To: CAPT Vel, Lunya (@LunyaVel)
CC: CMDR Akaela, Tala; LCDR Flynn, Matthew (@Rogue)
From: CMDR Mandra, Alina
Subj: Re: Coding Assistance
I spent some time looking over the early base program and consulting with some cyber warfare contacts I have outside the fleet including a friend in the 29th MACO Cyber Defense Platoon (yeah, soldiers who are computer nerds, will wonders cease), and an anti-Borg expert in the 116th Independent Mobile Fleet. I avoided specific details of any missions as per OPSEC requirements and framed most of it in terms of a research endeavor.
I don’t want to sound negative about your plans, but when pressed on the notion of a computer virus for use against Borg tech or Borg themselves the general consensus from most of my contacts gravitated toward the concept of… “Don’t.” To be clear, they mostly meant it was not a viable method of anti-Borg combat operations typically, but can be useful for information scooping.
Interestingly, when I mentioned the concept of disabling or affecting a specific propulsion mechanism in a Borg ship, I was generally met with skepticism as transwarp network fidelity is considered to be so robust that only a fleet attack on a transwarp hub (or one Intrepid class with a bone to pick as history nerds like to recall) could hurt it. I suggested an alternate subspace portal method, and they agreed that would be strange enough to focus more on information gathering.
At this time I have three variations of a malicious code. Two of them are entirely based on information scooping and flooding a local vinculum with trash data specifically to to distract the collective enough to not stop the data transfer. They work slightly differently, I don’t want to get into the details, but I would use both and make bets on which one wins for fun. They might put a Borg ship in sleep mode, I’m not sure though. The third option is the only version that can sort of cause any offensive reaction to systems on a Borg ship… and I say sort of because… it probably won’t… at least not for long. It’s hard to tell how effective it will be without any data on this novel propulsion system and I can’t properly test it on Borg systems as that violates close to 13 different Federation research statutes and a few Starfleet regulations. Holodeck sims are too rudimentary for such a complex procedure. My best guess is it might disable the system but the Borg might adapt to it before it can do the broad system data wipe you requested.
There’s technically a 4th option I have but I’m already not putting it on the table as it involves introducing a semi-sapient (though non-sentient) Synth mainframe that can use quantum adaptation to compete with Collective countermeasures. This should be self-evident in why it’s a bad idea, as if it gets assimilated it can be turned against you. Likely it’d be a toy in their purview but you don’t offer enemies weapons. I didn’t even build that, it was was entirely theoretical.
So yeah, my broad recommendation is, set up a situation to hard load one or both of the malware programs to get good information, and maybe get lucky and disable a ship for a little bit and… I dunno, do what ya do there. Trying the third program is about 6 risks and a half, if Command is ok with it, and offers no guarantees. It might be possible to refine it with info from the other programs to improve odds, but obv that takes some time.
I’m sorry if that all sounds less that helpful.
//SIGNED//
Commander Alina Mandra
Chief of Sciences
Deep Space 13
