Star Trek Hunter
Episode 28: The Covenant
Scene 1: Collective Renaissance
28.1
Collective Renaissance
"We are the borg. Cease fire and return to your home system or you will be assimilated. You have one minute to comply."
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The borg had not issued any communication at all to their antagonists in years – they had just been fighting it out with and running from one former victim after another – enemies energized by the borgs' sudden vulnerability, their lack of cohesion and their apparent inability to make decisions. The great collective of voices that had terrorized 10,000 civilizations throughout the Milky Way Galaxy had suddenly fallen silent and in an instant, instead of an unstoppable force, the borg had become a withering people, their mighty ships easy prey for determined looters and vengeful enemies once decimated by this formerly undefeatable foe.
Throughout the Milky Way, tens of thousands of ships were attacking the few thousand remaining borg cubes when those cubes suddenly came alive – their shields came back up, their ships began repairing themselves. Of the thousands of ships carrying hundreds of thousands of pirates and hardened warriors from nearly a thousand different species, no more than 30 crews took advantage of the single minute they were given to turn tail and flee from a newly re-energized collective.
As soon as that minute passed, every ship attacking a borg vessel fell silent. Their crews were taken in the blink of an eye onto the borg cubes and made borg in a process far more inexorable than ever before. Individual pirates and warriors were not chased down by borg drones and injected with nanites – the nanites were simply beamed directly into the blood stream of everyone on board every enemy vessel at once and they were fully assimilated by the time they were beamed over to the nearest cube.
Then began the slightly slower process of the borg drawing in each of their adversaries' ships to be cannibalized for parts to repair the dilapidated giant cubes. Each cube moved toward the ships that had been attacking – thousands of ships of every description began apparently disassembling themselves into component structures, which in turn began streaming toward the borg cubes. Hull plating, engine nacelles, large structural beams, tiny rivets, even the gasses and drive plasma streamed in component parts, continuing to further disassemble as the pieces were drawn into the borg cubes as if by giant vacuum cleaners in space. Each ship that had been on the attack only minutes before was fully disassembled by the time its parts reached the nearest borg cube.
At the same time, each cube could be seen repairing itself. Hull plating that had been crumpled for decades, now straightened itself out into smooth, flat plating as if it were being ironed from the inside.
A new, singular will was uniting the borg and driving them. He had transported from the lavardorn, Minerva, onto the borg cube that she was floating inside, there to unite directly with the borg. They were not assimilating him. He was assimilating them.
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Inside Minerva, the remaining companions of the new borg king were planning. He was able to hear them and speak to them through the emancipated borg drone, 3rd of 5, known affectionately as 'Hugh.'
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"Even with every borg cube in the galaxy and assuming we can double their numbers over the next hundred years and maintain exponential growth following that, we still have no chance of repairing enough of the Hulk to protect the entire Alpha Quadrant from the gamma wave front," said Rear Admiral Sarekson Carrera, Director of Star Fleet Temporal Command. "But we don't really need to protect a lot of empty space," he continued. "What we need to protect is life environments and trade routes. It will take nothing short of a nightmarish amount of math to calculate which parts of the Hulk must be repaired and in what order so that every star system with life or potential for life is protected from the gamma wave front."
"The borg can do the math," said Hugh, speaking both for himself and for the new borg king. "We just need the raw data. The location of star systems that need protection. The location of the trade routes that must be protected. And the location and vector of the approaching gamma wave fronts."
"But we don't have all of that information," Old Man Crusher objected. "Trade routes will need to be negotiated."
"More importantly, we are far from having visited all of the star systems in the Alpha Quadrant," objected Dr. Mlady. "Your people are only now beginning to map the locations of brown and red dwarf systems and we now know those systems can support life. The Federation is only now beginning to exploit some of these environments for colonization."
"Minerva is pregnant," said the blue avatar.
"Well, that was a bit of a non-sequitur," Dr. Tali Shae observed.
"Not entirely," the avatar replied. "She was impregnated before her pod sent her here from the Whale Galaxy. Their purpose in sending her here was to create a pod within this galaxy. Her partnership with us serves her purpose to create an environment for the pod she will give birth to. Over the next thirty years, she will birth about 200 pups. Each pup will need about 20 years to mature to the point of being able to physically support a small crew like yourselves – no more than three at first."
"Will they be, as Minerva is, impervious to gamma radiation?" asked Dr. Carrera.
"It will take each pup about a hundred years to grow skin thick enough to withstand the gamma wave front," said the avatar, "but as you know, Minerva obtains energy by resting in the corona of a star. Once their skin is thick enough, her pups will be able to do the same."
"200 teams of scientists, traveling at the speeds that Minerva is capable of," mused alien Bob, "they could map the entire Alpha quadrant and then map the gamma wave front."
"All we need now is enough borg to repair the Hulk," said Dr. Carrera.
Hugh spoke up: "King Prometheus says he has a plan for that. But you're probably not going to like it…"
28.1
