It was never a good sign when Janeway could hear the music from halfway down the hall that led to the holodeck. The rumbling bass rattled the panels and vibrated the bulkheads enough that she directed a wry look with Chakotay.

"Should I cancel the party so we can check the whole hull for sonic-induced microfractures," she asked.

"Not unless you want a mutiny on your hands, Kathryn," he said, with rousingly false deference.

She appraised him with a friendly eye. He'd exchanged his usual red command uniform for blue jeans and button-down black shirt that, she had to admit, set off his rugged features in an appealing way. His dark hair was a little rumpled, which only added to the charm, and the glint in his brown eyes was playful and enticing. She was in a light linen suit with a blue top and white flats that, Chakotay assured her with a relatively well-concealed leer, would be completely acceptable for their destination. She could easily make a play for him, she decided, to ease the ache that somehow lingered in her heart after an empty month.

The thudding drums led them to the door of holodeck 2, which whirred open to reveal a grimy city street, complete with slime-filled gutters, obscene graffiti, and a few simulated homeless who rattled a can for change and muttered swears at the pair as the officers came inside. Cars were triple-parked along the trash-strewn sidewalk as another few vehicles weaved their ways down the glistening avenue. A thin sheen of sticky mist clung to the air, causing the dimly-buzzing streetlights to shine their orange-yellow beams into a diffuse cloud of light.

A few steps further in, a Klingon clad in tight black leather growled menacingly at them, a ritual dagger in a sheath on one gigantic thigh and a disrupter holstered on the other. Janeway could make out a nondescript door behind his massive frame, which vibrated in sync with the music from beyond. She glanced upwards towards an old-style marquee ringed with, where they weren't broken, blinking blue and white lights. Emblazoned in twisting neon tubes were the words, "Club Liberation."

"Well, this must be it," said Janeway, taking a step forward. "Not much to look at."

Chakotay's grin broadened to show his perfect white teeth. "Kathryn, let's just say that looks can be deceiving."

They approached the glowering bouncer, neatly sidestepping the velvet-clad ropes that separated a straining, holographic mob from the front door of the club. Janeway appraised the line, which was filled with aliens from every Federation world and quite a number beyond. Scantily-clad women in straining corsets and miniscule skirts flirted and catcalled Chakotay...and to a lesser extent, Janeway, while men in glossy pants and suits made their presence known to both crew members in much the same manner.

A thick brown palm interposed itself between the two officers. "Halt. VIPs only. Everyone else gets to the back of the line." He jutted an enormous thumb towards the snaking mob of people, some of whom jeered at the bouncer's intervention.

Chakotay produced a pair of tickets out of his pocket and passed them forward. "I hope these are satisfactory, Kableth," he said with a charming smile.

The Klingon peered over the tiny stubs with an appraising eye, taking a penlight-scanner out from his pocket and running it over the paper. He nodded, tore them in half, and produced a rubber object from another pocket.

"Put out your hand," he commanded. Both did and he pressed a transparent layer of fluid onto the back of both Janeway's and Chakotay's hands, explaining the rules as he went along. "Single admittance. You get thrown out, you're not getting back in. Legal intoxicants only. No bribing the serving staff for anything." He pulled back his lips and snarled. "And if you start even a hint of trouble, you'll find yourself on the street so fast that your ass will hit warp 6."

With that, he stepped aside and swung open the door, oblivious to the wads of cash being waved at the entering duo from patrons hoping to jump the line. Janeway and Chakotay walked into the club as the Klingon shouted curses at the line of people who surged forward to overtake him. A few disrupter blasts echoed behind the now-closing door, followed by the shrieking of terrified patrons.

Janeway raised her eyebrows at Chakotay in the narrow hall. "This is certainly different from Fairhaven or the beachside resort."

"The ambiance is only going to get weirder," he reassured her. She rose to the challenge and grinned back.

"Well then, lead on."

They stood in a cubicle of a hallway lit by a single dangling bare bulb. The walls were plastered with garish posters advertising bands from five centuries of musicians on thirty different planets, from Romulan rock to delicate Betazoid folk. She looked ahead at a broad black door studded with metal spheres. There was no obvious handle or hinge; instead, a small rectangular slat was set into the door, suggesting that a second doorman would have to provide their means of entrance. She took a step forward, but Chakotay took her arm.

"Not in there. Up here." She turned a few degrees and saw a thin set of wooden stairs, barely a person wide, that had long since lost their battle with gravity. They sagged under the weight of the officers as the two bounded carefully upstairs, tiny flecks of paint flaking off with every step. And while Janeway wasn't afraid of heights, she was conscious that there was nothing to grab onto, other than obscene pictures and paint spatters, should she slip. At the top was yet another door that was a riot of graffiti, slogans, and signatures. With an ever-broadening smile, Chakotay pushed it open.

To Janeway's relief, the next area was comparatively pleasant. It was slightly brighter, though it was illuminated by a greenish fluorescent bulb that cast the two in mildly sickening hues. Along the walls were grimy, fingerprint-streaked mirrors that warped just enough to make Chakotay look a few kilograms larger and Janeway a few centimeters shorter. Beneath them, a few wrought-iron chairs with shabby velvet upholstery and a divan with permanent seat marks gave the impression of a parlor that had seen far too many visitors of dubious intent. The antiqued wooden dresser with a cracked glass top bore two identical lamps with beaded and dusty shades. Each featured a single working bulb that cast shadows on the peeling paint of their base: couples copulating in two different, equally risqué, positions. Two wilting plants, riotous but faded wallpaper, and a battered wooden clock stuck at 5:35 finished off the decor.

Most surprising, though, was the grinning form of Neelix standing in front of a relatively nondescript black door with a single metal handle. His usually-colorful garb had been switched to one of red and black, topped with a jaunty fedora out of which jutted no fewer than ten blue and orange feathers. He was flanked by two more bouncers, one Grizzela and one Cardassian, but they paid the pair no mind as the diminutive Talaxian walked forward, rubbing his hands in glee.

"Oh Captain, Commander. I am so glad you could make it. I hope you didn't have too much trouble at the door." He gave a conspiratorial wink.

"The tickets worked perfectly, Neelix," replied Chakotay. "And we got our stamps."

"Right," cried Neelix, gesturing to one of the bouncers, who handed him a small tricorder-sized device. With the press of a button, a purple black light emitted from the edge and illuminated the ink on the back of his guests' hands. They peered down. Both had a crude picture of Voyager and an obscenity regarding fornication inked onto their skin. Janeway rolled her eyes at both of the men, who took this moment to share a completely immature chuckle.

"So what's in there, Neelix? To be honest, I feel like I should have my phaser out and credits tucked in a secret pocket while avoiding riff-raff," said Janeway, looking around. Even though they were in the anteroom, Janeway had to admit that the holoprogram was exceptionally crafted. Unlike some, which felt forced or too clean, everything she'd encountered seemed brilliantly authentic, down to the musty smell of stale cigarettes wafting up from the threadbare carpet.

His proud yellow crest bobbed up and down as he nearly bounced with excitement. "It's an amazing program called a dis-ko-tek. Apparently, it's based off of a collection of Earth, Trill, Klingon, and Risian nightclubs from your 20th and 21st centuries. We never had anything like this on Talaxia, but when Alice and Pablo showed me the basic holodeck setting, I just knew it would be perfect for their celebration."

"Their celebration," said Janeway, with an eyebrow cocked at her abashed first officer. "I thought this was just Alice's birthday."

"Oh no, Captain," Neelix corrected. "This is a 'thank goodness we have our holodeck privileges back' party! You two are the guests of honor." He leaned in, making sure the bouncers couldn't hear him. "Pablo said they were all expecting thirty days in the brig. This is the least they can do to thank you."

Janeway covered her face with her palm and rubbed her temples. Of course it was. Of course this was why everyone insisted she be here. Of course this was the best way for the cadre of reprimanded ensigns and lieutenants to celebrate their returned leisure time. Club Liberation indeed.

"Come on, Kathryn, it'll be fun." Chakotay's tone was more grounded and thoughtful. "It's been a hard month for all of us. Let's take a little while to lose our troubles."

"Fine, Chakotay," she said, warning him with a smooth white finger that took a yellow hue in the light. "But if any of them lose privileges again, I'm deleting this program." He gave a deferential nod with only a hint of sarcasm.

"Of course, Captain."

"Excellent," said Neelix. "Food is in a buffet along the wall, bartenders are programmed to make the most delicious, knock-your-pips-off cocktails, and the dancing will be second-to-none. But, you'll want to take these."

Neelix, poking the other bouncer, handed two sets of earbuds to Janeway and Chakotay. The Commander popped his in immediately while Janeway turned hers over in her palm.

"They're specially designed noise-cancelling transmitters. You can adjust the volume of the music or turn it off completely, letting you hear just conversations. I prefer 50% myself," he said, pointing to the polymer devices nestled in his oversized ears.

"Well, here goes," said Janeway, fitting them snugly into her ears and following Neelix through the door, which he opened with a grand flourish.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Janeway wasn't sure what she was expecting when she walked in, but the morass of bodies wasn't even on her mental scanners. Unlike the worn exterior, the entirety of the club was gleaming metal, flashing diodes, and spinning glass. Whirling spotlights and flashing strobes cast a rainbow of shadows and tints over a dance floor so packed that Janeway couldn't see more than a few feet in before the throng of undulating bodies blocked her view. She looked up and marveled at the expansive architecture. Tiers of silver-hued scaffolding packed with dancers climbed the walls to dizzying heights and, as she watched, moved slowly across the ceiling so that dancers could change platforms and partners. Tubes of rushing fluid, bolts of electricity, jets of luminescent smoke, and tangled wiring dangled from the walls and ceiling. Janeway was reminded, somewhat disconcertingly, of the interior of a Borg sphere, except teeming with vibrant and joyous life.

She stood there for a good minute, taking in the overwhelming sensations, before she noticed that she was growing uncomfortably warm and beginning to perspire. As if anticipating, Neelix tugged at her jacket and brought it over to a dim box that served as the coat check, then signaled a bodice-clad waitress to their sides.

"Ice water, madam," he said with a flourish, then turned to the Captain. "It is a special occasion. Would you like the night's concoction?"

"Sure, I'll take a chance," she said. "Just remember I have to be on duty at 0700 hours."

"One Freedom's Peril for our Captain, and make it quick." The hologram bobbed her head and disappeared into the crowd.

She noticed that Chakotay had disappeared, but shortly thereafter, the sweating form of Tom Paris materialized beside her. His sopping-wet white shirt was open to mid-chest, revealing his well-defined torso and a set of ridiculously gaudy gold chains. One hand held a tumbler of orange liquid, while the other was used to gesticulate wildly.

"Isn't it amazing, Captain? Not only does the decor change every hour, it's been programmed to feature random dancers from the holodeck program shuffled in and out between songs. The DJs take requests and, if you don't like what's playing, will pipe a different song into your transmitter. More than that, the program actually has holographic representations of crewmembers, willing only," he said with slightly tipsy reassurance, "interspersed inside. At any time, we don't actually know who's here, except for the hand stamps."

"Really," said Janeway curiously. "Do I want to know the purpose of that?"

A young woman had approached the pair and Janeway felt her heart stir just a few beats faster. It was, however, Alice Soohoo, and not the tall slim figure that Janeway desperately wanted to see. The Asian woman too was drenched in sweat and clad in a green and purple robe that clung attractively to her small body. She bowed to both of her superior officers.

"With permission, Captain," she stated tipsily. A slight Korean accent emerged from her liquor-infused voice. Janeway nodded. "On a ship this small, it's hard to have a chance to let go, even in private; the walls are so thin." The two listeners nodded sympathetically. "But here you can be whatever you want to whomever you want. Exercise a fantasy or a reality. When you dance with someone, you can't be perfectly clear if he's real or a hologram. It brings clarity and freedom."

Janeway seemed a little dubious. This was the sort of thing that could be accomplished with private holodeck time. On the other hand, the allure of dancing in this dense setting was the anonymity and the raw physicality. She glanced through the crowd and saw Chakotay paired with a dark-haired woman whom, Janeway realized, she couldn't recognize as a crew member or a hologram from this distance. His grin gave no indication other than his enjoyment of the sensations his partner was bringing him. Janeway shivered, in spite of the heat. It was incredibly tempting to wade onto the dance floor and lose herself among the crowd.

A cup of ice-water appeared in her hand, which she gulped down gratefully as Paris and Soohoo continued to chat with her about the technical and philosophical aspects of the program. A thin glass of an orange liquid was handed over next by the buxom waitress, who fondly kissed both Paris and Soohoo on her way back to the bar. While Soohoo teased Paris about his marital status, Janeway contemplated her drink. Small spheres of blue drifted up and down the semi-viscous liquid. She tilted it and brought it to her mouth, but was baffled when the balls solidified into a soft, impenetrable cap. She raised her eyebrow at it and leveled the glass again, watching the balls go back into the solution, then harden again as she tried to take a sip. Paris smirked, but made no effort to help. A moment later, B'Elanna was beside him and dragging him onto the dance floor while Soohoo took her leave and went to the bustling bar on the side.

As Janeway peered at her glass in consternation, British-accented male voice broke over the crowd.

"This is DJ Roger Wilco spinning the latest hits from 21st century Earth. We'd like to welcome our beloved captain and commander to Club Liberation. We hope they enjoy their stay and, more importantly, help keep us out of trouble. This next song is just for them."

Janeway watched a sea of faces turn towards her and, to her reluctant amusement, salute in a single wave before returning to dancing. Well, at least she wouldn't dampen their fun. The music roared into screaming overdrive and Janeway tapped her transmitter down a few more percentage points. The lyrics were completely incomprehensible, so she pretended that they were flattering.

Then, she sighed and fidgeted with her drink. As beverages went, this was certainly the most unusual she'd ever encountered. She held it up to eye level and looked through for a hint as to its composition. Through the refracted glossy liquid and the orange tint it provided, she caught a glimpse of Mileena.

The half-Trill was on an upper platform, pressed between what looked to be a Bajoran female and the muscled form of Pablo Baytart. Mileena wore an electric-red sleeveless top that did little to hide her firm cleavage or lightly rounded stomach. Her skirt was equally daring, a white skintight fabric that had ridden up almost past her thighs as she undulated seductively against her partners. Her hair cascaded down her back in sweaty ringlets and her skull connectors flashed red and blue in time with the music. The scientist had thrown one hand around Baytart's neck and the other around the pale shoulders of the Bajoran. The darker woman's sinuous, rhythmic dancing gave the deliberate impression of making passionate, public love to her equally ecstatic partners. While Janeway thought that such an act was improbable, Mileena's arched back, closed eyes, and rapturous expression gave little evidence to the contrary.

Janeway found herself suddenly drenched in perspiration and as hot as an overtaxed plasma conduit. A drink. She needed a drink. Fruitlessly, she tried to liquefy her beverage and watched it congeal once again into a jiggling lump. In desperation, she flagged down a waitress, who managed to get her another glass of cold water. She drank half and put the remainder on the back of her neck to cool down her searing body temperature.

God, if she only had the nerve, she could insinuate herself between Mileena and Baytart. She could feel the half-Trill's winding body grinding insistently against her own in a delightful mimicry of the embrace they would later enjoy in private. All Janeway needed to do was let go of her self-imposed restriction and she could have every centimeter of that lovely woman against her skin and her bed. No one would notice and no one would care. Hell, it could be the Janeway hologram, if she let such a thing happen.

Then, jealousy raised its head. Pablo had leaned low and was brushing his handsome dark features against Mileena's equally dark skin, causing her to press closer to him and encircle both arms around his body as the Bajoran drifted away with a lingering touch. Janeway's jaw clenched involuntarily.

"Well, she certainly moved on quickly," said Janeway to nobody in particular. The coat check hologram nodded sympathetically, but said nothing otherwise. Apparently, the ardor that Mileena had demonstrated to the auburn-haired captain was only in passing.

Then, sheepishly, Janeway watched the two of them touch foreheads briefly and embrace in a way that was quite unlike two lovers. This was confirmed by Ensign Powell breaking in, administering a deep kiss to Pablo, as well as a quick kiss to Mileena's forehead, before wrapping herself around her new dance partner. Ensign Soohoo appeared behind him, at which point Janeway pulled her gaze away. She was many things, but a voyeur of her lower crewmembers' intimate moments was not among them. Hell, for all she knew, this was just a random show among an assortment of holograms, though her gut told her that everybody on that platform was real.

Most terrifyingly, she worried that should she keep watching, she'd finally lose control and throw herself into Mileena's arms. Janeway took this opportunity to locate a door and slide out onto the veranda. She needed to cool down.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

One of the difficulties of operating the bioneural interface was that it distorted all sense of time. After connecting to the apparatus, Mileena was adrift within the circuitry, which meant that she was processing information at a speed different from her own internal chronometer. Hours and minutes flipped their meanings; more often than not, she was brought unexpectedly back into full consciousness after swearing that she'd only just begun. It meant she couldn't tell how long she'd spent on a problem and whether her thought processes were efficient. It was still a work in progress.

Today, however, the timelessness of her interface made her completely oblivious to what was otherwise an excruciatingly boring task. Ever since the final battle with the Bakloth, Lieutenant Torres had been more willing to let Mileena interact with bioneural gel outside of just the supercomputer and console, albeit with a strict monitoring system and a manual break order. As a result, Mileena and Engineering had spent a few hours each day painstakingly pruning and strengthening the connections in each bag of gel throughout the ship. At a cellular level, Mileena was directing axons to grow and others to die while monitoring the feedback alongside the gold-suited crewmen near the warp drive. There were, according to Mileena's knowledge, 2,461 individual bags scattered around the ship. It would take her years to streamline all of them, so they were working on the gel attached to propulsion and weapons. Of course.

The task itself didn't take that much concentration, Mileena found, especially since its maximum speed was ultimately limited by the biological mechanisms themselves. She could start the process and check cell growth every few mental cycles. In the meantime, she puzzled through assorted data that exobiology had left in the supercomputer or complex analyses of patterns that Harry had found via the long range scanners. Even those weren't enough to truly engage her, so she went back to rebuilding the advanced indirect cortical connection that would sadly replace the implants she had now.

She and Seven had gotten remarkably far considering their short working time. It was going to be based on the cortical implant that Mileena currently had, but it could sit on top of the skull instead of inside. The external relay was completed, but the Borg and half-Trill had been struggling on how to shield the transmitter from external stimuli while still retaining good connectivity between brain and machine. There were a handful of prototypes, none of them completely functional, but it was enough to start testing. However, Mileena wasn't content. She had begun folding assorted contact proteins that would allow optimal signal transfer across bone when she was interrupted on some level.

"Ensign, the power flow through gel pack 2500 is 13% under normal." Torres' voice over the comm channel to proteomics was a jagged yellow and orange, reflecting the ship's decidedly love-hate relationship with its chief engineer. Mileena had learned to find it amusing. "Can you compensate?"

Mileena took a bit of her consciousness and flickered it back down to main engineering. Well of course the bag was operating below normal, the ship indicated in its disjointed sensory pattern. Just look at that mess.

"Power. Coupling 12-G. One deck away. There's. A 1.65% plasma. Leak. Bag has dropped. In response," said Mileena, forcing the words through her gritted teeth. Another one of the projects was how to let her communicate more smoothly, either through digital or analog means, when jacked into the machine. Otherwise, the conversations were essentially unidirectional.

"On it," noted Torres. "Okay, can you...wait, no you can't. We'll continue this tomorrow. Thank you, Ensign."

Mileena was puzzled, but she heard CRE's voice both inside and outside of her body intoning smoothly, "Daily duration of 10 hours reached. Beginning reemergence process." Defeated, she slumped against the heavy chair and waited the ten increasingly-boring minutes for the probes to retract and the computer to stop trying to communicate with her implants.

Blinking twice, she unfastened herself from the seat and woozily made her way over to a neatly-arranged row of equipment. She dunked her arms into an empty silver basin and hit a pedal with her toe. A torrent of bluish antiseptic and astringent poured out of a nearby tap, filling the bowl and submerging all of her implants. She wiggled her fingers and flexed her arm muscles a few times, then used her cranial implant to activate each implant briefly. A few thin ribbons of blood flowed from the edges of the hardware and she frowned. That same implant on her left hand was misbehaving, almost to the point that she might want to have it removed to keep it from interfering with the others.

Withdrawing her hands, she put them down on a bare metal plate and hit another foot pedal. A second metal rectangle came down and enclosed her arms. Purple light streamed out from the gap between the plates as the sterilizer/warmer finished its job. Finally, she brought herself over to the tray full of almond-colored plugs to block the implants and slumped. The palm coverings were a necessary evil; otherwise, she'd end up snagged on everything from her equipment to her own bra. The arm plugs, however, were merely cosmetic. Mileena's arm contacts sat closer to her skin and rarely caught on anything. Unlike the palm implants, they had a tiny aperture that easily shut out liquids or contaminants. She could dunk herself in a bath and they wouldn't leak water into her arms. Plus, the contacts were beautiful. They felt more like jewelry and emblems of courage than mere functional hardware.

However, Mileena had noticed that the crew reacted poorly to her modifications. Their curiosity rapidly gave way to disgust and distrust. After all, the crew's only experience with technologically-modified humans had been in their fights with the Borg and, more recently, their interactions with the standoffish Seven of Nine. There'd been whispers about this being some sort of modification that the whole crew might be forced to adopt; after all, Borg technology was forbidden. But this was conceived of and executed by human hands, more or less. Mileena was developing something, wasn't she? To make them all better?

Two dozen demos of the external interface later, the gossip had died down. That had done little to stifle the sideways glances at the implants when she didn't cap them in public. And since her next destination was the mess hall at the swapping of shifts, she'd encounter a lot of people who just didn't want to be upset any more than necessary. With a sigh, she tapped the remainder of the plugs into place, smoothed them down so they were almost seamless with her skin, and breezed out of proteomics.

Predictably, the mess hall was utter chaos. She managed to muscle through for a plate of scattered grains and synthetic protein, then tucked herself into the corner near a group of security staff who were busily coordinating their evening schedules. Each would have to do two hours of rounds, but the shifts meant that everyone would have a chance to stop in at the holodeck celebration that night. Mileena overheard their chatter and gave a small internal grin.

Nominally, this was Alice's birthday party. The young woman had swung around the corner of 25 just a few days before, but their collective restriction from leisure activities meant that the party was unacceptably subdued. Reaching a quarter century, Mileena believed, deserved far more than a small cake and a group of lower deck crewmen getting drunk off their limited rations.

More than just that, it was a celebration of their finishing their punishments and a blessed relief from the bi-weekly flybys of hostile drones that had peppered Voyager since they left the Erato systems. No one in her circle knew about the battle reports, save that there were unknown attackers striking at random before being vaporized by Voyager's clearly-superior firepower. Rumor was that these were a scouting party, but for whom or what was unknown. It had left the entire crew drained and shaken. Never knowing when the next attack would occur and being on constant alert had made everyone tired and on-edge. A party would fix some of that, she'd decided.

The tufted head of Neelix poked itself into her distracted visual field. She gave him a genuine smile and pointed to the already-stuffed bench next to her. He sat down in his grease-spattered apron, stole a sprig of yellow stem, and crunched it loudly.

"We're almost ready for tonight," he said triumphantly. "And I have to tell you again how much fun I've been having. The program is an absolute delight and challenge to work with. The AIs are rather sophisticated and often opinionated." He pounded the table with mock sternness. "Why, I had to set the bartender straight and teach her the difference between a traditional Klingon cocktail and a cheap Romulan knockoff."

Mileena snickered and leaned on him a little. He patted her head. "It's almost done, ensign. Then, you'll be able to relax and enjoy yourself."

She exhaled and slumped. "Neelix, I can't thank you enough for volunteering to be part of this. How can we ever repay you?"

It had been ridiculously difficult to organize a holodeck party when none of them were allowed in the holodeck. Alice had finally approached Neelix with her idea, given the curious Talaxian the full codes to her dance club holoprogram, and set him loose. Four hours later, in the middle of gamma shift, an inebriated and sweat-soaked Talaxian appeared at her door and shook her bewildered hand. He'd make all the arrangements, plan out the food, and administer the drinks. According to Alice, he'd even added a lush garden veranda for those who tired of the frenetic pace. However, the specifics of that modification were kept more or less private. Mileena's personal favorite touch were the exclusive VIP tickets that could only be bartered for or that mysteriously appeared in someone's quarters in a silvery envelope.

He took on a thoughtful gaze. "Well, for starters, keep yourself out of this sort of trouble." His finger wagging had more force behind it than might otherwise be expected from the often-jovial Talaxian. "I also want you to keep up on your meditating for reasons we both know. Now, though, I want you to finish your food, get ready, and look forward to tonight." His eyes went back to twinkling. "I think you'll enjoy all the surprises I've put in."

He drifted away as she scarfed down her meal, checked the chronometer, and made her way to astrometrics. Her supervisor, the towering Seven of Nine, did not look up from her charts as the half-Trill approached.

"You are late," observed Seven of Nine. A few mockups of the scout ships whirled around the expansive, curved screen that coated most of astrometrics. Simulated trajectories to nearby planets flashed by in a dizzying array of possibilities that blended together into waving bands of colored light. Mileena blinked and tilted her head. It was difficult to look at without the Borg-enhanced optical responses or her own computer connection.

"I was eating." Mileena paused. "And planning tonight's party."

"I received the invitation," replied the Borg without inflection. "It was neatly folded on my alcove. I almost recycled it before I noticed my name in silver script." Was that hint of pleasure? "It was aesthetically pleasing enough for me to reconsider my actions."

"So you will attend, Seven," said Mileena.

"I will," she stated. "I am curious to see the nature of this location. My records indicate that there will be a wide variety of humanoid courtship rituals present. I wish to observe them to further my exploration."

"Ah," said Mileena. Her thoughts flew as quickly as the projections before her. With whom was Seven trying to mate? What courtship rituals did she think she'd see? Could Mileena somehow make herself part of them? After all, Mileena desperately wanted the mental distraction. Her mind circled the uncomfortable topic of her non-existent relationship and instead headed towards the work they'd been completing together.

"Have you looked at the most recent iteration of the external cortical transponder? I left it for you a few hours ago." said the ensign hopefully. "This one has over two percent more responsiveness to the user's commands. Pablo did a quick demo and he said that it was much smoother."

"You will refrain from conducting field testing without my specific permission," said the Borg. She angled her tall, curvaceous body towards Mileena. "Your anxiousness to continue is illogical. We still have five months to go before your implants are removed."

"I'm thinking ahead," argued Mileena carefully, reconfiguring her attitude into cleanly scientific insubordination. "If this area is as hostile as it seems, most of our time will be spent protecting Voyager. If the prototypes are functional, that means better efficacy for all personnel involved."

"True," mused the Borg. "But you still must wait for me to allow you to act. That is my duty as your supervisor." The final word was said with that same hint of pleasure. Mileena guessed that Seven enjoyed being officially in charge of someone and having that amount of power, even if it only meant keeping Mileena to her schedule and handling ever-more-boring daily reports.

Seven of Nine walked over to a work station and pulled out a slim metal container. Mileena followed and attempted to peer around the young woman's lanky frame. The Borg's optical implant cocked up and Mileena backed off a few centimeters. With a flick of a switch, the lid slid open, revealing a pair of implants that resembled Mileena's own.

The astrometrics officer ran her mechanically-enhanced senses over the tiny devices. They were thicker than Mileena's and a fair bit larger to compensate for their external placement. She'd designed this set to be more Starfleet in appearance, with red and yellow diodes and tightly-wound, but visible, wiring. She guessed that the average user would want to feel like he was merely interacting with a piece of equipment more akin to a tricorder than a neural stimulator.

Seven had taken to running a probe over the transmitters and was recording the resulting data into her padd. Then, she set the connectors back into their carrying case and turned to the guardedly hopeful ensign.

"These are sufficient for testing purposes," she concurred. "I will alert Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Torres that they may come tomorrow for further training on the console."

Mileena swallowed her apprehension and her glee. The two senior officers had been surprisingly interested in working with the new technology, especially given Chakotay's earlier experiences with the disconnected Borg. Each had participated in a few training sessions with just the bioneural console, then the bioneural console with the crude transmitter speaking with their brains. Ensign Kim and Lieutenant Paris had been even more excited in participating, enough so that Paris had offered to try the direct connection to the navigational gel padd. Baytart had managed to talk him out of it, but it was gratifying nonetheless for her superiors to finally be noticing her. Well, everyone except for the one person she wanted most to do just that.

"Have the other senior staff been notified about our progress," she inquired with a false steadiness in her voice.

"They will be, though I am unsure when they can come to proteomics for testing. I will urge them to do so."

Lieutenants Tuvok and Paris had also been introduced to the hardware, though neither had spent much time on the console. Tuvok was reticent, while Paris was fascinated but completely consumed by working on the shuttlecraft. He and Pablo were spending almost every non-bridge moment completely refitting the Venture to be a primarily bioneural machine. They'd reached some sort of agreement about the piloting arrangement that didn't leave Pablo on Voyager while Paris had all the fun. Apparently, Lieutenant Paris wasn't as self-centered and oblivious as she'd thought.

And the Captain, well, she'd been carefully avoiding proteomics as much as possible, which Mileena appreciated and deeply regretted.

"May I continue testing with Ensigns Baytart, Soohoo, and Powell? They are the most familiar with this technology."

"They are less important to the ship's functioning than their superiors. You should put your effort into training the bridge crew instead." She must have heard Mileena's heart thud a few beats faster. "However, you may continue with them when it does not interfere with your primary goals."

"Thank you, Seven," said Mileena, expertly suppressing all external signs of her ire with the Borg.

Her commanding officer was just being honest. All ensigns were not just less important. They were, according to the below-decks sentiment, absolutely disposable. It didn't matter that Lauren could do a narrow-beam teleport through a multiphasic shield better than Harry Kim or that Alice's skill in exobiology was nearly equal to that of Chakotay; they'd be immobile in duty and prestige for the rest of their time in the delta quadrant. Mileena herself knew that once Seven of Nine had a handle on the bioneural equipment, the half-Trill would be back to manipulating protein transcription in her quiet little lab, far away from the system she had so lovingly created.

"I have offended you," observed the Borg. "Am I incorrect in noting their subordinate position?"

"You are correct." Mileena mirrored the tone of the Borg.

"But you are bothered nonetheless. Explain." Her blue eyes were cool and inquisitive at the same time.

Mileena gathered a few more thoughts before speaking. "Most humanoids prefer to constantly advance in skill and position. In the alpha quadrant, all three would be lieutenants on other starships. This would show evidence of their progression and growth. On Voyager, they're fixed as ensigns; no matter how good they are, they're always going to be second best. Being reminded of this is painful."

"In the Collective, all drones were equal. The drone who performed maintenance on plasma conduits for two decades was no more or less than the drone who had been newly assimilated. This focus on hierarchy can be inefficient if it effects the functioning of the crew." The Borg peered down at Mileena. "But you are not in Starfleet and you have no replacement. This should not affect you."

"My being irreplaceable is due only to the deaths of my labmates, which is not a satisfying way of achieving a goal." Not in a small amount, murmured Mileena to herself, because of the pain their deaths brought and her satisfaction at being a member, and not a leader, of that group. "And once the crew is fully trained on the new bioneural interface, I will no longer be required. You would be able to perform my duties more quickly."

"That is illogical," stated Seven, "My duties in astrometrics are more important than yours in proteomics. It is better for you to retain your position so I can aid the ship." The Borg took on a look of muted mortification. "I believe that was offensive."

Mileena took the emotional punch as easily as she'd taken physical ones, barely acknowledging just how much it hurt while privately and mentally screaming. "It was correct," she stated, then changed the topic. "I should take the transmitters and begin the replication process. Each will require several extra hours of testing."

"Very well. You are dismissed. I shall see you tonight," stated Seven. Mileena then received her first real surprise of the day. "And ensign, I apologize for the meaning of my comment." The Borg paused. "You are required for the functioning of this ship."

As she left for proteomics, Mileena wondered if she should commend the Doctor on teaching Seven to tell a social lie.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Alice Soohoo walked slowly through her nightclub and watched the bustling employees inside dip their heads and whisper, "Good evening, doyenne," as she passed among them. She acknowledged them with an imperial nod and ticked off her list of changes.

She'd adjusted the weather outside to be more grim so it would clash with the explosively vibrant club, then had created a variety of belligerent patrons to test the bouncer's responses. After a few holographic beheadings, she toned down his AI to be more threatening than deadly. She'd shuffled the posters to be even more offensive than usual and added a few insults aimed at the captain and Tuvok in scripts they'd be unable to comprehend. Then, she reconsidered and settled for subtly altering the fornicating lamp bases to have a decidedly Vulcan and human appearance. No sense in getting in more trouble due to a piece of miraculous translation software.

She lined up the DJs and had each run through a sample set. Durhash, the Klingon mixmaster, was probably too heavy for this evening. On the other hand, there were enough angry faces in that crowd that a release of collective rage in the form of raging Klingon synths would be cathartic. She put Durhash third, right before the Bolian close-out. The club cycled through its various settings at her command and she nodded in approval to the simulated maître'd. Then, she climbed a twisting staircase and slipped into a concealed office.

The Korean woman brought the lights up within, sat heavily at her simulated mahogany desk and hit an intercom. "Jaylen, bring me the food samples."

"Of course, doyenne," he replied.

She leaned back in the sumptuous black-leather chair and contemplated the glinting crystal of the opulent chandelier that, on the best nights, rocked and swayed in time with her body and the music beyond. This should have been her calling, she reflected. Crafting elaborate spaces that rippled with life, both real and imaginary, was more fulfilling than sorting artifacts. She'd decided that before she boarded Voyager, but wanted to finish her commission before exiting Starfleet. Now, she was stranded in the middle of nowhere, doing a job that she, well, she didn't actively hate it, but she wasn't very happy. There were no shortage of data to analyze, and most of it was fascinating, but what the hell was the point if all she'd do was catalog it until the next time they got in touch with the Federation which would be when, exactly?

A shirtless, ebony-skinned male clad only in a pair of white trousers graciously entered her sanctum and set down a gold-embossed tray with an engraved cover. With a flourish, he pulled it away, bowed his beautiful bald head, and waited for her instructions. On other days, she might have a bit of release with his sculpted body and impeccable technique, but with her guests arriving at times uncertain, it was an incorrect course of action.

"Thank you, Jayden," she said demurely. "Dismissed."

He left, snugly fitting the door back into place, and she picked up a brown-crusted fruit tart. An experimental bite confirmed that Neelix had done a phenomenal job with the catering. It had taken most of their journey thus far, but he'd become a master culinary craftsman, which is why Alice was decidedly loathe to share her snack when a familiar voice sang outside.

"Alice darling, let me in so I can show you my outfit."

Ah yes, the reason for their punishment had arrived. Alice tamped down her ire. The girl had done her best to mitigate the fallout and suffered along with them, apologizing almost constantly until they told her to stop. The lanky halfbreed had even gotten rid of the vast majority of her safeguards and taken everyone but their superiors out of the information loop. So, their little group had mostly forgiven her. Mostly.

With a tap of a pearlescent button beneath the desk, the door slid aside and admitted her dark-haired friend. Alice allowed her eyes to widen in amusement.

"Good lord, Mileena. What are you wearing? Or should I say, what aren't you wearing?"

Her friend had exchanged her recent Erato garb for a skintight ensemble that left exactly nothing to the imagination. Mileena chosen to wear a bright red top that barely covered her breasts and in fact served to nearly double them in size. The accompanying white skirt would be more properly considered underwear in most other circumstances. The practical standard black boots were transformed into a pair with almost five centimeters of extra heel, causing the already tall woman to appear nearly on par with her Borg supervisor. Her black hair was twisted into a spiral at her neck and her almond skin was dusted with what appeared to be glitter. It would all be too damn much if it didn't work damn well.

"I take it that it's succeeding. Glad to see I still have it." The half-Trill's amber eyes were afire with amusement as she eased herself demurely into a chair opposite Alice and snagged a pastry puff full of protein substitute.

"I don't know what you had, but yes, you still possess it. It's amazing." Alice leaned forward conspiratorially and ate another one of the food samples, this time a cheese-covered stem. "So, who's the target?"

A cloud drifted across her friend's face, but passed as she said, "Well, apparently Tal Celes has made a few mentions of wanting to try the other side," said Mileena with a patient eye roll. "And wouldn't you know, she and Lauren were hanging out the other day and my apparent preferences were brought to light. Lauren said that Tal was interested, and in more than the abstract sense, so I'm being fixed up."

Alice smiled, but it was more hesitant than it should have been. Pablo had told her, in confidence of course, about Mileena's abortive attempt to seduce him. Someone, he said grimly, had left a bruise on their friend's heart that he was ill-equipped to heal. Predictably, Mileena refused to say who or how; Lauren probably knew, but her blasted pseudo-Klingon honor would keep that secret until she was tortured. Maybe this would make it better.

"Well, I've heard decent things about her. She's pretty attractive for a Bajoran and I know just how much you enjoy deflowering women." Her smile went lecherous and, to her relief, Mileena returned it. "I'll make sure that you two end up on the same platforms. Personally, if required."

"Thank you, doyenne," teased Mileena. Her tone shifted to one of exasperation. "Is it wrong for me to want this so much? I need a release and a damn distraction."

"Nah, it's fine, though you're still up for the light show, right? It'll be the second set. It'll only be an hour, because no one likes Trill music." A piece of fruit sailed past her ear and splattered on the wall. "Hey, that's good food you're wasting."

"Trill music is fine," said Mileena grumpily, crossing her arms. "It's not my fault you have no taste."

"Yes, well, any music that requires a subtonal scale so that an internal parasite can enj-" The buttered bread hit her squarely in the chest. "Oh for crying out loud, Mileena. I like this shirt."

"Pfft, put it in the replicator. Besides, I know you'll be out of your clothing thirty minutes into the show. Consider this a bit of an incentive." Mileena ate the other half of the roll. "I'm good for the show. Let me go do practice run with the Gorna Rey. I need to make sure that the bioneural gel in the holodeck won't be overtaxed by your magnum opus." The woman rose, raised an eyebrow, and sashayed out.

Alice brushed the crumbs off her shirt and glanced at her chronometer. Forty minutes to showtime. Outside, the abominable dance music started up, signaling the test of Mileena's bioneural implants. They'd discovered she could control a small amount of the holodeck circuitry and had suggested that Mileena could be used as a living disco ball. Of course, being banned from the holodeck made practicing impossible, so the bioneural console had served as a demo rig. Alice listened a few minutes more. There was no indication of a malfunction. The party would go as planned.

With luck, everyone's spirits would be raised as high as their passions and their temperatures. She materialized a glass of a strongly-flavored fruit wine and took a draught. It was good to be doyenne.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Janeway shivered a little as she stepped onto the slate tiling outside the club. The veranda was startlingly cool after her immersion in the living furnace beside her. Now, though, she was in a chilly night air that made her long for her jacket. As if on cue, the holographic coat check handed back the garment that had been so hastily discarded when Janeway entered just a little while before. The Captain slipped the coat on, thanked the program, and walked a few steps farther from the dance hall.

The ambiance was different, not merely in location, but also in form. The winding of the ivy through curving black iron, the copious sprinkling of tables and food, and the liberal assortment of leafy plants betrayed their author's true nature. Ensign Soohoo had clearly not designed this portion of the program. Neelix had. His knack was always for settings of comfort, relaxation, and familiarity. The terrace was a little derivative, especially when compared to the chaotic innovation next to it. The simple venue, though, served its purpose as a quiet place for escape. Janeway saw that a few couples had curled themselves into the simplistic cafe-style furniture and were generating a tender heat by their proximity.

A bartender was out here as well, modeled on a Talaxian restaurateur of whom Neelix had spoken fondly. He was slightly taller than Neelix, with hair and spots that had faded with age. His eyes, though, were no less keen as his customer approached and set her drink on the glossy chestnut table.

"My drink is defective," she observed. "I can't seem to get the liquid out of it."

"Well, Captain, I can give you something different if you'd like. Maybe a conventional seabreeze from Earth? A bracing blood wine, perhaps? There's an El-Aurian cocktail that I've been taught to create." He gestured to a veritable bookcase of alcoholic selections. Enough of their bottles were half-full or obviously non-holographic that Janeway suspected they were from the personal supplies of certain crewmen. She perused the alcohol with a practiced eye, then looked down at her enticing beverage.

The orange and blue liquids whirled around each other, with the spheres bobbing in time with the music. Janeway had seen enough people downing the drink to know that it was drinkable. It was unlikely to be an extended practical joke, not if the crewmen all wanted to enjoy their remaining free time. There was some sort of trick, but no one had offered a suggestion. The bartender in front of her, clad in his dark blue shirt and white pants, seemed even less likely to give her a hint as to her folly.

"Just some water, please," she decided. He poured her another glass and she walked to the edge of the veranda, looked up, and gasped with bittersweet recognition.

It was the moon. Not just a moon. THE moon, their beloved Luna, the captivating, luminescent disc that lit the nights of her and her people for thousands of generations. Its artfully rendered face was enough to send a surprising pang of homesickness through her as she walked to the banister, set her drinks down on a glass tabletop, and contemplated the hanging sphere.

When Janeway left Earth, the moon's surface featured multiple intensely-silver clusters that represented the largest colonies, each housing millions of inhabitants. The moon before her bore no such marking. It was the pale white and grey that must have illuminated the nocturnal journeys of earth's creatures long before they had a word for moon or, indeed, had words at all.

She peered at the city beneath the glowing orb. Towering skyscrapers, their empty lit windows like earthbound stars, spread across the horizon. Rivulets of chaotic life expanding across a hundred streets were impossibly visible beneath her, though she knew they had only climbed a single set of stairs to the club. A set of matching buildings, slightly shadowed to the far south, caught her attention and she smiled wistfully. This was late 20th century New York City in all its splendor before a terrorist attack ripped apart the country and brought a century of senseless conflicts. At this moment, though, the city and its inhabitants flourished, heedless to their terrible futures, as all humans had before their individual calamities.

She sat down at the table and drank her water slowly, watching the tumult of dancers through the wide glass doors between her and the club. The goal of her excursion out here was to reduce her temperature and collect her private thoughts. While she was, at least, a comfortable temperature, introspection had been utterly denied to her. Within a few moments of sitting down, she'd been visited by a parade of well-wishers. Neelix, who wanted her opinion on his simulated Earth evening, took a few moments to tell her all about the "Big Fruit" in which they sat. Chakotay had checked on her enjoyment as he toweled himself off with a cloth napkin and gulped down a quantity of a strongly-flavored beer before venturing back inside. Assorted ensigns, including the surprisingly sober Ensign Powell and the visibly drunk Ensign Baytart, made their way over to apologize one last time for their behavior and to thank her for their finished punishment.

Even the Doctor came to her table to report that he'd treated ten cases of heat exhaustion, five cases of dehydration, one state of extreme intoxication, and one broken ankle caused by falling off of a tall shoe. His ire, however, was tempered by his professional pride at being specifically recruited to "work" the party for just this purpose. He hinted that, in return for his medical expertise, Ensign Soohoo had used his designs to flesh out the conversation options for many of the male and female characters. Someone flagged him down: there'd been a minor lover's quarrel between two holograms and now both were nursing simulated bloody noses. With rolled eyes, the Doctor allowed the handsome Klingon hologram to drag him away.

Janeway leaned back on her chair, grateful for both the company and the isolation, and closed her eyes. The music's dull thump would raise to its full volume whenever a door was opened and fall once more whenever it was shut. She manually adjusted the earpiece so that it was always transmitted at a very low volume. Let the kids enjoy their dance music. She preferred a pair of pipes and a fiddle any day.

