PART ELEVEN: A THOUSAND VOICES
The sleeplessness was the first sign. After Kathryn left, he tried to sleep, even though it was afternoon. He hadn't closed his eyes in more than forty eight hours but then, he hadn’t felt the need to sleep. Kathryn had been too busy preparing to leave and hadn’t noticed the signs of his lack of sleep.
Then yesterday morning, he had taken his cello outside to the deck. The flexing of his fingers, the exercise of running them over an imaginary keyboard had felt stiffer than usual, almost arthritic. And when he began to play a few arpeggios to warm up, the notes screeched forth from the instrument, off key and strident, atonal sounds that filled the air with their uselessness. For the next hour he had forced the suppleness back into his fingers so that the notes he created were again mellow, smooth, tonal, and he had played on until he grew tired.
He was restless. Since Kathryn's departure he hadn't been able to sit down or lie on his bed for any length of time. The prospect of abseiling the cliffs was not as pleasurable as it had been the last time the two of them had done so together. The lake beckoned in the moonlight; most nights he had spent just sitting at the water's edge but the gleaming stillness, long streaks of moonlight forming roads and highways back to the stars...impressed him no more.
The restlessness had been growing since the first signs of spring. He couldn't concentrate on writing even a thousand words of The Raging Moon but he had refused to give up and finally, he had finished almost three thousand for the day. He paced the lounge, walked jerkily to the bookshelf and with knotty fingers, caressed the spines of War and Peace, Man in the Iron Mask, Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, smiling grimly to himself. Ikiru meant life. The books took on a misty form, congealed into one and became all of life and all of literature, containing the saga of life and death and resurrection of the soul and the restitution of the body. He lifted Songs of a Wayfarer but numbed fingers dropped the book.
He tried to bend down to pick it up and return it to its hallowed place, but even that action became a laboured movement. It lay open where it had fallen. Page two hundred and one.
The Oracle answered in words that were clothed in the brilliance of morning, words that were full of meaning...
I know your
songs, O Wayfarer. I know that which you seek, even as the door to understanding
remains closed to you. You seek signs that are not there, for those signs are in
your heart.
How then, O
Oracle, am I to understand the signs?
Open your heart
to the morning dew as it restores the life of the wilting flower...
Ethan remembered those words, as he remembered every word in the novel, but now, the words were fading. The intangible entity was upon him and had sunk into his senses. He left the book on the floor, grunting as he turned away from it, moving in the direction of his stairs.
He cranked up the short flight of wooden steps to his bedroom, the largest room in the house for it covered the entire upper level. There he stood wide eyed, his mind again opening and beginning to infuse with images, his eyes darting round, finding photo frames with faces in them - long lost faces. Mel…Rourke…Piers…his life - years when he speared the joy through his soul with them. Mel's image receded even as his visual acuity increased. Were his mind and his sight acting independently? His bed had not been slept in for days, was the thought that registered, a singular structured string of words that remained as processes that moved only from neuron to neuron, never once breaking contact, but also never emitting from his mouth as distinct words and sound. As laboured as his movement was going up the short flight of wooden steps, so the wood echoed the halting, faltering movement back down again.
His heart registered beats - slow, dull thuds that did reaffirm he was still alive, he was still Ethan Bellamy.
I am Ethan Bellamy
That was two days ago, or twenty days, or two thousand days. He was beginning to let go of the ordered thoughts of Ethan, former first officer of the USS Bellerophon.
Now as his fingers clutched the bow, the left hand wrestling a gentle vibrato from the strings, he noticed the skin covering the back of his hand changing. Dark veins on the outside, more dark silver, metallic veins that had begun to show, merging with his skin, replacing it, reshaping it, realigning it. He knew that the process had begun days ago, but now all processes had speeded up and in a single afternoon, Ethan Bellamy would be no more.
Like ugly portents of death, the veins grew and hardened until the notes he played were no longer notes his fingers produced. They were oddities of sound - irregular catches, discordant bits that were without order. Order was scales placed from lowest to highest notes, in keys of flats or sharps; order was arpeggios he composed most times on the spur of the moment, becoming strange little melodies of chance. Biting his lips he forced again a scale - F Sharp - fingers digging, nails scoring into the wood. Into the wood? Where was he? Something snapped. He heard a zing echoing into the light of day. A string broke. He had never broken a string before.
A sudden vision of Kathryn watching him play Fauré.
Élégie.
Lament the dead. Lament your transformation.
"No...not now. Not this year...not again..."
