Chapter Three
Chakotay squinted as he woke up, the sunlight in his eyes was almost unbearable. A few moments of blinking, he finally was able to see clearly. He looked around, and found himself in the middle of what seemed to be a rainforest. After he tried hailing the members of his team, he opened his tricroder and scanned the area.
"How did I end up here?" He muttered to himself, for as far as the tricorders scanners could reach, it revealed nothing but forest. No outer walls, no holographic signatures, no evidence of him being on a space station whatsoever. He looked around for a few moments, and decided to try a basic search pattern, in efforts to locate his away team. Suddenly, his tricorder started to pick up a weak power signature: the mobile emitter.
Chakotay looked all around for the doctor, or the emitter itself but couldn't see anything. Finally, he gave up and used his tricorder to remotely access the emitters systems. It showed that the doctor was not online, so he activated him.
"Please state—aaaahh!" Chakotay heard from above. He looked up, and saw the Doctor falling from a branch. Chakotay lunged to the side, as the Doctor fell to the ground. "Well I never…" the Doctor said quickly, as he stood up and straightened his uniform.
"Good to have you join me, Doctor." Chakotay grinned.
"What happened? Where is the station? What happed to Ensign Kim and Lieutenant B'Elanna?"
"Slow down, Doctor. Something happened during transport, and we were separated from the rest of the away team. As for where we are, I have no clue."
"Well we need to start a search. Can we contact Voyager?"
"I tried calling them, but I got no response."
"Strange." The Doctor mumbled, as he flipped open his tricorder and started scanning the area. "Commander, look at this. I am getting a faint energy reading a few feet above us." Chakotay opened his tricorder back up and started scanning the area, and sure enough there was a faint energy signature.
"I wonder if we are in a holodeck, or some type of simulation." Chakotay said aloud.
"Mmm" The Doctor mumbled at Chakotays remark, as he passed his medical tricorder all around.
"What's 'mmm' mean?" Chaoktay asked
"Commander, holographic signatures are detectable by our tricorders. For example, look." The Doctor waved the portable scanner over his own body, and pointed the tricorder to Chakotay so he could see the readouts.
"I can see it, the magnetic field generators and the holographic force field emitters. Doctor, I already knew you were a hologram."
"Yes but that's not the point. The point is…" The Doctor started, as he bent down and ran the portable scanner over a vine on the ground. "…the point is that these plants, this air, and this environment, are real."
--
"Transporter room two to Bridge." The comm chirped aboard Voyager.
"Janeway here." Captain Kathryn Janeway glanced up from a padd she was reading to acknowledge the comm call.
"Captain, I believe something went wrong with the transport." Janeway frowned
"Explain…" She said.
"Well I'm really not sure what it is… but when the away team materialized on the other side, the transporter briefly recorded different coordinates for them. Now I cant get a lock at all… I don't know where they went."
"But they did set down ok?"
"Yes Ma'am, they are over there somewhere."
"Send the logs to the bridge. Janeway out." She said. "Tuvok, analyze those logs, and start scanning for the away team. Tom, take us closer to the station, that might help our scanning range."
A moment later, after Voyager was repositioned, Tuvok had some news.
"Captain, I am still having problems scanning the interior of that station. Curious…" Tuvok trailed off, getting lost in the readouts.
"What is it?" Janeway asked, as she looked up at him.
"I cannot explain it. For a brief moment, I was able to get a scan of the deck the away team was supposed to set down on."
"And what makes that 'curious'?"
"The scans were infinity reflected back upon each other for a brief moment. I did not see anything what so ever, just the sensor beam being reflected back on itself." Janeway blinked, and when she opened her eyes, the bridge was empty. She gasped, and jumped out of her seat. She turned her head when she heard the ready room doors open, revealing Q. She suddenly lost it.
"Q! What the hell is going on? Are you responsible for all of this?" She abruptly stopped when she saw his solemn expression.
"Hello, Kathryn." He spoke slowly. "I am not responsible for anything but the disappearance of your bridge crew. I wanted to talk with you alone for a moment."
Janeway knew Q well enough to know that something was wrong. This time, he wasn't playing around.
"Q, what's wrong?" She asked, as walked up to him.
"I came to warn you… to inform you of what you are getting yourself into. That space station outside your ship, it was never meant to be discovered."
"What?" Janeway asked, as she glanced back to the viewscreen. Q shifted his weigh uneasily, and walked slowly towards the screen.
"Kathryn, there are some things even the Q are afraid of. What lies within the walls of that space station is one of them."
"How can you be afraid of it? Doesn't the Q have unlimited control of space and time? Don't you know everything about everybody in the universe?" Janeway countered.
"Kathy… I came here to warn you. That thing was hidden from existence for a very long time, and for reasons unknown… its here. Space and time, and your laws of physics and even the very fiber of reality, they are all altered within those walls. It is out of our league, and now all that I know, you know. Best of luck to you." Q said, and with a bright flash of light he was gone.