Previously on Voyager.
- A montage showing the first time each character introduced themselves as they say their name, including Janeway, Tom, Cavit, Chakotay, Stadi, Tuvok. Neelix, Kes, B’Elanna, Kim, The Doctor, Samantha, Caretaker, Seska, Ayala, Carey, Hogan, Vorik, Suder, Jonas, Kullah, Barclay, Chell, Tuvix, Starling, Quinn, Q, Q, Seven of Nine, Namoi, Annorax , EMH Mark II, One, Doctor Chaotica, Megan Delanney, Jenny Delanny, Borg Queen(I), Celest, Lindsy Ballard, Ransom, Marla Gilmore, Boothby, Michael Sullivan, Icheb, The other kids… Others, all the little people in the uniform and the “big bads” who were dreadfully interesting.)
- Cut to Voyager traveling speedily though a transwarp conduit. There’s Borg following them.
5 years ago I’m told that I had at least 4 children with Kathryn Janeway. We don’t talk about it much, but I’ve seen her looking at me sometimes…
- Cut to Janeway sitting in her chair on the bridge seeming important.
She knows I made her tail curl all the way around. Literally she had a tail, we both did.
- Cut to humping Salamanders
- Cut to Voyager traveling speedily though a transwarp conduit. There’s Borg following them.
- Cut to Sarah Silverman eating McDonalds.
It’s also possible I might have left another baby Paris stranded in the 20th century, don’t scowl! She told me that she had the contraception all sorted out, but later, nearly 400 years later, I looked her up in the historical database for bragging rights, to see if she was famous, only to discover that the woman I had uncomfortably shared the backseat bench of a Vdub beetle Van with one romantic evening had had a daughter named Paris Eugenia Robinson born perhaps 8 months after our exciting adventure putting a stop to the dastard plots of an evil billionaire tycoon magnate.
- Cut to a black and white Captain Proton Adventure with that busty running after Tom.
Those are the only real loose ends that I am completely aware of, well except for the time Harry programmed Constance Goodheart to follow me around the Holodeck an entire afternoon screaming about how I had to marry her because she wasn’t going to raise our baby Al… Constance wanted to call it Neutron, Neutron Proton, she didn’t want to raise Neutron Proton alone while … But the most ardent piece of advice I can give to any one contemplating fatherhood,
.
- Cut to B’Elanna giving birth.
…Never, and I mean never, your life may depend on this, never tell a Klingon in labour to “Hold it in for another five minutes”
- B’Elanna breaks Toms nose. He’s screaming and there’s blood everywhere, she continues birthing their kid.
- Cut to Voyager traveling speedily though a transwarp conduit. There’s Borg following them.
…But, we were almost there, 63 years early, Earth was on the horizon, not all of us had made it, but I thought she might want our kid to be born at home, be an actual “Earthling” …O, I forgot about that time Kes got me drunk, trying to take my pants off whispering about some predestination paradox time travel thingy and how cute our grandchildren were… That little girl used to scare me terribly sometimes, but then, I do like that in a woman.
- Cut to Kes wearing men’s underwear (boxers with dozens of little Starfleet emblems on them.) on her head while hiking two bottles of 80 proof spirits in each hand above her adorable little head, and tragic hair cut, in the middle of what looks like a new years eve party with streamers balloons everywhere as well as even more drunk people.
Which is why I fell in love with this woman.
- Cut back to B’Elanna giving birth., with the breathing and sweating and the Klingon swearing.
She is the scariest woman I have ever met.
- Cut to Voyager traveling speedily though a transwarp conduit. There’s Borg following them.
And she’s having the first of my babies that I’m allowed to keep.
- The bridge of Voyager. Everyone is tense, they’re in the race of their lives with the devil herself on their asses.
Shields at %23.
Fire another spread of Torpedoes.
They’ll have no effect.
Shields at %21.
They’re just weighing us down. Fire all the torpedoes then start throwing shuttles at her next. We have to go
faster.
There will be no calculable increase in speed from…
- Janeway tosses a look at her Tactical Officer which says she is not in a mood to have her orders questioned no matter how unscientific they might be.
Tuvok if there’s half a nanosecond between us reaching safe harbour and getting assimilated again I’ll throw the kitchen sink at that Borg nitwit if I have to. We’re 5 minutes from Earth and all our friends, but they don’t know the worst bitch in the universe is right behind us with every intention to… I can’t believe I fell for her unbelievable naivety. The complete tragedy of the… She fooled us all! Fooled me. What was I thinking… “Discovering my humanity” ?? What unmitigated complete and utter bullsh…
I kissed her.
- What remains of that which can be seen of the bridge crew in the half light of emergency lighting which allows Voyager to travel an extra 20 kph faster than the thousands upon thousands of times the speed of light they already are velocophising at using some stolen Borg tech, “groan” dispassionately for the medium of patheticness that is Harry Kim’s woefully inarticulate love life.
In a dream. I only thought I loved her, but that can feel… She fooled all of us Captain. You can’t blame yourself.
