Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek Voyager, I do however own this plot and the original characters.
There were too many of them!
This was far worse than the horrific battles of Wolf 359 and Sector 001 six years later. And each of those intensely devastating battles had been against only a single cube, not fifteen of them! Fifteen super powered Borg cubes, relentless war machines with the collective will and drive to conquer all in their paths.
The Federation had been vastly unprepared for that battle and lost tragically. Then again, one could argue that one of the defining reasons they had failed so viciously was because Jean-Luc Picard had been a Borg with Starfleet tactical knowledge at his disposal. Even so, even without him as Borg, they still had supreme advantage over them. While they had the confidence that their enhanced weapons designed specifically by the Admiral Janeway of the other time-line to fight the Borg, there was still a chance they could lose just as brutally.
Reports from the fleet-wide communication poured through as the ships struggled to keep themselves from being annihilated. Their defensive line had been broken and they had to circle back around to regroup. So far the new defenses were able to stop some of the more destructive weapons the Borg cubes employed, but it would only work out for long. The Captains struggled to help each other, whipping their ships from one section of the battlefield to the next, trying desperately to avoid being hit. All the while, their fleet commander was having a nervous collapse.
As Voyager rocked viciously from another attack, Icheb braced himself on his seat, unable to get himself to move for a second. He found himself petrified from terror, seeing their ships begin to fight off the massive mechanical monsters. In his mind, Icheb heard the screams of a little boy, of himself, moments before his assimilation into the collective. He could not stop the awful repressed memories of the time before he was assimilated, flashes of his doomed childhood, from then violently resurfacing.
Contrary to what people assumed, Icheb had been well into his childhood and aware of the dangers of the Borg. When his parents had detected the passing cube near Brunali Prime, he had been very scared. He could now remember glimpses of that fear, of his mother saying everything would be okay now. At the time Icheb hadn't understood what his mother meant, but now he knew that after he had passed out, it had been because he was dosed the same way he had been when he returned to his parents the last time.
Icheb felt himself shudder. His younger self had awoken in an empty transport just as the Borg finished tractoring the craft in. What could he do? He was a very small boy with no knowledge of space craft controls, tactical situations, or even self defense. He remembered feeling intense confusion at first, but it quickly turned into crippling fear and panic. He had cried for his parents, tried every control he could reach to try and contact them, and screamed in terror as the Borg boarded the craft and injected him, silencing his pleas.
Icheb remembered flashes of his final moments of individuality, the severe pain suffocating him, muffling his sobs before they purged him of his individuality, feeding him information directly into the painfully intrusive cranial implants around his brain. Helpless to stop it, he knew that the nanoprobes were reworking his very bones, violently turning most of them into a mechanical endoskeleton.
After that, he didn't remember anything, nothing but the information from hundreds of years of Borg development, nothing but the voices of thousands, all speaking at once, deep inside his head. He was under the steady transformation into a mindless machine before he was awoken several years later in the defective maturation chamber. It was a miracle he hadn't had frequent nightmares, but his mind had repressed the traumatic experiences, and it took being attacked by them again to force them to the surface. And it couldn't have been at a worse time. Hearing the chatter of the fleet over the com, so similar to the drone of Borg voices, served to bring Icheb back to that time, making his heart race and body shake.
"Captain?" Tuvok probed inquisitively, giving the young man a critical look. Tuvok didn't have to initiate touch telepathy to know that the young man was experiencing a heightened degree of anxiety. He looked about ready to snap at any second and was pale enough to appear sickly.
Kathryn Janeway stared in concern at one of Voyager's grown children. "Icheb?" she questioned gently.
Icheb could hear voices near him trying to reach him. He wasn't on the cube, he was on... his ship. His ship... Voyager. Voyager? The fleet? The Borg! Icheb blinked back to the present and it was everything he could do to keep himself together, feeling suddenly intensely overwhelmed by the situation. Had Starfleet made a mistake with him? Was he truly prepared to be a Captain? Did he really have what it took to fight off the Borg and in such vast quantities? How could he possibly hope to reign in control of the situation when he could barely keep himself stable? No, he really couldn't afford to think that way, not now, not when so many depended on his sanity.
