Chapter 42
The reign of One of Many, née Annika Hansen; Queen of Borg.
Year 01, Month 01, Day 10, Hour 18, Minute 03.
B'Elanna was pacing through the living room with Vasha on her arm. She was bouncing the baby up and down a little while telling her a story. B'Elanna loved this time before Vasha's evening nap. She and Seven took equal care of their daughter, but they had decided that, until no longer needed, the time before the afternoon nap would be for Seven to spend with Vasha. While the time before the evening nap was for B'Elanna. Not that the other would leave, but they would hold back and not interact too much.
It was a good mix of interest for their child, and self interest. They had their own time to fully indulge in spending time alone with their daughter, and they also had their own time in which their partner was taking care of their child and they could concentrate on some 'me' time without feeling guilty.
Seven smiled when she heard the story that her lover was telling their child. B'Elanna had an interesting approach to telling stories. She didn't bother with fairytales or, since she was part Klingon, battle stories. No. B'Elanna knew that her voice, and especially the tone of her voice, was the most important thing. So the Klingon told things of her life, lowering her voice or throwing it, all depending on what was needed to make a life's tale sound like a fairytale.
"So then your Momma came in and started changing things without telling me. Ooooh I was so mad at her. But I kept my cool..." B'Elanna very pointedly ignored the snort coming from her lovely Mate. "...and asked her why she did that."
B'Elanna turned and paced in the other direction. She quickly looked at Seven and noticed that the blonde had put the computer unit aside and was now sitting back and was also listening fully to the story. B'Elanna decided not to comment on how Seven was sitting; it would have been an old comment by now.
While being pregnant, Seven had discovered the benefits of slouching on the couch with her feet on the coffee table. Now she was no longer pregnant, but the position was still comfortable for her if she wanted to do nothing else but talk, or watch her Mate with their daughter.
B'Elanna winked at her lover while continuing with her story. "Your Momma didn't like me very much back then."
With a smile, Seven lifted a hand and wiggled it back and forth.
"She was only pretending of course," B'Elanna smoothly corrected. "But she told me that it was none of my business. Of course Mamma got really mad at Momma for that. So I did something really, really bad. I tried to hit your Momma. But your Momma just grabbed my hand and told me that my activity was truly unproductive. Of course, what your Momma didn't know was that by doing so she made me instantly wet."
"B'Elanna Torres," Seven warned right away.
"Come on, baby, Vasha is one month old. She can't even understand a word I'm saying, let alone actually knowing what being wet means."
B'Elanna set down beside her lover and placed Vasha on their touching legs. "You did, you know? You simply grabbed my hand and held me in place; turned me on like crazy. Guess what I thought of that evening when I got home and had time to do something about being so turned on."
"We talked about that event some time ago and you told me what you thought of," Seven reminded. "Right before I asked you to show me, which you did." She treated B'Elanna to a kiss before adding, "In fact, I would not mind at all if you showed me again tonight."
"Deal, but only if I can have my way with you after that," B'Elanna happily agreed. "In fact, I'm really in the mood to use our Zamona toy and take you bent over the kitchen table."
"I would really like that," Seven assured. "But for now, how about you finish your story to Vasha before we put her to bed?" Then she admitted, "I do not want to wait until tonight. I want to see you touch yourself now."
B'Elanna laughed. "Babe, you're almost as easy as Pagsha."
"Which you like very much," Seven countered.
"I sure do," B'Elanna happily agreed. Then she looked down at their daughter. "Alright, how about I finish that story? Want me to finish the story?"
"Na," Vasha replied as if on cue.
"I believe that Vasha just told you 'no', Seven joked.
"Very funny," B'Elanna replied before focusing on her daughter again. "Momma doesn't think you want me to finish the story. Want to play a game instead?"
"Ga."
"That would be yes," Seven couldn't help but tease her lover.
"Seven," B'Elanna playfully growled. Then she asked her daughter playfully. Story?"
"Na."
Now the grin slid of B'Elanna's face. "Game?"
"Ga."
"Fuck me!"
"B'Elanna Torres, watch your language," Seven warned in outrage.
