On your way to Nottingham, ye shall pass three signs. The first proclaims the Lands of Star Trek belongeth to Lord Paramount, King of all surveyed (He pays the royal surveyors, after all). The second sign notes the hamlet just off the beaten path to be Star Traks, mayored by Sir Decker. If the traveler looks closely in the Land of Star Trek and the hamlet of Star Traks, the third, very small sign points to the cottage of BorgSpace, owned by peasant Meneks.
Just Passing Through
The scenery was spectacular, breathtaking. Bright knots of young stars coquettishly hid behind shrouds of dust, illuminating vast lace streamers in jeweled hues of turquoise blue, ruby red, and emerald green. Stained glass butterflies hundreds of light years from wing tip to wing tip were caught in slow motion metamorphosis between cocoon and adult.
Nearby, less than one AU, smoldered a protostar, little more than a lump of gravitationally bound gasses swirling around a central point. It glowed faintly, but would require 50,000 years to pass before the cosmic flame of fusion truly caught, igniting the life of the blue giant-to-be. A flat disc of dust revolved around the embryo, itself a snapshot of planetary evolution. Although the young planets would not survive intact the eventual ignition of the stellar gales, physics was an uncaring force, dictating only that in this here-and-now dustball planetoids would come together, sometimes to grow and sometimes to shatter.
Cube #347 was in the heart of a grand stellar nursery, a dark nebula birthing the next generation of stars. Perhaps lost in the molecular dust of simple amino acids resided the elements of a sentient race that would rise to prominence in five billion years. The beauty, the potentialities were lost on the Borg cube, as was the near religious radiance which argued such majesty could not arise without the intervention of a Supreme Deity: it was artwork using a palette of a million colors set on a canvas mind-boggling in dimensions. No, except for the Sensory hierarchy and a few other drones, the attention of the sub-collective was directed inward, the phenomenon on the outside just that - a phenomenon.
{I said I regretted the accident,} reiterated 187 of 310. He was busy rerouting the primary deflector distribution node system, as were several hundred other engineering drones throughout the cube. The main difference was the fact the corridor to either side of him was bound by forcefields, and he himself was enveloped by a sweet, dark brown, carbonated liquid chilled to precisely 5 degrees Celsius. {May I have some air now? My blood-oxygen levels are at 93%, not to mention the difficulty of rewiring while immersed in cola.}
Delta was Not Happy. Making Delta Not Happy was a Bad Thing. 187 of 310 had done a Bad Thing. He had tried to recreate an ancient refreshment called Coca-Cola using an old recipe culled from the archived datafiles of a recently assimilated (not by Cube #347, but the raw data remained available to the entire Collective until processed to remove irrelevant bits) Second Federation affiliated transport barge. The replicator data, unfortunately, required a fourteen character alphanumeric key to unlock the recipe. As the crewman with the key had not been among those humans assimilated, 187 of 310 had been forced to break the code on his own. The recipe had unscrambled surprisingly easy. Too easy.
The result of the deciphered data had not been cola. The actual secret recipe remained safely encoded. Instead, a malicious software demon had materialized, a critter quickly controlled and destroyed, but not before it had entered the deflector system and fried it via massive circuit overloads. As a final parting insult, several swimming pools of replicated not-quite-Coca-Cola had been transportered to 187 of 310's location.
Deflectors were a vital propulsion component for any speed faster than a fractional percentage of light speed. The faster an object moved, the greater degree of damage an otherwise insignificant mote of dust could do to even the hardest of alloys; and the universe was full of insignificant motes. In the subspace realm of transwarp and hypertranswarp, dust equivalents existed, as well as odd plasmas, radiations, and strange matter, all held at bay only by the action of deflectors. The loss of the deflectors had necessitated an emergency stop which, in this case, turned out to be orbit around a protostar in a nebular nursery ground.
{You should have thought of that before you played with unauthorized data,} retorted Delta to 187 of 310. {Drone maintenance relays that you have sufficient oxygen stores for another thirty minutes of productive work. Finish your task, then we'll see about draining the corridor and replicating you a mop to clean the hallway.}
187 of 310 whined, {But I'll be all sticky with liquid sugar!}
{Again, you should have considered the result of your actions,} said Delta without sympathy.
{But...}
{No buts. More work.}
{Compliance,} sighed 187 of 310 as he squinted through the nearly opaque caramel colored muck.
*****
Epitan. Cro'ook. Tlashinki. Parti gon. Lama lama lama goti lama. Adelpha[whistle]. Sitcal.
Star whale.
The names were numerous, but they all inevitably evoked the concept of a giant oceanic animal. This animal, however, paddled the dust disc sea orbiting stars not yet ignited; and an adult female typically measured a length better described in kilometers, not meters.
Take the shape of a water drop falling from the sky and scale it a hundred kilometers long with a diameter twenty kilometers. Clothe it with a vacuum-impenetrable hide the color of lignite coal and approaching four hundred meters thick in places. At the blunt end is the wide slash of a mouth, funneling to an esophagus able to swallow planetoids five kilometers in diameter. Following a circumference path just behind the mouth, and again every seven kilometers until the tapering tip of the tail end are two types of eyes - ones that function in X-ray through radio frequencies, and a second set particularly sensitive to magnetic distortions. This is the essence of a star whale.
Like the great krill-eating aquatic whales of Terra, the main food source of the star whale is proportionally tiny in comparison to its body - dust. Dust and pebbles comprised the primary diet. In fact, star whales would starve outside the rich environment of a stellar nursery; and the ignition of a protostar with the concurrent solar wind signaled the beginning of the end of a beast, the start of a trek to a new, dusty home with the end result of the adult dying so that she might give birth to a new generation of young.
