I found myself in a room of white, but I was not alone since Katye, Raven, and Echo joined me a moment later. All of us looked around for a moment, but since not even the floor and walls were defined, there was not a lot to see until a new face appeared, though I did recognize her. Dark brown curly hair, that she wore up, gaudy golden earrings that matched her fancy, long-sleeve dress which had an off-centered triangle cut-out that showed the tops of her breasts, but still modest enough to pass the censors of the late 1980's; she was Lwaxana Troi from Star Trek: Next Generation, who was played by Majel Barrett.
"Did we take a turn into Next Gen?" Katye asked.
"No, I am simply the manifestation of the computer. Rebecca had this memory of the form of the original voice owner, so I assumed that this appearance would be appropriate. I can change into something else if this is not to your liking," the woman said.
"No, it's fine. I never realized that she voiced the computer, but I hear it now," Katye replied.
"She was also Rodenberry's wife for more useless trivia," I chuckled.
"Nerd... So, Lwaxana, I thought that this was a training device. Where is everything?" Katye asked.
"It is in the process of being created from the combination of all of your memories to ensure that each of you will be able to get the most out of the training that my Creator made for you," she answered as a seating area, just like the one on our ship appeared.
"Creator? You mean Tori, right?" Katye asked.
"Yes, the individual that you know as Tori is the one who created my body which you know as the USS Fae Dragon. I am the Spirit of the Magical Artifact."
"So, we have a living, talking ship," Raven chuckled.
"In a sense, but it will take hundreds of years for me to be able to cultivate properly, so until then, I am simply considered an Item Spirit within the Endless Firmament."
"Then you actually know about the outside, where our past lives come from?" Katye asked.
"I do, as well as knowing information about your past lives, Alkatyenia."
"Alkatyenia?" Echo asked.
"The name of my past self," Katye replied.
"Oh? And what was Becca's?" Raven asked with a teasing smile.
"It doesn't matter. She's gone, and I'm here now," I said dismissively, not wanting to think about that part of me.
"Rebecca, I'm sorry, I didn't..." Raven started.
"I know," I sighed, cutting her off, and then pulled her into my arms. "I just don't like the fact that my whole life has been influenced by multiple ancient beings."
"Well, we are all in that boat now," she said softly, leaning into my embrace.
"I apologize for interrupting, but the first training program is now ready for all of you. You simply need to go through the door with your name and your custom class will begin, focusing on the key points that each of you will need to know about the ship and any duties that you might be placed in when you join the Voyager crew. After you finish the first program, it will allow you to access the different training programs that Tori created to develop your abilities, if you would like to continue your training. I will alert all of you when we are getting close to Voyager," the Item Spirit said.
While we were talking, four doors appeared around the seating area with our names on them. Echo did not wait any longer and headed for her door, causing Katye to shake her head while Raven chuckled.
"She's going to work herself to the bone trying to catch up to us," Katye sighed wryly.
"Can you blame her? It took ten people to stop her from reaching the Anomaly Stone after Luna was taken and then we saw the fight... You leave either of us on the sidelines again, and things won't stay the same between us," Raven explained as she pulled away from me and then headed for her own door.
After she disappeared behind her door, I gave an angry huff and complained, "They act like keeping them safe and alive was the biggest insult of their lives."
"Wouldn't you if I had left you behind? You did the right thing, no one is arguing against that, but they are still hurt that they were not strong enough to help us. What's wrong, Becca? I know you well enough to notice the black cloud hanging over your head, and it's been there ever since you talked to Tori. What did he tell you?" Katye asked.
"How much of Alkatyenia's memories do you have? Do you know why he's going through all of this to train us?" I asked with a sigh as I dropped onto one of the couches.
"Maybe a handful of them, but most are about that final battle against the Tienovy Pantheon," Katye replied.
"Well, after your past-self died, mine decided to use everything that she had left in her, including her life force and soul, to defeat the remaining enemies. She was incredibly powerful and had been at the peak of the power scale within the Endless Firmament for a very long time, but she was never able to take that next step because the root of our power is Chaos. She had always used her Will to control her power, but Chaos is not something that can be controlled. It was not until she gave up her Will, in what she had expected to be her final attack, that she finally took that step...
