Star Trek Voyager: The Loving Game

Star Trek Voyager: The Loving Game (Chapter 59)

“Shuttle Bay 2?” Chakotay echoed in fearful disbelief. His brain ordered him to move, to run down there and stop whatever she was doing, but his body was too numb, he felt like he was trying to walk through treacle, his feet sticking stubbornly to the floor.

Unlike him, the Captain recovered quickly from the initial shock and snapped down the comm. line, “Harry, put the Shuttle Bays on security lockdown, now! No one is leaving this ship until we know what’s going on here!”

“Yes, I…” Harry began, before a long, drawn out pause made Chakotay’s heart sink even deeper into his stomach, “I can’t do it Captain. Seven is blocking my commands with Borg algorithms…” Harry reported in utter bemusement before fear added a new, panicky edge to his tone. “She’s launching a shuttle Captain, I can’t stop her!”

“Use a tractor beam Ensign. Fire on her engines if you have to, there’s something very wrong!”

Chakotay gasped in horror, life returning to his limbs and tongue at the thought of firing on Seven for any reason. “Kathryn, you can’t be serious! You can’t risk…”

Janeway wheeled around to face him, a steely glare fixed on her determined features. “I can and I will. Do you want to risk chasing after her when we don’t know what her loyalties are?”

Chakotay ground his teeth in defensive anger, but could think of no answer to that argument. “Let’s go to the Bridge and try and find out what the hell happened to her!” he snapped finally, hardly waiting for the Captain’s nod of agreement before running from Astrometrics.

They reached the Bridge just as the ship began to shudder and roll in space. Chakotay saw the reason immediately, a tiny class 1 shuttle was fighting the tractor beam to such an extent that Tom was straining to keep the ship steady. “Wow, you must’ve really pissed her off Chakotay!” Tom exclaimed breathlessly, in a hopeless attempt to lighten the mood which earned him a deadly glare from Chakotay as he ran to the nearest console.

“Not helping Tom!” B’Elanna advised him in an exasperated tone as she tried her best to strengthen the tractor beam. “Captain, Seven sending a graviton pulse up through the beam, we won’t be able to hold it much longer!”

“Try your best Lieutenant; we need all the time we can get!” Janeway ordered briskly, “Tuvok, open a comm. line!”

“Comm. line is open.” Tuvok replied tersely.

“Seven! Seven, what are you doing?” Chakotay asked desperately, punching his console in frustration as he received no reply. “She’s cut me off!”

“I think I can explain her behaviour Commander.” The Doctor’s voice suddenly echoed through the Bridge from Sickbay.

“Well?” Chakotay asked sharply when the hologram didn’t immediately elaborate.

“I’ve just studied the scans the Shuttle Bay’s internal sensors took of her as she left and her cortical node is dangerously overloaded, if I don’t operate within the next hour she’ll go into neural shock and die.”

Chakotay’s fists clenched as he put two and two together. “You told her those modifications were safe Doctor!”

The Doctor sighed heavily, his voice weighted down by pain and guilt. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise that reactivating her Borg data storage implant would destabilise her cybernetic systems so drastically.”

Janeway looked at Chakotay questioningly but addressed the Doctor, “I’m not following you, how could malfunctioning implants make her lie to us?”

“I’m quite sure she believed what she was telling you all at the time Captain. Her brain is so overloaded it’s coping with it as logically as it can, still her understanding of what’s going on around her must be deteriorating, evidenced by her extreme paranoia…” The Doctor’s explanation was cut off unceremoniously by the violent electrical crack of the tractor beam being broken.