Chapter Five
Leaving behind the nebula that had protected them in the past and gave them a shelter in this future, Voyager emerged and her warp nacelles rose to the upright position. The ship burst into warp, flinging itself forward towards the location of the second nebula, where the transwarp hub had been housed and defended. Several hours later, Voyager dropped out of warp and slowly, timidly, eased her way into the depths.
On the bridge, the crew was tense. This was where they had died; in this timeline and it was where each of them had been resolved to fight to the death in their own. They knew, each of them, that it might still be their fate, and that whatever they found here might not be enough to stop the Queen in their own time without making the same sacrifices. Resolved, however, to do what was necessary, the ship went forward.
Janeway glanced over at Harry. "Ensign Kim, can we get better sensor resolution?" she asked. He glanced over his console and looked up.
"No ma'am. I'm not sure what it is, but there are massive amounts of electromagnetic radiation emanating from the nebula. I'm having trouble seeing anything more than a thousand meters ahead of us." He glared at the panel. "What's the problem with you?" he grumbled.
Voyager moved through the gas, cutting through it as it swept over her aerodynamic hull. Paris skillfully swung the ship around larger pockets of gas, and then Voyager skated through a layer of the gas and entered a giant pocket where the gas concentration was lower. On the viewscreen, the image suddenly resolved. Below Voyager they could see the giant transwarp hub. It was inactive, they could tell immediately, but intact. Surrounding it were more than a dozen Borg vessels. All of them appeared to be dormant.
Suddenly Harry stopped. "Captain, I've figured out what the interference is. There are massive amounts of energy weapon signatures. There's been a battle here, and recently." He tapped the console and his eyes widened. "Captain, there are Borg signatures and… Federation weapons." His mouth gaped open. "It was Starfleet who was fighting the Borg here!"
Janeway turned back to the monitor. Starfleet sent a fleet to the Delta Quadrant to attack the transwarp hub fifteen years after we attacked it the first time? They must have gotten the data the other Voyager sent back to the Alpha Quadrant. From the looks of it, they designed some pretty nasty weapons from it. A sudden thought struck her. Did they use it to design whatever weapon it was that was used to destroy the collective in this time? "If Starfleet was responsible for the destruction of the collective," she mused aloud, "that would explain why the Queen was so insistent on coming back in time to stop Voyager." Harry nodded, but his focus was back on the console.
"Captain, I'm starting to get transponder signals from debris in the nebula," he said. On the viewscreen an image popped into existence. It was what was left of what once had been a Federation starship, Janeway recognized, Akira-class. "That one's transponder says it's the USS Centaur." The screen changed and on it appeared a warp nacelle. "This is from the Al-Batani. And this sensor pod belongs to a Nebula-class ship. The Ulysses, I think."
Janeway looked up at him. "How many ships were lost here, Ensign?" she asked.
Kim shook his head. "At least twenty, ma'am, but I can't resolve it any better than that," he said. Suddenly he gasped. "Captain! I'm getting an active Starfleet signature!" The viewscreen changed once more, but the image was too small to resolve. Then it magnified, and magnified again. It resolved into what was clearly a Federation starship, a variant of the Excelsior-class, Janeway recognized. Kim magnified the image once again, and Janeway read the name inscribed across the ship's saucer.
"The Hood. NCC-42296," Janeway said quietly. "Lifesigns, Mr. Kim?"
"I can't tell from this distance, Captain. She's covered in some kind of armor I don't recognize. It's disrupting our sensors," he said. "If we get closer, I might be able to get more accurate readings as to her status." Janeway nodded at Paris, and Voyager closed on the Hood. She had clear signs of battle damage, hull breaches over sections of her hull, but the ship itself was intact. Janeway heard a sharp intake of breath from Kim behind her, and she turned back to him questioningly. "Captain. We're being hailed by the Hood."
Janeway turned back to the viewer. Someone is alive over there. "Onscreen, Mr. Kim," she ordered.