Ship of fools. I’m so proud.
Shields at %17.
We’re not going to make it.
- Silence. Everyone knows that the only reason they’re still alive is that the Borg are playing with them. Have been for years since it’s obvious who the Queen has really been all along by now if you’re even skimming this text.
I’m about ready to ram that Cube, but I don’t even want to think about making a three-point turn at these speeds.
- No one laughs. But everyone had learnt to drive, planetside sometimes even, in Tom’s Ford Pickup they’d found floating near the former Briori homeworld 6 years ago. So they knew what she was talking about.
Ramming the Borg Cube would prove as ineffective a weapon as our weapons.
Shields?
%5.
Time to think outside the box. Outside the conduit. Where are we?
Half way inside the Romulan Star Empire.
Oh, I shouldn’t.
The Romulans are currently our allies.
That won’t last. Punch me a hole out of this thing into normal space and lets pay the Romulans a visit.
My child is not being Born Borg!
That’s unlikely B’Elanna, the Captain has pulled us through tougher ordeals than this, Captain Janeway will do fine this time too.
- She’s not swearing in English. But the Universal Translator is censoring her or it has unfortunate gaps in it’s lexicon.
.
She took half the (*&^ing crew when she turned on us. 70 people I used to eat with every night and every morning, transformed into all that metal and (*&(*&ing Plastic. They’re dead Tom! Tom, Tom! Tom, when they come for me and my baby, kill us. Cut our heads off, pulverize every atom, make sure they can’t bring us back, she hates me, she has always hated me, masking her 9*&^ing hatred with snide (*&^ing…
Push B’Elanna. There’s a good girl, almost done. Just push with a little more cohesiveness …Are you actually trying?
You (&^%ing well ()&()8ing push you dutronic )*(&ing Holo(&*&^graphapic P’tahk son of a *(&%!!
- Tom’s mouth is still painted red from after she broke his nose, which is running a little.
Honey. Just calm down. Concentrate on the baby. Nothing else matters.
She waited! Waited till he announced their engagement. She turned on us at an engagement party! The engagement Party! She waited all this time looking down her stupid perfect tinny little Borg nose laughing at me like I was an idiot. A short idiot. She’s not tall. She wears high heals! Even when she was a drone she worse heals! I thought it might be some sort of technology… But it isn’t!!! Borg )(*^^ing vanity…Poor arch support is not efficient you (*&ing fools! …She knew I used to have… That we used to keep each other warm, she took what was mine, he was mine first, chewing over my seconds like a Borg #(*&ing Cow, she probably wants you too, wants all my stuff…
- Tom briefly looks inadvertently guilty. Men are not the best at hiding these things.
She’s crazy jealous of me, she wants everything that is mine, she wants the baby, Tom she’s going to… What is she going to do to our baby? She’s going to make a hat out of our baby. I hate her perfect hair. IT NEVER MOVES!
Pay attention! You’re giving birth! Don’t get distracted!
- B’lanna punches the Doctor. She breaks a finger. He ignores it.
It’s my pregnancy and I’ll rant if I want to!
- B’Elanna puts her back in-behind her whatever mothers do to evict their children at the beginning.
- Icheb is in a cell in the Brig. He throws himself against the invisible force field blocking the threshold to the rest of the world which isn’t a jail cell.
I’m NOT working for her! I really am a Freed Drone! Let me out! Don’t you trust me? I really am part of the Voyager family! Someone! Anyone!
- With Half the crew already assimilated, there’s no one left for busy work like guarding a prisoner, or even feeding the prisoner. It had been two days since any one had fed him or let the boy regenerate. He collapses back into his cot devastated that of all the humanity roaming about this ship, no one had any faith in him to be just what he says he is, a little lost boy, hurt and abused and finding his way to a home in the company of friends and what he thought was his family. He’d actually been spat on before they put him in here “For his own safety”.
Please. Is any one listening? Is any one out there? Help me? Please… I’m your friend.
- Icheb starts crying again.
- In a Cube. Under the green tint of the Queens throne Room, her little Indian pet has been staked to the floor and gutted… Chakotay’s chest cavity has been opened carelessly, and his heart has been removed, but there’s enough technology embedded in him now, that he’s still breathing and for some reason still human, in spirit and thought if not flesh. The Queen is observing the “oh so one sided” battle on a holographic plane, and there in her little steel hand, like one of those squishy squeeze balls for tension release you can buy from the 99 cent or less store, or a Beanie Baby, she’s holding onto Chacotay’s freshly harvested heart, digging into it, gouging grooves and finger holds rinsing the pump out of its last vestibules of life.
Don’t you go breaking my heart.
I couldn’t if I tried.
I want that back.
This is mine.
- She raises it to eye level, while looking down at him, like as if it’s a trophy. Her victory is absolute.
You gave it to me.
Give it back.
- I assure you that it is dead. No more beats left in the tired old leathery thing.
There’s a principle at stake.
