Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile

Episode 16: The Cube

(Stardate 46830)

By

Jay P. Hailey

And

Dennnis Washburn

The computer drew an imaginary line in space ahead of us. It was the limit of the Zantree Exploration Zone. We had been given a refit in exchange for exploring the area. The Zantree Alliance had hoped that we would find something that would make a critical difference in their war against the Kliges'chee. They were so hard pressed that they could not afford a single starship from their defense efforts to explore the frontier.

I sympathized with the Zantree desire. The Kliges'chee were a cannibal race that seemed to number into the trillions. We hadn't found anything conclusive. We discovered that the core of the Zantree Exploration Zone was a taboo area, declared off limits because of the danger of ancient Rishan ruins and artifacts. However, we didn't find any terror weapons to use against the Kliges'chee there.

Outside of the taboo zone we hadn't found a whole lot of anything. There were class M planets, but primitive people mostly inhabited them. There were natural resources, but they would all require refinement and processing before they became good war material.

Now we bid our final good-byes to the Zantree Alliance and prepared to enter unclaimed, unknown space. We were only three months away from the far side of the Klingon Empire. Once there, getting home was going to be much easier. I didn't want to take it for granted, though.

In any case we would know, shortly. With good wishes to the Zantree we left the Zantree Exploration Zone. We were back into unknown space and back on our own. It had felt odd casting our lot in with the Zantree Alliance. It had felt disloyal, somehow, to the Federation. We had really needed the refit, and it felt good having a planet behind you that was sincerely on your side. I was glad, in a certain way, to leave it behind. Now we could concentrate on our primary mission, which was to return to the Federation and report on all we had seen.

-*-

A couple of days later I was in my quarters reading, when the yellow alert went off. My intercom said "Captain to the Bridge!"

I hit my acknowledge button and ran up to the bridge. I had been exercising, trying to loose the "spaceman's gut" I was developing. All I was doing was firming up the muscles underneath the fat. I felt better for it, though, and resolved to continue.

When I got to the bridge, I was not breathless, but I could sense the tension there. Everyone was frightened.

"Report." I said.

Li'ira reported. I could see the muscles tense under her face. "We have made sensor contact with a Borg ship."

"What!? Red Alert! Are you certain?" I said. I hoped that it was an accident. Some training program accidentally put on the main screen or something. I sat down and ran a sensor diagnostic from my station.

"The readings are confirmed, Captain." Harksain Varupuchu said quietly.

"Oh, Ghod." I knew what that meant. The Borg were a hundred years ahead of us in technological development. This is a deceptive measure. After, which century are we discussing? The years from 1100 to 1199 on Earth didn't see a lot of development, while the spastic period between 1900 and 1999 saw entirely too much "progress." In our case, we meant our own century, roughly 2300 to 2370. The changes here were about as much as fifteen to twenty years in the 1900's. The challenge for us was not to make new machines, but to use the ones we had more wisely. The Borg were way ahead of us, there. A lot of their systems were understandable to us, taken one at a time. The mix and interactions between the Borg machines were what had stumped us. They had jammed our sensors with ease, and their shields had been tuned to easily defeat all of our weapons. Their computers were faster than ours. They could adjust their systems to changes more quickly than we could. The decentralized design of the Borg Cube ship meant that they could absorb much more damage on a relative scale. On an absolute scale, the Harrier was doomed.

Their sensor range was longer than ours. If we were seeing them, then it was a safe bet that they had already seen us.

"Range to the Borg ship?"

"Approximately two light weeks, sir." This was a little less than an hour away at warp six. It was about fifteen minutes away at warp nine.

"Time to intercept?"

"He is not on an intercept course, Captain."

"What's his course?" Were we just unbelievably lucky? Had he failed to notice us? Were we too unimportant to deal with?

Tillean checked her console. "It's hard to tell. If he's moving, it's so slowly that we can't detect the changes at this range."

That left me with a quandary. What was he doing? Finding out the answer to this could get us all killed, or worse, assimilated.

To run now, might simply get us run down and assimilated later by the Borg.

"All stop!" I said. The distortion our warp drives left in space made us much easier to track. The Borg scared me. A lot. However, I didn't just want to turn my back and run. The Borg can maintain a higher warp speed than a Federation starship. I wanted to hide, instead.

