*sniff* Sta Trek is own*cough* by Paramount. Decka writes *snort*snerf* Sta Traks. *sneeze*(ugh) BogSpace is constructed *cough* by Meneks.
Does anyone have a tissue?
Things That Go Kabloomy!
"Achoo!" sneezed someone.
*****
129 of 212 peered around the corner, swiftly withdrawing his head, just in case. Moderately safe once more, he minutely examined the image he had captured, enhancing shadows and applying filters. Nothing. Negative contact did not mean his quarry was not present, merely well camouflaged. The image was discarded. Readying himself, 129 of 212 whipped around the corner into the corridor, arm raised in threat.
"Kabloomy!"
When nothing is the verdict, oft times nothing is also the reality.
"Kabloomy!" shouted 129 of 212 again. Sounds - whines and clicks - emanated from the arm. Due to 129 of 212's instability, Weapons (in a moment of self-preservation following a near-miss during holo-training) had long disabled the drone's chassis mounted weaponry.
"Kabloomy?" tried 129 of 212 a third time, sighing when no response was elicited. "Dang." The quarry had escaped again, and thus he reported to the intranets. However, very few, if any, members of the Cube #347 sub-collective paid attention. 129 of 212 was categorized with drones such as "Eggplant Elephant" 151 of 203: prone to seeing what was not present.
Several subjective years prior, 129 of 212 had been involved in an unfortunate series of engineering incidents which concluded with his head wedged in a very large and very powerful electromagnet. While an unassimilated individual might have only expected temporary and minor effects, 129 of 212 was a Borg, which meant metal was a major cranial component. Following the episode, the drone had not been the same. The primary manifestation was a propensity to shout "Kabloomy!" at random objects and (prior to armament deactivation) occasionally making said things go kabloomy. Secondary symptoms included seeing things that weren't there, and so on.
Whereas a drone integrated in the mainstem Collective would have been recycled for spare parts following the first kabloomy, Cube #347 sub-collective retained 129 of 212. With weapons reactivated, he was a stupendous drone to set at the forefront of a charge; and his brain matter, although slightly scrambled, continued to function well when used as a passive calculator node in the larger sub-collective neural circuitry. It was in the latter use 129 of 212 was normally employed, the drone locked in his alcove. However, collective experience had concluded he functioned best if let out once a ten-cycle for exercise and to shout "Kabloomy!" at things, preferably in a lesser traveled part of the cube.
Undaunted at his lack of quarry, 129 of 212 continued the hunt, automatically adjusting his vision for most efficient use of the four light strips currently providing illumination as he ambled down the hallway.
The lack of other drones in the volume of cube 129 of 212 currently haunted was not unexpected, nor even unusual. Although an Exploratory-class cube was the smallest in the Borg stable, it still sported over a kilometer cubed of volume. Admittedly, there were areas of "empty space" - bulk cargo holds, interstitial spaces, hull space, shafts major and minor - but even then, a paltry population of 4000 crew could never fill it. In addition to the size issue, only one-third to half the complement, mostly engineering hierarchy, were mobile at any one time in a non-emergency; and specific areas such as engineering cores, alcove tiers, drone maintenance, and a bulk cargo hold or two generally encompassed the mobile population. Therefore, except for a dust mop patrol or stress fracture team, the majority of Cube #347 (or any Borg cube) was deserted most of the time.
129 of 212 entered Assimilation Workshop #11. It was dark; and 129 of 212 did not bother to activate additional light strips, current illumination adequate. Due to the near non-existent assimilations Cube #347 accomplished, the room was disused; and, in fact, had rarely been entered in the three year-cycles since the current iteration of Cube #347 had floated off the construction dock. Alcoves, surgical tables, pieces of ceiling-mounted equipment looming like huge metal spiders, all remained shrouded in their original bubble wrap.
Leaning over, 129 of 212 picked up several threads of cloth. He contemplated them as they were rolled between the fingers of his whole hand.
Fabric. Blue. Obviously of non-Borg origin. A clue. The quarry was close....
{Your time is almost up,} informed 35 of 83, boredom heavily shading her un-voice. She was 129 of 212's keeper today. {Ten more minutes.}
Answered 129 of 212, {Fifteen? I've almost found it.}
35 of 83 did not inquire as to what 'it' was, nor was it high on her list of priorities to inquire. {Ten. Nine minutes, fifty-seven seconds.}
{Fine,} sighed 129 of 212.
