Notes:

- This is rated M for some scenes of violence/horror that may be a bit uncomfortable to read, but are all in service of the story, and because in later chapters there will be some sexual content. There are no explicit depictions of sex or gore, however.

- This story takes place on Voyager in the middle of Season 3, between "Blood Fever" and "Unity." It endeavors to portray the characters' personalities and relationships as they were at this time. However, the focus of this story is on some of the background characters; the crewmen and officers on the lower decks. The romantic pairings of this story do not involve canon characters.

STAR TREK

ODYSSEY

Isle of the Sun

TELL me, O Muse, of that sagacious man

Who, having overthrown the sacred town

Of Ilium, wandered far and visited

The capitals of many nations, learned

The customs of their dwellers, and endured

Great suffering on the deep; his life was oft

In peril, as he labored to bring back

His comrades to their homes. He saved them not,

Though earnestly he strove; they perished all,

Through their own folly; for they banqueted,

Madmen! upon the oxen of the Sun,—

The all-o'erlooking Sun, who cut them off

From their return. O goddess, virgin-child

Of Jove, relate some part of this to me.

The Odyssey of Homer

CHAPTER 1

Ensign Lucille Kang's Personal Log, stardate 50566 mark 6

I woke up at oh six hundred this morning, a full hour before my alarm was set, to another damned Yellow Alert. I could see the reason for it the moment I glanced out the window— just one more in a long string of astral phenomena. In the Nekrit Expanse, it seems like weird astral phenomena crop up every ten seconds or so, and so far, they've all turned out to be nothing remotely interesting.

This one looks a bit like a flattened penny, dangling out there in space. It's an oblong disk of gas, about the color of copper, with a little spark of violet light right in the middle. At first, I thought it was a far away nebula around a young star. But no, it's hanging just a few dozen klicks off the port bow. If it were the size of a star, we would be inside of it.

Frankly, I've got no idea what that thing out there is. The fact that the Captain called a Yellow Alert doesn't really shed any light on it, either. The ship has been at Yellow Alert almost as often as not, the last few weeks. It's probably a purely precautionary measure. The only thing I really know about this phenomenon is that it was responsible for waking me up at oh six hundred and dooming me to a full shift in the BNG lab on what should have been my day off.

I swear, one of these days… I'm just so sick of bioneural gel packs. If I had one wish… well, obviously it would be to find a way back to the Alpha Quadrant, but my second wish would be that whoever invented these finicky, temperamental, pain-in-the-ass bags of blue, computational snot would never have shared their idea with Starfleet, so that the little buggers never would have been put on Voyager in the first place.

I've said this before, personal log, and I'll say it again, I'm sure. But I graduated from the academy in the top tenth percentile of my class. I joined Starfleet and studied biochemistry so I could seek out new life and explore alien worlds. Not so I could spend twelve hours a day, four days a week, week in, week out, in a dimly-lit monitoring laboratory, looking after the biochemical needs of glorified microchips. It's been months since I've been on an away mission. In fact, I could count the total number of away missions I've been a part of on one hand. And while a few lucky officers get to work on the bridge and attend meetings to analyze bizarre and fascinating new phenomena like that cloud disk out there right now, I have to spend day after day just making sure the BNG's are running at peak efficiency.

I'm beat, personal log. I'm running on four hours of sleep. I shouldn't have stayed up so late at Sandrine's last night, and I shouldn't have let Owen Vance ply me with so many synthales. I knew what he was after. I've been down that road once already, though, and it's not gonna happen again. Or at any rate, that's what I should have told him. Instead, I let him get to second base in Sandrine's primitive excuse for a 'fresher.

I just want to go back to my quarters now and collapse on my bed. I know, though, that the moment my head hits the pillow, I'll be wide awake. I've worked sixty hours this week, and I'm wound tighter than a K'tarian harp string. I'm gonna hit the gym and try to burn off some of this stress, and then I'm gonna hit the sack. Hopefully, by the time I wake, the Yellow Alert will be over, and I can salvage what's left of my weekend.

"Ensign Kang, report to Shuttle Bay One."

Lucy stumbled at the sudden chirp of her combadge and let loose a frustrated interjection at Commander Chakotay's disruption. "Oh, stars!"

