Later

Her breath caught in her throat.

“I never wanted to do any of this without you,” Taes said.

In better days, the fit of her uniform had the power to bring rigidity to her posture.  That assertive posture was nowhere to be found.  She had nothing left.  Leaning over a laboratory table, Taes’ palms were braced against the surface.  Because the illumination in the secondary med bay had been reduced by half, the glow from the table was the brightest source of light in the compartment.  Backlit by the table was a black and gold Starfleet combadge.  Clearly etched on the backside of the arrowhead symbol were the words ‘RAYCO, KELLIN’ and his Starfleet serial number.

Taes held her gaze on the badge intently, just as definitively as she kept her back to the wall of stasis units behind her.

“I don’t think I ever told you,” Taes said, chuckling grimly, “I never saw the value of a Number One when I was leading science labs.  What could they consider that I hadn’t already thought of?  My expectations were clear.  My deputies existed to implement my vision.  Their opinions were not required.”

After taking a deep breath through her nose, Taes said, “Starship command has been something else entirely.  It was you and me against the galaxy on that Raven back then.  Temperamental scientists rotated through our crew each week, but we always got them where we were needed.  I thought– I thought that’s how it was always going to be.  Kellin, you were so comfortable in your role as my mentee.  You thought I could unlock every secret of starship command for you.  You thought I had so much to teach you.”

“I’m sorry; I should have tried harder to convey how much I was learning from you.“

April 12, 2401

The opening of the exterior hangar doors offered a disquieting reminder of her place in the galaxy.  After only her maiden voyage, the Constellation had found her way back to the Avalon System of her construction.  The caged framework of an orbital drydock facility was visible beyond the stern of the Constitution III-class starship.  Although Constellation had put into drydock for imperative repairs, there was something oddly menacing about the clawing curves of the drydock, as if it were a metaphorical scorpion sitting on the back of a figurative frog.

At the edge of the main shuttlebay’s deck, where a protective forcefield held in the life support, a translucent hologram obscured the view of empty space beyond.  In that intersection between atmosphere and vacuum, the reminders of a hard-won history shared space with hope for the inscrutable bright frontiers to come.  The holograms relayed live videofeeds of starships flying a parade around Sol Station at Earth, along with an honour guard of starships touring the Avalon System.  Every starship served as a testament to the boldness of Enterprise NX-01’s legendary mission of exploration that marked the re-invention of modern-day Starfleet.  

Constellation would have flown proud among that parade through the stars if Taes hadn’t failed her crew so spectacularly.  The Deneb Sector had been invaded by a time-lost fleet of Jem’Hadar under a blanket of misinformation from Starfleet Command and the Federation News Network.   After captaining mobile laboratories, Taes had been entrusted with a mission beyond Federation space to uncover the origins of that Lost Fleet.  Although she had been savvy enough to discover the secrets of the artificial wormhole, the Dominion had stolen pieces of her ship and her crew along the way.  A Changeling infiltrator had robbed her of her executive officer and chief science officer.  Her inexperience in battle had robbed her starship of reliable communications, shielding and warp drive.

That was what kept Taes aboard Constellation when the Avalon Fleet Yards repair crew had come aboard.  The vast majority of her crew had accepted shore leave.  Many of them only travelled as far as Sato City on Avalon II, while the Romulan Free State contingent returned to Romulan space.  If they returned to her crew, Taes assumed, would depend on the RFS Science Ministry’s evaluation of the events that had resulted in Taes abandoning RFS mission commander Flavia to protect the lives of the rest of Constellation’s crew.

Taes squinted up at the holographic screens.  She couldn’t hear the speeches being relayed over the din of conversation around the shuttle bay.  Of the fifty-some-odd crew members who had remained aboard the ship, Doctor Nelli had gathered them in the shuttle bay to observe the festivities that were being celebrated everywhere else.

Organized in an organic cluster over a buffet table, Taes found coupes filled with a viscous green fluid.  That was it. There was green fluid to drink and nothing else.  She raised one of the coupes to her lips and she took a sip.  The scent was bracing and it tasted of chlorophyll.  

To Doctor Nelli, Taes remarked, “When you volunteered to organize the refreshments, I had expected more variety.”

“Ormachi nectar is our favourite,” Nelli said.  Their vocoder produced the statement in its typical monotone sing-song.  If the Phylosian took offence to Taes’ statement, Nelli showed no sign.  Rather, Nelli slurped at the contents of another coupe.

Then Nelli asked, “Why would we consume anything other than the best?”

Taes smiled tightly at Nelli.  She shook her head and she sipped at the nectar.  “I can’t think of a single reason,” Taes said, raising her glass to Nelli.

