A Line I Crossed (Part 1)
Another Voyager fanfic by TaTTooGaL™ (Lt Taya 17 Janeway)
Go ahead, push your luck,
Find out how much love the world can hold
Once upon a time I had control
And I reined my soul in tight
--Dar Williams, After All
The Enterprise-F was like a phoenix, streamlined and elegant, sweeping the skies with avian grace. She had a long pedigree, a proud Starfleet tradition behind her, one that she was obliged to continue. Every time the Starship Enterprise fell, a new one would arise from the ashes of the old, stronger and more powerful than before.
On the bridge of the ship, Captain Data observed his crew working together with satisfaction. They were a fine lot, this new crew, but somehow he felt that they lacked the dynamism they had shown under the command of the last captain. Barely six months in the center position, Data was still adapting to his new routine; after thirty years of being the science officer of this proud ship, he found the task of getting used to his new routines daunting, even for an android.
From the helm, young Alena Paris worked the controls with deft, sure fingers. Alena was the granddaughter of the esteemed Admiral Owen Paris, the man who was considered by many to have single-handedly brought down the Borg. But Data knew better. It wasn't common knowledge, being classified by the Temporal Prime Directive, but the Enterprise-E had been responsible for the downfall of the Borg Queen, which led to the subsequent weakening of the Collective.
From his side, his first officer, Denbri made a gesture with her hand. "She's late again."
Data glanced at the poised Romulan sitting beside him. She fixed him with a dark, steely gaze, the ridges on her forehead distinctive but not overly pronounced. "Fourth time this week."
The android shrugged fluidly. "She has a lot on her mind these few days."
Denbri narrowed her eyes. "It's been six months since her mother died, Data. You know that. If she still hasn't gotten over it by now, perhaps she should see a counselor."
Data frowned. "For humans, six months is a significant period of time, being precisely half a Terran year. Many of them take it as a point for retrospect. It would be easy to see why she would be distracted these few days."
"Gentlemen, you may be missing the point entirely," commented Counselor Ezri Dax from Data's other side. "After all, we are close to completing our mission. She may just be distracted by this."
"You're not empathic," jibed Denbri. "You wouldn't know that."
"I'm a counselor. I don't know; I guess."
"Wouldn't know what?" Lieutenant Amanda Tighe stepped onto the bridge and headed towards her station, relieving the young ensign on duty there. He moved off as she faced her colleagues, hands on her hips.
"The reason why you're late," commented Denbri dryly.
Tighe threw up her hands. "I overslept! Sorry."
Data perused his new science officer with a slight smile on his face. She'd gotten her dark hair bobbed recently, and every time she walked onto the bridge he saw echoes of her mother and father in her. Such sterling officers they had been. It had been a great loss to this ship when both of them had died within a month of each other. Captain Tighe had been an excellent commander.
One of the science panels lit up abruptly, momentarily disrupting that line of thought as he consigned it to a subroutine of lower priority. Tighe turned and worked at it, then her eyes grew large. "Captain, it worked! We've found the Starship Voyager."
*****
On the bridge of the Starship Voyager, Commander Chakotay was worried. The Delta Flyer had been missing for over a day now, with both Captain Janeway and Lieutenant Paris on board. They had been out on an exploratory mission when a level-five ion storm had struck, stranding the Voyager and cutting off communications with the Flyer. Searching for the missing vessel in the ionic residue was like searching for a needle in a pointy silver haystack. He gritted his teeth, feeling frustrated. The Voyager herself had also been damaged in the storm. It had arrived unexpectedly and overwhelmed them, overloading circuits and frying circuitry. A thunderstorm out of the blue, indeed, he thought wryly.
Ensign Harry Kim worked feverishly on his newly repaired console, trying to recalibrate the sensors so that they could detect parts of the Delta Flyer, something, anything which would distinguish it from the rest of the ionic soup surrounding them. The plasma gases extended for several light years, and briefly Chakotay wondered if he was seeing the catalyst of the formation of a new nebula. Every now and then ripples in the plasma would strike them, probably some form of aftershock from the original storm. The whole crew was jumpy and tense, prepared to bring the safety junctions online at the slightest provocation.