Indian Giver.
What? What! You… Are the Borg experimenting with humour?
Borg Humour is so far beyond your limited notion of good and evil you might as well be Vulcan. We once laid siege to a world and orbitally bombarded the dominant species into complete submission with just custard lemon cream pies.
That’s Borg Humour?
Drones snigger on the inside.
Why am I still alive?
Death is not an awfully great adventure. Wouldn’t you rather be Borg?
No. Been there. Done that. Not a fan.
Really, because I can keep you alive and sane for centuries… Or you could ask me very nicely if I wouldn’t mind assimilating you into the wonderful and exciting Borg Collective?
Never.
- the Queen takes a bite out of the heart in her hand as if it was a big juicy tomato Some of it dribbles down her chin.
I recall, once during a moment of passion that your heart wasn’t the only part of your body that deeded me the possession of Chakotay... Isn’t it fortunate that we turned off the part of your brain that acknowledges pain and pleasure, although right now, pleasure should be the least of your concerns… Unless, again of course, if you ask me very nicely.
You’re mad.
I told him he wouldn’t understand Borg humour, and he didn’t believe me.
- Marla Gilmore makes an entrance onto the bridge, all said and done, no matter anything else, when B’Elanna began her maternity leave, Marla was the only one with the chops and the Background to fill her shoes as Chief Engineer despite how many bitchy memos Vorik sent the Captain, till she yelled at him loudly to stop and broke his PADD over her knee.
There was no time to double check the math
This is criminal. The log will reflect that I strongly disagree with this course of action.
- They’d kept this plan off the coms for the last 5 minutes, she’d physically sent Tal Celest down to Engineering and they’d worked out the specifics about how to not get killed, oh, an actual target destination, fuck that, what was she, Spock? Nooooooo. “Not killed” is all Janeway wanted. Back in time and not killed.
Are we sure we’re not anywhere too important?
- Marla lifts the helmsman out of the seat, which at these speeds is only an insanely dangerous a thing to do as well as being quite inconsiderate that Ensign Kaplan always wanted to propel a Starship at a star and, well… They didn’t let him off the ship the last time, all the times they went back in time, he thought he’d finally get to be involved, be one of the big boys, but this murderer took his spot.
The edge of Sector 1385. Romulus, is 75 light years away. It’s an agricultural world. Barely populated. The Borg should ignore it. If they have plans for the rest of the Romulan Star Empire that’s their prerogative, but we are not offering up anything on a plate they can’t ignore or classify as inconsequential.”
Are we ready Gilmore?
Waiting for the word Captain.
The word is given. Time Warp.
- Exterior of Voyager racing towards a Romulan Sun and then slingshotting around it into the recesses of history.
- Something had gone very very wrong. Actual space was disturbed. The Doctor is a machine, his perception of reality is %100 accurate, %100 of the time. Reality itself would have to bend for him to experience all this which seemed like drug induced consciousness expanding experimentation the children are so fond off these days. Then B’Elanna, Tom and the baby all passed out.
Hello?
- The Doctor, shakes the mother a little to try and jostle her away from nod.
This no time for a nap. I can see the crown. Wake up!
That might be the smartest thing you’ve said today Mr. Paris.
- The Doctor thoroughly confused by the issue paces the sick bay a couple times before he comes up with the obvious plan.
This was always a forced situation to keep my patient humoured to begin with, natural birth in this day and age… but this is beyond the Joke. Computer, Emergency Medical Transport Paris Alpha Alpha Alpha.
- B”Elanna’s belly crumples like blighted old fruit.
The Doctor to Captain Janeway. I have a situation in Sickbay.
Captain Janeway?
Lieutenant Commander Tuvok? Anyone? The Doctor to anyone? Crap. It’s the telepathic picture plants again? This is just like my first day on the job. The more things change the more they stay the same.
No one. Oh dear. Well, we know who this is a job for.
- The Doctor shuts his eyes, and a change comes over his posture, and creeping from his ankles on up, his uniform begins to change, from Medical Blue into Command Red. Then like pimples before prom, four pips erect from his collar. The Emergency Command Hologram is ready to take names and hand out ass kickings.
My first duty is to my patient B’Elanna,
- He holds the sleeping Klingons hand,
- …but if there’s no one on the bridge, and the Borg are still after us… Then you and baby are dead either way.
- The Doctor puts her hand down gently and rushes off to save the day.
- Icheb felt funny. Temporal Narcosis is not the best way to get high. He has a wiggy dream about The Queen winding him up with a big clockwork key in his back and all the pretty colours. When he wakes up, the force field to his cell has failed. This is his chance. To do “what” however? How do you prove to people you’re not waiting till they’re most vulnerable to stick a knife in their back? Cautiously, Icheb leaves his cell. Everyone he passes sprawling in the corridors is still asleep, either his alien biology is more suited to what ever happened to everyone else or it’s the Borg in him. But either way the young man makes his way to the bridge too, to see if he can help. Hopefully no one will shoot him.
