2420.09

Extract submitted from Lt Taylor's Log: "Chief Engineer's Log, Stardate 2420.09. The Battle of Visak'a... where do I begin? It'll probably go down in history along with events like Wolf 359. Cromwell received a distress call from the Visak'a Space Station asking for help against the Borg. Our Borg and the children were sent away for their protection (and ours). By the time we arrived at Visak'a, we'd already worked out that we were in the wrong timeline but that the differences were probably slight. We had to protect this Visak'a and hope that our other selves would act the same. From the reports I've been reading since getting home, it seems they did. Personal details of the battle may vary slightly between the two timelines but the main results were the same. When we arrived at the station we found a tactical cube and a Borg probe. The Sixth Swarm arrived a little after we did under the command of t'Khellian. As well as defending Visak'a from the Borg, we had to steal a Chronoton generator. It would be our only chance to get home since we could no longer slingshot around the star, it had gone supernova as we arrived - earlier than it should have. We had a plan. Fletcher Harris and Alexis Patterson would scout the ship and find out where the Sphere, if there was one, could be found. Based on the information the Enterprise reported the last time the Federation saw the Borg time travel, the temporal vortex was generated by a Sphere which came out of a tactical cube. The cube at Visaka looked the same but we knew finding a chronoton generator onboard may come down to luck. Harris and Patterson managed to find the Sphere without making the Borg consider them a threat so then came the next part of the plan. This was when things got messy. The marines had to infiltrate the ship and steal the generator. I would go with them to disconnect it and Commander Martis would lead a team of Rock Jumpers to get us out. We had some unexpected help from the Sixth Swarm in the form of Michael Reynolds, or Michael tr’Khellrenz as he was known here and his team of legionaries. The fighters, Cromwell and the Sixth Swarm used planet crackers against the cube. I'm told one of the fighters even rammed into it. They did a lot of damage but a not-so-fun fact about the Borg: they are big on redundancy. A Borg cube can function even with 80% of its components destroyed and it kept adapting to everything we threw at it. They made a hole though, a big enough one for us to get in... except something unexpected happened. I guess it shouldn't have been unexpected on hindsight but they dropped their own shields around the hole and let us in. Of course there was a swarm of drones waiting to assimilate us when the dropship landed. We made it out of the assimilation chamber, if barely. I saw things which will haunt me for the rest of my life, including a marine get assimilated from the outside in by his own nanite-suite. We took heavy losses. I owe my life to a Romulan Legionnaire who -" Kit's voice crackled and the recording stopped for a second. "He was assimilated saving me. I... I shot him. A lot of people died or were assimilated, getting me to that generator but against the odds, we got there and with Brinn's help I was able to disconnect it. Martis got us out, except for this one legionnaire who chose to stay behind. Her name was Jilisi. She injected herself with a bio-weapon. A virus that would infect the cube when she was assimilated. Minutes after we left the cube, it self-destructed. The Collective destroying the infected cube so that the virus didn't spread, or so Six informs me. The Borg Probe had left, before the cube exploded. I don't know why. They'd just beamed out their drones and left... I guess they had somewhere else to be? The Borg were gone from Visak'a. We had survived but we'd taken heavy losses. Cromwell alone had lost 80 people, mostly marines but also security officers who'd went down to Visak'a and Fighter pilots. We'd taken 60 people over to the cube and 7 came back. The Sixth Swarm lost 39 ships and 99 fighters. But we had the generator and in spite of losing 70% of its personnel - Visak'a still stood and Pangaere was safe." Begin Log. Six of Twelve. Cromwell collected Six of Twelve, Four of Seven, Toby, Sally and Neilson after its interaction with the Collective was over. We were to program a temporal vortex which would take us to before the Ortus system was destroyed by the supernova. Six of Twelve, Four of Seven, Major MarQ and Captain Sesgaard calculated the course with the least range for error and we returned to the required time. Heron, the individual Commander Martis had brought from Colony 4, went into cardiac arrest. Dr Clark noticed that the star's frequency matched his heart rate, which fluctuated at the same time it did. We deduced that the star and the Ort may be linked. Heron asked Dr Clark to sing. We did not know what this meant initially but Captain Sesgaard theorised that the possible connection between the Ort and the star meant the Ort needed to survive so the star did not go supernova. We needed the star to survive so that we could return to the correct timeline. It was all connected: the Ort needed the star - this was why Heron was unstable, the star needed the Ort -this was why it had gone supernova early, because the Ort had died and Cromwell needed the star to return to our own time.  