CHAPTER 25

Resistance Cube 42

Seven tried to ignore her uneasiness as she walked with General Korok through the bowels of his vessel. It was illogical, not to mention irrelevant, since the cube was undoubtedly under the Resistance's control, though that reasoning didn't lessen her discomfort. Although the only visible sign of Seven's anxiety was her shifting blue eyes.

"Reports from the Beta Quadrant." Korok handed a large red PADD to Seven. "Your mate has been in contact with the fluidic space dwellers. An uneasy alliance is being formed."

"Axum is not my mate." Seven's voice remained icy, almost impassive, but her eyes flashed enough to make Korok nod his head in understanding. "An alliance with Species 8472 is ill-advised. They are vulnerable to modified nanoprobes. The Collective has this knowledge because Captain Janeway had this knowledge."

"Acknowledged, but they could still be an asset in battle, despite their vulnerability." Korok knew, regardless of how Seven's voice had softened and been infused by emotion when she had spoken of Janeway, that the former tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One would require no sympathy from him thus he did not offer any. "If the Borg destroy this Galaxy it will only be a matter of time before the Collective enters fluidic space to finish what they began. They will join us."

Seven nodded her reluctant assent. "When will the Infinity Modulator be completed?"

"Within the hour."

"Acceptable." Seven knew the I-MOD, as Lieutenant Commander Torres had coined it, would be the ultimate weapon against Borg drones. Not only because of its constant adaptability, but also because it was a weapon Kathryn Janeway possessed no knowledge of.

The woman who had most recently been known as Admiral Janeway might be gone, but her memories and knowledge were still within the Hive Mind of those onboard the Einstein. Seven might have the data of thousands of different species, but Janeway had been an extremely able tactician and strategist. All of which worked against the Federation and the Resistance.

Seven attempted to put aside her own feelings, her own anguish and grief, in order to better complete this crucial mission. But being on a Borg vessel despite who was in control of it brought painful memories to the fore in Seven's mind. Seven saw visions of what had become of Kathryn Janeway after her body had been mutilated and her mind pillaged of its valuable information. Perhaps, Seven considered, her rage could be useful in this last great stand against the Borg. She would see that the entire Collective was destroyed completely or die trying. Somehow Seven thought perhaps Kathryn would be proud of how far she had come in regaining her humanity. As a Borg drone she would never have thought in terms of revenge.

"We will reach the Talaxian Asteroid in approximately two hours." Korok led the way into his chambers.

Seven entered the makeshift quarters and noticed that unlike the rest of the vessel individuality infused the dwellings belonging to this man. The décor though was entirely irrelevant. "Admiral Nechayev wishes to meet with you onboard the Gorkon to discuss Borg tactical information. She also wishes to better understand the Resistance: ship placement, armaments, access to transwarp hubs—"

"Starfleet does not trust us." Korok's gruff tone indicated that it wasn't a question. Seven wouldn't have attempted to dissemble anyway.

"Yes. They do not entirely trust me as well." Seven knew full well that if it hadn't been for Admiral Janeway's intervention she would most likely be in a Federation prison due to her remaining Borg implants.

Seven and Icheb had in fact almost been killed due to regeneration deprivation during the incident with the insidious Admiral Covington, who had wished to become the Borg Queen. It was Janeway who had rescued Icheb and Seven from certain death when they had been incarcerated within a Federation holding cell. Seven kept the guilt that she hadn't been able to rescue Admiral Janeway in return buried deep within herself. She required her focus to be on the mission.

"I will meet with your Admiral, but no Starfleet or warriors of the Empire are to board my vessel." Korok's crew had been quite adamant regarding "outsiders" being allowed access to their cube. He had been equally opposed to it and so he had instituted that rule once his vessel had reached the Delta Quadrant and deposited the two Starfleet vessels and one Klingon warship into space. Only Seven, who knew full well what it was like to no longer be a Borg drone and yet not entirely an individual, was allowed to step foot onto the cube.

"Understood." Seven set her carrier on top of the metal assimilation platform that acted as Korok's desk. She opened the black case to reveal a hypospray and several vials. "The Doctor's neurolytic pathogen."

Korok held a single vial up for his inspection as he nodded his head, encouraged with yet another weapon to use against the Borg. "We require the formula to this compound."

"We require tactical information regarding the Resistance." Seven's icy stare was unrelenting despite Korok's rather incensed expression.

"Acceptable." Korok wasn't entirely pleased with the exchange, but if every Resistance member could be injected with the neurolytic pathogen that had destroyed the Queen in the Delta Quadrant they would never have to be drones again. That assurance was well worth an information exchange.

"General."

Seven and Korok's attention were both directed to the Vidiian woman who had just entered the General's quarters. Once a phage ridden species, the red-haired former Borg drone was quite beautiful. Something Seven found to be irrelevant and her annoyance at the interruption that would only delay her departure from the Borg cube showed only in her impossibly more rigid stance.

"Report."

"Long range scans are no longer detecting the Talaxian Asteroid." The Vidiian resistance member almost regretfully handed the PADD to General Korok. "There's nothing there but debris."

Seven immediately thought of Neelix, his wife Dexa and adopted son Brax. Her face flushed with anger as she thought about the unborn child Dexa held lovingly in her womb. Seven remember with a growing fire in her chest how Neelix would nearly burst with excitement whenever Dexa's pregnancy was mentioned.

"We will avenge their deaths in battle." Korok nodded his dismissal to the red-haired Vidiian before he turned to an enraged Seven. The movement of the small muscle beneath her silver starburst implant showed her extreme emotional response. Korok's fist collided soundly with his chest as he made his proclamation. "Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam."

"No." Seven stopped on the threshold of General Korok's quarters before she turned her head slightly to address the man with complete conviction in her steely tones. "It is the Borg who will die today. Seven to Enterprise, one to beam up."

Seven rolled her shoulders as she stepped off of the transporter pads into the more comforting surroundings of a Federation starship. Her departure from the room was quickly stopped by B'Elanna Torres, who had entered in almost a run.

"Seven! Neelix, the Talaxians, they're all right!" B'Elanna almost grasped Seven in delight and relief, but she thought better of it just in time. "They evacuated the Asteroid as soon as their sensors detected neutrino emissions. They're hiding out in a T-class nebula near the Uxali planet."

Relief washed over Seven in an awesome wave. "That is good news."

"You bet your ass it's good news!" B'Elanna did have to wonder why the Borg would bother destroying an unpopulated asteroid belt, but her need to tell Seven about the Talaxians outweighed every other concern. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yes." Seven relaxed her stance before she let the anger and grief that had invaded her entire body to dissipate into nothingness. "I was momentarily… disturbed by the report that the asteroid had been destroyed. I am functioning adequately now."

"Good." B'Elanna didn't touch Seven despite her wish to provide some modicum of comfort, so instead she did what she knew the former Borg wanted most. She studiously ignored Seven's emotions. "What I can't figure out is why the Borg would destroy an unmanned asteroid array in the first place. Does that make any sense to you?"

"No." Seven's brow furrowed as she followed Commander Torres from the transporter room. "It does not."

Seven and B'Elanna rode the turbolift silently as both contemplated the oddness of the efficient-minded Borg Collective acting decidedly inefficient. They were quite aware that the assimilated vessel once known as a Nebula-class starship had a considerable lead on the Resistance/Federation coalition and yet it would seem that the Borg were making little stops on their way. Doing what and why, no one knew.

The hairs on the back of B'Elanna's neck rose as anxiety filled her petite, but sturdy frame. She just couldn't figure out why the assimilated Einstein hadn't reached Borg territory yet. If B'Elanna didn't know better she would have thought the Einstein was waiting for them, luring them somewhere. For what purpose, again no one knew, but B'Elanna assumed it wouldn't bode well for them once they did catch up with the assimilated starship.

