Chains Around My Heart
Part 3
by Kimmi
Warnings and disclaimers in Part 1
Many thanks to Rebelgirl for the excellent beta’ing.
A/N: Again please excuse the technobabble, I suck I know. No
rotten tomatoes please.
As always, for Adi. Cause she stood by me when I needed a friend, Luvs ya
Tator.
Part 3
B’Elanna vaguely heard what was going on around her. Shouts of, ‘evasive
manoeuvres’, ‘damage report’, ‘enemy is breaking off attack’ all managed
to some how make their way past the blood rushing loudly through her ears.
The only thought in her head however was; ‘Oh Gods, please don’t let her
die. I couldn’t take it if she died.’
Harry Kim glanced up from the damage reports that were coming in to see his
friend cradling Seven’s head as her long, lithe body jerked and convulsed.
He immediately broke off what he was doing and began entering commands for
a site-to-site transport to sickbay. As the glittering lights signalled
that the beam had them, he saw B’Elanna look up and they locked gazes for
a brief second. What he saw in her eyes at that moment made him certain
that if the ex-drone didn’t make it, he would be losing two friends.
B’Elanna tore her eyes away from Seven as a familiar tingling sensation washed
over her and she realized they were being transported. She tried to
give Harry a grateful look but she just couldn’t seem to make her face obey
her. She felt like she couldn’t breathe; felt like her hearts were
going to rip their way out of her chest; felt as if the universe had just
imploded. In short, B’Elanna felt like she was going to die.
As the bridge disappeared and was replaced with sickbay, the Klingon had
to force down the scream clawing its way out of her throat. She had
to be strong now, for Seven. She had to help the Doctor save the ex-drone.
She had to keep it together long enough to make sure the blonde survived.
She just didn’t know if that was going to be possible without losing her
mind.
The second the beam released them, B’Elanna was on her feet, straining to
lift the quivering body in her atrophied arms to the closest bio-bed, all
the while yelling for the EMH to come and help her. She heard rather
than saw the Doctor rush out of his office and to her side; she refused to
look away from the contorting face.
The Doctor was more than a little surprised to see B’Elanna in sickbay; she
had refused to come in since she had been released right after the accident.
Taking one look at the figure on the bio-bed however drove all thoughts out
of his sub-routines except for his concern for his patient. “Lieutenant,
what happened?”
B’Elanna did her best to tell the doctor everything she could remember of
what Seven had told the bridge crew about her assailants. In the end,
she realized that she didn’t know much and what she did know wasn’t much
help. All they had to go on was the fact that the ex-drone had said
the J’kozyn reprogrammed Borg nanoprobes. She hadn’t given any specific
information about how they modified the probes or any way to overcome the
tampering. All she had said was that it killed an entire Cube in three
days.
“We have three days at the most. Please Doctor you have to help her,”
B’Elanna choked out after finishing her narrative of the conversation on
the bridge. Running her eyes over the shaking form on the bio-bed,
the Klingon swallowed a whimper as the sight once again tore at her hearts.
“Is there anything you can give her to stop the seizures?”
The Doctor ran the tricorder back along the tall figure to double-check his
first findings. “These are not seizures that we are seeing, not yet
anyway. The twitching is a result of the small electric pulses the
nanoprobes in her muscles are giving off as they attack each other.
From what I can tell there doesn’t seem to be any of the probes in her brain
at the moment, they seem to be concentrated in her muscles and connective
tissues. That won’t last I’m afraid. If this weapon’s main objective
is to kill Borg, then they will certainly move into the brain and the cerebral
cortex at some point. I think they concentrate in the muscles first
to weaken the drone sufficiently so that even if they wanted to they wouldn’t
be able to move to counter-act the effects if they found a way to do so.
Of course it’s all conjecture, I don’t have enough information.”
B’Elanna realized that the Doctor had stopped speaking to her some time ago
and was merely thinking out loud. He seemed to have forgotten that
she was even there as he rushed around the table and took readings with various
different instruments. She tried to stay out of his way, but
some unnamed need kept propelling her forward. She quickly gave up
trying to fight the feeling that she should maintain physical contact with
the ex-drone and moved swiftly back to her side, grasping one of the twitching
hands in her own.
The Klingon watched silently as the Doctor continued with his examination,
ignoring her so completely that she thought he might have forgotten she was
there at all. His photonic hands flew faster than she could follow
over the controls of the bio-bed, trying to stabilize Seven.