The viewscreen resolved into an image of a man, one Janeway recognized. He looked considerably older than she remembered him being, but that was to be expected. He spoke. "Janeway?" he said, astonishment in his voice. It faded quickly. "Captain Janeway, I'm Admiral DeSoto of the USS Hood. Welcome to Galahad Point." He looked at her closely. "Don't get me wrong, Captain, I'm glad to see you, but you're dead. You have been for fifteen years." Suddenly he shook his head, waving away his uncertainties. "Nevermind, we'll discuss it in person. The Hood is in bad shape, but we're making progress. We'll host you over here. Commander Neeley will meet you in the transporter room. DeSoto out." The screen blinked out.
Janeway raised an eyebrow. "You're with me, Commander. You too, Mr. Paris. We'll bring Seven also. Tuvok, you have the bridge." She stood and strode to the turbolift, Tom and Chakotay following closely behind.
When they materialized aboard the Hood, a slim woman with red-blond hair was there to greet them. She wore the grey-on-black uniform Starfleet had adopted after Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant, with a gold shirt underneath her uniform jacket. On her collar she wore commander's pips. "Captain Janeway. Welcome aboard the Hood. I'm Commander Lisa Neeley, ship's tactical and acting-first officer." She held out her hand. "We owe you a lot, Captain, although we're a bit confused as to how you came to be here," she said.
"I think I'll explain everything to you and Admiral DeSoto at the same time, Commander, so I don't have to do it twice," Janeway released Neeley's hand. "I will say, however, it's incredibly good to see another Starfleet officer out here in the Delta Quadrant."
"Starfleet has made some advances in engine technology, thanks in large part to the data Voyager sent us on the transwarp coils you recovered from the Borg. The Hood is equipped with a transwarp drive. She's not quite as fast as Borg ships, but she also won't burn out her engine after ten-thousand lightyears." Neeley led them out into the corridor towards the turbolift. The ship had clearly suffered major damage in a recent engagement, but the Hood was in decent shape. Certainly better than Voyager was after attacking this hub fifteen years ago, Janeway thought. Then again, there are more than twenty other Federation ships out in this nebula and they're nothing but wreckage.
"How many ships did Starfleet send to attack the hub, Commander?" she asked.
"We started with thirty-one ships, Captain. The Hood was the flagship under Admiral DeSoto. We're also the only ship in one piece, although we've recovered some survivors from other vessels." At Janeway's blanched look, a ghost of a smile passed across Neeley's face. "Believe me, Captain, the Borg got it a whole lot worse." She looked up at Janeway. "You made the same decision, once, when you attacked the hub with Voyager," she said. Janeway grimaced.
The turbolift stopped and the doors slid open. The Hood's bridge was in worse shape than the transporter room had been. One of the science stations was a smoking hole in the back of the bridge and there was a large piece of the ceiling plating sticking out of what had once been the first officer's chair. There were three officers working on clearing away the damage and fixing the stations. The Hood was crippled, but Janeway suspected that the ship would be operational before too much longer. Neeley led Janeway, Paris, Chakotay and Seven down and walked into the conference lounge. At the end of the table, DeSoto sat looking over damage reports. He stood up as she entered and walked over to shake her hand. "Captain Janeway, welcome aboard the Hood, what's left of her."
"Admiral. I'm sure you're wondering what my crew and I are doing here when we were reported killed fifteen years ago," Janeway said. "I'll explain in a second, but first," she gestured at her officers. "This is Commander Chakotay, my first officer, Lieutenant Paris, my helmsman, and Seven of Nine."
DeSoto glanced over them each with a scrutinizing look. He spent a good extra two seconds on Paris, before turning back to Janeway. "Now I know you're not from around here," he said. Janeway started to ask what he meant, but DeSoto cut her off. "I was at the initial briefing with Captains Picard, Riker, and Reynolds fifteen years ago, with Admiral Paris. In your message from the Delta Quadrant, you said it was probable that you and your entire crew were dead. You specifically mentioned the death of Mr. Paris here for the sake of his father." He looked at her as Paris winced in the background. "So what happened, Captain, and why are you here?" he asked.