Despite Seven's extensive knowledge of the inner-workings of the Hive Mind, she still couldn't figure out why the Borg manned starship would find it relevant to destroy the Talaxian asteroid belt. Seven recalled an ancient Earth story where two young children, siblings, used breadcrumbs to lead them from a dark forest to their home. It was as if the Federation and the Resistance were the children, but instead of markers leading them home the food items were instead laid out to direct them deeper into the dark foreboding forest.

The turbolift doors opened audibly onto the bridge of the Enterprise-E to emit Seven and B'Elanna. Worf, who was seated in the captain's chair, only gave them a brief glance as the two women made their way to the captain's ready room.

"Enter."

B'Elanna had barely stopped Seven from just barging into Captain Picard's ready room. She released Seven's wrist as the doors slid open.

"General Korok has agreed to meet with Admiral Nechayev onboard the Gorkon." Seven stood rigidly, her chin held high and the last of her discomfort vanished to be replaced by her sense of duty to the mission, to Admiral Janeway. "He has agreed to give us tactical information regarding the Resistance in exchange for the Doctor's formula for the neurolytic pathogen."

The tea cup held close to Picard's lips was soon set down as he stood from his chair to address the two women before him. He smiled minutely as he nodded his head in satisfaction. "The Admiral will be pleased."

Seven didn't voice her opinion that Admiral Nechayev's pleasure was irrelevant. She continued her report. "The Infinity Modulator will be completed in forty-seven minutes. The weapon should be distributed to the Hazard Team first and then as more are constructed to the rest of the crew on all three vessels."

"Agreed."

Seeing a break in Seven's report, B'Elanna stepped forward in order to hand a PADD to Captain Picard. "Report from Voyager. Lieutenant Kim hasn't made any headway in the ablative hull armor or the transphasic torpedoes that Ad—that were brought from the future. The Temporal police locked it up tight and destroyed all the records onboard Voyager."

"Unfortunate." Picard hadn't missed how B'Elanna had stumbled over and refrained from voicing Admiral Janeway's name despite the fact that it had been a seventy-six year old Kathryn Janeway. However, he studiously pretended not to have noticed.

"Indeed." Seven's voice was flat, seemingly devoid of all emotion, but B'Elanna detected something underneath the impassivity.

It was as if Seven was a simmering pot just waiting to boil over. There seemed to be a dangerous sort of energy around the former Borg drone, one that B'Elanna thought could prove either an asset or a detriment. Revenge was supposedly a dish best served cold, and B'Elanna knew no one icier than Seven of Nine.

"Breadcrumbs." Picard set down the report regarding the Talaxian asteroid array before he regarded the two women before him. They shared the same bemused expression though Seven's seemed almost knowing. "Hansel and Gretel. An ancient Earth text. The Borg are leading us to them. The Alixian. Ledos. The Overlookers. The Einstein is feasting yes, gaining drones, but there's something else at work here. Something decidedly un-Borglike. Wouldn't you say, Seven?"

"They are taunting us." Seven's brow furrowed as she came to terms with the Borg acting so uncharacteristically inefficient. "By destroying places and people Voyager has had contact with. I am uncertain as to why."

"But we might know where they're going next." B'Elanna wondered if they were already too late. "I don't think the Talaxian convoy is safe near Ulaxi. That's where the Einstein will strike next if this is the game they're playing. That is if they aren't already there."

The captain stood as he tapped his communicator. "Picard to the Bridge. Send a priority message to the Talaxians that it is no longer safe for—"

"Captain, the Talaxians have sent a communiqué." Worf wouldn't usually interrupt his captain, but he figured this particular communiqué warranted it.

Picard didn't hesitate to activate the message now blinking on his personal computer. It was a hastily written message that he read aloud. "Ulaxi has been absorbed."

"Captain." B'Elanna disregarded all thoughts of the previous inhabitants of Ulaxi as she turned to the next breadcrumb the Einstein would inevitably leave for them unless they got there first. "We need to get to Quarra."

CHAPTER 26

Quarra

Jaffen, Primary Shift Supervisor to the Quarran Power Plant, dropped his work tote tiredly on the floor next to the open door to his spacious, though lonely apartment. The pitch black of the night concealed anything and everything and he was frustrated and perhaps a little afraid when his lights wouldn't activate even after his third command. He was just about to leave to get security when a voice stopped him. That voice had stopped him before with its huskiness, its seductiveness, its power.

"Hello, lover."

Absently keeping the door ajar, Jaffen stepped tentatively closer to the sound of that voice. A voice he had thought for many years he would never hear again. His heart began to race as he carefully took steps further into the darkness. "Kathryn? You're back."

He could see a glinting movement and then she was there, her breath tickled the hairs on the back of his neck as she whispered softly into his ear. "Yes. I've come for you."

And then lips were upon him. Forceful, unyielding lips. Lips that tasted of metal, as if she had cut her mouth and was now allowing the red fluid to transfer to him. He couldn't get enough. He pulled her to his larger form and was delighted to find that she was naked and seemingly more than ready for him. He brushed his hands down the smooth planes of her back and moaned deep in his throat as she moved him towards the blinded windows that opened from their proximity to allow the city lights to illuminate them.

She was beautiful. Breathtakingly so. Jaffen had to take a step back, though his determined, almost desperate, grip never left her slim arms for fear of her leaving him again. Her thick auburn hair had grown considerably and now cascaded over her shoulders and down her back, and Jaffen couldn't wait to see the tresses spread out across the pillows of his bed. His hungry eyes roamed across her pale flesh made luminescent from the bright lights of the bustling city outside his window. She was slimmer than he remembered as if she hadn't eaten anything that could be construed as fatty since she had left him almost two years ago. He didn't care. He brushed his hands across her neck and then down to the smooth taut skin of her stomach. Jaffen smiled when she arched her body as he slowly, teasingly moved his hand still farther down.

"Do you want to be inside of me?"

Jaffen thought her voice was oddly steady, almost impassive despite the way the muscles of her lower abdomen were flexing rapidly beneath his hand. "Y-yes. My gods, yes."

"Good."

Jaffen screamed in agony as he tried desperately though ineffectively to break the vice grip she had him entwined in. The pain was nearly replaced by horror as he watched her pale lips turn up into a smile. It so closely resembled how she would smile when they would begin their evenings of passion that he nearly expelled his last meal. It was such a grotesque sight now that her true nature was revealed to him.

"I thought you wanted to be inside of me." Her hands had released Jaffen, but the liquid metal tendrils kept him sufficiently ensnared. Her voice became accusatory as she stood very still allowing the tar like strands to do her work for her. "You liked that, didn't you? Her wet, hot… embrace. You liked how it felt, so different from Norvalian women. Oh Janeway, she did teach you so many wonderful things, didn't she?"

"STOP! Plea—" Jaffen's words were cut off as black metallic fluid rushed down his throat, into his belly, and then to every other part of him.

"Security!" The young Quarran security guard didn't hesitate to detonate the portable lighting unit even as he aimed his firearm at the two ambiguous forms near the window. His mind hadn't been able to make sense of what he was seeing until the single room apartment was filled with light. "My gods!"

It was a woman. She looked almost naked, but the moving black fluid that ran over her slim form made it unclear and really that wasn't the issue. What the black vine-like substance was doing to the owner of this apartment was, and to his horror his hands shook as he fired one shot at the woman. The bullet hit her, square in the chest, but if she felt it or not she didn't show. Instead she walked steadily closer to him, with Jaffen either unconscious or dead suspended high in the air behind her by her moving tentacles. The security guard tried to run, tried to call for help, tried to fire his weapon again, but it was all to no avail since in a split second she had him. Her arm had raised and the security guard didn't know what he was seeing until a rush of thick blackness erupted from her palm and he was dead before he even realized he hadn't fired a second shot.

The ping of a bullet falling to the hard wood floor was the only sound as the Borg Queen slowly digested her meal as if she were a spider and Jaffen an unwitting fly wrapped in her insidious web. She walked to the window to gaze critically at the city streets below that teemed with people who appeared like ants to her. This city, this planet, was unworthy of assimilation, of absorption. She had known this before she had directed her vessel to this planet. Two had carefully, tentatively asked her why she felt the need to go down to the planet when they could just destroy it and move on to the Klingon settlement. Her only explanation was that she had to pay respects, to an old friend.