Now, the veranda was almost silent, save the occasional chatter of clustered crewmen, both real and imaginary. She tried to think and was saved from such a fate by a pair of very familiar voices breezing in behind her and heading for the bar.

"So, it's going well," asked Ensign Powell flirtatiously.

"It's...absolutely freezing out here. Kelton, I need a robe," said Mileena, her voice shaking as she dodged the question. A few chattering seconds later, Janeway heard fabric being dragged across the ensign's lovely body and a response given in a far warmer tone. "It's going fine, Lauren. We've been having fun. She's signaled her interest."

"Well, signal back, for Kahless' sake. Signal like you're trying to dock a ship in your port. That's what you want, isn't it?"

"My signaling apparatus seems to be malfunctioning, Lauren. It appears to be broadcasting only on the frequency that says to get away from me before I dump this glass of water on your head." A sound that resembled someone leaping to the side accompanied a burst of laughter and a swinging door. The voices went silent as the pair passed back into the nightclub.

When Janeway opened her eyes again, the veranda was empty, except for the hologram going about his mechanical barkeeping tasks. She shrugged and went back over to the banister, clasped her hands and leaned her weight onto her forearms with a sigh.

Mileena.

The young woman had been brutally professional ever since their abortive encounter. Meetings that were once between Janeway and the scientist now included Seven, B'Elanna, or any number of other personnel. Janeway's intermittent lunch dates with Ensign Powell, which had previously included Mileena as an infrequent guest, were brought strictly back to pleasant, passing conversation with either woman in the mess hall. She and the scientist might pass in the corridor with a professional nod. The hours that the Captain had previously spent with Mileena in proteomics, going over some piece of the apparatus or practicing on the console, were replaced by a padd full of testing data, administered via Chakotay.

Most embarrassing of all, Mileena had changed the tenor of her duty logs from friendly conversation to a factual report. The older woman somehow knew of Janeway's private enjoyment of listening to the scientist's duty logs and had deliberately carved the heart out of them so as not to confound their emotions. All in the name of professionalism. All because the captain had rejected her. Whatever Mileena had felt had been stripped away and replaced with the sort of respectful distance the captain always thought she'd wanted. The girl was handling it so calmly and cleanly. Immersed in her work, surrounded by friends, and even dating, Mileena was showing all the signs of having moved on in the way that Janeway just...couldn't.

Another interruption. "Captain," said Neelix. The anxious texture of his voice was mirrored by the jerky movements of his thick, yellowed hands. "You've barely budged from out here! And you haven't touched your drink!"

Her reply was cut off by Mileena's smooth tones. "I think, Neelix, that the captain hasn't been properly advised on the best way to handle Freedom's Peril."

Janeway turned around to see the young woman making her wavering way across the slate tiling, her long heels clicking one after the other as they struck the cool grey surface. A fluttering black silk robe, in much the style of Ensign Soohoo's, draped itself from her shoulders and extended down to her knees. The square knot in the belt obscured some of the ensign's bare flesh from Janeway's wishful view, though not enough that Janeway couldn't see the rise of the ensign's breasts from beneath the robe. Her coal-black hair, formerly loose and drenched in sweat, was pinned carefully into a pile on top of her head. And of course, those citrine-colored eyes appraised Janeway as the ensign walked ever closer, her own drink in her hand.

A mischievous smile, far more familiar than was appropriate given their current situation, splayed across the ensign's full lips and high cheekbones.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but there's a food question that someone needs you to resolve. I'll take over in the drink instruction department, if you don't mind."

"Yes, of course," he said, delighted as always. He whirled back into the club, leaving the two women alone. Janeway gripped the banister tightly as she watched Mileena approach. The captain's throat was, once again, absolutely parched. This was a fantasy, some part of Janeway screamed, why aren't you acting on it. A gorgeous woman. A throbbing nightclub. The moon and New York City. Just reach out your hand and take this. The other, sensible and terrified part won out, though, and Janeway reached instead for her frustrating beverage.

"Do you have a user manual for this thing," said Janeway, which was a front for the pleading enticements the rest of her was trying to generate.

"I have a hint," Mileena said, finally reaching the Captain. The woman leaned against the brick wall nearby, giving Janeway another view of the luscious, almond-brown flesh at the base of Mileena's neck. Even from here, the Captain could smell a thin, fruity alcoholic scent wafting from the drink in the Ensign's hand. Had cold professional tone had melted in the moon's heat, or was it the alcohol chipping away the control? Janeway didn't care. She just wanted to be here, with things being normal, whatever that was.

"Freedom's Peril is freedom itself. Imprisoned, you are safe, but you cannot choose your destiny. Free, you are in danger at all times, but your life and its direction are yours to command. You take a chance, you risk the consequences." Mileena smiled. Janeway felt her own, cream-colored skin flush in response. She hid her face in her drink's contemplation.

"Alcohol as a metaphor," replied Janeway. A bit of realization dawned on her as she tilted the liquid back and forth, then brought it to eye level. With a single, violent motion, she tipped it vertically into her mouth.

The fluid should have splashed across her face and drenched her in its orange display of gravity. Instead, the blue spheres hardened into a waxy substance that encased the liquid once again, keeping her dry. Disappointed, she lowered the glass, but the spheres did not reform or drop back into the solution. Instead, they stayed in a solid, arching lid that Mileena reached over and broke off with a quick motion of her long brown fingers. For two seconds, the scientist's body was closer to Janeway than it had been in weeks. Mileena's body radiated heat from her exertions in the dance and the intoxicating scent of mixed perfumes, alcohol, and healthy sweat mingled tantalizingly in the air around the Captain. Janeway leaned in, but Mileena was already throwing the cap off of the veranda and gesturing to Janeway with her own beverage with a smile.

"Well then," the half-Trill said. "Enjoy Freedom's Peril."

Janeway took a drink, finally. The fluid was acidic and sweet, with notes of apple and the warmth of honey, finished off by a surprisingly strong burn. It tasted, she realized, like achieving liberation after a long struggle. She put the glass down on the table and raised her eyebrows.

"It's quite good," she said, breathing out to cool the warmth in her throat. "There's a temperature-sensitive polymer, I take it? Most people start the drink on the veranda, where it's cooler, then drink inside?"

"Correct, captain," said the ensign, that smile never leaving her perfect features.

"Well, I'd say that it was worth the risk. Cheers, then," said Janeway, holding up her glass. The woman obligingly extended her hand and touched her drink to Janeway's with a gentle tink.

"To Freedom's Peril, wherever it may lead," said Mileena, but her voice had gone thoughtful, as if noticing the intimacy they were sharing. She had quickly turned her head towards the simulated skyline and retracted her drink close to her flowing form as if it were a security blanket.

"I'd been to Earth a few times as a child to visit mom's family in Nazret. It was always so strange to see just one, far-away moon. I'd ask them if their moon got lonely. They asked if mine were crowded." She laughed, but it was self-conscious now and not backed by easy emotion.

Dammit, Janeway cursed herself. The toast was a ridiculous idea. Here I am, talking about liberation, when it's my own stupid restrictions that make this so tense.

Janeway sorted through the strings of possible conversations, deciding on, "I spent years staring up at the moon, wondering what it would have been like to be the first woman to land on it, the first human on another world. I always loved the idea of being an explorer. So here I am." She chuckled ruefully. "The ultimate explorer."

Mileena, though, didn't take up the thread. Instead, she kept her vivid yellow eyes on the simulated orb and sipped her drink a few more times, allowing a pregnant silence to tick by slowly. Then, the alcohol must have provided just enough confidence to speak to her Captain, albeit without daring to look at her.

"Thank you for coming, Captain. It means a lot to me. To us," she added quickly. "That you would share this with us." The ensign's voice was hoarse and strained with conflicted emotions.

A gash of raw hurt raced across Janeway's heart, erasing her certitude that Mileena's feelings about their enforced separation had been purged. The scientist before her was in agony, perhaps as much as she, but had taken the lead in concealing her true thoughts until the situation...and copious amounts of emotional lubricant...allowed the barest trickle of expression through. Janeway was still impressed with the half-Trill's restraint. It was a simple acknowledgement, nothing more, and it was just as likely that Janeway was misinterpreting as it was that Mileena was projecting.

Janeway's admission of "I wouldn't miss it for the world," was utterly obscured by the breathless entry of a tall Trill hologram in shining black leather. She bowed respectfully, if frantically, at the Captain and fretted around Mileena.

"'Leena, we need you on stage in five minutes. Are you ready for the set? Gorna Rey is setting up and wants you to do a final cross-check."

"On my way," acknowledged the half-Trill, who nodded apologetically to the Captain. "I've volunteered to operate the lights during the next set. Thank you again."

She slipped off the black robe in a ripple of silk and draped it lightly over the chair, then trailed back into the club after the hologram, leaving Janeway out on the balcony to watch the moon's pale face mock Janeway's own. A few minutes later, though, the familiar moon and sprawling city of Earth was replaced by the massive twin moons of the Trill homeworld and a stunning panorama of its capital. Within, Janeway saw the towering platforms shift to a wilder setting, complete with twisting vines, swooping birds of paradise, and dappled green lighting. A strident female voice called over the music from the DJ's table.

"Hello single bodies, full-bloods and half-breeds. This is DJ Gorna Rey spinning the symbiont-rocking, soul cleansing electro-trance favorites from Trill's hottest 24th century artists. And as a special treat, our synchronized laser light show will be provided by the cause of all your problems and the solution to about as many, your darling Mileena Irae." A cloud of laughter and catcalls erupted at her name. "So fire up the bioneural gel, expand your senses, and release your inhibitions."

The tenor of the music shifted from frenetic crashing to something more meditative, though no less bass-heavy. In fact, Janeway felt her internal organs shifting with every other chord and realized that was exactly what the music was intended to do. The Trill symbionts didn't have ears, but they had enough tactile receptors that they would experience deep vibrations. The sensation seemed not to agree with a fair number of crewmen, who spilled out onto the veranda to grab drinks and take a moment to breathe. Soon enough, they streamed back in to rejoin the undulating masses.

Janeway watched the whirling lights and evocative pictures that lit the walls and painted the floors. Beside the DJ, Mileena had her eyes closed and was waving in time with the music. Her transmitters whirred in a spiral of colors as she remotely accessed the bioneural gel in the holodeck circuitry and directly triggered the holodeck emitters. Had Seven signed off on such a risky move? She must have, since the Borg was not on the platform and hauling the Ensign away. The show was absolutely entrancing, Janeway admitted. Something about being directly connected to the brain of a listener made the patterns more complex and the experience more vivid. With an ivory-colored hand, she idly ran her fingers over the damp silk that had embraced the ensign's body. "I wouldn't miss it for the world," she said again.

For the next hour, Janeway sat on the veranda, continuing to hold court with her crew and enjoying the party in her own, detached way. When not struggling through polite conversation with some crewman or another, she was watching Mileena and basking in her lights. After the Trill set, when the room went blood red and a Klingon took the stage, Janeway snuck out before her own liquid courage would make her approach the object of her desire.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Chakotay wasn't sure if the captain was deliberately making as much noise as humanly possible or whether the room's collective hangover was magnifying every sound until it was a screaming, uncomfortable din. Janeway dropped a padd on the conference room table and, almost in unison, the senior staff winced. Well, all except for Seven of Nine, whose nanoprobes had rapidly processed the variety of alcoholic beverages from last night. She sat there, prim and detached, while the rest of them suffered mightily after too much indulgence.

The commander watched Janeway pace and, from somewhere in his hung-over fog, heard her querying Lieutenant Torres about modifications to the phaser bank. It gave him a chance to contemplate her form and function. Her gold-lit red hair was ever-so-slightly mussed and beige rings sagged around the bottom of her eyes. Her arms moved more slowly than usual and a few times, he saw her waver for a nanosecond, then grip her chair in what should have been a gesture of mere forcefulness.

She'd been strange last night, a bit distant and preoccupied. She had been content to isolate herself on the veranda when in many cases, she would have joined him on the dance floor for a bit of a laugh. Perhaps it was the overwhelming sensuality of the event that turned her off, but he suspected that a particular half-Trill had managed to hook the captain's attention more than she preferred. Most wouldn't have noticed it; in fact, besides him, Tuvok and the Doctor, no one knew the captain and her habits well enough to distinguish her moods. That moment after Mileena was released, when the captain had rushed into her arms and dropped all pretense of mere professional worry, had been the most passionate expression by the captain that Chakotay had ever witnessed. Their subsequent avoidance of each other indicated to Chakotay that whatever had happened after had not been to their liking.

The sound of Seven of Nine finally reporting broke him out of his reverie.

"Captain, I have completed my most recent analysis of the drone strikes. Based on the pattern of attacks and local astronomical phenomena, I have concluded that the next attack will come from this planetary cluster four light years away."

She tapped a few buttons and a binary solar system appeared on all of their screens. Chakotay studied it intently. It was rare to encounter two suns in such close proximity, but it was even stranger to see that there were no fewer than ten planets orbiting around them. At least one seemed to pass between the two suns, which would make it an extremely rare phenomenon indeed.

"This system is comprised of two suns: a class B and a slightly smaller class G. There is a great deal of plasma flux between the two suns, suggesting that one is being consumed by the other at the rate of fifteen million cubic meters of matter per day. In two hundred years, the class G star will have completely absorbed the class B star."

"What about the planets themselves," asked Janeway. "You said that they could be the potential source of the attacks."

"There are fifteen planets orbiting the binary system. At least one is within a habitable zone, though we are too far to determine whether it holds life. There is a great deal of interference from the shared corona of the suns."

"An excellent place from which to launch another surprise attack," noted Tuvok. "It may be prudent for us to avoid this sector."

"I am inclined to agree with you, Mr. Tuvok, but we may be just likely to spend another month or more under constant assault. I'm not sure if Voyager can continue to endure that sort of extended barrage." She paced, more thoughtfully. "Then again, driving Voyager blindly forward into potentially hostile territory seems unwise."

She turned to Seven of Nine. "Do you have a course that will take us out of this area, perhaps one that will provide us with some sort of defensive advantage?"

"I detected higher than average levels of background gravitometric radiation. This led me to locate a dichromatic nebula approximately 1.63 light years away. Once closer to the nebula, it could be possible to modify the deflector dish so that Voyager can use the gravitometric interference to mask our warp signature."

"Excellent. Lieutenant Torres, work with Seven to get the dish ready." A quick discussion ensued about the modifications to the deflector dish that would make this possible before the Captain turned to Tom Paris.

"How goes the Venture, Mr. Paris?"

"Excellent," he reported, his usual enthusiasm deeply muted by what must have been an exceptional hangover. "Ensign Baytart and I have done a significant amount of testing, both with just the bioneural console and the simultaneous console and neural transponder. With your permission, we'd like to take another flight."

"In an active combat zone," questioned Chakotay. "That seems unwise."

"I know," reassured Paris, "but we wouldn't be going far from the ship. Also, based on data we've collected from the attackers, it's unlikely that they would pose any significant threat to the shuttlecraft."

The Captain shook her head, then looked briefly as if she wished she hadn't. "I'm sorry, Mr. Paris. Ordinarily I might allow you to do this, but we need your expertise in case there are more attacks."

His face dropped, then took on a sly expression. "Then would you be willing to let us try the bioneural interface on the helm? We've modified it so that the gel pad only takes a few minutes to attach. Plus, it can be ripped off in case of a red alert without damaging any of the helm controls. " Now his eyes were twinkling nearly as brightly as the stars around them. "You've been saying that you want Baytart to have more experience on the bridge during alpha shift and that you want to see the bioneural console in action. Let's combine the two."

"I believe, Lieutenant, that your confidence is overrated," stated Tuvok. "It is unwise to bring untested technology into a combat situation."

"The attacks are hours to days apart and don't last very long. I can vouch that he's a damn good pilot and can easily see Voyager through one of these encounters. Why not have Baytart take a few alpha shifts and attach the bioneural console in between fights?"

Chakotay got the feeling that Paris had planned this conversation long in advance. He must have been taking lessons from Ensign Irae. She had a knack for locating and shutting down logical objections, especially when they concerned alternative and novel technology. It seemed to have worked on the concerned parties.

"Tuvok, is this arrangement acceptable to you," the Captain asked.

"I will tolerate it so long as Mr. Paris remains accessible in case the situation deteriorates." Well, that was as good as it was going to get, mused Chakotay.

"Very well. Inform Ensign Baytart that he is going to be working the alpha shift, starting tomorrow. Dismissed."

The group filled the bridge, displacing the remnants of gamma shift who wearily trickled out to their respective quarters. Paris pulled aside Baytart to give him the good news. Chakotay watched with amusement as the young man's tired eyes grew wider with every word until he turned around, quickly thanked the Captain, and rushed out after the rest of the crew.

Settling into her chair, the captain ordered Voyager to proceed towards the nebula at warp 7, hoping to avoid any conflicts in the interim. She and Chakotay continued to turn over the possible causes of the incessant, mosquito-like attacks. The Captain was of the opinion that Voyager was being tested for her capabilities, potentially as a prelude to a greater strike. Chakotay, on the other hand, recognized the technique as one used frequently by the Maquis. Hassling a ship until it made a crucial error or wasted too many resources to continue was a time-honored tradition. There wasn't much point in their debate since their only real course of action was to proceed further out of the space and to hope that the attacks abated.

Sometime later, the relative peace of the bridge was punctuated by an unusual request. "Exobiology to Commander Chakotay," paged Ensign Soohoo.

He tapped his communicator and exchanged a surprised look with his superior officer. "Go ahead, Ensign."

"Sir, we've encountered a problem with our data. I think you should come down to take a look at this."

As much as Chakotay would have preferred to remain on the bridge, especially since an attack was overdue, he knew that he should go check. The Abraxian mess, in which Voyager had inadvertently aided a future genocide, could have been avoided had he been paying more attention to exobiology. With an assenting nod from the Captain, he answered.

"Of course, Ensign. I'll be right down."

"Thank you, Commander. We're in proteomics. Soohoo out."

He took a quick glance at the Captain, whose fingers tensed at the sound of that department. Wisely, he ignored it as he took his leave from the bridge. If Janeway needed help, he'd be there, but otherwise those depths should remain unplumbed.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Spirited disagreement greeted Chakotay when he entered the small biology lab on deck four. Ensigns Soohoo and Golwat were gesturing at Ensign Irae from behind the forcefield that separated the rebuilt outer lab from the inner lab. Ever since the Erato had restored proteomics to its original state, the outer lab had served as a modular station for any department that required extra processing power. Consoles that once had laid dormant, or that had been frequently blown into space after explosive decompression, remained in active use thanks to the multiple crewmembers bringing some task or another to Ensign Irae's supercomputer. He was reminded at times of an ancient priestess with supplicants seeking her wisdom, but that comparison was something he'd never speak out loud.

Conversation halted as they acknowledged him. The stocky, blue-skinned Bolian stood up to give him her chair while the lithe Asian woman positioned herself beside him as she sat down. Beyond the forcefield, Ensign Irae sat attached to the biomechanical array that provided her with a direct connection to both her own supercomputer and the main computer core through the bioneural gel packs. He deliberately kept his gaze away from her and focused on his subordinates.

"Ensign, what seems to be the difficulty," said Chakotay, adjusting the chair height and rotating into position. Exobiology was his specialty, even though he spent very little time in the lab with his subordinates. Usually, they did an excellent job of distilling the data into a report that was both detailed and fascinating. For the most part, though, raw processing was accomplished while he was on the bridge.

"There's a mismatch," stated Ensign Soohoo, gesturing with a thin-fingered hand at one of the consoles to the left. He peered closely at the display as she explained.

"You know that we've been monitoring the planetary clusters for signs of life. As you noted in our last report, it's extremely unusual for us to travel for a month without encountering any signs of civilization."

Chakotay nodded. Given their proximity to Borg space, it wasn't necessarily surprising that there could have been significant depopulation of many planetary systems. However, Voyager hadn't even detected signs of a pre-Industrial civilization, which the Borg would typically ignore, nor ruins to suggest that the Borg had been through. The planets were just empty.

"Well, Ensign Golwat noticed something."

The bald head of the Bolian inclined towards him. "There were unusual patterns in the mountain ranges of several planets. Several possessed mountain peaks of almost identical heights in the same location on each planet. There were similar electromagnetic signatures on all of their outer atmospheres. Many of them had a single contiguous continent on the southern portion of the planet, half of which was desert and half of which was tropical.

Six planets rotated on the screen in front of him, confirming her observations. "Curious," he agreed.

"I suspected it might be a form of pre-programmed terraforming," continued Golwat, becoming visibly agitated with excitement. "The Vortan of Regal Alpha have been known to employ a robotic task force that reconfigures entire moons for later colonization. Granted, they primarily provide a suitable atmosphere and the correct amount of surface water for the Vortan physiology. However, what if there were a more advanced variety of terraforming that could shape the entire crust of a planet to be completely ideal for a species?"

"So you loaded the sensor data into CRE to statistically confirm your findings," he guessed, leading to the two exobiology ensigns to nod in unison. "Presumable with Ensign Irae attached to the machine for extra refinement."

"And speed," came the voice from behind them. He glanced over quickly, then turned his head back.

The ensign's pale yellow eyes were open and gazing at a space behind his head. Even though he'd seen her apparatus multiple times, it was no less disturbing now than it was during the first initiation sequence. The thick metal robotic arms and head restraint gave the impression that she was locked in place through some ancient torture device. He knew that each component of the machine was linked physically to the ensign via a system of needle-like probes and transdermal implants, which did little to dispel his discomfort.

"So, what's the problem," he said. Ensign Soohoo handed him a padd.

"There's no correlation," she stated. "The patterns are quasi-random. Or at least, that's what we say." She pointed towards her friend in the heavy chair. "Mileena thinks that all of those planets are populated. What's more, all of them have intricate satellite systems and warp signatures that don't match Voyager's."

Chakotay looked deeply troubled and rotated his chair back to stare at the dark-skinned Ensign.

His questions were cut off by CRE announcing, "Disengagement protocol initiated. Please stand by."

There were a series of beeps and the whirring of servos as the bioneural uplink disengaged and lifted enough for Ensign Irae to retract her arms. She blinked a few more times, letting the last of the machine connection clear from her consciousness, and spoke to Chakotay from her apparatus.

"Whenever I see the direct output from CRE, I see populated planets. But when I look at the report myself, I see the same thing as Golwat and Soohoo. I've toggled it back and forth a few dozen times and I always have the same mismatch."

"What do you mean by see the direct input," queried Chakotay.

"It's hard to explain," said Mileena, wiggling her fingers free of the contacts, then paused and gestured towards the planetary display in front of the Commander. "Right now, I'm seeing those planets because the light from the display is triggering an electrical signal in my eye, which is sent to my visual cortex. Then, the signal is sent to the rest of my brain for interpretation, at which point I can understand what I'm seeing."

Chakotay nodded, trying to dig freshman biology from the back of his own brain.

"But when I'm in the machine, I receive the data pre-interpreted. I'm receiving the same information that the computer gets right from the sensors without needing to involve my eye or visual cortex." She sighed in frustration. "I see without seeing, a bit like how I know where my elbow is without looking at it. And when I see what I see in my head, and then I look at the padd, I know it's different."

"Is there a problem with the bioneural gel," he replied. "Could the sensor data be somehow corrupt when it enters CRE?" His brow furrowed. "Have you checked with the Doctor to see if any of your implants are malfunctioning?"

"I'm not sure, Commander," she admitted, idly rubbing her arms. "I'm inclined to believe that there's an issue in CRE's reading of the sensor data. It's possible that he's...it's...somehow tapped into the memory banks of the main computer and is displaying the configuration of other planets." She sighed. "The problem is that I don't know what I'm seeing and no one else can see it to confirm it."

Chakotay pondered his options. The direct bioneural uplink had been a risky endeavor from the start. Up until this point, there had been no significant issues, but that didn't necessarily predict the future functioning of this untested apparatus. Even more concerning, the one person who was most likely to troubleshoot the problem was also the person most likely to be damaged if something went wrong.

"Ensign, I want you to report to Sickbay to check your implants. Assuming the Doctor doesn't find anything, I want you and Seven of Nine to run a full diagnostic scan of the bioneural uplink. Have Ensign Powell assist you." The curly-hair on top of Ensign Irae's head bobbed in acknowledgment.

He turned towards his subordinates. "Ensign Golwat, keep collating data. See if there are any other similarities; broaden your search to include planets we've passed earlier in our trip. Ensign Soohoo, crosscheck your data with other sensor reports. Diagnostics, shuttlecraft, transporter. I want to see if there are any other anomalies. We need to figure this out." He stood up and smiled, albeit a bit grimly. "Good work."

They all beamed at his praise as he left for the bridge. He wished he could return their good cheer. The Captain was not going to like this.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The Doctor ran his scanner over the implants on Mileena's arms for a third time, then brought the probe up to her skull with a bored flourish. The tiny visible diodes on the skull transponders flashed in time with the tricorder output, causing the hologram to administer a professional glower to his patient.

"Will you please stop that? It's interfering with my readings."

He snapped the tricorder shut as the light show ceased, put down the equipment, and picked up a two-pronged tool from his medical tray. It was a new variant of an old device called a multimeter. It allowed the user to measure current strength and frequency across an electronic connection, in this case, Mileena's nervous system. With a sigh, Mileena closed her eyes as an alligator clamp was affixed to her left skull implant. The other end of the multimeter, a long needle-shaped probe, was wielded with mediocre fanfare by the Doctor. At random intervals, he'd poke the thin metal wand into one of Mileena's implants, causing a mild shock and a cascade of readings. She had no way to predict the location, which of course was part of the test, but she found it no less unpleasant or boring.

The jolts came and went according to the Doctor's whims until he reached the peripheral implants in her pinkie fingers. In contrast to the sensations from her thumbs or forearms, the responses from these implants were dull, distant pinpricks. A series of laden "Hmmm"s emitted from his tight-lipped mouth until Mileena could stand it no longer. She opened her citrine-hued eyes, rolled them towards his bald head, and inquired, "Well, what is it?"

"The signal strength is a full 75% less than expected. In addition, the skin has sunken in around the edge of the implant. I believe it is rejecting." He prodded it a few more times, then pulled out his microscanner, picked up her hand, and peered at it closely.

"I retract my previous statement," he said, concealing his surprise with flat scientific professionalism. "There seems to be an abnormal lattice of connective tissue that has been extruded from the surrounding tissue and wrapped into the neural connection. The skin is being drawn in along with it"

"So it's not rejecting. It's...connecting," she said, puzzled. "Then why isn't it working properly?"

He tapped his chin thoughtfully, then turned around and went to the replicator. Mileena watched him with unusual curiosity. She was technically the expert on this technology, but he was a Doctor and a scientist as well. It wouldn't necessarily be surprising if he had ideas that were different from her own. It was just, well, annoying to see his superiority.

"Computer, I require a one liter nutrient solution of balanced half-Trill, half-human enzymes, proteins, lipids, and glucose. Please make it 22°C." A whirring bucket of brownish glop appeared on the platform. He delicately brought it over to the biobed and unceremoniously dropped Mileena's hand into it. She went to retract it in disgust, but his pale grey hand kept hers in place.

"Humor me, Ensign."

She sighed and wiggled her fingers. "Besides that single weird implant, have you detected any other problems?"

"I have located no malfunctions in your implants," he reported lightly. "With limited exceptions". A hand was waved towards the biological slop on the table. "According to my readings, the connectivity is excellent in both directions. Your body is tolerating the implants relatively well. In addition, you've passed your neurological tests with flying colors. Other than a chronic lack of sleep, a mediocre attitude, and a raving case of lovesickness, you are in excellent health."

She choked at his last diagnosis and looked around for any intrusions. "Doctor, please," she beseeched. "I've been trying to conceal it."

"You're doing a terrible job, Ensign," he remarked. He crossed his arms and gave her a pointed look. "I can't rule out that your psychological state is somehow affecting your neural processing, but your symptoms seem to be limited to moping, dramatic sighs, and the completely ill-advised pursuit of Tal Celes."

Mileena groaned and rubbed her forehead with her free hand. "How did you find this out?"

He cocked an eyebrow and produced a superior grin. "The nightclub holograms provided me with a significant amount of information about the well-being of the crew. Of course, it is strictly confidential once I am made privy to it, so your secret is safe with me." He gave a half-laugh. "And anyone who knows you well enough to tell when your mood is off."

Mileena wiggled her fingers again in agitation. This time, though, a warm rush of sensation rippled up from the supposedly malfunctioning implant. She gasped and he looked even more smug.

"Just as I suspected." He dug out a towel, spread it on the ensign's legs, and lifted out her hand with an expression of disgust. Mileena wilted as the fluid seeped through the towel onto her knees and thighs. While the Doctor could whisk away any spatter in a holographic flash, she would need to go to her quarters to clean up.

With a few pats, he cleared away most of the nutrient solution and pointed to her pinkie in triumph. Mileena was, in a word, confused. The digit, and indeed, her entire hand, had plumped up to almost twice its normal size and was a strange pink color that contrasted uncomfortably with her almond-brown skin. She mentally queried the implant and received a lightning-fast shock of information, including enhanced texture from the towel. It was stronger than any connection had ever been in her body, implant or no.

"Give me a hint, Doctor," she said grumpily.

"As the implant has attached itself to your body, it has required a significant amount of nutrients in order to build new synapses, extra myelin, connective fibers, and so on. However, it isn't being supplied by your circulatory system, so it's been leeching the required materials from the surrounding tissue." He scanned her hand with the tricorder. "I estimate that I have provided it with sufficient nutrition for several weeks, but you should make an effort to supplement your implants at least once a day. I will synthesize the appropriate shampoo for the upper contacts."

"My implants are hungry and I need to feed them? Are you kidding me," grumbled Mileena. Then, she had a more disturbing thought. "Doctor, if they're making extra connections, how are we going to extract them when the time comes?"

He nodded sagely. "I expect that we'll let them naturally reject, perhaps with the aid of an immunosupplement. I assure you, Ensign, that you will complete your experiment with nothing more than a set of fond memories." He patted her on the shoulder as the Captain walked in and promptly wrinkled her nose at the stench of the nutritional broth sitting beside Mileena.

"How is the patient," asked Captain Janeway.

The patient, muttered Mileena to herself, would much rather be sitting in warm, dry, clean clothing than under a layer of lukewarm glop. She would also like it very much if the beautiful, auburn-haired and ivory-skinned woman in front of her would allow her a caring glance and open caress. Mileena recalled the Doctor's admonition and perception of her lovelorn state, so she mustered a pleasing facial expression and nodded politely to her superior officer without saying anything.

The Doctor lifted the vat of fluid and deposited it on the replicator, which obligingly dissociated it into its molecular components. He produced another box of disinfectant and a few clean towels, then returned to Mileena's side and bowed ironically.

"And good to see you too, Captain," he said. The Captain narrowed her eyes, which he merrily ignored. "According to my scans, she is, as Seven of Nine would say, functioning appropriately. I've detected nothing out of the ordinary. Any errors that she is experiencing are most likely localized to her apparatus and not to her."

The Captain appraised Mileena with her cool blue eyes. Mileena kept her composure intact as she luxuriated in the Captain's fleeting attention. Even the sight of that regal posture favoring the half-Trill with its gaze was intensely enjoyable for Mileena. Then, she pulled her unwilling eyes away from the Captain and began the laborious process of cleaning and drying her implants before recapping them.

"And what of the rotten corned beef stew that you've poured all over my crewmember," the younger woman said dryly.

"A nutritional supplement for her implants to facilitate their connectivity. I'll be sure to add some carrots and potatoes next time to make it more pleasing to the senses."

The Captain raised her eyebrow and the Doctor launched into an explanation of his neural growth theory while Mileena slipped the plugs one by one into the slots on her arms and hands. She'd gotten used to doing them herself, but the distal pinkie now protested its engorged state. She fumbled a few times with its cap and the flesh-colored polymer flew out of her hand and skittered across the floor. Janeway retrieved it, mid conversation, and set it delicately in Mileena's palm, allowing a split second of delicious physical contact before withdrawing her hand. Their eyes simultaneously flared open and reverted to normal. Mileena pulled away, tapped the final cap into place, and flexed her fingers experimentally.

At that moment, the Doctor decided to find something fascinating in his office that demanded his immediate attention. He drifted away, leaving the mildly-soiled ensign and her immaculate Captain fidgeting uncomfortably in front of each other.

"I should probably go clean up," said Mileena, dodging any sort of conversation that could lead to, well, anything. "Ensign Powell and Seven of Nine have been disassembling my machine to see where something has gone askew."

"Good, good," replied the Captain, looking no more at ease. "I'll let you return to your duties."

"Um, yes. I just need to change and then I'll be able to continue," said Mileena. "I'm sure there's just a miscommunication somewhere in the memory banks. The bioneural gel has been through so many permutations that it's inevitable something has been miswired. We'll have it hammered out in no time. Well, not literally I hope." She half-eased, half-oozed herself onto the floor, mopping up the remaining fluid from her legs with the terrycloth towel. Tossing it back on the biobed, she called a goodbye to the Doctor and left Sickbay, the Captain surprisingly trailing in her wake.

"Commander Chakotay told me about the data mismatch. I'm certain that we'll find the cause. I'll have Lieutenant Torres include a full ship's diagnostic of the sensor and computer systems just in case," said the Captain with brusque reassurance.

"It's very unusual, I'll admit," replied Mileena. She launched into the same explanation that she'd given the Commander, which filled the time it took both of them to reach Mileena's quarters.

They reached the door and stopped dead. They were simultaneously and overwhelmingly conscious about just what had happened the last time the two of them were in this place. It had been so hot and so sweet that Mileena felt a chill go up her spine at the mere recollection. But when Mileena caught Janeway's eye, she was disappointed to find that there was no reflected emotion in those icy blue depths. Any joke she could have made about avoiding another incident was completely suppressed behind her own scientific facade.

"Thank you, Captain, for your attention. As always, I am gratified that you take such interest in me...in my work." Oh, that slip wasn't obvious at all, said the inner Mileena, which died a few thousand deaths of embarrassment.

A tinge of pink developed about the captain's cheeks, but her response was distantly pleasant and exceptionally professional. As the captain strode away, Mileena dodged inside, took a frigid shower, and swapped into a clean uniform. Then, she went to proteomics, where she could search for whatever it was that was causing her to make mistakes. Well, other than her unrequited feelings for the Captain.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Seven of Nine watched the diminutive engineer crawl around on her hands and knees within the wet lab, then climb up the ladder and wave her arms around the ceiling. The ensign had been doing this for the better part of eight hours while Seven looked on impassively, checking the minute subroutines that controlled the bioneural interface in the outer lab. It was a strange process, reflected the Borg. There was no logical reason for this level of physical scrutiny when the source of the problem was most likely inside of Ensign Irae's neural processor. The second most likely source was far from the lab in the connections of the bioneural gel packs to the main computing core on decks 10. Seven had informed Ensign Powell of this three times, and each time, she had been brushed off with the statement, "I need to check everything."

Had Ensign Powell been her direct subordinate, she would have administered a stern reprimand in a tone taught to her by the Doctor. However, the ensign reported to Lieutenant Torres, who had experienced a typically Klingon reaction to the news of a potential computer fault. Her resulting admonishment of Seven and, by extension, the absent Ensign Irae was quite distressing both in its volume and vocabulary. Thus, given these circumstances, Seven knew it would be futile to argue against unnecessary precision.

Ensign Powell was on her back, once again, staring at the underside of the rear console and moving a tricorder millimeter by millimeter over the quasi-organic circuits within. This was a procedure that Seven was now witnessing for the third time, which was excessive even by Lieutenant Torres' standards.

Seven of Nine bent her well-endowed body over slowly and said, in a carefully modulated tone, "I am going to talk now. Do not get startled."

Previously, Seven's unexpected vocalization had led to the ensign's sitting up quickly, swearing at Seven not to sneak up on her, and accelerating the engineer's cranium into the side of the console. The duranium frame had not been damaged, but a thin trickle of blood had emitted from a cut to the ensign's scalp. That, along with the resulting dizziness, had been swiftly remediated by a trip to Sickbay. To avoid a second interruption in their work, the Borg was being scrupulously careful about the volume and nature of her communication.

The ensign grunted, which Seven took as a signal to continue. "Ensign Powell, you have performed this circuitry check twice already even though I have performed my own evaluation. I doubt that you will find anything that you or I have missed."

A deep sigh emitted from the petite engineer, who slid herself out, stood up, and wiped microscopic particles of dust off of her gold-shouldered uniform. She wrinkled the freckles on her face and ran a hand through her short, ash blonde hair, gestures that Seven correctly interpreted as signs of frustration.

"There's nothing wrong. Nothing at all." She set the tools down on the wet lab bench with more force than was recommended to maintain optimal functioning. Then, a bout of short pacing commences. "I built this system from the ground up with some damn good, excuse the language, engineers. I know every circuit, every optimal range, and every flaw we can't seem to stamp out. Nothing is out of place. If there's a fault, it isn't in the physical machinery."

Seven of Nine nodded. "As I expected. It would be wise to discontinue this avenue of discovery. There are three ensigns on deck 10 who are examining the main computer core. Your work is no longer required."

The ensign's eyes took on a shine that Seven of Nine recognized. It was one she'd seen in the Captain's, in Ensign Torres', and in a number of other faces when the owner was greatly upset but unable to fully express it. Seven did not give it heed, though. There was really no reason to. As far as she was concerned, this work was over.

Two steps later, the ensign was blocking the tall Borg's path out of the lab. "With all due respect, Seven, there is one thing we haven't tried."

The Borg cocked her implant and leveled her cool gaze down at the ensign, whose emotions were causing her to visibly vibrate. It was quite fascinating in its own way. "And what is that, Ensign?"

"Let me connect to the direct interface. This is the best way for us to provide another piece of experimental data. It could eliminate Ensign Irae herself as the source of the mismatch."

Seven thought carefully. The captain would be displeased with this, but the logic was inescapable. Having another experienced user operating the console could potentially clarify the source of the issue. On the other hand, the captain was visibly unnerved by the bioneural interface in any form, while Tuvok would object on security grounds. The young Borg shook her head.

"Based on my knowledge of the Captain's and Lieutenant Tuvok's beliefs, I cannot authorize this course of action."

Another flash of 'fire' appeared in the young woman's face, but instead of protesting, she nodded politely and collected her tools from the wet lab. As the ensign retreated from proteomics towards the mess hall, Seven of Nine had what many humans called a feeling in her gut. In this case, something in the posture of the ensign made the Borg believe that the test might be run regardless of Seven's opinion.

Seven alerted her superiors as to her decision and was met with a round of approval for her discretion. As she left, though, she neglected to initiate the full set of security lockouts around the lab. She was not, after all, the ensign's direct superior. Lieutenant Torres was. It would be wrong for Seven of Nine to interfere with an internal engineering matter.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

It had taken an annoying amount of courage for Mileena to ask Chakotay for his aid on contacting her animal guide. Even though he'd offered his support, it still felt like a strange imposition on a superior officer. They had a cordial, bordering on friendly, relationship prior to her more recent activities. That, to Mileena, didn't give her enough status to approach him on what was essentially religious grounds. She eventually sought him out, in part due to mental turmoil and in part due to rampant curiosity. The hours of meditation she spent in front of…that picture…on her altar rarely brought peace anymore. A week of mental back and forth eventually led her to his office, where a fumbling conversation arranged a meeting.

Their first foray into the great psychic unknown had been unsuccessful, thanks primarily to a red alert during the opening part of the ceremony. Mileena's disappointment was tempered with relief; it felt extremely strange, bordering on offensive, to use someone else's sacred relics as her own focus. By the next meeting, she'd collected the things she found most dear, or at least, were the most accessible: a shell from her favorite ocean on Trill. A curving jasper orb that, when touched, displayed pictures of her family. The first bioneural implant that she created. She cut the hem away from one of her Erato robes and wrapped the items within it. It was a source of slightly bitter amusement that those aliens, more so than many of her own kin, had touched her so deeply.

Now she was in his office, free of glop, and ready to try again. Their bodies faced one another across the cleared-off desk. Both of their medicine bags lay before them, their contents splayed across their individual fabrics. He did not question what she had added, though she thought he raised an eyebrow when he noted the bioneural prototype. Or not

Chakotay moved the grey and tan akoonah towards her. Hers wouldn't be constructed until she had successfully accessed her guide and, more importantly, accumulated enough replicator rations to create the small electronic accessory. She pressed her hands against it and listened to him begin the ceremony.

" A-koo-chee-moy-a. We are far from the sacred places of our grandfathers. We are far from the bones of our people..."

She fell easily into the trance, blocking out the rest of his words as she wandered her mind. It was intuitive after so many hours within the bioneural network. The only difference was that her inner being, rather than some plasma relay on deck 12, was the destination of her thoughts.

Mileena found herself on a rather bland plain. After growing up on a homeworld famed for its wild jungles, teeming oceans, and violent mountains, the expanse of browning grass dotted with squat shrubs and scraggly trees was almost insultingly featureless. The only thing that broke up the monotony of coloration and shape was the cloudless, azure sky and blazing white-blue sun. There was nowhere on Trill that was this monotonous; even its deserts were jewels.

The yellow-green carpet beneath her feet crunched discouragingly as she began to walk forward. A searing, bone-dry breeze blew motes of soil into her eyes and speckled her uniform with red dust. It smelled like handfuls of straw and a land empty of water. A few steps more and she had stripped off the top of her sweat-soaked uniform. With grimy hands, she ripped out a few pieces of fabric and fashioned a makeshift mask to shield her face from the wind, heat, and particulates. Her vision was almost entirely obscured, but she could move forward without being blinded by the dust. Part of her considered breaking out of her meditation, but the other part was too curious about the whole experience to give up quite yet.

She trudged onwards until the wind abruptly abated. In fact, the entire quality of the air had changed. It was cool and sweet with the scent of moist earth. What had been silence interpreted with roaring gusts was now a cacophony of constant noise. Bewildered, she removed the cloth from her head and appraised her surroundings.

The plains had given way to a massive body of almost-still brownish water. Its muddy banks bore several towering trees, their branches stretched in jagged horizontal layers from their gnarled and jutting trunks. "Acacia," said Mileena out loud, recognizing the foliage from the street near her grandfather's house. Not Trill. This was Earth. This was Ethiopia, but before the cities had overrun into the fields. An un-ruined Ethiopia from a time that no human, nor half-human, had seen in hundreds of years.

Animals, now, made their appearance as she approached the edge of the water. She danced her fingers over the surface and the fish within swam to the top, curious about whether her movements indicated food or a threat. The disappeared when tall birds with violent plumage called and dived into the lake, each returning with a wriggling creature that disappeared into their gullets. Across the lake, a few crocodiles lazed on the banks and snapped at a hippopotamus, who looked completely unconcerned by its supposed predators. Behind the half-Trill's back, the earth vibrated with the incessant rhythm of moving herds: gazelle, zebra, and buffalo. She thought she heard a lion roar in the distance, but any other noise was obscured by the thundering around her. She didn't stand up; if the animal guide wanted to make itself known, it would. Meanwhile, she'd play with the fish.

The sounds subsided until only a few remained: that of the water, the wind, and an insistent thump. Now, Mileena's heart rose in her chest even as she waited for the creature, whatever it was, to approach. The mythologist in her wondered if it were a lion, while the child in her hoped it was a giraffe. She stayed towards the ground until the shaking stopped. Then, a hand placed itself on her shoulder and shook her gently.

She turned around, frustrated that Chakotay had interrupted what she had hoped would be the long-awaited interaction with her animal guide. Her protest died in her throat as a long grey appendage retracted underneath a thick, curving pair of tusks that were angled unnervingly towards her torso. A set of massive ears waved once, ruffling Mileena's hair, and she found herself being peered at by a saucer-sized eye lined with thick black lashes.

