USS Grail: 'The Treaty of Algeron' - byLieutenant (jg) Eve Mallory (Chief Science Officer)

Location: Science Lab 14

Eve watched as the security team removed Blake, Castle and Jarel from the room. The huge door closed with a thud, followed by the usual faint <clank> as the bars within sealed themselves.

She turned finally to face the coffin-shaped cryostasis tube that the specimen was contained...

No. Not a specimen.

When it had been a Borg, it was easy to think of it has a thing, an extension of the whole. There were no individuals in the Borg, just one whole, with a lot of arms.

Now, it was different. Jarel had called her Angeline. Said she was his wife. Starfleet did have a number of Borg in storage, much like the one aboard the Nova and here. She asked, and had been told that as an on-going process, Borg were being reclaimed, the chips and equipment being removed, and the person within brought back into society.

Jarel didn't seem like the type of person who would have left things alone though. Why hadn't he wanted to wait for the reclamation process to reach his wife? Why had he waited to break her out now and not earlier?

Eve turned to the metal case on the desk. She entered the code into the small panel, and snapped open the locks. Inside was the mecha-neural interface, two tubes both filled with a red liquid, and a data crystal. Eve reached out to take one the tubes, holding it up for a better look. She rubbed the back of her neck absent-mindedly; They'd proved once and for all that Borg tubules could really penetrate anything. They had punched two small holes in her neck (with an empty set of tubules - she wasn't going to risk being infected with nano-probes), out of which samples of her 'blood' had been taken. There hadn't been a very wide time-frame to do that either; the two wounds had started to seal themselves far quicker than anyone had anticipated. There hadn't been any pain either, just a faint tingling where the tubules had penetrated.

She picked up the data-crystal, and fed it into the terminal. Data filled the screen.

>BORG NUMBER: 3456.20/1

KNOWN PREVIOUS IDENTITY: Angeline Deshaine

Eve read the details that came up. Angeline had been a science

officer at Wolf 359, aboard the USS Kyushu. No bodies had been

recovered from the Kyushu, when the ship had been found,

nearly intact at the site of the battle. She continued to read:

>RECLAIM DATE: None scheduled. Anomalous data in preliminary attempt, subject almost terminated due to unknown reasons. See attached records.>>

Eve frowned, What had happened? She was about to access the records when the Red Alert blared. She had to get to the Bridge. She'd deal with the problem of Angeline Deshaine another time.

Along with all her other problems.

"Computer, download all records pertaining to Angeline Deshaine within data crystal into this terminal."

[Download complete]

"Activate LHT program."

The long-term Holographic Technician shimmered into existence. Average height, average build. Brown hair and eyes, calm expression. And female this time.

"What would you like me to do?" She asked.

"Go through all details on the Borg Reclamation Program as pertains to Angeline Deshaine. Find out why she wasn't scheduled for reclamation and what the anomalous readings where. Download the results to my terminal."

"And then?" The LHT was expressionless.

Eve pointed to the blood samples. "I want a full series of tests run on those. Anything you can up with; run a full comparison analysis too. Contact me if you find anything."

Eve left at a half run, the doors opening in front of her. The LHT paused for a moment, then picked up one of the blood tubes. She held it up to the light, then turned towards the equipment.

Jason

Lieutenant (jg) Eve Mallory

Chief Science Officer: USS Grail