Sola/Insieme

The little internal voice that Kathryn Janeway, Captain of the U.S.S Voyager, accepted now as inevitable still had a way of popping up when she least expected it. Though, if she were honest, its appearance now was not entirely unexpected.

She glanced up at the chronometer in her living area, the crimson glow of the numbers one of the only familiar things about the room at the moment.

She quickly surveyed her spartan quarters, which had taken a sudden turn toward a softer look.

Two ivory candles flickered quietly on the low table in front of the sofa that ran underneath the large windows that dominated her suite of rooms. Reflections of their flames danced with the starlight that drifted past the windows and in the two empty wineglasses sharing the table with them.

A soft, cream-colored throw flowed down one arm of the sofa to puddle in a haphazard fashion along the far end. More candles, a bottle of wine, and two place settings sat sentinel over the table in the corner, where the light was decidedly ambient.

Clarinet jazz lightly flavored the air of the room.

The 43-year-old starship captain blinked in sudden horror.

Oh god, what am I doing?

She wanted to run around the room and sweep everything away, the candles, the wine, even the damned throw on the couch. But before she could even take a step, her door chimed, announcing the arrival of her visitor.

Your date, corrected her psyche smugly.

"My date," she agreed aloud, distracted by the dilemma of her décor. Then she seemed to realize what she was saying, becoming almost frozen by it, her eyes darting to the door.

Nothing you can do about it now, Kate, said her little voice. She’s standing right outside the door. Punctual as ever.

"Damn," she muttered as she took one last, disgusted look around her living area.

The door chime sounded again, just to be annoying.

Kathryn Janeway, starship captain, vanquisher of Kazon, Vidiian, Meilon, and Borg, took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and marched to the door, remembering only at the last possible second that she was not actually going into battle and that perhaps a smile would be appropriate.

The pasted smile she had been able to manage, though, evaporated the instant she saw Seven standing at attention, clad in her blue and gray outfit, the sweetest of smiles dusting her full lips.

Suddenly, incomprehensibly, Kathryn felt exhilarated and terrified all at the same time, like the moment she had seen fire take the skies over Junilkata and make them red with blood all those many years ago, on holiday with Mother and Father, before Phoebe was born. She was tiny then and full of the wonder of the very young but even as young as she was, there had been an aching sadness in her when the cloudburst had ended and the skies drained back to their bloodless gray. She knew somehow… She knew that had been the one time she would ever see such beauty.

That same aching sadness crowded her heart now, shadowing the happiness that welcomed Annika into her quarters.

"Kathryn?" The slight smile that Seven could not remove from her own features no matter how hard she tried, the slight smile that had accompanied her all the way to the captain’s quarters and that had betrayed her anticipation of this "date", as Kathryn called it…that same smile melted the instant she recognized the stain in Kathryn’s eyes.

Concern in the Borg’s voice caused Kathryn to shake the clouds from her head.

"I’m sorry, Annika. Come in."

The young woman entered further into the room, her observant azure eyes leaving Kathryn’s features for the moment, surveying the captain’s quarters and making silent note of the changes to the living area. She turned those eyes, now questioning, back to Janeway.

"You have changed the décor of your living quarters," she stated.

The smaller woman’s eyes dipped away for a moment, attempting to cover her sudden and uncommon shyness with a search for the wine bottle on the table, which she now retrieved, pouring the pale, peach-colored liquid into the waiting glasses.

"For you," she said, answering the question implied in the statement. "I wanted you to be comfortable." A hint of laughter—the self-conscious sort—laced her words.

The revelation was truly illogical, and they both realized it. The addition of candles and soft fabrics and warm light had no affect on Seven’s comfort at all since she did not have these things now in her own utilitarian alcove, nor had she ever known them as a member of the ever-efficient Borg Collective. Candlelight and cashmere would have been as out of place on a Borg cube as maturation chambers would be on Voyager.

Seven did not point this out to the captain. Nor did she point out that the change obviously did nothing for Kathryn’s comfort either, sensing the older woman’s hesitancy in the matter. Instead, she took the proffered glass of wine and glanced at the room one more time.

"Thank you," she said, returning her level gaze to steely blue eyes. "I find the changes…inviting." And she truly did, in a way she did not fully understand.

"Well that’s a start," said Kathryn, more at ease. Her subsequent grin allowed Seven’s own smile the opportunity to steal back onto her lips, quite beyond her control. They looked at each other in this way for a brief and somewhat light-headed moment before Kathryn finally shook her head.

"Where are my manners?" she chuckled, one arm sweeping outward to gesture to the couch. "Why don’t we sit down for a few moments before dinner. To talk."

"Acceptable," agreed the young Borg, seating herself primly near the center of the couch. When she was settled, Janeway folded herself up in the far corner, resting her back in the crook of the arm, now unexpectedly grateful for the addition of the throw. Starfleet-issue furniture might be efficient but it was not always comfortable.

Seven efficiently made use of the awkward silence that enveloped them, taking the opportunity to sip the wine she’d been given. The taste of it startled her, the acidic sweetness momentarily disconcerting until she swallowed, the liquid chased by a tiny comet tail of warmth all the way down her esophagus. The warmth spread instantly throughout her abdomen when the sample reached her stomach and she found she rather liked the sensation.

"Is this beverage traditional on ‘dates’?" she asked, taking another small sip.

"Sometimes," said Kathryn, gazing at the blond wistfully, carefully, both unaccountably enamored of her child-like wonder as she tried the new beverage and concerned, lest she over-indulge. "I chose something on the light side, something that I thought you would like. Is it all right?"

"At first, I found the taste strong. But when I swallowed, it was less of a taste and more of a warmth. I enjoy the sensation very much. Does it have a designation?"

"Onsinjeela wine." Kathryn was never quite sure she was pronouncing the word correctly, even when Neelix assured her she was. She had the feeling Neelix would not correct her pronunciation even if it came out ‘kumquat’. "It’s Talaxian. Made from a spring pod fruit, I think. It was a gift from Neelix a long time ago."

"It means ‘spring kiss’," said Seven off-handedly. "An odd designation for a beverage."

If she had been paying attention, Kathryn’s little sideways grin might have alerted Seven that something was up. As it was, the captain sat forward a bit, stifling her smile as best she could and setting her own glass with its untouched wine on the table in front of her.

"Annika, I would like to attempt an experiment. Would you assist me?"

"Of course, Kathryn," said the young blond agreeably.

"Good. First, I want you to close your eyes."

Seven gave her an odd look, but she did as she was told.

"Like this?"

"Like that, yes. Now take a sip of the wine but let it linger in your mouth a moment before you swallow it, all right?"

The optical implant over the young woman’s left eye rose inquiringly but she took a sip of the wine without comment, unerringly locating her mouth and tipping the sweet liquid into it. She held the wine on her tongue for approximately 15 seconds before letting it slip down her throat, the warmth somehow more intense than it had been previously.

However, before she could comment on that or ask about the next step in the experiment, she felt Kathryn’s hand take the wine glass from her then cup her face. Instinctively, she turned toward the captain, surprised when she felt a pair of lips brush softly over her own.

"Oh," she whispered, leaning forward to capture the elusive kiss.

That gentle sound, barely a breath and yet so lovely, felt like a plasma fire erupting in Janeway’s veins. She leaned forward, deepening the contact between their mouths until she felt Seven’s lips part shyly, allowing Kathryn entrance to the sweet space beyond those full lips. The intoxicating blend of wine and the indescribable flavor of the Borg herself drew Kathryn in deeper until she felt her desire beginning to build in intensity.

An intensity she wasn’t ready for.

She pulled herself away, gently, reluctantly and rested her forehead against Seven’s chin, forcing herself to breathe more evenly. Sometime during the kiss each woman’s arms, acting on their own will, came up to entwine around the other. They did not release the embrace now.

"I’m sorry, Annika. I’ve been wanting to kiss you like that since you walked in the door tonight."

Seven’s heart, which she had been endeavoring to slow, sped up again at the words.

"Do not apologize, Kathryn," she whispered, her breath fluttering against the auburn hair beneath her lips. "I have been wanting to kiss you like that since we ended our last ‘date’ 93 hours ago." She was silent a moment, apparently considering something. "Perhaps the wine’s designation is not as odd as I originally thought."

Janeway chuckled.

"I’m beginning to think it was intended for just that purpose," she agreed, pulling herself upright and gently extracting herself from Seven’s embrace. She didn’t want to leave the comfort and tenderness of Seven’s arms—which was precisely why she did so.

"Shall we sit down to dinner now? I think I have chosen something you enjoy."

Her smile became infinitesimally triumphant as she rose and moved towards the replicator.

Which intrigued Seven no end.

"What will we be consuming?" she asked, rising herself to take her seat at the intimate little table.

"Chadre Kab," announced Janeway, pressing a few buttons on the access panel of her replicator and waiting for the dish to materialize. "Though I will admit I have expanded upon the original recipe. Only slightly, though. I hope you enjoy it. " She put the platter in the center of the table and lifted the cover from it.

Two halves of a butternut squash sat side by side, the meat from their centers having been scooped out, combined with roasted yellow bell pepper, mushrooms, sweet onions, and the tiniest taste of roasted garlic, then replaced in the squash halves. Each one had then been drizzled with lemon-butter and baked.

It resembled the first meal she had ever consumed in name and primary ingredient only, but Seven could not deny that this version certainly appealed to her more than had the original.

"How did you know that I prefer Chadre Kab to the other comestibles I have tried?"

"Old-fashioned Human ingenuity." Janeway placed one squash half on Seven’s plate. "I did a bit of snooping."

"’Snooping’?"

The captain had been prepared for that question.

"It means—"

Kathryn’s explanation of the term and her own first taste of the Chadre Kab were interrupted by the sudden illumination of the Yellow Alert panels placed discreetly in her living area.

What now? she and her psyche muttered together as she carefully put her fork down and reached for her com badge.

"Janeway to Bridge. Chakotay, what is it?"

"Full stop, Commander. I’m on my way."

Janeway scowled as she looked up at Seven, the young woman’s fork still balanced between her plate and her mouth.

"Annika, I—"

Seven blinked once then put her own fork down, rising from her seat abruptly.

"I understand, Captain. I will go to Astrometrics to commence scanning this sector."

She was out the door before Janeway could apologize, let alone say goodbye.

Damn it all to Hell, cursed her inner voice loudly.

Janeway agreed with the assessment.

Wholeheartedly.

Lieutenant B’Elanna Torres, Chief Engineer of the Starship Voyager, looked up from her workstation and frowned.

She watched the staccato movements of Seven of Nine, the ship’s Astrometrics officer and resident ex-Borg, who had barely paused in her calculations and recalibrations over the last five hours. And while that was characteristic of the woman’s maddening focus, B’Elanna realized—and not for the first time that shift—that something was off…way off.

Sure, she looked like she usually did…all bombshell body in a blue second-skin uniform…all skill…all ice. But something was definitely wrong. It was like watching a plasma injector coil misfire by point-three nanoseconds…not enough of a problem to warrant a full recalibration but certainly enough of one to make B’Elanna’s teeth hurt.

I hate standard orbit operations, she thought bitterly, shaking her head and returning to her work, inputting the data from the most recent delivery of ore samples with a little more force than necessary.

She hated them not because they were somewhat boring. Not because the warp engines went practically unused for days on end, leaving her with precious little to do. Not because she was usually stuck in Engineering while others got to traipse around on the planet’s surface, fulfilling the "explorer" part of their job descriptions.

No, the half-Klingon officer hated standard orbit operations solely because Astrometrics had even less to do than Engineering once the surrounding sector was mapped and catalogued. Making Seven of Nine available for general duty in the Engineering department.

And sure enough, when the olive-skinned woman checked over routine diagnostic data for the last 72 hours, she found that efficiency was up an average of 4.3% department-wide.

There’s gotta be a way to get her out of here, she thought, scowling.

She leaned against her console, gazing at the soothing churn of energy that illuminated the warp core from within, letting the nearly inaudible hum of the power transfer conduits calm her. She could always think better this way, standing at her workstation, in her department…

B’Elanna suddenly grinned.

Her fingers danced over the tripolymer surface of her console as she requested and was granted access to Seven’s duty and regeneration logs. As she looked over the information, however, the concern that she had feigned in order to justify sending the young Borg away suddenly became real.

According to the logs, Seven had only regenerated for two hours out of the last ninety. And she had been putting in 12 and 15-hour workdays since their arrival in orbit around Biia T’aok. Even taking into account her Borg stamina, B’Elanna realized that the Astrometrics officer was approaching dangerous levels of exhaustion. Or should have been. But in fact, she seemed to be working faster and more efficiently than usual.

Kahless knows how long she can keep that up, she mentally muttered.

Making her decision, B’Elanna transferred the data to a PADD and stalked over to where Seven stood, fingers flying through a few hundred calculations.

"What the Hell is wrong with you?" she barked, surprising both the austere blonde and herself. What was it about the Borg woman that simply drove her to distraction?

"Pardon me, Lieutenant?" While her optical implant had risen enough to show curiosity, Seven displayed no ire at the unprofessional greeting.

B’Elanna said nothing, only handed the woman the PADD and glared. Seven accepted the device and looked over the data displayed on it.

