CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Sickbay, 0348 hours
Maren’s nervous fingers fumbled with the replicator control pad as she entered Icheb’s command codes to override the medical security lockout. The computer’s voice was ever-pleasant as it delivered the bad news: “Code not recognized.”
Pull yourself together, Maren, she chided herself in annoyance. You have to do this. She re-entered the code -- correctly, this time -- and the tools she needed materialized on the replicator tray in front of her. She immediately picked them up and headed for the drone.
Up close, she could see the woman’s face. Her heart pounded in her chest. I can’t do this. I can’t go through with this; it’s wrong, she thought in panic. Yes, you can, she quickly reassured herself. She’s still a drone, still dangerous, and Icheb won’t survive if you don’t.
Taking a deep breath, she carefully used the laser scalpel to cut into the mottled gray skin on the undamaged part of the cyborg’s lightly ridged forehead. She cursed her slightly trembling hands as she made the incision, which looked nothing like the perfect circles and lines she had seen Voyager’s Doctor cut. I guess sometimes it helps to be a hologram, she noted wryly.
She quickly completed the cortical node extraction and turned her attention to the next task, but when she saw that Icheb wasn’t where she needed him to be, she panicked. It was only then that she remembered he was gone. It wasn’t 2382, she wasn’t in a shuttle on the way to Risa, and Icheb wasn’t dying -- at least not imminently. She suddenly realized she was dreaming again.
She woke up with a start in her room in sickbay, her heart still pounding in her chest. Pull yourself together, Maren, she told herself, echoing her dream. You can’t fall apart right now.
She looked over at John, who had somehow managed to fall asleep in a visitor’s chair. His blond head rested at an awkward angle against the bulkhead, and one of the medics had finally taken pity on him and covered him in a thin, Starfleet-issue blanket. He looked completely exhausted, and Maren had a feeling his neck was going to be incredibly sore from sleeping in that strange position.
He had come to sickbay to apologize to her -- unnecessarily, Maren felt. Then Julian Bashir had interrupted them to deliver the news that Icheb was alive and had contacted the Tesseract. That Icheb had been accounted for was simultaneously an enormous relief to them both and a reminder that he was far from out of the woods, and the sheer emotional weight of it had been too much for Maren. Rather than the joy or worry she should have been feeling, she had suddenly just felt utterly exhausted.
As the emotional fatigue of the day -- augmented by painkillers and sedatives -- finally caught up to her, Maren had tried to convince John to go back to his own quarters and get some much-needed rest, but he had refused to leave, obviously still feeling guilty about walking out on her that afternoon. No matter how many times Maren reassured him that his anger had been justified, he still seemed to be bending over backward to be conciliatory. She got the feeling he simply didn’t want to be alone. It had been a difficult day for everyone, she realized. Shoving aside thoughts about both their kiss and the heated arguments they‘d had earlier that day, she wondered if anything would ever be the same again.
She picked up the PADD sitting on her tray table so she could check the time without asking the computer aloud and waking John up. 0349 hours. Less than fifteen hours to go until the captain would rendezvous with whoever was holding Icheb. The Borg resistance, she thought with apprehension. She wondered if these ‘resistance’ Borg knew they had captured a living weapon. She also wondered what the drones in the brig might be able to reveal about the situation.
Her mind started to wander, thinking of questions to ask the drones and the best way to word them, but at the same time, she felt tired and lightheaded. She was finding that actually bringing a coherent thought to completion was difficult, if not impossible. After a few unsuccessful minutes spent trying to focus, she finally closed her eyes and allowed the PADD she was holding to slip out of her fingers and onto the mattress beside her. Maybe tomorrow will be easier, she thought to herself, just before sleep overcame her once more.
*****
Sickbay, 0615 hours
John Quigley awoke to the sights and sounds of sickbay as Irina Marchenko shook his shoulder gently.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you sleep like the dead?” the Russian doctor asked him quietly as he blinked in confusion, then ran his hand down his face tiredly.
“I can’t say it’s a first,” John replied hoarsely. He winced as he sat up straight. His neck was killing him.
“I can give you something for that,” Irina assured him, in a voice just above a whisper. “It’s six-fifteen,” she added. “I’m sure you want to shower before Alpha shift, so I thought I’d come wake you up.” John nodded, yawning, then looked over at Maren, relieved to see her sound asleep.
“She’s doing fine,” Irina reassured him. She raised an accusatory eyebrow at John and added, “The night we launched, you did not tell me you had a girlfriend.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” John retorted, unable to hide his exasperation.