The ship gave another hard jolt as a familiar green light surrounded them. "Captain, they've locked on to the ship!" Harry told him.
"Your orders, Captain?" Tom questioned worriedly.
Janeway had been standing on the bridge silently, had seen Icheb's panic attack, his freeze, and feared she would have to take control of the situation soon if he didn't snap out of it. She had always known Icheb to have a gentle soul, unwilling to hurt anyone and had only done what he had as a drone because it was literally all he knew. Now with a crisis of this magnitude, so much fear and death, it rattled him like nothing else. At the last second, just before Kathryn could give up and take control of the situation, Icheb's demeanor changed.
Icheb physically forced himself to focus on the situation and got to his feet, nodding to his concerned officers. He took a deep breath to recompose himself and concentrated at least on resolving the current problem. One cube? He could handle that. Analyzing the situation, Icheb snapped himself into action. He knew that the Borg left themselves minutely vulnerable at a specific spot when they used their tractor beam. It would take a precise hit to disrupt it. Icheb was aware that sending a modulated signal pulse directly through it, like Voyager had done on 'his' cube, could disrupt it as well, but that would take too long. "Mr. Tuvok, arm transphasic torpedoes," he said as his fingers rapped over the console on his seat. "Fire a torpedo to these specific coordinates."
"Aye sir." Tuvok read the trajectory and input the commands into his console. "Torpedo away," he announced and they watched the torpedo fly directly toward the very small tractor beam port, clogging it before the weapon detonated. They were free from the tractor beam and circled around the cube.
"Mr. Williams, power distal ionic deflector plates," Icheb told the young officer at the engineering console. "Initiate attack pattern omega-six," he then ordered the helmsman, his hand shooting to stabilize himself as the ship shuddered from another attack. The plates powered to life, fielding the ship with further protection. Voyager swept around the cube in an orbiting pattern, facing toward it as it skated around it.
The problem with that attack pattern was that it left Voyager's sides completely vulnerable, making it receive several direct hits to its sides, but that's why it had the ability to compensate with the specifically designed deflection plates on either side of the nacelles. "Mrs. Paris, what is the current energy output of the deflection plates?" The half Klingon told him the specific amount it was putting out and Icheb frowned slightly, knowing they had limited time to do what they needed to do. "Mr. Tuvok, engage Lateral Tetryon Cannons." Kathryn walked over to the other side of the bridge, bracing herself at the railing as she watched the young Captain snap orders left and right with concise precision.
"Cannons priming. Might I remind you, Captain, the cannons have not yet been properly tested?" Tuvok mentioned with raise brow.
Icheb nodded in understanding. "I am aware." On the other side of the plates on either side of Voyager's nacelles, armor casing collapsed, revealing the reverse engineered Hirogen cannons capable of punching through shields like cutting beams, much faster than the propelled fire of a torpedo. Borg shield generators were deep inside the cubes, making it normally very difficult to effect them. The concentrated beam of the cannons on a single point however did very high damaged compared to normal beam banks and could cut through to their generators quickly. The only drawback was that they sapped a lot of their energy quickly and had to be recharged after a single use. They were still prototypes, after all.
"Shields down to seventy percent," Harry told him.
Tuvok looked up from his console then. "Cannons at the ready."
"Disable their shields." Icheb ordered and watched two brilliant blue beams of light concentrate on the cube, shredding its shields apart. The cube seemed to spin from the residual attack after its shields were depleted, before righting itself and preparing another attack, suffering moderate damage from the cannons. Icheb's eyes narrowed, studying the attack pattern the cube exhibited, recognizing it. "They are going to try using a cutting beam. Are their generators still damaged?"
"Yes, Captain," Tuvok reported.
"Good. Fire a tricobalt torpedo directly into their prime beam port the second they engage it." Icheb knew the dangers of using tricobalt warheads, but was glad their little warship was equipped with them all the same.