Time seemed to blur as she stood there, one moment bleeding into the next,
indistinguishable and surreal to her terror-soaked mind. B’Elanna would
never be able to say later if she had watched the blonde writhe in pain for
minutes or days. She was lost in an eternity of fear when a warm hand
on her shoulder pulled her sharply back to reality. She turned her
head slowly, trying to keep Seven in sight for as long as possible.
When she finally pulled her gaze away from her friend she was almost nose-to-nose
with the stoic face of the captain.
Janeway’s stony command mask held for three long seconds before crumbling
in the face of the sheer despair and fear in her chief engineer’s eyes. All
thoughts of keeping her distance from her crew, of maintaining professional
distance evaporated in the overwhelming hopelessness directed at her.
B’Elanna rapidly blinked back hot tears as the captain’s face suddenly became
a mirror of her own. But then she lost any scrap of control she had
left when the auburn haired woman opened her arms and silently invited her
in, offering comfort and respite for a few precious moments.
B’Elanna wept freely onto the red-clad shoulder of her friend and mentor.
She allowed the diminutive woman to do something that she had only let Seven
do, see her cry. She didn’t care if it made her look weak, she was
so brittle that she knew if she didn’t accept the hand she was being offered
she might just break.
Kathryn Janeway knew she was being given a precious gift, and she vowed to
do everything in her power to be worthy of it. When she felt the engineer’s
breathing return to something resembling normal, she pulled back to look
into B’Elanna’s red-rimmed eyes. “We are going to do everything in
our power to help her B’Elanna, you have to believe that. I personally
will not rest until she is out of danger and on the road to recovery.”
The hybrid nodded her head and used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe her face.
“I know that Captain, and you can believe that I won’t stop until she’s back
on her feet again and I have the hearts of every one of those gutless P’taqs
hanging from my belt. I will bathe in their blood and carve their bones
into pins for Seven to wear in her hair. I will flay them alive and
use their skins to make…
“STOP!” Janeway had heard similar boasts from Klingons before, they
had honed boasting into an art-form, but at this moment just the thought
of more violence, against anyone, was making her physically ill. She
wanted revenge for what had been done to Seven just as much as B’Elanna did,
but she knew they were out gunned and out classed where the J’kozyn were
concerned. The race was so much more advanced than they were, technologically
speaking, that they would never have a snowball’s chance in hell of inflecting
any amount of damage to them.
Taking a deep breath she tried to wipe the images out of her mind and steady
herself so that she could calm the angry woman in front of her. “B’Elanna,
I know you want revenge but now isn’t the time for it. Right now we
need to concentrate on helping Seven. From what she told us, we have
three days at the most to find a solution.”
Janeway paused when she saw anger burning in the deep brown eyes of the younger
woman. Putting her hand on a rigid shoulder, she gave it squeeze to
let its owner know that she was on her side. “I know this isn’t easy
for you, and I know what you’re going though, but…
Torres angrily threw off the hand’s light grip and spun away from her commanding
officer. “You don’t know ANYTHING! How could you know what I’m
going through?” She began to pace trying to stay as far away from the captain
as possible, not trusting herself not to throttle the woman.
“You didn’t lose a child, a husband, all your hopes and dreams, your will
to live then to suddenly find the one person that could help you get all
that back. Someone that could drag you up from the bottomless pit you
had fallen into, someone that really knew what you were going through and
knew how to make you want to live again. Someone that would sacrifice
their own health to make sure you ate and slept and bathed. You didn’t
find the one person that cared more about you than they did themselves.
You didn’t finally find your soul mate, just to have her ripped away from
you the moment you realized it. So tell me Captain, how exactly is
it that you know what I’m going through?” B’Elanna stopped where she
was and sank to the floor, all her anger draining away as fresh tears streamed
down her face.
Kathryn could only stare dumbfounded at her chief engineer. She knew
that the two women had gotten incredibly close since the accident, but she
had no idea that B’Elanna’s feelings had come so far. From the moment
the ex-drone had come onboard the hybrid had openly displayed her mistrust
and dislike of her. Now she was proclaiming Seven of Nine to be her
soul-mate.
Janeway shook her head slightly at this strange turn of events. She
never would have seen it coming and frankly it had her a little worried.
She could only hope that what B’Elanna was feeling was real and not just
her grasping at straws. If she truly loved Seven then she had no doubt
that the two women would be happy together, but if she was simply transferring
her need for love and security then both of them were going to get terribly
hurt. She decided that they would just have to cross that bridge when
they came to it. Right now she had to get the woman calmed down and
get her focused on saving Seven’s life.
She moved slowly toward B’Elanna, trying to make sure she didn’t look in
any way threatening. The last thing she needed was for the Klingon
to mistake her intentions as being hostile and attack her, because in her
state of mind B’Elanna could very well hurt or kill someone and not even
be aware of it.
