Wolf 359
By Michael Marek

Second Officer's personal log, Stardate 43997.   The USS Intrepid will be arriving at Wolf 359 within a few minutes, where Starfleet is assembling a fleet to intercept the Borg ship that is reported to be on course for Earth. As usual for Red Alerts, I'll be Tactical Officer when we engage.      We've been getting periodic reports from the USS Enterprise via Starfleet -- Jouret IV, the Paulson Nebula -- and things don't look good. The Borg have captured Captain Picard and apparently have access to all of his knowledge.        Wolf is a tiny, cool red star 7.8 light years from Earth.   It's not a bad place for combat because it has no habitable planets and the Borg bee-line for Earth just grazes the system.      Everyone on board is tense. Up to now, the Borg have been like the boogie man that nobody ever sees.   There have been rumors about cybernetic organisms in the Beta Quadrant for a long time, back to Zefram Cochrane, the legend says, plus the occasional missing ship over the last decade or so, but we only got a good look at one of their ships a year ago, and now we are going to meet them full force. There hasn't been a combat task force like this assembled in the Federation since the Romulan war...

      "Borg ship entering sensor range," I called out across Intrepid's bridge. "They're right on the course Enterprise gave us."
     "All ships," came the voice of Admiral Hanson on the open FleetComm channel, "engage for intercept maneuver, warp 9."
     The first challenge in combating the Borg was getting them to notice us and drop out of warp. The fleet swept out from the core of the Wolf system in a sphere formation headed toward Earth so that the cube ship would overtake us from the rear and pass through the center of our formation. The ships made up not just the surface of the sphere, but were spaced within. In his fleet-wide briefing an hour earlier, Hanson had called it the Mosquito Maneuver, in hopes that the cube would drop out of warp to "swat" the annoyance our weapons fire would provide.
      Intrepid was one of the closest ships to the Borg flight path, and toward the back of the formation where we would be one of the first to have the Borg in weapons range. That put me, at Tactical, in a very hot seat.
      The helmsman, Lt. Andy Krysman, engaged automatically on the admiral's orders, holding a rigorous formation with the 39 other ships.
      "Standby weapons," said Captain Angela Whirlwind Horse, in a clear, firm voice. She was slowly walking along the rail separating the upper and lower levels of the bridge. "Tactical, fire at will as soon as they're in range."
      "Affirm, Ma'am," I nodded, keeping my eye on my display. "They're at warp 9.3, so they'll be here fast."
      That is how I became the first to fire on the Borg ship at Wolf 359, dispatching a volley of photon torpedoes. The cube quickly swept past us as succeeding ships farther forward than us fired, in turn. Abruptly the cube flashed and dropped to warp, causing Intrepid and many of the other ships to sweep past the Borg position. Andy dropped us out of warp as quickly as he could react, and swung Intrepid around to backtrack toward the cube.

     "I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile," came an unemotional voice from the speakers, and I heard the Captain gasp "Picard." A horrifying image formed on the screen. It was a human who I soon realized was, indeed, the Enterprise captain, but there were devices, or maybe appliances, covering his chest and half his head. One structure on the side of his head emitted a sharp red energy beam.  
     "You will disarm your weapons and escort us to Sector 001. If you attempt to intervene, we will destroy you."
     "Like hell, you will," I heard the admiral say, and another channel from the flagship signaled "attack pattern Alpha."

     Intrepid was still close to a minute away on impulse as the first four ships began their run on the Borg cube. I can see it now in my mind as it played out. They were the Melbourne, the Yamaguchi, the Bellerophon, and the Saratoga. That was the pattern we were supposed to follow, ten waves of four ships each which would, in theory, give ships completing their passes the chance to swing around and position for another run, similar to strafing runs in the old days of land and air wars. In that way, we were going to hammer away, giving the Borg no relief. That was the plan.
     The USS Melbourne led the first wave, charging in boldly with phasers blazing and photon torpedoes firing continuously.   But the Borg returned fire almost immediately, with an overwhelmingly powerful blast from the Borg ship that sliced through Melbourne's shields in seconds and tore a massive chunk out of her saucer. Saratoga, the next ship in line, was also quickly neutralized, left adrift with a warp core breach that cascaded into an explosion a few minutes later. When the starships Yamaguchi and Bellerophon rushed to distract the Borg from their floundering sister ships, they too were destroyed. Few of the successive Starfleet ships entering the combat zone survived in good enough shape to strafe a second time. Some of our ships clearly did damage, but sensors showed only minor drops in Borg energy outputs.

