DISCLAIMER: You all know the drill - Paramount is God.  All hail Paramount.  They own everything in the Star Trek Universe - I'm just using my overactive imagination to take their characters where they refuse to go.  All in the name of fun, not profit (I wish).

CAUSALITY

CHAPTER FIVE: ALTER EGO

Captain's log, Stardate 54435.7  We've detected an automated distress signal from a nearby inhabited M-class planet.  We've been unable to establish visual or audio contact but we've altered course to investigate.

"We're coming in range," reported Tom at the helm.

Captain Janeway turned around in her chair to face ops.  "Mr. Kim?"

"We've got visual contact," said Harry.  "They're still transmitting the automated distress call."

"Onscreen," she ordered, facing the front of the bridge again.

A dark-skinned alien appeared on the screen.  "Mallor Prime to any vessel within range," he said.  "There is an imminent overload in our tachyon reactor.  We are completely depended on its energy.  We are in urgent need of assistance."

The screen went blank as the signal ended.

"Tom, increase speed to warp 9," said the Captain, crossing her legs.

*

"We're within communications range, Captain," said Harry.  "The distress call seems to be coming from some kind of power facility on the northern continent."

"Hail them," said the Captain as she rose from her chair, straightening her uniform with a tug.

"They're responding."

A Mallorian engineer appeared on the screen.  They could hear faint alarms in the background.  "This is the main energy complex.  Please identify yourself."

"I'm Captain Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager.  We detected your distress call.  Can we be of assistance?"

"Our engineers have been able to control the radiation, but they're still trying to avert the overload in the tachyon core.  I'm sure they could use any help they can get."

"Why don't they just shut down the reactor?" asked Tom, glancing over his shoulder at the Captain.

"That is being considered only as a last resort.  Our entire planet is dependent on the energy from this reactor.  Shutting it down would render our population helpless."

"I didn't even know tachyon reactors were possible," said Harry.  "I mean, I've seen theories, but --"

"Just because the Federation has not been able to put that theory into practice does not mean that other races could not," said Seven.

"We'll send an away team down to assist your engineers," said the Captain.

"Thank you.  We appreciate it."

She hit her commbadge as the screen went blank.  "Janeway to Torres."

Torres here, Captain.

"I want you to assemble a team and meet me in transporter room two."

Acknowledged.

She started up the stairs to the turbolift.  "Seven, you're with me.  Chakotay, you have the bridge."

*

"Try rerouting power through the backup power systems," said Taman.  "See if that stops the overload."

"Yes, sir."

"What is it?" he snapped impatiently as he was tapped on the shoulder for a second time.

Morat leaned forward and spoke quietly in his ear.  Taman bolted upright and turned around, staring Morat in the eye.  "You're certain it was the same woman?"

He nodded.  "Y-yes, sir.  I spoke with her myself.  Everything was exactly as she said it would be.  They will be arriving shortly."

Taman frowned.  "Send a message to the head of tachyon research."  He snorted.  "I always thought that windbag was full of it when he said there was no possibility of temporal phenomena.  That woman was convincing to say the least, yet he refused to believe a word of it."

Morat nodded and started to move off, but Taman grabbed him by the shoulder.  "When she gets here, keep her busy in the atrium until I arrive.  Use whatever excuse you need."

*

They were met by a pair of Mallorian engineers in the atrium.

"Welcome, Captain," said one as they approached the away team.  "My name is Morat, and this is Shoval.  We can show your engineers to any part of the facility you wish to examine."

"I'll need to get a look at the schematics first," said B'Elanna.

"Of course," said Morat, motioning over his shoulder.  His companion stepped forward with a PADD and handed it to her.

She quickly scanned the PADD.  "Vorik, you and Ashmore go take a look at these power flow regulators.  The rest of us will examine the main core."

"I can take you to the flow regulators," said Shoval, and Vorik and Ashmore followed him.

"The main reactor core is down that corridor on the left," said Morat, motioning with his arm.  B'Elanna nodded and motioned to her engineers to follow her.

