"Well... let's do some research."

 

His finger coiled under her chin, tipping her face toward his. Her eyes were feathered creatures enchanted by the mystery of the moment's sudden silence. Beneath them the console murmured a little music of its own.

 

His lips never touched hers, though he tasted her breath and felt the warmth of her skin. She drew back at the last moment, just an inch. Despite the hesitation, Chakotay felt she wanted more, just as he did.

 

She reached up and slipped her hand over his, then drew his

 

hand away from her face, though she didn't move back or release her grip or its promise.

 

"Tonight," she said. "We will skip ahead."

 

VESSEL IDENTIFIED u.s.s. VOYAGER. COLLECTIVE MEMORY

 

CONFIRMED.

 

JANEWAY, COMMAND

 

CHAKOTAY, EXECUTIVE

 

SEVEN OF NINE, BORG DISENGAGED PRIORITY REESTABLISH.

 

Analysis accepted,

 

She enjoyed her body, her muscles. She enjoyed her mind and sense of independent thought. These privileges she kept to herself. She was the only one of her kind. She kept ambition to herself.

 

Around her the comforting maze of blocky mechanical constructions, shafts, scaffolds, utility cubes, tubes, maturation chambers, alcoves, regeneration units, and the other billions of individual components making up the hive concept, duplicated in every Borg cube everywhere, gave her strength of purpose.

 

WE WILL PURSUE AND ASSIMILATE. STIMULATE CENTRAL

 

PLEXUS

 

"No."

 

A million voices sounded in her head. Monotone, mechanical, purposeful. She was serene.

 

"They haven't compromised our security. Let the vessel continue. I'll keep an eye on them."

 

COMPLYING. MONITOR U.S.S. VOYAGER PROGRESS, JANEWAY COMMANDING

 

In her enormous and far-reaching mind, she tasted the body of Voyager soaring through space. Electrical impulses. Molded metal and fibrous cables. Complex matrices. She smelled the hull shapes.

 

This was her exclusive breakfast. She was the lone apprecia-tor. Not a drone, not an assimilant, not a fragment. The isolated and spectacular potentate of a billion-celled body, she was the center of the central plexus, the queen.

 

The Borg Queen.

 

 

CHAPTER 1 1

 

THE BIOBED FELT COLD AND DID NOT BECOME WARM. SEVEN OF

 

Nine fixed her eyes on the ceiling and steadied herself to her purpose. This would be a weekly maintenance check like none other, for after the next few moments her future would be altered.

 

"You're fine," the Doctor said, "aside from some minor inflammation around your biradial clamp. Let me know if it starts to bother you."

 

He put down his tricorder. The examination was complete. Seven was expected now to stand and leave the sickbay.

 

She continued lying on the biobed, listening to the blips and bubblings of mechanical analysis deep within the systems of the sickbay consoles and processors. A pleasant noise. She recalled the idea of sound as a mode of entertainment from a deeply seated memory which had no roots, but floated free in her mind.

 

The Doctor almost went back to his work when he realized she had not altered her position.

 

"Is there something else?" he asked.

 

Seven hesitated. This move was unwise. It would weaken her, She should cling to her isolation and strength.

 

Must she give up her strength in order to grow?

 

She cleared her throat. "Do you remember three months ago, when my cortical node shut down?"

 

The Doctor struck an expression. "How could I forget?"

 

"You . . . you said it might be possible ... to remove the failsafe device that was causing the problem ..."

 

"Has it been giving you trouble again?" He moved closer to her.

 

"No. But.. . I've . . . reconsidered your offer to extract it."

 

The Doctor paused. His voice grew softer. "I've been hoping you would."

 

An uneasy pause broke their conversation as Seven sat up on the biobed and noted that her hands and legs were as cold as the cushion.

 

"You said it would require several surgeries ..."

 

He fought down a smile. "Actually, in anticipation of your change of heart, I've studied the problem in more detail. I now believe I can reconfigure the microcircuitry with a single procedure." He was eager about his new knowledge, proud of himself in his anticipation.

 

How could he know so conveniently that she might return with such a request? She hadn't thought about such a daring choice until. . . until Chakotay.

 

"You'll be free," the Doctor went on, "to experience the full range of emotions. Everything from a hearty belly laugh to a good cry."

 

She looked down at the long plane of her stomach, and wondered why anyone would laugh at it. "How soon can you do it?"

 

"Today, if you'd like." He obviously preferred a quick turnover, though he didn't outwardly offer any pressure or timelines.

 

"My watch ends at eighteen hundred hours."

 

"It's a date!"

 

His joy disturbed her. She was afraid of alteration. But how could there be progress without change?

 

Forcing herself to accept what she had now scheduled, she pushed off the bed and started toward the door.

 

"Speaking of dates," the Doctor called, "once the fail-safe is gone, you'll be free to pursue more intimate relationships."

 

He bounced on his holo-toes.

 

Seven looked at him. "I'm aware of that," she proclaimed, attempting to seem in control.

 

"If you decide you need help with that aspect of your humanity," he said, eyes twinkling, "I'm always at your disposal."

 

Was this a sexual proposition?

 

Unlikely.

 

"I appreciate that," Seven responded.

 

The Doctor brightened. "Really?"

 

"Yes," she said, her voice more gravelly than usual. "But I already have all the 'help' I need."

 

He seemed briefly confused, then realized what she was talking about. "Ah... of course. You'll undoubtedly be running more simulations with the Chakotay hologram."

 

Seven shifted her feet, causing her body to sway in a motion she had found common among her human shipmates, and this time, oddly, she found good use for the "language."

 

"No, actually," she told him proudly. She almost said more, then in deference to Chakotay's privacy, kept her silence.

 

Perhaps he inferred her meaning. Perhaps not.

 

"I'll see you at eighteen hundred hours," she finished, and let him go on guessing.

 

2100 hours

 

Why was someone working the transporter?

 

Chakotay stood up sharply at the whine of beaming technology squirming through his head when he least expected it-and where he least expected. His own quarters?

 

Instantly he suspected an invasion and made crazy plans in his head to get to the nearest phaser, or at least grab a candle off the table and shove it in the face of some misguided alien offender.

 

Instead, the form beaming in took on a decidedly attractive shape rather quickly and he realized he was in no danger. So to speak.

 

"Am I early?"

 

Seven's low-pitched grainy voice sounded much more sultry and steamy braced up by soft music and candlelight than it usually did when she was making reports to the captain. The ca ndle's glow from the dinner table flickered in her bullion hair and fiddled with the bouquet of flowers she held against her sculpted breasts.

 

Since when had beaming become such an enchantment?

 

Chakotay shook the surprise off his face, realizing she didn't understand why he was braced for action. "No-you're right on time. Is there something wrong with the door?"

 

She moved toward him. "I didn't think it would be discreet to be seen carrying flowers to the first officer's quarters."

 

He took them from her and studied them lightly. "Thanks. Your 'research'?" When she smiled, he added, "I should put these in wat-"

 

The flowers hit the deck. Seven had him in a headlock-with her lips. The scent of her filled his head, a clean and aromatic

 

scent of flower petals and shampoo, a touch of perfumed oil and the sharp zap of passion.

 

Oh, yes . . . there were more important things than flowers, weren't there? What kind of an idiot leaves the side of a gorgeous woman to tend a batch of artificially generated flowers? What was he thinking?

 

She only broke off so they could each take a breath.

 

"I've been told," she whispered, "that anticipation of the first kiss is often uncomfortable. I wanted to alleviate the tension."

 

Chakotay drew her even closer than her strong arms had bonded them. "That was very considerate of you . . . what about the second kiss?"

 

Her eyes were large enough to reflect the candle and the soft utility lighting behind the ceiling boards to an impossible depth. For a woman whose humanity had been so long lost, she was packed with echoes of life and compassion. Chakotay could look through those windows and see everything-everything.

 

"I'll have to check the database," she roughly murmured.

 

But he didn't wait. Behind her back his arm tightened. He spread his fingers across her spine until he felt the flare of her hip. A little more pressure, and she sank deeper against him. His lips went to her as fluidly as lilies to sunlight.

 

For a stiff and soldierly person, Seven melted against him in a way he would never have expected. This should've been much harder for both of them, the way she was, the way he was-the custodians of apartness and untouchability they had fostered in themselves on this ship for the sake of caution suddenly dissolved and were replaced by visceral needs and joys. This was fun, plain old happiness-something she had hardly known and that he had almost forgotten.

 

"Senior officers report to the bridge."

 

The captain's voice rammed down Chakotay's spine like a needle. What was this-some kind of dime novel? Who had timing this bad!

 

He thought about ignoring the call, playing sick, dead, assimilated, anything-

 

"Yellow alert. All hands to stations."

 

Assimilated ... oh ... hell.

 

Breathless and confounded, he took this radiant and rare young woman by the shoulders and deprived himself of her. Despite the interruption, she had a glint of amusement in her eyes. She liked the spontaneous parts of the game more than she had yesterday.

 

Chakotay made a sound of dissatisfaction deep in his throat, but he was probably the only one to hear it. Ship's damn business, dammit.

 

"Next time," he vowed, "we deactivate the comm system."

 

Chakotay didn't look very happy when he arrived on the bridge with Seven right behind him, but Janeway wasn't interested in why. He seemed to forget his own problems as he glanced around and saw that everyone else was already on station.

 

Janeway, Tuvok, Kim, and Paris were already at work at their various stations, but all of them were looking at the same bright new trouble that had opened up before the ship without a single blip of warning. The main screen showed a huge view of the impossible-a gigantic energetic hack mark right through space itself.

 

The colors made Chakotay wince as he hurried to her side. "What is it?"

 

"Judging from the tachyon emissions," she said, "some sort of temporal rift."

 

"How's it being generated?" Seven asked from behind Chakotay's shoulder.

 

Janeway glanced at her, annoyed at being prodded for information she clearly didn't have, or she'd have told them without being asked. "That's what we're trying to figure out," she droned impatiently.

 

"Could the Borg be doing something?" Harry Kim asked. "I just don't believe they missed us last time."

 

"They're a long way behind us, Harry," Paris warned, suggesting in a nice way that he shut up about it.

 

"Not long enough."

 

"All systems to bear on the rift," Janeway ordered. "Let's have an analysis. Is it light? Energy? A reflection? Why is it giving us temporal disturbance?"

 

"I hate time-travel," Chakotay grumbled as he punched the controls and tried to focus the sensors. Beside him, Seven was curiously silent. He was closer to her than he needed to be.

 

"Is it what is appears to be? A cut in space?" Janeway demanded.

 

"Yes," Seven responded. "It possesses readable dimension and there is physical space within the separations."

 

Tuvok's steady voice went up a notch. "I'm detecting nadion discharges on the other side of the rift."

 

"Weapons fire?" Chakotay said.

 

"It's possible," responded the Vulcan. "The signature appears to be Klingon."

 

A look of surprise passed from face to face, but there was no time to speculate.

 

"Red Alert," said Janeway.

 

An alarm sounded at Tuvok's station. "There's a vessel coming through," he announced.

 

"Klingon?" Chakotay asked.

 

"No," Tuvok reported, and turned to look up at the screen. "Federation."

 

Before anyone could respond to the shocking information or inquire whether this were some distorted error erupted to tease them into misery and disappointment. A ploy, a distraction, a red herring-

 

Janeway put her hand out to stop any jumping to conclusions. They watched, held rapt, as a battered shuttle of some unfamiliar design came rocketing through the temporal slash!

 

"We're being hailed!" Kim blurted.

 

"On screen!" Janeway demanded control with her tone.

 

The viewscreen instantly changed to reveal the smoky interior of a cockpit, and at the controls a woman in her late sixties, wearing a Starfleet field jacket.

 

Aunt Louise?

 

The crew was stunned at what they saw, at the faded echo of their captain as if computer-aged in some crime file, but Janeway had seen trickier tricks and wasn't buying it.

 

"Recalibrate your deflectors to emit an anti-tachyon pulse," the woman ordered. "You have to seal that rift!"

 

Janeway didn't bother to ask what her Aunt Louise was doing in the Delta Quadrant, driving a shuttle with Federation markings, or when she'd become an admiral. Her wariest instincts popped up to protect her from making assumptions.

 

"It's usually considered polite to introduce yourself before you start giving orders."

 

"Captain, a Klingon vessel is coming through," Tuvok quickly warned.

 

"Close the rift!" the older woman shouted.

 

Defiant, Janeway waited for an explanation, using the threat of Klingon incursion through the rift as leverage.

 

The admiral was unimpressed. "In case you didn 't notice, I outrank you, Captain. Now do it!"

 

A distorted image of a weirdly arranged Klingon ship appeared deep inside the rift.

 

With controlled urgency Tuvok quickly reported, "More na-dion discharges, Captain."

 

Abruptly, Janeway made a decision. "Recalibrate shields," she ordered.

 

"Deflectors recalibrated," Tuvok said instantly. He'd been ready.

 

"Prepare anti-tachyon emission."

 

"Anti-tachyon emission broadcasting, Captain," Seven responded. "Converting now, triangulated on the rift, port to starboard."

 

"Ready broadcast system stabilizers and all overload precautions. I'm not ready to burn out at somebody else's say-so."

 

She made a little inflection on the words somebody else.

 

"Ready," Chakotay said, eagerly taking over that duty.

 

"Activate."

 

As the deflector beam blasted steadily from Voyager's dish, Janeway felt her throat close up with tension. Why was there an aged version of herself on that shuttle? She already knew part of the answer. Temporal disruption . . .

 

Where was she in the future? Captured by Klingons? In the middle of a war that hadn't happened yet? Had she arrived there tomorrow or thirty years from now?

