Chakotay's battered, makeshift fighter shook again. The constant buckling might have rattled the Maquis captain once, but he'd long since learned to ignore it. He ordered the craft's control thrusters to make as hard a burn as they could manage in a vain attempt to throw off the Kazon's aim. Instead he was rewarded with a still harsher jolt, followed by a burst of heat and the acrid stench of burning metal behind him.

His eyes flickered to the viewport for a split-second to get eyes on the gigantic Kazon warship looming over themselves and their impromptu ally, Voyager.

"Neither of us has enough firepower to stop that ship." B'Elanna half-proclaimed, half-cursed. For whatever occasional issues his engineer's temper brought their rag-tag group, he would never worry about her ability to get to the point.

She was right, of course. Both Voyager and their own ship were still damaged from the tetryon beam used by the Caretaker to hurl them into the Delta Quadrant days ago. That Kazon cruiser was several times Voyager's size, they could spend hours fruitlessly pecking away at it.

Chakotay manipulated his control panel with the fine practice of a man who'd used the same instrument for years, knowing its every crack and crevice."I'm setting a collision course, but the guidance system is disabled. I'll have to pilot the ship manually." Again he took his eyes off the control panel, this time to meet B'Elanna. Unfortunately, she had her hands full making sure his ship still had functioning systems to work with, but he trusted she'd get the message. "Get the crew ready to beam to Voyager, and drop shields for transport."

"Tell one of your crackerjack Starfleet transporter chiefs to keep a lock on me. I'm going to try and take some of the heat off your tail"

Whatever crimes the man had committed, Janeway figured she'd be hard pressed to fault his courage. A quick glance at Ensign Kim and a curt nod was all the confirmation she needed; he still had a solid transporter lock on the Maquis fugitive. Two more blue bursts erupted from the Kazon warship plastered on their viewscreen, further depleting Voyager's tenuous shields. This little stunt they were about to pull would be questionable under the best of circumstances. Trying it while under enemy fire was borderline insane.

"Tuvok, what's your status?" Janeway asked hurriedly over an open channel. Tuvok - who had spent the last few hours dissecting the inner workings of the array which caused all their misery - replied with only a brief pause.

"I believe I have identified a method of returning Voyager to Federation space." The Vulcan reported, giving her an increased measure of hope. "After some trial and error, I have also located the Caretaker's self-destruct sequence. I can set this program on a delay to activate once the Array transports Voyager home. I am ready to begin the process at your command."

Hope surged across the bridge at the realization they'd be seeing their families back in the Alpha Quadrant sooner rather than later "Begin the process immediately, Mister Tuvok." Janeway could scarcely have gotten the words out faster if she'd tried. "And prepare to beam back to Voyager as soon as possible"

Of course, destroying the Caretaker Array to spare the Ocampa from the Kazon's wrath wasn't simply bending the Prime Directive. It was piloting a shuttlecraft into it. Once Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant, Janeway knew she could look forward to, at the absolute minimum, a formal inquiry and a court martial. More than likely, it would mean the end of her career as a command officer if not her tenure at Starfleet entirely. Still this decision, right or wrong, was the one she had made. She would own whatever consequences came of it.

"Let's hope our Vulcan friend is as good as you think he is." Tom Paris supplied less than helpfully. Seated at the conn, Tom's piloting skills had given them an edge against the Kazon, but their luck would run out before much longer.

A heartbeat after Paris's quip, the flaming wreck of Chakotay's fighter made a thunderous impact with their rival. The flaming warship lurched towards the array, and the string of weapons which had peppered away at the Federation ship came to an abrupt halt.

"We got him." Harry exclaimed with a relieved grin. Chakotay was safe and sound in their transporter room. The ensign's victory lap was cut short when the Kazon warship made impact with the array, shearing off one of the structure's pylons in a conflagration of metal and flame silenced only by contact with vacuum.

"Captain," Hurry evident in Tuvok's voice, "I have initiated the program. I am ready for transport. Inform the crew to brace for impact in less than sixty seconds."

Harry was on it before Janeway had a chance to turn to him. She tapped her commbadge with one hand while gripping the railing behind her with another. "All hands, brace for impact. We've been through this once, we all know what to expect this time."

Far fewer than 60 seconds later, a familiar white light enveloped the view screen, and despite all the preparation Janeway could manage, her vision became blinded by an overwhelming flash. She felt a sensation like needles prickling all over her skin, and for a few heartbeats she felt as if she was about to catch fire. Then, as quickly as last time, the sensation faded. Her vision returned, and a quick glance around the room showed the rest of the bridge crew was coming to as well. Knowing what to expect had helped steel them from the worst of the Caretaker's effects, though still they needed a few precious seconds to get their bearings. Last time they'd been subject to the Caretaker's technology, over a dozen people had died - including her first officer. This time, everyone looked more or less alright, if a bit shaken up.

Janeway blinked away the last remnants of the tetryon beam's blinding light. "Report?"

