Ship of the Valkryies (Part Three)
A Star Trek crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)
The seats onboard Voyager were a lot more cushy than the ones on the Defiant, thought Jadzia as she settled down at the helm of the Intrepid-class vessel. She let her fingers roam around the console, gauging it, getting acclimatized to it. The ship did not have as many fancy bells and whistles as the Defiant did, but it was pretty snazzy nonetheless, and would definitely do for a simple maze. She set a course for the coordinates provided by Cass. "Course plotted, Captain."
"Do it," acknowledged Janeway.
Like the sound of that. Jadzia smiled secretly to herself as she tapped the commands into the console. The thrumming of the ship's engines rose as the ship jumped to warp. The whole experience seemed so surreal, like a strange dream. Well, actually anything with Q in it was wont to be called a nightmare, but Jadzia was having a pretty good time now.
Kira, on the other hand, slouched in the chair to the right of Janeway, didn't seem to be enjoying this experience at all. The Bajoran was grumpy and tired when she'd arrived on this ship, and she was still grumpy and tired, owing mostly to the fact that she hadn't gotten any sleep yet. And the distance between them and the Alpha Quadrant was grating on her nerves. Jadzia knew that Kira constantly worried about the outcome of the Dominion War- come on, who didn't?- and this separation was worrying her. Jadzia sincerely hoped that it wasn't a permanent arrangement, or their helplessness was going to drive them crazy.
When Voyager dropped out of warp several hours later, Jadzia thought she'd learnt more than a few valuable life lessons. Firstly, certain captains didn't appreciate the notion of being called 'madam' and preferred to be addressed by their rank- like Janeway, for example. Secondly, botanists didn't appreciate the notion of being put in charge of weapons and worried constantly about it- like Keiko, for example. Thirdly, disgruntled Bajorans didn't appreciate the concept of humor, and wanted to do nothing with it- like Kira, for example. She shook her head.
The Maze of Alderaan hung before them, walls of solid plasma glowing in beautiful incandescent colors. "Is that it?" she asked.
Cass, ensconced in one of the stations at the side of the bridge, nodded in affirmation. "You got it. See that arch over there? That's the beginning of the maze. All you have to do is to get in through one side and exit through the other. The maze itself is about four point seven Astronomical Units across- but its size changes."
"It changes?" asked Troi incredulously. "You mean it's not a static maze?"
"Only the parts which you haven't been through rearrange themselves… so you can backtrack any time you want," replied Cass in her gentle, soothing voice. "Don't worry, it's not as bad as it seems."
"I hope," muttered Kira pessimistically.
Janeway glanced disapprovingly at her new doomsaying first officer, probably wishing she had her usual man in her place. "I'm sure we've been through worse. After all, it's only a maze. How bad can it get?"
"You don't say," Kira warned her.
Voyager drifted into the maze.
Jadzia steered the ship carefully through the narrow plasma passages while Seven charted a map of their previous movements. At her first junction she turned left, came to a dead end, backtracked and went right. Then she made more branches, more options, more choices, arrived at dead ends, backtracked, still dead ends, backtrack still some more, branch, make selections, dead end, backtrack….
Halfway through her forty-seventh junction, Jadzia suddenly wondered if the shifting of the maze might have caused this difficulty of finding the exit.
At her hundred and forty-seventh junction she wondered if they had gone past and missed the exit.
At her hundred and ninety-seventh junction she began wondering if the maze actually had an exit in the first place.
Kira began to look bored. "This isn't going anywhere."
"It most certainly is not," agreed Jadzia heartily as they ran into another dead end. "Cass, some help here?"
Cass shrugged fluidly. "You're not that desperate yet."
Kira shot her a dangerous look. "You wanna bet?"
"Um," said Troi politely, "I hate to interrupt, but sensors are picking up a huge object heading in our direction on a collision course. We have five minutes. Are we just going to sit here and bicker, or are we going to do something about it?"
Janeway rose from her seat. "Put it on."
The women stared at the viewscreen for a stunned moment. Finally Janeway spoke. "What is that?"
Troi shrugged. "All I know is, it's composed of some sort of bio-organic matter and its heading in our direction fast."
The pink agglomeration on their viewscreen looked nothing less than a giant pink space slug, complete with an ugly slit for a mouth and a long pair of antenna which it used to sweep the area around it, possibly searching for a tasty morsel to eat. Like Voyager, for example.
As if on cue, it speeded up, heading for the ship like a shark drawn to blood.
Cass smiled. "Still want to take up that bet, Major?"
"Now what?" asked Keiko.
"Run," said Janeway.
