I don't own Star Trek The Next Generation movies or Star Trek Enterprise.

All I own is this crossover story. I hope you enjoy it.

I got this idea reading the first page of Doctor Who and the Nightmare of Eden, which details the workings of a form of warp drive, totally different from the one seen in Star Trek. This is an alternate version of Star Trek First Contact.

Future chapters of this story will be uploaded first on an exclusive preview viewing on my Pa-treon; just visit pat-reonDOTcom/timetraveller2022

X

First Warp.

ECON?

The bar was typical of the camp; a lot of the building was composed of leftover scrap almost as if the builders had assembled the majority of the prefab like it was a giant conservatory, but they needed to stop because they didn't have enough materials left over to finish it off. There was a counter where the barman served the drinks, and there was a snooker table salvaged from somewhere in one of the cities before the war blew them to radioactive rubble, but many of the tables and chairs were assembled from old drums and blocks, anything that couldn't be found was improvised.

As she stood with her elder brother and best friend, Azalea Cochrane took a sip of whiskey and looked around the bar thoughtfully. She shivered lightly but she absently pulled her scarf up to her throat.

She and her brother were currently drinking, and while the air in the bar was stale with the stench of booze, she had to admit the foul brands of alcohol Eddie and his friends were making had likely contributed to her headache, and judging from the look on Lily's face she was just as mentally traumatised by the experience.

She hadn't planned on having more than a few drinks, but this was meant to be a 'celebration' as her brother, Zefram, called it. But Azalea knew her brother well; ever since the implant had begun to fail in him, her brother had become increasingly erratic, and she was becoming more and more worried about him.

Even tonight, they needed to have clear heads and clear minds for the flight, but Zefram seemed determined to drink himself to death and let his brain melt. Azalea shared a look with her friend. Lily looked as irritated and worried as she looked between the Cochrane siblings. Finally, Azalea decided enough was enough.

She lightly touched Zefram's fur-coated arm. "C'mon. We need to grab some rest. Big day ahead tomorrow."

"Lea, c'mon!" Zefram pleaded with one of his manic charming moments. Azalea wasn't fooled for a moment, especially when she saw him sneak a look at the bottles of the amber liquid that should never be consumed, by anyone. But she knew, underneath that silvery hair and the bright eyes, her brother was as excited as she was about the flight tomorrow. That was reassuring to her. She knew that despite his excitement, Zefram was still haunted by feelings of self-loathing, of worry he was going to fail. He was drowning himself in that foul stuff because he wanted to alleviate the guilt, but she knew it wouldn't work.

The Phoenix would work.

She knew it would, especially after the hell they'd gone through together to do it.

"No, Z," Azalea snapped. "It's time we left. We can celebrate tomorrow."

"She's right," Lily ripped out the glass from her brother's hand and pulled him away."Come on." Zefram sighed and conceded their point. "Good night Eddie," he murmured to the barman, and the trio walked out of the bar together, with Zefram lightly slapping the back of another patron sitting on an old oil drum that served as a crude chair. "…Go home."

Azalea snorted at her brother's hypocrisy. "You're gonna regret this tomorrow," Lily commented lightly as they walked, shivering in the frozen night air of Montana. Zefram chuckled, some of the booze making his voice slurred as he replied, "Well, what I think you should have learned about me by now is that I don't have regrets," suddenly he tugged the pair of them back towards the bar, " ...Come on, Lily, Lea, one more round."

Both women tugged him back. "Absolutely not. I'm done drinking that swill for one night, thanks," Azalea snapped.

Lily was in total agreement, "Z, you've had enough. I'm not going up in that thing with a drunken pilot." She moved off slightly, leaving the Cochrane siblings behind. Suddenly she stopped when something in the sky caught her attention, but Zefram hadn't noticed and neither had Azalea.

"But I sure as hell's not going up there sober," Zefram argued.

"You are if you want me to be there with you. I wish there was another way we could sort you out, Z; I worry about you," Azalea whispered to Zefram, worried.

Zefram's ruddy face crinkled as her message got to him, and he held her lightly. "We will. I promise," he whispered just as silently.

Azalea knew he meant they'd get another implant for him, but just before she was about to remind him they needed the Phoenix to fly first before they could find the medical resources needed to help her brother. But while Zefram's desires mirrored hers to a point, Azalea wanted the Phoenix to usher in a new era for the human race.

They needed it.

The planet, as far as they knew, was devastated. Millions were killed in a pointless war against a genocidal enemy. What did they have to show for it? A devastated planet with millions of innocent people dead, and the survivors forced to live in places like this to avoid the radioactive rubble.