Tuvok waited a few seconds until the port opened. The cutting beam had only a second to damage the outer layer of Voyager's armor plating, but the force was enough to jar the ship. At the same time, Tuvok gave the commands to launch the torpedo. "Torpedo away." The crew held their breaths, but their only real warning to the destruction of the cube was the bright orange and green flash before their ship was sent hurtling back from the shockwave, narrowly avoiding colliding with another ship behind them.
"Damage report!" Tom yelled, lifting himself off the ground as smoke bellowed around them. He winced and wiped blood that fell into his eyes, figuring he had hit his head on his fall. "Admiral, are you alright?" he asked then, watching Ensign Aida, the science officer, help her up.
"Just dandy," Kathryn groaned, patting the officer's arm in appreciation for her help.
Harry coughed and forced himself up, groaning in pain. "Decks one through... four have suffered moderate damage. Injuries reported but no casualties. Armor..." Harry coughed again. "Armor durability down to forty percent. The... detonation sapped a good portion of our shields. They're down to fifty-nine percent," he wheezed, hoping he hadn't cracked a rip when he collided with his console.
Icheb opened the fleet channel and told them how to effectively destroy the cubes, at least until they learned to adapt, receiving an immediate acknowledgment from the fleet. A lot of the other ships might not have had cannons like they had, but the pattern of attack worked well and they could use substitutes for similar effect. Not many of them had the extra side armor that Voyager had either, but they could compensate by diverting their shields and being quick. A further use of distraction from another ship could aid them in receiving minimized damage. The cubes had limited vulnerable spots so they had to take advantage of them when they could. Icheb went over his knowledge over Borg cube specs and tactical patterns and recommended some effective strategies to the fleet before checking in with Astrometrics. "Status of the wormhole?"
"We can't read anything coming in or out of the wormhole, sir," Jeremiah reported grimly.
Icheb frowned, not having anticipated this. "Clarify."
"There seems to be a dampener of some kind. It's difficult to say where it's coming from. Our scans can't penetrate it," Naomi answered, frustrated all of her hard work was going to waste when they needed her modifications the most. Not even Icheb's gravimetric sensor designs he had incorporated into Voyager years ago worked.
"Keep trying," Icheb ordered, watching the cube debris floating around them, feeling slightly less daunted by the battle at the sight. Seeing that they could be destroyed by one ship lessened their terror slightly. The small victory was short-lived however, as the destruction of one of the cubes was noticed by their enemy.
"Another cube on an intercept course," Tuvok announced.
"Captain, the Phoenix is under heavy fire," Tom said, bringing attention to the damaged Nebula-class starship off their port bow being singled out by a cube.
"Ensign Flores, maneuver us to offer assistance to them," Icheb ordered the helmsman, keeping his eye on the cube that was still flying toward them. This was a risky action; the cube attacking the Phoenix was on its last leg so could be easily dispatched, but they were trailing another closely behind them, which would mean they would have to deal with two.
"I am reading an imminent warp-core breach on the Phoenix," Tuvok mentioned.
"Get them on board!" Tom ordered hastily.
"Aye sir," Tuvok rapidly worked to bring the crew of the Phoenix on board, just as the second cube barreled toward them.
Meanwhile, Naomi and Lieutenant Jeremiah worked diligently to scan the wormhole to try to find out exactly what they would be facing eventually. Try as they may they could not and began trying to figure out where the interference was coming from. It was as though the Borg had discovered a way to block any and all signals going into it, masking their forces. A particularly nasty shake from weapons fire sent them careening toward their consoles, gripping them for support. After a few seconds they straightened and went back to work. "You okay?" Jeremiah asked at seeing Naomi wince and shudder from the corner of his eye.
"Yeah. I think I twisted my wrist," she mentioned wearily. "I'll be fine, the adrenaline will keep be going," she said with a weak smile. It was then that Naomi saw the console near her supervisor turning red, smoke piling up from it as electricity visibly began to sizzle over it. "Lieutenant!" she called him, but he was too concentrated on his work. The console was about to explode and her supervisor was standing right next to it, frantically trying to keep up with the signals coming from the activity around the ship and bypassing the mysterious signal block. "Gary!" Naomi yelled again. "Step away from that console!"
