Captain Ejoma Nushif prided herself on her keen ability to understand social cues, navigate precarious conversations, and not stick her foot in her mouth. Tonight, due to a particularly grueling hike, and a tired body and mind, she’d accepted an invitation from Admiral Niana Tondro to have drinks in the ship’s lounge, and she’d done exactly what she’d told herself never to do: ask an El-Aurian about the Borg.

Admiral Tondro, to her credit, had leaned back in her chair, took a sip of her cocktail, and looked out the window with a sad sigh.

“A Borg cube, Ejoma, is unmistakable as anything else, on the sensors. It creates a lot of noise, so to speak, generates its own local system of gravity. Has its own satellites. That’s hyperbole, but you get the image. You’ve seen Romulan Warbirds, massive ships unto their own right. Shit, even the Ride is massive compared to most ships. A cube would dwarf her, handily.”

“I apologize Admiral, I didn’t…”

“And they’re coming, and coming, and then they’re there,” she interrupted. “They’re there, bringing ego death and annihilation in their wake. They flood every communication channel with that awful, droning cacophony of theirs. A thousand thousand voices that could be lifted in beautiful chorus, instead spelling out the ways they’ll destroy you utterly, wholly, and forever. Then they cut.” She emphasized the word by slamming her drink onto the table. “A hundred beams of light, tearing apart your hull to get to the people you’ve served with, grown with…loved…the screams, the crying, the smell of blood and oil and ichor all at the same time overwhelming your senses as your friends undergo the change.”

She turned her gaze toward the (now cowed) Bajoran woman, her eyes red. “I would say they aren’t a fate I would wish upon my worst enemy. But they are my worst enemy, Ejoma. They are the enemy of sentience and free will. And if Starfleet would authorize it, I would take every ship from every fleet to the Delta Quadrant tomorrow. I would hunt down every Unimatrix, every cube, every probe. I would destroy them, permanently, brutally, and with great malice.”

Standing, she gulped down the last of her drink, and said, “That, Captain, is what the Borg are like,” before exiting the Lounge.

Epsilon Theta IX a | Alpha Quadrant | 1500 hrs

Admiral Niana Tondro had watched the informational brief from the Fourth Fleet precisely six times in the last two hours, from the comfort of her offices aboard the USS Ride. She had consumed six mugs of Darjeeling tea, four croissants, and a cup of Raktajinko, while she attempted to process her thoughts about the unfolding situation. 

She was young for an El-Aurian, but she held the same trauma that all who survived the destruction of her homeworld had: fear, hatred, and contempt for the Borg Collective. In recent history, the Borg had made a sudden comeback during Frontier Day, one of the Federation’s most hallowed holidays. Further in the past, Niana had been unimpressed, to say the least, by the Federation’s handling of the Battle of Wolf-359, when a large task group of Starfleet vessels had been utterly annihilated by the Borg’s first incursion into Federation space. 

With a heavy sigh, she deactivated the small viewer on her desk, and looked pensively out the window. The bright, beautiful moon that she and her crew had been orbiting shone brightly. Numerous away teams were dirtside, doing what they did best: scanning the ruins on the small moon, and determining what had happened to make an entire civilization of people be lost to the annals of time. It caused her to wonder what would happen should Starfleet ever make it to her people’s homeworld, and scan the ruins. 

She was interrupted from her dark thoughts by the sudden chime of her office’s door. Shaking her head slowly, she pressed the command on her console that would open the door, and allowed the visitor to enter, returning her gaze out of her window. 

“Admiral?” the man’s voice asked, concerned. “Apologies for the delay, it seems there’s’ a…” “Yes, James,” she interrupted. “As a Starfleet Captain, I imagine you got the same informational brief that I did.” She turned to see him lingering by the door, and gestured to one of the seats in front of her desk. The man quickly sat, and let out a long, but level exhale. 

“The Borg. Well…shit.” 

“Mostly activations of emergency beacons so far. Nothing pressing in local space, or at least nothing that we can urgently respond to in any meaningful way. So we are here, sitting on our hands, scanning ruins, trying to determine how this civilization came to an end, when the rest of civilization may meet the same fate in the coming days,” Tondro responded. “We’re sitting on one of the most advanced platforms Starfleet has ever put afield, and rather than respond to the looming threat, we’re…” she trailed off, gesturing broadly across her desk. 

