Unworthy - Kirsten Beyer [34]
“That’s impossible,” B’Elanna said, wishing that her eyes were deceiving her.
A massive cube hung before her in space.
As her heart took several deep, painful pounds, B’Elanna waited for the standard greeting of the Borg, promising assimilation. Her hands flew over the controls, rerouting power to shields, charging phaser banks, and preparing one of the ten precious transphasic torpedoes she’d carried for just such an emergency to launch.
After thirty seconds, she realized that the vessel was not behaving like a Borg ship. Come to think of it, apart from its shape, it didn’t look at all like a Borg ship. The surface lacked the intricate black hull that had always appeared to her as something unfinished. In its place was a polished gray alloy her sensors weren’t identifying. The ship was also uncharacteristically refraining from scanning or threatening her in any way.
The Caeliar? B’Elanna wondered.
She knew next to nothing about them, apart from the fact that they had helped the Federation defeat the Borg in the last moments of the invasion. The news feeds B’Elanna had intercepted since then had been filled with outlandish speculations about this incredibly advanced species.
Her Starfleet training reasserted itself. This could be a first-contact situation.
With shaking hands she opened a channel and began transmitting standard friendship greetings.
Ten seconds later, an angry purple burst of phased energy erupted from a corner of the cube and shook her ship from stem to stern, rousing Miral from her slumber. Her alarmed cries intensified with the second volley that B’Elanna had immediately moved to evade.
Apart from the sheer rudeness of the exchange, B’Elanna was confused by what she was seeing. The alien ship’s energy weapons were strong, but her shields were holding and could likely sustain such fire indefinitely. She hesitated to shoot back as she didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. There was a chance these were warning shots, and hardly the most destructive the aliens had at hand.
They obviously weren’t Borg, but B’Elanna had a hard time believing they were the Caeliar. What little she knew suggested that the Caeliar could easily have disabled or destroyed her vessel in one shot.
Against her better judgment, B’Elanna decided to give diplomacy one last try.
“Alien vessel, cease fire. You have engaged a civilian vessel. I have a child on board. I do not mean you any harm and if I have violated your space, I will be happy to depart in peace. Please stand down.”
In response, the ship sent forth three quick bursts that B’Elanna also found disarmingly easy to evade.
She was clearly out of safe options and Miral’s plaintive wails reminded her that she was risking more than her own life. With one hand she plotted an escape route and powered up her warp drive. She would run as far as was required to lose her combative new friends but hopefully not so far that Voyager wouldn’t be able to locate her if they ever arrived. A nagging thought snapped into the front of her mind. Neelix’s voice reminded her with harsh simplicity that she never used to run from a fight. She risked much by standing her ground, but there was no way to know what she might lose if she failed to be here when Tom reached these coordinates.
Neither option was particularly good, but something she hadn’t felt in years, something she had buried, rushed through her veins reminding B’Elanna that she was, first and always, a warrior.
She had been pushed to her limits by the Warriors of Gre’thor. She’d lost something to them she hadn’t even missed until this moment. She had unconsciously chosen to become a victim, and that had left her frightened and alone. It had made B’Elanna think that she had no control over her destiny. It had separated her and her daughter for far too long from the man she loved.
A Klingon chose how they faced life and death. She didn’t plan to die, but suddenly she knew in her bones that she didn’t plan to