A/n: A big thank you to NikkiB1973 for beta reading this chapter.
I do not own Star Trek: Voyager.
"Voyager has altered course." The Collective alerted their Queen in perfectly controlled chorus. "Current position: Spatial Grid 362. Trajectory 112, mark 5."
"How do you do it?" The Queen's metallic, detachable spine stiffened in its organic bodily shell at the sound of the distinctive, individual voice. In hundreds of thousands of attendant Borg vessels spread over four Quadrants, her drones froze in place mid task, or were unceremoniously roused from regeneration, in unanimous reaction to the disturbance. Yet the individual continued to speak, nonplussed. "A philosopher would think you were an oxymoron, a drone above and in control of the Hive Mind, but you can't escape it any more than any of the others, can you?"
The Queen's eyes shot open. Even her irises, Chakotay noticed as she met his own eyes with icy, angered disdain, were infected with nanoprobes, a striking silver but lifeless. Had this creature even been an assimilated humanoid, or was she, like the Collective itself, a construct? Precarious 'perfection' in constitute parts, the Drone of Frankenstein? Though these thoughts washed over him, they were appropriately irrelevant, easy to dismiss. Her head cocked towards him, her crown of cabled implants heavy and prominent on her dead scalp. "Tell your philosopher that I feel no desire to escape perfection." She deigned to reply, one royal hand moving in robotic dismissal.
Chakotay didn't move a muscle. "If you're calling drones to assimilate me, don't bother." He advised coolly.
The Queen lunged off her pedestal, moving with the eerie, violent grace of a lion, her eyes narrowing as she focused on her prey, colourless lips twitching in imperious amusement. "I don't need drones to assimilate you." She reminded him as her assimilation tubes explored his neck and found…nothing. The tubes retracted and tried again, whirring impotently.
Chakotay mirrored that smile humourlessly, though not without allowing himself a little self-satisfaction. "I'm not actually here, Your Majesty." He informed her, "I'm in your mind." And how does it feel? He raged at her internally, enjoying and hating the irony as he kept his face impassive. She regarded him stonily, expecting an explanation, which he gladly gave. "I'm using a synaptic interface. It would be highly inefficient of you to waste time trying to trace the signal. For the moment…" The Queen was sure she caught an emotional inflection in those words, "…it's beyond your abilities."
The Queen encircled him at her measured, prowling pace. "What do you want?" she questioned shortly.
"To make a deal."
"A deal?" The Queen echoed sardonically, halting her stride and easily turning her head at a wholly unnatural angle to fix unblinking eyes on him. "Maquis don't make deals, that is the reason they existed, to deny compromise between the Federation and the Cardassian Empire. They define themselves as too honourable, too heroic for deals." She smirked as he bristled, "You think we don't know you Commander, safe as you were in your backward looking, techno-phobic little colony, but we know you better than any of your so called comrades. When you knew Riley Fraser we saw you, when you fought Seven of Nine we saw through you. All of your fears, all of your inadequacies…"
"If you know so much about my inadequacies…" Chakotay cut her off through gritted teeth, "…then you're as aware as I ever was that the Maquis didn't always reach its own high standards." He was glad he could utterly ignore the revelation about Riley, Seven had gently informed him long ago, after years of silence on the subject, that the Cooperative had been 'reabsorbed' into the Collective almost as soon as they'd left the planet that had let down their dreams of paradise. As for the fearful illumination of his link with Seven, that helped him now, rather than haunted him. Inside knowledge went both ways after all. "We did deals with plenty of unsavoury types, just not the Empire or the Federation."
"But you did do one deal with the Federation's beloved Starfleet, with Captain Janeway." The Queen countered, her voice dropping to a silky whisper, "A deal part of you regretted, at least when she led you into another such deal, with us."
"Precisely." Chakotay said sharply, "Captain Janeway thinks I'm here to help her destroy your transwarp network."
"That's beyond your abilities." The Queen replied in a low, contemptuous tone.
"I know that." Chakotay agreed, "I tried to explain that to my naïve former Captain but, as ever, she wouldn't listen to me." This time, he approached the Queen, "She's determined to bring down that hub."
"She will fail." The Queen hissed heatedly.
"Yes…" Chakotay replied thoughtfully, "…but she has weapons I brought from the future. I believe you're familiar with them."
The Queen twisted away from him, "Transphasic torpedoes." She almost spat out in a vexed tone, "We will adapt."
"I don't doubt that you will." Chakotay said quietly, "Eventually, but not before Voyager does a great deal of damage." He shrugged slightly, glad the Queen couldn't pick up on his racing heart rate. Just a little longer… "I'm just offering you a more efficient solution to the problem. I'm willing to tell you how to adapt to those weapons now."
"In exchange for what?" The Queen demanded, standing toe to toe with him.
Chakotay didn't flinch, in fact his face hardened further, his tone more resolute. "Send a Cube to tractor Voyager and drag them back to the Alpha Quadrant."
"You're asking me to believe that the proud, incorruptible warrior Chakotay would betray his own crew?" The Queen questioned with condescending incredulity.
"Not betray them." Chakotay clarified hotly, "Save them from themselves." The taut muscles in his strong jaw twitched bitterly, "Just as I've always had to, with Janeway, with Seven…." He ignored the bile rising in his throat, "…with all of them. I brought technology to help Voyager get home, but the Captain's arrogant, self-righteous, and my younger self is just as bad. Our officers are so blinded by loyalty, they would sacrifice their lives, and the lives of those serving below them, just to deal a crippling blow to the Borg."
The Queen studied him intently, her gaze cruelly piercing. "But you'd never try to harm us?" she challenged, "You, who sucked my drones out into space when we last negotiated with you!"
