‘Five point seven… five point eight…’

A red warning light flared at Ekios’s left, small but enough to flicker crimson across the cramped cockpit. Jaw tightening, he ignored it, grip firm on the flight controls to keep his course steady as the shuttle shuddered and rattled around him.

‘Six!’ he confirmed triumphantly through gritted teeth. Through the canopy, it was as if the stars began to to streak as his shuttle vaulted through the black and hunted impulse speeds to threaten light itself.

‘That’s enough, Ekios,’ came Control’s voice through his earpiece. ‘Throttle her down, and we’ll pick you up.’

But the speed level on his dashboard was already eking up. Six point one. Point two. Point three…

‘Six isn’t good enough to win the Trans-stellar Rally, Control.’ With a flash of a grin, Ekios pumped more juice into his engines. ‘We can hit seven.’

‘Injection manifolds aren’t rated for the heat levels at six point five,’ Control reminded, her voice as monotonous when she was chiding him as it had been when he’d hit their test target. ‘You are directed to end the flight.’

Ekios’s gaze flickered back to the dashboard. Point four. ‘We came second to the Chessu last year!’ he protested. ‘Starfleet keep wanting to compete! We’ve got to nail this thing, or we can kiss victory goodbye again.’

But Control’s answer was predictable. ‘We will review this flight’s findings and grant another test if the engineering team clears the system for these speeds.’

‘What’s that, Control? You’re breaking up.’ It was the oldest lie any test pilot had ever told, but it was for his own benefit, not hers. Not his superiors in the Antarian Nor-Flight Company, chasing dominance on behalf of his government in the annual Antarian Trans-stellar Relay, the Gradin Belt’s sporting and political event of the year.

‘You are directed to –’

When Control’s voice went dead, for a second, Ekios thought he’d killed the comms. But his hands hadn’t left the flight controls, and a heartbeat later, they began to shudder more. Another alert light went off.

Six point six. Ekios could smell burning. And his comms had blown out. A second later came a blaring alarm as his left impulse engine began to overheat, and all ambitions about the Trans-stellar relay fled his thoughts. On instinct, the veteran pilot ran through his protocols. Shut down the engine. Vent the system compartments.

The shuttle fell into a wild, desperate spin, hard enough for the G-forces to pin him back in his chair. Groaning, Ekios had to fight to reach for the controls for his manoeuvring thrusters.

Over and over he tumbled. Even as spots flared in front of his eyes, the Antarian pilot fought to bring what few systems he could back online, activate what thrusters he had to stop the spin, to slow him down. Being in the far, distant reaches of the Gradin Belt, light-years away from anyone was the perfect place to test new engines away from watching eyes of rivals and spies. Even his ship was a distance out. But if he blacked out, he’d tumble forever.

The manoeuvring thrusters fired. The shuttle stopped spinning. Slowed. And Ekios let himself black out.

When he came to, the smell of burning was still in his nostrils, but it smelled old. A quick check of himself confirmed no injuries; a quick check of his systems confirmed most of them were dead, but nothing was on fire. Life support minimal. Manoeuvring thrusters burnt out from salvaging his fall. No comms, and nothing through the canopy but the endless black of space.

Something flickered on his short-range sensors, the only ones he had left, and Ekios breathed a sigh of relief. His ship had come to pick him up. Scrubbing his face with his hands, he sat up, and looked at the signal.

When his stomach dropped out, he told himself it was a mistake. Damage to his systems. Then a shadow fell over the canopy, and Ekios stared up as the stars were blocked out for a dim, emerald gleam. Even though he’d never seen the like of this ship before, he didn’t need his sensors to tell him what he was looking at: a Borg Sphere.

It hung before his battered, disabled shuttle for what felt like a lifetime. Ekios’s hands hammered in panic across his controls, trying to fire up engines, warp drive, comms, anything that could get him out of there or summon help. All he managed to do was boost what limited power he had to his short range sensors, and they told him that the Sphere was scanning him.

‘They never come this far out,’ he babbled to himself as if that would change anything. Chaotic Space had stopped the Borg from expanding their territory into the Belt, and ships venturing this far had not been reported in decades. Though Ekios knew he could not actually feel being scanned, his skin crawled as if it knew Borg sensors were raking over him, his flesh and blood, his potentiality as a drone. None of his systems responded. He was trapped. Ekios closed his eyes, knowing that in a moment, the transporter beam would consume him, knowing it was, indeed, futile to resist.

He did not know how long he sat like that, braced and cowering and nearly weeping. But when he opened his eyes, he was still in his shuttle. There was no Borg Sphere through his canopy. His sensors were clear.

Had he doubted himself even a shred more, he might have checked his records to be sure he hadn’t imagined it. But Ekios had seen all manner of horrors on the edge of space, and while none of them came close to the Borg, he knew himself and his judgement. At once, he sat up, and began rummaging through his cockpit for his emergency rescue beacon. He had to be rescued. But more importantly, the Gradin Belt had to be warned.

The Borg were silent no longer.