—- Ready Room ——

“Again with the coffee?” Commander Cruz protested, as the away team filed it.

Captain Hathorne ignored her protests, as Lieutenants Jara, and Matthews filed in and was joined by Ensign Constable. He took his cup of coffee over to his desk and realized that the away team was all women. That had not been expected, he tried to keep his command team as close to equal as possible, but apparently he’d taken the right mix of people to be a fully female team.

”So Commander Cruz will lead this mission,“ he said, “We’re way out of our jurisdiction as it were, but we’re the only ship free at the moment. A bunch of Borg signals just lit up and we’re not sure why. There’s no functioning Borg, we’re just here to take a look and collect anything we can for Starfleet. Ensign Constable from Engineering is in charge of picking out what’s significant.”

Cruz nodded, “We’ll be though, there’s no rush we take out time and catalogue everything, we haven’t come across a stash of Borg tech like this in awhile.”

The Captain nodded, “Report to the transporter room, Cruz will be with you shortly.”

The others left and he looked at his First Officer, “I’m having Th’kaotross put locks on the weapons, just in case we have another Fleet Day.”

”I’d say it’s unlikely they use the same technique twice,” Cruz said, ”But having Ensign Constable nail me in the back isn’t me preferred way of going out.”

The Captain laughed and walked his First Officer out, to see a ship on the main view screen.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Thomas Winfield was at the conn, and reported, “A scavenger sir. It’s started pulling back when we showed up.“

Lieutenant Junior Grade William Hume at tactical nodded,  “We out pace them and are much better armed, clearly they got the Borg signal too and were looking for scraps.“

”Keep scanning for anyone else,“ the Captain said, “Cruz take the away team down, we’ll handle it up here.”

—- Zaretti 573 —-

Lieutenant Jara had seen death, and devastation before. She’d grown up around it but this was a slaughter house. She passed her flashlight’s beam across the bodies as Ensign Constable tried to return power to the facility so they could see better. Still by now they all knew that they were in a morgue of some kind, a place were Borg drones had been taken to be stripped for parts and tech. A robotic eye looked at her blankly from a shelf, disconnected for its body but still blinking. 

Commander Cruz poked an arm of a former drone that had had all the metal stripped out, and the remainder now reminded Jara of Swiss cheese for all its holes. Why did they call it Swiss cheese? Some old Earth reason probably, like a Swiss was something with lots of holes in it.

Even Lieutenant Matthew’s, the Romulan was having a hard time with this. As Assistant Chief Medical Officer she was upset at the loss of life, “This was like a factory, they brought them here to dismantle them, take their body parts and leave the flesh.”

As she searched against hope for any survivors Commander Cruz found a terminal and called up for a portable generator to be sent down. It materialized next to her allowing her to power up the terminal while the Assistant Chief Engineer was still looking for a way to restore power to the entire complex. As the others hunted through the area with their flashlights, she read what she could. 

Tapping her comm badge she spoke with the Captain, “This facility was run by someone named Bjayzl.“

”Black market dealer, Starfleet has records on her,“ Dorian’s voice in the background sounded, the Chief Strategic Operations Officer must be on the bridge with the Captain. Dorian continued, “Believed to be dead, last known sighting was by Jean-Luc Picard in 2399.”

”Looks like the was murdering Borg clones, and stripping them of party, not sure yet what’s sending the signal though,” Cruz said. The lights came on, revealing the carnage around them. Cruz winced looking forward to this being over. 

“We’ve restored power, no signs of life or trouble,” she reported.

”I’m sending over the science teams then, we’ll do an exhaustive search,” Hawthorne said, “Prepare to receive Lieutenant Debub and his team. I’ll send Hume with them as well.”

”Yes sir,” Cruz said and then closed the channel. She turned to the others, “Science teams coming in, we’ll patrol the perimeter while they work.”

—- USS Seattle, Nine Forward —-

The young Lieutenant Claudia Jara took a seat. They had been exploring the facility for hours, and had been swapped off. It was slow work, and mostly just cataloguing what she’d found. Which most often was the body party of Borg drones. When she closed her eyes she could still see them, open eyes staring back at her. She’d seen dead people before, but these were twice dead.

Lieutenant Yi Zhang from Operations joined her to hit on her. They talked a little but it was clear that the woman was not interested in what he was selling. Truthfully they wanted the same thing but also from the same gender, and there was nothing Zhang had to offer her that she found interesting. She wondered how he’d look as a Borg, and imagined like most of them he had been at one point. On Fleet Day they’d all been (pretty much).

When she closed her eyes she could hear the voice of the collective still to this day. Maybe it was a hallucination, most of the crew reported that was done with but she believed it was still them whispering to her. Seeing so many drones dead, so many who’d been like her just doing their own thing when they’d been taken, had been troubling.

After Yi Zhang had begun to realize that he was not getting anywhere with the Lieutenant he abandoned ship, as it where, and left her to her own devices. Jara nursed her drink and thought of the world and more specifically the way that although she believed in peace and working with former enemies (such as the Romulans, Klingons, and even Cardassians) she did not believe they could ever work with the Borg. She wanted them all dead, and though the carnage she had seen today, and would again when she went down to the facility, had been horrific she felt that the drones deserved it. Of course there were some “good ones” like that one who was on the Titan and had been on the Voyager, but for the most part they were relentless killing machines. Beyond the redemtion that Starfleet offered to their other adversaries.

—- Captain’s Quarters —-

“Does this feel any less special now that we’re officially condoned by Starfleet?” the Captain asked his First Officer as she looked out his window onto space below, 

“Yes, honestly yes. But if it’s making you feel better then I’m glad we did it,” Commander Cruz said.

”The senior staff walked in on us, and the Betazoid on our crew called me out specifically,” Hawthorne said defensively.

”Just don’t think I won’t still make fun of your fussy coffee,” Cruz shot back. She did like him, he was just so old fashioned. Improbably it seemed as if he’d come from the nineteenth century sometimes to captain a starship.

”This is a Anaheim type mission, cleaning up Starfleet’s junk long after anyone else cares,” he said.

Cruz shrugged, “That’s what we do, clean up messes. Not everyone can be the Enterprise. Hell I bet not even the Enterprise is always out witting Q and stopping strange new diseases.”

”I guess you’re right,” Hawthorne said, “I just wish we’d catch a regular exciting missions. Maybe something with the Cardassians.”

“Let’s go to bed, maybe tomorrow will be less gruesome,” Cruz said.

It was not.