Chapter 3: Occupational Hazards

"CMO's log, stardate 59132.4. Following the victory of our confrontation alongside the U.S.S. Nobunaga against a Borg cube, the Cerritos has recovered two of its missing crew: Ensign Bradward Boimler, and Captain Freeman's daughter, Ensign Beckett Mariner. Ensigns Mariner and Boimler were assimilated by the Borg last year; Captain Freeman and Ensigns D'Vana Tendi and Samanthan Rutherford, who took sabbaticals in order to rescue them, have also returned aboard-ship and are awaiting official approval from Starfleet to end their indefinite leave.

I have been tasked by acting-Captain Ransom to return the neural functioning of Ensigns Mariner and Boimler to as normal a state as possible, given their conditions. While I've been able to separate out their personalities with the assistance of Ensign Tendi, it has not been possible to fully break the psychic link between them. Further research leads me to believe that any attempts could be fatal to the patients, because the Borg are apparently no-good-sons-of-bitches who don't like losing their toys.

Not looking forward to breaking it to them, I'll admit. Poor kids. Wouldn't trade places with them for a new tail and all the Latinum on Ferenginar."

The first thing Beckett Mariner noticed when she opened her eyes was that she was in the Cerritos sickbay, with a pounding headache. The second thing she noticed was that she was, in fact, Beckett Mariner.

Everything was so…quiet. For the first time in a long, long time, she could hear herself think; the unending struggle to block out the crowd of screaming voices in her mind had been replaced with the comparatively quiet beeps and trills of the medbay instruments and her own internal monologue, quiet but self-assured.

The third thing she noticed was that she wasn't alone. Someone else was gently gripping her hand, and when her gaze drifted sideways she saw a much older human hand gripping her own. She traced the hand up the arm to the person on the other end, and found herself looking at the only face in the world she wanted to see right then.

True, Carol Freeman looked worse for wear. She had a lot more gray hair than Mariner remembered, and bags under eyes that indicated many sleepless nights. It had also been a long, long time since she'd seen her mom in civilian clothes, at least outside of the context of sleeping or going out on a date with her father, so it was strange to see her now in a casual black shirt and jeans; she did remember, though, that her mom had been wearing the same white spacesuit jacket (with less blood and smoke-stains on it—oh right, she'd broken Rutherford's nose, she'd have to apologize for that) on the Cube, so it was clear Carol hadn't bothered to change before coming to keep vigil at her daughter's sickbed.

Though her brain still felt foggy (Dr. T'Ana must have given me the good shit), Mariner quickly pasted together these observations into a story of the last few months from her mom's perspective. Clearly, Carol had had a hell of a time trying to find her.

But she had found her. Rescued her from the Borg. As a civilian, and without Starfleet help, her mother had literally searched the heavens and the earth, confronted one of the most frightening enemies the Federation had ever known, and won. For her.

As all these thoughts were running through her head, her mom must have somehow noticed some minute change in her daughter's position, for she looked up from the Padd she was reading and went wide-eyed. "Beckett…"

"Mom," Mariner said hoarsely, and then flung herself into her arms.

Carol caught her and gripped her back so tightly that she almost squeezed the air out of her daughter's lungs, swaying slightly. Mariner buried her face in her mom's jacket and breathed in, letting the familiar scent wash away the last twelve months of all-that-stuff-she'd-rather-not-think-about. She was back home, and that all that mattered right now.

"Oh, Beckett, honey, I missed you so much," her mom choked, pulling back. "I was so scared I'd never see you again…" She brushed her daughter's hair out of her face, and, eyes watering, Beckett actually let herself lean into the touch. "But you're here," Carol murmured, studying her face. "You're safe."

"Mom, I…" She stopped suddenly as she felt her mom's fingers brush over something on her face, and raised a hand, stopping the older woman's fingers in place. Carol's expression fell and she pursed her lips, before taking a pad off the bedside table.

"Here." Mariner unlocked the screen and clicked the photo function; a moment later her own face appeared. "Honey, it's really not that bad," Carol offered.

Mariner didn't answer, instead staring down at her reflection on the screen. She raised her hand again to touch the implant—a silvery metal crescent that cupped around her right eye. "Beckett?"

The younger woman was silent a moment longer, and then locked the pad and set it back on the table. "Dr. T'Ana did a good job. Could've been a lot worse," she shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. "It actually looks kind of cool."

Carol smiled ruefully. "That's my girl."

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of the door sliding open, and Dr. T'Ana walked in. "Oh good, you're awake," she said, noticing Mariner. "How about Ensign Boimler? Still sleeping like the dead?"

"Seems so," Carol replied.

"Not surprised; I had to do a lot more work on him, seeing's how the Borg made a bunch of modifications. Gave him the good drugs to ease the process." T'Ana checked the time and added, "He should be good to wake up about now. Captain, no offense, but this is one diagnosis I should probably give in private."

"Of course," Carol agreed, standing up. "And I should probably go help Ransom with his report; Beckett, honey–"

"I'll be okay, mom." Mariner gave a weak smile. "Thanks. Y'know, for everything."

Her mother's eyes were suddenly glittering with tears again, but thankfully she restrained herself to just patting her daughter's hand with a nod and then leaving, apparently not trusting herself to speak. Dr. T'Ana watched her go and then turned back to her conscious patient. "Brace yourself," she warned, pulling out a little black instrument.

"Brace myself for wh–" But Dr. Ta'ana was already touching the stimulator to Boimler's neck; a moment later his eyes flew open, and he sucked in a gasp.

And Mariner's vision suddenly swung around like a revolving door and went double.

"Aghh!" She squeezed her eyes shut, but it only partially helped; she could still see, wildly, Dr. T'Ana standing above her—no, above Boimler— peering down at her.

"For that."

"Oh no, nonono what is happening," Mariner groaned into her fingers, as Boimler slowly sat up, staring at his hands. He spread his fingers in and out several times as his breathing grew shallower and quicker, turning into little whimpers as he began to panic.

Dr. T'Ana clapped a paw over his mouth before he could start screaming. "Keep it together, Ensign; this is no time to lose your shit!" Brad stared up at her, eyes wide. "You gonna be okay, or am I gonna have to put you under again?"

He nodded, and then shook his head. T'Ana took her paw away, and he let out a little squeak before looking over at Mariner. She peeked an eye out between her fingers at him.

"M-Mariner?" he stammered. She winced and gave a half-wave with her free fingers.

"Hey, Boims."

"Um, w-why am I seeing you and myself?" He stopped suddenly, and then raised one of his hands to the implant ridges around his eyes. "Oh. Oh, no…"

"Yeah," T'Ana sighed. "Listen up, you two; we've gotta talk."

"So you couldn't completely fix us," Mariner guessed grimly, lowering her hands as Boimler looked away, rubbing the implant with a disturbed expression.

"Well the good news is, I've been able to realign your neural pathways so your sense of identity isn't a Boimler-Mariner soup anymore," the doctor said bluntly as she sat down in a spinny-chair at the end of the occupied biobeds. "Lucky thing you two have totally different thought patterns."

"You can say that again," Mariner mumbled.

"Bad news is," the feline continued, "I can't remove the microcortical implants and cut your psychic link without giving you a much shorter life expectancy."

"H-How short are we talking here?" Boimler asked, lowering his hand and managing a queasy glance back over at Mariner.

"Yeah, I mean we're Starfleet, our life expectancy was never all that lo–"

"Three weeks," T'Ana said bluntly. Both humans winced.

"Ooh. Okay, yeah, that's not great."

The feline picked up her medical pad and opened several apps, some of which appeared to the ensigns, albeit upside-down, to be brain scans and medical papers. "Long story short, you're both still transmitting most of your higher brain functions to each other. Thanks to your friends' little invention—and frankly I think they deserve a medal—your link to the Borg ship's vinculum and the rest of the collective was broken without triggering the usual self-destruct order. I removed most of your implants, but some of the neural ones I can't take out; we're still not sure what'll happen if you get too close to a Cube again, but hopefully that shouldn't be a problem anytime soon."

"I-I don't understand," Boimler said, still sounding shaken. "You said you removed most of the implants; why not these ones?"

"Well if it was just microsurgery I could give it a shot, but it's more complicated than that. These aren't your normal Borg implants; I really don't wanna try removing them until we have more information."

"What do you mean?"

T'Ana handed them her pad and pointed to a spot on the display, which showed a scan of each brain, outlined in green, being entangled by root-like strands in branching non-organic red. "When the Borg realized that someone was about to de-assimilate you, they sent a failsafe order to create a permanent, semi-organic interlink network between you. Nasty little innovation," she growled. "Seems they picked it up about a decade ago from some drones who crash-landed and had their connection severed, one of them panicked and put the others into a mini-collective until they could reassimilate. Pretty famous case, actually."

"Failsafe measure 7-9-0001," Mariner realized, looking at Boimler, whose face had fallen. "Boims, Seven-"

"–of-Nine, yeah, Mariner, I got it too."

"Apparently the Borg has adapted what she did by accident for its own purposes. More and more cases are popping up across the galaxy," T'Ana continued. "I've been reading up on the other files and it looks like the only way to disconnect you is to get rid of the nanoprobes entirely; problem is, they're directly integrated with your higher brain functions, so trying to take them out would cause serious brain damage and probably kill ya both. All around, as your physician, I don't recommend it."

"But hang on—if our link to the rest of the collective has been broken, why can't we just do the same thing to break our link to each other?" Boimler pointed out. "No need to remove the implants."

But the doctor shook her head. "I thought about that, but I'm pretty sure you'd either go crazy or be compelled to re-link as soon as possible. Wouldn't be a very good failsafe if dampening fields were the cure, right?"

"But I don't get it, why would they even do this?" Mariner interjected, frustrated. "How does it benefit the Collective to have us linked together but apart from them?!"

"In my opinion? It's blackmail. It's probably 'inefficient'–" She gave big air-quotes here, "–to waste resources on tracking you, but apparently the Borg's finally figured out that drones who de-assimilate are real threats to their project. They don't totally understand individuals, but they've learned that navigating a shared consciousness as separate people isn't pleasant; my guess is they want you to get so fed up with individuality that you'll re-assimilate of your own free will. Saves them the trouble of hunting you down."

The two humans both fell silent for a long moment, looking at each other uneasily out of the corners of their eyes. "Wow," Boimler said at last. "That is–"

"–Evil," Mariner finished. "And genius. So…okay, then what do we do?" She turned back to the doctor. "I mean what's our plan here?"

"You tell me, kid." At their frowns Dr. T'Ana gave a hopeless shrug. "If you want me to take out the nanoprobes, I can. But I'll tell you right now, your mom'll never forgive any of us."

"You just said we'll die if you do that ," Boimler objected, as Mariner nodded aggressively.

"Yeah, that isn't an option; we need a plan B. Come on, Doc, I've seen you grow a guy a whole new heart; you've gotta have some sort of crazy medical theory up your sleeve! Give us something we can try here!"

"Look, I'm sorry, but there's no way to sugar-coat this!" T'Ana insisted. "You know everything I know; right now, these are the options we've got."

"So– so then what, we just stay as a mini-collective?! No way!" Mariner stood up and ripped off the monitor, causing the doctor to hiss in annoyance. "We just escaped the Borg, we're not staying assimilated to each other!"

"Ensign Mariner, get your ass back on that biobed or I will strap you into it myself!" T'Ana snarled. Mariner glared, but ultimately lost the contest of wills and sat down with a huff, reattaching her monitor. The feline pinched the bridge of her nose. "Look, I'm not all-knowing, maybe there's something out there I haven't heard of that can help! I'm communicating with some xB support groups on Federation planets to see if anyone's figured out how to get rid of the neural implants without killing the host, but I wouldn't hold your breath for a quick solution here. I'm sorry." Both humans' faces were their own versions of devastated, and the feline gave them what was, for her, a sympathetic look. "Hey, at least you're only sharing each other's brainwaves instead of the whole Borg collective's, right?"

"That's not comforting," Mariner snapped.

"Yeah, well, I never scored high in bedside manner." She checked the pad again. "The last of Mr. Boimler's anesthetics should wear off in a few minutes, but I wanna keep you both overnight for observation. Also I want you two to have some time to adjust to this–" she gestured vaguely to the two of them, "–whole shitstorm, before you go back out there."

She tucked the pad under her arm, hesitated, and then said, "By the way, there's one other thing you need to know: Ransom sent back his early report back to Command. It mentioned that you're back…and what's happened your whole little interlink situation." Boimler, who had until this fallen morosely speechless, looked up again. "They told him to put Tendi and Rutherford back on active duty, but you two are technically still on indefinite leave as MIAs; apparently they want some admiral to meet with you after he sends in his complete report."

"Hang on– are you saying they might not let us back into service?" Boimler realized, stunned. T'Ana shrugged helplessly again.

"Who can tell? I know the Captain will fight like hell for the two of you to be allowed back on-duty, but we all know Starfleet's never been as egalitarian as it pretends to be on recruitment brochures."

"But that's bullshit!" Mariner fumed; Boimler looked queasy. "We haven't done anything—hell, things were done to us!"

