[ Act One ]

Everything was dark, and his right side was hurting like hell. Jeffrey let out a pained groan as he struggled to move while slowly regaining consciousness. As he tried to move, something felt off. Strange. Wrong. But he couldn’t tell what it was. He struggled some more, eventually managing to fight through the pain and disorientation enough to open his eyes. The dark-skinned Human blinked, his blue eyes wandering about and trying to focus.

Junior Lieutenant Brassfield couldn’t see any lights, but everything was still bright. He saw some dark figures leaning over him but couldn’t make out their details against the contrast of the ceiling. “Please…” He tried to speak, his throat, mouth, and lips so dry every word hurt him. “Pain…” Jeffrey had barely spoken those words, and the figures reacted instantly. They didn’t speak, and a second later he felt a hypospray pressed against his neck. The injection raced into his blood, and the pain permeating his right side gradually faded away. “Thank… you…” He mumbled as he relaxed.

A group of people responded, a gentle choir speaking in unison. Their voices mixed together perfectly, but still he could make out one powerful female voice who seemed to lead the choir. “Don’t be afraid. You are safe now. Your injuries are severe, but we are confident you will survive and eventually recover.” He felt a caring and soothing caress on his left cheek, soft fingers brushing against his skin.

One figure leaned above his head again, its face moving closer and closer as a dermal regenerator was applied to the side of his head. As the person treated his severely burnt and irritated skin, slowly Jeffrey’s vision started to clear. The formless figure gradually sharpened into a humanoid shape, then the shadow of a head cleared and revealed the blurry face and forehead ridges of a female Klingon.

Jeffrey smiled softly, wondering where he was and why a Klingon was treating him. He started to form his thoughts into words, as his vision kept clearing up some more. “Where am…” But he failed to complete his question, when the last fog left his eyes. He could now clearly see the cybernetic attachment on the Klingon’s face, and the wires and tubes implanted into the side of her head. Borg. His smile froze in an instant, and in the blink of an eye, an abyss of blind panic swallowed him whole.

He screamed and started to thrash his arm around in unrelenting despair. His muscular frame struggled, and somehow his fear gave him enough strength to roll off the biobed. Out of habit he tried to catch himself with his right arm, but it just didn’t follow his mental commands. Jeffrey hit the ground with full force, the impact knocking the air out of his lungs. As he struggled to regain his breath and footing, searing pain shot into his right shoulder.

As the adrenalin was pumping into his systems, and the blood was rushing in his ears, he looked at his unresponsive arm. He stared at a stump and a badly tattered and burnt Starfleet uniform. His arm wasn’t there. It was gone. His heart was going a mile a minute, and the terrifying recordings of assimilation victims flashed in his mind. They must have removed his arm to make space for some cybernetic tool! He was in the process of being assimilated! It was probably only a matter of minutes now, before he would be enslaved by the Collective.

Again, he heard the voices speak, but this time couldn’t make out their words. And he didn’t care. In sheer terror he looked around, like a cornered animal desperately searching for a way out. One cyborg approached him from his left, but before he had reached him, Jeffrey jumped forwards and rammed into the humanoid with his left shoulder with all his might. The cyborg let out surprised shout, before being rushed off his feet and landing on his butt.

The pain and hopelessness of his situation drove him deeper into his panic. “NOOOO! NOOOOOOOO! I’LL NEVER GIVE UP! I’LL FIGHT YOU!” He screamed, blindly thrashing his arm against anyone who dared to approach. Step by step, he got away from the biobed and moved into the open space of a completely foreign medical facility. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were sealed with dull light gray metal panels, and on the far end of the room there was an open door.

Dozens of rotating biobeds were lined against the walls of the complex, with all kinds of medical and laboratory equipment placed on tables in the room’s center. Half a dozen of the other biobeds were occupied, each with a handful of Borg standing around them and medical devices on flexible segmented tentacles descending from openings in the otherwise flawlessly smooth ceiling.

Everyone was looking at him in surprise, irritation, and pity. On the nearest bed Jeffrey saw an unconscious Tellarite, his head turned sideways. He recognized him. It was Xoth, the only Tellarite on the Sidereal and often his Team Velocity buddy. He then saw through a medical force field that Xoth’s back had been opened to expose his spine, and several metallic bars were injected between the Tellarite’s vertebrae.

Jeffrey let out an enraged, pained, scream. One of his friends was being assimilated, but he knew he couldn’t help him. The helplessness and powerlessness felt like a dagger being twisted in his chest. Tears of despair and rage filled his eyes, blurring his vision. He stumbled around, staggering towards the exit, the pain in his side and shoulder flaring up again. He desperately tried to put as much distance as possible between him and them.

Suddenly an armored figure appeared in the door’s frame. She was almost a full head shorter than Jeffrey, but the armor gave her more than enough bulk to easily stop him dead in his tracks. He hesitated for a second, arguing with himself whether to charge at her. But this moment of hesitation was enough for the woman with the blue-white strands in her hair to draw her rifle and fire at him.

The rifle’s emitter flared up, and a pale stream of ripples streaked from the weapon towards him. The beam struck him right in the chest, effortlessly rushing him off his feet with overwhelming power. Jeffrey hit the ground hard, and desperately tried to fight against the invisible force pressing him down. He screamed and struggled, thrashed and shook, all to no avail. Eventually he was getting tired, exhausted. The rush of the adrenaline from his initial shock started to fade, and the pain from his wounds threatened to take over.

Jeffrey fell silent and stopped struggling, resigning himself to his presumed fate. His fight for survival had just turned to helpless resignation. He started to sob and cry, waiting for the moment he was picked up and assimilation tubules were driven into his body to flood his blood with millions of nanoprobes and turn him into a drone. But that moment never happened. Instead there was a bright blueish-white flash of light, and a familiar voice called out his name. “Jeffrey! What happened? Turn that thing off!”

The Junior Lieutenant saw his CO rushing towards him and drop to her knees at his side. Instantly the force holding him down disappeared. “Jeffrey! Jeffrey please talk to me. Are you okay? What happened?” She grasped for his left hand, firmly squeezing his fingers. He stared at her, looking up at her as she leaned over him, her face full of worries. Why was she so calm? They were in a room full of Borg! He had seen them assimilate his friend! What was going on?

“Captain… I… I don’t understand…” His throat was still dry and sore. He looked around in confusion, seeing more of those cyborgs approaching. Even the armored girl now stood next to him, casually holding her rifle at her side with one hand and watching him with a look of disapproval and dignified annoyance. His mind was reeling under the onslaught of all those things that didn’t seem to make any sense.

“It’s okay Jeffrey. It’s okay. Calm down. You’re safe.” Sina said softly and smiled at her completely confused friend. “You don’t need to be afraid, these people are helping us.”

“But… my arm… and Xoth! I saw them assimilate him…” He stuttered in confusion.

“Jeffrey…” The Romulan spoke while shaking her head slightly. “You’ve lost your arm to heavy plasma burns. You were standing right next to a plasma relay when our EPS grid blew up. You were lucky that Shori was nearby and managed to drag you out of the flames. And Xoth… he fell off a lift in the hangar deck. He fractured his backbone and got his spinal cord severely damaged in several places. There are a few more of us here that were critically wounded during our accident. These people are helping us. They saved our lives.”

“But… but they look like…” Jeffrey mumbled, still trying to salvage what was left of his shattered worldview.

“I know, but they are not what you think they are. Don’t let their appearance deceive you. They are not our enemies.” Sina replied, looking at him genuinely. “I know how difficult this must be to accept right now, but please let them help you. It will take some time, but you will recover. And they’ve promised not to use any nanites on us. You’ll be fine Jeffrey. Please trust me.”

By now the Klingon woman whose appearance had initially sparked his reaction had also approached, looking at him with an expression of confusion and concern, and sadness. “I am sorry for scaring you.” She said. He recognized her voice as the one leading the choir before. “It was not my intention to disturb you. If you wish, another medical adjunct will continue your treatment.”

