Journey through the Underspace.

- A short story of an alternate trip through the Delta Quadrant -

By TimeTraveller-1900.

Kes brought her borrowed shuttle to a halt far from Voyager, taking deep breaths even though her transforming body would soon no longer have her single lung. Her mind was on fire as new sensations reached her consciousness, but she was still a long way from truly understanding them; it reminded Kes of how Tanis had tried coercing her when Voyager came across Suspiria's array, and her mind had been opened in such a way that she wondered if her people's ancestors had ever experienced anything like it before the Caretaker reduced them to a dependent race who lacked the motivation to grow beyond what they were.

In the reflection of the viewport, Kes could see her body was glowing and she could see through her arms and chest. The young Ocampan had no idea how this was possible, or why it was even happening in the first place, but she could feel things and she became aware she could do things with her mind that she had never been able to do in the past. As her mind opened to these possibilities, Kes could see through subspace, until she could see the subatomic wormholes that linked all parts of the universe together.

And then she saw something else…..

Kes smiled. "My gift to you….," she trailed off as she began to gather her power, her mind reaching into the levels of the universe. The energy moulded to her will and was prepared to do her bidding even as her mind sought out Voyager's warp engines. But she saw something else that caught her attention as the waves of her transformation began undoing the molecular bonds of the shuttle's hull. The structural integrity fields were beginning to fall apart….

The bridge crew barely had the opportunity to react while they watched the shuttle carrying their long-time friend begin to glow when the ship seemed to have been caught in a strong shockwave and began shaking.

"What's happening?" Janeway demanded.

"Unknown, Captain. We're caught in a subspace field," Harry reported.

"And it's a strong one," Tom's voice rose as he stabbed futilely at his console as he tried to break them out. "And we can't get out. If we still had warp drive, we could do it."

"But we don't have warp drive," Harry reminded him, his voice dark as he remembered how Seven of Nine was meant to help him and B'elanna, only for it to go wrong, all because he'd taken his eyes off of the drone.

Suddenly the ship lurched again. "Torres to bridge," B'elanna's strained voice broke over the comm lines. "The warp core just came online."

"What is that possible?" Janeway knew the warp engines had been giving B'elanna and her crew a lot of trouble thanks to the Borg hardware wormed into their computer systems, and Janeway was hoping to find a way of getting Seven of Nine to once more pitch in to help - under heavier guard, of course, and they could once more get to warp since they were still in Borg space, but she had wanted to give B'elanna the chance.

"I have no idea. It just came on," B'elanna replied breathlessly. "But it's working again. Matter antimatter reaction at one hundred and two percent. A hundred and ten percent?"

Janeway's eyes widened. That was not possible…

" A hundred and twenty!" B'elanna shouted before the viewscreen flashed with hazy light and the ship shook again as the stars streaked past. Were they at warp?

"This can't be right," Tom said, "Our speed is - it's impossible!"

The bridge began shaking as the velocity they were going at began overcoming the inertial dampening systems, and everyone began to feel squeezed and pressed by the speed they were going. Janeway gritted her teeth together as she felt the strain, she had been on many warp jumps but she had never felt anything like this. Starfleet Academy did a course on inertial dampening failure to get you used to the sensations, but there was nothing like this, and it seemed they were going faster than she was experienced with. "We're coming apart!" Harry called.

A few minutes later there was another flash of light, and then they just simply…stopped. Tom leaned forward and took control of the helm station. "We've just dropped out of whatever it was we were in," he reported. Chakotay checked his own console."Systems coming back online. Any ideas what that was?"

"No," Tom shook his head. "It felt a lot like a warp field, but it's not one I've ever been in….not unless you count that warp 10 fiasco. But what we just went through was milder. I didn't feel anything that said we'd experienced infinite velocity." "We're going to find out what Kes did later. Right now I want to know what's happened," Janeway shook her head when she saw the screen was blank. "I want to see what's outside."

The blank screen changed to show a nebula, its purple and white light glaring gently at them.

"Where are we?" Janeway asked. The last time they'd checked, they were nowhere near a nebula. They were or had been, still in Borg space. Just what the hell had Kes done? How far had they come? "Nine point five thousand light years from where we just were," Tom read the information from his navigational readings as if he couldn't even believe it himself. Janeway knew how he was feeling.

