I understand that the Borg travel vast distances via transwarp conduits. Do these have fixed endpoints near the Federation, similar to the Bajoran Wormhole for the Dominion? They seem to appear wherever the plot needs them, even arriving very close to Earth in First Contact.
1 Answer
They do have fixed endpoints, yes. A map of the Borg transwarp network was seen in the Voyager episode "Endgame", shown here via Memory Alpha:
The four dots mark four of the network's six hubs, with each blue line representing a specific transwarp conduit, and the hub on the right is specifically the Delta Quadrant hub that Voyager ends up simultaneously destroying and using to get back to Earth.
SEVEN: It's more than that. It's a transwarp hub.
JANEWAY: You once told me there were only six of them in the galaxy.
SEVEN: That's correct.
...
SEVEN: This hub connects with thousands of transwarp conduits with end points in all four quadrants. It allows the Collective to deploy vessels almost anywhere in the galaxy within minutes.
A couple of that hub's conduits terminate near the Alpha/Beta border in the bottom-left (it's tough to read, but you can see the quadrant labels in blurry text around the edge of each). One of those conduits then is likely the one leading to near Earth, since we know via DS9's "The Sound of Her Voice" that Vega (about ~25 light-years from Earth) is only days at high warp from the Beta Quadrant, and its distance from the core is about right for the real-life position of the solar system.
(We know this even more definitively in later works, since much of Trek from Discovery onwards borrowed heavily from Star Trek: Star Charts for their maps and it established Sol as the marker for the Alpha/Beta border. However, this image was created before Star Charts had been published, so we can't necessarily lean on that. Still, this was relatively common fanon even before it was published, and honestly has more chance of having influenced the graphic than a random note from a DS9 episode three years earlier.)
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I don't agree with the conclusion that the hub near a quandrant border is near Earth. All the depicted transwarp conduits connect to that hub, so logically that should be the one on Borg home turf. That is, unless there's some in context reason why this map would only show the conduits leading to Earth? Commented Sep 18 at 16:10
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@ThePopMachine I'm not saying the hub near a quadrant border is near Earth, I'm saying that's the hub in the Delta Quadrant that Voyager destroyed. It's one of the conduits that terminate near the bottom-left border that I'm saying are probably near Earth. I actually hadn't noticed all the conduits are from that hub, though, which gives me even more reason to think that's the specific hub from "Endgame" and this is specifically a network map from that hub in particular. (Haven't watched it in ages, so that might be obvious in the episode itself.)– IdranCommented Sep 18 at 16:13
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Okay, yeah, checking the Endgame transcript, that's exactly it. I'll edit the answer to point that out and to make what I'm saying a little more clear.– IdranCommented Sep 18 at 16:17
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1Ha, the quadrants are even outright labeled on the map, I just didn't notice since the image was so blurry; there's no need for deduction at all.– IdranCommented Sep 18 at 16:25
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1Oh, yeah. For anyone trying to make sense of this blurry image, the text at the bottom of the viewscreen reads BETA QUADRANT upside down, oriented toward the galactic center. Commented Sep 18 at 17:59