 

Her heart pounded in her chest. She battled for a steady demeanor. Her crew was watching.

 

Before them, the rift flashed, burned, and pressed its lips together like some galactic child in defiance after a scolding. No more Klingons. Simple enough.

 

Now for the complicated part.

 

She faced off with the ghostly admiral in the damaged shuttle-craft. "I did what you asked... now tell me what the hell is going on."

 

BORG CUBE TRANSMISSION INTERCEPTED

 

FEDERATION SHUTTLECRAFT, TEMPORAL INCONSISTENCY

 

DETECT ANTI-TACHYON EMISSION OVERLAPPING TEMPORAL WAVES

 

"Let me see them on my screen."

 

The Borg Queen inhaled deeply the coming stimulation. She flexed her shoulders and spread her fingers, felt her ribs and thighs tighten within the skintight insulation suit with its molded pieces pressing her like a million fingertips.

 

Their science had tapped into a transmission. The floating viewscreen swept down from above and came to her eye level, showing a vision of a woman with familiar eyes. The woman's hair was silvered, her cheekbones sharp, her lips thin. Her pointed chin was fitted over a gaunt neck, and below that an unf-miliar uniform with Starfleet markings.

 

"Identify," the Queen summoned.

 

SUBJECT IDENTIFICATION JANEWAY, KATHRYN ADMIRAL, STARFLEET

 

"What is the admiral's current age?"

 

AGE SIXTY-EIGHT POINT FIVE-TWO FEDERATION STANDARD

 

YEARS

 

"Audio feed."

 

On the screen, the vision of Admiral Janeway spoke words of great interest, great substance.

 

"I've come to bring Voyager home,"

 

 

CHAPTER 12

 

"WELCOME ABOARD."

 

Kathryn Janeway gazed up from the forgiving cushion of her senior officers as a fig ure finished materializing on the transporter platform.

 

The individual whose identity was so mysteriously apparent also gazed around, but not at the people, not at Chakotay and Tuvok or at Janeway herself. Admiral Janeway instead gazed around at the interior of the ship itself. That something as mundane as a tranporter room could carry such obvious nostalgic gravity made the situation particularly surreal.

 

Then, as if walking into her own back garden, she stepped down from the platform. She moved finally to Chakotay and Tuvok, now standing a little apart from Janeway.

 

"Tuvok," she murmured. "Chakotay .. . it's good to see you."

 

Uh-oh. Janeway watched the admiral's expression-and she recognized that tone. What the hell was that tone doing here?

 

The admiral's voice sounded strange, though, like Janeway herself speaking through a paper funnel. Normal enough-

 

mostly we hear our own voices through the echo chamber of our skulls. Give or take the odd log review, she wasn't used to listening to herself.

 

Herself. . .

 

She flinched when the admiral suddenly turned to her. "I'm sure you have questions."

 

"Only a few," Janeway drawled.

 

"Then I suggest we go to my ... to your ready room."

 

"You know the way."

 

Well, why not? The obvious had inflicted itself upon them. Time to become explorers.

 

The admiral led the way. It was one method of confirming that she was the person she appeared to be. They walked the ship in silence, like a tour of a tomb. Janeway met Chakotay's eyes once, only once, but never connected with Tuvok. They all had the same feeling. The instinct to tell when something was really wrong despite the casual walk-and-talk had become a daily diet on Voyager.

 

As they approached the corridor entrance to the ready room, she motioned Chakotay and Tuvok to hold back. Perhaps it was her knowledge of herself speaking-she really wasn't sure yet- but the admiral would speak more freely if she only had her own reflection listening.

 

Tuvok merely lowered his head in acceptance. Chakotay took hold of her elbow for an instant, then almost immediately let go. The touch was worth its weight in dilithium.

 

She offered him a passive reassuring glance, nothing except a promise that she would look after herself, and followed the admiral's thin silvery form into the ready room.

 

The door closed behind her. This was like being in a carnival fun house, except for the fun part.

 

Admiral Janeway drew a long breath through her nose as if she had stepped into a meadow of wildflowers. "Fresh coffee . .."

 

"Would you like a cup?" Janeway asked.

 

The admiral looked at the steaming thermal carafe on the captain's desk. "No. I gave it up years ago. I only drink tea now."

 

Annoyance prickled the captain's neck. Since when? Caffeine was caffeine. Was the admiral trying to fit in to some kind of prefab image?

 

"I told the curator at the museum," the admiral went on, "that if he wanted to make the ready room more authentic, he should always keep a steaming pot of coffee on the desk."

 

"Voyager's in a museum?"

 

"Voyager," the admiral said proudly, "is a museum. On the grounds of the Presidio." She moved to the wide curved viewport through which multiple stars and one rogue nuclear storm performed brainless. "On a clear morning, you can see Alcatraz from here."

 

And the irony of that is ...

 

Captain Janeway inhaled the moment, held her breath, and pressed down the chittering in her stomach. This was big. Getting bigger.

 

"You made it back to Earth . . ."

 

The admiral nodded, but didn't meet her eyes. She moved back to Janeway's desk and picked up the coffee cup. "Unfortunately, our favorite coffee cup didn't get home in one piece. It was chipped during a battle with the Fen Domar."

 

"Who?" Ah, stupid question time. The value of the senseless blurt.

 

"You'll run into them in a few years."

 

Janeway held up a hand before the admiral continued. "You know what? I don't think I should be listening to details about the future."

 

Instantly her two personalities-the two still inside this body-began wrestling. The Temporal Prime Directive, the risk of the future, complications radiating from the flap of the butterfly's wing all came into raging conflict with her explorer's duty, her command responsibility to tend her crew and to bring this ship home any way possible-

 

What was the right thing to do? Refuse to listen? Or demand to be told?

 

She wanted to ask everything. Everything! She wanted to hedge her bets, make the challenging decisions, put to use her vaulted experiences collected at such risk and strain here in the Delta Quadrant. She wanted to be an adventurer on purpose instead of by accident!

 

"The almighty Temporal Prime Directive," the admiral drawled with acrid contempt. "Take my advice. It's less of a headache if you just ignore it."

 

Janeway's reaction again was mixed. Contempt for regulations? Respect for them was all that had kept Voyager held together as a Starfleet ship out where, where there was no Starfleet watching.

 

"You've obviously decided to ignore it," she said, "or you wouldn't be here."

 

"A lot's happened to me," the admiral admitted, "since I was you."

 

The odd pronouncement made Janeway angry. She had a visceral reaction and rubber-banded in the opposite direction from where the admiral wanted to go. Childish? Maybe.

 

"Well, I'm still me and this is still my ship. So no more talk

 

about what's going to happen until I decide otherwise. Understood?"

 

"All right," the admiral accepted, too quickly. "Let's talk

 

about the past.

 

"Three days ago you detected elevated neutrino emissions in a nebula in grid nine-eight-six. You thought it might be a way home. You were right. I've come to tell you to take Voyager back to that nebula-"

 

"It was crawling with Borg!"

 

"I've brought technology that will get us past them."

 

Magic from the future. Pretty damned convenient. Doubts raged in the captain's head. Nothing was this easy. Nothing good, anyway.

 

"I don't blame you for being skeptical," the admiral told her. "But if you can't trust yourself, who can you trust?"

 

"For the sake of argument," Janeway ventured, "let's say I believe everything you're telling me. This future you come from sounds pretty good. Voyager's home, I'm an admiral, there are ways to defend against the Borg, my ready room even gets preserved for posterity-"

 

"So why would you want to tamper with such a rosy time line? To answer that, I'd have to tell you more than you want to know."

 

Janeway glared at the admiral. There was no such thing as more than she wanted to know.

 

The admiral leaned against the edge of the desk, her thigh meeting the desk at a familiar point on the muscle. Janeway found herself staring at the desk and the admiral's leg.

 

"If you don't do what I'm suggesting," the older woman pressed on, "it's going to take you another sixteen years to get home. And there are going to be casualties along the way."

 

The revelation was a punch in the gut. It was the voice of fail-

 

ure, of hopelessness and anticlimax. All her effort, her careful thoughts, her wakening nights wondering if she was doing the right thing day to day, minute by minute-to spend their best years rushing at high warp to an unhappy future.

 

Unhappy? How did she know that? Nothing sounded so bad, nothing the admiral had said or implied .. . why, then, was the admiral here?

 

Why would I be here ? Why would I risk the futures of our crew and billions of others? No tampering with time came without ripples. Why is she here?

 

Casualties . . . there were always casualties. Even if they had never left on this mission, never been thrown into the Delta Quadrant, even if they stayed in their hometowns there would be accidents. Life would still happen. There were diseases and troubles and random acts that might have taken them from each other. You didn't going around rearranging time to prevent the symphony of life from not exactly going your way. Why not? Because you didn't dare.

 

/ don't dare. Why does she ?

 

"I know exactly what you're thinking," the admiral said, eyeing her with a posture of superiorizing that Janeway suddenly vowed to curb from now on.

 

"You've also become a telepath?" she grumbled.

 

The admiral nodded. "I used to be you, remember? You're asking yourself, is she really who she says she is or is this some kind of deception. For all you know, I could be a member of Species Eight Four Seven Two in disguise."

 

Annoyed, Janeway pressed a smile of irritation out of her lips. The other woman had her over a barrel. If all this was what it appeared to be, she was at a terrific disadvantage. If she had become a Starfleet admiral and she was really here talking to a

 

superior officer, then Admiral Janeway had authority over her. If this were any other admiral than herself plucked out of time, what would her obligations be?

 

But there was undeniable possessiveness born of the past seven unexpected years of trial and isolation. Reflex insisted she should retain complete command here, she must. This had to remain her ship until Voyager could be delivered to the Alpha Quadrant.

 

"Have your people examine my shuttle," the admiral said, reading her mind again. "Tell them to take a close look at the weapons systems and the armor technology. In the meantime, the Doctor can confirm my identity."

 

Such precautions made sense, but also seemed like colossal wastes of precious time. If Janeway believed her own protests about not wanting to know the future, then the wise thing to do would be to pack this admiral back on her shuttle and stuff her through that rift. Get rid of the temptation. The longer the admiral stayed here, the more the chance for contamination. Keeping her here, examining her, her shuttle-those were risks in and of themselves. The crew would begin to know what was going on. The technicians would log their encounters with whatever was on that shuttle. They would never forget. Tricorders all over the ship would have recorded information. Other than throw su ch a resource overboard, Janeway couldn't deny the plain fact that she would process and use the information. Any other course of action would be prohibitively cautious. It would be like having a tin of water in a lifeboat. Sooner or later, she would drink.

 

"We'll call you 'admiral,' " she told the other woman, "and we'll show you all the respect you seem to be due. You know the future and I don't. For all I know, you could be mentally deranged."

 

"Pretty picture," the admiral shot back.

 

"We all get old," Janeway had ready. "Sometimes infirmities come. Don't you think I know that?"

 

The admiral said, "You're pretending to be unaffected by me. I know when you're not being honest. We're the same person-"

 

"We used to be the same person. When you came through that rift, we became two people. You look like me, and we have a common past. We're just like any set of twins now. Our future may not be common at all. Mine is yet to happen and I have to play the game that way."

 

"The survivors of Voyager deserve better than what they got," the admiral said. This time she was angry.

 

Captain Janeway gestured to the corridor entrance, inviting the admiral to make good on her claims. "We're not survivors yet. We haven't made land."

 

Seven of Nine sat at the helm of the admiral's shuttle in the starship's bay. Sensations of concern plagued her. What would the captain decide?

 

Seven was uneasy, though she battled for control. Things were about to change again. In her life, the changes had all been serious, dramatic, sudden and encompassing. Assimilation by the Borg, then life as a drone for many years, ruptured by discovery of her individual self, the little girl so long erased-of late she had not only accepted human individuality but begun to explore it. And now she was seeking the great prize of individuality, the fulfillment lauded in literature and in the eyes of her fellow human beings-a bond of romance and devotion with another human being.

 

"The armor appears to be autoregenerative," she reported, watching the data scroll before her on the small screens. She worked the controls, changing the graphics to the "armored" stage. "When the system is enabled, specialized nanites reconfig-

 

re the molecular structure of the hull to form ablative layers."

 

The process was not unlike Borg adaptation techniques. Nanites read the surroundings, then changed to accommodate them.

 

"The armor's just the tip of the iceberg." B'Elanna Torres spoke from the rear of the shuttle's interior, where she crouched with a correlative analysis tricorder on the technology back there. "She's got omnispectral stealth technology and some sort of transphasic photon torpedoes-" Her voice cut off as she struggled out of her crouch, her body betraying both balance and grace. She moved forward to the helm and scanned the pilot's headrest. "And this ... I'm guessing it's a neural interface. But I couldn't begin to tell you how it works. Of course, there's one thing this vessel isn't equipped for." She squeezed between the seats and added, "A pregnant crewman." Looking down at her primary problem, she knocked and said, "It's time to come out now."

 

"Ideally," Seven said, "the child won't be born until Thursday at twelve hundred hours."

 

B'Elanna gawked at her. "You joined the baby pool?"

 

"I'm trying to broaden my participation in crew activities." Seven frosted her expression, keeping to herself the mysterious joy she would feel if she actually won a pointless bet.

 

B'Elanna struggled to lower herself into the seat. "My life would be so much easier if I'd never met Tom Paris."

 

Reacting, Seven experienced an inner shock.

 

"You regret your relationship with him?"

 

"I was joking," B'Elanna said quickly.

 

"Then you're happy ... being part of a couple?"

