NationStates Jolt Archive

*Three months prior* The Borg have heard rumors of a powerful spacefaring race in control of the Carina Dwarf Galaxy. This race, and their territory and technologies, have been determined useful in the collective's quest for perfection. No negotiation will be nessicary, this race's assimilation would not raise any difficulty in borg diplomatic efforts.

Small fleets of colony ships and assimilators flew in to the globular clusters of stars surrounding the Carina Dwarf Galaxy, and took them in the collective's name.

*Now*

With a forward position built, and enshrouded in the borg's artificial nebula, the shipyards have churned out a sizable invasion force to conquer another small galaxy.

With a groaning the space near a large Ooom population center blew open as the Gate alllowed a flotilla of cubes to pour forth.

For many the concept of an aquatic race reaching space is hard to fathom, yet more so if that race should be as large and sensitive to pressure changes as the Ooom. However the incredulity of other races had not stopped their progression, and after many thousands of years of dreams and toil they forged forth from their humble world, and never returned, though in a sense never left.

Their home planet remains connected to their astral empire by means of numerous enormous columns of the water in which they spend their lives. Though their possess accomplished spaceship technology the majority of the species spend the majority of the time within these vast channels that span the great distances between planets and bodies of a system. Though other, lesser races, should be forced too cocoon their liquids and gasses in crude cases of metal of glass the Ooom see no such constraints, through the mastery of pressure and gravity technology the aethereal rivers flowed without banks through space.

A single Ooom, they are naturally hermaphrodites can lives many hundreds of years, continuing to grow right up until its death, where as in the primitive beginnings of their species, the bones would eventually crack under the strain of their combined weight, they merely now migrated to wider waters of lower pressure and lived on, growing in population and wisdom. The greatest concentration of such majestic beings, could still though be found around their home planet, now a tiny speck of rock entirely consumed by the vast channels of water that span with it, and around which reverently circled the oldest of the Ooom no longer able to approach its terrestrial gravity, but remembering their youth in its sacrosanct waters.

One of the oldest of the Ooom however swam much further out, in the edges of the Mother System, using organic technology to probe the depths of space and the mysteries of the distant milky way. Even without this technology however Rouo could hardly have failed to notice the unnatural green tinge that the nearby space had assumed, though it had first appeared some time ago the Ooom are not hasty and he had not yet investigated the phenomena when the alien assault began.

A rent in space appeared bisecting one of the waterways causing it to burst and boil away into the void, though systems quickly compensated and the great liquid vessel appeared to pull backwards as the water retreated to the nearest stable point. From the opening poured a large number of metallic cubes, their abrupt and careless appearance and aggressive formation leaving little doubt as to their intention. Rouo immediately notified the central government though he didn’t need to wait for their reaction. Triggering his nearby flotilla of ships’ weapons he sent forth beams that should crush the structures of the offenders crafts, technology developed to keep their great waterways from depressurizing had also been repurposed as a powerful weapon.

The intensive gravity buckling of these beams cause many borg ships to simply rip apart from the strain, a few stragglers moved away from the initial gateway point trying to draw fire, but for the most part the wave was crushed. Another exit point opened, on the opposite side of this battle, out of this point poured not ships, but torpeados. Which rained outwards towards any non-borg engines they could detect. Their various exotic energy and nanite warheads waiting for their chance to impact with the enemy shields.

Rouo could not resist what passed for a smile as his ships deftly swatted the intruders, he sent another wave of attacks to ensure that their departure would be a final one before turning to the more pressing concern of naturally occurring ring constructs in the eastern edge of the Milky Way that had consumed the better part of his interests for several years. It was therefore to his great consternation that he observed another portal opening further from him, though this time it missed any of the waterways it brought forth a great issuance of tiny metal slugs. Such an occurrence had Rouo baffled, he could not guess at the point of function of the miniscule devices. He never the less attempting to destroy as many as possible utilizing his ships gravity point weapons that should suck the projectiles together and take care of the messy problem.

This however was considerably less effective than he had hoped, a great number of them simply swerved out of the way of the gravity points and ignored the demise of their fellows. Feverishly Rouo tried the same again this time worryingly close to his own ships, with the same result, though satisfyingly he was able to catch a greater number he quickly realized that this was because the objects were being forced to move closer together as their neared their intended targets. Looking on in horror Rouo wondered whether they intended simply to ram the craft or consume them. He had heard of solar fish a great distance east that could eat an Ooom whole but the idea that they could be flying around in space was patently ridiculous.