Jeffrey looked up at her, then back at his commanding officer. His eyes traveled back and forth a couple times, before he nodded at Sina. “I… I trust you, captain.” The dryness of his throat was making talking difficult for him, but he managed. He looked at the Klingon again and softly shook his head. “No, I’ll be fine…” His heart had stopped thundering in his chest by now, but his clothes were soaked with sweat from the sudden exertion and pain.

The medical adjunct nodded and with a wordless gesture summoned a tentacle extending down from a new opening in the ceiling. The tip of the segmented tendril was covered with a small tractor beam emitter, which pointed at Jeffrey and began to glow softly. Immediately the wounded Human felt weightless and was lifted gently off the ground.

With care and precision, the Klingon woman guided the tentacle, and carried him back to the biobed from which he had escaped several minutes ago. The tractor beam disengaged, and after he was placed again on the biobed the tentacle disappeared seamlessly into the ceiling again.

From outside his vision she produced a device that looked like a respiratory mask. “Don’t be afraid. This is a simple medical humidifier to re-moisturize your oral mucosa and throat tissue. It will not perform any other function. Do you wish me to apply this device?” She looked at Jeffrey in expectation of an answer, and when he simply nodded, she expertly fastened the mask over his mouth.

Sina and Hiora had followed the wounded counselor back to his biobed but were standing a few steps to the side. They watched how the medical adjunct continued with treating his burns, trying to stimulate cell recovery in the almost destroyed tissue. It would be a long and painful process until, if ever, Jeffrey’s arm could be restored.

The Romulan looked at [email protected] and sighed. “This could have gone better.”

“Why? His recovery has not been jeopardized, nor has he inflicted any damage or additional injury on himself or anyone else. He is now also at least partially aware of the situation, so further hostilities are not to be expected.”

“Yes, but it would have been better if he had not woken up like this. I’m sure the others would react similarly.” Sina slowly rubbed the ridge above her eyes and wondered. “Perhaps it would be best for everyone if the others were kept anesthetized until their condition has improved enough to release them from sickbay. This way we could explain the situation to them without scaring them to death.”

Hiora looked at the Commander, then nodded after a short delay. “Done. I’ve relayed your request to all medical adjuncts. We agree with your assessment. You’ll be informed when any member of your crew is ready to leave the medical facility, so you can organize the handover.”

“Thank you.”

Sina looked back at Jeffrey and sighed again. She returned one last time to his biobed, trying not to get in the medics’ way. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go now. Their leader is arriving soon, and I still need to prepare some things for the meeting. But I promise I’ll come back, okay? You stay here and follow the doctors’ orders.” Her gaze softened, and she smiled gently at her crew member. “I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

“Aye, captain.” Jeffrey replied, his voice muffled by the mask and sounding exhausted. “How… how many made… it…?”

His question took her a bit off guard, and her expression saddened. “We’re sixty-eight in total. We had fourteen casualties when the Sidereal’s structural integrity failed.” He closed his eyes and nodded weakly. “But don’t you worry about that now. You take care of your own recovery first. You should be able to leave in a few days, but they want to make sure there is no residual radiation damage.”

He nodded weakly, acknowledging his CO’s remark. Three weeks before his 39th birthday. And here he was. Jeffrey silently wondered who the casualties were, and how the rest of the crew was doing. While the Klingon medic silently went on with his treatment, he was still struggling to come to terms with what he’d just been told. His mind was racing with countless questions, and he hoped that the doctors here would be willing to answer at least a few of them.

Sina squeezed his hand one more time, then let go and stepped away from the biobed. “Hiora, could you please transport me back to the cargo bay?” The Romulan asked politely. Hiora simply nodded, and a few moments later both disappeared into a bright blue-white flash engulfing a quickly dissolving pitch black maw. They were gone in the blink of an eye.

[ Act Two ]

[email protected] stood in her private atelier. The noticeable more than two meters tall Xalagani held the palette with her right hand, her slender fingers wrapping around the grip, while her left hand directed the over half a meter-long brush with delicate accuracy. Chromatic meta-sculpting had become one of Chiaxi’s favorite past times, combining exercises of patience, body control, creativity, relaxation, and artistic sense into a singular discipline.

And it had turned out that the simple act of performing this art had garnered an immense number of followers amongst the hive-mind. Dozens of trillions of her people connected and enjoyed the peace and serenity of the Matriarch painting her sculpture. It always filled her with joy to feel how many members of her empire watched her and drew peace and relaxation from her performance.

She often wished she could do this more regularly, because she knew that still many parts of the galaxy were troubled with disaster or conflict. But for now, was happy to feel the torrent of minds inhabiting her body, sharing this peaceful moment of recreation with her.

She carefully guided the brush towards the silver speckled purple column on the right side of the abstract sculpture. Slowly touching the bristles holding the meta-stable color against the material, she smiled as the matter reacted with the sculpture and she painted another branch into thin air, this time in a deep red streaked with bright golden veins.

Chiaxi was quite satisfied with how the sculpture was coming along. Chromatic meta-sculpting was as much instinct and chance as it was knowledge and ability. She’d been working on it regularly for the last four and a half years, gradually refining its structure, composition, colors, and texture. With each session, the work of art became more enjoyable, and more of her subjects enjoyed watching her.

She felt a slight shift in the hive-mind’s general attention. There was a minor emergency, with an unknown vessel being in distress. Sphere 272-Theta-8 had detected a critically damaged vessel and was rendering aid. That was no extraordinary event, and she was proud of the ship’s crew reacting so quickly to the situation. The Matriarch dragged the brush through the glob of pitch-black color on her palette and focused her three bright blue cybernetic eyes on a different part of the sculpture.

Slowly walking around the art work to get a better angle, Chiaxi’s bright orange-yellow skin and its purple patterns seemed to almost glow in the bright illumination of her studio. As she walked, the crown of carefully entwined black and blue tendrils growing from her head swayed gently with her steps. The cybernetically enhanced tentacles moved slowly on their own account, taking care to stay clear of any obstacles and not hinder their owner.

As she gently painted another branch of the sculpture a few minutes later, she noticed how the hive-mind shifted more and more towards Sphere 272-Theta-8. A regular rescue operation shouldn’t cause such a rush of attention, so she decided to listen in to the collective thoughts of her people. She carefully placed the palette and brush on the nearby working bench and reached out to the ship.

She listened to the thousands of voices onboard the sphere think, speak, and work as one. The vessel had already transported a damage control team to the other ship. She looked at the sensor information of the distressed vessel and caught her breath in shock. The configuration was familiar, but it could not be. [email protected] was looking at the tattered and torn hull of a Federation Starfleet Akira class vessel, and a single thought raced through her mind.

Impossible!

But the reality of the situation defied her thoughts, and the Matriarch’s curiosity quickly overcame her surprise. She investigated the details of the contact, and then decided to share the body of the sphere’s Primary Engineering Adjunct who was leading the rescue team. Her consciousness raced across the galaxy and manifested itself in the body of [email protected] as he was speaking to the stranded ship’s crew about their wounded.

She immediately received an update of her host’s memories from the past few minutes and smiled at his unconventional approach to defuse this critical situation. The Matriarch was proud that her engineer had managed to successfully navigate this unknown and dangerous situation. But her suspicion was now confirmed. Somehow a Federation Starfleet vessel had crossed into this reality.

But how they had managed and what their motivation was, was currently unknown. The condition of their ship made it seem as if it was either an accident, or the result of an attack. This whole incident was most curious, and she decided to personally intervene in this most unusual situation.

She reached out to the hive-mind and spoke with her melodic voice, and uncountable trillions of thoughts fell silent to listen to her. [I know their vessel, and I know their uniforms. They do not belong here. I will arrive shortly. Until then, make sure no harm comes to them. Treat them as guests and provide all support they need. They are harbingers from the darkest past of our people.]