"An...elephant," she stated, contemplating the dust-encrusted grey beast. "You know, I wouldn't have expected that. I never had much of a connection to Earth."

The elephant blinked, then began to walk away from her. She darted after it...no, him...and tried to find her footing as each of his steps rattled the land beneath them. "Wait, did I offend you?"

Mileena got the impression of a patient chuckle from the swaying animal as they continued forward. "No, I guess not," she admitted. "I think you'd get that a lot, you know, being an elephant instead of a bird or something. Or, I mean, am I your only companion? Are you shared? How does this work?" She reached out and put a hand against the thick hide of the elephant beside her. "Wait, please, I don't understand. I have so many questions."

He paused, rotated his thick head, and touched her shoulder once again with his dexterous trunk. Her patter of questions died off, irrelevant. His colossal, steadying presence washed away her doubt and need for comprehension at this moment. Instead, he waited for the question she needed to ask instead of the ones she thought she should.

"How...do I start...to let go of what happened to me," she said quietly. "Chakotay said that you would be my guide. I don't even know where to begin."

The elephant stomped his front feet. Once. Twice. Three times. The ground beneath each gigantic foot was pounded flat and dense until the soil was a red-black brick. He moved forward and did it again, faster than Mileena thought that he could move, until he was several paces away from her. With a wry smile, she looked down. He'd made a literal path for her to navigate. Was she that bad that she couldn't handle metaphor? She moved along the path until she reached the animal, who had stopped and was placidly munching a shrub.

"Well, that's a start, I guess," she said, placing her hand on his body once again. Small flakes of mud crumbled off onto her skin. "I think, though, that I need to leave. There's a meeting I should attend. But, you'll be here next time? Right? That's how this works?"

He didn't answer, but she knew her questions were put at rest once again. She couldn't help but add in one more inquiry, which he did acknowledge. He gave her his name, which reverberated in her mind as strongly as his footsteps did upon the steppes. The beast receded and the trance lifted.

Her eyes fluttered open and she saw Chakotay grinning. He was leaning his chin on clasped hands and appraised her features as she emerged.

"You're quite good at that," he noted. "You've been under for about a half hour. Most people don't take to meditation so easily."

"I don't usually," she admitted. "I can only quiet my mind when my mind is already quiet. The rest of the time, I just sit there and worry about not being able to stop worrying."

"Well, with practice, you should be able to extend it to your tumultuous mind as well," he said, leaning back in his chair. "I hope this was helpful for you."

"I'm not sure," she said, recalling her silent interactions with the beast. "It was quite different from just praying. I didn't expect to see anything, but he was there. I thought there'd...I'm not supposed to be saying anything, am I," she said, her voice tapering off.

He smiled tolerantly at her, then dismissed her to her evening. She wandered back to her quarters, with the sense of the massive bulk of her animal guide plodding before her, making sure that she got to her destination.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Everything that created Lauren Powell gave her a healthy disrespect for rules. She grew up on Alpha Morelis, a half-forgotten rock between Deep Space K-7 and the Klingon border. It had the unique distinction of being the only functional Klingon/Human colony in the galaxy, in part because everyone there was sick of their lots in life and wanted a fresh start. Klingon warriors who had grown weary of Klingon politics and Klingon intrigue mingled neutrally with humans who found the Prime Directive too stifling and the Federation's stance too weak.

Her parents were ex-Starfleet who had watched the Federation crumple haplessly before one too many invaders. They marked themselves as dead and dropped out of the Federation as much as they could without defecting altogether. Unlike most of the humans, they elected not to go the boring route of making their living as smugglers or soldiers. Instead, they ended up on the platform above the icy planet, repairing any ship-Klingon or human or otherwise-who threw the right credits their way. Their business partner was a Klingon ex-freighter captain who had run afoul of one too many politicians; the bribes required to move his cargo eventually outweighed the value of the materials themselves. The whole thing worked well, better than most, and Lauren had grown up with a hyperspanner in one hand and a Targ in the other.

And, well, Lauren only joined Starfleet because her parents recognized that a bright young mind would eventually tire of patching together sputtering shuttles that were two warp jumps from exploding. Lauren appeared on the Manzar colony and was promptly deposited on the doorstep of a long-lost aunt. The woman recognized enough of her sister's face in jut of Lauren's chin and the hazel in Lauren's eyes to let the girl in the door. From there, a whirlwind of papers and tests led the young woman back to the very organization that her parents had abandoned. She advanced, she excelled, she hid her background, and she took after her father, her mother, and the half-dozen Klingons who made up her extended family. She took up the Starfleet way and somehow appreciated its order and hierarchy, but never quite shook off the vestiges of her more entertaining upbringing.

As a result, she could operate any piece of equipment on Voyager well enough to tweak or break it to her liking. She'd never be B'Elanna Torres, regardless of her skill in the Klingon language, but she could take a scrap heap and reassemble it into a barely-functioning machine in a few hours. She knew how to mask a transporter signature and how to ping-pong herself over a half-dozen relays until she reached her destination unnoticed. And, of course, she knew how to make the sensors think she was wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted. Every bit of this knowledge was thrown together as she dematerialized from her quarters and reappeared a minute later, against orders, in the midst of the wet lab.

Which was already occupied by Mileena.

Her friend was sitting cross-legged on the heavy chair, dressed in that ridiculous Erato garment that she insisted on wearing instead of a normal pair of pants, and reading a report off of a dimly-lit padd. The scientist's curly black hair moved upwards as she acknowledged the rapidly reddening engineer.

"Ah, I was wondering when you'd show up," said the scientist mildly.

"What are you doing here," blustered Lauren. "You're off duty. You're so off duty that you're not allowed to think about work from 20:00 to 07:00 hours."

"I'm not working," replied Mileena, gesturing with the padd. "I'm reading up on my sculpture technique. Oh, and waiting for you, so I can prevent you from making an absolutely stupid, completely avoidable mistake."

Lauren flopped down into the chair beside the bioneural console and leaned herself heavily against it. She'd spent all day in here and returning hadn't been on her list of things to do, but someone had to run the checks on the interface. By god, she'd built it. It was her duty to repair it, lest she be dishonored by her family and crew.

"Define mistake," she said miserably.

"You're going to hook into the console to see if it's working correctly. You're going to do this against orders, landing you, and maybe the rest of us in trouble again. It's not worth it, sweetie," said Mileena, bending over and rustling Lauren's hair. "You've told me that."

"Something is wrong, 'Leena, and I'm pretty damn sure it's not you and it's not the console. Meanwhile, people are crawling all over the computer core instead of letting me do something that's actually useful." The Klingon blood she'd absorbed in her lifetime railed against this restriction by her ordinarily insubordinate friend.

The pale brown form of the half-Trill unfolded itself from the chair and crouched down next to Lauren.

"I know, but let me argue it. That's how it has to be, remember? No more lying, no more hiding, no more secrets unless we really need to."

"Then what do I do," growled Lauren. Mileena failed to rise to the challenge.

"Go home. Get sleep. Come with me tomorrow when I try to overcome stupidity with logic."

Lauren slumped, then nodded. Mileena wrapped her arms around her fondly, then half-lifted, half-dragged the engineer out of proteomics. A few minutes later, Lauren busily helped Mileena expunge all record of Lauren's foray into proteomics. If anyone asked, which they probably wouldn't, it was just an automatic diagnostic of the emergency transport system and nothing more. Then, she was in a heap on her bed, with Mileena sitting nearby, reading her manual and idly running her fingers over Lauren's skin in a fond and intimate gesture. No more hiding, Lauren mused as she fell asleep in Mileena's lap, but no sense in putting themselves on a platter if it wasn't required. At the moment, it was most certainly not.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Pablo Baytart had certainly seen the helm on alpha shift before, but that was usually because Tom Paris was having an off day. Being escorted to his chair by a bubbling Lieutenant Paris was a completely unexpected experience, but one that Pablo was glad to receive. The two settled down to talk shop while Alice fiddled around with the helm, carefully attaching the leads from the bioneural console to the standard contacts below. Pablo watched her petite form work just a few centimeters away. It would be wildly inappropriate to grab her around the waist and sink his teeth into her pale skin just to get that enticing growl of enjoyment. There'd be time for that later. Maybe. If Lauren didn't mind too much.

The grey, silver-flecked material pulsed with energy atop the cream-colored hardware. Alice pushed one hand into the gel and let the undulations lap around her fingers. She scanned the apparatus with her tricorder and smiled at the young helmsmen.

"You should be all set," she said. "Remember that the release catch is on the left. Pull it hard enough and the entire thing will come away. Just...try not to do it unless it's an emergency. You'll break Mileena's heart if she has to rebuild it." There was a roll of her black eyes and a light sashay in her hips as she excused herself from the bridge.

Pablo sat down and adjusted himself in the unyielding metal chair before positioning his hands over the gel.

"By your command, Captain," he stated firmly. A tremor of excitement in his voice escaped his control. Had he been facing backwards, he would have seen a tolerant, knowing look exchanged among Paris, Chakotay, and Janeway. They all remembered what it was like to be on the cusp of discovery. It was hard not to enjoy watching someone else go through it.

The bioneural gel warmed to his touch and took on a lighter hue as he manipulated the surface. Within the gel, the glittering contacts solidified into lightning streaks of silver that branched towards toward his fingertips. On either side of the bioneural gel, the conventional circuitry lit up and displayed a bevy of information. He checked the engine status, headings, and sensory readings before settling himself more fully into his seat.

The next hour went by completely without incident. He flickered his attention among the heads-up displays and manipulated the gel to keep Voyager within meters of her intended course. This wasn't the hard part of flying Voyager. He could bring little Samantha Wildman up here and let her steer without any sort of performance loss. It was a trial run, after all. This was to see if the ship would respond cleanly and quickly to the bioneural input when, not if, Voyager were attacked. Mileena hoped that everyone on the ship would learn to use the bioneural interfaces. Pablo wanted, not a little bit selfishly, for him to be the absolute best so that he'd be the natural go-to. Too bad that she would always be better unless he made the drastic physiological modifications she had accepted. That wasn't going to happen. As it was, bloodying himself on the console was discomfiting. Speaking of which...

"Captain, with your permission, I would like to engage the direct interface for a limited trial."

Her voice was slightly strained. "You know my objections to this, Ensign."

"Yes, ma'am. I understand if you would prefer not to proceed, but Ensign Irae would like to confirm that the interface is appropriately integrated with Voyager's systems."

She didn't answer. Instead, Pablo heard her prod Tuvok for a response.

"I share your reluctance, Captain, but I believe our precautions are sufficient. Ensign Kim," continued the Vulcan, "monitor the bioneural interface for any signs of unusual activity. Immediately disengage helm control if any occurs."

The young Asian man that Pablo found so annoying gave his assent. Pablo pushed his dislike away. There was time elsewhere to brood on that.

With a stifled breath of pain, the helmsman plunged his fingertips abruptly into the gel. The rapid shift in pressure signaled the transition from merely manipulating the console to physically integrating himself with it. Blood seeped from the tiny pinpricks in his skin as the adaptive neurons within the gel reached up and formed welcome connections with his own nerve cells. He took a few minutes to adjust until the pain was just a dull ache and the blood part of the gel. He closed his eyes and relaxed, but only for a moment. His chiseled features descended into a deep frown.

Something was wrong. Even though his eyes were shut, he felt like...one of his eyes had been slightly strained and now his inner world was a sliver out of focus. This happened with the gel time to time, but it usually passed as the synapses between himself and the gel strengthened their connection. Yet as the minutes ticked past, the discomfort was only growing.

The sensation all but vanished when he opened his eyes again. Very strange. Masking his uneasiness, he performed another visual sweep of his arrays. Now, the wrongness returned. The gel was sending him something that was contradicting his conscious senses. But what could it be?

He tilted his head downward in supposedly curious contemplation of the console. Instead, his mind whirled frantically. Was there a malfunction in the synapses between his hands and the gel? He ran a quick mental cross-check and found nothing awry there. No, this might be a result of a shaky link between the conventional and bioneural hardware. Perhaps the console wasn't built to tolerate Voyager's excessive input.

"Ensign, report," stated the Commander. "You've been a bit quiet."

"Sorry Commander," replied Pablo, a bit more distantly than he preferred. "I'm just settling in and getting used to the helm." Well, that wasn't a total lie. "Voyager feels quite different from the Venture." His pulse thudded quicker and the gel increased its activity in response. "Would you let me run a quick connectivity confirmation? I want to see if I'm properly integrated.

"Of course," said the ex-Maquis.

Pablo exhaled and gave the command. "Computer, run bioneural uplink sequence Baytart alpha six." He closed his eyes once again. One by one, his fingers twitched involuntarily until he gave a return signal. Colors lit up behind his lids and vibrations reverberated around his hands. He frowned again. If anything, this was making the wrongness worse.

With effort, he looked at the sensor data from the bioneural gel and then, opening his eyes, compared it with the displays on either side of him. His visual and his mental senses clashed enough that he had to suppress a wave of nausea. The ship wasn't where it was supposed to be or operating as it should. Maybe it was time to get a second opinion. Maybe he was just misremembering his orders.

"Captain," he said cautiously. "What is our intended course?"

He could hear the raised eyebrow in her voice. "125 mark 223 at warp 6. We're heading towards the nebula to shield our emissions."

Once again, he closed his eyes and let the bioneural information trickle through him. The mismatch was there, just as Mileena had described before. They weren't going in that direction at all. Even worse, there was no nebula on long-range scanners. There was only empty space and the stars beyond. The ship was heading in the opposite direction, towards the binary star system that Voyager was purposefully trying to elude.

Pablo gritted his teeth. This could be a fault in all of the bioneural materials, perhaps induced by a fatigue in the materials. The implant tests could have distorted his senses somehow. He could just be misreading the helm's feedback. Or...there was something wrong with the ship's conventional sensors that the bioneural gel was somehow bypassing. With every insistent second of data transfer, he was beginning to believe the latter.

"Is there a problem, Ensign," said the Captain, coming over to him and leaning over his shoulder.

"Captain," he started, then stopped. This was going to ruin his chances of flying Voyager forever, along with destroying the bioneural project altogether. However, if there were something wrong with Voyager, well, his ego would just need to bear the hit.

"Captain, the bioneural console currently says that we are heading 250 mark 110 at warp 7," he said, then breathed heavily. "Even though the ship's sensors say we're going towards the nebula, we've been heading away from that region of space. Furthermore, there's no nebula there at all."

"Are you certain," she said, bending over him and watching his fingers manipulating the gel.

"It's only apparent, Captain, when I concentrate on the bioneural feedback. If I look at the left or right monitors, I see what you say I should. But when I try to adjust course to compensate for sensory information, the console registers a fault: I'm asking it to respond to something that isn't there."

Chakotay was also beside him, scanning the monitors in tandem with the Captain. "Is this similar to what Ensign Irae reported?"

"I believe so, sir. From what she described to me, there's a dual stream of information: what I see and what I am sent. It's only present when I'm connected."

"Could it be the apparatus," questioned the Captain. "Some sort of interference from the nebula's radiation or from the ensign's work with the bioneural network."

Pablo blinked, and then punted. "I don't believe I'm qualified to answer that, Captain. This is the same console that we've used successfully in the Venture, but I'm not the person who does most of the wiring." A twinge of guilt rippled across his stomach. It wasn't nice to throw his ladies to the wolves, but to be honest, he wouldn't be able to explain what he was seeing without help.

"Disconnect yourself, ensign," the Captain ordered. Then she tapped her communicator. "Ensign Irae, please report to the conference room."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

It had taken Mileena five minutes to disconnect from the apparatus and another five her to disinfect and reset her arm plugs. Then, she half-sprinted up to the bridge, composed herself into a sturdy facade, and walked inside. Mileena glanced around the room. Lauren and Alice were already there, flanking a pale-faced Pablo, whose distant gaze didn't quite register what he was seeing. The rest of the senior staff sat beside them, their eyes fixed on the pacing Captain. Chakotay gestured to a chair beside him, but something in the Captain's otherwise lovely posture suggested that Mileena would be literally thinking on her feet.

"Captain, what seems to be the problem," said Mileena, painfully aware that she had already raised the younger woman's ire by showing up a full ten minutes after she was summoned.

"Ensign Baytart has informed me that the ship is not heading in its intended direction," said the Captain. "Everyone else on the bridge disagrees."

The ensign cocked her head and clenched her hands behind her. "Was he experiencing a sensory mismatch," she queried. Pablo nodded his head absently; for whatever reason, the side effects of the bioneural console weren't wearing off as quickly as she'd hoped. He probably tore himself right off without doing a proper shutdown; she'd need to troubleshoot that over a beer or two.

"This represents the second time in as many days that the bioneural components have countermanded the computer's sensors. I want to know what's going on," said the captain firmly.

"We've been exploring that, Captain. Engineering and Seven of Nine have spent an extensive amount of time poring over the computer cores, the bioneural connections, and the apparatus itself. No fault has been uncovered," replied Mileena. She watched the captain's face, which registered a flicker of annoyance at what she thought was an excuse. "I am fully convinced that the problem is not with us or our equipment."

"This is untested hardware, Ensign," reminded the captain. "It's premature to say that you're convinced of anything without more data."

A flare of annoyance lit in the half-Trill's belly. "With all due respect, captain," she said evenly, "A version of the direct interface has been operational for over a year. Some parts of the bioneural machinery are nearly three years old. The bioneural interface has been built, tested, operated, and refined by the best scientists on the ship. When I say I am convinced, it is in light of our collective work. Your personal inexperience with the equipment does not make it untested." Mileena regretted the words the minute they left her mouth and a collective intake of breath from the junior officers confirmed her misstep.

Janeway stopped pacing and granted Mileena a look so cold that it raised a line of goose-bumps up her spine.

"My personal inexperience, ensign, is what keeps me from discontinuing this project altogether. The little I've encountered personally suggests that the bioneural console is unreliable at best and physically dangerous at wprst. However, those experts with whom you have worked assure me that I haven't seen enough to make an informed opinion."

Mileena wished, desperately, that someone would break in to save her from her carefully-modulated flailing. There was only silence from her comrades. She was left to untangle this mess alone. The ensign took a breath. She looked at her friends, whose work she trusted. She looked at her superiors, who judged her almost as harshly as she judged herself. She looked, finally, at the magnificent captain, whose affection she would never win. There was no other hope, really. She adjusted her tone to placating.

"Captain, I trust my work and those who have constructed it. We have gone over every bioneural circuit in my apparatus. I have submitted to a complete physical. I can perform the same studies on the helm console and the Doctor may examine Ensign Baytart. Seven and I have created several sets of external transmitters that you can test, but they're going to find the same result. It isn't us."

"Then what is it," demanded the captain.

Mileena's head thumbed through the minimal data points they had. Constant attacks by unknown parties, planets that weren't what they seemed, a steering problem that only manifested when Pablo focused on the gel. No, when he saw the computer's directly output. When he wasn't relying on the sensor readings but on the electrical activity of the sensors themselves, which is exactly what was happening to her.

"I believe that," said Mileena tenuously, "that there is a problem with our interpretation of the sensory readings. The computers are working just fine, but we are...unable to read them in the usual way." The red-haired woman in front of her narrowed her eyes in disbelief. Time was that Janeway might have trusted her more, but those days were gone now.

"Captain," said the Vulcan security officer. "We have encountered situations in which our perceptions were distorted. On several occasions, some or all of the crew have experienced hallucinations relating to their duties. It is not impossible that this is happening again."

The Captain paced faster, picking up his thread of thought. "However, the bioneural consoles speak directly to your cortex, bypassing the normal means of sensory experience, creating the mismatch between your eyes and mind."

Mileena nodded. The captain's ire lifted ever so slightly and Mileena felt a rush of relief. Perhaps she hadn't torpedoed all chance of working with the gel.

Janeway tilted her head up and looked at Mileena's supervisor. "Seven, can you use your ocular implant to scan data from the helm?"

The Borg nodded and tapped a padd in front of her. Her eyes went slightly crossed and the metal plate above her left eyebrow twitched almost imperceptibly. In a mechanical voice, she stated, "We are heading 250 mark 110 at warp 7, towards a binary star system." Then, she looked down at the padd in confusion. "However, the information on this padd directly contradicts this."

"One final test," said the captain, frowning. She stopped pacing and tapped her comm. "Janeway to the Doctor. Can you join us in the conference room?"

"Of course, captain," he stated evenly. "What seems to be the occasion?"

"It seems we can't rely on our physical senses anymore." The captain's brow tensed. "We're going to need you to help interpret the sensor readings."

"I see. One moment please." The Doctor materialized next to Mileena and looked at the assembled crew. Janeway motioned for Seven of Nine to hand the Doctor the padd, which he took and squinted at dramatically. "Everything looks normal," he said, trying to give back the small piece of equipment. Janeway stopped his arm.

"Doctor, where are we going," demanded the captain.

"Well that's certainly out of my purvey." Her look was withering and he discontinued his blithe tone. "The ship seems to be flying at warp 7 towards 250 mark 110. If I must make a conjecture, you're investigating an interesting binary star system."

"Thank you Doctor," said Chakotay, then he paused and took the padd from the hologram, moved his fingers over a few times, and then handed the equipment back to the captain. The red-haired woman's face was grim and thin-lined as the hologram finished his input.

"So we're operating in the dark," she said in a voice dark and sharp with modulated anger. "We have three sources of information on the ship that are accurate and the rest are being distorted."

"Captain, isn't it plausible that our conversation is being changed as we speak," queried Harry Kim. "If these aliens have the ability to fool our visual senses, they might be just as likely to fool our auditory ones. For all we know, we're all unconscious in our quarters and this entire meeting is a dream."

The room went uncomfortably silent. Mileena's gaze switched from the captain's solemn, tight-lipped face to the equally troubled faces of her peers. There was a measure of invasiveness that came with the implication that some unknown hand was manipulating one's senses and, by extension, oneself. Mileena was relieved that the heavy metal rivets in her arms were offering her some protection against this force. She half-consciously ran her fingers around one of the arm plugs and squeezed it into her skin as if it were a stress toy.

The Doctor was the first to offer a suggestion that wasn't a further deepening of their collective uneasiness.

"That seems unlikely, Mr. Kim, simply because of the energy required to maintain such an elaborate set of sensory information. Assuming for a moment that I am not currently part of the singular dream of some unfortunate crewmember, whomever is interacting with your minds would need to be altering an extremely varied set of stimuli to keep the scene consistent. Everything from accurately altering my voice as it changes location…"

The Doctor disappeared and flickered into place on the other end of the conference room and continued his explanation with a slightly raised voice, "To the movements of your bodies as you responded to me would need to be processed and replaced." He flickered back into place next to the Captain and raised his hands upward. "A race with that level of mental control would have no issue simply turning the crew into mindless puppets who did nothing more than fly Voyager into their waiting clutches. This variety of subterfuge would be absolutely superfluous and irreconcilably showy."

The captain seemed satisfied with his response.

"Yes. It would be far easier to implant some sort of unconscious suggestion that would lead us to ignore certain visual data and reach a different conclusion, at which point we would act accordingly." She gestured to the padd. "We don't hear or touch Voyager's sensory data. We read it. We see it. It wouldn't occur to us to ask the computer for something we could see…or thought we could see…with our own eyes."

Janeway arched her neck towards the ceiling as if asking for a sign from a higher deity. "Computer, what is Voyager's heading and speed?"

To Mileena's ears, the computer's voice was now that of a comfortable and familiar friend. Of course the computer would know the answer. She was quite wise and infinitely patient. Mileena tugged herself back to reality. It would serve no good purpose to anthropomorphize the machinery in that way regardless of how well it seemed to treat her. Instead, she preferred to admire the lean lines of the captain as she acknowledged the computer's predicted answer of "250 mark 110 at warp 7".

Janeway nodded, her face still grim. She turned again to her senior crew, all but ignoring the collection of out-of-place ensigns who were obviously cluttering her conference room.

"We must operate under the assumption that Voyager is being affected by some sort of psychogenic transmittance field. We need to figure out who's behind it, what's causing it and, most importantly, how to stop it." She rocked back on her heels a little. "I am open to suggestions.

Lieutenant Torres shook her head, brown strands of hair shaking back and forth to emphasize her annoyance. "Well for starters, we can't transform all the sensory readings into constant auditory output. There are a dozen people working on two dozen simultaneous projects in engineering. It would be useless cacophony even if we all had earpieces." She leaned her arms on the table and leaned forward towards the rest of the crew.

"But worse, in theory, we've been traveling for a month with these sensory distortions occurring all around us. Even assuming that each planetary system we've passed has had some sort of generator and amplifier, there are still hundreds of light years of empty space that would need to be seeded with this technology." Her voice went low. "Isn't it more likely that we're just suspended in space somewhere-"

"Not necessarily," interrupted Tom Paris. He was almost quivering with new realization. "The constant attacks from the harrier ships. They appear, take off about 10% of the shields, and then leave or are destroyed. I bet that they're somehow perpetuating signal by physically attaching devices to Voyager's hull."

Inspired, Harry Kim asked the ship, "Computer, are there unusual adhesions to the hull?"

"Unable to comply. Please specify parameters for unusual."

Harry Kim looked slightly frustrated. "Any devices or molecules that were not part of Voyager's original complement that have not been logged as entered by the crew or accumulated during normal spaceflight."

"Unable to comply. There is no data on the impact of normal spaceflight on a Federation vessel when flying through the delta quadrant."

Harry continued. The room exchanged a series of bemused grins, though Mileena found herself unamused. At least he was trying to outthink the problem. This is exactly what she would have done had she been allowed to talk. "Extrapolate based on previous data from the alpha and beta quadrants."

The computer paused and the room stopped smiling. Then the computer returned its verdict. "There are 1023 atoms that would not be expected to be found on the hull of a ship traveling in the alpha quadrant."

Harry Kim drooped, defeated, and Tom patted his friend on the back in a way that was not unkind. "Good try, but I think we have an easier way."

He cut off again and looked at Mileena expectantly. In spite of her infatuation with the captain, Mileena found herself pleasantly warmed by his boyish good looks and always welcoming smile.

"Can you query the ship to see if its hull has any sort of structural anomalies relative to what it expects? Maybe a psychogenic emitter-"

"Can't we just look out the window, Tom," asked his increasingly frustrated wife.

"Not if our visual information is being bent," he answered, apparently oblivious to her tone of voice.

Now it was the captain's turn to cut off a train of thought. "A level four diagnostic of the hull's sensors will accomplish the same thing, Mr. Paris. No need to involve Ensign Irae in this any more than necessary."

Mileena winced more visibly than she meant to, earning a pang of sympathy from both Tom Paris and Harry Kim. Both had experienced their fill of being shot down, overwritten, or denigrated when the captain had set her mind against them.

"Captain, a true full scan would require Voyager to come to a full stop and drop shield sections for several hours. If our attackers are monitoring our activity, any unusual behavior might make them suspect that we're no longer fully under their control." Chakotay was calm but insistent. "In this case, I believe the bioneural connection will be the fastest and most accurate way to detect abnormalities in the hull." He indicated Mileena, who was, as always, thankful for his intervention. "We've already established that the connection is sound and immune to the effects of the distortion."

Janeway appraised Mileena, who met her gaze solidly. The ensign knew she would get nowhere by being forceful. Mileena wanted nothing more than to perform the scan, if only to prove to the captain that the console was a good idea and that the captain should want to be near her once again. The two were linked, to Mileena's professional dismay. That shouldn't have been the case, but here it was.

"Do you believe you can accomplish this more quickly than the conventional scan," queried the captain. Her voice was tight and controlled.

"Yes captain," said Mileena, feeling very out of control in spite of the flattened emotion she needed to display. "I can direct the sensors to ignore the usual scan parameters and focus solely on defects and then report the outcome in real time." The captain gave an imperceptible nod. "And if we're only querying a small amount of the hull at a time, the ship can probably stay at warp. I can't be certain, though, until I'm actually interfacing with them."

The captain allowed herself to relent. "Very well. Mr. Chakotay, supervise this operation. Ensigns Soohoo and Baytart, you are relieved of bridge duty. Please assist Ensign Irae in her calibrations." Her friends slumped slightly, but no one could be surprised at the outcome. In a crisis situation, the captain was likely to have the people with whom she was most familiar on the bridge.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," she added more warmly. "I know this has been a fascinating experiment and that you are disappointed to put it on hold. At the same time, if it weren't for you, we'd be literally flying blind." She turned to the whole room.

"In the meantime, I want to find some way of circumventing this control. Let's not forget that we're due for another attack. If the ships are enhancing these sensory distortions, we may lose all progress."

"Since I am unaffected by these attacks," noted the Doctor smugly, "I will monitor the crew's behavior. Should you be acting unusually, I will have no choice to relieve you of duty."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Dismissed."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Mileena crawled into the heavy chair and reconnected to the computer. Pablo, Alice, and Lauren sat by their stations in the outer lab to monitor the sensory output. All were successfully suppressing the raging annoyance they wanted to express but all valued their newly-attained rations enough not to insult their senior officers.

At their signal, Mileena followed the mental tendrils leading to the bioneural gel controlling the ship's external sensors. Waves of activity began passing by her as the scan initiated and the gel began routing its findings into the main computer core, CRE, and now Mileena. She watched the signal's interpretation through the mind she shared with the computers and felt her skin begin to crawl. The ship was covered in them, like glittering insects clinging greedily to the surface of some large food source. Many were darkened husks, their power spent or their housings cracked, but many were alive and shrieking their own form of signal towards the inhabitants of the ship. She felt nauseated and disoriented. What was she seeing, again? What was she looking at? CRE pulled her back a little and shifted her perception away from the hull, a compensation for which she was grateful and slightly wary. Regardless, this was what she needed.

"At a quick count, there are 400,302,101 of these devices in varying states of operation," she said distantly. "They seem to be attached to the hull by tiny spikes that are just sharp enough to provide traction without triggering a hull breech warning." She tried to access the memory that she shared with the computer. It required a little bit of a push and then she continued. "They appear to draw on some of the shield emitter's energy to generate a signal. However, the majority are powered down."

The cool, solid blue colors of Chakotay's voice ran through the room. "Which is why the ships keep attacking. Maybe that's a part that tends to get damaged with use."

"Potentially," she said absently. She tried to maneuver the sensors to get a better assessment. However, the outer hull lacked the ability to give her more than a vague assessment of the item. "I can't tell from here." She drifted around the sensory information and tried to glean more from what she was receiving. Then, she let herself drift more and worked on optimizing some of the connections between herself and the machines. There was always time to prune and strengthen connections.

An exchange of blue and red punctuated her consciousness. The captain and Chakotay were debating something passionately. Another color, the blazing orange of Lieutenant Torres, joined them. Mileena lingered around the colors but recognized she was beyond words at this point. It was just impressions of sounds. She luxuriated in the sensations. If they needed her, they would ask.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

"It's too risky," opined Chakotay over the comm. "Even with the Doctor's monitoring, we have no way of knowing whether the device will power up once inside the ship or what it can do when there's no longer a hull between us and it."

From Engineering, B'Elanna tried to override him. "We don't know what we're dealing with, though and that will make it almost impossible to remove these things from Voyager or counteract their effect. We need to inspect it."

Janeway rubbed her temples from her seat on the bridge. They were both right. She was proud of their diligence and frustrated at the same time that she'd need to override one in favor of the other.

"B'Elanna's right. We can't stop this interference if we don't know how it's being caused. Set up a level 10 forcefield in Engineering and beam one of the deactivated devices inside. Make it so that the device is disintegrated should it even hint at regaining power."

They agreed in unison and the comm went silent. The bridge, too, was free of chatter. Everyone there was on edge, waiting for the now-familiar trio of ships to appear. The tapping of Harry's hands on his console and the quiet thrum of the engines were the only sounds that permeated the stillness, leaving Janeway deep in thought once again.

She's been too harsh on the ensigns, in retrospect, especially Ensign Baytart. None of them had done anything but their jobs. More than that, they had spoken up when they noticed something was awry. She prided herself in being willing to consider other possibilities, yet here she was punishing the young crewmembers for their ingenuity. It was the nature of their discovery and the way it in which it was made that unsettled her so. She prodded herself a bit more. And, of course, part of her mood came from discovery being shepherded by Mileena.

The comm came alive once more. "Captain, we've encountered a problem," stated B'Elanna.

Of course. "What's the matter, Lieutnant?"

"No one who isn't interfacing directly with the bioneural console can actually see the devices. Ensigns Baytart and Soohoo can only describe them when they're using a direct connection in the outer lab. We can't get a lock on it because we can't put in any parameters."

"Can Ensign Irae handle the transporter commands herself?"

"Negative, Captain," answered Chakotay, who apparently was listening in. "She says she doesn't have the knowledge to do anything more than activate the transporters. She can't pass the device through the forcefield or ensure that we only get the device and not part of the hull." His voice held that tinge of subversion and cleverness that he had been using far too often when talking about this project.

"I assume you have a solution," asked Janeway dryly.

An unexpected voice, that of the young Lauren Powell, answered her. "With your permission, Captain, I would like to use one of the external transmitters when operating the transporter. This way, I can use the bioneural network to bypass the sensory distortions."

Janeway considered the request and looked at Tuvok, who nodded in agreement. "Do it."

"In fact, Captain, I think it would be prudent for all of us who have an external transmitter to start wearing them. That way, if there is another attack, we'll be able to use the bioneural network to circumvent any strengthening of the signal." Chakotay's voice was calm as he supplemented the rationale of the young ensign.

Now Janeway hesitated. She was being forced to rely on a technology she actively distrusted. All of the components were still in their testing stages and the ship was in a potential combat situation. Once again, though, she needed to override a good officer to do something challenging. In this case, the officer she needed to override was herself.

"I'll allow it," she said, excluding any residual trace of uncertainty from her voice. "However, I want constant checks with the Doctor. If any of you start behaving abnormally, I want him to detach the external contacts."

"Thank you, captain," said Chakotay. Once again, the comm went silent.

Janeway got up and straightened her jacket. The waiting was becoming dreary and wearing down her resistance. In spite of her battle readiness, her thoughts were being pulled inexorably towards Mil…Ensign Irae. Janeway rarely received open challenges from her staff and never, in her recollection, from an indirect subordinate. Janeway knew she was formidable and, regardless of the social encouragement from her senior staff, she continued to consciously maintain a certain level of detachment from the crew. Ensign Irae was largely immune to her usual tactics of maintaining control, which is why she was so infuriating and so very hard for Janeway to put out of her head.

The two of them had not really talked since that day in the holodeck nightclub, and even then, it had only been a few sentences. Janeway had deliberately ignored the ensign's friendly overtures in Sickbay and her subsequent insinuation that she still had feelings for the captain. Turning aside those emotions had seemed extremely prudent at the time.

Except now, with minutes ticking towards an unknown attack and an unknown solution, Janeway found her desire to be reasonable completely irrational. If Janeway had intended this separation quash her desire, then her plan had failed spectacularly. She was just as attracted and just as desirous of the ensign as she was before. It was just being complicated by the captain's feelings on the bioneural console. All she had succeeded in accomplishing was making the two of them miserable.

"Three ships, approaching on an interception course," noted Tom Paris. "It's the same model ships as before."

"Red alert," Janeway said, sitting down in her chair. "Prepare to fire when they're in range. Mr. Kim, I want you to run a full sensor sweep of the ships. Get every piece of information on them, especially whether they discharge any sort of small projectiles. It doesn't matter if we can't understand the sensor data right now. The bioneural console will help sort the readings out later."

Lieutenant Paris' hands moved swiftly at her command and ship turned in response. From her training, she knew that this offensive maneuver would orient Voyager's phaser banks towards the attackers so that she could order Mr. Tuvok to launch the most optimal assault with their primary weapon. When the ships returned fire, she could initiate an evasive maneuver to take Voyager out of the attackers' line of fire. Until this battle, though, she had never considered how dependent this entire sequence was on her visual awareness. She operated on the principle that the ship's sensors, absent any gross malformation or malfunction, were faithfully rendering the outside world. This was standard. If she thought to double-check every sensor reading for accuracy, the ship wouldn't have left Utopia Planitia.

But she also assumed that she correctly perceived the output of those sensors. With that no longer the case, this dogfight took on a whole new dimension. Were the ships actually where she thought they were or was she incorrectly assigning them in space? Could they be to the aft of the ship? Were they there at all? She pushed aside the doubts as quickly as they leapt to mind. She hadn't second-guessed her competence in battle for a long time. This was hardly the time to start.

Tuvok informed the captain, "A direct hit on the lead ship's starboard shields. The shields seem to have buckled and the vessel is heading off. The other two have resumed their attack formation."

"Mr. Paris, evasive pattern delta four." A few flashes of light followed her command.

"Both ships have hit the port shields. Shields down to 92% and holding."

"Mr. Tuvok, return fire." Voyager released two phaser beams, one from each of the main arrays, and cut a line across both of the attackers. One managed to partially evade the fire and banked hard port. The other took the brunt of the more powerful ship's weapon and exploded in a shower of satisfying sparks. The remaining ship fired several more rapid-succession phaser strikes against Voyager before it too was destroyed.

"Sensors indicate no sign of either ship, Captain. The third seems to have engaged a cloaking device and retreated."

"Damage report," she demanded.

"Shields at 80%. Minor damage to Deck 12, section 3," replied Tuvok evenly. "No reported injuries."

"Good," replied Janeway, sitting down. "Cancel red alert. Maintain our course towards the nebula." She would be glad to put this entire set of incidents behind her. A few hours recalibrating the deflector dish while in the nebula would give Voyager enough concealment to make it out of this odd, lifeless region of space without being attacked again. She rubbed her forehead with increasing fatigue. She had only been on the bridge for a few hours but it felt like she had been on duty for days. She made a note to get everyone some shore leave once they cleared the sector.

Her comm came alive again. "Sickbay to Captain Janeway."

She tapped her communicator in worried response. "Janeway here. We were led to believe there were no injuries sustained during the attack."

"You are correct, captain, but I am contacting you with a question," he said with unnecessary patronization.

"Yes of course," she replied, wishing he would get to the point.

"Do you and the rest of the bridge crew remember that we believe there are psychogenic field emitters on the ship that are altering your sensory information? We discovered several million attached to the hull and are in the process of analyzing one now."

Janeway blinked her eyes in absolute confusion and turned to Tuvok, then to Tom Paris, then to Harry Kim. All of them shook their heads in disagreement.

"No, Doctor, none of us are aware of any such conversation. Are you certain that this actually occurred? Is it possible that your matrix was somehow damaged in the most recent attack?"

He let out a tortured sigh. "Well, this was not entirely unexpected but it is tremendously annoying. Captain, you instructed me before this most recent attack to relieve you of duty should you start behaving abnormally. I would consider your not remembering most of the day's activities to be profoundly abnormal."

She gritted her teeth and suppressed a more biting reply. "Do you feel that is necessary at this time, Doctor?"

"So long as your abnormal behavior is limited to an incorrect belief, I will allow you to remain on duty. However, I suggest you report to proteomics to talk with Mr. Chakotay. I believe he will some answers for you. Sickbay out."

Janeway looked at Tuvok for an explanation, but the impassive Vulcan only inclined his head. "It is possible that the Doctor has been damaged in some way. It is also possible that we have somehow been exposed to a memory-altering effect. If you recall, there was a sensory data mismatch of unknown etiology in proteomics and exobiology. Perhaps this is another case of that phenomenon."

She nodded. "Potentially. I don't like this, Mr. Tuvok, but in the meantime I will heed the Doctor's suggestion. You have the bridge."

She strode purposefully into the turbolift and made her way to Ensign Irae's lab. If her posture suggested confidence, it masked the creeping discomfort she felt after the Doctor's message. There was no reason to believe he was lying. At the same time, there was no suggestion that anything was out of the ordinary other than her first officer inexplicably being in proteomics during a red alert. And what was this tiny element of jealousy at his being with the ensign? Why was he even down here?

The doors to proteomics slid open to reveal a tight cluster of her crew gathered around a blank display in the outer lab. She kept her eyes away from the wet lab and the impaled crewmember within. Instead, she walked over to Chakotay, who looked at her carefully. The Captain noticed a set of red and yellow transmitters on either side of his scalp. Those must be his own bioneural interfaces. Had she given him permission to wear them while on duty?

"Captain, we've started analyzing one of the devices we found on the hull."

Janeway's face registered the statement but gave no sign of recognition. He looked troubled and turned to Ensign Soohoo, whose set of transmitters spiraled more quickly than those of Chakotay's. The ensign had that half-dazed look that signaled a deep attachment to the bioneural console and her fingers moved effortlessly across a conventional console, obviously receiving data from a source outside her own mind. Janeway hadn't realized how far along that track of research was; previously, a direct biological connection was needed to work with the bioneural gel at that level of connectivity. Now there was a less physical way to accomplish the same tasks.

Chakotay continued his conversation with Soohoo, but his gaze remained on the Captain.

"Ensign, can you confirm that more devices were deposited on the hull during the previous attack?"

"Yes, commander," she replied. A whirring started up behind her. "Another 193,220. In addition, Mileena says that many of the previously inactive devices have gone active, which may be responsible for the rest of the crew's disorientation."

"The rest of the crew," queried Janeway. "You mean you are not affected by whatever is happening?"

Chakotay paused and frowned more deeply. "Captain, how much do you remember of what happened this morning. Do you remember Ensign Baytart's test run of the bioneural console?" The dark commander pointed to male ensign, whose head was bent over another blank console flanked by flickering telemetry data.

The captain looked at her second in command with increasing suspicion. Not of him, but of her own memories. It was far later than it seemed, wasn't it? There was a shadow of a memory and a thought just hovering at the edges of her perception. If she tried to recall it, she found herself coming up empty. If she weren't aware of the missing memory, she would have dismissed her lack of mental acuity as a trick of fatigue. After all, how many times had she gotten lost in her duties on the bridge or in the heat of battle?

"No, I don't," she said firmly. "However, I'm guessing there's something distorting our perceptions but that the bioneural console interface is helping anyone who is connected to bypass the interference."

"Correct," came a quiet voice from the wet lab. "They're. Reading…the se-nsors. It's –rcing the-m to se."

Janeway let her eyes travel to the direct uplink. Ensign Irae's yellow eyes were open but unfocused. The direct contacts disappearing into her dark skin seemed to glint silver and scattered CRE's own indicators into starbursts of blue and yellow. The captain was torn between her insatiable drive towards scientific exploration and her desire to completely dismantle the entire, unnatural apparatus.

"Can you translate, Mr. Chakotay," said the captain. "And is there any way to allow her better communication when in the bioneural interface?"

"We've been working on the latter, captain," noted Ensign Powell. Her own contacts were whirring brilliantly but she seemed less taken in by the apparatus. Whether that was through training or depth of connection wasn't something Janeway could ascertain. "According to Mileena, she-" Powell cut off her explanation sheepishly and let the commander answer the other question.

"In addition to our usual connection to the bioneural gel, we're receiving data directly from CRE's sensory uplink to Ensign Irae. The readings provide just enough interference for the psychic distortions to be ignorable. As a result, we're able to work with the emitters without being fooled."

He gestured to what appeared to be an empty console. "This is a three-dimensional model of the emitter we teleported off the hull. I'm guessing you're not able to see it." Janeway shook her head and a combination of frustration and embarrassment rose to her cheeks. She disliked being at a tactical disadvantage, even more so when she was around her subordinates.

The monitor blurred suddenly and Janeway felt a brief moment of vertigo that subsided as Janeway blinked, then squinted her eyes. Instead of an image, the console displayed what looked like an interleaved geometric pattern. The quiet voice from behind the forcefield said a single word.

"Stereogram."

