“There’s no way around this lockout,” Chief Shafir said as she slammed her fists on the console. Over the bodies of their fellow crewmen, they’d fought to get to this point, but it was all for naught. She’d grown up hacking Starfleet systems, but this one had her beat.

“There’s always a way,” Lieutenant Morgan offered hopefully. “You’ve told me that a hundred times.” He didn’t see it, surely Dr. Brooks or Chief Shafir could find one… right? Where he’d come up learning to operate Starfleet systems, they’d spent much of their past circumventing them. It had almost put Ayala Shafir behind bars, and Dr. Brooks had wound up there. But now they were Starfleet’s best hope.

“If this was a regular Starfleet system, sure,” replied Chief Shafir, her voice thick with desparation. “But this is something different altogether, a bastardized blend of Fleet Formation and Borg subroutines.” Earth was careening towards oblivion, and here they were, unable to even retake their ship, let alone stop the Borg signal. 

“What about if we recapture the bridge?”

“It won’t help.”

“But the consoles up there have specialized command authority.”

“Under normal operating conditions, yes,” nodded the chief. “But Fleet Formation was designed for Fleet-wide incapacitation, including acts of mutiny. Command authority is delegated completely away from the ship turning us into essentially… a drone.” As she said it, she realized what she was implying. So did Dr. Brooks. The pair made eye contact. “Could they have been planning this for years, or decades even?”

“It is possible,” nodded Dr. Brooks. “But it’s also possible we did this to ourselves, and they just took advantage of it. For all Starfleet’s skepticism over artificial life, it has had a history of trying to become more like it.”

“So what can we do then?” asked Lieutenant Morgan. “There must be something.”

“If we cannot regain control of the ship, we cannot stop the signal,” Dr. Brooks explained. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t give the survivors a chance. Chief, what’s the status of Sol Station?”

“Her shields are on the verge of failing,” reported Chief Shafir. “But I’m detecting hundreds of shuttles and lifepods attempting to flee. They won’t get far though. Once the fleet finishes with Sol Station, it will turn its attention to those ships and to the unassimilated people of Earth.”

“We cannot allow that to happen,” Dr. Brooks replied dutifully. As he and Chief Shafir tried to penetrate the subroutines of Fleet Formation and the Borg, he’d already realized how this would end. The only way it could end. “If we cannot put an end to the signal, then we put an end to the fleet. We may not have control of the ship, but Fleet Formation cannot defeat the laws of physics themselves.”

Chief Shafir nodded. She’d come to the same conclusion. There weren’t any other options.

“I’m not following,” Lieutenant Morgan interjected as he looked back and forth between the pair. “What are you saying?”

“We trigger a warp core breach,” Chief Shafir answered flatly. “A rapid, catastrophic containment failure that doesn’t give the fleet time to react and jump away.” The shields of Starfleet vessels were impressive, but even they could not protect against the hundreds of gigajoules of force generated by the matter-antimatter annihilation cause by a containment failure in a fully-juiced warp core.

“But the lives…” Lieutenant Morgan shook his head. There had to be another way. “You’re talking about killing tens of thousands.” Such an explosion would destroy dozens of ships, if not more.

“Tens of thousands so that millions, or billions even, may have a chance!” Chief Shafir snapped back. He had to see that. If they didn’t stop the assault of the assimilated fleet, they’d all be dead anyways.

“But…”

“Jace, look out there,” Chief Shafir said darkly as she gestured towards the window. “All that awaits those folks, all of those in the shuttles and lifeboats fleeing Earth, all those still on Sol Station, and all those on Earth below, is fire and death if we do not act. If we do this, we give humanity a chance at survival.”

Lieutenant Morgan looked out the window at the phaser fire lancing out at Sol Station, the last bastion of defense before the annihilation of Earth. Chief Shafir and Dr. Brooks were right. Soon, Sol Station would fall, and then the fleet would carve up what was left of the survivors. They had to act, to make one final sacrifice so humanity might survive.

Aboard Sol Station, the officers charged with the protection of the councilors, cabinet officials and ambassadors from the observation deck had done their duty. They’d formed a human shield around their charges and pushed through the Borg lines. Dozens had fallen, Admiral Reyes included, but those still standing stepped over the casualties and just kept pressing forward. Their only objective was to get the civilian leadership to the lifepods in an attempt to ensure the continuity of government, and in their desperate mission, they had succeeded.

“The lifeboats are just ahead,” Dr. Hall reported as she rushed forward, rifle sweeping for targets. As they rounded a corner, she spotted two young crewmen standing there with phasers. They looked under twenty five, so without so much as waiting for their reaction, she squeezed off two shots. There was no time to waste, she knew, and they were better safe than sorry. Both young men fell to the ground.

“Move! Move!” Commander Lewis shouted as he popped the hatch to the lifepod and ushered the councilors, cabinet officials, ambassadors and surviving officers into the hold. He counted them off as they stepped through. All twelve of the civilians had survived, but only three of their officers. They’d left over three dozen, Admiral Reyes included, on the deck between the observation deck and the lifepods, either dead or on death’s doorstep.

