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Odyssey out of Time.
Return to the Alpha Quadrant.
Captain Benjamin Sisko wished he could have spent more time in the Delta Quadrant following the news of the USS Voyager's continual survival and being missing, 70,000 light-years away from home, but when Chief O'Brien had made it clear the ZPM was losing power and he had hooked the antimatter generators to the hyperdrive to provide a bit more power before they had nothing left, Sisko had given the order for Odyssey to return to the Alpha Quadrant.
The good news was they'd had more than enough energy to give the hyperdrive the power it needed so they were back, but Sisko felt like he had failed. It was not a feeling he really liked; the only times he had ever felt this way was when Eddington had revealed his true colours and beat him without him ever being aware of who and what he was, or when Cal had done the exact same thing.
Sisko had been hurt and horrified by what Cal had been driven to. In public, Sisko said that Cal was no longer a Starfleet officer, but deep down he was unable to shake away his last conversations with his friend, who had become bitter at seeing for himself what the Federation was doing in the DMZ and how they just handed the colonies out there to the Cardassians. More than once Sisko had asked himself whether or not he himself would have done the same thing had he or Jennifer, if she had survived Wolf 359, and settled on such a world. Would he have done what Cal had out of frustration and anger because the Federation didn't care about their own citizens and cared more about what the Cardassians wanted-?
No.
He killed that train of thought. He had beat himself up badly more than once since the days where he had seen Cal become a Maquis leader, but in his darker moments, he had been telling himself over and over again that he would have become a Maquis, especially if Jennifer and Jake were hurt. But he was angry with Cal for making him think like this, which was why he had reacted so violently when Eddington had done the exact same thing.
But this was different.
Sisko had taken Odyssey away from Vidiian space - he had asked Dr Pel if they could have samples of the Phage so then Starfleet could examine it and potentially come up with some kind of cure for the terrifying genetic disease that had turned them desperate enough to steal other people's organs; Dr Pel was worried that the Phage would get out and cause an epidemic worse than what her people had gone through, but at the same time she was hopeful and she had hinted that her people had discovered Klingon DNA was capable of resisting the Phage (that had surprised him and Worf, especially since Sisko could not remember a Klingon as part of Janeway's crew but Worf had surprised them when he had offered the Vidiian woman some of his own blood in the hopes it might help things at this end; Sisko had approved since the Vidiians if they were cured, would be a great friend in the Delta Quadrant - and they had searched a few light-years in the hopes of finding clues of where Voyager could be.
They had travelled to a region called the Nekritt Expanse and they found that Voyager had certainly been in the area, but that was when O'Brien had forced them to pull the plug on the search for Voyager. O'Brien might be sure the antimatter generators could provide a decent enough substitute for the ZPM, but he hadn't wanted to risk it. Odyssey had returned to the Alpha Quadrant, heading straight for Earth.
Odyssey's arrival caused a stir despite providing the intel for Starfleet Command, but Sisko had contacted Headquarters. Captain Sisko beamed into Starfleet Headquarters. The use of the Asgard transporter had surprised the Bolian ensign, but she had quickly shrugged it off when he was proven to be who he was thanks to a blood screening.
"Admiral Paris will see you now, Captain," the Bolian woman told him.
Sisko nodded. "Thank you."
Benjamin Sisko had never met Admiral Owen Paris before but he did know the man by reputation alone, but what surprised him was Paris was not alone; Admirals Roland, Ross, and lastly, and this one made Sisko concerned, Nechayev.
The sight of the pale blonde woman with the cool manner which grated on the nerves of everyone who met her in Starfleet worried him; he would never forget the urge he had during that virtual reality simulation the Dominion had put him and his crew under when the Jem'Hadar captured them and took them to the Founders' first planet to test them on how they would act if the Dominion tried to take over the Alpha Quadrant which resulted in him and his crew blowing up the wormhole, something he would definitely do if the need arose. But the sight of the real-life flesh and blood Nechayev made him tense regardless.
Sisko had not known the bitch queen from hell would be here, and judging from the looks she was garnering from Ross, the other admirals were just as surprised.
