Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lieutenant Zandra Taitt walked James and Nen into the Mess Hall, with her partner and their father, Abol Tay, to the other side. James, as always, held her hand. Nen strode along with the utter confidence of a child determined to be the first to…

Well, everything.

But specifically, today, what had Nen’s attention had been the promise of what they were coming to see now. 

"It’s so pretty!" Nen said, doing a little dance on the spot the moment the tree came into view. Her voice—and her joy—caught the attention of more than one person having their meal or taking a break in the Mess Hall, as well as Crewman Celes Tal, who came out from behind the kitchen area to join the four of them and kneel down in front of Nen. 

"I’m glad you like it," Celes said. "When my moms first showed me a Christmas tree, I felt exactly the same way." The Bajoran woman in her red crew support uniform glanced up at Taitt and Abol, a small smile on her face. "For the record, you don’t have to participate in the Secret Santa this year. Parents get an automatic exemption due to schedule overload and the fact we were all asleep for a month." 

"Bless you, Tal," Taitt said, meaning it. 

"But we could make something," James said, looking up at her with his big brown eyes, and Taitt realized her exemption had just disintegrated. There was nothing James liked more than to make something with his hands; clay, blocks, memory polymer, it didn’t matter the material, her son liked to craft things. 

He definitely got that from his father. She enjoyed her life in theory and data. 

"Put us all down," Taitt said, with a wry smile at Celes, who nodded. 

"Can we go see the tree?" Nen said. 

"Do we remember that seeing doesn’t mean touching?" Abol said, putting his hands on his daughter’s shoulders and… oof. Okay, Taitt didn’t need that reminder of how tall she was getting. To an outside eye, the twins could be eight-year-olds—but only if you were looking at them through a human lens. They were half-Ocampa, their ears developing the folds of Abol’s people, and technically, they weren’t even four months old—including a month in stasis that only ended two days ago thanks to the Newtara Nebula and its dangerous radiation—and yet… 

Abol’s dark eyes flicked up to her, and she realized he’d picked up on her frame of mind. His gentle smile, warm and loving and also empathetic and compassionate, took the edge off a bit. Her children would grow up within a year or so, becoming young adults in what—to her—might feel like no time at all. 

James squeezed her hand, and she, her partner, and the kids headed over to the Christmas tree, decorated with its pretty gold, blue, and red ornaments, as well as twinkling lights. Nen was entranced. James tilted his head, eyeing the lights woven into the branches. She could practically feel her son attempting to figure out how the lights worked. 

"Momma," Nen said, reaching out to touch one of the bright red sphere but stopping just shy of actual contact. "Tell another tree story?"

Taitt laughed. She should have known better than to tell her children that there wasn’t just one story behind Christmas trees, but rather quite a few. They’d wanted to hear them all. But she loved that about them—their endless curiosity, the way their minds seemed to hunger for another fact, another theory, another piece of the universe to understand and engage with. 

"All right," Taitt said, trying to remember all the details of the stories, myths, legends, and practices she’d downloaded after her offhand comment about Christmas trees. "Have I told you about Yule, yet?"

When both kids shook their heads, she exchanged a glance with Abol and got another warm smile from the man she loved, then started in on the Earth custom.

*

When he pressed the chime on Seven of Nine’s door, he was greeted with the typical, terse, "Enter."

Doctor Jeff Fitzgerald smiled as he stepped into Seven’s quarters, and couldn’t help himself from checking for any new signs of… well, her.  The susurrus stone remained in the centre of the single table she kept, and the small red nightlight he’d given her remained on her standing desk beside her personal monitor, which was where she was now, though she turned as he came into the room. 

Nothing else new, though. No art. No little touches. Nothing spoke of comfort. Though she’d chosen a belted tunic he’d seen her wear before; a particularly nice shade of pale grey with gently and barely noticeable repeating geometric patterns in a slightly darker grey.

A gift from Elliot, he believed. 

"I finished a full regenerating cycle," she said, by way of greeting. 

"Wasn’t going to ask," he said, which might have been stretching the truth a smidgeon.

She raised an eyebrow. 

"Fine, I probably would have asked—but it wasn’t going to be my opener," he said, cracking a wider smile. "I was wondering if I could join you for lunch given Aaron is off with the Aeroshuttle. I know you’re on reduced duty, and I know there’s still a lot of work to do with restoring and replacing the gel packs—Ensign Lan says you and One have been invaluable on that front, by the way, so thank you—but I wanted to check in with you, and thought we could do that informally, over a meal." 

Seven of Nine frowned. "I am fine." 

"You went through something isolating and terrifying," Fitzgerald said. "And while I am unsurprised you handled it so wonderfully, as the ship’s counsellor I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t check in with you." He paused, then decided to go for the big guns. "But, also, I happen to know it’s Sveta’s birthday, and Eru made a large batch of strawberry tarts to celebrate."

"You are attempting to utilize your awareness of my preferred culinary experiences to your advantage," Seven of Nine said, with a borderline regal annoyance he always found far more charming than he probably should. 

"Is it working?" he said. 

*

"Okay, so you spent a month with the Silvers while you were asleep?" Ensign Sahreen Lan tilted her head to one side, looking at Lieutenant Commander Veronica Stadi like she was waiting for the punchline. "Wait. I didn’t know you could do that over such a distance."

"Distance is relative when it comes to telepathy, but you’re not wrong. I think it had something to do with Alisse being pretty much born from my memories and thoughts," Stadi said. "Think of it like us being on the same telepathic frequency. Also being in stasis might have had something to do with it; Betazoid history says the not-sleep, not-awake state of stasis in sleeper ships tended to leave us more in control of our paraconscious awareness than regular sleep."

"Right." Beside Lan, Lieutenant Alexander Honigsberg rubbed his goatee with one hand, but not in his 'this is uncomfortable' way so much as his 'I have zero frame of reference' way. "But nothing last night?"

"No," Stadi said, shaking her head. "Or the night before. I’m pretty sure I’m out of reach now." She felt a pang of sadness, which she allowed herself to acknowledge as valid and meaningful, then conjured a more controlled, measured response filtered through realistic expectations. "Honestly, it’s a little like coming back from a really good shore leave. I’ll miss it, but I know I’m where I belong."

"Yeah, I just have vague dreams about floating in an underground pool," Lan said. "I think the symbiont took the lead on my… what did you call it?" 

"Paraconscious," Stadi said, intrigued. "I didn’t realize you had access to the symbiont’s memories of its time before joining." 

"Hosts don’t, generally," Lan said, waving a hand to one side in a back-and-forth manner. "Though it’s different for the first host. I know Pasha had a lot of dreams about swimming after she was joined, which she put down to Lan’s time in the pools." 

"As the non-telepathic, singular being at the table," Honigsberg said. "I feel it’s my duty to tell you both that you missed out on some very good random dream action." He popped the last bit of the strawberry tart into his mouth before adding, after a quick chew and swallow. "My dreams involved a hyper spanner, something to do with clouds, and I’m pretty sure there were singing mice." 

Stadi stared at him. "Really?"

"Really," Honisgberg said. "You could have had all that, but instead you hung out with three dozen nascent telepathic beings creating their own society on a demon-class planetoid." He shook his head with mock sadness. "Such a missed opportunity."

Lan snorted, and Stadi laughed. 

"Roni, I’m so freaking jealous," Honigsberg said. "You have no idea."

"I do actually," Stadi tapped her temple.

"Right." Honigsberg leaned forward. "Okay, can we go back to when you say they just pulled the stone out of the planetoid, you mean… With their minds?"

Stadi nodded. "They’re incredibly talented psychokinetics, like the Ocampa, but in a different way—it’s hard to put it to words—they have something like a Chorus, but it’s more structured, ordered—I’d say they’re weaker individually than, say, Kes or Setok, but they have nearly three dozen in their group state, and a precision that’s just…" Stadi shook her head, words failing her.

"Vulcan?" Lan said.

Stadi lifted her mug of firenut coffee. "Fair. Alisse and An’Aravik said they were 'reorganizing the stone via adjustment of the layer of thought beneath the subatomic.'"

"Oh, right," Lan said, nodding with an expression dry enough to exist in a desert. "As one does." 

"Imagine the time it would save with repairs to literally just think a fix," Honigsberg said, chuckling.

"Speaking of," Stadi said. "I adjusted the pilot rotation to make sure there’s at least one pilot with a class three or higher engineering rating free at any time for you, if you need them." 

"We’ll take it," Honigsberg said, and Lan nodded. "We’re still chasing down the side-effects of the radiation, all those bypasses Seven and One did, and, y’know, One themself deciding to become Voyager for a bit."

"We’ve had to rewrite quite a bit of program to catch all the micro-adjustments One made, conscious or otherwise," Lan said. "Even Kimble looked like he was getting tired of spending time in the computer lab re-reading code manually." 

"We should get back to it," Honigsberg said. "What time are we expecting the Aeroshuttle back?"

"Arkinson said we’d likely hear from them once we were done lunch," Stadi said, knowing the relief Bridge Officer, Dee Arkinson, had everything under control while they took their meal break. "The trading colony broadcast Cing’ta is monitoring sent a message saying they were on their way last night."

Lan regarded her with a smile. "Looking forward to sitting up front again, rather than the big chair?"

"Always," Stadi said, willing to admit it to Lan and Honigsberg. Captain Cavit and Commander Ro had both gone to a multi-species trading colony with Gara and Chief McMinn for what would be  First Contact with a half-a-dozen warp-capable peoples and one of their first real opportunities to trade since their disastrous time with the Vaskan and Kyrians. 

The chance to meet so many species wasn’t one they could afford to dismiss, either, and it allowed Voyager to take a bit of a breather after the journey through the Newtara Nebula—which they’d learned the locals on this side all referred to rather colourfully as "The Deathblossom Nebula"—for repairs. 

And given Stadi knew sitting still and watching repairs would drive Ro Laren up the bulkhead walls, she’d suggested the two most senior officers take the opportunity to stay in motion. It only seemed fair. Like she’d just explained to Sahreen and Alex, compared to the rest of the crew, Stadi’s time in Stasis had been the equivalent of a relaxing shore leave. 

They took their plates to the counter, and a reverberating, playful energy washed over Stadi. She paused, tilting her head and smiling at the familiar sensation, and Lan eyed her.

"What?"

"Incoming in three, two…" Stadi said, with a smile, and then the doors to the Mess Hall opened and Lieutenant Walter Baxter arrived with his three sons, who burst in with all the subtlety and poise of drunk Klingons.

"Wow!" Viru said—or, rather, shouted—pointing at the Christmas tree.

"See? I told you, papa!" Thomas yanked at Baxter’s sleeve, his attention in a different direction. "There are tarts!" 

"I can see," Baxter said, with a warm smile and an apologetic glance to the Mess Hall at large for the sudden increase in decibels. "But boys? Public voices, not Holodeck voices."

"Marble!" Paul was already running toward the Kid Brig, where Marble the Mess Hall cat had perked up the moment they’d arrived, and was already purring. 

"I don’t think any of us really thought through the effect the whole 'you’ll have an entire month’s worth of deep rest' would have on the kids," Lan said, leaning in and dropping her voice. "Li-Paz was saying Li-Nis hasn’t gone to sleep for more than two hours since we got through the nebula." 

They headed for doors together, Honigsberg taking a turbolift down to Main Engineering while they headed back up to the Bridge. 

"Hey," Lan said, once they were alone together in the lift. "You went on an Away Mission with Crewman Chano, right?"

"That’s right," Stadi said. They’d visited a trading planet after Voyager’s main computer had been stolen out from under them with Nyrian translocation technology.

"I got him for the whole 'Secret Santa' thing," Lan said. "Any ideas?"

Stadi stared at her in surprise. Sahreen put herself in the Secret Santa? Stadi had only done it because she was Voyager’s second officer.

"Michael," Lan said, as though that explained why the Trill woman had decided to take part in the rather human tradition, which—to be fair—did make sense once Stadi thought about it. Ensign Michael Murphy was one of the most upbeat humans she’d ever met. Of course he’d want to do the gift exchange. 

"Sorry." Stadi considered, but came up mostly blank, although… "You could ask Reskat, though. They’ve gotten close."

Lan narrowed her eyes. "Close."

Stadi cleared her throat as they arrived on the Bridge, and Lan chuckled all the way to the Ops station. Stadi, for her part, did her best to put on her senior officer’s face and got the update from Arkinson. The red-haired human woman said they had indeed heard from the Aeroshuttle who reported they’d had a great deal of success, and she’d only have a few more hours of being in charge of Voyager before she could go back to being the pilot again.

Stadi took the big chair, and smiled. 

Days like today? Repairs on track, trading missions going well, seeing Voyager’s kids so vibrant and energetic and happy? It all gave her a real sense of hope. 

Chapter Text

In the life sciences lab, Crewman Cir pulled up the fragments of the final data stream they’d downloaded from the Marconi relay network before it had gone off line. He tapped in a series of commands, and then glanced up at the display on his side-station.

"Hello, Voyager." The woman speaking was Admiral Penelope Fitzgerald, Doctor Fitzgerald’s great-aunt, and the admiral most involved in a project back in the Alpha Quadrant meant to help Voyager on its return journey. Her expression remained composed, if serious. "We looked at the data you provided with your last upload, and agree. Given we believe someone may be tampering with Marconi, we’ve attached—" 

The image, and message, froze.

Cir exhaled.

Someone slid into the seat beside him, and Cir glanced over, surprised to see Crewman Mestral—until he also saw the chronometer and realized his own shift was over and Mestral was starting his. The time-displaced Vulcan eyed the display, then Cir. "I didn’t realize you were still working on this. I thought Lieutenant Honigsberg and Ensign Lan had written it off as too far gone."

"They have. But I try again when I come up with a new reconstructive process to consider," Cir said. "I haven’t had a lot of time between my regular duties, working with Lieutenant Cing’ta, and Lieutenant Rollins’s classes, but I thought of something today while I was in the phaser range with Crewman Sveta." He eyed the Vulcan with a small smile. "As you can see, it didn’t work."

"Success always demands a greater effort," Mestral said.

Cir smiled wider. "Winston Churchill."

"One day I will conjure a quotation you have not already encountered," Mestral said.

"Perhaps," Cir said, resetting the data stream back to its original—and still garbled beyond his reach—state. "With greater effort." 

 Mestral’s soft laugh always delighted Cir. He really enjoyed the unusual Vulcan’s company, and often found genuinely fascinating conversation with him, something he knew Setok and Daggin did as well. 

"I can keep working on this after I log through the signals Lieutenant Cing’ta sends up from the Cloud," Mestral said. "I’ll let you know if I get anywhere."