Harry Kim checked and rechecked his console. He started to speak, stopped, then tried again. "We're not in the Delta Quadrant anymore." He said, but the hesitation in his voice gave her pause. "Something's not right out there, I had to recalibrate the sensors. If I did it right, we're somewhere on the outer rim of the Beta Quadrant."

Voyager's captain felt her heart sink. Closer to home, maybe. But still decades away. "What do you mean not right out there?"

The turbolift doors whirred open. Chakotay, clad in his gray-tan garments, escorted by a yellow-shirted non commissioned, charged out. "Did it work?" He pleaded, his question silently answered by Janeway's grim expression.

She tried forcing a bit of humor to cover up the despair both crews were about to feel. "Looks like our two crews will be spending more time together than expected."

Four hours passed since the Array deposited them in what they assumed was the outskirts of the Beta Quadrant. Voyager's crew continued the work of patching up systems and gathering what little intel was available about their new surroundings. For Janeway, the first order of business was what to do with more than two-dozen alleged terrorists now hosted on her ship. Far too many to throw in the brig for the fifty years getting back to Federation space would take. Tuvok seemed content to try anyway, but Janeway knew - and she suspected Tuvok knew, in his heart of hearts - that was not viable. Besides, Voyager had lost too many valuable crewmen during their misadventure in the Delta Quadrant. They could hardly afford to give up on potential fill-ins, even before considering how much Chakotay and his crew had sacrificed to help Voyager survive their ordeal at all.

Which is why Janeway ultimately decided to include Chakotay at the first senior meeting in the briefing room on deck one. If their crews were going to be working together, it was important they felt included. And if Janeway had her way, that Maquis would be attending quite a few more senior functions in the future.

Janeway kicked things off by addressing her staff as a whole. "Do we have any idea what went wrong during the re-configuration?"

"As the one responsible for configuring the Caretaker to send us home, I am the most familiar with its systems. I can only guess why the array sent us here. I instructed it to run its previous program, which should have resulted in sending us back the Alpha Quadrant."

"That Array was advanced technology from a species outside our galaxy." Chakotay noted correctly. "You didn't have much time to figure out how it worked. We may never know what happened."

Ensign Kim took the datapadd in front of him and pulled something up. "Speaking of not knowing what happened, whatever the Caretaker did seemed to be more than just sending us across the galaxy." A mirror of his padd appeared on a built-in monitor on the room's far-side. "I've been working with Stellar Cartography to figure out exactly where we ended up. I had to re-calibrate the sensors to even get an idea of where we were, right?" He glanced around as if expecting someone to speak up. Nobody did. "Our sensors use a series of thirty-two pulsars across the galaxy to determine our location at any given time. Thirty of those Pulsars appear to have drifted by about a thousandth of a degree, and the other two aren't there at all."

"Drifted?" Janeway repeated incredulously. "Are you sure it's not our sensors making a mistake?"

"That was my first thought too, and I'm certain. I had Stellar Cartography run sweep on every sensor we have, they're in perfect working order." The ensign seemed to have checked all his boxes before coming, which was a good sign. "It's not just Pulsars either, the galaxy looks weird."

Harry tapped his padd again. An overlay of the galaxy appeared on the monitor. "Some stars look like they've moved more than others. Some aren't there at all, others are new. And look at this here." The galactic map was replaced by an overlay of the Gamma Quadrant. "That nebula wasn't there an hour ago, and it's not the only stellar phenomena to just pop out of nowhere."

"Stars orbit the galactic core just like planets orbit a star." Tom Paris added. "Maybe the Caretaker sent us through time?"

Kim nodded. "That's one of our theories. For us to actually notice stellar drift, it would need to be a pretty significant leap into the future. We're talking tens of thousands of years at least. But that wouldn't explain why our galaxy looks so fundamentally different."

Tens of thousands of years. The entire evening had already sent Janeway on a physical and emotional roller coaster. Her determination to save the Ocampa combined with her belief they were about to get home, only to have hope ripped away. Still, she had comforted herself with the knowledge they were closer to home than before, and even in the worst case they would still be reunited with their families one day. That last shred of hope was quickly being doused by Harry's report. Their families had been nothing but dust for millennia.

"Have we been able to determine anything about this region of space?" She figured the best thing they could do right now was keep focused on the here and now.

Tuvok took the spotlight again. "It's unusually quiet. I've detected no warp signatures. No subspace communications. Our sensors can detect what appears to be artificial structures transiting in front of nearby stars, and spectroscopy reveals at least one M-class planet in our vicinity. There seems to be intelligent life in this region, but they do not seem to be talking."

Artificial structures spread across multiple systems implied whatever life was out here had warp technology. So why hadn't Voyager detected any trace of interstellar traffic? The Beta Quadrant wasn't a total unknown like the Delta Quadrant had been. It was home to the Klingon Empire, the Romulans, even some members of the Federation. Which gave her a small measure of hope. Perhaps if the Federation still existed in this strange future, they had allies to count on.