Suddenly, before Janeway could answer, another man burst in through the conference doorway. Janeway turned to look and the man stopped short in front of her and her officers. His right hand went to cover his mouth, and Janeway's own mouth dropped open as she recognized him. "Oh Captain! You're alive! You said you were dead! Oh, thank goodness!" On Janeway's left, DeSoto was starting to crack a smile. He remembered his first impression of Reginald Barclay, fifteen years ago at Project Pathfinder, and remembered how terribly upset the then-lieutenant had looked when he heard Janeway's message. In the years since, he'd gotten used to Mr. Barclay's eccentric mannerisms. He'd had no choice after Admiral Paris assigned Barclay to the Hood.
"Lieutenant Barclay?" Paris asked.
"Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Paris, but I'm a Commander now, but it's so good to see you! All of you! Commander Chakotay, and Seven of Nine, and… is everyone else alive aboard Voyager as well, Captain?"
Janeway smiled. "Sit down, Reg, I was just about to brief the Admiral on what has happened here," she said. All of them sat down around the conference table. "Admiral, as you've already deduced, I'm not your Captain Janeway. When Voyager was on her way to attack the transwarp hub just days ago, we were attacked and our engines disabled by a Borg sphere which our sensors hadn't detected. The sphere was heavily damaged even before it engaged us and we disabled it easily, but the attack prevented us from going on our mission to eliminate the Borg transwarp hub." Janeway looked over at DeSoto. "In our timeline, we haven't stopped the invasion yet," she said.
DeSoto looked at her. "But in our timeline, Voyager successfully attacked and destroyed the hub and bought the Federation about eight years before the Borg finally invaded. When they did, Starfleet wasn't quite ready, and we took heavy losses in the first few months. Eventually, though, with the assistance of several allies and the development of some new technology based on Voyager's logs, we pushed the Borg back," he said.
"That's good to hear. When we arrived here we found that Voyager and recovered her logs. Her crew is dead and she is crippled in a nebula a few lightyears from here," Janeway said quietly. "After the sphere was disabled, Commander Chakotay boarded it. We quickly determined that the sphere had come back in time to prevent Voyager from attacking the transwarp hub. All the drones on board had been severed from the collective, but…" Janeway made sure DeSoto met her eyes. "The Borg Queen was aboard and had led the expedition to the past herself."
DeSoto's hand slammed down on the desk. "Damn it, I thought we'd killed her. I guess we should have known that not even severing the collective mind wouldn't be enough to stop her. Hell," he spat out violently.
Janeway nodded. "We had no alternatives left. By the time our engines were back online, we couldn't get to the hub, infect it with the pathogen, and destroy it before the Borg left for the Alpha Quadrant. I was out of options, so…" Janeway shrugged.
"So you took your ship forward in time. How'd you do it, a slingshot?" Neeley asked. Barclay looked up.
"So you're… you're from a past where Voyager's crew didn't die attacking the transwarp hub? So you came to the future after the Queen went back to the past to… to what?" Barclay asked.
"To answer your question, Commander Neeley, yes, we used a slingshot maneuver to come to this future. As for you, Mr. Barclay… yes, since we haven't attacked the hub, Voyager's crew was never killed in the attempt."
"And, you're here… you're here to find something you can use to stop the Queen? Since she went to the past, you... you came to the future to… cancel that out." Barclay commented. Janeway nodded. Across the table, DeSoto was deep in thought. Finally, he shrugged.
