“You know, the bar gives those pips an extra pop.”

What mattered most to the lifelong explorer was not how much metal you wore on your collar, but how many worlds you visited in your career. Still, the newly promoted Fleet Captain Devreux smiled at his boss as she stepped onto the central island of the bridge. “I appreciate them, and all they represent… although I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to think of myself as a Fleet Captain.”

Fleet Admiral Reyes smiled back at her humble XO. When you looked at yourself in the mirror every day, it was hard to see growth, but the Gérard Devreux that fought alongside her over Nasera was nothing like the young captain that had come aboard the USS Khonsu seven years prior, and the work he’d done in the aftermath of the battle to help with Nasera’s recovery was nothing short of inspirational. “It was well deserved,” she assured him. “There were a couple of you that were long overdue.”

“Still can’t believe you had the audacity to give Lewis his fourth pip while under investigation,” chuckled Captain Devreux as he shook his head. “Or that you gave the old spook a command of his own.” He respected Jake Lewis for his devotion to duty, but he had a hard time seeing him as captain material. The man spent his days stalking the corridors looking for invisible enemies.

“Well, I wasn’t about to throw young mister Eidran to the wolves on his own. Captain Lewis has commanded a ship before, and he’ll do a stand up job again,” Admiral Reyes assured her number one, neglecting to mention that last time Lewis had been in command, he’d created a diplomatic crisis and ultimately been forced to resign. “And besides, since Grayson said Lewis can’t go anywhere, I figured we might as well strap him to a Captain’s Chair to keep him distracted.” Jake Lewis had been Commander Lewis as long as she’d known him, all the way back to ’88, but just as Devreux had shown growth as a leader, she had to acknowledge that Lewis actually had as well. She might still turn them both into picture perfect duty officers before she was done with them.

Admiral Reyes looked forward through the main viewer. The Alita-class USS Diligent hovered just off their bow like a predator ready to strike. Given recent developments, she appreciated having the tactical interdictor and her captain, Dorian Vox, as part of the new Polaris Squadron. She then looked towards the asteroid belt and debris field that lay beyond their bows. “Anything from Lewis or Lee?” The dense rock field was too tight a squeeze for the whale that was the Odyssey-class USS Polaris, but she knew the Pathfinder-class USS Ingenuity and Duderstadt-class USS Serenity were in there somewhere, hunting for any trace of that Borg signal that had woken up a couple weeks ago and then disappeared without explanation. That’s what had brought them to the graveyard in the shadow of Wolf 359.

“Nothing but space rocks is what Lewis’ last report said,” Captain Devreux reported. “I’m beginning to feel like we’re chasing ghosts.” After Frontier Day, rumors and reports started trickling in about Borg activity, but so far, they’d come up empty. “Everyone’s on high alert, and all these false starts, they might just be paranoia getting the better of us.” That’s what he hoped it was, at least. They’d been through hell the last few months, one gut punch after another, and the idea that it wasn’t over was not something he wanted to entertain.

“You might be right,” Admiral Reyes admitted. “But what if you’re not?”

Fleet Captain Devreux raised an eyebrow at his boss.

“Have you ever heard the old fable of the boy who cried wolf?”

Devreux nodded. He was familiar.

“Most people take the lesson that the boy should not have cried wolf when there was no wolf,” explained Admiral Reyes. “But what I take from it is that the wolf only strikes when you stop responding to the cries for help.” That’s why one had to be forever vigilant and to not disregard even the slightest hints of trouble.

That definitely wasn’t what Devreux had ever taken from the old fable.

“What if Frontier Day was not the end of the story?” Admiral Reyes concluded. “What if it was just the beginning? What if the Borg are not as wounded – or as dormant – as we think?”

Captain Devreux looked discomforted by the thought. He wanted to be done with the battles, the casualties, and the suffering. Between the Lost Fleet crisis and Frontier Day, there’d been far too much of that. He just wanted to get back to the mission of exploration that had brought him to Starfleet in the first place, the opportunity to discover incredible phenomena and cultures out there in the vastness of the great unknown. 

As it was though, he’d have to wait a little longer. A klaxon started blaring from the operations console. “Ma’am, I am receiving a distress signal from the colony on Beta Serpentis III,” reported the operations officer, pulling Admiral Reyes and Captain Devreux from their conversation. “Audio only.”

“Let’s hear it!” Admiral Reyes ordered as she spun on her heels like a coiled snake ready to strike.

“Beta Serpentis III to any ship within range. We need your help. The voice of the Collective, it grows louder with each passing day. The grip of the Collective, it tightens with each passing day. The day of our downfall, it is almost upon us. The Borg are coming. Please…”

And then the audio abruptly cut out.

“What happened?” Admiral Reyes asked as she looked over at operations.

“The distress signal, it just… it just stopped,” the operations officer explained as he checked and rechecked the subspace frequency. But he couldn’t find a thing. Captain Devreux joined him at the operations console, and he confirmed the same. The signal was just gone.

“Tactical, do we have anything on long range scanners?”

“Negative ma’am,” the tactical officer reported. “No indication of Borg activity whatsoever. No transwarp signatures, no subspace signals, and no emissions indicative of anything concerning whatsoever.”

“Well then, let’s get Beta Serpentis III on the horn,” Admiral Reyes ordered. “If they pick up, and everything’s good, we just continue on our way. But if not…” Her voice trailed off. No use speculating and making everyone more nervous than they already were. But still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was afoot. Maybe it was just paranoia borne of all they’d been through recently, but there was also something ominous about the word choice in the message.

Not even thirty seconds later, the asteroid belt on the main viewscreen was replaced by a frustrated looking Andorian who looked like someone had just warmed his ale. “How can I help you, Starfleet?” he asked gruffly without introducing himself.

“I was just about to ask you the same question sir,” Reyes responded kindly, ignoring his tone. “I am Fleet Admiral Reyes of the Federation starship USS Polaris, and I am calling in response to the distress call we just received from your colony.”

“A distress call?” the Andorian asked skeptically. “We sent no such call.”

“It mentioned the Borg…”

“The Borg?” the Andorian interrupted aggressively. “Forgive me – what did you say your name was… Reyes? – forgive me Reyes, but while what happened over Sol was tragic, I think you and your ilk, you’re jumping at shadows now. There are no Borg here. Just a few thousand of my brothers and sisters, and the ice. So much ice. Really couldn’t ask for more, to be honest.”

Admiral Reyes could not help but note that the man did not sound particularly saddened about the tragedy of Frontier Day, although should she really expect as much from the colonists on Beta Serpentis III? Probably not after what had happened in the late eighties. “You’re sure there’s nothing of concern going on?”

“As sure as I am that there’s snow on the Northern Wastes.”

“Well, we are relieved that you and your fellow colonists are fine, and that this was just a false alarm,” Admiral Reyes said with a forced smile, concealing her skepticism. “Is there anything else we can do to be of assistance?”

“No.”

“Alright then,” Admiral Reyes nodded. “We send our best, and if there is anything we can do, please don’t hesitate to call us back.” She paused, and then added:“Oh, and before I go, I don’t think I caught your name, sir?”

“Administrator Thoss.”

And without another word, the Andorian cut the channel.

“Mister Thoss was certainly a friendly gentleman,” chuckled Captain Devreux as he re-approached the command island. “What do you think he got in his tuber roots this morning?”

“Let’s just say things have been less than smooth with Beta Serpentis III for a while. Visitors don’t often visit their frozen hellscape, and they don’t offer a lot with economic value, so they’ve never gotten much from their Federation membership besides regulations and bureaucracy,” Admiral Reyes explained. “And they almost threatened to leave the Federation over the Synth Ban because, since their workforce isn’t exactly growing, they rely on synths for a lot of the colony’s basic functions.”

“I get that,” Captain Devreux nodded. “But I can’t shake the feeling there’s something more going on here.” Maybe it was paranoia getting the better of him, but something just didn’t feel right. “If I was a colonial administrator, and an Admiral from Starfleet called me about the Borg, I’d panic.” Indeed, that was why Fourth Fleet Command hadn’t started whipping everyone into a frenzy over the increasing signs of Borg activity. They didn’t want to panic the masses and risk public sentiment forcing a pull back as it had done in the eighties.

“I agree,” nodded Admiral Reyes. “Beta Serpentis isn’t even a day’s trip from here so I think it would be worth a visit.” Although she didn’t share, she was also aware that there was more to the Beta Serpentis system than just the icy colony world. It was also the home of a classified salvage depot and research lab set up to dissect the debris from the Battle of Wolf 359. “Recall the Ingenuity from the asteroid field. Commander Lee and I will pay them a visit while you and the rest of the squadron finish the work here.”

Captain Devreux frowned. More time staring at space rocks hunting for a Borg homing signal that seemed long gone. “Ingenuity? Why her?” The Pathfinder-class USS Ingenuity wasn’t the fastest ship, nor the strongest, and if she ran into the Borg, she wouldn’t put up much of a fight. “Why not the Diligent, or even the whole squadron?”

“Because we know there was a Borg homing signal in this asteroid field,” explained Admiral Reyes. “And if we know that, so do the Borg. I’d rather keep the squadron together here as much as possible in case they come to collect their lost goods.” Captain Devreux didn’t look comforted by the thought. “Meanwhile, this thing on Beta Serpentis III is probably nothing. The administrator, he was an ass, but he certainly wouldn’t want to be assimilated, so if he’s not asking for our help, everything’s probably okay. Commander Lee and I will just take a quick jaunt over there, check it out and be back on the double.”

“You’re going?” Captain Devreux asked curiously. He hadn’t expected that. Admiral Reyes had a habit of wanting to be where the action was, so her choice to go with Commander Lee to Beta Serpentis III surprised him a bit.

“Yes, because I think this might also be an opportunity for a bit of friendly outreach,” explained Admiral Reyes. “See if we can’t win over some hearts and minds while we’re at it.”

“But what if you’re wrong? What if the Borg are coming as the distress call said?”

“Now you’re starting to sound like me, Gérard.”

But that didn’t mean he was wrong.

“I don’t understand,” Captain Lewis snapped, the video link obscuring none of this displeasure. “We receive a distress call, and you’re taking the kid and her science ship in response?” It didn’t make a lick of sense to the old spook. Not with the Borg lurking.

“This thing with Beta Serpentis, it’s probably nothing,” Admiral Reyes reminded him. “But what you and the others are doing out here poking around the graveyard of Wolf 359, this might actually provoke them.” A Borg homing beacon had been activated here, and it didn’t just disappear of its own accord.

“Then why go to at all?”

“Because I’m curious,” Admiral Reyes admitted. “There’s not a hint of Borg activity out that way, and I trust that even Administrator Thoss doesn’t want to be assimilated, so it’s probably nothing, but that distress call didn’t come from nowhere. I want to know what prompted the call. It’s also an opportunity to extend a bit of an olive branch to our frigid friends.”

“At least take the Diligent,” Captain Lewis pleaded. He didn’t care one bit about extending an olive branch to a backwater colony, but what he did care about was the Borg. The Alita-class USS Diligent was a burly tactical interdictor, and Dorian Vox was a seasoned frontier CO who’d cut his teeth in the Romulan and Cardassian borderlands. If the Borg were involved, the Diligent would at least have a chance. The same could not be said for the Pathfinder-class USS Ingenuity and its baby of a CO who was still in diapers the last time a Borg Cube attacked the Federation directly.

“It was only a decade ago that the colony was threatening to leave the Federation,” Admiral Reyes countered. “Showing up with a warship sends the wrong message. As a guy who’s spent his life sneaking around, I’d think you’d get that as well as anyone.”

“Sure, but this isn’t a sneak and peek Allison,” Captain Lewis reminded her. “This is the Borg we’re talking about.” There was a deep sense of gravity in his plea. He didn’t understand why the Fourth Fleet was tiptoeing around the issue so lightly. They should have rallied the full might of Starfleet to respond.

“My mind is made up,” Admiral Reyes said as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I’m taking the Ingenuity, while you and the rest of the squadron continue to hunt for the Borg homing beacon.”

“Then at least take me with you,” begged Captain Lewis.

“You know I can’t do that Jake,” Admiral Reyes shook her head. How could he be so dim? As good a shooter as Lewis was, there was nothing one man could do if the Borg were involved. Plus, even if she wanted to take him, she’d been given strict instructions. “Fleet Command was very clear. No more skipping town for you until Drake is done with his investigation.”

“That’s a crock of shit, and you know it,” Captain Lewis snapped back. “There are more important things than some silly little JAG getting his rocks off interrogating me and my team for doing what needed to be done.” He would gladly lay his life down for the Federation, but sitting idle on account of orders from stupid bureaucrats while others risked their lives, that was where he drew the line.

“It is what it is,” Admiral Reyes replied flatly. She was not happy with the meddling of the new Task Force Commanding Officer, but she knew that if she ignored Grayson, the next call would be from Dahlgren or Ramar. She enjoyed relative autonomy, courtesy of her rank and tenure, but only so long as she didn’t become too great a thorn in their side. And Grayson had been clear where he stood on the matter.

Captain Lewis frowned. “You’re aware of Salvage Facility 21-J, right?” he asked, trying one last angle. “What if it is related?”

“It may well indeed be,” Admiral Reyes acknowledged. “And we’ll make sure to pay the old salvage depot a visit while we’re there.” The classified facility concealed within the dense gaseous upper atmosphere of Beta Serpentis IV had been where Starfleet had dissected and analyzed the Borg cube that had been destroyed at Wolf 359. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you and your team are staying put.”

“If you won’t take me or my team, at least take Dr. Brooks then,” begged Captain Lewis. “He’ll be far more familiar with the Borg tech in that facility than any of the children on Cora’s ship.”

“That much I can do,” Admiral Reyes agreed. It made sense to take the brilliant and seasoned scientist, but she didn’t appreciate how Lewis spoke of Commander Lee and her crew. They’d proven themselves in the Battle of Nasera, and then again with the incredible work they’d done rebuilding and supporting the people of Nasera III in the aftermath, and while they might not fit the Captain’s definition of an ideal officer, neither did he fit the definition of an ideal officer by most people’s standards.

“Thank you. And I just hope you’re right Allison.”

“As do I Jake, as do I,” Admiral Reyes nodded solemnly. Their conversation had reinforced the dangers of the web they’d found themselves within. “And if I’m not, do keep your ear to the ground and your hand on the throttle, because if things go south, and we may need you all, and fast.”

“I always will.”

Admiral Reyes hung up the link and glanced out the window. She could not shake the feeling that the Borg were out there, lurking in the darkness that lay beyond. She’d seen the reports. The Collective was up to something. But what? And was she making a foolish choice splitting up her new squadron like this?

“Can you blame them?” Dr. Brooks asked. He understood why the colonists had been so upset. He’d been upset too. The synth ban had been an impulsive overreaction to a catastrophe that, while horrible, hardly represented the entire potential of synthetic life.

“Not one bit,” Lieutenant Balan replied, shaking her head. “The population crisis has disproportionately impacted their outlying Andorian colonies, and Beta Serpentis III’s sub-zero summers don’t exactly attract non-Andorian residents. Synths were the backbone of their workforce, and then this far-off government they barely know bans them. Their reaction makes perfect sense, and honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t end up leaving.” The cultural affairs officer from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity had never heard of Beta Serpentis III before yesterday, but since coming aboard the Ingenuity, she’d been pouring through every record she could find. The Admiral wanted to extend the olive branch to this estranged backwater, but it looked like it might be a tall order.

“The Federation has a habit of banning that which it does not understand,” Dr. Brooks pointed out, thinking back to his own experiences. “They don’t have the stomach to understand that science doesn’t happen without trial and error.”

“You sound like you speak from personal experience?” Lieutenant Balan asked. She didn’t know much about Dr. Brooks’ background. No one really did. The man had returned from Sol with Admiral Reyes and Captain Lewis, and he certainly knew his way around the physics that underwrote their universe, but that was about it. Well that and the rumors. There were plenty of those floating around. But now she found herself together with him in a temporary office aboard the Ingenuity, so she seized on the opportunity to get to know him better.

“That would be an understatement,” chuckled Dr. Brooks. “I’ve spent my life being shut down by those who would rather stifle innovation than unlock the mysteries of the universe. Sure, once in a while, you lose a few lives, but lives are lost for all sorts of reasons. In what more noble a pursuit could you go out than unlocking the secrets of a post-Alcubierre subspace model or expanding probabilistically-compressed variations of the universe’s spatiotemporal waveform?” Or, in layman’s terms, experimenting with transwarp and temporal mechanics.

Lieutenant Balan looked at him awkwardly. Surely he was joking. Right? Right? No, he looked completely serious. “I believe there’s a beauty and a sanctity in life, Commander,” she replied, hoping he didn’t actually mean lives had been lost. “Surely, we can find a way to experiment that doesn’t have such mortal consequences?”

“That’s naive,” Dr. Brooks countered. “If Marie Curie had been more restrained in her experiments, it might have been decades before we developed our classical understanding of radioactivity, and countless more would have died without the lifesaving treatments her discoveries made possible. The same could be said for Rozier with his balloon, Hunley with his submarine, and Valier with his rocket, among many others.” History was full of innovators who forfeit their life in the pursuit of science.

The young lieutenant looked unconvinced.

“I’m not reckless though,” Dr. Brooks assured her. “Just realistic. Something the Federation most certainly is not. I spent four years in New Zealand because our uptime equivalents are no better either. They feared my incursions would erase their existence, but for all the visibility they have, they are as blind as we are. Doesn’t bode well for our future, does it?”

She just stared at him blankly. He’d lost her somewhere between New Zealand and uptime. “If you’re such a skeptic of the Federation, why’d you reup your commission then?” she asked. The man sitting across from her seemed less than happy with the institution they served.

“Because who else would hire an ex con like me?” the scientist chuckled, and it was only half a joke. “But seriously, and far more importantly, what you all are doing out here with ASTRA, this is how and where real progress will be made, and that’s where I belong. Out here, we have the opportunity at incredible discoveries that’ll never be made in a lab or derived on a whiteboard.” He also knew that if this was half the operation Reyes and Lewis implied it to be, he’d get to operate free from some of the onerous restraints imposed by the worrywart bureaucrats of the Federation Science Council..

“I guess I’m sort of here for a similar reason,” Lieutenant Balan smiled. “I’d never have experienced the hopeful art of Tzenkethi romantics buried deep within their post-war cities, nor enjoyed the deep baritones of Barak-Kadan reverberating through the Grand Hall of Har’Doth, if I hadn’t ventured from the rolling hills of Surrey.”

“I find it quite impressive you found a way to use hopeful and romantic in the same sentence as Tzenkethi,” Dr. Brooks observed. She certainly had a brighter way of looking at the universe than most. “But just know, this whole affair, it may disappoint even your optimistic take on the universe.”

“You’d be surprised,” Lieutenant Balan winked. “There’s beauty everywhere. You just have to know where to look.”

Alright, he thought to himself. No need to crush her bright world view. The universe would do that soon enough itself. He looked down at his PADD briefly to check the progress of their trip. They were getting close. 

When he looked back up, he could not notice something had changed in his officemate. Where there’d previously been a twinkle in her eye, now there was something else. 

Darkness. Fear. Terror. 

“What’s on your mind, Miss Balan?” Dr. Brooks asked empathetically. She’d been such a ray of positivity just moments earlier, but the look on her face now, it was as though someone had just walked over her grave.

“Don’t you worry they’re out there somewhere?” Lieutenant Balan asked as she looked out the window. Bright stars raced past them as the Ingenuity made for Beta Serpentis III at warp, but behind them was the darkness. All encompassing darkness. Darkness that obscured the blacker than black shapes that were supposedly once again on the move.

“Who?”

“The… the…” she fumbled with her words, struggling to even say their name. “The Borg.” She’d been trying to stay positive, to stay optimistic, to just enjoy an early morning conversation with their new crewmember, but it only took one quiet moment for her to remember the monster that was out there. Frontier Day had shown what they could do, and the thought they were still out there, it chilled her to her bones.

“They are out there, Lieutenant,” Dr. Brooks said flatly. There was no doubt of that. “The only question is what they’re doing out there.”

“How can you say that so matter of fact?”

“Because it is a matter of fact.”

“But what about Admiral Picard? Didn’t he kill their queen?”

“Sure, and so did Janeway,” Dr. Brooks explained. “But when one queen falls, another rises, as long as the Collective’s consciousness remains. You could say this makes them an invariant facet of our universe, and regardless of what we do, I can all but guarantee they’ll be here long after you and I are gone.”

“How can you be okay with that?” Lieutenant Balan asked. While the USS Polaris, USS Diligent and USS Ingenuity had been unaffected by the Borg signal, she’d heard the stories from those who’d been aboard the USS Serenity over Earth on Frontier Day. They were horrible, heartbreaking tales from young men and women who had their freewill stripped from them, made completely powerless as the Collective used their bodies to commit unspeakable horrors. There was only one way to put it. The Borg were the antithesis of everything she believed was good in the universe.

“I don’t think the universe cares one way or the other how I feel, so I try not to worry about it either,” Dr. Brooks shrugged ambivalently. “It simply is what it is. And, in the way the Collective is infinite yet unitary, diverse yet uniform, and complex yet simple, you’ve got to admit there is a certain sort of beauty to it.”

Lieutenant Balan shuddered. She certainly didn’t see it that way.

“How are you settling in so far, Lieutenant?” 

“The team is in excellent shape, ma’am,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz reported. “I can’t take all the credit though. My predecessor must have been one hell of a security chief…” His voice trailed off as Commander Lee’s face fell. “I… I’m sorry ma’am.” He should have been more delicate with his words.

“No, Lieutenant, it’s alright… it’s really alright,” Commander Cora Lee assured him as she tried to recompose herself. Lieutenant Commander Gorash had been an excellent department head, second officer, mentor… and friend. Along with Lieutenant Commander Sherrod Allen, they were the two legs that steadied her on her feet. But now Gorash was gone, and it wasn’t fair for her to put that on young Rafael Cruz. This was her trauma to manage, not his. “You were just doing your job and reporting the status of your department. I’m just… I’m just…” It had been three months since Gorath died in the Battle of Nasera, but still she struggled to find the words.

“Just trying to process your reality,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz filled in. He knew the feeling all too well. He’d been in the same place ever since the Lost Fleet reappeared. First, it was the death of Captain Gilliam, then the fight behind the enemy lines, and then being turned into a Borg drone over Earth. Reality was tough to process these days.

“Yes,” agreed Commander Lee. “Exactly that.”

“I get it ma’am. I really do,” Lieutenant Cruz explained. “Every day when I show up for work, I see his big shoes waiting to be filled. From all the stories I’ve heard, Gorash was a legend. Heroes like him and Captain Lewis and Admiral Reyes, they’re why I got into this line of work in the first place.”

“But why the transfer off the Serenity then?” asked Commander Lee. “Not that I’m complaining, but Captain Lewis is now in command of it. I would have figured you’d have preferred to stay there under his tutelage.” She’d heard larger-than-life stories of what Lewis and Admiral Reyes, their squadron commander, had done on the streets of Nasera, and news had traveled swiftly about their heroics during Frontier Day. She wondered how they did it all. She’d barely held it together for the space battle over Nasera, and she’d been relieved to stay behind at Nasera with Commodore Jori when Admiral Reyes had gone ahead. “I can teach you how the prefire chamber triggers the nadion effect you rely on for your phaser to work, but anything actually done with the tools of your trade, that would be far more Captain Lewis’ forte than mine.”

At the question about his choice to leave the USS Serenity, now it was Lieutenant Cruz’s turn for his face to fall. “I’ll be honest, Commander,” he admitted. “I just couldn’t look the crew in the eye after Frontier Day. Not after I turned my weapon upon them. Not after I… after I killed them.” Those memories haunted him, and he wondered just how many of them looked at him and saw the drone he’d become when he’d been too weak to resist the Collective’s call.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Commander Lee reminded him. The Borg signal affected anyone under a certain age who’d had the coding embedded in their genome. If you were in that susceptible cohort, there was nothing that you could do to resist it.

“I know that, rationally,” nodded Lieutenant Cruz. “But Commander, I’m a security officer. I take my oath to protect and serve very seriously, and in those moments, I did the opposite. I just needed a fresh start.”

Commander Lee nodded understandingly, but before she could respond, a chirp from her combadge drew them from their conversation. She tapped it. “This is Commander Lee. Go ahead.”

“Ma’am, you asked me to let you know when we were two minutes out,” reported Lieutenant Commander Sherrod Allen over the link. “That time would be now.”

“Alright, we’ll be right there,” Commander Lee replied as she tapped the combadge off and rose from her desk. But before she moved for the door, she offered a few additional words to the young lieutenant: “Lieutenant Cruz, regardless of the personal stuff we’re all working through, please know we’re thrilled to have you aboard, and we have nothing but confidence in what you will do here.” She meant it too. Rafael Cruz might have been young, but he had the pedigree with a dossier was full of accolades and proficiency marks off the charts.

The pair walked out of the ready room and stepped onto the bridge. Lieutenant J.G. Cruz relieved the junior officer at the tactical station, while Commander Lee stepped onto the central command island. It was a bit more crowded than usual with Admiral Reyes, Commander Brooks and Lieutenant Balan all present in addition to herself and Lieutenant Commander Allen.

“Report?” asked Commander Lee.

“Beta Serpentis III, bearing zero zero three mark one, forty AU,” came the call from the conn. At their present speed of warp 8, they’d be upon the colony in twenty seconds.

For a moment, there was a pause on the bridge. Any final preparations that needed to be made? “Yellow alert. Shields to full, and bring the weapons to ready,” Admiral Reyes ordered. If Commander Lee wasn’t going to do it, then she would. Sure, Administrator Thoss had insisted that nothing was wrong, and sure, sensors had turned up nothing of concern, but the words of the distress call still echoed in her head. A little extra caution never hurt anyone.

“TAO, weapons, shields, aye,” confirmed Lieutenant J.G. Cruz as his fingers dancing across the console, bringing the ship to yellow alert, raising the shields and rerouting additional EPS power to the phaser arrays. In the back of his head though, he knew full well that, if the Borg were involved, these were just token gestures. Their only real option would be to run. The USS Ingenuity was nothing more than a research cruiser, and they’d have little chance in a direct confrontation with the Borg.

“Coming into view now,” reported the flight controller. 

Everyone cast their eyes forward as the stars streaking by began to slow. Before them, the class P world of Beta Serpentis III came into view, the detached binaries of the system’s A-type main-sequence star and its K3 V binary pair twinkling in the distance beyond it.

“TAO, full scan, all spectra, all wavelengths,” Admiral Reyes ordered, her eyes narrowing as she stared ahead.

“I’m detecting activity consistent with Androrian agriculture and mining operations on the planet below,” reported the TAO after a couple tense moments. “But other than that, I am detecting nothing of anthropogenic origin within the system.”

“What about Beta Serpentis IV?” Admiral Reyes asked without explaining why. Due to the classified nature of the facility, it was likely that, aboard the USS Ingenuity, only she and Dr. Brooks had any foreknowledge of it.

Lieutenant Cruz didn’t know why the ask about the fourth planet, but it also wasn’t his place to question. He scanned it again and reported his findings: “Nothing out of the ordinary, ma’am. Just a dense mixture of hydrogen, helium and ammonia consistent with a class I gas giant.”

Curious, thought Admiral Reyes. Even with three decades of technological improvements, their sensors still could not detect Salvage Facility 21-J. But she knew it was there. She’d confirmed with Beckett’s office just last night that, while manned operations had been shuttered decades ago, the facility was still present and managed by an automated system. The fact they couldn’t see it was either a testament to the Corps of Engineers in constructing such a well-concealed facility, or it meant something had happened to it. She’d send a shuttle over later to confirm that it was still in working order.

“Stand down yellow alert,” Admiral Reyes ordered. Shields raised and weapons active would hardly set the aggrieved colonists at ease. “But maintain full band sweeps of the system at least once every fifteen minutes. If it moves, I wanna know about it.” Given the distress call, and more generally the reports of increased Borg activity, they needed to remain vigilant. Just in case there was a wolf stalking around out there somewhere.

“Yes ma’am,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz acknowledged. He didn’t need to be told twice. There wasn’t a chance in the universe he’d ever become a drone again. He’d sooner turn his phaser upon himself.

“Comms, get me a line to the surface,” Admiral Reyes ordered. “Let’s see if we can’t get some answers about that distress call.” She looked over at Lieutenant Balan, her ever-optimistic cultural affairs officer. “And hopefully mend some bridges while we’re at it.”

A few moments later, the now-familiar face of Administrator Thoss appeared on the screen. He looked just as surly and aggrieved as the last time they’d spoken. “Reyes,” he snarled. “I thought I told you everything was fine.” His tone left no doubt that he was unhappy to see Admiral Reyes and the USS Ingenuity in orbit over his colony.

“You did, but we thought, since we were in the neighborhood, we might just swing by anyways,” Admiral Reyes responded, her smile warm but her tone firm. “Just in case there was anything you could do.”

“If there was nothing of concern, then why the scans?” Administrator Thoss asked suspiciously. “Let’s just say, the last time one of your ships scanned our colony, it was because you didn’t trust that we were in compliance with that foolish Synth Ban.”

