A/N: Thank you to Alpha Flyer for the lovely review, I also quite enjoy your stories. As a note, if anyone has any comments, feel free to leave reviews or fire off a PM (as always) :). (I promise I'll respond to you in some form or another).

Chapter 3

The Doctor was waiting for them. The captain would not enjoy this news. The Doctor was going over the reports he had created about Harry Kim's condition. It detailed the entire treatment, starting with his initial transport time into sickbay and carrying on with the physical examination that revealed the spinal damage. The surgery went perfectly, with no rejection on the part of Kim's body and with vital signs only stopping once. The Doctor looked over the final reports. The operation restored Ensign Kim's physical state, but there was a new problem that the captain would have to contend with; one that she would definitely rather not deal with. With this thought, both the captain and commander walked into sickbay, looking a little bit pale and both asking about Harry's condition.

"Captain, I'm afraid I have the proverbial good and bad news." The Doctor was going to try to stay optimistic even though he could imagine the reaction forming in the captain's eyes.

"Well, Doctor, what have you got?" Chakotay was anxious. In fact, he was almost as anxious as the captain was. The Doctor took in a deep breath and began.

"The good news is that Harry will recover from all of his physical injuries, with no damage to his spine or organs. The bad news is that in the process, I had to revive his brain, which caused a small amount of damage leaving him in a coma..." He bowed his head and attempted not to let the disappointment show on his face.

"How long will he be in this coma?" The captain was now officially devastated, and it was clear. "Doc, is there any way we can speed his recovery, or even help out?" Chakotay was also upset, so now The Doctor had two more problems on his hands. This was not going to be a good day...

Seven looked at the probe. It looked like something out of one of Paris's holodeck adventure programs. The long shaft held all of the sensors necessary to accurately scan a specific location, while the head of the probe contained the modified Transwarp Drive and a new power source she had been working on for use in larger starships. This would sustain the Transwarp Drive during its active stages. There was also a plasma-based power distribution system for the power source to tap into, simulating a warp drive without actually having a warp drive. Seven began to catalogue her efforts in the main computer, just briefly looking up when Tuvok walked into the holodeck. He remarked that they had used the holodeck for over three days designing and building the device, and that it remained untested. This was followed by Tuvok assisting seven in her effort to catalogue their process.

Captain Janeway had drawn the short stick on this one. She was stuck on the bridge, trying to keep herself together while monitoring the situation outside the walls of Voyager. The new Ops officer was just getting settled in, feeling slightly twitchy trying to fill in the role of Ensign Kim. There had been no other mutagenic waves, and the surrounding nebulae had been, for the most part, normalized in their radiation spikes since the final wave that hit Voyager. B'Elanna had finished the work on Harry's and Tuvok's power-sensor relay, increasing the input to the sensors by 200%. Janeway intended to test the new interface when the next mutagenic wave was detected. With Seven busy building the transwarp probe, Icheb was left in astrometrics to scan for the waves, placing a great deal of pressure on him. He could handle it, however, and had always proven to be almost as efficient as Seven herself. Janeway was sitting in her chair, drinking her fifth coffee of the day, when Icheb called.

"Captain, a mutagenic wave is approaching Voyager, ETA twenty seconds" She was ready. Voyager would be ready. "I need a frequency, Icheb." Icheb tapped on his panel faster than he had ever tapped before. Voyager began scanning the wave. The data input was incredible. Voyager was literally processing thousands of frequencies per second, where before it could only do hundreds. Finally, 12 seconds later, the result came through.

"Captain, the radioactive frequency is 508.7 MHz." Janeway knew what to do with this. "Tactical, remodulate the shields to match that frequency!" There was frantic tapping, and then... nothing. Voyager didn't so much as move. The captain's coffee remained in the cup. She was impressed and confused. "Icheb, did that wave hit us?" Icheb was just as shocked as she was. It had worked. "No, it passed around us." Janeway's day was going better now.

