Chapter Text
“It’s been two weeks since the wormhole formed,” Janeway said, as she looked around the table. “It’s been stable since then, and now the ship’s in good enough condition to survive travelling through it. The problem is that the other end is in the Neutral Zone. So what’s our plan?”
“Can’t we just run for it?” Tom suggested. “We can outrun a warbird, and the Romulans won’t be expecting us. We can be back in Federation space before they can catch up to us.”
“That would mean that we’d be going home with a fleet in hot pursuit,” Chakotay pointed out. “Starfleet won’t like that, and the Romulans will probably use it to extract concessions from us. We’re already dropping a gate to the Delta Quadrant in their backyard. We’d be better off not giving them any room to make demands.”
“We can’t outrun them anyway,” B’Elanna said. “At least not right now. It’s taken this long and help from the Zahl to get us this far, but we’d need at least another couple of weeks to get to the point where we could make it to maximum warp. At the moment I can get you warp seven at best, and that’s pushing it.”
“Then we don’t run,” Buffy said. “We just pop out and hang there. Starfleet will pick us up on their sensors at the same time the Romulans do, and they’ll head on over as well. It doesn’t matter who gets to us first – the Romulans won’t fire on us with a Starfleet ship on the way, not once they work out that we came through a stable wormhole. They don’t want to give us an edge any more than we want to give one to them.”
“I concur,” Tuvok said. “The safest and most diplomatic option is to wait on the other side. If we hail anyone in the vicinity and don’t arm our weapons, it is unlikely they’ll engage us in combat. It’s more likely that they’ll try to convince us to surrender and be escorted into Romulan space, but once Starfleet arrives with reinforcements we’ll be in a position to negotiate. I don’t think the situation will escalate unless we cause it to do so.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Buffy said. “We might get some jumpy Commander with a grudge against the Federation. But even if we’re not at peak ability we’ve got a fair chance of holding out long enough for a friendly ship to turn up, and that’s assuming that Starfleet doesn’t get to us first. It basically comes down to a race between the two.”
Janeway nodded. “I agree. We could probably arrange for the Zahl to back us up – they’re as interested in trade as we are – but the Romulans might treat that as an invasion. Our best plan is to stall.”
“The problem is the Borg tech we’ve got on board,” B’Elanna said. “We’ve managed to scrub most of it out, but even with Seven’s help we just haven’t had the time to deal with all of it. Plus some of our systems actually work better now because of it. If the Romulans pick up on that, they might decide that it’s worth taking us by force just to get their hands on it. Especially if they find out we’ve got an ex-drone too.”
“The wormhole’s close enough to the asteroid field on this side that its paramagnetic field will mess with long range sensors over there,” Harry responded. “That’s probably why neither side has detected it yet. That and the fact that it’s hard to pick up on wormholes unless you’re looking for one or something’s coming through. They’ll be able to identify us as Starfleet – they’ll probably even be able to tell that we’re Intrepid-class – but they won’t be able to pick up the Borg energy signatures until they’re closer. By that point we can start talking to them, tell them who we are and where we came from. Once they’re looking at the wormhole they’ll stop looking at us.”
“Hopefully,” Buffy added.
“Uh, yes. Hopefully.”
“Still, it’s a plan,” Janeway said. “A lot can go wrong, but if it does then it’ll go wrong on our own doorstep and, if we’re lucky, someone else will have to deal with it for a change. B’Elanna, power down as many systems that are still infected with Borg technology as you can. That includes Seven’s regeneration chamber. We don’t need to tempt fate. Make sure the crew’s ready.” She stood and put her hand on Chakotay’s shoulder. “We’re going through the wormhole.”
~*~
“Why am I here?” Buffy murmured to Janeway as they stood on the bridge. “I know you promoted me and all, but I’m not a bridge officer. Everyone else has a role here but me. Unless you want me to just stand around and look pretty, that is, because I can totally do that.”
Janeway’s lips quirked into a small smile. “You’re the closest thing we’ve got an expert in Romulan tactics. I could use your insight.”
“Oh, sure. I mean, I’m pretty sure that they’ve come up with a few new tricks since the founding of the Federation, and they just might blow us up on general principle if they work out who I am, but I guess I can say things if you think it’ll be helpful.”
“It might be. You never know,” Janeway said drily. While Buffy was trying to work out if she’d just been insulted, the captain to face the viewscreen. “Are you ready, Tom?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Although Tom was trying to stay professional, he couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. It wasn’t every day that you got to pilot a ship through a wormhole.