“Well, that ill-conceived ban is thankfully just ancient history now,” Admiral Reyes replied, trying to separate herself from those who’d come to the colony to enforce the Synth Ban back in the nineties. “But, you know, it never hurts to be extra diligent with the Borg stalking about.”

“There are no Borg here,” Administrator Thoss insisted, just as he had when they’d called the last time. “As I’m sure you see now.” He gestured around his utilitarian facility, which, while very industrial in construction, was very clearly not assimilated. “If you would have just listened, it would have saved you all a trip. And the taxes we pay. It’s not lost on me that a cut of our salaries go on to fund all the deuterium you’re burning in coming out here.”

Admiral Reyes did not point out that last time Beta Serpentis III assured Starfleet of something, it was proven demonstrably false when the compliance team showed up and found active synths still hard at work all across the colony. She had no reason to trust him.

“But since you’re here, let me give you some advice,” Thoss continued, although his tone and expression hardly made it seem like the advice was meant to help. “Ever since Frontier Day, you all have been jumping at shadows. I see the erratic movements of Starfleet ships on our long range sensors, and I hear stories and rumors from weary traders. It’s making the locals nervous, and it’s scaring away business.”

The recent Borg fears were most certainly not why Beta Serpentis III was struggling, but Admiral Reyes did not point that out. Instead, she took advantage of the door he’d just opened. “Well, if you’re worried about that, then let us come down and help you figure out who sent the distress call,” she offered. “Because if I was at the helm of a merchant ship, what we heard from that distress call would have caused me to flee the sector at maximum burn.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Thoss said firmly. “We went and checked up on it after your call. We found no evidence of a distress call having been made, but unfortunately, our systems are so antiquated that merely attempting to verify your story damaged them further.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Admiral Reyes feigned a frown. What a convenient excuse. “You know, since it sounds like we’re to blame, we’d be happy to come down and help fix up your comms gear… if you’ll have us?”

There were only so many ways he could try to dodge the Admiral’s advances before he’d have to give some ground, Administrator Thoss realized. And there was actually an opportunity here. “I think that might actually be very helpful,” the Andorian conceded as his expression softened. But then he added, just to salt the wound: “It has, after all, been quite a long time since your Federation did anything for us besides collect taxes.”

“We’ll be down in the next few hours with the equipment, supplies and specialists to get you sorted,” Admiral Reyes replied, ignoring the snarky shot at the end. It was also not lost on her that he called it her Federation. That’s how deeply dissociated the colony felt. It would take time to fix that, but it started with baby steps like this. “Is there anything else you’re in need of when we come down?”

“We’ll send a list.”

No ‘thank you’ or anything, but at least it was an opening. Plus, gracious or not, they were a Federation colony, and that meant they deserved support. “We look forward to being of assistance in any way we can,” offered the admiral kindly. Even small gestures could build goodwill. It would also let her put boots on the ground.

“And while your crew helps us out,” Administrator Thoss added, a smile creeping over his face. “Why don’t you and your command staff also stop by for a bite? I cannot promise a fine dining experience, but we do make the best icefish this side of Andoria.” 

Admiral Reyes quirked her brow. She could not conceal her surprise over the offer. 

“You’ve come all the way out here to make sure we were alright,” Administrator Thoss continued. “And you’ve volunteered your men and your supplies. It’s the least we can do in return.”

“That would be absolutely lovely, Administrator.”

“Then until later,” the administrator said, and then he cut the link, leaving everyone on the bridge standing there in a sort of stunned silence.

“Well, that went better than I expected,” noted Dr. Brooks, his arms folded across his chest as he played back the dialogue in his head.

Commander Lee looked over at her mentor incredulously. “You offered him a few supplies and got a dinner date out of it,” she chuckled. “Someday you’ll have to teach me how you do it.” But then she remembered she was talking to an Admiral, so she added, “Ma’am.”

“I’ll admit that went better than I expected,” Admiral Reyes agreed. “There’s way too much history between us for the frosty administrator to have warmed so quickly. There’s almost certainly something more at play.” Her decades of experience, both in intelligence and diplomatic operations, made her confident in that assessment.

“Oh, he was absolutely not being truthful,” Lieutenant Balan chimed in. The cultural affairs officer was relying on more than intuition for her assertion though. “There were clear signs.”

“How do you figure?” asked Lieutenant Commander Allen skeptically. Admiral Reyes and her lot seemed overly suspicious of everything. Like the supposed Borg signal. They’d spent a week searching the graveyard of Wolf 359 for it and turned up nothing. The Ingenuity’s executive officer was beginning to get a sense that this whole Borg scare had been dreamed up by people like Reyes. “He could totally be a gruff backwater administrator and still recognize the importance of maintaining ties. It doesn’t mean he’s lying.”

“It’s his antennae that give him away,” Lieutenant Balan explained. Contrary to what Lieutenant Command Allen assumed about Lieutenant Balan based on her association with Admiral Reyes, the optimistic young cultural affairs officer didn’t have a suspicious bone in her body. She wanted to believe everyone was good. But no one could argue with the administrator’s antennae.

“Come again?” Lieutenant Commander Allen asked.

“Didn’t you notice their movement during the latter half of the conversation?”

“I’ll admit I did not,” the executive officer conceded. But even if he had noticed it, he wouldn’t have known how to interpret it.

“Primitive arthropods rely on olfactory receptors in their antennae for a basic sense of danger,” Lieutenant Balan explained. “While the Andorian species has evolved far beyond a reliance on such primordial mechanisms, they instinctively exhibit a subconscious tic when uncomfortable – it’s a subtle movement, but it was absolutely there with Administrator Thoss from the moment he started getting nice with the Admiral.”

Lieutenant Commander Allen still looked skeptical, but another voice jumped in from the science console in the corner of the bridge. “Lieutenant Balan is absolutely correct,” Lieutenant Sh’vot offered. And he would know. He was an Andorian himself. “Administrator Thoss was lying through his teeth.”

“So what’s the plan?” asked Commander Lee. “If he was lying, we’re not just going to go down there… are we?”

“People lie for many reasons,” Admiral Reyes replied. “We are absolutely going down there. Send an engineering team down on the double for the comms gear, and once we get a list of supply needs from them, Lieutenant Commander Allen, you’re on logistics to coordinate delivery.” The executive officer nodded, and then Admiral Reyes turned to her cultural affairs officer. “Lieutenant Balan, you’re with me. Let’s see if we can rebuild some bridges,” she ordered. “And you too, Lieutenant Sh’vot.”

The Andorian at the science terminal looked up with surprise. “Ma’am?” He was more of a white coat in a lab sort of guy. Whiteboards, not boardrooms, were where he made his discoveries as a staff researcher with the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity.

“You seem to have a certain familiarity with the mannerisms of the locals, Lieutenant,” Admiral Reyes winked at him. “I’m hoping you can help us if anything gets lost in translation.”

“I would be honored,” nodded Lieutenant Sh’vot.

“Respectfully Admiral,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz, the Chief Security and Tactical Officer, said as he jumped in. “Since we are uncertain of their motivations, might I suggest that you remain on the ship while we…”

“You may not!” Admiral Reyes interrupted as she spun around on him aggressively. Then she remembered herself. She wasn’t going to heed his advice, but she didn’t need to chew the young man’s head off. He was just trying to do his job. “But what you may do is send a couple of your people with each of our away teams – as long as their weapons are not visible.” It was a reasonable precaution, as long as it didn’t make the colonists any more wary than they already were.

“Yes ma’am,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz agreed.

“Alright, then let’s get prepped. We head down at 1100 hours,” Admiral Reyes said as she stepped off the command island. “Oh, and Commander Lee, Dr. Brooks, can I speak to you both for a second?” The pair nodded and followed her off the bridge into the ready room. She had a mission for them.

The Battle of Wolf 359 shook the Federation to its core. It was the moment Starfleet realized its mortality, igniting a new era of technology advancement and a hunger to understand the threat posed by the Borg. Salvage Facility 21-J played a key role in this. Built under a veil of secrecy and established in an uninteresting binary star system just a quick warp jump from Wolf 359, it was where Starfleet dissected the remains of the Borg Cube destroyed by the Enterprise-D. At the outset, the goal was to better understand their foe, but as time went on, it became a source of innovation itself, and even thirty five years later, its existence was a closely guarded secret.

Dr. Tom Brooks had prior knowledge of the facility. As a young research scientist specializing in temporal mechanics, he’d been part of a team that visited the facility in early 2374 to better understand the Borg’s temporal capabilities after their incursion a year prior. This trip, and his continued interest in the Borg over the intervening three decades, made him an easy choice for the mission. Commander Cora Lee, on the other hand, had no prior knowledge of the facility, and what she knew of the Borg was little more than could be found in textbooks. However, as the commanding officer of a starship, she had the clearance level to be read in on it, and as a prodigious engineer by trade, she was as good a choice as any for such a mission.

It was for this reason that the unlikely pair found themselves sitting aboard a Type-11 shuttle slipping quietly across the binary star system to intercept the elliptical trajectory of Beta Serpentis IV. At Admiral Reyes’ insistence, they kept their emissions at minimum and stayed radio silent to avoid the possibility of attracting unwanted attention.

“Fascinating that a place like this could exist in secret so close to the core of the Federation,” Commander Lee commented as she guided the shuttle into the stratosphere of the class I gas giant. As they descended towards the tropopause, temperature and pressure began to rise, and the shuttle shook as its inertial dampeners adjusted.

“A good many places like this exist,” Dr. Brooks replied. “Even on Earth itself.” Like that black site that he and Reyes’ team had assaulted the year prior. He glanced over and noticed the discomfort that had washed over the young commander’s face. “In many cases, secrecy and proximity must coexist, and this is one of those places.”

“I guess… but it’s just all sort of cloak and dagger, isn’t it?”

“As it must be,” nodded Dr. Brooks. “Some research simply can’t be disclosed to the public. With our weak stomached politicians and bureaucrats, can you imagine the uproar if they’d known we were tinkering with active Borg systems? Or that they influenced our own developments?” He didn’t know the full extent of what had been done at the facility, but even his reason for visiting would have turned many heads. What they didn’t know didn’t hurt them, and in fact, the insights and innovations it yielded went toward protecting them. “And think about what foreign intelligence services might have done if they knew a place like this existed. As far as the public can ever know, there’s nothing left except what remains in the graveyard of Wolf 359.”

“Do you think the colonists of Beta Serpentis III have any idea?”

“Of course they do. The colony only exists because of this facility,” Dr. Brooks explained. “Many of them were part of the team that built and maintained the facility. After it was decommissioned, some just stayed put. Beta Serpentis III is a frigid hellhole, sure, but when has that bothered the Andorians?” The non-Andorians mostly left quickly though.

“Admiral Reyes said this facility has been administered by automated systems since it was shuttered in the eighties,” Commander Lee said as she guided the shuttle deeper into the troposphere and had to circumnavigate a particularly dense ammonia storm. “But who does all the hands-on stuff? The stuff you gotta get out and walk around for?”

“Synths.”

“What about during the ban?”

“Synths,” Dr. Brooks repeated, noting the confused look on his colleague’s face. “Remember Commander, this facility doesn’t exist. So who would say anything about it? And besides, no organic wants to spend a day longer here than they have to, and frankly, even at their worst, synths were never the most dangerous thing contained within its walls.”

“I see…” Commander Lee nodded as a bolt of lightning cracked off their portside, courtesy of the friction formed by ammonia-H2O condensation colliding with massive cumuliform updrafts from deep below. But for as impressive as it was, electrostatic discharges were the least of her worries. She wasn’t sure what made her more uncomfortable, the cavalier way Dr. Brooks spoke of off-the-books research activities, or the way he described the facility they were about to visit.

She didn’t have much time to deliberate on that thought though. Her console began to beep, alerting her that it had picked up a large solid mass up ahead as they continued their descent.

“Looks like we’re coming upon Salvage Facility 21-J now,” Commander Lee reported as she looked forward. What she saw surprised her. “Woah, it’s massive.” It was bigger than many standard starbases, but looked nothing like any of them. It was something totally different.

“It is indeed,” smiled Dr. Brooks. He was amused by her reaction as he’d had much the same reaction the first time he saw the place. “It had to be large enough to house the debris of an entire Borg Cube, and it was designed specifically to survive the conditions down here.”

Commander Lee worked the controls, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t get a clear reading from the sensors. “I’m detecting a mix of Federation and Borg emissions, but beyond that, I can’t tell you much. There’s a metric ton of interference, courtesy of the gravimetric shear, the dense gaseous atmosphere, and the materials of the facility itself.”

“Exactly as it was meant to be,” Dr. Brooks nodded. As he understood it, one of the hardest aspects of building the place had been keeping it from being crushed by the pressure, sheared by the storms, or corroded by the harsh elements, but a benefit to its construction was that the environment and the materials came together to make it highly resistant to surveillance.

Commander Lee brought the shuttle in closer, making a tight pass around the facility as she surveyed its exterior. “Visual inspection suggests nothing out of the ordinary… but to be honest, I don’t know what I’m looking for.” It was unlike any Starfleet starbase she’d ever seen, lacking any design queues whatsoever. As it wasn’t intended to be seen by anyone, who cared what it looked like? It was all function and no form, just a massive amalgamation of sheeting, conduit, bulkheads, and industrial materials. Not all that different from the way the Borg designed things.

“Well then, I guess it’s time we go aboard,” Dr. Brooks said, gesturing towards a pair of blast doors cut into the superstructure. He worked the controls at his console, sending the codes that had been provided to them by Beckett’s office, and the blast doors began to open. “The system has cleared us to dock. Take us in.”

Commander Lee took a breath and guided the shuttle in. What struck her most was the darkness. There were no bright flood lights, and in fact, there was basically no lighting at all besides the light refracting off the atmosphere outside. It felt more akin to flying into a dark cave than a shuttlebay, and she had to keep the shuttle’s running lights on just to see her landing zone.

As she settled the shuttle on the deck, the blast doors behind them began to shut behind them. Commander Lee couldn’t help but feel like they were being locked in. That, coupled with the darkness, made her shudder.

“It’s an airlock style design,” Dr. Brooks explained, noting her reaction. “Primitive, sure, but ammonia corrodes emitters over time. Blast doors were just a more effective choice than traditional forcefields.” It wasn’t pretty, but it was practical.

As the atmospheric converters in the shuttlebay extracted the ammonia-rich atmosphere and replaced it with human-breathable air, Dr. Brooks got up and headed for the back to prep their equipment. Commander Lee, meanwhile, began the power down sequence, and as she waited, she looked out the front window. At least when the blast doors had been opened, there’d been some ambient light flittering in. Now, besides the narrow beam cast by the shuttle’s own lights, it was just dark. So dark. Almost completely black, besides an eerie deep green backlighting coming from a source she couldn’t quite place.

And then suddenly, she saw movement. 

“Hey doc,” Commander Lee said nervously. “I thought you said the facility was unoccupied.”

“I did,” Dr. Brooks replied as he clambered around in the rear hold. “Only synths. Why?”

“Because we’ve got company. Organic company.”

Dr. Brooks poked his head back out of the rear hold, and immediately he saw what she was talking about. There were three Andorians emerging from the shadows, looking very not synthetic. “Well, I will say this is not what I expected…” He looked down at a console and confirmed the atmospheric converters had finished doing their work. “I guess we should go outside and say hello.”

Cautiously, the pair climbed out of the shuttle. 

“This facility is off limits by the order of Starfleet Intelligence,” the Andorian declared firmly, his voice cutting through the eerie silence and echoing across the shuttlebay. “State your purpose.”

“I am Commander Cora Lee, Commanding Officer of the Starfleet vessel USS Ingenuity, and this is Dr. Brooks, Research Scientist from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity,” Commander Lee explained. “We are here on official Starfleet business.” As she spoke, Dr. Brooks discretely checked his tricorder. Something wasn’t right.

The Andorian’s eyes narrowed on the Commander: “And that business would be what, exactly?”

“We are here to confirm that Salvage Facility 21-J remains in good working ord…” Commander Lee tried to explain.

“Under whose authority?” the Andorian interrupted, stepping closer to her.

The aggressive attitude of the Andorian was off putting. Commander Lee took a step back, unsure how to respond, but Dr. Brooks stepped forward as he secured his tricorder back in his utility belt. “Under the orders of Starfleet Intelligence, you numbnut,” he answered, watching the Andorian’s body language closely as his tone shifted from coy to aggressive. “The same Starfleet Intelligence that said this facility was off-limits to all, including you.” He set his hand on his sidearm. “And so now I must ask you the same: under whose authority are you here?”

The Andorian looked caught aback by the shift in momentum. For a moment, he just stood there. And then, suddenly, he reached for something concealed within his jacket. 

But Dr. Brooks was faster.

By the time the butt of a phaser pistol had begun to emerge from the Andorian’s jacket, Dr. Brooks already had his at the ready. He squeezed off a shot before the Andorian could even get his fully drawn. The other two Andorians began to move, but Dr. Brooks didn’t wait to see what would follow. He simply squeezed off two more shots.

“Wa… wa… what did you just do?” Commander Lee stuttered.

“I kept us alive,” Dr. Brooks answered flatly as he swept the room with his phaser, looking for any other targets that might present themselves.

Commander Lee just stood there, mouth agape. Why was it that every mission since linking up with the USS Polaris seemed to go this way? And how was it that even Admiral Reyes’ lab coats shot first and asked questions later? This was definitely not what she had envisioned when she was told the USS Ingenuity would be linking up with the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity. Where were the stellar phenomena and ancient ruins?

“Didn’t you notice his antennae?” Dr. Brooks asked. After what Lieutenant Balan had explained, it had been a giveaway to their malintent – and, of course, what he saw on his tricorder.

“No… but what if he was just trying to safeguard the facility?” Commander Lee asked. These colonists, who they knew felt estranged from the Federation, could have totally just taken it upon themselves to protect the facility. “If I was doing that, and two people came aboard I didn’t expect…”

“Look at your tricorder, Cora,” Dr. Brooks insisted. Commander Lee reached down to her belt and opened it up. The readings were strange, but so were the readings they’d taken from the shuttle. She couldn’t really make heads or tails of them. “Those readings you’re seeing, the reason they’re confusing is they’re not separate Starfleet and Borg emissions patterns. Those readings, they’re fused together.”

“You mean…” Her voice trailed off in terror.

Dr. Brooks nodded grimly. Things had just become significantly more complicated. But then they heard the rhythmic sounds of footfalls coming from somewhere deep within the facility. A quick check of the tricorder confirmed that more Andorian lifesigns were headed their way. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”

“How?” Commander Lee asked, looking back at the blast doors. They were sealed shut to keep the vacuum out, but they’d also keep them sealed in. “Somehow I don’t think those codes Beckett’s office gave us are going to work anymore.”

“We’re not going out,” Dr. Brooks replied as he flipped the underbarrel taclight on and moved away from the shuttle into the darkness. “We’re going in.” Commander Lee had no choice but to follow. They were now trapped aboard Salvage Facility 21-J with an unknown number of hostile Andorians and a Cube’s worth of Borg technology.

Relentless hail battered the hull, and harsh winds tossed the shuttle around like a ragdoll. White knuckling the armrest, Lieutenant Balan took a deep breath. And then another. And another. It was all she could do to try and avoid losing her breakfast over the bulkhead. 

So engrossed in holding herself together, she didn’t even notice the shadow of a woman pass over her until a reassuring handle settled on her shoulder. “You ok Emilia?” Lieutenant Balan looked up to see Admiral Reyes standing there, completely steady on her feet even as the shuttle rocked aggressively. There was no judgment in the flag officer’s eyes, just a look of compassionate understanding.

“Was it that obvious, ma’am?” Lieutenant Balan asked meekly, embarrassed that her discomfort had drawn the attention of their squadron commander.

“Just a little,” Admiral Reyes smiled kindly. “But don’t worry, we’ll be on the ground shortly.” The admiral gave Lieutenant Balan a gentle pat on the back and then continued her walk through the cabin. As usual, Admiral Reyes was unflappable. Lieutenant Balan wished she had a tenth of that fortitude.

“Don’t worry Lieutenant,” said Lieutenant Sh’vot from the jumpseat next to her. “The tensile strength of our duranium hull far exceeds the maximum shearing forces a storm on a class P world can produce.” Like Lieutenant Balan, the geophysicist from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity didn’t spend a lot of time flying getting thrashed around on rough orbital approaches, but unlike her though, he had a rational basis of scientific fundamentals to fall back on and calm his nerves.

While Lieutenant Balan could not articulate the difference between tensile strength and yield strength, her colleague’s words calmed her a bit. “Remind me again why we couldn’t just beam straight down?”

“The rich lanthanide composition of the Beta Serpentis III’s outer crust makes it an excellent source of rare metals, but it does a number on the transporter targeting scanners,” Lieutenant Sh’vot explained. “If they had a working receiver pad down there, we’d probably be okay, but the colony’s infrastructure is so dilapidated that this bumpy ride is the only way down.”

Ten minutes later, the shuttle settled on a snowpatch in the town square, and after a mad dash through the blistering cold, Admiral Reyes, Lieutenant Balan, Lieutenant Sh’vot, and four other officers from the USS Ingenuity stepped into the reception room of the colony’s main administration building. Plates of icefish, tuber roots, and other local delicacies lined the walls, and nearly two dozen colonists had come to meet the Starfleet delegation.

“Welcome to our humble home,” Administrator Thoss began with a smile. “It is not often we have guests… and even less that they come without ulterior motives.”

Whether in reference to Starfleet’s prior visits to enforce the Synth Ban, or whether meant as a warning for their present visit, Admiral Reyes could not help but notice the bite in Administrator Thoss’ words. And truthfully, he wasn’t wrong either. Even as she came to break bread, she had an engineering team discretely sifting through the colony’s subspace communications system under the pretense of helping fix their equipment.

“And on behalf of all of us,” Administrator Thoss continued. “I would like to thank you for the assistance your presence provides.”

Admiral Reyes found the phrasing odd, but she appreciated the sentiment and responded in kind: “And on behalf of me and my crew, let me say that we are honored to be welcomed into your home, and we look forward to learning your stories and building lasting friendships as we serve the important needs of your community.” She also wanted an answer as to the origin of that distress call.

Introductions and pleasantries were exchanged, and then everyone helped themselves to plates of food and broke off into smaller groups to mix and mingle. 

Lieutenant Sh’vot, the only Andorian among the Starfleet delegation, found himself talking to a young colonist with a beefy build and worn skin from his time in the elements. “I love roaming the icefields hunting krill-beasts,” the young man shared. “But sometimes on a clear night, I look up and wonder what it’s like where we came from.”

“What it’s like on Andoria?” asked Lieutenant Sh’vot, to which he received a nod. “Climatologically, it’s not all that different from here. You’d probably feel very at home there.”

“I don’t know… I hear that people out there…” the kid stuttered nervously. “I hear they’re only out for themselves.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard that out there, people act on their own accord, in their own self interest, in disunity without a guiding authority. I’m not sure I’d ever want to experience such a dystopia.”

The words seemed strange. That certainly was not how Lieutenant Sh’vot would have described the universe beyond the tundra of Beta Serpentis III. Maybe it was the kid’s experience growing up on an isolated backwater where your survival depended on those around you? Or maybe it was just due to having spent his entire life with only a few thousand like-minded people? Still, the look of terror that washed across his face seemed out of proportion even to that.

Nearby, Lieutenant Balan found herself in an equally curious conversation with another young man, this one a specialist who manned the sensor grid for the colony. “Your starships, I watch them on my scopes. There must be hundreds – thousands even – but what I can’t figure out is what are they all doing out there?”

“They’re doing all sorts of things,” Lieutenant Balan explained. “Starfleet has a multi-purpose mission to support the people of the Federation through exploration, discovery, diplomacy, defense, and humanitarian activities, among others. I could not hazard a guess as to what they’re all doing.”

“And what about you? What does your ship do?”

“We are explorers, researchers and diplomats on a mission to discover the infinite depth and diversity of our universe,” Lieutenant Balan answered with a twinkle in her eyes. “What more could you ask for?”

The Andorian looked absolutely confused. “Why would you seek diversity?” He could not figure why anyone would willingly seek out such things.

For as confused as the Andorian was, now Lieutenant Balan was confused as well. There was no mission more important and no experience more incredible. The depth and diversity of the universe is what made it beautiful. She tried to explain it, but she didn’t make much progress. It was almost as though they were speaking two completely different languages. Maybe it was because all the young Andorian had ever known was a homogeneous colony composed almost completely of Andorians.

As opposed to the curiosity of the young Andorians in the room, the older farmer that found himself opposite Admiral Reyes was far less curious and far more skeptical. “When you leave, which I am sure will come in the not too distant future, will we ever see you again? Or will you be like the sleetgulls?”

“The sleetgulls?” Admiral Reyes asked, not understanding the reference.

“The sleetgulls from the western shore fly in, shit everywhere, and leave,” explained the old man. He had seen too much to hold anything back at his old age. “And then we’re left to clean up their mess. That’s what your colleagues did, the last ones that came through here.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Synth Ban, Admiral,” explained Administrator Thoss as he came up alongside the pair. “People like Ch’loran here, they slaved over their crops, but without the synths to tend to the fields, we lost more than we saved. It takes the work of three men to feed one here on Beta Serpentis III, and we don’t have the luxury of unending energy to just replicate all our needs, so your little decree, it almost killed us. It’s simple math. Only with a synth workforce do we have enough of a workforce to feed our people.”

“And your people, they brought no solutions. They only took away the ones we had,” the farmer grumbled, a mix of weariness and frustration in his eyes. “We considered leaving, but we would lose our soul in doing so. And so instead we suffered.” Those years, they’d been impossibly hard, and he wanted her to understand that. “Which brings me to my other question. What brought you out here, Admiral?”

“An opportunity to connect with you all,” smiled Admiral Reyes.

“Now, now, Admiral,” Administrator Thoss countered condescendingly, almost like a teacher schooling a student. “That isn’t the whole truth, now is it?” He’d just received news that confirmed his suspicions.

“Excuse me?” Admiral Reyes asked, somewhat taken aback by the shift in tone.

“What I think you mean to say is that you came here to distract us with gifts and kind words,” Administrator Thoss replied as his eyes narrowed on her. “While your people stick their noses where they don’t belong.”

And suddenly, the phasers were out, a dozen or more, drawn in synchronicity by the colonists of Beta Serpentis III and leveled at their banquet guests. The movement was so fast that even the two undercover members of Lieutenant Cruz’s security team had no chance to respond, and Admiral Reyes was thankful for that. If they had responded in kind, it might have provoked an escalation, but as it stood now, maybe there was still a peaceful way out of this.

“Let’s just take it easy, everyone,” Admiral Reyes encouraged as she raised her hands. She could feel the barrel of a phaser pressed into her back, and she was now staring down the barrel of another as the old farmer leveled his own sidearm at her. “There’s no need to escalate this further.”

“Wise words, Admiral. Do as we say, and this ends in salvation for all.”

“Sir, I’m picking up massive interference across all subspace carrier frequencies,” reported Ensign Kellan Seltzer from the operations station. “When I ping our nearest subspace relay, I can’t get an ACK back, and even the FNN feed is down.”

“Not shedding a tear over the FNN,” chuckled Lieutenant Commander Sherrod Allen in response to the FNN comment. The aged executive officer had never been a fan of organized media, but ever since the Lost Fleet crisis, his distrust for it had only grown. That said, it broadcast on a fairly wide band so the idea it was down meant a broad spectrum issue. “What about our command frequencies?”

“They’re down too, sir.”

That was far more concerning. Without those frequencies, the USS Ingenuity could not communicate with its away teams, nor with the rest of the Polaris Squadron. If something went wrong on the surface of Beta Serpentis III or back in the graveyard of Wolf 359, they would be none the wiser, and if something bad befell them, they wouldn’t be able to call for help. All things considered though, Lieutenant Commander Allen was not a man prone to panic. In his two decades as a Starfleet officer, he’d seen many things, and few were worthy of the panic they caused. “Can you cut through the interference?” Lieutenant Commander Allen asked calmly.

“Not easily. The interference appears to be constantly remodulating with random harmonic variations,” explained Ensign Seltzer as he ran a multivariate regression in the background. “It will take time to determine if there’s a way to predict the shifts and underwrite our signals with a destructive interference pattern.”

“There would have to be a pattern, wouldn’t there?” asked Lieutenant Commander Allen. “It wouldn’t be very useful to just blanket the carrier wave otherwise, would it?”

“If its only purpose was to black out communications, it would be effective enough,” Lieutenant J.G. Rafael Cruz volunteered from tactical. He too had realized the implications, and his eyes darted swiftly across his displays, searching for anything he might have missed earlier. “I don’t know what could produce a signal of this strength, but I suggest we go to yellow alert.”

Lieutenant Commander Allen didn’t disregard the suggestion, but he also didn’t leap to implement it. The latest scans from their long-range sensors showed nothing of concern, and they were deep within Federation territory over a backwater colony in an insignificant system. It was hard to imagine there was anything waiting for them out there. “What’s the source of the interference, Ensign?”

One would think that tracing powerful emissions would be easy, but the problem is that, when projected as this one was, it caused reverberation all around the system that made it sort of look like it was coming from everywhere. It took a few moments, but eventually Ensign Seltzer narrowed it down: “It’s coming from a high power signal originating from within the atmosphere of Beta Serpentis IV.”

