=/\=
Any trepidation Icheb may have felt prior to the trip to Sweden disappeared as soon as they arrived at the transport station in Malmö. Aunt Irene was there waiting for them. So were her daughter Anna-Christina Olsson, her son Karl Magnus Anderson, and their spouses and children. Seven had told Icheb that her aunt had two grown children, but in their datastream messages, the aunt hadn't mentioned her grandchildren. The crowd that greeted them was as much of a surprise to Seven as it was to Icheb.
Not long after they arrived at Aunt Irene's home, several more cousins of various degrees of relationship appeared, along with an elderly gentleman who turned out to be Seven's maternal grandfather, James McGinty. He had traveled from his home in Brooklyn, New York, to reacquaint himself with his granddaughter. "While you're on Earth, you must come to Brooklyn for a visit. You'll find you have cousins, aunts, and uncles there, too."
When Karl's daughter Anna-Lise asked Icheb what it was like to travel thousands of light years through the Delta Quadrant, Icheb looked around the crowded room and said, "We had a lot of crew mates on the ship. A little like this family, I think." A ripple of laughter traveled throughout the room. From that point on, Icheb felt at home.
Roughly half of the days Seven and Icheb were in Malmö were spent meeting and visiting with members of their extended family. The rest of the time a smaller group of cousins took them sightseeing. On the third day of their visit, they went through a museum in Stockholm. A sailing ship which had been recovered from its watery grave during the twentieth century was a featured exhibit. "In the seventeenth century on Earth, the Vasa was much like your Starfleet starships, only it sailed the seas, not the heavens," Karl Magnus explained. "It was designed for exploration and to provide military actions to protect Sweden. Unfortunately, it sank quite early during its early missions, but as a result, it was well-preserved when it was rediscovered. It allows us to see what the cutting-edge technology of its time was like." Because Icheb was captivated by the Vasa, Karl-Magnus brought him to a museum in Norway several days later, where a resurrected Viking ship, representing an even older technology of oceanic navigation, was on display. Karl-Magnus commented that when the Vikings came to call, "the people who were being raided reacted in the same way the people of Captain James Kirk's day did, prior to the Kitomer Accords, when they saw Klingon attack forces coming at them."
To Icheb's surprise, Aunt Irene's family tended to visit Copenhagen, in Denmark, as frequently as they did their Swedish capital. Copenhagen was closer to Malmö than Stockholm. Since Seven and Icheb's visit took place in January, Copenhagen's famous Tivoli Gardens were closed for the season, but they took the railway across the Öresund Bridge to visit other attractions which were available in the winter.
Icheb had asked to see the Little Mermaid in the harbor. He'd read the Hans Christian Andersen story when he'd explored children's literature, after his return from Quarra. While they went to visit the statue, it was a very brief one. The day was bone-chillingly cold, with a mixture of sleet and freezing rain descending from the sky. Everyone agreed it was preferable to spend their time indoors rather than getting soaked in icy weather. Fortunately, Aunt Irene's daughter Anna-Christina had checked the weather forecast before they left Malmö. Wisely, she'd arranged for the group to visit the Danish Royal Library, to view some illuminated manuscripts from Earth's medieval period. Icheb and Seven were both very impressed by their beauty. Icheb thought the illustrated pages of the Copenhagen Psalter glowed with life, even though the artists which painted them had died some twelve hundred years before.
Afterwards, while eating a late lunch at a smorgasbord restaurant near the library, Icheb silently contemplated whether or not treasures such as the Psalter might have been created by Brunali artists in the distant past. During his very short sojourn on his native planet, he couldn't recall hearing anything about a museum, or even a library, exhibiting items like these. If they had ever existed, like the Brunali children's books he couldn't remember, such things may have been lost as collateral damage when the Borg raided Brunal.
When he asked Seven about this during their train ride back to Malmö, she confirmed the Collective considered a civilization's art unimportant. "When the Borg assimilate a planet, such items are discarded as irrelevant. Perhaps someday an anthropologist on Brunal will unearth scraps of such superb artefacts buried beneath rubble, left behind when the Borg scooped up its technology and people." Their cousins Anna-Christina and her daughter Anna-Lise were sitting nearby on the train, close enough to hear what Seven said. While they didn't comment about her revelation at the time, that evening after dinner, the subject everyone had been avoiding for the first few days of the family reunion finally came out into the open.
Karl-Magnus was the one who hesitantly broached the issue. "You know I am the namesake of my Uncle Magnus, Annika. I understand he . . . he became Borg when you did."
"Yes," Seven said succinctly. Icheb wondered if she would refuse to say anything more about him. He knew what happened to Seven's family was as bitter a subject for her as Icheb's parent's betrayal was to him.
"Annika," Aunt Irene said softly. "If you don't wish to tell us much more about your parents, we'll understand. I do wish to know if they're still Borg. Or do you think they're dead?"
Seven glanced over towards Icheb. His role in the destruction of the Borg was unknown to the general public. He doubted she'd say anything about their supposition that most of the Borg were dead because of the way so many of the vessels which Commander Tuvok had not yet attacked with Admiral Janeway's transphasic torpedoes blew up on their own. However, Seven's answer to her aunt concerned a series of events which took place long before he'd arrived on Voyager.
"When the Borg attacked The Raven, both of my parents were assimilated. The Borg also assimilate children, but they do not immediately become functional drones. They're placed in maturation chambers, sometimes for years, to be indoctrinated into the Collective until they are fully developed. Icheb did not remain inside his chamber long enough for this process to be completed. I did." She paused. Her grandfather McGinty was present, listening closely to what Seven had to say. She walked over to him and held out her hand, grasping his before saying, "I never saw my mother again, so I do not know if she survived the assimilation process. Not everyone does." The old man nodded slowly, absorbing this painful truth.