"Captain Sisko, welcome back to Earth," Paris greeted him with half a smile, but was marred by the disappointment and desperate hope on his face. Sisko knew Paris had a son, the infamous Tom Paris who had lied because of a shuttle crash that had killed his crew. Sisko had been horrified by the notion of a Starfleet officer who'd lie because of the dedication to the truth, but he could see the hope in the face of Paris; the poor guy had likely been terrified that his only son had been lost/killed.
Sisko knew he would have likely felt the exact same way if anything happened to Jake.
"Thank you, Admirals, it's good to be home," Sisko said, but he looked more solemnly back at Paris. "I'm sorry we couldn't find Voyager, Admiral."
When Odyssey had been in the Delta Quadrant, Sisko had composed a report detailing the simultaneous dual voyage to the Gamma Quadrant and then into the Delta Quadrant, and the discovery of Voyager and her crew still being alive after whatever happened to them. He had continued to update the report over and over again until they had returned to the Alpha Quadrant. After that, it was simplicity in itself for them to transmit the reports they had been compiling and the sensor logs Odyssey had gathered of the Delta Quadrant.
Paris nodded, looking upset about the reality. "I understand, I do."
"Captain, your report indicated how you helped the Vidiians by giving them Klingon DNA for the cure to a disease that was killing them," Nechayev interrupted, staring at him with her usual cold manner.
Sisko needed to pause so he could grab his thoughts to answer her. "That's correct, Admiral."
"Are you sure that was within the boundaries of Starfleet regulations?"
"Alyanna, Captain Sisko is well aware of the regulations. He also stated in his report his hope that if the Federation could find a means of treating the Phage, we will have an ally in the Delta Quadrant for when we travel there, which might be sooner than anyone could imagine," Admiral Paris interrupted - Sisko suspected he was privately happy with the idea of interrupting his fellow admiral for her rather inane question. "And we do need allies for when we travel and explore space."
"I understand that Owen, but I am just concerned for the sanctity of the Prime Directive," Nechayev observed.
"We understand that, but at the same time we do need alliances and if we have to cure a species to help us do that, so be it," Ross commented. Sisko knew Starfleet would ignore the Prime Directive would be ignored in moments like this and while he wasn't surprised by Nechayev bringing it up, although he doubted she would worry about it for a long time given her reputation for making plans aimed for directing the Federations's greater good ideals and ignoring the sins of the races they met.
"Captain, we read your report about Voyager and how you couldn't find the ship before you had to return to Earth. Do you think the Odyssey could find Voyager if she was fitted with a more powerful energy source?"
"I don't see any reason why not. Commander Dax, my Science officer has been studying the Zero Point Module, and she believes it is possible to siphon subspace energy and store it in some kind of battery, but we won't know for sure until the Asgard database is accessed, however, our knowledge of what it contains is limited," Sisko said.
Nechayev was determined to move them on to a whole new line of questions. "Captain, we have read your reports and first contacts of the Delta Quadrant. Do you have enough knowledge of where Voyager has been?"
"Unfortunately no. Dr Danara Pel was helpful enough to give us enough information about Vidiian space and the regions of space she and her people know Voyager visited, and we saw enough of the Delta Quadrant to know Voyager visited the region known as the Nekritt Expanse, and we ventured a little past it, but we didn't see enough to make a detailed analysis. But we know they definitely encountered the Nyrians," Sisko grimaced as he remembered how the alien race almost captured Odyssey and the crew on board; several of the crew he had placed on her had been placed in a habitat floating in space where the crew was destined to be imprisoned for the rest of their lives, unable to return home, to their friends, their families, anyone.
It was apparently the method of how the Nyrians fought and protected themselves; instead of fighting, they captured the ships and stations of those nearby, switching places with the crews one at a time, so when a Nyrian appeared on the ship they would swap places with a member of the crew.
Sisko was one of the people captured. While he was captured, Dax and Worf had been suspicious about the Nyrians and they had found the small wormhole the Nyrians were using to switch places, and thanks to the Asgard sensor array they had tracked it down and quickly put an end to the whole attack. In the meantime, Sisko and the members of the crew who'd been captured learnt that the Nyrians had tried to capture Voyager, but Janeway and her crew had fought back.