Despite the fact dust was the main diet of a star whale, such was not always so. At birth, the litter first fed upon the adult corpse before female young turned upon each other, and occasionally the smaller males if the latter were not quick enough in escaping. Later, the singular female star whale (only one female of a litter would survive, and the miniature one kilometer males scattered to other stars in search of mates shortly after birth) used her duel eyes to search for the occasional rocky or icy planetoid striving to grow into something larger than a minor planet, relishing its concentrated nutrients and/or metals.
A star whale was sedate in its movements. No predator existed except time. With a life measured in tens of thousands to a hundred thousand plus years, depending on ignition of the protostar, a star whale had no need for haste. It was content to drift, mouth agape, changing orbit as needed by extruding or contracting a magnetic field, or diving, comet-like, towards the primary, whipping across the surface of gathering gasses on the way to a new feeding trajectory (or into interstellar space and another star when it came time to spawn).
There must have been a once-upon-a-time, however, when packs of now extinct predators did attack the lone individual - imagine what such a creature looked like! - for star whales could sprint, if necessary. By tightly winding a spiraling helix of magnetic flux around her tail, a star whale could temporarily produce a thrust similar to impulse drive. Without deflectors except for the natural thickness of hide, the velocity could not be sustained for long in a dusty protostar environment without lethal consequences. On the other hand, it was likely sufficient in the dim past to escape predators; and now served the dull-witted beast (star whales had brains the size of a Borg Exploratory-class cube, but if compared with immense body volume, it was just adequate for basic survival) as a way to grab a particularly yummy planetoid.
*****
The warning was brief.
{[Silver] anomaly approaching, quarter impulse,} said Sensors. Simultaneously, the sensory hierarchy initiated three new datastreams: raw grid footage; a vector map showing estimated time to interception; and archive access, concentrating upon matching incoming information with categorized phenomenon. Unfortunately, it was the wrong archive. Space-faring, nonsentient biologicals would have been more appropriate.
{Sensors cannot match it,} informed Sensors as phenomenon after phenomenon was discarded.
Time was growing short, mere seconds to decide course of action to follow. Weapons, predictably, wanted to shoot it, even through doing so to a spatial anomaly would achieve nothing. Without deflectors, dodging in the dusty environment could accrue unacceptable damages; yet, not moving could spell a different kind of disaster. On the other hand, many phenomenon were ultimately harmless, a type of spatial dust devil whirling impotent and short-lived through the cosmos. In the end, the hesitation meant it was too late to take any action except no-action.
The star whale dropped out of impulse, intense magnetic field propulsion causing a faint flash of blue luminescence to illuminate surrounding dust. Its mouth gaped as it finished its quarter impulse lunge, convinced via its ever-watching eyes that it had discovered a small asteroid treat. Mouth crashed closed around Cube #347, and the vessel was swallowed in an unknowing parody of Jonah and the leviathan, or perhaps Pinnochio.
<<Oh, sh**,>> exclaimed the sub-collective as One, or as close as the sub-collective ever came.
Cube #347 spun as a combination of electrostatic charge and rapidly fluctuating magnetic fields forced the ship down the esophagus. The walls of the corridor were black, but judicious use of flares, spotlight, and extended visual frequencies revealed massive waves of muscle. As the cube progressed deeper down the seemingly endless gullet, a thin atmosphere began accreting, a caustic brew heavy with sulfuric and fluouric acidic compounds.
It was not a healthy place to be.
The sub-collective's first instinct was escape; or, rather, escape topped the consensus over weapon use. Cube #347 had just been eaten by a very large space-faring animal, and a stomach was usually the first stop of a consumed food item. Deflectors or no deflectors, thrusters flared into life to push the cube "upstream." Use of impulse, warp, transwarp, or hypertranswarp was not possible because any speed faster than sublight thrusters in a mass as dense as a star whale was a guarantee of termination. The thrusters, unfortunately, were not sufficient to counteract the swallowing process.
As panic began to set in, weapons were charged. Before the first shot could be fired, however, a powerful tractor beam arrowed out of nowhere, capturing the cube and dragging it towards the side of the esophagus. The origin was a niche carved into the muscle just the right size to accept an Exploratory-class cube, warded by an environmental forcefield.
Cube #347 entered a spacious cavern, roughly elliptic. Unlike the pitch black esophagus, powerful omnidirectional light globes illuminated the scene, floating here and there like miniature suns. Striations of red muscle alternated with white cartilage gave notice that the space had been carved from living tissue. The opening just passed through was ringed with forcefield projectors and tractor emitters, the latter of which disengaged as other tractor beams deeper in the cavern took over, akin to the complicated ballet of dry-docking.
A sprawling complex which looked like a cross between orbital habitat and asteroid colony was embedded in the far wall. It was to this compound the cube was conveyed. Four docking pillions reached from the central belt of buildings. To three of them were docked standard Second Federation freighters - a two hundred meter football with the a pair each of warp and transwarp strip nacelles stretching longitudinally across the aft flank. To the final pillion a single Hawk-class light attack vessel sat quiescent, mismatched ablative armor covering the ancient 75 meter hull attesting to the fact the antique had not been produced by the Klingon Empire for over two centuries. Four warp-capable runabouts snuggled flush on pads at the base of the pillions. Multicolored lights winked here and there on the surface of the complex; and as the sub-collective watched, one of the runabouts lifted, disappearing into a snug hole punched in the cavern wall.
{We will not shoot the lights,} said Captain as a targeting lock was acquired on the tempting plasma globes. {Nor the freighters, nor the station, nor the runabouts, nor anything until the situation is assessed.}
Weapons was extremely unhappy as his toys were removed from his control. Where previously he had been faced with an impossible fight, now targets able to be destroyed were arrayed before him, targets he was not allowed to demolish. So what if the stimuli now coursing through sub-collective neural pathways dictated a behavior of inquiry as to whom the station builders were and why they had colonized a star whale?
