PROLOGUE
2400
Fifteen years of war had decimated Starfleet. The Dominion and the Borg had seemingly taken turns at challenging the Federation, and the Delta technology, brought back by Voyager in 2378, had not been deployed quickly enough to give Starfleet a definite advantage.
They were all dead: Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-E at Karemma III, Riker and the crew of the Titan at Veridian II, Janeway and the crew of Voyager around Romulus.
The Federation, the Klingons and, during the first three years, the Romulans had been united in the battle against the invaders. But in 2388, a huge Dominion Task Force had taken advantage of the relative weakness of the Empire still in turmoil after the Shinzon affair to almost completely destroy the Romulan fleet and homeworld. The exile had brought about three million survivors to Vulcan, in an ironic voyage home.
The fall of Romulus had been a disaster for the Federation, as the Dominion now had a huge foothold in the Beta Quadrant, and a new ally, as the Remans had decided that the time had come to unite with a power big enough to help them reach new heights of domination. Obviously they had chosen not to believe the stories about what had happened on Cardassia Prime around the end of the First Dominion War.
The new Dominion-Remus Alliance had a new To Do on its agenda: Qo'noS. The time had come to once and for all end "the galactic pollution" that was the Klingon Empire. But the Klingons disagreed, and they were very thorough in blasting to bits every Dominion or Reman battleship crossing the border of their space. So the Allies chose to blockade them, and by assigning tens of thousands of ships to that task, they were successful for the few following years. But even so, the Klingons were the proverbial thorn in the Dominion foot, and they decided to hold the Beta Quadrant and delay the conquest of the Federation. That was December 8, 2390.
As if they had only waited for their turn, on December 22, 2390, the Borg came back with a vengeance.
***
The assault began in the Palomar Sector, as a fleet of 150 Cubes started attacking every planet, every starbase, every starship in that sector. Of course, those ships were mostly there for scientific research on the Expanse and were quite unable to defend themselves against such an invader. Still, the Borg now held a position strategically comparable to the one the Dominion held in Romulan space.
It seemed the Borg were there for the long run this time. They wouldn't be happy just assimilating people and technologies and destroying everything else. No, they were settling on those planets they had conquered, ready to start anytime crushing the rest of the huge, mostly unexplored sector, before swarming on the undefended Federation. At least, that's what they thought. But that was without accounting for Admiral Robert Dalton.
Dalton was a human in his genes, but a Klingon at heart, just like Admiral Lionel Wilkins, who had spearheaded the defense of Federation space in the Beta Quadrant. He knew that the Delta technology had been specifically designed to fight the Borg. So he started trading ships with every other fleet in the Federation, offering three for one, ten for one, anything for one Delta-enhanced ship. Everyone was so scared of the Borg that they agreed. In the meantime, Dalton had hired the most heteroclite set of engineers to find new enhancements for his own ship, the USS Masada.
On October 17, 2392, the Borg started new incursions in Federation space — they had done so on a regular basis, one Cube at a time, conquering a system or two before stopping to settle, but this one seemed to be the real deal. It was a full-fledged attack through the tens of thousands of light years of mostly uncharted space between the Palomar sector and the Ferengi Alliance and the Cardassian Union, a prelude to the invasion of the main Federation space. Robert Dalton met the 150 Cubes with his fleet of 39 Delta-enhanced ships, and he beat the crap out of all of them at Vega 656.
Unfortunately, it was only a half-victory, as Dalton was left with four heavily damaged ships and he was unable to take back a single planet, defended as they were by a weapon network which made even the Cardassian orbital weapon platforms look like water guns. The Borg thus held the worlds they had conquered and promptly brought 600 Cubes to reinforce their position. But they didn't launch any other attack at that time.
***
The following two years finally gave a devastated Starfleet a chance to regroup. Except for a few skirmishes on the Dominion-Reman front, the next big battle occurred on September 6, 2394, with the second Defeat at Wolf 359 — where the 155 ships assembled in the Tenth Fleet were destroyed alongside the Imperial Klingon Fleet by an unexpectedly strong Reman fleet of more than one thousand ships.
