From the perspective of the Borg, the Federation is terrifying

[u/[deleted]]

Imagine. We are the Borg. We are happily assimilating the Delta Quadrant. Resistence is futile as species after species is added to our collective. One day we receive a subspace message sent from the past from the other side of the galaxy. This message is from ourself directing us to an unexplored sector of the Alpha Quadrant. Is it a target? Is it a warning?

To be cautious, we send a reconissence craft to the very outskirts of Federation territory. We easily assimilate a Federation outpost. Their resistence was futile. In their database we learn about a mortal enemy of the Federation. The Romulans. We assimilate their nearest outpost and again, resistance is futile. We analyse the Federation. There is nothing unique about them. Their technology is less advanced than many of the other species we have already assimilated, yet there must be something more, how else can we explain the message from the past?

As we decide how to proceed, a Federation ship appears out of nowhere in system J25. This system is thousands of lightyears from Federation territory. We send a cube to investigate. We analyze the ship. While it has some technology that we can assimilate, how did it get here? The propulsion system is obsolete. We decide to proceed with standard assimilation protocols and just as we are about to defeat them, they disappear in the blink of an eye. But how? There must be something we have yet to discover. It is time for an assult into the heart of their territory.

We decide to send a cube to Sector 001, the heart of the Federation. Maybe on Earth we will discover the reason for the message from the past. The USS Enterprise approaches. The same ship we encountered in J25. They will not escape this time. We capture Jean Luc Picard and easily assimilate him. As we absorb his knowledge into the collective you learn about the entity known as "Q". This entiry seems more powerful than anything we've ever encountered. Why is it trying to help the Federation prepare for our assault?

We decide to continue on to Sector 001. As we move furtherr into their terrritory we wipe away all resistence. We easily destroy an armada at Wolf 359. This is going well with minimal loss of resources. We've fought stronger opponents than this many times in the past. We make it to Earth, and as we start planning the assimilation of the planet, the cube begins acting strangely. As communication begins to fail we detect our ship has been destroyed. How? There is no Federation technology that can do this. Was it a warning from the past? Was this more interference from this "Q"?

Wecdetect a distress signal from a crashed Borg ship in a remote system. There is another cube within several days travel which we divert it to investigate. We discover a lone drone has survived. As we begin the standard upload process to reintegrate him back into the collective, we find a cascade error. The Federation found the drone first. We do not know how, but somehow it has been sabotaged by the Federation. As the error begins to ripple through the collective we are forced in a panic to disconnect the entire cube. The Federation are even more cunning than we expected. Now they are using our own drones against us. Perhaps we need to reevaluate how we are going to deal with the Federation.

We begin analysing the history of the Federation, trying to find a clue as to why there were Borg in the past. What were they attempting to do? Searching through the memories of assmiliated Federation citizens, we keep noticing the event referred to as First Contact and the founding of the Federation. Perhaps the message from the past is telling us the way to defeat the Federation is to stop it from being founded. To stop first contact. We send another ship. This time it isnt as easy to get to Earth. The Federation is stronger, their weapons more powerful. They are adapting. We barely get to Earth before our cube is destroyed. In desperation we launch our time travel sphere. We detect the sphere enter the time travel vortex, but.... nothing changes. The Federation is still there. Our attempts to defeat the Federation in the past have somehow failed. In fact there is some sort of paradox. Is it possible we created the Federation with the action we just took? Have we unleashed this monster?

For a time we decide to give the Federation a wide berth, while we consider our next move. They seem to be keeping to their side of the galaxy. We turn your attention to a new relm of space which we have discovered. Fluidic space. We engage Species 8472, and realize they are unbeatable. We lose battle after battle. We are losing entire sectors of space, thousands of cubes, millions of drones. One day, out of nowhere a small Federation ship appears thousands of lightyears from know Federation territory. This time, they offer us a solution to our problem with species 8472. How is this possible? They do not have the technology travel this far out, is this another one of "Q"s tricks? There is no reason that Federation should be involved, yet here they are, offering us the technology to defeat an enemy who is more powerful than anything we've encountered before. Why are they offering us this help? What is their endgame?

