Fanfic: Rhulan vs the Borg II

   In the lavish palace of Rhulan, she lounges back on wide and long couch in a room full of cushions, pillows, and several large round beds. Across Rhulan’s lap a Shadow Cat-girl rests. Rhulan strokes her darker than ebony mane. Thoughts cascade over Rhulan’s mind, the Borg ship, those drones adapting to her energy attack and their threat of assimilating her biology and technology. Sure she blasted the ship apart using a dimensional attack rather than an energy one so they couldn’t adapt, however her means of travel there was by a dimensional portal using technology. She opened the path, if any of their machines remained, or a deep enough scan from a sister ship came by…

 

   “Very well,” says Rhulan aloud moving the Shadow Cat-girl from her lap to rest on the couch, a slight murmur of complaint from the sleeping cat-girl.

 

    ******

 

    “We found another one captain,” says the ensign.

 

   On the view screen of the Federation Ship a Borg Cube rests dead in space.

 

   “What is doing this?” asks the captain to no one in particular, “that makes twenty Borg ships our people have been tracking found dead in space.”

 

   “Should we send an away team captain,” asks one of the officers.

 

   “Yes,” says the captain, “if only to confirm what the other vessels have reported, Borg bodies rotting and rusting with the interior of the ships rusting away at rapid speed.

 

   An explosion draws their attention to the ship.

 

   “Atmospheric venting and power conduit failures,” says the ensign, “the hull is rotting rapidly. Our scans are showing hull failures all over the cube.”

 

   “Cancel the away team,” says the captain, “it’s too dangerous to go over now. We’ve seen enough.”

 

    “Captain, Borg ships incoming!”

 

   “What?” shouts the captain, “where…”

 

   He stops short as red bolts streak across through empty space like lightning from the dead ship over to the new ones, which stop and go dark.

 

   “What?” says the captain, “what just happened?”

 

   “The new cubes,” says the ensign, “they’re dead in space.”

 

   “I want deep scans of every one of them.” says the captain, “focus on where that…discharge came from on the first cube, if we can find out what is taking down the cubes we can finally have an advantage over the Borg.”

 

    “I’m more worried about what race is booby trapping the ships,” whispers the ensign.

 

 

     ******

    -A few months later-

 

    “This is it,” says the doctor onboard Voyager.

 

    “This…dust?” asks Captain Janeway.

 

    “The remains of a Borg drone,” says the doctor, “however it’s not inert dust, although our instruments can’t detect it…yet. There appears to be a residual energy imprinted on the dust its self…somehow, even though I can’t detect it even down to the sub-atomic level until it’s activated.”

 

     “Activated?” asks Captain Janeway.

 

    “Ah, I’ll show you.”

 

    He brings over a canister, “Here we have some Borg nanites that I deactivated of course from our previous encounter with the Borg.”

 

   He removes a sample via a machine near the dust sample, “Now watch what happens when I reactivate them.”

 

   “Hold on Doctor,” says Captain Janeway, “reactivate? Borg nanites…have you done this already?”

 

   “Don’t worry,” says the doctor with a smile, “they won’t be a threat.”

 

   The very instant he reactivates the nanites they glow red and vaporize.

 

   “What just happened?” asks Captain Janeway.

 

   “Well,” says the doctor smugly, “Who ever it is taking down the Borg they aren’t using a device placed in the cubes as we suspected; well the Federation’s lead scientists have suspected. No, I realized that the very dust, even after the entire cube has dissolved into space dust, leaves behind in it some sort of energy signature that detects and reacts to Borg nanites, destroying and spreading its self.”

 

    “A Borg plague?” asks Captain Janeway.

 

    The doctor shrugs, “That is over simplifying it…but yes, that is basically it. Hmm, a plague that remains inert can’t be detected by energy scans, and spreads instantly to nanites of Borg design, not giving them time to adapt…if they can, so something hidden physically and perhaps made to resemble the dust its self so we wouldn’t be able to detect it unless we knew exactly what we are looking for.”

 

    “Is there a way to prevent it?” asks Captain Janeway.

 

   “Why would you want to do that?” asks Rhulan materializing behind them.

 

   “Who are you?” asks Captain Janeway right before tapping her communication badge, “we have an intruder in the medical bay.”

