“The Borg. The closest race to pure evil the Federation has ever met. They must be destroyed at all costs,” those were the words of Captain Picard after his vessel encountered a Borg cube armada in the Delta Quadrant before his assimilation along with a Hirogen fleet.
Chapter 1
“Admiral.”
“What Mr Barcly.”
“There’s a Borg vessel on sensors, 250 light years bearing 174, mark 092, travelling at transwarp speeds”
“Not another one!”
“Yes, ma’am. It will intercept us in 8 minutes, 30 seconds.”
“O.K then. Red alert, Harry deploy armour, Torres arm weapons,” the Vypers armour emitters glowed with an iridescent blue glowing field. Forcefields spread around the ship covering every small gap and view port in the hull before solidifying into a single near impenetrable armour plate that encapsulated the vessel. Reg stared into the viewscreen to se a small green translucent light forming in space ahead of them, it was the forming of a transwarp aperture.
“Armour deployed,” Kim informed the Admiral.
“Be’ Lana?” rhetorically asked Janeway as she turned her eyes towards Torres.
“The weapon systems are coming online. We have Transphasic torpedoes armed and ready to fire, tetryon emitters are charging, so is the multi kinetic neutronic array.”
“Katy,” sounded the com system “The Federation colony on Rytsal has been assimilated.”
“Michael, don’t call me Katy over the com. How many colonies does that leave us with?”
“4 if you exclude those outside this galaxy, otherwise we have 7 colonies.”
“The borg are here ma’am,” said Harry. The bridge crew were all tense and attentively staring at the view-screen. Torres’s finger hovered over her control panel waiting for the right moment to fire and Mr Paris was concentrating on the impulse controls in front of him.
Green surges of light were heading towards the ship, then a florescent sharp green energy burst shot towards them, hitting their port nacelle causing an electrostatic discharge throughout the armour and throwing their navigation system off track. The ship swung out of control, it narrowly avoided a collision with the cube that had shot out of the transwarp conduit. Gravimetric shear forces tugged onto Vypers hull pulling it along with the cube before it stopped sending the Vyper into a barrel roll. Its structural integrity field was failing though its armour was still online
There were explosions all over the bridge, Harry's station exploded in a flare of red and orange plasma, while Paris’s thruster controls crackled and fused causing a jet of smoke to steam out of his singeing chair. Janeway was blown to the floor as her seat exploded like a plasma flare.
“Be' Lana, get up and fire!” yelled Janeway as a Borg cube headed towards them.
“Admiral the cube’s charging its weapons,” noted Harry.
“I’m going to try and evade them,” Paris told Janeway as he tried to counter the roll they were in. The impulse control was frozen along with the thrusters so he detonated a small phased charge off their astern, then port, starboard, astern again. The ship jolted dodging some of the cubes weapons fire streaming towards them.
Be’ Lana’s hand creped up and tapped the fire control. A disruptor pulse of green energy shot from the Borg cube and smashed straight into the Vyper’s armour, then Mr Paris fired some plasma charges off their bow to bring them about around the Borg cube. At the moment the Vyper was facing the cube a transphasic torpedo spread jolted through its forward torpedo tube and flew until they crashed into the borg cube at high warp going straight through its hull plating. They detonated, blowing a hole in the ships hull with a flare of green and blue followed by glowing orange pieces of super heated debris flying from the breech. The Vypers armour started to warp as it was hit by molten hull fragments, it was dematerialising.
“Doctor to bridge, give me armour control, I believe that I can stabilise it,” commanded the Doctor.
“I’m directing armour control to your program now,” replied Mr Paris as he worked his control panel, “Be’ Lana, transfer the Docs programme to the bridge, also interface him with the main computer.”
“Aye, aye sir,” the Doctor materialized behind Mr Paris, he stood still though he was bleeping and his hair was growing quickly. The bleeping became irregular and faster.
“The armour’s almost failed,” warned Kim “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, It’s going!” The armour waved and rippled, parts even disappeared. “The armour’s rematerializing Ma’am.”
“Good work Doctor,” Janeway said.
The breech in the cubes hull was already starting to regenerate at a fast pace when it fired another torpedo towards the Vyper that was using evasive manoeuvres to full effect.
“I’ve gained control of the impulse engines and we are going to be able to get out of here in about 2 minutes when transwarp comes back online, though I’d advise destroying the cube so it doesn’t chase us!” said Mr Paris.