But they were not words that issued from his mouth. They were guttural sounds, comprised of ten thousand sounds of voices that reflected his thought. He knew he was thinking, that so far, his brain still functioned in ordered entities such as sentences, formulation of images such as Kathryn's face - smiling, her hair bobbing as she turned her head. Yet, he knew that any of these impulses he attempted to send from his brain to his hands, his fingers, his mouth, his eyes even, resulted in a cacophonic confusion that would straighten out...eventually.
Rising unsteadily to his feet, he managed to drag the cello inside. Like a limp rag doll, the instrument followed him to where he paused at his usual spot in front of the French door, in the right hand corner of the room, facing the outside world. He looked at the trees outside, their tops swaying in a breeze that had sprung up from somewhere, the sky above them clear - as clear as azure. On the floor lay Songs of a Wayfarer, still open at page two hundred and one, the Words of the Oracle staring up at him.
He gave a rasping cry and turned. Not the normal turn of a human biped which placed feet at certain angles and allowed the upper body to sway naturally in the direction the feet pointed, but a robot-like turn in which the entire body swung on the axis of his feet - one single motion. Coherent human thought waned into coherence of body, of movement, of another kind of energy that responded to another order, of compliance to hidden mysteries of his mind. Now, that order impelled him to set things in motion, that which would engineer his protection.
Slowly, he made his way to the back of the cabin, to the second shed hidden behind the shed where Kathryn's big chair had stood only days ago. He lifted his right hand. On the back of it, just behind the knuckles of index and middle fingers, were dark contusions, like the bruises of punctures, and over the whole hand, an exoskeleton had begun to grow until the hand appeared like a metal glove. The vision in his left eye sharpened exponentially and even through the door of the first shed, he saw the hidden door to which his ever growing exoskeleton carried him.
With agonising precision, he opened the door of the second shed and closed it behind him. In the darkness, he could see as well as he could during the day and his enhanced vision unerringly picked out the transponders and other metallic units on a waist high bench. Dark red lights had begun flickering as he came nearer to the consoles and when he touched them, they started whirring. He entered several codes, keyed in commands that appeared from somewhere in the hidden depths of his brain.
It is time, Ethan Bellamy, that you heed the cry of thousands
I have heeded
the cry. I hear all and I hear one.
He stood erect as he finished his task, then again, as before, he swung his whole body round on the axis of his feet and began walking with measured, slow steps. He knew if he looked in a mirror now, that his hair would be gone, that his head was now covered with only bare skin.
I
have pain.
P-A-I-N
I-S I-R-R-E-L-E-V-A-N-T
I
W-I-L-L C-O-M-P-L-Y
Words and sounds and all other forms of communication of the human Ethan were jumbled, then eased like puzzle pieces into discernable shapes. Robot-like he traced his steps back from the shed to the house, through the back door, the kitchen, the lounge. Now he saw the door of Kathryn's bedroom and headed for it. Inside, his head jerked this way then that, the enhanced eye finding objects he appeared to recognise.
I know I'm
welcome in your home, Ethan. I will always be welcome.
Before
his transformation, he could smell Kathryn in her room. Now there was nothing he
could discern through smell. He remembered vaguely how she felt in his arms.
s-k-i-n
a-l-a-b-a-s-t-e-r
On her bedstand were two photographs.
Her mother with Phoebe.
Chakotay.
Native American.
K-A-T-H-R-Y-N I-S I-N P-A-I-N
D-E-A-D E-Y-E-S
Another guttural, incoherent sound escaped as he stretched out a metallic hand and shoved the picture from the stand. It landed on the floor and the glass shattered. When he turned, he stepped on Chakotay's face before walking out to the open French door. No sensation of cold or heat or wind. A small hesitation before he crossed the deck to reach the steps. Looking down, he saw his whole body now encased in shiny armour that was not an armour but an extension of his skin, or more precisely, his new skin. Down the steps he walked until he reached a spot about ten metres from the deck.
The man - Ethan - stretched out his hand, saw the bluish-green flash of the forcefield he had set into place and activated. He turned and traced his steps back to the lounge, but this time moved up the short flight of steps to his bedroom.
A wall. A double metal door, which slid noiselessly open at the touch of the keys.
Inside his room, he finally felt safe. A mirror. He stood there, taking in his appearance. No emotion, compressed lips, the alabaster skin of his cheek that was left unscathed by the transformation, twitched. High visual acuity. He could see through the mirror. On the other side of the mirror was the other Ethan.
