The weeks passed by and, while I was ready for something to spring up, nothing did. I had more time to train with my Council, I had seen Raven several times when I regenerated, and I spent more time with L'Naan and Echo while Katye spent more time with Seven. While things seemed to be going smoothly, we knew that there were dangers lurking in our future and, just like with our time in 'The 100', events would pop up whether we wanted them to or not, so we planned for what we could.
"Before there were maps and globes, let alone radar and subspace sensors, mariners navigated by the stars," Chakotay said at the unveiling of the Astrometric Lab. "We're returning to that tried-and-true method, but this time, there's a difference."
"Ensign Kim and Seven of Nine have merged Starfleet and Borg ingenuity to create this new technology, and I'm sure I speak for the entire crew when I say... thank you," Janeway added before starting to clap, with the rest of those present following her example. "Now, how the hell does it work?"
Her statement received a few chuckles, including mine. Only the Senior Officers were gathered in the new Astrometric Lab for the event, including our ambassador, Nelix, so the whole 'ground-breaking' ceremony seemed a little over the top to me, but it did keep things from feeling too formal. The lab itself was a round room with several wall mounted consoles on both sides of the door. The main screen took up forty percent of the back wall, running from the ceiling to a small platform that had two steps on each side. The main terminal, where Seven would spend countless hours in the future, was placed in the center of the room and circular with a small opening for people to enter through.
"Astrometric sensors measure the radiative flux of up to three billion stars simultaneously. The computer then calculates our position relative to the center of the galaxy," Seven explained.
"This mapping technology is ten times more accurate than what we've been using. Seven, will you do the honors?" Harry continued. He waited for her to put up a new course on the screen which was displaying the Milky Way Galaxy. "We've plotted a new course home."
"By my estimation, this trajectory will eliminate five years from your journey," Seven said.
"Our journey. Nice work, Seven," Nelix corrected, and then praised.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and patted her back; thoroughly, making Seven uncomfortable, but in a way that the ex-drone needed to get used to with people like him around.
"That region of space we're about to enter... it looks like it has a lot of M-Class planets," B'Elanna remarked.
"It does," Seven agreed, tapping a few buttons and zooming into the region that B'Elanna was talking about. "Spatial grid 005, primary species: the Zahl."
"What do we know about this species?" Tuvok asked.
"Technologically advanced, but non-confrontational. Their resistance quotient is quite low," Seven replied.
"Thank you all for coming," Chakotay said, gently letting them know that it was the end of the little get-together. "We've got a lot of work to do, so..."
"I'd like to say a few words, if I may," the Doctor requested. "I've prepared a speech for this occasion. When I was first activated on Stardate 48315, and I found myself mano a mano with the Delta Quadrant, I didn't think we'd survive a week, let alone three years. There was strife. There was discord. You were all at each others' throats, but over time, I've had the pleasure and pride of watching this crew learn to work together as colleagues, even friends."
"Here, here," Tom interjected, hoping to end the Doctor's speech early, but sadly, had no luck.
"Who would have thought that this eclectic group of voyagers could actually become a family? Starfleet, Maquis, Klingon, Talaxian, Vazukuru, hologram, Borg, even Mister Paris. Granted, we've had our share of difficulties. One might say, we've seen the best of times and the worst of times. I'd now like to recount some of those times, from my unique perspective. Under the category of 'best of times'... I invite you all to recall the moment when I..."
"Bridge to the Captain," the comm system interrupted.
"Janeway here."
"We're being hailed... a vessel off the port bow," the ensign, who I could not remember the name of, replied.
It was a perfect moment to forcibly end the Doctor's speech, which everyone realized in an instant and grabbed on to, including myself. As much as I loved the Doctor, he could be a bit of a blowhard and talk for hours on end if given the chance. I was dreading the days when he would get into photography and 'force' the crew to watch his slide show, but that was the future me's problem.
"On our way," Chakotay replied as everyone made a quick exit, including Seven.
"Well, perhaps we could all reconvene later," the Doctor suggested.
I made my way upstairs with the rest of the Bridge crew. As we stepped off the turbo lift, the ship rocked lightly from an attack.
"They're firing on us, Captain," an ensign, standing at Tactical, said.
"It's a small vessel, fifteen life-forms aboard. Low warp capacity, limited armaments. They pose no threat," Tuvok confirmed, taking over the station.