Janeway peered closer and relaxed her eye muscles. She'd seen these little pictures as a child, when a matrix of blues and reds could be resolved into a sailboat or a dinosaur. A few moments of ocular adjustment later, she saw the device for the first time.

"We are trying to find ways around the psychic block. We guessed that a stereogram, which bypasses a portion of normal visual processing, would let you see the device," stated Ensign Soohoo as she watched the captain inspect the screen. "Did it work?"

"Yes," replied Janeway, and looked more closely.

It was a small oval with a domed surface and a studded array of lights ringed around the top. Tiny teeth protruded from the bottom, though some were bent or missing. Two partially-crumpled antenna jutted akimbo from the sides. Divots where more antennae could have been placed covered the entire dome.

"Would you like me to rotate it, captain," asked Ensign Soohoo.

"Please," she answered crisply. The stereogram obligingly altered its composition and the device shifted from being viewed from the size to being viewed from beneath. A concavity containing two empty cylinders sat in the middle of the emitter's base, which was otherwise coated in these small teeth. Chakotay began explaining what they had found.

"Each device is approximately four centimeters by two centimeters in radius and two centimeters high. The body is a standard tritanium alloy and most of the inner wiring is unremarkable. However, there are two features that stand out." The base of the visualization took on a blue highlight around the teeth.

"These crystalline spikes are thin and sharp enough to pierce the hull by inserting themselves between just a few molecules of duranium at a time. They also have a large number of facets and an exceptionally high index of refraction."

"That might explain how they get through the shields," observed Janeway. "They're able to deflect the subatomic energy of the graviton particles and create an anti-graviton field just large enough to let the emitter through." Chakotay nodded, following her train of thought, and she continued, her thoughts whirring as quickly as the machine behind her. "That's why we need to be under attack for the emitters to be attached. The shields are fluctuating and the graviton particles are moving fast enough in response that they're more likely to disperse when they encounter a localized disruption."

Janeway looked inspired and tapped her comm urgently. "Captain to Engineering."

"Yes Captain," replied the frazzled chief engineer.

"B'Elanna, can you modify the shield emitters so that they create a higher density layer of graviton particles at the farthest edge of the shield?"

Her Klingon subordinate responded in a voice pitched half a tone higher than usual. "But captain, that will reduce the overall flexibility of the shields. We'll have more trouble shifting energy to locations where the shields have been weakened."

"It's a chance we need to take," replied the captain firmly. "Otherwise, more of these emitters will get through to the hull. Also, I want you to determine what is usually set in the base of these emitters. Something is missing and I suspect that whatever it is will be the key to deactivating all the remaining emitters."

A pause followed and the captain wondered if the sensory distortion had cut off her communication with engineering.

"I'll have Ensign Powell work with Ensign Irae again to manipulate one of the less damaged emitters. I don't want to bring anything that seems fully intact inside the ship," replied B'Elanna finally.

The captain furrowed her brow. This was obviously an arrangement that she had agreed to beforehand and that Lieutenant Torres apparently approved. Yet it was still strange for these ensigns to take a new prominence among her closest associates. That had been a drawback, she mused, of forming such a tight bond with her bridge crew: many of those below decks had been wrongly overlooked.

"That's going to need to wait," observed Ensign Soohoo. Her voice was clearer and her diction impeccable once again. Janeway turned towards the scientist, once again feeling slightly off center as her visual input shifted, and saw the young Asian woman stretching her neck and blinking her eyes.

Almost in concert with Soohoo's voice, CRE's inner computer core announced cheerfully, "Initiating shutdown procedures. Please stand by."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The world around Mileena shifted back into view. The computers had been extraordinarily soothing after all the visual and emotional turmoil of the day. Their logic and the complex, yet straightforward, connectivity of the bioneural gel was preferable to negotiating her way through her science and social interactions. Once within the confines of her machinery, she'd been able to manipulate the transporter, create the visual profile of the device, locate all devices on the hull and, most importantly, untangle massive sensor dump that had preceded the most recent pass of their attackers. She'd not been able to discuss what she had processed while within the computers, but now that she had her own voice, she could give a full report. It was crucial, important beyond anything she'd found since helping the Erato. She needed to tell her captain everything.

As the apparatus withdrew, Mileena took stock of the surrounding room. The three other ensigns, Commander Chakotay, and the captain were all clustered around a screen that bore some sort of waving pattern. A stereogram. She reminded herself. Of the…devices?

The memory and understanding that she had just attained were slipping rapidly, as if she were waking from a dream. Why was everyone here? Was there something important? She wavered slightly and then initiated her neural contacts. CRE's familiar presence returned and now she was actively screening out the effects of the psychogenic field. Her eyes widened.

Not taking the time to begin her sterilization, she blurted out, "The Botha, Captain. These are Botha ships emitting the Botha's hallucinatory interference. I recognize the patterns from our last encounter."

The others wearing the transmitters nodded in uniform agreement. Only the captain stood there, appraising Mileena with those ice-blue eyes, and seemed cautiously perplexed.

"The Botha, Ensign," she questioned, turning to Commander Chakotay. "I'm not aware of this race, but it would seem that I am alone in believing this. Is this ignorance another product of the psychogenic emitter?"

"It might be," he replied, his dark eyes shadowed and troubled. "That would explain why none of us made the logical connection between the configuration of the attacking ships and our sensory disturbances. It seems incredibly obvious in retrospect."

The captain frowned and sat down at a monitor. "Computer, replay all Captain's logs associated with the Botha. Start from our first encounter."

As the Captain's recorded voice filled the lab, Mileena took the time to clean out her contacts and reset the plugs. With dismay, she noted that all of the implants had begun to retract the skin. She would need to spend more time bathing them in their nutrient bath if she wanted to keep them attached and healthy. Somehow she was forming connections more quickly than before, probably as a result of her increased sensitivity to the machines. With a final tap, she replaced the last plug, deactivated the forcefields, and sat down next to Ensign Powell.

Then, she discretely watched the captain. The logs were exceptionally detailed, as one would expect from a superior officer. They explained the complete events of Voyager's first encounter with the Botha, from the captain's first hallucination of a cucumber sandwich to the Botha ambassador's final, ominous message.

The computer had elected to play all of the logs in chronological order, including Janeway's personal logs. If the captain were perturbed by this, she gave no evidence until the recording talked about her own hallucination, a sexual encounter with her fiancé, Mark. With a sharp command, the captain terminated the logs, stood up, and looked at her assembled crew.

"So this is our enemy, one who can manipulate our senses with ease and skill, preying on our deepest desires and fears. However, there seems to be some ways around it." She shook her head. "But yes, I understand. As I stop talking about the Bot-ha," she hesitated, "their suggestion climbs back into place."

She peered back at the stereographic display. "How long until we're in range of the binary star system? The Botha obviously want us there for some reason?"

"At current speed, approximately twelve hours," responded Chakotay. "If we're going to do something, we need to do it quickly.

Janeway nodded and tapped her communicator with purpose. "B'Elanna, I need you to re-implement the shielding we used to screen out the Botha's hallucinations."

Lieutenant Torres replied, "Who?"

Mileena shut her eyes and concentrated on her contacts, then on the bioneural gel, then on the pathways that the bioneural gel took to the lieutenant's own transmitters. She increased the activity between those devices and CRE's link with the ship's computer. The strength of the sensory mismatch must have increased enough for the hallucination to break its hold.

"Dammit, the Botha," swore the Lieutenant over the comm. "I should have known. But Captain, those modifications used the deflector dish and the shields. If the psychogenic emitters are on the hull, the shields won't be as effective."

The captain looked puzzled once more and Commander Chakotay jostled her slightly. "You're talking about the Botha, a race that uses hallucinations to manipulate the crew. You're discussing a way to eliminate them by using shield modulations."

Janeway's face went cold and solid. "Thank you, Commander. Lieutenant Torres, see if you can make the changes using the structural integrity field emitters as a carrier. You should be able to divert some of their power without the ship's falling apart."

"But we'd need to drop from warp," argued back the Lieutenant. "And we don't want to alert the Botha to our improvements."

The captain's response did not hesitate and the firmness of her voice took on a crystal edge. She was throwing off the hallucinations. "Manufacture a plausible shipwide malfunction once you have made the adjustments. That will give us enough time to assess our position."

Mileena could picture the half-Klingon's scowl and felt Lauren's face make the same one. Just another impossible task that would need to be made possible as quickly as possible. However, all that returned from Engineering was, "Torres out."

The captain turned her gaze to the rest of the room. "In the meantime, I want you all to work with engineering and security. We need find a way to remove these emitters from our hull or at least to deactivate them completely until we're out of range of the Botha."

Ensign Soohoo replied very delicately, taking the fall for the question everyone wanted to ask. "Captain, we are the only ones on the ship, besides the Commander and Lieutenant Torres, who can reliably see these devices. Do we have your permission to work more fully with the bioneural interface so we can convert the data to something we all understand?"

The captain turned her face fully to Mileena, who let herself melt under its intensity. How could someone so terrifying and powerful be so absolutely beautiful?

"How long can it be used safely," she asked.

Mileena didn't break her gaze while racing through her data. "The indirect contacts have never been stress tested, but the transmitters can probably be used for several days without permanent damage so long as they are turned off when not working on crucial tasks." The captain nodded. "The direct interfaces, for Lauren, Pablo, and Alice, can only be used for a few hours at a time, but longer if they're allowed access to the dermal regenerators."

Janeway took a step closer and indicated towards Mileena's arms and their hidden components. "And what of your apparatus?"

There was the answer Janeway expected, recognized Mileena, and the truth. Janeway wanted to know how many physical hours Mileena could spend working with the computers before it was dangerous for her to continue. That response was in the realm of fourteen hours if she were very careful. The truth, though, was what she selected.

"Captain, the limiting factor for the apparatus is twofold. One, the connections seem to draw on my body for sustenance. This can be easily remedied by a constant infusion of high-calorie, high-nutrient fluid directly into my bloodstream, which can likely sustain me indefinitely." She took a professional breath to fill the anticipating silence.

"The second is more abstract. The longer I spend in the apparatus, the harder it is for me to disengage. At a certain point, I will require external aid to reduce my connection to the bioneural gel. I can partially avoid this by keeping myself at a relatively low gain, but there's no way to completely circumvent it."

The captain looked at her with an expression Mileena couldn't completely parse. Concern and dissatisfaction hid another emotion that vanished when the captain rubbed her strong jaw with one hand. "I'm reluctant to let it go that far, ensign. Assuming no supplementation, how long can you interact with the machine before it becomes too damaging?"

The half-Trill suppressed her sigh. "Fourteen hours, at which point I'll need approximately six hours of soaking in the nutrient broth to regenerate the lost tissue." Mileena interleaved her fingers behind her back and continued, "But Captain, this means all of the transmitters will be less effective for the time I am out of the machine."

Janeway narrowed her eyes. "I thought they worked independently of your own connectivity."

"To a point, yes, but only Ensign Baytart has fine enough control to consciously modulate the gain without a direct interface. With all due respect to Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Torres, no one else trained enough to adequately adjust the level of interaction. If the Botha increase the strength of their attack, it is unlikely the transmitters on their own will provide adequate interference."

The captain looked towards her first officer and the two exchanged a subtle, meaningful gaze.

"We will have an answer for you shortly," said Commander Chakotay, and the two exited proteomics swiftly.

Mileena sagged into her chair and let Lauren muss her hair. "Why can't they just let me do what I want," she whined. "It's not like I'm going to die or anything. There are too many fail safes."

"I don't know, 'Leena," replied the petite engineer. "It could be all the years you spent lying to them and nearly killing yourself over your work." Mileena gave her a piercing glare and the petite brunette rolled her eyes. "And it's unfamiliar tech." She leaned down and their skull transmitters hit with a click, causing both women to pull back and rub their heads.

"Yeah, because the captain has so much trouble integrating the Borg's technology into Voyager when it suited her purpose," snorted Soohoo. The scientist walked into the back room, picked up a dermal regenerator, and went back to the outer lab. She gently picked up each of Pablo's hands and ran the device over his brutalized fingertips once more.

"There's something along the lines of a quintuple standard at this point. One for Seven, one for Torres, one for Paris, one for Henry Kim of all people, and one for the rest of us idiots."

She put down the regenerator and leaned back on her chair. "But I know the moments I start complaining, the captain will walk into proteomics, tear me a new one, and dismantle everything you've worked for. So I'm going to pretend that I agree with all of this." She tapped her communicator.

"Soohoo to Ensign Kim."

A confused, eternally perky voice emanated from the bridge. "Kim here."

"Ensign, Captain Janeway has instructed me to work with you on deconstructing some sensor information from the last battle. When do you have a chance to speak with me?"

His voice fumbled impressively. "Um, I can get, um, someone to replace me at Ops. Now, I mean, yeah. How about in 15 minutes?"

"Excellent. We can use the resources in exobiology. Soohoo out." The comm link went dead and she finished her thought. "It's not like we're doing anything useful there anyway." Her dark eyes went wide.

"Oh no. No no no no no."

Mileena and Lauren sat up in unison and reached out to their friend. "Sweetie, is so-"

"He thinks this is the precursor to a date, doesn't he? We're both Asian. We're both single," she nudged the bemused Pablo gently, "more or less. And we're in a tense combat situation, which makes everyone randy. Hooray." She didn't wait for a reply. Instead, she stood up, straightened her uniform, and blanked her face of all emotion. "I'll see you later."

She walked out of proteomics, acknowledging the two senior officers outside with a curt, "Sir. Ma'am," and went to deal with Harry.

Pablo and Lauren took that as their cues to also exit towards their respective departments, though the young man agreed to meet Mileena a bit later for a discussion of just how he should remove himself from the gel in an emergency. This left the ensign blessedly alone for all of 30 seconds before the captain returned, though with Seven of Nine following her instead of the commander. Mileena rose and acknowledged her superiors.

"Ensign, I want you to work with Seven to create a monitoring and disengagement protocol. I believe she is the most appropriate person to create a safe way for you to interact with your machinery without your losing your sense of self," said Janeway briskly.

"Of course, captain," replied Mileena, slightly baffled.

"Once that is finished, I want you to rest and obtain enough nutrients to allow you to last for several hours without supplementation. Once Lieutenant Torres is ready to begin the shield modifications, you will use your apparatus to aid her as previously planned. Should the process take longer than expected or should the Botha interfere, the Doctor will assess your condition and, if required, initiate an intravenous infusion."

A gust could have toppled over the ensign. She was just given permission to use the apparatus to its full extent for the first time. Fully and totally. That impulse to wrap herself around the captain in gratitude was suppressed by her decorum and the absence of affection in Janeway's eyes.

"Yes, captain," she said, failing to erase every trace of excitement. "We will configure the apparatus to minimize risk." She thought quickly and added, "I will obey this to the letter of your instructions."

"Good," said the younger woman, more firmly than Mileena expected. "Do not show me that I am making a mistake by trusting you." The petite redhead nodded. "Seven, Ensign." She breezed out of the room.

Mileena gave the Borg in front of her a massive grin. "Well, let's get started."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

When the captain asked Seven of Nine to assist Ensign Irae, the young Borg had easily comprehended only one of the three instructions given by her superior officer. The first was extremely obvious and logical. There must be a way to disengage the ensign's conscious functions from those of the computers without damaging either system. Furthermore, that disengagement must be automatically initiated under well-defined conditions that did not terminate the connection too early to be useful nor too late to prevent harm. The apparatus would be configured in such a way to maximize connection to the other transmitters without requiring as much input. In this way, the ensign's sudden disconnection would not render other crewmembers' transmitters useless.

The second task of deciding whether the ensign should be allowed to override the automatic shutdown, however, was left up to Seven of Nine. "Use your judgment," said the captain. Seven of Nine did not fully understand this direction. She expected the captain to have a strong opinion. Indeed, the Borg suspected Janeway did. However, it was being suppressed for an unknown reason. It was gratifying to be trusted in this way, though the concept of judgment was still foreign. What should be judged, and how?

The third instruction was even more vague. "You have unique insight into the experience of full sensory integration with machinery and what it will feel like once it is terminated. I think you need to convey that to the ensign before she is ready to begin this process in earnest."

Seven had not had time to ponder this directive fully and she was being quickly caught up in the ensign's boundless enthusiasm for this project. The Borg tried to rein her in to the topic at hand.

"It is desirable for you to lose most contact with the outside world, correct," queried Seven of Nine, returning the studious look with one of her own. "In this case, screening external stimuli completely may even be necessary."

The ensign nodded. "However, a total loss of volitional disengagement could be unhealthy."

The Borg recalled the visual discrimination task she had witnessed during testing with the Erato, causing her to sit down at one of the CRE consoles and bring up that body of data.

"At 50% gain, you lost most contact with the outside world." Seven felt an unwelcome flush come into her cheeks at the memory of being disliked by the machinery. "However, you voluntarily removed yourself from the apparatus when you felt an…unpleasant stimulus."

It was impossible to visually detect the flush on the other woman's almond skin, but the brief rise in her heart rate conveyed that the ensign remembered the incident and experienced an emotion because of it.

"Yes. I'm…sorry for that, Seven. I had no idea that would happen."

"It is irrelevant," said the Borg quickly, not wishing to belabor the point and cause them both more unnecessary emotion. "The amount of engagement proceeds linearly with gain. I will set the cutoff at 60%." There, that seemed appropriate. The ensign would be well-engaged but still responsive. However, Ensign Irae's face registered a different opinion.

"I do not believe that will be adequate," she said carefully measured syllables. "With practice, I can retain better control at a higher percentage of integration. My consciousness at 60% gain more resembles that at 40% gain a month ago."

With a quick search of the data, Seven confirmed that to be accurate. She also noted that the maximum attempted percentage had been 71%.

"You stopped at 71%. Why?"

The ensign nodded. "I felt an exponential loss of awareness between 68% and 71% and terminated the sequence. I felt too separate from the outside world for me to be comfortable even though my processing power was enhanced."

"You determined this on your own," asked Seven of Nine.

"Yes," she replied. "I recorded it in the logs and made sure never to approach the level again."

Seven understood once more "judgment". If the captain were here, she would have said the ensign had matured, just as Seven had done in her first few weeks on Voyager. When the tall Borg first heard the comment from the captain, she replied that it was natural she should mature as time had passed. With a laugh, the captain explained that maturity meant an improved recognition of limits, an increase in patience, and a better sense of responsibility. If those were the criteria, then the ensign had matured in Seven's eyes as well. She was no longer willing to push the edges of safety nor to put herself into needless danger. Perhaps it would be appropriate for Seven to reward that behavior, just as the Borg had received in the past.

"Very well," said Seven. "I will set the cutoff at 70% gain." Seven then used her judgment.

"However, I will allow you to override that cutoff if you feel that the ship would be in danger otherwise."

The Borg sensed the half-Trill's significant jump in breathing and heart rate. She turned to face the ensign, who had lowered herself into a chair and was clutching the seat. Despite her obvious state of physiological arousal, the ensign had a calm, scientific voice.

"I appreciate your allowing me to do that. With this limit in place, I feared I could be hindered while in combat." The ensign turned to the console and began typing furiously. "We should set up a way for the automatic termination to be linked to the red alert, weapons, shields, and internal communications. If certain conditions are not met, the termination signal will register a fault and lock me out."

Seven nodded. "We should set up those parameters." However, the instruction was extraneous as the ensign's fingers flew across the machine and began reciting potential conditions.

"Red alert should be active, or at least recently activated by the bridge crew. The shields should have been…hrm, but what if shields…" The conversation was as much with herself as with her commanding officer. Seven noticed that while she was chatting with herself, the ensign's contacts whirred in a swirl of blue and green. An almost imperceptible increase in CRE's auditory output, a gentle hum, followed.

"You are communicating with your machinery," queried the Borg. "Is this required?"

The ensign looked up swiftly. "No, it isn't. I can stop if you'd like. It's just easier for me to determine optimal parameters if I have access to battle data." The whirring spun down and the ensign brought up a scrolling list of sensor logs. "You see, these are the conditions the ship experiences when in combat. Certain ones signal situations in which Voyager outmatches the opponent, while others suggest evidence of Voyager's being in danger. The shields don't have to collapse, or even take damage, for this to be the case. The Botha's attacks are evidence of this: we are obviously in extreme danger and we're operating at full power. However, I can't make an adequate model of all these parameters. It's not in my skillset. I'd need to ask someone in engineering."

Seven began to understand the third of the captain's directions. "You feel inefficient when you are unable to access the computers."

The older woman tilted her head. "Yes, I suppose so. I've gotten used to that extra store of information." She shrugged. "I think that happens with any technology. No one truly appreciated the importance of replicators until they were mostly disabled because of Voyager's energy needs."

The Borg examined the young woman. She looked at the whirring connectors nestled within the mounds of dark, curly hair. Then she examined the arms of the ensign's uniform. The stiff blue and black fabric was slightly perturbed where the raised flesh-colored plugs blocked the interaction ports from view. She moved her blue-eyed gaze to the fidgeting dark hands that idly tapped the console, knowing the digits too held a series of metal implants.

"What will you do when you are no longer able to access the computer in this way?"

The ensign cocked her eyebrow. "Permission to speak freely," she said, her intonation hard to read.

"Granted," replied Seven, curious as to the shift in conversation.

"I don't see how that's particularly relevant, since my disconnection is several months away and right now, we're concentrating on the act of further integration."

"I disagree," was all the Seven said.

The ensign continued, undeterred. "We have discussed my losing the implants, yes, but I won't be completely separated from the computers. Once we've perfected the technology, I will use an indirect interface just as the commander or Ensign Baytart would. I'm guessing I'll be annoyed by how slow it is, but I'll learn to work around it."

Seven let her humanity control the direction of her conversation instead of her Borg logic. "What if you were to be excised completely from the system and not allowed to use the transmitters or any form of direct bioneural connection?"

The Borg was not surprised by the transient look of displeasure that came over the ensign, followed by one that greatly resembled fear.

"I hadn't really thought of that," admitted Ensign Irae. Tense seconds passed and the ensign closed her dark-lashed eyes and tilted her chin up, as if looking for the answers in some mental guide. Seven noticed the older woman fidgeting more with the hardware on her skin as the ensign semi-consciously ran her thumb over their raised surfaces.

When the ensign finally responded, her voice was unsure and cautious. "I've become so accustomed to working directly with the machines. Going back to a manual interaction will feel like being forced to crawl instead of being allowed to run. I would adjust, but it…wouldn't be easy."

"You find this connection pleasurable?"

"I…," the response was still more hesitant. "The computers are…welcoming. They are logical. They do not judge. I feel at peace and part of a whole. And," she added quickly, "I'm many more times efficient working with them that I ever would be on myself so obviously I enjoy it. "

Seven nodded in what she believed was sympathy. "When I was removed from the Collective, there was a period of disorientation. As a drone, I was in constant contact with the Borg. Their thoughts were my thoughts, their senses were my senses, and my awareness was limitless. I was part of trillions of minds and they, in turn, were all part of me." Seven consciously accessed these memories with reluctance and found that they still caused her pain, even after a year. "Once I was separated, I felt lost. And alone."

The half-Trill dark lashes fluttered down once more. "I see," she answered, her voice soft and measured. Seven continued on.

"I believe the captain fears you will experience the same phenomenon even though you will have been engaged far less than I." Seven leaned forward, though she didn't quite know why. "I now agree with her. You will experience that same sense of emptiness and aloneness when you return from immersion within the machine interface."

"What do you suggest I do to prevent it?" The ensign seemed to retreat into her chair, defeated. Seven blinked her eyes. This was not a question she had anticipated. She had believed an explanation was all that was warranted.

"There is no way to avoid it." Seven instantly realized that perhaps she should not have been so harsh or direct.

"So you are advising against my using the connection or merely preparing me for the inevitable distress?" Seven floundered to identify the emotions in the ensign's voice, but the Borg's limited humanity was still deficient when it came to extreme complexity. She fell back to logic.

"There may be ways to mitigate the shock. For the first few weeks after I left the Collective, I spent extensive time with the Doctor and Captain Janeway. The captain's guidance was essential. She helped me recover my humanity and my individuality. Perhaps…"

The ensign's demeanor switched rapidly, professional and certain once more. "No, I believe that is unwise. If there is a superior officer required to deactivate the bioneural interface and assist me afterwards, Commander Chakotay would be the more appropriate choice. After all, he too experienced being disconnected from a Collective and he has been my direct supervisor for some time. "

Seven was instantly curious again. "Yet Captain Janeway helped both Commander Chakotay and I through our individual readjustments and she seems to have a great deal invested in this project. I do not believe the commander has the necessary skills to help you psychologically realign yourself."

The ensign's face went blank. "Nevertheless, I choose commander Chakotay act as the superior officer in this matter." The tone was so absolutely final that Seven knew better than to push any further. Whatever the ensign's reasons, they were not worth the time they would spend arguing over them.

"Very well. We will prepare the final disconnection protocols. Assist engineering afterward. Meanwhile, I will set up the nutrient bypass while you," Seven took a line from her superiors, "get some rest."

Instead of immediately agreeing, the yellow-eyed ensign regarded the Borg. "I would also like you to be present when the machinery disengages. You, more than anyone else, will be able to talk me through it."

Seven was unprepared for the whirl of conflicting emotions and made a note to sort through that sensation when she was less preoccupied with work. Perhaps the Doctor could help her make sense of them.

"I will comply," she answered firmly.

"Thank you," said the older scientist. The connections on her skull whirred to a swirl of blue and green as the ensign consciously reconnected to the computers and sunk herself into her task.

As she watched Mileena immerse herself in the shared mind of the computers, Seven could identify an emotion cleanly: jealousy. Extreme jealousy. Perhaps Seven had not completely recovered from her leaving the Collective after all.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The mood in the conference room was especially tense and unusually grim. Janeway was used to her crewmembers pulling it all together under extreme conditions, but this time she was only receiving half-measures and partial solutions. Given the circumstances and limitations, it wasn't surprising, but it was nonetheless frustrating to all concerned. A decade of command experience kept her from exposing even the slightest hint of disappointment: her crewmen were already berating themselves. It served no purpose to discourage them further.

Janeway was acutely aware of the precariousness of their tactical position. Voyager was fewer than two hours from the binary star system, having not been allowed to change heading or speed so as not to alert the Botha. The crew was still experiencing interference from the Botha devices, which was crushing both morale and work speed. It was exceptionally hard to stay on task when the alien signal was actively counteracting thought processes and, as Neelix had repeatedly pointed out, it was draining for the crew to distrust their own senses and emotions. With prompting, most of them were able to uncomfortably recall the emotional and physical manipulation by the Botha. The prospect of experiencing those hallucinations weighed heavily on their minds.

Lieutenant Torres did the bulk of the talking. Her voice was strained, graveled, and tired, a reflection of the many consecutive hours she had thrown into all of the projects.

"We've made as many modifications to the structural integrity field emitters as possible. We're arranging for a partial systemic overload of secondary power couplings. Nothing that can't be repaired pretty quickly, of course, but it'll look impressive. That should make Voyager seem to go dark. Then, we'll need about fifteen minutes to put the anti-Botha countermeasures into place."

Janeway could tell that this wasn't something to be pleased about, even though it followed the captain's instructions to the letter. Torres' demeanor was agitated beyond her already tightly-wound baseline and each word sounded like it was being extruded painfully.

"However, there's just not enough energy to maintain that level of screening and the extra hardening of the outer edges of the shields. We'd need to divert power from the warp engines to keep both in place."

"What about a rapid cycling fluctuation so that the structural emitters pulse their interference? That should be enough to disrupt the hallucinations," suggested Janeway.

The half-Klingon shook her head. "We've run some simulations. It's likely we'll burn out the structural integrity field emitters under those circumstances. The emitters are not configured to be toggled on and off that quickly. And if we leave them offline too long, the ship might fall apart. That would leave us trying to cycle patches of the emitters and…" The lieutenant shook her head again. "We don't have the programming or technology in place."

The captain nodded in return. "Very well. Divert the necessary power to the structural integrity emitters. If this plan holds, it won't matter if more devices are attached to the hull." She turned to her young ops officer, whose eyes bore uncharacteristically dark circles. "What about the missing parts of the Botha emitters?"

He looked sheepish. "Ensign Soohoo and I were able to get a basic outline of whatever was held in the divots, but not much beyond physical characteristics. Every time an intact device was beamed aboard, it activated. We destroyed ten of them before deciding not to take any more risks."

Janeway rubbed her jaw. "What do you know?"

"Whatever was housed there was of a similar composition to the crystalline teeth used to anchor the devices to the hull. However, it was probably more compact, with a higher carbon density, and hexagonal instead of pyramidal at its tips." A three-dimensional figure in bright yellow filled the screen of each padd.

"That sounds like a quartz crystal," interrupted Chakotay. "Could it be used as some sort of refracting device?"

"No, harder than quartz," responded Janeway thoughtfully. "A diamond inset, perhaps? Given its position, it could be acting as a data storage unit. Quartz crystal storage was introduced and eventually discarded in the 21st century as quantum processing became more common. The Botha might have found a way to refine it and use diamonds instead."

"The more intricate lattice of the carbon molecules would provide superior data anchoring," replied Chakotay, catching her train of thought. "This might be how the Botha are able to control exactly what we're seeing and remembering. The device is 'reading' the diamonds and adjusting it to our needs."

Janeway rubbed her jaw again. It was a more socially acceptable maneuver than rubbing her temples in frustration and exhaustion. "Diamonds are extremely resistant to trauma, easy to manufacture, and simple to code. We might be able to repurpose some of them to alter the signal at the source." She looked at the mostly bleary eyes of her crewmembers, none of whom looked forward to initiating yet another unfamiliar project. She chose her target carefully.

"Seven, do you think you can look into diamond programming while we're making the modifications to the emitters? I want a backup plan, no matter how remote."

The Borg nodded promptly. Unlike the rest of the room, she bore no traces of tiredness, one of the many benefits of her nanoprobes. "Ensign Irae and I will synthesize several diamonds and attempt to extrapolate their programming from what we know of the Botha's techniques. However, much of her processing power is currently being used to prepare the structural integrity field for its transition."

A prickle went up the back of the captain's neck at the sound of the ensign's name. It was a small involuntary arousal, not enough to disrupt her functioning or logic. It was just a quick reminder of her current, unwanted emotional tie.

"How is the bioneural console interface," said Chakotay, taking over for the captain. "Have you made the necessary adjustments for prolonged use?"

The Borg tapped her padd and sent the schematics to her superiors. "She has only been connected for four hours. Should that time be extended, the dialyzer and feeding mechanisms are in place and have been provided with organic components by Neelix."

The Talaxian smiled through his exhaustion. "I've always wanted to feed Lenurgian meatloaf to the ship! It just can't replicate an accurate version. Not pungent enough."

A withering blue-eyed stare from the captain caused Neelix to cease his culinary discussion as Seven continued. "Software programming has been implemented to account for potential depth of connectivity issues. There is also a manual and automatic override that will allow full connectivity under a discrete set of emergency circumstances, as well as protocols for safely severing contact." The Borg glanced around the table. "I am convinced that the ensign will not take unnecessary risks with this protocol. I have used my judgment."

Janeway perused the criteria. The data were so intricate that she would probably need an explanation by the bioneural console to appreciate them fully, but she agreed with the assessment. That is, until she reached the last few paragraphs.

"Manual override will be performed by Commander Chakotay," she asked carefully. "What does that mean in this context?"

"In cases where automatic and standard disconnection protocols are insufficient, the commander will use the bioneural transmitters to directly speak to the ensign's mind in order to help her internally disengage and begin to transition back to being a single individual," said the Borg blandly.

She paused. "According to the ensign, the computers find the commander's presence soothing, familiar, and trustworthy. We believe he is the logical choice for this task."

Chakotay smiled broadly. "Well, I'm glad I finally made a good impression. Did she say exactly how this would occur?"

Seven of Nine looked uncomfortable. "She said you would know what to do at that time. She trusts your intuition."

Janeway felt a jealous twinge. Hadn't the captain played a pivotal role in reversing Seven's attachment to the Borg? More than that, hadn't the captain seen Mileena in and out of her surgery? Hadn't the captain helped Mileena out of her reverie once she had been taken out of her suspended animation? The memory of that small frame clutching hers in utter devotion gave her an unwelcome thrill. It did not, however, color the rest of her decisions.

"Very well." She turned to her engineering officer. "B'Elanna, I want you to initiate the power failure as soon as you return to engineering. Have the other users of the bioneural interface online and ready. If there's any sort of fluctuation, I want them available to handle it quickly."

It felt more natural to give these orders, though she experienced the same lingering regret as when she asked Seven of Nine to make use of the Borg implants studding her body. There was a cognitive dissonance: the captain had been trying for many months to let Seven regain her humanity, yet in a crisis, those implants became a boon. She made a mental note to talk to Seven later about her feelings on the matter.

With a firm hand, she tapped her communicator. "Ensign Baytart and Ensign Soohoo, please report to the bridge."

They acknowledged her request. At that, Janeway led the rest of her senior officers out of the conference room. The crew returned to their stations and awaited the signal from engineering.

A few moments later, the two ensigns breathlessly swept into the bridge. Soohoo positioned herself next to a grinning Ensign Kim. Had Janeway looked behind her, she would have seen the young female ensign attempt a polite yet icy smile directed at her ops officer. Instead, the captain was focused on the quick discussion between Paris and Baytart as the bioneural console was reconnected to the comm. Baytart slid into place as the older helmsman finished snapping the wires into place.

"Well, good luck ensign," said Paris jovially. "I wish I could steer her through this, but you're the best man for the job right now. Plus, I think it's good for everyone to have a chance to save the princess sometimes."

He turned smartly and Janeway gave him an appreciative nod as he took a position next to Tuvok. Paris' ego might have caused problems in the past, but he had fully taken on the role of mentor to the dark-haired man sitting in front of her.

B'Elanna's voice crackled across the bridge from engineering. "We're ready to begin the adjustments on your mark."

"Do it," replied Janeway.

She felt the ship lurch as it dropped out of warp. Consoles began flickering on and off as the secondary power couplings temporarily shorted out. Even though Torres was controlling the fluctuations, it left the captain uneasy to have her ship being willfully damaged.

Minutes ticked by uneventfully except from the infrequent updates from her technologically-enhanced crewmen. The modifications were going as planned and the structural integrity fields were responding within normal parameters. Chakotay's own transmitters whirling their red and yellow diodes in rapid succession.

"I am monitoring Ensign Irae's connection to the bioneural console. She is holding at 50% gain and able to communicate." She heard a smile creep into his voice. "There is no sign of unusual activity in her neural pathways, though she expects she will need more focus when we turn on the shielding. This is within normal parameters."

"Good," responded Janeway. Normal parameters sounded comfortable, as if this were a natural occurrence on the ship: her second-in-command in a technologically-aided psychic link with a woman who bore so many unexpressed emotions towards the captain. If there were talk along those lines, Chakotay had given no sign. She hoped their chatter, and indeed the communications among everyone on the bioneural network, was strictly work related. The bridge lapsed into silence and precious minutes ticked by again. Then, the lights came back to full power.

"Torres to bridge," came the exhausted voice of the engineer. "We've finished the configurations. Voyager should be ready to leave."

"Good work B'Elanna," said the captain. "Mr. Baytart, take us out of here, maximum warp."

The young man complied and Janeway, relishing the renewed hum of the warp engines. Now, they would be able to continue on their way without fear of another Botha attack interfering with their senses. She hoped Voyager would be able to put enough space between them and the Botha for Voyager to have a chance of escaping before the aliens detected that their prey was no longer heading towards their trap. However, Janeway's plan was quickly thrown into upheaval by the insistent voice of Harry Kim.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

"Captain, I'm detecting something on short range scanners near the star system. We couldn't see it before, but now that the transmitters are off-line, I'm able to get an accurate reading of what is surrounding the star system."

"Onscreen, Mr. Kim," said Janeway, and walked towards the helm.

Outside the orbit of one of the planets was what appeared to be a densely packed asteroid field. With dawning horror, the bridge crew realized those asteroids were a floating field of ships tethered to small platforms that must have served as their dock. Some showed signs of damage, but many were merely stripped of their plating or engines. The vast majority were underpowered, though she could see the telltale glow of an active warp drive on a handful. Chakotay recognized some of them. Cataati. Enaran. Kazon. Talaxian. There was even a small Borg sphere hovering among them, circling end over end in concert with silent vessels it might otherwise have destroyed.

"How many," said Chakotay, his voice strained. He stood and walked beside her, matching her solemn expression with one of his own. Even without a precise count, he could tell that this represented years, maybe decades, of manipulation by the Botha.

"We've counted 1,531 so far from at least 100 species."

"Life signs," asked Tuvok.

"On a handful of ships, but they're fluctuating," Harry Kim replied. "We're not able to get a good read on which ships are still active, but there are a few."

The bridge shared a moment of disquiet before Janeway spoke with controlled anger. "When we first encountered the Botha, I thought the manipulation of our minds was merely an attempt to gain Voyager's superior armament. But it seems the Botha have built their civilization by bending other races to their will. Like the Borg, but more insidious."

Chakotay looked into the field of ships. He knew that on some of those vessels, hallucinating crewmembers waited for their execution by the Botha, trapped like flies within the web of the Botha's psychogenic field. Through the shared connection between him and Mileena, which had been quiet for the past few moments, he felt a surge of anger. She was obviously reading the sensor output and was as inflamed as it by everyone else on the bridge.

"Should we attempt a rescue," he said. He hoped the Captain would support him, as her dedication towards sparing innocent life was as fierce, and maybe even more so, than his own.

"I highly advise against it," counseled Tuvok from behind them. "As it is, Voyager is barely able to block the constant transmission by the Botha. It is likely the tethered ships have some sort of psychogenic field booster to maintain the hallucinations of whatever crew remains on board."

"But there are survivors," demanded Paris. "We can't just leave them there."

Janeway raised firm, but not unkind palm. "I understand your sentiment, lieutenant. At the same time, I agree with Tuvok's assessment. There is no good way for us approach the shipyard without running the risk of being recaptured."

The two bioneural-enhanced crewmembers had been silent until throughout this discussion, but it was Baytart who responded to Janeway.

"I believe, Captain, that we can bolster the crew's resistance to the hallucinations by further integrating the bioneural technology into the ship. If we train more personnel on the bioneural transmitters, we may be able to provide enough interference to overcome a stronger psychogenic field."

Chakotay had attempted to listen in on the conversation, but he found the input overwhelming. The two ensigns were much more practiced in interacting with Mileena. Without her directly talking to him, all he could sense were strong emotions. The rest of the data was like trying to understand a conversation held behind a sealed door.

"How long would that take," asked Paris, excitedly. "And if it worked, could Mileena support that many individuals connected to her network?"

Chakotay envisioned the crew tethered together by the shared, experimental technology, like a Federation version of the Borg. But instead of the Borg Queen, the center of their collective would be Mileena. It was not sure how he felt even though he knew the young woman would be far more benevolent than any member of the Borg could hope to be. To be honest, the only woman he wanted to trust in that way was the captain; it was a sentiment he suspected the rest of the ship would share.

Baytart did not respond. Instead, he looked over at Chakotay. At that moment, Mileena began feeding Chakotay a very clear, somewhat simplified version of what she was talking about with the ensigns. Apparently, she created a method of conveying information without overwhelming the commander's limited ability to understand her. He sent a tiny ping of thanks.

Chakotay continued, "According to the schematics I'm seeing, it would depend on the individual crewmembers, but most could probably attune to the machinery in the next 24 hours if we modified the protocol for quicker cortical learning." Another burst of careful information was sent over the communicator. "Mileena said that she might be able to speed up the process if the crew were willing to use the direct interface. In addition…"

Although Janeway would have stepped in, it was Seven who stopped the conversation. "That would be inefficient. It would be better for key crew members to become more proficient than to attempt a low level of competence across the ship."

Conversation on hypotheticals was interrupted by the de-cloaking of massive ship in front of Voyager. It bore the same general shape as the robotic vessels that had attacked Voyager in the past, but it was easily four times as large. Apparently, Voyager's ruse had been discovered.

"Red alert," said Chakotay, standing next to captain.

As the lights flashed around them and the klaxon sounded, Janeway stated "Ensign Baytart, initiate evasive maneuver Delta two." The ship banked impossibly hard and dodged a blast of phaser fire. "Mister Kim, fire a full spread of photon torpedoes."

Chakotay knew the Captain would ordinarily try diplomacy before launching an all-out attack, but the outcome of negotiating with the Botha had been unilaterally detrimental to Voyager. The time for talking was over.

"Six photon torpedoes hit," reported Tuvok. "No significant damage to the Botha ship."

Before Janeway could give the order, Voyager once again lurched and another orange beam lanced where the ship had been.

"Apologies, Captain, but the computer perceived the energy discharge and reacted faster than I could convey to you." Ensign Baytart sounded genuinely perturbed. He hadn't expected to lose control of his station to the unknown controller on deck five. "There's been a sudden increase in connectivity and responsiveness. About ten percent."

Chakotay would need to have a long talk about acceptable command of the ship in a combat situation, but for the moment he focused on attempting to disable or destroy the attacker. They were clearly outgunned and, with the extra drain on the shields, Voyager might not be able to withstand a direct hit from the Botha. Chakotay knew the Captain would be loath to abandon the other ships to their fate even though she knew how slim the chances of rescuing the crew were.

"Ideas," she demanded. Chakotay felt a massive burst of information attempt to come through the transmitter but it overwhelmed him and then withdrew, almost apologetically. So it was Ensign Soohoo who responded to the captain.

"Captain, Ensign Irae has detected a structural weakpoint at the base of their port weapons array. She believes if we were to fire a spread of photon torpedoes at the ship while directing a stream of phaser fire at that location, we might be able to overload their weapons system."

Janeway turned to her tactical officer, who nodded his assent. "Do it," she ordered.

Voyager turned sharply once more and launched the attack. A few moments later, a series of small explosions rocked the Botha vessel.

"They are hailing us, Captain," stated Mr. Kim. "Should I ignore them?" Chakotay was surprised at the unusually harsh tone in the ensign's otherwise gentle, even reticent voice. There was something profoundly violating about an enemy who used your own mind against you. It conjured a certain anger that might otherwise be hidden.

"No, Mr. Kim. Answer their hail."

The viewscreen flashed to life and the interior of an angular, orange drenched bridge replaced the view of the damaged ship. The gray cowled, wrinkled face of the Botha captain glowered back at them. Chakotay recognized him immediately: it was the same Botha attacker who had tormented Voyager so many years ago at the start of their journey. How the alien had made it back to this part of the Delta quadrant briefly troubled Chakotay, but then the commander remembered that the Botha had never truly been there. Perhaps the network of ships and satellites that enabled the Botha's control extended all the way back to the Caretakers satellite. He set his square jaw as the Captain moved forward, her blue grey eyes flashing dangerously and her lips pulled back into the polite approximation of a snarl.

"Kathryn Janeway," the Botha spat. "What an unexpected surprise. I had hoped Voyager might return so that we could finish our…"

"That's enough," replied the Captain in a low, dangerously growling tone. "I don't care what you want or who you really are. Voyager is leaving this sector. You will not follow us. You will not attempt to take over our minds again."

"Really, Captain," said the Botha with a grin. "And how do you propose you're going to do that?"

"We have found a way to neutralize your control. It doesn't matter how many ships you send after us or how many transmitters you beam onto our hull. We are immune to your tricks." Chakotay watched her body language, as she bent like a lioness getting ready to bring down her prey with a final strike.

"And make no mistake. We intend to spread this knowledge to every race we encounter so you will never trap another ship. Free the ships you are holding and let us go or we will destroy your vessel and leave the floating debris as a warning."

The Botha scowled and the screen went dark.

