“Commanding officer’s log, USS Liris. As of today, I assume command of this ship. On a personal note, I am quite thankful to the fleet staff for granting me this ship. As such, I have been assigned delivery of some medical supplies from Starbase 86 to the colony on Aldebaron III. Though I expect the mission to be fairly peaceful, the route I’m taking is through the heavily pirate infested Prancis nebula. End commanding officer’s log.”

Sh’ill stepped out of his chair, and entered the bridge. It was a small bridge, to be sure, but comfortable: A chair, console in front of it, regular viewscreen, and 4 consoles at the back of the bridge. Sh’ill proceeded to plop himself down in the chair, and call the Starbase’s command centre. “This is Liris to OPS. Requesting permission to leave station” “USS Liris, permission granted. Safe journey.”

As the permission from OPS came in, Sh’ill pressed some buttons on his console, and his ship started a full 180-degree spin. As soon as the spin was complete, he jumped his ship to warp.

A few hours later, near the Prancis nebula

Sh’ill slowed his ship down at the far end of the Prancis nebula, and turned his sensors on. Nothing unusual, though there were some blips, but Sh’ill thought nothing of it.

He accelerated his ship to half-impulse, and entered the nebula. The hydrogen and helium of the nebula started enveloping the ship, until it was completely enveloped, and the sensors were almost useless.

A planetoid 50 million kilometers away, in the heart of the nebula

“Ship detected.”

“Calculating course of action.”

“Assimilation possible. Dispatch a ship.”

“Yes, Queen.”

A small, black ship with lime green powerlines launches

Blip. Blip. Blip.

“What the hell is that? Computer, analyze.” “Holometric particles, approaching from all directions.”

Sh’ill slowed the Liris down to a halt. Suddenly, 20 ships encircled the Liris from all directions.

His ship’s bridge suddenly flooded with the message: “We are the Eka-Borg. You have 10 minutes to surrender your ship, or you will be destroyed.”

“Computer, shut that noise off!!” Sh’ill yelled at the computer. “That is impossible. They are using hyper-luminal waves to transmit it directly here.”

What Sh’ill didn’t know was that there was actually only one ship, all the others were being holoprojected. The projections were made possible by projecting into specific areas of the nebula, and refracting the photons to a selected location.

Sh’ill had to think quickly. In 10 minutes, either he would be out of the nebula, and on his way to Aldebaron, or he would be destroyed by whoever the “Eka-Borg” were.

“Wait, computer, pull up local energy reading on screen.” And the readings were just as he had thought. Holometric particles were being radiated by every ship.

“That means.. that every ship out there is holographic. That’s not possible, because something has to be projecting them. Computer, fact check me: either the ships out there are being projected by some ground-based projector, or one of them is real, just rigged to emit particles. Correct?”

“That is correct.”

Sh’ill was already on it. He knew that he’d have to stall for time to finish setting up the deflector.

Roughly 5 minutes later

“Your time is up. Surrender your ship. We must also ask that you stop modifying your deflector.”

“How the hell do they know? I’ve been masking every reading from this ship ever since I entered this nebula.”

“Hand over your ship. Now, or we will be forced to open fire.”

Sh’ill started stalling: “So, what are you doing here?”

“That is of no concern to you. Lower your shields.”

As the Borg was finishing up his sentence, Sh’ill had finished.

Now, let me explain how and why the Eka-Borgian was letting him finish. Well, mostly because he thought that he knew what he was doing, and so had prepared a defense. From Sh’ill’s point of view, all that the Borg was doing was setting himself a trap.

Sh’ill’s device was ready. As soon as the Eka-Borg had set the trap for himself, Sh’ill would beam the device straight into the phaser couplings, emit a wide-angle burst to disperse any holometric particles, and then he’d know which one’s the real ship. There was a slight chance that the device wouldn’t work, and he’d possibly be assimilated, but that’s a risk that he’d have to take.

He input the necessary commands, and was holding his finger over the button. Now, all that he could do was hope.

As Sh’ill pressed the button on his LCARS console, the phasers fired a wide burst and the ships around him slowly started disappearing. One by one, they were gunned down, and their holographic selves disappeared until only one remained, it alone looking a lot less threatening.

“Now let’s see what these so called Eka-Borg have to say. Computer, hail that ship.” The computer chimed as he said this, and opened a voice-only channel to them.

“Why have you decided to stop me here and threaten to assimilate me?” He asked, noting the fact that they hadn’t appeared on his viewscreen yet, but that was to be expected of the Borg, and evidently, of this… version of them.

“We are the Eka-Borg. Lower your shields, and prepare to be assimilated. You are outgunned.” The voice responded, still monotonally, but now with a hint of anger.

