Chương 117: Dark Frontier, Part 3
Needless to say, Janeway was not in a good mood after our conversation and immediately called Chakotay, Tuvok, and Katye, at my request, to her Ready Room. For the next three hours, the five of us went over the plans of how to approach this situation. There was no ignoring the danger of what Raven revealed, so we had to act on the knowledge that I had from the episode and follow the original plot. We would need to raid a damaged Borg sphere for a transwarp coil and make our way to Unimatrix One, where the rune factory and Raven were. The only question was whether or not the Queen would come after Seven as she had in the episode...
There was a strange hum of machinery onboard a Borg vessel that was unnerving, even to someone as strong as me. L'Naan and I were making our way towards the heart of Borg sphere while two other groups spread themselves throughout the ship, cloaked with bio-dampeners. Our task was to be a secondary distraction and, with the shuttlecraft that we exploded as the Borg tractored it in was the first, which we used to beam onboard from Voyager. The other two groups would knock out the shield matrix and set up pattern enhancers to allow Voyager to steal the coil.
We had no means of hiding our presence aside from the exo-suits that everyone wore. Only Katye and I could be identified due to the unique structure of our evolved bodies, so the extra members supplied by Voyager's crew would hopefully confuse the Queen more, once they were revealed, but that was a side matter to me currently.
In one hand, I conjured a fire ball and, in the other, a sparking ball of violet electricity. With a flick of my wrists, I threw both down different corridors then charged into a third while pulling out a pair of curved daggers. I slashed my way through the first few drones with accurate cuts to their necks, but they adapted to direct melee attacks quickly. L'Naan was also assisting me with arrows tipped with mana crystals, allowing them to explode upon contact, thinning out the numbers in the back. To combat the kinetic shielding, I wrapped my blades with Weapon-Force and was once again cutting my way through their numbers.
One of our biggest unknown variables was whether the Borg could adapt to our magic and our ability to shift between elements. The plan was for L'Naan and I to finally test their adaptability to our powers yet restrain ourselves to small scale utilizations of it. I had already proven that their kinetic shields could be overpowered by extreme force, so I would test Weapon-Force while L'Naan had a ring full of various elemental crystal tipped arrows, with a unified strength based off Katye's work.
While they were able to adapt to the different elemental arrows slowly, Weapon-Force completely eluded them, never adapting to the curved daggers in my hands. Honestly, it was not surprising as Raven had a concept of elemental mana while Weapon-Force was something that we discovered after her assimilation. The Borg had no data on it, and, in a sense, it was a higher form of 'spells' as it used both mana and Soul Power. Raven, Echo, and L'Naan only used pure elemental-mana based spells while Katye and I infused Soul Power into them subconsciously due to our past lives.
"Tuvok to Janeway. Charges set. Returning to transport coordinates," Tuvok announced through the comm system.
"Tuvok, now," Janeway replied a moment later.
In the next second, the Borg cube was shaken by a large explosion, no doubt centered around the shield matrix as that was Tuvok's, Harry's, and Echo's mission.
"I guess the fun's over," I smirked, looking back at L'Naan who shook her head wryly.
With a tap of my visor, a path was highlighted in front of me leading back to the transport coordinates. Unless there were Borg looking to block our way, we would not attack and simply seal the corridor behind us off with a metal plate, made from thinning out some of my heavy shields in my storage ring. The seeds of magic had already been planted, so retreating was the priority; only time would tell what the Borg could do with them, and how much danger the galaxy was in.
When we joined up with the others, Seven was notably missing, but no one had time to dwell on it as we were beamed away moments before the Borg shields regenerated. Everything was within the plans that we all had made, though Seven going back to the Borg would undoubtedly make it more difficult to get her back along with everything else we had to do. There was no way that we could leave her behind.
After Katye's bonding with the Arcana Pearls, Seven's and Katye's relationship had changed to an unusual level, compared to the Seven of the original plot, yet with the importance of that moment for Seven, when Omega fell into perfect harmony, symbolizing Chaos coming to Order, it made perfect sense. The Borg language, likely due to Tori's influence, was based off the Arcana, so Katye was almost a god-like figure in Seven's eyes. It was not in a subservient way, but rather, like a student looking up to a teacher, as they both had been working together to unravel how to safely remove the Borg technology from Echo and me for months. Seven had even asked Katye to help her look through her parents' journals, the Hansons who had come up with numerous ways to subvert the Borg sensors for their study, before she left, so she fully understood the technology and had ideas of how to improve it.
Just like in the episode, the Borg ship did not chase Voyager and immediately retreated into transwarp space. While it seemed like Seven had defected back to the Collective to most of the crew, the most important people knew the truth and were looking for proof as it could also help with locating Seven, as it had in the episode. My group, of course, was pulled off our normal duty shifts to fully focus on preparing everything for our infiltration of Unimatrix One; it was a big battle ahead of us, no matter how we went about it.