“Then take us through.”
Buffy had seen the wormhole open a few times now – they’d sent through several probes to make sure that it was stable and that it led where they thought it led – but she was still struck by how weird it looked. She’d seen a lot of weird space stuff in her life, but this might just be the strangest, at least visually. When it opened it looked like a large, jagged tear in space itself. Behind it there was nothing that looked remotely like matter or even the vacuum of space. There was just a dark blue light that gradually blended into the natural blackness of space. The light ebbed and pulsed seemingly at random, but Buffy still couldn’t quite shake the sensation that it was actually some kind of a giant heartbeat.
Travelling through the wormhole itself turned out to be just as disconcerting. The light level in the ship seemed to drop slightly, as though the wormhole was pulling the light into itself. There was a sense of pressure and weight as though the air had thickened, but when Buffy moved her hand everything was normal. Even so, the air felt heavy and oppressive, as though a storm was about to break. She felt like she was developing a slight headache, and when she looked around the room she saw that she wasn’t the only person who wasn’t enjoying this. Half the crew on the bridge were wincing. Through the viewscreen, the dark blue light pulsed gently.
Then they were out the other side. The wormhole closed behind them, and suddenly everything was normal again.
“Well, that was something,” Tom muttered. “I didn’t like it, but it was definitely something.”
Janeway caught Buffy’s eye. She could guess what the captain was thinking. Two weeks ago, on the Krenim time ship Droste, Illyria had given her life to stop time from breaking. Both of them couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the Droste’s explosion and the wormhole.
Buffy shrugged, answering Janeway’s unspoken question. She didn’t know if Illyria had had anything to do with this, at least consciously. She had her suspicions, but a voice in the back of her mind told her that they were more like hopes. She didn’t actually know anything. It was possible that creepy wormholes were what you got every time an Old One blew themselves up to break a paradox. She didn’t think anyone in the universe had experience with this sort of thing.
“All systems functioning normally,” Tuvok reported.
Janeway looked away. “Good. Get ready to hail anyone who comes close, Harry.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now we wait.”
As it turned out, they didn’t need to wait very long. “Detecting a D’deridex-class ship on long range sensors, travelling towards us at warp 9. They’ll be in weapons range within thirty minutes.”
That was bad, but not unexpected. D’deridex-class ships were common in the Romulan fleet, and they were definitely capable of outgunning Voyager. Buffy had been hoping that they’d send an Interceptor or two instead – they were faster, but not nearly as heavily armed. On the other hand, the fact that they’d only sent one ship suggested either that they didn’t think that Voyager was much of a threat, or that the Romulans didn’t have many ships nearby. Either option meant that they had more of a chance to stall. Buffy had hoped that it would take longer for the Romulans to show up at all, but it seemed like they were unlucky and the wormhole was close to a ship on patrol.
“We’re several light years from Starbase 12,” Tuvok continued. “While they’ll have detected us by now, it’ll be hours before a ship will be able to reach us from there. There may be ships closer to us that are patrolling the Neutral Zone, but the worst case scenario is that we will have to stall for two to three hours.”
Buffy groaned. “You just had to talk about worst cases, didn’t you? Now we’re going to be swamped by an armada of cloaked ships or something.”
“Unlikely,” Tuvok said, seemingly not realising that Buffy hadn’t been serious. “Cloaked ships would have to travel significantly more slowly to remain undetected, which means that they’d arrive too late to be an issue. They’d have to be here already to be here to cause any problems to us, and that would be a breach of treaty.”
“Right, because us being here isn’t. For all we know they picked up on the wormhole days ago and they’ve been waiting for something to come through.”
“Now who’s the one jinxing things?” Janeway said mildly.
“Oh. Good point. Sorry.”
“They’re almost in hailing range,” Harry interjected.
“I’d recommend hailing them first,” Buffy said, suddenly business-like. “Put them on the wrong foot.”
Janeway nodded. “Agreed. Hail them as soon as they’re in range, Harry.”
“Yes, ma’am. Hailing them now.”
“Put them onscreen.”
There was a brief pause as the Romulans accepted the hail, and then the screen shifted to show the bridge of the Romulan ship. The captain’s chair was occupied by a male with greying hair. Buffy took that as a good sign – an older captain would be less likely to have something to prove, and there was more of a chance that they’d be willing to talk. “I am Commander Havraha of the Sentaire,” he said before Janeway had a chance to speak. “Your ship is in violation of the Treaty of Algeron and is therefore forfeit. Do not attempt to flee. If you surrender, you will not be harmed.”