"I know. I'm sorry, I really am. But someone had to break the bad news, and I thought you should be prepared."

She left, and the two ensigns turned to look at each other. "…You don't think they'll actually kick us out of Starfleet, right?" Boimler managed aloud, voice strangled.

Too angry for verbal response, Mariner ripped off her monitor again in a fit of pique and chucked it across the room.

Despite being kept for observation, Dr. T'Ana allowed them to have visitors, so it wasn't surprising that Tendi and Rutherford showed up not long after, both of them back in their uniforms. Apparently they hadn't expected them to be awake, because as the medbay doors slid open the two ex-drones barely caught the end of Tendi saying, "–can't even imagine what it must have been like," before Rutherford nodded over her shoulder, and Tendi looked back. "Oh!" She flushed green. "Um, hey, guys; Dr. T'Ana didn't tell us you were awake."

"Obviously," Mariner groused. She was still rubbing her eyes, which she was now permanently keeping closed; it was less jarring to see just one point of view, even if it was Boimler's. Tendi winced.

"So, um, h-how are you doing?"

"Honestly?" Boimler sighed.

"Not great," Mariner finished.

"Did, um, did Dr. T'Ana figure out how to–"

"Nope," they replied in a tired chorus. Despite the fact that her eyes were closed, Mariner saw out Boimler's view as Tendi and Rutherford shared a look.

"For fuck's sake, just ask already," she grumbled, flopping back down on the bed.

"Mariner, come on," Boimler chastised.

"Come on what, Boimler? We got assimilated, now we're de-assimilated, they've got awkward questions. Whatever. I'd rather get them over with now than have them hanging over our heads, wouldn't you?" Tendi and Rutherford shared another guilty look. "Oh for Spock's sake, stop looking at each other like that!"

Tendi jumped. "But– how did you–"

"Everything I see, she sees, and vice versa," Boimler explained. "Apparently it's part of the psychic link."

"And before you ask, yes, it's weird," Mariner called from her biobed. Boimler shot her a side-eye, which thankfully she didn't comment on.

"We just want to, you know, make sure you're okay," Tendi said in a small voice.

"We're…getting there, Tendi," Boimler sighed. "We've just got a lot to think about right now."

"Yeah, like how they might kick us out of Starfleet!" Mariner fumed.

"Wait, what?!" Tendi and Rutherford demanded in unison. "But they can't kick you guys out! We just got you back!" Rutherford insisted.

Boimler huffed. "Thanks, Mariner; that couldn't have waited until tomorrow?"

"How are you not more mad about this?!" Mariner demanded, sitting up again and opening her eyes so she could face him. "You love Starfleet! And none of this, exactly none of this is our fault!"

"Of course I'm upset, Mariner! But there's nothing I can do about it except wait, and honestly, I've got a whole bunch of other awful things to worry about to pass the time!" That actually shut her up, and he sighed, turning back to their friends, who looked shell-shocked. "Listen, guys, we're so glad to be back, and we'll definitely talk more later—but right now, we just really need some rest."

"Of course," Tendi reassured him. "You guys take all the time you need."

"Yeah, definitely," Rutherford agreed. "Just say the word, we're here for you. Literally! We can just stay right here and keep you company." He sat down in the visitor's chair next to Boimler's bed.

"So long as it's not a bother," Tendi added anxiously. Mariner sighed.

"It's fine, Tendi. I shouldn't have snapped at you, this isn't your fault."

"It's okay! I'm sure this could leave anyone a little short-tempered." She noticed Mariner rubbing her temples and added, "Do you have a headache? I can get you a hypospray."

"For real, that would be great."

Tendi nodded and began to putter around as Mariner flopped back down on the cushions, causing an unpleasant phantom swoop in Boimler's stomach. Once he was sure they weren't giving him more pitying glances, he lay down himself, staring up at the medbay ceiling. What he'd said was true, he was overjoyed to no longer be– well– well, he didn't want to think about everything that had happened in the last year, not yet anyway. He just wanted to enjoy being back, and being human again. But on the other hand…

On the other hand, we're just stuck like this! And T'Ana doesn't even know how long this will last, I mean, this is bullshit! Some doctor she is!

Boimler froze as he realized the voice in his head definitely wasn't his, and then slowly sat up. "Uh… Mariner?"

"What, Boimler, I'm tired."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. Sorry." He swallowed, and then, not opening his mouth, let the next words run concretely through his brain. But I'm sure Dr. T'Ana is doing her best, so–

"Holy shit!" He heard, saw, and felt as Mariner sat up so fast that her head smacked the bottom of the diagnostic screen over her bed. "OW!"

"Agh!" He grabbed his forehead with a hiss as phantom pain shot across the psychic link and into his spinal cord. Both Tendi and Rutherford jumped.

"Guys! You okay?!"

Mariner had gone slack-jawed in the next bed over, staring at him. Boimler winced and lowered his hand; he could see a new bruise starting to form on her forehead. "Guys?!" Tendi demanded, scared.

"You felt that?" Mariner asked, ignoring her. "You heard that?" Boimler swallowed.

"Pain is irrelevant, remember?"

"Oh no," she realized. He nodded. "Ohh. Shit."

"And…done," Ransom said, setting the Padd down. "Now I just need Mariner and Boimler's reports and I can send it off to San Francisco." He looked across the table. "Captain."

Freeman blinked and looked up. "Sorry, Jack. I was just…lost in thought."

The acting-captain nodded. "Look, you know HQ is going to throw a fit about having two ex-Borg onboard, especially given their whole brain-bots situation."

Freeman scoffed. "Well, Seven-of-Nine's been made a CPO for the U.S.S. Voyager, hasn't she? And Mariner and Mr. Boimler were assimilated for far less time than she was!"

"Yeah, but we're California-class. We're really gonna be out on a limb here." She opened her mouth, offended, but Ransom held up a hand. "Look, I'm on your side, and we're gonna fight like hell to get Mariner and Boimler back in uniform. But you've gotta remember, you're on leave, too. Are you willing to risk getting your captainship back for this? Hell, after what you've been through in the last year, no one on this ship would think any less of you for taking a little more time off to recover."

"Are you trying to take my chair, Jack?" she demanded.

"You seriously think that low of me? That I'd try to take captainship from someone who just got back from rescuing her daughter?"

The two glared at each other for a moment, and then she relented, sighing. "Of course not. I'm– I'm just tired, is all. It's been a long year."

"I know. And that's why I want you to be aware of all the factors here." He hesitated, and then sighed. "Especially considering what happened on the U.S.S. Beckett."

Her eyes shot wide and her mouth fell open. "What the– how did you hear about that! I swear, if T'Ana was running her mouth–"

"It wasn't Dr. T'Ana," he said quickly, and then admitted: "It's in your biography on the Starfleet database. I, uh, I looked you up when I first got assigned to the Cerritos."

"You what?" Her gaze sharpened into a very Mariner-ish glare: "How dare you violate my privacy–"

"It's all public information!" Ransom defended himself. "Look, I'm already the youngest member of your bridge crew, and half of them are your old buddies that you hand-picked! I just wanted to know who I was going to be working with." The woman was still glaring at him, and he rubbed the back of his neck. "All I'm saying is, you need to consider the optics here."

"The optics shouldn't have anything to do with it! That was almost twenty years ago, and a completely different situation!"

"Was it? I mean you were a rising star, on your way to being one of the youngest captains in the fleet. And you gave all that up to protect your kid." He held up his hands before she could start shouting at him: "I'm not judging your choices, honestly I can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing in your situation. But you've protected Mariner a ton of times already, and you just took a year-long sabbatical to rescue her from the Borg."

"What are you saying, you think I can't be objective when it comes to my daughter?!"

"I know you can't be objective when it comes to your daughter," Jack said bluntly. "And honestly I don't care, but I'm not the one making choices about your career." He softened. "Look, being a Captain is tough— way tougher than I thought. I'm more than happy to hand all that life-and-death-decision stuff back to you. But if it comes down to it, you might have to choose between getting your career back, or fighting for your daughter's."

Carol opened her mouth to answer, but was cut off by the ping of someone at the door. "Come in," she and Jack said at the same time, and then glanced at each other in equal amounts of embarrassment that they quickly sought to hide as the door slid open.

A young Vulcan woman in ops yellow entered with a Padd in hand. "Captain," she greeted Ransom, and then raised an eyebrow at Carol. "Captain Freeman. Welcome back to the Cerritos."

"Ensign T'Lyn. I thought you were a science officer?"

"Officer T'Lyn was promoted to lieutenant junior grade while you were gone, and switched tracks," Jack spoke up, standing and holding out a hand; the woman handed him the Padd. "She's our bridge ops officer for Delta shift now."

"Impressive," Carol appreciated. "Not many people can jump to bridge crew in a year, Lieutenant; you should be proud."

"Thank you, Captain, but I did have significant prior experience onboard the Sh'vhal."

"She also never stops working, despite repeated orders from the doc to spend downtime doing something fun," Jack said dryly, giving the Vulcan a significant look. T'Lyn met it impassively, and he sighed, though it was good-natured. "Okay, Lieutenant, what did you find this time?"

"A stream of plasma particles originating in the local subspace, Captain. The wake-like formation appears similar to plasma emissions from the eddies generated in the interfold layer between space and subspace in certain regions of the Delta Quadrant."

"Delta Quadrant?" Jack repeated, scrolling through the report on the Padd. "That's pretty far from home, Lieutenant."

"Indeed, sir. Those eddies are not known to be native to the Alpha Quadrant, and have not previously been detected in this region of space."

"Huh." He handed the Padd back to her. "Well, have the other ops officers collect any data they can, but tell the conn to get ready to steer us clear of any astral anomalies. I'd rather not get sucked into the interfold layer today."

"Yes, Captain. And as regards recreation," she added, tucking the Padd under her arm, "I find data analysis to be relaxing."

"Right, how could I forget." T'Lyn raised the other eyebrow, and Jack waved a hand. "Thanks for the heads up, Lieutenant; dismissed."

"Yes Captain." She gave a brief nod to Carol. "Captain." As she turned and left, Ransom turned back to Freeman, rising to his feet.

"Look, I always knew you'd find them and be back here sooner rather than later. I even kept your ready-room the same. You're the captain this ship needs, not me." He handed her the first Padd, and Carol took it, looking over the initial report he'd sent. "I'll need a few hours to finish gathering my data for HQ, and then I'll be sending out my final report. If you need me before that, feel free to comm me."

"Jack–"

"I know Mariner and I haven't always gotten along," he said bluntly. "But as much as I hate to say it, she really grew on me the last few years. She's a good officer, even if she's rough around the edges. But if it comes down to the two of you, I know who I'd rather be serving with. I'll back you either way, but it's your decision."

He walked out of her quarters, the doors sliding shut behind him. Carol watched him go, and then looked down at the Padd in her hands. At the bottom of the short report, drawn in the blue outlines of the Padd's base format, she saw the four small thumbnail images of the four ensigns; both Mariner's and Boimler's were tagged with a pale green line of text reading: "RMS" —"returned from missing status."

At the top of the quartet was her own thumbnail. The words "Captain Carol S. Freeman" were followed by the status "On-Leave" in yellow. Carol rubbed her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger, trying to stave off the growing migraine. She hadn't slept since…when was it? Right, passing out at the controls on the Modesto.

She turned and looked back over her shoulder at her bed, hesitating—and then stood up with a sigh, tucked the Padd under her arm, and headed out. Ransom said he would be sending his report to Command in a few hours. That meant she only had a few hours to make one of the biggest choices of her career.

And hey, she was a Starfleet captain—or at least, she hoped she still was. What better way to make career-altering choices than while completely sleep deprived and wired up on a cocktail of stress and adrenaline?

CRASH.

Boimler looked up from his Padd with annoyance as Mariner tripped over her own feet and toppled sideways, taking down a tray of shiny medical instruments with her. "You just got a couple meters of rubber tubing taken out of your body, maybe give it a rest?" he called. "Also every time you fall I feel it, so–"

Mariner grabbed hold of the nearest biobed and hauled herself to her feet. "If you'd stop moving your eyes I could maybe figure this out!" she snapped back. "It's making me dizzy!"

"Oh, fine, yeah, I'll just stop looking at things, that's a totally normal request."

Oh my gosh just shut up, you ass. "Yeah, that'd be great, thanks so much," Mariner called over. Boimler scoffed in offense and went back to reading as Mariner wobbled another couple of steps.

There she goes, trying to be superhuman again.

"Hey, I am superhuman. Literally, I've got implants now baby, superhuman vision," she tried to brag, and then wobbled again and sat down hard on a biobed as he rolled his eyes dramatically. "You did that on purpose!"

"Whaaat, no, it was a total accident," he deadpanned. Then quit reading my mind!

Ohhh trust me, I wouldn't be listening to your riveting thoughts about 'regulations' and 'protocols' if I had another option! I can't believe you're reading the stupid manual at a time like this!

For your information, I find it comforting!

Their argument was cut off as the medbay doors slid open, and Beckett looked over her shoulder to see Dr. T'Ana walking in with a Padd in hand. Oh shit.

