Chapter 17
Seven lifted an eyebrow when she sparkled into existence in the Voyager transporter room.
"A security team?" She asked while taking in the four security guards that had phaser rifles aimed at them.
"Not for you two," Janeway said, indicating Seven and B'Elanna, "but for the drones."
"Captain, be assured, your phaser rifles would be completely ineffective against these drones. Considering that they are designed for our protection, their body armor is vastly advanced compared to drones you have met before."
"You can't blame them for being careful, baby," B'Elanna said as she put her hand on Seven's back.
Janeway's jaw sagged a little when she got her first good look at B'Elanna. Though no other implants were clearly visible, B'Elanna now had an implant above her left eye that was similar to Seven's. Janeway could only assume that B'Elanna now also had a cortical node. "B'Elanna? What happened to you?"
"Nothing I didn't ask for myself," B'Elanna assured.
Janeway lifted her eyebrows but decided not to react to that statement. Instead, she changed the subject. "Would you accompany me to conference room one? The rest of the senior staff is waiting there."
"Certainly," Seven said as she and B'Elanna started to move to the door.
The hair at the back of Janeway's neck stood upright when the four drones moved as one and started to follow Seven and B'Elanna. "Creepy," she mumbled softly more to herself than anything else.
"It does take some getting used to," B'Elanna said, looking over her shoulder at Janeway. She waited until the woman had joined them at the front of the group before continuing.
"But on the plus side, they never stand in the way and they don't need lengthy discussions on where to go and such."
"I wish you would have let us know that you were alright," Janeway said as they stepped into the turbolift. "We assumed you dead or nothing more than drones."
"I apologize for that," Seven said. "But you also have to understand that our position within the Borg was far from secure for a long time. There have been several times where we did indeed come close to being turned into mindless drones. We could not let you know that we were 'alright' because there still was a chance that this would result in you all being assimilated."
"But now you're in command over the Borg? The message we got told us that the Borg Queen was on the way to see us."
"I am the Borg Queen," Seven agreed.
The turbolift door opened and they stepped onto the bridge. Seven recognized everyone there, just as she had recognized the four guards. It felt strange. She felt as she had the first months on Voyager, with everyone looking at her; not sure if they could trust her.
"And I am in command of the Borg," Seven continued. "But the Borg do have a say in certain decisions. We set the course, and the Borg agree or not. Sometimes there are considerable discussions between us and the Hive mind, but we are always able to work the disagreements out now."
"Who is 'we'?" Janeway asked as they walked into the conference room. Before entering, Janeway gave the Voyager security team a sign that they should take up position outside the conference room.
"B'Elanna and I, of course," Seven said as if she was stating the obvious, which to her she was.
The entire senior staff was in the conference room. Carey was there, and one didn't have to be a genius to figure out that he was now the Chief Engineer. There was also a woman there that they didn't know. Except for the empty captain's chair there were two other empty chairs. B'Elanna and Seven sat down in them while the four drones took up position behind them, standing against the wall.
Janeway spared a look at the Borg drones and realized that they truly looked a lot different than the last time she had seen some. The body armor didn't look like a patchwork of implants, instead it looked like a black formfitting biosuit and it was very obvious that it could be taken off.
Janeway had noticed that Seven and B'Elanna were wearing the same kind of black biosuit body armor, the only difference being that they had silver colored collars, and that their clothing didn't have the clips that the guards had.
Seeing the position of the clips, Janeway could only assume that they were designed so that the guards could carry different kinds of weapons. It spoke volumes to Janeway about what the Borg thought of Voyager's threat level that they had allowed these guards to come to Voyager unarmed. Or at least, unarmed as far as Janeway could see.
Of course, seeing that the guards were wearing clothing instead of being covered by implants left Janeway to wonder what kind of implants they had underneath their body armor. She did see an outline on all four of them of an abdominal implant similar to Seven's. Janeway assumed that the biosuit type clothing would be able to withstand one or several phaser shots, but that they also had a second body armor just like Seven's; a force-field that would surround the drones when activated. It left her to wonder just how effective their full body armor was. After all, they showed up on a potential hostile place like Voyager with no visible weapons and the force-field armor deactivated. Clearly they felt that the biosuit like clothing offered enough protection.
