If she could make it to the main controls, she could overload the warp core.

That was the unthinkable goal that had driven her through the depths of main engineering. That had seen her bring down her own crew in hand-to-hand, make a rush for the central panel, and get there too late.

A phaser blast. Searing pain in her shoulder. Hands falling on her, and Valance had fought, pushed back, only to find herself pinned helplessly by the engineers around her. By the Borg around her.

Forrester, recovered quickly – too quickly – from the blast on the upper levels, slammed Valance’s head against the control panel. Once. Twice. The third time hit the metal edge, and amid the buzzing adrenaline, Valance felt the crunch of impact. When they let her go, she went limp, collapsing to the deck.

Darkness rushed in at the edges of her vision. Beside her, the unmoving form of Adupon stared at her with dead, glassy eyes. Above, the impassive Forrester raised a hyperspanner, and she could not even lift her hands to defend herself. She closed her eyes.

But the crushing blow did not come. And even as unconsciousness tugged at Valance, she heard voices. Old voices, not the overlapping chorus of the Borg.

‘What the…’

‘What happened…’

And then the chime, more desperate than confused and horrified, just as darkness took her. ‘Captain’s down, Captain’s down…’

When she could open her eyes again, the first sound was not voices but the beep of a biobed. Over her stood Doctor Winters, his dark eyes focused, but his expression went slack with clear relief.

‘Don’t move, Captain,’ the young doctor said with sharp apprehension. ‘Not if you want to keep function in your left arm.’

‘The ship… the Borg…’

‘We have the ship.’ Winters’ hand came to her shoulder and stopped her from rising. ‘Kharth has the bridge.’

‘How…’ Valance’s voice cracked, her mouth dry. ‘Where did this happen?’

Winters glanced over to a battered nurse on the other side of the surgical suite before he looked back at her. ‘You need to rest, Captain.’ But something moved him to speak, and he drew a slow breath. ‘So far as we know, it happened everywhere.’

There was a chance she’d killed the relief flight control officer, but Kharth couldn’t think about that. Her hands curled around the armrests of the command chair as she stared at the figure on the viewscreen and fought to keep her expression clear. ‘Don’t give me this, “I have concerns for the people.” I know the traffic control systems of Teros have been filled with Rebirth members. You’re not worried about the residents. You’re worried because we blew up your ship.’

The Romulan figure in the control centre on Sanctuary District A had a hunted look in their eye. ‘You attacked one of our only defensive craft in an unprovoked -’

‘Only days ago, you attempted to murder a Starfleet officer.’ Kharth jabbed a finger at the screen. ‘The Rebirth has made it clear they are in open hostilities with the Federation. You’ve stolen our equipment and used it to bring Sanctuary District A under your control, oppressing and controlling the people. We’re back today to tell you this will not stand. This is your only warning: pull back from the industrial replication complex and allow Starfleet to resume control of the facility, or we will continue to treat you as the hostile combatants you so clearly want to be. I expect to see cooperation on Starfleet’s return.’

The hunted look didn’t go away. ‘And when will that be?’

Kharth clenched her jaw. ‘Who can say? You’d better start packing. Endeavour out.’ It took a moment longer than usual for the viewscreen to switch off, Athaka trying to control comms from the Ops console, but the moment it went blank, she sank with her head in her hands. ‘Tell me you bought it.’

Athaka sounded like he was going to have a hysterical breakdown, but he’d sounded like that for the last half-hour and had continued to function. She hadn’t thought he had it in him. ‘It was – that was convincing, Commander,’ he squeaked. ‘But does that mean we’re taking credit for killing those people? Won’t that have repercussions?’

Kharth scrubbed her face with her hands, then straightened. ‘If the next person to come along wants to overrule me and tell the truth, fine. But I’m not letting the Borg hit us and destroy our chance to help the people of Teros.’ She didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. Perhaps she should have told the truth and let the people of Sanctuary District A fear and distrust Starfleet. They had brought the Borg to their door, after all. But if it came out, the fact she’d lied to them would be immaterial next to that terror. At worst, she had bought Starfleet time to decide what to do.