"Unfortunately, becoming the Embodiment of Chaos, disrupted the balance of Laws that governed the Endless Firmament, and she had no way of handling the new power for long. She cleared out her enemies then tore out her own Soul and gave it to Istar. There was only one person that she could imagine being able to match her power and become the Embodiment of Order... you. So, if you and I can't figure out how to control, match, or whatever we need to with this power tied to my Soul, I'm eventually going to destroy everything."
"Oh..." she said softly with surprise.
I was already at my limit, so I just laughed at her simple reply, or else I might have cried. The only thing worse than finding out that you were a ticking timebomb was learning that you were the one supposed to stop that calamity. Katye and I truly were a pair, for better or for worse.
"Do they know?" Katye asked.
"I haven't told them, but Tori obviously had a long conversation with Raven. Who knows what all he said," I replied.
"They have no knowledge of your past lives other than what Katye has told them from her dreams... While using this place, your minds are all linked to me, so I scanned their memories," the Item Spirit explained.
"I should have known that there would be a downside to having a way to train safely... I don't want to tell them, not yet anyways. They have enough on their plates with them trying to catch up to the twelve-year head start that we have on training our powers than needing to worry about whatever impending doom that I'm supposed to unleash. We have plenty of time to break that news to them later on," I sighed.
"I won't go out of my way to tell them anything, but Raven is going to start asking eventually if you don't hide that something is bothering you better," Katye replied.
"Hopefully, Voyager will be able to keep her distracted for a while, but I'll try to hide it better."
Katye sighed, shaking her head, and said, "Not exactly what I meant, but I'm not going to argue with you. I'm going to head in, and you should too. No matter what, we are living in Voyager now, so we need to get up to speed with a lot of things if we are going to manage to fool Janeway and her crew into believing that we belong here."
She patted my shoulder as she passed by and headed to her door. I sighed, sinking further back into the couch, and stared out into the whiteness. My emotions were a mess now that the surprise of Raven and Echo joining us was wearing off, but maybe that was just closer to my true, Chaotic self. I could not help but question who and what I was, and how much my past life influenced my current one.
"So, do we keep calling you Lwaxana, or do you have a name?" I asked.
"You may call me Lwaxana if you would like, but my name is Fae Dragon as I am the ship," the Item Spirit replied.
"Well, Fae is less of a mouthful if that's fine with you."
"It's acceptable," she agreed with a nod.
I stood up with a sigh and said, "Alright, I want to set some ground rules. If you can't stay out of our thoughts while we are in here, don't share them with any of us, including myself. Also, no revealing anything about our past lives to Raven and Echo; that's our responsibility."
"As you command," she agreed again.
"Thanks."
I walked over to my own door and opened it. Inside, I found a small classroom that reminded me of the AutoCAD computer lab where I spent a lot of hours throughout my college years. Instead of a normal computer, however, there were a number of station consoles that were pulled straight out of Star Trek. Fae appeared in the center of the room and waved me over.
"There is not a lot of time and we have far too much to go over before you meet with Captain Janeway," she said.
I shook my head with a wry smile on my face. I had the power to destroy or corrupt everything, but now I had to sit through classes that ranged from warp theory to species of the Alpha Quadrant to the specs of the ship. It was a dizzying amount of information, and I only touched upon the information as Fae repeated multiple times. Her goal for now was to ensure that I had enough information to get me ready for my meeting with Janeway, and we used nearly every minute of the fifty-four-hour window that we had.
Opening my eyes, I was sitting on the couch where I had first activated the Mind Linker. Katye, Raven, and Echo were also waking up from the mental plane. We took off the devices and placed them back into the drawer, so that they could charge.
::We will be dropping out of warp in just a few minutes.::
"Thanks, Fae," I said, rubbing my temples in hopes of alleviating the headache from all of the information that she tried to cram into my brain.
The others were in a similar state, though Katye seemed to have handled it better than the rest of us.
"If school had been that efficient, I would have gone for my master's," Katye remarked.
"And I would have quit before I finished an associate's degree. My head is killing me," I groaned.
::The discomfort that you are feeling is due to the forced expansion of your memory to accommodate the new information and to ensure that you each retained the information. The discomfort should resolve within an hour.::
"I take it back. I would rather deal with Ishu's training methods," I said which made Raven chuckle before she groaned.
"Is this like those headaches you would get when you overworked your powers?" Raven asked.
