The Littlest Rogue, chapter 37
Alfred Bester stood in front of the activated glowing metallic interdimensional portal, looking over at the lifeless Minbari corpse, who was still hooked up to the immense and complex control center that kept the planet Epsilon Three from destroying itself. He had just forced the former caretaker to activate the portal called the Guardian of Infinity, now knowing where and how the fleeing rogue Psi Corps fugitives had escaped his clutches. Bester had read in the unfortunate alien's mind that he had not expected the psi cop to arrive in the manner that he did. Instead of using his personal shuttle, Bester had activated the small device he had stolen from Zathros and Garibaldi, and had figured out how to use it by picking the minds of Zathros' brothers, who were out for revenge and pursuing him for the murder of their identical sibling. Already, Bester could feel tremors as the planet was becoming unstable for lack of a caretaker, but he didn't care. Even if the planet destroyed itself, the newly discovered portal and the orbiting space station named Babylon Five, he had a way to get back home. Before Draal died from a PPG gun blast to his chest, he gasped out the location of the fleeing telepaths, thinking he had little more to lose and knowing that it would be very hard for Bester to track down even one. Bester heard one word before Draal died: "Woodstock". The word held little meaning for Alfred. He was born on Mars and raised by the Psi Corps in the twenty-third century. He knew very little about the historic events that led up to a four-day concert held at a converted dairy farm in the state of New York, three centuries before he was born. Bester stepped over to the lifeless corpse, wisps of smoke emanating from the dead alien's chest and the scent of seared flesh entering his nostrils as he made sure of his handiwork. Satisfied that the Minbari was dead, Bester stepped into the Guardian portal and vanished in a green mist, in a crazy single-minded pursuit of his quarry.
The invisible Q who called himself Quinn watched as the evil madman departed, making sure that Bester had not picked up his presence with his telepathic abilities. Fortunately, the Q's were more powerful. He had just returned after saving Miss Lincoln from a fate worse than death. Not wishing the newly discovered Guardian portal and Psi Corps escape route or the orbiting Babylon Five space station to be destroyed, he quickly healed and revived the Minbari caretaker.
Since she had been freed from the Shadow implants, Bester's ex-lover Carolyn Sanderson had become friends with Ambassador Delenn. She had been informed by her new friend about the new portal within Epsilon Three and about Gary Seven in the other dimension and had decided to aid the Minbari spiritual leader and ambassador in her efforts to make sure the rogue telepaths made clean getaways via the Guardian portal. Both women had also become new part-time agents for Supervisor 194. Carolyn was happy to be freed from the Shadow implants. Delenn, after learning what Bester had done to Draal, now had an even better reason to aid fleeing human Psi Corps refugees. She hated Bester for killing her friend as much as she had hated humans in general in the past for killing her friend from the warrior caste Duk'hat. She now knew that not all humans were evil, but Bester certainly was. Even though Draal was now alive and well, thanks to the Q being from the parallel universe, Delenn hated Bester enough to kill him for what he did to her dear friend. In revenge, she now felt that she should help the fleeing rogue telepaths escape the evil Psi Corps by any means possible. Delenn made a call to her new friend Carolyn on a secure channel, asking about Woodstock. Unlike her former lover, Carolyn knew the history of the famous concert, held on a dairy farm in the state of New York. She had long been a student of Earth history and had become a patron of classical music from that era, studying the events leading up to the historic rock concert, including the Vietnam War, which was one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts in the history of her planet. The concert was partly political in nature, meant to impress on the powers that were of the uselessness of the war. The impact of this incredible concert was still being felt to a much smaller degree even in her century. She was also aware that Bester would have a very difficult time tracking down rogue telepaths, being that the concert had been attended by a half a million people and that Seven and Draal had disguised the rogue telepaths as hippies. The two men knew that the telepaths would adapt very quickly because of their unique abilities. Also, there was very little chance that they would be ratted out by other concert attendees, being that most in the crowd were into such things as flower power, transcendental meditation and pot. They would not think anything of a few telepaths in their midst, except that they were "cool", "groovy" or "far out".
The Borg queen awoke to find that the biological part of her had been disengaged from her mechanical body. She was lying helpless on the cold deck of the Borg ship, for a time, flopping around like a fish out of water. Still tingling from the effects of the massive electrical shock that had disabled the entire collective, she inched herself with her metal spine painfully and meticulously back into her Borg body as it slowly came back into working order. As it did and she recovered, she stepped over to the sensors. Voyager was nowhere to be found. The Q, before departing to help Draal, had masked the warp signature of Voyager as simple background radiation from a nearby nebula so the Borg would not be able to pursue them. The Borg queen also realized that her young captive had somehow escaped as well and that they had been foiled in their attempts to extract the information about Seven's base of operations. The Borg queen knew also that the young girl named Roberta had no knowledge whatsoever of the secret planet, due to the Borg implants they had given to her. It would be nearly impossible to keep any kind of a secret from the collective, so the queen knew that the girl was telling the truth when she said she had no idea what she was talking about. She, however, was aware of the fact that the girl was not married to Chakotay, having spied on her through Seven of Nine's ocular implant while she was recovering from a head injury in sickbay. She considered that there might be other opportunities to abduct Mrs. Chakotay and get the information the collective sought.
Seven, Chekov, O'Neil and Mrs. Chakotay gasped with concern as Miss Lincoln appeared inside the safe-like transporter with help from Quinn and his two newest agents in a flash of light. Saavik and Nick were holding her up and Seven instructed them to put her on the brown leather couch beside the computer and told Nick to depart back to the future before his mother awakened and he complied, giving her a gentle and compassionate kiss on the unaffected part of her forehead. She was unconscious, probably from shock and her head was drooping on her chest, but Seven could see her Borg implants, which were scanned by his Beta Five computer and thankfully found to be inactive. Her face was gray and drawn, and Seven knew just by looking at her that she had been partially assimilated. She would quite probably need a twenty-fourth century doctor to remove the cybernetic devices imbedded in her skull, not to mention the months of therapy she would need to recover from the brutal treatment she had suffered at the hands of the Borg. Mrs. Chakotay stared at her identical counterpart from this dimension, aghast and a bit ashamed that the poor girl had experienced such brutality on her behalf. Amazed at Miss Lincoln's resemblance to herself, she reached out with her hand to gently touch her pale cheek. The girl flinched, her eyes still closed, and she screamed in terror. Chekov picked up that Miss Lincoln was dreaming that she was once more being touched by the cold metal hand of the Borg queen. Mrs. Chakotay quickly withdrew her hand, also picking up the fact of her counterpart's nightmarish ordeal. She whispered a sincere apology to her identical double, who was now afraid to open her eyes, thinking that she was still aboard the Borg ship. Mr. Seven asked Chekov to go to the hidden communications panel behind the round wall hanging to contact Starfleet Temporal Medical. Before he arrived, Quinn appeared and offered to remove the cybernetic devices himself. With their consent, they were gone with a wave of his hand.