Turning to face the other gathered officers, Taes announced, “There’s still time.  One last runabout could get any of you to Sato City before nightfall.  You should all be enjoying yourself.  Constellation will be in safe hands with the fleet yard crew.”

Lieutenant T’Kaal reacted to Taes’ attempt at reassurance with a tilt of her head.

“Ah, you say that, Captain Taes,” T’Kaal said, “and yet how would you explain the spatial resolution of the crystal lattice couplings in Constellation’s neutrino imaging scanners?  Their quality was substandard upon their construction in this very—“

As if she hadn’t even heard T’Kaal speaking, Yuulik interjected, “You know why I’m here.”

Shaking her head at that assertion, Taes retorted, “What?  Are you jealous?  Because I mind-melded with T’Kaal.  Are you proving yourself now?”

Scoffing at Taes, Yuulik said, “How could I be jealous of walking bohrium?”  She waggled a dismissive hand at T’Kaal.  “As soon as you mind-melded with her, you fell asleep.“

“And if Yuulik’s here,” Nova chimed in, “I’m here too.  She’s my only friend in this century.”

“What’re you talking about?” asked Ensign Dolan, in his Zaldan brusqueness.  “Doctor Nelli ordered–“

Before he could say anything else, Nova took him by the arm and dragged him away to a group of engineers on the other side of the shuttlebay.  Taes raised her eyebrows and searched the vicinity for Doctor Nelli.

“What was that?” Taes asked.

It was Cellar Door who answered, “I don’t feel much like celebrating Starfleet.”  The exocomp flight controller hovered on anti-grav boots, sweeping closer to Taes.  “I already spent enough time away from my post during the synth ban.  I’m here for you, captain, because you won’t leave Constellation.  …We all are.”

Later

In the half-light of the med bay, Taes clutched Kellin’s combadge in her fist.

“I needed you, Kellin,” she said.  “On Frontier Day, I needed your calm centre.  Your voice of reason would have swayed me; you could have changed everything.  By then… I was hopeless already.  Lost.  You were my tether.  I was in no fit state to–“

“When they came for our young,” Taes said, “when they came for our best and brightest, I could see only one path forward.  The way was calling to me.  I knew I had to burn it all down.”

“My first duty was to destroy the starship Constellation.“

April 12, 2401

“You should not be here,” Nelli said.

Taes could hear Nelli approaching well before she even saw Nelli.  Her view was obscured by the protruding operations control panel she was sitting beneath.  Taes had excused herself from the party-goers in the shuttlebay, but she had only made it as far as the control booth on the upper deck.  Some minutes earlier, she had sat down under the console to collect her thoughts… or had it been to rest her feet?  She couldn’t remember exactly.  Nor could she remember for how many minutes she’d been sitting there.

The conversations of her crew, echoing up from the main shuttlebay deck below, sounded louder than ever.  Lost in her own thoughts, Taes managed to shut the noise out, but Nelli’s approach settled Taes into her own body again.  The deckplates felt especially hard beneath her.

The shuffling of Nelli’s four motor limbs carried her closer to Taes.  Nelli’s movements appeared awkward as if she was taking care not to step on Taes’ outstretched legs.

“I had not expected to find you like this,” Nelli said.  “Again.”

The words stung.  Like a thorn in the webbing of her fingers, Nelli’s accusation got under Taes’ skin.  It was such an intimate reminder of Taes’ inconsolable state after the Battle of Farpoint that Taes couldn’t acknowledge it.  She couldn’t even acknowledge it enough to even deny it.  Even denying it meant taking it on.

Instead, Taes lashed out.  “I know what you did, doctor,” Taes said, her words stern.  “Ache told me it was you; you were the intruder.  You transplanted Kellin’s garden into my quarters.”

Had Nelli been humanoid, Taes would have expected her to crouch down beside her or to summon Taes to her feet.  Taes kept waiting for Nelli to make eye contact with her.  But with no eyes, Nelli appeared perfectly comfortable conversing with Taes despite the large computer panel between them.

“Kellin’s flowers, his vines, they were abandoned.  All alone,” Nelli said.  “It was a ploy, I won’t deny.  You would be expected to care for Kellin’s charges, even when you could not find the strength to care for yourself.”

“I don’t,” Taes firmly said.

A peal of laughter bubbled up from the shuttlebay below.  Perhaps Rals or Dolan had told a joke and the humour resonated among the young officers.  For half an irrational second, it felt, to Taes, like they were laughing at her.