"Thank you," Cir said, then checked the chronometer again. "I believe the Aeroshuttle will be back soon as well—they’ll upload new passive files from their combadges and communications logs; if you wouldn’t mind—"

"Marking each for you so you can find them easily and perhaps learn a few more linguistic nuances," Mestral said. "As usual? Of course."

Cir nodded, rising from his station and giving one last look at the Admiral’s face before deciding he’d head down to the Aeroshuttle dock himself. The last transmissions had said the Aeroshuttle had been extraordinarily successful in their trades. He could help Daggin, Setok, and Kovar with any seedlings or other edible flora they might have gathered. Some time in the Gardens always went a long way after he’d butted heads with a cipher, signal, or language he couldn’t quite unravel.

*

Captain's log, stardate 51978.2. We’re back from a very successful trip to Travers III. The trading colony was everything Lieutenant Cing’ta believed it to be from the comm chatter we picked up this side of the Newtara Nebula—or, rather, the Deathblossom Nebula—with no less than seven species across the sector taking part in the joint venture there, including a xenon-based species known as the Q’I’K from whom we had the incredible luck of acquiring a remarkable amount of pergium. 

The Aeroshuttle is loaded down with supplies, and we’ll be back to Voyager shortly.

Captain Aaron Cavit entered the Aeroshuttle’s bridge from the port rear door and couldn’t help but think Commander Ro Laren looked completely at home at the helm. The Bajoran woman, his first officer, had been a pilot prior to completing advanced tactical training and her promotion—more of a restoration, actually—to lieutenant prior to her leaving Stafleet for the Maquis, but he could see how very much flying was a part of her. 

He knew the feeling, sliding into the Ops station beside her with a comfort of his own. 

"So, I won’t tell anyone how much I enjoyed getting away if you don’t," Cavit said softly, running a quick systems check of the Aeroshuttle from his station before glancing at her. "Though we probably owe Stadi something nice for suggesting it."

One of Ro’s rare-and-faint smiles was all the answer he was likely to get, but he thought it an eloquent one. When the doors behind them opened again, he turned, and caught Crewman Gara, Chief Basil McMinn, and their guest—Arturis—arriving as well, though none were strictly needed on the Bridge.

"I told Mr. Arturis you likely wouldn’t mind, Captain," Gara said, taking a seat at the Science station, which was currently set up for Communications as well. "He wanted to get a good view of Voyager."

"It’s fine," Cavit said. "And the least we can do for your help." 

Arturis bobbed his large head a bit in response. In his somewhat drab yellow-tan-and-brown robes, the alien’s pale complexion wasn’t much to write home about, though his enlarged hairless cranium certainly stood out. He had a sadness to the cast of his features, Cavit had thought, something sort of hang-dog, but he’d generally been measured and polite. More importantly, the alien had been invaluable during their trade mission. It turned out the language of the Q’I’K had been beyond the universal translators in their combadges, but their combadges hadn’t just failed to translate the clicks and whistles, they’d suffered a complete crash, going entirely offline. Arturis had stepped up and handled all the translations—without technological help—claiming it "hadn’t been too hard to pick up" Federation Standard, though the Q’I’K was "certainly unique." 

Cavit was used to the incredible skills of Crewman Cir, but Arturis claimed his own skills were one all his species had—their neurology saw patterns on a fundamental, instinctual way—which leant itself to learning language adroitly.

"She has beautiful lines," Arturis said a moment later, when Ro dropped them out of warp and Voyager came into view. "And this vessel docks beneath the forward hull, there?"

More noting of patterns, Cavit thought.

"That’s right," McMinn said. Voyager’s quartermaster was unfailingly polite and comported—Cavit honestly believed the man to be the best quartermaster in the fleet, especially given the constant challenges he’d risen to since they’d arrived in the Delta Quadrant—but even so, Cavit could hear the reverence in McMinn’s voice. 

Okay, Cavit had to admit it. He’d enjoyed the respite from being "the Captain" but he was happy to be back, too.

"I wonder how Walter is doing," Gara said, with a trace of relief in her own voice. 

"Missing the boys?" Cavit said, glancing at her. 

"I won’t lie, Captain," Gara said, with a twinkle in her eye that made him think her empathic gifts were telling her they were on a same page. "It was nice to get out there, deal with new species and make new friends and secure some new supplies, but I’m happy to be back." 

Cavit’s console beeped, and he tapped open the hail. 

"Voyager to Aeroshuttle," came Lieutenant Scott Rollins’s voice over the channel. "Welcome back. We’ve got you on approach and you’re clear for docking—should I bother asking if you want to use the auto docking sequence, or would that just be insulting?" 

"I can handle it, Lieutenant," Ro said with another one of her faint-and-barely-present-smiles. 

"Never imagined otherwise," Rollins said. "See you soon, Aeroshuttle."

Cavit watched as Ro expertly maneuvered Voyager’s auxiliary vessel beneath Voyager’s saucer, guiding it into position with tiny adjustments of thrusters until—with a soft thud that sounded throughout the Aeroshuttle—the magnetic locks engaged, and they were once again docked.

"Powering down for docked mode," Cavit said.

"I’ll get started in the cargo hold," McMinn said, clapping his hands together. 

*

Cir arrived in the Aeroshuttle bay with his daughters, and Chief McMinn spread both his hands in delight. "Please tell me you’re here because you feel like carrying things down to the cargo bays and Gardens." 

"I’ve been wrestling with algorithms for hours," Cir said to the soft-spoken man. "And I was going to spend time in the gardens, but Kovar, Doug, and Setok beat me to it. Something I can accomplish physically would be welcome." 

"And you girls?" McMinn’s sandy-blond hair was a bit ruffled, Cir noted, likely from moving the wide variety of crates and containers—most of them of alien design—into the offloading area behind the Aeroshuttle’s rear hatch where it rose up from the deck beneath their feet. 

"Dad is convinced I’m going to be a linguist and wants to show me the UT logs—especially since they crashed," Ahn said, crossing her arms in mock annoyance. "And he just wanted to Jeta to actually get out of the Garden." 

Jeta shook her head, but didn’t reply. She was always more quiet than Ahn, Cir knew, and he tried not to let Ahn’s teasing tone get to him. 

Especially since she was more-or-less correct. His daughters currently lived in that place after six months but before a year, where Ocampa seemed determined to be adults before their time, and were a constant lesson in reminding him of things his own parents—especially his father, one of the Elders—had said about he and his brother. 

You don’t need to rush to grow up, boys. The days will pass whether or not you’re waiting for them to arrive and depart.

"We were lucky to have Arturis arrive when he did," McMinn said, nodding and picking up a PADD before handing it to Ahn. "That has the full comm logs from before the crash of the UT."

"Thanks," Ahn said, already tapping the screen to life. Cir wondered if anything there would catch her attention. He didn’t fool himself into believing she’d dedicate her life to linguistics the way he had—she enjoyed some of the complexities of language, yes, but it didn’t capture her focus the way it did his—but he always enjoyed seeing her work at something. 

"Any new plants for me?" Jeta asked. 

"Preferably not plants that will create a baby boom?" Ahn said, with a sly chuckle. 

Cir shook his head, but McMinn laughed. "Believe me, we’re going to send samples of everything to Kes and Emmett for more extensive testing than even the usual protocols from now on." He turned to Jeta. "But to answer your question, yes. There’s something like asparagus we got from the Travers III sharecrops I think is going to be a very welcome addition, as well as a tiny yellow pepper I know both Li-Paz and Gus will be very pleased to work with." 

Jeta joined him by the crate of bio-samples, and Cir noted the seedlings already in place in the various compartments. Cir lifted one of the crates marked for Main Engineering, and aimed a nod at his daughters and McMinn. "I’ll be back." 

He could use an antigrav handle, but he’d been telling the truth earlier. He’d rather engage in some physical work. Much like his studies under Lieutenant Rollins, it felt good sometimes just to put some muscle into something and accomplish a goal.

*

"And this is our Bridge," Cavit said, stepping out of the turbolift with the alien guest Rollins had been told to expect. Rollins eyed the man—a larger-than-average cranium, but not particularly imposing otherwise—and exchanged a quick glance with Lieutenant Commander Stadi as she rose from the big chair. 

Rollins often watched Stadi react to newcomers as a thermometer of what to expect. She had a good poker face—she didn’t let much show—but he also knew he could count on Roni to speak up if any newcomer posed a threat. 

But when the Betazoid pilot shook hands with the guest—Arturis, the Captain introduced him as—Rollins didn’t see much of anything in her expression, except for maybe a delay in her smile. He left Tactical for his own turn as Commander Ro stepped down into the command section of the Bridge and took her seat. 

"And this is my chief of security and tactical officer, Lieutenant Scott Rollins," Cavit said.

Arturis held out his hand and Rollins shook it. Arturis had a decent grip. 

"Nice to meet you, Lieutenant," Arturis said.

"Same," Rollins said. "I read the report—we were lucky you were there and could pick up Federation Standard so quickly."

"Oh, it’s very simple," Arturis said, with a small shake of his head.

Rollins blinked.

"No insult intended," Arturis said, looking slightly chagrinned, Rollins thought. 

"None taken," Rollins said, chuckling. "Simple is often good, in my books." He turned to the Captain. "I arranged guest quarters, as you asked."

"Thank you," Cavit said. "I told Arturis we’d give him a lift to the next outpost."

"It’s on the edge of The Dark," Arturis said.

"Sorry," Rollins said, frowning. "The Dark?" That didn’t sound great. 

"You haven’t seen it yet?" Arturis said. "I imagined this vessel’s sensors would have noticed it by now."

"Our long-range sensors are undergoing some maintenance and repair," Stadi said. "We had a rough trip through the nebula."

"Ah, yes, I heard," Arturis nodded. "I have star charts I can share." 

"In that case," Cavit said. "Maybe you can join me in Astrometrics first, before I show you your quarters?" 

"I’d be delighted," Arturis said.

"You have the Bridge, Ro," Cavit said, heading for the turbolift with Arturis again.

Rollins watched them go. Then he turned to Stadi. 

"Can’t read him, eh?"

Her lips curled up in a small smile. "I’d ask how you know, but apparently it’s how I hesitated before I smiled at him." She eyed the turbolift. "White noise." 

"White noise?" Rollins said.

"That’s all I get from him—I think it might be the way he thinks? I picked up a word here or there in our language: proper nouns, mostly, like when he said Voyager, but for the most part, he seems to think in such unique, tiny pieces…" She closed her eyes, and Rollins figured she was trying to recall the details, as well as putting her impressions into words. He knew she often found it frustrating to attempt to translate telepathy for non telepaths. 

She opened her eyes. "It’s like if you were thinking not only a sentence, but breaking down each word into its part of speech, nuance, listing off the letters used to spell the word, what each letter sounded like, and also grasping the concept of each individual part of the sentence as well as the whole. All at once." She rolled her hand. "To me, it all blurs into white noise."

"That sounds exhausting," Rollins said. "I’ll stick to being simple, I think."

Stadi laughed. "I imagine it’s part of how his people are so good with language." 

"Good doesn’t do it justice," Ro said from behind them. "He was fluent in three dialects of Bajoran by the time we were an hour away from Travers III. He thought I’d appreciate it if he spoke to me in my own tongue." She glanced over her shoulder. "I didn’t have the heart to tell him I only spoke one of them." 

*

"I think that’s the last of One’s accidental damage to the sensor algorithms," Taitt said, glancing at the astrometric sensor status display across the side-station she was manning. "I’m seeing green across the board." 

"Agreed," Seven of Nine said, from her position at the top of the main display. She tapped in a series of commands. "Reinitializing astrometric sensors." 

Taitt pushed off from the station and rose, crossing the space to join Seven by the blank holographic display while the complex systems rebooted. "Did you put your name in the Secret Santa?"

"No." Seven of Nine’s gaze never left the display, where the indicator tracked the reinitialization process. 

Taitt forced herself not to laugh at Seven’s reply. As succinct as always. 

The door opened behind them, and Taitt turned to see Captain Cavit and an alien guest arrive.

"And this is our Astrometrics lab," Cavit said, gesturing. "Normally, I’d show you a glimpse of our galaxy, but we’re not quite back online yet."

"Approximately eleven minutes remain until we are," Seven of Nine said.

"Arturis," Captain Cavit said, walking the large-headed alien up to where they were standing. "This is Lieutenant Zandra Taitt, my chief Science Officer, and this is Seven of Nine, without whom this lab would not be possible."

The man seemed friendly enough when he smiled at her, but he gave Seven a longer look, and Taitt found herself tensing, defensive on behalf of Seven.

"You're much more attractive than the average drone," Arturis said.

"I am no longer part of the Collective," Seven of Nine said, facing him. 

"You know the Borg," Cavit said.

"Yes," Arturis said.

Seven of Nine faced him. "Species 116." Then she paused. "I’m afraid I don’t know your own species designation." It came off as an afterthought, and Taitt wondered if Doctor Fitzgerald had maybe told her it was polite to ask aliens what they called themselves if she slipped up and referred to them by a number.

"The Swei," Arturis said. 

Seven of Nine nodded. 

Yeah. Just a little awkward. Taitt cleared her throat. "What can we do for you, Captain?"

"Actually, Mr. Arturis here has a way he can help us—again." Cavit’s pale blue eyes aimed quick appreciation in Taitt’s direction. "He has star charts."

Arturis pulled a data rod from his pocket, and handed it to Seven of Nine. Seven scanned it with a tricorder, then began uploading the data. 

"While I’ve got you," Taitt said, turning to the Captain. "Cir took another crack at the last data stream from Marconi. No luck. Seven is going to keep working with him using Borg algorithms as well, but honestly, it’s starting to feel like a lost cause." 

"We knew it was a long shot given how corrupted the signal was," Cavit said. 

"You have a corrupted signal you’re trying to restore?" Arturis said. 

Taitt nodded. "We managed to communicate with the Alpha Quadrant for a while—the other side of the galaxy, roughly sixty thousand light years from here—and they sent us a data stream. Unfortunately, it got jumbled." 

"My people can see patterns where others see only confusion," Arturis said. "Perhaps I can help you." 

"You’d look at the signal?" Cavit said.

"You’re giving me passage, I can only attempt to be helpful," Arturis said.

"Seven?" Cavit said, and Seven of Nine tapped in a series of commands on the main console, bringing up the signal in its raw form. 

"I see, I see," Arturis had barely taken a moment to look at the data before speaking, and Taitt felt her eyebrows rise as she glanced at the Captain. He seemed less surprised, though no less impressed. "I think I see the problem," Arturis said, then, gesturing to where Seven stood. "May I?"

Seven stepped aside, and Arturis started working at her console. 

