“Resistance is futile.”

The drone’s voice never wavered, nor did its steps as it started towards the two officers under a fusillade of phaser fire.

“Fallback,” Lin ordered as she stepped back, one burst after another taking the drone in experimental shots to the head, shoulders, even the knees, all answered by that flaring of green shields and when it cleared the drone still standing.

“Remodulating,” Brek announced.

Both of them kept walking backwards, keeping the distance open with their quarry and after a few seconds, having remodulated her phaser as well, opened fire once more. Once more the shields flared, their weapons ineffective. “Cease fire,” she said and wasn’t answered with any argument from Brek. What was logical about continuing to fire ineffectually after all?

The drone never walked faster, never charged, just kept after them at a steady pace, organic and artificial eyes locked onto them. “Resistance is futile,” it chanted once more.

“I can’t tell if we damaged its shields or not,” Brek said, consulting his tricorder. Calm as he always was, calm as she was portraying she hoped but definitely not feeling inside. “In fact according to these scans, it’s not even there.”

“Stealth technology? On a drone?” she asked, not believing the possibility.

“It would appear so.” Brek consulted his tricorder one last time, closed it and she saw in her peripheral vision, examined the device in his hand before throwing it at the drone. It wasn’t a forceful throw, but a gentle lob, underarm even, which sent the closed tricorder sailing through the air at the drone. It bounced off the creature’s armoured torso, clattering off into a server rack and eventually to the floor with a dull thud as it hit the carpeted floor, the impact jolting the cover open and the device blurting to life as it dutifully resumed its last programmed set of scans.=.

“Move,” she ordered and all thought of keeping distance with the drone was gone – they both turned and ran away. Past the doors into the computer core, down the corridor to the atrium and its walkway.

As they emerged into the blended light of the atrium they could hear the computer core door hiss shut behind them, their pursuer on the other side. And only a moment after that sparks flew from the door’s seam, the metal heating in a neat little band that started near the top of the door and started descending slowly, carefully.

“Is it sealing itself inside?” she asked.

“It would appear so,” Brek answered. “Which would hinder it in its attempts to assimilate us.”

“And us in our attempts to stop whatever it is that’s its doing.” She glared at the door, the bright spot a third of the way down now. “I don’t like this. This isn’t what I’ve ever read of Borg behaviour.”

“It is certainly unique.”

It only took a few minutes to return to the control room, announcing themselves before rounding the corner and being greeted by Amber lowering her weapon as they did. She flicked her head at Mitchell and Rosa, both huddled around a computer terminal not far from the deceased Lieutenant Matt Conway and his broken terminal.

“…oh god oh god oh god,” came a nasally voice from the computer terminal. “Atlantis, if you get this, you need to hurry! Oh god! It’s in the computer core, there’s a –“ and the recording stopped.

“Recording never sent,” Rosa said as she looked to Mitchell. “Got interrupted by the console exploding but was kept in local memory. Whoever shot Conway did it from outside the pickup.”

“It was a Borg drone,” Lin said, instantly earning the attention of the three who had stayed behind. “New model it looks like.”

Mitchell looked like he wanted to disagree, to argue a point, but stopped himself. No point in arguing with his boss’s boss, a fellow security officer and a senior officer aboard Atlantis all rolled in one package. Or when she had a witness in the form of a Vulcan who merely nodded twice in silent confirmation that what she said was true.

“Uh, no.” Rosa however wasn’t burdened by the same need not to nitpick. Or fear of senior officer’s wrath. “If there were Borg aboard this station, Atlantis would have detected that before we beamed over. Heck, our tricorders would have screamed bloody murder the moment we beamed over.”

“Unless of course the drone possessed some form of stealth systems preventing us from scanning it,” Brek said, a bored lecturer in the making. “Which this particular drone appears to possess.”

“How’d it get aboard then?” Rosa continued.

“Unknown,” Brek continued. “But inconsequential currently to the fact there is a drone aboard the station. And that it has now sealed itself in the computer core, attempting to access the station’s primary computer.”

“So that won’t take long then?” Amber asked. “Wait, you said sealed itself in? As in you didn’t take it out?”

“The Collective is fast, a drone is…not as fast,” Lin said, avoiding the word slow. She doubted the drone was slow, but certainly wouldn’t be as fast as a drone dispatched by a nearby ship. There were no nearby Collective resources to pool from. No greater intellect to outsource code breaking and system access hacking to. “As for our unwelcome visitor, it has some form of shielding that seems adapted to our weapons already.”

“Well, that sounds just peachy.” Rosa’s eyes went to her phaser, considering it forlornly before she set it down on a console. “So boss,” she looked to Mitchell, “what’s the play?”

“We find a way to get comms back with Atlantis. We find something we can use to scan and track that drone and then we deal with it.” He looked at Lin, locking eyes with her. “Failing that ma’am, we make for the shuttlebay and scuttle the station.”

“Can we not make that plan a?” Rosa asked, earning a huff of agreement from Amber.

“This relay station is vital to Deep Space 47. And to this sector. Starfleet Command would be most displeased with its destruction,” she said, looking to the Orion with a disapproving tone in her voice. “Not to mention the civil bureaucracy that would be put out as well. No, we leave destruction as our last option.”

“And I,” Mitchell cut in, stopping Rosa’s next statement just as she was opening her mouth, “don’t feel like writing a series of reports explaining why a decades-old and vitally important comms hub got blown up. So here’s what we’re going to go to do –“

All of the lights in the control centre went out. Computer terminals included. The emergency lights died, plunging the space into an eerie darkness pierced only by reflected light from the arrays through the windows, casting harsh shadows. Then the emergency lights blinked back into existence as their batteries kicked in at the loss of power.

“What now?” Rosa pleaded.

A flicker of light appeared, a shimmer that rapidly solidified as a holographic being came into existence in the middle of the compartment. It rapidly took the form of an older hologram, the system installed evidently decades ago and expanded to other compartments but never properly updated. As it finished coalescing it was clearly an EMH Mk1 hologram, its uniform reminiscent of the day it was likely installed.

“Please state the nature of the medical emergency,” it asked, scanning the occupants of the chamber. “Ah, patients. Excellent. Who’s first?”