      By the time Intrepid could enter the fray, there was a cloud of derelicts surrounding the Borg cube, and a swarm of escape pods jetting away from the action zone. After a bare 120 seconds of combat, Admiral Hanson ordered a rally of the remaining ships for launch of a last-ditch all-ships-at-once assault, but his flagship was destroyed moments later, the admiral presumed dead.   There was a cacophony of radio calls, many signaling distress.
     "Target the emitters," Captain Whirlwind Horse ordered with grim resolution as we came into range. "Attack pattern Spirit Six. Divert all but critical power needs to the shields. Let's get in, do what we can and get back out. Hit and run is the only way we can possibly survive."
      I have no idea why the Borg were firing weapons from only a single location, but it was to our advantage. Andy swept Intrepid around the lee of the cube and popped us over the top where we could fire at the Borg emitters at very close range. To my surprise, we succeeded and the Borg emitters went dark. But Intrepid did not escape Borg weapons. For a few seconds on that run, before the Borg emitters failed, we took the full brunt of close-range Borg fire.
      "Aft shields six and seven failing," reported Lieutenant Commander Jean M'Buju, at Ops. At the same instant the ship rocked and circuits sparked here and there around the bridge. "Damage to port nacelle," added M'Buju.
      "Locking the nacelle down," Lt. Exwys reported over the comm. System from Engineering, relaying from Chief Engineer Hawthorne.
      "Get us out of range, Andy," ordered the first officer, Commander Adrian Vance, in his clipped British accent.  
      "Trying, sir," he replied. "Only partial power on impulse. We're still in their range, if they get their weapons back on line."
      "Not if," said the Captain. "When."  
      I was checking my targeting, in case I needed to fire again, when the ship's klaxon went off.
      "Intruder alert, intruder alert," the computer voice said matter-of-factly.
      We'd all read the reports of the Enterprise encounter with the Borg at system J-25 and their more recent encounters just hours earlier. In fact, we all carried phasers, tuned to a high, narrow band and set to rotate frequencies randomly after each shot.
      "We've got company," signaled Hawthorne on the circuit from Engineering.
      "Don't interfere unless they take hostile actions," ordered the Captain quickly.
      "They blew up my blankety-blank nacelle," retorted Hawthorne. "I'd call that hostile."
      "More reports coming in from all over the ship," reported M'Buju, looking aghast. "Scores of them...and they're attacking the crew. Security is responding."
      The two security staff members who were always present on the bridge during red alerts drew their side arms and took watchful steps forward.  
      "Get us out of their transporter range," Captain Whirlwind Horse ordered the helm, but even as Andy struggled to comply, light glowed at four places around the bridge. I had a brief impression of a transporter effect that was different from our own, more of a spinning than just a flickering.  
      Four Borg drones appeared out of the swirls, at the cardinal points of the bridge. Without hesitation, each began advancing on the nearest member of the crew, fist outstretched. One zeroed in on Andy in his critical position at the helm. The security team was already firing, but the drones had personal shields. I tried, as well, with my own sidearm, but the shields protected the drones from all sides.  
      "Belay phaser fire," shouted Commander Vance. "It's too tight in here."
      He gestured to the security staff, directing hand-to-hand, and grabbed at the closest Borg himself, locking a vice-like grip on the drone's wrists and trying to force it away from the helm. He succeeded for a couple of steps, but some kind of tubules snapped out of the Borg's knuckles and punctured the first officer's neck. Vance sagged and the drone supported him, disappearing in a swirl of transporter light. Moments later another drone appeared on the upper deck of the bridge. I wasn't really aware of it, but I somehow knew that the security team had not fared better than Vance; they were gone. The bridge was pandemonium as people shouted and danced out of the way of the stumbling gait of the Borg.  
      In the few seconds he had, Andy had tapped a preprogrammed course into the helm and scooted out of his seat as the drone approached him. Ignoring Andy for the moment, the drone zapped lightning from its artificial arm at the console, triggering short circuits and smoke all over.   The bridge plunged into darkness for a moment, until the red emergency lighting came on.
      "Find the med kit and get a tranquilizer hypo," the captain called from across the bridge, looking directly at me, then she dashed toward a drone, jumped and kicked it with both feet, all the while letting out what I gathered was a Lakota war cry. The drone went down and the captain landed on her feet in a crouched stance. I was fumbling desperately in the storage unit where the bridge medical kit was stored. I got the pouch open and pulled out the hypo, quickly dialing in the standard medicine used to allow an injured crewmember to sleep, then quadrupled the dose. The captain was knocking down a second drone as I sidled up to the first one, which was clumsily trying to rise. I got my hand to the drone's neck and injected it without being attacked myself. The drone quickly stopped struggling.
      I glanced around the bridge. Andy grasped a drone from behind that had just beamed in and was trying to pull it over backward. The final drone had M'Buju in its arms and was just beaming out. I didn't really have time to think as I moved to inject the next closest Borg. The trick was dodging its arms, which had tubules extended, whipping around. It tried for my ankles, but I jumped and managed to get to its neck, also, without being "bit."
      I looked around. Only Andy and I were still on our feet, with the drone struggling on its back. Andy disabled the drone on the floor by the simple expedient of walloping its skull with a fire extinguisher, something its shields did not block. For the moment, the bridge was quiet, except for short circuits and smoke.
      "Oh, no, the captain," murmured Andy, pointing. I turned to look and saw the captain on the floor, not far from the second drone she had attacked. There was blood.