We used low powered tight beam scans to explore our surroundings. I hoped that the Borg could not see any scattered or reflected energy from our scans. We saw a cold, dark gas giant orbiting a nearby star. It was closer to the Borg, but we could try to stay in its shadow until we got close enough to get under cover in it.

We crept in as quietly as possible. It wasn't possible to be that quiet, but we did the best we could. In space, you can often exchange time for energy. We did so ruthlessly, crawling along at warp one. It would take years to get from one planet to another at that slow speed, but it made for a much smaller warp signature.

-*-

After a week of creeping, the Borg ship hadn't done anything. Tillean wanted to launch a probe, but I wanted to wait until we were under some sort of cover first. Bill the Probe volunteered to go, but I didn't want him assimilated, any more than I wanted anyone else in my crew assimilated.

Tillean was stubborn. Since she couldn't launch a probe, she stuck to her passive sensors. Sensor come in two types. Active sensors send out energy and then read the reflections. Radar and most subspace sensors are active mode. Passive sensors read energy that is already there, falling on them. The humanoid eye and a radio telescope are passive mode sensors. Tillean used the passive mode sensors on the Harrier because they didn't give the Borg anything to lock onto. At the end of the week's creep, she came to me with an odd conclusion.

A big mystery to us was exactly what the Borg cube ship was doing. It seemed to simply hang in space. It wasn't near anything.

"Captain. The Borg ship seems to be adrift." She said.

"How do you figure that, Lieutenant?"

"Here is its current position, here is its position as of our first sighting. As you can see, It has drifted about 200 kilometers. According to these readings, It would seem to be rotating."

"Can you confirm these conclusions. Lieutenant?"

"Not really, Captain. There is simply too much that we don't know about how the Borg think."

I was faced with a tough decision. I had to know more about what the Borg were thinking. I was too scared to investigate, and I was too scared to simply turn tail and run. I gave permission to Tillean to use her probes.

-*-

The Borg Cube ship was a wreck. It was radiating minimal power. It showed extensive internal damage. Less than fifteen percent of its systems were operational. We detected six life forms aboard it.

-*-

I ordered the Harrier to close in. I was brave when I discovered how badly mangled the Borg ship was. There was an even more troubling question. What could to that to a Borg? We needed to know that. Anything that could do that to a Borg ship was either an ally well worth cultivating, or a powerful threat. Now I needed to know which it was.

While Li'ira led the first away team onto the Borg ship, we beamed the survivors onboard the Harrier. We made our best security arrangements, but they weren't needed. Four of the six were catatonic. They simply stood and stared. Three of them were Romulans. One was a Betazoid. One was a human. One was of a race that we hadn't seen before.

The Betazoid just babbled. She didn't babble anything coherent. Left to herself, she would simply drift into a corner and crouch down.

We identified her as Kamily Wandros, a crewman of the Tarod IX outpost. Whatever had happened to her had just been too much. We couldn't reach her.

The Human was still cognitive, but he wasn't sane. He was speaking Romulan. When the translator was able to catch up, it seemed that the man thought that he was six years old. He described a fairly normal home life with two people he called "Mommy" and "Daddy", except in Romulan. He knew that some people had pointed ears and that other people didn't. He used the word "Romulans" for both. He was very clear that "Mommy and "Daddy" didn't have pointed ears and were happy Romulans. The next thing he knew, He was in the Borg ship. Bad men tried to hurt him, but he ran away and hid.

Seamus McTague and Dr. Flynn agreed that it was a case of hysterical amnesia. Records from the Borg attack on Earth and the rescue of Jean Luc Picard seemed to indicate that a someone who was assimilated remained conscious the whole time, unable to fight the will of the Borg. McTague and Flynn guessed that all the Borg we had recovered had been assimilated from other walks of life. The experience had been dealt with in a variety of ways.

The away team reported that the interior of the Borg ship was littered with the bodies of dead Borg crewmen. The interior also showed great evidence of internal blasting and physical damage.

The Romulans, the Betazoid and the Human were De-Borged. Dr. Flynn was able to follow instructions in our records left by Dr. Crusher to remove the invasive Borg cybernetics. This did not help the Romulans to regain any cognition. The Betazoid woman became catatonic at that point. The Human remained regressed to childhood.