Havraha didn’t sound like he actually expected them to give up, but neither did he sound like he was particularly eager to fight. He sounded like someone doing his job. That suggested that he was the sort of person who would wait for word from his superiors once he found that there was a wormhole here.
“I’m Captain Janeway of the Voyager. We were transported into the Delta Quadrant four years ago. We recently found a way back. If you calibrate your sensors, you’ll find a wormhole at bearing 180 mark 10 from our current position.”
That seemed to get Havraha’s attention. He leant forward, suddenly interested. “A wormhole?”
“You’ll notice that there’s no warp trail leading to our position. Your own sensors will tell you that it looked like we just appeared here.”
Havraha looked offscreen and barked something in Romulan. The response seemed to confirm what Janeway was saying. “It’s stable?” he asked.
“We found it two weeks ago, and there’s been no indication of drift since then.”
“If you were so far from home, why didn’t you come through then?”
“Our ship was damaged. Travelling through a wormhole puts a strain on certain systems. Plus, the other side falls under the protection of the Zahl Sovereignty. We had to negotiate with them first to make sure that they wouldn’t come rushing through, eager to explore.” Janeway flashed a smile. “We didn’t want to condone anything that might look like an act of war.”
There was a brief pause as a Romulan handed Havraha a PADD. At first he gave it a cursory glance, but then he looked closer. Then he looked up at Janeway with a grin. “You’re a liar, Captain.”
Janeway put her hands on her hips. “How so? Your own sensors should confirm everything I’m saying.”
“Voyager was reported as lost in the region of space known as the Badlands on Stardate 46315.6. That was two years ago. Not four. You aren’t who you say you are. Really, you should have done your homework.”
“That doesn’t make sense. It was Stardate 48315.6, not 46…” Janeway trailed off. “Did you notice some unusual temporal phenomena two weeks ago?”
It wasn’t an unreasonable guess. In the two weeks since the Droste had exploded, they’d found that the effects of time breaking had been felt throughout the sector. By the time that they’d had been ready to go home they’d begun hearing rumours that similar things had happened in neighbouring sectors too. There was no reason that the effects should have been limited to areas close to the cause of the temporal distortion. In fact, Illyria had even said that the link between the cause of a paradox and the origin of the distortion it caused were tenuous at best. Q had mentioned that there was loose change when time broke. Apparently they’d found some of it.
Buffy could tell by the way that all emotion dropped from Havraha’s face that he knew exactly what they were talking about. She wondered idly what had happened in Romulan space, and if she’d ever find out.
“Clearly you have,” Janeway said. “Commander, I won’t pretend to understand exactly what happened, but in the interest of… friendship between the Federation and the Romulan Star Empire, we’ll share what information we have on the temporal phenomena with you. You can relay it back to your superiors. I’m sure they’ll be glad to have at least some kind of explanation for what happened. You can tell them about the wormhole, too. I’m sure this is the sort of thing that’ll bring both sides to the negotiating table.”
There was a brief hesitation before Havraha nodded curtly. “That is acceptable. Do not attempt to leave, or we will destroy you.” The viewscreen went dark as he cut the connection.
“Well,” Janeway said, “that went better than I expected.”
“Oh, come on. Does no one know about jinxing things around here?” Buffy grumbled.
“Unless his superior is closer than expected, we should have bought enough time for support to arrive,” Tuvok said.
“Apparently not.” Buffy shook her head. “Anyway, jinxing aside, I’d have leaned more into the Zahl angle. Tell them that if they go through the wormhole without clearing it with us, the Zahl will consider it an act of war. Right now there’s nothing to stop them from pulverising us and claiming the wormhole for themselves. I’m sure they’ve got a way to mask the entrance from whoever investigates.”
“He didn’t seem like he wanted to fight us. Making contact with the Delta Quadrant would be a big feather in his cap, and if he sparks a war with the Federation then that’ll go out of the window.” Janeway sat in her chair. “Besides, I told him that we’d already successfully negotiated with the Zahl. He’s bright enough to figure it out without me having to spell everything out.”
“I agree with Buffy,” Chakotay said. “It doesn’t hurt to make sure they know the stakes.”
“Well, it’s done,” Janeway said. “If it comes to it, the Zahl are another card we can play.”