Captain James Holmes sighed, and took a moment to compose his thoughts. “I know I don’t need to tell an El-Aurian how to feel about this particulat topic. But sir, when I think of the Borg, the image that comes to mind isn’t the recent devastation of Frontier Day. It’s Wolf 359. It’s the mission logs that Admiral Janeway sent back when the Voyager returned home. It’s…alright well I guess it’s a little bit of everything, but the one thing I’ve always said is that we absolutely should not be screwing around with Borg tech. There’s always been just too much at stake, too many factors that could have gone wrong. But here we are, years on, doing just that. And it’s come back to bite us. I’m sure reports will be coming soon that there have been incursions. Who knows how many transwarp conduits will be vomiting out Borg ships, responding to these beacons?”

“Hundreds, I’m sure,” Tondro replied.

Leaning forward, Holmes lowered his voice, and demanded, “So why are we sitting here on our asses, pouring over the ruins of a dead civilization, when our own civilizations could be the next to suffer the same fate? We don’t owe this moon anything. It’s a fascinating data point, yes. It could be an interesting xenoarchaeological dig, yes. But there are real threats out there, with real lives at stake. We don’t have to be beholden to the ghosts of dead men if we don’t want to. Forgive me for pressing the issue, but you’re an Admiral. You can make the executive decision. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge, make speed to the nearest beacon, and intercept anything that comes to investigate.” 

With a sigh, Tondro re-activated her display screen, showing a map of the sector. Turning it towards Holmes, she looked him in the eye, and said, “The nearest beacon is coming from a Sphere the Starfleet Corps of Engineers is dismantling. It’s a day away at maximum warp. I’ve been watching the comm, and staring at this map for the better part of two hours. We’re in a position to relocate to somewhere that we can protect people against the looming threat, which we can’t say we were during Frontier Day.” 

“Then what the hell are we waiting for?” Holmes asked. “Captains Leeway of the Richter and Sivol of the Taluga have already been in contact. They’re hours away respectively, and ready to join us if we decide to break off and take this on. No one wants to sit around and wait for the Borg to come knocking, Sir. My contacts across the Fleet are telling me they want to take them on. After Frontier Day, they’re itching for revenge.” 

“No one understands that itch better than I. And forgive me for being flippant, but your contacts across the Fleet have likely never witnessed the Borg in action. We can’t go in guns blazing, James,” Tondro replied. “The Borg are absolutely a threat to everything the Federation holds sacred, but they can’t be dealt with just by firing our entire complement of torpedoes at them. We have to be smart, we have to be surgical, and above all, we have to protect lives. We have to…” she trailed off for a moment, and swallowed hard. “We have to save as many as we can from being killed or assimilated, while simultaneously dealing them a decisive blow hard enough to make them question the merit of threatening the Federation ever again. It’s a tall order. Are we up to it?”  

Holmes leveled a steady gaze at the woman, and replied, “Without question. Otherwise, what’s the point?”  

As the swirling effervescence of the transporter beam died out, and her field of view returned to her, Captain Nushif Ejoma immediately noticed that there were no fewer than ten scientists cramped into this relatively small transporter room. She couldn’t think of any reason that she and the Ride’s chief of security would need such a welcome party, but they’d received one nonetheless. 

“Captain Nushif? Welcome aboard. I’m Commander Amanda Greystone, head of the research project here. These are my team…” 

“I hope you’re not about to tell us all their names, sir,” the Andorian woman to Nushif’s right quipped, straightening the sleeves of her uniform jacket. “We’re not here to meet the staff, we’re here to ascertain what’s going on with the beacon sending a klaxon out to every Borg drone across space and time.” 

Greystone raised an eyebrow, before turning to her team and saying, “I can take it from here, thank you.” 

Ejoma stifled a snorting laugh as the scientists filed out of the transporter room and said, “Apologies for the brusqueness of my chief of security, but she’s right. A pleasure to meet you, Commander Greystone. I’m Captain Nushif Ejoma, first officer of the Ride. This is Commander Ralessa zh’Dar.” 

Stepping down off the transporter pad, Ejoma offered as big a smile as she could on two hours of sleep and a cup of coffee. Following the group out of the room and down the hall she continued, “Admiral Tondro has sent us to ascertain the threat level of the Sphere your team has been dismantling. Can you tell me where you came upon it? I presume it wasn’t during Frontier Day or any of the various battles against the Borg.” 