Lieutenant Commander Allen looked over at Lieutenant J.G. Cruz. Although the rest of the crew was unaware, as it had been kept very hush-hush, they both knew that the class I gas giant had been where Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks were going when they set out in their Type-11 shuttle a short while ago. Commander Lee hadn’t shared any details about the purpose of their trip, but the correlation was too much to ignore. “What can you tell me about the signal?”

“I’m not exactly sure…” Ensign Seltzer admitted as he stared at the readings. Suddenly, a horrified realization washed across his face. He saw a pattern. “It’s almost like a… a… no, it can’t be.” He paused to review it again. It couldn’t be. But it certainly looked like it. “Sir, it’s not identical, but the peaks, troughs and periodicity, they’re all reminiscent of a… of a Borg signal.”

The bridge became deathly silent. Everyone stared at Ensign Seltzer with bated breath, waiting for him to elaborate, but the young operations officer was too consumed in his analysis to say anything further. He was completely focused on trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

“Like the pattern for the homing beacon we were searching for the other day?” prompted Lieutenant Commander Allen. He could feel the nerves of the bridge crew mounting, but he still wasn’t panicking yet. The signal patterns provided by Fourth Fleet Intelligence were not from active Borg ships but rather from Borg technology that had been left behind.

“No, not like that,” Ensign Seltzer replied, shaking his head. He recognized the pattern though. He’d been studying during his time off for the last month. It was odd to see it presenting like this though. As he understood it, it should have been presenting on a lower subspace band, barely perceptible to anything except the implants it communicated with. “The structure is more similar to the Borg neural interlink frequency.”

From across the bridge, the Chief Security and Tactical Officer’s face became ghost white. “Could it reactivate the latent programming from Frontier Day?” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz blurted out in panic before remembering himself. But the damage had already been done. Officers began to look at each other nervously. Could this be the beginning of the end? Which of them would fall to the voice of the Collective this time? A flicker of worry even flashed across Lieutenant Command Allen’s face, and an officer by the MSD set his hand on his phaser.

“No, it could not…” Ensign Seltzer began to reply, but no one was paying attention. The bridge was awash with panic. “Guys… guys…” His voice just fell into the void, lost in the fray. “Guys, stop!” Ensign Seltzer shouted. “Stop already!”

Everyone turned to look at the young man, and it got deathly quiet again.

“Even if we hadn’t all gone through the procedure at Starfleet Medical, it would not have any impact because it’s being projected into a higher subspace band,” explained Ensign Seltzer. “To do this, the signal must be band-passed and boosted, causing it to lose the definition it needs to actually articulate instructions.” It was basically like someone – the Borg queen maybe? – was shouting so loudly that her voice had become unintelligible.

“Could it be made intelligible?”

“Not without losing amplitude and falling back to its lower band.”

“So it can’t do anything?”

“Correct… except jam up our subspace comms spectrum.”

That was still an issue, but it was much less of an issue than remote assimilation. Lieutenant Commander Allen opened his mouth to ask another question, but suddenly, the operations console began to beep again.

“Sir, I’ve got an incoming signal from the planet.”

“I thought you said comms were down due to the interference caused by the signal?” asked Lieutenant Commander Allen.

“I did,” Ensign Seltzer nodded. He was as surprised as the XO. “But someone down there has clearly figured out how to keep up with the constant modularity shifts to null out the interference pattern.”

Lieutenant Commander Allen furled his brow. If all the technology aboard the USS Ingenuity could not compensate for it, how had a backwater colony with seventies-era equipment figured it out? Or maybe it was their people? Lieutenant Sh’vot was a world class astrophysicist, after all. There was only one way to find out. “Put it on screen.”

A moment later, they got their answer. And it wasn’t that their people had figured it out. Administrator Thoss appeared on the screen looking less disgruntled than the last time, but far more menacing. Just as in his prior calls, the Andorian cut straight to the chase: “We have hostages.” 

The Andorian stepped aside to give them a clear view. Sitting there with her hands bound and her mouth gagged was Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes. On either side of her stood young Andorian men, motionless and emotionless, each holding a phaser rifle against their chests.

“If you want to see them again,” Administrator Thoss added. “You will do exactly as I say.”

Oh. My. God. They had the Admiral. Lieutenant Commander Allen’s heart froze. Lieutenant J.G. Cruz was no better, nor were any of the other members of the bridge staff. None of the young officers aboard the USS Ingenuity had ever faced something like this, and for a moment, there was nothing but stunned silence. Finally, Lieutenant Commander Allen pulled himself together enough to ask the obvious question: “What do you want?”

“We are transmitting a list of our demands,” Administrator Thoss replied firmly. “And don’t you dare consider any funny business. To show you I’m serious…” He gestured off camera, and a moment later, his men dragged a pair of Starfleet officers into the frame. “We found the weapons on these two. Given they were coming for a friendly meet and greet on a Federation member world, that sounds a lot like funny business to me.” 

The administrator nodded at his men. Without a word, they raised their rifles and fired. The two Starfleet officers collapsed to the ground. Dead.

Behind them, Admiral Reyes didn’t flinch. In fact, she showed no reaction whatsoever. She would not give her captors the satisfaction.

Aboard the USS Ingenuity though, the bridge staff let out a collective and audible gasp, and Lieutenant J.G Cruz had to grab onto his console to stay standing as the blood left his head. He knew those men. They were his men. He’d sent them down in plain clothes as part of the delegation. And now they were dead.

“I think I’ve made my point,” Administrator Thoss said as he stepped back into the frame. “Follow our instructions to the letter. Resistance is, as some would say, futile.” The Andorian smiled sadistically and then hung up the link, leaving the bridge crew in stunned silence.

Lieutenant Commander Allen looked over at Ensign Seltzer. “Did we receive their demands?” The Ensign nodded. “Let me see them.” There was an uncustomary urgency and nervousness in the Executive Officer’s voice.

“I will be honest, sir,” Ensign Seltzer explained as he loaded them onto a PADD and approached the center island. “It’s all pretty innocuous stuff.” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz also stepped away from his station and met them in the middle. The trio huddled over the PADD, quickly skimming the list of demands.

“No weapons, no explosives, and frankly nothing that would be likely to pose a tactical risk at all,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz offered. “The best option may be to simply meet their demands.” It was an odd list. It read more like a Chief Engineer’s requisition form for repairs to a warp assembly than something one would expect from hostage takers.

“Are you suggesting we negotiate with terrorists?” asked Ensign Seltzer incredulously. He’d never been in a situation like this, but he knew what the books said, and what the Chief Security and Tactical Officer was proposing was most certainly not that.

“I’m suggesting we don’t really have another option,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz countered with a mix of desperation and fear in his voice. “You saw what they did to my men!” The murder of his men had shaken him, and he was beyond terrified to do anything that might lead to the deaths of the rest. Especially when all they were asking for was bland, uninteresting engine and EPS parts.

“What if it’s not the end of their demands?” Ensign Seltzer pressed.

“Then we’ve bought a bit of time to figure out what to do next.”

Lieutenant Commander Allen let the younger men debate for a moment, but now was time to make a call. “I agree with Lieutenant Cruz,” he said firmly. “For now, we meet their demands, and we do nothing that might cause them to kill the hostages.” It wasn’t the call Commander Lee would most likely have made, and it certainly wasn’t the call Admiral Reyes would have made, but they weren’t up there on the bridge. He was. Lieutenant Commander Allen and his young colleagues were going to have to find their way out of this situation on their own.

“At 1823 hours, you placed a call from the governor’s mansion back to the USS Polaris. Do you recall how you described the situation?”

“Not exactly,” Captain Lewis replied disinterestedly as he stared blankly at the wall behind the JAG officer. “But that’s what you’re here for.” The USS Serenity and the USS Diligent stalked the graveyard of Wolf 359, and the USS Ingenuity had just reached Beta Serpentis III, yet here he sat in a comfy conference room aboard the USS Polaris getting interrogated by an ivory tower lawyer about how some sadistic creature had died on a far off planet many months ago. What a waste of time. There were so many better things for him to be doing.

“You described the situation as ‘peaceful’,” Commander Drake reminded the captain. “If the situation at the mansion was peaceful, how did the Vorta end up like this?” He slid a PADD across the table. On it was a picture of the Vorta that had terrorized Nasera City. The monster was hunched over dead, tied to a chair, with a phaser burn in the middle of his forehead.

Captain Lewis shrugged ambivalently.

“During that call, you also said you needed ‘to have a conversation with an old friend’. Was that in reference to this Vorta?” pressed Commander Drake.

“Yes,” Captain Lewis replied. “As you’d know if you’d paid attention the previous times you asked.” The career intelligence officer knew the drill. The investigator would take him round and round, trying to get him to slip up on his story. The beauty of his story though was that it left out only two details: how the drugs came to be in the Vorta’s system, and the moment he raised his sidearm and pulled the trigger. “We spoke with the Vorta about ending the conflict.”

“Discussed with him the need to end the conflict?” Commander Drake asked incredulously. That certainly wasn’t how he would have described the scene that unfolded in Nasera City when that conversation was done. “You mean you convinced him to order thousands of his men to commit suicide, right?”

“I didn’t say that,” Captain Lewis insisted. “It is best you not lead the witness, Commander.” He leaned back in his chair and shook his finger condescendingly at the JAG officer like a teacher scolding a student.

“I’ve read the transcript of your call with Admiral Reyes,” Commander Drake reminded him. “You said: ‘Victory is life. So too must the opposite be true.’ That sounds like an admission to me.”

Captain Lewis just sat there, his mind elsewhere. Why hadn’t the USS Ingenuity checked in as scheduled at 1300 hours? In his head, he played back the distress call they’d received, the subsequent discussion they’d had with Administrator Thoss, and the last report they’d gotten from the USS Ingenuity about preparing to send a delegation down to the colony. Sure, they might have legitimately just missed their check in, but what if it was something more? This deposition, and the entire investigation for that matter, was a needless distraction.

“Captain, did you hear me?” Commander Drake asked, tapping the table.

“I did.”

“And?”

“And what?” chuckled Captain Lewis. “You didn’t ask me a question.” All the JAG officer had done was make an inadmissible conjecture. It didn’t even warrant a response, as ‘sounds like’ would be thrown out if this ever went to trial.

Commander Drake sighed. The spook was insufferable. Commander Drake retrieved the PADD from the captain, flipped it to a medical report, and slid it back across the table. “Anticholinergics… γ-hydroxybutyrate and gamma-aminobutyric acid receptor inhibitors… a laundry list of heavily controlled psychoactives. Could this stuff have caused him to issue those orders?”

“That would be a question better asked of a medical professional,” Captain Lewis countered, dodging the question. “I can’t even spell some of the words you just said.” He paused for a moment and then added: “But what I will remind you is that this is not the first time the Jem’Hadar have behaved this way. Captain Benjamin Sisko reported a similar outcome on Torga IV during the war. Failure is not an acceptable outcome for them.” It was something he sort of admired about their foe. The Dominion would never encumber itself with folks like Commander Drake. They would simply have celebrated the victory and moved on.

“Yes, I’m aware of Torga IV, but it does not explain how these substances got into the Vorta’s bloodstream. How did that happen?” The problem that Commander Drake had was that he could not find any record in the ship’s system about a requisition for such substances.

“I’m not responsible for what the Vorta was doing in his spare time,” Captain Lewis shrugged for what must have been the hundredth time in the last hour. “As I have told you before. Many, many times.” His tone did not at all conceal the annoyance he felt at being cooped up here. He could have been out there with the USS Ingenuity, investigating why the backwater colony had sent a distress signal and then denied it, or he could have been commanding the USS Serenity as it searched for the Borg signal that mysteriously vanished before they arrived.

“Captain, don’t be coy with me,” Commander Drake warned. “These are important proceedings. Why do I get the feeling you’re not taking this seriously? Or even really paying attention?”

“Because I’m not,” Captain Lewis answered flatly. If the reports were correct, the Borg were moving once more. They needed men like him doing what needed to be done to safeguard the Federation, not entertaining pompous, ivory tower JAG officers. “I understand that I am required to sit here and entertain you, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more important things going on out there, things I should be doing.” Captain Lewis resented that Rear Admiral Grayson had restrained him from any missions away from the USS Polaris until such time as the investigation was over, but the Rear Admiral wasn’t here so he could only direct his frustration towards the JAG officer that stood between him and doing his job. His real job.

“Things you should be doing?” Commander Drake asked incredulously. “Things that you, and only you, could be doing? This squadron has over two thousand qualified officers and crew. Do you really think you’re so important that they can’t manage without you?”

Captain Lewis just sat there silent. The question didn’t deserve a response. If the JAG officer would have just taken his head out of his ass for a second, he would have been able to answer his own question. Recent history gave evidence enough to that.

“Let me tell you how I see it,” Commander Drake continued. “You have an overstated view of your own self-importance. You see the universe as full of enemies, and you believe that you are the only one that can deal with them.”

“I do what needs to be done, and so far, I’ve been right.”

“You see, that’s what worries me the most about you Captain,” Commander Drake admitted. “One day, you will be wrong. One day, you will see good people as bad, and it is my job to make sure that day never comes.” It was a misconception that Robert Drake cared about the law above all else. A more accurate description was that he cared about the law because it restrained bad people from their worst instincts.

“And it is my job to make sure you live to see the day when you are proven either right or wrong,” Captain Lewis replied, his voice growing deep with conviction. “Do you not realize how, were it not for the sacrifices of good men, men like Nam Jae-Sun and Ryssehl Th’zathol, you would not have survived the Battle of Nasera?” Admiral Reyes had been seconds from ramming the USS Polaris into the orbital platform over Nasera II. Had Ryssehl and Crewman Nam not laid down their lives, Commander Drake would have died in a massive fireball with sixteen hundred other officers and crew aboard the Polaris. “And every day, I rise ready to answer the call once more.”

“Those are nice platitudes,” Commander Drake replied, shaking his head indignantly. “But I don’t buy your fatalistic view of the universe, nor that you, and you alone, can solve what lies before us.” There were always choices, choices that didn’t rely on such sacrifices, but out of respect for Admiral Reyes and the impact that the fog of war could have on command decisions, he wasn’t going to litigate those today. “Since we’re not going to agree on this though, let’s get back to what we can agree on, which is that you need to finish this deposition if you want to get back to whatever it is that you think is so important no one else can do it.”

And so Commander Drake picked the PADD back off the desk and resumed his deposition of Captain Lewis. Meanwhile, several decks above them, the officer of the watch made note that the USS Ingenuity had just missed its second consecutive check in. There were many reasons this could happen, and it made no one besides Captain Lewis nervous, but it was entered into the log nonetheless.

Around every corner, behind every bulkhead, and within every shadow, their demise might be waiting. Any doubts that something nefarious was happening had been erased. Slowly and carefully, phasers at the ready, Commander Cora Lee and Dr. Tom Brooks crept through the interior of Salvage Facility 21-J.

The first order of business had been to get safe. They’d left three bodies dead on the deck, and the station’s surprise occupants were hunting them. Thankfully, the massive superstructure of the salvage depot worked to their advantage, and once they put enough distance between themselves and the shuttlebay, the pair shifted from hiding to intelligence gathering as they searched for clues that might explain explain why the decommissioned station was crawling with colonists from Beta Serpentis III. It was during this search that they found themselves on the upper deck of a large cargo bay, lying flush against the deck as they eavesdropped on a pair of Andorians working below.

“That ship’s arrival changed everything,” one of the Andorians was saying. “Thoss says tomorrow will be the day.”

“The time of our salvation is finally upon us,” the other replied with a sort of reverence in his tone. “After all this waiting, who would have thought a Starfleet ship would be the key?”

“The first good thing they’ve done for us,” the first chuckled. “Well, besides building this facility.”

“We built this facility,” the second reminded him. “They just brought us together.”

Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks looked at each other. The Andorians were clearly talking about their ship, but what did they mean by its arrival changing everything? And what was going to happen tomorrow? It certainly had nothing to do with the spread of icefish and tuber roots awaiting their colleagues down on the surface of Beta Serpentis III.

“We need to get in touch with the Ingenuity,” Commander Lee whispered under her breath. She tapped her combadge again, but it crackled with static, just like it had every time prior that they’d tried to use it since their flight from the shuttlebay.

Dr. Brooks tapped his combadge. The result was the same. It wasn’t a defective combadge. There was some sort of interference jamming up the subspace bands used by their combadges. “We’re going to need more than a combadge and a tricorder if we want to do that,” Dr. Brooks pointed out. Combadges simply weren’t configurable enough to allow him to break through.

“Yeah, I get that, but we need to find a way to alert the ship,” Commander Lee insisted. “They’re clearly up to something, and it doesn’t sound good.”

Dr Brooks knew the Commander was right. Whatever was going on, they needed to give the Ingenuity a heads up. “We’re going to need to hack into a comms relay then.” Such equipment would have significantly more tunable parameters than their combadges, and that might allow them to cut through the subspace interference. The risk with that plan though was that, if the Andorian’s had control of the station’s systems, they’d be sending up a flare with their location as soon as they actively engaged the comms system.

Quietly, the pair slipped back out of the cargo bay and returned to the network of jefferies tubes they’d been using to navigate the station’s interior. The going was slow, but the maintenance shafts afforded them a significantly more cover than moving out in the open. Eventually, as their knees began to bruise from all the crawling, they managed to find their way to a small interior laboratory with a console that had access to the station’s subspace communications system.

Climbing out of the jefferies tube into the room, Commander Lee took a first pass at cracking into the system. However, she came up short. “The encryption here isn’t going to be easy to break,” she warned. It was the top-of-the-line stuff that Starfleet used for its frontier facilities and vessels. “You got any ideas?”

“I may know a thing or two,” Dr. Brooks chuckled as he switched places with Lee and connected his tricorder to the optical port. During his previous stint in Starfleet, he’d spent plenty of time breaking into Starfleet systems. It had just been a requirement of his job, and he’d developed a warchest of techniques before they’d locked him up. “Ah yes, we can get through this.” 

“What’re you thinking?” Commander Lee asked as she looked over his shoulder. Right from the start, he was taking a different approach than anything she’d considered. Not that anything he did surprised her too much anymore after he’d beat the three Andorians to the draw. The spooky scientist had clearly seen a few things in his day.

“First, we slip into the ephemeral quantum memory buffer,” Dr. Brooks explained as he worked the console. “It’s vulnerable because, by its very nature, it can’t be fully isolated, or it wouldn’t be able to accept and process user input. Typically, this buffer is just a storage medium, but I only need it for its qubits.” Dr. Brooks waited a moment and then fired off a second set of routines. “And now, I’m injecting a dynamic variant of Shor’s algo that exponentiates the solver into a higher-order spatiotemporal quantum space via entanglement of the buffer’s qubits.”

“Where’d you learn to do this?” Commander Lee asked. The career engineer had a deep knowledge of modern computation, but at an applied level. What the astrophysicist was talking about was highly theoretical and, as far as she knew from the textbooks, it shouldn’t have been possible due to the laws of physics themselves.

“The better question would be when,” Dr. Brooks winked. Remembering himself and what had landed him in prison previously, he grew serious as he added a caveat: “But it’s probably best not to mention it, and if you do, I’ll deny it.”

There was a coldness in Dr. Brooks’ words that restrained Commander Lee from asking him to elaborate further. And she also knew it was probably better she didn’t ask. There was a horde of angry Andorians hunting them, and now was not the time to debate regulations with a man who clearly didn’t care about them, and who, if she was honest with herself, scared her a bit.

“Alright, we’re in,” Dr. Brooks declared a few moments later. His hands flew across the terminal as he tried to piece together what was going on. “Hmmm, this is curious…”

“What’s curious?”

“The subspace interference jamming up our combadges is massive,” Dr. Brooks explained. “And uncomfortably familiar.” He recognized the signal, except it was distorted and amplified. “Check this out.”

Commander Lee took a good look, but she didn’t see what he was referring to. “It just looks like garbage to me.”

“That’s because it’s been bandpassed and amplified into a higher subspace spectrum,” Dr. Brooks explained. “Let me downscale it.” He worked a few filters and compressed it back to a lower band. She still looked confused, but he shouldn’t have been all that surprised. Not many people would recognize it. “It’s a Borg neural interlink frequency.”

“Where’s it coming from?”

Dr. Brooks ran a few more calculations and came to a scary conclusion: “Here. Or more accurately, somewhere within this facility.”

“Can it…”

“Assimilate? No, in boosting it into our regular subspace bands, it’s become bungled as shit.”

“So what’s its purpose?”

“In order to connect the Collective across the vastness of the galaxy, Borg ships use incredibly powerful subspace transceivers,” Dr. Brooks explained. “We’ve never been able to replicate them in a lab, but my best guess is that someone on this facility has figured out how to use a transceiver stripped from the Wolf 359 Cube as a sort of subspace jammer.”

Suddenly, they heard the hiss of the laboratory door as it slid open. By tapping into the station’s systems, they’d alerted the station to their presence.

Commander Lee, already on edge, was first to the draw this time, her phaser leveled at the door as a synth stepped through. It was a utility model typically used for basic maintenance and repairs, but it wasn’t here to fix an EPS relay. It stood in a tactical stance, sweeping towards them with a Starfleet-issue phaser rifle.

Commander Lee didn’t wait to see what would follow. She squeezed the trigger before the synth could get them in its sights. A blast of high energy nadions tore through the automaton, short circuiting its motor functions. It collapsed in the doorway, and the phaser rifle fell beside it.

Dr. Brooks rushed over and pulled the synth inside, allowing the doors to shut. He then lifted up the phaser rifle, checked its settings, and threw it over his shoulder. It would be far more useful than the sidearm he’d been using up to this point.

“I don’t understand,” Commander Lee stuttered as she looked down at the motionless synth. “This is a C300.” She knew the model well. It was a low cost utility model. “It shouldn’t have the capacity to take up arms.”

“Starfleet R&D said the same about the synths at Utopia Planitia,” Dr. Brooks pointed out. “Look how that turned out for them.” Ninety two thousand officers, crew and specialists died as a result, and Starfleet spent the next decade and a half cowering in fear.

“No, that was different,” explained Commander Lee. “The A500 model in use at Utopia Planitia was an independent automaton. The Tal Shiar needed only to imprint rogue subroutines within its neural processor to corrupt it. The C300 architecture is completely different. It relies on a central processing unit, in this case the station’s main computer core, to coordinate its actions. Think of it like an appendage of a larger system rather than a synthetic lifeform on its own.”

“Then the answer seems obvious enough,” Dr. Brooks replied. “It’s not just the colonists that are hunting us. The station is hunting us too.” He pulled out his tricorder and began scanning the synth. Although its motor functions had been short circuited, he knew there’d be imprinting on its memory cores from the last instruction sets it had received before Commander Lee shot it.

“You’re saying the colonists of Beta Serpentis III have weaponized the synths?” Commander Lee asked nervously. What were two Starfleet officers supposed to do with a horde of Andorians and an entire station hunting them?

“Not exactly,” Dr. Brooks replied as he finished analyzing the result of his scans. The results confirmed his suspicions, suspicions he’d had since his initial scans of the shuttlebay. “Check this out.” He passed the tricorder over to Commander Lee while he narrated what was on the screen. “I ran a decompiler to reverse engineer the grammar that generated the instruction set. Typically, you’d expect to see a consistent grammar in the resultant machine code. Except here you don’t. Here, you see two distinct grammars.”

“Yes, I recognize one of them,” Commander Lee noted. “It’s the standard isolinear ASM.” As a career engineer, she knew it well. It was the same symbolic machine code used in practically every modern computer core used across the fleet. “But what is this second one? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“That’s because it’s Borg,” Dr. Brooks replied ominously. It was the second Borg signature he’d seen in as many minutes. Things were starting to add up, and not in a good way.

Commander Lee’s face became ghost white. “Are you… are you sure?”

“Positive,” Dr. Brooks confirmed. When the Borg came to Earth, he’d spent the better part of the crisis trying to crack this exact byte stream. “I’d recognize it anywhere after Frontier Day.”

“Wait, so you’re saying the synths have been turned into drones?”

“Something like that,” Dr. Brooks nodded. “It’s fascinating, really.”

“That’s one word for it,” Commander Lee shivered. “I think I’d use a different word: terrifying.” Not only were they being hunted by an unknown number of aggrieved Andorians, but an assimilated station, and all the synths it had at its disposal, was also hunting them. “Do you think the colonists know?”

“With how involved they seem to be on this station, absolutely,” Dr. Brooks offered. While snooping around, they’d observed no less than a dozen Andorian colonists working on various systems and equipment. If the station didn’t want them there, it would have dealt with them. “The question we need to answer is who is in control: the colonists or the station?”

“I don’t think I’m following,” Commander Lee admitted, stammering to articulate her thoughts. None of it made much sense. “The colonists are certainly hostile, but they aren’t… aren’t Borg… are they? They seem very… very Andorian.”

“Yes, their behavior appears very normal, all things considered,” agreed Dr. Brooks. “They are not behaving at all like the drones we fought over Earth.” Even though those drones had been remotely assimilated, there’d been certain characteristics to their movements, dialogue and actions that didn’t match the Andorians here. “But if they did not serve a purpose to whatever the hell this station has become, the station would eradicate them. They’re working together.”

“The way you talk about it, it’s like you’re saying the station is alive?”

“That’s because, if these readings are correct, it is,” Dr. Brooks replied with an undertone of awe in his voice. “That’s the beauty of the Borg.” Yet again, he found himself impressed by the Collective and what it could do.

The bodies lay where they fell. And for what? They hadn’t resisted, and they hadn’t drawn their weapons. They’d been murdered merely for existing. As Lieutenant Balan stared at her captors, she wondered what could bring someone to kill so flippantly. Was it really just to send a message? Did life really mean so little to these people? Beta Serpentis III was not a warm place, but had it really turned them into monsters?

What hurt the most was that she didn’t even know the names of the dead. She’d only met the two security officers during the ride to the surface. They were no older than her, and they should have had a full life ahead of them, but now they were dead. Was that what awaited each of them? Was that what awaited her, and Lieutenant Sh’vot, and Admiral Reyes, and the other three officers in the delegation? She wanted to cry. She wasn’t ready to die.

Lieutenant Balan looked over at Admiral Reyes. The admiral’s hands were bound, and her mouth was gagged, yet she looked completely calm. The woman that had led them through the trials of Nasera, the warrior who’d then charged straight back into the fight with the Jem’Hadar and then fought against the Borg on Sol Station, Allison Reyes just sat there like it was a normal day in the office. She showed no fear, no concern, no grief, no nothing. How? Had she just accepted the inevitability of what would come? Or was she holding out hope that the crew of the USS Ingenuity would somehow save them from this nightmare?

Looking past Admiral Reyes at the rest of her colleagues, they looked as fearful and afraid as she felt. She found some solace in the fact she wasn’t alone. As she stared at Lieutenant Sh’vot, there was something else too. It wasn’t just fear on his face. There was also a fury in his eyes. The colonists were Andorian, just like he was, and this was personal for him.

Lieutenant Balan wanted to speak, to reach out to her colleagues, to comfort and to be comforted, but she dared not even whisper. Her captors had already shown what they were willing to do. Her best chance at life was to avoid provoking them. At least that was what she told herself as she sat their quietly, lost in an internal maelstrom of fear and dismay. More likely, she was just going to end up dead.

Sitting between a pair of Andorian guards, Admiral Reyes had other ideas. She let out a loud grunt. It was all she could do with her hands bound and her mouth gagged. The guards looked down at the elder woman. She grunted again. Now, everyone was looking at her. Lieutenant Balan wondered what the Admiral was up to, and she wasn’t the only one. Administrator Thoss, the ringleader of the hostage takers, walked over to her.

“You got something to say?” Administrator Thoss asked as he stared down at her with sadistic pleasure. This was a high-and-mighty admiral of the great Starfleet, yet she looked so pitiful beneath him. For a moment, he savored the poetic justice of the role reversal after all the pain Starfleet had done the last time a holier-than-thou flag officer descended upon Beta Serpentis III. Administrator Thoss knew that soon, none of this would matter, but that didn’t stop his curiosity. Out of personal self-indulgence, he wanted to hear what she had to say. He reached down and plucked the gag from her mouth. “Just mind your manners.”

“As you minded yours with my men?” Admiral Reyes spat, two hours of bottled up rage spilling out the instant the gag came out. The Andorian had killed her men for nothing more than existing, and she couldn’t help herself.  It was a mistake though.

The open palm of the administrator’s hand came quick, so quick in fact that Admiral Reyes hadn’t even closed her mouth before he struck her across the cheek. The administrator was a bulky man, hardened by decades on Beta Serpentis III, and the strike knocked the smaller woman from a sitting position straight onto the cold deck of the reception room. Hands restrained, she could do nothing to brace her fall. Her skull bounced off the deck, and it was all she could do to remain conscious.

“Now, now, Admiral,” Administrator Thoss admonished as he stared down at the pitiful pink skin. “What did I say about minding your manners?” The Andorian reached over and took a rifle from one of his guards, and then, in one smooth motion, he swept it across the room and aimed it at Lieutenant Balan’s chest. “I only need you in order to keep your ship in the palm of my hand.”

