Captain's log: Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Stardate 51935. The massive engineering team composed from the Enterprise, Defiant, and Voyager is hard at work developing devices that will make each of our three ships phase. The progress of the team is coming along nicely, and the only thing in question at this point is if we have enough information in our databanks to successfully replicate this technology. We don't know if the latest Borg threat can detect cloaked vessels, but we believe they will have little success getting a weapons lock on our ships if they are slightly phased into another reality.
Upon entering Federation Space, the Borg's pyramid has been emitting some sort of strange signal, similar to the one that Mr. Data detected in the satellite net of Monasian Prime. Whatever it is, the signal is powerful enough to disrupt the entire Starfleet Subspace Communications Grid. All the tactical data on the vessel is on our three ship's databanks. So, we have no way of getting this valuable information to Starfleet Command. Also, if we fail, Starfleet will have a very difficult time in organizing a larger fleet. At this time, I sit alone in my ready room, and cannot help but wonder how three ships could possibly succeed in destroying such a colossal target.
Captain's log: Captain Benjamin Sisko, Stardate 51935. Our engineers are hard at work trying to develop something that will allow us to fight the Borg stealthily. Once we get this phase cloak, as Captain Picard calls it, constructed, we still have no idea what we're going to do to actually attack the Borg. We've decided that the ship will likely be powered by sub-processors as oppose to one large central processor, but we won't be able to locate those until we're much closer to the Borg pyramid. The work is slow, and I am ready to get underway. But I know that at times like these, all I can do is wait, whether I want to or not.
The Borg's plan continues to trouble me. They obviously know the Bajorian wormhole is artificial, but how do they plan to make their wormholes so that the Borg exclusively will use them? I wonder if they are aware of the profit's presence. I've never actually seen a profit, they have always appeared to me as people from my memory, usually people whom I have just recently come into contact with. I don't know if the Borg would be able to assimilate or control them.
Before a few days ago, when I was forced to evacuate Deep Space Nine, I hadn't faced the Borg since… since I lost Jennifer, my wife, and Jake's mother. So far, everything has been so fast-paced I didn't have time to think about that, until now. And now that the images of Jennifer's death on the Saratoga at Wolf 359 are resurfacing, I am having a hard time focusing on phase cloaks and even the profits.
Captain's log: Captain Kathryn Janeway, Stardate 51935. The Borg pyramid has been detected here in the Alpha Quadrant, and I am currently working with two other Starfleet captain's, Captain Sisko and Captain Picard, to develop a phase technology that will give us the needed edge in combating the Borg's pyramid. Using an engineering team comprised of engineers from all three crews, we are making rapid progress. I'm sure that before long we will have the phase device and be attacking the Borg.
I have confidence in our ability to think as individuals, and have no doubt that we will be able to halt the Borg advance into our territory. However, this battle isn't going to be easy. As we wait for the engineers to do their job, I've been spending some time talking to members of my crew. Their morale hasn't been this low since we first got lost. After all these years in the Delta Quadrant my officers have put a lot of conflicts aside and worked together, hoping to one day return home to Earth, or other Alpha Quadrant worlds that are home to some of them. Now, we're here, and I sense that a lot of my officers just want to go home.
Unfortunately, we do have this Borg threat that must be dealt with first, and while they understand that, the crew just doesn't seem to have the energy for this battle. Nevertheless, I've come to place my trust in all of them, and I am sure that when the battle begins, my crew will come ready to do their duties. When it matters most, they'll find a way to focus in on what each of them has to do. I just wish it didn't have to be so hard for them.
On Bajor, Major Kira, Odo, and the other officers of the Bajorian militia stood in front of the Borg drones that had apparently invaded their planet.
"What should we do?" one of the young officers spat out.
"Uh," Major Kira hesitated, not really knowing the best way to attack the Borg, not knowing much about the Borg at all. She had read about them in the Federation databanks on the station, heard about them of course, but never encountered them before. She never studied the information she had available on them at great length because there never seemed to be a need. Now she wished she had used the information she had available when she had it.
Kira was stalled, stuck, frozen. Odo understood her dilemma, but she was supposed to be the leader. As he looked around, Odo observed the other officers with them, they were all nervous to begin with, but they seemed to be getting increasingly nervous as their leader stood by silently, without an answer to the question posed.
"Major," Odo baited, trying to make her subtly realize that she had to be the cool head, the one in control, and the one to inspire confidence.