The man already seemed to know all the interfaces. 

"I see what you mean about the linguistic facility," Taitt said, feeling her eyebrows rise as she glanced at Cavit, who looked less surprised, but no less impressed. "And all your species can do this?" 

"Yes," Arturis said. "It’s definitely provided us advantages in multiple fields."

"The Borg has never been able to assimilate species 116—the Swei," Seven of Nine said, and Taitt winced, because she was fairly certain Seven meant that as a compliment, but it came across a little like a threat or an inevitability only partially held at bay. You could practically hear the silent: Not yet.

"Seven," Cavit said softly. 

"Oh, it's all right, Captain." Arturis didn’t so much as pause at his work. "The Borg Collective is like a force of nature. You don't feel anger toward a storm on the horizon, you just avoid it." He entered another few commands, and then nodded. "Ah. Here it is." He tapped in another few sequences. "It's a simple matter of extracting the iconometric elements, and triaxilating a recursion matrix."

Taitt stared. Simple?

"Right," Cavit said dryly.

"There's a great deal of information here, Captain." Arturis tapped in more commands. "I think it might be useful to utilise the other monitors."

On the large holographic display, the face of Admiral Penelope Fitzgerald appeared, as did star charts, technological schematics, and other data.

"You’ve got it," Taitt said.

"Almost," Arturis sounded slightly contrite. "I’ve reconstructed over sixty eight kiloquads of information, but a lot of it is still garbled."

Seven of Nine was already working at a side station, and Taitt tapped in a quick search of her own, now that so much of the data was recovered. 

"Fourteen beta is still blocked," Cavit noted. "That’s part of Admiral Fitzgerald’s message, isn’t it?"

"Yes," Taitt said.

"That part of the message is too degraded to recover," Arturis said, still sounding mostly apologetic, like he hadn’t just given them a treasure trove of information they’d thought lost to the whims of interference and distortion.

"Captain, I have found a spatial grid," Seven of Nine said.

Taitt glanced up at the section Seven had isolated. Definitely a spatial grid, but it was both remote from anything interesting and uninteresting in and of itself. Why would Starfleet mention it?

"They've marked a set of coordinates," Cavit said.

"It's less than ten light years from here," Taitt said. "But it’s empty space—no interesting star systems, nothing of note at all, according to our current scans." 

"Maybe Starfleet wants us to proceed to that location," Seven of Nine said.

Cavit was looking at the display, nodding slowly. "As soon as we get long-range sensors back online, we’ll go take a look." He turned back to Arturis. "Thank you. Again." 

Arturis had sad eyes, Taitt thought, but a nice enough smile. "Of course, Captain. Anything I can do."

*

Crewman Atara Ram opened the door to his quarters, and spread his arms, hugging Eru first before wrapping Cir up just as warm a hug. "Thank you for coming," he said, pulling back and letting go. "Steven’s just getting changed after his shift. We’re all a little behind today."

"Don’t worry, we’re a little early." Eru brushed off the concern as she led the way inside, and Cir followed her. He liked how Steven Niles and Atara Ram kept their quarters, which weren’t large, but arranged with simplicity and openness both. Currently, the main focus was a table set for four, upon which a meal was already laid out, including a steaming hasperat soufflé, the scent of which made Cir’s stomach rumble audibly.

Both Eru and Atara eyed him. His mate grinned at him. "Hungry?" she said.

"I helped unload the Aeroshuttle," he said, chuckling. "Worked up an appetite." 

"Then let’s sit and eat, by all means," Steven Niles said, stepping out of the 'fresher and joining them. He was still in uniform, as were they all, and he offered hugs as well before they sat. 

"Have you met our new guest yet?" Niles said, while Atara cut into the soufflé and started serving out portions. 

"Not yet," Eru said. "He was with the Captain earlier, and I know he’s settling into quarters now, but we were busy getting the new plants into the garden and the foodstuffs into storage or the kitchen."

"Apparently, he managed to reconstruct part of the last data stream from Marconi," Niles said. "And it included a location. That’s where we’re headed now."

Cir glanced up, surprised. "He managed to reconstruct the signal?" 

"Lieutenant Rollins said his whole species are like you, Cir," Niles said, passing him a plate. "Linguistic geniuses." 

"More genius than I," Cir said, putting the plate down in front of himself. "If he succeeded."

"Says the man who translated ancient Bajoran script my people hadn’t managed to translate in the last few centuries," Atara said. 

Cir had his first bite of the soufflé to cover his embarrassment—he never liked it when people praised him, which Doctor Fitzgerald had once told him wasn’t uncommon—and the wonderfully spiced Bajoran dish was as good as ever. No one did a replicator pattern like Li-Paz. 

"May I ask, Steven," Eru said, and Cir sensed her coming to his rescue, a telepathic brush as though her had had squeezed his, turning back to Niles. "Now you’re an ensign, couldn’t you ask for officer’s quarters?" 

"We thought about it." Niles shrugged. "But honestly, neither of us really enjoyed the thought of moving. This is already our space." He paused, forking off a bit of his soufflé. "Also, I didn’t want to displace Frank—he might end up choosing to move, but I didn’t want to make it happen." 

Eru nodded, and Cir realized what Niles meant. Technically, the quarters his position as a relief Tactical officer afforded him would be those of Ensign Deborah Lang, who’d died on the original Vyntadi home world at he hands of the Hirogen. Lang had invited Crewman Frank Darwin, her partner, to live with her, and the engineer had been shattered by her loss. 

"You’re very kind, Steven," Cir said. 

Niles glanced at Atara. "I’m lucky. We’re lucky. All of us." He raised his glass of Bajoran Spring Wine, and Cir picked up his own, more than happy to toast the sentiment.

At the back of his mind, however, he wondered if Lieutenant Taitt would mind him looking at the methodology the alien guest used to reconstruct the message. He might learn a new trick or two.

*

"We’re approaching the co-ordinates," Stadi said. Like the rest of the Bridge Crew, she’d shown up early for the morning shift in order to be here for the arrival. She eyed her conn readouts and saw nothing immediately of interest. Which was what sensors had suggested as well. 

Why here?

Cavit rose from his seat. "Take us out of warp." 

On the viewscreen, the stars shifted from rainbow streaks to pinpricks of light. 

"Anything on sensors?" Ro said. 

"I’ve got a ship," Rollins said. "Low-power readings, but it’s there."

"On screen," Cavit said.

Stadi looked up, and saw a steep, arrow-headed starship with two, tightly-tucked nacelles and an engineering hull configuration that almost looked familiar. Even the main deflector had a sense of not-quite-right, but not-wrong, either. 

"Anything we can identify?" Ro said.

"No match in the database, but—" Ensign Lan’s voice caught as she paused, then continued. "Ro? The warp signature isn’t an exact match, but it’s definitely Starfleet."

Stadi regarded the vessel again, sensing the entire Bridge Crew’s stunned realization that they were looking at something from the Federation.

Well. That’s one way to start a day.

Chapter Text

Taitt, working alongside Seven of Nine in the Astrometrics lab, had to force herself to look down at her scan results, rather than continuing to stare at the ship on the display. The configuration was unique, but the nacelles, the markings… 

It all looked Starfleet.

"Captain, the reason no one is answering is there’s no one on board," Taitt said.

"There is no organic matter of any kind," Seven of Nine added. 

Ro’s voice over the open channel asked, "Any signs of damage or battle?" 

"Negative," Seven said.

"I’m getting power readings consistent with a Federation starship in a low-power mode. Life support is stable over there," Taitt said. "I can’t tell you why there are no people, Commander, but the ship appears functional." 

"Take a team, Ro. We’ll start with securing it." Cavit paused after the order. "I don’t like not knowing more about this ship."

"We’ll keep on it, Captain," Taitt said, eyeing the display again. "Starting with that nacelle configuration, I think." She’d never seen a Starfleet vessel with such tightly paired nacelles before, and it went against everything she knew about warp geometry. Starfleet had occasionally used singular nacelle designs through the years, but the payoff was always a reduction in speed. Pairing the nacelles like this would—as far as she knew—have a similar effect.

"I’m sure Alex will be up for offering some insight as well," Cavit said. 

"We’ll loop him in." Taitt got to work.

*

Cir joined nearly everyone else in the Mess Hall in staring out the windows. His after-breakfast discussion with Arturis had left him feeling frustrated by his inability to grasp the methodology the alien had used, and while he hadn’t had a chance to really settle with the thoughts and feelings—something Lieutenant Commander Stadi would insist he do—he certainly wasn’t going to allow falling shorter than someone else to leave him ill at ease for any length of time. 

Admittedly, in his time on Voyager, it had never been linguistics where he’d been so outclassed. 

"Look at her lines," Lieutenant Erika Ryson said, pointing with one hand. "The warp field must be incredibly narrow." A propulsion specialist, Cir knew that Ryson had been recently promoted to replace Lieutenant Ikuyo Seuphon, another casualty at the hands of the Hirogen, and was now the division head of the propulsion team under Chief Honigsberg. 

"Why would you do that?" Ensign David Orlando seemed genuinely confused, but as he crossed his arms and stared at the vessel, Cir could tell the man was also very curious.

"Cavit to Cir." 

"Go ahead, Captain." Cir blinked, reaching up and tapping his combadge and noting more than one of the crew in the Mess Hall glancing his way as well, likely hoping to overhear something about this new vessel worthy of gossip. 

"Cir, I’m sure you’ve noticed the ship ahead of us—we’re hoping to get some more information about it, and it occurs to me the one place it’s most likely to be is inside the rest of Admiral Fitzgerald’s transmission. We need to reconstruct as much of it as possible." 

"Of course, Captain," Cir said, and he glanced at Arturis, who gave him the same amiable look as always, and he nodded at Cir’s unspoken question. "I’m with Arturis right now, Captain. We can get right on it." 

"Appreciated. Thanks, Cir." 

After the channel closed, Cir said, "Perhaps this time I’ll grasp your theory better."

"We’ll do our best," Arturis said, which Cir couldn’t help but notice wasn’t agreement. Arturis glanced at the ship, and then back at Cir. "May I ask…" But he trailed off.

"Go ahead," Cir said, leading the way as they headed for the exit. 

"It’s just, the Captain, your people…" Arturis gestured behind them to the Mess Hall as they stepped through the doors. "It was my understanding you are far from home and had lost contact with them."

"That’s correct," Cir said, pausing to summon the tubolift. 

"It just seems to me that no one—yourself included—seems particularly encouraged by the discovery of that vessel." Arturis looked genuinely confused. 

Cir considered it for a moment. "I’d say the Captain—all the crew really—have learned to balance hope and caution." 

"I see," Arturis said.

The turbolift arrived, and they entered together.

"Astrometrics," Cir said, and a moment later, they were on their way.

*

Stadi found looking in all directions as the transporter took her from Voyager’s Transporter Room to the bridge of the other vessel. To her left, Ro and Rollins offered a sense of alertness and wariness; to her right, Sahreen Lan’s oddly blurred presence held curiosity more than anything else. 

They’d beamed in to what appeared to be the vessel’s Bridge, and at a glance…

No viewscreen?

"Definitely looks Starfleet," Lan said, already drifting to the side-station where Ops was located on Voyager’s Bridge, though here the curved consoles had no chair. In fact, other than the big chair in the middle of the Bridge, Stadi couldn’t help but note a lack of seating in general.

"Master systems display," Rollins said, crossing the full length of the Bridge to a section beyond where Stadi would have assumed a viewscreen to be. Stadi followed him, approaching what did, in fact, appear to be the MSD for the ship, which…

"USS Dauntless," Stadi said. "NX-01-A." She glanced at him. "Prototype."

"The plaque says she launched stardate 51472," Ro said, from further behind them. 

Stadi whistled at the math. "All this way in a half a year?" There were two seats beside this odd forward MSD, but the panels there were in standby mode. 

"This is Ops," Lan said, from the side of the Bridge. "It accepted my access codes. But it’s the emptiest Ops I’ve ever seen. No logs."

"I’ll try Tactical," Rollins said, making his way to the position opposite her. 

Stadi, for her part, made her way down to the Conn. 

"I can log in, but I can’t find crew logs," Rollins said.

Stadi, still trying to reconcile a pilot’s position without a chair, entered her codes and believed she had at least part of an answer for the rest of the Away Team. "The conn is set to auto-navigation," she turned, facing Ro. "I don’t think there is a crew. Also, the warp geometry of this ship doesn’t make sense."

"Six months to get here, no crew, all ready for us to hop aboard and head home…" Lan turned away from the ops controls, her usual pessimistic nature reasserting itself when she added, sardonically. "Is it just me, or is this striking anyone else as, I don’t know…?"

"Too easy?" Rollins said. "Where’s the security lockout? What if we hadn’t been the ones to find this ship?" He shook his head. "It feels sloppy."

"That," Lan said.

Stadi wanted to disagree, but she couldn’t shake the feeling, either. "Maybe the rest of Admiral Fitzgerald’s message will clear it up."

"Maybe," Ro said. "But in the meanwhile, lets take this one step at a—"

The Conn trilled, and Stadi turned and read it. "There’s a power fluctuation in the core—not the warp core, for the record, but something else. I don't recognise it."

Dauntless shivered beneath their feet.

"Why don’t you two go take a look?" Ro said, aiming the words at Stadi and Lan. "We’ll see if the rest of the files are as empty as the logs."

*

Main Engineering on the Dauntless looked like nothing Lan had seen before. For one thing, no floor-to-ceiling warp core seemed to be present, with instead a plinth-like structure, atop which sat a containment sphere holding…

Something.

"Not like any engine room I’ve seen," Stadi said as the two of them spread out, tricorders already scanning.

"My tricorder isn’t understanding this at all," Lan said, scanning the plinth, which had to be some sort of power core, given its central location and the main power feeds affixed. "It’s got to be some kind of new drive system."

"I’m not picking up antimatter at all," Stadi said. "But something is powering these EPS conduits."

"Oh, hello," Lan said, finally locating the Main Engineering Command Console and tapping in her credentials. Once again, it activated with zero fuss. Scott was right. No security lockouts, just a basic access requirement. Strange. "It’s a quantum slipstream drive," she said, reading the screen.

"A what?" Stadi joined her.

"You know all I know, Commander," Lan said, pointing at the display. "It’s in standby mode, but there’s some sort of power imbalance happening. That’s what gave us the trembles earlier."

"Quantum slipstream," Stadi repeated the name of the technology. "I've never even heard the term kicked around in theoretical discussions. You?" 

Lan shook her head. "No. To be honest, I—"

A hum filled the room, and they both froze before eyeing the display again.

"She’s powering up," Lan said.

