—- Observation Lounge —-

Personal Log – Lieutenant Commander Tashai

I don’t know how long it is going to take me to get bored of space, of traveling at warp speed. I suppose after a few thousand years it’s not meant to be as interesting, but it still is. I could sit here, watching worlds drift by for centuries. Maybe I will one day. When the Borg came that’s when I really learned that things end. Us El-AurIans don’t quite get the concept of endings, not the way humans do. But when the Borg came, well there was a finality to that, they changed out world, our lives and scattered us through the galaxy. I’d never met a human before that, or anyone other than my own people. Now they’re all I know, as we’re a rare breed as they say. 

Now the Borg have found us. Found humanity, found Vulcans and Klingons, and nobody is safe anymore. They taught me about finality, but I wonder if they also taught me about inevitability. Delay, fight, resist, all that. Eventually they seem to always come out on top. I thought it was all over on Fleet Day. I was on the USS Victory when most of the crew was converted. I’d accepted it then, that this was it. 

Now who knows. I’m on a ship being chased by a Cube. They are close by, another engine problem and they’re marching through our corridors. Putting their cold and clammy hand on my shoulder. Resistance is futile, so is it seems running. Now I have a life again, someone I care about and losing it and losing her. I don’t want to spend my life as a drone, I like this freedom. To watch the stars and the worlds go by.

—- Chief Counselor’s Office ——

Personal Log – Lieutenant Yuhiro Kolem

I suppose it all starts with my father dying early, at least that is what Feud might say. My mother never really knew how I could be, or who I was. My first name is the name of a Japanese restaurant back on Mars when I was young, and she gave it to my because it sounded exotic, like a Betazoid should be. My father, who was Betazoid, died before I really understood what the differences between me and other people on Mars where. He never really showed me what it meant to be half of him, half of his people, and that gets complicated at times. 

William, is interested in weddings now. I mention this because I can feel it, his interest increasing when someone mentions and engagement back home or what we see a holo from one of his friends where they got engaged. It seems so traditional, and pointless. Weddings. I always thought I’d got through a phase where I dated an older many (or woman really) from Betazed and learned more about the other half of my culture. We’re still young, and I don’t want to tie myself to William forever just because he asks me to one day. 

Yes he makes me happy. Yes maybe with the Borg chasing us I should be happy with being happy, satisfied with what Hume offers, but I don’t know. He’s very human, and decent and normal and boring. I don’t really see myself as those things, if I did I’d be on one of Earth’s colonies taking kids to school and complaining whatever happy homemakers complain about. 

—- Bridge —

“What do you expect me to just jot down all my feelings,” Lieutenant Jara asked.

”That’s what personal logs are for,” Lieutenant Junior Grade Thomas Winfield said.

Sitting in the Captain’s chair as she was the most senior officer on the bridge Jara considered that, then decided not to consider it. She felt that there was nothing really to be gained from exploring her pain, she knew where it came from and how it had gotten to the level it was at. She was from Turkana IV, and that factor was all the biography anyone needed on her. If they had not heard of it, and did not understand what it represented then that was there problem or rather their blessing.

“You know with the Borg Cube and…” Winfield began. 

“I’m tired of hearing how the Borg are going to kill us,” Jara snapped, “You’re our pilot, you’ll fly us somewhere safe. I’m a Strategic Operations Officer, I’ll strat ops something. Everyone’s walking around like this is the end of everything, when if the Borg wanted us dead they’d have done it by now.”

That was, she knew the truth. The Borg had gained on them, cutting their lead down to two hours (maybe), but they could have caught them by now. There had been almost an entire day the USS Seattle had been powerless and the Borg had dropped to warp five at that point. Watching and waiting but not attacking.

”I guess people just see this as a clarifying moment,” Winfield said, “And find writing helps.”

”Yeah well it’s nonsense,” Jara said, “or at least not for me. And if we die they’re going to look at metrics and statistic, not what Ensign so-and-so thought of their linguini on their last night.”

Winfield did another scan of the area, the Borg Cube was still behind them, matching their speed. They were still traveling farther and father away from explored space, hoping to drive the Borg vessel away from inhabited planets, with no way back. As a pilot there was not a lot to do, ensure they were on course, were not losing ground to the Borg, and were not flying into anything that may be in the USS Seattle’s way, though given how vastly empty space was that seemed quite unlikely.

He wished that there was more to do, so he did not have to engage with Lieutenant Jara and her evident dislike of journals and logs.

—- Cargo Bay 1 ——

Personal Log – Lieutenant Commander Gabriella Miller

It’s times like this that I should have grown wine. I like it, I liked life on vineyards. I like getting drunker than I should and flirting with attractive looking men with dirt under their finger nails from digging around in the ground all day. Here I am though, an officer on a  mid-level ship that left behind her love of grapes to catalouge Borg technology. Each piece of technology I box up for transport off the ship is protecting us, but it’s not botany, not what I went to school for or what I dream about. I want to love life, not be assimilated because years ago someone stole a bunch of Borg tech from drones that now we have to try getting rid of without the Borg attacking us. 

