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Rocketship Voyager	By : Odon Category: Star Trek > Voyager Views: 1330 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek Voyager and aren't making any money off this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Conclusion of a Three-Part Serial.
Synopsis: The United Nations Rocketship VOYAGER under the command of CAPTAIN JANEWAY was returning to Earth when it was caught in the gravitation beam of a vast cube-shaped spacecraft that carried them off to the other side of the galaxy! Whilst VOYAGER was able to break free, their losses forced CAPTAIN JANEWAY to form an alliance with renegade Spacefleet officer CHAKOTAY and his crew of Maquis rebels. Seeking a way home, they set course for THE ARRAY, a space station orbiting a black star that is the portal for an intergalactic transport network controlled by THE CARETAKER, whose space pirates use it to steal slaves and technology from throughout the galaxy. THE CARETAKER demands a shocking price for allowing VOYAGER to return to Earth: a female member of their crew for his own personal archive!

Chapter X: THE NEEDS OF THE MANY
The next few hours were the longest of Captain Janeway's life. The worst moment had been when they returned to the landing dome to find the shuttleboat missing, Tom Paris having taken it for a joyride. Janeway suspected that something illicit was involved, but on discovering that B'Elanna Torres and Seska Pamyatnykh were also on board she had ordered him to return the girls to Voyager at once while the Aeroshuttle was sent to pick them up instead.
The rest of their shipmates had arrived under escort by Pralor robots, several on stretchers thanks to food poisoning or excessive alcohol consumption. Ensign Kim had been bundled off to a decontamination ward after picking up a disease that made his skin glow, and Lon Suder had been arrested due to an altercation in a bar, but her fear that the Caretaker might hold them hostage had been averted when the overly-logical androids had removed them from the Array as well.
They had remained at General Quarters until it was evident the Hirogen and K'Zon warships prowling nearby had no intention of attacking. Guessing that the Caretaker did not want a conflict erupting so close to the Array, Janeway had Voyager moved to a geostationary position a few hundred feet above his castle before standing down half the crew so they could get some sleep. Let the Caretaker sweat about all that contraterrene they were carrying.
But it was Janeway's own dreams that were disturbing, as often happened when she had gone too long without sleep. She saw the girl floating in the suspended-animation tank but this time it was Eve from the Valkyrie, her body burnt and blackened yet her eyes open and accusing. Every alcove held someone she knew: Tu'Vix, Cavit, Fitzgerald, Star'Di, Lang, Mbuangi, Ziegler, Horvat, Tran, Jetal, Ballard, Darwin and Li—all the men and women who had died due to her actions, while Qu's mad taunting echoed around the Caretaker's hall: "But isn't that why they made you captain? To handle those really tough decisions? My, my; I guess now we get to find out whether the pants really fit!"
When the harsh blare of the intercraft woke her up, she was grateful.
"Radio Room to Captain Janeway."
The captain groped for the handset, locating it by touch in the darkened capsule. "Janeway here."
"Tech Lieutenant Nicoletti, ma'am. We were able to find only two starships large enough to transport Voyager in its entirety. A generation ship for a species called the Varro, and a city-ship of the Voth. Both refuse to answer our hails. The Caretaker is broadcasting a message saying that any vessel that aids us will be denied passage through the portal network and protection from the K'Zon or Hirogen."
"Thank you, Sparks. Tell the xenolinguists they can stand down." She clicked off the intercraft. What now? Form an alliance with one of the K'Zon sects, then storm the castle and strongarm the Caretaker into sending them home? But the Briori would be expecting treachery from that quarter; that was why they kept the Hirogen on hand and the sects at each other's throats. And how many innocents would die if it came to a shoot-out on the Array?
She had no desire to return to her dreams, so Janeway opened her sleeping capsule, grabbed a null-gee rail and propelled herself out the door and down the passageway. It was nighttime on Voyager, an artificial distinction in the darkness of Space that was necessary for psychological reasons. Though watch stations were still manned, red filters had been placed over the light-tubes and the crew talked in whispers. But the noise of the ship continued unabated: humming generators and clicking relays, gurgling pipes and bubbling algae tanks, the chug-chug of pumps and the whirr and clank of robotic machinery. If you wanted silence on a spaceship, you suited-up and went for a walk on the hull.
Janeway did not want silence. It was a bad time to be alone with her thoughts. As usual at such times she found herself heading for the Air Garden, their oasis in a desert of metal. When the crew tired of grey bulkheads or the artificial pleasures of the Illusionarium, they visited the hydroponics garden to gaze upon growing things and hash over their troubles with the ship's gardener. Tech Lieutenant Hansen might rule the astrodome as her private domain, but Agritech Keshari did nothing to discourage visitors. She said talking helped the plants grow.
Janeway floated into the antechamber and made sure to dog the hatch behind her before opening the interior door. A blast of warm moist air enveloped her, bringing memories of humid summers back home in Indiana. She took in the greenery arrayed around the glowing suntubes, some familiar from the farm-factories of her childhood, others exotic hybrids from Venus or the top-secret laboratories of the Lysenko Institute. Condensation drifted through the garden in a gentle mist, drawn toward the languidly-rotating fans that took oxygen from the room and replaced it with carbon dioxide exhaled by the crew.
"Those monkeys are stealing my mangoes!" cried a girl's voice.
'Monkeys?' Janeway pushed through the foliage, moving carefully so as not to damage the plants.
"But the mangoes didn't belong to him!" Nee'Lix's voice now.
"Well Brahmadatta was a king. For a man with that power, to see something is to own it."
"I've known people like that." Nee'Lix was gripping the treillage with his prehensile tail leaving his paws free to pick tomatoes, placing them into an elastic string bag that was strapped to his chest. Above him floated a dusky bare-footed waif in a blue coverall and matching turban. She was sliding a probe into a rack of hydroponic trays, the results displayed on the EC meter strapped to her slim wrist.
"King Brahmadatta ordered his archers to surround the mango tree and shoot the monkeys as soon as it became light enough to see," said the young Indian girl. "The monkeys knew the dawn would bring their doom, for there was no tree close enough for them to escape to."
'I know this tale', thought Janeway. It was in one of the books displayed in her wardroom.
"But the chief of the monkeys was strong and bold." Keshari plucked a stray leaf from Nee'Lix's whiskers, making him purr just like a Terran cat. "He found a long reed, and tied one end to his ankle and the other to the tallest branch of the mango tree. Then he leapt across the river to a tree on the opposite bank. But the reed was not quite long enough and he was barely able to grab hold of the closest tree branch. So the chief bade his monkeys to run across the reed and over his back to get to safety. This they did, but the last monkey to cross jumped onto his back too hard and broke it. The chief of the monkeys fell to the ground, and as he lay there, broken and dying, King Brahmadatta approached him. "You made your body a bridge for others to cross," said the king. "Why did you give your life for theirs?" And the chief replied__"
"ARRRGGGHHH!"
Keshari and Nee'Lix turned in alarm to see their captain enmeshed in the tendrils of a large purplish plant. It took them some time to untangle Janeway and remove the myriad barbs that were stuck in her hair and clothing.
"I didn't know it was prehensile, Keshari. I got too close and it grabbed me!"
"Sorry, Captain. Those Soviet triffidus can be quite aggressive. They were designed to compete with native plant life on Venus, so they have high energy requirements. You don't get that from photosynthesis alone."
"A carnivorous plant!" exclaimed Nee'Lix. "Is it dangerous?" After a moment of thought he added, "Is it good to eat?"
"They're used to much smaller prey," said Keshari. "Tree snakes and small birds, for the most part." She reconnected a hose that had come loose in the struggle, then removed her turban and used it to soak up the droplets of water floating in the air. Sweat glistened on her bald scalp, and she wrapped the damp turban around her head again to cool it. "They're useful for pest control and CO2 conversion, but you have to keep an eye on them."
