Disclaimer: Only the story is mine. Everything else belongs to Paramount. kicks Paramount But they've abandoned their characters and stuff and did really nutso things to them, so I delete Paramount. I'm not making any money off this, so leave me alone, Paramount minions! I wrote this story, which was my very first ever Voyager fanfic, in August, 2000. It was not beta'd. This story contains a relationship between two women, so if that offends you, please read something else.

Code: T/7.
Genre: Romance, Drama
Rating: PG-13


Ghosts, Chapter 2


"Yes! B'Elanna yelled triumphantly. The worm was destroyed. It had been one of the most complex little bugs that the chief engineer had ever seen. She had been furious when she discovered it. It had disguised itself as a recipe. A recipe! Torres had seen a lot of viruses and worms in her time, but never one quite sowell hidden. She still blamed herself for not finding it earlier, but now the damage was done and there was nothing for her to do except repair the damage her mistake had caused.

She tapped her comm badge to report to the captain, but all she got was a muted beep. Nothing else. She growled and began accessing the comm system to begin repairs there when the doors to Engineering hissed open. She glanced up briefly to note who had come in and froze. It was Sam Wildman's kid, Naomi. B'Elanna blinked a couple times, and then walked over to her.

"Hey, kid. You lost?" She asked, smiling, kneeling down in front of her.

"The comm doesn't work."

"Yeah, I was just about to fix that. You looking for your mom or Neelix?"

"No, Seven asked me to come here. She's hurt really bad. She was shaking when I saw her and I dunno what's wrong, just that she needs medical assistance." Naomi was proud that her voice came out strong and clear, but inwardly she was shaking. B'Elanna stared at Naomi and felt her heart start racing. She stood up and ran over towards a console that would let her activate the transporter. Naomi followed.

"I'm gonna try to transport her to Sickbay," she explained to the child. Naomi watched the engineer's hands flit across the controls. After about a minute Torres hit them. "Damn!" She shot an apologetic look at Naomi, but rushed over to another panel. She tried again, but the sensors outside Astrometrics were so badly damaged that they couldn't get a lock on the ex-drone. Torres' mind raced as she tried to figure out how to get around the problem. Finally, she realized there was only one thing for her to do. She'd have to repair the sensors herself. She began keying in for transport, manually setting the coordinates so that she wouldn't beam into a bulkhead and hit Energize.

B'Elanna beamed into the hall and the first thing she did was scan the area with her tricorder. Life support in this section was non-operational. That wasn't something she was expecting... She looked over at the form of Seven of Nine. The Borg Ice Queen. Looking at her like a frightened child. She had her head turned toward her and looked like she was about to fall asleep. With the decreased oxygen levels, it was no wonder. B'Elanna herself was already starting to feel lightheaded. She began searching for the control panel that would let her access the transporter controls and sensors.

"Lieutenant Torres." B'Elanna stopped and looked at Seven.

"Yeah?"

"You are endangering your life being in this section. You should return to Engineering. Life Support is off-line here."

"How do you know it's on in Engineering?" B'Elanna asked, teasing the other woman lightly. Seven's ocular implant raised.

"Then you should return to wherever life support is operational."

"And leave you here to die? Forget it." Torres found the access panel and opened it. She then began assessing the mess. As far as she could tell, whatever had dismantled these systems had done it maliciously. It looked like they took a laser cutter to the main circuit pathways.

The bioneural gel pack was an odd greenish color, instead of its healthy blue. She jerked it out and glared at it. Then she walked across the hall, removing a gel pack from the door controls and replaced it with the sick pack. After all, no one needed to go into Astrometrics right now. She felt a pang in her chest, but shoved it down.

She placed the gel pack in the panel she was working on and began attempting to integrate it to these systems as well as repair the damage done by whatever had messed with the controls. It was a long job, unless she could figure out a way to bypass certain critical pathways that had been severed.

She had a lot to think about as she was working on the circuit panel. Almost anyone she could think of would question her helping out the Borg woman. They were adversaries, after all. Who'd know that she actually would care enough to risk her life for the ex-drone?

