"I think you might be spot-on about that, Akiel..." Neil muttered, unholstering his phaser pistol and snapping it to position.
From the swirling purple-and-black spatial void, the air tore open. Hovering inches off the deck plates, a towering entity emerged clad in flowing obsidian and violet robes. Its six neon-lavender eyes burned with ancient malice, and its pale, three-fingered hands gripped a glowing staff forged from dark alloy and crowned with a pulsing amethyst crystal.
"That's a Herald Harbinger!" Veirik shouted, bringing his rifle straight to his eye. "I fought these nightmares in the Iconian War! Weapons hot—take it out now!"
Without waiting for a response, Veirik squeezed his trigger. A heavy phaser bolt streak through the air, but the floating wizard casually swept its staff, deflecting the particle blast into the ceiling in a shower of sparks.
The Harbinger pointed its amethyst staff toward the group. A beam of pitch-black and violet energy erupted from the tip with a deafeningly quiet thrum—as if the sound and atmosphere in the room were being violently sucked into a void.
"Take cover!" Neil yelled, diving behind a reinforced control console as the antiproton beam sliced through the bulkhead, melting solid metal like warm butter.
Realizing its targets were ducking behind the central consoles, the Harbinger extended its gangly, decrepit left hand. The ancient anti-grav generators in the palm of its hands shrieked, and the gravity field in the chamber suddenly inverted.
"WHOA!" Neil shouted as his feet left the deck.
The localized gravity field flipped upside down, sending the away team flailing into the air. Neil barely managed to catch the lip of the countertop with one hand, his legs swinging wildly above him. Veirik held on tightly to the countertop with his super soldier strength. Across the room, Lusaali and Stitch let out yelps of surprise as they floated helplessly upward, slamming hard into the chrome ceiling tiles twelve feet above.
Only Tegris stood his ground on the floor. Heavy, metallic Borg anchor tendrils shot from the soles of his boots, rooting his massive frame directly to the deck plates against the gravitational shift.
The Harbinger hovered upward, raising its staff to execute the two officers pinned helplessly against the ceiling.
PIEW!
A precise phaser pulse struck the Harbinger's staff, throwing off its aim.
Veirik was hanging upside down, holding onto the edge of the console with one hand, his muscular forearm tensed to the point of shaking. With his free hand, he had aimed his phaser rifle straight at the entity's chest.
The Harbinger hissed, its six eyes flaring with annoyance that these primitive intruders were still breathing. It slowly rotated in mid-air, sweeping its staff around to point the tip directly at Veirik's head.
Veirik's upside-down face went completely blank. "Uh-oh."
As the dark antiproton beam erupted from the staff, Veirik kicked off the countertop, riding the inverted gravity up to the ceiling and landing on his feet like a gymnast. Crouched upside down on the ceiling panels, he aimed down his sights and planted a clean, three-shot phaser volley straight into the Harbinger's shoulder.
PIEW-PIEW-PIEW!
The entity reeled back with a screech, its focus breaking. At the exact same second, Tegris leveled his phaser from the floor and landed a heavy body-shot into its abdomen.
The Harbinger groaned in agony, losing its mental grip on the gravitational controls.
The inverted gravity field collapsed.
"Look out below!" Neil yelled as the team plummeted straight back down to the deck. They hit the metal floor with hard, painful thuds, groaning and clutching their bruised limbs as gravity snapped back to normal.
The Harbinger growled in ancient, guttural Iconian—a language too decayed for the universal translator to interpret. It raised its staff high, gathering dark spatial energy to obliterate the writhing officers on the deck.
It raised the staff... and froze.
Its six eyes widened. Its decrepit arms spasmed violently, locked in place mid-cast.
THWIP!
A sleek, black-and-silver Borg neural implant burst through the pale skin of the Harbinger's cheek, blooming outward and fanning across its face in a web of cybernetic circuitry. Its six pink eyes flickered, died, and reignited in a cold, uniform Cooperative Borg Blue. Its lavender skin rapidly drained of color, turning a mottled grey.
Standing directly behind the floating construct was Tegris—or more accurately, Two of Three, Secondary Adjunct of Unimatrix 2901. Twin assimilation tendrils were buried deep into the base of the Iconian construct's neck, pulsing with bright blue light.
"I am Borg," Tegris stated, his voice ringing with a calm, terrifying dual-tone. "Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our Cooperative. Your technology and consciousness will adapt to serve the greater good."
The Harbinger fell to its knees on the deck plates, its body trembling as millions of nanites flooded its synthetic bloodstream.
"Resistance... is futile."
The entity shuddered one final time, its head dropping before snapping back up. The dark purple energy on its staff fizzled out, replaced by a soft, steady blue hum.
"I... am of the Cooperative..." the Harbinger spoke in a flat, synthesized monotone. It stood upright, completely motionless.
Tegris withdrew his tendrils, stepping past the subdued construct toward the main console. He tapped a sequence of keys, and the blaring sirens and flashing red emergency lights finally cut out, plunging the chamber into a peaceful silence.
"Commander," Tegris said, turning around. The dual-tone in his voice vanished, returning to his usual collected, quiet tone—though a subtle hint of mournful regret lingered in his eyes. "I apologize for the appalling act of assimilating a sentient being against their will. I truly believed those dark days were behind me."
"Look, T…" Neil slowly pulled himself up from the deck, rubbing his aching hip as he looked at his friend. "You just saved our lives!"
"Harbingers are not living beings, Commander," Tegris interrupted gently, correcting the record. "They are engineered, unliving constructs created by the Iconians to serve as shock troops. This entity is no more an organic drone than the automated probes we destroyed in the hallway."
Neil holstered his phaser pistol and let out an exhausted, relieved sigh, a grin spreading across his face. "Well, if it wasn't for you, we'd all be vaporized across the ceiling right now. So as far as I'm concerned, no harm, no foul."
"I now have absolute command over the spire grid, sir," Tegris reported typing away at the console. "In assimilating the Harbinger's neural core, myself and the Cooperative have gained complete structural data on this facility and its Gateway subroutines. Mission accomplished. I am now opening the gateway to the Solanae Sphere. Alliance research teams may beam down whenever they are ready. I am also uploading the entire database to the Alliance's mainframe. We may depart at your leisure."
Suddenly, Dr. Kayuli's blue holographic avatar snapped back into existence beside Stitch, looking wildly around the room.
"Holy Mother Eywa! You guys are alive!" Kayuli gasped. He paused, taking in the scorched bulkheads, shattered console panels, and the pale, assimilated Iconian giant standing passively in the corner. "What in the sacred halls happened down here?!"
"Borg and alien crap, Doc." Veirik grunted, stooping down to pick up his phaser rifle from the deck and blowing a line of smoke from the barrel. "Just more F+#&)@& Borg and alien crap."
Neil, Lusaali, and Stitch burst into loud, unstoppable laughter, helping each other up from the deck as the away mission finally came to an end.