The confinement of a grav-chair was not what Tw'eak was expecting to find when she awoke. She had been convinced, in a dream-like state, that she was in her command chair on the bridge, as she had demanded, when she came to, leading her to mumble orders to officers as she emerged from unconsciousness.
"Doctor? She's coming around." The bright lights of the room she was in were unlike the red-alert glow of her bridge. Had they turned to face a star? She tried to reach up to shield her eyes, but her arms were restrained. She pushed, exerting herself to her utmost, but she couldn't get them to move. "Easy now."
She recognized that voice. "Zed?"
"Yes, Captain. Good to see you're back." She saw a purple blur of motion against the burst of light. "You're in the medical ward of Earth spacedock."
"Earth? What are... how?"
"The doctor's had you sedated for a while. She can explain."
"Well." The gruff, if pleasant, tone of her chief medical officer's voice was the same as ever. "Sleeping beauty back among us." She knelt and Tw'eak, who was having trouble lifting her head, straightened up enough to look into her eyes, then back down at the restraints. The silver-and-copper blur in her field of vision slowly resolved to make Doc Ellington's features, her greying hair and dark brown skin, her slender hands and her lean, anxious face, with the sarcastic twinkle and half-upturned smirk clearly discernible. This was not the first time Tw'eak had revived in a sickbay and seen Doc's face, although it had been some years.
"Doc? What- why can't I?"
"Hold still, Tw'eak. You'll just make me want to sedate you again."
"Come on." She rustled against the restraints. "Just tell me."
"Well, it's not every day that our fearless blue leader decides to toss herself through a hull breach."
Tw'eak nearly sprang up at the mention of the word 'blue'. "Dazz! What happened-" The restraints did their job, and the pain of the interrupted motion made her groan involuntarily.
"You keep doing that and you're back to dreamland for a couple more hours."
"But Dazz..."
"Is very much alive, thanks to you. Took me about four surgeries and a lot of help from her Bolian physiology, but we made it." Doc sighed. "The injuries to her nervous system mean that she probably won't be able to continue in her current specialty, though."
"Why?"
"She sustained major damage to the nerves connecting her extremities. She's lost about fifty percent of the neuro-connectors in her hands and feet. And since Bolians don't tend to respond well to regeneration, I think she'll have to be given medical leave, maybe indefinitely." Doc looked up at Tw'eak. "But there's hope. I hate to say it, sound like a Ferengi when I do, but sometimes war is good for business for me, too. We've developed all sorts of new treatments for various species as a result of necessity, as a result of the war. And she's young, she's tough, and she's determined."
Tw'eak smiled. "Must remind you of someone."
"Someone who seems to have missed a day or two in her EV suit training. Just what the hell were you thinking, diving across a punctured bridge like that?"
"Wasn't thinking," she said with an attempted shrug that became a painful twinge.
"Well, that much is obvious." Doc turned her head to take in the rest of the room. "Looks like many of our other wounded are going to pull through as well. Morl's fine, was a deep laceration but he's okay. O'Leary responded really well to the concussion treatments, and he's looking forward to getting home for a couple days. We lost quite a number of marines over on the Hirogen ship, had a couple wounded from both there and the Swordfish but Selkirk Rex and his pirates have a few new toys to play with. Even Tucker Sharpe looks like he's going to pull through."
Tw'eak looked at Doc. It was news to her. "What happened to Sharpe?"
"I don't know," Doc replied, "but I know someone who does. He and Aurora both filed a full report - best I let them tell it." She tapped her commbadge. "Ellington to Doucette. She's up. Are you available?"
"Be right there," Aurora could be heard to say.
"I'll tell Zed to come over with her when she gets here." Doc patted Tw'eak on the shoulder, very gently. "You need anything else while I'm here?"
"Why am I in a restraining field?"