“You can’t battle the Borg, sir,” Greystone replied flatly, gesturing for the two to follow her down the corridors. “You can run from them, sometimes successfully. You can hide from them, usually with decent efficacy. But calling any encounter we’ve had with the Borg a battle would be charitable at best. We’ve had a few wins against the Collective in a running tally of losses. It’s why Brunel station exists. To study how we can do better, be better, against the biggest threat the Federation has ever faced.” 

“And you didn’t answer the question,” zh’Dar replied. 

“And I’m not going to,” Greystone sighed. “We don’t get many visitors here. We’re kind of a backwater station, even as far as the Starfleet Corps of Engineers is concerned. It’s why my entire team showed up to see who was coming. I don’t know why Admiral Tondro, who until now has largely been concerned with Bajoran and Cardassian matters, has suddenly decided to take a vested interest in Borg technology, but I can tell you what I do know. I don’t report to her, and I don’t report to you. I report to the Chief of Starfleet Engineering, and to Admiral Clancy.” 

This is going well, Ejoma thought. 

“That said, yes the emergency beacon on our Sphere has activated, and we have been as yet unsuccessful shutting it off. To add to the issue, intermittent shielding has gone up inside of it, trapping some of our crew. It’s been dormant forever, so we didn’t think it would be possible, but as it turns out the Borg really do prepare for every eventuality. Imagine our stroke of luck when an Odyssey class starship shows up at our doorstep and insists on seeing the Sphere; ascertaining whether the emergency beacon is a threat.” 

Greystone stopped at a large set of doors and announced, “Authorization Greystone zero-four-four-Alpha-Iota.” 

Whether by design or by coincidence, Borg vessels are imposing. Lacking any of the graceful curves of Starfleet’s cruisers or the sharp jutting angles of Klingon warships, they are instead simple, functional geometric shapes with hull plating and a glowing, sickly green light oozing from every junction. Ejoma had seen them, in holographic simulations. She had read reports and seen videos of ships going up against them. These did nothing to prepare her for the actuality of coming face to face with one. 

The Sphere dominated most of the facility’s massive bay. Large pylons gripped the Sphere like a hand tightly grasping a ball. A flurry of scientists and various other crew were walking and dashing around the makeshift gangways they’d built for access to various levels of the vessel. This Sphere was in rough shape, to be certain. Large chunks of it were missing along its “equatorial” region, as if someone had taken a scooper to the ship itself and pitted it out. There were telltale scorch marks across most of it, and a deep scar running at least four decks deep from the top of the Sphere curving down toward the bottom. 

Something, or someone, had been in battle with this vessel. Given that she was told the ship was here for dismantling and to discover any potential new technology that could be gleaned from it, she’d expected the ship to be dormant. But a soft green light was pulsing menacingly from somewhere in the center of the ship, bathing the bay in an occasional sickly viridian glow.  

“By the Prophets,” she intoned under her breath. “How did it…” 

“We don’t know, Captain,” Greystone interrupted. “We are some of the most qualified engineers that Starfleet can offer to study and dismantle this Sphere, and we don’t know how or why it’s doing this. What I do know is that there are twenty of my crew stranded in the Sphere, and none of us have been successful at figuring out how to retrieve them.” 

Turning pointedly to the Bajoran woman, Greystone continued, “My contingency orders were to lock down this facility should this ever happen, and do whatever we could to disable or destroy the Sphere. Admittedly, that would be a pretty easy job. Whatever enemy this Sphere did battle with made sure there wasn’t much of it left, when we found it, and we’ve dismantled a fair bit of the rest of it. But I have friends in there, Captain Nushif. Friends who I’ve served with for decades. Admiral Tondro wants to ascertain the threat of the emergency beacon? She can send as many people as she wants in there, and pour over it to her heart’s content. Just…just save my crew, and we’ll call it even.” 

Heaving a sigh, zh’Dar tapped her commbadge. “zh’Dar to Ride. We’re gonna need a hazard team.” 

“Oppressive.” 

Lieutenant Commander Ralessa zh’Dar looked up from the her PADD, and shot a confused look at the Ride’s Chief Science Officer. Simon Balboa deLeon was young, and had precious little experience in the field. Captain Holmes had insisted that there wasn’t a need for a hazard team, but that she did need a capable scientist to come along, as well as a medic. So this was going to be a babysitting job, a rescue mission, and a “turn off the thing that could potentially spell the doom of the galaxy at large” mission all at once. To say she wasn’t pleased would be an understatement. 