129 of 212 stalked through the assimilation equipment, yelling the occasional "Kabloomy!" as he searched. A shadow moved! It slipped out the room and into the corridor, sliding away with the sound of hurried footsteps. 129 of 212 followed, unconcerned that the quarry was likely only a figment of his electromagnetically scrambled imagination. Hallway, hallway ({Five minutes, 129 of 212, and don't block the transporters.}), corner...storage closet.
He had the intruder now. There was no exit from the storage closet except the doorway entered.
129 of 212 charged into the room, tripped over several mop handles, and crashed to the deck. Blinking, he ordered the computer to raise the light level and close the door. A shape in front of his nose, formerly a rounded bulk of shadow, resolved.
"Oh, kabloomy..."
Subsection 8, submatrix 15, Supply Closet #57 was an unpretentious three meter by five meter box, alike to all other similar facilities on Cube #347. This particular storage closet held a clutch of mops; a pyramid stack of six buckets; a calendar of Borg Exploratory-class cubes (every month the same, except for an inset with a different designation) stuck on a wall; and a shelf sporting three ping-pond paddles and a tuning fork nestled amid small circuit boards destined to repair a malfunctioning dilithium crystal growth oven. And a singularity torpedo.
How can one misplace a singularity torpedo, a lethal munition four meters long? The problem was, according to inventory, it was not misplaced. In fact, it did not officially exist, reality to the contrary. A physical inspection had confirmed Cube #347's singularity torp stores and critical components to construct additionals matched records. To replicate a singularity torp was not possible: the miniature linear accelerator and proton/anti-proton loads could only be resupplied at a unimatrix or munitions cache.
Where the torpedo originated was, in the end, not important. Oh, to a few drones of Cube #347, primarily mystery buffs, conspiracy weavers, and odds makers, it was. Currently, the most probable theory (odds 5:1) placed it as a leftover from Cube #347's construction, an error perpetuated by file corruption despite advertisement to the general galaxy that the Borg Collective did not make mistakes (a stretching of the truth as 4000 particular "mistakes" knew well). Teenage Q with an explosive sense of humor was second (17:1); and spontaneous deposition from an alternate timeline due to a temporary spatial/temporal rift was a distant third (76:1).
Unfortunately, the torpedo was Delta's problem, no matter what Weapons held.
Delta, body A, contemplated (with her hierarchy) where to begin. The torpedo was armed with a maximum cluster load and slowly ticking down to the moment it would detonate; and the half kilometer spherical volume it would carve in Cube #347 when it did was Not A Good Thing.
{With our history, it will explode in the next hour,} quipped Second, body distant, but, like most of the sub-collective, very interested in the drama playing out in Supply Closet #57.
Delta slowly panned the torpedo again, automatically reading the output of 9 of 240 as the latter scanned the mechanisms beneath the housing with a probe. {We have 63.72 standard day-cycles,} reminded Delta. For once, the solution did not require hours to enact, but could be pursued over several months. Cosmological symmetry being what it was, that meant someone, somewhere, was frantically working to defuse an explosive situation.
Second hrumphed. {The diagnostic is incorrect. That many day-cycles is too convenient.}
Delta automatically ran a series of parallel diagnostics on the probe, on the calculation algorithms. {It is correct. We will...}
"My hierarchy should have this task," huffed Weapons, breaking the silence of Supply Closet #57. Ever since his mental walkabout and near dissolution, Weapons had been subdued. Less twitchy, anyway, although he had continued to vex Delta like a niggling assembly that never seemed to calibrate properly. The discovery of the torpedo had fetched him out of his BorgCraft scenarios. His presence in the storage closet made the tight space even tighter. "How can you miss a torpedo?"
197 of 310, the last drone to visit the facility in quest of a bucket, defensively replied, {It had a blanket on it.} Assent murmured from the few other designations who had entered the storage closet: it was the blanket's fault; and who would expect to find a singularity torp stored with mops and ping pong paddles, anyway?
Weapons grumbled aloud, interrupting Delta's stream-of-consciousness. "My hierarchy should have this task," he repeated.
"You would only detonate it," retorted Delta.