"Forget about that," B'Elanna said dismissively. "Babe, I think you were right. Vasha really was telling me no."
"Beloved, Vasha does not yet have control over her motor functions. She cannot tell you 'no'; it is impossible."
"Not if she has a sound she can make that means no to her, and a sound that means yes to her," B'Elanna disagreed. She lifted Vasha into her arms again. "Here let's test it some more. Vasha, would you want Momma to hold you?"
"Ga."
"She also said 'ga' to playing a game," B'Elanna reminded. "Want to play a game with Momma?"
"Ga."
"That is just a coincidence," Seven persisted.
"Alright, Vasha, want to go to bed?"
"Na."
B'Elanna merely looked at Seven.
Seven took her daughter. "Vasha, do you want the wall to hop over the door?" Seven asked, deliberately talking gibberish to prove her point. But instead of saying 'ga' or 'na', Vasha just looked at her. Seven looked back at her lover. "Maybe it is in your voice, in how you ask the questions."
B'Elanna nodded. "We can test that. Vasha do you want the wall to play with you?"
Once again there was only silence.
"Do you want Momma to leave?"
"Na."
"Do you want Momma to sing?"
"Ga." This time the sound was even accompanied with a waving of arms.
Seven and B'Elanna merely looked at each other in silence for a long moment. Feeling Vasha becoming restless in her arms, Seven focused on the most important issue at the moment at took and deep breath before starting to sing to her daughter.
~~~~~~~~~~{}~~~~~~~~~~
"Alright, that was positively creepy," B'Elanna admitted once they were back in the living room after having put Vasha to bed.
"Creepy?" Seven repeated.
"Well, not in a 'damn I'm scared of my own daughter' kind of way," B'Elanna was quick to assure. "More of a, 'I never heard of that being possible and how the hell do we deal with this' kind of way."
Seven sat down on her favorite spot on the couch. "I connected to the Hive while you were fussing with Vasha."
"I didn't fuss," B'Elanna objected. "I tucked her in and told her that we would be back in a few hours so that she could spend the evening with us."
"As I said, when you were fussing with her," Seven persisted. B'Elanna merely stuck out her tongue this time. "And I discovered that the ability of coherent perception and speech at an extremely young age is a Human ability. Not to be confused with my photographic memory by the way, nor my instant recall."
So it could have come from both our Human genes," B'Elanna surmised. She dropped down besides her lover. "It's not a Klingon thing?"
"It is not. Such an ability has never been registered with Klingons. Klingon babies have other abilities, like not crying at birth and their motor skills developing very fast compared to Humans. Vasha did cry at birth, I assume that the Borg decided that crying was irrelevant since we are not in a battle. However, I would not be surprised if Vasha will have the quicker control over her body that Klingon babies do."
"Ah, so we'll need to change diapers for a shorter time," B'Elanna asked, deliberately producing an overdramatic extremely happy and brilliant smile that made her Mate laugh.
"That too," Seven agreed. "But to the point of extremely early communication, this must be something Human. While the vast majority of Human children follow the same pattern, within certain tolerances, some have abilities that do not compare to most Humans. The most known ones are the two abilities that I do have."
"Yeah," B'Elanna agreed. "A photographic memory and instant recall are so well known that almost everyone wishes at some point that they were born with it. But in reality only few are, especially with a combination of the two."
Seven put her arm around B'Elanna's shoulder and pulled slightly. Getting the hint, the Klingon moved until she was laying on the couch with her head resting in her lover's lap.
Once B'Elanna was comfortable, Seven continued. "There are quite a lot of reported abilities of Human children that are outside of the normal range. Of course, on the scale of all of Humanity it comes down to less than one tenth of a percent at any time. In regards to what we saw today, I found files in the database of an interesting case from the end of the 20th century where a family had triplets. All three of them had the ability to speak at a very early age. The parents even persisted that the triplets were already talking right after birth. That is not confirmed because they did not have any evidence. However, when the babies were two months old their special abilities became known and news crews came to report on the children. They even featured in a few scientific programs."
"They really could talk that early?"