"Right," Kira said, "what we need to do is kill all the Borg here."
"But if we shoot at them, they'll adapt to our weapons," someone nervously spat out.
"Who said that?" Kira asked.
A young man stepped forward. He looked like he had just signed up for the militia yesterday. He had light brown hair, which was parted in the middle, with a long, thin, nose and green eyes. As he stood in front of Major Kira, she stood about two inches taller than him.
"Lieutenant Jacob Reed, sir," the young officer reported.
"Jacob Reed, that's a human name," the Major noted.
"Yes, sir," Reed reported, "my mother was human."
It was at that time when Kira first noticed that his nose ridges were indeed less pronounced than most of her people. But this was no time for small talk, Kira knew she had to get down to business, and focus on defeating the Borg.
"Well, Lieutenant," Kira began, "I am fully aware of the Borg's adaptive capabilities. Nevertheless, we can't let them stay here. They're likely to wake up eventually and then they'll assimilate more Bajorians. Now, Lieutenant Reed, am I correct in assuming that your team did not come equipped with any photon charges?"
"Yes sir," Reed responded, "I wasn't aware that they were included in the standard equipment for a search party."
That comment was insubordination, and Odo noticed it immediately. In response, the shape-shifter shot a glance at Lieutenant Reed that caused him to adjust his posture and keep his place. Kira noticed too, but at the moment, she didn't care.
"They're not," Kira said, responding to Reed's last comment, "but I think that's are best bet. We can go unnoticed placing several charges on the outside of these storage houses. It'll annihilate these Borg in one swift blow. All we have to do is contact Militia Headquarters and beam them in."
"Unfortunately, that isn't going to be so easy," Odo reported, holding a Bajorian tricorder he had grabbed just before beaming here, "it looks like something in this Borg equipment is emitting some sort of strange damping field. Only certain electronic signals are being disrupted. That's probably why we didn't detect this set-up in our orbital scans of the planet. Anyway, communications at this location are jammed, we'll have to head out a ways before we can send a transmission."
"Of course," Kira said, still in a bit of dismal state, as the knowledge of a Borg presence on Bajor slowly sunk in.
"Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend it," Odo continued, "there's no reason to think that the Borg aren't ease dropping on all communications now."
"Well," asked Kira nervously, "can they hear are conversation?"
"Not according to these readings," Odo reported, "it looks like these drones are almost completely inactive."
"But why?" Kira asked herself, "It doesn't make any sense… Odo, you've got to get to Militia Headquarters as soon as possible. You can beam back here with the necessary equipment."
"I'm on my way," said Odo dutifully.
The shape-shifter transformed himself on the spot into the first thing that came to mind, which a seagull. As he did so the tricorder dropped to the ground and Odo flew off.
As he soared through the air, Odo wondered why the first bird that came to mind was a seagull. The last time he was at Starfleet Headquarters on Earth, he was hunting some of his own people that had infiltrated Earth and were watching. In the end, an admiral had blown the seriousness of the situation out of proportion, but one morning during his trip, Odo had flown with the seagulls to get an aerial survey of Starfleet Headquarters. Why the seagull was the instinctual form he took now, was puzzling to him. Knowing so little about his people, and the kind of instincts they had, Odo found himself with little information to go on to explain some of his impulse behavior. He reasoned that one possibility was that the Borg and the Federation are enemies, a bird made the most sense to transform into because he could rapidly fly across the Bajorian farmland, and the reason for the seagull because that was the only bird that he had been exposed to that has it's origins on Earth. The thought soon passed, as Odo focused on reaching the militia's headquarters and getting the needed explosives to Kira and the other Bajorians.
Meanwhile, Major Kira and a team of Bajorian officers were still in the old storage house where the Borg seemed to have set up camp. All they could do was wait for Odo to return with the photonic charges that would enable them to remove these drones from Bajorian soil. Major Kira, however, did not like waiting.
"While we have the time," Kira announced, "I'd like to take a closer look at some of this Borg equipment. Who knows what will find. Maybe other Borg sites on Bajor, or maybe an indication of what their plan might be." If they have one, she thought, simply unable to find a reason as to what role Bajor played in the Collective's attack on the Federation. "Okay…" she said to herself.
Kira walked over to the center of the group and gestured for the officers to move to either side of her, clearly creating two separate groups.
"Lieutenant Reed," she said, "lead your group over there and investigate the Borg technology. We'll stay back and cover you," Reed's eyes widened, "…just incase the Borg break out of their comatose state."