The Captain stepped forward to go with B'Elanna but Morat smiled and moved into her path.  "Our chief engineer was hoping to speak with you, Captain, if you'll just wait here.  He should be with you shortly."

"Of course."

Morat nodded, then led B'Elanna and her team down the corridor towards the main reactor.

*

She could see her from her position deep in the shadows.  Pacing back and forth in that familiar fashion, placing her hands on her hips -- a habit that over the years she could never seem to shake -- and despite everything that was racing through her mind an unconscious smile pulled at the corners of her lips.  She could make out the familiar facial expressions even from across the room.  So full of determination, so full of confidence.  No idea of what she was walking into.  The kind of pain she would go through.

And you won't go through it, she thought to herself.  She checked the setting on the Mallorian disruptor in her belt one last time and gripped the handle of thehypospray as she saw her chance.  Not if I haveanything to say about it.

*

Taman stormed into the main reactor core, looking around furiously.

"Morat!" he yelled when he saw the engineer up on the second floor, working at a console with B'Elanna and Ensign Tabor.  Morat turned around and immediately started for the ladder when he saw the expression on Taman's face.

"Yes, sir?" he said when he neared him.

Taman reached over and grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him closer.  "I thought I told you to keep an eye on her," he hissed quietly.

"I-I told her to wait for you in the atrium, sir," stammered Morat.

"She's not there."

"I don't know what to tell you, sir.  She was there the last time I saw her."

He leaned forward so his face was inches from Morat's.  "Find her.  Now."

*

"Ensign!  Have you seen the Captain?" asked B'Elanna as she climbed down the ladder to the main floor.

Tabor stood up, closing the tool case he had been using.  "No, not since the beam-in."

She frowned, looking around the room until her eyes fell on one of the Mallorian engineers.  "Morat!" she yelled, moving over to join him near the console where he was working.

"Yes, Lieutenant?" he said, turning around.

"Is our Captain still with your chief engineer?"

Some of the color drained from his face and he glanced around to room to hide his discomfort.  "I'm…not sure."

"Huh.  I would have expected her to be giving us a hand in here," she said, her eyes roaming around the room.  She hit her commbadge.  "Torres to Janeway."

*

The voice slowly penetrated the Captain's consciousness, but it took a few seconds for her sluggish thoughts to piece together what was going on.  The last thing she remembered was…waiting for the chief engineer in the atrium.  Her thoughts became sharper as she suddenly remembered being grabbed from behind and the tingling sensation of a hypospray against her neck.

As the sedative in her system began to wear off, she became aware that she was being dragged backwards through what seemed to be some kind of underground cavern.

Torres to Captain Janeway, please respond

The Captain tried frantically to reach her commbadge, but her reflexes were still slow and her abductor ripped the commbadge off her uniform and threw it before her fingers reached it.  She heard it clatter to the ground a few meters away.

She struggled against her captor as her strength returned in a sudden rush of adrenaline, trying to dig her heels in and stop their progress.  She managed to elbow her attacker in the ribs, eliciting a soft grunt.

"Don't make this hard on yourself, Captain," muttered a voice softly.

Ignoring her warning, she continued to struggle.  She dug her heel into her captor's shin, causing their step to falter.  Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, she ducked and used the arm that was around her neck to throw her abductor over her head and onto the ground.  She moved forward, kneeling down to try and pin her opponent.  The hooded figure rolled over and avoided her, climbing to their feet.

The Captain started to lunge forward again, but froze when her abductor pulled out some kind of weapon and pointed it at her.

"I don't want to use this, Captain.  But I will if I have to."

Her eyes widened at the familiar voice.  "What the hell…"

Her abductor reached up and removed her hood, shaking her long chestnut hair loose.  Except for the disfiguring scar on one side of her face and the longer hair, she could have been looking in a mirror.

On further consideration, though, she revised that opinion.  The woman in front of her looked older, at least five years or so.  The eyes too, were different.  They still had the fire and determination that she recognized in herself, but there was something missing or altered.  The eyes that were staring back at her looked like they had seen so much more despair and sorrow than she had experienced, even in their turbulent six years in the Delta quadrant.