"Auto-navigation is kicking in," Stadi said. She tapped on the console. "I can’t override."

"I hate it when Scott’s right," Lan said.

*

"Captain," Ensign Doug Bronowski, manning the helm, turned in his chair. The man didn’t rattle easily—no pilot did—but his expression was definitely one of surprise. "They’ve engaged impulse engines."

On the viewscreen, the vessel was turning away, adjusting its vector to face away from Voyager, and was moving off at a decent clip. 

"I see it," Cavit rose from the big chair. "Voyager to Away Team—report." 

"Communications with the Away Team have been disrupted," Ensign T’Pir said from Ops. "There is a distortion field forming around the vessel—I cannot identify it." 

"It’s channelling a lot of power through the main deflector," Ensign Harper added from Tactical.

"Doug, keep on them," Cavit said. 

"Aye, sir," Bronowski said. "They’re moving fast. Engaging at full impulse."

*

Who designed a conn without a chair? Ro did her best to work the console, but the field forming around the ship continued to grow, and the impulse controls weren’t responding.

"Any luck?" Rollins said from the Tactical station. 

"No," Ro said. "Apparently, the QSD is engaging."

"The what?" 

"Your guess is as good as mine." She tapped her combadge. "Ro to Lan. Ro to Stadi."

"Internal comms are as down as our feed to Voyager—it’s something to do with that field forming around…" Rollins’s voice trailed off, and Ro could understand. Her own panel was lighting up with new data. "The main deflector is channeling energy throughout the ship’s surperstructure. What the hell is this ship doing?"

Ro blew out a breath. Dauntless trembled beneath their feet, and she had a three second countdown now the "QSD" had reached threshold. "Hold on. Three, two…"

*

Cavit stared as the vessel went from impulse to… something else. It vanished. 

"That wasn’t warp," he said.

"No, it was not," T’Pir said. "I cannot locate the vessel." 

"Cavit to Astrometrics," Cavit said. "Seven, Zandra? I need to find that ship." He paused. "And we need the rest of that message."

"Acknowledged," Taitt’s voice came quickly, but the tension in it told Cavit they weren’t seeing the ship either.

Where the hell are my people?

*

"Okay, so energy from the quantum slipstream drive is being routed through the main deflector," Lan said, using her tricorder and the displays to talk out what she was seeing. 

Beside her, Stadi nodded, once.

"Which is creating this… whatever it is," Stadi said. The effect on the display looked something like a tunnel, but it wasn’t a subspace geometry she’d ever seen before.

"The slipstream, I’d guess," Lan said. "I’m starting to understand Dauntless’s shape at least—look how narrow the profile of the deflector output is."

"Right," Stadi said. "No wonder the nacelles are so tight—I bet this ship can’t break warp seven using its traditional warp system." 

Lan blinked. "Wait. Look. More navigational systems are coming online—this was an auto-navigation error, I think." 

"This look like an override to you?" Stadi said, pointing at the very interface Lan was considering herself.

"It does." She eyed the Lieutenant Commander, deciding that if someone had to press the button that turned off the quantum slipstream drive and maybe kill them all, it should be the ranking officer. "All yours."

Stadi chuckled. "The privilege of rank." She tapped the control.

The low hum of the slipstream drive shifted in tone, lowering in increments, and then…

"Deflector output is returning to normal," Lan said. "And we’re out of the slipstream." A thought occurred to her, and she tapped her combadge. "Lan to Ro."

"Sahreen." Ro sounded pleased. "I’m guessing you two figured out how to turn whatever that was off?"

"Quantum Slipsteam Drive," Lan said. "And yes. I think we triggered an auto-navigation subroutine just by poking around down here." She tapped the controls and it issued the flat note of an error. "Also, I think we broke the auto-navigation subroutine—it’s not letting me access it now." 

"I’ll take it," Ro said. "Scanning for Voyager…"

They waited. Lan frowned when the wait moved past a few seconds.

Stadi lifted her chin. "Commander?"

"There’s no sign of Voyager," Ro said. "But it’s not surprising. We’re more than fifteen light years from where we were."

Lan blinked. 

"Well," she said. "Now we know how they got Dauntless here so fast." She eyed Stadi, then scoffed. "I don’t suppose anyone packed a lunch?" 

*

Lieutenant Zandra Taitt looked up as Cavit entered Astrometrics, and nodded at him as he approached where she, Seven, Cir, and Arturis were standing. 

"Oh, I love that expression on your face, Lieutenant," Cavit said. "You only smile like that when you’ve succeeded."

"We’ve got more of the Admiral’s message for you, Captain," Taitt said, enjoying the Captain’s relief. "Also, we’ve located Dauntless—she’s fifteen-point-two light years away."

"Dauntless?" Cavit frowned.

"The designation of the Starfleet vessel," Seven of Nine said. She tapped a series of commands. "Thanks to Mr. Arturis’s help, we have learned more." 

Arturis offered a small smile again, and then Seven tapped another command.

"Hello, Voyager," Admiral Penelope Fitzgerald began, appearing on the screen."We looked at the data you provided with your last upload, and agree. Given we believe someone may be tampering with Marconi, we’ve attached information we hope will be of use to you, as well as something new. Included is all the information Project Dauntless, which launched prior to Marconi going live. Given security concerns, we hadn’t mentioned it earlier. Project Dauntless—the starship Dauntless—is already underway to you. Dauntless uses a new type of faster-than-light travel. Dauntless will wait for you at the enclosed co-ordinates." She paused. "Slipstream technology is experimental and high risk, but it's come a long way in the past year. We’ve had forty seven trial runs, all of them successful, but each flight lasted only five days. We have limited data on the long-term effects on humanoids." Her gaze, so much like Doctor Fitzgerald’s, seemed to convey caution and hope both. "In order to reach Earth, you’ll have to remain at slipstream velocities for a roughly six months. It will be difficult, but we believe you’re up to the challenge. I encourage you to try. Everything you'll need is on the Dauntless. Power cells, supplies, living quarters. Safe journey." She paused once more, her features softening. "We hope to see you soon. Now, if I can indulge you with an addition for my Jeffrey—"

"There was some more, but it’s too badly degraded," Arturis said. 

"It appears the missing component was personal correspondence for Doctor Fitzgerald," Seven of Nine said, and Taitt could almost hear the word 'irrelevant' in the air, but instead, Seven of Nine said, "Likely not crucial information. But we have most of the technical schematics for Dauntless—much of it is still partially corrupted."

Taitt watched the Captain take it all in. His smile grew, and he nodded, but Taitt thought he looked a little closed-off, too. She understood the feeling—she was fighting it herself. This seemed like everything they could ever want. 

Which had her hackles up.

"Astrometrics to Bridge," Cavit said. 

"Go ahead, Captain," Lieutenant Cing’ta answered. Given they were missing both Ro and Stadi, the Bolian Strategic Ops officer had the Bridge, Taitt realized. 

"We’re sending you co-ordinates of the vessel—Dauntless, she’s called—get us there at best speed." Cavit nodded to Taitt, and she sent the co-ordinates to the Bridge.

"That far in that time?" Cing’ta said. "Wow."

"Agreed," Cavit said. 

"We’re underway, Captain."

Cavit eyed the technical data. "Can you pipe all that down to Main Engineering, Seven? I’d like to go through it all with Alex while we’re underway."

"Acknowledged," Seven said. 

"If I may join you, Captain? I may still be able to clean up more of the technical data," Arturis said. 

"By all means," Cavit said, gesturing with one hand. "It’s going to take us two days to get to Dauntless, and I’d like to know as much as we can before we get there."

Taitt watched the two men leave. 

Once the doors closed, she turned her attention back to the data stream. Quantum Slipstream Drive. She’d never even heard of it. She glanced at Seven. "Are you familiar with this technology?" 

Seven of Nine faced her. "The Borg acquired theoretical knowledge of quantum slipstream technology from Species 128," she said. "Multiple attempts to create a stable slipstream failed, and all contact was lost with the test cubes. Assimilation of transwarp technology made pursuing slipstream technology irrelevant." She regarded the data stream. "It appears Starfleet succeeded where the Borg failed." 

Taitt nodded slowly, then noticed Cir still looking at the display. "You were quieter than usual," she said, though not ungently. 

"Sorry," Cir said, but his expression struck Taitt as… distracted. That wasn’t like him. 

"What is it?" she said.

"Language isn’t just words," Cir said. 

Taitt frowned. "I’m not sure I follow." 

Cir sighed, shaking his head and turning bodily away from the data stream, putting his back to it, which struck Taitt as another sign of… What? Discomfort, maybe? "I’m probably overthinking it." He rubbed his forehead with one hand. "Maybe my ego, too, what with how easily Arturis seemed to put all that back together, but…" Cir shook his head again.

"His methodology is difficult to parse," Seven of Nine said. "He claims to intuit solutions." She said the word the way one might refer to targ dung, and Taitt chuckled.

"Not a fan of intuition, Seven?" she said.

"A human fallacy," she said, and Taitt decided that was a conversation for another day, turning back to Cir. "I’d like to hear what has you concerned." 

Cir took a deep breath, then nodded, seeming to make up his mind. "Okay. Admiral Fitzgerald." He turned around and cued up the message. "Listen to her again."

Taitt turned back to the display, and listened. 

"Hello, Voyager," Admiral Penelope Fitzgerald said."We looked at the data you provided with your last upload, and agree. Given we believe someone may be tampering with Marconi, we’ve attached information we hope will be of use to you, as well as something new."

Cir paused the playback. "Admiral Fitzgerald is focused. She gets to the point, and while I wouldn’t call her removed, I think it’s fair to call her direct, no?"

"Her communication style is efficient," Seven of Nine said. 

"Right," Taitt said. "Doctor Fitzgerald said that about her before. So did the Captain."

"Okay," Cir said. "Keep listening." He tapped the console again. 

"Included is all the information Project Dauntless, which launched prior to Marconi going live. Given security concerns, we hadn’t mentioned it earlier. Project Dauntless—the starship Dauntless—is already underway to you. Dauntless uses a new type of faster-than-light travel. Dauntless will wait for you at the enclosed co-ordinates." 

Cir paused the playback again. "Do you hear it?" 

Taitt frowned, exchanging a glance with Seven of Nine, but Seven’s pale blue eyes seemed more uncertain than anything else. "I’m not sure what you mean," Taitt said.

"The cadence changes," Cir says. "Shorter sentence structure, and also less specificity—I’ve only read the logs of our previous discussions with Admiral Fitzgerald, but… 'prior to Marconi going live' struck me as an odd phraseology for her. I’d expect 'pre-Marconi' or 'before Marconi' or even a stardate." He gestured with one hand. "Also, 'a new type of faster-than-light travel.' Why not 'Quantum Slipstream Drive'?" He regarded her, and Taitt looked back at the screen. 

"Keep going," she said. 

Cir tapped the control. 

"Slipstream technology is experimental and high risk, but it's come a long way in the past year. We’ve had forty seven trial runs, all of them successful, but each flight lasted only five days. We have limited data on the long-term effects on humanoids." 

Cir paused it again, and this time, Taitt was the one to raise an eyebrow.

"Humanoids," she said.

"Right." Cir nodded. "Not crew. Not people. Humanoids."

"Humanoids is the correct designation, is it not?" Seven of Nine said.

"Yes—if I was talking to you, for Doctor Hall, or perhaps one of the Vulcan crew," Cir said. "That’s what I meant about cadence and language being more than words." He turned to them both. "Seven, if I gave some important information to you and to Lieutenant Taitt, I’d expect you to say 'acknowledged' and Lieutenant Taitt to say 'understood.' Mestral tends to say 'fascinating' if he finds the information intriguing, but also uses a lot of Earth colloquialisms like 'got it.'" 

"Keep going," Taitt said, a sinking feeling forming in the pit of her stomach.

Cir tapped the control again.

"In order to reach Earth, you’ll have to remain at slipstream velocities for a roughly six months. It will be difficult, but we believe you’re up to the challenge. I encourage you to try. Everything you'll need is on the Dauntless. Power cells, supplies, living quarters. Safe journey. We hope to see you soon. Now, if I can indulge you with an addition for my Jeffrey—"

The message ended. Cir turned to them. "I encourage you to try," he said, shaking his head. "Again, I don’t know Admiral Fitzgerald personally, but I’ve read everything she’s said in the logs and it doesn’t lend itself to those being word choices I’d associate with her." He eyed the screen. "Also, if we assume the rest was a personal message for Doctor Fitzgerald, there’s a major omission in the Admiral’s plan."

"Voyager," Seven of Nine said.

"Exactly," Cir said. 

"Her plan means leaving Voyager behind," Taitt said. "And taking Dauntless all the way home."

"Voyager is a proven vessel," Seven of Nine said. "It would be reckless to abandon it so quickly."

"Starfleet went out of their way to recover Marconi and everything we sent them, but Voyager is so much more valuable than Marconi." Cir sighed. "Lieutenant, maybe I’m off base here. Maybe it’s because of my training time with Lieutenant Cing’ta and Lieutenant Rollins—Cing’ta has us doing sessions with Crewman Chano and Ensign Niles and perhaps that’s put me into a distrustful frame of mind, but none of this feels right to me." He glanced at Seven of Nine. "My intuition—and my understanding of human communication—says something is off."

"Intuition is irrelevant," Seven of Nine said, and Taitt took in a breath, about to argue the point, but Seven surprised her by turning to Cir and adding, "But your expertise should not be dismissed. This plan is flawed." 

"Agreed," Taitt said. "And I won’t lie, Cir. All of this already felt very convenient." She considered their options. "I’d like you to go over all this with the Captain—and Doctor Fitzgerald, come to think of it. He’d be our best measure of Admiral Fitzgerald. Loop in Cing’ta, too." She considered how all of this had landed in their laps in the first place. "And… why don’t you two also take another crack at the rest of the data stream—without Arturis this time."

"Understood," Cir said, nodding once. 

"Acknowledged," Seven of Nine said.

"Not how anyone wanted to spend Christmas," Taitt said. 

Chapter Text

Ensign Sahreen Lan woke up, stretched, and groaned, rubbing the back of her neck.

"The pillows?" Rollins’s voice came from the other side of the quarters, and Lan rolled onto her side, seeing the large man was already up, and seemed to also be attempting to restore his neck or spine or shoulders after a night in the quarters they were sharing on the Dauntless. 

"Calling these things pillows is overstating it," Lan said, sliding off her bunk and standing. Her neck made an audible popping noise, and she grinned at Rollins, who laughed out loud.

"My neck needs to do that, and it won’t," he said, stretching his arms one way, then the other, and then dropping them, giving up. He needed a shave, but otherwise looked okay. 