Kim smacked his fist on the edge of the console in irritation. "I can't filter out the sensor echoes from our own ship!" he grumbled. "All I'm getting are readings come from us."
"Perhaps lengthening the sensor range while limiting its width would alleviate the problem," suggested Seven from her console.
"I'll try that." He prodded the console for a while, then his face lit up. "It's working! Thanks." He swept the newly configured sensors through an increasing radius around them, then frowned. There had to be something wrong with the readings he was getting. He scanned the anomalous sector again and got the same result as he did before. "I'm not sure if this is a sensor ghost," he announced, "but we're picking up large amounts of Starfleet-grade tritanium hull plating in sector four-three-four. It's not the Delta Flyer. I have no idea what it is, except that it's damned huge. And it's heading our direction."
******
The Enterprise-F exited the Einstein-Rosenberg bridge with fluid ease, and immediately found itself immersed in a colossal plasma cloud. No matter. Tighe quickly reconfigured the sensors to search only for the unique antimatter signature of the Voyager.
Seated in the center of the bridge, Data had a good vantagepoint of the rest of his senior crew. Apart from the security chief, a burly Tellarite named Reskin, and himself, all the other members of the bridge crew were female. And there was Geordi, of course, tending the warp core in Engineering, and Dr Bashir, the CMO of the ship and Dr. Crusher's assistant. Four men out of nine. He wondered briefly what Captain Picard would have thought of this. Captain Tighe would most probably be pleased.
"I have her on bearing six-seven-six," reported the younger Tighe from the science station. "Patching coordinates to the helm…"
"Got them," said Paris. "Shall I set a course, sir?"
Data nodded. Such an efficient crew; the best Starfleet had to offer. With tensions on so many fronts in the Alpha Quadrant, he knew that Starfleet was putting in a big risk by sending their flagship to look for an insignificant starship long ago conscripted to the annals of history. Yet there was significance in the fact that their wormhole system had worked. The top brass at Starfleet Command Strategic had deemed that the ability to manipulate the fabric of space-time with such precision would be sufficient to turn the tide of their long-standing war with the Dominion. Plus he knew a certain brilliant strategist who served on board that insignificant starship.
The Enterprise slowed to quarter-impulse as they neared their goal. The Starship Voyager hung silently in space, her hull blackened and scarred by the ferocity of ion storms. Data nodded. "Hail them." He adjusted his ramrod-straight position slightly, anticipating contact with an old, cherished friend.
The man who came onscreen, therefore, came as a mild shock to Data. Not only was he not the captain of the Voyager as he'd expected, but he was also listed as having been deceased for seventeen years in Data's information database. "This is Captain Data of the Starship Enterprise-F, NCC-1701-F. You are Captain Chakotay, I presume?"
The man on the other side seemed unsettled. "Commander Chakotay of the USS Voyager," he corrected.
"And the captain?"
"Is missing in action along with our helmsman. We were unexpectedly caught in this ion storm and it knocked out communications briefly. They were out on an exploratory mission when it happened, and the ship, the Delta Flyer, is of whereabouts unknown. We're still looking for them." He paused, then he asked, "Has Starfleet sent you to bring us home?" From years of dealing with humans and his own experiences with his emotion chip, Data managed to detect an undercurrent of hope.
"Yes," he replied, "but we will not leave without your captain."
Chakotay looked vaguely scandalized. "Of course not. I wouldn't ever dream of leaving the captain behind."
"The Enterprise has sensors which are much more powerful than those of the Voyager; perhaps we can locate your ship faster if we assist you," suggested Data.
"It sounds like a good idea," replied Chakotay, the start of a smile forming on his face. "We'll transmit the schematics and last known coordinates of the Flyer to you now."
Ezri nodded and gave Data a thumbs-up to indicate that she was receiving the information. "Lt. Tighe," Data instructed his science officer, "start working on re-calibrating those sensors."
"Aye, sir."