"Ensign Mariner, what the hell are you doing out of bed?!"

"Um– uh– uh, Boimler still thinks your tail looks weird even though he's known you for years! Yeah, he can't even look at it!" Mariner pulled out of their shared consciousness and pointed at Boimler, who slammed his Padd down on his legs.

"Mariner, what the hell!"

T'Ana growled. "Biobed. Now." Mariner reluctantly staggered her way back to her bed and climbed in; as the doctor headed over to her monitor she shot Boimler a dirty look, and he spooked like a—well, like a scared cat. "Lucky for you, your tendons are nearly done regrowing," she continued, looking over Mariner's biofunction monitor. "Otherwise we would have had to start over completely with that little stunt."

"Come on, Doc, you can't just keep us locked up in medbay," Mariner complained.

"Actually I'm authorized to confine any patient to medbay that I determine needs to be here," T'Ana said coolly. "Not that it matters, because you still haven't figured out how to walk to the door yet." Mariner glowered. "That's actually why I'm here, on my off-hours by the way. I could tell you two were pretty broken up about the whole 'maybe getting forcibly retired' thing."

"Yeah, I mean our careers might be dead, but that's just a little issue, no biggie," Mariner said acerbically.

"Yeah, well, in my expert medical opinion, the first step to getting you back in uniform will be convincing HQ that you two can actually do your jobs. I've been doing some more research–"

"You figured out how to fix us?" Boimler demanded, sitting up straighter. Mariner punched the air.

"Yes! Dr. T'Ana for the win, I knew you'd come up with something!"

"I can't 'fix' you, but there are a couple things we can try," Dr. T'Ana acknowledged. "Option one, a strong enough cocktail of drugs could mute your perceptions of each other's thoughts."

"Like what happened when I first woke up," Boimler realized. "Yeah, let's do that!"

"Hold your horses, ensign; I don't know how often you read the manual–"

"Yeah, Boimler, how often?" Mariner coughed under her breath; he shot her a dirty look.

"–but being high on the job isn't exactly standard Starfleet protocol; it'd impair your ability to work. Even if I got you a medical dispensation, eventually your bodies would just adapt to the anesthetics; I'd have to keep giving you higher doses, and there's an upper limit of how much of this stuff is safe. It's a temporary fix at best."

"Okay, but you wouldn't have come in here just to tell us that…"

"It's still an option I want you to consider," T'Ana said, opening the Padd she was carrying under her arm. "Option two, we can try using a subspace dampening field to sever the neural link between the two of you. Again, I strongly advise against this," she warned. "The Borg knows about dampening fields, they wouldn't have left such an easy loophole in their blackmail plan."

"Well, it didn't kill us the first time," Mariner declared. "I say we put us back in that thing Tendi and Rutherford invented and see what happens."

"It might not have killed us, but it wasn't fun either," Boimler objected. "Any third options?"

T'Ana nodded and opened up a program on the Padd. "Option three—and this is the one I really wanted to talk to you about—we start developing some coping mechanisms."

"Meaning…?"

"Meaning, we accept that this isn't going away anytime soon and focus on finding ways to work around the problem, instead of fixing it."

"So in other words, giving up," Mariner said curtly.

"Hey, there are whole fields of medicine focusing on helping people with major health problems live good lives!" Dr. T'Ana said defensively. "I wouldn't call that giving up."

"Oh yeah?! And what would you call it!"

"Therapy! Preferably physical and mental!"

"Well you know what I call it, I call it you throwing in the towel on us! I thought you were supposed to be a doctor, I thought you were supposed to help your patients!"

"Mariner, come on, she's doing her best," Boimler said sharply.

"We can't live like this!" Mariner shouted back, as much at T'Ana as at him. "We can't do our jobs like this, we need to fix this, now, before HQ decides to send us to a nice farm upstate!"

"Hey, now that she mentions it–" Boimler started, but T'Ana shook her head.

"No good. The Farm handles cases that are either mysterious or incurable; their focus is research and palliative care. We already know what's wrong with you, there's just no good way to get the nanoprobes out. Sending you to the Farm now would be as good as admitting to HQ that you can't hack it and need to be put out to pasture."

"Then we have to figure this out on our own," Mariner snarled. "I am not going to spend the rest of my life with Bradward here stuck in my head!" She pointed at Boimler, whose offense radiated as much back through their neural link as in his face. "Rude," she mimicked in unison with him, turning to face him. "Hey! Oh wow, Mariner, very mature. See what I mean?! This isn't a livable situation!" Dr. T'Ana didn't answer, but her face went, strangely enough, less tense than before. "Well?! Haven't you got something to say?!"

"You're upset. I get it." Mariner blinked at her. "When I lost my tail I was pretty pissed at the doctor who couldn't fix it, too. I know it's not the same," she said, holding up a paw before Mariner could start shouting again. "But learning to live with a disability is something billions of people across time and space have done before you."

She set the Padd down on the table, opened to what looked like diagrams of people walking on lines and touching their toes. "Take some time to grieve and process, and when you're ready, we can start some of these basic balance training modules. Should help with the vertigo at least."

She paused and looked back as the door slid open, admitting Tendi and Rutherford, who were carrying trays of food. "I'll be back from dinner in twenty minutes; lights, set to gamma-shift standard." The medbay lights dimmed slightly and turned yellowish to simulate a sunset. "Try to eat something and get some rest. I want your systems getting used to functioning without the regeneration chambers as soon as possible."

She walked away, leaving behind a fuming Mariner and irritable Boimler. As Tendi and Rutherford approached, the Orion gave them a little wave.

"Hey guys. We brought you some–"

"Holy fuck, real food!" Mariner gasped, instantly changing tracks and grabbing the tray out of Tendi's hands.

"We got your favorites," Tendi said brightly as they dug in. "Pupusa for Boimler and Okinawa ramen for Mariner–" Both of them stuck a bite in their mouths and then immediately froze. As their expressions twisted Tendi began to panic. "Oh no! Did I get something wrong?"

"It's– fine, Tendi, just–" Boimler swallowed, looking queasy and putting down his pupusa.

"–These flavors don't go great together," Mariner finished. She and Boimler shared an uneasy glance.

"You can go first," Boimler reluctantly offered, though the niceness of the gesture was immediately ruined by the unintentional inner addition of, Like you always do.

Mariner clacked her chopsticks loudly against the metal bowl. "I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that."

"Gee, tha-aaand wow, that's delicious," Boimler said, blinking hard as Mariner slurped up a mouthful of noodles. He was embarrassed that tears actually pricked at his eyes at something as simple as replicated soup, but he saw Tendi and Rutherford sharing smiles. "...Thanks, guys," he admitted, shoulders relaxing at least an inch. "It's been…"

"A long year," Tendi guessed, sitting down on the bed beside Mariner's. "Yeah. For us too." She ruefully tucked her ponytail back over her shoulder.

"Yeah, I'll be honest, I think short hair looks better on you Tendi, no offense," Mariner said, swallowing the ramen.

"I know, right? I can't wait to cut all this off; not a whole lot of chances to see a hairdresser when you're floating through space in a tiny shuttle."

"Well I think you look great no matter what hairstyle you have," Rutherford offered loyally.

"Aww, thanks babe," Tendi beamed and gave him a peck on the cheek.

"Babe?!" Mariner and Boimler demanded at the same time, the former through another mouthful of food. The couple looked back to see their friends staring at them bug-eyed.

"Oh, right," Tendi said with a blush, "I-I guess you guys wouldn't know."

"You're dating?" Mariner demanded, swallowing her food. "When the hell did this happen?!"

"While looking for you," Rutherford said, shrugging. "You know how it is, close quarters, lots of time together–"

"–Your mom yelling at us to get a room when we wouldn't stop making coding puns," Tendi added sheepishly.

"Wow. I mean I always knew you guys were close, but I guess I just never saw this coming," Boimler admitted. Mariner snorted in disbelief.

"Seriously? I actually thought they were dating a couple years ago, since they're always hanging out in jeffries tubes together. I just can't believe it took this long!"

"You know it's my job to fix those, right?" Rutherford pointed out. Mariner waved a hand.

"Details!" She wrinkled her nose abruptly as her mind caught up to her. "So you guys started dating while stuck in a tiny spaceship with my mom? That must've been so weird."

"Actually, it was kind of comforting," Tendi admitted, looking at Rutherford.

"Yeah, she's basically like an older you!" the engineer said brightly. Tendi elbowed him hard. "What?"

Mariner scoffed. "My mom and I are nothing alike! I'm a badass free spirit who plays by her own rules; Mom's a–"

"–Badass free spirit who plays by her own rules?" Tendi said wryly.

"What? She is not, she's a total tightass!"

"Who came looking for us in one tiny ship in the void of space, against a whole Borg Cube," Boimler pointed out thoughtfully. Mariner softened.

"Yeah…yeah, she did." Her smile slipped back into a frown, however, as she looked down into the bowl. "I can't believe they might really kick us out. Mom's gonna lose her shit at some admiral if they do, you know."

"That's one thing going for us at least, Captain Freeman will definitely fight to keep us on her ship," Boimler pointed out.

"Wait– you guys didn't hear?' Both of them turned to look at Rutherford, whose face had fallen. "Oh man. I-I guess Commander Ransom didn't want to freak you out."

"Freak us out about what?" Mariner demanded, setting down her bowl. Tendi and Rutherford looked uncomfortable.

"Your mom hasn't been put back on duty yet either," Rutherford explained, "and I guess Ransom thinks that if she tries to convince Command to let you two keep serving while all, you know, Borg-ified, that they'll think her judgment is too compromised to keep being an active captain."

"What?!" Mariner demanded, swinging her legs over the biobed.

"I mean, she was on indefinite leave for over a year and Ransom's been managing the Cerritos totally fine on his own; grounding her could make sense from HQ's perspective," Tendi offered hesitantly. "Obviously everyone here disagrees, but–"

"No. No way, that's it." Mariner stood up, bracing her hand against the medical scanner; Boimler looked at her warily. "No more options, no more 'coping.' We're taking care of this, right now."

"Mariner, I don't think that's a good idea," Boimler warned, sensing her intentions. "Dr. T'Ana said–"

"Dr. T'Ana said it probably wouldn't work," Mariner cut across, giving him a significant look. "But if it doesn't then no harm no foul, right? We should at least try!" Dude, trust me, just go with this!

You know Dr. T'Ana thinks it's a bad idea, he warned. What if it just makes things worse?

Yeah, which is why we're not gonna tell Tendi or she won't help us! Her eyes were pleading. Come on, man, we need to do this! Before it fucks up our lives and my mom's!

Boimler studied her expression for a moment, and then sighed. "Fine." He turned back to Tendi and Rutherford, who were looking a little uneasy at their prolonged silence. "Mariner thinks— we, we think," he added, seeing the glance she shot him, "that maybe we can use that invention you guys made to break the secondary interlink. Dr. T'Ana said it probably wouldn't work but that–" He glanced uneasily at Mariner, and then lied through his teeth, "–we could give it a try if we wanted to."

"I-I guess it's worth a shot," Tendi said, glancing at Rutherford, who nodded.

"Yeah, the Tank's still in the shuttlecraft ; it's just a few decks down in the bay."

"Good, let's get going," Mariner said, stalking towards the door—or trying to, anyway. As soon as Boimler tried to stand as well, she staggered and fell over onto his lap, knocking his tray of food to the ground.

"Aw man, my pupusa…"

Be-beep.

The doors slid shut again behind her, and Carol let out a sigh, looking around at the ready-room. It was exactly the way she remembered it, just like Jack had said, except for a small hand-weight on the desk that showed he'd been using it in her absence. Scanning the memorabilia on the shelves, she noticed that not a thing had been touched, from her plaque for distinguished service on the U.S.S. Illinois to the three bottles of fine Mexican liquor she'd been gifted by Sonya Gomez upon getting her captainship.

She gave a little smirk at that; Mariner had emptied all three of their contents and replaced them with replicated synthehol within her first month onboard the Cerritos— something she still didn't know her mother was aware of. Carol had been saving that little bit of information for the inevitable day that Mariner said something like "you don't know everything about me!" in the middle of a firefight. It would be almost as good as the liquor could have been.

She sobered at the thought as she returned to reality; the odds of that day of sweet victory were narrowing by the hour. At the end of the shelves was a small gold holo-emitter that she rarely turned on; at first it had been to protect Mariner's anonymity, but after their little secret had been revealed she'd just forgotten out of habit. Now she tapped the button on the side.

Three images were projected into the air and began to slowly rotate in a circle; the first, of her and Alonzo at their wedding, started at the forefront but was soon replaced by another. Carol pursed her lips. She'd never actually liked this picture, but it was one of the few she had of all of them as a family, before Mariner had hit her "rebellious teenager, no-photos" phase. The photograph displayed the three of them out on a picnic in the grass on a sunny day, with the Golden Gate Bridge sparkling in the background. Of the three of them, only Alonzo looked appropriately cheerful for the occasion; Beckett was scowling fearsomely at the camera, and as for herself… She studied the younger Carol's face, and saw the telltale pinch in her eyes and strain to her forced smile.