"Would not!" argued Weapons, hand reaching forth to hollowly slap the torpedo's dense-packed neutronium casing, next to 9 of 240. 9 of 240 promptly transported himself to face #6, outside the immediate half-kilometer high danger zone.
Delta glowered at Weapons, both through body A and the dataspace, as the echoes of the slap died. {Get back here, 9 of 240. And all else of the engineering hierarchy on face #6 whom do not belong, back to work.}
Weapons swung his hand to his side, as if nothing had happened. 9 of 240 sheepishly rematerialized and returned to the detailed scan.
"That is why your hierarchy cannot manage the task," evenly said Delta.
Weapons did not reply, Borg non-expression presented to the universe, the sub-collective, but mostly Delta.
The extreme reaction - not just by engineering hierarchy, but many other non-regenerating and mobile drones (including Captain and Second) - had not been without cause.
Singularity torpedoes created transient black holes by smashing together a proton/anti-proton cluster via a miniaturized linear accelerator. The larger the clusters, the more persistent and far-reaching the singularity, with "persistence" relative and measured in picoseconds. A singularity torp was incapable of producing a permanent black hole. The technology required to create even a small black hole (not a simple matter/anti-matter explosion) on demand was complicated, but in the normal course of affairs, an unarmed torpedo, even one with proton packs installed, was no more apt to spontaneously explode than any other munition. Dangerous, yes, but hitting it with a hammer, no matter how hard, would make a dent and some noise at worst.
Even the Borg, notorious when it came to the subject of safety, built precautions into each singularity torp to prevent unwanted detonation. After all, it was expensive in terms of material resources if one is continually losing ships and munitions factories. Therefore, a singularity torp only became capable of forming a black hole in the milliseconds prior to contacting a target. The torp in Supply Closet #57, as far as Delta could discern, was missing certain, if not all, of the failsafe devices.
Transporter beam? Certain (as 129 of 212 would say) kabloomy as soon as molecules began to energize.
Physical movement? Beyond the fact that a wall could have to be removed to exit the torpedo from the closet, there was a high probability of kabloomy as delicate innards shifted.
Disrupting it? Kabloomy.
Stomping on the deck too hard within 100 meters of it? Possible kabloomy.
The only choice was to disarm the torpedo where it lay.
{Keep us on a smooth course,} said Delta as the completed scan by 9 of 240 was compiled. The singularity torpedo's schematic floated on the virtual landscape of the dataspaces, surrounded by instructions grudgingly provided by the weapons hierarchy as to the best way to proceed.
Returned Captain, {Not a problem. Very boring region of the galaxy. We will loop large circles until the torpedo is disposed.}
{Sensors agrees,} inserted Sensors, her words accompanied by a star chart and sensor sweep overlay. One assumed the pulsating poison-green pyramids at the edge of the sensor envelope were benign.
A pair of engineering drones and a cart of tools filled the closet's remaining available space as they materialized. "Go elsewhere," ordered Delta to Weapons.
"No," was the curt reply, along with an unsaid 'And you can't make me.' "This should be the task of my hierarchy. I will remain to observe."
Echoing a very unBorg observation on Weapons' genetic heritage, Delta dismissed her unwelcome observer from consideration...as long as he stayed out of the way of herself and her assistants. If he did not, well, drone maintenance would have a marathon emergency session, assuming Weapons could be put back together. Accidents with plasma cutters had been known to happen.
Selecting a set of small Allen wrenches bound together on a key ring, Delta ordered the first of several casings on the singularity torp to be removed.
Delta, body B, delicately threaded a very small laser drill through a spaghetti of wires using a combination of dataspace schematics and real-time hypermagnified visualization. This was worse than taking apart the dashboard of a Fordsumishi brand shuttlecraft in order to replace the Check Engine light. It did not help that body A was in regeneration, leaving Delta with the sensation of not being fully alert.
Unlike other drones, Delta could downtime her individual bodies, allowing continuous mobility when the circumstances demanded. However, she disliked to do so for long periods of time, the stretching of her mental self uncomfortable even if her performance was not significantly affected. The ability was useful during emergencies, though, of which disarming a singularity torpedo qualified.
Now only if, in assembly, certain screws had not been so awkwardly placed.
Delta lined up the drill. To her left, 61 of 230, replacement for 9 of 240 when he had retired for regeneration, murmured an intranet assertion that all was ready. A trickle of energy was applied to the drill, sufficient to slowly burn out the screw, yet not enough to cause undue thermal stress to surrounding components.
