Species 329: Prologue
Location: Gamma V & Federation Science Vessel
Alarms could be heard from everywhere. They were so loud that it was a challenge even to hear your own voice, they were the unnecessary warnings of an enemy attack. Unnecessary because the attacks had been so constant that they were now expected.
Kal could hear the sounds of bombs going off and of phasers being fired, mixed together with the sounds of screaming and crying. The little boy held tightly to his older sister's hand. He was 10 years old and the girl was 17, they were alone, hiding under a table in their half-destroyed home.
Once the attack had subsided, several hours later, the pair headed out into the city in search of their brothers and parents. What they saw would have been scaring to most but they were used to it, they had grown up with it. Grown up to the screaming and the crying, to the sight of children crying over their dead parents. They lived in constant fear of being those children.
"Where's mum and dad?" The little boy asked, looking with watering eyes into his sister's.
"Don't worry Kal, we'll find them." The girl tried to reassure her little brother but she sounded unsure herself. "Mother? Farther?" She shouted as they walked through the warzone. They heard a familiar voice and ran towards it.
"Ji!" The girl exclaimed, picking up a crying toddler and cradling him in her arms "Where's mummy?" She asked softly. The baby pointed and they walked around a corner and that was the moment that Kal's life first fell apart…
A man and a women, and another small child were lying on the ground. The man had third degree burns and the women clung tightly, even in death to the child. Both of them had a hole in their chests were a disrupter weapon had clearly shot right through them. Kam, the older girl, handed the baby to Kal and told her brothers to look away. She went and checked if her parents and her baby brother were... were... yes they were.
The teenage girl returned to the child and the toddler, unable to contain her tears any longer. She wept violently and they understood immediately, they were those children now, they were orphans.
The three children huddled together near the bodies of their parents. Ji was only two years old, too young to understand. He just kept asking "Mummy? Daddy? Ki?" confusedly from his sister's arms (Ki was his, now deceased, twin brother).
It wasn't easy, but the three children survived the next 6 years. They scraped by, and scavenged for food.
Kam worked hard to raise her two little brothers, but Kazon society was a patriarchy, and she was an untrained 17 year old girl, so it was hard for her to get a good enough job to support her family.
The day before Kal turned 16 those alarms rang again, as they had done so many times before. Since the death of their family, the three siblings had always stuck together and they had survived.
Today Kal was applying for his warriors name challenge and was thus away from his siblings. When the alarms sounded he ran to find them but it was too late.
The evil sounds of the alarms rang in the boy's mind as he futility checked his little brother and his sister for a pulse but it was useless.
They were gone too now, gone forever, and he was alone…
Eight Years Later…
=/\=RED ALERT!=/\=
Now Kal's favourite sound. The bright red lights flashed across the Federation ship and people started to hurry madly out of their quarters, before the decks were locked down. Rushing madly, it seemed, in no obvious direction, but each individual was trying to reach a place of safety, or trying to find family and friends.
A moment later and Kal heard the words he had patiently waited for, for the past 6 months…
=/\=We have engaged the Borg=/\=
Security officers began to appear, transported in groups to offer their resistance, but it was a small science vessel, it stood little to no chance against the Borg. Soon it would be assimilated. Kal smiled in anticipation.
=/\=EVACUATE DECKS 4-6=/\=
The Kazon heard the announcement and a crazed grin manifested on his pale face, his eyes seemed to glow with the madness. The Borg had boarded, they were on decks 4 through 6, and Kal… Kal was on deck 4.
**Six of Twelve. Twenty-seven none Borg lifeforms detected on deck 4, corridor 3a. Twenty-six worthy of assimilation. Assist Four of Twelve and Eight of Twelve. Assimilate all relevant lifeforms.**
Six of Twelve, Secondary Adjunct of Unimatrix 11, heard the Collective voices and saw the instructions displayed in Borg alphanumeric in one corner of her ocular implant.
As she approached two humans, she was instructed to assimilate them. She was instructed to the very last detail, as she was with every element of her existence. Although these instructions were too fast to explain in words. The Collective controlled her in the same way that a person's brain instructs part of its body to move.
The drone complied. She pinned the pair of species 5618 together against a wall and shot her tubules through their necks.
**Twenty-four non-Borg life forms remaining**
Within a matter of twenty minutes there was no one left. Almost no one…
"What about me?" Kal screamed at Six, but she could not see him, or more accurately she did not process him, he was irrelevant. She calmly pulled the cortical implant out of the deactivated Four of Twelve and then stood motionless, ready to be transported.
"Please!" Kal cried grabbing onto the drone.
**Threat detected. Remove threat.**
Six responded immediately to the command. She grabbed the Kazon by the neck and for a second he had a glimpse of hope. He closed his eyes, expecting to feel assimilation tubules shoot through him and then expecting an end to his suffering.
Unfortunately for Kal, all he felt was a sudden jolt as the drone threw him at a wall, like the useless piece of equipment he was to those he worshipped. He was knocked unconscious.
Six of Twelve and the rest of her submatrix transported back to Probe 635. Six proceeded to her regeneration chamber as the screams of the Collective's latest victims echoed throughout the vessel.
Within an hour it was quiet again, only the peaceful ordered voices of the Borg could be heard in Six's mind. She heard each new voice and she felt the distinctiveness of each new individual, adding to Borg perfection, making the Collective better…
At least that was Six's opinion on the matter, if indeed a drone can be said to have an opinion, it would be more appropriate to say that it was the Collective's opinion on the matter.
Kal woke up several hours later in the sickbay of a DFA vessel with a concussion and a scar down his neck from where the drone had thrown him.
"Why didn't they take me?" He asked the doctor deliriously.
The Talaxian doctor smiled at his patient "You were lucky, it was the Borg, they consider your species to be 'unworthy of assimilation'" he laughed "Wish we were."
Kal passed out and did not wake up until several hours later recovering in a Starbase.
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