 

   “I…” says Rhulan, “am the one who is destroying your…Borg. Do you have a record of a ship being destroyed via a violet explosion? I do believe I sensed a vessel like this one nearby.”

 

   Captain Janeway looks at the doctor as several crew members come in. However despite their phasers being pointed at her their guest remains un-phased.

 

   “Yes,” says Captain Janeway, “was that your people?”

 

   “Me,” says Rhulan, “Was I who did that. However while my reasons for doing so are none of your concern, I deduced that this…machine infester was too great a threat to my people to allow to exist. If it followed my energy and portal signature back to my world they would pose too great a threat for my people to be able to handle. So…I have procured technology from one of the most ancient races I am aware of…the Suihrai, and have used it on several hundred of these Borg vessels.”

 

    “Several hundred?” asks Captain Janeway remembering that they only know of thirty at this point, and most of those are ones spread from existing vessels, “you went into Borg space didn’t you?”

 

    “It was the most efficient method,” says Rhulan, “….can you have your people lower their weapons, it is a bit…insulting for an Empress such as myself to speak with you while having weapons pointed at her.”

 

    “Empress?” murmurs the doctor looking her up and down in her sorceress outfit.

 

    “Are you Suihrai?” asks Janeway while gesturing to her people to lower but not holster their phasers.

 

   “No,” says Rhulan rolling her eyes, “I said I procured the weapon from them, I am Aesperian.”

 

    “Never heard of either,” says Captain Janeway.

 

   “You wouldn’t” says Rhulan, “and pray you never again hear those names. Know this however, you do not want to mess with the weapon.”

 

    “Why not?” asks Janeway.

 

 

   “Aside from the obvious,” says Rhulan, “what with it exterminating a great threat to life its self, the Genocide weapon is normally designed to target genetic material and can affect an area the size of a planet; contained only within gravity fields. Makes it difficult to use effectively against more than one ship at a time. Thus I modified the weapon to not only target the nanites of this machine race, but to also react to new ones that come within a set distance I gave it. If you inspect your Borg space you will find most of it empty now of your Borg. So unless you want to save your monsters and possibly screw up the weapon and turn it on one or more of the biological identities of the Borg you will leave it alone.”

 

   Rhulan vanishes like a ghost.

 

   “Cloak?” asks the doctor.

 

   “No,” says Q suddenly appearing from a flash of light, “The Empress of the Aesperians left.”

 

    “Q,” says Janeway, “what do you know about this?”

 

    “Well,” says Q, “remember that little civil war we had?”

 

   “How could I forget,” says Janeway.

 

   “Remember those guns we used, that you naturally saw as pistols and rifles? Well she has one; or rather something just like them. She showed up and hunted down the Borg that was the guy who invented the Borg…can’t say why or how she knew, but apparently she decided the Borg were a threat worth annihilating. So…she’s annihilating them. Such a fascinating individual.”

 

    Q manifests an apple and takes a bite, “I have to say I’d love to see what else she could do if only I could follow her back to her own world.”

 

   “What?” says Janeway, “you can’t follow her back to her home planet?”

 

   “Woops,” says Q, “I’ve said too much…tootles.”

 

   And in a *flash* Q is gone, and Rhulan is long gone, Captain Janeway is left with more questions than answers and the threat that tampering with this Genocide weapon, if they can figure out how to tamper with it could shift to any one or more of the races the Borg have assimilated.

 

    ******

 

   Elsewhere the whole scene is being watched from a monitor in a white room with big windows looking out into a garden. Behind the desk observing this scene is a man stroking his white beard.

 

   “Sir,” says a woman with long silver hair and wearing a weird purple and blue tight battle suit whose very form looks to be almost painted on with bits of mech armor in just the right spots.

 

    “No,” says the old man, “while this particular subject has shown dimensional threat levels in the past her current actions seem more set to aid others.”

 

   “Isn’t it still interference with the natural development and political structure of a foreign universe?”

 

   “True,” says the old man, “although the subjects being targeted are a galactic level threat; her use of a forbidden weapon…how she got it alone warrants investigation. You have a go to observe her actions for now. We don’t want to run out ill-prepared.”

 

    “Yes sir!” says the woman who then turns and leaves.

 

  “I wander,” says the old man freeze framing a series of screens showing Rhulan’s recent battles, and the incident that originally caught their attention centuries before, “are you a villain or are you simply chaotic? What reason do you have for doing all this anyway?”