Now the morale in the Federation was at its lowest. The Dominion Alliance on one side, the Borg on the other: no one had ever considered such a doomsday scenario would ever become possible. But it plummeted once again after the surprise discovery following the battle of Cestus IV, on January 6, 2395.
Starfleet had won the day. Admiral Wilkins, who had spoken loudly against the Wolf 359 expedition, because he knew, but could not prove, that it was all a Reman trap, had just been promoted Fleet Admiral and officially put in charge of ALL operations in the Beta Quadrant. Wilkins was determined to find how the Remans had been able to set that trap. One of the prisoners made at Cestus IV gave him the answer.
"What's your name?" the Starfleet interrogator had sternly asked.
"Subcommander Mandak, of the Third Legion."
"What's a Romulan Subcommander doing with the Remans?"
"I am a Reman."
"No. Remans look like Turok-Hans. You look like a Romulan."
"And you look like a human, yet you are a Klingon p'tahk. It's not a matter of genes, but of allegiance."
Commander Stone felt his spine turn to ice.
"There are other renegades like you?"
"What do you think?"
***
From that moment on, doubt was installed in all minds. Three million Romulans were on Vulcan, of which fourteen thousands had been integrated in Starfleet, at every level from simple crewman to Lieutenant-Commander. There were Command Officers, there were Science Officers, there were Tactical Officers, and there were Engineers.
Like Yirina Sorel.
Born in 2368, Yirina was clearly an engineering genius. An incredibly small woman (1.40 meters high, maybe 35 kg), cute as a button and looking about half her age, she had emerged from the Phi'lasasam, the Romulan Military Academy, at eighteen, the age when the brightest and most recommended were admitted, and she had become Chief Engineer of the Deletham, an experimental smaller warship which was supposed to become the new Romulan warhorse, as hundreds could be built instead of a Warbird, each one having about the same firepower — Wilkins had nicknamed it the "Romulan Defiant" when he had been invited to its shakedown cruise. Unfortunately, two years later, as the Deletham was now ready for mass production, the Dominion had launched its deadly attack. It was now orbiting around Vulcan, mighty orphan of an aborted class, as the head designers had all been killed during the assault.
Yirina had volunteered to serve in Starfleet, where she had been affected to the USS Venture, a Sovereign-Class starship assigned to the Bajoran Sector, with the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade and as a propulsion specialist. There she had learned in a record time the workings of the Federation Warp Drive Mark XXI, the most advanced in the quadrant, a beast capable of Warp 9.99985 for days at a time.
On November 12, 2394, she had been promoted to Full Lieutenant and transferred to the USS Masada, where propulsion seemed to cause a lot of problems, and Starfleet Command felt that her genius would be more challenged. Her mission: find out why the Mark XXI couldn't exceed Warp 7.3.
The challenge was worthy of her. She was worthy of the challenge. For weeks, she spent every minute off duty studying, not only the official specifications of the Luna-Class vessel, but also all the new devices and technologies integrated on Robert Dalton's orders.
That of course was quite aggravating for her colleagues. They would have liked to get acquainted with her, at least a little bit. Lieutenant-Commander Maddox, the ship's Chief Engineer, would have liked for her to stop and report to him once in a while.
"Lieutenant, don't forget that I'm in charge here. You may have a special assignment, but that does not mean that you don't report to me!"
Yirina was particularly tired that day.
"Don't you trust me?"
"That's not the point, Lieutenant. Starfleet regulations …"
"With all due respect, I have spent two years serving as Chief Engineer on a ship infinitely more advanced than this one. I know what I'm doing. I'm on the verge of a breakthrough, and I promise you that as soon as I have something worthy of a report, I will personally bring it to you!"
Maddox had tried to reason with her, but she was young and brash. He finally decided to let her go and check on her from time to time.
And then, on January 6, 2395, the Battle of Cestus changed everything …
***
"Hey, you!"
"Yes, Sir?"
"Are you through cleaning Deck Eight plasma conduits?"
"Yes, Sir."
