“Sensei Longfellow…there was nothing you could do for this man.”  Lieutenant Hiro stood beside her commanding officer, Doctor Henry Longfellow.  His face felt hot at the emotions swirling around his heart and head.

“I am aware, Hiro.  It doesn’t lessen the weight of being able to do nothing.”  He had patiently worked with the remaining life contained within the bruised and butchered half-Borg half-Human body.  It had held on as long as it could until the inevitable failures of the internal organs, long overdue, began to signal the impending reality and ruin of death.  “This was someone once.  Alive.  Now a husk of…mechanics.  In their push for perfection, the Borg are an abomination…a curse among the stars.”  He gripped his hands on the table and leaned forward.  Why was there such an urge to perfect things?

His charge nurse’s voice was a quiet oasis in the storm, “Sensei…you cannot carry him with you.  The weight won’t allow you to stay above the water.”  He closed his eyes and began the process of adjusting his breathing.  They had spent much of the last month working backward to the loss of his wife a year ago in June.  They had worked out between each other ways for him to check himself in the moment.  One of the images they had settled on was the ability to tread water and not be pulled down.  He grimaced.  It wasn’t easy to let things go into the depths of the water below him.

But it was the only way he could keep moving forward.  He couldn’t keep diving down to try and save everyone and everything.  He opened his eyes a moment later, “Thank you, Hiro-san.  Your reminders are most helpful.”  Longfellow secured the body and activated the full sensor scan.  There were several other bodies next door in the surgery suite that required his attention.  Lieutenant Hiro followed him.

He slipped on his protective suit, helmet, and gloves while Hiro did the same.  They went through the decontamination hallway and entered the staid room with the three bodies half assimilated.  Tapping the multi-media console, he activated the cameras and microphones.  Captain Wren Walton and the bridge crew were tuned into his session.  He heard her voice confirming they were receiving and for him to continue.

He began with a report while completing the additional examination and scanning on the bodies, “Initial scans detected no sign of life with the living tissue. That had become necrotic.  What was continuing to broadcast and seek out the collective was the biomechanical devices of the partially assimilated elements.  Those are the 14 signals that Commander Thasaz identified.”  He adjusted the cameras to focus on one of the bodies assimilated pieces, “What we see here are unusual pieces of Borg assimilation technology.  We’re still analyzing their uses, but our early hypothesis is that they were designed to test the adaptability of the assimilated with the collective.”  He had the cameras focus on the similar devices on the three bodies.  Longfellow concluded, “The rest of the assimilation tech is the standard we’re accustomed to.”

The voice of Walton spoke out of the speaker, “To clarify…the Borg are doing…experiments?”

Longfellow tapped at the console, bringing up photos from his autopsy sessions, “I don’t know if that’s even the correct word, Captain Walton.  The Borg are not known for their…intellectual hunger or interest.  It’s the will of the Collective that governs them.  Given what we know about what was reported to have occurred with Admiral Janeway’s actions against the Borg here and the events of Frontier Day back home…the Borg are probably suffering a loss of drones and equipment.  Lieutenant Hiro and I have an uncomfortable theory – this Borg Sphere is looking for someone, something, or a people group to repair their wounds and build back what was taken from them.”

He could hear the soft conversations on the bridge as his theory was absorbed.  He wasn’t completely sold on the idea.  The Borg were predictable and unpredictable – you could think you’re playing checkers when they’ve adapted to three-dimensional chess.  Or they could just be playing checkers with you.  Walton’s voice returned, “Thasaz and her team are working on the data they were able to pull from the transport’s computer.  What about the last survivor?”

Eileen Strickland lay comfortably in the biobed, her eyes closed.  The door to her room opened, and she was startled, only to be comforted as an officer in blue pulled up a stool beside her bed.  “Good mornin’…er…afternoon.  Lieutenant Juliet Woodward, at your service.”

The young girl stared at her, “What are you here to do?”

“I’m the chief counselor.  Which means I talk to a lotta people as a part of my job.”

“Is it just you?  This ship seems hella big.”

Juliet laughed, “No, I have a small team.”  The bright laughter infected the girl as she chuckled a little, a small smile crossing her lips.  Juliet asked, “How are you?”