No one would come. No one dared to come near him. He was protected. Shun the world, shun the universe, shun your masters, shun the Federation. Shun Kathryn...
He homed in on the small console on a stand at the end of the bed.
You are no longer Ethan Bellamy. You are an adjunct in a collective of millions.
Commander Bellamy, you have been severed from the Collective. We may not have achieved one hundred percent success.
Failure is irrelevant. Heal me.
We need you for testing.
I lost too much.
Commander
Bellamy, you are a drone in the possession of the Federation.
I have only my own voice...
I have no name. My thought processes are controlled.
His hand balled into a fist and two tubules suddenly extended from the back of it, sinking into the console, pouring into it thousands of nanoprobes that would, with their distinctive tasks, comply to the Ethan-drone's command. In and out the new tubes moved, like snakes traversing the branches of trees, malevolent, silent, a deadly task ahead - kill the prey. He watched the wall change, noted how instruments transformed and grew, shaped and produced form, assimilating the natural wood of the floor beneath his feet, the wall beyond, until eventually, the probing movement stopped, like the whirring of ancient machines come to a halt.
He drew back the tubules and stepped up on the platform, turning to face outwards from the alcove. A series of lights whirred above his head. He closed his eyes.
He was home.
****************
"Are you sure you want to go alone, Admiral?" Ayala asked, concern in his voice.
They were back at Headquarters in her office where she was making arrangements to leave for Beaver's Lodge.
A forcefield. Her heart had hammered when Admiral Paris spoke about a forcefield. She was intensely worried about Ethan's safety, his health. He had looked very pale the last time she had seen him. She knew he was there on his property, but not communicating with her, despite several attempts to hail him. When Admiral Paris had mentioned that the forcefield erected round Beaver's Lodge carried a Borg signature, it set off the alarm bells. Who set up the forcefield, and why a Borg signature? The only former Borg in the Alpha Quadrant were Seven of Nine who was on Dorvan V in the Demilitarized Zone, and Icheb, hard at work at the Academy under the watchful tutelage of Admiral Paris.
She had no idea what to expect, but it was imperative that she had to find out what was going on.
What mystified her was that his behaviour had been no more acerbic or eccentric than Voyager's EMH. She'd had no reason to suspect him of any subversive dealings. Yet her gut feeling told her that Ethan was too refined, too principled despite his antipathy towards the Federation, to be anything but disloyal.
Admirals Nechayev, Paris, Gordon and Hays knew what was happening. Why hadn't they warned her? Did their knowledge only extend to the forcefield? Or had they known but chosen to leave him alone?
She sensed Ethan was in trouble.
"Yes, I must go. I have reason to believe something may be wrong and my friend in danger - "
"Then in that case, you need assistance, don't you think?" Mike insisted.
She stared at him, her eyes narrowed as she pondered his words. He was right. She didn't know what waited for her at Beaver's Lodge and Ethan might very well be in danger.
"Fine. We'll take a shuttle. And Mike..."
"Yes, Admiral?"
"Whatever you see will be highly classified, is that clear?"
She had to make sure.
"One hundred percent. I'm on your side, Admiral."
She smiled.
"Thank you."
Before they left, Admiral Paris stopped by.
"I see you're ready to leave. Kathryn, why don't you wait a few days?"
"One day may be too late. I've already put off going there myself. Ethan isn't wild about his privacy being breached by anyone, Admiral. I'll have to convince him he's an emergency."
"I was hoping you'd ignore my suggestion. I'm as concerned as you are. You may be the only person to help Commander Bellamy. Our attempts in the past have been...unsuccessful."
Kathryn thought Admiral Paris hid his concern very well. He'd also answered her silent musings about their knowledge concerning what went on at Beaver's Lodge. As long as Ethan presented no threat to them, they left him alone.
"Thank you. And Admiral, whatever happens, I know I can count on the matter being treated confidentially."
"Ethan may be in need of medical attention, Kathryn."
"I know, Admiral. I've already asked Doctor Paris to be on stand by."
"Good. And good luck, Kathryn."
Admiral Paris's eyes revealed nothing. Like most high ranking Starfleet personnel, he was adept at masking his emotions. Kathryn knew he harboured some insight into Ethan Bellamy that she was not aware of, even though she could, with all certainty, claim to be the only person on Earth who had lived in his home for any length of time. Still, it didn't rankle, for she knew that Paris, Nechayev, Hays and Gordon would keep any information about Ethan under strict security with a very high level clearance. What knowledge they had must pertain to his years as a Starfleet officer, or more specifically, the Battle of Wolf 359. She knew he had been first officer of the Bellerophon, but Ethan's words to her months ago that he'd tell her himself, still lived with her. That was the comfort.