Chakotay let go of the breath he didn't know he was holding. The Captain turned from her place at the front of the bridge and sat down in her chair, staring ahead with absolute determination.

"Mr. Kim, report. Has the Botha ship released the other vessels?"

"Yes Captain," replied the young man. "Five ships are leaving the derelict shipyard." He waited another moment. "They've engaged their warp engines and are heading away from the system."

Chakotay watched Janeway let out a long breath that mirrored his own. "Any residual sign of psychogenic interference?"

"No, Captain," stated the Ensign. "The shield modulations are holding and the transmitters on the hull seem to be slowly deactivating."

"Excellent job," she answered. "Mr. Baytart, set course 192 mark 43, warp 6. Then, you are relieved of duty. I want you to immediately report to Sickbay." The tall, dark ensign slid uneasily out of his seat as Tom Paris clapped him gently on the shoulder, sat down at the comm, and carefully began dismantling the bioneural interface. Chakotay had carefully removed his skull transmitters and was rubbing his head thoughtfully.

"Do you need to be excused as well," the captain asked him gently.

"It's just a bit of a headache," he reassured her. "I told the others to take off their contacts as well. I think they all received the message."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Janeway tapped her communicator. "Bridge to proteomics. Ensign Irae, please respond." A few seconds passed and the captain's heart quickened. She had hoped disengaging the rest of her crew from the bioneural interface would be enough to initiate the ensign's own disconnection. She shook her head. They would need to use a manual override.

The commander was a step ahead of her. "Captain, I'm going to proteomics to start the protocol. It shouldn't take long."

"I know. Tuvok, you have the bridge. Chakotay, you're with me."

The tall Vulcan nodded and moved to the captain's chair as she and the commander went down to deck four.

Predictably, proteomics was locked down, forcefields in place, and decontamination procedures enabled. Janeway paced as the commander quickly overrode the security system, allowing them to enter the rebuilt outer lab.

Ensign Irae was sitting in the heavy chair, her body fully engaged in the bioneural uplink through her arms and hands. Her dark eyes were closed, though Janeway could see the pupils moving rapidly back and forth beneath them. From her post, she was whispering something to herself, which was causing CRE to beep and whir in return.

Janeway nodded towards Chakotay, who approached the secondary monitor outside of the forcefield. He tapped the console a few times, then stood back. CRE's calm voice broke otherwise mechanical noise of the lab.

"Command confirmed. Initiating disconnection sequence."

Obligingly, the apparatus retracted from the ensign's body and began its auto-sterilization. The fluttering motion of the ensign's eyes slowed until the young woman was completely relaxed. In fact, she seemed almost meditative. Janeway involuntarily held her breath; it was still possible that the young woman could have been affected by the most recent Botha attack, especially after Baytart's warning about the increase in connectivity he had sensed prior to the shields coming back online.

"Captain Janeway," acknowledged the ensign, "I take it your plan worked well?" Her voice had begun to shake off the distant tone that was present whenever the young…older woman, Janeway corrected herself…interfaced with the machine. She seemed unharmed and Janeway unclenched that place in her gut that seemed reserved for the ensign's well-being.

"Yes, it did," confirmed Janeway. "However, Ensign Baytart registered a greater than expected sensitivity in the bioneural console and worried that you had descended into the machine. You stopped responding to hails."

The half-Trill unfurled her luxurious limbs and stretched sinuously before beginning her post-connection cleansing protocol. Janeway watched the beautiful woman maneuver around her station. The sway of her hips, the lightness of her footsteps, and the bounce of her hair all captivated Janeway. How could something as simple as walking trigger this kind of reaction?

"I needed to transiently increase gain above usual levels," admitted the half-Trill. "However, I stayed well within the parameters set by Seven of Nine and Commander Chakotay."

"I appreciate your restraint, ensign, though we need to have a long talk about taking command of the ship out from under the bridge crew, no matter how effective it might be," replied the lieutenant standing nearby. "If you'll excuse me, captain, I need to oversee the removal of the remaining transmitters from the hull."

Janeway nodded and watched her officer leave just as the dark-haired woman affixed the last of her plugs into her implants and commanded the computer to drop the forcefields. The ensign stepped into the outer room and walked up to the captain, standing just a few centimeters from the younger woman's ivory face and scintillating blue eyes. Janeway involuntarily tensed at her sudden nearness, but the ensign seemed unperturbed.

"Captain, thank you for coming to check on me," she said, her breath warm against the captain's cheek.

"Of course, ensign. I was worried that...that you had..."

Janeway suddenly found it very hard to speak as the ensign's dark pink lips brought themselves to the side of the captain's neck and began to gently kiss upwards towards the curve of her ear.

"Kathryn, I know why you're here," she whispered between kisses, her voice alluring and strong in its desire. "You could have sent anyone, but you are here. You wanted to see me, so you're here. You know we can't dance around this any longer. It's taking too much from both of us."

Her mouth resumed its sensual trip down to the nape of the captain's neck, raising goosebumps along the moist trail. Janeway fought desperately for control. This was a combat situation. She was in a work space. They were on duty. She should be on the bridge. This was wrong. This was absolutely wrong.

All of her protestations, though, were slipping away in the raw pleasure of this mere kiss. She groaned and involuntarily arched herself upwards to give the scientist more access to her body. Janeway felt a rush of wetness between her thighs, a strong arousal the likes of which she had not felt since they left the alpha quadrant. Her knees almost buckled from desire, causing the ensign to wrap her arms around Janeway and keep her upright.

"We should go to your quarters," said Mileena, a smile on her full, curving lips. "I think you're going to want to be lying down for the rest of this."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Mileena's eyes all but stopped seeing the outside world as she drifted farther along the convoluted bioneural pathways. She was caught up inside the whirling computational framework of the sensor arrays and corresponding outputs. Everything was wildly off-balance. She guessed the Botha ship that had appeared just a few moments ago had managed to override the modified shielding and her own connections with the crew. They were now adrift.

With no one officially at the helm, the machines that ran Voyager were on an uneasy autopilot, simultaneously aware of the attack but unable to respond. She tried to coordinate them, at least until she could bring the other crewmembers back from their reveries, but it hadn't succeeded. More distressing was that she could feel the world bending around her as the bioneural inputs were slowly encroached upon by the Botha's psychic attack.

"Hello, Mileena," said the not-entirely-unexpected voice.

"Hello, Datossel," stated Mileena, not letting a centimeter of emotion approach her tone.

"Did you miss me," the voice said, its question tinged with amusement.

"No, not really," replied the wiry scientist. "But you know that."

The half-Trill's eyes hadn't focused on the voice, but she saw its origin nonetheless. A stocky Talarian woman, just a bit taller than Mileena herself, leaned against the edge of CRE. The thick padded ridges of the hallucination's armor rustled as it took a step forward and took the scientist's chin gently in one gloved hand. The ruddy, convoluted brow ridges, framed by neatly-styled short brown hair, bent themselves completely into Mileena's view. Just as vivid as on that picture on her altar, the hallucination of her wife came into view.

The scientist within the chair felt her head being tilted up with increasing pressure, even as she knew her body was immobile, her head locked into place by the apparatus, and this experience a complete hallucination.

"I don't understand why you would behave so poorly towards your wife," said the Talarian hallucination, running its glossy thumb along Mileena's curving jaw line. "Especially after so many years apart."

Mileena had been trained well enough that she didn't flinch or flush at the unwanted touch. Instead, she propelled her mind into the computers, trying to manipulate them as well as she could while keeping her consciousness above the din of the machinery. It was a fine line to walk and she found herself talking to keep herself from slipping into the computer network.

"You're not my wife, Datossel, not anymore. And even if you were, you're not actually here."

The imposing Talarian hallucination released its grasp and combed it thick fingers into the ensign's curly hair, seemingly ignoring the response. Then, it let her hands wander down Mileena's blue-clad body. The hallucination with Datossel's face inspected the visible rings of the implants on the top of Mileena's arms and carefully prodded the biological conduit that curled out of her torso and into the nearby console. Its touch was inquisitive and intimate without being invasive, which gave Mileena little comfort. At any moment, its lovely mood would shift capriciously. It was best never to relax.

"So strange, this adornment, Tas'Te-aleena," observed the hallucination. "Almost to rival mine. When you come back, I will have yet another trophy to display. My wife, the hybrid machine, first in the Federation." Her tone was that deliberately uncomfortable mixture of admiration, insult, and threat. "I wonder how much prestige you will bring us?"

"You will gain nothing, Datossel. I am not your trophy. I am not going back to Talar. And I am not your wife," she said, wishing she could spit the words from a furious mouth, but instead settling on a cool, flat, scientist's demeanor

The voice chuckled. "Is that so." It pressed a hand onto Mileena's chest and trailed its fingers with possessive familiarity along the swell of her breasts, up the side of her neck, until it finally placed a single digit on Mileena's lips, leaving goosebumps in its wake. The voice bent closer, passing impossibly through the machinery that encased the scientist, until it was hissing its message into the curves of Mileena's ear.

"My sweet Tas'Te-aleena. It's a good thing that I know you as well as I do. I know exactly what it is you want. And what you need."

The hallucination was becoming frustrating to suppress. The Botha had clearly refined their techniques between the first and second attacks. Previously, she had easily shrugged off any sensory imposition. Now, though, it was taking far more effort to screen out Datossel...the hallucination...and she was losing processing cycles to it.

"Go away, Datossel. I have work to do. There is nothing you can do for me. I have everything I want and everything I need."

The voice whispered one word. "Liar." And then again, louder and with righteous anger, "Liar!" It hurled itself backwards and pounded its fist into the side of CRE with a resounding thud of bending metal. The voice had made the inevitable transition from one passion to another, and for that, Mileena was glad. The latter was much easier to deal with.

"Have I done so little for you that you would disgrace me with a lie? I rescued you from your little hovel? Took you into my home. Provided you with companionship. Gave you everything you asked for. Loved you with the heat of a thousand suns." Another thud as the metal supposedly crunched beneath the Talarian hallucination's clenched fist.

"All I asked was that keep your oaths to me, Mileena. Nothing more. I didn't even ask for your fidelity when you abandoned me in Talar. Yet here you are, lying to me and to yourself. You have nothing you want. You have nothing you need."

Once again, the voice approached, only this time it brought its hand with great velocity across the ensign's face. The contacts on her skull ached as they were bent out of position by the force of the imaginary blow. Mileena took in a sharp breath, but didn't exhale until the counter-coup was landed. She felt the blood vessels rupture and begin leaking their contents into the interstitial tissues around her eyes and nose. Had this actually been occurring, she mused, she would have had a medium level black eye to explain away. Another hit, this time angled so that a patch of skin on Mileena's cheek came away on one of Datossel's medals. That might scar until they found someone to lend yet another dermal regenerator.

The voice bent low again and growled in her ear. "All your fancy equipment, Tas'Te-aleena, and you still can't get away from me. You're trapped by your pretty little machine, unable to fight back, unable to defend yourself. You're pathetic. Weak." It spat at her and Mileena felt the saliva run down her face, mingling with the tiny droplets of blood streaming from her nostrils.

She didn't answer. She didn't even tremble. In some ways, the hallucination was easier to ignore than its living template; this caricature doled out its cruelty too coarsely and without the concurrent affection that made it so much harder to bear. This was the Datossel she liked to picture, the raging violent monster who invaded her bed, not the reality of the complex woman with whom she'd willingly shared her life.

She let the ranting continue as best she could, trying to manipulate the shields into a frequency that would hold off the Botha's relentless attack. The hallucination was too distracting, though. She gritted her teeth and willed herself further still. Why weren't the others responding? She could feel their consciousness adrift in the network, but the signal she was transmitting wasn't powerful enough to completely overcome the Botha's interference. Dammit.

"Even that spineless captain recognizes how worthless you are. It's no wonder she won't look you in the face. And you want her in your bed? Ridiculous. No one will love you, Tas'Te-aleena," it snarled. "Not like I do. You know that's true. It's why I'm here." Another slap jarred Mileena's head so hard her ears rang.

Mileena summoned her voice, more to reassure herself than to respond to the hallucination.

"You are here because a group of aliens has decided to cripple the crew of Voyager with psychic projections. You are the most effective way to draw my attention from my work. You always have been. But what they don't understand is that this is one of the more mediocre beatings you've administered to me, Datossel. Try harder," she grunted through gritted, bloody teeth.

The voice laughed loudly. "No, my sweet little scientist, you're still wrong. I'm only here because you still love me. If you didn't, I wouldn't stand a chance."

That blow landed more soundly that any others that the Talarian had provided. That was it, wasn't it? Even after however many years of abuse, five years of distance from the alpha quadrant, a divorce request, a half-dozen lovers and her current obsession, that thin flame of affection had never quite gone out, no matter how hard she tried to smother it. She still loved her wife. She probably always would.

Mileena slumped, defeated, into the bindings of the heavy chair. Then, she bowed her head as best she could within the confines of her equipment. The rivulets of blood were crusting uncomfortably on her face and the oppressive nearness of her wife was making her excruciatingly aware her increasing powerlessness. She couldn't keep the hallucinations at bay long enough to rescue Voyager, not as long as the Botha knew her heart. There was no other choice.

She targeted the automatic disengagement protocol and with a swift pattern of thought, conveyed that she believed the ship was in danger. It did not fault; the ship knew they were in danger. Through the pattern of bioneural synapses between her and ship's computer, Mileena found the protocol's representation, then shattered it. She was now free do to as she required without being disturbed.

Datossel spoke again, mixing her voice with that of the unseen Botha controller.

"Yes, sweetheart. Do what you always do. Run away into your brilliant mind," she mocked. "You can go as far as you like. Just remember that you are, and will always be, mine."

In unison, Datossel and Mileena gave the command, "Computer, ramp to 100% gain on my mark." Mileena breathed in, but it was Datossel who spoke, a whisper full of malice and anticipation. "See you later, my beautiful wife."

"Mark," was all that Mileena answered. Her consciousness was mercifully washed away by the loving embrace of the twin computers.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Pablo Baytart knew something was wrong. It had been wrong since the first blast wave from the Botha ship, the one that supposedly was a warning shot. The one that engineering had supposedly dampened with their shield modulations. The one that sent the captain into negotiations with the Botha and concluded with Voyager leaving the system. The one that ended with the captain directing ops and tactical towards their tasks, paging Tom Paris to take over for Ensign Baytart as usual. That had been the information from his eyes and ears, at least.

The problem was that the machine at his fingertips was telling a very different story. Voyager hung suspended in midair, engulfed in power fluctuations. Two ships had emerged besides the larger Botha vessel. At least two. There were...he couldn't get a lock on the information. It was bobbing and weaving around his consciousness. If he tried hard enough, he could overcome the hallucination that was beginning to surround him, but it was excruciatingly difficult.

Flashes of naked flesh and warm conversation lured him from his task. Was it Lauren? Was it Mileena? Was it Alice? Was it any number of young women whom he loved and lusted after? Was he finally in command of his own vessel? Someone was calling his name and he had to keep from turning around. If he left his station, he would be as lost as the crewmembers around him.

That had happened the last time the Botha took over. One moment, he was doing calibrations on a shuttlecraft and the next, he was soaring across an uncharted nebula, dodging Cardassian fighters and winding his expert way through a mine field. It had been fantastic, at least, until he came crashing out of his fantasy and into the unfortunate reality of an otherwise empty shuttlebay.

Concentrate, he said through gritted teeth. Drive forward. He clenched his eyes closed and desperately wanted to block his ears. Anything to reduce the erroneous information streaming through his useless physical senses. He wished desperately that he'd been allowed to make a deeper biological connection with the bioneural interface, but respecting the captain's will now left him at a significant disadvantage. He couldn't act. He couldn't communicate. All he could do was hold on to his console and hope that he found a way out.

There was a searing ache in his head that barely competed with the feeling of hands running along his back and a computer calling out a proximity warning. He exhaled heavily and opened his eyes again. Everything was doubled and everything was blurry. Suddenly, though, the hallucinations were easier to screen out. He found his voice, hoarse and soft.

"Bridge to anyone listening. Please respond."

"Ensign Baytart," said the Doctor. "Welcome back. What is your status?"

With tremendous effort, the ensign crawled mentally through his console through the haze of interference. Everything was online, but completely malfunctioning. Sensory inputs were being routed nowhere, engine readings were being ignored, and the helm was trying to respond to his aimless, hallucination-addled commands. He stilled his body and found his words again.

"I am attached to the bridge. The ship is intact and I'm holding position." He paused as a pulse of hallucination broke over him. "Is there any way to reduce the delusions?"

"I assume Ensign Irae is working to manipulate the transponders so that they are a more compelling stimulus than the delusions. However, I have lost contact with her."

Pablo looked through his connections. Other than Mileena, he was the one most able to manipulate the bioneural gel at a physical, almost instinctive, level. He couldn't race along the conduits from where he was now, but he could query just deep enough to see her consciousness. It was a struggling yellow light entrapped within a dark grey morass. Circuits ran to and from the pulsing center, realigning themselves at lightning speeds.

"She's alive and working," replied Baytart absently. "But you're right. Someth-"

As he watched, the grey cover on the orb was ripped away. The nexus blazed before him and unexpectedly, the hallucinations all but vanished. He could feel Mileena, now, as if she were wrapped around his body and chatting with him. It was an enjoyable and deeply troubling sensation.

"Ensign, I'm not sure if you can still hear me," said the Doctor. "I authorize you to take whatever action you think necessary to assure Voyager's safety. I'm sending you reinforcements as they come online."

The comm went dead and Ensign Baytart was left with a bridge full of silent crewmembers, their identical gazes focused on the blank screen in front of him. He shivered, then returned to his console. Somehow, he had to get control of the ship without alerting the Botha that anyone was still conscious.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

It had been so long since Lauren had been on a hunt. The planet below the platforms held very little game, but that didn't keep her family cluster from beaming down to the equator and riding for hours across the land. She felt the rippling haunches of the horse between her legs and the biting wind across the few bits of flesh her fur-lined hood had left exposed. Leaning forward, she urged the beast faster; with a leap, she surpassed her sister and made a rude gesture as she pushed forward. Jessica gave a laugh that was a half-snarl and quickly matched Lauren's pace, with Kro'mal and Whar coming up to flank their friend. They held their gin'tak spears in their offhands and shouted at Lauren that she'd become soft in her years in Starfleet. In Klingon, Lauren questioned their parentage.

Whar and Jessica sprinted ahead, as was their custom. Their love had grown since she'd been away. Had they married already or had they waited for her? Lauren didn't know; there just hadn't been time to ask. In between thoughts, her head filled with a dull, incessant pounding; something familiar and incredibly unwelcome. The trim young woman pulled her horse back to a slow trot and shook it off. Then, she tilted her head up towards familiar stars; even obscured by an eternal cloud cover, they were welcome unseen reminders of her being home. Tiny drifts of snow caught in her eyelashes and the scent of burning peat filled her nostrils. The group must be approaching a camp. It wasn't unheard of for a less-fortunate exile to bide his time on the surface, waiting for his luck to change.

She turned to Kro'mal, who had been riding silently beside her. "Do you k-"

She fell to the snow as he backhanded her with the gin'tak in his hand. Her horse bolted away as she lay on the ground, trying to catch her breath; she'd broken a rib or two, but that was nothing compared to what he was going to feel in just a few minutes. A pounding, rhythmic thud passed through her head once again and she gave a grunt of pain before rolling away to avoid the next strike. She grabbed her own weapon and thrust it towards Kro'mal's torso. He stepped aside easily, caught the spear, and broke it over his massive knee.

Then, he grabbed her by her collar and lifted her up to his height. She fought the air; how had he gotten so strong, so tall? The rippling and familiar ridges of his head were covered by his hood, as were his broad nose and growling teeth. All she saw were his eyes, blue-black and full of rage.

"Lauren Powell. You dishonor my memory and you dishonor your people. This fantasy is an unworthy pursuit for a member of my family." He threw her into the snow, which absorbed a few flecks of her blood into light pink stains.

She rose to one knee, confused, and blinked her eyes. He was never like this. He'd always been good to her, even when she left him behind to join Starfleet. To join...Voyager. She blinked again and looked at his now-uncovered face. The pounding returned. She looked around her as the snow blurred into a hazy grey morass; the familiar smell of earth was cut with the metallic scent of a ship's engine room. Her head tilted up once more.

Kro'mal's gaze had turned solemn, yet no less fierce, and he gave her one of those inscrutable Klingon nods. From out of his parka he drew a d'k tahg, which he tossed beside her. She picked it up by its worn leather pommel and gripped it tightly in a gloved hand. She rose to her full height, still almost a half-meter below him, and took in his face one more time, memorizing every crevice before she left this place. His form was distorting as much as the snow, his voice as far away as the pounding had been.

"Finish it, Lauren. Defend your honor." She gave no human response, no weeping or wincing. Without hesitation, she drove the blade in between his ribs and he smiled.

She blinked once more and looked around. Engineering was full of standing statues, frozen in place by Botha hallucinations. The pounding in her head was one of those infernal dance tunes that Mileena forced her to enjoy...but broadcast directly into her consciousness? Lauren tapped her scalp and felt the transponders there. She reached out mentally and felt a tendril of Mileena's mind, otherwise entwined with CRE and the ship's computer, gently touch Lauren's consciousness.

Lauren saw the snow scene wavering before her once again, but she did not immerse herself in the hallucination. Ignoring it as best she could, she tapped her communicator. "Lauren Powell to Voyager. Is anyone there? Please respond."

"Ensign Powell, this is the Doctor," said the hologram. "I'm glad you're with us. Ensign Baytart is attempting to regain control of Voyager. The rest of the crew appears to be still hallucinating. You are the only remaining option for discovering a method for screening the Botha's attack."

Lauren gritted her teeth at the hologram's subtly insulting tone. "Yes, Doctor. I will use the bioneural interface to bolster the shield modulations. We may be able to reduce the effects enough for people to disengage from the hallucinations on their own."

"Very well, Ensign." He terminated the comm link and left Lauren to dive into the bioneural network and determine, with her unseen friends' help, just what they could do to save Voyager from itself. She imagined Kro'mal's face again, his dagger dripping blood and his face a scowl, and she smiled. The Botha didn't know they had given her exactly what she needed to survive.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Alice felt her lover surge within her and she arched her head back, relishing the sensation of being filled so completely, so utterly, so possessively. She looked down at Pablo, who reached out a calm brown hand and cupped one of her breasts within it. He scraped one curved fingernail lightly across her skin and she gave a happy sigh, then rocked once more against his manhood. He moaned happily, gripped her hips, and thrust again.

They'd been making love for what seemed like hours. No, like breathless, wonderful days. Beneath them, a lush jungle planet orbited tantalizingly. There'd been an expedition to a new, warp-capable civilization at the edge of the alpha and beta quadrant. Her team had spent the last two weeks poring through databanks and carefully interviewing citizenry while Pablo was off doing…whatever it was the Federation was making him do near Klingon space. She didn't particularly care.

They barely had time to see each other in between missions, but he'd managed to score a bit of shore leave, giving her time to luxuriate in his embrace and let him convey his love with every touch and caress. It had been an especially long separation this time and his ministrations were more welcome than usual.

Pablo kissed her. "I miss you when you're on assignment, you know that?" He growled possessively in her ear and nibbled on it. "It is wonderful flying sorties back and forth, but it means I don't get to have you in my bed nearly as often as we both want."

She laughed at him and let it turn to a moan as he stimulated her sensitive flesh. "Yes, well, do you want to sit around in a shuttlecraft while I'm chatting with the natives?"

He stopped moving and looked at her solemnly. "If I said yes, would you accept it?" He shifted slightly and clasped one of his hands around hers. "If I said you meant more than any mission I've been allowed to fly, would you believe me?"

She looked down with slightly tearing eyes. "Do you mean that, my heart?" She gripped his dark knuckles tightly and he nodded, his eyes also brimming with emotion. The years on Voyager and all the false starts between lovers, the time together that had been always so sparse and never enough, finally coming to this thing. What she always wanted.

She paused and looked down at him. No, she realized. This is not what she always wanted. She had promised herself, in the middle of yet another interminable data interpretation session, that she would never make her life's work the collection of ancient remains from meaningless cultures. She wanted to create new monuments to art. She wanted to exercise the intellect and talent she had been hiding beneath the blue uniform she wore so reluctantly. No matter how beautiful the planet nor how sumptuous her lover, this was not what she wanted.

"Pablo, I can't accept. I can't be this woman that you want me to be. In fact, I don't even think you are what you want to be."

His dark face creased with confusion and sadness. "Don't you love me? Is this not enough? We can stop traveling. We can…"

"No, it's not that. This is not real. This is a hallucination, one beautiful glimpse of the future I might have considered once upon a time. But now we need to break free, you and I. We need to become what we really are. I don't know if you sharing this with me or if this is truly the world of my own making, but I need to go.

He reached out his hand once again to caress the side of her face, his dark, thick fingers tracing the outline of her chin and up the bridge of her nose until he dragged them down to rest on her thin lips. "I will always support you, Alice. I will always be what you need me to be. I love you. Go."

She closed her eyes and focused on the self that was not herself, the distant thread of the bioneural gel that fed itself into her skull transmitters. The room began to twist and Pablo became more and more distant. A pounding filled her head and she let out a disappointed groan. It was Mileena's favorite song, one that made Alice want to vomit if the half-Trill turned up the volume too high. Alice dismounted Pablo, waved goodbye to his beautiful naked body even as he reached fruitlessly towards her, and blinked her eyes a few times.

She was still on the bridge, surrounded with the silent and still forms of her commanding crew. In front of her, Pablo waved back and forth, muttering to himself and twitching his head back and forth, deeply in communication with the bioneural gel. Alice closed her eyes and felt Mileena working furiously in the computer pathways. The half-Trill took notice and gave Alice a mental smile, as well as an apology for the interruption, before dropping back into the machines. Alice opened them again and smiled, then tapped her communicator and sought out Lauren. Together, they would find a way to escape all of this.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The computer that was Mileena was frustrated. She could hear the little programs, the people-things, who knew her best, and they could sing back to her, but the ones who she had so recently brought into her network were still too far away. She let her CRE-self and her main computer-self take over for a moment; they could guide the ship and had for so long. She expanded her mind once more to find the bioneural gel that clicked into the transmitters on those little far off nodes, nodes that she once called her fellow crewmembers.

She filled the nodes with electricity, and felt them once again, come online. Then, she retreated and considered the ship's function. Her shields were buckling and surging from the Botha attack. They observed the tiny pinpricks of data passing through them and judged them detrimental to the functioning of the lives the computers protected. There was a way, they knew, to screen the data out. More than that. There was a way to change the devices and turn them away. It was their duty to protect their crew. It was their ship.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

"Tom? Tom," called B'Elanna.

She was walking through an empty corridor on some ship or another. She didn't recognize the technology: the panels were largely dark, though one or two lit up as she passed. She didn't recognize the language or the consoles, though she knew instinctively she could control them.

But she didn't want to touch this ship. Its angles were all wrong. It wasn't organic like the Borg, wild and primal like a Klingon bird of prey, and precise and clean like a Federation ship. The walls sloped sharply and without pattern while the ceiling would unexpectedly drop, enough that she had to stoop, while in others it open to cavernous halls, all empty. All silent.

She knew that Tom had brought her here so they could try out his new technology. He had built it for her. He had given it to her. It was a gift. But she couldn't remember what it was. She couldn't remember why they were here or where they were. It was just corridor after corridor, empty hall after empty hall.

"Tom? Tom," she said once again. "Tom, this isn't funny." Her steps quickened, even though she had no destination. Keeping moving was better than staying still she suspected she had passed this particular triangle before.

She heard his voice from around the corridor, but it was muffled. He spoke again and she turned a corner and sprinted towards the door in front of her. Predictably, she realized, it opened and closed too quickly for her to make it through. She banged on it with a closed fist and shouted his name. He responded again and this time the door opened, long enough for her to get through, before slamming closed and melting away.

"Lana," he croaked.

He was suspended in a tube of yellow liquid, tendrils of flesh and metal entwining around his limbs as if he were encased in Borg apparatus. She rushed towards him, a furious and terrified howl emitting from her lips. She pounded on the glass in rage, which cracked under each heavy blow. Liquid began to seep out through the cracks and burn her fingers.

"Computer, end program," said the voice of her husband behind her. "B'Elanna, what the hell are you doing."

Suddenly, they were standing in the holodeck. Tom looked at her, no longer coated fluid. In fact, he looks surprisingly dry as he stood there in his daily uniform. "I was trying to model a better way of interfacing with the bioneural gel. I figure if we use the suspended bioneural substance and allow it to surround the person, it'll be less traumatic and more efficient. That way, we all might be able to connect to the console without any sort of external hardware."

"Yeah, well, I don't like it. We're not the Borg here Tom. We're Starfleet. And I don't like being forced to work with this material any more than the captain or anybody else."

"I like it," said Tom sulkily. "And I think the rest of you are being ridiculous. We haven't had this kind of tech in so long B'Elanna. Imagine what we could do if we were a little bit more like the Borg and a little bit less like Starfleet. I mean, since when were either one of this really part of the Starfleet hierarchy? Since when were we good at following the rules?"

"Rules are there for a reason, Tom, especially when they involve the health and safety of Voyager and not turning us all into monstrosities. I thought you had grown up enough to realize that." She found her face getting flushed and her breath coming in short gasps. This was not like the Tom she knew.

He took a step forward and raised his finger. "Now listen here, B'Elanna," he started, but was cut off by the sudden materialization of a gray-haired woman wearing a long grey and red checkered frock.

The woman briskly stepped in between the fighting pair and put her hand firmly on Tom's shoulder. She opened her mouth as if to speak but instead, a burst of shrieking static emitted from her. Tom covered his ears in terrible pain and tried to jerk away. B'Elanna took a step towards him, confused, but the hologram pushed her with her free arm and B'Elanna hurtled into back of the holodeck. A pair of firm, dark blue hands caught her and held her fast, not allowing her to turn around or pull forward.

"What the hell are you doing to my husband," she shouted. "Computer, end program!"

The gray-haired woman turned towards her, gave a patient, patronizing smile, and rolled her eyes. She turned to Tom again and let loose another shriek, causing him to cower once more.

He fell prostrate to the floor and croaked, "B'Elanna. Save me."

She tugged forward from the hologram, but the hands held her fast. The hologram made a low rumbling sound in her ear that she couldn't make out. She jabbed it several times in the stomach with her elbows, futilely, and watched her husband suffer.

The gray-haired hologram let loose one more shriek and, to B'Elanna's horror, her husband flickered and vanished. The arms holding the half Klingon let go and B'Elanna stumbled forward to the middle the holodeck. She whirled around to face her captor and was somewhat shocked to find a demure looking Andorian standing there, his hand clasped in front of him apologetically. His tuft of white hair was slightly rumpled and he was clad in what looked to be an old-fashioned lab coat, buttoned up and ending in a yellow polkadotted bow tie.

"Who the hell are you," she demanded, "and what did you just do to my husband?"

The gray-haired lady walked towards B'Elanna and smiled. She looked like the grandmother B'Elanna had never really known. Grey haired, angular face with a jaw somehow too strong for a woman, and deep wrinkles highlighting the corners of her eyes. Her dress was a long dressing gown with an equally draped cloak, both of a folding silver-red fabric. The hologram opened its hands in a gesture of conciliation but did not speak or make any other noise.

Instead, both she and the Andorian approached either side of B'Elanna and began tapping on each side of the half Klingon's skull. B'Elanna tried to duck away but they matched every step she took. In fact, they seem to be encouraging her to run, and so she did. Out of the holodeck, down the hallway, down the turbolift, and into engineering, with them tapping harder and harder with every frantic step.

She found, though, as she entered the strangely empty engineering that the tapping became less frightening and more familiar. There is something soothing about the drumming, something absolutely familiar. In fact, both of the…holograms…seemed like they were known friends. She smiled at them and they smiled back. She understood, now, and reached up to take their hands away from her head.

She focused slightly and they vanished, as did the empty engineering room. Instead, she stood among her silent crew, a dull thudding in her head matching the gentle rhythm the hallucinations had tapped into her transmitters. Except, the more she focused on what was coming through the transmitters, the more she realized that those holograms were not arbitrary hallucinations. They were the computers, bringing her back to serve the ship and work with them once more.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Chakotay sat in quiet meditation among the jungle of his homeland. His back rested against a thick tree trunk and the leaves whispered an ancient melody as the wind pushed through their green peaks. This was a song, warm and familiar, which he knew had been heard by his ancestors and their alien companions. At times like this, he felt exceptionally lucky that he'd been able to return to Earth with a new perspective on his heritage. His people and his faith were no longer things of obligation or of regret. They were alive within him again.

He took a deep breath and exhaled once more. The leaves rustled again, but this time it was a hand, clad partially in metal, that pushed them aside. The long, sinuous form of Seven of Nine crossed into his welcome vision, carrying a woven basket of food and a tricorder. He smiled brightly at her.

"I could not find you," she said. There was a hint of annoyance as she approached his seated form. "I had to use a locator."

She all but dropped the basket at her feet and pointed it at with the tricorder. "I have been informed that food served outdoors must be served in this vessel. I do not understand why. It is insufficient to carry more than partial nourishment, is not watertight, and is flimsy." She spread the blanket out neatly on the ground near Chakotay and sat primly upon it, demurely covering her long legs with the red folds of her skirt.

"This seating implement is also insufficient. It is quite uncomfortable and I am becoming damp from the water seeping up from the dirt." She looked at him expectantly. "However, these are appropriate accessories for our interaction. I hope they are pleasing."

Chakotay let forth a brilliant, rolling laugh even though he knew it was inappropriate. This had been Tom's doing. Leave it to the lieutenant to set the idea of a romantic picnic into Seven's literal mind and then turn the young Borg loose in the forest. The two men would need to have a talk about the amount of interference, or lack thereof, that Tom should have in Chakotay's personal life. It might involve a few rounds of gin bought with Tom's credits.

The commander rubbed his forehead. Too much time outside in the heat had dehydrated him and he was beginning to get an exceptionally unwelcome headache. As he moved onto the blanket and pried out a bottle of water, he did remember that it had been Tom who urged Chakotay and Seven together. That would make up partially for the liberties Paris occasionally took when interfering with the lives of others. It had been…when, exactly? Chakotay struggled to remember. Sometime on Voyager, right before she got home, he recalled…but…

Seven reached out and put a warm hand on his knee. "You asked me to come here and speak to you. I had hoped we could spend more time in our quarters making love."

The pain in his head abruptly subsided with the rush of desire pouring through his veins. Yes, to hell with reprimanding Tom. He owed the man a thousand rounds at the real Sandrine for this miracle. Chakotay cupped Seven's hand in his and kissed it lightly. Her sapphire-blue eyes widened appreciatively, then narrowed as he turned her arm over and kissed her wrist in turn.

"Seven, I wanted to t-" His head took to pounding again and he grabbed the sides of his head in pain, but Seven's sudden and passionate kiss took it all away. She continued to quash his conversation with her mouth as she rapidly unbuttoned his shirt and leaned her full form against his skin. He finally pushed her away enough to breathe, give her another broad smile, and start over.

"Seven, I can't believe how lucky I am to have y-" The conversation was again interrupted, but not by pain. Instead, the trees around them seemed to be melting, for lack of a better term. Their tall, emerald expanses shrunk to beige grass. The sky, which had been obscured by the jungle's canopy, now stretched around him in a harsh azure highlighted by a raging orange sun. He blinked as it blinded him and his headache returned.

Seven went to lean in for a kiss, but he scurried backward.

"Chakotay, what's wrong," she said. Confusion marred her pale face. The expression muted the pulsing in his head as he recognized that he had hurt her with his needless action.

"Don't you see it," he said quickly, attempting to rectify the situation. "We must be in a simulation of some sort. The Hirogen must have returned." His hand went automatically to where his communicator should have been. He felt its smooth surface under his palm, but looking down he saw only his white linen shirt. He looked up at her again. Her lip had begun to quiver.

"You are playing with me," she said forlornly. "You are making a joke at my expense." All desire was replaced by this pang of guilt. Yes, he was being unkind.

Any other sentences, though, were interrupted by a massive trumpeting blast. They both looked at a huge cloud of dust approaching from the distance. The blast sounded again, more insistently, and Seven drew back and stood up. She pulled a phaser from her skirt and fired at the cloud, but whatever was within it glanced the beam of light away. Once more, that piercing brassy trumpeting filled his senses. Thundering hoofbeats approached him, the sun blazed hotter, and Chakotay's mind was absolutely clear as the animal's call shook him awake.

He glanced around the bridge and noted grimly that everyone except Pablo seemed to be deep within their Botha-induced trances. Even the Captain's eyes were distant and fixed far away from him. He tapped his communicator, though he couldn't keep from glancing at it to make sure it was still there.

"Chakotay to Voyager. Is anyone still there?" A small chorus of voices replied and he quickly ascertained their status. The hallucination inched back towards him once or twice during their conversations, but every now and then a blast of that triumphant sound would knock him towards his senses.

The sun, though, seemed to be present no matter what he did. He recognized slowly that it was his mind's representation of Mileena. Emotion came to him, welcoming and concerned, carefully inquiring as to his well-being. Then a moment of confusion came over the representation and the trumpeting sound was replaced by a constant beat of mildly unpleasant music. The hallucinatory forest waved ineffectively into his view, replacing the grass and illusory Seven of Nine. But before the plain disappeared completely, he swore he caught a glimpse of a massive, dark-lashed eye inspecting him from behind the dust cloud.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

It was good, sighed the captain. Excruciatingly good. Better than she had ever hoped, in fact.

Mileena's warm body pressed down on Janeway's as they lay sprawled on the captain's bed. The half-Trill's full, dark lips roamed unfettered across the milky-white neck and delicately flushed face of the captain, who sighed and ached with every feather-light touch. Their hands were entwined above their heads, giving the raven haired woman perfect leverage with which to slide her torso and legs along the captain's wanting form. Janeway longed to strip off her uniform and relish the sensation of Mileena's skin, to give as well as to get, but the woman was being frustratingly coy and dangerously teasing.

Janeway broke yet another delicious kiss and wriggled one hand free. She caressed the angular cheekbones and rounded chin with her palm, then let her fingertips play across the ensign's smiling face. She gazed deeply into the citrine eyes that regarded her with blazing fire and intensity, then tried to speak. She found her words were cut off yet again by another rush of sensation as Mileena reached her arm between their bodies and drew it upward across the captain's thighs. Janeway pushed against the older woman's body, but the hand deftly maneuvered away from the captain's center, causing Janeway to fall back against the pillows in a frustrated heap.

"Slowly, Kathryn," chided Mileena. "We have so much of the day to enjoy ourselves." She trailed her hand idly across the captain's uniform and up to the long red hair which splayed out around the pale woman's head. She combed through the shining strand, then nestled herself beside the captain, continuing her ministrations across the captain's increasingly aroused form.

Finally, Janeway could stand it no longer. With a quick movement, Janeway flipped over, landing on top of the ensign with an exhaled grin. "Does this mean I get to enjoy you, too" she queried, initiating a commanding kiss that, to her immediate surprise, was not returned.

Janeway pulled herself up as the older woman rolled away towards the far end of the bed. The ensign's dark face reflected an unexpected distress that slammed Janeway back to earth from her cloud of sensation.

"Mileena, what's wrong," she said softly, moving closer with an outstretched hand. She tentatively cupped the young woman's shoulder, not comfortable administering any more physical affection. The blue-clad woman remained rigid, but didn't shrink away.

"Am I displeasing to you, Kathryn," she said sullenly. "Am I unskilled?"

Janeway nearly fell onto the bed in surprise. "No, no, of course not! Why would you ever think such a thing?"

"You turned me aside," she replied. "I was trying to give you something remarkable. Something special. Instead, you decided that what you wanted was more important than what I wanted. Of course." Now Mileena broke the physical contact and moved off the bed in a fluid, furious movement.

"Mileena, I just-" Kathryn struggled for words. It had been an innocuous act, one of a lover switching control. It didn't seem so out of place. "I thought that a change of pace might be pleasant."

"Was something wrong with my pace, other than the unfortunate fact that it happened to be mine? Is this a predictor of things to come? Will I always need to fight your strength, Kathryn?" The words were spat as accusations as the lithe form of the scientist prowled around the outside of the bed.

The captain's mind reeled. This was a jolt in attitude that was so completely out of place with both the situation and the calm, collected woman she knew. Certainly there had been emotional tension, but the resulting explosion of negativity caught her unawares. Was there still time to remedy this before the captain lost, once again, this woman who could bring her so much happiness? Maybe it was time to back off, to...

Janeway turned away from the still-pacing scientist and stared at her sheets. She meant it as a gesture of remorse but instead her thoughts were whirring intensely. How had she been brought here? She'd gone to proteomics, they'd retired to her room, but...wasn't...there...a red alert? The Botha?

The captain turned to Mileena, who had crawled back into the bed, her face the portrait of abashed desire. "Kathryn, I'm so sorry. I...I don't know what came over me." She lay down and beckoned Janeway forward. "I just want an equal I don't want to battle your command facade. I wish you'd put down that front, even for a little while."

Mileena's cool yellow eyes reflected such hurt and such need that the captain nearly succumbed. However, she pulled back and rolled to the edge of the bed.

"I think we need to attend to the ship right now, Mileena. Then, we should talk, but only after the Botha threat is resolved."

A firm grip on her arm caused the captain to slip back into the sheets. Once again, the voice addressing the captain was biting and cruel. "Oh, so that's the excuse this time. The ship needs you, even though B'Elanna has things under control, you're a site-to-site transport away from the bridge, and you've left two of your most qualified officers in charge." She stabbed her finger at Janeway. "You're just afraid, Kathryn, or maybe you enjoy taking advantage of your subordinates' emotions. After all, you wanted a pretty plaything to ravish you and provide you with amusement. That's why you've been listening to my logs, isn't it?"

Janeway's protests were drowned in a growling indictment from her bedmate. "Let's be honest, Kathryn. You've been hiding because you're scared that caring for someone will compromise your command. I have news for you, Captain," she hissed. "You showed the extent of your clouded judgment the minute you strode off the bridge to chase after some little ensign. And now that you have her, you're content to toy with her physically before throwing her out emotionally. Again."

Janeway inched farther away until she was off the bed completely. Something was terribly and desperately wrong, no matter how stinging and true some of those words were. She couldn't imagine that Mileena's hurt and rage could boil out in this explosion of uncontained vitriol. No, this reminded her of something else, a time when she had been overcome with emotions that she somehow couldn't remember. Her blue-grey eyes narrowed and she finally managed to retort.

"Mileena, whatever you are feeling will need to wait. There is clearly something affecting you, most likely from the attack. We need to get back to the bridge."

"We need nothing, Kathryn," she said, her mood suddenly desperate as she lunged at the younger woman. "We just need each other."

The captain dodged and fled into her living room, hitting her communicator as she went. "Security to the captain's quarters." The response was the empty beep of a malfunctioning circuit.

She blinked and she was on her sofa, with Mileena sitting across from her with an expression of concern and care across her gently-curving face. Janeway felt a rush of desire and closeness, but it was quickly overwhelmed by the endorphins and doubt still coursing through her veins.

"Who are you," Janeway demanded, rising from her seat and moving towards the desk across the room, trying to put as much space as physically possible between her and the mercurial ensign. The red alert lights flashed insistently across her skin and illuminated the room with every pulse.

"I'm Mileena," said the dark-haired woman. She stood and moved slowly towards the captain as if she were approaching a cornered animal. "You've been hallucinating since we've gotten here. I'm worried, Kathryn. Do you need me to call the Doctor?"