{Yes, life is /so/ unfair sometimes,} responded Second to Weapons' sullen, wordless reproach. {Deal with it.}
The tractor beams cut, leaving Cube #347 floating somewhat near the complex, but not so close as to hamper either freighters or warship should the vessels undock. Thrusters dampened remaining momentum, leaving the cube stationary with respect to the compound. As expected, a hail was received. Unforeseen was the audio-only content.
"Lucy!" exclaimed the baritone voice of a human male in Federation Standard. "Where the hells have you and your chigger-infested Personality butt been? You are late, and do you know what late means? It means the Denub run is late, which in turn means possible spoilage before the clients take delivery, which in turn means less profit. That revenue loss is going to come out of /your/ salary, Lucy."
The sub-collective was taken aback. Lucy? Much had changed in the five hundred years between early Dark War and resurrection, but no Collective memories indicated off-handed familiarity to have ever been applied towards Borg ships. Until recently, cautious salutations had been normal, with the last six years post-Hive reverting to the common reactions of resistance or flight. In no cases, not even those involving inscrutable species #6766 insectoids, had the Borg been greeted with the name Lucy. Other names, usually of scatological reference, yes, but never, never Lucy.
"We are Borg. You will be assimilated. Your technological and biological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile." Captain triggered Standard Opening Procedure Macro #1, relaying a Borg greeting. Scans began to probe the complex, however, the lifesigns of the star whale obscured those on the station. Humans were mixed with Dromelans, Tunian, and other species, but exact composition and population could not be determined. Penetrating X-rays and radar indicated the presence of a vast maze network of runabout-sized tunnels burrowing throughout star whale flesh surrounding the cavern.
"I don't know what type of twisted joke this is, but it is, one, not funny, and, two, wasting time." The voice was exasperated, peeved. "That may be the posture you have to take when your rotted chassis is discovered on the outside, but in here you are just another Personality. The Denub run is waiting. Lower shields and prepare to have supplies off-loaded and product on-loaded."
Part of the puzzle was beginning to make sense. Personalities were highly advanced AI systems, neural net technologies which allowed true digital consciousness only being discovered by the Second Federation in the past century. Artificially intelligent machines were not a new concept, as evidenced by the various mech species, but they tended to be evolutionarily hobbled until such time their progenitor race died. Until then, their status hovered somewhere between slave and child, depending on the patron, a state enforced by programming; and even the free mech species disdained their electronic cousins, refusing to acknowledge them as peers until a galactic revolution or two had passed with the young sentience on its own without organic parents. Second Federation Personalities of this era were usually embedded in ships, functioning as an intelligent overlay to the original computer. "Lucy" appeared to be such a Personality, although how it had gained a Borg cube, Exploratory-class, as a chassis was likely quite a story.
"We are Borg," reiterated Captain with multivoice. "We are not Lucy." With this pronouncement, Captain allowed Weapons full access to tactical systems. {Destroy a light globe,} he directed. Only two plasma balls were subsequently eradicated before Second could "convince" Weapons to stand down.
{Enough, Weapons.}
Weapons indicated one of the motionless runabouts, paranoia coloring his words, {It moved. It is a threat.}
{It is a shuttle with malfunctioning reactor core,} sighed Captain as he gleaned the nugget of information from incoming data compiled from the sensor grid. {It cannot move, much less threaten us.}
{That is what they want us to believe. And what if it is fueled by an advanced power system of which we cannot detect and has been sent backwards through a temporal rift by enemies of the Collective for the specific purpose to terminate this sub-collective?} asked Weapons in a rush. {So it is outlined in BorgCraft scenario gamma-delta-eighteen.}
Second, listening even as he performed other duties, was incredulous, {You devised a game scenario based upon the improbable event of us swallowed by a star whale and encountering sentient beings living in a cavern carved out of the creature's flesh?}
Weapons answered, {Not a game, a battle-readiness tool. Of course this scenario was created. We must be ready for anything. Anything!} The last word was emphasized.
{That's it. I want to see some of these files,} announced Second. He directed his attention to the massive folder that held the BorgCraft custom scenarios. {An attack by a giant, AI driven tank. Intelligent subspace phasic insects. The Enterprise. An uncatalogued species which opens spatial rifts on an opponent. Some of these abstracts have an occurrence rating of 0.00001%.}
{Odds of gamma-delta-eighteen was 0.0012%,} relayed Weapons.
Second was surprised it ranked so high, and said so.
Captain ground his teeth together. As the conversation was occurring on a computer time scale, it was highly unlikely that the human at the station would notice any response hesitation. On the other hand, the internal discussion concerning the relevance of plasma space squids laying a field of acid mines was unprofessional. Unfortunately, it was the rare day, the rare hour, the rare minute, that the sub-collective of imperfectly assimilated was utterly, totally stereotypical Borg in demeanor.
{Enough!} boomed Captain, freezing tangential pathways as they threatened to diverge too far from Borg standard. {We have a situation in the here-and-now to deal with, not an improbable what-if.}
Meanwhile, a new voice had replaced the baritone. The new human was a female with a light alto. It was a mellow tone which evoked visions of a school marm with mouse brown hair and matching hazel eyes. Reality could not have been further from imagined fiction as a video component was tacked to the audio stream. The woman had a face heavily tattooed with blue spirals, geometrical designs, and a third eye on the forehead; earrings and face piercing added enough hardware to give a Borg envy; and her black and white dyed hair was shaved in a close-shorn reverse mohawk. If this was the image of a teacher, then the school was a learning center for delinquent, psychopathic Hell's Angels.
