As Jack explained to General Hammond what a Borg was, and told him how they whupped the Goa'uld and hijacked their ships with frightening ease, he knew what he said was outlandish at best. Pure insanity at worst. An overwhelmingly powerful alien force coming from nowhere to save the Earth from certain destruction? It was the definition of Deus ex Machina—almost literally. Jack wouldn't at all be surprised after his court martial went through, a long stay in padded cell would soon follow.
"Just to be clear," General Hammond said, "these Borg aliens from Star Trek have a space station orbiting Jupiter, and you and your team are currently on said station? Is that right?"
"That's right, sir," Jack said.
"If this is another one of your jokes, Colonel, I'm not laughing."
"I assure you, General, this is no joke. The Borg, or some version of them, are real and they pretty much just saved all our asses. Sir."
General Hammond went quiet, and Jack looked to each member of his team. Carter gave him a reassuring nod and Daniel shrugged. Teal'c lifted an eyebrow but was otherwise stone-faced.
"Fine," General Hammond finally said. "What's the current situation there?"
Jack suppressed a sigh of relief before he replied, "Right now me and the rest of SG-1 are on the bridge of the Borg's space station."
"And the... Borg?"
"Assimilating the Goa'uld and their ships." Jack looked at the Borg inside the alcoves lining the bridge. "And regenerating. I think."
"Are these Borg any threat to Earth?" Hammond asked.
"I'm not sure, but at first blush I'd say they're not an immediate threat. They might even be potential allies."
"Alright, Colonel, learn whatever else you can about them and find out if they're willing to help us against the Goa'uld. Then you and your team find a way back to Earth. Hammond out."
"Yes, sir," Jack said. "Where I'm sure medals and cake are waiting for us, and not courts martial," he muttered after General Hammond cut the connection.
"All right," Jack said, "looks like we're going to have a look around."
"Sir, if you don't mind, I'd like to take a closer look at the information I found on this console," Carter said.
"Knock yourself out. See if you can get the Borg's attention while you're at it. They promised us an explanation. Teal'c, you watch her back. Me and Daniel will go check out the rest of the station."
When Jack and Daniel got into the turbolift Jack thought about where he wanted to go first. After a moment he called out, "Cargo Bay…3."
This place had to have at least that many cargo bays, Jack thought.
"A cargo bay? Why there? Shouldn't we go to the engine room to see what powers this thing?"
"Yeah, I'm sure Engineering is worth a look," Jack said then held up his zat gun. "But aliens keep all their cool stuff in cargo bays."
As the lift carried them to their destination Daniel said, "You know, I thought today was going to go much differently."
"Copy that."
Before his call to the president, General George Hammond prepared himself for the very real possibility of losing his command. One does not call the President of the United States and tell him cyborgs from a television show that aired some thirty odd years ago, were real. But after his call to the president ended, George was left feeling stunned, confused, and so uneasy, that getting fired would have been less upsetting.
After Colonel O'Neill's outrageous tale of TV space aliens fighting off the Goa'uld, George thought the man had lost his mind. As much as he'd come to trust and rely on the members of SG-1, George nevertheless found himself wondering if Jack made up the Borg. There were courts martial waiting for him and Captain Carter when they returned, so it was possible O'Neill might be feeling desperate enough to concoct some off the wall story to avoid a dishonorable discharge.
Still, George couldn't bring himself to believe a member of SG-1, or any soldier under his command, would lie to avoid the consequences of their actions.
When George called the president to inform him of Colonel O'Neill's report, Borg and all, to his utter amazement the president's first question wasn't who or what are the Borg, but how many SGC personnel heard O'Neill mention them. When George said just the ten men and women stationed in the Stargate Operations room, himself, and Colonel Samuels, the president requested a list of their names and ordered George to make it clear they were not to discuss the Borg with anyone else, including each other.
"Is that going to be a problem, General?"
"No, Mister President."
The whole base was on high alert and the officers in Operations had been on round the clock duty since the Goa'uld and Borg ships showed up. They barely had time for restroom breaks let alone gossip.
"I also want no mention of the Borg in any official reports or communications, General," the president said. "All information pertaining to them is classified beyond top secret. Am I understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"If SG-1 contacts you again make sure you're the only person in the room who talks to them."
"Understood."
"Good."
"Sir, is it possible for me to get read in on any information you may have available on the Borg?"
"Keep me informed, General," the president said without pausing to consider George's request.
After the call ended, George sat in his office quietly and blinked at the wall.
The Borg are real, and the president knew they were real before today. But how? And for how long?
"What in God's name is going on?"
George called in the officers on duty in Operations when Colonel O'Neill contacted the SGC, including Samuels, and informed them of their new orders. Then he returned to Command and waited for SG-1 to report in again.
"This is not a cargo bay," Jack said. "This is heaven!"
The cavernous room they entered was a near-exact replica of cargo bays found on Federation starships, only this version by far out-sized of any of those. Three stories up was an observation deck accessible by a staircase and lift. The bay had a large transporter platform positioned near the entrance, and an industrial replicator underneath the observation deck. And then there was what really had Jack jazzed: the cargo.
Twelve hexagonal shaped craft were neatly lined up in two symmetrical rows of six on one side of the bay, and eighteen suits of armor stood similarly on the other. And, finally, six gray cargo containers of varying sizes sat by the wall opposite the observation deck.
The craft were ten meters in length and seven meters high. They had a solid black color that reminded Jack of the stealth coating on an SR-71. Their cock-pit windows had been copied from the Delta Flyer right down to its intricate decal design. The ships rested on three two meter long landing struts under each point of the bottom vertex, which were identical to the landing feet on Voyager.