Sh’ill quickly moved to the helm of the small bridge, and sat down in the helm officer’s seat, getting ready to escape if need be. He started quickly an escape route into a denser part of the nebula, while trying to keep the attackers distracted.

“I find that doubtful, you have a quite a small ship, and from what I can see on my console, not as many guns as I do, and that says a lot for a Raven class.” He was toying with the other Captain or whoever, noting the fact that he heard only a singular voice, not a collective, not multiple people, just a single, highly robotic voice. As he said this, he finished programming the escape route, and now moved to look at the sensor readout to see what the other side of this comms channel was doing.

“Believe me, Captain, we have a lot more than you know… those sensors aren’t accurate, you know.” The Borg’s tone was almost… laughing, giggling, expressing… emotion? No, how could that be?

“Well, in that case, see you out by the rest of the fleet where you can go get obliterated. Best regards, Sh’ill of Cait Prime.” As he finished the sentence, he closed the comms as fast as he could, no doubt leaving the Eka-Borg confused, and then hit full impulse and a 180 back into the depths of the nebula, towards its core where it was the hottest and densest.

As he entered it, he noted the alert on his console trying to tell him of the increasing hull temperature, but he decided to ignore it, as going back out where it was normal wouldn’t be a good idea. The pressure continued to increase as the hull slightly, very slightly creaked.

“That can’t be good. Well, let’s just hope this doesn’t get any worse.” Sh’ill thought to himself, now looking out the viewscreen at the brown nebula with its strands of orange and red mixed in, making it both beautiful and terrifying, depending on if you know how the ship is faring against it.

Meanwhile, the Eka-Borg were faring much worse, their little but mighty ship made of scraps and whatever they could find without leaving the nebula. Pressure increased, hull creakiness levels increased, and finally they turned back towards their asteroid base, not wanting to blow up under the pressure.

Sh’ill stopped his ship in the middle, now the hull at 75% of the maximum pressure the hull could hold. He turned on his short range sensors, and set them to look out with all the power the ship could muster at the moment. Nothing yet, nothing yet, there, there the escaping ship was, leaking a bit of plasma out of its outer hull, a bit smaller than before.

“Guess they got smashed a bit like that human delicacy, the potato crisp.” Sh’ill pressed some buttons, and powered down all non-essential systems, including life support on the other lower 3 decks of the ship, not wanting to waste power.

“And now we’re going to study these people, Liris.” Sh’ill had already started talking to his ship, trying to get more comfortable with operating it. He made the sensors follow the ship right back to its base.

“Computer, show me where that ship is heading imposed on a map of the nebula. Also include all mapped asteroids and objects in the nebula. Put it on the portside secondary monitor.” As he said, he walked over to said monitor, and had a look at the map. It seemed to him that the ship was headed straight to an asteroid, almost as if it wanted to crash into it. As the little green dot was approaching the asteroid, it seemed that it was… landing on it? As he continued to watch it, he saw that it was in fact, not landing on it, but in it. He saw as it entered into the asteroid on the 3D map, and stopped.

After seeing this, he was left dumbfounded. “Are the sensors malfunctioning or something? Or have I had too many Nepada leaves?” He is, of course, referring to what humans call catnip, but he is unwilling to acknowledge the fact that he enjoys something so childish.

“Computer, confirm that the enemy vessel landed inside the asteroid, and if affirmative, perform a diagnostic of the sensors.” Sh’ill walked over to the center of the bridge, and sat down in the command chair, relaxing back in it, and putting his hands together, and joining his furry fingers together in something like a large fist.

“Affirmative, vessel has entered asteroid. Performing diagnostic.” After a long pause of about 2 minutes, and lots of data flashing by on the MSD, the diagnostic was complete. “Sensors are functioning with 100% efficiency, and are functioning normally.”

“Hmm. Cut power to anything non-essential, route more power to sensors.” Sh’ill quickly said to the computer, and moved back to the helm. What he was planning to do was to make a pass-by of the asteroid, and take some scans to determine what was going on in there.

He powered his engines back up, and started moving in the direction of the asteroid at full impulse, trying to get by as fast as possible. “Computer, as soon as this ship is within 300 kilometers of the asteroid, slow to .8 impulse, and when we move back out of this range, go back up to full impulse.”

“Confirmed, adding to flight plan.”

Sh’ill moved ever closer, still, it seems, undetected by the asteroid, a side effect of the half powered down state of the ship, he thought to himself.

As he flied within the aforementioned radius of the asteroid, something happened to it. It started glowing, and emitting large amounts of stray energy. Sh’ill knew what was happening.

