The Beginning of the End

It was four years since the initial invasion of the Borg into Federation Space, in which case, the Federation no longer existed. Earth was the first to fall, and then Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar Prime, Denobula, Betazed and all the rest had soon followed. Within six months, the Federation was no more. Four months after the Federation was assimilated, the Klingon Empire was also absorbed by onto Collective. The Romulan Star Empire was assimilated five months after, then the Breen, the Gorn, the Cardassians… Hell had fallen upon the Alpha Quadrant and there was nowhere left to run. The Enterprise was the last of the Federation ships to survive, at least as far as they knew. They had lost contact with the USS Valiant nearly six months ago, the last of the Nebula Class vessels of Starfleet. Ever since then, all communications between any of the surviving ships, if there were anymore, had completely ceased... Not even a whisper... The Enterprise, and its surviving crew of 483 people, most of which are children, was all that was left of the once proud United Federation of Planets. Over half of the original crew have been killed, or worse assimilated, over the 4-year long battle of survival against the Borg Collective.

Commander William Thomas Riker was then granted a battlefield promotion to the rank of Captain and was given command of the Enterprise shortly after the ship's original captain, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, was taken prisoner and transformed by the Borg, the man once known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise became known as Locutus of Borg. During their mission to assimilate Earth, the Borg decided that a human voice was necessary to facilitate their introduction into Federation society. Captain Picard was chosen to be that voice. With his capture, the Borg had assimilated all of the tactical and strategic knowledge of Starfleet. The knowledge held within Jean-Luc Picard's mind became the key to the Federation's demise. On Stardate 43997, Locutus lead the Borg into battle at Wolf 359. There, what was to be Starfleet's last line of defense turned into a massacre, 39 starships destroyed by one Borg cube. By the time, the Enterprise had reached the coordinates to take part in the battle alongside the rest of the assault fleet, it was too late. They learned that the cube was on its way to Sector 001, the home system of Starfleet and of the Federation itself… Earth…

They had managed to kidnap Locutus from the Borg cube in an attempt to not only save Picard, but to find a way into the Borg collective itself via their subspace transmissions. The goal had been to disrupt their communications and to shut down their weapons systems. However, their plan had failed. When they succeeded in hacking into the Borg subspace transmissions signal, an attempt was made to bypass the Borg defense command systems. The Enterprise was still two minutes behind the Borg, and every second counted. But the attempt by the Enterprise had alerted the Borg to their plans, and made the Borg disconnect the subspace link between the Collective and Locutus once the threat had been identified. The severing of the link, however, had caused a feedback loop through the implanted cerebral, subspace neural transceivers. The feedback looped triggered a massive brain hemorrhage that killed Locutus and their former Captain, Jean-Luc Picard, almost instantly. When they finally arrived at Earth, two minutes later, the invasion was already underway. The Borg cube had easily destroyed Earth's small defense force, and had just launched a Borg sphere onto the planet's surface and began assimilating the population below. That was the beginning of the end.