“Long-range sensors report the Sphere has moved on,”  Thasaz reported from science as she tasked the sensor suite.  “We’re coming into short-range now.”

Captain Wren Walton stood from her chair.  The distress call from the Voth had not been through official channels.  It had been a desperate call from someone in the midst of it who was pinning their hopes for survival on the Federation.  “Get me a visual.”  The screen showed the planet closer as Gabriella Castillo increased the zoom.  The planet was a hulking mess.  The flight control officer didn’t recognize it from their recent visit two days prior.  “Survivors?” Wren asked.

“Intermittent.  We’re getting the same phase readings from before.  Lots of interference this time around…I’m seeing some radiation readings…I think they used something similar to Old Earth’s nuclear weapons…we’ll need to get into orbit and land some probes…but I think the weapons they discussed were similar to them…but much more potent if these readings are correct.”

At the operations station, Commander Park was also reviewing the sensors reports, “There’s no pattern to this – it looks and feels like this was a last-ditch effort to stop whatever was happening.  Kondo?” She asked the tactical chief for clarification.

He studied the readings profile and examined them further as he evaluated what he could see, “You’d see a pattern of detonations on the battlefield…that’s not the case here.  The sensors confirm these weapons were powerful – I’ll need more information to decide what was used ultimately.”

Walton shook her head, “What a goddamn waste.  Helm – get us in orbit.  Reede – have Cadet Cardamon meet me in the observation lounge.  Park – you have the CONN.”

“There were three thousand of us on this colony, Captain.”  Cardamon stared at his home colony through the massive windows, his hands folded together, claws shaking with sorrow.  “Two days ago, I was exiled…I did not imagine having to return here again.”  He turned to her, “It is regrettable it has come to this.  They were still my people despite our harsh feelings for each other.”

Walton put her hand gently on his shoulder, “We’re working to find out where we can land a team and make an accounting for what happened here…I’m going to recommend that you not join the away team.”

He put his hand on hers, “Captain…I’ve learned much from your people about life and living it.  Regret isn’t a foreign concept to us as Voth…and I do not wish to live with that weight of what I should have done…or could have done.  I will go with your permission.”

Wren looked into his eyes, “You need to be sure of this, Cardamon.  You won’t be able to unsee what’s down there.”

“I must face it as I face everything, Captain.  With courage…and with my new friends.”

“They were able to assimilate a hundred, maybe.”  Doctor Henry Longfellow stood in front of the main hall for the Voth, his medical tricorder in hand and a PADD in the other.  They all wore ventilators and protective suits.  The fires raged across the planet, and the radiation had redlined the sensors.  The engineering crew had laid a path where the effect would be lower..  They would all need to be inoculated and undergo treatments back on the Mackenzie. An account was required, and probes only gave them so much information.

Cardamon sat limply on the stairs, his eyes reading the updating casualty reports as shuttles and runabouts scoured the planet with high-powered sensors.  They had not found any survivors, only the dead, the half-assimilated, and the radiated.  “They would not have gone easily, Doctor.  They would have fought…hard.  The Borg did not win today.  I take comfort in this.”  Longfellow held his tongue.  He did not understand the Voth ways.  Cardamon looked up and saw the look on his face, “I have grown to understand your face, Doctor Longfellow.  I know you must wonder why we are the way we are.  Sometimes, I do not understand us as a people.  As long as I have been…the human word is ‘disconnected’ from my people…the Voth part of me can never be fully erased…even if they are.”

The voice of Commander Park through the communications channel broke the moment, “Doc, I need your help in sector twenty-three!”

Longfellow helped the Voth up, and they tapped the badges for transport.

They emerged into the highest level of hell.  Bodies, Borg and Voth, were spread everywhere.  Some of the Borg drones twitched out of reflex, startling Cardamon as they walked down the path marked by engineering toward where the XO stood. Two security officers stood in a ready stance with phaser rifles charged and ready.  Longfellow bounded down the path and up the hill to Park, “What do we…holy shit.” Voreth, Supreme Commander of the Voth, lay on the ground.  He wasn’t fully assimilated or even half assimilated.  He was on the outer edges of his existence as a Voth with the Borg devices implanted in him pushing him farther away.

Voreth’s eyes remained furious and determined as he struggled to breathe, his words spilling out in a gasping cadence, “It…is not…lost…on me…that you are…my rescuer.”