"Oh, that." Doc moved her hands as she talked, as though putting Tw'eak back together with various waving motions of her hands. "You dislocated almost every joint on your body, surfing vacuum like that. No need to worry about your synthetic arm - it's fully functional, but I restrained it anyway just so you wouldn't get any delusions of normalcy. Now, I could've put you on a bio-bed and strapped you in tighter than an airlock hatch, but knowing you, if you'd come to lying down on the job you'd fight like a Jem'Hadar to break out of it." She chuckled. "If you didn't insist on giving the bed to some other lower rank first."
Tw'eak offered a woozy grin. "Am I that predictable?"
"A good doctor always knows her patients," Ellington said as she stood. "Besides, I've known you since you were tactical officer on the Nelson. You've never shown any hesitation about throwing yourself into your duty. I just wish you hadn't taken that concept quite so literally this time." Doc continued chuckling to herself as she made her way down the ward of bio-beds clogged with wounded.
Tw'eak felt herself swoon in the grav-chair as she watched Doc Ellington walk away, unable to focus her eyes on movement. She had forgotten about that. Her time on the Sovereign-class USS Nelson as tactical officer had lasted two years following a promotion after her service aboard the Enterprise-E, and it had been Doc Ellington's job to save her life on at least two separate occasions. She had once taken a direct disruptor blast from a pulsewave assault weapon to the back of the right arm while her personal shield was low, nearly severing it in the blast and incurring a rather nasty plasma burn over a third of her body. A biosynthetic arm had been fitted over the course of her recovery, and she only missed two weeks' work on the bridge.
The commendation and mentions in dispatches she received from her commanding officer had led to a rapid promotion to commander after she had taken a dagger to the throat while protecting her ambushed captain during a diplomatic contact gone terribly wrong. Klingon agents had used the lure of a potential first contact mission to draw the captain's interest, then while on the planet's surface, their attempted assassination had ended with an emergency beam-out, but not before a kut'luch blade had nearly severed Tw'eak's head from her body. She still bore the scar from that attack, among others less visibly obvious, like the aftereffects of exposure to various types of radiation, the numerous welts and bits of scar tissue from a series of melee and energy attacks during ground combat, the long and jagged mark down her right leg which had been the legacy of a bio-molecular laceration from an Undine infiltrator which had replaced her captain while first officer (and briefly commanding officer once the Undine was exposed) of the Steamrunner-class USS Repulse, and the occasional problems she had with migraines, ever since being struck in the head by debris when her station on the Enterprise-E had been damaged by Praetor Shinzon's attack. That skull fracture had been the first wound she had received in the service. How many was this now? she wondered to herself, reviewing her service record and medical history from behind her closed eyes. And how much longer, before her luck ran out?
"Captain?" Down a dark corridor Tw'eak could hear herself being summoned. "Captain Sh'abbas?" She realized after a moment that the corridor was fluidic, or perhaps filled with water, and she was slowly drawing closer to a light at its end. More mumbling voices all around her, and she felt herself gasp, her eyes opened wide, as she surfaced.
Her limbs flailed needlessly against the restraints for a moment before she recalled her state. She was still in a grav-chair, still wearing a shapeless chartreuse hospital gown, but the room around her that came into focus was no sickbay. It was hers - or rather, her quarters on the Bonaventure. She recognized the glow of a plasmonic sculpture she had recently completed from her workstation, still not happy with its overall contours. It was not a welcome reunion for Tw'eak as the artwork left much to be desired and would probably have to be started again. Beyond that lay a multi-systems display upon the wall, showing several systems, including the warp drive, offline or in a state of repair. She took in that information rather quickly before realizing happier reunions were just a few degrees to her right. Assembled together were four of her senior officers. Octavia and Aurora Doucette stood near each other, while seated upon the curved sectional couch in the nearest quarter of the room were Zed and Doc Ellington.
"Welcome home," Aurora said with a giggle, nearly bouncing.
"I... can I move?"
"Not yet," Doc answered. "But only because your restraints are still on. We can take them off and let you try to walk around a bit, but only in this room. Anywhere else on ship is off-limits unless Zed escorts you."
"Nicest looking brig I ever saw," Tw'eak quipped.
"It's not really to my taste," Doc cajoled. "Whoever the designer was, she has some eclectic ideas of how to design her quarters."