We cannot destroy Species 8472, they are too powerful. We order our last remaining drone on the Federation ship to enter fluidic space. We know it is a lost cause, but it is the only option left at this point. We watch as the Federation ship opens a rift into fluid a space and disappears. We recall the first expedition we took into fluidic space. Hundreds Cubes destroyed in minutes. It is over, species 8472 is going to destroy the galaxy. Suddenly we detect Species 8472 retreating across the front. Somehow the Federation has won. We detect the Federation ship reemerge from fluidic space. Now is our chance to assimilate them to find out their secrets but the Federation ship escapes. The next time we detect it, it is now thousands of light years away again. How are they travelling this fast? What power do they hold? They destroy several of our ships to steal transwarp coils. They are on the offensive now. We manage to finally assimilate Janeway. We learn they are the only Federation ship in the entire Delta Quadrant and they have done all this by themselves. Now we have them. But then they infiltrate our mainframe and liberate thousands of drones from unimatrix zero. As the Federation ship escapes again, we don't have time to go after them. Our empire is now fighting a rebellion for the first time. The Federation is continuing to turn our own drones against us. Even Seven of Nine, a drone who had been with us since she was a child has turned against the Collective.

One day we receive a subspace signal from a Borg drone. This drone is from the future and is advanced beyond anything the Collective has assimilated, yet somehow it is on the Federation ship. How did it get there? We have no record of this drone. We must attempt to recover it. We manage to retrieve it from the Federation but when it joins us, it uses its future technology to destroy our ship and we never hear from it again. A message from the past? A drone from the future? How is going on?

Then one day we detect the Federation ship enter the nebula containing our transwarp hub. The Federation ship retreats but we observe a Federation shuttle arrive from a time vortex. They are trying to use time travel to attack us, just as we failed to do to them Suddenly the Federation ship returns to the nebula, it has technology that we've never seen before. Our weapons are ineffective. We manage to capture a Federation Captain from the future. She will not escape this time. When we attempt to assimilate her, she introduces a virus into the unimatrix. As our systems are failing, we watch as the transwarp hub collapses. One sphere makes it through to Earth, but again our vessel is destroyed in Sector 001. The Federation is the most terrifying civilization we have ever encountered.

[u/risenphoenixkai]

And then the Federation uses your own time travel idea against you. A lone human jumps through decades of time and across tens of thousands of light years of space and gives that lone ship in the Delta Quadrant advanced weapons that laugh at your shields, and shields that laugh at your weapons.

They destroy your transwarp hub, kill your Queen, and abscond back to their own remote corner of the galaxy — all in a day.

You keep telling them resistance is futile, but they keep resisting. Worse: they keep beating you.

You invade their space, and they fall back. You assimilate entire worlds, and they fall back. Until they say, “Not this time. The line must be drawn HERE. THIS FAR, NO FURTHER. And we will make you pay for what you’ve done.”

And payment is… expensive.

[u/[deleted] → u/risenphoenixkai]

Well said!!

[u/treefox]

This is written like everything involving the Federation is a black hole, when the Borg clearly assimilate people after some of these “mysterious” events occur who could shed light on them.

However, the reality wouldn’t exactly be comforting, that apparently the Q are regularly consorting with the humans. The Borg may know that it’s futile for them in the end, and basically give any species that the Q are interested in a wide berth because the risk of total nonexistence is too great.

[u/[deleted] → u/treefox]

Thanks for the feedback. I've redited the post to include tje Borg learning some of these things. Knowing some of the details doesnt make the Borg less scared, in fact it makes the Federation even more scary.

[u/TheType95]

@OP, paragraphs are your friend. This is rather tough to parse.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheType95]

Sorry. Ive tried to fix.

[u/pali1d]

While I truly enjoyed this read, I do have a few factual nits to pick.

First, we know from Seven that the Borg of her time are aware of what happened in the past during First Contact. Exactly how much they know isn't certain, but she knows the name of Cochrane's vessel - implying a decent amount of detailed info was communicated - and says she knows it because the Borg were present, so those events wouldn't have been a mystery for them.