"I probably would have done the same thing, Captain. The Queen violated the timeline first, so you had a choice between breaking the temporal prime directive or letting her assimilate Earth. If you hadn't come to the future, in all likelihood, none of us," he gestured to his staff, "would exist. Although, I can't say with any certainty that we'll exist regardless, since you'll certainly change the timeline anyway." DeSoto looked up. "We can help you, Captain, and we will. We have the technology you need to beat the Borg in your past, and frankly, if they haven't ever even seen any of it before, you'll tear hell through any Borg drones or ships you come across, for a while anyway." He looked over at Neeley. "Tell them what we've got to help them out, Lisa," he said.
Neeley stood. She tapped the monitor behind her and it came to life, and then she tapped a few more buttons. A schematic of the Hood popped up. "Shortly before the Borg invasion in 2386, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers started working on making our weapons more effective. During the eight years you gave us, and the head start with all your data on the Borg, we developed several new methods of battling the Borg and getting our weapons through their shields. The engineers at the Corps were determined to show the Borg that resistance was not futile." She tapped on the screen. "This was their first development – a new generation of ablative armor. Unlike most of our new technologies, this one has universal applications. It'll protect a ship from the Borg, the Romulans, or a supernova, whatever you need it to. I expect Commander Barclay," she gestured at Reg, "can help you install the armor generators on board Voyager without too much difficulty. As long as you have replicators and extra power to spare, you can make the new armor work."
She tapped the screen again. "After that, about two years into the conflict, the Romulans and several other Alpha Quadrant races joined in the war against the Borg. The Queen was relentless and enemy reinforcements kept arriving, but without the transwarp hub they took a while to get here, and that gave us an early edge. Eventually we developed new weapons to help counter the Borg. The simplest one is a new type of phaser modulation that cuts through Borg shields. They've managed to adapt their shields to absorb some of the damage over the years, but they've never quite managed to neutralize it. More importantly…" she tapped the screen once more. "This, Captain, is the bread-and-butter in our war against the Borg, the transphasic torpedo. Before they adapted to it one or two of them were enough to turn a Borg cube into nothing more than oh-so-much debris. Here at Galahad it took eight to ten."
"Galahad?" Janeway asked.
"Galahad Point. It's what Starfleet Intelligence named this nebula and the hub inside shortly after we got your message," Neely shrugged. "Don't look at me, I'm just a goldshirt. Nobody seemed to want my opinion." Neely hit the monitor once more. "But this, Captain, is what you're going to need to beat the Borg, especially if you've only got one ship. The engineers who came up with it dubbed it the "information cascade." She glanced at Barclay. "Reg here was on the team that developed it, with Commander La Forge and Commander Data from the Enterprise, Professor O'Brien from the Defiant, and Commander Eruzione from the Endeavour."
Barclay looked up. "Oh, the cascade, right. Yes. Well, Captain, it's like this. Every Borg cube is equipped with a central plexus, you know that, yes? Well, in the collective, there are several very large more capable variants of it that are responsible for keeping all of the plexi in synch with one another. There are actually seven of them… one in each Borg transwarp hub, and, well, we don't know where the last one is, only that it exists somewhere. We think. It probably is related to the Borg Queen, although I have no idea how…" Barclay's voice trailed off, distracted, and Neeley pinched him. "Ow! Oh, right, right. Well, Captain, when I was on the Enterprise, Commander Data and Commander La Forge designed a virus that they called an 'invasive program.' I know, I know, it doesn't sound too dangerous, but just wait… The purpose behind it was it would download a virus into the collective that would pose an unsolvable problem to the Borg collective mind! Eventually, the collective would spend so much time trying to answer it, that it would eventually take over their primary functions and distract them from doing their jobs. The hope was it would eventually kill… all of the drones," said Barclay.