The Odyssey had arrived and launched an attack on the habitat, forcing the Nyrians to surrender. Sisko had the database of the Nyrian habitat downloaded and studied it. The Voyager crew had been there only a few months before. They had been so close, so close…but the hyperdrive and the limitations of their knowledge of it had forced them to return to the Alpha Quadrant.
Paris nodded grimly, remembering the report. "The Nyrians are definitely a species we'll have to watch when we go into the Delta Quadrant, but what I'm worried about is just how close to one of the borders the Nyrians are to the Borg."
Sisko tried and failed, to suppress his reaction at the mention of the Borg. It had been a long time since he'd felt the same rage towards Picard for his assimilated role in the battle, and the two men had gotten over their issues thanks to the Prophet's intervention. Sisko was relieved by the intervention. It had made him realise how Picard himself had suffered greatly, and that he was being selfish for refusing to move on.
"I know, Admiral," Sisko looked down for a moment. "I was horrified, too. I took Odyssey towards the border and we even entered Borg space; we found a number of destroyed asteroids that had a number of Borg facilities, but there was no sign of Voyager. We don't know if the ship was assimilated or not."
Paris tried and failed, to suppress the reaction he had. He shuddered and looked like he was about to be violently sick at the thought of his son and the rest of Voyager's crew being Borg drones, their individuality a memory and their bodies a mutilated mass of organic parts mingled with cybernetic bodies. Sisko knew how he felt.
Ross had clearly seen Paris's reaction because he changed the subject. "From what you have observed, how good was the hyperdrive?"
Sisko knew Ross was changing the subject. "It certainly makes interstellar travel better and from what we discovered it will make intergalactic travel possible in a short span of time, but I think we should have ships with conventional warp drives equipped with the drives; we have already seen our dependency on one form of FTL travel when the warp drive was proven to cause subspace pollution causes problems, so we need new propulsion methods, and Commander Dax has commented we could use ships designed with multiple FTL drives."
Ross nodded with a thoughtful grunt. "Yes, I can see where your Commander Dax is coming from there, Captain."
"Personally, I think that might be a good idea. Voyager was equipped with the latest warp drive engine at the time, capable of speeds of warp 9.975; fast, but when compared to Sovereign and Prometheus class designs, she would be a few minutes behind those two classes in a race. But she would keep up. Likewise, when the Galaxy-class was constructed, it was the fastest design in the fleet. But at the same time, with the limitations of warp travel, the subspace erosion problem, and the continuous research into faster warp engines, a ship equipped with more than one FTL drive is appealing. Your idea of a multiple drive starship is attractive and I can see the advantages of it. Not only does it allow ships to cover more distances, but if something happens to the ship the crew would be able to lay in a course for home on a secondary drive," Paris said. The last few minutes with the change in the topic had been good for the older man, and he had latched on at once. He turned to Ross. "Bill, I think we should put together research teams to see about doing that. Conventional warp drives mixed with different drives."
"Yes, that would be a good idea," Nechayev added before she turned to Sisko, who was starting to wonder if he was the third wheel in the conversation between the admirals. "Captain, from what you implied in your reports, Odyssey under your command followed enough of Voyager's route; do you think it's possible they might be somewhere else in the Delta Quadrant?"
Sisko took a few moments to think through his reply and try to work out what Nechayev meant. The question she had just posed him actually seemed to have different meanings. One possibility was Voyager had somehow miraculously survived the Borg. Another was they had tried to find a different route that didn't involve them risking encounters with any of the Borg.
But he had to admit, while he didn't personally know Captain Janeway and her crew beyond the formal meeting he had with her prior to her departure for the Badlands, he had come to discover the time she had been in the Delta Quadrant had transformed her into a tough, resourceful woman determined to get her ship and her crew home. Ever since he had discovered the truth about what had happened to Voyager, Sisko had asked himself - repeatedly - if he would have been as resourceful.
But he had to admit, Nechayev might have a point in the implication that the crew had become Borg by now. Even the luckiest person lost their luck occasionally, but were the crew assimilated or was Voyager still trying to find her way home?
"It is possible, Admiral, but until we can send anyone back into the Delta Quadrant, we should be very careful about being too hopeful," Sisko felt sick when he saw Paris's wince.
