The Tunnel’s End
by Michael Marek

 
 

     “Commander Marek, I’m picking up a spatial anomaly at 45 Mark 147, range point 822 light years.”
     The USS Crazy Horse was on a rare trip back to Earth’s solar system after having spent several weeks in the Gamma Quadrant working to help the worlds of the former Dominion rebuild themselves.  We were only a few hours away from home and looking forward to R and R.
     “Analysis,” I replied, routinely.  These things crop up from time to time.  Most are unimpressive.
     Lieutenant Commander Samantha Neal, still newly enough promoted that she polished her rank pips every night, was at the science station.  She made a face as she scrutinized the readouts.
     “Massive graviton emissions,” she reported after a few moments, “emanating from some sort of portal.  It conforms with the observed parameters of a transwarp conduit terminus.”
     That was bad.  The Federation had only made contact with one civilization that uses transwarp conduits, the Borg.  It demanded immediate action.
     “Helm,” I called out.  “Intercept course, maximum speed.  Yellow alert.  Notify Starfleet.  Senior officers to the bridge.”
     Moira (NFN, NMI, our ship’s artificial intelligence second officer) appeared immediately via her hologram.  Her simulacrum body followed shortly, along with my wife, Science Officer Commander Charlotte Marek, Tactical Officer Commander Dolores Scott, and Senior Helmsman Commander Bill Willmerdinger.  (LtC Marina Lemar came too, although she didn’t really have a formal bridge job.)
     It didn’t take long a reach a consensus.
     “Admiral Paris,” I reported over the com-link to Earth.  “The anomaly is definitely artificial -- and it carries a Borg signature.  There’s no doubt.”
     “Understood, Commander.  We’re sending all available ships to assist.  Hold the fort and take command when they arrive.  The Crazy Horse has more experience with the Borg than any other ship in the quadrant.  You meet the definition in the Starfleet regs for holding the “tactical advantage.”  The Admiral did something on a console near him, then looked back at the screen.  “You’ll serve as Brevet Captain, effective with the fleet rendezvous,” he added.
     “Understood, Sir,” I acknowledged.  “Marek out.”
     “Congratulations, Captain,” said Moira brightly.  “Assuming we survive long enough for the other ships to join us, that is.”
     It was a dicey situation.  We soon approached the transwarp aperture and took up station to monitor it.  I was pacing the bridge, thinking about our perilous situation.  Starfleet had managed to scrape together over a dozen ships to join us, but the first of them was still over two hours away.  Everyone automatically expected that a Borg ship would be coming through the conduit shortly, given the signature the Crazy Horse had identified. 
     I’d actually been on two Borg ships in previous years, a scout ship at Kappa Cephi and a full-sized cube ship near the Sietra Nebula, at the edge of the Beta Quadrant.  Those experiences were both made possible by the Borg’s odd habit of not attacking boarding parties unless they harm the functioning of the ship. Charlotte, Dolores and Bill had been with me on the cube ship, along with Brandon Campbell, who was not on board the Crazy Horse at the moment.
     Borg ships are remarkably hard to defeat, even with a full task force equipped with the latest Starfleet weapons.  The Crazy Horse had armaments equal to that of any ship in the fleet, but for another 147 minutes, it would be just us protecting the solar system, the Federation Council, the people of Earth and the various and sundry other colonies and habitats around the system. 
     “We’re trying to scan into the conduit,” reported Charlotte a few moments after we arrived.  “It’s hard, because this is a one-way aperture.  It’s not designed to let things in at this end, including sensor beams.”
     “Are we sure it’s artificial?” asked Dolores, always the tactical officer.  “Maybe we can find a way to collapse it and keep anything from coming out.”
     Charlotte and Moira’s simulacrum simulacrum  were conferring quietly, so Moira’s hologram answered.
     “Transwarp space is natural, similar to the way subspace is natural,” she said.  “The conduits, however, are artificially manipulated.  Charlotte and I agree that if we could close the terminus, it would just pop open again, because it’s being generated from the far end.  We’d have to somehow get inside to be able to collapse it.”
     “And it’s a one-way portal, so we can’t get inside,” I concluded for her.
     “We can’t get inside,” she confirmed.
     “What is our status if a ship comes out?” I asked, turning to Dolores.
     “Our upgrades during the Dominion War give us as much firepower as any individual ship that has ever faced the Borg,” she replied, stating something we all knew.  “I wouldn’t bet on it being enough.  We’ll use the Borg combat protocols – rotating shield frequencies and attempting to target weak points, if any appear.  Picard’s success in finding such a weak spot during the second Borg attack on Earth has given us a few telltales to look for.”  Dolores shrugged.  “It’s an approach nobody has been able to test because there hasn’t been a Borg ship in Federation space since then.”
     “Moira,” I said after thinking for a few moments.  “When we were on the cube ship you had a certain amount of luck in hearing the Borg hive mind.”
     Her hologram nodded in the affirmative.
     “Any hint of them now?” I asked.
     The hologram winked out and Moira’s simulacrum walked forward from the science station.  She cocked her head, as if listening to real sound and not electronic impulses.
     “A whisper, maybe,” she said.  “Like they’re a long, long ways away.”
     The Crazy Horse bridge had suddenly become very quiet.
     “Are the whispers getting louder?” I asked. 
     Moira nodded her head up and down.
     “Can you give me a projection of how soon they’ll be here, based on changes in signal strength?” I asked.
      “I don’t have much data for plotting a curve,” she replied.  “Call it two hours, 25 minutes, plus or minus ten. I can refine that as times goes by.” 
     “Keep me posted,” I instructed.
     “There’s something else, Michael,” she added.  “The signals I am receiving are not normal.  The data speed is significantly slower than usual.”
     “The distance?” I asked.
     “No,” she answered immediately.  “The data is digital.  If I am receiving it at all, it should be full speed.”
     “There is a theory,” spoke up Charlotte.  “Federation ships have only been in transwarp conduits a handful of times, but analysis of sensor readings from those trips suggests that perceptual time may slow somewhat for life forms in the conduits.  The Cochrane Institute published a paper on the subject last year.”
     “So while it will be almost two-and-a-half hours for us, it may less time for the Borg coming through?” I asked.
    “Based on the data speed I’m receiving, probably only a few minutes for them,” agreed Moira.
 
