Disclaimer: Definitely not my characters, definitely not my show, definitely hoping no one sues. Am very poor unless you accept jammy-dodger biscuits, in which case I'm minted. Characters etc belong to people far more powerful than I. Go watch the show, enjoy it, it's awesome.
We're all bouncing around the bridge with each blast that ripples off the shields.
Having just about made it to my command chair, I start to tap over the command console and Kathryn barks for a report.
"They're not responding to hails, Seven reported that none of Comm-Badges we gave the other ships are receiving transmissions, she believes they've been disabled." Harry shouts through the deafening blasts.
"Shields at seventy-six percent Captain, we are unable to find a firing solution, we are still unable to detect the other ships on the sensors." Tuvok yells above the blasts, wires are starting to appear from the ceiling, sparking and frayed.
"Can we bring Voyager around and fire on them manually, without locking on?"
"We can try Captain." Tom yells, eager to once again put his flying skills to test no doubt.
"Do it!"
Q has made his way to stand by Kathryn's chair, she looks up at him with a murderous glare.
"Damn it Q what did you do?"
"I armed the Marquis on the Val Jean and gave them back the use of their sensors."
"You're the one that causing the sensors to not work? Of course, why am I even asking." She shakes her head and looks at me with panic.
"I then may have armed the Marquis in seclusion on the other Voyager and helped them retake the ship, and then may have done to the same on the ship with the Equinox crew."
Another blast startles him for a moment.
"I'll admit it's a bit heavy handed but it's all for the best really, I just want us all to be happy."
"You want me to be happy Q? Send me home."
Q regards her sadly for a few seconds, slowly raises his hand and snaps himself away.
"Shields at 54 percent Captain, I'm detecting hull breaches on the port side." Tuvok yells.
The view screen shows that we've nearly pulled round into position and that Voyager Two is sat doing absolutely nothing.
Another blast rips through the bridge, a panel explodes into sparks and a large piece of plating sails through the air, stopping just inches short of hitting Kathryn.
Tom's doing his best to stay in his seat and keep Voyager on course, but the blasts that are increasing are jostling us all to the point it's almost impossible to remain seated.
"Shields are at 40 percent Captain."
Kathryn starts to speak and an ever larger blast starts to rip across the bridge.
I hear the sound of rushing blood in my ears and the world begins to blur into a darkness, my body heavy and uncontrollable.
When my eyes open next I'm lying face down on the deck.
I can see sparks flying in all directions, half on the ceiling is now on the deck.
Tom's voice startles me, its far away and I can't quite make it out. I look in the direction of the helm to see him admirably still holding on for dear life, he's got Voyager positioned and Tuvok is firing torpedoes off at a rapid pace. Tom keeps turning around to look in my direction and is yelling something I can't quite hear, my ears ringing with white noise.
I can see Tuvok is yelling but I cannot hear it.
Kathryn is clinging to the railing, her voice joining the indistinguishable din.
I try to move but cannot.
The want is there, the ability though has been stolen by a sizeable piece of plating protruding from my left shin.
Unable to stand, I settle for dragging myself forward towards my command chair, to the console to at least be of some help.
Another blast rips through the air and I look up in time to see Harry face plant his console and disappear out of sight.
Seven's appeared out of the turbo lift, grabbing on to anything near by to keep her upright.
I see her move towards Harry's position, she bends out of sight for a moment and then reappears, she then starts tapping at his console.
Another blast shakes us, more of Voyagers innards start to fall from the ceiling, creating almost a curtain between me and Kathryn.
I can see the Val Jean is putting up an fight but is failing, there are fires all over the port side, I know Kathryn is probably considering offering to beam them over before the ship would explode, that's the kind of person she really is, but they're not going to give her the chance.
Because I know that Chakotay isn't about to lay down his pride and accept help from the enemy, he never will.
The Val Jean starts to pull back, while Voyager Three looks in equally bad shape, Voyager Four however is holding up well, having snuck up from behind to join the fight. Rudy no doubt seeking his revenge for his own situation, a situation he in fact created for himself.
No doubt Q has spent the time he hasn't be pestering us, filling their head with conspiracies and bread crumbs, winding them up to the point of revenge.
I've managed to drag myself to my seat but I can't quite pull myself up, I've left a slug-like trail of blood across the deck.
Ayala is valiantly trying to push through the debris to get to me, but another shaking jolt overtakes the bridge and he's unable to keep his balance long enough to get far.
I turn to see Kathryn and find she's not there.
Where I last saw her is now a mass of debris and smoke.
The panic is increasing, with each shake of a blast, my eyes are frantically looking for her, I can't even hear myself but I know I'm screaming her name.
A light flare from the view screen engulfs the bridge as the Val Jean explodes, the hull shears off and impacts Voyager Three, which sets off a new chain of explosions, each one creating a shock wave that hits us with the force of the explosive chaos.