The implants Janeway could see were different as well. The protruding artificial eye was gone. It was replaced by something that still clearly was an artificial eye, just with normal eye proportions. They no longer had the gray/green skin color that had been the standard for Borg drones, and they were no longer bald. While they still were very clearly Borg drones, they didn't look as... scary. They looked more... normal.
"They are advanced drones," Seven explained when she saw Janeway looking past her. "The implants that were used on me have proven efficient, so from now on all new drones receive the new implants."
"Why only the new ones?" The doctor asked.
"Because of resources. Unlike the new implants, the old ones can not be reprogrammed. As you know, my implants could form by themselves, but that is only the case for body armor implants with the old implants. All other implants would have to be physically removed and replaced with the new implants. Can you imagine how many resources it would take to replace almost two hundred implants per drone for billions of drones, never mind how much time it would take because there is only a limited number of service drones."
"What happened to you two?" Janeway asked, coming to the matter at hand.
"That is a lengthy story," Seven said. "Before we go into that, there are several Barudian stellar guard ships waiting to take you into custody. I suggest we take care of that problem first. Why do they want to take you into custody? The Barudian home-world is comparable with Risa in the Federation. It is known as the pleasure planet of this ten-sector part of space. The one big difference is that the Barudian do not need a Federation to protect them, they are powerful enough to protect themselves. But they do not go out arresting people without a good reason."
"It's a bunch of crap," Harry spoke up, surprising everyone around the table with his forceful words.
"I would suggest you tone it down a little, Lieutenant," Janeway warned.
"Aye Captain," Harry mumbled.
Having reprimanded Harry to her satisfaction, Janeway looked back to Seven and B'Elanna. "While Harry chose his words poorly, he's basically right."
Janeway motioned to the unknown woman with her hand. "But before I go into the story, let me introduce Gazec Felov, former eight Vic of the Barudian science department. Gazec, may I introduce our former crew members Seven of Nine and B'Elanna Torres."
"Greetings," Gazec said. "I have heard much about you, the crew of Voyager speaks well of you."
"Pleased to meet you," Seven said while B'Elanna lifted her hand slightly and offered a 'hi.'
Seven looked back at Janeway before adding, "While those are our former names, and the names we would like you all to use when talking to us, for official purposes, we are now known as One of Many, and Two of Many."
"It is so noted, for the logs," Janeway said before continuing with her explanation. "We enjoyed some much needed shore leave. Since we also wanted to use the opportunity to learn a little about the Barudian's technology, we were assigned Gazec as tour guide to several technology centers. We were very impressed by her scientific knowledge. And apparently, Harry was simply impressed with her. He asked her to come with us when we left, she agreed."
Gazec spoke up, adding her side. "It was a win/win situation for me. I always wanted to go into space travel, but because I was born into the science class on our planet, I was destined to never serve on any Barudian space ship. Only the 'lesser' class scientists are let onto ships, but once you reached the class of twentieth Vic or higher, you will never be let onto a starship to serve. They think that your knowledge would be wasted then. After all, on a ship, new scientific inventions are only implemented after they have been firmly tested. You don't need a higher level Vic to do that. Certainly not one as high as level eight. No, we have to be on our home-world to do the test in secure buildings. A Vic with as high a level as I have would never be let off world. But on Voyager I could travel between the stars. And even more importantly, I could be with the man I fell in love with. I wanted to leave, but my government was not as happy to let someone like me simply leave our world. So I asked Captain Janeway for asylum."
Having the conversation handed back to her, Janeway continued. "The Barudian wanted to prevent a diplomatic tussle, so they reluctantly allowed Gazec to leave the planet and join us. Unfortunately some of the lower science Vics didn't want to see an eight Vic leave the planet, so they went to court. It seems that Gazec was promised in marriage to someone when she was a child. When she reached the age of twenty-five she was to marry this man."
