[WATB Phase 1]: Looming Cube (Flash Fiction)

Description

The Borg are known for their enormous, monolithic starships, each carrying tens of thousands of drones without any visible command, engineering, or habitat sections. They are faceless and terrifying much like the Borg themselves. For this competition, describe one of your character’s reactions to first seeing a Borg vessel—this could be on the holodeck or in real life, but very few people have seen a Borg vessel and lived to tell about it.

Write your response as a fiction vignette: a focused, concise piece of writing focusing on senses including sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. This should be no more than 250 words. Enter your response directly into the competition box. You can post your vignette as part of a story on the BFMS, and if you do so, you should include that link in your competition submission as well. Your entry need not be set within your Fleet Action story, though, and it can be something you write just for this competition.

Criteria

  • Entries will be scored using the Bravo Fleet Fiction Rubric.
  • Entries should be submitted directly to the competition form. If an entry is also being posted to a story, the link to the BFMS story should be included in the submission.

Winners

Submissions

User ID Content Date Entry
Reva Sarrik 2185

“Computer, load program Kobayashi Four.”
As the holodeck door shsshed open, Reva gestured to Urzas to enter.
“You can create illusion!” The big Technomancer’s delight faded as he stepped into the faux bridge and caught sight of the monstrous brooding cube looming on-screen. Affront and disgust chased themselves over his features, leaving the corner of his lip curled in a slight snarl. “This is your Borg?” he spat. “These are the ones who tried to destroy the planet called Earth? The ones who changed your young officers?”
“They aren't my Borg, but yes. Frontier Day…” Reva shook her head. “Those Borg were desperate. Damaged. A dying Collective, playing a last ditch genetic gamble that thankfully did not pay off.
“This program is the Borg as they were. One of several training programs.”
“Can we go inside?”
“Computer, load program Borg K73.” The setting shifted to the dim interior of the Borg vessel. Alcoves lined one side of the walkway the pair found themselves on. A railing shielded against the abyssal drop to the other. Dormant drones rested in some alcoves. In the distance, two active ones went about their business. Reva shuddered, letting instinctive dread wash through her, acknowledging and releasing it.
“Drones typically ignore solitary individuals and small groups, so long as they aren’t interfered with.”
Urzas leaned forward, examining a motionless drone in its cubby.
“Inefficient. Inelegant.”
“Inelegant, I’ll give you,” Reva conceded. “But they seem pretty damn efficient.”
“Inefficient,” Urzas said again. “Clumsy, clunky.”

 2023-11-11 23:43:48
Edwin Wagner 2468

Ensign Larissa Barron’s hands flew across the console, her stomach roiling with the emotions of what was behind them, arcing weapons fire like a scalpel against their shields. They’d come into the sector expecting nothing. A lone sentinel Borg Cube had been there instead. They’d stared at it for what felt like an eternity as their brains short-circuited. They tried to say its name, but their throats had closed up in fear, and their lips stuttered until Barron had screamed and slammed the console, intending to go to warp and get out of this place.

Ensign Terry McCloud’s uniform was soaked in the rear of the shuttle as his fear ran over and through. His heart raced, pounding in a manic crescendo, “I’m trying to reroute power to…goddamn it.” Slamming his fist into the console, he tried again. The shuttle shook, and the console panels flickered as the green glow of the tractor beam gripped them. “Shit.” He returned to the cockpit, the jade-colored cube monolith drawing closer.

Barron’s mouth was dry, her hands shaking. She was sweating profusely. The air was souring with their fear. McCloud turned at the sound of Borg transporters. He grabbed his phaser and got off a few shots before they adapted. The dull thump of the Borg echoed in their ears. He ran at them and found his neck stabbed, gasping as his life faded from bright to black. The voice of the collective filled his ears.

Barron blinked. And tapped the emergency autodestruct.