With the Phoenix's warp engine, they could explore the solar system and go beyond, travelling hundreds of light-years that would have taken thousands of years to reach by conventional spacecraft. The only problem was making sure Zefram was on the Phoenix and not passed out drunk. She would never forgive him if that happened. She didn't want to fly that ship by herself.

Azalea was about to say as much to Zefram to make him see some sense when Lily interrupted them. "What is that?"

Azalea turned curiously. Here she and Zefram were, talking about his problems, and she interrupted. But at the same time, she was intrigued. She knew Lily well enough to know she would have noticed them talking, so what had brought her attention? Azalea left her brother and went to stand by Lily's side and looked up, but all she saw was just space.

Zefram followed as well. He looked up and said, "That is the constellation Leo."

"No, I don't think that's what she's pointing at," Azalea said.

"No, that," Lily pointed upwards, to a point of bright orbiting light which suddenly fires two bolts of light hurtling towards the settlement before the Cochrane siblings were able to take a good look at the bright light. The siblings and Lily shared a look, just as one of the nearby huts was destroyed, throwing them to the ground.

Lily lifted her head angrily, "It's the ECON."

Zefram couldn't believe it. "After all these years?"

"If it's them, they haven't changed a bit, have they? The whole world is hiding in holes, but they still want to blow us all up!" Azalea was just as angry as her friend. Her anger was punctuated by more blasts, balls of light. They hit the ground at random, and Azalea realised that if it was the ECON they weren't particularly bothered about locking on properly. They were just shooting for the sake of it.

"We've got to get to the Phoenix!" Lily picked herself up and ran off.

The Cochranes were about to get up when another blast threw them to the ground again. Zefram gasped, his voice cold, hard, and full of sorrow. "To hell with the Phoenix."

Azalea looked down, knowing how he felt. She wanted to go down in that moment, the wanton and senseless attack on the commune had shaken her with the violence knocking it into her brain with a resounding clang that perhaps some people just didn't want to be better than this. But what was the point of trying to change the world when they didn't want to change? ECON, if it was them and everything said it was in her mind, hadn't changed and they didn't want to. So why go through with the test flight of the Quantum Warp Engine?

But at the same time, there was a part of her that didn't want to throw away her hopes and dreams for the future. But perhaps the Phoenix was dead, and the ship would never rise from the ashes while the world tore itself apart, senseless and insane?

X

Captain Jean-Luc Picard was extremely relieved the trip through the temporal vortex was over, but he was even more pleased when he saw Earth was currently the same beautiful glowing jewel she had always been instead of that assimilated horror he and his crew had seen following the destruction of the Borg cube during the recent battle in Sector 001 in an alternate timeline where the Borg had succeeded in travelling backwards into the past and assimilated Earth.

He didn't know what had happened to the rest of the fleet Admiral Hayes had set up in the Typhon sector. It was likely their entire histories had been rewritten after the sphere had travelled back in time through the vortex and assimilated Earth.

Picard wasn't surprised the Borg had time travel, but he couldn't remember in any instance even when he had been assimilated by the Collective six years before (he would not even think about the number of people who were slaughtered at Wolf 359: the memory alone was just too depressing), but he found it hard to believe the Collective would use such a tactic now. "Report," he demanded briskly as he moved away from the command tier.

Riker read off the system status report from his console. "Shields are down. Long-range sensors are off-line. Main power's holding."

"According to our astrometric readings we're in the mid-twenty-first century," Data reported, making Picard stiffen where he stood. "From the radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere, I would estimate we have arrived approximately ten years after the Third World War."

Picard was left reeling from the news. The Borg had come back to this point in time, to the 21st century, a full decade after the Third World War?

He supposed it made sense. With the planet in ruins and very few people capable of fighting although there would be some pockets of soldiers left behind, Picard doubted they would be able to resist a sustained Borg attack for long, and since only a Borg scout ship had escaped from the cube before its destruction, the Borg would likely have an easier time assimilating this version of Earth than one who knew how to fight them.

Will spoke at his shoulder, his words mirroring his thoughts, "Makes sense. Most of the major cities have been destroyed. There are few governments left. Six hundred million dead. No resistance."

"Captain!" Worf called as he pulled up the image of the leaden grey shape of the Borg sphere as it fired at the surface of the planet.

The sight of the sphere stoked the fires of Picard's rage, an anger that always appeared whenever he encountered the Borg. "Mister Worf. Quantum torpedoes," he ordered.

