Resistance - J.M. Dillard [79]
She held on and raised her face at the scream, at first high-pitched and in her ear, then rapidly growing lower, fainter, until it faded into nothingness.
She blinked, trying to force her vision to clear, and shouted down at Chao. “What happened? What happened?”
Moments earlier, as the away team neared the intersection of two catwalks—only steps away from the chamber filled with pulsating green light— Beverly Crusher saw the drones approaching from the front.
They had come from what Beverly instinctively knew was the queen’s chamber. There were six of them, and she craned her neck anxiously to see past Leary and over Worf’s shoulder; she wanted to know if Jean-Luc was among them. He was not, and she did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
Either way, she fought to suppress a wave of fear. The Borg were advancing with their prosthetic weapons wielded.
Worf had led the way, with Leary a close second. Leary at once moved into position beside the Klingon; the two formed a barrier in front of Crusher.
“Open fire!” Worf shouted, and Leary obeyed. One Borg, caught in the brilliant beam from Worf’s rifle, spasmed briefly as the energy surge enveloped its body; it dropped quickly as the blast faded.
Crusher held back, thinking to let the other security team members move past her to join the fight—but she glanced over her shoulder to see Nave and the two others standing shoulder to shoulder, firing on a second group of drones who were attacking from the rear.
“There are other Borg behind us,” she shouted, pulling her phaser from its holster. Worf was far too engaged in the battle to acknowledge if he heard. She considered her options as a second Borg fell, then a third reeled from a blow but recovered to continue its approach. Worf and Leary kept firing, but the drones reacted not at all to the blasts, not even pausing when directly hit.
“Recalibrate!” Worf ordered. At the same time, Beverly fired her own phaser, dropping the Borg.
Worf adjusted his weapon smoothly, swiftly, and resumed firing at the next oncoming Borg, but Leary’s malfunctioned. She frowned at it as she repeatedly pressed a control.
The lead drone—its prosthetic arm terminating in a slowly rotating claw hook—sensed her weakness and lunged forward. Leary glanced up, startled, and fired her unrecalibrated weapon. It had no effect, and before she could step back out of the way, the drone sunk its claw into her shoulder.
Leary cried out sharply. Miraculously, she stayed on her feet, the hook still in her flesh, and jammed the hilt of her rifle into the drone’s jaw. It staggered backward, just long enough for Worf and Beverly to dispatch it, firing in unison.
Crusher holstered her phaser and, with hand on her medkit, darted to Leary’s side. The claw had bitten into the young woman’s right deltoid, then ripped a ragged seam all the way into her biceps. Blood rapidly soaked the shoulder and sleeve of her uniform, and began to drip onto the deck. Amazingly, Leary was still standing. She had shifted her weapon over to her left side, nestling it against her rib cage as she adjusted it one-handed. She discharged a blast as Crusher did a quick scan of the damage.
“You have to let me help you,” Beverly half shouted in her ear. “That’s a deep laceration. If I don’t fix it, you’ll wind up fainting from blood loss.”
“No time,” Leary mouthed, but her eyes were dazed, her skin pale; a dark curl had fallen forward and clung to her sweat-dampened forehead. Even so, she kept firing.
Resolutely ignoring the approaching Borg, Beverly focused on her patient’s wound. She couldn’t reverse the blood loss Leary had already experienced, but she could at least slow it. She pulled her stimulator from her kit and applied it to Leary’s wound. At the same time, she fumbled in the kit with her free hand, searching for her emergency hypospray.