       I knelt beside her and gently touched the artery in her throat. There was just a hint of a pulse. She opened her eyes at my touch, but didn't seem to focus.
     "Captain," I said. "Help's on the way."
     "Mike," she whispered. "See the safety of all ha..."
     Her eyes drifted shut again and when I took her pulse again, I couldn't find it.
      "Sir," said Adam, leaning over the dead Ops console. "Nothing here."
      I had to take a breath. I was second officer, after all, and had just become the ranking officer onboard. I rose and moved to the nearby Science Station, which still seemed to have power. A scan told me that the Borg cube was 300,000 km away, moving leisurely from wreck to wreck, no doubt to harvest any crew remaining alive. An inward directed scan showed me life support out and engines off line. The air supply was venting in several locations.
      I tapped my communicator pin. "Bridge to engineering."
      "Exwys in engineering," came the reply a moment later.
      "Report."
      "Most of the rest of the engineering crew is dead or taken," Exwys replied. "The Borg didn't seem to know what to make of me. Maybe they only want to assimilate humanoids." Exwys was a Celentrapod from Raga. "The ship is dead, sir. One nacelle gone and the other venting. Most circuits fused. The warp core is powered down with no way to restart it. The ship is losing air in several locations and we have no power for force fields to stop it. Without life support we won't be able to breathe presently. My tricorder tells me there are 79 life forms on board." It went without saying that the count did not include the incapacitated Borg, who did not register as individual life forms.
      I re-keyed my communicator to "group call" everyone receiving my signal.
      "This is the second officer," I said and heard my voice echo back from Andy's pin. "Abandon ship. Repeat, abandon ship. Maneuver away from the Borg Cube. Rendezvous if possible, but stealth mode until rescue arrives."
      "I've got the log," Andy said, holding up an isolinear chip and slipping it inside his uniform. "Shuttle bay?"
      I pulled a tricorder out of a storage drawer at the science station.
      "That's what I was thinking, if we can make it," I replied, knowing that he was referring to the auxiliary hangar bay at the rear of Intrepid's saucer section, rather than the big shuttle decks in the secondary hull. I looked around the smoky bridge. "We'll be back, captain, I promise."

      We had to climb down four decks -- no turbolifts, of course -- and work our way through heavy damage back to the saucer section's engineering bay, used primary for the currently non-functional impulse engines. We encountered Borg twice, but were fleet of foot in leaving them behind. On the other hand, we picked up six crewmembers as we moved along, including the Science and Tactical officers from my own third shift, Lieutenant Adam Glidden and Ensign Alyssa Ahmed.  