"Care to explain?" she asked finally.

One side of her counterpart's mouth rose in a lopsided smile.  "We've got plenty of time."

She frowned.  "In case you hadn't noticed, there's a tachyon reactor above us that's going to overload any minute."

"Believe me, I noticed."

*

Chakotay moved up the stairs towards Harry's station.  "What do you mean, nothing?"

Harry shook his head.  "I'm not detecting the Captain anywhere.  But the level of tachyon radiation is increasing.  It could be interfering with sensors."

He frowned.  "We're not reading her on sensors, B'Elanna."

The concern in B'Elanna's voice was obvious.  Nobody down here has seen her for at least half an hour, and the Mallorians are giving me the run around.

"Do you think they're hiding something?"

I don't know, Chakotay…but we've got our hands full trying to stop this reactor overload.  We reinforced the containment field.  That should buy us an hour or two.

He moved past Harry's station, heading for the turbolift.  "I'm on my way."

*

"I need to get to the reactor core and help B'Elanna."

"I already told you.  We're staying here."

"I don't have time for this." 

She started to move past her, but the elder Janeway raised the weapon and pointed it at her.  "You're not going anywhere."

Without moving, she stared at the weapon.

Her counterpart jerked the weapon towards the wall.  "Sit down."

When she refused to move, her double's eyes narrowed and she stepped towards her menacingly.  "I said sit down, Captain.  I don't want to use this, but I will if it means stopping this from happening again."

She examined the face of her counterpart as she reluctantly complied, taking a seat on the rough ground.  "What exactly are you trying to prevent?  Some kind of disaster?"

Her voice dropped to a whisper and she could see her elder self's emotional control slip slightly.  "You could say that."

"What happened?"

Her double took a seat on the ground opposite her, the weapon still firmly in hand.  "We're trapped in some kind of repeating causality loop.  I encountered an older version of myself, who warned me that the reactor core was going to go critical.  When the core overloaded, there was a chronoton surge that created a fracture in subspace.  I was pulled in and woke up five years in the past, just like the Kathryn Janeway before me.  And the one before her.  There's no telling how many times this has already happened."

"I don't understand -- if you knew the core was going to overload why couldn't you stop it?"

"I would have, but Taman saw what I was doing and attacked me.  I didn't get a chance to shut down the reactor."

She frowned.  "Where were B'Elanna and her team?"

"I ordered them out."

"When they could have helped you?" she said incredulously.

"Don't look at me like that, Captain.  We both know you would have done exactly the same in my position."

"Not if it would have prevented the reactor overload."

"What if it saved B'Elanna's life?"

Her eyes narrowed.  "What?"

"In the previous loop, B'Elanna tried to assist…us…in shutting down the core.  When the chronoton surge happened, she was right next to the reactor.  When the Mallorians found us…it was too late.  She died from the radiation damage."

"How do you know all this if you have no memory of the previous loops?"

"She told me what happened.  I made sure that B'Elanna was nowhere near the core when it blew."

The Captain absorbed this information in silence.

Her double smiled wryly.  "I know this will be breaking the Temporal Prime Directive if I tell you this, but she's pregnant."

"B'Elanna?"

"About five or six weeks along.  A girl.  The Kathryn from the previous loop told me.  She found out when the Mallorians did an autopsy on B'Elanna.  I ordered her out of the reactor to protect her.  Unfortunately, I was so absorbed with getting everyone else to safety that I didn't think to get out of there myself."

*

Chakotay followed Taman as he moved around the engine room.  "Did you speak with the Captain?"

"No, I did not," said the Mallorian, examining a PADD one of his engineers handed him.  "I went to the atrium to meet with her, but she was not there."

Chakotay stepped aside as Taman moved past him.  "Did you ask anyone if they had seen her?"

Taman turned around, frustrated.  "Commander, I'm afraid I have more important things to worry about than the whereabouts of your Captain.  I'm sure there is no reason for concern."

