=/\=
"Yes, Mom. I'm coming," Naomi said to her mother through the comm system. Turning to her friends in "Borg Central," she waved at the twins, who were playing Kadis-kot, "I've gotta go home to my quarters, now. I'll see you tomorrow at breakfast, Mezoti. Remember, we have our Botany class with Mr. Lessing at 0900. See you, Icheb. Bye now"
Once the Cargo Bay Two doors slid shut after her, Icheb reminded everyone, "It is almost time for our regeneration cycles to begin. How close are you to finishing your game, Rebi?"
"I will beat Azan in five minutes, Icheb," Rebi replied confidently.
"No, I'll beat you in four minutes," Azan declared.
"Whether you're finished or not, clean up the game in five minutes," Icheb said, making his voice sound as commanding as possible. Mezoti gazed wide-eyed at him. Icheb looked down his nose at her, and she crimped her lips to keep from smiling. "You should prepare for regeneration, too, Mezoti."
"Naomi and I have already cleaned up after our game," she responded, her eyebrow upraised in imitation of a typical Seven of Nine expression as she pointed to Mr. Paris's durotta game, already neatly enclosed within its box. "I'm waiting for the rest of you to be ready to enter our alcoves."
Icheb suppressed a smile of his own. Mr. Paris had described durotta to Icheb as a "game of subtlety," but Naomi and Mezoti managed to play it without much difficulty. Turning to the computer terminal he had been using, he initiated the console's shutdown procedure. For the past few days he'd been researching a particular subject as often as he had the time.
Mezoti peeked over Icheb's shoulder at the screen just before it turned dark. "Starfleet Academy entrance requirements," she read. "Icheb, are you thinking about joining? You don't have to do that to work in Astrometrics. Seven hasn't enlisted in Starfleet. Neelix hasn't, either."
"I am aware it is not required. However, I must choose a career if I am to live in the Federation. I've been thinking I'd really like to become a starship officer."
"Ensign Kim told me it may take over thirty years for Voyager to complete its journey to Earth. Won't you be too old to go to the Academy by then?"
"That's why I've been reading the entrance requirements. Not every officer studies at the campus in San Francisco. There would never be room for all of the students to attend if there was only one site. They have what they call 'Satellite Campuses' on other planets. And they also offer courses through their 'Distant Learner Program.' If a student can find a qualified instructor, this is another way to earn credits towards graduation. They call this 'Another Avenue to Success.' I am certainly 'distant' out here in the Delta Quadrant."
"Where would you find an instructor?"
"Commander Tuvok. He once taught at Starfleet Academy on Earth, remember? He mentioned it when Lieutenant Torres was telling us about the theater troupe on Kelis's planet."
"I remember now. Do you think he would be willing to teach you? As the Head of Tactical and Chief Security Officer, he's already very busy, isn't he?"
"That's true, but he's found the time to teach meditation to many of Voyager's crew. Tom told me B'Elanna used to study with him, but not so much now. Neelix's ex-girlfriend Kes also took training in mental disciplines with him while she was living on Voyager. Neelix told me about it when I asked him what Kes was like."
"He would be a good teacher. He's very thorough when he explains something. And he's very logical," Mezoti observed.
"Vulcans pride themselves on their logic," Icheb agreed. Grinning slyly at Mezoti, he added, "Of course, Tuvok would never admit he was proud of how logical he is. Which is illogical, when you think about it."
Mezoti smiled back and said, "Agreed."
"Azan, Rebi, aren't you finished with that yet?" Icheb said, at an even greater volume than he had the first time he asked them about the game's status.
"In another minute," the twins said in tandem.
Icheb shook his head and smiled ruefully at his companion. "Let's move towards our cubicles so we are ready to step back if Seven comes in to 'tuck us in,' as Neelix puts it." As the two walked slowly up the platform to the Borg regeneration units, Icheb asked Mezoti, "Have you thought about enlisting in Starfleet when you're old enough?"
"I don't know. I'm not even nine years old yet. I believe I have time before I have to decide."
"True. Maybe you should consider it, though. You could enter the Sciences track, since you like to study insects. You'd be an excellent xenobiologist."
Mezoti didn't answer him right away. Icheb realized he might be pushing her a little bit, since she really was very young to think about a future career. He knew Naomi was already firmly decided upon becoming an officer when she grew up, however. Even though she was much younger than Mezoti in age, her rate of development was much faster. Of course, both of Naomi's parents were in Starfleet, and she wanted to "follow in their footsteps." Thanks to the Borg's assimilation of her parents, Mezoti knew more about the specifics of the Norcadi star system than she did about what career paths they might have followed.