As soon as he turned hard to starboard, away from the asteroid at full impulse, the asteroid exploded, sending flying pieces of rock everywhere, and not much else. Pieces of exploded technology were everywhere, now inactive, in shards.

“What the…” Sh’ill quickly turned to the aft camera, but didn’t see much there. There truly was only a small cloud of dust, some pieces of exploded tech and hunks of rock. Sh’ill turned the Liris quickly, and passed by the cloud once again. He beamed aboard some of the pieces of tech, and whatever was left of some of the drones.

As Sh’ill entered the now lit up transporter room to have a look at what he had beamed aboard, he was taken aback. The corpses were… definitely Borg, but something was off about them, they were… bulkier, they had more tech on them, and it looked more advanced than the Borg tech he had seen at the Academy, or in holodeck fighting programs.

He kneeled down to have a look at a dismembered head, and it was no ordinary head. The eyepiece was bulky, made out of some material that he had only seen in labs up until this point. Everything looked like that too, bulky, new, incredibly resistant.

Sh’ill sent the bodies to the cargo hold, which he then sealed off with Level-10 force fields and flooded with 50 liters of liquid nitrogen to make sure that nothing in there was moving or getting out, just in case.

After making his way back to the bridge, he set course straight to Aldebaron III, warp 8.

As Sh’ill carefully docked the Liris to the orbital base, even though he should have made the computer do that, he wondered to himself if the people aboard the station would understand and believe what had just happened to him in the nebula.

He docked the small ship, and walked over to the MSD behind his captain’s chair, and had a moment to himself. While using his tail to unconsciously groom himself and scratch his back a little, he thought: “If the Borg have returned properly, but now like this, will we have anything to protect against them? Well, I’m a Starfleet officer, they’d have to at least listen.”

The young Caitian brushed through his large mustache with his hand, and contacted the station.

“This is USS Liris, I have docked. I have medical supplies meant for the New Rainham colony on Aldebaron III, please transport them down.” Sh’ill quickly stated as he pressed some buttons at the nearby science station.

“This is Aldebaron III orbital station. Transporting now. Also, Captain, the station Captain has requested to see you.” A voice that sounded Bolian to Sh’ill responded overenthusiastically.

“What-” Sh’ill facepalmed momentarily. After all the abrupt chaos in the nebula and trying to keep everything in that cargo bay silent and dead, he hadn’t slept for an entire day.“What does the Captain want to talk to me about?” Sh’ill responded, now in a tired voice. He had just decided to let down the mask of “I have slept well.” and not put on any mask.

“I have no idea, sir. He just told me to tell you that he wants to see you.” The Bolian responded, with the same enthusiasm, but now with a hint of sadness in his voice.

Sh’ill facepalmed again, this time further, and leaned against the nearby wall to the right of the MSD.“Tell the Captain I’ll be right up. And tell me, are there any free quarters on the station and can I stay in them for a few days, provided I’m not given a new mission.” 

Sh’ill quickly leaned down against the science console, and pulled up the blueprints of the station and noted the guest quarters in the middle of the station.

The Bolian paused for a moment, evidently as he pulled up the list of quarters and where everyone was.“Yes, Commander, we have free quarters on deck 50. I’ll keep them reserved just in case.”

Sh’ill noted the enthusiastic voice of the Bolian, and squinted a bit, thinking about why he was so overexcited.“Understood. What’s your name, in case I need to contact you?”

“Oh, uhmmm… Ensign Bok Xasin, sir, Bok Xasin.” The Bolian stuttered for a moment, he had not expected the Commander to ask him his name. He made out a wide smile on the other end of the comms channel, and then quickly hid it as he was in the Command Center of the station.

“In that case, Lieutenant Commander Sh’ill out.” Sh’ill closed comms and grabbed his PADD as he stepped into the turbolift, and took it to the deck on which the airlock was located.

As Sh’ill stepped onto the station, and straight onto the quite large Promenade, but what was to be expected of a Narendra-class station.

Sh’ill walked over to the nearby Replimat, and grabbed a cup of Caitian Tea, which would normally be quite hallucinogenic, but the replicator has restrictions on that sort of stuff. As Sh’ill was moving to sit down at a nearby table, he bumped into someone.

“Sorry for that.” Sh’ill quickly looked down at his and the person’s into whom he had bumped into pants to check if he hadn’t spilled anything, and then looked up to notice a Vulcan doing the same, only he was staring right into the Caitian’s eyes, as if he was looking for some emotion.

“Commander..” The Vulcan slowly started as he brushed off some of Sh’ill’s fur off his yellow-coloured uniform and one gold pin and one black pin.“I recommend looking around before you walk and inevitably bump into someone.”