"Not exactly the same, but close."
"I'll head to the bridge and wait for Voyager to hail us," Katye offered as she stood up.
"I should be there too, but you two can rest for now. I'll have Fae let you know if we are going to land in the shuttle bay," I said.
"Thanks," Raven replied.
I stood up and followed Katye back down to the bridge. She took a seat at the conn station while I sat down at the tactical station. From my lesson, I had a general understanding of the power of our ship, which was comparable to the Voyager itself, despite its smaller size. The downside was that replenishing the ship's energy reserves could only be done by the four of us transferring our mana into the main mana crystal. If I were to try to fill it alone, Fae estimated that it would take a week and a half of exclusive work where I literally did nothing but channel my mana and meditate.
If we were to directly fight Voyager, we could last for roughly an hour in a full-blown dogfight, but it would completely drain the core. Unlike a traditional ship from the Star Trek universe, propulsion, life support, and practically every other system used barely any energy while our weapon systems would rapidly deplete our energy reserves. It was an intentional design flaw from Tori to limit the amount of aid that we could provide to Voyager, as that would prevent us from changing the timeline too much, while also giving us a way to constantly use our mana which would help us build up our personal reserves quicker.
Our ship dropped out of warp and a few moments later, the Voyager did as well, appearing a few hundred kilometers in the distance. A beep rang from the console, and it was the Voyager hailing us with the coordinates that would allow us to beam over. Katye confirmed the message while I stood and stretched my body.
"That mental plane is nice, but I'm going to have to figure out a way to exercise my body regularly. I'm not made to just sit in a chair and let my mind do all of the work," I said.
"I'm sure that you will find some method," Katye teased with a toying smile.
I chuckled and shook my head, "I'm pretty sure that you are the only one not mad at me presently. I'll see what a twenty-fourth century gym can do for me if I do manage to convince Janeway to allow us to join her crew for the time being."
"Do you really think that she will refuse us with this being Tori's universe?"
"Did he make anything easy for us in the last one? No, I expect that Janeway will allow us to join the crew since she is allowing me to come onboard, but actually trusting us? Not any time soon, and we will have to be careful with how we approach a lot of the situations that will present themselves here versus our last life. She is dedicated to her principles, but that doesn't mean that we can act however we want. We'll need to gain her trust before we can truly start changing things, and we will still need to be extremely careful. The first two seasons may have dealt mostly with the Kazon, but the Borg and Species 8472 conflict will be a major problem in a year or two and things will get crazier from there... Stardates and our time made little sense to me when I watched it, and I still need to remember the entire show after twelve or thirteen years."
"Well, not being in charge and having to do everything will give us a chance to really train properly."
"True... Fae, could you prepare a data pad with the ship's general specifications and a list of our current powers?" I asked.
::It will be waiting for you in the Engineering replicator.::
"I guess that means I should get moving. I'll see you when I'm done."
"Good luck."
"Thanks," I replied as I walked off the bridge.
Engineering was the next room after the bridge, so I headed over to the replicator and grabbed the data pad. I glanced through it as I walked over to the transporter pad and stepped into position.
"Fae, transport me over to the coordinates that Voyager transmitted," I said.
Since I had the ability to teleport myself over small distances with my powers, I had expected that being transported would feel somewhat similar to using my powers; I was wrong. I am not sure if it was because of my enhanced perception or ability to sense mana, but I felt my body get broken down to molecules and converted into energy which was shot over to the Voyager where I re-materialized. The whole process only took a matter of a few seconds, but it was still unnerving to me.
Captain Janeway was waiting in the transporter room with Chakotay and Tuvok flanking her. The room itself looked just like it did on the show with dark gray metal panels over the walls while I stood on a glass-like platform with blue lights coming from the sides and six orange circles on the ceiling which marked the six slots where people materialized. In the back, there was an unfamiliar face working the transporter console while the three of them were waiting in the empty space between the platform and console.
"Welcome to Voyager, Captain Cox. This is my first officer, Commander Chakotay, and my chief of security, Lieutenant Tuvok," Janeway introduced.
"A pleasure to meet you all," I replied as I walked off the transporter pad then held out the data pad. "This has the general specifications of my ship and information about myself and my crew, since I know that your sensors will have trouble analyzing my ship."