But still….

9.5000 light-years….

She did the math quickly. Somehow Kes had gained the same kind of control over time, space, and thought as the Traveller, and perhaps even Q did to move through space and time, and she had used it to throw them this far. "She's thrown us safely beyond Borg space," Janeway whispered. "Ten years closer to home."

"Ten years?" Harry repeated.

"Yeah," Janeway said, for a moment wishing Kes had the power to send them much further, but this was just as good.

Ever since their arrival in the Delta Quadrant, Janeway had hoped to find new technologies, and new spatial phenomena to send them home or to shave off great chunks of the journey. In their first year, they'd found an incompatible technology which could have shaved 30-40,000 light years off their 70,000 light-year trip, but Janeway's own adherence to the rules combined with the restrictions the Sikarrians had placed on their technology getting into the hands of alien visitors had meant her crew who'd taken the law into their own hands, and it had gone wrong.

But this was the first time in three years they had been thrown a good distance, slicing time off of their journey home.

"Kes must have gone through a transformation which would have allowed her to control time and space and thought," Janeway said aloud, "and somehow she was able to throw us this distance."

"Why couldn't she have thrown us further?" Tom asked, turning to face the command tier. "Why not send us all the way?"

"Maybe she couldn't? Maybe her powers have limitations?" Chakotay suggested.

"We'll probably never know," Tuvok opined.

"Do we still have warp engines?" Janeway put an end to the debate.

Tom checked quickly. "Yes. But the power has dropped. Captain, just before Kes…..transformed, she sent a transmission."

"What did she say?" Janeway asked eagerly.

"It says she threw us through space as a gift, for being her friends and because she loves us and she will miss us terribly," Tom was unable to mask the sadness in his voice - Janeway knew Kes and Paris had become friends, and there was a lot of credence to the rumour he'd had a crush on her before he began a relationship with B'elanna, and it turned out that Tom had turned his attention to the young Ocampan, who had a gift for seeing into other people's spirits because he'd wanted a friend who didn't just him for the stupid mistakes he'd made in his life. "She says she doesn't know how far we'd be sent, but she hopes we were thrown a considerable distance away. That's why she didn't throw us all the way, she had no control over it."

"What else did she say?"

Tom sighed as he tried to quickly read through what Kes had sent. "As she was transforming, Kes became aware of a network of subspace corridors threaded through the entire universe….," he breathed as he took in a fact about the universe that nobody ever had imagined in the past.

Janeway knew how he felt; if there were subspace corridors out there, then -

Harry voiced the thought in her mind. "If there are subspace corridors through the universe, then we could use them to return home!" He said excitedly. "Why else would Kes tell us about them?"

Janeway had always tried to contain her ensign's excitement; while it was good to be excited and positive, at the same time you had to be prepared to be disappointed, but right now she had other things to do. "Mr Paris, resume our original course. But send a copy of the transmission to stellar cartography, engineering, and to the science labs; I want to have a good idea of what we're doing. We'll take a look at these subspace corridors. Right now we need to stock up on supplies of food and water. And I also want an evaluation of the Borg technology. If the corridors do get us home, great, but at the same time I'd be more comfortable with the warp engines being ready and working in one piece."

Sadly while her orders were reasonable, Harry had to be obstinate. "Captain, this could our one chance-."

Janeway wanted to scream at him. She was incensed he would question her command decision, but she turned to him and tried to keep her voice level but sharp enough to make him see he was overstepping his boundaries and to remind him of his place. "Ensign, I've made my decision. We will use the subspace corridors once we've discovered them, but there's a great deal of work for us to do. Now, we don't know anything about these corridors, or where they are, but we need to come up with a decent plan to use them. And we will use them. Now carry on with your work and be quiet."

Janeway went back to her command chair and leaned over to read the message from Kes.

X

News of Kes's departure and transformation spread throughout the ship, and the news they'd just slashed 10 years off of their journey was welcomed by all. But the news Kes had apparently described a strange network of subspace corridors they would be using to return home. This news was seen by some as a rumour despite the proof since everyone knew some subspace corridors and tunnels were relatively easy to find, but reception was mixed.