A moment before, the only sounds had been her bare feet thumping again and again against the pliant surface of the treadmill, the treadmill itself whisking around and around its track under her feet, and the faint, omnipresent hum of the starship around her. Voyager's deck eight gymnasium was empty, aside from Lucy. The portside windows boasted a view of empty space, a featureless void tinged violet by the interstellar gases of the Nekrit Expanse, unremarkable but for the astral phenomenon that seemed to be the center of everyone's attention on Voyager at the moment.

Lucy should have been ecstatic to receive the call from Commander Chakotay. The only possible reason he would call her to the shuttle bay was to attend an away mission. It was the opportunity she'd been waiting for. And yet, she was exhausted, she was stressed, and she was not exactly presentable at the moment. Frankly, she just wasn't up to it.

Lucy thumbed the off switch for the treadmill, and the track slowed smoothly to a stop under her feet. For a moment, the whole room seemed to glide in the opposite direction around her as she adjusted to the change in motion. She took a deep breath, mopped her slender wrist across her forehead to clear away some of the sweat, and slapped the combadge affixed to the strap of her sports bra to reply.

"Acknowledged, sir," she said.

Whether she was up to the task or not, she was going. She couldn't turn down a direct order, after all, and besides, she'd be kicking herself for months if she managed to miss this opportunity.

Lucy set off immediately for her quarters. Only when the cool draft of the ventilation system in the corridor hit her sweat-dampened skin did she remember she'd left her sweater in the gym behind her. She was walking down the corridor in just her short, hip-hugging gym shorts and her sports bra.

Oh, well. She couldn't waste time going back for it now. She was going to be late enough as it was. Besides, almost everyone was either at their post or in their bunk at the moment. It was still a Yellow Alert, after all. She padded down the corridor in her bare feet, arriving at the turbolift without incident.

When the turbolift doors opened, however, there stood Ensign Vorik.

Lucy froze for a moment. Vorik took in her appearance with one quick glance, her light olive skin glistening with sweat, her shoulder-length black hair swept back in a haphazard ponytail, her slender proportions very apparent in her half-dressed state, and his gaze returned immediately straight ahead. His expression betrayed nothing.

Lucy debated waiting for the next turbolift, but decided that trying to explain to Vorik that she wasn't comfortable riding with him would be even more awkward. She figured her best chance of saving face was simply to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary. She stepped over the threshold and turned to face the door.

"Deck four," she instructed the computer, and the doors whisked shut. The slight lag in the inertial dampeners gave the turbolift just enough of a sense of movement to reassure them that they were on their way.

Lucy glanced sidelong at Ensign Vorik. His gaze remained fixed on the turbolift doors. And yet, the hairs on her neck stood on end, and a chill ran through her that could not entirely be contributed to the ship's ventilation.

Rumors had been running wild about the Vulcan ensign, the last week or so. There weren't really any facts to be had, at least not among the junior officers and crewmen of the lower decks, but the scuttlebutt was that Vorik had had some sort of violent episode and attacked Lieutenant Torres during the last away mission. Crewman Berman from engineering said that ever since, he could cut the tension between the two of them with a knife.

It wasn't often that Lucy contemplated the raw strength that the Vulcans on the crew possessed. It so seldom had any bearing. Vulcans were usually the very last people she would imagine being capable of violence. It wasn't a thought she liked contemplating, especially when she was in such a vulnerable position as she was now.

When the turbolift doors opened, Lucy was alarmed to recognize the control room of the Shuttle Bay. Gathered there in front of her was Commander Chakotay, Lieutenant Tom Paris, Ensign Harry Kim, and Chief Petty Officer Owen Vance, who had been her drinking companion the night before in Tom Paris's holodeck recreation of a twentieth-century tavern. At the sound of the doors opening, all eyes turned towards her and Ensign Vorik.

Lucy froze like a targ in the hoverpod lights, her eyes wide with panic. Vorik strode out of the turbolift. Ensign Kim took one look at her, and his eyes jumped to the ceiling. Tom Paris's gaze darted up and down her slender figure a couple times before he managed to force them to meet her eye line. Vance leered at her with poorly disguised amusement. Chakotay just gave her a hard, questioning look.

Lucy met his eyes and, just before the turbolift doors whisked shut, she said, "I'll be right back, sir."

He nodded in acknowledgment just as the doors closed.