"My name is Amy Smith," said the woman with a voice that continued to be at odds with her appearance, "and I am the...governor, you could say, of this establishment. You are not a Colored faction, are you? Before you become too frisky, I will warn you that if you check your sensors, you will find enough weaponry coming on-line to destroy your cube; and all personnel have updated, top-of-the-line medical nanos, so I would not recommend assimilation." The words rang with precise pronunciation.
Focusing on the multitude of energy points suddenly blossoming at embedded positions in the cavern wall, the sensory hierarchy created a map of the emplacement constellation. Cutting beams, quite deadly in the confined environment, comprised the bulk of the defenses, old hardware which had origins from Borg vessels. Interspersed here and there were other beam weapons - phasers, disrupters, masers, x-ray pulse cannons, even a pair or neurupters. There were no projectile mounts, only weapons which could slice and dice an enemy, lessening the chance of an unwanted explosion in the relatively confined space. It was unknown whom the welcoming committee was actually for, but it was more than sufficient to overwhelm an Exploratory-class cube and turn it into spare parts.
The warning of medical nanos was equally valid, neutralizing the sub-collective's other major offensive asset - drones. In the 30th century, Terran accounting, most Second Federation citizens had access to beneficial nanomachines. The nanites functioned to keep a body free of pathogens, contaminants, cancers, and other things of a noxious nature. As with all commodities available in a capitalist society, there were different grades of nanos, from the cheap varieties which were little better than the patient's own immune system to expensive types which nearly rivaled the complexity of Borg technology. In fact, the original medical nano had derived form Borg, or more precisely, Hive, although it had been a "lite" version. Mid-level nanos and higher lent a degree of protection against Borg assimilation, destroying compromised cells and invading machinery. Most kits could eventually be overcome by either sheer number of injected nanomachines, else Borg adaptation. The highest top-of-the-line versions, however, were highly aggressive and adaptable in the face of adversity, and typically required several hours per individual of intense scrutiny by drones specialized for assimilation duties to effect efficient conversion. It was possible, but not entirely preferable, especially given the situation.
At a loss as to what course of action to take, Captain cautiously led the sub-collective in querying the Collective for direction. As expected, the Greater Consciousness was busy at the moment, too preoccupied to do more than figuratively waggle fingers in the sub-collective's direction and mutter an "Uhuh, whatever." There was a slight current of curiosity as to why a colony was situated in the esophagus of a star whale, as well as a faint desire for Cube #347 to stop lollygagging and extract itself from its dilemma. Specifics, unsurprisingly, were not forthcoming. The Collective had better, safer things to do than tempt sanity by telling the sub-collective what to do, only to be regaled by questions as to feasibility of the decision.
Captain, the sub-collective, deliberated. The stand-off stretched several tense minutes, with Amy yawning in boredom as Cube #347 considered options. Several times Weapons had to be stopped from starting something which could not be finished by the cube. Finally a response was decided upon. "We are Borg. State your intentions. We demand to leave this place."
Amy, whose eyes had been focusing on something, likely a computer screen, below the camera input, returned her attention to the transmission. She ran one hand through her hair. "I am glad you decided to be civil. Do not mind us if we keep our defenses active: it is difficult to trust Borg, no offense meant. Unlike Starfleet numskulls, there are people in this universe who learn from mistakes."
"Umbrage is a trait of small beings."
"If you say so. We were expecting a courier Personality by the name of Lucy, who happens, as you have likely deducted, to wear a rather singular chassis. Since this operation doesn't expect the star whale to swallow too many cubes by accident, the appearance of a vessel of your type at a time we were expecting Lucy led to this foregone conclusion. You were snagged with tractor beams and brought into this niche.
"You didn't happen to have captured Lucy, have you? Is that the reason you came down the star whale's throat? If so, might I have the Personality returned? She cost my organization a large sum of money." Amy smiled pleasantly, revealing teeth which had been filed into needle sharp points; and the canines had been cosmetically altered into the form of fangs which would not have looked out of place on a large feline.
Captain ordered a command and control partition to search recent Borg acquisitions. Neither a Personality designated Lucy nor an Exploratory-class cube were among the items listed. "The Collective has not assimilated Personalities within the past two months. You will allow us to leave."
Another smile graced Amy's rather frightening face. "You may leave any time you wish," she said as she waved a tattooed hand vaguely, "but you won't get too far. I am sure you have already discovered that you cannot exit the way you entered; and I doubt that even a Borg cube can burrow through the amount of very tough living flesh required to reach the outside. That has left only one option: going through the digestive tract and leaving through the tail end."
Amy paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, "That is how Lucy leaves after she picks up her cargo. Unglamorous and dangerous, especially Big Momma if she is having a bad day, but it is the only way. Don't worry, a cube of your size will fit the entire way...if the appropriate precautions against digestion are used."
Images, speculation spread throughout the sub-collective, many tangenting to crude, scatological jokes. It was absurd to believe the cube was under credible threat of termination by digestion, yet, there was the evidence of a tenuous acid atmosphere building in the esophagus, as well as the knowledge of the silicate and iron diet the star whale consumed. What would the sensation be to have Cube #347 slowly dissolved, followed by individual units?
{Stop it,} said Captain to a coalition of drones led by morbid 92 of 203 as they jointly contemplated that very question. The thoughts quieted, but remained as an undercurrent flavoring consensus options.
"Explain," ordered Captain to Amy, his voice one of the multivoice many transmitted to the complex.
Amy cocked her head, causing numerous earrings to jangle. "There is a protective lubricant we apply to Lucy which allows her to pass unharmed through the digestive system. It is similarly administered to any vessel that needs to leave."
"You will supply us with the substance. Now. Comply."
"Whoa, whoa!" exclaimed Amy. "There is a price. I have product that needs to be moved, more than the freighters docked here can carry. I am not naive: I know if I bargain for product hauling in exchange for lubricant, you will dump it the first chance you find. That is okay. All I need is to have the cargo transported outside the star whale. A homing transmitter will lead company couriers to the stash once you expel it."