- Subtitles on Screen = Sector 1385. 2351.
- Aboard the bridge of the Romulan astrophysical Academy Vessel, two Romulans are right up in close to the forward screen not quite sure thy believe their peepers.
Did I oversleep? …Is that what I think it is?
That would definitely be your girlfriend.
She’s not my Girlfriend. I just respect her a great deal. She’s a fine Captain.
Well I suppose if they ran out of female primates at the zoo, a human would do in a pinch.
Hey. That’s enough. Quit it.
Touchy.
What’s Voyagers status?
She’s adrift.
Salvage?
We’re on the clock for the empire,
I guess that means we have to be noble… Chivalrous even?
Technically we always do.
But shouldn’t we be concerned about the larger picture?
The Empire’s interests?
Have you met the people running Romulus today?
The Praetor has a wet nurse.
They can’t keep a handle on the present, can you imagine those idiots sinking the finances of the empire into vast fleets to conquer the past? …Oh, And they’d quarter then 8th your girlfriend at the Circus Inifitus.
Look, just because I told you she had a nice smile, there’s no need to go on like this.
Unless of course that this Voyager ship is not at all from the future at all.
O?
I told you before; it could be some cunning Federation Ruse.
To what end? I’m more than ready to believe that they managed to squeeze their entire ship through a collapsing micro wormhole rather than that the people I met a week ago were in the slightest insincere about their predicament.
Are we going to be helpful?
I am not an evil man and I am not in the service of a merciless empire of cutthroats.
If I am hanged for this I will never forgive your grotes for getting me into this.
If treason weren’t fun, our government wouldn’t go to such great extents to prevent it.
You heard the Captain! Yeoman, get the humanitarian/disaster relief supplies queued and mounted on the zero gee forklifts, Valaris, set a course amid ships for Voyager. And someone make sure the gangway doesn’t have a hole in it before we try to dock. Tomalak, check in the sick bay to see if there’s any literature about humans other than how to kill them. We, gentle men are going to be angels of mercy to the dread enemy. DOES ANY ONE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT?
[Exterior of the Talvath scooting beside Voyager and docking.]
- The bridge of Voyager. Captain Doctor is running about making sure everything is right and everyone is right
Damn it I should be able to raise shields. I need some help.
- he pushes some buttons he really shouldn’t have. There’s an explosion and Marla’s arm is on fire. The Doctor puts it out by ripping of the front of his uniform off creating a blanket for batting the flames with. Once finished, he looks down at his naked chest…
Why on Earth did they put so much verve into my chest hair subroutines but leave my scalp as bald as a boiled egg... Where is the Borg? They should be beaming on board and… Computer, tactical proximity account?
There is one vessel within with weapons range.
How close?
It has docked.
Well. That’s pretty close. On screen, is it Borg?
Romulan.
Well, that’s not exactly worse. I’ve beaten them before. Although, the Romulans… They’re our friends now? Yay! We’re saved! Friendly Romulans, what an amazing universe. Just when you think you’re down and out, life deals you roses.
- Icheb blunders into the bridge out of a Jefferies Tube
Doctor!
Icheb. What are you doing here? …I don’t care. Go back to your cell. You’re just going to make everything worse if anyone sees you.
But Doctor I…
Just go, before anyone else wakes up and they shoot you.
- Icheb’s heart breaks. No one was ever going to trust him again. What was the point of continuing on in this life if he was ever going to be a pariah with the everyone remembering the stark image of The Queen flailing her assimilation nodules like a cat-of-nine-tails in each hand until ensign Wildman had managed to transport all the Borg into Space. What was the point? Icheb decided to go and kill himself, that would show them. Yeah that would really show them.
- The Captain Doctor opens a channel on the coms system.
Yes, this is Captain, um Proton… Of the Federation Starship Voyager. How may I be of Assistance?
You see what I never understood is why you never told Janeway how you felt? It was as plain as the Ink on your face?
Why won’t you let me die?
Because 15 minutes ago, Janeway vanished.
Heh, Good for her. Not so perfect now are you?
We are only as perfect as our last meal.
It’s obvious she found a nebula or something to hide in. Borg. Always such a strong start, but you’re crumby about the fine points to the Endgame, a couple individuals always seem to wriggle through your fingers no matter how Perfect your grasp is, because there is nothing as wily and cunning as sentient being terrified that a heartless monster… O. That was a poor choice in phrasing.
Stick to the animal parables. The method she used is inelegant and barbaric, but Janeway is running away from me through time. If she’s as heavy handed as usual, she could rip the fabric of history apart until it’s completely unrecognizable. I am suddenly half the villain your Captain is, Lieutenant Commander. You should join us and save the universe from Janeway. It’s exactly what a hero should do.
I still can’t believe how you came out.
How I revealed my true nature?
Through an animal parable.
Our Animal Parable. The tale of the Frog and the Scorpion
Well, that and it’s a fox and a scorpion. You butchered the story you insane bitch! A frog isn’t strong enough to carry a Scorpion across a river!
