Warning: spoilers ahead for Star Trek: The Last Starship #10.
No torpedo leaves the tube. Admiral Sato simply switches on a field, and Star Trek’s most dreaded antagonists fall silent.
That is how the confrontation aboard the Omega wraps up in Star Trek: The Last Starship #10 — about as close to a Borg off switch as Starfleet has ever come.
The issue, from writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly with artist Adrian Bonilla, is built around that moment. It’s out now from IDW Publishing.
The nanite problem, finally solved
Facing down the Borg-Kirk aboard the Omega, Sato’s ship activates what the issue dubs an “anti-nanite” field. Nanotech sits at the foundation of Borg technology — above all the probes used to assimilate other species. Break the nanites and the rest breaks with them.
The gambit pays off. Kirk stands down, and the issue wraps with him and Sato face to face — likely for the final time.
Exactly how the disruption field does its job is never spelled out, left instead to the reader’s imagination. That’s been the Star Trek approach to technology from the start. A schematic was never the point.
Kirk, revived and then assimilated
The series unfolds amid the turmoil that trailed “The Burn,” the catastrophe that brought galactic civilization down. At its center is Captain Kirk, pulled back to life centuries after he died.
It was the Jurati-Borg who resurrected him, hoping he could unite the galaxy and rebuild trust in the Federation. The intentions were noble; the execution was not.
Things slipped away from Jurati. Cornered, she makes a “Hail Mary” play to preserve herself and the Borg — and assimilates Kirk.
His new fixation is wiping out the fledgling Emerald Chain, the criminal syndicate that emerged in the Burn’s wake. Should he actually go through with it, the Chain hits back even harder. Hence Starfleet dispatching Sato to reign him in.
Why the Borg earned this much paranoia
Part organic and part machine, the Borg absorb species wholesale, folding their biological and technological distinctiveness into the Collective. Each civilization they take makes the next fight tougher.
Then came the Federation.
Q handled the introductions during Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s second season, flinging the Enterprise into the then-remote Delta Quadrant to meet the Borg. The ship scarcely made it through that encounter.
A year later the Borg returned — as invaders this time. They opened by abducting and assimilating Captain Picard, a move that produced the slaughter at Wolf 359, among the heaviest defeats Starfleet has ever suffered. Once again the Enterprise escaped with a narrow win.
Tens of thousands dead, and a very long to-do list
That opening invasion saw multiple colonies and ships assimilated, followed by tens of thousands killed and assimilated at Wolf 359. A Federation accustomed to humbling nearly every rival it faced was pushed to the brink.
Starfleet’s mindset shifted after that. Sitting back on defense was never going to work against a Collective that absorbs a lesson from every engagement.
So the arsenal improved. Quantum torpedoes. The Defiant class starships. And Voyager’s perilous journey through the middle of Borg territory delivered more intelligence on the species than the Federation had ever held.
Everything came to a head with the Collective’s defeat at Jupiter early in the 25th century.
The centuries-long gap nobody explains
Agnes Jurati led a splinter faction that endured into the 30th century — and that’s where the chronology starts to wobble.
Jupiter is centuries behind them by the era The Last Starship depicts. The Jurati-Borg had withdrawn into isolation, with no apparent interest in conquering the Federation.
Why, then, was Starfleet still funneling resources into anti-Borg weaponry? The issue offers no answer.
There’s something faintly embarrassing, too, about a solution that took hundreds of years to materialize. Nanites underpin so much of what the Borg do, and only now has Starfleet wizened up to this. Surely someone should have clocked it earlier.
None of those loose threads spoil the payoff. The field shut down Kirk and Jurati and dragged them to the negotiating table — something no torpedo ever accomplished.
Star Trek: The Last Starship #10 is on sale now from IDW Publishing.
Sato didn’t beat the Borg. She turned them off.