"As long as that thing doesn't pull up its roots and go prowling around my ship."
"Nee'Lix was telling me about the Great Tree of Rynax," said Keshari. "It sounds beautiful."
"So I saw," said Janeway. "Mr. Nee'Lix, when I asked to meet the Briori you didn't mention that they were the ones who invaded your homeworld. I'm sorry I put you through that."
Nee'Lix was checking his fur for stray triffidus barbs and didn't answer for a while.
"Well, that's all in the past," he said eventually. "And you were a long way from home yourself..." All of a sudden he plunged his paws into his chest bag, producing a ripe tomato. A farmer of the previous century would scarcely have recognized it, swollen as it was to twice its natural size by cobalt irradiation. "Speaking of which, Keshari says you need someone to run your messdeck! I can do wonderful things with vegetables, Captain! Take these tomatoes... am I saying it right? Is it pronounced 'tomayto' or 'tomahto'?"
"It's eether, I mean either... never mind. We already have a cook." Janeway had no intention of hiring Nee'Lix to take over the Commissary. These extraterrans had strange ideas of cuisine: meat from animals instead of synthetic food vats, and unprocessed fruit with the seeds still in them! Martian beef and vegetables were good for an occasional treat, but these all-natural foods were not healthy in the long run. "And this won't be a very safe place when the Caretaker decides to let his pirates off the leash. Your friend Wix'Iban has found you a berth on an Ubean freighter. We just need to find a way of slipping you off the ship when no-one's looking."
"I heard what happened on the Array," said Keshari.
"I don't know what I was thinking, trying to bargain with that kind of scoundrel. Did I seriously believe that just because a species has advanced technology, they're going to have advanced morals as well?" 'And now I've made things worse', thought Janeway. If she had just stonewalled for a few months, the Caretaker might have lost interest and taken his payment in contraterrene. Now he had been humiliated in front of his men and could not afford to back down.
Keshari picked up her EC probe and went back to checking the nutrient salts. "My father was an agronomist," she said. "He wanted to feed the starving people of India. He said that science could offer salvation, a Green Revolution that would feed the world. But research takes time and people want quick solutions, so they looked to a military strongman who seized power and declared himself Khan. He offered a solution. Depopulation via germ warfare on those people he said were our enemies. It wasn't long before the whole world was our enemy."
"I remember," said Janeway. It was a Spacefleet orbital platform that had destroyed the Khan's palace in Chandigarh. Keshari was just one of the thousands of innocent casualties, slowly dying of radiation poisoning. She could have prolonged her life in a null-gee hospital, but Keshari had joined Spacefleet because she wanted to see other worlds in the time she had left.
"He said the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few."
"They always say things like that," muttered Nee'Lix. "Funny how the people who make these decisions are never among the few."
"Sacrifice must be voluntary," agreed Keshari. "Or it's not a sacrifice, but murder. Captain, I'd like to offer myself to this Caretaker. If he has suffering in mind for me, then I will not suffer long. The doctors say I'll be dead in eight or nine years, and then my soul will be reincarnated in a better life. It would be my gift to this crew, who have given me so much love."
"Oh Keshari...," sighed Janeway.
"NO!" shouted Nee'Lix. "Such a sweet person handed over to those... monsters! How could your friends live with themselves, knowing they had bought their passage home at the price of your freedom?"
"It's not going to happen," Janeway assured him. "There are three things to remember about being a Spacefleet captain, Mr. Nee'Lix. Always keep your coverall zipped up, go down with the ship, and never abandon a member of your crew. Speaking of which..." She zipped up her uniform, which had become somewhat disarrayed. "I'd like you to accompany me to the Hangar Deck. You've been a great help, but it's time Voyager was on her way. Feel free to keep those tomatoes as a parting gift, compliments of the captain."
"But I was hoping to join your crew!" Nee'Lix cast an appealing look at Keshari. "Besides, I want to know how the story of the monkey bridge ends."
'I know how it ends,' thought Janeway. 'There's only one way this can end.'

Chapter XI: BEYOND THE BLACK STAR
A docking between two space-vessels of alien design is a maneuver fraught with danger, especially when the crews have itchy trigger fingers. When the rocket-propelled mooring lines shot across to the Hirogen warship and the purple flash of a brush discharge lit up the hull, only the self-enforced discipline of the spacefarer prevented both ships from blowing each other to atoms. The tension was not eased by the slow process of warping the vessels together. Peering through the armorglass viewport, Captain Janeway could see every detail of the extraterran warship exposed under their searchlights: gun barbettes, missile tubes, magnetic grapples, energy projectors to blind sensors and TV eyes, squat breaching pods poised on their launch cradles. This was a vessel made to board and storm.
"Docking ring engaged," blared the bullhorn above her head. "Pressurizing transfer tunnel."
Janeway pulled tight the shoulder strap of her kitbag, then spun herself round to face Chakotay. Her First Officer was floating above an autocannon that had been dismounted from a gun blister and lashed to the deckplates, all eight barrels aimed at the air-lock hatch. His face was as unreadable as those of the oxymasked gun crew strapped in behind it. Was he glad to be rid of her? Janeway could only imagine what Spacefleet Command would say about her placing a CT-powered warship in the hands of a Maquis renegade. She would just have to hope that Chakotay still thought seizing Voyager by force was too great a risk.
"I'm turning over command of the ship to you, Space Commander. Your orders are to resume course for the Solar System and hand over Voyager to the Martian government, whereupon all former members of the Maquis will be released from their obligations. I've entered their pardons in the ship's log, witnessed by Tech Lieutenant TuV'k."
Chakotay opened his mouth as if to reply, then tightened his jaw and gave a curt nod. On impulse she let go of the null-gee cable to reach over and grip his shoulders.
"I'm placing my crew in your hands, Chakotay. Get them home."
"Synthetic atmosphere optimum. Pressure optimum. With your permission, ma'am."
"Do it." She pushed hard on Chakotay's shoulders, forcing herself back into the air-lock. The inner hatch sealed and the armored outer hatch swung aside to show an accordion tube spanning the gap between the two vessels. As she drifted through the transfer tunnel, Janeway tried not to think about how thin the material was between her and the vacuum of Space, or what would happen if either vessel started their engines while she was still inside.
At the far end of the tunnel, an oversized docking ring had clamped around the Hirogen air-lock with powerful electromagnets, an inflatable gasket of silicone-rubber expanding to form an atmospheric seal despite its extraterran design. As Janeway approached the hatch unscrewed and withdrew inside the vessel like a huge plug. The humid atmosphere of an alien world enveloped her, and as she floated into the air-lock she was slammed to the deck, caught in the pull of that artificial gravity they used. Sharp talons seized her arms and dragged her painfully upright.
"I should not have given you my name," the Hirogen Alpha snarled in her face. His breath reeked of raw meat and fresh blood. "A worthy prey would never have surrendered."
"What makes you think I have?" asked Janeway.
There was a muffled clunk as Voyager's transfer tunnel detached from the hull.
"Besides that..."
She tried not to flinch as the Hirogen guards tore off her rank insignia and sliced open every pocket to search for weapons or suicide pills. The kitbag was ripped from her grasp and looted. Discovering her thermos, the Alpha twisted off the cap and guzzled the contents in just a few gulps.
'I hope you choke!' thought Janeway, as she watched the last coffee in 70,000 light-years vanish before her eyes.
"Warrior's drink!" roared the Alpha, thrashing his tail in approval.
They frog-marched Janeway down corridors lined with rib-like arches that she belatedly realized were ribs—the osseous matter of once-mighty leviathans, stripped of flesh and displayed as grim trophies, the hunts that placed them there depicted on the bone in exquisite scrimshaw. Skulls stared through empty eye sockets and glowlights cast a lustrous gleam on racked weapons ranging from flint-headed spears to portable atom bombs. And there were things that surprised her. Shrines to the trinkets of children, and murals of an alien world depicted with the nostalgia of exile: desert flowers around an obsidian monolith, sunsets made radiant by volcanic ash, iridescent eyes peering through a veil of filigreed gold. Despite her fear Janeway kept her thoughts focused, memorizing the twists and turns of the warship's construction. Hope died when she was dragged into a torpedo room to find the Caretaker hovering there like an expectant vulture.
