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?”