 

Despite her obvious discomfort, a passive expression came over B'Elanna's face. Soon, she smiled.

 

"Yeah," she said. "I am."

 

A brain. Human. But not just any brain-her brain. Their brain.

 

Life was simpler in Ireland in the 1800's. Plague, famine, workhouses, overlords-simple little problems. Did somebody say "time travel"?

 

"My scans of the admiral's cerebral cortex turned up something interesting," the Doctor reported as he stood beside the captain, studying the graphic on the freestanding console in sickbay. He punched a control and the picture changed. It zoomed on one of the brain's lobes, and there focused upon a distinct nonbi-ological implant.

 

"What is it?" she asked.

 

"I'm not sure." The Doctor frowned in both his expression and his voice. "I've never seen this kind of implant before."

 

Was this evidence? Should she not trust the admiral now? Was the admiral indeed herself at a future time, but being manipulated by some unknown intelligence? A puppet? A trick?

 

"Alien technology?" Captain Janeway asked.

 

The Doctor hit a control, and the implant came up in close view on his screen.

 

"The mircocircuitry has a Starfleet signature."

 

"Of course it does," Admiral Janeway said. The Doctor and the captain turned to her in surprise. The admiral was now seated, back rod straight, on the biobed.

 

"Admiral?" The doctor asked.

 

Admiral Janeway gestured toward the doctor's screen. "You invented it. Twelve years ago, from my perspective."

 

A self-satisfied smile spread over the doctor's face. "I'm sorry, Admiral," he said, "I didn't realize."

 

"What, that I was eavesdropping? I may be old but my hearing is excellent, thanks to your exemplary care over the years."

 

"So," the Doctor hesitated, as if somewhat embarrassed at in-

 

quiring into his own future successes, "this implant I'm going to invent-what does it do?"

 

"It's a synaptic transceiver that allows me to pilot a vessel equipped with a neural interface."

 

"Fascinating," the doctor said curiously. "Tell me. What other extraordinary breakthroughs am I going to make?"

 

"Doctor," Janeway scolded softly.

 

"Sorry, Captain," he acceded. "But you can't blame a hologram for being curious."

 

"Just finish your report."

 

"Yes, ma'am. My scans indicate that the two of you are genetically identical. The admiral is you, approximately twenty-six years from now."

 

The admiral glowed with satisfaction.

 

So far, nothing new. Just a sniggering confirmation. Janeway would've been happier with a spy or a trick. Confirmation of the admiral's story just tightened the Gordian knot.

 

She was about to speak again, to order more tests on the implant-as much as they could get without invading the admiral's intimate privacy or imprisoning her-when Seven strode elegantly in with a padd.

 

The admiral moved toward her, almost reached out, then stopped herself.

 

"Hello, Seven," she murmured.

 

Janeway stiffened. The room was suddenly a seance. The admiral seemed to be speaking to a ghost.

 

The captain's hands turned cold as she held the bitter clue.

 

Seven stared at the admiral like a confused child. She didn't like the disrupting fact of the admiral's presence chewing up the security of the moment.

 

Finally she broke from the awkward communion and in a de-

 

cidedly human defiance turned to her captain. "The technology aboard the admiral's ship is impressive." She handed the padd to Janeway. "Much of it appears to have been designed to defend against the Borg."

 

The clue turned even more icy. Major encounters with the Borg? Enough that Federation technology concentrated on it, made it a priority?

 

How much would such knowledge affect decisions from now on, the captain wondered. She commanded a starship commissioned to protect and defend the Federation down to the last life aboard. Did this mean she should turn the ship around and fight until there was nothing left, to fulfill her mission as a Starfleet officer first and forget her role as mother to the immediate nestlings? What was her obligation now?

 

Might as well get both feet wet.

 

"Could we install these systems on Voyager? " she asked.

 

So much for divorcing herself from the future.

 

"The stealth technology is incompatible," Seven reported. "But I believe we can adapt the armor and weapons."

 

The charged moment fractured her from those around her.

 

Luckily, the admiral had accepted that the decisions still belonged to Kathryn Janeway the First.

 

"Well, Captain?"

 

Janeway eyed her with undisguised annoyance. She didn't like being pressured, but-

 

The Borg...

 

She turned to Seven. "Do it."

 

 

CHAPTER 13

 

Captain's Personal Log

 

Stardate 54973.4

 

We've begun outfitting Voyager with Admiral Janeway's upgrades. There are dozens of crewmen in environmental suits crawling all over my ship, more than we've had working in space for over a year. Maybe I'm getting soft, but it makes me nervous to have them out there. I've gotten used to the idea that the ship is our cave, our protective shell, and really our entire universe. If they 're not aboard, I can 't feel as if they 're safe.

 

Possibly my unease comes from the fact that we 're mounting what adds up to alien technology on our only lifeboat. I really don't know this woman. I know who she used to be ... I know what she appears to be. But the rest is a mystery. The question is-should I let it remain a mystery?

 

Despite her personal discomfort, Torres is overseeing the conversion. The engineering department is fairly swarming with activity. We've pulled crewmen from almost every other section on the ship,

 

just to have enough hands at work to do this quickly. I have to trust her to notify me if there's anything we might not be able to control. I will not give up control to the admiral, no matter what she claims to be or know. 1 have to work in the present. That's my only anchor.

 

All this activity, and it might come to nothing more than a blip on the Borg Queen's victory roster. Compared to the complexity and sheer size and numbers of the Borg Collective in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager is a very, very tiny force. We have to be careful not to forget.

 

How can I know the right thing to do? This ship is a sp ark in a forest fire when it comes to fighting the Borg. On the other hand, if the admiral's right and we can blast our way through the Borg and into the correct wormhole-something on which I'm still reserving both judgment and hope-I might be morally and dutifully obliged to do just that, to return the ship to the Federation and Voyager's firepower to the whole of Starfleet.

 

If only there were a regulation for this-maybe I'll install one when I make admiral.

 

As soon as the major modifications are complete, we'll reverse course and head back to the nebula. Though I've certainly had some strange experiences in my career, nothing compares to the sight of my future self briefing my officers on technology that hasn't been invented yet.

 

But everyone is working hard, and the mood on the ship is one of cautious optimism. If 1 give them that one gift, at least they will have had a shining new hope for a little while. Janeway out.

 

"Computer, begin regeneration cycle."

 

Seven of Nine settled into her alcove, bringing with her troublesome feelings of uncertainty. Regeneration would clear her mind, calm her thumping heart.

 

The computer murmured its response, reassuring bleeps and twinkling noises which took her back to a more secure time, the immeasurable years as one of the Collective, absorbed in a life without questions.

 

Seconds passed, only seconds before she was without body or form, drifting. Her biofunctions and cybernetic implants began to merge in their sustaining function.

 

A green glow formed in her mind. Within it, faces, many faces. The captain . . . the admiral. .. dreams of past and future ... all just out of reach as she stretched the fingers of her thoughts.

 

Soon, a voice in the green mist.

 

"Seven of Nine. Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One."

 

Seven felt her body tighten. The seductive voice of the Borg Queen.

 

Her eyes snapped open. There was no more Voyager. Only the green glow. Within it hovered the head and chest of the Borg Queen, with just a hint of shoulders.

 

"It's been too long," the Queen murmured. Her pasty lips curled up at the edges into a bittersweet smile.

 

Seven tried to look around, but eyes were not necessary to know she was in the Borg Queen's lair.

 

My feet, my body, are still on Voyager. / should not be here, in a cube. How has she tapped into my mind?

 

"What do you want?" she asked.

 

The Queen hovered softly, without support. "Do I need a reason to visit a friend?"

 

"We're not friends." .

 

"No. We're more than that. We're family."

 

Such insult. Seven's nerve quaked.

 

FAMILY TWO OR MORE PERSONS RELATED BY GENETIC CODE. TWO OR MORE PERSONS WITH COMMON BACKGROUND AND DESIRES. TWO OR MORE PERSONS BOUND BY-

 

"But while we're on the subject of old friends," the Queen began again, "I see Voyager just got a visitor."

 

How could she know? Did she have tracers planted on Voyager?

 

Am / the tracer?

 

"She's come from the future," the Queen said, "hasn't she? Tell me why."

 

Seven steadied herself. "You may be able to communicate with me while I'm regenerating, but I'm no longer a drone. I don't answer to you."

 

The Queen tilted her head. This was a common human gesture indicating thought, but for the Borg Queen it was a command. A freefloating viewscreen entered Seven's periphery and descended to a place where both she and the Queen could witness its picture. On it was a distant vision of Voyager, cruising at impulse speed, coming toward them.

 

"I've extrapolated Voyager's trajectory. I know you're returning to the nebula. I suggest you alter course."

 

Perhaps while she was "here," Seven thought, she might graft information from the Queen. "Why should we comply?"

 

"You've always been my favorite, Seven." The Queen regarded her with eyes like ballbearings. True to her reputation, she was too clever to answer a question so directly. "And, in spite of their obvious imperfections, I know how much you care about the Voyager's crew. So I've left them alone. Imagine how you'd feel if I were forced to assimilate them."

 

Seven locked eyes with the Queen. Anger rose in her.

 

"Voyager is no threat to the Collective. We simply want to return to the Alpha Quadrant."

 

"And I have no objection to that. But if you try to enter my nebula again, I'll destroy you."

 

To prove her point, she tilted her head again.

 

Bolts of silver-green energy crackled through Seven's alcove, breaking across her body and mind. She tried to move her hands, her legs, to step out of the neuroelectrical storm. This was the Queen's warning, to fry the mind of her enemies if they wished to remain enemies. Be assimilated or be cooked alive.

 

Pain raged through Seven's existence until she no longer remembered her name.

 

Sparks carried her back to the brighter place where she had begun. She remembered something about this place, but could not put a name to it. Convulsions thundered through her muscles. Hard gray flooring came up to slap her, and she lay still.

 

She heard only the buzz of her blood and the voice of the computer.

 

"Warning regenerative cycle incomplete. Warning ..."

 

"Her cortical node was exposed to a low-energy electromagnetic surge. It could've been much worse."

 

The Doctor made his report, but neither Captain Janeway nor Admiral Janeway took much comfort in what they had just been told. Seven lay on a biobed, looking worn and even frightened.

 

Captain Janeway took this as the first sign of things going mightily wrong.

 

"What happened to you, Seven?" she asked. Her voice was stern and her throat rough with tension.

 

"It was the Borg Queen," Seven reported. "She wanted to

 

make sure I'd be able to deliver a message. She said she'd assimilate Voyager if we attempted to reenter this nebula."

 

None of that made much sense. The Queen could assimilate them any time she wanted to, considering that she had forty-seven cubes within striking distance of the ship at this very moment. In all reality, there would be nothing, nothing, and nothing that could be done to stop her. The second fact, that Voyager was on its way back to the nebula, running directly into the swarm, was another contributing worry. They were heading to give the Queen even more advantage, if that were possible.

 

"Why's it so important to her?"

 

"It doesn't matter," Admiral Janeway interrupted. "She's not going to be able to make good on her threat."

 

Janeway turned to her, suddenly stern. "I wish I shared your confidence."

 

"You would, if you had as much experience with the Queen as I've had."

 

Oh, such statements! That was a big damned statement.

 

She shook her head. "It was one thing to attempt this when we thought it was a secret. But if the Borg are monitoring us-"

 

The admiral cut her off. "There's no guarantee they won't try to assimilate Voyager even if we don't go back into the nebula."

 

"Is that supposed to be reassuring?"

 

"I'm not saying the Borg aren't dangerous," the admiral insisted, "but from my perspective, they're thirty years behind the times!"

 

"We shouldn't push our luck."

 

"Luck's not going to have anything to do with it. I know you don't want to hear too much about the future, but I ran into the Borg a few more times before I made it home. If I hadn't developed technology and tactics that could defeat them, I wouldn't be standing here today."

 

Would I?

 

The older woman's unspoken question irritated the captain ' even more because she heard it in her own head. These professions of superiority were beginning to sound trumped up. The admiral could posture and puff all she wanted, but she was from a future that hadn't gone into the nebula with forty-seven Borg cubes inside. She might think she had already experienced everything, but this one would be new even for her.

 

Captain Janeway resisted pointing that out, mostly because she didn't want her crew to lose what little confidence they had.

 

"We'll maintain course for the nebula," she said. Silently she added for now, and hoped the admiral picked up on the tail end of the message. "But we'll stay at red alert. And I want continuous scans for Borg activity."

 

"Aye, captain," Seven responded. Eagerly she got off the biobed.

 

"We'll need to find a way," Janeway added, "to modify your alcove so the Queen can't hurt you again."

 

"I can help with that," said her counterpart with a smile.

 

"There's no substitute for experience," she added.

 

Red alert. The astrometrics lab flashed with warning lights. The domescreen's focus was at maximum readiness, displaying a starchart. The starcharts of the Delta Quadrant would be one of the little perks of this whole years-long problem. Voyager would bring back-or send back-the paths through otherwise uncharted territory.

 

Chakotay hurried in, but at the last moment forced himself to quell his agitation. He strode quickly to Seven, who was busy with the admiral's conversions. She looked well enough, but

 

electromagnetics were nothing to play with, never mind the Borg Queen's vindictive manipulation.

 

"I heard what happened," he began without greeting. "Are you all right?"

 

"I'm fine," she said. She didn't look at him.

 

She was self-conscious, he could tell, probably worried not so much about herself, but that she might provide a conduit for the Borg Queen to infiltrate Voyager.

 

He tried to distract her with some mundane silliness. "Because if you need time to rest," he said, "I'm in charge of the duty roster."

