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Enterprise Asides Part 8 - The Fatalist
Lieutenant Jack Conrad was a little surprised he wasn’t terrified out of his wits. The Borg cube loomed ominously in the viewscreen, taking heavy damage, but moving ever onward toward Earth, an unstoppable juggernaut. The Defiant’s bridge was mostly empty save Lieutenant Commander Worf who had abandoned the captain’s chair for the tactical console, and a tiny, terrified ensign who had taken over Chief O’Brien’s usual spot. The senior staff from DS9 were all dealing with a sudden political upheaval on Bajor involving a small but well-armed anti-Federation group, but when the distress call from Admiral Hayes came, Worf had assembled a skeleton crew and taken the Defiant to hold off the Borg. Most of the crew had made it through the battle. Those who weren’t dead were crammed into the ship’s microscopic sickbay or frantically working in engineering to keep the ship from overloading into a fireball. And to top it all off, his face was bleeding from somewhere he couldn’t identify, but he wasn’t feeling dizzy, so he dismissed it as minor.
“Attack pattern--”
Worf’s command was interrupted by an exploding console, but Conrad figured Worf meant to use up every last photon torpedo they had, so he swept the Defiant around towards the cube, zig-zagging between shattered hull fragments, giving the commander a clear shot. As Worf blanketed one side of the cube with ineffectual photons, another console behind him exploded.
What kind of moron engineer designs consoles without some kind of safety whatsit to keep them from blowing up in people’s faces . Conrad noted, angrily swinging the Defiant around. Only this time, Worf fired a single photon.
Great .
“Report!” the Klingon barked.
“Main power is offline,” Conrad read from his display, wishing he could sound more cheerful. “We’ve lost shields and our weapons are gone.”
Worf smashed his hands down onto the console in violent frustration, confirming Conrad’s suspicions. This was the part where they died, then. The realization should have bothered him, but he was actually fairly calm about the whole thing. His tenure on Deep Space Nine had been brief and uneventful, except for the time he’d lost heartily at Quark’s dabo tables. But going up in a dramatic conflagration while fighting a Borg cube was pretty exciting. At least he’d never have to pay Quark what he owed him. He’d had a good ride. He was in his late twenties. That was good enough, right?
“Perhaps today is a good day to die!” Worf said, with all the furious energy of a doomed character in an opera.
Conrad nodded. Yep.
“Prepare for ramming speed!”
Oh, even better , he thought darkly. The Defiant was basically a ship-sized grenade. Small and compact, but it was so overpowered, when its engines went critical, the resulting explosion would not only take out the Borg cube, but any ship that was hanging around too closely. At least he’d end up in the history books somewhere.
His console beeped a perimeter warning. He tapped the notification and stared blankly at it for a second before saying, “Sir, there’s another starship coming in. It’s the Enterprise. ”
They had about a half second to process this information before the massive sovereign-class starship swept in front of them, taking the full force of a Borg cutting beam aimed at the Defiant . Their fully-charged shields harmlessly absorbed the beam. Conrad blinked. If that had hit the Defiant , they would have been sliced in half.
Conrad took in the sight of Starfleet’s newest flagship, wondering why she hadn’t led this doomed assault. Captain Picard knew the Borg better than anyone in Starfleet.
“Shall I ignore that ramming order?” Conrad asked Worf, who merely glared at him. “Yeah, okay. Our engines are about to give out, but I can give us one last burst of speed. Hopefully we’ll drift far enough away that we’ll be okay.”
“Do it,” Worf said, looking both relieved and tense. Conrad punched in the heading, but the engines quickly blacked out. They were adrift, and incrementally drifting away from the cube.
It was then that he noticed that he was getting short on breath. He checked the console, noting the almost shipwide failure of the life-support system. He sighed. Saved only to suffocate. Now he regretted not ramming the enemy ship. Dying of oxygen deprivation was not nearly as cool as blowing up a Borg cube.
He sighed, wondering if it was his last ever sigh.
But then the tingle of a transporter beam caught him and he found himself slumping to the floor and gasping for breaths of gloriously clean air. Gasps quickly turned to a choking cough. His vision grew speckled but he didn’t pass out. After a second, he began to feel almost normal. A nurse swept forward and injected him with something from a hypospray. Before he could ask what it was, his lungs began to calm down and he was able to breathe without feeling like he wanted to force his entire trachea up out of his throat.
“Thanks,” he said, giving the nurse a wan smile. They were in a sickbay of some ship. It was the most advanced sickbay he’d ever seen, so he figured they were on the Enterprise . That was nice.
“I must get to the bridge,” Worf demanded, pushing aside the doctor, a blond-haired woman who seemed to know him.
“Worf, you’ve inhaled a lot of smoke.” Her voice was calm despite the chaos of the nurses loading up the more critically wounded crewmembers for transport to sickbay.
“I must help. Please Doctor Crusher.”
She gave him an annoyed look before injecting him with something. He seemed to relax.
“That’s not going to cure anything. It’s just going to help you breathe for now.”
“I am needed on the bridge.”
“Worf--” Doctor Crusher began, but then she shook her head and said, “I’m going with you. If you pass out in front of Captain Picard, I’ll be sure to let him know it’s all your fault.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Mmhmm,” she said, leading him out of sickbay.
Conrad stood up and found a space not occupied by doctors or patients. Coincidentally, the terrified ensign from the bridge was also there.
“So that was fun, right?” he asked, thumping another cough out from his chest with a fist.
She gave him a horrified look, shook her head, but didn’t reply.
“Yeah, you’re right, that wasn’t fun.”
And then suddenly, the looming spectre of what had nearly happened crept up behind him and settled in between his shoulder blades. They had almost died. He had almost died. He settled to the floor and he began shivering violently.
Then he began to giggle, but he figured it was the result of the injection he’d gotten. Probably a tri-ox compound or something. That thought only made him laugh harder.
And then he imagined how calm he’d been when Worf had ordered him to ram the Borg ship. He had been ready to do it, too. He’d almost done it. And even if the Enterprise had arrived, they still would have done it. By all accounts he should be floating atoms now, and it was only a freak series of events that meant that he was still alive.
And that thought was hilarious.
And for the first time in his life, he was glad that the universe didn’t make a bit of sense.