The Klingon instantly got to work at the tactical station. "Ready, sir."

"Fire," he said. They could find out why the Borg sphere had been firing at the surface in a moment. Right now he wanted the Borg ship destroyed. And sure enough, a spread of torpedoes was fired at the Borg ship and it exploded. The explosion's recoil shook the Enterprise, but it quickly subsided. "They were firing at the surface. Location?"

Riker went to check at one of the other consoles. "Western hemisphere, ...North American continent. At a missile complex in central Montana," Picard's first officer reported, his face crinkled at the familiarity of the link between a missile complex and Montana.

"A missile complex?" Picard whispered to himself, racking his memory. Suddenly it came to him. Suddenly he had a horrible idea about what the Borg had wanted to do, why they had opened the time vortex to here. "The date?" He said urgently. "Mister Data, I need to know the exact date."

"April fourth, two thousand sixty-three," Data turned, his face lit by realised horror (sometimes the emotion chip Dr Soong made for him and the one he had taken from Lore really helped him understand the full implications of a situation such as this).

But Picard was still reeling from the news. "April fourth?" He repeated, remembering the history lessons he'd attended like every other child on Earth or one of the human colonies.

"The day before First Contact," Riker nodded as he saw the implications.

"Precisely."

Beverly said in a voice of growing understanding of the horror in front of them, "Then the missile complex must be the one where Zefram Cochrane is building his warp ship."

Picard nodded, remembering the countless visits he and so many other school children had taken to the complex. "That's what they came here to do. Stop First Contact."

Picard had been furious before the battle with the Borg, frustrated not only by Starfleet's desire to keep him away from the encounter with the Borg, even though they knew his knowledge and experience with the Collective made him a perfect asset in such a battle, but he was furious and terrified that the moment he had been dreading ever since he had gotten his individuality back after his horrifying time as Locutus was over had finally arrived.

The Borg were back.

They had started an invasion of the Federation, and it had been a long time since Starfleet had encountered a Borg ship in much the same way as they had tried to invade before. For the last six years, Picard had watched in horror as Starfleet decided to stick their head in the sand, pretend the threat didn't exist, but just because the Borg were not going to return so soon after the cube which had wantonly invaded Federation space, didn't mean they wouldn't come back. It was only when the Dominion threat reared its head and the recent Klingon war happened that many people in Starfleet began taking the threat of war more seriously.

Picard knew this was an even worse threat. The Borg knew Zefram Cochrane was the inventor of the human warp engine, and he had built it in the 2060s. With the Phoenix destroyed, there would be no First Contact, and therefore no United Federation of Planets. The planet would be assimilated and once that was done, this whole part of the galaxy and the people in it - the Vulcans, the Klingons, the Andorians, the Betazoids, the Cardassians, the Ferengi, everyone would become Borg.

No more.

It was time for this to end. Will, totally unaware of the volcanic rage in Picard that was raging out of control, asked Hawk, "How much damage, Lieutenant?"

"I can't tell. Long-range sensors are still off-line." That wasn't good. Even with sensors offline after passing through the temporal vortex - he made a mental note to see if there was any chance of researching a way of adapting starships so when they found themselves in other times, they would be robust enough to take it; while he tried to uphold the Temporal Prime Directive, Picard knew sometimes the rules didn't prepare you for everything.

But there was nothing else for it. They would have to go down there, to a version of Earth where they hadn't yet woken up to reality yet, and see what kind of damage the Borg had done. He wasn't just going to shrug his shoulders and leave. No. They had come back in time to repair the damage the Borg had done, and there was still a chance, although he couldn't hear the Collective at that moment, some drones might have beamed down.

If they assimilated the Phoenix, or worse Cochrane…..

"We'll have to go down there. Find out what happened. Data, Beverly, you're with me," Picard was already moving towards the turbo lift as he was giving orders; he wasn't in the mood for Will's 'the captain's place is on the bridge' attitude, not right now. "Have a security team meet us in transporter room three. Computer. Mid-twenty-first century civilian clothing. ...Number One, you have the bridge."

X

As he and his team walked along the familiar and yet unfamiliar corridors to the main control room of the missile complex, Picard wasn't sure whether to be relieved they had stopped the Borg sphere from doing too much damage or if he should be annoyed that he hadn't ordered the Enterprise to pass through the vortex quickly enough.