"Captain, we'll certainly be looking into equipping ships with the hyperdrive and hopefully we can find out if Voyager and her crew are still alive," Ross moved the subject along. "In the meantime, your crew are going to be taken home on the Enterprise; she's been assigned on a diplomatic mission close to Cardassian space. They'll take you all the way back to Deep Space Nine."
Sisko nodded back, not sure how to take being in Picard's company, but the good news was while the tension between them had eased they had never really spoken much over the years. Perhaps there was a chance to change that. "Understood, sir."
When Sisko was dismissed and sent on his way - Enterprise was being resupplied and she would take the DS9 crew back to the station in a few days which gave the captain and his crew a chance to grab some r&r while they were here - Paris turned to Ross. "Thanks for that, Bill. I was depressed with the possibility of my son….," he couldn't bring himself to say it, and Ross could see how difficult this was for the older admiral.
"Don't mention it, Owen. I'm just glad to help you out. In the meantime I think the three of us should come up with a plan to give the other admirals about the direction of the multiple drives for Starfleet; being dependent on warp drive technology might have worked so far, but we have the opportunity to go much further," Ross said.
"Many traditionalists won't like that," Nechayev commented, looking solemnly between the two men, "I remember when the subspace pollution proof came in. Many admirals were torn about what to do, but while there have been lines of research that's been going into weaning our ships off of warp drive, it hasn't worked. Too many are traditionally-minded."
"We're just going to have to think of something that will work and grab their attention," Paris privately believed Nechayev had a point. Too many races in the galaxy were reliant on warp drive like they were. But at the same time if they could develop a society that used different types of propulsion then it would work in their favour. His racing mind also found something else they could use to their advantage. "We could also add we want to avoid the you know what directive."
It took his fellow flag officers only a moment to work out what he meant, and they both grimaced.
The Omega directive.
Known only to Starfleet captains and flag officers, the Omega directive was one of the most important pieces of knowledge a Starfleet captain should know, and not talk about.
"I never imagined you would say to the others we're looking for a way of sidestepping the dangers behind that, Owen," Nechayev commented.
"I've been looking at the specs of the Odyssey. You have to. We know that ship doesn't use warp engines. It might help us prevent the Omega molecule from being a threat, and it might help us prevent the Omega nightmare from being unleashed. Right now, I want my son back and the hyperdrive can give us that with some help and work. But at the same time I think Starfleet should move beyond conventional warp drive," Paris was already working in his mind the possibilities of becoming the head of such a research group aimed at understanding the technological and scientific boom given to them by the Odyssey. His background would certainly help them, and with his influence, it shouldn't be too hard to get what he wanted, and with the mention of the Omega directive as a clincher to tell the others of the admiralty he wanted to find other methods of interstellar propulsion aimed at breaking the Federation away from the dangers of subspace damage but also to ensure another Voyager never happened again, Paris hoped he could garner enough support.
X
In his Ready Room onboard the Enterprise, a few days later, Jean-Luc Picard was fulfilling a month's long promise to himself when the door chime went off.
Picard sighed and put down the padd he was reading before he called out, "Come."
Picard was pleased he had been offered the new Enterprise E following the destruction of the Enterprise D at Veridian 3 during the struggle against Soran which was stopped when Picard had enlisted the aid of the temporally lost James T. Kirk, and aside from Worf who had transferred over to Deep Space Nine, the Enterprise-D's crew had largely transferred over to the new ship.
It had been a hectic few months for the Enterprise E; as if having to ferry an extremely pregnant Lwaxana Troi to her new planet was not difficult enough, but the Enterprise had been forced to fight off against the increasingly hostile Klingon Empire when they had launched their insane attack on the Cardassian Union in the mistaken belief they were protecting the Alpha Quadrant from the Dominion threat. For a whole year since the peace treaty between the Empire and the Federation had been ended, Enterprise had been lurching from one crisis to the next as part of its shakedown year.
Picard was pleased the Enterprise was going on a diplomatic voyage. After months of putting out bushfire attacks from the Klingons and maintaining the peace as befitting the flagship, Picard had promised himself a good few days of peace and quiet so he could read one of his archaeological journals so he could unwind and enjoy one of the biggest passions he had.