 

Would she get the joke? Nobody played with duty rosters while a ship was on alert status. Maybe she didn't know that yet.

 

"It would be inappropriate to allow our personal relationship to affect your command decision."

 

Was she smiling? Almost?

 

Chakotay got the feeling she was getting the better of him. "You're right," he murmured. "This is a time to keep things professional. So give me a report."

 

"There's no sign of Borg activity within a ten-light-year radius."

 

"That's good news, crewman."

 

She turned to him and suspended the effort to be icy. "Ye s, sir ... but we shouldn't underestimate the Collective."

 

"The admiral seems pretty confident we can get past them."

 

"Captain Janeway is more cautious."

 

"Our chances," Chakotay said, "would be good with one Kathryn Janeway on the bridge. But with two? I'd bet on this ship any day. If we do make it back to Earth . . . what are your plans?"

 

Seven's enormous eyes grew misty and tightened slightly. Chakotay got the idea she hadn't made any plans, hadn't really

 

absorbed the idea of getting back to their common homeworld, simply because she had never expected these things to occur which might shorten their trip by so much.

 

"I assume," she began tentatively, "Starfleet will want to debrief me. And then, I suppose, I'll attempt to find a useful position somewhere." She looked up at him and they passed a charged moment together. "You?"

 

Chakotay shrugged, and touched her chin with one finger. "I don't know yet either. But wherever I end up ... I'm going to make sure it's within transporter range of you."

 

Tom Paris had never seen so much activity on the engineering deck. He went there to chase his wife, who shouldn't even be on duty, never mind flogging dozens of crewmen into hurrying with what amounted to alien technology being fitted into Voyager's systems. Even as he stepped through the doors, he could tell she was overdoing-even before he saw her. He could hear her voice snap through the air.

 

"I don't want the whole system crashing because of one faulty relay. Install new ones!"

 

"Yes, ma'am," some poor schlock responded.

 

Paris paused and shook his head. Usually it was hard to believe there were more than ten people on the ship, never mind most of them crowded into one deck, running around with parts and installation tools and enviro-suits, practically crawling on top of each other. Add to that the idea that his wife could bark them all into quivering submission while carrying their child- and some men thought their lives were weird.

 

"And I need an update on the inductor capacitance-"

 

"B'Elanna..."

 

"This time don't make me wait more than five minutes. I have

 

to report to the captain and to the admiral. My least favorite report is 'I don't know yet, ma'am.' Clear?"

 

"B'Elanna, this is your husband calling . . . anybody home?" Paris strode up to her and tilted into her periphery.

 

"Shouldn't you be on the bridge?" she snapped.

 

He pulled her to a more secluded area and fielded the glances of the busy crewmen hurrying around them. "Is there something wrong with the pilot's requesting a systems report from the chief engineer?"

 

"The last report I got was that the comm system was working perfectly."

 

"Okay, you caught me," he admitted with a shrug. "I'm checking up on you."

 

What kind of husband would he be if he didn't? Red alert and all, Borg cubes, nebulae, admirals . . . Maybe the two of them should settle down on some nice asteroid with their baby, build a cottage, plant a garden, and tell the captain to just come back for them through some other temporal notch later on.

 

"I'm fine," she said, managing a halfhearted smile. His concern seemed to ease her clutter of concerns and frustrations.

 

"Your back?"

 

"I'm ignoring it."

 

"I'd offer you a massage, but then eveyone would probably want one."

 

The smile broadened. "You know," she murmured, "for a Starfleet flyboy, you're pretty sweet."

 

Paris returned the smile. Now that he had managed to relax her a little, he glanced around at all the work happening around them. "So how's it going?"

 

She shook her head in admiration. "This armor technology the

 

admiral brought-it's incredible! I hate to sound like Harry, but we might actually make it this time."

 

Paris took note of her words, but what he really paid attention to was her tone. "Why don't you seem happy about that?" he asked.

 

"I am happy ... it's just... I'd gotten used to the idea of raising the baby on Voyager. But now ... I might end up delivering her at Starfleet Medical instead of sickbay."

 

As he watched her expression, his shoulders sagged a little. Boy, this was one schizophrenic crew. Sometimes they wanted to go home, sometimes they were already home-

 

"That wouldn't be so bad, would it?" he pursued.

 

"Not as long as you're there with me. And I want the Doctor. Not some stranger."

 

"You'd have to take him off-line to keep him away."

 

When faced with the facts of how many people truly cared about them and their baby, maybe the idea that she was giving birth on behalf of the whole ship's complement, B'Elanna smiled again, this time more sincerely. "If we do make it home, where do you think we'll live?"

 

"We can always stay with my parents for a while-ooooh, you're right. Bad idea."

 

"Of course," she said, "it probably doesn't matter to you anyway. You flyboys are all the same. You'll probably take the first piloting assignment that comes along and leave me to change diapers."

 

He grinned at the idea-not of leaving, but of his half-Klingon wife patting powder on a little moon. "Not a chance."

 

"Come in."

 

Kathryn Janeway hardly noticed the door chime until it rang

 

for the third time. She was bent over her desk monitor, reviewing graphic after graphic of Borg cubes. As if it helped . . .

 

She knew the cubes well enough from the inside as well as out, yet somehow they just got more complicated, not less, like a swamp that was ever-changing.

 

When she finally looked up, aware that someone had entered, she found not a yeoman or Chakotay or anybody she particularly wanted to see, but Admiral Janeway standing there like a ghost.

 

A ghost with a dinner tray.

 

"What's this?" Janeway asked.

 

"Crewman Chell told me you skipped lunch. I'm not about to let you miss dinner too."

 

Oh, fine. She not only had a double-she had a granny. The absurd solicitousness just made her mad. "Thanks, but I don't have time."

 

"You're going to have to make some. You're too thin."

 

Janeway sat back and regarded the echo of herself over there. "It just hit me ... I'm going to turn into my mother."

 

The admiral lifted the cover off the tray. "I make a better pot roast than she ever did. I hope you don't mind-I invited a friend to join us."

 

"Good afternoon, ladies."

 

Chakotay.

 

Janeway watched him stride into the room. The admiral was gazing at him in that same odd nostalgic way she had addressed Seven. Another clue?

 

Her first officer made himself comfortable on the couch beside Admiral Janeway. They looked odd together-so many years apart in age-and yet there was a connection.

 

"How are my two favorite ladies this fine day?" he asked merrily.

 

"You're such a liar," the admiral accused. "How much do you think you can put over on me, Chakotay?"

 

His cheeks flushed with a touch of color. He crossed his legs and pretended to relax. "It's all a test to reveal your real identity."

 

"You mean to see whether or not I have a cape and a big red 'J' under my uniform?"

 

"Something like that."

 

"Why don't you just ask me some key questions that only our friend here and I would know?" The admiral gestured to the captain, then almost immediately seemed to think she'd been rude. "Sorry, Captain. I don't mean to speak about you as if you're not here."

 

Janeway came around her desk and accepted a cup of coffee. "Oh, don't mind me. I'm just a fifth wall."

 

"I'll take the bet," Chakotay said. "Admiral, why don't you tell us some things that only you would know?"

 

"The captain prefers I don't discuss the future."

 

"Oh, it doesn't matter now, does it?" Janeway stated. "After all, we're about to wipe it out, whatever it is. At least, we hope we are. How confident are you that after today none of your memories will have happened at all?"

 

The admiral dropped her smug expression. So she wasn't as secure as she sounded, was she?

 

"Like what?" she asked.

 

The odd dinner meeting dissolved rather quickly from information into reminiscence. And bizarre it was indeed, given that the ship was at red alert, emergency status, enemy-in-sight, and under conversion for critical new systems that would never have a chance to be shaken down. Everything could explode in their faces-literally.

 

"What about the first contact with the Rotenians?" Chakotay asked, the tenth in a roster of questions. He had been the one to keep the conversation ever moving forward.

 

"How could I forget?" the admiral uttered.

 

Captain Janeway nodded at the shared memory. "Now, they were telepaths." She glanced at Chakotay. "How many days did it take to negotiate passage through their space?"

 

"Twelve," the admiral answered before Chakotay had the chance-something she'd done several times now, and it tended to relax them all.

 

"Whenever I tried to bluff them," Janeway added, "that annoying little diplomat would say, 'I know what you're thinking, Captain

 

Chakotay laughed. "Until the morning you marched into his office and said-"

 

"Tell me what I'm thinking now!" both women chimed.

 

All three laughed, but the two voices, in perfect pitch with each other, inflections, volume, everything, made Chakotay shake his head. "Am I the only one who thinks this is a little strange?"

 

The captain reserved her comment and hid her edginess in the mundane. "More tea?"

 

Admiral Janeway nodded and said, "Thank you."

 

When the captain got up and left, the admiral watched her go to the other side of the room. She knew the captain was only pretending to be so relaxed, hoping to ply more information out of an admiral less on her guard. They weren't so good at fooling each other, but the older officer had the advantage of time and knowledge. She leaned toward Chakotay and lowered her voice to a whisper.

 

"How's your personal life?" she asked pointedly.

 

"Admiral?

 

"There's no need to be coy with me, Chakotay. I know exactly

 

what's going on." When Chakotay shot a glance at the captain, Admiral Janeway quickly said, "Don't worry. She doesn't know yet. So how are things going with Seven?"

 

Chakotay's eyes narrowed with suspicion, but he smiled. "Great."

 

Sh e was giving herself away in what could be the wrong way. Hinting at their personal future might ruin everything. Still, to see him so happy-to see him at all... "Helm to Captain Janeway."

 

The admiral perked up and almost answered Tom Paris's call to action, but the younger Captain Janeway beat her to it. "Janeway. What is it?"

 

"We're coming within short-range sensors of the nebula, Captain."

 

Paris sounded cautious, maybe even nervous. Of course- he would be. He was about to become a father, and didn't know whether his baby would live one day, or a hundred years.

 

The captain cast the admiral one glance, and their relationship shifted back to the hard-edged thing it had been an hour ago.

 

"Batten and secure the ship. All hands to battle stations. Prepare to engage the Borg. I'll be right there, Tom." Janeway turned to face both the admiral and Chakotay, who got to his feet quickly when she said, "Dinner's over."

 

They followed her to the bridge, where the mood was already tense. Within literally seconds, Tuvok, Kim, and Seven arrived to take their bridge posts, and there was now a full contingent of the ship's senior officers in this one small space, including a Starfleet admiral.

 

Captain Janeway took her command chair, a gesture not lost on everyone around her-and she noticed their quick attentions.

 

The admiral came to stand behind her. A power play? Not subtle enough.

 

"Janeway to engineering. Are we ready with the admiral's armor modifications?"

 

B'Elanna Torres's voice came up through the comm system complete with its thready strain. ''None of this has been tested, Captain. Can't we stall for a day? "

 

"You know better than that, B'Elanna. Give me a green light as soon as you can have all systems on-line. We're approaching the nebula, and you know what they say ... there's no time like a present."

 

Zing. She avoided a glance at the admiral.

 

After a few moments of clicking and waiting, B'Elanna said, "Go ahead, Captain."

 

Janeway drew a breath and let it out slowly. If the Borg didn't know they were here yet, they would in a minute.

 

"Deploy armor," she ordered.

 

The hull drummed with hammering noises as plates of armor shot around the ship to seal the hull. It was a sound none of them had ever heard, and once again Janeway got a feeling of resentment for what the admiral knew that she did not. The ship was a knight now, heading to the lists.

 

Janeway gazed at the encompassing mustard-colored fume on the main screen.

 

"All right, Mr. Paris," she said. "Enter the nebula."

 

 

CHAPTER 14

 

CUBE!

 

The Borg found them instantly, were waiting for them, but Janeway expected such a reception and would've been foolish not to. At the moment she first saw the approaching cube, with three of its sides fully visible and one angry point heading toward the starship, a surge of nauseous regret bolted up from her guts and almost knocked her out of her chair. She had allowed herself to trust a person who might be an illusion. Even if the admiral were what she appeared to be, she could still turn out to be a demented radical from the future. Janeway had been lulled into trusting the admiral because she wanted to believe her mind would be strong and pure at that age- but...

 

The moment had come to live with her decision and let her doubts play out, to life or to death.

 

The cube was massive and stunning-always, every time they laid eyes on a Borg cube, the sight shocked. That a

 

straight-edged block so simple and basic could be packed with technology somehow defied style and convention. If not the nemesis to individuality it was, the Borg cube could be a work of art.

 

Voyager was attacked instantly, blows that would ordinarily have sent her spinning.

 

Janeway braced for the worst and looked at Tuvok with her unspoken question.

 

"Armor integrity at ninety-seven percent," he said over the thrum of strikes and the ship's trembling.

 

Chakotay caught the captain's eye and they shared a moment of awe. Then Janeway eyed the admiral, who betrayed a little smile of satisfaction.

 

"Evasive, Mr. Paris," Janeway said, keeping a grip on her role here. "We're not here to engage them. Let's have full impulse speed on our heading. Ignore the cubes."

 

Easy to say, and in fact critical now as two more cubes were born from the fumes of the inner nebula to join in pursuit. Voyager rolled past them and engaged in a race to the death.

 

"Tuvok?"

 

"Integrity holding at ninety percent."

 

She gripped her armrests. "Maintain course!"

 

The shaking suddenly stopped, replaced by giant green scanning beams washing over the ship's hull.

 

The admiral checked a console and nodded as if to herself. "They're looking for ways to adapt," she said. Clearly she expected this.

 

Janeway cast her a glance and started to speak, but her intentions were swallowed as the Borg cubes all fired at once and the ship shook violently.

