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“Radiation sickness,” B’Elanna said. “If we hadn’t taken drugs before coming, I would be sick by now, too. Your race seems to have some developed natural defenses because you can tolerate rems that would kill most other species.”

Ignoring B’Elanna, Seven asked, “What does this have to do with the Borg?”

“The aliens—the other aliens, I should say—they didn’t have your translators, so we couldn’t understand what they were saying, but ‘Borg’ was one of the few words they said over and over that anyone remembers. We’ve always wondered what it meant.”

“It means death for most people,” B’Elanna said.

“Assimilation,” Seven corrected. “A new form of existence.”

“A form of life where everyone would prefer to die,” B’Elanna retorted. “Not much to brag about.”

“I am not bragging, Lieutenant. I merely wished to point out the inaccuracies in your statement.”

“I wasn’t being inaccurate, Seven. Editorializing a little, maybe, but…”

“So you two travel together a lot?” Kaytok asked.

“No!” B’Elanna and Seven answered as one.

“Imagine that,” the Monorhan commented dryly. “Dip your head down here,” he instructed B’Elanna. “Low doorframe.”

Chakotay stepped out of his turbolift car onto the bridge and found the captain already there, though she could have only just arrived because Dan Fisher, the gamma-shift bridge officer, was snapping to attention and issuing his report. “The shields came down, Captain. Only for a few seconds, though.” Chakotay slid into the science station and began checking sensor data. To his right, he heard Tuvok running a roll call of all the security stations. Glancing at Kathryn, he saw a flash of the anger she must be feeling. Fisher must have seen it, too, because he stepped away from the CO’s chair and said, “Engineering is standing by, Captain.”

The veins in her temples popping, the captain snapped, “Engineering, this is the captain. Report—and don’t tell me you don’t know what happened.”

“Engineering, Chief Jango here.” Chakotay was pleased to hear Jango’s voice. He was one of the older, more seasoned members of B’Elanna’s team, a Starfleet vet who had formed a personal attachment to the captain because (he told Chakotay once) she bore a striking resemblance to Jango’s oldest daughter.

Kathryn smiled, the stress lines around her eyes softening. “Good to hear you’re down there, Bill. Give me a status report.”

“You’re not going to like this, Captain,” Jango said. “But we really don’t know what happened. We’ve been monitoring a slow drain on the core over the past couple hours, but it wasn’t enough to make anyone really nervous. Figured the baby was just missing its mam.”

Chakotay almost laughed aloud. Not many people got to talk about B’Elanna that way, though he knew there was a myth among the engineers that the main core always ran better when B’Elanna was on board, even if she was nowhere near the engine room.

“Then, about five minutes ago,” Jango continued, “the main board shot out an alert that the coolant injectors were offline and scrambled the entire core. We tried to keep everything running off secondaries until we figured out what was wrong, but the shields were drawing too much. Mr. Carey says you two were working on these. Is that right?”

“That’s right, Bill. Check the radiation levels in the core if Joe hasn’t already.”

“He’s crawling around the injectors right this second with a radiation scanner, trying to figure out which seal is going to pop.”

Kathryn rubbed her forehead. “How much time do we have left, Bill?”

“Going by what I’ve seen, you’re going to want to get out of here in the next five hours, Captain. Maybe a little more. Depends on how much guidance control you’ll be wanting.”

“All right, Bill. Keep us posted. Let me know if you get a better estimate.”

“Will do.”

As soon as she signed off, Tuvok signaled to the captain that he wished to speak to her privately. Janeway stalked to her office, indicating that Chakotay and Tuvok should follow. She didn’t even sit down when they entered, but only walked around