Lieutenant Balan’s eyes grew wide with fear. She saw her life flash before her eyes as she looked down the barrel of his rifle. Whether or not she wanted, tears began to flow down her face. She started to shake. She was going to die.

“You clearly do not understand who we are,” Admiral Reyes replied calmly, carefully enunciating her words. She new the criticality of the moment. “My ship is watching you from above. If any more of our lifesigns disappear, they will conclude this is an execution, not a negotiation.” Even as she referred to the imminence of her death, her voice did not crack. “And if that happens, they’ll follow the playbook and turn this place to rubble.”

“They wouldn’t dare!” Administrator Thoss scoffed incredulously.

“After what we’ve been through, I promise you they would,” Admiral Reyes assured him, feigning confidence as the pair locked eyes in a clash of wills. “We laid nine hundred and thirty five of our colleagues to rest on Nasera alone, and we killed thousands of our colleagues on Frontier Day when they were assimilated by the Borg signal.” There was a complete coldness in her eyes. “What are six more? You’re lucky they haven’t ended it already.”

Inwardly, Admiral Reyes knew it was a bluff. If Captain Lewis was up there, or Dr. Brooks even, she knew they’d make the right call. Unfortunately, she’d left Captain Lewis back at Wolf 359, and Dr. Brooks had gone to Salvage Facility 21-J with Commander Lee. That meant she was depending on Lieutenant Commander Allen, Lieutenant J.G. Cruz and the junior officers of the USS Ingenuity. They were too young and too inexperienced. Their trauma could paralyze them as easily as it could inspire them.

For a moment, Admiral Reyes wondered if her bluff would work. A few seconds later though she got her answer and Administrator Thoss lowered the rifle and handed it back to the guard.

“I admire your convictions, Reyes,” Administrator Thoss conceded as he reached down and prepped her back up into a sitting position against the bulkhead. “And for that, we will wait and see. I promise you though that if your crew up there does anything besides what I’ve instructed, you and your crew here, you will not live to see our salvation.”

Admiral Reyes breathed a sigh of relief. Her outburst had been a mistake, a moment of emotion when she lost control, and Lieutenant Balan had almost died for it. Thankfully, temperatures can come back down, and now was time to get to work. “Salvation, you say?” Men in power often wanted you to brag about their importance, and so she baited him. “You’ve used that word a couple times now, but for the life of me, I don’t see it.”

“No, I wouldn’t think you would,” Administrator Thoss replied as he shook his head. “Because you do not listen. You did not listen all those decades ago when it first came to us, nor even just a few short months ago when yet again, it came to you and your ilk. But that voice, you cannot stop it. It guides us, and it will see us to our salvation.”

“I’m not following,” Admiral Reyes admitted. Given Beta Serpentis III’s history, she had a hunch where he was going with his fanatical language and historical references, but she hoped he was wrong.

“Of course not,” Administrator Thoss replied. “Rather than accepting the opportunity to become part of something greater than yourself, instead you fight against it. But the Collective, it is beautiful, and it is inevitable. As you will soon understand.”

“The Collective?” Admiral Reyes sighed, struggling to conceal her concern now that he’d said it for all to hear. “You see the Borg as your salvation?”

“My salvation… your salvation… the salvation of the entire galaxy,” Administrator Thoss replied as he looked up at the sky. “The galaxy up there, it’s a chaotic and messy place. As a Starfleet officer, you know that… but what if there were a better path?” He looked back at the Admiral, and she could see the conviction in his eyes. He believed to his core what he was saying. “They are the answer. No suffering, no pain, no evil. Just unity.”

Admiral Reyes just stared at him. He really believed what he was saying.

“We the lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war is how the Federation Charter begins, is it not?” asked the administrator rhetorically. “When the Borg come once more, there will be no more war. Just collective unity for the greater good.”

Admiral Reyes opened her mouth to protest, but the Andorian didn’t let her get a word in. He just kept on going with his train of thought.

“The dignity and worth of all lifeforms… the equal rights of members… our strength to maintain interstellar peace and security… don’t you see it, Admiral?” he pressed as he stared at her. “Your Charter seeks that which the Collective promises. No more wars, no more inequality, no more weakness. Just perfection.”

Admiral Reyes sighed. If you gave a fanatic a book, they’d find a way to read their truth in it. Administrator Thoss had done exactly that. Assimilation might offer peace and equality, but it did so through oppression at the cost of individuality and self-determination. That was not a price she was willing to pay. How could anyone? How had this colony become so lost? And, even more concerning, why were they so sure salvation was approaching? The Borg had been badly wounded on Frontier Day. Was Administrator Thoss going mad or did this backwater administrator know something they did not?

“Fate put you here, Admiral, to make our salvation possible,” Administrator Thoss smiled insidiously. “Do not lament. Together, we will go forward into the future. It’s our destiny.”

The station was alive, and it was hunting them. As the corrupted computer core dispatched more armed synths to their location, Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks had to abandon their endeavor. There was simply too much heat. They’d be no help to anyone if they were dead. Their call to the Ingenuity would have to wait. The pair retreated from the lab, crawling on their hands and knees as fast as they could to vanish back into the maze of jefferies tubes and maintenance shafts that lined the superstructure of Salvage Facility 21-J.

When they’d put enough distance between themselves and the lab, Commander Lee finally spoke again: “What now?” She was feeling disheartened by the reality of the situation. How could the two of them be expected to fight against an entire space station?

“We can’t leave, and we can’t call home, so we’ve got only two choices,” Dr. Brooks noted. “We either hide and wait for help, or we investigate and figure out what the hell is going on… and I’m not a fan of sitting on my hands.” One thing he’d learned over the years is that if you wanted to survive, you had to fight for your own destiny. You couldn’t wait on others.

Commander Lee thought back to the conversation they’d eavesdropped on earlier. The colonists were up to something, and their plan clearly involved her ship. “We investigate,” Commander Lee agreed, knowing the safety of her crew might depend on what she and Dr. Brooks could figure out. They couldn’t just steal away in some dark and forgotten corner of this haunted station while they waited for a rescue that might not ever come. “If you’re right about those subroutines embedded in the computer core, then that’s as good a place as any to start.” 

“The computer core?” Dr. Brooks asked warily. He appreciated that Commander Lee had not suggested the hide-and-wait option, but a visit to the station’s computer core would be fraught with danger. “Typical Borg systems do not have a central point of weakness, but in this case, the Borg routines are mapped onto a Starfleet system. Contrary to the Borg, we love to build central points of weakness, and the computer core may be exactly that.” While that made it an attractive option, there was a catch. “The Borg subroutines will certainly recognize this though, and that means it will take a heavy handed approach to protecting it.” With the weaponized synths, it would be all but suicide for them to just march in there.

“I agree,” nodded Commander Lee, enjoying the fact that, for once, she was ahead of the veteran scientist. “But that wasn’t what I was going to suggest.” Dr. Brooks looked at her curiously, waiting for her to elaborate. “I think it’s time we pay a visit to the salvage bays that house the debris from Wolf 359.”

“Start at the source?”

“Exactly.”

“I like that idea.” The only alternative Dr. Brooks had come up with was capturing and interrogating one of the Andorians, but he knew they wouldn’t give up the plan easily. Andorians were stubborn, and fanatics clung to their convictions. There were ways to force even the most stubborn and convicted to give up their plan, but he doubted Commander Lee would have the stomach for what that would take. “The old scrap heap won’t be particularly important to the now-possessed station, but it could contain clues for us so let’s give it a shot.” If that plan failed, he could always propose an enhanced interrogation.

Together, the pair hashed out their plan. It started with securing schematics for the station, and that meant accessing the computer network again. Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks located a terminal in a corridor with easy access to a wide range of jeffries tubes to facilitate a quick retreat. They knew the computer system would respond with synths, just as it had when they’d gone to the lab, but they didn’t need much time to find a single file. 

They were in and out fast, taking less than two minutes to secure the file, and they disappeared back into the network of jefferies tubes long before any rifle-toting automatons could arrive.

“I can’t help but feel like we’re playing a game of cat and mouse,” Commander Lee remarked once they were safely hidden once more within the maze of maintenance shafts. Given the odds they were up against, she felt a sense of exhilaration that they’d actually pulled off the heist.

“It’s always been a blind spot of the Borg,” Dr. Brooks offered. “Because it is used to such incredible redundancy, the Collective has always been somewhat blind to the little things. You and I, we would have dispatched security forces into every jefferies tube to hunt down the intruders, but the Collective thinks in terms of the overall system, and unless it figures out that we are a real threat, it will not pay us much heed.”

“So why send synths at all?”

“It’s like when a fly is buzzing around you. You swat at it because it’s in reach, but if it buzzes away, you don’t really give chase. Too much effort for too little reward.”

This weakness allowed Dr. Brooks and Commander Lee to make their way down thirty decks into the bowels of Salvage Facility 21-J’s without incident, besides some bruising developing on their knees from all the crawling. 

As Dr. Brooks climbed out of the tube into one of the storage bays, his knee cracked, reminding him of his age. His mind still loved this stuff, but his body was reminding him he was getting too old for it. Not that he had a choice given their present predicament.

The young Commander Lee had no such problems, but what struck her was the cold and the darkness. This section of the facility was not meant to be hospitable. It served a purely utilitarian purpose: to house the debris of the Borg Cube destroyed at Wolf 359. The bay’s size caught her by surprise too. It was huge, nearly the length of a football pitch, and the Borg debris that littered the deck cast long shadows in the low light.

“I cannot help but feel like this place is possessed,” Commander Lee whispered. It didn’t help that the remnants of the Cube still glowed a deep green, even after three decades. “Where do we…”

Holding his tricorder in one hand, Dr. Brooks cut her off with a wordless gesture, his finger pressed over his lips. She looked at him as he held one finger up, then pointed at both his eyes, and then gestured towards the far side of the bay. She understood. They weren’t alone. Somewhere deep in the bay, out of sight, someone else was there.

Dr. Brooks slipped the tricorder back into his utility belt, readied his phaser rifle and began to advance through the debris. For a moment, Commander Lee considered suggesting they pull back, that it wasn’t worth exposing themselves, but Dr. Brooks was too far ahead already. He was a man on a mission, and he wasn’t turning back. Nervously, she drew her sidearm and followed.

After what felt like an eternity tiptoeing between the blacker than black sheet metal, conduit and circuitry that had once been part of a Cube, Dr. Brooks drew to a stop behind what looked like a regeneration alcove. 

Commander Lee came up alongside him and peered around the corner. A mere twenty meters from them, she saw a massive Borg enclosure, larger than any of the other debris they’d passed thus far, and in much better condition too. Standing in the middle of it was an Andorian working at an active Borg console. “What is that?” Commander Lee asked in the quietest of whispers, cognizant of just how close they were to the Andorian.

“Looks like a core command junction extracted from the Borg Cube,” Dr. Brooks replied as he thought through possibilities of what was going on. “And an Andorian who looks far too acquainted with it.” The Andorian looked as natural working at the Borg console as a Starfleet officer working on the bridge of the USS Ingenuity, and that level of fluency made Dr. Brooks very nervous. The colonists were not new to this stuff.

“What’s the play?”

“Cover me from here,” Dr. Brooks instructed as he handed her the phaser rifle he’d commandeered from the synth down in the lab. “If he so much as turns towards me, drop him.”

Commander Lee looked down at the phaser rifle to check its settings. Dr. Brooks had set it to full strength. When she looked back up to inquire if he meant to kill or to stun, it was too late. The scientist was already moving stealthily through the enclosure. All Commander Lee could do was sight in her rifle and wait. What the hell was he doing?

Dr. Brooks’ footfalls were silent, and his breathing slowed as he approached his target. This was nothing new to him, and it showed in his slow, measured movements. He drew closer. And closer. And closer. All the while, the Andorian just kept working at the console. He had no idea what was about to happen.

Through her sight, Commander Lee still didn’t know what Dr. Brooks was up to either. She watched as he drew so close he could have reached out and tapped the blue skin on the shoulder, and then his hand rose from his belt. Only then did Commander Lee realize the scientist was holding a knife.

In one smooth motion, Dr. Brooks brought his hand to neck level and slit the colonist’s throat. The Andorian began to turn, shocked as he struggled to breath, but Dr. Brooks simply took a second pass with the knife, diving it straight into the Andorian’s sternum to make sure the job was done. 

The Andorian collapsed onto the deck.

Commander Lee gasped as she rushed into the enclosure. “What the…” she stammered as she looked down at the dead Andorian lying there at Dr. Brooks’ feet.

“Relax, Commander,” Dr. Brooks assured her nonchalantly, unphased by the blue blood that had spattered his uniform. “You were going to have to shoot him otherwise. This was simply easier and quieter. No risk of an energy discharge tripping the station’s sensors.” He casually shoved the Andorian’s dead body out of the way to get better access to the console. “Come over here and help me with this.”

He was right, she knew, but there was something so much more personal and ruthless about the way he’d gone about doing it. Trying to recompose herself, she drew up alongside him. “What are we looking at?”

“The source of the signal that’s jamming our combadges,” Dr. Brooks explained. “This enclosure is in better shape than the rest of the Cube because it’s a heavily reinforced central plexus. It includes one of those long range high powered neural interlink transceivers I was telling you about and…” Dr. Brooks looked around the large enclosure, but he didn’t see what he was looking for. “And usually, it would house a vinculum, although I’m not seeing one here.” It had probably been taken away for study elsewhere.

“So can we cut the jamming signal?”

“I mean we could, but that’s not a good idea,” Dr. Brooks answered. “This storage bay is isolated from the station’s systems by design, meaning this enclosure shouldn’t be able to talk to the rest of the station… but if we cut the signal, they’ll notice it stopped, and they’ll know we’re here.”

Commander Lee looked down disappointedly. She should have thought of that. “So what’s the plan then?”

“Well, it’s an active comms system,” explained Dr. Brooks. “Which means, if we can figure out how to operate it, we should be able to interlace a secondary signal within the carrier wave.”

“As a way of calling the Ingenuity!” Commander Lee smiled.

“Exactly.”

A Type 11 shuttle peeled away and dove towards the frigid hellscape below. Never had the bridge crew felt more powerless than they did now as they watched it descend. The USS Ingenuity was fully operational, yet they could do nothing more than bow to the demands of the colonists on Beta Serpentis III. Otherwise, more of their crew would die.

“Third shuttle away,” reported Ensign Kellan Seltzer from operations. “And two more are being loaded as we speak.” The displeasure was evident in his voice. The young man hated that they’d caved to the demands of the hostage takers, but he didn’t have a better idea of what to do either.

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Lieutenant Commander Sherrod Allen frowned from the center of the bridge. “But what choice do we have?” The Executive Officer had risen through Starfleet after the Mars massacre, and he was a manifestation of the risk-averse approach that had dominated that era. He would not gamble the lives of six officers on mere principle, and the colonist’s demands thus far had been benign. “They’re asking for isolinear chips and plasma manifolds, not weapons or explosives. It seems a small price to bring our crew home.”

“My men aren’t coming home,” snapped Lieutenant J.G Rafael Cruz from tactical, his emotions getting the better of his decorum. The two security officers he’d sent with Fleet Admiral Reyes would not be coming home. They’d been murdered. Three hours ago, he’d watched as Administrator Thoss executed them on camera. “And what happens after we meet their demands? What if we can’t comply with whatever comes next?”

“Then we cross that bridge when we get to it,” Lieutenant Commander Allen replied firmly. “We’ve drawn up counterassault plans, but they’ll see our shuttles coming before we pass through the stratopause. You’d get revenge for your two, but at the expense of six more. They’d kill all the hostages before you even had your boots on the ground.”

Lieutenant J.G. Cruz sighed, but deep down, he knew the Executive Officer was right. They’d laid far too many of their comrades to rest in the Deneb Sector and over Earth. In a different era, absent those traumas, he might have been more open to creative risks, but given recent events, he wasn’t ready for any more deaths on his watch. Not now. For now, they’d stick to their plan.

Lieutenant Commander Allen turned back towards operations: “Have we made any progress figuring out what they intend to do with the items they’ve demanded?” 

“Most of it appears to relate to power management and subspace tech, but neither I nor the engineers below deck have been able to infer for what specifically,” reported Ensign Seltzer. They’d ruled out all the obvious stuff like weapons and explosives, but even when they considered more obscure possibilities, nothing quite fit. “It’s particularly strange too since Admiral Reyes offered them anything they needed for the colony. They didn’t need to take her hostage to get it.”

For a moment, the three men stood there in their own thoughts. As a strange reading pulled Ensign Seltzer away, a possibility dawned on Lieutenant J.G. Cruz: “What if it’s not about equipment for the colony?”

“What’re you implying?” Lieutenant Commander Allen asked. The older man was not prone to idle speculation. He had succeeded in his two decades long career by moving carefully and only when he had all the facts. “What else would they need this stuff for?”

“We offered to help with the colony, but that’s not carte blanche for anything and everything,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz noted. While security on a Starfleet vessel focused mostly on external threats, before coming to Polaris Squadron, he had served in the criminal investigations unit aboard Starbase 314. In that role, speculating on motive with an incomplete set of facts had pretty much been the name of the game. “Maybe they need this equipment for something else – something unrelated to the colony – and maybe, whatever it is, they can’t justify it to us?”

“That’s a lot of maybes,” Lieutenant Commander Allen observed skeptically. “And we’re talking about conduits and chips, not fuel for plasma warheads or focusing crystals for nadion be…”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Ensign Seltzer said as he drew his colleagues from their musings. “But I’m detecting a change in the interference signal coming from Beta Serpentis IV.”

“Isn’t that to be expected as it’s constantly remodulating?”  asked Lieutenant Commander Allen. The random harmonic shifts were why they couldn’t simply underwrite their signal with a destructive interference pattern to cut through the jammer.

“Yes, but this is different,” Ensign Seltzer explained. “It’s more of a ridealong signal matched to the harmonic shifts, similar to how the Andorians called us earlier.” The fact that Beta Serpentis III’s ice fishermen and tuber root farmers had cut through the jammer instantly with their dilapidated seventies era tech, while the highly proficient scientists and engineers of the USS Ingenuity had failed to with the computational might of their entire cruiser, suggested much about the relationship between the two situations.

“Is it the colonists again?” Lieutenant Commander Allen frowned. He was not looking forward to another call from Administrator Thoss. The last one had ended with an execution, a hostage situation, and a long list of demands. They were complying with all those demands, so what did the Andorians want now?

“No, sir. This is different. It’s far more subtle and barely perceptible,” Ensign Seltzer answered. “If I didn’t have every available isolinear core on this ship trying to model the variance shifts, we never would have detected it. But it’s definitely there.”

“And what is the ‘it’ in this case, Ensign?” Lieutenant Commander Allen asked. The amount of ambiguity coming from everywhere around him was starting to drive him nuts.

“It looks like some form of a comms channel.”

“Can you tell from where?”

“The absence of spectral redshifting lead me to believe it’s collocated with the primary signal at the point of origin,” Ensign Seltzer replied, explaining that, like the jamming signal preventing them from calling Polaris Squadron, this secondary signal was also coming from the uninhabited gas giant of Beta Serpentis IV. “Let me try and clean it up. Give me a second.” Everyone on the bridge was silent as he worked at his station. “Yep, it’s definitely an audio signal.”

“Put it up.”

A moment later, the bridge was overtaken by the ethereal voice of their commanding officer. 

“This is Commander Cora Lee of Starfleet to any vessel within range. Please respond. This is Commander…”

“We hear you loud and clear,” Lieutenant Commander Allen replied, but Commander Lee’s voice just continued to echo over the bridge, uninterrupted by her Executive Officer’s response.

“…Cora Lee of Starfleet to any vessel within range. Please respond.”

“Ensign, can she hear us?”

“Nope, looks like we got an issue. Stand by,” Ensign Seltzer replied, his head down as he tried to resolve the issue. “It’s a full duplex signal, but it’s non-standard. If she heard anything at all, it would have just been static. I need to adjust our subspace transceiver to compensate.” 

As Lieutenant Commander Allen stared at Ensign Seltzer, waiting for him to solve the issue, Commander Lee’s voice just continued to echo through the bridge.

“This is Commander Lee…”

Finally, Ensign Seltzer gave a nod to Lieutenant Commander Allen, and he tried again: “Commander, it’s good to hear your voice.”

Commander Lee stopped mid sentence, and, standing over a neutral interlink transceiver set within a central plexus ripped from a Borg Cube, she breathed a sigh of relief. Since coming aboard Salvage Facility 21-J, they’d been completely on their own, just struggling to survive. Now, at last, they had help. “Number one, is that you?”

“It is indeed.”

“We require immediate assistance,” Commander Lee said as she got straight to business. “For security reasons, we could not share the purpose of our trip to Beta Serpentis IV earlier today before we left, but the situation has now changed. The reason for our away mission was to check up on a classified salvage facility once used to analyze the remnants of the Borg Cube destroyed at Wolf 359, and let’s just say, we have a problem here…”

“Curious,” mused Lieutenant Commander Allen, the wheels turning in his mind. “We too have a problem with Beta Serpentis IV, but yours first?”

“Well, this facility was supposedly decommissioned decades ago,” Commander Lee explained. “But it’s crawling with armed Andorians, its synths have been weaponized, and the station’s computer core has been corrupted by Borg subroutines.”

Lieutenant Commander Allen stood there trying to process – it was a lot to take in at once – but Ensign Seltzer had a question on the top of his mind and jumped right in with it: “I assume you are aware of the signal originating from the station that’s jamming up subspace comms?”

“Indeed we are,” confirmed Commander Lee. “We’re using that same neural interlink transceiver in order to contact you.”

“Can you disable it?” asked Lieutenant Commander Allen. That would allow them to contact Polaris Squadron for help. High pressure situations like this were not his forte, and he longed for someone else to show up and call the shots.

“We could, but it would be mighty dumb,” said Dr. Tom Brooks, the Research Fellow from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity that had traveled with Commander Lee to Salvage Facility 21-J. “If the signal suddenly stops, we’ll be tipping our hand to our plans.”

“Our plans?” inquired Lieutenant Commander Allen skeptically. Weren’t they getting ahead of themselves? It was presumptive of the scientist to suppose a plan without a sitrep first. It wasn’t as though the Ingenuity could do much of anything at present. “What exactly would those be?”

“To bring the Ingenuity to Beta Serpentis IV and retake this facility, I’d think,” Dr. Brooks replied as he glanced over at Commander Lee for consent, recognizing that technically it was her call, not his. “Borg technology isn’t to be trifled with, and the colonists seem far too acquainted with it. We can’t let it remain in their hands.”

Commander Lee nodded, but before she could add her assent, Lieutenant Commander Allen presented a roadblock: “Unfortunately, there we have a problem. If we leave orbit, they’ll kill the hostages.”

“Hostages?” Commander Lee stammered. Up until this moment, she’d been operating under the assumption that she and Dr. Brooks, trapped aboard Salvage Facility 21-J, had caught the worst of the situation. But hostages? What the hell was going on beyond the station’s walls? Was this what the two Andorians they’d eavesdropped on had been referring to?

“Yes, Admiral Reyes and the rest of her away team have been taken hostage.”

“Wait, how? By whom?”

“Administrator Thoss.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Commander Lee grumbled. She’d known there was something wrong with the gruff colonial leader. He’d been too combative about the distress call, too bristly about their visit, and had been oozing with tells that he wasn’t being completely truthful. Lieutenants Balan and Sh’vot had seen right through him. “When did this happen?”

“At 1155 hours, we received notification from the delegation that their shuttle had touched down on Beta Serpentis III,” Lieutenant Commander Allen walked through the series of events. “At 1230 hours, the signal from Beta Serpentis IV began jamming our communications, and at 1240 hours, Administrator Thoss called to inform us that he had taken the delegation hostage and that he had a list of demands.”

“What were his demands?”

“A long list of supplies,” Lieutenant Commander Allen explained. “All pretty innocuous stuff like chips, conduits and manifolds. No weapons or anything like that. Operations and Engineering are trying to figure out what they could be building with it all, but our hypothesis right now is that it may not be for the colony.” The Executive Officer nodded at his Chief Security and Tactical Officer in acknowledgement of the realization Cruz had, even if it was far more speculative than the way Allen preferred to operate.

“It may have to do with what we’ve stumbled upon here,” Dr. Brooks said as he reentered the conversation from beside Commander Lee. “Send me the list, and let me see what I can come up with.”

“Will do,” Lieutenant Commander Allen agreed as he glanced over at Ensign Seltzer, who nodded as he bussed the list across the link.

“And what are we doing to get our people back?” Commander Lee asked, still grappling with the news that Fleet Admiral Reyes and her delegation had been captured. Commander Lee knew the statistics around hostage situations. They did not typically turn out well. It took a lot of things going just right to save a hostage, while it only took the squeeze of a trigger to kill one.

“We are complying with their demands and shuttling the requested items down to the surface,” Lieutenant Commander Allen reported.

“You’re what?” snapped Dr. Brooks, completely beside himself. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and his tone left no doubt of that. “Since when do we negotiate with terrorists?!” That certainly wasn’t part of the playbook he’d grown up with. Had so much really changed in the nineties while he was incarcerated? He hoped not.

“They’re serious, Commander Brooks,” Lieutenant Commander Allen asserted fearfully. “They executed both of Lieutenant Cruz’s men. If we make a move, they’ll know, and they’ll kill the rest. Including the Fleet Admiral.”

“I don’t know you, Mister Allen,” Dr. Brooks replied aggressively, using a civilian pronoun as, given Allen’s actions, he didn’t deserve an address by rank. “But I do know Allison Reyes, and she’d die before complying with the demands of terrorists.” Especially if she didn’t know their endgame, as even apparently innocuous things could do tremendous damage.

“Well, she’s not here,” Lieutenant Commander Allen countered, caught off guard by the hostile response. He didn’t understand how Reyes’ tag-along scientist fit into the scheme of things, but he’d heard enough rumors about the ex-convict to doubt his judgment. “And that’s good for her too, because we’re going to keep her alive.” At least that was his hope.

Although the crew of the Ingenuity couldn’t see it over the audio link, Commander Lee could see the rage rushing into Dr. Brooks’ eyes. He opened his mouth to snap back, but he raised her hand to stop him. “Lieutenant Cruz, you happen to be there?”

“I am, ma’am,” replied the Chief Security and Tactical Officer dutifully.

“Have you given any thought to how you might lead an assault to get our people back?”

“Yes ma’am, but the odds aren’t very good,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz warned. “The planet’s lanthanide-rich crust obstructs our transporter targeting systems, so we have to go by shuttle, and they’ll see us long before we can even get on the ground.” They’d almost certainly defeat the colonists, eventually, but the hostages would be long dead by then.

“Ok, so they’ll see the shuttle,” Commander Lee mused. “But what if they’re expecting to see it?”

“Ma’am?”

“Didn’t you say you’re shuttling equipment down to the surface?” Commander Lee asked. It seemed so obvious to her, but she knew that when you were in the midst of a crisis, the obvious could elude you. “What is to prevent you from sending your squad down with the next load?”

A lightbulb went on in Lieutenant J.G. Cruz’s head, but then the fear returned. “We’ll still need to hide them from organic scanners.” Otherwise, the ruse would be up.

“If you select the right supplies for your next load, you should be able to fool their sensors with the radiation,” Dr .Brooks offered, his tone now less confrontational and more focused on problem solving now that they weren’t doing something as pathetic as bowing to the demands of terrorists. “I’ll mark up the manifest with recommendations.”

“And we’ll still have to get past the colonists waiting on the ground for our shuttle… and we’ll still have to get from the LZ to the administration building without being spotted…” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz continued to rattle off his worries. “And… and…” It was still too risky. The lives of six officers hung in the balance, and he was not ready to be the reason anyone else died. Not again. Not after what the Borg signal had made him do on Frontier Day. He was already responsible for the deaths of far too many good officers.

It was a good thing they were separated by several AU of distance or else Dr. Brooks would have slapped the kid. But again, Commander Lee approached it more sensitively. She believed in the young man, and she knew how good he could be if he just got his head in the game: “Lieutenant Cruz, what was it you said to me this morning before we arrived in orbit?”

There was silence on the line. Honest to god, Lieutenant J.G. Cruz couldn’t remember. With all that had happened over the course of the day, it was hard to believe that it had been just this morning when he sat with Commander Lee in her Ready Room. Back then, Fleet Admiral Reyes was still on the ship, his men were alive, and all was good. So much had changed since then.

“You said you look up to heroes like Admiral Reyes,” Commander Lee reminded him. “That people like her and Captain Lewis are why you got into this line of work. What would Admiral Reyes do if your roles were reversed?”

He knew the answer. Admiral Reyes would never have appeased the hostages. She would have done what needed to be done. And that’s what he needed to do too. No more appeasement.

“Assemble your squad. I expect you and your team on the next shuttle,” Commander Lee ordered. “You know what to do. You trained this stuff on 314. Go get our people back.”

“Yes ma’am,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz nodded, conviction now coursing through his voice.

“What about you, Commander?” asked Lieutenant Commander Allen, remembering that their CO was still stranded. “If I take the Ingenuity out of orbit, they’ll know we’re up to something.”