"There is footage of trusted video sources of that time that actually showed one of the children telling the parents that they needed to be cleaned and diapers to be changed. Obviously the sentences were basic, and not as elaborate as the one I just used, but it was clear communication in which even an outsider that saw the footage for the first time would understand what the baby meant."
"So, are you telling me that Vasha will be telling me stories in a few months instead of the other way around?"
Seven thought about that for a moment. Then she shook her head slightly. "I am not dismissing it, but I doubt it. That case was so well known exactly because it was such an extreme case, more so because it involved three babies."
"Which were triplets, so they all shared the same DNA," B'Elanna interrupted. "If one can do it, I'm not really surprised that the other two can as well."
Now Seven nodded her head. "I agree. Obviously I cannot tell you what the case will be with Vasha, however I assume that for a long time the communication will be basic. She will be able to talk coherent sentences long before most other Human children would, but intricate sentence constructions will be another matter. After all, a lot of how people talk is also social upbringing. Just look at the difference between you and me. You like to shorten your words like letters are on a budget and you want to save by using as few as possible, while I prefer to leave the language in the way it was meant to be used and use words properly."
B'Elanna laughed. "Whaddaya mean? I ain't never used no language wrong. It's you that's always doing it wrong like."
Seven groaned, right before tickling her lover's very reachable side.
"Hey, cut that out bitch," B'Elanna objected as she squirmed under the attack.
Seven did so, changing her attack from a tickle to a loving caress, but never stopping with moving her hand over B'Elanna's body.
"So, your educated guess is that until she learns that sometimes words are added simply for the sake of the flow of a sentence, she will keep it to basic, use as few a words as possible?" B'Elanna guessed.
"Indeed. In fact, in the beginning we might have to translate for her. Take today, now we know what 'ga' and 'na' mean. So now we know that she answered a question, but even Pagsha and Katzi, who spent the most time with Vasha besides us, would merely assume that they are baby sounds."
"We'll need to tell them tomorrow," B'Elanna immediately noted. "They should know so that they too can understand our extraordinary treasure."
"We will," Seven assured. "However, in the mean time, B'Elanna Torres, you need to keep this in mind as well. As of today you need to watch your words in front of her. No more proclaiming that I made you wet, or that I am fucking stubborn."
B'Elanna chuckled. "Well, you are. But you're right baby. I'll watch it. I don't want Vasha to answer a question with 'fuck yeah' any time soon."
"Very well, with that settled, you promised to show me something," Seven suddenly said, changing the subject. Her daughter's abilities was something to keep in mind, but not something that were of need of occupying their every free moment for the next few days. Vasha was their daughter, this unexpected ability was part of her, they would accept it and go from there; as simple as that.
"You're right," B'Elanna happily agreed as she started to move.
Seven used her second hand to hold her lover in place, her first hand never stopping with moving over that wonderful caramel colored skin that she liked to touch so much. "No, I like you like that. Stay and show me."
"Well, it isn't really the position I was in," B'Elanna pointed out as she nevertheless softly started to squeeze her breasts through the fabric of her shirt. "I was so turned on that I didn't bother with lying down, you know?"
"I know, from your first demonstration," Seven agreed. "Call it, call it artistic license."
"Oh, I like being artistic for you," B'Elanna happily agreed before starting to treat her lover to a sexy and satisfying show.
~~~~~~~~~~{}~~~~~~~~~~
The reign of One of Many, née Annika Hansen; Queen of Borg.
Year 01, Month 01, Day 12, Hour 22, Minute 43.
Somewhere in the Delta Quadrant.
"Mayday. Mayday. Please anyone, I need assistance, I,"
{Warning. Core-breach imminent. Evacuate.}
He slapped at the console, muting the alarm, until the next warning cycle would start. He hadn't been able to figure out how to switch it off completely.
"Please, anyone. Mayday, I," This time he stopped talking when he saw a green light flash across the engine room, and then it was gone. It had happened so fast that he wondered if he had imagined it. He decided to turn back to the more important thing of staying alive.
"Mayday. Pl..."
