Later

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

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

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

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

April 12, 2401

“You should not be here,” Nelli said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t,” Taes firmly said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Fleet formation?” Nelli said.

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

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

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

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

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

Stridently, Taes said, “Computer!”

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

“We are the Borg,” they said.

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

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

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

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