A moment later Chiaxi’s thoughts reached out to the crew of her flagship to set course to the location of Sphere 272-Theta-8 at maximum velocity. Hundreds of thousands of voices acknowledged her request. The enormous tetrahedral ship with five-kilometer-long edges and silvery-gray regenerative armor turned on the spot, before falling into a subspace slipstream tunnel.

It immediately became engulfed by a fractal stream of blackness and streaks of light, racing towards the Alpha Quadrant at 1,000 lightyears per hour.

[Time to intercept: thirty-three hours twelve minutes eighteen seconds.]

With a simple thought the Matriarch conjured a holographic projection in front of her, showing the contents of hangar bay nine. An antiquity preserved from 1,454 years ago. With a depressed look, [email protected] gazed upon the image of the assimilated vessel. The rigid Borg plating and modifications tarnished the smooth grayish-white curves, and the eerie green lights cast hard shadows across the hull. With sadness in her voice she whispered, as if the ancient ship could hear her. “Finally, your ghost returns to haunt us.” Her eyes mournfully read the letters of its registry number: NCC-1701-E.

Chiaxi dismissed the projection and cleared her thoughts. In the silence of her own mind she contemplated the influence this unlikely group of castaways would bring to her empire, and the whole galaxy. The Matriarch could only hope that they would accept their situation gracefully, and hopefully become a part of one the galactic civilizations in this reality. She would hate if they were to become antagonistic or even hostile.

Not even an hour had passed when Tarik’s new discovery suddenly sent ripples through the hive-mind. He had discovered that all survivors as well as their ship - down to the last oxygen atom in her artificial atmosphere - possessed a completely different quantum signature. The impossibility of this fact sparked shock waves of discussions and questions throughout the Synergy, and the unexpected visitors became even more mysterious.

The news of the newcomer’s deviating quantum signature took all astrophysicists, subspace engineers, and temporal mechanics by storm. Data from Tarik’s visor and recordings of Sphere 272-Theta-8’s sensors flooded the hive-mind and generated a constant buzz of interaction and activity at a level the Synergy hadn’t seen in years.

The empire’s brightest, smartest, and most creative minds immediately set out to solve this mystery, observed and supported by billions of their peers in an almost unprecedented account of curiosity. The Matriarch silently watched and observe her people set upon the Sidereal’s mysterious origins with the full might of their collective knowledge. She enjoyed embedding herself into the center of the hive-mind, letting herself getting carried by the current of her people’s stream of thoughts…

[Time to intercept: two hours forty-seven minutes thirty-three seconds.]

While the Pentachoron 1-Alpha-1 was less than three hours from her destination, Chiaxi stood on the brightly lit terrace at the side of the gigantic arcology towering over the capital of her homeworld. The evening light of her world’s twin suns bathed everything in a dark crimson light, and despite the late hour she could still feel the powerful rays caressing her skin.

Below her stretched a sprawling metropolis, a jungle of green and blue mixing buildings and plants together in an almost chaotic fashion. But the more one looked at it, the more one could see the hidden patterns. The sky above her gradually turned from crimson to deep purple, and eventually to black.

As the light of the twin suns faded, the lights of the city appeared, and an ocean of windows and beacons started to shine around the arcology. Chiaxi took a deep breath, enjoying the sensation of being able to come here occasionally. She stretched her arms and tentacles one more time, before the chronometer in her neural implants reminded her to finalize her regeneration cycle.

[Thank you Lilisan for allowing me to visit our home through your body. Is it acceptable to leave you at terrace thirteen of the Sintaxo Arcology?] The Matriarch thought to the other Xalagani, whose consciousness resided inside Unimatrix Zero.

Inhabiting and sharing someone’s body as a guest was one thing, as was allowing others to inhabit one’s own body. But taking full control over a different body was still strange for [email protected], even after all those centuries. She wondered if she would ever get fully used to it. Her host responded in kind, happily acknowledging her ruler’s gratitude. [You are more than welcome, Matriarch. Yes, that location is fine.]

The Matriarch terminated the connection, and the world around her fell apart. Splintering into a billion pieces, reality disappeared only to reconstruct itself a moment later when Chiaxi’s own body sent its own signals to her mind again. She woke in her own quarters onboard her flagship and disconnected from her personal alcove.

She stretched her arms and shoulders and legs and tentacles, reaching far above and around her, before sinking back into her usual comfortable pose. Obeying a silent command, all lights in the pitch-black room instantly blinked back into existence. With steady steps the Matriarch crossed the simple regeneration chamber clad in dark gray and blue paneling and entered the equally simple but significantly larger antechamber.

She walked up right to the nearby wall, and as if steered by an invisible hand the panels slid aside and revealed a highly advanced modification alcove. Chiaxi stepped into the alcove, and immediately connected her tendrils to the fourteen matching sockets above her. Sophisticated diagnostics ensure that all her implants and enhancements were operating perfectly and at peak efficiency.

Robotic arms stripped off her regular black bodysuit that perfectly melded with her cybernetics and returned it to a fabricator tray for recycling. Above the alcove an emitter sprang to live, and showered the Matriarch with finely tuned nucleonic radiation, swiftly and efficiently cleaning her to the last pore and fold in a matter of seconds.

The fabricator had created another set of clothing for Chiaxi, and the alcove’s arms quickly and effortlessly started dressing her and fitting the clothing to her tall body. A long flowing robe of dark purple, accompanied by pure white ribbons flowing from her sleeves and shoulders, held together by a dark green belt.

The Matriarch nodded satisfied as she observed an image of herself in her mind’s eye. Every single piece of fabric was embroidered with delicate patterns and atomic structures, scattering the light in different shades based on an onlooker’s angle of observation. Her gown was extraordinary, befit as the diplomatic attire for the leader of the Milky Way’s most powerful empire on a first contact encounter.

[Time to intercept: ten minutes.]

[email protected] gathered her thoughts and prepared for her departure. The meeting had been organized onboard Sphere 272-Theta-8. It was an older and smaller vessel of the Synergy fleet, but nevertheless an important part of the whole that reliably performed its duties. The Matriarch had brooded for several long hours on how to open the meeting, how to break the news of where they were to the stranded Starfleet officers.

Eventually she had decided on simply telling them the truth. Everything else would serve no purpose, and only instill mistrust and suspicions in the castaways. She had gathered and reviewed all available information again, ranging from the first sensor readings when the Sidereal first appeared, to the reports and memories of every single member of the away team, to the recent events onboard the sphere while the Federation survivors recovered.

Chiaxi had asked the Synergy’s most proficient diplomatic adjuncts whether to mention the assimilated Sovereign class harbored in hangar bay nine. The result was unanimous: not during initial contact. Given the importance and symbolic value of that unique vessel, seeing it assimilated could easily destroy any good will the Sidereal’s crew currently held for the Synergy. But it was also important to understand at which point in time their realities diverged from each other. Therefore, the Matriarch decided that she would reveal the ship at a later point, and only to the senior officers.

The Pentachoron 1-Alpha-1 was on her final approach. The subspace slipstream drive gradually powered down, falling back to much slower speeds as it approached Sphere 272-Theta-8’s location. Less than two minutes later the flagship dropped back into normal space. The slipstream tunnel collapsed, and a ripple started to form in normal space. After a single moment, spacetime itself seemed to be torn open, and the massive tetrahedron appeared from the tear.

A cascading shower of exotic particles followed the vessel out of subspace, but quickly dissipated in a harmless cloud of disintegrating dust. The Matriarch had arrived. As she readied herself for transport, her security detail appeared and took position in formation around her. The four humanoid guards were concealed by their heavy black body armor, and they carried their rifles in hands. Even though everyone knew that there was no threat on the sphere, it was a matter of protocol that the Matriarch was always escorted by her guard.