There's so much smoke on the bridge it's becoming hard to make anything out, I can only see the flaring lights of the view screen as universes collide together into a place they should never have been.
And then the shaking stops.
Only the occasional spark of cables and consoles remain, the smoke curling towards the remaining filters and then I know nothing at all.
I feel like I've licked a desert.
My lips are dried together and my eyes feel glued shut.
As they do finally separate and part, I am greeted with the cheerful face of the Doctor.
"Rise and shine Commander, it's time to rejoin the living."
Gingerly I try to sit up and get a bearing on the situation.
The Doctor supports my shoulders and helps me sit forward before pressing a hypo to my neck.
"You were injured on the bridge Commander, do you remember?"
Ahh yes, Q.
Oh spirits.
Kathryn.
My eyes grow wide and I must be looking panicked because the Doctors looking at me with a frown.
"Kathryn-.."
"The Captain is here in sickbay." He gestures towards the surgical bay and I can just about make out her sleeping form. "Unfortunately she's not going to bounce back as quickly, she suffered serious blunt force trauma to the head and crushing injuries to her torso. She's stable for now but she isn't by far out of the woods."
I'm going to rip Q limb from limb.
"There were twelve minor injuries to the crew Mr Kim suffered a mild concussion and Mr Paris broke his wrist trying to keep hold of the helm, but otherwise we were extremely lucky, I believe Tuvok is on his way to give you a full report, he's been on the bridge for fourteen hours straight."
He's doing nothing to console me, I'm too consumed with a red hot rage to invade the Q Continuum and show them the meaning of life once and for all with the business end of a modified torpedo.
I have no weapon that could harm a Q, but by Gods I'll find one.
"In keeping with my being the bearer of bad news commander, I regret to inform you, you have a visitor." He looks towards his office with a look of disgust.
And I see red.
Q peer's out of the doorway once again looking sheepish. Followed by a horrendously pissed off looking Mrs Q.
"What do you have to say to the Commander, you buffoon." She back hands him around the head as she speaks and he stumbles forward.
"I feel I should apologise Commander."
Spirits give me strength.
I'm raising myself up and testing the weight of my leg curiously by touching the floor.
It hurts but hopefully, I can do something to hurt Q more.
"It didn't go exactly as I had planned."
"And what did you plan Q? Because you've succeeded in nearly killing me and the Captain and destroying this ship you apparently hold so dear."
"That isn't what I intended, I would never doing anything to intentionally hurt yo-" he stops himself "Kathryn." Nice save. Douche-bag. What a tit.
"I thought they'd bully you into some sort of submission, I failed to see they'd go on a murderous rampage."
"That didn't occur to you when you armed them?"
"Well it did, but I didn't think it would get that far. I just thought they'd be able to encourage you to stay here in this little bubble and the good times could continue." He tries to laugh and it awkwardly fades upon receiving glares from both myself and his better half.
"I underestimated how pissed off they were."
He's underestimating how pissed off I am.
I'm slowly limping forward bit by bit, slowly and surely.
"I should not have interfered with your time, with your lives." He shrugs. And Mrs Q steps forward, not before hitting him once more upside the head.
"Commander, I know it's hard to believe after the behaviour of this miscreant-" She looks at Q with a glare that could melt a glacier. "- but the Q don't tend to make a habit of interfering with the life-forms, especially with ones inferior to our own -" Such a humble race the Q…
"- much like your own Prime Directive and had the continuum known of what this idiot was up to we would have put a stop to it."
I look over towards Kathryn, without much surprise the consoles are bleeping that Kathryn's blood pressure has suddenly shot up and the Doctor's doing his best to both treat Kathryn and be as subtly nosy as he can be.
"Can you fix this mess?" I look at her pleadingly.
"I can do more than that Commander, I can put you back exactly where you came from, all of you, none of this should have occurred without Q's interference so it's only right we clean up the mess he made as usual."
Before I can ask any further questions, she's snaps her fingers and in what feels like a blink, I'm sat on the bridge looking at a very confused Kathryn sitting next to me.
Everyone's looking around trying to figure out what the hell happened.
"All stop!" Kathryn yells and stands up, looking around frantically.
"It worked." I say astonished, I didn't think she'd actually do it.
"What worked?" Kathryn's looking at me like I just grew another uglier head while checking herself for signs of the injuries she was just cheating death with.
"Mrs Q." Kathryn's eyebrows shoot up higher than Tuvoks do. "She was waiting for me in sickbay when I woke up, she was none too happy with Q and apologised and said she'd fix it, I guess this is what she meant."
"Sounds too good to be true." She snorts, her hands which now patting smooth her uniform now she was satisfied she was no longer crushed and was in reality back to as normal as she could be.
"Captain, according to the sensors, we are back at the point we were before we crossed into the tear, all systems are functioning." Tuvok reports from his station.