Cube #347 shuddered. The drill, sensing a jolt which threatened misalignment greater than the micrometer tolerance, abruptly shut off.
Thrown out of her narrow concentration, Delta withdrew herself from the dedicated engineering node supporting the disarming and opened herself to current events.
{What do you mean it came out of nowhere?} demanded Captain to Sensors. {We have circled this region of boring stability ten times without incident. The function of the sensor hierarchy is to warn of such things.}
Replied Sensors defensively, {Not Sensors' fault! Not here, then [plug]! [Plug, plug, plug]! From emptiness came [plaid plug]. Not Sensors fault or grid.} A time lapse map of the region - submicrometer hyperspace divining cluster array, if Delta was not mistaken - began as a featureless blue-gray slate before exploding into complexly of tangled green-yellow strings.
The cube sidled again; and for subspace weather to affect such a large object as a Borg cube, the energies involved had to be fantastic. Normally Cube #347 would simply ride out a storm, trusting to bulk and ship regeneration to dampen what would tear apart of a ship of lesser proportions, but in this instance there were other considerations.
{We cannot work in these conditions,} complained Delta for herself and the engineering hierarchy. Unvoiced was the delicate nature of the torpedo operation.
{Why would the torpedo explode now, at the drop of a hat, when it has withstood much worse prior?} questioned Second with acid sarcasm.
Unfortunately for Second, Delta, and the whole of the Cube #347 sub-collective, it is a lesser corollary of Murphy's Law which states that a potentially explosive device exponentially increases sensitivity to triggers (e.g., vibration, heat, light, radiation) once discovered and when the danger is realized. After all, what is death and destruction if the recipient party doesn't know the cause nor how they contributed to its occurrence?
{Get us out of here,} tightly reiterated Delta. Cushions and pillows of all descriptions were being transported into Supply Closet #57 as fast as they could be replicated. Weapons, long since grown bored and returned to his regular activities, was not present, but what space had been gained by his loss quickly vanished under piles of pillows with fashionable gold fringe. Delta locked body B as the trio of engineering drones present wedged cushions, lest she dislodge the laser drill and slap its head into something undesirable.
Sensors input, {Sensors say that she sees/tastes less [blanket] normal [fuzzy spoon].}
{Blanket?} repeated Captain, clutching at the faultily translated word. {What is blanket? Light? Turbulence? Wind? Weather?}
{Hedgehogs?} inserted Second. None, however, were paying attention. Second sulked.
Sensors whistled as Captain said "turbulence." {Second one. Yes. That one. [Blanket], only more so.}
{Turbulence,} confirmed Captain. {Leaving hypertranswarp,} he continued in unnecessary comment as hypertranswarp coils disengaged.
Turbulence might have been less, but the gravitational sheer was quite a bit stronger; and sensors had not the sufficient resolution through the intervening subspace layers to predict the outbreak of St. Elmo's fire which suddenly plagued the corridors of Cube #347.
{Yup, less turbulence,} "helpfully" noted Second.
{Do you /want/ to explode?} asked Delta to the backup consensus monitor and facilitator. Two mops, the calendar, and 61 of 230 were now lined in a cold blue flame.
Locked in his alcove, 129 of 212 watched a pair of will-o-wisps smash together in the shaft beyond his alcove tier's railing. {Kabloomy!} he chimed into the intranet.
Curtains of transient reds, oranges, purples shimmered in a solar system-sized display outstripping any mere planetary aurora borealis; and silent bolts of lightening were serpents twisting half a light year long. Gravitonic rip currents tore streamers of gas from a nebula into deadly molecular blades able to abrade and pit the densest of hull plating. Temporary temporal instabilities set cause after effect before disintegrating, leaving the universe to reassert its tau vector.
As bad as the storm was in normal space, it worsened on the subspace seas. The mathematical descriptors which described the mechanics of warp were twisted with negative infinities and numerical improbabilities. All flavors of warp were thus barred to any vessel which utilized it. Meaningful subspace communication was reduced to jumbled words amid static with the only two broadcast stations able to be resolved: on one channel, a religious evangelical cult espousing the virtues of baldness and naked meditation whilst sitting on hot coals; and on the second, participants of GNN's "Under Fire" literally sniped at each other between screaming debates over the legality of a recent Second Federation decision to declare all used nacelles to be "strategic property of concern" and be turned over, or else.