"Do you think it’s the war?" Rollins said, pinning his combadge back on his uniform. "Or just because she’s a prototype?"

"The quarters, the lack of… everything?" Lan regarded him. 

He nodded.

She’d had the same thought more than once while they’d explored the ship. Dauntless redefined lean. A communal 'fresher on each of the two crew decks—not so bad given there were only four of them right now—bunk-style rooms made up the entirety of the crew quarters as well: four bunks set in to opposing walls, and not much else.

Also, the worst pillows in the history of the entire Federation, as well as plain, grey blankets and sheets.

She supposed she should have been pleased they weren’t beige. 

But Rollins’s question made her consider the vessel again. 

"The tactical systems are on par with Voyager," Lan said, thinking it through. "Or, well, Voyager’s original configurations. Even though Dauntless is smaller, she’d punch above her weight in a fight, you’re right." She put her own combadge back in place. "Prototype or not, this ship seems set up for a tactical purpose. Though I’d have at least included one replicator." 

"Speaking of." Rollins laughed. "Ready for breakfast?" He held up a pair of ration bars, and Lan groaned. He tossed one to her. She caught it and unwrapped it. 

"They’re worse than I remember," she said, after a bite.

"There’s a psychology to that," Rollins said, waiting for her to put on her boots, and then walking with her to the turbolift. "Rations are for emergencies, meant to keep you up and running, deliver exactly what’s needed to maintain your health—if they taste good, you might be tempted to eat more than you need, especially if you’re isolated, bored, and just waiting for a rescue."

"As a random example of situation one might find oneself in," Lan said stepping into the turbolift. 

"Completely random," Rollins said. "Bridge."

Stadi and Ro were already on Dauntless’s Bridge, and Lan smiled at the sight of Stadi sitting. She wondered where the chair had come from. It didn’t look like one of the ones from the Mess Hall. 

"Morning," Ro said, glancing back at them and lifting a flask. "Water?"

"Oh, are you sure?" Rollins said with a note of annoyance. "I mean, we had water yesterday. You don’t want to mix it up and have, say, hot water?" 

"Let’s not go too wild," Stadi said, more than a little sly. "After all, if Dauntless’s designers had wanted us to have coffee, they’d have included coffee." 

"Or at least a damned replicator," Lan said, moving over to Ops and logging in, not that there was much to do. They’d still not managed to isolate whatever had set off the auto-navigation error, and so Ro had chosen to stay put.

"Did we hear from Voyager?" Rollins said, taking up his post as Tactical with the same sort of aimless energy she herself was feeling.

"Right on estimate," Ro said, nodding. "They’re on their way. Another twenty-nine hours or so. The Captain sent us some of the data files—Arturis managed to reconstruct them—and on the surface Dauntless appears to be a way home sent for us."

"That’s some word choice there." Lan turned. "Appears to be."

"Word choice is exactly the point. Cir had some thoughts, and apparently Doctor Fitzgerald agreed, once Cir pointed them out to him," Ro said. 

"Cir?" Rollins raised an eyebrow. 

"You’re rubbing off on him," Ro said, with a smile that didn’t hold a great deal of humour. "He noticed patterns in the message that left him suspicious. And let’s be clear, we’ve all been feeling the same, haven’t we?" Ro turned to face them all. 

"No security lockouts," Rollins said, nodding.

"Anyone could have beamed aboard and just taken Dauntless," Stadi agreed. "War or not, prototype or not, this is the opposite of what Emmett reported when he was on the Prometheus."

"Right," Lan said. "He couldn’t even access communications." 

"Exactly. Cir doesn’t think the message is genuine," Ro said. "The Captain has tasked us with getting as much information about Dauntless as we can before they arrive, and once they do, we’re going to have security and engineering teams go over every centimetre of this ship."

A silence fell on the unusual Bridge, and Lan realized what it was: they’d all been holding onto a shred of hope, even in the face of their mounting uncertainties. Now they were admitting to themselves they’d known something was wrong, if only on an instinctual level, which was always the worst kind of way to be correct. 

The Pasha and Kejal in her took grim satisfaction in it, while the part of her that was informed by Dolay considered the caution more-or-less prudent. 

But the very-much-more-important thing? The Sahreen in her was angry.

"Who’d do this?" She said. "And how? And why?"

"Those are questions the Captain’s hoping we can answer."

"Marconi," Rollins said. "At least, that’s my guess on the how."

They all looked at him, and Lan frowned, not following at first, but then it clicked. "The tampering?"

"We were never sure, and we set off the self-destruct out of an abundance of caution, but it was possible someone was tampering with the relays" Rollins said, leaning against the tactical station console. "But it never triggered the security overrides, it was so… slight. Alex figured it could have been a recursive error, Seven and One thought it might a degradation in the chronodynamic plasma program, but let’s assume the very worst for a second."

"Your forte," Stadi said, but not unkindly. 

He nodded, taking the comment well enough. "The whole reason we had that security system in place—one that included Borg algorithms—was to ensure everything we sent through the relays wouldn’t be intercepted. We made it as hack-proof as possible, and we assumed between Seven and One and Meyer and the rest of you…" He gestured to Lan. "That we’d succeeded." Then he crossed his thick arms. "But we hadn’t met a genius linguist who can do things even Cir can’t do."

"Arturis," Stadi said, nodding slowly.

"Did you sense anything off about him?" Lan said, curious. 

"I can’t read him—or, well, I can, but I can’t parse him." Stadi waved a hand, and Lan took it at face value, not needing Stadi to explain more than that. "But let’s look at the timeline here. Arturis helps on a trading mission, asks for a ride, helps us decode the message and—oh, look at that!—Dauntless is only ten light years away."

"All wrapped up for Christmas," Rollins said.

"If it was a Christmas present from Starfleet," Lan said. "There would have been coffee."

Ro exhaled. "Over the weeks we had Marconi, we sent full technological update schematics to Starfleet. Everything we’ve done with Voyager, everything we’ve been learning from the Pel and the rest of the species we’ve encountered…" She frowned. "If Arturis did get into the Marconi network, and listened in for any amount of time?" She glanced at the Conn. "Standard interfaces would be possible mimic." 

"To do it so quickly?" Stadi said. 

"For all we know he was listening in from step one, and only tripped the security later on," Ro said. 

"Right," Stadi said.

"I’m going to take a look at the torpedoes," Rollins said, pushing off from the Tactical station’s edge. "Dauntless’s database calls them photon torpedoes, but we’ve never managed to recreate those ourselves—it feels like a good spot to start looking for signs of…" He waved a hand, like he wasn’t sure of the right word. "Impersonation?"

"I’m going to see how the QSD core feeds and powers the warp drive," Stadi said. "The signature was almost Starfleet—but maybe I can get something more specific than almost."

"I’ll take sickbay," Lan said, considering her options. "I’ve spent enough time with Emmett’s systems to know my way around, and I can draw on Pasha’s memories to see if anything is out of place, or just wrong for the Federation."

"I’ll stay here and work my way through the command systems—such as they are," Ro said. "Report in if you find anything." 

*

Captain's log, supplemental. After two days at high warp, we rendezvoused with the Dauntless and are now rotating teams onto the vessel. Commander Ro and her team used the time to begin a thorough examination of the ship, but so far, we haven’t found anything concrete to cast doubt on the ship, or Arturis. 

My biggest red flag is the complete lack of direction when it comes to Voyager herself—I can’t imagine Admiral Fitzgerald suggesting we simply leave Voyager behind, nor to scuttle her, which would be what we’d have to do if we did, so I’ve told the crew to keep looking. 

Especially at this quantum slipstream drive.

Captain’s personal log, supplemental. Jeff agreed with Cir, once Cir pointed it out, that his great aunt wasn’t quite herself in the patchy, static-laden signal, and I’ve got Scott and his people keeping an eye on Arturis, but what if the truth is as it seems? What if he’s done nothing but be helpful, and this is a case of us unwilling to trust good fortune?

What if I’m camping in my family cabin half a year from now?

I keep telling myself—and the rest of the crew—not to let themselves get their hopes too high, but by all appearances, Dauntless can get us home in six months. 

How do I not react to that with hope?

Cavit stopped by Astrometrics, and was unsurprised to see not just Lieutenant Zandra Taitt there, but Crewman Abol Tay, Seven of Nine, Ensign Sahreen Lan, and Crewman Cir—though Cir was to one of the side-stations and working quietly by himself. 

Seven of Nine had the attention of the others, and was speaking as she brought up readings from both Voyager and the Dauntless’s short jaunt in the quantum slipstream.

"I’ve analyzed the quantum slipstream technology of the Dauntless," Seven said. "It is similar to the transwarp drive used by the Borg."

"As I recall, when you first came aboard, you thought it might be possible to adapt Voyager for transwarp, but we took that off the table," Lan said. 

"Correct," Seven of Nine said. "Voyager’s superstructure and main deflector were not capable of withstanding sustained transwarp." Seven of Nine paused. "At that time."

"You’ve been working on it," Abol said, smiling. 

"As Voyager encounters new species and new technology, our options increase," Seven of Nine said.

"With outlooks like that, you’re going to fit right in once we’re back on Earth," Taitt said.

Cavit caught Seven’s hesitation at that remark—it was small, but it was there—before Seven said, "I believe it may be possible to create a quantum slipstream effect with Voyager’s deflector. However, the material used to power the quantum slipstream drive—benamite—poses a problem."

"Benamite crystals are unstable, aren’t they?" Cavit said, breaking his silence.

They all turned—except for Cir, who was still working—and Seven of Nine dipped her chin slightly.

"Correct," she said. "We have limited time to work with before the crystals deteriorate to an unworkable state, and no current ability to attain or synthesize replacements."

"Something else Admiral Fitzgerald neglected to mention," Lan said. 

"What sort of time-span are we looking at, Seven?" Cavit said.

"While active, the deterioration rate of the benamite crystals is slowed to a negligible rate—as long as Dauntless is underway within the next two weeks, the margin of error is within safety parameters." Seven stated the numbers with her usual confident, composed manner, but again, Cavit thought he caught… something. 

"Okay," Cavit said, rubbing his hands together. "You four are most of my dream team of integrating foreign technology into Voyager, so head back on over to the Dauntless to get whatever you need alongside Alex for tests. Emmett and Kes found no effect on Ro or the others, but we’re going to do this slow and steady—or, well, as slow and steady as we can within a two-week timeframe."

"If we can’t recreate the QSD for Voyager," Lan said. "Abol had an intriguing idea."

"Hit me," Cavit said, turning to the slender Ocampa man.

He blinked, and Cavit was about to explain the euphemism when Abol said, "Ah," and nodded in Cir’s direction in gratitude, then said, "If Voyager wasn’t attempting to power a slipstream of its own, the deflector could be realigned to support the structural integrity field and her superstructure—what if we towed Voyager?" 

Cavit grinned, and looked at Seven and Taitt and Lan. "Thoughts?"

"Dauntless has a tractor beam, we’d need tests," Taitt said. "But if we can’t recreate the drive on Voyager, it’s much better than leaving her behind."

"Agreed," Seven of Nine said. "Voyager is too valuable to abandon."

"Set up a team to devote time to the towing plan," Cavit said. "I’m going to catch a meal break with my husband before he calls me, and the rest of you take some time, too. I know we’re on the clock, but I need everyone clear-headed."

They offered "ayes" of assent, and Cavit noticed Cir remained quiet.

"You too, Cir," he said, though he dropped his voice and offered it a bit more one-on-one to the man as he passed him on his way out the door.

"Aye, sir," Cir said, with some chagrin.

*

Lieutenant Commander Veronica Stadi raised a hand when Seven of Nine entered the Mess Hall, and Seven gave her a small nod of acknowledgement before approaching the kitchen serving area and briefly interacting with Crewman Celes Tal, who seemed to have a dish already prepared for Seven, Stadi noticed. 

When Seven brought the steamed and lightly-spiced chadre’kab to the table to sit with Stadi, Stadi pointed her fork at Seven’s plate.

"I don’t recall chadre’kab being offered," she said, in a lightly teasing voice.

"After our trip through the nebula, my biological inefficiencies were affected," Seven of Nine said, with the tone of frustration Stadi was used to from Seven when she discussed her more human frailties. "Doctor Hall left instructions with Crewman Celes to ensure the organic biomes in my stomach were restored." 

Stadi winced, getting a telepathic replay of what Seven of Nine had dealt with on this side of the Deathblossom Nebula. "Upset stomachs aren’t fun." 

"Fun is irrelevant," Seven said, though Stadi detected a trace of teasing on Seven’s part, both telepathically and in her delivery. But underneath that… Seven’s thoughts were unusually guarded. Normally, she relaxed around Stadi, Stadi had found, knowing Stadi wouldn’t judge her for any stray thoughts or feelings she might have, but right now, Seven concentrated on the flippant comment, the "small talk" she usually didn’t enjoy and...

Did Seven of Nine just use humour to deflect? Stadi regarded her, then took another bite of her own vegetable and noodle mix, chewing and swallowing before asking, "I hear you’re helping with trying to get Voyager into the slipstream."

"Yes," Seven of Nine said. "We have multiple approaches to consider. Did you wish to discuss them?" She forked off a bit of the chadre’kab, and bit into it. Stadi felt Seven allowing herself every moment of sensation the food provided, including far more attention than Seven of Nine usually spent on considering the nuances of Celes’s choices of garnishes and spice.

Definitely deflecting.

"You’re upset," Stadi said. 

Seven of Nine lowered her fork, and looked at her. The woman’s pale blue eyes—one of the most striking things about Seven of Nine—held her gaze for a moment, and Stadi felt her organizing her thoughts, forcing herself not to react as Seven of Nine allowed herself to think something she’d been putting off for days now.

"You don’t want to come with us," Stadi said.

Seven of Nine considered that. "I am unsure."

Stadi exhaled. "May I ask what brought this on?"

"Crewman Copage’s family," Seven said, after a pause. "When I was facilitating the conversation between his extended family and Crewman Copage and Crewman Mitchell, they initially found my presence unsettling." She forked off more of the chadre’kab. "Crewman Copage spoke up for me, and even then, they were apprehensive. Afraid." Seven of Nine lifted her fork, then paused before putting it in her mouth to add. "I do not imagine Earth will be any more enlightened." 

Well, damn, Stadi thought, watching Seven of Nine chew. She’s not wrong. In the moment, Stadi simply nodded, because the important thing here was acknowledging Seven of Nine was in all likelihood correct. 

But to herself, Stadi considered the latest reports she’d read—especially the time limits they were facing—and set a mental task on a two-week countdown to convince Seven of Nine to stay with them for this journey. 