He was about to say they could discuss it another day when Seven blew briskly into the cargo bay, the way she usually did. "Children! You should have already begun your regeneration cycles! It's late. Icheb . . . "
Mezoti piped up, "I was asking Icheb about something important, Seven. We are both ready to regenerate." Mezoti stared at Azan and Rebi, who were scrambling to put away the Kadis-kot game pieces, in order to direct Seven's attention towards the twins, rather than at Icheb.
Seven lifted her eyebrow at the young Brunali, acknowledging she was as fully aware of Mezoti's true tactics as Icheb was; but she hurried Azan and Rebi up the platform to their cubicles and said nothing more than her usual "Good night. Sweet dreams," as she "tucked them in" for the night's regeneration cycle.
=/\=
The children woke up to the sound of Voyager's computer voice announcing, "Regeneration cycle incomplete," as their cubicles began to flicker and power down. In seconds, their cargo bay was absolutely dark. Icheb looked around him. Even the tiny emergency lights by the door, which stayed lit to enable the crew to orient themselves when the lights were shut off, were not visible. Icheb could hear Mezoti and the twins rustling in their cubicles. He imagined they must be as disturbed as he was by this turn of events.
Suddenly a light bloomed on the floor near one of the control panels. It was a battery powered portable unit. Neelix was standing by it in such a way that his face was highlighted in some parts, but was shaded in others. The effect was rather unnerving, reminding Icheb of images formed in his mind when Naomi shared one of the ghost stories Neelix had told her when she was "just a little kid."
Icheb was relieved when Neelix finally said, "Everything's all right. We've just had to shut down main power temporarily. Nothing to be concerned about."
When they questioned Neelix about the reason for the power shutdown, Neelix became a little flustered. "We've entered a Class-J nebula. The Captain wants to make sure that we don't attract any, uh, residual E.M. radiation."
"Our shields provide sufficient protection against nebula discharge," Icheb observed.
"Is that so? Well, I'm afraid that gaseous anomalies were never really my specialty. Come on, gather round. I brought toys and stories and games and I thought that later we might even have a sing-a-long. Like we were on a camping trip."
Icheb offered to go to Astrometrics to help Seven, but Neelix informed him Astrometrics was also shut down. Mezoti asked why Voyager had entered the nebula if the crew wasn't going to analyze it. Neelix put her off by saying it was a very "long and dull story." When Mezoti became concerned that Voyager might be in danger, Neelix said she shouldn't "leap to those kinds of conclusions."
Icheb noticed Neelix never actually said they were safe, an ominous omission. "Maybe if you explained what's happening in more detail," Icheb noted, "we wouldn't have to guess."
"This has something to do with Deck 12, doesn't it?" Mezoti asked.
"Why, what makes you say that?" Neelix replied.
Icheb noticed he didn't deny this, either. "Deck 12, section 42 is off limits to everyone but senior officers with a level-six security clearance."
"That's because it's haunted, isn't it?" Mezoti said calmly.
The Talaxian jumped back and asked Mezoti, "Who told you that?"
"Naomi, of course."
"I'll have to have a talk with that girl," Neelix muttered to himself, before insisting there were no such things as ghosts. When all the children pressed him for a better explanation, he finally said, "All right. Gather round. But I'm warning you - this is not a tale for the faint of heart."
"We're not faint of heart," Mezoti said.
"Our cardiopulmonary systems are reinforced," Icheb observed.
Mezoti added, "So don't leave anything out."
Neelix sighed, "All right, but remember - I warned you . . . It all began several months ago, before you joined Voyager. We were exploring a dark nebula, just gathering deuterium. We had no idea what was in store for us. But, when the turbulence started getting rough, we should have seen that as an omen . . ."
=/\=
The crew was collecting particles to fuel the ship when the nebula began to destabilize. Captain Janeway ordered Mr. Paris to take the ship out, but then the ship began to shake. "We'd taken some minor damage," Neelix informed them, "but for the most part, everything was fine. Or so we thought. What none of us knew was that a mysterious stowaway had come aboard Voyager."
"What kind of stowaway?" asked Mezoti.
Icheb answered, "It was obviously a space-dwelling life form."
"Yes, but we didn't know that, not at that point," Neelix said.
All the children began to make wild guesses about the nature of this stowaway. "Was it non-corporeal?"
"Hostile?"
"Species 5973?"
". . . an inter-phasic species?"
"We can either debate comparative xenobiology or I can continue on with the story. It's up to you," Neelix said in exasperation. After the children agreed to hold their questions for later, the Talaxian said, "Now, where was I? Oh! . . . life aboard Voyager would have been more or less back to normal if it weren't for a few strange malfunctions . . ."