She sighed, guilt pooling in her chest. Alonzo could make anything work, but as for Carol herself…those years had not been a great time in her life, and she wasn't proud of the failings she'd had as a wife and mother. Did she really want to risk being grounded again? She'd spent the last year tortured with guilt and locked in a tiny spacecraft, searching the alpha quadrant for any sign that her daughter was still alive. When the Cerritos had come to their rescue, she'd hoped that somehow, everything really could go back to normal. Now that was seeming more and more like a pipe dream.

The picture rotated away and was replaced by the third of the trio. From the holograph, Beckett beamed back out at her in her scarlet graduation uniform. She'd been so proud to become an official member of Starfleet, so excited to see what was out there…just like Carol herself had been at that age. Just like she still was, all these decades later.

She felt her resolve return. Captain Carol Freeman had fought for years to get her chair, she wouldn't risk it just for anyone. But for Beckett? She could do it. Of course she could.

She tapped the comm badge she'd pinned on her T-shirt. "Freeman to Ransom. Jack? I've made my decision; tell Command in your report that I fully endorse Mariner and Mr. Boimler returning to active duty as soon as they have medical clearance. Make sure to mention they have my complete support."

"Are you sure, Captain?"

"I'm sure, Jack. Freeman out." She tapped the badge again, and then exhaled and sat down at her computer and opened up a document file. If she was going to pull this off, she'd have to come up with one hell of an argument.

Between the layers of space and subspace glimmered a realm of pure energy. As the two planes pressed down on either side like the pane of glass and the silver surface of a mirror, rippling vortex-like anomalies burst forth, spinning in vast twisters of glowing plasma molecules. Light like an eternal sunrise gleamed through the plane, reflecting off the distant cosmic ceiling and floor like sunshine on the bottom of a pool.

Through this glittering celestial landscape hurtled a black cube, a perpetual silhouette that almost seemed to suck in the light around it. If the drones—crawling like so many black ants over its surface in their interminable tasks of welding, repairing, replacing, reabsorbing the damaged walls of the cube—saw the beauty of the ethereal landscape around them, they certainly didn't notice.

"You named it the Modesto?!"

Mariner, for the first time all day, was in a pretty good mood, cracking up in her wheelchair as Boimler stared incredulously at the banged-up shuttlecraft and the spray-painted name on the side. Tendi and Rutherford both broke into giggles. "What," Boimler demanded, "the actual hell, guys?!"

"We knew you'd react like that," Tendi snickered into her hands. Boimler opened his mouth to retort, but relaxed at seeing the relief in their eyes. They'd clearly been waiting a long time for that joke.

"Yeah, congratulations," he grumbled good-naturedly, sitting back in his chair. "You got me. I'm officially indignant."

"Well come on, let's fire this baby up!" Mariner declared, trying to stand, but Tendi pushed her back down in her chair.

"Mm-mm, nope, we're using the ramp."

"What? Come on, I'm fine…"

"And when you don't almost give yourself a concussion trying to walk to the medbay doors, I'll believe you." Tendi gave her a motherly pat on the shoulder while Rutherford lowered the shuttle's ramp. When they got inside and turned on the lights, however, both Tendi and Rutherford paused, looking around the little spacecraft that had been their home for the last six months.

"Hey," Mariner said, looking up. "You guys okay?"

"Yeah, just um…lot of memories in here," Tendi offered.

"It's weird to think it's just suddenly over, that you're– you know, you're really back," Rutherford agreed.

Mariner and Boimler shared a glance. "Hey, uh, guys," she said awkward, rubbing the back of her neck, "If I've seemed ungrateful–"

"She's not," Boimler added. "I mean, we're not. Things have just been kind of hectic–"

"–And, you know, we're still pretty worried about this whole job thing and the Borg thing and– anyway, not the point." Mariner reached out and squeezed Tendi's arm. "We're only back because you guys brought us back. So…thanks. For not giving up on us."

Rutherford and Tendi looked touched. "Of course we didn't give up on you guys. You're our friends," Tendi reassured her. Mariner grinned, and then spotted something past her.

"Hey, that's it, right?" The two scientists turned to see she'd been looking at the Tank. "My memory of getting deassimilated is pretty hazy but I'm pretty sure Tendi shot a button on that panel or something, which, by the way, very badass move."

"Hang on, didn't you also kick me in the chest?" Boimler remembered. Tendi chuckled awkwardly and rubbed the back of her neck.

"I figured a couple of broken ribs wasn't your biggest concern at the moment…anyway, yeah, this the Tank!" She bounded over to their invention and opened the panel so they could see the various wires and nodes, none of which made sense to either of them.

"So you guys… built this?" Boimler asked, wheeling himself closer and looking at the box.

"Yup. It wasn't easy, but it was a labor of love," Rutherford said, looking fondly at the mess of wires.

"We call it the Tank because of the blue light, kind of makes the whole ship look like the inside of a fish tank," Tendi said, trying and failing not to look too proud. "It's a generator for a portable subspace damping field!"

"But not just that," Rutherford added. "Deassimilating a drone is actually pretty easy; the hard part is keeping them deassimilated."

"Yeah, that makes–" Boimler started, and then his face fell as his eyes went wide. "Oh no. No, nonono."

"Bradward, calm down," Mariner warned behind them.

"But the Borg always go after detached drones!" He tried to get out of his chair but was stopped by Tendi. "You guys don't understand, you're all in danger; they're gonna come for us–!"

"No they're not; it's okay," Tendi reassured him, pushing back into the chair.

"B-but we've gotta get out of here, they're coming to find– they'll assimilate all of you–!"

"Boimler. Hey. Look at me." He stopped as Tendi's hands clapped onto either side of his cheeks, squishing his mouth out slightly like a pufferfish. Tendi smiled reassuringly back at him. "Hey. It's aaaaall okay, buddy. We planned for that!"

"You planned for that?" he repeated, voice slightly distorted by his puffed-out mouth.

"Of course! That's what we're saying; on the inside, the Tank makes a subspace dampening field, but on the outside–"

"–It sends a subspace signal that makes it look like your lifesigns have been totally destroyed!" Rutherford finished, beaming. "The Borg thinks that you're dead and all your important circuits have been compromised; they have no reason to come and collect you!"

Boimler didn't look convinced. "But what about the homing beacon?" he demanded, pulling away from Tendi's hands. "Stranded drones always send out a homing beacon; once you shut the dampener off it should have started transmitting again!"

"We planned for that too; the subspace dampening field was built to absorb frequencies coming from the outside and reflect ones coming from the inside. Basically your homing beacons created a feedback loop into themselves that paradoxed your Borg circuits into fritzing out; the transmitter's still technically working, but it's not sending out a homing beacon anymore, we checked."

"You checked," he repeated, now wheezing slightly in relief as he looked over his shoulder to Mariner. "They checked." She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.

"We think some of the feedback got picked up by the Modesto's speaker system and made that loud noise we heard," Tendi added, rubbing her chin. "We'll have to add a warning for that in the manual."

"Manual?" Mariner added, as Boimler continued to force himself to take deep breaths.

"Yeah! We think with some tinkering and improvements, this can be used to deassimilate drones all over the galaxy! –At least until the Borg catch on and adapt, anyway, but still!" Tendi looked fondly over the box and gave it a pat. "We're hoping with just a bit more beta-testing, this little cutie can give Starfleet a hand in rescuing hundreds, maybe even thousands of assimilated drones!"

"And Starfleet funded all this?" Mariner said, a little dubiously.

"Eh, well, not exactly," the Orion admitted, rubbing the back of her neck.

"They called us crackpots," Rutherford agreed. "I mean they gave us the Modesto and some extra credits for parts we couldn't replicate, but we had to do all the coding and research completely by ourselves."

"And I had to call in a few favors with my cousins for some of the rarer parts," Tendi said sheepishly, "but it was all worth it because it worked! You're back! Well– mostly," she said, as both ex-drones studied the box.

"Wow. You guys really are science geniuses, huh," Mariner said softly.

"Eh, more just very desperate," Rutherford said with a shrug. "But thanks! So," he said, looking between them, "should we give this thing a shot?"

"Absolutely," Mariner declared, standing up. "And I'll do the honors."

"Ope, one second!" Tendi dashed off to the front console. "Just have to power up the ship first! You know we should really think about adding a portable battery–"

As she was fiddling with the controls and getting the Modesto's engine running, Boimler cast a side-eye at her and then back at Mariner, who was facing away from him in a futile attempt to ignore him. Mariner, I really think we should rethink this.

No way. This is gonna work and then our whole problem with HQ will be gone.

Okay, first off, that's not true; they'll probably still be skeeved out about us being xBs anyway. And second off, what if, I don't know, this ends up killing us or driving us insane or something? Tendi and Rutherford just spent a year inventing this thing and looking for us–

He paused as the ship's lights began to glow, and Tendi hopped back to them. "Okay, that should do it! Oh and I've muted the speakers this time around."

"Great." Mariner narrowed her eyes, looking at the red button. "Count of three, Boims, ya ready? Three–"

Mariner, I'm serious! This is their invention, if something goes wrong they'll blame themselves!

We haven't got a lot of options here! Just shut up, okay, it'll be fine! "Two–"

Yes we do, we can go back to medbay and wait for Dr. T'Ana to figure something out!

We don't have time for that! "One–"

Brad stood up. "Mariner, don't–!"

She hit the button. Blue light flooded the little spaceship, but neither of them had any chance to appreciate it as splitting pain forced both of them to their knees.

"Guys!" Tendi's voice called, but it sounded like it was coming from very far away; it was hard to focus on anything but the feeling of millions of electrical shocks being delivered directly into her neurons. Mariner clutched at her head, faintly aware that someone was screaming, but all other noises were swiftly being drowned out by the reverberation of her own thoughts echoing back on themselves, growing louder and louder and louder–

"Aghhh turn it off, TURN IT OFF!"

She had a brief glimpse through bloodshot eyes of Tendi hitting the button again, before the pain vanished and her pounding brain took mercy on her, the world fizzling to black.

She didn't even feel herself hit the ground.

The first thing Beckett Mariner noticed when she opened her eyes was that she was in the Cerritos sickbay, with a pounding headache, and a horrible sense of déjà vu.

"Ughhh," she groaned, shutting her eyes, and then realized it wasn't helping; somehow she was still looking clearly at none other than Commander Jack Ransom, who was typing something into a Padd at the foot of her bed—no, the foot of Boimler's bed. Sweet. Maybe I can keep pretending to be asleep and avoid a lecture.

Well, look who's awake, Brad's voice responded snarkily, and far too loudly, inside her skull. She squeezed her eyes tighter, not that it helped, and then realized, with a sinking feeling, the implications of still being able to hear his thoughts. Yeah, it didn't work, what a surprise. Ransom's doing his detail report, feel free to chip in whenever you're done being a single-minded jerk.

Mariner didn't respond, her spirits having sunk so low that she couldn't come up with a good retort even in her mind. Brad, who was somehow sitting at attention in his biobed, apparently felt a little guilty about kicking her when she was down, but was quickly drawn back into his conversation with the acting-captain. "–The Federation still doesn't know how they got into the Alpha Quadrant to begin with or how they keep hitting unsuspecting ships and then hiding again," Ransom continued, oblivious to their internal conversation. "Starfleet's had ships scanning both normal space and the relevant subspace and transwarp space corridors, but so far the Cube's been escaping them every time."

"I'm afraid I can't remember, sir. Flight control wasn't part of my designation."

"And your designation was Excretus of Borg, right?"

"One of Two," the younger man added immediately, and then flushed. "Um, yes, sir."

"Right," Ransom nodded, writing this down. "And what did that designation entail?" When the silence had lasted a little too long, he looked up to find the other man's eyes had flickered away, staring at a point on the wall. "Mr. Boimler?"

"Um–" Boimler swallowed and blinked several times in rapid succession, before shaking his head slightly and turning forward again. "Uh, disposal, sir. Of non-assimilable material. Both non-organic and, um– and organic. Mostly deceased organic."

Ransom frowned for a moment, and then his eyes widened. "Oh." He hastily dropped his gaze. "Oh, uh, right, thank you ensign. Uh– so, why is the Cube all the way out here in Alpha Quadrant space? Seems a long way from home."

Boimler looked relieved. "That I actually do know; it's a scout ship, sir, its goal is to collect information on Alpha Quadrant species—lifeforms, technology, weapons and defense capabilities, you get the idea."

"Doesn't seem like a very safe mission."

Boimler shrugged. "The Borg doesn't really care about safety. Every time the Cube won an encounter or was forced to retreat, it got new information on the Federation's tactics and technology; at some point in the future when it gets destroyed, that'll be valuable information, too. They're willing to sacrifice one cube for the greater good of the Collective."

"I see…. And that's why it targeted the Terran diplomat? To get information on the Federation?"

"I'm sorry, sir, I really can't remember."

Ransom rubbed a hand over his face. "Right, sorry. I thought drones knew everything the Collective knows?"