And one thought sprang to mind right away.

"No one says you have to live on Earth," Stadi said.

Seven of Nine swallowed, and Stadi turned her own attention to her plate as she felt Seven’s thoughts considering other options. 

*

Jeff was distracted, and Cavit wasn’t sure what he could do about it.

"Hey," Cavit said, putting his hand over Fitzgerald’s on the smaller, two-person table they were sharing in the Mess Hall. "We’ll figure it out." 

His husband shook his head. "Sorry." He smiled, and while Cavit preferred the smile to the distant, thoughtful, not-quite-in-the-moment expression from before, he wrapped his fingers around the man’s hand and squeezed. 

"You don’t have to apologize," Cavit said. "We’re all feeling it."

"The crew is handling this well, they’re not letting themselves get carried away, and yet…" Fitzgerald lifted his other hand, waving it slightly. "I can’t stop thinking about whether or not we’ll be home in half a year."

"Me too," Cavit said. He let go after another squeeze, picking up his mug of Ocampa black tea and took a swallow. "Not to underline any false hope, but if we were back in six months’ time, what would you like to do first?"

Fitzgerald blew out a breath that was half a laugh. "That’s a huge question, but honestly I imagine we’ll all end up in weeks of debriefing," he said. "And there might still be a war going on." 

Cavit sighed, nodding his head.

"Sorry," Fitzgerald said, picking up his own mug. "Again."

"No, you’re right. Your realism is appreciated." Cavit held out his mug, and they clinked. 

"Okay, you were very good. Ate a whole meal and everything," Fitzgerald said, gesturing to their now empty plates. "If you want to get back to—"

"Cir to Cavit."

Fitzgerald smirked, and Cavit held up one hand. "That wasn’t planned," he said. He tapped his combadge. "Go ahead, Cir."

"Can you join me in Astrometrics. And if Doctor Fitzgerald is with you, could he come, too?"

Fitzgerald frowned, and Cavit felt something grow tight in his chest. "We’re on our way."

They paused only to drop off their plates and mugs, and one turbolift ride later, they found Astrometrics was empty except for Cir, and he turned as the other two men arrived. 

"Captain," Cir said. "I decoded the degraded block of data that Arturis said wasn’t recoverable." 

"You kept working on it?" Fitzgerald said, surprised. 

"Scott—Lieutenant Rollins—believes in being thorough and when the Captain said we should examine Dauntless as carefully as possible, I went through the partial technical schematics we received, and I noticed a pattern in how they were partial…" Cir tapped in a few commands. "Arturis used a recursion matrix—via triaxilating—and…" Cir paused, eyeing them both, and Cavit thought he read their expressions rather eloquently in the moment, as his dark brown eyes filled with a hint of mirth. "The details are pretty technical, but… the pattern of degradation on the technical files were all the same as the data block he said we couldn’t fix, which made no sense to me."

"You recreated his decryption routine?" Cavit said.

"I had to adjust it somewhat," Cir said, pausing. "Because I believe he didn’t try to decrypt that block. I believe he further encrypted it." 

There it is, Cavit thought. All those bad feelings and something-is-off, coming home to roost.

"But you’ve fixed it?" Fitzgerald said.

Cir nodded, and tapped the panel.

"Hello, Voyager," Admiral Penelope Fitzgerald began, appearing on the screen."We looked at the data you provided with your last upload, and agree. Given we believe someone may be tampering with Marconi, we’ve attached everything we have on the Delta Quadrant that might be of use to you." She paused. "We’ve got our best people at Pathfinder working the problem, trying to find a wormhole, a new means of propulsion, anything to get you home, but despite our best efforts we’re not there yet. Lieutenant Barclay has some thoughts on communication, and you’ll find an upgrade to your transceiver and plans for a potential communication option in the files included. We’re still working on it, Aaron, I promise. This isn’t the last you’ll be hearing from us." She paused once more, her features softening. "We hope to see you soon. Now, if I can indulge you with an addition for my Jeffrey, please let him know we love him, we’re thinking of him, and his great-uncle is almost finished another novel—with a little luck, we’ll be able to send it your way with Barclay’s plan."

The message ended. 

"Damn," Cavit said.

"I’m sorry, Captain," Cir said.

Chapter Text

"Chief," Taitt said, stepping into Transporter Room One and nodding at Chief Dean Tamal.

"You heading back over to Dauntless?" Tamal said. "Seven and Sahreen just beamed over."

"I am," Taitt said. "Had a lovely lunch with Abol and the kids, but now it’s back to work." 

Tamal’s smile grew. "Did I tell you James was asking me how the transporter worked the other day?" 

"Don’t let him in here," Taitt said, stepping up onto the transporter pad. "Or he’ll start taking it apart."

Tamal laughed, and was about to reply when the doors opened and Captain Cavit and Doctor Fitzgerald arrived. 

"Hang on," Cavit said. "Change of plans."

Taitt frowned, not liking the Captain’s energy one bit. He looked… angry. She could count on one hand the number of times Aaron Cavit had allowed himself to appear angry in her presence.

"Sir?" she said, glancing at Fitzgerald, and—even more surprising—the doctor had the same expression in place. 

"Arturis modified the data stream—Starfleet didn’t sent Dauntless," Cavit said. "Head to the Bridge—I’d like you and Tamal here to co-ordinate getting everyone off Dauntless, quietly." He paused, glancing at Tamal. "Do you know where Arturis is?" 

"He’s on Dauntless’s Bridge," Tamal said, after tapping in a quick series of commands on his console and accessing sensors. "If I remember correctly, he was on the schedule to help Chief Honigsberg and Commander Stadi with some of the Conn interfaces."

"Sure he is," Fitzgerald said darkly.

"Scott’s on the bridge, too," Cavit said, frowning. "And Ro. I can’t let them know what’s going on without Arturis overhearing, and beaming them back would be suspicious. We gave Arturis a lot of latitude and access when he first came aboard—and given his finesse with our systems, I don’t want to tip his hand in any way."

"We’ll get everyone else back on Voyager," Taitt said, nodding. 

"Beam us over, Chief," Cavit said, then paused to open the security pack beside the transporter controls. He pulled out the two type-two phasers, handing one to Fitzgerald, who took it, adjusted it to stun, and slid it into his pocket. Cavit did the same.

They mean business, Taitt thought, then headed for the Bridge.

Once she was in the corridor, she tapped her combadge. "Taitt to Bridge."

"Go ahead, Lieutenant," came Lieutenant Cing’ta’s deep voice. 

"Put together a list of where everyone is on Dauntless, and what they’re doing," Taitt said, stepping into the turbolift. "I’m heading up there now. Arturis lied to us, and we’re going to pull everyone off we can without him knowing."

There was a pause before Cing’ta’s "Acknowledged," and Taitt wondered if Cing’ta was feeling the same way she was. Defeated. Frustrated. And, yes, angry. Because no matter what she hypothesized about the reasons behind Arturis’s actions—why had he lied?—she knew one thing for sure: they couldn’t trust Dauntless, which meant they couldn’t trust the QSD, which meant…

Well.

Hope died so easily.

*

When Arturis reached for the Conn, Stadi saw where he was aiming and managed to intercept his hand with her own. 

"Careful," she said. "We’re pretty sure that’s the initiation sequence for the slipstream drive."

He blinked, his sad, hang-dog face regarding hers with a soft smile that struck her as vaguely patronizing. "No, it’s not." 

She sighed, prepared to be proven wrong yet again by this apparent linguistic genius when the shimmer of blue-and-white light and the telltale sound of a transporter made her turn in time to see Captain Cavit and Doctor Fitzgerald beaming in at the rear of Dauntless’s Bridge.

A moment later, their thoughts—not to mention their anger—washed over her and she turned to look at Arturis, who seemed to detect the change in the room.

"Captain?" he said, in his usual genial tone, but Stadi saw something in his eyes. 

"We restored the last of the data stream," Cavit said. He drew a phaser from his pocket, and at the sight of it, Commander Ro and Lieutenant Rollins followed suit. "You lied to us. From the beginning. You created that message, which pointed us to this ship. Why?"

Stadi considered her own position, exchanging a glance with Honigsberg, who was just a half-step away, and she rose from her chair, but didn’t move back. She hadn’t brought a phaser of her own, but Arturis wasn’t the most imposing figure. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Arturis said. Stadi would give the man full marks for confident delivery, but she didn’t doubt the Captain for a second—nor Cir, who the Captain’s thoughts made it perfectly clear was behind the restored message.

"Starfleet didn't send us Dauntless," Cavit said. "Which means you did."

"Please, stay calm, Captain," Arturis said. "There must be an explanation."

"Sure," Fitzgerald said, and the man’s anger burned a whipcrack across Stadi’s senses. "You spied on us through our subspace relay system, dangled a carrot, abused our welcome, and then abused my relationship with my great-aunt to feed us a pitch-perfect solution to our problem." He exhaled. "Did I miss anything?" 

"I believe that there is a threat here, Doctor, but not from me," Arturis said.

"Do tell," Rollins said, in a grim, flat voice. 

"I didn't feel it was my place to make accusations, but I saw Seven of Nine reconfigure several key algorithms two days ago in your Astrometrics lab, and it seemed obvious." Arturis gestured to Seven of Nine where she stood at Ops. "She must have been tampering with the Starfleet message."

Stadi laughed out loud, and Arturis stared at her.

"Telepath, remember?" Stadi said, tapping her temple. "Seven did no such thing."

"You are lying," Seven of Nine said, raising her chin. 

"You don't have to believe me," Arturis said. "You can find all the evidence you need in her personal database." He turned toward the console, and Stadi moved between him and it. 

"We already know you know your way around our computers," Ro said. 

"True," Arturis said, then lifted his chin, and spoke a series of sounds that Stadi thought must be language, but the UT in her combadge simply failed to translate. All around them, the lighting on Dauntless shifted, turning redder, and two phaser beams sliced across the bridge, one from Captain Cavit, the other from Doctor Fitzgerald. Both struck Arturis, and he stumbled back a half-step, but apparently a stun setting on a phaser wasn’t as effective on the alien as most.

Stadi lunged for him, but bounced off a forcefield surrounding the alien. 

All around them, the Bridge was transforming. Arturis waved a hand, speaking again and Stadi braced herself as panel-by-panel, wall-section-by-wall-section, Dauntless shifted into a deep red and dark grey configuration, with alien script on the panels.

The real Dauntless, Stadi supposed.

"Cavit to Voyager," Cavit said. "Beam everyone off Dauntless."

"In a few moments there’ll be no one left on Voyager," Arturis said, in a cold, hard voice she’d not heard him use before. "Even as we speak, your transporters are beaming your entire crew aboard—"

"Cing’ta to Cavit," Cing’ta’s voice came. "We’ve gotten everyone off Dauntless except those of you on the Bridge—but Dauntless’s shields are up."

"Stand by," Cavit said.

Arturis frowned.

"We know you know your way around our systems," Cavit said. "I had Cir look for anything you might have left behind. We added a manual bypass in our transporter systems a while back—I’m guessing Cir flipped the switch."

"It’s called the Durst Protocol," Rollins said. "Not our first rodeo."

"Care to end this standoff?" Cavit said. "Because you’re outnumbered, outgunned, and we’ll find a way through that forcefield eventually."

Arturis replied with another string of alien clicks and pops, and Stadi felt the ship shift beneath her, the hum change in tone, and she eyed the controls on the console.

"We’re moving," she said.

*

Taitt stepped back from Ops as Lan arrived on the Bridge and took her station. 

"What’s going on?" the Trill woman asked as she keyed in to her station.

"Arturis lied," Taitt said. "He just tried to beam everyone onto the Dauntless—we stopped that—and—"

On the viewscreen, the main deflector of Dauntless glowed, space around the vessel distorted and stretched, and with a flash of light, the ship was gone.

"Lieutenant?" Cing’ta said, turning to Taitt. Technically, the big Bolian was in charge, but she understood what he was asking with the single-word question.

"Sahreen," Taitt said. "Bring the modifications online. Tell Main Engineering we’re going to need everything they’ve got for structural integrity and the main deflector—I’ll handle the field geometry from the Science station…" She crossed the Bridge to take the station, calling up every scrap of data they’d put together for their attempt to make Voyager tow-capable. 

"So much for test-runs with probes," Lan said. "Susan barely has the benamite crystal sample we brought over in place." 

"If you need to help her…" Taitt said, glancing back at her. 

But Lan shook her head. "Ryson and Atara are down there—they’ll get it aligned and powered up. I’m more worried about the SIF—I’ll focus on that."

"I’ve got their vector," Ensign Bronowski said from the Conn. 

"As soon as we can, Doug," Cing’ta said. "Give chase."

"Aye, sir."

Taitt tapped her combadge. "Taitt to Abol. Drop the kids off with Celes, would you? I need you in Astrometrics—we need Voyager slipstream capable, as soon as possible."

"On my way."

Cing’ta came to stand behind her as Lan started speaking with Main Engineering. Lieutenant Chapman was already feeding information to Taitt’s station as well—they were re-routing as much power as possible to the main deflector, and Taitt started the tweaks she’d need.

"What are our chances?" Cing’ta said, in a low voice.

Taitt gave him a quick glance. "The problem isn’t so much entering slipstream as surviving slipstream." She exhaled. "But we’ll make it work."

Cing’ta nodded, and stepped back. 

"Quick question," came Ensign Harper’s voice from Tactical. "Has anyone determined what tactical options a ship has during slipstream? Can I fire a torpedo? Phasers?" 

"I’ll add it to the list, Ensign," Taitt said. 

*

Seven of Nine attempted to take a step forward, but the static and snap of a forcefield held her in place. She saw Commander Ro probing the limits of her own limits of movement, a similar cone to the one Seven believed she was surrounded by, and noticed Ro exchanging a glance with Stadi.

On multiple occasions, Lieutenant Commander Veronica Stadi had mentioned how Commander Ro Laren had the mental focus and clarity required for Stadi to engage with actual telepathic communication with her, despite Ro not being a telepath herself.

Seven considered what she could do to aid in their clandestine efforts, and settled on being a distraction. "Where are you taking us?" she said.

Arturis barely glanced at her. "Home." He’d moved to the conn—either he’d dropped his own forcefield or he’d adjusted it to move with him. He tapped in a few more commands, but the holographic viewscreen—one they hadn’t even realized was present—displayed the scintillating rings of quantum slipstream ahead of them.

The alien’s answer was not illuminating. "I don’t understand," she said.

He snorted. "I imagine not."

"I have another question," Rollins said. "How did you disguise this ship so well? Was it holograms?"

"Particle synthesis." Again Arturis seemed barely interested in the conversation. Seven of Nine couldn’t quantify his emotional state. "Beyond your understanding."

