Chapter Text
It wasn’t a long walk from the infirmary to Neil’s residence, but the frigid air against Icheb’s face gave him a good idea of what Maren must have endured unprotected. Each time he or Neil exhaled, the vapor immediately crystallized and fell to the ground as snow. They walked there in silence. Icheb looked up at the star-filled sky, where the aurora was just beginning to put on its colorful display. He wished Maren were beside him to see it, too.
When they arrived at Neil’s laboratory, the scientist leaned in front of the eyescanner next to the door, and it slid open. “After you,” he said, gesturing to Icheb to step inside.
As they entered the lab, Icheb’s eyes were instantly drawn to the bloodstained sofa in the living area. A washcloth had been dropped on the floor beside it, and it, too, was saturated with blood. He must have displayed a visible reaction, because Neil immediately rushed over to pick up the washcloth and took it into the nearby kitchen area. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, looking truly remorseful. “I wasn’t thinking. You didn’t need to see that.”
“No, I’m fine,” Icheb replied, but he was lying. He felt sick to his stomach at the sight.
Neil shed his coat and took Icheb’s, too, draping them over a nearby dining chair. “I’ll get the handheld,” he said. He walked over to the lab area and retrieved a portable sonic cleaner and disinfectant. As Icheb followed him with his eyes, he noticed there was a dog, sound asleep in a crate, snoring softly.
As Neil returned with the device and ran it over the stains on the sofa, they rapidly disappeared. “I really wish you hadn’t seen that,” Neil said. “This is the only place I have for you to sleep tonight.”
“I don’t really sleep,” said Icheb. It was the truth. He regenerated, and he didn’t have an alcove here. One night without regeneration wouldn’t kill him, but as far as sleep went, he’d be fortunate to manage more than a twenty-minute nap.
Neil cast him a questioning glance, and seemed to really notice, for the first time, the visible implant on Icheb’s face. A look of recognition crossed his face. “I know who you are,” he said. “You were Borg. Voyager brought you back from the Delta Quadrant.”
Icheb nodded. He was used to being recognized. Now Maren was semi-famous, too, at least in the scientific community. It was strange for both of them.
Neil eyed him with curiosity, but didn’t press further. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
Icheb wasn’t, but he nodded anyway. He required nourishment, especially if he was going to skip regeneration. “Yes, sir,” he said.
Neil gave him a stern look. “You can call me Neil, or Dr. Abbott, or just ‘hey you,’ but please stop calling me ‘sir,’” he said. “I haven’t worn the uniform for a long time, and it’s disconcerting to hear you call me that.”
“Yes, sir,” Icheb replied automatically, before he could catch himself. He gave Neil a tiny, slightly sheepish smile. “I mean, Dr. Abbott.”
“That’s better,” Neil said, with a small smile of his own. He walked over to the replicator in the kitchen area. “What’ll it be?” he asked.
Normally, Icheb would have ordered nutritional supplement 13B. It met all his dietary needs in an efficient manner, and its taste was inoffensive. But right now, he didn’t feel like being efficient. Back at the Academy, whenever either of them was upset about something, Maren would replicate them peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate milk. Comfort food, she’d called it. Right now, Icheb felt he could use some comfort. “A peanut butter sandwich and a glass of chocolate milk,” he requested.
Neil’s eyes widened slightly. “Geez, you are just a kid, aren’t you?” he said, bemused. “And here I was going to offer you a beer.”
“I don’t really drink,” Icheb replied.
“That’s a shame,” Neil said. “Because if anyone needs a drink tonight, it’s probably you.”
He replicated the requested items and set them on the table for Icheb, then retrieved two glasses and a bottle of scotch from the countertop and brought them over. “In case you change your mind,” he said, pouring a glass for Icheb and sliding it toward him. He sat down at the other end of the table and poured his own drink. He rolled the liquid around in the glass a bit before taking a long sip. He closed his eyes as he swallowed it down.
“May I ask you a question?” Icheb asked him.
The scientist gave him a wary glance, but nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Who is Caris?”
Neil sighed. “I had a feeling you were going to ask me that.”
