Disclaimer - I down own Star Trek or Doctor Who.

A/N - Technically while the Cybermen belongs to Doctor Who, they are in the Star Trek universe and there is nothing relating to Mondas, Telos, Pete's world, or anything else. These Cybermen are completely different.

A/N 2 - I was inspired by Celgress' brilliant story with the Cybermen, I asked for permission but unlike him I want to say something... the BORG DO EXIST IN THIS CONTINUITY. They will appear later but they are not going to encounter the Federation. Regeneration in Enterprise NEVER HAPPENED! Please, do not clutter my review and PM box with notes and reviews talking about the BORG.

Genesis of the Cybermen.

The starship had been travelling for years now.

Long and bulbous, its reinforced hull peppered with micro-meteorite scars that had managed to somehow pass through the deflector fields while the ship was travelling at Warp 1 speeds, the ship's journey was long and ponderous. It had been travelling slowly but it would not reach its destination for a good thirty years yet.

Designed and built at great expense by the humans of Earth, the ship was just one of a growing number of vessels sent out from Earth under the supervision of the Vulcans. The logical, more advanced culture believed that the humans were impulsive sending ships that could only travel at warp 1 speed, but they had helped the human engineers with the barest minimum even though they had the technology to make the ship travel much faster.

Inside the ship it was dark and aside from the automated robots of various sizes and abilities that were programmed daily by the ship's computer to maintain the systems and ensure the engines didn't fail, there was no sign of the 50,000 human colonists onboard the ship. The reason for that was simple.

The crew and the colonists were in suspended animation. The journey was considered too long for humans to cope with, and to save resources - food, air, and water and energy - it had been decided to put them into suspended animation. Many people back on Earth at the time of the launch had been annoyed with their Vulcan allies, knowing that the more logical race could have provided them with the technology to make the trip in the literal blink of an eye, but they'd known better than to expect miracles by that point.

For years, Humanity had relied on the Vulcans wisdom and advice. They had just emerged from a global war, 600 million people had paid the price for human stupidity and they were just getting back on their feet, but as humanity recovered and began sending out ships into space, they came increasingly under criticism from the Vulcans.

Many people believed the Vulcans were holding them back but that didn't stop humanity.

The United Earth government had been sending out colonist ships into deep space to planets sighted with the improved sensor technology they'd developed since the First Contact with the Vulcans; the earlier "Great Experiment" Terra Nova was a well-known example of a deep-space colonisation program, but this one was far more ambitious. It was further out and unlike the Terra Nova population who had not gone into suspended animation, the colonist ship was prepared to spend decades or even centuries in suspended animation.

The Vulcans considered the agenda of the United Earth government to send more and more ships deeper and deeper into space without proper engines capable of moving at much higher velocities, without more advanced defence and offensive systems to be foolhardy, reckless, and illogical; but the humans ignored them.

But the people of United Earth, the Vulcans, and the crew themselves didn't realise that one of the passengers was prepared to go to any lengths in order to survive….

"Urrghh!" Kate Allen winced as she shivered as the cold air touched her exposed flesh before she staggered away from the suspended animation tube, stumbling until one of her hands flashed out and grabbed hold of the nearby wall and used it to keep her steady. If anyone had seen what Allen had just done, they would have jumped with shock; there was no way an ordinary human being could just grab something like that so quickly.

But Allen was alone, so no-one saw it. The air was loud as Allen started taking in deep, wheezy breaths of air into her lungs, and she looked around the stasis chamber, blinking rapidly as her eyes tried to adapt to the darkness in the room, broken by the bank of consoles and computers and the blue-green glow of the working stasis units.

Allen looked from one unit to the next, a slow smile spreading over her lips. "I've made it," she uttered, relaxing a little when she saw that no-one else was awake, and there was no life and movement in the room with her.

With another wheezing gasp, Allen walked over to one of the consoles and started checking the information on the console. Allen mentally thanked the builders of the ship had opted to make life as easy for the passengers as it could be by supplying them with clocks that told you how long you'd spent in cryogenic freeze.

Ten years.

Allen sighed with relief. She had been scared at first someone back home would discover her presence on this ship and revive her before launch, but Earth security was lax. Now she could continue her Experiment and finally make some progress, and with these people completely cut off from Earth - that she knew of, she had to admit since they hadn't even cracked warp 2 yet back home - she could finally succeed without United Earth security colluding with the Vulcans.

She grimaced as she thought about the Vulcans. Although they had been happy to provide her with the necessary scientific knowledge to really begin her work; a lot of human scientific knowledge into artificial intelligence and cybernetics had been lost due to the war which had nearly spelt the end of human civilisation before Zefram Cochrane sent up the flare to the Vulcans, though fortunately some bits and pieces had been locked away by the various governments in vaults when the first signs of the Third World War began to appear and the work was still being re-discovered in those vaults, but Allen's work was too critical for her to simply wait and see.

The Vulcans had provided the newer generations of Earth scientists with knowledge to get them back on Terra Firma, but when they had discovered just what she planned to do, they had informed the United Earth Government. Once a respected and credited scientist, Dr Kate Allen, cyberneticists, roboticist, an expert on AI suddenly found herself condemned and hunted.

