Shape Fate


Upon our arrival at the Zahl station, we found ourselves, once again, having to stop and wait. Elentia had promised to work as quickly as possible to integrate Voyager and Equinox into the war effort, but she couldn't give us a time frame for when to expect orders.

The delay was fine with me. It gave Tom, Harry, B'Elanna, and I more time to focus on getting our shuttle done.

It was a bit surreal how okay things were between the four of us. We worked well together, and working together made our friendship come more naturally. Harry's inclination had been right in that respect.

Just a few days into the project, Lieutenant Commander Maxwell Burke visited the holodeck while we worked on the shuttle's design specs. Tom and I were mid-argument regarding a set of unnecessary tail fins—which Tom wanted to add for literally no good reason besides vanity—when Burke walked in. Suddenly, Tom stopped caring about tail fins and went silent.

"Good afternoon, everyone," Burke said smoothly as he sauntered over to the scale model that the rest of us were circled around. Sidling up beside B'Elanna, he threw a wink her way. "BLT."

She smiled. "Max."

"Didn't expect you to stop by," Tom said in what I knew to be his fake-friendly voice.

Burke shrugged. "I was in the area. Heard you were working on a brand new shuttle design, and I couldn't help myself."

On Equinox, Burke served as both head flight control manager and first officer. He was young—just two years older than B'Elanna and Harry, and had been a third-year student during their freshman year at the academy. While there, he and B'Elanna had dated before her decision to drop out and move off-planet had split them up for good.

Every time I saw them in the same room together, he was clearly laying on the moves. B'Elanna had never reciprocated, as far as I knew, but Burke didn't quit trying.

Burke's behavior with B'Elanna drove Tom up the wall. "He's like a really charming predator," Tom told me once before our encounter with the gravity well. "He doesn't see her as a person, but a conquest."

Still, Tom refused to lose face in front of B'Elanna, and since he had just affirmed with Harry and me his desire to be B'Elanna's friend, he did his best to take Burke's presence at our meeting in stride.

"What do you think?" Harry asked.

Burke stroked his chin as he examined the delta-shaped model. "I like the overall look. Very sleek. It'll handle atmospheric entry well." He looked up. "You know what it's missing?"

Harry frowned. "What?"

"Dynametric tail fins on the nacelles."

His delivery was so deadpan that nearly everyone thought he was being serious. It wasn't until B'Elanna scoffed and told him to "get the fuck out of here" that the rest of us realized he was joking. He couldn't have possibly known that, only moments before, Tom and I had been arguing over that very addition. Seeing Burke's teasing smile emerge, Harry and I broke into laughter.

Then I caught Tom's eye and realized that he was most definitely not amused. Instead, he looked angry and hurt.

"Do you have any real suggestions, Commander?" I asked, quickly regaining my composure.

"You could fit some extra storage, or maybe a couple bunks, if you drop this—" he gestured to one side of the shuttle's hull— "all the way down to the wing. It'll change the airflow a bit, but it won't be too much to manage, and it's hard to argue against having more room when you think about long away missions."

Harry nodded. "That's a good point. What do you think, Tom?"

Tom shrugged. "Yeah, it works."

"Talia?"

As much as I hated to feed Tom's negativity, Burke was right. "I'm all for more bunk space. And if we curve the wing just right, I think it'll handle atmospheric entry even better than the current design."

Burke's combadge chirped, alerting him to the time. "Well, gotta go. Let me know if you want any more input."

"Will do," Harry said. "Thanks!"

"My pleasure." Burke winked again at B'Elanna. "Until next time, BLT."

B'Elanna shook her head and laughed. "Goodbye, Max."

As the holodeck doors closed behind Burke, Tom added, "Yeah, I think I'm done, too."

B'Elanna frowned. "What? Why?"

"I'm beat. You guys can keep at it if you want, but I'm gonna go to bed. See you tomorrow, okay?"

Harry clapped him on the shoulder. "Get some rest, buddy."

Tom gave a weak smile. "I'll try."

I pursed my lips and sighed quietly as I watched him leave. Harry, B'Elanna and I played around with the model for another hour before calling it a night, but I kept thinking about Tom's reaction to Burke and the warnings he had made to me all those months ago. At the time, he'd still been romantically involved with B'Elanna, so I chalked it up to simple jealousy.