"I'd like to get a better idea of who our new neighbors are. How long would it take us to reach that M-class planet?"

"About three days, assuming we're easy on the engines." Tom offered. "I'd prefer to keep us around warp seven. Until we can find something to supplement our antimatter supply, what we have on board is what we have."

Tuvok was quick to concur. "Given we know nothing about this region of space, we should conserve our resources for the time being."

Janeway turned to Harry again. "Ensign, I want a complete inventory of critical supplies from all departments. We need to know how long we have until we start running into issues. Draw up a plan to ration our energy reserves. Replicators, holodecks, all of those are going to have to be used sparingly for now. Work with Neelix, he's our resident survival expert. Even if he's not familiar with this region of space anymore, he should know a thing or two about making a little go a long way."

The operations officer responded with a crisp "Aye Captain.".

"Mister Paris, set a course for that M-class planet at warp seven. Chakotay," The man's gray-tan outfit was still off-putting. Seeing Maquis parading around her ship would still take some getting used to. "Put together a list of Maquis candidates you think would make good officers. We still need a chief engineer, transporter chief, doctor…" The list went on for too long.

Then, one last thing. "We're not giving up. The fact that the Caretaker could bring us here at all means there's still a way home, and I intend to find it."

A round of "Aye captains" and "Yes ma'ams" went around the room before Janeway dismissed her senior staff with their assignments. One by one they made their way out of the room with brisk determination. All but the Maquis commander, who stayed behind while Janeway gathered her things.

Which was actually helpful, she needed to talk to him anyway. She just didn't expect it to be this soon.

"I thought that went well." Chakotay confided. The man's voice always seemed to carry that same level-headed tone, you'd almost mistake him for a Vulcan. That would be a good trait to have in a crisis. "I agree we need to start thinking about rationing right off the bat. My people are used to doing as much as they can with limited resources. I think it would be helpful to have some of them brainstorm ways to conserve resources with your staff."

My people, your staff Janeway thought to herself. "We're going to need to start thinking of ourselves as one crew if we're going to be stranded together."

Chakotay weighed his words. "You're right. It's going to take some getting used to. My…" He stopped again before settling on the same terminology. "My crew aren't exactly Starfleet's finest. They're going to be rougher around the edges than you might expect."

"We'll find a way to work as a team." Janeway replied hopefully, even if the same doubt lingered in her mind. "Especially with the crew's new first officer being a Maquis, I'd imagine they'd get used to it one way or the other."

The Maquis looked genuinely caught off guard. "First officer?"

"You were a professor of advanced tactics at Starfleet Academy, were you not? You have command experience. The Maquis respect you. The crew will need the stability of somebody used to Starfleet procedures. You're the perfect candidate, if you accept of course."

He knew there wasn't much room to deny the promotion. "I'm not going to be your token Maquis." He said curtly. "I want my crew on the same footing yours. I won't accept them being treated like second class crewmen if we're going to be in this mess together."

Then, he held his tongue, as if considering his next words. The Maquis had stayed behind to do something more than appear diplomatic. "And about this mess. I think gathering intel is another good idea, now that being said…"

Janeway crossed her arms and braced herself for whatever her new second in command was about to say.

"Starfleet has a streak of idealism that gets the better of it sometimes. The way you charged headlong into the Kazon's hand back in the Delta Quadrant, it nearly got people killed."

The Starfleet captain faked a smile. "So how would you approach this situation, Commander?"

Chakotay seemed to brush off the new formality. "I think we should study this planet, and whoever lives on it. But we can't simply assume they're friendly. We should stay in the shadows, collect whatever information we can, but we shouldn't just march in and open hailing frequencies until we're certain we know who we're dealing with."

"I'm not a fan of subterfuge being a prelude to first contact." Janeway countered. "If we're detected, they could take us tip-toeing around as a sign of hostility."

"I recognize that, but we only have one Voyager." Chakotay argued. "And if they're friendly, fantastic. But if they're not, heading into that system could be putting your… our crew in danger."

Captain Janeway gave a deep, frustrated sigh. She sat back down at the front of the meeting room's long, thin table, intertwining her hands considering. "I wouldn't have chosen you as my first officer if I didn't value your input." She conceded. "Alright, we'll go for the more subtle approach."

Three days had passed Voyager by uneventfully. But for Janeway and her new second in command, "uneventful" wasn't the word to use. It turned out integrating dozens of former rebels with a Starfleet crew had its share of challenges despite their best efforts. Not even thirty hours into their journey to the M-class planet, a Maquis woman in engineering had come to blows with Janeway's most senior engineer over repairs to the power grid of all things. Janeway expected some of these would have a hardened attitude. After all, the Maquis couldn't afford to be picky about who they employed. What surprised her was how much Chakotay was willing to vouch for his ill-tempered engineer.

