&t=285 begins playing here.
[Engineering]
Sparks flew, and consoles exploded as the ship began to give in. Some random surge of energy, or the subpace stress from the repeated short-range jumps proved too much for the spaceframe of the venerable ship. A whole section, upon the ending of the last warp jump, began to crumple inward, sending a spew of flaming plasma out into space. This plume was followed by the whoomps of explosive decompression, all along the starboard side of the ship. These decompressions set off alarm after alarm, the final green areas on the Main Status Diagram blinking to a blinding yellow, and finally resting on a deep crimpson red. Still, the ship was a credit to her designers. Phasers racked havoc all across the surface of the now-unprotected cube, taking out chunk after chunk supplemented by a barely-working torpedo system.
As the flames consumed the ship, the final evacuation order came through.
[Athena- Transporter Room]
Two beams of light quickly materialized into Ash and the Captain who, promptly collapsed. The thing about transporters was that they had the ability to detect and filter out foreign infections in people coming aboard. The Brog nanoprobes in their bodies registered as such a thing and, as such, were left behind.
This was well and good for Ash, freeing her of any residual control Danny might have had over her, but rather traumatic for the Captain as many of her implants required those nanoprobes to function. Her breathing was labored and the red cybernetic lense over her left eye went dark. Still she could speak,
Her speech was nothing but a breathy whisper and her breathing was labored.
"All hands. Abandon ship."
Dylan nodded to Mulchano. It was time to go. Both men put their helmets on, sealing with a soft mechanical whine as the Oxygen supplies filled their lungs, a clean and refershing change from the smoke-filled, acrid environment they had just come from. They clomped as the force field containing the core flickered blue, then red as the field came close to failing. Dylan paused, and turned back as he saw his home start to go up in flames. From the last working console, Dylan ran back and jettisoned the log bouy, firing it at near-warp-speed out of the back of the Athena. He then set up a wireless wipe of the computers- creating a final backup and wipe of the Athena's core.
Unfortuantely for Dylan his borrowed time was up. A peice of stray debris struck the damaged Athena, rebounding off of the main shuttlebay and impacting on the Athena's nacelle, shearing the pylon off as drive plasma vented and ignited, a column of flame in space. beginning a slow, almost casual turn as the whole ship shook. Artificial gravity failed, and the only gravity from a small newtonian force of the spinning ship. The deflector was hit, and destroyed in a flurry of sparks as a torpedo tried to fire from the remaining tube and failed, detonating a little too close to the ship. The same explosion caused the aerowing to be destroyed, caught up in the blast of the torpedo as it automatically disengaged and exploded, casting the Athena around like a rubber duck in a typhoon.
As the events transpired, thousands of micrometeroids and debris began to pound the hull of the ship, doing more and more damage. Salvage was now almost impossible. With the damage at it's max, Dylan hauled his way by the support pylons all the way to the warp core controls, priming a lethal injection of matter and antimatter if the ship made contact with something big enough to be the Cube, setting a final explosion and turning the Athena into Starfleet's largest torpedo to date this far out. "Thank you." he said to the room, and turned and thrust himself with the tiny microjets on his back up to the door, working his way toward the escape pods. He didn't get there. Another explosion of a detonating torpedo store blew out the corridor ahead of him, as Dylan and Mulchano tried to magnetize and failed, being sucked out into the void of space screaming. From the rush of air to the cold, oppressive silence of space. Dylan moved over as they avoided debris together, turning back as they put on their saftey clips to each other. A large rock slammed into the damaged mess hall... or was that debris? Nobody could tell at this point, invading the mess in true Athena fashon.
Dylan began broadcasting his distress call as the Athena lumbered into motion.
This is Lieutenant Commander Dylan Torngate to any receiving stations- The view is lovely but dangerous out here.
he said, as Mulchano softly hit his superior for making this scenario into a joke. As Dylan and Mulchano began to spin slowly into deep space, the cable holding them together half stretched, Dylan breathed slowly, as he saw the final escape pods leaving the Athena.
Dylan looked on.
So long, good friend.
he said sadly to the ship, as the automated sequences drove the now-abandoned ship straight toward the center of the Cube.
As the ship flew, Dylan thought of all the personal belongings on the ship that would help drive the cube to it's grave. Stuffed bears, clothes, family herlooms... all gone to the dust of time. The most damning of them all would be the loss of memories and experiances... for some 8 long missions of memories... and others shorter but no less important times. The ship had been through thick and thin... seeking out new life forms and new civilizations... The Athena truly boldly went where no ship had gone before them, and had brought light to the darkness of lies. And now, the ship's final acts were in defense of the Federation her crew held dear, as the ship in her last acts bought time for the crew to escape, as shuttles and pods fled. Dylan and Mulchano simply slowly floated away as they fled, running from the Borg to save their own lives.