The turbolift resumed its course towards deck four and her quarters. Lucy's cheeks were blazing hot, so she was sure she was blushing bright red.

She wondered whether she'd be able to play it off with a joke when she got back, or if that mortifying moment would stigmatize the rest of her career, or even the rest of her life.

Lucy made it the rest of the way back to her quarters without further incident, thankfully. She headed directly into the 'fresher, stripping off her sports bra and shimmying out of her gym shorts as she walked. She stepped into the sonic shower and turned it on full blast, holding her arms up in the air and turning in three slow circles as ultrasonic pulses, antiseptic rays, and jets of warm air caressed her naked body up and down, scouring every drop of sweat and grime from her skin and leaving her feeling clean, dry, and refreshed.

Next, she dug some clean underwear and a gray uniform undershirt out of her dresser, took a clean uniform out of her closet, and got dressed with all possible haste. She felt much better in her impeccably tailored black uniform, with its cerulean blue shoulders and its single bronze pip on the collar marking her as a Starfleet science officer. She pulled on her socks and uniform boots next, and finally, she affixed her combadge over her left breast. She activated her holomirror and spared a full second to inspect her appearance. She straightened her ponytail, tugged on her sleeves, sucked in her little belly, and stood up straight, slender shoulders back, small chest puffed forward.

Even with everything that had happened since she'd first taken her commission, all the setbacks and disappointments, disasters and embarrassing moments that had plagued her career so far, she was still proud of her uniform and everything it represented. She'd made a commitment to the peaceful exploration of the cosmos, to provide aid where it was needed, to pursue scientific curiosity wherever she could, to make peaceful contact with new worlds and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no one had ever gone before. She was Starfleet. Sometimes, she needed to remind herself of that fact.

Lucy made it back to the shuttle bay about five minutes after she'd left.

"I'm sorry about that, Commander," she said as she stepped out of the turbolift.

"It's quite alright, ensign," said Chakotay. "It's been a long day. If you're not feeling up to this away mission, I'll understand completely."

"Oh, I am!" Lucy rushed to reply. "You just happened to catch me while I was in the gym, sir. I was on my way back to my quarters to change when the turbolift made that little side trip."

She flashed a little annoyed look at Vorik, who was gathered with the other officers for the away mission. It occurred to her that he could have warned her where he was going before she stepped onto the turbolift.

Chakotay flashed a polite smile, though she was sure there was amusement dancing in his eyes. "It's nothing to worry about, ensign."

She caught sight of Chief Vance, still smiling at her embarrassment and casting occasional glances below her neckline, as if he could see straight through her uniform.

Why did it have to be him? Lucy wondered. Why couldn't it have been Tuvok, or any other security officer?

But she turned her focus back to Chakotay and replied, "Thank you, sir."

Chakotay nodded, then changed the subject, turning to a display on the shuttlebay control console. "This is the telemetry from a class one probe sent through the wormhole at sixteen hundred hours."

Lucy's eyes went wide at the mention of a wormhole. That's what that stellar phenomenon hanging off the port bow was? It was news to her. If they'd discovered a stable wormhole here in the Delta Quadrant, it could prove a huge boon to their mission. If the other end happened to be closer to Federation Space than this end, they could shave years or decades off their journey. And even if it wasn't, the data they gathered from studying it might be instrumental in detecting similar ones in the future.

Lucy swallowed her urge to voice these thoughts, or to ask any of the thousands of questions that immediately sprang to mind. She was clearly behind the curve on this subject, since no one else seemed surprised. She struggled to focus on the probe telemetry Chakotay was showing her and to pay attention to his mission briefing.

The telemetry included visual and sensor readings of what looked to be an alien space station. It was a massive, bone-white, isosceles tetrahedron, its shape stretched so that it did not resemble a pyramid so much as a wedge, with narrow edges running horizontally along the top and the bottom of the station. The structure featured gaps in the triangular faces along the top and bottom edges that might have been shuttlebay doors, exhaust ports, or disruptor banks for all Lucy knew, and corrugated striations that radiated from the narrow end of each face vertically across the structure.

"This was discovered on the far side of the wormhole," said Chakotay. "In fact, this structure appears to be the only thing on the far side of the wormhole."

Lucy squinted at the image and thought she spotted another station of the same design in the distance behind the first one. "What about that, sir?" she asked, pointing at the spot.