His words trailed off when suddenly there were two flashes of green light. Only this time they didn't disappear. Instead they seemed to solidify until two people were standing in Engineering with him. Both were clad in some black uniform.
He quickly sank to his knees and cowered as low as possible, as he had been trained to do all his life. He glanced up from the corner of his eyes; a little trick he had learned over the years to pretend that he was keeping is head down but nevertheless could see the beatings coming.
One of the two strangers, a woman judging from the ample swell in the chest area, walked over to the warp core. He saw her smash her hand into a console, breaking glass and metal alike. Then she pulled her hand back out, holding a piece of wire.
{Warning. Core-breach immin... core regulator has been deactivated. Core is in auto-power-down sequence. Condition Gamma is now in effect. End of all alarms.}
The second stranger, a man he guessed, turned to him.
"Greetings. I am Gryndi Waneel of the Borg Collective. This is Fliana Ree'lk of the Borg Collective. I apologize for the destruction of your console, but we scanned your ship and deduced that it was the quickest way to stop the core-breach. Once you have repaired the panel your ship will be usable again. Though I would strongly suggest that you build in a reversed core regulator, so that the next time, the core automatically shuts down instead of trying to regulate to the point of explosion."
"I, I would not know how to do that," He admitted from his place on the floor. "I, I also don't know how to fix the panel, honorable master."
He saw the man named Gryndi frown for a moment, and he knew that the stranger must have started to put the pieces together.
"What is your name?" Gryndi asked as he helped the cowering man to his feet.
He went with the motion. He knew how touches felt, how to interpret them. He knew that the gentle help up would have turned into a carless lift off the floor otherwise. He realized that there was tremendous power hiding in that misleadingly thin arm.
"I am called Boy, master."
"Boy?" Gryndi repeated. With his free hand he reached up and pulled off the bandanna that had been drawn down far enough to cover 'Boy's' forehead. Gryndi nodded when he saw the branding, and his guess confirmed. "You're a Grak slave. What are you doing alone on a ship?"
Boy saw that the woman turned to them and the two strangers looked at each other for a moment. Then the woman nodded and turned back to the panel.
"Fliana will start repairs. I ask again, what are you doing alone on a spaceship? Grak slaves are considered property. Where is your master, and what were your services? Clearly you are not the engineer of this ship."
"My mistress is dead, master. Four days ago she and the engineering slave took the shuttle down to a planet. She had debts to pay, but couldn't meet them. She was sure that she could stall for more time. Next thing I know I hear a message on the news channel that my mistress paid off her debt with her life and all of her possessions now belong to the creditor."
"She was killed for her debt and the killer claimed all her possessions," Gryndi clarified. "A somewhat unusual but not uncommon practice in Grak territory."
"Yes master," Boy agreed. "I assume that this is why the Engineer slave didn't come back, he is now property of the new master."
"As are you," Gryndi pointed out.
"Yes, master," Boy admitted. Then he added with a blush, "But my mistress often teased me by telling me that she would hand me to the new master when we were traveling to the destination. She told me some of the things the other master likes to do with pretty boys like me, as she called it."
He was at that, Gryndi had to admit as he looked the slave up and down for a moment. Now, knowing that the young man was a slave, and seeing a surprising absence of marks on his body other than the slave branding, Gryndi made the connection. There was a certain kind of slave that was always punished in such a way that beatings never left a mark on the skin. "You're a sex slave."
"Yes master. That's also where my name comes from. My mistress bought me six years ago and called me boy then. She never called me otherwise since then."
"Six years with the same mistress? That's impressive for a Grak sex slave. Normally they're sold on after a year of two."
Boy blushed deep red when admitting, "My mistress liked the fact that I can... perform, on command. And please for as long as she wanted to be pleased."
"The repairs are complete, for now," Fliana spoke up. "Obviously this panel is beyond use, but I rerouted controls to that panel over there. Crude, but effective. You'll be able to continue your journey in approximately one hour. The core needs to cool down first and you cannot rush that."
"And we'll be spending twenty minutes of that time with you," Gryndi added. "Our ship was underway to another emergency call, so we were beamed over here after it was considered safe, since we knew how to prevent a breach. Another mode of transport is already underway for us."