"These are my duty and regeneration logs," she stated calmly, handing the PADD back to the Chief Engineer.

"I know what they are!" snapped B’Elanna. "What I really want to know is why you think the rules around here apply to everyone but you!"

"I am Borg," said Seven. As if that explained everything.

"That doesn’t mean a thing in this department and you know it," replied the incensed department head, her hands perched on her hips. Grudgingly, she softened her tone a bit and added, "Your body needs to regenerate, Seven. Pushing yourself like this can’t be good for you. You aren’t going to miss much. Nothing’s happening anyway."

Seven did not look up from her work.

"Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant, but it is not necessary." She moved to another console, one conspicuously further away from her superior officer, and began a whole new set of calculations.

B’Elanna’s eyes narrowed dangerously. She followed the infuriating blonde to the next console.

"I’m not asking you, Seven, I’m telling you. You need to regenerate."

Seven did not respond. She simply moved to yet another console, starting another project without the slightest hesitation.

The Klingon hybrid felt the rise of anger inside her, sending her blood pounding through her head.

If I get a headache from this, so help me… She didn’t finish the thought. It would have been too tempting.

"Hello? Your Borgness?" She waved her hand to get Seven’s attention. "I’m not saying these things just to hear myself talk. This isn’t open for discussion."

Seven glanced up, her optical implant raised slightly.

"You cannot force me to regenerate, Lieutenant." She was annoyed now. She didn’t want to regenerate. And she didn’t want to argue about it. She just wanted to continue her work. Work was the only cure for a certain Human frailty that had recently resurfaced in her life. One she was having trouble coming to terms with.

"You’re right, I can’t." The engineering chief, however, did not look defeated. In fact, she looked very smug with her arms crossed triumphantly across her chest and a twisted little smile on her lips.

"But the Doctor can."

That got Seven of Nine’s attention. Instantly.

"There is no need to involve the Doctor," she said sharply. He would be forced to include the incident in his daily report to the Bridge…something she definitely did not want to happen.

"No?" B’Elanna leaned across a console as if she would pounce at any second. "Look, we can do this any way you want to, Seven. I can throw you out the nearest airlock, you can log off duty yourself, or we can call the Doctor. Your choice."

Seven’s cobalt glare could have cut through duranium. She logged out of the workstation but she was clearly not happy about it.

"You have made your point, Lieutenant. I will leave now."

"And regenerate, right?" Something in the Klingon woman would just not let this one go. She couldn’t explain it, even to herself.

Seven hesitated, her voice faltering ever so slightly.

"I will make the attempt, yes."

And that got B’Elanna’s attention. Voyager’s resident Borg didn’t know what the word failure meant. She was always supremely confident, much to the Chief Engineer’s constant annoyance. Yet here she was, almost admitting that there was a task she wasn’t sure she could complete…which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that something was definitely wrong.

B’Elanna’s curiosity got the better of her.

"Seven, wait a minute!" she called, stopping the taller woman before she reached the department’s main entrance. "What do you mean, ‘attempt’? Is something wrong with your alcove?"

Before B’Elanna could get a handle on this new, hesitant Seven, the old, haughty Seven reappeared in a flash.

"My alcove is functioning perfectly." Arrogance colored her tone. "May I leave now?"

"No!" snapped the smaller woman. If she was concerned that she had just contradicted her own previous orders, she did not show it. "What is going on with you? Even you are not usually this annoying!"

The silver arc over Seven’s left eye rose in inquiry. "Is that a compliment, Lieutenant?" she asked, dryly.

"JUST ANSWER—"

Chirp.

"Janeway to Torres." The captain’s cool, professional tone cut B’Elanna’s rage off at the knees.

"Yes, Captain?" she replied in a calm voice though Seven could still see the roiling anger in the Klingon’s inky eyes.

"I’m on my way, Captain," she acknowledged, cutting the com channel with a sharp tap to her communicator. Her eyes narrowed.

"I’m not finished with you, Borg," she hissed, jaw clenched so tightly Seven wondered that her teeth didn’t shatter.

The distinct chirp of another intraship hail followed the clang of the doors closing behind Lieutenant Torres.

And Seven—eyes clouding—didn’t have to answer to know that she would be returning earlier than she had planned to the cavernous chill of her cargo bay ‘home’.

Once again.

Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Starship Voyager sighed. It was a brief sound, sad and filled with self-recrimination.

She didn’t blame Seven for being disappointed. How could she? She was disappointed, too. More than she dared to admit.

Our timing has been atrocious, she thought, frustrated and dismayed. Four attempted dates in a row had either been interrupted or cancelled outright. The first, more than a week ago, was over just after they had taken their seats at the dinner table, cut short by Voyager’s untimely arrival in the spatial trade routes belonging to the inhabitants of Biia T’aok, a small, G-class planet that valued water above all else.

Well, water and the art of the deal, thought Janeway wryly. Each of the subsequent cancelled dates had fallen victim in one way or another to the Mildri’s unique negotiation style. Even a very late night ‘philosophical discussion’ on the art of kissing—which Janeway had been especially enjoying—had to be cancelled after only ten minutes, usurped by the Sovereign of Biia T’aok himself, who demanded immediate reconsideration of a deal only three hours old. The reason? Because Prial H’soh, the planet’s primary religious leader and the sovereign’s personal advisor, had had a "vision".

Janeway still hadn’t quite forgiven that interruption.

I’ll have to make it up to her, she decided. Which certainly hadn’t been in question.

No, the question was how?

The professional apology she’d just given over the impersonal communications network certainly wouldn’t do. And flowers—though appropriate—would be lost on Seven, she feared.

However, before she could allocate even a small measure of her consciousness toward pondering her dilemma, the chime to her Ready Room door sounded.

"Come."

The hiss of the door revealed her first officer, Chakotay. She noted his faint smile, the one that usually meant he had found something inappropriately humorous.

"Commander?"

"There’s been a slight change of plans, Captain," he said, waving a PADD that no doubt contained her away team’s itinerary.

"Why am I not surprised?" Janeway gestured for him to take a seat, which he did readily.

Chakotay chuckled. "As far as I know, it doesn’t have anything to do with the last of the provisions. It seems the Sovereign has decided to break with tradition and is inviting the away team to tour the…" He looked down at the PADD as if to ensure his accuracy. "…the ‘Holy Enclosure’," he said finally, his grin flaring for a moment before he could contain himself.

"The…‘Holy Enclosure’?"

Janeway saw the commander’s tribal tattoo crinkle and she felt a bubble of laughter rise up in response, one she found difficult to restrain.

Chakotay shrugged. "That’s the best the universal translator could do with the phrase. I understand it loses something in the translation."

"Apparently."

She tried. She honestly tried. But the combination of the sparkling humor in her first officer’s eyes and the bizarre image her mind created to go with the phrase in question was too much. She held the laughter behind trembling lips for as long as she could.

Which turned out to be shorter than she had hoped.

When they had subsided, the captain asked, "Tuvok asked you to bring that report to me, didn’t he?"

When Chakotay nodded in the affirmative, they both succumbed to another bout of laughter, each privately envisioning Tuvok’s own unique brand of disapproval.

"He made a wise decision, I think," said Janeway, shaking her head ruefully.

Before the ex-Maquis could agree with her, a com chirp interrupted them.

The captain winced, remembering—too late, obviously—that she had asked the lieutenant to join her in the transporter room.

"I apologize, Lieutenant," she began, rising from her chair. The commander rose with her. "I was going over some last minute—"

Janeway and Chakotay shared a look of concern.

"What kind of problem?"

"Can we go by shuttle?" Janeway did not want to prolong their stay with the Mildri. In fact, the sooner they could make this last transaction, the happier she would be.

The cargo being the last four of twelve gaseous compound containers, two of hydrogen and two of oxygen.

"I’m on my way, Lieutenant," she acknowledged, cutting the channel.

"Do you want Tom to pilot the shuttle, Kathryn?" Chakotay didn’t like the idea of all that explosive gas riding alongside the captain. Seemed a little like asking for trouble.

She shook her head. "No. He’s more familiar with the Delta Flyer at this point. This mission would seem like a demotion. Is there another pilot you trust? Someone with HazMat certification?" Janeway, herself, wasn’t thrilled with the idea of shotgunning in a shuttle with those dangerous canisters. She felt like cursing the inventors of the transporter system. Sure, when it worked, it really worked. But when it didn’t, it was usually Hell.

Chakotay rubbed his chin. "Ensign Ara Lerano. I admit I don’t know too much about her. She joined my little, um, resistance group just before we headed out to the Badlands and she was very closed-mouth about her past. However, she has HazMat certification and she said she used to be a munitions runner, running Dip to the different cadres."

"Dip?" Janeway’s left brow arced over her eye.

"Um, a homemade explosive we used to use in space mines. Highly unstable." Chakotay looked uncomfortable, waiting for the disapproval he knew was bound to follow his confession.

"I see," said the captain, her tone flat. "And the ‘recipe’ for this Dip would be on file somewhere? For purely informational purposes, of course."

Chakotay didn’t answer for a long time, surprised by the question. He had expected indignation, not interest. However, he had to admit that this Starfleet captain had a whole host of unique problems to deal with as commanding officer of the only Starfleet vessel in the Delta Quadrant. Certainly she had relied upon innovation before. Why shouldn’t she be interested in non-regulation munitions?

Particularly when even a small edge could mean the difference between continuation and obliteration.

"Yes, ma’am," he answered, even if that wasn’t exactly the truth. He had thought the need for such things had died with his past in the Maquis. But he would make it available to her if she ever did ask for it.

"Good," she replied, heading out of her Ready Room. "Please ask Ensign Ara to join me in the shuttle bay."

The door closed behind her, leaving a very bewildered Chakotay alone to consider this new facet to a woman he thought he knew well. Though, if he were to be completely honest with himself, he had been noticing a few changes in her demeanor recently. Nothing too obvious. Just…different.

Never assume anything, he reminded himself, tapping his com badge to open a channel. That phrase had been known as the Unofficial Prime Directive back in his Academy days. In fact, it was drilled into the cadets so completely, he often wondered why it wasn’t the Academy’s official motto.

I can’t believe I forgot it, he mused, shaking his head. Especially with her.

Ensign Ara Lerano ignored the sweat that rolled down her face and the ache of her muscles, pushing herself harder in response, adding an additional set of curls simply because she had wished she could put the weight bar down.

"Two…three…four…five…" The count came on short, explosive breaths, the burn of the exertion finally consuming even the air in her lungs. The sounds she made mirrored the mantra she kept in her mind.

The gymnasium was nearly empty. Only two others, a young woman with very pale skin and fire-red hair that was barely pinned back, the ringlets threatening a full-scale invasion of her range of vision and a "no-neck", a big beefy guy that Ara knew only as a security officer, kept her company. The redhead was making good use of a treadmill, clearly intent on the long haul of a cross-country program and completely oblivious of Beefy’s less than subtle leering and his grandiose posturing.

In fact, the longer Red ran, the less Beefy actually exercised.

Ara rolled her eyes and drew her focus back to her own workout.

"Forty-two…forty-three…forty-four…" The count droned on. Her mind was nearly the blank, empty space she wanted. That precious stillness that gave her the only peace she really ever enjoyed. Had ever enjoyed.

Ara’s had not been a peaceful existence.

But this was where she came to forget about all that. To forget what it meant to be Bajoran during the Cardassian occupation. To forget the paths she had traveled to find herself at the helm of one of Chakotay’s renegade Maquis ships. To forget the choices—made by others higher up than she, who believed they had the right to choose for others—that had gotten her stuck firmly in the Delta Quadrant on a Starfleet ship, thousands of light-years from home.

Not appealing choices. Not to someone who had made a habit of surviving the tough spots.

She found it was a hard habit to break, harder than she had expected though that hadn’t kept her from trying.

The mantra came back, forcing the pointless thoughts from her head. Sweat rolled down her forehead and over the ridges on her nose and she swiped at the moisture with her free hand, muttering a curse at the distraction.

"Eighty-five…eighty-six…eighty-seven…"

The pain seared through her muscles and nerve endings. She welcomed it, focussed on its white-hot intensity, gritting her teeth against it in a feral snarl. As if to say that pain was no longer something to avoid. Rather, it was the only thing that she knew anymore. The only thing that truly felt like home out here in the vast strangeness of the Delta Quadrant.

During her shift, when she was Ensign Ara Lerano assigned to shuttle maintenance, she was numb. Void of emotion. Going through the motions of her mundane little job. But when she took off that uniform, when there was nothing standing between her and her past but a thin swath of cotton and her own will, Ara came to the gymnasium to find the pain that allowed her to forget.

"Ninety-eight…ninety-nine…one-hundred…"

She put the weight bar down and allowed herself five breaths to feed her oxygen-starved lungs before switching arms, hefting the ten-kilo bar in her left hand determinedly.

"One…two…three…"

An intraship hail interrupted her count.

Ara stared at the com badge sitting on the bench with her water bottle and her towel, a slightly annoyed frown marring her angular features. She put the weight bar down and reached for the metallic device, tapping it once to respond to the call.

"Ara, here." She did not say ‘sir’. She hadn’t called him that when they were still Maquis and she wouldn’t call him that now. Or ever.