Maybe if he had done that, then the place wouldn't look this bad, and there wouldn't be more death caused by the Collective. Picard had seen dozens of bombed-out ruins in his time as a Starfleet officer, but there was something surreal about seeing the Montana community where the Phoenix had been placed in a nuclear missile silo which gave Zefram Cochrane and his legendary team the building blocks to build the warp ship.

But those visits had been in a time period where this place had become a monument with clean, well-lit, cheerful shrines to a turning point in history. But seeing the devastation in and out of the missile complex brought it home for him, and he supposed to the rest of the team.

This was the time where Zefram Cochrane had lived, in a violent past.

He had been here before, like so many other children ever since First Contact. This part of Montana would become a historical monument. It was just so odd to be here, and not see any sign of the legendary marble statue of Zefram Cochrane with his hand reaching towards the future. But much of the buildings were preserved, to remind humanity of its warlike mistakes. But tonight, he could smell the smell of explosions. Picard had to fight down the impulse when they beamed down to order the team to fan out and help everyone else.

There was a time and a place.

Cochrane and the Phoenix came first. The moment they pushed open the control room doors and found sparking consoles and slumped bodies, Picard felt his anger grow.

Beverly scanned the room. "They're all dead." Picard nodded. "See if one of them is Cochrane. Data, let's go check the warp ship."

Together with the android, they went down the familiar walkway to the silo. Picard had seen the Phoenix hundreds of times in the Smithsonian Institute but he had never touched it. But the version of the warp ship towering over himself and Data hadn't yet broken the light barrier. It was still in its casing; Picard knew from his studies primitive rockets would shed its outer casing and the engine parts as they became useless, although they did their job of sending the ship out into space. Data took his tricorder out and began scanning the Phoenix. "The structural integrity of the missile appears to be intact. The fuselage is slightly damaged. Curious."

Picard turned to him. "What is?"

"I am uncertain, sir. But the Phoenix seems to have components that are completely unknown to conventional warp ships. While the Titanium casing allows the tricorder scans, I am picking up dark matter and dark energy emissions," the android's expression furrowed as he became confused.

Picard was just as puzzled. "Dark matter and Dark energy? They shouldn't be anywhere near this ship. Still, we will have a few hours yet to find Cochrane and repair the ship as best as we can while we try to discover what is happening. We should have the original blueprints on the Enterprise computer. Commander La Forge will need to bring a team down here-."

Suddenly he was cut off by a hail of machine-gun bullets.

X

A few moments before, Lily Sloane had been examining the Phoenix herself. When she had reached the control room, she had seen some of the dead people there, people who had been her friends, and were part of the team Zefram and Azalea had assembled to help them with the warp flight into hyperspace.

When she saw the damaged controls and the smashed ceiling, any hopes for the launch died with them. The console that Zef and Lea had built together to monitor radiation had been smashed beyond repair, and while she was no physicist Lily still found it hard to believe the Phoenix may never rise.

Every instinct in her body was screaming at her not to see the ship despite the antique Geiger counters the Cochranes often had scattered around just in case, but she couldn't resist.

To her relief, the outer shell of the casing and the cockpit she and the Cochranes had spent so long building was intact, but as she went down Lily began to feel sick. It was enough to push aside the impression she had of the Phoenix, that it was a missile whose warhead had been removed and replaced by a cockpit.

But as she went further down to the rocket itself, Lily began to feel ill. she would have to get out and find some of the medicine that cured radiation sickness. She had no idea how bad the damage was, but she had seen signs some of the damage from outside had gotten into the silo; the ladder had melted in parts and fused together, but somehow she was able to make it down there, but if the core was hot then there could be a massive explosion and the only people who could help might not care anymore. The idea of the Cochranes no longer caring about the Phoenix was upsetting, but there was only so much the two could take.

ECON. The goddamn bastards were so determined to use whatever precious resources were left to blow what was left to pieces.

But as she was preparing to go back up, she heard the hatch open. At first, she thought it might be Zef and Lea, but it wasn't. Her vision was blurring, but she could see the two of them were men, and she could hear all that they were saying, but she was having problems focusing on it all. But what she did pick out was the fact they had found the dark matter and the dark energy reservoirs in the Phoenix.

Quickly grabbing a gun, Lily opened fire from where she was standing. Her rational mind fought with her not to shoot the Phoenix. The last thing she wanted to do was to cause more damage. A man with a British accent yelled down, "Hold your fire! We're here to help you!"