      My tricorder told me that many ASRV lifeboats had already left the ship. It would have been an easier out for us, too, but I really wanted the capabilities of the Type 6 warp shuttle I knew was in the hangar bay we were approaching.
      We lost artificial gravity part way through our trek, so I wasn't surprised to find the power out when we reached the hangar deck control room.
      "Don't worry," I told my people, and began using my tricorder to take remote control of the shuttle, which was floating in vacuum a few dozen meters away. Luckily, past experience had made me sure to memorize the prefix codes of all of the shuttles assigned to Intrepid. Moments later the shuttle nacelles lit up and I was able to remote control beam all eight of us on board using the shuttle emergency escape transporter.

      Andy took the helm, of course, and Adam, the nominal science officer, slipped into the other control seat as the shuttle lightly jetted out of the hanger.
      "I'm reading 67 of our ASRVs, sir, and three other shuttles, all smaller than ours," reported Adam.   "A total of 79 life forms, including our own. They're linking up, as per procedure.   Uh...there are several hundred lifeboats from other ships, too.   Generally moving away from the battle site as fast as they can."
      The lifeboats are designed with docking ports to allow them to link with other lifeboats. Most have two ports, but some have four, to allow three-dimensional structures. In some cases, crews have had to survive in such ad hoc structures for extended periods.
       It was good news that everyone who has survived the actual attack had apparently made it off the ship, but it also meant that over 600 members of the Intrepid crew had died or been taken by the Borg. I was glad that we were headed outbound and I couldn't see Intrepid. Couldn't see the derelict, because that's want she was. Again, I took a breath. The challenge was far from over. The Borg ship was still out there, not exactly coming our way but too close for comfort.
       "Standby tractor beams," I told Adam. "As soon as they're linked up, we'll pull them out of here."
       It was my plan to get away to a reasonable distance and wait for the Borg ship to depart. I hoped that eventually other Starfleet ships would arrive. We'd had reports of other vessels inbound that wouldn't arrive in time for the party, including Enterprise, which had been desperately trailing the Borg ship from Jouret IV. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I was counting on the Borg not paying attention to miscellaneous groups of beings who were not causing them problems. On the other hand, I was troubled by what the Borg were actually doing. We were now 35 minutes after the action had effectively ended. Were they repairing damage?   Going through the wreckage to assimilate surviving Starfleet personnel?   If so, I definitely wanted to be out of there, but my options were few. We were months away from any habitable planet at the low warp our shuttle could manage. Any other ships arriving at the scene would also be at risk, if the Borg hung around.
       Intrepid's lifeboats rendezvoused and docked as we watched, performing a sort of ballet. As instructed, they used communications-out procedures, yet were fairly efficient about clustering. I had a sudden horrible thought that the lifeboats were, essentially, cubical. I wondered if more than one Borg cube could meet and connect the same way. The thought of facing more than one Borg ship at the same time made me shiver.
      "Sir," said Andy, "The Borg ship is moving off at impulse."
      "Course?" I asked.
      "Best I can tell," he said, poking at his controls, "is that they're on a parabolic course to swing around the star. Speed about half light, so expect them back in, well around an hour.
      "I think that maybe they're going to somehow capture energy to recharge," Adam added, with a shrug. "They'll skim the corona pretty close."
      "Find us a hiding place," I said. "For all of our pods."
      Adam peered intently at his screen while Andy began the maneuver to link up with the lifeboat cluster. We would not dock, as such, but would take up a standard towing position and link to the cluster with a tight beam communication signal that the Borg were unlikely to detect, unless they were right on top of us.
      "I've got a comet about seven light minutes away," said Adam. "It's got a decent tail. If we can get into the coma, we should be pretty well protected from scans. As long as we maintain communications silence, they shouldn't notice us."
      "Do it," I told Andy who immediately activated tractors and began thrusting.   Turning to Adam I added, "Monitor Starfleet channels for anything from the other survivors, or from inbound Starfleet ships but do not reply without my say so."

