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Chapter Text

Previously, on Star Trek: Voyager (Cavit Ro Alternate Retelling) Season Four…

The Borg-Undine War

After learning the Borg were in fact responsible for the war between themselves and Species 8472, known to themselves as the Undine, Voyager was pulled into the realm of the Undine, a fluidic space of its own dimension. There, Voyager attempted to make peace with the Undine, despite the desires of the sole remaining member of the Borg on board: Seven of Nine. Ro, in temporary command after the injury of Captain Cavit, realized the Borg would betray them the moment they were back in normal space, and set up an end-run around the inevitability with herself and Ensign Michael Murphy using the interlink nodes they still had implanted from their time in the Nekrit Expanse. After proving their nano probe weapons could defeat the Undine, Seven of Nine returned Voyager to regular space, and made her attempt to assimilate the vessel. Ro and Murphy stopped her, severing her from the collective. When the Undine arrived, a last-minute telepathic contact between the Chorus and the Undine brokered détente, and the Undine—finally realizing that the Borg were not representative of all species in the galaxy—retreated. 

Seven of Nine

Severed from the Borg, Seven of Nine at first demanded to be returned to the Collective, but with the efforts of Doctor Jeff Fitzgerald, as well as a great deal of support from many of the crew, including Lieutenant Commander Stadi, the Ocampa Chorus, and Ensign Sahreen Lan, Seven of Nine grew to at least believe some sort of existence outside the Collective might be possible. She began to form relationships with others of the crew as well—among them notably Crewman Elliot Copage, a man diagnosed with a terminal disease who befriended Seven over the last months of her life and gave her a great deal of guidance in interpersonal relationships—and while there were multiple setbacks (including the reactivation of her Borg implants by the partially assimilated and crashed remnants of her family’s vessel, the S.S. Raven), by the end of 2374, Seven of Nine had not only found a place among the crew, but found herself re-evaluating her concerns with a return to living among humanity. Specifically, she realized that returning to the Alpha Quadrant did not necessitate "becoming human" or even living on Earth, and that alleviated much of the stressors she was facing when it came to the thought of Voyager’s ultimate destination.

In particular, Seven of Nine has bonded with Voyager’s Vulcan crew, Lt. Commander Stadi—Seven finds telepathic contact soothing and more familiar—as well as Ensign Sahreen Lan, who shares an understanding of Seven’s complex personality being in a very real sense made up of other beings as well as herself. Similarly, she enjoys the company of One, the Automated Personnel Unit who—like her—is very much "outside" the usual humanoid crew of Voyager. In particular, Seven of Nine spent over a month with only with Doctor Emmett Hall and APU 1106 when Voyager had to cross a nebula emitting radiation toxic to the rest of the crew—the rest of the crew was placed in stasis, and Seven, One, and Emmett had to keep Voyager running throughout ongoing deleterious effects. They managed the feat, but it was a strain especially on Seven. 

Her relationship with other members of the crew can involve more friction, and her ongoing discussions and counselling sessions with Doctor Jeff Fitzgerald, the ship’s counsellor, are a consistent source of complexity she finds frustrating, but no one can doubt Seven of Nine is becoming very much an individual, and one of her own designation.

The Ocampa and the Chorus

The original Ocampa—Kes, Daggin, Abol, Gara, Cir, and Eru—as well as Daggin and T’Prena’s first-bond son Setok, found telepathic contact with the Undine had created a runaway evolutionary process in their cellular structure. Their telepathic and psychokinetic abilities were amplified, and nearly destroyed both themselves and Voyager itself. Luckily, the time-travelling versions of Kes and Abol that had visited Voyager three years prior in late 2371 also left instructions on how to cure the effects, which Emmett was able to apply in time to save the group. This didn’t solve the "power" problem the Ocampa all faced: they were more-or-less supercharged with neurogenic energy, but they managed to channel all that power in a non-destructive way that pushed Voyager nearly ten thousand light years closer to home, leaving them all none the worse for wear. 

The Ocampa all mated and had children (in Daggon’s case, twice, thanks to T’Prena’s pon farr). Kes and Li-Paz have a daughter, Li-Nis; Daggin and T’Prena have their first-born son, Setok, as well as their twin daughter and son, T’Ral and Arev; Abol and Zandra Taitt also had twins: a son, James Taitt and a daughter, Nen Taitt; Gara and Walter Baxter gave birth to triplet sons: Paul (named for Walter’s twin brother), Thomas, and Viru Baxter; and Cir and Eru had twins, Ahn and Jeta (named for the deceased Ahni Jetal). Like all Ocampa, the children are growing up quickly, reaching young adulthood in roughly six months for the pure Ocampa, and slower for the others. Of note, all the children seem to have also favoured their Ocampa heritage in another way: they were still instinctively telepathic as infants, and "imprint" learned from their parents via touch while growing up. In particular, Li-Paz and Li-Nis displayed a very strong telepathic connection, even though Li-Paz is not himself telepathic. 

When working together, the Ocampa are capable of great telepathic and telekinetic feats as "a Chorus." This came into play multiple times over the year, beginning with the "shove" of nine and a half thousand light-years. 

The Bajorans

Commander Ro Laren, Crewman Li-Paz, Crewman Atara Ram, and Crewman Celes Tal continued to work with their spiritual sides with varying degrees of focus (Ro and Celes less so than Li-Paz and Atara)—especially in light of Crewman Cir’s translation of the Bajoran script found years earlier on Nechan (alongside particulates that formed an orb fragment during all four Bajorans having a Prophet-vision experience). 

In particular, Crewman Atara Ram found these translations confusing, as they seem to focus more on "choosing" fate—something he can’t quite reconcile given faith in a fate traditionally means preordainment in the Bajoran faith as written prior—but he is allowing himself to widen his point of views and explore the notions brought up in the writings. 

The Year of Hell and Doctor Jeff Fitzgerald’s Quantum Lock

Back when a Q visited Voyager determined to end his life, another Q—the Q which had visited the USS Enterprise, prior—altered Doctor Jeff Fitzgerald and made him aware of changes this first Q was making to the timeline. 

In 2374, when Voyager encountered the Krenim Imperium and time shifted all around them due to the erasure of the Zahl from history, Doctor Fitzgerald remained aware of the previous timeline, which gave the crew enough warning to know what the violent Imperium was attempting. Thanks to Seven of Nine, Zandra Taitt, and Abol Tay, the crew developed temporal shielding which allowed them to withstand further attacks—and survive timeline adjustments—but over the two hundred and fifty seven days of this timeline, Voyager was badly damaged, the crew scattered in escape pods and shuttles, and ultimately, Captain Aaron Cavit, co-ordinating with a kidnapped Lieutenant Zandra Taitt and Lieutenant Scott Rollins, as well as allies given the temporal shielding, faced down against the man responsible: Annorax, a Krenim officer and scientist determined to use his temporal warship to restore the Krenim Imperium to full glory. 

In the end, Cavit gambled on destroying the temporal warship using Voyager itself as a weapon, though he wasn’t sure it would reset the timeline, it held a good chance of doing so. It did, and in the end, only Doctor Fitzgerald recalled the year (which Fitzgerald dubbed "my own private year of hell"). This led to a great deal of tension between Fitzgerald and his husband, as Cavit didn’t remember the ever-escalating situations throughout the year, nor choosing to leave Fitzgerald the only one to carry memories of the major losses, deaths, and tragedies thereof. 

They reconciled after a few months, but Fitzgerald still struggles now and then to deal with some of the memories of that (undone) timeline.

Later, Fitzgerald was the reason the crew realized temporal meddling was at play on Enthara Prime when he realized events had changed from what he remembered, which allowed the crew to investigate—ultimately unsuccessfully—what had happened and who might be responsible.

Unknown to the Voyager crew, Doctor Fitzgerald isn’t in fact the only person aware of the Year of Hell—during the events of that year, the crew of the Pel: Lieutenant Dennis Russell, Ensign Lyndsay Ballard, Ensign Pablo Baytart, Ensign Tom Moore, Ensign Therese Hickman, Crewman Clifton Biddle, Crewman Cordelia Foster, and Crewman Kimble Meyer—alongside a Ram Izad man, Elam vir Praeder—raised their own temporal shields during the overload Captain Cavit initiated, and thus survived the timeline reset as they were. Left functionally a full year behind Voyager and on the wrong side of the "Goldilocks Grid," the crew of the Pel and vir Praeder began the long journey to potentially catch up to Voyager, knowing it unlikely, but at the Vaskan/Kyrian homeworld, they recovered some technology left behind by Voyager (including the emergency medical program’s backup module) and used a wormhole to end up roughly twenty-nine years ahead of Voyager, albeit at the cost of the duplicated Ensign Baytart’s life. 

The Waypoint Alliance

After getting "mugged" by aliens using Nyrian technology, Voyager would learn on a trading planet, after recovering their stolen technology, that the species they liberated the year before from the Nyrian Prison Habitat Ship had banded together in an alliance and withstood an attempt by the Nyrians to recover that ship (and in fact had instead gained another of the large vessels). 

The Alliance would be brought up once more this year, when Arturis of the Swei mentioned the survivors of his people who’d not been assimilated by the Borg found them, and they were his first clue as to what had happened to the Undine—the withdrawal of which he believed the sole reason his people fell to the Borg, and thus his belief the blame was entirely on Voyager for his people’s destruction.

Communication with Starfleet

Encountering an ancient network of sensor relays, Voyager managed to send Doctor Emmett Hall, the emergency medical hologram, to the USS Prometheus, where the Doctor—after some cat-and-mouse struggles with Romulans—made contact with the Federation for the third time since Voyager had been lost in the Delta Quadrant. He returned quickly, with messages of goodwill, and the promise that Starfleet would attempt to use those relays to make further contact.

Starfleet was able to do exactly that, sending letters and updates, which alerted Voyager to the state of things in the Alpha and Beta Quadrant—most notably the Federation-Klingon and Dominion Wars, as well as the losses of two-thirds of the Maquis—but the relays were ultimately taken offline during an offensive by the Hirogen shortly thereafter. 

Later in the year, Lieutenant Alexander Honigsberg would lead a project—Marconi—utilizing the wide variety of technology Voyager had encountered—including Borg, Arde, Benthan, Enaran, Cravic, and more—to create a probe capable of crossing the distance between Voyager and the Alpha Quadrant to create a chain of subspace relay satellites capable of real-time communication with Starfleet. The project was a success, and for a time the crew were able to have both live discussion and back-and-forth delivery of letters and documentation from home. The crew received important updates—and formalized promotions—and the connection lasted a few months before tampering by an unknown source led the crew to utilizing a self-destruct command to ensure no one got their hands on the alien technology. 

Starfleet, however included plans to attempt to regain communications in the future in their last transmissions. 

The Hirogen

Perhaps the primary antagonists of 2374 were the Hirogen. First encountered when Voyager discovered an ancient sensor relay network, they were discovered to be a hunter-centric species, and on multiple occasions chased, hunted, and threatened isolated crew of Voyager, including costing Voyager the life of Ensign Lyndsay Ballard. 

First, the Hirogen reacted poorly to Voyager using the sensor relay stations, but after Seven of Nine and Commander Stadi successfully avoided them and then Ensign Sahreen Lan outwitted them on a hunt, they grew all the more focused on Voyager as "cunning" prey. 

Voyager met multiple species with run-ins with the Hirogen, including the Soncol, the Vyntadi, the C’Glynn, the Entharans, and the Benthans, before multiple Hirogen ships assaulted Voyager, taking most of her crew and leaving behind only thirty or so of the young, old, mothers, or disabled behind. The kidnapped crew were taken to the original Vyntadi homeworld for a large hunt, which was stopped by Lieutenant Commander Jeff Fitzgerald (who was in command of Voyager) alongside the remaining crew, albeit with the loss of twenty-two more crew in the process. The hunt was only ended by taking the Hirogen matriarchs hostage—Hirogen hold their incredibly rare matriarchs in the highest of value—and possession of their space station was passed to the Vyntadi survivors before Voyager moved on, wounded and dispirited by their losses.

Temporal Incident

Voyager had already been involved with two major temporal incidents in the past: when someone attempted to destroy Voyager, which flung Lieutenant Rollins, Lieutenant Commander Ro, and Lieutenant Taitt into the past; and then a trip to 1996 Earth when Voyager was framed for having destroyed the Sol system in the far-future. Both incidents involved crew of the temporal ship Relativity aiding Voyager’s crew in the restoration of events as they should be—most centrally Lieutenant Juel Ducane, who formed a romantic relationship with Lieutenant Rollins. 

This year, while trading with the Entharans on their home world for an Isokinetic Cannon and Thoron Torpedoes, more attempts were made to stymy Voyager: one to cause the isokinetic cannon to overload, and another to block the purchase of replacement torpedo stock. While both were stopped, and the cannon purchased as well as production technology that would allow Voyager to replace their spent photon torpedoes with thoron torpedoes, the true culprits and their motivations remained unclear, as did the revelation that it wasn’t just two incidents of time-travel that occurred on Enthara, but rather four—one of which apparently involved neurogenic energy of the type seen used by the Ocampa Chorus. 

The Omega Molecule and New Passengers

Shortly after regaining contact with Starfleet, Voyager encountered an Omega Molecule reading, and Captain Cavit was forced to involve the crew rather than follow strict protocols to ensure the destructive molecule didn’t destroy subspace in the Delta Quadrant. Seven of Nine, in particular, found the experience a struggle: the Borg consider the Omega Molecule to be the rarest example of perfection, but she ultimately understood Cavit’s decision (even if she didn’t agree with it in theory) to eliminate the molecule given the destructive potential in the wrong hands. 

From that, for a while, four badly wounded Austi joined the crew, of which one of them, Ennes, a security guard from an underground bunker-style facility, remained on board rather than returning to his people. 

Later, a Ramuran fleeing the strict laws and confines of his people, Reskat, would also join Voyager, at first under a personal cloak and only making contact with the Ocampa (whose perfect memories meant they didn’t forget him the way other species did), but eventually revealing himself to the whole crew when a Tracer came to track him down. When it was revealed that the Ramuran memory-affecting pheromones were not entirely natural, that Tracer, Kellin, ultimately decided to allowed herself to have her own memory erased and to be fooled into thinking Reskat had died so she could return to her people without disgrace or the knowledge she’d learned about the truth of her people, and Reskat remained with Voyager. 

The Silvers

One of the more incredible moments of the year, Voyager accidentally created new sentient life thanks to Commander Veronica Stadi’s ability to "dreamshare." Her telepathic contact with a life-form that had yet to realize self-awareness created a sense of individuality for the first time in the being, and along with all the other telepathic members of the crew—centrally Stadi and Crewman Aravik—taught the lifeform how to conceptualize its individuality to the point of stability while Voyager recovered from the damage the Vaskan/Kyrian conflict had done to the ship. 

Within the space of a few weeks, the Silvers had learned to utilize the Chorus-like abilities alongside the telepathic practices of Vulcan and Betazoid telepathy to create whole structures out of solid stone on their demon-class planetoid home. 

Dauntless, Quantum Slipstream, and Arturis of the Swei

At the end of the year, an alien whose people were gifted linguists managed to decode the last piece of the final transmission Starfleet had sent via Marconi, which led Voyager to a Quantum-Slipstream capable vessel that might bring them all the way home.

It all turned out to be a lie, and Arturis was revealed to the individual who’d tampered with Marconi to alter the message. He blamed Voyager for the Undine retreat, which he believed led to the Borg assimilating his people—though he later admitted he wasn’t with the rest of his people because he’d told them to "hold the line." Managing to kidnap most of Voyager’s Senior Staff, he attempted to deliver them all back to Borg space to be assimilated, but was unsuccessful.

Voyager, utilizing quantum slipstream to first rescue their kidnapped crew, and then to travel a few hundred light-years further before having to stop due to the dangerous effects of Quantum Slipstream on Voyager itself, got a little closer to home, albeit with the heartbreak of having had hope, for a time, of a way to be back in only six month’s time.

Chapter Text

Trading Station on the edge of The Dark, New Year’s Eve, 2374

The station on the edge of The Dark reminded Ensign Sahreen Lan of Deep Space Nine. It didn’t have the cold, cruel edges of Cardassian architecture, nor even the telltale metallic sheen Lan couldn’t help but think of as "metallic desert," but the superstructure, the choice to use twinned trios of curved docking arms both up and down from a central, round ring? 

It itched her spots.

Even inside the station, the Dolay in her made it harder to enjoy the last few hours of shore-leave she and her group should be undertaking thanks to the way the image of its shape had conjured Dolay’s memories of Nor-style stations, but she fought the urge to keep making comparisons and tried to find differences instead.

For one, the place was well-lit. For another, the sounds of laugher and enjoyment carried throughout.  

"You are light years away." Ensign Michael Murphy squeezed her hand. "And doing that adorable thing you do when you’re thinking so hard about something your spots gather here…" He dropped a quick kiss on her left temple, then shifted to stand on her right in an exaggerated little dance, right out on the middle level of the rounded, three-level colonnade. "And here." He kissed her other temple. 

In front of everyone. 

"You are the most relentlessly fun man I’ve ever met," Lan said, charmed as hell. Which had been his whole intention, she assumed. 

"Dare I ask?" he said.