"No reason for concern?" he repeated incredulously.  "Nobody has seen her since she arrived."

Taman continued working at his console.  "She has most likely joined one of my engineering teams in an effort to assist them."

"Can you contact these engineering teams?"

"They are busy."

Chakotay stared at him for a long time before he stepped away and crossed the room, finding a quiet corner.  "Chakotay to Voyager."

Go ahead, Commander, responded Tuvok.

"I haven't been able to locate the Captain.  Have one of your security teams beam down to assist me, and tell Harry to keep scanning for her."

Acknowledged.

He stood in silence for a moment, hoping that the knot in the pit of his stomach would disappear.  He could feel the muscles in his chest tighten, and it felt like his heart was going to pound out of his chest.  Something was wrong.  Kathryn was in trouble.  He could feel it in his bones.

*

"Where are we?"

"Old mining tunnels from before the reactor was built.  It took me months to find the entrance near the atrium."

"You've been planning this for a while."

"Since the day I woke up in the reactor core…over five years ago."

Her eyes narrowed.  "How do I know this isn't some kind of elaborate trick?"

Her companion took a seat facing her, the gun still firmly in hand.  "To what end?"

"I don't know."

Her double thought for a moment.  "When you were seven years old, you broke your arm in a game of Parisses squares even though your father had repeatedly forbidden you to play.  You walked all the way home from the game with that broken arm, and the Admiral found out what you had been doing.  He managed to act angry until you told him your team had won."

She looked at her counterpart suspiciously.

"In your second year at the Academy, you were offered a chance to cheat on your quantum mechanics final.  You refused and made the second highest grade in the class.  Or should I say the highest, considering Cadet Raega was exposed a few days after the exam and expelled."

The suspicious look on the Captain's face remained, but it was less determined than before.

"Still don't believe me?"  asked her double with a smirk.  "I can keep this up all day."

"Are you sure we're the same person?" asked the Captain wryly.  "I don't picture myself pulling a phaser on…myself."

"We're not the same person, Captain.  Not anymore."

"I noticed you grew your hair out," she said sarcastically.  "And…"

"This?" she said, touching the scar on her cheek.  "It seems I was standing a little too close to the reactor when it blew.  The Mallorians don't have the same level of medical technology that Voyager does.  They weren't able to completely heal the burn.  But our differences go far beyond the superficial."

The Captain's eyes fell to the weapon that was still trained on her.  "Obviously."

"You're still a Captain.  You have your crew.  You have Chakotay."  She held her hand up when she saw the reaction in her younger counterpart.  "Don't start with me.  I don't want to hear it."

She clamped her mouth shut, swallowing the objection that she had been about to voice.

"I know you're going to tell me he's your First Officer, nothing more, but I know as well as you do the kind of comfort that gives you."  She sighed.  "When I first woke up here, I didn't want to accept that I was stranded.  I spent every spare minute trying to figure out exactly what had happened.  When I did, I tried to convince the Mallorians that I was telling the truth.  They wouldn't believe me."  She snorted.  "I even tried sabotaging the reactor once, but it didn't work and they increased the security.  So I realized that there was nothing to do but wait.  And that's when it started to get to me."

"When what started to get to you?"

"The loneliness."  She looked sadly at her younger self.  "I know you think you're lonely now, Captain, distancing yourself from the crew.  Having to be Captain…but you have no idea what it was like.  I'll go to any lengths to prevent this from happening again."

"How do you know it won't happen again?"

"What do you mean?"

"If I'm not there to order B'Elanna out of the core, she might stay and try to stop the overload.  She could be there when it blows."

"She won't be.  Trust me."

Her eyes narrowed.  "How can you be so sure?"

*

"Are you sure she's not assisting one of our engineering teams?" asked Shoval.

"Nobody has seen her," said Chakotay forcefully.  "We've searched the entire facility."

"Perhaps you are not familiar enough with our facility.  There may be areas that you missed."

"None of your people would help us."

Shoval frowned.  "In case you haven't noticed, Commander, we're in the middle of a crisis."