 2023-11-11 04:33:43
Alexandra Sudari-Kravchik 2121

On the surface of things, it shouldn’t have been a terrifying sight. It was just another starship, plying the merciless vacuum of space like any other. Just larger and with far, far less aesthetic concern than what most species considered when building their ships.

But it was.

It was terror manifest.

Its size alone would have brought forth concern from anyone seeing it for the first time. A colossus many times larger than most starships, heck most starbases, its form conformed to a simple platonic solid. Its surface was riddled with weapons, sensors, armour plates and many other instruments all bent to one purpose. The dark hull, the ominous green lighting from within and arrayed along the surface of the hull gave the entire structure an overwhelming aura of dread.

The way the ship carried through space, uncaring for who saw it or tried to intercept, the complete contempt and disregard for anything around it added to the effect. This ship and its people didn’t care enough to be concerned. They went where they wanted to, when they wanted to and there was nothing you could do about it.

Just the sight of it made a room feel smaller, and colder, the lights darker. It oozed dread that infected everyone who saw it. Their first attack – against the psyche of those who would fight it by being something so simple and so yet so overwhelming.

There was no mistaking, even for the first time seeing it, a Borg Cube.

 2023-11-11 00:43:03
James MacLeod 653

The bridge of the USS Sovereign was shrouded in an ominous silence as the colossal Borg cube appeared on the viewscreen. The vast, monolithic structure, devoid of any discernable symmetry or design, seemed to swallow the light around it. Ensign Aria Andrews, her hands trembling slightly at her console, couldn't tear her eyes away from the sight. The cube's surface was a tapestry of metal and conduits pulsating with a ghastly green light. The air was thick with tension, the usually unnoticed hum of the ship's systems now a foreboding drone in the background. Aria's mouth was dry, the taste of apprehension like copper on her tongue.

Captain Leland J. Maddox, his jaw set firmly, stood resolutely near the Captain's Chair. His presence, usually a source of reassurance, seemed dwarfed by the sheer scale of the Borg vessel looming ahead.

Aria's skin prickled with a cold sweat, the sensation of the console under her fingers grounding her to the moment. The faceless and relentless Borg were no longer distant threats relegated to briefings and simulations. They were here, an embodiment of raw, unyielding power.

"Initiate Defensive Pattern Maddox Alpha." The silence was finally broken by Captain Maddox's voice, steady yet charged with an underlying urgency.

As the Sovereign maneuvered into position, Aria's training kicked in, her actions automatic. But the image of the Borg cube, vast and implacable, was etched into her mind, a haunting reminder of the galaxy's terrors.

 2023-11-10 16:05:13
Khim Samnang 2222

Qsshrr had heard few descriptions of what it was like to experience a Borg cube. None were from other Horta; all of them were from humanoids. Most humanoids were deeply dependent on their vision as a means of experiencing the universe, and even then in such a limited band of the electromagnetic spectrum (which they so reductively referred to as “visible light”). How could any of those descriptions have prepared her? It was the uniformity that so thoroughly disturbed and intrigued her. The waves of energy that radiated upon her form the first time she felt a Borg cube were so thoroughly invariant that her body shuddered in an attempt to make sense of it. What impossible superterrestrial cave could have formed such a massive crystal? The cubic symmetry was sublime, the nearest thing to perfection next to the silicon sphere from which she had hatched. After a while, its presence became almost soothing. Only when the ship was directly upon them did the horrible drones shatter the illusion: thousands of nearly imperceptible bubbles pushing at the bonds of the crystalline lattice, a prickly effervescence. Qsshrr did not fear the Borg, but it was not because they passed the Horta by that day. It was because even the cold logic of the Borg was desecrated by the hypocrisy of carbon-based life forms. The Borg were seeking perfection through assimilation when they were just one step away from achieving it themselves: all they had to do was eliminate their drones.

 2023-11-09 21:34:33
Nathan Hawthorne 2199

Lieutenant Yuhiro Kolem could not ‘hear’ the voices of the Borg Collective any longer. Since she had become a Borg, or at least a temporary one, on Fleet Day she had been disconnected from the hive mind, and in a way from the certainty of being part of a larger group. The argument that the Borg always made about human life being solitary and lonely was not wrong, exactly. She felt it herself, a longing for what she had had briefly had had.