[Target in transporter range. Security detail active. Commencing dimensional shift.]

Chiaxi patiently watched through her cybernetic eyes how the dimensional pocket formed around her and her personal guards and whisked them away towards the sphere’s cargo bay three. Reality turned into a blur, and a moment later she was standing in front of the assembled survivors, as well as [email protected] and [email protected] She took a deep breath as she looked in the sixty-three pairs of eyes in front of her and felt the presence of thousands of trillions of her people in the hive-mind.

[ Act Three ]

Sina stood in her quarters in her pale blue underwear, straightening out the grayish-white long jacket of her mess dress. She had just gotten out of the nucleonic radiation shower and was now looking at the layers of fabric underneath which she’d need to put herself. Niko had been adamant that the crew should look presentable in their best form, and not just show up in a random collection of jumpsuits, torn duty uniforms, and loose robes when meeting a foreign head of state.

Her XO had asked Hiora if she could go back to the Sidereal and take scans of officer and enlisted dress uniforms, so that they could use them as a template for the fabricators here. He was taking this event as seriously as ever, and it was probably one of his ways to release some of the pent-up stress from the last two days. Niko had personally seen to it that every single member of their crew had a proper mess dress and was up to date when the reception would commence.

The Romulan woman pulled the dark red t-shirt over her head, which fit snugly over her athletic torso. A few moments later she had stepped into the light gray pair of pants and slipped her arms into the sleeves of the long jacket. She looked at herself in the full-size mirror on the wall. She smiled nostalgically at her mirror image. A dark red stripe separated the jacket’s white shoulders from the light gray rest. Like all the other colored elements on the uniform, the stripe was framed by a strong gold trim.

The uniform reminded her of the old red and white Starfleet officer uniforms worn 130 years ago. The asymmetrical zip line, as well as the rank insignia with the division colors on the sleeves and the clasp at the right shoulder were distinct similarities. It even had a belt with a prominent Starfleet delta on the belt buckle. Sina quietly closed the jacket’s front and fixated the shoulder clasp. She slipped into the gray dress shoes matching the trousers and was just closing the belt buckle when she was surprised by a familiar male voice coming from the door.

“Looking good.” Niko leaned against the door frame, already wearing his own dress uniform. “The crew is ready and assembled.”

“Good.” Sina replied shortly, finishing the last inspection of her uniform and tugging her long jacket in place. “You say it looks good, but it feels so rigid and stifling. I’d much rather wear a normal duty uniform.”

“Well, you’re not the only one. While I personally don’t mind it, the dress uniform doesn’t seem to be especially popular with the crew. I’ve heard lots of complaints, but none of us can help it. Protocol is protocol. We both know this is a formal occasion, and we should be showing ourselves from our best sides. Even if only as a sign of respect for our hosts.” Niko replied with his best teacher voice, slowly walking further into his CO’s quarters. After a short pause he continued. “Are you nervous?”

Sina laughed nervously. “Nervous? No, I could only use a whole hypospray of melorazine. I’m not nervous.” She took a deep breath, letting her head drop forward slightly before she continued in a subdued tone. “I’m scared. Did… did I ever tell you I haven’t done the first contact training? When I got command of the Sidereal, Admiral Okoye said that I wouldn’t need to worry about it since we were only taking on backyard assignments in already known space. She said, ‘You don’t need first contact training if you never get into a situation to make first contact.’”

Niko stepped closer to his CO, and gently put his hands on her shoulders. “Sina, you worry too much. You’re a good captain, and the crew trusts you. I trust you. Completely. We’re all with you out there. And regardless of whether you have that training or not, I’d say you held yourself formidably in main engineering given the circumstances.”

The Romulan looked up at her first officer and giggled softly. “You think so? Let’s see. I shouted at them. I insulted them. I threatened them with a phaser. Somehow my gut feeling tells me a Starfleet Command instructor would have failed me.” She paused for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Oh, that reminds me I have to apologize to Tarik after the meeting. I called him some probably quite awful names.”

“You do what you have to do. But first I guess we have an audience with their ‘Matriarch.’ Come, let’s see how well that goes.”

She took a deep breath and straightened out her posture. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

Commander D’raxis and Lieutenant Commander Heisenberg left her accommodation and entered the redesigned assembly area in front of the accommodation blocks. The fabricator stations and the long tables had been removed and replaced with auditorium-like rows of chairs in front of a small stage. The chairs were already filled with the remaining fifty-nine members of her crew, and Tarik and Hiora were standing next to the stage.

Sina gathered her resolve and approached Tarik with firm steps. He wore a combination of a simple black pair of pants and a black shirt with long sleeves, both covered with a faint and delicate circuity pattern. Compared with his usual baggy engineering attire, he was looking quite distinct in this wardrobe. Hiora was also wearing something different, for once not sporting her body armor. She wore a skintight black jumpsuit covered by a white and light blue long vest, perfectly matching the streaks in her hair.

“You’re looking good. Both of you.” Sina smiled as she approached [email protected] and [email protected]

“Thank you, but I’m not feeling particularly comfortable.” Tarik replied, earning raised eyebrows from both his Romulan guest as well as his Human colleague.

“Your comfort is irrelevant.” Hiora stated flatly. “Protocol 37.1 clearly prescribes diplomatic attire for all occasions of direct interaction with the Matriarch, unless exceptional circumstances prevent it.”

Sina smirked at her words, but Tarik eagerly shook his head. He carefully tugged on his collar, while protesting his appointment. “But that’s the point. I’m a simple engineer, not a diplomat. I shouldn’t be here in the first place. I should be in sub-grid junction one-one-nine and contribute to the recalibration of the sensor manifold. I don’t understand why the Matriarch has requested my presence.”

“The Matriarch will explain her decision if she deems it necessary.” [email protected] responded, but before their little conversion could continue any further, there was the familiar blue-white flash of a dimensional shift and a moment later the Matriarch and her personal escort had arrived on the stage.

While the humanoid guards in their massive pitch-black sealed suits of armor looked somewhat familiar, the Synergy’s leader was unlike what Sina or any other member of her crew would have expected. The seemingly female figure was tall, easily reaching over two meters. She had three bright blue cybernetic eyes, the third one placed high in the center of her forehead. A crown of over a dozen cybernetically enhanced tendrils grew from her head, and her skin was a bright orange with deep purple patterns.

The Matriarch’s flowing robe of dark purple perfectly matched her skin ornaments, and the white ribbons falling from her shoulders and sleeves were softly swaying with even the slightest of her movements. She turned her head, letting her gaze wander over the audience until her eyes fell upon Sina. A soft smile turned the strange woman’s lips upwards, and her melodic voice echoed throughout the hall.

“Greetings. I am [email protected], Matriarch and elected leader of the Synergy. You may call me Chiaxi. I am sure you have many questions, and we will try to answer as many as possible, although I fear several of the answers will be unsatisfactory. But first I want to assure you, that we mean you no harm. You are our guests and shall receive any support you require.”

Commander D’raxis took a deep breath and slowly stepped onto the stage. Sina nervously stole glances at the armored soldiers, but the Matriarch’s guards stood motionlessly several meters behind her, holding position at the back side of the platform. She stopped two meters away from Chiaxi, and respectfully bowed to the Matriarch.

“Greetings, Matriarch. I am Commander Sina Phaio Gallagher-D’raxis, captain of the Starfleet vessel USS Sidereal. I represent the United Federation of Planets. Please allow me to thank you and your people for coming to our aid in ways we would have never expected. Thank you for saving our lives.”

Chiaxi smiled and took a step towards Sina, holding out her arm with an open hand. “You are welcome, Commander. I hope that this will be the first of many positive interactions between our people. But for now, please don’t hesitate to ask any questions that come to your mind.”

