Canon Facts Backstage Info  Speculation

Notes : In 2368 the Enterprise-D discovered a Borg scout ship crashed on a moon in the Argolis Cluster. They rescued an individual whom they named Hugh from the wreckage; Hugh later returned to the crash site and was recovered by another scout ship.

In 2369, The Enterprise encountered a new form of Borg vessel which did not conform to the standard cube design. They discovered that Hugh had been a member of the crew of this vessel, and that his return to the ship after developing his own sense of individuality had caused the destruction of the collective mind on board this particular ship. The ship had drifted for some time before coming under the control of the android Lore, who used it and the Borg in an attempt to take over the Federation.

It quickly became apparent that the new Borg vessel was capable of generating transwarp conduits which allowed it to travel at incredible speeds. One such conduit was accessed by the Enterprise-D - the ship covered sixty light years in eight seconds, an average of 236,000,000 times lightspeed. Standard Borg cubes do not seem to be able to achieve this level of speed, so Starfleet analysts have theorized that the new design was an advanced prototype built by the Borg to test out a newly assimilated transwarp technology. The vessel is capable of operating in the second transwarp domain, at speeds approaching Warp 30 - a feat which is far beyond standard Borg vessels. It was evidently sent out on a test flight to the Argolis cluster, a trip which would take some two and a half hours with this drive system.

The Borg ship fought several small skirmishes with the Enterprise-D, which eventually masked itself by hiding within the outer layers of a star. The Federation vessel subsequently used its phasers to create a large solar flare which destroyed the borg ship.

The absence of further examples of this type of vessel indicates that the Borg have abandoned this technology - it is possible that they took the destruction of the collective on the prototype as a sign that the technology was somehow flawed. In any case, they do not seem to be constructing more ships of this kind - a fact for which the peoples of the galaxy can be profoundly grateful.