Rather than eat his ships however, the torpedoes simply struck them. In a couple of cases passing straight through, the vessels bursting like enormous saggy balloons, spilling their contents out into space. The rest rippled under the numerous impacts as the projectiles sank in.

Other ships began to explode one by one as the varying torpeados and energy pulses impacted them.

But of course a few ships wern't so lucky. Those were the ones struck by nanite bombs. The ships water turned a deep brownish color as nanites swarmed through them, chunks of metal begain to surround them in a ring-shape bringing borg weapons to bear on their one-time comrades.

The original exit point opened up again and along with cubes came a number of other geometric shaped vessels, diamond shaped vessels began scanning the waterways and the energies holding them together. Sphere shaped vessels began laying minefields loaded with nanites set to re-replicate themselves on destruction and only to impact with non-borg vessels.... then finally pyramidial shaped vessels began to appear. These massive vessels slowly oriented their caps towards the nearest planets and fired a massive beam towards them. This massive concentration of nanites created a visible impact as it blasted into the planet's atmosphere.

Rouo began to panic as his fleet billowed apart, the tiny things had been explosives, packed into such a small thing it seems irrational, totally alien too him. He sent off several more messages to the central government and turned ponderously to leave his pool and enter one of the super light speed pathways. Before he could even fully rotate the first portal opened once again and from it came many more ships. Before he could react large pyramids followed their brethren from the rent in space and swung into position. With rising terror Rouo realized that one of the vessels was pointing in his direction. He knew that he would never be able to make it out of the area in time, a beam from one of the pyramids passed right through his section of the great waterway, obliterating him and a vast tract of ocean around him.

In the blink of an eye, several other beams reached their targets and slammed into the water around the major solar bodies, but now the attackers were dealing with the technology and defensives of the central government, far in excess of anything a humble citizen could wield. Though the beams were wide enough to boil away oceans, as soon as they began to make their entrance into the planets field they were compressed to tiny points, within a few meters they had vanished to nothing, from a distance it appeared that the beams had stopped dead against the planetary defenses.

The Ooom were already readying their retaliation, great beams of light sprung from the uninjured planets and leapt, directly away from the attackers into the swollen red face of the sun.

The borg positions were fortified in preperation for retaliation. when the beams hit their own sun they decided to send auto-assimilator-equiped cubes along the gossimer tubes of water, spreading their deadly payload of nanites along these pathways. Meanwhile exit points began opening around the sytem spitting forth more nanite bombs at any non-borg vessels... or even population groupings on planets.

Despite the rush of battle the time between the beams hitting the sun and any reaction seemed unearthly still. But deep within the star things roiled, without any warning showing on its great stellar face numerous answering beams of exponentially greater size and force issued from the star, plunging through both great tracts of the waterways boiling them away and straight at the Borg pyramids. Through the centuries of activity in space the stellar onslaught had never failed the Ooom. Though its affects were different for each sun, it had been developed for Ooom Prime, and the crimson beams produced were the most effective.

Almost as a repeat of the first wave's difficulties, the borg fleet was decimated from this onslaught. The borg decided to take a different tact as even their adaptive shielding couldn't reduce these solar rays. Utilizing their warp artillery, more nanite bombs began flying at each and every planet, and along the waterways. Raining the atmospheres in a deadly black dust.

The black mist appeared to boil as it entered the ears of the planets, forming bizarre patterns as they began to disappear, like the pyramids assault they seem to vanish into tiny points, leaving no trace of themselves. For a moment the Borg assault appeared entirely thwarted.

For several minutes nothing stirred, the Ooom breathed a sigh of relief and began to assess the damage when black columns forged into the depths of the planets waters. Astonished the Ooom could see that the nanites had traveled through the waterways and were pouring into the undefended waters of the planets. The Ooom breeding grounds were easy pickings for the Borgs assimilation techniques. Desperate the Ooom sent out messages of anger, pleading, and sadness, but their language was a slow one, before they could fully encapsulate even their shock great swathes of the systems seas were under Borg control.

The veins of water the connected the planets grew purple with the blood of the countless billions of Ooom and their many semi-sentient aquatic companions. One of the veins lead straight into the central library of the Ooom Mother, the combined wisdom of every race of the sector, of ever Ooom in history, of millennia of careful measured study, consumed by waves of malign Borg influence.

Resistance is futile. The borg control of the system seemed assured... and with the central library under their control, this small galaxy did not stand a chance. It was only a matter of time before the borg way spread across the universe.

Perfection is almost tantilizingly within the borg's grasp.