“I concur, Reg target the cube with a tetryon pulse, it should disrupt there shielding,” ordered Janeway. The cube continued to chase the ship as well as firing weapons even though they weren’t causing any damage. The Vyper came about and fired at the cube with a tetryon pulse that had am odd purple after glair even though it would normally be a luminescent yellow.
“Their shields are down,” said Tom as he turned to face the Admiral.
“Torres target there sensor array and fire a level 7 intensity tachyon flair at their sensor array at a frequency of 568.23 nano-hertz, no, make that point 13.”
“Actually my sensors say that it should be 658.68 Admiral,” corrected Harry. Be’ Lana called engineering to reprogram the secondary shield emitter to be reprogrammed. The ship suddenly rolled and jolted out of the path of the borg cube narrowly avoiding collision on several occasions as the Borg were using the ramming tactic to destroy her.
“I’m Ready!”
“Then by all means fire,” said Janeway. A jet of gleaming gold shot from a small crack in the armour which soon sealed. The burst flew passed the Vypers nacelles at a velocity matched only by a transwarp pulse. It headed towards the cube creating a glow of molten metal on the cubes surface before melting its way through the cubes outer hull, vaporising all it came near. There was an anti-matter conduit ruptured by the flair causing a chain reaction creating a gaping hole in the side of the dismal cube as well as creating several smaller explosions along its primary hull.
“There sensors are offline, I’m firing a spread of transhphasic torpedoes at their transwarp field emitters,” commented Harry as he tapped his control panel. A hole dematerialized out of the armour where the torpedo launchers are hidden and out came a volley of sparkling blue torpedoes with a pale blue crackling energy field surrounding them. They surged straight at the cube passing straight through its hull detonating inside it and turning the cube into a hail of super heated debris after being blown up in a spectacular show of glowing eerie green lights and iridescent sparks of blue plasma flairs as well as the mighty explosion of its transwarp coil network. This created a shockwave that chased the Vyper as if hunting its prey.
“Tom get us out of here!” said Janeway. Paris brought the ship so its stern pointed at the shockwave and engaged at full impulse straight ahead.
“We can’t outrun the shockwave unless we get transwarp back online,” reminded Mr Paris.
“How long Be’ Lana?” inquired Janeway.
“About a minute but the shockwave will impact in 30 seconds.”
“Be’ Lana, divert power directly from the transwarp matrix into the aft armour emitter on my command,” ordered Janeway.
“Aye, aye,” said Be’ Lana in a distrustful tone. She entered in the command sequence to redirect power flow when her console exploded sending her backwards crashing down upon the exposed power relay behind her and creating a chain reaction through the transwarp relay. There were also explosions in every engine and computer system onboard. The life support control station crackled and then vaporized, the heat scorched the Hirogen manning it; consequently he died in a flourish of flames. In engineering the secondary impulse and phaser reactor imploded under its own gravitational stress before exploding in a massive show of orange, phased energy. Being so close to the outer hull meant that although the vacuum put the fire out quickly it suffocated everyone in that section who hadn’t already burnt to death in the fiery and vicious explosion.
“Admiral, on screen, we’re 2,000 light years from the shockwave!” notified Paris in amazement.
“Doctor, take a look at Be’ Lana,” said Janeway. The doctor took a tricorder out of his med kit and scanned Be' Lana thoroughly. His tricorder was bleeping but slowed down until it was one continuous beep.
“She’s dead,” informed the Doctor.
“No!” sobbed Mr Paris.
Chapter 2
The senior officers had gathered in a dimly lit meeting room accompanied by several armed guard. The Admiral was facing out of the window looking out at the unending possibilities of space. She was concerning herself with one thing above all others whilst staring into the darkest abyss of what seemed all Borg.
“What’s the status of the Federation? That’s if you could call 47 ships a federation compared to the Borgs millions of vessels,” asked Janeway.
“All but two of our colonies haven’t been assimilated as of yet and our ships are spread across 106,143 light years of space. Our defences have almost gone,” reminded Reg.
“That cube seemed more powerful than normal, it almost had us destroyed. When I scanned it, it had abnormally high tachyokinetic energy readings for a Borg vessel,” said Harry.
“Just a moment. The borg are experimenting with time travel,” hypothesised Tom
“No, I don’t believe so, Borg require the hive mind to function so if they travel through time the hive mind changes drastically which is unbearable for drones. I think it might to a temporal communicator of sorts, a message sender. The borg from the future might be wiped out by us in the un-altered time line though if they managed to find what our exact whereabouts would be and when.” said Janeway before being interrupted.