B'Elanna was a compassionate woman. Something very few people aboard Voyager seemed aware of. Chakotay knew, of course. He'd been her best friend while in the Maquis. Harry Kim, her best friend aboard Voyager after Seska turned against them. And of course, Tom. Well, sometimes. She didn't always feel as comfortable letting her more vulnerable side out to him as to Harry or Chakotay and that worried her some. Especially since she believed that, in a love relationship, you were supposed to be able to share every part of yourself with the other person.

But her compassion had been part of what had moved her to join the Maquis. Most people thought it was only because her Klingon side was always looking for a fight and that she hated Starfleet, so the Maquis was perfect for her, but that had only been part of it. The human side of her had felt the people's plightbeing driven from their homes by a people they had fought off, but who had politically taken what they had once stolen and the people who lived there be damned.

Her compassion and guilt. She felt guilty. If she had only listened to Seven when she had lodged her original complaint about Astrometrics and investigated. If only she hadn't let her feelings against the woman cloud her thinking and at least send a team to check it out. Then maybe the ex-Borg wouldn't be dying right now. Maybe the worm wouldn't have spread so thoroughly throughout the system. Maybe everything would be okay and back to normal right now and no one would be dying because she had to be pissy. It was all her fault. And Seven of Nine was paying the price for her imperfection. If she hadn't been ready to cry, B'Elanna might have laughed at the irony.

Click. Beep, whir. 'Yes!' She had done it. The systems were back on-line. She turned to Seven to find her unconscious and seizing. Scared, B'Elanna hit the transporter controls and ran over to the ex-Borg. The transporter dematerialized them.

"Please state the nature of the medical emergency." Voyager's nameless EMH materialized with the two women.

"She's been exposed to an area with no life support for I don't know how long. Apparently, she needed medical attention before that, too, but I don't know what else is wrong," B'Elanna shot out as quickly as she could. She took a much-needed breath. "Naomi said she was shaking."

The doctor closed the biobed Seven had materialized in and began the scanning process. "My God, she's been poisoned." He hurried from one side of the sickbay to the other, programming a hypospray as he returned.

"Poisoned?" B'Elanna exclaimed, outraged.

"Yes, with a biological neurotoxin," he explained as he injected her with the compound. "Her nanoprobes didn't start working until she had asphyxiated. Apparently, the toxin worked on her central nervous system, paralyzing and shutting it down, then released it, while disrupting the normal function of her internal organs. While her central nervous system was shut down, her nanoprobes ceased to function properly. Which is an oddity in itself, since if a simple neurotoxin worked against the borg, they would not have lasted and expanded as far as they have. This seemed to actually prevent the nanoprobes from swimming through her bloodstream. It's really quite fascinating. I wouldn't mind obtaining a sample if at all possible."

"Yeah, well, you'll have to wait. I don't know what did this. There wasn't anybody on that deck when I got there. Just her."

"Well, it's a good thing you got there when you did. Another five minutes and she would have been dead. As it is, I can correct the internal damage with surgery. I'm already monitoring the oxygenation levels in her bloodstream, which are quickly returning to normal and raising her insulin level." The doctor looked up and noticed B'Elanna's anxious face. "No need to worry, she'll be just fine."

B'Elanna looked a little defensive. "I'm not worried." She looked down at Seven, noticing how human she was when she was unconscious. Not just a Borg. Her lips were partially parted, her hair was falling down slightly and her eyelids twitched as though she was having a dream. The half-Klingon couldn't help noticing that she looked very fragile and beautifullike a butterfly. Torres shook her head slightly. A butterfly? What was she thinking? She turned and hurried out of Sickbay, to be alone with her thoughts.


Seven woke up, to see the smiling face of the Doctor, rather than B'Elanna's. For no reason she could understand, this came as a disappointment to her. She felt a pain seem to explode from behind her eyes. Her stomach heaved and she groaned.

"Well, that's to be expected under the circumstances," the EMH told her, as if she'd reported her physical ailments out loud.

"How is Lieutenant Torres?"

"She's fine. I'm assuming. She didn't stay long enough for me to scan for any damage from the lack of oxygen." He rolled his eyes and lifted his brows. "Typical of her." Seven felt an urge to glare at the hologram, but repressed it. She didn't think it would be pleasant to move her face anytime soon. Her throat was raw from the few words she had uttered and everything either ached, throbbed or burned. The doctor appeared with a hypospray. Seven eyed it warily. "Don't worry, this is a painkiller. You must feel like you got hit by a runaway shuttlecraft."