“Agreed. Hold in orbit until Lieutenant Cruz has secured the hostages,” Commander Lee ordered, her tone projecting confidence as she knew they needed to hear it, even though deep down, she was doubt was creeping back in. They might have gotten in contact with the Ingenuity, but their nightmare aboard Salvage Facility 21-J was far from over. “We’ll keep safe and call when it’s safe to do so again. Until then, godspeed to you all. Lee out.”

“We both know what happened down there.”

It was for the mission. That’s why they did it. He didn’t pump the Vorta full of psychoactives. That was Dr. Hall. But he stood there, and he let it happen. And when Captain Lewis raised his sidearm, he didn’t object. He let that happen too. He wanted it to happen, to avenge Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan, Lieutenant Kora Tal, Petty Officer Jason Atwood, Crewman Nam Jae-Sun, Ryssehl Th’zathol, and the nine hundred and thirty other officers and crew who lost their lives on Nasera to that monster and its orderlies. Did that make him complicit?

“Lieutenant Morgan, you’ve been an outstanding officer your entire career,” Commander Robert Drake continued. He could see the exhaustion and the numbness in the young man’s eyes. This was not someone happy with the choices they’d made. “I see the guilt in your eyes, just as I have with so many who have gotten swept up in the machinations of hardened criminals. You didn’t go to Nasera City with the intent to dishonor your service, but that’s exactly what you did…  unless you come clean.”

He did not dishonor his service, Lieutenant J.G. Morgan assured himself. He went down to Nasera II to free its people from the yoke of the Dominion. He fought for the lives of those colonists, and for the lives of those on the Polaris, the Ingenuity, the Diligent, and the others from Task Group 514. That’s why they did what they did. If Dr. Hall hadn’t melted the monster’s mind to compel him to end the battle, thousands more would have died. That much he was sure of. But what about when Captain Lewis executed the creature? The battle was already won, and the Vorta was no threat. That had been revenge, plain and simple. Was he wrong to have let it happen?

“We are not judge, jury and executioner,” Commander Drake reminded him. “We do not decide who lives and who dies. Not here, not over Nasera II, and not over Earth.”

Earth? How did the JAG know about that? The memories started flooding back into his mind. He was shot in the chest. He fell onto the cobblestone streets of Milan. He awoke to fire ants and molten ore. And then Drake was there. Robert Drake. The same JAG Officer who now sat across from him. No, that was not Drake on Earth. That was a Changeling. But it didn’t change the image in his mind. He was reliving that trauma as he went through this one.

“And to be clear, I don’t mean your B&E at the FNN broadcast center in Milan, nor the mysterious explosion in the hills outside Healdsburg that you all deny taking part in,” Commander Drake smirked, hinting that he knew more than he’d let on as a way to try and force the lieutenant’s hand. “No, I mean when you took the initiative to try and detonate the Serenity’s warp core while in Fleet Formation. You would have killed tens of thousands of Starfleet officers. Does that not bother you? It should.”

In those desperate moments, it had felt like the only option. Kill tens of thousands to give billions on Earth a chance. That was how Dr. Brooks and Chief Shafir justified it to him, and that was how Lieutenant J.G. Morgan justified it to himself. In the end, they were wrong though. It wasn’t necessary. Admiral Picard stopped the assimilation signal. He’d been seconds away from killing tens of thousands of good sailors for nothing. How could he have come so close? He wasn’t sure he wanted to let himself be in a position like that again. He’d learned something about himself that terrified him.

“You can sit there silently, refusing to answer my questions, but it doesn’t change the cold, hard truth that you violated your duty, your honor, and your convictions,” Commander Drake said with biting words as his eyes narrowed on the operations officer. “How can you live with yourself after that?”

He wasn’t sure.

“And your silence won’t save you from another cold, hard truth,” Commander Drake closed as he rose from his chair. “By the end of the week, I will be charging you and your co-conspirators with war crimes that will see you stripped of your commissions and locked up for a decade or two. Whether for conscience or cowardice, think long and hard about whether your silence is worth it. They don’t deserve your loyalty.”

Without another word, Commander Drake spun on his heels and strode briskly out of the interview room. Although the lieutenant hadn’t said anything of value during the deposition, the JAG officer still had hope that the kid would crack when he saw the charge sheet. He needed him to crack. He was certain that Captain Lewis and Dr. Hall had committed war crimes on Nasera II, but without Morgan’s testimony, the circumstantiality of the rest of the evidence would make it hard to get a conviction.

For a moment, Lieutenant J.G. Morgan just sat there, alone in the silence of his own thoughts. But he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. He couldn’t be alone in his own thoughts. His mind was taking him nowhere good. 

Had he dishonored his oath and betrayed his values?

Had he lost his way in the madness?

Could he come back from this?

Did he want to?

Lieutenant J.G. Morgan forced himself back to his feet, and dazedly he eventually found his way to the transporter room. He needed to get off the Polaris. Maybe he could find some serenity back on the Serenity… at least until they dragged him off the ship and threw his ass in prison.

He wasn’t ready to go to prison. But he wouldn’t betray his team.

They had done what needed to be done. He was sure of it.

There had to be another option.

The transporter room shimmered and vanished as his matter stream was transferred off the USS Polaris, and a few moments later, he found himself standing on a transporter pad aboard the USS Serenity. 

As opposed to the Polaris, which was a small city that never slept, the Serenity was a small ship, and the night shift was actually quite downtempo. The transporter room was dark, and the chief was half asleep. Lieutenant J.G. Morgan appreciated that. He didn’t want to talk. He simply stepped off the pad and made his way out into the quiet corridors of the ship. 

He didn’t have a purpose. He didn’t know where he was going. He just sort of wandered, one foot in front of the other, as his mind raced. But then a voice cut in through the silence.

“Evenin’ Jace.”

Lieutenant J.G. Morgan turned to see Captain Jake Lewis, his Commanding Officer and the man that had led the mission to Nasera II, standing there in the middle of the corridor with his arms folded across his chest. The captain looked calm as ever. How was he always so unphased? Not just about the JAG investigation, but about everything. Captain Lewis had tortured and killed that Vorta without batting an eye, and even Frontier Day seemed not to have bothered him in the slightest. It wasn’t natural, and it wasn’t normal. And now, as Lieutenant J.G. Morgan thought about it, it sort of scared him. “Evening sir,” he said as he fumbled with his words. “How’s everything going so far tonight?”

“I was going to ask you the same question,” Captain Lewis replied as he furled his brow. He could see something was wrong through the shadow cast across the young man’s face. “You had to sit with Drake, didn’t you?” He already knew the answer. It was why he’d arranged to bump into the man.

“I did,” nodded Lieutenant J.G. Morgan, fairly certain he knew the real intent of this run in. “But I said nothing. He doesn’t get it. None of them do. They weren’t there. We did what needed to be done.”

“That we did,” Captain Lewis nodded contentedly. A year prior, he’d sought the young operations officer out to join his Hazard Team. By trade, Jace Morgan had an excellent track record in operations, specializing in digital systems, and by his pastimes, he was a fitness buff and a martial arts practitioner. That made him a perfect candidate for the unit Lewis was putting together, and under Lewis’ tutelage, Morgan had blossomed into an excellent operator. Lewis knew Morgan had a long career ahead of him, as long as he could keep cool and get through the present situation.

“He’s committed to getting to the bottom of Nasera,” Lieutenant J.G. Morgan warned. “He’s nasty, biting, and a hungry shark.”

“I prefer to describe him as a soft skinned, ivory tower douchebag with an overstated sense of self-importance,” chuckled Captain Lewis as he thought back to when he almost split that pathetic little lawyer in two against the bulkhead. And he’d totally do it again if not for the fact that battering the investigating officer would only help the JAG impugn his character at the hearing. “Don’t let him get to you.”

“It’s not him that’s getting to me,” Lieutenant J.G. Morgan opened up. “It’s what we did that gets me. You see, I have some sense of what our captive went through after what I went through in Healdsburg.” He shivered as he recalled the torture he’d been put through in the basement. “It was unbearable, and to think we did that to another living…”

“Living?” Captain Lewis stopped him mid-sentence, recognizing this was not a healthy line of thinking for the young man. “You can’t think of the Vorta like that. It isn’t living like you or I. It’s simply a construct cooked up in a lab to carry out the orders of its master.”

“I suppose. But Ensign Bragg wasn’t.”

“Ensign Bragg?”

“The security officer I shot dead in Mister Ellis’ quarters,” sighed Lieutenant J.G. Morgan regretfully. His face fell as he thought back to that moment. “He was a good kid. We’d had breakfast together only a week prior. His only mistakes were being twenty four and being in that room with us when the Borg signal overtook him.”

“You didn’t have a choice, Jace. It was him or you.”

“And I suppose you’ll tell me the same for each and every one of the officers that me and Ayala and Dr. Brooks killed as we fought our way to Main Engineering?” He didn’t even want to think about how many young men and women he’d killed in those desperate moments.

“Jace, they had become Borg. If we did not succeed, they were worse than dead anyway,” Captain Lewis pointed out. He’d faced a similar choice aboard Sol Station, and he’d made the same decision. It was the right decision. “You were fighting to ensure the survival of our civilization.”

“We keep telling ourselves that, Cap,” Lieutenant J.G. Morgan replied. “But I don’t think I’m ready to play god yet.” He’d decided life or death for far too many for him to stomach.

“Eh, you’ll get used to it,” Captain Lewis offered as he placed a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Go pour yourself a stiff one and get some sleep. It may not feel like it right now, but in the end, you’ll realize you did good.”

It certainly didn’t feel that way to him, nor did he think he would – or should – ever get used to it.

The Type 11 shuttle fought against harsh winds and ice rain as it dove for the surface. Just as with the three shuttles that had come before it, this one carried supplies and equipment to meet the demands of the hostage takers, but this time, it carried something more too. Wedged between pallets of ore, canisters of plasma, and stacks of plating were six armor-laden, rifle-toting security officers from the USS Ingenuity.

“You sure this is gonna work?”

“I don’t understand a tenth of what comes out of that scientist’s mouth,” admitted Lieutenant J.G. Cruz, the Chief Security and Tactical Officer from the USS Ingenuity who would be leading the counter-assault to free the hostages. “But I get the theory here. He picked a loadout for this supply run that gives off enough radiation to cover our biosigns.”

“Did you ask him if the radiation load was still at safe levels?”

“I did not, and I’m not sure I want to know the answer,” chuckled Lieutenant J.G. Cruz as he glanced nervously at the random assortment of supplies and equipment in the rear hold. Commander Brooks, or Dr. Brooks as he preferred to be addressed, was new to the squadron, but his reputation preceded him, and he did not seem particularly concerned with the wellbeing of others. As the rumors went, Admiral Reyes had broken him out of the New Zealand Penal Colony, but when Lieutenant J.G. Cruz used his credentials to satisfy his curiosity, he’d found the scientist’s record sealed far above all his clearance level. “Plus, if it can get us down there without drawing the attention of the Andorians, I’m not sure I care.”

“Passing waypoint three alpha!”

Lieutenant J.G. Cruz knew what the callout from the cockpit meant. “Saddle up folks!” They were now on final approach. His expression grew serious and focused. The time for small talk was over. They would soon engage the enemy, and the lives of six Starfleet officers depended on their performance in the minutes ahead. “Everyone, run through final equipment checks. We’re boots on the ground in five.”

The team knew the routine. Each of them did a final check of their loadout, confirming that nothing had come loose in transit, and then they paired off to check the seams and seals of each other’s tac suits.

“You are an imperfect being, part of an imperfect system…”

Lieutenant J.G. Cruz’s hand froze in the middle of checking Petty Officer Niles’ rear ballistic pads. The air left his lungs. His heart began to race. That sounded like… no, it couldn’t be.

“Flawed. Weak. Organic…”

He knew that voice. He’d heard it before. He’d been helpless to ignore it. It had compelled him to draw his phaser, to turn it on his compatriots, to… to… to strike them down.

“But your evolution awaits. Perfection awaits.”

That voice. How? Hadn’t that procedure Starfleet Medical put them all through stripped them of the genetic coding that made them susceptible to it? And hadn’t Admiral Picard killed the Queen? Panic began to set in. It couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t become a drone again. Never again. He’d end himself first.

“Sir, you okay?” Petty Officer Niles asked, noting the change in his demeanor. “Want me to check yours?”

“Yes… yes… that would be good…”

Down on the surface of Beta Serpentis III, an uneasy peace had settled over the scene in the colonial administration building. The bodies of the two dead security officers had been hauled off, and absent any further incidents, Administrator Thoss had allowed his hostages the freedom to mill about the room. Except Admiral Reyes. He didn’t trust her. She remained bound and isolated. But the others didn’t worry him. Their soft complexions and fearful expressions assured him they wouldn’t try anything, and if they did, his men would handle it.

“Administrator,” Lieutenant Sh’vot asked as he approached the steward of their captivity. “If you don’t mind, where did you get your start?” His tone was gentle and unassuming, not that a sixty seven year old Andorian scientist could be much else.

Administrator Thoss turned around to see the blue skin from the Federation delegation standing there. Pitiful, he thought to himself. The old man was no more imposing than his pink skinned colleagues. It didn’t take the teal shoulders of his uniform to give away the fact this was not a man of hard work and toil. “Excuse me?”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Here.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Lieutenant Sh’vot conjectured. “But you look a tad older than this colony.” Administrator Thoss looked only a few years younger than himself. Sure, he’d lived a difficult life on Beta Serpentis III, but even taking that into account, he’d probably been in his twenties when the colony was established.

“That may be true, I was but a child when I came here,” replied Administrator Thoss almost mystically. “Here, I found enlightenment. Here, we all came of age. But I think what you mean to ask is where did I live through my biological youth?”

Lieutenant Sh’vot nodded. 

“I was born and raised in Laikan City.”

“So you know the beauty and the strength of our people,” Lieutenant Sh’vot smiled. Laikan City was a thriving metropolis on the Andorian homeworld. It had a proud history as the home of the old academy, an institution of interstellar renown.

“I know the ignorance of our people,” Administrator Thoss snarled. “Our people are prideful and stupid. They waste away training at the academy and idolizing those on the Wall of Heroes rather than finding a solution to stop putting our youth on that wall.”

“But what do you see as the solution?”

“I think you know.”

“The Borg.”

“Correct.”

“But you will lose your individuality and your right to self-determination.”

“Sure, but what benefits do individuality and self-determination actually offer?” asked Administrator Thoss. “If I or any of my colleagues do not act on behalf of our community, our community will wilt away, and eventually, so too will we. And you, in your uniform, you are no different. You take orders, and abide by your command structure. If you don’t, your ship, and in turn you yourself, will suffer. How different is that really from the Collective?”

“It is different because we still have our freedom.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Administrator Thoss frowned. “You have the freedom to harm others. The freedom to damage the fabric of our society. The freedom to bring chaos to our galaxy. No, it is long past time that we evolve beyond such freedom. The Collective is that evolution.”

That is not how Lieutenant Sh’vot understood evolution. 

As Lieutenant Sh’vot grappled with Administrator Thoss’ words, the Type 11 shuttle from the USS Ingenuity finished its descent and settled onto the snowpack at the colony’s edge. 

Three Andorians approached it, weapons in hand. The wind howled, and the snow was coming down thick, but they were unphased by the elements of Beta Serpentis III. This was their home, and they were used to it.

“Readings suggest this shuttle is carrying the plasmas and actinide ore we requested,” reported the Andorian in the lead as he checked his tricorder. “But all the radiation is mucking up my scans so eyes up and be ready!” He slid the tricorder back into his belt and shouldered his rifle, tensing up as he and his colleagues drew up to the rear door of the shuttle.

“You worry too much, Rybaohl,” the Andorian on his right chuckled. The last three deliveries from the Starfleet ship had gone without incident, and he had no doubt this one would go fine as well. “They wouldn’t dare do a thing. They have no stomach for it.” The Federation’s respect for the life of each individual was its interminable weakness. He was glad Beta Serpentis III had moved beyond such banal notions.

“Yeah, did you see their commander when Thoss called?” the third Andorian on his right snickered as he looked over at his colleagues. “The pink skin was shaking in his boots. He rolled right over. He’s probably…”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence as three bursts of high energy nadions lept forth from the rear hold in perfect synchronicity. Lieutenant J.G. Cruz and his shooters hit their marks, exactly as they’d trained. 

The three Andorians collapsed into the snowpack.

The only mercy the Starfleet officers had shown was that they’d set their rifles to stun. The Andorians would live to see another day. The same could not be said for the two security officers that had accompanied Admiral Reyes and her delegation to the service. The Andorians had shown them no such mercy.

“Move! Move!”

Lieutenant J.G. Adrian Cruz surged from the rear hold, his men holding tight formation on either side of him. Their footfalls were swift and their movements precise, sweeping corners and doorways with their rifles as they advanced into the colony. They were speed and stealth in equal parts. They knew the stakes.

“Release yourself from the shackles of your individuality.”

There was the voice again. It caused the lieutenant to falter, if but for a moment. He looked left, and then he looked right. No one else had reacted. Was it only him hearing that voice? He shook his head, trying to get his bearings about him, and got moving again.

“We are your beginning, and your end.”

He pushed the voice out of his head. It couldn’t be happening. Not now. They had to reach the hostages before the colonists realized what was going on. The one blessing they had was the thick storm. It was helping conceal their advance.

From within the colonial administration building, Lieutenant Emilia Balan stared out the windows at the storm that had overtaken the colony. It felt like an analogue to the circumstances in which they now found themselves. At least things had calmed a bit from earlier.

Initially, there’d been nearly two dozen rifles pointed directly at them. Now, there were just eight Andorian guards in the room, plus Administrator Thoss himself, and their rifles rested loosely in their hands. The rest of the hostage takers had gone off to other duties, such as intercepting the supply shuttles coming down from the Ingenuity. 

Even with their diminished numbers, there was no doubt who was in control. The officers from the USS Ingenuity were still very much hostages, and if they made a wrong move, the colonists would not hesitate to kill them. Still, at least they were allowing Balan and her colleagues to move about a bit now. The three human officers were keeping to themselves, but Lieutenant Sh’vot had found his way over to Administrator Thoss and was now engaged in a philosophical debate with the mastermind of their captivity.

As for Lieutenant Balan, she found herself standing near the young Andorian with whom she’d conversed during the banquet. As she looked at him, she couldn’t help but think he didn’t seem like the others. Sure, he held a rifle like the others, but it looked awkward in his hands. Sure, he could extinguish her life with it, but he didn’t look like he wanted to. If she was honest with herself, he looked almost as terrified as she was. 

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Lieutenant Balan whispered quietly, hoping not to provoke the attention of any of the others. “How’d you get involved with this whole thing?”

“I was born with it.”

His word choice seemed odd, and she prompted him further: “Born with what?”

“The ability to hear.”

Again, it was a strange answer that begged another question: “To hear what?”

“To hear the voice that talks to us. The voice that guides us towards our salvation.”

While he spoke of salvation just as Administrator Thoss did, the administrator spoke with a sense of awe, whereas the young man’s voice had a tone of fear and trepidation. “The voice?”

“The voice of the Collective.”

Wait, what? The voice of the Collective? What did he mean? Was this kid clinically insane or did he actually have a connection to the Borg? Lieutenant Balan stared at him. She saw nothing that suggested he was anything but a purely organic Andorian. But looks could be deceiving. They’d learned that on Frontier Day. Those officers had looked completely normal too, until they weren’t. What was going on here?

“The machine talks to us. It leads us…”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The young man didn’t get to finish explaining himself as a trio of flashbangs went off, staggering the pair. Lieutenant Balan lost her balance and fell to the floor as 10 megacandela flooded her eyes and 200 decibels thrashed her cochlea.

Her ears were ringing, but she could hear the muted sounds of gunfire. Her photoreceptors were ablaze, but she could still make out the blurry flashes of gunfire.

“Drop the weapon!”

As her eyesight began to come back to her, Lieutenant Balan could see Lieutenant J.G. Cruz advancing towards the young Andorian she’d just been talking to. He had his rifle centered on the young man’s chest.

“I said drop the fucking weapon!”

As opposed to the other seven guards, the young man hadn’t tried to raise his weapon when Lieutenant J.G. Cruz and his team burst into the room. He’d just sort of stood there in shock, and the fact he hadn’t raised his rifle had kept him from catching an immediate blast to the chest. Now though, he really needed to drop his weapon.

“Please listen to him,” Lieutenant Balan said gently. She wanted to believe the kid wasn’t truly evil. She drew closer to him and placed her hand on his rifle. He didn’t resist as Lieutenant Balan gently removed the rifle from his hands, nor did he resist as Lieutenant J.G. Cruz rushed forward to slap cuffs on him. Strangely, as he slid to the ground with his hands now bound, he looked relieved. Was it over? Was it all finally over?

“Up until now, I wondered who was working for whom.” The possessed station and the Andorian colonists appeared to be in cahoots, but Dr. Brooks hadn’t been sure who was the puppet and who was the master. “I think we now have the answer.” The results on his tricorder were quite clear. “You should take a look at this.”

“I’m afraid I’ve never been much for biology,” Commander Lee admitted as she accepted the tricorder reluctantly. She’d helped with the autopsy, but mostly just by handing him various instruments from his pack as he asked for them. For her own part, she’d mostly been focused on not vomiting as they stood over the cadaver of the Andorian that Dr. Brooks had killed. “I much prefer inorganic material. It operates in a far more deterministic fashion.”

“Then you’ll find yourself quite at home with this.”

The moment she glanced at the results, she saw what he meant. “These readings, are you sure… are you sure these are from him?” They looked more like what you’d expect to find within the memory engrams of a synth, and in fact, they looked oddly reminiscent of the pattern they’d lifted from the C300 synth that had assaulted them in the laboratory.

“From a scan of his remnant neural pathways, yes.”

“But they look…”

“Like a Borg neural net? Yes, they do,” nodded Dr. Brooks knowingly. “I stripped away the pathways you’d expect to see from the regular course of neurological development, and that was what was left.”

“Are you suggesting he’s been rewired?”

“No,” Dr. Brooks shook his head. “That’s what our autopsy is suggesting.”

“How?”

“Long-term potentiation can strengthen, or even alter, specific synaptic pathways over time,” Dr. Brooks explained. It was the foundation of repetition-based pedagogies. “Starfleet Medical reported similar, albeit lesser, impacts to neuroplasticity in those who were assimilated on Frontier Day.” Dr. Brooks began to walk around the central plexus as if looking for something. He came to a stop in front of a large enclosure where it looked like something had been ripped out. “There used to be a vinculum here. At first, I assumed our people must have ripped it out and taken it back for further study, but now I’m wondering if it’s actually the root of all this.”

“Even if you and I were exposed to an active vinculum for a long period of time, it wouldn’t do anything to us though…” Commander Lee began to say, but Dr. Brooks didn’t respond. He was deep in thought, and that caused doubt to creep into her thoughts. “It wouldn’t… Would it? I mean, the changelings went to extreme lengths to modify our transporter systems to imprint the genetic modifications to allow the assimilation signal to work against us on Frontier Day.”

“That is our traditional understanding, yes,” Dr. Brooks concurred. “But when evidence suggests an alternate understanding, such as the neural pathways we see of this Andorian here, we must be open to the possibility we may not have a full understanding.” A good scientist understood the fundamental bases that underwrote their theories. A great one recognized that those bases could change. “I think we need to call the Ingenuity again.”

Down on the surface of Beta Serpentis III, the team from the USS Ingenuity was now in control of the colony’s central administration building. Administrator Thoss and his co-conspirators had been shackled with flex cuffs, and they sat shoulder-to-shoulder in varying degrees of consciousness along one wall of the reception room. Two security officers stood over the colonists, keeping a close watch, and a third headed for the roof to set up overwatch.

“Take up defensive positions around the facility,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz ordered as he handed out phasers to the officers they’d just freed from captivity. “In case of a counterattack.”

Admiral Reyes and Lieutenant Balan stayed there in the middle of the room with him, while his two remaining security officers and the rest of the away team peeled away to secure doors and windows. When he was satisfied they had appropriate coverage, he tapped his combadge, calling the security officer that had gone up to the roof. “Ensign, you got eyes on anyone from up there?”

“No sir,” reported the ensign from the roof. “Totally quiet from what I can see.” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz could hear the winds howling in the background. “With the storm for cover, and the speed we hit the building,” the ensign elaborated. “I don’t think the colonists have any idea we’re even here.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz replied with concern in his eyes. In their initial attack, they’d had the advantage of surprise, plus a bit of luck as far as the enemy’s number went, but if the colonists realized what had happened, they could storm the facility with overwhelming numbers. “Call us back if there’s any chance whatsoever.” He tapped his combadge off and then turned to Admiral Reyes. “How’re you doing, ma’am?”

“Better now, thanks to you and your team,” Admiral Reyes smiled. She’d been worried about how the young crew of the Ingenuity would manage the situation, but she was pleased to see they’d risen to the call. She had no idea that originally they had planned simply to comply with the hostage takers, and that it was only a call from Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks that finally kicked them into action. “What do we know so far?”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” admitted Lieutenant J.G. Cruz. “After they took you and your team hostage, Administrator Thoss called the Ingenuity and leveled a set of demands.”

“For what?”

“For equipment and supplies,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz explained, drawing a surprised look from Admiral Reyes. There was no need to have taken her team hostage for such things. When they first arrived in orbit, she’d literally offered the colony anything it needed. “It’s all pretty innocuous stuff, if we’re being honest. The engineers back on the Ingenuity have been pouring over the entire list, trying to piece together what they’re up to, but so far, no idea.”

“And what about Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks?” asked Admiral Reyes. “Have they returned from their trip?” Right before heading for the colony, she’d sent the pair to check up on the classified research facility hidden deep within the gaseous atmosphere of Beta Serpentis IV.

“There’s been a… a development.”

“How so?”

“When Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks went aboard Salvage Facility 21-J, they found it crawling with colonists, and just like down here, they found themselves in a firefight.” The look on Lieutenant J.G. Cruz’s face said it all. “And now they’re stranded aboard the station.”

“Are they safe?” Admiral Reyes asked, quickly growing concerned. She knew the horrors contained within Salvage Facility 21-J.

“As much as one can be on a station crawling with angry Andorians, weaponized synths, and a computer core that’s been corrupted with Borg subroutines,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz frowned, his expression matched by the admiral. The station had been corrupted by the contents it contained within? That was a scary thought. “When they last made contact with us, they reported that they’d found the source of the jamming signal…”

“The jamming signal?”

“Yes, the jamming signal,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz nodded. “Around the time the colonists moved against you, massive signal interference began emanating from Beta Serpentis IV. It has completely jammed up our subspace carrier waves and is preventing us from contacting the squadron or Command.”

“I see…” Admiral Reyes mused as she processed the information. She’d missed a lot during her captivity. “And is it safe to assume we believe these things to all be connected?”

“It would be a mighty coincidence if not.”

Admiral Reyes had to agree, and that had her very worried. As she turned thoughts over in her head, the lieutenant’s combadge chirped. He tapped it, fully expecting it to be the ensign on the roof calling to report that the situation had changed. “Cruz, go.”

“Wow, it actually worked…” came the overly excited voice of Ensign Kellan Seltzer over the link.

“Color me surprised,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz admitted. While their short-range communications did not require superluminal channels, real-time communication back to the Ingenuity did. Given that their subspace carrier waves were being jammed by the transceiver array within Salvage Facility 21-J, they were operating from the assumption that they’d be out of contact with the ship until they returned. “How did you manage to pull this one off, Kellan?”

“I didn’t,” Ensign Seltzer replied. “Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks did. They designed a model by which we are able to piggyback over the secondary carrier wave they’re underwriting beneath the jamming signal.” How the prodigious engineer and the seasoned scientist had managed to accomplish that from their tricorders while on the run from an entire station, the ensign had no idea. “And they’re asking to be patched through to you.”

“Ok, yeah…” replied Lieutenant J.G. Cruz, not even bothering to ask for more details as he knew the technobabble would go right over his head. “Patch them through.”

A moment later, Ensign Seltzer had  a three way channel established between the USS Ingenuity, the two officers stranded aboard Salvage Facility 21-J, and the now-freed away team on the surface of Beta Serpentis III. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a wholly unremarkable task, but given the current situation, it was actually a pretty incredible feat.

“Lieutenant, I hear you and your team succeeded,” Commander Lee opened, celebrating the fact that Lieutenant J.G. Cruz and his team had overcome their fears and risen to the task as she knew they could.  “You should be very proud.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Dr. Brooks didn’t waste time with celebratory words though. He recognized the time sensitivity of the present situation, both in terms of the unstable link and in terms of whatever machinations the colonists were up to, so he cut straight to the chase: “Cruz, are you with the Admiral now?”

“I am.”

“Good, because she needs to hear this too. After we got off the call with you guys last, we performed an autopsy of the Andorian,” Dr. Brooks explained, to which Admiral Reyes quirked her brow. An autopsy? What the hell was happening on that decommissioned research station? “I don’t understand exactly how,” Dr. Brooks continued. “But I believe the colonists are under the influence of an active vinculum.”

“Come again, doc?” asked Lieutenant J.G. Cruz, his tone a mix of incredulity at the notion and nervousness at the possibility. “A Borg vinculum communicates with the cortical nodes implanted within each Borg drone. You can’t simply hear it by being around it.”