"You're leaving me here?" Boy asked amazed. He could not believe that these masters would not hand the property back to the Grak government. After all, neither ships, nor slaves, were that cheap. And there was a new master waiting.
"We are. We have no ties with the Grak, other than the fact that a few of them are in the collective after having been assimilated twenty-one years ago. Therefore the law that property must be returned to its owner does not apply to us. As far as we're concerned you're free to continue your course to your destination."
"I don't know what my destination is," Guy suddenly wailed. "When I heard the news I came down here to prepare the ship for boarding by the new owner. Just to clean up a little. I accidentally bumped that console there, fell forward and hit that console there, and suddenly the ship announced 'autopilot initiated' and off it went."
"Where would you like to go?" Gryndi asked. "We can set a course for you."
"Anywhere as long as it's away from Grak territory," Boy said, his voice full with hope.
Once more the two strangers looked at each other in silence for a moment. A moment that lasted longer than the last one had.
"We just connected to the Hive," Gryndi said, knowing that the young man would not know what that meant, but it needed saying to explain the next part. "You're in luck. The Queen is regenerating at this moment and she reacted to our query herself. She decided that you're only alive because of our intervention. Therefore we're not taking property away from an owner; you're already lost to them. Because of that the Queen has granted us clearance to offer you a home in the Borg collective."
"A home? You mean that I would have to service your Queen?"
"We all serve our Queen, but she is not in need of anyone but her Mate to provide the kind of services you provided to your mistress," Gryndi said amused.
Having made a last check of the systems, Fliana joined the other two. "The systems are now set to automatic. I added a nano scanner that will warn me if a problem occurs. We could wait somewhere else. Maybe someplace where we can sit down?"
That last was said with a glance at Gryndi, who happened to be her best friend, but nevertheless also her commanding officer.
"A good idea. How about the bridge?"
Knowing the outlay of the ship from the original scan, Gryndi started to walk. Boy followed him, with Fliana at his side.
"So why was your mistress traveling with only two slaves on a ship that is suited to transport fifty people, at least."
Boy looked at her, seeing the friendly smile she was giving him, he blushed. He may be a sex slave... or may 'have been' a slave as it seemed, but he had never lost his shyness. Probably because his mistress had never cared about anything but having him perform for as long as she had need. To actually have a very attractive woman grace him with a friendly smile was very new to him. More so because she was of a species he had never heard of. Her looks stirred a weird feeling in his stomach that he had never felt before, but he liked it.
"Because my mistress fell on hard times since she killed her husband in a duel. She challenged him because she felt that she should be in charge of his business. She won the fight, but she vastly underestimated what it took to run a business. She started to borrow money to make up for losses. The household once had almost a hundred private slaves. Things never got better. Slaves were sold, property, smaller sub-businesses, all went to pay loans only so that her credit rating stayed good and she could get new ones. Her company is nothing more now than just a known brand name with nothing to back it up. She was living on this ship for the last two months after she sold the house."
"And yet she kept a sex slave," Fliana pointed out.
Boy lowered his eyes. "The more she lost, the more, um, active she became. If she was having sex she was not thinking of other things."
"And you delivered whenever she wanted to forget," Fliana said in understanding.
They moved on in silence.
"So if I won't be servicing the Queen, who will I serve?" Boy asked as they entered the bridge.
"As I said, we all serve the Queen," Gryndi reminded. "But you must move away from thinking as a slave. We don't have slaves in the collective." He chuckled. "Or depending on who you ask we all are slaves that are told what to do and how to do it. We all work for the Collective, but..." an idea for a simple explanation came to him. "You basically can see us as a Collective of your former masters. They have jobs, they work for people, they report to superiors. We're much the same. Only we don't have slaves working for us. We have a lot of technology that takes the place of jobs that are done by slaves with your species. With you, slaves cook food, with us it's created by machines. With the exception of a relatively small number of people that work in restaurants because they actually like to create food."
"And, um what if people want," another blush, "my kind of services?"