The Shuttle Bay became a locked off zone which only my group could enter, but that was for safety reasons rather than secretive ones. With the incredible increase to our internal reserves and ability to transform outside mana into our personal mana, due to our Telo transformations, Katye and I had a routine of stockpiling mana crystals, so we had a few thousands to power a number of mana-draining formations to increase the rate of Time within them. A normal person could not handle the 'shift' between time-rates, and even Echo and L'Naan could only shift between a level-zone safely after an adjustment period.
Katye, as the crafter of the formations, could easily pass through the three zones that she had set up. The first zone, one and a half faster than the 'outside world', encompassed the door and right up to the Fae Dragon, giving some space which we had turned into a small gym, and the second zone, at double the outside world, covered majority of the rest of the Shuttle Bay, including the Delta Flyer. The last zone was Katye's personal working space, taking up a small corner of the bay, which moved at three times the 'normal' speed of time. My physical body was strong enough to mitigate the effects of shifting Time, though I would get a strange headache if I crossed the lines multiple times.
You may ask, why make a gym in the lowest time zone? That was because Katye needed to have a third zone to achieve a small three-time zone, but she had also added a gravity multiplier of three within the space. While again, my body was strong enough to ignore these effects, Echo and L'Naan would get significant benefits while training their bodies in this environment. The only problem with these formations was that we were burning through our stockpile of crystals to power all the complex formations quickly.
Still, we were not the type to ignore the advantages of the moment and used every available moment to train. Fae, monitoring all of us despite the time zones, kept us on a strict schedule of an 'eight-hour' workday, based off the true time. L'Naan and Katye were the key to making sure that the Delta Flyer would be ready to use the transwarp coil since only they understood the technology well enough to do the work... which left Echo and I on recharge duty, either filling Fae Dragon's core or replacing the mana crystal with new ones.
When we were not "on-duty", each of us was training in some way. Echo and L'Naan focused on the gym since, with the added gravity, simple exercises would train their bodies from the inside out. Katye had claimed the three-times zone, where she worked on several enchanted items that could be helpful, while I would sneak in whenever she was working on the Delta Flyer.
My focus was on a new Four-Elemental spell that I had dubbed Plasma Storm, which combined Fire, Wind, Thunder, and Water. While I had no intention of using it against the Borg during the mission, Raven was familiar with my Thunderstorm spells, even if she could not use them herself, so if the Borg could access that knowledge they might adapt to that magic so, eventually I would need something stronger, and relying on my Chaos Storm could do much more harm than good. Explaining my Chaos Storm power was impossible as I barely understood it above an instinctual level, unlike my Thunderstorm, so I doubted that the Borg could analyze Raven's memories of the magic the few training sessions that I used against her, but I did not need to give them any extra data on it.
A week and a half later, based on "true" time, the modifications to the Delta Flyer were completed. Janeway had already discovered the subspace frequency that the Queen used to contact Seven, and the plans for the attack on Unimatrix One had been refined through numerous simulations on the holo-deck, at least those for Janeway's away team; our group's goal was slightly different than theirs, after all. Of course, there was no way to be sure of how things would play out, but it was the best that we could do...
"...This will be a long-range, tactical rescue. It could take days, even weeks, before we find our missing crewmen. Commander Katye and Lieutenant L'Naan have equipped the Delta Flyer with the transwarp coil. It'll allow us to cover more territory. An away team will take it into transwarp space, accompanied by the Fae Dragon and her crew, where we believe that we can track the sphere that abducted Seven of Nine as well as the interplexing beacon frequency of Lieutenant Raven. Thanks to the Hanses, and some Vazukuru technology, we'll be well-prepared for an encounter with the Borg. Their multiadaptive shielding will make the Flyer virtually invisible to Borg sensors, and narrow-beam transporters will allow us to penetrate the sphere," Janeway explained while numerous people were gathered on the Bridge, my group among them.
"Mister Paris, you'll man the helm. Commander Tuvok, tactical. Doctor, there's no telling what condition Seven and Raven will be in when we find them. You'll come along. I'll be leading the away team. The rest of you will remain on Voyager and maintain position at the threshold of our transwarp conduit. We may need tactical support when we return. You'll be taking your orders from Commander Chakotay. We'll be searching for two individuals among thousands of drones, but they are one of us... and we aren't about to let them go. Let's get started."
While giving her speech to the crew, she locked eyes with numerous people, giving them a confident and reassuring look. She said the last bit, looking at me, and I nodded my head in agreement. In the show, the crew had an unshakeable confidence in Janeway, and with the addition of our group, that resolve was even stronger. To the majority, it seemed like a simple mission with the strength of my group behind the Flyer, but only a few knew the true danger that we were undoubtedly heading into...
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