The Borg Queen smiled from the deep and pleasurable feeling of being sated as the last of Jaffen was dissolved and ingested. The tendrils shrunk considerably in size before she reabsorbed them entirely into herself. For the moment she stood appearing as the human woman she had once been. Curiously she brushed her hands across her recently acquired appearance. Her nipples hardened under the rough touch of her palm and she imagined that it was Seven of Nine whose touch was bringing moisture to the juncture between her legs. She imagined that it was Seven who was now entering that heat with metal encased fingers.

"Soon, my love." The Borg Queen pulled her hands away from her stimulated body. She had much to do before she could indulge herself in such an inefficient manner. More so she wanted Seven to be the one to touch her. The Borg Queen craved Seven. She wanted her. She required her. Seven would come to her, willingly, because the Borg Queen could give her what she most desired: Kathryn Janeway. At least her body. Her soul had been destroyed by the Borg Queen long ago.

With a thought the Borg Queen was back on her vessel. Two was standing to greet her. He almost shook from the pleasure of being in his queen's presence once again. Despite her human appearance, her power emanated clearly to his cybernetic eye and he had no choice but to be utterly devout.

Two had thought he would grieve over the loss of the previous form the Borg Queen had been ensconced in. That form had been gloriously beautiful with the gleaming silver armor and the network of wires that emerged from her skull. He had not hesitated of course to deliver his Queen her new form. In a dark, black pool of nanoprobes she had been birthed and grown. He had seen to her development personally. And when she had matured sufficiently he had presented her to his Queen with pleasure.

The Queen had smiled her appreciation and had deigned herself by touching Two's trembling face with her hand as his reward before she entered the liquid blackness. The sleeping creature within the pool awakened when the Queen had touched her pale face. Both women had smiled identical grins of pleasure as they had pressed their slim bodies, one pale and fleshy and the other silver and hard, against one another. This new being that had awakened had feasted ravenously upon the metallic construct of the Borg Queen in much the same manner and reasoning the Borg Cube had devoured Pluto in its rebirth. After the metal and technologically enhanced biomatter had been completely ingested the newly formed Borg Queen had emerged from the inky depths to Two's enthralled gaze.

Two had watched as the pale, naked form with long, thick waves of auburn hair, bright blue eyes, and a wide grin that showed white teeth had walked towards him all the while the pool of black she had been born and matured in swirled around her as if the tendrils were alive. She was almost more than merely a queen at that moment to Two, she was a goddess.

The Queen's voice brought him out of his reverie as she instructed him to take their vessel to the Klingon inhabited planetoid seventeen light years away.

"We require tactical drones."

The Borg Queen almost wished Janeway was still trapped within her so she could hear her screams as she destroyed everything the captain had done, had accomplished, during her trek through the Delta Quadrant. The incorruptible Kathryn Janeway would be known throughout the Universe as the greatest enemy to humanity. At least those who managed to survive would extol her as such. And the Borg Queen smiled at the vindication she felt against the small being that she now so greatly resembled. Kathryn Janeway had thought she could destroy her. Could turn Seven of Nine against her. That would be her greatest victory over that insufferable human. Seven. She would have her in a way Janeway had only been able to dream about. Seven would be hers. And the Universe would do well to tremble before them.

CHAPTER 27

The Einstein

"Bring me the last one." The Borg Queen's voice reverberated off the metallic walls of her chamber as green-tinted lights flashed across her pale naked body.

To the untrained eye, the Queen looked human. She possessed the appearance of a petite woman with long, wavy auburn hair that caressed her narrow shoulders and the smooth planes of her back. Her dark blue eyes contained humor in a situation most would find harrowing and a trace of what could only be classified as hunger. When the door of her chamber slid open she parted her lips to allow her tongue to moisten them before she smiled broadly as if she were meeting an old friend.

"Kohlar." The Queen ran her blue gaze across the form of the formidable Klingon leader who had a rather shocked expression on his dark features. "Your people are mine. As you will soon be."

"Captain Janeway?" Kohlar took in the small human female before him with a mixture of horror and confusion.

The mechanical beings had appeared in flashes of green light throughout his colony. The screams of the Klingon colonists still echoed in Kohlar's mind. The cyborgs had struck fast, were relentless, and the colonists had fallen swiftly under such might and numbers. Though this was the last thing Kohlar ever expected. Captain Janeway assisting such creatures seemed to be the most impossible scenario he could devise, and yet here she was standing before him with the smell of death around her.

"Don't," The Queen moved swiftly. Much quicker than Kohlar knew humans were capable. Her breath stank like the metallic flavor of blood and wafted hotly against his neck as she whispered forebodingly in his ear. "Call me that."

Kohlar tried to remove himself from her grip, but found it impossible to do so. It wasn't just her hands, which were like steel vices upon his broad shoulders, but the black substance that had suddenly appeared on her pale flesh that held him tight. The black tendrils felt hot against his skin as they moved across his body and then around his torso. He was soon completely ensnared in the scorching black material that seemed almost alive.

"What are you doing to—" Kohlar's words were blocked by a hot stream of black fluid that forced its way down his throat, into his belly, and throughout his body. He would have screamed in rage if his lungs and the rest of his internal structure were not being so quickly dissolved.

"Isn't it obvious?" The Queen's black tendrils pushed Kohlar closer to her and she was aroused by the way the bulky man was being pressed tightly against her, into her. "I'm eating you alive."

The final words, the last horror, Kohlar was forced to experience was the Borg Queen's promise that his kuvah'magh would soon join him.

CHAPTER 28

The Enterprise-E

"Warning: Regeneration cycle incomplete."

Seven fell to the floor on her knees and the palms of her hands as she pushed the stale, recycled air of the starship into her lungs in heaving breaths. Her shoulders shook as she lifted herself slowly from the gray-blue carpet. Her left hand, encased with the dull silver metal of Borg technology, brushed platinum blonde strands of hair from her sweat-drenched face that was pale from the sickness she felt rising from her stomach to her tight throat. Seven forced the nausea back down as she moved slowly to the replicator located by the door to her temporary quarters.

"Water, twenty-one degrees Celsius."

In a flash of light Seven's command was fulfilled. She took the glass with her as she moved to the three viewports on the opposite end of the room. Seven's icy blue eyes were on the white streaks that indicated the Enterprise-E was moving at warp, but her thoughts were on the harrowing visions she had just experienced in her dream, her nightmare, that had led to the disruption in her regeneration cycle.

The door chime interrupted her reverie, thus the repeating visions that intruded upon her thoughts ceased for the moment. Seven straightened her posture before she turned to meet her visitor with as much poise and impassivity as she could.

"Lights." Seven set the half-empty glass on the nearby dining table before her hands fell to her sides. "Enter."

B'Elanna didn't look away from the PADD in her hand as she stomped into Seven's lit quarters until she realized Seven was standing right in front of her.

"We were wrong." B'Elanna almost sounded disappointed.

In truth she was relieved that the highly populated planet was intact and that their ship's sensors showed nothing untoward. But she had had every assumption that Quarra was the Einstein's next target, so that left the question as to what was. Also the huge question of why the Borg were making these little stops along Voyager's flight path in the first place.

Seven took the proffered PADD and quickly scanned the information while B'Elanna continued her impromptu report. "Long range sensors detected Borg activity, but the planet seems to be fine."

"It would appear that way, Commander." Seven's metallic crescent shaped implant above her left eye rose minutely at the seemingly unrelated piece of news contained within the PADD. The Primary Shift Supervisor to the Quarran Power Plant had gone missing. She wondered if the unsettled feeling she felt at seeing that Jaffen was missing could be her intuition. If that were true she wished it would tell her what it was she was feeing unsettled by.