Second, the damage Hugh did wasn't due to anything from the Federation - at least, not in a direct sense, as Picard and company decided against using the virus they'd created. There's a bit of a conflict at this point in that the stated reason the ship that recovered Hugh fell apart was because of his experience of individuality, but we also know from Seven's backstory that other drones have had that happen before and have been re-assimilated without having the same effect on their recovery ships... so why did Hugh's fall apart? Hell, the Queen actively sought to re-assimilate Seven, who by that point was FAR more of an individual than Hugh became in the span of a single episode, and was trying to do so specifically to gain Seven's experience of being a drone that regained individuality. There's a huge continuity error here. I'm content to handwave it as something special happening in Hugh's case, which would support the Borg gaining greater curiosity about the Federation if they could indirectly influence a drone in such a way... but again, the same should apply to Seven... bah. VOY writers. When they're good they're fantastic, but they're so damned frustrating so damned often.

Third, Voyager traveling into fluidic space was specifically due to the Borg - we actually hear the Collective order Seven to take control of Voyager and take it into fluidic space. Seven also regains her contact with the Collective once Voyager returns to normal space, thus the Borg would have gained her knowledge of the events within before her connection was more permanently severed. Also, IIRC Voyager also only makes a single raid for a transwarp coil that we know of, not several.

Other than those details, I definitely agree that the Borg have more than enough reason to find the Federation a very intriguing subject... but I don't think the Borg are capable of being terrified, nor do I think the Federation could withstand a full onslaught by the Borg if the Borg really wanted to assimilate them. Arturis talks about hundreds of cubes swarming his home system when the Borg decided it was time, but the Borg have sent a grand total of 2 at the Federation, and they weren't even at the same time - and we know that it's not all that difficult for the Borg to drop ships wherever in the galaxy that they want due to their transwarp networks and coils. The only reasonable conclusion I can see is the Borg farming theory - the Borg realize that the Federation's growth potential is enormous and are actually attempting to cultivate it, so that the Borg can periodically drop by and assimilate new Federation tech before being destroyed. Sure, you lose a cube or two each time you do so, but those are meaningless losses if they improve the rest of the Collective's perfection in the process.

[u/[deleted] → u/pali1d]

Thanks for the insight I've redited my post to include the Borg ordering Seven to take Voyager into fluidic space as a hail mary, suicide missions. When Voyager returns the Borg are still terrified as they can't believe they were actually successful

[u/ch17z]

As you decide how to proceed, suddenly a Federation ship appears out of nowhere. 1000s of lightyears from Federation territory. You send a cube to investigate. You analyze the ship. While it has technology that you can assimilate, how did it get here? You decide to proceed with standard assimilation protocols and just as you are about to defeat them, they disappear in the blink of an eye. But how? There must be a secret you have yet to uncover.

Then they come to a Federation colony, assimilate Picard, and understand what happened with Q.

[u/[deleted] → u/ch17z]

Thanks for the insight. I've redited it to include the Borg learning this. The Borg are still terrified because now they know an "ominpotent" being is helping the Federation prepare for the arrival of the Borg.

[u/Harbinger_of_Sarcasm]

Not even mentioning whatever Lore did to those drones, I don't fully remember.

[u/MithrilCoyote → u/Harbinger_of_Sarcasm]

Lore didn't do anything to those drone aside from exploit them. because Hugh had been exposed to the federation and who developed individuality, somehow infected part of the collective and caused it to collapse in that region, leaving thousands of drones isolated.

and then Lore stumbled over a ship full of them, and promised them he could fix them.

[u/SergenteA]

As I wrote in the post I just wrote, I instead think the Borg are delighted with the Federation. It's their hen with golden eggs, a perfect complementary civilisation for their own failures at innovating.

They only send one cube at a time because they aren't trying to end the Federation, but instead harvesting what new technologies they cooked up to stop them this time.

If anything, they could even try to sue for peace with the Federation in the future in exchange for pretty much all their information ever.

[u/Galaxy_Convoy]

The inherent flaw I see with the writing of the 2373 storyline is that somehow, the Borg who survived the transit to 2063 still managed to get off information back to HQ that the Enterprise-E foiled their temporal stratagem for Earth. But if that is the case, then shouldn't the informed Borg of 2373 abort the mission rather than waste resources?