 

"They're firing simultaneously!" Chakotay called over the noise. "Focusing on a single section!"

 

An alarm went off on Tuvok's station. "Port armor integrity down to fifty percent!" he called. "Forty percent!"

 

The whine was deafening.

 

"Mr. Paris, attack pattern alpha-one!" Janeway ordered. "Target lead cub and fire transphasic torpedoes."

 

They heard the armor split apart, exposing a launch mechanism. If only it would work! Untested, unproven-

 

The nebula lit up. Torpedoes blew free of their housings and collided with the first Borg cube. Janeway expected something a little better than the usual poof of smoke and sparks against the cube's outer mechanicals. She got much more.

 

An explosion of a level met only by the collisions of spatial bodies rocked through the nebula, washing Voyager up on her nacelles and blowing the other two cubes back the way they'd come.

 

Bright white clouds edged with neon green made an enormous gouted fireball behind the ship, then another, and another.

 

The cube had exploded!

 

Exploded!

 

Well, damn-the admiral was a nice little old lady after all!

 

If only they could see the look on the Borg Queen's face right now! A blown-up cube!

 

Janeway kept her head. "Target the second cube."

 

The second hit was as effective as the first. The next cube broke through the fireball of the first, only to be struck corner-on with the starship's second salvo.

 

Possibly because of proximity, the second explosion was more ghastly and glorious than the first.

 

"The third cube is retreating!" Harry Kim shouted, overcome with whatever he was feeling.

 

Disbelief, probably. Such untempered joy was rarely the profit of Voyager's contacts with the Borg or anyone else. There were always costs.

 

At this moment, though, everything went their way and they were soaring!

 

"Distance to the center?" Chakotay asked.

 

"Less than one hundred thousand kilometers," Seven answered instantly.

 

On her last word the ship blew out of the gassy wall of the nebula into a clear center, a huge area of empty space fenced off all around by more thousands of cubic kilometers of poisoned yellow vapor.

 

Voyager became tiny again. Not because of the clearing or the vapor, but because of the structure turning before her. Before them in space hung a Borg colossus, a pinwheel of Olympian proportions spreading its extensions out, out, out beyond the range of the sensors to bring to the screen. Like some elephantine toy made of a billions pieces, the pinwheel might as well have been a display of fireworks gone solid and with a crust of circuitry bolted on every inch. At the end of each conduit was a glowing transwarp aperture held open by huge struts.

 

No one had ever before seen such a gargantuan structure-or such was the bet Captain Janeway made with herself, despite the presence of her future self, who clearly was not so surprised. Yet even the admiral stared with rekindled awe.

 

"What the hell is it?" Janeway demanded in a warning tone.

 

"Mr. Paris," the admiral said instead, "alter course to enter the aperture at coordinates three-four-six by four-two!"

 

"Belay that!" the captain snapped. "I asked you a question! What is it?"

 

"The road home."

 

"It's more than that," Seven broke in. "It's a transwarp hub."

 

Janeway's memory awakened with a jolt. "You told me once there were only six of them in the galaxy-"

 

"That's correct," Seven responded.

 

The captain swung to the admiral. "You knew this was here, but you didn't tell me! Why?"

 

"I'll answer all your questions once we're back in the Alpha Quadrant."

 

"Take us out of this nebula!"

 

Paris turned to them both. "Captain?"

 

"You heard me."

 

"I gave you an order, Lieutenant," the admiral barked. "Proceed to aperture-"

 

"This is my bridge, Admiral," Janeway interrupted, "and I'll have you removed if necessary. Mr. Paris, take us out!"

 

They had to hit warp speed to clear the nebula without being killed. Their victory over the two Borg cubes had been quickly slapped down by the sight of the pinwheel, the transwarp hub that so thoroughly dwarfed them, the cubes, and their place in the galaxy. If the Borg had these profound mammoths around the galaxy, then the Federation was already beaten. It was just a matter of time.

 

Such was the sour attitude in the astrometrics lab as Seven of Nine described to them the replay of what they had seen and now recorded. Even the image of the hub created a gut-wrenching fear and frustration.

 

The admiral hovered in the background, her arms folded tightly across her body. She was angry.

 

Janeway didn't care. She would have honesty and completeness, if nothing else.

 

Seven had to reduce the magnification six times before the whole hub would even let itself be seen on the large dome-screen.

 

"This hub connects with thousands of transwarp conduits with endpoints in all four quadrants," Seven explained. "It allows the Collective to deploy vessels almost anywhere in the galaxy within minutes."

 

As every heart sank-with the possible exception of the admiral's-Tuvok added, "Of all the Borg's tactic al advantages, this could be the most significant."

 

"It's no wonder," Chakotay said, "the Queen didn't want us in that nebula."

 

"So how do we destroy it?" Janeway demanded.

 

She shocked them with this question, but she didn't care. So it was a big mission. So what? What else was this ship for?

 

The admiral reacted, but Janeway paid her no attention. Whether she liked the idea or not remained a mystery.

 

Seven worked her controls and changed the image to display one of the high-tech struts in close-up. "The structure is supported by a series of interspatial manifolds. If we could disable enough of them, theoretically the hub would collapse."

 

Oh, that really sounded too easy. Still, it also sounded possible. With the explanation came the thousand questions, primary of which was-why hadn't anybody tried it before?

 

Or maybe somebody had.

 

"This is a waste of time," the admiral ground out from behind-

 

them. "The shielding for those manifolds is regulated from the central nexus, by the Queen herself. You might be able to damage one of them, maybe two, but by the time you move on to the third, she'd adapt."

 

The captain wasn't annoyed enough to ignore good information, but suggested, "There may be a way to bring them down simultaneously."

 

"From where? Inside the hub? Voyager would be crushed like a bug."

 

Chakotay got between them before Janeway responded. "What about taking the conduit back to the Alpha Quadrant, and then destroying the structure from the other side."

 

"This hub is here," the admiral caustically chided. "There's nothing in the Alpha Quadrant but exit apurtures. While you're all standing around dreaming up fantasy tactical scenarios, the Queen is studying her scans of our armor and weapons. And she's probably got the entire Collective working on a way to counter them. Take the ship back to the nebula and go home before it's too late."

 

Before she said anything else, Janeway reached out and grasped the older woman's arm. To Chakotay and Seven, Tuvok and everything within her power, she ordered, "Find a way to destroy that hub." To the admiral, she said, "Let's take a walk."

 

, "I want to know why you didn't tell me about this."

 

Admiral Janeway didn't react to the captain's question in any outward manner, but simply walked beside Janeway as they pointlessly emerged from the astrometrics lab and left the officers with their awesome task.

 

"Because I remember how stubborn and self-righteous I used to be," the senior officer said, "and I figured you might try to do something stupid."

 

The captain bristled. "We have an opportunity to deal a crippling blow to the Borg. It could save billions of lives!"

 

"I didn't spend the last ten years looking for a way to get this crew home earlier just so you could throw it all away on some intergalactic goodwill mission."

 

Disgusted, Janeway stopped walking and faced her, faced the sickening image of a captain gone sour, a promoted ponce who had forgotten why decent people rose up and made starships, and why only a handful among them were chosen to command.

 

"Maybe we should go back to sickbay," she rasped.

 

"Why? So you can have me sedated?"

 

"So I can have the Doctor reconfirm your identity. I refuse to believe I'll ever become as cynical as you."

 

The admiral wasn't insulted. "Am I the only one experiencing deja vu here?"

 

"What are you talking about?"

 

"Seven years ago, you had a chance to use the Caretaker's Array to get Voyager home. But instead, you destroyed it."

 

Janeway stood back a step. Did she really have to explain? Did she have to remind this shriveled soul that a captain's first duty is to the bigger picture, and that everybody on a starship signed up with the vow of giving his or her life to the betterment of those who had supplied them with this power and authority? That this ship wasn't a toy or a private plane?

 

"I did what I knew was right," she proclaimed.

 

"You chose to put the lives of strangers ahead of the lives of your crew," the admiral said caustically. "You can't make the same mistake again."

 

Janeway's stomach rolled to think this person was even related to her, never mind the reality. The lives of strangers? What

 

was that supposed to mean? No ship exists just to protect the lives of those aboard!

 

Her jaw set hard. She battled down the wish to fight. "You got Voyager home," she said. "That means I will too. If it takes a few more years, then that's-"

 

"Seven of Nine is going to die."

 

"What?"

 

"Three years from now. She'll be injured on an away mission. She'll make it back to Voyager, and die in the arms of her husband."

 

"Husband?"

 

"Chakotay."

 

Janeway felt her innards buckle. Was the admiral making this up just to get a rise out of her? The other woman was tricky- Janeway intimately knew just how tricky.

 

Yet there was a hardness of truth in the admiral's eyes. "He'll never be the same after Seven's death. And neither will you."

 

Janeway tried to let this sink in. She was also obligated to cling to her oath-that the life of no single crewman would stand in the way of the ship's primary mission to protect life and peace and stability on a much grander scale than these decks.

 

"If I know what's going to happen," she attempted, "I can avoid it."

 

"Seven's not the only one," the admiral shot again. "Between this day and the day I got Voyager home, I lost twenty-two crew members. And then, of course, there's Tuvok."

 

"What about him?" Janeway snapped.

 

The admiral swaggered as she shifted her feet. "You're forget-ting the Temporal Prime Directive, Captain-"

 

"To hell with it!"

 

"Fine. Tuvok has a degenerative neurological condition that he hasn't told you about."

 

How many punches could one rib cage take?

 

"There's a cure in the Alpha Quadrant," the admiral went on harshly. "Even if you alter Voyager's route, limit your contact with alien species, you're going to lose people. But I'm offering you a chance to get them all home safe and sound-today! Are you really going to walk away from that?"

 

 

CHAPTER 15

 

"YOUR CONCERN IS APPRECIATED, CAPTAIN, BUT PREMATURE. IT

 

will be several years before the symptoms become serious. Until then, the Doctor can manage my condition with medication."

 

Kathryn Janeway listened to Tuvok's polite protestations and took everything with a grain of salt. Tuvok didn't incline toward deception, but even keeping his condition from her had been a kind of lie. She knew he was thinking more of her than himself-after all, she couldn't exactly dismiss him from the Service on a medical discharge, could she?

 

"Is it true," she asked, "what the admiral said? That there's a cure in the Alpha Quadrant?"

 

Tuvok was obviously disturbed by her knowing this information and sagged a little. "It's called a fal-tor-voh. And it requires a mind-meld with another Vulcan."

 

"What about the other Vulcans on Voyager?" The question sounded flat just as she finished it. He would've thought of that possibility first off.

 

"None of them is compatible," he pointed out politely.

 

"But members of your family are," she inferred. "If you knew that returning to the Alpha Quadrant was your only chance for recovery, why didn't you object when I asked you to find a way to destroy the hub?"

 

It was almost an insult to ask him that. Unlike Admiral Janeway, Tuvok was still a Starfleet officer first and a member of an adopted family second.

 

"My sense of logic isn't impaired yet," he said. He seemed never to have considered his own well-being in balance with the lives of innocent possible Borg victims-and he was right not to. "If we succeed, billions of lives will be saved."

 

Janeway dismissed the ship, the crew, the universe, for just a moment. "What about your life?"

 

Sanguine, Tuvok had accepted the noblest route. "To quote Ambassador Spock.. . 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.' "

 

There was a great lesson here, one Janeway had almost allowed to slip away. Yes, the Alpha Quadrant sooner than later held many temptations, but they weren't just children lost in the woods with no one to worry about other than themselves. She was suddenly ashamed of Admiral Janeway and disappointed that the crew had met the woman she might become.

 

The woman she might have become. She could change things now. If Admiral Janeway stayed on Voyager for the rest of her life, she and the captain would be separate people, and the captain was not obligated to turn into this other woman.

 

And I won't. I won't become her. I don't admire her. She has special knowledge, but she's forgotten why intelligent beings seek knowledge and reach out with it.

 

She looked at Tuvok, and vowed that he would be her example, the sentinel for Voyager's unwritten future.

 

"I appreciate your candor, Admiral, but Captain Janeway is my commanding officer. I won't disobey her."

 

Seven of Nine accepted the admiral's disturbing news with almost as much distaste as the admiral's bitter suggestion. Betray the captain?

 

"I'm not asking you to," the admiral said, pursuing Seven back to the freestanding console. "I simply want you to tell her that in your opinion, destroying the hub is too risky, the cost is too high-"

 

"I can't do that."

 

The admiral held out a hand. "Even if it means avoiding the consequences I mentioned?"

 

Seven quelled a particularly human sense of vulnerability. "Now that I know about those consequences, they're no longer a certainty. But even if they were, my death would be a small price to pay for the destruction of the transwarp network."

 

The admiral watched her work, watched her try to lock herself into the course of action the captain wanted, a course that would sacrifice her chance for a long life with Chakotay-such a strange and wondrous possibility! Seven was not as practiced at logic under conflict as Mr. Tuvok, but she tried.

 

"I've known you for a long time, Seven," the admiral attempted. "Longer than you've known yourself. You're thinking that collapsing the network would be an opportunity to atone for atrocities you participated in while you were a drone."

 

Seven's shoulders tightened. Her nerves seemed to be suddenly burning from the inside out. These had been atrocious indeed, the things she had been forced to do, the crimes against

 

life, against freedom and choice, love and diversity of pursuit. The thoughts of atonement had always been private, small thoughts lost within her search for individuality, but they were there and she had entertained them.

 

Wasn't it called revenge?

 

Perhaps it was more complicated than simple revenge. She owed something to the galaxy.

