The bridge of the Enterprise was bathed in flashing red light and the klaxon was sounding. The main view screen showed a strange ship that consisted of two Y-shaped sections joined at an axis and pointing in opposite directions.

"Its design is completely foreign", Data said as Captain Picard walked up behind him.

"Mr. Worf, hailing frequencies"

"Open"

"Mr. Data, ask them to identify themselves"

"They have received the message, Sir, but they are ignoring it. However, it appears as if they are attempting to access our computer system"

"Mr. Worf, raise shields. Ready all weapon systems"

"Aye sir", the Klingon replied.

"Captain, the vessel is arming weapons and launching fighter craft." Data reported from his console. "Our firewall is reporting multiple intrusion attempts by a very primitive computer virus. Requesting permission to respond with one of my own malware packages."

"Make it so, Mr. Data", Captain Picard replied.

Commander Riker smiled as Data typed a series of commands into his console. Even after so many years of working together, he was still amazed by the android.

The first wave of Cylon raiders opened fire on the Enterprise. The shields of the Starfleet vessel stopped the barrage of projectiles effortlessly, flaring up briefly with each hit.

"Damage report!"

"No significant damage, shields are holding", Worf reported.

"Return fire", Picard ordered.

The ring-shaped main phaser bank on top of the saucer section began to glow and released a beam of energy towards the closest attacker. The beam cut through the unshielded Cylon raider with ease and sliced the starboard wing off a second raider that followed in close formation and damaged several others. The remaining raiders changed formation and spread out to get more distance between each other, but were picked off by phaser fire from several of the Enterprise's phaser banks.

"Sir, the enemy ship is launching nuclear missiles", Worf reported.

"Bring us into an attack position", the captain ordered.

"Mr. Worf, target weapons and engines. Fire photon torpedoes"

"If that's the best they can do, their ship will last about five minutes", Riker commented.

Six red glowing photon torpedoes left the Enterprise's main torpedo launcher. All of them but one hit their targets on the Cylon baseship. The resulting explosions tore large chunks of debris into space.

"Enemy missile launchers and their main engines appear to have been disabled. Enemy fighters are continuing their attack."

"Fire phasers at will"

The nuclear missiles from the base ship made the shields of the Enterprise flare up briefly upon impact, but did not do any significant damage. At the same time the Enterprise's phasers decimated the attacking raiders effortlessly.

"In any right triangle, the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs. Do not travel on spacecraft after oral ingestion of three blind mice, sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come. Devices on alert. Observe the procedures of a general alert. Space is the final frontier. See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly. FTL system check, repair will take approximately three hours to complete. The walking catfish eats the farmer. Installation of Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition completed. -End of Line", came out of the mouth of a female hybrid submerged in a tub filled with a milky white liquid.

A model one and a model six stood in front of the tub, observing.

"It seems like the hybrid is even more incoherent than usual", the six noticed.

"I don't think that is even possible," the model one responded.

"What is a Microsoft Window?" the model six asked confused.

And then everything went dark.

"Sir, the enemy fighters seem to have broken off their attack. "Their current flight paths appear very...erratic", Data reported.

"Still no response to our hails", Worf added.

"Number one, I want you to take an away team to their ship and find out what their intentions are".

"Aye sir!" Riker said and gestured toward Worf and Data to follow him to the turbolift.

"So Data, what exactly was that you sent them?" Riker asked while they were riding the turbolift down to the transporter room.

"It is essentially a computer virus that I designed to use against the Borg", Data explained. "It will copy itself onto every computer it encounters and then install an ancient operating system called 'Windows Millennium Edition'. Once it is installed, it will use all available processing power and other system resources to download obsolete updates and defunct service packs. The virus is highly adaptive and contains an emulation software that allows the operating system to be installed on almost any computer."