Longfellow went to work, “It is a good thing this happened to you in 2401, Supreme Commander.  The chances of your survival are dramatically higher than they were twenty years ago.”

The rage-fueled Voth gasped, “Who…says I want…to live!”

Cardamon pushed himself into the circle, his eyes searching his former leader’s eyes, “A Voth does not cherish meaningless death, Voreth…death is earned…it is power.  It walks with us into the darkness.”  He clasped his talons together as his voice grew louder, “I say you want to live, Supreme Commander.  The words of our people say you want to live…you are ordered by the ancestors to live!”  The voice that had come out of him gave the Starfleet officers pause as they turned to gawk at his sudden turn of posture and sound. There was something ancient within the Voth that had awoken.

Voreth was quiet, and he stared at Cardamon.  Longfellow looked between the two Voth, desperate for permission, “Can I treat him?  The longer I wait…”

Voreth’s eyes started to roll back in his head as he wheezed, “Save…me…”

“100 survivors.”  Walton threw the PADD across the room, where it slammed into the wall, crashing to the ground, still in one piece.  “Out of three thousand.”  The Mackenzie captain wasn’t simmering.  She wasn’t boiling.  Wren was furious.  “I..that…is an unthinkable number.”  She couldn’t speak straight and sat roughly on the couch in her ready room.

“I…gods, I wish I had better words for both of us, Wren.” Chief Counselor Juliet Woodward paced the room, her mind wallowing in mourning and furiously wanting the right words.  The bodies of three hundred Borg littered the planet below while the impact sites for the Voth weapons numbered half that.  “One hundred and fifty bombs…I can’t imagine being pushed to the point of genocidal apocalypse.”

Wren didn’t retrieve the PADD.  Anything less than a soothing tea in her hand was likely to get tossed in a vain attempt at releasing the pressure.  She hadn’t been this angry in some time, and she had walked to her ready room to avoid a display of a severe lack of decorum and professionalism in front of her crew.  “We’ll have to figure out a way to stop this Sphere.  We’re running around putting out fires and finding a wasteland of death where there was once thriving life.  It’s shitty.  The senior staff knows it’s shit.  I know it’s shit.  The crew will figure it out if they haven’t already.  We won’t be able to do this for a month, Juls.”

Woodward stopped pacing, “The crew has already figured it out, Wren.  Our appointments are racked and stacked – and it’s mostly the new and fresh crew that’s freaking out.  Every report I’ve read from department heads, assistants, shift leads, and team operators runs the same – they’re terrified of what’s coming next.  It’s already affecting productivity.”

Walton groaned, “I’ve been reading Chief Katsumi’s reports…she’s worried about engine maintenance…never mind Pearce’s concerns with her security teams.  She’s got ensigns who are locking up in simulations.  We can’t keep relying on the most senior officers to hold the line.”  The chime to the room rang out, “Enter.”

Commander Park stepped through the door and gave them both a nod.  “The Voth are requesting asylum.”

Wren looked for something to throw but held her frustration.  She sipped her steaming green tea, “That’s now 600 extra souls onboard.  We do have an emergency capacity rating of 5,000…but I do not want to test it.”  She rubbed her temples to release the stress that threatened to overwhelm her.  “Right.  Cargo bays one, two, and three are in use.  Park, work with Quartermaster Wyatt – let’s get number four set for our new Voth guests.”  The XO left the room with her orders.  Wren ignored the stare her chief counselor was giving her.

Juliet asked, “That’s the angriest I’ve seen you, Wren.”  She said it softly.  Her friend was hurting.  It wouldn’t help to accuse.

Walton let out a long sigh and stared at the windows of her ready room, her mind trying to restore the order of her passionate heart.  She found her words, “This job…being a captain…it’s galaxies away from what I used to do.  I’m ultimately responsible for our wins…and our losses.  And we lost here today…we lost three thousand members of an alien species to a mechanical monster…that’s…that’s a hard thing to shoulder, Juls.  Three…thousand…lives.  What makes it worse is they hated us, and one of them still thought to call us…because they knew we’d come no matter what they had threatened us with.”  She wiped at her eyes, the tears flowing.

Juliet sat beside her friend, “We lost something that should have never been taken from us.”  She leaned into Wren, “The one thing I’m hanging on to now, Wren…is that they called us.  They knew our quality.  They knew we’d come.  That helps me.”

Walton leaned into her counselor, “It helps me too.  Not enough…but it’s a start.”