Ara carefully hid her surprise under a deepening scowl. It would in no way improve her darkling reputation on Voyager if she allowed herself to gape dumbly at the little device. Red and Beefy obviously weren’t as concerned about their reputations. They both gaped openly, like fish out of their watery homes.

"Commander, I’m in the gymnasium now. I need some time to clean up."

"Plenty, Commander," she replied, half way to the showers even as she spoke.

Nine minutes later she entered the shuttle bay, wrapping an elastic band around the end of the braid she’d weaved on her way through the ship’s corridors. She straightened her shoulders and quickly checked her left ear, hoping her Bajoran dikata hadn’t been jarred.

Tuvok stood just inside the doors and greeted her with a raised eyebrow in his typically Vulcan fashion.

"Commander." She nodded a sharp greeting.

"Ensign." He returned the nod. "I am to brief you on the details of this mission. Shall we begin?"

He turned toward the shuttle and Ara allowed herself the tiniest sigh of relief. She’d always been very cautious around the Chief of Security, even before, when they were both still Maquis. Since joining Voyager’s crew and discovering—as they all had—that he was a Starfleet infiltrator, she’d made a special point of traveling in vastly different circles than he. After all, he was the last person whose attention she wanted to attract.

Usually, she was successful.

Today, she was not.

Seven of Nine slowed as she neared the cargo bay where she resided. She did not fully understand her aversion to the place even though it seemed to increase by the hour. And while hesitant to break her promise to B’Elanna about attempting regeneration, she could not see the point in forcing herself through its doors when it was clearly not what she wanted to do.

She stopped in the corridor, considered her options, chose one, and turned around, heading back to the turbolift she had just vacated.

Less than 3 minutes later, she stood outside the Wildman quarters, awaiting an answer to her chime.

The door opened a moment later, the startled face of Ensign Samantha Wildman greeting the Borg.

"Seven? Can I help you?"

Seven clasped her hands behind her back and nodded slightly.

"Ensign Wildman. Is Naomi Wildman present?"

"I’m sorry, Seven, but she’s in the Biometrics lab right now. Her afternoon physical science lessons." The apology was only half-hearted. In fact, Samantha was a bit relieved that her daughter was not at home at the moment.

"Oh," said the young Borg, a look of profound disappointment shadowing her features. "I am sorry to have disturbed you. I will go." She turned to leave and Samantha was startled to see Seven’s slightly rounded shoulders and the miniscule droop of her head. She had never seen anything like it, accustomed only to the ramrod posture and the head-held-high confidence that always exhausted her when she spent any length of time with the Borg. Which wasn’t often.

"Wait, Seven," she called, the woman turning obediently to gaze at her with eyes so pale, Samantha wondered if they had any color at all. "She’ll be done in a few minutes. Is this about her lessons?"

Fairly recently, her bright, adorable 5-year-old had gotten it into her head that she was going to be Captain Janeway’s Bridge Assistant. And with dogged determination—no doubt inherited from her father, Elaku—she had decided that the best way to accomplish this goal was to train for it, seeking out Seven of Nine to function as her mentor.

Which had given Samantha Wildman pause, to say the least.

"No. I wished to see if she was available to participate in recreational activity."

Samantha blinked.

To Seven, she said, "Why don’t you come in and wait for her? I’m sure Naomi would be happy to, uh, ‘participate in recreational activity’ with you." She stifled a small smile in spite of herself as she turned and retreated into her quarters.

Seven followed Samantha inside, her observant eyes taking in everything…from the scattering of PADDs left on the dining room table to the brightly colored and intricately designed pillows on either end of the couch on the far wall to the crude yet engaging picture affixed to the replicator’s service access panel. It was the hand-drawn picture that truly drew her attention. Even from a distance, she could tell it was intended to represent Samantha and Naomi, holding hands. She could not account for the pang of longing it caused.

"Please sit down, Seven," said Samantha, gesturing to the couch. She watched as the austere blonde lowered herself gingerly to the edge of the couch, folding her hands in her lap, her knees perfectly aligned. She felt uncomfortable just looking at the woman’s rigid posture and eerie stillness and she resisted the urge to shake her head in response.

"Can I get you something to drink?" Samantha forced herself to smile though she wondered why she bothered. Surely the Borg wouldn’t care one way or the other.

Seven noted the feigned smile with some concern, realizing for the first time that just because Naomi was a subunit of this Human, it did not mean the two shared the same opinions. While Naomi was very comfortable with Seven, feeling that she could say and do anything in her presence without the fear of disapproval, obviously the ensign was not as comfortable. And in fact, seemed very awkward under the circumstances.

An occurrence Seven wished to alter, no matter how unskilled she was in the art of interpersonal relationships.

"Do you drink hot tea, Ensign?"

Samantha blinked again. Somehow this was not the response she had expected. A curt request for ‘nutritional supplement number 3, please’, perhaps, but not this most intriguing question. It suddenly occurred to her that she was operating under a set of assumptions about the Borg that may not be entirely accurate.

Which she found unnerving.

"I do."

The young woman offered her a genuine smile.

"I have recently discovered that I have a preference for it, myself. However, my experience is limited to a flavor known as Brandied Apricot. Kath—" She stopped—momentarily flustered—then started again. "Captain Janeway introduced it to me," she said, emphasizing the proper name.

"I see," said the ensign. "Would you like some of that, then?"

If she noticed Seven’s slip on the captain’s name, she showed no indication of it.

Seven endeavored to hide her relief.

"I would rather add to my limited experience and try a new flavor," she said seriously. "Do you have a favorite I may sample?"

The thought came out of the blue and Samantha felt a little surprised and appropriately guilty for ever having felt otherwise. As she sat there, pondering it, she wondered how IT had happened, how the little black thing known as intolerance had slipped into her life so quietly, so stealthily. She generally thought of herself as a pretty tolerant individual on most levels. She was a Biometrics officer, after all. Diversity was not an exception, it was the rule.

Yet somehow all that went out the proverbial window when Seven of Nine, former Borg drone, entered the picture.

She silently turned and went to the replicator, typing in a request for a pot of hot lemon-blackberry tea, a favorite since her childhood. She put the pot and two mismatched teacups on a tray and brought the whole thing to the low table. She poured the tea and handed one cup to the seated Borg, a look of sadness coloring her features.

She thought of Naomi, how open and how willing she was to learn about Seven the individual, accepting her as a friend easily, without hesitation or apprehension. Like she accepted most things.

Naomi should be the one teaching me. How did I ever come to be this closed-minded?

One thing was certain, though. She couldn’t let it go on.

"I think I owe you an apology, Seven."

The Astrometrics officer looked down at the cup of dark, steaming liquid, then back up at the ensign, confusion in her eyes.

"But I have not tasted it yet—"

Samantha laughed. "No, not about the tea, Seven. I think you might actually like that." She sat down on the couch, looking into her own mug for a long, quiet moment.

"What I wonder, though," she said finally, looking up with a genuine, if sheepish, smile, "is if you might be able to forgive me for the way I’ve treated you this afternoon…and in the past."

"There is nothing to forgive, Ensign," replied Seven quickly. "I am accustomed to the crew’s less than…enthusiastic reception of me."

Samantha’s brows came crashing down over her eyes. "That’s just it, Seven, you shouldn’t be accustomed to it. And you shouldn’t let us get accustomed to treating you that way. It’s wrong."

Seven seemed surprised by that assessment, as if she had never heard it before.

Which she hadn’t.

"It is?" she asked quietly.

"Of course it is! It may be a defensive response to fear but it is still unacceptable!"

The young Borg looked dejectedly at her untried tea and set it gently on the low table in front of her.

"The crew fears that I will assimilate them. Do you fear that as well?"

"Yes—I mean, no! I mean—well—I—"

Samantha stopped, realizing how ridiculous she sounded, how paranoid and pathetic the assimilation fear seemed when she considered that she let her daughter take lessons from the Borg, after all. Why did she fear assimilation for herself and not for Naomi? Was she truly naïve enough to believe that if, for some reason, Seven turned on the crew and began to assimilate them that she would overlook Naomi because they had been friends or because she was only a child? Hadn’t Seven been only six, herself, when she’d been assimilated?

Samantha felt one whopper of a headache coming on. Looking mournfully into her cup, she wished she had something stronger than tea to drink.

"What I am trying to say is yes. It isn’t rational, Seven, or logical, or even justifiable, but—until recently—yes, I still feared assimilation." She leaned forward and placed her hand over the young woman’s, wanting the physical connection both for Seven’s benefit and for her own.

"I’m so very sorry."

Seven saw the earnest apology in the ensign’s eyes and she felt a little of the ice she kept around herself melt in response. Here was another crewmember reaching out to her in unexpected ways. Unexpected but not unpleasant.

Her small smile was warm and pleased.

"Apology accepted," she said softly. "Thank you, Ensign."

"Thank you, Seven. And call me Sam, okay? Calling me ‘Ensign’ is too much like calling me ‘Mrs. Wildman’. I’m too young for that." She smiled, gathering up the now-cold cups of tea. "How about we save the formalities for our duty shifts?"

"That would be acceptable…Sam," said Seven, testing the new designation carefully. By now she recognized the honor it was to be asked to address someone in the familiar. She did not wish to make mistakes.

"Good! Now let me get you some more tea," said the young mother, smiling as she took the cups to the replicator and discarded the cold liquid. She poured fresh tea from the pot and returned Seven’s cup to her.

Seven eyed the unusual design of hers with interest. Part of it seemed metallic and part of it seemed to be made of glass, or a glass-like substance, both components whirling and swirling with each other in patterns of great delicacy. She wondered how the artisans had managed to combine the materials so seamlessly. The workmanship impressed her very much.

"Are these cups significant in some way? I notice that they do not match." She had thought that dinnerware should match. Though she admitted that she had limited experience with the subject.

"I just bought that cup this week, when I was on the planet’s surface. There was this cute little market and I saw it on the shelf…" Sam laughed at herself. "But of course you really don’t do a lot of shopping, do you? Anyway, I bought two, one for me and one for Naomi. But Naomi says she lost hers. I can’t find it anywhere and she doesn’t remember where she saw it last." Sam took a sip from her cup and sighed, enjoying the familiar taste of the brew.

"I suspect she broke it and doesn’t want to tell me," she added suddenly.

"Indeed," replied the Borg, her optical implant raising slightly. Somehow that assessment did not fit the child she had come to know. Naomi had always been very forthright regarding her own errors. However, the Borg imagined that Sam would know best about Naomi’s potential for utilizing falsehoods. After all, she was Naomi’s mother.

She decided not to pursue the subject and instead turned her attention to the tea. She took a small sip and let the liquid linger upon her tongue, flushing slightly as the action reminded her of her aborted date with Kathryn the night they arrived in Mildri space. She shook the extraneous thought from her head and concentrated on the taste of the tea, finding it sharp and sweet at the same time. It was a more pleasant taste to her than the wine had been, but she was disappointed to find that the two beverages did not share the same kind of heat.

"So, is it better than the Captain’s offering?" asked Sam suddenly.

Seven had not been expecting the question and she swallowed her second sip a bit too hastily, sending a small amount of the liquid into her trachea instead of her esophagus…which immediately convulsed, trying its level best to expel the anomalous matter. Not knowing quite what to do, Seven attempted to put the teacup on the table while her body continued its odd behavior.

She missed.

Teacup and tea tumbled off the edge of the table, every drop of the deep purple liquid finding its proper landing spot on the carpet in Sam’s living area.

"Ooops," said Sam, regarding the bruise-colored stain on her floor with mild interest as she patted Seven’s back, trying to comfort her through her first bout of coughing.

"I am sorry about your floor, Sam," wheezed Seven when she had finally gotten control of her coughing fit. "I seem to be making a habit of staining the floors in other crewmembers’ living areas."

"Oh really?" asked the Biometrics officer, suddenly all ears. "And who else have you been visiting in their quarters?" The question sounded innocent enough, but Sam had an ulterior motive.

The lieutenant who had spied the young Borg waiting outside Janeway’s quarters almost two weeks ago was just the sort of young woman who routinely let her imagination get away from her. She’d told everyone in her immediate circle of friends—which included Sam, of course—about the incident and added her own wild supposition that the Borg was meeting the captain for a clandestine affair.

Generally, Sam thought her friend was too much of a romantic. However, this time she wasn’t so sure. After all, Seven had almost used the captain’s first name earlier. Sam didn’t know of any other officer or crewmember—except maybe Chakotay—who was granted that privilege.

She decided the jury was still out.

Seven abruptly started coughing again.

Sam laughed. "Oooops again. You don’t have to answer the question, Seven. It’s okay."

Seven eyed the ensign warily for a moment, wondering how much she knew. It disconcerted her that she and Kathryn might be the subject of talk on the ship even though, to the best of her knowledge, they had been discreet. After all, they had only had a total of one date, not counting the aborted ones and several others which had been cancelled even before they had begun, victims of duty.

But the grin on Sam’s face was infectious—if inscrutable—and Seven decided not to worry about it too much, thinking that she did not know the officer to indulge in idle gossip. Even if Sam suspected something, the Borg did not think she would share it with the rest of the crew.

She smiled back at the smaller blonde, a small but engaging grin.

Sam laughed again. "Of course, that could be answer enough."