The team had spent the last two hours inside the Sphere, and had so far encountered a handful of powered up consoles, evidence of a hard battle fought in the interior, and numerous pieces of Federation equipment plugged in at random points. They had not as yet found any scientists, but had mercifully found the route to the Vinculum, where the Beacon was likely to be found.

Clocking the look she was giving him, Balboa deLeon replied, “Oh! Uh sorry sir. I never did any of the holo courses or took any Borg electives,” Balboa deLeon responded. “There just never seemed to be any time with all of the advanced coursework I was taking, and then after Frontier Day, I just didn’t feel like there was much of a point. Kicking myself for those choices now, but anyway this is…it’s just oppressive. Everything looks brutal.”

“Oppresive’s a pretty good adjective to describe the Borg. So’s brutal,” the team’s Trill medic, Vaes, added. “Aesthetics aren’t a Borg ideal, it’s all about function over form. Good news though, four life signs down this corridor, Commander.” 

Tucking her PADD back into her satchel, zh’Dar nodded, and said “ I won’t belabor the point Simon, except to say that what you don’t know can get you killed. The Federation has had precious few dealings with the Borg aside from a couple of unlucky flag officers. Borg electives and the holo courses are important. I’m sure Picard thinks the Borg are all gone but…they adapt. This beacon proves him wrong. Let’s move.”

The team moved quickly down the long corridor. It was surprisingly well lit, thanks to the lighting fixtures the station’s crew had installed. Various bits of Federation tech were plugged into ports, and a number of dismantling tools were laid out neatly in boxes where they could be neatly tucked away. 

“Looks like they were pretty methodical about what they were doing here. But if they were here to dismantle the Sphere, why were they plugging equipment in?” Vaes quipped. 

“And what were they attempting to find out, if all the Borg equipment was offline and the ship was dormant. I know I’d be looking for clues to whatever caused this level of damage, but…would be hard to figure out if none of the data nodes are online,” Balboa deLeon replied. 

“Quiet,” zh’Dar commanded. 

There was a soft, rhythmic electronic noise emanating from just around the next corner of the corridor. As zh’Dar rounded, she let out an audible gasp, and took several steps back, putting her hands to her side to keep Vaes and Balboa deLeon from approaching further. 

A green forcefield blocked a large alcove on the right side of the corridor. A pale human woman in a science teal uniform was pressing her hand against the shield, tapping at it continuously. Two thin black tendrils extended from the walls of the alcove, embedded into the woman’s neck, visibly pumping in a viscous black ichor. With a robotic jerk, she turned her gaze to the Andorian woman, a sense of recognition in her eyes. 

Looking past the woman, zh’Dar could see several other bodies in similar states slouched over against the bulkheads. Three of them were rocking gently in place, the rest very clearly dead. 

“Vvviiiiinculum,” the woman droned, robotic tones breaking through her voice. “B…bbbeeaaacon.” 

“Are you still in there?” zh’Dar gasped. 

“B….bbbeeaacon. Deeeeee-ac-ti-vate,” the woman replied, pointing weakly at a room at the end of the corridor. 

“That’s what we’re here to do, yes,” zh’Dar responded. “But your Commander asked us to find you and get you out. How do we do that?” 

“Al…reaaaaaady…gone. Not…assim…assimilated. Too much…damage. P…paaathoooogen. Nan..naaaaaaannnnop..robes not eff…effective. Death. Minutes. Tell G…Greeeeeyssst…stone. C…contingency…four.” 

“I’m so sorry,” zh’Dar responded, putting her hand against the forcefield. “We’ll get it done.” The woman moved to put her hand over zh’Dar’s in solidarity, before her eyes rolled back, and she slumped down onto the deck.

Andorians were widely renowned as one of the galaxy’s most aggressive species, with a renowned short fuse and quick temper. Ralessa zh’Dar had done her best in her career in both the Andorian Home Guard and in Starfleet to buck this trend, and be prickly, at worst. There were no words to describe the fury she felt witnessing the senseless scene she just had. 

“Double time,” she barked, sprinting down the corridor to the alcove. Tapping her commbadge, she shouted, “zh’Dar to Greystone. Your people are dead, and you have some damned explaining to do once I blow up this beacon. Contingency four. Out.” 

The team looked at the Vinculum, the central hub of the Borg Sphere which disseminated information to the collective and purged individualistic thoughts among the drones. 

