They had laid a course for Earth, nothing interesting coming up on their scans for light years and so it seemed they would pass this portion of space without distraction or trouble. Still as a captain even when it seemed nothing of interest was out there you had to be prepared. Today was just one of those days. "Captain, there is a Viidian vessel ahead of us sending out an SOS." Kim looked over at her. It seemed strange, the vessel hadn't been on the scans earlier. The captain knew Vidiians shouldn't be this far in the Delta Quadrant, if they were out here then they were far from home. It could be a possible trap but it was her obligation as a captain of the federation to lend help to anyone who needed it. Even a race such as the Vidiians. "Drop out of warp, go to impulse." Kathryn ordered and stood up from her seat. "Once we get in range I want it on screen." They left warp jolting in space a moment as if they had hit some sort of energy barrier.
"Shields are holding." Tuvok announced.
"On screen." Kathryn ordered looking at the heavily damaged Vidiian ship drifting, it's side seeming to dip lower than the rest of it as it swung sideways moving listlessly through space. "Life signs?"
"I'm not reading anything." Paris looked back down at him con. "Captain, I think we are being hailed."
Her attention went back to the image of the damaged ship, who was hailing them then? "On screen."
The image flickered from the vision of the ghost ship into a figure obscured by static. "Compensating for the interference." The image cleared up showing a figure cloaked in black, a strange black mask covering their face. It looked a little like body armor with a display visor covering the eyes. The figure looked rather small sitting in the command seat, their fingers pressed against a silver box just under their chin.
The voice sounded electrical, static breaking through the transceiver at the throat making it tinny and dark. "Are you the Federation ship Voyager?" The figure asked, the end of the sentence breaking into eerie static.
"We picked up your distress signal, what happened to your ship? Why are we reading no life forms on your ship? Are there other survivors?" Janeway started with her questions but the figure only titled their head sideways.
"Are you the Federation ship USS Voyager?" So long as their face was covered the crew could not determine if they were Vidiian, or if they were even hostile but one thing was clear, they had been looking for Voyager.
"What do you want with Voyager?" Kathryn asked.
"My scans are reading 158 lifeforms on your ship, stand by for data transfer." The figure spoke while pressing a few buttons on their con and looking down at their wrist.
"Captain I don't know how but whoever that is they bypassed all security systems, they have total control of Voyager." Paris tried regaining control of the con.
"This is the Federation ship Voyager." The figure looked back up from their wrist moving a finger clockwise around the device on their arm.
"Release control of my ship." Janeway growled but the figure did not respond. "Tuvok focus phaser fire on the bridge."
Finally the figure looked back up, the blank black mask reflecting the damage on the bridge making it clear the only thing holding it together was the dying shield around the ship. "Captain Janeway, you are Captain Janeway." They paused a moment tilting their head again. "I do not wish to harm you, I have been looking for you for quite some time now."
"Who are you?" If they had been looking for Voyager then they must want something from the ship, from her. Janeway glanced back to Tuvok giving him the hint to get ready in case the other vessel attacked.
Slowly the figure pressed a button to the side of their neck next to the silver box they had pressed to speak. A quick burst of smoke erupted around the chin line of the helmet as they removed it. Dark curls falling over their shoulders with focused green eyes locked on the screen. "My name is NX117." The voice was crystal clear and very pretty, almost holding a strange accent to it. Though her face was scratched up on one side she was very familiar to the captain, she couldn't have been any older than ten years old but held the maturity of someone twice her age in her eyes."
"Amelia?" Janeway looked harder at the girl on the screen.
The girl on the other side cocked her head again, confused by the name she had been addressed by. "No, I am NX117. I have been looking for you Voyager, my father needs your help. Will you give us permission to board your ship?"
Janeway stepped back a little confused, the girl looked strikingly like an older projection of Amelia from before she had been born and if she considered what Captain Amelia Janeway had looked like the girl before he could have fit the bill perfectly. "We can try to lock onto your location and beam you out."