The Cube loomed before her and the significantly smaller USS Seattle, hung silently in space. One imagined that something so massive be accompanied by pounding timpanis and blaring trumpets but in space nobody could hear the fanfare. In space death came silently and immediately.

Adjusting her movements for the sake of the weight of the space suit that was keeping her alive in the zero atmosphere of space as she moved through the halls of the destroyed Seattle. Chairs floated by, no longer tied down by gravity, they were free from their teathers and were just floating. The Borg likely did not have chairs to arrange around conference tables, or even conference tables.

The recycled air of the suit felt stale though it was not meant to be. The half Betazoid knew that she could not feel the Borg collective any more since they were like a closed system, a loop that she was not a part of. The Chief Counselor did not quite understand what that meant, but she’d been assured by smarter people than her that it was natural. Of course those smarter people than her had mostly died with the USS Seattle.

She hoped that the Pearl Jam was still active. Or one of the shuttles. Yet before she moved beyond the conference room the world dissolved as she was transported onto the Cube. She materialized along with a handful of other officers who had survived the initial attack. She watched as Lieutenant Jara, the Chief Strategic Officer was on a table being assimilated. Kolem felt her fear fade, and then there was nothing.

Just the closed loop.

Kolem was not going to panic. Life was what you did between being born and what came next. This was the last thing she’d get to do. She did not fight when they guided her to a cold metal table, did not resist as she felt the pinch on her neck. Soon she was not alone any longer, there were countless voices now and with that a kind of peace.

Kolem sat bolt upright in her bed. The nightmare fading as she looked around the room, the USS Seattle still there, no space suit and no Borg Cube. She was safe, or relatively. At least for now.

At least for now.

 2023-11-07 21:35:53
Sazra Kobahl 2545

Tamaz gasped at the metallic and cybernetic structure of the regeneration room. His eyes were focused on his surroundings as he could feel the heat plunging on him. It made breathing somewhat difficult for him. He was fascinated by the drones just standing there as batteries charged overnight. Tamaz eventually touched the side of one of the consoles and felt how cold the metal was compared to the heat coming down on him. The creaking sound of metal, the sound that disappeared by machinery doing its duty. This was a fearful location to witness, even if it was just a holodeck. He took a deep breath, tried to process everything he saw, and looked back at his colleagues standing at the floating cube. It was impressive to him that this projected room was but a mere pixel on the scale of that cube.

This piece is the experience from Tamaz first time seeing a Cube from the inside in the holodeck. Posted at https://bravofleet.com/story/92864

 2023-11-05 22:40:33
James Neidlinger 1

Blacker than black and completely featureless, the Cube lumbered forward, eclipsing the class G subgiant. As it continued its advance, it occluded the starfield behind it. Gazing upon her demise, she realized it wasn't as black or as featureless as she'd thought. Now, as her future became inevitable, she could see ducts, conduit and sheeting, layers upon layers, lit by a deep green luminance from somewhere deep within the heart of the Cube.

The tactician within her looked for weakness, anything that might give her a puncher's chance, but there was nothing. The Cube had no central power source, no central propulsion driver, and no central command center. A manifestation of the Collective itself, the Cube was just redundant system upon redundant system, no individual any more important than any other, all orchestrated by an unseen conductor, a voice carried over the low subspace band of the Borg neural interlink.

That voice had come to a million worlds, and to each, it declared "We are the Borg." Now it had found her. Any moment now, it would inform her that her "biological and technological distinctiveness" would be added to its own and remind her that "resistance is futile." She took a deep breath, one of her last breaths as a free woman. Any moment now, she would become a part of something infinite yet unitary, diverse yet uniform, and complex yet simple. Just like the Cube itself.