“They could destroy us much more easily because normally the biggest problem’s finding us,” said Harry.
“Adaptations to our weapons and technology could also be sent, meaning the Borg will have an unfair advantage over us by about…”Janeway stuttered to a halt.
“Probably about 150 years tops for reasonable signal quality,” added Harry. Everybody sat in deep thought about the situation for about five minutes until Janeway spoke.
“Let’s not worry about that until the repairs are complete. Mr Paris, what’s the status of the engines?”
“One of the thruster control sub-routines has been damaged so we currently can’t orbit a planet without crashing to the surface whenever we use engines.”
“Why’s that?” asked Janeway.
“The thrusters are only controlled by the one subroutine that now only lets us move downwards whenever the thruster activation sequence is engaged.” the Doctor had a smile upon his face that looked like a sine of joy “It’s not funny Doc. Anyhow the impulse engine repairs are well under way, we can currently manage 1/8 impulse and we’ll be able to manage full impulse by tomorrow afternoon. The transwarp drive is a different story. When the system overloaded and pushed us 2,000 light years in less than a second it blew out the drive or more precisely the majority is vaporised and is of little use to anyone now. Thankfully we have a transwarp coil left. I know it’s a piece of cheap Ferengi equipment these days. It works fairly well but it only has about 30,000 light years left in it. So we can use that straight away or in about 2 weeks we can have it adapted it with damaged transwarp reactor parts to have a ‘new’ array built to a similar standard as our old one.”
“O.K then. Harry, what about the armour emitters and hull repairs?” asked Janeway.
“Armour emitters are under repair though their efficiency has dropped 3.5%. The emitter on the port nacelle has been completely destroyed along with the secondary emitter on the bridge. This time next week the armour will be back online at its maximum efficiency. Without scrounging a new set of power relays from somewhere, all of the plasma conduits on deck 9 are offline. Decks 6 and below have no artificial gravity and only minimal life support. There’s also only a single working replicator for all 68 of us. The outer hull on the aft sections of decks 3,5,7,8 and 9 has been blown off the ship by transwarp detonations. Forward ablative armour deck 4 has been destroyed as well as section 13 through 21 decks 3 and 4. The hull damage is extensive. Without new resources it will take 4 to 6 weeks to complete repairs; and that’s only if the Borg stay put.”
“Any news about the weapon systems Reg?” questioned Janeway.
“You don’t want to know,” he was saying in a ‘we’re all doomed’ voice.
“Reg, it doesn’t matter if the news is good or bad so tell me, that’s an order.”
“Fine then! We’re down to 34 transphasic torpedoes, 3 neutron mines, a single gravimetric flux charge and all the energy weapon emitters are off line.”
“All!” Janeway was stuck for words “You’re joking?” there was a short pause while she looked Reg in the eye, “You’re not joking.”
“Ahhhh. No. Every single emitter is down and it’ll be at least 11 hours before we have any directed energy weapons back up and running.”
“Anyone have good news?” asked Janeway openly. Nobody answered but the bell for the door rang. “Come in.” Following a security guard was a medium height figure carrying something. “Yes, who is it?”
“It’s me,” the girl removed her jacket “Naomi, I brought you some coffee.”
“Thanks, best news all day. Fresh coffee-is it from my supply of fresh coffee beans?”
“Of course.”
“Lovely! You’re all dismissed except for you Naomi. I want this ship in working order as fast as possible, oh and Tom do whatever you think is right for our transwarp system.” Everybody left the room except Naomi who sat down next to the Admiral. “Do you still remember your temporal theory Seven taught you?”
“Yes, why are you asking?”
“I was wondering if you could modify the deflector to become a temporal resonance pulse emitter.”
“I could; you’re not thinking of time travel are you?”
“For a matter of fact I am. To the year 2403 when the Borg began there assimilation of the galaxy.”
“All right, I will make the modifications but I’ll need a type 3 temporal node from a borg drone or cube and a 97.285 mega hertz hyper subspace communicator.”
“You can get whatever you need from me.”
Chapter 3
Janeway strode down the corridor with a mild sense of emergency coming from her face. She passed a door to the primary holo-grid when she stopped abruptly turned and pressed the computer interface panel.
“Computer, which program is currently running?” she asked the all ears computer.
“Sandrines Bar by Lieutenant…..” the computer was interrupted .