Irina looked disbelieving. “Whatever,” she said dismissively. “Just know for in the future, I don’t sleep with men who are attached. There are plenty of men on this ship who do not come with that kind of drama. I don’t like drama.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” John repeated irritably.
“As you say,” Irina conceded calmly, obviously humoring him. “In any case, I’m telling you she’s stable. I think we might even release her to quarters tomorrow. It will be a little while before she is one hundred percent, but you don’t need to sit vigil beside her like this. She will be all right. I would tell you if you needed to be here; I promise.”
John nodded slowly, still trying to shake off the fog of sleep. “Thanks,” he said sincerely. “Can you please hand me that PADD?” he requested, and Irina turned to see the device sitting next to Maren. She handed it over.
“Thanks,” John said again, and Irina nodded in reply. As she went about scanning her patient and making a few adjustments on the biobed controls, John entered a quick message into Maren’s PADD.
M -
Back after A shift, if you’re still here. Comm. if you need anything. Remember what I said last night -- be careful, OK? Still sorry, too.
-JQ
He quickly saved the message and set the PADD on the small tray table beside Maren’s bed. He hoped she would take the advice he had given her last night to heart, but he wasn’t optimistic. He looked at the sleeping engineer for a long moment before standing up, stretching, and walking out. He had a feeling it was going to be another long, difficult day.
*****
Large Conference Room, 0854 hours
Lieutenant Commander Ryzal arrived several minutes early for the scheduled senior staff briefing, cursing the artificial daylight as he did so. His species was nocturnal by nature, and he preferred to work Gamma shift, but his position as chief tactical officer of the Tesseract meant that he had to work artificial days more often than artificial nights. The environmental lighting system, designed to mimic the circadian rhythms of an average M-class world, worked to most of the crew’s advantage, but not his.
Normally, the Saurian bore this slight inconvenience stoically, but he was irritated to begin with, and this early briefing wasn’t helping. His most promising junior officer had gone missing for a few hours yesterday, disappearing after leading the security team to manage the Borg intrusion and only turning up again for the second half of his shift, disheveled and distracted. Ryzal had heard he was in sickbay with the chief engineer, but he hadn’t had a chance to talk to the younger man about any of it the previous afternoon. Both he and the lieutenant had been too busy running tactical analyses of the confrontation with the Borg and what apparently had been some sort of cloaked resistance ship.
As he waited for the meeting to begin, he looked around at the other early arrivals. Adrian Keller, the ship’s flight controller, sat clutching a mug full of something steaming, looking fairly well-rested. Beside him was the CMO, Julian Bashir, who looked extremely tired. The two friends were chatting quietly about the previous day’s events and the upcoming mission to rendezvous with the Borg resistance, and the doctor frequently paused to yawn or rub his eyes. Lieutenant Telek, the acting chief engineer, sat at the far end of the table intently studying a PADD, his blue face lined with fatigue and worry.
With a minute to spare before the meeting was scheduled to begin, the rest of the senior staff began to file in. Ryzal had long observed that most of the fleet had the on-time arrival down to an art form. He knew they thought it showed they were too busy to arrive early, but sufficiently dedicated to their duties to be prompt. Ryzal had never cared for such games. He could perform most of his duties from anywhere on the ship with the technology at his disposal, and he preferred to let his record speak for itself. Shipboard politics were not something he enjoyed at all.
Acting first officer Borux, Chief Science Officer T’Pring, and Chief Communications Officer Iden Nix all walked in together, no doubt coming straight from the bridge. Adele Oyugo was right behind them. Ryzal had learned in his twenty years as a security and tactical officer how to read the facial expressions of most humanoid species, and even a few non-humanoids. At this moment, his captain was an enigma, her visage perfectly neutral.
“Good morning,” she greeted her staff crisply. “By now, I’m sure all of you have heard that Commander Icheb contacted the Tesseract late last night. For now, he seems to be unharmed, and I’ll be leading an away mission to rendezvous with the ship he’s on this afternoon. Borux will be in command while I’m gone. The rest of you will be with me, except for Telek,” she said, glancing at the Andorian. “With O’Connor down for the count, I need you here manning engineering. I’ll be bringing Loren Daniels as our engineer on the Sol.” Telek nodded and made a note on his PADD.
“Captain,” Ryzal spoke up.
Adele looked at him. “Yes, Commander?”
“Given what we know of the tactical capabilities of the entity holding the first officer, I question the wisdom of putting the entire senior staff at risk in this way.”
