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Odyssey out of Time.
The Founders' Idea of Order.
"My god, the Kazon race has been shattered because the Dominion used a biogenetic weapon?" The newly promoted Admiral Kathryn Janeway hissed through her teeth in horror. "How did this happen?"
"We're not sure of the details; it's opened up a new front we could have done without," Admiral Paris sighed as he thought about the massive new headache on their minds. "But from what we can tell thanks to our initial findings thanks to the Vidiians, the Founders hit the Kazon hard with bioweapons before sending in the Jem'Hadar to soften them up even more. Some of the Kazon sects you reported about have had no choice but to surrender. They've been enslaved by all accounts."
Janeway was not surprised to hear that; while the Kazon hated being enslaved due to their history with the Trabe, even among them there were bound to be those who knew when something was hopeless. "And the others?"
"From what we can tell, they're still fighting it out, but they're losing. The Federation Council is putting forth a debate to vote on whether to help them or not, but I doubt we will since our forces are spread thin in the Delta Quadrant."
Janeway bit her lip. Starfleet regulations on the matter were clear; you don't deal with outlaws, and you don't supply them with technology, which was what she assumed the Federation negotiators would be forced to concede if they wanted the Kazon's help. "I'm aware of that, Owen," she replied, ignoring her unease by calling her old mentor by his first name, "but if you're expecting me to show any kind of sympathy towards the Kazon, think again. They gave us hell in our first two years in the Delta Quadrant. Several members of my crew were killed by their attacks on Voyager, and three were lost on the planet the Nistrim stranded us on; if it weren't for your son, the Doctor, and Lon Suder, and help from the Talaxians, we'd be dead or still there."
Paris nodded, smiling at the mention of his son. "Personally I don't want their help, especially after several of their ships attacked us when we engaged the Dominion. In any case, we've got other problems on other fronts."
"Like what?" Janeway asked slowly, not liking where this was going.
Paris sighed, knowing Janeway wasn't going to like this. "The Dominion has opened fronts to fight against the newly fledged Delta Coalition."
Janeway's hand went to her mouth in horror. She had been expecting this horrifying news at some time anyway, but not quite so soon. "The Delta Coalition? How bad?"
"Depending on some of the races, it varies. The Dominion has launched nasty attacks against the Vidiians, the Ocampa, the Nyrians, the Sikarrians, the Rakosans, and the Voth; the latter are certainly giving them a fight, and the Nyrians are transporting bombs onboard Dominion warships using their translocator technology."
Janeway couldn't help but grimace at the memories evoked by the mention of both the Voth and the Nyrians. The encounter with the Voth had been nasty, it was only thanks to Gegan recanting his theories of the origin of the species they had escaped, and the slow and steady kidnapping and replacing of the Nyrians on her ship had been difficult to break. But she wasn't surprised the Nyrians and the Voth were holding the line in their own way.
"How about other races?" Janeway asked hesitantly.
"They're hunting down the Turei through the subspace corridors," Paris sighed.
The Delta Coalition was something Janeway, Chakotay, Neelix, and Jean-Luc Picard had been working on for a while now. Voyager had made contact with many races in the Delta Quadrant, many of whom were destructive, dangerous, and territorial. But right now they were fighting against the Dominion. When the Dominion acquired hyperdrive technology they acquired many of the files the Federation had on the Delta Quadrant; hundreds of bytes of star chart data, reports on the aliens there, and they took it back to the Dominion, obviously to the Great Link in the Gamma Quadrant. It had been two years after the theft of the hyperdrive technology, but in that time the Jem'Hadar created bases in the Delta Quadrant in different places and they began building up their forces.
Starfleet hadn't even known about the activity as the Dominion was launching lightning attacks against other races in the other quadrants including the Delta, before the inevitable invasion. Many of the powers in the Delta Quadrant were manipulated into going into war against each other while being forced to be terrified by the Dominion attacks. Thanks to Starfleet's revelations, the Founder infiltrators were discovered and they were quickly wiped out, proving they were being manipulated. The Dominion moved quickly, taking advantage of the weakened state of many races to expand their territory and their influence in the Gamma Quadrant.
The Federation also took advantage of the situation. They provided aid to races in a vast region extending thousands of light years in every direction while keeping the Dominion in line. Some of the races they'd encountered, sadly, possessed long memories of their encounters with Voyager, good and bad, but thanks to Federation aid they were appeased. Even species Seven referred to as Species 116, and the Caactati, were receptive once they had been relocated to worlds in Federation space after Starfleet was given standing orders to send them back. Both Delta Quadrant races were bitter towards the Borg, to Voyager, to Janeway for how they had allied themselves with the Borg; while the group of Caactati that Voyager encountered had been grateful for the Thorium generator design, many were still bitter concerning Janeway's alliance with the Collective, but the chance to rebuild their civilisation had given them both the means to rebuild their cultures and their societies, and they were taking advantage of their new location with gusto; that was more than enough incentive for them to work with Starfleet, with the Federation.
The war with the Dominion gave Janeway, Chakotay, and Jean-Luc Picard the idea of uniting all of them in the conflict. Thanks to their more peaceful encounters and the aid they were giving, many cultures were receptive. Even the Voth, despite their pride, were thankful for Starfleet for their aid. And it helped that Starfleet found a Voth society which had been exposed to leaked files on the Distant Origin theory long after Voyager's departure. Professor Gegan had vanished after that out of fear of being imprisoned or worse, but his files had bled their way into Voth society so the government was unable to do anything about it. On top of that, the Founders had stolen much of their technology, shaking the Voth out of their lethargy so they were forced to ally with the Federation for aid.