"Open a channel," Janeway instructed as everyone else took their stations.
As soon as the image of the man on the ship came up on the screen, I cursed to myself silently as I recognized him. While he was nothing more than a stand-in character from the episode, I remembered him, and what his presence marked.
[Code One alert. The Year of Hell is about to start!] I sent to Echo.
"Have we offended you in some way?" Janeway asked.
"You will reverse course immediately. This region is in dispute. You have no business in Krenim space!" the Krenim man barked like a chihuahua.
[I'll reach out to Katye, but you need to get the temporal shields online before the first distortion wave hits.] Echo sent back.
[I'll talk with Janeway as soon as I can.]
"I was under the impression that we were entering Zahl territory," Janeway replied, casually.
"The Zahl have no legitimate claim here. They have taken what is ours! Reverse course... or be destroyed."
Janeway looked back at Tuvok and then back to the screen. "With all due respect, unless you've got something a little bigger in your torpedo tubes, I'm not turning around, but I'm certainly willing to discuss this issue with you."
"No discussion! No compromise!" the man snapped before cutting off communications with Voyager.
"They are in retreat," Tuvok remarked a moment later.
"His bark's obviously worse than his bite," Chakotay said with a joking manner.
"He seems rather intent. Let's go to Yellow Alert. Maintain our course. Maybe the Zahl can give us some answers," Janeway said as she made her way around the railing.
"Captain, may I speak with you privately?" I asked.
Janeway gave me a surprised look, but agreed all the same and replied, "Alright, my Ready Room."
The two of us made our way to her Ready Room. Janeway headed over to the replicator and ordered a cup of black coffee, making me smile wryly. She knew that I was going to bring up some looming danger to the ship, and as much as I did not want to prove her right, that was not the case at this moment. With a sigh of exasperation, I summoned out a padd with information about a new type of shield modification that Katye and Seven had developed over the past few weeks due to my memories, and Kes's warning seven months ago. In the show, they seemed to completely forget about it, but I had not and made sure to keep everything that she remembered recorded. I handed Janeway the tablet and waited for her to look it over.
"Temporal shielding?" Janeway asked with a hint of confusion.
"Do you remember Kes's warning when her body was unstable, traveling backwards through Time? The Krenim?" I replied.
Janeway frowned, trying to remember, making me wonder if the plot-hole would continue into this reality, but her eyes widened in the next moment. "That's right; how could I forget?"
"That little ship will pop up multiple times throughout our journey through their space, but it's not the real danger of the region that we are entering. Unknown to that little ship, and all of the worlds around here, there is a Krenim Timeship that has the ability to wipe entire civilizations from the timeline with a unique weapon. This technology is something that even my group fears because we don't know how it will affect us. Time is a very dangerous element to manipulate, and something that none of us had dared to study because of that fact.
"If things follow my vision, a spatial distortion wave will ripple from the Zahl home world and Voyager will be majorly affected. History will rewrite itself, and that little vessel will become a warship with weapons that can easily penetrate the Voyager's shields with their chronitonic torpedoes, which are in a state of temporal flux. These are what would have led to Kes's chroniton poisoning, if she was still with us, and we have found our way to their space despite the changes that my group has made.
"Our bodies have a natural resistance to these things; it's why the Q have such a problem with us. We have no idea what will happen when that spatial distortion wave hits us, and we would prefer to keep it that way. Voyager was able to come up with a way to combat this temporal weapon, and I've had Katye and Seven work together to come up with what I hope was the solution that Seven managed on her own, based off my memory, but until its tested, I can't be positive," I explained.
Janeway sighed and took a drink from her cup. "Can't you ever tell me that we are about to find a wormhole back to the Alpha Quadrant?"
I chuckled and retorted, "You had your chance at that when we first joined the crew but complained about a twenty-year difference and keeping the timeline intact."
She smirked, shaking her head, and asked, "How quickly can Seven implement these new shields?"
"In ten minutes or so, since the bulk of the work is already done," I replied.
"And how long would it have taken her to come up with them?"
"A month, maybe two… and Voyager would have sustained heavy casualties before then," I warned.
"This is a big change from your vision. Haven't you been preaching that you need to limit the effects of your group?"
