The Borg

Starfleet database subject: The Borg

The Borg

The Borg are an immensely powerful race of enhanced humanoids from the Delta Quadrant.
The Borg implant themselves with cybernetic devices, giving them great technological and combat capabilities.
Different Borg are equipped with different hardware for specific tasks.
Each Borg is tied into a sophisticated subspace communications network, forming the Borg collective, in which the idea of the individual is a meaningless concept.
The Borg exhibit a high degree of intelligence and adaptability in their tactics.
Most successful means of defense or offense were found to work only once, almost immediately after which the Borg developed a countermeasure.
The first known contact with the Borg and the Federation was on stardate 42761 when Q transported the USS Enterprise-D out of Federation space and into the flight path of a Borg vessel heading toward the Alpha Quadrant.
Following this first contact, Starfleet began advance planning for a potential Borg offensive against the Federation.
The anticipated Borg attack came late in 2366, when a Borg vessel entered Federation space, heading for Earth.
Starfleet Tactical planners had expected several more months before the Borg arrival, and thus were caught unprepared.
Enterprise-D captain Jean-Luc Picard was captured by the Borg at the beginning of this offense.
He was assimilated into the Borg as Locutus of Borg, providing crucial guidance to the Borg in their attack.
Starfleet amassed an armada of some 40 starships in hopes of stopping the Borg at Wolf 359, but the fleet was decimated with the loss of 39 ships and 11,000 lives.
As Locutus, Picard explained that the Borg purpose was to improve the quality of life in the galaxy by providing other life-forms the benefit of being part of the Borg collective.
Following the rescue of Picard from the Borg ship, a last-ditch effort to implant a destructive computer command into the Borg collective consciousness was successful in destroying the Borg ship in Earth orbit.

The Borg are an immensely powerful race of cybernetically enhanced humanoids. Believed to have originated in the Delta Quadrant, the Borg have spread throughout the Galaxy in their quest to assimilate all races into the Borg collective.
The Borg operate around a principle known as the collective, a term used to describe the group consciousness of the Borg civilisation, and is itself composed of a number of life forms from around the galaxy. The Borg travel the galaxy assimilating entire cultures into their collective. When the Borg attack, they use an unique strategy for dealing with prisoners; they turn them into Borg. Within only a few minutes of capture the prisoners become allies to the Borg, ready to help in the assault on their former colleagues.
Assimilation is achieved by an existing Borg penetrating the victim's skin via two tubules which extend from the Borg's hand. Once under the victim's skin, several nanoprobes are injected which attack the body on the cellular level taking control of cells and body functions. From here, the victim begins to turn into a Borg, their bodies riddled with Borg technology and renders them passive, ready for further assimilation via the grafting of cybernetic components onto the subject's body. This transformation robs the victim of independent control and eventually links them into the Borg collective.
The group consciousness that the Borg maintains means that no one Borg has a sense of individuality or separate autonomous thought or action apart from that of the hive mentality. All Borg are initially born humanoid although are implanted immediately after birth or capture and fitted with various cybernetic devices which integrate them into the group, adapting them to their new function. Each Borg is linked to the hive via a sophisticated subspace network that ensures that each is given constant and immediate supervision by the collective.
Every Borg exhibits a high degree of intelligence and adaptability in their tactics against other life forms. The most successful Borg countermeasures are only effective once as the Borg have the ability to quickly adapt. The Borg travel the universe in ships which, due to the high degree of connectivity between single Borg, can be considered as a single entity, extremely generalised in design, with no specific bridge or engineering section.
The Borg only attack when either assimilating entire races or when they perceive a threat. The artificial and organic parts of the Borg blend together seamlessly with devices extending from their bodies rather than as separate items held by hand. They can survive in the vacuum of space indefinitely without the need for breathing apparatus and their bodies appear to have in-built shielding against directed energy fire, e.g. from a phaser, and also have the ability to transport themselves at will.
The Borg queen is the one controlling consciousness within the Borg collective and personifies herself as the Borg; the beginning and the end of the hive consciousness.

Borg Transwarp Update I
Type Experimental technology test bed for advanced transwarp drive.

Unit Run Prototype only; production is not expected.

Commissioned 2368

Dimensions Length : 1,200 metres approx.
Beam : 4,500 metres approx.
Height : 1,400 metres approx.
Decks : approx. 370 maximum

Mass 500,000,000 tons

Crew Unknown; estimated to be 1,000 drones approx.

Armament High energy tractor beams

Laser cutting beams

High power plasma projectors

Warp energy weapons of unknown type capable of draining shields and warp fields

Estimated total output 60,000 TeraWatts

Capable of creating additional weapons to new designs in a short period

Defence Systems Adaptive shield system ,total capacity 2,700,000 TeraJoules

Automatic regeneration matrix

Electromagnetic shield system

Hull equivalent to heavy Varethiel double hull

High level structural integrity field

Warp Speeds
(TNG Scale) Normal Cruise : Unknown
Maximum Cruise : Warp Factor 9.99 on standard warp drive
Maximum Rated : Warp Factor 29.968 with advanced transwarp drive

Strength Indices
(Galaxy class = 1,000) Beam Firepower : 1,200

Torpedo Firepower : -
Weapon Range and Accuracy : 890

Shield Strength : 1,000

Hull Armour : 4,400

Speed : 100,000
Combat Manoeuvrability : 310

Overall Strength Index 7,540

Diplomatic Capability Generally none - specialized facilities can be constructed if required

Expected Hull Life Unknown

Refit Cycle Unknown

Notes : In 2368 the Enterprise-D discovered a Borg scout ship crashed on a moon in the Argolis Cluster. They rescued an individual whom they named Hugh from the wreckage; Hugh later returned to the crash site and was recovered by another scout ship.