Seven walked into Janeway's quarters. "Captain, I have a proposal for a transwarp flight test of the-" Seven couldn't finish the sentence. "No. Seven, it's not happening. I'm glad you built the probe, but you need to study it more before we test it." The captain was not budging on the matter. "Captain, Voyager's safety could be on the line if we don't test the probe. Just because you and Lieutenant Paris had a less-than-successful flight..." She trailed off. "This isn't about Paris, or me, or anyone else. This is about the danger that the probe poses, not to mention the stability of the Transwarp Drive. If we lose it, there's not another one. We can't just whip up another drive for testing. It would take weeks of construction, even in the dilithium belt." She pointed out the window, but kept talking. "Seven, I know it's hard to wait, but we have to be absolutely sure that the probe will work before we even let it out of the ship." Seven wasn't about to take this without a zealous counter-argument. "Captain, if we lose this opportunity, the situation both in and out of Voyager could get worse. We may never get this chance again. The longer we wait for the conditions to improve, the more danger we are imposing on the crew of Voyager!" She was getting impatient. They both were. Janeway walked over to a picture sitting on her table. If there was any chance that this probe could gather information that would get Voyager home faster, they needed to take it. She knew this. With this information in mind, she walked over to Seven. "I know what this transwarp probe means to you, and I know what it could do for Voyager and her crew. I promised myself after the Caretaker, that I would get the crew home. If this transwarp probe will help me do that, then I'll authorize the launch. Get the probe ready, transwarp at 0700 hours." Seven was moved. She looked at the captain, thanked her for the authorization, and then walked out of the quarters. It would be a relatively long night, with Tuvok being angry for having to prepare the probe, but it would be ready, and Voyager would soon know everything it needed to...

The probe was launched at 0700 hours. The bridge was abuzz with activity. Tactical was monitoring the area for threats to the launch, while Ops was scanning for mutagenic waves that could interfere with the probe's transwarp flight. So far, everything was clear. Seven stood with apprehension at her console, awaiting the moment when she could push the button and send the transwarp probe into infinity. The captain, too, looked anxious, for reasons known to both her and Seven. Finally, after ten minutes of engine charging, the probe was ready for transwarp. "On my mark!" The captain was ready to give the signal. Seven did a final sweep of the area. There was nothing on sensors. "Captain, the area is clear. We are clear to send the probe into transwarp." Captain Janeway wasted no time in giving the order. Seven pushed a few buttons on her console, and the probe vanished from space entirely.

Five seconds passed. Then ten. Finally, fifteen seconds had passed since the flight of the probe. In theory, it would now drop out of transwarp exactly where it had entered. Twenty seconds passed. Still no probe. Janeway ordered Seven to scan the area for the probe, while the Ops officer checked his sensors. "Captain, a transwarp signature is emanating from approximately 1.4 light years away." The captain was astonished. That far away? Janeway ordered Tom to set a course at warp 7. She wanted that probe back quite badly. After all, it contained all of the data that the crew needed on this sector, including the data on the electro-wall and what lay beyond. After a very long five minutes, Voyager came out of warp just in front of the transwarp probe. The captain was ready for the mystery of this region to end. She tapped her combadge. "Bridge to Engineering." The response was quick. "Go ahead, captain." "The transwarp probe is being transported directly to engineering, please download the logs." "Yes captain, engineering out." Janeway ordered Ops to beam the probe into engineering, and also ordered Seven to go to engineering to download the probe's data. She went, looking forward to seeing the results.

The probe was sitting there while the data was decrypting. Something Seven had forgot to mention was that the spacial sensors would encrypt all data if the probe was found to be away from the origin position. The data automatically began encrypting when the probe came out of transwarp, and had been decrypting for over 2 hours. Finally, the probe displayed a message, "Decryption complete, downloading sensor information." Images came up on the screen. Both Seven and B'Elanna gasped. B'Elanna tapped her combadge, missing the first time, but getting it on the second. "Torres to Janeway." "Janeway here." "Captain, you need to take a look at this data." "I'm on my way." Janeway wondered what was so important on the probe. Maybe the data had been flawed. Perhaps the sensors had misaligned and caused the probe to scan in a different location. Janeway simply didn't know. When she got off the turbolift and into engineering, she peered at the screen. Oh, this was bad... very bad.