Lily felt her rage explode. If these were ECON, and she was certain of it, the only help they were going to hand out was the type where they would kill them all! "Bullshit!" Lily fired again visualising each bullet being a friend, a lover, a member of her family who had died at ECON's hands. It seemed she hit someone, he was falling to her level…. No, wait, he hadn't been injured by bullets. Even in her woozy state, she watched as a pale skin man landed on the walkaway above her in shock. How had he done that?

When he jumped down again to the rocket motors, she fired two successive bursts, but he did not fall down! Instead, the pale-faced man walked towards her, nodding pleasantly, "Greetings!"

Lily had been feeling ill for a while since she had come into the silo, but now her head was spinning and she collapsed. Data managed to catch her as she fell and he examined her, feeling her pulse and her breathing. "Captain, this woman requires medical attention," Data called.

Doctor Crusher arrived within moments when she received the call about the medical emergency. "Severe theta radiation poisoning," she diagnosed after checking her tricorder's findings.

Data nodded, "Radiation is coming from the damaged throttle assembly."

"We're all gonna have to be inoculated, ...and I have to get her to sickbay," Crusher said as she took out a hypospray and filled it with the right drug.

Picard instantly protested, remembering every single time Beverly violated the Prime Directive; he knew it was her duty as a doctor, but there was something about it that irked her. "Doctor," he began.

But Beverly was prepared for his protests. "Please, no lectures about the Prime Directive," she begged as she began the inoculations, injecting Picard and the unconscious Lily, and then herself. "I will keep her unconscious."

Picard sighed and decided that was just going to have to do, but he hoped to hell Beverly kept this woman unconscious; the last thing he needed was to worry about someone running around in an aggressive state on his ship when he had enough problems as it was. "Very well. Tell Commander Riker to beam down with a search party. We need to find Cochrane." Beverly nodded before she tapped her combadge. "Crusher to Enterprise. Two to beam directly to sickbay."

Once they were gone, Picard was left looking up at the missile thoughtfully. While he was still confused by the mystery of the dark matter and dark energy inside the Phoenix, they had no time to lose. As he prepared himself to bring down Geordi and get him and a detail to go over the Phoenix, Picard hoped they could get the ship working quickly, while they tried to understand how this Phoenix differed from the one they knew.

X

The engineering detail had gotten straight to work within minutes of their arrival. The team had brought with them enough tools and equipment from the Enterprise to start working on the repairs to the warp ship. But very quickly they had hit a number of snags. Geordi himself had been surprised by the clear presence of dark matter and dark energy, so much so that he had actually gone inside the Phoenix engine compartment - not an easy job at the best of times, and he had come out more confused than ever.

While the mystery was slightly worrying, Picard couldn't help but smile fondly and wistfully at the Phoenix. "Isn't it amazing?" He asked Data. "This ship used to be a nuclear missile."

The android just raised his golden face toward the ships' cockpit, but his eyes hinted at no emotion, just detached curiosity. "It is a historical irony that Doctor Cochrane would use an instrument of mass destruction to inaugurate an era of peace."

Picard sighed. There were times he wished Data kept the emotion chip - whenever he had it in his neural net - on at all times. Until he did, he couldn't explain what a sense of wonder was. But right now he wasn't in the mood to indulge in one of Data's questions about exploring the facets of humanity.

Right now, he wanted to actually touch the Phoenix. He lifted a hand and gently pressed his palm against the cold metal of the titanium. It was unbelievable. He was actually touching the Phoenix, and he doubted anyone from engineering wouldn't take the opportunity, either. The Phoenix had changed the lives of millions, changing the history of not only North America, but of Earth, the solar system, and the whole galaxy. And he was touching her.

Noting Data's curious frown, Picard did his best to explain. "It's a boyhood fantasy, Data. I must have seen this ship hundreds of times in the Smithsonian, but I was never able to touch it." Data was still puzzled, "Sir, does tactile contact alter your perception of the Phoenix?"

Picard nodded with a smile. "Oh, yes," he replied, curious about why Data was unaware of this little facet. "For humans, touch can connect you to an object in a very personal way. It makes it seem more real."

Together the two of them touched the hull of the Phoenix, and Picard had to hide a smile when he saw for himself Data cocking his head as he absorbed this latest twist. "I am detecting imperfections in the titanium casing. Temperature variations in the fuel manifold. It's no more real to me now than it was a moment ago," the android remarked.

Picard sighed again. The good news was when he reactivated his emotion chip, Data would have both perspectives to think about. An amused Deanna Troi called from above, "Would you three like to be alone?"

Data and Picard looked up to find Deanna leaning over the rail on an observation platform. Her overall expression was amused, but Picard noted quickly her look of ill in her dark eyes. Not very reassuring. "What have you found out?" Picard asked.