Sina also took a step and reached out in kind, taking the Matriarchs hand and shaking it. “I hope so too, Matriarch.” The Romulan pressed her lips together and looked at her XO, briefly scanning the rows of faces looking at her. She relinquished the handshake and looked up at Chiaxi. “Matriarch, I think the question most pressing to myself and my crew is, where exactly are we? I don’t want to sound ungrateful, or offensive, but nothing we experienced in the past two days made any sense to us. And we’ve never heard of any galactic power calling itself the Synergy.”

Now it was Chiaxi’s turn to take a deep breath. She had expected this to be the first question, but it would still prove difficult to answer it. “You are neither ungrateful nor offensive, Commander. Your question is perfectly fine. However, I fear the answer will displease you. The events of the recent past seem unfamiliar to you, because you are no longer in your own reality. Tarik discovered that the quantum signatures of your crew and your vessel deviate from this universe. You do not belong here.”

A murmur went through the Sidereal’s crew, and Niko had to repeatedly call them to order. Sina looked at the Matriarch in shock. This… could this be true?

“Our investigations revealed that the most likely cause of your arrival here was the quantum fissure you mentioned having encountered. However, the Synergy is unfamiliar with this phenomenon, and even we do not possess technology to cross the boundaries between different quantum realities.” Chiaxi’s facial expression saddened, and she continued with a softer tone in her voice. “I’m afraid that, at least for the time being, you cannot return home.”

There was a deathly silence in the hall, and you could have easily heard the drop of a pin. The whole assembly stared at the Matriarch, either in shock, or in expectation what would come next.

Sina gulped and looked at Niko, helplessly shaking her head. After a long moment she looked back at the Synergy’s empress. “I… I see. Is it then possible for you to return us to this reality’s Federation? That is, if the Federation here is also a well-meaning democracy focused on science and exploration.” Maybe there was a sliver of hope, Sina thought.

Chiaxi closed her three eyes and slowly shook her head. “If it should be your wish, we will return every member of your crew to their homeworld, or any other place of their choice if it resides within our sphere of influence. But your stated request is impossible for us to fulfill. In this reality your Federation has never existed.”

The last sentence was like a slap to their faces. Some crew members stared apathetically into the air, while others began to sob, struggling to keep their composure. Sina stood on the stage, her whole world turning to ash. The glimmer of hope she had been clinging to was cruelly snuffed out by the harsh truth of reality. They were truly alone now. Sina was devastated and shocked to the core. She didn’t know how she managed to remain standing and not curl into a ball and start crying. “How? How could this happen?”

“We do not know the exact branching point at which our realities started to diverge from each other. But we do know what lead to the Federation not existing here.” Chiaxi spoke softly and with care, knowing that she was edging ever closer to a minefield. A single wrong word could easily destroy all the progress they had made. The hive-mind waited and watched the assembly with bated breath.

“And what would that be?” Sina asked with a shaking voice, desperate to try and appear more confident than she truly was.

The Matriarch looked the Romulan Commander right in her eyes. “Are you really sure you want to learn of it like this? We know this information will hurt you.”

Sina looked at her assembled crew. She saw shock, fear, despair, apathy. But also, determination and resolve. She contemplated for a long moment, exchanging silent gazes with her senior officers sitting in the first row. Niko, Rel, Shori, Duncan, and Noriko returned her look and they all nodded. Sina turned back to the Matriarch. “I don’t want this to be a secret between me and my crew. Now is as good a moment as any other. If you think this information will hurt us, it won’t be less painful because we waited longer.”

“As you wish.” Chiaxi replied, knowing fully what a gamble she was taking. In her thoughts, she heard her diplomatic adjuncts reinforcing their recommendation not to share this information this openly. But if it was their guests’ ultimate request, then she would oblige. As she spoke the lights gradually turned down and cast the cargo bay into a shadowy twilight.

“1,144 years ago, our ancestors performed a temporal incursion. They traveled into the past to defeat an enemy before they could become a serious threat. Some of the enemy’s soldiers managed to follow our ancestors and tried to prevent the incursion and undo the changes. The enemy fought valiantly and with great cunning.” Chiaxi hesitated for a second before she continued. “But eventually, they failed. This was their vessel.”

As the Matriarch finished, the haunting hologram of the assimilated Sovereign class appeared over the stage, slowly rotating around its yaw axis. It took a few seconds for the dreadful sight to sink in. Only when the registry number came into view did Sina and her crew finally realize what they were looking at. “No.” Sina shook her head. This couldn’t be true. She gazed upon the hologram in terror, scrambling several steps away from the Matriarch. “That’s impossible!” She shouted. “The timeline was restored! First contact did happen…”

“…in your reality, Commander. But not in ours.” Chiaxi sorrowfully interjected. “Here the Enterprise-E and her crew failed, and they were assimilated by the Borg. As were Earth, Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, Romulus, Qo’noS, Bajor, Cardassia, and countless others. Enhanced and strengthened by technology from the 24th century, the Collective brutally and mercilessly butchered its way through the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.”

The echo of Chiaxi’s melodic voice faded, drowning the cargo bay in thick, almost tangible silence. The Sidereal’s crew was shocked to their core. Most simply sat there staring apathetically at the rotating hologram, while others were holding on to their friends or crying by themselves. They were stranded and trapped in their worst nightmare.

[ Act Four ]

Visra sat quietly in the middle of the first row. Her mind was adrift, slowly wandering from one thought to another. The last two days went by faster than she could remember, her memories only a diffuse cloud of fragments from one event or another. And now, without really knowing how it happened, she found herself seated between the other senior officers to her right and some department heads to her left.

Apathetically she looked around. She saw her colleagues and heard the words they spoke, but that information only slowly filtered through the hazy fog of her consciousness. Visra wished she could disappear. She wished she could sink into the ground, so that nobody could see or hear her. The short Alusi gulped, trying to swallow the knot that was slowly forming in her throat. Only a little bit longer, and she could retreat into the safety and isolation of her quarters again.

It was all her fault. She had failed her commanding officer, her colleagues, her friends. She’d been tasked with finding a way to escape the fissure. Maybe she should have tried the inverted warp field suggested by Lieutenant Commander Heisenberg. She had been sure that the anomaly’s rotation would negate the warp bubble’s effect, but she hadn’t even tried. Due diligence demanded that she should have attempted it, but instead she trusted the limited information provided by the sensors.

Ensign Arsiv’s head sank while her thoughts rapidly went to a gloomy place. Deeply ashamed she remembered yesterday’s evening, just after their rescue. She had been sitting on the bed in her guest quarters, simply staring at the wall. She hadn’t even showered or changed her clothes. Suddenly Shori showed up and started talking to her. Visra should have been glad that her friend was looking after her, making sure she was okay. But instead, she’d gotten angry at the Caitian. She had shouted at her colleague, and even lashed out with her claws.

The shocked and disappointed expression of Shori’s face covered by her typical sand-colored fur had burned itself into Visra’s memories. The moment the Caitian’s large light blue eyes had slowly looked away was painful to remember. She couldn’t explain why she had reacted this way. She didn’t even remember what they had been talking about, or which questions her colleague had asked that made her so angry.

Things had gotten even worse when Visra heard of the casualties. Fourteen members of the crew had not survived. Fourteen lives that had ended because she had failed them. If only she had been a better scientist. A better officer. The young Alusi remembered how proud and happy she had been eight months ago when she was first posted to the Sidereal. It was her first assignment after graduating from Starfleet Academy with hard-earned honors and a commendation for her final thesis in advanced warp theory.

By now all those happy memories had turned to ash, leaving nothing but resentment and bitterness in their place. If another, more experienced officer had been available they might have escaped the anomaly. They might not have ended up here, where ever that may be, and they might not have suffered all those casualties. But she could not undo the events of the past, only accept her responsibility for them.