Data turned back to Chakotay. "In the meantime, we should talk. It appears that some facts in the Starfleet database that pertain to your ship are inaccurate."
Chakotay seemed mildly annoyed. "There'll be plenty of time to talk when we return to the Alpha Quadrant. My ship, as you can see, is badly damaged and in need of repair. I don't want to stay out here too long, in case another storm strikes, but as of now I don't think the Voyager will be able to withstand any sort of journey across thirty-five thousand light years."
"I will send a Damage Control team over to your ship to assist you," Data agreed. "The sooner we leave this area of space, the better."
******
And it feels like a winter machine
You go through and then
You catch your breath and it's winter again
And everyone else is spring-bound
******
Lieutenant Amanda Tighe didn't need any reminders of winter, knowing that she'd just left the darkest winter of her life and she wasn't ready to face the cold again. But on that damnable ship it seemed that there were endless reminders of her parent's legacies. Sometimes she wished she hadn't deferred to Data's wishes and taken up this assignment, but how could she refuse an old family friend? Especially not one who'd helped her so much in her upbringing. For months now she'd had to endure comments on how much she resembled her mother, or how strong she was, just like her father… And every reference made her uncomfortable, every comparison… It just served to remind her how wrong she had been to distance herself from her parents.
So she'd volunteered to help Reskin on the Starship Voyager, just to get away from those crewmen on her own ship. No, not volunteered. Begged. And Data had sensed her desperation and let her go. He was one of those few who truly understood how she felt; one of those few who'd served with Captain Tighe from the first days of the Enterprise-E all the way until six months ago.
Now as she threaded her way through the corridors of this strange ship, she felt unstressed as she hadn't been in months. Nobody knew her here. She didn't have to put on a face to hide the fact that she hadn't exactly been on the best of terms with her parents when they'd died. No pretense, no facades, just being herself.
It was refreshing, to say in the least.
She had been assigned to assist Ensign Harry Kim in Astrometrics. The sensor relays had been severely damaged in the storm, and they needed every bit of sensor power to find the Delta Flyer as fast as they could and get the hell out of there. She perused the padd Chakotay had given her again. The repairs all seemed pretty routine to her at least. Not to mention that the technology involved was more than a decade old; she learnt about things like this when she was six or seven.
Kim was waiting in Astrometrics, working on the innards of a console where the panel had been pried off. He was a young man with an open, honest face. He looked up as she approached. "Lt. Amanda Tighe?" he enquired.
"At your service." He smiled pleasantly; she liked him already. "What can I do for you today?"
"Well, for starters, you can shine my shoes, cook my dinner, do my late-night shift…" he chuckled. "No, really. Some of our sensors weren't really badly damaged in the storms, just overloaded. We only have to reboot them to get them up and running again. But first we have to disconnect them from the secondary EPS conduits." He gestured to the far end of Astrometrics. "You see that panel over there? The controls for the EPS conduits are jerry-rigged inside."
"I see them. Don't worry, I'm a trained engineer myself." She headed over to the panel, prised it open, and began to work.
As he worked Kim struck up a conversation with her. "So you're from the Enterprise, huh."
"Yes."
"Not bad. I used to dream of being assigned to that ship, what with it being the flagship and all… but that was such a long time ago. Which Enterprise is it now, the E?"
"F. The E was destroyed a couple of years ago."
"Really? That's fast… it was still the D when the Voyager was launched. Guess that's what they mean when they say high turnover rate." He chuckled. "I still can't believe it… after all these years, we're finally getting home."
Tighe cast an odd look at Kim's turned back, ignoring his last statement. "If I'm not wrong, the D was destroyed before the Voyager launched."
Kim turned to face her. "Really? I don't think so… my memory isn't that bad, you know."
Tighe put down the isolinear relay she had been working on. "Excuse me, but wasn't your captain transferred over to this ship because the Enterprise was destroyed?"
Kim looked puzzled. "Is that so? I wasn't aware that there had been a correlation."
Tighe wanted to laugh at his confused expression. He was either a remarkably smooth actor, or else he was really thick. "Of course there is, you numbskull! Take my word for it."