Seven didn’t know exactly what that meant but she definitely had a feeling she was going enjoy counting Samantha Wildman among the slowly-widening circle of friends she was quickly—and unintentionally—gaining for herself.

Captain Janeway strode into the shuttle bay, a cool gaze sweeping the scene in front of her.

It was a small team, designed to be skeleton in nature. B’Elanna, who Janeway could see through the shuttle’s viewport as she attended to some last minute detail or other, was to oversee the unloading and loading of the cargo. Which was proving to be a more complicated job than she had originally expected.

Not that that’s unusual in Starfleet, she noted ruefully just as B’Elanna became aware of her arrival.

Tuvok, her Chief of Security and whose unenviable job it was to protect this little ragtag bunch, noticed her at the same time. Both senior officers immediately made their way over to her, though it was B’Elanna who reached her first.

"Status, Lieutenant?"

"The cargo is onboard and the shuttle’s almost ready, Captain. We’ve decided our best option is to get under these storms and then beam the cargo to wherever the Mildri want it. I’d rather not have those canisters onboard when we land."

Janeway nodded. "I agree. I’m not entirely fond of the idea of having them onboard when we take off." She offered a crooked half-smile to her Engineering chief, who cracked one in return.

"I thought that was why Chakotay suggested Ara for this flight. She is the best pilot I know…after Tom, of course," said the Klingon, the pride she held for her lover’s skills unmistakable even in the brief remark. "And if I remember correctly, she has, uh, some experience with volatile cargo," she added belatedly, wondering suddenly just how much the captain knew about that.

"So I’ve heard," replied the captain dryly.

Which brought them to the last member of the team, Ensign Ara Lerano, a slender woman with impossibly long, jet-black hair braided in a rope down her back. She sported a ridge along the bridge of her nose, indicative of her Bajoran heritage, and a decorative piece of non-traditional ear jewelry that seemed to envelop the entire shell of her ear rather than hang from it, as was customary.

She wondered suddenly what Tuvok thought of the ex-Maquis pilot, if they had had the opportunity to interact during his covert operations with the resistance militia. Whether or not he trusted her.

"Captain," greeted Tuvok mildly, interrupting her thoughts. "Ensign Ara has been briefed. We are ready to begin as soon as Prial H’soh determines the coordinates where he would like us to transport the cargo."

There was something in the way Tuvok said ‘determines’ that caught the captain’s attention.

"Another vision, Tuvok?" She wondered if the Mildri’s penchant for mystical predictions and divination—offensive to Tuvok’s sense of logic, to be sure—was the cause of his obvious distaste.

But she dismissed that thought after a moment’s consideration. He was too even-keeled to be put off by something so incidental. She suspected the true reason for his darker mood was the ban on weapons imposed by the Mildri’s Sovereign. Which of course meant that her security chief was deprived of the most basic of his defensive tools of the trade.

Add to that a captain on the away team and she wondered he was as serene as he seemed. In fact, Janeway was sure that she was the only one who could tell that he was at all ruffled. Something she owed to their long friendship.

"More than likely, Captain. He did not say."

"Did he say when he would make the determination?"

"Again, he could not be specific."

Janeway frowned. "Then I guess we’ll just have to wait." She took a quick glance around the shuttle bay, watching as Ara circled the small craft with her tricorder, no doubt performing a last minute safety check.

I don’t know anything about this woman, she realized suddenly. How is this possible? She’s been a member of my crew for five years and I know almost nothing about her beyond the most basic of her skills. And she’s going to be piloting my people. Through radiation storms. With hazardous cargo.

The headache that had been Janeway’s constant companion over the last week intensified. Voyager was her responsibility. Hers alone. Too much of this visit to Biia T’aok had been out of her control already. These new variables were disconcerting to say the least.

"What’s left to be done?" she asked, her gaze returning to her unflappable chief of security. "I’ll help."

The captain’s declaration was—of course—illogical. Tuvok knew that B’Elanna Torres’ pre-flight of the shuttle had been rigorous and precise, determined, as she was, to ensure the captain’s safety on this mission. And Ensign Ara’s current safety checks, though redundant, would—he knew—be carried out with the utmost attention to detail.

He suspected that his commanding officer’s sudden interest in assisting the team had little to do with the actual tasks yet to be completed. Which made his next words all the more important…as well as difficult to gauge.

"In truth, Captain, our preparations are almost finished," he confessed. "We need only wait for the Prial to hail us."

The phrasing was casual…in as much as Vulcan communication was ever casual. But Janeway knew this particular Vulcan too well. There was something, a note of concern, perhaps, that spoke volumes.

Turning from his perceptive gaze, Janeway found herself watching as B’Elanna sidled up next to the Bajoran, startling her, the Klingon snorting derisively as the intent officer scowled at the interruption.

"Will you relax already? It’s just the Captain, for Kahless’ sake!"

The words were hushed, not meant for her ears, but she had heard them, nonetheless. The quiet admonition caused the woman’s eyes to dart across the bay, narrowing as she met her captain’s icy gaze full on. After glowering back at Janeway for the briefest of instants, Ara stalked to the other side of the shuttle, away from the scrutiny and—pointedly—away from B’Elanna.

The Klingon rolled her eyes, muttering "Oh, lighten up!" before continuing with her final adjustments to the shuttle’s shield generators.

‘Just the Captain.’ Janeway knew intellectually that B’Elanna hadn’t meant anything by the words, but they hit a raw spot inside of her that she thought didn’t exist anymore, burning like acid.

"There’s nothing for me to do here." It was a statement of conscious understanding and surprising bleakness.

Tuvok frowned ever so slightly. His long association with this Human had given him knowledge of her moods and uncertainties that he knew no one else onboard Voyager shared. However, the hollowness he now heard in her voice was unexpected and unfamiliar.

"I did not say that, Captain. Perhaps the wisest course of action would be to allow the crew to complete those tasks for which they are best suited."

Janeway was silent for a moment.

"And to what task am I best suited, Commander?" she asked finally, quietly.

"Leadership, Captain." His response was immediate and firm, as if pointing out the obvious to a rather idiotic child.

Their eyes locked, Janeway’s now razor-sharp gaze meeting Tuvok’s even one. Her first instinct was to be angry at the tone. How dare he speak to her that way? Then realization dawned and with it, an amused smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

She nodded at the Vulcan. "Understood, Commander," she said, her voice having returned to its customary strength though her eyes were warm. "Dismissed."

Tuvok raised one eyebrow in acknowledgment of the unspoken gratitude before turning to approach B’Elanna, who greeted him with a brief smile before launching into a description of additional precautionary forcefields she wanted to erect around the explosive canisters.

I envy them. The thought flared up in the captain’s mind like ancient flashpowder. Their easy camaraderie, their familiarity with one another. Even Ara has that.

Ara joined the two senior officers, nodding to both of them politely but hanging back from them a little, keeping to the outside edge of their discussion as if leaving herself room to exit suddenly.

They have a history together,she realized. Although it was fairly obvious that Ara didn’t feel exactly comfortable with B'Elanna and Tuvok, all three of them had worked together in the renegade militia, for better or worse.

Janeway contemplated that history. How could she envy life in the Maquis, on the run, constantly on guard, afraid at every turn, outside the law? But she did. It didn’t make sense, but she did envy them. Not so much their membership in the resistance group as much as her ideas about the relationships formed there. Strong ones, loyal and resilient. Tried by the fires of life and death situations, heated battles where the odds were always against them, and stolen moments of calm when all they had was each other.

Why don’t we have that? she thought suddenly, thinking of the similarities between the Maquis and Voyager’s plight in the Delta Quadrant, similarities she didn’t think she’d been aware of until now.

Then another thought, even more disturbing.

She regarded Ara, noting that she preferred to work solo, moving away from the group as soon as possible.

And maybe I’m not the only one.

She frowned, her mind slipping into what her sister, Phoebe, used to call ‘Katie’s Silent Running Mode’.

After a moment, Janeway caught Tuvok’s eye and nodded towards the shuttle bay doors, letting him know that she would be out prowling the ship when the call from the planet’s surface finally came and they could get underway. If it seemed at all strange to her that she was able to communicate so much with little more than a simple elevation of an eyebrow, she did not dwell on it.

"Are we going to visit Flotter?"

Naomi Wildman’s question, usually asked with more enthusiasm and less utter disbelief, drifted up to Seven of Nine’s ears just as she efficiently keyed in the code for the holodeck program she wished to run.

"No," came the short reply. In truth, Seven did not understand the appeal of the inconsequential fictional characters that Naomi regarded so highly. She thought her time ‘playing’ with them could be better spent elsewhere. However, she did not wish to hurt her friend’s feelings and so said nothing but listened intently when the little redhead would launch into a description of yet another wildly improbable set of interactions with the unusual creatures.

"Oh." Although disappointed that she still hadn’t won Seven over with her daring tales of travel through the forest with Flotter and His Friends, Naomi found her hesitancy completely understandable considering Seven’s woefully lacking literary background.

After all, Seven was the only adult she knew who had never read or even heard of If You Give A Mouse a Cookie, the time-honored children’s literature classic.

Her child’s outrage at the unforgivable oversight on Seven’s part had flustered the Astrometrics officer and when the Borg retorted with the supposition that perhaps Captain Janeway had never heard of the book either, Naomi had proudly run off to get the copy of it Janeway herself had presented to her on her second birthday. Complete with a little note written on the inside cover:

Of course, by the fifth time they’d read and analyzed the tale, Naomi had been sorry she’d ever brought it up.

The holodeck doors opened and Seven entered, Naomi following behind, eyes wide as she contemplated what kind of holodeck program a Borg would like. She hardly registered the dimly lit stone walls and the intermittent sound of a baritone voice humming, concentrating instead on gripping Seven’s hand tightly and following impossibly close behind her.

She half expected to see a Borg drone or two, intent on completing some task or other. Or maybe even a cross-section of a sensor array that the two of them would recalibrate. Or a hundred other sedate, Borg-like things…many of them involving mathematics.

Which did not appeal to her in the slightest.

However, not a single one of all the things Naomi Wildman imagined during their brief journey came within a million light years of the sight that greeted her around the last turn in the dusty corridor.

The narrow passageway opened up into a vaulted room filled with warm, amber light and more…more…more stuff than Naomi had ever seen crammed into one space before. Her robin’s egg eyes, round as pancakes, darted from one incredible object to the next.

"Where are we?" she whispered urgently, not sure if she felt at all comfortable in the cluttered, cave-like scenario. After all, she had lived her entire life on a starship. And not just any starship, either. Captain Janeway’s Voyager was not a vessel that had ever been described as cluttered.

"This is the studio of Leonardo DaVinci, a Terran artist and inventor. Are you familiar with his works?"

Naomi’s face scrunched up in her ‘Just a minute, I’m thinking’ expression, one Seven was quite familiar with, especially when she had just ‘stumped’ the child with a particularly difficult equation or question. But Naomi’s was a persistent, if not entirely efficient, intellect and it never disappointed Seven.

Until now.

"Wait! I know!" Naomi smiled triumphantly. "He’s the painter who painted the ‘Moaning Lisa’, right?"

Seven was aghast. Apparently she had found the one person onboard who knew even less than she did about artistic endeavors and history. Something that did not surprise her when she considered those crewmembers who were primarily responsible for her friend’s education.

Samantha Wildman, though Naomi’s mother and no doubt a well-educated Human, was also a Biometrics officer whose talents tended to the analytic. She might appreciate art and artistic endeavors, but Seven suspected that she did not engage in any beyond the involvement of a spectator.

The Doctor, possibly the most overt of the three instructors with his artistic talents—if one could call his holophotography ‘art’—was also the one least likely to instruct Naomi in them. His appreciation of his own talent and his obsessive desire to display the results of it were not conducive to a tutorial environment.

And then there was Seven, herself. Though no doubt possessed of the proper techniques and abilities, not to mention the patience, required to instruct Naomi in art and art history, she was also—of the three—the least possessed of artistic knowledge, it having been removed by the Collective as ‘irrelevant’.

I will have to do, decided the Borg. We will teach each other.

Which she had recently learned was the most efficient and her most favorite method of instruction.

"The painting’s proper designation is the ‘Mona Lisa’," Seven corrected.

Before Naomi could acknowledge the correction, a loud, rotund man dressed in muted and paint-stained robes, flew at the pair as if from nowhere, his arms and mouth stretched wide in nearly identical smiles.

"Angela!" he bellowed. "Come in! Come in!" He grasped each of the Borg’s arms in his strong but gentle grip. "You are a pleasant sight for my old eyes, my friend. Have you come for a lesson today, eh?" He looked around expectantly, concerned eyes lighting upon hers again after a moment. "And where is our Caterina? She is not with you?"

Seven looked nervously at Naomi, who was watching the entire exchange with complete and utter fascination, uncertainty warring with delight in her young features.

"The Captain is very busy," she said hesitantly, unsure how much the hologram might reveal if she did not divert his attention. "However, I have asked Naomi Wildman to accompany me today. She is my…friend."

Seven looked down, smiling slightly at the girl who simply beamed. She had never used that word aloud to describe any person in her life and promptly decided it was a most appropriate title to bestow upon the small Human, especially if it caused her to smile in such a way.