"The Borg have holodecks that can be used," Fliana spoke up. "They create artificial people that act and feel like real people. They can be used for mindless sex. But a lot of species, including mine, don't do that for different reasons. For them there are other options. The fact that we have so many species in the Collective helps. There are several species that are extremely sexually active, and they don't mind sharing their surplus with other species, so to speak."
Boy digested that for a moment. "You mean, if they want sex and someone of a different species also happens to want sex... why not? But isn't, um, compatibility a problem?"
"Not as much as you would expect," Fliana assured. "Nature, or omnipotent beings, depending on your beliefs, long ago decided that the Humanoid form has certain benefits. Sure, there are species that simply are incompatible, but in eighty percent of the cases things... fit. Sometimes some creativity is needed, but that can be part of the fun. In fact, personal preferences as to what one considers pleasure is much more restricting than the humanoid body itself."
"Fliana, maybe you should switch seats with me," Gryndi suddenly said with a chuckle when the undertone of the conversation of the other two registered with him.
Fliana looked at him in surprise and then her cross shaped pupils dilated a little. "Um, yes, that might be a good idea actually."
"What did I do?" Boy asked.
"Nothing other than not having a Mate at the moment," Gryndi assured amused as he sat down in the chair that Fliana had just vacated.
Boy looked at Fliana who treated him to a smile. He immediately blushed, again.
"Maybe," Fliana started, only to be interrupted from a beep of a panel to the side of the bridge. She got up and walked over to the panel. "A starship is heading in our direction." She hesitated for a moment as she used her link to the Hive to reference the style of the ship. "I believe it to be a Grak Enforcer class ship."
Boy started to shake.
"I bet that they picked up your mayday as well," Gryndi guessed.
"No. They'll take me back. I knew it was too good to be true."
"Our Queen did offer you a home in the Borg collective," Gryndi reminded. "Do you take the offer?"
Boy gave a helpless laugh. "Oh I would love to. But you aren't going to stop them. We don't have weapons powerful enough to put even a scratch on their hull, while they can blast us away with one shot."
Fliana stepped away from the console and kneeled in front of the still sitting Boy. She opened one of the pockets of her tool belt and took out a small oval shaped medallion. There was a symbol on it that reminded Boy somewhat of a hand that was squeezing something between thumb and three fingers.
"I was given this when I joined the Borg, before I got my implants. It's an external Borg communicator. I kept it as a good luck charm. You can give it back to me tomorrow. Welcome to the Borg Collective, Boy Ree'lk."
Boy took the communicator, but his eyes never left those beautiful golden colored eyes with those fascinating cross shaped pupils. He blinked, realizing that Fliana had just given him a last name; her last name.
"Promise me that you'll give it back to me tomorrow," Fliana prompted. "I have a few things to explain to you, my Mate."
Boy nodded. He felt himself move closer to her, but she moved away just before their lips could touch.
"You're a troublemaker, my friend," Gryndi said with a shake of his head. "Go man the con station."
Fliana laughed as she got up and did as she was ordered. As she reached her friend she whispered in his ear, "At least he won't disappoint in bed. Plus he's really cute, incredibly nice, and has a delightful blush. Be glad, now you can stop growling at those suitors hanging around the department after having found out that you have a Siill in your department that needs bonding."
"Well, yes, that's a plus," He admitted before asking, "I do wonder why you didn't just pick one of them." Privately he was glad that he already had a wife when Fliana entered the bonding stage. It had resulted in him not being affected by the Maintainer that had been put under his care, and therefore he had been able to get to know her simply for the wonderful person that she was. A great friend to have.
"Because they are too stupid to first read up on us Siill. We will bond with whoever fits base criteria, yes. But the first contact should not be forced. A selection should happen naturally, as by accident."
"Like coming across a nice guy that has no clue about the bonding," Gryndi said in understanding.
"Yes, for someone that isn't of my species. Or if the person is of my species then someone I'm working with in daily life, or that I meet on my way to my job in daily life. All is fine, just not someone that very deliberately searches us out because they've heard that we're in need of bonding. After the first innocent contact is made, then they can run after us all they want and we even applaud them for knowing what they want. But the first contact should be something to think of fondly when thinking back to how we met our Mates."