      Forty minutes later we were in position, inside the haze close to the core of the comet. During the transit, I had talked with the Intrepid survivors via the closed circuit link we had established. Some were calm and some anxious, but the consensus was that they were glad we were "getting out of Dodge" as the ship's historian quipped. We were getting receive-only readings through the coma because some of the Starfleet derelicts still had partial power and were transmitting telemetry.
      It was via this channel that we watched Enterprise arrive, just minutes before we expected the Borg ship back from its "sun run." It was a VERY hard decision, but I did not immediately signal the big Galaxy Class ship as it nosed through the wreckage of over three dozen ships. None of the survivors were transmitting, in fact, as the cube returned, slowing to a relative stop not far from Enterprise. I was pleased at the discipline the survivors showed in the face of the enemy, regardless of their perilous position.
      Enterprise followed the Borg ship into warp immediately after rejoining its saucer and warp drive sections which had separated for the Picard rescue maneuver. I later heard the story, getting better with each telling, of how the Enterprise crew recovered Picard, filled with Borg implants, chased the Borg ship right into Earth orbit and used Picard's neural pathways to implant a false command in the consciousness of the collective, leading to the cube's catastrophic explosion. But we who stayed behind on the fringe of the Wolf 359 system had our own problems.  
      Enterprise had done a subspace "ping" for lifeboats as she was rejoining her sections. We had no voice contact, but the encrypted pulse no doubt gave them a good count of survivors, even though they had more a pressing agenda than rendering aid. We knew that other ships would do their best to respond, but the uncertainty of what the Borg were doing at, or to, Earth, left us hanging. Adam was monitoring subspace, but the radio traffic was in disarray, so it held little news for us.  
      And so our first priority was survival. A full commander, who was apparently the highest ranking officer on any of the ships to survive, was organizing the escape pods and shuttles in an area near the battle zone, now that the Borg were gone. I tractored the Intrepid cluster back out of the comet and we joined the throng. A later count said that close to 6,500 Starfleet members survived, over half of them injured, whereas some 11,000 died or were missing in action. Our ASRVs joined up with the others forming a kind of temporary space station, the largest assembly of docked lifepods ever assembled. The shuttles stood by. Ours, like many others, became a makeshift sickbay with injured beamed out of their pods.
      It was 18 hours later when we finally got the word from Earth about the destruction of the Borg ship, followed shortly by ETA estimates from the various relief ships headed our way. They'd been inbound to Earth to do what they could to provide reinforcements, and quickly diverted to Wolf. It happened that the first rescue ship to arrive in the Wolf system was my future ship, the USS Crazy Horse, NCC-4681R. She came charging in at the highest warp I had ever seen a Starfleet ship travel, up to that time. One of my Starfleet Academy classmates was Operations Officer of the big ship, and she was uniquely suited to manage the recovery efforts. Moira, you see, is an artificial intelligence residing in the Crazy Horse computer (how she achieved full Federation citizenship through demonstration of sentience is a story for another time). As soon as the CH was in range of the low power transmitters on the lifeboats, Moira used her multitasking capability to contact all of them, more or less simultaneously.
      "NCC1631C shuttle 3, this is Crazy Horse," I heard Moira's calm but urgent voice in the cramped quarters of the shuttle.  
      "This is Intrepid shuttle 3," I replied. "We have wounded onboard."
      "Michael?" she asked. "I'm so happy to hear your voice. Report conditions for triage."   No time for small talk, of course.
      "All on board are stable," I replied. "Three with shock from blood loss. One broken leg, set. Shuttle resources in good shape. We're coping."
      "Understand, shuttle 3," Moira acknowledged. "Tag shock cases for second priority transport and broken leg for third. We'll get back to you."
      Transporter operators read the transponders that are embedded in Starfleet communicator pins.   When survivors across the battlefield manually set their communicators to signal priority, we were, in effect, giving the transporter teams precedence guidance so that the most severely injured could be brought on board for treatment first, followed by those whose need was not as severe. It was 45 minutes before our shock cases were beamed out, and another hour after that that the officer with the broken leg went away. By then a couple of additional ships had arrived, but it turned out that the remaining party on board our shuttle was eventually beamed directly to a Crazy Horse holodeck, configured as relief stations and bunks (before beaming, we hard docked the shuttle with the mass-gaggle of ASRVs, which remains on the fringe of the Wolf system today as a memorial to the 11,000 people lost there, and a tribute to the 6,500 survivors). We were greeted by a couple of Crazy Horse ensigns who assigned us to bunks and offered us sedatives. I gratefully accepted and quickly crashed, in spite of the not-very-quiet activity around me.