Captain's log, supplemental:  See Dr. Clarks medical report.  There is an organ within the Ort chest that had an unknown function which we discovered when we first arrived.  While we did not think anything of it initially, when Heron Ort had a heart attack upon looking at the star from ten Forward (Not quite a Cardiac Arrest), he asked Dr Clark to 'sing' to him.  It was something healers evidently did.  Dr. Clark was able to stabilize Heron Ort, and Heron 'sang' to the beauty of the neutron star.  Dr. Clark had theorized the star may have a 'heartbeat' of its own, and there were actually two heartbeats within the bianary system.  Long story short Awyteams convinced the Ort to come to the surface.  Three Ort were brought to the Bridge. The Ort, in sufficient numbers would sing instinctually to the star, which stabilized the mother star and the neutron star's heartbeat (which was having difficulties in labor evidently), which prevented the star going supernova, and gave the mother strength to complete the birth of Ortus (Ironically named for sunrise or origin).  Cromwell needed the Ort to survive, and we will debate the Prime directive exceptions for years, but without action/intervention, The Ort, the Mother star (Going supernova), a good portion of the sector, and Cromwell would not have survived.  Unintended consequences for blind adherence to the Prime Directive. An away team returned to Ortus III. It consisted of Fletcher Harris, Alexis Patterson, Dr Clark, Tas and Six of Twelve. It was required for the away team to be ‘volunteers’. Six of Twelve would be useful for communications so we suggested it go. It was instructed to find the definition of ‘volunteers’. We complied but we did not understand. It was about ‘freedom’ and we do not know what this means. We asked Captain Sesgaard if Six of Twelve /had/ to be a volunteer. It did not. Six of Twelve is a weapon. Six of Twelve is not ‘free’. Six of Twelve, Fletcher Harris and Alexis Patterson collected an individual from Colony 7 while Tas and Dr Clark collected one from Colony 2. They also opened the valve so that the Ort in Colony 2 would not die from over-heating as they did in our last iteration of the timeline. The individuals, Toc from Colony 2, Heron from Colony 4 and Muraj from Colony 7, sang to the star and it began to stabilize. The star did not supernova, it gave birth.   We do not entirely understand the nature of the connection between the Ort and the star as both lifeforms are new to us, but the Ort surviving and singing to the star enabled its survival and the birth of its offspring. We saw the star produce a smaller star and we saw the smaller star leave the system. Perhaps they are a symbiotic species and the infant has gone to find another species to join with in the same way its parent was joined to the Ort? We could not learn more as Cromwell had to return to our own timeline. We used the star to do this in a final slingshot maneuver. Cromwell has successfully returned to our timeline and is now enroute to Devu II. We received a United Earth distress call. This is unusual given United Earth no longer exists. We collected the individual from United Earth and her subunit. We also removed the Plutonium she was using to power her communication device. The device used to send the distress call had been adapted from a radio transmission device the species native to the planet used for their own communications. The planet seemed to shift in and out of time, meaning in spite of spending only 7 years on the surface, the individual from United Earth, designated Irina Pavlova, was actually gone for 260 years.  Captain's log, supplemental: The planetary orbit is empty.  We can track some regualar disruptions of orbits of the planets.  Current theory is this may be a phasic planet, appearing only on occasion, likely brought into phase by our own Chroniton leap using the borg Chroniton generator.   Irina and a local child were rescued, and are being returned to Earth.  System is labeled as hazardous to prevent accidental phasic shifts creating instability in the system.  Ensign Mallory ‘resigned’ from the DFA. This means she is leaving. She was supposed to go to the planet with Six of Twelve and Captain Sesgaard but she did not. She said she would not go if Six of Twelve went. She disobeyed a command, like Twelve of Twelve, but Captain Sesgaard said this was not a malfunction. We do not understand. Data from Tas suggests she should not leave but may require a new function. We will suggest this solution.   A promotion ceremony was held. All data regarding service record updates, ribbons, awards, and chain of command priorities have been updated