Star Trek Voyager: The Hansen Identity

Star Trek Voyager: The Hansen Identity (Chapter 13)

Seven stared up at the ceiling as her hand drifted listlessly up to the dreamcatcher pinned to the nearest wall. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had received another one of these from a hologram as the dangling white and grey feathers caressed her fingers softly, the intricate multicoloured cord was pulled taut, ready to catch dreams… Her hand fell to the bed abruptly as tears cascaded uncontrollably down her face, if only there was some magic that would remove knowledge of this nightmare! Harry, B’Elanna and…Chakotay, all gone. Their bodies were deceased or their minds assimilated, they were lost forever. A groan left her throat as she turned on her side to face the vacant side of the bed, pointlessly she grasped the sheets, willing him to materialise. Why was she here, in his quarters? It changed nothing, wouldn’t bring Chakotay back to her, restore Harry’s lost opportunities or give Miral a mother a love her… Her dazed vision focused involuntarily on her cybernetic arm and suddenly impotent anger flooded her, driving her nails into the flesh around the metal until it bled, such was her desire to gouge the implant out. It had always been a bone everyone picked with her, why she didn’t take the suffering caused by the Borg as a personal guilt, at least not as far as they could see but now the full force of that bottled up guilt and self hatred overwhelmed her. I am Borg, I killed them, it’s my fault…

“Captain, we have to do something!” Tom raged, wild with fear as he stalked around the briefing room.

“Calm down Lieutenant, your reaction is unhelpful.” Tuvok said quietly.

“Calm down? My wife sends a garbled message about Borg which is so ominous that Seven of all people bursts into tears and you want me to calm down?”

Janeway laid an understanding hand on his arm. “I know Tom. We will do something, but we need to hear the facts from Icheb first okay?” She then nodded to her young crewmember. “Go ahead Icheb.”

Icheb stepped forward, his whole posture tense and upset but his voice matter of fact. “Yes Captain.” He walked up to the wall console and pulled up a picture of a hub from Seven’s Borg files. “A Borg Repair Hub is a complex temporarily constructed in space, consisting of perhaps two to three interconnecting hundred cubes which can split off autonomously. Their main purpose is to create a foothold to expand Borg space by maintaining damaged cubes, acting as a base while planets are assimilated or transwarp conduits are built. The Queen frequently moves between them while not in conquered space…”

Janeway cautiously interrupted him, now disturbingly aware of how hopeless the situation was beginning to sound, “So you’re saying the Delta Flyer basically stumbled into a Borg space station?”

Before Icheb could answer, Tom, sagging in a chair like a deflated balloon, flew off the handle. “We can’t just leave them there!”

Icheb bit his lip and swallowed. “A Repair Hub is one of the most heavily fortified Borg installations in existence, second to only a transwarp hub in importance…but the fact that they were even able to send a message bodes well, if they were far enough away to do that then it may only have been the shields that damaged them and the Collective may decide their assimilation an inefficient use of energy.”

The Captain inhaled sharply, trying not to let the daunting nature of the task overwhelm her. “Well then, as long as there’s a chance we’ll continue to look. Report back to your posts.”

“Yes Captain!” They all replied.

Erin and Magnus walked together through Voyager’s eerily abandoned corridors. It set them both ill at ease but they had heard nothing of what had happened so dismissed the feeling as irrelevant. “You didn’t tell me she was living with him Erin.” Magnus said irritably.