=/\=
If the days following the discovery of the Wormhole Nebula had been filled with anticipation, along with more than a little dread on the parts of some of the crew, the appearance of a Kathryn Janeway who claimed to be from some twenty-six years in the future created a sensation. When the woman arrived on board, everyone who saw her in the flesh remarked that she looked "just like the captain." If this Admiral Janeway is telling the truth, Icheb thought, of course she would look just like the captain - just older.
For the first day she was on Voyager, Icheb saw her only from a distance. Despite being a couple of decades older than their captain, Icheb thought her quite beautiful. Her hair was silky, a pure white; her face was still beautiful, with only a bare minimum of wrinkles. While her figure was slightly thickened at the waist, as Icheb had learned was common with older humans, she carried herself firmly erect, like a much younger person. In fact, Icheb thought her posture tended to be a little too stiff, as if the years had turned her bones to steel, whether from disappointment or from the need to be vigilant always, never daring to relax for a moment, lest she risk attack from some unknown quarter.
Although he knew he wasn't supposed to spy on anything in Sickbay, Icheb suspected the Doctor would, at some point, need to verify her identity, undoubtedly through a DNA comparison. While Icheb's assistance wouldn't be needed for such a simple procedure, he invented a fictitious experiment and positioned himself in the adjacent lab soon after she arrived, "just in case." Icheb was rewarded when he heard that familiar voice echoing from Sickbay. It was even huskier than the captain's, but through his enhanced hearing, he determined its timbre was exactly the same as hers. When the second, slightly less husky voice also appeared, Icheb took a chance and leaned just outside his doorway. Once he heard the Doctor confirm the admiral was, in fact, the same person as the captain, but approximately twenty-six years older, Icheb stepped away from the lab and into the corridor. If they really were getting home in a matter of days, perhaps he didn't need to worry about the Doctor catching him eavesdropping; but after all of the mishaps Icheb had already experienced during his time on Voyager, Icheb wasn't going to risk losing his lab privileges now. Better to be safe than sorry!
When he arrived at the mess hall, Icheb found it awash with rumors, but no one knew anything for certain until the entire engineering staff was called back to begin work on a special project. The admiral's ship from the future had three advanced systems. While one, a type of stealth shielding, wasn't compatible with Voyager's current level of technology, two of them were. Most of the engineers were assigned the installation of ablative armor over Voyager's entire surface. The rest, with Icheb and several non-biology specialists from Sciences tabbed to assist them, were to build a number of extremely powerful new weapons, which the admiral called transphasic torpedoes. All of these technologies had been developed through Admiral Kathryn Janeway, who identified herself as the "author of the book on how to defeat the Borg."
And the word was also: Voyager would return to the Wormhole Nebula. They were going to try to get home that way after all.
=/\=
The hugely pregnant Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres was giving her team a pep talk, praising them for completing a full complement of the new torpedoes. Icheb and Freddie Bristow had been singled out for their outstanding work, but now they would be assigned to reinforcing Voyager's energy systems. Just as the chief engineer finished her lecture, Icheb's combadge was activated. Stepping back and away from the rest of the group, Icheb answered the EMH's hail.
:::Icheb, please come to Sickbay. Seven requires your presence.:::
"Is she sick, Doctor?" Icheb asked, perturbed. "It's not her cortical node again, is it?"
:::No, but her regeneration cubicle malfunctioned briefly. She's going to be fine, but she'd like to speak with you.:::
"Tell her I'll be right there."
=/\=
Icheb became extremely upset when Seven disclosed the Borg Queen had contacted her. She not only knew about their renewed plans to return home, she'd also caused the EM surge which had injured Seven. Once he was assured she was really all right, he told Seven he was going back to work in Engineering, unless he was needed in Astrometrics. The Doctor had informed Icheb he was keeping Seven in Sickbay for another hour or so before allowing her to return to duty. Icheb knew Seven was unsettled by the entire incident when she allowed him to kiss her gently on the cheek as he said good-bye.
As Icheb was leaving, the Doctor took him aside and inquired, "Have you had any 'Borg Queen dreams' yourself lately?"
"Doctor, I don't have a cortical node anymore. You inserted it into Seven. The Queen has no way of contacting me that way."
After a noncommittal "hmm," the Doctor asked, "How much time do you currently spend in your regeneration cubicle?"
"A couple of hours a week. You said you weren't sure I even needed to be in it for that long during my last check up."
"Ah, so I did. When was the last time you used it?"
"Well, I like to sleep standing up in an alcove, but the last time I had any current going through me was two nights ago."
