In a place far removed from space or time, the Immortal stirred...
Somewhere, a world was about to die...

The ancient planet hung in space. It's surface, where visible, was cracked and pitted.
The air was thick with dust, whipped and churned by massive storms that tore at the broken rock. The wind driven particulates in the air, by themselves, would be enough to strip any living thing to it's bones in seconds. Terrible heat and toxins that could corrode almost any known substance completed the mix, turning the ancient world's surface into a fair approximation of Hell.
It had not always been so. Far, far into the past, the world had been young. Lush and vibrant, orbiting it's parent star at a comfortable distance, life had arisen. Small at first, with time it spread, diversifed, evolved. Life covered the planet and was nurtured by it.
Intelligence arose. One species rose above all others, spreading first across the planets surface, then outward to the stars around them. Ages past and the planet's children continued to grow, creating a great and flourishing civilization.
The world that had given them life aged. By the hundreds, then thousands, then millions,
the years past. The once lush and nurturing climate grew harsh, the abundant resources dwindled. Long abandoned by it's children, the world grew old. The air grew dense and hot, the surface broken and unwelcoming.
The planet's home star, already well into it's middle age when the world was young, became increasingly unstable. Solar flares and ejections hammered the world, scorching it's already brutalized surface. The planet's orbit shifted and the gravitational forces from it's rapidly destabilizing sun pushed and pulled at the world, rending it's surface and causing it's core to grow and flare, threatening to turn the planet inside out.
So it was, as the ancient world entered it's death throes, that the invaders came...

They had many names. Some were spoken with reverence, others as a curse. All were spoken with fear.
They were of a thousand races, blended unwilling into one. They pursued a singular goal,
searching for a unattainable outcome through the forced merging of flesh and metal. Each new conquest brought fresh horror. Civilizations great and small fell, all in service of a twisted dream of techno-organic perfection.
They had liitle care for the ancient world's history. It's past, the saga of it's children,
it's rapidly approaching end, were not what had drawn them there. All these things were irrelevant. As the world aged, it's increasingly hostile enviorment began to change the composition of the minerals in it's crust. What had been something relatively common and unimportant became, with the long passage of time, something exceedingly rare and valuable.
These changed minerals were what had drawn the notice of the invaders. When properly processed,
they formed the core of the vast Transwarp engines that powered their monsterous cube shaped starships. Elsewhere, the mineral was rare, and difficult to process in any useful quantities. Here,the crust of the ancient world was rich with it, a bounty the invaders would overcome any obstacle to possess. The cubes descended upon the world by the hundreds. Massive mining and refining centers arose across the planets surface while in orbit the great armada spun webs of energy around and through the world, forcing calm upon it's raging core and binding it's vast tectonic energy to still it's writhing crust.
They knew death was waiting to claim the ancient planet. To them, it didn't matter.
They would take what they wanted from this world, as they took any resource valuable to them, from any world. When they wanted something, resistance was irrelevant,
enviorment was irrelevant, difficulty was irrelevant. The Borg wanted the unique mineral wealth of the dying world. Until they had it, they would make even death wait.

The Immortals ship settled into orbit around the ancient world, dwarfing the Borg cubes around it.
The Borg did not detect the larger vessel because the Immortal did not make the effort to allow them to do so.
The Immortal stood, gazing down upon the tortured surface below, the techno-organic structures of the Borg a grey cancer on a world already near death. Time whispered to the Immortal like the faintest of messages carried upon a breeze.
There...

Once, he had had a name. Once he had had a family, a people, a world. Once he had felt joy and sadness and all the many other things that made up a life.
Then the Borg came. Then there were screams and blood and the end of everything he knew or loved.
Then there was only purpose and the cold, terrible will to carry that purpose out. Then he was Borg.
His designation was One Of Four, Primary Overmonitering for Energy Allocation and Redistribution.
His task was to monitor and adjust the movements of energy to the systems stabilizing the planet. With the other three drones of his node, he oversaw all aspects of calming the old world, so the precious mineral could be safely extracted down to it's last few grains.
He moved through the shadowed interior of the Primary Control Center, ceaselessly checking the readouts,
searching for any discrepency, any flaw in the system. He had done so since the PCC had been built and would continue to do so until it was no longer needed. He did not get bored, or tired. His attention did not waver and his dedication to his tasks was absolute.
He was Borg. He was one of millions, all bound by the same purpose, all driven by one will. To still the dying world until they had what they needed from it. Nothing would stop them from achieving this. Nothing could stop them from achieving this. They were perfection. They were Borg.