B'Elanna Torres, the half-klingon, half-human woman who had effortlessly broken Lieutenant Kerry's nose, was apparently the best engineer Chakotay had ever seen. Janeway, after some convincing, agreed not to lock the loose cannon of a technician up for the duration of the trip as Tuvok had suggested, but his suggestion to make her chief engineer was pushing against her limits. Kerry had more experience with Voyager's engines, and to her knowledge had never broken one of his coworker's bones.

Another Maquis nearly caused a power outage on deck four when he began work on section of power couplings without actually telling anybody. And one of Janeway's own nearly got a few bones broken himself when he decided to start cracking jokes at his new crewmate's expense. "Poking fun" at how easily the Cardassians seemed to swat the guerilla fighters away.

She'd told him to choose his words much more carefully.

It was a weight off her back when Voyager finally dropped out of warp around the small G-type star which hosted their objective. Hopefully, giving the crew something new to focus on would stop them from turning their attention to one another. The yellow-orange glow of that main sequence star was eerily similar to Sol, though that's where the comparisons to Janeway's home system ended. Five planets made up the star's family, with only the second closest suitable for habitation.

A massive debris field blanketed the skies around that planet in a miniature ring system. Kim clocked billions of pieces of twisted, charred metal. Some barely the size of a fleck of dust, others hulking behemoths that made Voyager look like a toy. Kerry would have the job of cataloguing what exactly they were looking at out there. With B'Elenna's help, after Chakotay's careful prodding.

The debris field was an unexpected blessing. Janeway ordered their power levels reduced as much as could be afforded without compromising ship safety, and ordered Paris to coast them into the vast collection of detritus. It would make a fine cloak from whoever happened to be inhabiting the tan-colored orb below.

"It has an atmosphere of Oxygen-Nitrogen." Tuvok confirmed of the featureless orb taking up the viewscreen. Partly obscured by a field of metal refuse, it looked quite unlike what you'd expect from a Minshara. Hardly a trace of green could be seen on its plain surface. No mountain ranges or great oceans were to be found. Instead, the strangely flat world was criss-crossed by a series of clearly artificial rivers, nestling vast, oddly shaped fields of yellow. "However the mixture is unusually rich in Nitrogen, to the point that long-term exposure to the atmosphere would be toxic."

"Lifesigns?" Captain Janeway replied plainly.

Ensign Kim piped up from behind his console. "Captain..." He started inquisitively, causing her to turn to the young man with some measure of annoyance. "We're reading about eighty million life-signs, and every single one is human."

It took a few moments for his words to register. "Human life signs, here?" Anything was possible given how far into the future Voyager had apparently been flung. Still, they were half a galaxy away from what would have been the closest human colony.

"They're pretty decentralized down there. I've got one major city center, everything else looks like towns, with some more concentrated pockets spaced in regular intervals. But those pockets aren't cities, more like…" An image of one such compound, containing dozens of featureless gray structures was brought onto the viewscreen."I'd call that a factory of some sort, maybe? Spaceport?"

Seska, a Bajoran woman seated at the far side of the bridge, offered her suggestion. "Housing for workers maybe." One of Chakotay's more disciplined compatriots, Seska was assigned a more senior posting thanks to her expertise and ability to follow protocol at a higher level than much of the Maquis. "Cardassians would use camps like that to keep Bajorans housed and fed between, whatever they would use them for."

"What's all that yellow?" Janeway implored, and the view screen again shifted to a shimmering field of yellow. The very ground seemed to be swaying in endless wind.

Chakotay, clad in his new, red-black command uniform, was quick to answer. "I think those are crops, captain."

"Those are all crops?" Paris asked in disbelief. "That stuff makes up more than eighty percent of the surface. Every single bit of that planet is a farm?"

"It's an agricultural world." Janeway surmised. "Which implies whoever lives in this part of space may not have access to replicators."

"Farming like that can't be good for the planet, it looks like they're growing one single type of crop." Chakotay continued. "They'd destroy the soil after enough harvests. Which might explain the high concentration of Nitrogen. They might be trying to supplement their yields with a lot of fertilizers."

Janeway smiled, increasingly confident with her choice of first officer. "You seem to know a lot about farming, commander."

"I've always had an interest in anthropology." Chakotay smiled through his response, quite happy to share his hobby with her.. "Agriculture is how civilization first came together, it's a good place to start. You can learn a lot about a culture from the way they grow their food."

"In that case, you seem like the perfect candidate to lead an away mission." Janeway didn't so much suggest as order. "I'd like you to put together a small team and beam down to the planet, see if you can't glean anything about these people's culture. Their level of technology, if they might be friendly."

"If we can make First Contact the proper way." Chakotay finished for her. "Seska, report to sickbay and have the medical hologram patch up your nose so you can pass as human. Kim, I'd like you to zero in on some of the natives and replicate some clothes to let us blend in. We'll rendezvous in transporter room two in one hour."

