Brave words. I've heard them before, from thousands of species across thousands

           of worlds, since long before you were created. But, now they are all Borg.

The last film saw the destruction of the USS Enterprise - D and so the bridge crw, with the exception of Worf, are transferred to the new ship, the USS Enterprise - E. Initially a Borg Cube Ship had entered Federation space on a course for earth. Instead of placing their most advanced vessel among the fleet assembled to protect Earth, Starfleet has assigned the Enterprise to patrol the Romulan neutral zone. Starfleet orders Picard to do so in case the Romulans decide to take advantage of the situation. However, he is fully aware that the real reason is that, because of Captain Picard's past experience with the Borg, Starfleet considers him too unstable to lead a ship into battle against them.

At the beginning of the story, Picard chooses to disobey his orders and takes the ship to Earth, where the Starfleet armada has engaged the Borg. Upon its arrival, the Enterprise takes part in the fighting and beams aboard survivors from the heavily damaged USS Defiant, including its commanding officer, Lt. Commander Worf. The Cube is defeated by the fleet, but shortly before its destruction ejects a sphere, which the Enterprise pursues. As the sphere heads toward Earth it opens and travels via a tunnel through time, followed by the Enterprise. The two arrive in 2063, and the Borg ship begins to fire on a former nuclear missile launch-facility in the northwest region of the US. The Enterprise destroys the sphere; however, unknown at this time, a number of Borg drones and the Borg Queen manage to transport into the USS Enterprise.

Picard, realizing that the Borg were attempting to destroy the Phoenix, Earth's first warp-capable vessel, has an away team, including himself, transport in civilian clothes to the missile silo housing it. Lt. Commander Geordie La Forge and an engineering team work on the damaged vessel while Commander Riker attempts to convince Dr. Zefram Cochrane, designer and pilot of the ship, to go through with the flight. The time of his warp test is imperative to establishing first contact with the Vulcans. At the same time, Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher return to the Enterprise.

Meanwhile, the Borg begin to assimilate the equipment and crewmembers that they encounter on the Enterprise, taking over main engineering and moving upward through the decks. Realizing their presence, Picard leads the remaining officers against the Borg, during which Lt. Commander Datais captured by the Borg.  Picard returns to the rest of the crew and find that the Borg are building a communications antenna on the Enterprise's navigational deflector to call for assistance from the Borg of this time. Picard, Worf, and Lt. hawk don space suits and destroy the antenna, whilst Cocrane repairs the phoenix on the surface of the earth. It launches on schedule and exits the earths gravity without incident.

On the Enterprise, the Borg have continued to climb upward. Worf advocates setting the ship's self-destruct function and abandoning the ship via escape pods. Picard refuses to allow the Borg to cause the loss of the Enterprise. However after a heated argument he agrees to destroy the ship. As the crew are escaping the ship, he doesn't join them, instead proceeding to engineering to recover Data.

Meanwhile, Data has been taken to the Borg Queen, who has been attempting to entice him to join her through replacing pieces of his artificial skin with human skin and connecting them to his nervous system, helping him in his goal of becoming human. When Picard enters main engineering, he offers to remain willingly with the Queen if she frees Data. The Borg queen agrees and Picard tells Data to leave; Data refuses and the Queen tells Picard that she no longer needs him, as Data is a more appropriate counterpart. The Queen then has Data deactivate the self-destruct program, which he does, and fire on the Phoenix. Data fires. However, he deliberately misses the Phoenix and then kills the queen by breaking open a tube carrying a coolant that dissolves organic tissue on contact. The death of the Queen causes the collective on board the ship to fail. Picard saves himself by climbing up on tubes dangling from the ceiling until the gas has drained from the room.

The Phoenix test is a success. Shortly after Cochrane returns, the Vulcan survey ship T'plana-hath lands in the camp to make first contact with humans, having detected the warp signature from the Phoenix. The Enterprise crew returns to the ship, and it returns to its own time....

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