"Just a second!" Jeremiah yelled back. "I think I figured out how to get through the frequency dampener!"
Naomi's eyes widened at the sound of the crackling and knew she had only seconds to react. "No time!" She rushed to him and bulldozed her body right into him, knocking him out of the way. The next thing she knew, her world was on fire and soon after all she heard was a piercing, ringing sound in her aching ears, disorientating her for only a second before all her body could then process was excruciating pain. Naomi shrieked in agony, twisting away from the flames as her skin was lit ablaze from the massive eruption. Seconds later she was sent flying back until she hit the ground hard. She would have screamed again from the feel of her shoulder forcefully being wrenched out of its socket, but the force in which her head slammed against the floor rendered her unconscious first.
"Naomi!" Jeremiah screamed, rushing to her side as smoke and electricity surged around him. The Lieutenant grabbed her and pulled her away from the wreckage, checking her. Naomi's wounds were grisly, dark red and black bleeding wounds, and charred uniform outlining gaping horrible oozing blisters. Her arm was bent in an unnatural way and blood was steadily running down her cheek from her left eye. Checking her vital signs, Jeremiah's heart stopped when he found that she didn't appear to be breathing. He checked her pulse, gaping when he couldn't seem to find it with all the rocking of the ship. He quickly tapped his badge. "Jeremiah to transporter room, medical emergency! Two to beam directly to sickbay!"
"Aye sir!" The officer on the other end acknowledged and transported them right away.
The doctor had been treating various injuries throughout the tense battle with the Borg, but hadn't expected a new patient to be brought in via transporter... at least, not this soon into the war. When he saw who it was, his proverbial heart stopped. "What's going on?!" he rushed over, looking over the half Ktarian and gaping at her wounds. "Help me," he said firmly, gentle lifting the woman from the floor.
"A console exploded near me while we were working, Naomi shoved me out of the way," the Lieutenant explained in a rush as he helped the doctor carry her over to one of the remaining free beds.
"Please step back, Mr. Jeremiah," the doctor ordered.
Jeremiah backpedaled and watched nervously, hoping the girl he had come to see as his colleague, his equal, and his friend, was still alive. The doctor went to work to restart her breathing, getting it going though the damage from the blast made it difficult for her to expand her lungs properly. That done, he pulled out his scanner to access her injuries further. After another rough shake, he braced himself on the far wall from Naomi's bed, but kept his eyes trained on the medical team. "Is she... alive?" he asked anxiously after the medical staff had stabilized her enough and the initial scans were completed.
"Barely," the doctor said in distress as he prepared the little defibrillator pads over her chest in case her already weakened heart gave out during the procedure she needed.
Meanwhile, the battle raged on, rocking the ship violently from multiple weapons fire. So far the shield modulations were working on the fleet. Some of the ship were equipped with the extra ablative armor as well, which helped a lot from cutting beams. Aside from the absence of Locutus of Borg, the only real differences between this battle and Wolf 359 or Sector 001 was the upgraded weapons, shields, and armor. If it hadn't been for the added measures in resisting the Borg, they would have lost all their ships against even just a single cube. All things considered they were doing well so far, though they knew it wouldn't remain as easy for long.
Eventually the Borg would adapt.
Admiral Picard stood scrutinizing the tactical strategies the young fleet commander had issued, finding them as efficient as he expected from him. He had heard the slight waver in his voice when he first began speaking to the fleet, and knew he was still struggling with his self worth and demons of his own, but was bravely keeping them locked out of his mind. Still, fear and tempered pride would keep the man's head on straight and so far the fleet was doing well. There were a few starship casualties, but with quick enough reaction time from nearby ships, their crews had been transported to safety.
Screams of fear and death, not currently present in the open fleet communication channel so far, echoed in Jean-Luc's head from long ago. Picard felt his own shudder of past pains all but freeze him in his place. Memories of his time as a Borg ravaged his mind. All the drills, decapitations, agonizing probing and purging of his individuality, the mocking voice of the Queen in his head.