Cube #347 contemplated the deal, looking for both a double-crass on the part of the human, and for ways to turn the bargain into a Borg advantage. Unfortunately, it was straight forward, as the simplest transactions were, and largely immune to the backstab. "Acceptable."
Captain stood in the main control room on the station, or, as he had been informed, the production facility. Among the duties of primary consensus monitor and facilitator was the requirement to act as liaison when the situation warranted, to be the sub-collective's (and the Collective, if it had been directly interested) eyes, ears, and mouthpiece. Flanking Captain were two weapons drones and two engineering drones. Their presence in the small, crowded room made technicians of various species obviously nervous despite the fact their blood coursed with nanos capable of resisting Borg assimilation. The only person not affected by the imposing presence of the drones was the equally impressive Amy Smith.
In person, Amy was short for a human, only 152 centimeters tall. Her attitude, however, was that of an individual much taller; and her fierce appearance only emphasized her leadership. 3 of 203, one of the drones on the away mission, had managed to access the computer when left unobserved for several minutes, allowing assimilation hierarchy to copy key personnel files without alerting the resident Personality. Amy had once been a high school teacher, before leaving that career to pursue a higher paid and less stressful employment as manager for a specialty narcotics factory.
Amy had desired to simply transport the cargo to Cube #347, then send the vessel on its way. Such an action had not sat well with the sub-collective, which had demanded to know exactly what was going to be in the holds (several hundred tons of explosive would cause more than minor difficulties should it detonate) and insisted upon a close examination of the product production process; additionally, the sub-collective had demanded to move cargo via cube transporters, not those of the facility. Subsequent negotiations had led to a tour.
"This is the central control room," explained Amy with a hand wave at a bank of monitors. Screens flickering from one scene to the next, input devices, chairs, a water cooler, the function of the room was obvious. "From here we can personally watch the progress of production from collecting lymph to final packaging."
The Dromelan company that employed Amy, as well as one hundred twenty-three other individuals in the star whale complex, specialized in narcotics manufacture. The crown jewel was "Primordial Blast." The hallucinogen was derived from components in star whale lymph and blood collected from taps located in the flesh of the behemoth near the facility. As the drug was such an unlikely item to stumble across accidentally, one had to wonder if there was a group of people that roamed the universe injecting, ingesting, and snorting implausible compounds in the quest for the ultimate high.
Like parasites, the manufactory drained a small bit of vitality from its host; however, the creature was so large that the collection did not hamper the star whale. The animal did not even appear to know it was parasitized by a drug factory. Due to infrastructure and personnel costs, Primordial Blast was a very expensive product, one destined for the veins, noses, mouths, whatever of only the most wealthy customers.
"From here, I can also oversee the meat harvest. Do you know how many ways there are to prepare star whale? And I've only begun to explore! One can fry star whale, bake it, barbecue it, baste it, kebob it, deep fry, chicken fry, stir fry, beer-batter fry it. It can be dried, jerked, pickled, salted, broiled, seared, fricasseed, nuked, and boiled. A roast can be candied..." Amy appeared to have spent too much time inside the star whale because for, as Captain had discovered, her major obsession centered around the star whale as food. Like the lymph and blood, the amount of muscle harvested to meet Amy's demand was insignificant; and, in fact, she was the only individual on a quest to apply star whale to as many recipes as she conceivable could, other employees satisfied with the usual replicator fare. As a consequence, nearly every stop on the tour had not only focused upon a step in the manufacture of Primordial Blast, but also upon food.
Captain fended off a piece of star whale jerky thrust his way. "Borg do not eat," he reminded Amy for the dozenth time.
Amy looked disappointed as she pocketed the bit of dry meat. "You do not realize what you are missing. At any rate, this stop concludes the tour. If you do not have questions, I would like to have the cargo loaded and to send you on your way. The lubricant will be applied once all product is on your vessel."
{No,} he sent to 165 of 212, who had been eyeing the lint-encrusted jerky every time it was offered to Captain. Aloud: "Acceptable."
Cube #347 gleamed wetly under the plasma globe light. Appearance was not reality for water would have swiftly evaporated in the near vacuum of the chamber. The thin layer of substance which coated the cube had a consistency somewhere between jelly and Vaseline. It was almost transparent when viewed head-on, but when seen at an angle of less than 45 degrees, a prism of colors threw scintillating rainbows, turning the vessel into a gaudy ornament. Except for a slight decrease of resolution, sensor grid under the goop remained intact.
The lubricant had been applied by two of the facility runabouts. During the process of literally hosing the cube with equipment that looked like giant water cannon, Captain had been hard pressed to keep Weapons from using the little ships for target practice. Despite the large surface area represented by Cube #347, the task was swiftly completed, indicating the routine nature of the job.
The substance was an inert polymer heavily laced with hydrophobic and acid resistant compounds. The coating was akin to that used by some species to protect delicate gastrointestinal sensors, swallowed devices of which were required to pass through the digestive system intact while relaying feedback of the processes within. This substance, however, was much more robust, as appropriate to the innards of a star whale. Always alert to new variations upon known technologies, a sample of the compound was stored for Collective analysis. In the end, Cube #347 had essentially been turned into an extraordinarily large pill.
{We are prepared?} queried Captain into the intranets. Affirmatives were received from all hierarchies.
Sighed Assimilation, {Why do you even bother? There is not anything for myself and assimilation hierarchy to do. The star whale would require the resources of three dozen Assimilation-class cubes to be assimilated...}
That was one pet which would /not/ be following Doctor home any time soon, or so vowed collective consensus.
