With the crew returned the Wabi Sabi sped, as fast as the atmosphere of Illiran would allow, into orbit and then at full impulse out towards the system’s 9th planet. A class T hyper-gas giant. In orbit around this massive planet was a Borg signature, the massive amounts of radiation the planet threw off every second was enough to muddle their sensors but it was likely a Borg vessel. While the Illiran defense forces gathered for a coordinated strike the Sabi would intercept. Their technology, thanks to the Dominion War, Voyager’s return and the Borg own invasion had given Starfleet a great deal of experience and incentive to progress in weapon and defensive technologies, Pax was confident that they would at least hold on long enough for reinforcements to arrive; even so he had sent a transmission to the Fleet requesting aid.

As the Wabi Sabi neared the planet her sensors, augmented by Elli and engineering crews were able to cut through much of the interference confirming that there was indeed a Borg vessel, a sphere. Somewhat confusingly though it was badly damaged with no indication that it was repairing itself, it did move to intercept the Sabi opening fire the moment it was in range. Their beam weapons strike out probing the Sabis shields but failing to do much damage, the pair of torpedoes bufferted the Federation ship but again did little damage. The return fire, however, was devastating to the Sphere, with no shields and a badly damaged hull the Wabi Sabi easily punched through into vital functions and to their surprise the sphere exploded after just a few hits.

To find some answers Pax orders an away team to transport over to a large chunk of vessel that still has partial power and life support. The away team, joined by a small marine detachment materialized into a corridor leading to a remote operations sub-junction, most of the Borg they discovered were either long dead or had been killed in the destruction of the ship only a few remained active but they were zombie like, unmoving in random positions within the sub-junction.

Moving to one of the borg consoles they quickly access all the data they can find. Records show that this vessel had fled the attack on Illiran 14 years before and due to immense damage had hidden within the hypergiant to repair. The damage had proven too great and the ship and her drones had been disconnected from the collective, putting them into ‘sleep’ mode. They remained there until a month ago when they received the wake up signal. With the small number of drones left the ship had tried to repair, only once its weapons and engines were online did it ascend into orbit. The wake up signal was flagged as suspicious as it was delivered on a non-borg carrier wave, but even with the Wabi Sabi’s computers it would take time to trace the signal and decode who sent it.

Meanwhile in medical, the Doctor in conjunction with Illiran services had found a way to disseminate the cure to the borg flu virus, the large atmospheric processing towers that kept the air of Illiran so clean and free from taint could be used to spread the cure to all those infected. It was the method the Borg had used to spread the virus in the later stages so it had already been proven to work. The Problem being that it would take time for the cure to be loaded into the tower and it was programmed to do what they needed, and then it would take more time to expel all of the aerosolized cure.

In simulations the cure would be absorbed into the body via skin contact and by being breathed in and would then make a bee-line for the Illiran nanite-factory each person wore on their wrist where it would undo the programming the Borg had done. At that point it would be mere seconds before the Illiran nanite would defeat the Borg ones and release the host from the collective’s influence. It was the build up to that point, in which the atmospheric tower would be vulnerable. A defense plan was needed and the expertise of the crew would be invaluable, Pax agreed to deploy an engineering team and a joint force of security and marines to help defend.