Transporter Room One was out of commission. Gravity was temporarily lost on Deck 5. Doors opened and shut without instructions. Many of the sonic showers went off-line. And because the replicators began to act up, the captain couldn't get a decent cup of coffee. Icheb imagined the captain was very irritated by that. Those were all minor annoyances, however. When false readings from the navigational array caused Voyager to travel in circles, and the communication system had to be shut down because it was functioning erratically, the situation became more serious.
Commander Chakotay tried to get to Engineering to speak with Lieutenant Torres about the problems, but, "the turbo-lift plunged eleven decks at high speed. It fell faster and faster! The G-Forces pinned Commander Chakotay to the ceiling! He knew that at any minute he was going to come crashing down to the bottom of the turbolift, and there was nothing he could do about it!"
The children were leaning forward, totally involved with Neelix's story, and then he asked, in a conversational tone of voice, "Is anybody hungry? You haven't touched your snacks."
Mezoti cried out, "Neelix! Snacks are irrelevant! Continue the story!"
"What happened to Commander Chakotay?" Icheb demanded to know.
"Oh, then the descent stabilizers reactivated."
To sighs of relief, Neelix added, "The way B'Elanna tells it, Commander Chakotay was not very happy when he showed up in engineering that morning." After running a diagnostic, the commander and the lieutenant went to Deck 13, where they thought the problem was with burned-out gelpacks. Once they arrived, they saw the gelpacks were fine, but now they diagnosed problems with the environmental system around Cargo Bay Two, where Seven was running diagnostics. Because the comm system was down, no one could warn her of any potential problems. Seven was concentrating on her work, and she didn't immediately notice nebular gasses seeping inside the cargo bay. Once Seven did see them and tried to leave, the doors wouldn't open, and she collapsed from lack of oxygen. She never realized an entity was in the room with her. When she was down on the floor, it floated over to her.
"The entity must have infiltrated her cybernetic systems and turned her against the rest of the crew," Mezoti suggested, resulting in a cry of outrage from Neelix.
"It most certainly did not! You're letting your imagination run away with you!" Just then, the portable light went out. To the children's cries of dismay, Neelix reassured them. "It's all right. I just have to replace the power cell. Nothing to be frightened about."
Once Neelix got the light working again, his face appeared suddenly out of the darkness, highlighted in such an eerie way that the younger three screamed a little. While Icheb tried to stay calm, he had to admit he felt like he was inside one of Naomi's ghost stories, not just listening as Neelix related one.
Neelix apologized to his listeners. "Now, where were we. Oh, yes. Seven was trapped, but fortunately for her, help was on the way . . ."
The commander and chief engineer rescued Seven, but strange things continued to occur. Voyager was hanging dead in space, with system after system failing. Ensign Paris was seriously injured by an E.M. surge at his helm station, and then the bridge began to vent out all its breathable air. The captain ordered everyone to exit immediately. Right after the bridge crew managed to get Ensign Paris to Sickbay, the Doctor's matrix began to destabilize. They just managed to transfer him into his mobile emitter just in time.
When they began to compare all the incidents that were happening all over the ship, the captain and commander realized they might be dealing with a life-form, electromagnetic in nature. However, with so many of the ship's systems no longer under their control, for safety's sake, the captain asked the crew to retreat to Main Engineering, where a secure area could be established.
This was a problem for some who had been out of touch with the rest of the crew for a while, because of the comm system failure. Ensign Kim was punched in the stomach by Crewman Tal Celes when they met up in the dark; she was afraid he was an alien invader coming to take over Voyager. As for Neelix himself, "I still had no idea what was going on. I'd been waiting in the mess hall for more than four hours in the dark, cut off from the rest of the crew." Lieutenant Commander Tuvok had to crawl through Jefferies tubes to get to the mess hall, to explain to Neelix what had happened.
"Were you scared?" Mezoti asked Neelix.
"Well, considering that engineering was eight decks down and the only way to get there was to crawl through pitch-black Jefferies tubes . . . It's fair to say that I was never more frightened in my life."
Icheb said, "You shouldn't have allowed yourself to be afraid. Fear distracts people from accomplishing their goals."
"Well, that's true, I suppose. On the other hand, fear can sometimes be very healthy! It keeps you alert, keeps you from putting yourself in danger . . ."
"I was scared once," Mezoti offered.
"You've been afraid many times," Icheb said, teasingly.
"Icheb!" Neelix reproved, before encouraging Mezoti to tell him about it.
"It was when we were first disconnected from the hive mind, before Seven rescued us. I couldn't hear anyone else's thoughts anymore. I felt . . . alone."