Even now he could almost hear them, whispering, beckoning. It was the same every time he fought the Borg, including when he battled with the Queen when she tried to change the past. Every time, the faces of the people he had personally assimilated haunted him, screaming for him to stop, that he was a Starfleet officer, and each time he would tell them their attempts to reach him were irrelevant, he was no longer Picard and he would personally assimilate the Federation.
"Admiral?" Picard blinked and looked over to his former Borg consultant. "Are you well?"
"Yes, I'm fine, thank you. Simply ghosts of the past rattling my chains," Picard smiled fleetingly and turned back to the battlefield. "Ensign, initiate attack pattern gamma-two. Let's see if those new plasma turrets are as effective as you boasted, Captain Shon." Below the Enterprise, on either side of the deflector dish, two slots opened and the turrets emerged, priming to fire in rapid destructive succession.
On the Defiant, Admiral Sisko struggled with his own horrible memories.
Sisko's grip on his seat tightened, his teeth clenching painfully. He did all he could to keep a sob from escaping him, covering his mouth as unwanted and unrelenting memories of Wolf 359 haunted his mind. He relived the tragic massacre, haunted by the screams and explosions around him. The unwitting memories sent him back to the Saratoga, before its catastrophic warp-breach destruction, seeing his wife pinned beneath a support beam that had collapsed over her. All the fire and smoke, blinding and burning him. The only thing he could do was take his son and flee, leave his wife behind, telling the distraught boy that everything would be alright... even as the Borg ravaged them pitilessly. Benjamin Sisko forced himself together and glared furiously at the screen. He would not let that happen again! He would fight back and they would win this time!
"Remember me, you bastards?" Sisko growled under his breath, eyes trained on the battle before him. "This time we will rain terror down on you. Lieutenant," he turned to his tactical officer. "Fire RF Missiles." At that moment, Sisko was glad he had made friends with a few Ferengi on Deep Space Nine, allowing him to purchase their 'old school' rapid-fire missile launchers at a 'premium price'. Sometimes the high damage, easy to use and low energy cost methods were much more efficient than tangling with the more complicated arsenals modern ships had.
A suggestion to end this battle quickly from their fleet commander inspired the small fleet to regroup in a wide attack pattern. Voicing in her own opinion, Seven coordinated with Icheb, taking over half of the fleet while Icheb took the other, flanking the Borg and funneling them. With their combined efforts and superior weaponry, the fleet whittled the small Borg armada down. Massive damage was beheld by the Borg as they underestimated their willful opponents. The fleet managed minimal casualties as they worked tirelessly to attack the cubes, working as a swarm to single out a solitary cube in a wing pattern to try to disorientate them. Finally, after what seemed like days, the last of the current cubes had been eliminated. They held their breaths for more, but for reasons most of them couldn't figure out, the activity from the wormhole stopped.
The unexpected lull in the battle compelled Icheb to check the status of the ship, assess the damage. So far Voyager's shields and armor were holding, though they had been drained to worrisome levels. When he was sure there were no casualties reported, he checked in on the activity from the wormhole. "Lieutenant, status on those scans?" he tried, but got no response. "Lieutenant Jeremiah, respond?" Icheb frowned. "Cadet Wildman?" Still no response. "Tom, you have the bridge. I'll be right back," Icheb left for the turbo-lift, worry clouding his rationality. Why weren't they answering? Did the lab take too much damage? Were they injured? Were they dead? "No, no I am overreacting," Icheb told himself, cold sweat making his hair stick up slightly more than it already was as he ran his hand through it.
Meanwhile, the doctor and his staff had worked tirelessly to safe Naomi's life. They healed her open wounds, administering the injections she needed to fight burn infection while working to coax her shoulder back to its proper spot. They worked for a good while, mending the damaged flesh, re-hydrating her cells, healing her fractured wrist, and repairing the ruptured blood vessels in her eye where she had been blasted by the explosion.