Reed and the group walked into the Borg infested area of the old storage house. As they progressed, Reed made it a point to keep Major Kira apprised of what they saw.
"It looks like all of them are in a state of hibernation or something," he commented. "Each drone is plugged into these units, and from these readings, I'd guess they're getting fed power, recharging or something."
"Oh," said Kira, accepting the idea.
"As for the computers," Reed continued, "I don't know. It's some kind of weird configuration. I don't know what any of them mean."
Reed continued describing things he couldn't explain, but Kira's attention became focused on his earlier comment about the Borg recharging.
"Wait a minute," Kira started, "you said that the Borg were being fed energy."
"It certainly looks that way," Reed told her.
"Yeah," Kira went on, "and I'm not questioning you there, but where's it coming from? We're out in the middle of nowhere."
The officer who had contacted Kira and Odo and insisted they beam over here spoke up again, "Actually, we noticed on the way inside that there were some old solar panels set-up on the roof. Farmers used to use them to power storage houses like this, it was just enough to keep the lights on if they needed to come in and find something."
"Solar power," Kira repeated, "well that's very weak. It's going to take them a while to get up to full power that way."
"That doesn't mean time's on our side," Reed reminded her, "these Borg could've been here ever since you arrived."
Suddenly, without cause or reason, one of the Borg drones activated. Breaking out of regeneration, it's eyes widened. The drone was thrusted forward a few centimeters as a small hiss could be heard as it broke the connection with regeneration chamber.
Elsewhere, the Defiant, Enterprise, and Voyager floated motionless in space. They were too busy preparing for combat. It had been agreed that the Enterprise would serve as the guinea pig for the phase cloak development. All the top engineers in this mini-fleet, as they had started to refer to it, were able to meet in one location. The Enterprise made sense because the only information available on phase cloak was stored in her databanks, having been transferred from the old Enterprise-D. Once they had developed the device, and successfully integrated it into the Enterprise's systems, to make sure it worked, they would simply have to replicate the device and install them in Voyager and the Defiant, probably needing a few slight adjustments.
In engineering, Lieutenant Commander Data, Geordi La Forge, Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax, Chief O'Brien, B'leanna Torres, and Seven of Nine were hard at work, and getting ready for a preliminary test.
"Okay," Geordi said, "we've still need to fine tune the circuits to get it to work, but I'd like to see if we can even tie in the hardware to the main engine first."
"None of my simulations have showed any problems," Data reported.
"Let's run the test anyway," said a fatigued Torres, none of them had slept in days, "I'd like to see a little progress."
Chief O'Brien walked up, "Yeah, that'd be nice. And tinkering with the microscopic circuits on this thing to trigger the right reaction's going to be tricky."
"Tell me about it," La Forge agreed, "besides, Data, do you want to go see Captain Picard after we accidentally blow up the ship trying to phase?"
The android removed his hands from the control panel, and turned to face his friend. He gave Geordi a very puzzling look because he didn't understand his comment. It was possible for them to phase themselves right into non-existence if the ship's pressure decreased and the outside pressure remained firm. This would overload the systems and destroy the ship, but as long as the engineers were careful, that eventuality was not likely. That wasn't the point though. If they did destroy the Enterprise, Data would be unable to explain to Captain Picard because the both of them would have been destroyed with the ship.
Data attempted to correct his mistaken friend, "But Geordi…"
As all of this happened, Dax came up behind Data, recognizing his lack of understanding by drawing off her lives of experience. She placed her hand on his shoulder and smiled.
"Let's just focus on getting the test started," Dax said softly.
Data seemed to accept her answer and began setting up the experiment by punching several sequences on his control panel. The androids hands moved so fast, it was impossible for anyone to see exactly what he was doing with the blind eye. Dax was thoroughly impressed.
"Are we ready over there?" La Forge shouted to Torres, who had helped Chief O'Brien integrate the mainframe of the phase device into the Enterprise's warp core.
"Everything should be in order," Torres replied hastily.
"Should?" Geordi didn't like the sound of this, "Chief?"
O'Brien sighed, "The truth is Commander that we've fused and tinkered with so many circuits and microcircuits, I don't know what to expect."
La Forge didn't like hearing that; nevertheless, he would have to try this test anyway. The idea of this experiment was to see if the circuitry of the phase device would interface properly with the Enterprise's systems. Although the phase "adapter," as the engineers dubbed it, wouldn't actually do anything yet, they needed to see if they could channel some of the energy being fed to the warp core through the phase adapter without any interference.
