Chapter 1

2376 - Voyager - Deck 1 - Bridge

Captain Kathryn Janeway was sitting in her command chair reviewing a padd about problem in sickbay when she heard a strange sound and looked up. Her mouth fell open. Five girls, all about thirteen years old, were standing on her bridge, stunned looks on their faces. One of the girls said something she couldn't hear, and slowly, one by one they started smiling.

By then, the entire bridge crew knew what was happening and everyone was either staring at the five girls, or at her, waiting to see what she would do next. Reigning in her shock, Janeway pushed herself out of her chair.

"Who are you?" she asked, and when they didn't answer right away she added, "What are you doing on my ship?"

There was an immediate reaction, all of them trying to talk at once.

"We're on Voyager?!"

"No way!"

"Impossible!"

"Wow!"

"We have to meet B'Elanna Torres!"

The last sentence was spoken by a petite girl with long, light-colored hair that reached down past her waist. She had on black pants, a white T-shirt, and glasses. Her sentence made the other girls smile knowingly and exchange looks. The bridge officers glanced at each other, unnerved. How did they know who their Chief Engineer was?

Suddenly, an awful thought jumped into Janeway's mind; a thought which she quickly put into the air.

"Are you Q?" she said crisply, new suspicions aroused. If they really were Q, an obnoxious race of immortal, "omnipotent" beings, then she wanted to get them off her ship as fast as possible. Janeway gave an internal shudder. She didn't even want to think about what had happened the last time a Q had shown up on her ship.

"Oh! No, of course we aren't!" a girl with brown hair and glasses said, "I'm sorry, we should have introduced ourselves. Actually, we're human."

The girl moved her hand to indicate each girl in turn.

"I'm Rachel. These are my friends: Rhanda, Meredith, Taylor, and Charlie. And to answer the next question you're going to ask, we have no idea how we got here. We were at school. . .,"

She indicated the different colored packs on each of their backs, looking all similarly big and bulky.

". . .and then we were suddenly here."

"What do you need those big, heavy things at school for?" Tom Paris butt in.

Janeway shot him a look, but said nothing. The girl (Rachel was it?), however, turned around and smiled at him.

"To carry our books," she replied casually.

"Books?" Paris said, confused. No one carried around old-fashioned books. Everyone used PADDs, which were smaller, lighter, and carried many times the amount of information.

Rachel laughed. "We're from the twenty-first century."

There was a long pause before Janeway said what everyone was thinking, "What?!"

She said it softly, but knew that everyone could hear her perfectly. That was because the bridge had fallen so quiet that you could hear a padd drop. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Paris gaping openly.

"That's right!" another girl piped up, "Early twenty-first century. We know all about you though!"

The girls seemed to have gotten over their amazement at suddenly appearing out of thin air on a ship 70,000 light years from Earth. Not to mention three hundred years in the future. Unfortunately, it also seemed that now they all wanted to talk. At once. A babble of excited conversation broke out between them.

"Enough!"

Janeway's strong voice stopped them all mid-sentence. The girls stared at her.

"I want a few questions answered first," she said, using a nicer, but still commanding tone, "Then you can talk all you want in the Mess Hall. Understood?"

Five voices in unison answered her at once.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good," she tapped the communications badge on her chest, "Senior officers to the conference room immediately."

She had already crossed the full length of the bridge before turning around and motioning for the five girls to follow her.

"Let me get this straight. You're telling me that you appeared on my ship from twenty-first century Earth?!"

The senior staff was seated at the table in the conference room. Five more chairs had been pulled up for the girls, who were now extremely quiet and paying rapt attention. Janeway smothered a smile. Obviously she had made an impression.

They were stumped as to how five girls from the twenty-first century could appear out of nowhere on their ship. Especially from Earth, which they had been separated from and hadn't seen in years.

"Yeah," one of the girls said, lighting the room with her smile.

They had listened to the girls' account of arriving on Voyager. It hadn't given them much to go on. Okay, it gave them nothing to go on. Apparently, each of the girls had closed her eyes, and when she had opened them, she was on Voyager. Added up with their own account of the girls arriving, they hadn't gotten very far. They were also running out of ideas.

"A temporal anomaly," B'Elanna Torres suggested, but she looked doubtful.

"Inside the ship? I don't think so," Harry Kim, the ops officer said, "We haven't detected anything unusual on sensors, either."

"It is not a very likely possibility," Tuvok, a Vulcan and the chief of security, stated calmly.

"Maybe we're dead," one of the girls piped up suddenly.

"Huh?!" another of the girls, Meredith said, looking confused.

"Maybe we died and now we're here because. . .," it was Rachel talking Janeway now realized.

"Because this is. . .um. . .an afterlife!" Rhanda finished for her, jumping into the conversation with excitement.

"I like being dead!" Meredith said brightly.

"Excuse me," Taylor, one of the girls, interrupted, "Sorry that I have to mention this, but I think your imaginations are taking control of your heads. No more coffee for you, Rachel and Rhanda!"

Captain Janeway looked up in surprise, "You like coffee?"

The senior staff members tried to suppress their smiles at the mention of their captain's addiction to coffee, but they didn't quite manage it.

Finally, Commander Chakotay cleared his throat, interrupting the very animated conversation Janeway, Rachel, and Rhanda were having about the different blends of coffee.

"Ahem," Chakotay said, "Don't you think we're a little off topic?" he said carefully.

"Oh, yeah," Rachel sighed. The energy flowed from her so fast Janeway could swear she saw it fly out into space. "I guess you're right."

"We aren't getting anywhere!" Paris groaned. Janeway personally agreed.

"All right," she said, without any real conviction, "Let's move on. How do you girls know so much about us?" She hadn't even bothered to introduce herself, seeing as they already knew exactly who she was.

At her question, the girls glanced at each other, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

"We. . .well. . .we, uh. . .it's just. . .um, yeah," one of them stuttered.

"What she means is, maybe it. . .well, wouldn't be such a good idea to tell you," another girl, Taylor, explained.

"Why not!" exploded Torres.

The girls looked nervous. "Well, um, because. . . the temporal prime directive!" Rachel said suddenly, "We really, really shouldn't discuss it. It. . . sort of concerns your future."

"Captain," Tuvok said in his calm, Vulcan voice, "May I remind you that if we find out about our future, it could change considerably. We should take that into consideration."

"Maybe so," Torres interrupted, "but they can still tell us how they know about us."

Torres crossed her arms across her chest and Janeway realized she had a point. She looked at the girls. The girls looked at each other. Finally, Rachel opened her mouth.

"We can't tell you," she said confidently.

Janeway saw Torres open her mouth to retort, but before she could say anything, another girl spoke. Janeway recognized her as Rhanda.

"We are sorry. We just can't tell you. It doesn't totally make sense to us, either."

Janeway was pleased at Torres' control of her anger. It was harder for her than most since she was half Klingon. But she had more important things to deal with now.

"Fine," she snapped, "B'Elanna. Harry. I want you two to work together to figure out how these girls got here, and how to get them back. Neelix, take our guests on a tour of the ship."

"Aye, Captain," Neelix said quickly.

"Tom, you're our unofficial expert on the twenty and twenty-first centuries. Try to make these girls feel at home. All right, anything else?"

"Um, yes, I have a question," Rachel said hesitantly.

"Go ahead," Janeway nodded.

Rachel held out a pencil. "Can I have your autograph?"

Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to Star Trek or Star Trek. I don't even own any rights to this story because it was written by my friend. It was written about our little Trekkie group, The Sisterhood of Teenage Trekkies. Though there have been changes to respect rights of my friends and myself. I have been given permission to post this story. Thank you and enjoy.