Allen pushed that out of her mind. It was the past now, even if it seemed like only yesterday in her mind, now she had to plan for the future. Still concerned in case the United Earth government had realised she had smuggled herself and much of her work onboard the ship, Allen checked the computer. Allen checked the information on the screen to check the last communiques from Earth. There was nothing really substantial to them, just a few 'good luck' messages and that was it, there was nothing linked to her. Good. They hadn't detected her presence, just like they hadn't detected the fact she had programmed the computer to bring her out of cryogenic suspension.

Now she could begin.

Allen entered a new search into the computer. She needed a place to continue to work.

Leaving the chamber after a few more minutes of checking out the information on the computer, Allen walked through the ship's darkened corridors. Occasionally she stopped to inspect some of the other chambers, and she smirked to herself as she saw the would-be colonists in their own stasis tubes. Oh, so many bodies, so much time. If she were lucky, she could carry out her experiments without the colonists learning about it until they came out, and by then it would be too late for them to do anything before her creations overwhelmed them.

Heading for the main laboratory, Allen looked around curiously; she had seen this room on the map she'd just looked at earlier when she'd revived, but she hadn't seen it before for real. She shrugged her shoulders uncaringly and examined everything in the room before she nodded. Yes, this would do for a temporary base of operations while she looked around the ship to see if there was nothing better to set up shop.

Leaving the laboratory, Dr Allen walked to the bridge. If any outside observer saw her, they would do a double take. It was plain as day Allen was suffering from some kind of illness which was causing her to gasp and wheeze for breath, but she walked like a healthy person. No, she moved far better than any human was capable of doing.

When she arrived on the bridge, she scanned the controls. The bridge of the ship was spartan and strictly utilitarian. The consoles were the only signs of illumination, but it was not a problem for her artificial eyes which could see in other spectrums. Allen wasn't interested in whether the bridge was pretty, she was more interested in what this control centre could do for her. She moved over to stand over one of the consoles and looked down at the complicated array of switches and buttons and displays. If she had the time and the patience then she would be in here for days, trying to work out what each console did and whether or not she should even touch it.

But Dr Allen wasn't interested in the systems of the ship, all she was interested in was the computer. She leaned forwards and touched the com panel.

"Computer," she wheezed.

"Working."

Allen paused for a second so she could both get her breath back and to give her a chance to put her questions into words; she had been on the point of receiving a pair of artificial lungs but she was forced to go on the run, and she was left with the same lungs that had been falling apart for years.

"How soon will the ship arrive at the destination from now?" she asked.

The computer's reply was immediate. "20 years," it answered.

Twenty years? That would provide her with the time she needed….

"Computer," she asked, "show me a map of the ship and its workings. Are there any disused storage areas with links to the power grid?"

"Working," the computer chirped; that was the great thing about the computers of this century. They were always working even if the questions made little sense and they always worked even if the person asking the questions was not meant to be around. The computer didn't seem bothered by her revival, but truthfully Allen didn't care if the computer logged her presence. It wouldn't do any good in the long run anyway.

The computer showed her a schematic of marked areas on the ship that could be classed as storage facilities that were connected in some manner to the power grid. Allen leaned forward to study them closely. There were quite a few places where she could set up her conversion facility without being detected.

The ship was quite big, especially for this time where United Earth was trying hard to keep their ships small to minimise the amounts of fuel and dilithium that were needed. But the number of colonists onboard was part of the reason why the ship was quite large, and it carried already assembled pre-fabricated buildings needed to assemble the colony when they arrived as well as equipment needed to begin the settlement and beyond.

Mentally Allen chose the right one; she needed a facility that was separate from the rest of the ship, was small enough to be virtually unnoticed by the ship's crew in case they were revived in order to cope with an emergency, but was close to the main cargo decks and near the suspended animation core.

It only took her a few moments to find the right one. It was directly beneath the suspended animation core of the ship, separated by one level only and it was connected to the power grid. She had found the conversion facility she needed.

Allen had become apathetic towards emotions as her body fell apart. She had been suffering from an illness that was hereditary and even now in the future, it had not been cured by human medical science. Even Vulcan medicine hadn't really helped her, though at first, it had managed to mitigate the worst effects of the illness for a time.

For a moment Allen thought about the illness that had afflicted her family for generations. When Project Chrysalis was taking place on Earth in the 21st century before the outbreak of the Eugenics wars, many of her family had pinned all their hopes on their family using genetic engineering to finally cure their family and being free of the illness.

It would have been so easy, she thought to herself almost wistfully, imagining without any trouble a short period of time needed, thanks to the Augment study since it quickly became known that Augmented human beings possessed far better immune systems than their ordinary forebears, for geneticists to isolate and treat the gene which caused the illness in her family, curing them and allowing them to live longer and happier lives, with the memory of the pain and misery fully removed.

But no. Earth's banning of genetics because they were afraid of another group of augments appearing had put paid to that plan even though many scientists had claimed that they had learnt from the mistakes of the idiots behind Project Chrysalis, but they had been ignored. Allen wondered how many others there had been out there, suffering from illnesses all across the world that no-one had been able to rid themselves of. Genetic engineering had been the answer to so many problems, but the human race had banned it because a group of people had grown careless.