X

"I don't know what or how Kes did it, but her transformation flash fried the Borg crap littering the engines. They're working functionally again," B'elanna reported. "I've had my staff run every check imaginable to make sure of that."

"What about the other systems you'd been having trouble with?" Chakotay asked.

"They're working perfectly," B'elanna replied. "I've also been looking at what Kes sent about these subspace corridors."

"What's your opinion of them?" Janeway asked, seeing Harry was looking more excited.

"I think it is plausible, Captain," B'elanna said slowly, "we would need to be sure, but the entrances and exit points of the corridors radiate a specific sort of subspace radiation which largely blends in with the usual cosmic radiation, which is likely why we have never discovered them before."

"So they should be easy to find?" Janeway held up a hand to stop anything from Harry from distracting them from this discussion.

"I don't see why not, but there's a problem. We need some raw materials for some repairs. Species 8472 caused a fair amount of damage, and I also want to do some work with the warp engines to make sure those things don't come back and clog the whole thing up again," B'elanna said.

Janeway wasn't happy about the thought of a delay in finding the subspace corridors, but at the same time they needed to find the corridors and a brief stop would do a lot of good. And she began thinking of the logic. What would be the point of using the corridors if they found themselves in a situation they needed their warp engines? "Is there a star system nearby?" She asked Tom.

"Yes, there's a system 20 light years away," Paris asked. "It's quite a distance."

But this was too much for Harry. "Captain, we have a chance to return home. We have to find these corridors!"

Janeway turned slowly to face him with a look so withering it would have sent Seska and the Kazon to the other end of the galaxy, and it had the effect of cowing Harry down. "Mr Kim, I don't appreciate your constant 'suggestions' on what my decisions should be," she said dangerously, "we will find the corridors. We will go through them, and we will get home. But this ship has to be fully operational to do that. Patience is a virtue, and it is about time that you learnt your place. I don't ever want you to step out of line like this again, and if you do…. You will regret it, is that clear?"

Kim swallowed. "Perfectly, ma'am."

Janeway narrowed her eyes at him before she turned to B'elanna and Neelix, who were both mercifully silent during the whole exchange like everyone else. "What do we need to do when we get to this system?" She asked curiously. In her mind, the whole incident with Harry was over.

"I'd like to see the engines are alright, and there's no sign of the Borg contamination clogging the systems up," B'elanna racked her brains for anything else. "I'd also like to double-check the hull and some of the other systems."

"I'd also like to take the opportunity to take on some fresh supplies of fruits and vegetables and fruits, Captain," Neelix added, sending an apologetic towards B'elanna in case she had wanted to speak before he'd interrupted. "I had plans to extend the food and replicator rations while we were in Borg space, but since we don't need to anymore, I'd like to keep restocking. I've been in subspace corridors before, there was a small one that took my ship several light years from where you found me, which wouldn't have done Voyager any favours, which is why I never told you about it and it was going in a different direction anyway, and there was no decent supply of food available. Take my word for it, we will need to use every opportunity we will need to get."

Janeway nodded when she saw the point the Talaxian was getting at. "Sensible. Alright, we'll go to this system. Tom, when you get back to the helm, lay in a course, but keep the speed limited to warp 7. That will give us the time to find out more about this subspace radiation, and perhaps we'll launch a few probes into the subspace corridors and learn more of the geography before we make use of them."

Everyone in the room knew she was doing this to make Harry and everyone else happy.

X

Chakotay was struggling to control his temper a few weeks later as he gazed at the group of Starfleet officers and members of his Maquis ship who'd gotten into a fight. Things between the fleeters and the Maquis crews had cooled down over the years, while a few of Janeway's crew had decided to put aside the petty differences between themselves, some of them were simply following Janeway's unspoken example.

Despite her well-chosen, smooth words about being in the Delta Quadrant and having to work together, Janeway had never been able, not once, to look beyond her views on how the Maquis had gone against Federation politics and dared to leave Paradise. Fights between the Maquis and the Fleeters were fortunately rare, but in the early days, they had been frequent. Chakotay knew he would need to fight tooth and nail to keep his people from being punished for something that was not their fault any more than it was Seven of Nine's or B'elanna's; Seven of Nine had suggested they modify the warp engines to create a transwarp conduit, and B'elanna had needed to jettison the core when it looked like a core breach was in progress.