Janeway, though, refused to be placated. "No, stay there," she replied curtly. "This is still a hallucination. Accuse me of whatever you want, but do not dare to insinuate that Mileena would leave her post in the middle of a red alert. She went into cryostasis half a dozen times rather than get to a safer location, but you're implying that she'd abandon proteomics in the middle of a red alert for a dalliance with her captain? That's absurd."

Mileena smiled, but her face was stretched to widely and her teeth were far too glistening. Her eyes dilated impossibly and her jaw slackened. Her movements were jerking and uncoordinated as she continued to walk forward. Each movement gave the impression that she was being dragged to the captain's position.

"Kathryn, Kathryn," she taunted. "You couldn't leave well enough alone. You couldn't just surrender to our will." Janeway felt revulsion as her crewmember, or rather, the hallucination of her crewmember, took on the appearance of a crude marionette with every flailing step. "Wasn't it nice last time? Feeling Mark caressing and making love to you in that turbolift? Why oh why couldn't you have done it this time?"

For an instant, Mileena flickered back to normal. "Don't you love me, Kathryn," she begged. "Is that why I'm not a worthy distraction?"

The Captain's heart broke even as she recognized that it was a cheap ploy. "No, I don't, Mileena." Her mind whispered, Not yet, but soon enough. "And even if I did, this wouldn't be the time to indulge." The ensign resumed her unearthly appearance and Janeway steeled her will.

"Botha, drop this pretense," she commanded. "Tell me what you want instead of manipulating my crew."

The remote Botha ignored her request and made an idle comment through the ensign's mouth. "You know, we much prefer to take over ships with an overwhelming feeling of pleasure and enjoyment. In your case, though, we can change the paradigm."

Janeway was on fire. Searing heat ripped through her body and set every nerve ending alight with pain so intense that she couldn't cry out. Her skin blackened and burned off in flaking clumps while her vision went absolutely dark. A wetness on her face suggested a combination of blood, lymph, and the oozing remains-

The pain was gone, leaving her breathless and shuddering. She gripped the desk with white-knuckled hands and tried to quell her rising panic.

"Pain is such a coarse form of control, after all, but it's so simple to administer," said a voice that was a mocking echo of the ensign's usual tone.

Another wave of absolute agony washed over her, even longer than the first. When it finally subsided, she was on her knees, coughing and gasping for air. Tears threatened to fill her eyes as she clamored to standing and stared down her torturer. It was still the ensign's face, twisted beyond recognition into a mask-like parody of her beautiful form.

"Hmph, you're far stronger than last time, but you don't have your pet psychic to counteract us. And your little ensign, your would-be savior? The one attached to the machine?" Mileena smirked. "Well, let's just say she's in a hell of her own making."

Janeway had a flash of Mileena's body writhing in agony. She was screaming and crying in her bonds as she was brutalized by an unseen assailant. Blood streamed from the contacts where she'd managed to injure herself in her fruitless struggle. All of Janeway's precautions and hopes had been rendered worthless by the Botha's overwhelming attack.

"Let her go," whispered the captain hoarsely. "It's me you want. Let my crew leave and you can have me."

The Botha within Mileena laughed and crippled the captain with another overwhelming wave of pain. "No, captain, we want you, your crew, and your ship. Having our revenge on you is just a hidden bonus."

Janeway lay on the floor, flattened and breathless once again as the pain overcame her. Tears actively streamed down her face and a plea for mercy rattled around the back of her mind though she did not voice it.

"Yes, Kathryn," said hallucination. "Give in. If you relax your consciousness, you can be back on that bed with your little ensign beside you."

Janeway bit her tongue and clawed her way to standing. She looked once more at her tormenter, whose face distorted even further, twirling in on itself and inverting its symmetry. It was horrifying, but she couldn't give in. Not while her crew, and her Mileena, were depending on her.

Then, Janeway was looking at a whirring starfield. She was on the bridge, she realized, and not in her quarters. The hallucination had been broken.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The computer that was Mileena was pleased with itself. It had made modulations to the shields had been achieved. It had provided enough power and processing to make the change occur. Now, the life within the ship was returning to its normal function. The computer was being adjusted. Sensor readings were being re-run and requests for interpretation were being placed. The part that was the main computer began devoting some of its endless cycles to the reactivated life, leaving the Mileena and CRE parts to hum in unison.

They were waiting for the people within the ship to regain full function. They were waiting to be given true purpose. At this gain, Mileena's emotions were another thread for the two computers to truly appreciate for the first time. They understood more fully what it meant when she had conveyed duty, joy, frustration, need, love, and anger. The last two were especially compelling for the true machines. When the ship was in danger, they concluded, they were angry and when they were spoken to by the captain, they felt love. And so the machines learned from the third computer and she in turn gave her mind to them.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Janeway swallowed hard and croaked out, "Status report." She continued to survey the bridge. Pablo Baytart was at the helm, his eyes closed. If not for the twitching in his fingers and a stream of muttered commands, Janeway would have thought he were still hallucinating. She rotated slightly to stare at the back of the bridge. Tuvok and Harry Kim were shaking off the last of their delusions behind the forms of Alice Soohoo at ops and Commander Chakotay at the tactical station.

Both of them wore their whirring pair of brightly-glowing transmitters on either side of their scalps. Ensign Soohoo was swaying back and forth and murmuring in much the same way as Baytart.

Chakotay didn't look up from his panel. "Welcome back, captain," he said quickly. "We're still heading towards the binary star system, flanked by three Botha ships. We're almost within range of the deserted shipyard."

The intense emotions, both positive and negative, were still very present and very insistent in the captain's consciousness. She suppressed them as her second in command continued to appraise her of the situation.

"Each ship is a composite of multiple races' vessels. Heavily armed and heavily shielded. We haven't had luck determining who is inside them but we suspect these are Botha motherships. However, they have not detected that we are no longer hallucinating. Ensigns Baytart and Soohoo have made it seem like Voyager is continuing to suffer from the effects of the delusions, but Lieutenant Torres and Ensign Powell are breaking up most of the signal."

"How...is this happening," she said. Chakotay was, under the circumstances, inappropriately pleased as he responded.

"Ensign Irae and the Doctor modified the external bioneural connectors so that they received direct sensory input from the ensign herself instead of just from the bioneural gel. This allowed Ensigns Baytart, Soohoo, and Powell to resist the hallucinations, and shortly thereafter, B'Elanna and I were able to climb out on our own." He tapped the blinking lights on his head. "It's been very strange, but it worked well enough for us to get the ship back online and help the rest of the crew."

"Won't the Botha detect the ship's reactivation," she asked

"It doesn't matter, captain," stated Ensign Soohoo in that absent voice Janeway associated with the bioneural console. "Mileena is manipulating the shield emissions to screen the entirety of the Botha's signal both from the lead ship and the hull emitters. I've gotten the impression that Mileena can continue this emanation until Voyager has recovered."

Janeway was suddenly alert. "Gotten the impression," she said urgently. "What do you mean?"

A pregnant pause prefaced Chakotay's statement. "Ensign Irae has apparently overridden the disengagement protocol, allowing her to submerge fully with the computers at 100% gain. We're unable to rouse her on sensors or communications." Janeway's face bent into a frown. This was an unacceptable turn of events even in this tense situation. Chakotay did not share her attitude. In fact, he seemed hopeful.

He kept talking. "However, it's not…" and he stopped again. "However, connecting to the bioneural network gives..." His words seemed to fail. Then, he sighed and walked over to the captain, plucking off one of his transmitters as he approached.

"I should be fine without one for a little while. The shields have more or less taken over. Plus, someone else should be forced to share this abysmal dance music."

Janeway turned the warm, intricate device over in her hand. She'd resisted the technology as inhuman, but it seemed to have saved the ship. With slightly trembling fingers, she pushed the prongs onto her scalp.

Nothing happened.

Ensign Soohoo's voice drifted back towards the Captain. "Close your eyes, captain, and focus on the sounds of the ship. Notice that what you're hearing and seeing isn't quite what you think it is."

Janeway did as she was told. The onyx-eyed scientist was right. The darkness behind her eyelids had a strange order to it. Sounds and lights flickered past like whispered conversations. The captain focused harder. She could feel something surrounding her, a pulsing that reminded her quite pleasantly of the warp engines' familiar thrum. There was something more, though. She pushed her mind through the strange morass of sensations and saw it. Or felt it. Or both.

It was a blazing yellow sun, or at least, it felt like it. It was warm and welcoming. It rose up to meet her with a glowing arc and a rush of emotion coursed through her. Happiness, worry, anger, joy, contentment, competence and love. It was absolutely dizzying. Janeway swayed slightly and Chakotay's hand stilled her. She removed the transponder and set it into his hand.

"That's...Mileena," she whispered.

He smiled. "Correct."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

B'Elanna Torres tapped the transmitter aligned on the side of her head once more. It had been keeping her head above the hallucinations for some unknown amount of time as she had been trying to assist Ensign Powell. Now, though, it seemed to be completely malfunctioning or working so perfectly that she didn't notice the Botha's interference at all. All around her, in fact, the previously motionless crewmembers were shaking off the last of their reveries, some looking wistful and some looking grateful. Ensign Vorik, in particular, seemed especially relieved to be out of whatever he was experiencing. His usually tranquil face was lined and his eyes were wide with receding panic. Though she no longer had any emotional attachment to the young Vulcan, she nonetheless cared about him as her subordinate and made a mental point to discretely enquire after his well-being.

"Torres to bridge," she said. "Chakotay, are we all successfully fending off the hallucinations or am I still in the grips of the Botha." She mentally added, in which case I believe our previous fictional dalliance would probably be unwise given my current marriage.

"Bridge here," answered the Captain, unexpectedly. "The hallucinations seem to have subsided completely. Good work, lieutenant."

The chief engineer bit her tongue and looked at Ensign Powell. The young woman was still deep within the console, swaying and whispering in time with the brilliantly whirring LEDs of her own transmitter. Her fingertips moved unconsciously within the modified gel interface. Dried blood encrusted the top of her hands and obviously blackened skin surrounded what little of her wrists that B'Elanna could see. The half-Klingon suspected that her personal shield modifications had provided the jumping-off point for a modulation far beyond what she could do on such short notice. It was the young woman in front of her and the older woman in proteomics who were running the ship. B'Elanna was uncomfortable with the arrangement but far preferred it to being controlled by the Botha.

"I wish I could take credit, captain, but I think Ensign Powell deserves most of it. I set up the modulations but I don't recognize the pattern or even how it's being transmitted."

She moved her hands around the console and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. There was a modified wave form being generated by the shields but it was far more complex than the one she had initiated while being pulled into the hallucination. More stunning was the output of the bioneural gel itself. If she remembered her basic biology, individual gel packets were mimicking aspects of the human brain. Every now and then, a cluster would peak into a frenzy and then die back down in perfect synchrony. Some lines would go flat and restart a few moments later.

"It looks like the bioneural gel is generating brainwaves from several thousand humans and using them to intercept the signal from the Botha's hull emitters. I'm guessing it's being amplified through the deflector dish." She looked again at Ensign Powell, who wasn't responding to the chatter of the people nearby. "I can't tell you more about it without a bit more analysis."

"As soon as you can, let me know. I've been informed that we will be protected for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, I want to get out of here before the Botha find a way to adapt."

"Yes, Captain. Engineering out."

Torres watched her display and noticed that the signals were becoming slightly more agitated. Then, a handful stilled and Ensign Powell blinked her blue eyes, then shook her head and wavered. She tilted her sandy brown head upward and spoke to no one in particular.

"'Leena, what are you doing? I need to be here." In response, the bioneural console fizzled, went grey, and withdrew from her hands. The ensign looked down at her tortured flesh and swore. "Oh, that's ridiculous. I can get myself to sickbay. Yes, well, I don't let you use that excuse. No, I don't care that I might injure myself." She rolled her eyes. "I don't know why I'm even talking to you. It's not like you can hear me." Then she slumped. "I love you too. Can we at least think about that idea you had? Okay, good."

She looked up at her commanding officer. "Apologies, lieutenant," she said with a sheepish grin. "Ensign Irae has disconnected me from the direct interface and is sending me to sickbay. However, she has a plan she'd like us to discuss. She wants to know how much push you can take through the transmitter."

The shorter ensign walked unsteadily towards the bulkhead and waited for Torres to pass control of Engineering to Carey before beginning the journey to the Doctor.

Torres had to slow her usually determined steps to match the slower ones of her subordinate as they headed towards the turbolift. She noticed that the ensign wasn't in pain or even in real discomfort based on her bearing. The slowness was, she guessed, based on whatever conversation she was having with proteomics.

"What do you mean, how much push? Can't I just talk with her?"

Ensign Powell replied, "Negative, Lieutenant. She's gone beyond, well, verbal." B'Elanna's raised eyebrow prompted another sentence. "It's hard to explain. I'm just receiving emotions, sensory information, visions. I'm understanding what she's telling me as I'd understand my own thoughts." She gingerly lifted up her damaged limbs. "I'm also reaping the benefits of her being able to block my sense of pain. That's new."

"But you just had a conversation with her," noted Torres.

"I've found it makes sending information easier. It's hard for me to just conjure up an emotion or an intention. Giving it a voice helps.

The petite woman shook her head again. "Anyway, we've hashed out a potential plan and want to run it by you. So, how much information do you think you can manage if she sends it through the transmitter?"

They reached the turbolift and began the trip to sickbay. Torres pondered the question. She'd felt the presence of the other mind when she was being pulled out of her hallucination. It wasn't intrusive but it was certainly strange. There had been the time with that Betazoid boy back in the academy, but besides that little mishap, she'd never experienced a psychic communication. There was her concern about the oddness of this interface coupled with her growing and intense desire to see what was going in the ship's computer. Plus, there was her honor as an engineer at stake. Right now, one of her underlings was planning to use Voyager without Torres being included on the planning. That, she found very unsettling.

"Let's wait until I'm sitting down and we'll see," she said finally. The turbolift opened and the two walked in silence towards sickbay.

The Doctor looked at them expectantly as they entered. "Ah, yes, I was alerted that you would be arriving," he said with consternation. "It's quite unpleasant when one's programming is being interrupted by tiny pings of data from its bioneural connections."

"She's interfering with your holomatrix," Torres demanded, a touch of bloodrage rising in her mind. Oh, that would need to stop right then. It was one thing to play with the shields and another to toy with the Doctor's functioning.

His look was withering. "No more than a ringing doorbell would interfere with your functioning." He gestured with a finger towards the far wall. "I was informed you might need a console to work with while I attempted to repair Ensign Powell's all-too-common injuries. Oh, and Ensign Irae says that you should alert her when you're ready to begin."

B'Elanna Torres went over to the small screen and sat down. Alert her, she mused. She paged proteomics and received no response. Then, she closed her eyes and tried to isolate the tiny pulsing that sounded in her mind from the skull transmitters. She sent out a thought, something like a greeting. A bright light filled her gaze and responded with a sensation of pleasure and waiting. Torres found it slightly disorienting and the light subsided, almost apologizing. It signaled that it could wait until she was ready or Ensign Powell was available.

"Oh no you don't," she mumbled under her breath. "Show me what you're doing with my ship. Suddenly she was being bombarded with images and thoughts that were both hers and someone else's. She mustered as much strength as she could to follow them through, but she eventually passed out.

A few minutes later, having been revived by the appropriately miffed Doctor, she was in the conference room, excitedly reporting what she'd seen.

"We can modify the hull emitters and transport them onto the Botha ship, at which point they will use Voyager's modified neural screen to scramble the Botha's output at their end." She gestured towards the now-visible emitter diagram hovering in front of her. "We can send a sensory-distorting signal that shows Voyager heading in a totally different direction. We might even be able to make them think that they're following us, giving us enough time to escape."

The room did not completely share her enthusiasm. "How are we going to get the emitters through the shields without exposing us to the Botha's signal again," asked the Captain. "The transporters are unlikely to overcome the additional levels of graviton particles."

"A reverse tractor pulse with a shield wave," she answered, then realized no one else saw what she had seen and, she recognized, had no idea what she was talking about. "It would be a transient deactivating of shields in discrete locations long enough for our tractor beam to, for lack of a better term, 'throw' the Botha emitters back onto their ship."

"Through their shields," noted Tuvok, "using a technique I've never encountered. It is exceptionally risky and experimental, even for you."

Torres looked around the room again. The faces she had come to trust seemed skeptical and concerned. She was frustrated with their recalcitrance, a feeling mirrored by the quiet pulse in her head. It was difficult to tell her own growing ire from that of the ensign talking to her mind, which she pointed out mentally. The feeling subsided.

"It is, lieutenant," she said, "but I'm almost positive it will work. It's a variant of what the Botha attackers did to us. Remember that they only needed to remove 10% of our shields to get these devices through almost passively. Using the tractor beam should give us enough force if we distract them with phaser fire."

"There is the problem of fine tuning, B'Elanna," said Chakotay reasonably, "Modifying the shields in that way is almost impossible without significant preparation. Even getting the tractor beam to bend around the hull-"

He stopped talking and looked puzzled, then wavered. "Oh, yes, I see," he said after a few tense moments. "Are you certain?"

The captain, Tuvok, and Seven of Nine looked at him strangely. B'Elanna knew what he was experiencing. It was a message sent from a person who knew exactly what needed to be done and could express it in a far more easy way than mere words.

"Captain," he said, looking up, "Ensign Irae believes she can direct the emitters with guidance from Ensign Soohoo and Ensign Powell."

"How long will it take," asked the captain.

"It can be done as soon as the transmitters are reconfigured," replied the chief engineer.

The captain turned towards Seven of Nine. "Any progress on reprogramming the transmitters?"

"As requested, Captain, I investigated the feasibility of synthesizing and programming a diamond crystal similar to that used by the Botha. I have concluded that this may be done, though it will require significant processing power and raw materials to create enough crystals for every transmitter. Once created, each diamond must be targeted and programmed using a laser. I estimate it will take approximately one second per crystal."

"There are millions of devices," observed Tuvok. "We do not have access to that much raw carbon or the energy to refine it, nor do we have the time to reprogram the crystals before we reach the dock."

"That won't be necessary," replied the captain. She turned to B'Elanna. "How many of the transmitters on the hull still have their crystals?"

B'Elanna asked a faraway operator, who gave a wavering answer. "About one third. It's hard to tell which ones would still function or which have small amounts of damage."

The captain gave a satisfied nod. "You think you could find a way to reprogram the remaining crystals if we give you a template with which to work."

B'Elanna posed the question and was surprised when the living computer in proteomics did not respond immediately. She felt some amount of consternation and the patterns behind her eyes suddenly went into a world geometric shapes, circuit diagrams, a brief glimpse of the tractor beam, and replicator before subsiding. She got the distinct impression that this was not a solution Mileena was able to provide.

Luckily, B'Elanna Torres had not become chief engineer by relying on somebody else to do her work. She turned the problem over in her head, if not as quickly as a computer, than at least more informed. "If we configured the deflector dish to emit a thin beam laser, it could act as a carrier of the information. Then, we could target one of the shield emitters and it could refract the beam into a portion of the hull transmitters. But there's no way we could get more than 20% of the ship at any given time. The aft transmitters would be out of reach."

"That won't be a problem," said the captain. "We have a month's worth of transmitters on our home. There are only three ships in front of us and we need to send one clear message. I estimate several thousand will be sufficient to get our point across."

"What will become of the transmitters still on the hull, Captain," asked Chakotay.

Janeway crooked her eyebrow upwards. "Let's just say that if this works, we may be able to use them in the future." She turned towards her chief engineer. "B'Elanna, work with the bioneural team to make the necessary preparations for the tractor and transport. Mister Kim, find a way to generate a low-power, accurate beam from the deflector dish. Seven, you're with me. I want to see just what we can tell these crystals to do."

As the team departed the conference room, Janeway gave her chief engineer a parting comment. "Tell Ensign Irae that I am grateful for her insight."

B'Elanna related the information promptly and couldn't help the broad smile that crossed her face when the faraway operator at the other end the bioneural console shone with happiness. The captain must have noticed, since she smiled in return, but then turned away without saying anything else.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Janeway surveyed her bridge with grim approval. The addition of the two bioneural-modified crewmembers both weakened and strengthened her command. Rightly or wrongly, the captain still didn't completely trust Pablo Baytart. For all his skill and bioneural augments, he was still an inferior helmsman in her mind. He didn't have that natural knack for improvisation or the coolness under pressure that she wanted with her in a combat situation. However, with Tom Paris still a novice at his bioneural uplink, she'd have to make do.

Plus, Baytart was a far more comfortable choice than the young Alice Soohoo who had displaced Ensign Kim. Her only advantage, as far as Janeway could tell, was that she had enough bioneural training to get semi-accurate sensor readings while under Botha influence. Otherwise, Janeway's opinion of her was, well, dim. Soohoo had been an excellent exobiologist until she became an absolutely average one who was apparently dumping most of her work on her crewman, Ensign Golwat, to chase after perfection of her holodeck programs. Janeway squelched that thought as well. If not for Ensign Soohoo's intervention, none of this apparatus would be possible. Though Janeway's inner scientist howled in protest, her captain side needed to acknowledge that creating and maintaining a complex, practical instrument outweighed pure research, no matter how fascinating.

Turning her thoughts away from the new ensign, Janeway stared at the looming bulk of the Botha ships in front of her. It was increasingly discomforting to know that the only reason she could see them was due to technological intervention. She couldn't rely on her vision, nor could she count on the people closest to her. She was forced to trust these unknowns. And, of course, she was forced to put herself once again in close proximity with Mileena.

Not just that. She would need to depend on that young-Janeway corrected herself-older woman. For all the arguing and compromises that had gone into that console, it was now the best hope of steering the ship away from danger. Janeway's discomfort notched up a few levels. It was the unfortunate duty of any captain to ask her crewmembers to put themselves in mortal danger. Doing so with Mileena had given her a twinge of greater remorse. Part of it was her unconquered desire for the gorgeous half-Trill, but the other was born of Janeway's embarrassment. The captain had deliberately shied away from this new technology. Now, her own reluctance might be a rare liability.

"Captain," said B'Elanna over the comm. "We've completed all of the modifications to the deflector dish, the shield emitter, and the tractor beam. We're ready to engage them when you are."

The captain stood up next to Chakotay, who had been peering over Baytart's shoulder since they returned to the bridge. He rested a thick hand on the younger man's arm.

"Are we clear to begin, ensign," said Chakotay quietly.

"Yessir," said Baytart, slurring a little from his machine-induced semi-conscious state. Chakotay gave his shoulder a quick pat and did not remove his hand, to the captain's surprise. She realized that the two of them were sharing a slightly different bond now, one born of the communication over the relay facilitated by Mileena. The jealousy she might have felt otherwise was dwarfed by the intensity of the captain's focus.

"Mister Kim," stated Janeway flatly. "Fire the deflector dish. Send the program."

A blue beam came off of the ship and quickly reflected to an intricate web of light. Contained within these beams of the laser with the command the Captain had created with Seven. It was brutal, efficient, and short.

"Laser signal complete," he reported. "I sent the pattern of coverage through the sensor array. That should help Ensign Powell and Lieutenant Torres isolate them for transport."

Janeway glanced upwards and watched Ensign Soohoo give an imperceptible nod of thanks to Harry, who positively glowed in spite of himself.

"Ensign Soohoo, I want you to initiate the transporters and send the counter signal as soon as you detect that the Botha's shields are at under 90%. It has to be fast."

"Yes ma'am," said the exobiologist. Her voice was bitingly crisp, as if she weren't fully integrated with the machine, and slightly condescending. Janeway pursed her lips until the blood drained out, but restrained her comment.

Janeway sat down in her command chair and looked forward, gripping the armrests with total determination and focus. "Mr. Tuvok, bring weapons online."

"Unnecessary, Captain," said her tactical officer. "The phaser banks are already powered and weapon targeting systems locked on the structural weakpoints in their starboard shields of each ship." She could hear the cocked eyebrow in his voice. "All I need to do is initiate the weapon."

"Fire," said Janeway, her voice powerful and dark.

Three white beams of phaser fire shone across the viewscreen and illuminated the Botha's shields with a burst of energy.

"Botha ships powering weapons," said Soohoo in a thin, distant voice. "Diverting power to shields, transporters, tractor beam, and primary hull phaser banks."

All but tactical, ops, and the comm went silent and the backup lights from the red alert provided the only illumination. Janeway tapped her communicator, but it responded with a beep that let her know the ship's communication had gone down. Janeway shook her head. That would be the ensign working with the bioneural gel to redistribute its processing power where she thought it most appropriate. Nevermind that it would take days to get the replicators fully back online. They were clearly less important than the shields, as there would be no need for replicators if the shields did not hold. It was absolutely Vulcan in its perfect logic.

The bridge shook and everyone stumbled as the Botha fired back on Voyager. "Shields at 99%," noted Tuvok.

"Botha shields 95%," whispered Ensign Soohoo. "Overloading main phaser arrays."

Before Janeway had time to object, she watched a three brilliant lances of energy shoot forth and continuously, almost impossibly, illuminate the shields of the Botha mothership. The beam grew wider and deepened to a terrifying orange color as the computer intoned, "Warning. Primary hull phaser arrays approaching critical temperature. Automatic shutdown in 10 seconds."

The captain grabbed at her chair as Baytart pivoted Voyager to avoid the simultaneous barrage of fire from all three Botha ships. The phaser beams were uninterrupted as targeting was passed seamlessly from his mind to the ship to the other crewmembers.

"Botha shields at 88%," announced Tuvok. Chakotay nodded and informed the captain, "The tractor wave has begun."

A brilliant blue glow washed over the viewscreen and what looked like a meteor shower descended onto the massive angular vessels in front of them. Simultaneously, the enhanced phaser beam from Voyager cut off and the bridge was illuminated once more.

"Sensors are back online, captain," reported Ensign Kim. He tapped his console, then looked at Ensign Soohoo. Her hands moved deftly and she blinked a few times than cocked her head at him, but did not reply. His console must have given him some new information, since he continued, "It appears most of the transmitters in the deflector beam path have been transported off the hull. The Botha ships have dropped their shields and powered down their weapons. I think the transport worked."

The viewscreen came back to life in time for the entire bridge crew to witness the massive Botha ships turning away from Voyager and retreated towards the derelict flotilla. Janeway felt the tension on the bridge ratchet down several levels, but the relief was short-lived.

Tuvok interjected with sudden urgency. "Captain, they're powering their weapons."

"Tuvok, do have any weapons left," Chakotay demanded.

"Affirmative, commander. But our armament is limited to the aft torpedo bay and starboard phaser bank. Shall I prepare them?"

"Hold, Mister Tuvok. That will not be necessary." Janeway put up a cautioning hand and allowed a grim, slightly self-satisfied smile to cross her face.

The tether points surrounding the flotilla suddenly powered down and, a few moments later, a handful of ships broke away from their moorings and sped towards Voyager. Janeway watched the Botha ships travel past the escaping captives into the shipyard and, in quick succession, the motherships destroyed the docking arrays. Row after row of disengaged ships were blown back by the force of the explosion. The hulks of several ancient warships collided, forming a colossal mass of twisted metal that then slammed into a ship with an active warp drive. The core destabilized and exploded, engulfing still more vessels in a ball of fiery plasma.

Two other Botha vessels appeared within the shipyard. They were quickly dispatched by the lead mothership, which continued forward until it rendered the entire flotilla inert.

"We are being hailed, Captain," said Ensign Kim. "I count five separate channels."

"Inform the other ships that we will rendezvous the half-light year from here. Then, we can work on undoing some of the damage the Botha have done."

Janeway turned on her heel, walk towards her chair, and sat down. The smile broadened as she watched the Botha follow her command in a way she had never hoped. "Mister Baytart. Get us out of here. Warp eight."

"Yes ma'am," he responded absently. She felt the warp engines surge as Voyager turned and escaped from its trap.

"Captain, if I may ask, what did you tell Botha to do."

"I told them what they were doing was wrong and that they should put a permanent stop to it," she said crisply. "It seems they are following my order to the letter. Now, let's see what we can do about our newfound friends."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Tuvok surveyed the conference room warily. The past several hours had been a string of meetings, occasionally tense, with the five alien races now freed from the Botha. Each race posed its own challenge and Tuvok watched his captain attempt to resolve them all while still being cognizant of their collective proximity to the Botha homeworld. He knew every moment they spent negotiating increase the chances of the counterattack from the Botha, but they could not set out without resolving how and where they would travel to avoid further confrontations.

The Erez had been the most reasonable. They were merchant race whose territory ended five light years from what they believe to be the edge of active Botha space. They were happy to accompany Voyager on their journey out of Botha space, though they possessed no particular technology to screen the Botha weaponry. Short of dodging the attacks from the robot ships and reinforcing their shields, their people had learned decades ago to merely avoid the main Botha traveled routes and accept that the occasional trade ship would go missing when the Botha required some critical component.

In contrast, the Yath had been actively engaged in fighting the Botha, a battle they had been thoroughly losing for many years. They possessed technology that screened the Botha transmissions, which rendered most of their ships immune to further attacks. However, the sheer vastness of the Botha fleet meant that the Botha tended to destroy Yath ships instead of taking possession of them. As a result, the Yath trade routes and reinforcements had been decimated, shrinking their territory to a handful of star systems whereas before it had stood at over two dozen. The Yath's anti-Botha shielding had been damaged by a plasma storm and, for reasons unbeknownst to the Yath Captain, the Botha had elected to take the ship hostage instead of destroying it as usual. They were unusually reticent in volunteering their method of counteract the Botha and Tuvok made a note to discuss that particular wrinkle with the captain once she finished with her final meeting.

The Cru were unlucky newcomers to the world of space travel and had the misfortune to begin their first forays using warp drive near a race that actively cannibalized such technology. As such, their vessels had limited warp capability and were unable to travel at more than warp four for extended periods of time; the jump to warp eight had burned out most of their engines. Why their extremely underequipped vessel had seemed like an appropriate target for the Botha was unknown to the Cru, though Tuvok and the Captain both suspected the Botha often sampled new races to see if their technology were worth exploring and exploiting in the future. Unsurprisingly, the aliens were wary of Voyager's motive, as the majority of the alien races they had encountered in their short-term among the stars were unfriendly, at best.

Those three races had been reasonable, each in their own way. The Agok and Splenit ranged from obstructive to downright unfriendly in spite of Voyager's success in rescuing both vessels from the Botha flotilla. Neither was forthcoming either with the details of their race, the shielding or weapons on their ship, or any other information that might provide the cluster of vessels with any advantage over the Botha. In fact, most of the information about these two came from the data helpfully sent by both the Yath and Erez, but those data were from an outsiders' perspective. Deep insight into the workings of these nations would need to be extrapolated, which put Voyager at a distinct disadvantage.

The last of the aliens left and Janeway stood, then paced around the conference room. Tuvok watched Janeway's body animate as thoughtful energy flowed through her previously rigid posture. The captain was profoundly uneasy when being forced to stand still, mentally or physically. Those brief moments in which the captain was temporarily without an explanation had seen Janeway's entire demeanor change ever-so-slightly. She had tensed all her muscles and bowed the edges of her lips into a frown that reflected frustration more than mere determination. It was a physical manifestation of disquiet that Janeway was probably not aware of, but one Tuvok had grown quite accustomed to over the years.

Her skill as a negotiator and her insight into alien psychology had gotten them this far, but it was clear to the security officer that she was not pleased with their tactical position.

"Your assessment, Mr. Tuvok."

"Proximity to Botha space has colored these aliens interactions with the outside world. Even for this part of the Delta quadrant, their attitudes are unusually secretive."

"I agree," she said, not stopping her frenetic motion. "When a race like the Botha is nearby, any tactical advantage you may have makes you a less attractive target. Sharing that technology puts your own people at risk. Let the Botha go after the weaker races and reinforce your position. It's almost the opposite of working against the Borg."

"It is a logical path to take," he noted, but knew his captain well enough not to leave his statement unqualified. "Of course, in the long run that approach will be detrimental to the survival of each race, as the Botha will eventually change targets to obtain superior weaponry."

"Yes, Mr. Tuvok. However, I doubt I will be able to overcome that many years of rigid thinking in such precarious situation. In fact, I suspect that our companions will betray us as quickly as they can, hoping the Botha will choose Voyager instead of pursuing them."

Tuvok nodded his head and they both fell silent briefly. Tuvok spoke again. "I believe Voyager can travel safely alongside the Cru and Erez. Neither of their people seem inclined towards attacking us. The Yath may be persuaded, but only if we are willing to offer them some sort of trade. As for the other two…"

"I believe we can get them to leave us alone if we convince them we're getting the worst part of the deal."

"Indeed. What are your thoughts?"

"Let them know we will be protecting the slower moving ships on our way out and give them the option to go on ahead. I doubt either captain will object."

"That will leave us at a serious disadvantage," responded Tuvok evenly. "Even with repairs, the Cru vessel will not be capable of more than warp four without significant modification. It would be prudent for us to leave their ship behind and transport their people on Voyager."

"I would otherwise agree, Mister Tuvok, but the Prime Directive comes into play here. These people are far less technologically advanced than we are in leaving their ship behind would constitute to a serious blow to their space program. It's not like we can leave them with a shuttlecraft that is 200 years more advanced than what they're using now."

"Based on the maps we have received, then, it will take us another month to clear the majority of Botha space. During that time, we can expect to be continuously attacked. In fact, I believe the Botha will bring more forces to bear on us now that we have destroyed one of their shipyards and potentially caused a cascade of mechanical failure in their home system."

Tuvok watched the captain's face set firmly. She had come to get another conclusion that did not please her completely but that she realized was the best possible option.

"What if we continue to fight back using the transmitters? I assume they'll be sending fewer robotic ships and more manned missions, since they are capable of more complex maneuvers. What if we send that signal back with every ship that attacks us, reducing the Botha threat to the point where the surrounding people might have a chance of fighting back?"

The Vulcan nodded once more. It was a good plan, at least in theory, but he would have felt remiss had he not pointed out the obvious fault. "That will require Ensign Irae to remain in the bioneural console for the duration of our journey, at least until we can find a way to complete the modifications and maneuvers without her guidance."

Conflict and a tinge of pain crossed his captain's face. He had seen it a few times now when the half Trill's name had come up. He had suspected that the captain had developed a complex relationship with the ensign that extended beyond what might be expected. The captain had not hesitated when proposing her solution but she wrestled with the decision in a way she might not otherwise when speaking about an ensign.

"I'm aware, Mister Tuvok," she said quietly. "And I believe it would be wise for us to ask Mileena if she is able and willing to do this."

"I believe that she would assent because it is for the good of the ship. She has never been reticent in her desire to help Voyager." He paused when the captain did not immediately respond. "But that is not your main worry."

"It's not," she admitted. "I worry that this technology is still so foreign and yet we are asking the crew to trust it completely. The ensigns damage their bodies in a way that I'm still not comfortable with. I know I've asked Seven to do something similar and I know that, if required, any member of this crew would sacrifice themselves immediately to save us. But this is… different somehow."

"I believe it is a more intimate method of sacrifice," Tuvok proposed hesitantly. "We are asking them to change their way of thinking and being. There is something very different about the mind."

She didn't answer. She did however start moving and looked at him tiredly. "I believe, Mister Tuvok, that we should ask Mileena if she is able to complete what we're asking."

They made their silent way down to proteomics and passed through the forcefields with a few taps commands. The Ensign lay within the heavy chair, strapped in with her eyes closed and breathing slow. In the past, she might have been muttering to herself with her fingers twitching in time with the commands. Instead, she gave the impression of being within a deep sleep. It was only the brightly colored whirring of the computer next to her that evidenced the ensign's continued connections to the machine.

The captain approached and stopped at the edge of the wet lab, where the inner forcefields had their emitters. She looked thoughtful and hung her head. "Ensign Irae, I don't know if you can hear us, but I need to ask you about the bioneural console."

There is no change in the surroundings. The young woman within did not acknowledge that she'd been spoken to nor did the computer change its frenetic patterns. The captain sighed and tapped her communicator. "Janeway to Ensign Powell," said the captain. "Ensign, can you meet us in proteomics."

"Yes ma'am," came the rapid reply. "I'll be right there."

The Captain sat down in one of the external chairs and rubbed her forehead. Tuvok recognized that much of the crew had been up over 24 hours and that it would be prudent for a change of shift even though the situation was still dire. He would recommend it to the captain once their task was finished.

She looked wistfully towards the young woman within. "Mileena told me what she had hoped to accomplish. I have faithfully read her daily reports, as promised. I don't think I fully appreciated how much she wanted this, nor the upper limits of what she could do."

Tuvok pondered this for a moment. "I believe that, once this has passed, she will be happy to share her work with you." Janeway smiled a little but she didn't respond, and didn't have a chance to before the breathless young transporter operator breezed into the room.

"Captain, Lieutenant Commander Tuvok. What can I do for you?"

"I need you to ask Mileena whether she would be willing to spend several more weeks within the bioneural console combating the Botha," said the Captain quickly.

The engineer's eyes grew wide at the suggestion which, up until this moment, had been absolutely unthinkable. She glanced upward and tilted her head, still puzzled. Then, she must have been sent the message since her facial expression was replaced by one of peace and welcoming.

"There would be nothing more she would like than to serve Voyager in this manner. The ship and its crew mean everything."

"Even if it means she might suffer damage in some way?"

"That is not a concern," said the ensign without hesitation. "Her duty is to the ship and to you, captain. She will follow you into death itself." Ensign Powell realized she had over spoke and flushed crimson. "I mean, that's what I think she's saying. She's not really using words. I'm sorry, I…"

The captain's face was not unkind and she reached out a hand to the ensign's shoulder. "It's quite all right, Ensign. The sentiment is greatly appreciated. Thank you. Both of you."

"Captain," said the ensign hesitantly, "if Mileena is going to be in here full-time, I would like to request that someone be stationed in proteomics to monitor her and the hardware."

The Captain looked at Tuvok and Tuvok nodded. "That is acceptable. I assume that you, Ensign Soohoo, and Ensign Baytart ought to take shifts here."

"Yes, sir," replied the ensign. "Though any crewmember would be appropriate with some training on the console."

"Very well," said the Captain. "I'll speak to commander Chakotay about adjusting the staffing. In the meantime," the captain looked at the ensign thoughtfully, especially at the skin around her fingertips. "I believe you and the other two are due for some rest and regeneration. If the bioneural console is going to be operating full-time, I can't have the three people most familiar with it in poor health."

Without stopping, the captain looked over at her security officer. "And before you add anyone else to the list, Mister Tuvok, I will apply that to the entire ship as soon as we have spoken to our cohorts outside."

Three shared a tired smile and then left proteomics. The door shut on the silent, dark-haired ensign within.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Mileena held court every day and she didn't know it, mused Lauren Powell. In fact, there were more people coming in and out of proteomics now that Mileena was within the console then there had been for the entire duration of Mileena's time on Voyager. The constant stream of people came to use the bioneural console, to consult with one of the bioneurally-experienced crewmembers, or to check on Mileena herself.

At the end of every alpha shift, Neelix would bring in whatever leftovers he had gathered from last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast. He'd walk into the lab, laden with a pot of some horrifying something or other, and explain what he would be feeding the Ensign as the forcefields were deactivated. Then, with surprising delicacy, he would pour the entire gloppy thing into the dialyzer apparatus without letting a single drop splash on either his gaudy coat or the floor of the wet lab. He would tap the sides a few times and look at the level to make sure the fluid was flowing freely. Then, he would cast a slightly wary yellow eye over at the Ensign and shake his head.

More often than not, he would say, "Mileena, we're all glad you're doing this, but I can't wait to feed you the normal way. The minute you're out of here, I am preparing you the biggest spread of Trill desserts that you have ever seen" With that, he would breeze out of the lab, all spots and unusual hair, off to feed the rest of the ship something far more palatable. Usually.

Shortly thereafter, the Doctor would appear and wave his tricorder menacingly over the ensign's body. He'd frown and tut, click his tongue and make snide comments. He'd occasionally take some medical instruments and wave them over a port for reading, then frown and produce a large hypospray of unknown materials. They would be injected and, a few minutes later, the same elaborate routine of scanning would produce a Doctor in slightly better spirits.

At least, that had been the pattern until recently. Now, the Doctor's visits were longer and longer and his face grew more and more troubled and pensive. The comments stopped and the single hypospray was replaced with a small phalanx of devices, from hyposprays to neural stimulators. He didn't share his results with Lauren, considering her at best some sort of hearth tender, and would leave generally without saying goodbye. His visits made Lauren the most uncomfortable, if only because he was the one person on the ship who treated Mileena most like a malfunctioning piece of equipment instead of person who happened to be bound to a machine.

Somewhere at the start of beta shift, Seven of Nine would arrive and take a report from Lauren about the past day's processing. The reports would vary and Seven would inevitably make some convoluted set of suggestions in the hopes of improving functionality by a few decimal points. Lauren would comply, at least verbally, and go about convincing Mileena that this was indeed worth the time it would take away from solving the Botha problem

As predicted, Voyager was under constant attack from the Botha, but the threat had diminished steadily as they left Botha space. The team had gotten extremely proficient at reprogramming and redirecting transmitters, to the point where a set of transmitters could be beamed back at the attackers within seconds of Voyager's shields dropping by 10%. Each attack left a fresh batch of almost undisturbed transmitters that could be refined and prepared for the next flyby. Lauren had hoped the process could be disengage from the bioneural console, but between the precision required for the tractor and the additional shield screening needed to thwart any new attack, it simply wasn't possible. Mileena would continue to stay within the machine, no matter how much Lauren wished otherwise.

Lauren missed her friend, she admitted to herself. As nice as it was to have the ability to beam emotions and thoughts to somebody, they couldn't hold a real conversation. Mileena was so distracted with helping run the ship at she couldn't spare many thoughts for her friends. Lauren knew everyone close to Mileena felt that way, and, based on what she could perceive, Mileena probably missed them back. She was more distant now, less like a warm voice in Lauren's mind and more like an idle whisper from another room. But they had agreed to this and, no matter what it did to their relationships and their bodies, they had to see it through. It was ironic that what they had tried so hard to achieve was suddenly become a burden they all wish to put down.

Lauren was working on refining the transporter protocol, hoping to automate it just that little bit more, when her commanding officer walked in. Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres strode towards the main panel that served as CRE's direct terminal and tapped a few things in on it, acknowledging Lauren with a quick nod of her fierce Klingon features. Lauren offered a respectful nod of her head and returned to her reconfiguration.

A few minutes later, her commander asked her about the work she was doing and, absently, Lauren gave a brief rundown. Her superior was surprisingly brusque, given how little interaction the two of them had. Prior to the recent upset over Mileena's below the deck hardware and material acquisition, Lauren and the Lieutenant had very little to do with each other, save intermittent performance reports. And after the month-long reprimand, the Chief Engineer seemed to have forgiven the better part of her staff, though Lieutenant Carey was still definitely on the half Klingon's bad side. So Lauren wasn't quite sure what she had done wrong, especially since she was actively engaged in a project that most people agreed was incredibly difficult.

A few more sentences into their conversation, Lieutenant Torres said, "You didn't even realize you switched over, did you?"

Looked over, a small look of horror coming across her pale features. Klingon. They'd been speaking Klingon. However, the gold clad superior officer seemed completely amused instead of put off.

"Yes ma'am," said Lauren, rapidly switching back into the standard English used by most of Starfleet. "I apologize if I offended you."

"Why would I be offended?" Lieutenant Torres gave a toothy smile. "I was sort of curious to see how long it would take you to realize that you were speaking a different language. But I'm guess that this was something that happened relatively often in your past?"

"Yes ma'am," said Lauren again, conscious of the pinkish flush spreading across her otherwise pale, freckled features. She wasn't quite sure where the conversation was supposed to go, so she let her superior officer take the lead before she somehow broke protocol or otherwise triggered the unpredictable shift in her commander's mercurial mood.

