Starfleet Outpost 21: Louis Pascal Centre For Research

Sedna


─•~:~•─


Amy Chen hated life at this exact moment.

Two years ago, she'd been the Head Nurse of Avalon under Dr. Jesse Symco, a respected surgeon, and was well on her way to a coveted post as a nursing instructor at Starfleet Academy.

She had earned her nursing credentials at the Royal Ontario Academy of Medicine at the top of her class, and starships were practically fighting each-other for her services.

And yet, she had chosen Avalon, because she wanted some excitement, and being a Nurse on a Battlecruiser sounded a lot more exciting than ESD or even the Grey Ghost.

It all changed with the Marines.

Amy had voted against the Marine bill, along with most of Avalon's medical department – with Dr. Symco being one notable exception – and refused to ever visit or socialize with any of the jar head Sharkies she came across.

Most of them were just Academy rejects too stupid or lazy to get through the four-year program. Some of them she heard had been criminals who belonged in prison instead of the uniformed services. And others were just misfits who shouldn't have a place anywhere.

Some of Amy's friends from Nursing School had since resigned from the Fleet to join the FMC's Hospital Corpsman program, and Amy made sure that each 'friend' who told her of their intentions was in turn told off and cut off from any further contact.

There was nothing that a Marine could do that anyone in Starfleet Security couldn't do.

All the FMC's special equipment could have simply been purchased by the Fleet, and their training could have been morphed into a special volunteer division, without having to invite criminals, rejects and the misfits into the service.

She had written several policy recommendation letters, including one straight to the CNC office.

Almost all of them had been ignored outright, and the one reply she got – from the CNC – had told her in no uncertain terms that she was just a nurse, holding a provisional rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade, and she should really just stick to what she knew.

On her last mission in space, Avalon had beamed aboard a critical evac casualty from the CRM (Criminal Rejects and Misfits, her name for the FMC) during Operation Soul's Edge.

The Corpsman who brought her patient in had still carried his rifle, something that would have gotten any Starfleet Officer charged for dereliction of duty, and even threatened to shoot Amy and her fellow nurses when the Doctor had ordered him to throw out the patient's silly little penguin toy.

Amy had been responsible for conducting the gene scan, and discovered that the patient – Rain Kaimeao, the "woman" dating the Captain – was an Augment.

Rightfully, Amy had demanded that this crime be reported to Starfleet, but she was overruled and ordered to continue her work. Knowing she was right, Amy filed the report anyway, but for her troubles was reassigned from Avalon to Outpost 21, a nowhere station on the edge of the Solar System to keep her quiet and away from everything of meaning.

She sighed deeply as she prepared another bacteria sample for the computer. Outpost twenty-one had a small thirty-man crew, and there was almost nothing to do but perform meaningless research on diseases and viruses that had already been extensively covered by Starfleet Medical on Earth, and any discoveries she did make would probably be credited to her supervisor, a bitter old French LC named Monet Pen.

Resignation was always an option. Amy could leave the Fleet and take her information to the press. The revelation that the CRM employed an Augment as their Special Operations Commander would be enough to completely embarrass the service, if not get it dismantled entirely.

Amy would have her choice of Nursing positions anywhere in the Federation, and most importantly, she would finally have proof that she was right all along.

While waiting for the sample to process, she opened a second window on her terminal to look over the half-finished resignation letter. But just as she entered the command, the lights in the entire lab died, along with the power to her terminal and the computer analyzing the bacteria samples.

Probably those idiots from maintenance again, she thought to herself.

Last week, when the LCARS interface in her lab needed an OS update, she had found the outpost's computer specialist drunk out of his mind on illegally imported Romulan Ale in his quarters, rather than fixing her computer.

She immediately reported the technician to LC Pen, who did exactly nothing about it other than file a disciplinary report that never actually got transmitted. Most of the crew of the outpost simply didn't care about their jobs, or their careers. It was a dead-end outpost on the ass-end of nowhere. Pen herself was barely a year out from retirement, while the rest of the crew were disciplinary orphans who were lucky to even still be in Starfleet.

Amy had ambitions however, curtailed as they may have been by politics. She decided to fix the issue herself as usual and got up to start walking to the lab doors.

But the doors wouldn't open. Sighing deeply, she hit her comm-badge and asked, "Chen to Maintenance, is there a reason why the door to my lab is stuck?"

There was no response, so she tried again, calling the on-duty tech by name, "Chen to Garcia. Get off your ass and open my door!"

But Garcia failed to answer her either. She sighed deeply and began fumbling around to find the flashlight so she could hit the door's manual release switch. But as she did, Amy was stopped by a blood curdling scream from the hallway.

She froze in place, not knowing if the scream was real or simply the guys playing a trick on her again. Deciding it was the latter, Amy cried out, "Not funny, you fucking assholes. Open my door already!"

But still, no one answered her. Cautiously, she retrieved the flashlight and shined it on the stuck door, but her white light was overcome by a feint green glow. Seconds after, the door violently collapsed open, and three Borg Drones walked into the room, pointing their laser optics directly at Amy and walking slowly towards her.