Dr. Flynn didn't want to attempt to De-Borg the alien. "I don't know enough about his physiology."

"Doctor. I'm afraid I must insist."

"It's too dangerous."

"It's too dangerous to leave him in this state aboard the Harrier." I explained.

"I might kill him." She insisted.

"Can you give me any guarantees that he won't use these Borg systems to sabotage my ship? Look at these interfaces. If he gained access to our computers with them, he might be able to access critical systems before we could stop him. That would be the end for us."

"That's a problem for Security. My department is the health of the crew of the Harrier."

"Consider it preventive medicine." I said.

"No." She was adamant.

"Doctor, you misunderstand me. I am not requesting. I am ordering."

"I refuse."

"Then I'll have to abandon him."

"With the Borg ship in that condition could he get it to safety?" She asked.

"I'm not going to let him have the ship back." My voice was cold and angry.

"What are you going to do, stuff him in a life pod and eject him?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe you'd put a comatose man in a life pod and eject him in deep space."

"He's a BORG!" I realized I was shouting.

Flynn looked at me, closely. "You would do that, wouldn't you?"

I had to turn away to regain my composure. "He's a Borg. He's a threat to all of us."

"I want that order in writing, Captain."

"Okay."

I wrote the order and Dr. Flynn performed the operation. The Alien/Borg died. At least he wasn't a Borg anymore when he died. I kept telling myself that.

-*-

We put the survivors into hibernation. We weren't equipped to deal with them. I hoped that when we reached the Federation, that we would be able to turn them over to a more competent medical facility.

-*-

One of the first things that we were able to identify about the Borg ship was where it had come from. We found the bodies of dead Humans, Romulans and other races in the wreckage. Eight years ago a mysterious intruder had traveled down the Romulan Neutral Zone. Whole outposts disappeared as if scooped out of the planetary surfaces into which they were built. No one knew what had caused the destruction in 2364, but the traces were later found identical to the Borg.

This particular cube ship must have been the one. We also identified standard Federation and Romulan building materials used in its construction.

-*-

We tore into the Borg cube ship. The technology secrets contained in it could make the Federation immune from attack, by the Borg, or anyone. I was grimly happy. We still didn't know what had caused the destruction of the Borg ship, but the Federation was going to be the beneficiary.

Further investigation revealed that it had been exclusively Borg hand weapons used in the destruction of the ship. A lot of the damage must have been caused by beings with superior physical strength. This was the kind of strength given by the Borg cybernetics.

Had something made the Borg go insane? Had an enemy which so closely resembled the Borg that we could not see the difference attacked them? Could it have been an attack by another Borg vessel? We couldn't find any answers right away.

-*-

"How are you coming with that circuitry nexus, Tillean?" I asked. It had been a while since I had ventured into the physics labs of the Harrier. It had been since we had found the stable einsteinium.

Tillean looked up at me and refocused her eyes. She breathed a heavy sigh. "Well, I know what it's made of." It had become a running joke. The material that the Borg had assimilated into their structure had been changed precisely enough to be used in their machines and no more. This left macabre reminders of where it had come from. We had found several structural members from the outpost at Tarod IX stretched like taffy and welded into the Borg ship. The serial numbers were still on them, stretched and misshapen.

The chemical composition of the Borg ship was easily determined. How the Borg used the elements and materials they had stolen was the mystery.

I nodded at Tillean's joke "Heh, heh. Please keep working on it."

Tillean rubbed her eyes and leaned back into the micro-scanner, trying to trace a web of molecule sized circuits.

-*-

"Ensign Bruce, How are we doing with the programming in that interface?" I asked.

Bruce was a sight. Big screens surrounded him, constantly flipping through pages of information. My computer programming expert was nested into a large chair. Food and drink surrounded him, and he hadn't picked any of it up in a while. The whole of his brain power was going into puzzling out the arcane Borg programming.

In the Federation, programming resembled nothing so much as putting together blocks. Standardized blocks of code were assembled automatically to arrived at the desired effect. This was the rough draft. Then an intelligent compiler program ran the rough code through a couple of times, streamlining it.

Artists were those who could understand where to put these prefab blocks of code to maximize their effectiveness. They could do some of the streamlining themselves. These people understood the interrelations.

The Borg took this process to the next step, running like ancient multiprocessor computers. They split a problem into many separate parts and then had several small computers solve their own segments.