—-

From her terminal in engineering, B'Elanna Torres flicked through the images and readings collected by Voyager's sensor array. She was still getting used to the hum of a proper warp core. A pristine engine, maintained with meticulous care. Nothing like the forty-year-old rebuilt piece of junk she'd kept running with black-market scraps and desperation.. An Intrepid-Class was an unfathomable upgrade by her standards. The vessel had hundreds of little quirks and eccentricities she could spend years figuring out, and the engineer loved every bit of that challenge.

She selected a fifth image from her console, adding it to her collection. Satisfied for the time being, she dismissed the remaining gallery. B'Elenna gave each of her choices painstaking attention. She wished she had more information to work with, but the captain's insistence on power reduction to mask their approach left her with little more than visual cues to go off. Most of the debris around Voyager was unrecognizable pieces of alloyed garbage, leaving no hints of whatever structure they might once have been. It didn't take a detective to work out the origins of charr and blast damage on many fragments, though - that was the work of weapons fire. This had been the site of a battle at some point.

She pressed another image. The largest and most intact of the hulks around Voyager was almost uncomfortably large. Nearly five kilometers from bow to stern, this crippled, twisted derelict made a Galaxy-class blush. Long gashes and entire swathes of missing hull made it difficult to build a full picture of the craft, but it still had a few distinguishing features: A tall, red mass of what might have been decorative or might have been armor, adorned the front of the vessel. The long plow almost resembled what might have been fastened on the front of an antique steam locomotive. The vessel's broadside was christened with luxurious patterns whose purpose she could only guess. Perhaps they were meant to inspire beauty more than function. Rounded structures much like smoke stacks or cannons dotted the space before those ornate patterns. Ventilation? Was this a factory ship? Probably not. More likely some form of weapon. A weapon wide enough to fly a shuttle through.

And this ship had dozens of them.

Lt. Kerry pulled up a chair beside her, breaking Torres out of her muse. She glared at the man, his nose still betraying the last traces of the injury she'd inflicted on him a day before. He glared back, keeping a healthy distance that showed a level of respect for what she was capable of.

"The Captain wanted us to work on this together." He reminded her.

"Then get to working." Torres said curtly. She handed Kerry a padd without breaking her gaze. "Take a look at these sensor readings. What little we have, from passive scans."

He almost ripped the datapadd from her hand, clearly frustrated by her flippant dismissal of him. "The ship is dead." He noted flatly. "There's nothing useful here."

"Yeah, it's dead. Which doesn't make any sense. Nothing about this ship makes any sense. Why aren't we detecting residue from antimatter reactions?" She used two fingers to zoom in on the derelict. "There's nothing on this thing that looks like a warp nacelle, or a deflector array. For something allegedly built by humans it's completely alien."

"Perhaps it was meant for travel within the system?" Kerry suggested. "That's a farming world we're orbiting, maybe it carried foodstuffs?"

Torres shook her head. "It's more than an order of magnitude bigger than Voyager. Nothing that big would have been built to just lounge around the system."

"Then not a ship at all, a space station?"

"Maybe. That's a good thought." Torres said diplomatically. "This whole thing just feels weird, you know? How could a civilization advanced enough to build something like this not have replicator technology? To still need a whole planet to grow food?"

"Technological development isn't always a straight line." Kerry rebutted. "We don't know what their society is like. Maybe something took them in a different direction than ours took us."

Torres shifted the conversation in an effort to refocus on her goal. "We need more information about this ship, passive scans aren't going to cut it."

Kerry leaned forward, studying the image Torres had selected. "It's full of hull breaches. Any one of those would work just fine to get a transporter lock through." He turned to Torres. "Are you up for a field trip?"

Torres met his eyes, the tension between them thawing a few degrees. Still hot to the touch, but only just. "Only if you don't slow me down again."

A fair amount of disorientation was normal immediately after transport. While a person could get used to the sensation of having one's molecules disassembled and put back together again, the instant change in temperature, humidity, and air pressure reliably caught even practiced users off guard. Commander Chakotay, former guerilla fighter, considered himself an honored member of that category. Cardassian compounds weren't exactly made for human comfort, their adversary preferred an uncomfortably hot and humid environment. It had become common practice, among Maquis as well as veteran Starfleet crews during the Federation-Cardassian border war, to spend some time in a similarly hot, humid room just to let a strike team adjust prior to transport.

Despite that conditioning, transport to this agrarian world made Chakotay's head spin while he gathered himself. Much like a Cardassian supply depot, the air was unnaturally humid. Unceasing wind nearly knocked him off his feet. Specks of dust and soil clung to Chakotay's clothes and he struggled to breath. The green ensign Kim looked to fare a bit worse. Seska easily had the two humans beat, though she always had a natural knack for adjusting to Cardassian environments. Probably all that experience dealing with them on Bajor, Chakotay figured.