Jadzia didn't need to be told twice. She slammed her hands down in the twenty-fourth century version of flooring the pedal, and the ship rocketed off so fast the inertia dampers barely had time to compensate. The pink slug followed. Fingers racing across the console, Jadzia sped away into the depths of the maze, forgetting completely about completing it. Survival was the most important. Her keen hands deftly steered the ship down the narrow winding corridors, swinging past tight corners, maneuvering the convoluted pathways. She twisted their trajectory downwards, skimmed under a plasma wall into another corridor, weaving in and out between treacherous columns of roiling orange gases.
Yet the pink globule pursuing them never gave up the chase, doggedly remaining on their tail. Jadzia turned abruptly at a junction, trying to shake it off, and barely missed clipping the starboard nacelle off. A chorus of alarmed yelps ran across the bridge. "Relax," she exclaimed, "I know what I'm doing!"
She accelerated the ship some more, then suddenly slammed down on the reverse thrusters, almost instantly bringing the ship to a full stop. The deceleration was so sudden Janeway tumbled out of her chair and ended up on the deck in a confused ball. Despite the urgency of the situation Kira couldn't stifle a giggle.
Janeway would have shot her a venomous look, but other things were on her mind. She saw the reason for their abrupt lack of motion: a towering wall of plasma blocked the end of the corridor mere hundreds of feet away. They'd hit a dead end.
Jadzia swore.
"The … entity is closing fast," Troi informed them.
"We're stuck," Kira realized.
"Not necessarily so," rebutted Janeway, thinking fast. "There must be another way out…"
"Well, do something!" exclaimed Kira impatiently. "Keiko, you're at tactical, for Prophet's sake! Do something! Shoot something!"
Keiko looked at her like she was crazy. "It's a living thing, Major, you can't just-"
"Not at the blob, fire at the plasma wall!"
"Of course! A dispersion charge!" exclaimed Janeway. "Seven, would it be enough to break us free from here?"
"Theoretically, it might."
"Then what are we waiting for? The slug isn't getting any further away- fire!"
Keiko needed no further bidding. An orange dispersion beam shot out from Voyager's deflector dish, carving a huge hole in the side of the plasma wall. Jadzia flew the ship through as the wall began to regenerate, closing the hole behind them, effectively locking them away from the hungry pink slug.
"Look," said Troi in amazement, "the stars."
Everyone turned to gaze at the viewscreen in wonder. It'd seemed like days since they'd last seen the stars, pure and simple, untainted by the incandescence of plasma gases. "We made it out of the maze…" said Keiko in amazement.
"So all we had to do was to break through the plasma walls to get out?" asked Jadzia incredulously. "Why didn't we think of that earlier?"
Cass smiled enigmatically. "Sometimes, in a Quest, one must take a creative approach to solving it."
Janeway smiled at Kira. "That was some initiative," she said, impressed.
Kira shrugged. "No, just desperation." But her ill temper seemed to have been mollified by the triumph of their first mission. One down, six more to go…
"Excellent," said Cass, jotting something down on her clipboard. "I promised you a tactical officer if you did well on the first quest, didn't I?" She pointed to the space in front of the ship. "Behold."
The space in front of the ship slowly began to distort, twisting and turning color, glowing softly. Faster and faster it spun until finally a small, neat wormhole was sitting in space right in front of Voyager. The women were impressed.
A small battered craft came careening out of the wormhole, coming to a halt before Voyager. The wormhole faded fast behind it. "She's here."
Kira stared suspiciously at the dilapidated frieghter. "It's got Bajoran markings."
Cass shrugged. "Bajoran pilot."
Janeway nodded. "Deanna, see if you can establish connections with the ship."
"Unnecessary," Troi replied. "She's hailing us."
"Put her on."
The face that came on the viewscreen was that of a haunted woman, one who'd seen too much suffering and war in her life. Yet here eyes were wide in amazement as she surveyed her new surroundings, probably wondering how in the world she was abruptly transported over to the other side of the known universe. Kira drew in a sharp breath. She knew this woman- of course she did! The woman scanned the bridge, saw Kira, and her preternaturally- large eyes widened. "Nerys?"
"Laren? What are you doing here?"
******
"I can't believe Q would do something like this!" fumed Ro as she stormed down the corridors of Voyager, Troi and Kira flanking her on either side. "I was on a mission. An important mission. And he had to drag me all the way here!"
"A Maquis mission, no doubt," said Troi dryly.
"Don't even start," snapped Ro, obviously not in the most sociable of moods right now, a condition Kira fully empathized with. "This hasn't exactly been the best day in my life."