Kathryn stopped in front of the distraught woman and carefully knelt down
with her hands out and palms up. She wanted to reach out and touch
her but knew that at this point B’Elanna wouldn’t allow it, she was already
growling warningly in the back of her throat. Once she was on the other
woman’s level she started speaking softly and soothingly, knowing that she
had to treat her like a wounded animal at this point if she wanted both of
them to come out of this unscathed.
“You’re right B’Elanna, I don’t know exactly what you are going through,
but I do have a pretty good idea. I lost half my crew when the Caretaker
ripped us out of the Alpha Quadrant. I felt every one of those deaths
intensely. I lost friends I had known for years as well as young men
and women fresh out of the Academy. I lost a piece of myself with each
of those deaths, and there have been so many more since then. So I
may not have gone through the same things you have been through but trust
me when I say I know precisely what you are feeling. And I know how
I would feel if something ever happened to you or Seven. I really shouldn’t
be telling you this, I had resolved myself long ago to not let my feelings
get in the way of being your commanding officer but I think you need to know
this.” She paused to make sure she had the Klingon’s full attention.
Seeing that two liquid brown eyes were focused firmly on her now she continued
in the same soothing tone. “You and Seven are like daughters to me.
I have given the both of you far and away more headway and more second and
third chances than I have the entirety of the rest of the crew. Believe
me when I tell you there were times I wanted to strangle the both of you
for your stubbornness alone and I won’t even mention the pigheadedness, arrogance
and childishness you have both displayed.
I thought that if you could see past your very few differences you
would be able to see how very much you have in common with each other, and
you would put everything behind you and be friends. Because I love
you both and God help me I wanted you two to be friends not for you but for
me, I wanted some small semblance of a family. Why do you think I constantly
threw you two together? And it was finally working; you two were actually
being civil to each other and beginning to get along. And then the accident…
and you would only let her in…”
“I love her Kathryn.” B’Elanna interrupted her, finally calming down
enough to hear what the captain was saying. “I think I always did,
but I couldn’t allow myself to see it. At first it was because I was
intimidated by her, by her beauty and intelligence and I was a little jealous
of the way you gave her preferential treatment. Then later, I was involved
with him and I was trying to fool myself that I was happy and by then I had
been so incredibly horrid to her that I didn’t think I would ever have the
chance to even be her friend, much less anything else.”
B’Elanna angrily swiped at the tears rolling freely down her face, she couldn’t
believe that she had broken down in front of the older woman twice now.
“It took a horrible accident and her stubbornness for me to open my eyes
and now I see what was there the whole time. I can’t live without her,
I love her and if she dies I won’t be far behind her.”
If either had been looking at the woman they were discussing, they would
have tears that had nothing to do with physical pain, rolling down her cheeks.
B’Elanna stiffened as Janeway enveloped her in another hug but quickly allowed
the contact once again. She had to admit that now that she had
everything off her chest and out in the open she felt much steadier, clearer,
focused. Now she felt she could concentrate on saving Seven’s life
without breaking down. She pulled away from Kathryn and wiped her eyes.
“Thank you for everything you said and I’m sorry I went ballistic on you,
but I’m scared. Actually I’m terrified of losing her.”
The captain reached up and wiped the remaining tears from the engineer’s
cheek with more tenderness than she thought possible, she truly did think
of this brilliant young woman as a daughter. “I’m scared too B’Elanna.
I’m scared that we won’t be able to do what the entire Borg collective failed
to do. I’m scared that we are going to lose her for good this time
and that she is going to die in horrible pain. But even with those
fears I’m not going to give up, not while her heart is still beating and
there is still breath in her body. So let’s get up off this floor and
get to work.”
B’Elanna managed a weak smile for the captain’s benefit, glad that she wasn’t
going to let Seven go without a fight any more then she was. She helped
the older woman up off the floor and they moved together to the bio-bed where
the doctor was still working furiously, mumbling to himself as he administered
different hypo-sprays and then monitored his patient for any changes.
“Doctor, any ideas on how to stop this?” Janeway asked as she watched
the cinnamon-skinned woman take the ex-drone’s paler hand in hers and lift
it lovingly to her lips.
“What?” The EMH jerked his head up from the readings he was studying.
He had been so intent on trying to solve the problem before him, he had forgotten
they were in the room. “I have a few ideas, unfortunately I don’t think
any of them will work. They might slow the process but they won’t stop
it. I’m afraid this is really more Lieutenant Torres’ or Seven’s department
and not a medical issue. I can treat her symptoms but the cure will
have to come from engineering.”
