We Were Never Welcome

Source Episode: VOY 6x16 Collective


"Kardasika'I"

The sound of Iliana's exclamation announced the arrival of our help from Voyager. I turned to find her gaping at First. Second and Schmullis stared at her curiously. It wan't often that Iliana got caught by surprise.

You're Cardassian, she'd said.

"We are Borg," First practically spat at her.

"How long have you been Borg?" she asked, still speaking Kardasi.

First didn't even wait on his universal translator. "Do not engage us in irrelevant conversation!"

One corner of Iliana's mouth pulled upward as she sauntered towards him. "You know your father tongue. I bet you were quite young when you were taken. Old enough to speak but too young to understand what it means to love Cardassia."

"Perhaps the malfunctions began earlier than we believed," Second said, interjecting awkwardly into the conversation.

Iliana stopped just in front of First, but her green eyes flicked over to the less-assimilated adolescent boy. This time when she spoke, it was in Standard. "How very Borg of you to think a Cardassian remembering his true language is a malfunction. Your collective can steal as many of our children as it wants. It will never take our identity."

"That is precisely what the maturation process is meant to do," Second said. "All information relating to experiences of individuality is purged, including spoken language, until only the order of the collective remains."

"Charming."

"First was in the maturation chamber for a significant length of time. If he is able to recall the language he spoke prior to assimilation, then his chamber must have been malfunctioning for much of that period."

"That's not something the collective would have missed," I said.

"Annika spoke Federation Standard," Schmullis pointed out.

He was right. Could it have something to do with Unimatrix Zero?

"She did," Iliana said, shifting her gaze back to First, "even when she was still a machine."

First scowled. "We are Borg."

Iliana ran a finger along the corded ridge lining his jaw. "Yes, you are."

The annoyance on First's face gave way to confusion. For a few seconds, he simply stared down at Iliana, seemingly unsure of how to react to her. Then, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from his face, his expression becoming cold. "You have two hours to reconnect us to the hive mind. If you fail, we will assimilate you."

"Lucky me," Iliana deadpanned, wrenching her hand from his grasp.

"Talia," Chakotay said, "you and Schmullis get going on your study. We need to know what happened here. Ghemor—" His voice dropped an octave, nearly becoming a growl— "you're with me."


Second escorted Schmullis and me to a corridor where the children had transported some of the dead. In one section alone, there were hundreds of bodies. Although it wasn't the first time I had seen such a massive collection of dead drones, the silence was somehow more complete.

These drones hadn't been torn limb for limb by a vengeful member of Species 8472. There was no violence here, no carnage left behind. They'd simply shut themselves down.

"It never ceases to amaze me how long Borg corpses can resist decay," Schmullis said as he stooped to scan one of the bodies. The wonder in his voice felt wrong, as if he hadn't noticed that we were standing in the middle of a nightmare.

I swallowed a lump and cleared my throat, giving a perfunctory "Mm-hmm" but not reaching for my own tricorder. The drones' eyes were open—all of them gray and unfocused beneath a cloudy film. I'd once thought the eyes of living drones were reminiscent of a dead person, but looking around the corridor made me keenly aware that some spark still burned within the children's eyes.

They were still alive, still sentient, no matter what the Borg had done to them... or what they'd done to others.

That thought called Ransom to mind—the agony in his yellow eyes, his challenge to me, how tightly he'd gripped my hand when I plunged my tagh

into his heart. My uniform was stiff now, stuck to my skin in places with his dried blood.

Anger bubbled in my chest. His death meant something. Intuition told me he was connected to this mystery somehow, I just needed to find the link. The agony... the pain...

I turned to Second. "When you injected Captain Ransom with some of your nanoprobes, it looked like you were in pain."

"Yes, I did experience physical discomfort."

"Why?"

The boy tilted his head. "I do not know."

"Commander?" Schmullis asked.

I ignored him, needing to understand why Ransom was dead, needing to find the connection. "Was the injection supposed to kill him?"

"No. It was intended to be threatening in order to motivate Captain Ransom's second to surrender his vessel's deflector."

"Then why is he dead?"

"I do not know."

I glanced over my shoulder, making eye contact with Schmullis. He nodded, pausing the tricorder's scan of a dead drone and making his way to me.

"Is this the first time you have experienced discomfort when using your assimilation tubules?" Schmullis asked as he began to scan the boy.

"It is not. Shortly before your arrival, I assisted in an assimilation."

I frowned. "All drones on this ship came out of maturation chambers. I scanned the units myself. What happened to the person you assimilated?"

