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Locutus of Borg.
Jean-Luc Picard looked out over the starfield out of his Ready Room window, the events of the last few days of pure hell playing in his mind. One of the more vivid memories was how he had proudly, defiantly, and ultimately foolishly defied the Borg on their ship. But now he knew just how badly few in Starfleet had even known what the Borg would do to anyone they came across. After they had told him they had needed a human voice, one of the Borg drones near him had injected him with nanoprobes through their injection tubules.
The shock and the pain of the transformation had made him weak, weak enough to be taken to a Borg alcove in the core of the Cube. From there his transforming body was almost forgotten - before he was shoved into the alcove, frightened as the pain in his transforming body was starting to really, really hurt as he felt it becoming harder to breathe, let alone feel human - when his brain was merged into the Hive mind.
Picard wasn't sure if the Borg Queen on the Cube had purposefully decided to try to break him, or if it was because the Borg didn't have any true individuals who were not Queens, but he was forced to watch and endure as the Borg used his knowledge and his voice as if it were their own. He felt physically sickened and furious by what they had done, what they had forced him to do against his own people. The worst was burnt into his mind, Wolf 359. The Borg had used his knowledge of Starfleet operations and Starfleet to rip apart the Federation defences at Wolf 359.
Picard wished J.P hadn't stubbornly gone ahead with his plan to intercept the Borg Cube. He had been made aware of what Starfleet was doing before his assimilation, and while he knew it was a logical step for Starfleet to work with the Klingon Defence Force against the Borg Cube all it did was slow the Borg down but not enough, and cost thousands of lives. Picard could still remember the Borg cutting beams as they gouged out a massive hole in Melbourne's saucer section before they destroyed the ship, and he could remember Saratoga's attack before the Borg's tractor beam held it taut and a cutting beam sheared its way to the warp core.
During the battle, Picard remembered thanks to his connection to the Borg Collective consciousness the new voices that had appeared in the group mind. But more horrifying…. Locutus's Borg personality had dismissed them as irrelevant, but Jean-Luc Picard still remembered the horrifying way the survivors of the numerous ships were transported onboard the Cube and they were forcibly assimilated. He remembered the horrible screaming, the pleas from so many people, and he had even heard the sounds of frightened children as the Borg placed them inside Maturation Chambers, to the threats of the surviving Klingon warriors who had survived the engagement who had nothing left but bravado and bravery.
Picard remembered them all, and he remembered hearing their voices in his mind as they were assimilated. Starfleet had ordered him to give them reports on his experiences. Picard grimaced as he thought about Starfleet. While some of the admirals were sympathetic towards his ordeal, Picard was not entirely surprised many of them were not so inclined to be sympathetic to him. Many of them had looked like they blamed him for the whole mess. Picard didn't blame them, but at the same time, he blamed himself. He hated himself for being so weak and unable to fight them even if intellectually and logically he knew it was impossible.
The Borg invasion had changed everything. Picard knew that. So many ships and lives had been lost, many of them assimilated by the Collective although hopefully they had been put out of their misery and would never have to live as Borg drones, if that was the case Picard didn't know. It was his hope that Starfleet took the recommendations of himself and anyone else who believed it was the best if Starfleet changed; their tactics had not been enough, even during the course of the year like when Picard and the rest of the crew had sparred with the 80-year old Hathaway before the Ferengi marauders attacked and believed with the typical brand of logic there was something valuable on board the Hathaway.
Their technology needed to be improved and, while the idea was sickening to him, his perspective had long since changed after being assimilated and being forced to be the mouthpiece of the Borg Collective, the Federation needed warships. New weapons. Picard had always been an explorer at heart but he was unafraid to pick up arms to defend everything he believed worth fighting for, and while the thought of using weapons and warships showed and horrified him, Picard knew if the Borg ever invaded again and if they won, the entire way of life the Federation enjoyed was decimated. In the Borg Collective, the races that made up the Federation would just be drones if they won, their minds locked away while their bodies were used by the Collective for their own ends.
Freedom would become a thing of the past.
To survive, Starfleet, the Klingon Defence Force, the Romulan fleet, and everyone else in this part of the galaxy needed to arm themselves and prepare for the inevitable return for the Borg. Picard knew the Borg would be back. He would give Starfleet his knowledge on Borg technology - some of the debris from the destroyed Borg Cube, destroyed by the self-destruct system put in operation by the Queen herself would be littering the space nearest to Earth. It would be salvaged and analysed and give Starfleet building blocks for new defence ideas. That, combined with his knowledge and whatever weapons Shelby and Hansen had been privy to at Starfleet Tactical for the past year, should be enough to start the defence of their way of life.
He hoped, but with the Borg anything was possible.