All amusement left Deanna and her expression turned serious. "There's no sign of Cochrane anywhere in the complex."

Picard found that hard to accept. When everyone from the Enterprise had beamed down, he had ordered them to look for Cochrane. Nobody needed a description since every Federation citizen would recognise the warp scientist by sight. The fact the scientist wasn't here was worrying in itself, and Picard didn't like the implications. "He has to be here," Picard insisted, refusing to believe Cochrane might be dead, but it was a possibility. "There was nothing more important to him than this ship. This flight. It was his dream."

Deanna voiced his fear. "Captain, we should consider the possibility that Doctor Cochrane was killed in the attack." Picard sighed as he gazed sadly at the Phoenix. "Huh. If that's true then the future may die with him."

X

Inside the missile silo, Geordi La Forge was giving his report to everyone about his examination of the Phoenix. The chief engineer had spent 45 minutes inside the legendary ship, and the experience had been incredible for him but at the same time confusing. Picard had hoped Geordi would help them reduce the mystery, but it only added to it since Geordi didn't have a clue about what some of the components were for.

"Some of the hardware in the Phoenix matches the schematics, but only to a point. There are reservoirs of dark matter and dark energy inside the body of the Phoenix, and from what I can tell the warp nacelles are slightly strange as well."

"Strange, in what way?" Riker asked.

"Well, there are extra warp coils inside, but these coils are arranged in a way I don't understand. And the Bussard collectors are field generators. But at the rear of both nacelles is a strange conduit I can't even begin to grasp," Geordi shook his head. "It's almost like Cochrane installed a totally different warp engine on the Phoenix. Enough of the engine is identical to the one we have in the schematics for us to work with, but that's it. I don't even want to mess with it without knowing what it does."

There was only one way they could do that. Picard turned to Riker, hiding his concerns about the stranger warp engine design. "Will, has there been any luck finding Cochrane in the community?"

Riker shook his head. "The teams have only just been sent, but most of our people are focusing on the Phoenix. Besides we don't know how every survivor of the community will take our presence."

Picard rubbed his head. He didn't want to bring too many people down here, but it was starting to look as if he wasn't going to have that much choice. Just as he was about to give the order, every thought fled his mind when he heard something that made his blood chill. The Collective. The voice of the Collective, and it was still alive.

Deanna saw his expression and became worried at once. "Captain, what is it?"

Picard ignored her and he walked briskly away, his strides growing with each step as he touched his comm badge. "Picard to Enterprise. Mister Worf, is everything all right up there?"

The Klingon's deep baritone voice came over the connection. "Yes sir. We are experiencing some environmental difficulties on deck sixteen but that is all."

Picard felt his expression harden. "What kind of difficulties?" He asked, knowing when a ship was being assimilated one of the first things to be adjusted was the environmental systems.

"Humidity levels have risen seventy-three percent and the temperature has jumped ten degrees in the last hour."

For a moment Picard was tempted to tell his first officer and Counsellor Troi to remain here without telling them anything but right now everything was important. "Mister Data and I are returning to the ship, Mr Worf."

The Klingon's voice was confused."Understood."

But Picard decided to be honest. "I can hear them. The Borg. They're still alive. They're on the Enterprise."

"Borg, on the ship?" Worf's voice was angry.

"How, we saw the sphere destroyed?"

Picard didn't say anything. He remembered the way Enterprise had emerged in this century, and the report Riker had given…. "Our shields were down. They knew their ship was doomed. Mr Worf, Data and I are coming back up. In the meantime, post security teams at every access point, issue hand phasers and phaser rifles. Also, see about replicating primitive projectile weapons - the bullets will be hard for the Borg to adapt to."

"Aye, sir."

Picard tapped his badge to shut down the connection and he turned to Riker and the others. All of them had served together long enough to know what Picard was going to do. He was only going up to the ship with Data. Instantly there were protests.

"Captain, we have to stay with you," Will said.

Geordi agreed. "Captain, you need us."

"Commander, right now we need to find Cochrane and make sure the Phoenix's warp flight is conducted. The Borg will be trying to stop it. Data, Worf and I can fight them off, but you will need to make the flight. The only way that would work is if we split up. Now stay here, Number One, take charge down here."

Riker sighed when he realised he wasn't going to get anywhere with his protests. In any case, Picard was right. "Aye, sir."

X

A/N - Not many divergences aside from Azalea's new presence in the story, but the others will be coming soon.

Please let me know what you think.