Resistance - J.M. Dillard [78]
Nave did not care to waste time arguing. She lowered herself and started climbing down. The act seemed exceptionally precarious, given that her hands were slick with sweat, the nose of her rifle kept catching on the smooth metal rungs, and the shaft was uncomfortably wide, making her feel exposed. It didn’t help matters that the drop below her was dizzyingly infinite.
Don’t think about it. Just move.
Below her, Chao’s dark head bobbed. To make moving easier, she had pushed her strap so that her rifle now hung on her back. Nave refused to follow suit; she wanted her weapon as close to her hands as possible.
Overhead, Diasourakis closed the hatch with a dull, final sound. Nave didn’t look up. She was too busy concentrating on gripping each new rung firmly, taking care that neither her hands nor her heels slipped, matching her pace to Chao’s. They made fair time; less than a minute had passed when Chao suddenly slowed her pace.
Nave glanced down, concerned.
“There’s a landing here, sir.” Chao’s voice echoed endlessly.
Nave saw it. It was more like a small ledge, with just enough room for a body to step onto and then reach out to the side to catch hold of a rung. The Borg were apparently none too concerned about personal safety.
“Keep going,” she called down. “Let’s put a couple more levels between us and them.” At the same time, she was aware they could not go too far; the away team now had less than two hours to accomplish its goal.
“Aye, sir.”
They kept descending. The atmosphere in the shaft was a steam bath; Nave remained vigilant about gripping the rungs as tightly as possible with her sweating hands. At times, she paused to carefully wipe a hand on her uniform, then to glance overhead to see whether the drones were still in pursuit.
Blessedly, she saw nothing above her but Diasourakis’s legs. Ahead of her was the little landing, just below a hatch; she glanced at it as she made her way past it. After five minutes, she decided she would direct Chao to take the next landing. And then it would be a matter of surviving long enough to find another shaft that would take them back up to Worf and the others. Once they had some breathing room, she would try to contact Worf and ascertain the other away team members’ status…
Her thoughts were interrupted by a hoarse cry. She jerked her head back and stared up at Greg Diasourakis’s right leg, which had slipped off the rung and kicked out suddenly to the side.
No, she realized, it hadn’t been kicked out. It had been pulled, by a long, dark arm that had snaked out from the landing. By a drone, whose upper torso emerged from the hatch; its shoulders rested on the landing as its white hand gripped Diasourakis’s ankle. It and Diasourakis’s foot were an arm’s length from the top of Nave’s head.
His cry was wordless, but Nave understood it nonetheless. With her left hand, she gripped the metal rung. Her body swung precariously to the left, but she ignored it, along with Chao’s shouts, and focused instead on catching hold of her phaser rifle. Using her shoulder and right hand, she managed to get the nose up and her fingers on the trigger.
Diasourakis was thrashing wildly now. The drone had wriggled farther out so that its waist and hip rested on the landing. Its humanoid hand still clung to the security officer; its prosthetic saw arm was raised, and the blade was rotating, ready. Slowly, it was pulling him down. Down, and in, to the landing.
Nave leaned back as far as she dared and pushed the nose of her weapon high, higher, then called up.
“Greg! Hold still! Hold still!”
Diasourakis flailed a few more times; Nave couldn’t get a bead on the drone without killing them both. And then his leg relaxed—for an instant, only an instant, but it was enough time for Nave to fire.
Given its proximity, the blast blinded her; she felt heat on her face. Instinctively, she dropped the phaser rifle and clung to the rail with both hands, pressing her face against them, squeezing shut her eyes.
In the same instant, she cried out as a deluge of