{...assuming such was possible and that we were allowed to assimilate nonsentients. Assimilating nonsentients, however, is not allowable; and since we are not attacking the facility, the assimilation hierarchy is thus rendered useless. Again. Therefore, why does any of the Hierarchy of Eight bother...}
Captain tuned out Assimilation, leaving the latter to commiserate unheralded. {Engineering, the cargo is secure? } The crates of Primordial Blast cluttering four Bulk Cargo Holds were inquired upon.
One of the first crates to be beamed onboard had been opened, revealing small, brightly colored boxes marketed for individual use and printed with species-specific language the product name, company, and instructions for use. Opening the small carton had exposed a grainy, red powder. 125 of 240, had, after reading a label designated for his base species, tested a bit of the powder by applying a dollop of it under his tongue. He was currently in the care of drone maintenance as his nanites cleansed the poison from his body. The sensory input from the drone had been most disturbing before his sedation.
{Yes,} replied Delta, {the cargo is secure.} Pause. {We should burn it.} Delta was not concerned about the moral issues of the drugs, but rather the fact they were taking up space in Bulk Cargo Holds 1-4.
{The crates will be disposed of in a short time,} responded Captain. All was ready: it was time to leave the star whale.
Cube #347 eased through the giant environmental forcefield which separated cavern from esophagus. After confirming her product's safe arrival, Amy had subsequently ignored the cube, not even offering the standard Terran good-bye. That was fine with Captain, who, as Borg, saw such social rituals as irrelevant. As the cube entered the esophagus, the lights from the plasma globes abruptly terminated - the environmental field was opaque - and darkness enveloped the ship.
Dark is a relative term, and to the sensor grid of Cube #347 (and to Sensors, whose species could naturally see from infrared to X-ray frequencies), the black gave way. The cube was immediately caught in the swallowing action, electrostatic and magnetic fields coupled with waves of muscle guiding food to the stomach. Unlike previously, the descent was controlled; and accompanying the ship was a river of dust and pebbles made sparse only due to the five kilometer diameter of the esophagus. Calculations indicated 3.8 tones of debris was present in every unit of volume equivalent to an Exploratory-class cube.
Deflectors at this moment cycled into existence. At least that system was finally operational.
Cube #347 traveled kilometers of esophagus, finally approaching what looked to be a blind end. It was not a muscle wall which confronted the cube, bur rather a valve. The ship slowed, slowed, slowed, then abruptly shot forward as the valve opened, dumping debris and vessel into the largest organic cavern the sub-collective had ever had the misfortune of experiencing first-hand.
The dimensions of the stomach were not surprising - a pouch approximately 13 kilometers by 25 kilometers - considering the huge size of the star whale beast; and nor were the readings of an atmosphere which would have melted the tough duralloy hull of the cube but for the jelly protectorate. No, the unexpected marvel was the light. All living creatures survive by breaking the atomic bonds of their food, be it simple carbon compounds or neutronium, and assimilating the released energy. Some crystalline lifeforms use the liberated energy directly, while the more common organic beings played the bond reconfiguration game, eventually transferring stored power in the form of ATP and other similar molecules. Star whales snapped the molecular connections of silicon, iron, and other extremely resistant substances. As stomach acids broke bonds, the major byproducts were immense quantities of heat and light in the form of glowing acid clouds.
The scene was a vision of Dante's Inferno.
Molecular fires swept across the cube, dissolving the few antennae clusters which had reached beyond the jelly layer. In the distance, surrounded by a red haze, a small asteroid slowly melted, surface layers stripped atom by atom. Vaporized metals and charged ions discharged plasma lightening bolts and crackled in the subspace and radio bands.
Sensors was enthralled. {Beautiful [song],} she sighed, {so beautiful. [Graceful spoons] singing.} She flooded the dataspaces with the squalling hiss of static. Somewhere beneath the noise there was, just perhaps, the hint of harmony, but, like a heat mirage, it disappeared if attention wandered too close.
{There is nothing out there,} said Captain as the cube started forward, maneuvering as much as possible to avoid the worst pockets of superheated gas. {We repeat, there is nothing...}
{What the hell was that?} asked Second suddenly. {There it is again!} He captured a still-shot from exterior cameras, highlighting a long shape. In slow-motion replay, the squiggle sinuously wiggled through the noxious atmosphere, ignoring the deadly environment as it headed towards the melting asteroid. A few seconds behind it trailed a second form alike to the first and traveling in the same deliberate trajectory.
All creatures have parasites, no exception. Some are harmful, some are benign; and, in the extreme case of Terran plant chloroplasts or animal mitochondria, some have become symbionts and are now required for host survival. The star whale was big, and, thus, its parasites were equally humongous. The gastrointestinal fauna was tough as well, a prime requisite of survival in the lethal surroundings.
These particular parasites were lithe and long, pale yellow spaghettis which folded back upon themselves to achieve a rod-like form. They darted throughout the stomach, concentrating near the rare large hunk of rock, untangling bodies to glom onto the chunks and bask in freshly freed energy, heat, and minerals. Several parasites had sensed the arrival of Cube #347 and were blindly gliding in the direction of their next meal.
{Destroy them!} exclaimed Weapons. There were no objections as neurupters snapped on-line. Unfortunately, not only did the parasites' acid protection abate most weapon damage, but the activity only served to attract more parasites. Targeting the entrance to the intestines, Cube #347 hurriedly crossed the stomach expanse, weapons blazing.
*****
The star whale felt gas building in her stomach. Had she been physiologically capable, she would have burped. Unfortunately, she could not do so. If she could not release pressure by venting gasses at one end, then the other would have to do, eventually.
Her stomach rumbled uneasily.