"If you want to put me on display in your banquet hall, you might let me fix my hair first."
"It appears you are to be spared that fate." The Caretaker gestured to where the Hirogen were hooking up a crude life support system in an autonomous cargo rocket. The loading hatches were splayed open, showing a space as inviting and roomy as a coffin. "Your act of self-sacrifice has proven an annoyance, Captain Janeway. I had planned to deliver Voyager to the beings who brought you here, while retaining a specimen from your crew for my own archive. Unfortunately they have no interest in your ship, only its captain. They have learned of our arrangement and insist that you be handed over. Refusal would be... unwise."
"So, you have a higher authority after all."
The Caretaker gave an irritated hiss. "Just as these Hirogen must be placated with live prey, so must... certain clients whose identity is best kept secret. They are the source of our graviton devices, and in payment I provide them with sentient specimens and advanced technology plundered by my mercenaries." His cold eyes turned to the Hirogen guards. "Wait until Voyager has entered the portal network before launching her into the black star. I want no last-minute interference from her crew."
"How is crushing me down to my component atoms going to make your clients happy?" asked Janeway.
"The workings of the black star portal are beyond your comprehension."
"Beyond yours too, I'll bet."
The Caretaker's lipless mouth compressed to a thin line. He made a curt gesture to his guards and intense agony shot through Janeway's body, her legs buckled and she fell to the deck. When the fog cleared from her mind, she was inside the cargo rocket and the hatches were being welded shut with an atomic lance, the Caretaker staring at her through the inspection window with the detached interest of a scientist studying the contents of a petri dish.
"A terrible fate awaits you. You may well regret not choosing to die alongside your crew."
Janeway's voice was calm and steady. "And the monkey chief said to King Brahmadatta: I am their chief and their guide; I lived with them in this tree and I loved them. I do not suffer in leaving this world for I have gained my subjects' freedom. And if my death may be a lesson to you, then I am more than happy. It is not your sword that makes you a king; it is love alone."
"What are you ranting about, Terran?"
"Something beyond your comprehension, 'Caretaker'."
The rocket slid into the launch tube plunging Janeway into darkness. She felt bile rise in her throat and bit her lip to distract herself from the nausea; the old spacer trick for dealing with weightlessness and then Janeway realized she WAS weightless, floating free in the void outside the spaceship! She gasped for air, struggled against her claustrophobic prison, her eyes casting desperately for something to focus on: a star, an asteroid, a flaw in the armorglass window but there was nothing an infinity of nothingness for ever and ever exposed to the naked Universe in all its terror close your eyes but it makes no difference in the blackness of Space so breathe-breathe-breathe-in-out, in-and-out sloooowly innn-and-ouuut reMEMber what PEACE there MAY be in Silence reMEMber what PEACE there MAY be in Silence remember what peace there may be in silence remember what peace...
Her breath caught as something finally captured her gaze, a mere speck against the blackness but those Spacefleet navigation lights were unmistakable. The Hirogen had launched her too soon—Voyager hadn't entered the portal after all! The crew kept a constant meteorite watch... surely they had picked her up on radar? But something was wrong; the navigation lights should be flashing blue and green but they were frozen in place, slowly changing to a blurred red afterimage which faded from existence before her horrified eyes.
"No-no-no-no-NO!" Janeway hammered her fists again and again against the inspection window, at first in anger and then in a futile attempt to shatter the armorglass; better a quick death in the vacuum of Space than whatever fate the Caretaker had in mind but there was no room to deliver an effective blow because the rocket was shrinking and her entire body was being squeezed with iron clamps a blinding pain like hot needles driving into her skull! Her vision blurred and everything was turning red...
Afterwards Janeway could not be sure what she witnessed inside the black star portal and what had been the phantasmagoria of space madness. Stars and nebulae and entire galaxies reduced to streaks of light in nameless colors, centuries that passed in an eyeblink, the Universe fractured into divergent paths of possibility. She stood alone on Voyager's Bridge, a Hirogen warship filling the telescreens in the seconds before impact. She cradled a child to her breast, watching Chakotay plow the earth under the light of an alien sun. She was plunging to her death over a vast industrial city, until the ground opened beneath her and she fell screaming into a cyclopean Hades. And it was at that moment that Janeway heard the mocking taunt of Captain Qu as clear as if he was standing right behind her, in the place where insanity lurks in every spacer. "It's not very safe, out here in Outer Space. It can be wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

Chapter XII: THE PSIBORG COLLECTIVE
Captain Janeway awoke to find herself still trapped inside the cargo rocket, her head throbbing and her limbs like lead weights. Gravity held her within its grasp again, and through the window she could see a surprisingly mundane deckhead lined with pipes and glowing tubules of tritium gas. She recalled a white light at the end of a tunnel of stars, but this was definitely no afterlife. There had been something rushing towards her... a black monolith in the blinding glare until it was close enough to make out what looked like a vast city before a hatchway had opened like a giant iris and drew her inside... the cube-ship! It had to be!
"HELLO! IS ANYONE THERE?" Janeway shouted, only to start coughing and gasping in the stagnant air. She rapped on the metal of her prison and winced as a stabbing pain shot through her knuckles, raw and bleeding from her earlier efforts. She kept knocking regardless; it was either escape or die. "I'M TRAPPED! GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
Some... thing entered her field of view, peering through the inspection window at her. For a moment she thought it was the Caretaker but this Briori was very different, the grey skin turned a pallid white and the body modified with artificial prosthetics. Instead of a hover-craft he stood on a spidery cluster of metallic legs; instead of waldo gloves a mane of varicolored wires emerged from the back of his skull and plugged into his artificial limbs like literal nerves of steel.
Janeway craned her head and saw two more figures staring down at her, both radically different in appearance. One was a large crustacean, the thorax covered by a transparent casing beneath which she could see organs pulsating with the aid of tiny mechanical pumps and a micratomic engine for a heart. The third figure might well have been human: a six-foot Adonis with handsome features, encased in a metallic silver garment that clung to his well-muscled body like a second skin, making it evident—as Janeway saw with horror—that the surgeons had rendered him genderless. The only thing that all three had in common was a copper skullcap, strikingly similar in appearance to the encephalo-adjuster caps used for the melding-of-minds.
The trio stepped forward in unison. While the Briori held the rocket steady with his many appendages, the others proceeded to dismantle it around her using tools attached to their prosthetic limbs. Janeway scrambled to her feet the moment she was free but they showed no interest in her, continuing to break the rocket down into components: metal, plastic, electronics—even the remaining fuel was syphoned off into bottles. Everything was placed on a robot trolley, the tools were detached and neatly racked, then the whole lot marched off down the corridor, leaving Janeway alone and somewhat nonplussed.
"Aren't you going to take me to your leader? Or at least a tour guide?"
There was no reply, so Janeway set off in the opposite direction in case they returned to dissect her as well. It made little difference as she discovered there were more of those beings wherever she went; some wired into alcoves like trophies in the Caretaker's archive, others laboring with ant-like regimentation on mysterious tasks, ignoring any attempt she made to speak to them. But her progress did not pass unobserved; there always seemed to be one of them looking in her direction every time she entered a chamber or a corridor. Back-tracking did no good, nor trying to outrun their gaze. She even tried clambering through one of the larger ventilation ducts, only to find them waiting patiently wherever she emerged. Yet she could sense no animation behind those watching eyes; neither hostility nor curiosity, not even the amoral scientific detachment of the Caretaker. It was like they were dead inside.