B’Elanna could feel anger and fear warring for domination in her mind and
she struggled to stamp them both into submission. “Give me some idea
of what this thing is doing, give me something to go on, something I can
work with. Please.”
The Doctor could see B’Elanna was near to breaking point and trying valiantly
to hold herself together. He put his hand on her shoulder and left
it there as he told her what he knew. “This thing acts like a computer
virus. It is has taken over her nanoprobes and is directing them only
to specific areas of her body at this time. I can only assume that
at some point it will direct the probes to attack her brain and cortical
implant, but for now they are staying away from those areas.”
“But why wouldn’t the probes attack the most vital areas first?” The
captain interrupted him, not liking where she thought this was going.
“The only reason I have come up with, is that the people that created this
weapon did it with the purpose of first causing as much physical pain as
possible before finally killing the victim.” He tightened his grip
on B’Elanna when he felt her starting to sag in his grip. He waited
a moment to make sure she was going to be able to stand on her own before
he continued. “They wanted the Borg to suffer before they died.
There is no other explanation for the way this weapon works. If they
had wanted it to, it could kill in a matter of minutes rather than days.
It was designed to torture.
“Normally if something malfunctioned with Seven’s nanoprobes I would have
her go through a regeneration cycle and let her alcove reprogram them.
But if this has affected every Borg component on the ship then it won’t do
any good. I could try to put her into a stasis-tube to slow the process
but I’m not sure it would affect the probes. If they went into a dormant
state along with her body then it would give us the time we needed to find
a way to fight it, but I don’t believe they would. If we had an unaltered
sample of the probes, we could filter the adulterated ones out of her system
and replace them.
“I can try a few things, try to slow down the cellular destruction, but I’m
not optimistic about anything working. I believe that you are Seven’s
best hope, B’Elanna. Aside from him, you know more about Borg systems
then anyone and I think that the answer lies in your area of expertise.”
He finished with his explanation and watched as the captain and the lieutenant
absorbed the information he had given them, sketchy as it was. He could
actually see the almost physical struggle B’Elanna was having with herself
as she tried to put her feelings aside and focus on solving a seemingly unsolvable
problem.
Stalking towards the center of the room, B’Elanna began pacing in the middle
of sickbay. It was taking nearly every ounce of strength she had to
get her emotions under control, she had to forget her feelings for Seven
if she was going to save her. Using a Vulcan mediation technique that
Tuvok had shown her, she could almost swear she could feel the ragged edges
of her fear smoothing over and her mind becoming calm. Where her thoughts
had been a storm-tossed sea moments ago, now the waters were mere ripples
and faster then she would have ever thought possible, it was as smooth as
glass. The exercise had never worked this well before and she hoped
to Kahless that she never had the motivation to make it work like this again.
Janeway swore she could see the gears turning in her chief engineer’s head
as she continued to pace. She was mumbling to herself and her hands
moved as though she was manipulating tools, building the answer out of thin
air. She had always been impressed with the leaps of intuition that
sometimes seemed to grip the brilliant Klingon, but she couldn’t remember
ever having a front seat to see exactly how she did it.
B’Elanna knew the answer was right in front of her, she just had to open
her eyes wide enough to see it. As she ran the possibilities through
her mind, she had no idea that she was mumbling her inner monologue out loud
for the others to hear. In fact she didn’t even remember that she was
in sickbay or that they were there with her, in her mind she was in her workshop.
The shop in her mind was where she went when she needed to work through a
difficult problem. It was warm cozy little place that had every tool
the engineer needed right at her fingertips, it didn’t matter how big or
small all she had to do was reach out for what she needed. When B’Elanna
was here she could quickly work through whatever it was that had her stymied,
trying things and seeing results before she put it into practice. And
now she had a Borg alcove on her workbench, watching the alien virus run
rampant over its surface.
“Normally her cortical implant would take care of the problem, but it’s affected.
Then it would be up to the alcove to purge it from her system or reprogram
the probes to fight it off during a regeneration cycle. But all the
alcoves are infected with it. Why didn’t this thing wipe the Borg out?
If there’s no way to combat it, why are they still here? Seven said
it killed any cubes it came into contact with, but it obviously didn’t spread
beyond the initial target. Why? The Borg are all connected, so
a virus should have spread through the collective like wildfire. But
it didn’t, it was contained within each target. So what does that say
about our virus? That it’s not one.”
B’Elanna turned abruptly and ran for the cart beside Seven’s bio-bed.