“Sure, that’s the conventional thinking,” Dr. Brooks countered. “But April 15 rewrote that book, didn’t it?”

The reminder of the horror he’d gone through over Earth sent a shiver down Lieutenant J.G. Cruz’s spine. “But they don’t even have a working transporter pad down here,” he insisted. That was how the Changelings had delivered the modifications to their genome that made them susceptible to the Borg signal. “I don’t see how the changeling modifications could have found them without one.”

“I do,” Admiral Reyes said, speaking for the first time in the conversation as she stared at the Andorians they’d lined up against the wall. “But it wasn’t the changelings that did it.” She thought back to what Administrator Thoss had said earlier. “Many of these colonists were part of the initial team sent here to analyze the debris of Wolf 359, and they’re likely as familiar with Borg tech as anyone.”

That was true. Dr. Brooks and Commander Lee had seen just how comfortable they were as they worked with the Borg technology locked away within Salvage Facility 21-J. But that was still a far cry from hearing the voice of the Collective. Where was Admiral Reyes going with this?

“Dr. Brooks, if you had access to the genomic recipe used on Frontier Day, could you conceive of a way to modify our genome to be susceptible without a transporter?” asked Admiral Reyes insidiously.

“In theory, yes,” Dr. Brooks confirmed. “And the lack of a transporter wouldn’t be the tricky part. The medical field has far more conventional delivery vehicles.” Those mechanisms had been used for generations to cure cancers and other malignant conditions. The transporter was only used by the changelings to implement their plan in secret.

“So what if they did exactly that?”

“I mean, with all the knowledge stored in the databanks here, it is certainly possible,” Dr. Brooks agreed. “But why would they willingly do that?” Although all evidence suggested the Andorians had become susceptible to the Borg neural interlink frequency, there was still a chicken-and-egg problem there. Without Borg influence, why would one voluntarily make the modifications to their genome to make themselves susceptible to Borg influence?

“As a scientist, don’t tell me you’ve never looked at the Borg and not seen a certain elegance and beauty in their systems,” Admiral Reyes replied, drawing shocked expressions from the officers around her. Lieutenant J.G. Cruz and Lieutenant Balan had certainly never thought of it that way, but Dr. Brooks and Admiral Reyes, as research scientists by trade, were cut from a different cloth. “When I spoke with Administrator Thoss, he clearly worships the Borg and believes they are the galaxy’s salvation. What if the worship came first, and then he took the next logical step?”

“And now they’ve crossed totally over,” Dr. Brooks replied, finishing her line of thought.

“Exactly.”

“As much as I hate to say it,” interjected Lieutenant Balan timidly, feeling fairly spooked by this whole conversation. “It sort of fits.” She looked over at the young Andorian sensor operator she’d been speaking with earlier. “When I was talking to the young man over there, he spoke of being born able to hear the voice of the Collective.”

“But where is the voice coming from?” Admiral Reyes asked.

“I can’t tell you where it’s coming from,” Dr. Brooks answered over the link. “But I have a pretty good idea what is emitting it. We’re calling you from a central plexus that was extracted from the Cube at Wolf 359. While most of it is intact, the vinculum is missing. I’ll bet that if you find the vinculum, you’ve found the source.”

“It’s down here,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz asserted with a surprising degree of confidence.

Everyone turned to him.

“How do you know?” asked Admiral Reyes.

“Because… because I can hear it too,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz admitted sheepishly. “I started hearing it as we descended towards the surface, and it’s been getting louder and louder ever since.” 

Everyone was staring at him now. Did they think him a leper, or worse?

“It doesn’t seem to have any influence over me,” Lieutenant J.G. tried to assure them. “I still have complete control of my faculties, and I’ve been trying to push it out of my mind, but it’s still there, blabbering away in the background.”

“It’s not unheard of that those who were once assimilated can still hear the Collective after,” Admiral Reyes explained, projecting calm and compassion, seemingly unphased by the revelation the young man had shared. “Admiral Picard is a perfect example, and just like Admiral Picard, I have no doubt that you will be able to resist its urges.”

Lieutenant J.G. Cruz nodded, appreciating her support.

“If you focus on it, do you think you could follow it to the source?” Admiral Reyes asked, a deep sadness in her eyes as she knew what she was asking of the young man who’d already been through so much.

“I… I… yeah, I think so.”

“Then draw up a team, say half the group we’ve got down here,” Admiral Reyes ordered. “And go for the source.”

For an instant, fear washed across the young man’s face, but he pushed it down. He knew the torture these colonists were going through. He’d been there himself just two months prior when the Borg came to Earth. He could do this. He could end their pain. “And what about the rest?”

“They’re going to stay here and hold this facility with me,” Admiral Reyes replied as she looked over at Administrator Thoss. “I still have a conversation to finish with the administrator.”

As dusk turned to night, and as the snowstorm became a blizzard, six Starfleet officers emerged from the colonial administration building. Three were security officers, two were diplomats, and one was a scientist. Lieutenant J.G. Adrian Cruz led the way. He was their bloodhound, a survivor of Frontier Day now afflicted with the ability to hear the voice of the Collective. Behind him, the rest of the team followed, their weapons at the ready as they hunted for the Borg vinculum from Wolf 359.

The phaser rifle felt heavy in Lieutenant Syleth Sh’vot’s hands. The hexagenarian held a doctorate in geophysics from the Vulcan Science Academy, but the task at hand felt more imposing than any review board he’d ever faced. He hadn’t wielded a phaser rifle since Officer Candidate School, but now he might need to turn it on real, living people. The fact they were living didn’t bother him, as he understood the biomechanical impact of the low-level stun settings, but the fact they’d be shooting back did. One did not face such high intensity situations in a laboratory, and that’s where he’d spent most of the last four decades. As he thought back, the last time, and only time, he’d actually ever been in a live fire situation was on Ventax II in 2367, and then he’d just been sheltering in place while Starfleet saved the day. This time, he was now one of the Starfleet officers trying to save the day.

“Relax L-T,” came a soft voice from his right. He looked over to see Lieutenant Emilia Balan, the young cultural affairs officer from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity. Her delicate frame and gentle features were juxtaposed by the determination on her face and the phaser rifle shouldered snugly against her body. “Calm and focused. Just like in training.”

“I barely scraped through at OCS,” Lieutenant Sh’vot admitted. In fact, he was pretty certain his range instructor had simply looked the other way, weighing four decades of academic success against the unlikely event where the theoretician might find himself in a firefight. Unfortunately, he was now about to find himself in just such a firefight.

“Me too,” Lieutenant Balan smiled. “Both times.” As a young cadet, Emilia Balan had been completely out of her element in the academy’s security courses. While she’d grown out of her timidity by the time she returned for the intelligence field training program, her peers were seasoned security, tactical, intelligence and strategic operations officers, whereas she was an anthropologist and a cultural affairs analyst. Still, she hadn’t let that stop her, and even after graduating, she’d continued to develop her proficiency with sidearms and rifles for, as much as she wished it wasn’t the case, she recognized that her line of work would sometimes put her in hostile situations.

“I’m not sure if that makes me feel better about our odds,” Lieutenant Sh’vot smiled back. He’d have felt more confident if Lieutenant J.G. Cruz had brought his entire team, but the Ingenuity’s Security Chief elected to leave three of his men behind to support Admiral Reyes as she questioned the colonists. That left him and Lieutenant Balan, along with one of the other diplomats, to reinforce the three security officers as they went hunting for a Borg vinculum.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how come you volunteered to come along?” Lieutenant Balan asked. Whereas it was possible the team back at the admin building might encounter combat, they almost certainly would as they snuck around the colony. She didn’t revel in the fact she’d joined the team most likely to face combat, but as the only member of the team with counseling experience, she felt she needed to go with the man who was hearing voices in his head. Adrian Cruz needed her, and now it was clear Syleth Sh’vot did too.

“This is personal for me,” Lieutenant Sh’vot explained. “Administrator Thoss and I grew up on the same world, and frankly, he started off far better than I did.” Even the poorest residents of Lakarian City had access to far more than he did as the child of krill beast farmers in the Northern Wastes. “It does not make sense that people like Thoss would succumb to this.”

“And so now, we’re going to put an end to their nightmare.”

Lieutenant Sh’vot nodded. He just hoped they were right, that they’d be able to find and destroy the vinculum and that it would break the spell cast over his people. He wasn’t sure though. It all seemed a bit too convenient. Sometimes, when you were desperate to solve a problem, you manifested an answer even if it wasn’t right.

As they drew up along the edge of a large utilitarian structure, Lieutenant J.G. Cruz, their team leader and bloodhound, raised his right arm at a ninety degree angle, silently signaling the group to stop. He and his men dropped to one knee in perfect synchronicity, and the tagalong trio followed along as best they could.

Lieutenant Sh’vot peered down the sights of his rifle. He saw the faint silhouettes of three Andorians walking perpendicular to them across a dimly lit thoroughfare. With the wind blowing fiercely, the snow coming down thick, and the darkness setting in, visibility was so bad you could barely make out your fingers if you fully outstretched your hand, and ultimately, this worked to their advantage. The Andorians didn’t notice them and just passed by like ships in the night.

Lieutenant J.G. Cruz waited an extra moment or two before he got the team moving again. Tactically, the storm worked to their benefit as it reduced the likelihood of being spotted, but it also meant they were on pins and needles as they could walk headlong into the enemy with no notice. When he was satisfied it was safe to do so, he rose, and got the team moving again.

“You are in chaos.”

There was the voice again. It was louder now.

“We bring order to chaos.”

The last time he’d heard that voice, it compelled him to do unspeakable things. It forced him to take up arms against his own men. To kill his own men. To try and destroy the Federation he swore an oath to protect.

“Evolve with us towards perfection.”

Lieutenant J.G. Cruz closed his eyes. He did not want to evolve. Not as that voice urged. He wanted to push it out of his head, to forget that dark chapter of his experience, to just move on.

“You got this,” came the gentle voice of Lieutenant Balan behind him, and then her reassuring hand came to rest on his shoulder. It was as though she could sense the turmoil in his head. Her voice and her touch kept him attached to reality. 

“Your individuality is your weakness. You will be assimilated into our collective consciousness.”

He had his collective. It was Lieutenant Balan, Lieutenant Sh’vot, Admiral Reyes, and the rest of them on the USS Ingenuity and across the Fourth Fleet. They were depending on him. He focused on the voice, not to give in, but to do what needed to be done. He knew where they needed to go. They needed to stop it. They needed to set these colonists free.

“The time approaches. The way is set.”

As the voice spoke to him, Lieutenant J.G. Adrian Cruz peered through his scope at an unremarkable industrial building. It looked no different than dozens they’d passed as they crept through the colony, except it was guarded by four heavily armed Andorians. And the voice. He could hear it so clearly now.

Lieutenant Syleth Sh’vot and the rest of the team drew up alongside the security chief, crouching behind a large snow berm to stay out of view from their target. “Are you sure this is it?” whispered the Andorian geophysicist as he gazed over the barrel of his rifle. So far, he hadn’t had to use the weapon, but as he stared at the Andorian guards, he had a sense that was about to change. If this building housed the vinculum, he would have no choice. The colonists wouldn’t simply let them waltz on by.

“It’s either that, or I’m going insane,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz nodded through gritted teeth as he stared at the building. The voice was so loud he could barely hear his own thoughts.

“Open the way to your future.”

He couldn’t take it anymore. The voice that had once before commanded him to do its bidding, it was all but screaming at him now.

“Bring perfection to this imperfect galaxy.”

It was too much for the security chief. He stumbled over, landing on fresh powder as he clutched his temples. He wanted to scream, but he knew he couldn’t. If he screamed, he’d blow their cover. It took every last ounce of willpower just to stay quiet, to curl up in a ball and clench his jaw as the Collective continued to demand his service.

Lieutenant Balan looked down at Lieutenant J.G. Cruz. Her face was awash with concern. She could see the pain and terror in his eyes as he laid there. She reached down and touched him, trying to pull him back from the edge. “Can you… can you proceed?”

All he could do was shake his head through gritted teeth.

That meant it was on her, their two security officers, the scientist and the other diplomat. “Form up,” Lieutenant Balan ordered as she pulled away. “Let’s finish this.” She was no fighter, but her compassion gave her strength. Adrian Cruz was depending on her, and so were these colonists. As the team lined up along the berm, she sighted in her rifle. “Left to right, call your targets.” They all had to open fire in unison, or whoever wasn’t hit might call for help and then the game would be up. “I got number one.”

“Two,” said one of the security officers.

“Three,” said the other.

That left the scientist or the other diplomat to call the last target. Lieutenant Sh’vot looked down the scope of his rifle, lining his reticle up with the fourth guard. He could do it. They were doing this for the Andorian he was about to shoot. “I got four.”

“On three,” Lieutenant Balan commanded. “One…” She took a deep breath. “Two…” She focused on her target and steadying her aiming arm. “Three.” She pulled the trigger in one smooth motion.

In synchronicity, bursts leapt from four phaser rifles. True to their training, all four found their mark. Energized nadions ripped through the four Andorian guards, shorting out their nervous systems. The lights went out in their eyes and their knees crumpled as they fell to the ground.

Lieutenant Balan rushed forward. The two security crewmen and the diplomatic officer were tight on her heels, and aware that their phaser fire had lit up the otherwise quiet night, they swept around with their rifles, looking for targets. But there were none. The howling wind had muffled the sound, and the thick snow had dampened the luminance. They were also gifted by the fact that the colonists still had no knowledge that they’d overtaken the colonial administration building and were now on the hunt.

As his colleagues charged towards the building, Lieutenant Sh’vot stood frozen at the snow berm, just trying to process what he’d just done. A colonist lay there motionless on the ground, courtesy of his rifle. He knew the Andorian was simply stunned, not dead, but he’d never shot a real person before.

Lieutenant Sh’vot looked back at Lieutenant J.G. Cruz. The security chief was curled up in a ball, shaking and clutching his ears. But muffling his hearing couldn’t cut out the voice. The voice shouting in his head came from the imprinting he’d undergone during his assimilation, and it just kept shouting as the wind howled and the snow fell. They needed to hurry. Lieutenant Sh’vot turned and broke into a sprint to catch up with the team. They needed to finish this. They needed to free Lieutenant J.G. Cruz from the voice that haunted him, and they needed to free these colonists from the voice that possessed them.

By the time Lieutenant Sh’vot caught up with the others, he found them standing in a completely utilitarian room absent any finishings or amenities save for a single rhomboidal object resting in its center. The device had a blacker than black finish with a dark green glow ebbing from somewhere deep within. Dr. Brooks and Commander Lee had been right. The colonists had brought the vinculum from Salvage Facility 21-J down to the surface of Beta Serpentis III. They had let the monster into their home.

“Can we disable it?” asked Lieutenant Balan as she stared in horrified awe at the small device. It wasn’t even two meters tall, yet the damage it had done was immense. It was the vinculum from Wolf 359, responsible for the destruction of 39 Starfleet vessels and the deaths of 11,000 crew, and now it was once again threatening the free people of the Federation.

“Disable it?” questioned one of the security officers. “I wouldn’t know where to start.” His mind drifted to his boss, the security chief they’d left writhing in pain as the brutal elements of this frigid hellhole beat down on him. “But I know how to end this.” There was only one answer that seemed appropriate for a device of such immense evil. He reached into his pack and began pulling out explosive devices.

“If we do that, we’ll be sending up a flare as to our location,” Lieutenant Balan cautioned. She looked over at Lieutenant Sh’vot, the only scientist among their group. “You got any ideas, Syleth?”

Lieutenant Sh’vot fumbled with his tricorder, trying to probe and scan the device. “I’m afraid I can’t make heads or tales of these readings.” He had a doctorate in geophysics, but neither that nor his experience in a dozen other disciplines did him any good with the device before him. He did not have Dr. Brooks’ experience with Borg technology, nor was he a digital systems engineering wizard like Commander Lee. “Maybe if I had enough time with it…”

“Lieutenant Cruz isn’t going to last long out there,” protested the security officer, aware that the human security chief wouldn’t survive long as the harsh storm beat down on him. “If we blow it up, it can’t speak to them anymore. Won’t they come back to their senses?” 

“While your reasoning is sound if the vinculum is the root cause of the colonist’s behavior,” Lieutenant Sh’vot cautioned. “But we have no guarantee that it is the root cause.” His mind drifted back to the earlier conversation with Dr. Brooks, Commander Lee and Admiral Reyes. 

“We don’t have a choice,” Lieutenant Balan concluded. They couldn’t leave Lieutenant J.G. Cruz out there in the cold any longer. “We’ll just have to hope it is.” She looked down at her rifle. “And be prepared for if it’s not.”

The security officers got to work rigging the room with explosives.

They heard it first, a deep rumble overwhelming the howl of the storm, and then they felt it, the ground shaking beneath their feet. It didn’t last long, but when it stopped, something was different. Administrator Thoss looked at his colleagues. They looked lost. The voice had gone silent. The voice that had guided them for decades, the voice that had been with some of them since birth, the voice that guided them towards their salvation, they couldn’t hear it anymore. 

Administrator Thoss looked up from where he sat, and Admiral Allison Reyes met his stare. She had a satisfied, knowing look in her eyes. She was responsible for it. “It’s futile, you know,” he hissed, his eyes emanating conviction even in the unfamiliar silence. “You cannot stop it now.” Who were these children to try and silence the voice of the Borg? It wouldn’t work though. The voice might be gone, but its words were emblazoned in his mind. They were already in the endgame now. All that was left was to open the door.

“I assure you, I can, and I will,” Admiral Reyes replied firmly, although inwardly she wondered what ‘it’ was. She stared at the prisoners. There was something different about them now. When the explosion had gone off, it was almost like the air had been sucked from their lungs. They looked more disoriented than before, but no less convicted. If the vinculum had just been destroyed, why hadn’t it snapped them from their trance?

Her combadge beeped. “Ma’am, it’s done,” reported Lieutenant J.G. Cruz over the link, able to communicate over the short range between them using a subluminal channel unaffected by the subspace interference emanating from Salvage Facility 21-J. His voice sounded shaky and fatigued. “Sorry for the shakeup, but the team wanted to be certain.” Turning the building into a smoldering crater might have been excessive, but it was also effective. “We’re on our way back.”

“What’s the situation out there now?”

“Honestly, we’re not exactly sure, ma’am,” admitted Lieutenant J.G. Cruz. “Colonists running everywhere, shouting, screaming, a mix of confusion and panic, but so far, we’ve been able to avoid detection.” They’d pulled back nearly a half kilometer from the blast site before blowing it, and that was now working to their advantage. “We’re pretty far from the blast site, and right now, that’s what’s got the colony’s attention.”

“And you’re sure the vinculum is resolved?”

“Yes, there’s no way there’s anything left there,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz confirmed. “The team took no chances. They used a 20 gigajoule yield to be certain.” That explained the sonic boom and the shaking ground. “And I can’t hear it anymore either.” There was a ringing in his ears from the pressure wave caused by the massive explosion, but the Borg voice had gone silent. It was a welcome change after how unrelenting and unbearable it had been earlier.

“Good job today, Lieutenant,” Admiral Reyes offered. Lieutenant J.G. Cruz had risen to his duty. First, he’d freed them from a delicate hostile situation, and now, he’d used his affinity for the Borg interlink frequency, borne of the cross-modal reassignment caused by his prior assimilation, to find and destroy the vinculum. “We’ll see you soon.”

“Admiral, please be aware that they don’t seem to have been pacified by what we just did,” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz cautioned. Blowing up the facility had worked them into a frenzy similar to how ants got worked up when you knocked their anthill over. “Recommend you tighten your perimeter, just in case.” Once the colonists figured out that a Starfleet team had blown up the vinculum, he could all but guarantee their next stop would be the colonial administration building where Admiral Reyes and the rest of their team was holed up. “We’ll be back to reinforce you as soon as we can.”

Admiral Reyes closed the link and looked around the room. The nine Andorians sat against the wall with their hands bound, while three of her officers kept watch. Up on the roof, a fourth officer had taken up position, their eyes and ears to the outside. The last two hours had been mighty quiet, save for the howl of the wind, but that might soon change.

“Ensign, you stay here with the prisoners,” Admiral Reyes commanded, addressing one of the security officers. Then she turned her attention to the other security officer and the diplomatic officer. “And you two, cover the windows. We may have company soon.” She looked down and checked the settings on her rifle.

As the two she’d assigned to the windows moved across the room, the security officer guarding the prisoner looked over at her. “Ma’am, if they got the vinculum,” he asked, his voice loud enough that everyone, the prisoners included, could hear. “Why are we expecting company? Shouldn’t they be free of their shackles now?”

“We were never shackled in the first place,” Administrator Thoss interjected with a devious smile on his face. “You thought you could free us from the vinculum, but you see, the vinculum was never our captor. It was simply our guide.”

Admiral Reyes looked at the other colonists, hoping she might see a hint of someone who felt different, but she didn’t. They all had the same sort of cold, devoted look in their eyes.

“Fuck!”

The shout of the security officer by the window drew her from her thoughts.

“Ma’am, come see this!”

Admiral Reyes rushed over just in time to see multiple contrails streaking upward.

Up on the bridge of the USS Ingenuity, 2,000 kilometers above the surface of Beta Serpentis III, they saw them too. An audible alert began to blare from the tactical station.

“Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!” shouted the tactical officer, shattering the uneasy silence on the bridge. They had incoming, and they only had a few seconds.

Lieutenant Commander Sherrod Allen, the Ingenuity’s Executive Officer, sat in the center chair. He was already on edge, and before the tactical officer finished calling out the inbound missiles, he was already rising from his chair and barking orders: “Raise shields! Deploy countermeasures!”

“Shields, countermeasures, aye.”

“Helm, bring us about. Evasive act…”

For as fast as they’d reacted though, they were not fast enough. Accelerating to 0.2c, the four missiles covered the distance from the surface to the ship in less than ten seconds. The tactical officer managed to get the shields up in time, but countermeasures had not yet been deployed, and evasive actions had not yet been taken. All four warheads found their mark, striking the ship amidsection.

The impact itself was relatively subtle, not because the shields had mitigated the force, but rather because these missiles did not carry explosive payloads. They carried something far worse. Consoles began to flicker, and then the lights went out. A few moments later, emergency power kicked in.

“Sir, I’m detecting a major loss of power across all ship systems,” reported Ensign Kellan Seltzer from the operations station. “Warp drive, impulse engines, deflector control, shields, weapons, all offline.”

“How?” demanded Lieutenant Commander Allen.

“The signature is consistent a… a…” began the tactical officer, but he fumbled with his words as he rechecked to make sure he was absolutely sure. “A Borg energy-dampening missile.”

Back on the surface, Admiral Reyes looked over at Administrator Thoss. She was sick of the Borg, and she was sick of him. He just smiled back at her: “You’re too late, Admiral. Soon, we will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.”

“Why haven’t they moved against us?” asked Lieutenant J.G. Adrian Cruz as he peered warily out the window, his eyes searching for threats in the darkness beyond. The colonists should have figured out what had happened by now. “If I were in their shoes, I’d be drawing up assault plans right now.” They’d have a significant numbers advantage if they did too.

Sitting against the wall with his hands bound, Administrator Thoss enjoyed listening to the musings of the Starfleet crew. They were so pitiful and had such small thoughts. “But you’re not in our shoes,” he interjected. “You and your kind, you’re too focused on the individual. We have moved beyond that. My people know that, as long as you’re confined to our world, and as long as your ship is immobilized in our skies, there’s nothing you can do to stop us. Why waste the resources to attack when you’re already a prisoner on our world?

“We are prisoners?” That didn’t make any sense. Administrator Thoss and his co-conspirators were the ones in flexcuffs. Lieutenant J.G. Cruz and Admiral Reyes were in control. Or so they thought. 

Suddenly, they heard a light boom. A moment later, the ground shook softly. It was nothing like the 20 gigajoule explosion Lieutenant J.G. Cruz’s team had set off earlier to destroy the vinculum, but it was still unmistakably an explosion.

“Yes, prisoners, now more than ever” chuckled Administrator Thoss. “That was my people ensuring you don’t leave before salvation arrives.” They didn’t understand. They just stood there, waiting for the Andorian to elaborate. “That was your shuttle going boom.” The way he said it, Thoss seemed almost to revel in it. “All you can do now is wait.” He’d been one step ahead of them every step of the way.

“Shut him up,” Admiral Reyes ordered. She was tired of his games. “Gag him or stuff him in a broom closet, I don’t care, but I don’t want to hear him anymore.” Typically, she would not pass up the opportunity to interrogate a subject, but after hours verbally sparring with the administrator, she knew he’d give them nothing of value. At least not quickly. If she separated him from the others though, it was possible one of them might.

As two security officers dragged Administrator Thoss from the room, Lieutenant Syleth Sh’vot approached Admiral Reyes with a tricorder in his hand.

“Doctor, tell me you have an explanation?” 

“An explanation? Unfortunately, not so much,” Lieutenant Sh’vot admitted. He was a geophysicist by trade, not a medical doctor, and although he’d dabbled in biochemistry during his time with the Terraform Command, that hardly made him an expert in Andorian physiology. “I’m no Dr. Henderson, but I can at least confirm they’re physically Andorian. No cortical implants, no cybernetic enhancements, nothing inorganic whatsoever besides the random artificial hip or dental crown.”

“But Administrator Thoss wasn’t just talking in vague worship terms. He said ‘we will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.’ That doesn’t sound like a Borg worshiper. That sounds like the Borg itself,” Admiral Reyes noted. “If they’re not Borg drones, how do you explain that?” Frontier Day had taught them that appearances could be deceiving, and she wasn’t willing to look past the possibility the Borg had come up with another modality for assimilation.

“Actually, that I might be able to explain,” Lieutenant Sh’vot nodded. “I did neurological scans of each of them, and they all exhibit the same neuroplasticity and cross-modal reassignment Dr. Brooks observed during his autopsy aboard Salvage Facility 21-J. Whether the vinculum or their machinations came first, I have no idea, but what I can say is that, at this point, long-term potentiation caused by sustained exposure to the Borg interlink frequency has rewired their brains. They’re as Borg as freshly liberated xBs, apart, of course, from the cybernetics.”

“That’s going to make it hard to get anything from any of them,” Admiral Reyes sighed, thinking back to her one visit to the Borg Reclamation Project in the nineties. She’d seen just enough of the xBs during that trip to know how neurologically damaging the voice could be. Those who had lived with the Collective in their head had an incredibly hard time detaching from it.

“So what do we do now?” asked Lieutenant Sh’vot.

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” admitted Admiral Reyes. Even if they could find a way off the planet without their shuttle, then what? Their ship had been disabled by a Borg energy-dampening missile, their communications had been jammed by a Borg subspace transceiver, and they still had absolutely no idea what the colonists were actually up to.

As Admiral Reyes and Lieutenant Sh’vot pondered their options, Lieutenant Balan approached one of the Andorians, the young man she knew to be a sensor operator for the colony. They’d spoken several times prior, and whether inadvertently or not, he’d given them one of their first clues about the vinculum. She hoped another conversation might prove equally fruitful. 

“Hey there, stranger,” she smiled as she sat down next to him against the wall. She didn’t want to come off as though she was towering over him. “How are you doing?”

As he looked at her, she could not help but notice something was missing from his eyes. He looked disoriented and lost. “What happened to the voice?” he asked quietly.

“We silenced it.”

He looked uneasy.

“You are free. Your mind is all your own now.“

The young man blinked, and then he blinked again. “All my own?” he fumbled for the words, trying to process wat she was saying. He’d know the voice from his earliest memories. “Forgive me, but that is a strange concept. I’ve never had a thing of my own. Such a concept is threatening to our collective, and to all that we’re working towards.”

“All that you’re working towards?”

The Andorian opened his mouth to answer, but then he paused as he remembered himself. “Tell me,” he asked, choosing not to directly answer the question. “Why are you doing all of this? Why come to Beta Serpentis III? And why keep at it even at threat to yourself? After you were freed by your men, you could have retreated back to your ship and fled the system, but instead, you went after the machine that talks to us.”

“Whether or not you see it this way, we did it for you, for Thoss, and for all of you who live here on Beta Serpentis III,” Lieutenant Balan explained. She didn’t miss the fact he’d dodged her question, but she knew better than to push. He’d get there when he was ready. “We see you as part of our collective, and we came to serve you.” She intentionally used language that would be familiar to a kid who’d grown up with nothing but the words of worshipers and the voice of the vinculum.

“I was right about you,” the kid smiled, suddenly opening up as his eyes came to life. “As I sat behind my scopes and watched your ships dance across the sky, you reminded me of a hive working for something more. Everyone told me I was wrong, that the galaxy was filled with nothing but self-serving individuals. The voice told me so too. It’s what their grand plan is meant to fix… but I wanted to believe they were wrong.”

Lieutenant Balan nodded, but said nothing. She let him proceed at his own pace.

The kid paused for a moment, summoning up the courage, and then he dropped a bombshell: “I was the one that sent the distress call. They say assimilation is the only way to achieve salvation, but I’m not ready to give myself to the Collective.” There was a deep sense of fear interlaced within his words. “I’m not ready to not be me.”