It was not as if the concept of Homo Artificialis was unknown to her, not with Annika Hansen as a member of her crew. But the Spaceborn surgeons who modified her astrogator had sought a balance between practicality and aesthetics; the ability to live in Space with the need to interact with others. Hansen was Spaceborn, but still human and unmistakably feminine. These beings seemed emotionless, androgynous; even (to use the archaic Christian term) soulless. Some of the species she recognized from the Array: Ovion hexapods, saurian Voth, an insectile race that had only been described as The Swarm. There were anthropoids and octopods, avians and simians and gillmen, sentient plants and silicon-based life-forms and others she could not even categorize given the extensive alterations made to their bodies. 'I provide them with sentient specimens and advanced technology,' the Caretaker had said, and it had all ended up in this mad scientist laboratory writ large. But why had these beings tried to seize Voyager in the first place? A rocketship was hardly advanced technology to a civilization with the power to stride the galaxy.
After what felt like hours of exploration Janeway felt herself starting to flag. The adrenaline rush of survival had long since passed and she had no salt tablets or Dexedrine pills to sustain her. Janeway wondered grimly if she was doomed to wander this metal labyrinth until she died of thirst or exhaustion. It was not just a spaceship but an entire city, one unlike any she had ever seen. There was organization but no apparent means of organizing: no control-rooms or supervisors, no bureaucrats or police, no signs to label or indicate direction. She saw giant protein tanks and algae farms but no mess halls, workers but no recreation areas or sleeping quarters. There was sound—steam hissing from ventilators, busbars humming with power, strange energies that crackled and coalesced within stranger machines—but not the background hubbub of conversation. At times Janeway thought she heard whispers carried on the slight breeze of the air-renovators, but wherever she turned to look she saw no-one.
It was while following such a phantasm that Janeway rounded a corner no different from a thousand others and found herself looking into open air. A vast docking bay over a mile in length, with what appeared to be model spacecraft hanging on cradles over the chasm—but Janeway had seen similar craft passing through the Array and knew they were arkships that would have dwarfed Voyager. Tiny mites buzzed around them: avians whose wings had been replaced with surgically-implanted jetpacks, other life-forms with prosthetic limbs attached to contra-rotating rotor blades. A shuttleboat rocketed past just a few yards away, flown not by a pilot but a living brain floating inside a transparent ovoid. Wisps of cloud drifted across the bay; the condensation formed by the breath of tens of thousands of living beings. Janeway looked up and saw a sky speckled with stars that she gradually realized were the lights of alcoves, entire levels of them, row upon row filling her field of vision. The sheer scale of it all was mind numbing.
"Who in Space are you people?" she wondered aloud.
"We..."
A whisper so faint, Janeway could not be sure it wasn't her imagination again.
"We... are..."
It was unmistakable now. The whispers came from no particular direction; they were echoes inside her mind, rising and falling in volume, a multitude of voices merging into one.
"We... we... WE... are... are... ARE... one... one... ONE..."
"I am Captain Kathryn Janeway!" she shouted. "I speak as a representative of the Tri-World Federation!" She spoke in Traben, then realized the voice was speaking in Terran-English. How did they know her native language? "Identify yourself!"
"WE ARE ONE." The voice spoke in her mind, loud and clear like a radio that had been tuned to the correct frequency. "WE ARE THE PSIBORG COLLECTIVE. WE ARE ONE MIND, ONE VOICE, ONE WILL. ONCE WE WERE MANY: INDIVIDUAL MINDS OF DIFFERENT SPECIES, DIFFERENT WORLDS, DIFFERENT THOUGHTS. NOW WE ARE ONE."
A psychic gestalt, thought Janeway; a so-called hive-mind. She was not 'hearing' the voice of the Psiborg Collective; they were using some kind of telepathy. She tried talking instead of shouting. "First you tried to seize my ship, then you had the Caretaker bring me here. What do you want with me?"
They had no trouble hearing her because the answer came right back. "WE GATHER SPECIMENS OF SENTIENT RACES FROM THROUGHOUT THE GALAXY TO JOIN THE COLLECTIVE. WE ACT THROUGH THE ONE YOU KNOW AS THE CARETAKER TO CONCEAL OUR INVOLVEMENT, BUT THE METHODS EMPLOYED BY HIS MERCENARIES ARE INEFFICIENT. WE CHOSE TO ACT DIRECTLY TO SECURE A SPACEFLEET CAPTAIN, ONE WHO IS AUTHORISED TO SPEAK AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF YOUR TRI-WORLD FEDERATION."
"If you just wanted to make First Contact you could have said so from the start, instead of dragging us across the entire Milky Way!"
"YOUR ARCHAIC THOUGHT PROCESSES RESIST ASSIMILATION INTO THE COLLECTIVE WILL. KNOWLEDGE OF THE COLLECTIVE CREATES FEAR. FEAR BECOMES RESISTANCE. IN THE PAST WE WERE FORCED TO SEEK REFUGE IN DEEP SPACE, HIDING FROM THOSE WHO WOULD DESTROY US. WE HAVE REFINED OUR TECHNOLOGY AND INCREASED OUR NUMBERS OVER THE CENTURIES. SOON WE SHALL COMMENCE THE ASSIMILATION OF EVERY SPECIES IN THE GALAXY INTO A SINGLE OVERMIND. THERE WILL BE NO MORE WAR, NO MORE CONFLICT, NO MORE INEQUALITY. WE SHALL UPLIFT YOU TO A HIGHER STATE OF EXISTENCE."
Janeway saw an image in her mind, as real as any tri-vid: the giant cube-ships of the Psiborg Collective hovering effortlessly over the megacities of Earth. The reactions of the humans below: panic, fear and awe building to a crescendo until—at a time calculated for maximum psychological impact—she would speak to the world as the voice of the Collective. A speech of such wisdom and insight that any counter-argument was futile, any resistance inconceivable. All Humanity would join together in a melding-of-minds that would spread across the Solar System and eventually the entire galaxy. Many would die in the process but their deaths were irrelevant as their minds would live forever in the Overmind, whose nature was as inconceivable to the Collective now as her form would have been to the single-celled organisms from which she had evolved.
"YOUR SOLAR SYSTEM IS ISOLATED FROM THE REST OF THE GALAXY; THE FIRST STAGE OF OUR PLAN CAN PROCEED THERE UNOBSERVED. EARTH IS OVERPOPULATED YET HIGHLY INDUSTRIALISED; IT SHALL PROVIDE THE BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL MATERIAL REQUIRED FOR OUR ARMY OF ASSIMILATION. YOUR MIND HAS KNOWLEDGE OF EARTH'S DEFENCES, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ITS INHABITANTS. YOU SHALL BECOME ONE WITH THE COLLECTIVE AND THAT KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE OURS."
Janeway shook her head, as much to drive the images from her mind as in negation. "No...," she gasped, then much louder: "No! I refuse!"
"IRRELEVANT. YOU WILL ADAPT TO SERVICE US. YOU MUST COMPLY."
"That's what Qu said, and he was nuts!"
The hellish glare of coal-red eyes lit up the nearest alcove. Restraints snapped open, wires reeled back into sockets, umbilical cords disconnected with explosive force, filling the corridor with vaporizing steam as a nightmarish parody of a Hirogen hunter stepped from the alcove: photocells for eyes, armor grafted onto skin, claws replaced by pincers, the tail a metallic coil. Janeway turned to run and found her escape blocked by an Ovion whose six-legged bulk filled the corridor. A Briori rode on its back like an ancient hag, the control wires from its skull plugged into the hexapod's spine. Cradled in his fragile arms was a copper skullcap that looked a perfect fit for a human head.
"YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."