The Immortal moved along the surface, the howling winds barely ruffling it's dark coverings. Towering cliffs of metal rose around it, the surfaces battered and pitted despite their armor and the protection of force fields.
The massive Borg structures stretched from horizon to horizon, A vast city of Techno-Organic perfection, all dedicated to the one, all-important task.
The Immortal paid no attention to the Borg structures, just as it ignored the churning, poisonous atmosphere. Time itself sang to the Immortal, guiding it not through the sands and structures that surrounded it, but through ages and eons long past and gone. Somewhere near, was the prize the Immortal sought. It passed into the nearest Borg structure, the Borg within unable to percieve it's presence. it moved deeper into the twisted maze of the interior, following the distant whispers in time.
There... The Immortal stopped, facing a wall of incomprehensible Borg technology. It saw not the incredibly complex machinery, the massive guts of a vast, planet wide operation held in perfect balance by the sheer will of the Borg. It's gaze swept across eternity, seeing pathways in time incomprehensible to beings that suffered death. What it sought was very close. There... The Immortal stretched out a hand. There...

One of Four stopped suddenly, as a tremor ran through the Primary Control Center. It was not uncommon, even with the Borg energy fields binding it, for a world as old and unstable as this one to suffer techtonic activity.
What was uncommon was for there to be no forewarning from any of the thousands of sensor nodes scattered throughout the planets interior.
One of Four stepped towards the nearest interface station. The unexpected tremor should have been predicted. The sensors watching the planet were in turn watched by overmonitoring systems that were themselves watched by still other, even greater systems.
There should have been no surprises. Every possibility had been forseen,
every eventuality prepared for. The system was perfect. The system was Borg.
The other drones of his Node were already doing thier own checks. One of Four was just beginning to access the sensors operational records when a titanic shockwave threw him and every other drone in the Primary Control Center into the air. He smashed into the ceiling with bone breaking force. Dark Borg blood sprayed the air as he fell away, only to be struck from below by what, a second earlier, had been part of the far wall.
The air was filled with the scream of tearing metal as the structure was ripped apart around him.
Explosions and unchecked energy discharges set the interior aflame. Bloodied and burned, One Of Four was struck from all directions by flying debris, some small, some huge. He dimly perceived the rapidly disintigrating Primary Control Center was spinning around him, while he was smashed from wall to wall, battered from all directions.
The PCC was in freefall...

In orbit, amoung the Borg armada, chaos reigned. Something, some unknown force, had ripped a section of the old planets crust the size of a small continent from the surface and blasted it into space. Scores of Borg cubes were directly struck by chunks of rock the size of mountains and utterly destroyed. The planets gravitational field surged wildly. Some Borg cubes, much of thier power dedicated to the stabilizing fields, were unable to compensate quickly enough and fell from space. They burned and exploded in the maelstrom of rock, the monstorous blasts adding to the devastation.
Other cubes were hurled out of orbit, the drones onboard fighting desperatly to control the huge vessels. Many collided, exploding like miniature suns before being smothered and consumed by the expanding debris field from the planet.
The stabilizing energy fields collapsed. The planet, it's violence so long held in check,
screamed it's deathsong. All across it's surface molten rock and pressurized, superheated gases exploded outward. The crust shattered and broke and the poisonous atmosphere turned to flame. Borg structures disintegrated like straw buildings in a hurricane, while inside, and in orbit,
Borg Drones died by the millions.
Death, too long held back, feasted...