*****
The valve regulating transfer of contents from stomach to intestine opened, swallowing intact Cube #347; a slurry of digested rock, gasses, and ionized atoms; and several parasites. The parasites, sensing they had left their preferred environment, immediately glommed to the walls and began the laborious process of climbing upstream towards their home. The convoluted walls of the intestine, barely large enough to pass the Exploratory-class ship, closed in, lit by residual light from processed rock-acid compound.
The intestines functioned to complete the digestive process. The less nutritious the forage, the longer the intestine required to extract sufficient sustenance, thus, herbivores have longer bowels than carnivores since plants are tougher to digest than meat. The star whale had an extremely long intestine coiling for hundreds of kilometers: rock was not a high quality food.
The walls of the star whale's intestine glowed dimly, shedding an ambient light which illuminated nothing. The processes fueling the light were the same ones at work in the stomach, but more controlled. Instead of free acids literally melting rock, minute quantities of partially digested slurry were absorbed into individual intestinal cells, the end rending of nutrients and energy occurring in vacuoles. The waste product was the faint light (Literature on the internal physiology of living star whales had never been assimilated by the Borg. One had to assume an insane graduate student sometime, somewhere, would eventually accept the task from an equally deranged professor.); and extraneous heat raised the temperature to a mild 20 degrees Celsius.
The hours passed uneventfully, or at least as uneventfully as possible in Cube #347. With the immediate danger of the stomach passed, the apparent benign nature of the trek, and continued integrity of the jelly coating, idle minds turned to other pursuits. The creator of the adage about idle hands being the plaything of the devil had never confronted the damage possible by unoccupied drones of the imperfectly assimilated caliber.
{Leather is not appropriate garments for a Borg; and neither are feather boas. Get rid of the whip and dog collar too.}
{Okay, who painted the obscene graffiti in corridor 38 of subsection 1, submatrix 21? The designation better fess up before I resort to other means.}
{Remote control canines are not sanctioned devices, especially ones with "Totally Real Lifelike Body Processes" where my leg is concerned.}
{Concerning the incident logged in Replication Chamber #8, subsection 8, submatrix 6: explain why the room and surrounding hallways are overflowing with extra-buttery popcorn. Now.}
Along with the expected lapses in individual self-censorship, Captain dealt with data shuffling, coordinated minor consensus cascades, and yelled at Second to sit on Weapons, literally if necessary, to keep him from blasting the random oversized parasitic flatworm the ship occasionally encountered. The white blobs did nothing, either too engrossed in their feeding or too lacking in brain cells to do more than glide on mucus trails from one spot to the next. In addition to the normal baby-sitting and administrative duties which came with the job of consensus monitor, Captain absently drove the cube, making sure corners and edges did not snag against intestinal walls when the latter loomed near.
Cube #347 maneuvered around a sharp bend, a tight kink which left mere tens of meters clearance to all sides. Ahead the intestinal light dimmed. It required several minutes to register what the signified. Illumination was being obscured by an immense shape, an immense /living/ shape. By the time the revelation struck, it was almost too late.
Big Momma indeed!
A huge globular head was half buried in the wall of the intestine, a white hill rising almost half a kilometer from glowing ground. Girding the eyeless head was a double band of hooked bristles used to secure the creature to flesh. Half a jawless mouth, all which was visible, gaped wide, inward pointing shards of teeth visible. A ruff of long, stiff hairs surrounded the mouth, funneling slurry into it. Behind the head stretched a segmented tail of pale ivory. The tail disappeared beyond the line of sight of the cube, slowly undulating back and forth in the slow currents of the digestive system.
Big animals have big parasites, and Big Momma was the largest tapeworm catalogued in Collective archives, defeating the next nearest record by a factor of over a hundred.
Big Momma's tail lashed a bit more vigorously as the pressure waves proceeding Cube #347 washed over the tapeworm. The blind head lifted itself a little higher from its snug niche, but not too much, else risk dislodgment. Mouth quivered as sensory bristles relayed information to what passed for a brain in the parasite.
{Not enough room,} stated the obvious by Sensors as her hierarchy compiled return data from a lidar array. {Sensors [fan] cube will not [jump].} The narrow intestine did not have sufficient clearance to allow Cube #347 and the hulk of Big Momma to coexist side by side. Unfortunately, the same irresistible processes which had moved the cube in the esophagus were present in the bowels, and pausing to consider the problem was not an option.
A photon flare was shot toward the tapeworm to better illuminate the scene. Light sensors must have been present beneath epidermis for Big Momma flinched. In photophobic reaction, the parasite attempted to bury herself deeper into the intestinal wall; and the great tail coiled in a series of giant waves.
Weapons seized upon the solution without bothering to allow the general consensus cascade to come to a complete conclusion. Photon flares were the providence of weapons hierarchy, but served neither defensive nor offensive purposes. Little more than brightly burning oxygen-phosphorus based chemical compounds riding a stripped down torpedo framework, they were a system generally neglected during lock downs of Weapons' command pathways. The flares did not go boom; and they barely radiated enough heat to be called hot.
{Consensus is...} began the announcement by Captain mere milliseconds after two flares had been launched, {...not important.} The action the sub-collective was to take was in fact that just performed by Weapons. However, it was the principle of the matter that a hierarchy had not waited for the Whole to make a decision. {Weapons! How many times have we...}
Interrupted Weapons, {1,672,934 times.}
{What?}
{1,672,934 times have I been reprimanded since I first took over as hierarchy head. Usually I am reprimanded at a rate of three times per day, but sometimes it is more or less, depending upon the designation of the primary and secondary consensus monitor and facilitator.}
{You have been keeping tally?} asked Captain, incredulous. For the moment his attention was directed inward, not outward.