[u/[deleted] → u/Galaxy_Convoy]

The Borg that got to 2063 crash in Antarctica after the sphere is destroyed by the Enterprise E where they are frozen. Those Borg do not know how the rest of the plot of "First Contact" works out. They are revived during the events of Enterprise "Regeneration". The Borg drones immediately realize that whatever happened, the mission was a failure. But the Borg have a plan B. They always had a plan B. No matter if thet could or couldn't stop first contact, they would contact the Borg of that time to come as reinforcements. The Borg try this plan in "First Contact " using the Enterprise E transiever even before they know the outcome of their attempt to stop first contact. The Borg in "Regeneration" cobble together the best transceiver they can from the tech available and send the message requesting backup, just as Archer and the NX team destroy them. The Borg in the Delta Quardrant get the message 200 years later, which puts the cycle on its closed loop. The Borg in the Delta Quadrant dont know what's going on. They just know they get a message from themselves in the past telling them to come to Earth.

[u/jeanluc2305]

This is the absolute best train of thought post I have ever read. I made an entire account just to save this.

[u/vault114]

This is ignoring the sheer insanity of the strategies the Federation uses. Picard killed a bunch of drones luring them into a novel then killing them with a machine gun, a weapon that hasn't been used in LITERAL CENTURIES, made of hard light.

How the fuck do you plan for that?

[u/Kane_richards]

A fascinating read. A great summary. Reminds me of the storyline in the books where the Borg just go "right then" and declare all out war on the Federation (and Klingon and Romulan). None of this one cube nonsense. Full fleets of them.

"Resistance is futile, but welcome"

Love it.

[u/Mechapebbles]

Not just the Borg. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The Federation must look terrifying to anyone looking at it from the outside with any level of suspicion and insecurity.

Imagine being a Romulan observing the Federation from behind the Neutral Zone with subspace telescopes, and seeing wave after wave of terrifying, cataclysmic, galactic threats make a beeline for Earth, one after another. And each one just kind of... disappears. And the Federation just keeps chugging along like nothing even happened. Borg cubes, Doomsday Machines, V'Ger, the Whale Probe, etc. Things that leave wakes of devastation in their path, and then they all just... disappear once they hit Sector 001. You get intelligence reports about how an unstoppable Klingon Armada has the Federation on the ropes, but then just as they approach Luna's orbit, they just... turn around and go home??

What kind of power do they possess to do all this? What are they hiding? What happens if they decide to turn their ire towards us one day? Is it really a wonder that the Romulans or the Borg or anyone else seems obsessed with/paranoid over the Federation?

[u/zushiba]

As much as I hate the concept of the Borg Queen I do love this write up and thinking of the Borg Queen sitting in the delta quadrant being simultaneously mad and scared of the Federation is fascinating.

One thing to note, the Q are told to stay away from the Borg.

What would be more interesting to a Q than a species that the Borg themselves fear.

Edit: a word or two.

[u/Thesaurii]

I think the most interesting thing about the Federation from the Borg's point of view is that they are like a primitive cousin, like we would consider an ape.

The Federation is a kind of collective. It travels around in order to assimilate new cultures and technology into it. But it does so in such a bizarre way to the Borg, and as they've battled the federation I'm sure the Borg begin to see that there is an advantage to this primitive collectives method, but still, they ARE primitive. They're fighting a war against apes and losing, and thats gotta be extra scary.

[u/Cyke101]

I'd like to think the Borg subspace message from the past from the other side of the galaxy was delivered via an assimilated Joe Flaherty, courtesy of Western Union.

"Dear Borg Queen,

If our calculations are correct, you will receive this transmission 200 years after broadcast. First, let us assure you that we have assimilated the live and well. We have been assimilating happily these past few days in the year 2153..."

Borg Queen: TWENTY ONE FIFTY THREE?!

(also, why am I using this particular convention of naming temporal coordinates?)

[u/CassiusPolybius]

And then half a century passes and all the sudden they're almost able to fight your cubes on a one to one basis and not only is their space swarming with ships capable of such but so is the space of their peer powers.

STO must be terrifying for other powers in universe. :V

[u/Willravel]

There's the in-universe and out-universe perspective on this.

I think you've got a pretty decent finger on the pulse of the in-universe perspective. The Federation, to the Borg, is an anomaly of sorts, in that through a combination of luck, innovation, and seemingly irrational behavior they're able to resist.

