Transwarp hub

File:Transwarphub.jpg

A transwarp hub

Four of the known six hubs located on galaxy map

A transwarp hub was a structure used by the Borg to connect their network of transwarp conduits and to keep them open for immediate use.

The transwarp conduits made it possible for the Borg to travel much faster than warp 9.2 (Federation warp scale). As a result, the transwarp hubs were of vital strategic and tactical importance to the Borg because they made it possible to deploy vessels very quickly to anywhere in the galaxy in a matter of minutes. (TNG: "Descent"; VOY: "Endgame")

Each hub could connect to thousands of transwarp conduits with endpoints in all four quadrants of the galaxy, giving the Borg an enormous strategic advantage. The structure was supported by a series of interspatial manifolds. These manifolds were protected by force fields, controlled by the Borg Queen herself. Destruction of the massive hub complex could be accomplished by disabling enough interspatial manifolds, but the main problem with this approach was disabling the force fields protecting the manifolds. Even if this was accomplished, multiple detonations would still be needed to detonate at the same time to collapse the manifolds and force a cascade reaction which would take out other interspatial manifolds. When this happened a shock wave would surge through the transwarp conduit in question.

In 2378 there were six known transwarp hubs in the Borg network. One hub was situated in a nebula, Spatial Grid 986, within the Delta Quadrant and was discovered by USS Voyager in 2378. This happened when Voyager detected extremely high neutrino emissions, accompanied by an intermittent graviton flux from the center of the nearby nebula. Believing these were emissions from hundreds of wormholes, which might shorten their journey home to the Alpha Quadrant, they set course for the nebula, only to discover the true nature of the readings: the transwarp hub protected by numerous Borg cubes.

After Voyager left the nebula, they encountered a temporal rift from which a Starfleet shuttle appeared. In this shuttle was Admiral Kathryn Janeway who came from the future to bring Voyager home. With her she brought technology, including ablative generator-deployed hull armor and transphasic torpedoes, to enhance Voyager's defenses (ignoring the Temporal Prime Directive completely).

With the help of these technologies and Admiral Janeway, who infected the Borg with a neurolytic pathogen disrupting the Borg Queen's control over the interspatial manifold force fields, they were successful in entering transwarp conduit 9, which led to the Alpha Quadrant. After they entered, transphasic torpedoes were fired at the manifolds causing a cascade reaction. Fortunately Voyager managed to stay ahead of the shock wave and entered the Alpha Quadrant where they were greeted by a Starfleet battle-fleet assembled to fight the Borg after detecting a transwarp aperture less than a light year from Earth.

An unknown number of Borg drones and at least 47 vessels were destroyed by this event.