=/\=
In response to a summons from Captain Janeway, Icheb stepped into her Ready Room to find both Kathryn Janeways standing before him. From this close, Icheb could see the tiny lines around the admiral's eyes, revealing her age more clearly than he'd been able to detect when he'd only viewed her from a distance. She smiled as soon as she saw him, which made him feel as comfortable as he usually did whenever he spoke with Kathryn Janeway.
That is, not particularly.
"Icheb! It's so good to see you!" the admiral exclaimed heartily. "How are you doing? Is everything going well with you on Voyager?"
"Very well, ma'am. Sir. Admiral?" The captain preferred to be called by her rank in lieu of the many other forms of address considered appropriate for a commanding officer of the female gender. Was that still the case? Icheb immediately thought he'd bungled this meeting, and it had barely begun.
The admiral chuckled lightly, however. "Admiral will do. Tell me, have you begun studying with Tuvok yet? It's been a long time. I'm a little unsure of exactly where you are in this timeline."
"Yes, m . . . Admiral. I passed the Starfleet Academy Entrance Examination several months ago. Commander Tuvok has been tutoring me ever since." He wondered if he should mention his very tardy paper, but he decided against it.
"Good, good. And you're pursuing some independent study projects as well, aren't you?" This question was asked with a quiet intensity, suggesting she knew of his genetic manipulation investigations. Of course. If the timelines had diverged when she arrived in the Delta Quadrant, everything Icheb had experienced and done on Voyager up to then was the same for both Kathryn Janeways. Icheb glanced towards his captain. Other than a brief nod when he entered her Ready Room, she'd barely moved and hadn't uttered a single word since he did. She knew about the project of course, although he'd only spoken directly to her about it during its initial phase. He'd reported his findings to Seven, the Doctor, and Commander Tuvok ever since.
"Yes, Admiral. From your question, I take it you know the main objective of my studies."
"Yes, I know exactly what it is. What I don't recall is how much progress you've made to this point." Those eyes were boring into him now. It certainly wasn't a "Janeway glare," as the crew referred to it, since that was as good as a slap on the face. It was as if she wanted to peer into his mind and tease out every detail of his discoveries to date.
Icheb sighed deeply. "If you are inquiring if the weapon is ready, it is."
The captain looked quizzically at him and asked, "Are you calling yourself a weapon now?"
"No, Captain. You know that anyone can be a weapon if the serum I've developed is injected into their body and that person is later assimilated. However, I've been . . . tinkering with the genetics for a while now. In the latest version, the change will happen very rapidly. In minutes, even, rather than in days or weeks. Any drone in the same Borg vessel will begin to deteriorate almost as quickly as the one who injected the nanoprobes does."
"Good. Very good," the admiral mused, a satisfied look upon her face. The captain looked shocked. Obviously, neither Seven, the Doctor, nor Commander Tuvok had gotten around to telling the captain about his latest formulation of the serum. While he hadn't expected Seven or the Doctor to tell her, as Commander Tuvok had insisted it was his responsibility, Icheb was surprised that the ship's weapons expert had not yet done so. He'd know about this for weeks. It wasn't possible Commander Tuvok had forgotten to inform her, was it?
The captain broke this chain of thought when she inquired, "Icheb, I know you were also investigating whether or not your serum would affect other ships in the Collective. Do you have an answer to that question?"
"Perhaps," Icheb grudgingly admitted, "but I have no way to know without a test, and for that, we would need to be in a position for one Borg vessel to be close enough to another for the infection to spread. Although there may be many Borg vessels in and around the Trans-Warp Hub, I don't think that's the best place to go to perform testing protocols!"
"I agree!" the captain laughed grimly, and even the admiral chuckled, although that's exactly where she wanted Voyager to go.
Icheb was emboldened to explain further. "The neurolytic pathogen affects the Borg nervous system along the neural interlink frequency, which communicates the orders of the Queen throughout the Collective via the Viniculum in each ship. The pathogen creates a very subtle, initially undetectable vibration in the frequency. As the rate of vibration increases, it eventually becomes obvious, but by that time, it's too late stop its progression. The frequency reaches a level of distortion that creates chaos in the organism and, after a time, destroys the vessel itself. Since the neural interlink frequency connects all of the Borg, in theory, it would result in chaos throughout the Hive. It's difficult to tell, as I said, without testing. The only way the vibration's progress could be halted would be if the Queen destroyed every infected vessel - and she'd have to know it was happening at all before it affected her, too. We know she's capable of ruthlessly eradicating her own vessels and thousands of drones with little cause. She destroyed huge cubes and every drone on them when she was trying to stop a handful of Unimatrix Zero drones from breaking away from her control."
The captain pursed her lips and nodded slightly, acknowledging the truth of his observation, and then asked, "Do you think that's what happened to your Children's Collective Cube? That the Queen ordered all of the affected drones to destroy themselves?"
"I don't think so, Captain. It would have been much easier for her to explode the cube, and then you'd never have been able to rescue us. I think the pathogen my body creates caused the drones on our cube to lose the ability to communicate, and the vibration interfered with their functioning to such an extent that they died, or perhaps terminated themselves out of confusion. That would explain why our cube remained intact. By the time the Queen recognized she'd lost her connection to our drones and that she had to stop any Borg vessel from coming to investigate and catching the infection, it was too late for her to order our cube's destruction. She had to send a message ordering us to terminate themselves, a message we were unable to decrypt. However, if the vibration continued to progress more gradually, affecting the cube's mechanical systems, that could have caused it to explode once it reached a certain point of deterioration."
The admiral shook her head. "That does explain what happened. You have an excellent mind, Cadet. I don't think I'm breaking any of the Federation Temporal Police's rules by suggesting you will become a fine Starfleet officer eventually."