Adele sighed. “The entire senior staff is at risk no matter where they are, given what we’ve observed. If I’m taking a Saber-class head-to-head with these Borg, I want my best people with me.”
“Then why don’t we take the Tesseract?” Iden interjected. Everyone turned to look at the Bolian woman. “Well, I mean, it’s a lot more tactically capable than … well, anything, really,” she said, blushing a deeper shade of blue. Iden could talk all day about communications, or make endless social conversation, but voicing proposals outside of her usual realm of expertise during staff meetings was not normally her style. She just really didn’t want to be on a tiny Saber-class, even an upgraded one like the Sol, if there was any chance they were going up against Borg, even mysterious resistance Borg -- or maybe even especially mysterious resistance Borg.
“There are hundreds of civilians on this ship,” Adele replied. “I’d rather not intentionally bring them into harm’s way.”
“So, get them off,” Iden answered back. “Put non-essential personnel and civilians on the Sol and Luna and send them somewhere safer, and take the Tesseract for first contact with the Resistance. Together those ships can carry about four hundred people. Not comfortably, but it’s only temporary. And they‘re fairly tactically capable, if they run into any trouble.”
“Iden’s suggestion is logical,” T’Pring said, earning her a shocked glance from Iden. T’Pring favored her colleague with a slightly elevated eyebrow. “I share your astonishment,” she informed the Bolian dryly.
Adrian Keller’s normally relaxed expression was gone, replaced by a look of anxious disapproval. Ryzal shared his trepidation. He knew the flight controller had family aboard, and so did he -- a wife and an infant daughter. He was less than thrilled about the prospect of sending them away, not just from him, but from the relative protection of the Tesseract. All the same, he realized that safety was an illusion, and becoming more so all the time. The truth was that what Iden Nix had proposed might well be the safest plan for them. Both the Borg Collective and the Borg Resistance -- whatever it was -- were now aware of the Tesseract, but they might not think to look for the Sol or the Luna. And even if they did, both auxiliary ships could be armed with transphasic torpedoes, in addition to the slipstream technology that should enable them to outrun just about any aggressor. Their smaller size also made them more maneuverable and easier to hide.
Reluctantly, Ryzal grunted his assent. “I agree, Lieutenant Nix’s proposal sounds reasonable, given the circumstances.” Adrian shot him a sharp glare from across the table, but held his tongue.
Adele appeared to think for a moment, then nodded. “I agree,” she said, “it’s a better plan than mine. Let’s get ready to do it.”
But yes, between me and CaptainSarine (and Gibraltar, too, he's got some cool ones!), the TBBS fanfic forum is now lousy with bloody spies. Julian has his own agenda, though. As for Adele ... well, she can't help but feel bad. Emotionally, she's been in a similar place to where Maren is, when she was about the same age, and she knows how much it hurts. Of course, she didn't compound her own problems by making questionable decisions at the time, like Maren is now. So she's not letting Maren off the hook ... just feeling like she could have handled their conversation better. 
I'm also intrigued by Section 31 -- I personally believe that it's wrong to do evil so that good may come of it, but it's one of those fascinating debates with so many interesting hypotheticals and good points on both sides. Plenty of fodder for the imagination to be found with a group like that. Julian, as we know from DS9, was sucked into the middle of it without really being given a choice, but always tried to maintain his integrity. He's an idealistic man, and a very smart one. Those things haven't changed in this story, though he's gotten older and less naive. Thanks for the review! I look forward to any further comments you want to make! 
I'm not confirming or denying anything, just because it's more fun that way ... but seriously ... Maren? The kitten in a den of wolves, I believe you called her? She would certainly be the last person I'd suspect ... but then, you write Olivia Juneau. So I can see where your mind would go there. We'll see what happens as things unfold! 
Hehe. I'll take it as a compliment if I could make you suspect either of them for a moment, though, after forty-four previous chapters of liking them just fine. Speaking of Adele ... yes, she's a captain. A particularly feeling, empathic one, maybe, but still a captain. She's grown used to calling the shots over the last six years. Today, everything was out of her hands. The only one who got to make any real decisions today was Maren (and maybe Icheb, but Adele doesn't know anything about that yet). However, as you noted, that all may be about to change. The ball may be back in her court. And regarding Icheb -- Wait and see! 
<---- And yes, Maren is in her own personal hell right now and it's showing up in her crazy dreams. Hopefully you're right and a bit of rest will do her good.