We had examples of the Borg style of computer code from Lt. Commander Data's records of his hacking into the Borg system.

Bruce was working as hard as any of his primitive hacker ancestors to break the code of the Borg computers. This would give us the edge we needed to understand Borg technology.

"Captain," He said, without ever looking at me. "If I didn't know better I'd say that this code has been scrambled."

"Can you confirm that?" This was bad news indeed.

"It'll take a couple days."

-*-

"Snoopy, any news?" I could trust Snoopy. He was a real talent at ferreting out the truth.

"Are you okay, Captain?" He asked.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. What have we discovered about the Borg ship?" It wasn't like Snoopy to waste time on small talk.

Snoopy thought for a moment, composing himself. "Not too much. Most of the damage that we can trace in the wreck happened about eight months and two weeks ago."

I looked at the Borg cube. "It's been adrift for eight months?"

"Uh Huh."

"I guess we were lucky to happen by when we did." I grinned.

"Yeah, if you say so."

-*-

"What can you tell me, Ruezre?" My Chief Engineer had a standard Federation type nine power generator in pieces on the floor of the Engineering section. It had come from the wreck. By its serial number we were able to trace it to the Federation outpost Delta Zero Five.

"The main reactor was left alone. It operated just like it should have. But the control circuitry was yanked out and Borgified." She shook her head. "I don't know how it worked or how it was kept in phase with all the other junk they had in there."

This was the chief difficulty. How did they manage to keep it all together?

"Please keep working on it. We'll get a break soon."

Ruezre looked at the mangled generator on the deck and shook her head. "I hope so."

-*-

We went on like that for another two weeks. Whatever the Borg was doing with the stolen technology and material, it seemed just a little bit beyond us.

We had crews on the Borg ship twenty four hours a day, trying to map out the maze of interwoven systems. They were having a limited amount of success. Each system seemed to route through several junction points. Many of the junctions were destroyed so tracing how things connected in them was difficult. Even the ones that were intact seemed to have had their software scrambled. We had no idea how the various systems interrelated. However, I refused to give up. I knew that given enough time, We could understand the Borg ship. Once we had done that, then we could design defenses against it. It was only a matter of time.

-*-

"Captain, may I ask a question?" Li'ira asked during one of our paperwork sessions. There were a variety of things that demanded coordination between the Captain and the First Officer. Once or twice a week we locked ourselves into my office and crashed through it. I had let it go for too long, and we had quite a back log to work though.

"Sure." I was absorbed by the fuel consumption reports.

"How long are we going to stay here and explore the Borg ship?"

I looked up. "Until we can take enough back to the Federation to allow for a good defense against the Borg."

"We're no closer to understanding their systems than we were a week ago."

"That's not true. We're making good progress."

"Okay, maybe we're making a little progress, but my question still stands. How long are we going to do this?"

"Don't you understand? This is the Borg. They destroyed forty starships. Eleven thousand well armed people. They were minutes away from destroying the Earth. Were you there?"

"No. I was off the planet at the time."

"I was there, at Starfleet Command. They couldn't tell us what it would be like. I'm an engineer by training. I was working as a desk jockey. They threw a phaser rifle into my hands and told me to go man the barricades. Nobody knew much of anything except what the Borg might look like, maybe. We had a clipping from the log of the Enterprise-D. There was a riot out in front of Starfleet Command. Civilians were either protesting our failure or demanding to get phaser rifles of their own."

I stood up to pace. "They never really talked about what happened on Earth, did they?"

Li'ira looked at me. "I got there a few days later. I saw what it looked like."

"People just went crazy. I was trying to man my position with some people from my office, but we just stood and stared. They burned the city down. There were just people panicking and running everywhere. There was looting. Looting!"

Li'ira didn't get it. "Okay, there was panic. You survived."

"Earth was a place that we've all been working on for generations. We've turned it into a place that our ancestors would have considered paradise. There was no real crime. There was no poverty; there was very, very little suffering on Earth. It was a nice, quiet place. The Borg never even had to land to destroy it."

Li'ira shook her head. "Earth didn't have any of these things anymore because you exported them to the frontier." I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off. "I've been there. I've seen it. I used to live there. You sent all the malcontents, all the nonconformists away out into space. Your people worked strenuously to keep Earth safe, predictable and boring. Earth isn't like that. Your people aren't like that. Ship after ship, but you could never send your own natures out to the frontier and leave them there.

