The Light Read Free

gaze for a moment. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know anything. “Only that Starfleet has ordered us on a priority mission. Beyond that, we’ll have to wait for an explanation from the captain.”
    As if on cue, the door hissed open again, and David Gold entered the room. Gomez took in the expression on Gold’s face and knew something was wrong. Well, not wrong, necessarily, but it was clear something had put him on edge, and she suspected the mission details he’d received from Starfleet were the source of that discomfort.
    But as a member of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, Gomez knew, as did Gold, that they were often given assignments that weren’t ideal. Some of them, such as her experiences on Sarindar, Teneb, and Vemlar had provided some personal close calls she could have done without. And the Galvan VI incident…well, the point was that from one extreme to another, despite the odds, the ship and crew had always come through, working together to come out more or less intact.
    Gold paused behind his chair at the head of the table and took them all in with a glance. He inhaled deeply, then let it out as he finally sat down. Gomez couldn’t remember him being so hesitant about discussing a mission and thought he was being a little over-dramatic. How bad can it be?
    â€œAll right, there’s no use in my stalling any longer,” Gold said, speaking more to himself, it seemed, than to those gathered before him. “We’ve been ordered to investigate a faint Borg power signature that was picked up on a remote planet deep in this sector two days ago by a Boslic freighter.”
    Borg? Okay, that is bad . Like the crack of a whip, Gold’s mention of the Borg snapped everyone in the room to attention, and a flurry of worried and uncertain looks passed from face to face around the table. Gomez herself was unable to suppress an involuntary shudder. Eleven years ago, she’d been aboard the Enterprise -D when they were forced into Starfleet’s first meeting with the cybernetic species. The meddlesome being Q had flung the ship some seven thousand light years to System J-25 in order to illustrate his point that humanity wasn’t ready for what awaited them out in the galaxy. It was an encounter that had claimed the lives of eighteen crewmembers, and one which Gomez had not forgotten. The experience had frightened her enough that, even today, any mention of the Borg gave her pause.
    â€œSo, naturally,” said Stevens, “they advised Starfleet.” His voice was light, but Gomez detected a note of cynicism there as well.
    Gold acknowledged with a soft grunt. “When it comes to the Borg, Starfleet has become the go-to guys for beating them back. God knows few others have had success at it.”
    â€œThat may be so, sir,” Gomez said, “but we’re not equipped to go hunting down the Borg. The da Vinci isn’t exactly armed to the teeth.”
    â€œI’m well aware of that, Gomez,” Gold said, “but we won’t be going into battle. The signal is coming from a cube, but it appears to have crashed on the planet’s surface a long time ago.”
    â€œHow long?” asked Corsi.
    â€œAt least two decades before Wolf 359, based on the information Scotty passed along to me,” Gold said, referring to their Starfleet liaison, the legendary engineer Montgomery Scott.
    Gomez shook her head. A Borg cube in Federation space twenty years before they were first seen here? It didn’t make any sense. How could it not have been detected by long range observatories or nearby starships? And why, after all this time, hadn’t the Borg returned to retrieve the vessel or any drones that might have survived?
    â€œAn advanced team from the Hood has been onsite since day one and has deemed it safe,” Gold continued, then glanced at Gomez. “It’s the power signature inside the cube that you and your team