A sudden rush of stale air, accompanied by a series of clicks, beeps, and whirs, brought him to his feet. His heart pounded fervently in his chest and pure adrenaline jolted his extremities. Turning to the operations station, Kim watched expectantly as the display screen began to glow faintly. Moments later, a series of commands appeared indicating that the station had initiated its start-up procedures.
“She did it,” he said aloud. “Way to go, Nancy!”
He moved quickly from station to station, confirming that the primary systems were responding to the sudden influx of power coursing through them without overloading. Any minute now, communications would be restored shipwide. His first duty, however, was to route what power they had to the ship’s most critical system, feeding much-needed life support to sickbay and engineering, and activating sensors.
Before the main computer could begin generating data about the ship’s location, the bridge’s viewscreen surged to life. Kim stepped closer to it, beyond the well that contained the captain’s chair and flight control station, and tried to process the sight that now met his eyes.
He had no idea where the ship was in relation to where it had been just before the attack Ensign Unhai had described. But wherever they were, it was an astonishing sight, and one with which he was actually quite familiar.
Just before the Borg had decided to instigate an all-out assault on the Alpha Quadrant, Voyager had been dispatched for a long-term study of star formation within the Yaris Nebula. Staring at the images before him now, Kim could easily believe they had returned to that stellar nursery.
Vibrant pink, blue, green, and orange streams of plasma floated before him, dotted throughout with young stars. “The edge of a nebula?” he asked the empty bridge. In the distance a series of flashing lights caught his attention. “Those are too close together to be stars.”
He was suddenly conscious of a hint of panic in the form of sudden tightness around his chest.
Unhai had said that the vessel that attacked them emitted something similar. He scanned the viewscreen and began to count, struggling to distinguish these distant ships from the multitudes of stars among them.
When he reached twenty, he stopped counting.
The ship that attacked them was like nothing Unhai had ever seen before and it had changed its shape right before the attack began. Kim didn’t like to speculate based upon little or no evidence, but he had personally observed matter found on an asteroid near DK-1116 that had also shown impressive malleability of form while in the process of—transforming? ingesting?—one of Voyager’s shuttles. According to the last reports he had read from the away teams that had explored the surface, a great deal of a similar substance had been found beneath the surface of the planet. Whatever the substance was, it had been created by a species called the Edrehmaia. If the attack on Galen was connected to the events that had taken place in and around DK-1116 over the last few days, it seemed possible that the Edrehmaia were the ones who had brought them here, and here appeared to be their place of origin, or at the very least, some sort of rendezvous point. The only good news was that most of the potential Edrehmaia ships he could make out through the viewscreen were holding position thousands of kilometers distant from the Galen.
But where exactly were they?
Kim returned to the ops station and ordered a long-range positioning scan. To his mingled relief and dismay, he was soon rewarded with his answer.
“Engineering to Kim.”
He was conscious of another celebratory flutter of his heart at the sound of functioning communications equipment.
“Nancy?”
“We’re still a long way from full power, but so far, the reactor is stable.”
“That’s great. Good job.”
There was a slight pause before Conlon said, “Good job? Harry, we just overcame the first and most dangerous problem we were facing. That’s better than ‘good,’ right?”
Kim continued to scan the astrometric display the sensors were generating. “I’m sorry. Yes, of course. It’s great.”
Another pause.
“What’s wrong, Harry?”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes. I sent Velth to check the nearest relay junctions. I won’t be able to run any diagnostics for a bit, so I’ve ordered him to perform manual scans to check for any overloads.”
“Long-range sensors just came up.”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“We’re alive, so it could be worse.”
“Where are we?”
Kim shook his head. Voyager had once been transported seventy thousand light-years from its position into the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant in a matter of minutes. That fact alone meant he couldn’t rule out what the sensors were telling him, much as he wished he could.
“I’m going to run the scan again.”
“Harry, where are we?”
“We’re still in the Delta Quadrant, forty-seven thousand light-years from our previous position, near the outermost edge of the Milky Way.”
Another long pause.
“That’s not possible.”
“Yeah, I’m going to run the scan again.”
“Harry, if you’re right…”
“I know. Stand by.”
Kim waited anxiously for the results of the new scan to populate the screen before him.
“Come on, come on…”
A short trill sounded. Kim’s heart sank.
The results were the same.
Lieutenant Ranson Velth had never had much patience for briefings. Commander Glenn, who was still unconscious in sickbay but had mercifully survived the trip there despite suffering severe head trauma, tended to keep them short. He liked that in a commanding officer. Her senior staff meetings weren’t terribly democratic affairs. Reports were concise, Glenn’s orders were clear and definitive. They rarely lasted more than fifteen minutes.
Staring at the faces of the officers now huddled together on the bridge, sipping something the folks who prepared emergency rations had the temerity to call coffee and munching on a bar that tasted like spiced tree bark, Velth realized that briefings were a thing of the past. From this point forward, much of his day would consist of multiple meetings with those assembled as they moved step by step toward their mutual goal of restoring the Galen to something resembling full functionality.
With the exception of the Doctor, all present were lieutenants. Each