"If they had gotten us, then the whole Federation would have been next. We were all in danger. The Borg are dangerous!"

"This is all true. However, it didn't happen. We got out of it okay."

"What about the next time? That must never happen again."

"The next time the Borg attack Earth, will we still be out here wrestling with this wreck?"

"That's out of line, Commander. Let's get back to work."

She looked at me carefully. I realized that she was noting my attitude and behavior. It was a little annoying. We finished the paper work and went back to work on our main project, the Borg.

-*-

I decided that the next step was for all the various officers working on separate parts to pool their knowledge. Maybe Tillean had discovered something that would help Bruce, or visa versa. A break was just around the corner, I knew it.

"Okay, is everyone set?" I asked. Truth to tell, everyone looked tired. Getting a generally positive response I signaled Tillean to begin.

Tillean stood up and started her presentation. A diagram of Borg circuitry appeared behind her on the screen. It looked like a corridor. There were a series of squares that had regular interconnections. Each square was slightly smaller than the one before it, and the smaller ones were nested inside the bigger ones. The effect was like a forced perspective optical illusion. I realized that it reminded me of a corridor because it looked somewhat like the corridors in the Borg ship.

"The Borg use molecule sized circuits, in a non-prioritized network. We don't know how signals are routed through the network, except that it seems to be related to the software that controls it."

"I have managed to back trace about twenty percent of this nexus. From what I can determine. It's a kind of fractal circuitry pattern. The whole device is replicated in miniature in its parts. I have scanned down to the level of electrons and positrons in the this circuit."

The scan zoomed into one corner of one square. As it got closer and closer, I could see that the circuit seemed to be constructed of smaller, interlocking squares. Each one had features in common with the larger circuit square, and even the corridors of the Borg ship.

"I can't specify if the circuit is identical all over, and adapts via software, or if the physical circuit is sometimes altered to perform a function."

"What would you need to do that, Lieutenant?" I asked.

"I need the program a scanner to trace the paths of at least this nexus. To be rigorous, I would like to scan five more nexi. The differences and similarities between them would tell me a lot."

She took a breath "I have analyzed the problem. It will take me 512 kiloquads of computer capacity for about three months. Once that's done. I can begin to puzzle out the basics."

I was stunned. 512 Kiloquads was a hefty chunk of the Harriers main computer. Tying that up for three months would cripple the Harrier.

"All right, let's table that and move on. Ensign Bruce?"

Bruce stood up and gave us his report. He didn't even bother to turn on the main view screen. "Some sort of power surge seems to have scrambled the programming in the remaining nexi. I have downloaded the mess from most of the surviving nexi. The good news is that different parts of the programming survived in different nexi. I can analyze the surviving pieces and try to assemble a recreation of the programming from one nexus. The bad news is that the time frame is similar to Tillean's. I need 640 kiloquads for three months, roughly." He sat tiredly back down.

Ruezre' Vengla, my Chief Engineer started out with her report. "The Borg ship is built along the same `fractal' pattern that Tillean says the circuitry is. Every system is recreated in miniature in every part of the ship. There are certain limits to this. They do add in technology that they steal from other races. I don't know how they do this. The basic structure seems adaptable enough to handle it. The real understanding of the whole thing requires an understanding of the native Borg systems. We have spotted small power generators, small force field generators, small replicators and systems like that, spread everywhere. By networking these in unison, the Borg are able to act as a single huge ship. This is the basic unit of Borg technology. Once we can understand that, the rest might be more accessible."

"And that will take an understanding of their control circuitry and the programming, right?" I finished for her.

"Yes, Captain."

Varupuchu was next. He didn't even stand up. "We have had crews working on the wreck for two weeks now. The transporters are being over worked transporting three shifts, twice a day. We need to either set up quarters on the Borg ship, or hard dock the Harrier to it.

It was time for me to show some leadership. "Look, I know that you've all worked hard and that this is a tough project. Remember that this stuff could make the difference between life and death for the Federation. One Borg ship chewed through our defenses and easily menaced the Earth. What if they send two, next time? Let's keep our eyes on the ball, here, and try to focus on just how important this is."