Strickland shook her head slowly, “I don’t know.”  She struggled to identify her state of mind.  So much had happened; so much had been torn from her.  The wounds to her heart and soul were open but haphazardly bandaged as if they could open up any moment.  “I feel like there’s this bubble around me, and every so often, I feel or hear something that reminds me that I’m the only one left…but then I sit here, and I watch a show I love…or read a new book…and it’s on hold…like I don’t have to feel it all the time…you know?”  Woodward understood.  “It’s hard to feel all of it all at the same time.”  She played nervously with her hands.

The counselor acknowledged, “Feelings are hard.”  She shifted closer to the bed, “Would you be comfortable sharing some things about what happened?” A slow nod.  “OK.  You can ask for it to stop at any time.”  Another slow nod.  “Start wherever you want, Eileen.”

Resistance is Futile.  You will be assimilated.

“It was like they said in the movies.  That line.  That…fucking line.”  She accepted a cup of water and continued, “They came out of nowhere…we’d been tracking something just outside sensor range…I was on the bridge with my dad…and then…it appeared.”

“Raise shields!  Get us out of here!  Move, move…”

“It was massive…and it moved so fast.  It took out the warp engines for all three ships in five seconds flat.  Then they started on the other two ships.”

“Captain – they’re tearing them apart!  I can see…oh god, I can see the bodies!”

She took another drink.  “Then they came for us.”

“Whatever you do, Eileen, run.  Run, hide, get to cover…whatever it takes.  We will fight as hard as we can to keep them from getting to you and the others.  Don’t stop running from them.  Don’t give up.”

Tears ran down Strickland’s face, “I heard the screams.  I heard the sounds of the…assimilation…only they didn’t finish them.  They stood over the bodies, watching…waiting…for something.  Whatever it was, it never came.  I heard the human voices crying out for mercy…to die.  The Borg didn’t care.  My father and the rest fought them.  They took more than a few with them…but they adapted.  I ran.  And I ran.  I found the bodies like you did…and I could hear the drones coming down the halls.  I had to climb into the bodies.  I had to hide.  Daddy told me to hide and not give up.”  She openly sobbed as she spoke, and Woodward pulled her close.

“You don’t…”

“I need to finish.” Juliet gave her a nod.  Eileen grasped tightly onto her emotions as she continued, “They couldn’t detect me in the pile of bodies, so they piled more and more on top.  I felt like I was being crushed.  It was so hard to breathe…staring into the faces of people I knew…friends I had loved…my people.”  She wiped the free-flowing tears away as if it would stop the raw emotion from erupting from within.  “I was about to give up…about to surrender to dying there…when I heard your voices.  You saved me.”

“She’s the only survivor.”  Wren stood at the nurses’ station as Juliet finished her report.  “17 years old, and she’s…alone in the world.  What will happen to her?”

Woodward explained, “She’ll remain in our custody…we’ll reach out to Markonian and see if they have any information on people groups similar to her that could take her in…but in talking with her…she wants away from the Delta Quadrant as soon as possible.  She asked if we would return home at the end of the month…and if she could hitch a ride.”

“You seem sold on the idea of her staying aboard.”

“Capt…Wren…she has nowhere else to go.  I can’t fathom putting her on a planet with people she’s never met or known.”

Walton pointed at her, “So help me if say…”

Juliet’s lopsided grin was followed by, “…we’re her family now?”

“You’re fired.  Get the hell off my ship.”

“You can’t fire me, I quit.”

Walton couldn’t keep a straight face with her chief counselor. They had developed a banter that had served to break up the tension in their conversation.  She smiled, emphasizing the first two words, “For now, we’re her family.  Set her up with some quarters…set the rules.  I don’t need a teenager joyriding one of our shuttles in the Delta Quadrant.”

It was Juliet’s turn to point, “I seem to recall a young teenage Wren Walton story involving something similar.”  She cackled as she walked back towards Strickland’s patient room.

Wren scoffed, “Why did I tell you that story, anyway?”

A tongue stuck out at her was her answer, followed by, “It’s cause you love me, Captain!”  She slipped into the room and quickly closed the door, preventing Wren from a clever retort.