“Captain, all literature about Deltans reflects on your reverence for life in all its myriad forms,” Nelli said.  “Your curiosity for the variations in life is a desire like no other.”

“No, I don’t deserve it,” Taes insisted.  “I can’t be trusted.  I left them–“

Nelli’s vocoder made an error sound; something didn’t translate.  Then, Nelli said, “Stop whinging!  For your own wellbeing, captain, you cannot continue to–“

“I left them to die,” Taes hissed unabated.  “Yuulik and Flavia.  And–“

The LCARS above Taes’ head interjected with a whirring and a clicking sound.  Taes could see a red light being projected on Nelli’s body.  Even though Nelli was awash in red light, the computer’s notification sounds didn’t resemble the red alert klaxon.

“Captan?  Apologies?” Nelli said.  Whatever emotion Nelli was communicating, their universal translator presented every question with an intensely questioning lilt.  “This I don’t recognise.”

“What is it?” Taes sighed, leaning deeper into her alcove beneath the console.

“Fleet formation?” Nelli said.

“No, that can’t be possible,” Taes snapped back.  Gripping the edge of the console, Taes yanked herself to her feet.  The LCARS display in the control booth –in fact every LCARS display in the shuttlebay and the holographic projections on the forcefield– had defaulted to a notification that all ship systems had been overridden by the fleet formation system.  Constellation had fallen entirely under an external remote control.

“We’re in drydock,” Taes affirmed in frustration.  “We’ve been excluded from the parade formation.  Starfleet Command has no reason to commandeer this ship!”  

The fleet formation system had been a revolutionary enhancement in the ship’s construction; allowing the ship to be piloted by command in the event of a crew catastrophe.  Although she hadn’t expressed it aloud, Taes had nearly initiated fleet formation to send the remains of her crew safely home when the Jem’Hadar had thoroughly outnumbered Constellation in the Kholara system.  On this Frontier Day, Starfleet starships across the fleet were being remotely controlled to conduct their parade maneuvers.  Evidently, Constellation was among them.

“Computer,” Taes ordered, as she put a hand on the smooth surface of the companel, “Route all command functions to this location.  Command authorisation: Taes epsilon seven three nine.”

The computer offered no reply.  Nothing changed on the LCARS screen except for a flickering that looked like little more than interference in the optical data network.  The computer’s voice interface remained silent too.  Far more ominously, Taes’ officers, down below, had gone silent too.

Stridently, Taes said, “Computer!”

Four words.  The response was four words long and it didn’t come from the computer.  Taes heard more than half of her officers in the shuttlebay speak four words in perfect unison.

“We are the Borg,” they said.

Pushing past Nelli, Taes sprinted from the control room, out on the catwalk.  She flung herself to the railing’s edge, looking down on the shuttlebay below.  More than half of her crew were motionless, their faces mottled with elongating black veins: Rals, T’Kaal, Dolan, zh’Tilhar, Jayasinghe…  The others were questioning those silent officers, shaking their shoulders, waving hands in front of their faces: Yuulik, Nova, Pagaloa…

Those youngest ones with the marked faces spoke again in a unified voice. 

“We are the Borg,” they said.  “We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.  Your Avalon Fleet Yards will adapt to service us.“

As a transporter beam stole her away, Taes heard them say: “We are Borg.  Starfleet is Borg.“

“We only found out afterwards that a rogue faction of Changelings had infiltrated Starfleet,” Taes said.  “They were the ones spreading misinformation about the Dominion invasion of the Deneb Sector.  They lowered the Federation’s guard, taking advantage of Doctor Marl Trojet’s horrific mistake in unlocking that fleet of Jem’Hadar ships from their bondage in the Bajoran wormhole.  They put a Changeling aboard Constellation.  Aboard my ship.  Seeking revenge for the Dominion War, that Changeling reprogrammed our transporters, taking advantage of the development of young nervous systems.  The invasive transporter code made every young officer aboard Constellation susceptible to tele-assimilation by the Borg.  Their minds were primed to receive a signal, transmitted to them from the final Borg hiding on Jupiter, and they were immediately assimilated.  All of them.  It happened all over the quadrant, all over the fleet.”

Clutching Kellin Rayco’s communicator to her chest, Taes took two steps in the direction of the med bay’s largest treatment alcove.  She only made it two more steps and then she looked away, sucking in a ragged breath.  She leaned against one of the biobeds lining the central compartment.

Taes’ attempt to maintain a steady tone of voice required massive concentration and all of her energy.  The retrospective fear and disgust roiled through her being, but she was keeping that to herself.  That self-despair was hers alone to savour.  It was like a masochistic treat.