 2023-11-05 15:51:22
Julian Durand 283

https://bravofleet.com/story/92782

 2023-11-05 01:34:56
Cressida Brennan 2765

As Nichelle stepped onto the bridge, the air hummed with the anticipation of those around her. They were in the middle of a simulation of a Borg encounter to prepare the crew for the inevitable, and while Nichelle wasn’t a bridge officer, she had understood the wisdom in summoning her here. 
The main view screen already showed what they were up against, and for a moment, Nichelle almost laughed. The borg cube floated like a lost dice in space, infinitely less threatening than snarling Klingons or similar. 
“Bring us closer.”, said the Captain, and Nichelle wondered if he had read her mind. The Borg vessel loomed like a monolithic nightmare, a metallic behemoth devoid of any defining features. It was a symphony of cold, gray angles and harsh green lights, sending shivers down her spine.
Nichelle licked her lips, the palpable tension almost metallic on her tongue.
She reached out and pressed her palms against the closest control panel, hoping to ground herself, but the absence of warmth or comfort only intensified the building anxiety.
A low, ominous, haunting hum reverberated through the bridge, drowning out the voices of those around her. 



In that moment, Nichelle realized what made the borg so difficult to confront. There were no threats, no emotions, no palatable goals and ambitions. "No Soul.", Nichelle said quietly.

And that was, perhaps, the most terrifying thought she had ever faced.

2023-11-04 19:01:03
Cole Shepard 2754

Lt Cmdr Cole Shepard

The doors parted and Cole entered the holodeck. He wasn't sure what to expect from the program he had discovered but hopefully, it would give him some insight to the Borg they may come across. Cole had been fortunate enough to have never personally, encountered the Federation foe but he wanted to learn as much as he possibly could.

The doors closed and he found himself submerged on the inside of a Borg vessel. By no means an engineer, he was able to identify several different technologies that had all been cobbled together. The Borg didn't waste a thing that they assimilated.

He looked around some more. It was a dark, musky area. He was glad that their were no Borg in sight but he could see what he had learned were called alcoves. The place where the Borg "sleep" and recharge. There had to be hundreds of them.

He began walking around. His foot steps echoed throughout the vessel. It was the only sound he heard other than the occasional beep from some of the consoles. He couldn't find the words to describe exactly how eerie it was. Especially being in here alone. This was definitely something he needed to do in small doses.

"Computer. End program." he called out. He'd had enough for today.

 2023-11-04 17:34:21
Callen Varro 2063

A sudden surge of warmth washed over her face, like an invisible tide, as if the very air had thickened and congealed. It clung to her skin, leaving pressure in its wake. The weight of it pressed down upon her, making each breath a laborious struggle, like her lungs bore an unexpected burden. It was as though the very atmosphere within this metallic, green-glowing domain had transformed into an oppressive shroud, bearing down upon her with an suffocating force.

Her eyes darted across the surroundings, taking in the disorienting spectacle. The bizarre geometry of the vessel seemed to defy physics, an endless abyss of metallic intricacies. The green luminescence cast eerie shadows that danced across the unforgiving walls, adding to the unsettling ambiance.

As she cautiously surveyed her new environment, an unwelcome scent assaulted her senses, an odor so pungent and disconcerting that it clawed at her awareness. The stench grew more intense with each passing moment, accompanied by a whirring sound, mechanical yet insect-like.

With dread gnawing at her, she turned, and there it was – a Borg drone, advancing with mechanical precision. The sight of the cybernetic entity sent a bolt through her body, constricting her chest, and making it increasingly difficult to draw a breath. It loomed closer, its cold unfeeling eyes locked onto her with unsettling intensity, she could feel the inexorable grip of the Borg collective drawing her into their nightmarish world.

In an instant, the Cube vanished, leaving only the holodeck in its wake.