“How about the change in the timeline, huh?” Tom said, trying to change the subject. “I wonder what else is different.”
“I’m more worried about how the Romulans know about us in the first place,” Janeway said darkly. “Starfleet wouldn’t share that information, and our mission in the Badlands had nothing to do with Romulans.”
Chakotay shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about it. The Tal Shiar are the almost the best at what they do. Besides, we know the Caretaker scooped up other people from our Quadrant. Seems like the sort of thing that they might be interested in.”
“Yeah, but the thing is that they pulled up that info so fast,” Buffy added. “I know the Sentaire’s on patrol close to Federation space and all, but there’s no reason that they’d have info about Voyager just sitting in their databanks. Either they’ve got a Tal Shiar operative on board or whatever version of Voyager that vanished two years ago did something that meant the Romulans are keeping a real close eye on things.”
Janeway nodded thoughtfully. She glanced briefly at Buffy, and Buffy suddenly realised that there was an entirely different reason for the Tal Shiar to be interested in Voyager.
When they’d been on board the Droste, Illyria had said that she was actually a commodore, and that she’d been tasked with investigating displacement waves in the Badlands. They had turned out to be caused by the Caretaker whisking people away to the Delta Quadrant, but the Federation had thought that it might be the Borg. They’d sent Illyria, a sensor specialist and one of their experts on the Borg, to take a look. Even though Janeway had kept that out of her official logs because it was supposed to be classified, the disappearance of one of the Federation’s top scientists was definitely the sort of thing that the Tal Shiar would keep an eye on. It still didn’t explain why what looked like a run-of-the-mill D’deridex-class ship had that information at its fingertips, but it explained why the Romulans might have that information in the first place.
“I guess that’s a mystery for another time,” Janeway said after a moment.
“Unless they really do have a Tal Shiar agent on board,” Tom pointed out. “Chances are they’d have the authority to make a decision, which means we might not be able to stall as long as we’d like.”
“Fortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case,” Tuvok said. “I’m detecting a Starfleet vessel approaching us at warp 9.6. Galaxy-class. It’s the Enterprise.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Course it is. You know what they say. If there’s trouble, the Enterprise is right there in the middle of it. Might be the only ship in the fleet that has the same sort of luck that we do.”
“At least the Romulans won’t destroy us now,” Janeway said. She relaxed slightly in her chair. “Not when there’s a ship that can go toe-to-toe with them near enough to witness it. It won’t be long before they’re in hailing range.”
“Still, now we might have another problem,” Harry interjected. “If anyone would go looking for Borg technology at the first mention of the Delta Quadrant, it’d be Captain Picard.”
Buffy sobered at that. Some years earlier, at least in the timeline they knew about, Picard had been assimilated. He’d led the Borg during the battle of Wolf 359. Although he’d been rescued quickly and pulled out of the Collective, it was common knowledge that he’d been traumatised by the experience. Buffy wasn’t sure how he’d react to a Starfleet ship that had incorporated some of their technology, had an ex-drone on board, and had even allied with them, however briefly.
“I mean, it still can’t be worse than the Romulans,” Buffy said. “It’s not hard to work out that we aren’t Borg, what with us not all talking in unison about resistance being futile and all. I doubt it’ll be anything more serious than him arguing with Seven.”
“It’s out of our hands now,” Janeway said. “What do we think will happen next?”
“My guess? The Federation will push for joint custody of the wormhole and some kind of passage in the Neutral Zone to get to it,” Buffy said. “They’ll want to build a station nearby – maybe even a joint one, if they can manage it. That way both sides would be able to keep an eye on each other. The question is whether the Romulans would go for it.”
“They might decide that a stable wormhole’s worth going to war over,” Chakotay pointed out. “Technically we have violated the treaty. They’d be justified, and after Wolf 359 the Federation’s a lot more interested in appeasement. We might even just hand it over.”
Buffy shook her head. “I don’t think it’ll go that far. They don’t want another Maquis on their hands, and I can’t see them passing up on a gateway to the Delta Quadrant. Not when we’ve already made first contact with a couple of the species on the other side already, and they were friendly to us. The Romulans will milk it for everything they can, but if they push for war then the Zahl might get involved. I don’t see them risking that. The Romulans don’t know the exactly how powerful they are, and the Romulans aren’t big on uncertain battles.”
“I hope you’re right,” Janeway said. “Right now all we can do is wait and see how this all shakes out.”