Chapter 24
Collapse

Ten minutes after stepping off the transporter pad, Janeway was standing before Tok who was sitting in his cell fuming. Apparently he had struggled with security all the way from the transporter room, but his smaller height made it easy for them to deal with him. They would have beamed him directly to his cell but the site-to-site transporter buffer had been damaged more than the site-to-platform buffer when Tobias had overloaded it.
Tok looked up and noticed Janeway. He all but growled at her as he jumped to his feet.

"You have no right to hold me here!" Tok yelled as loud as his lungs would allow him, "I suggest you release me captain! My men will not allow this, you will be destroyed!"

"Actually, we've received word from Ret that your highest ranking officers have taken command of the military and have asked us to hold you until you can be tried for treason, and two accounts of murder."

Tok's eyes widened, he then slowly sat and looked up at her. His short height made him seem even smaller when he sat, Janeway was surprised someone of such small stature could contain so much pure hatred.

"So you have succeeded, your people will invade this unsuspecting world without any resistance." he said after a moment of looking at his hands which he held before him, his palms facing the ceiling. He seemed almost calm all of a sudden.

"Tok, as we told you before we are not invaders." Janeway said shaking her head, "but if you wish to believe it then go right ahead. You can do whatever you want behind this force field. It matters very little to me."

Again Tok looked up at her and made a look of sheer hate that contrasted even more from his calm expression with the scar Chris had given him.

"I will get out of here and kill you all, and leave that damned alien who scarred me for last!" Tok said pointing to his grey discolored face which now had a hint of blue where the scar and bruises were starting to bleed again.

"I'm sure we can actually heal that for you. Our medical technology is a bit more advanced than yours." Janeway offered, at this point all she could do was to try and lower Tok's hate and fear of them.

"You keep your hands off me!" Tok yelled and leaned back seeming almost frightened, "I won't be experimented on!"

Janeway again shook her head, Tok was being extremely paranoid. She didn't even feel safe with him behind the force field. His anger seemed to transmit beyond the field and engulf her. She stepped away from the cell and was about to leave the brig when Tuvok and Seven entered.

"Captain, we have discovered something about the tachyon field surrounding this solar system." said Seven as she held out her hand and offered Janeway a padd.

"What have you found?" Janeway asked looking over their collected data. On the little screen an image of the Frain system was being displayed.

"It appears to have decreased in size three percent since we last scanned it." Tuvok said calmly putting his hands behind his back, "However, as Ret reported before, it was already at a point zero five percent decrease prior to our original scan, the only conclusion we can make is that the field is collapsing in on itself."

Janeway hated bad news but she kept her cool the best she could even if it was in front of her two least emotional crew members, "How much time until the field wall reaches Fra?"

"Approximately fifteen and a half hours." Seven said tilting her head in her usual manor.

"What will happen when it intersects the planet?" Janeway asked dreading the answer.

"As of yet we are unsure, however, Sil did say that anything that had tried to exit from this side of the field was destroyed."

Janeway turned and looked again at the cell Tok occupied. He was walking back and forth angrily.

She turned back to her crew members and thought to herself. They were her friends, as well as her family, and she needed to get them out of this situation, all of them, even the people of Fra. But everything seemed to be working against them, especially time.

"Any suggestions?"

Tuvok and Seven glanced quickly at each other and then Tuvok faced her again.

"We have hypothesized that the crashed ship in the possession of the Frain is linked to the fields presence and perhaps even why the field is now collapsing." he said.

"Are you saying we didn't cause its collapse?" Janeway asked crossing her arms in front of her.

"Perhaps, perhaps not. As of yet we are uncertain, but it is possible we had an effect on the ships systems when we passed through the field if it truly had been creating it. Or the collapse could have begun when the power on the Causality, as Sil called it, began to fail." Tuvok hypothesized further.

"Has its power systems failed completely?" Janeway asked starting towards the door. Tuvok an Seven followed her out into the corridor.
"According to sensors main power has failed on the Causality. Its engine core however appears to still be producing a reaction, perhaps due to perpetual motion. However it is slowly losing its cohesion." Seven reported.

"Tuvok, prepare an away team. We're going to that ship. I'll contact the Frain and let them know our intentions." Janeway said as she entered the Turbo lift, "Bring Chris and Sil with you, at this point they know more about that ship than we do seeing they've been there before."
"Aye captain." Tuvok said, entering the Turbo lift, followed by Seven.

"I shall accompany the away team as well and study the borg components on board."

Janeway nodded to Seven in agreement then gave her command to the turbo lift.

"Bridge."

Chris sat alone in the corner of Voyagers mess hall looking out over the hull of Voyager which seemed to luminescence as it sat quietly surrounded by the rippling water.

It was around lunch time and a lot of the crew had come to eat. The kitchen was closed due to the fact the ship's cook had apparently recently left Voyager. But someone had shown Chris how to use one of the replicators.

He sipped orange juice from his glass, and in his mind went over everything that had happened to him. For one, the technology on Voyager was well beyond anything they had in the time he was from, not to mention the fact it was well known in this time that aliens existed.

In fact there were a few in the room now, two blue people sat at the far end of the room. A man and woman, each had ruts in their face that looked like a vertical line splitting their face directly down the center. Chris realized he was staring and turned away to again look out the large windows that ran along the mess hall.

From this distance, the city-scape of the Frain capitol looked similar to an earth city except for the occasional shuttle flying between the buildings. Although they did remind him of helicopters, just without the blades.

A crew member walked by the window outside and the suddenness of this brought Chris out of his thoughts. He realized the crew must be making repairs, and being able to do it on a planet made it easier. Although he knew that the parts of the ship that were underwater would be difficult to repair. They must have just begun to work on the damage outside since the attack on Voyager had halted less than an hour ago. They didn't waste time, and they seemed to be a very efficient crew. They also seemed to know how to react in a crisis.