 

"It's time to let go of the past," the admiral pressed on, "and start thinking about your future!"

 

"My future," Seven forced out, "is insignificant compared to the lives of the people we'd be saving."

 

"You're being selfish."

 

"Selfish? I'm talking about helping others-"

 

"Strangers. In a hypothetical scenario. I'm talking about real life! Your colleagues .. . your friends ... the people who love you! Imagine the impact your death would have on them!"

 

Seven paused and gazed into the eyes of this person, this stranger. If these choices and decisions were part of being human, then she had reached a new level.

 

"Excuse me, Admiral," she said bluntly. "I have work to complete."

 

She remained otherwise very still. She stood her philosophical ground, waited for the admiral to digest the expression in her eyes and to leave the lab. Once alone, Seven turned back to the purpose she would not abandon for her own edification, and to the populations unnamed who needed her to be bigger than herself.

 

And she was proud. Frightened, proud. A strong and useful combination.

 

Everybody rallied to the captain's plan. To the last of Voyager's crew, even B'Elanna and Tom Paris, who were about

 

to become parents, were willing to make good on their promise to be higher than themselves, for the good of a galaxy that desperately needed heroes.

 

In the shadow of the irritated and greatly subdued admiral, Captain Janeway found herself puffed up with pride. She knew the admiral had been lobbying the crew, and she knew what response they had unilaterally given.

 

The briefing room was now cluttered with coffee cups, water glasses, padds and people. They had spread out to their various stations, analyzed every last possibility, and come together to a single purpose like a cluster of surgeons about to operate on the same patient.

 

Janeway sat next to Chakotay. Around the table were Paris, B'Elanna, Kim, the Doctor, Tuvok, and Seven, and over there, apart, was Admiral Janeway. Tuvok had a graphic of the tran-swarp hub playing on the monitor. Even small and transparent, the monstrosity was frightening.

 

"Once inside," Tuvok was reporting, "we'd fire a spread of transphasic torpedoes."

 

Seven added, "They'd be programmed to detonate simultaneously."

 

"If the torpedoes penetrate the shielding, the conduits should begin to collapse in a cascade reaction."

 

Janeway drew a breath to clear her head. This had been a long meeting after a tiring day. The explanation-sharing was giving her whiplash. She wished they'd all report to one person and that person would just say everything at once instead of the zigzag dialogue. The irony was not lost on her that this attack was only possible because of technology that Admiral Janeway had brought from the future, and they were using it to go very much against the admiral's purpose.

 

"In order to avoid the shock wave," Tuvok continued as the graphic began its theoretical collapse, "we'd have less than ten seconds to exit the hub."

 

What more could be said? The plan could be executed, could succeed, or could be their glorious last couple of minutes. Their legend would die with them. No one would really know why.

 

Billions of lives. Whole planets out there trying to live and thrive, most not even knowing they were percolating fodder for the Borg. If the encompassing plan for assimilation continued on its extrapolated path, someday there would be nothing in the galaxy but Borgified life-forms. True, there would be no more death in the conventional sense. But there would also be no more life, no love or ambition, no striving for betterment, no failing and getting up from failure, no new greatness, no new dreams. Worth doing?

 

Janeway gripped the arms of her chair. "A long time ago," she began solemnly, "I made a decision that stranded this crew in the Delta Quadrant. I don't regret that decision. But I didn't know all of you then, and Voyager was just a starship. It's much more than that now. It's become our home."

 

She paused, to see if this very odd statement would have some effect on them. The only response, though, was Tuvok's brow when she uttered the uninspiring phrase "just a starship." Maybe she should stop baiting them.

 

"I know I could order you to carry out this plan," she went on, more mellow than before, less posturing. "None of you would hesitate for a second. But I'm not going to do that. You know the crewmen who work under you, and you know what your own hearts are telling you. So we're not going to attempt this unless everyone in this room agrees. No one will think less of you if you don't." To whom was she lying? Herself? Possibly. To them? No--

 

they knew she already understood the answer they would give. This was all a weird performance, all for the admiral's sake- just so she would never again interfere.

 

"Captain?" Harry Kim spoke up, probably not understanding the game Janeway was playing.

 

No, of course he wasn't picking up on her subtle trick. Janeway gazed warmly at him, at his innocence, and in his boyish features and his guileless eyes she saw the myriad souls they were about to attempt to save.

 

"Go ahead, Harry," she accepted.

 

He hesitated, formulating his thoughts. "I think it's safe to say that no one on this crew has been more obsessed with getting home than I have. But when I think of everything we've been through together, maybe it's not the destination that matters . . . maybe it's the journey." He paused again, and made contact with each of them at the table. "I can't think of any place I'd rather be, or any people I'd rather be with."

 

His words hung in the air a moment, then drifted into the coffee cup Tom Paris held up in front of him.

 

"To the journey," Paris declared.

 

One by one their raised their glasses or cups, and to the last echoed the sentiment of solidarity, admiral or no admiral, Borg or no Borg.

 

Off watch, at red alert. The two were contradictory. Nobody was off watch at red alert, yet Captain Janeway stood in the mess hall alone, near the window, reviewing a padd and sipping another cup of coffee. It was her tenth in the past couple of hours. She'd either float away or just use up all they had left. Maybe that was why she eventually "gave it up." Wasn't any left.

 

"Coffee, black."

 

She turned at the sound of her own voice. The admiral was here. When had she come in?

 

A cup of coffee was dispensed from the replicator. The admiral took it and approached her.

 

"I thought you gave it up," Janeway commented.

 

The admiral offered a very familiar shrug with just a tip of her head. "I've decided to revive a few of my old habits."

 

"Oh? What else, besides the coffee?"

 

Admiral Janeway's eyes twinkled at the irony. "Well... I used to be much more idealistic. I took a lot of risks."

 

What was she driving at? Janeway deliberately didn't say anything, letting her silence propel the moment.

 

"I've been so determined to get my crew home," the admiral regretfully went on, "for so many years ... I forgot how much they loved being together. And I forgot how loyal they were to ... you." She paced a few steps, then went on. "It's taken me a few days to realize it, but this is your ship, your crew. Not mine. I was wrong to lie to you, to think I could talk you out of something you'd set your mind to-"

 

"You were only doing what you thought was right for all of us." Janeway cut her off with a platitude. She really didn't want to hear any more.

 

"Well, you've changed my mind about that," the admiral said anyway. "And I'd like to help you carry out your mission. Maybe together we can increase our odds."

 

Janeway stared at her, unblinking, until her eyes hurt. Could it be this easy? Flip, flop, I'm with you now?

 

Or had the actions and devotions of the crew really had this much of an effect on a person whom she knew-damned well knew-was hardheaded and inflexible on items of conviction?

 

She couldn't read the admiral's eyes, despite the mirror effect. There was still a factor of possible manipulation going on. And she wanted to be cautious, to hold back her trust. She owed it to everyone to be circumspect and not plunge forward just because the admiral decided to play nice.

 

Why were they at odds? Why were they playing mental games and challenges of authority and will? There was something wrong about this, and there had to be some better way. A captain with a ship of this power, a crew of this diverse talent. . . there had to be something she hadn't imagined.

 

For the first time she opened her brain to the crazy wedge of chance that she had until now been pushing away for the safety of her crew.

 

"Maybe we can do more than that. There's got to be a way to have our cake and eat it too."

 

The admiral scowled a bit. "We can't destroy the hub and get Voyager home."

 

"Are you absolutely sure about that?"

 

Clearly the admiral had never thought this way. She had been too single-minded, and now reconsidered.

 

"There might be a way," she offered quietly. "I considered it once . . . but it seemed too risky."

 

For the first time they genuinely understood each other, and genuinely agreed.

 

Janeway actually smiled. "That was before you decided to revive your old habits."

 

The admiral smiled back and took a sip fr om her coffee cup. "I don't know why I ever gave this up."

 

The admiral checked the readings at the helm of her shuttle when the captain entered, carrying a hypospray. Risky? This was

 

beyond the definition. They had, however, committed themselves and neither was looking back.

 

"It's about time." She looked up at the younger version of herself and saw the beginnings of lines around the eyes that had by now become familiar and in a way reassuring. "I'm not getting any younger, you know."

 

Janeway adjusted the hypo, then injected the admiral while casually chiding, "You're sure you want to do this?"

 

"No, but Voyager isn't big enough for the both of us."

 

Somehow it was easy to joke, now that the critical, crazy decision had been made.

 

Didn't matter-if the captain succeeded in taking the ship back to the Alpha Quadrant, then the admiral wouldn't exist anyway because the future would have been changed. If they didn't succeed, well-there was no future to worry about. So she might as well go.

 

Captain Janeway was watching her. "Good luck, Admiral."

 

"You too," the admiral said, rather quickly. Then she added, "Captain . . . I'm glad I got to know you again."

 

Destiny took over, on autopilot. The captain got up and simply left. There was nothing more to say.

 

The admiral was glad of it. Enough talking. She launched the shuttle from the starship's bay with a surge of nostalgia and wondrous ease, and instantly went to warp on a heading for the Borg nebula and the transwarp hub. She would cross a threshold, and she would disappear from the screens on the starship.

 

It was time to live or die, or both.

 

 

CHAPTER 1 6

 

CHAKOTAY HURRIED INTO THE LAB AND TOOK SOME KIND OF UNEX-plainable relief at seeing Seven hard at work. That vision of her had become like an icon for him. If there was a statue of her forming in his mind, it involved her standing at the console, her long limbs tight, her hair glossy, her eyes fixed and determined, her fingers playing the board as if it were an extension of herself.

 

The whole ship's company was tense like that. The admiral who had given them a chance at a whole new kind of future was now off board and had disappeared into the transwarp hub's glowing aperture.

 

"Any word from the admiral? ,

 

Seven shook her head stiffly. Her tone was formal. "We lost contact as soon as she entered the hub."

 

Sir. She all but said it.

 

He tried again. "Did the Borg give her any trouble?"

 

"Her vessel was scanned by several cubes, but none approached her, sir."

 

Oh, there it was, the term of address that set them apart. He

 

tried to strike up a little banter. "Are we keeping things professional today?"

 

"Yes, Commander."

 

He smiled, but almost immediately his smile faded. She wasn't looking at him. Not at all.

 

"You're not joking, are you?" he asked.

 

"NO."

 

She moved away from him, to another console. She didn't have to do that.

 

He followed her. "Hey . . . what's wrong?"

 

"Nothing. I'm just busy."

 

"I think I've gotten to know you a little better than that," he attempted, but her expression didn't change or soften, or anything.

 

"I'd prefer it if you didn't speak to me as though we're on intimate terms."

 

A surge of anger warmed between them. "We are on intimate terms," he protested.

 

"Not anymore."

 

Chakotay bristled. "What the hell is going on?"

 

She still wouldn't meet his eyes. "I've decided to alter the parameters of our relationship."

 

"You mind telling me why?"

 

"We both have dangerous occupations," she began flimsily, forcing every word. "It's possible one of us could be seriously injured... or worse. I believe it's best to avoid emotional attachment."

 

It was that damned admiral. It had to be.

 

Chakotay drew a sharp breath. "Maybe you can just flip some Borg switch and shut down your emotions, but I can't."

 

Finally she turned to him. "I suggest you try. It will make things less difficult for you if any harm were to come to me."

 

He digested this almost immediately, because he already had his suspicions. "Why are you suddenly so concerned about that? Is there something I should know?"

 

Perhaps she could see in his eyes that he suspected, that he wasn't quite as dull as would be necessary for a person not to notice the changes since the admiral's appearance. They were tampering with the future, and Admiral Janeway had been talking to the crew.

 

"The admiral suggests"-she paused as he rolled his eyes with anger and anticipation-"that your feelings for me will cause you pain in the future. I can't allow that to happen."

 

He took hold of her arm as if to anchor them in the present, and in the flexibility of things to come. "Any relationship entails risk, Seven, and nobody can guarantee what's going to happen tomorrow. Not even an admiral from the future."

 

He wanted to launch into an explanation, chase down the simple fact that the future had been incurably altered the moment Admiral Janeway stepped on the ship. Just her very existence told them things they weren't supposed to know. Now everything would be different, like it or not, and that meant nothing was carved in stone anymore. The future she had left was gone and would never return in the form she recognized.

 

And she was gone anyway! She was gone, and they were alone again to take care of each other.

 

"The only certainty," he ventured, "is how we feel about each other here and now. If you think I'm going to let you end this because of what might happen, then you need to get to know me a little better."

 

He reached out for her. Nothing overt-just put his hand between them and didn't retract it.

 

Slowly, her fingers, implanted with their Borg components,

 

came to meet his. Together they dismissed the threats and warnings, fears and hauntings placed between them by the woman who talked about strangers, but was no more than one herself.

 

But for the two of them, there was only one future today, which they found in the strength of each other's eyes. This was the future for which, together, they would fight.

 

"If you say 'relax' one more time I'm gonna rip your holographic head off!"

 

Even the corridor outside sickbay rang with Tom Paris's lovely wife's melodic voice. As Paris rushed into sickbay, he heard the Doctor's response.

 

"I hope you don't intend to kiss your baby with that mouth."

 

He rounded the partition and expected to see the Doctor's holoprogram rearranged. "Tell me this isn't another false alarm."

 

The Doctor looked up. "This isn't another false alarm."

 

B'Elanna lay on a pallet in obvious discomfort, half sitting up. Her teeth were gritted, her features hardened, her whole body drumhead-tight. This was it.

 

"I can't believe it," Paris murmured.

 

She stared at him and moaned, "Believe it!"

 

"I might actually win ..."

 

"WHAT?"