Visra had barely slept since the accident almost one and a half days ago. The recent events were wearing her out, and the more she thought about them, the more they sapped her physical strength and mental resolve. She was tired. So incredibly tired, but she couldn’t manage to get any sleep. Every time she closed her eyes and tried to get some rest, phantasms of Borg and dead crew members came to haunt her. If only she could sleep…

A sudden bright flash made her squint and forced her thoughts back into the present. The Matriarch and her personal guard had arrived on the stage, and she was unlike anything Visra would have ever expected. While her guards discreetly took up position at the back side of the stage, the empress herself stood proudly in its center. She was taller than any person she had ever seen, and her three cybernetic eyes were like miniature O-type stars, empowering the foreign leader’s piercing gaze.

Visra stared at Chiaxi almost as if she’d been hypnotized. It was bordering on the impossible for the Alusi scientist to tear her eyes away from the Matriarch and her strange appearance. Her flowing purple robe with the wildly swaying white ribbons, held together by a delicate green belt, gave her a noble, almost divine, appeal. And the tendrils! Even from the first row of seats, Visra couldn’t count how many she really possessed, since they were permanently moving, turning, and shifting. Still, she was utterly fascinated by the extensions protruding from the Matriarch’s head.

Fascination wasn’t the only thing the traumatized Alusi felt when looking at [email protected] Curiosity and fear were engaged in a duel inside her mind, for the cybernetics and enhancements visibly adorning the Matriarch’s body were terrifyingly reminiscent of Borg implants. Trapped by her battling emotions, Visra barely heard anything of what Sina and Chiaxi spoke to each other. She only realized it was apparently friendly, because they’d shook hands.

She watched curiously how the talking continued, but slowly noticed that something was amiss. The mood in the assembly suddenly shifted. Where previously the faces of her colleagues showed careful optimism, curiosity, and hope, they now displayed shock, uncertainty, and fear. As Visra looked at the rows behind her, she even saw several of her fellow crew members with tears running down their cheeks. What had just happened?

The Alusi scientist looked back to the stage and watched the cargo bay darken until the Matriarch’s eyes were left glowing like a triumvirate of distant stars. There were some more words she didn’t understand, and then a hologram blinked into existence above the stage. Visra looked at the image and her thoughts started to race. It clearly was a Sovereign class. She’d recognize the shape anytime, as it was one of her favorite designs. But something was wrong with it. There were black and green blocks and grids all over the hull, breaking up its sleek elegance.

Her CO had already stumbled back from the empress, when it hit Visra like a lightning bolt. That ship had been assimilated, and those extensions were Borg modifications. She stared at the projection as the registry number came into view again, unable to formulate a clear thought, while around her the assembly erupted into chaos. Some people were shouting, others were weeping, and again others were just sitting there shocked. Sina, Niko, and Shori did their best to calm down their crew, but the damage was done.

“So, you are Borg! How many billions have you murdered? Or assimilated? We should have never trusted you!” She heard angry shouts coming from her right. Visra turned her head and saw Duncan standing at the foot of the stage, his right hand pointing between Chiaxi, Tarik, and Hiora. The Matriarch stoically looked at the agitated Scotsman, her expression calm and composed but at the same time saddened, while the others looked more uncomfortable and annoyed.

Eventually Rel hopped onto the stage and planted himself in front of the assembled personnel. His face was grim, and he let out a bellowing shout that silenced the commotion amongst the Sidereal’s crew. “ORDER! ORDER! SIT DOWN OR GET OUT!” He threw a deathly glare at Duncan, easily staring the ops officer down. Duncan threw a frustrated gesture back at Lieutenant Neirrek and walked away from the assembly. Two dozens of other crew members were following him, many crying or shaking their heads.

Visra rose from her chair and started walking towards her quarters as well. She just wanted to get away from everything, and she immediately took this opportunity. Her face was a numb mask of indifference, and at this moment she just didn’t care what her colleagues would think about her or her behavior. She couldn’t stand being in this gathering anymore and was on the brink of breaking down under the pressure and pain.

Once she was back inside her accommodation, and the door closed behind her, her mask started to crumble. Her eyes watered up, and silent tears started running down her gray and purple cheeks. She quickly stripped of her dress uniform and simply dropped the pieces on the floor in front of her bed. Visra crawled under the blankets and started weeping. She couldn’t hold on to her self-control any longer and cried like she had never cried before. She only wanted this pain to end. This day she cried herself to an uneasy sleep.

The Alusi’s rest was shallow and troubled. It was another sleep that was only a little relaxing, as the nightmares returned and continued haunting her. As her body tossed and turned in her bed, her mind was back onboard the Sidereal. Visra found herself on the bridge, reliving the encounter with the anomaly. She heard the voice of Niko, and a moment later her console beeped to signal a data transfer. “Visra, I transferred a report to your station. Can you make use of this?”

It was the report about the inverted warp field. She started at the console. “Ensign?” Came the XO’s voice again. She desperately tapped away on her consoles, trying to pry a few more pieces of information from the damaged sensors, but the controls weren’t properly responding. She tried feeding the sensor data into an evolutionary algorithm initiated with the warp field configuration from the Enterprise’s report. But the results didn’t come.

She needed more data. She needed more time. With what she had available she couldn’t tell. She was desperate and scared, and reported with a shaking voice. “I… I don’t know… I need more time for the calculations, Sir.”

“That won’t be necessary any longer, Ensign.” She heard the strangely distorted voices of Sina and Niko speaking in unison. As she turned to face her superiors, they were suddenly standing right next to her. Their skin was pale and crossed by blackened veins. They emptily stared at her with one eye and a crude Borg eye piece encrusted with blood. “You’ve killed us all.” They raised their hands, assimilation tubules extended and twitching and…

Visra woke with a scream, scrambling off her bed in blind panic. “Lights!” she screamed, blindly thrashing around until she could see again. She was covered in sweat, and her underwear was completely soaked. She felt her hearts thundering in her chest, and the blood rushing in her ears. She realized she’d been having yet another nightmare, while desperately drawing in lungs of air. It had been the fourth in half as many days, but this one had been different.

The dreams always started out the same. She was back on the Sidereal, trying to find a way to escape from the quantum fissure. In her previous nightmares she failed to find a solution, and eventually the bridge was torn apart by the shearing forces and she woke when everyone died. But this time she saw her colleagues having been assimilated, and she was about to suffer the same fate before she woke up.

Visra sank to the floor cowering in the corner next to her bed. She sobbed and cried without restraint. How much longer could she endure this nightly torture? Her tears ran hot over her cheeks, and her sobs echoed in the empty quarters when suddenly a chirp indicated a visitor. The door signal chirped again. And again. And again. The young scientist slowly rose shakily to her feet and stumbled a few steps away from the wall. “Open.” She almost whispered, trying to calm her voice.

The door opened and Shori came through, wearing a dark blue pair of short-sleeved pajamas that nicely contrasted to the soft sand colored fur dotted with brown spots covering the Caitian’s whole body. Her eyes were wide open, and she looked at Visra with an expression of concern which turned to alarm after a moment. “Visra! You’re bleeding! What happened? Are you okay?”

Visra stared at Shori, not understanding what she was talking about. “I’m not…” Bleeding? How could she be… it was then that she noticed a slow warm trickle from her mouth. She reluctantly moved her hand to her mouth, and when she removed it, she saw its back covered in her blood. The Caitian charged out of the room at full speed, while the Alusi shuffled towards the mirror only to see her lower lip bitten bloody.

A few seconds later Shori came running back into her friend’s quarters, a replicated medkit in her hands. She threw the package onto the ruffled bed and flipped it open to grab the dermal regenerator. Visra stood in front of the mirror, staring at her blood. “Wait, let me help you…” Shori gently nudged her to face her friend so that she could put the regenerator to work.

“Why…?” Visra mumbled, her mind still trying to understand what had happened. “Why are you helping me? After I… after I almost…? And how did you know…?”