Everyone gave me a tired affirmative. "I need better answers than these, people. Let's see what we can do to crunch these analysis times down, okay? Dismissed."

We went back to work.

-*-

Satisfied that the Borg cube ship was inactive, I ordered the Harrier hard docked to it. Then we got back on track.

I walked the decks of the Borg ship sometimes. It was disturbing. Even after clearing away the bodies and the worst of the gore, the ships seemed to hold a certain cold, mechanical menace.

My exercising finally began to pay off and I lost some weight.

-*-

Ruezre' Vengla had the warp core of the Harrier down for a maintenance cycle. I walked into Engineering to check on our progress. I was shocked to see that no one was working on the Borg Problem.

"Lt. Commander, report please. What's the progress on the Borg Project?"

Ruezre looked stressed as she turned to me. "I have put that on the back burner while we complete the realignment of the containment fields in the warp core, Captain."

I was a little angry. It was not as though one starship was worth the information that might be around the corner. "Well, return it to front burner status, Chief."

"We need a break, Captain. We need to deal with some technology that makes sense, for awhile."

"We can rest all we want after the problem is solved, Commander."

"What if that takes a couple of years, sir? We don't have the people or the equipment to do this right!"

"That's not good enough! The Earth needs that information, and goddamn it we're going to get it!"

"You can't change the laws of physics, sir! The Borg technology is complex, and it takes complex equipment to analyze it and that's just the way it is!"

"That's enough! Ruezre' you're out of line! Place yourself on report and when that's done I want you to turn all your notes and findings over to me directly, is that understood?" I would show her by cracking the problem myself.

-*-

I was in science lab four. There were two different types of science labs on the Harrier. One was a dedicated lab. It was designed around a given topic of study and then laid out and equipped for that type of study. These are necessary, but they took up a lot of space. The other types were general purpose laboratory rooms. These were simply large empty rooms with mechanical provisions for power and furniture. You could set up all the shelves, tables and equipment you needed right where you needed it.

I had the control circuitry from the old power generator on the table in front of me and I had been going over it with a micro-scanner.

"Computer, retain image." I said.

"Image from micro-scanner saved." The computer said. I was doing the basic step which was to build a big picture of the item myself. The whole machine had been scanned before, but not frame by frame by a micro-scanner.

"At current imaging rate, how long to enter the whole device?" I asked.

"Working" The computer said. I waited. The computer thought about it. "Twenty three years, eight months, nine days, two hours forty five minutes, and eighteen seconds, estimated, given Captain Hailey's past work record and estimated mean time between failures of Captain Hailey." It meant that it included sick time for me.

I was shocked. I looked again at the scale I had the scanner set on. I had never really appreciated how many molecules could exist in a couple of pounds of circuitry.

I sat down for a while and tried to come up with a new approach to the problem. After a while I thought of trying to trace a single molecular circuit through the matrix

"Computer, locate grid 19-A and enhance." The computer zoomed in. "Computer, highlight the molecular circuit centered in the screen in about grid twelve." The computer highlighted several circuits in the correct area.

"Eliminate one circuitry highlight per second until I say stop." I said. The computer did so. "Now follow the highlighted circuit, enlarging the highlighted area until finished."

The point of view on the screen began to fall back and the highlighted section grew like an amoebae. "Stop." I said. "Computer I only wanted the first circuit highlighted."

"That circuit ties into the other circuits as specified." The computer said. It seemed a trifle smug.

"Then how are the circuits differentiated?" I was confused. If all the pipes were connected how did the information know which way to go?

"That information is not available." The computer said. I spent another two hours going around with it like that.

Seamus McTague came into the lab. "Good afternoon, Captain."

"Greetings Counselor, what can I do for you?" I was tired. My eyes hurt from staring at the screen.

"I would like to discuss the subject o' yer mental health, Captain."

I looked up at him shocked. "Really? I feel fine." What was this about?

"Well, Captain, everyone's heard about yer screamin' match with the Engineer this mornin'."

"Yeah, well." I said. In retrospect it didn't seem like I had been acting really rational. "I suppose you may have a point."

"Captain, I came to talk to ye' because I know that in yer heart of hearts, that ye're honest enough to look back at the past three weeks and try to see yer behavior from an outside perspective. I think ye've lost yer perspective on the issue of this Borg ship. I'll ask ye to please take some time t' think about it."