All the while they took meticulous scans of her vital signs, making sure she did not react adversely to the treatment, having to restart her heart once already during the surgery. Once the worst of it was over, the doctor administered a stimulant to help her body naturally recover fluids. Courtesy of 25th century medicine, Naomi looked perfectly healthy, despite a bit of loss of color on her cheeks from her weakened state. While he worked, scanning her frequently to make sure her body was healing properly, he frowned at something disturbing he found, but had no time to investigate further as the Captain charged in.
Icheb took one look at Naomi laying completely unconscious on the bed with many instruments surrounding her and lost all coherent thought in his head and all color in his face. Instruments on the table, flashes of gruesome physical trauma from his assimilation unwittingly intruded into his thoughts again. The images in his head changed then, and he could see not himself, but Naomi on a processing table. His mind ruthlessly showed Borg surrounding her, ready to literally disassemble her piece by piece, replace her already perfect body with awful mechanical abominations. Fear, revulsion and rage surged through him for a second.
"...Captain?" Jeremiah questioned, seeing the unreadable look in his commanding officer's eyes.
Icheb forced the images away. "What..." he swallowed hard. "Lieutenant, what happened? What happened to her?" he demanded, panic tightly squeezing his heart.
"Sir," Lieutenant Jeremiah began, walking over to his Captain. "Cadet Wildman pushed me out of an exploding console. She saved my life," he explained, too overcome by the accident to notice how distressed his Captain was behaving over her in particular. There were many injured crew members in Sickbay, but his eyes were trained on the Cadet for the moment.
Icheb then turned to the Lieutenant. "Mr. Jeremiah, we need someone to continue trying to break through the dampening field. The Borg have stopped for a second, we need to monitor the activity on the other side of the wormhole. We need to know what we're going to face next. Are you familiar with Cadet Wildman's modifications?" he asked tensely.
"Yes sir. I think I may have a solution to our problem. I'll return to my post at once!" Jeremiah promised, casting one more worried look over to his young friend before rushing out. Icheb turned back, moving quickly to Naomi's side.
The doctor could see the panic in the once unsure boy's eyes for his friend as the former Borg approached the bed quickly. "She's fine, Icheb," he said gently as the nurses finished cleaning her up and going off to care for the other patients.
Icheb gave the doctor a severe expression. "Please elaborate, doctor. What happened? What is her exact condition?" he asked firmly, seeing the familiar metallic blanket covering her upper body. From what he could tell from how the nurses had cleaned her and the instruments they had used, she looked like she had just undergone an extensive surgery.
The doctor tried not to let his curiosity over how strongly he was reacting to Naomi's injuries distract him. "Right now, she is recovering from dermal-regeneration and ligamental-trauma mending. She had third degree burns to half of her body, a dislocated shoulder, a fractured wrist, a mild cranial contusion, and a ruptured retina. She's okay now, Icheb," the doctor explained gently. Icheb braced himself over her bed, his eyes trained on her frail, weakened appearance, trying hard not to cry. If he lost her... "However." Icheb looked up at the doctor sharply. "There was one other thing I detected while scanning her."
Icheb didn't know how much his already frayed nerves could handle more bad news. "What is it?"
"This should probably stay between doctor patient confidentiality, but under the circumstances and limited time I may have to breach that protocol..."
"Doctor," Icheb pressed.
"Naomi has significant signs of internal tearing and bruising. From what I've heard, the two of you seem to spend a lot of time together-"
"-How much do you hear, doctor? And from who?" Icheb interrupted in a panic.
The doctor's brow lifted questioningly. "Tom Paris has mentioned to me when I asked about your stress-levels that you and Ms. Wildman frequently spend time together. I can only assume it is recreationally." Icheb visibly relaxed and nodded slowly. "Now, have you played any physically demanding sports? Done any strenuous physical recreational activities recently that could account for the injuries? Or will security have to be notified?"
Icheb tried not to stare at the doctor incredulously, but forced himself to relax. "Strenuous physical recreational activities," he sighed in disbelief. "Yes, you could call it that..." he did not want to have to get into this with the doctor now. "Please don't worry about it doctor. I promise what you've detected isn't anything worth being concerned over."