Kim returned to his work, shaking his head in amusement. "Okay, I will." He continued to make small talk. "So, you've been looking for us long?"
"Well, it's been twelve years since your ship has gone missing. I'd say yes."
Kim's head whipped back up to face her, but before he could say anything the doors to Astrometrics swept open.
It was like being plunged into a bad dream, only that she was wide awake. Images from the past overwhelmed her vision, and she stood up, feeling dizzy. She dropped the isolinear relay.
She was twelve again, running, running from the bad men who were coming from anywhere and anyplace. She was lost, confused; she was the only child onboard; all the adults were getting hurt and she couldn't find her parents.
The images kept coming, fragmented. Her parents, arguing on the bridge; the ship jettisoning escape pods, the blue sphere of Earth growing larger in her vision…
And then she was back on the nightmare ship again before her mother had bundled her off, pressing a phaser rifle into her hand, crying that she wouldn't leave-
"-We're not leaving without Data-"
"-What chance does he stand? He's already been assimilated by the Borg!"
"-The mainframe encryption hasn't been broken yet, he can't be cooperating with them-"
"-You're not risking your life like that-"
"-Captain the last two escape pods are ready-"
"-Dammit Justin, you can't do this!"
"-Dad, dad, please, I don't want to die, please come with me dad, mom-"
"-Amanda, honey, be a good girl and follow Dr. Crusher-"
"-You're not staying on the ship are you, mom? You can't-"
"-your mother and I need to rescue Mr. Data, sweetie-"
"-I won't leave you here!"
And then she was running again, down corridors of green and black and white and everywhere there were more of them, more Borg, Borg, and Borg--!!
"Lt. Tighe? Amanda?" It was Kim's voice, shaking her from her nightmare. Tighe snapped back into the real world and flushed slightly with embarrassment.
"What just happened?"
She didn't know herself. Even when she'd been young the memories of the Borg inquest never gave her nightmares like these. So what just happened? The woman who'd just entered Astrometrics wasn't even fully Borg; apart from a couple of implants on her face she looked perfectly normal. Not enough to trigger a panic attack, at least. So she shrugged. "I don't know. Nothing like that's ever happened to me before."
"Were you hallucinating?" he asked her, looking concerned. Privately she wondered what she thought of herself now. Strange kid comes in, makes herself comfortable, then starts freaking out the moment somebody else appears.
"Something like that. I was having flashbacks of a … difficult period when I was a child."
She'd tried to put it as euphemistically as possible, but this Borg woman was sharp and picked up immediately on her non-verbal cues and suggested, "The Borg were involved in the attempted invasion of Earth in 2063. The Enterprise-E was the only thing which stopped them… us."
Tighe nodded slowly. "I'm sorry… I didn't mean any offense."
"None taken." The woman gazed coolly at her with unusually large blue eyes. "Most people would find any encounter with the Borg traumatic."
"I was twelve when it happened. My mother nearly died defending the ship." She shivered. "But I've never had many nightmares about it before. It must be the stress." She addressed the Borg woman with mild curiosity. "What kind of Borg are you?"
"I was assimilated into the Collective at age six," she replied, "and given the designation Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct to the Unimatrix 1-0. I was part of the Collective for eighteen years before the Voyager… rescued me." She faced Tighe with a steady gaze. "Do not worry. I am part of this crew now."
Tighe chuckled tiredly at that line. "One would think I would have figured it out by now." Part of her insides wrenched with sympathy as she thought of the poor child she had been, to have her childhood taken away from her. Not like mine was all that idyllic though. She sighed and bent over to pick up the isolinear relay she'd dropped. "Back to work, I guess."
"Hey." Kim put his hand on her arm gently to stop her. "If these panic attacks aren't normal for you perhaps you should see a doctor. Or at least take a break… Seven and I can handle the rest of the repairs here." He afforded her a comforting glance.
Tighe nodded. "I guess a visit to Dr. Crusher might be in order for me," she told him. "Or some bed rest." She smiled at him, feeling mildly better. "Thanks for the concern, anyway."