      I woke the next morning not completely refreshed, but doing much better.   There were tables with replicator stations at the far end of the holodeck chamber from the bunks. I made my way there, urgently needing an Orion Blend coffee, with plenty of cream and sugar.   I had just seated myself to nurse it when a familiar voice spoke behind me.
      "Sorry I didn't have time to talk yesterday." It was Moira.
      "Hi," I said with a rueful smile. Then I looked at her analytically. "Simulacrum or hologram today?"
      "Hologram," she said, sitting down on the bench beside me. "My other self is busy on the bridge. We're en-route Earth and should be there by suppertime."
      "My captain died," I said shortly.
      "I know," she said softly. "We recovered her body, and many others. They're in stasis. Some ships are still there, continuing the work. The brass wants the big ships, like Crazy Horse, back in the Sol system to ‘protect Earth.' Somehow they got caught with no other ships of any significant size on station.   They were even trying to bring up some of the ships in the lunar museum."
      "The Crazy Horse Q?" I asked with a rueful smile, to which Moira responded with an unladylike snort.
      "Fat chance," she said.
      We sat together in silence for a few moments then a thought struck me.
      "Oh, God," I murmured. "I just realized. I'm the highest ranking Intrepid officer to survive. I've got to write to all of their families."
      Moira commiserated, but said nothing.  
      "The captain's daughter, Sarah, is in her last term at the Starfleet prep school," I told Moira. "She'll be entering the Academy proper in May. I've known her since she was ten. This is going to suck royally."
      "You'll do a good job," she said with assurance. "You'll put the time and effort in and you'll make their families feel better."
      "Then what?" I asked rhetorically.
      "You might be surprised," Moira smiled. "I scanned Intrepid thoroughly for you and I think they can make her right.   Not all the ships were that lucky, by far, but I'll bet Intrepid's under her own power again within a year."
      I said nothing, but felt a tiny bit of comfort.
      "I wish I had time to show you around," Moira said, clearly changing the subject. "I love this ship. But we're so heavily loaded that it'll have to be another time. Too bad, too. There's this nice redhead up on the science deck I'd like you to meet."
      "Oh, pleeeze," I groaned.  

      We were the first survivors of the Battle of Wolf 359 to return to Earth and we were all beamed down to the Academy parade ground where a three-sided mass formation greeted us. The center before us consisted of regular Starfleet officers in rank and file. To the left was the full assembly of Academy cadets.   To the right the Academy Preparatory School assembly.   Each assembly wore their distinctive uniforms. The ceremony was short and understated, but the admiralty conveyed Battle Star decorations en masse, accepted on our behalves by the senior surviving officer. Over the next week, we all attended similar ceremonies for the rest of the returning survivors, making up the fourth side of the mass formation, and I spent the rest of the time writing those letters and then recording each as video, of course.
      Sarah was the hardest. I knew I had to talk with her in person, so I made arrangements in advance and went to the preparatory school to see her in person. The commandant, a matronly captain who had commanded the prep school longer than I had been alive, led me to a private lounge and directed an aide to bring Sarah. Presently, the girl entered and stepped smartly up to the commandant.
      "Junior cadet Sarah Whirlwind Horse reporting as ordered, sir."
      "At ease, cadet," said the commandant, gesturing to where I stood, off to the side. "There's someone here to see you."
      Sarah turned and, I think, noticed me for the first time.
      "Mike," she said with surprise, taking a couple of steps toward me before recovering and halting. "Um, thank you for coming, sir."
      I glanced at the commandant, who flipped her fingers my way in a "go ahead" signal, then I stepped up to Sarah, opened my arms and wrapped her into a hug. She squeezed back and shuddered, not quite starting to cry...

      I guess don't need to say much more about that day. Sarah went on to graduate from Starfleet Academy near the top of her class. She now has a command of her own. The Battle of Wolf 359 is receding into history. The current crop of first-year midshipmen at Starfleet Academy had not been born when the battle occurred. They don't really understand what that desperate time was like. Within another few years as I write this, the midshipmen won't even remember the Dominion War.
      I am happy with that. It has largely been a time of peace in recent years, leaving plenty of time for exploration, which is what Starship is really supposed to be about. Of course, we still get the occasional threat and crisis, enemy aliens out to conquer the universe, and technobabble space phenomenon causing goofy side effects.   It's all part of the package when you're on the most remarkable ship of the Starfleet.