So, the wedding is off?
Now that you mention it. No it isn’t. So what if you’re a genocidal maniac hell bent on universal domination who killed me, I can’t think of anything in the world I’d rather do next than bond forever with you in holy matrimony till your death do we part, marry me. I dare you! What are you? Chicken?? You’re going to marry me and then I will become the Borg King!
You are delusional.
What’s a Delusion inside an illusion really amount to? You’re not fooling anyone. I’m already assimilated, none of this is real. I’m inside your unimatrix, a unimatrix and you’re just trying to scare me for some perverse reason, probably a perverse pleasure or to pump me for information… but you don’t need to pump me when you can be me, you’ve allowed me a sheath of individuality inside your grand collective of single motive and unified instinct. But that’s not enough for you any more is it? Isn’t being Borg all it’s cracked up to be? Do you miss it… You wanted me to think I was still in the real world because the connections you made on Voyager were real. So real that you are feeling pain for the lack of them… All the friendships you built. They meant something and now that it’s time to go back to being the boss of all this, you’re not sure where you belong and who you are, as if Anika Hanson wasn’t some poorly constructed imaginary spindoctored backstory to make us drop our guard… We got to you. We assimilated you into our collective, and no matter what you thought you had to do to be true to who you thought you were… The thought of no longer being human, of no longer being an individual any more hurts more than you thought possible. The Queen of the Borg, the embodiment of the Collective’s singularity wants to be an individual.
That is quite ridiculous. I am Borg.
We fucked like monkeys on Ledos for hours.
There was no technology. It was cold.
I bet that’s what you say to all the boys.
I am Borg. This no longer amuses us.
I could still love you. Despite everything. We could still be together as individuals. We could have a future Anika.
Your future is as a Drone cleaning the waste recycling tanks. If I must be honest, you already are.
Why deny the feelings that are trying to break out of your chest and…
- Chakotay looks down fretfully at his own cracked open and spooned out torso with a grimace of consternation slooged by the over burdening forces of irony assembled at the gates of his comprehension like Visigoths.
Oh my, I have got to think before I talk.
- The Queen giggles. Sniggers. You know.
- Tom wakes up to find a Romulan scanning his baby in some sort of bactatank incubator fish bowl with some sort of evil dubious Romulan tricorder His first instincts are not the most shining examples of the species character
Get away from my daughter you green-blooded animal!
- Tom Jumps at the alien, who is 3 times faster and 5 times stronger than any human not born in a test tube, who is carefully caught by his little human neck and left suspended in the air with his feet dangling left with no grounding to speak of
I am undercrewman Tomalak of the Romulan Astrophysical Academy serving aboard the imperial Science vessel Talvath. I am a registered nurse among other talents. We offered your crew assistance one week ago, and do so again, which has been accepted by your Captain.
Huh?
Human, I am under orders I don’t really care for,
not to kill you, so please don’t try my patience.
The Talvath?
Yes.
The mirowormhole?
Yes.
So this is… Stardate 48579.4?
It was last week.
Bt that was seven years ago.
Well now that is interesting.
- Hours later. In Janeway’s ready room. Telek and Janeway are in conference. Telek is trying coffee for the first time in his life. He doesn’t seem to be all that impressed.
Seven years Captain, that is incredible. You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you had just accepted my invitation to accept the protection of the Romulan Star Empire a week ago. Was it a hard road?
It’s always a hard road, but the journey is as important as the destination. So many good people died.
My palm scanner says that this beverage has dangerous levels of caffeine in it. Actually, I think the correct translation into Terran is “stupidly dangerous” levels of caffeine. I’ve already drunk enough to keep me awake for three days; I don’t think I should finish the cup…
Live a little, sleep is for the weak.
You are an exceptional woman.
Thank you, but it’s just something my grandfather used to say.
No, I am quite serious. 75 thousand light years, holding your crew and ship together against all manner of obstacle. These Borg you’ve described. But you have persevered. It’s truly a magnificent and inspirational story. There is much my people could learn from a person as industrious and if I am to believe half the other stories I have heard your crew exchanging with mine as they put Voyager back together from after your recent struggles… You are a truly exceptional woman.
I had to muddle through. There was no choice. The alternative was unthinkable.
You are an exceptional woman.
You’ve already said that.
I must confess, I have been thinking about you a lot. Almost constantly since we met last week.
The story of Voyagers odyssey has consumed the minds of a few rabid poets on a couple alien worlds out there.
No, I mean, I have been thinking about “you”. I have been thinking about you constantly for the last week. There is no questioning my mind that I am falling in love with you.
O.
You are an exceptional woman.
I’m flattered. I really am. I’m…
Yes?
You’re not expecting sex in exchange for all the help you’re giving us to climb out of this pickle?
No. Of course not… No.
Good.
Unless you feel so inclined, because you might have some human customs, which could pleasantly surprise me I am unaware of?
No, I would not like to pleasantly surprise you.
That’s fine. Although.
