"Set a course, for home."
These were perhaps the last words spoken by Captain Janeway before the unexpected happened. Voyager had just started it's now rather short journey back to Earth when a flash of green tinged light engulfed the ship.
After a few brief moments the light dissipated and the ship leveled out. "Report!" Janeway called as she picked herself up from the floor. The seconds stretched into minutes as those gathering sensor readings were too shocked to speak. Janeway waited patiently for a couple minutes before demanding, "Well, casualty reports, systems report? Now!"
"Minor injuries reported, nothing serious, no fatalities," Chakotay read off the consol in between the Captain's chair and his, having returned from the conn after the ship had leveled out, leaving navigation in control of one of the extra crewmembers on the bridge.. Janeway nodded her head. At least they were all alive and in one piece.
"Warp core is off line, hull breeches on decks 3, 5, 7, and 13. Emergency force fields are holding. Deflector is functioning at thirty-four percent of normal, shields are down, weapons are reduced to minimal phasers. Long range sensors are off line. Life support is failing on deck 13." The systems report came in from Ensign Kim. "I'm re-routing power from the holodecks to life support and weapons."
Captain Janeway nodded, she'd just been about to tell Harry to do that. Her crew was on top of everything before she even had to say it anymore. "Is there anything on sensors? Where are we?" She turned in her seat to look back at Harry.
"There's two ships on sensors, Starfleet ships. And the borg nebula we just left. Captain, we're back in the Delta Quadrant, about 35,000 light-years from home." Silence greeted the statement, shocked expressions were evident on every face on the bridge, with the exception of Tuvok's.
"We're back?" Janeway said quietly, though everyone could hear her. "We were so close, so close, and it was just….snatched away from us…How long will it take to repair all the damaged systems?"
"A couple days, minimum, if we don't get any unexpected visitors and…" Harry was cut off as the turbo-lift doors opened revealing Tom Paris. He took one look at the shocked faces many of the crew were still wearing before he spoke.
"We're not….back… are we?" The Captain nodded her head slowly, not trusting herself to speak. "No. No, it can't be.."