Episode Number: 7×15
Written by: Jon Crew
Directed by: Jon Crew
Transmission: 8th August 2026
Guest Stars:
- Chief Boatswain’s Mate Arag Qoht: Lexington’s Bolian head of the Deck Department.
- Boatswain’s Mate William Briggs: Member of the Deck Department.
- Crewman Belades Qoht: Member of the Deck Department.
Battling a Borg incursion was something I hoped I would never have to do. It appears they have managed to gain a foothold in the disused starboard extremity of the primary hull, which raises interesting questions about the huge cruciform structure outside.
Captain’s Log: Stardate, 52476.2
Plot: The crew battle a Borg incursion.
The ‘A’ Plot: On the bridge, Commodore Konin responds to Azonan’s discovery by ordering the crew to general quarters. He also orders security and boarding defence teams to the location of the incursion, before grabbing a phaser rifle and a tactical waistcoat to join them. He leaves the conn in the hands of Quinn, while Boone coordinates defence from the tactical station.
Meanwhile, Azonan manages to reopen the door, but the unfortunate security crewman is nowhere to be seen. Ordering the rest of his squad to be ready to prevent any Borg from emerging from the space beyond, he and one officer venture through the doorway. On the other side is a maze of small storage rooms and corridors, all with their doors forced open. He sees something small skitter across the ceiling and recognises it as a Cardassian vole. It appears to have been assimilated, covered in metal implants.
After checking some rooms, he finds a humanoid drone putting the apparently unconscious guard into a regeneration alcove. Rather than use his phaser and risk the Borg adapting, he pulls his ushaan from his belt and charges. As he closes, he recognises the drone – Belades Qoht, of the deck department – and changes tactic, knocking her out with the flat of his blade. The security officer at the door suddenly screams, as two voles attack him, one injecting him with nanoprobes. Azonan is forced to call for help getting the three unresponsive crew members out so they can receive medical assistance.
Konin soon arrives in the area with reinforcements and sets up a headquarters in recreation room 3, where Doctor Conners also establishes a triage centre. He begins planning an expedition to locate the epicentre of the Borg presence.
On the bridge, Selvek notices movement on the massive cruciform structure outside. He displays a close-up of the tip of one of the arms on the main viewscreen, showing that cables and beams are moving and reforming, seemingly of their own volition. The arm itself is slowly getting shorter and thicker. Quinn reports this to Konin, noting that this seems to match observations by the Enterprise crew during their first encounter with a Borg cube. Selvek suggests that this may be an unknown type of Borg vessel.
After some discussion, Konin decides the giant structure should be destroyed. While photon torpedoes would be effective if used, it would take many of them to ensure it could not regenerate, but using the quantum singularity in the sphere recovered from the battlefield would be much more efficient. There is some debate over the exact tactics, but eventually he orders Quinn to “fire” the sphere at the structure, using a photon torpedo to breach the casing as it arrives at the target.
With the structure of the presumed Borg ship now visibly shifting, Boone uses the tractor beam to manoeuvre the sphere towards it. The sphere has a high inertia and moves slowly once released, taking a full minute to reach its target. At the last moment, Boone fires a torpedo at it, then the conn officer takes the ship to maximum warp to escape the area of effect.
Unfortunately, the results are more powerful than they had anticipated, and a shockwave hits them. The warp field collapses and the ship coasts back to lightspeed, with no power, and everyone aboard unconscious.
Quinn awakes on the bridge, and checks the others for injuries, but there is nothing serious. The biggest problem is that they have no power, except emergency reserves running life support, and no communications. Intending to order that repair priority should be given to communications and sensors, he sends an overenthusiastic ensign down to engineering, then sends Boone after him to convey the actual orders.
Konin wakes up to the sound of screams and weapons fire. He gathers support from Azonan’s group and the boarding defence teams, then heads into the corridor, where defenders are trying to hold the line against a horde of voles and one tactical drone. The Borg have already adapted to their phasers, so Konin orders them to recalibrate their weapons and use physical weapons where possible.
He clubs one vole with a phaser rifle butt, successfully killing it. Azonan blasts a hole in a wall in the hopes of killing one or more with shrapnel; unfortunately, he hits an EPS conduit due to a lack of familiarity with this part of the ship. The resulting plasma fire kills many vole drones, but prevents transit along the corridor. Another vole emerges from a Jefferies tube hatch behind them, and Azonan kicks it into the fire before it is able to attack anyone.
The tactical drone is equipped with an energy weapon and fires back, just missing Konin. Again this drone looks familiar, so Azonan advises they should capture it. While the others keep its attention, he drops back to use the Jefferies tube to bypass the fire, but encounters an assimilated vole within, which he is forced to shoot. He emerges from the tube behind the tactical drone and clubs it into unconsciousness. It turns out to be the missing Boatswain’s Mate Briggs, and pausing only to step on another vole, he brings him back through the Jefferies tube.
Azonan then shuts off the plasma stream before the fire causes too much damage, and they advance into the rooms beyond. They find the Borg outpost in the vicinity of the alcove Azonan discovered earlier and are forced to dispatch four more drones before they can begin dismantling the Borg machinery. Konin organises squads to hunt down the assimilated voles and locate Raynor’s team. The security chief is found with members of his team barricaded within a defensible room, surrounded by the remains of a horde of voles.
Later, once repairs are complete, Conners reports that she is confident the assimilated crew can be rehabilitated. Investigations show that the Borg nanoprobes got on to the ship when wreckage from the battlefield was brought aboard. They were able to get into the computer systems, then found a quiet location to build their stronghold. The voles were assimilated first, providing mobility and the ability to assimilate humanoids as full drones. Azonan notes that he and A’Mathi are going to have to check the whole ship again.
Selvek suggests that the cross structure was originally a Borg cube that fought the black sphere ships. He theorises that the Borg won, but another entity – probably Q given the proximity to the Endurance Divide – took an interest and twisted the cube into its odd shape, perhaps not realising that the Borg would have ultimately regenerated even from that. It is most likely that the Orion pleasure barge was caught in the crossfire. He estimates that the whole series of events took place three to four months ago.
Observations: Security contingents aboard most Starfleet vessels are small, so they train other members of the crew in repelling boarders. The majority of the boarding defence teams involved here are from the deck department.
Dialogue: Azonan: “They’ve assimilated voles??”
References: The regeneration of the cross-shaped ship resembles the regeneration of the damaged Borg cube from “Q Who”.
Questions: Who were the creators and users of the black globe ships? What were Orions doing this far out? And who intervened in the battle?