Gryndi nodded in the direction of the console. "Let's talk later. My Mate is cooking today."
Fliana merely smiled brightly as an acceptation of the invite. It wasn't the first time she would have dinner with her friends. She had hardly sat down when she noted, "They're sending a message." Fliana played the message over the speakers.
"This is Kral, Third Constable of the Hio sector. We received your mayday. Its identification code told us that your ship is reported as missing property. We will board your ship and take control over it as soon as we are in transporter range."
"Oh no," Boy cried. Yet despite his almost paralyzing fear he noticed that the two strangers didn't seem to be impressed by the statement.
"Open a channel," Gryndi ordered. When Fliana nodded for ready, he spoke, "Third Constable Kral, This is Gryndi Waneel, Fifth Officer of the Borg Collective. We too responded to the mayday. We prevented this ship from being destroyed because of a Warp core overload. This ship has no value to us and you're welcome to claim it as soon as one of our ships arrives to transport us. However, as long as our ship has not yet arrived we declare this ship sovereign territory of the Borg Collective and any attempt of boarding will be seen as an act of war."
There was a long silence before a reply came back. "Borg? My second has heard the name somewhere once, but it doesn't really mean anything to us. If it doesn't take too long we are willing to wait for you to leave."
There was a short pause, and then the next words were spoken with a certain smugness. "But our sensors are picking up a slave tracking device, and along with the missing property report for the ship there was a mentioning of a missing slave. So I'm afraid that we really will have to board the ship to secure that property before you can be on your way."
"Oh well, it was worth a try," Gryndi said before signaling that the channel should be opened again. "Constable, I'm afraid I can't allow that. The former slave, called Boy, would have been killed in the explosion of this ship if we had not intervened. Therefore our Queen has granted him sanctuary and Boy is now considered a member of the Borg Collective."
"If you don't hand him over you will be destroyed," Came the expected reply right back.
"That is an unacceptable proposition. I would strongly urge you to refrain from any forceful acts against us. That would be extremely unwise. We are Borg, and the Borg protect their own. You don't want to face the retribution our capture or death would cause."
"I am getting tired of your bluffing. You will be boarded, we give you ten minutes to decide how you will react to that boarding. Be smart and don't cause problems. Kral out."
"Oh no," Boy cried. "You should, you should hand me over. You don't want to anger Enforcers. They get... mean when irritated."
Fliana came closer and caressed his face, making Boy look up into those confident eyes. "They gave us ten minutes."
"Yes, and,"
"And," Fliana interrupted, "We only need nine."
"For what?" Boy asked confused. Her proximity affected him, called to him. He felt himself move again, only to feel warm fingers being placed over his lips.
"You will see. But that means that I have about eight minutes now to explain something to you." She glanced at Granada who nodded in agreement. "You feel a very strong attraction to me."
Boy blushed when hearing that confident statement. He nodded shyly.
"You see, I am of a species called the Siill and..."
~~~~~~~~~~{}~~~~~~~~~~
"We're being hailed," Fliana said from her place at the com station. She kissed her Mate, who was sitting on her lap. "Mind getting up and letting me do my job?"
Boy merely nodded as he got up. He was still so nervous that he was shaking slightly, but having been told that he now had someone that was going to share his life with him, or more to the point, he with her since she already had an established workplace, home, and friends, had taken his mind off the threat outside the ship. His new Mate had merely told him 'trust me', and he had found that he did.
"Your time is up," Constable Kral said over the com. system. "Are you going to cause trouble or did you wise up?"
"From your reaction I assume that you did not spend the last ten minutes wisely and do some research on the Borg?" Gryndi asked.
"Stop your stalling. Drop the shields or we won't even bother with boarding and simply destroy you."
Gryndi sighed. "Constable Kral, you leave me no choice. I hereby inform you that if you continue to insist on an altercation with us, we will retaliate in kind."
"You and what army?" Kral snorted dismissively.