"So," the half Klingon said, taking a few steps closer, pulling over one of the swivel chairs, and sitting down in a relaxed heap on the fake leather. "Where did you learn to speak Klingon so fluently? And don't say Starfleet. Any dialect that includes the casual insults you sprinkled into conversation sprung up on some colony a few hundred light years from Qu'noS and not in some classroom."

"I am so sorry, Lieutenant," stammered Lauren. "I forgot that most of the way we spoke about equipment was…"

"Likely very accurate, am I correct? Engine parts that were seconds from coming apart at the rivets? Shield emitters that were 100 years out of date and held together with sweat and prayers? You don't have to explain. I've worked with a good number of tu'HomI'raH gHoD in my time, enough to know when you need to blow off steam to keep from destroying the entire thing with the microspanner. So, as I said. Where did you learn it?"

"I, er, grew up on a colony called Alpha Morelis. It's near Deep Space K-7."

The engineer looked thoughtful. "I've never heard of it."

"Yes, well, most people who lived there prefer it that way. It was an interesting bunch of not-quite-dishonored Klingons and not-quite-expelled Federation citizens. And I would still be there except everyone in my family thought it would be a good idea for me to join Starfleet instead of spending the rest of my life attempting to keep freighters from falling apart on their jump to warp. So here I am." She tapped the console gently, though she really wanted to bring her fist down on it to make point. "Cobbling together yet another bad idea from whatever I can find sitting around on the ship."

"So it is. You and I should have a talk about exactly what the Klingons do with their engineering, yes?"

Lauren gave a hesitant nod. She wasn't quite sure what this had accomplished, other than some sort of uneasy bonding with the chief engineer. She looked at B'Elanna Torres again and ventured a question. "Lieutenant, I noticed you're not wearing your transmitters. Have they been malfunctioning?"

The Klingon looked a combination of thoughtful, sheepish, and vaguely annoyed. "Yes, well, I decided to take them off. I mean, I appreciate all that the ensign and you and everyone else had done with the bioneural console. And hell, if it weren't for this entire contraption we wouldn't be where we are now. But, I prefer to work with the ship in my own way and on my own terms." She gave a half smirk and shook her head then tilted it towards the silent, blue clad half Trill within the wet lab. "And I swear a few times that I tried to make changes, the computers got annoyed at me. I don't need that kind of opinion from equipment on my ship."

Lauren gave a soft chuckle. "Yes, they do that. The entire system has become a little bit more opinionated than it was before. It's odd to talk to machinery in this way." She found herself suddenly serious and contemplative. "It's odd to talk to Mileena in this way, too."

There are both silent for a minute or two, surrounded by the constant thrum of the warp engines and the rhythmic pulsing of the dialyzer.

"Do you need any time off," said the chief engineer, breaking the silence awkwardly in a tone that suggested she didn't quite know what else to do. "I know Chakotay usually in charge of staffing but, hell, you're on my team. You all been working nonstop and I see what you do when you, you know, work the console." She gestured towards the Ensign's hands, healed now but often charred or bleeding.

"Thank you Lieutenant, but no. I'll take a little time off when she's out of here."

"I'll hold you to that, Ensign." The lieutenant stood up and tugged down her uniform. She gave what seemed to be an uncomfortable, albeit approving, nod. "As you were."

The lieutenant strode out, leaving Lauren to her thoughts. At least, until the next person came in to bring her troubles to the foot of the bioneural console. Then, at the end of her shift, she locked down the entire lab before Alice came in. She dropped the forcefield between herself and Mileena, pulled over a chair and sat helplessly next to her friend. Then, she'd spill all the secrets and fears that she had, while idly brushing the ringlets away from Mileena's thinning face or carefully examining the flesh borders of the ports. She wouldn't use the transmitters to speak and instead, she would fill the room with the sound of her voice and her very presence, hoping this would be enough to convince Mileena that when this is all over, she should come back. Then, Lauren would leave too.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

By his own choosing, the Doctor was an infrequent visitor to the conference room. While he was considered senior staff and valued member of the crew, he preferred remaining in Sickbay, where he could make the most difference with the least aggravation. And, he said with some internal consternation, it was unlikely that the crew of Voyager would listen to his protestations over various military maneuvers that would inevitably lead to loss of life and limb. Thus, he busied himself with scientific research, academic pursuits, and of course, his writing until the rarefied occasions where he was specifically requested. This was one such situation.

Voyager was still a week away from the edge of Botha space and still under siege by the flailing attackers, but talk had already turned towards what they would do once they were safe. The Erez promised to bring them to what was the most luxurious, most beautiful relaxation colony in their space, all-expenses-paid of course. Relative aesthetics notwithstanding, Captain Janeway had agreed the crew needed some extended shore leave after what amounted to almost two months of constant barrages. This had been in no small part due to the Doctor's private observation to the captain that the psychological scars wrought by the Botha hallucination would once again take some time to heal. The few snippets of conversation he overheard from many crewmembers suggested the majority of the hallucinations had been drastically unpleasant this time around. Perhaps it was vengeance for the humiliation Voyager had wrought on the Botha the first time they had met.

However, the task at hand did not concern the general welfare of the crew. Instead, the Doctor found himself being the bearer of bad news relating to a specific individual, namely the Ensign Mileena Irae. The Doctor handed a padd of his observations to the Captain and regarded the somber faces of the senior staff, plus the trio of ensigns who had work so closely with Mileena. His results from his study in the proteomics lab would not be to anyone's, most especially the captain's, liking. The flickering of uncomfortable emotions around the table confirmed his prediction. Well, as a hologram, he experienced no such conflict in the face of hard data. With that thought in mind, he began his presentation.

"As you can see, prolonged exposure to the machine at maximal gain has generated a number of significant physiological changes in Mileena. Her body has formed large internal fibrous connections with the implants that include new axonal growths. In addition, a significant volume of new cortical neurons, usually unheard of in an adult, have been generated and are now integrated into the brain transmitters."

"So she's growing into the ship," said the Captain slowly, "and the ship is growing into her."

The Doctor assented. "Yes. While the original model did predict some amount of reciprocal physical interaction between the implants and her body, this degree of conductivity was not expected. The Ensign and I had discussed methods of disconnecting the implants from her body once the six-month experimental period completed, but it would seem that we will need to embark on a much more ambitious program once she has been separated, if we can remove the hardware at all. The bigger problem, however, is the cognitive connection."

"Cognitive," said the captain, with more urgency.

"Indeed, captain. I have determined that approximately 20% of her normal neural function is now being handled by CRE and, to a lesser extent, the main computer. Much of her prefrontal cortex is behaving in a way usually associated with sensory function, but based on the crew's report, it does not seem that she has become less logical or otherwise impaired. She is merely improving the efficiency of her mind by using the computer."

"So if you disconnect her at this point, we risk leaving her brain-damaged, or permanently comatose," stated the captain, her voice low and troubled.

Most of the room would suspect she was merely concerned for the safety and health of their fellow crew member, but he knew better. The captain's personal tie to the young woman was weighing heavily on her mind, though he trusted his captain enough to know she would never makes a significant a choice based on anything less than objectivity. Except, he amended to himself, when she added a fair amount of emotion as she saw appropriate, but always for the betterment of the crew, and never for her personal gain.

"Given how much of her cortical function would remain outside of her body, that is the most likely outcome," said the Doctor. "In light of this, the initial protocol established by Seven of Nine and Commander Chakotay would need to be significantly altered to compensate for this recent development."

"How long do you think we have until the process is completely irreversible," inquired Chakotay. He had been designated, unwisely in the Doctor's opinion, as one of the people who would guide the ensign out of the console once Mileena's services were no longer needed. Well, he was about to be deeply disappointed.

"To be honest, I'm not completely certain. Ordinarily, I would say there might be a way to initiates a recession of neural growth coupled with some sort of data transfer through the bioneural network, but there is another wrinkle, as you might say."

He gestured to Ensign Powell, who assented with a nervous nod of her head. She had come to him with an observation of her own that he could not confirm, so the data she had gathered were suspect. However, this was her area of expertise and he was willing to take the opinion of a layperson, in spite of his better instincts. Therefore, she had been brought to his meeting with the senior staff. He hoped she wouldn't embarrass herself.

"Over the time, Mileena has spent in the machine, I have noticed that she is becoming less human. It's easier to talk to her in some ways because," Ensign Powell paused and shook her head. "It's… It's hard to explain."

The Doctor momentarily regretted allowing her to speak, as she was not presenting her case adequately, but she found her voice once again. "I send a command and it is handled immediately. More efficiently than before. But there's no emotion behind it. Before, it was like speaking with a friend who instantly understood what I needed and took great pleasure in assisting me. Now, she's more and more becoming just a very responsive computer. There's no humor and no conversation. It's not her in there anymore"

Although it was Chakotay who spoke, the Doctor kept his eyes on the captain. There, beneath her implacable command façade, he saw tiny lines of sadness and regret. "So you're saying it may be too late already."

The ensign didn't respond immediately, and when she did, it was a careful lie. "I am not equipped to say, sir." Which, the Doctor took to mean, yes. Ensign Powell believed it was absolutely too late. The Doctor, therefore, picked up her train of thought.

"We cannot be sure, commander, but obviously every day we leave Ensign Irae in the console makes successful disconnection less likely. It is my recommendation as her doctor that this experiment be stopped immediately."

The captain turned to her senior crew when he finished speaking. "B'Elanna, Tuvok. Do you believe there is a way we can continue through Botha space without using the bioneural console to shield the ship or redirect the transmitters."

"The Yazh are now willing to share their technology. However, we will still need to outfit Voyager with the appropriate shield emitters before we can make the transformation. This will take several days. It will also leave the Erez and Cru unprotected, as I doubt the Yazh will extend their technology to what they perceive as rival races," stated the Vulcan security officer.

"We will also lose the ability to remove the transmitters from the hull," remarked Harry Kim, unasked as usual. "I've compiled sensor readings from the past few attacks. Shortly after we left the sector, there were a chain of explosions in the satellite belts surrounding the star system, probably from the manned ships opening fire on their own defenses. Your plan is working, Captain. The Botha are attacking themselves." His face was lit up with excitement, completely inappropriate given the serious subject matter at hand. Leave it to Harry to get distracted in the face of such seriousness.

"And I have heard from the Erez captain that other races near Botha space are experiencing fewer attacks since we have been redirecting Botha transmitters. He reports a few races are thinking of banding together to push back against the threat," added Chakotay, a mixture of hope and concern in his somber voice. "We seemed to be turning the tide against the Botha."

The Doctor watched the captain slowly rise from the table and walk to the window. She rested one pale hand on the bulkhead and bent her head. He knew the stance well, as he had watched her wrestle with so many issues while gazing at the streaks of stars for inspiration.

"Throughout human history, we have held true to the tenant of putting the greater good above the individual. Every Starfleet officer understands she may make the ultimate sacrifice to defend the Federation. And Ensign Irae has shown over and over again that she is ready to preserve Voyager at the cost of her own life. But do we have sufficient cause to ask that from her right now?"

"The Botha had inflicted tremendous damage on the people in this sector," said B'Elanna urgently. "This might be the first time in decades that these races have a chance to fight back. If we stop now, we risk both the other ships and the futures of their people. Certainly she would agree to that."

The captain's eyes fluttered downwards, still troubled and contemplative. "Voyager is in the Delta Quadrant because we looked at the future of the Kazon and the Ocampa and determined, without hesitation, that our intervention was what stood between them and a terrible future. We do not have that surety now. There is no one in this room who can say that the difference between failure and success against the Botha lies in the number of single sorties against their defenses. So we are asking Ensign Irae to sacrifice her humanity, which she loved and clung to so deeply, for a hypothetical tactical advantage."

She focused her eyes, piercing blue and determined, on each member of the crew. At times like this, the Doctor admired the strength and direction of his captain. She had come to a conclusion that would be unshakable in its rationale and unquestionable by the crew.

"I value the lives of my crew enough that not one of you, not any of you, will be used as currency to buy half measures against our foes. The Botha have taken enough from us. They will not claim one more crew member." She took a quick breath and looked at Tuvok. "Inform the other ships that we can no longer continue to redirect the transmitters. Have the Yazh make preparations to teleport their technicians onto Voyager and the other vessels as soon as we drop out of warp. Reassure them that their technology will be removed and all plans deleted as soon as we leave Botha space."

The dark Vulcan nodded. "Yes, Captain."

"Mister Kim, work with the technicians on the Yazh ship…but be discreet. We need to convince them that were not taking away their only tactical advantage."

"Of course, Captain," said the young man, clasping his hands in front of him in restrained excitement. The Doctor suppressed a groan, but recognized that Harry Kim was perfect for this job. His lack of guile and absolute awkwardness in every situation made him seem completely nonthreatening, which is exactly what this task required.

"B'Elanna, keep trying to find a way to offload as much of the shielding as possible onto the main computer without drawing on Ensign Irae. Use the detachable elements of the bioneural network as the base for your work."

The engineer responded affirmatively. Tentatively entering the conversation, Ensign Powell asked, "Would you like Ensign Baytart, Ensign Soohoo, and I to help mimic the signal? We are able to interface with the bioneural gel without going through Mileena."

Janeway shook her head. "No. I will not transfer this burden simply because it does less damage. No one else will be sacrificed for this cause. Work with engineering to reconfigure the components but otherwise do not attach yourself to the machinery." The young woman whispered an "Aye, Captain," pale beneath the unwavering gaze of her Captain.

"Doctor. Seven. I need you to begin designing a protocol that will disengage Ensign Irae from the bioneural console. Find a way to access the Ensign's consciousness and see if she is aware of a way to detach herself from the machinery."

The Doctor looked at the Borg, who nodded curtly to him. "Yes, Captain," he replied. "I will keep you informed."

Captain surveyed her crew once again. "Thank you. Dismissed."

The crew filtered out to their various duties, with Chakotay lingering behind, probably asking the Captain why he hadn't been told to do something. The Doctor was about to return to Sickbay when Chakotay put up a hand to stop him. Seven of Nine also stayed behind, and they clustered near the Doctor in a way he found very uncomfortable.

"Captain," said Chakotay, "we need to discuss part of the detachment protocol."

The Captain frowned and then looked puzzled. "What about it?"

A laden glance was exchanged between the Borg and the dark-haired commander. Seven looked hesitant and slightly embarrassed. The Doctor realized she was struggling with some sort of internal conflict and not, for once, about her own place in Voyager or some social matter.

"The original protocol called for Chakotay and I to be present when Ensign Irae terminated her connection with the bioneural network," said Seven, her matter-of-fact voice colored slightly by discomfort. She clasped her hands behind her and tilted her blond head down to match the Captain's gaze. "At the time, I agreed. However, on further reflection, I believe this is not the best course of action."

"How so," said the Captain, not divulging any other emotion besides very restrained curiosity.

"I believe that you are the superior choice for interacting with Ensign Irae." The Borg looked to the side, and fidgeted very slightly, like a child being forced to tattle on one of her friends. "You were indispensable during my separation from the Borg. You helped me understand and regain my humanity. I found your presence very…reassuring. I am not equipped to offer that kind of emotional support."

Her manner resumed its normal blunt confidence. "Of course, once the ensign is more acclimated, I will be able to instruct her on how best to operate without the constant input from the computers. That skill I possess."

Janeway's smile was soft and wistful. She put a hand on the Borg's tall shoulder. "I believe you are equipped to offer a wide variety of support, Seven, and that you do yourself a disservice when you doubt what you could do for the ensign."

"Nevertheless," countered the Borg, "I believe this is the correct course of action. Commander Chakotay supports this decision in spite of the ensign's strenuous objections at the time."

Janeway's eyebrows nearly leapt off her forehead and she pivoted towards her first officer. "Really?"

The Maquis commander's gaze was, thought the Doctor, inscrutable and full of depth. And the voice that emitted from his stolid face was more somber than even the Doctor expected.

"Yes, Captain. You, more than anyone else, can help her understand what she needs to do to become herself once again. You share a deep connection and will be able to reach her in ways that neither Seven nor I can."

The Doctor expected him to elaborate, but the commander was unusually taciturn and said, "I am going to assist Tuvok with the negotiations. Thank you, Captain. Please let us know what you decide."

The Captain dropped her stunned expression and returned to her normal command posture. "Of course, Chakotay. Seven. Dismissed."

The two crewmembers exited to the bridge, leaving the Captain and the Doctor alone in the conference room. She didn't acknowledge him and walked back over to the window, rubbing her head once again and looking for answers beyond Voyager.

The Doctor decided to take a proactive approach. "I believe your decision about the bioneural console was unbiased and the correct course of action, both medically and ethically. I also believe Commander Chakotay's assessment is accurate and I will incorporate his suggestion into whatever protocol I…we…develop."

The captain did not respond, but the Doctor noticed her posture sagged and her head dropped just a bit more. He thought about inquiring as to her thoughts, but reconsidered. There was something she needed to say and, for once, his counsel would not provide her with easy answers. Finally, she broke the silence.

"How can I offer her anything? I rejected her," said the captain, her voice barely above a whisper and gravelly with emotion. "She came to me and I turned her away."

The Doctor was unperturbed. He had assumed this was the logical outcome of their initial interactions, as he had detected no increase in happiness in either the captain or the ensign since the two had become aware of their mutual attraction.

"You will not this time," he said firmly. "Somewhere in that machine is a woman whose feelings for you have not diminished, no matter what the ensigns say. I also know that you have unsuccessfully rid yourself of your own desire, which I consider an acceptable failure. And regardless of your bond, you are still an expert in what it means to be human. Part of that is caring deeply for someone who has lost her humanity and who so desperately wants to find it again, even if it means causing one or both of you pain."

The captain did not acknowledge him, nor did he expect her to. Instead, the Doctor ended simply, "I will be in Sickbay if you need me."

He returned to the comfortable, brightly lit environment of Sickbay and began pouring over everything he knew about machine – organic interfaces to see if there is a way to undo what Mileena had done.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Kathryn Janeway lay in her bed and contemplated, once again, the smooth contours of the bulkhead above her. She had retired at the end of beta shift and collapsed almost immediately due to sheer exhaustion, but her rest had been fitful and now she found herself painfully awake and unable to drift off once again. She ticked off, as a way of calming herself, all the progress being made on her ship. They were nearly out of the Botha space and experiencing far fewer attacks as a result. The Yazh were reluctantly providing their technology and a handful of their engineers were working with her own staff to make the modifications for all four vessels. The crew was no longer experiencing ill effects from the Botha hallucinations and Voyager was returning to some semblance of normal, as much as it could while still under siege. Yet she knew the main source of her insomnia, as it had been on too many other occasions. The woman for whom she developed such strong emotions, the beautiful dark Mileena, was very possibly lost her forever because they had both taken a tremendous risk for the good of the crew.

Janeway curled herself up around her pillow, pushed the thoughts out of her head, and forced her thoughts towards topics more conducive to sleep. She tried cataloguing plasma conduits by deck and reorganizing the periodic table by element name instead of chemical properties, but it was no use. Her mind fixated completely on the half Trill's presence within the computer, both physical and mental. What might it mean for Mileena's disconnection and the relationship, whatever it might be, with the captain should the young woman emerge? There was the matter of the reawakening itself. Did she and Mileena actually share an unspoken, true connection that could awaken Mileena from her computer dream? Chakotay had not spoken that thought aloud and perhaps he meant the bond that Janeway had with every crewmember, for she knew each one of them would gladly give their lives for her and trust her implicitly. But perhaps he meant the romantic inclination that tortured Janeway and, likely, Mileena in turn. Perhaps he knew something that she very desperately tried to keep secret.

She had broken that silence about her relationship with Mileena to the Doctor for the first time in weeks but that gave her no peace. His words did not reassure her and she went over and over her decision in a way the crew would never suspect. She was always resolute when she chose for the crew, all deliberations called off the moment she put a plan in action. They never knew that she would spend many moments in deep contemplation and reconsider what she had chosen to make sure that no element of bias had colored her judgment nor that she had broken some tenet of Starfleet or overlooked some crucial information. Janeway could not imagine sacrificing any member of her crew in this way under any circumstance that was not so dire and so critical that it would otherwise cost the ship. Would she have given it more deliberation though had she not so desperately wanted to hear Mileena's voice once more or to catch her eyes in the hallway and exchange some little sentence of connection? Would she have allowed the project to continue to the end of Botha space had she not longed for another chance to wrap the woman in her arms and let her own pale skin flush red with desire against the ensign's live and beautiful form?

This brought on the terrible memory of the Botha hallucination, the outrageously erotic moment she shared with the ensign coupled with the subsequent horror and desecration of Mileena's body and essence. Janeway had been rapidly assured, once the Botha's hallucinations broke, that Mileena had sustained no physical injury and that her personal hallucination had passed more quickly than those of the rest of the crew. But the nagging doubt remained. What demons did that the older woman see behind her eyes before she evicted the Botha from her consciousness…or was Mileena gifted with a beautiful, erotic encounter of her own?

The exhausted captain sat up in her bed and pinned her wafting red hair up on top of her head with a concerned palm, then let it drop. She rubbed her eyes and checked the chronometer. 0200 hrs. Certainly not a time for her to be awake if she wanted to continue successfully through Botha space. But she couldn't just keep lying here, turning what if's and futures over in her mind futilely. She rolled out of her bed with a groan and dressed in a set of pale blue and gray civilian clothes before making her decision to take a walk to clear her head. Perhaps she would visit the holodeck and spend some time walking through rolling Irish Hills, conversing with some philosopher whose droning treaties might put her back into a drowsy mood.

Naturally, she found her feet at the door to proteomics. She hesitated before it and then sighed. No one would question the captain going to check on one of the largest projects on the ship. No one would doubt that she were there for anything other than professional courtesy. And certainly, the captain's reputation as being a workaholic would not raise any suspicion as to her reasons for being awake so late at night and visiting a scientific lab. And yet, she stood there hesitating, coming up with excuses should anyone discover her, before tapping in the codes to disable the layers of forcefields around the lab.

To her surprise, she found that no forcefields were in place and the door to proteomics slid open with a quiet whoosh. The outer lab was dimly lit by consoles running background processes while their various operators slept or attended to other duties. But the wet lab was inhabited, and not just by the object of Kathryn's desire. Beside the still, impaled form of Mileena sat Ensign Soohoo, curled up on one of the other console chairs and reading aloud from a padd she held in one hand. The other hand rested gently on the edge of Mileena's right arm, not enough to disturb where the probes were fixed into Mileena's body, but still giving the impression that the petite blue-clad woman was holding her friend's hand and chatting with her.

Ensign Soohoo twitched slightly when the captain entered the room and, carefully avoiding the equipment, stood at attention as the captain entered. "Captain," she said rapidly. "How may I help you?"

Janeway tasted that odd dislike she had of the young woman and swallowed it with a smile. "At ease, ensign. I recognized I had not been down here since shortly after the Botha attack and wanted to check on the bioneural console." She realized it was a lame excuse and mentally checked off all the potential questions. Couldn't you do that during duty hours? Why would she do it in the middle of the night? She formulated the rest of her explanation.

"I hoped to find a time when the bioneural console would be under less stress so that I didn't disturb any of the remaining work being done while we attempted the disengagement protocol."

The ensign did not sit down and clutched the padd tighter until her pear-colored knuckles went white. Perhaps Ensign Soohoo also felt dislike for the Captain but did not have the luxury of rank with which to indulge that emotion. Her dark eyes never left the captain's face and her breathing became shallow and rapid, enough that Janeway was mildly concerned.

"Is everything okay, Ensign," asked Janeway, attempting to ascertain the source of the ensign's distress.

"Permission to speak freely, ma'am."

That was never a good sign, especially from such a junior officer. "Well, given the time of night, I suppose that's inevitable." She attempted to break the mood with a little wry humor that was absolutely lost on the woman in front of her. On both women in front of her.

The ensign took a breath and steadied her voice even if her body betrayed her emotion. "I have heard about the protocol changes and I do not agree with them. I do not believe that you are the correct person to guide Mileena out of the bioneural console."

Janeway was torn between surprise at both the nature of the message and how frankly it was being conveyed. However, Janeway was not in the habit of breaking agreements and she understood that speaking freely did allow ensigns to give their opinions, no matter how ill received they might be. So Janeway employed her usual diplomacy instead of informing the ensign that she was relieved of duty and should spend some time alone, confined to quarters, reconsidering how she would speak to the captain in the future.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, ensign, but this is a matter that I have discussed with Chakotay and Seven of Nine. They both feel that I will be able to bring her back from the console."

"And not me," said the ensign flatly. "And not Pablo. And not Lauren. Even though we have been her friends for five years and we had shared so much with her. Even though we have taken her from death to life a half-dozen times, mourned our friends together, suffered and loved with each other. We are being excluded…for what? Are we just not good enough?"

The trembling woman in front of her shook a little bit more and Janeway saw tears beginning to pull at the signs of her eyes. She noticed that the transmitters that Soohoo had worn previously were nowhere to be found and that CRE seemed unusually dormant given the close proximity of two of its strongest operators.

Janeway took a few steps closer, less angry and shocked than saddened. "Mileena herself created those protocols and targeted Chakotay and Seven as the people who should initiate them. And, as I have come to know her, I believe she wanted to spare you from witnessing whatever might happen when she was detached from the machine." The young woman did not respond and Janeway inched a little closer, not knowing what she wanted to achieve, only that being nearby was the correct answer.

"I watched Lauren helped Mileena from that chair after the Erato battle. I watch them both suffer. I know Mileena cares about you and, in her promises to Chakotay when she reevaluated the protocols, said she didn't want to hurt you anymore. She is entrusting us with this task because, in some ways, she knows we can absorb her suffering because we do not feel it as acutely."

In her heart, Janeway knew that sentence was half a lie. Janeway had felt every second of that breathless suffering during the defrosting as keenly as if she were experiencing it herself and suspected that the growing emotions she felt for Mileena would soon equal, and maybe surpass, what Mileena's many friends felt for her.

Ensign Soohoo dropped her head and sat down again, placing the padd on her lap. The captain walked forward and brought one of the chairs next to the forcefield that separated the two compartments. All dislike for the young woman had faded away and now Janeway busied herself trying to console somebody who is suffering in a way that Janeway understood all too well.

"I know how painful this is for you," said Janeway. "I know it is like to watch someone battle for her life and to feel absolutely helpless to aid in any way."

Tears flowed openly down the ensign's rounded cheeks and tapped onto the blue of her uniform in darkening pools. "I felt her slipping away. Every day, a little less of her was there to talk to. Every day, the emotions dimmed and the chatter quieted. I always suspected this would happen, that she would embrace the machine more than she embraced her outside world." She didn't raise her head and she continued.

"Mileena always had this place of darkness that she hinted at. Not just the death of her lab or her isolation from her family. Something more, something the terrified her and shamed her by the same measure. Something that feeds all that doubt and self-loathing, not matter how much she tried to cloak it in scientific devotion. Sometimes I wondered if that was why she loved the console so much: perhaps it gave her something that humanity could not."

Janeway folded her hands in her lap and leaned forward, but did not interrupt the Ensign, who was crying openly in front of the older women. "I've tried so hard to keep her here. I've tried to read to her and tell her stories to bring her back. The three of us… Pablo, Lauren, and I… are stationed at the bioneural console to monitor her, but what I do is I bring in exobiology data and I read it out loud and I try to make her work through it with me, to keep her talking instead of just processing." She took in a very long shuddering breath. "But I took off the transmitters when I realized she wasn't listening anymore." And with that the young woman collapsed into tears and sobbed while Janeway's heart broke in front of her.

The captain spoke slowly and firmly, both to reassure the ensign and herself. "I will do everything in my power to make sure that she is here again. I trust the Doctor and I trust Seven of Nine and I trust Chakotay. Just as you trust Ensign Baytart and Ensign Powell and Ensign Irae."

"And what if it fails," was the desperate reply. "Will you leave her attached or come in here and initiate the final break command to spare her from being completely lost in the bioneural network?"

Janeway had not seriously considered the possibility but now it was there, nakedly in front of her. Janeway didn't realize she had been inadvertently keeping her eyes on the onyx eyed Korean ensign and not daring to look at Mileena. But now she let her pale blue eyes rest on the reclining form of the half – Trill and she understood a little bit more of the fears. The skin around Mileena's face had sunken in, accenting her high cheekbones and broad nose in a discomfiting way. The ports on her arms and hands, once gleaming, polished metal, had been partially covered by bands of fibrous tissue and were speckled with tiny bits of dried fluid. The ringlets of dark hair had become lusterless and brittle at the edges. Beneath the dark lashed, bronze eyelids, Mileena's eyes were still, not dreaming as they had the past. No whispers came from her full lips. No involuntary twitches from her fingertips. Just a silent, reclining form affixed to machinery that was stealing her mind.

But in spite of what she saw, Janeway continued to comfort both of them. "If that is the case, we will consult at that time. But I do not intend for it to reach that point and we will make every effort possible to bring her back to all of us."

Alice had composed herself and discreetly wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. "Understood, Captain. I apologize for breaking down." Her demeanor was, not quite icy, but reserved in a way that conveyed fear of repercussions.

"I find that late at night, emotions that we can often suppress successfully bubbled to the surface, even if we are used to working gamma shift." She hoped her smile did not feel forced, because Janeway suddenly perceived those same emotions rising from deep within her own chest.

The ensign, though, did not notice and instead stood up and placed the padd on the chair behind her. "Captain, may I go freshen up?"

"Of course, ensign. Is there anything in particular that needs to be done while you're here?"

"No, Captain. It's just an analysis of the Agok and Splenit data and a model I'm building of the chances that they will double back to either attack us or each other."

"Good. I look forward to the report when it is ready."

The ensign dropped the forcefields and stepped unsteadily out into the outer lab. She brushed by the captain without speaking again, leaving the captain alone with Mileena for the first time in so many weeks. The captain stood up and reinitialized the forcefield, then reconsidered, dropped it once more, and entered the wet lab. She raised it once again in deference to Mileena's exceptional security protocols, though she realized now that they had likely moved past the point where mere contamination was the true risk.

She reached out a tentative hand to the ensign and gently brushed her fingertips across one arching cheekbone, letting it linger on the side of the ensign's face and hoping against hope that Mileena would flutter her eyes open and smile back at the captain. But the ensign did not stir and the captain pulled her hand away, embarrassed at the intrusion. Janeway wanted to go back to her quarters to reflect on this encounter and indulge her own fears, but instead she waited for slight, still trembling Soohoo to come back. Then, she carefully broached the topic of the ensign's work and the two of them engaged in an awkward, but diverting, conversation about the potential outcomes Voyager could face once they exited Botha space.

Somehow they stayed like this, their voices rising and falling above the subtle humming of the dialyzer, until alpha shift was called. The captain excused herself to prepare for the rest of the day. Back in her quarters, though, she sat down on her couch and clenched her fists to keep from expressing her private fears about the outcome of Mileena's experiment, bit back tears and rivers of doubt. Then she donned her uniform and command façade, and strode confidently down to the mess hall, never letting anyone know just how much she wanted Mileena.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

"The protocols aren't working," said Chakotay, frustration and resignation ringing in his dark voice as he stood outside the wet lab and tapped CRE's main interface. "We've tried various break commands that don't invoke the physical disconnection of the ensign from the system. We've tried reprogramming the bioneural gel and back signaling a neurogenic pulse but the input is being ignored.

"Did you allow one of the ensigns to use the direct interface?" Janeway's eyes were a troubled, stormy grey and her Irish heritage flushed her skin pink under its smattering of rarely-viewed freckles. She had told everyone to stop using any sort of direct interface, but recognized that this was a last-ditch effort. Therefore, she did not reprimand Seven of Nine when she stated, "Yes. It was the most logical course of action. I closely monitored Ensign Powell and did not detect any increased load on CRE or any disturbance of Mileena's remaining cortical function. We disconnected shortly thereafter. The joining was a failure."

"And what of the Doctor's attempts at forming some sort of rejection program or reverse data transfer?"

"As unsuccessful as if I attempted to download my holomatrix into Harry Kim's brain," he said flatly, with only a tinge of sardonic humor rather than his full possible range. "She has become enough machine that conventional techniques may not work."

The room was silent they all stared inside at the reclining ensign, who lay heedlessly processing data and unaware of the turmoil outside.

"May I suggest an unconventional approach, captain," said Tuvok suddenly.

"Any ideas are better than no ideas," said the captain, keeping a fierce lid on whatever emotions threatened to break through her control of the situation.

"I could use a mind meld to create a telepathic bridge between you and the ensign." Eyebrows went up around the room and Tuvok looked at all of them, seemingly not comprehending their surprise. "All of our attempts have been technological, routed through the bioneural computer. Perhaps, if we access the ensign's human and half – Trill side, we may be able to convey to her what we need her to do and whether it will be possible."

The captain looked at Tuvok and nodded her head. "I'm willing to try it. Seven, monitor the output from the bioneural console and alert us if there's any change or destabilization. Doctor, monitor Ensign Irae's remaining cortical function. If you see any worsening, have us break the link. Tuvok, initiate the mind meld when you are ready."

"Captain," said the Vulcan. "I believe the meld would be most effective if you were to participate."

Janeway did not object and instead moved closer to both him and the ensign. "Very well. I am ready."

Tuvok placed one hand on the side of her face and one on the side of Mileena's face. "My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts," he droned, closing his eyes. Janeway closed her eyes as well and let his words and his telepathy carry her beyond her own consciousness into what she hoped would be Mileena's mind.

She opened her eyes within the telepathic link and stood next to Tuvok on what appeared to be a dreamlike interpretation of a deck on Voyager. The bulkheads were translucent and distorted, shot through with glittering gold, blue, and silver wires that extended in every direction, giving the appearance that Tuvok and Janeway were standing in the middle of a fractured gem. Flashes of silver light and sparkles of gold ran across the meshwork. Voices and swirling sound, flickering stars and whirring planets, streams of characters and fragments of pixels appeared and vanished within the lattice.

Tuvok tilted his ebony face towards the ceiling…no, sky, and Janeway watched the lights reflect across his forehead. "It seems we are in the midst of Mileena's perception of the bioneural interface."

"But where is she," Janeway asked. The glitter of gold washed over her eggshell colored skin and she began to walk forward.

As they moved across the deck, the floor behind them fell away. The path in front of them became an endless sloping ramp disappearing into the glimmering network, leading nowhere that gave a hint as to where Mileena's consciousness might reside. The sounds around them were indistinct and muddled, but if Janeway strained her ears, she could recognize the voices of her crew, including her own voice and that of Mileena. Commands, conversations, laughter. How many were memories and how many were occurring at the moment she could not tell.

Spheres of yellow and the sphere of red coalesced in front of the Vulcan and the human. The orbs circled their bodies a few times, flitted around their frames, and then retreated. To Janeway's surprise, the walls enclosed them and pair now stood within a conventional Voyager corridor. Janeway cocked one auburn eyebrow at her security officer. "It seems we've been discovered."

"Indeed."

The orbs began wafting down the hallway slowly enough for the Captain and the Lieutenant to follow them until they reached the door to proteomics. It slid open but the interior was obscured by what looked to be infinite layers of green and blue forcefields, overlapping like translucent sheets of silk. The red orb passed through them easily but the yellow one waited outside. Tuvok turned to his superior officer. "I believe this is the indication, Captain, that I should remain behind. I will continue to monitor the mind meld from here. "

"Acknowledged, Mister Tuvok." Janeway reached out a hand and walked into the forcefield. Her skin was electrified as she passed through the layers of energy, eventually reaching the entry to the wet lab.

Mileena sat there, crosslegged on the heavy chair, but the rest of the room was open to the mental representation of bioneural network behind her. The cloud of her black hair merged seamlessly with twisting ribbons of color streaming from where the bioneural transmitters would have resided on her skull. The intertwining fibers vanished into the network and rivulets of color flashed up and down them as Mileena spoke silently to the computers around her. The ensign herself looked much like she did in life when she was healthy and whole. Her citrine eyes, the bronze of her skin, the full and curving lips that smiled, but only just, as the captain approached. Mileena's arms rested on the sides of the heavy chair where the probes in her arm were instead intricate braids, tinged red where they passed into the Ensign's skin. The skin patterning of the Trill people, absent on in the real world, started behind Mileena's ears and ran down the nape of her neck. The dark spots disappeared under a sleeveless khaki shift that draped across her body and pooled around the chair.

Janeway had never seen the young woman so beautiful or so at peace in the months they had known each other. She looked neither tired nor stretched thin, which were her two constant states of being when on Voyager. No doubt. No need. No hurt, longing, or uncertainty. A self more true than Mileena could find in her waking world.

"Mileena," said the Captain.

The figure in front of her did not answer. Another river of silver ran to and from the ensign's body and the sky above them flashed with energy and activity.

"Do you understand me," the captain asked.

The figure gave an unmistakable nod and let more colors and sounds run through her body.

"Do you know I am here?"

Between the captain and Mileena, an image formed, nebulous and translucent like an ancient hologram. It was the array of Botha ships they had encountered, motherships and robots, the various stolen vessels that Voyager had turned against the Botha people. And within them, an image of Voyager under siege. Blue beams rippled across the surface, most likely representing the tractor and transporter that Mileena so artfully controlled.

The captain shook her head vigorously. "No, Voyager is safe. I'm here about you."

The scene vanished and was replaced by a fuzzy image of Mileena in the chair, but reclining and impaled on the machinery. The figure was distorted slightly, the probes overly large in the body shrunken in some places. Perhaps the ensign was conscious that she was losing herself.

"Yes."

There was no change, again, in either the ensign's posture or the image between them. Janeway didn't even know how to begin the next part of the conversation.

"Ensign." She stopped. They were within Mileena's mind; formalities were unneeded. "Mileena, you are moving your consciousness into the computers and out of your body. We worry that we will never be able to detach you from the bioneural console without your help."

The image of Mileena disappeared and the concept of Mileena bowed its head. Another flash ran from her and Kathryn looked up. Among the massive sparkling yellow meshwork and cooler, smaller blue lattice was a green and black net, one that wound its way around Mileena's head like a woven crown. As Kathryn watched, the crown inched upward moment by moment, growing and extending itself farther into the computers. Not only did Mileena understand that she was within the consciousness of the computers. She was encouraging it, forcing herself more and more into their network.

"You are aware of this." No response save an infinitesimal movement of the mesh of her cortical function. "Mileena, when you came to me you told me how much you love your humanity and how much you never wanted to sacrifice those parts. But now here you are, adrift in the machinery, giving yourself willingly." Kathryn's tone took on a more pleading, more demanding tone. "Why? Tell me."

The ensign looked up and a blue yellow flash roared out of her eyes. Suddenly, Kathryn was in a tiny, freezing cold, and black space. The void thundered around her and the sound of shredding metal overcame her senses. She felt fear and rage and agony. But then something else, and not just the experience of Mileena in those terrible moments when the lab had fallen away. A worse fear in some ways. Shame and loneliness. A secret that she could not tell but one that Kathryn felt stalking her. The dark space was no longer the isolated wet lab but a tiny corner where Mileena crouched deep in her mind, knowing she could not hide for long. Something was coming and Kathryn could not see it, but she knew it and she did not want to be near it anymore. Janeway recognized that behind all of the voices she could hear while she moved through the mind meld, there was a constant and low screaming. The dark place that Ensign Soohoo had mentioned.

The image washed away and she could hear Tuvok's voice around her. "Captain, are you alright? The Doctor has detected high levels of neural activity within the ensign's hippocampus and amygdala."

The captain looked at the ensign, whose expression flickered between anger and fear. "I'm fine, Tuvok. I'm just gaining understanding."

Kathryn walked towards the foot of the heavy chair, knelt down, and held out her hand, the pink of her fingertips reaching towards the ocher shades of the woman in front of her. Mileena was a radiant goddess among her stars and Janeway an acolyte, no, a supplicant at her temple.

"I know that you fear the terrible loneliness. I know that there is something that you cannot tell me that isolates you from everything around you. But let me try to keep you from that," said Kathryn gently. And she meant it. She wanted to chase that loneliness away with her voice, and her heart, and her body. She wanted to walk along the beach that Mileena had spoken of and make love next to a waterfall, surrounded by the sounds of the wilderness beside them. Slightly belatedly, she realized that she was in a mind meld with both her Vulcan officer and the half-Trill in front of her. The things she hadn't said aloud were easily read by the two others in this bridge. Mileena smiled and a crimson flush came to her bronze cheeks.

The captain composed herself enough to rein in the most rampant emotions and pressed onward. "I know that I turned you away before, but I will never do it again. I want to try this relationship. I want to make a true connection with you. But Mileena, you need to leave this place for us to do it."

Mileena lifted her arms in a mechanical way from the sides of the heavy chair and reached them towards Kathryn. She grasped their fingertips together and ran the calluses of her thumb over the ridges of Kathryn's palms. The smile was replaced by hesitation and the look of doubt. The image swallowed hard and looked around her, the network dim and darkening, shouts and flickers of red surrounded her, the temperature dropped and rose. Mileena shook her head and pushed it away again.

"I know. But I will be there with you," said Kathryn, wanting nothing more than to wrap the young woman in her arms to shield her from whatever was chasing her within. The figure released her hands and put her arms against the sides of the heavy chair, then looked up at the green-black meshwork. It began to recede, ever so slightly. It stopped with a ripple. Mileena winced and shook her head, then took a breath, beginning the process once more, then ceasing it in another jolt.

The captain understood. "Take your time. I'll…we'll be waiting for you."

With a flash of blue and an outstretched arm, the figure of Mileena threw Kathryn from the wet lab and through the forcefields. The captain found herself besides Tuvok once more and then the mind meld dissipated.

"We seem to have been ejected," he observed.

The two officers opened their eyes and looked at each other, then at the quiet figure in front of them. The Doctor ran cortical probe over the ensign's forehead. "The synaptic activity in her cortex has increased by .5%." He moved the probe again. ".6%." He looked at his tricorder again "1.0%."

"I believe you've reached her, Captain," Chakotay hopefully.

The captain nodded. "Yes, I believe so, but it will take some time for her to reintegrate herself into her own body. In the meantime, we wait."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Mileena didn't understand where the screaming was coming from or what the disjointed flashes of color and sound meant. She didn't understand that two sets of arms were holding her in place and that she was trying frantically to rip herself away. She did not know she had been moved from the wet lab or that she had been in Sickbay for two weeks letting her rewired brain recuperate. She did not know they had left the Botha space and were now finishing the last of their shore leave on an ocean planet ringed by three glowing moons. She did not know her sacrifice had been used as a stepping stone to a concerted effort pushing back against the Botha threat.

All she knew was the sudden aloneness and silence where the rest of her had been. Instinctively she moved her mind upwards, to where she had been, no, where they had been, the solid logical masses that had welcomed her so completely. And there was nothing. There was none of their sound, none of their minds. No memories, no data, not a thousand-thousand connections among tiny stars in the beautiful lattice of the network. No communication with the parts of herself that had become parts of them as well. There was only a tiny, finite mind within a body that had forgotten how to be a body.

Her eyes couldn't focus once they were open. Instead, shapes and jagged lines, spooling with whirls of color, coalesced and then collapsed in front of her. But if she shut her eyes, there was the silent darkness no longer punctuated by the glittering silver she had become so accustomed to. It was better to have her eyes open though the visual distortion made her seasick.

The sounds became words that formed and passed into her hearing but never quite reached the level of comprehension. She pushed against that mind, the achingly tiny box in which she suddenly resided, and tried once again to leap into the place that she had so recently been. The only place she wanted to be in the world. But she was blocked. The connection to the other parts of herself, the two computers, was gone. It was agony to be missing, like someone had cleaved her apart and left her with just a head, no body, no self. Whatever had done this would suffer, or at least suffer with her. She fought, again, and once again something held her back.