For example he had heard a few crew members talking about how the lowest deck on the ship, deck fifteen, had been flooded during impact. But all the crew in that area escaped before it had become completely filled with water. Life in space must have been hard on the crew if they had become so used to such things. Could he learn to cope with the amazing things he would see on the long journey back to earth. Who could know, but thoughts of seeing his home again, even if it was four hundred years later, still made him happy.

"Nice view, mind if I join you?" Sil's voice came from behind him.

Chris turned and smiled up at her, he then quickly stood and offered her a chair. "Please do."

Sil sat in the chair opposite him, and smiled brightly at him. Chris felt knot inside his stomach. He wasn't sure what to say. Thankfully she spoke first.

"I didn't have a chance to thank you for coming to speak with my people." She said beaming, but her smile quickly faded. "When we transported back, you were gone. I was worried that Tok's weapon may have still hurt you even though you had transported."

"When I transported back I went to a neadby console where I could watch the broadcast." Chris said. "Tuvok was handling the transporter controls and suggested I leave the area since Tok was about to be transported to the ship, so I came here to think."

"About what?" Sil asked.

Chris lifted his glass to take a sip and before doing so he said, "Everything."

He tasted the orange juice in his mouth. It was the same it had been four hundred years ago. So much was the same, but so much was different.

"Yes, this all must be hard for you. Not being from this time and finding out everyone you know is dead." Sil said, a frown again conquering her smile. She looked around the mess hall, and then back at him. "But it is good that you found your own kind."

Chris knew what she said was true but he couldn't help but feel out of place nonetheless. "Yes, I suppose your right, but I don't know what it is. It's like being in the center of a crowd that knows why they are there, with you standing in the middle wondering where everyone is going."

Sil smiled at him again. Her gaze was amazing, partly because her eyes were a different color each time she looked at him. She was so full of mystery to him, yet he trusted her more than anyone else he had met so far here.

Quietly, and slowly from the back of his mind, a shallow indistinguishable voice rang in his ear and he turned to look behind him but he saw no one there. He turned back to face Sil who was now just staring at him seeming lost in thought. He instinctively rubbed his temple where he knew the implant was.

"Is it bothering you again?" she asked him.

"No, its just hard to imagine its there, I can't feel it or anything." He said looking down at Sil's hand where he saw the marking he had seen before. He still hadn't asked her about it, so he decided now was as good a time as any. He reached his hand out and touched hers where the marking was, "What is this marking? I saw it before and I couldn't help feel that it was something familiar."

Sil looked down at her hand, "This, is the mark of our god's. It signifies that we are grateful for their absence on our world for four thousand years. Almost all Frain have similar markings on their bodies."

Chris leaned in to look at the marking, and Sil allowed him to pull her hand closer.

The black shape looked like an egg, but one part of the egg was broken and separated from the rest. At certain points around the egg, there were what looked like spiders legs arcing away from it. Perhaps that is why it looked familiar.

"Looks kind of like a spider." He said releasing her greyish white hand.

"A spider?" Sil said puzzled. "What is that?"

"It's an insect on earth." Chris said leaning back in his chair. He again realized that things that seemed normal to him would come as new information to others here. Especially Sil and the rest of her people, after all the Frain had been cut off from the rest of the universe for four thousand years. Who knew what things they had missed that existed right outside of their system. For all they knew there could have even originally been more planets in their planetary system beyond the field.

Sil looked at her hand and then back at Chris. Her eyes were now a light blue. "This is what our god's took form as when they existed in corporeal form. They were not very merciful god's. In fact, it is said we were created to be their slaves. Yet, they did bring life to our species so that is why we adorn our bodies with their image."

The door to the mess hall opened as it had done many times during Chris and Sil's conversation. After all it was lunch time and the crew was in and out of the room at an almost constant flow. This time it was Tuvok whom had entered. Once inside he made a quick glance around the room and when his focus fell on Chris and Sil he made his way towards them.

"Mr. Moss, Sil, Your presence is required." he said when he came up to their table. Chris noticed Tuvok still had the same straight non-emotional face he had when Chris had seen him last in the transporter room. Tom had mentioned to him that Tuvok's race controlled their emotions. Chris couldn't seem to wrap his mind around the possibility of such a thing.

"Of course." Sil said standing up. Chris did the same, and they both followed Tuvok out of the mess hall.

As they walked down the corridor, about halfway to the turbo-lift Sil turned to Chris and asked, "With all the thinking you've been doing... Have you ever considered staying here on Fra?"

Chris stopped walking. Tuvok noticed him stop and stopped as well and turned around to face them both.

Chris actually hadn't thought about that as an option. After all, he was human. Wouldn't it make more sense to try and get to his planet where humans lived? But then there was the long journey Voyager and her crew had ahead of them, could he learn to handle the difficulties they came across?

"There will be time to discuss this matter later, but right now, I'm afraid we have little time." Tuvok said abruptly cutting into Chris's train of thought.

"Why what's happening?" Sil asked.

"The Field around your planetary system is collapsing and we fear it may crush everything inside it including this planet."

Sil almost appeared to collapse herself when she heard this. "How can that be, the Field has been stable for four thousand years." She said as they started to walk again, this time with a bit more haste.

"We believe that the field was being generated by the crashed vessel Tok discovered." Tuvok said. "And since the power has failed on that vessel, whatever was producing the field is also losing power. I have been ordered to go to the Causality and we would like you to join the team that will be going there because you have been there before."

"Ok." Sil said nodding to Chris. "We will accompany you."