{Yes.}
The two flares abruptly brightened as they reached their target, miniature white suns hovering over Big Momma's head. Most frivolous internal discussions were forgotten as the tapeworm reacted. The head began to sink into the intestinal wall, the parasite retreating beneath sheltering tissue to seek a place of lesser light. With solution to dilemma apparently discovered, the cube sedately moved forward.
Sensing the shadow passing overhead, Big Momma lunged upward, or at least as much as a tapeworm was capable of lunging. Her hooks came in contact with the cube, penetrating through jelly to reach metal underneath. For a moment the hooks caught on hull protuberances, then, with encouragement of a disrupter lance, the tapeworm shook the ship free and sank back into its intestinal home. The tap had imparted an unwanted vector, sending the cube careening into a yielding wall. As the cube used thrusters to correct its position in the tract, Weapons fired a volley of neurupters at the just visible top of Big Momma's head. Shots hit not only the parasite, but surrounding tissue.
The action was Not A Good Thing.
If Big Momma had possessed vocal cords, she would have bellowed in rage. As it was, a hump of tail rose from the intestine wall, smacking hard against the cube's hull. At the same time the star whale reacted to the assault upon her innards, releasing copious amounts of mucus into the vicinity of the damaged area. The mucus, intended to act as a balm for injured flesh, seeped into thruster nozzles, blocking them. As it was not possible to make forays onto the hull in the current conditions to clean the thrusters, the cube was left without the ability to maneuver.
The tail lashed again, and unlike the previous hit, Cube #347 was unable to react. The ship proceeded to bounce off one wall, then another. None of the ricochets were sufficient to damage the ship, but they were enough to cause lurches with inertial dampers, echoing bangs, and groaning complaints from structural elements. In total, Big Momma was 153 kilometers long; and she whipped the cube the entire way.
As the trek through the bowel continued, the accompanying slurry became less silicate and more organic. As the waste carbon content rose, so did viscosity and opacity. The volume around Cube #347 slowly thickened to the consistency of thick mud and forward velocity proportionately lessened. Egg capsules the size of runabouts, originating from Big Momma, were here and there; and creatures resembling lace shawls crawled through the waste grazing on bacteria delicacies. Finally, amid the close packed organic matter and mere kilometers from exiting the star whale, the cube stopped.
*****
The star whale rolled back and forth sickly; and if one had extremely sensitive ears, one might even be able to hear the rumble of indigestion shivering the beast's magnetic fields. She did not feel well, a burning sensation in her belly spreading into general nausea. The star beast closed her mouth - a rare occurrence - and quietly orbited her protostar, unwilling to eat, unwilling to move. If she had been a terrestrial animal, she would have found herself a deep hole to hide in, but she was a space-faring creature, and holes to hide her bulk were exceedingly rare in the dust disc of a protostar.
As the hours passed and the nausea came and went, the star whale continued to roll. Sometimes a bit of undigested rock blocked her bowels, and the instinctive motion served to dislodge the offending mass and send it on its way. Finally the creature opened and closed her mouth, as if gulping nonexistent air, and concentrated on muscles at the end of her body far, far from her minuscule brain.
A cloud of silicate and organic matter whooshed into the vacuum of space, rapidly freezing as it chilled from the relatively warm temperatures of the star whale to a point just above absolute zero. The star whale opened and closed her mouth again as the pain disappeared, gone with the waste evacuated from her body.
With the recollection of nausea rapidly evaporating from the beast's vacuous memory, the star whale returned to feeding her incessant hunger. Behind her was the signature of an asteroid! Very close! Cause and effect, except in the grossest and most immediate of situations, did not register on the star whale's tiny brain; and the fact that the profile of the asteroid matched one she had consumed earlier, prior to the stomachache, meant nothing.
Ponderously the star whale turned as tight a radius a hundred kilometer body could make, mouth opening to accept the delicacy.
*****
Cube #347 found itself moving forward at great speed, the close packed organic matter it was mired in being pushed and squeezed by waves of muscles. Somewhere a sphincter opened and suddenly the star whale was left behind. The cube was once again in the clean environment of vacuum. Well, "vacuum" was debatable, as was "clean," for all around the ship was star whale waste; and the bigger the animal, the more the waste. The star whale was very, very, very big.
Take a moment and look at one of the proud ships of the Borg Collective. Look extremely close. There was a vessel present, despite the fact that the organic matter had adhered to the lubricant, turning Cube #347 into a great, amorphous blob of, well, crap. There was no polite way to describe the cubeship's condition, except to say it was deep in the sh**.
Opening holds to expel the crates of Primordial Blast was out of the question: the hold doors were literally sealed with successive layers of lubricant, mucus and organic waste; and they would remain so until the crud was removed, a manual task for which Delta was already assigning unlucky designations. Therefore, transporter beams were used to off-load the drugs. The dispersing cloud of organic matter was shortly laced with boxes of highly potent hallucinogenic. If somewhere in the near cosmos an astronomer was directing a telescope on the protostar, he, she, or it was receiving what was surely the oddest spectral analysis ever seen from a to-be star.
Sensor clarity through the layer of vacuum-frozen crud was very low, but high resolution was not required to see the star whale turning, mouth agape. Fortunately the size of the animal precluded swift maneuvers, making even Cube #347 look nimble. It was time to leave.
With deflectors fixed during the tour of the star whale's gut, supralight speeds were available. Cube #347 slowly spun, feeling the new distribution of mass and subsequent balance alteration imparted by the triple layer of gunk on the hull. Satisfied there was no impedance to hypertranswarp, Cube #347 left the protostar, post-haste.
The star whale stopped in confusion, the object of her hunger gone as the cage of hamsters which comprised her brain frantically began to run their exercise wheels. The exertion at genius was very short-lived, the memory of the strange asteroid leeching from her mind. There would be no star whale Einsteins today; and the star whale ponderously orientated herself in the dust disc, opening her mouth to feed.
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