Thanks so much to KrazyKatKrueger1428, whose multiple reviews were a great encouragement in writing this part!


Star Trek: Final Hour

The Doctor waited for exactly 5:00:00 hours before attempting to reactivate himself via the internal systems set up years before by Admiral Janeway and her crew. Not a standard feature on any starship, it evidently was not yet common knowledge. The Doctor supposed that everyone assumed the mobile emitter granted him freedom of activation.

He first utilized sickbay's interior scanners to determine that no other individuals were present in the sickbay. He didn't want to be caught by the hijackers again. It had been years since someone had tried to turn him off forcibly! The utter audacity of it!

As his holomatrix shimmered into resolution once again, he glanced around the darkened sickbay; vacant, he noted with relief. Hopefully the hijackers would not detect the subtle rerouting of power that activated his programming. If they did, he was doomed for sure.

He suddenly spotted a few crushed pieces of metal on the floor of the sickbay. Curious, he leaned closer.

A sudden pounding of dismay flickered through his holographic matrix. The mobile emitter had been destroyed! With that gone, his one advantage that might give him some capability of resistance against the hijackers had vanished.

He stood once more and looked around a sickbay that seemed colder and more forbidding than a Hirogen prison cell.


The conference room on board the Enterprise- E was larger, but since the flagship of the Federation had sustained damage from Borg attacks, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, hero of the Federation, beamed over to Admiral Janeway's ship. It was a meeting of legends. One for his tenacity and dedication to the Federation's cause, the other for her groundbreaking work in the Delta Quadrant and against the Borg.

However, at the moment, both officers seemed merely weary.

Kathryn settled into the most comfortable chair in the Leonardo's conference chamber, cradling a mug of coffee protectively in both hands. Picard, his uniform smudged by a few slight burns and rips in the fabric, took a seat opposite her. With him he had brought the white-skinned android Data, eight hundred quadrillion bits worth of computing power packed into a man-facsimile shape. Kathryn had invited Tuvok and Annika to join her side of the table, bringing her tactical and Borg expertise to the field.

"Captain," Kathryn began at once, feeling a heavy load settle on her shoulders. She brought the fingers of her left hand up to massage her temples. "It has been a long few days, so you'll excuse me if I skip the formalities. Commander Tuvok and Annika Hansen," she indicated her companions.

The aging captain gave them both a firm nod and leaned forward, steepling his fingers as he did so. "I'm very glad to find you here, Admiral. There were some of us who were afraid you had fallen in the coup, or worse, sided with the extremists." His voice was gruff but somehow not unpleasant.

"As I am glad to find you, Captain," Kathryn returned. "Again, excuse my forthrightedness, but you mentioned a Borg invasion?"

"Indeed," Picard said with a hint of anger lurking beneath his tone. His capture and transformation into Locutus were common knowledge among the peoples of the Federation, and Kathryn found herself amazed he did not seem even more furious than he was. "Mr. Data?"

The android stood and moved to the wall display screen. Inserting a data card, he rapidly punched a sequence of keys, and a frozen starfield was displayed. He turned back to the occupants of the table. "This is the visuals recorded by the Enterprise's sensors, augmented by audio data from communications. This is four days ago." He looked at the screen. "Computer, play recording."

For several seconds there was only silence. Then, a beeping noise sounded in the background. Picard's voice spoke.

"Ensign, what is it?"

Another unfamiliar voice sounded. "Vessels approaching at high warp, sir. Configuration suggests Borg starships, sir."

"Red alert! All hands to battle stations!"

The familiar whooping of the alarms sounded in the background noise.

The ensign's voice emerged above the hubbub of the bridge. "Sir, all but one of the Borg ships have altered course. They're heading towards the Neutral Zone outposts."

"What about the last one, ensign?"

"Still on course for our position, sir."

"Very well." A pause. "Set phasers to rotating frequencies and ready quantum torpedoes. Shields to full. Aim for their engines."

"Firing range in three, two-"

The rest of the sentence was cut off by a blue burst of fire from the rapidly swelling image of the Borg vessel on the screen. It was an irregular oblong vessel with two prongs out to the side, one much smaller than the other.

The display vanished in fire.

Data flicked off the screen. "We managed to damage their engines and escape. We have been attempting to make contact with various Federation forces during our escape."

Picard resumed the floor. "Six Neutral Zone outposts have been wiped out, and over twenty ships have vanished from their assigned patrol sectors. It has all the characteristics of a scouting assault, preparing the way for an actual invasion."

Kathryn blinked several times. "What about the rest of the Federation that aligned itself with the extremists?"

Picard glowered at the mention of the traitorous faction. "They have taken fewer losses so far, but only because more outlying worlds have refused to bow to them. Once the invasion progresses, they will be hit hard."

Tuvok raised one black eyebrow. "What about the Klingons and Romulans?" he asked pointedly. "Are they facing a similar threat?"

"The Borg seek to subdue the Federation," Annika broke in with her solemn voice. "You- we- are an irritant to them, a nuisance that has taken far greater time than it should have to be eradicated. This must be corrected, in the Borg's minds."

Tuvok glanced at Annika. "We can suppose at least one thing from this information: that the Borg have indeed created a new Queen for themselves. Otherwise, there would be no impetus to attack, or indeed to do anything."