Without hesitation Janeway swung a leg over the railing to throw herself into the chasm, only to feel cold pincers snap shut around her ankle. She kicked and felt ligaments tear in an unyielding grip, not the strength of mere muscles but of servo-mechanisms powered by atomic energy—Janeway knew her ankle would give way before the Psiborg would. She lashed out with her fists aiming for photocells, control wires, anything she could reach. Her arms were pinioned, her head seized in a vice-like grip so she couldn't even flinch as she heard the shriek of a powered cutting tool. Something soft brushed past her cheek, and despite her terror Janeway could not help feeling incredulous as she saw auburn strands falling onto the deckplates.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me... you're cutting off my hair? You... Venerian swamp-rats!"
"YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."
"I heard you the first time!"
"RESISTANCE IS FUTILE..." the voice of the Collective continued unabated, seeming to drill right inside her skull. "RESISTANCE IS FUTILE... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE... ("Captain...") RESISTANCE IS FUTILE... ("Captain Janeway...") RESISTANCE IS FUTILE... ("Captain, can you hear my thoughts?") INTRUSION... ("My thoughts to your thoughts...") UNAUTHORISED VESSEL EXITING PORTAL 4-2-4 GRID 1-1-6... ACTIVATE GRAVITY TRACTION BEAM... SUBJUGATE... ASSIMILATE..."
A thunderclap like a bolt of the Olympians echoed throughout the docking bay as a vast cyclopean iris began to open in the hull. Janeway felt her ears pop and a rush of air tugging on her body, heard the familiar whoosh of decompression as the clouds were whipped away and the airborne Psiborgs scattered, racing to land before the air vanished from under their 'copter blades. The Ovion and its macabre rider lumbered through a doorway that sealed shut behind them but the Hirogen made no effort to release her. Liquid gel flowed across its snout to seal the mouth and nostrils, twin tubules erupted from an air-tank on its back and plunged vampire-like into the Hirogen's neck.
Resisting the instinctive urge to hold her breath, Janeway took rapid gulps of air to saturate her blood with oxygen, her hyperventilation aided by the sight of the silver rocketship plunging through the dilating iris. Voyager was not waiting to be dragged in by the traction beam but was coming in with thrusters blazing. No sight had inspired such joy and terror in her at the same time.
("Captain Janeway...") came TuV'k's voice again in her mind, stronger than the thousand voices of the Collective. ("Give us your location...")
"800 yards port on your axis of thrust!" Janeway shouted against the whirlwind rushing out into the void, though she knew her Psionics Officer was not listening to her verbally. "Declination... minus fifteen! Inhabitants hostile!"
("Seen") was the reply, then the calmly-stated command: ("Commence firing.")
Lines of crimson death shot from the gun blisters like the colored rays of science-fiction. The fragmentation shells would have barely scratched the double-armored hull of a rocketship—they were designed to protect Voyager when landed on a planet's surface, or as a last-ditch defense against missiles. But inside the cube-ship the rapid-fire guns wrecked bloody devastation. Autoloaders slammed a relentless stream of ammunition into the hot breeches, powered traverse mechanisms smoothly tracked their targets, electro-mechanical predictors linked to gunlaying radar enabled deadly accuracy. A hail of cannisters ripple-fired from the ejector tubes and burst to form a billowing smokescreen and clouds of radar-reflecting 'window', and as armed figures in dirigible space armor spilled from the air-locks all Janeway could think was: 'So much for a peaceful First Contact!'
Her legs were yanked out from beneath her, Janeway's face smashing against the deckplates as she was dragged into the labyrinthian interior of the cube-ship. She clutched a floor grating in a death grip but found herself gasping for breath; there was an intense pain in her ears that almost drowned the nightmare howl of escaping air. A Psiborg bent over her, guiding the whirling blades of a circular saw towards her fingers. "RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!" warned the Collective. "YOU WILL__" and then an atom bomb exploded.
It was only a micratomic grenade but the blast wave knocked the Psiborgs down like skittles even with the fading air pressure. Janeway turned her face from the heat and tucked her hands beneath her body, instinctively adopting the Duck & Cover position drilled into every schoolchild. When she looked up again everything had turned red, but that was because someone was shoving her head-first into a decompression shelter-balloon.
"Oh no, you don't!" Janeway protested. "I want a gun and space armor!"
"There's no time!" shouted B'Elanna, planting a magheel against the captain's behind and booting her inside. She fumbled with the clumsy pincers of her space armor to seal the gasket, then reeled out the tow rope, looking around for help. Sergeant VanBuskirk was swinging a rescue axe into the Hirogen Psiborg, the tungsten-carbide blade smashing metal and bone like glass. Lon Suder crouched beside him firing carefully-aimed shots with his rifle. Kurt Bendara and a Spacefleet ensign she knew only as Bennet hovered over the docking bay in their jetpacks, shooting a stream of explosive bullets directly upward at an unseen target. The surrounding alcoves and corridors were being mopped up by a scratch squad of UN space marines, Maquis rebels and Spacefleet personnel. As she watched a door dilated to reveal a half-dozen Psiborgs clustered around a semi-portable energy projector; its nucleo-electric power pack, liquid-helium cooling coils and radiation-proof gunshield a stark contrast to the handheld rayguns of space western tri-vids. Before they could fire the cumbersome weapon, Corporal Rico had turned his atomic burner on them and the door deliquesced into a molten slurry along with everything behind it.
"The captain's secure! Someone give me a hand here!"
Michael Hogan activated his jetpack and flew across to her. Taking care to avoid the red-hot venturi and radiator fins, B'Elanna clipped the tow rope to his space armor, then grabbed a handle on the shelter-balloon and keyed her own thrusters. Together they lifted Captain Janeway over the smoldering wreckage, and B'Elanna started to breathe easier until she looked out into the docking bay and saw what awaited them.
Voyager was at the epicenter of a swirling hurricane of airborne Psiborgs. The autocannons were spraying shells in wild random bursts, unable to track the multitude of moving targets. Traction beams and energy rays drilled visible paths through the smoke and radioactive ash. A dirigible torpedo blasted from its tube and an eye-searing flash sent everything dark as her helmet glass polarized with the rad-snoopers crackling in mad chorus. When her vision returned, B'Elanna could see Voyager's thruster rings flaring as the helmsman struggled to skew-flip the thousand-foot rocketship to face the entry iris, only for another traction beam to latch on as the Collective repaired or replaced whatever damage had been inflicted.
"You're supposed to be the smart one," said Hogan. "Any ideas?"
B'Elanna shook her helmet. If she was an engineer in a space opera, she'd babble something technical about running a feedback pulse through a transmission dish to overload their collective psi-brains, but right now she couldn't think of anything that would actually work.
Rico unslung his bazooka and loaded an A-rocket. "Well, we have to clear those gnats away if we want to get back."
"NO!" shouted B'Elanna. "Voyager is surrounded by an electromagnetic field to keep out cosmic radiation! If you detonate an atom bomb within that field, it traps and concentrates the radiation inside. It'll irradiate us as we fly through it!"
The space marine looked unimpressed, though that might have been due to his prescribed ration of Benzedrine Sulfate. "So it's a choice between dying now, or dying of cancer in a few decades. Do you want to live forever?"
"No thanks," came Janeway's voice—she must have found the radio in the shelter-balloon's survival kit. "I've already had that offer today."
"Atomics won't be much use," said VanBuskirk. "There's no air left to create a pressure wave. If you want to shoot something, Rico, take out the hydraulics of that entry iris before they shut us in here."
Rico leaned out over the railing with the bazooka, making sure to point the venturi where no-one would be hit by the backblast. He squeezed one trigger to lock on the target, the second to launch, ducking behind cover as a false dawn lit up the docking bay, followed by a hailstorm of debris that noticeably thinned the swarm of flying Psiborgs.
VanBuskirk used his formidable jaw to press down the chin-switch for the all-hands circuit. "All right you apes, stand by to jump! Durst, set a micratomic demolition charge on a twenty-second timer. Torres and Hogan, in the center with the captain; I want 360-degree protection around them. Put your Y-racks on automatic, dispersal pattern Sierra. Corporal Rico and I will take up the rear. Any questions?"