"Dolay keeps attempting to send me down not-so-pleasant-memory lane," Lan said.

"He’s not the only one," Murphy said, with gentle understanding. "Steven said Ram had the same reaction at first, though I think the hosts are helping with that." He gestured to where Lan could see Ensign Stephen Niles and Crewman Atara Ram—two of the most ridiculously perfect-for-each-other individuals she’d ever met—seated at an eating area where some of the local residents of the large station were obviously enjoying a meal with them. Lan spotted three species of the six most common to the station at their table, and chuckled when she saw one of the burly humanoids—smooth and aqua-skinned, with striated patterns of deeper blues and greens—throw an arm around Niles and offer up a toast the table, which was met with cheers.

"The Ageem-Nek could give Talaxians lessons in extroversion," Lan said. 

"That’s actually terrifying," Murphy said, with a laugh. "Shall we join them anyway? I’d like to  walk the upper walkway, but maybe a drink first?" 

"Definitely," Lan said. With what was ahead of them, she needed to tuck the Pasha and Dolay away and soak in as much socialization as possible; lean on Kejal a bit. 

They arrived as the Ageem-Nek in question was finishing up telling some story, and as it turned out, it was about the station itself. 

"…and we founded this place at the edge of The Dark, to put something between it and our home world. To say, 'Here is our light' in the face of all that is dark." 

"That is so lovely," Atara Ram said, gesturing for Lan and Murphy to join at the same table.

"Your people built the station?" Murphy said, sliding right into the conversation as effortlessly as always. "The Ageem-Nek?"

"Yes!" The burly man exclaimed his response with an outdoor voice, regardless of them all sitting at the same table. "Or at least, the initial ring. But over the years, all the local species have made it into what it is today—a gathering place on the edge of The Dark. A watchtower and guide for those who travel near."

"Reminds me of lighthouses," Murphy said, and when the Ageem-Nek leaned forward, interested, Murphy gave a lovely description of where he was from on Earth—a place called Ireland—and how its coasts had at one time been lined with structures designed to let ocean-going vessels know rocks were nearby at night. 

"Does your world have a lot of oceans?" Another of the Ageem-Nek asked this, a woman this time, and Lan noticed her striations were among the lightest of the group. Like Trill spots, it seemed the Ageem-Nek had quite a bit of variance in their skin markings. "Our home-world is known for its oceans as well," she said, as though she needed to qualify the question by sharing a fact of her own.

"Earth is mostly ocean," Murphy said. "Just over seventy percent of its surface is water."

"That must be magnificent," another alien spoke, one of the sandy-coloured species with the completely black, double-lidded eyes. Lan was fairly certain they were the called the Niq, and came from a mostly-desert planet, which would explain the wonder in his voice. 

"And your world?" the woman asked Lan.

"My world is Trill," Lan said. "And I suppose the most interesting thing about our oceans is the colour—they’re far more purple than most planetary oceans." 

That seemed to delight everyone at the table, and Lan was about to admit she had no actual idea of the precentage of Trill’s surface that was covered in ocean when across from her, she saw Atara Ram frown, his cup half-way to his mouth. He grew very still. 

It didn’t take long for Niles to notice. 

"Ram?" Niles said.

Atara’s hand shook, and he lowered the cup. "Something… something’s wrong." He swallowed, and then shivered, as though chilled. "I don’t… I don’t know…" He’d gone pale, as well.

Now their hosts had noticed as well, and the boisterous conversations petered out as everyone turned to the Bajoran man.

"Let’s get him to Sickbay," Lan said. 

Niles nodded, the man looking deeply concerned, and when Atara Ram rose without even the slightest argument, Lan felt her own worry increase. 

"Murphy to Voyager," Michael’s voice held an edge beside her, and she glanced at him gratefully as he added. "Tell Sickbay to expect Crewman Atara in a few minutes. He’s not feeling well."

Sickbay acknowledged, and they were on the move a moment later. Lan rode the lift, Murphy holding her hand in his, and kept one eye on the Bajoran man, who at least seemed to be standing under his own power. 

"What’s happening, Ram?" Niles said, keeping one hand at the small of Atara’s back. 

"I can’t explain it," Atara said. "Cold. Alone?" He shook his head. "I can’t explain it."

Murphy squeezed her hand, and she squeezed it back. 

When they finally made it to Voyager’s Sickbay, Lan frowned when she saw there were already multiple people waiting, and not just the medical staff. T’Prena was scanning Crewman Tal Celes where she sat on one of the biobeds, with Crewman Andreas Murphy to one side of her, and Crewman Billy Telfer to the other. Crewman Li-Paz was also present, and his wife, Doctor Li-Kes Aren, was the one scanning him. And Doctor Emmett hall held out his own medical scanner just a few inches away from Commander Ro Laren, who—like Li-Paz, Celes, and Atara all—seemed pale and oddly shaken. 

I’ve never seen Laren look like that. Lan’s worry rose to something more like fear.

"No," Atara said, and to Lan’s surprise, he pulled away from Niles, backed through the Sickbay doors again, and then ran off down the corridor.

"Ram!" Niles said, giving chase, and Lan found herself following as well. 

"Our quarters," Atara said, shaking his head, his light brown eyes wet with tears. "I have to get back to our quarters!"

Lan joined Niles at the turbolift were Atara was tapping the control multiple times, and Murphy caught up to them as well. 

"Honey," Niles said. "I think we need to go back to Sickbay."

"No," Atara said. "Please. Just… Please."

"I’ll go tell Sickbay to send someone down to your quarters," Murphy said, to a relieved-looking Niles, and Lan gave him a look of appreciation of her own.

Then the turbolift arrived, and they stepped inside. It wasn’t a long trip down, but Lan felt every second of it, especially when Niles tried to take Atara’s hand and the Bajoran man flinched away. Niles looked stricken.

What’s happening?

They passed the vine green-wall panels of the crew quarters at something just shy of a run, and Atara was pushing through the door before it even finished opening and crossing the space of the quarters he shared with Niles at a rush, kneeling before a cabinet and opening it and pulling out what appeared to Lan to be a fairly pretty small wooden box.

Atara opened it. Ram’s voice offered a wordless noise of anguish and pain that went straight through Lan’s heart. 

"Ram?" Niles covered the space and knelt beside him, hesitating before wrapping him up in his arms, and when Atara began sobbing—wracking, deep sobs—Lan moved over as well. She’d never seen him like this. What could be happening?

Then she saw the open wooden case, dropped onto the floor. Beside it lay a chunk of dull black and grey rock. At first, she frowned, not understanding, until she finally grasped what she was seeing. 

She’d helped scan that rock, a couple of years ago—though the sensors had only grudgingly agreed to call it something geophysical. At the time, it had glittered and flared with energy, and it barely registered on scans—it was both there, and not-there.

Atara Ram’s orb fragment, the one he’d somehow gathered from particulate matter on Nechan, lay lifeless and cold, nothing more than a dark lump.

"They’re gone," Atara said, burying his face against Niles’s chest, clinging to him and still shaking visibly with every word, his voice raw. "They’re gone." 

Niles looked at Lan over Atara’s shoulder, hazel-green eyes wide with question, his arms tight around his husband, but Lan could only shake her head, not comprehending either.

"The Prophets are gone!" Atara said.

Chapter Text

Two Months Later…

Doctor Jeff Fitzgerald gripped the railing behind the Bridge command area as Voyager lurched beneath his feet and thought, now what?

"Damage report," came the voice from below him, tense, but focused. 

"The port nacelle took a hit." This came from the engineering station. "Power drain is continuing. We’re going to lose warp."

"Helm is sluggish!" The pilot’s frustration was clear. "I need more power to compensate for—"

"Antimatter containment is failing," this was delivered in a dry voice from Ops, and then, a few moments later, a white light surrounded them all and…

"Okay," Fitzgerald said, smiling at the group of cadets now standing in the blank Holodeck all around him. "What did we learn?" 

"We failed," Ennes said. The large, Austi man crossed thick arms over his impressive chest, frustration telegraphing in everything he did. He’d had Tactical. 

"The Swarm dragged our warp field, drained our power, and then left us defenceless," Kol agreed. The Ferengi had been their pilot. "If we don’t find a way to counter whatever it is they were doing—"

"Or avoid their attack," Ennes said.

"—then we’ll never get away from them," Kol said, nodding at the Austi man’s aside.

"I still can’t crack how they manage to keep up those high warp speeds in those small vessels," Reskat said, shaking his head. The Ramuran fell silent again, which was often his default state, Fitzgerald had noticed. "Though their communications are interesting," he finally said, after another beat.

"Their behaviour was off," Ahn said. "They’re territorial, determined, act almost collectively—" The Ocampa woman glanced at Seven of Nine. "No offence," she added, with a small smile despite her obvious frustration that they’d bumped into another situation where her leadership in the Big Chair had ended with failure. 

"None taken," Seven said, and once again it held that dry tone she used during their holodeck training sessions. On Ops, Seven had been the calmest, most deliberate of the Cadets once again, and while Fitzgerald wasn’t surprised on that front, Seven’s expression told him she had more to offer, but she wasn’t offering it. 

Was it because she found the simulations so difficult to take seriously, or something else?

Jeta turned to Kol. She’d been at the Science station, where she’d said almost nothing throughout the recreation. Now, she said, "The drag on the warp field was coming from the field they were generating." She was so unlike her twin sister Ahn, who spoke with determination. 

Jeta suggested. 

Kol nodded. "I couldn’t shake it."

Jeta opened her mouth, closed it, and nodded.

Li-Nis, who’d taken the role of Ahn’s XO, took a breath, then said, "Let’s look at the data we’ve got before we try again." She glanced at Doctor Fitzgerald. "If that’s allowed?"

"Of course it is," Fitzgerald said, smiling. "The whole point of these simulations is for you all to work a problem drawn from historical events. Practical situations to build on your experiences." 

A moment passed while the seven students considered that, and then—to Fitzgerald’s relief—Li-Nis said, "Seven?" 

She can tell Seven has something, too, he thought. Li-Nis might be the youngest person present—she was half-Bajoran, half-Ocampa, which made "youngest" something of an understatement—but the woman had the keenest eye in the room when it came to the dynamics of the group, something Cing’ta had noticed within their first three sessions, and Fitzgerald had agreed and been keeping an eye on ever since. Over the weeks, Li-Nis seemed to be following in her mother’s footsteps. And he didn’t just mean studying medicine with the same voracity Doctor Li-Kes Aren had—though Li-Nis was doing exactly that, and also showed an interest in his work, too—but also her ability to lead. To speak up in a way that empowered those around her. Kes had been an excellent XO for Sam Stiles, back in his first class of cadets. 

That both neurology and psychology caught Li-Nis’s attention really showed whenever she was within the training group.

"Yes?" Seven of Nine said, facing Li-Nis and—Fitzgerald noticed—rather avoiding the rest of the group’s attention, which had all turned her way as well.

"Do you have any ideas?" Li-Nis said, then, after a brief pause, she added. "Or maybe some feedback?"

Seven of Nine’s bright blue eyes—rather brought out by the blue-and-grey cadet uniform, Fitzgerald thought—took a survey of their group and he could almost see her processing whether or not to make the statement she was about to make. 

He hoped she would, because he wasn’t sure what it was going to be, and it always delighted him when she spoke up during these sessions. Even when she was disagreeing with the most basic of Starfleet’s regulations as "irrelevant."

"Our assignments are not optimal," Seven said. "They are causing inefficiencies and a lack of focus."

"What do you mean?" Li-Nis said. 

Yeah, Seven, Fitzgerald thought, doing his best to remain as blank-faced as he could. Do tell. 

"Kol should be stationed at Engineering," Seven of Nine said. "Jeta should have the Conn. Kol’s technical understanding is better served there, and Jeta’s piloting skills are more than adequate." 

"And where should I go?" Reskat said, though without offence, Fitzgerald thought. More like curiosity.

"Tactical," Seven said, with the finality of someone completely sure of her decision. "You have a keen mind for tactical analysis, but you also do not assume violence should be an initial response, in keeping with Starfleet priorities."

Fitzgerald blinked. Huh. Okay. He eyed Ennes, who had a small smirk in place no doubt because Fitzgerald and Cing’ta had both needed—more than once—to remind him that "fire phasers" wasn’t traditionally the initial response of Starfleet priorities.

"And me?" Ennes said, raising one hand—still more of a smirk in place than any offence.

"Your opinions often run counter to the group," Seven said, apparently willing to give everyone some "feedback." "But your analysis is sound. You should be first officer." 

"Which puts me on Science?" Li-Nis said, raising one eyebrow. Fitzgerald thought she’d be underutilized there, frankly, but he kept his peace. Seven didn’t do this often. He wanted to encourage it. 

"No. You should command," Seven said. "Ahn should take the Science station."

Ahn blinked, her dark brown eyes telegraphing surprise. She’d been the first one to step forward to put herself into consideration for leadership in their group—the only one who’d done so, in fact—and while Fitzgerald had admired her outgoing nature and she definitely had a strong enough personality, he saw Ahn considering the suggestion, and the Ocampa woman said, simply, "May I ask why?"

"You are intelligent, analytical, and provide valuable insight into the motivations and structure of alien cultures," Seven of Nine said, then hesitated.

"But?" Ahn said, with a small smile. "It’s okay, Seven. I’d like to hear it. You’re not going to upset me." 

"You hesitate," Seven of Nine said. "Especially in situations of conflict." 

Ahn blew out a breath, and Fitzgerald thought any frustration it represented was in being so very accurately described by Seven. He and Ahn had had that very discussion in private, about how she sometimes waited too long to act, hoping for one more piece of data to make any given decision the quantifiably correct one. 

"So the only one of us in the right place is you?" Ennes said, with a crooked grin that wasn’t quite a challenge in Seven’s direction, but maybe just a door or two down a challenging corridor. 

"Yes," Seven of Nine said, meeting his gaze with complete confidence.

"I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes…" Li-Nis said.

"You’re not," Ahn said, shaking her head. "Let’s try Seven’s way." 

"Actually, we’ve only got five minutes left in the session before we need to pass the Holodeck on to the next group," Fitzgerald said. "Why don’t we call it, and start fresh with you in new positions next time?" 

That got nods from the group as a whole. Fitzgerald watched as Ahn and Jeta left alongside Li-Nis, the three of them already chatting over the details of their meeting with the holographic recreation of the Swarm. Kol hesitated a moment or two before heading off alone—again—and Reskat approached Ennes, asking if he was staying for the next session, which Fitzgerald realized meant Rollins’s rapid response security group had the next slot for this holodeck. 

Both Reskat and Ennes had signed on for the extra training sessions Lieutenant Rollins had organized. 

"Can I take you to lunch?" Fitzgerald said, walking over to where Seven of Nine had remained, watching them all disperse. "I’d love to get more of your thoughts about the reassignments you just suggested."

"I should check in with Astrometrics first," Seven of Nine said. "However, that is not likely to take long. I will meet you there."

Fitzgerald nodded—given their situation, he couldn’t imagine she’d need much time in Astrometrics either—and headed out the door. 

All in all, it had been a good class, even if they’d blown up the ship again.

*

Ensign Sahreen Lan sat in the big chair and did her best to ignore the viewscreen while she desperately searched for something interesting to be found on the PADD she was looking at, but crew rotation offered nothing up in the interesting department. 

She sighed. 

"Agreed." 

Lan glanced up at the man who’d spoken. As the only other person on the Bridge, Ensign Doug Bronowski provided a view of the back of his head from the Conn. Not the most interesting sight—brown hair, boring hairstyle—but it beat the absolute nothingness on the viewscreen. 

"How are we doing on the clock?" Lan said. 

"Just over an hour to go," Bronowski said. He was a good man. Okay, truth be told, he was boring man. He didn’t really speak up much, he had zero sense of humour, and his minor at the Academy had been agronomy—seriously, farming—and yet right now he was all she had to work with. 

Literally.

"I never thought I’d appreciate a reduction in shift," Lan said. "But Doctor Fitzgerald was right."

"Yes." Bronowski turned his head enough to nod at her, but kept most of his attention on his controls. She had no idea how he was managing to keep his focus for six whole hours at a time on a navigational display where nothing changed, but she’d give him—and the other pilots—the credit due. 

The turbolift door opened, and Lan turned her head back, surprised to see Seven of Nine arrived with a PADD. 

"Hello," Lan said, getting up out of the big chair and meeting her by the command rail. Seven was in her cadet blues, which meant she’d been at a lesson. She always changed out of her cadet uniform as soon as she could, Lan had noticed. "How was class?"

"I took your advice," Seven said. 

Lan blinked. "I gave you advice?" She didn’t recall doing that.

"The simulations," Seven of Nine said. 

"Oh," Lan said, having some of the puzzle now. At one of the breakfasts they’d shared—Seven had a tradition of sharing her breakfast alongside rather stilted conversations that often felt more like interrogations—Seven had admitted she found the holodeck simulations she took part with Lieutenant Cing’ta or Doctor Fitzgerald difficult. Not the exercises themselves, of course, but taking them seriously. She found she couldn’t conjure any real reaction to a situation she knew was entirely false and made up of light, forcefields, and basic replicated matter, and an inefficient use of her time. But Lan wasn’t quite as clear on what she’d said in response. "I think I said something about finding a new way to process the experience?"