Janeway was treating the whole thing as suspicious, but Chakotay, who had been inside Seven of Nine's mind, knew that the former Borg drone lacked that kind of imagination - she had knocked Harry out of the Jefferies Tube that one time, but that was because she had seen a part of the communications system, and saw she could use it.

Chakotay had many worries in him where the former Borg was concerned. He was worried that, like with the Maquis, Janeway was going to prove her hypocritical nature, once again.

He was not looking forward to dealing with the damage control here.

X

Captain Kathryn Janeway took her seat on the bridge, not even looking at Chakotay, who had given her grief for what had happened between her people and his own. "Mr Paris, take us into the Underspace corridor."

Chakotay heard the tension in Tom's voice. Like everyone else on the ship, Voyager's pilot was more than aware of the arguments between himself and the captain. But Paris was not going to say or do anything, since he had his own reasons for distrusting Janeway. But Tom knew better than to push the limits. "Aye, Captain."

As Voyager approached the point in space where the subspace corridor was located, their warp field interacted with the opening and they were pulled inside the corridor.

"Mr Paris, Kes's message said there were weak navigational beacons scattered throughout the corridor network," Janeway said, "can you get a fix?"

Although Janeway had been surprised nobody had ever encountered them before, Chakotay guessed it was unsurprising that the corridor network was discovered by other aliens, and they had used them for long-range interstellar (or beyond?) travel, and they had scattered beacons throughout the network to provide a navigational aid. They broadcasted a signal from an extremely primitive form of subspace communication.

A moment later checking the scans, Tom nodded as they passed through the gaseous, orange-hued subspace corridors. "I've got a few of them, Captain," he replied, "the signals are very weak, and the scans can detect only a few of them in the immediate vicinity. My guess is we can follow them, and check our position from those points."

Janeway smiled thinly. "Mr Paris, the way I feel we won't be using them for long. Very well, take us to that part of the network."

"Aye, captain."

The journey through the corridors was hazardous. Not only was their course extremely random; every time they passed through one corridor, they came to a junction that branched off, and they went upwards, sideways, and downwards. They couldn't predict the different directions and if it wasn't for Tom's skill and the beacon he was tracking at that moment, they would have gone down any of them and ended up anywhere.

But the hazardous thing about the corridors was the amount of debris littering the corridors. Kes hadn't mentioned anything like it, either because she hadn't had time, or her transformation meant she hadn't even seen it beyond seeing how the corridors worked, how to get in after finding an entrance point.

Wrecks of old, shattered ships ranging from floating hulks to splinters barely the size of a grain of soil were drifting through the corridors. It was a miracle their deflector dish and their shields were working, or they would be receiving reports of the debris punching holes into the hull the size of a football or a fist.

"How old is the debris?" Janeway asked.

"Scans indicate…between 800 and 900 years," Harry replied.

Chakotay mentally sighed, hoping that Janeway wasn't going to organise any kind of investigation, but luckily they emerged into normal space a few minutes later.

"Captain, we've travelled….over 100 light years," Tom announced.

Janeway's eyes widened, and Chakotay checked the ship's chronometer even as the bridge crew gasped and whispered excitedly. "We were only in the corridors for ten minutes," he said.

"We only got here because of the beacons," Tom pointed out.

"So if we follow the beacons, we can find our way out of the corridors quickly?" Harry surmised, his excitement bleeding through.

"No, from that we know the beacons in the network aren't particularly strong. What we need to do is to find a way of boosting their signals so then we can pick them up better," Janeway sighed, disheartened, although Chakotay didn't understand why since they would sometimes get lucky. He didn't understand why she just didn't order them to go back into the network of tunnels, find the beacons that were further away, go to them, rescan for the next beacons that were further away and then lay in a course. If they did that, then they could double or quadruple the distance they'd crossed thanks to Kes.

"Captain, we can still use the Underspace, we just have to aim for the furthest beacons and then travel to them, and keep on going to the next lot," Tom seemed to catch the same thought as Chakotay, and he was unafraid of hearing it.

"I know that Lieutenant, but I would prefer we had the means of getting through the corridors more quickly and taking course corrections and counting down how many light years we've slashed from the journey home," Janeway said.