Hearing that, Icheb felt badly about joking with her. He couldn't remember that time as well as Mezoti did, but then, she had always been more in tune with the hive mind than any of the others. It had been upsetting for Icheb, too. He must still have been in his maturation chamber when that happened.
Neelix said gently to Mezoti, "When you're scared, it helps to have someone to talk to, doesn't it? Of course, in my case, the only person I had to talk to was Commander Tuvok. As you've probably noticed, he's not exactly what you call chatty . . ."
Because of this, Neelix's imagination began to run away with him. He started talking to Tuvok about a Talaxian freighter, the Salvoxia, which drifted for eighty years with its dead crew inside before anyone found them.
"I wonder what the crew of the Salvoxia did for food after their emergency rations were gone?" Icheb mused.
"Maybe they ate each other," Mezoti rudely suggested.
"All right! That's enough! I shouldn't have told you that story. It's too gruesome. Now, where was I? . . . " Neelix described how the two of them encountered a trap that was a lot like the one in which Seven had almost been smothered. When Tuvok was injured, Neelix was able to help the commander get to main engineering, overcoming his own fears in the process.
By this time, the main computer system had been infiltrated by the life-form. When it started to state :::Captain Janeway, report to Astrometrics::: the captain realized the entity was trying to communicate with her. It simply wanted to go home to its nebula, and Captain Janeway was perfectly willing to bring it there.
There was just one problem. When Voyager destabilized the nebula, it had dissipated. The creature's J-nebula home no longer existed, and the entity became angry. It ordered an evacuation so the gaseous anomaly could possess the ship, and any entity capable of turning off the environmental control systems has the power to force the issue. Captain Janeway explained that without the ship's crew, every system would eventually fail, stranding the entity in an empty ship, but it didn't seem to believe her. The entire crew entered the shuttles and the escape pods to abandon ship while the entity ran the diagnostic the captain had suggested it run. The entire crew exited the ship in escape pods or on shuttles - all, except for Captain Janeway. Once the entity realized the captain was telling the truth, it prevented her from leaving.
The life form tried to force Captain Janeway to cooperate by erecting force fields around her and transferring nebular gases inside to choke her. "It looked like the creature was calling the captain's bluff," Neelix said, but when the captain was willing to die rather than submit to the ultimatum, the entity replaced the nebula gasses with air and restored all systems to the crew's control.
"It took almost two days for the crew to return to the ship," Neelix explained. "Eventually, an artificial environment was created in an isolated section of Deck 12. The creature has been living there ever since."
"I told you there was a monster on Deck 12," Mezoti said to Icheb.
"It's not a monster. It's an alien life form," Icheb replied. Just at that moment, there was a decided bump, which all of them felt. "What was that?"
With an evil gleam in her eye, Mezoti said, "Maybe it's the alien life form coming to get us."
Neelix reproved her again about her imagination getting the better of her, but at that moment the lights came back on. "There," Neelix said. "That little jolt was probably nothing more than our friend leaving the ship, to go to a new home the captain found for her. Time to regenerate." He herded all four into their alcoves.
"What if the life form didn't leave?" Azan asked.
"What if it wants revenge?" worried Rebi.
"What if I told you I made up the whole thing?" Neelix said.
"Naomi says you always exaggerate," Mezoti commented.
"I should have known better than try fooling the four of you. All right. In you go," Neelix said, he hustled them back into their alcoves and their regeneration cycles reinitiated.
"Sweet dreams," he said, as he tiptoed out the door.
=/\=
Over breakfast the next morning, Icheb related Neelix's "ghost story" to Tom Paris. "I knew the story wasn't true the moment he said Bussard collectors produced nadion emissions."
When the helmsman chuckled while sipping his coffee, Icheb was confident he was right.
But then Tom said, "Hate to break it to you, Icheb, but that story Neelix told you - it wasn't made up. The jolt you felt last night was our gaseous entity friend diving out of Voyager and into its new J-nebula home. It took Seven quite a while to find one with just the right mix of gasses so it could live 'happily ever after.' That's what Neelix said when he saw it swimming through the nebula, when he came on the bridge to tell us you were settled down for the night."
"You mean everything Neelix said was true? He told us it was just a story."
"Go down to Deck 12 and check it out, if you don't believe me. B'Elanna's asked me to help her replace a few wall panels in the 'haunted corridor.' Thanks to corrosive elements in our guest's gaseous make-up, some are damaged. I'm going there after I finish my meal. Do you want to come down and help me? I'm sure B'Elanna would welcome an extra pair of hands . . ."
=/\=
(This section quotes extensively from "The Haunting of Deck 12," Story by Mike Sussman, Teleplay by Mike Sussman, Kenneth Biller, & Bryan Fuller)