"What's an 'ape', Sarge?"
"An extinct animal—like you all will be if you don't watch your six, high and low. Remember we're fighting in three dimensions. Is everyone ready?"
They answered with a war cry that would have sounded impressive if their voices weren't so squeaky from the oxy-helium mix. For the tenth time, B'Elanna checked her tommy gun was loaded and the trigger guard folded back so her pincers could engage the trigger. She knew she should object to being downgraded to baggage hauler but remained guiltily silent. She had volunteered for this caper on the spur of the moment, and the men had only let her come because she was supposed to be one of the legendary women warriors of Venus. But she felt as terrified now as when her mother first pressed a scimitar into her trembling hands. She tried to think of an inspiring prayer, something from Psalm 23:4, but she forgot the words halfway and ended up mumbling a distorted version of Ezekiel 25:17 instead.
VanBuskirk stepped to the edge of the walkway. "Roughnecks and rockriders, launch on my mark! One-two-LAUNCH!"
B'Elanna hit her firing stud a fraction too late, nearly yanking her arm off as Hogan shot into the air with the shelter-balloon trailing behind on its tow rope. She could hear Janeway cursing them over the radio then she was too busy to care as Psiborg were flying at them from every direction, heedless of bullets and bomblets and the hellfire of nuclear-powered flamethrowers. She saw Bennet die when a shuttleboat kamikazed into him, Durst get his face sliced off by a grotesque horror, Suder shot in the back by a Psiborg he thought he had killed. The worst thing was it all happened in silence, with only the hiss of air-tanks and the panicked sound of her breathing.
Their guns were firing in support, bright-red droplets drifting languidly towards them until they were suddenly shooting past her helmet, far too close and impossibly fast. Stray shrapnel bounced off her tungsten-alloy space armor and B'Elanna hugged the shelter-balloon close, knowing a single shard puncturing the skin could doom its occupant. Her rad-snooper crackled in warning; someone was shooting at her but she was moving too fast and the energy beam was diffused by smoke and distance. The crackling stopped as they flew through Voyager's electromagnetic field and then the hull was coming up and she fired the jets to cushion her landing, stumbling forward until her magheel boots locked on. B'Elanna turned to see the walkway they had launched from erupt in a noiseless fireball and realized to her shock that only twenty seconds had passed.
Voyager was no sanctuary. Kamikazes had followed in behind them where the guns could not fire and were now slamming into gun blisters and torpedo hatches, geysers of exploding rocket fuel lighting up the hull. B'Elanna and Hogan dragged the shelter-balloon to the nearest air-lock, then Hogan unclipped the tow rope and threw it to B'Elanna. He hit the thrusters and leapt across the hull in a huge bound, a sheet of white flame shooting fifty feet from his burner. B'Elanna clipped the rope to her armor and then hammered on the air-lock hatch. "Open up, d**n you!"
The hatch remained firmly shut and she couldn't see anyone through the viewport. The locking handle that had been built to withstand the impact of a meteorite had been torn clean off. B'Elanna keyed her chin-switch. "Torres to Control, open Docking Port Bravo!"
A blast of static was her only response, whether due to enemy jamming or radiation interference she had no idea. The next closest air-lock was two hundred feet along the dorsal spine but with the guns knocked out the Psiborg were now swarming everywhere, the others falling back on her position in an ever-shrinking circle, their burners scorching nightmare shadows into the hull. B'Elanna wished she'd kept her mouth shut about using A-bombs—she no longer cared about radiation poisoning, she just wanted to live through the next few minutes. She was an engineer not an Amazon, no matter what her mother thought...
'Well if you're an engineer, get that hatch open!'
B'Elanna yanked a tri-meter from her bandoleer and powered up its fluoroscope. The ghostly X-Ray image kept flickering from stray bursts of radiation, but she could still make out the locking latches—all undamaged, praise the Lord! She drew a power-wrench from her pistol holster and used it to detach the electromagnets from the docking ring. Hooking their power cables up to a micratomic battery, B'Elanna clamped them around the rim of the hatch mounting where the fluoroscope had shown the latches were, then pushed hard on the hatch.
It swung open with ease just as the hatchway became very crowded. Two marines were supporting a Maquis she recognized as Chell—his face was blue from cyanosis and hull-sealant had been sprayed over punctures in his space armor. Ayala was giving them covering fire. Summing up the situation at a glance, he yanked the D-ring to detach his jetpack and Y-rack discharger, threw aside his rifle and bundled Chell and the shelter-balloon inside. The others followed suit with unseemly haste, half-a-dozen people crammed into an air-lock that was only designed to fit two men in dirigible space armor. B'Elanna's helmet was jammed against Ayala's so she could hear him even without the radio working. "Close the hatch!" he was shouting. "We can't open the inner door until the outer hatch is shut!"
B'Elanna groped for the red-painted handle, clasped it in her pincers and turned. Under control of its electric motor, the hatch swung out from the bulkhead until it struck their bodies and stopped. The men pushed and shoved against unyielding space armor and the amorphous bulk of the shelter-balloon, shouting: "Make room!" and "Out of my way, you idiot!" Using her smaller frame to advantage, B'Elanna was able to wriggle free of the crush, pushing herself through the outer hatchway which then shut smoothly behind her. For a terrifying moment she was sliding off the hull to her doom before Rico grabbed hold of her until her magheel boots could get a grip.
Her death had only been delayed a few minutes, B'Elanna knew. By the time they pressurized the air-lock, got everyone out, closed the inner hatch and pumped out the air so they could open the outer hatch again it would be too late. She felt a surprising sense of calm, observing the chaos of battle around her with detachment. She saw Hogan clasped in the jaws of a giant lizard-creature, biting and rending until his air-tanks burst and blew them both to pieces. Bendara was feeding an ammunition belt into a recoilless machine gun that VanBuskirk had clamped under his arm, ten-inch flames spurting from the muzzle and recoil ports. Rico's burner had run dry with no more hydrogen to fuel the atomic chamber; he tossed it aside and reverted to his rescue axe until something monstrous rose from the Psiborg corpses piled about him: severed heads with living brains whose control wires had inserted into mammalian vertebrae and the mandibles of crustaceans, the eyes of insectoids and the claws and teeth of reptilians—an amalgamation of terrors that rolled over Rico like a nightmarish tumbleweed, drawing his body into itself, harvesting flesh and metal alike for its unstoppable onslaught. B'Elanna screamed and pulled the trigger of her submachine gun, emptying an entire clip of explosive bullets to no avail. She hit the firing stud but nothing happened; she had thrown away her jetpack and there was nowhere left to run...
A rocket-propelled mooring line shot past B'Elanna and slammed into the creature, the writhing sparks of the brush discharge lighting up the abomination in all its horror. Convulsing from the shock, it lost its grip on the hull and plunged into the depths of the docking bay, still throwing out control wires in a futile attempt to assimilate anything in reach.
Captain Janeway was leaning out of the air-lock hatch, the crimson shreds of the decompression balloon streaming around her like tattered banners, an oxymask her only protection. She dropped the rocket launcher, fumbling with swollen fingers as the fluids inside her body boiled in the vacuum. B'Elanna shoved her back inside then nearly fell off the hull again as something slammed into Voyager like the hammer of Vulcan, crushing Terran and Psiborg alike with the irresistible force of a pressor beam. B'Elanna dived into the air-lock and yanked the red-handled lever, and as the outer hatch slid shut she witnessed a final horror—the crushed remnants of Bendara and VanBuskirk rising into the air only to slam down on the hull again, over and over, the entire vessel ringing with each impact.
Even in the depths of Voyager they could feel the pounding, the Bridge crew shaking in their couches, held in place only by their safety webbing. The air was stifling as heat built up inside the hull with no means of purging it. Every alarm would be clamoring if they hadn't already been switched off, but no-one could silence the shriek of tortured metal or TuV'k's mad ranting as he convulsed at his station: "Resistance is futile... resistance is futile... resistance is futile..."
