Post 206: Fight or Flight Part One

Stardate:70602.2030
Title: Fight or Flight Part One
Author: Lt. February Grace
Scene: Inside Captain Gilmore's Mind/Sickbay
Time: After "In An Instant"
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We are The Borg, Lower your shields and surrender your ships.

Gilmore felt pain in his chest, his mind racing. There had to be somewhere he could go to escape them. Anywhere.

Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own.

The words of the Collective mind infected him, boring in his brain like a latinum-tipped drill bit. Waking, sleeping, it didn't matter. Running across the stars or on the most peaceful planet in the quadrant, didn't matter. Everywhere he went he heard the echoes of their soulless voices, their evil declarations his eternal torment.

With more than half a dozen medications coursing through his system now, any hold he'd had on the reality of his situation slipped away. In his mind's eye he was back on the USS Fearless, and life as he knew it was about to end in a fate so much worse than death.

Everyone around him had been either murdered outright or assimilated. Only a few of the crew remained at this point, but they continued stubbornly fighting to hold the bridge. Backed up against the wall. Their weapons useless, defenses weakened.

Your culture will adapt to service us.

"Like hell we will! We're taking you with us!" Gilmore shouted, and he looked into the eyes of the handful of other officers within his line of vision. Bloodied, defeated, they nodded to him. He just needed to get past this one drone, to get to the auto-destruct controls. He was Chief Engineer, he knew how to short circuit them to get around the security protocols. The Fearless would go out in a flash of brilliant light, and it would take as many Borg as possible with it when it blew.

Resistance is futile.

The clang and whirr noises were deafening. The screams of the others as they were assimilated. The din so loud that his ears rang painfully before the sounds seemed to fade into nothing. He felt as if he would pass out. He was backed into the corner with nowhere to go, the drone approaching so much more quickly than he thought possible. It raised its artificial appendages upward, pincers grasping for his flesh. Reaching out for his neck. All hope was lost.

Yet, he couldn't give up. He had to fight back. He had to try to get his hands around the throat of this bastard and squeeze and wring until the life drained from its mechanical corpse and it fell to the ground like a heap of worthless scrap metal.

"Captain,"

His arms had flown upward and forward in an instant.

"Captain Gilmore."

His fingers encircled her throat with crushing force.

"R.J. . . " The woman felt the air being forced from her windpipe, and with all her might she breathed in as hard as she could and screamed into his face. His eyes were open, but glazed over as if he were in a trance.

"RONYN JAMESON GILMORE! LET GO!" The young Trill screamed as she tried to wrestle free of his grip.

Lt. Grace had been sitting silently beside Gilmore's bed in Sickbay, waiting for him to wake up again. Lily T'Ana had been summoned to a meeting of the senior staff and Grace had stayed to watch over him in her stead.

She just wanted a chance to try to talk sense to him. He'd been so set against accepting the new heart when Lily had passionately argued with him over it before she'd left. February had stayed here watched him sleep, hoping that she might have a chance to convince him it was worth the sacrifice after all to stay alive.

Now still trapped in his nightmare Gilmore shook her like a rag doll. Completely unaware of who it really was that he was trying to strangle, he had seized her as he fought old demons in the realm of his drugged and troubled mind.

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Lt. February Grace
Helm/Flight Controller
USS Independence NCC-90791