"The drone's lifesigns terminated partway through the procedure."

"Do you know why?" Schmullis asked.

"We were unable to determine the cause of our failure."

"It's the drone in the assimilation chamber, isn't it?" I said. "Where you held Chakotay and me."

"That is correct."

Schmullis closed his tricorder and stowed it in his pocket. "Do you mind if I take a sample of your nanoprobes?"

The look on Second's face hinted at suspicion, but he didn't resist. "You may proceed."

Fetching the hypospray from his medkit, Schmullis slid an empty vial into the device and pressed it to Second's neck. "Do any of your shipmates seem to have this problem?"

"No."

Just Second, then. Was he the link?

Schmullis hummed. After drawing the sample, he removed the vial and placed it carefully into a different case he had brought from Voyager. He tapped his combadge. "Schmullis to Doctor Kes."

"Kes here."

"Please sync the sickbay console to the Portable Medical Analysis Unit. There is a sample I need you to analyze."

"Right away, Doctor. Kes out."

Schmullis turned back to the dead drones in the corridor, but I grabbed his arm. "We have to go to the assimilation chamber and scan that drone."

But it was Second who spoke next. "That is not the task First designated for us to complete. We are to determine whether there was a biological reason for the malfunctions of this vessel."

"What if this is the reason?" I argued.

"Clarify."

I hesitated for a moment, not actually sure of why my question felt so important. Why was I advocating for a return to that horrible place at all?

"What the hell happened to you?" Ransom had asked. "You used to jump at the chance for a good calculated risk, but you don't have the guts anymore to do what needs to be done."

"Your species was this cube's last known target," I reasoned aloud. "Days after they captured a colony of five hundred people, every adult drone died. Your chamber was the first to malfunction. You're the only one of the survivors who has problems with nanoprobe injection, and both times it has led to the death of your victim. What if your condition is somehow connected to what happened on this ship?"

"We'll still need data from several adult drones to confirm your hypothesis," Schmullis pointed out.

"Fine," I said. "So we gather what we need here, then go to the assimilation chamber and take a look at that drone."

"Very well."

We both looked to Second. "We will proceed with your hypothesis," the boy said.

While the doctor and I scanned and collected samples, the portable analysis unit worked on Second's blood sample. By the time Schmullis announced that he was ready to move on, the unit signaled its readiness to accept a new sample. He swapped out the vial with one containing a sample of a pathogen we'd found in every dead drone.

"Kes to Dr. Schmullis."

"Schmullis here."

"I'm sending a report to your tricorder right now. There's definitely something off about those nanoprobes. When I exposed them to unfamiliar blood cells in a simulation, they destroyed the cells rather than assimilating them."

"And in doing so, they destroyed their own ability to replicate."

"That's right."

"Fascinating," Schmullis said as he scrolled through the data on his tricorder. "And there were no abnormalities with the subject's own blood cells?"

"None that I could find, but I'd like to do a more thorough analysis of the data."

"Of course. Please inform me if you find anything important. Schmullis out."

When I glanced at Second, he was staring at his hands with a horrified expression. "I am defective."

Compassion welled up from some deep, dormant place inside, making me ache for this boy. Before I could stop myself, I placed a hand on his arm. "You're not defective. Your nanoprobes may be, but you are not."

He stared at my hand with an odd expression I couldn't interpret.

I pulled away. "Sorry. Some individuals have a propensity for using touch to offer comfort to others. You seemed troubled."

Second lifted his eyes to mine. "I was not offended by your gesture. I believe there may have been a similar practice in Brunali culture."

A flicker of hope warmed my chest, soothing the ache. I smiled at Second. "We'll get to the bottom of this."


Returning to the assimilation chamber was like going back to a place after it had endured some kind of disaster. Everything was familiar, yet it felt incredibly distant and unreal. There was an uncanny sense of wrongness, as if any moment I'd realize I was dreaming and things would go back to how they were before.

Nothing would be the way it was before.

My eyes sought out the place where Captain Ransom died, and nausea clutched my insides at the sight of his dried blood staining the grate. For the first time, I was thankful for my lack of food. If there had been anything in my stomach, I might have lost it.

It took a few moments for me to realize my companions had moved on. The sound of Schmullis' tricorder tugged at my awareness. Walk away, I commanded myself. I had a job to do.

At the table upon which the partially-assimilated corpse lay, I followed Schmullis' lead and retrieved my tricorder. While his device was designed for medical purposes, mine was geared towards collecting other scientific data. The more information we had, the better off we'd be. I scanned the body.