"It just doesn't make any sense." Frustration added a growl within B'Elanna's low tones as the motions of her hands accompanied her voice. "Why ignore Quarra?"

Seven could feel B'Elanna's eyes on her as she continued to read the contents of the PADD. She shifted her shoulders, irritated at B'Elanna's expectation that she should know the Borg's motivation and annoyance that she didn't. "I am uncertain."

"Hey, are you okay?" B'Elanna's hand paused above Seven's shoulder before she let it drop back to her side. B'Elanna could see Seven's disquiet in the way the other woman's icy blue eyes darted from the PADD to the green-lit Borg alcove and the small muscle that jumped below the starburst implant.

"I—had a nightmare." Seven's eyes only stayed on B'Elanna's worried countenance for a moment before she turned them back to the PADD, though she had already ingested the information within it. It was true that she had found something of a confidant in B'Elanna Torres, but that didn't mean Seven felt any more comfortable speaking of her feelings of fear, regret, and uncertainty to anyone.

"Like—was it like the one you had before we left Earth?" B'Elanna kept her tone soft, gently coaxing, but hesitant as well, careful.

Being a sounding board to Seven hadn't been something B'Elanna had intended. The day she had offered to be one had come as much of a shock to her as it had for Seven. But B'Elanna didn't regret that decision. In fact she was proud that she had made the offer. B'Elanna figured Seven and she would never be best friends, but she knew Seven was in a considerable amount of pain and so compassion was extended whether Seven wanted it or not. Fortunately for both of them, Seven seemed accepting of it, at least to an extent, and had been more forthcoming than perhaps B'Elanna had intended her to be. Especially when it had been revealed to her that Seven had been in love with Admiral Janeway.

"No." Seven followed B'Elanna to the gray couch beneath the viewports. Her hands brushed against the black fabric of her Starfleet uniform as she lowered herself to the couch cushions. Seven's hands remained atop of her thighs as she angled herself towards B'Elanna. "It was not of a sexual nature."

"Okay." B'Elanna evened her voice out though she was relieved that Seven wasn't about to go into any detail regarding something of a 'sexual nature'. "Do you want to tell me what it was about?"

"The Borg Queen existed in my dream." Seven took a deep, cleansing breath as she ordered her thoughts before she elaborated on the visions the night had given her. "She had the same absorption powers the cube had. She was leading the Einstein throughout the Delta Quadrant in order to feed. The Overlookers were the first, then the Ventu. In my dream she went to Quarra. She killed Jaffen. She absorbed him. And then the Klingon colony fell and she absorbed Kohlar."

Seven looked quite pointedly at B'Elanna. She wanted her next words to be heard without confusion. "She looked like Kathryn."

"What do you mean?"

"She appeared human." A shiver ran down Seven's spine as she thought of the smile the Queen had possessed when she devoured the small girl Seven had befriended on Ledos. "She was still the Borg Queen, but also something else. I know you believe the Borg to be evil, but the actions they take have no emotional ramifications to them. This new Borg Queen took great pleasure, physical pleasure, when she murdered. She enjoyed it, B'Elanna. And she looked like Kathryn."

B'Elanna could only nod her head as she digested what she had just been told.

"It was only a dream." Seven stood abruptly, her decision made. She would adapt and ignore the disquieting images that had come to her while she had been regenerating. The Borg Queen was dead. Kathryn was no more. It had only been a dream. Although the reason why she still felt so unsettled was frustratingly elusive to her.

"Seven, I can't imagine how terrible it was for you to—to have to see Janeway that way. To see what the Borg did to her." B'Elanna's rage against the Borg showed in her aggressive tones as she too stood with her fists clenched at her sides. "It's all right to be angry. To be shaken by the experience. And you've been dealing with that all on your own. I just want you to know. Dream or not, you can always—look I'm here all right. Whenever you need me."

"What Kathryn Janeway was forced to become was my worst fears realized, B'Elanna." Seven stood ramrod straight though her head was angled so she looked squarely at the other woman. "It was hers as well. After I released the Endgame virus she—she thanked me. In those seconds before the Borg cube self-destructed I was connected with Kathryn. And I understood everything. In those seconds. And then she pushed me out of the collective mind and was… gone."

Seven's voice had gone quiet, reverent. She turned her face away from B'Elanna as a single tear fell. She was startled when a warm, strong hand fell on her shoulder. Seven looked to B'Elanna and saw a sympathetic expression, also a knowing one.

B'Elanna didn't speak of her mother. How Miral had all but begged for B'Elanna to kill her lest she lose her honor and not be allowed into Sto-Vo-Kor. With love in her heart and tears in her eyes B'Elanna had complied with her mother's wishes. B'Elanna shook away the feeling of her mother's hot, wet blood on her hands as she turned Seven towards her.

"What—in those few seconds, what did you understand?" B'Elanna wasn't sure if her question was quite proper, but her own need to know, her need to understand, overrode propriety. A part of her just needed to know how it had ended. How Kathryn Janeway had ended.

"All that she had kept hidden from us." Seven's voice was soft, but in the stillness of her quarters with only the hum of the starship around them it seemed almost loud to B'Elanna. "How deeply she felt things. How strongly she was affected by always being the captain. How she carried the guilt of her decisions with her. How… lonely she was. How alone she has always felt, especially on Voyager. Despite her words of family and of closeness she always felt detached from us. An outcast within a crew of misfits."

"But we—we loved her. We all did." B'Elanna's hand fell away from Seven's shoulder as confusion marred her features and soon seeped into her voice. "She knew that."

"Yes. She did." Even if she had not been connected to Kathryn's mind, Seven would have been fully aware of how much Kathryn had loved her crew through the personal logs she had kept. "She was uncertain if she deserved it."

"That's crazy. Of course she did. She deserved it." B'Elanna's defensive posturing was due to her own guilt and regret that she never truly took the time to say even a proper thank you to Janeway, much less anything else. "Look, at first, when I came to Voyager I was—I resented Captain Janeway for stranding us in the Delta Quadrant. I didn't want to serve on a Starfleet ship, much less under her. When she made me Chief Engineer I didn't trust her. I thought she wanted me to fail. I was wrong. She—she saw something in me that I couldn't. She believed in me and because of that I started to believe in me too. When she—when she died, I thought, the first thing I thought was, how am I going to do this, do any of this without her. I was embarrassed and angry that I needed her so badly. But I did. I needed her strength, her compassion. I needed her to be proud of me. But, you know the thing I realized, Seven? You helped me realize it the day you showed me that isolinear chip, when you told me she had found a daughter in me. She was proud of me. I needed to know that. She was uncertain that she deserved our love, of course she did. If I had known she felt—I wish I had told her, said these things to her, taken the time. And no one was more deserving of it than her."

Seven's gaze was fixed on the moisture that had gathered in B'Elanna's dark brown eyes, the determined glint that accompanied the tears, and the way the other woman's shoulders quaked with regret. One hand encased in metal and the other vulnerable flesh pulled B'Elanna to Seven before the Commander was enfolded in slim, but strong arms.

B'Elanna smiled and laughed softly despite the tears that slid down her cheeks. "Seven, what are you doing?"

"I am hugging you." Seven also smiled at her own words being tossed back at her. When she released B'Elanna from her hold there was no embarrassment, only a smile of gratefulness.

"Seven?" B'Elanna's grin vanished as her voice grew serious, tentative, but sure. "Did Janeway—did Kathryn know you loved her? That you were in love with her?"

"During the three point four seconds we were connected within the Hive Mind, she knew." Seven's own eyes overflowed with hot tears caused by regret and love. She smiled before she answered. It was a soft, small smile that conveyed both the pain and effusive emotions that warmed and constricted her chest. "She said 'thank you'."

CHAPTER 29

The Beta Quadrant

"That's not possible." Despite his skeptical words, Axum couldn't deny the thrill he felt at witnessing an astrological event he knew shouldn't be occurring.