"Crude and limited programmable matter," Seven of Nine said, and Arturis glanced her way. 

"I suppose I can’t argue with the Borg," he said.

"What is the point of this?" Cavit said. "Why kidnap us? What did you want the whole crew for—are you a slaver? Need a fresh supply of innocents for the auction block somewhere?"

"Innocent?" Arturis turned, and Seven of Nine believed she had accurately ascertained the alien’s emotional state. She would categorize it as fury. "Of all the self-righteous, ignorant self-declarations—you petty, insignificant—" Arturis trembled, then shook his head. "Innocent," he said again, with utter contempt.

"What exactly am I guilty of, Arturis?" Cavit said.

"You destroyed my world," Arturis said.

"What?" Cavit blinked, and Seven of Nine understood the man’s confusion, because Arturis’s statement made little logical sense.

"The Undine," Arturis said, and for a moment, Seven of Nine’s psyche provided her with unwelcome data: fear. The Undine—Species 8472—had nearly been the undoing of the Collective. They were also the reason she was here, today, severed from the Collective. Everything she was, everything she had been? All had changed because of the Undine.

"Species 8472," Seven said.

"What about them?" Fitzgerald said.

"How did you put it, Aaron?" Arturis tilted his head, and then—with what Seven of Nine thought might be a word-for-word rendition of something Captain Cavit must had recorded in a log—the alien said, "Thanks to the efforts of the crew—and especially the Ocampa Chorus—the Undine realize that not all species in our galaxy are the same as the Borg, and have returned to fluidic space. The war is over." He shook his head, and Seven of Nine believed once again she understood the emotional nuances in play well enough to designate his recitation as angry and disgusted.

But she still did not understand why. 

"The Undine would have wiped out every living thing in our galaxy," Cavit said, shaking his head. "If we hadn’t stopped them, taught them the difference between us and the Borg—"

"Did it ever occur to you that there were those of us in the Delta Quadrant who had a vested interest in that war?" Arturis snapped. "Victory would have meant the annihilation of the Borg."

"As well as everyone else," Cavit said. "If you saw my logs, you saw what happened to the Argala homeworld."

"I didn’t need your logs to know what that’s like, Captain." Arturis’s voice went cold and flat. "My people managed to elude the Borg for centuries. Outwitting them, always one step ahead. But in recent years, the Borg began to weaken our defences. They were closing in and Species eight four seven two was our last hope to defeat them." He shook his head. "One moment, those organic vessels were destroying the Borg cubes en masse, appearing out of singularities, raining bioelectrical fire down on the Borg. They’d retreated from our borders, and then…" Arturis stared at Seven of Nine. "The Undine simply vanished. You took away our chance to survive!" He exhaled. "The Borg lost so many cubes, they needed to recover." Arturis faced the Captain again. "Thanks to you, they were free to simply restore their own numbers. The outer colonies were the first to fall. Twenty three in a matter of hours. Our sentry vessels tossed aside, no defence against the storm."

Seven of Nine had no trouble imagining the scenario. She had perfect recall of Species 116—the Swei—and their territory, which had been close to a major Borg transwarp conduit. The assimilation of a species at its homeworld was one she had taken part in, personally, numerous times. An unfamiliar wave of something unpleasant and cold and oddly slick formed in her core, but she kept her features calm.

"That must have been horrible beyond telling," Fitzgerald said, in his soft, careful voice.

"Don’t try to counsel me, doctor." Arturis shook his head. "By the time the Borg surrounded our star system, hundreds of cubes, we had already surrendered to our own terror. A few of us managed to survive. Ten, twenty thousand."

Cavit opened his mouth, but Artirus held up one hand. "Don’t. Save me your platitudes, Captain. I already read what you wrote about the Argala’s "survival" as a species." He scowled. "I was fortunate. I escaped with a vessel. Alone, but alive." He pointed at Seven of Nine. "I don't blame them. They were just drones, acting with their Collective instinct." He moved his hand to Cavit. "You? You had a choice!"

"To do what?" Cavit said, and Seven of Nine shared his confusion. What course of action did Arturis believe would have been the correct one?

"You could have asked the Undine to destroy the Borg," Arturis said. 

"They weren’t talking to us," Rollins said, speaking carefully and evenly. "They were stomping on us like we were insects. We barely got them to understand we weren’t part of the problem—that we hadn’t invaded their realm—they weren’t going to do us any favours, Arturis." 

Arturis barely glanced at the tactical officer. "At first, I fled," the alien said. "Staying ahead of the Borg, trying to find others of my kind, but then I found the Alliance."

"Alliance?" Honigsberg said.

"Again, so ignorant." Arturis snorted. "More of your interference, the fallout of your choices, and you don’t even know. A group of aliens Voyager encountered, including the Argala. Some of my people joined them, added themselves to their cause to prepare for potential incursions by the Borg, but they also told me what I needed to know—that Voyager had been the one who’d headed into the war between the Borg and the Undine before the Undine vanished. It couldn’t be a coincidence. I followed, and everywhere I found a trace of you I learned more about you, until, finally, I found your relays."

"You compromised the Marconi relays," Seven of Nine said.

"Simplicity." Arturis waved a hand. "I watched and waited for my opportunity to make you pay for what you'd done. When Starfleet sent that final message, I ensured it was compromised." 

"You blame us for what happened to your people," Cavit said. "So this is… what? Petty revenge for an atrocity committed by the Borg?" 

"Your selfish desire to get home destroyed my homeworld," Arturis said.

"The Borg destroyed your homeworld," Seven said. She believed the data Arturis’s emotional instability was providing him was flawed beyond reconciliation. "Your actions serve no greater purpose."

 "You’ll stand for your crimes on that homeworld. I was hoping to get your entire crew," Arturis said. "I could see to it that you'd all be assimilated and spend the rest of eternity as Borg, but I'll settle for the group of you." He eyed them all, considering. "The senior staff of Voyager, no? Isn’t it what you’re supposed to do—stand trial for the actions of your ship?"

"If this was a trial, there’d be more justice," Cavit said.

Arturis scoffed.

"When we arrive in Borg space, you will be assimilated as well," Seven of Nine said.

"What is it your people are so fond of saying?" Arturis said. "That's irrelevant. In less than two hours, it will all be over for all of us." 

He turned back to the Conn, and with another series of whistling clicks, Seven of Nine felt Dauntless’s transporter effect wash over her. A moment later, she was in the Dauntless’s Brig, alongside Captain Cavit, Commander Ro, Lieutenant Commander Stadi, Doctor Fitzgerald, Lieutenant Rollins, and Lieutenant Honigsberg.

Chapter Text

"I don’t want to complain," Cing’ta said while the vibrating rumble beneath their feet grew all the stronger. "But it appears we’re still moving at impulse."

"Full impulse," Bronowski confirmed.

Taitt reminded herself to be precise, careful, and calm, even as she resisted the urge to ask the Bolian command officer if he wanted to switch roles and handle the complex quantum mathematics she was currently undertaking—on the fly, no less—to align an experimental technology to Voyager that, as it happens, wasn’t actually Starfleet in design at all. 

"It’s the quantum barrier," she said instead. "The warp field needs to align perfectly and I believe I’ve got it, but the barrier isn’t breaking…" She tapped in another series of commands, but no. Her math was correct. Damn it. What was she missing?

"I think maybe you need more power to the deflector," Lan said. "Brute force."

"Astrometrics to the Bridge," Abol’s voice joined the conversation. "I’ve confirmed your calculations, Zandra. The quantum warp field formula is correct."

I love that man.

"Rerouting auxiliary power to Deflector Control." This came from Main Engineering, and Lieutenant Susan Nicoletti. "We’ve got the crystals resonating within parameters, but the heat pumping into the hull is approaching the redline." Nicoletti’s tone made it clear she wasn’t understating. "Make it fast, Bridge."  

"Deflector output at maximum," Harper said. 

"Realigning the field with the quantum resonance and—" Taitt said.

The rumble shifted in tone, and Taitt glanced up just in time to see space fold open in front of them, and between blinks a repeating echo of quantum rings—a slipstream tunnel—replaced the previous view of stars. 

"We’ve achieved slipstream velocity," Bronowski said. "Sensors are doing their best to give me information, but it’s a mess…"

"I’ll add it to the list, Doug," Taitt said, with perhaps a bit more snark than necessary, even as relief flooded through her. Six impossible things before breakfast. She refocused her attention. "Abol and I should be able to track down Dauntless in a few minutes." She got back to work. 

"Didn’t mean to criticize, Lieutenant," Bronowski said.

"No offence taken," Taitt said. 

"Let’s take as much of the geniuses’ plates as we can," Cing’ta said. Harper, Bronowski—our job is to catch up and get our people back."

"Aye, sir," the two ensigns chorused.

"Structural integrity took a hit," Lan said. "Almost nine percent down… And the strain isn’t going to lessen." 

Taitt sighed. They all knew what they were looking at here—they couldn’t keep this up forever. Voyager was designed to move at warp, not slipstream. In the meanwhile, she needed to find Dauntless… She aligned astrometric sensors with her own sweeps—Bronowski wasn’t wrong, sensor data inside the quantum slipstream was a mess. 

She remembered Ensign Harper’s question from earlier, and added a new item to her list: How the hell are we going to aim a torpedo? 

"How long do we have, Sahreen?" Cing’ta said.

"Best guess? Less than an hour," Lan said. 

"Astrometrics to Bridge," Abol said, the same moment Taitt smiled at a faint reading on her panel. "I’m feeding Dauntless’s vector to you now."

"Got it," Bronowski said. "Aligning our slipstream with theirs and…" He paused. "Oh. Wow." 

"Wow?" Cing’ta said. "Doug?"

"There’s a… multiplicative effect?" Bronowski seemed to be floundering for the right term.

"Following them made it easier on us," Taitt translated, turning to face the Bolian. "Like being the goose in formation in a V." 

"A… goose," Cing’ta said with a soft shake of his head.

Right. Bolian. "Chasing them is easier than forging our own path—there’s a kind of wake effect that works in our favour—and it’s stronger the further back we are, which is counter-intuitive but given this is alien tech, I’ll take the win," Taitt said. "Short version? We got a jumpstart in catching up, but that’s going to fade. We’re just a few minutes behind them; I’m not sure we can close the gap much tighter."

"Do what you can, Doug," Cing’ta said. Then he rose from the big chair. "We need clear eyes on Dauntless. Focus on sensors. Captain Cavit, Commander Ro and Lieutenant Rollins are on that ship. There’s no way they’re not in motion already. Whatever their plan is, we’ll need to be ready for it."

*

Everyone stood still. The brig’s forcefield snapped at Rollins’s hand, and he jerked it back from the small apparent gap between the edge of the red-and-grey opening of the brig and the forcefield covering it, hissing. 

"Nope," he said. "Not a gap. Just looks like one." 

Seven of Nine decided this was a moment not to state the obvious futility of the security lieutenant’s attempts to circumvent the forcefield.

"Why is it always false gaps in alien brigs?" Honigsberg said. The chief engineer was as close to the edge as he could get, eyeing the spot where Rollins had made his attempt. 

"Transporter drained our phaser cells," Cavit said, shaking his head and tossing his phaser onto the first of the slab-like sleeping platforms. 

"Arturis wasn’t bluffing. We’re a couple of hours from Borg space," Stadi said. "Assuming I was reading the conn right."

"Well," Cavit said. "That gives us time to come up with a plan." 

Seven waited for someone to put forth an option. 

Silence fell. 

"Anything?" Cavit said, glancing at Ro.

The Commander blew out a breath. "The weakest link in this situation is Arturis himself, but I’m not sure how we can use that from here."

"He’s decided the blame lies squarely with us," Fitzgerald said, in apparent agreement with the first officer. "That alliance he mentioned—Taymon and his group?"

"Sounded like it," Ro said. 

"Waypoint Alliance," Stadi said. "That’s what the Nyrians called it back on that trading planet." She took a breath. "I still don’t think I follow how he’s decided what happened to the Swei is on us."

"His thinking is irrational," Seven of Nine said. "Flawed."

"Trauma and anger rarely make for good decisions," Fitzgerald said. "But Ro’s right. I don’t imagine he’s going to give us an opportunity to change his mind." 

"Seven," Rollins said, pushing off from the cell’s wall and regarding her with a direct gaze. She did her best to return it, though she found the intensity of his attention—or, rather, the way he focused on her occipital implant—oddly discomforting. "When we put up internal forcefields to stop you back when that signal from the Raven affected you, you walked through the forcefields."

Everyone turned to face her now.

"That’s right," Ro said.

"The reactivated nanoprobes adapted my bio-electric field to match the frequency," Seven of Nine said. 

"Can you do that again?" Rollins said.

Seven of Nine considered it. "If I activate the appropriate nanoprobes, it is possible I could accomplish the same result. However, it would require a precise adjustment via my cranial implant."

Rollins frowned, shaking his head.

"She means we’d need a microsurgery tool," Fitzgerald said, and Seven nodded at him. 

"What about a micro-filament?" Honigsberg said. "Would that work?" 

"That’s not exactly what I’d suggest," Fitzgerald said, but he glanced at Seven of Nine, and she had to admit, as crude as it might be…

"It would suffice," she said.

"Where are you going to get a—oh," Stadi said, as Honigsberg popped open his combadge and started peeling away the outer layers of the device with his thumbnail. A moment later, he carefully extracted a barely visible wire. He turned to Fitzgerald, but the doctor shook his head. 

"Can’t be me," he said, holding up his bad hand. 

"The adjustment is primarily technological," Seven of Nine said to Honigsberg. "I can talk you through each step of the procedure." 

"Okay." The engineer nodded, and approached her. 

"You will need to cross-link the third and sixth nodules," Seven said, holding her head very still as the engineer used the microfilament to access the ocular implant above and around her cybernetic eye. 

"Third nodule… okay. And sixth… Right. Got it," Honigsberg said softly, and Seven did her best to ignore how close he was and the odd sensation of manual adjustments being made to her implant. He had a steady hand, at least, even though his tendency to speak the entire time he functioned was distracting.

"Once Seven gets us out," Ro said. "I’d suggest a divide and conquer approach. He has full verbal control of this vessel, so whatever we do, it needs to be fast and irreversible and preferably more than he can handle with one command."

"You upset him the most," Rollins said to the Captain. "Maybe we need to lean on that."

"It’s a good idea," Ro said.

Seven watched Captain Cavit take in this information, and she wondered if he was still considering a more diplomatic approach. She believed this was another time printing out the futility of such a decision would be unwelcome, and kept her own counsel, especially since Lieutenant Honigsberg had begun the cross-connection. 