"So what are you doing here?"
"Waiting for orders, Sir."
"We have a Deck Nine, don't we? We have plasma conduits there, don't we? Unless I am misinformed about the technical specifications of this ship. Tell me, Chief Engineer, is that the case?"
"No, Sir."
"I DON'T HEAR YOU!"
"NO, SIR!"
"Very well. You know what you have to do then. Do it!"
"Yes, Sir."
For five years, that had been the new routine Yirina had followed on the Masada. The day after the revelation that some Romulans might in fact be Reman spies, she had been retrograded to simple crewman and affected to the dirtiest tasks, the jobs they wouldn't even ask prisoners to do, had they had any on board. Maddox had been called to Starfleet Command that day and had never returned. The rumor was that he had taken Yirina's defense a little too far, and he was now on some sub-warp carrier in the Sol system.
Lieutenant Jethro Watson, a 2.10-meter high colossus, had replaced him as the new Chief Engineer. He was a competent engineer, but clearly not ready to assume that important role, especially on a ship as the Masada. But since he had a deep commitment to the Federation, amply proven by twenty-five years of service, it was felt that there was no better man available for now.
Watson hated the Romulans. To be fair, he was a strong protagonist of the divine origin of the human race and its right to dominate the universe, but some races he almost tolerated in his godly magnanimity. Particularly the Andorian little blue kissy face he regularly humped when he felt like having fun.
But Watson hated the Romulans. That had been exacerbated by the Cestus IV revelation. And Yirina was the only Romulan on the Masada. To make things worse, she was so much smarter than him that ideas actually seemed to ooze from her ears. Watson had noticed it, and he hated her even more for that. His was really not the brightest bulb on the ship.
As soon as Yirina, along with all Romulans serving in Starfleet, had been retrograded to crewman — a situation which had led most of them to leave in outrage —, it had started.
Two days later, the Science Officer, visiting Engineering, had noticed her and asked her why her face was black and blue.
"I tripped and fell on a battery pack, Sir", she had answered in a muted voice.
***
The five years following the victory of Cestus IV were a new kind of war. No more big battles, no more skirmishes, just a huge game of chess, as senior strategists on both sides were trying to outguess their opponents, and counter their most probable moves. As a result, there were very few real fights, as a game of chess with only a few pieces left on the board.
Both sides however were busy preparing the next duel, building battle ships, consolidating their positions, and trying to make sure that the enemy was not listening. On the Federation side, it meant a constant increase in the Romulan paranoia which was now rampant, and sometimes much more than that, on every ship, every outpost. The easy answer would have been to simply throw them out, but they were experienced people, and Starfleet had lost too many lives, so many that Starfleet Academy couldn't supply replacements quickly enough.
On October 11, 2399, the sky fell.
That day, the Palomar Expanse exhaled thousands of Borg Cubes, which promptly defeated Dalton's fleet and stormed the space between it and the Federation in an irresistible stampede. So deliberate were they in their rush that they didn't even stop to finish the Federation fleet, sixteen ships in various state of destruction out of the 265 originally assembled there.
The Borg literally rammed the Cardassians and the Ferengis and punched right through the Federation last big defense, Admiral Warner's sixth fleet, like a hot knife into butter. Tens of thousands of carriers started evacuating the civilian population as quickly as possible, while the military tried to cover their backs for as long as they could.
It took the Borg three weeks to occupy the most important, strategically best located worlds, including Earth. There was only one possible destination: the Klingon Empire.
Wilkins' fleet and the Klingons did everything they could to help the refugees. But less than ten percent of the ships finally arrived safely. The rest was simply destroyed by the pursuing, relentless enemy. The survivors were directed to the Khitomer Star System, which had been promptly evacuated by most of its population to welcome them. There they would regroup. There they would establish a new liaison with the Klingon government and try to organize some kind of society.
***
The survivors of Dalton's fleet had left in shuttles and escape pods. Their destination: Cardassia, the first world on their way in. They didn't know yet that Cardassia was now a Borg world …
2400
Fifteen years of war had decimated Starfleet. The Dominion and the Borg had seemingly taken turns at challenging the Federation, and the Delta technology, brought back by Voyager in 2378, had not been deployed quickly enough to give Starfleet a definite advantage.