He took another long drink of his scotch and closed his eyes again. Then he set his glass down carefully on the table in front of him. “Caris was my wife,” he said, after a long moment. “Me, Lew and Caris, we were all three assigned to the Ajax. Lew and Caris got sent on an away mission to an uncharted Class P moon to determine whether it had any mining value. I wasn’t along for the ride – geology was her specialty, not mine. The system we were in had a lot of radioactive noise, so they had to take a shuttle because we couldn’t use transporters. Lew was the pilot.” He sighed and took another sip of his drink, seemingly willing himself to continue.
“While they were down there, we detected an incoming neutronic storm,” he said. “The captain ordered them to return to the ship immediately.” He paused and swallowed hard. “But Caris was dragging her feet. She had just found an unidentified element in the rocky surface below the ice, and she was determined to get a sample to take back for analysis. She told the others to go ahead, that she’d catch up in a minute. But as she was climbing out of the excavation site, she slipped and lost her footing on the ice, and lost her grip on the climbing rope. She fell about 30 meters, broke her leg, and shattered her EV suit’s faceplate.” His eyes welled up at the memory.
“The others had all made it back to the shuttle, so she told Lew to just leave her, and he did,” Neil said, his voice thick with the effort of fighting back tears. “He didn’t even try to save her. He could have flown the shuttle over to the excavation site, lowered someone else down to pull her out, but he didn’t. He said there was no time – neutronic storms move faster than warp, you know?”
Icheb nodded. The Borg called them particle density anomalies – classification 3472 – and they were extraordinarily damaging to both technology and organic life. If Schmidt had tried to save Caris, it was likely everyone on the away team would have perished. But he also knew that if it was Maren in that situation, he probably would have taken the risk. He suspected Neil felt the same way about Caris.
“He was my best friend, and he left her there,” Neil said quietly, still sounding disbelieving after all the intervening years. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye. We recovered her body three days later, after the storm had passed and radiation levels had dropped enough. The last words I ever heard from her were recorded on the shuttle’s comm. She said, ‘Tell Neil I’m sorry, and I love him.’ Lew didn’t even give her a reply.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Icheb, sincerely.
“It was a long time ago,” Neil said, shaking his head sadly. “But seeing your girlfriend tonight took me right back.”
“I quit Starfleet the day we buried her,” he added, after a few moments’ silence. “I couldn’t do it anymore, not without her.” He set his glass down. “I hadn’t seen or spoken to Lew in twelve years before tonight.” He frowned across the table at Icheb. “Is what happened tonight normal now?” he asked. “I know everyone has to do the survival test, but I don’t remember it being this bad. I mean, I spent three days on a swampy moon trying to avoid poisonous creatures, but at least it was M-class. The only way I was going to die was if I did something stupid.”
Icheb shook his head. “No. Maren’s test was not standard protocol,” he said. “Commander Schmidt sets everyone up to fail their first time. He analyzes their strengths and weaknesses and uses them to plan a worst-case scenario. But he usually only needs standard equipment to do it.”
“After Maren broke the Kobayashi Maru simulator, he realized she could program her way out of anything," Icheb continued. "He wanted to force her to face the test as designed – a test of survival, not of technical skill. He chose the arctic because she hates the cold. But as far as I know, this is the first time he’s instructed weather control to alter conditions for a survival test, and the first time he’s tried to lock anyone out of the pod’s internal systems. And it’s certainly the first time he’s called in someone close to the test subject to assist with developing the scenario. I told him I thought it was a conflict of interest, but he said I should consider it a psychological test, to see if I could send her into a potentially lethal situation.”
“And how did that make you feel?” Neil asked.
Icheb looked up from his sandwich and met his gaze. Neil was staring at him with an oddly intense expression.
“Terrible,” Icheb answered. “I hated every minute of it.”
Neil sighed heavily. “Don’t let them do it to you,” he said. “Don’t let them turn you into one of them. You’ve been assimilated before – Command is no different.” He shook his head and took another swig of his scotch. “I swear to God, sometimes I think the Borg are more honorable than we are – at least they’re up front about their intentions.”
Icheb put down his sandwich. “I’m unsure what you mean.”