"It's an old tradition," Gazec explained. "All children are 'married out' at age five. It doesn't mean anything; just a formality to close ties between families. It is been generations since a forced marriage has been conducted. In fact, when you do find someone you want to marry, it's something of a pre-marriage ritual to have your family officially renounce the marriage promise made with the other family, and then invite that family to the upcoming marriage. That this is nothing more than a ritual is proven by the fact that the date of the arranged marriage was at my twenty-fifth birthday, and I turned thirty-one three months ago and I don't even know where my 'husband to be,' who I was supposed to marry six years ago, lives."
"But the thing is," Janeway continued, "that those laws are still in the official law books. So the lower Vic's started a lawsuit. Everyone knows that they could never win it, but that wasn't the point. The point was that they requested three years to prepare their case. They were hoping that we would be long gone before the case came to court, thus preventing Gazec from leaving. I decided to not play that game. She had already been allowed to leave before this nonsense lawsuit. She had asked for asylum on Voyager, and I had given it to her. So we left, taking Gazec with us."
"I get it," B'Elanna said, seeing what the problem was. "Had you left without her, than there would have been no problem since the lawsuit was about Gazec not leaving the planet. But by taking her with you, you have basically kidnapped her, and ran from the Barudian law."
"That's how they seem to see it," Janeway agreed.
"This problem should not be hard to solve," Seven said confidently.
B'Elanna leaned back in her chair a little and looked to her side at Seven. "Why don't you do this, you know how I hate to negotiate."
The senior staff looked at the slightly slouching B'Elanna. This was the B'Elanna they all knew, this is how she had sat countless times during senior staff meetings. It had been the implant that had thrown everyone for a moment, but seeing the body language from both B'Elanna and Seven made it clear that these were still the same women they had known.
"Very well," Seven merely said.
"So Starfleet," B'Elanna said while looking at Harry with a small grin, "Did you two pick a date yet?"
"Um," Was all Harry said before Janeway spoke up.
"A date?"
"For their wedding of course."
"Wedding?" Now it was Tom who asked.
B'Elanna nodded her head slightly. "Sure. The Barudians are well known for having a pleasure planet, and because of that, sex is seen as separate from love. But when the Barudians fall in love, it is for the long haul; they 'Mate' for life. They might have sex with others, but that is sex, not love. They only love one person. Seeing that Gazec just said that she loves Harry, it is only logical that they'll get married soon."
"A Klingon talking logic, impressive," Seven said, with a small smile.
"Oh shut up Princess, and go back to negotiating," B'Elanna countered, returning the smile. "So Harry, did you pick a date yet?"
"No we haven't," Harry admitted. "Because of my 'history' of falling for the wrong girl, we kinda wanted to hold off for a while because I wanted to prevent people from assuming that Gazec is just the next wrong girl in line."
B'Elanna grinned at him. "Wanna make your wedding special? You could get married at our place. You would be the first ever Starfleet officer to be married on a Borg ship. Not just any Borg ship; Unimatrix 01 even."
"Um, no offence, I'm grateful for the offer, but a Borg ship isn't really the environment I had in mind."
"Just hold your options open," B'Elanna persisted. "You haven't seen yet what we did with the ship. For one thing, we now have the biggest holodeck ever seen on any known ship. With a fifteen-kilometer length, it's actually more than sixty times as long as a Federation holoship. Add to that its width of ten kilometers and height of five kilometers, and you're looking at a holodeck of 750 cubic kilometers (470 cubic mile). It's also of a better quality. Unlike Federation holodecks, there isn't 'something' that indicates to you that it's not real. We used the Zamonan replicator technology and the holographic technology of species 11,712... you don't know them, but trust me; they have the best holographic technology I've ever seen. The combination of the two results in an absolutely real environment, just that it still has the holodeck safety features. We would like to invite you all to our place later on. Just wait until you've had a tour of the 'new and improved' Unimatrix 01 before graciously declining."
"Alright, I will. Besides, it's not just my choice," Harry said while looking at Gazec.
"Smart boy," B'Elanna grinned.