Even now, with Vulcan experience and scientific aid, the old bans and fears and attitudes towards genetics remained and there would probably be no true research into developing a cure. Allen knew that the data gathered on the Augments had been retained thanks to her scientific background which had given her the access she had needed to see if the governments of Earth had lied about the destruction of the Augments and the research that surrounded them and what had been learnt by studying them. They had but that had made plenty of sense; when you've got a dangerous new technology that gets out of hand, you don't throw the knowledge away despite how dangerous it is in the future, you keep it so then you've got a blueprint to prepare for something similar.

At first, she had thought of using genetic engineering to remove the gene responsible for her family's illness, curing them forever. Unfortunately, she had become impatient with genetics. She was frustrated by the lack of proper research beyond the basics that it was possible, and while she could say positively the governments of Earth before they united after the first contact had indeed stored information about the Augments she didn't have the authority to access them.

She had tried on many occasions, but by that point, her body had begun falling apart and had begun to shut down, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Dr Allen fell into a deep depression when she found herself in a hospital room, and so she had turned to movies to keep her mind entertained. And then she had seen the Star Wars movies, the prequel trilogy, the original trilogy, and the later trilogy. She didn't care about the plotlines, the cringe-worthy romance between Anakin Skywalker and Padme, but she did care about Darth Vader who was a cyborg.

Another set of movies she had watched were the Robocop movies after she had become almost obsessed with cybernetics, the idea that you could remove the flesh of skin and muscle tissue, replacing them with metal or plastic, removing a damaged flesh and blood limb and then replacing it with a stronger and more durable prosthetic…. It had been compelling enough, but it wasn't until she had watched Robocop 2 and saw the primary antagonist having his brain removed from his body, and placed in a robotic body that she realised the advantages.

Even if she could remove her body's limbs and organs and replaced them with artificial counterparts, there would still be a vestige of the original body left behind to work with the bionic components. The idea of that appalled her. She remembered seeing too many of her family being put under the ground or cremated. Her family always had a weird balance, so many births to replace the ones who had died. Allen had always hated the idea of her body decomposing like a pile of plants stuffed into a compost bin, but it wasn't until she had seen the second Robocop movie that she realised that little fact.

Before she had considered simply having her arms, legs, internal organs, removed and replaced with motors and components, but after she had watched Robocop 2 she had realised that even if she went down that original route her body would still be diseased. Alright, so she would still be alive thanks to the machinery in her body, but thanks to the movie her mind was open to a new idea of simply removing the brain and placing it inside an artificial body with no flesh from her body, contaminated by the illness, became more compelling that simply undergoing one operation after another.

When she finally got out of the hospital, Allen threw herself into researching cybernetics and bionic surgery. The Vulcan medicines she was taking kept her alive long enough to continue her research, but all they did was to slow down the illness.

Between the treatments and her research, Allen was slowed down in making the first prototype. At first she just wanted to create some kind of android that could house her brain, but later on, as she began looking for the organic material she needed for her test subjects, she came face to face with the number of illnesses, diseases, and injuries that a human had to endure. To make matters worse, this was a period where space travel was still quite primitive, so Allen realised that an android body was insufficient in order to work properly.

Looking into human history for inspiration, Allen became enamoured with the idea of a cybernetic knight's armour, one that was sturdy and strong enough to withstand virtually anything. Three years after she had begun her research, Allen managed to remove the brain of a terminally ill woman and placed it inside a life support tank connected to a computer. Although not one of her creations as they were now, the experiment was the first true cyborg ever truly made by humans. People with prosthetics didn't count, they didn't completely allow the full potential cybernetics allowed.

For the next five years, Allen continued stealing people's bodies and with each theft, she managed to develop her techniques. She realised that speed was the key to removing the brain and placing it within the artificial body, and with each brain theft she developed better synaptic processors and even came up with an artificially created organic liquid to create a more responsive body.

At first, Allen had pursued the research to save herself from dying, but as time passed, Allen became more obsessed with the thought of living forever. Unfortunately, while her research had many benefits and allowed immortality, her work was condemned when others began to become suspicious about what she was doing with the materials she'd ordered. No-one knew what she was doing at first but the answer became more obvious as time passed, and they placed an embargo around her suppliers, meaning she needed to purchase more rudimentary materials to continue her research, change her identity, everything.

During the time between leaving the hospital, conducting her original experiments, and when the embargo was placed on her suppliers, Allen had come to realise that humanity needed to change and to become better. The geneticists behind Project Chrysalis were right in that humans needed to become better and become stronger, though in her case she didn't care anymore about genetics. Now she wanted to turn humans into cyborgs so they could attain perfection.

She was forced to go on the run when the truth about her research and experiments were discovered. She saw three of her prototypes be destroyed, but they were among the first of the new race. Human.2. Gone, forever. She had managed to escape, taking with her a conversion unit she had built and the materials and parts she had assembled based on the final design she had gained from the last experiments, and she had managed to hide on the colonist ship.

But all this was irrelevant.

Now she would not fail.

Until next time.