Grabbing a syringe from the top, she quickly drew a sample of the ex-drone’s
blood and rushed to the lab in the back. She became vaguely aware that
someone was following her, but they didn’t interfere and she paid no more
attention to them. Putting the sample she had collected into the scanning
microscope, she enlarged the image until she could see the microscopic machines
that kept Seven’s Borg systems going. She also saw what she had only
begun to grasp seconds ago.
There were two different kinds of nanoprobes in Seven’s blood. One
was obviously of Borg manufacture; the other while it looked similar was
definitely not. The alien probes were attacking the originals and then
attaching themselves to them. As she watched, one of the overpowered
probes was released by the invader and they both turned on an unaffected
nanoprobe, striking and capturing it in a concerted effort. This thing
wasn’t a computer virus, it was more like a biological virus, invading cells
and inserting its own DNA thus turning the body’s own cell into a factory
for creating more of the virus.
Now B’Elanna had her answer to the question of why it hadn’t run through
the Borg collective like a raging storm and wiped them out. Like a
real virus, this one needed to be physically transmitted to a new host.
But she still didn’t know how that helped her to save Seven. Somehow
she had to get the alien nanoprobes out of her system, while keeping the
Borg probes that hadn’t been tampered with in. That however wasn’t
her biggest problem, once she got Seven decontaminated she had to keep her
clean. The entire ship was infested with the damn things, so if she
managed to get one batch out of the blonde she would be immediately attacked
by more.
Of course, if the ship is infested then the people on it should also be carrying
the invader probes on them and in them. With that thought B’Elanna
reached for another syringe and drew her own blood. She hurriedly replaced
Seven’s sample with her own and brought the scanner up to the correct magnification.
Nothing. Her head jerked around the room and landed on the captain.
She was at her side in a second, her arm in a vice-like grip drawing her
blood like a giant deranged mosquito, and then back to the lab equipment
before the tiny woman could hardly open her mouth to protest. Again,
nothing. She and the captain had been on the bridge when the probes
were rammed through their shields, they had been in direct contact with Seven
since then and neither one of them were infected.
Now she had to know about the room. Were those miniature killers on
or in the starfleet issue electronics? Had they truly infected the
whole ship, or just its Borg enhanced components? Maybe the J’kozyn
nanoprobes had infected the ship and the probes had then migrated to Borg
systems. If that was true, then saving Seven’s life had just gotten
a little easier.
But first she had to find a way to scan for the little boogers. “Torres to
Kim.” She bellowed as soon as she heard the chirp of her communicator.
It only took a second for the young ensign to answer. “What is it B’Elanna?
What’s wrong?”
She could hear the near panic in his voice, but she knew they didn’t have
time for her to explain, Seven didn’t have time. “Harry get to engineering
and get my tool box out of my office and the scanner we use for the dilithium
crystals. I also want you to go mine and Seven’s quarters and get the
new alcove we were working on and then get your ass down here to sickbay.
Torres out.” B’Elanna never looked up as she barked orders to
her friend or cut the transmission. She had her eyes firmly locked
on the tiny machines that were very rapidly killing the ex-drone.
“Doctor where’s your holo-emitter?” B’Elanna yelled as she tore her
gaze away from the screen. The second he pointed toward his desk she
twisted up and away with the grace of a feline and sprinted into the small
office. She grabbed the device from its resting place and ran back
to the workstation. Wrenching the sample out of the reader, she shoved
the emitter under the scanner. There, swarming over the surface, were
the foreign nanoprobes, and though she couldn’t see it she knew they were
probably crawling all over the inside too. She fumbled for a tricorder
and replaced the emitter with it. As the image swam into view a plan
was hatching in the engineer’s mind.
She panned the scanner over the surface of the unaltered starfleet issue
instrument. Giving a loud “Yes!” B’Elanna nearly jumped out of
her skin when a hand suddenly landed on her shoulder, and her triumphant
yell turned into a startled cry. “What the *HELL*?”
Captain Janeway leapt back at the engineer’s exclamation. She had watched
in fascination as the hybrid tuned out everything except what she was working
on, but as it became obvious that she had made a breakthrough she couldn’t
stay quiet any longer. She put up her hands to calm the startled woman.
“Easy B’Elanna, just relax. You seemed to have a revelation and I just
wanted to see what progress you’d made.”
The Klingon tried to get the adrenaline rush pounding through her veins back
under control. Her hearts felt like they were about to jump out of
her throat and every nerve was singing for her to act, and act now.
She took breath after deep breath in order to give the rational part of her
brain time to overcome the warrior side. Just as she felt control returning
the doors to sick opened and Harry Kim rushed in, juggling the things B’Elanna
had sent him after.