"Yes," Seven of Nine said. "You suggested attempting to find the most efficient path to the conclusion of the program."

Right. That sounded like something she’d say. She’d never been one to relax in a holodeck. "So you succeeded today?" Lan said.

"No," Seven said. "The simulation of Voyager was destroyed. Again." She paused, one eyebrow rising. "But I believe my reassignments will be effective."

"Reassignments?" Lan said, then clicked at the realization of what Seven was saying. "You mean you reassigned everyone’s station?"

"Yes," Seven of Nine said. 

"Jeta was saying the simulations weren’t going particularly well last time I saw her in the Gardens," Bronowski said, turning in his Conn chair to join the conversation for the first time. "She’s on Science, right?"

"Cadet Jeta will be taking the helm," Seven said. 

Bronowski’s expression did a whole thing, and Lan rather enjoying watching it play out. "She likes to fly?" he said.

"During our piloting lessons, Cadet Jeta often scored highly," Seven of Nine said. "Her enjoyment is irrelevant." 

Lan cleared her throat. "Well, I look forward to hearing about it after your next class."

Seven of Nine tipped her chin, and then lifted the PADD. "The astrometric scans. There are no star systems within twenty five hundred light years."

Lan groaned. "Really? Nothing out there at all?"

"Correct," Seven said.

"Do we know why we can't we see the stars beyond that?" Bronowski said.

"There are heavy concentrations of theta radiation," Seven said, and Lan looked down at the PADD, seeing the notations of just that. "It has occluded our sensors."

"That’s… barely something, at least," Lan said. She blew out a breath. "I’m guessing no ships, or you’d have led with that."

"None," Seven said. "We are alone."

"Well, it’s official," Lan said, lowering the PADD. "I have no excuse for skipping talent night." 

"Ensign?" Seven said.

"Michael wants to go to the musical thing in the Arboretum," Lan said, exhaling a breath from roughly around her feet. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go—okay, she didn’t want to go—it was more that over the last month of this trek through the dark nothing, she felt like she’d already exhausted what supply of extroversion she had, and it turned out she needed to fix and repair things to replenish it. 

But nothing was broken. Given they’d met no one, done nothing, and had the entire engineering division free to keep up on diagnostics and maintenance, the chance of anything breaking was pretty damned slim, too.

"If you do not wish to attend, decline," Seven of Nine said, in that blunt way she had, like the option was obvious.

"I wish." Lan smiled at her. "If you have a relationship of your own someday," she said. "You’ll learn how there’s some give and take involved in outings. My introversion has to be balanced with Michael’s extroversion—and we’ve already done some private time this week." 

Seven of Nine shook her head. "It seems to me that humans demand introverts adapt, rather than extroverts." She tilted her head again. "It is—to borrow your term—unbalanced."

"Agreed," Bronowski said. 

"Aren’t you performing tonight?" Lan said, glancing at Bronowski. "Nicoletti said you were doing an accordion thing?" 

"She and Biddle wouldn’t take no for an answer," Bronowski said, nodding to Seven of Nine. "Like Seven said, it’s unbalanced. They found a piece for me to accompany them with." 

"How will we introverts survive another two years of this?" Lan said, amused in spite of herself at the thought of someone cajoling Doug to play his accordion—which, rumour had it, he didn’t necessarily do particularly well.

"We will adapt," Seven of Nine said.

"Of course," Lan said.

"Do you require me to inform the Captain of my findings?" Seven nodded to the PADD.

"I’ll tell him when he gets here," Lan said, shaking her head. "No rush. You’re free to go be introverted."

"Unfortunately, I must also adapt," Seven of Nine said. "Doctor Fitzgerald has invited me to lunch." Her expression shifted to something that reminded Lan very much of Kejal Lan whenever he was asked to speak to literary critics—a sardonic stoicism. "No doubt we will discuss feelings." 

A moment later, Seven was gone, and Lan turned to Bronowski.

"You know," Lan said, smiling at him. "When she first came aboard, I wouldn’t have laid my bet on her developing a Vulcan-level mastery of sarcasm, but she’s well on her way, don’t you think?"

Bronowski blinked. "You think Vulcans are sarcastic?" 

"Oh, Doug." Lan put her hand on his shoulder. The man truly had zero awareness of humour. "Never change."

*

Counsellor's log, Stardate 52081.2. With planning and having some idea of what stressors this desolate region might place on the crew, so far our journey though The Dark has been more-or-less as expected, with a few exceptions. Crewman Atara Ram and I talk, but I’m not sure we’re getting anywhere—counselling someone having a crisis of faith is one thing, but yesterday afternoon, Seven of Nine and I were having lunch and Celes Tal mentioned her own feelings on the subject in passing—I believe she said, 'It’s easier for me, because I didn’t grow up having much faith; I only got it from Nechan, really.' 

Seven corrected her, in her usual blunt way, but with a point of view I hadn’t considered.

"What you had was not faith," Seven of Nine said.

"I’m sorry?" Celes said—her habit of apology has returned since she and the rest of the Bajorans on board felt the loss of the Prophets, as has Li-Paz sense of struggling to belong and to focus, I’ve noted. 

"Your Prophets interacted with you. They left measurable phenomenon in their wake." Seven of Nine turned to me then, as though she realized she was maybe wading into waters she might not be as confident about as she initially believed. "That is not faith. It is fact. It is my understanding faith requires belief in the immeasurable and unseen."

And holy hell, but once again I found myself thinking the same thought after Seven of Nine offered a point of view: she’s right. 

So. I’ve decided to adjust my discussions with Atara, veering away from the various texts and treatises and therapies I’ve been reading about faith-based cultures and it occurred to me that I might be better served considering sensory adaptation texts. Ro—who still refuses to admit any real impact of the incident—described the event itself as a "chill," whereas Li-Paz and Celes were a bit more eloquent, saying it felt like they were "alone" or "diminished." 

Atara, I think, feels all of that and more, and perhaps the key here is to consider through the same lens as a loss of a sense, or a limb, or—and yes, I hear the irony in my own voice—mobility. 

Say, a hand?

Atara Ram has, since his first visit to an Orb as a youth, held onto that sense of completeness owing to the Prophets having been—in some way—with him. Now they’re not. 

Either way, I hope—

Cavit stepped into their quarters, and Fitzgerald paused his log entry.

"Sorry," Cavit said. 

"No, it’s fine," Fitzgerald, shaking his head. "Had an epiphany yesterday, and wanted to start working with it." 

"Nelson?" Cavit said, raising one eyebrow. 

Fitzgerald shook his head, dejection and failure conjured at the mention of the man. "No. No luck there." Crewman Gavin Nelson had almost completely retreated and withdrawn. About the only forward motion they’d had with Nelson had been assigning him to the same night shift as Lieutenant Sam Stiles and Crewman Sveta, but even then, Sam had told him more than once entire shifts would go by with Nelson saying nothing. 

"Is this where I remind you you can’t make someone face their pain?" Cavit said. He crossed their quarters, leaned over the back of the desk chair, and wrapped his arms around Fitzgerald from behind.

"Technically…" Fitzgerald leaned back against his chest. "If we were home, I’d suggest removing him from duty and having him report to Starfleet Medical. Which is about as close to making him as I can, but honestly, if we were home, I think he would have resigned by now."

"If we were home," Cavit said, squeezing him once and then resting his chin on Fitzgerald’s head. Cavit blew out a breathy sigh, and Fitzgerald pushed away enough to rotate the chair, rise, and then pulled him in for another embrace, this one tighter and more about giving comfort than receiving it. 

"Your nightmare?" Fitzgerald said, guessing. Aaron had confessed to a particularly bad dream, where the dead—Ahni Jetal, Ikuyo Seuphon, Michael Sendine, even Peter fucking Durst—had lined up to berate and scream at him for their own deaths so far from home, reminding him with cruel, barbed clarity that he could have sent Voyager home with the Caretaker’s Array, but he chose the Ocampa over them. 

"My nightmare," Cavit said. He pulled back, seeming to shake it off, and Fitzgerald thought he’d mostly succeeded, which was fair—the subconscious could be a bastard sometimes. "Any chance you’re up for coming to the Senior Officer’s meeting?"

"Oh, damn…" Fitzgerald blinked, looking at his monitor. "I completely forgot."

"Well," Cavit deadpanned. "With so much on our schedules, it’s not surprising." 

*

Lieutenant Alexander Honigsberg lifted a PADD as Fitzgerald and Cavit joined the rest of the Senior Staff in the Briefing Room, and once they sat, Cavit gave him a nod.

"You start," Cavit said. 

"We have officially concluded level one diagnostics on every system on Voyager," Honigsberg said, trying to conjure up something a bit triumphant about the announcement, but he wasn’t fooled by his own voice. He chuckled. "We are so bored, Captain."

"I’d ask about the power cell project, but I have to admit, I went and took a look," Cavit said, with a bemused smile of his own that Honigsberg thought was kind of charming, actually. 

"You went to deck fourteen?" Honigsberg chuckled. "Were you on a walkabout?" Given they were traveling what was looking to be years through The Dark, they’d needed a way to push their energy supply beyond any measurable plan from Starfleet. Deuterium—which of course still existed in The Dark—had given them their solution. Power cells he, Bennet, Lan, and Seven of Nine had come up with using multiple species technology—Kolhari, Enaran, a bunch of aliens Seven referred to by numbers—which they could create, charge, and stockpile as they moved through The Dark. 

Given it was the only ongoing project he really had for his team, he’d been rotating his people through it, but there wasn’t enough work to go around, and only 1106 was in pretty much constant use—he being the only one who could keep climbing into the nacelles while they were at warp.

"Something like that," Cavit said. "It occurred to me there were parts of the ship I haven’t seen much of." 

"Beats the view from the windows," Lan said. 

Cavit gave her a small smile for the joke. 

"The longest version I can give you is: everything’s going well with the power cell project. It’s all on target. In fact, if we keep up as we’re going, we’ll be finished in another two weeks, and I’ll have even less to offer the team." Honigbserg blew out a breath. "Which isn’t great." 

He saw Fitzgerald’s eyes steely-grey eyes pick up on that, and he said, "I’d like to hear from all of you on that subject, too, but I can go last." He said, nodding to Lan.

"Everything is in the green," Lan said. "Like Alex said, we’ve never been this tidy—everything is working as it should, we’ve done diagnostics on systems that weren’t due for another six months…" She lifted one hand. "I have nothing to report."

Ro leaned forward in her chair. "Zandra?"

Lieutenant Zandra Taitt lifted both hands. "Geophysics has the deuterium refinery process fully at hand." She paused, as if searching for something else. "Oh. Ensign Kovar said we’d have a bumper crop of gamma plomeek soon. He and Setok treated the soil." 

"This is excruciating," Honigsberg said, but he laughed to take the edge off, and all around the table—with the exception of Commander Ro—he got smiles in return. 

Taitt laughed as well, and added. "There’s the theta radiation, which Seven picked up, but that’s all I’ve got."

"At this point, I’d be tempted to suggest we divert to check it out just because it’s something." Lieutenant Commander Veronica Stadi said. "It’s only slightly out of our way, and we can return to the path easily enough with our breadcrumbs." 

Honigsberg had to agree. They’d been dropping beacons behind them as they traveled through The Void—nothing more than little repeating subspace signals—to ensure they didn’t drift off vector given they had so little to work with beyond the galactic centre. He eyed Cavit and Ro, wondering if they’d give the word.

"I’m not opposed," Cavit said, which didn’t sound like a ringing endorsement. 

Ro didn’t agree or disagree either. Again. In many ways, since the whole thing with the Bajorans had happened, Honigsberg thought Ro seemed more like she’d been when she first came aboard Voyager. Aloof, a bit cold, and definitely not possessing any of that sly humour he’d only come to realize she had after a few rare glimpses. 

"Scott?" Ro said, turning to Lieutenant Scott Rollins. 

"Rapid Response Training is going well," Rollins said. "Turnout has been solid, and honestly, I’ve been surprised a few times over." He spread his hands. "I’d ask for more Holodeck time to run more scenarios with the teams, but I know how important it is for people to get their down time."

"Writing their holonovel is the only thing keeping Li-Paz, Cabot, and Ashmore sane," Lan said, holding up one hand. "Don’t take that from them, Scott." 

"Wouldn’t dream of it," Rollins said. 

Honigsberg considered that, and leaned forward. "Holosuites." 

"Pardon?" Cavit said.

"I know we’re trying not to run replicators for much more than the basics," Honigsberg said. "But what about converting some space into holosuites—it would take too much work, not to mention resources, to convert some cargo space into a holodeck, but immersive surroundings, smaller-scale programs…" He lifted one shoulder. "Just a random thought."

"Not a bad one," Lan said. "We could probably set up two or three single-person units in the cargo bays." 

Cavit nodded. "Work up a plan."

Honigsberg smiled.

"Anything from medical?" Fitzgerald asked Doctor Emmett Hall. 

The hologram shook his head. "Nothing beyond the usual minutia. For the first time since I was activated, I’m not chasing down crew for their routine medical exams, and myself, Kes, and Nurse T’Prena have caught up completely." He paused. "About the only thing of any concern I have to report is a rise in sleep aid use, but that’s to be expected given the circumstances, and we’re keeping an eye on everyone." 

Wow, Honigsberg thought. Even Emmett sounds bored. 

"Okay," Cavit said, with the tone of a man about to rip off a dermal strip. He turned to face Fitzgerald. "Crew morale."

Everyone sort of tensed, Honigsberg thought, and more to the point, no one looked at Ro. 

Fitzgerald, for his part, didn’t sugar-coat it, not that Honigsberg had expected him to. "The Dark is a strain, and it’s having an effect. Starfleet doesn’t exactly attract the quiet, sit-still type, and I wouldn’t call it a stretch to say the same about the Maquis."

Lan made a little snorting noise of agreement.

"The challenge I’m seeing is balancing action with a sense of purpose or challenge," Fitzgerald said. "The biggest successes we’ve seen are with the classes—the cadets and the Rapid Response training both—as well as Eru’s impromptu cooking group, the hockey league that’s sprung up in the holodeck…" He waved a hand. "We’ve got months to fill ahead of us—years, in total—and it can’t be busywork or drudgery—we’ve all sat on Bridge duty." 

Honigsberg groaned, definitely conceding that point, because those six hour shifts on the Bridge were awful. 

"Maybe we should follow Seven’s example and swap seats," Lan said, with a wry smile.

"Swap seats?" Honigsberg said, but Fitzgerald was nodding.

"That’s not a terrible idea—" When Fitzgerald seemed to realize Honigsberg—and the others—had no idea what he and Lan were talking about, he said, "Seven suggested some changes to the stations of the cadet group." He eyed Rollins. "Who’ve been your biggest surprises?"

Rollins didn’t even need to think about it. "Cir is a hand-to-hand savant—he’s on some of the higher-level Suus Mahna postures already. Val Canamar and Jim Magdaleno are amazing shots—Sveta is turning them into first-class snipers, frankly…" He paused, smiling. "I get what you’re saying."

"Cir’s a linguist, Canamar’s a transporter chief, and Magdaleno is a terraformer and geologist," Fitzgerald said. "But they’re finding new skills." 

"Along with those holosuites," Stadi said, leaning forward. "Could we rig up a flight simulator in the Shuttlebay?" She turned to Rollins. "You reminded me of when Eru asked for extra flying lessons when she was doing her cadet training. She’s a damned good pilot. Yareth, too. But they needed somewhere to learn that. We used the holodeck, obviously, but we don’t need a whole holodeck." 

"Definitely," Lan said. "You know, we could rig up a shuttle-pod, adjust the controls to match a class-two shuttle, and you’d never know the difference, if we program a viewscreen right." 

Honigsberg watched Fitzgerald smile, and found himself just as drawn in to the idea of helping Lan and Stadi come up with a flight simulator. It could be fun. More than that, it would be something to do. 

Then his gaze drifted to Commander Ro, who was simply watching, and he felt some of that excitement fizzle a bit. 

She’d barely added anything. Again.

Chapter Text

The Arboretum, with its six Kona trees, and multiple fruit and nut bushes as well as other plants in containers Lan should have probably bothered to learn the names of but hadn’t, was a favourite spot of her partner, Ensign Michael Murphy, even when it wasn’t full of people.

She preferred it this way, when there were only a few others around, though when she noticed two of the others included Crewman Atara Ram and Ensign Steven Niles, her mood took a bit of a turn for the maudlin. Niles had his arm around Atara, and they sat together at one of the couches set against the walls between some of the unnameable bushes, but the Kejal in her was already crafting a scene in her mind.

The broken man and his lover in a park, drawing what comfort they could from the life around them to fill the missing parts of his soul…

Ugh. Lan swallowed some of her tea. Stop it. 

"Kejal?" Murphy said, raising one eyebrow and squinting at her.

She lowered her mug, smiling in spite of herself. "Okay, you’re getting really, really good at that."  

"Something in the eyes," Murphy said, swirling one index finger in front of his face. "You look at the world differently when he’s speaking up. Rose-tinted glasses, maybe?" The little dent on his chin was darkening as the day went on—it always did as his five o’clock shadow showed up—and she reached out and rubbed her thumb against it. 

He pressed into the gesture, grinning enough for his faint dimples to show. 

