A/N: I'm beginning to realize that this is a rather clumsily written story. But perhaps no more than the average TV series, "Voyager" included. (Ooo, buuurn!) Nevertheless, I'll try to tie up loose ends with the next few chapters.
I don't own "Star Trek: Voyager."
Months after B'Elanna had left, things still hadn't calmed down on Voyager. Andrew Kim and Naomi Wildman were brainstorming ideas for a school project over dinner when they were rudely interrupted by a blast that rattled the entire mess hall. By now, Naomi and Andrew were both used to it.
When Captain Chakotay's voice came over the intercom, Naomi could almost swear she heard more fatigue in his voice than urgency. "Senior officers to the bridge."
Andrew and Naomi watched Lt. Neelix leave the counter, where he'd been conversing with Chell. The ship was hit again, and this time the blast knocked several people from their chairs, Naomi and Andrew included. Instead of returning to his seat, Andrew wrapped his arms around the pillar that attached the table to the floor. Naomi decided to join him. It might be safer under there, and anyway, it made her feel like a kid again, hiding under the table.
"There goes my spaghetti," Naomi sighed, watching her bowl bounce on the floor, spewing pasta everywhere. "The sooner we're out of Borg space the happier I'll be."
"The whole quadrant is 'Borg space.'" Andrew reminded her.
"And I can't wait 'till we're out of it."
Andrew's dark eyes scanned the shaking mess hall, as plates and silverware continued to hit the floor. Most people were gripping their tables or chairs, or a few cases the counter. Naomi and Andrew got a few looks for being under the table, but no one seemed to find their decision that unreasonable.
"I think these battles are kind of exciting," Andrew admitted.
Naomi looked away. "Yeah, well, your mom didn't die in one of them."
"I'm sorry Naomi," Andrew's face fell. "That was a stupid thing to say."
Naomi shook her head dismissively, as the ship shook again.
"Everybody okay?" Chell called from the galley.
"For the moment," Crewman Tal Celes replied, gripping her shaking table.
Andrew made a feeble attempt at raising Naomi's spirits. "Don't worry. Captain Chakotay and my dad will get us out of 'Borg space,' and back home to Earth."
"You mean the captain and Tuvok," Naomi corrected. "Your dad's just filling in for Tuvok temporarily. Lt. Kim's not the new first officer or anything."
"Ten weeks of replicator rations says he is."
Naomi gave her friend an odd look.
Andrew leaned towards her, as if sharing some urgent military secret. "I've been sensing a lot of fishy thoughts all over this ship, and I think the senior staff's keeping something from us. And it's mostly revolving around Commander Tuvok. I have a hypothesis: Tuvok's possessed, or replaced with an impostor, and they suspect it, but they don't want anyone else to know yet, because there might be other aliens onboard and they don't want them to know they're onto them. Maybe the Borg Trio has something to do with it." This was an affectionate nickname some crewmembers had taken to calling Annika, Laura and Xin. "Maybe they're actually still drones, and the entire Unimatrix Zero thing was a set up! They've assimilated Tuvok, and now they're cozying up to Tom and the Captain to assimilate them too!"
Naomi hugged the pillar, dropping her head wearily. "Andrew, six months ago you were the cutest little kid I ever baby-sat for. Now you're the most paranoid teenager I ever—" Another blast cut her off.
"I'm not a teenager. I'm probably not even gonna live to my teens." Andrew wrinkled his nose. "Anyway, you'd be paranoid too, if you were just enough of a telepath to hear the thoughts people screamed when they were upset, but nothing else. You'd wanna know what they were thinking about."
"Who's been 'screaming upset thoughts?'" Naomi asked, tightening her grip on the pole as the ship continued to tremble.
"Mom and Dad, for starters. When they told me Dad was gonna be filling in for Tuvok, and it was nothing serious, they were both lying through their teeth. They kept repeating what they were telling me in their heads, before and after they said it, really stern and clear. People only rehearse in their minds like that when they're about to lie. Or maybe not lie, but say something really delicately."
Naomi grimaced, remembering a month ago when she'd rejected Andrew's romantic advances in the kindest way she could. Of course, Andrew was well past it by now, and their friendship was back on track. One advantage of Andrew being part-Ocampan was his ability to quickly get past, well, the past. But it still felt awkward, to know that he'd probably been reading her mind, when she'd given him the "let's stay friends" speech.
Andrew finished, "Something's seriously wrong with Tuvok."
Naomi glanced around the shaking mess hall. Most people didn't seem too concerned with their conversation, but Tal Celes was determinately staring away from their table, with a look on her face like some secret had just been blown. Naomi considered what Tuvok being ill might mean for Icheb and Mezoti. (At the moment, Mezoti and Icheb were on the holodeck, working on their own school project.) Tuvok had been their first guardian, along with Neelix. The arrival of Annika, Laura and Xin had some good timing, apparently.
"And Mom's got something else on her mind," Andrew added. "There's times she puts up this telepathic wall. I think she's talking to those aliens, Species 8472. The ones who were at war with the Borg, who she met in that coma."
"Talking about what?" Naomi's interest suddenly perked. "Defeating the Borg?"
Andrew made a face that indicated he wasn't sure.
"All hands," Chakotay suddenly barked, "Abandon ship. Repeat, abandon ship."
Naomi and Andrew looked quickly at each other. There had been a few times when Voyager's crew had heard this order, and never at a point when Naomi or Andrew was old enough (or born yet) to remember. This was probably the first time Captain Chakotay had ever given the order.
"You heard the man!" Chell barked, urging the two teenagers out from under the table.