"Do you remember when I gave you the mobile emitter for the Doctor? We solved a Time Paradox and, while it should have reset everything to how it was before the moment we were drawn in, we retained our memories and even the emitter... The Krenim Timeship literally fires time warping waves, and my group fears how this will affect us and Voyager. We think that it is a bigger danger for Voyager to be affected by these distortion waves with us onboard as an unstable element than speeding up the confrontation with the Timeship, because they will come eventually since you won't roll over and let the Krenim destroy the ship, even without my group here. These shields make Voyager a thorn in Krenim's side and running away from these events aren't likely now that we've found ourselves in the middle of them," I explained with a heavy sigh.
Janeway let out a sigh herself and remarked, "I'm beginning to understand why Starfleet kept your race secret and separate from the rest of the fleet."
"Not the first time that you've said such, and probably not the last, but honestly, would you rather we were gone?" I asked.
"No," she replied with a wry smile. "How soon do you recommend that these shields need to be active?"
"I feel like we have a day or two... the first wave in my vision hit while you had a Zahl delegate onboard."
"Alright, I'll have Tuvok and B'Elanna look over the specifications and, unless they see something wrong with the data, I'll have the modifications active by tomorrow."
"Thank you, Captain."
"I have a request for you. If this matter is so serious that you are acting preemptively, could you show me these memories as you did with the Borg?" Janeway asked.
"One moment," I replied then reached towards the connection with Echo. [Echo. Echo!]
[What?] I could sense her annoyance since she was in the middle of writing her weekly report for Tuvok.
[Janeway wants to look at the memories of 'Year of Hell'. It was a Krenim ship that rocked the ship, just a bit ago.]
[Is she using the temporal shields?] Echo asked.
[After Tuvok and B'Elanna look them over, yes. She requested to see them after agreeing.]
[Fine, it doesn't really matter. Once those shields are activated, the events of the episode are going to be completely different, other than destroying the Timeship.]
[Alright, thanks.]
"No complaints from Echo, so sure. Things are going to change significantly with us here, no matter what," I replied. Janeway was surprised by my quick agreement, to which I shrugged and chuckled, "Katye had already guessed that you would want to look at the memories since I've done it once before, and I just wanted to confirm that I wasn't stepping on Echo's toes by agreeing."
"Alright, then let's go," Janeway said then finished off her coffee and placed the empty cup on her desk as she walked past me and headed for the door. Following her out, she stopped by Tuvok's station and handed him the padd that I had given her. "Send a copy of this data to B'Elanna. I want a report from both of you by the end of the day about these modifications and how difficult it will be to implement them."
"Understood," Tuvok acknowledged.
Janeway led me to the turbo lift and ordered it down to Deck Ten. She continued to lead me all of the way to the Fae Dragon, but stopped outside the door. I chuckled at the gesture and motioned for her to head in first, with Fae opening the door for her. The ship was empty since Katye and Echo were on duty, so we made our way upstairs and over to the couches. We sat down and I pulled out two Mind Linkers for us, passing one to her. She still remembered how to use them, so we activated them and entered the white world of the Mental Plane.
"I'll give you fair warning that these visions are scattered over a year's worth of time, so they might feel a bit disjointed. They are only bits and pieces of that time; moments that held their own significance in some form or fashion. Still, I believe you'll understand why we are so concerned," I cautioned.
"Alright," Janeway replied.
"Fae, show her the 'Year of Hell'," I said, since even Kes had called it such.
The memories were edited to not show any of the scenes on the Krenim ship until Chakotay and Tom were abducted. Every time that I showed her my memories, even arranged by Fae, could potentially add to her doubt of them, and my group. I was waiting for the day when she pressed me for the truth, since I knew there were holes in the story that we had told her, and I did not doubt that she had noticed them.
The world of white changed to the Astrometric Lab and the ground-breaking ceremony, which played out nearly identically to how it had, just with the lack of my presence. The Krenim ship attacked and allowed everyone to flee from the Doctor's speech. Just like before, their ship posed no danger to the Voyager, and it was the same man that we had seen when Janeway spoke with him. Next, the scene jumped to the Briefing Room where Janeway, Chakotay, and Tuvok were meeting with the Zahl representative, who was a bubbly, and charismatic man. Again, the Krenim interrupted and then accused Voyager of conspiring with their enemies. Before the matter could be resolved, though, a spatial distortion was rapidly approaching.