"But… it didn't work. We… ah… we tried it. The Queen apparently is able to solve the invasive program, or at least convince the rest of the drones to ignore it, so the collective went, you know, merrily onwards despite our attempts. After that, we got together all the engineers who had faced the Borg before and started working on new viruses to attack the Borg collective directly." Barclay sounded excessively excited. "And we came up with… the information cascade. This virus wasn't slow working. In fact, it wasn't really a virus. Not really. We would access a Borg central plexus – it wouldn't work on a regular Borg subspace transceiver, they would short it out before relaying it to the rest of the collective – and use the plexus to transmit an extremely compressed data file which would expand upon retrieval to every drone in contact! All the drones in the collective would overload their subspace transceivers at once when they retrieved the file and be disconnected from the collective!"
Barclay shook his head. "But… that didn't work either. See, we tried it on a regular cube's plexus, but it just… shorted out the plexus and all the Borg on the cube. Oh sure, it was relayed to another couple cubes, close by, but the signal couldn't be transmitted to the whole collective. The central plexus of a normal cube just didn't have enough… transmission capacity," said Barclay. He shrugged. "So, then, I thought about trying it on a transwarp hub plexus. They are far larger and more capable than a normal central plexus. So when Admiral DeSoto left on the mission to destroy the hub at Galahad Point… I went along and brought the cascade along too. Luckily, it worked… if it hadn't, well, the Borg would have gotten the hub working, and sent all those cubes through to the Alpha Quadrant, and…" Barclay's stopped speaking. His head shook rapidly back and forth. "Well, I suppose the Hood would have been destroyed too. Oh, Thank God it worked," he said. "But! Captain, I can give you a copy of the information cascade program! If you can find a way to get it to the central plexus of the transwarp hub in your time, then… you can stop the collective! Shut them down in their tracks! Just know… it's not completely thorough either. Mostly. If any cubes aren't in contact with the collective when the cascade goes off, well, they'll avoid being shorted out. As long as you get the Queen, though…"
Seven of Nine looked perplexed. "Commander Barclay, how would you propose Voyager access the central plexus of the hub in order to download the cascade program and infect the collective? We have only one ship and despite whatever upgrades the Federation has developed, I do not believe one ship could hold off the collective for the amount of time it would take for a security team to access the plexus and trigger the cascade," Seven said.
Neeley looked up. "We might be able to help you there, too," she said. "Starfleet developed anti-Borg cloaking technology shortly before we left on this mission. The Borg have gotten pretty adept at seeing through it if they know to look, but in your time they'll have never seen it before. And, hopefully, they won't know to look."
Barclay's foot hit the ground. "The bio-dampeners! The Borg fifteen years ago haven't adapted to the bio-dampeners yet!" Barclay said excitedly. "Seven, your parents invented multi-adaptive shielding and bio-dampeners to hide from the Borg. We used the multi-adaptive shielding to help us design the new cloaking device, of course, but the Borg eventually figured out how to see through our enhanced bio-dampening technology. They're no good to us, well… well, I suppose none of it is any good to us, now that the collective is gone, except for the armor of course… but! They'll be perfect for an infiltration mission to the central plexus of the hub! Combing them with our cloaking technology, the new ablative armor generators, the phaser modulations, and the transphasic torpedoes, and Voyager will be a one-ship anti-Borg armada!"
Janeway glanced at Chakotay. "Admiral, we don't want to remain here in this time for any longer than possible, lest we risk doing further damage to the timeline. How long would it take to make these modifications to Voyager?"
Barclay cut in. "Is B'Elanna still your chief engineer?" he asked. Janeway nodded. "Then… wait, she's pregnant isn't she. That will add at least a couple days to the modifications time… although, once the Hood's transwarp drive is back up and running, all we'll have to do is move one of our enhanced transwarp coils over to Voyager." He glanced at the Admiral. "And… there is plenty of material left over from the battle to salvage, Captain. I'd say four days. Most of the technology is compatible with Voyager anyway. The hard part will be installing the ablative armor generators." He looked up. "And, Geordi told me to multiply all repair estimates by a factor of four, that way when you finish quicker you look like a miracle worker. So… two weeks! Well, a little more than two weeks."