 

"The baby pool. I picked today, fifteen hundred hours-"

 

Her head dropped back for a moment of respite and annoyance. "I'm so glad I could accommodate you."

 

The Doctor came to the other side of the bed with a tray of medical instruments that didn't look very comforting at all.

 

"I wouldn't celebrate yet," he warned casually. "Klingon labor sometimes lasts several days-" B'Elanna's expression stopped him cold and encouraged a slight rearrangement of the other half

 

of that sentence. "Of course . . . I'm sure that won't be the case here."

 

"Bridge to Lieutenant Paris," the captain's voice interrupted. "We 're about to get under way."

 

Oh, not now! Suddenly Paris was hit with the full-face blunt force of why having families on ships wasn't really a great idea. To divide a crewman's mind this way couldn't come to anything good. On a ship, emotional distraction and confused priorities were a recipe for disaster. He was the most qualified helmsman for what they were about to do-nobody else could do as well, not even the captain or Chakotay. Should he give up this precious moment or should he go to the bridge and make sure his baby had the best chance to live more than two minutes? And could he concentrate once he got there?

 

His place was here-wasn't it?

 

"Go," B'Elanna said, reading his mind.

 

"But-"

 

"No buts, flyboy. If this mission's going to succeed, we need our best pilot at the helm. Don't worry-I've got the Doctor."

 

He hated the idea of leaving. What kind of job could he do at the helm, thinking about her down here giving birth without his support? He'd started something, and now he might not be able to make good on following through. She'd be doing this alone. He had promised they wouldn't do anything important alone- this was marriage, wasn't it? While he was here, he would want to be on the bridge. On the bridge, he would be thinking about what he was missing and the family he was trying to ignore.

 

"Is there a problem, Mr. Paris?"

 

"On my way, Captain."

 

What choice did he really have?

 

VOYAGER HAS ALTERED COURSE. CURRENT POSITION SPATIAL GRID THREE SIX TWO TRAJECTORY ONE ONE TWO MARK FIVE

 

"I don't know how you do it."

 

Admiral Janeway took great joy in the Borg Queen's shock as the bodiless woman's eyes shot open. The Queen was in her private alcove within the great metropolis of the Unicomplex. To the Queen's perception, the admiral stood only a few feet away. A good effect.

 

Getting the drop on the Borg Queen-mmm, felt great.

 

"All those voices talking at once. You must get terrible

 

headaches."

 

The Queen's pasty face bent into a scowl and she tilted her head.

 

"If you're calling drones to assimilate me," the admiral told her, "don't bother."

 

"I don't need drones to assimilate you," the Queen warned.

 

She moved toward the admiral, raising a threatening hand, but the admiral didn't flinch. The Queen ejected an assimilation tubule from her wrist, an ugly and invas ive device that represented orderly chaos for millions of former-people.

 

The tubule seemed to pierce Admiral Janeway's throat, but the admiral enjoyed just standing there, unaffected. "I'm not actually here, 'Your Majesty.' "

 

Angry, the Queen retracted the tubule.

 

"I'm in your mind," the admiral clarified.

 

"How?" the Queen asked.

 

"I'm using a synaptic interface. If I were you, I wouldn't waste my time trying to trace the signal."

 

Ah, the joy of advantage. Wasn't this pleasant? The freedom to give away all her secrets and still win?

 

"For the moment," the admiral went out, "it's beyond your abilities."

 

The Queen's expression hardened. "What do you want?"

 

"To make a deal. 'Captain' Janeway thinks I'm here to help her destroy your transwarp network."

 

"That's beyond your abilities."

 

"I know that. And I tried to explain to my naive younger self, but she wouldn't listen. She's determined to bring down that hub."

 

"She will fail."

 

"Yes. But she has weapons that I brought from the future. I believe you're familiar with them."

 

"Transphasic torpedoes. We will adapt."

 

"Eventually," the admiral agreed, "but not before Voyager does a great deal of damage." She paused, letting all this sink in, using her skill at dramatic timing to draw the Queen into her plan. "I'm willing to tell you how to adapt to those weapons now."

 

Intrigued, the Queen began to enjoy the game. "In exchange for what?"

 

"I want you to send a cube to tractor Voyager... to drag them back to the Alpha Quadrant."

 

The Queen's metallic eyes narrowed. A creature who could not be manipulated? Says who?

 

After ten years of conniving and plotting and bargaining, the reaction gave Admiral Janeway monumental satisfaction. "They're going home whether they like it or not."

 

"You're asking me to believe that the incorruptible Kathryn Janeway," the Borg Queen plumbed, "would betray her own crew."

 

"Not betray them," the admiral countered. "Save them from themselves. I brought technology to help Voyager get home, but the captain's arrogant, self-righteous . . . and her officers are so

 

blinded by loyalty that they're prepared to sacrifice their lives just to deal a crippling blow to the Borg."

 

The Queen raised her chin and said, "But you 'd never try to harm us."

 

"I've become a pragmatist in my old age. All I want is to get that crew back to their families."

 

"You wish," the Queen added, "to insure the well-being of your 'collective.' I can appreciate that. I'll help you, Admiral ... but it'll cost more than you're offering."

 

"What else do you want?"

 

"Your vessel and its database."

 

"I told you ... I'll show you how to adapt their torpedoes-"

 

"Insufficient."

 

Admiral Janeway felt her plan begin to unravel. If the future were compromised-she was already tampering with repercussions out of sight, out of control. "If I let you assimilate technology from the future, there's no telling how events would be altered."

 

"You're willing to alter the future," the Queen pointed out, "by getting Voyager home now."

 

"Yes, but there's a difference."

 

Couldn't the Queen understand the difference? The admiral wanted to alter the future her way. She knew best. She knew what was going to happen if nothing changed. Why didn't everyone just take her word for what was the better course?

 

"Do what all good 'pragmatists' do, Admiral," the Queen challenged. "Compromise."

 

"All right, I'll give you the shuttle. After the ship arrives safely in the Alpha Quadrant."

 

The Queen smiled. "You've already lied to your younger self. How do I know you're not lying to me?"

 

"I guess you'll just have to trust me."

 

"That won't be necessary."

 

Was the Queen communicating with the Collective? She seemed suddenly more smug.

 

Admiral Janeway controlled her own expression. She had already given too much away.

 

"You've underestimated me, Admiral," the Queen said. "While we've been talking, my drones have triangulated on your signal-"

 

"Computer, deactivate interface! Deploy armor!"

 

Instantly she was back in her shuttle. The mental image of the Queen dissolved in less than a second. Was it too late? Was it?

 

The shuttle rocked from side to side. The cloak!

 

A beam had hold of her, forcing the shuttle to drop its cloaking energy!

 

Her arms and legs tensed. She felt the buzz of a Borg transporter beam. She'd been found!

 

 

CHAPTER 17

 

THE ADMIRAL MATERIALIZED IN FRONT OF THE BORG QUEEN-THIS

 

time in the flesh-burdened with the knowledge that she had greatly miscalculated almost everything. She counted on the idea that the past was primitive and she had all the advantages. She had enjoyed her communication with the Queen, had taken time to enjoy herself after so many years of anticipation.

 

Now she was caught, and the Queen had her in the Uni-complex, and had possession of the shuttle without having had to come up to the admiral's deal.

 

This was a critical error, and Admiral Janeway had allowed it to happen.

 

"Very clever," the Borg Queen murmured, "hiding right on my doorstep. Were you planning to attack us from inside the Unicomplex?"

 

The admiral stiffened her lips. She must not speak, not give away anything more.

 

"Not feeling talkative?" the Queen chided. "That's all right."

 

The attack came again from the Queen's wrist, but this

 

time there was no protection from the technological shield of illusion. This time the admiral was physically here. The assimilation tubule hurt-a piercing agony at the admiral's throat. Borg technology began instantly to ripple beneath her skin.

 

"You and I don't need words to understand each other," the Queen said.

 

The admiral felt her body collapse, her eyes go dark. She gave herself to the the whispering web of a billion Borg voices on their way into her mind.

 

But she saw other things in her mind too. Now linked to the Collective, she also saw the the Starship Voyager plunge into the nebula clearing, back into the eye of threat's private hurricane. The bridge must be a tense place right now, alight with anxiety and excitement. And yet there was a thrill in the eyes of the officers, all of them as a team, with a single purpose-Janeway, Chakotay, Seven, Paris, Kim, Tuvok-all together again, strong and young. Despite the horrors, this was what they had all been trained for, what they had all intended to do with their talents when they signed on with Starfleet.

 

The trans warp hub loomed before the suddenly tiny ship. Without altering course or engaging evasive cautionary maneuvers, the ship entered one of the glowing apertures in the great wheel. With a flash of light, it disappeared.

 

The admiral had no idea whose point of view she was witnessing. She listened, helpless to move or react, to the voice of the Collective.

 

VOYAGER HAS ENTERED APERTURE EIGHT TWO THREE ACCESS TRANSWARP CORRIDOR ZERO NINE

 

She now saw a mental picture of herself slumped against a console, her skin gray-blue, mottled, with Borg implants pressed to her features. Before her, the Borg Queen seemed satisfied and curious.

 

REDIRECT VESSELS TO INTERCEPT CORRIDOR NINE VOYAGER

 

u.s.s.

 

ZERO NINE TRANSWARP INTERCEPT COMPLY JANEWAY JANEWAY

 

UNABLE TO COMPLY

 

The voices were suddenly muddled by a high-pitched whine. The Queen reacted with pain and stumbled.

 

Admiral Janeway summoned her sheer force of will and blinked her eyes. The whine began to die down, but the voices of the Borg cacophony were now poisoned with echoes and overlays, jumbled and disparate. There was a nonsensical ring to them now.

 

ZERO TRANSWARP

 

UNABLE COMPLYING VOYAGER NINE CORRIDOR

 

The Queen spread her arms in disorientation. Panic painted itself across her face.

 

The admiral felt a tiny smile on her own lips. "Must be... something . . . you assimilated ..."

 

"What have you done?" the Queen cried.

 

"I thought we didn't. . . need words to ... understand each other."

 

The Queen endured a shooting pain. Beside her, a console exploded, bathing her in sparks. "You've infected us! A neurolytic pathogen!"

 

Admiral Janeway found the next smile much easier.

 

"Just enough to bring chaos to order," she said. Her voice was stronger! "Your conduit's shielding is destabilizing . . . look . . . let's watch together, Your Majesty ... Voyager is firing its transphasic torpedoes . . . they're ripping through the inter-spatial manifold ..."

 

"Voyager will be destroyed," the Queen spoke sluggishly.

 

"They're ahead of the shock waves," the admiral said, just to prove she knew. "They'll survive . . . Captain Janeway and I made sure of that... it's you who underestimated us."

 

Like bullets from a machine gun, transphasic torpedoes punched through the Borg hardware and kept delivering destruction on a long powerful trajectory. Violence erupted through the Queen's consoles. Sparks rained around them from destructive collapse high in the Unicomplex. The cry of a billion confused Borg blew through their minds like wind.

 

The transwarp hub, in all its gargantuan lordliness, began to collapse on itself as if dragged into a huge gravity well.

 

Near the admiral, the Queen's mechanical body jolted and convulsed in weird microcosmic empathy with her planet-sized counterparts. Her shoulder sparked. Like a piece of a store-bought plastic doll, her arm blew off and fell to the floor, leaving nothing but a nasty tendril dangling from the socket that once had fed her circuitry.

 

She didn't react to her arm's little dance, but instead the

 

Queen tilted her head and brought in a floating screen with a picture of a Borg sphere.

 

"Sphere six three four, they can still hear my thoughts."

 

She focused on the image, then closed her eyes and strained to send a telepathic command.

 

The admiral, nearly helpess in her half-Borg state, watched with a churning delight at the Queen's trouble. A disease, a plague, a virus-something so basic that it couldn't be out-thought.

 

Lovely.

 

Around them the entire complex began to shudder and spark, beautiful in its horror of destruction. Some things really were gorgeous as they blew themselves to molecules . . . suns, clouds, storms, Borg cubes . . .

 

Admiral Janeway indulged in her final moments by completely enjoying her long-planned revenge on the Borg, their "unbeatable" Queen, and their plans to assimilate the galaxy like a disease. Now they had the disease.

 

A shot of pain racked the Queen's body again and in an almost burlesque sideshow way one of her legs fell off. She grabbed a console to steady herself and glared at the admiral.

 

"Captain Janeway is about to die," she threatened. "If she has no future . . . you'll never exist. . . and nothing you've done here today will happen."

 

But there was pleasure in possibility. The admiral noted that the Queen's voice was losing its aural stability. As explosions tore through the complex around them, the Queen's body pulled itself to pieces like the finishing sequence of some kind of Frankenstein story.

 

In the admiral's assimilated mind, still clinging by virtue of the virus to a tincture of humanity, she enjoyed the invigorating sight of Borg cubes, Borg spheres, and the transwarp hub being

 

chewed by crawling brushfire all through the systems. Drones scrambled everywhere, helpless, in their brainless effort to continue doing their jobs. They didn't know they were about to die. Insects stumbling everywhere, still tending the nest while the grass burned around them. How ironic!

 

There were disadvantages to linking every being, every circuit and brain cell, every eye and voice being linked inextricably. To the glories of the swarm would come a unified death. Admiral Janeway was glad to share their end with them. Rather than waste away in an unhappy future, she would have a hero's finish while doing heroic things. Her crew would live now, and the Borg would suffer damage possibly irreparable.

 

Their ambitious Queen was dissolving before her eyes. The Collective was being consumed in a giant meltdown.