Visibility was acceptable, flat vistas marked only by vast fields of crops and the small, boxy gray spires of what they assumed was the planet's main city center. Chakotay quickly noted these plants, for as much effort as the natives seemed to have spent on growing them, were not in fantastic husks were discolored, slimy messes of green and yellow. Many of their stalks drooped noticeably, with some specimens having fallen over completely. In the distance, great metal combines stretching hundreds of feet long tended to the fields, and floating metal contraptions sprayed a substance onto the growing produce. The landscape was dotted with movement, so distant he could hardly make out what it was. Kim had already pulled out a magnification device to examine the view.

"There's at least a thousand people out there." Kim reported before handing the device to his new commanding officer.

Chakotay examined the same view for a few moments. "Working the fields. Gathering up anything the harvest machines missed, tending to the soil." He handed the small ocular device to Seska. "Which is odd for a space faring society, that's not an efficient way to do things. And look at these plants, they don't seem to be taking good care of their work."

"Did you notice none of them are wearing rebreathers?" Seska asked, finally handing the device back to Harry. "This air would be toxic in the long term."

A small army of laborers slowly trudged by on a nearby road. As they slowly grew in the distance, the torn rags of their linen and ashen faces became distinguishable. A few of the workers noticed the away team, but didn't seem to pay them any mind. Many of them did not look to be in good health, the bones of their shoulder blades or ribs jutting out from tears in their linen.

"Crops aren't the only thing they don't take good care of." Kim noted.

A man limped along at the rear of their formation. Supported by a makeshift walking stick of wood and corn husk, he worked valiantly to maintain pace with his brethren. His clothes, a set of blue-tan overalls similar to what the away team donned, were heavily dusted but otherwise in good shape. Balding and unshaven, his face sunken, Chakotay clocked him as middle aged. The commander frowned. That man could barely walk, what use was he for manual labor?

The trio dredged their way across the low patch of soil which had likely been recently harvested. The walking-stick man stumbled, making the commander quicken his pace. His walking stick had fallen just out of reach and as he struggled to grasp it, Chakotay reached a hand out.

At first, the native's face betrayed genuine confusion. Then, after a few moments, his hand reached out to join the officer's. Chakotay noted he was a good bit lighter than he expected, and while his clothes appeared mostly free of the rips and tears which adorned his comrades, they were about a size too large. Ensign Kim handed the man his walking stick as Chakotay finished helping him to his feet.

"Are you alright?" Chakotay asked, and again the man seemed to hesitate, studying them closely before replying.

"You're Uppers." He said matter-of-factly. Without prompting he pulled up the sleeve of his undershirt to reveal a barcode tattooed into his skin. "I've finished my Allotment for the day, feel free to check for yourselves. I was just going home."

Before Chakotay could begin formulating a response, Seska cut in. "We'll take your word for it. Are Uppers always as obvious as us?"

A weak laugh came from the man. "You don't look like you've spent your lives tending the fields, do you?" His eyes widened. "Not that, there's anything wrong with, I didn't-"

Seska waved a hand. "We appreciate your honesty. You must not live far from here."

He shook his head. "No, I was assigned quarters close to my Allotment this harvest." He hesitated before looking to the sky. It was midday, and the yellow hue of the system's singular star shone almost directly above them. "The closer I am, the more time I have to serve in His name."

"If you don't live far, why don't we see you home." Chakotay offered before turning to Seks. "You can tell us more about your work. 'Uppers' don't get us much time out here as some of us would like."

An expression of unfettered bewilderment returned to the man's seemed to be trying to size them up. It didn't take a degree in Anthropology for Chakotay to conclude these weary laborers weren't here by choice. The man was probably trying to figure out if this was some sort of ploy. If a simple act of compassion caused this much conflict, they likely were not treated terribly well by their supervisors. Still his fear of retribution outweighed any lingering concern, and he accepted their offer to see him home.

Edran was this haggard man's name. With plenty of time to pester him with questions about his life, Chakotay struggled to reign in his disdain for Edran's condition with a giddy interest in every aspect of his culture. They learned he had what was considered a more hazardous but better compensating job: loading pesticides into the great payloads of floating sprayers to keep the crops free of pests. They used some sort of point system to determine things like living arrangements and work during each 'Allotment,' a yearly work assignment that each worker received for that particular harvest in that particular section of the planet. It was the man's hazardous job which allowed him to live in what he considered particularly luxurious arrangements.

Edran proudly declared he'd worked this job for thirty years. Chakotay asked the man exactly how old he was. Thirty-nine was the reply which forced a round of concerned glances among the away team.

Chakotay carefully prodded the man for more information about his religion, taking care to frame each question as if they were also devout followers. These people seemed to worship their sun as a deity, who they referred to as their 'Emperor.' He provided the light and nourishment their crops needed to grow, and they harvested those crops to further His work. He had no idea where the crops went and seemed to have only the most passing knowledge of space travel. No inkling of a power higher than his Uppers, and no idea of what polity they answered to. No knowledge of that orbiting debris field except for a comment about watching the glittering stars twinkle in the sky as he worked.