"An agreement has been reached," Seven spoke up. "The Barudian government will persuade the Vics to drop their lawsuit. You will be allowed to leave their space, and Gazec is allowed to leave with you. If she wants, she can get the position of Barudian envoy to Voyager. She can retain her title as eight Vic, and she is allowed to use all her scientific knowledge to Voyager's advantage."
Gazec's jaw actually dropped a little at hearing that. In the original agreement her government had only allowed her to go. With that deal, she had to give up everything, save her name, to be allowed to leave the planet. Now they had actually offered her the most honored title of envoy; a title that had only been handed out fifty times since the great revolution two hundred years ago.
"I... Yes, yes, I will take the position as envoy. I... thank you... I don't really know what to say... I... thank you."
"No thanks are needed," Seven assured. "We are glad that we could help solve this issue to the satisfaction of everyone."
"You negotiated that deal, while sitting here?" Chakotay asked.
"Yes," Seven merely said.
"Queen of multitasking she is," B'Elanna said amused.
"An agreement means that they get something in return. What do they get?" Janeway asked.
"The Barudian government knows that this is an empty case. I told them that if they insisted in continuing this lawsuit, the Borg would not initiate further political ties with them. They know that having ties with us is much more important than keeping a Vic on the planet that does not want to stay there anyway. Furthermore, the Barudian have been experimenting with transwarp for several years now. While they succeeded in reaching transwarp, they never quite succeeded in creating a reliable engine. We have agreed to share some of our transwarp capabilities with them. An older and more basic system than what we ourselves are now using. But it still enables them to reach warp 12, and on top of that it is a technology that can be improved by them, by simply adapting and refining the system over time. In other words, it is not a dead end technology like the one they are experimenting with now."
Janeway cleared her throat a little. "Talking about transwarp..."
"That is one of the things we wanted to discuss with you," Seven said. "Two years ago the Borg gave you transwarp coils. Once we were on Unimatrix 01 we discovered that these were actually useless coils. We want to rectify that. We will bring you back to the Alpha Quadrant, regardless of whether you will help us."
"Help you?" Chakotay asked.
"Yes. We have made some significant changes to the Borg Collective. So much so that we are now certain that the Borg are no longer what they used to be, and will never go back to that. I believe that it is time to come to an understanding with the Federation."
"And you want our help in what way?" Janeway asked.
Seven looked at Janeway for a moment before saying, "The Federation will never believe that we truly have good intentions if we were to show up there unannounced. And if we were to announce that we were coming in peace, would they even trust the announcement? The potential for such a meeting resulting in a hostile situation is very high. It is something I would like to prevent if possible. Which is where you come in. If at first contact a known Federation Captain were to speak on behalf of the Borg, they might at least be willing to listen to what we have to say."
"I... see," Janeway said thoughtfully. "That's quite some help you're asking for."
"We know that," Seven agreed. "That is why we are willing to take whatever time it takes to convince you, including showing you the changes we have made to the Collective. That is also the reason why we want it to be clear that we will help you back to the Alpha Quadrant regardless of whether you help us or not. Your return to the Alpha Quadrant is not a reward for helping us; it is giving you something that you should have received two years ago."
"I think that there's one thing that will make us talking pretty much useless," Chakotay said. "The Borg assimilate people. There's no way the Federation would deal with a Collective that basically enslaves people. I mean, as you once said yourself, space is a dangerous place; drones die. How do you get new drones? Voluntary assimilation?"
"Actually... yes."
"What?" The question had come at the same time from almost everyone at the table.
B'Elanna looked at the Doctor and asked, "Doctor, tell me, roughly estimated, from all the species that Voyager had come across, how many species would you say have the medical knowledge that the Federation has, or of a higher level?"
"Well, guessing, I would say that only thirty percent would have such a level of medical knowledge."
"So with most species, if someone were to break their back and injure their spinal cord they would become paralyzed?"
"They would. In fact, even in the Federation we only know how to mobilize a person again without implants if the damage to the spinal cord is not too severe. If the damage is too severe we have to use implants to get them mobile again. But to come back to your percentages, I would say that about twenty-five percent would be able to help such a person to the point where they can walk again."