Schmullis hummed. "It appears the patient suffered a rapid loss of red blood cells. She became severely anemic, leading to heart failure."

"Consistent with what Kes found in the nanoprobes," I said. "And it would explain Captain Ransom's symptoms."

"I'm still not seeing any connection to the sudden deaths of the drones aboard this ship."

"What if the pathogen that killed them had a different effect on Second? Could it have altered his nanoprobes?"

Schmullis frowned. "Based on Kes' initial findings, I highly doubt it."

"She's still sorting through all our data. She might find something."

He snapped his tricorder shut. "With all due respect, Commander, we don't have time. We need to focus our studies on the pathogen."

"No, this is connected somehow. We just haven't answered the right questions yet."

Schmullis crossed his arms. "Such as?"

"Well, for starters—" I turned to Second. "If your colony was the last stop this ship made before everyone died, then where the hell did this woman come from?"

"We were ordered not to discuss this drone."

I grit my teeth and stepped closer. "She might be part of what went wrong here, and if she is, we need to know everything if we're going to fix it. So start discussing."


"Another survivor?"

Chakotay's eyes were wide as I shared, in hushed tones, what I'd learned from Second about the corpse in the assimilation chamber.

I nodded. "The only fully-developed drone to do so. She intended to join the Unimatrix Zero rebels, and had even begun to remove her own implants, but First overpowered her. He tried to re-assimilate her, but he couldn't make her compliant, so he demanded that Second attempt to 'repair' her. She became severely anemic and died within twenty-four hours."

Chakotay glanced over his shoulder, probably checking for eavesdroppers. "Maybe she was liberated along with the rest of Unimatrix Zero and was laying low."

"Maybe. If First was in Unimatrix Zero with her, it's possible she was waiting for an opportunity to get them both out."

"Or she was spying."

I hadn't thought of that.

I shook my head. "The point is, I think she survived because she wasn't connected to the hive mind. The pathogen spread through the whole ship using the local neural link. It was stopped before it infiltrated the central plexus or the maturation chambers, so it didn't spread to any other Borg ships and it didn't infect the children. Every active drone on board received a shut-down command, so that's what they did. At that point, standard Borg procedure would have been for the admin drones to activate the cube's self-destruct sequence. But they didn't."

"They were spaced," he said.

"What?"

"First claimed they shut down all sections of the ship that were too badly damaged in order to conserve power, but I looked at the activity log myself. Someone shut down the command center manually and vented it before the first maturation chamber opened."

"It must have been the survivor."

He nodded. "It looks that way."

"Is it just me, or does this situation sound a bit too familiar?"

Chakotay frowned. "You think this pathogen is similar to the virus we used to liberate Unimatrix Zero?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Maybe the survivor planted it on purpose. Maybe she created it. And I still don't know how Second's malfunctioning nanoprobes fit into all of this. I just have this feeling in my gut that it's connected."

"I think you're right. In fact, Ghemor came across something you'll want to see."

Chakotay led me to a console where Iliana was working. Its innards were strewn around the floor, framing the slender woman as she tinkered with some piece of hardware deep within.

"Hello, Eelo," she said, not looking up from her work. "What can I do for you?"

"I was just telling Talia about that information you found in the logs," Chakotay murmured.

"I see," Iliana said. Her eyes flicked to me, the green in them deepened by the ship's strange lighting. Wiping her greasy hands on a cloth, Iliana stood, stretched her back, and produced a small PADD from one of the pockets in her black jumpsuit. She pressed her thumb to the reader, unlocking it before handing it to me.

It was a collection of information about the cube's last conquest—activity logs, stolen data, archival information about the colony and the species who lived there. As I read, a story began to emerge about the Borg's interactions with the Brunali people and how that had led to the latest attack on a small unadvanced colony of survivors.

They were genetics experts. Once, the Brunali had been a proud spacefaring people whose scientific curiosity drew them to the stars—not unlike Terrans. After the Borg decimated their homeworld, the survivors destroyed their advanced technology and decided to live as an agrarian prewarp society. Most likely, they'd hoped the Borg would judge them to be of no further value to the collective and never return.

Two decades later, one of the Brunali colonies had a change of heart. They launched a small ship into their star system—right in front of a transwarp aperture. When the Borg detected the vessel's warp signature, they snapped it up, traced it back to the colony, and assimilated everyone.

Also included in the files was data about the genetic work that particular colony had been doing. Mostly, it revolved around humanoid genetic modifications that I couldn't make sense of. It was called Project Icheb. Attached was another file, but when I tried to open it, the data was too corrupted to read.