Sh’ill responded just as calmly.”I will take that under advisement, Lieutenant.”

“Good. Now, can I help you in any other way, Commander?” The Vulcan looked over Sh’ill’s face, and then back into his eyes.

“Yes, could you show me the way to the Command Center?” Sh’ill clutched his cup of tea harder, not wanting to spill it again.

“Yes, Commander. Follow me.” The Vulcan grabbed his PADD off the nearby table, and started walking in the direction of a nearby turbolift, making sure that Sh’ill could keep up with him.

As they walked through the Promenade, Sh’ill noted to himself that the station must get a lot of visitors judging by the jumble of people that they were walking past. There were a lot of Starfleet installations here. A medical center, Security office into which a raging Andorian was being dragged into at the moment, etc. Of course, there were also shops, cafes, restaurants, a small casino run by some questionable Tellarites, and so on.

As they finally stepped into the large turbolift together with some other people, and the Vulcan officer instructed it to take them to the Command Center, it finally occured to Sh’ill to ask what the officer’s name was, just in case.

“Lieutenant, what is your name?” Sh’ill looked over his shoulder, and said in his normal voice, not trying to make the question appear out of place.

“Delvok,” the Lieutenant responded while not even looking at Sh’ill, as if he was barely noting his existence. “That is my name, Commander. And what is yours?”

“Sh’ill. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Delvok.”

As he finished saying his name, they arrived in the Command Center of the station, and what a sight it was. At least 50 people, all coordinated, working to keep the station running 24/7. On one side, docking control working to keep the traffic flowing peacefully, on another 2 security officers coordinating policing across the station, and so on. In the middle, a large raised platform with a table with a blueprint of the station on it, being used by several officers. Delvok then stopped after they had walked a bit into the bridge..

“This is the Command Center. I shall now leave. Good day.” With this, Delvok walked to his station at the security part of the Center, and replaced one of the officers there.

After this, Sh’ill made his way to the raised platform, as that’s where the Captain would probably be. And, just as he had thought, he was there. An old Andorian, grey hair, coarse voice, the complete set. He was at present talking with another Andorian officer about one of the warp cores and how it needs repairs. Sh’ill patiently stood there, and after about 2 minutes of waiting, the Captain turned to him, and smiled a bit.

“Ah, Commander, welcome to Aldebaron III. We are pleased to welcome you. Now, as to why you were called up here. We are giving you 3 days of downtime here on the station while we get you a crew. Please, let’s go to my office, I don’t enjoy standing up here.”

As Sh’ill and the Captain were making their way to the Captain’s office, he stopped a few times to give out advice to some of the people working there. Finally, they made their way to the Andorian’s lavish office. A Federation flag in one corner, paintings of the station and Andoria elsewhere, and so on.

As the Captain sat down in his large chair behind a large wooden table, Sh’ill took his position opposite him, standing, preferring not to infuriate or insult him.

“Now, Commander, seeing as for now things have somewhat settled down and there are officers available, the higher-ups have decided to start giving crews to the previously barely crewed ships. This applies to you too. And thus, we are giving you downtime while we find officers for your crew. As I can see, you have already contacted Ensign Xasin about this.” As he said that, he grabbed his PADD, and quickly opened quarter reservations.“Deck 50, section 23, quarters Lambda-Yellow.”

Sh’ill nodded, and used his PADD to find where he needed to go, and then spoke up, now about what had happened in the nebula.“Sir, thank you for the hospitality, but there is something I need to talk to you about. Captain, there is… something that happened in the nebula. I came upon some Borg.”

As he said this, the Andorian Captain’s antennae shot up and pointed themselves at Sh’ill.“You came upon what? How… explain, now.” He switched to a stern voice, and now properly sat up and fixed his posture to focus on Sh’ill.

“Yes, I came upon some Borg, but they weren’t like other Borg. They called themselves… the Eka-Borg. They were more advanced, their drones bulkier, and so on. They don’t seem to be a threat for now. I will be compiling a report about what happened, and I will send it to Bravo Fleet Command. I also have some of their drone parts in my cargo bay, frozen and locked away.” Sh’ill then continued, with an audible anxiety in his voice about this new potential threat.

“Now, here’s what’s going to happen.” The Captain began after a moment of silence and careful consideration.“While you are here, these… Eka-Borg parts will be removed from your cargo bay and sent off to research them. You will speak of this to no one except command level officers and Intelligence officers. Is that understood, Commander?” He squinted as he stared into Sh’ill’s eyes, trying to understand how, why and what was going on.

“Yes, sir. Speak of it to no one.” Sh’ill repeated.

“In that case, 3 days and 3 nights on this station. After that, a new crew, a new mission and a clean cupboard.”