Borg



The Borg are a pseudo-race of cybernetic organisms from the Star Trek universe. They exist as a collective of various alien life-forms that have all been interconnected through cybernetic technology into a unified hive-mind. This hive-mind is driven to seek out and assimilate new species and new technologies in order to achieve what it considers to be "perfection". To this end, the Borg have mercilessly attacked and conquered thousands of worlds, assimilating countless millions and slaughtering anyone who tries to fight back. With each new conquest, the Borg's technology advances and adapts, making the collective ever more powerful.

Early history
The origins of the Borg are shrouded in mystery. While there have been numerous rumours, tales and theories of how the collective came to be, none of them have yet to be proven authentic. All that is known about the Borg's origin is that they come from the Milky Way's Delta Quadrant. By the 24th century, the collective controlled a sizeable portion of the quadrant with its borders reaching the galactic rim.

Supposedly, the Borg's development as a cybernetic race has been progressing for "thousands of centuries" according to the El-Aurian Guinan, but this can likely be dismissed as mere speculation as Guinan was not on her homeworld when the Borg invaded and has admitted that her knowledge of them is limited to tidbits of information told by other El-Aurian refugees.

The earliest known activity of the Borg was in 1484 as they had been encountered by the Vaadwaur by that time. Around that time, the collective had only assimilated a handful of systems and the Vaadwaur Supremacy considered them to be a minor nuisance at worst.

First contact with the Federation
By 2365, the Borg had already conquered a large portion of the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy. They made their first contact with the Federation when a lone Borg cube came across the USS Enterprise-D in the J-25 star system that the collective had destroyed 100 years prior. The Borg recognized the Enterprise as a worthy target and attempted to assimilate the vessel, but the omnipotent being called Q whisked the Starfleet vessel back to its own space. During that first encounter, however, the Borg had gathered information directly from the Enterprise's computer banks and knew where the vessel had originated from. The same cube that had made contact with the alien ship then made its way toward Federation space on a mission of assimilation. It would arrive a year later, attacking and destroying a Federation colony and a Starfleet ship before re-encountering the Enterprise.

The Battle of Wolf 359
Despite the Enterprise crew's preparations, their defensive capabilities were no match for the power of the Borg, who abducted and assimilated Captain Jean-Luc Picard so that they could use his knowledge and experience to bring about the downfall of the Federation. As they made their way towards Earth, they engaged Starfleet at the Wolf 359 star system, obliterating 39 ships in a fleet of 40.

The Enterprise would later catch up with the Borg vessel and initiate a plan to rescue Captain Picard. This plan was successful, and while the Borg hung in orbit above the Earth, the Enterprise crew used Picard's link to the collective to plant a command to the invading cube. The command ordered all drones on the cube to enter their regeneration cycle, putting them to sleep. A malfunction occured as a result, triggering a self-destruct sequence aboard the cube. When the cube exploded, Captain Picard's link to the Borg hive-mind was severed.

The Battle of Sector 001
After the Battle of Wolf 359, Starfleet had a few encounters with rogue Borg who were cut off from the hive-mind. Their next encounter with the collective came in 2373 when a Borg ship destroyed the Federation colony on Ivor Prime while en route to Earth. Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-E were ordered to stay out of the fight since Picard's lingering connection to the Borg made him a potential liability, but the captain disobeyed Starfleet's orders and joined the battle as the Borg approached Earth. With Picard coordinating the fleet, the tide of battle turned in Starfleet's favour and the Borg cube was destroyed, however a smaller spherical ship was launched from the cube just before it exploded.

Temporal incursion
Using temporal displacement technology, the Borg sphere created a time vortex that took them back to the 21st century, just before humanity had achieved warp travel and was recovering from a third world war. The planet was defenceless and would have been assimilated easily, but the Enterprise followed the Borg sphere through the vortex and destroyed it before the Borg could kill Zefram Cochrane, the man who invented humanity's first warp drive. Though their ship was destroyed, the Borg managed to beam over to the Enterprise and quickly began assimilating the ship and its crew. Thanks to Captain Picard and Lt. Commander Data - who had released plasma coolant gas into the engineering section - the Borg all died following the death of their queen. Despite this loss, the Borg would recover to plague humanity again in the future.

The Species 8472 Conflict
While they had failed yet again to conquer the Federation, the Borg still remained a threat to the galaxy at large and were now spreading their menace beyond the boundaries of the Milky Way. They had forced their way into another universe entirely, into a region of fluidic space populated by a race that the Borg referred to as Species 8472. These aliens were regarded by the Borg as the pinnacle of biological evolution, possessing destructive power unlike anything the collective had seen before. Their biology was so complex, in fact, that the Borg were unable to assimilate them.