"And yet it is happening." T'Hana's left eyebrow rose as the brilliant light being displayed on the circular viewscreen of the command station shone upon her angular, impassive features characteristic of her people. She and Axum were observing the second supernova in less than a day's time in the same sector. It was a cosmological impossibility and yet she could not deny it was occurring against all odds. "Curious."

"Indeed." Despite the distance the Resistance sphere was from the collapsed star, the shockwave caused Axum and T'Hana to move with the shaking of their ship, but other than the minute jolt the sphere remained unaffected.

"We should contact others. Discover if this is occurring elsewhere in the galaxy." T'Hana's Vulcan upbringing was not lost to her despite the time she had spent as a drone in the Borg Collective. Her tone remained even and dispassionate regardless of her interest in understanding this cosmological mystery.

"Agreed."

Within twelve hours three other Resistance controlled spheres and two probes reported that supernovas were taking place in their sectors as well. The sphere captained by Laura Pembroke in the Vega Omicron sector on the outskirts of Federation space reported the occurrence of three supernovas in a seven hour time span. Perhaps the oddest aspect of an already bizarre situation was the fact that after each supernova a star of the same composition immediately took its place and that aside from shockwaves none of the surrounding space was vastly affected.

Curious, Axum knew, didn't begin to cover it.

CHAPTER 30

The Enterprise-E

"The Nygeans reported that the Einstein passed through their system fourteen hours ago incident free. So that leaves the question, where are they heading next?" Captain Picard dispensed with pleasantries as the two women he had called to the Bridge stood before him. He removed himself from the captain's chair in order to speak more quietly to Torres and Seven. "I'm afraid the Borg remain two steps ahead of us. The Klingon colony isn't responding to our hails."

"The Borg might've gotten to them already." B'Elanna thought of Kohlar, which caused her chest to constrict in fear and worry that the Borg had already decimated the colony. Her voice displayed her concern clearly along with her uneasiness that Seven's nightmare seemed to be almost prophetic except the fact that the Borg Queen had been destroyed in the Alpha Quadrant.

"I'd like to have that answer sooner rather than later." Picard turned his attention to his Conn officer. "Lieutenant Faur, increase our speed to Warp 9 and continue course to the Klingon colony."

Joanna Faur complied with Picard's order as two words left her. "Aye, sir."

"Captain, the cube, the Gorkon, and Voyager have matched our speed." Commander Kadohata's voice was even without a trace of hesitation despite her own revulsion at the fact that a Borg cube, despite who controlled it, was accompanying them through the Delta Quadrant.

Picard nodded his head in acknowledgment. "Commander Torres, Seven, join me in my Ready Room. Commander Worf, you have the Bridge."

After ordering an Earl Grey tea and offering refreshments that neither woman wanted, Picard settled into his chair before he looked at the PADD atop of his desk. "The Quarran shift supervisor, a Mister Jaffen, he was Admiral Janeway's fiancé."

"It was when our memories were manipulated with." B'Elanna wasn't quite sure that information was not already known by Captain Picard, but she felt compelled to explain why Kathryn Janeway had a fiancé in the first place. She felt Seven stiffen next to her upon hearing the name Jaffen and thought she did it also for Seven's benefit.

Picard nodded in understanding. "We know the Borg were at Quarra. Left it untouched, so it would seem. The incident with Jaffen is a point of interest. I hardly think it's a coincidence that he disappeared the same time the Borg orbited Quarra."

"The Borg would not assimilate one individual and leave the rest of the population, Captain." Seven's brow was furrowed as she thought back to her dream. The visions that had contained Jaffen… and Kathryn.

"It seems to me these particular Borg onboard the Einstein are already acting uncharacteristically." Picard took a few sips from his tea cup as he looked pointedly at Seven. She seemed disquieted and he suspected it was about more than just his questioning of the Borg's motives. He decided it was neither the time nor place to discover what that was though.

"Indeed."

"I spoke with Admiral Nechayev." Picard watched Seven visibly though subtly relax at the change of topics. "She met with General Korok onboard the Gorkon. They remain suspicious of one another, but the alliance between the Federation and the Resistance appears to be intact with each party exchanging information. We've given the Resistance the Doctor's formula for the neurolytic pathogen. They've given us tactical information. General Korok told the Admiral he didn't understand the behavior of the Borg onboard the Einstein either. Despite their motivations the Borg are killing thousands, destroying whole worlds. We can't remain two steps behind them. Once we reach the Klingon colony you'll transport to the Voyager. Work with Voyager's crew. Try to determine where the Borg will strike next."

"Aye, Captain." B'Elanna felt dread creating a heavy feeling on her chest. She suspected she already knew where the Borg were. She thought of the Klingon colonists, their lack of response to hails and hoped it was just due to equipment malfunction.

"Seven, it's not outside the realm of possibility that the Borg captured an individual to act as an intermediary for the Borg." Picard's gaze and voice remained even despite the residual trauma from when he had been assimilated and turned into Locutus of Borg who had spoken for the Collective at the Borg Queen's urging. "As I said, it seems highly unlikely that Jaffen's disappearance is merely a coincidence. If I'm right, there remains the question as to why the Borg onboard the Einstein would single him out. Do you have any thoughts on the subject?"

"I do not." Seven's face flushed as the images from her dream flooded her thoughts. Kathryn, naked and beautiful with pale smooth skin and bright blue eyes that held something Seven had never seen within them: murderous intent. Seven could still hear the screams Jaffen had emitted in her dream when he was being destroyed by black tendrils that sprung from Kathryn's body. Seven felt a prickling, nagging sensation in her mind. She felt urged to tell Captain Picard of her dream despite the irrationality of doing so. It was merely a fragment of her mind, not worth discussion, so she remained silent.

"Captain Picard to the Bridge."

Picard knew, even as he led the way from his Ready Room onto the Bridge, that he would need to have a discussion with Seven. She was under his purview and aside from that he felt for the woman, but right now he had more than two hundred Klingon colonists to attend to.

Commander Worf stood from the command chair without as much as a flicker of hesitation. Picard settled his lean form in the captain's chair, while his narrowed eyes were locked onto the readings from long range sensors that were being displayed on the viewscreen. The remnants of what had been a small M-class planet and also the home of two hundred and four Klingons.

"They didn't have a chance." B'Elanna watched the scattered remains of the world with fire in her heart that was fueled by grief and rage.

"Commander Torres. Seven." Picard's voice was low, reverent in the wake of such death and destruction though his tone brooked no argument. "Go to Voyager."

Distracted and distraught by the devastation the Borg had wrought, B'Elanna hardly realized her acquiescence or her own movements until she was being allowed admittance into the Bridge's turbolift with Seven right behind her. The doors closed seconds before B'Elanna's fist collided with the wall of the turbolift. "Damn it!"

"Transporter Room Two." Seven felt the humming of the floor panels that indicated their downward movement as she turned her attention to the fuming half-Klingon. "Commander?"

"What the hell are they doing, Seven?" B'Elanna's petite form was crouched in a fighting stance with her fists clenched at her sides. A growl emitted with each word she spoke. "The Talaxian asteroid is destroyed even though no one's manning it. The Borg take the Ventu and kill the Ledosians. The Einstein absorbs Ulaxi without even slowing down. Jaffen is missing, but Quarra is left intact. Now the Klingon colony is obliterated. How does this make any sense?"

"It does not." Seven stood as passively as she could with her hands clasped behind her back though anger at herself and her own confusion and uncertainty made her tone sharp. "The Borg onboard the Einstein are not behaving like normal drones. They should have rejoined the Collective, the Hive Mind, immediately. To get instruction. Purpose."

"They've got a purpose, Seven." B'Elanna leaned her strong back against a wall of the turbolift as she crossed her arms over her chest. Her dark features were flushed with the heat caused by grief over the loss of lives, which only exasperated the burning fury that fired hotly in her chest. "We just can't figure out what the hell it is."

