=/\=
Before Seven boarded the Delta Flyer II to join Harry Kim and the Doctor on an away mission, she'd said to Lieutenant Paris, "While I'm away, please watch over Icheb for me."
"I thought it was pretty amazing. Seven actually said 'please,' Icheb. I think she really really likes you!" Tom told Icheb several days after the mission began.
It was pretty amazing. It made Icheb feel really wonderful. Maybe he should have resented being treated like a little kid by Seven, but actually, he didn't. It was a good feeling to have someone looking out for his safety. "She cares about me, Lieutenant."
"That she does, Cadet. I'm happy for you." Tom's smile was bright, not to mention catching. Icheb was conscious of a silly smile on his face, too.
"How is Commander Tuvok doing? We were scheduled to have a rigorous physical training exercise this afternoon, but he cancelled it. He said he wasn't feeling well."
"Just a touch of Tarkalean Flu. He'll come around in a few days. I've restricted him to his own quarters for the duration."
"Shouldn't he be in Sickbay?"
"Tarkalean Flu is very contagious. I'd rather keep him in his quarters and treat him there, where no one else can be exposed. He's more comfortable in there, too. He has everything he needs to meditate. A meditative Tuvok is a calm Tuvok. And a calm Tuvok will recover more quickly than a . . . non-calm Tuvok." Tom grimaced slightly, and Icheb realized he hadn't really meant that pun. Tuvok wasn't a non-com, he was the second officer on Voyager.
"When you see him next, if he's still incapacitated, could you ask him if there's any subject he wants me to research in particular during my independent study time?"
"I'll make asking about that a priority the next time I go in to check on him, Icheb."
Icheb went to Cargo Bay Two and looked up some physical training exercises to do on his own. Once he'd completed a full set of isometric and weight-bearing exercises, he ran through the ship's corridors, working on cardiovascular conditioning. Even a former Borg with enhanced systems benefited from rigorous activity. Icheb enjoyed running, since his mind often wandered into unexpected trains of thought while on a run.
It wasn't until his third circuit of the bottom six decks of the ship that Icheb realized no one had contracted Tarkalean Flu on Voyager since Icheb had arrived on Voyager. The incubation period for the illness is less than a month. How was the Vulcan tactical officer exposed to the virus?
=/\=
Since Tuvok was still "under the weather," as Tom put it, Icheb took advantage of his absence by standing near Lieutenant Ayala for part of Alpha shift. Icheb had already noticed that crew members handled certain aspects of the Tactical/Security details a little differently. While the basic protocols were the same for all, one officer would survey images from around the ship one way, while another officer would view them in a different order, or might magnify some locations in order to check out certain details more closely. Still another might check out certain corridors more frequently than others. Tom called this difference in operation based upon individual's choice an officer's "style." This fascinated Icheb, since it was diametrically opposed to the way Borg drones functioned.
Mr. Ayala, Icheb noticed, always kept very close tabs on the engineering decks. He sometimes anticipated Lieutenant Torres would be contacting the officer in command about an issue before she had a chance to call for help, just by observing her staff behaving in an unusual manner. Tom had pointed out that this was something a lot of the Maquis members of the crew did habitually, since they'd been trained by necessity to cover each other's "six." (Tom explained that this meant each other's "back.")
After Icheb had observed Mr. Ayala for a while, he noticed something. According to away team protocols, the Delta Flyer II should have checked in with Voyager over an hour ago. This wasn't really unusual, since at times the shuttle's crew had to complete some task or other before getting the chance to call in. This time, however, it was unusual because the Flyer was supposed to be meeting Voyager later today. Ayala had instituted a sensor sweep of the area where they were expected to meet. Icheb couldn't see any sign of the shuttle from where he stood. Had the shuttle run into a problem?
Icheb glanced up at Ayala. The taciturn Tactical officer nodded his head slightly and looked to the command chair, which Commander Chakotay currently occupied. "Commander, there's no sign of the Delta Flyer anywhere near the rendezvous point."
"Acknowledged," Chakotay responded. "Ensign Lang, still no communication signal from the Flyer?"
"No, sir. I've sent out five messages to them in the past hour. Still no response."
"Alert the captain, Ensign Lang. Institute a search."
That was Icheb's cue to stop observing on the bridge. With Seven away, Icheb had to be the one to go to Astrometrics, to take part in the search for the missing Delta Flyer. His soon-to-be mother was on that shuttle. He needed to find her.