“The Borg among our crew beamed me and the other unassimilated into the observation bay of our drydock facility,” Taes said.  “Our going theory assumes the remnants of the Borg sought to assimilate the Avalon Fleet Yards.  Avalon was meant to be the birthplace of a new fleet of Borg cubes.  I was locked out of Constellation’s computer systems by the Fleet Formation software and out of the vessel itself by the shields being raised by the Starfleet drones.  Yuulik’s plan of attack was reckless as always.”

In an undertone, Taes remarked, “Although I’ll admit, I am proud of her for influencing crewmembers to follow her.  They were thrilled to initiate her plan, which involved loading Yuulik inside a probe casing and launching her at Constellation through the explosive decompression of a drydock airlock that was already positioned within the ship’s shield envelope.”

“My plan was far more reasoned,” Taes said, embracing the irony of her next words.  “I kitted myself in an environmental suit and rode one of the drydock’s industrial gamma welders, like it was a Pacifican sea-horse.  Destroying one of the nacelles was my mission.  I couldn’t stomach the Borg taking command of Constellation.  Before I could accomplish anything, Avalon’s own assimilated crew took command of the drydock.  The gamma welder lost power and Yuulik was locked in an airlock.  I fear the Borg were simply penning us until they would be able to synthesise assimilation nano probes.”

“In the end, Cellar Door succeeded in sabotaging the ship,” Taes said, retelling the events of Frontier Day.  “The Starfleet drones overlooked him because he was young enough to be assimilated but his brain lacked the biological components needed for this method of DNA assimilation.  Cellar Door managed to fool the warp core’s internal sensors into believing there was a coolant leak and a breach was imminent.  The computer had no choice but to eject the warp core automatically.  After all the damage the ship has taken the past month, most of the primary systems crashed.  A Starfleet crew in the Sol system managed to defeat the Borg at Jupiter and all of our officers were released from assimilation.”

“I’ve had to cancel shore leave for our crew,” Taes advised.  “The fleet yards are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of starships ravaged by the Dominion and the Borg.  We’re going to need all hands working together, supporting the yard crew, to mend Constellation until she’s ready to fly again.  It’s… it will be good.  Fitting.  Give the crew a shared purpose after what the Borg did to so many of them.  We’re going to have our own hands full, leading such a fractured crew from here.”

“I don’t…” Kellin Rayco started to say and then he stopped himself.  Taes’ executive officer was tall for a Trill.  His body was made for a Starfleet uniform; broad across the chest and sturdy legs.  Contained behind a forcefield in the med bay’s treatment alcove, Kellin was sat on the floor, hugging his knees close to his body.  His curly auburn hair was longer than Taes had ever seen it, hanging heavily over his eyes with his chin dropped to his chest.

“I don’t understand,” Kellin said with an edge of panic in his voice.

“We talked about this, Kellin,” Taes replied.  She kept her voice low, speaking in rounded, soothing intonation.  Rallying her strength, Taes took one timid step towards the forcefield again.  

Taes said, “They found you in a stasis pod.  You were locked away in an access tunnel aboard Deep Space 17.”

“Thank you,” Kellin said without looking up.  “Thank– yes, you’re right.  I do remember that.  I, uh, I don’t understand why I’m here.“

“Where else would Starfleet bring you?” Taes rhetorically asked.  She encouraged Kellin by saying, “This is our ship.  You’re the north star of our Constellation.“

Hugging his knees tighter, Kellin spat, “Plesae don’t mock me.”

Stepping back, Taes said, “Kel, now I don’t understand.”

“Did you bring me here to do it yourself?” Kellin asked.

“Do what?”

“Punish me?” Kellin insisted.  “Execute me?”

“Stop that!” Taes snapped back.  “They brought you home!  Don’t you understand?”

“Don’t.  Don’t make this harder,” Kellin said softly.  “If they brought me to you.  If you can see me, that means you know.  You already know.  I told him.  The Changeling with my face.  I told him things.  Too many things.”

Dropping to her knees outside the forcefield, Taes said, “I don’t care.  None of that matters now.  The Borg are dead.  The Changelings are gone.  I only care that you’re alive!“

“Don’t lie to me!” Kellin riposted.  He raised his head, but only slightly.  Just enough to level his half-lidded gaze at Taes.  “I gave them the prefix code.  I’m a traitor, captain!  I tried to stop– I promise– I tried to keep quiet– I did but– they kept– they wouldn’t stop, Taes.  Why wouldn’t they stop?”

As Kellin keeled over on his side, curling in on himself, Taes said, “You’re home now, Kellin.  You are my home.”