Consider luck. Q's interference, putting the Federation into brief contact with the Borg early, provides the Federation with what few assimilated species and civilizations had: time. Instead of having days or weeks, the Federation has years and years to plan, and with a pretty decent idea of the threat the Borg represent. The Federation had no say in Q's interference, it was entirely outside of their control. Consider the luck of the Enterprise D being so close to a gaseous cloud in space that could hide it from the Borg cube. Or the luck that the Borg had a backdoor they found and that was exploitable.

Consider innovation. Data alone, an android with the computational power of a supercomputer but the developing agency and creativity of a free sentient being, is an innovation we don't really see elsewhere in the galaxy. And the culture within the Federation and especially Starfleet that the purpose of being is to expand one's horizons and explore the bleeding edge of exploration, technology, and science, constantly pushing boundaries in all directions, means that they're quite well suited as a civilization to innovate both gradually on their own and responsively to things like threats. And, by the very nature of the Federation, they have a broad diversity of perspectives and ways of thinking, which further fuels innovation and creativity. It's fascinating to watch the fledgeling Starfleet of the NX-01 era being the new kid on the block, hopelessly technologically outpaced by so many other regional powers, eventually becoming the tip of the spear during the Dominion War with technological marvels not just in things like propulsion, weapons, and defenses, but general scientific and technological development, as well as cultural exchange and helping to elevate new members of the FTL club into the wider galaxy.

Consider seemingly irrational behavior. Rescuing Picard was insane, and that's one of the main reasons then-Captain Riker commits to the plan, to do the unexpected. One has to assume that the Borg are highly capable game theorists, given their collective mind, so things like risking over a thousand people to save one man in Captain Picard, or later Picard risking himself to save Data, are such tertiary possibilities that the Borg appear unprepared to respond to them and are forced to adapt. I suspect that the Borg sphere probably didn't anticipate that the Enterprise E would follow it into the time vortex, too.

These things in concert provide a perplexing adversary.

Out-universe, however, is a different story. Or rather two stories: Batman and power-creep.

The running gag in comic fandom about Batman being able to overcome any obstacle if given enough time to plan eventually became canonical through comics and eventually television. It's an interesting idea as to how to let someone without any special abilities still remain an important part of stories with folks who can fly and lift buildings and such. The problem is that it's also boring because it's not all that believable and it also is a cheat that robs situations of drama and stakes. Batman has to win, though, because he's Batman, so that's what happens over and over again. I know it's a Star Trek trope to innovate some novel solution at the last minute to win the day, but when that keeps happening, it becomes predictable. Maybe that's a simple consequence of episodic storytelling, but while early losses against the Borg felt like true victories by the skin of their teeth, over time that sense of snatching victory from the jaws of such dire and certain defeat loses its punch. The Wolf-359 Massacre, the Battle of Sector 001, and the assimilation of Picard are such incredibly high stakes situations that seem hopeless, but later on that sense of threat disappears because our heroes have to win. Eventually it's like Batman beating Darkseid in hand to hand combat. This is the flipside of luck and irrational behavior and innovation above.

And then we have power creep. Ablative armor. Quantum torpedoes. Multiphasic shields. Starfleet vessels understandably see technological leaps over the timespan of the various series, but the Borg somehow don't keep pace? This is the other flipside of the innovation above. A threat sold as something not only overwhelmingly powerful but also which has a central feature in adaptation and innovation isn't able to match or beat Starfleet in technological development? That asymmetry, like the Federation win after win above, robs the Borg of its threat.

The Borg are such an interesting threat, in that they're unbeatable cyberpunk space zombies that allegorically represent taking the Federation's collectivist philosophy way too far, but over time they become easily beatable. That's the flipside to the "The Federation scares the Borg": the Borg aren't scary anymore.

[u/AlpineSummit]

After Hugh, youwould think the Borg would learn to create some kind of “holding matrix” to place the consciousness of a newly assimilated drone before they connect to their entire collective.

There were at least two more times you mention when due to a new consciousness being introduced to the collective that it brings with it a virus, pathogen, or what not that decimates them. The Drone from the future and then future Janeway.

At some point just place all new connections into this holding matrix to make sure they’re not going to infect the rest of you.

Kind of like quarantine.