"I'll keep you informed."
Admiral Paris nodded sombrely before he left her office. When Mike Ayala entered, it was to tell her that the shuttle was ready for take off.
Minutes later they were airborne and on their way to Oregon, which was but a short trip. The first time she had departed from Indiana not knowing where she was going, and not caring either, she had ended up in Oregon and on Ethan's doorstep. She had little recollection of that terrible day, only waking up to find Ethan's eyes on her. Those first days still remained hazy, although she knew that Ethan had done literally everything for her. She had been weak as a baby then, unable to do anything for herself.
Mike Ayala sat quietly next to her.
"You're deep in thought," she said, making conversation.
"Have you heard from Chakotay and Annika, Admiral?" he asked, turning to look at her.
"No. I don't expect to hear from them anytime soon."
"Then I guess he hasn't told you."
"Told me what?"
"They're going to have a baby, Admiral. I thought you knew."
She stilled completely, glad the shuttle was on autopilot. There was a buzzing sound about her, not from the engines of the shuttle, but in her head. She felt momentarily faint.
"A - A baby?" she asked weakly.
She'd never thought of a baby. She had never given it any thought. The knowledge smote her and created a maelstrom of pain and sorrow and regret. A flash...a baby with blue eyes and golden curls... She had always thought that any child of Chakotay's would be hers. Once, on New Earth, they had talked about it, had talked themselves out of it because of the nature of their circumstances. They couldn't raise a child in solitary confinement, with no advanced medical facilities, education, mixing with fellow students, interaction with other people... New Earth had been their love nest, special circumstances that impelled them to seek one another's warmth and create their own comfort. They had shelved the idea and when they were back on Voyager... Everything had changed. Voyager, her jealous lover, had claimed her again.
A baby for Chakotay and Seven of Nine.
The darkness descended on her like it had that first day she travelled along the Pacific Northwest. Her world crumbled and the foundation was ripped from her. She closed her eyes, and opened them. But darkness was there all the time.
A baby. A beautiful baby that would seal a love, a bond, a new resolution.
Not hers.
"Admiral?"
From afar she heard Mike's voice, a voice that breached the darkness with rude precision, bringing her to the reality of light and reason. She pulled together all the hurt, the sorrow, the regret, and wound it into a tight little ball, consigning it to her own dark universe.
"I...didn't know."
"It distresses you. I am very sorry for causing you hurt, Admiral."
"It's okay, Mike. I wish them the very best. I'm just surprised, yes, that he hadn't told me."
"They seem overjoyed, anyway. I'm glad for them, Admiral. Please, if you will forgive my intrusion... I'm glad you didn't marry Chakotay."
She smiled wanly, then covered his hand with hers.
"You're glad, huh?"
"Yes. He's welcome to Seven of Nine. He's my friend, since before Voyager, when his father was still living on Dorvan. I love him as my friend, but he is not worthy of you..."
She sighed, glad that the light was returning, glad that she could push the darkness away. The regret came back and remained. Her heart still pulled to Chakotay, still carried a torch of which the flames, though more subdued, were still present, all too present.
"Not worthy of me?"
"I don't know how to say this, Admiral, without making Chakotay a villain, or without seeming to be too intrusive. I am intrusive. Forgive me. I should shut up."
"Oh, no, you're not going to. You just got started and you should finish what you started, Lieutenant, since you know my life so well..."
Mike looked completely mortified and blushed deep red. She sighed. His deference was overwhelming, and what he had said had already encroached too far into her personal life, according to him. She touched his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
"I'm waiting, Lieutenant."
"He had his chances, Admiral. Sure enough, we all thought that you would, well, get together. But it didn't happen, and it's not because you were the captain and he the subordinate. Not, it's not because of that."
"I think we were more like fish in a bowl than we realised," she admitted ruefully.
"And that's why."
"Why what?"
"It wasn't difficult... Forgive me, Admiral.. "
"You haven't done me any harm...so far," she said, her mouth curving at the corner.
"I'll never hurt you."
"I know that. There's nothing to forgive. So why, what?"
"Chakotay needs Seven of Nine. He - he needs someone who's not complicated."
"You’re saying I'm complicated?"
"My guess is, Admiral, that we're on our way to someone who understands your...complexities..."