"Just to be on the safe side, Icheb, I'd sleep somewhere else, perhaps even in a bed - just in case the Queen has a way of getting to you through your remaining Borg implant system."
Icheb nodded his agreement as he stepped out of Sickbay. So the Borg Queen knew what they planned, and she didn't want them going into that nebula. To discourage this, she might try to hurt Icheb, even though it would be a lot harder for her to do it to him than it had been to injure Seven. This wasn't good. Not at all. It was looking more and more like the plethora of wormholes inside that nebula was not a natural phenomenon. If it was what Icheb feared it was, he doubted the road home to the Alpha Quadrant would pass through there, no matter what Admiral Janeway insisted.
=/\=
Despite the Borg Queen's warning, the ship plowed on towards the Wormhole Nebula. This time, at Voyager's approach, a Borg cube confronted them. Admiral Janeway's futuristic weapons were as effective as she'd touted, and when the Borg fired on Voyager, the transphasic torpedoes fired in response caused the cube to explode in a spectacular, and one might even say, unprecedented manner. When another cube faced off against Voyager, it, too, was blown to smithereens. Despite this evidence of the new torpedoes' effectiveness, more Borg cubes began to fire on the Starfleet ship. While the new ablative armor contained the damage, Voyager's shields began to weaken. The ship can't take much more, Icheb thought, as he watched the action from his preferred monitoring position in Astrometrics. They'd either have to flee again or try to force their way through a virtually impenetrable Borg blockade.
And then Voyager burst through the thickest clouds of nebular gasses to see a glowing ball of energy, punctured with myriad openings. Icheb immediately recognized these apertures as wormhole entrances and exits. From the Borg memories he still retained, he knew what this was. It wasn't a Borg matrix, or even a part of the Collective's Trans-Warp system. It was one of six Trans-Warp Hubs, all that existed in the entire galaxy, which permitted the Borg to travel from point to point at velocities which made all other faster-than-light technologies irrelevant. Moving at maximum speed, Voyager, would appear to be standing completely still, like an insect entombed within a piece of amber.
It was, quite simply, the secret of the Borg's success. No wonder the Queen didn't want them anywhere near it.
=/\=
The captain and the admiral gave conflicting orders to Lieutenant Paris. Unsurprisingly, the helmsman obeyed his captain, not the admiral. Voyager flew away from the hub at maximum warp. While Icheb could observe this much on his monitor, he wasn't privy to the rest of the argument, which took place in the conference room only minutes after Voyager fled from any further confrontations with Borg cubes. Fortunately, the Collective seemed to be content to let Voyager go, as long as it was heading away from their precious Trans-Warp Hub.
Although Icheb would have to wait for Seven or one of the other senior staff members to give him the particulars, it wasn't hard for him to imagine that the admiral was still insisting they use the Trans-Warp Hub to get back to the Alpha Quadrant, despite the danger to the ship from the Borg. Clearly, if the admiral had used the hub herself to get home, she wouldn't have needed to come to the here and now to convince the captain to use it. She must have passed on the opportunity, too, but what did that mean for the crew? While it was obvious that Kathryn Janeway had returned home safely, no one had heard how many others made it back with her. It stood to reason that not everyone residing now on Voyager would have survived. From his explorations of Federation literature, Icheb was very familiar with the Greek poet Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. It took twenty long years for Odysseus to return home to his family, and when he finally did, he was alone. Everyone who had gone along with him to battle the Trojans had perished on their way back.
Icheb wasn't happy to make that association, and he quickly became aware that he wasn't the only one on board who had been exposed to the benefits of classic Terran literature. When he went to the mess hall to grab a quick bite before returning to duty in Astrometrics, shortly after they'd turned away from the Trans-Warp Hub, quite a few of the crew were mentioning "Homer" and "Odyssey" in hushed conversations.
Since the admiral hadn't been forthcoming about details such as which of them were living when the admiral left her time, it wasn't surprising the members of the crew were becoming markedly jittery about their futures. When Seven stopped by Astrometrics to confirm the meeting in the conference room had ended with toasts "to the journey," along with a unanimous decision by the senior staff to continue on Voyager's previous course rather than turning back to the hub (as the admiral still wished), Icheb didn't know whether to be happy or apprehensive. He hadn't been able to learn anything about his own fate, or Seven's, in the admiral's timeline. He thanked Seven for the information, however, and thought the matter had finally been laid to rest.
He was wrong, of course. He hadn't counted on the persuasive powers of Kathryn Janeway, and the admiral had lots more practice at being her.
=/\=