The doors to the turbolift hissed open and Seven of Nine strode onto the bridge. The light from the bridge lighting gave the former drone's blonde hair an otherworldly appearance.

"Captain, I was monitoring the movement of the ship from main engineering," Seven said, "and I was monitoring the stellar cartography sensors. I believe if we create a laboratory with Borg sensors then a course could be plotted more effectively and efficiently and will detect the subspace corridor beacons."

Chakotay gaped at the former Borg drone. This was the last thing he had ever expected her to say, and while a part of him was concerned she might have been eavesdropping, which he doubted she would have done since he had spent some time with her and had urged B'elanna and a few of the other Maquis to help her with her humanity since Janeway was largely indifferent towards her beyond the barest minimum of contact. In Chakotay's mind, Janeway was a hypocrite when it came to Seven. Yes, she wanted the traumatised former Borg drone who'd been assimilated from an excruciatingly young age to be human again, but she was just throwing Seven into the deep end to see if Seven would either sink or swim. That was why Chakotay and his Maquis cell had taken the young girl and were trying to help her relearn how to be human. In many ways, the girl was like them.

"Why didn't you suggest this to us before?" Janeway demanded.

Seven luckily stood her ground. "I had no idea of the conditions within the corridors, but with this new information, it shouldn't be hard to build a laboratory for the work. At the same time, it would improve Voyager's charting abilities greatly."

Janeway sounded like an annoyed animal for a second. Chakotay knew that she was annoyed and frustrated by her protege not informing them about the prospects for a stellar cartography lab with sensor equipment capable of making new and accurate scans of the beacons in the subspace corridors beforehand. But it wasn't Seven's fault. They hadn't known what they would find within the network in the first place, but Janeway seemed to think it was.

Fortunately, Tom seemed determined to save Seven from any potential repercussions as well. "Kes's message was extremely limited. We didn't know what we'd find in the corridors and we didn't know how well we'd detect the beacons anyway. At least we know now."

Janeway still looked incandescent with rage, but she controlled her temper with great effort. "Fine. Begin making plans for an Astrometric's laboratory, and begin them as soon as possible," she ordered brusquely before she headed for her ready room.

Seven turned to Chakotay. "I didn't mean for...," she began.

Chakotay held up a hand. "It's okay, Seven. You didn't know, and we didn't know what the conditions within the tunnels would be when we first came across them."

"I don't want to cause any problems," Seven said.

Chakotay was beginning to lose it with Janeway. Not only had she plucked a young woman out of the Borg Collective and fully expected her to become human without any real effort, but she was making Seven into a nervous wreck. "You didn't," he managed to say to her with an encouraging smile. "You'd better get to engineering and speak to B'elanna about building a laboratory."

Seven left. She looked pleased to just leave.

X

Voyager would cross over 70 light-years as the Astrometric's laboratory was constructed with help from Seven, B'elanna's engineering team, and in that time they had mapped out a much larger expanse of the subspace corridors, slicing off days and even months off of their trip home, however, the senior staff had come up with a plan to wait until the laboratory was finished and ready for the job, but they had discovered a few tactics for discovering new routes that would shorten their journey quite quickly.

Probes.

Using probes designed to be non-detected, at long range, the probes were programmed to lock on to the distant range beacons and send the telemetry back through to Voyager, while sending back astrometric information which would help stellar cartography determine if the probes were a suitable distance and allowed the ship to cut the journey to bits.

In the time Voyager was building and finishing the Astrometric's lab, they made first contact with the Krenim Imperium, they had managed to successfully cross 297 light years, using a combination of the long-range probes' data which mapped out the furthest beacons and their cosmological bearings and by using the Borg sensors to locate the beacons. At that time they discovered a network of subspace communication relays which were scattered like seeds throughout the Delta Quadrant and had a link with the Alpha Quadrant.

The Doctor was sent along the network to a long-range Starfleet vessel, and once he defeated a Romulan commando squad, he informed Starfleet of Voyager's survival and detailed information about the Underspace network.

During their fourth year in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager saw over 10,307 light-years slashed off of their journey, and they reopened contact with Starfleet and the Alpha Quadrant, and their loved ones and friends discovered that the crew were still alive and had been kidnapped and dumped on the other side of the galaxy.