I don’t know how this ends, or if I end up talking to the computer alone in the cargo bay while I work anymore, but it seems like this mission is vital. Protecting people is noble, but so is getting people drunk by making the best wine possible. I could be doing that.

I’m not sure why science ended up shouldering this other than there’s a lot of us. Yet here we are, or rather I am, putting old Borg transponders into boxes and putting filled boxes into the shuttle that is named after some old Seattle thing from Earth I figure. What’s a ’Soundgaden’ and why should that, Nirvana, Peal Jam and Mudhoney be the names of our shuttles?

I just want to be a botanist, not a space adventurer. Meeting new plants would be interesting, but so far this ship had just dealt with god like aliens, and now the Borg. I should find a Starbase and return to my research. Something tragically unhip, specifically unsexy.

—- Holodeck 1 ——

Commander Cruz looked up the deck at the Captain who was being a Captain. She realized that she should have guessed that his ‘play’ would have been nautical. The man liked being a Captain, it was basically all he had going for him, other than fussy coffee and the fact that she was dating him. 

For some reason.

Her own “costume” was a pretty revealing ‘Pirate Queen’ combination that he had assured her was historically accurate though in Cruz’s mind historically accurate was probably that the women folk stayed home and milked cows or something vital but unexciting. History often forgot the women, over and over again. At least until they had begun demanding that they were included and got to have as vital a role as men.

”You have a ship,” she shouted down the deck to him where he stood behind the big wheel thing, “Why do you need this one too?”

“This is a classic Royal Navy ship, hunting pirates,” Captain Nathanial Hawthorne said.

”I thought I was a pirate Queen,” Cruz protested.

”Spoils of victory. I won you, you and your booty are my booty,” he said.

Cruz swore at him in Spanish. Normally she had more measured respect for her senior officers, but the Captain and her had almost instantly had a complicated and deep history. They had had a fling before they had known her assignment and since then had been exploring what that meant, and how to best handle the feelings between them. He had, to his credit, never treated her like his First Officer and his subordinate, allowing her to swear at him in Spanish. 

He did not know Spanish but the Universal Translator did. It relayed her complaints to him, and he looked at her slightly embarrassed. He did not like to think of himself as being ‘old school’ but compared with his much younger First Officer he often was. Particular in his love of all things old Earth boats.

“Men like you find all this fun don’t you?” Cruz said.

”Men like me?” Hawthorne asked.

”Captains always look like you, Picard, Archer, Kirk, Pike,” she listed, “So for fun you go back to a time when all Captains looked like you. When people like me were just chased off our land fun or gold.”

”You’re Spanish,” he said.

”Mexican, and a woman,” she pointed out accurately.

Hawthorne signed, “On Fleet Day I locked myself in my quarters on the Anaheim. Most of the crew were young and transformed on me, and I hid and was not a brave hero. My first time to step up, and be the Captain I always imagined myself to be and I was useless. So yes, I like playing at being more than useless. I like simulating situations I can be the hero. I wanted you here, because I like you and wanted you around. You liked that dumb spy story too.”

Adriana Cruz sighed, how to best explain it. Spy stories were fiction, adventures. While there fictional stories of pirates it was people who looked like Hawthorne riding boats like this that had come across the ocean to enslave her ancestors.Sure there was colonists blood in her, but that usually meant something far worse.

Still he saw it as a dumb little way to have fun, and it was not worth fighting nineteenth century fights when there were twenty-fifth century fights still to be fought. Besides for all his obliviousness to what it was being anything other than a straight white man, he did listen and he was trying. Nobody was perfect but sometimes simply being better than you were the day before was enough.

”Okay, then I’ll be your pirate queen, but you tell nobody I did this for you,” Cruz said, “and especially not about this costume.”

”Ma’am. Can I speak to the Captain,” Lieutenant Junior Grade William Hume asked, standing behind her trying desperately not to look away from her face. He looked very nervous doing so.

Cruz threw her hands in the air, and again swore in Spanish which the computer helpfully (or not) translated. She turned and stomped out of the holodeck, as an archway had been created by Hume’s entry. As she crossed the threshold into the main part of the ship her Starfleet uniform replaced the pirate queen one that Hawthorne had designed.

”Well now Hume what can I do for you, and do you know knots?” Hawthorne asked, as the archway faded and vanished. As far as the Captain was concerned they were on the high seas and pirates were about. Unless the Borg were going to board the USS Seattle and assimilate everyone, he was taking his time off.