"That is not an accurate description. My bones are intact and"

"It's a figure of speech, Seven. Meant to indicate a great deal of pain. I was merely expressing my sympathy. I recall pain. It is not a pleasant sensation."

"Indeed."


Naomi sat quietly, watching the Engineering staff work and wondering if anyone would ever notice her. She was too scared to go in the turbolifts and she didn't know the Jeffries tubes well enough to find her quarters. So she sat and waited. She watched as Lt. Torres came back and began giving orders. She watched as the warp core lit up to it's normal colors and she watched as the engine room staff began cheering as systems came back on-line, one by one. She watched, but she never said a word nor moved from her position under a neglected access panel in the corner.

So it came with much surprise that B'Elanna Torres came knee-to-nose with the little girl. She thought she'd accidentally kicked a repair kituntil it squeaked. She leaned down and looked at the tear-streaked face of Voyager's youngest crewmember. She knelt.

"Hey... what are you still doing here?" she asked softly.

"I can't get home."

"Why's that?"

"The monster."

"Monster?" Just then, her combadge beeped.

"All senior officers, report to the briefing room immediately," the captain's voice came through sounding strained. B'Elanna raised her eyebrows, wondering 'what now?'


The captain did not look pleased. She was staring at the sensor data that Harry had just provided her with. There had been a vessel. A tiny ship, no bigger than one of Voyager's escape pods, but a ship nonetheless. And it had been attached to her ship for over a week.

That was not acceptable.

It emitted the same readings as the ship in front of them. They were almost identical, except for the size. Janeway put down the padd she was studying. "Why didn't we pick it up as soon as it attached itself to us?"

B'Elanna looked up, sitting up straight. "The cloak"

"Shouldn't have disguised the extra weight we put on, Lieutenant." B'Elanna looked back down. She hadn't been able to explain that either. The ship's external sensors should have detected it as soon as it latched onat least on some level.

"Maybe a dampening field..." B'Elanna rested her head on her hand. She was shaking slightly and she felt lightheaded. She realized, for the first time, that she hadn't eaten in almost three days. It had been bed to engineering to bed and back again. She'd only managed brief showers and her sleep had been troubled. Kathryn looked worriedly at her Chief Engineer. She had dark circles under her eyes and she detected a tremor running over her entire body. Her hair was slightly unkempt and she looked like she was about to pass out.

"B'Elanna?" Tom whispered. She looked up and gave him a brief, reassuring smile. He sat back, unconvinced.

"Lieutenant, are you alright?" Janeway inquired.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I justit's bugging me. There's something almost... familiar about this. I just can't place my finger on what it is."

"Well, if you figure it out, do let me know."

"Yeah," she replied absently, lost in thought.

"I don't like that someone was on my ship without me knowing. Especially for eight days. And I especially don't like that it injured one of my crewmembers. We don't even know what it looks like."

"Maybe we can get an idea on their ship," Chakotay offered.

"Perhaps it would be prudent to cancel the away mission, in lieu of recent events."

"I appreciate the advice, Mr. Tuvok, but I agree with the Commander on this. We need to know as much as possible about these people. Who they are, what they want, why they were on my ship and how they managed to get there."

"Captain," B'Elanna blurted, then caught herself.

"Yes?" Janeway turned her attention to Torres.

"Naomi Wildman. She's the one who found Seven. She mentioned a monster. I think she might have seen the intruder." Janeway raised an eyebrow, ducked her head, and then looked at B'Elanna.

"Well, then. I guess I'll have to have a talk with my assistant, won't I?"


Naomi looked around the corner, peeking into the captain's ready room before she actually entered. She'd been here before, to submit a plan to rescue Seven of Nine when the Borg Queen had first kidnapped her. But this time, the captain had called her. She wondered what it was about, although she was pretty sure she had it figured out.

"Come in, Miss Wildman." Kathryn called from behind her desk, putting on a formal show for the child.

"You wanted to see me, Captain?" Naomi asked, coming to stand in front of her.