Shortly after the Doctor's return, Voyager found itself invaded by Hirogen hunters who wanted their holodeck technology to enact hunts which were more sustainable, and at the end of the year, Captain Janeway's decision to ally with the Borg against Species 8472 which brought the angry and vengeful Arturis plan to deceive the crew and deliver them to the Borg on a Quantum Slipstream Drive starship he owned saw Voyager adapt the propulsion method to their engines as a tertiary propulsion method. After saving Janeway and Seven of Nine from the ship, Voyager shortened their journey further by using the slipstream to cut off 300 light years.

In their fifth year, Voyager found themselves in a region of space where the beacons had malfunctioned, and they found themselves in a region where they couldn't reenter the Underspace…

X

"What happened?" Janeway sighed as she stood on the bridge and stared at….nothing, it was as if the stars had been blotted out by an artist who'd suddenly poured a deep black ink over the vista of space.

Tom sighed. "It looks like there was a malfunction in the beacons, Captain. It was emitting a signal that we took to mean that there was a beacon leading into a solar system, but turned out instead to be a warning area."

"A warning area?" Chakotay frowned.

"Yes. There are areas within the Underspace which are broadcasting warning signals; we discovered the difference when one probe fell into a black hole and only just managed to send a warning message in time before it was sucked in and crushed to atoms. I programmed the difference into Voyager's computer, but the beacons can transmit different messages. The malfunction is obviously down to the beacon network's age," Seven explained grimly.

"Well, we can just go back, right?" Harry asked.

Seven shook her head. "I sent a probe to the entrance of the Underspace we came through, Ensign. It didn't work."

"Why not?" Janeway challenged.

"I can't be sure, but I do have a theory. Kes didn't share too much information beyond the basics of the Underspace, but we have found their entrance and exit points are close to areas of gravitational mass like stars and planets. In areas of gravity where there are no major worlds or star systems, there would be no entrance or exit points, and the few points that do go into this expanse would only let one ship in but there wouldn't be enough gravitational force nearby to allow anything back in," Seven explained before she shook her head. "It's nobody's fault, Captain. The beacon network is centuries old and the technology is primitive. We had no way of knowing this would happen."

Janeway visibly struggled to contain the urge to scream. "How long will it take before we can re-enter the Underspace?"

Seven was already checking Astrometrics. Finally, she sighed, not a good sign. "The nearest star system is less than a year away, Captain. We're too far into this….expanse to turn around and go the other way, and it extends over a vast amount of space in all directions, so there is no chance in altering our course to get out early."

Janeway looked like she was trying to maintain her command demeanour but everyone could tell she was furious and annoyed.

For the next few weeks, activity on Voyager slowed to a crawl as everyone found the expanse quickly renamed 'the void' hard to take. With no stars and planets outside for light years, they found it hard to concentrate. It soon became terrifyingly normal to find the bridge virtually empty, with only one or two crew members on duty. Even Janeway found herself spending more time in her quarters, blaming herself for the whole situation even if it was not her fault.

With more time on their hands, the crew immersed themselves into different pursuits like art, music, literature, or writing new holo programs in order to throw off boredom. The senior staff often met still to keep everything as routine as possible, and while it was suggested to simply put everyone into suspended animation for the following year and simply wake them all up when the year was up, it was dismissed because while the Doctor could monitor everyone it would be a dismal existence for a lone hologram.

Fortunately, a distraction turned up when the crew encountered two new alien life forms - a race of beings who were uniquely adapted to living in the Void, although how they came to be here, and where they originated from were total mysteries, and the Malon, a race who dumped terrifyingly high levels of antimatter waste which was killing the race who lived here already.

Voyager had been detecting the high levels of theta radiation for a while as they travelled further into the Void, and while they helped the alien beings destroy the Malon garbage scow, they discovered a subspace corridor which was not related to the Underspace corridors cut their journey by two years and allowed them to re-enter the Underspace. The moment they reentered the network of subspace corridors, Voyager cut their journey by another 400 light years.

Unfortunately, as they travelled through the Underspace, they came across two new enemies, one of whom was more tragic than they should have been immediate friends and allies.