"On screen."
The screen shows a normal space before us, no other ships, no other us' lurking.
"Are there any other ships?"
"Nothing on short or long range scans Captain, nothing I can see on the view." Harry's smiling, safe in the knowledge another disaster had been averted,
"Mrs Q should have taken them home." I smile at Kathryn, feeling somewhat secure and happy that for once, things are back to normal.
She's smiles back at me, gob smacked that things seems to have been put right.
And of course at the moment a transporter tingle over takes me and Voyager disappears.
"YOU FUCKING TWATS!"
And so begins round two of Captain Crazy.
"YOU'RE LIKE A MOUSE IN THE MAZE GETTING ELECTROCUTED OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN!"
Just what I needed right now.
Relativity looks just as I remembered it, Commander Adams is hanging back from Captain Picard as he loses his shit once more.
"I MEAN YOU UTTER PLANKS! IT'S LIKE TEACHING A GROUP OF TRIBBLES TO TAP DANCE, I CAN'T BEGIN TO THINK HOW YOU MADE IT THIS FAR!"
Beats the shit out of me.
"KENNETH!" The name shrieks out of him and he sags momentarily, panting with the effort.
Adams steps forward and looks at his passively.
"Kenneth, deal with this twat and made it so none of them, not one single person, from that ship EVER steps foot on this ship again, do I make myself clear?!"
"Aye, Captain." Adams salutes and Picard wobbles off muttering to himself towards his ready room.
Adams looks at me and smiles.
"Good to see you again Commander, for a moment there it looked like we might not."
"Do you know what happened to us?" If Relativity's been observing that entire time I'm going to rampage the shit out of this ship.
"Q." He looks at me, the misplaced smile still remaining on his lips.
"Commander I feel I should tell you how long this has been going on for."
"I thought it was a few weeks?"
"It's about 43 years."
What?
"What?"
"Commander, for the last forty-three years we've been trying to put an end to this, we're not the first crew to try."
Oh Shit.
"Oh Shit."
He starts walking me towards the view screen where I can see other ships orbiting Earth.
Earth.
I can see Earth.
Right there.
"Commander, for forty-three years we've been trying to amend the past week, we've been trying to stop a temporal incursion. No matter how many times we try, it always ends the same. No matter how we try to get you to that wormhole home, Q interferes. And every time it leads to a chaos we cannot contain. The repercussions of tangling so many universes together are far greater than Q realises. No matter how it plays out, no matter how many times he promises to send you back to before it happened, it just starts all over again, we try and get you through the wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant and he does it all over again. You've been stuck going through this loop over and over for about 43 years now."
I realise I haven't taken a breath in a while and the notion of what he's just told me and seeing Earth out of the window are making a difficult combination for me to take on as reality.
"This is what you're trying to stop?"
"Not exactly, there's more Commander."
Of course, there's always fucking more.
"The event we're trying to stop is connected. By trying to get you through that wormhole home Commander, we hope to completely negate the temporal event we're avoiding. But Q has made it almost impossible, he's created a paradox within a paradox and it's a situation we cannot completely rectify to what would be deemed satisfactory."
This really was bigger than we all thought.
"If you go through that worm hole Commander, the event doesn't happen, but we just can't get you there, what Q has done has altered that time and space so badly that his loop just keeps on playing out regardless of what we do."
"What happens if the event plays out instead, what happens to that time line?"
"History is changed in a way none of us can control, someone attempts to manipulate the time line and it's ripples reach further than Q's, certain lives play out in a way they are not supposed to, one in particular."
I look at him as it all sinks in, silently pleading for him to say that there's another hidden ending we've just no found yet and he's not about to say -
"Kathryn?"
He nods.
"The effect she will have on the time line if the event plays out is phenomenal. Things that were never supposed to be become reality, families and whole worlds change, people die and people live that shouldn't, other events play out and more from those and more from those, and so on, the chain growing longer and more destructive as it grows from what she does. She will do what she thinks is right, regardless of the outcome. No matter how many times it's been observed, the time line she creates is uncontrollable, there is little we can do to stop it or change the outcome. But for your lives, for you now, there are only two choices, and both lead to their own hell so to speak, one to be avoid at all costs."
Oh don't put this on me, don't make this my decision.
I don't even understand all this.
"The reason this always fails, is because every crew member we've encountered has refused to let the event take place. Every single one of them refused to let what Kathryn does happen, they all chose to keep trying for the wormhole because that destiny seemed to not cost as much as the other. You refused yourself, every time, because you couldn't let what happens to Kathryn come to be. And because of this, Q's loop will always be, we won't let the other timeline happen, neither will any of you, so Q's universe of Voyager is all that is left."
"What happens to her?"
"Time will pass, Voyager will eventually make it home, but most of the crew will not survive, including yourself and your wife Seven."