She looked at Athaka, who hadn’t dared voice any further objections but still looked like he might burst into tears. ‘Can you set us a course out? Heading for Gateway?’

The young man was running ops, navigation, and comms but still gave a quick nod and reached to reroute more navigational controls to his panel. ‘Commander T’Varel confirms that we can get underway. At low warp.’

‘Low warp is some warp. Let’s get out of here.’ As the deck of Endeavour hummed to bring them away from Teros and out of the sun’s gravity well for a safe jump to warp, she turned to the rest of her hastily cobbled-together bridge crew. Her eyes fell on Science. ‘Turak, will you now report to Sickbay?’

The Vulcan had been shot, inhaled a lungful of coolant, and been only hastily patched up when the drones had recovered their senses. But he’d insisted on standing his post at Science as the bulk of the others, injured or recently unassimilated, were escorted to Sickbay or the emergency relief centre Kharth had instructed they set up in Cargo Bay 2. Now he looked positively translucent as his eyes lifted to hers, but still, there was no breach in his Vulcan poise as he said, ‘If you insist, Commander.’

‘You – I insist. We’re away. If something else goes wrong, we’re screwed, so let’s make sure you don’t get any more serious injury.’ As he moved, Kharth looked to Logan, stood at Tactical. ‘Go with him. I want a report of the state of things down there from someone not up to their elbows in saving lives.’

Logan hesitated. ‘You sure I’m the best person to go wandering around right now?’

‘Right now, Logan, you’re upright and functioning and that makes you the most qualified person in the galaxy. Valance is in surgery. Rhade’s injured. Airex, Thawn, and Lindgren are unaccounted for. T’Varel is keeping this ship together in engineering. Kallavasu is five seconds out of both the Academy and assimilation and Winters is patching us all back together. I’ve got to stay here, so I need you to find out what the hell is going on with the crew.’ Her voice had threatened to waver at the mention of the missing officers. But if she let even an inch of that feeling in, she’d break. The only way out was through.

His brow furrowed as the unavoidable duty settled on his shoulders. ‘You got it, Commander.’

‘And help Turak walk while you’re at it.’

Ten minutes after they’d left, there was a chirrup on the main display as their casualty report updated. Ensign Yates, the relief flight control officer who’d been assimilated and taken a direct lungful of the coolant she’d flooded the bridge with, had died.

Kharth kept her expression level. She could feel Athaka’s eyes on her, waiting for her reaction, but when she met his gaze, she gave nothing away. ‘Take us to warp, Athaka.’

He turned back to the navigational controls, shoulders taut. ‘Yes, Commander.’

She swallowed. ‘And, Athaka?’

‘Commander?’ He did not turn.

‘…you’re doing really well.’

He did not reply. Moments later, the deck lurched under them as Endeavour leapt to warp. A few moments more, she thought she heard him stifle a sob. She pretended she hadn’t.

It was like waking up from a bad dream, only to find himself in a whole new nightmare.

He’d come round somewhere on Deck Seven, a phaser pistol in his hand, Crewman Mytrik next to him. Behind them, at the curve of the corridor, lay the bundled bodies of the officers they’d shot.

In the jumbled kaleidoscope of memories, he saw their faces as he’d opened fire. Not just theirs – everyone on the bridge, everyone in the Safe House, everyone in Engineering. He saw as Turak was shot, Valance was shot, Lindgren. Had that been him? Had he crossed the length of the ship and cut them all down?

But that question became meaningless as, through the maelstrom of memory, rose the one recollection he knew was his. Because it was the only one that for certain followed on from the last actions he knew he’d taken in the last place he’d been. And as Mytrik ran for the fallen officers, Nate Beckett flew to the nearest wall display and hammered at the internal sensors until they told him if there were any life signs in the SOC.