"Okay, Counselor. I'll think about it." I promised.

-*-

I returned to my quarters and relaxed, and tried to follow the counselors instructions. I was able to relax, some, but I knew as soon as I really thought about it that I wasn't really relaxed. I was in a hurry. I wanted to hurry up and analyze myself so I could get back to forcing the Borg ship to reveal its secrets. I could not relax enough to really empty my mind, because I was too focused on that subject.

Sometimes I can think things through by talking them out with a friend. Therefore, I went to look up Patricia Flynn. We had been part time lovers and full time friends since shortly after the Harrier had become lost.

I found her in sickbay.

"Patricia, can we talk?" I asked her. I only used her first name in an informal mode.

She looked up at me, and I could see that she was angry "About what?"

I shuffled "Well, I was just hoping that maybe we could do lunch and talk a little. I need a sounding board, and you're a lot of fun to sound."

She pinned me on a gaze. She was not miffed, she was not irritated, she was not snarked or pissed or anything like that. She was genuinely angry. "I'm busy. If you need to talk I can arrange an appointment with the Counselor."

I could imagine the sound of an armored door slamming down. There was no doubt in my mind where Patricia Flynn was.

I was stunned for a moment. What had I done? Oh. I had ordered her to perform an operation that she didn't feel comfortable with, and the patient had died.

Then I hadn't talked to her for three weeks. In that moment I realized that I had been a serious asshole.

"I... I'm sorry." I said to her and then before it could get any worse I turned and left.

I walked at random around the Harrier. I felt miserable, and no place held anything that seemed like it would help. I simply wandered around. People talked to me, and I said vague things at them but I wasn't really paying attention.

Several hours later I was tired, but I didn't want to go to sleep. It didn't seem like it would be any fun. In the end I had to. It was my job.

-*-

When I woke up the next morning I found that I had come to a decision in my sleep. As soon as I became aware of it I thought it through. It seemed like a good idea, and so I went to go find Tillean.

"Tillean I need to locate a section of the Borg Cube that is mostly intact. I want enough systems in it so that an analysis stands a good chance of paying off."

"How big a section, Captain?"

"About five meters by three meters by three meters." I gave her the rough dimensions of a shuttlecraft.

"Oo," She said "That's going to take a bit."

"Let's get on that right away, okay?"

Then I went and scared up Harksain Varupuchu. He was on the Borg ship over seeing the gathering of samples.

"Mr. Varupuchu, please secure all the samples that you already have and then prepare to get out of the Borg ship."

He looked coolly at me "Aye, Captain."

Then I went to find Stephanie Anderson.

-*-

A couple of days later, on the bridge of the Harrier I said "Execute." Stephanie pressed a button on her panel. We were ten thousand kilometers away from the Borg wreck. All of our samples were secured, and everyone was ready to get back under way for home.

On the Borg wreck, at a signal from Stephanie a strange device began to operate. The first part of the device was a containment field with a gram of antimatter inside. The containment field was tuned to a specific frequency. The second part of the device was a phaser rifle mounted on a tripod aimed at the containment field.

When Stephanie gave the order to fire, the rifle turned on and began to pump energy into the containment field. The containment field was tuned so that the energy went right to the anti-matter. The antimatter quickly heated up.

Eventually the energy from the phaser rifle had heated the antimatter to the point where it overwhelmed the containment field. Once the field fell, there was a blast of extremely hot gaseous anti-matter inside the Borg ship.

The hot anti-matter gas went every where, and each time an atom of it hit the material of the Borg ship, it converted into a pulse of gamma radiation. As the blast proceeded the gamma radiation heated up the gas and the rest of the Borg ship even further. Eventually the bulkheads and equipment of the Borg ship melted and then became hot gas.

In less than the blink of an eye, the hot gasses reached the outer edges of the Borg cube ship. By that time there was enough energy in the mass to vaporize the whole thing. The Borg ship was melted and evaporated down to its individual atoms.

A cloud of hot gas that used to be the Borg ship expanded in space. No one would ever be able to discover the secrets of Borg technology from that.

"Well, they'll be able to tell what it was made of..." I said. This earned me a weak grin from Tillean.

"Let's go home." I said. The Harrier turned and went to warp speed towards the Klingon frontier. In just a few weeks we would be back in known space.