Slowly, painfully, One of Four came back on Line. He was badly injured. His internal diagnostics showed multiple broken bones and ruptured organs. Both legs and his chest crushed. His implants, those that were still functioning, were trying to compensate, but could do little in the face of such damage.
He was dying. Through the Collective's shared Nueral Link, he saw and felt the slaughter around him.
The armada, and the old world were nearly gone. Most of the Borg in orbit, and nearly all on the planet's surface, were dead.
He was buried in rock and loose earth, mixed with the wreckage of the PCC. Debris continued to fall on and around him. The air was superheated, burning his skin and his lungs. Had he not been Borg, he would have been screaming in agony. One arm was still free. Slowly, every movement causing his failing body more damage, he struggled to dig himself free. There was no point to it. He knew the Borg fleet was in ruins, he knew the world was disintigrating around him. The mission had failed. The Borg had failed. His cybernetic systems, rapidly shutting down one after the other, were unable to repair the hideous damage to his mangled body.
Death had laid it's hand upon him and soon he would no longer function. Trying to dig himself out served no purpose. The Borg fleet, the precious mineral, the legions of drones working on the surface and in orbit, all were gone. The planet was tearing itself apart around him. Continuing to struggle was illogical. Irrelevant.
Yet struggle he did, though even he could not have said why.
As he continued to dig feebly through the debris, something shifted and the earth gave way beneath him.
He fell end over end through a shower of rock and dirt, finally crashing hard onto unyielding stone. His few remaing implants, barely functional to start with, failed completely. Only his Neural Link remained active, the song of the Borg weakly sounding in his mind.
He felt himself dying, felt his conciousness flicker and dim. He should have simply lain there and let it all end but somehow, he couldn't. Without purpose or hope, beyond any sense of reason,
he felt the need to continue to struggle.
Blood charring as it flowed from his mouth, his broken bones grinding beneath torn muscle, One Of Four forced himself to his knees and looked around him.
He was near the bottom of a vast, bowl shaped depression. Sand and loose dirt whirled around with hurricane force. Slabs of rock, miles long, hung suspended in the air, slowly grinding against each other yet somehow not falling. All around, vast geysers of magma blasted into the air as the old world's interior vomitted itself into space. The air was on fire and the entire nightmarish scene glowed red like the blood of Hell itself.
All except the center, where One Of Four knelt. The magma rose on all sides but did not rain down there, nor did the miles of cracking, splintering rock in the air fall to crush everything below. There,
in the very heart of Armageddon, there was, impossibly, calm.
Something, some small movement, caught One Of Four's attention. A short distance away were several interlocking rings of worked stone that once,long ago, could have formed the foundation of a building. They were ancient and there was little left. Whatever they had been, they had long ago been buried, so long ago they had become one with the bedrock of the ancient world.
Movement again. Standing in the middle of the ruins was a solitary figure, completely covered and cloaked in black. It moved slowly, Oblivious to the devastation raging around it,
staring down at a small pile of debris scattered against one side of the broken, ancient foundations.
As One Of Four watched, the figure carefully, almost reverently, knelt at the base of the wall...

There... The Immortal knelt inside the ruined dwelling, taking no notice of the holocaust it had caused raging around it. With great care, it reached out, the layers of dirt and pulverized stone moving away at it's gesture. Gently, almost tenderly, it picked up a battered, cracked stack of octaginal slabs of black glass, loosely bound on one side by a tattered strip of flexible metal.
Holding them as though they were the most precious of treasures to have ever existed, the Immortal, with the greatest of care, turned the first of the obsidian pages over.
For a long moment, there was complete and utter silence. Then in the faintest of voices, in a language dead and forgotten for millions of years, the glass book began to sing to the Immortal...

One of Four watched as the dark figure listened to the sounds coming from the object it was holding. It drew the object into it's black wrappings, bending over it as if protecting something of unimagineable value.
One of Four knelt there, unable to comprehend the things he was seeing. The dark robed figure was not Borg. Could it be responsible for the cataclysm that had consumed this world and the Borg with it? Did such power even exist?
The dark figure stayed huddled with it's prize, ignoring the flaming corpse of the old world burning around them. One of Four was nearly dead, yet he was suddenly seized by a need to know, to understand. He opened his mouth to speak only to find his throat choked with charred blood and bile. He tried to move,
but his crushed legs and ravaged insides wouldn't respond. Instead, he fell over, barely catching himself with his one functional arm.
Crippled, barely maintaining his grip on life, he raised his head. A few meters away,
the dark robed figure had straightened. It stood motionless for a second, as though listening to something. Then it slowly turned, and looked at him.
And what had once been One Of Four began to scream, a high pitched, wailing scream beyond terror or horror. Those condemmened to the deepest pits of Hell could not have made a noise so terrible.
He was still screaming when the oceans of magma all around came crashing down upon him,
and the millions of tonnes of rock floating in the sky fell. Still screaming as the ancient world finally ripped itself apart in a titanic detonation...

All that was left of the world was a expanding cloud of superheated rock and gas. Less than a year later, having been strained by the planet's sudden breakup, the old Star it had orbited went nova.
The shockwave destroyed what little was left in the system, leaving behind only a slowly expanding nebula to mark the place where so much and so many had perished.