"Well spotted, ensign, but sensors indicate that that's the same structure."

"What, like a reflection?" she asked.

Chakotay smiled. "Not exactly," he said. "It's the same structure, viewed from farther off. The space on the other side of the wormhole seems to curve around on itself, encasing a volume of only about sixty-five thousand cubic kilometers in a hyper-spherical, four-dimensional geometry."

"So if we flew in a straight line in there… we'd go in a loop, and end up where we started?"

Chakotay nodded.

Lucy looked from Chakotay to the sensor readings in wonder, then looked around at the other officers. Harry and Tom seemed less amazed. In fact, mostly they seemed to be amused by her reaction. It occurred to her that they were already aware of all this, and this part of the briefing was only for her benefit. She cast a glance at Chief Vance and saw a greatly muted reflection of her own surprise. No, he hadn't known about any of this, but he was too much of a professional to let that fact interfere with the briefing. She resolved to follow his example.

"Indications are that this region is a pocket of normal space, folded into subspace inside of a static warp field," said Chakotay.

"You mean that whole place exists entirely within a warp bubble?" said Harry.

Chakotay nodded. "There have been a few incidents recorded by past starships that have hinted at this kind of possibility."

"Yes," said Vorik, "However, the degree of subspace distortion required to form and maintain a static warp bubble of this magnitude would likely exceed nine hundred thousand teracochranes. That would exceed the total warp core output of every Starfleet vessel in service, combined."

Chakotay took a deep breath and said, "To form, maybe, but not to maintain, it seems. The warp distortion emanating from the space station only registers in the thirty teracochrane range, and no other source of subspace distortion is in evidence."

Harry's brow furrowed in thought. "Could it be a naturally occurring subspace phenomenon?"

"That's one thing we're hoping to determine," said Chakotay.

Lucy's head was swimming, trying to keep up. First, they told her they'd found a wormhole. Then, that the other side was a massive pocket dimension in a warp bubble in subspace, and before she even had a chance to digest the enormity of this discovery, they started batting around warp physics calculations, as if she should already know all the implications of this many teracochranes versus that many teracochranes, and Lucy just had to face the fact that she was way out of her depth. She was a biochemist, dammit, not a warp physicist. How did senior officers and hotshots like Harry Kim manage to come into every situation with a working knowledge of the subject at hand, no matter how obscure or complicated?

She resolved to keep her mouth shut and wait until the briefing turned to something she actually knew about. They'd called her down here for a reason; people didn't get picked for away teams completely at random, after all.

"There is another, rather intriguing, possibility to consider," said Vorik.

The others turned their attention to him.

"It is possible that the warp distortions emanating from the space station are responsible for the creation of the wormhole."

"Very good, Ensign," said Chakotay. "That was Captain Janeway's hunch, as well. If that should prove to be the case, then it might be possible to use the station to create another wormhole, leading somewhere else."

"You mean like the Alpha Quadrant?" asked Harry. Lucy's heart leaped at the possibility.

Chakotay nodded. "However, we still don't know enough about this phenomenon, or the technology that seems to be operating inside of it. We have no way of knowing its capabilities or its limits. It certainly warrants a closer look, though, wouldn't you say?"

"What about life signs?" said Lieutenant Paris. He cast a glance at Lucy as he spoke. "Is there anybody home?"

Of course. Why didn't I ask that? That's my department.

Chakotay swiped the console display and called up another page of sensor readings. "Here," he said, pointing at a familiar-looking chart of figures and graphs. "What do you make of this, Ensign Kang?"

Lucy's heart started hammering in her chest. Time to shine, she told herself. She leaned over the display and reviewed the internal temperature readings, the spikes in mass spectroscopy readings corresponding to O2, CO2, and various Carbon and Nitrogen compounds, the infrared localization and variance indices, the aggregate entropy index, the sonic vibragram, the millivolt-range electrochemical emissions, and other esoterically complex datasets, from which a trained eye could discern the life signs corresponding to most known forms of life.

"Hm." The sound escaped her throat unbidden. She studied the figures a little closer and said again, "Humm…"

"What is it, Ensign?" said Chakotay. She glanced up, and all five men were looking at her.

She wondered if she could really offer any new insights, or if they were just testing her competency. She felt like she was back in the academy, trying to impress her professors.