Suddenly one of the drones standing against the wall stepped forward, scaring the crap out of some people around the table that would of course never admit to it. "My Queen?"
"Katzi, do you remember Captain Janeway?" Seven asked.
"I do," The drone affirmed before speaking to Janeway, "Kathryn, nice to meet you again."
"I... I'm sorry, do I know you?" Janeway asked, surprised that the drone had addressed her with her first name.
"I'm not surprised that you don't remember me. You only met me for ten minutes, two years ago. Do you remember when you were a guest in a Zamonan village?"
"Zamonan? You're a Zamonan?" Janeway asked, now understanding why the drone had addressed her with her first name. It was after all custom with the Zamonan people.
"I am. Remember that there was an incident where Two of Many, my Princess, hit one of the Zamonan for touching One of Many, my Queen, in an improper way?"
Janeway frowned while for a moment thinking back. A lot had happened since that time. "Yes. I think I remember that. If I remember correctly, the Zamonan was punished by having to serve a longer than normal guard duty..."
Then she remembered more of that woman. One thing that has stood out was that she was huge; almost two meters tall, with broad shoulders and a heavily muscled body: just like the woman she was now talking to. "You are that person?"
"I am."
"What... I mean, how... how did you end up here, now?"
"While on that guard duty, one day I was bored and decided to show off a little for one of the other Zamonan. I misjudged the strength of a tree and fell; landing flat on my back and breaking my back in six places, and my neck in two places. It's a miracle that I survived. But I was totally paralyzed. The only thing I could still move was from my throat up. I couldn't even talk anymore. The only way I could still communicate was by moving my eyes and moving my lips. Then my Queen visited our planet, and I received an offer. I could get Borg implants, I could go back to the way I was before, no, more even. I'm stronger, faster, more resilient. In exchange, they wanted one year of service. I took that offer."
"Service?" Janeway asked.
It was B'Elanna who answered that. "The deal we offer people is that they get Borg implants and in exchange they have to serve in the Collective for four years. After those four years, they can choose. They can leave the Collective, keeping, within reason, any implant they want and having the rest removed... if they can be removed. Or they can choose to stay in the Collective longer. We kinda copied that from the Federation. If you join and go to the Academy you sign up for four years, and after that time, you're in Starfleet until you yourself want to leave. Granted, some people go AWOL before that time, but that's a different point. Theoretically, I myself still had to serve two years before I came onboard Voyager. But just think, just imagine. If you can't walk. If you have a bad heart and have been given only two more weeks to live. If you were born without arms, or with another genetic defect. Wouldn't you give four years of your life, if it meant that you actually would have a life? If it meant that you would be able to walk for the rest of your life? If it meant that you had arms for the rest of your life? Arms and hands that feel just like real ones?"
"I can understand that part," Harry spoke up, "But who in their right mind would stay in the Collective out of their free will?"
"Actually, I am," Katzi said. "Because the Zamonan were the first to join the Collective of their own free will, they got a special deal. My Queen needed at least one species she could use as an example to show that Assimilation is voluntary now. The Zamonan received the offer of only having to join the Collective for one year so that one year later there would also be drones that left, and indeed were allowed to leave the Collective. My year of service ended almost one year ago, but I stayed out of my free will."
"I must admit that I'm a little confused," Janeway admitted. "First off, you seem pretty devoted to Seven, but you were injured while serving a punishment, don't you hold that against the person who made you get punished? And why are you still with the Collective?"
"Kathryn, you seem to forget that I was slotted for guard duty anyway. The only difference was that instead of two months I had to serve six. I got injured in the beginning of the second month. So even if I had been there for normal guard duty, I would still have been injured. As for being devoted to my Queen... of course. Do you really think that a drone would be selected for Royal guard duty if they aren't also totally devoted to the Queen, even when they are not under the control of the Hive mind? The connection to the Hive can be disrupted; at those moments you still need guards that are willing to die to protect the Royal family."
"I thought that the Zamonan were devoted to the Zamonan Queen?" Chakotay asked, thinking back to the reports of that time.
