Chapter Text
Voyager shuddered, and behind her, Commander Ro Laren heard Lieutenant Scott Rollins call out, "Shields at sixty-seven percent!"
She gripped her arm-rests, glanced at the empty Captain’s chair—poor timing, worse luck—and leaned forward in her chair and said, "Roni, we need to give the Varro ships time to get to warp. Sahreen, I want power for the IK cannons."
"Understood," Stadi said, reading between the lines—and likely Ro’s thoughts—over what was needed. The IK cannons had a forward-facing arc. They couldn’t fire at targets behind them.
"On it," Lieutenant Sahreen Lan said.
"Cannons charging," Rollins said, grunting as Voyager took another hit. "Shields at sixty percent. I’ll be as fast as I can, Stadi."
"I’ll give you as clear a shot as I can," Stadi said. "Everyone hold tight."
A moment later, Voyager danced. Ro had come up through Starfleet as a pilot before she’d begun her path through advanced tactical training—Captain Picard’s suggestion she’d one day make a fine Strategic Operations Officer, or even work for Starfleet Intelligence—but when Stadi put Voyager into a lengthwise spin—then flipped the Intrepid-class vessel end-over-end—all without bleeding most of the momentum she already had and wanted to keep, Ro’s own exhalation of being utterly, truly impressed was drowned out by the various noises of discomfort from the rest of the Bridge crew, including a choking noise from Ensign Simon Stotler at the Engineering Station.
Though apparently not a fan of pulling Gs, Stotler did manage to call out, "Inertial dampers at eighty-nine percent capacity!"
On the viewscreen, Ro had a glimpse of the Varro ships zooming past Voyager at high impulse, and then, behind her, the two vessels—completely mismatched, one sleeker and far more militaristic than the other, which they now knew wasn’t the Ord freighter it appeared to be—came into view, albeit swooping and suddenly.
Also, it was odd to watch the stars still move backwards.
"IK cannons charged!" Lan said.
"Scott?" Ro said.
"Firing!" Rollins called out, and Ro watched as the IK cannons discharged their destructive force at the tactical vessel, striking the shields of the ship almost head on.
Come on, Ro thought. Come on…
The vessel’s shields buckled, and a streak of flame flared from the hull before the vessel tipped and began to swing away. Still mostly under control, Ro thought, but certainly not in good shape.
The freighter, despite being modified with heavier armaments alongside the bright orange markings of the M’Kree, also visibly pulled back.
"Get us out of here," Ro said.
"I’ve got the course the Varro ships took," Stadi said. "I’ll turn us around."
"Maybe not the same way as last time?" Rollins said, though with good enough humour that it sent a ripple of laughter through the Bridge.
"Spoilsport," Stadi said.
Within minutes, they were back underway at warp, the two Varro vessels beside them. Ro thought both looked good, but there was carbon scoring on Varro-7.
"Message from Varro-4," Lan said, tapping her panel. "They’ve confirmed the Hazari ships we’re meeting up with are where they’re supposed to be."
"Are we sure they’re Hazari and not N’Kree conscripts?" Rollins said.
"The Captain already spoke to them himself," Lan said.
Rollins nodded, and Ro took a breath. No doubt Captain Cavit—having been over on Varro-4 with Doctor Fitzgerald when the attack had begun—had found the experience of being off Voyager during a tactical scenario painful. She could imagine him looking for a way—any way—to be useful and contribute to their safety.
Knowing they weren’t warping into another trap was a good way to do that, frankly.
"All right," Ro said. "Stand down from red alert, but maintain yellow. I want a full damage report. And let’s keep shields up for now."
*
Once they were back at Yellow Alert, Crewman Celes Tal returned to the Mess Hall, finding Crewman Eru had already beaten her there. The pixiesh blond Ocampa was straightening some of the mugs they kept out by the heated urns—they must have fallen over during that maneuver—and Celes joined her, kneeling down and grabbing a few mugs. The first one she picked up was from the Amundsen, and had the markings of the USS Venture from an alternate timeline on it, but she wasn’t particularly superstitious about which mugs she used when, unlike some of the crew.
They stacked them together.
"Any luck on why the N’Kree are so mad?" Celes said, once they were done.
