For the tenth time in as many seconds, Commander William Riker's eyes darted from the rapidly approaching Borg cube on the viewscreen to his maddeningly calm Captain, who seemed completely immune to the almost choking tension building on the bridge with every second that the nightmarish vessel approached the hastily-assembled fleet unopposed.á He licked his dry lips nervously.á "Captain, your orders?"
Looking almost bored, Picard waited for several long seconds before replying.á "Data, hail the fleet.á Tell them to go to yellow alert, and remind them not to act until I give the word."
The android almost visibly hesitated before nodding and relaying the orders to the fleet.á "Aye Captain."
Riker looked on the verge of leaping from his seat and punching the Captain's lights out before taking command himself.á "Yellow alert, sir?á Shouldn't we be going to red alert?"
The bald Frenchman shook his head.á "Yellow alert will be sufficient, Number One."
By now the titanic cube was almost on top of the Federation fleet, and in the face of apparently completely absent opposition slowed to a complete stop before forcing open a communication channel to every ship in the area.á The chilling 'voice' of the Borg race, the sound of countless enslaved sentients speaking in unison, made more than one Ensign on t he assembled ships soil themself.á =WE ARE THE BORG.á LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND SURRENDER YOUR SHIPS.=
Picard stood from his chair and, to the shock of everyone else on the bridge, nonchalantly unfastened and shrugged off his jacket and the shirt underneath, leaving him completely barechested.
=WE WILL ADD YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN=
Pulling a neatly-folded budle of cloth from behind his chair, the bald Captain shook it out sharply, then threw the blood-red cape it proved to be over his shoulders, fastening it shut with a pair of gold chains and straightening the large, unusually pointed collar.
=YOUR CULTURE WILL ADAPT TO SERVICE US.á RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.=
Pulling a large, almost ludicrously long and pointed pair of crimson sunglasses from an internal pocket of the cape and slipping them on, Picard completed his preparations by spinning his chair in place and setting one foot up on the seat, leaning one elbow casually on his upraised knee.á Unaffected by the horrified silence, he cleared his throat and calmly spoke once more.á "Data, open all communication channels, audio and visual."
This time, Data actually did hesitate...for a good long moment, before finally tapping a few buttons on his console.á "Channels open, Sir."
The highly-decorated Captain pointed dramatically at the viewscreen, an arrogant sneer on his face.á "Lower our shields!?á Surrender our ships!?á WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE!?"
==========
For decades afterwards, the finest minds in the Federation and beyond would analyse every second of Jean-luc Picard's legendary Speech.á It would almost unanimously be agreed upon that the almost three minute long speech was, to put it lightly, bizarre in the extreme.á Similarly, none could deny the unbeleivable psychological and physiological impact those words carried.á Humans would feel their heartrate jump and the hairs on the backs of their necks rise, Vulcans would feel their iron emotional control strain, Romulans would bleed from their tear ducts and Klingons would weep for the duration of the speech, then viciously attack the closest being of equal or greater size to themselves upon its completion.
In fact, the Klingon people would honor Jean-luc Picard in a unprecedented fashion; they would build a great statue in his honor in the Hall of Heroes; barechested, cape fluttering dramatically in the breeze, with a finger pointed to the heavens...for being the only known being to have made a Borg cube explode from being on the receiving end of a speech.