And with that Ayala shut up. Anything he knew about Ethan had only been gleaned from her own responses to her friend, her confidant, the man who had saved her life. She owed Ethan everything. If Mike Ayala saw more, then he was damned astute. He sat back, pursed his lips, sulking and looking exactly like a crewman who had told his superior what he thought of her and then waited for the consequences. She was seeing a side of him she had never seen on Voyager, primarily because she had never dealt with him on a one to one basis very often. Those occasions had been too isolated to have formed a friendship. Still, she had valued him as a Voyager crewmember and knew from Tuvok's reports that he was one of the best. She liked him, she liked his wife and she had a growing affection for their children, who Carmen had instructed, should call her 'admiral'. It's why she found she could tolerate his intrusion.
"Do you know Ethan Bellamy?"
He refused to look at her, but kept staring at the approaching forest of Douglas firs.
"I know his name, that's all."
"Well, Ethan Bellamy doesn't make many friends. He considers me a friend."
And he
understands my complexities...
Ayala
sat up straight suddenly as he studied the readouts.
"We're almost at the coordinates. Is there a place where we can touch down?"
"Lieutenant..."
"Yes, Admiral?"
"It may be nothing, it may be something. But I must ask you again to keep this in the strictest confidence. I know Ethan Bellamy and he values his privacy to the point of cold obsession. Whatever we find..."
"You have my word, Admiral."
"Thank you."
When Beaver's Lodge came into view, the conn panel lit up.
"What...?" exclaimed Mike, looking at her with a question in his eyes.
"A forcefield. I was warned about the forcefield," she said as they touched down close to Ethan's little runabout. She smiled grimly as she realised they were literally on opposite sides of a fence.
"But Admiral, I notice the forcefield doesn't carry a Federation signature. Is Mr Bellamy perhaps from another world?"
"He's human, Ayala. The signature is - "
"Borg..."
"Yes. We have to be careful. Should have brought Icheb along, but the fewer people who know - "
"Understood. Are we getting out?"
"Just give me a few minutes..." she said, concentrating on the information she had uploaded to the shuttle's computer. "Thank Tuvok for me for sending the Borg decryption codes from Voyager," she said as she busied herself keying in commands to set the deactivation sequence in motion. Whatever it was Ethan had done or where he'd gotten the codes from, she had yet to unravel. One thing was certain: he had no idea that it was possible for Voyager's former captain to deactivate the forcefield.
"Okay, that's it."
"I'll follow you. I'll treat this as an away mission, Admiral. I hope you don't mind me carrying my phaser."
"I understand, though I sincerely hope we won't have to use it," she said as she opened the backdoor of the cabin, moved through the kitchen and entered the lounge.
The first thing she saw was Ethan's cello in the corner, a string broken. On the floor lay a book, and when she picked it up, saw it was Songs of a Wayfarer. She could hear Ayala's breathing behind her. It was good he had insisted on coming along after all. She replaced the book, slotting it from where it must have been taken out by Ethan. Then she moved to her bedroom and immediately saw the broken photo frame on the floor.
"An accident?" she heard Ayala ask.
Kathryn saw the dusty print of a boot on Chakotay's face.
"I don't think so. He is definitely here, in the house," she said as she stepped out of her bedroom and looked up the short flight of stairs that led to his room.
"Upstairs, then?"
"Sensors indicate a lifesign, but not human... That's strange..."
She snapped the tricorder closed and drew her phaser, moving carefully up the steps with Ayala close behind her. She had never ventured upstairs, for it was Ethan's domain, a private place in which he brooked no interference. It felt surreal walking here, after being so long in his house. Her heart raced as she stopped in front of a door panel, much like the sliding doors on starships. It was curious, since the rest of the cabin was built from wood. She looked at Ayala who set about decrypting the entry codes. After several minutes, the doors slid open.
Her heart raced as she stepped inside the room. Drawn instantly to the alcove, she stepped forward. Her mouth went dry, her ears buzzed painfully as she looked at the drone. Her eyes felt hot, moist.
"Oh, my God...!"
"Admiral, this drone has been in here for two weeks..." she heard the unruffled Ayala say.
"Two weeks... That's three days after I left here...!"