"What about my brother Magnus?" Aunt Irene quickly asked. Icheb realized she'd picked up on the way Seven phrased her response about her mother. Seven would have said she never saw either of her parents again, if that, in fact, had been her experience.
Seven dropped her grandfather's hand and strolled slowly around the room, lost in her thoughts. Everyone remained silent, waiting for her to continue. Once she arrived at the large picture window of the room, Seven gazed pensively into the cold, dark night. Finally, in a soft voice, she recounted what had to be some of her bitterest memories. "When Voyager discovered what was left of The Raven, Commander Tuvok retrieved what he could from its computer before the wreckage fell down a canyon. That planet is more than fifty thousand light years away from here. The region's inhabitants, the B'omar, did not welcome us. We were forced to speed away from their space before we had a complete understanding of what the lieutenant commander's tricorder contained. I believe the captain did skim through its contents, but not in any depth.
"Two years and five months ago, Captain Janeway asked me to study the data for a . . . project we were about to undertake." She sighed before continuing, "I learned my mother had become alarmed and warned my father they should end their study. She felt they'd gained enough data and needed to return to the Alpha Quadrant to share what they'd learned. They were so far away from home by that point, it may have been impossible, but she didn't want to follow the cube they were studying anymore. She thought they'd been lucky the Borg hadn't noticed my father during his visits, even though he'd developed technology to hide his presence from them." She sighed again and looked back at her aunt, who was sitting very still in her armchair. "She was right, but her warning came too late. We were discovered."
At this point, Aunt Irene leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and groaned, "Oh, Magnus, my dearest brother. Always your fatal flaw! The dog with a bone, that was you! Once engaged in a subject, you never seemed to know when enough was enough. There was always that one, last, fascinating tidbit of information you simply had to obtain." When she opened her eyes, she sighed and asked her niece, "When was the last time you saw him?"
"When I saw my father again, he was in the company of the Borg Queen. Papa was a drone, of course. She'd added his 'distinctiveness to her own,' as she always put it. She may have liked having him near her. Or it could have been for my benefit, since she wanted me to come back to the Collective." Icheb could hear the steel return to her voice. "The project I'd undertaken for the captain resulted in my capture. The Queen didn't immediately take away my individuality. I will not share the tasks I agreed to complete for her while in her grasp, when she told me she would assimilate everyone on Voyager unless I cooperated with what she ordered me to do.
"When Captain Janeway and the crew rescued me, they failed to rescue my father. I don't know if they were aware he was one of the drones near us. It might have been impossible, even if they did know. Everything happened so fast, and we had to flee as soon as I was back on Voyager. Papa was still connected to the Hive and the Queen, too. He may even have tried to assimilate Voyager, since Commander Tuvok hadn't had an opportunity to make any preparations to prevent such an eventuality.
"We know the vessel that followed us into the conduit when we escaped was destroyed. We believed the Queen and my father were both still on that ship, but the Queen communicated with me again later. She must have survived. He may have also been saved with her. I have no way to know for certain."
Seven looked towards Icheb then. He didn't need to hear a subvocal command to maintain his silence about what had transpired when the Admiral Janeway of the future made her suicide run at the Queen. He couldn't have said anything anyway. After all, they had no concrete knowledge of what had happened at the Unicomplex. All they knew for certain was that the hub and conduits had been destroyed everywhere Starfleet had managed to search. Whether the Queen had been killed, along with the drone who had once been Magnus Hansen, they did not know. He nodded his head ever so slightly, just to let her know he'd understood.
Aunt Irene walked over to her niece, murmuring softly, "Oh, my dear Annika. I'm so, so sorry." She wrapped her arms around Seven and hugged her. Gradually, all of the cousins converged on Seven, with each, in turn, offering condolences. It reminded Icheb of Joe Carey's wake on Voyager. And perhaps, in a way, that's exactly what this was: a memorial service for a couple who had, in a sense, died when they'd lost their individuality due to their dedication to scientific research. As for their actual lives, those, too, had probably been erased. While Icheb hoped the truth would eventually be revealed, he felt that sinking feeling in his stomach again. It was unlikely they ever would know.
=/\=
While Icheb and Seven agreed the reunion with Aunt Irene and their new-found family had been a wonderful experience, by the end of the visit, they were more than ready to return to San Francisco. They needed to learn how their crew mates had fared during their absence. Every morning, Icheb had checked into the Terran news services. He reported to Seven they'd missed two "Welcome Home, Voyager" bashes which had taken place while they were in Scandinavia, but he didn't find anything about the fate of the Maquis. Perhaps more importantly, nothing had been said about Captain Ransom, Lieutenant Burke, or the crew of Equinox, either. Icheb saw a few feature stories about Starfleet crew members' reunions with family members, but nothing of substance had been distributed by Starfleet Command Headquarters. Icheb wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing. He was eager to get back to find out what was really going on.
Although Aunt Irene invited them to stay with her for as long as they wished, Seven explained they needed to get back as scheduled. "The date for the adoption hearing is set for next week. We must be there in case court representatives have any more questions," Seven explained.
Aunt Irene said she understood. As they were getting ready to leave her home, Seven shared something with her and with Icheb that even he had not heard before. "Aunt Irene, I wish you to know of a decision I've made. Yesterday, I contacted the court in San Francisco and asked them to make a revision in their documents. I will adopt Icheb using the name my parents gave me at birth. When I return to my duties, I will ask everyone to use the name Annika Hansen in official documents and during my work assignments."
Aunt Irene's eyes flooded with tears upon hearing this. "Oh, Annika, now I know you've really come home to us." Hugging them fiercely, she bid farewell to her niece Annika and soon-to-be grand-nephew, Icheb Hansen.
=/\=
