Bowers had faced the Borg only once before in his career: during their last attempt to assimilate Earth three years ago, he had been the tactical officer on the U.S.S. Budapest,part of a hastily assembled fleet whose mission was to defend Earth from an invading Borg cube. In the midst of the battle Budapesthad apparently been targeted by the cube for assimilation, because drones began beaming into key points throughout the ship. Bowers had killed two on the bridge before the drones began to adapt to the crew’s modified hand phaser frequencies. The Borg were very quickly overrunning the ship, and Bowers had been too late to stop one of them from assimilating Captain sh’Rzaan.

Fortunately, the crew had gone into the battle with a contingency plan. At that time Budapesthad been one of five test-bed starships for a new offensive hand weapon, one radically different from phasers and designed to be used specifically in situations when particle-beam weapons were useless: the TR-116. Essentially a rifle that fired chemically propelled metal projectiles, the TR-116 was immune to the adaptive beam shields that made Borg drones able to withstand phaser attacks. With Bowers leading an assault team armed with the prototype weapons through the ship, bullets from the TR-116s tore through drone bodies like paper. The Borg never knew what hit them.

How many of his friends had he been forced to kill that day because of the nanoprobes consuming them from the inside out, turning them into creatures of the collective? He tried not to remember, but the faces still haunted his nightmares. Jalarin, Hughes, Selok, Perez…Bowers had even looked into the pale, transformed face of sh’Rzaan as his former captain attacked Ensign Demarest, knowing he had no choice except to fire if Demarest was to be spared the same fate.

Budapesthad won the day, but the cost had been horrific.

Now as he stood in the furrow created by the crash of the Borg ship, staring up at the broken hull that lay almost completely buried in the cliff, Bowers recalled that terrible day three years ago and found himself wishing Starfleet had never taken the TR-116 out of service.

Nog was walking up to the wreckage. Something had caught his attention. “Woah…Sir, this isn’t a Borg ship. Or at least, it wasn’t always.”

Vaughn didn’t respond. He seemed to be somewhere else. “What do you mean, Nog?” Bowers asked.

“The hull plating under the Borg technology…I’d know it anywhere. It’s Starfleet.”

Stunned, Bowers looked at Vaughn for a reaction. He hadn’t moved. But then, speaking quietly, he said, “U.S.S. Valkyrie,Paladin-class, NCC-68816. Crew complement: 30. Lost with all hands stardate 46935 during a Borg engagement at the planet Uridi’si. Presumed destroyed.”

Seven years ago,Bowers thought. Then the realization hit him and he stared at Vaughn. My God, he was there.

As if rousing himself from a dream, Vaughn opened his tricorder and pointed toward a narrow breech in the hull. “Let’s go. What we’re looking for is in there.”

The transponder signal!Bowers had almost forgotten about it. Nog glanced at him, looking worried. Sam knew that entering the wrecks of two deadly Federation enemies in one day had to be fraying the engineer’s nerves. But he also knew Nog had proven time and again that he was made of sterner stuff than he himself realized. Nervous he might be, but Nog would never fail to come through when the situation required it. Sam watched him steel himself and follow Vaughn through the breech, with Bowers bringing up the rear.

Once again relying on wrist lights to navigate the dark, dead interior, the away team half-climbed through the bowels of what had once been a Federation starship. Familiar corridor configurations had been transformed by Borg technology that seemed to have invaded every square meter of the ship. Unlike the wreckage of the Dominion craft, animals and plant life had not encroached on the interior of the Borg ship. Maybe the conditions inside wouldn’t sustain anything long enough to allow life to thrive; it was cold in here, and there was an almost antiseptic taste to the air. Or maybe the animals just knew instinctively that they should stay away.

Nog narrowly sidestepped the inert body of a drone—a Vulcan, Bowers guessed, judging from the distinctive size of the skull—collapsed over a Borg interface panel near engineering. Bowers paused to see if there was any indication of what had been displayed on the panel when it ceased to function, but the surface was dark. Vaughn stopped for nothing, not even when Nog reported that there was a faint energy reading inside the engine room. They pressed on, past more Borg corpses and ruptured conduits, following the commander’s tricorder.

Vaughn stopped outside a door. It still bore a label that read SHUTTLEBAY, but without it, it might have been impossible to tell what the room’s original purpose had been. A labyrinth of corridors and catwalks lined with Borg regeneration alcoves greeted them as they pried the doors open. Most of the alcoves were empty, but a few were occupied, the drones still plugged into the ship’s systems, their organic remains long since decayed within their inert cybernetic shells.

Vaughn ignored them all, his pace picking up as the signal on his tricorder grew stronger. Nog showed Bowers the reading on his own tricorder: another energy signature, very faint, but matching the one he’d picked up in engineering. The conclusion was obvious. Something back there was still trickling power to something in here.

Vaughn disappeared around a corner. Cursing, Bowers and Nog rushed to catch up. While they marched, Sam made some quick adjustments to his phaser, setting it to cycle randomly through different frequencies with each shot. He gave it to Nog and then made the same modifications to the engineer’s phaser. If one or more of these drones suddenly came to life, he wanted to be as ready as possible. Every shot would count.

Vaughn had stopped in front of an occupied regeneration alcove down a long catwalk overlooking the gutted remains of the shuttle maintenance bays one level down. Wondering idly if the Borg had jettisoned the shuttles or cannibalized them for raw materials in their assimilation of the rest of the Valkyrie,Bowers heard his heavy footfalls rattling the framework of the catwalk as they reached the commander. Vaughn was passing his tricorder over and over the drone in the alcove, which Bowers saw wasn’t decayed like the others. It looked dead, but showed no evidence of decomposition. A hairless chalk-white face obscured by invasive prosthetic enhancements was mottled with charcoal-gray rivulets, the telltale sign of a circulatory system saturated with Borg nanoprobes. Like its dead companions in the room, the drone was plugged into the the ship’s power grid through its regeneration alcove, but a telltale light winking dimly by the interface port showed that power was still being fed into it. A thick layer of dust covered the drone and every surface of the alcove. My God,Bowers thought, has it been here like this for two years?

“This is it. This is the source of the transponder signal,” Vaughn said quietly, his eyes never leaving the tricorder, as if he feared missing some vital detail.

No, it’s more than that,Bowers realized. He’s trying not to look directly at the drone.

“You mean…this was once a Starfleet officer?” Nog asked.

“Most of these drones were,” Vaughn said absently. “Though only DNA scans will tell us for sure. This one, however, I can confirm without a scan.” Vaughn snapped his tricorder closed and tapped his combadge. “Vaughn to Defiant.”

“Defiant. Dax here,”came the reply. “Commander, where are you? Your signal is weak.”

“We’ve found what we were looking for, Lieutenant. But we need Dr. Bashir. Have Chief Chao home in on my signal and beam him to these coordinates immediately.”