"Tell me about it," muttered Kira mirthfully as they stepped into the turbolift.
"So…" asked Ro almost casually as the doors slid shut and the lift made its way to its destination, "what was it I have to do on this ship, again?"
"You're the security officer," Troi informed her. "Serving at Tactical on the bridge."
Ro glanced disparagingly down at her civilian clothes and snorted. "Did I ever tell you how much I hate the Starfleet uniform? It's clumsy, heavy, and it itches."
"I don't think you'll have to wear the uniform. We're all in different ones anyway." She pointed to Kira's red military suit, then at her own gray-shouldered uniform. "Only Dr. Crusher, Lt. Dax and I are in this uniform."
"Really?" Despite herself, Ro was intrigued. "What are the others wearing, their bathrobes? Or swimsuits?"
"The Borg might as well have been wearing one," said Kira, and she and Troi laughed.
Ro, on the other hand, was horrified. "Borg?"
"Oh, don't worry, she's perfectly harmless," said Troi. "Unless you step on her tail, that is."
"Thanks a lot for the assurances," grumbled Ro as they stepped out of the turbolift.
"So, basically, all we have to do is to complete the remaining six Quests Q has in store for us, and we get the prize?" Ro asked as they headed for the Mess Hall, swinging the sling bag on her shoulder carelessly, belying its weight. "Sounds fairly easy to me."
Troi shook her head. "Never underestimate a Q… you just might live to regret it."
"Pessimist," said Kira.
They entered the Mess Hall and Ro found herself looking at a motley crew of women seated around a long table like the High Confederation of Witches. She recognized a few of them: Keiko, Dr. Crusher, Guinan… " 'Lanna?"
The half-Klingon engineer smiled at her. "It's been a while, I know…"
Ro blinked. "You're here too? So it's true… all they said about you being alive."
"Well, I look alive to you, don't I?" she replied, prompting soft laughter from around.
Ro suppressed a grin. "I might be dreaming."
"I sincerely hope not."
The petite woman seated at the head of the table rose and came forward to greet her. "I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Starship Voyager," she said, firmly shaking Ro's hand. "Welcome aboard."
"Thank you," said Ro. "I am… was Lieutenant Ro Laren." She shrugged. "Before I defected, I mean."
Janeway nodded briskly. "I know. Will told me about you."
"Will… Will Riker? You know him?"
Janeway headed back to her seat and tossed Ro a smile over her shoulder. "He was an Academy friend of mine. We used to write regularly… long story." She sat down. "I suppose you more or less know everyone here, then?"
Ro inclined her head slightly, a habit she'd picked up on the Enterprise. "Not everyone."
The dark-haired Trill seated on Torres' right stood to introduce herself as Ro moved towards the table. Kira and Troi found seats and settled down. "I'm Lt. Jadzia Dax, science officer assigned to Deep Space Nine," she said, shaking Ro's hand.
"I've heard of you," said Ro, nodding. She glanced uncomfortably at the Borg, wondering if she should ask her who she was.
But the Borg beat her to it. "My designation is Seven of Nine," she said smoothly. "You may call me Seven."
"Seven. It's a pleasure." Ro was somehow glad she didn't have to shake her hand. She glanced at the young woman with wide blue eyes and long golden hair like curls of silk. "And you are-?"
"I am Cassandra, the Diocese in charge of your group." She said pleasantly. "I'm here to guide you in your Quests. Speaking of which, you should proceed to the next one as fast as possible, before the others beat you to it."
Janeway puckered her lips. "You have a point. What's our next station for the Quest?"
Cass produced a slim parchment scroll from somewhere and slid it across the table to Janeway. "There's your clue for the location of the next station."
Mystified, Janeway picked the scroll up and unrolled the yellow paper. On it was written a short, yet somewhat cryptic verse:
Where fire and air meet
And the earth is scattered in legions
On the fourth rock from the sun
Here there be dragons.
Janeway frowned and read it out loud. Cass nodded. "They're all describing the system this next station is located in.
Janeway perused the verse again, thinking. "Air and fire… burning gases? Plasma storms? And earth… I suppose that means rocks. A planetary system with nebulae and asteroids?" She guessed. "What dragons?"
Seven tilted her head to a side, thinking. "There is a planetary system three light years from here which fits the description. The Rinnis system."
"I remember," said Torres, "It's situated in a diffuse Class-5 nebula, asteroid belt between the sixth and seventh planet. The fourth planet is M-class. It could be our next destination, all right."
The women glanced questioningly at Cass, who nodded her affirmation sagely. "That's right. You'll be participating in a dragon slaying competition on Rinnis Four."
