The Borg ship 346897-673 blasted through space, followed by its associates, 34698-457 and 4907245-234. The giant, technically amassed cube roared through the spacelanes, only stopping to assimilate Romulan Warbirds and other such craft. The ship's giant collective mind, fed into the other two ships, were unable to understand the Romulan pleas for survival, or release, so they continued to assimilate all that they found.

"Resistance is futile," they told the Romulans, "You will be assimilated."

The Romulans who tried to resist too much were neutralized, some were killed to asses their possible threat later onboard the ships. All Romulan ships they assimilated were slowly turned into smaller cubes in a period of minutes, adding to the number of ships approaching the Federation border. Their order: begin destruction of all worlds in their current galaxy-they were going to move on, towards another galaxy soon. The collective mind had told them that twenty seven more cubes were heading in their direction, to continue the assault. They would begin with the Romulan homeworld, the Klingon homeworld, and the Cardassian homeworld. The Borg had no idea that Romulus, Quo'nos, and Cardassia were armed, but it would not matter.

The Borg ships would beat them.

Don Maxwell awoke to a startling BANG! a deck or so below him. It shook him a bit, and he jumped out of bed. Don's feet hit the floor about the time Jerrica woke up.

"What was that?" Jerrica mumbled through sleep-induced drowsiness.

Don, who was busy fumbling with the strings on his robe, replied, "I don't know, honey, I'm about to find out." Don grabbed a small phaser weilder in case anything needed repair. He ran through the doors to his quarters, to see Cheval and Evan Palpatine all standing either in their doorway or in the hall. It looked like Don was not the only one awoken by the explosion.

"Hello, guys." He said a bit sheepishly. Seeing as he was in his robe and bare feet, yet holding a phaser weilder in one hand, he did look rather funny.

Cheval smiled and covered her mouth.

Evan nodded towards the turbolift, and said, "C'mon, Chief. Let's go see what that was."

Don replied, "Yeah, I'd rather go fight technical problems than become the butt of another joke." He took off at a slight jog after Evan, and reached the turbolift. The doors whisked open to reveal Bobby Squit, who screamed "Whoopee!" and jumped into the hallway.

He turned, and saw Don, who dropped his phaser wielder. Bobby's face was enough to figure out that he was the one that had caused the loud bump-he was obviously in enough ecstacy to do so.

Don decided to find out over what.

"Bobby, what's going on here? Some of us have rather early shifts." He said, rather aggrivated. He was still getting over his sleepiness, and he had a headache.

"We did it!" Bobby yelled as he projected himself into Don. Bobby clapped Don on the back enthusiasticly for a second before moving away.

He then continued. "Don, Evan, we made it! We won the test drive prize!" Bobby said. Don was now utterly confused.

"Listen, Bobby, calm down and start from the beginning." He urged.

Bobby seemed to mentally calm himself, however he still looked jittery and happy as Don and Evan walked him back towards the turbolift.

"Both of you and I won the grand prize that the Federation puts out each year for the bi-annual Great Starship Race," Bobby continued.

"We're both going to Earth for a day or two, and then we get to command the prototype the Federation enters in the Great Starship Race! Isn't this great?"

Don listened to Bobby, nodding. He slowly remembered what had happened.

Nearly a month ago, Bobby had asked everyone he knew on the Egypt to sign up for the Great Starship Race's Test Drive Contest. Every two years, the Federation, the Vulcans, and the Klingon Empire would fund the Great Starship Race. An intergalactic race of speed and guts, starship captains and crew would pit themselves against giant battlecruisers, small, swift, speed-built ships, and even against the Federation's majestic cruisers in an all-out game of speed. Even though there were rules about tuning down engines and weapons power so everyone was equal, the winners of the Great Starship Race Test Drive Contest usually felt like they had been given an advantage.

Don could hardly think of what to say. Out of a near 16 thousand crew, only Bobby, Evan, and he had won. A Hoax? Nah. Who've I'd made enemies with? Maybe it was just dumb luck... Don shrugged, and smiled back at a rather bubbly, while happy, Bobby Squit.