Seven?! What in living hell…?
"Admiral Janeway later manipulates the timeline to bring you home much quicker than anticipated, she thinks that she's doing it to save you, save Seven, save Tuvok, save all her crew that died or were scarred by Voyagers late arrival home, she thinks she's giving you back the time you lost, the lives you should have lead. She also thinks she's striking a fatal blow to the Borg for once and all." His eyes darken as he speaks and it fills me with fear.
"In doing so she sets a series of events in play, namely bringing the Borg threat home with her, people that should have been somewhere else, were not there to avoid the fates that did befall them, the Captain herself included. She will die. And so will many others who were not supposed to, millions." His emphasis on the last word is heavy and breaks me in a why I didn't think existed.
I can't even begin to process this in any coherent way.
Earth's gentle spin blurs beyond my gaze and the air becomes hot and heavy.
We really are the ship of the doomed.
One way we end up puppets in Q's sick play and fuck up the universe, or I send Kathryn and countless others to their deaths and screw up the universe that way.
"I take it there's not a third option here?"
"None that we've seen so far as yet. Everything always goes the same Commander eventually."
"How do we get off the merry-go-around."
"In order to stop the Admiral from achieving her timeline, we need to get you through the wormhole but that would mean you just go back to Q's universe which makes things just as bad. There seems to be no way of resolving it, we've only spent 43 years on these weeks Commander, the complete total of years spent trying to sort the timelines that this ship seems to generate are almost countless, for a small ship you do get around a bit."
I dread to think.
"The future we are from is heavily shaped by the outcome of events, they are events which need to be avoided, they are events that lead to us eventually even existing just to put this all right, yours is a twisted tale, you'd be surprised how far back and how far forward Voyager's story goes, it order to manipulate events for you not to be and for the events that will shape all existence to be, we'd have to return to the beginning of time, literally."
Well that's enough to make a man feel small and humongous at the same time.
"Are you sending me back in for one more try?" I question.
"The intention was the beginning of time Commander." I wait to see if he's joking but he's not. "There are few options left to consider."
Well we really are well and truly, one hundred percent fucked.
They are literally going to rewrite the beginning of all time to stop Kathryn Janeway, because that's apparently what it takes.
The thought makes me smile.
Kathryn, Q slayer and time bender extraordinaire.
This is why the universe seems to hate us so much, because Kathryn's apparently a big player around these parts.
It seems unbelievable this would be so huge but at the same time it makes sense.
Just because we stop being able to understand the ripples, doesn't mean they stop.
Consequences, cause and effect.
It's all fucked.
"Let me just get this straight for one moment, I'm frankly struggling with this" He nods at me and I continue "To avoid hell on Earth literally, we need to go through the wormhole" He nods. "But if we do that, every time we're going to end up in Q's universe with the other Voyagers." He nods again. "That's an unstoppable loop," Another nod. "The only way to stop this is to go back to the beginning of time and start again?" A slower nod.
"All of existence cannot balance on you simply unplugging something and plugging it back in and starting again?" A very slow nod. "Wonderful, just making sure I've grasped this."
Hells bells.
Kathryn I could really use you right now.
Everything can't be so definite. It can't be so unwavering.
"All of history leads to now Commander, without Kathryn Janeway the universe is a far more stable place, for one human being she, along with other Starfleet Captains and Officers, have influenced time and the universe far more than any one being should." Adams speaks honestly and I'm thankful for that. He can acknowledge the power that has fallen on people who had no place interfering with the infinite unknown of how we all exist.
The consequences of small decisions have wide ripples and there are so many ripples from so many disruptions that everything becomes a wash of swirling madness. You cannot control time, you cannot control the universe and we have in some way and not usually for the better.
I cannot begin to understand existence, or time and I have no intention on playing God but once again it seems my uniform is asking it of me.
I don't remember signing up for this.
At no point during training did anyone tell me that the entire existence of all matter and energy rested on my shoulders, at no point did anyone inform me that I would be asked to influence the lives of billions.
I just wanted to see the universe and expand my curiosity.
Next existence, I'm becoming a postman.
"With or without you Commander, we have to do something, this cannot be for all of time." Adams seems to sense my inner war and tries to offer some sort of get out clause.
Somewhere in my mind, I can sense Kathryn's smile, I can remember how when she's utterly tickled by something, her smile becomes toothy and wide, her eyes joining in with her lips, she always smiled from everywhere.
I don't want a universe without that smile.
"Let me try one more time."
I don't know why I'm saying this, why I think little old me has any chance to save this is beyond me, but my mouth is faster than my brain sometimes and I just have to hold on and hope it doesn't end with a kick in the balls.
"Please."
He looks at me and then glances in the direction of the Ready room before looking back at me with a defiant grin.
"One more try couldn't hurt Commander."