... And The Slaughter Begins

Toran and Harris entered the Conference room with dejected looks on their faces. The fate of the Romulan Empire, and perhaps the entire Milky Way Galaxy now rested on the shoulders of Captain Devore and his crew. An untested Captain, an inexperienced crew, and a ship whose systems were mostly still experimental. Toran had beaten worse odds before, but he did not know about Harris.

"All right Mr. Toran," Harris said as he brought a map up on the viewer, "this is their projected course. Five cubes and a sphere are what we are up against."

"That doesn't mean much Lieutenant," Toran said, "I've seen Cubes of every size and configuration. The cubes that attacked Earth are the third largest that I have ever seen. As for the spheres, they tend to be smaller recon ships. We don't have any information on how large the vessels are?"

"No," Harris replied, "that portion of the records were garbled."

Toran unzipped the front of his uniform tunic somewhat, "It's going to be a long night Lieutenant Harris, better get comfortable."

Harris nodded as he took a large pot of coffee from the replicator, "I hope El Aurians like caffeine."

"We don't generally," Toran replied, "but it's been my friend for the past 100 years."

"Assuming there are five full sized cubes and a sphere, what are our chances of success?" Harris asked as if he did not know the answer.

"What does the word 'shit' mean to you sir?" Toran asked sarcastically. "That's my answer."

"Any ideas?"

"Well, it's safe to assume that the sphere is just a recon ship," Toran said pointing at a diagram from the logs of the *USS Voyager*, "a properly placed photon torpedo will destroy it. I've already ordered all of the weapons on the ship to be set to frequencies that the Borg have not encountered from us."

"The *Voyager* destroyed a few ships with some well placed explosives on board," Harris said finishing the last of the coffee in his cup.

"Yes, but they'll be immune to those tactics now."

"I don't think so Lieutenant," Harris replied, "they only had photon torpedoes beamed over. A quantum torpedo would have better luck."

"Perhaps, but that'll be tricky," Toran replied, "we'd have to beam the weapons in all at the same time so that the Borg couldn't stop them. You know how hard it is to transport antimatter."

"It could work though!"

Toran and Harris spent the next three hours chugging coffee and trying to figure out how to use the *Leviathan's* transporters to beam a quantum torpedo onto the Borg ship. They found a way to take out the four cubes leaving only the Sphere (which was of little consequence) and a cube left. That would make the odds a little better. Now all they had to do was find a way to go hand to hand with the Borg drones.