Species 8472 took the Borg's entry into their space as a clear sign of aggression and retaliated by declaring a campaign of extermination not only against the collective but all life in the galaxy. For five months, the Borg endured numerous attacks by the aliens and lost every engagement. The tide of the war turned when the lone Federation starship - USS Voyager - had reached Borg space on its journey through the Delta Quadrant on its way back to Earth. They had been researching ways of resisting Borg assimilation by analyzing nanoprobes recovered from dead drones in the Nekrit Expanse, and had begun looking into a means of using the Borg's nanotechnology to fight Species 8472.

Captain Kathryn Janeway negotiated with the collective for safe passage through their territory, in exchange for the weaponized nanoprobes. An agreement was reached and the two uneasy allies developed a biomolecular warhead that could damage the otherwise invincible alien bioships. The warheads were successful in destroying a number of the alien vessels, deterring Species 8472's invasion and prompting them into returning to fluidic space. With the alien menace gone, the Borg terminated their alliance with Voyager and intended to assimilate the ship. However, their representative drone Seven of Nine was the only surviving drone on the ship and Voyager's crew managed to stop her and sever her link to the collective.

Civil war
In the year 2377, the Borg became aware of a virtual environment that existed within the collective called Unimatrix Zero. Certain drones throughout the collective possessed a recessive mutation that allowed them to enter this virtual environment and exist as individuals. The Borg Queen began systematically identifying and deactivating any drones with the mutation, but the process would take centuries before all the mutant drones were discovered. As the queen planned the destruction of Unimatrix Zero, the Zeroes reached out to Seven of Nine, who used to be one of them. The crew of the USS Voyager then became involved in the conflict and tried to assist the Zeroes in organizing a resistance movement against the collective. Developing a nanovirus that could nullify the cortical inhibitor implants of the Zeroes, Voyager attacked a Borg tactical cube and Captain Janeway and two of her officers boarded the vessel. They allowed themselves to be assimilated, but remained separate from the collective thanks to a neural suppressant that prevented them from falling sway to the Borg's hive-mind. With the nanovirus already in their bodies, the three infiltrators used their new Borg implants to download the virus into the cube's central plexus, transmitting throughout the collective instantly. As the virus spread and the Zeroes emerged from their regen cycles, they retained their individuality in the real world and worked toward sabotaging the collective from within.

The Borg Queen attempted to curb the Zeroes' resistance by commanding several Borg ships across the galaxy to self-destruct, killing their entire drone complements which numbered in the thousands just to eliminate a handful of renegades. The Zeroes were too widespread for self-destruction to be effective, and so the Queen modified Janeway's nanovirus to attack every drone with the mutation. The queen ordered the captive Janeway propose a compromise to her crew on Voyager, telling them that Unimatrix Zero could no longer exist. The Voyager crew convinced the Zeroes to exit Unimatrix Zero completely so that they could delete the construct altogether. With the Zeroes now free in the real world and their virtual homebase gone, the Borg had no way of eliminating the rebel drones without self-destructing the entire collective. How long the Zeroes' rebellion would last remains unknown.

Crippling blow
In 2378, the Borg once again were forced to deal with the nuisance that was Voyager. The vagrant Starfleet ship had discovered one of the collective's six transwarp hubs thanks to the aid of a future version of Kathryn Janeway who had travelled back in time to get Voyager home early. Admiral Janeway offered her future technology up to the Borg Queen, in exchange for letting Voyager use the hub to return to the Alpha Quadrant.

The Queen was able to locate the admiral's shuttle hiding within the Borg Unicomplex and had her beamed into the central nexus where the Queen assimilated her personally. Unknown to the Queen, Admiral Janeway had injected a neurolytic pathogen into her system prior to beginning her mission. The pathogen infected the Queen and spread across the collective, disrupting their entire subspace network. The Queen and Janeway both perished and the Unicomplex self-destructed. Voyager had meanwhile used the transwarp hub to return to the Alpha Quadrant, using the admiral's transphasic torpedo weapons to destroy the subspace manifolds that held the tranwarp network together. The hub collapsed and the entire network was destroyed, leaving the Borg Collective crippled.

Society
The Borg Collective was not a government in the traditional sense. Instead, it was the amalgamation of trillions of minds linked together via a subspace communications network. All minds within the collective made decisions as one, though they had no sense of individual thought and no free will.

The collective form of organization allowed for tremendous efficiency in action and deliberation. With each Borg drone functioning separately according to its instructions, it could at any time be processing information, performing physical actions, or focusing its energy toward other collective goals. The vast resources thus presented to the collective organization allowed for simultaneous execution of a nearly infinite number of tasks as well as nearly limitless calculations. This in turn allowed the Borg to consider multiple courses of action before committing to any one course. The best example of this was the Borg ability to "adapt" nearly instantaneously to any type of attack or threat. By focusing its resources on the threat at hand, all possible outcomes and responses could be explored within an extremely short period of time. The result was that the Borg were able to bring a tremendous amount of force, or computational power, to bear on any single problem and overwhelm any opposition by sheer volume of numbers. The collective state of organization also greatly decreased the chance of error that exists with the decision making of individuals or the conflicts of opinion that are a factor in hierarchical organizations.

