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The Borg Scare.
Strange events in the Alpha Quadrant - outposts and colonies close to the Romulan Neutral Zone had been complete mysteries to Starfleet and the rest of the Federation for some time. In the reports of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D, it was noted the colonies and outposts were gone, completely gone. In the report of Lieutenant Worf, the Klingon security officer noted "the colonies and outposts were missing, as though some colossal force just scooped them from the face of the planet."
Prior to this investigation, the lack of contact from the outposts was taken as a Romulan attack. For many years the Federation had been in a cold-war type standoff with the Romulan Star Empire. There had been many conflicts, but the Tomed Incident many years before which cost countless lives in a needless conflict had been the last anyone had heard from the Romulans. But the Romulans had a history of attacking Federation outposts closest to their territory, as reported in the 23rd century by the crew of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, the original precursor to the Enterprise D. But the Romulans at the time had not been capable of the same level of devastation recorded by the Enterprise D. To the surprise of the Enterprise D crew, a Romulan warbird decloaked and the captain and the first officer told Captain Jean Luc Picard they had been sent on a similar mission. The news that not only had Federation outposts been destroyed in an identical manner but the Romulans did not have any idea of who was responsible any more than the Enterprise crew was a surprise, and despite further investigations, the Federation would not know of the truth until a year later when the Enterprise, visited once more by the Q entity, who flung the Enterprise into the star system, J-25 where they encountered a Borg Cube and several systems which had once been home to advanced civilisations but were destroyed in a manner similar to the way the Neutral Zone outposts were destroyed.
Identified by the El-Aurian bartender Guinan as the Borg, the Enterprise crew discovered the hostile race responsible for that race's world's destruction and why the El-Aurians had been scattered throughout the galaxy. But that was only the tip of the iceberg.
Rumours of the Borg, how the Enterprise was flung across the galaxy where they encountered a cube-like ship that nearly destroyed them, went hand in hand with the facts of the actual encounter with the cube. In meetings, admirals met with captains and commanders when the Enterprise crew were fully debriefed and they had the time needed to go over everything recorded in the Flight Recorder. The news that Q had flung the ship into the path of that cube, resulting in the death of 18 people and serious damage to the starship caused a lot of unrest.
Enterprise, as a Galaxy-class starship, was perhaps one of the most advanced ships in the fleet. The Galaxy-class was heavily armed, top of the line… and yet the Borg were not only able to immobilise the starship with a tractor beam of unusual composition and power and they could not break free, and the ship was completely hopeless while the Borg ship used an unknown type of laser cutting beam that was strong enough to slice a hole in the Enterprises' saucer, and tear out several floors from that section, decompressing that part of the ship and killing 18 people.
The capabilities of the Borg - their ability to repair their ship via the will of the crew alone, having the power to pass through a Starfleet ships' defences and access the computers, adapting so they were virtually indestructible. The Enterprise's weapons, the strongest of the fleet, were completely hopeless against the Borg and barely had any impact on the Cube, which only regenerated before chasing the Enterprise and causing terrific strain on the Galaxy-class ship's engines. But the Borg had been relentless. They had the technology and a source of power vastly superior to anything the Federation could provide for their ships.
If it wasn't for Q, the Enterprise would have been destroyed. The Borg ship has been firing a strange weapon that bled the energy out of the ship's engines and shields, causing the Enterprise to slow down until the engines gave out when they could not take anymore. On their return to Federation space and entering a Starbase, the Enterprise crew were debriefed on the Borg incident in the System J-25. From there the rumours began before word officially got out, but until the Borg incursion which had begun with the attack on Jouret IV, one of the newest and most outermost colonies in Federation space, knowledge of the Borg was limited.
And yet, rumours of a hostile species known as the Borg had been known to Starfleet and select members of the United Federation of Planets for years. Much of the word came from El-Aurian refugees, who'd been rescued by the Enterprise B, so knowledge of the Borg had existed for a long time. In the 2350s, exobiologists Magnus and Erin Hansen both vanished during their quest to determine if the Borg existed. There, the Enterprise crew discovered conclusive proof of the Borg's responsibility of the attack, before they encountered the Borg ship responsible for the destruction of the USS Lalo.
News of Captain Picard's kidnapping and his subsequent assimilation into Locutus spread to the Federation fleet massing at Wolf 359, and to Earth, but it was not until the complete destruction of the fleet that everyone on Earth and around the Federation realised the full power of the Borg Collective.
The fleet had been sending continual footage and reports to Earth during the course of the battle before they lost contact, and what was shown was terrifying. But there was little Starfleet could do. They had sent every available battle-capable ship to the battle, and they all proved ineffective against the Borg.
People were terrified; after discovering what happened to those captured by the Borg, such as Picard, who'd been one of Starfleet's top and most experienced commanders with a wealth of knowledge of Starfleet tactics which had really helped the Borg's cause and provided them with knowledge of Earth's defences, many wondered if that was the reason why the Borg had such an easy time in overcoming Federation defences, but it had to be admitted the Borg were powerful and they had ripped colonies and outposts apart, leaving nothing but vast pits in the ground. Attacking Earth and other Federation worlds would have been easy. That knowledge terrified people for a long time to come. But what terrified everyone else was the uncertainty of what the Borg would do to them, since they were still a mystery and nobody at the time knew what assimilation would do except the Borg would transform people into one of them, and remove all emotions.
The thought of their emotions, their individuality, everything that made them who they were, leaving only empty shells while their minds….went nobody knew where frightened everyone and continued being the reason why the Borg scare would go on forever.
However, Starfleet was not finished. During the rebuilding process, they started conducting research into making Starfleet ships stronger and more powerful than ever before. They conducted research into new armour technology, shield improvements and potential new weapons such as improved photon torpedoes and new Quantum torpedoes were researched. A new class of ship, known as the Defiant-class was put under construction to become the first of a new Federation battlefleet. Unfortunately, the project was shelved until the Dominion War began. Starfleet's stick the head in the sand approach once more showed its ugly head.
When the USS Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant with its database full of knowledge of the Borg and their technology, along with the bonus of an alternate version of Admiral Janeway destroying the Borg Queen and crippling the Borg transwarp network, Starfleet and the Federation gained a huge amount of insight into how to defeat the Collective. From the future, new weapons and technologies became available to the Federation. While this was a violation of the Temporal Prime Directive, Starfleet believed it to be acceptable to accept the paradox for the greater good. At the same time, they would ensure Kathryn Janeway would travel back in time to Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, and ensure the time loop was closed.
What do you think?