It took more than thirty minutes to make their way to the man's abode, a journey which would have taken him twice as long alone. A walk he dutifully performed twice a day between twelve hour shifts. His little hamlet was a sorry collection of rusted metal slabs. Brutalist in their design, they looked like pre-fabbed structures scarcely maintained in generations. At the edge of town, a man who half resembled a Borg drone knelt at the base of one of those giant into a removed access panel, Chakotay could make out a metal hand working with fine precision, while a tall metal arm fused into the robed man's back worked in tandem. Sensing their presence, the mechanical man turned to reveal he had one eye replaced with a red-black ocular implant. This did not help the Borg drone comparison.

His artificial eye seemed to fixate on them for a few moments before finally turning back to his work.

"I know what this was about." Edrad admitted solemnly as he reached for the gray door of his home. "I know the Arbites told you my son missed his first Allotment. But he just couldn't, not in his shape. He'll be more than ready before the next cycle, you have my word."

"What's wrong with your son?" Kim asked bluntly. Chakotay shot a glare at the ensign.

Edran let out a dejected sigh. "Maybe if you see him, you'll understand?"

His home was a ramshackle of decrepit, aging furniture. A single metal bench was pressed up against the wall while a fading light bulb lit his quarters in a dim aura of orange. A lack of dust and careful arrangement of what meager possessions he owned told Chakotay he had a fair amount of pride in his home. Indeed, Edrad seemed quite pleased in his three-room prefab, calling himself incredibly lucky to escape the cramped bunks he'd spent his younger years in. It took decades to build up enough to escape sleeping ten to a room, but he'd done it, while starting a family to boot.

Chakotay expected the worst. Even so, stench still hit him like a photon torpedo. Edrad's son, ten harvests old, lay barely breathing on a collection of filthy towels. His skin carried a sickly blue tint, with a bowl of vomit which he appeared to have trouble aiming for laying beside him. A weak cough interrupted the child's scarce breathing.

"You can see why he can't work right now." The man explained while the trio stared in stupefied silence. "But he'll be better next Allotment, you'll see."

The Maquis shot a knowing glance to Seska, who took Edrad's arm and ushered into the main room under the pretext of questioning him on Allotment quotas. Once both were clearly out of earshot, he produced a tricorder out of a satchel hidden under his shirt. Both he and Ensign Kim crouched over the child, Kim leaning slightly to the side to keep Seska and Edrad in his sight.

"Nitrate poisoning." Chakotay diagnosed after consulting the tricorder for a few brief moments. He returned the device. "These people must know the air is toxic!" He whispered curtly, perhaps louder than he should have. "And Edrad works with pesticides all day, bringing all that home every day can't be helping."

"I can't explain these people." Kim replied in defeat. "How could a society capable of interstellar travel live like this?"

"He's not going to survive." Chakotay said grimly. "Even if he was moved to a world where the air wasn't killing him, his lungs are too badly damaged. It's only a matter of time."

Ensign Kim started to stand, but stopped and knelt back down when his commander seemed dissatisfied with that being the last word.

The Maquis reached down again, slowly, weighing a decision in his mind. "One hypospray would at least stabilize his condition. Give him a fighting chance."

Kim leaned in closer. "We can't interfere here. The Prime Directive, we don't influence the affairs of other civilizations because we don't know what the consequences would be."

"I'm not Starfleet." Chakotay struggled to maintain a whisper. "And I think I can live with the consequences of letting one child survive."

A little sleight of hand later, and Chakotay had the hypospray in hand and was adjusting the dosage. It didn't take long after injecting the child for his breathing to begin the process of steadying, if only by the smallest degree. Kim, disapproving as he seemed, kept close watch. Satisfied, Chakotay stood up, straightened his outfit, and led the two out of the sickly child's bedroom.

The home's singular window was a jagged, round hole machined out with nothing actually separating Edrad's residence from the elements. Out that window, as he and Kim returned, Chakotay's gaze met the same mechanical man from earlier, his ocular implant again studying the away team intently, before mercifully turning away.

Captain Janeway scrolled through the computer seated atop the desk of her ready room. On her right sat the last mug of coffee she would allow herself to enjoy for some time. While the final details were still being hammered out, every crewman would soon be allotted a ration of replicator use in an effort to stretch out their finite energy reserves. She savored every small, teasing sip of the beverage, which had lost its last remnants of warmth about twenty minutes earlier. A chime brought her to attention. "Come." She called out, unfurrowing her brow and refocusing on the door, which slid open to reveal her Vulcan chief of security.

"Lieutenant Kerry and Ms. Torres are making preparations to beam aboard the derelict." Tuvok reported. "And our away team just made their scheduled check-in. They are not optimistic about relations with the natives."

Janeway frowned at those words. "I'm eager for the away team's full report. And on the topic of reports…" She took hold of a datapadd seated next to her computer. "Have you had a chance to read B'Lenna's initial findings of the debris field? Her notes are meticulous. I can see why Chakotay thinks so highly of her."

