We Are the Borg

Members of Bravo Fleet: I’m happy to announce that for the first time ever we will have two Fleet Actions in one year, with our 5th Fleet Action ever launching on Friday, October 27th.

Captain Camarero turned in her command chair, eyebrow arched chidingly. “‘Um’ isn’t a substantive report, Lieutenant.”

 

Lieutenant Lourde looked like she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. That was what made Camarero stop short; very little made her science officer contemplate not talking. “I had a reading, Captain. I want to double-check it.”

 

Little of their survey mission on the Typhon Frontier these past weeks had been worthy of this much caution. Camarero had been briefing her officers daily on phenomena they were approaching for study while Lourde enthused on her astrophysicists’ findings. After the hard crusts and gruel of operations on the Deneb Sector, the Susan B. Anthony had been spoilt with a buffet of scientific inquiry.

 

Camarero thus stood and crossed the bridge to approach the Science station. “Did our scans of the comet come in? Do we need to change course?”

 

But Lourde would normally have verbalised such readings as they came in, regardless of their significance. Now she looked both abashed at the captain’s direct challenge, and relieved by her approach. When she dropped her voice, Camarero knew they were really in trouble. “I don’t know what this is. It appeared on long-range sensors, then vanished.”

 

On a small window on the console’s display, Lourde brought up this reading. Something pinched in Camarero’s chest. By the time she spoke, it felt like she’d been silent for hours, but nobody on the bridge was paying this exchange any undue attention. “Can you find the reading again?” When Lourde shook her head, she drew a sharp breath but kept her voice down. “Run a full diagnostic on the lateral sensor array. Then scan again.”

 

“Yes, Captain.” Lourde looked quietly relieved. “It could have been anything.”

 

“Absolutely,” said Camarero, and returned to the captain’s chair so Lourde didn’t see through her mask. The slightest flicker on sensors was not worth raising the alarm. Not without taking an hour – just an hour – to double-check records, readings, the sensor systems.

 

After all. You didn’t report a sighting of a Borg ship within fifty light-years of the Federation border unless you were absolutely sure.

This Fleet Action, titled We Are the Borg, follows the story of the Fourth Fleet in the fallout and aftermath of Frontier Day. Starfleet is recovering, so many are dead, and even more are traumatized by the events of what was to be a day of celebration. Many top brass in Starfleet believe the Borg to be defeated, but a select few question that truth as it echoes through the halls of Starfleet Command. The top brass of the Fourth Fleet remain unconvinced.

Why the Borg? It is no secret that I and many others on the BFSS, including our BFXO and Intel Officer, have been very vocal about our general opposition to Borg storylines. In the past in Bravo Fleet, Borg stories quickly jumped the shark and just turned into some weird shoot-em’-up fest with very little actual substance or content. However, when I formulated the seed of what We Are the Borg has become, I knew that if we were ever going to do a Borg-themed Fleet Action we would never get a better opportunity than off the heels of Frontier Day. We knew that if we were going to do a Borg story, we wanted to do something that would be fun and far out of the norm for what we’ve seen of the Borg since Voyager to the present day.

What will this be about? I don’t want to give away too much, but we’ve crafted the overall story that crosses through multiple genres. The Mission Briefings will be returning for this Fleet Action as they were such a success for The Lost Fleet. The genres range from an Indiana Jones treasure hunt all the way to horror ghost stories (no possessed candles involved).

What won’t this be? This won’t be a shoot-’em-up armed conflict with the Borg. There won’t be any transphasic torpedoes or ablative armor. Temporal Investigations took those away and locked them deep into a vault.

Look forward to more announcements and teasers in the coming weeks as we approach the next Fleet Action!