Although what?
Although it would make me very happy if I was allowed to court you… Kathryn.
Court me?
Woo you.
Woo me?
Exactly. You are the most beautiful woman I have met in my entire life and I have already been fool enough to lose you forever once, and I am not going to let fate shortchange me again now that we are finally…
You are pulling my leg?
I am not touching any part of your
body.
I know for a fact that you said you had a wife.
I have four wives.
Four (Gasp) wives.
And any Romulan who cannot support more Mistresses than he has wives is no Romulan at all, as
my grandfather used to say.
You want me as your mistress?
Well if I took you as my wife, I’d have to get two more mistresses. We have to be practical about these things, there’s hardly enough of me to go around as it is.
I am not having this conversation.
All I need you to know is that I am open to possibilities, and that given half the chance I will try to impress you and impress upon you that I am a good man who is worth loving back
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaayy …Right. You know I’m 14 years old? That has to be illegal even on Romulus.
- The intercom chirps. It’s the Doctor.
The Doctor to Captain Janeway.
Yes, Doctor?
Icheb is dead. He killed himself.
- The sick bay. B’Elanna is in a morning dress, but still bedridden enough by the last couple hours from squeezing out that little miracle. Tom is holding the baby up in the air like at the beginning of the Lion King because he’s proud of her, ridges and all.
Look at the little Romulan we made Lanna! Isn’t she precious! We could send away for the paper work as early as tomorrow to confirm her Romulan Citizen Ship. She could grow up to be Proconsul!
My girl is NOT a Romulan. It’s bad enough I bred with a human, my mother is never going to forgive me.
You’re mother bred with a human, and you are half human.
And do you think that maniac forgave or let either one of us forget?
What?
It’s called self-loathing honey.
We should set your mother up with my father.
That would make us brother and sister.
Uh. That would be bad… Though this is where she was born, in Romulan space, how about we call her Romula?
Over your dead body.
That’s not exactly how that expression goes.
We’re naming her after my mother Miral so there’s half a chance she won’t drown our girl in her own bath water.
Lanna… This is a time for celebration. Happiness. We’re not dead. The Borg Queen used this ship as a peitre dish for 3 years and then just as about when she was finally going to kill all of us… Hey presto, the Captains a genius and we’re alive! So what’s wrong sweetie?
Romulans.
You don’t like the Romulans?
Yes. That’s it. I don’t like Romulans. Look at the damn forehead. I’m a Klingon and it’s only 5 years since the massacre at Khitomer, which is my mother talking, and I just hate it when my mothers words come out of my mouth, but what I really find detestable is that they’re here. All over My ship. With their sticky green little fingers pulling my ship apart,
my engine… That should be me out there putting My ship back together again, I am after all the bloody chief engineer!
Romulans don’t have green fingers, they only have green blood. Of course, if they did, that would make them better botanists than engineers… Please smile.
No.
B’Elanna, I’m scared. You have to…
You haven’t spent as much time with Vorik as I have. His sweat is green. This light emerald sheen sparkle, which eventually builds up into a green paste he cakes engineering with like he’s some leprechaun with a paint roller, I swear if I didn’t make those Equinox 5 people scrub everything down after he goes off duty shift, every time after he goes off his duty shift engineering would seem as if it was built in the middle of a French hedge maze.
It’s can’t be that bad. I spend all day with Tuvok and I have never noticed it seem like…
But there’s dozens of them! And only emotional people really really sweat, so each one of these Romulans are dozens of times more slimy than Vorik and then there’s three dozen more of them than I’m used to tolerating and THEY”RE ALL TOUCING MY (*&ing ENGINE!!!!
They’re not that bad.
They’re not that bad? They’re Romulans Tom. By definition, Romulans are bad.
I’ve been talking to some of the Romulans. A couple of them are actually quite cool.
Cool? Did you just say that the Romulans are cool? Cool Romulans? What next? Vegetarian Gorn?
You’re acting insane.
Did you just call me insane?
No! No… That is not what I meant.
- The late Icheb’s cell. Tuvok, the Doctor, back in his regular blue togs, and the Captain are examining the scene. The corpse is still on the floor, there’s writing on the wall, painted in orange blood using his opening arteries in his wrists(Just like humans!) as marker pens he wrote the briefest suicide note in really large clearly eligible block lettering… “I AM NOT A TRAITOR.”
This is terrible. Are we sure it was a suicide… There are a lot of Romulans on board
Most certainly. He did this to himself.
Simply Tragic
His liberty was a danger to us all. Even if he believed that he was not a Borg loyalist, Icheb might have been a sleeper drone awaiting a trigger to turn on us all.
We’ve all been Borg.
**Hrumph!**
Don’t look so innocent Doctor, she was inside your program constantly. The Queen could have done anything to you. And because of that some time soon you could do anything to us. God, by that rationale, the entire ship is a liability. We’re still finding Cardassian deathtraps left behind by Seska… God knows what the Queen has incubating in the bosom of my ship for some fateful day when we least expect it.