Seven's light blue eyes turned away from B'Elanna's contrite features to the gray carpeted floor of the turbolift. The pale skin between her blonde eyebrow and metal implant scrunched in frustration. Despite her greatest efforts she had to agree with B'Elanna's critique despite the nagging feeling in the back of her mind that seemed to promise an answer although it remained forever elusive. Visions from her dream permeated her thoughts and Seven couldn't alleviate the sense that despite how illogical it seemed her nightmare was somehow important. Seven brushed away the strange feeling as she walked with an incensed B'Elanna Torres to the transporter room manned by a stocky, blue-skinned Bolian.

Ensign Chell would have made a sympathetic overture to both women, but he wasn't at all certain as to how to go about doing so and thus he remained silent in that regard. With a few commands keyed into the control panel he initiated transport with a smile of reassurance. Chell secured the transporter room for warp speed after he received a hail from the Ops station on the Bridge that they were moving on.

The rest of his shift was spent in Engineering. Chell commenced with his regular duties and then was given orders to assist in getting the Enterprise-E battle ready. Aside from anxiety at the prospect of meeting the Borg, Chell felt hope fill the right side of his chest. The fact that Torres and Seven were now onboard Voyager inspired a glimmer of optimism within him. During his time in the Delta Quadrant he had been a part of Voyager's crew so he had experienced firsthand how the crew had gotten out of many dire situations, had beaten the odds, and had done the seemingly impossible. He forcefully ignored the fact that one crucial element was missing this time. A single individual he had no doubt would have been able to turn the tide in their favor. Captain Janeway would have known what to do. That was the last thought Ensign Chell had before the world around him was lit with a glow ominously green.

CHAPTER 31

U.S.S. Voyager

"We found them." Chakotay's voice was as tired as his dark features, but a smile of success graced his lips as he looked at his crew. He stood with his back to the trio of windows of the Briefing room that showed, by the streaking of stars, the ship moving at warp. Chakotay nodded to Seven to elaborate on the report.

Chakotay wasn't especially happy to have Seven onboard, due in part to the residual regret he felt at the physical altercation he had initiated when he had been informed of the death of Kathryn Janeway. He was also suspicious that Kathryn had meant a great deal more to Seven than he had ever expected. It worried him to consider the possibility that Seven had held a special place within Kathryn's heart as well. A place he had always thought of as belonging to him.

"Kejal and Donik sent an encrypted response to our subspace message regarding Borg activity in the region." Seven stood stiffly with B'Elanna next to the wall monitor that displayed a star chart of the region of space they were approaching. "They reported the opening of a transwarp conduit two point four light years from a Y-class planet in Sector 83447."

Seven pressed a control to enlarge the sensor readings on the planet that had been dubbed "Ha'Dara" by a cadre of holograms. Holograms Voyager's crew and its captain had had a hand in creating when Captain Janeway had given the Hirogen holographic technology as a peace offering nearly six years earlier.

"Kejal's ship, the Olarra, will reach Ha'Dara within the hour under stealth mode to determine if it's the Einstein." B'Elanna's tone was kept purposefully even, but she couldn't deny the anticipation that welled up within her and the fear of what awaited them. "But I'm betting it's them. The Einstein is hiding on Ha'Dara."

"You're probably right." Chakotay moved to his chair at the head of the table, but opted not to take his seat as he addressed his Ops officer. "Lyssa, get Admiral Nechayev on the comm. Transmit Voyager's records regarding Ha'Dara and Kejal and Donik and the report they sent us to the other ships."

"Y—yes, Sir." Lieutenant Campbell stood quickly from the Briefing room table with gracelessness caused by anxiety and dread. She knew their mission had always been to engage the Borg, but that knowledge didn't keep ice cold fear from skittering down her spine. As she left the Briefing room she hoped her panic wasn't too evident.

Subtly Chakotay's dark eyes followed Lyssa's jerky movements and he knew his Ops officer wasn't a coward, she was just smart. He had no doubt in his mind that many would lose their lives when the fight against the Einstein eventually ensued, but they had a mission to complete, stop that ship by any means necessary. "Harry, I want the weapons and shields checked out before we get on the road."

"Aye, Captain." Lieutenant Kim nodded his head in acknowledgement, his lips curled up into only the smallest of smiles. He felt anxiety and fear, but he also felt righteous and honorable. They would make Admiral Janeway proud.

Admiral Janeway's former crew had not been with her, to defend her, to fight with her, to die with her. This would be their last testament to their beloved former captain. And if they were to die in this last stand against the Borg, then they would die fighting for something worthy of losing their lives. Harry also believed that what they were doing right now, against the Borg, would only be the beginning of the battle against the Collective. Others would follow them for the sake of their lives, their worlds and their freedom. The Borg hadn't even begun to see what true resistance meant.

Chakotay laid out the rest of his orders before he left to go to his Ready room in order to confer with the rest of the leaders within the Alliance. His movements, or anyone else's, weren't stalled for a second by Tom Paris' protestations.

"Am I the only one who thinks this is a trap? I mean, clearly it's a trap. No one else cares it's obviously a trap?" Tom received his response loud and clear when he was left standing, disgruntled, worried, and alone in the Briefing room. "Great, now I'm talking to myself for no reason."


"Of course it's a trap." B'Elanna regarded her husband with a grin that showed slightly pointed teeth as she brushed blonde strands of hair from his sweat drenched brow. She kissed his lips before she pressed her ear against his naked chest to hear the rhythmic thumping of his heart that was always helpful in calming her.

"Well good. I'm glad we're in agreement on that." Tom couldn't help but smile with adoration before he brought his lips to the top of B'Elanna's head and tightened his hold on her. As he hugged his wife to him he thought of their daughter. "If we do survive this remind me to never let Miral join Starfleet. She can have a nice planet side job. Florist, maybe."

B'Elanna snorted at the thought of her mighty warrior of a daughter selling flora. She placed her palms upon Tom's bare chest before she rested her chin on top of her hands to preface her next words with a seriousness that showed in her dark gaze.

"I'm worried about Seven." B'Elanna was comforted by Tom's hand stroking her lean back and felt encouraged to continue by the understanding nod he gave her. "She's having really horrible nightmares when she regenerates. She's gone to the Doctor, but he couldn't really do anything about it. I've never seen her like this, Tom. She doesn't say anything, but I—I think she's afraid to regenerate."

"I guess I don't blame her." Tom hugged his wife closer to him and his heart filled with even more love at the compassion B'Elanna exuded despite her sometimes gruff and impatient exterior.

He had been surprised when B'Elanna had become somewhat of a counselor for Seven, but he quickly understood and appreciated what both women were offering each other. B'Elanna had so recently lost her mother, a wound that was healing slowly, so she could sympathize with Seven perhaps better than anyone else could.

"What the Borg did…" Tom's voice caught in his throat and his arm around his wife tightened. "God, B'Elanna, I can't imagine what seeing—having to see what the Borg made her into…"

"In her nightmare Seven sees the Borg Queen killing hundreds, personally, but the worst thing about it is that she doesn't look like a machine. She looks like Janeway." B'Elanna slowly pulled herself up into a seated position.

She smiled when Tom wrapped her in a blanket to protect her from the chill of their bedroom before he hugged her close. Her words seemed stuck in her throat from her uncertainty about how much to divulge, how much of Seven's confidence she should forfeit. Even with the man she trusted above all others.

"Hey, what is it?" Tom made soothing circles upon B'Elanna's back. He kept the motions light and slow to extend comfort and infinite patience.

B'Elanna took a deep breath before she peered over her shoulder at the concerned look her husband was paying her. "She loved her."

Tom nodded. His voice was quiet, reverent and sure. "We all did."

"No, Tom." B'Elanna turned her body towards Tom and let her hand fall atop of his bare chest. "I mean she was in love, with Janeway."

Tom allowed the hand on his chest to encourage him to lie back down on the warmed sheets of their bed as he smiled knowingly, yet sadly. "Well, yeah."

B'Elanna's descent paused. Her dark brown eyes were wide due to the revelation, but somehow she wasn't surprised by Tom's perceptiveness. "You knew?"