If she'd had a free hand, Tw'eak would have waved the doctor's sarcasm aside. "I didn't expect the... Octavia, what's our status?"
"I'm sorry, Captain, but I am under orders from our chief medical officer to provide you with no further information as to the ship's status for the time being."
"It's for your own good, Tw'eak," Doc added.
"The hell it is. At least give me an idea of who's in command."
Doc raised a hand before Octavia could respond, filling in the blanks herself. "The Starfleet Corps of Engineers at Utopia Planitia Shipyards, Mars, Sol System, the Universe." Doc considered for a moment. "That is to say, our universe. Now, does that answer your question?"
"I am overseeing the repairs, and am in nominal command." Octavia added. "However, the Corps of Engineers will not permit us to leave spacedock without a bridge module fitted. In the meantime, you may rest easy and recover."
"That oughta hold her for a couple minutes," Zed joked.
"Don't you start," Tw'eak replied. "I have no idea what stardate it is."
"99118.4 at present," Octavia replied.
"No. I lost a whole week?" Tw'eak felt her head begin to swim again.
"We last spoke about three days ago, when you came out of sedation a little ahead of schedule." Doc reassured her. "The order to move Bonaventure out of Earth space control came just after that, and you'd asked to see Aurora and Zed. I had just enough time to co-ordinate and get all of our wounded back on board before we made our way to Mars." She paused for a moment. "Well, except for Dazz and Sharpe. They'll both need longer-term care at a Starfleet Medical facility. But I had to operate on your back for a second time. You Andorians have some of the most measly bone structure I've ever seen. "
Tw'eak looked around at her assembled officers. "I still don't know what happened," she said, then tilted her head to look at Doc. "Am I allowed to ask that question, Captain?"
"Good gracious, Tw'eak, wouldn't you rather give you time to work the sedatives out of - well then." Tw'eak's facial expression was reply enough. Doc turned to Zed. "You better tell her."
The Saurian looked momentarily put upon. "My report's waiting for her to read. Not that she should be reading yet - probably has quite a headache at the moment. Can't even concentrate, I'd bet. She needs a good long rest."
"Don't you take her side - give me a run-down. Summary. Precis. Something." Tw'eak tried to raise a hand to gesture with, but couldn't. "And could someone let me out of these restraints already?"
Doc moved to de-activate the grav chair's restraints as Octavia nudged Aurora. "I can help if you'd like," the young engineer offered.
"You can start by telling me what happened. You were over there with Sharpe, too."
"Actually, I wasn't. With Sharpe, I mean. He sent us off in pairs. And that was when we got separated from him. I had Corporal Vyhr with me, and he and I were able to fight our way out of the ambush that they beamed us into-"
"Ambush?" She looked to Zed.
He answered, "The Hirogen had transporter enhancers on their ship, along with the inhibiting effect the monotanium hull of the ship had on our ability to figure out where we were. So they could point-beam us out to wherever they wanted us, into little arenas where they hunted and fought us."
"It took me about three or four times being transported before I was able to set off a cascade failure that took down about half of their EPS network," Aurora added. "Wasn't hard - they had actually channeled warp power into their EPS in order to keep the 'hunt' going!"
"Sounds like Hirogen all right," Tw'eak muttered.
Zed shook his head. "It was horrible. I was with Private Eastochou, and he was wounded a number of times. I did the best I could, but he went down fighting. They then paired me with one of the pirate crew - they had done the same thing to them! And she and I, she had been a lieutenant in Starfleet, a Bajoran named Ereeyo, she had training as a security officer, and she and I were together when the system failed. We linked up with other members of her crew, many of them wounded as Eastochou had been. And slowly we were able to work our way to vital systems - first the weapons control station, then the main command deck. It was ugly. We lost a lot of good people over there."
"And Sharpe?" Tw'eak looked anxiously from Aurora to Zed.
Aurora swallowed hard. "It took forever for us to find him and Sergeant Galbreth. A group of Hirogen had recognized he was the ranking officer..." She looked to Zed, her eyes hardening.