Another Federation starship, the USS Equinox, another ship kidnapped by the Caretaker and stranded carelessly in the Delta Quadrant, struggling to escape and return to the Alpha Quadrant.

Voyager first encountered the Equinox after a series of events which began when they emerged into normal space after fighting off against the Turei, a race who likewise made use of the Underspace. They had been fighting them off for some time, and it wasn't until after a few adventures in normal space they came across the Borg and came up with a plan to use a transwarp coil to shorten their journey. With the transwarp coil, they shortened their journey by 15 years before they reentered the Underspace.

When they found out about the presence of the Equinox, they found a ship under heavy attack and they immediately began to help their fellow Starfleet officers. But after a while, they began to discover horrific clues that pointed out the Equinox crew had not only lied to them but they had begun kidnapping members of an alien race which, when they died, gave off a highly purified antimatter fuel which increased the power of the Nova-class starship's engine capacity.

Janeway became obsessed with capturing the Equinox and bringing both the crew and the captain to justice for their crimes, and for disgracing their Starfleet oaths.

Captain Ransom couldn't have put it plainly.

"We did what we had to do in order to survive. You were lucky. You had found a way of getting home without going to the lengths we went to. But my crew were desperate. We were all desperate. And we are still human. You can pretend otherwise, Captain and claim that we are more evolved, but I realised the truth when we discovered what those aliens could do, and soon we were putting the antimatter into our engines and suddenly we were being propelled thousands of light years closer to home. I was prepared to give myself up and confess my crimes to Starfleet Command. I was prepared to spend the rest of my life in prison. But that's where you and I are not alike; I was prepared to do whatever it took even if it killed me inside to get us home, but you willingly stranded yourself and your crew in the Delta Quadrant, you fell back on principles of the Prime Directive to throw away the opportunity of possessing that spatial trajector - it might not have worked, but you could have found a way of jumping maybe a few hundred light years away from that part of the quadrant if you had told your people to begin studying it, and you might have found a way of making the antineutrino problem go away if you hadn't tied anyone's hands. And what about the Barzan wormhole? Honestly, what was it to you if the Ferengi changed the culture of that planet? They are not a part of the Federation, they were sitting on a wormhole and yet you cared more for their interference than getting your crew home. If I'd found the wormhole and the Ferengi, I would have gone through the wormhole and damn the consequences to those people, and who's to say that their interference wasn't a benefit in the long term?"

Ransom's scathing speech echoed throughout the corridors of the Voyager for weeks even following his ship's ultimate destruction and the remaining Equinox survivors being assimilated into the Voyager crew. While nobody voiced their thoughts, some of them because of their loyalty to Janeway despite her…. Overzealous treatment of the Maquis on her ship, they had to admit Ransom did have a point. And the feelings of the Maquis crew members were well known. Their contempt for Janeway was legendary.

X

Their final year in the Delta Quadrant was marked by the discovery of a subspace catapult, which shortened Voyagers' journey by a further 3 years, and the crew were brainwashed into becoming slaves before it was overcome, and the rediscovery of a fabled warp probe launched from Earth after First Contact, Voyager spent most of its time in the Underspace and cutting more and more of their journey to bits as they approached the Alpha Quadrant. Finally, after seven months into their sixth and final year, they found themselves in the Alpha Quadrant. The Federation had received the knowledge of the Underspace corridors from Voyager during their journey, and the information of the Astrometric's lab's sensor array technology which made mapping the corridors much easier, and they had begun exploring the corridors themselves, and they had spread updated markers and beacons to augment the old Vaadwaur explored sections of the network, and they had made use of the network to fight off the Dominion.

In the final days of the war, Voyager's return brought with them the hope the Federation needed. Thanks to the downloaded files of a derelict Borg Cube and the alien technologies they had made use of and encountered in the past, the Dominion War began shifting in favour of the Federation. Once it was over, Captain Janeway was promoted to the rank of Vice-Admiral, while her crew were conscripted and headhunted into the crews of other ships to help with the war effort.

By the end of the war, the Maquis officers went off on their own paths, reunited with friends and loved ones, and got married and had families of their own.

But every one of them remembered that if they hadn't had access to the Underspace, they would have gone mad.