=/\=
Icheb slipped out of Astrometrics briefly for the ingestion of nutrients. He felt the need for something more substantial than a Nutritional Supplement alone. Since their resident chef had prepared a large batch of banana pancakes for Lieutenant Torres, Icheb accepted Neelix's offer to consume the extras.
The chief engineer was sitting by the window, scarfing down her own stack of pancakes. When Icheb approached her table, Lieutenant Torres, who was still chewing, wordlessly indicated he should join her. Once he'd taken his seat and sampled the pancakes, the lieutenant said, "How are you doing, Icheb? Don't worry, we'll find Seven soon. I have a feeling the away team will have quite a story to tell when they get back. Harry, Seven, the Doctor. That's quite a crew. No telling what those three will get up to!"
"The Doctor will be the one talking the most."
"I'm sure you're right, Icheb. How do you like the pancakes? They're a favorite dish I remember from my childhood. My abuela - my grandmother - made them for me whenever I visited her on Earth."
"They're delicious. They don't taste much like Neelix's usual meals."
She laughed. "That's because he replicated the bananas, the milk, the eggs, the pancake mix, and the syrup. He enjoys cooking 'flapjacks,' but when I let him try making some from scratch once, they weren't exactly a 'taste of home.'"
"He added Talaxian spices to them?"
"Lots and lots of spices. You're really getting the hang of this place, Icheb."
She mopped up the last piece of her pancakes in the syrup and leaned back to sip the last of her coffee. Icheb recognized the signs of a chief engineer who was about to run back down to Engineering.
"Lieutenant, before you go, I'd like to ask you a question. Why is Tom being so secretive about Tuvok's Tarkalean flu? I didn't think it took a long time to recover from that type of flu."
Lieutenant Torres apparently gulped a mouthful of her coffee a little too quickly. She choked a bit on the liquid as she swallowed it. "Why do you ask?"
"I just wondered. I asked Tom about it yesterday. He told me a Vulcan sometimes exhibits more extreme symptoms than others and requires longer to recover. I looked up the entry on Tarkalean Flu in the database. It didn't say anything about that. When I mentioned this to Tom yesterday afternoon, he said meditation was sometimes more helpful than medications for a Vulcan who's severely ill. I couldn't find out anything about that in the database when I went back to it last night, either. I don't understand."
"Ah, the Doctor has his secrets, and when Tom is being the Doctor's nurse, he does, too. You know the Doctor has a separate database we non-medical people can't access, containing information about synthesizing medicines for specific conditions - things like that. It's one of the things I keep track of when I do my maintenance checkups of his program. That's probably why you didn't find any mention of it in the main database. Tom told me he was setting up a hologram program to help Tuvok meditate. I'm sure that'll help him heal more quickly. You know what they say, 'mind over matter.' I really need to get down to Engineering. Bye."
With that, she hurried off. Icheb was even more curious about what was going on with Tuvok. She'd spoken so quickly, he'd had to concentrate to understand what she was saying. Lieutenant Torres didn't seem to want to talk about the subject with him at all. He didn't think the big secret had anything to do with restricted medical databases. "I'm missing something," Icheb murmured to himself.
When he returned to Astrometrics, he checked over the search pattern he'd instituted for the Delta Flyer II, but there was still no evidence of the missing shuttle. For the moment, there wasn't much more he could do to hurry the search along. He went to an adjacent console and looked up the entry about the Tarkalean flu again. Maybe he'd read it too quickly and skipped the reference about Vulcans with the condition. He read the entry again very carefully, but Icheb still didn't see anything about using meditation to aid recovery when a Vulcan suffered from a severe case of the illness.
Perhaps he was going about this the wrong way. He decided to change the parameters of his search to: Vulcans, meditation, illness. A response popped up quickly.
Once Icheb had finished reading the entry on the pon farr, he knew he didn't need to ask any more questions about Tuvok's current problem. To confirm his suspicion, he accessed (actually hacked into) Tuvok's service record. The date of Tuvok's last "vacation" visit to Vulcan, approved only days before his arrival, occurred seven years, two months, and three days ago, after his captain ordered a sudden diversion of their ship to Vulcan.
Since Tom and B'Elanna's wedding, Icheb's studies of the database concerning single-cell sexual reproduction had become rather intensive. He'd learned enough by now to know this subject was just as sensitive to others as Seven had indicated it was the first time he asked her about it, shortly after he came aboard Voyager. Icheb decided it was time for him to drop his inquiry and concentrate on finding the Delta Flyer instead.
=/\=