Janeway glanced at DeSoto, who was trying hard to smother a grin. "Two weeks it is, Mr. Barclay," she said.
After their crewmen had departed to get to work on repairs to the Hood and the modifications to Voyager, Janeway and DeSoto were left alone in the conference lounge. She looked at him from across the table.
"How bad was it, Sir?" she asked quietly.
"It would have been a lot worse, Captain. And don't call me sir, I hate being reminded that I took this blasted promotion." DeSoto scratched his head and sighed. "It was pretty bad at first. Even with your warning and the time you bought us, we weren't ready. We did what we could to keep the Borg away from core systems, but those months before the transphasic torpedo breakthrough were really bad. We lost several dozen ships and did little to halt the Borg incursions. Several people designed viruses based off the one your Icheb used to infect the hub, but after that incident the Borg were more cautious about who they assimilated." He shrugged. "They made it as far as Alpha Centauri before we really stopped the bleeding." At her fearful look, he shrugged. "It's not as bad as it sounds. They were on a straight-line course for Earth and didn't do a whole lot of assimilating outside of it. Once we developed the torpedoes we drove them back pretty fast. The Klingons and the Romulans joined the fighting early on, and…" he glanced at her. "After they realized just how serious this was, the Dominion joined us too. It shocked a whole lot of people, and made a whole lot of good Federation citizens uncomfortable, but it made a big difference in the long run," he said. "We owe that to Captain Kira and Odo, really."
"You know, Admiral, that everything may well be different once Voyager returns to our own time," Janeway said.
"Yes, I know. I'm not really sure how this will all play out – I hate temporal mechanics – but I can't imagine how you attacking the hub fifteen years ago with the weapons we developed during seven years of fighting the Borg before they've even had a chance to start to adapt to them can possibly make it any worse." He shrugged. "She started this, not us."
Janeway nodded. She stood. "I'd better be getting back to my ship, Admiral. There's a lot of work to be done and…" Janeway shrugged. "I'm a fully qualified engineer, and with Torres pregnant, they might need an extra pair of hands on deck," she said.
"Captain Janeway," he said, as she was about to leave. "I was one of the first people to see the message you sent after attacking the hub. You gave all of us a fighting chance that we wouldn't have had without you, and you did it at the highest price. I wanted to thank you."
Janeway paused, wondering if she should deflect the praise since she hadn't had the chance to attack the hub yet. Finally, she said, "Thank you, Sir. But you would have done the same."
DeSoto looked at her. "It's wartime. I go where I'm sent. I never had to make that choice." He stood. "And Captain, I'm glad I didn't."
Three days later the modifications to Voyager were almost complete. Reg's estimates had been excessive, even before he'd multiplied them by four, and B'Elanna had done an admirable job directing her staff around engineering, heavily pregnant. The crew had gotten a chance to know the real Reg for the first time, and Janeway thought that they were almost as happy about it as he was. Despite his and B'Elanna's wildly varying personalities, they both had engineering in common and Janeway thought that B'Elanna was probably one of the only people Reg had ever known who could speak to him on his level. The man was a genius; there was no doubt of that.
They'd run into a few problems. The armor and phaser modifications were operating just fine. Soon B'Elanna insisted that the transwarp drive would be working as well – she said with Nozawa, Vorik, Jor, and Nicoletti all working on it that if it wasn't finished in the next two days she was going to send half of them to Sto-vo-kor and that it was most emphatically not a good day to die. When Jor looked at her frightened, B'Elanna had just growled, "Crewman, if you don't want to meet the kos'kari far before your time, you'll go get back to work on the engines." B'Elanna was right… she was even more intimidating pregnant.