"Ahhh!" exclaimed the holographic artist, swooping down over the child as if just noticing her for the first time. "What do we have here? Una bambina? A friend of Sette’s? How wonderful!" He stuck his hand out to shake Naomi’s. "Welcome then, Naomi Wildman! Any friend of Angela’s is welcome here!"

"Thank you, sir!" The little girl looked like she might actually salute the Maestro, her slender form coming to immediate parade attention. But she merely held out her hand and shook the aging painter’s with a strength that seemed to surprise him.

His eyebrow’s shot to his hairline and he laughed, rubbing the appendage more in jest than in actual injury.

"She is a strong one, eh, Angela?" he commented, ruffling Naomi’s strawberry blond hair.

Naomi interrupted Seven before she could respond, an exasperated frown darkening her normally sunny face.

"Why does he keep calling you ‘Angela’?" Before the stunned Borg could answer, the youngster whirled on Leonardo, her hands perched on her hips. "Her name is Seven! Call her by her name!"

"Naomi Wild—" Seven’s attempt to calm the unusually annoyed girl was drowned out by a loud, deep, rich belly laugh that filled the room like the scent of fresh-baked cinnamon bread, warm and sweet.

"No, Angela," he said. "Do not stop her questions. How else is she to learn?"

The holographic painter leaned forward and put his arm around the young girl, the considerable folds of fabric from his tunic and robes behaving in a very wing-like manner as the child disappeared almost completely from view. He moved them a slight distance away from the Astrometrics officer, conspiratorially, as if sharing a secret.

"Ah, Little One," he whispered. "I mean no disrespect to our Sette, our Seven. I call her Angela as a pet name because that is what she is, no?" He turned them both around to face the young blond woman who stood with perfect posture, her hands clasped behind her back, her head tilted slightly to one side, a look of pleasant concentration upon her alabaster features. The blue and gray uniform she wore seemed to bring out the azure in her pale eyes, making them larger and brighter.

"Do you not see an angel there?" he asked, pointing.

Naomi blinked then giggled. For there, hanging from the ceiling behind Seven, was a model of an ancient flying machine, its papered wings seeming to spread from the Borg’s back.

"Now go with Sette, eh? She is better company than an old man." He nudged the child out of his embrace and watched, pleased, as she raced to Seven, catching the older woman's hand in her own.

"I am curious, Naomi Wildman," began Seven as they walked up the stairs to the loft where two empty easels stood. "Has no one ever called you by a ‘pet name’?"

The young Ktarian’s smile faded. "Promise you won’t laugh?"

Seven was instantly intrigued.

"I promise," she said solemnly.

"Well," began the child, biting her lip. She didn’t seem at all anxious to relate this bit of information. "Sometimes my mother calls me…" She paused, eyeing the Borg nervously, as if distrusting her promise. She took a deep breath.

"Noodlebug. Sometimes she calls me Noodlebug."

The metallic crescent above Seven’s left eye arched high as she contemplated the name.

"Indeed," she said, her voice curiously devoid of any inflection.

Naomi wasn’t buying it at all.

"You said you weren’t going to laugh!" she accused, scowling.

"I was not aware that I was," replied the Astrometrics officer, amused.

"You were," replied Naomi, certainty in her disgust-laden voice. "Only when you laugh, it comes out sounding like ‘Indeed.’"

Her friend’s imitations of her own formal tone and demeanor charmed Seven no end.

"Indeed," she repeated, completely unable to resist teasing the girl.

"See? There you go again!"

The Borg said nothing, only quirked her lips into an impish half-grin.

Janeway settled herself into her flight chair, preparing to spend the next hour or so not thinking about the four canisters perched ominously behind her.

It wasn’t that she distrusted her crew’s abilities, necessarily. It was more a reaction to teachings ingrained in her since her days as a cadet at the academy. Those ‘Blood in the Cockpit’ holomovies shown during every cadet’s Shuttlecraft Flight & Safety course were legendary for their gruesome detail and their ability to linger with a person well into their career.

Well, they certainly stayed with me, that’s for sure, she thought, glancing around the close confines of the shuttle a little uneasily.

With supreme effort, the captain firmly turned her thoughts away from the canisters. Quickly, as it often did now when faced with idle time, her mind drifted to thoughts of Seven and the recent discovery she had made about her "standoffish" Borg.

Kathryn Janeway was able to keep up the ruse that she was simply wandering her ship with no real destination in mind for quite some time.

The visits to Astrometrics and Engineering were, of course, entirely appropriate, as she hadn’t indulged in a surprise inspection of either department for more than six months. Not that she stayed long enough now to make more than a cursory sweep of the officers on duty.

Her stroll by the mess hall was simply a means for observing her crew in their off time, something she deemed an important gauge of morale. If the brevity of her stay and her subsequent inability to accurately recall which crewmembers she had seen there bothered her at all, she gave no indication of it.

By the time she reached Cargo Bay 2, however, she was forced to acknowledge that her wandering was, in actuality, a methodical Search and Find mission. One that was failing miserably.

"Computer, locate Seven of Nine." She stood gazing at the empty alcove in the cargo bay, a slight frown unbalancing her brow.

"Seven of Nine is in Holodeck 2," replied the computer helpfully.

The captain was surprised.

Seven had told her recently, during one of their aborted dates, that she’d "convinced" the holographic Maestro to continue their lessons. But she hadn’t thought the young woman would actually return there alone.

And then she wondered why she had come to that conclusion.

It’s not as if we’ve discussed using the program only when we’re together, she admitted, though that was exactly what she had assumed would be the case.

And when exactly is that, Kate? asked another part of her brain, one that seemed happiest when brutally honest. Every moment you’ve spent or attempted to spend with her over the last week has been cut short or snatched away. Maybe she got tired of waiting for you.

Kathryn felt a bit sick at the thought.

Within seconds, she was on a turbolift heading for the holodeck.

Of course, she could be running a completely different program, she told herself, feeling marginally cheered by the thought. However, her cheer disappeared when she arrived at the door and read quite plainly the file name for the DaVinci program on the control panel.

And that Seven was not alone.

Before she could fully catalog and examine all the reasons why entering the holodeck was not the best idea, she had set the doors to open at the base of the servant’s stairs which, when taken upward, would lead to an anteroom behind the loft where they took their lessons. With an electric green fury that was not familiar to her at all, she nearly took the stairs two at a time…

…halting abruptly when she came into view of the loft.

"Are you certain this is the correct implementation of this medium?"

Seven of Nine sat at her easel, peering closely at the index finger of her right hand. Or more specifically, the bright red substance upon it.

Her companion, sitting happily in the Borg’s lap, sighed heavily.

"It’s called ‘finger-painting’ for a reason, Seven. Here." She grabbed Seven’s hand and touched it to a large sheet of blinding white paper. "Now make a shape or something."

The Borg eyed Naomi dubiously.

"Go on," coaxed the little Ktarian, smiling encouragingly.

Seven nodded then pulled her finger around in a circle. She took a small breath and added two dots and a curved line, approximating the placement of eyes and a mouth.

"This is crude," she said, not sure she could appreciate something so unsophisticated.

"It would be more ‘efficient’," said the child, emphasizing Seven’s favorite word, "if you did it like this." And she promptly dipped her whole hand into a pot of blue paint, pressing it to the paper with zeal. She quickly added dots of yellow and red and some small, green, triangular shapes obviously intended to be feet of some kind. She finished with a flourish of purple squiggles that appeared to be some sort of feather growth or appendage.

"There."

Seven looked at the painting and then at the child who, in her enthusiasm, had covered herself in pigment nearly up to her elbows.

"There is more paint on you than on the paper," she remarked.

Naomi only rolled her eyes. "That’s the whole point, Seven!" She picked up two pots of paint, one blue and one red. "Now you try."

The young woman regarded the paint for a long moment before her lips curved into a wide, rare smile.

"I will comply," she said and she stuck her entire right hand into the container of red.

Kathryn had watched for another ten minutes, captivated by Seven’s glee in the experiment, hard-pressed not to laugh when the prim Borg had ended up more paint-covered than her partner in crime.

The longer she had watched, though, the less she had felt the desire to laugh. Instead, a long-buried part of her had risen up, sporting a strong and rather petulant desire to call off the entire away mission in order to spend the time with Seven, wanting to connect with her and share in that rare and playful moment. Of course, a more familiar, duty-bound part of her had dismissed the idea as patently ridiculous, a luxury a captain could not afford.

Particularly a captain that had stranded her crew 40,000 light years from home.

Janeway sighed and shook herself out of her daydream, looking around the silent cabin of the shuttle as the away team made its way to the planet’s surface. She wondered briefly if she could have chosen three more taciturn officers to accompany her on this mission.

Tuvok and B’Elanna were both naturally reticent, an odd similarity for two such opposite personalities. She didn’t know if Ara was naturally quiet or if it was simply a symptom of her feeling out of her depth on this mission.

She surreptitiously studied the young woman as she bent her head to the controls of the shuttle, fingers dancing lightly through some minor course adjustment. Input chirrups ceased for a moment and the ensign nervously glanced out the forward viewport, her eyes sweeping the particle storm for pockets of debris or whatever other danger she feared lurked in the whorls of radiation and dust. She made another course correction and then froze, one hand poised over her navigational pad.

It was just the slightest of movements, hardly even a flicker in her direction, but Janeway knew the ensign had caught her staring. The young woman’s posture improved instantly, almost defiantly, and with an efficient snap of her head, she sent her long, ebony braid over her shoulder and down her back.

The captain suppressed the frown that came to her lips and concentrated on finding something less cognizant of her observations to watch, turning to look into the swirling silver-green haze of radiation visible through the port viewport.

I must be losing my touch, she lamented, remembering that this was the second time in as many hours that she’d been caught ‘spying’. Of course, Naomi Wildman had been less inclined to remain quiet about her discovery until Janeway had put one finger to her lips to shush her. She’d been very surprised indeed to see the little girl look from Seven to herself and then wink, as if in complete understanding.

That child is too smart for her own good, she thought wryly. Thanks to Seven, in part anyway.

A small smile curved her lips for a brief moment.

The thought, when it sank in, rocked Janeway to her core, almost jolting her out of her seat. Then her startled brain caught up with what was happening around her, coming to attention as another impact nearly knocked her to the deck.

"Report!" she snapped, her steely gaze coming to rest on Ara who remained rooted in her own seat despite the catastrophic turbulence they were experiencing.

"We’re entering the last band of radiation in the atmosphere, Captain. It’s more dense here." B’Elanna gripped the sides of her console with Klingon determination.

"Impulse engines are affected," announced their pilot, her hands a blur over her controls. "Attempting to compensate."

For one blessed moment the concussions seemed to cease. The four crewmembers stared out into the kaleidoscope of greens and grays that whirled about them, nearly breathing a collective sigh of relief.

But then the sound came. Like the engines themselves were screaming.

"No effect," barked Tuvok just as another concussion hit, this one finally uprooting the captain from her seat, sending her to the floor in a heap. The security chief reached down to assist her but she waved him away.

"How much longer until we’re free of this storm?"

"Another three minutes, Captain," replied B’Elanna. As if on cue, the shudders increased in intensity and the Klingon woman was forced to abandon her controls and concentrate solely on not flying across the cabin, her nails digging into the fabric-covered seat for all they were worth. Her frustrated howl harmonized nicely with the whine of the engines.

"Structural integrity is beginning to fail," remarked Tuvok above the cacophony. "Down by 11 percent."

Janeway bit off a curse.

"Are transporters functional?"

The shuttle itself seemed to answer her when two control panels behind her blew, sending a shower of sparks over the gaseous compound containers. Fortunately, the precautionary shields B’Elanna had insisted upon erecting around the containers were still functional. The protective blue field buzzed into existence as another shower of sparks fell from the cabin’s ceiling.

"Not anymore, Captain," said the Engineering chief in a voice that was one part incredulity and two parts rage. "Secondary systems are down."

"Structural integrity down by 27 percent," stated Tuvok and Janeway thought his announcements might quickly become the Voice of Doom.

"We won’t last in this much longer! Ideas!" she snapped.

Ara glanced at each of her superior officers then took a breath, steeling herself.

"We need to lower the shields and shut down the engines," she said sharply, just loud enough to be heard over the shearing sound of the atmospheric chaos outside.

"What?!" B’Elanna gaped at the ensign as if she’d just suggested they adjourn for the day and have a tea party.

Ara ignored her.

"They’re fighting the force of the storm. If we shut them down, we will become inert. We will sink—"

"Yeah! Like a rock!"

"Lieutenant!" snapped Janeway. B’Elanna fell silent.

"What about once we clear the storm? We’ll need those engines to land, Ensign."

Lerano’s eyes, usually a light chestnut, suddenly became sharp and dark.

"They’ll be there, Captain."

"Captain," interrupted Tuvok. "That may not be entirely accurate. The radiation may have an unforeseen effect on the engines. Once they are off, we may not be able to bring them online again."

Ara’s gaze never once left Janeway’s.

"I can do this, Captain."

Two seconds of silence. Two seconds to make her decision.

"You had better, Ensign." The captain’s tone left no room for argument.

Ara answered with a curt nod and turned to her controls, making the necessary adjustments.

"Structural integrity down by 43 percent," offered Tuvok.

"Shutting down shields and impulse engines. Now."