Chakotay's face darkened at the reminder, "That was a different time, and as you know, Seven's not the negotiating sort." The Queen froze, his barbed reference to her earlier threat to Seven hitting home. "All I want is to get that crew back to their families." Despite himself, he'd began to breathe heavily, emotion surging in. "To get back to my family!"
Triumph smoothed the Queen's features, "You wish to ensure the wellbeing of your Collective." She murmured, her tone verging on gentle now. "I can appreciate that." A smile curved her lips, "I'll help you." She moved majestically away, "But It will cost more than you're offering."
"What do you want?" Chakotay asked, wary for the first time in this surreal conversation.
The Queen turned back towards him, the sounds of her implants making her sound truly insectoid. "Your vessel and its database."
Insanely, Chakotay felt an almost overwhelming urge to roll his eyes. That wasn't even original! Seska had asked the same thing of him all those years ago! The feeling of déjà vu was both hilarious and disturbing, maybe this really did prove that one's life went in circles. At least he hadn't been beaten up or drugged this time, surreal as this was. "I told you…" He began, realising he'd been silent for a second too long, "I'll show you how to adapt to their torpedoes."
"Insufficient."
Chakotay's mind began to scramble for time. "If I let you assimilate technology from the future there's no telling how events would be altered."
"You're willing to alter the future by getting future home now." The Queen reminded him pointedly.
"The crew of Voyager doesn't assimilate people and wipe out whole civilisations!" Chakotay snapped.
"But if you want to get them home, you need us Captain." The Queen pressed.
Chakotay hesitated, "All right." He conceded reluctantly, "I'll give you the shuttle…after Voyager arrives safely in the Alpha Quadrant."
"You've already lied to both your younger self and to Captain Janeway, to whom you pledged your loyalty." The Queen began, seemingly thinking aloud as she cocked her head at him questioningly, "How do I know you're not lying to me now?"
Chakotay lifted his own head, "You'll have to trust me."
"That won't be necessary." The Queen informed him darkly, again turning away, "You underestimate me Chakotay. While we've been talking my drones have triangulated your signal."
On board the Delta Flyer, Chakotay's eyes snapped open. "Computer, deactivate the interface." He ordered. At once, his mental audience with the Queen was over. "Deploy armour." It was too late, the ship shook as it was seized by the Borg tractor beam and a second later Chakotay felt their transporter yanking him away.
He rematerialized right where he'd first been faced with the Queen, though they'd swapped places, now he was standing on her isolated pedestal with the Queen reigning over the multiple screens below him. "Very clever." She commented as she watched the Flyer, its cloak dropped in exchange for armour, being drawn in on one of the screens. "Hiding right on my doorstep. Were you planning to attack us from within the Unicomplex?" Her composure left her when Chakotay didn't give her an answer, "Not feeling talkative?" she hissed, pouncing on him. This time her assimilation tubes cut easily into his soft flesh. He groaned as loudly as any of the others, and fell to his knees almost as quickly.
"Fuck…uh…ugh…" He moaned breathlessly as his dark skin immediately took on the dying greying tinge and implants began to erupt. It was agony beyond description. Every cell in his body was freezing, shutting down under the onslaught, but it felt like fire, being burned alive from inside out… Seven had been right, and even then he hadn't really understood, didn't until now, there was no preparing for it… No, don't think about Seven…
The Queen gazed down at him, she was oddly serene now. "We don't need words to understand each other." A smile, deceptively real, broke out over her face. "You were married to Seven of Nine? Then it is pointless to hate us. We took the child Annika Hansen and made her what she is!" Her smile became seductive as knelt down before him, "If you love her, then…"
Chakotay laughed, bitterly and loudly, right in her face. "You stupid, evil, robotic bitch, you still don't understand…" His laugh became as manic as it was painful. "Even with me hooked up to you…you still…don't understand…"
The Collective interrupted, "Voyager has entered aperture 823. Access corridor zero nine. Redirect vessels to intercept at…" The seamless union of voices suddenly cracked apart, began to stutter. "…sub…sub…junct…" Numbers were funnelled out in a loud, but confused mess. "Eight…fou…si…" The Queen lurched forward as if she'd been punched in the gut, suddenly ungainly as she had to clutch at the walls, gasping and grunting in shock.
"Not…feeling perfect?" Chakotay taunted with gargantuan effort, his eyes having taken on an unnatural wild gleam. "Maybe it's…something you assimilated?"
On her knees now, the Queen glowered at him viciously, "You…You infected us…with a neurolytic pathogen…"
Chakotay responded with something between a grin and a grimace, "Just enough…to bring chaos to order." He ground out, chuckling as he managed to snap his fingers provocatively. Propitiously, Voyager obviously chose just that moment to carry out the next stage of the plan. On the screen in front of them, torpedoes crashed into one of the conduit terminals, and the ripple effect slammed into the whole hub as well as the Unicomplex at its heart, by the way the room quaked.
"Voyager will be destroyed with the hub!" The Queen snarled.
"They're ahead of the shock wave." Chakotay replied, his eyes beginning to drift closed as the pathogen took hold. "Captain Janeway and I made sure of that. They'll make it."
The Queen's lolling head snapped up, her gaze reverently fixed on a screen which showed a single Sphere travelling through a conduit that hadn't yet collapsed. "Sphere 632…they can still hear my thoughts…" Even as she said that, she dropped like a stone face first onto the floor. "They will destroy Voyager…and so you will never exist and these events won't take place…" She growled weakly when Chakotay didn't rise to that. "They will reclaim the traitor…Seven of Nine and she will replace this Queen just as we always planned, to capture Earth… You will be dead and she will be lost! Not only will your child never be, but humanity will be eliminated!"
"Over my dead body…and yours!" Chakotay screamed out with the last of his life and individuality as explosions began to surround him, swallow them both, all of them.
A/n: Please review. :)