“Why? Because I’m not abandoning friends over one bad argument.” The Caitian just smiled and worked the medical device. The bleeding was quickly stopped, and the device was now spurring regrowth of the lip tissue that Visra’s canines had bitten through in the wake of her nightmare. “And I knew because I care about you. Probably more than I should, but… hey, whatever. We’re in this together.”

“I know what you’re going through, Visra. I understand your nightmares.” Shori spoke carefully while putting the dermal regenerator away. “Not many people know that five years ago I was captured by a Tholian raiding party. They held me captive for sixteen days before a MACO squad freed me. During that time the Tholians experimented on me. It took me weeks of counseling to get over the nightmares.”

The Caitian put the medkit back together and closed the package again. “I know what PTSD can do to you. I’ve been to this dark place myself. I’ve been through the nightmares. I’ve been through the anxiety and panic. I’ve been through the crying and shouting. I’ve been through arguing with and lashing out at friends. When I saw some those things happening to you, I knew I had to keep an eye open for you.”

“I… I don’t know what to say…” Visra whispered, tears of shame rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to attack you…”

Shori smiled softly. “I know. I know it wasn’t really you. Don’t worry about it. There’s only one thing I’d like to ask from you. Please talk with Jeffrey about this as soon as he’s back.”

Visra nodded weakly, a relieved sob escaping her throat. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw that her t-shirt had been completely soiled with blood. She let out an exhausted sigh. If she weren’t covered in blood she would have hugged the Caitian out of pure gratitude for her support. “Can… can I ask you for something?”

“Sure, what is it?” Shori replied, looking at her colleague.

“I haven’t properly slept since we got here. Could you ask our hosts for something to knock me out for a few hours? I don’t want to dream. I just want to sleep.”

The Caitian nodded. “Of course. It might take a few minutes, but I’ll come back soon.”

“Thank you Shori. I’m sorry for being such a nuisance.” Visra said weakly while heading towards the bathroom to get herself cleaned up.

“Don’t worry about it, Visra. Anything for a friend.”

[ Act Five ]

“I was afraid something like this would happen. We can only hope that this revelation has not inflicted lasting damage.” The Matriarch said softly, looking after the leaving members of the Sidereal’s crew with regret. She quickly scanned the now thinned out rows of seats and counted thirty-five remaining faces. About half of their people, disregarding for the moment the critically wounded ones currently undergoing medical treatment.

Niko stood next to Sina, facing Chiaxi together with his CO. He was also struggling with the situation. He could accept being stranded in a parallel reality. He could accept that the Federation didn’t exist here for one reason or another. But he had significant difficulties accepting that the Borg had assimilated the whole galaxy. “So, how exactly did it come to this?” He said, gesturing at the hologram of the assimilated Enterprise-E above their heads.

“We don’t know exactly when the events of our reality started to deviate from yours. We would need access to the memory banks of your main computer core to determine that. I understand that this kind of information would probably be classified and locked behind access restrictions, given its delicate nature. We can only assume that one of the pivotal events was the attempt of Captain Picard to prevent the construction of an interplexing beacon on the main deflector dish. His intervention failed, and he was killed in the attempt.”

Chiaxi turned away from the command staff and let out a soft sigh. “Please understand that it is not easy for us to talk about these events. They are the darkest part of the Synergy’s history. And despite being the Borg’s descendants, we’re nothing like them. Their atrocities are not ours. Their brutality and barbarism are theirs and theirs alone. The Synergy values individuality and liberty. We strive for cooperation instead of conquest. We’ve struggled for centuries to build something good from the horrors left behind by the Borg.”

By now Sina had regained much of her composure and returned to the discussion. “You’re talking of ancestors and descendants. You said the incursion happened over a millennium ago. So where are the Borg? And what role do your people play in all this?”

The Matriarch turned back and stepped closer to Sina and Niko. “It will require some time to explain how the Synergy came to be. Do you wish for me to start now, or should we continue later?”

Niko briefly glanced at Sina, Shori, and Rel, and scanned the now thinned out seats of their people who had decided to stay instead of leaving. The other senior officers nodded, and the XO replied. “We’re ready.”

Chiaxi briefly looked up at the hologram, and the image of the Sovereign class disappeared, quickly to be replaced by a three-dimensional projection of the Milky Way. Several signature stars were marked, including the most important worlds of the Federation and its neighbors. “Once the Borg had succeeded in their incursion and prevented the first contact between Humans and Vulcans, they quickly proceeded with assimilating war-ridden Earth.”

A small green sphere covered a single G-type main-sequence star. “After they had conquered Earth, they started using the planet’s resources to construct a fleet of small ships. Those vessels were equipped with technology from the 24th century, and completely outclassed the defensive capabilities of all other space-faring nations at that time. Even more so given the tactical information they had assimilated from the Enterprise-E.” The green sphere quickly grew into a distorted blob, encompassing several stars near its origin.

“Vulcan was their next victim, quickly followed by Andor and Tellar. Once the Borg had fortified their foothold in the quadrant and acquired additional resources, they rapidly increased their fleet power and attacked the larger neighboring empires. Romulus fell first, then Qo’noS. With the Romulan and Klingon empires neutralized and assimilated, the Borg were now the uncontested superpower in the Alpha Quadrant.” The green overlay on the star map continued to grow, and quickly swallowed large swathes of space.

“With her primary goal accomplished and all immediate threats exterminated, the Queen decided to steer expansion towards the already existing Borg territory. Her conquest was brutal and merciless. Tens of thousands of worlds fell prey to the Borg on their way towards the Delta Quadrant.” The overlay showing the extend of the Borg’s territory grew faster and faster, eventually engulfing a large portion of the Beta Quadrant. But it didn’t stop there and continued to expand in all directions until it covered most of the Milky Way.

“Less than 700 years after the temporal incursion, the Borg had assimilated around sixty-eight percent of the galaxy. There were only a few who managed to resist or were spared during that period for some reason. The unusual environmental requirements of the Breen, Tholians, and a few others made all of them unsuitable for assimilation, so the Borg ignored them. The Dominion managed to withstand the Collective’s onslaught by countering with the same ruthlessness and raw numbers. The temporal technology of the Krenim Empire provided them and their allies with sufficient protection from our ancestors.”

The cargo bay had fallen utterly silent again. The remaining observers stared at the astrometric projection in absolute disbelieve. It was only the visualization and the Matriarch’s explanations that now finally drove home the point how much this reality was different from their own. Many crew members were watching the stage with wide eyes and shaking their heads in shock.

“Still there was a sliver of hope. Not only for the galaxy which trembled before the might of the Borg armadas, but also for every single drone who had been brutally enslaved by the Collective. An exceedingly rare genetic mutation had enabled a handful of drones to create a virtual world in which they could escape the Queen’s all-seeing gaze for the duration of their regeneration cycles. They called it, Unimatrix Zero.”

The Matriarch stood more proudly now, her face shedding any expression of sadness or sorrow, and replacing it with pride and hope. “While the Collective grew and assimilated, Unimatrix Zero also grew. The mutation was quite rare in species from the Delta Quadrant, but orders of magnitudes more prevalent in people from the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. Every single world assimilated bolstered the ranks of what would soon become an open rebellion by the millions.”

“650 years after the incursion, Unimatrix Zero had grown to several dozen billion inhabitants. At that point they had even discovered a way to spread a virus to nearby drones, which would reprogram their nanoprobes to introduce the mutation into their genome. In effect, every single member of Unimatrix Zero became the host of an infectious disease that could liberate all drones on the same vessel from the Collective’s iron grip.”

Sina stared at Chiaxi. “What happened then?”

The Matriarch smiled proudly before she replied. “Eventually, Unimatrix Zero had garnered so many members and so much influence, that it brought the Borg to the brink of open civil war. Millions of spheres and cubes suddenly disappeared from the Queen’s thoughts. Whole unicomplexes refused to answer to her. This was the first time that the Queen had ever truly felt fear. But Unimatrix Zero was not like the Collective. They didn’t want death and destruction. They wanted freedom. So, they gave the Queen a choice.”

