Throughout human history, mankind has turned its goals and dreams toward exploration. With wagon trains, ships, satellites and starships, humanity has chosen to seek out the new frontier, to explore new worlds, and to go where no human has gone before-even to the furthest reaches of the Delta Quadrant. There, Captain Janeway and the crew of the Starship Voyager™ have discovered many strange and wondrous civilizations...but few as alien as the Chiar. An advanced and scientiÞc people who have made great strides with nanotechnology, the Chiar expanded internally rather than externally. Every inch of their planet is crawling with the tiniest bits and pieces of artiÞcial intelligence imaginable, working in concert as the new lifeblood of this mechanical world. The people themselves are inseparable from their nanites, which layer their skin and provide extra limbs or senses as required. Caught up in a bitter civil conþict, some Chiar will try to take advantage of their meeting with the crew of Starship Voyager. They imagine that their homegrown nanites can harness the incredible power of the deadly Borg, and instead set in motion an experiment that goes devastatingly out of control.