 

And I did it. I always knew I would.

 

"Full power. Continue firing. Take out as much as you can! Concentrate on the connective junctions! Seven, show them their targets!"

 

"I'm having trouble holding course," Paris warned as the ship bucked to starboard and whined in an attempt to compensate. "Permission to transfer power to specified thrusters."

 

"Do what you have to," Janeway said. "Don't wait for orders. Keep us on a heading to the Alpha Quadrant."

 

"That's my point-it keeps changing!"

 

"Seven, help him! Identify and shut down the systems that are confusing the helm."

 

"Aye, Captain."

 

"Aft armor is down to six percent," Tuvok called.

 

Kim spoke at almost the same time. "Hull breaches on decks seven through twelve!"

 

"Evacuate those decks. Shut down all unnecessary systems. Tell the crew to batten down and hang on!"

 

Paris was sweating by the pint. "I can't stay ahead of them, Captain!"

 

The ship endured a hard bang.

 

"The armor is failing," Tuvok reported.

 

Chakotay grabbed the rail and called to Seven, "Where's the nearest aperture?"

 

"Approximately thirty seconds ahead-but it leads back to the Delta Quadrant!"

 

Chakotay turned to the captain. It was the easy way out, the quick way to save themselves.

 

Janeway endured his gaze. Save the ship? Or keep taking the only chance they had for a quick way home?

 

No-no more safety-first!

 

"Mr. Paris, prepare to adjust your heading!"

 

"The helm's sluggish-"

 

"Draw whatever power you need. Compromise life-support if you have to. We can't breathe if we're all dead anyway!"

 

"Yes, ma'am!"

 

The ship veered hard over, bending to port and several degrees

 

down.

 

"Seven, give us a course!" Janeway called. "The nearest aperture to the Alpha Quadrant!"

 

"We'll have to loop full about again, Captain," she reported instantly. "Six-six mark six."

 

"You're kidding ..."

 

"Six-six mark six!"

 

"Mr. Paris, you have your numbers. Effect change of course! Tuvok, keep firing the torpedoes down to the last salvo! Let's drag down as much of the Borg idea of life while we have the chance."

 

"Captain, what about the admiral?" Chakotay asked, calling above the whine and splatter of electrical breakouts around the bridge. "Aren't you going to tell me?" He moved a little closer, holding himself near her in spite of the shaking. "She's not theoretical, you know . . . she's a living person here."

 

"A person who made her own choice about when and where to give up her life. She's fulfilling her own dream," Janeway said thoughtfully. "You're not going to suggest I don't know what she's thinking, are you?"

 

"No." Chakotay wiped the sweat off his face. "Not at all, Kathryn. I think we both know her pretty well. I just don't like leaving her," he added, cupping her hand with his, "even though I'm bringing her with me."

 

Janeway stole a moment from the violence and battle to meet his eyes and touch his hand. "Don't worry, old friend. If we get through, the admiral and I have a rendezvous with a whole new destiny. We all will."

 

Chakotay, usually unflappable and wry in his dealings even with the ghastly or unpredicted, endured a little shudder of childlike anticipation that Janeway felt all the way down his arm and into her hand. Were they really going home? Was this really it after seven years of wandering? Or would one great salvo from the Borg cut them off at the last kilometer?

 

No. Captain Janeway willed the universe to go her way this time, this one final time!

 

"Captain, a Borg sphere is bearing down on our stern," Tuvok warned quickly.

 

The sphere immediately opened up on the ship, chewing away at the armor around the nacelles and engineering hull and the aft end of the saucer section.

 

Tuvok frowned. "Armor is eroding steadily!"

 

"Increase speed," Janeway ordered.

 

"Captain!"

 

Janeway looked up at Tom Paris's warning cry at the main screen. Before them the corridor between quadrants was collapsing in on itself!

 

 

CHAPTER 18

 

Pathfinder Research Lab Stardate 54983.1

 

REG BARCLAY WAS ALL RIGHT WHILE HE WAS BY HIMSELF. HE could concentrate on the wild readings pulsing through the equipment and the numbers, waves, and sensory data pouring like water through the arrays. Borg information.

 

The whole base was at red alert. Ten admirals were on their way. Within minutes of his report, the doors opened and dozens of Starfleet personnel scrambled to the lab areas that had previously been pretty much Barclay's lonely domain. He now had more help than anybody would ever want.

 

When Admiral Paris arrived with Admirals Barrenson, Eddu, Sylvanus, and two others whom Barclay didn't know, he suddenly found himself at the hub of the next great thing to happen in Federation history.

 

Or the end of the Federation once and for all. Nobody was forgetting that part, were they?

 

"Mr. Barclay, what is it you think you've got here?" Admiral Paris asked quickly. "Tell me in your own words."

 

"A transwarp aperture," Barclay stammered. "It's less than a light-year from Earth!"

 

"How many Borg vessels?"

 

"We can't get a clear reading. But the graviton emissions are off the scale!"

 

"I want every ship in range to converge on those coordinates."

 

The other admirals broke immediately to summon whichever ships of their own fleets were within range of communications.

 

Admiral Sylvanus came back within thirty seconds and said, "We've got eighteen ships forming into position. Nine more on the way."

 

And those were only the ones in the solar system. Within an hour there would be thirty more, Barclay guessed, rushing here at high warp. They would either be battling Borg or be the cleanup crew.

 

On the big screen the aperture glowed like the mouth of hell itself. Between the base and the aperture, eighteen Starfleet ships of various configuration converged and maneuvered into formation. Barclay shivered down a sense of the impending- that was a lot of firepower concentrated on one little area, but would it be enough?

 

"Open a channel," Admiral Paris ordered.

 

Barclay almost forgot the admiral was talking to him. He snapped out of his fascination with the screen's alarming tale and pounded the comm panel, then nodded to the admiral.

 

"This is Admiral Paris. Use all necessary force. I repeat-all necessary force."

 

One by one acknowledgments shot through the system from each of the Starfleet ships. They were still jockeying for posi-

 

tion. It had to be right, or they could accidentally graze each other. Was it right? Were they in a good position? Or would accidents happen?

 

Barclay's heart pounded in his ears. His eyes were nearly blinded by the brightness of the opening aperture, so much that when he looked down at his controls he couldn't read them. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and fought to see. With one hand he shielded the controls until the readings began to appear in the cloud before him.

 

"Sir, there's a vessel coming through!"

 

"Identify!"

 

"Borg signature!"

 

"This is Admiral Paris. All ships confirm visual of Borg infiltration. Target and open fire!"

 

Smart, Barclay noticed. Even if the equipment said Borg, the admiral and all those captains wanted to be sure of what they were shooting at.

 

Barclay forgot about his console and looked up into the viewscreen. The bright light of the aperture framed a corona around a dark shadowy ball, as if a solar eclipse had come right up to give Earth a kiss. An instant later and the sphere began to define itself, showing hard edges and square shadows, rectangular depressions and mechanicals formations and portals.

 

A Borg sphere! Visual confirmation!

 

The Starfleet ships opened fire in a bright ballet. The sphere's shields flashed, creating a ghostly blue bubble around the sphere as if the ball were inside blown glass.

 

"Phaser fire is not breaching their shields, sir," Barclay responded. "We can't fight them with conventional weapons!"

 

"We can sure as hell try. All ships, reconfigure and continue firing. Deploy photon torpedoes, tandem salvos."

 

The admiral's voice got steadier as the situation grew more dire. That was the sign of a leader!

 

Barclay looked at the admiral, just to record this moment in his mind.

 

When he looked back to his controls and the viewscreen, he pointed at the aperture behind the flashing Borg sphere and the ships firing wildly upon it. "Admiral, another formation! Another ship!"

 

More Borg!

 

They couldn't fight more Borg. The other Starfleet ships would never get here in time. This was a full-fledged invasion from the Delta Quadrant!

 

Barclay almost swallowed his whole head. Good thing he wasn't giving the orders, because he could barely speak.

 

"Federation-wide Mayday," Admiral Paris croaked. "Broadcast emergency alert to every planet. All planetary defenses should prepare for aggressive-"

 

"Sir!" Barclay pointed at the screen.

 

A streaking body emerged from within the aperture, but not a ship-a single thin line of propulsive trail. The streak lit into the sphere and drilled deep.

 

Barclay wanted to glance at the admiral, to measure the other man's expression and see what he should be thinking, but he couldn't pull his eyes away. They didn't know what they were seeing. The Starfleet armada hadn't had that effect-even if their phasers could have produced such destruction, they weren't firing from inside the aperture.

 

From far within the bowels of the sphere, an explosion began. The whole sphere engaged in a great burp from inside, ejecting

 

plumes of orange plasma and superheated gas. The sphere's hardware skin became a sheath housing a fireball. A moment later, that fireball blew outward.

 

All the other admirals began to cluster behind Admiral Paris and Barclay. For this moment they were only confused spectators of a monumental performance, the utter wrecking of a Borg sphere. They couldn't decide how to act or which orders to give until they had some idea of what they were seeing. They stood shoulder to shoulder, witnesses to the next unbelievable moment-when the Borg sphere disengaged its central adhesion and broke apart into an encompassing fireball.

 

The blazing eruption blew outward in all directions, bathing the Starfleet ships in white-hot ejecta. If the crews on those bridges weren't cheering, they weren't watching.

 

In a phenomenal breach of-well, everything-Barclay reached out and seized the admiral's arm. "Sir, sir! Look!"

 

Ridiculous-the admiral was already looking, but Barclay was drowning in sheer thrill.

 

"Oh, sir!" he cried like a kid at a baseball game.

 

The green-white-golden fireball broke up as a solid form punched through at dead center. A recognizable shape-a Starfleet shape!

 

"Cease fire!" Admiral Paris called. "All ships, cease fire! We have Starfleet contact! My God!"

 

The senior officer dropped his demeanor of stability and gasped at what they saw. Some of the other admirals reached over to pat Admiral Paris on his back and shoulders.

 

"Voyager!" Barclay choked out. "It's Voyager!"

 

A cheer broke from the admirals around him, as simple and childlike as he could ever imagine, and the sound thrilled him to his core.

 

The admiral gazed at his son's ship as it soared forward through the veil of glorious debris and streaked toward the Starfleet armada.

 

Beside him, Reg Barclay quietly spoke the words all were thinking.

 

"They're home . . ."

 

Admiral Paris held his breath for a moment of communion with this miracle, then found his voice.

 

"Hail them, please, Mr. Barclay."

 

"My pleasure, sir! Where's the comm-oh! Short-range! Imagine that! This is ... this is ... Pathfinder Base to Voyager. Come in!"

 

 

CHAPTER 19

 

THE CHEERING ON VOYAGER'S BRIDGE WAS A BALM FOR THE SOUL.

 

Kathryn Janeway sank back into her chair and waved away their moment of joy. There would be time for celebrating later, and plenty of cheering. Why, Starfleet might even bring back the ticker-tape parade.

 

Home .. . home. All of them, healthy and together.

 

When Admiral Paris's face, flanked by Reg Barclay and several other admirals, appeared on the main screen, Janeway almost laughed. They were perfectly stunned. Imagine rocking a fistful of admirals into silence!

 

"Janeway to Pathfinder Base. Sorry to surprise you ... next time we'll call ahead."

 

Admiral Paris smiled shakily. "Welcome back, Captain."

 

"It's good to be here."

 

"How did you-"

 

"It'll all be in my report, sir."

 

"I'll look forward to it!"

 

He didn't ask how his son was doing, or any other questions. Maybe he was afraid to know.

 

Tom Paris gazed at the vision of his father. He was hardly the rash young pilot who had disappeared off the scopes seven years ago, and had made his peace with the man whose face was their first beacon back to the Alpha Quadrant.

 

The admiral clicked off the communications connection. Probably unable to speak right now, as were most of them. Around her, her crew gazed at the armada of welcoming ships on the screen and the beautiful marbleized ball of Earth in the near distance. Seven and Chakotay were looking at each other now. Paris was still gazing at the screen and its wonders. Tuvok glanced at Janeway, and she was gratified to see him so healthy. Harry Kim was almost in tears with sheer joy, and choked into silence.

 

Around them, the sounds of damage reports and scramblings around the ship were wonderful music. In minutes they would have help, real help. They could call in the experts who had built this ship. There would be parts galore. Energy and resources and expertise brimming from every crack. For the first time, there would be plenty of everything, and the next time Janeway hailed her crew on the shipwide, she would be imparting to them the wonderful news. They could be home for supper.

 

"Sickbay to Lieutenant Paris."

 

Everybody flinched. The call was so mundane, so common- yet they all knew what it meant.

 

Paris almost fell out of his chair when the doctor's voice was backdropped by an infant's thready wail.

 

"There's someone here who'd like to say hello."

 

Paris whirled around in his chair. Janeway smiled at him.

 

"You'd better get down there, Tom," she invited. "Mr. Chakotay, take the helm."

 

"Aye, Captain!" Chakotay snapped.

 

He slid into the chair as Tom Paris dodged for the lift, catching the hands of his shipmates as he rushed past.

 

Captain Janeway squared herself in her chair and assessed her victories. The Borg transwarp network had imploded. The way to the Delta Quadrant was sealed up, and the ship and its crew were finally home. Her mission was complete. She had delivered the starship to its rightful owners, and her crewmates to their families and futures.

 

She settled back and murmured, "Thanks for everything, Admiral Janeway . . ."

 

Chakotay alone heard her, or heard something. He turned. "Course, Captain?"

 

She turned and gave him an ironic smile. Then she gave an order she had given many times over the last seven years.

 

"Set a course for home," she said firmly. Home.