"Someone shut him up!" shouted Chakotay, showing none of his usual reserve. It looked like his command of Voyager was going to be short and final. The repeaters on his lap console warned of temperature overloads, radiation leaks and an ammunition count that was getting lower by the second. "Ensign Vor'K, take over at Tactical Psionics! Get me a firing solution on whatever's projecting those gravity beams!"
"I can't lock on!" the young ensign stammered. "Resistance is futile... resistance is futile..."
"Ops, get me a target! Radar, gravimeters, anything!"
"Sensory instruments are down!" Kim's face was pale, and from the way he cradled his right arm he appeared to have broken it. "The transistors on the Computer Deck have fused... some kind of electromagnetic pulse..."
"So much for modern technology. Sparks, get through to those marines! I need a target spotter!"
"Sir, I'm not receiving telemetering from any spacesuit outside the hull."
Chakotay's hands clenched on his armrests. They were all dead: Janeway, Torres, the gunners and marines and the Maquis soldiers he had sent with them. They'd done their best, but now he had to save whatever crew he had left. He could see the gaping iris on the forward-view telescreen, still glowing from the atomic explosion, Psiborgs swarming to repair the damage heedless of the radiation. If only they could get free of those traction beams...
"Mr. Paris, engage the Cochrane Drive!" Chakotay ordered. He jammed down the PA toggle. "This is the captain! All hands, brace for immediate acceleration!"
"Is he crazy?" gasped Kim. "We're still inside the cube-ship!"
Paris gave a mirthless laugh. "Hyun, let me show you what I found out the hard way on Deimos. Every reaction drive makes an equal and opposite weapon!"
He slammed the levers past the safety stops and a lance of pure white flame shot out from the rocket-tubes, punching clean through the side of the cube-ship. Voyager sprang free and it was only the finely-honed reflexes of their helmsman that saved them from disaster as the rocketship flashed across the docking bay and through the entry iris into Outer Space.
Their relief was short-lived. No sooner were they clear of the cube-ship when another gravity beam seized hold of Voyager.
"Resistance is futile," intoned TuV'k and Vor'K in unison. "You will be assimilated."
"You would think they'd have had enough," said Chakotay through gritted teeth. "Paris, maximum thrust! Give it everything we have!"
"That could tear the hull apart!" Kim protested.
"Then tear it apart!"
"Chakotay," said a quiet voice beside him, "purge Cargo Bay One."
Chakotay turned his head to stare in astonishment at the woman clambering through the tween-deck scuttle. Janeway was barely recognizable, her face bruised and swollen and her head looking like one of his ancestors had taken a scalping knife to it.
"Do you realize what you're saying? That cube is not just a spaceship; it's an entire city... maybe an entire civilization!"
"Better than an entire galaxy," said Janeway, strapping herself into an acceleration couch. "Do it."
Not trusting himself to speak, Chakotay nodded to Ensign Kim, who used his undamaged hand to flick several switches on his console. On Voyager's outer hull, a loading hatch slid aside and pneumatic rams forced the contents of the cargo bay into the void: a blue sphere bound in the interwoven coils of an electromagnetic field generator. Grim warnings in a dozen languages were stamped on every surface: DANGER: CONTRATERRENE, NO STEP MAGNETIC BOOTS, and MAINTAIN POWER: FAIL-DEADLY SYSTEM. Without any thrusters to resist the pull of the gravity beam, the sphere shot back towards the cube-ship, its electromagnetic fields shutting down one after the other as they rapidly drained the power of the micratomic backup battery.
"Resistance is futile," TuV'k and Vor'K were saying, "Resistance is__" and then they stopped as a savage jolt hurled everyone back into their couches.
By the time Paris was able to skew-flip Voyager to begin the process of deceleration, and the blast shield on the astrodome was retracted so their electronic telescopes could see what had happened to the cube-ship, they were thousands of miles away and unable to make out much. Radar detected an extensive field of debris, but there was no thermal signature from power or life support systems.
No-one suggested they go back and look for survivors.

Epilogue: STARSHIP VOYAGER
BENDARA, KURT. Maquis rebel (paroled). Telfas mining colony, Ceres.
BENNET, RICHARD. Spacefleet Ensign. Sydney, Autonomous Region of Australia, People's Republic of Greater China.
CAREY, JOSEPH. Spacefleet Tech Lieutenant. War refugee, Belfast, United Ireland.
DURST, PETE. Spacefleet Gunner's Mate. New Chicago, United Megacities of America.
HOGAN, MATTHEW. Maquis rebel (paroled). Space Station DS-9.
RICO, JUAN. Corporal, United Nations Space Marines. SeaDome-7, Republic of the Philippines.
SUDER, LON. Maquis rebel (paroled). Martian citizen (naturalized), place of birth unknown.
VANBUSKIRK, PETER. Sergeant, United Nations Space Marines. New Holland, Venus.
Beneath the list of the dead were thirty-six other names with injuries ranging from broken bones to radiation exposure. Though the experience of the Third World War had greatly advanced the treatment of the latter, she would not be the only member of the crew who would need regular check-ups over the next few decades. Captain Janeway crumpled the print-out in her hands. "Joe Carey is dead?"
"There was a radiation leak in the Power Room," said Chakotay. "They had to evacuate. Carey stayed behind to ensure we'd have power to the Cochrane Drive when we needed it."
"I don't know what to say..." Janeway looked up at the two officers floating in the middle of her cabin. "No, that's wrong. I'll begin by thanking you for saving my life, then ask why eight men had to die in exchange. I'll ask why you disobeyed a direct order and risked the lives of every man and woman on board my ship!"
"It wasn't your ship," was Chakotay's calm response. "I was the captain of Voyager and I made the decision. I hear there are three rules about being a Spacefleet captain: always keep your coverall zipped up, go down with the ship, and never abandon__"
"Oh, shut up!"
Janeway reached for her coffeemaker, then realized she'd seen the last of her coffee disappearing down the gullet of the Hirogen Alpha. She opened the drawer for a packet of Spaceport Classic, then remembered the Autodoc had told her not to smoke until her lungs had recovered from her decompression injuries. She slammed the drawer shut and glared at Chakotay.
"I wasn't some damsel in distress that needed rescuing; I surrendered myself to the Caretaker so this crew could get back to Earth! Who are you to make that decision for all of them?"
"Captain Chakotay did not act alone," stated TuV'k. "I seconded his decision, and noted that in the ship's log."
'Of course you did,' thought Janeway, studying the Martian. His features were as impassive as an Adept could make them. Asking whether logic or emotion had swayed his action would be regarded as an insult, she knew.
"I don't recall anyone objecting," said Chakotay, "though I admit we didn't have time to conduct a poll. After Voyager passed through the black star portal we found ourselves in some kind of... galactic transport hub, for want of a better term. Thousands of conduits to every part of the galaxy, including our own Solar System... but there was also a convoy heading back to the Array, so I ordered Mr. Paris to skew-flip Voyager and follow them in. Then it was just a matter of persuading the Caretaker to send us after you. That was easier than I expected; we found him barricaded inside the torpedo room of a Hirogen warship while their Alpha was running amok outside with an overly-large hunting rifle. The Caretaker was quite willing to help us, once I convinced him you were the only one who knew the antidote for the berserker drug you used to infect the Alpha."
"Berserker drug???"
"Turns out the Hirogen aren't used to coffee."
Janeway sunk her head into her hands. Her scalp itched where the hair was growing back under her wig. 'A bald captain', she thought grouchily. 'Maybe I'll start a fad'.
"It's far more likely the Caretaker was trying to get you all killed," she said. "He may well have succeeded. We're light-years from the nearest star system, we have no idea how to activate the black star portal to take us home, and we blew up the only available vessel capable of traversing interstellar space."