"They were in the process of harvesting trophies from their bodies. I was able to bring them back both to life, but Sergeant Galbreth was too far gone. They had..." He looked grimly around the room, as if uncertain if any of those around him could take what he had to say. "They had opened her thoracic cavity, and were after something in there. I didn't want to scan to find out what, out of respect. They were about to cut her throat for the skull, when those Hirogen were engaged by our people and killed. I avoided contact with them, got to Sharpe just in time. I started with Galbreth, but there was no hope for her, so I got Sharpe resuscitated. Both of them had been painted with a bright green colour that I initially thought to be Vulcan blood." Zed's eyes narrowed. "It was horrible."
"And you were able to stabilize him?" Tw'eak asked.
"They weren't as interested in him, I think his initial cause of death was a concussion or electrical wound, because I was able to revive him quite easily. Galbreth... she'd only just been killed, ritualistically, before they cut her open. I wouldn't say Sharpe had been dead for anything longer than five or six minutes. Most of his wounds were simple lacerations and burns, nothing catastrophic."
Doc interrupted. "His cardiac function is a bit weaker than most, but it was never flagged as a detriment to command. How ironic that it would end up killing him too soon to satisfy a Hirogen's bloodlust."
Zed continued. "Anyway, more of our people were hurt fighting the Hirogen that had killed them, so I got the assistance of a medic from Selkirk Rex's main ship, and she carried Sharpe out and looked after him while I triaged and helped those who had been wounded taking down those Hirogen. It was only then, once the fighting was over, that I looked around... the Alpha Hirogen was one of those we'd slain, and by the looks of his... shall we call it a trophy case? Let's just say he was a very capable hunter. I ran a tricorder scan to make out all the various skulls and trophies... he even had a colossal sand scorpion's claws from Nimbus III."
"They'll let anyone run riot on Nimbus these days," Tw'eak noted.
"But the scan... there were Gorn, Bajoran, Nausicaan, Jem'Hadar, Undine, Romulan, Tellarite, Tholian, Reman, Cardassian, Andorian, Ferengi, even a couple which I didn't recognize instantly but whose names I knew from reading about the Delta Quadrant, like the Voth and the Quarrens... even a few Borg implants... it was unlike anything I've ever seen. All of these relics showed the presence of some kind of enzyme that had been used to 'boil down' the organic contents and preserve them. They had these vats all over the ship which were used for the same purpose."
"It was just horrible," Aurora noted, holding herself with her arms. "I never want to see anything like that again."
"Well, we did our part, and we did more than enough to disrupt their efforts to 'hunt' people like this in our part of the galaxy, at least." Tw'eak closed her eyes, trying to picture such a scene. "If either of you need to talk to Counselor T'uni, I'm sure she'll be available."
"Already have," Aurora acknowledged. Zed nodded appreciatively.
"All right. Thank you both. I suppose I'll have quite a report to fill out to Starfleet Command about this. Admiral Quinn will want to hear these details, possibly from both of you personally. I'll append your reports to mine when I file them."
"Later," Doc added. "You're in no condition to work right at the moment."
"No, but if I'm in any condition to stand, I'd like very much to change into a uniform."
"Oh, no. Next you'll be telling me to point-beam you to the bridge."
Tw'eak raised a hand, painfully. "Stop. I'll be good. Andorian's honour."
Doc ran a finger over her chin thoughtfully. "Lucky for you I know that means something to you. And I'll hold you to it, too." She stood up. "Come on." Holding out her arms, she waited for Tw'eak to take the first step.
It took a moment, a long and lingering moment in which she first placed her right foot on the ground, then found it too painful to spring up and walk. She held out a hand, and Octavia stepped to her left side, supporting her weight with an arm under the shoulder. "Thank you," she acknowledged as she put her other foot down and swung forwards, twisting for a desperate moment before she felt her spine click into place and stood aright for the first time in a week. "That'll take a little practice," she noted.
"I've got physiotherapy lined up to run you -well, walk you through the next phase of your recovery."
"Maybe I'd better leave that uniform where it is for a bit." She nodded in the direction of her desk. "That way?"