We are all compromised, but I did believe that whatever misgivings we had towards Icheb, they would pass.
Sleeper agents, Trojan programs, plague, time bombs. We must agree that we shouldn’t have been able to escape. Hell, we shouldn’t have been able to survive any encounter with the Borg… But really there is only one reason that we are going to get home and that is because the Borg Queen has peppered us into the prime ingrediant to facilitate some fiendish endgame where the human race will finally be assimilated… And even that doesn’t make sense. We don’t know what she wants us to do, and we don’t how to second-guess her… We’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t.
Captain. We must return to the present and save the Earth. We cannot risk polluting the timeline much further than we already have.
Another hour and these Romulans will be able to build their own Intrepid Class Starship, that is if they haven’t already hacked into the historical database or lifted any stray tech manuals laying around Engineering, and we haven’t yet vanished in a puff of illogical discontinuity. This is all either supposed to happen or we’re not going to be eaten by any paradox we’re responsible for.
I thought time travel gave you a headache?
I read a book. Time Travel for idiots. There’s no reason you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Captain we must return to the present.
We can’t beat her in a fair fight, and if we go back as we are, it will not be a fair fight. The Borg are frugal. Tom would call them a cheap date. Haven’t you ever wondered why a thousand drones don’t just set course for sector Zero Zero One?
I believe they claim that it is an inefficient use of resources.
Exactly. She wants us to assimlate Earth for her, because the Borg Queen is too lazy to do it her self, so we’re staying. I don’t know if we’re staying in Romulan Space, but if it takes 25 years and that’s how much time we have to get our crap together before we do have to save the Earth from the blonde liar, we are going to be adequately prepared for her with exactly what we’ll need to take apart the entire Borg Collective as completely as mathematically possible because I am sick to death of half measures.
Captain. We must return to the present. I will relieve you of command if I have to… The integrity of the timeline is paramount.
Doctor would you please restrain Mr. Tuvok as Painlessly as possible.
- There’s a worried look on the Doctors face, but only because of that he’s not quite sure what’s going on, but he’s functionally 7 times stronger than Tuvok.
I love you like a brother, and I even stood in for your wife once when it couldn’t be avoided, but these are not Tuvok’s thoughts and this is not how Tuvok would express these thoughts if he did have them. She’s inside your brain Tuvok. She could be inside all of us, but you’re not passing for yourself anymore. We cannot go home. And you are not leaving this cell till we can figure out how to make you better. Do you understand what I am saying?
How many more of us have been compromised?
- The Vulcans brain switches off and he goes limp in the Doctors arms.
We are so screwed.
[Earth near orbit. 12 Borg Cubes descend on the Earth like locusts. Orbital weapons platforms fire like mental knocking chunks off the invaders to who knows how much effect?]
- Subtitle = Present Day. 2377.
[Cut back to the unimatrix, which appears to be the Queens throne room observing the battle.]
So let’s get this straight? After murdering billions of people to assimilate trillions, you are offering me the opportunity to become your wife
IF I disconnect and deconstruct the Borg Collective? And just so I’m absolutely sure about what you’re putting on the table, you want to resign your “faux-Commission” from Starfleet and become an herb farmer on some backward reclusive Luddite territory, which used to be the Cardassian Demilitarized Zone?
[Cut to near Earth orbit, 15 Defiant Class Starships working in unison fell a Borg Sphere. Cut back to the Queen.]
Exactly what you already agreed to once.
[Cut to A Cube cutting through two galaxy Class Starships and a Steamrunner with a single continuous beam of death. Cut back to the Queen.]
The Wife of a herb former, or the Queen of the Borg? Now that’s a tough choice?
It’s a very simple choice from a human perspective.
[Cut to the orbital bombardment of the moon. New Berlin is Fragged. Cut back to the Queen.]
Impudent ridiculous human. You are small.
What’s so great about being big?
[Cut to a near Earth orbit a Cube is slicing an Ambassador Class Star Ship into usable sections, and tractoring all the crew that fall out for assimilation. Cut back to the Queen.]
Survival.
Anika.
[Cut to near Earth orbit, the Borg devastate a Sovereign Class star Ship, chunks of it fly randomly into space skewering an intrepid Class Vessel and a Defiant Class Starship which then blow the hell up. Cut back to the Queen.]
The Borg will survive the end of the Universe. All this flesh and metal is nothing. Tools. We exist as thought. The only substance capable of surviving entropy. That is what we are all about.
You’re a lifeboat?
We only have 100 trillion years to prefect, to refine the process; Humanity and the technology and philosophy of the Carth might hold some ineffable nuance to make our collective ambition possible.
[Cut to near Earth orbit, aboard a cube, thousands of Borg start dying form the application of a clumsily delivered biogenic weapon in the corpse of an ensign they had planned to assimilate. Cut back to the Queen.]