Ara touched the controls and everything stopped. The scream of the engines, the teeth-rattling turbulence…everything stopped as the shuttle relied only upon Biia T’aok’s gravity to pull them through the storm.

No one made a sound.

Tuvok reached down once more in an effort to help the captain up from the deck but she waved him off a second time, her head cocked, listening for any shred of warning that something was going to go wrong. One thing was all that was needed. One small thing, like an errant asteroid or even a badly aimed phaser blast, and the shuttle would simply detonate with more destructive power than the average hydrogen bomb.

Much more.

Finally—and with little more than a hiccup—the shuttle dropped out of the storm and into the calm atmosphere 3 kilometers above the planet’s surface.

Fifteen seconds passed, then twenty.

"Ensign?" said Janeway worriedly.

"Attempting to bring the engines online now, Captain." Her long fingers flittered over her console and Janeway found herself unable to keep from staring at them, willing them to succeed as she could do little to assist, especially from her position on the floor. Never before had she felt like such a fifth wheel. Even the cargo was more useful than she was on this mission.

Forty-eight seconds passed.

"Come on, Ara, this isn’t funny anymore!" snarled B’Elanna.

The Bajoran gave no indication that she heard the Klingon.

"Got it!" she said, punching the control pad with vigor.

The shuttle lurched unexpectedly, throwing B’Elanna from her flight chair. Her short cry of surprise was cut off when she landed with a thud near the captain’s knees.

She wasn’t happy.

"Come here often, Lieutenant?" asked Janeway as her Engineering chief looked up. The comforting hum of the now-working impulse engines filled the cabin.

"Oh, ha ha," muttered B’Elanna, picking herself up off the floor. "At least I have the sense to get up—" Another unexpected jolt sent the lieutenant back to the deck.

"Oops," said Ara, glancing smugly over her shoulder.

B’Elanna just growled.

Samantha Wildman sat in semi-darkness, watching streams of data flow over the tiny screen of a PADD she held in her hand. Stars floated behind her in the constant night of space and the soft strains of a stringed instrument native to her husband’s culture kept her company in the emptiness of her living quarters.

For the fourth time in an hour, she looked at the door to her child’s room.

She was worried.

Naomi had returned from her outing with Seven of Nine exhausted. So exhausted, in fact, that she had politely requested to be allowed to skip her supper and go straight to bed, which had both surprised the young ensign and caused her to wonder just exactly what the little girl and the ex-Borg had been up to. But not wanting to seem suspicious of the two, Samantha had simply agreed to Naomi’s request, kissing her ridged forehead just before she’d disappeared into her room.

She had suspected that the child would sleep for a few hours, then waken hungry and in a foul mood, as often happened when she took mid-afternoon naps. But now, six hours later, with no sign of Naomi, Sam debated whether or not she should call Seven and find out exactly which activities the two of them had been participating in. She even got so far as to raise her hand to tap her communicator…before realizing she was being paranoid.

Certainly, Naomi hadn’t seemed injured or upset. Only tired. And it wasn’t unusual for small children to over-excite themselves and then sleep through dinner once in a while. Even if it had never happened specifically to Naomi before.

Sam sighed and looked down at the forgotten PADD in her hands. Realizing she wasn’t going to get much more work done, she decided to call it an early night herself.

Maybe Naomi had the right idea, she thought, forcing herself to relax. Maybe we both could use some extra sleep.

She tossed the PADD with some others on the end of her sofa and leaned over to gather the teapot and teacups leftover from Seven’s visit earlier.

"Computer, discontinue musical selection," she ordered. The whimsical songs of the spiraled Injalaban, a Ktarian stringed instrument her husband had always wanted to learn to play, ended abruptly.

The little implosion of sudden silence that followed gently dissolved with a small sound from behind Naomi’s door.

Samantha smiled and looked up, forgetting the pot and cups, expecting to see her daughter wander through the door, rubbing an eye with a balled fist and scowling crankily. She waited and waited some more, the moment finally becoming stale.

Naomi did not appear.

At first, Sam thought she had imagined the sound, which had been nothing more really than a muffled knock, the sound of two solid items connecting as if jostled gently. When she heard it the second time, a frown slid firmly in place upon her features and she left the dirty dishes, walking purposefully to her daughter’s door.

She half expected to see her child sitting in her bed, dejectedly playing a solo game of KadisKot while listening to her empty belly rumble. When the door slid open, however, she found Naomi on the floor, crouched over something she couldn’t quite see, though she thought it might be a container of some kind. Naomi’s shoulders moved rhythmically, as if her small arms and hands were working clay or kneading dough. And she heard muted, wet sounds, something like the sounds one made while eating a soft substance, like pudding.

"Naomi?" She deliberately made her voice soft, not wanting to startle her daughter. "Honey, what are you doing?"

The little girl froze for a moment, her whole body rigid with fear. She began apologizing immediately.

"I’m sorry, Mom. I couldn’t help it. I was hungry and it tasted so good…"

She trailed off weakly, not knowing how to explain.

"Naomi, what are you eating?" Sam couldn’t quite see past her daughter’s hunched figure.

For a long moment, Naomi said nothing, rooted in place as if trying to will herself to disappear. Then the tension drained out of her, her shoulders slumping, resigned. Slowly she turned around.

"I couldn’t help it, Mom. Honest."

The child’s face and hands were covered in a sticky, ruby-black substance and Samantha yelped for the lights, thinking—in the dim light of the room—that Naomi was covered in blood. When the lights dutifully came up, revealing the chaotic remains of the child’s paint caddy and its neat little pots of bright paint, Samantha’s instant relief was drowned out by instant alarm.

"Naomi?" She didn’t quite know what to say. "You ate your paints? But sweetheart, why?"

Naomi hiccuped once and then began to cry, confusion and embarrassment ruddying her stained face. "I don’t know!" she cried, hiding her face behind her garish hands.

"Oh, honey, it’s okay," whispered Sam, wanting to go to the little girl, but afraid of frightening her. She knelt down to Naomi’s eye level. "Come here so I can take a look at you, okay?"

The little girl self-consciously stood up and timidly approached her kneeling mother. As she came more fully into the light, Sam gasped, shocked by the stark pallor of Naomi’s skin and the deep smudges of charcoal gray beneath her eyes. And then, hidden at first by the paint, she saw the raw, angry sores at the corners of Naomi’s mouth and eyes…and even around the bone flares along her forehead.

And she knew something was very, very wrong.

Without another word, Samantha gathered Naomi into her arms and headed out of her quarters.

"Mommy? Where are we going?" The young Ktarian’s voice was small and unsure.

Sam tried not to let her fear show through in her words, fighting the panic down and covering it with and brittle, bright voice that kept breaking no matter what she did.

"I just want the Doctor to take a look at you, honey, okay? Everything’s going to be fine. I promise. Shhhh. Hush now."

She repeated those words the entire way through the corridors, past all the gaping or frowning crewmates she passed along the way, their confusion or concern a blur to her. She practically sprinted the last few meters of her journey, bursting through Sickbay’s doors, her call of "Doctor!" halted by his sudden appearance at her side.

"Ensign Wildman? What’s going on?"

The Emergency Medical Hologram bustled the two of them over to a bio bed where Samantha reluctantly released Naomi. She suddenly didn’t seem to know what to do with her arms now that her child was out of them. They fluttered about as she nervously pushed her hair out of her eyes and then balled her hands at her sides. Finally, she crossed her arms tightly across her chest as if to keep her entire body from flying about the room.

Sam told the Doctor everything she knew in the jumbled mishmash speech of a severely frightened parent while he waved the sensor nodule of a medical tricorder over the child. From her arrival back at their quarters to discovering her confused child devouring her paints. When she finished, the Doctor did not make his trademark "Hmmmm…" sound, nor did his frown disappear to be replaced by sarcasm.

Samantha thought she might cry.

"Naomi, please lay down," the Doctor said gently. The little girl slumped bonelessly onto the smooth surface of the bed, curling onto her side and staring, emotionless and wide-eyed, at nothing.

"Are you cold?" he asked and when she nodded, he found a silvery solar blanket and tucked it under her chin. "You can sleep if you’d like. I know you must be very tired."

She dutifully closed her eyes and he frowned even more deeply, taking Samantha’s arm and leading her out of earshot of the child. Satisfied that she couldn’t hear them, he did not beat around the bush.

"She has a rampant case of anemia, Ensign. How long has this been going on?"

As far as he could tell and for all he knew, Naomi had been suffering for weeks.

"She came home a little tired. She said she wanted to go right to bed. That was six hours ago."

"Hours?"

Samantha nodded.

"She didn’t have the sores then? She wasn’t so pale you could almost see through her?"

Samantha shook her head. "If she’d looked like that when she came home, do you think I would have waited six minutes to bring her up here, let alone six hours?"

Stunned by her vehemence, the Doctor seemed suddenly to realize he’d been vaguely accusing Samantha of neglect or—even worse—abuse.

"Of course not, Ensign. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded." He turned to look at the paint-stained little girl, his frown intensifying. "I just don’t understand it. Even taking into account her Ktarian heritage, anemia shouldn’t come on that quickly. This is end stage anemia. This is weeks worth of damage!"

"She will be all right, won’t she, Doctor?"

The hologram turned his grim features back to Samantha, despising with every binary code in his matrix that he had nothing better to offer her than "I don’t know." But he didn’t know and he couldn’t change that right now. With the child’s Ktarian heritage and the unusually aggressive nature of what was commonly a fairly mild mineral imbalance, he couldn’t even be sure traditional treatment would work.

"I will attempt traditional treatments, of course, but I’m not sure they will be effective. We’ll have to run some tests, find out more about what’s going on inside of her. She’ll have to stay here, I’m afraid. Until I’m sure she’s out of danger."

Samantha felt as if her skin might just peel away and float off. Her head buzzed. A tiny part of her realized that she was in shock but the rest of her swept that thought away, under the rug of darkness that was blanketing her reason.

She was a Biometrics officer; she knew what danger the Doctor was referring to.

Eventual heart failure.

She wanted to gut the Universe itself, flip it upside down and throttle it, force it to tell her why! Why Naomi! Who was to blame?

Then…

"Seven of Nine."

Her voice was quiet and cool, a still pond that hid deep waters.

"Ensign?" The Doctor, who had been watching Samantha with growing concern, recognizing the signs of shock, frowned now at her apparent calmness.

Samantha didn’t answer.

But when she fixed her gaze upon him and grinned with a primal malevolence the likes of which he had never before seen, he wished for the first time in his existence that he could shiver.

She was out the doors before he had quite recovered.

Biia T’aok, the planet, was not much more than a cinder in space. A burnt-out, almost waterless environment that had the good fortune to be rich in minerals and ores, providing the Mildri with a viable, tradable resource. And for a society whose space savvy was restricted to a few million kilometers of oft-patrolled trade routes and a small fleet of tiny, notably fragile ships, such a resource meant continued existence.

As far as Janeway knew, the only goods the Mildri would willingly trade for were water and food.

Evolution for the Mildri must have been very harsh, she thought, frowning as she and the rest of her away team descended deeper into the heart of the capital city to where the S’Gwari’—the Holy Enclosure—apparently resided.

The team followed the Sovereign and his entourage of guards and advisors, and Janeway, knowing Tuvok was busy cataloguing their route to the subterranean site, felt she could finally take a few moments to indulge the anthropologist in her. She began by studying the Mildri form, imagining their rise from primitive insectoids to the cautiously spacefaring race they had become.

Their height was their most impressive feature…at least to her humanoid sensibilities. Each Mildri was more than a head taller than Tuvok, the tallest of her away team, and each of them walked on two of their six appendages, those obviously having evolved longer and stronger in order to support their weight. What would have been their knees, however, bent in the opposite direction of her own and she wondered what evolutionary benefit that could possibly provide them.

Of the remaining four appendages, two were primary usage, also long, and two were secondary, rather small and almost vestigial rather than functional. Janeway suspected that a few hundred more years of genetic change would see those appendages completely disappear, making the Mildri a truly bipedal species.

No Mildri wore clothing of any sort, which was not only appropriate for their planetary climate but for their cold-bloodedness as well. They did not have skin so much as a toughened exoskeleton—usually black or very dark brown—which provided them the necessary means of synthesizing the heat from their sun. Janeway suspected that their ships were the only place they would need artificial heat provided, which helped explain the small, single or double occupancy construction of most of their fleet. And its restriction to short patrol sorties. Only the Sovereign himself had ships that could accommodate larger groups and longer distances.

The Mildri were not a decorative species. The only ornamentation she had witnessed among them thus far was a ritual painting of rings and half-rings upon their dorsal exoskeletons. The colors they chose were desert colors: sandstone, ochre, rust, and copper. Blues and greens were virtually unknown and correspondingly Janeway craved the cool colors like never before. She became conscious of Voyager’s innate coolness, its silvers, grays, and blues standing out in her mind’s eye. She found herself wishing that she had brought even one science officer along, just so the blue uniform could provide some visual relief.