"Icheb, how could I not worry about it? The tissue damage is not severe, but it is very specific. Without wanting to jump to conclusions, I must ask you, has she fallen recently? Kept an accident to herself? The only other explanation is troubling. Has she complained to you or anyone else about anyone? Has she been physically abused or-"
"-Doctor, please stop. I know what it is you're detecting," Icheb explained reluctantly, interrupting him again. "I didn't want to bring this up, especially without Naomi's word on it as well, but it appears I may have to. We've recently undergone a change in our relationship."
The doctor frowned in concern, walking closer to the young Brunali. "What sort of change?" he asked in a quiet voice.
Icheb squirmed slightly, feeling like he was talking about it to a concerned parent. "A change that would be consistent with internal physical bruising..." he replied dryly, not willing to go into it in further detail. There was a war going on outside of those very walls between the Federation and the greatest threat in the galaxy they had ever faced, and he was forced to disclose his sex life to the doctor? The day just couldn't get any better.
It took only a microsecond for the doctor to scan his database and discover an appropriate reason behind that combination of conditions. "Oh! I see! Why didn't you simply say so?"
"Our relationship isn't exactly on par with regulations," Icheb mumbled resentfully, glancing around to be sure none of the doctor's staff were eavesdropping. The doctor merely shook his head and Icheb could practically here the unspoken chiding on being abstinent while on an important mission. "Doctor, is she alright?" he asked again.
"Yes, yes, of course," the doctor said, taking out his PADD and reading over his scans. "Don't worry, your secret is safe with me. Aside from some rough handling, there are no signs of impregnation," he happily announced, putting his PADD back down and smiling at him. Icheb felt annoyed at the slight blush that tainted his cheeks. "However, I'll give her a contraceptive just in case, but you two really should be careful. There's no telling how your genetic tampering could effect her or any offspring you chose to have."
Despite his embarrassment and increasing state of anxiety, Icheb's brow lifted in intrigue. "Is that even conceivable? Are we not naturally genetically incompatible?"
"No pun intended I presume?" The doctor smiled mirthfully again, but Icheb continued to give him a steady stare, so he sighed and shook his head again. "Not necessarily. With the advancements in medical technology these days, and a strapping, efficient doctor such as myself, anything is possible. Just remember how easy it was for Tom and B'elanna to have Miral?" Gregory Zimmerman reminded him, injecting the young woman with the contraceptive, unaware that she had been awake for a few minutes already, her eyes closed as she silently listened, partly in amusement, and partly in embarrassment.
"They only had to contend with two species. Any possible child we decided to have would be part Brunali, Ktarian, Human and a small chance of Borg, doctor," Icheb replied tersely.
"Hmm, yes, I see your point. Still, it is possible and if the two of you so chose to in the future, I'd be more than happy to help you through the process!" The doctor grinned.
A weakened voice interrupted them then. "Thank you, Greg..." Both males blinked down in surprise at Naomi, who was wide awake and looking up at them. She had hoped to avoid this, hadn't wanted too many people to know of their relationship or the doctor to make a fuss out of it. "I think we should probably focus on fighting our mortal enemy for now, wouldn't you agree?" she asked dryly, her tone betraying a residual pain.
"Naomi!" Icheb immediately tuned his senses on her. He heard the slight falter in her voice, heard her slightly higher heart rate and her labored breathing, and knew it was not from anything pleasant. "How do you feel? Do you need anything? Are you in pain? Doctor can you get her something for pain?" Icheb asked in rapid-fire, becoming more agitated by the second.
"Icheb! Please relax, I'm okay. Take it easy," Naomi told him as gently as she could, reaching for him until he bent further to her and she was able to caress his face gingerly. Icheb relaxed only a fraction, leaning in to her touch instinctively, desperately seeking her warmth and soothing presence. Naomi had never seen him so incredibly stressed over her like that, and it concerned her greatly. "Are you okay?" He seemed to be pouring his stress into a single source, the most immediate being her.