"I’m not sure rose-coloured, though," she said, dropping her hand. "He could be romantic, sure, but he was more cynical than that—his voice tended to something bittersweet rather than sweet." 

"Especially the one about the architect," Murphy said, nodding.

Lan blinked, surprised. "You read his books?" 

"I’ve been meaning to for ages," Murphy said, chuckling and putting his own mug on the table they’d chosen at the furthest end of the Arboretum, by the large windows, but they’d both chosen to sit with her backs to the windows. She shifted to face her again, turning sideways in his seat, and said, "But I started a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t exactly had much work to do." 

Lan snorted, hearing that sentiment loud and clear. "You’re sweet."

Murphy took a deep breath, one large enough his chest rose visibly before falling.

Hm. "What’s wrong?" she said. 

"Oh…" His dark eyes flicked to where Niles and Atara were sitting, and back. "It’s nothing."

"Uh-huh," she said, in her best not-buying-it tone. She followed his gaze. "I wish I had answers, too."

"Answers…" His voice, soft and questioning, grew more certain once he saw she’d turned her attention to Atara and Niles as well. "Oh. Yes. If only…" He trailed off again.

"If only?" she said. Michael Murphy didn’t really do wistful, and she found herself a little intrigued but also somewhat worried seeing him like this. 

"I guess it’s just that I can’t help but think Ram would be doing better if he had, you know, something else to do." A hesitation had crept into his voice, which also wasn’t very typical. "Maybe it’d be easier to get a handle on his whole… uh… struggle?" He winced, like he wasn’t sure that was the right word.

"Crisis of faith," she said, though frankly struggle wasn’t a bad way to put it. 

"Right," Murphy said. 

"You’re not wrong," Lan said, after a moment’s thought on the subject. "I know Alex has been trying to get him as involved as possible in what little work there is to be done—the deuterium cells, for one—but when we’re stretching things as it is to cover six hour shifts…" She blew out a sigh. "We were talking about it at the briefing this morning—how we need something to do—the talent nights, Eru’s cooking classes, Rapid Response training with Scott and Cing’ta…"

"I don’t think I’m quite desperate enough for that last one yet," Murphy said.

Lan gave him a mocking, cool, superior look. "Ah yes, Starfleet science officers and their nonviolent ways." 

"It’s more about not showing how bad I am with a phaser, but… sure." Murphy lifted one shoulder. "Call it that."

"Well, if you can think of more things to do, don’t be shy," Lan said.

When utter silence fell at her statement, she turned to face him, and his expression looked somewhere between panicked and terrified.

"I can think of one thing," he said, swallowing hard.

"Michael?" she said.

"Well," Murphy said, meeting her gaze. "We could get married." 

Lan snorted, laughing out loud.

His face fell.

She stared.

"Wait," she said, holding up one hand. "Was… was that serious?" 

His expression shut down, his jaw shifted as he clenched his teeth, and he blinked twice. 

Oh shit.

*

Commander Ro Laren stepped onto the Bridge and paused. She did her best to cover for her surprise, got moving again almost right away, but she didn’t imagine for a second the steely-blue eyed man sitting at the Conn hadn’t noticed her hesitation. 

"Doctor," she said, taking the big chair. Stadi was already gone. They’d given up on the practice of official relieving given the circumstances, and they’d decided to stagger the shifts so each sitting Bridge officer also sat with two different Conn officers—anything to mix things up—but she hadn’t recalled seeing their ship’s counsellor on the pilot rotation.

Fitzgerald smiled, turning enough to make something adjacent to eye-contact, but not quite. "Believe it or not, I once took turns on helm duty for nearly half a year." 

Ro frowned, then realized the reference. "The undone timeline."

"Right," he turned back to the Conn. 

Silence fell. She tried to find her usual comfort with it. She’d brought a PADD—everyone who had Bridge Duty brought their reports, but even the reports these days were running thin, and all she had was Seven’s analysis of the theta radiation occluding their sensors—but she couldn’t quite focus on it.

Ahead of her, Doctor Jeff Fitzgerald held a perfectly upright posture, hands at rest on the console. 

Silent.

He’s doing this on purpose. She knew it, which should have granted her the ability to roll with it, to counter the move tactically on the basis of "I know what you’re doing" alone, but instead…

How did he move so little? When she’d been the chief navigation officer on the Enterprise-D, she’d never managed that stillness. Then again, the Galaxy-class starship had never had such precision in its conn, not the way Voyager did. Enterprise had explored and pushed forward, and Ro would always have a place for the ship in her heart, but when it came to grace?

Enterprise had nothing on Voyager.

But taking the conn had always been her comfort zone. Even on the Wellington, before… 

"You don’t often sigh." 

Ro flinched, got annoyed at herself for flinching, and then said, "You don’t often ambush people." She heard the combativeness in her voice, wished she’d had greater control.

Which is the whole problem, isn’t it Laren? The voice in her head, contrary and gruff, belonged to an older woman, and one Ro hadn’t known long. Ro Saral. It had been delivered, word-for-word, as a critique of Ro’s impatience at the pottery wheel, but it applied just as much right now. 

Fitzgerald turned in the conn chair, facing her. "With some crew, I’d start by saying 'I’m worried about you.'" 

Ro felt her entire body tensing up.

"But I’m not," he said.

She blinked. "You’re not?"

"Well." Fitzgerald lifted one shoulder. "Things aren’t ideal, by any means, but you’re handling it. You and Celes are handling it really well, all told, if you ask me." 

Ro stared at him, wondering if she was facing down some reverse psychology—tell her she was doing well so she’d admit she was struggling—but Fitzgerald wasn’t like that. He didn’t trick people. 

Well, except maybe Hirogen matriarchs. 

He offered a small nod, and turned back to the conn. 

This is ridiculous.

Ro Laren took a deep breath, held it, and then let it go carefully—she didn’t want to sigh again and earn commentary—then said, "Did I ever tell you about the Satarran incident?" 

Fitzgerald turned again. "I think you might have mentioned it in passing after what happened in the Nekrit Expanse with the cooperative, if I’m thinking of the right thing?"

She swallowed. "Right." Another time she wasn’t herself. She allowed herself a brief moment to remember Joph Cul, the Parein man who’d rescued her when she’d barely remembered her own name. 

Fitzgerald waited. She gathered her thoughts, then lifted the PADD. "I feel… occluded." 

Fitzgerald nodded slowly. "May I ask you a question?"

She nodded.

"How aware of the Prophets were you before the orb shard went dark?" She tried not to flinch at the question, and she thought maybe he’d seen her instinctive reaction anyway, because he added, "I ask because Tal said she hadn’t realized something was there, that she’d had something present inside her ever since Nechan—not until it was gone." 

Ro forced words out. "That’s not a bad description." She heard her own prevarication, but it was the best she could do—and that, once again, was the problem. And she needed to admit it to someone. She’d gotten close with Lan a few times, but then backed off, and with Stadi, it was too difficult to even allow herself to think about it, given she knew the Betazoid would feel every nuance of it. But maybe, with this man, so like—and also unlike, thankfully—Troi, she could just say it.  "I feel… like myself." 

Fitzgerald took a second with that. "What was it you said? It seems like you’re only capable of being vulnerable when you’re not yourself."

She nodded. 

"So, Ro Laren after Nechan wasn’t Ro Laren?" Fitzgerald said. "But she is now?"

"That Ro Laren—the one after Nechan—might have been made," Ro said, using the word from her vision from the same achronal alien entities who’d apparently decided to leave her—and the rest of the Bajorans on Voyager—high and dry. 

"Made?" Fitzgerald said. "Or maybe influenced? Or just added-to?" 

"In the vision," Ro said, already flailing at the thought of trying to describe what she’d experienced. "They showed me two versions of myself, two futures, I think—it’s hard to explain."

"I’ve read about Orb experiences," Fitzgerald nodded. "And I’ve had enough experience with temporal mechanics to understand the language issues. Say it however you can, we’ll untangle it later."

"Okay." She snorted, and inelegant but effective gage of her emotional state. "Ever since Nechan, I’ve had this idea—or, no, that’s not a strong enough word—I’ve had the certainty of one thing for sure." She met his gaze. "We get home." 

Fitzgerald exhaled. "Oh. Wow." 

Now it was her turn to be surprised. "The Captain didn’t tell you?" 

"You told him that?" Fitzgerald said, and she nodded. He shook his head, smiling. "He and I talk a lot, Laren, but he’d never betray a confidence. Especially about a spiritual experience." 

Ro couldn’t decide how to even begin to feel about the phrase 'a spiritual experience' so she pushed it to one side. "It was the commonality in what they showed me, even though they were showing me differently, twice over. They were both me, but…" She shook her head. "But either way, it was me, back home." She didn’t want to even mention that she’d been wearing higher ranking uniforms, especially not the admiral’s rank she’d seen. But there’d also been the voices, telling her one Ro Laren was, and the other Ro Laren was made. "I think maybe one of those options just… fell away. Went away. And it took some of that certainty with it, and left me feeling…" She shook her head. "I don’t want to say less, because it’s not the right word, but that’s the only one coming to mind."

He nodded. "I think I understand." 

She laughed—not with a great deal of humour—and said, "Then you’re doing better than I am."

"No," Fitzgerald said. "I’m not. You’re doing as well as anyone could be expected to do after losing a sense—and I think that’s maybe where I made a mistake at the beginning with all of you. We originally talked about how important faith was to your culture and your people, if not specifically you, but now I think framing it from a point of view of faith was the wrong idea." He lifted his good hand. "Would you believe Seven of Nine pointed out that what the Prophets provide to Bajor can’t quite fall under the term of faith because there’s measurable data of their involvement, which precludes the whole 'leap of faith' thing in the first place?"

Ro stared at him for a beat. "Is it wrong that my first thought is how much I’d like to introduce her to the Vedek Assembly and then sit back and watch?" 

Fitzgerald laughed, a deep, sudden laugh that made her smile—and prophets, but it felt good to smile—and then join him with a laugh of her own. Maybe not as deep as his, but a real laugh. 

I did laugh sometimes, before Nechan. She shook her head, smiling. I’ll laugh again, too. 

"Well, I’d—" Fitzgerald started, and then the Bridge rocked slightly beneath their feet, a gentle roll, and he turned back to the conn quickly, tapping in a series of commands with his good hand. "Our warp field is being disrupted."

"What?" Ro rose, and looked over his shoulder. The readings made no sense. "We’re losing power across the board." She jogged up to the Ops station, and even as she headed there, the lights above her began to dim.

*

"Of course I’m upset," Lan said, doing her best not to allow too much of Kejal’s affronted tone to take the lead. She and Murphy were both standing now, and he looked just as mad as she did, which made no sense, because he’s the one who’d started this. "You just suggested marrying me as a distraction." 

"That is not—" Murphy began, and then a hand dropped onto her shoulder, and Murphy’s dark eyes flicked past her and he clenched his jaw shut.

Lan turned. Niles and Atara had gotten all the way across the Arboretum without her noticing. Niles was the one holding her shoulder. Atara was looking at her with concern. 

"Maybe this is a discussion you two should have somewhere else?" Niles said. 

"A discussion would mean there’d be give and take," Murphy said, and Lan turned back to him, astounded. 

Where either Trill hell was this coming from? "What’s that supposed to mean?" she said.

"Sahreen," Atara said, and Lan snapped her gaze his way long enough to realize that there were about a half-dozen other people in the Arboretum, too right now—she saw Chano and Reskat, Sveta and Ennes; Cir, Canamar, Magdaleno… They must have finished one of their rapid response sessions.

"Fine," Murphy said, shaking his head. "Forget I—"

The lights went out. 

Lan frowned, and took out her untapped anger on a slap to her combadge. "Lan to Bridge." but before she’d even finished the request, the badge offered the flat, off-note of a failed connection. 

"Someone’s here." The voice was Cir’s. "Someone’s boarding the ship." 

"Anyone close to a beacon?" Lan said.

A second later, Sveta snapped one on—she must have already been on her way to the emergency kit before Lan had spoken. The single wrist beacon was enough for the rest of them to get moving, but Lan went right to Cir. 

"What are you picking up?" she said, then noticed his gaze had gone a little distant. He’s using the Chorus, she realized, waiting as more lights snapped on around them. Murphy handed her a wrist beacon, expression stony, and she took it, wondering exactly when they’d be able to get back to that disaster of an argument but also quite happy to have some sort of catastrophe to deal with instead.

"Power loss," Atara said from a side-console in the Arboretum, which was completely dark. He raised a hand to the venting, and shook his head after wiggling his fingers. "It’s not affecting life-support, though—air is still circulating."  

"Tricorder is picking up a dampening field," Canamar said.

"Arm yourselves," Niles said. 

Magdaleno handed Lan a phaser. 

"There." Cir pointed to the far corner, and all the wrist beacons turned in the same direction. 

The being—Lan barely had a glimpse—was a mostly dark red and black humanoid silhouette, though mottled, ridged, and striated with inky black markings, and she wouldn’t have seen it at all except the eyes reflected light the way many predatory creatures did. It hissed, flinching as if the light hurt it, and then leapt with an impressive speed. Someone—Sveta, Lan thought—got off a single phaser shot before it vanished into the shadows again, and their beams split up.

"Back to back," Niles said, and Lan moved into position to do so. Their beams played out.

"Set to stun," Lan said. "Cir? Anything?"

"He’s trying to hide from us," Cir said. "They all are… they’re afraid we’re here to hurt them but—there!" He gestured again, and as their beams found the humanoid, another phaser strike lashed out and struck the alien, this time from the middle of the Arboretum, and Lan turned, frowning, just in time to see Reskat appear out of thin air, one hand pressed to the centre of his chest. 

Right. He had that whole personal cloak implanted beneath his sternum thing. Handy.

"Got him," Reskat said. 

"Cir, do you have contact with anyone on the Bridge?" Lan said.

"No," Cir said. "The Chorus is spread throughout the ship, but we were all off-duty—this is happening elsewhere, though." He shifted his head. "Don’t let the aliens touch you. They can burn with a touch." 

Lan and Niles exchanged a glance. 

"Main Engineering," she said. It was the closest place they could try to get a handle on whatever was happening. 

*

"Sensors still say there’s nothing there," Fitzgerald said from the Conn.

Ro tapped in a series of commands on the Ops console, but as she watched, more systems went offline. Including all lighting, but not life support. 

"This is targeted," she said. "A dampening field, but I can’t locate the source." In the nearly-dark bridge, with only the panels giving them even a shred of light, she considered her options. "It’s not natural, or it would be affecting everything."

"Which means it’s most likely technological, and shorter-range," Fitzgerald said. "At least, I’m not up on any long-range dampening effects?"

"Exactly." Ro glanced up. "We’re fully stocked on thoron torpedoes, correct?" 

"As of last week," Fitzgerald said, with a hint of reluctance in his voice. "Dare I ask?"

"Thoron radiation plays havoc with sensors, but it does so in a way we know how to look at…" She crossed the Bridge to the Tactical station, and then glanced at him. "Keep an eye on thoron dispersal."

"Got it," Fitzgerald said.

Ro programmed in a rather atypical spread, then hit the launch sequence. As always, she felt as much as heard the torpedoes launching, and she glanced up at the black rectangle that was the viewscreen as she waited for the eight torpedoes to form the points of a cube around Voyager before—

They detonated, and for a brief moment against the white flares of light, she saw the outline of multiple vessels on the viewscreen. 

Three of them, in fact. 

She hit the red alert status, but nothing happened.

Chapter Text

Lieutenant Alexander Honigsberg slid his legs free from the Jeffries tube and slid out onto deck fourteen and into a crouch with as much dignity as he could muster, his wrist-beacon doing little against the darkness around him. 

"Great minds." 

Honigsberg yelped, and when he swung his flashlight at the Captain, Captain Aaron Cavit raised both hands and blinked in the sudden light. 

"Sorry," Cavit said, raising a hand to shield his eyes. "Didn’t mean to startle you."

"I hate jump scares," Honigsberg muttered, and then added, "no beacon?"

"Didn’t have one on me," Cavit said. "When we lost power I was on deck thirteen, so I’ve been using my tricorder." He held up the device, which—if you squinted a lot—probably could provide some light to work with.

"Let’s get a power cell plugged into the EPS," Honigsberg said. 

"Do you know what happened?" Cavit said, and they set out together to where the power cells had been set up in a series on the large, more open deck. 

"No," Honigsberg said. "But Susan is in Main Engineering, and if power isn’t back on already…" He glanced at Cavit. "Dampening field?"

"That was my thought, too," Cavit said, lifting his tricorder. "And readings are consistent. Here we are. If we can spike the EPS grid…" Cavit didn’t finish explaining, and Honigsberg didn’t need him to. If they flooded Voyager with power from the power cells, it would shift the frequency of the energy in question, and any dampening field should be countered.

Honigsberg grabbed the power lead off the first cell, and then frowned as something shifted out of the corner of his eye. "Did you see that?" 

They both turned in the direction he pointed. Darkness. Honigsberg swung his flashlight, but all that was revealed were rows of power cells.

"I don’t see anything, Alex." 