“That should be all of them,” Ambassador Drake reported as he drew up from the rear and climbed through the hatch. He looked back, waiting for Commander Lewis and Dr. Hall to follow. But neither of them did. “Commander, Lieutenant, it’s time to go.”

“No,” Commander Lewis shook his head. “You go. I’m not leaving a man behind.” Ensign Rel lay incapacitated on the promenade, and Admiral Reyes was bleeding out on the deck outside the blast doors of the observation deck. The Ambassador opened his mouth to protest, but Commander Lewis raised his hand. “We did what needed to be done for the Federation. Now, we are going to do right by our people. No man left behind.”

Without another word, Commander Lewis and Dr. Hall turned to head back into the station. Ambassador Drake had to admire them for that. And then the call of duty struck him once more. He could not leave Reyes behind either. They’d fought on the line together, and dead or alive, he owed it to her. And so he climbed back out of the lifepod and shut the hatch behind him. He watched momentarily as the lifepod launched away, and then he rushed to catch back up with the pair. 

Bodies lay everywhere. The young, dozens of them, almost a hundred even, those assimilated by the Borg and felled by their colleagues. And then there were those who’d not been assimilated, the security detail and the other officers that had been conscripted by Admiral Reyes for their last stand against the Borg. Among them lay the Admiral herself.

“She’s in bad shape,” reported Dr. Hall as she scanned the Admiral with her medical tricorder. “The phaser shot disintegrated her ilium and irradiated a portion of her pelvic and abdominal cavities. But she’s alive. I can stabilize her temporarily but, if we don’t get her to a medical facility soon…” She didn’t need to say more. What she needed to do was get to work. She dropped to a knee and started fishing equipment out of her medical kit.

Commander Lewis looked down at his tricorder. He had equally bad news. “We’ve got a dozen lifesigns approaching at three o’clock,” he reported and then glanced down the other hallway. “And another dozen from nine o’clock, all registering with the neurological function of Borg drones. We’re cut off.” Of course they were. He’d rushed to recover Admiral Reyes without due tactical consideration. It was foolish. He shouldn’t have done it. But he had a duty to his fallen. Leave no man behind.

Ambassador Drake looked around for cover, but there was none. It was why the battle had been so bloody in the first place. Their only choice had been to cut down the Borg before the Borg could cut them all down. “Well, I guess this is where we make our final stand,” he said as he raised his rifle and prepared to meet the oncoming advance. “It has been a pleasure, both of you. We did our part. We gave the Federation a chance.” He had no regrets.

Aboard the Serenity, Dr. Brooks, Lieutenant Morgan and Chief Shafir charged into main engineering, rifles ablaze. They caught the small contingent of assimilated crewmen flatfooted and cut them down without hesitation. Knowing they were all dead anyways, Lieutenant Morgan no longer regretted the lives he took. Or at least, he regretted them no more than all the lives they were about to take, their own included, when they blew the core.

Lieutenant Morgan rushed over to the terminal in front of the warp core. A seasoned operations officer, he trained to prevent warp core breaches, but now he was going to cause one. He knew what to do, and guided by Dr. Brooks, who helped him set up the parameters to ensure the maximum possible blast yield, he got to work. Chief Shafir stood nearby keeping watch in case any additional Borg came upon them.

A couple minutes later, everything was ready. It would be the explosion to end all explosions. “We’re ready,” Lieutenant Morgan declared, his voice shaky with the realization of what he was about to do as he stared at the button that would trigger a catastrophic cascade in the matter-antimatter assembly. “On your call.”

Dr. Brooks opened his mouth to give the order.

But then the lights flickered and the terminals became garbled. 

Something was happening. Something was changing.

“Abort!” shouted Chief Shafir as she rushed to a terminal that had suddenly taken on the normal blue hue of a Starfleet display.

Lieutenant Morgan pulled his hand away from the console and looked at her for an explanation. 

“If these readings are correct, the Borg signal has stopped,” Chief Shafir reported, stunned as she double checked her work.

“It… what?” asked Dr. Brooks as he rushed alongside her to get a look for himself. She was right. The signal was gone. On a hunch, he queued up long range sensors. “Curious. An explosion in the outer atmosphere of Jupiter and… wait, is that the Enterprise-D?”

Aboard Sol Station, Commander Lewis and Ambassador Drake prepared to fire as the assimilated officers came upon them, but then the lights flickered and the advancing drones stopped dead in their tracks. Suddenly, the focused faces of the assimilated crewmen were overtaken by expressions of pure confusion, those of a dozen young men and women completely unsure of how they’d wound up where they were with phasers in their hands.

“The fuck?” asked Commander Lewis, looking over at Ambassador Drake.

The older man just lowered his phaser and smiled. “It’s over.”

Between them, Dr. Hall didn’t even look up. She was completely focused on trying to stabilize the internal organ function of the Admiral enough to give Allison Reyes a chance at life.