"Not yet," Eru said. She often worked with Lieutenant Cing’ta and her mate, Cir, to translate subspace messages and help Voyager piece together the puzzle that was the Delta Quadrant’s various species. "They seem to use tight-band transmissions, and encode them. Cir’s working on the bits and pieces we’ve gotten so far, but…" She shook her head, lifting the partition that let her into the kitchen area, and gesturing for Celes to go first.
She did, and looking around the kitchen side of things, she saw no immediate disasters. They’d designed the kitchen well. Or, well, Lieutenant Honigsberg and Eru had. She’d not been a part of Crew Support back then.
She rubbed at her right eye with one hand, nodding to herself. "Given we’re still at yellow alert, maybe we should just stick to wraps?"
"Makes sense," Eru said. Then, Eru’s voice took on an edge of concern. "Tal? Are you okay?"
Celes turned to look at the woman, but instead of seeing Eru, it was like the air itself was fracturing between them, like a broken window or mirror distorting the view. She rubbed at her eyes again, and intended to say, "Eye strain," which she’d had all morning.
Instead, she heard her own voice, weak and shaky, say, "Help."
Then she collapsed.
*
Crewman William Telfer stumbled on his way back into Stellar Cartography.
"Billy?" Therese Hickman said, reaching out and taking his arm.
"Need?" Billy said, in a thick, slurred voice, before his eyes rolled back into his head and he went boneless, dragging them both to the ground.
*
When Jeta stepped into the Gardens, she was pleased to find little to no obvious signs of turmoil from Voyager’s recent maneuvers. Ensuring the frames and gardens were as stable as possible had been an ongoing project of the botanists and support crew assigned to the place, but all the best intentions didn’t always work, and while she spotted a few ripe and perhaps not-quite-ripe vegetables had fallen from their various vines, it appeared the impact was—
Ensign Doug Bronowski lay prone on the floor by the chadre’kab containers. His eyes were open, and his mouth was moving, but whatever he was saying, she couldn’t make it out. She knelt beside him even as she tapped her combadge.
"Jeta to Sickbay," she called out. "Ensign Bronowski has collapsed in the Gardens."
*
In the plasma relay room on deck fifteen, Crewman Mortimer Harren’s PADD slipped from his nerveless fingers and clattered to the deck.
No one noticed.
*
Crewman Alona Unai paused at the entrance to the Planetary Sciences lab, and tilted her head. "Pardon?"
"I didn’t say anything." Ensign Ikuko Kyoto glanced at her. "You okay?"
Unai fell to the ground.
*
Gavin Nelson wasn’t the first person back to the Arboretum once the Red Alert was over, and he nodded to Ensign Sylvester MacAlister, a burly ops officer he only really knew in passing as someone else assigned to Lieutenant Lan’s team.
Or, well, formerly, in his case.
MacAlister nodded back. He looked to be doing a quick manual diagnostic check of the room—likely checking the various power conduits behind the walls as part of a damage control sweep, Nelson thought.
Nelson sat at one of the tables, aiming his gaze out the aft windows, where streaks of stars at warp told him they were underway once more.
Then the stars curved. And twisted. And everything tilted sideways. He closed his eyes against the sensation of vertigo, but it didn’t help, and he shoved to his feet and opened his mouth.
He felt hands trying to steady him. "I—" he managed, though he had no idea what else he’d intended to say.
Then it was like the entire world just broke away beneath his feet.
*
In Astrometrics, Seven of Nine’s ocular implant alerted her to a visual impairment.
She reached up and touched the metal where it curved around her eye, even though the functional response was a mental effort and something she directed silently and internally.
Lieutenant Zandra Taitt, currently working alongside Seven to attempt to create a map of the N’Kree incursion into Ord’mirit treaty territory, paused and glanced at her. "Everything all right?"
"A minor adjustment," Seven of Nine said. "My organic eye is fatigued."
Taitt smiled. "I can relate." She faced the display. "This invasion is far larger than we realized…" She shook her head, and Seven turned her attention back to the display, where a vast array of vessels were marked, with more appearing by the moment all across Ord’mirit space.
The image blurred—or, rather, her vision of it became occluded—and Seven aimed another mental command at her implant.
She corrected for the biological fatigue, and her vision cleared.
"Let’s see if we can figure out somewhere safe to figure out what started this fight," Taitt said.
Seven of Nine nodded, and got back to work.