that
protruded from her right cheek.
“We
had to leave some of the implants attached or else she would have died,” Q explained, taking a medical tricorder from a nearby tray and passing the scanner over Morra’s still form, then nodded to herself with a slight
smile. “She’s recovering slowly, but given
time, she’ll be back to normal real soon.
Someday she may not even need any of the implants.”
Kyman nodded, then looked at
Koester, deep sadness in his eyes.
“That Borg ship. Were
there others of my family on it?”
“We
have no way of knowing,
“No,
Skipper. Be better if they had been
killed anyway,” Kyman said, shaking his head and
looking sadly at his mother. “What are
we going to do with Morra?”
Q looked up at Koester, concerned, when
the Commodore answered, “We were really hoping you might have some input into
that dilemma,
Kyman chuckled unpleasantly, then
looked at Koester as he continued to hold Morra’s
hand.
“Skipper,
I would not want my mother here while we’re at war any more than you wanted
your daughter Gem aboard.” He sighed, then returned Morra’s hand
comfortably to her chest as he started walking back to his own biobed. “Please,
make arrangements for her to be sent to Earth.
I’m sure they can help her better there.”
Koester
nodded, then gave a brief goodbye kiss to Q before he left to make arrangements
for the former Borg’s transfer to Earth.
Meanwhile, Q moved over to Kyman’s bed and started scanning the Chief with her tricorder.
“If
you don’t mind, Commander,” Kyman said, turning to
face Q, “could you please take your
noisy machinery away. I would like a
chance to meditate.”
Q smiled awkwardly, then excused
herself and returned to her office.
Kyman turned back over, facing the bed where his mother
still lay unconscious, and closed his eyes.
“Welcome
home, mother. I love you,” he whispered.
‘I love you too, my son,’ he heard in
his mind.
The
End
Return to 2375.
Return to Stories Archive.