In the cargo bay of the Harrier a single chunk of the Borg cube ship rode, wrapped and preserved for the science people on Earth. The technology of the

Borg was their problem.

-end-

The Borg and I:

Author's notes on Episode 16 of ST-OM

By Jay P. Hailey

My biggest fear about this particular episode will come true. You see, this episode came from a discussion on the nature of the Borg between Dennnis Washburn and myself. The subject for debate the nature of "Borgness".

Our sources were the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation "Q-Who?" "Best of Both Worlds Parts 1 and 2." and "I, Borg."

The Borg were said to be a cybernetically networked mass mind. It was said that all Borg shared the experience of any single member of that race.

In "I, Borg" a single Borg was rescued by the Enterprise-D. He became an individual based on the experience. In the end of that episode, it seemed as though Hugh retained the benefits of that experience (He looks back at Geordi as they march to the Borg Ship.). So the question became, "What did the Borg as whole experience and when did they experience it?"

We speculated on three basic results.

1> The Borg have methods of controlling members of the Borg who have been assimilated from other races. J. L. Picard couldn't alter the events at Wolf 359, although he desperately wished to. The concept of Individuality would be considered "Bad-Think", Hugh would be ruthlessly controlled. His mind might be wiped, or he might even be destroyed as "Contaminated":

2> The Borg might consider the whole experience interesting, but "irrelevant." Hugh might go his way as a happy go lucky Borg in a sea of zombies. The Collective might not even notice his oddness for some time.

3> Hugh seemed to have no defenses against the experience and the character development. There seemed to be no "Bad-Think" programs guarding him against non-Borg-like thinking. In this scenario, the experience of individuality amounts to a subtle and invasive virus against which the Borg really didn't have a defense. Look what a pasty Hugh was for it.

I personally favored item three. I am a sucker for happy endings, and like most members of my culture I value my freedom and individuality. That's why the Borg are such hideous monsters to me. They destroy individuality, wholesale. This ended up being the idea we used for our Role Playing simulation.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Neutral Zone" there was just a lot going on. The Romulans had reappeared, there were three survivors from the Twentieth Century, Data tried and failed to understand humor, etc, etc. There was also a background bit. Several Federation and Romulan outposts had disappeared as though some force had scooped them up from the planetary surfaces.

I had the opinion that this was, in fact, meant to be foreshadowing of the Borg. It also implied Borg contact with known space before Q's interference.

Okay, so here's this Borg cube on the way from Point A to Point B. It scoops up some hapless victims and moves on. Then this terrible idea catches up with it. The effect would be that all the "Individual" Borg would be cast out of the collective. The collective would cease to exist. So all the survivors from the Federation, Romulan and other outposts are suddenly non-Borg after years of enforced Borgness.

Dennnis thought that the results would not be pretty...

The story you read was more about Captain Hailey and his reaction to the Borg rather than the Borg themselves. Captain Hailey never learned what had happened to the Borg ship, and after viewing his loss of perspective on the matter he didn't care.

After we had role played this the Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes "Descent" and "Ascent" were aired. In them, Data's brother Lore leads free Borg on a rampage. The Borg were lost and uncertain after the loss of their collective.

Dennnis and I were overjoyed. We had guessed correctly about the nature of the Borg. This episode confirms nearly everything we had speculated about the Borg except for the violence inherent in the loss of the collective. This could easily be explained away by the idea that Hugh's group were mostly "Native" Borg, that is, people who had been Borg since birth. The group found by the Harrier had been mostly "Assimilated" Borg who had been somewhere else first.

This was all fine and good in 1992 and 1993. Now, in April of 1996, The news is this: The next Star Trek Movie (Due out at the end of 1996 as of this writing) will feature the Borg. All of the questions, assumptions and speculations inherent in this piece might be invalidated.

But that's the whole bugaboo about writing Star Trek stories in the first place, isn't it? I addressed that in my first essay, "The Harrier: An Alternate Universe of Star Trek." The Harrier stories are an alternate universe of Star Trek because the guys who make Star Trek keep changing things on us!

That's okay. In our role playing world and the world of the Harrier, the Borg are not an issue, although some "Free Borg" might be, in time.

Just another divergence between the Harrier and the "Real" Star Trek. We hope that you enjoy these stories, anyway.

-end-

Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.