“Lot of plating on that device sir,” Vaes noted quietly. 

“Yeah.” 

zh’Dar gripped at the plating with her bare hands, using every muscle in her body and every ounce of her will to force the plate off, throwing it to the side of the alcove with a loud thud. An almost blinding, pulsing viridian light poured out of the internal circuitry. 

“Here’s hoping the ship’s too damaged to adapt,” she said, leveling her phaser. 

“No, sir.” 

Admiral Niana Tondro looked up from her PADD at the Ride’s chief helmsman, a young Betazoid man with the telltale dark black eyes and thick dark hair. She sighed deeply, and set the PADD down on her desk, folding her hands and pressing her fingers to her lips. 

“Come again, Lieutenant Plaze?” 

“You ordered me to join you on Brunel Station while you interview her commanding officer. I read the report about what Commander zh’Dar saw down there, I read the preliminary report about why we’re here, and I read Commander Greystone’s bio. I have zero experience interviewing or interrogating witnesses, I have no experience with the Borg Collective, and I have no experience with the daily ins and outs of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. Sir,” the man replied. 

“I’m aware of your lack of experience, Lieutenant. But I believe your lack of experience will also mean a lack of bias, which I unfortunately cannot say I possess. In addition, your relatively junior rank to Commander Greystone will mean she won’t perceive you as a threat to her command, and might help assuage any concerns she might have.” 

“Admiral Tondro, with all due respect, cut the shit,” he replied. “When you want an assistant to aid you in an interrogation or an interview, you bring a security officer or a JAG officer, not a fly-boy. I’m a Betazoid. You want me there because I can read her thoughts and tell you if she’s lying or lying by omission. There is nothing that Betazoids hold more dear than the sanctity of one’s own private thoughts. It’s a moral precept on Betazed. It’s something drilled into any of us who want to leave our society, from a very young age. You’re ordering me to violate my own code of ethics, and while I can’t cite any of them I suspect a few Starfleet code of ethics as well. I am refusing your order.” 

Exhaling deeply, he continued, “You can throw me in the Brig, you can confine me to quarters, or whatever punishment you deem appropriate for refusing a direct order from a flag officer. But I will be filing a formal complaint, sir.” 

Tondro leveled a steel gaze at the man, and sat silently for a few moments. With a sigh, she said “Thank you for your candor, Lieutenant. You may return to your station. Send in Captain Nushif, please.” 

The man turned on his heel and walked wordlessly out of the admiral’s office. Moments later, the Ride’s Bajoran first officer, Captain Nushif Ejoma walked in, biting her lip in a very clear but poor attempt to stifle a laugh. Walking to the replicator, she cleared her throat, and commanded, “Pistachio breve.”  

Grabbing the mug as it coalesced, she moved to the Admiral’s desk, and sat down in a chair opposite her, blowing the steam off the top of her drink before she took a sip. 

“Forgive me for cutting to the quick, sir, but I told you he would refuse.” 

Shrugging, Tondro replied, “It was worth a shot. Something awful has happened down there. Commander Greystone filed her casualty report, and I filed my own report about the actions of the team in the Sphere. I was told, in no uncertain terms, to pound sand.” 

“Clancy?” 

“Clancy would have been more colorful,” Tondro replied. “Anyway, Lieutenant Plaze is going to file a report about what I ordered him to do, and he should. In any other situation, I would never have ordered him to come down with me. But it’s the Borg, Captain. We don’t have the luxury of idealism.” 

Captain Nushif stared across the top of her mug at the El-Aurian woman, and ran her tongue across her teeth for a moment, before responding. “You’ve asked me not to mince my words with you, my recent and rather embarrassing questioning of you about the Borg aside. So I’m not going to mince my words now, and I would appreciate if you would accept my feedback in that spirt. Agreed, sir?” 

“Absolutely,” Tondro replied with a nod. “I’ve come to enjoy your directness, Ejoma.” 

“Thank you, sir. You’re counting on my sympathies as a Bajoran. That the Bajoran Resistance did whatever it took for victory against an overwhelming force, and so I’ll agree with you. And tacitly sir, I don’t. When the stakes are high is precisely the time when idealism is important. You told Captain Holmes we needed to save as many lives as we could. We failed at that, and it’s awful, Admiral. But to whose lives were you referring?” 