But things had changed. Like everyone in Starfleet, especially since the story had spread like a forest fire, the ship Odyssey that had come through the Bajoran wormhole and possessed an alien knowledge and technology far greater than the Federations' own knowledge and had just returned from a brief trip to the Delta Quadrant and discovered the USS Voyager had survived and had been swept there by some bizarre accident had spread through Starfleet extremely quickly.
When the door chime had come, Picard wondered who was on the other side of the doors. He had told Will that short of a warp core breach, he did not want to be disturbed. He had been so busy recently that he had promised himself to sit down for a few hours and read. It was better than spending time in the holodecks.
The doors to his Ready Room opened and the tall figure of Benjamin Sisko walked in. "Captain, I hope I'm not disturbing you?"
Picard smiled genially. "No, of course not. Please come in."
Sisko did so.
Picard wondered what his fellow captain wanted. He and Sisko were not exactly on speaking terms; they might have settled many of their differences following the….disastrous meeting they'd had. Sisko was the first survivor of Wolf 359 whom he had met, and if he were honest he wasn't surprised in the least by the man's anger towards him. But their differences had been settled, following the then Commander Sisko's first contact with the wormhole aliens. However, they were a long way from being friends.
"Was there something you needed?" Picard hoped he wasn't being rude.
"I just wanted to talk to a fellow Captain following my debrief at Starfleet concerning my trip to the Delta Quadrant. When I was younger, I wanted to become an admiral, but….," Sisko looked around the Ready Room, "being on a ship, or a space station, is more rewarding. You make the big decisions there without just sitting behind a desk."
Picard smiled. "I know what you mean. When I met James T. Kirk in the Nexus, he told me not to let Starfleet promote me so they didn't take me off of the Enterprise bridge because while I'm there, I can make a difference. I didn't realise what he meant, despite all of my years of command, until I realised that Kirk himself had made the mistake, and he was struggling to find something to do."
Sisko smiled. The two men had quite a few things in common, and meeting one of the legendary Starfleet officers like James T. Kirk was only one of them. "I met him too, but I wasn't in a position to have a worthwhile conversation with him."
"Was that when the Bajoran Orb of Time sent you back to the 23rd century? I had heard of the encounter, but I only know the basics-."
"A former Klingon spy whose career was ruined by Kirk during an important mission to derail Federation colonisation efforts wanted to get revenge by planting a bomb in a place where Kirk was going to be. We stopped it. But I couldn't resist the opportunity to get Kirk's autograph," Sisko explained.
Picard couldn't help but chuckle. "I don't think many other officers or Federation citizens would have done anything differently." But Picard's smile faded a little bit and he looked solemnly at Sisko. "Thank you."
Sisko blinked in confusion. "For what?"
"For reminding us we're meant to be explorers, diplomats. For too long we've been fighting. Everything has gone mad in the last few years; first contact with the Dominion, the destruction of Keogh's Odyssey, the encounter with the Founders where you and some of your crew were shoved into a virtual reality program, the failed attack on the Founder's homeworld, the Founder's attempts to destabilise the Alpha Quadrant, Gowron's insane attack on Cardassia, and now the discovery that Voyager and her crew are lost in the Delta Quadrant because you couldn't resist the urge to see what's on the other side of the galaxy."
Sisko smiled. At first, he had assumed that Picard was being critical of him, but he knew he wasn't, that was far from the case. "I couldn't resist it. In any case, we learnt a great deal about the Delta Quadrant from that brief trip just like we started learning more about the Gamma Quadrant when the wormhole was discovered."
Sisko's smile faded a little bit. "I just wish we'd found Voyager, and brought her back."
"We all do, Captain. Believe me, we all do. But if you had stayed you could have endangered your ship and your crew. We'll find Voyager again. Would you like something to drink?" Picard remembered his manners, and he gestured at the replicator.
"A Bajoran Jumja tea, please."
After getting for his guest a sweet-smelling tea and a fresh mug of Earl Grey for himself, Picard sat back down only to find Sisko looking curiously at the padd he'd been reading.
"I hope you don't mind…," Sisko said, gesturing at the padd.
"Don't be. Archaeology has always been one of my fondest passions. I haven't had the time recently to be one considering our last missions. We've been fighting the Klingons too often," Picard shook his head in annoyance.