Ignoring the captain in favour of the equipment she needed, B’Elanna pushed
past the older woman and rushed to the young ensign’s side. Snatching
the newly finished alcove from his overburdened arms, she rushed it back
to the instrument that had already given her so many answers, and silently
prayed that it would bring her the one she needed to slip the last piece
of the puzzle into place.
As she peered at the screen this time she was acutely aware of the others
in the room. Their presence hung like smoke over her head, threatening
to descend and smother her. She didn’t need the distraction right now,
not when she was this close to solving the crisis. The image swam into
view and B’Elanna wanted to cry with relief. She had been counting
on the fact that the J’kozyn’s predator nanoprobes hadn’t been attracted
to the alcove as it had yet to be powered up. The emitter she had tested
earlier had it’s own power source and Seven’s body acted as a battery, so
they had both drawn the tiny marauders to them like moths to a flame.
Now she just needed a way to incapacitate the alien probes.
“Harry, give me that dilithium scanner.” B’Elanna called over her shoulder.
The captain found she could no longer contain herself. She had to have
answers, she needed to know, now. “Just a moment Mr. Kim.” She threw
up a hand to forestall his forward motion. “What exactly have you found
B’Elanna? Please bring us up to speed before you continue.”
The hybrid had to take a deep breath before she turned to look at her commanding
officer to keep herself from flying at the woman and strangling her.
When she felt able to look at the captain without the danger of being thrown
in the brig for the rest of the journey home, she turned and faced Janeway.
Taking in the haughty bearing and crossed arms made the hackles on the back
of her neck rise and she could feel the growl climbing out of her throat.
“With all due respect Captain,” she slurred the title into as much of an
insult as she could manage, “shut the hell up and let me save Seven’s life.
Harry, the scanner.” She held up her hand for the piece of equipment,
effectively dismissing her superior.
The young ensign’s head looked like it was about to snap off his neck he
was looking back and forth so quickly between the captain and the engineer.
He didn’t know what to do, whom to obey. B’Elanna was staring at Janeway,
and the captain’s chin was halfway to floor, but neither was really paying
attention to him. There was a power struggle going on between the two,
and if he concentrated hard enough he was sure that he would be able to see
sparks flying between their eyes. His training demanded that he followed
orders, but his loyalty to his friends, both B’Elanna and Seven, required
that he help the former Maquis.
His concern for the ex-drone’s life finally won over and he edged toward
the dusky-skinned woman, avoiding the captain’s gaze. He could feel
her eyes following him as he suddenly brought himself back into her focus.
Harry knew he was going to pay for his disobedience later, but for now he
decided he wasn’t going to worry about it. Seven’s life came before
the slap on the wrist we would get for disobeying orders.
B’Elanna tore her gaze away from Janeway as Harry stepped in front of her,
scanner held in front of him like a shield. She gave him a small thank
you smile before reaching for the needed device. “I need you to go
get a shuttle ready, Starfleet. Make sure there is no Borg technology
on board or that has been integrated into its systems. Once that’s
done, launch it and then come back here. I’m gonna need you to transport
Seven and myself to the shuttle.”
As B’Elanna turned away from him, Harry looked to the captain for permission
partly to take the sting out of his earlier, tiny mutiny and partly to keep
himself and the engineer out of the brig. He breathed a sigh of relief
when she gave him a slight nod; maybe he could avoid disciplinary action
after all. He tried to keep from running out of the room, but the urgency
of his mission and the displeasure of his commanding officer was enough to
propel him rather swiftly through the door.
Janeway waited until the doors had closed behind him before she turned to
the EMH. “Doctor, could you give us a minute please?”
The doctor nodded and left the two women alone, going back to his patient
shaking his head. He had a feeling he really didn’t want to hear the
conversation that was about to take place, but knowing the Klingon’s volatile
temper he would probably hear most of it anyway.
The captain returned her attention to her chief engineer as soon as the holographic
doctor had moved away. While she had bristled at B’Elanna’s curt dismissal
and attitude, she could understand the motives behind it. However she
wasn’t going to just let it go. She was the Captain and she needed
to know these things. She moved to where the younger woman was already
bending over scanner and reached out to still her hand. “B’Elanna,
I may be the ship’s captain but I am also a scientist. I can help you
with this if you would simply take a moment to stop and tell me your findings.
I realize that urgency is of the utmost importance, but we do have some time
to spare, and you will tell me what you’ve found before you continue.”
B’Elanna stiffened at the touch and had to fight the impulse to slap the
woman. Throwing off the hand she whirled on her commander. “No,
we really don’t have time to spare. If this doesn’t work then I have
to find something else and try that, and then if that doesn’t work I don’t
know what will happen. Seven has hours, not days. If she were
fully Borg with a full load of probes then we would have time, but as it
is, the alien nanoprobes will overwhelm hers quickly and she will die a horribly
painful death.” She turned back to her equipment, trying to ignore
the open-mouthed stare Janeway was shooting her way.
