Unity : Episode 59 Part A :: EPISODE GUIDES :: Janet's Star Trek Voyager Site

Part A
UNITY : Episode 59 : Part A

Chakotay and Ensign Kaplan are in a shuttlecraft on their return from a scouting mission in the Nekrit Expanse. They are lost and trying to ascertain their location when they pick up a distress call from a nearby planet - a Federation distress call! They launch a buoy to let Voyager know where they are.

Once landed on the planet, Chakotay tries to explain to a group of humanoids that they have come in answer to the distress signal but are attacked. In the ensuing exchange of fire, Kaplan is killed and Chakotay injured. His life is saved when help arrives in the form of another group.

Later Chakotay wakes on a bed in a bunker. He injuries have been treated but still has neurological damage. He finds a woman named Riley Frazier with him. She reassures him that they were not the ones who attacked his party and tells him that Kaplan did not make it. She explains that 7 or 8 years ago, when she was the Science Officer on a vessel in the Bolian sector they were attacked by aliens. She and the other survivors were kidnapped by the aliens, who put them into stasis, brought them to the Delta Quadrant and left them on this planet. The same thing occurred to numerous others including Klingons and Cardassians. Some on the planet are hostile: it started when the Klingons attacked the Cardassians, then the Farn attacked the Parein and the fighting escalated. There are 80,000 on the planet. The hostile factions would have taken Chakotay's shuttlecraft apart so he has no shuttlecraft to go back to. She belongs to a co-operative, the New Hope colony, whose members (about a hundred) work together and share what resources they have - they are like the Texas homesteaders. She apologises to Chakotay that they have no meat to offer him; Chakotay replies that he is a vegetarian and she says that she dreams about her mother's famous Texas barbecue. Chakotay tells her Voyager will take about 67 years to make the journey home. She disabuses Chakotay of his belief that she wishes to leave the planet on Voyager: she sent the distress call hoping for help against the raiders - security upgrades, medical supplies and weapons.
Riley: "We're creating a society here: one that's based on tolerance, shared responsibility, and mutual respect that people like you and I were raised to believe in. we're not about to give it up just because it's difficult."

Back on Voyager:
Paris: "I think they should have renamed it the 'negative expanse'. We haven't run across anything interesting in days."
Janeway: "If you're bored, Mr. Paris, I'm sure I can find something else for you to do. The warp plasma filters are due for a thorough cleaning."
Paris: "Now that you mention it, Captain, I find this region of space a real navigational challenge."
The banter ceases as sensors detect a vessel some distance off. Janeway tries to hail the ship with a standard greeting, but when it comes into view they see that it is a Borg vessel. Voyager goes to red alert, shields go up and weapons are readied.
But the Borg vessel is floating in space and a multi-phasic scan of the Borg cube shows no active energy signature or lifesigns.
Despite Tuvok's warning that the Borg have been known to retrieve their damaged technology, Janeway wants to learn as much about Borg technology as possible and sends a boarding team.
Tuvok: "Allowing yourself to become apprehensive can only be counter-productive, Lieutenant."
Torres: "I'm not being apprehensive, Tuvok. I'm just nervous as hell."
Torres asks Tuvok to get one of the Borg's access nodes operational so that she can tap into the Borg's main data systems. As he sets about doing as she asks, he finds a dead drone.
In a meeting in the Briefing Room on Voyager, the away teams reports finding 1,100 dead Borg drones and that investigation reveals the Borg ship ceased operation five years earlier. Torres wonders whether a hostile force more powerful than the Borg could be responsible for what happened to the Borg vessel.

On the planet, Chakotay disobeys Riley's instruction to stay in the bunker...

...and finds his way into the open air. He sees members of the co-operative at work.

Chakotay comes across a group sitting apart: a woman is seated with her back to him; she is bald and has a Borg implant in the back of her head. She is receiving treatment from what looks like an ex-Borg male with a prosthetic arm. The woman turns - it is Riley!

Chakotay surmises that she and the others are Borg. Riley explains that they were Borg: they were not kidnapped but assimilated. She was the Science Officer aboard the USS Roosevelt and was assimilated at Wolf 359. Five years ago, their Borg ship was damaged by an electro-kinetic storm which severed their link to the Borg Collective. The survivors settled on the planet, free at last but they quickly began fighting each other for food and supplies. The members of the cooperative still have Borg neuro-processors implanted in their nervous systems because removing the implants would have killed them, but it has helped bring the co-operative together.
Orum explains that he is Romulan and was taught to hate humans but he is a member of the co-operative. Riley says that Orum is their medic. Riley is hoping Chakotay can help them. However, Chakotay collpases from his wound and Orum says that right now it is Commander Chakotay who needs their help.

On Voyager the Doctor performs an autopsy on a Borg drone.
Doctor: "I must say there's nothing like the vacuum of space for preserving a handsome corpse."
He finds the drone was electrocuted and also finds an axonal amplifier inside the drone. While using a cortical probe on it the Doctor accidentally triggers a backup neuro-electric power cell and re-activates the drone. He quickly de-activates the drone. But Torres realises that if the drones on the cube are somehow re-activated then Voyager has a big problem.