Borg cube

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Borg cube
Borg cube, 2366.jpg
Affiliation: Borg Collective
Type: Cube
Active: 24th century
Crew complement: Officers: up to 130,000
Enlisted: N/A
Emergency: N/A
Armament: Phasers: Phasers (unknown type)
Torpedoes: Torpedoes (unknown type)
Other: Cutting Beams, magnetometric guided charges, tractor beams
Defenses: Deflector shields, subspace field, electromagnetic field, regeneration


The Borg cube was the primary vessel of the Borg Collective.


Encounters

The first officially publicized Federation contact with a Borg cube took place in 2365, when the Enterprise-D encountered a single cube in System J-25, located in the Beta Quadrant. This encounter was due to the interference of the Q being, who claimed he was giving the Federation an advantage, and a look into their future, and who they would meet should they continue exploring the galaxy.

  • Civilian researchers on board the USS Raven had previously tracked a Borg cube a decade earlier in 2353.


Every Star Fleet encounter with a single Borg cube resulted in heavy losses for the Star Fleet vessels. At the Battle of Wolf 359, 39 out of 40 ships were lost, and dozens more in the incursion of 2373. Normally, a single Borg cube was capable of eliminating all the elements of civilization from an entire planet. When the USS Enterprise-D experienced malfunctions due to Wesley Crusher's nanites in 2366, sensors erroneously detected an approaching cube, which proved to be nonexistent.


Thousands of cubes were estimated to exist in Borg space in the Delta Quadrant. The largest grouping of cubes directly observed by Star Fleet was fifteen, by the crew of the USS Voyager in late 2373.


Technical data

Design

The Borg cube was extremely large in size, measuring 28 cubic kilometers (6.7 cubic miles) in volume, with each side measuring more than three kilometers. In 2366, Commander Shelby estimated that a cube could remain operative even if 78% of it was destroyed.


Propulsion systems

Borg cubes were capable of both warp and transwarp velocities, in part, thanks to their network of subspace corridors and hubs. When a Borg cube enters a transwarp conduit it projects a structural integrity field ahead of the Cube to compensate for the extreme turbulence. To compensate for the extreme temporal stress while traveling through these corridors, and remain in temporal sync, a chroniton field was also projected through specially designed conduits.


Tactical systems

The main tactic employed by Cubes when engaging another vessel was to seize it with a tractor beam and render its defenses useless by draining its shields. Thus, the cube could perform any type of action, ranging from destruction to assimilation, on the defenseless ship.


Following the failure of enemy shields, the cube usually engaged a cutting beam to slice sections of the ship for assimilation.

The cutting beam could also be used as a weapon to destroy vessels showing resistance. During the Battle of Wolf 359, the USS Melbourne and the USS Saratoga were annihilated by cutting beams.


In addition, a Borg cube's weaponry also included disruptor beams and torpedoes. During the 2366-2367 incursion, a cube obliterated three ships of the Mars Defense Perimeter with torpedoes. The concentrated fire of three Borg disruptor beams was able to reduce USS Voyager's ablative generator-deployed armor hull integrity, a highly advanced future Star Fleet defense technology, to 40%.


Support vehicles

Ships up to the size of a Borg sphere were able to be docked inside a Borg cube for assimilation, supplies or escape purposes.

At least one Borg cube, and possibly others of its class, contained a Borg sphere. The only known recorded purpose of a sphere disengaged from a Borg cube was for escape. The sphere is the only documented support vehicle a Borg cube possessed.


Interior design

Borg cubes were typically manned by thousands of drones, and could vary in capacity from 5,000 to 64,000 to 129,000 drones.


Borg cubes were highly decentralized in structure. No specific bridge, living quarters or engineering section was observed. All vital systems were spread throughout the ship, which, along with the presence of a regenerative outer hull, made it highly resistant to damage and system failures.


Information and Collective communication were routed through power waveguide conduits and distribution nodes. Its exterior design consisted of perpendicular and diagonal grids, struts, and weaponry, allowing a characteristic green light to emanate from within.


Some vessels are equipped with Maturation chambers, which keep young lifeforms in stasis until they are ready to operate at maximum capacity as drones.


The internal pressure aboard a Borg cube was two kilopascals above what would be normal on a Federation starship. The humidity was on average 92%, and the temperature was at 39.1 °C / 102.38 °F. The atmosphere contained traces of tetryon particles. The infrastructure was made of tritanium, an ore known for its extreme hardness.