Kathryn was dumbstruck for a moment and she did a pretty good fish impression
before she could get her motor skills back under control. “Wait, what
are you talking about, I thought this was a computer virus?!”
B’Elanna growled at her indiscretion. She had slipped and given the
tenacious little woman an inch and now she going to take a light-year.
She knew she would never get the captain to shut up and leave her alone now.
She would have to tell her everything. “Fine, but I’m only going to
say this once so listen closely and don’t interrupt me. It’s not a
virus…
*****
… Now I have to find the frequency to these little bastards in order to shut
them down and give Seven’s own probes time to disable and destroy them.
Now you’ve heard everything, please let me get back to work.”
Janeway nodded her consent even as the small hybrid was turning away from
her. Now that she knew all the facts she was inclined to agree with
B’Elanna that they didn’t have a lot of time and she had wasted precious
minutes getting her to explain everything. She watched her mumbling
to herself as she bent over the readings and adjusted the controls in order
to pin down the correct modulation.
It seemed like hours, but was really only minutes before the Klingon had
what she needed and was programming a counter-measure. As soon as she
had the tricorder modified she put Seven’s blood sample back into the microscope
and watched carefully as the tight beam of high-pitched sound waves bombarded
the specimen. As she watched the alien probes slow and then stop without
affecting the ex-drone’s own, she allowed hope to seep in through the cracks
of the carefully constructed wall she had built in order to be able to concentrate.
Now all she had to do was get Seven and all the equipment to the shuttle
and implement the plan.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, Harry walked back through the doors
of sickbay and rushed to her side. “The shuttle’s on a parallel course
with Voyager so I can beam you and Seven over as soon as you’re ready.”
B’Elanna could see the man was out of breath and was sure he had run all
the way to the shuttle bay and back. She clasped his shoulder to show
her appreciation and gave him the biggest smile she had been able to muster
since they had been attacked. “I’m ready Harry, just help me get all
this equipment together. Once I know whether or not this is going to
work I’ll contact you so that we can figure out a way to decontaminate the
ship so we can come back onboard.”
She helped him pile everything she needed, or even thought she might need
by some slim chance, in the middle of the floor. Before he had gotten
the command out to begin transport, B’Elanna was at ex-drone’s side, stroking
her hair and holding one of her twitching hands. “Hold on just a little
longer Seven, please.”
She never heard Harry give the order to transport them to the shuttle, her
entire being was focused on fearful blue eyes, pain-filled and pleading.
The next thing she was aware of was the close confines of the shuttle and
she had never been so glad to see the drab claustrophobic Starfleet walls
in her life. Now they held all the hope for the future, all her dreams
and aspirations; and that made them brighter than a super-nova to her.
B’Elanna gently lifted the quivering body into her arms and carried her to
the small sleeping bench in the rear, laying her as gently as possible on
the hard mat. She took a moment to look into Seven’s eyes. She
could see all the love she now recognized that she felt reflected back at
her, but more than that, she saw trust. She saw trust that she would
be able to cure her, trust in her abilities, trust in her love. Looking
in her eyes she could see that Seven knew exactly how she felt about her.
She knew and she felt the same way, but she had sat back and waited.
Waited until B’Elanna could allow herself to feel it, to allow herself to
see that Seven had been waiting three years for her to wake up and see what
was in front of her face the whole time.
She leaned over and kissed Seven’s forehead, allowing her lips to linger
in an effort to convey all she felt. When she leaned back she looked
back into azure orbs. “Don’t worry, I’m going get you fixed up and
as soon as we do, you and I are going to have a long talk, about us.”
She let her hand rest on a pale cheek for just a moment before going to the
pile of equipment and removing the new alcove.
She needed to have it ready as soon as the alien nanoprobes were neutralized.
The hybrid didn’t know how long the effect would last and she was fairly
certain that she would only have a small window of opportunity once they
were off line to begin the regeneration cycle. If the situation hadn’t
been so urgent she would have had time to run tests and simulations.
Now she was flying blind.
When she had everything she needed set up, B’Elanna took Seven’s hand and
held it tightly as she wielded the modified scanner like a sword, cutting
down the invaders that threatened her beloved. She knew that this was
the most important battle of her life. If she lost here, she lost everything.