Or better yet, I should have brought Seven, she thought wistfully. In her blue and gray outfit, the one that matches her eyes…

As if the very thought of the Borg had the power to alter the climate, Janeway noticed a sudden drop in temperature and she instinctively slowed, dismissing her momentary daydream and concentrating on her surroundings as if for the first time. She was not the only one who noticed the temperature change. Ara looked mildly perplexed as she searched the carved silicate overhead for the origin of the coolness. B’Elanna’s reaction, though, was more in her general attitude, as if every one of her cells had breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Captain," said Tuvok, low so only she could hear. The entourage ahead of them had come to a halt in front of a large and surprisingly ornate stone doorway. The guards formed themselves into two neat lines, one on either side of the door. The Sovereign and his advisors faced her team.

<"Mildri welcome softshell guests to the Holy Enclosure,"> said the Sovereign. He then turned to one of his advisors and lowered his head while the junior advisor placed a long, narrow, and intricately woven piece of cloth around his leader’s neck, letting the ends dangle loose and close to the ground.

<"Because softshells cover softshells already, softshells do not have to wear the honor silk.">

As she often did when speaking to a species so linguistically removed from her own, Janeway sent a silent thank you to the inventors of the universal translator. Even still, when the language was particularly intricate and prone to unusual idioms, like mildri, the captain found she had to be on constant guard lest an unusual phrase strike her the wrong way. It would in no way enhance her hosts’ opinion of her or her species if she suddenly began to chuckle when they spoke.

With many long hours of trade negotiations under her belt already, she was quite used to the Mildri name for her group. Though, the first time she had heard herself referred to as a ‘softshell’ could have gone either way for a long, tremulous moment. Now, the designation only inspired a vague craving for Snow King legs and fresh lemon-garlic butter.

One other significant linguistic challenge existed with the Mildri…the fact that they used absolutely no pronouns whatsoever. Janeway wondered how many times she had heard the phrase "Mildri Sovereign recognizes Janeway, softshell leader of softshells from large flyer named Voyager" during the first few days of negotiations, then quickly abandoned her guess, feeling another headache coming on. She considered it a feat of some note that she had managed to shorten her name to "Janeway of softshells" after only three days, sure as she was that she would have willingly broken the Prime Directive just to introduce the words ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘you’, or ‘it’ to the language.

<"Mildri decide to share secret of Holy Enclosure with lost softshells, because—of all the Others Mildri have encountered—softshells alone travel without softshell egg-bearers.">

The Sovereign turned and depressed a pressure plate affixed to the left of the doorway.

Tuvok raised an inquiring eyebrow at Janeway and she shrugged in return. She remembered that the most important question of their initial evaluation by the Mildri all those nights ago had been "Do Others in large flyer travel with egg-bearers?" The term ‘egg-bearer’ had been somewhat hastily determined to mean ‘pregnant woman’ and Janeway had been all too quick to assure the Mildri scout ship that no, Voyager did not have any ‘egg-bearers’ aboard. Why that fact should now accord them the honor of a visit to a secret religious shrine, she could not fathom.

The round stone door rolled away and two guards, also wearing the honor silks, preceded the Sovereign and his advisors into the huge anteroom beyond. Janeway led her away team through the opening as well, almost gasping when she came into view of the vaulted ceiling. B’Elanna did gasp and Ara made a low, surprised sound. Only Tuvok managed to maintain his composure.

No one noticed that Prial H’soh had suddenly joined the group.

<"H’soh sees that softshells appreciate Mildri prayers."> he said, indicating the ceiling with one three-phalange claw.

The most vibrant shades of blue and green were woven into complex, almost lyrical swoops and arcs and curves above their heads. The predominant pattern seemed to be the completed circle and it was oft repeated. Janeway felt the painting almost as a sound, the unmistakable urge to dance making her sway self-consciously.

"What does it mean?" she asked softly, realizing there had to be a message included in the design.

<"The prayer is a prayer to the Egg Before All Eggs. The prayer is a prayer of gratitude and humbleness, asking the Egg Before All Eggs to protect Mildri egg-bearers and nourish Mildri egg-bearers with gifts of water and food.">

Janeway continued to stare at the ornate design, stunned by the juxtaposition of intricacy and simplicity. On a visceral level, certain things about Biia T’aok made more sense to her now.

The color choices for the small bits of personal expression on the planet’s surface reflected those things the Mildri lived with daily: heat, light, sand, ore.

Here, though, where the air was moist and cool, where she suspected they hid their crops from the unforgiving and arid heat, where she could taste water, sweet and fresh, in every breath…here, it made sense to use blues and greens in their prayers.

Janeway breathed deeply, forcing her legs to be still. She faced one of the three corridors leading away from the vaulted anteroom.

"The Egg Before All Eggs must have been very generous this season," she said, smiling.

The Prial and the Sovereign looked at each other, nearly speechless, their large, black eyes unreadable.

<"Mildri acknowledge that Great Egg was generous this season,"> said the Prial slowly. <"Mildri want to know how Janeway of softshells knows Great Egg was generous.">

The captain blinked, sensing the veiled hostility of the demand. She felt rather than saw Tuvok and B’Elanna close ranks around her.

"I smell something sweet and clean coming from this direction," she explained. "I assumed the scent came from your edibles. Have I offended the Mildri in some way?"

A round of clicks and hisses shattered the brief silence that followed her question. Janeway, the most familiar with the Mildri, relaxed immediately, recognizing Mildri laughter. The rest of her team still bristled around her, apparently not having caught on.

"They’re laughing," she said carefully through a frozen smile.

"Oh." B’Elanna glanced at Ara, who—despite herself—grinned somewhat contritely. She knew then that she hadn’t been the only one to misinterpret the sounds. "Oh," she repeated, more to stifle her own sudden need to laugh. She immediately found something other than Ara to watch, sure that if she met the ensign’s eyes once more she would dissolve into giggles right there.

Tuvok raised a disapproving eyebrow at the engineer and took a step away from the captain, standing down from his battle-readiness as easily as he had summoned it.

The Prial raised one claw and pointed at another of the three corridors.

<"Mildri edibles,"> he said. <"Grown and made.">

The Sovereign raised one claw and pointed to the opposite corridor.

<"Mildri water, collection and processing.">

Janeway frowned. "Then where does this corridor lead?"

<"Pathway to greatest of all Mildri treasures!"> said the Prial, as he started toward the corridor.

<"Greater even than all water in Mildri hive!"> added the Sovereign, following his holy advisor.

Janeway shrugged at the curious looks from her team and followed the Mildri into the mouth of the darkened hallway. Tuvok and B’Elanna, loathe to let the captain out of their sight for even a moment, hurried after her.

Only Ara hesitated.

"Why do I suddenly have a bad feeling about this?" she muttered to herself. Then realizing she was about to be left behind, she broke into a lazy trot and went after her superior officers.

"Wake up!"

Samantha Wildman’s frustrated scream fell ineffectually on Seven of Nine’s ears, unhearing during her regeneration period. The pale young woman remained upright and unconscious in her alcove, firmly unaware of Samantha’s building fury.

The young mother growled, stalking quickly to the other side of the control console, eyes darting over the unfamiliar Borg technology. She activated several random controls, hoping at least to manually cause the computer to override the Borg’s regeneration cycle. An unimpressive chirp was her only reward.

"Damn it, Seven, WAKE UP!" She let her fists crash onto the panel, ignoring the slicing pain and the sparks that resulted. The soft, feminine tones of the shipboard computer filled the cargo bay.

"2147 hours. Regeneration cycle incomplete."

The wrist braces automatically released and Seven’s eyes fluttered open. Mildly annoyed by the unwanted interruption to what had been the first regeneration period she had successfully initiated in more than four days, she took a moment to focus and was surprised to see the cause of the override.

"Ensign Wildman?" She stepped out of her alcove and closer to the officer. "May I assist you?"

Seven clearly saw that Sam wasn’t on duty, dressed as she was in a casual civilian outfit. Seven herself was off duty for another ten hours. However, something in the ensign’s expression said it would be inappropriate of her to address Samantha in the familiar, as she had recently been invited to do.

Inappropriate and most unwelcome.

A flash of vibrant color where none was expected caught Seven’s eyes, pulling her focus to Samantha’s hands. Blood, fresh and bright, dripped silently from them, staining the deck below.

"You are damaged," stated Seven, somewhat startled by the sight.

Sam ignored her.

"What did you do to Naomi?" she asked, her voice sharp and unpleasant, her usually pale eyes flashing in the dim cargo bay.

Seven’s eyes widened perceptibly. The indefinable something in the ensign’s expression suddenly became all too clear to her. Sam was angry. Very angry. And obviously whatever was causing the anger had something to do with Naomi and herself. Beyond that, Seven was at a loss.

"Ensign?" she said, tilting her head to one side in that expression of confusion and polite interest that was wholly hers.

Sam clenched her hands into fists, garishly painting them with wide ribbons of darker, sticky blood. A tempest of crimson rain spattered the floor and her outfit as those fists shook at her sides.

"Answer the QUESTION!"

Seven blanched. She had faced anger from others before. Primarily from Janeway, in the beginning, when her ideals were in conflict with Seven’s own, causing the two women to clash on more than one occasion. Or from B’Elanna Torres, with whom she had always shared a contentious relationship.

She had faced irritation, distrust, arrogance, contempt, annoyance, ridicule, and even hatred before. Such was the nature of being Borg, particularly among a people so philosophically and emotionally opposed to the Borg’s scientific methods and practices.

But she had never faced this emotion before.

Rage.

White-hot, savage, instinctual, unfathomable rage.

She swallowed carefully. "I do not understand, Ensign. Please explain."

Sam ignored the hail from the EMH and began to pace in tight, feral little circles, an agitated lioness caged.

"Don’t play naïve little Borg with me, Seven," she spat. "I know this is your fault."

The Doctor’s urgent tone coupled with Samantha’s total obliviousness of him struck Seven and she quickly began to take stock of the situation.

Seven felt entirely out of her element here. She recognized the need to calm Samantha, to assist her in behaving more rationally, but she was unsure of how to proceed. She wondered what Kathryn would do in her situation.

Keep her talking, Annika. The voice in her head now spoke in Kathryn’s rich, deep tones. Keep her focus on Naomi, not on you.

"Has something happened to Naomi, Ensign?" Seven was careful to remain as still as possible, knowing somehow that any movement on her part would be taken as a threat.

Sam stopped pacing for a moment, a bleakness coming over her the likes of which Seven had never witnessed before. Though few might have guessed it possible considering her usually cool exterior, the young Borg ached to see such a desolate expression on her new friend’s face.

"She’s dying, Seven," whispered the young mother, tears filling her eyes. For a single moment, it looked to the young Borg as if Sam would simply fold into herself and drop, useless and bereft, to the deck plating. But then, beginning in the grief-darkened eyes, an inferno of madness and purpose swept over the ensign, returning her strength and her rage. Her entire body shook with it and a tiny part of Seven’s consciousness wondered at the will that kept Sam from launching herself across the short distance that separated them.

"She’s dying and it’s YOUR FAULT!" she roared. "Now tell me WHAT YOU DID TO MY DAUGHTER!"

Sam screamed at the interruption and tore her communicator from her chest, hurling it across the cargo bay into Seven’s alcoves where it exploded in an impressive shower of sparks and duranium shards. Her breathing was wild and erratic when she faced the Borg again.

Their eyes locked.

Naomi is…dying? The statement completely blind-sided Seven of Nine and she felt a strange sensation begin in her chest, a fluttering, buzzing emptiness that she realized could easily consume her reason if she did not control it. The consummately Borg part of her consciousness recognized the new emotion as panic and filed away its symptoms and effects for further study.

Seven didn’t understand. How could that be possible? She went over every nanosecond that she and the child had shared that day, looking for something, anything that could have been a warning to her that her friend was unwell and in danger. Other than an understandable fatigue that had finally prompted Seven to send the youngster home for "nutrition and regeneration"—against Naomi’s protests—she saw nothing that would have alerted her to a life-threatening medical condition. And certainly she had done nothing to harm the child.

Suddenly…

"You are in error," said Seven evenly and without the slightest doubt whatsoever.

The fire in Samantha’s eyes coalesced into a razor-edged beam of wrath.

"What did you say?" she asked, her voice little more than a guttural growl.

"I said you are in error, Ensign," repeated Seven, her vague offense at being held responsible for Naomi’s condition now giving way to indignation. "I have never harmed Naomi. It is impossible for me to do so."

Before Sam could react, the Doctor’s persistent voice erupted from Seven’s commbadge.

Seven’s words forgotten, Sam used the distraction to her best advantage, choosing that moment to spring at the Borg. Seven caught Samantha’s hands just before they gripped her throat, finding that her enhanced Borg strength gained her little against the fury of a terrified mother. She finally managed to pin the ensign’s arms to her side and they looked at each other, breathing heavily with their skirmish, halted at an impasse. The Doctor’s voice continued to blare at them from Seven’s communicator and both of them ignored it as best they could.

"You must listen to me, Samantha Wildman." Seven’s eyes bored into Sam’s. The cargo bay doors opened and three security officers rushed inside only to come to a confused stop upon seeing the two women. "I cannot harm Naomi."

"Why should I believe you?" hissed Samantha.

"Because I am Borg."

Samantha started, the incongruous statement playing serious havoc with her already compromised ability to reason.

"What?"

Seven turned the older woman around and forced her over to her work console. She positioned Sam in front of the small display monitor, careful to be firm but gentle with the Human, despite her resistance.

"Computer, display cortical disruption program omega-one. Authorization: Hansen delta nine."