The girl nodded her head. "Unnecessary, I have already locked onto the coordinates of your sickbay, I shall beam us there from my ship, alert your medical officers they are receiving two patients."
"Two?" Janeway looked at her again, aside from a few scratches she seemed alright.
"I received mild injuries to my torso that will require medical attention." The girl raised her wrist to the device on her arm. "Will I see you there Captain?" The girl let out a sigh. "I must go, the ship's life support is critical." The screen flashed back to the ship as the doctor contacted Janeway.
"Our guests are in sickbay captain."
"I'll be right down."
Janeway made her way down to sickbay, when the door opened she had to take a moment to step back and look over the scene. On the bed laid a Vidiian, his face horribly disfigured and mutilated as she remembered. Their race so horribly disfigured from the phage virus and their assimilation of other species organs. Beside his bed stood the young girl, her hand holding his tightly as she smiled down at him. Q was a little hesitant to call the girl over to one of the other beds and aid in removing what appeared to be some sort of body armor. "Looks like you have a few cuts and bruises but nothing serious." Q spoke up scanning her with the medical tricorder and looking over at Janeway with mild panic. "Captain." It was strange hearing him address her as captain.
Janeway ignored Q and walked right up to the girl. Resting her hands to the side of the bed she looked the child over again. "You are not a Vidiian are you." Janeway paused. "Who are you, who are you really?"
NX stiffened up her shoulders looking like someone who had been raised by the military rather than the man laying on the next bed. "I am a replication, a copy created by my father. He is a scientist, his job was to work on creating a cure for the phage, you know him. At least, he said you know who he is, he told me when we left that you would help us." Janeway looked back over at the man, she had never seen him before in her life, then again Vidiian's were always seeming to change their face as the phage ate away at it. "It would have been almost a year ago by now, he looked different, before they came and cured the phage. The people who tried taking me away. Father said he helped you escape a Vidiian vessel almost a year ago to save your life." The man on the bed started coming too, his eyes opening as he reached out for NX "Father." She moved off the bed and stood beside him once again taking his hand. "It's alright father I found Voyager and Captain Janeway, they will help you now father."
The Vidiian male looked up at the captain forcing a little smile across his face. "Your child, is she well?"
Hearing his voice again brought back all the memories, the same anger she had felt before but he had let her go, he had let her keep her baby. Raising a brow Kathryn kept from showing any dislike for the man. "She's well."
"This is NX117." He patted the girls hand with a smile on his face. "She's a good girl, I knew she would be, after all she's come from good blood." Looking up at Janeway there was a sort of sadness in his eyes. "She has been my daughter for the past year, it will be her first birthday next month, I couldn't ask for a better child and I couldn't be more proud." His attention turned to the girl, his eyes shinning as he looked at her. "But as you can imagine Captain from looking at her you will know she is not mind, she is not Vidiian, she's human, or at least what human DNA we could stabilize to make her. She's also yours. Maybe not the daughter you carried, the daughter you fought so hard to protect, but she is yours on a genetic level." NX was displeased with where he was going with the conversation. Pulling her hand away from him she took a step back.
"Father?"