"Well, my friend, it look's like we'll have a week off from Egypt, eh?" Don said, trying to erase from his head the frightening thought of his engines and his ship and his holodecks and his computer cores and his conduits in someone else's hands.

Bobby smiled, and said, "You bet we will! We're going to be on the Federation's new Starship, the Isor!"

Don nodded, however, quiet Evan spoke up.

"The Isor-isn't that the new ship with all the engines?" He asked. Bobby nodded enthusiastically.

"Yup! And guess who's in command?"

Both of them were silent.

"You, Don! You'd better get studying, because you've got the command chair on that ship for a week!" Bobby's response was emphatic.

Don smiled, replying, "Yeah, great." However, butterflies were beginning to dive bomb his stomach. The Isor? Great. This technological spoof is going to run us into warp 15! Oh, for Pete's sake, why did the Federation have to give us a five warp engine ship? Why not something you can trust, like...

Don had a hundred starship names he could place on the end of that sentence, but only Egypt came to his mind. He may have to leave his ship to someone else for a week, but he was not going down because he hadn't known the Isor bow to stern!

"When do we leave?" Evan asked.

Bobby nodded, his bubbly enthusiasm dissipating to a general smile amidst speaking.

"We're off the Egypt and on a ship headed towards Earth in three days. After reaching Earth, we get those two days I mentioned for a crash course in learning how to use the Isor."

Evan, who had noticed he currently had no assignment on this great mission, decided to find out.

"And what, pretell, will I be doing?" He asked.

Bobby nodded. "I was coming to that. You've got two jobs: you were assigned Chief Medical Officer, but you'll also be trained to be an acting science officer, if the one we've got goes ill."

Don nodded in recognition, and then asked, "Well, Bobby, just who's on the bridge for this race?"

Bobby turned around, pulling a datapadd from his rear nightgown pocket.

"Here, I downloaded it from the mail I got. I, of course, was chosen for the helm position," Bobby smiled ear to ear for them, displaying his proudness, "A man named Martin Cowerfield is running the sciences station, A Klingon named-get this-Alexander will be our tactical officer! Would you believe it? What a great name for a Klingon!"

Bobby laughed away, while the name nagged at the back of Don's head. Alexander R-something, a Klingon from Starfleet...where do I know him from?

Bobby went on, undisturbed. "Mia O'Leary, from the Anthony, will be our Commander, and Evan, of course, has sickbay. And we all know where Don is..." Bobby said, clapping his friend on the back.

Don smiled at both of them, and nodded towards his quarters.

"Well, I'm glad for all of us, but we all still have jobs to do on this ship before going off to take home the trophy. I'm going back to bed, and I suggest both of you do too. Especially you, Ensign Squit, seeing as we're performing a battle practice at your request tomorrow. Now, I'll see you on the bridge tomorrow. Evan, see you in the morning as well..."

Don made his way back to his room, drooping to grab his fallen phaser wielder. He walked back inside, and saw beautiful, blonde Jerrica Adams lying in bed, next to his vacant position, where the sheets had been tossed aside. No wonder I want to get back in here! Ran through his mind. The door closed behind him, and he locked it from the inside, throwing the phaser wielder on the couch. He untied his robe, and fell back into bed.

Commander Sperock looked into the skies, and nearly screamed out in fear. In the skies above Romulus Command, a giant cube, made up entirely of scaffolding and mechanical parts floated slowly-and it was descending.

The Borg.

Sperock ran to his post, and feverently tapped the "recognize" button, until it chimed.

"Commander Sperock here, sir. We have a problem, sir!" He said, catching glimpses of the giant ship every few minutes, than returning to the problem at hand.

The person on the other end of the datalink was Admiral Tomalak, head of Command Security.

He yelled back at Sperock, "Don't you think I already know? We have people running through the streets like mad! People are readying all the ships they can for launch! Get off my terminal, and go, Sperock, save yourself!" Sperock nodded, looking out over the Romulan landscape. The royal cities, the Imperial monuments, all the glamour of the mountains beyond the Romulan Capital-would the Borg take this entire planet? The sun had been block out by the giant cube's shadow, and the ship was dominating most of the airspace over the Romulan capital city.