Boimler wiggled his hand. "Sort of? I 'heard' everything that went through our Cube, but that doesn't mean I cared about all of it or even understood it. Information is only retained if it's relevant to an assignment."

Ransom nodded, pensive. "Any clue why they targeted you and Ensign Mariner?"

Boimler shook his head. "No idea. I know they thought I had some information they needed, but by the time they finished assimilating me they'd learned I didn't have whatever they were looking for. It wasn't relevant to my designation so I can't remember anything else. I'm sorry sir, I wish I could be more helpful."

"Don't apologize, Ensign, you've been through a hell of a time. If you or Ensign Mariner remember anything else, let me know."

"You can ask her yourself, Sir; she's been faking being asleep for the last minute."

Bradward, you fucking traitor, Mariner muttered internally.

"Oh, I'm the traitor? Maybe next time don't make unilateral decisions about our shared consciousness."

"Ensign Mariner," Ransom said irritably. She winced, and then cracked an eye open and gave him a little finger-waggle wave.

"Hiiii, Jack."

"Don't 'Jack' me." Despite the situation, Mariner still had a very hard time keeping a straight face at the implications of that phrase (in the other bed Boimler shot her a "don't you dare" glare) but Ransom was clearly in no mood. "What the hell were you thinking?" he demanded as she sat up. "Dr. T'Ana told you not to mess around with dampening fields, and you decide to go throw yourself into one?"

"Hey, all Dr. T'Ana said was–"

"'All Dr. T'Ana said' was to stay in your fucking biobed," a voice snarled from the other side of the medbay, and she looked over to see the Caitian herself stalking towards them. "I told you not to fuck with your nanoprobes; you could have done yourselves some serious damage! You already popped a couple blood vessels in your eyes!"

"It was just a little pain," Mariner argued.

"A little pain that your brain isn't built to handle! You're lucky Ensign Tendi turned it off when she did—who by the way was just about hysterical by the time I got down there. You owe her a serious apology for lying to her like that."

"That's one thing I actually don't understand," Boimler interjected as Mariner hunched down in her bed. "Why didn't the Borg just have the nanoprobes torture us until we returned to the Collective?"

T'Ana snorted as she pressed a hypospray to Mariner's neck, immediately relieving the headache. "Constant pain might be a good motivator, but it's a shit tactic if your goal is to get people from Point A to Point B. Imagine trying to fly a starship with that headache. Social pressure, though, that's a little easier to work around—not to mention that if one of you didn't want to go back, the other could decide to force things."

Boimler gave Mariner a very flat look at this statement, and she hunched her shoulders even more. Ransom stood up from his chair and locked his Padd, turning to her.

"Look, I know you've been through a lot lately," he told her. "And Dr. T'Ana and I and everyone else on this ship want to get the two of you the help and recovery you need. But your job is on the line here, and this isn't the way to convince Command that you're fit for duty."

"Yeah man, I know!" Mariner snapped back. "That's why I'm trying to fix this, I–"

"Your mom is up in her ready room right now trying to find some way to convince Admiral S'Tess that you're not a danger to the crew or yourselves. So do her a favor and just stay put, okay?" He ran a hand over his face and then checked the time on his Padd. "Delta shift's starting. I need to submit my report and get some sleep; I suggest you two do the same. T'Ana–"

"I'll sleep in my office tonight," the doctor said, rolling her shoulders and yawning. "Gotta make sure these two don't run off again. Lights, dim to delta-shift standard."

As the lights faded to near-darkness and the doctor headed to her office, Mariner guiltily watched Ransom walk towards the door. It had just slid open when she called out, "Jack." He looked back. "I, um– I know my mom's job is on the line here too. I swear, I was just trying to help."

It was hard to tell in the dim light, but she thought he looked a little less annoyed. "Your mom knew the risks when she left to find you, Mariner."

"But it's not fair. She didn't do anything wrong!"

"Yeah well, sometimes life isn't fair. But it's better to accept the situation as it is and work from there than try to pretend it's something different."

With that rather pointed statement, he left, the doors sliding shut behind him and shrouding the medbay in darkness. Mariner felt the same phantom swooping sensation in her stomach as Boimler lay down on his side. Look, I can tell you're mad at me–

Yeah, no shit, he fumed.

Come on, you know I was just trying to fix things!

I know, Mariner, and that's the problem. Look, I know you don't like all the red tape and bureaucracy but that's how Starfleet works, okay? So please, just– stop trying to fix this when you clearly don't know how.

But–

Before you ruin my chances of getting my life back, too.

That stung, but he was right and Mariner knew she couldn't hide it. I– yeah. Okay. She swallowed the lump in her throat and lay down. I'm…sorry, Boimler. Seriously.

...I know. Just go to sleep, Mariner. We'll…I don't know, we'll figure this out tomorrow. Somehow.

After that there was—well, not silence, that was for sure. They could still hear each other's thoughts, even though they were trying not to interact with them. Mariner curled up on her side and tried to shut her eyes, but some particularly memorable moments from the last year immediately began to play on the back side of her eyelids—and worse, she knew from his uneasy shifting in the bed next to hers that she was making Bradward relive them, too. She pulled the blanket up tighter around her shoulders and tried to think about something else, but unfortunately all her or Boimler's brains had on tap was the shitty first day back they'd just had, and the yawning abyss of an unknown future in front of them.

Fun stuff, he said weakly, as a peace offering, and Mariner gave a mental huff. Oh yeah. This was going to be a long, long night.

Unlike other parts of the starship, the bridge and most hallways were always set to daytime lights—which meant that for one Lieutenant Junior Grade T'Lyn, her workday was just beginning. As the turbolift rose she straightened the sleeves on her uniform shirt and then stepped out onto the bridge, looking around at the rest of her usual coworkers.

There was, of course, no one in the captain's chair yet—the commanding officer of the delta shift was almost always late. Ensign Sh'reyan, as usual, had the conn, and Ensign Escher was at the science station. T'Lyn noted over Escher's head as she walked to her own station that there were currently only two casualties in sickbay, and then looked behind her as the holodeck doors opened again. "Alright everyone, how're we feeling today?" Lt. Kayshon said breezily, walking in surveying the bridge crew.

"Very well, thank you sir!" Sh'reyan said promptly. T'Lyn merely inclined her head, opening the functions on her station's computer.

"Looks like there's nothing interesting to report from gamma shift; conn, steady as she goes, warp four." Sh'reyan nodded and turned forward again. "Lt. T'Lyn." The Vulcan raised an eyebrow. "Can I have a word with you over at the security station?"

She repressed a sigh and stood. "Of course, Lieutenant."

It was, of course, not logical to be annoyed at your commanding officer—but T'Lyn had never been the most logical Vulcan. Everyone on the ship knew that Lt. Kayshon was a bit of a womanizer; although per regulations he never hit on junior officers, T'Lyn's recent promotion had put her at exactly the same rank as him. She had already politely dodged an offer for drinks after work, but he still hadn't gotten the hint. It looked like she was going to have to be a bit more direct.

There was, predictably, nothing more interesting than the ship's weapons launch controls on his screen when he arrived, despite his attempts to look like he was studying something very interesting. "Lt. T'Lyn," the Tamarian said smoothly. "Good morning; how did you sleep?"

"Suitably."

"Really? That firefight kept me up all night." He grinned. "Can I replicate you a cup of coffee?"

"I do not require caffeine at this time."

"Well uh, maybe after the shift–" He glanced over as the turbolift door opened for Ensign Casey and added with a wink, "Chatha and Terubim, the fire warm?"

T'Lyn turned to him and raised an eyebrow. "Fendit, refusing the flame; Fendit, refusing twice." Kayshon's face fell. "Timar and Darnek at sunset, their hands bound."

"Oh. Really?" He lowered his voice. "Sorry, I didn't know."

"Kiteo, his eyes closed; T'Pol, upon the Enterprise. "

"Okay, okay." He held up his hands. "Lemross, at Illashanta."

"Indeed." She glanced at her station. "Sallana, her pack full."

He nodded, abashed, and T'Lyn returned to her station, ignoring the impressed look Sh'reyan was giving her. Pride was an illogical emotion, unnecessary to the completion of her duties.

…Though it was certainly valuable to know she'd aided his journey on the path of self-control, of course.

Allowing herself the slightest hint of a smirk (What? She was working with humans and Andorians now, they wouldn't notice), she scanned her screen, and then tilted her head. "Curious. Lt. Kayshon, sir." The Tamarian jumped like she'd just shouted at him, still at his weapons station instead of the captain's chair. "Our sensors are detecting more of those plasma emissions I noted in my last report."

"The ones that look like they came from the Delta quadrant?"

"Precisely, sir. They appear to be in the same wake formations that commonly surround the outbreak of an interfold eddy."

"Huh. Well, looks like the captain's orders are to collect data but not get us too close," Kayshon said, scanning the notice. "Sh'reyan, slow to impulse."

"Aye, sir."

As the ship dropped out of warp, the viewscreen displayed a large expanse of otherwise empty space spangled with distant stars. Slightly starboard of center, however, they could see the telltale cosmic warping of space that preceded a subspace rupture. "Sh'reyan, get ready to compensate for those graviton waves," Kayshon instructed, as the rupture turned into a double-funneled cyclone of light with an expanding ring of plasma particles. "T'Lyn, prepare to release the probe, on my mark."

The graviton waves reached them, causing the ship to start shaking. Inside the darkened ready-room, Carol Freeman awoke on her desk with a start, blinking and looking up at the half-written speech on her computer. "What the–"

"Three," Kayshon counted. "Two–"

"One moment, sir– I'm getting readings of a ship exiting the eddy," T'Lyn announced, peering down at her computer and then looking up at the viewscreen. In the midst of the glowing plasma clouds, a tiny black dot could be seen–

No, not a dot. A cube.

"Shaka when the walls fell!" Kayshon punched his console and a red-alert began to blare overhead. "Computer, shields to max; Sh'reyan, kill the engines!" On the port side the Andorian began to frantically tap her computer. "Ops, have they scanned us yet?"

"Not yet, sir; I'm engaging the subspace dampening field around the ship." She tapped the button on her screen. "The plasma field from the eddy should scatter our warp signature; with the engines disengaged we should not draw their attention–"

She was cut off as another graviton wave struck the ship, sending most of them careening out of their chairs. Kayshon barely managed to brace himself against the back of his chair. "Sh'reyan!"

"Sorry sir! I was communicating with engineering–"

Kayshon's comm buzzed. "Captain Ransom to bridge; Kayshon, what the hell is going on up there?!"

"It's the anomaly, Captain—the Borg cube is coming out of it!"

Several decks below in his quarters, Ransom's eyes went wide as two and two were put together. "Holy fuck, that's it." He tapped his badge again. "Kayshon, I'm on my way! Wait until the anomaly disappears and then warp us the hell out of here; whatever you do, don't engage in hostil–"

The ship shuddered again as the third and strongest wave yet hit, and Jack staggered sideways. Up on the bridge, Kayshon lost his footing and crashed forward into his weapons screen, smacking his head on the controls. The whole delta shift bridge crew watched, as if in slow-motion, the phaser charge brim along the saucer and then fire. The blast of charged particles rocketed silently across the void of space, on a near-perfect trajectory, towards the anomaly.

In the distance, a tiny cloud of debris exploded off the very tip of the corner of the cube. Everyone turned to look at Lt. Kayshon, who slid off the weapons console and crumpled unconscious on the ground, blood pouring from a welt on his face, and then turned to look back at the Borg ship. Slowly, every so slowly, the cube turned to face them—and then began to rocket straight towards them, weapons clearly charging.

"Oh no," Ensign Casey squeaked, and that was when the ready-room doors burst open, revealing a flabbergasted Captain Freeman.

"What the hell is going on?! Did we just fire phasers?!" The captain's eyes flashed to the unconscious Kayshon and then to the rest of the frightened bridge crew and then to the approaching cube on the screen. "Oh, shit."

"Captain!" Sh'reyan's voice drew her eyes. "What do we do?! We can't warp until the anomaly closes or we'll get pulled in!"

"Why the hell hasn't it closed yet? Wait, no, I'm not your captain, I–" She tapped her badge. "Jack! Where the hell are you, we have a situation up here!" There was no response. "Jack?!"

Several floors down a half-conscious Jack Ransom stirred and tried to open his eyes through the torrent of blood pouring down his face as well; his vision swam and then faded again as his head lolled to the floor. "Jack!"

"Captain." Carol looked over; the young Vulcan woman met her eyes with forced calm. "Commander Ransom is not here. You are our captain."

The ship shook again, this time not from a graviton wave but from the crackling of a disruptor beam over the shields. Carol hesitated, and then looked up at the approaching Borg cube and made her choice. "Casey, take weapons! T'Lyn, send out a distress call; we need backup!"

"Captain, they are blocking our transmission frequencies. In any case, the Nobunaga is too far away to–"

"I get the picture; Sh'reyan, evasive maneuvers!" She sat down in her chair and tapped the console. "Cerritos, this is Captain Freeman taking command; all hands to their stations! Looks like that Borg ship was hiding in the subspace interfold layer, but they're not hiding anymore!" She closed the intercom and glared out the viewscreen as the Cube charged another blast. "HQ be damned. I'm not losing anyone else to these assholes tonight!"

