‘You said the Redemption team cleared this out.’ Thawn’s voice sounded tinny inside her own EV suit. ‘Right?’

There was a thunk as Cortez stepped over the threshold of the airlock and set her booted foot on the deck of the Borg probe. Beside her, Logan advanced and raised his left arm, the flashlight attached to his suit sweeping down the corridor beyond.

It was not like the wreck they had first boarded. Lights shone back, white and yellow instead of dim and green, the Redemption’s team leaving the probe fit for officers to return and investigate. Floor lights had been left, stretching down the short corridor to the far, sealed door, and while they reflected off obsidian bulkheads bearing the gleam of emerald circuitry, the presence of the Borg felt dormant here. Conquered. There were no drones in sight, no Borg systems. If this was a wilderness once, for now, it had been tamed.

That did not mean they were complacent. After a beat, Cortez nodded and took another step. ‘They said it was clear. It’s clear.’ She checked the tricorder on the forearm of her suit. ‘Atmo’s good.’

‘Popping the hood,’ called Logan. A beat later, there was a hiss as they cracked their helmets and breathed the stale air.

Cortez cleared her throat. ‘That great recycled flavour,’ she sighed. ‘Come on.’ They had docked their shuttle at an airlock nearest the central control room of the probe and now walked the short corridor to the far door, shuffling in their EV suits.

‘What did the Redemption do with the drones?’ Thawn said, hearing her voice echoing in the corridor and not enjoying it.

‘There were none on the probe,’ said Logan. ‘They get dispatched if and when it launches. It’s like an Aquarius on an Odyssey.’

Thawn nodded, then said, against her better judgement, ‘What are we doing with the rest of the drones?’

‘Much as we did for the Artifact,’ sighed Logan. ‘Keeping them in suspension until we have a better idea. None of them what were active when the Cube collapsed have shown signs of losing their connection to the Collective.’

‘It’s being worked on,’ said Cortez. ‘The Redemption is still trying to locate the central vinculum. If it’s even on the Alpha Wreck.’ They approached the hatch to the central control room. Cortez used a hand-crank to get it open.

‘Aren’t we going to need to power the probe up to access its navigational records anyway?’ Thawn said in a small voice as they entered the control room. She was relieved to see more of the floor lamps from the Redemption team in there, casting the chamber in a dim, golden glow. They had gone nowhere that others had not gone.

‘We are, but I want to have computer access right in front of me when we do that,’ said Cortez. ‘So I can keep track of exactly what the damn ship is doing if it wants to misbehave.’ She nodded to the panel on the far bulkhead, several metres wide and with multiple interfaces. ‘Gonna need your help with this one, Logan.’

‘It should be straightforward,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but you can read it better than me,’ she pointed out. ‘Thawn, get to that panel there and keep track of the ship systems. We’ll find the navicom and input our coords. Make sure it doesn’t activate anything else when we bring in the power.’

‘It should be cut off,’ said Thawn. ‘The Redemption team insisted they’d isolated the navicom from the rest of the probe.’

‘Sure,’ said Logan, reaching up to access the main panel. ‘But you know what the Borg do.’

Thawn paused, staring at the screen she was supposed to monitor. It was still blank. ‘…assimilate?’

‘Regenerate,’ he sighed.

‘Come on, Lieutenant,’ chided Cortez. ‘That were an obvious bit. Powering up now.’

Thawn bit her lip and stayed silent as they worked. Her screen came to gentle life, the feed scrolling to confirm that power had been restored to the navicom and to nothing else. ‘The system looks isolated.’

‘Good,’ said Cortez. ‘Let’s find what we need and get out.’

It was only a slow process because they were careful. Ploughing through the probe’s database to find exactly what they need, and isolating anything they didn’t, took rigorous scrutiny, especially with Logan’s clear caution – or paranoia. It took them an hour before Cortez eventually fist-pumped, awkward in the EV suit, and said, ‘Gotcha!’

Logan let out a slow breath of relief. ‘Borg navigational data.’

‘Let’s put this bad boy in and get a star chart. How’re we looking, Thawn?’

Thawn blinked. She hadn’t stopped paying attention, so much as there was little to nothing to pay attention to. ‘All clear. No real change.’

‘Great.’ Cortez tapped her armpiece for the holographic projection of the data she needed to pop up. ‘Inputting the coordinates now.’

Logan nodded, tapping at the panel. ‘It’s processing.’

Thawn resisted the urge to look back as she watched her screen, where the data kept scrolling without change, the feed of the status of the probe steady. A few moments later, behind her, she heard Cortez let out a low whistle. ‘That’s a way off.’

On Thawn’s screen, the data changed by one number. Her breath caught. ‘Commander!’

A split second later, everything changed.

‘…Captain?’

There was a dullness to Airex’s voice, a quiet, confused surprise, that somehow made Valance’s gut roil worse than if he’d snapped something. She looked across the bridge at him. ‘What?’

‘The probe is powering up.’ Now urgency entered his voice, and his hands sprang across his console, drawing in data. ‘Flight systems are active -’

‘Captain, the probe’s moving,’ barked Lindgren, likewise springing into action. ‘It’s pulling away from the wreckage.’

Valance jumped to her feet. ‘Bring us in. Kally, can you contact the away team?’

A beat, then the comms panel blatted at the young ensign. ‘Negative, Captain! There’s a communications dampening field, like on the first wreck.’

Lindgren swore. ‘It’s fast, Captain, and it’s moving to the far end of the debris field. We can’t match its speed and navigate the field.’

‘Hail the Redemption, Kally,’ Valance snapped. ‘See if Captain Daragon can move in or if he has a runabout out there.’

‘There’s nobody closer than us,’ warned Kharth, who’d jumped up to stand at Qadir’s shoulder at Tactical.

‘Bring us around the debris field, Lindgren. Full impulse, tight as you can – give the wreck a shave if you have to!’

Airex looked back up. ‘They’re out of the debris field, and I’m detecting elevated neutrino levels in the space before the probe.’

‘They’re going to transwarp,’ Valance said, fist clenching.

‘Conduit opening!’ Airex confirmed a moment later. ‘They’re going in!’

‘Lindgren, follow them.’ They were at the edge of the debris field now, and on the viewscreen, with the remains of the Alpha Wreck no longer blocking their sight, she could see it – the low shape of the small probe, and the roiling vortex before it of a transwarp conduit. ‘Qadir, get ready to grab them with a tractor beam -’

‘Too late,’ said Airex. ‘They’re in.’

‘Then we follow –’

‘Conduit is closing,’ said Airex, and a heartbeat later, anything on the viewscreen that was not inky black space or the gleam of distant stars vanished.

Valance stared for a moment. Then a moment more. When she drew a sharp breath and spoke, her voice didn’t sound like it came from her, colder and more tense than she thought she’d ever heard it. ‘Status, Mister Airex.’

In the silence that followed, the only sound was Airex’s fingertips on the controls as he checked, double-checked, triple-checked his readings. Then he looked up again. ‘They’re gone, Captain.’