She noticed a change almost immediately. After only a few seconds the
spasms eased and her body stilled. Seven lay gasping, dragging air
into lungs that felt as if they had not drawn air for months. She felt
her body finally beginning to cool as the sheen of sweat that had covered
her since the start of her ordeal began to dry in the recycled air of the
small craft. She felt more tired then she could ever remember feeling
before and every molecule of her body ached. She wanted nothing more
than to close her eyes and rest, but warm brown spheres captured and held
her. She wanted more than anything to reach up and touch B’Elanna,
but the weakness in her limbs kept her from doing even that simple gesture.
The hybrid seemed to understand what she wanted and took her hand in a strong
comforting grip.
“Easy Seven, don’t try to move. You’ve been through a lot and as much
as I want to just sit here and hold your hand, I can’t. I have to start
the regeneration cycle while I can. I promise you, as soon as you’re
well I will do nothing but sit here and hold you while you bend my ear with
whatever you want to talk about for hours at a time. Right now though
I have to hook you up to the alcove, please.” Even looking intently
at the former drone, B’Elanna nearly missed the tiny nod of affirmation.
Giving the limp hand a reassuring squeeze, the engineer started the cycle
and sat back to wait.
The hybrid engineer was only able to contain herself for half an hour before
she drew a sample of blood from Seven. She used the high-powered microscope
she had confiscated from sickbay to look at the minute machines that had
invaded the ex-drones body. To her relief the Borg nanoprobes seemed
to have recovered and were working together to disassemble the intruders.
The only problem was it seemed to take as many as three of the smaller Borg
probes to dismantle the larger invaders. She knew that at the rate
they were working it would take some time for them to overcome all the alien
probes. She just hoped they had enough time.
********
Five long hours later B’Elanna had used the adapted scanner to anaesthetize
the J’kozyn nanoprobes twice. It seemed they would take two steps forward
and one step back, but even as slow as it was they were making progress.
She estimated that it would take another three to four treatments and ten
more hours before she had all the tiny raiders annihilated. Then Seven
would need to go through at least a double regeneration cycle to repair all
the damage done to her systems.
She knew the waiting would be nearly unbearable, but she was willing to endure
the seemingly endless hours if it meant having Seven whole. It was
apparent to her now that the plan would work; now she just needed to find
a way decontaminate Voyager. She needed to talk to Harry and see if
he had made any progress. She reached up to tap her com badge to inform
the captain that it was working, but stilled her hand for a moment went the
device chirped with an incoming communication.
“Captain Janeway to Lieutenant Torres.”
Startled, B’Elanna hesitated for a moment before answering the hail.
“Torres here, go ahead Captain.”
“B’Elanna how are things going over there?”
To the engineer the auburn-haired woman sounded worried. There was
a tight quality to her voice that immediately put B’Elanna on edge.
She shook her head, certain that it was just her nerves and that she was
over reacting. The woman just wanted to know how Seven was doing.
“It’s going well Captain. The Borg nanoprobes are recovering and even
though I have to keep stunning the alien probes it is working. The
entire process is going to take awhile but we’ll get there. Actually
I was just about to give you a call with a progress report and to find out
how Harry was doing decontaminating the ship.”
There was a pause, and B’Elanna felt her hearts constrict and her breath
hitch up in her throat. This time she didn’t try to rationalize the
ominous alarms going off in her head. “Harry is making progress as
well, however it may be a moot point. About an hour ago we picked up
the J’kozyn ship on long range scanners. Their ETA is a little less
than an hour. I called a senior staff meeting and we haven’t
come up with a solid solution yet.”
The disembodied voice paused and when it continued the strain was even more
apparent than before. “We can’t out run them B’Elanna. I’m ordering
an all stop. We’ll wait here for them to catch up and try to reason
with them.”
B’Elanna felt her head explode, her hearts stopped and her blood froze.
Everything they had done was for nothing, the damn aliens were coming back
to finish the job. She was going to lose Seven this time, and there
was a good possibility none of them would survive the upcoming confrontation.
“No no no no nonononono NO! I will not accept that. We’ll split up.
I can disguise our ion trail and warp signature, use every Maquis trick I
ever learned. I can hide us until they give up and then catch up with
you. I am not about to just sit here and wait for them to come back
and finish murdering Seven. I don’t give a damn what you do, we’re
getting the hell out of here. Torres out!”
As the channel cut out she could hear the captain’s voice begging her to
wait, but she didn’t care. She was going to save Seven’s life no matter
what it took. Even if she had to sacrifice her own life, Seven was
going to live. Her honour, the Oath she had already made in her heart,
her love for the other woman demanded it, screamed for it. As she entered
a course away from Voyager she knew she would never regret her decision,
not as long as Seven lived.
To be continued.