"So you take us from one bad situation to another!" Janeway stormed at the Doctor. He held his hands up to his ears.
They were on the bridge once more, the Doctor having bolted up there after his pronouncement. Martha had run after him, breathless, heart pounding. What she needed, she thought ruefully, was a rest.
"Nobody ever mentioned how shouty you got…" he said. "You, Harry – make a note of that, I'll want to know how shouty she is, it's important..."
Harry Kim nodded before he realised what the Doctor had said, then he frowned, but Janeway ignored it.
"You know," Janeway added, still fuming, "you almost remind me of Q…"
The Doctor looked totally shocked for a moment. Then he burst out grinning.
"You know Q?" he said. "My goodness…"
"You know Q?!" Janeway yelled. Martha looked from one to another, in desperation.
"Ok, so you're both Bond fans," she said.
"No, no, no," the Doctor said, turning to Martha with a grin, "not that Q – although incidentally, I built that jetpack for him, he didn't get the antigrav field right – Q! The extra dimensional being!"
"No idea who you mean," Martha said after a moment. "Sorry."
"Ah, right, sorry, forgot you were new," the Doctor smiled. "I'll introduce you sometimes, he's great at canasta."
"So you aren't Q?" Chakotay asked.
"Pah," the Doctor said, waving his hand, "No, mate, I'm not Q. If I had Q's power, believe me, I'd have done a lot of things differently…"
A haunted look came into his eyes, one which the Captain ignored.
"Well you're sure acting like him," Janeway said, infuriated. "Meddling with our lives, throwing us hundreds of years into the future…"
"Story of my life," Martha muttered grimly, mildly miffed as the 'new' comment..
"Captain," a voice came from OPS, and Janeway turned to regard Harry Kim. "We're being hailed."
"On viewer," Janeway said, and she turned.
To regard a very familiar face.
"Captain," the EMH smiled at her from the screen. "An honour to see you once more."
"DOCTOR?!?!" Janeway yelled. He certainly looked like a Mark I EMH, but he was in… well, it looked like a Starfleet Captains uniform. It was red, with four pins, but the delta was different, and the shirt was block solid red, rather like the traditional uniform of Kirks day.
"Doctor!" the Doctor – the brown suited one by her side that is – grinned. "How's it going, Joe?"
"Doctor," the EMH – Joe? – said. "How nice to finally see you again. It's been too long."
"Don't tell me I didn't pop in again," the Doctor said, almost as if in self admonishment.
"Once in a while, but you… had a facelift," the EMH on screen said. "Anyway," he added, "this is no time to chat. We need your help, as you well know…"
"Yes, I do," the Doctor said. "Right, you know the sequences."
"Yes I do," the EMH said, as the Doctor ran to a console. Janeway looked from one to another in desperation.
"Would someone mind telling me what's going on?!" she yelled.
The EMH looked at her, and there was a sort of pain on his face, the sort of pain that Janeway half recognised.
"I missed you," he said, smiling sadly. "You were a good Captain."
Janeway looked at him increduously, but then he Doctor said, his tone one of warning; "Joe." The EMH nodded sadly, and gave out a series of long numbers, which the Doctor proceeded to enter into the console. A moment later, Tuvok raised an eyebrow in semi-shock.
"Captain, our shields have just become thirty times more efficient," he reported, and he almost sounded surprised. Almost.
"That's the point," the Doctor said. "Look, we're in a war zone, and they need me."
"Why do you need us?!" Janeway countered, angrily. "What possible reason could you have…?"
"I need you because I needed you," the Doctor said, smiling.
"What?" Janeway asked.
"In the future – your future, my past – I met your crew atr a reunion," the Doctor said. "And they talked about this encounter. Trouble was, once they realised I didn't know what they were talking about, they stopped – round about here in the story."
"A temporal paradox," Tuvok said. "You have set in motion events that were already destined to happen."
"Yup," the Doctor confirmed with a nod. Janeway massaged her temple.
"I hate time travel," she said. "So everything up 'til now you knew what was gonna happen…?"
"But now I don't," the Doctor confirmed. "And it's more fun that way."
"Tell me you have a plan," Martha asked the Doctor. He looked at her, scandalised.
"'Course I've got a plan!" he said, running to Harry Kims station. "Just need some cooking utensils and my special party hat…"
Janeway exchanged looks with Chakotay.
"A joke," the Doctor added. "Now, you have a lovely delfector dish, Captain," he added. "And I wopnder what would happen if I did this…"
"Captain," Tuvok said, "he is creating a temporal rift near the Dalek fleet…"
"Too late, they're coming for us!" Tom Paris said.
"Initiate evasive maneuvors!" Janeway ordered. "Keep us away from them, Tom!"
"Martha!" the Doctor yelled. "Get down to the TARDIS, and open her. Captain, get your engineers to connect the TARDIS power supply to youre ship – it should give us enough power to get where we're going…"
Martha ran, and Harry Kim, surplus to requirement for the moment, followed. The Doctor kept fiddling with the console, eventually taking his Sonic Screwdrive rout to continue his meddling. It was all Tom Paris could do to keep them in one piece. Suddenly…
"Ah ha!" the Doctor yelled. "Martha did it!"
"Did what?" Janeway asked.
"She linked us to the TARDIS – the entire Dalek fleet is going to Borg Space, circa the year 2375!" the Doctor yelled.
"What if the Borg assimilate Dalek technology?" Seven of Nine asked.
"You said it yourself, "the Doctor grinned smugly. "Only a handful ever allowed themselves to be captured alive. They'll kill loads of Borg - aboslutely yonks of 'em - then they'll self destruct. Sides, Dalek tech is actually quite primitive compared to some stuff the Borg have assimilated over the years…"
"Captain," Tuvok reported, "the Dalek fleet has been swallowed, and the temporal anomaly has gone."
Janeway looked impressed, but there was still one question.
"How are you gonna get us back home?" she asked.
"Home?!" the Doctor said. "Oh, I'm not sending you home," he added, "I'll send you back where I found you. You've got things to do, Kapitan…"
He smiled, and then another rift opened. The Doctor quickly sent a goodbye message to Joe – the EMH – and then Voyager was gone…
--
Borg Cube 22573634/45143 was patrolling sector four-six-one-G, for the 1184724th time in its long, comparitively productive existence as a Borg ship, when something happened that had never happened before.
A temporal anomaly appeared, right in front of it, andout of it came a vessel idetified as USS Voyager NCC-74656, Intrepid class Starfleet vessel ,enemy of the Borg. Assimilate on contact.
The Borg Cube dutifully hailed the vessel.
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile."
The reply was unexpected, and not what the current designated Captain would have been predicted to send. A humanoid male voice, accent identified British.
"Oops. Ah. Bollocks."