"Right…" Honigsberg shivered. Must have been his imagination, which he decided to consider fair in the circumstances. Cavit opened the access port, and Honigsberg pulled the lead forward, and connected it to the EPS grid just as the figment of his imagination leapt out from behind a power cell, and a flare of light—and heat—just barely missed his face thanks to Captain Cavit yanking him back.

*

"Emergency power is coming online," Fitzgerald said from the Conn. 

"Raising shields," Ro said, glancing up at the viewscreen. The flare was gone, but she didn’t for a second believe the aliens were gone. "Adjusting for the dampening field and…"

The lights went on again.

Ro cracked a wan smile of success, and then frowned as internal sensors came back online. "We’ve been boarded," she said. She tapped open a channel. "All hands, we have seventeen intruders on board, full tactical alert." She also hit the red alert again, and this time, it went off.

"Can we hail them?" Fitzgerald said. 

Ro tried. They didn’t respond.

"Lan to Bridge," Sahreen’s voice held an edge. "We stunned one of the intruders in the Arboretum; Cir let the Chorus know while comms were down, and there was another intruder in Astrometrics—Abol and Seven dealt with that one."

"Get the intruders to Sickbay," Fitzgerald said. 

Behind them, the door to the turbolift opened, and Rollins and Stadi arrived together.

"We’ve got three ships out there," Fitzgerald said, rising as Stadi got to him. "You can see them on the logs, but they’re all but cloaked again—the residual thorons might be useful for spotting them again."

"Thoron torpedoes," Stadi said, glancing at Ro before she slid into the Conn. "Nice trick."

"No response to hails," Rollins said, noting the open hail on the Tactical as Ro stepped aside for him. She was about to move to Ops when the turbolift opened again, and this time it was Captain Cavit and Lieutenant Honigsberg, both of whom looked a little worse for wear.

"There was one on deck fourteen," Cavit said, tugging at his sleeve where what looked like a burn went half-way up his forearm.

"Aaron," Fitzgerald was already by his side.

"They have some sort of glove-weapon," Cavit said. "It’s… hot." He winced as Fitzgerald touched his arm, and then aimed the rest of his information at Ro and Rollins. "They don’t like the light."

"I blinded it with this," Honigsberg tapped his wrist beacon. "Then we got the hell out of there before it could successfully melt my face off." He slid into the Ops station. "Power is mostly back online—we don’t have propulsion yet, that dampening field is messing with our warp geometry."

"Raising illumination on all decks and sending security teams to all the alien lifesigns," Rollins said. 

"They’re not answering hails," Ro said to Cavit.

"We need to get you to sickbay," Fitzgerald said to Cavit.

Cavit put his good hand on Fitztgerald’s shoulder, and Fitzgerald scowled, but didn’t press the point. "Those three ships, can we get a lock?"

"Just," Rollins said. "An educated guess at least."

"I think they’ve earned a warning shot," Cavit said. 

"Firing phasers," Rollins said. 

Three volleys of energy weapons responded, and Voyager rocked beneath their feet. 

"Shields down to sixty four percent," Rollins said. "At least they decloaked?"

Ro gave him a sardonic look. "Stadi?" she said.

"No engines yet, but I’m doing what I can with thrusters." 

"Who are these people?" Honigsberg said, then glanced down. "Damn it. They’re adjusting the dampening field…"

*

Li-Paz had exhaled in utter relief when the lights came up in Sickbay, though he didn’t loosen his grip on his phaser. 

One minute, he and Kes and Li-Nis had been having a discussion about Li-Nis’s role among the cadets—it truly made him so proud every time he saw her lean on that core of iron she seemed to have inside, one he couldn’t help but believe was the a refined version of the best of himself and Kes—and then the next, main power had faded, and their quarters had gone nearly completely dark.

Who am I in the dark? The thought had come immediately, and had been a visitor multiple times a day since they’d flown into the void the locals had called "The Dark" and as always he had no answer. 

Then Kes and Li-Nis had both shifted, their expressions doing that "I’m here and also not here" thing he’d long learned meant they were in contact with the Chorus, and that was how he’d learned they’d been boarded—thank you, Cir—and Kes and Li-Nis had decided they needed to be in Sickbay in case anyone was wounded. 

Because of course they did.

He’d grabbed his phaser, wrist-beacons for them all, and they’d made their way to Sickbay from their quarters—including a delightful climb up one deck via a Jeffries Tube ladder given the turbolifts were down—and while they’d not come across any of the alien intruders, Li-Nis had let him know that wasn’t the case in the Arboretum or Astrometrics, though in both cases, they’d apparently managed to subdue the interlopers.

Frankly, Li-Paz thought any alien foolish enough to decide to pop in unannounced on Seven of Nine and Abol Tay had it coming to them. 

Still, once they’d arrived in Sickbay—Rebecca Sullivan was there, though for obvious reasons Emmett was offline—Li-Paz had at least been relieved everything seemed okay. He’d kept his eye on the doors, phaser ready, while Sullivan, Li-Nis, and Kes started gathering what they’d need if any wounded showed up. 

"Maybe I should head down to Astrometrics?" Sullivan had just said, after Li-Nis had explained the situation there via the Chorus, and then the lights came up. 

This is who I am, Li-Paz thought. I’m a husband, a father, an engineer, and I will protect my family and my crew. And just like every other answer he’d had since some part of him had gone missing along with the Prophets from Atara Ram’s orb fragment, it felt… hollow. Off. Missing something.

The doors opened, and he raised his phaser but it was Seven of Nine arriving with Abol and…

Woah.

"Computer, activate Emergency Medical Hologram," Seven said, even as she aided Abol in carrying—well, more like dragging—the humanoid across the threshold. Li-Paz moved forward, helping as best he could, and Li-Nis took the other side of the humanoid alien’s legs and they got him up on a biobed as Emmett shimmered into being.

"What happened?" Emmett said. "I went offline and—oh. We have a guest."

"An intruder," Seven of Nine said in a flat voice. "This being attacked Crewman Tay and myself."

When most heads turned their way, Abol raised a hand. "We’re fine. I had most of the Chorus with me by then, so I told him to sleep." 

"And I stunned him," Seven of Nine added.

"We were thorough," Abol said, with a tiny smile.

"All hands, we have seventeen intruders on board, full tactical alert." Li-Paz grimaced at Ro’s announcement on ship’s comms.

"There’s something wrong with him," Li-Nis said, and Li-Paz glanced at his daughter, whose gaze had gone to the display above the biobed, which—now it was powered up again—was giving them readings. He looked, and though he’d come far since his early days on Voyager thanks to both First Aid training and being married to a doctor, what he saw there didn’t mean much to him.

Though, like his daughter, he definitely saw too many notations in the red.

"Have the Borg encountered anyone like him before, Seven?" Kes said, though her attention was also on the readout now.

"No," Seven of Nine said. "I am unfamiliar with this species."

The ship jolted beneath their feet, and Li-Paz exhaled. "We just took fire."

The lights began to dim again, just as the doors opened and Jim Magdaleno and Cir arrived, another alien held between them. 

Emmett flickered off, and Li-Paz braced for more darkness.

*

"I’m losing shields," Rollins said.

Ro looked at the viewscreen. If shields went down and these ships kept firing—

But they didn’t. Instead, as she watched, two of the vessels started to turn, and unless she was mistaken, it looked like a ship about to bolt. 

"They’re adjusting course," Stadi said.

"I’ve got transports in progress, I think," Honigsberg said from Ops. "Confirmed. The aliens are beaming off the ship—they’re retreating?"

The lights returned to normal a second time. 

"A new vessel inbound," Rollins said. 

"On screen," Cavit said.

Ro frowned at the ship that appeared—three spherical structures in a series seemed berthed beneath a larger superstructure that gave it a sharp, avian-like fore, but as a whole the vessel struck her as… rough. As a Maquis, her people had often resorted to repurposing vessels meant for freight or transport into something capable of taking the fight to Cardassia, but this ship’s trio of embedded warp/impulse exhausts at the rear, and what appeared to her to be multiple torpedo emplacements, looked more than willing to throw a punch.

The thought had barely occurred to her when the vessel lived up to her impression, firing a large sweep of torpedoes at the three vessels attacking Voyager, with bright explosions following as all three ships did their best to scramble away. 

"Apparently we have a rescuer," Cavit said. 

"Is it just me, or does that ship not scream knight-on-a-steed to anyone else?" Honigsberg said.

Ro couldn’t disagree.

"They’re hailing us," Rollins said.

"On screen," Cavit said, and a moment later, Honigsberg’s knight appeared, and Ro’s instincts flared again. 

The alien’s face, rounded and broad in facial features offering what might have been pleasant forehead ridges and particularly elegant nostrils on a wide nose, had the effect ruined by both grime and what looked to Ro to be some sores on the being’s forehead. His uniform seemed thick and well-lived in, and behind him, the surfaces Ro could spot were utilitarian and a shade or two removed from cleanliness as well. 

She didn’t make a habit of automatically assuming a lack of tidiness as a bad sign, but something in the man’s comportment, and the gaze…  

"I had to fire thirteen spatial charges to drive those ships off," he said, in a thick, annoyed voice. "I expect to be compensated."

I do not like you, Ro thought.

"We can do that," Cavit said, and he had his diplomat’s voice on. "I’m Captain Aaron Cavit of the Federation Starship Voyager."

"What are you doing in the middle of nowhere?" the alien said.

"That… might take some explaining," Cavit said. "If you’d like, we could beam you aboard, Mr…?"

"All right."

The signal cut out.

"You’re going to Sickbay," Fitzgerald said, and this time, there was no arguing. 

"Ro," Cavit said. "See what you can find out, would you?" 

"Aye Captain," she said, and let Cavit and Fitzgerald have the first turbolift. "Scott, you’re with me," she said, then nodded to Stadi. "You have the Bridge, Roni."

*

"The biofilters are showing theta radiation spikes," Ensign David Martin said, frowning at the transporter controls before looking back up at Ro and Rollins. 

"Put up a forcefield," Ro said, adding another check to her column of reasons this all felt off. She saw Rollins take a breath, frowning as the figure materialized behind the forcefield. In person, the man had even more presence—tall, stocky, and she imagined pungent would be added to the list were the forcefield not in place—and his uniform once again struck her as more utilitarian than anything else, bulky and protective. 

Protecting him from what?

"Welcome aboard," she said, once he’d fully materialized and had a bead on her and Rollins. "I’m Voyager’s first officer, Commander Ro Laren. This is our Tactical officer, Lieutenant Scott Rollins, and this is Ensign David Martin." She paused. "We had to put a forcefield up around you, which means we’ll have to settle for talking here."

"Did you know you’re giving off a lot of theta radiation?" Rollins said.

"Yes, yes," the man waved a hand. "My isolation suit. Don't be alarmed."

"We have protocols we follow," Ro said. "But like I said, we can talk here, mister…?" She trailed off. 

"Emck," the alien said. "Controller Emck. Malon export vessel, eleventh gradient."

Well, that was information without much in the way of detail. 

"Thank you for the assist earlier," Rollins said. 

Emck grunted. "I’d advise you to turn around immediately. There are more of those creatures ahead, thousands of vessels. They're almost impossible to detect. You won't survive another attack."

Confident of that, are you? Ro did her best to channel Aaron Cavit’s more diplomatic approach. "Unfortunately, home is across this void."

"Void," Emck chuckled. "It’s hardly that, not with all those creatures." He regarded Ro a beat, and it occurred to her, finally, what she thought she was seeing and why it was familiar. Emck was calculating. She wasn’t sure exactly what, but for some reason, it put her in mind of dealing with Ferengi. "But if you’re moving forward, then it appears you'll be coming with me."

"Sorry?" Rollins said. 

Emck grunted again. "There's a spatial vortex a few light years from here. It leads directly to the other side of the expanse." Another grunt. She was starting to think he used them as punctuation. "We've been using it for years."

Rollins regarded her. "If it gets us across The Dark, it’d also cut off two years." His skepticism, she imagined, likely came from the same place as hers: Dauntless. They’d been handed easy answers before, and usually it turned out the questions were more important.  

But right now…

"Thank you," Ro said. "I’m sure the Captain will follow you to that spatial vortex—he’s in Sickbay," she added, when the alien tilted his head in an unspoken question. "He’ll be fine," she said. Then, she asked the big question. "What is it you’re doing in The Dark?"

"Rescuing you, apparently," Emck said.

Nice evasion. Ro raised one hand, deciding on another tack. Maybe it was time to lean in to that Ferengi-like feeling about this man. "Which we appreciate, truly, and we’ll recompense you for the spatial torpedoes, of course—but rescuing ships can’t be profitable, what with there being almost none around." 

 "I’m on a transport mission," Emck said, then, in a change of topic Ro thought couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d fired off more of his torpedoes, he added, "My sensors tell me that two of the creatures are still aboard your ship."

"That’s right," Ro said. "Why do you ask?"

"Enough questions." Emck scowled at her, and she wondered if this was another facet this man had in common with Ferengi: misogyny. "Give me the creature and I'll take you to the vortex."

"Why would you want to take these beings?" Ro said. Beside her, Rollins crossed his arms.

"None of your concern," Emck said. 

"Mr. Emck," Ro said. "What kind of transport mission involves taking on prisoners?"

Emck stared at her, then grunted again—the folds on his nostrils flared—before he crossed his own arms over his chest, which made his protective uniform scratch against itself. "My ship will depart in two hours," he said. "Cooperate or stay behind. I won't be coming to your rescue when the creatures return." He faced Martin. "I’m finished here."

Ensign Martin turned Ro’s way, making it clear exactly who he did—and didn’t—answer to.

Good man. 

Ro nodded once, and Martin initiated transport again. Ro waited until he was gone to turn to Martin and ask, "How many people on that ship of his?"

Martin checked his sensors. "Nine."

"And yet they were willing to take on two prisoners?" Ro eyed Rollins, who shook his head, just as skeptical. 

"Let’s get to Sickbay," Ro said. "We can tell the Captain about our so-called knight, and maybe we can ask these creatures a few questions of our own."

*

Li-Paz had been doing his best to stay to the side and out of the way, letting Emmett, Kes, Li-Nis, and Sullivan work—T’Prena had arrived, too—but when Captain Cavit had seen what he was up to, he’d waved him over from the biobed where Sullivan was using a dermal regenerator on his forearm.  The Captain had shucked his uniform jacket and Sullivan had cut off the lower half of his mock-neck to get to the burns, which had looked pretty rough to Paz’s eye, and made him think of the scar he bore on his own arm.

"What have you got there, Paz?" Cavit’s voice 

"Hold still, Captain," Sullivan said, with a slight tone of recrimination. "Or I’ll tell Doctor Fitzgerald to come back."

"Sorry," Cavit said, offering a rather contrite chuckle, Li-Paz thought, as Li-Paz joined them. "I’ll be good."

"Hm," Sullivan said. 

Li-Paz held up the glove—which wasn’t just a glove—and said. "This is how they burned you, I think." He’d been scanning it since Kes had allowed him to take it off one of the two aliens. One was in the main surgical bay, and the other on the first biobed, and Kes and Li-Nis were working on one while Emmett and T’Prena looked after the other.

Neither appeared to be doing well. 

Cavit used his good hand to take the glove from Li-Paz. It was hard to see in the dim light of Sickbay—Emmett had turned down the lights once he’d realized the aliens found it painful, even stunned unconscious and with their eyes closed—but Cavit turned it over. "These nodes?"

"Yes," Li-Paz said. "The glove itself is insulated, but when triggered, they get hot."

"As evidenced here," Sullivan said, still working the dermal regenerator over the burn.

"What’s interesting to me is I think it’s chemically powered," Li-Paz said. "Both the heat and the regulators seem to work via chemical batteries—and they look rechargeable to me. It’s not overly complex, but it works." 

Cavit nodded, and then all three of them turned when the doors to Sickbay opened, and Ro and Rollins arrived. Both hesitated at the threshold.

"They turned down the lights for our guests," Cavit said.

"Ah," Rollins said, and he and Ro closed the last of the distance. 

Li-Paz made room, but stayed when Cavit handed him the glove back. 

"The patients are extremely photosensitive," Emmett said, coming out of the surgical suite. "From what I can tell these aliens may be indigenous to The Dark. Both their physiology has evolved to survive in complete darkness." 

"Dakala," Cavit said.

"Sir?" Li-Paz said. 

"A rogue planet that evolved life—it was geothermally active enough that even though it had no star, it was warm enough. Chemosynthesis." He nodded at Li-Paz’s glove. "A planet somewhere in the void with similar conditions might be where these aliens came from."

"If they hate the light, it would explain why their first move was to dampen our power," Rollins said.

"Are they conscious?" Ro said. "I’d like to know why they attacked us."

"I’d rather not wake them, Commander," Kes said, joining them. "At first we thought they were having a bad reaction to being stunned, but it wasn’t being phasered that’s the problem. They’re dying."

Li-Paz blinked. Dying?

"Of what?" Rollins said. 

"Theta radiation poisoning," Emmett said. "In both cases, every organ is degrading at the cellular level."

"Can we do anything for them?" Cavit said, turning to face Kes and then aiming another apologetic glance at Sullivan when she gently tugged him back toward her by the elbow. She went back to work, and Li-Paz saw the answer in Kes’s eyes, dim lighting or no, before she spoke.

"No, Captain," Kes said.