In 2369, The Enterprise encountered a new form of Borg vessel which did not conform to the standard cube design. They discovered that Hugh had been a member of the crew of this vessel, and that his return to the ship after developing his own sense of individuality had caused the destruction of the collective mind on board this particular ship. The ship had drifted for some time before coming under the control of the android Lore, who used it and the Borg in an attempt to take over the Federation.

It quickly became apparent that the new Borg vessel was capable of generating transwarp conduits which allowed it to travel at incredible speeds. One such conduit was accessed by the Enterprise-D - the ship covered sixty light years in eight seconds, an average of 236,000,000 times lightspeed. Standard Borg cubes do not seem to be able to achieve this level of speed, so Starfleet analysts have theorized that the new design was an advanced prototype built by the Borg to test out a newly assimilated transwarp technology. The vessel is capable of operating in the second transwarp domain, at speeds approaching Warp 30 - a feat which is far beyond standard Borg vessels. It was evidently sent out on a test flight to the Argolis cluster, a trip which would take some two and a half hours with this drive system.

The Borg ship fought several small skirmishes with the Enterprise-D, which eventually masked itself by hiding within the outer layers of a star. The Federation vessel subsequently used its phasers to create a large solar flare which destroyed the borg ship.

The absence of further examples of this type of vessel indicates that the Borg have abandoned this technology - it is possible that they took the destruction of the collective on the prototype as a sign that the technology was somehow flawed. In any case, they do not seem to be constructing more ships of this kind - a fact for which the peoples of the galaxy can be profoundly grateful.

End.

The Hansens and the Borg: A Report
Federation science vessel, registry no. NAR-32450, manned by exobiologists Magnus and Erin Hansen, along with their young daughter, Annika -- the first humans to study the Borg up close, and perhaps the first to be assimilated.
At least 10 years prior to the U.S.S. Enterprise-D's first encounter with the Borg, the Federation had some knowledge of the existence of the Borg, based on encounters with species who had been affected by them (such as the El-Aurians, whose homeworld was destroyed 90 years before). However, such knowledge was not made public among the Federation because information was too sketchy and unconfirmed to hold briefings with Starfleet personnel. (For example, there were descriptions of cube-shaped vessels, but no information on what Borg individuals looked like, other than rumors that they were cybernetically enhanced.)
Two of the people privy to these rumors were Magnus and Erin Hansen, who petitioned the Federation Council on Exobiology to let them travel deep into unknown space on the U.S.S. Raven to observe and study the Borg. Their petition was granted ca. Stardate 32611, in spite of Starfleet's concern about security issues, and the Raven departed from Deep Space 4 toward the Delta Quadrant.
For eight months, the Hansens tracked nothing but stray readings and sensor echoes, and in the process of chasing their theories about the Borg, the unconventional scientists deviated from their flight plan, crossed the Neutral Zone and disobeyed a direct order to return, effectively burning their bridges with colleagues back home. But then they detected a transwarp conduit from which emerged a Borg Cube. The Raven was scanned by the Cube, but the Borg ship did not alter course, apparently considering the small vessel neither a target nor a threat. The Hansens tracked the Borg Cube through the relatively nearby region of space for three months, when the Cube finally entered a transwarp conduit again. The Raven followed in its wake, and found itself in the Delta Quadrant -- the Borg's native territory.
The Hansens designed a variety of new technologies to allow themselves to study the Borg up close without being detected. They developed multi-adaptive shielding to make the Raven virtually invisible to Borg sensors, and a "bio-dampener" to camouflage a visitor on a Borg ship, by creating a field around the body that simulates the physiometric conditions within the vessel. Magnus periodically made "field trips" to the Cube they were tracking to observe first-hand the behavior and interactions of the drones; he even gave them nicknames such a "Junior" and "Needlefingers."
The Hansens studied the Borg in this way for over two years, collecting 10 million teraquads of data. But then a subspace particle storm damaged the Raven and caused its multi-adaptive shielding to go off-line for 13.2 seconds, long enough for the Borg to perceive the vessel as a threat. In spite of the Hansens' attempts to hide in a nebula and mask their warp trail, the Borg caught up with the Raven as it crash-landed on a Class-M moon orbiting the fifth planet of a yellow dwarf star in B'omar space. All three of the Hansens were assimilated into the Collective at that time, including the young girl, who became the drone designated as "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One."
The Raven itself was partially assimilated by Borg technology, and was left emitting a resonance signal -- a "homing beacon" which 18 years later inadvertently summoned the Seven of Nine drone (who by that time had been separated from the Collective and was serving aboard the U.S.S. Voyager). Seven of Nine had been experiencing strange visions involving a threatening black bird -- a raven -- which turned out to be a subconscious metaphor for the trauma Annika Hansen experienced when she and her parents were kidnapped from their vessel and assimilated.
Because Seven of Nine had violated B'omar space in order to respond to the homing beacon, the B'omar fired upon the Raven wreckage while she and Voyager crewmate Tuvok were inside it. Seven and Tuvok escaped from the vessel and were beamed up by Voyager just as the Raven was finally, completely destroyed. In addition to rescuing the crewmates, Voyager also managed to retrieve the Hansen's field notes from the ship (contained in 9000-plus log entries), which the crew later used to aid in their assault upon a Borg vessel to steal a transwarp conduit.
It was during this assault that Seven of Nine was lured back to Unimatrix One by the Borg Queen, at which time she encountered her assimilated father, Magnus, in the Queen's lair. The Borg Queen vessel was later destroyed, but it is uncertain if the Magnus Hansen drone was aboard at the time.