Tom shrugged without actually moving a muscle though he did smile kindly. "It was pretty obvious."

"Yeah." B'Elanna lips pulled into a bittersweet grin as she settled against the warmth her husband provided freely with both his body heat and affection. "I guess it probably was."

B'Elanna pushed back thoughts of how the anger and annoyance she had felt towards Seven when they had been in the Delta Quadrant had perhaps been caused partially by jealousy. Instead she recalled the day she had been at Admiral Janeway's memorial. When Seven had attempted to give her an isolinear chip that had the potential to alleviate all of B'Elanna's concerns and reinforce her confidence that she had in fact earned Janeway's respect, garnered her trust, and had been loved just as equally, just as completely.

"I think she feels responsible. Actually I know she does." B'Elanna ignored the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach and the unwanted voice that whispered words which elicited her own sense of guilt.

"She's not the only one."

B'Elanna nodded absently. Her tangled thoughts had already moved on. "This is it, Tom."

"Yeah, I know. I never thought we'd ever go out looking for a fight with the Borg." Tom adjusted his position so that he could look B'Elanna in the eye. "But it seems right somehow, doesn't it? If we don't stop the Borg now—"

"We will."

Tom didn't want to go against the earnestness in B'Elanna's voice, but he couldn't deny he was less confident than she. He suspected she wasn't even as sure as she sounded. "We're going to try. These aren't the usual, predictable Borg we're dealing with here—"

"Come on. We need to get to the Bridge." B'Elanna's movements were stalled by Tom's hands on her biceps. Her brow creased in bemusement. "What?"

"It's just—I—I wish she was here."

"She's gone, Tom." B'Elanna pulled herself out of Tom's grasp. Her tone wasn't harsh, but sharp with the knowledge that Tom was right. Janeway would have known what to do. But she was gone and they had to deal with that. "For once we're going to have to actually do something without her."


Seven's back was ramrod straight as she stood behind the secondary tactical station with B'Elanna to her left. A swirl of anxiety mixed with pent up anger unsettled her stomach, but one would not know it by her impassive features. B'Elanna knew or at least sensed Seven's apprehension and if they had been two different people she would have placed a comforting hand upon the uneasy woman's shoulder. Instead she did what she figured Seven would want most; B'Elanna ignored Seven's emotional upheaval completely. That also allowed her to concentrate on controlling her own.

Seven was unsettled being led into battle against the Borg without Kathryn Janeway in the captain's seat. Without her husky, commanding voice leading the charge with confidence that was perhaps unfounded but always reassuring. Seven wanted to hear that voice so intensely it caused pain to radiate from her chest to the rest of her body. Instead she listened as Chakotay commanded the vessel that had been so loved by Janeway. So much a part of the woman that it seemed wrong for another to captain it. A part of Seven hated Chakotay for taking what she believed was rightfully Janeway's despite how illogical that assertion was. Admiral Janeway had given Chakotay Voyager a long time ago, seemingly without a moment's hesitation. Then why did Seven feel as if it had been stolen? Perhaps it was because it hurt her to think that Janeway could cast away something without pause that she had loved so much. Chakotay's voice shook Seven out of her reverie.

"Take us out of warp." Chakotay's features and voice were steady, but B'Elanna knew by the way his large hands gripped the armrests of his chair that he was worried. Chakotay stood from the captain's chair as he took in the brown Y-class planet displayed on the viewscreen. "Lyssa, contact the Olarra."

As Seven watched the gray swirling electromagnetic storms that covered the planet she felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck standup. She wondered if intuition was ever helpful. Voyager's scanning equipment did nothing to help alleviate her apprehension as it could not break through those clouds to what, if anything, lay beneath them.

"Captain?" Lyssa's voice shook as she looked up from the Ops station. "Subspace communications are down."

"What?" Chakotay bolted back to his chair to make a ship wide announcement. "Red Alert. All hands to battle stations!"

Seven dismissed rank and decorum and allowed B'Elanna to take over her station as she moved to take Lyssa's. Uncaring of Lieutenant Campbell's angry response to Seven's occupation of her Ops station Seven proceeded to input commands to try to discern why communications were not operational. What she saw caused a wave of ice cold fear wash over her.

"It's a Borg dampening field." Seven's grave light blue gaze met Chakotay's.

"I said it was a trap." Tom's voice was soft as he tapped on the control display that had risen between his chair and the captain's. "But no, no one ever listens to me."

"Incoming weapons fire!" Harry's voice was a scream to overcome the alarm klaxons.

"Full power to the shields. Evasive maneuvers!" Chakotay watched as the torpedoes skimmed across their forward shields before it exploded, which shook the ship around him. "Damage?"

"Shields are down to seventy-eight percent."

"The Enterprise-E, the Gorkon and the Resistance Cube have arrived." Seven was ashamed of the relief she felt when she saw their sister ships dropping out of warp alongside them.

"Can you get a weapons lock, Harry?" Chakotay knew the ship out there firing at them was cloaked. Those torpedoes had a Hirogen energy signature and the hunters were known for their stealth capabilities.

"Not yet, sir."

Chakotay sat straighter in his chair when he saw a green-lit tractor beam reveal a small Hirogen vessel. Of course Korok's sensors would be superior to their own. The captain smiled a little, thankful that the General was on their side.

"Captain, I'm reading an energy surge from the Hirogen ship." Lyssa, who had decided she would not allow Seven to take over her station without a fight, tried to make sense of her readings through the haze of the electromagnetic interference from the Y-class planet and the enemy ship itself. Her confused expression garnered a look of irritation across Seven's features before Lyssa was once again pushed to the side.

Seven and Chakotay shared in the moment their eyes met an understanding of what was happening, but that knowledge came much too late. Chakotay's desperate command was utterly futile. "Target the tractor beam emitter—"

The explosion wrenched the occupants of Voyager's Bridge to the ground or harshly against their respective consoles as the viewscreen filled with the image of the Hirogen ship self-destructing taking most of General Korok's Resistance Cube along with it.

"Get a lock on Korok's people. I want them on Voyager now!" Fury filled Chakotay. How could he have been so naïve? "Akola, back us off. We need to—"

"Sir, I can't. I don't have transporter control." Lyssa willed the readings to be wrong, but she knew it was hopeless so she reported her findings. "I can't raise Engineering. Systems are shutting down all over the ship."

Akola had a haunted expression as she turned to address Chakotay. "We're dead in the water."

"We don't have weapons or shields." Harry's voice was surer than Akola's and Lyssa's but he too felt fear gripping his heart. "Captain?"

Chakotay didn't acknowledge what he had just been told as he stared at the viewscreen. Thirteen ships, some were Ledosian, most were Overlookers, and one had been a Federation starship, were covered in the black hardware and green lights denoting them as belonging to the Borg, began to emerge like locusts from beneath the electromagnetic cloud that had concealed them from Voyager's sensors.

The image on the viewscreen of the Einstein led armada quickly shifted to that of a stout man riddled with cybernetic implants. Not so long ago he had been Captain Howard Rappaport, but was now known to the One who mattered as Two.

"Prepare for transport." Two's singular voice was augmented by that of the thousands of other voices in the relatively small Borg fleet. "Do not resist. Or you will be destroyed."

Two's visage disappeared as quickly as it had come and now the viewscreen and the Bridge were lit green by the tractor beam holding Voyager in place like a fly on a web.

"Weapons." Chakotay easily caught the two rifles Harry threw him even as he felt his body being transported off his Bridge.

Seven managed to retrieve her two weapons as well before she felt the familiar feel of a Borg transport.

Lieutenants Akola Tare and Devi Patel looked at one another with expressions that bore momentary relief that they hadn't been transported. As they looked around the empty Bridge their relief was quickly replaced by confusion and worry. Why weren't they taken? What was happening to their shipmates? And what were they to do now?

"Sickbay to Bridge." Jarem Kaz's worried voice sounded over the comm. which startled Akola into moving from the helm to Ops as quickly as her legs could carry her. She put the doctor on the viewscreen.