Bile soared in his chest as the computer blatted a negative, but he couldn’t stop, however sick he felt. Even if it meant holding himself together, he had to rush for the nearest turbolift, join the knot of the bewildered and the horrified, the injured and the dying, as Endeavour broke free of the hold of the Borg’s control but fell under the horror the Collective left behind.

The SOC was empty, but that meant nothing. So his next stagger, drunk with horror, was to Sickbay, to the eye of the storm of this catastrophe. All down the corridor slumped crewmembers without a mark on them, curled up alone in corners or huddled together, all of them his age or younger. It was closer to the doorway that he began to find the injured, battered and worn medics seeing to minor injuries that grew worse the closer he got to Sickbay itself.

Beckett had seen Sickbay after a catastrophe, but never like this. Never with the horror in the air so thick it was like he had to wade through it, like it slowed every step, every thought. Like it pushed his consciousness back so all he saw, over and over in slow motion, was his hands sinking around Rosara Thawn’s throat until she went limp.

By one biobed, Zherul pulled a sheet over the body of a crewmember whose face he didn’t get a chance to see, but before Beckett could rush over there, the doors to the surgical suite slid open, and a sallow-faced Winters slouched out.

‘Ed!’ Beckett staggered over and somehow was the first to the doctor, the first to grab his arm. ‘Ed, Ed – you’re alright -’

‘Nate…’ In the field, Winters had been flaky and uncertain. Somehow, with all of this chaos as his domain, he stood firm, and even with the relief on his face, his eyes raked over Beckett, calculating, assessing. ‘You’re not injured. Report to Cargo Bay 2 if you don’t feel fit for duty -’

‘Ed -’

‘I have a hundred people to see to, Nate -’

‘Rosara.’ Beckett’s grip on his sleeve became iron-tight. ‘Rosara, is she here, is she okay -’

Winters’s expression twisted, but the glint in his eye was of sympathetic impatience, not a doctor’s bracing for bad news. ‘She’s alive, badly injured; she’s in with Lieutenant Li – Nate, I’ve got to see to people, I just got out of surgery with the captain, but there’s a dozen more…’

‘What happened, who found her -’

But then Winters was gone, and Beckett was turning in the buzz, feeling like the eye of the storm, desperate and helpless as relief battled in him with surging dread and guilt.

Then heavy hands landed on his shoulders, and a strong voice said, ‘I found her. Let’s get you out of here, kid.’

Beckett almost went limp as Jack Logan walked him out of Sickbay, away from the injured and towards where the others – the ones who’d been like him, he was realising – slouched in the corridor, paralysed in their horror and shock. When he spoke, his voice didn’t sound like his own. ‘You found her?’

‘Kharth sent me down from the bridge to find out what’s going on, find missing officers. SOC was the last place I knew Thawn had been. She was in a bad way, but I got to her in time.’ Once they were at the end of a row of people, Logan grasped his shoulders and turned Beckett to face him. ‘You were with her when it happened?’

‘With her – I did it,’ Beckett stammered, and his mouth felt numb at the words. It felt like at any moment he’d wake up once again, and everything would be normal, but the nightmare didn’t end. ‘I did it, I almost killed her -’

Logan’s grip on his shoulders didn’t waver, keen blue eyes locked on him. ‘Not you. You didn’t do a thing. You hear me, kid? The Borg did it.’

‘I was…’

‘You’re not gonna believe me right now, but some day, you gotta believe me or you gotta go mad; those are the only options.’ Though he was firm, there was a gentle undercurrent, and at last, Jack Logan’s voice creaked as he said, ‘Trust me. I know.’

Beckett might have broken down then. Would have, if there hadn’t been a call from further down the corridor – ‘I need help!’ – and if they hadn’t turned to see the pale, battered figure of Davir Airex dragging a barely-conscious Elsa Lindgren towards Sickbay.

If he could find strength to hurt, he could find strength to help. So as Logan let him go, Beckett turned, looked at his wounded friend, and moved. Not just because helping others helped. But helping meant he didn’t have to think.