Harry had enough time to confirm that it originated from the Zahl home world before it reached the Voyager. As the spatial distortion wave passed through the Voyager, the pristine Bridge was replaced by a damaged one. There was a nameless ensign dead, but now, I knew her name: Nicole Brookson. She typically worked graveyard shifts, manning one of the minor stations, so I had gotten to know her over the years.
Voyager was hailed again by the Krenim ship, which was now a large and powerful warship, and it was the same man from before. Arrogantly, he told Janeway to stand down before he destroyed the Voyager, and he would not execute her crew. Of course, that was not something that Janeway would agree to, not the show one nor the one that I had come to know, so they fought back and escaped.
The scenes changed again. Now, Voyager was under attack again. They had no luck changing the shields, so the Krenim chronitonic torpedoes could slip through the shields like they were not there, causing heavy damage to the Voyager. Their phaser banks were burned out, the torpedo launchers were down, and Deck Five was about to explode due to a power overload. They managed to survive due to some quick thinking by Janeway who deployed four torpedoes like mines in the path of the Krenim ship which managed to destroy it.
Janeway gave Chakotay the Bridge, or what was left of it anyways, then went to her Ready Room. The damage inside was just as bad as on the Bridge, with a bulkhead fallen in the middle of the room, and a layer of ash and dust covering everything. She searched around for various knick-knacks while checking the replicator and her computer, both of which were broken during the exchange. Chakotay came in a few minutes later and made the suggestion to break up the crew, but she refused, and he admitted that he did not really believe it was the right decision either.
A few more attacks happened, and more and more people were injured or killed. Seven managed to discover the torpedo imbedded in a jefferies tube and was able to get the precise modulation of the temporal frequency of it, but it came at the price of Tuvok's vision as it exploded as they tried to get away from it and he used his body to shield her while looking at the explosion. It took Seven a week to come up with the shields that I had presented to Janeway, but once she activated them, they were safe from the chronitonic torpedoes, meaning that the did not have to fear the Krenim, or so they believed.
Another spatial distortion wave erupted from the Garenor home world, but when it reached the Voyager, things were thrown off from what Annorax had planned. The Krenim warship that had been attacking them was reduced to a pre-warp ship while nothing happened to the Voyager. In fact, the Krenim Imperium had been reduced to a handful of planets and their technology had regressed significantly. While their problems had seemed to vanish, Janeway knew that there was more going on than just that and wanted to figure out what it was that had happened, but now, Voyager had caught the attention of the Timeship.
The massive time-bending weapon ship came for Voyager as they could not complete their task while Voyager remained as an unstable element. They abducted Chakotay and Tom, and then tried to erase Voyager from history as they had done to countless civilizations, but they managed to escape because the Timeship could not exceed Warp Six while having to leave Chakotay and Tom behind. From there, things only got worse for Voyager as different races would attack in hopes of stealing their technology, and they constantly had to run from Annorax. With little other choice, Janeway was forced to send off the majority of the crew in hopes that they could continue their journey home while the Senior Officers remained behind to hopefully save Chakotay and Tom, and stop Annorax.
Voyager was crippled, Janeway was scarred by burns she had sustained while trying to save the ship, and hope for their survival was diminishing at a rapid pace. Their chance came when Tom sent an encoded message to Voyager which gave details of a plan that he had come up with. Janeway did her part and collected allies, and B'Elanna helped them create the same temporal shields that they had. When the day that they were going to confront the Timeship came, Janeway sent all of the remaining crew to their allies' ships while she piloted the Voyager alone. Things played out as they hoped, the temporal core went offline while they were fighting, and with no other weapons remaining, Janeway steered the Voyager straight into Annorax's ship, destroying it.
The moment that the Timeship was destroyed, Time itself was repaired. Voyager re-enetered Krenim space, and met the same man that we had met before, but his tone was much different. He warned that the area was in dispute and recommended that they avoid their territory, then let them go without any trouble. Chakotay had Tom adjust their course to avoid Krenim space, and the scene faded away, back into the world of white.
Janeway had a frown on her face when she looked back at me, to which, I simply shrugged, and she let out a heavy sigh. "So, we need to destroy Annorax's ship no matter what?"
"That's the only way to undo all of the damage that he has done to the timeline since he developed that weapon ship. They have been active for centuries, so who knows how many species have been erased by him which we would restore," I replied.
"Then we need to start coming up with plans for when he appears," she said.