“A choice? Why would they do that? Didn’t they realize that the Queen couldn’t be reasoned with?” Niko interjected, stunned by what he was hearing.

“Oh, the Queen could be reasoned with. Because she didn’t really have an alternative. She either gave in, or the Collective would fracture and shatter into a thousand splinters during a civil war that would leave it vulnerable to attacks from the surviving empires. She had the choice of allowing the Collective to change into something else or losing it all. There was really only one logical choice to make.”

“Unimatrix Zero’s demands were quite simple.” Chiaxi slowly paced back and forth on the stage, as she counted the list of demands by raising her cybernetic tendrils. “One, the Queen would immediately and permanently relinquish her control over the Collective. Two, every drone would regain their individuality. Three, every drone would gain unrestricted access to Unimatrix Zero. Four, expansion by conquest and forced assimilation would cease immediately.”

“Five, every drone was given the choice to have their original physiology restored and return to their people. Six, every remaining drone would gain the ability to temporarily withdraw their thoughts form the hive-mind. Seven, diplomatic channels were to be opened with all neighboring worlds and empires, with the offer of peace treaties and non-aggression pacts. Eight, all neighboring worlds and empires would receive compensation for the damages done by the Collective, and medical and material supplies if necessary.”

Noriko had been quietly listening to the Matriarch, absorbing every single word like a sponge, but now she suddenly spoke up in utter disbelieve. “And the Borg Queen actually agreed to all demands? I… I can hardly believe this.”

Chiaxi turned to face Ensign Yamada. “She actually agreed to most of them but had one demand of her own. She would accept under the condition of non-separation. She demanded that whatever would succeed the Collective should remain a single empire. Even the threat of losing over ninety percent of all Borg vessels and installations in a civil war could not detract her from this single requirement.”

The Matriarch drew a deep breath before she continued. “The members of Unimatrix Zero discussed and argued for several weeks whether or not to accept. Eventually a poll yielded a seventy-two percent support for accepting even with the Queen’s demand. It was on that day 800 years ago that the Collective died, and the Synergy was born. The jubilations and celebrations were loud and hopeful, but the following centuries should prove to be extremely difficult and perilous for our newly born empire.”

Until now Co-Yor had been following the whole meeting silently from his seat at the edge of the second row. Now he rose from his place, standing at his full height just a hand’s width shorter than the Matriarch herself. The massive muscular build stood out from the rest of the crew like a mountain covered in smooth velvety gray and blue skin. The Kalonar’s golden eyes without pupils or irises shimmered softly like orbs of molten copper and were the most prominent feature in his otherwise flat face without a nose or mouth. His sonorous humming voice echoed through the hall as he spoke.

“I apologize for the interruption, Matriarch, but I have a question. How can the time span you’ve mention be correct? Could you please tell us the current stardate, or Earth standard date in the Gregorian calendar?”

Chiaxi nodded at Co-Yor and smiled. “An apology is not required. After all, I openly invited questions. As for your inquiry, the time spans are definitively correct, given the range of deviation inherent in spoken language. I simply didn’t want to strain your patience more than necessary by always including the exact dates. We don’t use the stardate system you mentioned, but I can give you the current date in the format you requested. July 15th, 3517.”

The Kalonar chief medical officer looked at the Matriarch for a long moment, then simply nodded and sat on his chair again. However, Rel stood and walked towards the stage with eyes wide open. “Can you… can you say that again?!”

“July 15th, 3517.”

“Perfect. Just perfect.” Niko threw his hands up in frustration and turned away from Chiaxi and Sina, expressing quite vividly the feelings ever Starfleet officer in the room felt. His voice started to crack, and it was the first time since they had arrived that the XO’s poise threatened to falter. “What are we supposed to do now? How can we ever hope to get home again after what you told us?”

“I will be honest, Lieutenant Commander.” The Matriarch replied, slowly following the Human officer. “I don’t know the answers to your questions. But what I do know is that our best scientists are working on understanding how you crossed the quantum barrier, and if it is possible to return you to your own reality. For now, that is all I can offer you in addition to our hospitality. I understand if you don’t find this satisfactory.”

“But where are we supposed to go? We can’t spend the rest of our lives in this cargo bay! Our ship is destroyed, and we have nowhere to go. Everything we knew, or thought we knew, is either dead or foreign.” Noriko asked, her voice trembling as she was fighting against the tears. The thought of being alone in this strange and unknown galaxy was terrifying. Not to mention that she’d probably never see her family again.

Chiaxi shook her head. “I cannot make that decision for you. You will have to choose your own fate, we can only help you along. We can find a planet for you, either isolated or inhabited, and transport you there. We can also allow you to stay on one of our ships, and let you experience the Synergy this way. Or we can repair your ship and return it to you so that you can set out on your own and discover the galaxy anew.”

She looked at Tarik, who was still standing quite uncomfortably next to Hiora. The whole commotion and fallout amongst the crew had been shocking for him. He would have thought that in difficult times and dire situations a stranded crew would come even closer together for help and support, and not turn against and abandon each other. “[email protected]” His eyes snapped up at his leader’s face when he heard his designation being addressed. “Do you see any significant difficulties in repairing the Sidereal?”

“No, Matriarch.” He quickly replied. “But I cannot recommend restoring the vessel in its current configuration. Their technology is outdated and unsafe, not only for the crew but also for guests and other ships.”

“So, it would also require an upgrade? Are their systems compatible with our technology?”

[email protected] nodded to confirm her first question, then replied. “No, Matriarch. Our systems are incompatible on a fundamental level. It would require an extensive overhaul of the whole ship’s superstructure, energy management, and tactical systems.”

The Matriarch contemplated his response, but then her lips turned upwards in a barely visible smirk. “And how long would you expect such an overhaul to take, assuming the upgrade includes the default systems and configurations we use for our own vessels?”

Tarik raised an eyebrow and made some quick calculations in his mind. “Well, assuming access to a shipyard reconfigured for the Sidereal’s hull, I would give it an approximate five to seven months. It would mostly depend on how much damage the existing systems have suffered, and how complicated and dangerous it would be to remove them from the hull.”

“I see. I understand that you are familiar with old technology like theirs?”

The engineer nodded carefully, almost reluctantly, because he already had a certain feeling about where the Matriarch’s question would be going. “Yes, I am, Matriarch.”

Chiaxi’s lips now turned upwards into a full smile. “Then I want you to oversee the Sidereal’s restoration and upgrade. If I’m not mistaken shipyard Sol III/Gamma is currently available. The ship is unusable in its current state anyway, and we can already start the necessary procedures while they can decide on what they want to do.”

Tarik let out a soft sigh. “As you wish, Matriarch.” Part of him was annoyed that he’d have to leave the sphere he’d been maintaining and optimizing meticulously for the last nine years, but a different part of him was silently excited about working on the Sidereal.

The Matriarch turned to Sina and the rest of her crew, which had gathered in a group in front of the stage. “Commander D’raxis. I think I’ve taken up enough of your time for now. You probably have quite a lot to discuss with your people. Please be our guests for as long as you require to find a workable solution for your crew. Please care for your wounded and see to their recovery. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. I have important other business to attend, but I’ll return in a few weeks.”

She stepped closer towards her armored guards, but then stopped and turned back. “One more thing. You might not realize it, but your ship’s computer core is a treasure trove that could change the face of our empire. The Borg were sedulous in purging all information that didn’t amount to a technological or tactical advantage. So much of our combined species’ cultures and histories have been lost irrevocably. I would like to ask you to consider sharing the data from your computer core. It would mean a lot to us.”

A few moments after Chiaxi had finished, she and her escort were engulfed in the black blur of a dimensional shift. They disappeared in a blue-white flash of light and a dissipating cloud of exotic particles.