One thing of note was with each infiltration the Dominion's knowledge and technology leapt forwards and the Dominion had taken control of several worlds, especially when they subjugated the Sikarrians and used the trajector technology to transport soldiers and Founders on dozens of worlds at random. It had taken Starfleet months to fight off the various fronts opening up and retake Sikarris, and discover where the Dominion had gone to. The Sikarrians always kept meticulous records of each use of their planetside trajectors in case some parasite of poison beyond their medical experience made its way through; if such an incident happened, a special team would cross to the planet and take samples, and then come back. Thanks to their records, they were able to deal with the Dominion, although they'd had a hard enough fight.
Janeway, who had led the whole thing, did not want to revisit those memories. More than once she had assumed they'd all die. A surprise for the Dominion turned up when they discovered the Turei, a race who had access to a web of subspace corridors, which seemed to stretch not only across the galaxy like a spider web, or an old metro network. The Turei were a surprise for both Starfleet and the Dominion; apparently, they were a race who fought another race in the 15-16 century, called the Vaadwaur, who had conquered a large section of the Delta Quadrant after discovering the network, and the Turei were one of the races who rose up to overthrow them, but they were lucky enough to inherit the network.
Apparently, a Turei ship was captured emerging from the Underspace, and their records were seized by the Dominion and the crew were likely killed. Once the ship was caught, the Dominion had the Underspace; while they had the hyperdrive technology, they needed a weapon that could get them to and from a system, without discovery. The Underspace was perfect.
Starfleet was taken by surprise by the sudden attacks and they were being overwhelmed; the Dominion even got behind Starfleet lines, passing the hyperdrive detectors, and they attacked Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, Qo'Nos, Romulus, and half a dozen other worlds. Desperate to prevent more losses, Starfleet had only just managed to capture one ship, and get access to Underspace and they fought the Dominion within, and the fight was still ongoing, but thanks to these events, the Delta Coalition was easy to form despite the issues they still had. They were still holding out, regardless of the fact they had to contend with changelings. Thanks to the hyperdrive technology, the transwarp drive of the Voth, the Quantum Slipstream drive and the Underspace, the Delta Coalition was growing substantially.
If the Jem'Hadar had started hunting them down…
"How bad?" Janeway asked.
"Most of the Turei are in hiding; they're experienced with the Underspace, we and the Dominion aren't," Paris said.
"Ah. What other problems are the Delta Coalition having?" Janeway asked.
"They're stretched thin, but then again we all are," Paris leaned back in his seat with a sigh. "I'm going too old for this, Kathryn. I really am."
"The war is taking its toll on all of us," Kathryn replied, wondering if the Odyssey hadn't appeared then the war would have ended sooner instead of going on like this for so long. "But returning to the original point, what's going on with the Kazon?"
"I don't know. But we're giving the Ocampans more help than we're giving them. We've moved them to other worlds to give them a better chance, and they're getting training thanks to Vulcans and Betazoids," Paris said.
Janeway nodded, wishing that Kes were around to see how much they were helping her people. "I know."
"Fortunately, depending on your point of view, we're getting allies all the time. Do you remember the Think-Tank that was recently encountered, and Lieutenant Commander Data joined them after the Dominion tried using them?"
Janeway nodded grimly. A few months back the Dominion had learnt of a group of intellectuals who sold their services to the highest bidder and they had asked them to help them create strategies to wipe out the Federation. When they refused to create weapons of mass destruction, the Dominion - who were desperate - attacked and if it weren't for a distress call, the Think-Tank would have been wiped out. And they nearly were.
While the idea of a group of intellectuals was interesting to Janeway, who hadn't encountered them, she didn't like the fact their fees were exorbitant. She had heard many unsettling rumours about the Think-Tank…
Once the organisation were saved, they were asked to join the Delta Coalition. There weren't many of them left, and they were likely still a target. At the same time, the Federation and the Delta Coalition needed their aid. Since then they had been helping devise strategies and helping develop new technologies, thanks to the Asgard technology, giving them little bits of knowledge and technology far more sophisticated than what they had. Janeway didn't like the idea, but war bred strange bedfellows.
"What about them?" Janeway's voice was neutral.
"They've found a way of discovering them that's more effective than our current methods."
"That is good news."
"That's not all. The rumour the Founders are dying because of a virus? It's real."
"What?"
"You heard. It's real. And there's a growing rebellion on Cardassia. With luck, we can make it much worse and give the Founders a lot of trouble."
Janeway was pleased to hear the part of a rebellion, it would give them a valuable ally. Ever since the war, millions of Cardassians were lost but hundreds more were sickened by the war, especially by how violent it was growing, and out of control. The Cardassians were never afraid of war, but only as long as they were in charge of it.
And besides, the Dominion had been treating them as second-class citizens in their own homes. That was punishing to their pride, but truthfully she didn't care. As for the virus, while it was horrifying that a unique species was endangered, her pity was limited. She only hoped there was a way they could end the war peacefully.
But somehow she had a feeling it was not going to happen; the war was becoming increasingly violent all the time and new fronts were opening. Somehow she had a feeling while the Odyssey had opened the doors to victory, it was becoming more like a maze to reach that goal.