Chakotay and TuV'k exchanged a look.
"Unless there's something you gentlemen haven't told me?"
"It appears that while they were on the Array," said TuV'k, "several members of our crew managed to acquire the essential components of a spacewarp drive."
"WHAT?! Who? How?"
"I'd say it was a classic Maquis operation, but there were Spacefleet people involved as well," said Chakotay. "They traded some vids from Voyager's library for access to the engineering areas of a K'Zon warship that was being repaired in spacedock. The Caretaker wasn't joking when he said his people were obsessed with collecting esoterica. Turns out the Briori are crazy about alien cultural works."
"Cultural works? You mean Plato, Shakespeare, Ayn Rand?"
"Well... more like game shows, soap operas and baseball commentary. And there was a documentary on Chicago Mobs of the 1920's that they really seemed to like."
Janeway was incredulous. "Let me get this straight. You're telling me that a technologically-advanced species sold us the secret of faster-than-light travel in exchange for... for the World Series and I Love Lucy: The Next Generation?"
"Well, not sold, exactly..."
"I believe 'theft' and 'bribery' are the correct words in Terran-English," said TuV'k.
"That Wix'Iban fellow had a brother's brother's uncle who did the scutwork in the Power Room," explained Chakotay, "and he left some hatches unlocked, then Seska paid off the Briori security supervisor, B'Elanna and Carey removed the components, and Tom Paris happened to be nearby in a shuttleboat..."
"So they pirated a pirate ship—very apropos. How does that help us? You can't just plug an alien gadget into a Spacefleet console and fold space at a whim! It could take years to work out the principles behind this technology!"
"B'Elanna is confident that with the help of the eggheads and the Glowing Gang, she can create a tractable bubble of warped space large enough to encompass the entire ship." Chakotay removed a sheet of graph paper from his pocket and floated it across to Janeway, who snatched it out of the air. It was an engineer's sketch of Voyager encircled by a pair of giant metal tori, connected to the hull by slim spokes.
"We'd have to construct it ourselves of course, without the help of a spacedock. Fortunately most of the Belters have experience in space construction work, and Cargo Bay Two has the raw material we need. We might not be able to cross the galaxy in a single bound like that cube-ship, but we could travel to the nearest star system in less than a week. I had Astrogation and Computer Deck crunch the numbers, and they reckon Voyager could get back to Earth within our lifetime."
"How long exactly?"
"Seventy-five years at maximum acceleration, give or take..."
"SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS?!"
"Which is a lot better than never," Chakotay forged on. "Even if only our children or grandchildren made it back home, they would have a better future among their own kind than in some isolated colony struggling on the verge of extinction."
"There are other considerations," said TuV'k. "We now know that our Solar System has attracted the attention of hostile alien forces. We would be delivering a much-needed technological advance to the Tri-World Federation, and forewarning them of the dangers they might face."
'That wasn't what the two of you were saying earlier,' Janeway thought. Their encounter with the Psiborg Collective had clearly given them all a kick in their complacency. "It appears you have everything worked out,” she said sardonically. “What do you need me for?"
"A decision," said Chakotay. "You're the captain of Voyager now. Do we set course for the Solar System, or find a habitable planet and settle down?"
Janeway pursed her lips. On her desktop videograph Mark and Mollie frolicked in their never-ending loop. Family or Duty? Groundside or Outer Space? She had been given this choice before, but this time the stakes were much higher. Like any rocketship that had to operate billions of miles from the nearest planet, Voyager was designed to be easily repaired, self-sufficient in food and power and oxygen, habitable for years in an emergency. But what her officers were proposing was something their designers had never anticipated.
It meant decades on a rocketship that was never meant to be an ark, their lives dependent on alien technology that could leave them marooned in the unfathomable void between the stars, crossing a galaxy that might well prove dangerous in ways beyond their understanding. The dangers they did know of were bad enough: cosmic radiation, space madness, space piracy—as long as the Briori controlled the galaxy-spanning portal network they would be in danger from K'Zon pirates or Hirogen hunters. And who knew if the Psiborg Collective had been truly destroyed?
Perhaps it would be better to establish a colony—that Second Foundation of Man—but that brought its own risks. It meant landing Voyager on a planet and dismantling the ship for building materials, using its reactor to power a community but leaving them vulnerable to orbital bombardment by any passing aggressor. It meant raising children on a world where the biology would be innately hostile, evolved to co-exist with completely different forms of life. Or perhaps they could cast aside the Prime Directive and assimilate into an extraterran culture on a civilized world, become aliens adrift in a sea of aliens. Whatever resulted would not be human and know nothing of Earth.
Whatever course they chose, their chances were so slim they would need more than luck, skill and determination to succeed; they would need resolve beyond the point of reason, to continue on when both logic and emotion dictated it would be better to just give up. And once they had set forth it would not be easy to stop after blood and sweat had been invested. The same pioneer stubbornness that would get them home or found a colony against all odds would make it difficult to change their course should it be necessary.
Janeway keyed the PA toggle. "Now hear this. This is the captain speaking. All hands not currently on watch or in Sickbay are to muster in the messdeck."
Some of those in Sickbay turned up regardless: Hyun Kim with his arm in a cast, Keshari guiding a man with bandaged eyes, Chell in a life-support stretcher carried by a couple of marines. B'Elanna Torres was there with a dozen members of the Glowing Gang, trying to look confident in the uniform of a newly-frocked Tech Lieutenant (j.g.). There was Majel Barrett with her computers and electronicists; Annika Hansen with her astrogators, chartsmen and stereographic interpreters; Dr. Zimmerman and his cosmologists, xenologists, xenolinguists, labtechs and psychotechs. There were gunners and torpedomen, radarmen and commtechs, yeomen and clerks, stewards and cooks, space-jockeys and technos and jetmen. Men and women from Antarctica to Zanzibar, from Mars and Venus and the Belt and colonies that only veteran spacers had ever heard of. Janeway was annoyed but not surprised to see Nee'Lix was still on board despite her orders, hanging from a null-gee strap by his tail and arguing with Cookie over the correct way to stew tomatoes. Even the Autodoc had turned up, stubbornly insisting it had become Chief Medical Officer by default and therefore had a right to attend crew briefings. "You're an Autodoc, not an officer!" she had replied, but had let the robot stay.
Some of the crew had started pairing off, Janeway noticed. Seska was whispering in the ear of Michael Jonas, and B'Elanna had attracted several admirers including Tom Paris and Ensign Vor'K. ('A man from Mars with a woman from Venus?' she thought, 'That never works!') She would have to give some discreet advice to the girl about handling personal relationships when you were a Spacefleet officer. And what of herself? She eyed Chakotay as he handed her the wireless handset to relay her words to the rest of the ship. Thought of a man called Mark and a dog called Mollie, too distant in space and time.
"We are alone," said Captain Janeway, "in an uncharted part of the galaxy. Already we have made enemies and taken losses. But we've made some friends as well, risked all to save each others' lives, come together as one crew in the face of fear and danger. And it is as that crew we shall face whatever adversity lies ahead. I've been informed that even at maximum acceleration it will take seventy-five years to reach our Solar System, but I'm not willing to settle for that. We know there are aliens out there with the ability to get us home a lot faster, and we'll be looking for them; we'll be seeking every technology and opportunity that can help us. And in doing so we shall expand the frontiers of our understanding of the Universe, we shall discover worlds and civilizations undreamed of. We shall live up to the name of Voyager, by boldly going where no-one has gone before."
Someone started clapping; Janeway thought it was B'Elanna but she couldn't be sure as the others joined in, a thunderous applause filling the room. She could hear them over the intercraft as well, the entire ship resounding with cheers of acclamation. Not too long ago they had been trying to kill each other. Now they were her crew, the crew of the rocketship... no, make that the starship Voyager.
And together, they would find a way home.

THE END
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Rocketship Voyager