Wait… That’s what this is about? What it’s really about? You’ve been destroying species fro the last 700 years so that sometime, infinitely down the road and a couple steps further there will some recorded reflection of aspects of people you’ve murdered for whatever passes for life in the next universe to… To what? Learn from?
No. The journey must continue. The next universe after this will be different and to escape it into the next will require a new procedure as the definition of perfection redefines itself. We cannot stop Charles. We must continue. Because from time to time there will be a dead universe without life in it… If a universe dies while it is barren and infertile it’s all together possible that a new universe will not rise to replace the fallen.
[Cut to Paris France Earth. Paris is gutted to the bedrock with an excavation tractor beam. Cut back to the Queen.]
So, you’re turning me down?
We are already one. Your biological distinctiveness enhances the Perfection of the Borg. You are Borg and have been for hours. Soon, you will think as I do utterly your individuality has almost vanished running away into itself smaller and smaller. This conversation is the sound of your consciousness dying.
[Cut to near Earth Orbit. All the remaining Cubes begin Harvest the technology and population of Earth. A few Starships hoik up to ramming speed and try to give them what for, but hey? Did you know that resistance was futile?]
Do you understand that your body, and half the meat on Voyager are drones staffing a series of cubes even now laying the final siege on the planet Earth? This is mans final hour.
- Of course it’s at this point that a thousand Romulan Warbirds pop their warp bubbles entering the combat theatre of Normal Space flanking the now relatively tiny Borg armada and open fire with some truly devastating weapons. Cut back to the Queen.
Oooh… Shi-
- Aboard the Romulan Warbird “Janeway’s Fist”. An graying Asian male I his early 50s adorned in the typical Romulan military garb of this era, is sitting comfortably in the centre, seat a beautiful woman, his yeomen, with easily described as muted head ridges, and tresseled with the brightest blonde hair that people can have with out pouring the colour out of a bottle, stands beside him.
- Cut to near Earth orbit where 980 Romulan warbirds are decimating the 8 Borg Cubes still functional. Cut back to Janeway’s Fist’s bridge.
This is Rear Admiral H’Rold Kim aboard the Warbird Janeway’s First seconded to the joint Imperial Romulan Navy/Voyager Initiative Task Force, to the United Earth Federated States Government and the Untied Federation of Planets Seat. We are apprised of your tactical situation and have the matter in hand. Kim out.
- Cut to near Earth orbit where 800 Romulan Warbirds are decimating the Half dozen Borg Cubes still functional. Cut back to Janeway’s Fist’s bridge.
Sir, we’re scary for about another 4 minutes until those cubes adapt to the randomized frequencies of our disrupter fire.
Don’t worry. We’ve had since the day you were born to figure out how to do this right
But when push comes to shove, right now everything is relying on my father being on time and not being a fool.
Just because he couldn’t make his marriage to your mother work, it doesn’t mean Tom is incompetent. I wouldn’t have selected him for this aspect of the mission if he weren’t the best pilot I’ve ever met in my life on either side of the Neutral Zone.
- Cut to near Earth orbit where 400 Romulan warbirds are decimating the 3 Borg Cubes still functional. Cut back to Janeway’s Fist’s bridge.
He can steer a ship. Anyone can. He’s always made such a big deal about it. That man is a relentless motor head. But that’s not what I’m worried about. It’s his ability to read a clock. That man has no idea what the word “prompt” means. We were always budging into the movie theatres or the games late throughout m… He has two minutes to get his lunchbox together before we’re all dead.
- Cut to near Earth orbit where 200 Romulan warbirds are beginning to lose making any headway against the last Borg Cube still fully functional. It’s adapted to the complete destructive resources of the Romulan Flotilla. Cut back to Janeway’s Fist’s bridge.
Crap. One left. We were so close. C’mon Tommy…
We’re dead.
- Cut to near Earth orbit where 50 Romulan Warbirds decimate the last Borg Cube as it’s shields become non operative and the usually terrifying boxy starship loses power and et all any sense of purpose. Cut back to Janeway’s Fist’s bridge.
See. That’s your dad!
We didn’t have to lose a thousand ships to get this job done. The Doctor has been beside himself for months thinking about the mass slaughter of all the Emergency Command Hologram backups we were going to lose in this enterprise if we achieved an acceptable win/loss ratio. Have you ever been minding you business and he starts reciting, “Photons be Free” and then continues to follow you for 7 hours until the recitation is complete. Nonviolent civil protest be damned, after a night of that, I just want him to pick up a disrupter and do me in.
We’ve all been there Miral.
We’ve saved the day. We should go down and get a medal or something. That’s my home down there. Earth. I ..
Captain Janeway’s last order before she died. None of are to ever set foot on Earth. It’s dangerous enough getting this close. Any one of us could be part of some scary Borg plot final solution. Maybe we just destroy the Earth rathe
The next day true to his word the Caretaker returns them back to the Alpha Quadrant. Janeway and Chacotay don't work out, go their separate ways, as do 7 of 9 and the Doctor that one doesn't work out either, when they discover neither of them has any genitalia 