Cube #347 slowly tumbled in a parabolic orbit around a guttering white dwarf. Its tattered magnetic field shielded the cube from the worst of the storm, although it could not shelter the vessel completely. Asteroids and the shattered remains of a planetary system comprised a dense cloud of rocks which shared the cube's temporary refuge.
And upon Cube #347, temporarily severed from the Greater Consciousness due to a static which extended even to fractal subspace channels, the blame game was in full cry.
{You said this was a smooth and boring region of space,} complained Delta. Elements of engineering were hastily installing a plethora of dampers, nullifiers, and shocks in the volume surrounding Supply Closet #57. Foam and feather pillows could only provide so much support. Still, despite all efforts, nothing could quell unwanted vibrations when they were the result of the base superstructure ringing like a struck bell.
Captain (via command and control) shuffled through virtual chart after virtual chart. While navigational maps used by ship-bound Borg sub-collectives were an amalgamation of all seized during assimilation, copies of the originals were retained. Due to the static and empty nature of the region - no gravitational anomalies for thrill seekers, no unusual quasi-sentient nebulas to lure scientists, no enticing civilizations with rare goods for traders - most base charts had the entire volume grayed out with the species equivalent of "Boring" scrawled in the margin. The exception was species #5, a race nearly extinct when a young Collective had chanced upon a derelict party barge seeking bold new ways to raise narcissism to artistic levels. The charts of species #5 labeled the expanse as "Mostly Boring," with no explanation except that travel was not recommended when the stars of a particular septuplet aligned in a specific pattern vaguely resembling a duck's head.
{Whoops?} finally offered Captain.
Delta repositioned a micrograppler which had been nudged out of position. Again. Each wire of the bundle was sheathed in the same color insulation, distinguishable from its neighbor only by a barcode awkwardly placed such that it always seemed to be on the side the camera was not. In addition to the demands required to disarm the torpedo (true, bombs were not supposed to be turned off once armed, but the sheer complexity of necessary steps to do so in this case seemed purposeful), the additional load caused by an increased number of mobile engineering units was starting to become a distracting burden.
Snarled Delta, {No more whoops.} A distant bang, more felt than heard via an intimate connection with the cube, signaled an asteroid bouncing off the hull. {And watch the rocks! Those panels were just repainted.}
{The storm is causing shield and deflector systems to overload. When they cycle, well, there are many rocks. Not all can be dodged.}
Before Delta could respond, Sensors interrupted. {Incoming!}
{Incoming what?} queried Captain. Delta returned all concentration, except that required for management, upon the wire bundle and directing body B. The storm was playing havoc with the grid, with the sensor envelope effectively contracted to a rock-filled sphere several million kilometers in radius. Anything more distant was unclear, to put it mildly. Sensors had raised more than one orange-spiky-thing false alarm.
{Ships,} helpfully interpreted Sensors, radiating mild confusion as to why the perfectly legible grid echoes were not accepted by the rest of the sub-collective, including her own hierarchy. {[Wall] ships, but many.}
Exclaimed Weapons as the realization was absorbed that the datastream was not another sensory hallucination, {Targets!}
Appearing from the storm's sensory fog, a swarm of vessels were converging upon Cube #347. Enhanced visuals showed a flotilla of sleek warships, each multi-deck ship bristling with weaponry. Two saucers were stacked upon each other, connected by a heavily armored waist bulge from which extended pillions to a pair of warp nacelle. While the warp drives were currently idling due to the storm, the energy signature suggested more than sufficient power for both engines and weapons.
The scene would have been far more dramatic if the majority of the swarm had not measured less than ten meters in length. A very few topped twenty meters. The Lilliputians were on their way to slay Goliath.
{Lots of targets,} reiterated Weapons eagerly as weaponry powered up. This would be much more interesting than watching Delta disarm a singularity torpedo. {Species #3829. Exotic quadruped lifeform. Extremely small stature and propensity to explode in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere renders the race unsuitable for assimilation. Eliminate upon contact, with a low priority corollary to capture vessels for dissection. Vessels are highly agile, but present no difficulties for any cube/sphere class when encountered in swarms of less than 500,} he added as the species was identified and summary dossier accessed.