They were all dead: Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-E at Karemma III, Riker and the crew of the Titan at Veridian II, Janeway and the crew of Voyager around Romulus.
The Federation, the Klingons and, during the first three years, the Romulans had been united in the battle against the invaders. But in 2388, a huge Dominion Task Force had taken advantage of the relative weakness of the Empire still in turmoil after the Shinzon affair to almost completely destroy the Romulan fleet and homeworld. The exile had brought about three million survivors to Vulcan, in an ironic voyage home.
The fall of Romulus had been a disaster for the Federation, as the Dominion now had a huge foothold in the Beta Quadrant, and a new ally, as the Remans had decided that the time had come to unite with a power big enough to help them reach new heights of domination. Obviously they had chosen not to believe the stories about what had happened on Cardassia Prime around the end of the First Dominion War.
The new Dominion-Remus Alliance had a new To Do on its agenda: Qo'noS. The time had come to once and for all end "the galactic pollution" that was the Klingon Empire. But the Klingons disagreed, and they were very thorough in blasting to bits every Dominion or Reman battleship crossing the border of their space. So the Allies chose to blockade them, and by assigning tens of thousands of ships to that task, they were successful for the few following years. But even so, the Klingons were the proverbial thorn in the Dominion foot, and they decided to hold the Beta Quadrant and delay the conquest of the Federation. That was December 8, 2390.
As if they had only waited for their turn, on December 22, 2390, the Borg came back with a vengeance.
***
The assault began in the Palomar Sector, as a fleet of 150 Cubes started attacking every planet, every starbase, every starship in that sector. Of course, those ships were mostly there for scientific research on the Expanse and were quite unable to defend themselves against such an invader. Still, the Borg now held a position strategically comparable to the one the Dominion held in Romulan space.
It seemed the Borg were there for the long run this time. They wouldn't be happy just assimilating people and technologies and destroying everything else. No, they were settling on those planets they had conquered, ready to start anytime crushing the rest of the huge, mostly unexplored sector, before swarming on the undefended Federation. At least, that's what they thought. But that was without accounting for Admiral Robert Dalton.
Dalton was a human in his genes, but a Klingon at heart, just like Admiral Lionel Wilkins, who had spearheaded the defense of Federation space in the Beta Quadrant. He knew that the Delta technology had been specifically designed to fight the Borg. So he started trading ships with every other fleet in the Federation, offering three for one, ten for one, anything for one Delta-enhanced ship. Everyone was so scared of the Borg that they agreed. In the meantime, Dalton had hired the most heteroclite set of engineers to find new enhancements for his own ship, the USS Masada.
On October 17, 2392, the Borg started new incursions in Federation space — they had done so on a regular basis, one Cube at a time, conquering a system or two before stopping to settle, but this one seemed to be the real deal. It was a full-fledged attack through the tens of thousands of light years of mostly uncharted space between the Palomar sector and the Ferengi Alliance and the Cardassian Union, a prelude to the invasion of the main Federation space. Robert Dalton met the 150 Cubes with his fleet of 39 Delta-enhanced ships, and he beat the crap out of all of them at Vega 656.
Unfortunately, it was only a half-victory, as Dalton was left with four heavily damaged ships and he was unable to take back a single planet, defended as they were by a weapon network which made even the Cardassian orbital weapon platforms look like water guns. The Borg thus held the worlds they had conquered and promptly brought 600 Cubes to reinforce their position. But they didn't launch any other attack at that time.
***
The following two years finally gave a devastated Starfleet a chance to regroup. Except for a few skirmishes on the Dominion-Reman front, the next big battle occurred on September 6, 2394, with the second Defeat at Wolf 359 — where the 155 ships assembled in the Tenth Fleet were destroyed alongside the Imperial Klingon Fleet by an unexpectedly strong Reman fleet of more than one thousand ships.