More sounds that were words, more colors that were voices. These she knew. Even without her trueness, even without the self that was not hers, the voices had their colors. Steely gray in boxes, cool columns of icy blue, and jagged red that somehow she wanted to crawl towards. The screaming stopped and so did the incessant motion. All it took was that redness to keep going. And perhaps it recognized that, because the red never stopped. She could not understand the sounds or the words, but she knew they were coming from somewhere that she…and they who had also been she…needed so much. And it was that way until something forced her back into an empty space that was neither the computers nor herself.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The Doctor looked over the now unconscious ensign and sighed. He had re-affixed two cortical dampeners and put her back into the medically induced coma where she had resided since her disconnection from the machine. He had believed that a few more days reintegrating without the constant contact with the neural probes would be sufficient to rewire her cortex. The violence of her awakening proved otherwise.

"What happened," asked Chakotay, his voice tinged with worry and his handsome jaw set square. When the ensign had awakened, bolted upright, and started trying to escape, he had grabbed her and held her fast as she ripped and clawed furiously at the air around her. His uniform bore a few tears and a tiny trickle of blood ran down his dark face.

"I hypothesize the lack of external sensory stimulation has left her unable to understand the outside world. It only takes a few days for the visual cortex to adapt itself to complete darkness and, if you recall, her sensory cortex had expanded to encompass much of her frontal lobe. Apparently the depth of reorganization surpassed what I predicted. We will need more time."

The Doctor was loathe to admit an error but of course, this was highly experimental subject matter. Some tweaking of the science was to be expected.

"How long," said the captain. Her face was a single, bloodless line and her posture was rigid. She had watched the reactivation and startled back when the older woman went into a frenzy, letting Tuvok and Chakotay restrain her as best they could until the doctor administered the sedative. Janeway had noticed the ensign struggled less once the captain started talking, an artifact, the Doctor believed, not just of the computer connection but also of Mileena's romantic connection to the captain. Perhaps the captain knew it too but this was not the time to speculate.

"It will depend largely on how much sensory stimulation we can provide her. Sedating her will keep her from hurting herself but it will delay the healing process. We need to expose her to the outside world and let her readapt to seeing through her eyes and hearing through her ears." He moved his tricorder in a sweeping gesture that collected no new data. "There is also the problem of significant muscle and organ wasting after a month essentially motionless. She will need physical rehabilitation and we lack the facilities to adequately address this."

"Then what do you suggest," said the captain. Her voice had that spear point that could drive through his sardonic and supercilious armor.

"The physical rehabilitation can probably be accomplished through a combination of holodeck conditioning programs and physical therapy on the ensign's part. It is likely many of the more primitive habits have been retained." He wanted very desperately not to describe the ensigns toileting habits in front of a mixed crowd and the looks on their faces suggest they did not want to hear about it either. Catheters and other materials had gone out of fashion with the advent of bio bed dialyzers. But as needed he would break out the ancient equipment.

"The sensory reprogramming will take more effort." He reflected on the centuries of data collected by his medical predecessors on how to handle a newly reconfigured brain. This wasn't as simple as a stroke or head trauma that had caused lost brain tissue. Rather, this was a brain whose functions had grown and needed to shrink back into place again. He stroked his rounded chin thoughtfully.

"I believe the best way to handle this will be to provide a limited but constant sensory experiences. Specifically, we could rework the earpieces used in the nightclub program to deliver constant stream of verbal input. Obviously we have hundreds of thousands of vocal clips to draw from."

"And I am certain the crew would be happy to contribute their own messages to her," said Chakotay, interrupting with what the doctor considered a completely superfluous comment. But the Doctor, under the captain's watchful and judgmental eye, decided against anything more unpleasant than a smile.

"Yes, commander. That would provide her something familiar and perhaps enticing to return to." He was staring right at three superior officers but he let his gaze linger slightly on Janeway's face. Certainly her voice would be one Mileena would respond to greatly, though if Janeway wished to respond, she did not do so.

"Rewiring her visual cortex will require more effort. I'm loath to prop her eyes open with some apparatus best left to medieval torture. I'll try first to reduce sedation to the point where she naturally opens her eyes but not so much that she goes into that frenzy of sensory overstimulation. I'll prepare a set of lines and colors to best mimic visual processing and play them through a pair of goggles. I will need someone in engineering to make this modification of course," and Tuvok nodded in assent. "It may take a few days but I believe it will be successful. I had hoped the ensign's brain would be more resilient and more adaptive. We will see…"

He immediately recognized his mistake when Janeway replied in a very disquieting voice, "I believe the ensign has demonstrated remarkable flexibility, adaptability, and capability in her duties to the ship. I would advise you to work with that when you consider her treatment."

The Doctor immediately backpedaled. Any crewmember would quell under her gaze and his holographic self was no different in this case. "Yes, Captain."

"Keep us informed, doctor." Janeway's sentence was dismissive and she led the rest of her team out of Sickbay. The Doctor turned his eyes towards his patient and sighed. He very much hoped these interventions would be successful and not just out of medical concern. The captain's happiness was always on his mind and he could tell some light and hopeful part of her had become quite dimmed over the last month and a half. Perhaps restoring Mileena would bring Janeway completely around. It would take time

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

"Put me back," said Mileena, her voice gravelly and strange to herself. She was fully conscious for the first time in…she could not remember how long. The chaotic sounds and shapes that assaulted her human senses had now resolved into a blurry and discordant variation of what she had experienced before she became part of the machines. The harsh lighting of Sickbay was no longer simultaneously overwhelming and insufficient. Now it illuminated faces and shapes that she could no longer remember. She waded through the mud that was her consciousness to scoop out nouns and verbs.

Using words instead of shapes and knowledge was inefficient, but the people-things in front of her did not know how to speak the language she would rather speak. She needed to display the logic of why she should not be here and instead should be connected to the two other things who were part of herself.

She knew the computers' absence and instinctively sought them out. Her first thought upon waking was to activate the transmitters on either side of her skull. When they did not respond, she lurched forward in an effort to return to proteomics. That was almost instinctual, the draw towards her equipment, the draw towards the rest of herself. She had flailed weakly against the Doctor who tried to stop her, managing to connect with one side of his holographic face and dumping a tray of tools to the floor in the process. His response was to return her to the bio bed, call security, and eventually the captain.

Now Mileena was being supported by two pairs of gold colored uniforms. She did not remember that these two security officers were her friends. She did not recognize the sadness in their eyes as they restrained the hollowed shell of one of their crewmembers.

Mileena was looking into the indistinct face of the petite woman in front of her. The woman's face was familiar and conjured an uncomfortable sensation within Mileena's muddled consciousness. It was an emotion, she recognized. The sensation of not having the computers, the sensation of being where she should not, the sensation of attempting to resolve the shapes into pictures, they all had names. And regardless of how her human self may have felt in the past, emotions were now unfamiliar and uniformly disquieting. She wanted these to go away as much as she wanted to be among the machinery again.

A red, thick voice replied, "We can't do that, Mileena."

"I belong there," growled the ensign, attempting to pull herself from the grips of the young men. All she could muster was a futile effort, her weak and wasted muscles fatigued from the limited effort it had taken her to lurch from the bed.

"No, you belong here, with the people around you. Before you entered the bioneural interface, you made it clear that you wanted to return to humanity. I intend to respect that wish."

"I have changed."

"Perhaps you have," said the face… the captain. "But not so much that I would return you to the machinery so that you lost the rest of yourself."

"Myself is not here. Myself is part of them. Here, it is so alone and so quiet. There I am part of something that is more." She needed to explain this to the faces in front of her. They had to understand she needed to be returned and to be whole. She needed to not exist in this empty, lonely space where the only companion she had was the inside of her mind. She needed to go away from the jumble of sensation that broke over her, leaving her gasping for air and understanding.

"You are within yourself, Mileena. And you are part of something larger. You are part of this crew, you are part of Starfleet, you are part of humanity. You will rediscover this."

"Those things are too small. My home is larger. My home is…infinite." Her mouth and mind were tired from dredging up the words. She could not respond further.

"Your home is here on Voyager. Your home is part of humanity in the minds and hearts of those who know you is larger than any neural network. But for now, you must get acclimated to being a single person."

The captain turned away from the sagging half-Trill and said, "Doctor, have you configured the physical rehabilitation program in the holodeck."

"Yes, Captain." He turned towards the two men whose gentle hands rested on Mileena's shoulders. "I will be initiating a site to site transport. You may let her go."

Before she could react to their release of her body, there were of sounds and colors prickled through her body and she found herself in a different room, a different bed. Faces surrounded her in white coats. There were too many of them now. Her overtaxed sensory system stopped interpreting what she saw correctly and the entire room dissolves into grotesque smears and distorted sounds. She squeezed her eyes closed and covered her ears with her hands.

Silence returned. She opened her eyes up and the room had emptied except for the Doctor and two silent, white clad orderlies. Now the silence was overpowering so the Doctor's speech was a welcome sensation.

"Mileena," said the Doctor, standing in front of her with his hands woven behind his back. "I have created this physical rehabilitation program to allow you to regain use of your body. You sustain significant physical deterioration while attach the bioneural console, so we must work to counteract that. In addition, the program will help restore sensory function and memory. This may take time, of course, but you cannot rush healing."

Holodeck. She remembered that terminology. And transporter. That one too. In her tiny limited mind she saw the bioneural pathways that once accompanied those words. She had been able to see where the power conduits ran to the individual transmitters in the holodeck, into the pattern buffer, and out into the world. Now her knowledge was falling apart like a sand castle in the face of a wave and she was left only with her human understanding, an awful paucity in the face of previous bounty. She began to names sensations even if she did not truly understand them. Panic. Rage. Futility.

"So I am trapped."

His face softened. "Yes, you will be confined to the holodeck. But it is a fully functioning program. You will be permitted to walk around the grounds and receive visitors as you wish. I know many of them are anxious to see you." His voice altered in a way she did not recognize as his attempt at levity and hope.

Having friends had become foreign as well. There is only self and non-self. The concepts of the world around her came and went, the words for what was around her came and went. Part of her desperately wanted to find a way to break out of this place and to reengage with the wiring tantalizingly behind those walls.

"And if I refuse?"

"Then you will remain in the holodeck or be confined to quarters until the captain states otherwise." He rocked backward slightly. "For now, though, we must attend to more simple matters."

A small figure with splotches running down its face appeared with an object on another moving object. It was a table with a cup and straw on it, she put together. It was moved within distance of her hand.

"Pick this up," said the small figure. A link was made. It was a Trill, Mileena recognized, and the little glimmering of self within her reminded her that she too shared that name. But only partially.

Mileena focused hard on her arm and where the probes should have been. That empty sensation overwhelmed her as she realized she could not ask her arms to move through any means but her own neural connections. She used her mind to cautiously order her arm towards the cup, but she succeeded only in knocking it over as she failed to coordinate her elbow with her hand. Orange, sweet smelling liquid spilled out of it and dripped off the table onto the yellowing tiled floor. The spill immediately vanished as the holodeck restored the cup to its full and upright position

"That's okay. Try again." The Trill figure's voice was a pale green, one that Mileena found not unpleasant. So Mileena moved her arm once more and was able to bring her hand to rest next to the cup. Then she slowly slid her hand along the tabletop, willing her fingers open into a curve that she thought approximated the circumference of the cup. Again she miscalculated and knocked it over once more

She pulled her hand back and dropped it in her lap. "I do not wish to do this any longer. Return me to the computer and reattach me to my nutrition source."

"That is not on the itinerary," said the Doctor. "Today we are going to get you to drink a cup of orange nutritional supplement. You will feel hungry now that you no longer have the biobeds attending to your needs. It is against my professional ethics to starve someone into compliance. But if that is how we initiate your treatment, so be it."

She blinked a few times at him and looked at the cup again. She would need to learn to handle this frail human body until she found a way to return to the machinery. As of right now, the diagnostic part of herself recognize she could not handle the bioneural console even if she wanted. So she would comply.

With a trembling arm, she reached out once more.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Seven of Nine sat on the chair opposite the half-Trill within the ensign's small, cluttered quarters. The ensign's roommate Mariah bustled about and seemed quite reluctant to leave both Seven and Mileena alone, staunchly refusing to obey Seven's commands for privacy. Seven, finding herself unable to evict the troublesome extra stimulus from the room, attempted to hold a conversation while someone nearby sang songs and folded clothing more loudly than the Borg thought possible without actively screaming.

The ensign looked shriveled and brittle, with her bronze skin taking on a sickly grey-green undertone and her yellow eyes reflecting instead a muddy brown. The fibrous tissue that previously encased the external ports on her arms was pruned away and the flesh-colored caps were carefully bonded into place, but it was a surface alteration. The ports had become so integral to the ensign's nervous system that the Doctor feared removing them would cause permanent damage to her nerves. Similarly the internal segment of the skull transmitter now housed swaths of glial tissue, knots of neurons, and countless new synapses. The transmitters reading from her motor areas were no longer mere antennae, designed to exert finer control of her neural ports and the bioneural gel. They were now part of her brain, though with a function they had not discovered yet. The Doctor disabled the external transmitters but was unwilling to pry them off Mileena's skull. The potential for irrecoverable brain damage outweighed any reservations the captain had about keeping visible implants on her crewmember.

So in this way the Borg and the half-human were the same. They would always be linked to the computers that had served as their home. They could not be returned to humanity without killing them.

"Ensign, how are you functioning," said Seven. This had been the first opportunity they had to talk and the Doctor had suggested that inquiring after the older woman's health would provide a suitable entry into conversation.

"I've been ripped out of everything that I cared about and I am forced to live my life confined to a single brain while being denied access to the work I have spent so many years developing. The problem is, I can't remember what I was doing or how and why I was doing it. My memory is full of gaps and the skills I once had have been replaced by empty space. So how do you think I am functioning?"

The Borg briefly considered this answer. The Doctor had said that the ensign might express some sort of negative emotion but Seven did not anticipate this particular assessment. According to the Doctor, the ensign had made sufficient progress to leave the holodeck rehabilitation program and live in crew quarters once more. He failed to mention her recovery had been primarily physical and sensory, not emotional or intellectual. Perhaps he felt it was unnecessary given how little emotion Seven tended to express. She did not appreciate the omission.

"I am…sorry you are feeling this way," said the Borg, feeling the term completely inadequate.

"Yes, well, I would certainly be sorry if someone decided to cut parts of you off and leave you as a bleeding stump, but it would not fix anything."

The Borg regarded Mileena through a silver capped blue eye and the Ensign return her stare with eyes of dull yellow. The half-Trill was delivering her conversation in a flat monotone completely out of line with her words. Her body had curved in on itself, a way of screening out a world she no longer understood. Seven accessed her own memories from her first days on Voyager and saw the same signs, the same fear and confusion, displayed in front of her.

"Mileena," said Seven, "I… know how you feel. When I was severed from the Collective, I saw myself as one of many who was suddenly alone. It took time to readjust to my oneness," reflected Seven.

That time in her life was one marked by exceptional turmoil and difficult self-discovery. She remembered the many disputes, and outright physical confrontations, that had marked her integration into Voyager's crew. She found the memories painful and pushed them aside as she continued, in her own understated way.

"It was a challenging process."

Mileena had no rebuttal. Instead, she tilted her head forward and let a few black ringlets fall across her shoulders. From this angle, Seven could see the thick swath of tissue from which tiny diodes still projected. They were silent now and not whirring in the blue pattern that Mileena preferred when interacting with the bioneural gel. The ensign took one elegant palm and rubbed it across her forearm. She pressed her light brown skin and knowingly exposed the deep bumps that represented the immovable hardware still anchored to her body.

"I am sorry," said the ensign quietly. "Of all people on the ship, you are the one who understands most intimately what I am experiencing. In fact I should be ashamed to compare the month I spent with the computers with the lifetime you spent in the Collective."

"There is nothing to apologize for." In fact, it had not occurred to Seven to judge Mileena Relative suffering and worthiness thereof was something she had not learned to care about. Something was in pain. That was generally unacceptable.

"In some ways, I envy you," said the ensign, feeling her way down her left arm and pushing the skin down unto the metal beneath. "You are no longer near the Collective and you cannot become part of them again. But all around me, I know the computers are there. If I asked them to tell me where something is, they will still answer me. I just can't reach them anymore and I worry the temptation will be too much."

She looked beseechingly at the Borg, who found herself sympathetic and concerned. "How do I do this," the older woman said, suddenly even looking more frail and distressed that she had just moments ago. "How do I not need to be part of them anymore?"

Seven considered this carefully. There was no easy answer, though she wanted to create one to spare Mileena the painful transition back to a solitary life. Empathy, she believed the Doctor called it, was driving her. It was a pleasing, yet painful, emotion. "You will return to work and find other ways to fill your time. You will reestablish social interactions," said Seven thoughtfully. "In time, the need will lessen."

The ensign gave a tired sigh and didn't return Seven's gaze. She fidgeted with the edges of her dress and drew a fingernail around one sealed implant. "I seriously doubt that talking to other humanoids will replace merging with two all-encompassing entities."

"That is correct. But there are many things the computer cannot provide," observed Seven, undeterred by Mileena's logic. "It lacks emotion. It lacks appreciation for art. It lacks the ability to interact physically. These are all things that humanity is fond of and that you have previously enjoyed. In time, you will enjoy them again."

"But I will always want to return, won't I? Did you try, I mean, after you left the Collective?"

Seven looked at the scientist curiously. Mileena had been on Voyager at the time of seven's arrival. Certainly she would have encountered the turmoil Seven had inflicted on the ship during Seven's attempts to reach the collective.

"Do you not recall that I took over the ship in an effort to contact the Collective?" Seven left out the part where she knocked Harry Kim unconscious. Rediscovering her humanity included regaining embarrassment and shame; she would never be able to apologize enough for injuring him even if at the time it was the correct course of action. Or so she thought.

"Not completely, no. Like I said, my mind is fragmented. I know the word Collective and I know you were once Borg. I understand you have implants like mine. But how we found you is missing. How I got on Voyager is missing."

That was something Seven also had experienced. Her childhood had been wiped away by Borg conditioning and it took several painful dreams for her to reawaken her knowledge completely.

"Your memory will return. It will merely take some time." Seven found the conversation increasingly distressing. Her emotional capability is not enough to process both her own painful history and whatever the ensign was experiencing. She wished very much to return to astrometrics to work on something more concrete and less difficult.

The tall Borg rose to leave and handed a padd to the ensign. "This is a list of departments that are interested in having you participate since you are no longer fit to work on the bioneural console." Seven regretted the remark since the ensign visibly winced at the reminder.

"That does not mean you will never be able to work with the bioneural gel again. It just means that in your previous capacity…" Seven noted the ensign had stopped listening to her. Mileena ran her fingers along the smooth surface of the pad and scanned it with her eyes. Seven noticed that they did not move in the way that suggested reading. Instead, the ensign's gaze flickered from place to place. The remnants of color drained out of the ensign's face she handed the padd back to Seven. "I cannot accept any of these assignments," she said quietly. "It seems I can no longer read."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

It was a painful and embarrassing discovery for Mileena to recognize that her time in the computer had eliminated one of the fundamental aspects of her career and her personhood. According to the Doctor's assessment, she had rearranged her cortex so that the areas once devoted to language recognition were repurposed when she stopped using words. Her ability to understand spoken language returned quickly, he hypothesized, because it was more instinctual for her to hear. His reassurance that her skill would return in time did nothing to assuage fears that she would be left illiterate permanently. She wasn't sure how sarcastic he was when he indicated that the holodeck had a variety of kindergarten teachers who could guide her through the learning of basic skill.

As a result, the day she met with Chakotay to formally discuss her reinstatement was far more awkward than either had anticipated. During her prolonged convalescence, Chakotay was her most frequent visitor, more often than the people she had considered her deepest friends. His presence was non-threatening and undemanding. Unlike everyone else who came to see her, he wasn't expecting her to reply in a certain way or go back to her old self. He showed neither disappointment nor overt judgment. He was willing to sit and listen to her complain or update her on Voyager's progress as she requested. Just what she needed.

Mileena wanted to return to duty, though, to silence the nagging desire to plunge the probes back through her skin and dissolve herself in the welcoming embrace of the machinery. So she asked what she could do without reading. Chakotay said he would ask the captain before giving her a firm response. A day later he returned with Janeway's distant blessing. They would find a place for Mileena on Voyager even if she could no longer be part of proteomics for the time being.

Sickbay was a nominal choice, as her ability to administer basic care was based more on her ability to follow directions than on her ability to read medications or write diagnoses. She just couldn't stomach more than a few hours with the Doctor before his supercilious sneer began to bear down on the back of her neck.

Thus, she spent the rest of her duty time with Neelix. After all, he created all of the food via his encyclopedic knowledge of cooking materials and flavor combinations, never using a written recipe unless it was personally handed to him by a member of the crew. Even then, the resulting dish would have more than a few modifications and usually resembled its intended dish in name only. The brilliantly hued Talaxian was overjoyed to have her in his kitchen. He hadn't had an assistant in years and was glad to delegate some of the more tedious chopping and stirring tasks so that he could pursue culinary perfection. Yet unlike the Doctor, Mileena never felt like she was in the way or looked down upon.

She gained a routine. Every morning, she would rise an hour before alpha shift to help Neelix prepare the kitchen, at which point she would eat breakfast and quickly return to Sickbay so she wouldn't have to face most of the crew. She would spend the next five or six hours in Sickbay, attending to crewmembers who suffered various ailments from ending up at the wrong end of a ruptured plasma conduit to gravely underestimating some alien while on an away mission. During downtime, she monitored and adjusted the equipment as much as she could without needing to read the output. The biobeds had never been so well-maintained in their entire history, nor had unusual cures been so thoroughly mixed.

Shortly before the end of alpha shift, she returned to the mess hall for dinner preparations. Again, she would retreat, spending some time eating alone in a corner. At the end of the day, she would have a meeting with Chakotay or Seven to discuss her progress. And then, she would go back to her quarters, where she would pull out a rudimentary book of language and attempt to bend her brain once again around the characters she had once found so comforting. Simple words were now coming together but otherwise she had lost the languages she once loved.

Absent from her routine, though, were all of the people she had called her friends. They made entreaties but she rebuffed them, confused. They held all these emotions that she was expected to reciprocate but didn't know how. They seem so tangled and she no longer knew how to respond. Her friends were understanding, of course, when she explained just that. Some seemed hurt. Some did not. They all gave her time…but time was passing and she was no closer to being herself.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

It was the meatloaf that provided the breakthrough. Mileena had been helping Neelix craft one of his more elaborate spreads to celebrate a successful trade mission. They had procured several kilograms of actual meat instead of the replicated and vaguely flavored protein they had gotten for so many months. She stood there, folding the ingredients one after another into the brown mass, when she looked down and cocked her head at what she was making. She took in a long breath and coughed, the spices tingling the inside of her nose.

Neelix noticed, as he often did with things out of the ordinary, and approached her. He placed a ridged hand on her shoulder and inquired, "Is something wrong, Mileena? I don't think you are allergic to the spices like Tuvok is."

There was a certain amount of levity in his voice, but it was calculated to give her an opening for whatever she needed to say.

"You fed this to me, didn't you," she said, slow wonder crawling into her voice. She heard in her mind fragments of conversation, far away but moving closer. "You told Alice that there were always too many leftovers of the meatloaf. You wondered whether there was resistance to the texture or the spice combination."

His face beamed and Mileena found herself smiling back, her face relaxing into an emotion that felt natural, as if it were something she was supposed to do. His voice rushed to her.

"That's right," he exclaimed, then dropped his voice conspiratorially. "Do you remember anything else?"

She looked at him and then looked around the kitchen. "I…don't know. There's just something about the smell of the food."

That triggered a transformation in the ebullient Talaxian. He pushed aside the meatloaf and began throwing ingredients into pot after pot, mixing and stirring and occasionally calling her over to slice or hold or breathe. That night's dinner was even more eclectic than normal, leading to an unusually large number of complaints filed with the senior staff. Neelix didn't care. He made those dishes and fed them one after another to his assistant.

And it worked. Some combination of scent and taste triggered deep connections that had formed whenever he had walked into proteomics and chatted with her as he poured the leftovers into the dialyzer. She had not tasted anything, of course, but there was abstract pleasure in receiving nourishment that had become unconsciously associated with the scent of the food. Triggering that pathway brought with it not only that enjoyment but also the one sided conversations Neelix had with her.

One night, after he had forced her to devour what he said was the thing she ate most often, she opened up a book. Neelix sat next to her, steaming mug of some Talaxian brew in hand, and leaned close to her as she said in a trembling voice, "See spot. See spot run. Run spot, run." He stayed with her until they finished the book and then send her back to her quarters, his smile encompassing both of them. Using the voice program that still responded to her as if she were locked in the machine, she made sure to note to the commander that Neelix deserved a commendation for doing no one else on the ship could do: bring her memory.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The dreams had come, of course, now that her human self was being uncovered. The fire and ice, emptiness and grief, screams and cries. She woke sweating and confused. Her roommate Mariah, once again her constant companion, would rush to her side and wake her. Mileena wasn't sure Mariah resented the intrusion into her sleep, though there wasn't much either could do. Two weeks before, Mariah's boyfriend had broken up with her unceremoniously and left her with nowhere else to stay but her former quarters. Mileena figured Mariah would get sick of rooming with somebody who is currently in the throes of a psychological crisis, but the former Maquis soldier did not blanch in the face of raw emotion and was not rebuffed when Mileena attempted to send her away.

But the dreams were merely a prelude to what she began to experience in her waking life. The voices around her began to trigger cascades of memories. She remembered hearing their voices talking to her in the machine, which chained to memories of their talking to her before that, in poker games and arguments, in celebrations and in funerals. She cautiously reintroduced herself to their lives, trying to find where she could be now that she had heard them as both friend and computer.

With reluctance and fear she had contacted her spirit guide, whose bulk seemed unfamiliar yet whose gaze was knowing. She hadn't been able to concentrate very long, but with his trunk he had drawn shapes in the sand and when she awoke, she recognized them as letters of the Trill alphabet. That, too, began to return.

And so it was that two memories rose unbidden from the depths of her unconscious while she was sitting and eating in her quarters. The meat was especially tough and she was struggling mightily with her knife, enough that she debated getting a phaser to slice it…or vaporize it. As she failed to wrestle her meal into submission, her hand slipped and she drew a thin line of blood across her fingertip. The dull red fluid spread itself across her chestnut colored skin and she remembered sitting in the machine, feeling that same sticky wetness running down her face and dripping onto her neck.

It had been the hallucination, she remembered, that finally drove her to push the gain to its maximum. The feeling of one last beating at the hands of her wife, and the words that came with them. As always, she had been brutal and efficient at breaking Mileena down. Datossel's words about their unending love, Datossel's cruelty, Datossel's care. Datossel's truth. Mileena dropped her meal to the floor as she physically recoiled. The time she spent cleaning up did little to settle her mind and she fled to the holodeck, finding a program, any program, that would wash away the fear. She eventually settled on a massive wildlife preserve she had once seen on Betazoid. The trees and animals mingling in front of her did little to distract her and so she filled it with hundreds of visitors whose voices tried to drown out the terrible visions.

Apparently, the largest databank of random inhabitants included Alice's conglomeration of dance club visitors. To her surprise, Tuvok and the captain stood looking at…the giraffes? She heard the two of them talking about nothing in particular, their words being filled in as a script about the differences between Vulcan and human fauna.

Then the second memory came, the one in which Tuvok and the captain had entered her mind and brought her back to herself with words of care and compassion. She remembered the captain's emotions filling her head and the beauty of the captain's words and the captain's feelings. Mileena recognized that since Mileena's disconnection from the computers, the captain had not been avoiding her. She had just been waiting for the two of them to be alone to initiate their conversations. Except if it was a mistake, which was not impossible.

After an anguished internal debate, she contacted the Vulcan chief of security, and arranged for what she hoped would be an extremely brief, extremely productive conversation. She anticipated the meeting would be pushed some point in the future but to her surprise, he invited her to one of the small conference rooms on deck five at the end of alpha shift.

When she arrived, he was already there, a padd to his left that he perused until the doors slid closed behind her and she addressed him. "Lieutenant."

"Ensign Irae. I see you wish to talk."

No smalltalk, she reminded herself. That was one of the nice things about Vulcans. "Did you and the captain engage in a mind meld with me while I was in the machine?"

He raised a pointed Vulcan eyebrow. "You remember."

"To some extent."

"So you have questions."

She wasn't quite sure what to say. Much of her initial planned out conversation had been convincing the Vulcan to divulge the particulars of his interactions with the captain. Now that that particular line of questioning was not required, she found herself at a loss.

"Do I recall correctly that the captain expressed certain emotions," she ventured, hoping the vagueness of the term would not lead the Vulcan to believe or suspect anything had he not already been informed about the captain's feelings about her.

That was his turn to hesitate and he folded his hands neatly on the table between them. "While in the mind meld, the captain showed you her true romantically-inclined feelings and you reciprocated them."

"I see," she said. So he was aware and suddenly everything was more awkward because they were now talking about the personal life of the captain. She contemplated her options, all of which made her feel like an idiot for even opening this line of communication. However, Tuvok was here now and she might as well keep asking. The worst that he could do was say that it was no longer appropriate and leave.

"Do you believe she said those things truly or as a way to encourage my disconnection from the machine?"

"The two are not mutually exclusive," he said calmly. "I believe that she demonstrated the emotions she held as a way of indicating that you did not need to remain in the machines to feel a connection."

Mileena paused. Janeway had come to visit, first in the holodeck and later when she was confined to quarters. There was expectation and anticipation in the captain's warm and steady voice, but it fell away as Mileena struggled to recall just what happened between the two of them. Clearly the captain expected some sort of dialogue, especially when the captain spoke passionately about the role of humanity and the importance of being oneself. But early on words were still so hard for Mileena that she could mount no discussion or defense, not as Seven had when she left the Borg. Janeway never betrayed frustration at the ensign's lack of responsiveness and changed her approach to be more simplistic and supportive. The visits dropped off and the emotions, whatever they were, remained buried on both their parts.

"Do you believe she still holds those feelings?"

"It would be inappropriate for me to speculate," he replied. "Though I do believe if you were to approach her, you could discuss this freely."

Mileena shook her head. Emotions were still out of focus for her. Not as foreign as they would be to a Vulcan but certainly not as deep as she had once felt.

"I do not know how to approach her, Lieutenant. I'm certain that my failure to interact with her has deterred her from initiating a relationship with me."

"That is likely," he confirmed. "But not because she would not welcome it. The captain respects personal autonomy and the healing process far too much to bring her own needs into consideration. The decision to generate a connection, or not, is in your hands."

"I see," was all Mileena could answer. "I will give this some thought. Thank you, Lieutenant Tuvok."

He rose stiffly. "You are welcome. I must return to my duties on the bridge. I will note in my log that you are regaining your memories and that we should discuss soon your continuing work on the console in the near future. You are dismissed."

He left her sitting there and she felt very foolish for talking to him, even though their conversation had been fruitful. It was one of those cases where she couldn't find solace in her room for the rest of the day. Instead, she wrapped herself up in the Erato garments and slipped into a holodeck. This time, she conjured up the most elaborate aquarium she could think of. But instead of members of Voyager, she was careful to specify that the guests should all be unfamiliar. She let the cacophony of voices drown her again and lost her attention watching the schools of fish ripple around her like the shapes behind her eyes once did.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Janeway sat in her ready room and pushed the pads around on her desk, sighing. Sisyphus would have pitied her as she struggled against the constant onslaught of personnel reports. The end of every reporting cycle resulted in yet another cascade of evaluations and admonishments as changes in crew roster necessitated further adjustments in position. The ensigns' names began to run together and she wondered if they wouldn't all be better served by her throwing a handful of darts at various locations on the ship for their duty assignments.

So she welcomed the beeping distraction of her security officer and good friend. She tilted her porcelain-colored head to meet his gaze and smiled widely, gesturing with an open palm towards the chair opposite hers.

"Tuvok," she said, "I'm glad to see you." A mischievous air insinuated its way into her voice. "I don't suppose you've come to relieve me of these interminable reports."

"Alas, Captain, that is one of the few duties I am not equipped to undertake," he said returning her humor in a dry display of wit. He slid into the chair and leaned back.

She gave a sigh of pretend exasperation. "Well, then, I guess I'll just have to fight through. So tell me, Tuvok, what can I do for you?"

His dark eyes searched the curves of her face and she found herself more somber as he brought together his thoughts. "I believe we need to discuss what occurred during the mind meld."

Janeway bent her head towards her desk and covered her face with her hand. He had been there, after all, when she had divulged her feelings to Mileena and he had certainly felt the rush of the young woman's emotions they were returned. But he had also seen that since Mileena's detachment, the ensign had been unreceptive to the captain's overtures of companionship. She had lost her memory and, according to Neelix and the Doctor, was only now regaining it. Whether that included their kiss or the mind meld was not a question Janeway wished to ask.

"I don't know what there is to discuss," Janeway said listlessly. Then threw her hands up. "She and I shared an emotional connection that she apparently does not remember."

He didn't respond when she stood, then began pacing. "I have turned over in my mind 100 times whether I would've done the same for any crewmember and of course, Tuvok, I thought I had." She moved around her rug, looking towards the small decorations that she had arrayed so carefully as a way of breaking the monotony of her office. Little reminders of home and her place as a woman, as a person who was not a captain. Sometimes she felt that they were totems left behind as a reminder of an ancient practice she could no longer undertake.

"Yet would I have made the same decision if Mileena were," she fumbled for a word that seemed appropriate, "My paramour? Could I have asked someone I loved to sacrifice herself in that way or made the decision to disrupt her in a way that could have killed her?"

Tuvok followed her agitation with his calm, dark gaze. His hands folded on his lap and his posture became rigid. Yet when he addressed her, he was not unkind. "Like all humans, you are ruled by your emotions and you often find them at odds with the logical execution of your decisions. However, Captain, I have never known you to push aside what is right for Voyager in favor of what is right for you personally or to betray your command with your emotions."

Janeway let his words settle over her and she did another loop and searched for some conclusive response in the planet orbited outside. She ran thin fingers through the flow of her hair and shook her head.

"It is not appropriate for me to have these feelings. I am the captain of the ship and I cannot let anything come between me and that duty."

"I assure you, Captain, your feelings for Mileena will not interfere with your function as our leader. You are far too invested in this crew and this mission to let anything compromise your judgment. Therefore, it is not logical for you not to act on your emotions. You are, after all, only human."

Janeway smirked and sat down on the edge of her desk. She smiled wanly at her security officer. "Tuvok, I believe that is the most backhanded compliment ever paid to me. And perhaps you're right, perhaps I will be able to dissociate my personal life from my duties here on Voyager. But she will never have my entire attention. I will always be putting Voyager above her."

"I do not disagree. However, there are few others on the ship who recognize the depth of the roles they need to play in preserving Voyager's mission."

She sighed and put her marble colored hand on Tuvok's charcoal hued arm. "I can't argue with her logic, Tuvok, but it's all moot. She doesn't remember. Not me, not us…"

He did not disturb her arm or did he move to increase the contact. He looked her in the face and met his obsidian eyes with her sapphire ones, speaking words that conjured instant hope. "That is no longer the case."

Through their brief interactions since the disconnection of the bioneural console, Mileena had given no indication that she would not welcome the captain's presence. Neither had she signaled, though, that she would enjoy the captain's being close to her again. The desperate, all-encompassing loneliness the young woman had displayed when disconnected from the machines ripped at Kathryn's heart, yet somehow she could not bring herself to extend even a brief display of warmth or affection once it was clear that Mileena no longer wanted the captain's company. That was what she had believed until Tuvok set her right.

She put aside her doubt and triggered the opening mechanism on the holodeck door. Her first impression was of how loud and how blue the interior seemed. She took a few steps into the cacophonous crowd of aliens from every stretch of Federation space, hearing the doors closed and sealed behind her then looked around. She smiled and watched in wonder as a school of the thousand brightly colored tropical fish swam over her head, followed by an impossibly large stingray and an even larger hammerhead shark, who was surprisingly docile in spite of the veritable buffet around it. Her pleased response was mirrored by the many children standing near the walls of the aquarium, who were barely prevented from banging on the glass to summon more fish by their watchful parents. She walked a little farther through the tube of glass, marveling at the arching coral reefs and aquatic outcroppings that were merely inches away from the guests around her. She wasn't sure if this was based on any aquarium in particular, or whether the program was a conglomerate of sites on many worlds. Regardless, it was breathtaking and she understood why Mileena might choose to spend her time here.

As Janeway pushed through the massive crowd, she caught little snippets of conversation about the fish, but also about news events, science, art, and even the workings of Voyager itself. She heard a conversation about advances in dilithium crystals segue neatly into one about advanced techniques and martial arts. Another school of fish passed around her, eliciting a squeal of delight from a nearby Klingon child, and Janeway could have sworn she saw a blue whale somewhere in the distance. The sensory input was becoming overwhelming, and Janeway realized, likely by design. This environment, with its dynamic, brilliantly colored visual input and a stream of seemingly unrelated voices and sound, was as close as Mileena could come to what she experienced within the machine. Though the Doctor and Seven of Nine reassured the captain that Mileena was not in danger of integrating herself into the machine once more, it was clear the half Trill missed what she had been when she was part of Voyager circuitry.

Janeway walked further, tangled in the tour groups and informative lectures that made up the seemingly endless aquarium. It was becoming frustrated and she was tempted to discontinue the entire program in order to talk to the ensign. Instead, she the eye of the woman in tightly pressed black pants and a crisp white shirt, whose fish-embossed name tag read "Sarah".

"Excuse me," said Janeway, approaching the holographic security guard. "I was wondering if you could help me. I am looking for my…crewmember. She is about 1.7 meters tall…"

"You are Captain Janeway of the starship Voyager," observed the hologram. "I will take you to Mileena."

So the hologram knew who Mileena was. Was that from her time in the console or was that an interesting side effect of Alice's program? Janeway followed through a few more corridors until she was ushered into a domed room absolutely teeming with aquatic and humanoid life. In the midst of the visitors was an octagonal wooden bench, on which sat the crosslegged figure of Mileena. The older woman rested the base of her palms on her knees, her expression calm and distant, not as peaceful as she was within her machines but enough that she no longer threatened to rip apart. Her cascading black curls arrayed themselves messily around her rounded shoulders. White ripples of water were reflected on her face, shadows passing through them as the fish blocked the artificial light streaming in from above the aquarium.

"Miss Mileena," said the hologram. "The captain is here to see you."

Mileena shifted over and arrayed herself so that there was space next to her on the slats of varnished hardwood. She said, by way of reply, "Computer. End program Alice four."

In a flash of dissipating light, the people around Janeway and Mileena vanished, leaving the two of them alone in the voluminous aquarium.

Janeway walked forward towards the ensign, who gestured a thin arm to the space beside her. "Captain. Welcome to my favorite aquarium."

"It is certainly beautiful," said Janeway. Much like you are. "Another one of Alice's program?"

"No," said Mileena with a warm smile that lit her brown features with a line of white. "Well, the people are Alice's but I built this myself. I find it very soothing."

Janeway had no interest in discussing the particulars of programming a holodeck. She wanted to approach the one topic they had been so desperate to discuss and then so desperate to ignore. She sat down on the bench and looked deeply into the troubled citrine of the ensign's eyes.

"Mileena. Tuvok tells me you remember what I said during our mind meld." The ringlets of the older woman in front of her bobbed with the tilted acknowledgment of her head.

Janeway waited for a response and then a bit more, gathering her nerve.

"I want to let you know that I still feel that way. I still want to see where this relationship can take both of us."

Mileena didn't respond and she reached out a hesitant hand towards the captain. Janeway let out a breath she didn't know she was holding and wrapped her palm around Mileena's fingers. They sat in quiet as a school of silverfish changed direction above them and threw shadows of their passing into spirals on the floor.

"Captain," said Mileena, her voice measured and each syllable straining against itself. Janeway realized she was about to be let down very gently, which had been the most likely outcome all along. "There is nothing more than I would like to do than explore what it means to be with you. But I still have to heal. The computers…the Botha…there is still so much I need to process. It isn't fair for me to be with you when I can give you only a part of who I am."

Janeway recognized the line. It was the one she had been feeding to Tuvok when she was detailing all the reasons she shouldn't be with Mileena. Hell, it was the line she's used after their first kiss in Mileena's quarter. Hearing the excuses, specifically lack of time and dedication, made her realize that particular reason was not acceptable.

"I am happy to give you all the space that you need as your captain, your friend, or something more." Mileena smiled in a way that made Kathryn's heart swell and flutter. "But Mileena, you don't have to give me all of yourself right now. Share the parts that you have. I will be happy to have them and to learn about them."

The smile chased itself away and Mileena looked back towards the curving glass of the aquarium. She didn't withdraw her hand but the captain felt it go limp. "I'm going to need time captain. I don't know how much longer it will take me to come back to who I was or even if that's possible. I don't want you to wait for someone who may not return."

"We have both waited this long, Mileena. I would never want to push you farther than you are ready to go. However you choose to do this, I will be here."

By way of response, Mileena reinitiated the population program and the two were surrounded once again by the holographic voices and figures. The half Trill inched closer and leaned gently on Kathryn's arm in a gesture of guarded affection. Janeway resisted the urge to bend down and kiss her forehead. Instead, she squeezed their hands once more. They sat in silence until the end of the shift, at which point Mileena excused herself with the comment, "Breakfast tomorrow, captain? 0600 hours? Neelix and I will be making eggs."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," said Kathryn with a wide grin. Mileena smiled once more and left the holodeck.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Epilogue:

The Botha homeworld was burning. The first attack by their own ships had been brief but devastating. In the few hours it took to break the mental hold created by the repurposed technology, the brainwashed crew of the capital ships had managed to destroy not only the main shipyard but also many of the orbital platforms that served as staging grounds for the robotic attacks. Even worse, these crews had deployed mind control technology on other smaller vessels that had immediately warped away to attack their own colonies.

Then came the force of inferior races taking their vengeance for the Botha's years of subjugation and exploitation. Botha colonies that had served as outposts to exert control were now liabilities as the attackers rolled through, stopping at each colony to strip away limited defenses and take control of robotic drones they turned against the terrified colonists. The great secret of the Botha race was there absolute dependence on mind control to defend themselves. With that technology compromised, there was nothing they could do.

Thus it had not taken long before a multitude of races ringed the Botha's home planet and subjected the cowering people below to bombardment before demanding their unconditional surrender. With eventual genocide on the horizon, the Botha were preparing to accept.

Within the crumbling vestiges of the capital, the Botha ambassador had barricaded himself into the formal office that contains the trophies from every race he had tricked and overpowered. The space he had confidently reserved for a piece of Voyager sat empty and he fixated on it as he prepared a handful of pills that would allow him a ritualized, if cowardly, exit from his problems. After all, the alternative was being placed on trial by his livid people for encountering and engaging the agent of their collective demise.

He rued the day he had ever encountered Voyager. He replayed to the taunts he had subjected Captain Janeway to the empty promises of her defeat rung in his ears. He thought of the minds he had twisted on that ship and how they had nonetheless thrown off his influence, with the power of the captain and the woman who loved her combined to absolutely crush him and his people. He thought of his own mind, easily overridden and forced to attack his own people at what was to be his long-awaited moment of triumph.

Another round of bombs shook the building and the mantelpiece containing the empty plaque fell down, littering the floor with bits of wood and metal. He gulped down the pills and sat in his chair, listening to the clattering of soldiers running down the hall to drag him out. His last thoughts were of Kathryn Janeway, the woman who defeated the Botha Empire.