"No, NX117, please listen to me. The way I see it is you have two options, you can go back and be destroyed or you can stay here and have a better life than I can offer you." He reached out to grab her hand but she pulled it away and backed off from him with a look of betrayal. "Captain, the DNA I collected from your child, I used to to create a near perfect copy of her, you could call her a clone though I feel that would be insulting to NX117. She is not a complete copy of your daughter, we were forced to use some genetic markers from other species to stabilize her genetic code. It seems your child is not a simple creature to duplicate. We thought our research was successful, we grew her to an age where she would be capable of understanding what was being done to her and would be young enough to trust us. As we had thought she was immune to the phage and she showed unusual properties not unlike your own child did when we confronted it. Her ability to interphase with technology, to transport her site from location to location, it was sporadic, uncontrollable. We developed a restraint device to prevent her from using her abilities, I later recalibrated it so help instead focus them. He reached out to grab her wrist and show off the device around her arm but NX pulled her arm away again and backed off from him. "I know you are angry with me NX, but these people will help you." He looked back to Janeway. "Please captain Janeway, I helped you and your daughter escape, now help mine." He started coughing, holding his hand over his chest as he tried sitting up a little more. "Our research was nearly successful, NX117 was completely immune to the phage...but we could not simply make a common cure. Because what protected her from the phage was not chemical nor biological, it was something else. Something likely inherited from the father." He glanced over at Q. "It was decided in order to continue on with a more appropriate cure for the phage she would be donated to various leaders of my world to stop the disease in their bodies. As compensation I too would be put on the donor list but I couldn't let them. I have come to love NX as I love my own daughter. I couldn't let them pull her apart."
"She shouldn't have those powers." Q interrupted and tried taking further scans of her but NX stepped away. "Amelia's abilities are not inherited on a genetic level, if you cloned or...replicated her you would get an average boring human being, not another Q. What makes Amelia part Q isn't the fact I'm her father, though she shares something resembling genetic material inherited from me, when I got Janeway...the captain...well..." He looked over at her seeing her give him that look. How was he going to say this and still be able to stay off the ready room sofa? "How do I put this...in medical terms?" Q took in a deep breath. "I took a fraction of myself and my powers and with a little spark and a fancy glow I injected that into the ovum of choice so that when conception was achieved little Amelia would be more than a human baby, she would be part Q, a process you can't just...clone."
"That might be true, but tell me, as a child who is half human, who has a set genetic structure could you not assume that even a smaller portion of what makes your daughter a Q could be transferred? Not entirely copied but transferred from an original organic sample? I said calling NX117 a clone was an understatement, she was in fact grown directly from the tissue sample we collected not copied using it. What gaps remained in your daughters DNA we closed with the DNA of other beings and samples of Captain Janeways own blood. So, could it be questioned then in the earliest stages of development what makes you a Q binds to her human DNA? Even a smaller sample of her tissue would have to have some of it permeating her cells in order to let her do what she can do."
Q thought about it for a moment, if you could grow a new Amelia from say, her finger, with that energy he had originally given her still acting as apart of her physical form. "It could happen that way, but not to the extent of what Amelia herself is capable of, since it was not a complete copy of her full power, only a fragment of it."
The Vidiian nodded his head. "And I am sure, if NX117 did have the full power of Amelia we might have never been able to do our research. As I recall your child before she was even fully formed was capable of projecting herself, was capable of making a self sustained force field, could transport herself and others from one location to another, could rearrange matter, and could blink things out of existence of which she did to multiple tools. NX117 has never shown that degree of...talent though she does have a few interesting tricks of her own, certainly nothing to scoff at."
"Father you told me with your medical tools and Voyagers medical officers you could transplant one of my organs into your body, it could stop the phage and we can find somewhere to hide, we can have a good life on another planet. You are a very smart man, you could be a doctor again and heal people, you..."
"NO, NX117, I did not risk my life and ruin my career to cut you apart, even if it means saving myself what could I truly offer you? Safety? I am not a fighter. Voyager is a safe place with good people, it moves further and further from Vidiian space every day. You will have a better life than one I could ever give to you NX, don't argue with me."
"But fa..."
He cut her off again. "I said do not argue with me." He yelled before having a coughing fit. NX wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, something no one else was likely to ever do, even other Vidiian's, even his own daughter back home. "After what happened, I can't risk it. You could have died." He ran his hand over her face and smiled at her again. "I have lived a good long life, accomplished many things. You have only just begun to see the universe. I can't take that from you." NX closed her eyes letting tears stream down her face. "I will stay with you until the end. You have nothing to fear."
"What if I'm afraid of losing you?"
"Then it is a fear you will conquer like all other fears."