The collective was organized by a Borg Queen; the exact nature of the queen's purpose within the collective is obscure, but she appears to represent the will of the hive-mind, bringing order to the chaos of the countless minds that make up the collective consciousness. Like with insects, the queen directs and coordinates the activities of the drones within her hive. Unlike drones, who act as mindless automatons under normal circumstances, the queen displays individual behaviour, even though she is not an individual herself. Instead, she is merely a figurehead or avatar representing the will of the collective, displaying an authoritative, ruthless, even sadistic demeanour.

Assimilation
Assimilation is the means by which the Borg Collective adds new life-forms and technology to itself, further increasing its numbers and its power. To achieve its vision of perfection, the collective selected species that possessed various advantageous traits to their biology and were technologically advanced. So far, all Borg that have appeared have been humanoid; no explanation has been given for this, but it could be that the collective considers this a baseline requirement for assimilation. Civilizations targeted for assimilation had to at least be warp-capable and possess some form of technology unique to their society that could serve the Borg's interests.

Biological
The Borg would typically only target entire civilizations or sufficiently large groups for assimilation, ignoring individual life-forms that were neither threatening nor biologically distinct from other members of their species. Thus, assimilation efforts were reserved for planets, large spaceborne structures and starships carrying relevant technology. There were exceptions in some cases, such as the assimilation of Starfleet captain Jean-Luc Picard who was to serve as an intermediary between the Borg and the Federation. The assimilation process would begin with drones seizing victims and injecting them with a set of tubules, usually through the carotid artery. Swarms of nanoprobes would flow into the victim's bloodstream, attacking the blood cells and re-writing the victim's DNA. In a matter of seconds, the nanoprobes would spread quickly enough throughout the body to cause the victim's skin to mottle and and their hair to begin falling out. The victim's first basic implants are formed, starting with a neural tranceiver in the brain. With the formation of the neural implants, the victim's mind is linked to the Borg's hive-mind and falls under its control.

Following the preliminary assimilation, new drones would undergo cybernetic surgery to prepare them for their roles within the collective. Clothing would be either partially or completely removed to make way for the new drone's exo-plating which functioned as body armour. Often, but not always, one of the victim's eyes would be removed and replaced with an optic implant, while one of the victim's arms would be amputated from the elbow and replaced with a mechanical prosthetic. These servo-armatures contain a number of tools that vary depending on the drone's intended function. Once augmentation is completed, the new drone is given a designation and begins carrying out its assigned function.

Technological
The Borg attempt to assimilate advanced technology wherever and whenever they find it. In most cases, when a Borg vessel encounters an alien ship, it will scan the target vessel to determine its threat level and whether or not its technology is of interest to the collective. Drones are then beamed aboard to analyse the vessel's technology up-close and to gather information from the ship's computers. Even if the crew attempt to interfere with data-gathering by killing or incapacitating a boarding drone, another will immediately be transported over to continue its comrade's work and to salvage any vital components from the deceased drone.

Vessels marked for assimilation are held in place by the Borg vessel's tractor beam. If the target is small enough, it is drawn into a hangar within the Borg ship where drones will begin dismantling the captured ship, adding its systems to the collective's own technology pool. Larger vessels are taken apart piece by piece as the Borg ship uses a series of cutting beams to slice up sections of the target ship and retrieve them with tractor beams.

In rare cases, Borg drones that are cut off from the collective will attempt to acquire an alien vessel by force, assimilating as many of the crew as necessary and transforming the ship from the inside out. The most notable example of this was when the Borg travelled back in time to 2063 and were pursued by the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E); the Enterprise destroyed the Borg's own vessel, but a large contingent of drones managed to transport over to the Enterprise and began assimilating the ship deck by deck. As the assimilation progresses, the ship outwardly transforms, increasing in mass and altering in configuration.

''It has been theorized that the Borg Collective acquires all of its vessels via assimilation, eventually reconfiguring assimilated vessels into basic geometric shapes such as cubes or spheres with the vessels' systems being evenly distributed throughout the entire structure instead of being localized to a specific area. This theory is supported by the fact that no Borg shipyards or construction facilities have ever been witnessed in-canon.''

The assimilation of planetbound technology is carried out in a similar manner to that of ships. When the Borg invade a planet, they begin by bombarding any defensive structures from orbit, reducing the target species' ability to resist them. Once planetary defences are neutralised, the Borg vessels use tractor beams to scoop entire cities off of a planet's surface, beaming down drones to assimilate any technology and life-forms within a city, or simply beaming victims onto their vessel for assimilation.

''The Borg have been known to occupy planets long-term, though it is currently unknown why. Many planets within Borg space remain populated, but it is not yet known what kind of activities take place upon Borg planets. Given that the Borg have been known to rip whole cities off of planets, it seems likely that they would extract any and all naturally-forming materials that could be of use to them, until there is nothing left of a planet but a hollow, broken crust.''