"I'm afraid I have not." Tuvok replied flatly.

"Let me give you some spoilers for the next senior staff meeting." Janeway teased, leaning forward and tapping through the datapadd. "They beamed aboard a sample of debris and detected a completely unique quantum signature. Tuvok, the Caretaker didn't just throw us through time and space - It sent us to a different universe all together."

"That would explain the discrepancies Ensign Kim discovered between this galaxy and our own."

"There's precedent for something like this." Janeway resumed manipulating her padd. "Stardate 47391.2, the USS Enterprise encountered a quantum anomaly which caused several thousand alternate universes to intersect. They managed to set things right. Stardate 46944.3, two crewmembers aboard Deep Space Nine were mistakenly flung into an alternate reality by the station's wormhole. They were able to mimic the conditions which brought them there to get back" She returned the padd to her desk before twining her fingers together. "We're going to get this crew back to the Alpha Quadrant, our Alpha Quadrant."

"If the Caretaker sent us here, it is logical that technology to send us back is possible." Tuvok agreed. "However, with the Caretaker array destroyed, and a universe away regardless, it will be difficult to reverse engineer its method of transporting us here."

"Difficult, but not impossible." The Captain finished with a smile before changing the topic. "I've also taken a crack at examining this planet myself. These people didn't just find an agricultural world, they created one." She stood up from her desk and walked to the expansive window on the opposite side of her ready room, clasping her hands behind her back as she did so. The window was dominated by the tan pearl of the planet below, its surface eclipsed intermittently by jagged bits of debris. "You can see echoes of flattened mountain ranges, oceans filled in unthinkably vast mounds of soil, replaced by rivers spaced out in regular intervals to ensure proper irrigation." Janeway turned to meet Tuvok's expressionless gaze. "It would have taken Starfleet's Corps of Engineers generations to do something like this, and they're using it to grow corn?"

Her Vulcan friend seemed to ponder the statement before another chime interrupted their conversation. It was Tom Paris. Captain to the Bridge.

"Tom Paris had already locked the viewscreen on something new when Janeway and Tuvok stepped onto the bridge. "A ship just appeared on sensors about half a million kilometers away."

"Why didn't we detect them on subspace scanners?" Janeway interrogated, squinting to make out the distant craft.

"They didn't come from subspace." Paris explained. "They came from some sort of spatial conduit."

"Mister Paris is correct." Tuvok confirmed, sifting through the sensor logs from mere moments ago. "The vessel emerged from an anomaly of unknown origin."

Janeway racked her mind. "Like a Borg transwarp conduit, perhaps?"

"Perhaps. However, our computer has no record of the radiation which emanated from the anomaly. I can offer no explanation of the vessel's method of travel."

"Magnify."

The viewscreen blinked and settled on the craft streaking through the debris field and into planetary orbit. It looked like a miniature version of the derelict Torres and Kerry had just beamed onto.

Though according to Tuvok, 'miniature' was a relative term. "That vessel is one point five kilometers long. I am detecting over twenty thousand life signs."

Enough to staff an entire Starbase, and this was the smaller version. "All human?" Janeway assumed. Tuvok confirmed her suspicion. "Have they detected us?"

"If they have, they do not seem to be indicating it."

Their helmsman kept pace with the seasoned Starfleet officers on the bridge, not bad for someone they'd bailed out of a prison three weeks earlier. "They're transmitting something to the planet on an open channel." One word from his captain later, he was patching it through the Bridge.

What they heard both chilled and confused the bridge crew in equal measure.

"This is Inquisitor Virex, aboard the Spear of Prosecution. By writ of the God-Emperor and the authority of His Holy Inquisition, Governor Radcliff is hereby commanded to receive me immediately. You know why I'm here, Governor. Nothing in the Gulf stays as hidden as you think it does. This visit has been years in the making."

Paris scanned his display for any other transmissions from their new friend. "That's all she wrote, I guess."

The Holy Inquisition? Janeway thought to herself. The very words tasted bitter on her tongue. Such a term brought to mind the Spanish Inquisitions and prosecutions of old Earth. Of grim atrocities and kangaroo courts and so much pointless pain and death. The God-Emperor? A reference to some mythical deity? A real figure head? Finally the Gulf, most likely a name these people had for this region of space.

Who were these people?

"Do we still have a lock on the away team?" She questioned.

"Yes." Tuvok affirmed. "However, Commander Chakotay desires more time on the surface."

She considered their options. If Chakotay wanted more time, she wanted to defer to his judgement. This ship's business was supposedly years in the making, meaning Voyager's arrival was just a coincidence. Whatever this Inquisition was doing here would have been arranged long ago. Curious as these arrivals were, she saw no immediate need to change course.

Besides, she needed to remind herself that different cultures were, in fact, different. The Federation taught them that their differences were what made them strong, and she needed to be careful not to pass judgement on these humans simply because their customs might seem strange, or even alien.

For all she knew, the friendliest people in the galaxy were on board that ship.