Now the morale in the Federation was at its lowest. The Dominion Alliance on one side, the Borg on the other: no one had ever considered such a doomsday scenario would ever become possible. But it plummeted once again after the surprise discovery following the battle of Cestus IV, on January 6, 2395.
Starfleet had won the day. Admiral Wilkins, who had spoken loudly against the Wolf 359 expedition, because he knew, but could not prove, that it was all a Reman trap, had just been promoted Fleet Admiral and officially put in charge of ALL operations in the Beta Quadrant. Wilkins was determined to find how the Remans had been able to set that trap. One of the prisoners made at Cestus IV gave him the answer.
"What's your name?" the Starfleet interrogator had sternly asked.
"Subcommander Mandak, of the Third Legion."
"What's a Romulan Subcommander doing with the Remans?"
"I am a Reman."
"No. Remans look like Turok-Hans. You look like a Romulan."
"And you look like a human, yet you are a Klingon p'tahk. It's not a matter of genes, but of allegiance."
Commander Stone felt his spine turn to ice.
"There are other renegades like you?"
"What do you think?"
***
From that moment on, doubt was installed in all minds. Three million Romulans were on Vulcan, of which fourteen thousands had been integrated in Starfleet, at every level from simple crewman to Lieutenant-Commander. There were Command Officers, there were Science Officers, there were Tactical Officers, and there were Engineers.
Like Yirina Sorel.
Born in 2368, Yirina was clearly an engineering genius. An incredibly small woman (1.40 meters high, maybe 35 kg), cute as a button and looking about half her age, she had emerged from the Phi'lasasam, the Romulan Military Academy, at eighteen, the age when the brightest and most recommended were admitted, and she had become Chief Engineer of the Deletham, an experimental smaller warship which was supposed to become the new Romulan warhorse, as hundreds could be built instead of a Warbird, each one having about the same firepower — Wilkins had nicknamed it the "Romulan Defiant" when he had been invited to its shakedown cruise. Unfortunately, two years later, as the Deletham was now ready for mass production, the Dominion had launched its deadly attack. It was now orbiting around Vulcan, mighty orphan of an aborted class, as the head designers had all been killed during the assault.
Yirina had volunteered to serve in Starfleet, where she had been affected to the USS Venture, a Sovereign-Class starship assigned to the Bajoran Sector, with the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade and as a propulsion specialist. There she had learned in a record time the workings of the Federation Warp Drive Mark XXI, the most advanced in the quadrant, a beast capable of Warp 9.99985 for days at a time.
On November 12, 2394, she had been promoted to Full Lieutenant and transferred to the USS Masada, where propulsion seemed to cause a lot of problems, and Starfleet Command felt that her genius would be more challenged. Her mission: find out why the Mark XXI couldn't exceed Warp 7.3.
The challenge was worthy of her. She was worthy of the challenge. For weeks, she spent every minute off duty studying, not only the official specifications of the Luna-Class vessel, but also all the new devices and technologies integrated on Robert Dalton's orders.
That of course was quite aggravating for her colleagues. They would have liked to get acquainted with her, at least a little bit. Lieutenant-Commander Maddox, the ship's Chief Engineer, would have liked for her to stop and report to him once in a while.
"Lieutenant, don't forget that I'm in charge here. You may have a special assignment, but that does not mean that you don't report to me!"
Yirina was particularly tired that day.
"Don't you trust me?"
"That's not the point, Lieutenant. Starfleet regulations …"
"With all due respect, I have spent two years serving as Chief Engineer on a ship infinitely more advanced than this one. I know what I'm doing. I'm on the verge of a breakthrough, and I promise you that as soon as I have something worthy of a report, I will personally bring it to you!"
Maddox had tried to reason with her, but she was young and brash. He finally decided to let her go and check on her from time to time.
And then, on January 6, 2395, the Battle of Cestus changed everything …
***
"Hey, you!"
"Yes, Sir?"
"Are you through cleaning Deck Eight plasma conduits?"
"Yes, Sir."
"So what are you doing here?"
"Waiting for orders, Sir."