"Forgive me, I..." Icheb's face contorted in confused distressed, his pupils dilated and uniform sticking to him uncomfortably. The combined stress of the battle, his traumatic assimilation memories resurfacing, the unknown of what was yet to come, and nearly losing the love of his life was suddenly and savagely overtaking him, making his normally reinforced systems fail him.
The doctor noted the alarmingly specific symptoms in the young Captain and quickly went over to pull out a hypospray. "Icheb. Among other things, that we will discuss at a more appropriate time, you are having an acute anxiety attack. I'm going to give you a mild sedative to-"
"No!" Icheb stepped away from them, away from the doctor and the neurologically suppressing drug. "No, please, just give me a moment." He took a couple of deep breaths, his nails breaking through his skin as he clenched his fists, forcing himself to calm down and concentrate once again. "A sedative will lessen my focus. I need to be at my peek efficiency."
Naomi stared at his rapidly crumbling form anxiously. She had never seen him so torn apart before. "Please don't kill yourself, Icheb," she begged him softly, her eyes still looking over him worriedly.
Icheb's attention went back to her and he focused on her, moving over to lean in close to her again, laying a soft kiss on her forehead, close enough to her horns to make her shiver slightly from the contact, while he slid his fingers tenderly across her cheek. "I'll be fine, I promise," he assured her lovingly, trying to convey his sincerity and resolve in his eyes for her. For a moment, Naomi and Icheb found themselves laying on his bed, teasing each other and reveling in each others arms.
The soothing memories were interrupted however, as Tom's voice was heard through the coms, jarring them back to the present. "Paris to Hansen. Reports coming in of activity coming from the wormhole, we need you up here," he announced, his tone belaying an intense worry.
Icheb tensed and felt his instinct to rush back to his duties kick in. He hesitated a moment, part of him unwilling to leave Naomi's side. "Go," Naomi gestured with her chin and closed her eyes as he leaned back down to capture her lips, pouring all his worry, fears, and passionate love for her into it, not caring if anyone was watching. After a little bit, Naomi pushed at his chest, smiling reassuringly at him. Icheb's gaze lingered on her a second more before he quickly made his way out, all but sprinting out of the room.
Naomi was a little distressed when a few of the nurses had indeed been watching, but relaxed slightly with the looks of either sympathy or dreaminess they had on their faces. Despite being assured by the doctor that they would not tell, it was still a little embarrassing. "...Alright, I think I'm healed enough," she decided then and began to get up.
The doctor had watched the interaction with rapt fascination. Seeing the radical change in behavior the two of them shared with each other, since he had known them as children, had been astonishing. When he saw her attempting to leave though, he snapped out of it, tucking the observation away for later examination. "Naomi, you need to rest! We just finished the regenerative procedure on you. You've suffered extensive tissue and ligament damage, you shouldn't-"
"-Doctor," Naomi interrupted firmly as she replicated a new uniform and put it on. "With all due respect. We are at war. Hurt or not I have duties to preform and this ship needs every available crew to support it. I may still be a Cadet, but I am also a Crewman and have my responsibilities to uphold."
"Alright, but I want you to wear this," he said, pulling out a Neurocortical monitor to gauge her vital signs. Her heart had already given out one time during the procedure, he wasn't sure how recovered her body was from it yet. "I don't recommend you strain yourself too hard, but your argument in this circumstance is valid. Just be careful, okay? Try to avoid diving into exploding consoles..." he added wryly.
Naomi tried not to roll her eyes at his dry humor. "Thank you doctor." She slipped off the bed and carefully made her way to her post as quickly as her recovering body would let her. When she made it back to Astrometrics, Jeremiah motioned her over, explaining how he detected the source of the dampener coming from a key point within the wormhole and by using the deflector dish to send a graviton pulse to it, they were able to disengage it long enough.
What she saw on the other side made Naomi's heart nearly give away a second time that day.
TBC...
End A/N: This chapter mostly influenced by the song "Iron" by Woodkid.
Shout-Outs
The Cheshire Cheese: As I mentioned, I took the liberty to correct her name to "Kathryn" as you suggested, thanks for that! Last time I wrote this I just threw some Captains in willy-nilly and didn't give them any real introduction, didn't even research them properly!