The drone stood imperious, eyes closed, lips compressed, hands at his sides. The prosthetic enhanced eye and cortical node did nothing to hide the familiar planes of his face. He reminded her of the drone they'd had on Voyager. Everything, or almost everything, fell into place. Ethan's painful obsession with his hermit-like existence. Pushing away Mark and Wanda, relatives. The sickly pallor she'd noticed the day she left. The nights he never slept, when he told he was busy writing. He was writing, but not because he couldn't sleep. He didn't need sleep. He needed regeneration. Ethan's sometimes too clinical cynicism, which bordered on complete disregard for the relevance of others' lives and interests. Why was that in such stark contrast to his brilliance as a writer? Wasn't it the mission of a writer to study and observe people and the passions that drive them?
She heard Nechayev's words, that she had sent Ethan's ship to Wolf 359, remembered that eleven thousand people, more than half of them Starfleet personnel, had died there. Nechayev, who needed this man's forgiveness to find absolution. What had happened to him then? Why was it happening now?
Unless she deactivated his regeneration mode, he wasn't going to wake up, so she stepped forward and touched his hand. There was no reaction, not even a flicker of the right eye. She remembered One on Voyager, born from a transporter malfunction and how they had watched the infant grow in the maturation chamber. He had, like B'Elanna's prototype, asked for instructions, to be filled with knowledge. Ethan looked like every drone she had ever seen, and he looked like Ethan. The white hair was gone, and now again, she realised that he had lied when he told her his hair was a genetic inheritance from his mother.
She wanted to cry for him.
"How did this drone get here? And where is Ethan Bellamy, Admiral?" Ayala asked.
"He's...right here..." she whispered in a strained voice.
"Admiral?"
Kathryn turned to face Ayala. He might have been shocked, but never let on what he felt. She had raised her children of Voyager well. Very deliberately, she turned to the console and entered the commands that would halt the regeneration process. Her heart thundered against her ribcage. She had no idea of Ethan's reaction, but she trusted him. The right eye flew open. The prosthetic eye had already scanned her. She took his hand and led him off the platform.
"Ethan…"
"I A-M E-T-H-A-N"
His hand was still clasped in her hand.
"Do you know who I am, Ethan?"
"Y-O-U A-R-E J-A-N-E-W-A-Y"
"Yes, Ethan. I am here to help you."
"H-E-L-P"
"Yes. Let me help you, Ethan…"
He pulled his hand from hers, then reached for her neck, the pose in a manner of assimilation. She stood her ground, refused to move away or be shocked or afraid. She had to remember that he saved her life. Behind her she heard Ayala shuffle his feet. Her bearing told him not to move. Ayala stopped, backed off, though she knew he would be ready to react in a second if Ethan became aggressive.
She maintained eye-contact with Ethan, willed him to recognise her and understand that she meant him no harm.
"I trust you, Kathryn," Ethan said in a voice that sounded metallic.
She gave a sigh of relief as she hit her commbadge.
"Janeway to Admiral Paris."
A second later the familiar crackling sound.
"Paris here. What have you found?"
"Admiral, we have a situation here. Advise Doctor Paris to be on standby to beam Ethan Bellamy to Starfleet Medical. It is of the utmost urgency."
"What has happened to him?"
"Ethan Bellamy has transformed into a Borg drone, Admiral. I don't think I'm telling you anything new here. Janeway out."
"That was very...Captain Janeway," she heard Ayala say.
"Lieutenant, you must oversee the transport of Voyager's EMH to Headquarters. He is currently on Jupiter Station with Doctor Zimmerman. If he asks, it's on the order of Admirals Janeway and Paris. Also, contact Commander Tuvok. Voyager has been lagging long enough at McKinley. She must be brought into Earth's orbit. I have a feeling we will be needing Voyager's Borg technology."
"I'm on it," Ayala said, jumping to attention and running off to the shuttle to work from the shuttle's computers.
Kathryn turned to face Ethan.
"I think the time has come for you to tell me your story, Ethan..." she whispered softly, not surprised when the drone was enveloped in the familiar blue shimmer of the transporter beam.
Kathryn looked about her. She was in Ethan's bedroom, his sanctuary, where no one had ever entered before. On a wall, there were several portraits. She stepped closer. A young woman with bright eyes and blonde hair, probably the wife Ethan had mentioned. The other portraits were of young boys, aged about six years and four, both with dark brown hair. Green eyes and dark brown hair… The boys looked bright and happy.
Where were they? she wondered as she prepared to join Ayala in the shuttle. She remembered Alynna Nechayev saying that Ethan's family was on the Bellerophon when the Borg attacked it. If that were so, then they must have died during that battle. Died, or they had been assimilated.
Gone…
****************
END PART ELEVEN