"They’re in the final stages of cellular collapse," Emmett said. "My guess is they’ve been exposed to it over a long period. There's nothing we can do."

"Theta radiation," Ro said. "The commander of the vessel that came to our rescue was putting out theta radiation, too—he said it was nothing to be concerned with, that it was his protective suit, but he had visible skin lesions. They could have been radiation burns."

"We need to talk to these people," Cavit said.

Emmett exhaled, exchanging a glance with Kes, who bit her bottom lip. Li-Paz knew that look, too. Kes didn’t want to do anything to impede their patients recovery, but then again, if the patients were dying…

"Your patient or mine?" Emmett said.

"Mine," Kes said. 

Cavit glanced at Sullivan, who finished one last swipe of his forearm with the regenerator and said, "You’ll still need some dermgel."

"I’ll be right back," Cavit said.

Li-Paz watched him slide off the biobed, and stood back as he passed by to talk to the alien. He turned to Sullivan, and caught her eying him appraisingly. 

"You don’t normally hang out here this much," she said, lowering her voice to a near whisper.

"Wanted to stick close to Kes and Nis," he said. "Though I should probably report to Main Engineering even if I’m off-duty. See if they need any extra help with repairs." He didn’t move, though. 

Sullivan patted his shoulder. 

*

Ro regarded the alien as its eyes fluttered open, though the inky-black orbs were somewhat disquieting. Between the eyes, the mottling of his skin, and the skin-tight clothes, all mostly black, she found herself conjuring a sense of wariness, on some instinctual level. Things that evolved to be deadly in the dark were to be avoided.

"Hello," Cavit said, soft-spoken. "I’m Captain Aaron Cavit of the Federation Starship Voyager."

The alien blinked twice, and even on its hard-to-read features, she knew that look. That was the look of a being that hadn’t encountered a universal translator before. "You are allied with the Malon," the alien whispered.

It wasn’t a question. 

"No," Cavit said, exchanging a glance with Ro. "We’re not." 

"They will want me," the alien said.

Cavit frowned, and Ro nodded. "Controller Emck said he’d take us to a spatial vortex—a way out of The Dark, Captain—if we gave him these two."

"We made it clear that wasn’t going to happen," Rollins added.

The alien rolled its head on the pillow to look at Rollins. "You’re not?"

"Of course not," Rollins said, looking to Ro and Cavit. 

"Are your two species at war?" Ro said, wondering where the hostility between the two had come from. 

"No." The alien winced, choking and coughing, and Kes stepped up, pressing a hypo to its neck, but her expression told Ro this would be—at best—a temporary relief. Still, the alien’s breathing did seem to improve. At least a bit.

"Their ships are poison," the alien said.  

"The theta radiation?" Ro guessed.

"They're killing us," the alien said.

"Why?" Rollins said. "What do they want from you?"

"Nothing," the alien’s voice was growing rough again, and it coughed lightly.

"I’m not following," Cavit said. "The Malon haven’t ever reached out to your people?"

"I’m sorry." The alien’s hand reached up and weakly took Cavit’s hand. "We were ignorant. We attacked you. Forgive us."

Ro had heard more than one Maquis speak like this. The alien knew he was dying. He wanted to make things right first. She clenched her fists, swallowed, and did her best not to let any of her anger show. 

"Forgiven," Cavit said, wrapping his hand around the alien’s. 

"The Malon are killing your people," Ro said. "But they’ve never said why?"

"They're poisoning our space." The alien coughed, a deeper sound this time, and wetter. "We don't know why." He descended into further coughing, and Kes and Emmett moved together as one, Emmett using a hypo while Kes held her scanner over the alien’s chest.

"He's in respiratory distress," Kes said. 

"We need to get him back to his people," Emmett said. "Both of them. They might know how to treat them."

"I will show you how," the alien said around another wheezing cough.

Ro was about to ask Kes to get a PADD, but then Li-Paz was there, handing over one silently, already called up with Voyager’s position—not that there was much more to work with other than radiation readings and their own breadcrumbs. But the alien took it, and started tapping on the screen. 

"My people," he said, passing it back.

"Take that to Stadi," Ro said.

Li-Paz nodded and left. 

The alien’s eyes closed.

"I’ll be back on the Bridge as soon as I can, but lay in a course for their people," Cavit said, once they’d all stepped aside. "I promised Rebecca I’d get some dermagel first."

"Will do," Ro said, and she and Rollins left together. 

"If they use their dampening field again—" Rollins started, once they were in the corridor. 

"I think they’re the victims here, not the offenders," Ro said, but she nodded. "Have Alex and Sahreen see if they can come up with a countermeasure or two. But…" She shook her head as they stepped into the turbolift and Rollins said "Bridge." "Why do you think Emck wanted them? Can you think of a single good reason?"

"No," Rollins said. 

"Exactly." Ro considered options as they rode to the Bridge, and just before the turbolift arrived, she said, "You said they had nine people on board?" 

"That’s right."

"Hm." 

*

Lan opened the access panel she’d been looking for on deck five and ran her tricorder scan before nodding to herself. She tapped her combadge. "Lan to Main Engineering. You were right Alex, the blown relay is on deck five. I’m replacing it now."

"Great." Honigsberg’s voice held a measure of humour. "Remember when we were complaining about having nothing to do?"

"Never tempt the universe," Lan said, and tapped her badge to cut off the channel after Honigsberg’s laughed had finished.

But also because Ensign Michael Murphy was approaching, and she’d pretty much known this was going to happen. That he had an engineering kit slung over one shoulder only added to the sense of impending doom. 

"Hi," she said warily.

He scoffed, but managed a "Hi" of his own. 

Awkward. She cleared her throat. "I’m not avoiding you," she started, which was a total bald-faced lie, and he just looked at her, and she knew she wasn’t going to get anywhere with that particular line of excuse. "There’s repairs to be done," she said, deciding to just state a fact instead.

"I noticed," Murphy slung the kit off his shoulder. "I’m rated high enough to help you." He handed her a replacement relay bridge. 

Okay, then. She took it, and used her other hand to disengage the power flow through this particular juncture. She popped the burned out relay bridge, and passed it back to him. 

He took it. Silently.

She got as far as putting in the new relay bridge before she turned and faced him dead on, and found him staring right back at her.

"I really don’t know what to say," she said.

"You don’t?" Murphy said. "Because 'I’m sorry' springs to mind as an option." 

She winced. "You caught me off guard," she said.

"That wasn’t 'I’m sorry,'" Murphy said, and now he just sounded… sad. "That was 'It’s your fault.'" 

Lan blew out a breath. "I am sorry," she said. "It felt—to me—like…" She wished she had better words. One of her previous hosts had been a damn author, how could she not have words?

"I’ve been carrying the ring around since the station," Murphy said. 

She stared at him, even less words coming to mind now. "What?" 

"I was going to propose on the station, before we entered The Dark," Murphy said, swallowing once. "I even had a whole speech about how you’re my light." A wetness in his eyes told her just how much he meant everything he was saying, and also made her feel about three microns high. "But then Ram…" He shook his head. "The point is," he cleared his throat. "At no point was this about a distraction, or giving us something to do." He sighed. "I love you. I want to marry you. If you don’t want to marry me, that’s okay, but if you think I only asked because I was bored—"

Yeah, she didn’t have words. 

Instead, she grabbed his uniform, yanked him in, and kissed him. 

*

"We’re at the co-ordinates," Stadi said. 

Ro glanced at Lan, who’d arrived to take Ops with a kind of jumpy energy Ro couldn’t put her finger on, but seemed sharp now. "Anything?"

"Nothing on sensors, but with their cloaks…" Lan lifted one shoulder. 

"Shields, Captain?" Rollins said.

"Let’s not be overtly defensive," Cavit said, and Ro did her best to swallow the urge to agree with Rollins, even if she did think they weren’t naturally aggressive. "But maybe we need to be introduced." Cavit leaned forward in his chair. "Bridge to Sickbay."

"Go ahead, Captain," Kes said.

"Kes, we’re at the co-ordinates your patient provided, but no one seems to be here." 

*

The alien lifted a hand weakly. "They're here, but I must tell them you are a friend. Your communications system?" 

Kes brought over a PADD and interfaced it with the comms system via Sickbay. Emmett gave her a small nod, and she handed the PADD to the alien. 

*

"Photonic surges," Lan said. "Eight of them… we’re surrounded." 

Ro eyed the viewscreen, and sure enough, vessels just like the ones she’d glimpsed via the thoron torpedoes were out there, forming a fairly tight box around Voyager. 

"I’ve got twelve more approaching," Rollins said.

"Okay," Cavit said, rising from his chair. "Let’s open a dialog."

"Captain," Emmett’s voice came over the still-open channel from Sickbay. "I took the liberty of a bioscan of the closest vessel."

Ro raised an eyebrow at Cavit, and Cavit sighed. "And?"

"Every one of them seems to be suffering from theta radiation exposure." 

"He’s right," Lan said. "I’m seeing it on all eight ships."

Cavit nodded at Rollins. "Hail them."

"Hailing."

Nothing happened.

"I will tell them, Captain," came the weak voice over the channel. "They think you won’t listen. Like the Malon. We told them they are killing us. They don’t listen." A cough. "We tried to stop them. They're too strong." 

Ro felt her hands curling into a fist again. 

"Captain," Rollins said. "The closest ship has initiated a transporter lock on both aliens in sickbay." The unspoken question of shields hung in the air, and Ro glanced at Cavit.

"Tell them we’ll do what we can," Cavit said. 

"Thank you." The alien’s voice deepened with emotion. "Your ship is powerful, your people resourceful. Your help is the only way we’ll survive. We’re not strong enough to stop the Malon."

Rollins’s station trilled, and he looked up. "They’ve been transported off." 

On the viewscreen, Ro watched the vessels vanish again.

"They’ve cloaked," Lan said.

"How do we help them?" Stadi said, turning in her chair.

"We talk to the Malon," Cavit said.

Ro took a breath, and considered just how successful she thought diplomacy might be. Then she started on Plan B.

Chapter Text

"You wanted to see us?" Cavit said. Ro followed him into Astrometrics, where Lieutenant Zandra Taitt and Seven of Nine stood side-by-side at the upper control panel, and on the large screen above them, the Malon vessel appeared.

Ro frowned. It was venting green particulates from multiple nodules, releasing whatever was in those three large tanks into space. 

"We’ve got one of the answers for you," Taitt said. "We know what the poison the aliens were talking about is."

"The vessel is ejecting massive quantities of contaminated antimatter," Seven said.

Ro only realized her hands had curled into fists when her palms started to ache from the pressure, and forced herself to relax them again.

"Those spherical cargo holds are loaded with it," Taitt said. 

"Can you get me an analysis of the antimatter?" Cavit said, stepping up to join them. "I’d like to know exactly what we’re seeing here."

Ro didn’t. She couldn’t have lifted a leg if she’d been begged to. 

I know what I’m seeing. Before she’d gotten to the refugee colony, she’d seen this before. Cardassians, dumping whatever byproducts they made, however toxic they might be, wherever it was easiest to do so. Ruining Bajor while they stripped it of anything of value. 

A spectral analysis spread across the lower half of the display, and Cavit exhaled. "It’s waste." 

"This is the source of the theta radiation," Seven of Nine said.

"Let’s go talk to him," Cavit said, nodding back at Ro.

"He won’t listen," she said.

Cavit balked at that, pausing half-way down to the lower level. "We can try," he said. 

She managed to make herself nod, but she saw his pale blue eyes flick back and forth, trying to read her expression. He didn’t say anything more until they were in the tubolift.

"You’re angry," he said.

"Yes." She wasn’t going to lie to him. "I am."

"Should I be worried?" he said.

She managed to breathe in, to hold it, and to release without clenching her fists again. Then she faced the Captain, and considered her words carefully. "I don’t think I’m overreacting, and I don’t think I’m misjudging him. I think we need to consider contingencies."

He nodded slowly. "Okay. I’m still going to try to talk to the man."

She couldn’t help the small smile—humans—and it seemed to break the tension between them. 

Cavit leaned against the turbolift wall. "I’m not blind to his callousness. I’m just hoping for a diplomatic solution." The turbolift opened on the Bridge, and he glanced at her before they stepped out. "But go ahead and put together a contingency."

She’d already started, but she nodded.

"Captain," Stadi rose from the big chair, pausing as her gaze landed on the two of them. "Ah. You know about the contaminated antimatter."

"We do," Cavit said. "Scott, are we in communications range or is the theta radiation blocking us?"

"We’re close enough for visual," Rollins said. 

"Hail the Malon vessel, would you?"

"Hailing," Rollins said. 

"Captain," Emck appeared on the viewscreen. "You've decided to join us. Send the creatures to my—"

"I have questions," Cavit said, cutting the man off. "Also I’m afraid the aliens aren’t with us any more." He delivered the last with a gravity that made Ro fight to control her expression. It was a good play. "They were dosed with lethal levels of theta radiation," Cavit added, underscoring the lie he wasn’t actually saying, just heavily inferring. 

Emck stared at them. "I see." That was it. Just I see. No emotional impact, beyond a vague annoyance. 

Ro flinched. The tone, the expression. No, she had even less doubts now. This Malon used the aliens as workers. Just like the Cardassians used the Bajorans. 

Until they dropped.

"This transport mission you mentioned. Your mission," Cavit said. "I take it that’s what we’re seeing now?"

"This is none of your concern," Emck said. 

"The theta radiation levels on your ship might impede the torpedoes we were planning to replace for you," Ro said, and she caught Cavit’s slightly-shifted stance, but he didn’t otherwise react to her interruption. "It would be a waste of resources and time both if our recompense didn’t function."

"I see," Emck said, and now he sounded just a trace less affronted. 

"Are the radiation levels constant?" Cavit said, picking up her thread and doing a much better job at sounding concerned on Emck’s behalf than she had. "You’re dispersing your antimatter waste here, so you know it’s dangerous." He paused. "To every lifeform, not just yourselves."

"My civilisation produces over six billion isotons of industrial by-product every day," Emck said, returning to the casual dismissal Ro had found so very Cadassian-like. "We attempt to find less impactful regions for dispersal. This region is a perfect disposal site."

"There are living beings here, Mr. Emck," Cavit said, as though reminding the man. "I understand how convenient that spatial vortex must be, but now that you know a species calls this area of space home—"

"One species," Emck said, waving a hand.

"One is more than enough," Cavit said, but Ro saw the words didn’t register on the alien’s face, and when Cavit spread his hands, she knew he’d seen the same thing. "Look, Mr. Emck, what if you had no waste to deal with?" 

"What?" That got his attention. 

"The Federation uses anti-matter—has done for centuries, in fact—but thanks to cross-species technological advances, we know how to purify all reactants—no toxic waste." 

"None?" Emck said.

"We can show you how to do it," Cavit said. "Teach your engineers on the other side of that vortex—if you can control antimatter technology you already have the means to do so without creating the toxic byproducts, I assure you."

"Show me," Emck said, barely pausing to take in what Cavit had said. "Now."

"We’ll transport you over," Cavit said. "If you don’t mind a decontamination process as well before we start?"

Emck waved a hand, annoyed, but said, "Very well."

The screen returned to the view of the transport, and the venting streams of toxic antimatter waste. He hadn’t stopped, Ro noted. 

"That seemed too easy," Cavit said, and the admission surprised her. He crossed his arms, and turned to face her. "I’ll walk him through the tech with Alex. Have Taitt and Seven scan the vortex—I’d like not be beholden to Emck if we don’t have to be."

"Aye, Captain," Ro said, glancing at Lan, who relayed the request down to Astrometrics. 

"And Ro?" Cavit said.

She turned back to him.

"Go ahead with your Plan B," he said. "Just in case."

"Aye, Captain." He hadn’t asked her what it was, and in truth she’d only gotten the basics partially gathered in mind, but she noted he was trusting her judgement. 

She wished she could. 

Cavit left the Bridge, and she walked up to the Conn. "You were quiet," she said, joining Stadi and speaking softly. 

"You’re not wrong," Stadi said, her black-irised eyes flicking up to Ro from her chair. "He’s not eager to get clean antimatter technology from us. Quite the opposite. He hopes we’re lying about it."

"Why?" Ro said, frustrated. 

"It threatens him," Stadi said, shaking her head. "I don’t know why. But I will say that’s the first thing I’ve felt him respond to. Not empathy, not concern. A personal threat."

"Good to know," Ro said, and her threads of a plan began to weave. 

She headed to Tactical. She’d need some of Scott’s people.

*

"Thought I’d find you here." 

Cir looked up to see Crewman Chano arriving, and—unsurprisingly—that the Orion security officer’s greeting was for Reskat. The Ramuran man had been helping Doug Bronowski and Jeta with the early Gamma plomeek harvesting, with two baskets of the ripe red fruit already gathered at their feet. 

"Everything okay?" Reskat said, rising and wiping his hands on his smock. Cir wondered if the Ramuran man would ever move past his tendency to worry, and thought perhaps it was too ingrained in him after spending a year on the run. 

When Reskat had first come aboard Voyager, he’d been hesitant, shy, and reticent to be noticed in any way, even though he’d been running to find somewhere he could live free of his people’s rule. When that reality had come to pass, Reskat had, at first, stuck very close to the Ocampa who’d been the ones who’d centrally helped him—spending a great deal of his time here, in the Gardens, with Cir himself, and Eru, Gara, Daggin, Setok, and the kids—but often growing a little shyer whenever Doug joined them. 

