First Contact

In 2373, the Borg launched their another attack on the Federation; following the pattern of the previous one, a single cube arrived on the edge of Federation space and headed directly towards Earth. [1]

Starfleet Admiral Hayes assembled a fleet to intercept the cube at the Typhon sector, and a heavy battle ensued. Captain Picard monitored the fleet's subspace communications from the Neutral Zone; Admiral Hayes had declined to assign the Enterprise-E to the defence fleet in spite of the vessel's sophistication, citing that Picard's previous experience with the Borg might "introduce an unstable element into a critical situation." [1]

When fleet communications traffic indicated that the battle was not going well for Starfleet, Picard decided to disobey orders and took the Enterprise-E to intercept the cube at Earth. Picard was still able to sense the Borg collective himself, apparently a residual effect of his own assimilation. He took command of the fleet [1], and used this connection to locate a weakened spot on the Cube which several Starships focused their fire on, destroying the invader. [2]

However, as the Cube was destroyed it launched a previously unknown type of ship; a smaller, spherical vessel which headed towards Earth. The sphere generated a temporal vortex which it passed through, leaving a wake which engulfed the Enterprise-E. The crew observed the fleet of Starships vanish and Earth change before their eyes, becoming a Borgified world with a population of nine billion drones. Captain Picard surmised that the Sphere had travelled into Earth's past, assimilating the planet then so as to avoid interference. The temporal wake had apparently protected the Enterprise-E from the new timeline, allowing it to observe the changes happen around it. [1]

Picard took the Enterprise through the vortex, following the sphere into the past. The ship emerged to find the sphere firing on a target in the North American state of Montana. Picard used a volley of quantum torpedoes to destroy the Sphere and took the ship into orbit. Analysis revealed the date to be April 4th 2063; the day before the historic first contact between Humanity and the Vulcans. Picard surmised that the Sphere had fired on Zefram Cochrane's warp ship launch complex in Montana as a way of preventing the contact. Without the relationship between Humans and Vulcans there would be a different timeline, in which the Federation was never created and so the Borg assimilation of Earth would be unopposed. [1]

Determined to reverse the damage, Picard beamed down with an away team. He located the warp ship and set the Enterprise-E officers about repairing the damage. However, whilst the repairs were proceeding Picard once again sensed the Borg collective in his mind. Realising that the Sphere must have beamed some drones onto the Enterprise-E before being destroyed. Putting Commander Riker in charge of the away team, Picard beamed up to the ship to investigate. [1]

On the surface, Riker located Zefram Cochrane and tried to convince him to proceed with his flight. Cochrane, however, was not quite the figure that history had made him out to be. Instead of the bold and brave explorer, Cochrane was a drunk who hoped to get rich and famous off his flight. Astonished at the selfless hero that history had made him out to be, Cochrane panicked and tried to run. Riker had to resort to actually shooting Cochrane and forcing him to take part in the mission. [1]

On the Enterprise-E, the Borg drones proceeded to capture engineering and assimilated much of the ship in spite of Picard's best efforts to stop them. His efforts were complicated by the presence of Lilly, Cochrane's co-pilot, who had been beamed up to the ship to treat injuries she sustained in the Borg attack. Lilly escaped and wandered the ship for a time before encountering Picard. He managed to convince her that he was from the future and of the nature of the Borg threat. Lilly was able to assist Picard on his attempts to fight the Borg, ultimately convincing him to destroy the Enterprise rather than allow it to fall to the Borg. [1]

A further complication was the capture of Lieutenant Commander Data by the Borg. The Borg Queen offered Data the chance to achieve a measure of Humanity, something he had long dreamed of, by using Borg technology to integrate living tissue into his systems. Data was tempted by this offer for a time - he would later claim it was 0.68 seconds - but decided to play along with her plan in order to defeat it. [1]

On Earth, Riker's team was able to repair the warp ship and it blasted off with Cochrane, Riker and La Forge aboard. The Enterprise-E, under the Data and the Borg Queen's control, fired quantum torpedoes on the warp ship. Data, however, had deliberately targeted the torpedoes to miss the ship and it proceeded successfully into warp. Data punctured one of the warp coolant tanks in engineering, releasing coolant gas which liquefied the organic components in both the Queen and himself. Picard was able to escape the gas by climbing above it, but the Queen was killed and Data restored to his android self, albeit with his external layer a little the worse for wear. [1]

The loss of the Queen destroyed the Borg collective aboard the Enterprise-E, allowing the crew to reclaim and repair the ship. The first contact between Zefram Cochrane and the Vulcans proceeded as planned, restoring the original timeline. Geordi was able to recreate the temporal vortex, allowing the ship to return to a restored future. [1]

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