The Next Leg

"May I ask when you was thinking of telling me?" Naomi was speaking to Icheb in the Ready Room.

"I was unsure as to the extent of the problem" Icheb admitted. "I was in error in not telling you of my findings. I will accept any punishment that you see fit to give me" he added.

"I'd send you to the Brig, but that section has no life support working" Naomi mused. "I'll think of something later. Have you any idea about what to do?" she asked him.

"Mezoti and I have come up with a possible solution. We could weld some of the scrap metal we have onto the members in order to strengthen them. We then rig the structural integrity field for low power operation"

"We need that working. The first hint of it dropping, we'll all be turned into strawberry jam" Naomi protested.

"There are a number of decks that we do not use" Icheb said. "By deactivating most of the support that goes to them, we can lighten the ship a little in order to get us into orbit. Once there, we can install additional plates and resume our journey"

"Will that stop us going at Transwarp?" Naomi asked.

"If we used it carefully, then we can use it once a week" Icheb replied. "I thought the damage was repairable, but it is beyond any of our abilities at this moment. As it is, the patching will last only for a year – a year and a half tops" he added, using a term that Naomi would understand.

"And then what? We do it again?"

"At that point, either we proceed at impulse speed and hope to find a shipyard suitable to our needs, or we take whatever we can from Voyager, take to the shuttles and scuttle her"

"Scuttle?"

You don't want the ship going to somebody else"

"What does the word mean?" she asked.

"Ah!" Icheb nodded in understanding. "It means to blow her up in order to prevent her technology and secrets from being captured"

"Oh" the girl was quiet for some time. "It is that bad?" she asked.

"I wish I could give you good news" Icheb apologised again.

"What if we got Aunt B'lanna on the holodeck with the Doctor's mobile emitter?" Naomi nearly got the last word right.

"The work would not be done with one more person, Naomi. Even if we worked all year round, there is no way we can fix the broken things" Icheb reminded himself that he was dealing with a younger girl then what she appeared to be. "We could send the shuttles all out on a mapping mission to search for a shipyard. If the Borg maps are anything to go by, though, I don't think that we will find much – if anything at all"

"We might need the shuttles to pick up food and stuff" Naomi shook her head. She knew that part at least… She was about to admit defeat when something popped into her mind. During one of her science classes, Seven of Nine had told her about the various gases and how they could be lighter and heavier then normal air. "I have an idea" she said. "Naomi to Mezoti"

"Mezoti, here"

"What are you doing? Are you busy?"

"I am in the toilet. I am very busy" Mezoti replied.

"Oh" Naomi blushed. "When you are done, would you mind coming to the ready room?"

"I will comply" said Mezoti and closed the link.

#

"Would you mind running through that again?" Mezoti asked. Naomi nodded and reset the display to make it run again.

"Icheb was talking about making the ship lighter by lowering the SIF. I have an idea that could help lower the stress on the back" she spoke. A wire frame outline of the Voyager rotated and became larger as she continued. "Seven once told me all about different gasses that exist and how they are heavier and lighter then normal air. We could replace the air in the sections we do not use with helium which should reduce the weight of the ship. The wire outline changed as she spoke with some sections of the ship changing from green to red – indicating the sections Naomi was thinking about. "Uncle Tom used to talk about it in his old Earth lessons" she added. "Something balloons and all that" and Mezoti looked at the rotating display as thoughts ran through her head.

"This should have occurred to us before" she said. "We have failed you" Mezoti looked ashamed.

"You can't get everything right or know what to do all the time" Naomi hugged her friend, and then, on reflection, hugged Icheb as well. "Will it work, do you think?"

"I will run some computer simulations" Mezoti told her. "That will take several hours at least"

"We would have to modify the air circulation system" Icheb commented, looking at the wire outline which he had frozen and zoomed in. "Also, we'll have to put in defences against leaks back into the normal system"

"We could install scrubbers on the decks above the zone. Closing the valves to the decks we want to seal off should solve that" Mezoti said.

"I shall consult with Azan and Rebi once they come out of regeneration" Icheb said. "We should have plans by the morning"

"Right" said Naomi. She looked at the time on the bottom of the screen – a modification to the displays and viewscreens throughout the ship. According to the shipboard time, it was nearly 04:46 and this made Naomi's mind up. "I'm going ashore. Icheb, the ship is yours"

"Ashore?" Icheb was surprised by the declaration.