"Yes. It has come to my attention that you night have some information that could prove to be very useful to us." Naomi perked up immediately.

"Do you mean about the creature that attacked Seven?" Kathryn smiled and nodded.

"It's my understanding that you're the only one who got a look at it. I wanted you to describe it for me." Naomi's eyes widened.

"It was big and ugly. Kinda blue-greenish black. It had big eyes and short arms. It had a shell and horns and its mouth looked weird and it smelled like a raw leeola root. It kinda looked like a big bug."

"How many legs and arms did it have?"

"Two legs, two arms. It had hands like a lobster and it had three toestwo in the front, one in the back. And I think it had a beak."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah. It didn't like it when I screamed."

"How do you mean?" Kathryn leaned forward, interested.

"It jumped out of the turbolift when I screamed, and it roared." Janeway processed the information and smiled at Naomi.

"Thank you, that will be all." Naomi smiled and hurried out of the room, leaving Kathryn to her thoughts.


Harry, B'Elanna, Tuvok, Ensign Kyote and Janeway materialized on the bridge of the alien ship. Both Tuvok and the ensign had their phasers drawn, pointing in opposite directions. B'Elanna and Harry produced tricorders and began scanning for their various stations. Janeway reported to the ship and the task of finding out all about the Ssckerellon began.
Kyote stared down the empty corridor, scanning for any living Ssckerellon. So far, she hadn't found any. They were all dead, their husks rotting in the humid climate of their ships. The fetid air almost made her sick several times, and the site of the aliens did nothing to help her keep down Neelix's latest stew.

The captain had ordered her and Tuvok to search the surrounding decks for survivors and to contact her in the event of an emergency. So far, the closest thing to an emergency had been something resembling a rat scurrying out of the empty shell of one of the Ssckerellon. She didn't think the captain would care about that, though.

She saw Tuvok and nodded to him as their paths crossed. He returned the greeting without really looking at her and went back down the hall she'd just come from. She went down his hallway, continuing her macabre count. 'Thirty-six, thirty-seven...' Her search of the ship was almost complete, she only had half this deck and then back to the bridge.

Suddenly, she saw a blur of light blue and she went on alert. She heard hard footsteps, like hooves on the deck plating. She began pursuing the unknown alien.


Janeway glared at the science station in front of her. These Ssckerellon definitely had a low opinion of "mammalian species". Anything warm-blooded, actually. They had encountered a bird-like species once, and classified it as "lesser," the same they apparently gave anyone not reptilian or insectoid, which they seemed to be a combination of.

"Hey, Captain. You might wanna check this out," Harry called. Kathryn trotted over to his station and peered over his shoulder. He stepped aside so she could see a little better. She read the screen out loud, for the benefit of the bridge crew, who was patched in via their communicators.

" 'Live specimen recovered... mammal/lesser... assumed sentient, all attempts at communication failed... known speciesthirty-four point eight, previously... exterminated?' " Janeway looked up at her ensign as though he might have the answer to her outraged query. She returned to reading. " 'Furred, external... front-set optic organs... third spectrum high.' What's that supposed to mean?" She raised her eyebrows and continued: " 'Grazer characteristics with omnivorous tendencies, bipedal mammal base-form..."

"You think that means 'humanoid?' " Commander Chakotay's voice came through the combadge on Janeway's uniform.

"Pretty good chance, is my guess. 'As usual, gender characteristics unavailable in recognizable form. Thin hide, easily ruptured/damaged, light shaded. Fur centered to cranium and assumed genitalia... Bone structure weak, though sturdy by lesser standards.' This thing reads like a half-translated, Gorn med student's journal and it goes on like this for three pages, there's no useful information here. All I get from it is that they had someone captive on this ship. A humanoid of unknown gender or species. We should try to locate their brig or... whatever they might keep a 'specimen' ina giant petri dish, if necessary, and see if they're still alive."

Then the sound began. It was a rhythmic 'cl-clack, cl-clack.' And it was coming closer. Janeway pulled her phaser and pointed it at the sound. Suddenly, a blur shot through the door, faster than it could completely open. It tripped into a pile of blue and white. Itno, she, definitely shestood up and faced B'Elanna. Kyote followed, brandishing her phaser.

To be continued...