Star Trek: The Ranger Part 1

Chapter 5

V

Aboard the Starship Voyager

Admiral Elizabeth Shelby, the new master of the U.S.S Voyager, NCC-74656, entered The Bridge of her vessel, as one of her crew bellowed. "Admiral on The Bridge!"

"As you were, people", she said with a small smile.

Inside, her smile was quite large.Voyager was the ship that had run the gantlet of the Delta Quadrant; had been led by the legendary (if now almost forgotten) Captain Kathryn Janeway, and her Starfleet/Maquis crew, plus two former Borg drones. It was the stuff of legends. The information that Janeway had brought back from the DQ was still being examined, so much data did they collect.

Yet it was the information on The Borg that had excited Shelby. She had been chosen, by Admiral Picard, among others, to lead the effort to glean over the data on The Borg. After two years of study, Shelby had wanted to map out a plan to hunt down The Borg, wherever they were, and destroy them, based, in part, on the information that Janeway and the former drone, Seven of Nine had collected.

It took her team almost another year to come up with all their recommendations to turn in to Picard, who had been tasked to receive the information, then pass it on to Starfleet with his suggestions for how to use it.

She thought back to the meeting that she had attended with Picard, and Captain Riker. No one knew it at the time, but the repercussions of that meeting were what had led her to this moment, on The Bridge of Voyager.

Captain Shelby sat across from Admiral Picard and Admiral Riker, both men smiling at her warmly. They had done so much to save The Federation and Starfleet all those years ago in Sector zero-zero-one. Today, she would give them her report on her group's multi-year study into The Borg, and how Voyager had successfully fought them off. It had been an eye-opening study for Shelby, who, now more than ever, was determined to defeat this enemy.

She hadn't come to the meeting with the full report. The entire report was gigantic, and would take hours, if not days, to read. She had brought her summary for the Admiral and Captain to read.

After niceties and formalities, and the usual replicating of preferred drinks, she allowed Picard and Riker to look over her summary.

Being the professionals that they were, neither let their facial expressions change as they read, and read the entire summary before commenting.

Riker had finished first, but waited for the few minutes it took Jean-Luc to finish up, deferring to his superior officer to make the first comments.

Picard slowly put down the PADD containing the summary, and looked up at her, his face troubled.

"Captain", he began slowly, "you are proposing that Starfleet, and The Federation, go out in search for The Borg? To actively seek a confrontation with them?"

"Yes, Admiral", she said without skipping a beat. "By destroying one of their transportation hubs, and, perhaps the Queen in the process, we feel they're very vulnerable to being beaten in a way that will severely limit, if not end, their threat to every Quadrant."

"Captain Shelby", Riker chimed in, "we're still massively short-handed after the Dominion War. It will probably be another seven-to-ten years before The Fleet is back to full strength, and even using some of the Borg technology that Seven of Nine added to Voyager, it's still being analyzed for its practicality to use fleet-wide. We aren't ready to take The Borg on, on such a scale."