"I've been to loads and loads of planets, Icheb, but not once have I ever seen the sun rise outside of a holodeck" Naomi went on in a somewhat quieter voice. "Mom never had the right shifts to show me herself"

"Why do we not all go?" asked Icheb softly.

"I suppose that we could wake the twins up" Naomi shrugged.

"I meant that we all go ashore and watch the sunrise" Icheb said.

"But nobody would be on the ship" said Naomi. "The rules say somebody has to be onboard all the time" and quite forgot the fact they had all left the ship several days previous.

"Stuff the rules" Icheb said. "There are more important things then duty, Naomi, and one of them is friendship. Lets share this together…" and Naomi nodded and blinked through the tears that poured from her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

"Come on" she sniffed. "Lets get the boys and head down to the surface" and they left the ready room and went to the turbolift for Cargo Bay 2.

#

Making the modifications took several weeks of running simulations, designing and making the things they needed. After it was done, Naomi had the ship flooded in the lower areas with helium gas and the ship became much lighter. After reaching orbit, the group decided to wait an extra day to check it worked in space – something they confirmed to be the case. Naomi made the decision to continue on normal warp power until the effects of the transwarp drive on the lightened ship could fully assessed. There was after all, nothing like being too careful with your only means to the Alpha Quadrant!

"We are ready to begin our first test of the drive" Icheb said.

"Okay" Naomi said to him. "Bridge to Azan"

"Azan here"

"We're ready to begin testing of the transwarp drive"

"I will report to Engineering. Azan out"

"Is there anything around us?" asked Naomi.

"No vessels on sensors" Mezoti replied. "We are clear and free to navigate" she added.

"Beginning power up sequence of the transwarp drive" Icheb said.

"Azan to Bridge"

"Go ahead" Mezoti took the call.

"I have reached Engineering. All systems appear to be working at optimal efficiency"

"Monitor the drive and call if there are any problems"

"I will comply"

"Power up sequence complete" Icheb announced. "Transwarp drive available at your command"

"Target system coordinates put into the helm" Rebi said.

"Take us out" Naomi ordered.

"Acknowledged" and Rebi pressed the controls and took them to warp. "Warp 6… Switching to Transwarp drive now" and there was a bright flash as they jumped into transwarp speed.

"How are we doing?" asked Naomi to Azan.

"All readings appear to be normal" came the reply. "Passing through twenty five percent power now"

"This is Icheb. Can you get me a match at fifty percent?" he asked.

"Certainly" Azan said. "We are now passing through thirty percent" he added.

"Steady as she goes" Naomi ordered, remembering something she'd heard Captain Janeway once say.

"Steady as she goes, Aye, Captain" Rebi treated the situation with great respect and used the formal terms.

"I am reading a slight temperature build up in the drive coils" Icheb said.

"I see that as well… I did not have enough time to fully complete the cooling system. I will endeavour to do so when we travel at normal warp speeds" Azan said from down below.

"Wait a moment" Naomi said. "Computer, lower the temperature on deck 15 by ten degrees"

Acknowledged

"I have failed you by not completing the task I promised to do. After this test is completed, I shall report to the Brig" Azan said.

"Do you all tend to over react" asked Naomi. "We'll discuss punishments later. Is the drive system working correctly at the moment?"

"Affirmative"

"Then keep it that way" and she looked over to Mezoti. "How are we doing?" she asked.

"Transwarp space appears to be normal, or at least as normal as we know of. Sensors continue to gather data" the Norcadian said with a smile.

"Good. Icheb?"

"All systems appear to be unaffected by the transit"

"Keep it that way"

"I tend to do so" Icheb said dryly. They kept an eye on all of the readouts for an hour until they reached the designated location.

"Beginning disengagement" Rebi said, and he deactivated the drive – bringing the sleek vessel to a much slower one half impulse.

"We have left Transwarp space" Mezoti said. "Sensors reveal we are in the target system. There are no ships, probes or stations that I can detect" she added. "I am detecting an abnormal… thing… on sensors. The computer says that we have already encountered this thing before"

"What is it?" asked Naomi, checking sensors from the Captain's position. "I don't see anything"

"It is closing rapidly" Mezoti said. Naomi ran some scans and could see nothing at all. She was about to raise shields when the computer began playing some happy music.

"Today is the moment that you took command of the Voyager two years ago" Icheb said.

"Good god…" Naomi closed her eyes and thought of her mother, Janeway, Seven, Neelix and all of the other members of Voyager's crew that had died in the attack.