"I knew it, I knew they'd come for us, we're gonna be assimilated again–"

"Brad, snap out of it, I need your help over here!"

The ship shuddered again and swayed badly beneath their feet as the artificial gravity failed to keep up with the evasive maneuvers; Bradward looked through his hands to where Mariner was trying to stem the blood pouring down Dr. T'Ana's head. "Fucking dammit, why do senior officers always get knocked unconscious at the worst times!"

Boimler swallowed hard and crawled over on shaking hands; the ground rumbled beneath his knees, memories flickering across their shared consciousness of bad San Andreas earthquakes. "Fuck, fuck, I don't know anything about Caitian biology," Mariner swore. "Do we move her? I don't think we move her, right?"

"I don't know, why would I know! Computer, activate the EMH!" A moment later the hologram of an elderly woman phased into existence.

"Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

"Um, Caitian patient, female, uh– f-fifty years old? Forty? Look she has a concussion, it seems pretty bad–"

As the EMH took over, the two ensigns crawled to the wall, bracing themselves as the reverberations of the crackling shields echoed around them. "I knew it." Boimler was beginning to hyperventilate, clutching at his head as he curled into a ball. "I knew they'd come after us, I warned them–"

"Dude, we don't even know if this is because of us!" Mariner snapped. The ship shuddered again. "This is bad; we need to get to our stations."

"What?!"

"You heard the captain, it's all hands on deck!"

"We're not hands, we don't have a deck! We're on leave!"

"Yeah, and imagine how great it would look to Command if we actually helped in the middle of this! Oh man this is perfect, what better way to prove that we're trustworthy xBs than by helping fight the Borg, am I right?! I couldn't have planned this better myself!"

Boimler stared at her eager face with an expression of such eye-twitching horror that Mariner, briefly, felt her mood dip below its elated state. "Have you lost your mind?!" he shrieked at her.

"Wh– hey, come on, it's not a bad–" she began, offended, but at this Brad finally lost his shit.

"What the FUCK is the matter with you?! We've got a life-changing medical condition, Mariner! We are LITERALLY out of commission! WHY can't you just ACCEPT THAT?!"

"Because this commission is the only life I've GOT, you ass!" she bellowed back at him, and just like that a dam broke in the back of her mind, gushing out a tidal wave of memories that crashed over them both and swept them away.

The first thing Bradward Boimler noticed when he opened his eyes was that he was outside in the sunshine, with a pounding headache. The second thing he noticed was that he was not, in fact, Bradward Boimler.

"I knew I shouldn't have let you play with us!" a voice snapped, and his head turned of its own accord to see a young boy of about his—her? Their?—own age glaring back at them. Somebody was crying nearby. "You're such a bully, Beckett!"

Boimler heard a voice that both was and wasn't his own scoff in disbelief. "I am not!"

"Yes you are, you made Mara cry!" the boy shouted back. "You scared her on purpose!"

"Wh–" They looked over to see a little Klingon girl bawling on the edge of the playground slide. "No I didn't!" they defended themselves, turning back to the boy. "She's just being a baby, that story isn't even scary!"

"You said your dad got his hand bitten off! You said it got chewed up and swallowed!"

"Yeah, but the doctor fixed him! He's fine!" They were starting to get mad. "It's not scary, it's cool!"

"It's not cool, it's weird! Just like you!"

"Take that back!" They stepped forward. "I mean it! Take it back, you– you pahtak!"

The Klingon girl was so shocked at the profanity that she actually stopped crying, her mouth falling open, and the boy flushed. "Just leave us alone!" he yelled; Boimler could feel Mariner's heart pounding in their chest, their breathing growing harsher and faster. "Go back to space if you love it there so much!"

"Fine! I will!"

"Good! Nobody wants you here anyway, you– you freaky space weirdo!"

For a brief second, they felt hurt, startled tears pricking their eyes—and then Mariner's combative nature took over and they let out a howl, rushing forward and slugging the boy as hard as they could in the stomach.

The memory warped, twisting like a cloth being wrung out from the inside. When it settled, Boimler found they were sitting in a chair in a brick hallway, kicking their feet miserably out over the tiled floor. From the door at their back (he somehow knew it was the principal's) he could hear voices talking quietly, but not quietly enough:

"–Needs to control her inappropriate behaviors, or I'm afraid we'll have no choice. She's scaring the other children."

"We understand." He recognized that voice as the captain's (specifically, her "trying to smooth-talk an admiral" voice). "We'll talk with Beckett; she's just—having some trouble, adapting to life on Earth."

"You need to make it clear to her that if there's another incident like this–"

"There won't be another incident," Carol said firmly, accompanied by the sound of scraping chair legs. "Believe me. We'll take care of this."

"Alright, Mrs. Freeman. I guess I've said everything I can." The principal's disapproving voice made them wince and hunch their shoulders.

"I guess you have." They looked up as the door opened behind them, and they looked up, fear clenching their heart.

The face looking back at them, Boimler noticed, was…tired. The lines under her skin seemed sharper, and there were the very beginnings of the stripe of gray hair she had in their time. On a face this young, it seemed premature. The only thing he had to compare it to was the way the Captain had looked when he'd caught a glimpse of her during their rescue on the Borg Cube; she almost didn't look like the Captain Freeman he knew.

"Am I getting expelled?" they asked. She met their eyes, and then she pursed her lips, kneeling down next to them.

"No, baby. Not this time." She took their hands. "But I really, really need you to try harder, okay?"

"I am trying! The other kids are just a bunch of pahtaks!"

Carol winced physically at the same moment that Boimler did mentally. "Okay, we need to have a conversation about who can and can't use that word…" She sighed, apparently seeing the angry confusion still simmering in their face, and stood up. "Come on, Beckett. Let's…let's just go home."

Holding her hand, they followed her towards the doors at the end of the hall streaming with late-afternoon sunlight. "...Mom?" they asked quietly, as they reached the doors; Carol paused, her hand on the push-bar. "Jonah called me 'weird.' Am I weird?"

Carol looked down, surprised, and then sighed again, her shoulders slumping. "No, Beckett, you're not weird." She pushed the door open, and the brightness of the sunlight caused the memory to fizzle and begin to break apart. Just as it did, they heard the last echoes of her voice add: "We just don't belong here."

Brad blinked several times as he came to in the darkness of the medbay. The ship shook again underneath him, and he looked over. Mariner had turned her face away, but as he watched she scrubbed her eyes with her wrist and then hugged her knee again. …When I was ten years old, my family moved to San Francisco, she admitted. It wasn't a great time for me.

Boimler nodded, uncertain what else to do. I always thought you said you didn't grow up on Earth.

I "grew up" on the U.S.S. Beckett; I tolerated living on earth, she corrected sharply. He held up his hands, and her mood deflated again. Anyway...the kids at my new schools, they didn't really get me. She still didn't meet his eyes; it was clear from the fact that he was hearing this in his head and not out loud that she wouldn't be telling him this if she had any other choice. Neither did my teachers, or, well…basically anyone, except my parents. I mean I was a Starfleet brat, all I'd ever known was red-alerts and scary space monsters, and I just—I didn't fit into civilian life, okay? I never have. She sighed. I know I haven't always been the best officer, but I love this job. If I have to leave Starfleet because of this…there's nowhere for me to go.

Boimler stared at her for a moment, and then sighed through his nose and scooted closer to where she was sitting with another nod. Yeah. I get that.

You do? She looked over at him, frowning. How? You were born in Modesto, that's, like, the most civilian place on earth.

Yeah, and how well do you think I fit in there? Mariner blinked. All I've ever wanted my whole life was to be a Starfleet captain; living in Modesto was practically torture—and I say that as someone who had a bunch of implants shoved up my–

Yeah, no, buddy, I'm aware.

Being the perfect candidate and doing things by the book is how I got into the Academy in the first place, he admitted. That's why I've been trying to be the perfect officer all day, I-I guess I was trying to prove I still deserve to be here. If they ask me to leave, I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life either.

Mariner was about to respond when the ship shuddered, making both of them pause and look up. Sounds like a pretty bad firefight, she mused; he nodded. Who knows, maybe we won't even have to worry about any of this.

Boimler snorted. Well, either way, if worst comes to worst—at least we won't be alone, right? Mariner looked over, and he smirked. I mean we literally can't be alone, not anymore.

Look at you, finding the one silver lining on the universe's biggest pile of shit.

That actually made him snicker, and then Mariner's eyes went wide. Wait. Boims–! She knelt up and grabbed his arms. We literally–

–Can't be alone! he realized in unison with her. Mariner, that's it!

"Sh'reyan, evasive sequence delta five and circle us over, don't let them get us in their tractor beam! Casey, switch to manual and fire at will!"

"Aye Captain!" The ship swung hard to the starboard and then to port as the green field of the Cube's tractor beam flashed out at them from the left and the right, missing the hull by mere meters. "Captain, we can't fire on them so long as they're behind us!"

"Sh'reyan, give us line of sight!"

"Aye, Captain! Engaging evasive-standard sequence alpha one!"

As another tractor beam flared out beneath them the Andorian yanked the joystick and the whole ship went belly-up, the antigrav struggling for a moment as everyone seemed to float a few inches out of their seats or grabbed hold of their consoles; a moment later it re-registered as their feet smacked back to earth and Sh'reyan brought them down on the other side of the cube. "FIRE!" Carol roared.

Several phaser cannons fired at the same time, searing massive scars into the side of the Cube. Sh'reyan veered them hard to the starboard as they soared past the Cube and then pivoted around to face it again; the swirling light of the anomaly was still blazing behind the Borg ship like a twin-funneled tornado. "Damage report!"

"Um–" Casey checked his panel and winced. "Minimal cosmetic damage to the Borg cube, captain. Our shields are down to ten percent–"

"Understood, ensign; don't bother recharging weapons, reroute all available power to the shields. Dammit, we can't warp out of here until that anomaly closes!" Carol swore. "What the hell is going on; subspace anomalies never stay open this long!"

"Captain," T'Lyn spoke up. "I have re-analyzed the plasma emission readings and found I was mistaken; these do not precisely match the patterns created by natural Delta quadrant eddies. I believe they are artificial."

"Artificial eddies? Are you saying that Borg cube created an interfold layer anomaly?!"

T'Lyn opened her mouth to answer but was cut off by Casey, who announced in a panic: "Captain, they're charging weapons again! I'm reading full functionality on all but one face of their ship; we've got less than a minute here!"

"Damn Borg cubes and their redundant systems—T'Lyn, how's our distress call coming?!"

She checked her panel and shook her head. "Our signal is still being blocked, Captain."

"Sh'reyan, can we outrun them on impulse engines alone?"

"Borg impulse engines are way faster than ours, Captain; even if we pushed it to half-warp we wouldn't make it to the nearest star before they caught us!"

She clenched the armrest of her chair as the lift doors opened behind her. "We can't outrun them, we can't outfight them, we can't call for help—what can we do, someone give me an option here!"

"We can hide, Captain."

She and the rest of the bridge crew turned. "Mr. Boimler?!" Standing in the blue light of the turbolift and looking like a light breeze would knock him down, the ensign—still in a hospital gown, no less—was bracing himself against the wall. "What the hell are you doing up here, you're supposed to be in sickbay!"

"Captain, listen to me," he urged, stumbling out of the turbolift and bracing himself against the railing. "Mariner and I figured it out, we're gonna have to warp past them. It's our only option!"

"We can't, we'll get pulled into the interfold layer!"

"Exactly! The Cube's visual scanners can't look across planar boundaries and their subspace scanners will be absorbed by dampening field around the Cerritos's hull; we can hide there until they leave!"

"Are you crazy?! The interfold layer doesn't match up with normal space or subspace; if we warp in there without something to guide us back, there's no telling where we'll come out!"

"We could release a probe behind us," T'Lyn suggested.

"Negative; there'll be too much interfer–"

"Mariner's already doing it," Boimler declared. The Captain's eyes went as round as dinner plates, but he barrelled on ahead: "Borg subspace links aren't affected by distance or interplanar interference; she's going to take the Modesto and activate the Tank to make herself invisible to their subspace scanners. Once the Borg ship is gone she'll reestablish contact with me and we can use our interlink connection to guide us out."

There was a beat of silence on the bridge. "Wow," Jenn admitted. "That's brilliant."

"No, it's the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard," Carol growled, rising to her feet, and Brad winced as she seemed to tower over him. "You want to throw my daughter out there as bait?!"

"Not bait! Definitely not bait!"

"Uh, Captain?" Casey piped up in a squeak; the harried woman gave him a brief glance. "Their weapons are 98% charged, w-we should really do something here soon!"

Boimler took advantage of her distraction to continue. "Look," he insisted, "the Modesto is an old Model 6 shuttlecraft; the Borg has technology way more advanced, they won't bother to assimilate it! And with the Tank's dampening field they won't even know she's there!"

"And what if they take it anyway! What if they assimilate her all over again, what if–" But her comm buzzed, cutting her off.