"That would be me and this army," Gryndi replied. At the same time as he said this, areas of space around the two ships shimmered and ten huge blocks appeared apparently out of nothing. They dwarfed both ships in size. "Constable Kral, take this message back to your leaders. It comes directly from our Queen. We are the Borg. We protect our own. If you ever again come across a Borg drone, do realize that any act of violence against that drone will be considered an act of war against the entire Borg Collective. I would strongly advise that you recommend to your leaders to research the Borg and decide if they want to anger us. Also, we recognize the sovereignty of your territory, but as of today any slave found outside your territory is granted sanctuary by the Borg Collective, if they wish it. Gryndi Waneel, Fifth Officer of the Borg Collective, out."
"What, what are those?" Boy asked while looking at the viewscreen. "I have never seen anything so big."
"Those are the standard ships of the Borg Collective, called cubes," Gryndi explained. "This is the seventy-eight wing."
Boy quickly did the math and asked amazed, "Are you telling me that you have almost eight hundred of these ships?"
"Try several million," Gryndi corrected. "This is a new approach that our Queen introduced. She believes that if you have numbers, use them. The Borg have numbers. The Queen believes that if you show up with a force big enough to win a war, people will be more inclined to listen to suggestions instead of actually starting that war. This situation now is a good example. We also have smaller ships, but if one of those had come to take us home, then the Enforcers might have been tempted to try force. Now they are sitting over there on that ship peeing their pants and wishing they never tried to show their superiority by asking me 'you and what army'."
"This is called a wing? You said?" boy asked.
"It is. They are assigned to sectors so that they can give first response in situations like this. If a bigger force is needed then a fleet will arrive. A fleet exists out of one thousand cubes. With the exception of the First Fleet. They are designed as the Borg's main defense force and therefore they exist out of fifty thousand cubes."
"Fifty thousand of those, in one fleet?" Boy walked closer to the viewscreen and focused on the view that showed the Enforcer ship that now looked as small as a toy compared to the huge ship behind it.
"It's a new development," Gryndi explained. "The Borg Collective has gone through incredible changes in the last year. I for one like it. With the last Queen, individual drones were irrelevant. In a situation like now, we would have simply been considered dead and a ship would not even have bothered coming for us. Now every single drone knows that even if alone on a mission somewhere, the Queen will never consider them expendable. Sometimes sacrifices need to be made, we all know that. But if in any way possible, a Drone will be saved at all acceptable cost. If need be an entire army will come to the defense of a single Drone. Now, with the new Queen, every single drone in the Collective knows that no matter where they are, a drone is truly never alone."
Boy turned away from the viewscreen and looked at Gryndi. "There must be thousands of people on those ships."
"The wings and fleets have a standard crew of fifty thousand drones per cube. With the exception of the First Fleet, they have more drones per cube because the troops might be needed for ground maneuvers."
"And, and you're telling me that even if you were not here, they would have defended me, risked their own lives for me?" Boy asked in a whisper.
"They would," Gryndi assured. "After all, you accepted the Borg as your new home, so now you're Borg as well."
Boy's knees buckled and he dropped to his knees. "Half a million people. For me. To protect me." He moved further onto the floor until he was lying in a fetus position and was crying without restrain.
Fliana rushed to him, but Gryndi stopped her by grabbing her arm. "He's alright. I've seen this behavior before. I met my wife like this actually. As you know, she is a Ghdibrian. She was brought back into Individualist status in the same group as me. She, she didn't have an easy life before being assimilated. Being the twelfth wife of an abusive and tyrannical husband. She behaved in this same manner when she realized: no more. She was no longer property, she was no longer to be beaten for the smallest thing, or even simply because her husband felt like it. I happen to be the one that took her in a hug and comfort her, things went from there between us. He's alright, honestly. Just look at his hands."
Fliana did so and noticed that Boy was clutching something tightly to his chest.
"The communicator you gave him," Gryndi explained. "His symbol of freedom. Now go and comfort your Mate while we get off of this piece of rust. So that we can be brought back to our ship, and his new home."
Boy felt arms move him. He went with the motion. And as a green light started to form around him, he cried freely in those arms that now were his new home.
Continued...