"Well, the air is breathable, though stale and thin. Temperatures fluctuate around fifteen C, so we should maybe bring some light jackets. Lifesign readings are consistent with trace microbial life, and not much else. Biochemical spectroscopic readings suggest about three hundred kilograms of preserved organic matter. I'd guess either a frozen food supply or vacuum-preserved mummies, but it's conceivable that it might represent living organisms in some form of stasis. Whatever it is, though, it's clearly inert. And yet, the station is putting off strong electrochemical emissions resembling theta and gamma waves."

"You mean brainwaves, ensign?"

"That's right… I mean, not necessarily, but certainly… bioneural." Ah, there it was, Lucy realized. The reason she'd been assigned to this away mission.

"You mean like our own bioneural gel packs?" said Harry.

Lucy nodded. "It's definitely similar. And since there don't seem to be any living organisms on the station that could generate such emissions naturally…"

"Then you believe this station might have a similar computational technology to ours," said Chakotay. Clearly, he had suspected as much all along, but she had just confirmed it. She was heartened that her opinion actually seemed to count for something.

With that established, Chakotay moved the briefing along. "The aperture of the wormhole is wide enough to admit Voyager in theory, but it would be a tight fit, and it would be imprudent to put the whole vessel at risk," he said. "So, we'll be taking a shuttlecraft through instead."

"How stable is it?" Lucy blurted out, visions running through her mind of being crushed in a collapsing wormhole, or trapped forever in a pocket dimension. She regretted the outburst immediately, but Chakotay seemed to take her question as professional curiosity rather than a nervous outburst.

He answered frankly, "So far, we've seen no evidence of deterioration. Variances remain in the forty to fifty millicochrane range. It'll be a little bit bumpy, but it's a short trip through the aperture."

There he goes talking about cochranes again, she mused, but she just nodded in response.

"It'll be a walk in the park," said Tom. He gave Lucy a reassuringly confident smile.

"The real issue we need to worry about is the station itself," said Chakotay. "Just because there's no organic life on board, doesn't mean no one's home. Those bioneural readings might signify a powerful artificial intelligence, or even a psionic lifeform."

At that, Vorik's eyebrow shot up in an expression that might have been incredulity.

"We've encountered such beings before," Chakotay said to Vorik.

Vorik acceded the point with a nod.

"And even if there is no conscious entity on the space station, that wouldn't rule out automated defenses or other hazards. That station is powered. It's putting off as much power as Voyager does on her best day, and all indications are that it's essentially running in standby mode. We can't allow ourselves to underestimate its capabilities. We'll need to stay on our toes in there."

Chakotay looked at each of them in turn. Tom responded with a cool, confident nod. Harry nodded with a degree of exuberance that may have been covering for his well-founded anxiety.

When his eyes found hers, Lucy borrowed a bit of the certainty she found in his piercing gaze and used it to muster a determined nod of her own.

Vorik simply nodded in acknowledgment when Chakotay looked to him. Vance stood up a little straighter and nodded with grim determination. Lucy's gaze lingered on the noncom for a moment afterward, wondering again why they weren't taking Tuvok on this mission, instead. As the others broke from their huddle around the control console, Vance looked up and caught Lucy staring. He raised a questioning eyebrow, and Lucy just shook her head slightly and turned away, joining the other officers heading towards the closest shuttlecraft.

Lucy wasn't sure how she felt about Vance. Off duty, he tended to be boisterous, gregarious, and chivalrous, at times verging on patronizing, like a relic from a previous century. He certainly could be charming, and Lucy had to admit that he was decent in bed. But he had an arrogance about him that was a serious turnoff. She'd kept him at arm's length since that first encounter a few months ago, but Voyager was too small a ship for her to avoid him completely. She'd suspected all along that he was hoping for something more from her—more sex, or a relationship, she didn't know—and last night at Sandrine's had confirmed it. But Lucy was pretty sure she didn't share his interest.

On duty, though, was another story. He was always professional, always respected the chain of command, always kept his uniform clean and pressed, his boots polished, his honey-blonde hair in a perfect regulation crew cut. The Captain had offered him more than one commendation for bravery over the last three years. Lucy should have felt comfortable knowing Owen Vance had her back.

She chanced one last glance at him as she stepped up the ramp into the shuttle, and thought she caught his eyes lingering on her hindquarters. No, she didn't feel particularly comfortable.