Zed stood and moved to the captain's other side, supporting her just as Octavia had done. Tw'eak felt suddenly self-conscious of her legs being visible, and the dip in the v-neck of her gown being far lower than was comfortable. She tried to move more quickly, but merely stumbled as a consequence. After a few steps further, she sat before her plasmonic sculpture and work station terminal.
"Thank you both." She turned to Octavia. "Would you mind putting that over on the table? It'll be a while before I can try plasmonic sculpture again."
"Of course," Octavia replied. She hoisted the ugly thing and carted it to a place on the table. "Can you see it well enough here?"
"I don't want to see it. It'll make me want to try plasmonic sculpture again. It wasn't coming together like I wanted."
"Then maybe you'd let me keep it," Doc said. "Could use something for next time down in sickbay."
"No, wait-"
Doc picked up the sculpture and made her way towards the exit. "I'll put it someplace safe, where you'll never find it, and next time I need something to remind you of your limitations, well..." She held up the sculpture and winked at her captain and friend, then left the room.
"I didn't dismiss you! Doctor!" Tw'eak's shouting was to no avail.
"I'd best be getting back to duty," Zed commented. "If you need anything, call me."
Tw'eak looked down. She wasn't wearing a commbadge. "With what?" she wondered.
"The console on your desk should be more than capable of-"
"Octavia. I know. It was a joke."
"Ah."
Aurora followed Zed towards the door, turning at the last moment. "Get well soon, captain." She smiled brightly and headed back to the engineering deck.
This left Tw'eak alone with her operations officer. "Is there anything further you require?"
"Those reports are all here," Tw'eak said with a look to her work station. "There's a bed in over there. Maybe just a bowl of plomeek soup..."
"Very well."
Tw'eak looked up at the liberated Borg in her quarters with a mixture of admiration and regret. "And a new first officer."
Octavia stopped in her path and turned. "Commander Sharpe may yet be able to return to duty."
"I know. But you handled yourself so well under fire during that action. And you're about the only person on this ship who's been taken apart and put back together more than I have, so I'd better keep you around. Like Doc said, to remind me of my limitations."
"I can assure you, Captain, that I do not regard my assimilation as being of a comparable experience to yours."
Tw'eak shook her head. "Don't misunderstand me, I mean that, when the time is right, you'll make a fine captain in your own way. And I intend to still be here to see that happen." She smiled. "I also intend to help to make that happen. Whenever I get my report together I'm going to include mention of every officer and marine involved in the boarding action, and recommend promotions for Dazz, for Morl, for O'Leary, for Sharpe... and for you."
"I... don't know what to say." Octavia looked pensively at the bulkhead. "The appropriate phrase would be 'thank you', but it seems curiously inefficient."
"I'm not looking for thanks. Tucker Sharpe is a good man, and by all reports he fought hard. He also kept an ability to look at Selkirk Rex and his people objectively, something I didn't do. Starfleet needs good commanders like him... dedicated, ambitious, free-thinking, principled." She looked up at Octavia with a twinkle in her eye. "Know anyone who that sounds like?"
Octavia nodded. "If you are referring to yourself, then I would agree. However, I have no further ambition than to see this ship, and her crew, safely returned from her next adventure." She gestured expansively. "This is my home. I once read that now-Admiral Janeway was able to persuade Seven of Nine to remain a part of the starship Voyager's creapaw by referring to that ship as a 'human collective'. This ship contains more than just a human crew. The collective of the Federation which it represents is something I have sworn to uphold as an officer in Starfleet. That is my purpose. Promotion is irrelevant. Only the greater good matters."
Tw'eak resisted the urge to make a pun about how fitting it was that a liberated Borg should find rising in a hierarchy to be irrelevant, but she let it go. Instead she said, "We'll see what happens. They don't always give those promotions out, after all."
"Of course. Shall I replicate your soup now?"
"I would appreciate it. Medium heat, please." Tw'eak smiled as she watched who she hoped would become her next first officer make her way to the replicator unit in the next room.