I frowned.

"Confused?" Iliana asked. "Those modifications would create an immuno-compromised person, a child born with heightened susceptibility to infection."

"On purpose? Why would anyone do that?"

"Funny you should ask. I sent this data to Kes, and she connected it to the pathogen your team found in all those cadavers you've been studying. She also found the source." Iliana tilted her head and flicked her eyes towards the corridor.

I held up two fingers and mouthed, Second?

She nodded.

"Why didn't she inform me? Or Schmullis?"

Iliana's brow rose. "What, so drone-boy could overhear? How do you imagine that would've played out, Eelo'chali?"

I glowered.

"I told Kes to send the results directly to my tricorder," Chakotay said. "If our friends here were to get wind of that information, they'd kill him."

He was right. I took a breath, trying to clear my head. "Okay. So, what do we do?"

Chakotay opened his mouth to answer, but Third's voice cut him off as she reported an incoming comm signal.

"Identify the source," First ordered.

"Unknown. It appeares to be a code."

"What does it say?"

"Unknown," one of the twins said. "Decryption algorithms do not recognize it."

"Mind if we take a look?" Chakotay asked. "Lieutenant Commander Eelo and Crewman Ghemor both have experience breaking codes."

Iliana ticked a brow at First, lifting her chin as a smug smile pulled at her lips.

First didn't look impressed, but at least he didn't scowl. "Proceed."

When Third released the data to our tricorders, I recognized it right away.

Korok.

I exchanged a glance with Chakotay, unsure if it was information we should share with the children. He shook his head.

"It looks like a transponder code," Iliana said, not having seen Chakotay's subtle gesture. She stared hard at her tricorder as she made her way to the visual-tactile interface where First and Third stood. Iliana frowned at the readings, then glanced at Chakotay and me. "I think it's Klingon."

"Distance?" First asked.

"Twenty lightyears. They must be boosting the signal to let someone know they're coming."

"Who?"

"Us," Chakotay said, squaring his jaw. "It's Unimatrix Zero."

Iliana frowned. She hadn't been briefed about Korok or our orders to rendezvous with his liberated Borg sphere, and she was clearly not happy at being left out.

First glared at Chakotay. "I said no reinforcements!"

"We didn't call them."

In a move so fast I almost didn't register it, First grabbed Iliana by her thick dark hair, yanked her head back, and plunged his assimilation tubules into her neck. Chakotay and I pulled our phasers, but First was already shouting. "If you discharge your weapon, your crewman will die."

My finger twitched on the trigger, but we both held our fire. Iliana's complexion kept its dull pink color, her eyes were still green, and no implants sprouted from her skin. He hadn't injected her with any nanoprobes. All that kept her from bleeding out were the tubules in her neck.

"These delays are intentional. You tried to deceive us. Give us the deflector now, or you will be assimilated."

"It won't help, you know," Iliana sneered.

"Ghemor," Chakotay warned.

"The collective received your distress call, and they answered it with a self-destruct order."

"Another deception," First said.

"See for yourself," Iliana said, glancing at Third. "Data grid four-two-six. Use decryption protocol theta three."

Third did as Iliana asked without even looking to her admin for approval. After a few tense moments, she turned to First. "She is correct. The transmission is authentic."

"It is a mistake," First insisted.

"You're defective," Iliana growled. "Weak. The collective doesn't want you."

First tightened his grip on her hair, and Iliana grunted. "We are a collective," he snarled, leaning down until his face was centimeters from hers. "You are an individual. You are the one who is weak."

"Perhaps," she said through gritted teeth. "But I'm much smarter than you are. And I'm not alone."

First only had time to frown before Third raised an instrument to his cortical implant and deactivated him. Immediately, the admin's body went limp. His grip on Iliana's hair loosened, and his tubules automatically retracted. Third shoved his body sideways so he wouldn't crush Iliana, and he landed on the deck with a sickening thud.

As the tubules withdrew from her neck, Iliana clapped a hand over the wound. Blood slipped through the spaces between her fingers and, as her breathing became rapid, streamed down from her hand despite her best efforts to staunch the flow.

Then both Iliana and First dissipated.

My mouth dropped open, refusing to make words.

"Mind telling me what the hell just happened?" Chakotay asked.

"I transported them to Voyager's sickbay," Third informed us. "They won't die, and you won't be assimilated."

"I'm gonna need a better explanation than that."

"We've met before," the girl said, "but I had a different face. On Brunal they called me Mezoti, but my real name is Anelina. I am Brenari."