"May I shake the hand of the greatest Captain that I have ever served under?" Icheb asked. Naomi looked up at him and saw his comment was genuine – something that Mezoti and Rebi both duplicated.

"I forgot it was today" Naomi said. "It all seems so long ago" she added.

"We have a big party planned down on the Holodeck" said Mezoti. "It took us ages to work out…" she hesitated.

"What?"

"We programmed in your mother and several others of the crew. Despite your desire not to see them all again, we thought that this might be an exception" Mezoti looked at the floor from fear of Naomi storming off the Bridge.

"Well… Seeing as you went to all of the trouble, Mez – But this one last time" Naomi said, putting an arm around her only female friend. "Besides, I never pass up the chance of ice cream and cake" and the four of them laughed as they stepped into the turbolift.

# # # # #

Naomi woke from her dreams made up of random memories, looked at the bedside clock and saw it was time for her to get up. She rose, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and headed for the shower. Her quarters had remained unchanged from the configuration from when her mother had been alive. Stripping, she stepped into the only water shower on Voyager and allowed the water to wake her fully up. Once finished, she set about dressing in clean clothing. After she had hit the normal human growth sprout starting age, Naomi had begun to develop somewhat more slowly. None of the group could determine why, but it was assumed that Naomi's Human genes had asserted themselves a bit more and had put a brake on everything. Her chest had developed, however, and this meant some resizing and adjustments to her clothing and a highly interesting reviewing of the medical database on puberty. She'd read all about relationships, and confided in Mezoti that she liked both boys and girls. Naomi had been hesitant to discuss it with her friend and was, therefore, surprised to learn that Norcadians were very open minded when it came to sexuality. To add to Naomi's confusion and embarrassment Mezoti had confided that she liked the way that Naomi looked.

"Bridge to Captain"

"Naomi"

"Naomi, we have encountered a wormhole" and something told the girl that Azan had other news.

"What is so special about this one?" she asked.

"Sensors reveal that it is extremely stable and it is possible that the ship can travel through it"

"Have you called the others?" Naomi asked. She had just been about to get breakfast and didn't want to miss or delay it.

"Icheb is in the middle of a regeneration cycle and you know how upset he gets when interrupted from one" Azan reminded her.

"How long does he have left?" Naomi tapped the buttons of the replicator.

"Twelve minutes"

"Have him come up to the Bridge as soon as he can" said Naomi as she set the food on the table. "I will not be too far away. Naomi, out"

#

"… the other thing" Mezoti pressed a button and the map zoomed out and the view changed to a map of the universe. A blinking little outline of Voyager, tagged with the registry number, indicated where the ship was currently positioned. A thinish line stretched from the rotating circle of the wormhole entrance to a point in the Alpha Quadrant. "If sensor readings are correct, the wormhole leads all the way to the Alpha Quadrant. An isolated part, to be certain, but it would cut a hundred years off our journey"

"Where does that take us?" asked Naomi.

"I believe it will take us to a point near the Secunda Drema system" Icheb took over the explanation. "If so, the nearest Starbase would be three weeks away at high warp"

"Except we can not do any high warp" Naomi said to him. The last seven months had had the group travel along the Delta Quadrant at a piddling Warp 3. This was due to a major explosion in the Engine Room which had damaged the driver systems. The coils were still in place, but fused and had no opportunity to get replaced. By rerouting some pathways, the group had managed to restore power to Warp 3. Not even putting on suits would give them any protection from the immense radiation for any longer then thirteen seconds. Over the course of the last year and a half, systems had steadily begun to degrade to the point that Naomi was seriously thinking about packing it all in and finding a planet to settle on.

"Assuming we keep the ability to use warp after our transit of the wormhole, we'd reach the nearest Starbase in two months" Rebi said.

"Of course, Starfleet will be able to send us a rescue vessel" Azan added.

"Hmm…" Naomi sat in the Captain's chair in the ready room with her long legs tucked under her. "Lets not be too hasty" she decided. "Mez, send a probe through and see what it finds. If the readings and end position report match up, we might give it a go"

"Assuming that we do not fall apart first" Mezoti said.

"Azan, what is the news on the long range communications array?" Naomi asked.

"I may be able to restore some ability to it" he said. "But we would only have a radius of about two or three light years"

"What about using a shuttle?"