"That is part of the deal we make with species," Seven explained. "To prevent conflicts of loyalties all individuals that join the Collective swear loyalty to the Collective, unless the Collective were ever to get into a conflict with that species' government. At that time the individuals will be allowed to leave the Collective so that they do not have to choose between the two."
"I am loyal to my Queen because of the chances the Borg have given me," Katzi continued. "Not only by healing my injuries, but also because thanks to the Collective I found my Mate. She's of a different species, so we would never have met if I had not joined the Collective. We met because until recently she was a member of the senior staff on Unimatrix 01, and I'm, clearly, a guard to the Royal family. We started spending our off duty time together and we were soon sharing quarters..."
Janeway lifted her hand to stop Katzi. She looked at Seven before saying, "You weren't kidding when you said we had a lot of things to discuss. A senior staff on Unimatrix 01? Drones having off duty time that they can spend together? Drones having quarters?"
"Captain, if I may suggest," Seven said. "We have two years to tell you about. The changes we made to the Collective are extreme; you have only heard a few of those changes. B'Elanna offered you a tour of our home. I would like to extend that offer to you actually staying for a few days. I do realize that you do not trust anything that has to do with the Borg, but remember, if we wanted your destruction, then we could have let the Barudians do so. There would also be no use in assimilating you because you could not give us any information that we do not already have. If you do not trust the Borg, than trust us, B'Elanna and me, your former crew members."
"Yeah," B'Elanna added with a grin. "I even promise you that you can stay in normal quarters. You really don't have to sleep standing up. That invitation goes to the entire senior staff by the way. I know you're all dying to find out what happened. If you're still worried about some ulterior motive and therefore don't want to have the entire senior staff off the ship, maybe this can convince you."
Suddenly the conference room was filled with the hum of transporters and about twenty Borg drones came into existence, making the conference room an extremely crowded place. Then just as suddenly as they appeared the drones disappeared again.
"As you can see, Captain, you have no defense against us. If we wanted you dead, you would be. If we wanted you assimilated, you would be. If we wanted control of Voyager, we would already have it. The point is, that you don't need any defense. The Borg Collective is no longer what it once was."
"You have some very compelling points," Janeway agreed with a nod. "In fact, I think now would be a good time for a little tour. I think it'll be interesting to walk around in a Borg ship without having to watch our back every minute."
B'Elanna grinned. "Well, we can show you around some of the parts that are still normal Borg ship; a lot of Unimatrix 01 is still like that. But we have changed about forty percent already."
"Only forty percent?" Tom asked.
"Fly-boy, we're talking about Unimatrix 01, not a shuttle. Do you have any idea how many rooms there are on that thing?" B'Elanna asked with a grin.
"Um, a lot?"
"With room for an amount of drones that is measured in seven digits, I would say a damn lot," B'Elanna agreed with a grin. "Besides, we were busy changing the Borg Collective, changing the scenery is only secondary to that."
"Well," Janeway spoke up, "Should we start that tour then?"
"Actually, Captain, you have a former Borg drone on Voyager. With your permission I would like to talk to her," Seven offered instead.
"Why?" Janeway merely asked. Perizn had become a very valued crew member, and Janeway felt protective of her.
"Captain, I myself have been in her situation. I first feared being on the ship, and then I feared having to leave. I want to assure her that the Borg will never come for her. Besides, you are the Captain of this ship and she is a crew member, you care for her and you would like to know how she is doing if she had left the ship some time ago, would you not?"
"I would," Janeway agreed with a frown, wondering what Seven's point was.
"Then why do you find it so hard to believe that I, as the Borg Queen, would care about a former drone? One of the changes we made is that to us the Borg drones are no longer merely expendable tools."
"Again, you have a point," Janeway agreed. "Tom and I will escort you to where she is. Her name is Perizn Paris now, by the way."
B'Elanna laughed. "You ended up marrying a Borg drone Tom?"
Tom grinned in reply. "Well, I learned from Seven. I knew that what Perizn needed when she came onboard was a friend that accepted her for what she was. I offered to be that friend and things just went from there."
"Well, in that case, why don't you show us the way to your wife?"
Continued...