Tuvok and Neeley formed a mission plan to infiltrate the hub, also. Tuvok knew that when they returned to the present they would be working on a very tight schedule – with only a few hours before Seven estimated the Borg would begin their invasions of the Alpha Quadrant, they would have to hurry. Even a single cube in the transwarp conduit would be a major problem, since, according to Seven, drones lost contact with the hive mind while in a hub conduit. If they were in a transwarp hub conduit when the cascade went off it was likely they wouldn't be affected by it, and while Starfleet could probably handle one Borg cube, Janeway wasn't going to hedge her bets.
The biggest problem was that they didn't have very many transphasic torpedoes. The Hood had used almost all of hers during the last battle and they'd so far been unable to recover any from the wreckage of the Challenger or Budapest, the only two ships which were marginally intact. DeSoto had given her all the ones he had left – six – and Janeway was grateful for it. He'd also given her the Hood's cloaking device, saying that she would need it more than he did. Installing it had been easy – Barclay and Seven had the procedure finished inside of fifteen minutes.
But with the new transwarp drive coil that Barclay had scrounged from the wreckage of the Budapest, Voyager didn't even have to go through the transwarp hub to get home. Once Torres finally got it running they would be able to get home under their own power, without using the transwarp hub. Thus, all they had to worry about was keeping the Borg from getting through. Everything else would come later.
Aboard Voyager, the modifications were almost complete. The ship would be leaving in the morning – but tonight they celebrated. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, thought Janeway dryly. The phrase didn't often feel so appropriate, although she had no intention of dying. The holodeck was running Sandrine's for the first time in several years at the behest of Reg Barclay, who had "always wanted to try the program." DeSoto, Neeley, Barclay, and Voyager's entire senior staff, except Tuvok, occupied the room, along with several other survivors from the Federation fleet and just about every off-duty crewman from Voyager.
Janeway watched as Chakotay and DeSoto played a game of pool. DeSoto was acquitting himself rather well, although it was clear he was outclassed. Mike Ayala and Lisa Neeley were discussing some of their experiences with Tom Paris and his wife, and Janeway could hear Neeley talking about what she called, "the most harrowing week of her life," when she had been on an undercover operation in Cardassian territory aboard a captured Jem'Hadar fighter with Ben Sisko. Neeley had laughed sadly, recalling that Charlie Reynolds' Centaur had almost shot them down, thinking they were the enemy, and that she had teased Reynolds mercilessly about "liking to swing for the fences" ever since. Neeley had gone silent for several minutes after that, and Janeway recalled the wreckage of the Centaur that Voyager had passed on the way to the hub.
Mortimer Harren and Reg Barclay seemed to be bonding over something that Janeway decided not to try to contemplate – she was good at mathematics, but she knew better than to try to keep up with Reg. Behind them sat the two Delaney sisters with a few crewmen from the Hood and survivors from the Challenger and the Al-Batani. Janeway watched them for a few minutes, and had to laugh quietly. Such flirts.
She turned her attention back to the pool table. As she glanced over, Chakotay finished DeSoto off and the two of them shook hands, then DeSoto wandered over towards her. "Enjoying yourself, Admiral?" she asked. He grinned at her.
"It's been a while since I've played pool, Captain. Your first officer is quite good, although I hear you're the shark on board." DeSoto rested his back against the bar and gratefully accepted a drink from Sandrine.
Janeway smiled. "That's right, although Mr. Paris over there fancies himself the 'shark.'" She looked over, where Tom and B'Elanna were still conversing with Ayala and Neeley. "You saw a lot of combat in the Alpha Quadrant, even before the Borg invaded," she said. "I wonder if I should be grateful we missed out on the Dominion War."
"It wasn't fun," DeSoto agreed. "There were many times I thought my ship and I weren't going to make it. And if it hadn't been for Admiral Ross, the Breen would have destroyed the Hood at Second Chin'toka. But you've been through your own share of combat, Captain. I've seen the scars on your hull. And in the end, we always had a home that we could go back to."
"So do we, Admiral. So do we."
DeSoto turned and reached out his hand. Janeway took it and shook it firmly. "Good hunting, Captain Janeway. And Godspeed."