"Mariner to Captain Freeman; he's right, Mom." Several floors down Mariner sprinted down the hall, praying that Brad wouldn't start walking again. "The Borg don't target individuals; they'd have no reason to go after a random shuttlecraft."

"You mean they usually don't attack individuals! I just got you back, Beckett, I can't risk losing you again! Let alone to the same damn Cube!"

"Mom, this is my job!" She rounded a corner and vaulted herself over a case of replacement parts some panicking crewman had left in the middle of the hallway. "It has its risks, yeah, but that's why I love it!"

Up on the bridge, the captain looked out at the Borg cube, positioned directly between them and the anomaly and already rotating to face them. "Beckett, this is crazy–"

"We're Starfleet, Mom," Mariner's voice crackled out of the comm badge. "Doing crazy shit like this is exactly where we belong."

The captain looked at Boimler, pursing her lips. He nodded once. "She's right, Captain. You've gotta trust her."

She wavered a moment later, and then nodded and sat back down, tapping her badge. "Do it, Mariner. Be careful."

"Ha, no promises."

"Mariner!"

"Fine, fine, I'll be careful."

They had no time for a longer conversation, for at that exact moment the Borg cube fired another round of disruptors and the ship shook badly. "Shit! Casey–"

"Shields are down, captain, on the next hit we're taking damage!"

"Sh'reyan, evasive maneuvers again, get ready to warp on my signal! Mr. Boimler–" She glanced sideways as the ship began to move again, "–you two had better be right about this."

Several decks below, Mariner decided not to answer that as the shuttlebay doors parted in front of her and she ran into the room, where Rutherford was already waiting; outside the bay door the stars were swinging back and forth wildly, the green disruptor shots from the Borg cube flying by on all sides. "We good?" she panted, pulling on the space jacket he handed her.

"Autopilot will take you out a hundred meters and then hold position; activate the Tank as soon as you leave the shuttlebay."

"Got it. Man, this is going to suck so much ass."

She grabbed hold of the stability rung to pull herself into the ship but stopped as a voice called out "Wait!" and looked over her shoulder. Tendi sprinted up to her with a hypospray in hand. "Here," she panted, injecting it into her neck. "This should help with the pain

Mariner nodded "Thanks, Tendid." She met the Orion's eyes and hoped that her sincerity was clear. "And I'm sorry about everything. For real." To her relief, the other woman smiled back with a nod.

"Uhh, Tendi, can I get one of those?" Boimler said nervously on the bridge, forgetting she couldn't hear him, but looked over as a hypospray was applied to his own neck. "Oh. Thanks, Ensign Escher."

Down below, the tiny shuttlecraft's engines burned to life and then lifted it into the air. "Okay," Mariner breathed, pulling up the autopilot. "We got this."

We better 'got' this, or I think your mom's going to kick my ass. Mariner just grinned and hit the autopilot.

As the Cerritos barrel-rolled again and then swung around sideways in a lopsided figure-eight, a tiny shuttlecraft launched out of the bay doors, the windows lighting up blue from the inside as it cleared the starship's dampening field. On the bridge, Boimler immediately crumpled to his knees. "OwowOW punch it already!" he yelped, clutching his head.

"You heard the man, Sh'reyan, punch it!"

"Punching it, Captain!"

Outside, the warp engines gleamed to life, and then with a flash and taffy-like stream of lights the ship vanished into thin air. On the viewscreen the stars briefly stretched out into their white streamers, and then the ship was yanked violently sideways. "BRACE!" Carol yelled, grabbing hold of her chair as everything was dragged port-side.

With an almighty crackling rumble like the ship itself was breaking apart, the Cerritos tumbled out of warp, spinning bow-over-stern through the endless sunrise of the interfold layer. "Compensate!"

T'Lyn, grabbing hold of her station with one hand and typing with the other, pulled up a diagnostic and swept it sideways towards the conn desk. "I have the speed of rotation, captain."

"Compensating!" Sh'reyan called, dragging the newly-appeared data onto a diagram of the ship and reactivating the impulse engines. The tumble slowed and stabilized, but the viewscreen was still showing blasting plasma winds and the centrifugal force was still pulling everything sideways.

"If we're compensated then why the hell are we still moving?!" the captain demanded, ignoring Boimler's whimpers of "ow ow ow" beside her.

T'Lyn tapped her panel. "We appear to be caught inside the anomaly, captain."

"If we're inside the eddy itself then that Borg ship can still see us; can we close it manually?"

"Photon torpedoes are still active, Captain," Casey announced. "Maybe if we fire everything we've got left–"

"–That could trigger the anomaly to collapse," T'Lyn agreed. "But we do not know how it will impact the subspace link."

The captain looked at Boimler, who managed to crack an eye open and give her a nod. "Do it," she ordered.

Outside the anomaly in normal space, Beckett Mariner forced herself to her knees, peering out past the front window of the shuttlecraft. The pain was nearly blinding, but she managed to squint her eyes and peer outwards into the darkness. As she watched, the double-cyclone began to fade, and then vanished completely, leaving only the array of stars for light—and the harsh angles of the silhouette of the Borg cube in front of them.

The pressure in her head was growing; one blood vessel popped in her eye, and then another. "Come on," she wheezed, watching the Borg ship drift, silent and dark, in the void. "Come on…" The Cube didn't move, but the screen on the front dashboard lit up; they were scanning her ship. The pain spiked another few degrees and she clenched her fists. "Agghh COME ON, dammit!"

The Borg cube rotated, torturously slowly, and then fired a single green shot into the void, apparently at nothing. A moment later the space around them warped, and the Modesto was pushed back on a graviton wave as a new anomaly burst into being; the Cube disappeared into it and the new double-twister faded a moment later. "Fucking finally," she gasped, and with one shaking hand reached up and pressed the Tank's red button.

The blue light died, but the pain did not. And that was when she realized their fatal mistake: Bradward was still onboard the Cerritos, inside its dampening field—and the only way to contact them was with an interference-ridden message from the front console dashboard.

Mariner crawled towards it, struggling to think through the crippling pain. She almost made it, too, but as the pressure in her brain grew to unbearable levels, her limbs buckled beneath her; she caught a last glimpse of her hand reaching for the console, meters away, before her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed, beginning to seize up. I can't do it, she thought dazedly, and then the rest of her mind was swept away in a haze of pain. As much as she'd always tried to pretend otherwise, in the end, Beckett Mariner was only human.

…Or at least, she was mostly human.

Drifting in the golden light, the inside of the Cerritos seemed eerily quiet despite the blare of the red-alert, with the exception of one Ensign Boimler, who was trying very hard not to scream and was instead letting out little huffs as blood poured out of his nose. "Captain, I don't know how much more of this he can take," Ensign Escher announced nervously, administering another anesthetic hypospray.

"Any communications from the Modesto?" Carol demanded of T'Lyn, who surveyed her panel.

"No, Captain, but– wait." She frowned. "We are being scanned by a Borg subspace signal, but it's very weak." The rest of the bridge crew tensed, and then T'Lyn looked up. "It appears to be from Excretus of Borg, Two of Two."

Carol exhaled, her face breaking into a relieved smile. "That's Mariner; she's looking for us. Kill the dampening field."

"Aye, Captain." She tapped the panel, and a moment later Boimler exhaled and slumped sideways, blinking hard.

"Sh-she's okay, Captain," he wheezed. "She's– she's still Mariner."

Far away on the Modesto, Mariner managed a ghost of a smirk, still lying flat on the floor. You'd better believe it, Boims.

Back on the bridge, Ensign Escher attached a cortical monitor to his neck and analyzed it with a tricorder. "I've got the signal, Captain. We should be able to coordinate our location relevant to its origin."

"Good. Ensign Sh'reyan, take us home."

Of all the amazing cosmic sights Mariner had witnessed in her days on a starship, the reappearance of the Cerritos into normal space was easily in her top ten. As the tractor beam pulled her into the shuttlebay she steadied herself against the wall and managed to stand and walk herself to the door—ironically one of her more impressive feats of the day, given that Brad was currently being helped down to the shuttlebay along with the captain and the rest of the bridge crew.

When the door opened she was greeted immediately with a crushing hug from her mother. "I'd tell you not to do anything that dangerous ever again," Carol said hoarsely, pulling back, "but–"

"Yeah," Mariner agreed, grinning. "It's the job." Her mother gave her a rueful smile and an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder, and then stepped to the side, giving her a better view of the welcome committee. At the forefront were a beaming Rutherford and Tendi, and, slightly behind them, she spotted Jenn, Ensign Casey and Ensign T'Lyn. Flanking them were a grumpy T'Ana and a dazed-looking Jack Ransom and Lt. Shaxs, all three with bandages on their heads For real, how many concussions can the bridge crew get in one firefight? One of these days somebody really needs to talk to HQ about seatbelts, or at least better artificial gravity.

No kidding, a voice answered in her head, and the crowd shifted, revealing the one face she really cared about.

"Hey, Boims."

"Hey Mariner." Bradward grinned tiredly back at her and stepped away from Ensign Escher. "So, that sucked," he added in a slightly-too-high-to-be-conversational voice. "I vote we never do that again?"

"Yeah no, that hurt like hell," she agreed, "but hey, it worked!"

"Eh, who needs all their brain cells anyway?" They fistbumped, and then Boimler swayed on his feet. "A-and now that the adrenaline is gone I think I'm going to pass out."

"Not surprising; when was the last time any of us got some proper rest?" Freeman chuckled, rubbing her eyes.

"Come to think of it, I haven't slept in, uh– yeah, a year, I haven't slept in a year."

"Honestly Bradward, and I don't say this lightly," Mariner said, slinging his arm over her shoulder as they helped each other start to walk towards the shuttlebay doors, "but there's nowhere I want to be more right now than a biobed."

"Say that again, I wanna record it for posterity," T'Ana grumbled, chasing after them.

Carol watched them go, a tired smile on her face, but a smile nonetheless. As two figures sidled up beside her she looked left and right to see Ensigns Tendi and Rutherford, watching their friends stagger and trip and laugh their way down the corridor arm-in-arm. "They really are back, aren't they," Tendi said softly.

"They really are," Carol agreed, turning. "Come on, you two. Let's go get some rest ourselves. I'd say, we've earned it."

"Carol Freeman's log, Stardate 59132.6. It's been two days since our last encounter with the Borg cube. I have returned command of the Cerritos to Captain Ransom, who has recovered from his head injury and informed Starfleet Command about his suspicion that the Borg ship has been hiding from Federation security by traveling through the interfold layer, instead of normal space or subspace. This theory appears to be confirmed by Lt. T'Lyn's data analysis and Ensign Mariner's recollection of seeing the Cube open an interfold layer anomaly.

Ensigns Mariner and Boimler have begun adapting to their…unusual situation, with a little help from Dr. T'Ana." Carol paused her recording to look up from where she was sitting in T'Ana's office, watching her daughter walk with near-perfect balance from one end of the room to the other as Mr. Boimler did the same. "They are now more or less able to walk, work and otherwise function independently—an important development, as we have our meeting with Admiral S'Tess on the holodeck at 14:00 hours this afternoon."

She opened her mouth to continue, and but ultimately sighed and ended the recording, looking over the drafted speech she'd prepared on her Padd. Even she could tell it wasn't as convincing as she'd hoped. The Cerritos was hardly the Voyager or the Coleman. While HQ gave a lot more leeway for crazy scifi stuff to Intrepid-class ships, the California class were supposed to be workhorses of the fleet: reliable, dependable, and above all, boring.

Which was why she was recommending Mariner and Boimler for transfers to the Coleman. Boimler's service record definitely deserved it, and Mariner…well, Mariner may have had a lot of demerits, but the two of them were now almost literally attached at the hip. With any luck, that would be enough to convince the admiral to take her crazy suggestion seriously.

And if her luck had run out, well…

"Care? You still recording?"

She blinked and shook her head, maximizing the tiny call window in the top of her Padd. "Sorry, Zo. Just lost in thought."

"Hey." He gave her an encouraging grin. "It's going to be okay, Care-bear."

"What if it's not," she sighed. "We both know I don't do great being grounded, and I don't think Beckett's going to handle it any better. This has to work, or–"

"Or, we will figure it out as a family. That was the past, Carol, you've grown a lot since then. We all have."

"I hope so." If she was going to tank her career all over again, she really hoped she'd grown enough as a person to handle it better this time around. "Anything else you can tell me about Admiral S'Tess?"

Alonzo shrugged. "She's a ladder-climbing admiral who barely waited for Buenamigo's seat to cool before she jumped at it. Appeal to her ambition, it usually works for me."

"Fantastic. Another Starfleet careerist standing in the way of me doing my job."

"Hey, it can't be any worse than talking to Principal Pallman, right?"

"Don't remind me," she groaned, but his effort to lighten the mood had worked. "Thanks, Zo. Call you when it's over."

She closed the videochat and looked up as two shadows fell over the doorway. "Hey, Mom," Mariner said, looking more professional in her pressed-and-polished uniform than Carol had seen her in years. "You ready for this?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Carol sighed, picking up her Padd and following them out of the medbay. "Listen, you two; just so you're aware, I've made some changes to our case–"

"Don't worry, Mom, Brad and I've got this," Mariner reassured her, smoothing her hair back in its bun.