Right away Jack knew he wanted to fly one if he ever got the chance.
The armored suits closely resembled the get-ups worn by Seven and Nine of Nine, only bigger. At first Jack didn't get why the suits were so big. They had to be over ten feet tall and five feet wide. Unless the Collective had giant Borg Jack hadn't seen yet, the armor didn't make sense.
Then it hit him.
"Power armor!" Jack said. "They have power armor!"
"Are you sure they're not just robots?" Daniel asked.
"That'd be almost as neat," Jack said.
"You have an odd definition of neat."
Jack walked closer to the power armor and reach out his hand.
"Careful, Jack."
The armor's plating felt like titanium, but was most likely made of some other kind exotic alloy or polymer—maybe both—because the material was cool to the touch and didn't seem to absorb the warmth from Jack's hand. It remained cold, almost uncomfortably so. Jack also looked for rivets or joints to figure out the mechanics of how the suit was put together and how it moved, but it was impossibly seamless like the Borg's body armor.
"Jack, come check these out," Daniel called out.
Jack reluctantly abandoned the armor and joined Daniel over by the cargo crates.
Daniel already had a couple of them open.
"Holy crap!" Jack exclaimed when recognized what was in one of the crates.
"You know what these are?"
"You bet. They're tricoders."
Three dozen of them were neatly packed in the cargo container.
When he saw the 'That doesn't explain anything' look on Daniel's face, Jack said, "Fancy scanning devices."
A dozen medkits filled the other container.
"Let's grab a couple," Jack said.
"Do you think it's such a good idea to steal from these Borg?" Daniel asked. "Especially when they can teleport us into vacuum of space?"
"You worry too much," Jack said as he pulled out one of the medkits. "If they didn't want us nosing around, they would've kept the doors locked."
"Exploring their base is a lot different than rummaging around and looting all their stuff," Daniel said.
When Jack opened the kit, he found a medical tricoder, a hypospray, and three rows of six vials tucked inside protective sleeves. Jack closed the case and turned to Daniel.
"Got an empty pocket I can use?"
"Jack."
"C'mon, Daniel."
With an exasperated sigh Daniel took the medkit and tucked it into one of the inner pockets of his flak jacket. Jack grabbed a standard tricorder and placed it inside an empty ammo pouch on his jacket.
"Let's see what else we find inside the rest of these crates."
They went through all the containers. In one they found plasma torches, in another two types of armbands with a small rectangular device attached to them. Something about the bands tickled a memory in Jack's brain, but he couldn't recall what they were used for exactly. He took one of each—he could look them up later.
Several of the crates carried hyperspanners, sonic drivers, and other engineering tools.
Finally, they came across three crates packed with phasers weapons. Two carried type-1 and type-2 hand-held phasers, respectively, and a third larger crate held eight phaser rifles. Jack and Daniel each pocketed a type-1 and type-2 phaser.
"Okay, let's go," Jack said.
"Where to?"
"Engineering. Might as well see how this thing runs."
"Before we do that, can we check out some of the rooms we passed on our way here?"
"Sure. Why?"
"Well, something about this place…" Daniel said.
"What about it?"
"I'm not sure," Daniel said slowly, which caught Jack's attention. Daniel usually talked like he was giving a timed presentation and he had three seconds left to make his point. "But I'll let you know when I am."
Jack shrugged, and the pair exited the cargo bay.
There were no other compartments nearby, so they had to walk a ways before they located another room. The door swooshed opened and they went inside. The immediate area looked like a living room. It was furnished with a large sofa, two lounge chairs, and a coffee table.
Jack and Daniel separately circuited through the quarters and found a room with a bed and nightstand, a bathroom outfitted with a sonic shower, and a kitchen nook with a replicator embedded in the wall.
The last area Jack went through was an office space. A medium-sized workstation sat in the middle of the room, on top of it was a compact version of the glossy black terminal found on the bridge. In front of the desk was a plush, rotating and reclining chair bolted to the floor.
They went through several more crew quarters. All of them more or less had the same layout, though some were more spacious than others.
"Jack," Daniel said when they finished inspecting the crew quarters, "I think I know what this place is meant to be."
Their next stop was Engineering, or at least what passed for Engineering on the Borg's space station.
The overall look of the operational section closely resembled the engineering decks found on The Next Generation and Voyager. The access ports to the Jefferies tubes, lifts, and the wall interfaces were the same, but the ubiquitous master systems display table that usually sat at the heart of operations had been replaced with a waist high, coffin-sized version of the black terminals on the bridge and in all the crew quarters.
Why, wondered Jack, did the Borg go through all the trouble of duplicating so many interiors from Star Trek, some down to the last detail, but change most of the computer interfaces?
Then there was the 'warp core' section. Normally the warp engines on Starfleet vessels spanned two or three stories, but the section that contained the station's power source was at least as tall and wide as a mid-sized office building. It needed to be to fit the giant, shimmering, neon green orb hovering in front of them.
The orb was the size of Epcot's geodesic sphere, and it floated; suspended between two pulsating green rings half as wide as itself—one on the ceiling high above and the other on the floor far below.
The sphere gave off no warmth, at least no heat radiating from it reached the walkway Jack and Daniel stood on that wound around the area housing the sphere. And unlike the rhythmic humming that emanated constantly from warp cores on modern Trek shows, the gleaming ball made no sound.
"You know what I think?" Daniel asked as he clutched the walkway's chest high safety railing and stared up at the enormous orb.
"I should have brought Carter," Jack replied.
"You should have brought Carter."