Amy in turn screamed loudly and hurled the closest object she pick up at one of the drones. The glass beaker bounced off the Drone's chest plate and shattered, but the three kept up their slow yet terrifying advance.

"Chen to Security! I need help in lab thirteen!" she screamed into her comm-badge. But again, there was no answer, and Amy realized in horror that one of the drones walking towards her was in fact LT Mohamed Farad, the outpost's head of security.

Amy ran to the other side of the lab, oblivious to the fact that there was no other way out of the room and tripped trying to avoid a Borg Transporter beam forming in front of her.

Amy looked up, and her soul went cold in terror. She had heard stories about the Borg Queen. She had learned the basics about her from her time in the Academy, but never in her wildest dreams had she ever expected to meet the Queen face to face.

And yet, the nightmare was very real, as the Queen got down on one knee in front of Amy and smiled.

"Hello," the Queen said, in a chilling and yet calm voice to Amy's ears.

Amy tried desperately to crawl away from the Queen, "Oh God, please, I don't wanna die! Please god, please! Don't hurt me."

The Queen smiled again, and walked calmly towards Amy, "Are you frightened of me?"

Amy was in tears, and nodded furiously, not daring to speak again. At any moment, the Borg Queen would assimilate her, and she'd lose any sense of herself to the Hive Mind of the Borg Collective.

Her medical training told her that Borg Nano-probes attached themselves to her blood cells and bonded with her system at the genetic level. As the infected cells eventually travelled to her brain, the Nano-Probes would soon begin re-wiring her neuron channels and install microscopic devices to link her brain into the Hive Mind. Amy's personality, memories, thoughts, feelings, and emotions would be erased, and she would be repurposed as a Borg Drone, for whatever purpose the Collective decided to allocate to her.

The Queen gently brushed a piece of her hair, and again spoke softly to Amy, "Do not be frightened. I can tell by your uniform that you are a medical officer. We have added many of your peers to our Collective. They are not frightened of me. We won't hurt you. In fact, we will help you in ways you can't begin to understand."

The Queen's metallic hands were cold to Amy, but somehow gentle in their touch, and the Queen took her hand as she continued, "You are incredibly special. You posses knowledge and uniqueness that we do not have. The Borg do not kill or harm anything. We seek to attain perfection, and our only desire is to make all things perfect."

Gently, The Queen interlocked her fingers with Amy, "When we add your technological and biological distinctiveness to our own, you will never be alone again. You will not feel fear, or hunger, or suffering. You will become one with the Borg. And you will help us achieve our goal, to attain perfection. Do not resist us. It will all be over soon, and you will make us more... perfect."

And as gently as she could, The Queen allowed the assimilation tubules in her fingertips to pierce Amy's skin. Each tube entered her fingertips and spread nano-probes through Amy's bloodstream in a bio-solution that mixed in with her blood for easy travel.

Amy felt her arm go cold and numb, and then felt nothing at all.


Designate: Nineteen of Twenty-Seven, Secondary Biological Analyst of Unimatrix One Nine Seven

/root/dir/exec_

Attain Perfection through Assimilation

Resistance = Futile


She didn't know anything of use, naturally. And she wouldn't be a particularly useful drone either. Nineteen of Twenty-Seven – her name had been Amy – had inferior knowledge compared to other members of her species, and her genetic structure was decidedly average. But the Queen had meant what she said. In 7 654 281 simulations, The Queen had determined that in 67.28% of interactions with unassimilated species, a gentle approach was the best way to achieve cooperation and to lower resistance quotients.

And Nineteen of Twenty-Seven did have one unique piece of knowledge to share with the Collective. She had encountered an example of 2765 that had been genetically augmented for superior cognitive skills, reflexes, healing, and memory recall. Assimilation of such augmentation would prove useful to dealing with the biological challenges of other drones from Species 2765, and this Augmented Drone would in turn make her collective more perfect. The Queen created a new file in her library to make note of this Augment if and when the opportunity presented itself, and then returned to the matter at hand.

"Do we have access to the communications grid yet?" she asked the Collective, speaking aloud if only to calm what was left of 19 of 27's emotions.

Negative. 4.76 minutes ETA to circumventing security lockouts. Resistance Quotient adjusted to B-1.

Not for the first time, She was frustrated. The Collective contained the knowledge, experience, skills, and perceptions of 2 876 123 901 Species. 2765 was nearly maddening in their ability to adapt to Borg tactics, however. A small part of her mind, the part that contained her necessary – if annoying – emotional sub-processes, fantasied about burning 2765's home planet to ashes, and personally slaughtering every example of this Species that had caused so much frustration to her Collective.

But her /root/ command path structure reminded her emotions of three true statements:

- Slaughter is inefficient

- Desire is irrelevant

- Resistance is futile

The Queen steadied herself and returned to the task at hand, "Assign 19 of 27 to an appropriate assimilation platform. The Diamond will continue on course to Earth. If we must, we'll do this the old-fashioned way."