“Is Michael online?”
“Please restate question.”
“File Janeway, 019 Gamma-Michael from Solemnans Bar, Is he active?”
“Affirmative. He is currently being projected deck 6– Main engineering, maintenance shaft 003.”
“Activate the program “Fair Haven” and transfer Michael Sollemnan to his bar, set year to 2398 in the bar,” commanded Janeway.
“Program active, enter when ready.” Janway stepped through the door to the Holodeck and found herself in the current Sollemans bar. There was a replicator in the far corner as well as what looked like a weapons locker access port. The door was a very dark brown oak and there was nobody in until she heard a noise.
“Hello Katy,” came a cheerful voice from behind her. She looked around to see Michael sitting on an old knarred chair made from the finest leather of the time and he was holding a cloth and some crystal coloured polish. He was polishing the glasses on the table he was sitting at to a glistening diamond like shine. “Real diamond glasses these are, they’re not synthetic or replicated, worth about 300 bars of latinum each 50 years ago but since the Borg have the rest of the diamond in the galaxy they’re priceless.”
“What’s this?” she asked kindly as she sat down at the table. Michael was being quiet as he brought something over, straight out of his grill.
“Lunch,” he said as he lifted the cloth from the plates, placing them both on the table.
“Aww, you didn’t have to do this you know, I don’t mind replicated food,” she sighed affectionately.
“Actually, I wanted to do this for our first night together for about 3 months. Anyhow we’ve spent almost no time together since we were married 18 years ago because of the Borgs mass assimilation, of the galaxy,” he sat down and pored a glass of wine into both of their glasses, “I hope you like it, it’s one of only three remaining bottles of Château Picard left in the galaxy.”
“I love Picard’s wines. Grilled salmon on a bed of fried Klingon targ, how nice. There’s also Terellian carrot soufflé. Is this from Toby the Targ’s cook book by any chance.”
“Now why would you think that?” Michael asked as he ate some of his fried Targ.
“Lets just say that the food all looks like the Toby Targ cuddly toy.”
“Does it?” he asked rhetorically leaning back with shock as if she’d noticed a secret, “You’re right it is a Klingon recipe but with a few tweaks.
“Such as…”
“Salmon instead of a defeated warriors heart, Château Picard instead of fresh blood wine. I used carrot from the Hydroponics bay instead of Romulan Trikan sauce stolen from the hands of a defeated Klingon warrior. And, instead of a blood fury over the table with the two eating the meal we’re sharing the affection without trying to kill each other, sharing our affection vocally.”
“Michael, this is really nice of you but can I eat now?”
“Of course you can Katy,” said Michael as he dug his fork into his food and gently cutting it before bringing it up to his mouth and blowing it so he could cool the piece of targ before eating it. He slowly placed it into his mouth and savoured the flavour of the food before swallowing it.
“Just a moment,” Michael froze as Katy stared at him, “You can’t eat, your matrix doesn’t include a stomach.”
“Actually, you know the Doc had Be’ Lana program himself a stomach forcefield.”
“Yes.”
“I, err,” he paused as he started to stutter, “took the Docs subroutine for his stomach and transferred it to my program.”
“Admiral!” sounded the Doctor as he materialized over behind the bar “That idiotic husband of yours has deleted my stomach from my holo-matrix!”
“Wait a moment Doc, where’s the proof?” asked Michael.
“The mess hall!”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was eating when Seven told me I’d spilt something straight onto the floor– naturally this wasn’t possible for a hologram so I had Mr Paris run a review of my program and the stomach sub-routine wasn’t there, and you, Admiral are the only person who can modify my program but the problem with the holodeck security is any Hologram can modify another so I found it was Michael.”
“I did steal your stomach but here have it back,” said Michael as his and the Docs body swapped places, “By the way I’ve also transferred you a copy of my indigestion sub-routine and targ allergy.”
“Help!” gasped the Doctor as his face turned a deep purple.
“Computer, reverse the changes to the Docs subroutine made by Michael Solemnan over the last month.” The computer bleeped to Janeways commands and the Doctor dematerialized.
“Modifications complete,” sounded the computer. The bar shook and the glasses on the table fell over.
“Admiral to the Bridge,” sounded Reg over the com, “Another transwarp conduit is opening ahead”
“Coming Reg,” she then spoke to the computer, “Deactivate the Fair Haven program and save Michael Solemnan in secure data block 9 alpha and hold for review.”
Chapter 4