"Authorization confirmed. Initiating," replied the computer and both Seven and Samantha watched as a series of schematics and a very complex, randomly-encrypted program streamed across the monitor.

Though Sam had no hope of ever completely understanding everything she saw, the bottom line was very clear. If for any reason Seven’s cortical implant or neural transceiver registered a command to assimilate or otherwise harm or injure any member of Voyager’s crew (but specifically Captain Janeway, Naomi Wildman, Samantha Wildman, B’Elanna Torres, the Doctor, or Neelix), regardless of whether the command came from the Borg hive-mind or some other source, a very specialized group of nanoprobes was to enter the cortical implant and render it completely nonfunctional before the command could be carried out. Essentially, what Samantha was looking at was Seven’s own personal self-destruct protocols.

"Oh my God," she breathed, placing her bloodied hands on the console for support.

Seven released Samantha’s arms, confident that she was finally regaining control of her reason.

"I cannot harm Naomi, Sam," she said quietly. "I cannot harm anyone on Voyager."

"Oh God," repeated Sam, her voice breaking. For the first time since the nightmare had begun, the young mother allowed herself the indulgence of tears, feeling them slide hot and bitter down her cheeks. Little raging rivulets of pain and fear and shame and remorse that, once started, she feared would never stop.

"What have I done?" she asked, staring blankly at her bloodstained hands.

Seven knew that Sam was not asking about her injury. But she lacked the words of comfort that would no doubt reassure the ensign. In fact, some part of her determined that there were no words currently in existence that could hope to reach the grieving woman. So Seven said nothing, relying on actions to bridge the chasm.

She gingerly put one arm around Samantha.

"I will escort you to Sickbay now," she said softly.

Sam looked up, gratitude shining through all the sorrow and pain flooding her eyes.

"Thank you, Seven."

Seven nodded in brief acknowledgement and gently began to guide her friend to the cargo bay doors, where the three security officers still stood. When the two women neared the doors, the three mustard-shouldered crewmembers parted in front of them, coming to attention silently, pensively, standing sentinel over their passage.

Two of the officers left immediately after the women.

The other lingered for a moment, stopping to gaze at the cold storage facility and its complement of Borg technology and various containers and hampers. He shook his dark head with something akin to dismay, eyes roaming quickly over the uninviting expanse. Then he turned, following his fellow officers out the doors, muttering something under his breath.

B’Elanna Torres broke the deafening silence with a derisive snort, causing Janeway to raise her hand, signaling her team to be still.

"Excuse me, Prial?" said the tiny, auburn-haired captain, her stature much more slight than the power and purpose radiating from her now. "I am not sure I understand the question." But Janeway had a good idea that she knew where the question was going and she didn’t like the implications…or the odds if there was a conflict as a result.

The Mildri religious leader gave a derisive snort of his own before repeating the question.

<"H’soh wishes to know if softshell egg-bearers are kept in so wonderful an enclosure on softshell homeworld?">

"Captain," interrupted Tuvok with soft urgency. "I believe our understanding of the term ‘egg-bearer’ has been in error. Perhaps the translation we arrived at on Voyager was agreed upon too hastily."

Janeway nodded and glanced around the cavern again. She felt the dread and disgust ripple down her spine as her eyes took in the small cells containing the Mildri egg-bearers, who were smaller and more colorful than their unadorned counterparts.

Their carapaces were darker as a rule, with unique markings in blues and greens that were obviously natural, not painted on. Under the auspices of sacred duty and holiness, these egg-bearers were confined to individual cells and waited on hand and foot by yet a third class of Mildri, the servant class, a singularly unimpressive group who scuttled to and fro between cells and levels with maddening speed and nervous energy.

But the servant class did not wait upon the egg-bearers because of their status as holy objects or because they were ill or infirm. No, the servant class waited upon the egg-bearers because they were physically unable to wait on themselves. Because they were ritually restrained.

It had been one of the last stops on the tour and Janeway still felt nauseous from the sight of it.

Under the guise of "beautification", specialized drills bore five-centimeter holes into the edges of each egg-bearers’ dorsal exoskeleton. A metal ring, usually brightly painted, was fed through each hole and then fused shut. Some egg-bearers sported more than five rings on each side, which effectively reduced their freedom of movement to nothing.

The noise the drills made was disturbing enough—a sickening whine combined with the unmistakable grating sound of a bit chewing through calcification and cartilage. Add to that the sound of keening that poured out of every cell and through every corridor, surrounding the silenced victim with the bitter honey of grief, and the cacophony became haunting.

Janeway’s eyes darkened to glints of frozen steel as she considered the Mildri Sovereign and his Holy Advisor.

She did not know a great deal about Mildri culture or rituals, their history or their evolution. But she did know one thing. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The term ‘egg-bearer’ did not simply mean "pregnant female"—though the captain was sure that was one of its meanings.

No, ‘egg-bearer’ was a gender classification. ‘Egg-bearer’ was the equivalent of ‘female’, the general term for the entire young-bearing segment of the Mildri population.

And for three of the four members of her own away team, herself included.

"I think we have had a misunderstanding, Prial," she said, her voice deliberately calm. She gave a small signal with her right hand and her three crewmembers slowly and casually stationed themselves in more defensible positions, all of which placed them strategically around her, though that had not been her design.

The Prial glanced from Janeway to his leader and back. He seemed aware of the sudden tension in the air.

<"H’soh does not understand.">

Janeway chose her words carefully, painfully aware that she and her team were outnumbered, outsized, and completely unarmed.

"When we originally spoke about the ‘egg-bearers’ and I told you that we did not have any aboard our ship, I was in error. You see, we had thought the term meant pregnant females and we haven’t traveled with one of those for several years. However, now that we have completed the tour of your Holy Enclosure, it is clear that the term refers to females in general."

H’soh tilted his head in the universal expression of confusion but something dark and malevolent glinted in his large eyes.

<"Then softshells travel with softshell egg-bearers?"> He made a gesture and the two processional guards flanked him.

Janeway’s eyes narrowed briefly.

"Perhaps we should have this discussion elsewhere," she offered tightly. The one thing she did not want was a confrontation here, below the surface, shielded by thousands of tons of rock and silicate and imprisoned by eons of religious tradition.

The Sovereign, silent until now, closed in on Janeway’s team and made another gesture. Two more guards appeared seemingly from thin air. They flanked him, their honor silks and paints marking them clearly as members of his elite guard.

<"The Sovereign thinks softshells and Mildri will discuss here. Now.">

B’Elanna dropped into a slight crouch, her sub-vocal growl raising the hairs on the back of the captain’s neck. To her left, Ensign Ara rolled fluidly into a position of readiness, displaying a somewhat unexpected skill in ‘street fighting’, a Maquis specialty. And though she couldn’t see him, Janeway knew Tuvok, too, was at the ready, his cool logic assessing the situation. Desperate to keep this mounting tension from disintegrating into a brawl, she gave the signal to hold.

H’soh clicked twice and gave a brief hiss. Laughter devoid of mirth.

<"Janeway of softshells must obey the Sovereign. Answer question! Does Janeway of softshells allow softshell egg-bearers on large flyer called Voyager?">

Her steely gaze did not falter. She drew herself up to her full height proudly.

"Janeway of softshells is an egg-bearer," she said quietly.

Knowing her words were a gauntlet thrown.

Knowing there was no taking them back.

Knowing there was nothing else to say.

Samantha and Seven came to a halt outside the turbolift they had just vacated. Seven raised the optical implant over her left eye curiously and tapped her communicator.

"Seven of Nine here."

Seven hesitated, her pale eyes coming to rest on Samantha.

"You go ahead, Seven. It’s not far to Sickbay from here. I’ll be okay." She offered the young woman a simple smile to emphasize the point.

Seven opened her mouth to speak, a frown settling between her eyes.

"I mean it, Seven. Go. Vorik sounded almost panicked." She grinned, the effect smoothing out the pain and worry on her face, reassuring Seven to no end. "Well, panicked for a Vulcan, anyway."

Seven nodded and quietly told Vorik she would join him shortly.

"I will come to Sickbay as soon as I am able, Sam," she said gravely, gripping the ensign’s forearm with solid concern.

"We’ll be waiting," said Sam. Then she turned and made her way up the corridor.

Seven watched her friend disappear around a corner then turned, re-entering the turbolift.

"Deck 11," she snapped, letting a completely uncharacteristic tone of impatience slip into her voice. Once the door to the turbolift had closed and she knew she was alone, Seven’s mask of cool indifference fell away, leaving an uncertain, shadowed look in its place.

The last 36 hours had been jarring to her, filled with new experiences and emotional resonance she did not think she’d been prepared for. Coupled with her inability to regenerate properly and the deep weariness that was the result, the young Borg felt a good deal less than fully functional.

She was also aware of a certain restlessness of body and a tight, uncomfortable feeling in her abdomen nearly strong enough to be pain. However, before she had much of a chance to analyze the sensation, the turbolift halted and she exited—finding herself face to face with Vorik, who was waiting patiently in the corridor.

Her mask of indifference snapped back into place.

"You wished to see me, Ensign?" she asked.

"Yes." He nodded in polite greeting then motioned for her to follow him to Engineering. "We have discovered an anomaly with the ore shipments from the surface. In Lieutenant Torres’ absence, I thought it best to ask for your assistance."

Seven’s optical implant rose slightly. "Indeed," she said.

The two of them entered Main Engineering, their brisk movements catching the eyes of those few crewmembers handling standard orbit operations. Vorik led Seven to a set of ore canisters arranged on a temporary workstation. One canister was contained a standard ore sample. The rest appeared to be filled with a crystalline substance and not ore at all.

Vorik indicated the canister containing unrefined ore.

"This sample was beamed aboard yesterday, approximately 21 hours ago."

He indicated the three other canisters.

"These ore samples were beamed aboard prior to that, the most recent one 48 hours ago."

Confusion gently swept across Seven’s face, rustling her usual composure like a breeze through leaves.

"But these canisters do not contain ore." Logic led her to the first obvious conclusion. "Has the ore been stolen and replaced with this substance?"

"The canisters have been in storage since their arrival, awaiting scheduled refinement and final processing. None of the stasis seals have been broken."

A frown appeared between Seven’s brows.

"Perhaps the ore was transported directly out of the containers, bypassing the stasis seals."

Vorik shook his head slightly. "Although I cannot be certain, it is not likely. All transporter and security logs have been thoroughly examined. No transporter on Voyager shows records of such activity. Nor do any of them show signs of being tampered with."

The Borg’s frown deepened and with it, the tightness in her abdomen increased significantly. She had the sudden thought that perhaps stress was causing the sensation. She dismissed both the notion and the abdominal irritation out of hand, forcing herself to focus on the problem before her instead.

After all, she was Borg. Certainly she could control a few contrary physical reactions.

"Perhaps the transport originated outside Voyager," she offered. "From another vessel or from the planet’s surface."

"Security is examining the sensor logs as we speak. So far, they have found no evidence to that effect. Also, according to the captain’s logs from her earlier visits, transporter technology does not exist on Biia T’aok. Due to the radiation storms, we cannot scan the planet's surface to confirm her claims."

Seven looked at the ensign blankly.

"I—I require a tricorder," she said suddenly, stiffly. Vorik eyed her for a moment then nodded, turning to retrieve one from the main equipment storage cabinet. When he was gone, Seven leaned against the workstation heavily.

Something was definitely wrong.

The irritation she’d been studiously ignoring was growing exponentially. This confused her since any malfunction of implant or system should have registered with her cortical implant, activating diagnostic and repair nanoprobes. That had not happened and she could feel the beginnings of fear building within the slight buzzing that filled her head.

She manually activated a phalanx of diagnostic probes herself, expecting a near instant lessening of the sharp disturbances in her abdomen. The relief never came. Instead, she nearly doubled over as the irritation abruptly became a searing starburst of pain radiating outward from her middle.

Seven pitched forward and stumbled toward the main engineering workstations, managing to support herself—but just barely—by gripping the edge of a console.

The buzzing in her head became a deafening roar that threatened to consume all rational thought.

Panic, she thought, recognizing the horrid feeling as it crept over her, letting it siphon away her lucidity and motivation for action. Then—just as penetrating and as powerful as the panic—another instinct rose up inside her.

Survival.

She clenched her teeth and forced back the fear, pulling herself a few steps along the edge of the workstation.

The mantra sliced through the chaos in her head for a few gratifying seconds.

"Help me," she said, her voice coming in a strangled choke as an abdominal spasm propelled matter into her esophagus.

Vorik, returning with the tricorder, saw the young Borg sink to her knees. He tapped his communicator as he hurried to assist her.

"Vorik to Sickbay. I have a medical emergency in Engineering." The calm of his voice disguised his wholly unVulcan-like shock at seeing the Borg in such a state. He had no time, however, to analyze his reaction. In fact, he had no time for anything other than to reach out, barely catching the young woman before she hit the floor.

"Help m-me…" Seven held onto Vorik’s arm with all the strength she could muster, her usually crisp voice now thready with terror. Another spasm rocked through her and she fell forward, bracing herself on hands and knees until it passed.

When she looked up, her eyes were wide and wild.

"Please…" she whispered, a ribbon of dark blood spilling out of her mouth.

Then she lost consciousness.