"Can the rest of you drop this ship out of slipstream—and deal with the transporters so we don’t all end up right back here again?" Cavit said, and Seven noted he had not agreed to lean on anything.

"Seven and I can handle the slipstream drive," Stadi said. "Which would leave the rest of you to focus on the transporters, getting the shields down and regaining computer control." 

"Agreed," Seven said, feeling the connection between the nodes activate and the rush of new activity sending a sensation across her skin like that of a low-grade electrical field. "The adjustment is complete."

"Did I get it right?" Honigsberg said, stepping back and lowering his hand.

Seven strode at the forcefield, stepping through it without so much as a reduction in her velocity. On the other side of the barrier, she turned, raising one eyebrow. "Yes."

*

"I detected your jailbreak, Captain."

Cavit exhaled as he returned to the Bridge. Arturis sat at the helm, and didn’t turn to look at him. He took a step further, and then—predictably—hit a forcefield.

"I’ve increased speed," Arturis said. "Your people may have taken my transporter offline, but there’s nothing you can do to—"

Dauntless jolted, then started to shimmy.

"You were saying?" Cavit said.

Arturis worked the controls, and the effect stopped. "I won’t allow your people to drop us out of slipstream, Captain." 

"What’s the real reason you didn’t join your people?" Cavit said.

From behind, there wasn’t much to work with, but Cavit saw Arturis grow very still for just a second or so. The question had landed. Whether Arturis would deign to answer it, he didn’t know, but part of him still hoped for some sort of dialog here.

"I’ve locked out all operational access to the drive," Arturis said. "Even your Borg won’t have time to regain control before we arrive."

"You said twenty thousand Swei survived," Cavit said. "Why turn your back on them?"

Another stillness. 

Maybe he should have brought Jeff with him for this. 

*

"I can't initiate a shutdown," Stadi said, frowning at the semi-comprehensible engineering controls of the quantum slipstream drive. 

"All commands are being blocked from the bridge," Seven of Nine said, standing across from her on the opposite panel. "Arturis has detected us, and locked us out. He has also increased the ship's velocity. At our present speed, we will enter Borg space in less than twelve minutes."

Stadi grimaced. Alex and Fitzgerald had headed to the transporter room, and Ro and Rollins were aiming their efforts at the main deflector and the shield emitters one deck up. 

"What can we access?" Stadi said. "Anything?"

Seven of Nine tapped away. "Diagnostics. Power distribution. Sensor feeds…" 

"Power distribution and sensor feeds," Stadi said, grinning, and joining Seven on her side of the controls. The woman raised an eyebrow, wondering what Stadi had in mind with such limited access.

"We’re going to take the diagnostics offline, trick the sensors, and then throw as much power as we can into the port thruster assembly," Stadi said.

Seven of Nine stared at her, and her thoughts—that the torsional stress might tear the ship apart—were based rather firmly in reality, but Stadi lifted one shoulder. 

"You have a better idea for avoiding rejoining the Collective?" Stadi said.

"I will alter the sensors," Seven said. "You adjust he diagnostic subroutines."

They got to work.

*

When Dauntless lurched to one side, Cavit expected to bounce off the forcefield again.

He didn’t. 

Interior forcefields were down.

He lunged forward, but Dauntless jolted a second time, and he lost his footing and had to grab the command chair to keep upright. At the conn, already seated and more stable, Arturis entered a series of commands on his console even as he issued more clicks and whistles out loud—then scowled at Cavit over one shoulder. 

"Your people may have taken the verbal interface offline, but I’ve just destroyed the navigational controls. No one can stop this ship now." He glared at Cavit. "Not even me. In three minutes—"

"You want this. Taking us with you is a convenient excuse, but you’re lying to yourself, aren’t you?" Cavit had no other explanation for the man’s determination to deliver them all to the Collective like this. "You don’t blame me—blame us—not really. I think you blame yourself," Cavit said.

Arturis’s eyes widened. "How dare you." But his voice held less anger so much as raw grief.

"What happened?" Cavit said. "If we can stop Dauntless, we can take you to the survivors of your people, Arutris, we can—"

"They don’t want me!" Arturis screamed the words. "I told them to hold the lines and they listened and—"

Dauntless dropped away beneath their feet, and they both fell, Cavit to his knees and Arturis from the conn seat, and on the odd, holographic viewscreen, Cavit saw the telltale flare of an isokinetic cannon charge. Beyond the floating viewscreen, he could see the master display, and multiple locations on the vessel were now showing flashing, insistent text in a deep red.  

*

"Direct hit," Ensign Mary Harper said from tactical. "You were right, Lieutenant." 

Taitt exhaled. The isokinetic cannon had a forward firing arc and utilized directed energy. They might not have clear sensor readings, but they could look out a window. "Ahead of us" was all they needed for the cannon. 

"Their shields were already fluctuating—that took them down," Lan said. 

"Ro," Cing’ta said with a warm smile, and Taitt had to agree. 

"Transporter Room?" Cing’ta said.

"Attempting to get a lock on our people," Tamal’s voice answered the Bolian’s question. "I don’t have the Chief’s combadge signal, but there are two lifesigns in the Dauntless’s transporter room…"

*

The helm erupted in a series of sparks and overloads. A loud, whining sound had picked up volume. 

"That was our IK cannon," Cavit said, dragging himself back to his feet. 

Arturis moved past him, to the tactical station. "Voyager," he spat. 

"It’s not too late—" Cavit started, but Arturis had pulled a phaser from beneath the tactical station, and Cavit threw himself to one side as the Swei fired. 

"It is for you," Arturis said, but then Cavit felt the familiar wash of a transporter effect and held still, bracing himself for another shot from Arturis, and even seeing the flash of light from his phaser, but it was too late. A moment later he was crouched on the pad of Transporter Room One, alongside the rest of his people. 

Seven and Stadi looked a little worse for wear, with burns on their hands.

"He overloaded the navigational controls," Stadi said. 

"I’ll get them to Sickbay," Fitzgerald said.

"Cavit to Bridge," Cavit said. "We’re on board. Hard about. We’ll be right there."

"Aye, Captain," Cing’ta’s voice answered. 

*

Captain's log, supplemental. We remained in the quantum slipstream for an hour on a heading back towards the Alpha Quadrant before the strain grew too great and it collapsed. The benamite crystals no longer have the structure required to hold the effect, and even if we had more, our diagnostics made it clear Voyager wouldn’t survive extended slipstream travel. 

But in the end? We got three hundred light years closer to home. I imagine I’ll never have the full story of why Arturis tried to do what he did—so much of what he said were lies—but his star charts were at least accurate. 

We’re catching up on some repairs, and Jeff suggested giving the crew some extra down-time to process home having potentially been so close, but now taken away again.

Cavit entered the Mess Hall and smiled when he saw the person he was looking for. Crewman Li-Paz sat with his wife, Doctor Li-Kes Aren, and their daughter, Li-Nis, at one of the tables, and as he approached, Kes noticed him first.

"Captain," she said, in that warm, almost melodic voice she had. 

"Hello," Cavit said. "I didn’t want to interrupt, but—" He held out a small, wrapped package to Li-Paz. "Sorry this is late." 

Li-Paz smiled, taking it. 

 "You got daddy for the Secret Santa?" Li-Nis said. She sounded delighted, and Cavit nodded to her, once again marvelling at how mature she already seemed. She could have passed for a twelve year-old, were she a full Bajoran. 

"I did," Cavit said.

"Please, join us," Kes said, gesturing to the seat.

Cavit sat, watching Li-Paz carefully try to unfold one of the edges of the wrapped box. 

"Not a shredder?" he said. 

The Bajoran man paused. "Captain?"

"Oh," Cavit said, chuckling. "There are two camps when it comes to opening Christmas presents. The careful," he gestured to Li-Paz’s delicate attempts to undo the paper. "And the shredders, who rip their way in." 

"Ah," Li-Paz said, smiling like this was just another human foible to add to his list.

"I believe I prefer the Gratitude Festival," Kes said softly. "But I do enjoy the randomness of the gift exchange—it’s an interesting way to interact with the crew." 

"She says that because she got Austin Gennaro—who she already knows well," Li-Paz said, finally getting the wrapping undone. "Whereas I got Reskat."

Cavit winced. The Ramuran man had made some strides—he didn’t look terrified all the time these days—but Cavit didn’t envy trying to come up with a present for him. "What did you come up with?" 

"Music," Li-Paz said, and the dark-haired man looked slightly embarrassed when he added. "I figured someone who’d spent a year of their life hiding probably hadn’t brought a music collection along, so I picked a few favourites I thought he might enjoy." 

"That’s very thoughtful," Cavit said. 

"I got Uncle Niles," Li-Nis said. "That was easy. He likes books." 

"So do I," Cavit said, nodding.

"Oh," Li-Paz said, opening the small box and showing it to Kes and Li-Nis. Inside, a semi-spherical candle-holder sat, and Cavit thought he’d gotten it right. He’d asked Atara Ram for some guidance, but from the expression on Li-Paz’s face, it seemed the intent had outweighed any unintended offence of the potential overstep.

"What is it, daddy?" Li-Nis said.

"It’s a Ha’Dara candle-holder," Li-Paz said. "It’s a traditional gift from a family member—and something I would give to you when it’s time for your Itanu." The man’s dark blue eyes met Cavit’s.

"But you’re not related to us," Li-Nis said, frowning slightly when Cavit looked at her, and he swallowed, because this was the part he’d been slightly worried might cause offence, and of course Li-Nis had just bluntly pointed it out. She was as direct as any of the Ocampa children. 

"Well," Li-Paz said. "Actually, that’s not quite true, Nis. See, if there are no blood relatives around, a Vedek can formally give permission for the gift to be given by someone else, and…" He showed her the markings on the candle holder. "See this?"

Li-Nis traced her finger across the markings. "That’s Uncle Atara’s name."

"And that’s mine," Cavit said, pointing to where he knew his name had been translated phonetically into Bajoran. "But you’re right—I’m not your grandfather, but your uncle thought I could fulfil the role, at least as far as the Prophets were concerned."

Li-Nis considered that, then smiled. "Doesn’t that mean you really gave me daddy’s gift, then?"

Cavit laughed. Ocampa kids. They kept you on your toes. "Maybe with a delay."

"It’s lovely, Captain," Li-Paz said. "And I really appreciate it." 

Cavit smiled at the man, and then saw Li-Paz’s expression slip. For a moment, he wondered if he had misstepped after all, but then he realized the Bajoran man was looking past him, and he glanced back, turning in his chair to look out the Mess Hall window. 

Ahead of them in space, a large dark spot had become visible. 

"According to Arturis," Cavit said, turning back. "The locals call that The Dark. It’s a significant distance, but there’s a trading post before we have to enter." 

"Strange not to see stars," Kes said. 

Cavit nodded, glancing back at Li-Paz, who seemed to gather himself.

"I guess we’ll find out if who we are in the dark is who we are in the light," the man said, and Cavit frowned slightly, wondering at the turn of phrase, but then Li-Paz held up the candle. "Do you want to help me pick where to put this?" he said, aiming his attention at his daughter.

"Yes!" Li-Nis said, and they rose together. 

I wonder what that was about, Cavit thought. He looked at Kes, but she was aiming a soft look of concern Li-Paz’s way, too. 

*

The holographic recreation of the historical Earth bar struck Seven of Nine as both anachronistic and a waste of time. 

"You’re not having fun, are you?" Stadi said, approaching Seven where she stood at the bar. 

Seven faced the Betazoid pilot. 

"I would prefer to report to the Astrometrics lab," she said. "There is work to be done."

"That big empty nothing will still be there tomorrow," Stadi said. "And Doctor Fitzgrerald gave us all strict orders for the whole crew to take some R and R over the next few days." Stadi pointed one finger at Seven, then reached past her and picked up a pair of glasses with a clear liquid in it, handing her one. "The whole crew includes you."

Seven of Nine considered the drink, wondering what it might be. She did not find synethol held much allure. 

"It’s a sparkling water," Stadi said. "Emmett wanted us to keep hydrated after the dermal regenerator, remember?"

Seven took a sip of the drink, and while the effervescence seemed irrelevant, the taste was at least refreshing. Perhaps after she finished it she could return to Astrometrics and her work.

"Okay, fine, I give up," Stadi said. "What work?" 

"I am attempting to design another method of travelling at slipstream velocities without damaging Voyager," Seven of Nine said.

"I didn’t think that was doable," Stadi said, shifting to sit on the stool beside Seven. Behind the bar, the holographic Ktarian bartender had paused to engage in inefficient discourse with Crewman Augustus Emmanuel and Crewman Joel Swift, but Seven decided to ignore the anachronistic linguistic exchange, and returned her attention to Commander Stadi, who said, "I thought Alex determined balancing the slipstream field with Voyager’s spaceframe was impossible."

"Impossible is a word that humans use far too often," Seven of Nine said. "I wish to continue my efforts."

Stadi regarded her, and Seven of Nine allowed herself the comfort of knowing the Betazoid pilot had full access to the nuances of her thought process. 

"The Federation doesn’t seem as daunting to you anymore," Stadi said. It wasn’t a question. 

"As we approached Borg space I found myself considering what might happen if we failed," Seven said. "I found the prospect of becoming a drone again… unappealing." 

Stadi smiled. "I’m glad."

"Your insight into the Federation helped," Seven of Nine said. "Perhaps, when we return to the Alpha Quadrant, I will live on Beta Zeta Five."

Stadi’s expression shifted, and the woman took a drink. Seven of Nine considered their most recent knowledge of the state of the pilot’s homeworld, and believed she understood what the Betazoid might be considering. 

"While my experience is limited," Seven of Nine said. "Individuals in the Federation may possess a tendency to flawed logic, and are often contradictory and disorganized, but they do not abandon each other. Your homeworld will be reclaimed."

Stadi lifted her glass. "I’ll toast to that."

Seven tapped her own to it. The chiming noise was pleasing. 

"What are we toasting, lovely ladies?" the holographic bartender was back. 

"Liberation," Stadi said.

"To liberation!" the hologram said, in a louder-than-necessary voice. "Always throw bricks!"

Seven did not follow, but Stadi laughed, and the bartender moved on.

"So," Stadi said, and Seven believed what would come next would be considered a "change of subject" that might shift the focus back on Seven herself, and prepared herself accordingly. "I hear Doctor Fitzgerald and Cing’ta are considering more classes while we get through the big empty. Thought about signing up?"

"No," Seven of Nine said, because she hadn’t. But then her eyes were drawn to the Lieutenant Commander’s uniform, and the small gold pips that designated her rank. "But as I said, nothing is impossible."