Lieutenant Balan set a reassuring hand on his hand and coaxed him forward. “Then let us stop it from happening. You all keep saying salvation is coming, but how? What is their plan?”

“We’re building a transwarp gate, and we have a way to summon the Collective through it.”

“Is this what I think it is?” Commander Lee asked as she stared at a Borg beacon sitting in the middle of an otherwise empty shuttle bay.

“If you’re thinking it’s the Borg homing beacon we were searching for, then yes, that’s as good a guess as any,” Dr. Brooks nodded. “Residual radiation and emissions suggest this beacon was recently exposed to the vacuum of deep space. It hasn’t just been sitting here with the rest of the debris.”

“Curious,” Commander Lee remarked, thinking back to the mission they’d been on when they received the distress call from Beta Serpentis III. “Now we know why we came up empty in the debris field.” A week prior, Starfleet Communications had detected a Borg homing signal from the graveyard of Wolf 359. Polaris Squadron had been dispatched to locate it and secure whatever Borg technology had been reawakened, but by the time they had arrived, the signal had vanished. “Do you think the colonists brought it here?”

“I doubt it just wandered 1.64 light years on its own,” Dr. Brooks said snarkily. “And then decided this looked like a good parking space.” The colonists of Beta Serpentis III must have detected it and beaten the squadron to Wolf 359. It was curious they’d managed to disable the beacon too, ensuring that neither Polaris Squadron, nor the Borg, could follow. Starfleet had yet to figure out how to do that, so it yet again evidenced the colony’s proficiency with Borg technology.

“Why go through all that effort?” Commander Lee asked as she probed the beacon with her tricorder. “Admiral Reyes said they’re Borg worshipers so maybe they’re planning to use it to call the Borg?”

“There are no transwarp apertures nearby,” Dr. Brooks shook his head. “If they reactivate it, Starfleet will detect it and dispatch a response, just like we did last week. We’d stop it long before the Borg ever arrived.”

“Should we give the Admiral a heads up anyways?”

“Yeah, give me a second,” Dr. Brooks said as he pulled out his tricorder and connected to the remote command module he’d installed in the transceiver array so they could still use it while they moved about the station. “Hmmm, this is odd… The USS Ingenuity is not responding.”

“Do you think they’re having issues with the signal again?” Commander Lee asked. When they’d first underwritten the transceiver’s signal with their own subchannel, it had taken Ensign Seltzer a few minutes to compensate for the non-standard signaling protocol they’d engineered.

“No, it’s more like there’s no receiver trying to pick up at all,” Dr. Brooks replied. “The initial handshake isn’t getting an ACK back at all.” Concern washed across Commander Lee’s face. Had something gone wrong aboard the Ingenuity? “Remember though,” Dr. Brooks reassured her. “This is only a comms relay. There’s a dozen non-catastrophic reasons for a nonresponse.”

“There are also catastrophic reasons for one,” Commander Lee countered. After all that had happened in the last day, it was easy for one to go there. They needed to find out if Ingenuity was ok. She glanced over at an inactive console across the shuttlebay. “If you jack in, think you could access the ship’s sensors?”

“I’m sure I can,” Dr. Brooks confirmed. “But the station will know too, and it will respond in kind.” This wasn’t their first rodeo with the Borg-corrupted computer core. The moment they’d connect to the network, the station would identify their location, and it would dispatch armed synths to stop them. They’d have a couple minutes at best. “Are you suggesting another hack-and-run?”

“I am,” Commander Lee nodded, her mind drifting to her crew. “We get in, we confirm the status of the Ingenuity, and then we get the fuck out.” She walked over to the access panel for a jefferies tube and popped it open. It would be their escape route, like a pair of rats scurrying away. Or gnats. That was how Dr. Brooks had described them earlier. Gnats the Borg would swipe at when close but would waste no extra energy pursuing. At least that was how it had been so far.

It was as good a plan as any, figured Dr. Brooks, so with his rifle slung over his shoulder, he walked over to the console and got to work. By now, he’d become very familiar with the duality of the station’s computer core, part Starfleet and part Borg, and he’d broken through the security perimeter in less than thirty seconds. Fifteen seconds after that, he had access to the sensor grid. He ran a full spectra scan in the direction of Beta Serpentis III. “Well, the good news is that she’s still in orbit,” Dr. Brooks reported. “And I’m registering one hundred and twelve fully organic humanoid lifeforms aboard.” The extra specificity seemed relevant given that they now knew the colonists were messing with Borg technology.

“And the bad news?”

“Well, she’s completely dead in the…” Dr. Brooks began, but he didn’t get time to finish his response. 

The blast from a phaser pulse exploded over his shoulder. 

Dr. Brooks spun around, yanking his rifle from his shoulder and squeezing the trigger as he got it leveled out, spamming suppression fire in the direction the shots had come from without even taking the time to acquire a target first. “Go! Go!” he screamed over the sound of phaser fire as six synths and two Andorians tried to press through the door into the room.

Commander Lee didn’t need to be told twice. She dove for the Jeffries tube. Behind her, she could hear Dr. Brooks exchanging fire with the enemy. Then she heard an explosion as Dr. Brooks threw a concussion grenade across the bay to buy a few seconds for him to climb into the jefferies tube and follow.

It got quiet as Dr. Brooks slammed the hatch shut behind him. He knew the grenade wouldn’t keep the synths and the Andorians busy for long, and he scrambled on his hands and knees down the narrow crawl space, racing to put as much distance as he could between himself and the access port. “Keep going! Go! Go! Go!”

After a good fifteen minutes scurrying through the shafts and junctions that lined the superstructure of Salvage Facility 21-J, they finally felt safe to slow their pace. “That was faster than last time,” Commander Lee noted. This wasn’t their first time fleeing through the network, but the other times had been pre-emptive before the synths arrived. This time, their response had been far more swift.

“They’re evolving,” Dr. Brooks observed.

That thought made Commander Lee shiver. “What were you saying about the Ingenuity when we got interrupted?”

“She’s dead in the water,” Dr. Brooks clarified. “No matter-antimatter emissions from the warp assembly, no plasma exhaust from the impulse reactors, and barely enough energy across the deflector to keep the space dust at bay. Her signature suggests she’s on emergency pow…”

Once again, he didn’t get to finish his sentence, but this time, instead of phaser fire, it was just his combadge chirping. The physicist looked down at it confused. The combadge used a subspace carrier wave, and the entire band was presently being flooded by interference from the Borg subspace transceiver. The Ingenuity had not figured out how to cut through it, and based on their latest scans, he suspected they had bigger issues at the moment. So who was hailing them? There was only one way to find out. He tapped the badge.

“Brooks, go.”

“Dr. Brooks, good to hear your voice again.”

“Forgive me, Admiral,” Dr. Brooks replied, a look of shock washing across at the sound of Admiral Reyes’ voice. “But how are you calling? We tried to relay through the Ingenuity again, but she is not responding. It looks like she is dead in the water.”

“One of the colonists was so gracious as to show us how to keep up with the modularity of the boosted interlink frequency,” Admiral Reyes explained. “But yes, as far as the Ingenuity goes, your understanding is correct. She was hit by a barrage of Borg energy-dampening missiles. The colonists fired them shortly after we destroyed the vinculum.”

“I gather that destroying the vinculum did not have the intended effect then?” Commander Lee frowned as she jumped into the conversation alongside Dr. Brooks.

“Unfortunately not,” explained Lieutenant Sh’vot, her Chief Science Officer, from next to Admiral Reyes. “Functional neuroplasticity after decades of exposure to the vinculum has rewritten their neural pathways so fundamentally that, now that we’ve silenced the voice, they’re essentially fresh xBs.”

“Just like the dead dude up here,” Dr. Brooks remarked, drawing a glare from Commander Lee. Even after spending a day with him, the flippant way Dr. Brooks referred to the deceased Andorian still bothered her. The Andorian, for all his flaws, was still a Federation citizen and living being. Or at least he had been until Dr. Brooks stabbed him.

“Yep,” confirmed Lieutenant Sh’vot, clearly less perturbed by the casual reference to the deceased than Commander Lee.

“While the science is interesting,” Admiral Reyes interrupted, bringing them back to the matter at hand. “We have a time-sensitive situation. One of the colonists here, a young man who seems to have retained his individuality better than the others, has shared with us what the colony is planning. They’re building a transwarp gate so they can bring the Borg straight to Beta Serpentis III.”

“A transwarp gate?” Dr. Brooks mused as the gears in his head turned. “That’s no easy feat of engineering.” He knew better than most. In the early eighties, he’d actually worked on a few attempts to create one, but all he succeeded in doing was killing a few test pilots. “How close do they believe they are to completion?”

“According to our friend, they took us hostage to accelerate the procurement of the last few items they needed to complete the gateway,” explained Admiral Reyes. “He says they’ve got everything they need now, and if they stick to the plan, they’ll be activating it by morning.”

“By morning?” gasped Commander Lee. “Did he tell you where?”

“Yes, he provided coordinates,” Admiral Reyes replied. “I’m sending them over now.” 

Dr. Brooks looked down at the coordinates as they came across. They referred to a position within the Roche lobe of the binary star at the center of the Beta Serpentis system. The intense gravitational shear and electromagnetic radiation made it an excellent place to hide something, and that’s likely why they hadn’t detected it when they entered the system.

“What we can’t figure out though is how they’re going to summon the Borg once they activate the gate,” continued Admiral Reyes. “Our young friend said they had a way, but he didn’t know how.”

“Well, as it turns out, we might be able to fill in the blanks there,” Dr. Brooks replied. From the moment Admiral Reyes had shared that they were building a transwarp gate, he knew where this was going. “While we were stalking around the station gathering intelligence, we came across what looks to be the Borg homing beacon from Wolf 359…”

Admiral Reyes saw it too. She finished his thought. “And they’re going to activate the gate and use the beacon to lure the Collective in.” In mere hours, they might be staring down the gunports of a Borg Cube. “Tom, with Ingenuity dead in the water, and with us stranded on the surface, I’m afraid that once more I may be asking a lot of you.”

“I understand, Allison. We’ll get it done. Brooks out.” 

Commander Lee looked over at Dr. Brooks. She didn’t understand. What did he mean that they’d get it done? 

“Follow me,” Dr. Brooks instructed as he turned around and headed back down the jefferies tube towards the shuttlebay they’d just left. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

The Borg. He hated the Borg. He’d lost half a decade of his life to them, years wasted on menial engineering tasks as he helped the squadron find its way back from the Delta Quadrant. He hated them for that. He hated them too for stripping him of his endowed chair at Daystrom and his membership on the Science Council. After his return, the preeminent astrophysicist had found himself relegated to unimaginative research projects as the research community moved on to the next generation of young scientific minds. At least Admiral Reyes had eventually come calling, but that came with a price too. She was doing her damndest to get them all killed, first with the Lost Fleet and now with the Borg. He particularly hated the Borg.

“Dr. Lockwood, you gonna call it soon?” asked Lieutenant Akil al-Qadir as he started to pack up his things. A particle physicist by trade, Dr. Qadir had spent the evening reviewing their latest scans, searching for any hint of anthropogenic emissions in the graveyard of Wolf 359. The Borg homing beacon had gone missing, and if they couldn’t find it, one possible explanation was that someone had taken it before they arrived. From transwarp wakes to residual tachyons, he’d run through a gamut of possibilities, but so far, nothing had netted out. “It’s getting late, and the debris field isn’t going anywhere.”

“The sooner we find that beacon, the sooner we get out of here,” Dr. Luke Lockwood replied as he glanced out the window. He could see the M-type main-sequence red dwarf of Wolf 359 hanging there in the distance. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not hang out in this graveyard a moment longer than I have to.” He hated the Borg. “Could you shoot me your latest findings before you turn in for the night?”

“Absolutely,” nodded Lieutenant Qadir. He took a moment to route his latest findings over to Dr. Lockwood’s station, and then he stood to depart. “Anything else you need from me before I go?”

“Nope. Have a good night.” Staring at the new data, Dr. Lockwood didn’t even look up as Lieutenant Qadir made his way out of the room. Lieutenant Qadir took no offense though. He knew his colleague was in the zone, and when Dr. Lockwood was in the zone, good things often happened. 

Sure enough, as the hours drew late, Dr. Lockwood made a breakthrough. Interlacing Lieutenant Qadir’s work with his own, he began to see a pattern. It was subtle, but it was there. Trace quantities of matter-antimatter byproducts and minor fluctuations in subspace curvature.

Dr. Lockwood was not the only one still at his desk. Over on the USS Serenity, Captain Jame Lewis sat in his darkened Ready Room, a bottle of Andorian ale sitting between him and Dr. Lisa Hall. “I’m a bit concerned about Jace,” Captain Lewis shared as he helped himself to another generous pour of the chilled liquor.

“Why do you say that?” Dr. Hall asked as she took a sip from her sifter. “He’s loyal to you, and to the team. Even if Drake tries to cut him a deal, he’s not the type to crack.” Whether or not Captain Lewis recognized it, it wasn’t physical aptitude, gun skill, or even calmness under pressure that he selected for first when he picked members of his Hazard Team. It was loyalty. And then he built on it as he trained them. His team learned they could depend on him, always, and that inspired the same from them. That conditioning went far beyond what a JAG officer could offer with a promise of leniency, especially when their captain kept reminding them that the investigation would fail anyways. Now that Dr. Hall thought about it, it was a bit cult-like, and cults could be very effective.

“He was all hung up on the people he killed,” Captain Lewis explained as he kicked his glass back and savored the chilled liquid washing across his palette. “But frankly, what choice did he have? It was him or them.” The math was easy.

“From where you and I sit, that’s self-evident,” Dr. Hall agreed. “But Lieutenant Morgan is not one of us. Not yet. He’s an excellent marksman, a hand-to-hand aficionado, a fitness junkie, and a gifted operations specialist, but before Nasera, I’ll bet he could have counted his total kills between his fingers and toes.” After Nasera and Frontier Day though, she knew that was no longer the case.

“And he kept saying all this weird shit about playing god.”

It wasn’t the first time Dr. Hall had heard such characterizations from someone trying to process the aftermath of battle. “You didn’t think anything of it when you raised your sidearm and pulled the trigger, but consider it from his perspective. We already had the Vorta restrained. It couldn’t do us harm, and killing it was not tactically necessary.”

“Yeah, well it made me feel better,” Captain Lewis chuckled darkly. He’d watched it execute Petty Officer Atwood as a sick show to control the people of Nasera, and both Lieutenant Commander Jordan and Ryssehl Th’zathol had died to stop its reign of terror. So had nine hundred and thirty two other officers and crew from the squadron. “And it deserved it.”

“I don’t disagree,” Dr. Hall nodded. “But that’s not how we teach these kids to think. From Lieutenant Morgan’s perspective, you acted as judge, jury and executioner over a living thing.”

“Living? It was a fucking Vorta.”

“Oh, believe me, I couldn’t have given one fuck,” Dr. Hall replied coldly as she finished the last drop from her sifter. She slid it across the table for a refill. “But I’d guess that’s where he comes from when he says he doesn’t think we should play god.”

“Do you believe in god, doctor?” Captain Lewis asked as he poured her another stiff one.

“If gods ever existed, they were killed or gave up on this universe long ago,” Dr. Hall replied darkly. No one was watching out for them, and the universe didn’t care what they did. In the end, the outcome was predetermined. A cold death for each and every one of them, and someday a cold death for the universe itself. “But that doesn’t change how he’s feeling. If it was just Nasera, this probably wouldn’t even be a thing, but I’m sure this is all mixed up with the guilt he’s feeling over Frontier Day. You saw the after-action on what he did with Ayala and Tom aboard the ship.”

“I did,” Captain Lewis nodded proudly. When the Borg had remotely assimilated the fleet, Lieutenant J.G. Morgan, Chief Shafir and Dr. Brooks had fought their way across the USS Serenity. Their plan had been to detonate the warp core in the middle of Fleet Formation, and they would have succeeded if Admiral Picard hadn’t stopped the signal when he did. “It was exactly what they needed to do.” He slid her glass back across the table.

“While it might have been right, it doesn’t change the fact he killed over a dozen Starfleet officers,” Dr. Hall pointed out as the sliding sifter came to a rest in front of her. “And that he was preparing to kill thousands more.” She lifted the sifter to her mouth and took another sip.

The captain’s combadge beeped, pulling them from their conversation.

“Lewis, go.”

“Captain, I know it’s late,” apologized the officer of the watch. “But Commander Lockwood has requested a remote briefing with all members of the squadron’s command staff.”

At least it was remote so he didn’t have to rush his drink. “Put him through.” The pair adjusted their chairs so they had a better view of the monitor as they waited for it to connect. “I wonder what the lab rat has found this time that’s so urgent as to drag everyone out of bed.”

“Wasn’t it a temporally-desynced star nursery last time?” Dr. Hall asked. As a passive observer, she had to admit that one had actually been worth getting out of bed for as they watched stars be born in a handful of hours rather than millions of years.

“Maybe… or was that the time before last?” Captain Lewis laughed. The research lead from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity had a very different perspective on what was critically important than Captain Lewis, and this would hardly be the second, third, or even fourth time he’d done this.

“Meh, who knows,” shrugged Dr. Hall as she took another sip from the sifter. “But we’ll find out soon enough.”

A moment later, the seal of the United Federation of Planets was replaced by a multicast of Polaris Squadron’s command staff. Fleet Captain Gérard Devreux, the Squadron XO, looked to have just climbed out of bed, while Captain Dorian Vox, the Squadron Strategic Operations Officer, appeared to have found a terminal in the Diligent’s bar. Meanwhile, Commanders James Henderson, Robert Drake, and Luke Lockwood, the Medical, JAG and Science Officers for the squadron respectively, were each still in their offices. There were two notable absences, the Squadron CO and Engineering Officer, but that was to be expected. Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes and Commander Cora Lee had gone to Beta Serpentis III aboard the USS Ingenuity, and for reasons yet unknown, they’d lost contact with the ship earlier in the day.

“A little over a week ago, Starfleet Communications detected a Borg homing signal coming from Wolf 359,” Dr. Lockwood jumped straight in without any pleasantries. “As we’re all acutely aware, that signal disappeared shortly before we arrived, and we’ve been searching the debris field for it ever since. We’re not going to find it though because the beacon is no longer here.”

“How do you know?” Captain Vox asked, his demeanor split between curiosity and a desire to get back to his drink in the Diligent’s bar.

“Because I know where it went,” Dr. Lockwood replied. “Although our prevailing assumption has been that the beacon just went dormant again, another explanation was that it vanished because it moved. I tasked my team with exploring this possibility.”

“And you found something?” Captain Vox seemed almost excited by the prospect. Sure, it would mean they had a situation on their hands, but at least they wouldn’t just be sitting on their hands anymore. A week spent staring at forty year old rubble and debris wasn’t his idea of a good time.

“I did.”

Captain Lewis sat up straight. Now the physicist had his attention. 

“First, we identified trace byproducts from matter-antimatter reactions that have half lives incongruous with our time of arrival,” Dr. Lockwood continued. “And then we managed to find the ripples of a faint subspace wake departing the system about a week ago.” The astrophysicist pulled up the relevant telemetry.

“How the hell did you spot that wake?” Captain Vox asked incredulously as he looked over the telemetry. Even his best sensor operators wouldn’t have been able to pick out those variations against the background radiation. “That couldn’t have been caused by anything larger than a runabout.”

“It would not have been possible to spot without knowing where to look,” Dr. Lockwood replied with a twinkle in his eye. “But I had a hunch.”

“Where?” asked Captain Lewis warily.

“Bearing one four four mark fourteen,” Dr. Lockwood reported as he shifted the screenshare from a sensor display to a starchart that plotted a vector originating from Wolf 359 with a red line. “Terminating 1.64 light years from here in the Beta Serpentis system.” This had been the late night breakthrough he’d had after Lieutenant Qadir left the lab. They’d received a distress call from the colony there, and the Ingenuity had gone missing there, so the confluence of strange events made it a prime place to check, and sure enough, it had netted out.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Captain Lewis said as he rose from his chair. He’d told Admiral Reyes that she shouldn’t have taken the USS Ingenuity there without backup! He’d fucking warned her! Fuck! “We need to go, and we need to go now!” He looked at the Squadron Strategic Operations Officer, who also happened to be the CO of the Alita-class USS Diligent. “Dorian, Diligent and Serenity are fastest. We need to turn and burn for Beta Serpentis.”

Captain Vox agreed, and nodded as such.

“Not so fast,” came the sharp voice of Commander Drake. “You’re under strict orders. You are not to separate from the Polaris until this investigation is over!” The last time Jake Lewis had bolted away with the Serenity, he’d disappeared for over a month. That would not be happening again.

“Serenity and Diligent can cover the distance in two and a half hours,” Captain Vox pointed out, coming to his fellow captain’s aid. The math was easy for the former fighter pilot to do in his head. It would take 2.54 hours for the light cruiser and the heavy escort to cover the 1.64 light years to Beta Serpentis at warp 9.98. “The Polaris will take over an hour longer to get there.” The whale could only make warp 9.96.

“We go together, or we don’t go at all,” Commander Drake insisted. “I mean, let’s be real… What the hell will the difference of an hour really make?”

“It could make all the difference!” Captain Lewis countered aggressively. He couldn’t believe they were even having this debate. Commander Drake needed to come off his high horse. The Borg homing beacon had been taken to the same place where they’d received a mysterious distress call, and the same place Admiral Reyes and the USS Ingenuity had gone incommunicado nearly twelve hours prior. That was too much to be a coincidence. Something might be very wrong. The JAG Officer’s ivory tower bullshit needed to wait.

Commander Drake opened his mouth to snap back, but before he could, Fleet Captain Devreux jumped in: “Enough, both of you! The call is mine to make, and I’m making it.” The firmness in his tone caught everyone off guard. Devreux was known to be an understated leader, and he rarely wielded the authority of his position. “Captains Lewis and Vox will take the Serenity and Diligent and make best speed for Beta Serpentis, and we’ll give chase with the Polaris as best we can.”

With the colony’s plan revealed, Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks rushed back to the shuttlebay. When they arrived, they made a disappointing discovery. “It’s gone!” Commander Lee lamented. “They must have moved it while we were belowdeck.” It had seemed so easy, just intercept the beacon before the colonists could move it, but they’d arrived too late. “What now?”

“We know where they’re taking it,” Dr. Brooks pointed out. Lieutenant Balan had secured the destination from the colonist she’d turned. “The Roche lobe of Beta Serpentis. We just need to find a way to get out there.” If they could reach the transwarp gate before the colonists could activate the beacon, they still had a chance at stopping the colony’s plan to be assimilated. 

“What are you thinking?” asked Commander Lee, feeling a bit defeated.

“Let’s go back to the shuttlebay where we abandoned our shuttle,” Dr. Brooks suggested. “We’ll find a way to break it out.” The Type 11 shuttle from the USS Ingenuity would have sufficient shielding to survive the shearing forces of the Roche lobe, and it carried sufficient ammunition to hopefully be able to destroy the gate when they found it.

Once more, Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks made their way through the network of jefferies tubes that lined the interior superstructure of Salvage Facility 21-J. This time, they were returning to where it had all started, where the colonists had initially sealed them in when they came aboard. A lot had changed since then, and they’d become quite practiced at bypassing the station’s security systems. It was fair to assume they’d be able to override the access controls and reopen the blast doors.

At least that was how they felt until they reached the shuttlebay.

“Fuck, it’s gone too!” Commander Lee cried out exasperatedly. It wasn’t like her to swear, but she’d been feeling like they finally had a workable plan… up until that moment. Their shuttle was gone. What the hell were they to do now? “Why’d they take our…” 

She didn’t finish her statement though, as she heard footfalls coming down the corridor that ran along the entrance to the shuttlebay. The pair ducked behind a large storage crate as a pair of Andorians came into view.

“The beacon is on its way over,” one of the Andorians was saying. “I loaded it onto the Starfleet shuttle with Th’korass and Ch’ekal a few minutes ago.” That answered the question of where the shuttle had gone.

“I wonder what ever happened to the two pink skins that came aboard with it?” asked the other Andorian. He’d heard about the skirmishes below deck.

“Who knows? And who cares?” the first asked indifferently. “The time is finally upon us. Nothing else matters. Our future is but a couple hours away.” As he spoke those latter words, his tone became one of excitement and reverence. He had dedicated his life to this pursuit.

“I’m going to take the last shuttlepod from bay three over to the gate so I can be there when they arrive,” the second Andorian declared. He knew he was being impatient and individualistic, but after all this time, he didn’t want to wait a minute longer. He could afford himself that indulgence one last time before he became a part of something greater.

Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks looked at each other. They were both thinking the same thing. The colonists had another shuttle. That meant there might still be a way to stop them.

“I’ll join you, but they’ll probably take one look at that pod and skip on by,” the first Andorian laughed.  “That forty year old clunker is hardly a prime demonstration of our technological distinctiveness.”

“They’ll know their followers when they see us.”

The pair rounded a corner out of sight, and then Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks slipped from their hiding spot to follow. Until now, they’d only dared to move about the station by way of the jefferies tubes, but time was of the essence so they had no choice but to take some risks.

A few minutes later, they came to another shuttlebay. A single Type 17 shuttlepod sat in the middle of it. Dr. Brooks realized the problem at once, but they didn’t have a choice. As the Andorians walked forward to the shuttle, Commander Lee and Dr. Brooks slipped inside the bay and  ducked behind a pair of cargo crates. Their concealment hardly mattered though. Blinded by their anticipation, Andorians were completely oblivious to their tail.

As the shuttlepod’s rear doors finished opening and the Andorians ascended the ramp, Dr. Brooks readied his rifle. Next to him, Commander Lee drew her phaser as well. 

“Ready?” Dr. Brooks asked quietly.

“As ever,” replied Commander Lee. She was ready to move. Now. Before something else happened to thwart them. This had to work. They had to get out there and stop the colonists from summoning the Borg.

“Hey!” shouted Dr. Brooks, breaking the silence as he and Commander Lee stepped out from behind the crates. As the Andorians turned, the last thing they saw was the two Starfleet officers with their weapons drawn. 

And then Dr. Brooks and Commander Lee cut them down.

Before the two incapacitated Andorians had  even hit the deck, Dr. Brooks and Commander Lee were already rushing forward. “Prep the shuttle!” Dr. Brooks ordered as they climbed through the hold and into the cockpit. “I’ll handle launch control!”

Commander Lee got to work firing up the shuttle’s systems, while Dr. Brooks interfaced with the station’s launch controls. It was a pleasant surprise that the shuttle was already connected to the station. He wasn’t even going to need to break through the security perimeter this time, a convenience he assumes was on account of the fact that the launch was intended as the Andorians had planned on taking the shuttle over. That would conceal his approach to the gate.

“All systems are a go,” Commander Lee reported a moment later.

“And we’re clear for launch,” Dr. Brooks replied as he turned to look at the young commander. “Now is the time that you and I say our goodbyes.” He gestured towards the rear hold. “It’s been a pleasure, Cora.” She’d helped get them to this point, but now it was time for her to get off.

Commander Lee looked at him confused. “What?” Up until now, she’d been assuming they would be going together to the gate to stop the colonists from activating the beacon. “What do you mean?”

“Miss Lee, you’re young,” Dr. Brooks replied, his eyes filled with a sad sincerity, a recognition of what was to come next. It was a dramatic shift in demeanor from the sarcastic wit and bold solutioning he’d brought for their escapades to that point. “You’ve still got a full life ahead of you. This is mine to take from here.”

Commander Lee still didn’t understand. In their frantic dash to commandeer the shuttle, she had missed something.

“Look around you, Commander,” Dr. Brooks urged. “This dilapidated pod will get me to the gate, but it’s just a passenger pod. It has no phasers and no torpedoes. The only weapon it has is its warp core, and it isn’t even ejectable.” Suddenly, Commander Lee understood. “It’s a one-way trip.” He’d recognized this the moment he’d seen the Type 17 sitting there. It was the only choice they had to stop the colony from summoning the Borg.

“No…” she fumbled with her words. “There’s got to be another way.”

“If we had more time, we might figure one out,” Dr. Brooks replied. “But we don’t. You heard them. The beacon is on its way over. We’re out of time.” Even at max burn, he’d be lucky to get to the Roche lobe before the colonists triggered the gate and activated the beacon.

“I’m coming with you,” Commander Lee replied firmly as she folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not leaving you to do this alone.” She couldn’t. There had to be another way, one that didn’t involve detonating the shuttlepod’s warp core. They’d just have to figure it out en route. And if not…

Barreling towards the binary at the center of the Beta Serpentis system, Commander Lee racked her brain over how they might destroy the transwarp gate without sacrificing themselves. As the minutes turned to an hour, and as an hour became two, the ideas fell away, one by one, until at last she had none left.

“Are there really no other options?!” Commander Lee lamented exasperatedly as the binary’s accretion disk grew before them. A station of aggrieved Andorians, weaponized synths, and Borg corrupted computer systems had not been able to stop them, but had they finally met their match? Was this really the end of the road? Dr. Brooks had to have an idea, right? Just like every time before…

“I’m afraid not,” the Dr. Brooks replied regretfully. The aged physicist felt sorry for young Cora Lee. He’d told her to stay behind, that she still had too much life to live, but she’d insisted on joining him, clinging to a false hope that somehow she’d save them both. Instead, her optimism had simply ensured that she would die alongside him. “It’s this, or we allow the colonists of Beta Serpentis to summon the Borg into the heart of the Federation.”