Burke was a good man and a great officer. As for his flirtatious nature—well, it wasn't as if I was a stranger to his type. Tom and I were once insufferable flirts, too. Burke was a young bachelor trapped in a setting with a limited number of potential partners. Who were we to judge him?

By the time I laid my head on my pillow that night, I decided to put Tom and his jealousy as far out of mind as possible.


It was another four days before the orders came in from Queen Nessav.

"A comm signal was intercepted by one of our scouts in a nebula about twenty lightyears from your position," the queen informed us in a special meeting of the senior staff.

Her long, slender face was framed by strawberry-blonde waves that had been the defining characteristic of the royal Kyana line for centuries. As she spoke, those steel-blue eyes seemed to cut across the thousands of lightyears between Kyana Prime and our little space station at the edge of the Delta Quadrant. Of course, the very same image was being projected into the Equinox's briefing room, as well—we could see them watching her on our split-screen view. Still, her presence was a force of nature.

The PADD in my hands chirped, drawing my attention to its small display. A star chart was shown, mapping the location of the nebula the queen was speaking of.

"The precise location of the signal is unknown due to interference from nebula gasses," she continued.

I looked up once more to the viewscreen, finding the queen's eyes.

"Voyager and Equinox are, by far, the closest allied ships capable of investigating the source of this signal, as it is too dangerous for our scout to approach."

"And why is that?" Ransom asked.

"The signal carries a Borg signature."

Around our table, I heard several people shift in their seats.

"I see," Ransom said.

"Our Unimatrix Zero allies have analyzed the signal. It is a distress call, but a rather unusual one, according to them. We want you to triangulate the signal and investigate."

"And what if we determine that the situation is too dangerous for us to handle?" Ransom asked.

"There's a liberated Borg sphere fifty lightyears from the nebula which is under the command of a former Unimatrix Zero inhabitant who calls himself General Korok. His transwarp coils are under repair, but they should be up and running in a few days, and I've already ordered him on an intercept course with the nebula. If you find the source of the distress signal and determine that it is unwise for you to engage them, you are to exit the nebula and wait for a comm signal containing the code that is listed in your briefing notes. That will be General Korok. He will contact you, and you may decide together how to proceed."

I thought back to the very first time Annika told me about Unimatrix Zero and all of the species she'd mentioned being there. General Korok sounded like a Klingon name and rank. Who had he left behind when the Borg took him? Did they think he died honorably in battle, or did they believe him to be dishonored by the captivity of assimilation?

"Very well, your grace," Janeway said. "We'll proceed to the nebula immediately."

Queen Nessav bowed her head, and I couldn't help but smile at the indication that she had begun taking on some of Elentia's mannerisms. "Thank you, Captain Janeway, Captain Ransom. Shape fate." With that, her transmission ended, leaving only Equnox's briefing room on our viewscreen.

"Shape fate?" Ransom repeated. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It's a Krenim idiom," Chakotay said.

Swiveling my chair around, I found an amused smile on his face.

"It's used somewhat like our own phrase, 'good luck,'" he continued, "but it comes from the Krenim belief that the ultimate success is to secure one's existence in all timelines, making themselves a sort of inescapable quantum reality."

"The point where volition becomes destiny," I said.

His dark eyes met mine. "Exactly."

"Space and time and thought are not the separate things you believe them to be, Eelo," Q had once said to me. Things that we believed to be fundamentally different were all still connected. The Krenim had studied and mapped space-time, believing that free will and destiny were not actually the opposites they appeared to be. Were they right?

I'd spent my whole life wrestling with the destiny Marnah set before me, rebelling and trying to find a way to assert my own free will without betraying her expectations entirely. Could I hold both halves of myself together at the same time? Did loyalty to the family I was born into necessarily oppose loyalty to the family I had chosen on Voyager? Could I actively choose to shape my own fate—to make my own path like the Emissary had said?

"It'll be just inside of a week to that nebula," the captain said. She looked from Ransom to Chakotay, Tuvok, me, and the rest of the table, her blue eyes just as sharp as Queen Nessav's. "Let's make sure we're prepared."