"Wh– you've got this?"

"Yeah, obviously. Come on, we're gonna be late."

"Beckett– hang on, what are you planning?! Beckett!"

The room they entered upon stepping into the holodeck was a standard admiral's office, though, Carol noticed, decorated in warmer tones than Alonzo used—and with a lot less plants. Instead there were several framed paintings of the Caitian homeworld, a decorative scratching post, and the distinct smell of fine-quality coffee hovering in the air.

Someone cleared their throat, and the trio looked forward, seeing a desk in front of a window with a perfect view of the San Francisco skyline. In that desk was sitting a middle-aged Caitian woman in an admiral's uniform, drinking a cup of coffee and looking perfectly relaxed. "Admiral," Carol agreed, walking forward. "Good afternoon."

"Captain Freeman. Ensigns Mariner and Boimler, nice of you to holo-project in today." Carol briefly glanced down to see that her own body now appeared to be slightly glittering and only ninety percent solid; apparently the holodeck was reacting in real-time to the cameras in the admiral's office.

"Uh– yes, of course, thank you for taking the time to discuss our case." She swallowed, her mouth feeling dry. I can do this. She looked out at the city skyline and steeled her nerve. Getting grounded wouldn't be so bad, right? She could see Alonzo more often. And– well there had to have been other good things about it, she just couldn't remember what…

"So," the Caitian woman drawled, setting down her coffee mug and steepling her fingers. "If I understand the situation correctly, you three are going to try to convince me that two ex-Borg drones—one of them with let's-just-say a history of causing trouble—" She cast a dubious glance over Mariner's spit-and-polish demeanor, "–and a captain who clearly can't separate her personal life from her job and who just took illegal control of a starship," another glance, this time over Carol, who forced herself not to shuffle her feet like a scolded child, "should be allowed back on a ship in my division."

"Actually, Admiral–" Carol began, but was overshadowed by Mariner, who stepped forward with her hands clasped behind her back.

"Actually, Admiral, it's not just the three of us. We have signed letters from every member of the Cerritos bridge crew and dozens of lower-deckers recommending that Captain Freeman be returned to duty." Carol's mouth dropped open as Mariner held out a hand and a glittering Padd materialized, which she slid across the desk. "You can verify them all with the Starfleet database."

"Really," the admiral said in surprise, picking up the holographically-projected Padd and flicking through the letters. "Even Commander Jack Ransom? I understand he's currently acting-captain of the Cerritos."

"Commander Ransom's is first on the list, Admiral," Boimler answered, also stepping forward. "Everyone on the Cerritos agrees: they want her back. And as for taking 'illegal' control of a starship, I was there, ma'am, and the most senior officer conscious on the bridge at that time was a lieutenant ops officer. Captain Freeman's decision might have been technically against regulations, but it was model behavior in spirit."

"Yeah, if my mom hadn't stepped up to the plate, none of us would be in front of you today," Mariner agreed, and then glanced over her shoulder with a small smile, the holographic sunlight gleaming off the silver Borg plating around her eye. "For a lot of reasons."

"Be that as it may," Admiral S'Tess said, although she was clearly intrigued by the letters, which she was still scrolling through, "Captain Freeman has a history of putting your benefit, Ensign Mariner, ahead of what some here at Command might call 'model behavior'—like leaving her ship in the hands of an acting-captain for a year to go looking for you. Mr. Boimler," she added, turning to the young man before Mariner or her mother could reply, "your thoughts?"

Boimler hesitated, glancing sideways at Mariner, and then took a deep breath. "You said that Captain Freeman can't separate her personal life from her job," he admitted. "I can see why you think that, Admiral, and you're right, she's taken the heat for Mariner several times."

"A lot of times, from my records," the admiral agreed dryly, leaning back and taking a sip of coffee.

Mariner elbowed Boimler, and he quickly resumed, "But Captain Freeman looks out for all of us onboard the Cerritos. She could have left me on the Borg ship after she found Mariner, but she put herself and her daughter at risk to try to find me. And that's not the only example; a few years ago when she thought she was being offered a promotion, she told us all she intended to turn it down to stay with the Cerritos. I mean, how many captains do you know who would do that?"

"Not many," the Caitian admitted. "But I'm afraid I'm not seeing your point here, Ensign."

"Boimler's point is," Mariner interjected, "if my mom can't separate her view of me as her daughter from me as a crewmember, then at least she treats everyone on the Cerritos the same way: like family. Look, we all know that ships function best when the crew is tight-knit; how many times have we heard of a starship crew beating impossible odds or saving the galaxy just because they wanted to rescue a member of their crew! And if we want to talk about the Borg, how much information has Starfleet gotten on them because the Enterprise didn't give up on Captain Picard!" She gestured behind her and added, "My mom didn't do anything other Starfleet captains haven't done in the past, and she didn't risk anyone else's life except her own and two willing volunteers."

"And, thanks to her saving us, we were able to get valuable information back to HQ on how a Borg ship got into Federation space without being spotted," Boimler chimed in. "Without her, who knows how long the Borg could have used the interfold layer to attack Starfleet ships unapprehended?"

"Yes, well, speaking of the Borg," the admiral said, setting aside the Padd, "you two don't have dozens of glowing recommendation letters from your subordinates. Even if I give Captain Freeman back her command, I don't see why I should take a risk on two xB ensigns, one of which has a pretty colorful record. Your record, of course, is sterling, Ensign Boimler, but–" She gave a little snort, "–as I understand it, you two are now something of a package deal." She chuckled at her own bad joke and took another sip of her coffee.

Boimler and Mariner shared a look and a brief nod, and then Mariner shrugged. "Actually, Admiral, we think you're looking at this the completely wrong way."

"Excuse me?" the admiral said flatly, setting her mug down. Carol's eyes went wide, mortified, but she managed to keep her mouth from falling open; if they were going down, they were going down as a unified front.

"Admiral, this is a great experiment for Starfleet," Boimler urged. "Imagine how useful ex-Borg crewmates could be to the Federation if it's proven we can be trusted on starships; we've already mentioned Captain Picard, but think of all the help Seven of Nine gave the U.S.S. Voyager. Our experience could be valuable, both from our time in the collective and now that we've been deassimilated."

"Not to mention that for as annoying as this little interlink thing is for us, it's already been super helpful in the field," Mariner added, tapping the side of her head. "We've already saved the fleet the equivalent of, what, fifty billion credits? How much does a California-class starship cost to build these days?"

"Look," Boimler cut in before Mariner could say anything else provocative, "the Borg isn't going away anytime soon, and the more often the Federation comes into contact with the it, the more deassimilated crewmembers Starfleet is going to have to deal with. Think of how great pioneering a program like this would look on your record." The admiral looked intrigued at that. "And if it doesn't work out, then we're just a California-class ship, we're not high-profile enough to cause any real damage. The moment Ensign Mariner or I make any problems, you can decom all three of us with minimal bad press. No skin off your nose."

Admiral S'Tess rubbed her chin. "I have to admit, you've made some good points. Freeman!" The bug-eyed woman quickly snapped to attention. "You have anything to say here?"

"I, uh–" Carol stepped forward and glanced at her daughter; Beckett grinned. "I think my daughter and Mr. Boimler have stated our position very well, Admiral. They're some of the Cerritos's best officers, and the ship would be worse off without them—which is why I'd like to take personal responsibility for rehabilitating them."

The admiral considered this, and then nodded. "Alright. You've convinced me—on two conditions," she added, before they could start celebrating. "First off, no big fanfare, not yet anyway. You two–" she nodded to Mariner and Boimler, "are going to keep your heads down, understood?"

"Of course, ma'am," Boimler assured her. The admiral raised her eyebrows at Mariner, who straightened up and nodded.

"Understood, Admiral. We won't step a toe out of line."

"Good. And second off: if this goes wrong, I'll be putting all of this on you, Freeman, is that clear?"

"Admiral, I wouldn't have it any other way."

"In that case, I'll have your reinstatement orders sent over immediately. Good luck, all of you," she added, eyeing them dryly. "I have the feeling you're gonna need it."

The call ended and the holodeck deactivated, and Mariner immediately let out a cheer. "Whoo! Take that, HQ bigots!" She and Boimler high-fived.

"I can't believe that worked," Freeman exhaled, shaking her head. "I hope you two know that tactic was risky as hell!"

"We know, Captain, but we needed to sell Command on taking a risk, and that meant we had to take one, too," Boimler explained. "Which meant Mariner suggesting something big and dramatic–"

"And Boimsie here being the ass-kissing social climber the admiralty loves," Mariner said fondly, ruffling his hair; he batted her hands away but didn't look too annoyed.

"Well," Carol said, shaking her head in admiring disbelief and starting for the doors, "I guess we'd better go tell everyone the news. And, Beckett," she added, as the doors slid open, and her daughter met her eyes. "Thank you," she said sincerely, and Mariner smiled back.

"Don't sweat it, Mom. You've put your reputation on the line for my career, like, a million times. Figured it was time I returned the favor."

They parted ways at the holodeck doors, heading for opposite turbolifts, and Carol took a moment to exhale letting the stress fall off her shoulders, and then tapped her badge. "This is Captain Freeman to Commander Ransom; Jack, I'm afraid I've got some bad news."

"'Commander,' huh? Sounds like good news to me." She chuckled at his answer. "Good to have you back, Captain. The chair is ready when you are."

"Glad to hear it, Jack. Over and out."

On the other end of the hallway, the two ensigns stepped into the turbolift. "Hey, Boimler," Mariner said as the doors closed; he looked over and she gave him a nudge, before continuing internally: This situation sucks, and it's probably going to suck for a while. But…if I have to be in this sucky situation with anyone, I'm glad it's you. She quickly added: —Not that I'd want you to be suffering like this too, I just meant–

It's okay, Mariner, I know what you meant. He shrugged and tilted his head. I kind of always know what you mean now.

Huh. Speaking of things that are going to suck…

Yeah, not my favorite either. She snorted, and he added: I'm glad it's you too, Mariner.

The doors opened in front of the medbay and they walked out as a pair, Mariner already letting out a groan. "Ughh, I hate PT, it's so boring."

"It's only a couple more weeks, you'll be fine." She groaned again and he added, "Or would you rather be in normal therapy, discussing our combined PTSD with Dr. Migleemo?"

"You know on second thought, physical therapy is fine, I'm totally cool with physical therapy…"

Wrapped inside the obscuring gasses of a nebula, a single Borg cube drifted idly, barely moving. The Federation ships were out there, it knew, scanning large swaths of the Alpha quadrant for its presence…but the Collective could wait. Organic lifeforms were not good at patience. Eventually, they would grow lazy. They would give up on their designations. Safely concealed, the Collective could afford to lurk and bide its time, allowing the repairs to continue.

Inside the Cube, drones moved along the walkways in a perfect, hive-like harmony of busy productivity. One paused in front of an array of screens, surveying the visual information displayed and communicating it to the rest, including images of the exterior visual field from all six sides. Another screen flicked through images of high-priority Alpha Quadrant lifeforms for assimilation. Flick: a bald human male in an admiral's uniform, peering stoically into the shot, contrasted with an image of the same male as a Borg drone. Flick. A female admiral with coiffed hair and a warm smile. Flick. A young human male with purple hair and a nervous expression, contrasted with an image of a drone. Flick. A male human ambassador with dark hair and a pale complexion. Flick.

The surveying drone reached out and tapped the screen, bringing up the picture of the young man again. With another tap, the green-tinged image turned red and muted. That lifeform was deceased—therefore, irrelevant.

With the error corrected, the drone moved on, the screens continuing to blink behind him. Flick. The human ambassador. Flick. A blonde human female with Borg implants, contrasted with the image of an assimilated female drone. Flick…

NOTES:

1.) The "interfold layer" shows up in the Voyager episode, "Real Life." It's stated to be a layer in between normal space and subspace, is accessible by a two-poled twister-like space anomaly, and is shown to have a sort of golden atmosphere.

2.) I based T'Lyn's conversation with Kayshon roughly on this dictionary, with some of my own additions: /cognitiveailab/darmok/blob/main/dictionary/Tamarian% .

Translations:

"Chatha and Terubim, the fire warm." = "Would you like to come to my quarters?"

"Fendit, refusing the flame; Fendit, refusing twice." = "I've already turned you down once, you need to take a hint."

"Timar and Darnek at sunset, their hands bound." = "Also, I'm married."

"Kiteo, his eyes closed; T'Pol, upon the Enterprise. " = "Your cultural ignorance is no excuse; I'm not the first Vulcan to work in Starfleet."

"Lemross, at Illashanta." = "I've clearly made a mistake."

"Sallana, her pack full." = "I've got a lot of work to do."

3.) "evasive-standard sequence alpha one": Evasive patterns (or sequences, if executed manually) are obviously evasive, while standard patterns are for attack; the barrel roll Jenn pulls off here accomplishes both of these, so I gave it a combined name.