"We have a Deck Nine, don't we? We have plasma conduits there, don't we? Unless I am misinformed about the technical specifications of this ship. Tell me, Chief Engineer, is that the case?"
"No, Sir."
"I DON'T HEAR YOU!"
"NO, SIR!"
"Very well. You know what you have to do then. Do it!"
"Yes, Sir."
For five years, that had been the new routine Yirina had followed on the Masada. The day after the revelation that some Romulans might in fact be Reman spies, she had been retrograded to simple crewman and affected to the dirtiest tasks, the jobs they wouldn't even ask prisoners to do, had they had any on board. Maddox had been called to Starfleet Command that day and had never returned. The rumor was that he had taken Yirina's defense a little too far, and he was now on some sub-warp carrier in the Sol system.
Lieutenant Jethro Watson, a 2.10-meter high colossus, had replaced him as the new Chief Engineer. He was a competent engineer, but clearly not ready to assume that important role, especially on a ship as the Masada. But since he had a deep commitment to the Federation, amply proven by twenty-five years of service, it was felt that there was no better man available for now.
Watson hated the Romulans. To be fair, he was a strong protagonist of the divine origin of the human race and its right to dominate the universe, but some races he almost tolerated in his godly magnanimity. Particularly the Andorian little blue kissy face he regularly humped when he felt like having fun.
But Watson hated the Romulans. That had been exacerbated by the Cestus IV revelation. And Yirina was the only Romulan on the Masada. To make things worse, she was so much smarter than him that ideas actually seemed to ooze from her ears. Watson had noticed it, and he hated her even more for that. His was really not the brightest bulb on the ship.
As soon as Yirina, along with all Romulans serving in Starfleet, had been retrograded to crewman — a situation which had led most of them to leave in outrage —, it had started.
Two days later, the Science Officer, visiting Engineering, had noticed her and asked her why her face was black and blue.
"I tripped and fell on a battery pack, Sir", she had answered in a muted voice.
***
The five years following the victory of Cestus IV were a new kind of war. No more big battles, no more skirmishes, just a huge game of chess, as senior strategists on both sides were trying to outguess their opponents, and counter their most probable moves. As a result, there were very few real fights, as a game of chess with only a few pieces left on the board.
Both sides however were busy preparing the next duel, building battle ships, consolidating their positions, and trying to make sure that the enemy was not listening. On the Federation side, it meant a constant increase in the Romulan paranoia which was now rampant, and sometimes much more than that, on every ship, every outpost. The easy answer would have been to simply throw them out, but they were experienced people, and Starfleet had lost too many lives, so many that Starfleet Academy couldn't supply replacements quickly enough.
On October 11, 2399, the sky fell.
That day, the Palomar Expanse exhaled thousands of Borg Cubes, which promptly defeated Dalton's fleet and stormed the space between it and the Federation in an irresistible stampede. So deliberate were they in their rush that they didn't even stop to finish the Federation fleet, sixteen ships in various state of destruction out of the 265 originally assembled there.
The Borg literally rammed the Cardassians and the Ferengis and punched right through the Federation last big defense, Admiral Warner's sixth fleet, like a hot knife into butter. Tens of thousands of carriers started evacuating the civilian population as quickly as possible, while the military tried to cover their backs for as long as they could.
It took the Borg three weeks to occupy the most important, strategically best located worlds, including Earth. There was only one possible destination: the Klingon Empire.
Wilkins' fleet and the Klingons did everything they could to help the refugees. But less than ten percent of the ships finally arrived safely. The rest was simply destroyed by the pursuing, relentless enemy. The survivors were directed to the Khitomer Star System, which had been promptly evacuated by most of its population to welcome them. There they would regroup. There they would establish a new liaison with the Klingon government and try to organize some kind of society.
***
The survivors of Dalton's fleet had left in shuttles and escape pods. Their destination: Cardassia, the first world on their way in. They didn't know yet that Cardassia was now a Borg world …
also sounds like they could use the dauntless that other universe thinks its gone so finders keepers? sounds just up Q's alley 
