"Glancing hit, ventral, we're still flying." Lindsy's voice stayed level even as her hands fought the helm. "She's dragging a little to port now, I've got it, I'm compensating, but I've lost partial maneuverability and I'd like it back if engineering can find it for me." She threw them into another roll as the Borg tried their luck once again and missed. "Almost there. Thirty seconds to the underside of that thing. Once I'm in tight against the hull its own structure blocks half its firing angles and it can't turn its weapons on us fast enough to matter."

Chief Morgan hailed Lindsy at the helm. “Lindsy, it’s Avery. I’m getting an alignment error in the stabilizing gyros. I’ll nail it down in a minute. In the meantime, compensate with the reaction control thrusters. Don’t be afraid to push them, we have quite a bit of leeway. Call me if you need anything else. Morgan out.”

As she listened, Lindsy felt some drag on the ship as she rolled it once more. But hearing Avery gave her the confidence to increase power and push through "Copy that Avery, thank you. I'll make the adjustments real quick. I think we'll be okay..." She couldn't tell who she was trying to reassure. The Captain, or herself.

Tiraa gripped the armrests of her chair for stability, her jaw set as the ship shook around them. She glanced at Ragnar and hoped to the gods the man had taken a dose of the inhibitor she had given him before this. What had been a general hum was now a roar of panic from many of the souls within the ship.

The cube kept firing. It fired the whole way in, green lances stitching the dark around them, each one closer than it had any right to be with a ship this crippled doing the shooting, and Lindsy flew through all of it, reading the rhythm of the ports the way she'd read the defensive grid, sliding the Dutchman through gaps in the fire that closed a heartbeat after she was through them. The viewport went from a cube in the distance to a wall of Borg hull, vast and pitted and close, and then closer, until the scarred grey surface filled everything and the ship slid in beneath the curve of it, tucked in tight against the flank where the great dead structure hung over them like a roof.

And the fire stopped.

Not because the cube had given up. Because it couldn't reach them anymore. The active weapon ports strained against their own arcs and found nothing but their own hull between them and the tiny ship pressed up under their belly, and the green lances that had chased them the whole way in went quiet, unable to depress far enough, unable to bring anything to bear. The cube loomed, enormous and still furious in whatever way a half-dead machine could be furious, and could do absolutely nothing about the fly that had landed on its back.

"We're in." Lindsy let out a breath and eased the Dutchman into a slow crawl along the underside of the hull, hugging it close, station-keeping in the one pocket of space the whole cube couldn't touch. "In tight against the hull, holding station. It can see us, it just can't shoot us, not without shooting itself, and even the Borg won't do that. This is as safe as anything near that thing gets." She finally glanced back at Zedd. "That's the good news. The bad news is the only way it stays safe is if we stay this close, and we came here to get out and walk around inside it. So somebody's going to have to leave the one spot it can't reach."

Zedd looked up at the wall of Borg hull filling the viewport, close enough to touch, the way into the belly of the thing somewhere in all that scarred grey. "One problem at a time," he said. "We're alive and we're in. That's more than that thing wanted to give us." He straightened off her chair and turned toward the rest of the bridge, toward the team already gearing up, toward the part of this that had always been coming. "Let's find a door. And give me a damage report. Combat teams, stay on alert. Ragnar, you're up."

Ragnar pushed away from the bulkhead he had braced against during the approach and moved closer to Mei-Lin's station. There were enough hull breaches on the scans, but most of them opened into sections too badly damaged to be useful. He marked one a short distance ahead, where the structure beyond it looked mostly intact. "That one," he said. "See if you can get a clean transporter lock through the breach. We go in together, secure the first section and make sure we can still get back before anyone moves deeper." He looked towards Sykes. "One section at a time." He echoed the original plan, wanting to make sure it was understood.

Zedd returned a nod. "One section at a time." Zedd replied. He looked over at Mei-Lin, who began working on a coordinates lock, but there was too much interference. "I can't get a safe lock, so we'll have to move closer if we want to go in there."

Zedd looked over at Lindsy who respnoded "I can work us in there, it'll take a bit and I think we need Cormus to fly ahead. That corridor is an absolute wreck."

The Captain turned back to Ragnar. "Get you teams ready, we'll get in there and let you know when we're set."

Ragnar gave a short nod. "Understood. We'll wait in the transporter room." He looked once more towards the breach on Mei-Lin's display, fixing the location in his mind, then turned and headed off the bridge to get the teams moving.

Tiraa stood with Zedd, putting a hand on his arm and drawing closer so she could speak to him quietly without the rest of the bridge hearing. "With that thing active, Zedd, you should under no circumstances try to interface with it. It will likely eat you alive or worse."

Her touch caught him by surprise, but he moved towards his XO while listening to her. "The bounty inside that things has to be worth it. I'll have Avery and Mei-Lin run checks before I hook in, our new computer should be able to help buffer as well. I think there's too much here not to take the risk, after a few checks. Besides, I've made it through worse, you know that." He gave a wink in reassurance, doubting it hit it's mark at all but he was certainly a man used to risking it all.

Tiraa shook her head and sighed, but resumed her seat without further comment. He had absolutely no concept of what he was dealing with, but he didn't seem to care. If he wanted to be reckless, there was little she could do to stop him at this point.