Counted Second in the background: {785...787...795 - no, 793, with those just rocks - 810.} Pause. {Oh, those rocks are carriers. Total ship signature number is now 1253...with more emerging....}
{Kabloomy! Kabloomy! Kabloomy!} chanted 129 of 212 with each impact of species #3829 missile against shield or hull. It was normal background patter for the drone, one usually dismissed and ignored, but Delta found a thread of herself following it with morbid interest. After all, one of the {Kabloomies!} could be the trigger signifying the final kabloomy.
129 of 212 abruptly halted as he was sent into regeneration, with his duties shifted to another member of the weapons hierarchy. Weapons had decided that 129 of 212's distractions were greater than his active contribution as secondary processor for neuruptor bank #15 through #21. The slight gain in tactical efficiency was not noticeable.
The species #3829 swarm seemed endless. The debris of hundreds of small ships littered the volume around Cube #347, but still the swarm pushed. Individually each species #3829 warship would be hard-pressed to threaten a child's My First Space Scooter. Unfortunately, species #3829 warships did not come as singletons, but in hundreds, and in this case, thousands.
Just at the edge of Cube #347's storm shattered sensor perception lurked a string of small asteroids. The rocks were used by the swarm as carriers and factories, launching new ships as fast as they were destroyed and repairing those able to limp back to the relative safety they represented. Cube #347 could not swat the asteroids, not without performing certain abrupt maneuvers the inertial dampers would not totally suppress, thereby risking higher danger to the disarming process.
Cube #347 was forced to remain in one place and take the pounding meted out by both swarm and storm.
Distant, relatively speaking, from the scramble of the engineering hierarchy to disarm the singularity torp, Captain swayed slightly on his feet as a trio of tiny warships smashed into Lepton Sensor Array #3b, one of the kamikaze vessels successfully overloading its miniscule warp core at contact. The resulting crater was not critical, no more so than the others on face #1 and #3, but it was synonymous of the thousand papercuts which would ultimately lead to the cube's termination. The swarm seemed to be concentrating on all visible sensor arrays; and the swaying had been in unconscious sympathetic response to the blow to sensory hierarchy as their efficiency degraded.
A hologram representing Cube #347's shields flickered, indicating the storm-wracked system had cycled and was now engaged once more, at least for the next five minutes. Captain's unseeing eyes flicked from one display to the next, attention fluidly shifting as datastreams rose and fell in importance in the dataspace ocean.
"I've a new riddle," spouted Second. He was in the nodal intersection as well, as busy as Captain with coordination, although not as central.
Captain blindly blinked as his ears registered the sound of words, then a second time as his brain made sense of them. A small sliver of his awareness was detached to curtly answer. "What?"
"What does 129 of 212, a singularity torp, Cube #347, and a supernova all have in common?" asked Second.
"We don't know," absently muttered Captain, unaware of his own plurality and unwilling to sacrifice any of his attention to scan Second's surface thoughts.
Second smirked slightly, a subtle tightening of muscles the non-Borg observer would not have noticed. "They are all things that go kabloomy."
It was a horrible riddle, one which demanded Captain to respond. He did so with a throaty groan which was more synthetic vocal cord than breath. Relative silence reigned once more. In the intranets, Delta allowed herself the slightest of celebrations as a critical relay as severed. Unfortunately, many more steps were required before the defusing could be considered a success.
Fifty-five species #3829 warships joined their brethren in termination; seven drones reported to drone maintenance; an overstretched engineering hierarchy attempted to be in all places at once; shields overloaded, slipped; another crater sprouted on the hull.
Second broke the silence again, this time with a rhetorical observation, not a riddle: "We are attempting to defuse a touchy bomb in the middle of a storm which has not only severed communications and prohibits supraluminal travel, but overloads our shields every five minutes. Add to that our location in the middle of an asteroid field and a species #3829 swarm of midget ships, the latter of which are scoring hits on our hull sensor grid arrays. What else can go wrong?"
The words "What else can go wrong?" and "Watch me!" are the two most inflammatory phrases in the known multi-verses. While they are said countless times with no consequences, it is those relatively few, but very spectacular, instances the dramatic does occur which accounts for their famously taboo nature.