Taking another sip of her drink, she continued, “And I understand and agree with you that there is some…very backwards shit happening on Brunel Station. They shouldn’t have a Borg ship, irrespective of the state it’s in. Where did it come from? What were they doing to it? Why do they have it? Maybe Commander Greystone knows the whole story. Maybe she only knows part of it. But she was sobbing when zh’Dar left the Sphere. She cared about those people that died, Admiral. And you treated them as a data point in your report to the Admiralty. A convenient reason to get the powers that be to divulge their secrets. It rings as callous at best, unspeakably and inappropriately cruel at worst.” 

“I will admit that when it comes to the Borg, I have blinders compared to a great many flag officers,” Tondro said. “My people were all but wiped out by them, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to harbor a deep hatred for them. These beacons are reportedly going off all over known space, and it can only mean that the Borg will be returning to investigate. It’s what they do, when these emergency beacons sound.” 

“But no one has seen more than a few stray drones, which parenthetically is terrifying in its own right sir, and I don’t need to tell you of all people that. This isn’t an invasion force, it’s a few stray drones coming to check on emergency beacons. And we disabled one of them. Our primary mission was a success. We’re never going to find out what they’re doing to that Sphere. We’re not going to stop them, and we’re not going to get to blow it up. We can chase these ghosts across the galaxy, and I suspect we’re going to find the same things we did here.”  

Setting her mug down on the desk, and folding her hands, she continued, “The Prophets have sealed the lips of the dead herein entombed. They shall not give up their secrets. Their stories shall remain theirs. May their names be forever remembered.” 

With slow, methodical footfalls, Commander Amanda Greystone made her way toward her office on Brunel Station. She’d been up most of the night, talking to her various colleagues in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers scattered across the galaxy, as well as various members of the Admiralty. 

She’d lost 20 team members over the course of half a day. A Borg Sphere that she’d been assured was deactivated and harmless had partially re-initialized, and in the process attempted to assimilate the scientists who were scanning its interior. Attempted, as the damage to the Sphere had essentially negated the efficacy of the nanoprobes, and all medical scans showed that rather than replicate ad infinitum in the victims’ blood streams, they’d essentially used them as fuel until there was nothing left, and then gone dark once the person died. 

A terrible tragedy had unfolded on her station, and a potential threat had only barely been neutralized. She had spent hours alternating between sobbing over the loss of her friends, and thanking whatever deity of luck had graced her with a team that had the ability to figure out what exactly was going wrong. 

Looking down at her PADD, she kept pouring over the data through blurry eyes, as she had most of the last night. She had to have been missing something. 

“Couldn’t sleep either, Commander?” 

Greystone looked up and sighed. Lieutenant Commander Ralessa zh’Dar, the Chief of Security of the USS Ride was standing in the doorway to her office with two cups of what looked to be steaming hot tea. She had half a mind to tell the woman to beam back to her ship and leave her to her reports and studies…but she was loath to admit that she did want the company. And the tea. 

Gesturing her in, Greystone replied, “No. I keep going over it again and again in my head. That there had to be something I missed, that there was something that should have been staring me in the face saying ‘HEY! This shit’s going to reactivate and you and your team need to get clear!’ But there just isn’t. There was no way we could’ve known that a sphere this damaged would suddenly re-activate after years without an active power source, and just go completely haywire.” 

Sliding a mug across the desk, zh’Dar said, “But there is. They’re the Borg, sir.” 

“Please,” Greystone responded. “Please just call me Amanda.” 

“Sure. Drink your tea, Amanda. My point is, the Borg are renowned for contingencies layered on contingencies. They build for function over form. They build so that if one piece of the collective’s chain gets broken, links elsewhere along the length strengthen and shore up what remains. It’s how they’ve survived and adapted for as long as they have. It’s what makes them nearly impossible to figure out. It’s why we run from them and only engage them in a fight when it’s the last possible option left to us before death or assimilation.”

Taking a sip, Greystone sighed softly, and set her PADD back down on her desk. Looking up at the Andorian woman, she said, “You’d make a hell of a ship’s captain. Never even encountered the Borg, and you understand them perfectly.” 

“You’re young, have you encountered them?” zh’Dar asked. 

“No,” Greystone sighed. “At least not directly. Ran from stray ships a few times, hid from them a few times. Frontier Day was my only real experience with them.” 

“It was most peoples’ only real experience with them,” zh’Dar responded. 