"I understand that.  If you would just cooperate with us, we would be able to find her."

Shoval sighed.  "What do you want to know?"

"Chakotay!"  He looked up from the Mallorian to see B'Elanna standing at the entrance to the main reactor core.  "You'd better come take a look at this."

Shoval followed him as he moved with B'Elanna into the core.  She knelt next to one of the power matrices.  "We found this when we were analyzing the power flow."

He knelt next to her and examined the small blinking device that was attached to one of the power conduits.  It was small, about three centimeters square, and was partially hidden behind some of the other conduits.

"What is it?"

"It's a bomb."

Shoval and Chakotay both looked at her in surprise.  "What?" he said.

"It's designed to overload the power matrix."

"We inspected this facility two weeks ago," sputtered Shoval.  "I'm certain that wasn't there."

"Did it cause the reactor overload?" asked Chakotay.

"No, but when it detonated the radiation level in the core would have gone critical.  We would have been forced to evacuate."

"You disarmed it?"

She nodded.  "The fact that it's there isn't even the most surprising thing."  She pointed to a small component of the haphazardly assembled device.  "See this?"

He leaned forward.  "Yes."

"It's got a Starfleet signature.  It looks like it came from a commbadge."

"What?  How is that possible?"

*

"You sabotaged the reactor?" said Captain Janeway incredulously.

"It was the only way to prevent this."

She stared at her double in disbelief.  "I can't believe I would ever do something like that."

"It's not serious.  Everyone will merely be forced to evacuate long before the reactor overloads."

"And no one will be there to try and stop the overload.  The Mallorians will be completely helpless without the energy from that reactor."

"They'll manage."

"Have you forgotten everything Starfleet stands for?"

The elder Janeway didn't answer immediately and tilted her head back against the rock.  "Of course not…but being separated from the crew has changed my perspective."  She took a deep breath.  "Imagine waking up every morning for five years and not knowing where they were.  If they were safe.  If they finally managed to get home.  If they thought about me."  She smiled sadly and her throat tightened.  "You know…I always used to think that I was the one who depended on Chakotay and not the other way around…but so often I found myself wondering if he would be able to go on without me."

She watched the emotions on her elder counterpart's face with interest.  "Chakotay's more than capable of commanding Voyager." 

She looked back at her, lowering her head from the wall behind her.  "You know that's not what I mean.  I have full confidence in his abilities.  It's him I worried about."

They sat in silence for a few moments before the elder Janeway spoke up again.  "One night," she said quietly, smiling sadly, "I dreamt that I was back on Voyager, with him."  She laughed when she saw her companion's reaction.  "Don't look so surprised, Captain.  I used to be you, remember?"

"How could I forget?"

"I remember how I kept my feelings hidden for so many years."  She smiled.  "And I seem to recall some rather vivid dreams I had long before I ended up here."  Captain Janeway raised an eyebrow.

Her double smiled wistfully.  "I could feel his arms around me, his breath on the back of my neck.  It was so peaceful, so comforting.  And then I woke up, and he was gone.  And that's when it hit me."  Her voice wavered and dropped to a whisper.  "I was alone."  She looked at her younger double, determination showing through the tears in her eyes.  "And that's when I decided that I wasn't going to let this happen.  Not again."

"I thought we made a point of avoiding time travel."

"We used to.  You weren't stranded here by yourself for five years.  Not knowing what had happened, not knowing if they made it home…it was a living Hell for me.  For all I know, the entire planet was obliterated when that reactor blew, and Voyager along with it."

"For all you know, planting that device will have devastating consequences."

*

Taman turned the device over in his hand and glanced over Shoval's shoulder to make sure the humans were not within hearing range.  "You're sure?"

Shoval nodded.  "Their engineer said it was their technology."

"Hm," grumbled Taman.  "I thought we took enough precautions to prevent her breaching our security a second time.  Whatever her motives may be, it's clear she's trying to destroy the reactor."  He looked thoughtfully at the device and tossed it in his hand.  "Help their Commander to find her.  Bring a security team with you.  Stop her at all costs."