     I left Samantha in command of the bridge and led Charlotte, Moira and Dolores to the briefing room where we advised Admiral Paris of our conclusions.  Then we got on a group com-link with the commanders of the reinforcement ships.  It looked like most of the members of the squadron, each coming at its own best speed, would be here in time to help greet the Borg ship when it exited the conduit. 
     Somebody once said “…no plan of battle ever survives contact with the enemy.”  That would certainly be true with our Borg ship.  The best I felt I could do was to coordinate the initial deployment of the strike force and general tactics.  I left Dolores in conference with the other tactical officers – comparing the telltales we would be watching for and working out what other details they could.
     Waiting for action has always been hard for me.  I have developed a modus operandi for such situations.  I deliberately stayed away from the bridge for much of the intervening time, both because I didn’t want the crew to feel that I was looking over their shoulders and because I didn’t want myself getting too keyed up too soon.  I carried a PADD with me on which Moira kept me posted with her latest projections of the arrival of the Borg ship and the arrival of the first and last reinforcements.  The numbers were uncomfortably close together, but continued to give us a slight margin.  The PADD kept me in touch with all of the other key information on the status of the ship I needed, as well, so being away from the bridge was not a detriment.
     I visited Engineering, Sickbay, Roddenberry’s, Weapons Control, and several other departments of the ship, speaking briefly to the people on duty at each post.  I found that although we had not yet actually called Red Alert, everybody from all shifts was already at their duty stations.  I finished the tour in my office, just off the corridor at the back of the bridge, where I had a cup of coffee, Orion Blend.
 