In this case, a second swarm of species #3829 vessels, no less numerous than the first, began to pour into Cube #347's degraded sensor envelope.
There are two family genelines from which all species #3829 - Lilupithi - swarms are descended, and they despise each other. Beyond Hatfield and McCoy, when swarms of the opposing clans meet, the only option is battle to the death of one or both. Even a dire situation which might have nonLilupithi enemies assisting each other for mutual survival, the two genelines would strive for eradication. No Romeo and Juliet story in the shared cultural mythos of the Lilupithi.
When swarm A saw newly arrived swarm B, Cube #347 was immediately demoted from target to obstacle, leaving the Borg ship to be snarled in the center of the growing holocaust.
{Shields! Shields! Shields, shields, shields!} demanded Captain to engineering hierarchy as the cube's defensive spin was rendered useless from being in the middle of the two-swarm demolition derby. {We need shields which last longer than five minutes. Now!}
Delta had transported body A to body B's location, and was now using herself to literally brace and steady herself. The micrograpplers had slipped again and required repositioning. Only a couple more steps to accomplish.../if/ the cube could be held relatively still. {The majority of the available engineering hierarchy is maintaining and tuning suspension elements. If the vibrations are not dampened, we will have our own personal singularity. Trust me...ship regeneration /will not/ be able to fix such a large hole.}
{So, you'd rather we were torn to shreds by these species #3829 micro-vessels?} asked Second incredulously.
{No. Rouse Assimilation. It is not as if his hierarchy is busy. Shield mechanics are not difficult, and nor is setting up a tertiary bypass to redirect the overload long enough to swap out the fuses when they blow in the primary and secondary arrays,} retorted Delta. Nudge, nudge. The micrograppler realigned itself micrometer by micrometer to the target wire.
Outside, swarm warships used Cube #347 in a vast and deadly game of hide-and-seek. Missiles, the preferred species #3829 weapon, flew thickly. While some successfully demolished their targets into short-lived fireballs, others were spun away by the storm's enigmatic eddies, only to return to their origin, or, more usually, to smash against Cube #347's shields and hull.
{Assimilation!} barked Captain.
The long shuddering sigh of a depressed martyr impinged upon the intranets, momentarily paralyzing thought and even causing the play of neuruptors upon swarm ships to falter. {Fine. Since we aren't allowed to perform our assigned tasks anyway. Accessing engineering file structure now.} The file tree relating to shields was opened and its contents siphoned to the more mechanically minded members of assimilation hierarchy.
Yet another dozen dozen missiles, followed by a pair of newly derelict warships, smashed in the already pitted hull of Cube #347 as shields overloaded, flickered, solidified.
In Bulk Cargo Hold #5, a precariously perched hat dropped.
The hat was a jaunty bowler, somber brown, found by 10 of 19 and added to his collection only two months earlier. It had been hidden amid the contents of a tramp freighter hastily abandoned by its crew upon Cube #347's approach. 10 of 19 had been especially intrigued by the hat's lizard hide material.
The hat tumbled off the storage rack and slid down the aisle, stopping only when it impacted a wall. Amid the chaos of battle and storm, a very minor conduit had sprung a plasma leak. As the plasma contacted the hat, the lizard skin reacted, scales flashing a brilliant red, orange, white. Then it exploded. The plasma swirled in the sudden microgust before igniting. With a hollow "whump," the plasma burned back along its pinhole leak and into the conduit.
Like a flame following a trail of black powder, bowler hat ignited plasma raced from minor to medium to major conduits. The computer screamed an emergency alarm into the brains of all drones, and most especially engineering, but attempts by the machine mind to isolate the affected conduits was in vain, so wide and quickly the conflagration was spreading. Only vacuum, impossible given the location deep in the vessel's bowels, could extinguish the fire.
The heat of the plasma as it ignited in the interstitial space behind a wall of Supply Closet #57 was sufficient to abruptly increase the temperature of the room by two degrees Centigrade. In turn, the tuning fork, left upon the self with ping pong paddles and circuit boards, began to vibrate at a perfect middle-C.
The active singularity torp, thus far resisting explosion despite the many provocations of storm, battle, and probe, reacted to the roundabout dropped hat.
{Oh...} commented Delta in matter-of-fact stereo.
*****
"...sh**," said someone.
To Be Continued...........................................................................................................
(with a few more ellipses for extra luck)
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