Icheb grinned with pleasure. "Really? What is my rank in your time, Admiral Janeway?"
The admiral's face suddenly turned to a stony mask. The blue eyes staring at Icheb became cold, yet Icheb didn't feel a rush of anger emanating from her. Her brows had pinched together, causing deep furrows to appear, and her lips were clasped grimly together, as if she were struggling to hold back words she would regret.
And suddenly, it was as if his ability to communicate subvocally was restored, not with other Borg like Seven or Mezoti, but with Admiral Kathryn Janeway. Icheb wasn't alive in her time. He didn't know how he knew this, and didn't know why he was also certain he'd never had the pleasure of reaching the Alpha Quadrant.
"Let me rephrase that, Admiral. What was my rank as of the day I died?"
The stony look disappeared in a flush of red. "The Temporal Police would get after me if I told you that, Cadet!" she said, apparently not realizing she'd confirmed Icheb's supposition by the way she'd phrased her response. Her demeanor quickly softened, and she added, "There's no point in me saying any more about it anyway, Icheb. That time stream was extinguished as soon as I exited the temporal rift and came aboard, since none of this happened when I was the captain of Voyager. It's all been changed. There's no point in telling any of this crew what happened to those who served with me."
Stung, Icheb contritely apologized, "I'm sorry if I was insubordinate, Admiral. I didn't mean to offend you."
Both versions of Kathryn Janeway chuckled at this comment. The admiral was the one who answered him. "Curiosity is not the same thing as insubordination, Cadet, at least, not most of the time. And you didn't offend me." She sighed deeply. "You just reminded me - as if I really needed it - of all those we lost during the additional years my Voyager traveled through the Delta Quadrant. That's why I came: to prevent those losses from occurring."
Icheb breathed more easily with their quick change of mood. He sensed the interview was coming to an end, and he had something else to say before it did. "Admiral, Captain, one more thing . . . I haven't administered the improved serum to myself yet, but just say the word and I will. If a 'sacrificial lamb' is needed to attack the Borg so we can use the Trans-Warp Hub, I offer myself." He stopped and swallowed deeply before adding, "That's why I was born, you understand. "
The captain gently replied, "Thank you, Cadet. Your offer is noted. I trust we won't need to take you up on it."
The admiral had turned away from Icheb as the captain was speaking. Thanks to his enhanced sense of hearing, he could hear her whisper, as if to herself, "I have another 'sacrificial lamb' in mind."
He saw the captain glance sharply at her older counterpart, at the same time she told Icheb, "Dismissed."
As he turned to leave the Ready Room, the admiral casually added, "I haven't had a chance to visit 'Borg Central' yet on this trip, Captain. You don't mind if I follow our young friend on his way home, do you?"
The captain cleared her throat, as if something was stuck in it, but when she spoke, her voice sounded the way it always did. "Of course, Admiral. Don't take too long, though. We'll need your expertise if we're to accomplish our mission."
The Admiral nodded agreement and, following closely on Icheb's heels, stepped out of the Ready Room door.
=/\=
The admiral smiled at him while they descended in the turbolift, but she didn't address him again until they reached their deck and began the short walk to Cargo Bay Two. At that, it was only to murmur a soft, "Borg Central," in tones Icheb associated with someone longing for an unattainable objective. The doors to the bay slid open. The admiral entered and circuited the space at a slow pace, her fingers lightly stroking the surfaces of storage containers Neelix had left behind him when he moved to the Talaxian colony. She caressed the console Seven and Icheb used whenever they worked in their quarters. Eventually, she ascended the platform to the regeneration alcoves, two of which glowed with the acid green, flickering light of Borg technology. The admiral stood in front of both for quite a while, for a much longer time than Icheb had anticipated. She seemed as intent at studying the cubicle Seven had always used as she did his.
When the admiral finally descended the steps and headed towards the door, Icheb was at a loss at what to say to her. He didn't dare ask her again about his rank at the time of his death, but at that point he really didn't need to. As before, without knowing exactly how, he knew he hadn't lived for very long. He might not have even reached adulthood. As she approached the door, however, she turned back to him and said, "In my timeline, Naomi named her first son after you."
So perhaps he had lived long enough to develop some sort of relationship with Naomi. He decided not to ask the admiral if they'd ever become lovers, or if they'd just continued to be very close friends. Even if Naomi and Icheb had enjoyed a romantic relationship, the admiral might not have known how physical it had actually been. As she'd already quite firmly informed him, that time stream had been obliterated. Perhaps in this new one Naomi would name her first son after someone else.
The admiral was still examining him closely, and here he was, standing in front of her, saying nothing at all. That wouldn't do. "Admiral, is there anything more I can do for you?" He offered, "Would you like me to accompany you to another location?"
She shook her head. "No, Ensign. I was simply remembering what a fine officer you turned out to be."
Had that just slipped out, or had she answered his earlier question in a way which shouldn't upset anyone monitoring temporal matters on Voyager at this moment in time? In fact, why was this moment in time occurring at all? Shouldn't the Federation Temporal Police have already swooped in to return the timeline to its original state? Yet here was a Kathryn Janeway from the future, apparently altering the past, without any visible attempts to stop her. What was going on here, anyway? Was this something that was meant to happen?
The admiral began to smile, in that crooked way the captain sometimes did. Before she left, he would risk one more query, or, perhaps, he would be better off simply stating it as a fact. "So, I guess I managed to graduate from the Academy."
Her smile broadened into a grin. "Yes, a very fine officer," was all she said, but her head bobbed slightly, in what Icheb took to be affirmation.
And then she slipped away.
=/\=