 2023-11-04 07:15:53
Theo Barrington 2080

Entry:

He was thirteen again, on the holodeck. He shouldn’t have been there. Shouldn’t have even had access to that program. But teenagers can find anything, especially on an old cargo freighter whose systems he’d been hacking since he was five years old, and he’d been looking for ‘adult films’ in his parent’s digital lockbox on the system.
That’s not what he found.
He was on the bridge of a ship, but not the Morningstar. Something newer, something with more weapons. It hadn’t mattered. Nothing had mattered as the cube had materialized out of nothingness in front of him. The ship’s weapons had fired, the bridge crew around him shouting all at once.
The gentle rush of metallic-tainted air washed over his face, the single sign he wasn’t aboard that ship, but safe on the Morningstar.
It didn’t matter… his senses told him he was there, watching the Cube slicing through space to birth itself. Saw the weapons fire as the ship he was on, and all the others around it, fired on the cube.
It didn’t matter. Nothing stopped it.
Then they were all around him. Screams echoed. There was the flash of amber and green as his fists clenched at his side and his nails bit deep into his palms.
“We are the Borg…” the voice was legion and terrible, as he stumbled backward, fleeing from a fate worse than death…

Story link: https://bravofleet.com/story/92458

 2023-11-01 22:29:21
Iskander al-Kwaritzmi 569

The Cube could, for the first moment, only be stared at with awe and creeping terror. Part of it was its dimension -- barely conceivable in its extravagance -- and the uneven, chaotic texture of its surface, all jagged forms and dark cavities. Yet Iskander's thoughts couldn't concentrate on what he was seeing -- as enormous as it was -- but rather fled on what it represented. Everything in that structure, in its ugly shapes and sharp angles and accidental design, suggested a carelessness for human comfort, a disregard for aesthetics and for compromise, an alienness that was as hostile as it was thoughtless, and a lack of any sort of planning that went beyond a geometrical shape. Iskander imagined himself transported into one of its corridors: pitch-dark if not for sparse harsh green lights, its air hot and moist and stinking like metal.

There was no doubt that the Cube was a horrible, huge machine. And for a horrible moment he wondered how the Cube -- in itself maybe, to some degree, in its misshapen way, a sentient being -- saw him.

Looking at that dark, lumbering presence in the sky, he knew. The machine saw him as nothing but a gear to be put into the machine.

 2023-10-30 21:11:47
2246

Acrid electric smoke making his nose curl in disgust…pain spiking against his lower torso...
Pushing himself up, Jarzeg’s hand slipped in a puddle, and he fell sideways. His cheek rubbed against the wetness as he fought to get up and away, finally finding purchase to do so. Unfamiliar fingers slid against that damp cheek, only to show a dark streak when held to his azure eyes.
Popping and sizzling made him duck, an arm held up to abate the golden and red sparks.
“Resistance is-“ the words cut off with a zinging sound and a thud. Vision blurred and focused on a lighted entryway, something prone silhouetted beyond the tips of his boots. Ice picks tore at his temples, vision turning red and yellow as brown eyebrows pushed down over eyes.
Air lifted swiftly against his body, firm pressure of hands causing the change in position. The hands tugged one bicep sideways, his head bouncing side to side in the effort. Boots suddenly felt too big with further pulling, knee almost buckling then compensating.
Cooked meat assaults his nose while stumbling with Hands. Cool metal presses against his hands and fingers curl around it, one slipping through an opening. His arm lifts somehow and the cool metal warms slightly as an orange stream leaves his hands. A clamp clatters to the floor, an arm attached to it. Bitter bile rises while being pulled away.
Hands jars him to stop, and glittering blue enfolds his vision and everything evaporates.

 2023-10-30 17:38:26
Azras Dex 10

The holodeck was the perfect place to see what the inside of a Borg vessel was like without having to worry about being assimilated. Though Ritru had programmed it to be as real as possible with one key component the drones would remain in their regeneration pods. Upon entering the eerie feeling washed over Ritru with the sight of the drones within their alcoves.