"It's the Borg!" Andrew decided, as they hurried into the crowded hall. "Ten bars of latinum, it's the Queen, she wants revenge on us for Unimatrix Zero!"
"It's not the Borg."
Naomi and Andrew both turned at the sound of Mezoti's voice. She and Icheb were coming around the corner. As usual with any stressful situation, Mezoti's voice and face were completely absent any emotion. She was one of those people who tended to "freeze up" under pressure.
Mezoti added, "It's an unidentified alien force."
The four adolescents converged in the middle of the crowded hall and stuck together, all the way to the escape pods.
"What kind of aliens?" Andrew asked Mezoti over the commotion. "Ones from another dimension, like Species 8472?"
"Humaniods," Icheb said. "From our own reality. Don't be afraid Andrew. This is likely just another hectic day aboard Voyager. I'm sure whatever is ahead of us will hardly be life-changing, at least in the grand scheme of—"
Andrew threw Icheb a look. "Icheb, I'm almost a year old. You don't have to treat me like a kid."
"I wasn't," Icheb said, as they rounded another corner. "I was treating you like a teenager prone to paranoid obsessions."
Before Andrew could retort, Naomi asked, "Okay, so how does this work? I mean, there are escape pods on every deck, right?"
"Yeah," Andrew said slowly. "They just come out of the walls of the ship, right?"
Icheb explained, "The escape pods are located in miniature launching decks, at the farthest section of each deck. We'll reach them in a few minutes."
"A few minutes?" Andrew exclaimed. "For all we know we could be blown to—"
"We got a little over twenty minutes before the core blows," Ensign Mariah Henley said, jogging by. "Plenty of time."
It was hard to tell how much of that last sentence was sarcastic.
The group was soon moving through a labyrinth of cramped corridors rarely used by most crewmembers. Naomi, Mezoti, Icheb and Andrew distracted themselves from the impending destruction of their home by continuing their petty arguments.
"I'm not paranoid, and I'm not pointing fingers. I noticed that Larua and—"
Mezoti recited dryly, "Laura Kovacs. Annika Hanson. Jenarro Xin. Captain Chakotay, Commander Tuvok, Admiral Paris, Dr. Van Gough, Ensign Brooks, Reginald Barclay, Reginald Barlcay's cat, Ambassador Spock, Flotter, Treavis, Captain Proton, Abraham Lincoln, Moby Dick…"
"What's that?" Naomi asked, as they rounded a tight corner.
"A list of people who Mr. Kim has accused of being possessed by an alien entity, an intruder from a parallel universe, a Cardassian spy, Species 8472, a Terran vampire, a Ktarian soul-snatcher, a renegade hologram, and a Q, in the last two months."
They finally stepped into the escape pod deck. It was essentially a thin, curved hallway, dimly lit, lined with small doors leading to the escape pods. The nearest pods had already been launched, and the bay was cramped with people looking desperately for the next ride out.
"We've got room!" Marla Gilmore, former Equinox crewman, called from a few pods down.
"Take the kids!" Chell shouted, and shoved Naomi, Andrew, Icheb and Mezoti forward.
They squashed into the pod, with five other people. With Marla was her adopted daughter Amanda, the "Borg baby" as many shipmates called her. Amanda was a toddler now, and her only visible implants were a silver crescent around her left eye, and some metallic "scars" just barely visible under her chestnut curls. A Terrellian, Amanda appeared human, except for her elongated, "double-pointed" ears. The other four crewmembers, Naomi recognized, but couldn't recall the names of; a blonde Trill woman, a black female security guard, a young Bajoran man, and an Asian science officer. The Trill took the helm.
As the pod was taking off, Marla Gilmore asked to no one in particular, "Are the aliens still out there?"
The Trill at the helm didn't reply. The Bajoran and the science officer immediately began working at the pod's tiny consoles.
"No firepower on this thing," the Bajoran said with an edge in his voice.
The pod wasn't even finished jettisoning when a blast sent the entire pod tumbling backwards. Naomi flew clean off the floor, and felt the back of her head smash against the wall.
For a second, Naomi thought she was in sickbay. By the time she was pushing herself up on the bed, she realized she was in a sickbay, but not Voyager's. Voyager's crew was there, though. Captain Chakotay was lying just a few beds down, either asleep or unconscious. Lt. Kim was on the bed next to him, turning over groggily. The whole crew was there, lying on biobeds, some just barely conscious, others out cold. Curved metallic appendages jetted from the ends of the beds, over the patients' heads. The alien doctors treating them looked human, save some unattractive formations under their lips and between their eyes. Naomi thought they looked a bit like monkeys, and not the cute kind.
"If you'll just lie back," a doctor coaxed Naomi, "We can get you treated."
Naomi blinked slowly. Her head hurt so badly, so it was difficult to think. But something really seemed wrong.
"He's lying!" Andrew Kim's voice shouted rang out. "They want to—"
There was a metallic hiss, and the thunk of a body hitting a bed.
"Andrew?"
Naomi spun around to see her friend on the bed right behind her, slumped over on his side. The alien doctor who'd sedated him began lowering the bed's metallic device over Andrew's head.
Naomi pushed herself onto her knees, and demanded, "What are you—?!"
Another hiss, and pressure on her neck….everything spinning…
Her head hitting the pillow…
A/N: The Borg baby's species is never revealed. Since we never see her ears, I decided to make her Terrellian, the species of Harry's evil girlfriend in "Drive." And once again, the idea of Marla Gilmore from "Equinox" adopting the Borg baby comes from AuntiePastaa's story "A Little Piece of Paradise."