Gara had been the one to realize Reskat liked being around telepaths. Telepaths had saved him. Telepaths could sense tracers—though his worry that another tracer might someday come for him had faded completely once they’d entered The Dark—and so telepaths had become a comfort of a sort for him.

Until Chano had taken on that role almost entirely. Reskat still came to the Gardens whenever he wasn’t training with Doctor Fitzgerald and Lieutenant Cing’ta or Lieutenant Rollins, but his social circle of the Ocampa had shifted to more occasional times with them. Cir thought they made a solid pair, frankly. Chano’s confidence and skill at infiltration—one he was sharing with Rollins’s class, which included Cir—made for an elegant counterpoint with Reskat’s quieter, more subtle ways of staying unnoticed and overlooked. The two often stymied Rollins’s entire training group when they worked together to create infiltration programs where the others were meant to find them.

Or, as Crewman Sveta put it, "You’ve never played Hide & Seek until you go up against Reskat and Chano." 

"Commander Ro and Lieutenant Rollins want your input on something," Chano said, smiling at the group, most of whom had paused in their work to watch the two interact. 

"Oh," Reskat said, straightening and undoing his smock. Bronowski took it from him, and Reskat left with Chano. This close to the other Ocampa, Cir’s own telepathic senses were sharpened, even when he didn’t intend them to be, so he picked up three things.

One, Chano was eager to get to work with Reskat.

Two, Doug Bronowski wasn’t sorry to be alone again with Jeta picking Gamma plomeek.

Three, Jeta had noticed Doug’s attention, and didn’t mind one bit.

Oh. Well, his quietest daughter was getting older. And he did find Doug Bronowski to be a stable, calm sort of man. He’d just assumed Jeta might gravitate to someone outgoing and exuberant, as he’d done when he’d bonded with Eru. Then again, perhaps pairings didn’t always have to be point-counterpoint. 

Eru gave him a winsome little smile, and he returned it. 

*

After nearly an hour, Cavit was starting to pick up some of Ro’s pessimism about Controller Emck. 

"The residual anti-matter gets processed through the transkinetic chamber," Honigsberg was explaining the process with the diagrams on one the Engineering Command Console. "And that’s where it's broken down on the subatomic level."

"What about the theta radiation?" Emck said, and once again Cavit thought the Malon’s tone was only surface-level interested. Theoretical in a way that didn’t align with someone being handed a solution to what had to be a major problem for his species. 

Why doesn’t he care?

He decided to answer the question for Honigsberg. "Radiometric converters," Cavit said. "The theta radiation is absorbed—" He tapped the monitor to bring up the converters, and showed their processing cycle. "—and recycled into a useable form of energy. It’s partly how we power our life support system, and our replication technology." 

"We don't have this kind of conversion technology," Emck said.

"But you do have plasma manifolds," Honigsberg said. He tapped in a few commands of his own. "Your plasma manifolds do pretty much the same thing with plasma energy and radiation. The principle is the same, applied differently." Honigsberg offered a smile to Emck.

Emck didn’t return it. 

"Is it the time scale that’s daunting?" Cavit said, hoping he had the answer even though he doubted it. "Refitting power systems is time consuming, and I understand this is likely to take months to accomplish, depending on how many other ships like yours are out there."

"No," Emck said. "Though you are right—it would take weeks to do this to my ship, to all the ships…"

"I’d be willing to provide you with converters," Cavit said. "It’s easier to work with a functional model, rather than just schematics."

Emck stared at him, and Cavit didn’t know why, but he had the feeling he’d just stepped in exactly the wrong direction.

"It’d be more useful than those spatial torpedoes we sent you," Honigsberg said. "You wouldn’t have to come here at all—no reason to defend yourself from the natives if you have no need of poisoning them."

Emck barely turned Honigsberg’s way.

What am I missing? Cavit thought. 

"Ingenious design," Emck said finally, but again without any signs of being happy about it. "Our engineers would be pleased. This would solve a lot of problems on my world." He paused, reached forward, and tapped the table, shutting off all the displays. "Unfortunately, it would also put me out of business."

"Pardon?" Cavit said, with a sinking feeling tugging at the centre of his chest. 

"Your technology would throw the waste export industry into chaos. Before long, I'd be obsolete." Emck’s voice hardened. "I came here hoping your claims were exaggerated, but I can see they're not. You can keep your solution."

"You’d rather keep hauling toxic waste than not have toxic waste destroying whole swaths of the galaxy?" Honigsberg’s incredulousness mirrored Cavit’s own. "You’d rather keep killing an entire species?"

"Alex," Cavit said, though he completely agreed. "Mr. Emck, look. I can’t claim to understand your culture or your own personal situation or that of your crew, but surely this technology, which you said would be of value… If you brought it back to your people—"

"The moment I installed it somewhere other than my own ship, the valve would be opened and my advantage would be lost," Emck said. "Others would copy the technology, and my value would vanish. Right now, I have an advantage no one else has. The vortex. No one knows about it except me and my crew. By ejecting my cargo here I cut expenses in half. I won't sacrifice that."

"But you will sacrifice the aliens who live here?" Cavit said.

"This void is large," Emck said. "They could simply move elsewhere." 

They stared at each other. 

"Thank you for this demonstration," Emck said. "I suggest you follow me through the vortex when we leave." 

"Mr. Emck, that would be tacit agreement of just letting you go on killing these people," Cavit said.

"Then you can continue your journey among those creatures and whatever else might be in this void for the next two years. Follow me or do not," Emck said. "You certainly can’t stop me. You've scanned my vessel. You've seen my fire power. You wouldn't survive ten seconds in a conflict with me."

Cavit exhaled, holding on to his composure with more effort than he’d care to admit. "We’ll send you back to your ship." He nodded to Crewman Lang, the burly security guard Rollins had assigned to stick with Emck, and said, "Take him back to the transporter room, Lang."

"Aye, Captain," Lang said.

Emck snorted once, then left. 

"What the hell is wrong with him?" Honigsberg said, the moment the man was out of earshot.

"Expenses." Cavit tried not to spit the word, but his disgust came through loud and clear. 

Wait. Expenses. 

Cavit tapped his combadge. "Cavit to Kol." 

Honigsberg blinked at him in surprise, but Cavit thought the Ferengi man’s voice was the more startled on the other end of the channel.

"Yes, Captain?"

"I need some insight into profit-driven societies," Cavit said. "Can we chat in the Briefing Room?" 

Honigsberg had tilted his head now, a half-smile in place.

"I’m on my way, Captain," Kol said.

"Oh, this should be fun," Honigsberg said.

*

The Senior Officers—and a single Ferengi in his cadet-gold—had gathered around the table. Cavit stood, arms crossed, beside the main display. "Let’s start with the spatial vortex," he said. "Given that’s the singular sticking point with Emck, can we take it out of play?"

Ro wondered how easy that would be without dealing with Emck’s armament, but she waited to hear Taitt’s answer.

"We can," Taitt said. "But only from this side—the spatial substructures we can get clear readings on through the radiation between us and it are consistent with a what we’d call a subspace funnel rather than a vortex."

"Meaning the other end is too widely dispersed in subspace to disrupt," Stadi said. 

"Exactly," Taitt said. "It’s not a wormhole, and while it will erode in time, we can speed that up to an instant collapse with an appropriately attenuated torpedo. Seven and Abol are working with Sina right now to get a thoron torpedo ready." 

Everyone looked at her, and Cavit raised an eyebrow.

"Seemed prudent to have the option ready rather than just offer a theoretical," Taitt said. 

"The Science Officer who blew up the Borg, everybody," Honigsberg said softly, and Taitt rather pointedly didn’t acknowledge the comment, though Rollins grinned in her direction.

"So," Fitzgerald said. "If that’s our plan, it means two more years in The Dark." When everyone turned his way, he held up on hand. "I’m not opposed. We can’t allow Emck to keep toxifying local space, I’m just pointing out what it means. Two years is a small price to pay to save a species." 

"Hopefully they can recover from the damage already done," Emmett said. "But our former guests did seem convinced that stopping the Malon would save them."

"We’ve certainly paid more to do the same once before," Cavit said, with just a trace of regret, and she realized he meant the Ocampa, and allowing the Caretaker’s Array to self-destruct.

"Still the right choice," Fitzgerald said.

"We’ll call it Plan C," Cavit said. 

"What’s the payload on that torpedo?" Stadi said.

"Ballpark numbers were somewhere around one-hundred and fifty percent of normal," Taitt said. "I can get you precise numbers once Seven and Sina are done calibrating the detonator." 

"Stadi?" Ro said.

"What’s the saying?" She turned to Cavit. "Have our cupcake and also eat it?"

"Close enough," he smiled. "What’s your plan?"

"Our recent clash with The Dark aliens notwithstanding, Voyager was in the best shape she’d been in since we got here." Stadi lifted one hand. "Given we know the exact payload of the torpedo, and we can time it perfectly—surely we could adjust our shields to handle a close-range detonation."

Ro found herself smiling. "You want to outrun the torpedo shockwave through the vortex."

"Technically, I want to let the shockwave give us a helping shove as well, but… yes." Stadi didn’t blink at the suggestion, which broke more propulsion, tactical, and safety regulations than Ro could recall in the moment. 

"Zandra wants to blow things up, Roni wants to surfboard a shockwave…" Honigsberg leaned back in his seat. "I blame you two." He aimed a finger at Ro and Lan, waving it back and forth. "Bad influences."

Lan lifted one shoulder. "It’s doable." 

"Consider Plan C amended," Cavit said, nodding to Rollins and Stadi. "Get on those adjustments once we’re done."

They both nodded. 

"If this is plan C," Lan said. "What’s Plan A?" She paused. "Also Plan B?" 

"Mr. Kol here gave us Plan A," Cavit said, gesturing to the Ferengi, who looked like he wanted to sink into his seat and through the floor. Ro hadn’t dealt with Kol much—she’d had a couple of run-ins with the man’s late superior, Dr. Arridor, and they’d always been unpleasant—but Kol, she had to admit, had mostly seemed to want to make himself useful and also to stay out of her way. 

She’d appreciated both. 

"Employee dissatisfaction," Kol said. 

"Pardon?" Emmett said.

Kol leaned forward, and as he explained, Ro thought they might not need her plan after all.

So why did that thought make her feel so… uneasy?

*

After the meeting broke up, Lan caught Ro’s eye and held back. For half a moment, she thought the woman was going to ignore the unspoken request, which sent a jolt of both surprise and worry up her spine, but after a moment, Ro waited, and Lan caught Doctor Fitzgerald aiming an interested gaze their way before he left with the rest.

"Everything okay?" Ro said, once they were alone in the Briefing Room.

"You tell me," Lan said.

Ro sighed. "I’m not really in the mood for—"

"Laren," Lan said. "It’s me. I’ve given you weeks to be alone and snarly, but I heard you just now. You want to use Plan B." She crossed her arms. "And whatever the hell else you did." 

Ro glanced up, too late to school the surprise on her face. 

"We’ve known each other way too long," Lan said. "And I’ve seen Ro Laren make decisions like whatever you’ve chosen to do before. You know—every time—I’ve agreed with those choices, so don’t worry. I’m not so Starfleet now I’m going to do an end-run around you. But I hate you haven’t told me what it is."

"We have three good options," Ro said. 

"And one bad one?" Lan said.

"It might not come to it, is what I mean," Ro said. 

"The thing is," Lan said, deciding she needed to be even more direct than usual. "I think you’re hoping it will."  

Ro swallowed, and then Lan watched her closest friend meet her gaze and admit it. "Yes."

"You’re not the only one seeing the parallels here," Lan said, shaking her head and feeling her own frustration and anger rise. "Sure, the Malon seem to operate in a very Ferengi way, but they’re also very fucking Cardassian when it comes to how they treat anyone else." 

Ro didn’t reply, and Lan figured that was reply enough. 

"Also Michael proposed."

"What?" Ro’s complete surprise was almost a balm to the moment. 

"It will not surprise you to learn I nearly screwed the entire thing up, but he’s Michael, so he forgave me. I said yes." Lan stared Ro down. It felt like looking into the past. This was the Ro Laren who’d betrayed Starfleet, the Ro Laren who’d held her principles so high she’d been willing to betray some of the only people she’d ever come to truly care about for near strangers in the DMZ. And Lan was terrified that whatever had happened to her back on that station with those goddamn wormhole aliens had damaged her in some way, made her think she had to prove herself again, or… Hell. She didn’t know what to think. "So do me a favour? Don’t get thrown in the damned Brig because I’m pretty sure we’re having a human wedding and I need a best man."

Chapter Text

"Emck’s vessel is between us and the aperture," Lan said. "And holding position."

"Their shields are up." Rollins’s grim declaration wasn’t particularly surprising, but Ro took it as the sign it was.

"Well, that’s not friendly," Stadi said.

Ro looked at the Malon transport and tried to imagine how the next few minutes were going to play out. She glanced at Cavit, and saw the same uncertainty in his eyes, too, alongside a lot more hope than she herself was feeling.

"Okay," Cavit said. "Here we go. Hail Emck, Scott." He glanced at Rollins. "And stand by on shields. Maybe keep one finger right on the button."

"Aye." Rollins said. The trill of a hail request was answered almost immediately. Once again, Emck’s smeared—and smug—face appeared on the viewscreen. 

"You will follow me into the vortex," Emck said. "You will then set a course away from Malon space, which I will give you on the other side."

"So we can’t possibly tell anyone about the antimatter waste processing technology," Cavit said. It wasn’t a question, and Emck didn’t treat it like one, though he grew more smug. 

All the worst of the Ferengi and Cardassians in one callous, self-interested, murderous man, Ro thought.

"If you deviate from your course, I will destroy you," Emck said. 

"With what crew?" Cavit said. 

Emck’s expression shifted from his first, immediate reaction—confusion—to something else—anger—rather quickly. 

"Stand down, Controller." The voice came from out of the narrow view of Emck’s communication screen output, but was audible enough. 

"What are you doing?" Emck snapped, now facing off to the left. 

"I can explain that. We had a word with your people," Cavit said. "Who, it turns out, don’t see as anywhere near as much of those profits you mentioned as you seem to. We explained how a single sale on antimatter waste recycling technology, properly invested, would be far more lucrative for them. In fact, if they sell it to the right person, I’m told they’re pretty sure they can retire to a nice moon somewhere with their share." 

"You short-sighted fools!" Emck snapped.

"They’re willing to split that share that with you, Emck—at the same rate you shared with them."

Ro gave Cavit a quick look, and he tipped his chin in a small admission she took to mean, yes, I did enjoy that. 

"Do you really think I’d give you functional bolt-guns?" Emck said, and then the signal cut out. 

"Stadi?" Ro said, rising from her chair.

"He meant that," Stadi said. "I don’t think whoever is in the control room with him has a functional weapon—but Emck does." She turned in her chair. "He has manual overrides, some sort of contingency command system. I don’t think we can count on his crew. And it’s worse than that, Captain—"

"He’s planning on destroying us on the other side of the Vortex anyway?" Cavit said.

"Yes." Stadi said. "I guess you didn’t need to be a telepath to pick that up—but if it helps, he’d already decided that before the attempted coup." Her black Betazoid eyes slid to Ro as she delivered that last bit of information.

Did it help? She didn’t know. 

"You just can’t trust a piece of scum like you used to," Lan said.

"I’m reading weapons fire in the control room of that ship—probably only one weapon," Rollins said. "I’m also reading bulkheads closing in other parts of the ship—everywhere there are crew lifesigns." 

"He’s cutting off the rest of his crew, isolating them," Cavit said.

Ro tried not to flinch. Had they just gotten all those people killed? 

"He’s moving," Lan said, which Ro confirmed at a glance—the ugly Malon vessel was turning and firing impulse engines. And a moment later, it slid into the subspace vortex.

"Follow the garbage scow, Stadi," Cavit said. "Everyone? Plan C. And prepare for battle once we’re through." 

"Powering aft shields to maximum," Rollins said.

"Feeding you the modulation adjustments," Taitt said from the Science station.

They’d blow the vortex as they planned, Ro thought, but once they got out the other side, she had no doubts Emck would be waiting for them. 

*

Stadi spread her hands across the helm and dropped into that place between emotion and thought that served her best during what she’d always thought Captain Kathryn Janeway had so perfectly described as "crunch times" during their shakedown year. Stadi knew Voyager, just as she’d known Intrepid before her, and she didn’t just have faith the ship could handle riding the collapsing edge of a subspace vortex, she knew it, though she supposed even the four gods would point out she was blurring the lines between the two.

"Give me a countdown on the torpedo, Scott," Stadi said, the moment the viewscreen shifted to the twisting corridors that were the subspace distortion spanning thousands of light-years.  

"Three. Two. One," Rollins’s countdown was calm. "Firing." 

Stadi punched Voyager just over the warp threshold—any more, and she’d blow the warp engines given they were already in subspace—but any less and they wouldn’t be moving fast enough, and the shockwave would wash past them and when it reached the end of the funnel, it would collapse and then Voyager would be left with little option left but to implode.

Not ideal.