“You know, I was on the Bardeen when we found this sphere. We thought we’d hit a latinum mine. Here’s this…derelict Borg ship, beat to hell and adrift on the ass end of the Beta Quadrant. No drones onboard, no power signatures, just floating there like a giant black orb suspended in space. Captain Tanner wanted to destroy it. He said no matter what state it was in, it could adapt, rebuild itself, and the Borg would come looking for it.”  

“Well, mercifully he was wrong about at least part of that,” zh’Dar responded, taking a sip of her tea. “How’d you end up in charge of the thing?” 

“I was the one who recommended Brunel Station be repurposed to study it,” Greystone said through a sad smile. “SCE had just been using this as a scrapyard for old ships, so it seemed the perfect spot. Brunel’s out of the way of most major civilizations. Hell, there’s not even an inhabited planet within a couple hours at warp 7. I figured the sphere was in such a state, that we could take it apart piece by piece. Really dig in, and figure out what we could use against them; how much of their own technology could be repurposed by Starfleet to get the upper hand against them. But every year it was something. First being unable to get into the deep reaches of the ship. Then half my staff being reassigned to install the Fleet Formation software suite across the Fleet. Then Frontier Day and all of its awfulness…it was just setback after setback. I think I’d given up on finding anything meaningful, and that we’d just have this lump of Borg sitting in our scrapping bay for the rest of time. We never even got to figure out who did all this damage. Maybe those fluidic aliens from the Delta Quadrant? Maybe some kind of feral space monster with a taste for Borg flesh? Now I guess we’ll never know.”  

Her monologue was interrupted by the station’s gentle toning chime, indicating the start of Alpha shift. 

“Do you need to do something about that?” zh’Dar asked. 

“Nah, we’re on standby until we get further orders,” Greystone responded. “All that’s left is contingency four, and we’re out of orders.” 

“Okay. Look, Commander…” “Amanda.” “Fine, Commander Amanda. At least it scans rhythmically. I didn’t beam down to beat you up over your decisions,” zh’Dar said in the most comforting tone she could muster. “You requested an assignment you thought would be fulfilling. Something about the work called to you, and you thought it would make a difference. It’s what everyone who goes into Starfleet does, irrespective of the track they’re on. And for what it’s worth, thank you for finally giving me at least a piece of the puzzle as to what you’re doing down here, but I didn’t come down here to interview or interrogate you either. I came down here because I couldn’t sleep, and saw you were in your office awake too, and guessed you probably didn’t sleep much either and could use the company. What I saw was…an awful scene of horror. But I didn’t know those people. They were Starfleet, and presumably had people that cared about them, and it’s awful that they went the way they did but…” 

Sighing and taking a sip of her tea, she continued, “You actually knew them. When I came back to your office after nuking the vinculum, you were sobbing. So I have to be honest, I don’t really care what the plan was with the sphere. These were your friends, and they died, and that sucks. The least you could use right now is someone to sit with you and drink tea, and remember them.” 

“All hands, contingency four. All hands, contingency four,” the computer’s automated voice intoned. 

zh’Dar looked out of the office at the massive black sphere hanging by its fixtures, a small group of scientists quickly leaving the large bay in which it was suspended.

“You might as well stick around to see this, so you can include it in your final report,” Greystone said. 

“I’m not filing shit,” zh’Dar said, turning her gaze toward the scrapping bay. The two watched on as the forcefield lowered and fixtures retracted, allowing the sphere to float out into the inky void of space. It began a slow rotation as the rush of air caught the various pits across the surface, before settling and beginning to float away from the station. 

Depressing a command on her desk, Greystone ordered, “Repulsion. Distance Marker Theta.” A tractor beam began to push the sphere further and further away from the station, until the pair could barely make it out against the black backdrop of space. 

“Fire one, authorization Greystone Omega Four-Seven.” 

The forcefield shimmered quickly back into place as a blue streak flew out from parts unknown on Brunel Station. It impacted the side of the Sphere with a visible explosion, leaving little but jagged scraps of metal behind. 

‘Tricobalt’, zh’Dar thought.

With a sigh, Greystone stood up from her desk, and grabbed her PADD. “I’ve got a bunch of reports to file now, but I could use some breakfast first. You?” 

zh’Dar offered what was likely the first sincere smile she had since she’d seen the state of the scientists on the sphere, and replied “Let me tell my partners I’ll be home late this morning, but yeah. I could use some food.”