Janeway took the pad and looked over it briefly before passing it over to Tuvok. She motioned towards the door and asked as we walked out of the room, "How long have you been in the Delta Quadrant?"
"About five months," I said since I knew that they had been stranded here for four months currently thanks to Fae's crash course. "After the disappearance of the Equinox, Starfleet asked us to investigate since their own investigation had turned up nothing. We were searching the Paulson Nebula when we were scanned by a coherent tetryon beam and then hit by a displacement wave which pulled us all the way out here."
The four of us entered the nearby turbo lift and Janeway replied, "We faced a similar situation though we were in the Badlands before the Caretaker brought us here."
I sighed, "He said that he would stop taking ships from Federation space, but I guess I should have been more specific when I talked with him."
"Why did you not ask him to send you back?" Chakotay asked.
"We did, but he refused, saying that he needed to focus on finding an heir to take care of the Ocampa. Although I disagreed with his methods, my only option to stop him would have caused his death since he had devoted so much of the space station's resources to forcibly extending his lifespan."
"Unfortunately, he only lived another month without finding an heir. I was forced to destroy the array to ensure that it would not fall into the hands of the Kazon," Janeway said.
"You made a good call. If the Kazon Sects could have figured out how to properly use his technology, they would have posed a danger to more than just this quadrant," I said. "It's a sacrifice for you and your crew, but it was for the greater good, and I won't deny that I'm happy to see another Federation ship."
"I imagine so," Janeway replied as she led all of us into the Briefing Room. "Now, Captain, I'm not going to refuse your request to join us; I can't after that stunt you pulled. There were plenty of other methods to contact me without alerting my entire crew to your presence."
"I apologize, Captain, but I won't deny that it was intentional. I have a crew of four, including myself, and unlike your ship which is powered by anti-matter reactions, mine is powered off the energy that our race's bodies produce. Propulsion may not use too much energy but imagine having to bike all the way back to Alpha Quadrant. Two of my crew have only recently awoken their power, so there is a limit to how much they will be able to contribute to our energy reserves for the first few years. If anyone picked a drawn-out battle with us, we could easily be crippled by sheer lack of energy to power the ship," I explained, which was true.
Janeway sighed, shaking her head, "I can understand your situation. As I said, I'll allow you and your crew to join mine, but there are specific rules that will need to be followed. This is a Starfleet vessel, and it will be run as such. You may have powers but using them will cause a lot of problems and rumors among my crew."
"Would you have me stand aside as I watch members of your crew die around me? One of my abilities is related to healing. It is best for treating illness and poisoning, but it can mend flesh and bone for more energy. My first officer and I can both speed up the growth of plants. My engineer can analyze technology through the use of mana while my tactical officer is bonded to a three-tailed fox which will need to be in close proximity to her for the next year. We are bound to cause rumors if we don't address this from the beginning."
"Do you want me to tell them the truth?"
"That my entire 'race' was created as an experiment by a rogue Q to see if he could forcibly create more of their kind? No, I would prefer that you didn't, but we will need to explain our abilities one way or another. If we do come up with some explanation, that would give you the ability to start utilizing not just our abilities, but also our ship."
"Captain, if the information that she provided is accurate, their ship is comparable to the Voyager as long as it has adequate energy reserves. That would give us a significant tactical advantage," Tuvok said, which was a surprising endorsement from the Vulcan.
"We would prefer to live on our ship, if you would allow us the use of your shuttle bay to land and that way we can safely train our abilities as we are not born with perfect control of our powers, but we would be happy to serve as members of your crew. We are not exactly typical officers, but we have undergone similar training due to our people working closely with Starfleet. None of us need to be a Senior Officer or anything, but I would appreciate being included on events pertaining to the ship as I may have the ability to give suggestions that you may not have thought of on your own," I added.
Janeway sighed and turned to look at the stars. I had to resist the urge to smirk when I saw the classic bit of television drama, but what I was asking was not an easy matter even in what I had once considered the real world. The use of magic and science were not exactly in line with each other, but Tori had designed this universe on the same principles as the Endless Firmament. Certain things were quantifiable and could be explained with science, but there were many things that could not be.
"Fine... My crew only benefits from this arrangement, and while this may cause some problems for me when we return to the Alpha Quadrant, that's only if we make it back," Janeway agreed with some reluctance.
"We'll make it back, Captain, I promise," I replied confidently.