"What the hell is going on up there?" Jarem's handsome features were marred by blood from a head wound he had sustained, but now had long forgotten about. "I was treating Lieutenant Vorik when he was transported right off the biobed."

"The Borg took everyone from the Bridge except me and Lieutenant Patel." Akola's attention was diverted from the doctor as Patel's panicked voice sounded loudly in the vast Bridge.

"A star's going supernova!"

"That's not possible." Jarem's assertion of what was and wasn't possible was challenged when he observed on his monitor the impossible. His assumptions were made even less true when the exploding star did them no damage and was instantaneously replaced by an identical one. "My gods!"

Jarem Kaz didn't know how close he was to the truth.


Seven used her cybernetic hand to smash in the face of the nearest drone who had once been a young Ledosian woman. She finished her task by firing her TR-116 rifle at the drone's chest. The chemically propelled tritanium bullet efficiently deactivated the drone by tearing through its biological systems. It now lay bloody and unmoving upon the gray deck plating of the Einstein's cargo bay.

A drone nearly knocked Seven over as it whizzed past her. She looked to where it had been thrown from and felt relief when she saw B'Elanna. The half-Klingon was baring her teeth and her fists were clenched in front of her.

"Get down!" B'Elanna swung the rifle that was slung over her shoulder into her hands and didn't hesitate to fire it at the drone rapidly approaching Seven from behind. She snarled with approval when the brownish blob covered with implants fell in a heap upon the deck.

"Don't let them touch you!" Chakotay's command wasn't needed, but he bellowed it anyway as he fired the two rifles he held in his hands at any drone within distance of his targeting array imbedded in his yellow eyepiece. "Keep firing!"

Tom did as he was told, but as he took out two more drones he knew more would be coming. That was how the Borg won. Not with strategy or brute strength, but with sheer overwhelming numbers. There were only twelve of them and hundreds if not thousands of drones. Eventually he knew they would lose. He kept firing as he thought of Miral. He screamed in rage as he thought of Janeway. Three more drones fell and he continued fighting for what he thought would probably be his final stand against the Borg. If he was going to die he was going to take as many of them with him as he could.

Not so long ago Harry would have hesitated in killing Borg drones, but today he fired fast and with pinpoint accuracy taking out a dozen cybernetically enhanced beings with a spread of tritanium bullets. He ignored the splattering of blood that fell on his uniform and the left side of his neck as he continued firing his rifle even if resistance to the seemingly inevitable was futile. He'd die standing and fighting until he drew his last breath. That's how he had been trained. That's what Kathryn Janeway had taught him.

"Seven!" B'Elanna hated how her voice sounded panicked, but truth was she was panicked.

Seven sprinted to where B'Elanna was being held by a drone, his hand near the half-Klingon's throat, and without hesitation she grabbed the drones head and rotated it until a snap preceded his deactivation.

"God, Seven, remind me never to start a fight with you." B'Elanna grinned toothily as she allowed Seven to help her quickly to her feet.

"We are vastly outnumbered. We must get off this ship." Seven removed the infinite modulator that had been strapped to her back and pointed a finger to the upper deck to indicate where she planned to go.

"Seven?" B'Elanna looked skeptically at the untested weapon, but knew it was perhaps their only chance. "Make it count, okay?"

"Of course." Seven smiled a small, but reassuring smile before she ran as fast as she could to the nearest ladder. She had to take out two drones before she made it to the first rung. Within seconds she was on the scaffolding high above the fray. She closed her right eye and allowed her Borg enhanced eye to do the targeting. She aimed the I-MOD and fired. The weapon's energy signature rotated before she fired again. Bodies of deactivated drones began to pile up as she continued firing.

Seven's right eye opened as hot tears poured down her cheek as she thought of what she had been. A mindless automaton seeking a perfection it could never hope to reach. Seven had seen perfection. For three point four seconds she had experienced perfection. She had been connected in a way humans could never imagine with Kathryn Janeway. She had touched what could only be described as Kathryn's soul and what she had found there was love. A deep and abiding love. For those three point four seconds she had been free to love Kathryn in return. To bare her own soul to the woman who had saved it.

"Seven?" B'Elanna was careful not to touch the sobbing woman because she still had the I-MOD firing off phaser shots at any drone in sight. So instead she knelt down next to her and waited for the last two seconds to expire that would end the forty-two second massacre Seven had just perpetrated.

Once the power cell had been depleted, Seven let the I-MOD fall from her hands as she slowly turned her tear-streaked face to B'Elanna.

"You've avenged her, Seven. You did it." B'Elanna helped Seven to her feet as she smiled softly. "Come on, we need to go. We're not that far away from the shuttlebay. We just need to—"

The blood in B'Elanna's veins turned ice-cold as more than a hundred tactical drones entered the Cargo bay. It wasn't just that their infrastructure was tritanium and thus impervious to the TR-116, but it was who they had been that made B'Elanna's heart thump painfully in her chest.

"The colonists." Seven's voice was soft, reverent, for she knew B'Elanna had felt a kinship with the Klingons they had helped find a home for in the Delta Quadrant.

"Come on." B'Elanna and Seven descended the ladder quickly to join the line their shipmates and friends had formed to stand against this new threat.

Seven regretted that only Jurot, Chang, Munro, and Murphy had brought I-MODs with them. Seven knew where the flaw was in their plan to come to Ha'Dara, they had been small in their thinking. They had assumed they would merely face the assimilated Einstein with a small group of drones with erratic, illogical behavior. What they had found was beyond what even Seven had imagined. The barrage of Overlookers and Ledosian drones had been some sort of test to ascertain what weapons the Federation had at its disposal. Now the Borg knew of the I-MOD and with time they would adapt to even that. Her forty-two second demonstration would have been all the time they would have needed to begin developing a counterattack.

Austin Chang was the first to fire his I-MOD, and soon Jurot fired hers. Alex Munro and Telsia Murphy reserved their power until the swarm of tactical drones began to thin. An imposing drone that had been Ch'Rega stepped forward and lifted her arm, which had an array of cybernetic components attached to it. A green flare fired from her hand a second after she was killed by Ensign Murphy. What that flare had done wasn't readily apparent until Jurot and then the others tried to fire their I-MODs again and their weapons failed to produce anything other than impotent beeping sounds. The drone's final act had been to create a localized and effective dampening field.

Drones circled the dozen Starfleet officers with their augmented arms raised as a deterrent for resistance. The doors to the Cargo bay opened once again and emitted Two.

"Drop your weapons." It was the first time any of the Borg drones had spoken. His voice sounded as it had when he had been Howard Rappaport except for the echo of a thousand voices that sounded with it. "Kneel and bow your heads."

"You've got to be kidding." B'Elanna wanted to lunge for Two's throat, but was stopped by her husband's hand on her shoulder. She knew he was right, but she still snarled her frustration.

"Bow down."

"Yeah, yeah, we're doing it, all right." Tom tried to keep his voice light even though he was more terrified than he had ever remembered being in his entire life. Probably because most of his fear was regarding his wife and the daughter they had just made an orphan. "Who the hell do you think you are anyway? Arrogant bastard."

"You do not bow for me." Two's face transformed into an expression of complete and utter reverence and supplication. "You bow for Her."

All eyes went to the Cargo bay door as it emitted a lone being. A being whose appearance resulted in twelve people's realities being shattered completely. Loud utterances of disbelief, denial, anger, and horror filled the Cargo bay as she continued towards the collection of officers through an opening the tactical drones had made for her so she could enter the circle.

Dark blue eyes sparkled and moist pink lips turned up into a lopsided grin before she spoke. Her voice was not augmented by that of her Collective. It was as husky and rich as it had been when she had been a human, a woman, their captain. And for that it was all the more grotesque. She tilted her head slightly as she took in the horrified group of individuals. For the first time since her resurrection the Borg Queen felt love in her heart as she addressed the people that had been part of her family. This sentiment was intoned with two simple words: "Welcome home."