Neil sighed and set down his drink. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long night. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. I just mean that not everyone at Command has your best interests in mind, or Maren’s, or anyone else’s. To some of them, you’re simply … well, drones, for lack of a better comparison. Useful for your function and very little else. Have you ever noticed that the Vulcans consistently get the highest marks during performance reviews?”
Icheb nodded. He had, in fact, observed this phenomenon, although his marks were typically just as high.
“It’s because they’re logical and efficient, and don’t let their personal lives affect their work,” Neil said. “The only reason they don’t staff every starship with as many as they can is that they tend to irritate the humans.”
“Logic and efficiency are extremely valuable traits, but emotion can also be a powerful motivator,” Icheb pointed out. “Anger over injustice, compassion for the suffering, curiosity about the unknown – often, emotions become catalysts for action. That’s why we fight wars, go on humanitarian missions, and travel to uncharted space, isn’t it?”
Neil smiled and shook his head. “That was fine when the Federation was smaller,” he said. “Now, it’s so large as to be practically ungovernable. People are easier to manage when their emotions don’t get in the way of their utility. When Caris died, Lew was commended for his decision to leave her behind. You know: ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.’ It’s not that they weren’t sad to lose her – but ultimately, her death came down to a numbers game. Statistical probabilities were more important than compassion or love – or Caris’s life. Sometimes I worry that this utilitarian approach to things will spread beyond Starfleet itself and affect the entire Federation. Maybe we’ll sacrifice one planet to save a few others, or drop our support of worlds that take more resources than they give back. We can’t just keep expanding forever, or we really will become the Borg.”
Icheb stared silently at his still-untouched glass of chocolate milk. He picked it up and took a sip, just to give himself something to do while he processed Neil’s words. He set it back down, and then eyed the glass of scotch Neil had given him. “Is that synthetic?” he asked warily. Synthehol did bad things to his cortical array.
Neil shook his head. “No, it’s the real deal. Friend of mine brought it in from Aberdeen a few weeks ago.”
Icheb picked up the glass and took a sip. It burned going down, but it was a strangely pleasant feeling. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but the prospect of being awake all night without something to ease the tension he was feeling was enough to convince him to partake. “Thank you,” he said, nodding at Neil.
“You’re welcome,” Neil replied. “And I’m sorry to have gone off on a tangent like that. Seeing Lew tonight just reminded me of all the reasons I left Starfleet. Don’t get me wrong – you people do a lot of good, and the Federation isn’t evil. It’s just … unwieldy. And the more our leaders try to manage it, the further it gets from what it was created to be. I often wonder if the Borg started the same way.”
Icheb shook his head. “No. The Federation was built on respect for diversity – disparate worlds in cooperation together. The Borg Collective strives for unity and the perfection of the whole. No matter how much pressure the Federation puts on worlds to conform to its ideals, it will never be the same thing as a hive mind. As long as its citizens remain individuals with free will, the Federation will never become the Borg.”
“I suppose I find that reassuring, coming from you,” Neil said, taking another sip of his scotch.
“I realize the Federation is imperfect,” Icheb said. “I’ve experienced its imperfection firsthand, more times than I care to recount. But out of all the societies the Borg had encountered as of my separation from the Collective, this is the one I like the most.” He took another small sip of his drink, enjoying the warming sensation it gave him. He eyed Neil cautiously. “I’m very sorry about your wife.”
Neil nodded. “I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” he replied. “I mean, I’m glad she’s alive, but I’m sorry this happened to her, and to you. I have to say, though, I’m honestly a little surprised this hasn’t soured you on Starfleet.”
Icheb shrugged. “This is our dream,” he said. “Maren’s and mine. We both want to experience as much of the universe as we can, and Starfleet is the best way to do it. No one else but the Borg have the resources to take us where we desire to go.”
“And where is that?” Neil asked.
“Everywhere,” Icheb replied. “As you stated back at the infirmary, Maren might have 150 years of innovation in front of her. I plan to be working with her the entire time. Starfleet is already developing a practical slipstream drive because of a problem she solved when she was 20. She and I have other ideas, too. If we can utilize Federation resources to develop our theories, intergalactic travel may be feasible within our lifetimes. Possibly even instant intergalactic travel.”
Neil raised his eyebrows. “Wow. You two are ambitious.”
Icheb didn't argue. It was the truth.