It was so quiet one could hear a pin drop, which sent shivers down her spine. Walking through the never-ending corridors that all seemed to run together. The smell that hit her nose was one that was hard to describe, though it wasn’t so pleasant. Ritru continued to walk through examining each level with her heart beating out of her chest even though it was just a hologram it still felt like she was really there.

After a while Ritru ended the program and exited the holodeck and shook as she closed her eyes for a moment. She wasn’t sure why she wanted to do that, not like they were actually going to see the inside of a Borg vessel during their mission. Though they would more than likely see some of its technology.

2023-10-30 14:17:26
Jonas Flanigan 500

“RESISTANCE IS FUTILE,” echoed through the ship. He could feel it in his bones. He could hear the phrase repeatedly in his head, almost as if they had assimilated a telepathic race. There was the sense of dread. He could hear the stomp of their boots as they walked, no marched through the corridors. Then there was the crack of phasers being activated, the faintly acrid metallic smell of metal and burnt flesh in the air. “RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.” It was booming though his head. There was no where he could run to get away. There was nothing he could do. It was inevitable. This was nothing like the Kobayashi Maru. This was much worse. At least in the Kobayashi Maru, he knew it was just a test. This was real life. There was nothing he could do to stop the Borg. They just kept coming. He was reduced to his basest instincts, survive. And there was nothing he could do and nowhere left to run. He was backed into a corner. Nothing he tried worked. They just kept coming. They had him. “YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.” The Borg drone reached out with a probe. He could see the solution starting to flow into him.

The lights in his quarters turned on. “Good Morning, Commander,” the computer announced. Jonas sat up in his bunk. He was drenched in a cold sweat. It had just been a dream, no a nightmare.

 2023-10-30 13:58:20
Keith Anderson 1849

Tiffany stood stock still in front of the XOs chair on the bridge of the USS Zephyr. She could taste the bile in the back of her throat as she stared at the enormous Borg cube that hung lifeless and still on the viewscreen, the dim, green glow of whatever machinations made it function thrumming in and out in a hypnotic cadence. She heard the CO shouting for shields up and weapons armed, but all that truly made it through was the digitized voices speaking in unison over the open channels, “We are the Borg. Prepare to be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as the droning tone continued on with its monotonous speech. She closed her eyes and quickly reached over and pinched herself as hard as she could on the wrist, before the cold, steel ball in her gut could turn to panic. Taking in a deep breath of the processed air on the bridge, she glared at the cube now, steeling herself for whatever would come. Not today. No one would fall prey to these hordes today. “Everyone! Battle stations!”

2023-10-28 06:47:40
Varen Wyll 2419

No-one had mentioned the damp. The creeping, clinging damp that saturates your uniform and chills the skin whilst simultaneously clogging your throat and shortening your breath. In all the reports she had read, the pages of Janeway’s logs, Picard’s memoirs, the intelligence briefings, the tactical reports and the xenobiology assessments, no one had mentioned the damp. On reflection it made perfect sense to Oyvo. The sheer amount of biological tech involved, combined with hundreds of drones operating in a slightly warmer than average temperature; without rest or relaxation, without breaks and refreshment, without choice. This would inevitably create a damp environment. She remembered her grandmother’s tales, relayed in turn by her grandmother, of the claggy marshes of the now lost Xindus, a world of life, vivid and wonderful. Here, the antithesis. Despite the seemingly never-ending legions of drones and semi- aware devices, the cube was silent, devoid of life’s cacophonous signature. Silent beings stared, unblinkingly, down corridors of fetid air; manipulating tools and consoles with cold, dead flesh, a floating mausoleum in the stars. At each turn she found the labyrinthine corridors featured more undead soldiers, some statuesque in their alcoves whilst others trudged unbothered through corridors to tend to the warp-capable tomb’s operation. They did not care that the air was damp, they did not care for anything any longer. As the team moved deeper Oyvo was grateful for the damp that clung to her in the flickering emerald light, it hid the fearful tears rolling down her cheeks.

2023-10-27 23:24:33

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