"Okay," Geordi said again, "okay" becoming his new favorite word as he hesitantly approved the continuation of this difficult to predict construction, "let's go for it."
"Start your engines," Dax said to herself as she walked by Data.
Standing next to Data, was Seven of Nine, who had been entrusted with minimal duties so far. Her job was simply to monitor the core temperature, to make sure that the warp core didn't begin overheat. This was almost unheard of in Federation warp engines, and even more unlikely in this scenario because all power transfers taking place were moving power out of the warp core.
After Dax passed, Seven uttered a sarcastic reply to the Trill's comment, "Our engines are already running." It was clear that Seven was lost in the metaphors the other engineers were constantly using.
The only one who could relate to this was Data. Data still got confused by some human expressions, but was now much more versed in them. His emotion chip helped somewhat, but it was really his many years of being around humans that allowed him to realize what they were trying to relay in their metaphors and anecdotes.
Data turned to Seven, "Commander Dax's comment is derived from an old tradition on Earth, and other worlds as well, known as 'auto-racing.' Automobiles, or similar crafts, would line up on a track and race to see which of them could complete the course in the fastest time. The start of one these races was very exciting for the drivers, an excitement comparable to the excitement of running our first test on the phase adaptor, which we have all been working so hard on."
"Thank you," Seven told him, with an honest appreciation for Data's insight. She turned back to her station, and continued monitoring her readouts.
Geordi tapped his communicator, "La Forge to bridge."
"Picard here," the Captain said, "go ahead Geordi."
"Captain," Picard's chief engineer reported, "we'd like to run a small test. We've got the device built, but we need to make sure it's fully compatible with our systems before we can nail the programming down that's going to make this thing work."
"Understood," Picard said, "proceed."
Captain Picard tapped one of the buttons on the armrest of his chair, closing the channel from the bridge to engineering. He was more than happy to approve a test at this point. Despite the captain's always calm exterior, and his firm, serious attitude, he was anxious to get this mission underway. The mini-fleet could only imagine what damage the Borg were doing while they idled in space preparing.
Moments later, Picard's thoughts were interrupted, as the Enterprise powered down.
Picard tapped his communicator, "Engineering, report."
After a brief pause, Geordi's voice came out of his badge, "It didn't work," he said simply, making no effort to hide his disappointment, and disgust, "we'll try to get main power back online as soon as possible."
In engineering, the scene was a little more hectic than Picard would have picked up listening to the official report over the comm. Emergency power had restored the lights and life support, but everything else was out, the main computer was as good as down, with it's functions so limited, all the ship could do was keep the lights on and the life support operational.
La Forge took a deep breath, "Alright," he said, "what happened."
Nobody got more than a glance at the system's readouts before the power cut out, which meant that Data was the only one who could give La Forge an answer.
Although he could not become fatigued, Data's emotion chip did allow him to feel a certain level of frustration and aggravation due to all the guesswork and slow progress under dire circumstances. Still, the android spoke with his usual tone and inflections, and kept a level of professionalism about him that most humanoids did not have the discipline needed to keep their professional attitude.
"We were unable to successfully regulate the power going through the phase adaptor," Data reported, "All of the warp power passed through the adaptor. For this to work, we only need approximately 32% of the power to keep a phase cloak intact."
"Okay," La Forge said, thinking hard, "but we knew that already."
"Yes," Data confirmed, "however, I do not believe we can accurately control the amount of power being diverted from the warp core without a special regulator."
"Yeah," La Forge said, visualizing something, "I see where the anti-matter could give us problems. But other than that, the test went okay?"
"That is correct," Data said.
"Good," Geordi said, "Chief O'Brien, Commander Dax, find something that will prevent more than 30% of the warp power from flowing into the phase adaptor. The rest of you, let's start programming."
"Geordi," Data said, "may I remind you that we cannot resume work on the project until main power is restored. May I suggest that all of you get some rest now; I can coordinate some of our less experienced engineers in this repair effort. It would beneficial if everyone got some rest."
"Sounds good to me," Chief O'Brien said, "I'm starving."
For the first time in days, Geordi laughed, "Alright, that sounds good, Data. I think we could all use a good six hours." Then he glanced at Data, "Well, almost all of us. We'll reconvene here at 08:00?"
"Sounds good, Commander," Dax replied and the tired engineers walked out of the engine room.