Sisko nodded solemnly. Like his fellow captain, he had been on the receiving end of Klingon attacks. He would never forget the senseless way Martok's Taskforce had attacked the station. It was only thanks to Worf and himself persuading Gowron to stop that they survived at all. "Most of Gowron's actions are just sabre-rattling; after the Martok changeling was revealed to him, he only kept up the hostilities to keep his troops happy. It would be a disaster for him to stop. All that talk of Klingon blood being called to battle was nonsense."
Picard nodded just as solemnly. He knew what Sisko was talking about. "Gowron's hold over the Empire was always tenuous. He only became Chancellor because Worf killed Duras, but he always lacked K'mpec's talents for maintaining a hold over the Empire and rallying the troops. He was also slow to accept the Kahless clone's existence, too. This war has given him the means to fortify his power. He's not going to let that go."
Sisko took a deep sip of his drink (the Starfleet replicated version of Bajoran Jumja tea wasn't as good as the one on DS9, but it was close enough for him to relish the taste) and sighed. "I honestly wished the talks had succeeded."
"They're still ongoing. In many ways, this current mess isn't too dissimilar to how it was a century ago."
"Maybe, but there wasn't an enemy on the other side of the galaxy waiting to come through to impose their own twisted sense of order on the whole galaxy," Sisko pointed out.
Picard looked thoughtful for a moment. "I always wondered if there was more to the Founders' story than what you discovered. I can understand the Founder's shapeshifting abilities terrifying other races, but what if some of them decided to foster wars that were convenient for them, and it only spread more fear in the Gamma Quadrant?" Picard shook his head.
"We may never know, but to be honest…right now…I'm not thinking about the Dominion, the Founders. My mind is on Voyager. When the Vidiian scientist, Dr Pel, came onboard Odyssey, she told us Voyager had been dragged into the Delta Quadrant by an alien entity known as the Caretaker; the Vidiians had known of the entity as a powerful being who'd protected another race, but they had heard rumours for a while the entity had been abducting aliens for a while. Voyager and her crew were the last to be dragged there by the Caretaker."
Picard's eyes crinkled curiously. "I don't understand, why would an alien entity kidnap so many people in the first place? Was this Caretaker like Q?"
Sisko made a face at the mention of Q. Picard didn't blame him, knowing Sisko was one of the few Starfleet officers outside the Enterprise crew to have encountered the irritating entity. "No, from what she discovered from her brief time on Voyager when their EMH saved her, she learnt the Caretaker was a sporocystian life-form who needed to procreate in order to protect the race it was guarding when it learnt it was dying, but it became too desperate. I just don't understand why it just kept going when it must have realised it was running into a dead-end when it discovered nothing in the galaxy came even close."
Picard shrugged while he absorbed the new information into his mind, ideas and possibilities sparking like an electrical circuit. "Perhaps its desperation clouded its judgement. Did this Doctor Pel say anything about how many ships were dragged into the Delta Quadrant?"
Sisko sighed. "Sadly, no."
"Computer, access Starfleet records; look for Starfleet and other Federation ships which have disappeared over the last seven years, - no, a year after the disappearance of the USS Voyager," Picard ordered his desktop terminal.
"Working."
Intrigued, Sisko stood up and came to stand by Picard's side when the computer was finished. "That's quite a list," Sisko commented when he saw the number of ships.
"It's hard to believe, isn't it? We can travel faster than light, we have a communications network that spans thousands of light-years, but we still lose people. So many Starfleet officers spend their entire lives working to get a berth on a starship, and they rarely if ever realise they could disappear without a trace," Picard agreed.
"Hopefully things will change with the Odyssey's technology and the alien database onboard," Sisko said haltingly, hoping and praying he wasn't jinxing the whole thing. "With the hyperdrive technology, ships should have a greater chance of coming home."
"Let's hope you're right. But there are quite a few ships here that vanished under mysterious circumstances. Could they have been dragged into the Delta Quadrant like Voyager?" Picard asked.
"I have no idea. But we can definitely rule out some of the ships; I recognise their names from the padd the Jem'Hadar Third I met took them to DS9. But I can't see Admiral Paris, who has a son, giving up until they come back," Sisko said.