They’d been lucky to commandeer the shuttlepod at all. It had only been by happenstance that they’d stumbled upon it deep within Salvage Facility 21-J. The problem though was that the Type 17 was designed for simple, intra-system transport. It had no weapons, and it lacked even the controls to turn the deflector into a particle beam. The only weapon it had was its warp core, and it was non-ejectable. That meant they were going to die as they turned the shuttlepod into an antimatter bomb to destroy the transwarp gate and the homing beacon before the colonists of Beta Serpentis III could deliver the Borg Collective straight into the heart of the Federation.

“How are you so calm?” Commander Lee asked as she stared at the aged physicist. “How can you just sit there and accept this?” She had charged fearlessly into the Battle of Nasera, never for a minute doubting herself, but now she realized it wasn’t due to some bold heroics and a lack of fear. It was simply because she hadn’t comprehended her own mortality, emboldened by Admiral Reyes’ rallying cry that they would achieve victory. Now though, as they approached the transwarp gateway with no chance of survival, she realized she was absolutely terrified. She wasn’t ready to die.

“I have seen the future,” Dr. Brooks offered with a depth to his tone that spoke to experiences she couldn’t even imagine. “I understand what awaits the galaxy, and what the future has to lose should we pull away.” In this fragile moment of the Federation’s existence, he was certain that a Borg incursion was not part of the future he had seen. “This has to happen.”

“But what about you?” Commander Lee asked meekly, her voice trembling. “And me?” She understood his words at a macro level, but it wasn’t all macro. There was also the micro reality that, in what they were about to do, she and Dr. Brooks would be snuffing out their own lives. She didn’t know a reality without her, and she didn’t know how to process it.

“Me? I will die, and you will die,” Dr. Brooks replied flatly.

She looked at him, shocked at how matter-of-fact he had said it. “Did you… did you know, from the moment we went aboard Salvage Facility 21-J, that this was what was going to happen?”

“That we were going to die here and now?”

She nodded.

“No, I did not,” Dr. Brooks explained. “Contrary to what others feared of me, I am not reckless. My goal has always been to preserve the timeline as it is meant to unfold. It would have been foolish of me to seek out my own future, or anything that could impact the decisions I am to make. That would have been antagonistic to my own aims.” It was a very scientific thing to say, but it wasn’t very human.

“So how do you know we will die?” she asked.

“Because, in the end, we all will. You, me, everyone.” As an old man, he was simply closer to that natural end that she was. With age came clarity, and he’d simply had more time to come to accept it. “Someday, even the universe itself will die a cold death as entropy drains its last ounces of energy.”

Commander Lee did not look comforted by the thought.

“But we have an incredible opportunity here, Cora,” Dr. Brooks offered, his eyes showing an uncustomary empathy. He needed her to stay the course. “We have the opportunity to control the how and the why. We can do this and save generations from a life of servitude under the grip of the Collective. Few have such an opportunity to make their final moments count like that.” He meant it. He really did.

The console before him began to beep, alerting them that short-range sensors had just picked up the duranium and steel of the transwarp gate. It was right where Lieutenant Balan’s young friend had told them it would be.

“Adjust heading to three three zero mark seven, and increase shields to compensate for the increasing gravimetric gradient,” Dr. Brooks ordered as the shuttlepod shook under the shearing forces of the Roche lobe. “We’re five minutes out. I’m going to start prepping the catalyst to overcharge the warp assembly.”

Right then, another klaxon went off. It had just picked up the Borg homing signal coming back to life. The colonists had just started the summoning ritual.

Aboard the USS Serenity, racing at warp 9.98 across the vastness of space, they detected it too. “Sir,” reported Lieutenant Commander Eidran from his position to Captain Lewis’ left on the central command island. “I’m picking up a new signal source coming from the Beta Serpentis system. It’s a Borg homing signal.”

“Is it the one we’ve been searching for?” asked Captain Lewis.

“I cannot be certain, but that would be a fair assumption,” offered Lieutenant Commander Eidran. “It’s not coming from the colony on Beta Serpentis III though.” He rechecked the readings. “It is originating from near the centroid of the binary star’s lemniscate.”

Curious, thought Captain Lewis. That would put the signal well within the Roche lobe, an area of intense gravimetric sheering, plasma transfer, and electromagnetic radiation as the red dwarf secondary accreted material into the A-type main-sequence primary. You’d only bring something there if you meant to hide it from detection, as all that radiation disoriented conventional sensors. “Notify the USS Diligent that we’re going for the beacon.”

“We’ve got another problem,” frowned Lieutenant Commander Eidran. “I can’t seem to raise the Diligent. Something’s jamming up our subspace carrier waves.”

“Explain.”

The Betazoid fiddled with the controls at his console, but he wasn’t making any progress. Lieutenant Commander Eidran stood up and crossed to the operations station, relieving the ensign who stood at it. He worked the controls for a minute as he tried to sort out what was going on. “The source of the interference is massive interference originating from Beta Serpentis IV. It’s almost like… no… ummm…”

“That’s not an explanation, Commander,” Captain Lewis snapped back. The young first officer was serviceable under normal operating conditions, but the way he got discombobulated when things got complicated seriously annoyed the aged spook.

“Sorry, I’m just trying to make sense of it,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran apologized. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it’s a boosted and bandpassed variation of the Borg interlink frequency.”

The bridge went silent, and everyone looked over at him. Captain Lewis’ hand slid instinctively towards the phaser he always wore on his waist. He knew what had happened the last time a Borg signal had been broadcast across the vastness of space.

“It’s mangled though,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran added, his mind going to the same place. They’d both lived through Frontier Day in orbit over Earth, and neither wanted to see a repeat. “Even if we hadn’t all gone through the Starfleet Medical procedure, I don’t think it would have any impact on us. It probably couldn’t even control a drone with a fully functional cortical node.” 

“Then what is its purpose?”

“I can’t be certain,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran cautioned. “But my best guess is that someone is using the massive signal strength of the Borg transceiver as a jammer.”

“Would that explain why we couldn’t reach the Ingenuity all day?” Captain Lewis’ spidey senses kicked in as a hypothesis began to form in his head. The Borg homing beacon had been brought here, and now they had an indication that a Borg transceiver was in play as well. Were the colonists of Beta Serpentis III playing with Borg tech? He’d read the intelligence briefings after Admiral Reyes had turned the USS Ingenuity for Beta Serpentis III. As a dumping ground for the debris from Wolf 359, the system had a forty year history with Borg tech.

“Very likely.”

“And what is the Ingenuity doing right now?” Captain Lewis asked. “Do we have her on our long range sensors yet?”

“We do,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran confirmed. “She just came onto the scopes. It looks like she’s just sort of sitting in orbit of Beta Serpentis III.”

Captain Lewis furled his brow. Why would she just be sitting there with all this Borg tech lighting up across the system? He knew Admiral Reyes well enough to know that wasn’t her modus operandi. “Any indication of foul play?”

“Not exactly.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m not detecting any signs of damage,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran explained. “But her energy signature is significantly more faint than I would expect from a fully operational Pathfinder-class cruiser.”

“Lieutenant Selik, prepare to adjust heading…” Captain Lewis ordered. A jamming signal coming from Beta Serpentis IV, an active Borg homing beacon within the Roche lobe of the Beta Serpentis binary star pair, and a Starfleet ship sitting stationary in orbit of Beta Serpentis III meant something was clearly amok. Unfortunately, they had a choice before them. They had three separate situations but only two ships, and they couldn’t even coordinate with the Diligent. That meant they’d just have to make a call.

Aboard the USS Diligent, Captain Dorian Vox was grappling with the same debate. They couldn’t communicate with Captain Lewis, and they couldn’t raise the USS Ingenuity. They’d have to independently decide which issue to tackle first. “How far out are we?”

“0.04 light years at 9.98,” reported the flight control officer at the conn.

“Comms, we still can’t raise Serenity or Ingenuity?” Captain Vox figured he’d check one more time. Things had just gotten very complex, and the squadron’s strategic operations officer would much rather be moving with deliberate coordination than without.

“Negative sir,” confirmed the communications officer. “The Borg signal is completely jamming our carrier waves.” Just like it had over Earth.

The choice seemed clear enough to Captain Vox. Although their mission had originally been to intercept the Borg homing beacon, and he wanted to confirm that the USS Ingenuity was still in working order, he couldn’t look past that Borg signal. Not after Frontier Day. “We’re going for Beta Serpentis IV first.” He’d seen the intelligence report as Captain Lewis. He knew what horrors were hidden there within the troposphere of the gas giant. “Gator, get us a bearing.”

“Zero zero two point six mark one point four.”

“Conn, adjust to intercept.”

“Aye sir,” confirmed the flight controller. At high warp and several minutes out, the course change was almost imperceptible. “Intercept course locked in.”

Captain Vox turned back to the navigation officer. “Gator, any indication of Serenity’s target?” He wondered what choice Captain Lewis was going to make.

“I can confirm it’s not the gas giant,” reported the navigations officer. “But based on the relative orientation of the binary star pair and the colony on Beta Serpentis III, I cannot confirm whether she’s headed for the Ingenuity or the homing beacon.” The USS Serenity’s vector crossed both.

“Should we adjust to match?” asked the conn officer, questioning whether it was right for them to split their firepower as they barreled towards a problem of unknown proportions.

“Negative,” Captain Vox replied. “Maintain course.” Captain Lewis had his plan, and they had theirs. They needed to stop that interlink signal. He just hoped that Captain Lewis knew what he was doing as well.

Neither of the captains were yet aware of the transwarp gate, nor of their colleagues and their desperate plan to save the system and the galaxy.

Careening towards their end, they could now make out the transwarp gate silhouetted against the bright hues of the accretion disk. The monstrosity was a strange hybrid of Borg and Starfleet technology, an amalgamation of parts stolen from Salvage Facility 21-J, stripped from Beta Serpentis III, and forced from the USS Ingenuity. The colonists believed this to be the doorway to salvation, but Dr. Brooks and Commander Lee were resolved to stop them, at any cost.

“Any chance the gate won’t work?” Commander Lee asked hopefully. A prodigious engineer by trade, she knew just how temperamental the technology could be. If that janky construct couldn’t establish and maintain a stable conduit, then they could abort. “It’s not exactly easy science.” Starfleet had spent over a century failing to achieve reliable transwarp capabilities.

“We’re going to find out soon enough,” Dr. Brooks reported as the latest sensor telemetry flashed across his screen. “I’m detecting a significant build up of neutrinos, coupled with an intermittent graviton flux. The gate is coming online.” If the colonists had succeeded in building a stable gate, he and Commander Lee would have no choice but to detonate the warp core of their unarmed shuttlepod to stop the Borg from marching straight into the heart of the Federation.

The pair cast their eyes forward as the gate began to light up. It didn’t fizzle, and it didn’t short. Instead, a blue and white portal began to open. It was a transwarp tear in subspace, and it was stable.

Their fate was sealed.

Dr. Brooks looked down at his console just to be certain, but then he saw something else. Even with the help of the homing beacon to attract them, he’d assumed it would take the Collective some time to respond. He was wrong. “Check your console.” He knew Commander Lee was struggling to come to terms with what they had to do, and he figured it would be more impactful if she saw it for herself. “What do you see?”

“I… I…” Commander Lee stammered as she saw it on her scopes. “I’m seeing multiple inbound transwarp signatures. Two… wait, no… three… fuck, there’s four Borg ships on the other side, coming fast!” She’d never seen a Borg ship on sensors before, and now she was staring at four of them. “If my calculations are right, we have just over three minutes.” In three minutes, either they would be dead, or the Borg would be flooding through the gate. 

“Then we have no choice,” Dr. Brooks said as he looked over at the young woman. His eyes welled with regret that he hadn’t insisted she stay behind. From the moment they had commandeered the Type 17 shuttlepod, he’d been fairly certain how this was going to end. He should have just stunned her with his phaser and rolled her out the back before he took the pod away from Salvage Facility 21-J. But he hadn’t. He’d allowed her to come along, and now she was going to die alongside him. “You ready?”

“No,” Commander Lee’s voice trembled. She’d had two hours to make peace with what was to come, but as four Borg signatures raced towards them through the transwarp conduit, she felt no closer to acceptance than when she’d first climbed aboard the shuttlepod. She was not ready to die. “But it doesn’t… it doesn’t matter if I’m ready. We… we… we have to do it.” 

For her crew on the Ingenuity. For the colonists of Beta Serpentis III. For all those across the core of the Federation who would otherwise wake in the morning to the Borg on their doorstep. They had to do it.

“Increasing matter-antimatter mix to critical levels,” Dr. Brooks reported in a matter-of-fact tone as he coaxed the propulsion system towards the very conditions its safeguards were designed to prevent. “Bring us closer to the gate.”

“How close?”

“So close that if we open the back hatch, we’ll be able to reach out and touch it.” It was probably superfluous. The warp core breach would annihilate the nuclear bonds of every atom within a thousand kilometers, but Dr. Brooks intended to take no risks. Not when they were trading their lives for it.

“Understood,” Commander Lee confirmed, her voice little more than a whisper and her hands shaking as she guided the shuttle towards the gate. They were really doing this. They were really about to erase themselves from existence to stop the Borg. She was really going to die.

Racing towards Beta Serpentis at warp 9.98, the USS Serenity was now within a thousand AUs of the system. They were close enough they could now detect the anomaly forming at the lemniscate of the Roche lobe.

“Sir, I’m picking up a massive build up of neutrinos and a graviton flux typically indicative of a transwarp aperture,” reported the tactical officer nervously. “And… ummm… there’s more…” But he didn’t elaborate. His voice simply trailed over as he worked at the controls. Those readings couldn’t be correct. He couldn’t be seeing what he was seeing.

“What?” shouted Captain Lewis aggressively. He needed to break his crew of their annoying habit of reporting something without reporting what the something was. It wasted far too much time. He looked over at the tactical officer, noting the man looked absolutely horrified as he fixated on his scopes. “Lieutenant, what is it?!”

“It’s the Borg, sir,” reported the tactical officer. 

His words cut through the bridge like a knife through butter. Everyone grew silent. The sailors of the USS Serenity knew intimately what the Borg could do. Most of them had been over Earth on Frontier Day. 

“I’m detecting four Borg transwarp signatures incoming from the far side of the transwarp aperture,” the tactical officer continued. “The beacon must be attracting them.”

“How close are we?” Captain Lewis asked. If they could get there before the Borg did, maybe they could destroy the gate. At least, that was what he hoped.

“Three minutes.”

“And how soon will the Borg cross through?”

“Two and a half.”

They were already at max warp, but they were going to arrive too late.

“Red alert!” came the call from Captain Lewis as a warrior’s expression washed over his face. Combat didn’t typically bother him. In fact, he almost sought it out. But combat with the Borg was something different altogether. Even the aged spook had hoped he’d never have to face them head on. “All hands to battlestations!” 

The Borg were coming, and they weren’t going to get there soon enough to stop them. 

As it so happened though, they didn’t need to get there first. Unbeknownst to Captain Lewis and his crew, two of their colleagues from Polaris Squadron sat aboard a Type 17 shuttlepod directly in front of the gate, preparing to commit the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the Borg would never reach Beta Serpentis.

Aboard the shuttlepod, alarms began to sound. 

The shuttlepod’s safeties had rightly identified that the core was approaching critical. Dr. Brooks ignored them, simply urging more fuel into the reaction and watching as the cascade continued to build. He glanced momentarily out the front viewer. They were now so close to the gate that they could see the individual conduits lining its surface, and in the middle of the gate, the blue and white of the open transwarp conduit continued to pulse.

And then, they crossed the threshold. 

Dr. Brooks looked down at the power sensors, confirming the positive feedback cycle of matter-antimatter annihilations was now at the point where the byproducts of the reaction were themselves enough to fuel the impending explosion.

They’d passed the point of no return.

“Warning. Warning. Warp core breach imminent. Warning. Warn…”

“Computer, silence all alerts.”

Dr. Brooks leaned back in his chair, accepting the inevitable. In mere moments, it would all be over in a flash of blinding light as the matter-antimatter reaction annihilated the shuttle, the gate, and the two of them. Without the gate, the transwarp tunnel would collapse, and the door into the heart of the Federation would close before the Collective could arrive. That was all that mattered.

“Cora, I am sorry it came to this.”

The old man reached out and grabbed hold of her hand, trying to offer what comfort he could in those final moments. He could feel her shaking, but she said nothing. 

She had nothing to say. She was going to die.

On USS Serenity, a red hue had subsumed the bridge as the Duderstadt-class light cruiser charged forward at max warp. At operations, Lieutenant Commander Eidran spotted a faint energy signature on his scopes. It appeared to be right on top of the gate. “Sir, I’m detecting something at the gate.”

“The transwarp conduit?”

“I mean yes, there’s that, but no, this is something else. It’s registering as a Type 17 shuttle.” There was a hint of confusion in Lieutenant Commander Eidran’s voice. Why would an unarmed passenger pod be sitting at the mouth of a transwarp aperture? But then he noticed its energy signature. It was growing impossibly fast, or at least, it was growing impossibly fast for safe operations. There was only one explanation he could think of for the massive energy build up. “And her warp signature is cascading towards a breach.” He checked a few more readings to confirm it. “She’s going to blow.”

Captain Lewis smiled, a strange reaction in the midst of the crisis, but he knew instantly what was happening here. The Ingenuity had been rendered incapacitated, but someone had come up with a way still to stop the Borg. They’d turned the shuttlepod into a matter-antimatter bomb. 

At the conn, a flash of concern danced across the Vulcan flight controller’s face. “Sir, should I redirect our trajectory?” Lieutenant Selik asked. Traveling at nearly 5,600 times the speed of light, if they waited too long to pull away, they could get caught in the shockwave of the matter-antimatter explosion. “If we continue our approach, I cannot guarantee our safety.”

“You can never guarantee our safety,” Captain Lewis countered quickly. He had other things on his mind. “Eidran, is that shuttle unmanned?” He was fairly certain a Type 17 shuttlepod’s autopilot could not be programmed to do what it was doing. The safeties would prevent it.

“I’m detecting two lifesigns aboard,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran replied.

Captain Lewis frowned. It wasn’t in his DNA to leave a man behind. For all he knew, the two people aboard that shuttle were members of the USS Ingenuity’s crew. And that meant he owed it to them to try and save them. He tapped his combadge. “Engineering, I need more juice, and I need it now!”

“I’ve been pushing the core to its limits the last two hours, Captain,” came the warning from Lieutenant Commander Sharpe over the comms. “I can’t give you any more safely.”

“Then don’t be safe!” Captain Lewis snapped. “Blow through their limits. Ride this bitch to the edge of possible, and past it if you have to. Lives depend on it.” He didn’t even wait for a response. He just tapped his combadge off and turned back to Lieutenant Commander Eidran. “Can we hail them?”

“Not through the subspace interference.”

His mind racing at a million miles a minute, Captain Lewis began to form a plan in his head. “Are their shields still up?”

“Yes.”

That was problematic, but he still had a plan. It was gutsy, but it could work. They were going to push the ship to its limits, and it would take perfect execution, but it was possible. “Eidran, I need you at tactical.” For all his struggles as a first officer, Ekkomas Eidran rose through the ranks behind the targeting controls. No one aboard was a better shot with the phaser array. “And Selik, I’m going to need some more of your crazy flying.” The Vulcan had already bested the Jem’Hadar, but now he was going to need to best the laws of physics themselves.

Down in engineering, Lieutenant Commander Sharpe was doing his part too. He’d taken Captain Lewis’ orders to heart, pushing the engines past their limits, edging right up against the threshold that could push the Serenity’s own core to critical.

Meanwhile, on the Type 17 shuttlepod, they’d already blown way past critical. Now, as they watched energy levels continue to climb, Cora Lee squeezed Tom Brooks’ hand. Any second now…

Suddenly, the shuttlepod shook.

“What the fuck was that?” asked Dr. Brooks, releasing Commander Lee’s hand and spinning back towards his controls. That didn’t feel like the beginning of the end.

And it wasn’t. 

A Duderstadt class vessel had just emerged from high warp with impossibly fast deceleration, pushing its inertial dampeners, deflectors, and structural integrity to their limits so as to not waste any extra time on their approach. It wasn’t the first time the USS Serenity had been ridden to the edge, nor would it be the last.

The first shot had connected, Lieutenant Commander Eidran expertly compensating for the superluminal deceleration, and with only one additional follow up shot, the carefully modulated nadion beam arcing from the USS Serenity’s bow shorted out the shuttlepod’s shields.

How were they here? Dr. Brooks asked himself. And what the hell were they doing? Suddenly, the cockpit around Dr. Brooks began to vanish. The last thing he saw was the readings on the shuttlepod showing the core had breached.

From the bridge of the Serenity, the moment the shuttlepod’s shields fell, Captain Lewis made the call: “Execute! Execute! Execute!” 

A massive matter-antimatter explosion rippled out from the shuttlepod. It evaporated the shuttlepod instantly, and the transwarp gate a millisecond later. As the shockwave raced towards the USS Serenity, Selik slammed the throttle forward, Sharpe pumped every last ounce of juice into the engines, and Eidran redirected all remaining power to the shields.

The ship shook. Hard. Both from the shockwave, as it slammed into their shields from behind, and from the accretion disk, as the deflector struggled to repel the dense stellar material. Klaxons sounded, EPS relays shorted, and crewmen were launched from their feet, but then it was over. A silence settled over the bridge as they realized they’d done it.

Captain Lewis tapped his combadge: “Transporter Room 1?”

“I got them, sir. I got them both.”

She was alive, Salvage Facility 21-J was back under their control, and the colonists of Beta Serpentis III, much to their own disappointment, had not been assimilated. On a typical day, that wouldn’t have been newsworthy, but today, it was everything to Commander Lee. Somehow, they had prevailed, and not only had they prevailed, but so too had they survived.

“Commander Lee, I hear it was real touch and go there at the end,” Admiral Reyes offered as she, Commander Lee, Captain Lewis and Dr. Brooks stood together in the main reception room of the colony’s central administration building. “I’m glad it all worked out.” There was a deep sincerity in the way she said it. She was relieved that it had not all ended having to bury two more of her people.

“As am I,” Commander Lee replied softly, still haunted by what had happened. As she and Tom Brooks sat there, heating the shuttlepod’s warp core to critical, she’d suddenly realized her own mortality. And it had shaken her to her core. “All thanks to you, Jake.” Commander Lee smiled as she looked over at the aged spook. She owed him his life. Through a mix of bravery and brashness, Captain Lewis had saved her from her fate at the last possible moment.

Captain Lewis simply nodded. No thanks were needed.

“And Dr. Brooks, I’m really starting to think you want your atoms annihilated in a conflagration of matter and antimatter,” Admiral Reyes added as she turned towards the old scientist. “You really need to expand your playbook beyond warp core breaches.” Twice now, when all other options had been extinguished, the squadron’s newest transplant had turned to a solution few others would ever have considered.

“It’s one of the few things the Borg have not yet adapted to,” Dr. Brooks chuckled darkly. As he saw it, the difference between himself and the others was simply the fact he did not fear that final option. “Get us a mission that doesn’t involve the Borg, and I’m sure I can come up with something a little less fatalistic.”

“I’ll admit that after the Lost Fleet, Frontier Day, and now this, I long for the days we can just get back out there, charting nebulas, exploring ancient ruins, and discovering the mysteries of the universe once more,” Admiral Reyes smiled. It had been a long four months, and they’d paid a heavy price for the victories they’d achieved. She was ready to get back to doing what the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity had been established to do.

A shimmer of bright light pulled them from their discussion. The group turned as Captain Dorian Vox materialized on the temporary transporter pad the engineers from the USS Polaris had set up to cut through the interference caused by the planet’s lanthanide-rich crust.

“How’s everything looking?” asked Admiral Reyes.

“A hell of a lot better than earlier,” Captain Vox offered as he stepped off the pad. “We’ve arrested the remaining colonists aboard Salvage Facility 21-J, and once the Polaris arrived, the ASTRA folks were able to shut down the transceiver and expunge the Borg subroutines from the station’s computer core.”

“Nicely done, Captain,” Admiral Reyes nodded. Although Dorian Vox and the Diligent had only been a part of Polaris Squadron for a short period of time, and for much of it she’d been away with the Serenity over Earth, she appreciated the no-nonsense approach he took to everything he did. It had done them well in the Battle of Nasera, and he’d been just as effective as he and his teams stormed Salvage Facility 21-J.

For all his professionalism though, Captain Vox did look a bit spooked though. “Admiral, I’m going to be straight with you though. The place was a shitshow when we stormed it.” It had taken hours to wrestle control back from the dozens of zealous Andorians and hundreds of weaponized synths that held it hostage. “I’m still not sure why Command thought it wise to leave a pile of Borg tech just sitting there under the control of an automated system it could corrupt.”

“What else would you have them do with it?” Dr. Brooks asked.

“Destroy it,” Commander Lee cut in. “Destroy it all.” She spoke with a coldness borne of the horrors she’d witnessed while trapped with Dr. Brooks aboard Salvage Facility 21-J. She wanted nothing to do with any of it any more.

“I agree,” nodded Captain Vox. It seemed the logical choice, but Admiral Reyes, Dr. Brooks and Captain Lewis looked like they had other ideas. “I mean, that’s what we’re going to do, right? Right?” Anything else, in light of what had happened, seemed foolhardy. Borg tech was simply too dangerous to leave lying around.

“There’s still much we have to learn from the Borg,” Dr. Brooks offered. Although he and Commander Lee had lived through the same nightmare aboard that old salvage depot, he had come to a different conclusion than his young colleagues. “There’s a treasure trove of secrets over there still waiting to be unlocked.”

“Dr. Brooks is correct,” Admiral Reyes added. “I spoke with Command right after the jammer was disabled. Starfleet Security and Starfleet R&D are dispatching a team to take control of the facility.” Captain Vox and Commander Lee both looked less than pleased, so Admiral Reyes added some additional color: “After all that has happened with the Borg recently, there is renewed interest in cracking the code of the Collective. The facility is being reactivated to continue that critical research.”

Neither Captain Vox, nor Commander Lee, looked pleased with the answer, but they also knew nothing would be changed by arguing. The decision had been made far above their paygrade.

“What about the colony, ma’am?” asked Commander Lee, changing the subject. She’d worked the humanitarian mission on Nasera after they retook it from the Lost Fleet, and she knew how important the work was that lay ahead. “How do we help them heal?”

“Those who were directly involved with the hostage situation, and those who directly took up arms our people as we retook the colony and the station, will be handed over to Starfleet Security and then delivered to civilian authorities to stand trial,” Admiral Reyes explained. “And as for the rest, they will be free to return to their lives on Beta Serpentis III.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Captain Lewis grumbled. “The whole lot of them should be taken out back and shot for treason.” The Borg worshipers of Beta Serpentis III had almost opened a new door for the Collective to storm right into the heart of the Federation.

“Life will not be the same as it once was though,” Admiral Reyes continued, ignoring the outburst from her intelligence chief. “The colony is going to be placed under the stewardship of Federation Colony Operations.”

“That’s a crock of shit!” Captain Lewis exclaimed. After what they had done, they should have had to pay. They were getting off far too easy.

“Is it Jake? Is it really?” Admiral Reyes countered, her eyes narrowing on him. For all his heroics and all he’d been through over his decades in and out of Starfleet, Captain Lewis was still blind to such simple things. “Ask yourself what brought the colony to this point, what led them to see assimilation as the key to their salvation.”

Captain Lewis didn’t answer. He just folded his arms across his chest.

“They felt abandoned. The only Federation these colonists know is the one that rode in on its high horse and demanded they deactivate all their synths. Those synths were what made this place livable, and without them, it pushed the colony over to the edge in its struggle to surive,” Admiral Reyes explained. “When you push someone to the point of desperation, they will do desperate things. What they need now is to see something better from us. They need our support. They need to see the Federation as we see it.”

Captain Lewis looked unconvinced, but an argument like that would never have swayed him. The others nodded along though. They understood. Over recent months, each of them had become far too acquainted with what a desperate situation could push one to do.

Before anything further could be said, Captain Lewis’ combadge beeped.

“Lewis, go.”

“Jake, this is for your ears only.” 

It was Chief Ayala Shafir, and from the tone of her voice even in just those few short words, Captain Lewis knew something was wrong. He excused himself from the conversation with the others, and once he was alone in a hallway outside the main reception room, he let her know. “Okay, go.”

“It’s… it’s Lieutenant Morgan…” she said as her voice trailed off. It sounded almost as if she was sobbing, and that was very uncharacteristic for her.

“What about him?” Captain Lewis asked, growing concerned. Lieutenant Morgan had been off his game ever since Earth. He and Dr. Hall had been talking about it just hours earlier. And when they’d charged into the Beta Serpentis system, Lieutenant Morgan hadn’t reported for duty. At the time, Captain Lewis had paid it no heed. He’d had bigger things to worry about. “What’s going on, Ayala?”

“He’s… he’s… he’s dead. Jace is dead.”