He ran down from the top story watch tower to a small hangar several stories below. Each Romulan sentry guard had their own ship, so that if a renegade tried to escape the planet, pursuit was possible.

He ran over to the side of the ship, and depressed the release hatch with his button. As he clambered into the one-winged, bird-like sentry ship, he powered up the engines. When the ship was ready for launch, he accelerated to full speed, blasting out of the hangar.

Above him was one of the massive central Borg cubes, taking up much of the sky, so Sperock steered his sentry craft towards the end of the city, and found the end of the seemingly "endless" wall above him.

He flew up through the hazel-brown evening atmosphere and into dark space. However, it was not as blank and uninhabited as usual.

He saw smaller borg ships, giant cubes, and assorted Borg "crew" who were swimming through space between their ships. Suddenly, Sperock saw three small Borg cubes, about the size of his Romulan shuttle, blast off after him. Sperock had no doubt they were after him, so he began spinning, dipping, accelerating or decellerating to avoid the attack. He angled his ship to get a look at Romulus once, and watched as a cube that was outside the atmosphere send a giant red laser blast straight onto the surface of Romulus.

However, Sperock's ship suddenly shattered to pieces as he flew headlong into one of the giant cubes. Before the blackness of the mind began to eat him, he could already see Borg dispersing from their craft to retrieve his body and pieces of his craft.

Then, it all went black.

Tomalak ran into the docking port of his Romulan Warbird, and yelled, "Well? What are you waiting for? Captain on the bridge, let's go!"

He sat in his chair, and nodded at several Romulan crew members, watching their ascent from the ground. He knew they would probably fire upon Romulan Construction Yards soon; they had already leveled the capital with what seemed to be a giant superweapon. His Warbird shuddered slightly under the stress of the launch, but before the third giant Borg cube had centered itself over RCY, they had accelerated into warp speed.

Romulus was burning.

The capital was nothing more than a world of fire now, the superweapon the Borg had been using leveled the capital to a fire-filled hellhole in a matter of minutes. Nothing survived, nothing was living below the ring of fire it had sent out. The Borg cubes swarming over the planet strived to hit any escaping craft it could with a cutting beam or tractor beam, and usually they suceeded. There was only one untouched area-the poles, due to very little or no Romulan population there. However, there was not much to do to abade the fires that were consuming the planet, which now looked more like a gas giant from space than a Class-M planet.

Graceful, Wing-like Bird-of-Preys tried to escape the planet, only to have their travel heeded by a Borg cube grabbing, and assimilating them.

Only Tomalak's Warbird, the Hakoul, and several smaller ships not affiliated with the Romulan Navy escaped destruction. On the bridge of the Hakoul, Tomalak could easily see everyone was either deep in grief or already shaking their head in vain. He knew what the humans would be doing in a situation like this-crying. It's a good thing we can't, biologically, thought Tomalak, or we'd all be reduced to a weeping group of children. However, Tomalak could feel his own grief, yet washed it away currently to give orders.

"Okay, listen up. I am well aware of what just happened, and I have no intention of letting it slip. We are going to regroup in the Thierrull system-I have just sent a message to all other Warbirds in the vacinity to meet us there."

One younger Romulan, a subcenturon, spoke up.

"But what if the Borg hear it, sir?"

Tomalak shook his head. "Using our knowledge of the Borg given to us by the Federation, I know what frequencies they don't pick up. Do not worry, my friends, we'll get there."

Tomalak settled back into his chair, murmuring to himself, "They have come from the edges of the galaxy to take us all. So we'll hire the most powerful force our galaxy has to offer," he lowered his eyelids to a meanicing glower at the main viewscreen.

"The United Federation of Planets."

Like it so far? 'Cause it gets gooood! Wait until you see the Isor and the Egypt go head to head against the Borg, as well as the assimilation of one of the Egypt's crew!

E-mail me for the rest of the story!