On the navigational sensors, the shockwave came a moment later—the angle is off, adjust—and her hands moved across the console in a practiced dance as much intuition as talent and skill. A small part of her mind tucked aside the moment as one she’d like to talk to Seven of Nine about the next time Seven took her to ask on the value of emotions and intuition. 

Flying is talent, skill, intuition, and luck. Knowing which to rely on and when is the real challenge.

Voyager pitched forward, the inertial dampeners and gravity plating reaching upper limits as expected, and a series of alarms sounded—she tuned them out, none of them were navigation or engine related, at least not yet—and once again the angle had drifted. 

"Our angle is off," Taitt said. "Vector is drifting."

This was the problem with funnel-shaped subspace anomalies. You went in at a single point, but then you had a wider and wider exit options, and sticking to the shortest path meant working against subspace eddies.

"I know. Hold on," Stadi said, purposefully unbalancing the nacelles—and creating a few more alarms, this time quite pertinent to her role as the pilot given the starboard nacelle warp coils were overheating—but the shockwave remained just behind them, the shields were holding, even if they were down to nearly half, and they might not be on the shortest ride out, but they were at least going to make it.

Well. She was pretty sure they were going to make it.

A flare of light on the viewscreen and Voyager returned to normal space just as the starboard nacelle flatlined on her controls, shutting down automatically until the temperature in the overworked coils dropped below operational norms. 

"We’re out, brace yourselves," Stadi said.

Ro repeated the brace warning to the entire ship and then, behind Voyager, The Dark was lit by a blinding, blue-white flare of subspace energy that rocked Voyager once more, a gravimetric effect forcing Stadi to make a few quick thruster bursts to keep the ship from pitching wildly.

"Nice flying, Stadi. Lan, damage report. Scott, eyes on Emck?" Cavit said.

"Starboard nacelle is offline," Lan said. "Some structural damage on the aft and upper secondary hull, shields are at forty seven percent, but… she held."

"Malon vessel is just over fifty klicks off our port and closing, weapons hot," Rollins said.

"He noticed we shut down his garbage chute," Cavit said. "I don’t suppose we can outrun him on one nacelle?" 

Stadi blew out a breath. "I don’t think so, Captain."

"Evasive, Roni," Cavit said. "And Scott, open a channel. Time to tell Emck Plan B." 

Stadi caught the pair of thoughts in Ro Laren’s mind—Plan B, but also more—and allowed herself a brief glance over her shoulder at the first officer. Ro returned the gaze. Not exactly regulation, and the inspiration for it…

I fly the ship, Stadi thought, and got back to evasive maneuvers. 

*

Ro waited for Emck to answer, gritting her teeth. 

"He’s not responding," Rollins said, then lifted his gaze. "Scratch that. Incoming spatial torpedoes." 

Voyager lurched as only one of the incoming missiles struck the shields, thanks to Stadi putting Voyager into a descending corkscrew.

"That’s one way to answer a hail," Lan said. 

"He can hear us," Cavit said. "It’ll do."

Rollins nodded, and Cavit raised his voice. "Emck. We had ample time to scan your ship. Antimatter does a hell of a job on hull density. There are multiple points on your ship that have been weakened." He paused, looking at Rollins, but Rollins shook his head.

"More incoming—he’s firing broader spreads this time."

"Return fire," Cavit said.

"Firing phasers," Rollins said, "Wouldn’t mind a clearer shot, Stadi."

"Hang on," Stadi said. And Ro gripped her armrests as two detonations slammed Voyager out of the spread. Ro knew they couldn’t win this fight, and in fact, ever torpedo Emck fired lowered their chances in more ways than one. 

She flipped up her command console access and tapped in a series of commands through the comm arrays, her finger hovering over the last. 

"He can still hear us?" Ro said.

Scott nodded, frowning. She felt Cavit looking at her as well. 

She tapped her panel, and said, "Emck, I’ve just remote activated every torpedo we sent you. You’ve got thirty seconds to stand down." 

The Bridge went silent. Only Stadi didn’t so much as hesitate—no doubt she’d already picked up on Ro’s tactic. Or, well, to be fair and give credit where it was due: Peter Durst’s tactic. 

Ro couldn’t bring herself to look at Rollins. 

"Lan?" Cavit said, in an even, controlled voice.

"Reading a power build up consistent with multiple torpedoes going hot," Lan said, and in the Trill woman’s voice, Ro heard no judgement. More than a trace of approval, even. Maybe even satisfaction.

"Twenty seconds, Emck," Ro said, watching her readout. "Power down your weapons, lower your shields, and turn your ship over to your crew." She made her voice as cold as she could. "Or die. Your choice." 

He didn’t blink until ten, which was five more seconds than she’d expected from the bastard. 

"He’s powering down his weapons. His shields are down. The bulkheads are opening." Rollins listed off each update in a clipped, tight voice. 

Ro tapped her panel. "I’ve paused the sequence," she said.

A new voice on the channel came a moment later. "I have control. We have Emck." It wasn’t the voice they’d heard earlier on the Bridge, the one telling the Controller to stand down, and Ro couldn’t stop herself from saying, "Do you need medical assistance? It sounded like things got violent over there." 

"That would be appreciated, Voyager." 

Ro exhaled. Not dead then. That was something.

She finally allowed herself to look at Aaron Cavit. He met her gaze, but she couldn’t get much beyond it. She hoped she hadn’t truly broken something they’d worked years to build, but at the same time, deep in her chest, she realized she’d just now felt something she hadn’t felt ever since Ram’s crystal had gone dark. 

She’d felt like Ro Laren.

And Prophets or not, it had felt good to stand up to someone like Emck and then take him down. 

That was when she finally noticed the rest of the viewscreen, rather than just the view of Emck’s garbage scow.

There was nothing else.

They were still in The Dark.

*

It wasn’t until they’d beamed back the two wounded Malon to their ship and it was underway back toward Malon space that Ro felt she could step aside. She glanced at Stadi, who gave her a supportive smile as she rose from the Conn, not even waiting for Ro to speak.

"You have the Bridge," she said anyway, as the relief pilot took Stadi’s place.

Then Ro went to the Captain’s Ready Room door and pressed the door chime.

"Come."

Inside, Cavit sat behind his desk. The large viewscreen he’d had installed on the wall beside him showed a smaller version of Voyager’s MSD, with the status on the starboard nacelle highlighted. Honigsberg’s people thought it would be back online within the hour. 

"Captain," she said.

To her surprise, he rose from behind the desk and went to his replicator and said, "Two cups of Earl Grey tea, hot." 

A flush of something unpleasantly like nostalgia and appreciation washed up her chest, and when he carried the mugs to one of the side-tables between the gardening planters the support crew used to top-up their herbs and teas, she joined him there, taking a seat. 

Earl Gray tea, and not sitting at his desk. Aaron Cavit was definitely saying a lot without speaking.

"Okay," Cavit said, once they were seated. He picked up his tea and took a sip, then lowered it. "Why didn’t you tell me?"

Ro picked up her own mug, but didn’t drink. The scent was enough for now. "Can I ask you something?" she said.

He paused, grew a little still, then nodded. 

"Would you have approved it?" Ro said. 

He blew out a long breath, and shook his head. "I don’t know."

"That’s my answer, too," Ro said. "And I know it’s not enough, but it’s the truth."

He frowned. "I’m not sure I follow."

"I could tell you it was because I wasn’t sure finding those weak-points on his ship would be enough—he had the tactical advantage even before we lost a nacelle, and he was a callous, selfish bully who only responded to personal threat. And I could tell you I wanted you to have plausible deniability for a maneuver that—at best—crossed multiple ethical boundaries." She finally took a swallow of her tea, using the time to put her thoughts in order. "But the truth is, it’s more just that I recognized him. I knew what sort of person he was, and the singular option that would work was…" She considered a euphemism, then shook off the urge. "A direct, unavoidable threat to his life. Not a chance of one, a certainty." 

"The Occupation," Cavit said. 

Ro nodded. She’d expected him to at least understand her, and he hadn’t fallen short. She had no idea if explanation would excuse—how could it?—but at least he saw her. 

"How’d you do it?" Cavit said. "Surely he would have looked at the torpedoes?"

"Reskat," Ro said. "Though I asked him to implement stealth deactivation options."

"Then used them the other way," Cavit said.

Ro nodded. Then she said the rest of it. "I’d hoped Plan A would work. And Plan C. Even Plan B." She realized she wasn’t being completely truthful, and—again—skipped euphemism. "Though I also didn’t mind the thought of Emck ending up against the wall, and definitely wanted to be the one to put him there."

Cavit’s brow furrowed, but he nodded, not interrupting.

"I wish I could tell you, clearly, how I knew the other options weren’t going to work. That there was no diplomatic option, but I can’t." She shook her head. "And I wish I could tell you I didn’t enjoy taking him down, but I can’t tell you that, either." 

"Okay," Cavit said. He took another swallow of his tea, and to cover her own whirl of emotions—and especially the utter lack of remorse—she did the same. 

"I’d like to talk more about this—because I need to figure out my part in it," Cavit said.

She frowned at him.

"You’ve told me things I didn’t want to hear before," Cavit said. "So at least some of this is down to me somehow making you believe you couldn’t tell me this—and I know that’s oversimplifying, but it’s still true on some level." 

She wasn’t sure oversimplifying was a strong enough word, but she got his point. She’d made these decisions, not him. Still, she understood what he meant. "All right."

"But maybe we table that until we figure out how much further we need to go to get out of The Dark." Cavit paused, sipping again. "Deal?" 

Was it wrong to be more uncomfortable with relief and the fragile notion that Aaron Cavit understood her—and maybe even in some ways agreed with what she’d done—than receiving condemnation from him? 

Oh, Laren. The thought, once again surprisingly like Ro Saral’s in her own mind, came unbidden. When things work better than you thought they would, take it. 

"Deal," she said. She lifted her tea, and despite the urge to leave, they sat there together drinking. At first in silence, but then Cavit asked about the progress on repairs, and before long, she found herself letting go of at least some of the tight, coiled, brace-for-impact in whatever passed for her pagh these days.

"One other thing," Cavit said, and when she looked at him, she was surprised to see a broad smile in place. "I have an idea about a wedding present."

Wedding present? Oh. Right. She had to shift mental gears. "You heard?" She was surprised Lan had let word get out—and then she chuckled, because of course it hadn’t been Sahreen. "Fun Murphy." No doubt the man had been telling anyone and everyone within earshot. She turned back to the Captain—to Aaron Cavit—and realized this was more than just an idea he was about to share with her.

It was a reminder of what they’d forged together. Her crew and his. This was an offer. 

She took it.

"What’s your idea?" 

*

After four lives, there weren’t a lot of things Sahreen Lan could list as "completely new experiences," but it turned out getting married was one of them. That probably said more about Pasha, Kejal and Dolay than herself—or maybe it was something to be laid at the feet of Lan—but it turned out having no frame of reference had left her completely unprepared. 

She’d looked into human wedding traditions, balked at almost everything on the list—a wedding veil? If she wanted to stumble around half-blind she could just take off her hairband—and ultimately, she’d told Murphy she’d be happiest if he told her what he wanted to take from the traditions of his people.  

That, it turned out to be, really only included a few things. Most importantly, he wanted to stand in the Arboretum by the big windows, and have her arrive and walk down the rows of people to join him there. 

She figured she could handle being the centre of everyone’s attention when it was for him. 

Just this once, anyway.

That’s how she found herself in her dress uniform, walking at a ridiculously slow pace between the two groups of gathered people in the Arboretum, heading to the windows. There, four people waited. Ro Laren stood to where Lan’s side would be, in the "maid of honour" position. They’d both had a good laugh at considering Ro Laren a "maiden." The Captain stood in the centre, and he was doing a proud-father thing, which was going straight to the Kejal in her and threatening tears. Actual tears. The "best man"—again, who came up with these terms?—was Ensign Therese Hickman, standing just beside and behind the man who made this all possible and thus deserved all the blame.

Ensign Michael Marcus Murphy, in his own dress uniform, stood to one side of the Captain, waiting for her to get there.

And waiting.

And waiting.

Seriously, who wrote this ridiculous march? She was taking every step along with the cadence, but had a walk across a room ever taken this long in her entire life? She didn’t think so.

Thank all the gods both Trill and human that she had his face to look at. 

Finally, she got there. 

"Hi," Murphy said, and oh, those tears were definitely going to happen if she wasn’t careful. 

"Hi," she said back, and then Ro was taking the flowers from her and she was face to face with Murphy again, and he’d taken her hands in his and the Captain started speaking and she probably should have paid attention to what he was saying, but she couldn’t. She just waited for the part where she got to tell this man she loved him, too, and wanted to marry him.

Behind them, through the large windows of the Arboretum, a star appeared to one edge of the blank darkness of The Dark. Then another, on the opposite edge. A third, then a few more, and just as Sahreen Lan said, "I do," a spread of stellar nurseries and a vast nebula came into view at the top-left, as behind them, the The Dark began to fall further and further behind. 

At least, that’s what someone told her happened. 

She’d only had eyes for Michael.

*

Lieutenant Dennis Russell smiled at the viewscreen and the broad array of stars, stellar gasses, nebulas, and even what looked like a stellar nursery all appeared now they’d cleared the occlusive effect of The Dark. He exhaled. "How’s that for a view?"

Taking a rare turn at the helm, Ensign Louis Culhane turned in his chair enough to aim a smile both at Russell and at his wife, Ensign Mary Harper, who stood at Tactical. "Much improved, sir."

Russell didn’t doubt for a minute there was a double entendre there. 

Harper, in her maternity uniform—Russell thought she was five or six months along now—agreed with a bright smile. Both she and Culhane had volunteered for this six-on just like he had, to give more people the option to attend the wedding. "Happy to see it," she said.

Russel glanced at Ops, but Gavin Nelson didn’t join in. His eyes were on his console, not the view.

Damn.

"What have we got, Gavin?" Russell said, keeping his tone as delighted and upbeat as before, even as he felt a tug of sympathy for Nelson. He still looked broken. He’d volunteered for this, too, which… 

Well. The rest of the former Maquis had all gone to the wedding.

"Reading thousands of star systems," Nelson said, with a borderline toneless delivery. "Denser than usual."

That was it. He didn’t even look up. Russell caught Harper’s eye, and she gave him a soft shake of the head. 

Well. At least most of them were out of The Dark. 

*

"So," Hickman said, after Lan and Murphy had shown her the matching gold bands with the simple, engraved knot-work pattern on them. She had a mischievous grin, and she’d had her hair re-dyed a bright red and cut into a sharp, flattering style, "Does this mean I call you Ensign Sahreen Murphy now?" Hickman tilted her head, raising one sharp eyebrow at Lan’s husband—oh wow, I have a husband—and said, "That doesn’t seem right. How about we call you Ensign Michael Lan?" 

"I’d be up for that," Murphy said, nodding. And damn, but she was pretty sure he meant it.

"Hrm," Hickman said. "Then again, we’d just be trading the whole 'Do you mean Michael or Andreas' for 'do you Michael or Sahreen?'" Hickman’s teasing smile grew as Chief McMinn, passing by with a tray of drinks, handed her one.

"Maybe it’d be Fun Lan and…" Murphy started, then paused, glancing at his wife.

"No, really, finish," she said, grinning at him. This would be good. 

"Grumpy Lan?" he offered, with a teasing smile of his own.

Hickman laughed.

"We have a better solution." 

Lan turned, Captain Cavit and Commander Ro joined them. Ro looked about as comfortable in her dress uniform as she did being at a wedding at all, and she couldn’t help but notice the two of them were doing a pretty good job of standing near each other, chatting with groups together.

There was some definite messaging of Captain and First Officer still being on the same page going on there, and frankly, Lan appreciated it. 

"Captain?" Murphy said.

But Cavit turned to Ro, and Ro faced Lan. "It’d be easier to go with Ensign Lan and Lieutenant Lan," she said, and then passed Lan a little black box. 

Lan blinked down at it, then flipped the lid open and found a little black and gold rank pip pinned to the velvet. She looked up. She’d had this experience once before, as Dolay Lan, and yet it also felt strikingly close to completely new. 

"Congratulations," Cavit said. "And long overdue." 

Murphy was tugging her in for a hug before she could come up with a reply, and he kissed her with more than a little verve—milking this whole weddings-mean-kissing-in-public thing for all it was worth—before he pulled back and grinned. "Now we get to plan another party."

"No party," Lieutenant Sahreen Lan said, in unison with Ro. 

Murphy looked at the two women and sighed. "Fine, fine." He was still grinning though. 

Cavit and Ro moved off, as did Hickman, and Murphy put his forehead against hers. "Okay, we’re alone," he said, in a quick whisper. "Or, at least as we’re going to be for the next few hours. Quickly, you have to tell me. Did you throw the bouquet to Seven of Nine on purpose?" 

"I’m your wife now, Michael," Lan said, glancing back to where Seven of Nine appeared to be undertaking a conversation with Doctor Fitzgerald, Atara Ram, Steven Niles, and Stadi. The bouquet in question was on the table beside them, where Lan was pretty sure Seven had put it roughly two seconds after reflexively catching it. Lan looked back, reached up with one finger, and tapped her husband’s lip. "I don’t have to tell you anything."