     Ten minutes before we predicted the Borg ship would exit the conduit we were in position and as ready as we would ever be.   Seventeen Starfleet ships had arrived and were on station with us; nine others were still inbound and probably wouldn’t make it in time.  We had a nice collection of ship sizes and types, including a couple of that new class that has four nacelles.
     “Well, reinforcements after the battle starts is always good,” I muttered to myself after checking the ETA of the remaining ships.  Then I spoke aloud to the bridge crew.  “OK, everybody.  This is a big one.  We need to find a way to pull a rabbit out of our hat, and we’ll have to do it on the fly.  There won’t be time for much talk when we’re in combat with a Borg ship.”
     “Captain,” spoke up Moira.  “The signals I’m getting from the Borg are more and more unusual.”
     “In what way?” I asked.
     “High level Borg communication is normally highly ordered and structured, superimposed over a low level background of individual minds.  What I’m hearing now is all jumbled and disordered.  The primary signals from the hive mind, in particular, are strident and almost desperate.  The approaching ship is franticly and repeatedly being instructed to…I can’t really tell what. 
     “‘Get them, destroy them, assimilate them…’” Moira quoted.  “It’s not clear who ‘them’ is.”
     “Don’t you think it’s us?” asked Dolores.
     “Maybe,” Moira answered.  “The responses from the ship are also erratic.  ‘Hold together, stay on target, just a bit longer, ignore irrelevancy, open hangar bay…’  I would say that the Borg mind has been radically disrupted, by something.  This ship has a mission that is critical to their survival and the ship’s collective is struggling to hold itself together to accomplish that mission.  I am also not hearing as many voices.”
     “If only we knew what it was,” said Charlotte.  “It has to be more than just exiting the transwarp aperture and fighting some Alpha Quadrant ships.”
     “The best way to undermine their mission is to destroy the Borg ship,” I said. “Open a channel to the fleet.”
     Samantha nodded to me that the channel was open.
     “Marek to the fleet.  We have an indication that a hangar door may be open on the Borg ship exiting the aperture.  If so, target it.  Getting our phaser blasts inside will do a lot more damage than hitting the exterior of the ship.”  I checked my PADD.  “We have thirty seconds.  Good luck everybody.  Marek out.”
     “Captain,” said Samantha.  “We have an incoming message from Admiral Paris.”
     “On screen,” I said.  The admiral had certainly monitored my transmission to the fleet.
     “This is Admiral Paris.  Use all necessary force.  I repeat, use all necessary force…”
     As he spoke Charlotte called out, “Here it comes! It’s a sphere ship.”
I never heard the rest of what Paris said.  We were instantly in the thick of things with the entire squadron firing on the Borg sphere.  I remember thinking that we were lucky.  Borg spheres are much smaller that the cube ships that are the Borg’s primary transportation.  The popular wisdom in Starfleet is that a sphere can sometimes be destroyed with sufficient firepower, whereas a cube ship is virtually immune to anything we can throw at it.
     “There is no hangar bay open,” called out Dolores, almost immediately.  I heard her report but gave it no more thought.  It had been a nice tactical idea that wouldn’t help us, so I didn’t have time to regret a lost opportunity.  Besides, something else had quickly grabbed my attention.
     “Why aren’t they firing back? Ideas?” I asked the bridge crew at large.  The sphere had taken heavy fire but had not once returned fire.  Their shields, of course, were protecting them, as yet, from much damage. 
     “Sensors indicate their weapons appear to be functional.  They’re just not firing,” reported Dolores.
     “The transwarp network has collapsed,” added Charlotte.  “It’s not just that the aperture’s gone.  The whole network behind it disappeared an instant before the aperture went poof.”
     “I don’t get it,” I said, mostly to myself.  “I’m a Borg ship that drifts along at low sublight through a fleet of attackers, not returning fire.  'What is my motivation?’”
     As I watched the sphere, an explosion blossomed outward from the surface of the Borg ship.
     “Some kind of metaphasic explosion inside the Borg ship,” said Moira.
     It was followed rapidly by two more.
     “Message to the fleet,” I called out.  “Cease fire.”
     “The fleet is acknowledging,” replied Samantha.  “Incoming message from Admiral Paris also orders ‘cease fire.’”
     More blasts rocked the surface of the Borg sphere, which then abruptly exploded.  An instant later, something streaked out of the fireball.  I registered it as a ship, but one that looked nothing like a Borg construct. 
     “Identify,” I ordered the bridge crew at large.  I didn’t need to explain what I wanted identified.  Everyone’s attention was riveted on the little ship that was approaching.
     “The hull has a Federation signature,” said Charlotte.
     “Com signal identifies them as USS Voyager,” chimed in Samantha an instant later, with glee in her voice.  Everyone in Starfleet knew about the plucky crew of the little science ship that got stranded at the far side of the galaxy, slowly making its way home against the odds.  Since Voyager had gotten back in regular contact with Starfleet several months earlier, the ship’s exploits had become the talk of many Ten-Forward lounges, including our own.
     “Advise Starfleet,” I ordered immediately.  Moments later we monitored Admiral Paris hailing Voyager directly.
     “Sorry to surprise you,” responded Voyager’s Captain, Kathryn Janeway, adding a little joke.  “Next time we’ll call ahead.”
     “Welcome back,” answered Paris.
     “It’s good to be here,” said Janeway.  She sounded in shock.
     “How did you…?” Paris began to ask, but Janeway interrupted him – something one generally doesn’t do to an admiral.
     “It’ll all be in my report, Sir,” she answered, understandably still sounding a bit disoriented.
     The admiral probably realized that small talk was not what Voyager needed immediately after their return home.  “I look forward to it,” he said.  “Paris out.”
     “Advise Voyager ‘Welcome home’ and tell them the fleet would be pleased to escort them to Earth,” I told Samantha.  Moments later the Intrepid Class ship swung around and took up course for Earth.  The ships of the task force moved into place.
 
     The story of Voyager’s homecoming amidst a rapidly organized fireworks display over San Francisco Bay is well known. 
     As the command ship of the fleet that escorted Voyager home, the USS Crazy Horse had the privilege of organizing the welcome home party.  Our standing Project Team had all of the elements of the party in place by the time we arrived in San Francisco.  They outdid themselves, which is saying a lot.  Stories of the party that followed Voyager’s arrival home are infamous.
     After all, the USS Crazy Horse wrote the book on Starfleet parties.