"This is so," Picard agreed.

Kathryn groaned. "There are far too many problems to confront already. I didn't need a Borg invasion to top it all off."

"To what do you refer?" Data asked.

Kathryn blinked again. They hadn't heard? "Perhaps the information hadn't reached your ship yet," she said, turning to Tuvok. "Call up the data logs from the U.S.S. Odin."

Again, Kathryn watched the data scroll by, accompanied by the last panicked transmissions of the doomed vessel. When the reams of information had ceased to appear on the screen, Picard turned back to the table, face drawn and looking more weary than ever.

"What does this mean? Species 8472 also wishes to destroy us?"

"We don't know anything, as yet," Kathryn said. "We suspect, though the prospect is gruesome, that the Borg have learned how to assimilate Species 8472 and adapt their biology to theirs."

Data's eyes flickered. "That would be a significant advantage for the Borg."

"If that's true," Picard continued, his tone both horrified and fascinated at the same time, "they could destroy all of us without any resistance."

"But," Tuvok interjected, "I must point out that the Borg vessel you encountered, Captain Picard, was not augmented by Species 8472 biology. This seems to be a contradiction."

"One we're going to have to solve later," Kathryn said with finality. "I'd like to get moving. We can't sit this close to the invasion front for long."

Her communicator beeped at her. Stifling a sigh, she tapped and said, "Janeway here."

"Admiral, get out here now," Chakotay's taut voice came through the badge, tinny and small. "There's a Borg ship bearing rapidly on our position."


"Report," Kathryn said when she and the four others arrived on Leonardo's bridge. The red lights of battle illumination already bathed the round chamber. Chakotay stood as she approached the center chair.

"There's no chance of evading it now, Admiral," he said, glancing at the viewscreen and the rapidly swelling dot that represented the Borg ship. "It's traveling at approximately warp factor 9.895."

"That is considerably faster than any Starfleet vessel in the quadrant," Data noted with some surprise in his eyes.

"Are our weapons online?" Kathryn asked as she sat in the Captain's seat.

Tuvok glanced at his board. "Torpedoes are ready, but phasers are not active or powered."

"We'll make do, then," Kathryn decided grimly. "Tom, prepare for evasive pattern Sigma-5, but wait for my order."

"Aye, aye, Admiral," Tom replied tightly.

The Borg vessel began to take shape in the main viewscreen.

"Admiral, have you warned the Enterprise?" Picard asked.

It was Chakotay who answered. "We told them as soon as we detected it. They're remaining in rear guard position for now."

"I'm sorry, but we can't drop shields to beam you over, Captain," Kathryn said to Picard. "You'll have to wait the battle out with us."

The Borg ship was a cube, a massive equally distributed chunk of circuits and dark metal, with no obvious means of propulsion and no obvious weapons emplacements. Its promise of certain destruction coupled with the seeming innocuousness was a bizarre contradiction.

The cube slowed as if hitting a patch of thick mud when it drew near enough to the two Federation ships to loom like a titan over them. For several seconds, all was silent except for the hoarse breathing of the bridge crew.

"We are Borg," a multilayered voice announced from the bridge communications system. "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."

"Like hell it is," Kathryn whispered, though she knew the Borg ship would not bother to listen to her retort. She raised her voice. "All weapons; fire!"


Admiral Burke was sitting brooding in Voyager's ready room when the news arrived. The new Council had not seen fit to release any new crew or materials to them, and so, Voyager sat languishing in outer Earth orbit, undercrewed and underprovisioned, while the new leaders rearranged their empire.

The stars had always fascinated him. It had seemed to him in his youth that each one was pure, crystal clear, and untainted. To discover that they were not, and what a loose, indecisive organization like the Federation was doing to them, was a huge disappointment to him. Nevertheless, he had fought his way up through the Starfleet ranks in an effort to change all of that. Now, he was.

He frowned at the viewports. The thick layers of glass distorted the stars slightly with reflections around their edges. It was an unsettling thought, but he did not know what to make of it.

The door sounded its entry chime.

"Come," he called, turning to stand and straightening his uniform.

The door hissed open and Commander Shelby stepped through, face grim. Burke hoped that it wasn't another episode like that hesitation over the Destiny's destruction. They couldn't afford to hesitate, not know.

"What is it, Commander?" Burke asked impatiently. He saw that she was holding a PADD and reached for it.

She extended it to him. "We have something of a situation, Admiral," she said.

Burke looked down at the device. A stream of reports in small print raced by on the screen, and he slowed them down, glancing briefly at a synopsis of each one. At each one, his face grew darker.

"The Borg again?" he finally growled, handing the PADD back to Shelby.

"I'm afraid so, sir," Shelby said. "The Council is mobilizing whatever remains of the main fleet to go after the invaders. They'd like Voyager to be in the vanguard."

Burke's lips curved into a thin smile. This was going to be fun.


To all readers, I will be out of the country on a school trip and unable to update for about 10-12 days. Keep the reviews coming, and I'll update as soon as I can after returning! Thanks go to: Daydream Omega, SuperSanne, Dan Halliwell, Little Janeway, and KrazyKatKrueger1428.

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