Behind the Shroud

Posted on Thu Mar 5th, 2020 @ 4:17am by Fleet Captain Racheal Yamaguchi

Mission: Mission 60: Atlas Falls
Location: Location Unknown - Delta Quadrant
Timeline: 1200Hrs - January 15th, 2391

The Borg were known as a race of beings, able to use everything and everyone that they had come into contact with and it was also well known that they could assimilate others into their collective often using ruthless force but what was not known about the collective was that the identities of those who they assimilated were often retained by the collective.

The drone with the designation Unit Thirteen of Eighty Two was no exception to this statistic, she looked human to a degree and while she had female features, she also had Borg implants festooned over her entire body.

Thirteen turned her head in a rather android like fashion as she heard the resonant tone of the Collective go through her mind, the voice directed her that it was time to regenerate so like an obedient dog she slipped her lithe form into the nearest alcove and shut down while she regenerated.

The woman who was once human opened her eyes to find herself on a beach, her memories all came back to her like a warm blanket as a smile appeared on the womans face. "I miss home.." she said softly aloud to herself. "Will my girls ever think of me... or do they think I'm dead.?" she asked of herself as she looked down at the calm water lapping around her ankles. She was wearing a light blue one piece bathing suit over which she wore a pair of light grey shorts. "What... What is this?" Thirteen asked herself aloud for the first time in as long as she could recall.

She had a pile of chestnut colored tangles from her head instead of Borg implants which she had received courtesy of the Borg following their assimilation of several dozen of the crew of the Goodson's escape pods.

Thirteen turned her head as she regarded who would obviously be her companion this time out wherever it was that she herself was visiting. "You don't recall this place... do you?"

"Clearly not." The human woman responded with a soft huff. "So... who are you ... and where is this place?"

"You are not hallucinating, you are also not here." the man responded. "My name is Dayos and you are-"

"I am not incapable, I know exactly who I am." the woman responded with a growl. "You gonna tell me its wrong to miss my children too?"

"No." Dayos responded. "Not at all." he sighed. "This place is Unimatrix Zero... or what Unimatrix Zero became... after the USS Voyager and Captain Janeway hid it from the Borg Queen."

"Ahh... She was on the Cube that assimilated me." Thirteen sighed softly.

Dayos smiled. "Did she personally assimilate you?"

"Yep." the woman smiled. "In a way I kind of feel flattered but in other ways... having those implants is merry hell for my back.." she paused. "Maybe I should request more Borg mutilation to fix their mutilation."

"Thats somewhat cynical of you?"

"Not at all... I'm in for the duration of hell... however many years or decades or centuries it is..." she sighed softly. "I believe you are too..."

"Alas.. Yes.." the man responded evenly as Thirteen sighed softly. "I wanted some peace and quiet from the endless droning on of the Collective and the mechanical noises of all of the slaves screaming to be free..."

Dayos smiled. "Well who knows... The Borg was created in a day,.... someone out there will dethrone the Borg once and for all and we can all live happy endless lives in oblivion."

Thirteen sighed softly. "Go away already... Stop pestering my limited time with stupidity," as she mentaly thought of the family she lost when she herself was assimilated by the Borg in early 2367 on the Terran calendar.

Dayos sighed before he turned and walked away, leaving Thirteen to herself and her own thoughts with what limited time she had left to herself before her regeneration cycle finished and she went back to being a Borg Drone.

"Jake... I hope you turned out like your father... and me." Thirteen responded softly. "Heather... Talon.." the woman sighed softly. "I miss you all... and its only here that I can remember you." Thirteen slowly smiled. "For as long as I exist,... there is hope that I will someday be free of the endless nightmare."

As she said the last word to herself there was a soft dull booming sound, she looked up as the star in the sky seemed to go out, the wind picked up and the water turned from a placid flat calm to a frothing sea that looked like it was from the center of a major storm, loud and white-capped. This scene from paradise was rapidly turning into a vision of hell itself.

Thirteen blinked as she opened her eyes in her alcove but something was horribly wrong in the collective, she could hear trillions of voices all asking the same thing, all chaos rather then order but to make matters even more complex was that she retained all of her memories from before she was assimilated rather then just what she had become.

"I... remember... who I am..." Thirteen said aloud as she slowly smiled as she gently reached out to all of the drones near her. "Hear me... Hear me!"

The drones on her own cube all heard her and she was able to communicate with them. "We are.... Free.... I think .... Something has happened to the collective and we must find out what it was..." she paused. "Can none of you hear the collective?"

"No." thousands of responses came back. "What will we do?"

"We will survive, we will endure and we will continue.." Thirteen responded. "Many of you, like me are from Starfleet and so we will work together for the whole... so for now. I will command this vessel... and we will survive. Medical drones, see to those who need it." she exited her alcove as she began moving towards the central plexus of the cube as she was the only one on her cube who had been restored.

Thirteen reached her destination some ten minutes later, she could feel the insanity gripping the collective, in her minds eye she watched as Unimatrix One was utterly demolished by a force of ships she couldn't begin to identify. Now the Queen was gone and the leadership of the Collective had been all but obliterated.

Thirteen knew she had to act fast so she asked her drones to set up a subspace communications pulse that would reach the entire collective, telling each drone what they needed to do in order to save themselves from their own destruction. They would need to reset and then restore every drone's personality and individuality to them otherwise they would be lost forever, in order for this to work they would also need to destroy the Vinculum.

Waves of discord and chaos infected the collective but Thirteen who was a mere drone ignored it, she focused on her task that she had set for herself.

Thirteen did this to her own Cube's central plexus before she lifted her wrist-mounted disruptor, then she opened fire on the vinculum, it took several hits before its shields collapsed, then another half dozen shots reduced it to scrap.

Then she finished her task. "I am restored." the drone said as her entire life's memories were restored to her, her experiences and her very identity were also returned to her in a flash, years of memories downloaded and it was almost more then she could process. "I am... alive.." Thirteen said quietly as she blinked her one human eye. "I am... Rachael Yamaguchi... and I have returned.."