"We still can not get to the shuttle bays" Rebi said. "The damage to the corridors is such that I can not guarantee that structural integrity will hold. As it is" he continued, "It is pure luck that we are running at all"

"Whilst we are waiting for the probe, may I suggest that we do some ideas I have been having?" Icheb linked his PADD to the viewscreen and allowed the others to watch. "As you know, there is no hope of our conducting large scale repairs on the hull and hull failure is very likely to occur. I suggest that we use the sole remaining large replicator to recover the debris lying around. We could then make strengthening beams which we cold place on the deck below us. We then take deck plates and weld them on the Bridge – so that, even if we suffer a hull breach, we will still have a containment of oxygen to the ship"

"How long will that take?" Naomi glanced at him from the screen before turning back to it.

"If we get started now, seven hours"

"Right, then that is what we shall do. Mezoti, you program the computer on the probe. Azan, I want you to have the computer take over the Helm if nobody can reach it or if it looks too hard for us. Rebi, you come with me"

"What are we going to do?" asked Rebi.

"We're going to drag all of the bottles of air up to the bridge" Naomi replied, pushing herself upwards from the chair. "Azan, when you've finished doing your job, I want you to set up a back up link to the warp core. If it looks like we are going to be taken by enemies, I want to blow us up"

"Aye, Captain" Azan said solemnly. He knew that Naomi didn't want any of her friends captured and the Voyager picked over for secrets. She had made a promise, after all.

"Dismiss"

#

Once the supplies had been dragged up to the Bridge, Naomi went to the lowest part of the ship she could and closed each of the emergency bulkhead doors in the Jefferies Tubes and mid way through the Turbolift shafts. This would limit the effect a major loss of oxygen would have on them. The group then sat around on the Bridge for the probe to send back information from the other side.

"Naomi, I am picking up data from the probe" Icheb said.

"Confirmed" Mezoti said. "The probe has reached the other side and is sending back sensor data. It can not lock onto any star pattern"

"Are the sensors damaged?" asked Naomi.

"All systems are working normally" Mezoti said. "I am switching to visual sensors…" the main viewscreen came on and showed a wall of swirling pink and blue and green… and many other colours.

"Perhaps a nebula" suggested Azan.

"That would explain why the probe can not lock onto the stars" Rebi agreed.

"Is it in the Alpha Quadrant?" asked Naomi.

"Most certainly…" Mezoti frowned and worked her console. "Odd… I am picking up some solid mass ahead of the probe"

"Move it closer"

"Acknowledged" Mezoti worked her console. "Naomi? The probe's sensors indicate trace amounts of the substance known as Miller"

"So?"

"Miller is found in only one part of the Alpha Quadrant – the Blon system" Mezoti turned around to face her friend – fear and confusion in her eyes and expression. "The entire system has been destroyed"

"How?"

"I do not know. I do not know how, Naomi, but the probe is also reading higher then normal readings of solar radiation, heat, planetary debris and huge variations in the gravitational forces in the area. I also see bits of starship hull, but I can not say from what sort of ship"

"Icheb…" Naomi choked back a gasp. "Icheb, how many people in the Blon system?"

"As of the last information we had, seven billion and rising" Icheb stared at the screen.

"Find a map or something" Naomi rose from her chair. "Try to work out where the probe is in the system" she walked to the ready room, stopped and then walked back and sat down. There was silence on the Bridge of Voyager as Mezoti and Icheb worked to plot a location.

"The probe" Icheb said after two hours work, "Is located where the forth and fifth planets should be"

"If we were there, could we simply head forwards and not hit anything?" Naomi asked.

"Perhaps" Mezoti replied. "But the sensors on the probe can not penetrate more then a hundred thousand kilometres into the cloud. We have no idea what is hidden inside the cloud"

"Mez, based on the last piece of good data, would we hit anything?"

"No" the Norcadian suddenly realised what was being thought of. "The radiation would kill us within minutes"

"No matter…" Naomi smiled. "Rebi, raise shields. Azan, set course for the wormhole – one half impulse power. Engage on my command. Once through, 000 mark 00 at maximum warp"

"May I remind the Captain that she has been warned of excessive radiation levels?" Icheb said formally.

"Noted. If Azan can be quick enough, we'll only be in the radiation for seconds" Naomi said. "Rebi, divert all power to the forward shield grid. Azan? Ahead, one half impulse power…"

A/N:

Another update for you!

Please note that I now have a cover for this story designed for me by my good friend Riccarda Grey. Its my first ever cover for a story, so I'd like to know what you all think of it!

Reviews in the normal way, thank you...

Pixel